Homeless in Arizona

Ex-cop, federal mole charged with extortion, selling guns to felons

By Annie Sweeney Tribune reporter

7:17 p.m. CST, January 28, 2013

A former Chicago police officer whose undercover work led to charges in separate public corruption probes was himself charged Monday with extorting a tow truck operator and selling firearms to a convicted felon.

Ali Haleem becomes the 11th Chicago police officer charged in a tow truck scandal in which officers steered business to drivers for kickbacks, federal prosecutors said

According to court records and sources, Haleem worked undercover after federal authorities confronted him about the extortion in 2008, secretly recording conversations. His cooperation led to charges against a onetime campaign treasurer for former state Sen. Ricky Hendon, and six others on charges they paid kickbacks in the hopes of securing thousands of dollars in federal grants. Hendon was not charged.

Haleem’s undercover work also resulted in charges against two tax analysts for the Cook County Board of Review who allegedly pocketed a $1,500 cash payoff after agreeing to reduce property tax assessments.

Court documents in both those public corruption investigations identified the cooperating witness as a Chicago police officer who had been arrested in July 2008 as part of a probe into public corruption and gun trafficking.

The charges on Monday against Haleem alleged that in addition to extorting the tow truck operator, he also sold three firearms to the driver, who was a convicted felon who could not legally purchase weapons. Haleem resigned last September from the Police Department.

asweeney@tribune.com

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Alaska cops being secretive about jail suicide of serial killer

Alaska officials mum on serial killer’s suicide

The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Jan 28, 2013 7:00 PM

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Alaska prisons officials refuse to say how confessed serial killer Israel Keyes obtained a razor before his jail-cell suicide.

The state Department of Corrections denied a public records request from The Associated Press that seeks to determine why Keyes was able have a razor in his Anchorage cell. Keyes slit his wrist in December with the blade of a disposal razor that was imbedded in a pencil. He also strangled himself with a bedsheet.

At the time of his death, Keyes was awaiting trial in the 2012 slaying of an 18-year-old Anchorage barista. Under state policy, he would not have been authorized to have possession of a razor, according to a list of items allowed for pre-trial detainees. Razors can be possessed by convicted prisoners who have been cleared to have them.

In its denial, the state cites prisoner confidentiality. It also says information on the department’s internal investigation of Keyes’ death is denied “on the ground that the only investigation performed was conducted at the direction of Assistant Attorney General John K. Bodick in anticipation of litigation and is thus protected from release by the attorney-client privilege.”

Bodick said Monday he doesn’t know of any lawsuits planned over Keyes’ death, but his office wanted to be better prepared should litigation arise in this case or others involving other inmate deaths. He said Keyes was the kick-off point of a new approach to inmate deaths that had been discussed before his death. Earlier deaths have been handled with a variety of reports by different officials.

Keyes’ family or others have a two-year window to sue, Bodick said. But even if no one does, a lot about Keyes’ death may never be disclosed.

“There’s still a right to privacy involved regarding these kinds of sensitive topics,” Bodick said. “So I think, despite the fact there may be no lawsuit forthcoming, there’s still a right to privacy with the survivors, which would remain.”

Keyes was found dead Dec. 2. Also found were two bloodied sheets of paper with illegible writings that have been analyzed by the FBI, which has not disclosed it findings, only that they did not include a list of Keyes’ other victims.

Keyes, 34, was set for a March trial in federal court in the abduction and killing of Anchorage barista Samantha Koenig. Before he died, Keyes also confessed to the killings of at least seven others across the country, including Bill and Lorraine Currier of Essex, Vt., in 2011. He also alluded to other possible victims. Koenig and the Curriers are the only victims named by Keyes because he knew authorities had tied him to their deaths.

He was in state custody in Anchorage because there are no federal prisons in Alaska.

Besides declining specifics on Keyes’ razor access, the state also declined to discuss policies for inmate razor use and how they apply to an inmate who confessed to numerous killings.

Corrections spokeswoman Kaci Schroeder said that even general discussions of razor possession are not public because they are a security issue.

“If an inmate reads on how we’re doing something,” she said, “then, you know, they can work around the system.”

Keyes was once on suicide watch. At the time of his death, he had been segregated from other inmates but was not on a suicide watch.

In its public records denial, the Corrections Department declined to say why Keyes was placed on suicide watch and for how long. The agency won’t say when and why he was taken off suicide watch or if he was always segregated from other inmates.

The state also declined to say when Keyes’ cell was last checked when he was alive, when he was found dead and who discovered the body.

U.S. Weighs Base for Spy Drones in North Africa

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U.S. Weighs Base for Spy Drones in North Africa

By ERIC SCHMITT

Published: January 28, 2013 292 Comments

WASHINGTON — The United States military is preparing to establish a drone base in northwest Africa so that it can increase surveillance missions on the local affiliate of Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups that American and other Western officials say pose a growing menace to the region.

For now, officials say they envision flying only unarmed surveillance drones from the base, though they have not ruled out conducting missile strikes at some point if the threat worsens.

The move is an indication of the priority Africa has become in American antiterrorism efforts. The United States military has a limited presence in Africa, with only one permanent base, in the country of Djibouti, more than 3,000 miles from Mali, where French and Malian troops are now battling Qaeda-backed fighters who control the northern part of Mali.

A new drone base in northwest Africa would join a constellation of small airstrips in recent years on the continent, including in Ethiopia, for surveillance missions flown by drones or turboprop planes designed to look like civilian aircraft.

If the base is approved, the most likely location for it would be in Niger, a largely desert nation on the eastern border of Mali. The American military’s Africa Command, or Africom, is also discussing options for the base with other countries in the region, including Burkina Faso, officials said.

The immediate impetus for a drone base in the region is to provide surveillance assistance to the French-led operation in Mali. “This is directly related to the Mali mission, but it could also give Africom a more enduring presence for I.S.R.,” one American military official said Sunday, referring to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

A handful of unarmed Predator drones would carry out surveillance missions in the region and fill a desperate need for more detailed information on a range of regional threats, including militants in Mali and the unabated flow of fighters and weapons from Libya. American military commanders and intelligence analysts complain that such information has been sorely lacking.

The Africa Command’s plan still needs approval from the Pentagon and eventually from the White House, as well as from officials in Niger. American military officials said that they were still working out some details, and that no final decision had been made. But in Niger on Monday, the two countries reached a status-of-forces agreement that clears the way for greater American military involvement in the country and provides legal protection to American troops there, including any who might deploy to a new drone base.

The plan could face resistance from some in the White House who are wary of committing any additional American forces to a fight against a poorly understood web of extremist groups in North Africa.

If approved, the base could ultimately have as many as 300 United States military and contractor personnel, but it would probably begin with far fewer people than that, military officials said.

Some Africa specialists expressed concern that setting up a drone base in Niger or in a neighboring country, even if only to fly surveillance missions, could alienate local people who may associate the distinctive aircraft with deadly attacks in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

Officials from Niger did not respond to e-mails over the weekend about the plan, but its president, Mahamadou Issoufou, has expressed a willingness to establish what he called in a recent interview “a long-term strategic relationship with the U.S.”

“What’s happening in northern Mali is a big concern for us because what’s happening in northern Mali can also happen to us,” Mr. Issoufou said in an interview at the presidential palace in Niamey, Niger’s capital, on Jan. 10, the day before French troops swept into Mali to blunt the militant advance.

Gen. Carter F. Ham, the head of the Africa Command, who visited Niger this month to discuss expanding the country’s security cooperation with the United States, declined to comment on the proposed drone base, saying in an e-mail that the subject was “too operational for me to confirm or deny.”

Discussions about the drone base come at a time when the French operation in Mali and a militant attack on a remote gas field in the Algerian desert that left at least 37 foreign hostages, including 3 Americans, dead have thrown a spotlight on Al Qaeda’s franchise in the region, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and forced Western governments and their allies in the region to accelerate efforts to combat it.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who is chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death and the turmoil of the Arab Spring, there was “an effort to establish a beachhead for terrorism, a joining together of terrorist organizations.”

According to current and former American government officials, as well as classified government cables made public by the group WikiLeaks, the surveillance missions flown by American turboprop planes in northern Mali have had only a limited effect.

Flown mainly from Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, the missions have faced stiff challenges as militant leaders have taken greater precautions in using electronic communications and have taken more care not to disclose delicate information that could be monitored, like their precise locations.

General Ham said in an interview on his visit to Niger that it had been difficult for American intelligence agencies to collect consistent, reliable intelligence about what was going on in northern Mali, as well as in other largely ungoverned parts of the sub-Saharan region.

“It’s tough to penetrate,” he said. “It’s tough to get access for platforms that can collect. It’s an extraordinarily tough environment for human intelligence, not just ours but the neighboring countries as well.”

The State Department has been extraordinarily wary of allowing drones to operate in the region, fearful of criticism that the United States is trying to militarize parts of Africa as it steps up its campaign to hunt down Qaeda-linked extremists in Somalia, as well as those responsible for the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

American drones regularly conduct surveillance flights over Somalia and occasionally launch airstrikes against people suspected of being members of the Shabab, a militant group linked to Al Qaeda. General Ham, who will be retiring from his command this spring after nearly 40 years in the Army, has been warning that the United States needs more and better surveillance tools in Africa to track the growing threats there.

“Without operating locations on the continent, I.S.R. capabilities would be curtailed, potentially endangering U.S. security,” General Ham said in a statement to the House Armed Services Committee last March. “Given the vast geographic space and diversity in threats, the command requires increased I.S.R. assets to adequately address the security challenges on the continent.”

Uncle Sam is reading your email???

Google will seek to limit law enforcement's access to emails

Reuters

Posted: 01/28/2013 05:46:16 PM PST

WASHINGTON -- Google (GOOG) will lobby Washington in 2013 to make it harder for law enforcement authorities to gain access to emails and other digital messages.

In a blog post on Monday, linked to Data Privacy Day, Google's chief legal officer, David Drummond, said the tech giant, in coalition with many other powerful tech companies, will try to convince Congress to update a 1986 privacy protection law.

He cited data showing that government requests for Mountain View-based Google's user data increased more than 70 percent since 2009.

In 2012, Google said, "We're a law-abiding company, and we don't want our services to be used in harmful ways. But it's just as important that laws protect you against overly broad requests for your personal information," Drummond said in the post.

The U.S. Electronic Communications Privacy Act, passed in the early days of the Internet, does not require government investigators to have a search warrant when requesting access to old emails and messages that are stored online, providing less protection for them than, say, letters stored in a desk drawer or even messages saved on a computer's hard drive.

The current system also makes complex distinctions, many disputed in courts, between emails saved as drafts online, in transit, unopened or opened. Some of them are to be released with subpoenas, which have a lower threshold than search warrants as they often do not involve a judge.

A warrant is generally approved by a judge if investigators have "probable cause" to believe that their search is likely to turn up information related to a crime.

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo (YHOO) and popular social media site Twitter -- among others -- have resisted turning over customer data.

They have put in place policies, based on the constitutional protection from unreasonable searches, that require search warrants for access to content of private communications.

Privacy activists say the outdated law should be reformed to extend the constitutional right to privacy online, but legislation limiting government requests will not face an easy road.

Last year, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, introduced a bill that would have updated the current law.

It triggered a wave of concerns from the police and FBI that new restrictions would impede crime investigations and possibly endanger victims.

"After three decades, it is essential that Congress update ECPA to ensure that this critical law keeps pace with new technologies and the way Americans use and store email today," Leahy said in a statement on Monday.

His privacy legislation died in Congress last year after his counterpart in the House of Representatives, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Republican, drafted another version of that bill, which also tackled other issues but stripped out privacy reform language.

Last year, Goodlatte said he was willing to consider the privacy law reform, but that the timeline then was too short for a "thorough examination."

Leahy has now included the change of privacy laws as one of his top priorities this year.

Will your next bag of weed come from Washington or Colorado????

Hell, Uncle Sam can't even stop weed coming to the US from Mexico, where they can legally stop and search anybody entering the US who is suspected of smuggling marijuana.

I doubt that the Feds can legally put up border checkpoints around Washington and Colorado and search everybody that leaves those states for pot.

Source

Wash. vows to try to keep weed in state _ but how?

By GENE JOHNSON | Associated Press

SEATTLE (AP) — So far, no one is suggesting checkpoints or fences to keep Washington state's legal pot within its borders.

But Gov. Jay Inslee insists there are ways to prevent the bulk smuggling of the state's newest cash crop into the black market, including digitally tracking weed to ensure that it goes from where it is grown to the stores where it is sold.

With sales set to begin later this year, he hopes to be a good neighbor and keep vanloads of premium, legal bud from cruising into Idaho, Oregon and other states that don't want people getting stoned for fun.

It's not just about generating goodwill with fellow governors. Inslee is trying to persuade U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder not to sue to block Washington from licensing pot growers, processors and sellers. Marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

"I am going to be personally committed to have a well regulated, well disciplined, well tracked, well inventory-controlled, well law-enforcement-coordinated approach," said Inslee, who is due to give Holder more details this week.

Keeping a lid on the weed is just one of the numerous challenges Washington state authorities and their counterparts in Colorado — where voters also legalized pot use — will face in the coming months.

The potential of regulatory schemes to keep pot from being diverted isn't clear. Colorado already has intensive rules aimed at keeping its medical marijuana market in line, including the digital tracking of cannabis, bar codes on every plant, surveillance video and manifests of all legal pot shipments.

But law enforcement officials say marijuana from Colorado's dispensaries often makes its way to the black market, and even the head of the Colorado agency charged with tracking the medical pot industry suggests no one should copy its measures.

The agency has been beset by money woes and had to cut many of its investigators. Even if the agency had all the money it wanted, the state's medical pot rules are "a model of regulatory overreach," too cumbersome and expensive to enforce, Laura Harris said in a statement.

Last fall, voters made Washington and Colorado the first states to pass laws legalizing the recreational use of marijuana and setting up systems of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores where adults over 21 can walk in and buy up to an ounce of heavily taxed cannabis.

Both states are working to develop rules for the emerging pot industry.

The Obama administration could sue to block the legal markets from operating, on the grounds that actively regulating an illegal substance conflicts with federal drug law. The DOJ is reviewing the laws but has given no signals about its plans.

It has never sued states like Colorado that have regulated medical marijuana, even though it could under the same legal principles.

Part of the DOJ's political calculus in deciding whether to sue is likely to be how well the department believes the two states can keep the legal weed within their borders. During a meeting with Inslee last week, Holder asked a lot of questions about diversion, Inslee said.

Alison Holcomb, who led Washington's legal pot campaign, said it's important to respect states that haven't legalized weed by not flooding their black markets. The first step, she said, is for the state to figure out how much pot should be produced, and then grant licenses accordingly.

"Excess supply creates incentive to divert outside the state," she said.

Washington's Liquor Control Board is planning a comprehensive survey to estimate how much marijuana is consumed in the state.

Inslee has boasted about the effectiveness of the State Patrol's highway interdiction program in stopping drug trafficking. Traditional police work, combined with inventory controls, will be key to clamping down on diversion, he said.

Digital tracking of the weights of marijuana shipments between processors and retailers would help make sure there isn't "10- to 20-percent shrinkage that's going to the black market," he said.

But even if the state can prevent bulk pot from being diverted, there's nothing to keep customers from walking into multiple stores, or returning to the same store, to collect more than their 1-ounce limit. Some traffickers could recruit many people to buy weed for them.

Tom Gorman, head of the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug-Trafficking Area, said efforts to keep a lid on legal marijuana simply don't work.

Pot from Colorado's medical marijuana system — often described as the most closely regulated in the world — routinely makes its way into Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming and points east, often from dispensaries that have sold out the back door, he said.

A brief law enforcement survey the organization conducted last summer turned up numerous cases in which suspects had made purchases at Colorado dispensaries before being busted in other states.

In the past two years, Colorado's medical pot regulators have levied 54 fines against licensed businesses, but have never revoked or suspended a license.

Matt Cook, the former director of Colorado's Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division, defended the "seed-to-store" regulations in the state.

Cook, who is applying for a job as a consultant to Washington's marijuana regulators, noted that at any time officials could check the digital records, pull the surveillance video or drop in for an inspection — and the fear of getting busted keeps people in line.

Bob Hoban, whose law firm represents nearly 100 medical marijuana businesses in Colorado, agreed, and noted another incentive for dispensaries to behave.

"It's a cutthroat business," he said. "If somebody sees something unusual, they're going to provide a tip. ... There's just about as good of a safeguard as you can have for diversion in the state of Colorado, and a lot of that is Big Brother watching you."

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Associated Press writer Kristen Wyatt in Denver contributed to this report.

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Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

After gun crime, weapon history takes time to find

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After gun crime, weapon history takes time to find

By ALICIA A. CALDWELL | Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the fictional world of television police dramas, a few quick clicks on a computer lead investigators to the owner of a gun recovered at a bloody crime scene. Before the first commercial, the TV detectives are on the trail of the suspect.

Reality is a world away. There is no national database of guns. Not of who owns them, how many are sold annually or even how many exist.

Federal law bars the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from keeping track of guns. The only time the government can track the history of a gun, including its first buyer and seller, is after it's used in a crime. And though President Barack Obama and numerous Democratic lawmakers have called for new limits on what kinds of guns should be available to the public and urged stronger background checks in gun sales, there is no effort afoot to change the way the government keeps track — or doesn't — of where the country's guns are.

When police want to trace a gun, it's a decidedly low-tech process.

"It's not CSI and it's not a sophisticated computer system," said Charles J. Houser, who runs the ATF's National Tracing Center in Martinsburg, W. Va.

When police trace a gun, the search starts by sending all the information they have about the gun — including the manufacturer and model — to an office worker in a low-slung brick building just off the Appalachian Trial in rural West Virginia, about 90 miles northwest of Washington.

ATF officials first call the manufacturer, who reveals which wholesaler the company used. That may lead to a call to a second distributor before investigators can pinpoint the retail gun dealer who first sold the weapon. Gun dealers are required to keep a copy of federal forms that detail who buys what gun and a log for guns sold. They are required to share that information with the ATF if a gun turns up at a crime scene and authorities want it traced. Often, gun shops fax the paperwork to the ATF.

That's where the paper trail ends.

In about 30 percent of cases, one or all of those folks have gone out of business and ATF tracers are left to sort through potentially thousands of out-of-business records forwarded to the ATF and stored at the office building that more closely resembles a remote call center than a law enforcement operation.

The records are stored as digital pictures that can only be searched one image at a time. Two shifts of contractors spend their days taking staples out of papers, sorting through thousands of pages and scanning or taking pictures of the records.

"Those records come in all different shapes and forms. We have to digitally image them, we literally take a picture of it," Houser said. "We have had rolls of toilet paper or paper towels ... because they (dealers) did not like the requirement to keep records."

The tracing center receives about a million out-of-business records every month and Houser runs the center's sorting and imaging operations from 6 a.m. to midnight, five days a week. The images are stored on old-school microfilm reels or as digital images. But there's no way to search the records, other than to scroll through one picture of a page at a time.

"We are ... prohibited from amassing the records of active dealers," Houser said. "It means that if a dealer is in business he maintains his records."

Last year the center traced about 344,000 guns for 6,000 different law enforcement agencies. Houser has a success rate of about 90 percent, so long as enough information is provided. And he boasts that every successful trace provides at least one lead in a criminal case.

"It's a factory for the production of investigative leads," Houser said of the tracing center.

A 1968 overhaul of federal gun laws required licensed dealers to keep paper records of who buys what guns and gave ATF the authority to track the history of a gun if was used in a crime. But in the intervening decades, the National Rifle Association and other gun rights groups lobbied Congress to limit the government's ability to do much with what little information is collected, including keeping track on computers.

"They (lawmakers) feel that the act of amassing those records would in essence go a step toward creating an artificial registration system," Houser said.

What the ATF can do is give trace information to the law enforcement agency that asked for it and in some cases uses the data to help point them in the direction of other crimes.

Houser said the "manually intensive process" can take about five days for a routine trace. In some cases, completing the trace can mean sifting by hand through paperwork that hasn't yet been scanned.

In more urgent situations, including the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting in Connecticut last year, ATF agents run a trace within about 24 hours. Oftentimes, that involves sending agents to the gun dealer that first sold the weapon to quickly find the paperwork listing its original buyer.

Despite having access to millions of records about gun purchases from dealers that have gone out of business, the ATF isn't allowed to create a database of what guns were sold to whom and when.

ATF does keep tabs on how many guns are manufactured and shipped out of the country every year, but only gun makers and dealers know for sure how many are sold. There are also strict limits on what the agency can do with the gun trace information. And that's just the way the gun lobby and Congress want it.

Various laws and spending bills have specifically barred the ATF from creating a national database of guns and gun owners. And due to the efforts of lawmakers, including former Rep. Todd Tiahrt of Kansas, ATF agents who trace the history of a gun can't share that information with anyone but the police agency that asked for it.

As it stands now, local law enforcement doesn't have access to regional data about gun traces. So if the police commissioner in New York City is trying to figure out where the guns are coming into the city from — whether they're going to New Jersey first or upstate New York, for example — that data is not available because of an amendment introduced by Tiahrt, said Mike Bouchard, a former ATF assistant director for Field Operations. ATF can tell police where most crime guns are traced from, by state. But it does not release information on gun shops or purchasers.

If police chiefs want that, they have to reach out to individual chiefs at other departments and ask.

"It's pretty ridiculous when we have an automated system that will do it for the chiefs," Bouchard said.

Tiahrt said he first proposed limiting access to trace data to make sure the information wasn't available under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. It was an issue of keeping undercover police, informants and innocent gun buyers and sellers out of the public eye, Tiahrt said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

Knowing who legally buys guns won't prevent gun violence, the former Republican congressman said.

"We're chasing these wisps of smoke that won't solve the problem," Tiahrt said. "Get to the root cause. Put out the fire. Deal with mental illness. Deal with situational awareness."

Houser said he would prefer the tracing center's operations to be expanded and a center built that would use some technologies to help more easily trace a gun. But until the law changes, his staff will continue removing staples, turning pages right-side-up and taking digital pictures of records.

"Our job is to enforce the laws that are passed to us," Houser said. "What they give us is what we are required to work with."

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Associated Press reporter Eileen Sullivan contributed to this report.

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Follow Alicia A. Caldwell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/acaldwellap

Tempe pigs crack down on marijuana 'compassion clubs'

Tempe police crack down on marijuana 'compassion clubs'

By Jim Walsh The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Jan 29, 2013 1:41 PM

Tempe police targeted the operator of two “compassion clubs’’ Tuesday, arrested him, serving a series of search warrants and seizing a garage full of mature marijuana plants.

The months-long undercover investigation started before an employee of Top Shelf Medicine, formerly known as the AzGoGreen Co-op, was shot and critically injured on Oct. 25.

The employee survived the shooting, but police also served a search warrant a few days later and seized marijuana, Tempe police Commander Noah Johnson said.

Because the clubs have money and cash, police are investigating whether the motive was robbery, he said.

Compassion clubs opened in Valley strip malls and office parks when medical marijuana advocates became frustrated by the long delay between the state Medical Marijuana Act passing in 2010 and dispensaries opening.

Arizona has more than 35,000 residents with medical marijuana cards, but only six dispensaries where card-holders can legally obtain the weed. The only Valley dispensary is in Glendale.

While the dispensaries are tightly regulated, the compassion clubs are not regulated in any manner, although they generally require members to have state-issued medical marijuana cards to obtain marijuana.

Before the shooting, the club had been investigated by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, but it continued to operate after a grand jury decided not to indict the operator, Johnson said.

“What I hope is that people will get the message that operating in this manner is illegal,’’ Johnson said.

He said the Arizona Medical Marijuana law allows people to grow a limited amount of marijuana and to share it, but they cannot exchange anything of value for marijuana.

Sgt. Mike Pooley, a police spokesman, said the investigation started when other business owners in a strip mall near Southern and Mill avenues complained about traffic, customers smoking marijuana in the parking lot and the smell of marijuana.

On Tuesday, a strong odor of marijuana filled the crisp, early morning air at a rental house in north Tempe, just east of Papago Park, where police found an estimated 50 to 60 mature marijuana plants that were more than five feet tall.

Pooley said the hydroponic grow involved high-grade marijuana, in high demand. He said each plant was capable of generating five to 10 pounds of marijuana, selling at $2,000 to $3,000 a pound.

Police seized plants from two houses across the street from each other, valued at several hundreds of thousands of dollars, Pooley said. Police SWAT team members wearing ski masks cut down the plants with saws and loaded the leaves in large plastic bags.

The suspected operator of two compassion clubs was arrested in an Ahwatukee neighborhood near Desert Vista High School where residents said they shocked by the early-morning raids.

Top Shelf Hydro College, which police identified as a compassion club, had a yellow and green banner hanging from its roof in a warehouse building near McClintock Drive and Curry Road. It also was raided by SWAT team members who broke down a door to enter.

No one was inside the grow houses near Papago Park or the compassion club on McClintock Drive. In all, six search warrants were served, three at houses and three at businesses.

Clubs have been raided and shutdown in unrelated cases in the past in Tempe, Mesa, Gilbert and Phoenix. Two cases have been prosecuted, with defendants placed on probation but hit with stiff fines.

Club operators interviewed by The Republic prior to Tuesday’s arrests argued they are doing nothing illegal.

They said the Arizona medical marijuana law allows for “patient-to-patient transfers’’ of marijuana, and that card-holders are sharing the marijuana with each other.

The operators said smoking marijuana helps cancer patients combat nausea from chemotherapy and a wide range of other ailments.

“I’ve seen herbs work in miraculous things,’’ said Craig Scherf, a former compassion club operator in Tempe and Mesa who lost everything after he was arrested.

He said his patients often had cancer and other life-threatening diseases and that marijuana helped them get off addictive painkillers.

But police contend the clubs are illegal, whether they charge a membership fee or if the patient makes a “donation’’ based upon the strain and quality of the marijuana.

Johnson said there are many compassion clubs located throughout the Valley but it is difficult to tell how many are operating.

Cops take 2 years to bust 4 hookers for prostitution???

Source

Police: 4 arrested in adult business; prostitution suspected

By Domenico Nicosia and Yihyun Jeong The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Tue Jan 29, 2013 5:39 PM

Authorities arrested four people Tuesday in connection with a Phoenix adult entertainment business operating as a brothel.

The Phoenix Police Department shut down the Champagne Room located near 40th Street and Broadway Road after approximately two years of investigation, said police spokesman Sgt. Steve Martos.

Janet Fiore, 44, and her boyfriend, Sterling Costa, 37, owned the business and were arrested during a search warrant Tuesday morning.

“The managers involved in this activity were operating much like pimps would,” Martos said. “The managers were taken into custody and the Champagne Room will remain closed.”

Margaret Pahssen, 34, and Tiphany Finklea, 22 were also arrested on suspicion of being involved in the illegal business.

Approximately $6,000 was seized along with other evidence in the arrests, Martos said.

Detectives began investigating the case after they received a tip that clients would come into the business and pay some of the women working there for prostitution.

The Champagne Room offered services ranging from $300 to $1,000, Martos said.

Authorities continue to investigate and more people may be arrested in connection to the suspected illegal activities at the Champagne Room, Martos said.

The Glendale Police Department's SWAT team, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office SWAT team, the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, and the City Prosecutor's office assisted in the investigation.

Man gets 3 years for child-porn cartoons

Source

Man gets 3 years for child-porn cartoons

Associated Press Tue Jan 29, 2013 9:50 AM

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — A southwest Missouri man will spend three years in prison for possessing cartoons showing child pornography.

A federal judge sentenced 36-year-old Christjan Bee of Monett on Monday to three years without parole, followed by five years of supervised probation.

Bee pleaded guilty last October to possession of an obscene image of the sexual abuse of children.

The Joplin Globe reports Bee’s wife called police in August 2011 after finding what she believed to be child pornography on her husband’s computer.

The U.S. attorney’s office says in a news release that comics found on the computer found several images of minors engaged in sexual activity.

Papers please!!! This isn't Nazi Germany, but Peoria, Arizona!!!

Source

Peoria police set up traffic stop, ask for licenses

By Domenico Nicosia The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Tue Jan 29, 2013 11:11 PM

Peoria police officials constructed a vehicle stop in Peoria on Tuesday evening to check commercial vehicles and ask for licenses and registration for all non-commercial vehicles.

Amanda Jacinto, a public-information officer with Peoria police, said the stop involving multiple agencies was set up near Grand and Peoria avenues. But the purpose of the operation was unclear.

Prominent Latina activist Lydia Guzman, who went to the stop, said that officers were funneling traffic in from side streets. She believed the traffic stop may have been set up to get people driving back to the Valley from Las Vegas, where President Barack Obama spoke about immigration reform that could lead to the legalization of millions of undocumented immigrants.

Guzman said many young people attended the speech in Las Vegas.

“This was just a way to antagonize the activist groups,” she said.

Jacinto didn’t specify the reasons. When asked about what officers were going to do with any drivers without licenses, she said that officers are required to contact federal immigration agents.

Kyrsten Sinema - U.S. Representative, Arizona, District 9

If you are a police officer, a fan of the drug war, hate medical marijuana, love taxes, or hate guns you will probably love Kyrsten Sinema.

Kyrsten Sinema - U.S. Representative, Arizona, District 9

Source

Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.)

U.S. Representative, Arizona, District 9 (Since 2013)

Kyrsten Sinema was born in Tucson, Ariz., and has lived in Phoenix since 1995. She attended Arizona State University where she earned a master's in social work, a law degree and a doctorate in justice studies. She practices criminal defense law in Phoenix and also is an adjunct professor at ASU's School of Social Work. Sinema served three terms as a representative in the Arizona Legislature and was the assistant leader to the House Democratic Caucus from 2009 to 2010. She was elected to the state Senate in 2010 but resigned in early 2012 to seek a seat in Arizona's newly created 9th Congressional District. Sinema ran unsuccessfully for the state Legislature in 2002 and for the Phoenix City Council in 2001, both times as an independent candidate. She is single.

Birthday: July 12, 1976

Hometown: Tucson, AZ, United States

Alma Mater: JD from Arizona State University; MA from Arizona State University; PhD from Arizona State University

Web site: http://kyrstensinema.com/

Michigan Supreme Court judge pleads guilty to bank fraud

Source

Ex-Michigan justice pleads guilty to bank fraud, faces prison time

By Marisa Gerber

January 30, 2013, 6:15 a.m.

For years Diane Hathaway sat behind the dais as a Michigan Supreme Court justice. This time, she was the defendant.

Hathaway, who has resigned from the bench, pleaded guilty to bank fraud during a federal court hearing Tuesday in Ann Arbor.

As part of her plea agreement with the U.S. attorney's office, Hathaway faces a year and a half in prison for concealing information from her bank. Sentencing was set for May 28.

The case stems from 2010, when Hathaway entered into debt forgiveness negotiations with ING Bank for her home in Grosse Pointe, a Detroit suburb. According to court documents, Hathaway concealed some of her assets in hopes of improving the odds that the bank would approve a short sale, allowing her to sell her home for less than her loan balance. The bank OK’d the sale, saving her thousands of dollars.

As part of the plea agreement, Hathaway agreed to pay ING up to $90,000 in restitution.

Hathaway, who avoided reporters' questions as she walked into the courthouse, dropped her voice to a whisper when she admitted guilt, and eventually cried during the hearing, according to WXYZ-TV, the Detroit news station that first reported her real estate transactions last spring.

For Michigan Atty. Gen. Bill Schuette, whose office helped the FBI with the investigation, Tuesday’s hearing was an important step.

“Public corruption scandals have damaged the public’s trust in government and tarnished our state’s reputation,” he said in a written statement. “But today, we begin to move forward, beyond the cloud of controversy that hung over our state’s Supreme Court.”

Hathaway stepped down Jan. 21, weeks after the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission filed a 19-page complaint against her.

“Regardless of a person’s stature or position in life, we must all follow the same set of rules,” the FBI said in a statement. “In this case, an individual in a prominent position of public trust made extremely poor choices.”

George Ryan isn't getting special treatment - HONEST!!!!!

Source

George Ryan sent home after spending just hours at halfway house

11:36 a.m. CST, January 30, 2013

Former Gov. George Ryan has already been released from the halfway house on Chicago’s West Side and will be confined at his Kankakee home until he completes his 6 ½-year sentence.

Ryan was released hours after he arrived at the halfway house at Ashland Avenue and Monroe Street this morning from a federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind.

He will not have to wear electronic monitors while under house arrest at his home, according to his lawyer, former Gov. Jim Thompson, who wasn’t sure if Ryan, soon to be 79, would work.

Bureau of Prison spokesman Chris Burke said Ryan did not receive special treatment in order to be released to home confinement. He said BOP officials would have made the decision based on several factors – including whether Ryan had a stable environment to go back to in Kankakee.

“There is no requirement to actually spend a minimum amount of time in the halfway house,” Burke said. “How much time is based on the needs of the offender. Whether or not he has financial support, family support, an approved release residence. His health issues.”

Burke said Ryan knew he would bypass the halfway house home confinement long before he left the federal prison.

“To surprise the inmate with something at the last minute would not be conducive to transitioning back to society,” he said. “It wouldn’t do any good to keep secrets from inmates.”

As for Ryan’s release from the prison in the middle of the night, Burke said that call would have been made by BOP officials who have to consider “special characteristics that an inmate may present.”

When asked if a former governor with intense media scrutiny would be on such characteristic, Burke replied, “That would be one thing.”

A somber and silent Ryan had arrived at the halfway house shortly before 7 a.m. Wearing a gray sports coat, white shirt and maroon tie, Ryan was surrounded by TV cameras as he walked down the street and entered the four-story red brick building.

Ryan smiled tightly as he refused to answer questions from reporters. Ryan's son, George Ryan Jr. and Thompson accompanied Ryan into the house.

After Ryan checked in, Thompson came back out and told reporters "today is another step in a long journey for George Ryan. . .He would like me to tell you he's grateful to leave the penitentiary. He's grateful also for the encouragement and support from many people. He has paid a severe price. The loss of his wife and brother while he was in the penitentiary, the loss of his pension, his office, his good name and 5 1/2 years of imprisonment. Now near 80 years old, that is a significant punishment. But he is going to go forward."

Ryan left the prison early this morning and managed to escape the notice of media camped at the facility. The first indication that Ryan has been released was around 6:45 a.m. when he left a building down the street and started walking toward the halfway house.

His son put his left hand on his father and guided him out the door. Ryan kept his head down, his hands in his pockets as he talked to his son and walked slowly through the knot of TV cameras.

As they neared the halfway house, a worker opened the door and tried to clear a path through the cameras. Ryan raised his head, his hands still in his pockets, his son to his right, as he walked down five steps and into the halfway house.

Thompson said Ryan didn't speak much during the van trip to Chicago.

"He didn't talk much, just small talk," Thompson said. "He looks good. He's been lifting weights. . .He knows something about carpentry now.

"He tied his own tie this morning, he hasn't forgotten that," Thompson said. "He's in decent spirits. He has to become accustomed to seeing things differently. . .We came down Michigan Avenue and he was looking at the lights left over from Christmas. That was sort of wonderful, I think. He hasn’t seen the city of Chicago in 5 1/2 years.”

Thompson said people forget that Ryan "was a very good governor." But he added that Ryan "is not bitter, he's not angry. He's accepting. This has been a long fight."

Ryan completed more than 5 years of a a 6 1/2-year prison sentence in Terre Haute, Ind. for a corruption conviction. Ryan entered prison on Nov. 7, 2007. His wife of more than 50 years, Lura Lynn, died of cancer in June 2011.

The halfway house, operated by the Salvation Army a few blocks east of the United Center, has been a way station for about 20,000 men and women since opening in 1975. Many corrupt Illinois politicians have finished their sentences at the facility. Among the most recent graduates was former Chicago Ald. Edward Vrdolyak.

Ryan's conviction for fraud, racketeering and other charges was the culmination of the federal Operation Safe Road investigation that exposed rampant bribery in state driver's license facilities while he was secretary of state as well as misdeeds as governor.

After a six-month trial, a federal jury convicted Ryan in 2006 of steering millions of dollars in state business to lobbyists and friends in return for vacations, gifts and other benefits to Ryan and his family.

The conviction overshadowed Ryan's long career in government.

The Kankakee native rose from speaker of the Illinois House to win statewide election as lieutenant governor, secretary of state and then one term as governor. His actions as governor included placing a moratorium on the death penalty and emptying death row, moves that won him international acclaim.

Thompson said Ryan may become involved in death penalty issues after his sentence ends in July. "It's way too soon to tell." chicagobreaking@tribune.com

Sheriff’s deputy charged with trumpet theft

Sheriff’s deputy charged with trumpet theft

A San Mateo County sheriff’s deputy faces felony grand theft charges after a hotel horn heist last month, authorities said.

Brandon Hatt, 34, was off duty and shooting pool with friends at the Aloft Hotel in Millbrae near San Francisco International Airport early Dec. 20 when he decided to walk out of the hotel with a trumpet and a jacket he didn’t own, said prosecutor Al Serrato.

Hatt was filmed by a surveillance camera leaving the hotel, returning for a minute, then leaving again with the items in hand, Serrato said. Soon after Hatt left, a trumpeter playing at the hotel that night noticed his $2,000 instrument and jacket were missing.

Serrato wouldn’t elaborate, but said there were other indications besides the camera footage that Hatt might be the suspect. Hatt was arrested several hours later and the trumpet was recovered, though the jacket was not.

Hatt is out of custody on $10,000 bail and pleaded not guilty Monday. His next court appearance is March 21. He is on paid administrative leave from the sheriff’s office, said spokeswoman Rebecca Rosenblatt.

Prosecutors said the theft didn’t appear to have been planned in advance.

“It seems to have been a matter of a decision he made in poor judgment,” Serrato said. “A crime of opportunity more than anything, as far as I can see.”

Arizona Game and Fish official under investigation

Source

Arizona Game and Fish official under investigation

By Dennis Wagner The Arizona Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jan 30, 2013 10:24 PM

A veteran Arizona Game and Fish administrator who previously headed the agency’s law-enforcement operations has been placed on leave while under criminal investigation by the state Department of Public Safety.

Wildlife authorities and DPS officials have so far declined to disclose what prompted the investigation of John Romero, head of special operations and a nationally recognized expert on the black-market trade in reptiles.

Gary Hovatter, deputy director for Game and Fish, confirmed that an investigation of Romero is under way and said that it involves “matters related to his official duties.”

Hovatter stressed that the investigation was initiated at the request of Game and Fish officials after they uncovered a matter of concern.

The agency turned down most document requests regarding the matter, and Hovatter refused to provide additional information.

Romero, with about 25 years as a Game and Fish officer, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Last year, he was listed as the agency’s acting Law Enforcement Branch chief, responsible for bringing game-law violations and presentations to the state Game and Fish Commission.

Romero has been a law-enforcement supervisor at least since 2008, when he was given an Outstanding Service Award by the North American Wildlife Enforcement Officers Association. His salary is listed at $65,393.

Jack Husted, new chairman of the state Game and Fish Commission, said he has not been told the nature of allegations against Romero.

Norman Freeman, the commission’s outgoing chairman, said he was surprised to learn that an investigation is under way and is uncertain what it could be about.

“I’m shell-shocked,” Freeman added. “I really think he’s a great guy. ... I sure hope there’s another side to it.”

NYPD cuffed boy, 7, over $5, family says

Source

Police cuffed boy, 7, over $5, family says

Associated Press Wed Jan 30, 2013 5:06 PM

NEW YORK — A 7-year-old New York City boy’s family has filed a $250 million claim against police and the city after saying he was handcuffed and falsely accused of stealing $5 from a schoolmate.

Wilson Reyes’ mother, Frances Mendez, told the New York Post that her son was “interrogated” for 10 hours on Dec. 4.

“My son was crying, ‘Mommy, it wasn’t me! Mommy, it wasn’t me!’ I never imagined the cops could do that to a child. We’re traumatized,” Mendez said.

Wilson’s family claimed the boy was falsely accused of stealing $5 that was dropped on the ground and picked up by another student, leading to a physical altercation between him and another child, according to the Post.

That child gave a different account, telling the New York Daily News that Wilson and another boy approached him and both reached into his pocket before Wilson struck him in the face.

The court claim, filed by attorney Jack Yankowitz, said Wilson was handcuffed and held in a room at P.S. X114 in the Bronx for four hours, then taken to a precinct house. He allegedly was held there for six hours and charged with robbery.

Mendez told the Post she initially wasn’t allowed to see her son when she went to the station. When she did get to him, she saw that he had been cuffed by one wrist to the wall, and she snapped a photo of him.

“My sister and I started crying when we saw him,” Mendez said.

The Post said the city dropped the charge Dec. 26. A spokesman declined to comment.

School officials say it occurred off school grounds. Police had no immediate comment.

The other child involved in the altercation, 9-year-old Seth Acevedo, told the Daily News that Wilson had a history of attacking him.

“Wilson was the worst bully,” Seth told the News. “He would call me names. He would punch and kick me. I wish they never took the cuffs off of him.”

Source

Dad of grade-school theft victim says cops were too harsh on handcuffed 7-year-old

By DOUGLAS MONTERO, JAMIE SCHRAM and BOB FREDERICKS

Posted: 1:53 AM, January 31, 2013

Even the dad of the boy who accused little Wilson Reyes of robbing him thinks the cops acted outrageously.

Santiago Acevedo, whose 9-year-old son was supposedly robbed of $5 in the incident in which 7-year-old Wilson was caught up, yesterday told The Post police went overboard in allegedly interrogating and handcuffing Wilson for 10 hours over the schoolyard dispute. Wilson was later cleared.

“If he was there [handcuffed] for that long, I think that’s a bad thing. He’s a kid,” said Acevedo, 63.

The NYPD said it is investigating the actions of the main cop in the case. The 33-year-old officer, Santos Collazo allegedly turned what should have been a routine trip to the principal’s office into a full-blown robbery investigation.

Wilson’s mom filed papers Monday, putting the city on notice that she plans to sue for $250 million.

NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne yesterday insisted that the claim was “grossly distorting and fabricating facts.”

“Nonetheless, [the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau] is conducting a review,” he said.

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott says he’s not “second guessing” cops. “It’s a Police Department issue and I do know it didn’t happen during school hours,” he said.

Officers had gone to PS X114 in The Bronx on Dec. 4 after Acevedo’s wife, Janet Ramos, reported that their son Seth had been punched and robbed by Wilson four days earlier.

Wilson wound up handcuffed and grilled for four hours at the school, then for another six hours at the 44th Precinct station house, the claim said.

He was charged with robbery, but the rap was dropped after another third-grader confessed.

Collazo referred questions to police brass. “I can’t say a single thing right now,’’ he said. “I hate to be callous. I’m sorry about that.”

Additional reporting by Kevin Fasick, Frank Rosario and Reuven Fenton

rfredericks@nypost.com

Jail pot smokers, let government crooks go free????

Arizona Republic thinks crooked politicians should get a free ride???

On the other hand, based on past editorials the Republic has run they seem to think the government should continue to arrest and jail people for victimless crimes like smoking or selling marijuana, gambling, prostitution and other victimless crimes.

Personally I think the folks at the Arizona Republic have their values totally screwed up.

Government criminals like Ben Arredondo belong in prison, not on probation.

And of course the prisons are full of people who committed victimless drug war crimes. Those people should be ALL released. It is a waste of our tax dollars to jail these people for harmless and victimless crimes.

Source

Big waste on a small fry

Tom Tingle/The Republic

The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jan 30, 2013 6:57 PM

In the annals of Arizona politicians who run afoul of the law, the case of United States vs. Ben Arredondo will never rank among the best of the bad.

The competition is stiff, after all. Evan Mecham. The “AzScammers” of the early 1990s. Fife Symington.

Arizona history likely will not even judge the malfeasance of this former Tempe city councilman (and, most recently, state legislator) as the political-misconduct story of 2012, a comparative down year, scandal-wise.

It isn’t even the biggest legislative scandal of the year. That “honor” goes to former state Rep. Richard Miranda, who got two years in prison for wire fraud and attempted tax evasion.

What will set the Arredondo case apart is the peculiar enthusiasm of the federal prosecution. [Per the US Constitution, Arizona cops should be investigating Arizona crooks, not Federal cops]

No one asserts Arredondo did not act badly. He solicited lots of tickets to sporting events from people with a clear political interest in pleasing him. Even though he seems to have given away all those tickets — in a glad-handing fashion — the scent of quid pro quo was all over Arredondo’s tawdry politics.

Still worse was Arredondo’s scholarship fund, which paid to educate a lot of Arredondo family members. [Arredondo use that scam to steal almost $50,000 for his relatives]

So, the former councilman and state representative got probation and house arrest. Just deserts. [That is a crock of BS!!! Ben Arredondo is a crook who should have been sent to prison]

But in the process of sentencing Arredondo, U.S. District Judge Frederick Martone took time to put the affair into some context:

Is an elaborate two-year sting operation the best use of federal resources in a case as small potatoes as this one? [On the other hand the Feds don't think anything of spending millions to investigate people for victimless drug war crimes. Crimes that hurt no one. I would rather have the put a crooked politician in prison then waste our tax dollars jailing pot smokers!!!!]

“I wonder whether the resources of the United States government were appropriately directed over the course of two years,” said Martone, who also wondered why federal prosecutors are not applying such zeal pursuing Wall Street mortgage-fraud cases.

We still know next to nothing about what prompted the Arredondo sting operation.

But we do know the government created a limited- liability corporation, staffed it with federal agents who ingratiated themselves with Arredondo by making at least $3,280 in campaign donations.

In two years beginning in 2009, the agents produced 10,000 pages of documents and more than 50 hours of video and audio tape — most of which had little or nothing to do with the Arredondo case, prosecutors would later admit.

Washington prosecutors have had a long-standing fascination with Arizona politicians. Federal investigators pored over the records of former Gov. Fife Symington’s development firm for more than five years before indicting him on counts unrelated to the original investigation. And need we even mention the Justice Department’s years-long infatuation with Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio? [That investigation seemed mainly on getting votes for Obama, not sending Sheriff Joe to prison where he belongs]

At least those cases involved substantial issues, such as suspected racial profiling in Arpaio’s case. And, in Symington’s case, the sort of bank fraud Martone said ought to be occupying the time of federal lawyers now.

With l’affair Arredondo, we kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the justification for the elaborate schemes to surface. None did.

The wrist-slap penalty to Arredondo was appropriate. The mind-boggling federal expense of time, effort and money was not. [A slap on the wrist for a government crook that screwed donors out of $50,000 they donated to Arredondo's sham scholarship fund???]

Group launches Sheriff Arpaio recall effort

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Jan 31, 2013 12:56 PM

A political group called Respect Arizona has filed paperwork with the Arizona Secretary of State’s office to launch a campaign to recall Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Petition Partners, one of the largest petition-circulation companies in Arizona, posted a social-media message earlier in the week stating that Respect Arizona had “$1.3 million dedicated to the recall of Joe Arpaio.”

Respect Arizona will need to collect more than 350,000 valid signatures in the next 120 days to force a recall election, according to the petition gatherers.

Arpaio was elected in November to his sixth consecutive term in office, in one of the closest races he has endured. Arpaio received nearly 680,000 votes to best his closest opponent, former Phoenix police Sgt. Paul Penzone, who finished with nearly 600,000 votes. A third candidate, former Scottsdale police Lt. Mike Stauffer, received about 62,000 votes.

Arpaio filed paperwork last week indicating that he plans to run again in 2016, when he will be 84 years old.

Arpaio’s campaign manager released a statement in response to the recall election questioning why the effort was undertaken months after the election, and calling on the recall campaign to release the names of donors.

The group held a news conference Thursday about the recall effort and organizers were not immediately available for comment. The group’s treasurer has spoken out against Arpaio at County Board of Supervisors meetings in the past, and Randy Parraz, a vocal Arpaio opponent who also participated in an effort to recall former Senate president Russell Pearce returned a phone call to the group’s headquarters.

It will not be the first time Arpaio has faced a recall effort.

The Committee to Recall Arpaio formed in 2005 and disbanded in 2006 without forcing a recall election.

Arizonans for the U.S. Constitution and Recall of Joe Arpaio formed in 2007 and disbanded in 2008, also without forcing a recall election.

-----------------------------------------

The following URL is a response put out by Sheriff Joe on the recall.

www.azcentral.com/ic/pdf/0131arpaio-recall.pdf

I bet those donors can expect a 3 am visit from Sheriff Joe's goons.

Just like when Sheriff Joe's goons paid the owners of the Phoenix New Times a late night visit by armed police thugs driving cars with Mexican license plates.

Glendale detectives seize over 450 pounds of marijuana

First did the cops illegally stop Jewel Eugene Johnson illegally, without probable cause???

Second did the cops illegally search Jewel Eugene Johnson???

Sadly the police routinely use both techniques to illegal stop and search people looking for drugs.

Source

Glendale detectives seize over 450 pounds of marijuana from vehicle

By Cassandra Strauss The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Thu Jan 31, 2013 3:06 PM

Over 450 pounds of marijuana were seized from a vehicle in Glendale on Tuesday.

Jewel Eugene Johnson of Arkansas was stopped for a traffic violation when a canine detected drugs in his vehicle. Detectives with the Glendale Special Investigations unit found the marijuana in the back of Johnson’s Cadillac Escalade, according to police documents.

Police also found $26,000 in cash in the vehicle, according to authorities.

Johnson arrived from Arkansas to visit friends in Arizona, according to police documents.

It is unclear whether Johnson transported the marijuana into the state or obtained it in Arizona.

Arpaio spooked by recall threat of ‘extremists’

EJ Montini

Arpaio spooked by recall threat of ‘extremists’

The same people who ousted former Senate President Russell Pearce from office have filed paper work to recall Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. First reported by Phoenix New Times, the group calling itself Respect Arizona must collect roughly 350,000 signatures in four months.

It won’t be easy.

But these are determined individuals (the sheriff calls them “radical extremists”) and they have Arpaio spooked.

He’s already sent out a fundraising letter (see it here) seeking donations to fight the effort. [Let's face it politics is all about money and a recall effort is a great excuse to raise more money]

Among other things, Arpaio says, “These sore losers just never stop. They figure if they can force an election in an off-year they’ll be able to turn out every pro-illegal immigrant voter and steal this election. We saw them do the very same thing to an Arizona State Senator just over a year ago.” [Hey, if it works I thinks it's a great idea. Anything to get rid of Sheriff Joe]

How disturbing is it that channeling the political ghost of Russell Pearce might actually bring donations?

“You were such an important part of my victory last year even though we faced insurmountable odds,” ["insurmountable odds??? What BS!!! Sheriff Joe is the most popular politician in Arizona, and probably also the most hated"]

Arpaio tells the folks on what must be his massive campaign e-mail list. “I certainly did not plan on this recall, but I have to ask you again for your support. The fight starts now. Over the next several months I am going to be bombarded with negative attacks and lies. ["Lies??? Sheriff Joe's terrorist acts against Mexicans and Latinos are well documents. And even Sheriff Joe admits them] I must have the necessary resources to defend my record and run a winning campaign.”

The Respect Arizona folks must feel great.

Whether they force a recall election or not they will have managed to distract the sheriff’s attention and put him back in campaign mode until Spring.

That could keep him from doing too many of the things for which they’d like to have him removed from office.

Recall election or not, that’s a win.

Arpaio recall already?

Laurie Roberts

Posted on January 31, 2013 3:37 pm by Laurie Roberts

Arpaio recall already?

Three weeks into a new term and there’s already an effort underway to oust Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Three weeks and the group that launched the successful recall of Russell Pearce in 2011 is now ready to recall the sheriff.

Arpaio was vulnerable last year. Between his immigration sweeps, his bizarre birther investigation, rogue political probes and sex crimes sitting on a shelf – not to mention a quality candidate in Paul Penzone – it looked as if Arpaio’s fifth term might be his last.

Voters, however, decided otherwise.

So what, in three weeks, has happened that would make those voters want to rethink their selection?

The answer, of course, is nothing.

On this, I agree with Chad Willems, Arapio’s campaign manager.

“Voters will be scratching their heads wondering why a group that calls itself Respect Arizona has no respect whatsoever for voters or the political process,” Willem said in a press release today.

They’ll be doing more than scratching their heads. They’ll be getting out their checkbooks to support our sheriff/showman in chief.

This is not like the Pearce recall, wherein a legislator was elected in a primary by a small percentage of the electorate in his district. Arpaio was elected by a majority of the county’s voters — a slim majority but a majority still. [I have to disagree with Laurie Roberts here. Russel Pearce is an ex-cop who is a police state thug just like Sheriff Joe and they are both law and order terrorists. Both Russell Pearce and Sheriff Joe have a small but vocal minority group of law and order nut jobs who always show up at the polls and vote for them. That's why they get elected over and over. I suspect that over 50 percent of the registered voters dislike both Sheriff Joe and Russell Pearce, but those folks don't show up at the polls, while that minority nut job law and order crowd that loves Pearce and Sheriff Joe always shows up at the polls cause Sheriff Joe and Russell Pearce to win. I suspect if you had an election where ALL the registered voters showed up and voted, both Sheriff Joe and Russell Pearce would lose. But only by a small amount. After all there are a lot of law and order nut jobs out there!!!]

Respect Arizona should have had enough respect for voters to at last wait until Arpaio did something bizarre or outrageous enough to warrant asking voters to rethink their selection. [Huhhh??? Arpaio has been doing nutty, bizarre and outrageous things ever since he was elected 20 years ago. That is a good enough reason for me to want to recall him any time or any place]

Let’s face it, this is Arpaio. The group probably wouldn’t have had to wait all that long.

As it is, beware of backfires, Mr. Parraz – and of acting like the bully you accuse him to be.

Trial date set for AG Tom Horne in hit and run case

Trial date set for case involving Horne, fender-bender

By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Jan 31, 2013 7:24 PM

A trial date has been set for the case involving Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, who last March hit and damaged a Range Rover and left without notifying the owner.

Horne was scheduled to appear Friday in Phoenix Municipal Court for a pretrial disposition conference. Instead, Horne’s attorney asked to vacate the conference and take the case to trial, according to records released by the court. The trial date is scheduled for March 28.

But Horne’s attorney, Michael Kimerer, said filing the motion “does not necessarily mean we will be going to trial, but will give us the time we need to address some witness issues” and file other motions.

Horne’s fender-bender on March 27 last year was witnessed by two FBI special agents who were tailing Horne as part of a campaign-finance-violation investigation.

The FBI agents saw Horne bump into the Range Rover while driving a car he borrowed from a subordinate employee. An FBI report states Horne did not leave a note because he was having an extramarital affair with another subordinate who was with him during the accident.

Horne has said he didn't think the other vehicle was damaged. He has pleaded not guilty.

The State Bar of Arizona is investigating Horne over allegations stemming from the campaign-finance-violation investigation as well as his role in the fender-bender.

Horne did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.

Union negotiations should be public

Source

Union negotiations negotiations should be public, Arizona house panel argues

Posted: Thursday, January 31, 2013 8:30 am

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services

Saying they are promoting transparency, members of a House panel voted Tuesday to force cities and counties to negotiate with public employee unions in the open.

HB 2330 would expand the state's Open Meeting Law which generally requires public bodies to discuss their business in the open to include any discussion of salaries and fringe benefits between a representative of a public body and any agent or officers of an employee organization. It would not matter whether there was a quorum of an elected council present -- or even if a council member was there at all.

The vote came even though two of the Republicans on the nine-member Government Committee objected to the provisions. Both Reps. Sonny Borrelli of Lake Havasu City and Doug Coleman of Apache Junction said their own experience as city council members convinced them the legislation is a bad idea.

That was enough to send the measure down to defeat in a preliminary vote.

But a procedural motion by Rep. Martin Quezada, D-Phoenix, forced them to go along with their GOP colleagues to allow the legislation to go to the House floor. Both indicated, though, they will oppose the bill there.

Rep. Steve Montenegro, R-Litchfield Park, who sponsored HB 2330 called it a simple matter of transparency.

"There's no reason why taxpayers should be kept in the dark,'' he said, particularly since the closed-door talks eventually will lead to how public dollars are spent.

"We are asking that the taxpayers be given a seat at the table,'' he said. "If you're big enough to spend the taxpayers' dollars, you're big enough to be transparent and accountable.''

Coleman, however, said taxpayers are at the table through their elected council members. He said the final vote on any deal -- along with the terms -- has to be done in public.

Montenegro responded that the council gets only an up or down vote on the final pact and cannot reject specific provisions. But Borrelli pointed out that if council members are unhappy with one or more terms they can reject the deal and send negotiators back to the bargaining table.

Taylor Earl, an attorney with the Goldwater Institute, countered that it is important for the public and council members to know what happened up until that point so they can see what was offered and what was bargained away.

Quezada, however, said Republicans are not being consistent.

He pointed out that the negotiations between legislative leaders and the governor's office over the $9 billion budget occur behind closed doors. It is only when there is a final package that there is a public vote on the deal and the details are revealed.

Quezada chided Montenegro for not proposing to require these talks be done in public.

And Coleman also found flaws in the logic behind the legislation. He said that, carried to extremes, it would require lawmakers themselves to meet only in public with lobbyists and others ahead of any votes.

Montenegro sidestepped the question of how he feels about such transparency, responding instead that anyone interested in that issue is free to introduce such a proposal.

A.J. LaFaro, newly elected as chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Committee, told lawmakers that union contracts are "a license to steal from the citizens of Arizona.'' He said the average salary of police officers in Tempe, where he lives, is $103,000, with firefighters earning an average of $109,000; by contrast he said the average Tempe resident earns less than $50,000.

Borrelli responded by asking LaFaro what a firefighter's life is worth. LaFaro responded by saying that's not relevant.

In separate action, the committee voted to require all cities and counties to take a public vote before the end of the year on whether to permit payroll deduction of union dues.

Ugenti, the sponsor of HB 2026, said she is not precluding such deductions. But she said if local officials want to offer that benefit to employees they should have to take an affirmative public vote.

Borrelli called it an unnecessary intrusion into local government but, like the open negotiations measure, he and Coleman agreed to support it to get the bill to the full House.

A third bill to prohibit union members from doing union work while on public time, HB 2343, was tabled amid questions by several committee members.

Exonerated death row inmate seeks to question Daley

Exonerated death row inmate's lawyers seek to question Daley under oath

By Annie Sweeney, Chicago Tribune reporter

11:00 p.m. CST, January 31, 2013

Lawyers for a man who spent more than two decades in prison after Chicago police allegedly used torture to extract a false confession are asking a federal judge to force former Mayor Richard Daley to answer questions under oath in a lawsuit filed against disgraced former Cmdr. Jon Burge and the city.

Attorneys for other alleged Burge victims have previously sought to make Daley sit down for a deposition — and judges have twice ordered the former mayor to answer questions. But both times, the city settled the lawsuit before Daley had to testify about what he knew about the scandal.

In the motion filed Thursday, attorneys for Ronald Kitchen alerted U.S. District Judge John Tharp that efforts to schedule a deposition with Daley have "reached an impasse."

According to the filing, Kitchen's attorneys went so far as to outline for city attorneys the topics they wanted to question Daley about. They also offered assurances that they would not ask Daley about pending involuntary manslaughter charges against the former mayor's nephew Richard Vanecko in connection with a controversial 2004 death.

"Despite … reasonable attempts to accommodate Mr. Daley, the city categorically refuses to make him available," Kitchen's attorneys wrote.

The city's Law Department did not respond to the allegations in the filing. Daley could not be reached for comment.

Kitchen was exonerated in 2009 after spending 21 years in prison — 13 of them on death row — for the 1988 slaying of two women and three children in their South Side bungalow.

Daley is no longer a defendant in the lawsuit brought by Kitchen, but his attorneys are still seeking to depose him as a witness, according to the filing.

Daley was the Cook County state's attorney when the office decided to seek the death penalty for Kitchen. Kitchen's lawyers also contend that Daley could have knowledge about alleged systemic abuses against African-American suspects by Burge and detectives who worked under him.

In addition, as mayor, Daley would have had knowledge of any conspiracy to cover up the Burge scandal, prolonging Kitchen's wrongful incarceration, Kitchen's lawyers argued.

"He should not be permitted to indefinitely evade questioning regarding these matters simply because he was once — but is no more — the mayor of Chicago," Kitchen's lawyers wrote.

Burge was fired from the Police Department in 1993 and convicted in 2010 in federal court of perjury for denying under oath that he was aware of the abuse and torture of criminal suspects. He is serving 41/2 years in prison. A federal judge has said Burge's torture of suspects irreparably damaged the justice system.

asweeney@tribune.com

Focus on Mental Health Laws to Curb Violence Is Unfair

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Focus on Mental Health Laws to Curb Violence Is Unfair, Some Say

By ERICA GOODE and JACK HEALY

Published: January 31, 2013 35 Comments

In their fervor to take action against gun violence after the shooting in Newtown, Conn., a growing number of state and national politicians are promoting a focus on mental illness as a way to help prevent further killings.

Legislation to revise existing mental health laws is under consideration in at least a half-dozen states, including Colorado, Oregon and Ohio. A New York bill requiring mental health practitioners to warn the authorities about potentially dangerous patients was signed into law on Jan. 15. In Washington, President Obama has ordered “a national dialogue” on mental health, and a variety of bills addressing mental health issues are percolating on Capitol Hill.

But critics say that this focus unfairly singles out people with serious mental illness, who studies indicate are involved in only about 4 percent of violent crimes and are 11 or more times as likely than the general population to be the victims of violent crime.

And many proposals — they include strengthening mental health services, lowering the threshold for involuntary commitment and increasing requirements for reporting worrisome patients to the authorities — are rushed in execution and unlikely to repair a broken mental health system, some experts say.

“Good intentions without thought make for bad laws, and I think we have a risk of that,” said J. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist and clinical professor at the University of California, San Diego, who has studied rampage killers.

Moreover, the push for additional mental health laws is often driven by political expediency, some critics say. Mental health proposals draw support from both Democrats and Republicans, in part because, unlike bans on semiautomatic weapons or high-capacity magazines — like the one proposed in the Senate last week — they do not involve confrontation with gun rights groups like the National Rifle Association.

“The N.R.A. is far more formidable as a political foe than the advocacy groups for the mentally ill,” said Dr. Jeffrey A. Lieberman, chairman of psychiatry at Columbia University and president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association.

Indeed, the N.R.A. itself, in response to the massacre in Newtown, argued that mental illness, and not the guns themselves, was at the root of recent shooting sprees. The group called for a national registry of people with mental illness — an alternative that legal experts agree would raise at least as many constitutional alarms as the banning of gun ownership.

For mental health groups, the proposals under consideration are tantalizing: By increasing services for those with mental illness, they raise the possibility of restoring some of the billions of dollars cut from mental health programs in recent years as budgets tightened in the financial downturn. The measures also hold out hope for improvement of a mental health system that many experts say is fragmented and drastically inadequate. And some proposals — those to revise commitment laws, for example — have the support of some mental health organizations.

But some mental health and legal experts say that politicians’ efforts might be better spent making the process of involuntary psychiatric commitment — and the criteria for restricting firearms access once someone has been forcibly committed — consistent from state to state. And some proposals have caused concern, raising questions about doctor-patient confidentiality, the rights of people with psychiatric disabilities and the integrity of clinical judgment.

Especially troublesome to some mental health advocates are provisions like New York’s, which expand the duty of practitioners to report worrisome patients — a model likely to be emulated by other states. New York’s law, part of a comprehensive package to address gun violence, requires reporting to the local authorities any patient “likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to self or others.” Law enforcement officials would then be authorized to confiscate any firearm owned by such a patient.

John Monahan, a psychologist and professor of law at the University of Virginia, said that such laws are often superfluous.

Although many mental health practitioners mistakenly believe that federal laws like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act forbid them to disclose information about patients, such statutes already include exceptions that permit clinicians to give information to the authorities when a patient presents a threat to others, Dr. Monahan said. National Twitter Logo.

Most states also have laws requiring mental health professionals to notify the authorities and any intended victim when a patient makes a direct threat.

New York’s provision, Dr. Monahan said, differs from virtually every other state’s laws in allowing guns to be taken not only from those committed against their will but also from patients who enter treatment voluntarily.

“The devil is in the details,” he said of New York’s new law. “The two fears are that people will be deterred from seeking treatment that they need or that, once they are in treatment, they will clam up and not talk about violence.”

Most mental health experts agree that the link between mental illness and violence is not imaginary. Studies suggest that people with an untreated severe mental illness are more likely to be violent, especially when drug or alcohol abuse is involved. And many rampage killers have some type of serious mental disorder: James E. Holmes, accused of opening fire in a movie theater in Colorado in July, was seeing a psychiatrist who became alarmed about his behavior; Jared L. Loughner, who killed 6 people and injured 13 others in Arizona, including former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, was severely mentally ill.

But such killings account for only a tiny fraction of gun homicides in the United States, mental health experts point out. Besides the research indicating that little violent crime can be linked to perpetrators who are mentally ill, studies show that those crimes are far more likely to involve battery — punching another person, for example — than weapons, which account for only 2 percent of violent crimes committed by the mentally ill.

Because of this, some criminal justice experts say it makes more sense to pass laws addressing behavior, rather than a diagnosis of mental illness. In Indiana, for example, firearms can be confiscated from people deemed a potential threat, whether or not they have a mental illness.

Proposals in a number of states seek to redefine the threshold for involuntary commitment to psychiatric treatment. But in doing so, they have reignited a longstanding debate about the role of forced treatment.

In Ohio, lawmakers are expected to consider a proposal to increase access to outpatient commitment instead of hospitalization, while also doing away with language requiring people with mental illness to show a “grave and imminent risk to substantial rights” of themselves or others before they can be committed.

In Colorado, where legislators are undertaking a broad overhaul of the state’s mental health system proposed by Gov. John W. Hickenlooper, a Democrat, the proposal also includes changing the criteria for involuntary commitment.

Under the state’s current laws, caregivers can place patients on 72-hour mental health holds only if they are believed to pose an “imminent danger” to themselves or others. The governor’s plan would allow caregivers to commit people if they believe there is a “substantial probability” of harm. Virginia and some other states already have standards based on “substantial probability.”

But some mental health advocates are wary about lowering the threshold. “The evidence that we have tells us that that’s not an appropriate solution, it’s not an effective solution to this problem,” said Jennifer Mathis, deputy legal director at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, an advocacy group for people with psychiatric disabilities.

But Cheryl Miller — whose 21-year-old son, Kyle, was shot by the police last June after he pointed a toy gun at them — believes that a revised law might have saved her child.

Two weeks before Kyle was killed she took him to an emergency mental health clinic to get him hospitalized. But the staff refused to commit him.

“I said, ‘I don’t want to take him home; he needs to go to the hospital,’ ” Ms. Miller said. “They didn’t think so. It goes back to, was he an imminent danger to himself? And it was ‘No.’ ”

Thu, Feb 7 - Medical Marijuana Support Rally at the Arizona Capital

Medical Marijuana Support Rally

Summary of the event

Rep John Kavanagh has introduced legislation in the Arizona House to repeal the Medical Marijuana Act. He cites a flawed study and would have Arizona taxpayers pay for yet another vote on whether or not to allow medical marijuana.

Mr. Kavanagh, the citizens of Arizona have spoken 3 times already. Yes to medical marijuana, yes to allowing Arizona citizens the right to choose an alternative to the legal, harmful pharmaceuticals available.

Medical Marijuana patients, advocates, activists and friends are invited to join in this rally and guided tour of the Arizona House of Representatives.

If you have any questions about the event please contact

Rain Baker
(623)349-0482

Phoenixisnorml@gmail.com

More information on this event

Meet Up

Arizona Weekly Weeder

Camp 420

Italy court convicts 3 Americans in CIA kidnapping

Source

Italy court convicts 3 Americans in CIA kidnapping

Associated Press Fri Feb 1, 2013 7:53 AM

MILAN — A Milan appeals court has convicted a former CIA station chief and two other Americans in absentia in the 2003 rendition kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric.

The court on Friday sentenced former CIA station chief Jeff Castelli to seven years, and handed sentences of six years each to Americans Betnie Medero and Ralph Russomando.

All three had been acquitted in the first trial due to diplomatic immunity.

Italy’s highest court last year upheld the convictions of 23 more Americans in absentia in the abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect from a Milan street as part of the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program.

The appeals process for Castelli and the other two was separated for technical reasons.

70 percent of Phoenix's general fund is spent on the police!!!!

"70 percent of the city’s general fund is spent on public safety"

Councilman Michael Nowakowski

I think when you consider the total budget as opposed to the general budget the figure is about 40 percent of it. Most city fire departments grab the next 20 percent of the total budget, with all other departments combined grabbing splitting up the final 40 percent of the budget up.

Now considering that two thirds of the people in prison are there for victimless drug war crimes, you could easily tell the police to stop arresting pot smokers and not affect public safety at all!!!!

And of fire a whole bunch of unneeded cops at the same time and save a whole bunch of money.

Of course the war on drugs is a jobs program for cops and the police union would hate that!!!! Even if those jobs are 100 percent unneeded the police union is not going to let them go without a fight!!!

Repeal the stinking sale tax. We don't need those cops!!!

Source

Food-tax repeal may hit Phoenix hard

By Dustin Gardiner The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Feb 1, 2013 10:38 AM

As political pressure builds to repeal Phoenix’s food tax, city officials have outlined several financial obstacles that could complicate such a move.

City Manager David Cavazos this week sent a memo to the mayor and City Council listing major budget constraints to ending the tax, including concerns that it could affect the city’s perfect credit rating or result in a loss of revenue needed to help support police and fire services. [screw the credit rating, I want lower taxes. and it certainly wouldn't hurt to fire a bunch of cops who mainly arrest people for victimless drug war crimes]

The update comes as some council members have renewed calls to repeal the tax this spring, roughly two years before its 2015 sunset. The 2 percent tax on residents’ grocery bills is shaping up to be a contentious point of spring budget negotiations.

Mayor Greg Stanton, who pledged during his 2011 campaign to repeal the tax by April, has been a focus of much of the debate. He has yet to take a definitive position on the issue and could provide the crucial fifth vote needed to abolish the tax early.

“We still have significant challenges,” Stanton said, describing the city’s murky budget picture. “The economy is not bouncing back as quickly as people had hoped.”

He said Cavazos’ memo points out the “stark circumstances” Phoenix faces as it weighs the food-tax repeal: revenue for the current budget year is less than projected. Stanton said he hopes the city can still eliminate or reduce the tax but that he plans to review detailed spending-cut options before making a decision.

Two of the council’s more fiscally conservative members, Jim Waring and Sal DiCiccio, said the city could immediately repeal the tax without affecting public-safety services. DiCiccio has questioned why the city spent tens of millions of dollars on employee raises and bonuses these past few years, costs that are fixed as part of the city’s contracts with unions.

“Delaying the promised repeal of the food tax is the kind of tactic that hurts the middle class and working families,” DiCiccio said. “If the food tax is to be removed by April 1, the public needs time to consider the details of how that will be done without affecting public safety, as promised.”

Council members created the emergency food tax in February 2010 as Phoenix was facing an unprecedented $277 million general-fund shortfall. The tax was proposed as a way to prevent large layoffs of public-safety personnel and keep libraries and senior centers open. [really the expense of libraries and senior centers is insignificant compare to the cops of paying police officers who account for 70 percent of Phoenix's budget] So far, it has generated about $127 million in additional revenue, or about $50million per year.

Although some council members hoped to remove the tax by April, Cavazos’ proposed time line makes that appear unlikely. He plans to present options for cutting the tax on March 26, along with the rest of his trial budget for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1. The council would have months to make a final decision.

City officials said two primary challenges will be maintaining the city’s AAA bond rating and continuing to provide support for public safety.

Phoenix has relied on money from the food tax to help pay for about $30 million in general-fund expenses per year, most of which goes toward public safety and court expenses. On top of that, $8 million goes to help support specialty police and fire funds that have run a negative balance.

“Because 70 percent of the city’s general fund is spent on public safety, I am concerned about how it would be affected by a possible repeal of the tax,” Councilman Michael Nowakowski said recently. “Phoenix’s leaders must consider that and all other consequences in the process.”

A loss in revenue from the food tax could also hurt how credit-rating agencies evaluate Phoenix, Cavazos said. A lower credit rating would require the city to pay higher interest rates when it borrowed money.

Cavazos and city budget staff will spend the next several weeks outlining the council’s specific options, including a budget with recommended service levels and another with cuts to compensate for the loss of the food tax. He said both options will be shown to residents at numerous public meetings.

“I think it’s pretty clear that we have lots of constraints, ” Cavazos said. “We have to work very carefully with our departments and listen very carefully to the public before we can fully identify what those consequences are.”

Look who's coming out of the closet for medical marijuana

A drug warrior comes to his senses on medical marijuana!!!!

Let's face it, it's time to end the insane and unconstitutional drug war.

Source

Laurie Roberts | azcentral opinions

Look who's coming out of the closet for medical marijuana

Posted on February 1, 2013 5:00 pm by Laurie Roberts

Look who's coming out of the closet for medical marijuana

“No medical authority would say it’s helping you. They all say it’s harming you.” Rep. John Kavanagh, on medical marijuana

That’s marijuana.

Now there’s a move afoot to repeal the medical marijuana law that Arizona voters have approved three times now. Bennett Black’s father is hoping the Legislature will take a pass on Kavanagh’s bill to put repeal on the 2014 ballot.

“I can’t imagine people saying ‘I’m going to take away a sick person’s lifeline, their ability to have a quality of life and to criminalize that which is keeping him alive,’ ” the father told me. “If there’s a problem, the problem doesn’t come from keeping it away from people that need it.”

Lest you think these the words of some aging hippy, think again. Black’s father is former U.S. Attorney Mel McDonald, a Ronald Reagan appointee who led the war on drugs in Arizona in the 1980s and sat on the 15-member advisory commission of attorneys general that helped set national drug policy. He’s a Mormon, a former Maricopa County prosecutor who also served as a Superior Court judge and has been appointed to various boards and commissions by six of the last seven Arizona governors.

And he’s a fierce supporter of medical marijuana, because he’s seen the relief it offers his son.

I’ve been skeptical about the whole medical marijuana movement, sold as a godsend to cancer and glaucoma patients but used mostly by people with “chronic pain.” The picture of the young man holding his skateboard and his white bag of pot in December, when Arizona’s first dispensary opened, wasn’t exactly a PR coup for the medical marijuana industry.

Then I met Bennett Black and his parents, Mel and Cindy McDonald.

In 1997, Black was riding his Go-Ped when he was hit by a car going 45 mph. The 14 year old suffered a serious brain injury that left him with a severe form of epilepsy.

He’s seen some of the best neurologists in the country. He’s had a golf ball-sized piece of his brain removed. He’s had a vagus nerve stimulator wired to his brain, a device that sends out electrical charges every 30 seconds. And still the epilepsy controls his life, racking his body with life threatening grand-mal seizures that can last up to 75 minutes.

He takes five anti-seizure medications, which leave his stomach one roiling pit of uuuugh. Every day, he is sick. All the time, sick. By 1999, his weight had dropped from 180 pounds to 119 as he would go days without food. His mother, Cindy, talks of spending hour upon exhausting hour in the dead of night, trying to coax seizure medication into his empty stomach only to find the pills minutes later in a bucket of vomit.

A neighbor, suffering the after effects of a broken neck, suggested to Cindy that her son try marijuana. At first, Cindy says she resisted giving it to her son but eventually she became desperate. It was, she says, like a miracle. A few puffs and Bennett could a least gag down a few bites of food, enough to keep him alive.

And so came Cindy the criminal, the mother who snuck around and broke the law, obtaining marijuana so that her son could live, knowing that if she were caught it would make headlines: Wife of former US attorney snared in drug bust.

But knowing, too, that she had no choice.

Mel McDonald also faced a dilemma. He knew his son needed the illegal drug. But he knew also that he could lose his license to practice that which he had always stood for and respected — the law.

For a decade, the McDonalds lived with what he calls “the iron curtain” in their house. Cindy would obtain the marijuana, storing it in a safe only she had access to and giving it to her son when he needed it, which was pretty much every day — though never when Mel was around.

And Mel? It was his job to look the other way and to live with that.

“It’s almost like the story of Les Miserables. Jean Valjean breaking in to steal bread,” he said, recounting a decade of his wife’s clandestine activity. “Here’s a mother who has found one way to keep her son eating food — the only thing that works is marijuana – to keep him alive. To have to go out there and create that barrier in our home because I can’t be a part of it, I can’t be with you. I don’t want to know what you’re doing. I’ve literally got to keep a barrier in my own home to satisfy the requirements of the law and the bar.”

Voters first approved legalizing marijuana for medical use in 1996 but the Legislature repealed the law. Voters again approved it in 1998 but it never took effect because federal officials threatened to prosecute any doctor who prescribed the drug.

Then in 2010, voters narrowly approved it a third time, this time with a requirement only that a doctor “recommend” the drug, and Cindy sobbed relief and gratitude.

For nearly two years, the state dragged its feet before finally the first dispensaries were allowed to open in December. Now Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery is asking the state Supreme Court to toss out the law, contending that it’s pre-empted by federal law.

Meanwhile, Rep. Kavanagh is working to put repeal on the 2014 ballot, noting that 90 percent of medical marijuana users are seeking relief from “chronic pain”, not cancer or glaucoma. He also cites a recent federal appellate court ruling that upheld a Drug Enforcement Agency decision to keep marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug — one deemed to have no legitimate medical uses.

Bennett Black would beg to differ. He is among nearly 34,000 Arizonans who have state permission to use marijuana.

We met at noon on Thursday, along with his parents and his service dog Aggie, who is trained to call for help when a seizure occurrs. Black hadn’t eaten for 22 hours when we met. At most, he says he has one meal a day and only then because the marijuana temporarily eases the nausea, giving him a window of opportunity to eat.

“All you have to do is see someone in my situation and see how much it helps and they would completely feel differently,” Black told me. “They would go from being against it to for it in the blink of an eye.”

Cindy says the program has given dignity to people like her son, who can now obtain the drug legally to ease his nausea and stimulate his appetite.

“It saved his life,” she told me. “I will go to my grave knowing he would have been dead.”

Mel McDonald says a repeal would have the effect of turning his wife into a criminal. Mothers will do what they must, after all. Who among us wouldn’t?

If people are abusing the law, McDonald says we should go after the abusers, not the patients whose lives are often transformed because they can get legal access to relief.

“There are tens of thousands of people that marijuana genuinely helps,” he said. “We’ve been to the best doctors in the world for Bennett, from chiefs of staff on down. Nobody gave us a medication to take away the nausea and enable him to eat. It isn’t out there except marijuana. If there was a magic pill somebody could give us that would cure the nausea and let him eat we would take the pill but marijuana is the only thing that works…

“One of the tough things is for me not to pick up the phone and call Tom Horne or Bill Montgomery, both of whom are friends of mine and who I know well, and just say, ‘For hell sakes, there’s people that really need this. If there’s a problem, tighten the laws to stop the abuse but don’ t take the medicine away from the patient.’ ”

67 years in prison for selling whale meat???

Source

Sushi chefs indicted for allegedly selling whale meat face prison terms

February 1, 2013 | 5:59 pm

The hump (sic) It made for a wild tale three years ago when a Santa Monica sushi restaurant abruptly shuttered its doors after it was disclosed that the hipster hangout was selling illegal whale meat.

The Hump at the Santa Monica Airport closed and its chef and parent company were charged with misdemeanors after a sting operation was captured by a documentary crew.

But now stakes have been raised. A federal grand jury has indicted the owners of the parent company and two of its one-time chefs, charging them with felonies that carry lengthy prison terms.

The two chefs and the ownership group of the Hump are charged with nine counts of conspiracy to import and sell whale meat from 2007 to 2010, a violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

The indictment accuses Typhoon Restaurant Inc., which is the parent company of the now-closed Hump restaurant, and chef Kiyoshiro Yamamoto, 48, of Culver City; and chef Susumu Ueda, 39, of Lawndale of conspiring to import and sell the meat of Sei whales, which are listed as an endangered species.

According to an indictment, Yamamoto and Ueda allegedly ordered the whale meat from Ginichi Ohira, a Japanese national who previously pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of illegally selling a marine mammal product.

Once Ohira received the whale meat in the United States, he prepared an invoice that incorrectly described the meat as fatty tuna and delivered the whale meat to the Hump, according to the indictment.

The arrangement allegedly went on for three years. The Hump sold whale sushi to informants posing as customers on three specific occasions in the fall of 2009 and in early 2010.

Federal agents and animal activists had cooperated in a video sting orchestrated by the associate producer of the Oscar-winning documentary "The Cove."

The whale meat is popular in Japan and Norway and fished controversially by the Japanese whaling fleet, but importing it into the United States is illegal.

Yamamoto could face up to 67 years in federal prison and Ueda would served up to 10 years if convicted. The restaurant's parent company faces fines of $1.2 million.

DEA thugs defend their war on marijuana

Mike, if you want send me and email with why you think I love the drug war and I will gladly post it with this article.

I am just posting this article so folks can see the DEA stupid position on classifying marijuana as a drug with no medical users whatsoever.

Personally I would think that even if marijuana has no medical value whatsoever like the DEA claims it should still be legal as a recreational drug.

After all millions of people think it's a fantastic recreational drug and use it daily risking prison time.

I won't clutter up the article with my usual snide comments, because that would double or triple the size of the article.

Source

The DEA's pot defense [Blowback]

By Robert Bonner

February 1, 2013, 8:23 a.m.

Reacting to a federal appellate court decision upholding the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's denial of reclassification of marijuana, The Times states in its Jan. 25 editorial that whether marijuana should be reclassified under federal law to permit its prescription as a medicine should be based on science and an evaluation of the facts, rather than on myths. I fully agree.

And yet the editorial is based on the myth that the DEA has made it "nearly impossible" for researchers to obtain marijuana for such scientific studies. To the contrary, not a single scientifically valid study by a qualified researcher has ever been denied by the DEA or, for that matter, by the National Institute of Drug Abuse. And there is ample government-grown marijuana, specifically for research, available at the marijuana farm run by the University of Mississippi. More surprising, as your editorial points out, is that there is still no scientifically valid study that proves that marijuana is effective, much less safe, as a medicine.

As the DEA administrator 20 years ago, I denied the reclassification of marijuana from a Schedule I controlled drug because there were no valid scientific studies showing that smoking marijuana was an effective medicine. In my decision, published in the Federal Register, I interpreted federal law and set forth a five-part test that included whether there were valid scientific studies demonstrating that marijuana was safe and effective for treating any medical condition. I noted that at that time there were none of the kind of controlled, double-blind studies that the Food and Drug Administration would require before approving a new drug application, and I clearly spelled out that this would be necessary before marijuana would be reclassified to a lower schedule that would permit its use as a physician-prescribed medicine.

Essentially, I invited those who advocate marijuana use as a medicine to conduct research and then present it to the DEA. I laid out a road map for what they needed to do. If scientifically valid studies demonstrated that marijuana was “effective” and “safe,” as the FDA defines those terms, the agency would reclassify marijuana into one of the other schedules. It is amazing that 20 years later there is still no such scientific study establishing that marijuana is effective as a medicine. And yet in the interim, the well-funded marijuana lobby, including the National Assn. for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and others, have spent tens of millions of dollars on convincing voters to pass medical marijuana initiatives based on anecdotes but not science.

The reason the FDA and the DEA have scientific standards is because snake-oil salesmen are able to sell just about anything to sick people without any scientific proof that it has a truly helpful therapeutic effect. If proponents of medical marijuana had invested even a small fragment of their money in scientifically valid studies, we would know one way or the other whether it works.

One can only conclude the marijuana proponents did not go this route because doing so would have shown that cannabis is not an effective and safe medicine. Alternatively, we are left to conclude that their agenda was not about marijuana to help sick people, but rather was getting voters to pass medical marijuana initiatives as a wedge to legalize the drug for "recreational" use.

TSA doing the best they can to rain on Super Bowl fans parade!!!!

TSA warns Super Bowl fans to leave mining tools, air horns at home

By Hugo Martin

February 1, 2013, 5:40 p.m.

Football fans flying to New Orleans for Super Bowl XLVII will be packing a lot of enthusiasm, but they'd better not haul pickaxes, air horns or flasks of booze.

And if you're bringing a live raven, check with out your airline's pet policy before getting to the airport.

That is the warning issued Friday by the Transportation Security Administration to fans of the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens flying to the big game.

Air horns are prohibited in carry-on bags and in checked bags because of a TSA ban on compressed-air canisters on planes. The same goes for propane tanks used to cook at tailgate parties.

Because sharp objects are prohibited, gold-mining tools such as picks and shovels also are not allowed on planes, the TSA warned. (The 49ers, of course, were named for the gold prospectors who flocked to Northern California during the Gold Rush around 1849.)

Flasks of booze will not get through carry-on screening, either, the TSA said. Libations should go into your checked bag.

The TSA predicts the busiest day at Louis Armstrong International Airport will be Monday when football fans begin their journey home.

The agency will be operating around the clock at the New Orleans airport, with additional agents, to open twice as many screening gates as usual, the TSA said.

Screw an IRS agent to reduce your tax bill???

Man says he had sex with IRS agent after threat

Associated Press Fri Feb 1, 2013 9:11 AM

EUGENE, Ore. — A Lane County man accuses an IRS agent of coercing him into having sex with her by threatening a tax penalty.

Vincent Burroughs filed a lawsuit in federal court in Eugene last week suing the federal government and Dora Abrahamson.

Abrahamson declined to comment when she was contacted Thursday by The Register-Guard.

In the lawsuit Burroughs says Abrahamson contacted him in August 2011 about an audit. He says they subsequently flirted over the phone and by text messages, and at one point she sent a photo of herself in her underwear.

Burroughs says he initially resisted, but Abrahamson told him she could impose no tax penalty or a 40 percent penalty. He says they had sex at his home in September 2011, which caused a rift another relationship.

US expanding the drug war in South America

"At any given moment, 4,000 U.S. troops are deployed in Latin America and as many as four U.S. Navy ships are plying the Caribbean and Pacific coastlines of Central America. U.S. Air Force pilots clocked more than 46,400 hours in 2011 flying anti-drug missions, and U.S. agents from at least 10 law enforcement agencies spread across the continent."

And of course it's also a government welfare program for the companies in the military industrial complex that make all the hardware used to fight the drug war.

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U.S. expands anti-drug efforts in Latin America

By Martha Mendoza Associated Press Fri Feb 1, 2013 9:28 PM

The crew members aboard the USS Underwood could see through their night goggles what was happening on the fleeing go-fast boat: Someone was dumping bales.

When the Navy guided-missile frigate later dropped anchor in Panamanian waters on that sunny August morning, Ensign Clarissa Carpio, a 23-year-old from San Francisco, climbed into the inflatable dinghy with four unarmed sailors and two Coast Guard officers like herself, carrying light submachine guns. It was her first deployment, but Carpio was ready for combat.

Fighting drug traffickers was precisely what she’d trained for.

In the most expensive initiative in Latin America since the Cold War, the U.S. has militarized the battle against the traffickers, spending more than $20 billion in the past decade. U.S. Army troops, Air Force pilots and Navy ships outfitted with Coast Guard counter-narcotics teams are routinely deployed to chase, track and capture drug smugglers.

The sophistication and violence of the traffickers is so great that the U.S. military is training not only law enforcement agents in Latin American nations, but their militaries as well, building a network of expensive hardware, radar, airplanes, ships, runways and refueling stations to stem the tide of illegal drugs from South America to the U.S. [Wow sounds like a jobs program for Generals, as well as a welfare program for the companeis in the military industrial complex that make the military equipment to wage this war on drugs]

According to State and Pentagon officials, stopping drug-trafficking organizations has become a matter of national security because they spread corruption, undermine fledgling democracies and can potentially finance terrorists. [And because it gives high paying jobs to the Generals and Admirals that run the drug war]

The Associated Press examined U.S. arms export authorizations, defense contracts, military aid, and exercises, tracking a drug war strategy that began in Colombia, moved to Mexico and is now finding fresh focus in Central America, where brutal cartels mark an enemy motivated not by ideology but by cash. [Like I said, a government welfare program for the companies in the military industrial complex]

US troops on patrol

At any given moment, 4,000 U.S. troops are deployed in Latin America and as many as four U.S. Navy ships are plying the Caribbean and Pacific coastlines of Central America. U.S. Air Force pilots clocked more than 46,400 hours in 2011 flying anti-drug missions, and U.S. agents from at least 10 law enforcement agencies spread across the continent.

The U.S. trains thousands of Latin American troops, and employs its multibillion dollar radar equipment to gather intelligence to intercept traffickers and arrest cartel members.

These work in organized-crime networks that boast an estimated 11,000 flights annually and hundreds of boats and submersibles. They smuggle cocaine from the only place it’s produced, South America, to the land where it is most coveted, the United States.

One persistent problem is that in many of the partner nations, police are so institutionally weak or corrupt that governments have turned to their militaries to fight drug traffickers, often with violent results. Militaries are trained for combat, while police are trained to enforce laws. “It is unfortunate that militaries have to be involved in what are essentially law enforcement engagements,” said Frank Mora, the outgoing deputy assistant secretary of defense for Western Hemisphere affairs. But he argues that many governments have little choice.

“We are not going to turn our backs on these governments or these institutions because they’ve found themselves in such a situation that they have to use their militaries in this way,” Mora said.

But the U.S. is deploying its own military. Not only is the Fourth Fleet in the Caribbean, the Pacific and the Atlantic, but the Marines were sent to Guatemala last year and National Guardsmen are in Honduras.

Shift away from Colombia

The current U.S. strategy began in Colombia in 2000, with an eight-year effort that cost more than $7 billion to stop the flow from the world’s top cocaine producer. During Plan Colombia, the national police force, working closely with dozens of DEA agents, successfully locked up top drug traffickers as an estimated 44,000 people were killed in organized-crime related deaths.

But then came “the balloon effect.”

As a result of Plan Colombia’s pressure, traffickers were forced to find new coca-growing lands in Peru and Bolivia, and trafficking routes shifted as well from Florida to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Thus a $1.6 billion, 4-year Merida Initiative was launched in 2008. Gruesome killings topped 70,000 in six years.

The latest iteration is the $165 million Central America Regional Security Initiative, which includes Operation Martillo (Hammer), a year-old U.S.-led mission. Focused on the seas off Central America’s beach-lined coasts, key shipping routes for 90 percent of the estimated 850 metric tons of cocaine headed to the U.S., the operation has no end date.

When the drug war turns bloody, the strategy is working, said Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield, head of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. [What rubbish!!! The drug war has always been a dismal failure!]

Peña Nieto continues Felipe Calderon's drug war

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A quieter drug war in Mexico, but no less deadly

By Nick Miroff, Published: February 1

MEXICO CITY — As a tactical matter, the gangsters and government security forces fighting Mexico’s drug war have typically opted for the spectacular over the subtle.

Massacres, beheadings and other unspeakable cruelties became cartels’ preferred form of violence. In response, the government sent masked troops with machine guns to patrol Mexico’s streets and paraded its captured drug suspects on television like hunting trophies.

But in the past few months, that has changed. Mexico’s drug war has gone quiet.

Not less lethal. Just less loud.

The country’s drug-related homicide numbers remain essentially undiminished. More than 12,000 people were murdered last year in gangland violence, according to the latest Mexican media tallies, roughly the same number that were slain in 2010 and 2011.

Yet polls show public perceptions of security improving. Nearly six months have gone by since gangsters have staged one of the large-scale massacres seemingly devised for maximum shock and terror, like the slaughter of 72 kidnapped migrants near the U.S. border in August 2010 or the time killers dumped 49 human torsos along a highway last May.

Grenade attacks, car bombs and wild urban gun battles have also become more rare. In one especially telling shift, Mexico’s military says the number of attacks on its soldiers dropped more than 50 percent last year, a sign that traffickers were looking to avoid — not ambush — army patrols.

“They’re still fighting each other, but the last thing the criminals want to do right now is confront the military,” said Martin Barron Cruz, an analyst at Mexico’s National Institute of Criminal Sciences. “They have learned that spectacular acts of violence only bring more pressure to bear on them.”

The change appears to be a tactical decision, Barron and other security experts say, as cartel bosses increasingly eschew the kind of open warfare and extravagant barbarity that defined the drug war in 2010 and 2011.

The gore, it seems, was bad for business. A sickened Mexican public has backed the deployment of more and more troops and federal police, bringing new highway checkpoints and additional pressures on the gangsters that drive up the costs of smuggling drugs, most of which are bound for the United States.

Another mass killing or elaborate ambush could happen at any moment, of course. Violence has flared in recent weeks in the gritty cement-block barrios that ring Mexico City. And in northern Mexico last week, gunmen barged into a private party and kidnapped 18 musicians and crew members from the band Kombo Kolombia. One band member escaped; the other 17 were shot and thrown down a well.

But in general, while the cartels are still killing each other at almost the same clip, they’re doing it more quietly and in areas of the country where they’re drawing less attention.

It is a strategy that the Mexican government appears to have adopted as well, in its own way.

Just as the traffickers have lowered the visibility of the violence, so has the administration of Mexico’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto.

His predecessor, Felipe Calderon, made the drug fight the central focus of his presidency and his public statements. But since taking office on Dec. 1, Peña Nieto has looked to change the conversation — by talking about trade, poverty reduction, and education and energy reform.

Peña Nieto has also instructed Mexican security forces to curb the practice of dragging handcuffed criminal suspects and alleged traffickers in front of the television cameras before they’ve been charged, a custom known as “presentation” that was a near-daily feature under the previous administration.

These perp-walks often exhibited suspects with fat lips, facial bruises and other signs of rough treatment by authorities.

But if the spectacle was used by Calderon and his predecessors to show the public they were winning the war, Peña Nieto’s decision to end it is meant to signal a new approach.

Officials in his administration say the sight of suspects smirking defiantly as authorities read aloud their criminal aliases — monikers like “Tweety Bird,” “Barbie” and “The Moustache” — sent the wrong message, especially since many later go free for lack of evidence.

Peña Nieto’s government says it wants to focus on securing criminal convictions and protecting judicial integrity, not making Mexico’s bad guys into TV personalities.

‘Walking a fine line’

Still, the government’s effort to shift the public conversation away from drug violence is a risky one, analysts say, given the lingering perception that Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was corrupt and soft on the cartels when it ran Mexico for much of the 20th century.

Peña Nieto assures U.S. officials he will press on with the drug fight and forge ahead with implementation of the $2 billion security assistance package from Washington known as the Merida Initiative.

But he has also sent the message that his administration wants its relationship with the United States to be about more than drugs, said Eric Olson, a Mexico scholar at Washington’s Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

“The question is: In doing that, does the urgency of dealing with security issues fall off the agenda?” Olson said. “Or the urgency of judicial reform, modernizing the police and reforming the prison system?”

“He’s walking a fine line,” he said.

The more discreet violence is giving the new administration a chance to talk publicly about other issues — something that isn’t possible when authorities are busy cleaning up after a mass murder or political assassination.

According to tallies by the Mexican media organization Milenio, the number of drug-related homicides in December 2012 — Peña Nieto’s first month in office — was actually higher than during the same month in previous years.

The Mexican government no longer releases its own body count estimate. But Peña Nieto insisted during his presidential campaign his success should be judged according to whether he’s able to slow the pace of the killings.

It’s a goal that leaves him boxed in, since the reforms he has proposed — including a massive reorganization of state-level and federal police forces — will take years to implement, said Alejandro Hope, a former Mexican intelligence official who is now a security analyst at the think tank Mexico Evalua.

“If he doesn’t bring down violence, he fails,” Hope said. “But nothing that he has proposed will do that in the short term.”

And if the cartels commit another huge massacre or deadly ambush on federal forces, Peña Nieto may be forced to turn his attention back toward the fight.

“There’s more availability of drugs and more availability of guns, and if that doesn’t change, we’ll continue to see the same trends,” said Alberto Islas, a security expert at the consulting firm Risk Evaluation.

Relief in some areas

For now though, the new president seems to have some breathing room, partly the result of quieter times in the big border cities that have long been red zones, such as Tijuana and shell-shocked Ciudad Juarez, where the murder rate has dropped nearly 80 percent since 2010, when more than 3,100 were killed.

Local authorities in those cities say their police reforms are paying off and that they have purged their ranks of corrupt officers. Federal forces say they’ve weakened the cartels by taking out many of their top leaders.

But analysts say the violence has simply moved elsewhere, to new flash points in central-northern Mexican cities, like Torreon, that are hundreds of miles south of the border but strategic for control over lucrative smuggling routes.

“There may be a perception, on a national level, that security has improved. But not here,” said Javier Garza, editor of the newspaper El Siglo de Torreon.

It’s one of the places where Mexico’s two most powerful cartels are crashing into each other. The Sinaloa Cartel controls much of western Mexico and the Pacific. The Zetas dominate the country’s eastern states and the Gulf Coast.

Torreon had 114 murders in December 2012, Garza said, its second-worst month for the year. In 2012, nearly 1,100 people were slain in the city, a record.

Gabriela Martinez contributed to this report.

Three Redwood City fire officials retired with at least $200,000 in extra payout

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Three Redwood City fire officials retired with at least $200,000 in extra payout

By Bonnie Eslinger

Daily News Staff Writer

Posted: 02/02/2013 03:00:00 AM PST

Two Redwood City fire captains and a firefighter retired last year with at least an extra $200,000 tacked onto each of their final paychecks.

Most of that money came from payouts for unused paid leave and a big bonus for getting off the city's payroll.

In all, 16 of 27 employees who retired last year took advantage of the city's "exit incentive" bonus offer last year, according to salary data provided by the city. In addition to the three firefighters, 11 employees left with an extra $100,000 to $199,000 each, the data shows.

With base pay included, 17 city employees retired with take-home pay of $200,000 or more for the year.

City spokesman Malcolm Smith said the retirement program was one of several compensation changes the city negotiated with workers to rein in costs. When an older, higher-paid employee retires, the city can bring in a replacement at a lower salary and with a reduced pension benefit.

Firefighters hired before October 2011 are eligible to retire at age 50 and those hired after that date have to wait until they're at least 55. All retired firefighters collect pension payments equal to 3 percent of their highest annual salary -- which includes overtime pay that year -- multiplied by every year worked, according to Leah Lockhart, a senior human resource analyst for the city.

Fire Captain David Raymaker began working for the department in 1980 and retired in May 2012 with a final paycheck that totaled more than $290,592 -- $60,957 in five months' base pay, $18,600 in overtime, $30,193 in vacation payout, $50,003 in sick leave payout, $45 in comp time payout, a $629 uniform allowance, $3,055 in holiday comp and a $127,110 exit bonus.

Fire Captain Bruce Meisenbach began working for the department in 1986 and retired in June with $279,329, which included $71,142 in six months' base pay, $30,428 in vacation payout, $50,003 in sick leave payout and a $118,331 exit bonus.

Like Meisenbach, firefighter Martin Moore served in the department for 26 years and retired in June. His last check came out to $269,811, which included $59,838 in six months' base pay, $60,685 in vacation payout, $42,058 in sick leave payout and a $100,086 exit bonus.

Fire Chief Jim Skinner acknowledged that the sums are "an incredible amount of money ... no doubt," but explained that the exit bonuses allow the city to hire new firefighters at a lower cost.

The monthly pay for a new firefighter is $6,591, with a top step of $ 8,015, according to the salary schedule posted on the city's website.

The new hires generally have a higher education and are more technology savvy, Skinner said.

But it hasn't been easy seeing so many people retire, he said. After 12 firefighters retired last year by the city's June deadline to collect their bonus, the department struggled to fill shifts and help San Carlos plug staffing holes under a contract.

"They had to leave by the end of the fiscal year," Skinner said. "You lose experience, you lose the historical knowledge of the organization and the job." Besides firefighters, bonuses also were offered to police officers, police sergeants and managers eligible for retirement, according to Lockhart.

Email Bonnie Eslinger at beslinger@dailynewsgroup.com; follow her at twitter.com/bonnieeslinger.

Gun Grabbing Phoenix Area Mayors

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Valley mayors weigh in on gun reform

By Maria Polletta The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Feb 2, 2013 11:23 PM

Valley mayors have joined the national chorus of officials saying when it comes to gun violence, something has to give.

But there’s no consensus on what that something is.

The mayors, who range from avid hunters and National Rifle Association members to those who have never owned a firearm, have suggested tentative solutions as diverse as their backgrounds.

Some have hesitated to offer any sort of directive, and most have held off on membership in gun-control organizations. Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton for a time was the only Valley representative in the Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition until Tempe Mayor Mark Mitchell recently joined.

“There’s just a lot of dialogue right now, and it’s hard to bring it all together,” said Gilbert Mayor John Lewis.

Lewis said he prefers to wait and weigh in on specific legislation, such as a 2012 guns-on-campus bill he opposed, rather than sign on to more sweeping efforts.

Mesa Mayor Scott Smith, a former NRA member and a gun owner for most of his life, also worries that acting too quickly on the gun issue would lead to an inadequate or ineffective solution. He said he refuses to “jump on the gun-control bandwagon,” lamenting what he described as the U.S. tendency to seek knee-jerk solutions after major crises.

Still, Smith and other mayors have said they’d support or at least be open to certain measures to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, in effect limiting firearm privileges to responsible citizens.

Glendale Mayor Jerry Weiers, a hunter, NRA member and gun-safety instructor, said he supports efforts to curtail the spread of illegal guns, for instance. “If it’s an illegal gun, it’s an illegal gun,” he said. “Why wouldn’t everybody support trying to stop (that)?”

Smith also believes the law has a legitimate role in forbidding the willful sale of guns to criminals and forbidding “straw buyers” who would channel weapons inappropriately.

Other mayors, such as Phoenix’s Stanton, have looked to the types and grades of weapons people are allowed to own. President Barack Obama recently unveiled a broad set of proposed gun-control measures that include bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Stanton has described requiring universal background checks as a “good, commonsense approach.” Checks are not done now on users who purchase firearms at gun shows and through other private sales.

Glendale’s Weiers and Peoria Mayor Bob Barrett have said training is a key component of responsible gun ownership. Weiers argued that gun-safety classes for youngsters make for “better citizens and … less problems.”

Barrett, a gun owner, has opposed legislation to allow guns in schools and city buildings and said training should be required to carry a concealed weapon.

“When you are under stress, when you are under fire … you’re more likely, A, to miss or, B, to hit somebody else,” Barrett said. “The idea of people walking around with concealed weapons and no training is not a good thing.”

Barrett contends that any initiative focused solely on how and which guns are obtained will help little if the country does not start placing a greater emphasis on mental-health care. Changing that, he said, would go further than trying to eliminate extended magazines and military-style weapons.

“What I think we need to do as a society is make mental-health treatment regarded the same way physical-health treatment is,” he said. “There is a sense of shame connected with getting counseling and getting help.”

Chandler Mayor Jay Tibshraeny said that “a lot of these folks that have done this (mass shootings) are seriously mentally disturbed” and mental-health-care funding is a “a factor that I look at on this issue.”

“At the state level, better reporting of mental-health records would be good,” Tibshraeny said. “We’ve got folks that are unstable and applying to get guns. A lot of their health history is on record, and it needs to go into a database that is checked as they’re applying.”

All Valley mayors said they believe a balance between protective measures and Second Amendment rights is vital as the gun-control debate moves forward, especially in Arizona, with the state’s historically pro-gun culture.

“I am a gun owner and a supporter of the Second Amendment,” said Surprise Mayor Sharon Wolcott. “But my right to own and carry a gun does not trump your right to live in a safe and civil society.”

Republic reporters Gary Nelson, Parker Leavitt, Dianna Náñez, Allie Seligman, John Yantis,Jen Kuhney and Paul Giblin contributed to this article.

Mayor's for Knife Control???

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Stabbed Scottsdale bouncer dies, played ASU football

By By D.S. Woodfill and Paola Boivin Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Sat Feb 2, 2013 10:24 PM

Those who remembered a former Arizona State University football player who died a week after he was stabbed at Scottsdale nightclub described their friend as a gentle giant.

Tyrice Thompson, a former tight end and wide receiver, passed away surrounded by friends and family at about 8:30 a.m. Saturday at Scottsdale Healthcare Osborn Medical Center.

Thompson, a 27-year-old former tight end and receiver for ASU from 2003 to 2007, was working as a bouncer at Martini Ranch in Scottsdale at 1 a.m. on Jan. 27 when a scuffle started between patrons, police said.

Although details of the investigation are still not clear, police said at some point during the scuffle, someone stabbed Thompson 5 times in the back hip and arm.

In a statement released Saturday, Martini Ranch said Thompson had become a member of the family who had a “remarkable ability to connect with people and will always be remembered for his warm smile, sense of humor and positive attitude.”

The business has created a Facebook page to help raise money for his loved ones. That can be found at https://www.facebook.com/remembertyrice

It was sadly ironic way for such a good-natured person to die, said Marques Elliott, a friend of Thompson’s since college.

“He always was a very calm, kind individual,” Elliott said. “He’s always been extremely humble, soft spoken (and) has always had a very clear head on his shoulders. (He was) a very good human being.”

Doug Yazzie, a close friend Thompson who was with his family when he passed away, said Thompson was a kind and positive man.

“He could fill any room with light,” Yazzie said.

Yazzi, who said he is the godfather to Thompson’s 2-year-old son Takai, would likely have forgiven his attacker.

“He didn’t have an angry bone in his body,” he said.

Dennis Erickson, Thompson’s coach during his senior year of school, was heartbroken over the death of his former player.

“He was an unbelievable guy, so coachable,” Erickson said. “Everything we asked, he did. It's so sad.”

Police reported that no one at the bar the night of the attack, including employees, identified who stabbed Thompson and no knife was found at the scene.

Police on Tuesday arrested, but then released pending further investigation, a 26-year-old Tempe resident Ian MacDonald.

“During interviews, Mr. MacDonald admitted to fighting with the bouncers, but denied stabbing Mr. Thompson,” a police statement said.

“Police have questioned all those we believe were witnesses or involved in the incident,” said Sgt. Mark Clark in a statement. “MacDonald remains the sole suspect at this time.”

“We are waiting for lab results to forward charges to the MCAO,” he added.

Thompson, a Laveen resident, played with 13 games his senior year as a Sun Devil, catching 15 passes for 272 yards. He was a key special teams player his final two seasons at Arizona State.

Thompson was signed as an undrafted free agent by the Indianapolis Colts, but did not play an NFL game.

Stan Ogwel mentored Thompson, who was a sophomore at South Mountain High School in Phoenix, as part of public service work he performed with his ASU fraternity.

Ogwel said Thompson was alert before he died, but unable to talk because he was on a respirator.

“I held his hands and prayed with him,” he said. “ I was able to at least spend about 10 minutes with him in the room.”

ASU Associate Athletic Director Mark Brand released a statement that said “the Thompson family is in the thoughts of everyone in the Sun Devil Athletics family.”

“The words of his teammates, our fans and media who came in contact with him are true measures of how much his smile was appreciated,” the statement said.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

Obama loves HIS guns????

Like Obama, most government rulers love guns. They love guns, because guns allow them to stay in power. Ask Hitler, Stalin and Mao if they loved guns and they will all say yes.

The only people that rulers like Obama, Hitler, Stalin and Mao don't want to have guns are the serfs they rule over.

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White House photo shows Obama firing shotgun

By Zachary A. Goldfarb and Howard Schneider, Published: February 2

On his 51st birthday last August, President Obama hit the links with a group of buddies and then flew by helicopter to Camp David. There, he changed into jeans and picked up a shotgun. And then, before it got too dark, he started a round of clay target shooting.

You’d be forgiven if you didn’t think this was headline-worthy news. But on Saturday morning, the White House released and promoted a photograph of Obama shooting skeet at the presidential retreat in Maryland.

White House aides were trying to end a growing distraction just as the president plans to make a fresh push to rally public support behind his ambitious agenda to tighten gun laws, traveling to Minnesota on Monday.

The photo, taken by White House photographer Pete Souza, depicts a sunglasses-wearing Obama firing what appears to be a Browning Citori 725, the shotgun wedged against his left shoulder, a pillow of white smoke emerging from the barrel.

The photo was published a week after Obama claimed in an interview with the New Republic that he routinely shoots skeet at Camp David. The surprising assertion — Obama’s golfing and basketball hobbies are far better known — instantly stirred the political zeitgeist.

Jay Carney, Obama’s press secretary, was asked for evidence in the White House briefing room. “The Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart poked fun at the president’s apparent hobby. Gun-rights activists dismissed it, and some were skeptical that Obama was a routine skeet shooter.

A Republican congresswoman even challenged the president to a shooting contest.

“I’m sure they released the photo because there were folks raising questions about his answer, and those questions are a silly distraction in the midst of a serious debate,” David Axelrod, a longtime adviser to Obama, said in an e-mail.

“I know him pretty well. He doesn’t embellish,” Axelrod added. “If he says he’s done some shooting up there on occasion, I’m sure he has. He’s not a hunter or marksman and doesn’t pretend to be.”

The White House did not say how often Obama has gone shooting.

In the interview with the New Republic, Obama was asked if he had ever shot a gun.

“Yes, in fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time,” he said.

Asked if his whole family goes shooting, Obama replied: “Not the girls, but oftentimes guests of mine go up there. And I have a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for generations. And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake.”

But while the White House made clear Saturday that the president has shot skeet at least once, the release of the photo seemed more likely to inflame passions around the issue than douse them.

Current and former advisers to Obama compared skeptics of Obama’s skeet-shooting prowess to a group of conservatives, known as birthers, who cast doubt on whether Obama was born in the United States and kept exerting pressure until the president released a long-form birth certificate showing he was born in Hawaii.

“Attn skeet birthers. Make our day — let the photoshop conspiracies begin!” David Plouffe, Obama’s senior adviser until last week, wrote on Twitter early Saturday. Later in the day, he wrote, “Day made. The skeet birthers are out in full force in response to POTUS pic. Makes for most excellent, delusional reading.”

Dan Pfeiffer, Obama’s senior adviser, coined a term for those who didn’t believe Obama had gone shooting: “skeeters.”

On the other side, Obama’s critics in the gun-rights community were not impressed by the photo.

“One picture does not erase a lifetime of supporting every gun ban and every gun-control scheme imaginable,” said Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association.

Ladd Everitt, a spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, regarded the whole episode as a sideshow.

“If that’s something the president enjoys doing, God bless him,” he said. “I’m no more offended by this photo than by one showing him throwing a Frisbee.”

The White House would not confirm what firearm Obama used. But gun dealers and enthusiasts said that from the picture, it appeared to be a Browning Citori, a model popular among those involved in the sport.

The “over and under” design features two barrels, one on top of the other, allowing the gun to hold and fire two shotgun shells.

The smoke in the photo is emanating from air vents in the barrel, a feature known as “porting” that reduces recoil shock and allows for steadier aim.

Gun dealers said the shotgun appeared to be a stock model of the Browning, which retails for $2,000 to $3,000. According to the Browning Web site, some of the Citori models are made in a left-handed version, with a slight bend near the butt — though it was not apparent from the photo whether the left-handed president was using one of those.

“It looked like he was shooting regular American skeet,” said Michael Hampton Jr., head of the National Sporting Clays Association. “It’s a gun that is used for this discipline — a good middle-of-the-road gun, very functional and very standard.”

The sport originated early in the 20th century when hunters were looking for ways to practice and improve their marksmanship.

Over time, the activity developed as a sport of its own. There are several variations, all involving a shooter attempting to down a roughly three-ounce clay disk that has been launched from a spring-loaded machine.

In skeet shooting — the activity the White House said Obama was pursuing at Camp David — the clay targets are launched at different heights and travel across the shooter’s field of vision.

Hampton said that even novices can get quick satisfaction. In a 100-target session, he said even beginners will hit 25 or 30 targets and quickly develop 50-50 proficiency.

War is big business in Arizona

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Arizona defense contractors branch out; develop more products for foreign markets

By J. Craig Anderson The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Feb 2, 2013 3:25 PM

Defense contractors with operations in Arizona such as Raytheon Co., Honeywell International Inc. and the Boeing Co. are becoming less dependent on the U.S. military by branching out into new markets and inventing products for both defense and industry.

That includes seeking more foreign-military customers as well as developing technology with non-military applications such as mass-produced satellites, high-tech helicopter-maintenance systems and better thunderstorm detectors for commercial aircraft.

Unmanned drones and drone-based systems for both military and civilian use also play a prominent role in defense contractors’ diversification plans.

Innovation can carry a heavy cost, as Boeing learned in January when regulators grounded its revolutionary new commercial airliner, the fuel-efficient 787, over fire-safety concerns.

An investigation is under way into what caused a Jan. 7 fire inside an empty 787 “Dreamliner” parked on the tarmac at Boston’s Logan International Airport. The delay in rolling out new 787s ultimately could cost Boeing millions of dollars, aerospace-industry analysts said.

Still, officials at Boeing, Honeywell and Raytheon said constant innovation and diversification always have been essential to keeping their businesses viable.

“At some point, all programs go away,” said Randy Gricius, Space Applications Program manager for Raytheon Missile Systems in Tucson. “You’ve got to continue to look for growth.”

Raytheon has been working on two new products at its Tucson facility: a small guided missile for drones known as Pyros and a line of relatively inexpensive, mass-produced military imaging satellites called SeeMe.

Although both products are being developed for U.S. military use, company officials said Pyros is likely to appeal to foreign allies, and SeeMe could be used by Earth-mapping companies and global-warming researchers.

Pyros is unlike anything Raytheon Missile Systems ever has produced, said J.R. Smith, senior manager of advanced-missile-systems business development.

At 22 inches long and 12 pounds, it is by far the smallest laser-guided missile Raytheon has produced and the first missile designed specifically for drones.

“It’s kind of outside the box of what we normally do,” Smith said.

SeeMe is an even greater departure for the company’s Tucson operation, Gricius said, but it made sense because of Raytheon Missile Systems’ mass-production experience.

SeeMe satellites will sell for $500,000 each, Gricius said, and an innovative system of launching them into low-Earth orbit from high-flying aircraft will cut the deployment cost to about $1million.

By comparison, launching a satellite with a Pegasus missile costs more than $30million, he said.

While Pyros missiles are expected to generate big revenue from foreign customers, SeeMe will be difficult to sell overseas because of prohibitive federal regulations governing satellite sales, Gricius said.

Still, the satellites could be used by non-military customers such as National Aeronautics and Space Administration, as well as U.S. companies that provide images to online mapping services like Google Earth.

Honeywell Aerospace in Phoenix also is tapping deeper into commercial markets with two recently developed products, Health and Usage Monitoring Systems, or HUMS, and the IntuVue 3-D Weather Radar.

HUMS is an onboard diagnostic tool for military and commercial helicopters that measures the health and performance of critical components and can detect mechanical faults before they become catastrophic failures, company officials said.

According to Honeywell, HUMS already is saving the military tens of millions of dollars and thousands of maintenance-related hours each year.

Company officials hope those figures will resonate with commercial customers looking to save time and money on helicopter maintenance.

IntuVue is an upgraded aerial radar system for commercial airliners that can detect potentially dangerous storm conditions more than 350 miles away.

It includes new capabilities to detect turbulence, hail and lightning up to 10 minutes in advance of storm cells in an aircraft’s flight path, a company official said.

“The IntuVue was designed from the ground up to provide pilots with superior information about the location of true weather threats, such as hail and lightning, relative to their aircraft,” said Ratan Khatwa, a senior chief engineer at Honeywell Aerospace.

The predictive hail and lightning system uses complex algorithms that analyze data captured from constant radar scanning from ground level to 60,000 feet and out to 320 nautical miles, equivalent to about 368 miles.

Carl Esposito, vice president of marketing and product management for Honeywell Aerospace, said the company has gotten its reliance on the U.S. military for revenue down to less than 25percent by expanding both commercial and foreign business.

“More than 50 percent of our business is in the commercial area, with customers like Boeing, Airbus, Embraer and Gulfstream,” Esposito said. “In defense, we are nearly evenly split between U.S. business and the rest of the world. We continue to expand in a variety of emerging regions throughout Asia-Pacific, Latin America, India and elsewhere.”

Foreign-military sales by defense contractors are limited by two key sets of regulations: the International Traffic in Arms Regulations and Export Administration Regulations.

The U.S. Directorate of Defense Trade Controls maintains an ever-changing list of trade policies and embargoes that dictates what kinds of products, if any, can be sold to a particular country.

Several countries — including North Korea, Cuba, Iran and China — are perennially restricted from purchasing weapons technology from U.S. companies.

Still, weapon sales to most countries in the world are possible, although they must be evaluated and approved by the U.S. government on a case-by-case basis.

Foreign sales of commercial products such as aircraft-guidance and diagnostic systems are far less restricted and represent a huge potential market for Arizona defense contractors, industry representatives said.

“As air-traffic-management needs greatly increase in markets like China, India and the Middle East, we are well-positioned to bring solutions to those markets that support infrastructure growth while providing the latest in technology and safety advancements,” Esposito said. “This is a core focus for Honeywell now and into the future.”

Reach the reporter at craig.anderson@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8681.

Supreme Court to hear fight over taking DNA from arrested people

Source

Supreme Court to hear fight over taking DNA from arrested people

Supreme Court to hear DNA challenge

By David G. Savage, Washington Bureau

February 2, 2013, 10:12 p.m.

WASHINGTON — On a cold February night three years ago, police in suburban Arlington, Va., received a frantic call. A young woman said her roommate had been abducted at gunpoint by a short, clean-shaven man who sped away in a silver SUV.

At dawn, a motorist spotted the victim in a snowy field near a highway, raped and strangled, but alive. An alert officer, hearing the lookout report, recalled that he'd jotted down the license tag of a silver Dodge Durango whose driver lurked near bars at midnight, leading to the quick arrest of a short, clean-shaven Marine named Jorge Torrez.

Ten years ago, Virginia became the first state to require, upon arrest for a serious crime, a mouth swab for DNA. The sample from Torrez, sent to a state crime lab and entered into the FBI's DNA database, confirmed he was the rapist. A few weeks later a DNA match also led to charges against him in the rape and murder of two girls, ages 8 and 9, in Zion, Ill., where Torrez had gone to high school. Jerry Hobbs, the father of one of the girls, had been in prison for the crimes.

This month, the U.S. Supreme Court will take up a privacy rights challenge to taking DNA from people who are arrested. The case could either end the practice or make it the norm nationwide.

Arlington County Deputy Police Chief Daniel Murray says the Torrez case shows the value of taking DNA when someone is arrested for a serious crime. "It's extremely important to quickly identify someone who would be a danger to society if he were on the loose," he said. And in this instance, he said, the DNA match freed an innocent man.

Nationwide, DNA samples are taken from people who are convicted of violent crimes.

Going further, the federal government and 28 states, including California, Illinois and Florida, now take DNA samples from some or all who are arrested but not yet convicted of serious crimes. Besides taking fingerprints, the standard jail booking now often includes taking a DNA swab, which prosecutors say is as simple and painless as brushing your teeth.

Last month, President Obama signed into law the Katie Sepich Enhanced DNA Collection Act, which will help pay the start-up costs for other states to begin testing people who are arrested.

"The whole purpose of this is to find serial rapists and murderers and to get them early to save innocent lives," said Jayann Sepich, a New Mexico mother whose daughter Katie was raped and murdered. Her attacker was arrested several times, but he was not identified until he was convicted of another crime and his DNA was taken.

California prosecutors say arrests for nonviolent crimes, including drug offenses, credit card fraud and burglary, have led them to rapists and murderers, thanks to DNA tests.

But the constitutionality of taking DNA upon arrest remains in doubt, particularly when it is not needed to identify the suspect. For example, police do not need DNA to identify someone who is caught with drugs or breaking into a house.

A state appeals court in San Francisco and a federal judge in Sacramento ruled it was unconstitutional to require a DNA sample from someone who had been arrested but not convicted. The California Supreme Court and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals have put the issue on hold pending a ruling from U.S. Supreme Court.

The justices will hear the case of Maryland vs. King to decide whether requiring DNA from someone taken into custody but not convicted is an "unreasonable search" forbidden by the 4th Amendment.

In 2009, Alonzo King from Salisbury, Md., was arrested for waving a shotgun in a threatening manner. That was a felony charge, calling for a DNA test. He later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge for which no DNA test was required. But the DNA sample taken upon arrest pointed to him as the man who had broken into a house and raped a woman six years earlier. King was convicted and given a life term.

But Maryland's high court threw out his conviction and ruled police may not take DNA without a search warrant and some reason to believe the suspect had committed another offense. "DNA samples contain a massive amount of deeply personal information," far more than a fingerprint, the state judges said.

Civil liberties advocates have urged the court to hold the line and to bar DNA searches until someone has been convicted.

"This could be an unprecedented expansion of search power. The rule has been the government has to have a specific suspicion before they search," said Erin Murphy, a DNA law expert at New York University. "If you are arrested for a drug crime, that doesn't mean the police can walk into your house looking for evidence of other crimes."

But victims rights groups, the Obama administration and the top state attorneys from California and 48 other states have urged the court to rule that routine DNA testing upon arrest is reasonable and constitutional. They say the mouth swab is a minor invasion of privacy at most and that it has an extraordinary potential for solving heinous crimes.

david.savage@latimes.com

Military serial killer murdered???

‘American Sniper’ Author Shot and Killed in Texas

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: February 3, 2013

GLEN ROSE, Texas — The authorities in Texas said a man had been charged in the shooting deaths of a former Navy SEAL and author of "American Sniper," Chris Kyle, and a second man at a Texas gun range.

Sgt. Lonny Haschel with Texas Department of Public Safety said Sunday in a statement that Eddie Ray Routh, 25, of Lancaster was arraigned late Saturday on two counts of capital murder.

Mr. Kyle wrote the best-selling book, “American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History,” detailing his 150-plus kills of insurgents from 1999 to 2009.

Mr. Haschel said Erath County deputies responded to a shooting at the Rough Creek Lodge west of Glenn Rose at about 5:30 p.m. Saturday and found the bodies of Mr. Kyle, 38, and a second man, 35-year-old Chad Littlefield. Glenn Rose is about 50 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

The police said Mr. Routh opened fire on the two men at about 3:30 p.m. Saturday, then fled in a Ford pickup truck. At about 8 p.m., Mr. Routh arrived at his home in Lancaster, about 17 miles southeast of Dallas. Police arrested him after a brief pursuit and took him to the Lancaster Police Department.

The Lancaster Police Department referred all calls to the Texas Department of Public Safety in Garland, and a phone message about where Mr. Routh is being held was not immediately returned Sunday.

The motive for the shooting was unclear.

A statement from Travis Cox, director of FITCO Cares, a nonprofit Mr. Kyle helped start, said he had served four tours of duty. He is survived by his wife, Taya, and their children, the agency’s statement said.

Mr. Kyle was sued by the former governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, over a portion of the book that claims Mr. Kyle punched Mr. Ventura in a 2006 bar fight over unpatriotic remarks. Mr. Ventura says the punch never happened and that the claim by Kyle defamed him.

Mr. Kyle had asked that Ventura’s claims of invasion of privacy and "unjust enrichment" be dismissed, saying there was no legal basis for them. But a federal judge said the lawsuit should proceed. Both sides were told to be ready for trial by Aug. 1.

Sen. Kimberly Yee wants to allow the police to steal medical marijuana

Of course if this law is pass, it will literally give the police a license to steal marijuana from patients. And I suspect they will fully take advantage of the law and use it to terrorize medical marijuana patients.

Sen. Kimberly Yee is another tyrant who thinks she is a royal government ruler, rather then the public servants they pretend being.

If the Founders were around I suspect they would tell you that tyrants like Sen. Kimberly Yee are the reason they passed the Second Amendment

Source

Bills would tighten regulations on medical marijuana

By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez The Republic | azcentral.com Sun Feb 3, 2013 9:11 PM

In a move aimed at preventing children from accidentally eating marijuana and the state’s police from falling foul of federal drug laws, a state lawmaker is proposing two pieces of legislation to tighten the state’s medical-marijuana program.

Sen. Kimberly Yee, R-Phoenix, wants to force medical-marijuana dispensaries to label edible drugs, such as cookies, brownies and lollipops, to make it clear they are only for medicinal purposes. Packaging could look similar to the U.S. surgeon general’s warning labels on cigarettes.

She also wants to give police the power to dispose of any drugs seized during criminal investigations once inquiries are completed, instead of being required to take care of plants or drugs in case courts order them returned to a patient.

Yee plans to introduce the bills today. Each bill would require a three-fourths majority vote by the Legislature because it would amend the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act, a voter-approved law.

Yee said she believes both bills advance the intent of the marijuana law, a requirement under the Voter Protection Act to alter a law approved by voters. She said she has support of both Republicans and Democrats.

But Yee almost certainly will not have the support of medical-marijuana advocates, who already are gearing up to fight an effort to repeal the 2010 law.

Yee said law-enforcement agencies around the state want clarification of 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.

Arizona’s legalization of marijuana for medical purposes has created dilemmas for law-enforcement officers who want to avoid violating the federal Controlled Substances Act, which makes possession, sale or use of marijuana a crime.

The question, in these instances, Yee said, is: “Do they (police) hold onto it? If they do, it creates a problem with respect to them holding something that is a federally banned substance.”

A recent legal battle in Yuma County underscored the dilemma when the sheriff argued he could not return medical marijuana to a California patient because doing so may violate federal law. The Arizona Court of Appeals ruled that the Yuma County Sheriff’s Office must give back marijuana seized from a California woman who had permission to use the drug for medical purposes.

Yee said the edible-marijuana bill is geared toward consumer protection. Under the proposal, the Arizona Department of Health Services, which oversees the medical-marijuana program, would be required to immediately revoke the registration certificate of dispensaries that package or advertise the drug in a way that states, suggests or implies it’s for a use other than medicinal purposes allowed under the law.

“We are finding the products being produced that contain marijuana appear to be geared toward the youngest consumer — we’re talking about lollipops, chocolate bars and things that appeal to a minor,” Yee said. “And it is something the parents and consumer should clearly be aware of before purchasing that product.”

Such labeling is not currently required, although edible packaging is supposed to identify the amount of marijuana in the product.

ADHS Director Will Humble said no dispensaries are making edible medical-marijuana products yet. Dispensaries would have to obtain a food establishment license from state health officials and would have to remain in good standing in order to be in compliance.

Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk, who has aggressively battled sales of methamphetamine and “bath salts” in her county, is among law-enforcement officers who support Yee’s legislation.

Polk said it is impractical to require police — who are sworn to enforce state law and can be authorized to enforce federal law — to return marijuana to patients since the drug is federally illegal. Other complications can arise, she said: whether plants must be returned in the same condition they were in when seized, for example.

“If law enforcement goes in, and there’s 14 plants, and they pull out the plants… and the expectation is that they have to be returned, what’s law enforcement to do?” Polk asked. “Plant the plants, water them and continue to cultivate them? The idea that law enforcement would be cultivating marijuana is an outrageous idea.”

Since Arizona voters approved the medical-marijuana law in 2010, nearly 34,000 Arizonans have been approved to smoke or grow marijuana. Of them, the overwhelming majority cite severe and chronic pain as a debilitating medical condition.

Yee’s legislation comes weeks after Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, filed a bill that would refer the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act back to the ballot in November 2014. House Concurrent Resolution 2003 would require the Legislature’s approval but not Gov. Jan Brewer’s signature.

The medical-marijuana industry has come out strongly against his legislation, saying he is attempting to undo the will of voters. And one attorney said the requirement of labeling in Yee’s bill could violate free-speech rights.

Doug Banfelder, board member of the Arizona Wellness Chamber of Commerce, said the language in the edible-marijuana bill is “overly broad” and too subjective.

“We’re not opposed to working with legislators … so we could address their concerns and come up with language that allows people to market their products but does not subject them to varied interpretations.”

Banfelder said he also is concerned about law enforcement destroying seized medical marijuana.

“What if the accused are acquitted or charges aren’t brought — it’s still their property,” he said. “They’d have a right go have it back. It’s still their property.”

Reach the reporter at yvonne.wingett@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4712.

Dog's turn Banner Hospitals into police states

Source

Canines make rounds at Banner hospitals

By Luci Scott The Republic | azcentral.com Sun Feb 3, 2013 10:18 PM

If you visit Banner Desert Medical Center in Mesa, you may see a K-9 team patrolling the halls: a majestic, 68-pound Belgian Malinois imported from Holland and his handler, security Officer Brandon “Rudy” Morgan.

The dog, Stuka, is named after a type of World War II German bomber plane.

Stuka’s calming presence is used in the emergency room when someone on street drugs, spice or “bath salts” comes in angry and aggressive. The dog is used in the neonatal intensive-care unit when a mother gets angry that her infant is being taken from her by Child Protective Services. Stuka also has searched rooms for illicit drugs and weapons.

But mainly just his presence is enough.

“He’s 99 percent deterrent,” Morgan said. “I’ve had people see the dog and get up and leave. They might have something on them, or they might be here for no good reason.”

Morgan and Stuka, who patrol all seven floors of Cardon Children’s Medical Center and the four floors at nearby Banner Desert, walk 12 miles a day. Another dog takes the night shift.

The dogs are among a stable of canines at all Banner properties in Arizona as well as North Colorado Medical Center in Greeley, Colo. Other hospital systems around the nation visit Banner sites when planning to start a canine program.

The Banner dogs are imported from Europe and are trained to receive commands in their native languages of Dutch, German or Czech.

At Banner Desert, Morgan said, if a person becomes aggressive with a doctor, Morgan or another officer intervenes with the dog.

A tight, sensitive bond exists between Morgan and Stuka, and if someone’s movements raise Stuka’s suspicions, he’ll alert Morgan.

“Nine times out of 10, he’s right,” Morgan said. “He’ll pick up on someone’s mannerisms before I do. … Many times, that person has become a problem in the hospital, and instead of me telling (Stuka), it’s (the dog) telling me.”

“I usually give a warning first before I deploy the dog,” he said. “We practice crisis prevention. He’s the last resort.”

Stuka, who is sensitive and alert, does not like people making exaggerated movements, which Morgan said is one of the dog’s “triggers.” Stuka will communicate with a whine.

“He lets me know that guy is not doing what he should be doing.”

Stuka usually goes without his muzzle but wears it in the emergency room and on Mondays, when more people than usual are walking the hallways.

Stuka lives with Morgan, his wife and two small children, and when the dog is not working, he’s playful and loving.

All handlers are certified through the National Police Canine Association, and training is constant.

Handlers and dogs participate in competitions that include handler-protection scenarios, bomb-sniffing exercises and agility.

Dogs will compete in the 11th annual Desert Dog Police K-9 Trials on April 13-14 at Scottsdale Stadium, sponsored by the Arizona Law Enforcement Canine Association.

Postal Service says it’s immune from local traffic laws

All you have to do to figure that out is read the 9th and 10th Amendments.

9th - The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

10th - The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Postal Service says it’s immune from local traffic laws, report says

Published February 02, 2013

FoxNews.com

A government lawyer is attempting to get dismissed almost $700 in traffic tickets given to U.S. Postal Service employees in Cleveland, claiming it is immune from state and local regulations, Yahoo! News reported.

Postal Service attorney Jennifer. S. Breslin says the infractions, which include speeding citations and red-light infractions, should be ignored.

"In providing mail service across the country, the Postal Service attempts to work within local and state laws and regulations, when feasible," she said in a letter responding to a summons for payment, according to Cleveland.com.

“However, as you are probably aware, the Postal Service enjoys federal immunity from state and local regulation,” Breslin wrote.

The attorney for American Traffic Solutions, the company that enforces East Cleveland's camera citations, referenced the Postal Service's own safety manual, which says truck drivers should and have been held accountable, Yahoo! News reported.

“By attempting to hide behind an immunity claim, you are aiding and abetting your drivers in their blatant disregard for the traffic laws in East Cleveland, which have endangered other drivers, pedestrians and school children," ATS attorney George Hittner said in a response to Breslin.

East Cleveland Mayor Gary Norton told Cleveland.com he questions why the Postal Service did not decide to make their drivers pay for the infraction.

The mayor said he is unsure about the validity of the agency's immunity claims.

“I was unaware that the post office doesn’t have to stop at red lights or obey the speed limit,” he told Cleveland.com. “But since they are, I wish I’d get my mail faster.”

Source

Postal Service Lawyer Argues Agency Is Immune From Paying Nearly $700 Worth Of Traffic Tickets

Posted: 02/02/2013 5:31 pm EST

The U.S. Postal Service is trying to get out of paying some traffic tickets.

A lawyer for the USPS sent the city of East Cleveland as well as the company that operates the town’s speeding cameras a letter last month arguing that the USPS is exempt from paying nearly $700 in traffic tickets, according to USA Today. In the letter, posted on Scribd by Yahoo! News, Jennifer Breslin, senior litigation counsel for the Postal Service, cites the Constitution in explaining why the agency should be exempt from paying the tickets.

“The Postal Service attempts to work within local and state laws and regulations, when feasible,” Breslin wrote in the letter. “However, as you are probably aware, the Postal Service enjoys federal immunity from state and local regulation.”

A USPS spokesman backed up Breslin’s claim in an interview with USA Today, saying that while Postal Service workers are required to obey traffic laws like any other citizen, “the Postal Service cannot legally be billed for any traffic violation fines incurred by its employees.”

The Postal Service could probably use the extra cash. The agency reported a record annual loss of $15.9 billion in November.

An attorney for American Traffic Solutions, the company that operates East Cleveland’s photo-enforcement system, responded to Breslin’s letter urging the USPS to transfer the liability for the tickets onto the drivers responsible for the violations, according to Yahoo! News.

“By attempting to hide behind an immunity claim, you are aiding and abetting your drivers in their blatant disregard for the traffic laws in East Cleveland, which have endangered other drivers, pedestrians and school children,” he wrote.

East Cleveland’s Mayor Gary Norton offered a response of his own to Breslin’s claims.

“I was unaware that the Post Office doesn’t have to stop at red lights or obey the speed limit,” he told Cleveland.com. “But since they are, I wish I’d get my mail faster.”

New drug task force HQ aims to end agency rivalry

Source

February 03, 2013

New drug task force HQ aims to end agency rivalry

CHICAGO — A first-of-its-kind headquarters has opened in Chicago for 70 federal agents, police and prosecutors to work side-by-side, year-round to fight drug traffickers — a set-up meant to end inter-agency rivalry and miscommunication that can hamper investigations.

The recent, fanfare-free opening of the Chicago Strike Force building comes as Mexican cartels now supply over 90 percent of the narcotics in Chicago, and as street gangs vying for turf to sell those drugs kill each other and bystanders caught in the crossfire.

In this Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2012 photo, Jack Riley, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration in Chicago, discusses local Mexican drug cartel problem areas, in the new interagency Strike Force office. The first-of-its-kind drug enforcement headquarters has opened in Chicago where 70 federal agents, local police and prosecutors work side-by-side, all year round to fight drug trafficking - a set-up meant to end inter-agency rivalry and miscommunication that can plague investigations. The opening of the Chicago Strike Force office comes as Mexican traffickers have taken control of more than 90 percent of the drugs market in Chicago, which the syndicates also use as a hub for distribution across the Midwest, the DEA says. (AP Photo)

Inter-agency and -department cooperation is hardly a novel concept, but typically takes the form of occasional meetings or temporary joint task forces on specific investigations, said Jack Riley, the head of Chicago's DEA office.

"But you can't talk to your counterparts in once-a-week meetings _ you have to talk as things are happening," said Riley, who took the lead in pushing for the facility. "When we get information here, it's not put in a pile and forgotten. It's acted on, now."

Riley gave The Associated Press an exclusive tour of the three-story brick building. Citing security, he asked the AP not to reveal its exact location.

The staff includes city and suburban police, as well as agents from the DEA, FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the IRS and a half-dozen other agencies. In another rarity, U.S. and state prosecutors also work alongside one another. Riley declined to reveal its budget.

It'll take time to see if the headquarters makes anti-trafficking efforts in Chicago more efficient, said Fred Burton, a security analyst for the global intelligence firm Stratfor.

"It sounds great on paper," he said. "But getting federal agencies to act in unison can be like herding cats."

Over the years, competition has led to situations where agencies end up unknowingly targeting the same traffickers, creating the risk that they could inadvertently foil each other's investigations, Riley said.

Thus, the headquarters was designed to foster camaraderie. Employees' desks all sit in a warehouse-sized room with no dividers or signs identifying who belongs to what agency. Response teams are comprised of members from each agency.

A major focus of their investigations will be the point of contact between major traffickers and local gangs, who serve as street-level salesmen. That's when traffickers are especially vulnerable, Reilly says, because they meet at unfamiliar places or use phones that can be wiretapped.

The ultimate goal is to arrest suspects, squeeze them to cooperate and then move along the cartel's chain of command to indict everyone from the street dealer to the kingpins in Mexico. They hope to replicate investigations like one that led to the 2009 indictment of key leaders of the Sinaloa cartel and the extradition of Sinaloa lieutenant Vicente Zambada, who'll stand trial in Chicago this year.

Beat officers should also benefit from the new headquarters, Riley said. A single office with a range of experts on everything from which gang controls what block to cartel structures in Mexico should help officers in the field make sense of anything suspicious, he said.

"They can call and say, `Hey, I saw this guy who I think is a gang member hand a bag to this other guy. Does it mean anything? '" he said. "Before, there really wasn't a good place to call. There is now."

Texas Judge framed Michael Morton for murder

Source

Texas judge faces inquiry into wrongful conviction

Associated Press Mon Feb 4, 2013 7:05 AM

GEORGETOWN, Texas — A court of inquiry is set to examine whether a Texas judge should face criminal charges in the case of a man who was wrongfully imprisoned for nearly 25 years for his wife’s murder.

The legal proceeding beginning Monday in Central Texas will determine whether Judge Ken Anderson acted improperly in 1987 when he was a district attorney prosecuting Michael Morton.

Morton was released in 2011 after new DNA testing showed he didn’t kill his wife in 1986. Anderson is accused of hiding evidence and has denied any wrongdoing in prosecuting the case.

Tarrant County Judge Louis Sturns will hear evidence before deciding if Anderson acted improperly. Sturns could then decide whether a grand jury should review the case.

British police used dead children's IDs

Report: British police used dead children's IDs

By RAPHAEL SATTER | Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — The Guardian newspaper says that London's Metropolitan Police Service stole the identities of dozens of dead children to use as aliases for undercover officers, mining those children's personal histories to build covers and even issuing fake passports in their names.

The allegation is another potential embarrassment for Scotland Yard's undercover program, which has previously been rocked by revelations that police spies had sex with their targets and fathered children with activists under surveillance.

It wasn't exactly clear how long or often the police used the dead children's identities. The Guardian said it had seen a document suggesting that around 80 officers used such identities between 1968 and 1994, but said that one case may be as recent as 2003.

Police said in a statement Monday that they had received a formal complaint about the practice and "appreciate the concerns." The practice "is not something that would currently be authorized," they said.

Stealing the identities of dead people is a classic piece of spycraft and features prominently in Frederick Forsythe's famed 1971 thriller "The Day of the Jackal."

But lawmakers and law enforcement officials were left wondering Monday whether taking on the identity of a dead child was an appropriate technique for British police. Opposition lawmaker Keith Vaz told Sky News television "that the parents of those involved should be informed immediately."

The Guardian, which has run a series of stories exposing the seamy side of Scotland Yard's undercover work, based its story on detailed accounts provided by two undercover officers — neither of whom it identified by name — and an ex-girlfriend of a third one, who was identified with a pseudonym.

The newspaper said all three men were members of Scotland Yard's Special Demonstration Squad, which was disbanded in 2008.

One of them, the newspaper said, assumed the identity of an eight-year-old boy who died of leukemia in 1968 — going so far as to assume the boy's hometown and even his parents' names when he infiltrated an anti-capitalist group in the 1980s. The officer was found out when he left his girlfriend — part of the group he was spying on — and she pulled up his vital records in an effort to track him down.

The newspaper described her horror when she realized that the person her boyfriend was pretending to be had died 25 years ago.

Former director of public prosecutions Ken Macdonald said that the latest revelation, coupled with past reporting about undercover officers fathering children with their targets, suggested a police force gone wrong.

"How are you supposed to maintain a level of fair and objective evidence-gathering if you are having sex with the person you are targeting, fathering a baby and then abandoning it, using a dead child's identity?" he said in an interview with BBC radio.

"These are all examples of areas in which the police have completely lost their moral compass and have completely failed to understand the boundaries," he said. "We don't know quite how these units were operating in days gone by. It looks as though they've effectively gone rogue."

Kyrsten Sinema a gun grabber???

I should also note that US Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema when she was a member of the Arizona Legislator tried to slap a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana. She is fairly well hated in Arizona for that.

Source

County attorney says he would bring gun to a hearing

By Brahm Resnik 12 News Fri Feb 1, 2013 6:14 PM

"Sunday Square Off" is the leading weekend political news program in Arizona. "Square Off's" newsmaker interviews feature elected officials at the national, state and local levels. Our political roundtables bring together insiders with unique perspectives on the stories of the day and insight on what's next.

This Sunday

• Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema
• Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery
• State Rep. John Kavanagh
• Promise Arizona's Petra Falcon
• Panel: Chris Herstam, Christina Martinez, Stan Barnes

Maricopa County attorney says he would bring weapon into a hearing

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery says he would probably carry a gun into a mediation hearing like the one that led to the fatal shootings this week of a Phoenix lawyer and his client.

Montgomery is one of my newsmaker guests on this weekend's special edition of "12 News Sunday Square Off." The show was taped before a studio audience taking part in a daylong "Politics and the Press" event sponsored by ASU's Cronkite School of Journalism, the Arizona Republic and 12 News.

Also on the show:

-Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema (D-9th District) says she believes universal background checks on gun buyers have the best chance of passing Congress this year.

-Republican State Rep. John Kavanagh, a border hawk, debates Promise Arizona executive director Petra Falcon, an immigrant rights advocate, on the new immigration plans released this week.

--The roundtable of Stan Barnes, of Copper State Consulting; Christina Martinez, of Adalante Public Affairs; and 12 News political insider Chris Herstam make the cold political calculations on which big bills -- immigration reform and gun controls -- can get through Congress.

"12 News Sunday Square Off" airs at 8 a.m. Sunday on 12 News, right after "Meet the Press."

Super Bowl F-bomb could put FCC in a bind

Source

Super Bowl F-bomb could put FCC in a bind

By Scott Bomboy | National Constitution Center

After another obscenity incident involving CBS and a Super Bowl broadcast, the Federal Communications Commission is under pressure to fine the TV network.

A watchdog group says it wants the FCC to act after CBS aired audio of Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco using the F-word and another player using a curse word. Both incidents happened right after the Ravens defeated the San Francisco 49ers in Sunday’s Super Bowl.

Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed the right of the FCC to fine over-the-air broadcasters if they aired profane words. It also said the FCC had to make its rules clearer to broadcasters. But the FCC hasn’t faced a high-profile profanity case until now since the Supreme Court ruling.

The Parents Television Council wants the FCC to act and set a precedent by fining CBS after Flacco’s choice of words.

“Now nine years after the infamous Janet Jackson incident, the broadcast networks continue to have ‘malfunctions’ during the most-watched television event of the year, and enough is enough,” PTC president Tim Winter said. “After more than four years of inaction on broadcast decency enforcement, the FCC must step up to its legal obligation to enforce the law, or families will continue to be blindsided.”

Entertainment Weekly said that CBS had instituted a time delay for the Super Bowl halftime show, featuring Beyonce, but it didn’t have a time delay set up for its on-field live television feed.

On Sunday, the political website The Hill interviewed several obscenity experts on the eve of the game, about the prospects of the FCC fining any broadcaster for obscenity or profanity violations.

That may not happen until FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski resigns later this year.

“If the chairman waits a little bit longer, he may be gone. So it’ll be somebody else’s headache,” attorney Andrew Schwartzman told The Hill.

The Supreme Court sent a message on broadcast TV obscenity last June.

In one ruling, the decision in Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations was about three incidents where the FCC wanted to punish Fox and ABC for what it deemed as offensive content.

Fox was facing potential fines from the FCC for two incidents of “fleeting” cursing during live broadcasts involving Cher and Nicole Richie. ABC was in hot water for showing the naked buttocks of actress Charlotte Ross in an episode of “NYPD Blue.”

The Supreme Court found that the FCC didn’t provide fair notice to both networks. Also, the ruling was specific to the three incidents, and not meant to alter the FCC’s policy about broadcast regulations about obscenity.

Also in June 2012, the court refused to hear an FCC appeal after a lower court tossed out a $550,000 fine against CBS for the 2004 Janet Jackson half-time show incident.

The justices said the FCC had failed to give CBS proper notice, in that specific incident, after Jackson exposed herself briefly in front of a global TV audience.

Even though the court turned down the FCC case, Chief Justice John Roberts made his opinions very clear, after the FCC changed its policy on “fleeting expletives” and fined CBS for the Jackson incident after the Super Bowl.

“It is now clear that the brevity of an indecent broadcast — be it word or image — cannot immunize it from FCC censure,” Roberts said last June. “Any future ‘wardrobe malfunctions’ will not be protected on the ground relied on by the court below.”

In its official guidelines, the FCC says, “obscene material is not protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution and cannot be broadcast at any time.”

Its rules for profanity are different.

“The FCC has defined profanity as ‘including language so grossly offensive to members of the public who actually hear it as to amount to a nuisance’ Like indecency, profane speech is prohibited on broadcast radio and television between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.,” the FCC policy reads.

The PTC doesn’t have any issues with Flacco.

“No one should be surprised that a jubilant quarterback might use profane language while celebrating a career-defining win, but that is precisely the reason why CBS should have taken precautions,” says Winter.

“Joe Flacco’s use of the f-word, while understandable, does not absolve CBS of its legal obligation to prevent profane language from being broadcast – especially during something as uniquely pervasive as the Super Bowl. The instance was aired live across the country, and before the FCC’s designated ‘Safe Harbor’ time everywhere but along the East Coast.”

Broadcasters have argued unsuccessfully in a series of legal cases that the First Amendment protects them from FCC fines in such cases.

But it has been years since the FCC has issued a significant obscenity fine against a broadcast TV network.

F* the First Amendment, they are Muslims and must be criminals.

Source

NYC police defend undercover spying of Muslims

Associated Press Mon Feb 4, 2013 1:53 PM

WASHINGTON — The New York Police Department is defending its use of undercover officers to prevent terrorism attacks, saying it follows the Constitution regardless of what civil rights lawyers say about its surveillance of the Muslim community.

Police spokesman Paul Browne commented in a statement Monday. It came after civil rights lawyers claimed in court papers that the police department had resumed now-banned tactics it used against anti-war demonstrators in the 1960s and 1970s.

Civil rights lawyers say the NYPD has subjected the Muslim community to “widespread and intense” surveillance, including where they eat, shop and worship.

They seek a court order against further surveillance of Muslims without evidence of crimes. Browne said terrorists have tried to attack the city at least 16 times since Sept. 11, 2001.

Nude photos of Tucson cop Lt. Diana Lopez

I wonder when these cops ever have time to hunt down real criminals.

Now I said real criminals, and I meant real criminals, not busting harmless pot smokers and other victimless drug war criminals which account for two thirds of the people the police send to prison.

I don't have a problem if Tucson cop Lt. Diana Lopez wants to shoot naked photos of her self and send them to her co-workers, but maybe she should limit these activities to her off time and not do it at work.

And the same for here boyfriend cop. I don't have a problem if he and his buddies look at naked pictures of Lt. Diana Lopez, but they shouldn't be doing it at work.

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Tucson policewoman demoted after explicit videos

Associated Press Mon Feb 4, 2013 7:47 PM

TUCSON — A Tucson police lieutenant has been demoted after allegedly taking sexually explicit photos and videos of herself wearing her police uniform.

Police said Monday that Lt. Diana Lopez used her personal cellphone to send videos and photos to a subordinate officer with whom she was in a relationship. They say Lopez was reduced to the rank of sergeant following an investigation that began last August.

The Arizona Daily Star (http://bit.ly/WMXjxM ) says anonymous letters sent to the police department about Lopez prompted the probe.

A police report says Lopez’s boyfriend apparently showed the videos and photos to other officers from May 2011 through August 2011.

Police say Lopez violated several department regulations, code of ethics and professional standards. They say a recommendation was made to reduce her in rank.

Source

Tucson policewoman demoted over sexually explicit photos, video

Carmen Duarte Arizona Daily Star

A Tucson police lieutenant was demoted after officials said she took sexually explicit videos and sexually provocative photos of herself wearing her police uniform and sent them to a subordinate officer with whom she was in a relationship, department officials said Monday.

Lt. Diana Lopez, a former public information officer for the department, was reduced to the rank of sergeant following an investigation that began in August 2012. Anonymous letters sent to the department about Lopez prompted the probe, according to a report that was released Monday.

The department did find that Lopez took sexually explicit videos and at least one provocative photo where she was wearing a Tucson police uniform shirt. She sent those images and videos using her personal cell phone to the subordinate officer.

That officer then apparently showed the videos and photos to other TPD officers, the report said. This happened between May 2011 through August 2011, the report said.

Lopez violated several department regulations, code of ethics and professional standards and a recommendation was made to reduce her in rank from lieutenant to sergeant, the report said.

"Justice Dept justifies killing Americans if they pose ‘imminent threat

Of course you have to remember that MSNBC reports the news as objectively and unbiased as the FOX network reports it so you have to take that with a grain of salt.

Here is a link to the 16 page document is titled “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen Who Is a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qaeda or An Associated Force.” which was released by NBC. [http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf ]

Source

Justice Dept. document justifies killing Americans overseas if they pose ‘imminent threat’

By Karen DeYoung, Published: February 4

The United States can lawfully kill a U.S. citizen overseas if it determines the target is a “senior, operational leader” of al-Qaeda or an associated group and poses an imminent threat to the United States, according to a Justice Department document published late Monday by NBC News. [http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf ]

The document defines “imminent threat” expansively, saying it does not have to be based on intelligence about a specific attack since such actions are being “continually” planned by al-Qaeda. “In this context,” it says, “imminence must incorporate considerations of the relevant window of opportunity” as well as possible collateral damage to civilians.

Guiding the evolving U.S. counterterrorism policies: White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan is compiling a “playbook” that will lay out the administration’s evolving procedures for the targeted killings that have come to define its fight against al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

The memos outline the case for the targeted killing of U.S. citizens in counterterror operations overseas.

It says that such determinations can be made by an “informed, high-level official of the U.S. government.”

NBC said the document was provided by the Obama administration last summer to members of the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees as a summary of a classified memo on targeted killings of U.S. citizens prepared by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

The memo was written months prior to a September 2011 drone strike in Yemen that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born Muslim cleric accused of helping al-Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate plan attacks against the United States. Three other Americans, including Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, have also been killed in U.S. strikes in Yemen.

The Obama administration, in decisions upheld in federal court rulings, has repeatedly denied demands by lawmakers, civil rights groups and the media to release the memo and other information on targeted killings — or even to acknowledge their existence. Senators are expected to closely question John O. Brennan, President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, on drone strikes, the memo and the Awlaki killing during Brennan’s confirmation hearing Thursday on his nomination to become Obama’s new CIA director.

Justice officials could not be reached for comment on the document, which NBC posted on its Web site. The 16-page document is titled “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen Who Is a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qaeda or An Associated Force.”

In announcing Awlaki’s death, Obama described him as the leader of “external affairs” of Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Monday night called the document a “profoundly disturbing” summary of “a stunning overreach of executive authority — the claimed power to declare Americans a threat and kill them far from a recognized battlefield and without any judicial involvement before or after the fact.”

The ACLU sought the original Justice Department memo as part of a case dismissed last month by a federal judge in New York. Last Friday, the ACLU filed a notice of appeal in that case.

“Needless to say, the white paper is not a substitute for the legal memo. But it’s a pretty remarkable document,” ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer said. [http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf ]

Source

Justice Department memo: Drone strikes on U.S. citizens can be legal

By Cheryl K. Chumley

The Washington Times

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

The U.S. Justice Department finds it legal to target American citizens with drone strikes under certain circumstances, according to a memo that just surfaced.

The undated memo, titled “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen who is a Senior Operation Leader of al Qaeda or An Associated Force,” was obtained by NBC News. The memo defines as legal drone attacks on U.S. citizens who were involved in violent attacks, according to United Press International. [ The memo can be viewed here http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf ]

Specifically, the memo states: “The condition that an operational leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,” according to UPI. Citizens who present such “imminent threats” were defined as those who participated in violent acts — and maintained the views that led to their violent acts, according to UPI.

In those instances, a fatal drone attack would be considered a “legitimate act of national self-defense that would not violate the assassination ban,” according to the memo.

The memo was distributed to various members of Senate and House intelligence committees.

Source

Drone strikes on Americans on U.S. soil are LEGAL, says confidential Justice Department memo

By Damian Ghigliotty

PUBLISHED: 23:58 EST, 4 February 2013

The U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be ‘senior operational leaders’ of the Islamic terrorist organization Al Qaeda or ‘an associated force,’ according to a confidential Justice Department memo leaked on Monday.

The U.S. government can do so even if there is no clear evidence that the American targeted is engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S.

The news was first reported by NBC’s Open Channel, which obtained a copy of the 16-page document and released it to the public.

The undated memo, which is not an official legal document, sheds new light on the reasoning behind a reported increase in the number of drone strikes used against Al Qaeda suspects in recent years -- including those aimed at American citizens -- under the Obama administration.

The memo, ‘Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al Qa’ida or An Associated Force,’ was reportedly provided to members of the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees in June by unnamed administration officials.

It was provided on the condition that authorities keep the memo confidential and not discuss its contents publicly, according to NBC.

‘The condition that an operational leader present an “imminent” threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,’ the memo states.

Insight: The document sheds new light on the legal reasoning behind a reported increase in the number of drone strikes used against al-Qaida suspects in recent years, including those aimed at American citizens

Insight: The document sheds new light on the legal reasoning behind a reported increase in the number of drone strikes used against al-Qaida suspects in recent years, including those aimed at American citizens

The Justice Department told MailOnline that it would not comment on the news.

The Obama administration has remained relatively hush about reports of increased drone strikes carried out since 2008.

The Long War Journal reports that the U.S. has been conducting a covert program to target and kill Al Qaeda and Taliban commanders in Pakistan's northwest region.

‘The US ramped up the number of strikes in July 2008, and has continued to regularly hit at Taliban and Al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan,’ the non-profit news outlet writes.

‘There have been 332 strikes total since the program began in 2004; 322 of those strikes have taken place since January 2008.’

The New York Times reported in November that the Obama administration had been mapping out a strategy weeks before the presidential election to develop definitive rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by drones, so that a new president would ‘inherit clear standards and procedures’ if Obama was not re-elected.

The secrecy surrounding such strikes may soon be unraveled, as indicated by the release of the 16-page Justice Department memo.

Proponent: John Brennan, Obama's pick for CIA director, has called drone strikes 'consistent with our inherent right of national self-defense'

John Brennan, a White House counter-terrorism adviser, one of the leading architects behind the government’s drone policy and Obama’s pick to become the country’s new CIA director, is expected to face tough questions about his involvement in Obama’s drone program during his Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday.

Brennan was the first administration official to formally acknowledge drone strikes in a speech he gave at the Woodrow Wilson Center in April 2012, calling drone strikes ‘consistent with our inherent right of national self-defense.’

A bipartisan group of 11 senators wrote a letter to Obama on Monday asking his administration to provide its legal justification for its use of drone strikes over the past four years.

‘We ask that you direct the Justice Department to provide Congress, specifically the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, with any and all legal opinions that lay out the executive branch's official understanding of the President's authority to deliberately kill American citizens,’ the senators lead by Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote in their letter.

Political blogger Marcy Wheeler, who says she has closely tracked the group’s repeated requests, writes that it was at least the 12th time Congress had asked for those documents.

Among the overseas attacks that have killed U.S. citizens with terrorist ties on Obama's watch, a September 2011 missile strike in Yemen took out alleged Al Qaeda members Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan.

Both men were U.S. citizens who had never been indicted by the U.S. government or charged with any specific crimes.

Read the full Justice Department white paper released on Monday night here. [http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf ]

Texas opens court of inquiry into claims of prosecutor misconduct

Source

Texas opens court of inquiry into claims of prosecutor misconduct

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske

February 4, 2013, 6:58 p.m.

GEORGETOWN, Texas — In emotional testimony Monday, a Texas man told a judge how it felt spending 25 years in prison for a murder he did not commit.

“Brutal,” Michael Morton said. “But after a couple decades, I got used to it.”

Morton, 58, who grew up in Los Angeles, was convicted in the 1986 beating death of his wife, Christine, at their home. He was exonerated and released almost a year and a half ago after DNA tests confirmed his innocence. Another man has since been charged in connection with the killing.

Now the man who prosecuted Morton, Williamson County District Judge Ken Anderson, faces an unprecedented “court of inquiry” about 30 miles north of Austin in which a judge will decide whether the then-district attorney lied and concealed evidence that could have cleared Morton.

It is the first time the state has convened such a hearing for prosecutorial misconduct. Although part of Texas law since 1965, the court of inquiry has typically been used to consider allegations against elected officials. Some hope this week’s hearing will lead to a greater examination of alleged misconduct by prosecutors not just in Texas, but nationwide.

“This is going to be a significant case for prosecutorial misconduct. It could lead to judges giving more specific orders about turning over evidence,” said Barry Scheck, co-founder of the New York-based Innocence Project, who attended Monday’s hearing.

Texas District Judge Louis Sturns, who is presiding over the court of inquiry, must determine whether state laws were broken in Anderson’s prosecution of Morton. If so, the judge must issue an arrest warrant, potentially leading to a criminal trial.

Morton’s attorneys — including several from the Innocence Project — appealed for the court of inquiry after uncovering evidence they believe should have been disclosed under the landmark 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brady vs. Maryland, which requires prosecutors to share evidence favorable to the accused with defense lawyers.

Rusty Hardin, the special prosecutor appointed for the court of inquiry, asked Morton on Monday how he felt when he learned that information that could have cleared him was not shared with his attorneys during his 1987 trial.

That evidence, Hardin said, included an interview the lead investigator conducted with Morton’s mother-in-law in which she recounted how his 3-year-old son, Eric, at home at the time of the murder, claimed his father wasn’t there but that he saw a “monster … hurt Mommy.”

“I was stunned,” Morton said. “All those years … the primary thing that kept hitting me was why? What purpose, what motivation?”

On the stand Monday, Morton occasionally choked up, but remained mostly composed, at times smiling.

He sat facing Anderson, who appeared impassive. Anderson has apologized, but also denied wrongdoing in the case.

Last fall, the State Bar of Texas filed a lawsuit accusing Anderson of professional misconduct in Morton’s prosecution. A date has yet to be set for that civil trial.

Anderson’s attorney, Eric Nichols, a former prosecutor with the Texas Attorney General's Office, focused his questions Monday on what the trial judge, who has since died, ordered Anderson to turn over.

He argued that Morton’s lawyers ruled out relying on his son as a witness before his trial and emphasized that Innocence Project lawyers, not Morton, have been pursuing charges against Anderson. Nichols noted that two Innocence Project claims about concealed evidence that could have cleared Morton were recently found to be false.

“You are not interested in seeing someone prosecuted on insufficient evidence?” Nichols said.

“Correct,” Morton said.

Hardin argued that even if the evidence couldn’t have cleared Morton, it should still have been turned over before trial.

Morton said he’s not out for revenge, just accountability.

“I don’t want anything ill for Judge Anderson,” Morton said, tearing up, “But there are consequences for our actions. There needs to be accountability, because without that, everything else falls apart.”

Some said they hope the inquiry leads to increased oversight of prosecutors.

“There is no doubt that the eyes of Texas are going to be on this proceeding,” said Kathryn Kase, executive director of Texas Defender Service, a nonprofit that trains and assists lawyers who represent death row inmates. “Bad forensic science is not the only reason people get wrongfully imprisoned, and we have to be dedicated to trying to stop that.”

Texas State Sen. Rodney Ellis, a Houston Democrat, has proposed legislation to create an “innocence commission” in Texas like some other states to systematically investigate wrongful convictions. Ellis attended Monday’s hearing and said it showed the need for such a commission to find solutions to prevent future mistakes, especially for poor defendants who cannot afford the “firepower” of the high-caliber lawyers that filled the courtroom Monday.

“It’s really hard to get to the real problem of what went wrong” with prosecutorial misconduct, Ellis said. “You ought to have a system, a way in which hard questions are asked.”

molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

Copyright © 2013, Los Angeles Times

3rd trial for S.F. drug lab tech who stole cocaine???

Source

Feds mull 3rd trial for S.F. drug lab tech

Published 4:28 pm, Tuesday, February 5, 2013

The feds have until Feb. 15 to decide whether to take a third shot at the former civilian drug tech at the center of the San Francisco Police Department's crime-lab scandal - and the $72,000-a-year-pension she receives from the city.

"I hope they give up the ghost," said Paul DeMeester, the attorney who has defended Deborah Madden in two felony trials that ended in hung juries - the most recent just last week.

"If you look at the results, it's not going the feds' way," DeMeester said. "The first jury voted 9-3 for conviction. The second vote was 6-6."

The U.S. attorney's office isn't talking about whether it will try again to convict Madden of stealing cocaine from the police crime lab.

Had Madden, 62, been convicted, she stood not only to serve as much as four years in federal prison but also to lose the $72,000-a-year pension she earned by working in the crime lab for 29 years.

Madden told police in February 2010 that she had taken home small amounts of cocaine from the lab to combat her drinking problem.

Madden's confession, and the subsequent audit that found shoddy work at the lab's drug unit, led to a shutdown of the unit and forced San Francisco prosecutors to dismiss hundreds of drug cases.

The San Francisco D.A. handed off the case to then-state Attorney General Jerry Brown, who declined to prosecute, saying there was insufficient evidence.

So the feds, intent on making an example of Madden, stepped in and hit her with the felony charge of fraudulently obtaining the drugs. The charge is usually used in prescription drug cases.

Madden admitted taking the cocaine from the lab, but there was no fraud involved, DeMeester said.

Initially, Madden was willing to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of possessing cocaine, but drew the line at a felony conviction that could have stripped her of her pension.

Her fight, however, has come at a cost. Other attorneys familiar with the case estimate her legal fees for the two trials are between $30,000 and $50,000.

"She's been on pins and needles, but she's turned things around," said DeMeester, who wouldn't comment on his fee. "She's been clean and sober and is now back in school."

And what is she studying?

"Substance abuse counseling - she wants to help others," DeMeester said.

SNIP

Drug war prisoner gets 30 days for flipping off judge!!!

No freedom of speech in Miami!!!!

Woman gets 30 days in jail for flipping off judge

Source

Video: Miami woman flips off judge, gets 30 days in jail

ASSOCIATED PRESS February 6, 2013 8:52AM

Updated: February 6, 2013 8:57AM

MIAMI — A Miami woman was jailed on contempt charges after flipping off a judge during a drug possession hearing.

Miami television station NBC 6 reports 18-year-old Penelope Soto laughed Monday when Circuit Judge Jorge Rodriguez-Chomat asked how much her jewelry was worth as he inquired about her financial assets.

The judge told Soto “we’re not in a club, be serious about it.” Soto said she was being serious.

He set Soto’s bond at $5,000 and said, “bye-bye.” Soto laughed again and replied, “Adios.” He summoned her back to the podium and reset bond at $10,000.

Soto asked, “Are you serious?” The judge replied, “I am serious. Adios.”

Soto flipped him off and blurted an expletive as she walked away.

The judge then sentenced her to 30 days in jail.

Source

Girl flips off judge in court, gets expected result

A giggly 18-year-old Penelope Soto ended up in a Miami courtroom on charges of possession of Xanax without a prescription.

Laughing and playing with her hair, she told the judge she owned a lot of jewelry. When he asked her how much jewelry, she replied, ” A lot. Like Rick Ross.” To which the judge said,” Huh??”

The judge set her bond at five thousand dollars and dismissed her. That’s when things got worse.

It rubbed him the wrong way when in response to his “bye-bye” she answered, “adios”.

He then upped her bond to ten thousand.

She then flipped him off.

Not surprisingly, the judge tacked on 30 days in county jail for contempt of court, in addition to the possession charge.

Source

Miami Judge Smacks Down Teen After She Gave Him The Finger In Court

Abby Rogers | Feb. 6, 2013, 9:28 AM

A Miami teen's bad attitude got her 30 days behind bars after the judge decided he wasn't going to put up with it.

Penelope Soto, 18, was in Judge Jorge Rodriguez-Chomat's bond court Monday on charges of possessing Xanax, Local 10 reported Monday.

Rodriguez-Chomat was prepared to let her off on a $5,000 bond when the giggling girl made the mistake of sarcastically saying "Adios" before flitting away from the bench, NBC Miami reported Tuesday.

But the judge wasn't having her sarcastic attitude and upped her bail to $10,000.

"Are you serious?" Soto asked, to which Rodriguez-Chomat replied that he was, adding "Adios."

"[Expletive] you," Soto said, raising her middle finger as she walked out of court, according to NBC Miami.

Rodriguez-Chomat then called the girl back again, charged her with contempt of court, and sentenced her to 30 days behind bars.

Watch the entire exchange, courtesy of YouTube user NewsRoss:

Border Patrol shoots 16 year old in the back

New theory on Border Patrol killing of boy

By Bob Ortega The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Feb 6, 2013 11:25 PM

An autopsy report raises new questions about the death of a Mexican youth shot by at least one U.S. Border Patrol officer four months ago in Nogales.

The Border Patrol has maintained that Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, 16, was throwing rocks over the border fence at agents on the U.S. side when an agent fired across the international border the night of Oct. 10.

But entry and exit wounds suggest that all but one of as many as 11 bullets that struck the boy entered from behind, according to the report by two medical examiners working for the Sonora Attorney General’s Office.

Those bullets also entered the boy’s body at a lower point on his frame than they exited, the report found.

“The only way I can fathom that report is that he was lying on his face when he was hit,” said Luis Parra, an attorney representing the Elena Rodriguez family.

Border Patrol spokesman Vic Brabble declined to comment on the autopsy report, citing an ongoing FBI investigation. The FBI also declined to comment.

Gregory Hess, the Pima County medical examiner, said after reviewing the report that the trajectories it describes could be consistent with someone being shot and falling, with subsequent shots hitting the prone body. But he said that there could be other interpretations and that without seeing photographs, and without knowing the examiners or the quality of their work, he couldn’t draw any conclusions.

Absalon Madrigal Godínez, the lead examiner, hadn’t replied by deadline to e-mail requests for an interview.

Parra, reached by phone in Hermosillo, Sonora, where he was seeking ballistics reports, said that Elena Rodriguez’s family feels frustrated “because it seems like there hasn’t been any collaboration at all between U.S. and Mexican authorities on this.”

Nineteen people have been killed by Border Patrol agents since January 2010, with all but two of those deaths along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Elena Rodriguez’s death led Mexican officials to question whether Border Patrol agents were too quick to use deadly force.

The Department of Homeland Security, of which the Border Patrol is part, has said it is reviewing the patrol’s use-of-force policies.

The current policy treats rocks as potentially lethal and allows agents to fire at rock-throwers if they perceive a threat to their lives or the lives of others.

In this incident, agents were chasing two men they believed had carried bundles of drugs over the fence and were trying to escape back into Mexico. As the men climbed the fence, rocks were hurled at police and Border Patrol agents, according to police reports. That’s when an agent standing near the fence opened fire, the reports said.

At the spot where Elena Rodriguez’s body was found, the border fence runs along a bluff. The bottom of the fence is about 25 feet above street level, where the boy would have been standing. The top of the fence is another 18 feet above that.

According to Nogales police, whoever was throwing rocks was flinging them over the fence, not through the 3 1//-inch gaps between the metal poles.

Given the arc that a rock would have to travel to pass over the fence from the street below, it would be nearly impossible for a projectile to hit someone next to the fence, where the shooter would likely have been standing in order to fire through the fence’s metal bars.

In addition to the bullets that struck Elena Rodriguez, police investigators marked holes from 11 bullets on the walls of a medical office behind where the boy’s body was found, with some holes 9 or 10 feet off the ground.

According to Hess, it’s unlikely Elena Rodriguez would have been struck by ricochets, because ricochet entry wounds are readily identifiable and would have been noted in the report.

Reach the reporter at bob.ortega@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8926.

Ex-L.A. officer sought in killings tied to victim father

Ex-L.A. officer sought in killings tied to victim father

Associated Press Thu Feb 7, 2013 12:35 AM

LOS ANGELES — Authorities are seeking a fired Los Angeles police officer suspected in the killings of two people including a Cal State Fullerton basketball coach whose father represented the suspect in front of a disciplinary board when he lost his job, police said Wednesday night.

Former LAPD officer and U.S. Navy reservist Christopher Jordan Dorner, 33, is the suspect in the killings of Monica Quan, 28, and her 27-year-old fiancé Keith Lawrence, who were found shot to death in their car at a parking structure Sunday night, Irvine police Chief David L. Maggard said at a news conference.

Police said Dorner implicated himself in the killings with a multi-page “manifesto” that he wrote that included threats against several people, but would give no further details on the document or its contents.

Police do not know Dorner’s whereabouts, and authorities were seeking the public’s help in finding the suspect.

“We have strong cause to believe Dorner is armed and dangerous,” Maggard said, adding that the LAPD and FBI are assisting in the case and anyone who sees the suspect should immediately call 911.

Dorner was with the department from 2005 until 2008, when he was fired for making false statements.

Quan’s father, Randal Quan, a former LAPD captain who became a lawyer in retirement, represented Dorner in front of the Board of Rights, a tribunal that ruled against Dorner at the time of his dismissal, LAPD Capt. William Hayes told the Associated Press Wednesday night.

Randal Quan, who the LAPD said was the first Chinese-American captain in department history, retired in 2002. He later served as chief of police at Cal Poly Pomona and went on to practice law.

Police said Dorner’s manifesto included threats against members of the LAPD.

“We are looking at the manifesto and will do an assessment in terms of the threat against those listed in it, and determine what level of protection each of them will need,” Hayes said.

Police said he may be driving a blue, 2005 Nissan Titan pickup truck and his last known address was in La Palma, Calif., in northern Orange County near Fullerton.

According to documents from a court of appeals hearing in October 2011, Dorner was fired from the LAPD after he made a complaint against his field training officer, Sgt. Teresa Evans, saying in the course of arrest she kicked suspect Christopher Gettler, a schizophrenic with severe dementia.

Following an investigation, Dorner was fired for making false statements.

Richard Gettler, the schizophrenic man’s father, gave testimony that supported Dorner’s claim. After his son was returned on July 28, 2007, Richard Gettler asked “if he had been in a fight because his face was puffy” and his son responded that he was kicked twice in the chest by a police officer, he testified.

Autopsies showed both were killed by multiple gunshot wounds in the parking structure at their condominium in Irvine, Orange County sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino said earlier Wednesday.

Lawrence, the other victim, was a public safety officer at the University of Southern California.

The killings brought mourning and disbelief at three college campuses, Fullerton, USC, and Concordia University, where the two met when they were both students and basketball players.

Obama tries to convince Congress he can kill any American he feels like???

Lawmakers to get classified drone info

Associated Press Wed Feb 6, 2013 6:52 PM

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has directed the Justice Department to give Congress' intelligence committees access to classified legal advice providing the government's rationale for drone strikes against American citizens working with al-Qaida abroad, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

A drumbeat of demands to see the document has swelled on Capitol Hill in recent days as the Senate Intelligence Committee prepares to hold a confirmation hearing for John Brennan, who helped manage the drone program, to be CIA director.

Those demands were only intensified by the leak this week of an unclassified "white paper" on how decisions are made to target U.S. citizens abroad that the Justice Department confidentially sent to key lawmakers last year. The unclassified memo says it is legal for the government to kill U.S. citizens abroad if it believes they are senior al-Qaida leaders continually engaged in operations aimed at killing Americans, even if there is no evidence of a specific imminent attack.

The senior official said Obama decided to send lawmakers the classified rationale on Wednesday as part of his "commitment to consult with Congress on national security matters." Obama directed the Justice Department provide the Senate and House intelligence committees access to classified advice from its Office of Legal Counsel that the white paper is based on, the official said.

Legal opinions produced by the legal counsel's office are interpretations of federal law that are binding on all executive branch agencies.

The administration official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter by name.

Earlier Wednesday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama was engaged in an internal process deliberation to determine how to balance the nation's security needs with its values. He said Obama was committed to providing more information to Congress, even as he refused to acknowledge whether the drone memo even existed.

"He thinks that it is legitimate to ask questions about how we prosecute the war against al-Qaida," Carney said. "These are questions that will be with us long after he is president and long after the people who are in the seats that they're in now have left the scene."

Eleven senators, including Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon, called on Obama to provide lawmakers "any and all legal opinions" that outline the president's authority to use legal force against Americans.

Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told The Associated Press that Obama called him Wednesday evening to alert him to the decision to release the legal opinions. The president pledged to launch a "very extensive" public discussion on the government's ability to target Americans abroad, Wyden said.

"This is an encouraging first step," Wyden said. "There is now an opportunity to build on it."

The Oregon lawmaker said he expects members of the intelligence committees to be able to read the classified legal opinions before voting on Brennan's nomination to lead the CIA, but likely not before Thursday's hearing.

Justice's unclassified 16-page white paper says that it is lawful to target al-Qaida linked U.S. citizens if they pose an "imminent" threat of violent attack against Americans and that delaying action against such people would create an unacceptably high risk. Such circumstances may necessitate expanding the concept of imminent threat, the memo says.

"The threat posed by al-Qaida and its associated forces demands a broader concept of imminence in judging when a person continually planning terror attacks presents an imminent threat," the document added.

A September 2011 drone strike in Yemen killed Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, both U.S. citizens. A separate drone strike two weeks later killed al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son, a Denver native. The strikes came after U.S. intelligence concluded that the elder al-Awlaki was senior operational leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula plotting attacks on the U.S., including the abortive Christmas Day bombing of an airplane landing in Detroit in 2009.

The memo does not require the U.S. to have information about a specific imminent attack against the U.S. But it does require that capture of a terrorist suspect not be feasible and that any such lethal operation by the United States targeting a person comply with fundamental law-of-war principles.

U.S. drone use could set dangerous example for rogue powers

U.S. drone use could set dangerous example for rogue powers

By Carol J. Williams

February 7, 2013, 2:00 a.m.

Imagine if North Korea or Iran or Venezuela deployed thousands of unmanned surveillance aircraft in search of earthbound enemies, a swarm of robotic hunters armed with lethal weaponry and their governments’ go-ahead to exterminate targets.

It’s a frightening scenario but far from an unimaginable one, given that dozens of nations now build, program and deploy their own drones.

Newly disclosed U.S. guidelines on drone warfare appear to authorize a more permissive practice of targeted killings in the global fight against terrorism than previously articulated. And the Obama administration’s embrace of a right to strike those it has identified as threats to U.S. security has prompted warnings from rights advocates and international security experts that the White House is setting a dangerous precedent that rogue nations could follow.

The U.S. military and intelligence communities have increasingly turned to drones for precision strikes against terrorism suspects in Pakistan and Yemen, executing more than 300 remote-controlled attacks during President Obama’s first term. That is a sixfold increase from the Bush administration’s use of drones, according to the British nonprofit Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Muting any serious debate on the morality and legality of targeted killings is the U.S. public’s positive response to the arm's-length attacks that eliminate terrorism suspects without putting troops at risk in a more conventional offensive. More than 80% of Americans expressed support for the administration’s drone policy in a Washington Post-ABC News poll a year ago. A Pew Research Center survey in June showed similarly high regard among Americans questioned but majority disapproval among respondents in 19 other countries surveyed.

Escalating U.S. drone use in counter-terrorism is both hurting the country’s image and raising the stakes in what promises to be a protracted war to defeat the global network of militants bent on doing America harm, security and legal experts argue.

“Technological capabilities are developing far faster than the laws and international frameworks to regulate their use,” said Amy Zegart, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and former National Security Council staffer under President Clinton.

Drone use was a rare and almost exclusively U.S. military capability a decade ago, Zegart said, yet today at least 70 countries have unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, as drones are called in security parlance. Although most of that use is aimed at reducing the costs and risks of intelligence-gathering and search-and-rescue missions, the increasingly affordable and versatile aircraft can be programmed for combat as easily as for peaceful civilian uses.

Despite a credible threat of spreading drone warfare, there is little interest among the nations employing the devices to yield to any agreed rules of engagement, Zegart said.

“The question is, can the United States lead by example? Can we realistically put forward policies and ideas” that would establish permissible uses and prevent a perilous free-for-all, she said, intimating that such self-imposed restraint is unlikely.

Avner Cohen, a professor of nonproliferation policy at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, agrees there is little incentive for countries making the most aggressive use of drones -- the United States and Israel first among them -- to impose restrictions on themselves.

He points to what he sees as “seductive” elements of drone use as a danger for both international security and thoughtful decision-making.

Israeli drone surveillance pinpointed Hamas militia leader Ahmed Jabari in the Gaza Strip in November, encouraging the Israeli leadership to order a targeted killing in a likely streamlined analysis of potential consequences, Cohen recalled. Jabari’s death set off eight days of fighting between Israel and the Palestinian enclave that ended with a cease-fire seen as having strengthened Hamas and Palestinian cohesion.

“The temptation to use it is so high that it can obscure and overpower all kinds of other considerations,” Cohen said of drones’ offensive capabilities.

Human rights and international law advocates have expressed growing concern that Washington’s expanding use of targeted killings by drones violates its obligations to treaties guaranteeing protection of civilian life and prohibiting extrajudicial killings off the battlefield.

Ben Emmerson, the U.N. special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, announced two weeks ago that he was investigating U.S. strikes on suspected terrorists to evaluate their compliance with human rights treaties and the international law of armed conflict.

Rights groups contend the U.S. actions stray far beyond the limited circumstances under which international accords allow the use of preemptive lethal force.

“When the U.S. government violates international law, that sets a precedent and provides an excuse for the rest of the world to do the same,” said Zeke Johnson, director of Amnesty International USA’s Security with Human Rights Campaign.

“We have now seen, under two administrations, the emergence of a claimed global war framework in which the U.S. tries to treat the whole world as a battlefield, to the exclusion of human rights law,” Johnson said.

“I sincerely doubt most members of the U.S. government would be happy with China or Russia or North Korea using drones and lethal force the way the U.S. government is doing, which is outside the bounds of international law,” said Johnson.

“Everyone should be concerned by the idea that any government can basically deny its human rights obligations,” he warned. “That puts all of us at greater risk in the long run.”

Secret drone strikes simplify Obama Doctrine

Secret drone strikes simplify Obama Doctrine

February 7, 2013

For years, scholars and journalists have struggled without much success to define the Obama Doctrine — the president's foreign policy principles.

As a Democratic candidate, Barack Obama couldn't even define his own doctrine as he sought to succeed outgoing Republican President George W. Bush.

In a debate in 2007, back when he was Sen. Civil Liberties and the darling of the left that hated Bush for leading the war party into Afghanistan and Iraq, Mr. Obama said the world was too complicated for him to formalize his doctrine.

"Well, I think one of the things about the Obama Doctrine is it's not going to be as doctrinaire as the Bush Doctrine because the world is complicated," the senator from Chicago said. "And I think part of the problem we've had is that ideology has overridden facts and reality."

But now President Obama has finally stripped away those complications to define the Obama Doctrine this way:

He can assassinate American citizens abroad without trial if they're suspected terrorists.

His weapon of choice? Drone strikes from the air.

Drones are politically antiseptic weapons of death, almost like a video game, except that real blood and tissue is blown against the walls. And it's all being done in secret. The White House won't publicly release the rationale explaining how the Obama administration has shredded the Constitution and taped the bits back together again.

Two things are astounding here: The lack of Democratic outrage over Obama's convoluted policy, and the ease with which Republicans and Democrats have brought us to this point.

Just think about what the president's assassination campaign means. Not for the terrorists, who deserve their fate. But for the rest of us. A president has put it in writing: He can kill you if he finds that you're a threat.

Many of us — and to my shame I include myself — bought into many Bush Republican policies after al-Qaida killed thousands of our countrymen on Sept. 11, 2001. And then came more cameras watching us, and more eavesdropping, and a steady erosion of American privacy.

It came in the name of efficiently thwarting the terrorists. Now the supreme efficiency is offered by a president who campaigned in opposition to waterboarding terrorists for information to find Osama bin Laden.

The president's drone strikes against American citizens overseas "are legal, they are ethical and they are wise," said White House press secretary Jay Carney. He added that such drone strikes are "fully consistent with our Constitution."

Carney must be talking about some other little booklet. He can't mean our American Constitution. If he actually believes that the Constitution allows the president to kill Americans without trial, someone should lead him by the nose to a loony bin.

Not all Republicans are for this. But many establishment Republicans just love it, like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, an Obama critic and friend of defense contracts.

He stopped thwacking Obama for a day or so to support the president in the assassination doctrine.

"Every member of Congress needs to get on board," Graham said. "It's not fair to the president to let him, leave him out there alone quite frankly. He's getting hit from libertarians and from the left."

Some on the port side are angry, including the severe high priestess of the political left, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. Unconfirmed reports had her hair smoldering the other evening.

But she's not an elected official. Where was Democratic outrage? You'd think Sen. Dick Durbin would scream. He made plenty of loud public demonstrations during the Bush years, and I almost expected him to start yanking his burning hair from the roots while referencing storm troopers and gulags and such.

Sadly, Durbin and other Democratic pols are rather church-mousian about Obama's drones. With their own guy on the throne, they're worried about damaging the dignity of the presidency.

To his credit, Durbin quietly signed his name to a letter from 11 senators of both parties asking Obama to make public the White House rationale allowing assassinations.

But they won't hound Obama. Expect them instead to shake their jowls angrily at John Brennan.

Brennan is the career CIA officer and supporter of drones and "enhanced interrogation techniques" who was nominated by Obama to run the CIA. He is scheduled to testify Thursday at a Senate confirmation hearing .

There is a big difference between intelligence officers and politicians. Obama seemed to understand this once, when the world was complicated for him. Intelligence officers do what's necessary, and once the work is done and the threat removed, they're often thrown under the bus by politicians.

But politicians? They change the rules to justify what they want to do. And in so doing, they make the future far more dangerous and far less free.

"Who'd we get today?" was the famous question asked repeatedly by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, when he was the pro-drone Obama White House chief of staff, according to Bob Woodward's book "Obama's Wars."

Emanuel's was a gleeful question, full of bureaucratic malice, asked by a man with his loafers on safe White House carpets. Those same carpets still caress Obama's shoes.

The president once opposed "enhanced interrogation" of terrorism suspects. But now he claims constitutional protection to kill them without trial, if they're Americans overseas.

That complicated, nuanced world Obama once lived in? It's been simplified.

jskass@tribune.com

Twitter @John_Kas

Cops NEVER lie - Honest - Well except in this case!!!!

Source

Facebook video overturns parking ticket

Associated Press Thu Feb 7, 2013 9:50 AM

JERUSALEM — An Israeli woman has turned to Facebook to beat a parking ticket — and expose a Tel Aviv road crew.

Hila Ben Baruch says she parked her car legally near her Tel Aviv home only to find it gone and replaced with a handicapped parking sign. City Hall slapped her with more than $300 in fines. Making matters worse, she says a city representative accused her of lying when she called to complain.

Determined to prove her innocence, she obtained footage from a security camera showing municipal workers painting the handicapped symbol under her car, then towing the vehicle away.

She told Channel 2 she was “shocked.” The video, put on Facebook, has gone viral.

The Tel Aviv municipality has apologized and refunded the fines.

Proposition 203 violates Arizona "Equal Protection Clause"???

The "equal protection" clause of the Arizona Constitution says:

13. Equal privileges and immunities

Section 13. No law shall be enacted granting to any citizen, class of citizens, or corporation other than municipal, privileges or immunities which, upon the same terms, shall not equally belong to all citizens or corporations.

I suspect Prop 203 also violates the "equal protection" clause in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The "equal protection" clause in the 14th Amendment is in Section 1 and says:

Section 1. ... No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

My solution is to allow ANYBODY to get a medical marijuana prescription or recommendation as the law calls it.

Of course the real solution to this problem is to legalize ALL drugs and let anybody take any drug they want without having to ask the government for permission.

Medical marijuana laws violates Arizona "Equal Protection Clause"???

The "equal protection" clause of the Arizona Constitution says:

13. Equal privileges and immunities

Section 13. No law shall be enacted granting to any citizen, class of citizens, or corporation other than municipal, privileges or immunities which, upon the same terms, shall not equally belong to all citizens or corporations.

I suspect Prop 203 also violates the "equal protection" clause in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The "equal protection" clause in the 14th Amendment is in Section 1 and says:

Section 1. ... No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

My solution is to allow ANYBODY to get a medical marijuana prescription or recommendation as the law calls it.

Of course the real solution to this problem is to legalize ALL drugs and let anybody take any drug they want without having to ask the government for permission.

Brennan defends drone strikes, even on Americans

Brennan defends drone strikes, even on Americans

Associated Press Fri Feb 8, 2013 7:56 AM

WASHINGTON —

CIA Director-designate John Brennan strongly defended anti-terror attacks by unmanned drones Thursday under close questioning at a protest-disrupted confirmation hearing. On a second controversial topic, he said that after reading a classified intelligence report on harsh interrogation techniques, he does not know if waterboarding has yielded useful information.

Despite what he called a public misimpression, Brennan told the Senate Intelligence Committee that drone strikes are used only against targets planning to carry out attacks against the United States, never as retribution for an earlier one. "Nothing could be further from the truth," he declared.

Referring to one American citizen killed by a drone in Yemen in 2011, he said the man, Anwar al-Alawki, had ties to at least three attacks planned or carried out on U.S. soil. They included the Fort Hood, Texas, shooting that claimed 13 lives in 2009, a failed attempt to down a Detroit-bound airliner the same year and a thwarted plot to bomb cargo planes in 2010.

"He was intimately involved in activities to kill innocent men women and children, mostly Americans," Brennan said.

In a sign that the hearing had focused intense scrutiny on the drone program, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told reporters after the hearing that she thinks it may be time to lift the secrecy off the program so that U.S. officials can acknowledge the strikes and correct what she said were exaggerated reports of civilian casualties.

Feinstein said she and a number of other senators are considering writing legislation to set up a special court system to regulate drone strikes, similar to the one that signs off on government surveillance in espionage and terror cases.

Speaking with uncharacteristic openness about the classified program, Feinstein said the CIA had allowed her staff to make more than 30 visits to the CIA's Langley, Va., headquarters to monitor strikes, but that the transparency needed to be widened.

"I think the process set up internally is a solid process," Feinstein said, but added: "I think there's an absence of knowing exactly who is responsible for what decision. So I think we need to look at this whole process and figure a way to make it transparent and identifiable."

In a long afternoon in the witness chair, Brennan declined to say if he believes waterboarding amounts to torture, but he said firmly it is "something that is reprehensible and should never be done again."

Brennan, 57 and President Barack Obama's top anti-terrorism aide, won praise from several members of the committee as the day's proceedings drew to a close, a clear indication that barring an unexpected development, his confirmation as the nation's next head of the CIA is on track.

"I think you're the guy for the job, and the only guy for the job," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.

The panel will meet in closed session next week to permit discussion of classified material.

Brennan bristled once during the day, when Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, accused him of having leaked classified information in a telephone call with former government officials who were preparing to make television appearances.

"I disagree with that vehemently," the nominee shot back.

Brennan made repeated general pledges to increase the flow of information to members of the Senate panel, but he was less specific when it came to individual cases. Asked at one point whether he would provide a list of countries where the CIA has used lethal authority, he replied, "It would be my intention to do everything possible" to comply.

He said he had no second thoughts about having opposed a planned strike against Osama bin Laden in 1998, a few months before the bombings of two U.S. embassies. The plan was not "well-grounded," he said, adding that other intelligence officials also recommended against proceeding. Brennan was at the CIA at the time.

Brennan was questioned extensively about leaks to the media about an al-Qaida plot to detonate a new type of underwear bomb on a Western airline. He acknowledged trying to limit the damage to national security from the disclosures.

On May 7 of last year, The Associated Press reported that the CIA thwarted an ambitious plot by al-Qaida's affiliate in Yemen to destroy a U.S.-bound airliner, using a bomb with a sophisticated new design around the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden. The next day, the Los Angeles Times reported that the would-be bomber was cooperating with U.S. authorities.

During Thursday's hearing, Risch and Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana were among those who contended Brennan had inadvertently revealed that the U.S. had a spy inside Yemen's al-Qaida branch when, hours after the first AP report appeared, he told a group of media consultants that "there was no active threat during the bin Laden anniversary because ... we had inside control of the plot."

The hearing was interrupted repeatedly at its outset, including once before it had begun. Eventually, Feinstein briefly ordered the proceedings halted and the room cleared of anyone except staffers and credentialed media.

Brennan is a veteran of more than three decades in intelligence work, and is currently serving as Obama's top counter-terrorism adviser in the White House. Any thought he had of becoming CIA director four years ago vanished amid questions about the role he played at the CIA when the Bush administration approved waterboarding and other forms of "enhanced interrogation" of suspected terrorists.

On the question of waterboarding, Brennan said that while serving as a deputy manager at the CIA during the Bush administration, he was told such interrogation methods produced "valuable information." Now, after reading a 300-page summary of a 6,000-page report on CIA interrogation and detention policies, he said he does "not know what the truth is."

The shouted protests centered on CIA drone strikes that have killed three American citizens and an unknown number of foreigners overseas.

It was a topic very much on the mind of the committee members who eventually will vote on Brennan's confirmation.

In the hours before the hearing began, Obama ordered that a classified paper outlining the legal rationale for striking at U.S. citizens abroad be made available for members of the House and Senate intelligence panels to read.

It was an attempt to clear the way for Brennan's approval, given hints from some lawmakers that they might hold up confirmation unless they had access to the material.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he was encouraged when Obama called him on the telephone to inform him of his decision. But he said that when he went to read the material he became concerned the Department of Justice "is not following through" on the presidential commitment. Prodded to look into the matter, Brennan said he would.

Wyden made the drone strikes the main focus of his time to question Brennan, asking at one point what could be done "so that the American people are brought into this debate and have a full understanding of what rules" are for their use.

Brennan said the day's hearings were part of that effort, and he said he backs speeches by officials as a way to explain counter-terrorism programs. He said there is a "misimpression by the American people" who believe drone strikes are aimed at suspects in past attacks. Instead, he said, "we only take such actions as a last resort to save lives" when there is no other alternative in what officials believe is an imminent threat.

Fewer than 50 strikes took place during the Bush administration, while more than 360 strikes have been launched under Obama, according to the website The Long War Journal, which tracks the operations.

Illinois auditor general arrested on DUI charge in Springfield

Source

Illinois auditor general arrested on DUI charge in Springfield

By Ray Long and Rafael Guerrero Clout Street

3:17 p.m. CST, February 8, 2013

SPRINGFIELD --- Illinois Auditor General William Holland said today he has been cited for allegedly driving under the influence of alcohol in Springfield.

Holland, 61, confirmed he received tickets for alleged drunken driving and improper lane usage at about 11:45 p.m. Wednesday. A police report stated that Holland "had a very strong odor of an alcoholic beverage on his breath, red, blood-shot glassy eyes."

Police reported Holland failed field sobriety tests. Holland said he refused to take a breath test. Such refusal triggers a suspension of a license for a year, according to the police documents and the Illinois secretary of state’s office. He posted $100 bail.

Holland called the matter “unfortunate.”

“I was in my own car,” Holland said. “It was not a state vehicle. There was nobody else with me. I was on my own time. I’m happy to say that there was no damage to any property or any individual.” “I view this as a personal matter,” Holland said, declining further comment. He is scheduled for a court appearance next month.

Just appointed last year to his third, 10-year term as the state’s government watchdog, Holland has been in his statewide oversight position since 1992. When the House and Senate voted to reappoint him for a third term, he won widespread praise from lawmakers for his investigations into the administration of Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Holland’s testimony buttressed Blagojevich impeachment proceedings, and his audits pointed out how Blagojevich officials repeatedly attempted end runs around rules for contract bidding and other basic government procedures.

The House impeached Blagojevich following his December 2008 pre-dawn arrest by FBI agents on corruption charges that included trying to trade for personal benefit the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama when he was elected to his first term as president. The Illinois Senate then tossed Blagojevich from office in January 2009. The former governor was convicted in federal court of wide-ranging corruption and began a 14-year sentence in prison last year.

Holland is paid $150,346 a year, according to state records.

long@tribune.com raguerrero@tribune.com

Twitter @RayLong

Cops shoot newspaper carriers, in search for killer cop

Dorner manhunt: Lawyer calls shootings of paper carriers 'unacceptable'

February 8, 2013 | 5:58 am

An attorney representing two women who were delivering newspapers when they were shot by police during a massive manhunt for an ex-LAPD officer called the incident "unacceptable," saying his clients looked nothing like the suspect.

Emma Hernandez, 71, was delivering the Los Angeles Times with her daughter, Margie Carranza, 47, in the 19500 block of Redbeam Avenue in Torrance on Thursday morning when Los Angeles police detectives apparently mistook their pickup for that of Christopher Dorner, the 33-year-old fugitive suspected of killing three people and injuring two others.

Hernandez, who attorney Glen T. Jonas said was shot twice in the back, was in stable condition late Thursday. Carranza received stitches on her finger.

"The problem with the situation is it looked like the police had the goal of administering street justice and in so doing, didn't take the time to notice that these two older, small Latina women don't look like a large black man," Jonas said.

Officials seeking Dorner describe him as black, 6 feet tall and weighing 270 pounds.

"We trust that the LAPD will step up and do the right thing and acknowledge that what they did was unacceptable, and we'll deal with it," Jonas said.

Television images from the scene of the shooting showed newspapers scattered alongside the blue pickup and in the bed of the bullet-ridden vehicle, which sat on the street for hours after the shooting. Jonas said the vehicle was also "the wrong color and the wrong model," compared to Dorner's.

Sources said the Los Angeles police detectives involved in the Torrance shooting were on protective detail for a police official named in an online manifesto that authorities say was posted to a Facebook page they believe belongs to Dorner.

"Tragically, we believe this is a case of mistaken identity," LAPD Chief Charlie Beck told reporters earlier Thursday about the shooting.

About 25 minutes after the shooting, Torrance police opened fire after spotting another truck similar to Dorner's at Flagler Lane and Beryl Street. No one was reported hurt.

Chicago plans $4.1 million settlement in fatal police shooting

City plans $4.1 million settlement in fatal police shooting

By Stacy St. Clair and Jeremy Gorner Tribune reporters

1:59 p.m. CST, February 8, 2013

The city of Chicago is expected to pay $4.1 million to the family of an unarmed man who was fatally shot by police while on the ground.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration has the proposed settlement on Monday’s City Council Finance Committee agenda.

The deal ends a legal battle over a controversial police shooting that was caught on video and raised questions about the officer’s fitness for duty.

A video of the incident shows Officer Gildardo Sierra firing three shots into Flint Farmer's back as the South Side man lay bleeding on a parkway early on June 7, 2011. The incident was the third shooting by Sierra in six months – and the second fatality, records show.

The proposed settlement comes just a month after aldermen voted to pay a combined $33 million to settle police misconduct cases involving Christina Eilman, a mentally ill woman who wandered out of a South Side police station and into horrific danger six years ago, as well as a victim of notorious police Cmdr. Jon Burge.

The Police Department ruled Farmer’s shooting justified, but Superintendent Garry McCarthy later told the Tribune that he considered the case “a big problem” and that the officer involved should not have been on the street given his history of shootings.

Sierra admitted that he drank “multiple” beers before he went to work that night, but the city waited more than five hours to give him a Breathalyzer test, according to a filing by an attorney for the slain man's estate.

The court filing does not say how many beers Sierra purportedly drank or what his blood-alcohol test showed. Sierra, however, denied consuming any alcohol while being treated at Little Company of Mary Hospital in Evergreen Park shortly after the 1:45 a.m. shooting, according to the filing.

The city waited about 5 hours and 20 minutes after the shooting -- and about 9 hours after Sierra's shift began -- to administer the alcohol test, the filing said.

On the same day the court filing became public, the city reached a settlement with Farmer’s family. The deal came hours after a federal judge upheld a jury’s judgment that a “code of silence” exists in the Chicago Police Department to protect rogue officers.

The Independent Police Review Authority, the city agency that investigates officer-involved shootings, referred all three shootings by Sierra to the Cook County state's attorney's office so prosecutors could determine whether he violated state criminal law.

A spokeswoman for State's Attorney Anita Alvarez has said the investigation is ongoing. The Tribune has reported that the FBI is also investigating the shootings.

Attorneys for the city and Sierra could not be reached for immediate comment.

The alleged failure to quickly administer a Breathalyzer test to the officer after Farmer’s shooting reflects what has been a frequent problem in the department.

A December 2007 Tribune investigation, “Shielded From the Truth,” showed that supervisors often waited hours to administer breath tests to officers, both on- and off-duty, raising questions about how aggressively the department investigates shootings involving officers.

Indeed, the Tribune found that department officials sometimes considered these shootings administrative matters and treated the officers with deference rather than matters deserving rigorous scrutiny.

That crucial delay comes at a cost: It allows an officer's blood-alcohol level to drop, sometimes under the legal level of intoxication. That forces prosecutors -- if they bring a criminal case -- to extrapolate the officer's blood-alcohol content, a move that criminal-defense lawyers typically challenge.

Sierra, 32, who joined the department 10 years ago, was stripped of his police powers and has been working at the city's 311 center since the shooting. He is paid about $75,000 a year, according to 2011 city data.

Before Farmer's death, Sierra, a patrol officer in the Englewood district, had wounded a 19-year-old man in a shooting in March 2011 and killed Darius Pinex, 27, in January 2011.

In Sierra's deposition for the lawsuit, he testified that he wasn't given a “mandatory psychological debriefing” as required by the department following both those shootings, according to Thursday's filing.

Sierra continued working the overnight shift in Englewood after the first two shootings, typically patrolling from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. He was on duty shortly before 2 a.m. on June 7 when he and a partner responded to a domestic-disturbance call allegedly involving Farmer and his girlfriend in the 6200 block of South Honore Avenue.

Confronted by the officers about beating his girlfriend and her 3-year-old daughter, Farmer allegedly fled through an empty lot to South Wolcott Avenue, one street west. He got as far as the parkway when the officer yelled at him.

Police reports said Farmer put his hands in his pocket and pulled out a dark object.

“Don't do it,” a witness heard an officer shout. The warning was followed by gunfire.

Farmer, a 29-year-old unemployed sales clerk, was shot in the abdomen and thigh and fell to the ground.

Moments later, a squad car responded to the scene, officials said, and captured video of Sierra as he stepped onto the parkway, walked about the unarmed Farmer in a semicircle and fired three more shots. A medical examiner later ruled that the last three bullets were the fatal shots.

Farmer was pronounced dead at the scene. A cellphone was found near his body. He was not carrying a gun.

Sierra fired 16 bullets, seven of which hit Farmer, according to police records.

After Farmer's death, McCarthy implemented a policy in which an officer’s history is reviewed after a shooting, officials have said.

The $22.5-million settlement in the Eilman case averted a trial detailing the events of May 2006 when the then-21-year-old California woman was arrested at Midway Airport in the midst of a bipolar breakdown. She was held overnight and then released at sundown the next day without assistance several miles away in one of the city's highest-crime neighborhoods.

Alone and confused by her surroundings, the former UCLA student was abducted and sexually assaulted before plummeting from a seventh-floor window. She survived but suffered a severe and permanent brain injury, a shattered pelvis, and numerous other broken bones and injuries.

The latest Burge settlement gave $10.2 million to Alton Logan, who spent 26 years in prison for a murder he did not commit and who alleged in a federal lawsuit that Burge’s team of detectives covered up evidence that would have exonerated him -- a departure from previous cases that documented torture used by Burge's team to extract false confessions.

The Logan case brought the tab on Burge cases to nearly $60 million when legal fees are counted.

Burge is serving 4 1/2 years in federal prison for lying about the torture and abuse of suspects.

In another high-profile case, the Finance Committee is scheduled to consider a $145,000 settlement on behalf of Jose Fematt, who was 13 in 2005 when rogue Chicago Police officers handcuffed him and took him hostage in their car, demanding information about the boy’s neighbors, Fematt alleged in a lawsuit filed six years later.

The officers were part of the since-disbanded Special Operations Section. Several SOS officers, led by Jerome Finnigan, were convicted of terrorizing numerous residents with home invasions, illegal searches and trumped-up charges, renegade tactics used to pocket thousands of dollars in cash. Finnigan was sentenced in 2011 to 12 years in federal prison.

The Finance Committee on Monday also is set to consider a $1.2 million settlement for a beer truck driver who claimed injury after his truck was rear-ended in 2003 by a Chicago Fire Department truck on Lincoln Avenue at California Avenue.

Peter Schenk, 59, later underwent two back surgeries that he said left him unable to work, according to his lawsuit. He still suffers from pain and depression as a result of the crash, he alleged.

Tribune reporter Hal Dardick contributed.

sstclair@tribune.com
jgorner@tribune.com

Chicago dropping red-light camera firm as probe heats up

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City dropping red-light camera firm as probe heats up

By David Kidwell, Chicago Tribune reporter

3:45 p.m. CST, February 8, 2013

Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced today he will axe the city’s embattled red-light camera vendor when its contract expires in July, citing new investigative findings that the company gave thousands of dollars in free trips to the former city official who oversaw the decade-long program.

Emanuel announced the action against Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. following the Chicago Tribune’s report today that the chairman of Redflex’s Australian parent company resigned this week and trading in the company's stock was suspended amid an intensifying investigation into allegations of corruption in its Chicago contract.

Redflex Holdings Ltd. announced the extraordinary actions just days after board members were briefed by an outside legal team hired to examine ties between the company's U.S. subsidiary and the city official who oversaw its contract, a relationship first disclosed in October by the Tribune. The company also revealed for the first time that it is sharing information with law enforcement authorities.

The internal probe found that company executives systematically courted former city transportation official John Bills with thousands of dollars in free trips to the Super Bowl and other sporting events, sources familiar with the investigation told the Tribune. The company also hid the extent of the improper relationship from City Hall after the newspaper's reporting last year forced Redflex to partially reveal its ties to Bills, sources said.

Emanuel, who inherited the red-light contract when he took office in 2011, had already disqualified Redflex from bidding on his new speed camera initiative after the October disclosures. The new announcement means Redflex will lose what it has described as its largest North American contract. The mayor’s office gave the company a six-month extension last month while it opened the contract to bids, but at that time did not announce whether Redflex could compete to keep the business.

“Given these more serious allegations, we are declaring Redflex not responsible to bid on the new red light RFP when it is issued,” Emanuel spokeswoman Sarah Hamilton said in an email to the Tribune.

“The City is also engaging an independent firm immediately to audit the Redflex contract for all past and ongoing activities to ensure Chicago taxpayers are not cheated in any way. If there are any findings of illegal conduct or improprieties that show Chicago taxpayers were defrauded, the City will seek penalties to the fullest extent of the law.”

The Redflex internal probe and a parallel investigation by city Inspector General Joseph Ferguson are also raising more questions about the company's hiring of a longtime Bills friend who received more than $570,000 in company commissions as a customer service representative in Chicago, the sources said.

Bills did not return calls, but has adamantly denied any wrongdoing. "I would never have intentionally accepted a dime from Redflex, I wouldn't do that," he told the Tribune in October.

The latest developments run counter to the company's previous contentions that a whistle-blower concocted widespread accusations of internal wrongdoing and that a single company executive had mistakenly violated procedures by paying a one-time hotel tab for Bills. The reversal was acknowledged in a statement to the newspaper Thursday from the Australian company's CEO, who took over in September.

"Although the investigation is not over, we learned that some Redflex employees did not meet our own code of conduct and the standards that the people of the city of Chicago deserve," said Robert DeVincenzi, CEO of Redflex Holdings, the parent company of Phoenix-based Redflex Traffic Systems Inc.

"We are sharing information with law enforcement authorities, will take corrective action and I will do everything in my power to regain the trust of the Chicago community," DeVincenzi said.

Until the allegations were published by the Tribune, Redflex was positioned as a leading contender for Emanuel's new program to sprinkle the city with automatic cameras to tag speeders in school and park "safety zones." Emanuel's administration accused the company of covering up the wrongdoing allegations and disqualified it from bidding on the speed camera contract. Now the company faces the potential loss of its long-standing red-light program in Chicago, which has generated about $100 million for the company and more than $300 million in ticket revenue for the city.

The internal allegations were first made by a former Redflex vice president who wrote of the company's close relationship to Bills in a five-page internal memo emailed in 2010 to the Australian board of directors and obtained by the Tribune. In addition to making allegations about commissions to Bills' friend, the executive complained of "nonreported lavish hotel accommodations" for Bills.

The memo was addressed to Redflex Holdings board Chairman Max Findlay and sent overseas via email. Findlay and another board director, Ian Davis, were atop the list of recipients of the 2010 email.

The company announced both men's resignations in filings Wednesday to the Australian Securities Exchange, where Redflex is publicly traded.

Redflex did not indicate why the men were resigning. But on Thursday the company asked for and was granted by the exchange a four-day suspension of trading "until the earlier of 10 a.m. on Monday 11 February 2013 or an announcement being made."

"The trading halt relates to an update regarding financial aspects and the ongoing investigation in the USA," wrote company secretary Marilyn Stephens. The company did not elaborate on the trading action.

Redflex lawyers told the Tribune in October that a previous company-sponsored investigation by an outside law firm in 2010 found no wrongdoing but for a single hotel stay one top executive paid for Bills. Redflex Traffic Systems sent the executive vice president in question to "anti-bribery" training and revamped its expense accounting system, according to General Counsel Andrejs Bunkse.

Bunkse also said that neither Bills nor his friend the customer service representative were interviewed as part of the company's "exhaustive" three-week probe. He acknowledged the company's failure to notify the city of the allegations was a "lapse."

But in the wake of the newspaper's disclosure, the company announced it would pay for another outside review, this time by David Hoffman, a former city inspector general and federal prosecutor who is now a partner at the Chicago-based law firm Sidley Austin LLP.

Hoffman last week presented the audit committee of Redflex's board with a starkly different version of events, reporting that Bills received thousands of dollars in pricey hotel stays, including tickets to at least one Super Bowl and White Sox spring training trips over the course of many years, according to sources. Hoffman's report implicated company executives in the wrongdoing and recommended that some be fired, the sources said.

Bills, a self-acknowledged Sox fanatic, moonlighted as a clubhouse attendant for the team for several years, including the 2005 World Series season.

Many of the questions about Redflex's success in Chicago revolve around the friendship between Bills, who was a $138,000-per-year managing deputy commissioner for the city Transportation Department, and Marty O'Malley, who was retained by Redflex as its Chicago liaison at the outset of the red-light program in 2003.

Both Bills — a longtime precinct captain in the political organization of House Speaker Michael Madigan — and O'Malley have acknowledged their longtime friendship but said the relationship played no role in O'Malley's hiring and had no influence on Bills' management of the contract. "I have never taken a dime from Marty," Bills said in October. O'Malley did not return a telephone message Thursday.

After retiring from the city, Bills worked as a consultant for the Redflex-funded Traffic Safety Coalition. He also was appointed to an obscure Cook County board known as a haven for those with political clout but was forced to resign the $34,000 post after the Tribune's disclosures.

Redflex has been a multinational player in robotic traffic enforcement for two decades. Chicago, with more than 380 red-light cameras, has long been Redflex's largest contract in North America, but the company supplies more than 2,000 cameras nationwide, from Oregon to Florida.

Last year the company opened a new vein of potential business in the U.S. when it bought two companies involved in putting camera surveillance on school buses to ticket the drivers of cars who illegally pass the stopped vehicles.

The company listed its annual revenue as $146 million in 2012. The company's stock was trading at $2.10 per share in October but dropped to less than $1.50 on news of the Chicago allegations. It was trading at $1.67 on Wednesday before trading was halted. The Australian dollar is worth about $1.03 in U.S. currency.

dkidwell@tribune.com

Papers Please - 27 arrested in false-ID probe at Tempe business

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27 arrested in false-ID probe at Tempe business

By Danielle Grobmeier The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Fri Feb 8, 2013 4:51 PM

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said his deputies arrested 27 people at a Tempe business where investigators suspect employees were working under false identities.

Arpaio announced the arrests on Twitter at about 2 p.m., shortly after officials said they would serve search warrants at Sportex Apparel in the 2000 block of West 4th St.

The operation followed a seven-month investigation that resulted in 23 people arrested on suspicions ID theft and being in the country illegally, as well as four others for outstanding arrest warrants, officials later confirmed.

The investigation began after a caller reported the company was hiring unauthorized workers.

Source

MCSO arrests 27 workers at Tempe apparel company

Posted: Friday, February 8, 2013 7:19 pm

Associated Press

Maricopa County sheriff's deputies have raided a Tempe company and arrested 27 employees.

Sheriff's officials say 23 workers at Sportex Apparel were taken into custody Friday afternoon on suspicion of identity theft and being in the country illegally.

They say four other employees were arrested on outstanding criminal warrants.

Search warrants were served at the company after sheriff's officials were alerted that unauthorized workers were employed by Sportex Apparel.

Sportex Apparel officials didn't immediately return calls Friday on the raid and the employee arrests.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio says it was his office's 71st false identification operation.

Phoenix Police looking for dangerous pot smoker???

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Phoenix man escapes hospital, police custody

By Jackee Coe The Republic | azcentral.com Sun Feb 10, 2013 1:23 PM

Phoenix police are searching for a man who escaped custody while being treated for an illness at a hospital, authorities said.

The man, who Phoenix Police Department spokesman Sgt. Tommy Thompson said they believe is 48-year-old Wadsworth Jennings, was taken into custody Friday in connection with a marijuana investigation. He was being held on suspicion of criminal impersonation after reportedly giving officers several different aliases while police have been trying to determine exactly who he is, he said.

He was taken to Maricopa Medical Center in Phoenix because he was sick, and at about 9:30 a.m. Sunday, when the officer who was watching him was distracted for a few minutes, Jennings pulled the IV out of his arm, got out of the hospital bed and walked away, Thompson said.

Police don’t know whether or not he is dangerous because his identity is still uncertain.

“The crime that he’s arrested for is a Class 6 felony, but we don’t know for sure who he is,” Thompson said. “Generally, when a person gives a bunch of aliases, it generally means they’re trying to hide something.”

Jennings still could be in the hospital, but police believe he has left, he said. People still can come and go from the hospital.

He is described as Black, between 5 foot 5 inches and 5 foot 7 inches tall, about 120 pounds, skinny, with short hair. He last was seen wearing a hospital gown.

Anyone with information is asked to call Silent Witness at 480-WITNESS or 480-TESTIGO for Spanish speakers.

Arpaio recall campaign to restore Arizona's good name

Arpaio recall campaign to restore Arizona's good name

By William James Fisher Mon Feb 11, 2013 7:29 AM

As chairman of the Respect Arizona campaign to recall Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, here’s my response to the Feb. 3 Arizona Republic editorial, “No need for new vote on Arpaio”:

1. Respect Arizona is a grassroots organization of Republicans, Democrats, Anglos, Lations, African-Americans, business owners and workers who are fed up with our sheriff and the mismanagement of his office. We are not extremists. We are not radicals. We are funded by mostly small donations. So far we have raised a little less than $100,000 (not the $1.3 million reported in the editorial).

2. State law allows for a recall election if enough signatures can be mustered by voters. We believe there are enough disgruntled voters to have such a recall election. If we are wrong, we will be stuck with Joe.

3. Joe Arpaio was, in fact, elected (but only by a small margin). To that, there is no doubt. A recall election will allow voters to be much more cognizant of the issues surrounding the Sheriff’s Office. They won’t be distracted by a national election. Most likely there will be only two candidates in a recall election. Both candidates will have to debate each other to win.

Arpaio’s record would come to light in a much more dramatic manner through a recall. The voters will know about the millions of dollars Joe Arpaio has cost this state in lawsuits caused by his antics. They will become much more aware of the accusations of malfeasance, intimidation, incompetence and downright corruption committed by Arpaio.

The voters will learn exactly where Arpaio’s funding is coming from. In this election, all votes will be counted.

4. Respect Arizona is aware of the cost to hold a recall election. However, when you take the cost to hold an election against what will be lost in needless lawsuits and the cost of mismanagement from a continuing Arpaio administration, the amount is well worth it.

A recall is our right, assuming we get enough valid signatures. A recall election will bring back new respect for the Arizona voter and in Arizona as a state. Hopefully, we will cease to be the laughing stock of the rest of the nation and the world. That, my fellow Arizonans, is what this campaign is about.

William James Fisher, an attorney, is chairman of Respect Arizona.

Make loss of office, not the pokey, the big penalty

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Make loss of office, not the pokey, the big penalty

From the political notebook:

* Legislators are contemplating increasing the penalties for violations of campaign finance and financial disclosure laws, in some cases making them felonies. Right now, they are mostly civil violations and in some cases misdemeanors.

Expanding criminal penalties, particularly into felonies, is a serious mistake. To put it bluntly, Arizona prosecutors, who are politicians, can’t be trusted with such a club when investigating other politicians.

It was bad enough when former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas had to invent felonies to charge other politicians with. Imagine if he actually had real felonies with which he could have charged them.

Even prosecutors with better judgment and self-control, such as Thomas’ successor Bill Montgomery, shouldn’t be entrusted with the weapon of felony charges for this kind of behavior.

Montgomery has alleged that Attorney General Tom Horne violated campaign laws that prohibit coordination between a candidate and an independent campaign being conducted on his behalf.

Horne, however, has a pretty strong defense. Federal precedent and past state practice tolerate a high degree of coordination when it comes to fundraising. The evidence of illegal coordination with respect to the advertising content of the independent campaign is circumstantial – a spike in phone conversations between Horne and the head of the independent campaign while the advertising was being developed. Horne, however, has an alternative explanation for the spike – the two were working on a real estate deal at the time.

Horne is vigorously defending against the charges. If he loses, he faces the prospect of a substantial fine, perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars. Let’s assume that Montgomery had the option of charging Horne with a felony. Would he still fight the charges, even if he were innocent? Or would he plead to something to avoid the felony consequences?

Prosecutors shouldn’t be so heavily armed that those who are innocent fear to defend themselves. This is particularly true with respect to public officials. Prosecutors in Arizona have a history of going trophy hunting for fellow politicians with little to show for it.

This isn’t to argue that all campaign finance and financial disclosure penalties should be slaps-on-the-wrist. Politicians who knowingly cheat to win elections or hide their financial affairs should face a big penalty – vacating the office and being prohibited from running for another one for a period of time.

That’s the appropriate big penalty, not a threat of time in the pokey that can, and will, be misused.

* Know what the chief reason is for cautious optimism that comprehensive immigration reform might pass this year?

The gun control debate.

In 2007, comprehensive immigration reform was done in by a populist conservative grassroots uprising. At the time, a lot of Washingtonian Republicans supported comprehensive immigration reform. A bill had passed the Senate the previous year, with over 20 Republican senators voting for it.

But the populist uprising in 2007 was a searing experience and has defined the Republican position on immigration ever since: Secure the border; no amnesty.

The 2012 election results left the professional Republican political class nervous and anxious about the future. They want the immigration issue behind them to clear the way to solicit Latino votes on other issues. And that means some form of amnesty.

There are lots of devilish details about comprehensive immigration reform to be worked out. But the principal political question is whether the populist conservative grassroots will revolt again. If so, getting an immigration reform bill through the House that includes legalization and a path to citizenship would probably be impossible.

It may be just the quiet before the political storm, but the response in conservative grassroots circles so far has been more muted that it was in 2007. And populist conservatives have something else they are riled up about: the revival of the gun control debate.

Right now, the energy in the grassroots right seems exercised considerably more about guns than amnesty. If that remains the case, it might create the political space to sneak comprehensive immigration reform through – if the devilish details can be worked out.

Gun-licensing mandate an affront to our rights

Gun-licensing mandate an affront to our rights

Mon Feb 11, 2013 1:14 AM

Comparing guns to cars is a common and seductive but subtle error of logic.

If it makes sense to license drivers and register cars, then it would make sense to license pilots and register airplanes. And we do. That’s parallel logic.

However, if it makes sense to license gun owners and register guns, then it would make sense to license writers and register printing presses. That would be parallel logic, too. But we don’t do that, because that doesn’t make sense. That’s because those are rights, and government has no legitimate power to license your rights.

So, why would an honest writer object to having a license? Most reporters I know can’t answer that question, which explains why so many support “universal registration” — they understand the issue very poorly. I’ll answer it for you.

If you must pass a government test, pay a tax called a “fee,” get fingerprinted, photographed, listed in the criminal database and carry around your card with an expiration date to publish an article, or else go to prison, that’s flat out wrong. Licensing and registering freedom is tyrannical, assaults the innocent and serves no legitimate purpose in America. That’s why.

—Alan Korwin, Scottsdale

The writer is author of “The Arizona Gun Owner’s Guide.”

Cops over react to trivial comments as they always do.

Incidents like Dobson HS bomb threat force schools, police to take extra precautions

Posted: Saturday, February 9, 2013 8:12 am

By Michelle Reese, Tribune

Just one day after schools in Tempe were put into lockdown, Mesa’s Dobson High School was partially evacuated Friday following a bomb threat.

School and police officials said they collaborate to determine when to ask school principals and teachers to lock their doors and keep students away from potential harm.

“We work together with the schools to try to determine, for the safety of the students and staff, when it would be best to lockdown a school, depending on the situation,” said Mesa Police’s Det. Steve Berry.

Friday’s lockdown of Dobson High was prompted after a student made a comment about a bomb during class, Berry said. It was heard by students and his teacher, who contacted the school resource officer — a licensed Mesa Police officer — who was on campus.

“The boy was detained. The wheels were set in motion to make sure this was not a credible threat,” Berry said. “Once he realized he was going to be taken serious, that this was not a joke, he tried to recant. That’s not going to stop us from moving forward to assure everything is safe.”

After students were evacuated from parts of the school — and other parts were put on lockdown — police determined it was safe to return to class.

Since December’s tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., East Valley school officials say they are fielding more calls and questions from parents about safety.

“Since December, many people are on heightened alert mode,” Tempe Elementary School District spokesperson Monica Allread said. “Parents want to know anything that happens at the school that’s out of the ordinary. We’re working hard to make sure they know that.”

Mesa Unified School District spokesperson Helen Hollands said there are a few reasons for lockdowns in a school.

“There are lockdowns that happen because of an external incident. That would be if police are dealing with a suspect in an area. Those are always called by the law enforcement agency,” she said. “The other would be if we go into a lockdown for a campus related or internal reason. Most of the time, it’s a collaboration between the school district and the police or law enforcement agency to decide if it’s appropriate to go into lockdown.”

A school principal may also put a school in lockdown if there is an active situation, she said.

“If the event is active and there is an immediate threat or danger, the site administrator would call the lockdown immediately and then notify police,” she said.

After the Sandy Hook shooting, the Mesa school district decided to move up plans to do a campus-by-campus safety analysis. The Mesa school district governing board will hear that report Tuesday during a work study session that begins after an executive session at 5 p.m.

“That will look at what we need to do to make our sites physically more safe for students and staff,” Hollands said.

The district is also looking at the policies, procedures, practices and protocol that are used on campuses.

“That’s underway right now. That will be a report that could change protocol. Sometimes it’s helping to close a gap between practice and protocol,” she said.

Tempe’s Allread said during the last two school years, she sent out three letters each year notifying parents that a lockdown took place. This year, including Thursday’s incident, she has already sent out five.

A handful of schools in Tempe were put on lockdown while police searched an area for a suspect from a road rage incident.

Mesa didn’t have a count of the number of lockdowns used so far this school year as of press time.

Allread said the Tempe Elementary School District looked at its safety and security measures last summer.

“But we’re always looking a safety and security and certainly after what happened in December, we took a look at what they had in place and tried to learn any lessons we could,” she said.

The 16-year-old student detained by police could face charges, Mesa Police’s Berry said. The student could also face punishment from the district, from a short suspension to expulsion, depending on the circumstances, Hollands said.

“At this point, without having any due process evaluation, I couldn’t say where within this guideline it would fall. It has a range, because you need to take into account all the mitigating circumstances,” she said.

Contact writer: (480) 898-6549 or mreese@evtrib.com

A serial killer speaks out against the death penalty

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Ex-Virginia executioner becomes opponent of death penalty

By Justin Jouvenal, Published: February 10

Jerry Givens executed 62 people.

His routine and conviction never wavered. He’d shave the person’s head, lay his hand on the bald pate and ask for God’s forgiveness for the condemned. Then, he would strap the person into Virginia’s electric chair.

Former executioner opposes death penalty: Jerry Givens executed 62 people in Virginia’s electric chair. Since leaving his job he has become one of the state’s most visible — and unlikely — opponents to capital punishment.

Givens was the state’s chief executioner for 17 years — at a time when the commonwealth put more people to death than any state besides Texas.

“If you knew going out there that raping and killing someone had the consequence of the death penalty, then why are you going to do it?” Givens asked. “I considered it suicide.”

As Virginia executed its 110th person in the modern era last month, Givens prayed for the man, but also for an end to the death penalty. Since leaving his job in 1999, Givens has become one of the state’s most visible — and unlikely — opponents of capital punishment.

His evolution underscores that of Virginia itself and the nation. Although polls show that the majority of state residents still support the death penalty, Virginia has experienced a sea change on capital punishment in recent years that is part of a national trend.

The state has had fewer death sentences over the past five years than any period since the 1970s. Robert Gleason, who was put to death Jan. 16, was the first execution in a year and a half. As recently as 1999, the state put 13 to death in a single year.

Nationwide, the number of death sentences was at record lows in 2011 and 2012, down 75 percent since 1996, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Five states have outlawed capital punishment in the past five years, and Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) affirmed plans to push for a moratorium there. Gallup polls show support for capital punishment ebbing.

Givens’s improbable journey to the death chamber and back did not come easily or quickly for the 60-year-old from Richmond. A searing murder spurred his interest in the work, but it was the innocent life he nearly took that led him to question the system. And he was changed for good when he found himself behind bars.

His story helps explain how a state closely associated with the death penalty for decades has entered a new era.

“From the 62 lives I took, I learned a lot,” Givens said.

The first execution

Friends and strangers regularly ask Givens the essential question: What is it like to take another man’s life? In answering, he vividly recalls his first execution, in 1984.

That it involved one of America’s most notorious killers helped solidify Givens’s feelings then that the death penalty was just.

Linwood Briley was one of three brothers in a gang responsible for one of the bloodiest murder sprees — and death row escapes — in state history.

The day before Briley’s execution, Givens said, the death row team began a standard 24-hour vigil, monitoring Briley at the now-shuttered Virginia State Penitentiary in Richmond. The goal, as Givens put it, was to keep the condemned from killing himself before the state could. [Wow, those government folks will do anything to get their bloodthirsty wish of killing people they consider scum]

Nevertheless, the first execution took a toll. Givens said the most difficult part of that execution — or any other — was something he called the “transformation.”

Givens worked as a prison guard “saving lives” most of the time, as he put it, but when he took on the role of executioner, he had to become a killer.

Before Briley was put to death, he asked to be baptized, Givens said. The death team took him to the penitentiary’s chapel, and Givens prayed alongside the man whose life he would soon end.

Find Virginia executions from 1982 to present by year, method of execution and by the victims’ names.

“We don’t know our day and time, but these guys do,” Givens said of death row inmates. “They can repent. This is the advantage they have.”

The team moved Briley to the death chamber, and he was strapped in the electric chair. Givens took up a position along a wall outside, where the button was located. He could see Briley’s back through a small window.

At these moments, Givens said, he would empty his mind to avoid fear, insecurities or regret. He was solely focused on the grisly mechanics of electrocution.

“You are concentrating on the body itself,” he said. “With that much electricity, you are going to get burning and smoke. You want to make sure the current is right.”

At 11 p.m. Oct. 12, 1984, Givens pushed the button. He saw Briley’s body spasm through the window. And then it was over. He had taken his first life.

Inevitably, Givens said the emotion of an execution would come flooding back.

“You are not going to feel happy,” Givens said. “You feel for the condemned man’s family and the victim’s family. You have two sets of families that are losing someone.”

The chamber and back

Givens grew up in the Creighton Court housing complex in Richmond, where he also graduated from high school in the early 1970s. By 1974, he had gotten a job at a Philip Morris plant and then lost it after fighting with a co-worker.

He recalled someone telling him that he should apply for a job at the state penitentiary before he got sent there. Givens did just that.

After two years as a prison guard, he said, a supervisor approached him about working on death row. He would not be paid extra, but he accepted the job. The deciding factor, he said, was an event that marked him early in life.

When he was 14, Givens said, he was at a house party in Creighton Court. He spied a girl next to a window, and as he was trying to get up the confidence to ask her to dance, a gunman burst up a flight of stairs.

The man was looking for someone at the party, but he fired randomly and killed the girl.

Givens was furious. The incident left him with a firm conviction: Killers such as that shooter deserved to die.

In the years ahead, Givens said, he would recall the girl’s shooting each time he had to prepare for an execution. It was a touchstone that helped him carry out the grim work of the death chamber.

After Briley, the executions would come in quicker succession through the 1980s and 1990s. Givens executed Linwood Briley’s brother James in 1985. In 1993, it was Syvasky Poyner, who killed five women during an 11-day spree in southeast Virginia, and David Mark Pruett, who admitted to raping and killing his best friend’s wife.

Ultimately, though, it was a man he didn’t execute who would make the biggest impression. Earl Washington Jr. was sentenced to death in 1984 in the rape and killing of a 19-year-old mother of three in Culpeper.

Washington, who has an IQ of about 69, admitted to the killing, although many of his answers were inconsistent with the facts of the case. Just days before his scheduled execution in 1985, lawyers secured a stay based on doubts about his guilt.

In 1993, DNA tests provided strong evidence that Washington was not the killer. Then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (D) commuted his sentence to life in prison. After testing with a more advanced forensic science, Washington was cleared and eventually granted an absolute pardon, making him the first person on Virginia’s death row to be exonerated by DNA evidence.

It was a landmark moment locally and nationally. The case was among the first in a wave of exonerations based on post-conviction DNA testing. There have been 302 such cases across the nation, including 18 death row inmates, according to the Innocence Project.

Experts and opponents of the death penalty say the exonerations have been a key factor in the recent decline in death sentences in Virginia and elsewhere. They say judges and juries have become more sophisticated about how the system can fail and therefore more leery of applying a penalty that cannot be reversed.

The DNA testing “was a scientific process totally outside the system that said, ‘You’ve got the wrong guy,’ ” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center and an opponent of the death penalty. “The fact that you had the entirely wrong person was a revelation to some people.”

The man who would have been Washington’s executioner was one of them. Givens said the case shook his faith in the justice system. He came within days of putting an innocent man to death.

“If I execute an innocent person, I’m no better than the people on death row,” Givens said.

From executioner to inmate

Despite his growing reservations, Givens continued to work as Virginia’s chief executioner through the late 1990s. He had risen to the rank of captain in the Department of Corrections, raised a family and become an assistant football coach at a Richmond area high school.

But then it fell apart. Givens was charged with money laundering and lying to a federal grand jury about it in 1999. Prosecutors said Givens and an old friend from Creighton Court purchased a car together using proceeds Givens knew came from drug dealing. Givens was put on trial.

“There’s a fine line between lawfulness and unlawfulness,” the U.S. attorney reportedly told the jury in the case. “There are a lot of good things about Jerry Givens. He is by no means the worst criminal any of us will ever meet, but he did cross the line.”

Givens maintains his innocence, but he was convicted and forced to resign from the Department of Corrections. His distrust of the justice system was cemented.

The prison guard became an inmate and spent four years behind bars.

“This was God’s way of waking me up,” Givens said.

His incarceration gave him time to think and deepened his Baptist faith. He said he read the Bible more often — the story of Jesus’s crucifixion held a lot for a man who had spent his adult life putting people to death.

Givens said a pivotal moment came one day as he was walking around the prison track, where he often talked with God. He said God asked him a thorny question: Would Givens have executed His son if He were on death row?

Givens said he could give only one reply: No, because Jesus was the son of God. He said he realized what he had done as executioner was not compatible with Jesus’s teachings of forgiveness. He realized that he could no longer support the death penalty. He said God told him to share his story.

Evelyn Givens said she thought her brother’s change was possibly the result of guilt about what he had done and a desire to spare others from “walking in his shoes.”

“He doesn’t want anyone else to feel what he felt,” she said.

After he was released from prison in 2004, he found work as a truck driver. Jonathan Sheldon, a lawyer and former executive director of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (VADP), recalls hearing about Givens through a mutual acquaintance.

They agreed to meet at a Burger King off Interstate 95 outside Richmond. The activist and the former chief executioner sat across from each other, talking about the death penalty.

“It was quite a funny meeting,” Sheldon said.

It also planted a seed that would grow in the coming years.

Givens started attending VADP meetings and joined the board about 2009. He began giving speeches across the country about his experiences as chief executioner and his newfound opposition to the death penalty.

The work hit a high point in 2010, when he testified at a state legislative hearing on a bill that would expand the death penalty to accomplices in murders. Givens’s emotional testimony about the impact of death row work helped defeat it.

“The people who pass these bills, they don’t have to do it,” Givens said afterward. “The people who do the executions, they’re the ones who suffer through it.”

Sen. J. Chapman “Chap” Peterson (D-Fairfax) said it was a key moment.

“It was so dramatic, you could have heard a pin drop,” Peterson said. “No one knew who he was, and then he announced he had been the state’s chief executioner and gave an emotional and raw speech. It was something out of Dickens.”

All the while, Virginia was changing as well.

David Bruck, a law professor at Washington and Lee University’s law school and an opponent of capital punishment, said a number of other factors have contributed to the decline in use of the death penalty in Virginia.

Like most states, Virginia has enacted sentences of life without parole, giving juries and prosecutors an alternative. The creation of the state’s capital public defender system has given those facing the death sentence better representation.

Bruck also said the state’s prosecutors, who are elected in Virginia, feel less public pressure to pursue the death penalty than in years past because it has faded as a key political issue.

“Our death sentencing rate is becoming similar to states like Colorado that have the death sentence on the books but hardly use it,” Bruck said.

That’s good news to someone such as Givens. He said he has gained a measure of peace through his new calling. He wrote a book about his experiences, which was released last year.

Nevertheless, he still wonders whether there were any innocents among the 37 people he executed via the electric chair and the 25 by lethal injection. The man who prayed for the forgiveness of each of the condemned said he may need it himself.

“The only thing I can do is pray to God to forgive me if I did,” Givens said. “But I do know this — I will never do it again.”

Bolick: Police ‘Release time’ for unions not fair to taxpayer

Bolick: ‘Release time’ for unions not fair to taxpayer

By Clint Bolick My Turn Fri Feb 8, 2013 7:26 PM

Once again taxpayers have gone to court to protect their wallets — and their rights.

The issue is the widespread practice of union “release time,” in which public employees are paid full-time city salaries and benefits to work on union business.

In Phoenix, the cost of release time for the seven city unions is over $3 million per year. In its contract with the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association (PLEA), six full-time officers are diverted from patrol duties to union desks, and thousands of additional police hours are placed under the union’s control.

Last year, the Maricopa County Superior Court granted an injunction against PLEA release time, finding that it violated our state Constitution’s ban on gifts of public funds to private entities “by subsidy or otherwise.” When the contract expired, Phoenix tried to rein in release time, but the union browbeat it into submission. Hence, the taxpayers are back in court.

PLEA says release time is necessary to represent officers who are accused of wrongdoing. But in many other cities, such representation is paid by union dues rather than taxpayer funds. And under the Phoenix contract, two officers are on 24-hour paid standby to do just that.

So what do the release-time folks do? They solicit member complaints against the Police Department — including 78 grievances (and a possible lawsuit) against Chief Daniel Garcia’s police-uniform policy. They lobby for bills in the Legislature (sometimes against the city’s position), they interview and endorse candidates for public office, and they bargain against the city for higher wages and benefits — all at taxpayer expense.

Not only that, they report not to the police station but to union headquarters, they qualify for the same pension as officers who risk their lives every day, they don’t have to account for their time, they receive guaranteed overtime pay whether they work it or not, and they collect a monthly stipend and car allowance from the union in addition to their police salaries. It’s a nice gig if you can get it — and those who do usually keep it until early retirement. PLEA says officers “pay” for release time by making it part of their compensation. Not so: The members must vote yes or no on the entire contract, take it or leave it. And many officers are not members, so they don’t get to vote. Regardless, taxpayers pick up the tab because new officers had to be hired to replace those assigned to the union.

Release time is an unlawful gift to the union in another important way. City employees are bound by conflict-of-interest requirements, they can’t receive compensation from third parties when they’re on duty, and they’re prohibited from political activities on city time. But when cities give unions control of their employees, they confer the valuable gift of exemption from the rules that otherwise would govern them.

Why don’t more people know about this? Perhaps because the collective-bargaining process between city and union officials takes place in secret. That is why the Goldwater Institute, in addition to challenging release time in court, is urging the Legislature to open labor negotiations to the public. Cozy deals like release time are far less likely to occur in the light of day.

When the court enjoined release time last year, the six full-time officers were reassigned to the job for which they were hired: keeping us safe. Once again, we invoke our state Constitution to make sure public resources are focused exclusively on public purposes — none more important than public safety.

Clint Bolick is vice president for litigation at the Goldwater Institute.

Was Christopher Jordan Dorner fired for exposing corruption in the LAPD???

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Dorner's LAPD firing case hinged on credibility

By Jack Leonard, Joel Rubin and Andrew Blankstein, Los Angeles Times

February 10, 2013, 11:11 p.m.

For a Los Angeles Police Department disciplinary panel, the evidence was persuasive: Rookie officer Christopher Jordan Dorner lied when he accused his training officer of kicking a mentally ill man during an arrest.

But when a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge examined the case a year later in 2010 as part of an appeal filed by Dorner, he seemed less convinced.

Judge David P. Yaffe said he was "uncertain whether the training officer kicked the suspect or not" but nevertheless upheld the department's decision to fire Dorner, according to court records reviewed by The Times.

As the manhunt for the ex-cop wanted in the slayings of three people enters its sixth day, Dorner's firing has been the subject of debate both within and outside the LAPD. An online manifesto that police attributed to Dorner claims he was railroaded by the LAPD and unjustly fired. His allegations have resonated among the public and some LAPD employees who have criticized the department's disciplinary system, calling it capricious and retaliatory toward those who try to expose misconduct.

Seeking to address those concerns, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck announced this weekend that he was reopening the investigation into Dorner's disciplinary case. "It is important to me that we have a department that is seen as valuing fairness," Beck said.

LAPD records show that Dorner's disciplinary panel heard from several witnesses who testified that they did not see the training officer kick the man. The panel found that the man did not have injuries consistent with having been kicked, nor was there evidence of having been kicked on his clothes. A key witness in Dorner's defense was the man's father, who testified that his son told him he had been kicked by police. The panel concluded that the father's testimony "lacked credibility," finding that his son was too mentally ill to give a reliable account.

The online manifesto rails against the LAPD officials who took part in the review hearing and vows revenge. Police allege Dorner killed his own attorney's daughter and her fiance last weekend in Irvine.

"Your lack of ethics and conspiring to wrong a just individual are over. Suppressing the truth will [lead] to deadly consequences for you and your family," the manifesto says.

Dorner's case revolved around a July 28, 2007, call about a man causing a disturbance at the DoubleTree Hotel in San Pedro. When Dorner and his training officer showed up, they found Christopher Gettler. He was uncooperative and threw a punch at one of the officers, prompting Dorner's training officer, Teresa Evans, to use an electric Taser weapon on him.

Nearly two weeks later, Dorner walked into Sgt. Donald Deming's office at the Harbor Division police station. There were tears in Dorner's eyes, the sergeant later testified.

Deming gave the following account of what happened next:

"I have something bad to talk to you about, something really bad," Dorner told him.

Evans, Dorner explained, had kicked Gettler once in the face and twice in the left shoulder or nearby chest area. Afterward, Dorner said, Evans told him not to include the kicks on the arrest report.

"Promise me you won't do anything," Dorner asked Deming.

"No, Chris. I have to do something," Deming responded.

An internal affairs investigation into the allegation concluded the kicks never occurred. Investigators subsequently decided that Dorner had fabricated his account. He was charged with making false accusations.

At the December 2008 Board of Rights hearing, Dorner's attorney, Randal Quan, conceded that his client should have reported the kicks sooner but told the board that Dorner ultimately did the right thing. He called the case against Dorner "very, very ugly."

"This officer wasn't given a fair shake," Quan said, according to transcripts of the board hearing. "In fact, what's happening here is this officer is being made a scapegoat."

At the hearing, Dorner stuck to his story. Evans, he said, kicked Gettler once in the left side of his collarbone lightly with her right boot as they struggled to handcuff him. She kicked him once more forcefully in the same area, Dorner testified, and then much harder in the face, snapping Gettler's head back. Dorner said he noticed fresh blood on Gettler's face.

Dorner did not immediately report the kicks to a sergeant, he said, because he was asked only what force he had used, not what his partner had done. And as a rookie who had already filed complaints against fellow officers, he feared retaliation from within the department, Dorner testified.

Gettler's father, Richard, testified that police eventually brought his son home and that he noticed a slight puffiness on his son's face. His son told him he had been kicked by a police officer — once in the face and twice in the chest, he said. Richard Gettler said he was shocked but decided against calling police because the injury was minor and his son could not explain what prompted the officers to use force. Gettler said that his son's mental illness prevented him from being a good witness and that he was easily scared and would often answer "yes" to everything.

Dorner's attorney, Quan, presented a brief video he took of Christopher Gettler answering Quan's questions at the attorney's office. On the video, obtained by Fox 11 News, the younger Gettler agrees when asked whether he was kicked by a police officer and points to his left cheek, indicating that's where he was struck. He says he was kicked once and that the officer was female and "almost black" with dark hair. He then corrects himself, saying she had light hair.

Evans is listed in department and court records as white with blond hair.

At the disciplinary hearing, Christopher Gettler could not give the current year and sometimes provided seemingly random answers to questions. He said he did not recall how he was hurt during the encounter with the officers and thought they had used a club on him.

Evans denied kicking Gettler. She had been placed on desk duty for about seven months during the department's investigation and prevented from earning extra money outside the department. "It was very difficult on me personally," she testified.

Dorner, she said, was having problems readjusting to police work after returning from a 13-month military deployment overseas. He told her that family members had noticed a change in him and that he would seek help for it, she testified. On one occasion, he started crying in their patrol car, she said.

On several evaluation forms, Evans rated Dorner as "satisfactory" but indicated he needed to improve in certain areas. At one point, she told him she would give him an "unsatisfactory" rating unless he improved. "He was upset," she said.

Records show that Dorner reported the kicks a day after he received an evaluation in which Evans noted that he needed to show improvement in three categories, including the time it took to write reports, officer safety and use of common sense and good judgment.

She said Dorner had told her the department was a "racist organization," which she said she reported to a supervisor. That supervisor, however, denied during the hearing that Evans told her that.

Three witnesses, including two hotel employees and a port police officer, testified that they did not see Evans kick Gettler. The port police officer recalled telling Dorner to fix his tie. But a photograph from the scene showed that Dorner was not wearing a tie.

The board's three members — two LAPD captains and a criminal defense attorney — unanimously ruled against Dorner. They found that his claims lacked credibility and that he was motivated in part by his fear that his training officer would give him a poor evaluation that could end his career.

To fire Dorner, the board had only to conclude that it was more likely than not that he had made up his story about the kick. From then on, it was up to Dorner to prove that the board was wrong, a burden that Yaffe and a subsequent appeals court found he did not meet.

Capt. Phil Tingirides, who chaired the board, declined to discuss specifics about the case, citing a state law that makes it a crime to disclose personnel information. But he defended his handling of the proceedings.

"I am meticulous and objective," Tingirides said. "I take the responsibility very seriously. Before his board I had never met Christopher Dorner and didn't know a thing about him. I went into that board with an open mind.... I am very comfortable with what we did and the way we did it."

jack.leonard@latimes.com

joel.rubin@latimes.com

andrew.blankstein@latimes.com

Cop pulls gun in washing machine dispute

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Cops: Washing machine dispute lands deputy in hot water

By Melissa Jenco Tribune reporter

6:59 p.m. CST, February 10, 2013

A Cook County corrections officer is facing felony charges after authorities say she displayed a weapon during a dispute over a washing machine, according to court records.

Sonjia L. Dennis-Brown, 36, of Dolton, got into an argument with another woman over a washing machine in the 1100 block of East Sibley Boulevard, Dolton, about 4:34 p.m. Feb. 8, according to a police report.

During the argument, she removed a 9 millimeter semi-automatic handgun from her purse and said, "This is all the protection I need," the report says. Dennis-Brown denied to police she displayed the weapon.

She was charged with aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and possession of a firearm without firearm owner identification. She appeared in court Sunday where Cook County Judge Israel Desierto set her bail at $25,000.

The Sheriff's Office of Professional Review is investigating the charges, said Sheriff's Spokesman Frank Bilecki. The officer is currently on maternity leave and until the investigation is complete she has been dedeputized, Bilecki said.

mjenco@tribune.com

Dorner manhunt: Torrance neighborhood edgy after mistaken shootings

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Dorner manhunt: Torrance neighborhood edgy after mistaken shootings

February 10, 2013 | 5:00 am

Police investigators examine a blue pickup that was riddled with bullets Thursday on Redbeam Avenue in Torrance. Officers, thinking shooting suspect Christopher Dorner might have been in the vehicle, unleashed a fusillade, wounding a woman and her mother.Some Torrance residents remain on edge days after police officers participating in the massive manhunt for ex-LAPD Officer Christopher Jordan Dorner mistakenly shot up two pickups being driven by people not matching the description of the murder suspect.

Two women in a blue pickup, who were delivering copies of the Los Angeles Times, came under fire by Los Angeles Police Department officers on Thursday morning in what Police Chief Charlie Beck has described as a case of “mistaken identity.”

Moments later, Torrance Police Department officers responding to the gunfire slammed their cruiser into a black truck being driven by David Perdue and opened fire. Perdue’s attorney described the shooting as “unbridled police lawlessness” in an interview with The Times on Saturday.

Both shootings took place in the West Torrance neighborhood, a small section nestled on the border where the city meets Redondo Beach.

Leaders of the neighborhood association acknowledged that many residents are on edge after the shootings but praised the efforts by police officers to find Dorner.

“Torrance is a safe city with strong ties between residents and public safety,” a representative of the West Torrance Homeowners Assn., who asked not to be named citing personal ties to local law enforcement, said in a statement provided to The Times.

“Our residents feel the same as every neighborhood caught up in this horrible saga: We will feel safer once Dorner is caught.”

Hundreds of people in California and across the nation have taken to social media to weigh in on the manhunt, with many citing the shootings in Torrance as an example of police overreaction during the search for Dorner.

About 5 a.m. Thursday, after the manhunt had begun, LAPD officers opened fire on a mother and daughter who were delivering newspapers. One woman was shot twice in the back and the other was wounded by broken glass.

Moments later, Torrance police slammed their cruiser into Perdue’s vehicle -- which is similar to the pickup Dorner was suspected to be driving -- and opened fire.

The two sets of gunshots startled 16-year-old Jacob Pivovaroff awake about 5:30 a.m. He says he ran downstairs, where he and his parents peeked out the windows of their Marialinda Street home -- just blocks from both shootings. Together, he said, the family concluded they had heard as many as 30 shots.

After the gunfire stopped, the family waited. About 6 a.m., Jacob’s mother phoned Torrance police to ask if it was safe to leave the home.

“They said to keep our doors closed and locked, that there was an ongoing situation,” he said. “We were huddled at the TV, just trying to figure out if it was safe.”

As he watched television reports and saw the images of the two bullet-riddled trucks, Jacob took to Facebook to voice his first thoughts.

“If you drive a black truck or apparently any truck, you might want to put a 'Not Chris Durner' sign on the back,” he said in a status update posted Thursday morning.

In the three days since, Jacob said the police presence near where both shootings occurred has diminished slightly, but notes that many of his neighbors and friends remain on edge. Some of his classmates, he said, have been staying home from school until the manhunt is over.

“It’s absolutely ludicrous that they shot at these people,” said Jacob, who made it clear that he’s thankful the local police force is taking the threats from Dorner seriously. “I understand why they were scared, but they need to use just a little bit more common sense before they just open fire.”

California ex-officer hunt resumes in mountains

California ex-officer hunt resumes in mountains

By Tami Abdollah Associated Press Sat Feb 9, 2013 9:18 AM

BIG BEAR LAKE, Calif. — More than 100 officers fanned out again at daybreak Saturday in the snow- covered San Bernardino Mountains, resuming the search for the former Los Angeles police officer suspected of going on a deadly rampage to get back at those he blamed for ending his career.

Authorities hope clearer skies will allow aircraft to help them in the manhunt for Christopher Dorner, which entered its fourth day Saturday.

Relentless snowfall on Friday grounded helicopters with heat-sensing technology and hampered their effort to find Dorner, whose burned-out pickup truck was found a day earlier in this ski resort town.

SWAT teams in camouflage scoured the mountains and went door-to-door examining vacant cabins, aware to the reality they could be walking into a trap set by the well-trained former Navy reservist who knows their tactics and strategies as well as they do.

“He can be behind every tree,” said T. Gregory Hall, a retired tactical supervisor for a special emergency response team for the Pennsylvania State Police. “He can try to draw them into an ambush area where he backtracks.”

As authorities weathered heavy snow and freezing temperatures in the mountains, thousands of heavily armed police remained on the lookout throughout California, Nevada, Arizona and northern Mexico for a suspect bent on revenge and willing to die.

Police said officers still were guarding more than 40 people mentioned as targets in a rant they said Dorner posted on Facebook. He vowed to use “every bit of small arms training, demolition, ordnance and survival training I’ve been given” to bring “warfare” to the LAPD and its families.

The manhunt had Southern California residents on edge. Unconfirmed sightings were reported near Barstow, about 60 miles north of the mountain search, and in downtown Los Angeles.

Some law enforcement officials said he appeared to be everywhere and nowhere, and speculated that he was trying to spread out their resources.

For the time being, their focus was on the mountains 80 miles east of Los Angeles — a snowy wilderness, filled with thick forests and jagged peaks, that creates peril as much for Dorner as the officers hunting him.

The small army hunting him has the advantage of strength in numbers and access to resources, such as special weapons, to bring him in.

In his online rant, Dorner baited authorities. “Any threat assessments you generate will be useless,” it read. “I have the strength and benefits of being unpredictable, unconventional, and unforgiving.” Without the numbers that authorities have, Dorner holds one advantage: the element of surprise.

Authorities said they do not know how long Dorner had been planning the rampage or why he drove to the San Bernardino Mountains. Property records show his mother owns undeveloped land nearby, but a search of the area found no sign of him.

It was not clear if he had provisions, clothing or weapons stockpiled in the area. Even with training, days of cold and snow can be punishing.

“Unless he is an expert in living in the California mountains in this time of year, he is going to be hurting,” said former Navy SEAL Clint Sparks, who now works in tactical training and security.

“Cold is a huge stress factor. … Not everybody is survivor-man.”

Jamie Usera, an attorney in Salem, Ore., who befriended Dorner when they were students and football teammates at Southern Utah University, said he introduced him to the outdoors. Originally from Alaska, Usera said, he taught Dorner about hunting and other outdoor activities.

“Of all the people I hung out with in college, he is the last guy I would have expected to be in this kind of situation,” Usera, who had lost touch with Dorner is recent years, told the Los Angeles Times.

Others saw Dorner differently. Court documents obtained by The Associated Press on Friday show an ex-girlfriend of Dorner’s called him “severely emotionally and mentally disturbed” after the two split in 2006.

Dorner served in the Navy, earning a rifle marksman ribbon and pistol expert medal. He was assigned to a naval undersea warfare unit and various aviation training units, according to military records. He took leave from the LAPD for a six-month deployment to Bahrain in 2006 and 2007.

Last Friday was his last day with the Navy and also the day CNN’s Anderson Cooper received a package that contained a note on it that read, in part, “I never lied.” A coin riddled with bullet holes that former Chief William Bratton gave out as a souvenir was also in the package.

Police said it was a sign of planning by Dorner before the killing began.

On Sunday, police say Dorner shot and killed a couple in a parking garage at their condominium in Irvine. The woman was the daughter of a retired police captain who had represented Dorner in the disciplinary proceedings that led to his firing.

Dorner wrote in his manifesto that he believed the retired captain had represented the interests of the department over his.

Hours after authorities identified Dorner as a suspect in the double murder, police believe Dorner shot and grazed an LAPD officer in Corona and then used a rifle to ambush two Riverside police officers early Thursday, killing one and seriously wounding the other.

The incident led police to believe he was armed with multiple weapons, including an assault-type rifle. That detail concerned officers whose bullet-proof vests can be penetrated by such high- powered weapons, said LAPD Deputy Chief Kirk Albanese.

As a result, all LAPD officers have been required to work in pairs to ensure “a greater likelihood of coming out on top if there is an ambush,” Albanese said. “We have no officers alone right now.”

Policing for profits??? Jailing Mexicans for profits???

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Controversial Pinal County jail faces new financial scrutiny

By Lindsey Collom The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Feb 8, 2013 11:38 PM

It was supposed to be a win-win: Pinal County administrators needed to fund a jail expansion, and federal agencies needed a place to hold detainees.

In pitching a proposed partnership to supervisors in 2004, county officials said a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to house immigration detainees would pay for itself, cover the debt from $62.1million in detention projects and spare taxpayers any expense.

But the contract county supervisors ultimately signed off on was a money-losing one, the effects of which have compounded over time. Pinal County has lost millions of dollars in potential revenue, according to a recent internal audit requested by the county manager.

Separately, the Internal Revenue Service is auditing the bond issue that funded Pinal County’s jail renovations. If the agency finds the county issued the bonds under false pretenses, it could levy steep fines and force the county to pay millions in back taxes.

The county jail already is under the microscope. A national coalition of advocacy groups last year named it one of the country’s 10-worst immigration-detention facilities and asked the Obama administration to direct Immigration and Customs Enforcement to stop contracting with the jail. The

American Civil Liberties Union has threatened to sue ICE and the Department of Homeland Security over conditions there, but the jail has passed muster in multiple federal inspections.

County officials admit the contract has been poorly administered but say they are now taking steps to correct the situation.

Fritz Behring, the county’s manager since 2011, said the original deal was “a violation of the public trust” and “demonstrates deficiencies in Pinal County that have persisted for years.”

“Spending decisions are often made on assumptions, misinformation and self-serving agendas without any regard for objective, substantiated facts,” Behring said.

“The public has an expectation that local government officials are making sound financial decisions and are actually following basic business practices to ensure public funds are correctly spent.

Unfortunately, that is not the case here.”

Subpar contract signed

In the early 2000s, the 400-bed county jail was holding an average of 600 to 700 inmates, and the looming threat of receivership because of the overcrowding made expansion a priority.

Then-Sheriff Roger Vanderpool helped steer county management to consider subsidizing any debt service with federal contracts. It made sense to Vanderpool: A surge in deportation proceedings during President George W. Bush’s administration meant ICE was in the market for jail space, and if the county could fill beds with immigration detainees, it would let them build a jail large enough to plan for growth in booming Pinal County.

Vanderpool took then-County Manager Stanley Griffis to Washington, D.C., and introduced him to immigration officials. Griffis declined to be interviewed for this story. In the months that followed, Vanderpool worked with his administrators to plan for a 1,034-bed expansion, and Griffis and his aides set about finding capital. The county ultimately decided to issue $62.1 million in tax-exempt bonds.

A September 2004 presentation to the Board of Supervisors by underwriters Stone & Youngberg showed that the county expected to raise about $15 million in new revenue through contracts with ICE and the U.S. Marshals Service. In combination with existing general funds, contract proceeds would go toward a $16 million jail operation, $4.3 million to debt service and $5 million for contingency.

For the plan to make financial sense, the county would have to charge ICE no less than $71 per inmate per day. The Marshals Service would pay a rate of $58 because that contract had fewer requirements.

County supervisors authorized the municipal-bond release by the end of the year, and groundbreaking began. Griffis hadn’t yet sewn up the ICE contract. Negotiations were continuing when he spoke with The Republic in September 2005.

“I’m a hundred percent sure that once we build it, we’ll get 625 inmates from ICE,” Griffis said. But Griffis never sealed the deal. He was put on administrative leave in late 2005 after he used sheriff’s posse money to purchase $21,000 in sniper rifles and related equipment. Griffis pleaded guilty to six felonies, including theft and fraud perpetrated against Pinal County, and he spent nearly three years in state prison. He was released from the Department of Corrections in 2010.

His deputy county manager, Terry Doolittle, was at the helm when county supervisors signed off on the ICE agreement in August 2006 at a daily rate of $59.64 per inmate — $11.36 less than the amount bond underwriters said was needed for the plan to work financially. Doolittle did not respond to a request for comment.

By then, a different sheriff was involved, too. Chris Vasquez, who had been chief deputy, took over for Vanderpool when he left in 2005 to become director of the Arizona Department of Public Safety under then-Gov. Janet Napolitano.

Vasquez hired 200 new jailers, more than doubling the previous force in time for the first set of immigration detainees to arrive in January 2007. The following fiscal year, which began that July, would mark the first time jail expenditures surpassed the projected $16 million in operating costs given to supervisors.

Nothing seemed amiss, except that the county wasn’t getting as many immigration detainees as planned, Vasquez said. “Anytime we talked about the ICE contract, I was always led to believe it was paying for itself, it was doing what they intended it to do,” he said.

Phillip Crawford oversaw ICE detention and removals in Phoenix in 2006 but wasn’t involved in the negotiations with Pinal County. He said all those talks happened at the national level. “Pinal County really wanted this contract,” said Crawford, who left ICE in 2007. “Many municipalities throughout the country would very much like to get an ICE contract because it’s a continuing revenue source for them.”

Rate change untouched

Sheriff Paul Babeu took over the department in January 2009 and, by year’s end, was appealing to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to help solve a “dramatic decrease” in immigration detainees being sent to the facility.

On average in 2009, they had 551 ICE inmates. There were fewer than 300 detainees that December.

“This reduction is not acceptable, given our partnership with ICE and our agreement to maintain 625 beds,” Babeu wrote in a letter to McCain that The Republic obtained through a records request. “It is not possible for PCSO Jail to maintain our current staffing levels or meet our debt service for the Jail Annex (built specifically for ICE Detainees).”

More than a dozen agencies in the state besides Pinal County had similar contract agreements with ICE, but with a per diem rate of $59.64, no one was giving the agency a better deal.

Less than 20 miles away, Corrections Corporation of America in Eloy was housing ICE detainees at a rate of $79.06; that figure included money for medical services, which Pinal County does not provide. The agency was using fewer beds in all its contracted jails, not just Pinal’s.

Detainees or no, the Pinal County jail continued to operate with a full staffing level of about 350 employees, which Babeu has contended is necessary to comply with the ICE agreement.

Among the contract requirements, detention staffers retrieve detainees from a nearby ICE processing facility twice daily and accompany detainees to medical appointments and emergency visits, which have spiked in recent months.

Early last year, Behring, the county manager, directed county finance staff to root out why the jail appeared to be hemorrhaging money. The audit he requested found that the county has been losing millions in potential revenue on one of its largest contracts.

The Sheriff’s Office spent $24 million on its jail operations in fiscal 2012, about $4 million more than it had the previous year. About half of the operating budget was spent on immigration-detainee services, according to recent audit estimates. ICE paid the county about $9.6 million that fiscal year.

Auditors also unearthed budget projections and other records created during negotiations, the sum of which indicate that former county administrators knew ICE was getting the best deal possible at the county’s expense.

Though county officials have had the ability to seek a rate adjustment for ballooning service costs or inflation since 2006 — years into the contract — it has gone nearly untouched except for a minor tweak in the language. The set rate of $59.26 per inmate per day hasn’t changed.

The Sheriff’s Office says the county’s financial system wasn’t conducive to tracking expenditures for certain groups of inmates. Although not a practice of the Sheriff’s Office in the first few years of the contract, the office has begun to track costs associated with the ICE service agreement.

Tim Gaffney, Babeu’s director of administration, said PCSO had no part in the contract’s neglect. The contract was brokered between the county and ICE, not ICE and PCSO, he said. “Ultimately, the county is responsible for ensuring all contracts are adhered to, as the Board of Supervisors are the only ones that can sign contracts for the County,” Gaffney said in an e-mail.

“The sheriff has voiced his concerns and asked for an increased budget to comply with the contract, yet the county hasn’t taken the steps to increase the budget or renegotiate with ICE.”

Gaffney said PCSO will take a supporting role in the county’s future talks with ICE. Behring said ICE officials have agreed to negotiate a rate adjustment after April 1, when a federal budget freeze has been lifted. The county hopes to negotiate a rate that lets them break even on housing detainees.

Bond-violation penalty

Behring said the timing of the IRS audit is coincidental. At issue is whether Pinal County has violated the terms of its 2004 bond issue, in which investors purchased tax-exempt bond certificates.

“The principle is you’re a not-for-profit organization, so people can invest in these bonds and they can get interest on these bonds and they won’t be taxed on the interest,” said Leo Lew, county budget director.

“So, it’s attractive from an investors point of view. That being the case, they would assume you’re going to build the jail, but you’re not going to make money on it. Once you start going down the road of making money on it from federal prisoners, the IRS says, ‘Hey, you’re contracting out business and acting like a business entity.’”

Which would make sense, Lew said, if the county were actually making a profit. “We’re saying ‘Hey, we’re losing money,’” Lew said. “These (bonds) are tax-exempt because we haven’t made any money, and we haven’t been using proceeds to cover debt service because we can’t even cover our operating costs.”

If the IRS finds the bonds were issued improperly, the county could face a $5.3 million fine. The other option could be that the county has to reissue the bond as taxable debt and use the proceeds to pay off earlier investors. An attorney hired by the county is in talks with IRS agents. County administrators say they will have a better idea of their next move once the IRS makes a decision.

Sheriff Joe's murderers cost us another $550,000

$550K settlement OK’d for family of Arizona inmate

By JJ Hensley The Arizona Republic Mon Feb 11, 2013 11:10 AM

County supervisors approved a $550,000 settlement offer for the family of an inmate who died after an altercation with jail detention officers and Phoenix police near the booking area of the Fourth Avenue Jail in late 2011.

But the family’s lawyer said the county’s “offer of judgment” is a procedural step that will not keep the family from going to trial.

Ernest “Marty” Atencio, 44, died five days after the altercation took place. Atencio’s family filed a lawsuit last fall that noted the jail system’s repeated failures to offer adequate medical care for inmates and treatment for the mentally ill in jail.

The family had previously filed a notice of claim offering to settle for $20 million.

Mike Manning, an attorney representing Atencio’s surviving family members, said the county’s decision could impact the amount of money awarded to the family following a trial if a jury’s verdict comes back in the family’s favor, but will not prevent the family from moving forward with the lawsuit.

“This was a complete unilateral act on their part, it had nothing to do with us,” Manning said.

Manning said the two sides are still going through the discovery process and a trial date has not been set.

The elected officials approved the settlement offer on a 4-0 vote Monday morning, with Supervisor Denny Barney absent from the meeting.

Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox said she approved the offer because she wants to move forward “and see if we can settle this case.”

Atencio was jailed on assault allegations in mid-December 2011. He died at a hospital five days later following a scuffle with officers in which Atencio was struck several times and shocked near his heart with a Taser, according to the lawsuit. Atencio’s family has called the incident a “jailers’ riot”.

The family’s lawsuit claimed he was exhibiting signs of mental illness. Police reports, which mention that Atencio would become distracted and attempt to chase cars while talking to officers, support that claim.

But jail health-care workers failed to recognize Atencio’s signs of mental illness, according to the lawsuit, denying him the medical treatment he needed and sending him through the booking process where officers allegedly made fun of Atencio’s mental state before becoming physically engaged with him.

The Maricopa County Medical Examiner last year issued a report that concluded that Atencio died of cardiac arrest, acute psychosis, medical problems and “law-enforcement subdual,” but the report did not list a manner of death.

The absence of a manner of death- such as homicide or natural causes- in the Medical Examiner’s report was notable, Manning said.

“It was conspicuous that he didn’t list homicide,” Manning said. “The law-enforcement subdual did it.”

Sheriff Joe - Don't blame me for this f*ck up!!!!

MCSO report: Blame the system for botched sex-crime cases

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MCSO report: Blame the system for botched sex-crime cases

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Feb 12, 2013 12:14 AM

A five-year investigation that produced nearly 10,000 pages of documents draws no clear conclusion on who is to blame for hundreds of botched sex-crime investigations by the Maricopa County sheriff’s special-victims unit.

The Sheriff’s Office on Monday released results of its long-running probe into why the unit mishandled sex-crime cases. It concluded that no single person was responsible for systemic failures that resulted in hundreds of cases being reopened.

Last year, an Arizona Republic investigation into the 400-plus reopened cases revealed that the Sheriff’s Office failed to adequately investigate reports of sex abuse and assault — in some cases never interviewing suspects or running background checks on known offenders.

Some sex-crime complaints were completely ignored. In other cases, files were later found gathering dust in a drawer or in a deputy’s garage. Those shortcomings, combined with lengthy delays in resolving cases, left alleged predators free to find other victims — sometimes for years.

The report concluded that detectives who failed to file reports or who improperly stored evidence at home were no more responsible for flawed investigations than supervisors who failed to check log books or who signed off on incomplete case-clearance sheets.

“The deficiencies identified ... were not problems that stemmed from the conduct of one or a few individuals. Rather, I have determined that ... the MCSO sex-crimes unit was inadequately resourced to complete its tasks. The systemic problem could not then, and cannot now, be properly addressed or corrected by disciplining a few individuals,” sheriff’s Deputy Chief Brian Sands wrote last week to detectives at the center of the internal investigation.

An agency spokesman declined to comment on the report, providing instead a statement noting “corrective actions” the Sheriff’s Office has taken since the problems first came to light in late 2007.

“The internal investigation shows that the problems were not unique to this agency and were systemic in nature,” the statement read. “It is the policy of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office to seek continual improvement in all its operations.”

As part of the sheriff’s efforts to resolve problems in the unit, investigators reopened more than 400 cases from 2002 through 2008.

Delays may have led to some cases never being prosecuted. For example, the Sheriff’s Office delayed for five years an investigation into an allegation against a convicted rapist. While the inquiry was on hold, another agency received an allegation that the same suspect had assaulted a teenage girl. In another case, the Sheriff’s Office ignored for a year one girl’s allegation that a horse trainer had molested her. The suspect was accused of molesting three more girls before being indicted.

The investigation laid some of the blame for those flawed cases on Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s former chief deputy, David Hendershott, who ran the office’s day-to-day operations until his ouster for alleged misconduct in 2011. After his departure, Hendershott was blamed for many failures during his tenure.

The internal investigation refers often to Hendershott, saying he ignored concerns about staffing in the unit responsible for sex-crime investigations.

In response to similar allegations stemming from The Republic series, Hendershott said the chiefs of the agency’s various divisions set staffing levels.

“Once we learned of the problems, the sheriff and I did everything right,” he said.

Notes in Monday’s report cast doubt on when sheriff’s administrators first learned of staffing issues and other problems in the unit. The report states that questions arose in November 2007 about the quality of the unit’s work. Concerns came after El Mirage police reviewed cases that deputies had worked while the Sheriff’s Office was under contract as the West Valley community’s primary law-enforcement agency.

But the report includes a July 2006 e-mail string between the unit’s supervisors that mentions problems the unit was having in El Mirage.

The Republic’s series determined the flawed investigations were not limited to El Mirage. They occurred Valley-wide, with dozens in Mesa, Queen Creek and Litchfield Park.

The sheriff’s investigative report also blames Hendershott for failure to approve overtime or shift resources to aid the overtaxed unit. The Republic reported that, in fiscal 2007, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors approved $600,000 for new positions that could have eased the caseload for sex-crimes detectives.

Sheriff’s administrators have said they have no explanation for what became of those positions, and the investigative report does not reveal where the positions went. But the report notes the impact it could have had on the unit’s five investigators, each carrying workloads of 55 to 60 cases. The new positions would have reduced those caseloads to fewer than 30 per detective, according to the report.

Records released with the report indicate investigators initially sought suspensions for several supervisors and detectives in the unit, sending each letters that identified the violations of office policy and corresponding punishment.

But at least one of the division’s former supervisors, Lt. Kim Seagraves, who was a sergeant in the unit from June 2006 until February 2008, made clear that she would legally fight any attempt to hold her responsible for the unit’s failures.

“I made improvements within the unit and made recommendations requiring additional staffing to meet the needs of the unit but was continually denied. In fact, I was told to ‘shut ... up’ about it,” Seagraves wrote. “I would challenge any objectively reasonable person to point out where it is demonstrated that those deficiencies were a result of any negligence on my behalf, as opposed to the identified staffing deficiencies.”

As part of the report, Sands explained the steps the Sheriff’s Office has taken to address shortcomings: increasing the number of supervisors and detectives, collaborating with other law-enforcement and emergency-services agencies on sex-crime investigations at a West Valley family-advocacy center, and purchasing new equipment to help investigators and administrators better track cases.

Another reason, or two, for an Arpaio recall

Another reason, or two, for an Arpaio recall

Now you know why there is a recall effort against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

You’re probably seen news articles about a group of local activists (RecallArpaio.com) hoping to get enough petition signatures to force a recall election for Sheriff Arpaio, which seems odd given the fact that Arpaio was just reelected in November.

Why the recall so soon after an election?

Well, one reason might be the fact that county supervisors just approved a $550,000 settlement offer for the family of Ernest “Marty” Atencio, 44, who died days after an altercation with jail detention officers and Phoenix police.

It’s just the latest in a long, long line of such cases, with millions in payouts and too many deaths. And the fact that supervisors approved the money doesn’t necessarily mean that Atencio’s family will accept it. They could take the case to court.

And that’s not all.

Another reason for the recall just might be the more than 400 sex-crimes cases from throughout the county that were reported to the Sheriff’s Office between 2002 and 2008 but were not investigated. Or given only the most cursory look. The sheriff’s office is only now releasing the 10,000 pages of documents related to its internal investigation into that horror.

The recent election hasn’t eased the pain of the ignored victims or their families. It hasn’t lessened the ire of those pursuing a recall.

The attorney for the Atencio family is Michael Manning, who has represented a number of clients against the sheriff.

The revelations from such cases, along with a number of huge settlements, haven’t prevented Arpaio from being reelected.

Prior to the November election, Manning told me. “But if you step back on all the cases we have handled and you overlay them with the 400 uninvestigated sex crimes, and the attacks on the judiciary, and all the other problems in the Sheriff’s Office, you hope that people, voters, will see what is going on under this sheriff’s watch, and see what the victims went through. You hope that speaks to people. Wakes them up.”

Not yet.

But if enough signatures are collected, maybe they’ll wake up … next time.

Phoenix government to force you to love your neighbor????

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Phoenix hearing to focus on discrimination ordinance

By Dustin Gardiner The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Feb 11, 2013 10:09 PM

Phoenix will hold a public hearing Tuesday night on proposed changes to its discrimination ordinance, including protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender residents.

The city is considering amending the law to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity or expression. Discrimination would be prohibited in the areas of housing, employment and public accommodations, such as restaurants or hotels.

City code currently offers no such safeguards, excluding city workers. State and federal laws don’t provide protections.

Leaders also proposed outlawing discrimination against disabled people in employment and public accommodations. Federal law gives protections in these areas, so the change would not have as much impact. The hearing will be held at 5:30p.m. at the Adams Street Training Center, 304 W. Adams St.

Will Tom Horne-inspired bill to punish cheating politicians die?

Will Tom Horne-inspired bill to punish cheating politicians die?

On Tuesday, our leaders in the Senate Education Committee will hear a little bill I like to call the Tom Horne Cheaters Should Never (Again) Prosper plan.

Or, as it turns out, will they?

Sen. Steve Gallardo says his proposal has been gutted, eliminating any hope of punishing politicians who blatantly ignore campaign finance laws in order to boost themselves into public office.

“If you’re doing something illegally, why aren’t you being held accountable for it?” the Phoenix Democrat asked.

It’s an excellent question. Sadly, as we have seen in recent years, trying to hold public officials accountable is a little like trying to hold Jello.

It’s squishy and sticky and it generally leaves you with a mess on your shoes.

Gallardo’s bill is aimed at making sure that never again do we see a repeat of the Tom Horne affair. (And by affair, I mean his questionable campaign-finance activities.)

Last fall, Horne was accused of creating what amounts to a phony independent-campaign committee — where there are no contribution limits — to raise a quick $500,000 to bury Felecia Rotellini in the final days of the 2010 attorney general’s race. State law forbids candidates from having any involvement with independent campaigns.

Horne, who contends the Business Leaders for Arizona campaign was truly independent, wasn’t charged with so much as a misdemeanor because apparently, it isn’t a crime to cheat your way into office in Arizona.

Instead, Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said the best that he could do was to pursue a civil fine. He vowed at the time to lobby for stronger campaign-finance laws and in January he called Gallardo’s bill “a really good start.”

Gallardo’s Senate Bill 1197 would make it a class-five felony both for a candidate to coordinate with an independent campaign and for the person running an independent campaign to coordinate with the candidate.

Gallardo says Senate Elections Committee Chairman Michele Reagan told him last week that the bill needed to be “tweaked” and that it would likely be reintroduced as a strike-everything amendment to another bill.

Reagan, R-Scottsdale, says Gallardo’s bill was assigned to two committees rather than one, making it more difficult to get through the Senate. So she says she asked Sen. Robert Meza, D-Phoenix, to amend Gallardo’s bill onto his own SB 1336 – which, I must point out, is also assigned to two committees.

“I think it’s a great bill,” Reagan told me, of Gallardo’s proposal. “I was trying to find a vehicle that would have more of a chance so I found one late last week and we were rushing, trying to get everything posted in time. We had the county attorney review the language because there was some stuff in Gallardo’s bill that they were like, that wouldn’t work.”

The county attorney’s office, however, says it supports Gallardo’s bill as written and opposes the watered-down version being heard this afternoon.

Gallardo’s bill creates a criminal penalty for both independent committees and politicians who thumb their noses at the law requiring independent campaigns to actually be independent. Meza’s bill creates a criminal penalty only for the independent committees, leaving politicans ollie ollie oxen free.

Meza says he took out the part about holding politicians accountable.

“My gut told me if I include that part the bill does not get heard,” he said.

There’s certainly ample historical evidence to support his gut.

But here’s the curious thing. Meza says his bill was never intended to hold the Tom Hornes of the world accountable. He’s only after the independent committees, which he believes are blatantly ignoring the law and giving money to candidates.

It’s a good measure – a good half measure, that is. But why not insist on accountability all around?

“We are protecting bad candidates, candidates that now are able to orchestrate these IE’s (independent-expenditure campaigns) on their behalf and walk away without getting punished for doing it,” Gallardo said. “We are rewarding bad actors, that’s exactly what we’re doing. We’re rewarding bad actors.”

Reagan, meanwhile, says the bill can be changed.

“If there are things that aren’t right in it,” she said, “we have the ability to make it right.”

That’s certainly good to hear. My mother always told me that cheaters never prosper.

Or, as it turns out, do they?

The Senate Elections Committee meets at 2 p.m. Tuesday.

4th & 5th Amendments null and void in Arizona???

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Ex-Phoenix officer in sex case fighting HIV-test order

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Feb 9, 2013 10:14 PM

It was almost an afterthought when a Maricopa County Superior Court judge ordered former Phoenix police Officer Christopher J. Wilson to submit to an HIV test while he awaited trial on allegations of sexual misconduct with a minor.

The law allowing judges to order such tests for defendants suspected of certain crimes has been in place for about 20 years, and they are routinely submitted without legal challenges.

But Wilson chose to fight it. His first challenge was rejected in Superior Court, but his attorney, Robert Campos, said he plans to file an appeal with the Arizona Supreme Court, arguing that forcing Wilson to submit to the test without an evidentiary hearing amounts to a violation of his client’s constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

“My argument to the judge was, I think we need a hearing, just like we have lots of hearings on motions to suppress. ... I was saying, ‘Based on the charges alone, you don’t have enough facts to support this request that there was significant exposure,’” Campos said.

The County Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the case because of the pending legal action.

The law came about in the mid-1990s during a time when the justice system was increasingly focused on victims’ rights.

Though the HIV-testing statute was not a part of Arizona’s voter-approved Victims’ Bill of Rights, the statute was added shortly thereafter as a way to ensure victims of sex crimes would not be further harmed by unknowingly carrying a disease or infection, said former Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley, whose tenure coincided with the increased awareness of victims’ rights.

Wilson, 44, was indicted last year on 10 counts of sexual conduct with a minor, including four that were classified as dangerous crimes against children because of the victim’s age.

Wilson allegedly performed sex acts on two boys and participated in a sexual act with the 14- and 17-year-old together at the older boy’s apartment, according to court documents.

Court records indicate that Wilson, a 13-year Phoenix police veteran who was serving as the department’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered liaison, admitted to the sexual contact during an interview with detectives after he was advised of his Miranda rights.

Arizona’s law allows a judge to order defendants suspected of committing sexual offenses to submit to tests for sexually transmitted infections and HIV, or for the prosecutor to request the tests on behalf of victims.

The law also outlines what constitutes a sexual offense — Wilson’s alleged conduct qualifies — and details “significant exposure,” to include blood and bodily fluids “other than tears, saliva or perspiration” at a level scientists have shown allow for the transmission of infections.

Ron Reinstein, retired Superior Court judge and former prosecutor who once headed the county attorney’s sex-crimes division, said the court orders were not often challenged during his time on the bench, but when they were, the rulings had a common theme.

“The objection was it was an invasion of privacy, kind of like drawing blood. But I think every single time that this came up the decision was, ‘This is not usable in a criminal case,’” Reinstein recalled, noting that the orders are not meant to punish the suspect, and only the health department, victim and suspect should be aware of the results.

“It’s more ameliorative for the victim, and, in a way, also for the defendant who might not have known that they have it,” he said.

Just about every other state has similar laws, with variations on who can request the tests and the length of time charges must be pending before a suspect can be ordered to submit to the test.

There have been challenges in other states, too, largely along the same legal lines. A similar law was enacted in Utah in 2011 despite the protests of the American Civil Liberties Union there, which argued that the test could provide faulty information — and false hope — to an assault victim whose actual attacker was not the person police had in custody.

The group also argued the tests would subject defendants to loss of privacy and stigmatization.

Campos, Wilson’s attorney, said he plans to file the appeal following a hearing scheduled for later this month and is well aware of the arguments and case law working against him.

But the required testing has much in common with a case the U.S. Supreme Court will take up about mandatory DNA testing for suspects, both of which raise questions about what comes of the information if those suspects are later acquitted, he said.

Campos has no issue with post-conviction tests, but he said there is no need to rush a suspect to submit to the procedure.

“Peace of mind of the victim should not trump a citizen’s right to be presumed innocent and not have to be forced to STD testing,” he said. “Our system is moving towards a real presumption of guilt until proven innocent. Upon arrest, defendants are being tested and cataloged. Nothing is done to expunge the record if you are found innocent. This is why I think it important to fight the testing on behalf of my client.”

Sheriff Joe Arpaio still covering up in sex-crime cases

Sheriff Joe Arpaio still covering up in sex-crime cases

Posted on February 12, 2013 8:39 am by Laurie Roberts

At long last, The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office is releasing the report on why it bungled more than 400 sex crimes, many of them involving children.

Reports stashed on dust shelves while rapists were free to pursue new victims. Reports stuffed under desks and in garages while perverts walked free.

The internal investigative report, released at 3 p.m. Monday, is 10,000 pages which will take awhile for reporters to digest. But already a couple of outrageous things are clear:

1. Sheriff Joe Arpaio seems to think he can keep the report under wraps — or at least make it more difficult for the public to see. He’s charging $5,000 for a copy of this public document. Or, you can go sit over at the the sheriff’s office and read it. The sheriff could put the thing on a flash drive or a CD and sell it for $10, as the Department of Economic Security does for its lengthy reports. That Arpaio isn’t doing that tells me something and it should tell you something, too. Remember, these are PUBLIC documents and you are entitled to view them. It shouldn’t cost $5,000.

And 2. Deputy Chief Brian Sands says the sex-crimes unit was understaffed and thus no one was to blame for the ignored cases, which spanned from 2002 to 2008. Really, he says that.

“The deficiencies identified …were not problems that stemmed from the conduct of one or a few individuals,” he wrote. “Rather, I have determined that … MCSO was inadequately resourced to complete its tasks. The systemic problem could not then, and cannot now, be properly addressed or corrected by disciplining a few individuals.”

The systemic problem, as he calls it, occurred for six years and it happened right under the nose of Arpaio, who was busy deploying his troops not in search of rapists who prey on children but on dishwashers and cooks who snuck into the country and on political vendettas which are now costing us millions in legal settlements.

The deficiencies identified, Chief Sands, were problems that stemmed from the conduct of one or a few individuals. One, in particular, who didn’t have control over his then-chief deputy (Dave Henderschott) or his office.

What’s that old saying…the buck stops here?

How sad that we don’t have a sheriff who even now, can acknowledge the fact that he failed these children and in so doing, failed us all.

Dorner manhunt: Officers opened fire on mother, daughter

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Dorner manhunt: Officers opened fire on mother, daughter

February 9, 2013 | 7:47 am

In their pursuit of a fugitive ex-cop, at least seven officers opened fire on what turned out to be a mother and daughter delivering newspapers on a quiet residential street, law enforcement sources told The Times.

It was "a tragic misinterpretation" by officers working under "incredible tension," LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said Friday in an interview with The Times. Margie Carranza, 47, and her mother, Emma Hernandez, 71, were the victims.

Early Thursday morning, Christopher Jordan Dorner, 33, allegedly shot three police officers, one fatally. And, in an online posting authorities attributed to him, Dorner threatened to kill more police and seemed to take responsibility for the slaying over the weekend of the daughter of a retired LAPD captain and her fiance.

Then around 5 a.m. Thursday in Torrance, police from nearby El Segundo saw a pickup truck exit a freeway and head in the general direction of the Redbeam Avenue residence of a high-ranking Los Angeles police official, which was being guarded by a group of LAPD officers.

A radio call indicated that the truck matched the description of Dorner's gray Nissan Titan. As the vehicle approached the house, officers opened fire, unloading a barrage of bullets into the back of the truck. When the shooting stopped, they quickly realized their mistake. The truck was not a Nissan Titan, but a Toyota Tacoma. The color wasn't gray, but aqua blue. And it wasn't Dorner inside the truck, but Carranza and her mother delivering copies of the Los Angeles Times.

Beck and others stressed that the investigation into the shooting was in its infancy. They declined to say how many officers were involved, what kind of weapons they used, how many bullets were fired and, perhaps most important, what kind of verbal warnings — if any — were given to the women before the shooting began.

"How do you mistake two Hispanic women, one who is 71, for a large, black male?" said Richard Goo, 62, who counted five bullet holes in the entryway to his house.

Glen T. Jonas, the attorney representing the women, said the police officers gave "no commands, no instructions and no opportunity to surrender" before opening fire. He described a terrifying encounter in which the pair were in the early part of their delivery route through several South Bay communities. Hernandez was in the back seat handing papers to her daughter, who was driving. Carranza would briefly slow the truck to throw papers on driveways and front walks.

As bullets tore through the cabin, the two women "covered their faces and huddled down," Jonas said. "They felt like it was going on forever."

Hernandez was shot twice in her back and is expected to recover. Her daughter escaped with only minor wounds from broken glass.

Beck said he had not yet received a detailed briefing, which typically occurs a few days after officer-involved shootings to give investigators time to collect evidence and put together the basic summary of what happened. But he did say that the gunfire occurred in two bursts: The first came from an officer positioned down the block from the LAPD official's residence, and the second when Carranza accelerated away from the gunfire and toward other officers.

After the investigation is completed, Beck and an oversight board will decide if officers were justified in the shooting or made mistakes that warrant either punishment or training.

Mexicans - Papers Please, you are in Peoria!!!!

Peoria traffic checkpoint stirs inquiry, ire

By D.S. Woodfill and Daniel González The Arizona Republic-12 News , Breaking News Team Tue Feb 12, 2013 7:10 AM

A traffic checkpoint two weeks ago in Peoria at which 11 people were detained by federal immigration agents has led the city’s police chief to order an internal inquiry and continues to draw criticism from Latino leaders.

The checkpoint, police said, was intended as a commercial-vehicle safety inspection. But it ensnared private motorists, too, and drew cries of racial profiling from immigration-rights activists.

Immigration officials said 10 of 11 immigrants detained were released.

Of those, five will have to go before an immigration judge. One already had a pending court hearing. And one is still being detained and will be deported because the person had re-entered the country after previously being deported.

The operation, which jammed traffic on Grand Avenue near Peoria Avenue, triggered finger-pointing between police and state transportation officials over who was in charge. Peoria eventually acknowledged after further review of the incident that, unbeknownst to department leadership, an officer helping to plan the operation requested officials check private vehicle registrations.

The checkpoint came about four months after section 2B of SB 1070 took effect, which requires police to look into a person’s immigration status if there is reasonable suspicion he or she is in the country illegally.

“It was a de facto immigration checkpoint,” said Lydia Guzman, executive director of the Hispanic activist group Respeto.

ICE officials said the agency does not conduct immigration checkpoints and were on scene at the request of the Arizona Department of Transportation. A team of two agents and a van was on hand to help check the immigration status of motorists suspected of being in the country illegally.

Peoria Police Chief Roy Minter said officials are conducting an inquiry into the operation to find out why police stopped and checked the vehicle registrations of private motorists.

“That operations plan did not state anything about a vehicle registration compliance checkpoint,” Minter said.

Minter said he learned about the private-vehicle checks when he got a late-night call from the city manager who asked why traffic was backed up. Minter then sent his deputy chief to the scene.

That official shut down the registration checks.

Guzman said she’s taking the chief’s word at face value but still believes it was an immigration checkpoint.

“When they check every single vehicle and there’s an ICE agent at that stop, that’s what it is,” she said.

Since the checkpoint, Minter has met with immigrant-rights activists, including Guzman.

Police officials have since started to give back the 17 impounded vehicles to their owners as a “gesture of good will” by waiving all department-imposed fees.

Drivers had to have licenses and registered owners had to be present when picking up the vehicles.

However, police spokeswoman Amanda Jacinto said, “We can’t undo citations.”

ICE said it has assisted ADOT at commercial-vehicle safety inspections for years, but it’s not clear if past checkpoints included private motorists.

Lino Garcia Paulino said he was one of the people detained at the Jan. 29 checkpoint. Paulino, who was with his pregnant wife, was in jail for a week before a friend paid his $3,000 bail. Paulino plans to fight any charge. His wife was let go after she told agents she was in the process of applying for residency.

Paulino is still trying to get his car back from police and has missed work selling corn.

“I need my car to get around,” he said. “My wife is pregnant and I need to have a car for anything that may come up. She doesn’t have a car and doesn’t know how to drive.”

Alessandra Soler, executive director of the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said ICE’s presence at such checkpoints is “contrary to their stated priorities of focusing on the most serious threats to public safety,” such as people with outstanding warrants and deportation orders.

Soler said if 11 people were detained, many more were likely questioned about their immigration status.

“I’m sure that people of color were disproportionately questioned,” she said. “What if I forgot my driver’s license? I would have been sent over to ICE and would have been detained.”

Republic reporter Eddi Trevizo contributed to this article.

Understaffing cited in botched sex-crime probes by Arpaio's office

Source

Understaffing cited in botched sex-crime probes by Arpaio's office

Posted: Tuesday, February 12, 2013 8:37 am

Associated Press

A report examining more than 400 sex-crime cases that were inadequately investigated or not looked into at all by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office attributes the failures to understaffing and mismanagement, including hundreds of pieces of evidence intended for storage that were instead left in offices or taken home by detectives.

The internal affairs report released Monday blamed officers on Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's sex-crimes squad for some failures and noted the squad was "overworked and understaffed." But the report said officials were rescinding earlier letters that threatened to discipline the officers in question.

"This systematic problem could not then, and cannot now, be properly addressed or corrected by disciplining a few individuals," Arpaio aide Brian Sands wrote in a new letter Monday to one of the squad members. Sands wrote that officers fell short in their duties because they were assigned an overwhelming volume of complex, time-consuming cases to investigate. The squad had too few detectives, and budget restrictions limited overtime hours.

The report also attributed the failures to detectives marking cases as cleared when investigations were still under way, and to a supervisor who didn't use the agency's case tracking system and instead relied a written log that often lacked key information and made it virtually impossible to determine the status of each case.

According to the report, a box containing 47 pieces of evidence was found underneath a sex-crimes detective's desk. If the box hadn't been found — an internal investigator looked for it for two weeks — prosecutors could have been forced to drop all charges against a suspect, the report said.

When another detective was transferred out of the sex-crimes squad, he took a box of evidence home with him, the report said. The detective stored the box in his garage for a while before moving it to a locker at his patrol district office. He claimed the original copies were in evidence storage, according to the report.

The sheriff's office issued a statement Monday saying it worked to correct the problems once they were pointed out.

"The internal investigation shows that the problems were not unique to this agency and were systemic in nature," the agency said. The statement didn't address the issue of understaffing.

In November 2011, the sheriff's office sent letters to former sex-crimes squad supervisor Kim Seagraves and four other people who served on the squad, saying the agency was considering suspending them for alleged incompetency, neglect of duty and other conduct violations. But on Monday, the sheriff's office sent the officers a new letter saying it was rescinding the previous letter that threatened to discipline them. Seagraves' attorney, Kathryn Baillie, declined to comment on the report.

The internal investigation was launched in May 2008 after the city of El Mirage, which paid Arpaio's office for police services, said it discovered at least 32 reported child molestations in which the sheriff's office failed to follow through, even though suspects were known in all but six cases.

El Mirage, a heavily Hispanic community near Phoenix, alleged there were many cases in which sheriff's investigators wrote no follow-up reports, collected no additional forensic evidence and made no effort after the initial crime report was taken.

Arpaio's office eventually reopened more than 400 of its sex-crime cases countywide after finding they were inadequately investigated or not examined at all. The botched investigations have been an embarrassment to a department whose sheriff is the self-described "America's toughest sheriff" and a national hero to conservatives on immigration issues.

Arpaio apologized in December 2011 for the bungled cases, and his office has since said it has moved to clear up the cases and taken steps to prevent the problem from happening again.

The internal investigation launched in May 2008 was stopped after its investigator was pulled away at the direction of David Hendershott, Arpaio's then-top aide, to help with another matter. The probe was reopened in December 2010 while Hendershott was on medical leave.

The botched investigations were mentioned in a lawsuit by the U.S. Justice Department that alleges a range of civil rights violations in Arpaio's immigration patrols and jails.

The Justice Department accused the sheriff's office of failing to adequately respond to reports of sexual violence and focusing intensively on low-level immigration offenses over more serious crime. Arpaio's office has denied the allegations.

Arpaio's critics used the bungled investigations to hammer on the sheriff last year as he was campaigning for a sixth term. He was forced to plow millions of dollars into the race to fend off the challenge. In the end, Arpaio won by a six-point margin.

Last month, a group launched a campaign to call a recall election against the six-term sheriff.

Arizona AG Tom Horne wants his hit and run case tossed

Source

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne wants traffic case tossed

Associated Press Wed Feb 13, 2013 5:10 PM

PHOENIX — Lawyers for Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne asked a judge Wednesday to dismiss a misdemeanor hit-and-run case against him, arguing he’s being singled out for prosecution and FBI agents who witnessed the incident while tailing him are refusing to answer questions.

A court filing obtained by The Associated Press accused the FBI’s top agent in Arizona of personally calling Phoenix Police Chief Daniel V. Garcia and asking him to investigate after FBI agents tailing Horne saw him back into another vehicle and leave. Horne’s lawyer, Michael D. Kimerer, wrote in his court filing that police did so even though it violated their own written policy of not investigating cases involving less than $5,000 in private property damage.

Kimerer wrote that singling out Horne for prosecution violates the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection clause. The only logical explanation for doing so when others are not investigated or prosecuted for similar crimes is that Horne is an elected official.

Horne is accused in Phoenix city court of not stopping or leaving a note after he backed a borrowed car he was driving into another vehicle. FBI reports released by Phoenix police in October say he left the scene because he was having an affair with a female employee who was in the car and he didn’t want their relationship to be reported.

Horne has declined comment on allegations of an affair and repeatedly said he didn’t know he had caused any damage. He declined comment Wednesday, referring instead to the court filing.

The agents who were following Horne in March 2012 had apparently been doing so during the course of a campaign finance investigation, although agents interviewed by Kimerer refused to say that was the case.

The FBI waited seven months before notifying Phoenix police, until after the Maricopa County attorney’s office filed civil charges in the campaign finance case.

“It just shows animus the way they pursued this,” Kimerer said in an interview. “They were just rabid to get him.”

In the campaign finance case, Horne and employee Kathleen Winn are accused of illegally coordinating with an independent expenditure committee during the 2010 election. Horne is appealing Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery’s findings that Horne illegally coordinated his 2010 campaign with a group that was supposed to be operating independently. The group aired television advertising critical of Horne’s general election opponent.

Montgomery is demanding that Horne’s 2010 campaign and the other group, Business Leaders for Arizona, return up to $513,000 of contributions. There also could be large civil fines.

Because of the alleged coordination, the contributions made to a group headed by a Horne ally who now works in his office actually were contributions that exceeded campaign finance limits on money given to candidates, Montgomery said. Candidates aren’t allowed to discuss strategy or other matters with so-called independent expenditure committees, but there’s evidence that Horne was involved in both raising money and deciding how to spend it on advertising by Business Leaders for Arizona, Montgomery said in October.

Horne, a lawyer who is the top-elected law enforcement official for the state, denied any coordination. He had been considering running for governor but now says he’ll seek re-election in 2014.

Tempe cops seize 1,761 fake IDs on Mill Ave

Source

Tempe police: 1,761 fake IDs seized on Mill Avenue in 2012

By Jackee Coe The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Feb 13, 2013 4:44 PM

The Tempe Police Department and businesses on Mill Avenue seized more than 1,750 fake identifications from underage people last year, authorities said.

They seized 1,761 fake IDs from people trying to get into bars, clubs and other businesses on Mill Avenue that sell alcohol, Tempe Police Department spokeswoman Molly Enright said.

Mill Cue Club had the most seizures, with 378, followed by School of Rock Mill Ave club with 285, according to police data. Rounding out the top five were Canteen Tequila Bar with 194; Firehouse Tempe, which opened Sept. 12, with 149; and Vintage Lounge and Grill with 136.

School of Rock Mill Ave, Mill Cue Club and Canteen were the top three locations for arrests, with 54, 31 and 14, respectively.

The total number of cards seized last year is the lowest in the last three years. There were 2,138 seized in 2011, and 1,926 seized in 2010.

The Police Department and businesses in downtown Tempe work together each year to prevent underage people from using fake IDs, Enright said. Officers provide training to staff and management on current trends and how to spot fake IDs.

Enright said the number of fake ID cards seized last year illustrate “the commitment and dedication by the management of Tempe businesses to follow the law and prevent the serious consequences that can result from underage drinking.”

“We want to send a clear message that the person to whom you hand your ID is trained in the area of falsified identification detection,” she said. “Those using a fake identification can be arrested and fined.”

Drug War is a jobs program for cops????

Arizona court ruling upholds DUI test for marijuana

If people are not drunk or stoned it doesn't make any sense to arrest them for DWI or DUI. Well unless you want to create a jobs program for cops. And raise lots of cash for the government, because now each and every DUI ticket results in about a minimum of a $2,000 fine.

Under Arizona law if you have ANY detectable, or microscopic illegal drug in your body you are automatically considered guilty of DUI or DWI.

Well except for medical marijuana patients. Prop 203 requires the cops to prove they are actually stoned before writing them DUI tickets.

Source

Arizona court ruling upholds DUI test for marijuana

Associated Press Wed Feb 13, 2013 5:10 PM

PHOENIX — An appeals court has issued a ruling that upholds the right of authorities to prosecute pot smokers in Arizona for driving under the influence even when there is no evidence that they are actually high.

The ruling by the Court of Appeals focuses on the chemical compounds in marijuana that show up in blood and urine tests after people smoke pot. One chemical compound causes drivers to be impaired; another is a chemical that stays in people’s systems for weeks after they’ve smoked marijuana but doesn’t affect impairment.

The court ruled that both compounds apply to Arizona law, meaning a driver doesn’t have to actually be impaired to get prosecuted for DUI. As long as there is evidence of marijuana in their system, they can get a DUI, the court said.

The ruling overturns a decision by a lower court judge who said it didn’t make sense to prosecute a person with no evidence they’re under the influence.

The lower court judge cited the proliferation of states easing their marijuana laws, but the Court of Appeals ruling issued Tuesday dismissed that by saying Arizona’s medical marijuana law is irrelevant regarding DUI.

The Legislature adopted the decades-old comprehensive DUI law to protect public safety, so a provision on prohibited substances and their resulting chemical compounds should be interpreted broadly to include inactive compounds as well as active ones, the Court of Appeals said.

The case stems from a 2010 traffic stop in Maricopa County. The motorist’s blood test revealed only a chemical compound that is found in the blood after another compound produced from ingesting marijuana breaks down.

According to testimony by a prosecution criminalist, the compound found in the man’s blood doesn’t impair the ability to drive but can remain detectable for four weeks.

The man’s lawyer argued Arizona’s DUI law bars only marijuana and “its metabolite,” so only the first derivative compound that actually impairs drivers is prohibited.

Two lower court judges agreed, with one upholding the other’s dismissal of the case against the motorist, Hrach Shilgevorkyan.

Superior Court Commissioner Myra Harris’ ruling noted that several states have decriminalized pot, and that a growing number of states, including Arizona, have legalized medical marijuana.

“Residents of these states, particularly those geographically near Arizona, are likely to travel to Arizona,” Harris said in her 2012 ruling upholding the dismissal. “It would be irrational for Arizona to prosecute a defendant for an act that might have occurred outside of Arizona several weeks earlier.”

However, the Court of Appeals sided with prosecutors who appealed, saying that allowing the testing for marijuana’s active compound would unduly restrict law enforcement.

The ruling said it serves the Legislature’s intention to have a flat ban on driving under the influence to interpret the DUI law’s reference to a prohibited substance and “its metabolite” as covering both a substance’s active and inactive compounds.

Michael Alarid III, a lawyer for Shilgevorkyan, said he’ll ask the Arizona Supreme Court to consider an appeal.

He added the testing issue is increasingly important because people legally using pot in two Western states — Washington and Colorado — that last year approved marijuana decriminalization laws could be convicted of DUI if arrested while driving in Arizona weeks later.

Sheriff: Christopher Dorner Cabin not purposely burned down???

Source

Sheriff: Cabin not purposely burned in firefight

GREG RISLING, Associated Press, By GREG RISLING and TAMI ABDOLLAH, Associated Press

Updated 5:49 pm, Wednesday, February 13, 2013

LOS ANGELES (AP) — There was no question. The man standing before Rick Heltebrake on a rural mountain road was Christopher Dorner.

Clad in camouflage from head to toe and wearing a bulletproof vest packed with ammunition, the most wanted man in America was just a few feet away, having emerged from a grove of trees holding a large, assault-style rifle.

As teams of officers who had sought the fugitive ex-Los Angeles police officer for a week were closing in, Dorner pointed the gun at Heltebrake and ordered him to get out of his truck.

"I don't want to hurt you. Start walking and take your dog," Heltebrake recalled Dorner saying during the carjacking Tuesday.

The man, who wasn't lugging any gear, got into the truck and drove away. Heltebrake, with his 3-year-old Dalmatian Suni in tow, called police when he heard a volley of gunfire erupt soon after, and then hid behind a tree.

A short time later, police caught up with the man they believe was Dorner, surrounding a cabin where he'd taken refuge after crashing Heltebrake's truck in the San Bernardino Mountains 80 miles east of Los Angeles.

A gunfight ensued in which one sheriff's deputy was killed and another wounded. After the firefight ended, a SWAT team using an armored vehicle broke out the cabin's windows and began knocking down walls. A fire broke out and later charred remains believed to be Dorner's were found.

San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon said Wednesday the fire was not set on purpose.

"We did not intentionally burn down that cabin to get Mr. Dorner out," he said.

His deputies lobbed pyrotechnic tear gas into the cabin, and it erupted in flames, he said. McMahon did not say directly that the tear gas started the blaze, and the cause of the fire was under investigation.

The sheriff said authorities have not positively identified the remains. However, all evidence points to it being Dorner, he said, and the manhunt is considered over.

A wallet and personal items, including a California driver's license with the name Christopher Dorner were found in the cabin debris, an official briefed on the investigation told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing probe.

The tourist community of Big Bear Lake that was the focus of the intensive manhunt was returning to normalcy Wednesday and residents were sharing stories of the last weeks' events. None was more dramatic than Heltebrake's.

He said he wasn't panicked in his meeting with Dorner because he didn't feel the fugitive wanted to hurt him. "He wasn't wild-eyed, just almost professional," he said. "He was on a mission."

"It was clear I wasn't part of his agenda and there were other people down the road that were part of his agenda," he said.

Dorner, 33, had said in a rant that authorities believe he posted on Facebook last week that he expected to die, with the police chasing him, as he embarked on a campaign of revenge against the Los Angeles Police Department for firing him.

The apparent end came in the same mountain range where Dorner's trail went cold six days earlier, after his pickup truck — with guns and camping gear inside — was found abandoned and on fire near Big Bear Lake.

His footprints led away from the truck and vanished on frozen soil.

Deputies searched hundreds of cabins in the area and then, in a blinding snowstorm, SWAT teams with bloodhounds and high-tech equipment in tow widened their search.

Authorities for the most part looked at cabins boarded up for the winter, said Dan Sforza, assistant chief of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and often didn't enter occupied homes where nothing appeared amiss.

San Bernardino County Deputy Chief Steve Kovensky said Wednesday that he did not believe anyone was in another cabin near the command post when search team began going door-to-door after Dorner's truck was discovered. He also did not say how long Dorner might have been in that cabin or whether deputies had entered it during the dayslong search.

Sassing a cop is constitutionally protected free speech!!!

Sassing a cop may be unwise, but it’s constitutionally protected

Talking back to a police officer while you’re under arrest is usually not the smartest move, a bit like tugging on Superman’s cape, or spitting into the wind. But it’s legal, according to a federal appeals court — and if the officer retaliates in some way, like hauling you off to jail instead of giving you a ticket and letting you go, you might be entitled to damages.

“Police officers may not use their authority to punish an individual for exercising his First Amendment rights,” the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said in a 2-1 ruling Feb. 8 that reinstated a lawsuit against the city of Yakima, Wash., and two of its policemen.

Eddie Ford, an African American who grew up in the central Washington community, was driving to his night-shift job at a bottling company in July 2007 when a police car came up from behind and stopped him, apparently for playing his stereo too loud. As Officer Ryan Urlacher approached, Ford got out of the car shouting that the stop was racially motivated. Urlacher told him to get back in the car, then said he would arrest Ford for violating a city noise ordinance, and commented, according to the court, that “he might only get a ticket if he cooperates.”

Ford kept talking for awhile after Urlacher handcuffed him, put him in the patrol car and threatened to jail him unless he shut up. He quieted down, but the officer drove him away and booked him at the suggestion of a superior officer, telling Ford that “your mouth and your attitude talked you into jail.” Urlacher later testified that he jailed Ford because of “his rageful … behavior towards the law enforcement,” which, the officer said, put public safety at risk.

Ford went to trial on the noise-violation charge, was found not guilty, and then sued for damages. A judge dismissed the suit, ruling that Urlacher had acted reasonably and had not punished Ford for freedom of speech, but the appeals court said a jury might conclude otherwise.

The Constitution protects “a significant amount of verbal criticism and challenge directed at police officers,” the court said, quoting a 1987 Supreme Court ruling. Even if police had reason to arrest Ford in the first place, they were not entitled to jail him in retaliation for speaking his mind, said the court majority, Judges Procter Hug and Dorothy Nelson.

Dissenting Judge Connie Callahan looked at the case through the other end of the telescope, the viewpoint of the officers. Once someone is under arrest, she said, that person’s free-speech rights are reduced, and police are entitled to jail someone like Ford based on what he says, which might indicate he posed a danger to himself or others. In this case, Callahan said, Urlacher may have simply been trying to give Ford “an opportunity to change his attitude,” and the court oversteps its bounds when it tries to “impose such etiquette upon peace officers.”

Robert Christie, a lawyer for the city and its police, said they agreed with Callahan and were considering whether to ask the full appeals court for a rehearing. Ford’s lawyer, William Pickett, said the court had reaffirmed a basic constitutional principle.

“Citizens have an absolute right to be critical of law enforcement, and they can vocalize that criticism without any fear of being retaliated against,” Pickett said.

The ruling can be viewed here.

Let the police decide which rights we have???

Source

Listen to police, not NRA

Wed Feb 13, 2013 9:08 PM

Listen to the police on the weapons issue!

Who would know the weapons issue better than the police, who are on the front lines of combating gun-related crimes and dealing with the horrific aftermaths? Should we not therefore listen to what they have to say about the question of gun control?

Should we not be made thoughtful by the fact that the International Association of Chiefs of Police has historically backed gun-control measures?

Their IACP website recently stated: “Our membership was, and remains, a leading proponent of universal background checks for gun purchases, the ban on military-style assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and ensuring that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (and Explosives) has both a permanent director and sufficient resources to enforce our nation’s gun laws.”

I ask my fellow readers: Should we listen to police chiefs or to the NRA?

— Vanessa Goldberg

Scottsdale

Drones will be coming to the "drug war" in Arizona???

Source

Arizona seeks to be a key player in drone work

By Alia Beard Rau The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Feb 13, 2013 11:35 PM

Arizona lawmakers are bidding to make the state a center for aerial-drone research, but they also want to make sure local police don’t use the unmanned surveillance aircraft to spy on Americans.

As the sophisticated eye-in-the-sky technology deployed by the military in the war on terror in Afghanistan and against drug cartels on the Mexican border becomes a Pentagon fixture, state lawmakers have introduced several bills this session to ensure that the state is part of the high-tech revolution, without turning Arizona into a “police state.”

The U.S. military has used drones around the world for more than a decade, patrolling hot spots, gathering evidence and launching airstrikes. The unmanned craft are nothing new to Arizona, either.

The federal government has used them within the state to help fight forest fires and patrol the border. The Fort Huachuca Army base in southern Arizona houses the largest unmanned-aircraft-system training center in the world, according to the Army, employing hundreds of private contractors and civilian instructors and training more than 1,300 students a year.

Arizona-based defense contractors are cashing in on what has become a $4 billion-a-year investment for the military alone, not to mention the growing private and foreign government uses.

And local universities are pushing to develop the necessary workforce. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, the University of Arizona and Arizona State University offer programs related to drones.

Arizona lawmakers are doing their part via legislation to prepare for greater growth.

House Concurrent Resolution 2009, sponsored by Rep. Tom Forese, R-Chandler, reinforces Arizona’s push to be selected by the Federal Aviation Administration as one of six national drone- testing sites.

The National Defense Authorization Act, which President Barack Obama signed in 2011, authorized the establishment of sites where officials could test drones in civil airspace near commercial air traffic. The sites were scheduled to be chosen in December, but the FAA delayed a decision indefinitely, saying it needed to address safety and privacy concerns.

Arizona officials said they are hopeful the state will still be chosen. HCR 2009 has passed the House Public Safety, Military and Regulatory Affairs Committee with unanimous bipartisan support. It now awaits a vote of the full House.

Officials are also preparing for what they fear could be a worst-case scenario in the future of drone technology.

House Bill 2574, sponsored by Rep. Jeff Dial, R-Chandler, makes it illegal for state or local law-enforcement officials to use a drone to collect information unless they have a search warrant.

It also makes it illegal to monitor individuals inside their homes or places of worship. It has exceptions for law-enforcement officials investigating human trafficking or drug smuggling as long as they are doing so on public property or with permission on private property.

Dial said he is working on the bill and expects to make some changes. It has been assigned to the House public-safety committee but is not yet scheduled for a hearing.

Rep. Carl Seel, R-Phoenix, also introduced a bill that would forbid the state and local governments from assisting in any way with enforcing portions of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 that allows the military to detain a U.S. citizen. But Seel said he is putting his support behind Dial’s bill.

The bills come amid controversy surrounding a White House legal argument justifying drone-missile strikes against U.S. citizens who are part of terrorist groups overseas.

“We need to protect something called the Fourth Amendment,” Seel said, adding that he has heard “unverified” reports of drones being used to survey citizens in Arizona. The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable searches.

He said the bills restricting drones are not intended to limit the federal government’s use of drones to protect the border.

Dial said his bill is intended to be pre-emptive.

“What I want to do is protect citizens’ rights,” he said. “We don’t want to live in a police state. We don’t want to have drones everywhere in society.”

Dial also supports the resolution seeking to make Arizona a test site and efforts to promote drone research and business opportunities in the state. “I want the jobs here, and there are definitely uses for drones,” he said. “But I don’t want civil liberties and privacy invaded.”

He said the two bills address separate issues and can work together.

“The problem isn’t technology,” Dial said. “It’s how humans use the technology.”

Assistant House Minority Leader Ruben Gallego, D-Phoenix, a former Marine who serves on the House public-safety committee, said he wants to see the final details of Dial’s bill but supports the effort in general.

“Technology is always advancing, and we have to put safeguards in place to protect people’s civil liberties while still allowing drones to be used as a law-enforcement tool,” he said. “As long as we can find that balance, I don’t have any problem with the bill.”

Tom Horne continues to self destruct

But sadly the police routinely selectively enforce the law. The police routinely apply the full force of the law to people they dislike while ignoring the same violations committed by other people that are not on the police hate list.

Of course one group of people the police routinely let violate the law are elected officials, and government employees. Cops are rarely if ever arrested and put on trial for crimes they commit. Source

Posted on February 14, 2013 8:25 am by Laurie Roberts

Tom Horne continues to self destruct

The attorney general of the state of Arizona is asking a judge to dismiss his misdemeanor hit-and-run charge.

Tom Horne says he’s being singled out because the head of the FBI in Arizona actually called the Phoenix police chief and asked him to investigate after his agents saw Horne back into a Land Rover and drive away without even checking for damage. Then, the Phoenix police chief actually agreed to investigate.

Oh, the agony, the utter unfairness of it all.

Horne’s attorney, Mike Kimerer, says police violated their own policy of not investigating such cases when the damage is less than $5,000.

And so it seems Horne’s constitutional rights have been trampled, shredded into bits just like his credibility.

There certainly are questions about why the FBI was following Horne in March 2012, as he and one of his employees at the AGs office were en route for a little lunchtime rendezvous at her apartment. Perhaps Horne will escape a misdemeanor conviction given the oh-so-outrageous conduct of the FBI and police chiefs.

Horne has denied doing anything wrong and pointed out that the damage, if any, was minor.

Perhaps so, as far as the Land Rover goes.

But damage to Horne’s career? That’s significant — and getting worse all the time as the top law enforcement official in the state attempts to wiggle his way out of responsibility for his own actions.

Politics seen in Tom Horne hit and run prosecution

Politics seen in Horne prosecution

By Lindsey Collom The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Feb 14, 2013 11:03 PM

Lawyers for state Attorney General Tom Horne said they have delayed settling a misdemeanor hit-and-run case against their client in a bid to discover whether there was political motivation behind his prosecution.

Attorney Michael Kimerer told The Arizona Republic on Thursday that he believes Horne was the victim of selective prosecution because he is a politician. Kimerer also said he wants to find out what role the FBI may have played in pursuing a case that he says may violate the U.S. Constitution.

Kimerer said that, although Horne had been willing to settle the case, the lawyer advised the Republican attorney general against it so they could use the legal proceedings for fact-finding purposes.

But Kimerer claims that facts have been few, in part because of federal agents’ refusal to “answer relevant questions posed by defense counsel during discovery interviews.”

For that reason, he filed a motion Wednesday to dismiss the case in Phoenix Municipal Court. In a separate motion for dismissal filed at the same time, Kimerer argued that Horne is the victim of selective prosecution.

“Makes you think there is some type of political motivation to go after Tom Horne. And why do you single him out?” Kimerer said Thursday, adding that both Arizona’s top FBI agent and the Phoenix police chief have refused to discuss the issue with him.

“I doubt if they will give me a clear answer, but I would like to hear one,” Kimerer said.

A city attorney who is prosecuting the case declined to comment Thursday. Horne’s trial date has been set for April 2, although Kimerer said the case will likely be settled before then.

Phoenix police allege that, last March, Horne left the scene of an unreported accident that left paint damage to another vehicle. Two FBI agents witnessed the fender-bender in a parking lot while tailing Horne as part of an investigation into possible campaign-finance violations, for which he is now facing civil charges.

Horne denies any wrongdoing.

Seven months later, the FBI turned the accident information over to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, and officials referred the matter to Phoenix.

Police cited Horne in October with one count of leaving the scene of a collision with an unattended vehicle, a Class 3 misdemeanor punishable by fines of up to $500 or 30 days in jail. Horne has pleaded not guilty to the charge in court.

“Tom was ready to accept responsibility for it,” Kimerer said. “If he did damage, he certainly wants to take responsibility for it. Then, we started getting police reports, and there were all sorts of questions.”

Specifically, according to his court filing, Kimerer wanted the FBI agents involved to answer why they had Horne under surveillance and why they didn’t immediately go to police with the hit-and-run allegation.

Agents didn’t disclose what Kimerer wanted, but they did give him ammunition by revealing that the FBI’s senior agent in Arizona contacted Phoenix Police Chief Daniel V. Garcia about the parking-lot incident.

Kimerer alleges that the call was made only after County Attorney Bill Montgomery announced he would not pursue criminal campaign-violation charges against Horne.

By moving forward, Kimerer said, police violated their own written policy of not investigating cases involving less than $5,000 in private-property damage.

Additionally, Kimerer wrote, singling out Horne for prosecution violates the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, the argument being that Horne was targeted simply because he’s an elected official.

“I’m really using this to get a clarification,” Kimerer said. “Why would they pick him out to prosecute him when they don’t prosecute others under those guidelines?”

Phoenix police Sgt. Trent Crump said Kimerer’s interpretation of department policy is almost right. Crump said officers aren’t dispatched to collisions that involve less than $5,000 in private-property damage, but “if information is presented to us in some fashion, there’s nothing that precludes us from doing something.”

“The policy doesn’t trump state law,” Crump said. “It’s a guideline for responses by the Police Department.”

Arpaio ‘army’ prepares for war

EJ Montini | azcentral opinions

Posted on February 14, 2013 10:42 am by EJ Montini

Arpaio ‘army’ prepares for war

Sheriff Joe Arpaio has 700 deputies under his command, along with roughly 2,000 detention officers and a volunteer posse said to number 3,000.

Apparently, that’s not enough to combat his latest enemy: Voters.

The sheriff’s friends in the county Republican Party are mustering volunteers for yet another Arpaio army. They are hoping to attract recruits to a gathering over the weekend where, according to an e-mail sent to Arpaio supporters:

“The purpose of the meeting is to muster and organize a ‘shadow army’ of ‘shadow warriors’ that are willing to volunteer their time to stand toe-to-toe at the majority of the locations here in Maricopa County where the paid progressive socialists are collecting petition signatures to recall Sheriff Joe.”

Not long ago some of the same people who successfully recalled former Senate President Russell Pearce announced they would launch a recall effort against Arpaio, who was reelected to his six term in November.

Arpaio immediately cranked up his political campaign machine, sending out a fund-raising letter to his many donors that read in part:

“These sore losers just never stop. They figure if they can force an election in an off-year they’ll be able to turn out every pro-illegal immigrant voter and steal this election. We saw them do the very same thing to an Arizona State Senator just over a year ago.”

The sheriff’s friends want to bolster his campaign war chest by putting boots on the ground.

The e-mail seeking “shadow warriors” calls local activist Randy Parraz and the rest of those behind the Arpaio recall “domestic terrorists” and “thugs.”

“What are they so afraid of?” Parraz told me. “If Joe is such a great guy why would they even give the recall a second thought? It sounds like what they have planned will just give us an opportunity to catch people doing illegal things on video tape. At the Pearce recall it got ugly. You can’t try to intimidate people. If they do that we’ll get it on tape.”

One of those helping to organize Arpaio’s army, John DeCarlo, said volunteers will be respectful when trying to convince folks not to sign a recall petition.

“The idea is to have a presence and be informative but not get in anyone’s way,” DeCarlo told me.

He works in the same office as Arpaio’s campaign manager, Chad Willems, although Willems said his people are not in command of the “shadow army” but only offering advice and assistance.

“What happened is that there is a group of very active supporters of the sheriff who have been wanting to do something to stop the recall,” he told me. “The chairman of the county (Republican) party said that he would like to send people out and stand next to circulators and voice their opinions. Our phones have been ringing off the hook with people wanting to know that they can do.”

What will these “shadow warriors” tell voters trying to decide whether to sign a recall petition?

“One thing will be the cost,” DeCarlo said.

The price of a recall election has been estimated at over $5 million.

Parraz calls that a small amount compared to what Arpaio has cost the county in lawsuits over the years, not to mention department’s other problems, like the 400-plus uninvestigated child sexual abuse cases about which the sheriff just released a 10,000-page report.

“The election in November doesn’t wipe away what Arpaio has done,” Parraz told me. “People know why they should sign a recall petition. We don’t have to persuade them. These Arpaio people are just drawing attention to why Arpaio should be recalled. They’re helping us.”

No petitions are being circulated yet. The recall group, like the Arpaio group, is meeting this weekend. [That is WRONG!!!! I already signed a recall Sheriff Joe Arpaio petition]

Recall supporters have 120 days to collect roughly 350,000 signatures. It won’t be easy.

“We don’t have the resources they have but we have a lot of support,” Parraz said.

The odds of success are heavily against a ragtag guerilla force taking on a well-equipped, well-funded army. At least that’s what military and political strategists have been saying since way back in – When was that? — 1776.

No free speech in Mesa, Arizona????

Man arrested while protesting Mesa Police on streetcorner

No free speech in Mesa, Arizona????

Source

Man with gun arrested while protesting Mesa Police on streetcorner

Posted: Friday, February 15, 2013 8:44 am

By Michelle Reese, Tribune

A man protesting law enforcement in Mesa was found to be in possession of a loaded gun when arrested early Wednesday morning for disorderly conduct.

Mesa Police said Jeremy Wiseman, 36, had been on the corner of Alma School Road and University Drive for several hours holding a sign that read “Stop the harassment Mesa Police,” along with a phone number reported to be his own. Police say Wiseman started yelling obscenities at officers who were called to the scene when a bicyclist said the suspect harassed him.

Up until the call from the bicyclist, which police received about 3 a.m., police had not contacted him because he was exercising his First Amendment rights, according to a press released by Mesa Police Sgt. Tony Landato.

Upon responding to the call, police said, Wiseman started screaming at them.

In an audio released by Mesa Police, a man is heard screaming “Stop Mesa Police harassment.” An officer responds, “I need to talk to you.” A moment later another officer is heard saying, “He’s got a gun,” and two officers start ordering the suspect to the ground.

Police first noticed the butt of the gun holding up the sign and ordered Wiseman to put the gun and the sign down. When he did not, two officers used a stun gun to subdue him and take him into custody, according to the police press release.

During an interview after he was booked into the Mesa City Jail, Wiseman said he had the gun to protect himself from Mesa Police.

According to the release, he then made threats saying the officer talking to him, “was stirring up a hornets nest" and Wiseman made a reference to former Los Angeles Police Department officer Christopher Dorner and his manifesto against police. Dorner is believed to have killed multiple police officers and civilians in California this week, leading to a multi-state manhunt.

Before the interview was over, police said Wiseman stated he would bond out and take care of “the problem.”

He was arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct and threats.

Contact writer: (480) 898-6549 or mreese@evtrib.com

Audio Released of Cops Arresting Mesa Man Protesting Police

Source

Audio Released of Cops Arresting Mesa Man Who Used a Loaded Shotgun to Protest Police

By Matthew Hendley Thu., Feb. 14 2013 at 4:24 PM

Mesa police have released an audio recording from yesterday's arrest of 37-year-old Jeremy Wiseman, who decided to picket the Mesa Police Department with a shotgun at 3 a.m.

[Here is a link to the audio ]

Really, the audio sounds like the situation just as police described it, except for the exclusion of the officer's sigh of relief after getting the cuffs on Wiseman: "It's a f*ckin' shotgun."

Earlier today, we told you that officers had seen Wiseman for several hours at the corner of Alma School and University, holding a sign that said "Stop Police Harassment in Mesa," with a phone number that's listed as Wiseman's.

Police contacted him after a bicyclist reported being disturbed by Wiseman, and an apparent conversation with that cyclist is on the audio recording. You can also hear Wiseman ranting and raving in the background. While Wiseman told police, "F*ck the Mesa Police, come arrest me, you slime," one officer noticed that Wiseman's hand was on what looked like the butt of a gun coming out from the bottom of the sign.

Seconds later in the audio recording, you can hear that officer realize that Wiseman was actually holding a shotgun, and had taped the sign to the shotgun.

Cops say Wiseman told officers that he had the gun to "protect himself from Mesa Police," and he allegedly told an officer at the jail that he "stirring up a hornets nest" and told the officer that "you saw what happened to shooting cops in southern California" -- an apparent reference to former LAPD Officer Christopher Dorner.

Wiseman was booked on charges of disorderly conduct and making threats.

Mesa pigs bust man for protesting the police

Source

Jeremy Wiseman Pickets Mesa Police on Street Corner, Uses Loaded Gun to Hold Up His Sign

By Matthew Hendley Thu., Feb. 14 2013 at 11:56 AM

Here's your lesson of the day, folks: if you're going out to picket your local police department on a street corner, consider using something other than a loaded shotgun as a signpost.

We give that seemingly appropriate advice only because Mesa police say that's what 37-year-old Jeremy Wiseman did yesterday, as part of what appears to be a very poorly planned protest.

According to information provided by Mesa police, officers had seen Wiseman for several hours at the corner of Alma School and University, holding a sign that said "Stop Police Harassment in Mesa," with a phone number that's listed as Wiseman's.

"He had not been known to have committed a crime at that point, was free to express his freedom of speech, and therefore he was not contacted by Police," Mesa police Sergeant Tony Landato says in an e-mail.

However, police contacted him after a bicyclist reported being disturbed by Wiseman, causing the bicyclist to find another way around, according to police.

While Wiseman told police, "F*ck the Mesa Police, come arrest me, you slime," one officer noticed that Wiseman's hand was on the butt of a gun, which was taped to the back of the sign, police say.

Cops, figuring there was a possibility of an actual gun being behind the sign, ordered Wiseman to drop the "gun/sign," police say.

He didn't, according to police, and Wiseman got taser blasts from two officers before being arrested around 3 a.m.

Sure enough, police say not only was there an actual gun taped to the sign, but it was loaded, too.

Cops say Wiseman told officers that he had the gun to "protect himself from Mesa Police."

As if the poorly planned protest had gone bad enough, Wiseman told an officer at the jail that he "stirring up a hornets nest" and told the officer that "you saw what happened to shooting cops in southern California" -- an apparent reference to former LAPD Officer Christopher Dorner.

For good measure, Wiseman told the officer that he'd take care of "the problem" -- whatever that is -- when he posts bond and got out of jail, according to the cops.

Wiseman was booked on charges of disorderly conduct and making threats.

Waco, Texas in San Bernardino, California???

In wake of Dorner shootout, questions over use of 'the burner'

By Joel Rubin and Andrew Blankstein, Los Angeles Times

February 14, 2013, 9:26 p.m.

The day's light was fading when the SWAT officers decided they could wait no longer for Christopher Dorner to surrender.

Dorner, the fired Los Angeles cop suspected of killing four people in a campaign of revenge, had been holed up in a cabin near Big Bear Lake for hours, trading gunfire with San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies. Repeated calls over a loudspeaker for him to surrender went ignored. Attempts to flush him out with tear gas led nowhere.

Wanting to end the standoff before nightfall, members of the sheriff's SWAT unit enacted a plan they had devised for a final assault on the cabin, according to law enforcement sources. An officer drove a demolition vehicle up to the building and methodically tore down most of its walls, the sources said.

With the cabin's interior exposed, the officer got on the radio to others awaiting his order. "We're going to go forward with the plan, with the burner," the unidentified officer said, according to a recording of police radio transmissions reviewed by The Times.

"The burner" was shorthand for a grenade-like canister containing a more powerful type of tear gas than had been used earlier. Police use the nickname because of the intense heat the device gives off, which often causes a fire.

"Seven burners deployed," another officer responded several seconds later, according to the transmission which has circulated widely among law enforcement officials. "And we have a fire."

Within minutes the cabin was fully engulfed in flames, ending a dramatic manhunt that captivated the nation.

The SWAT radio transmission, in addition to the comments of at least one officer who earlier in the gun battle could be heard by a TV reporter calling for the cabin to be burned down, have raised questions as to whether authorities intended to end the standoff by setting the structure on fire. San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon at a Wednesday press conference adamantly denied that was the intent. But the department on Thursday declined to answer further questions about the standoff.

Multiple sources, who were at the scene and asked that their names not be used because they were not authorized to discuss the case, said the decision to use the incendiary gas canisters came amid mounting concern that time and options were running out.

Dorner, they said, had not communicated with police at any point during the siege and had continued to fire off rounds at them with high-caliber weapons. "Any time they moved, this guy was shooting," one source said. Bringing large floodlights into the area was deemed too dangerous and police worried Dorner might have night-vision goggles that would soon give him an advantage.

When they eventually moved in with the demolition vehicle and began to get glimpses into the cabin as the walls were torn down, Dorner's whereabouts and condition were unknown. On the radio transmission, one officer describes seeing blood splattered inside the cabin and then another reports hearing a single gunshot being fired, raising the possibility that Dorner may have killed himself before the fire engulfed the cabin.

On Thursday, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department announced dental records had confirmed what had been widely assumed since the showdown — that the charred body found in the cabin rubble was Dorner's. The test results brought to a definitive close the epic manhunt for Dorner, 33, who police say killed a deputy during the cabin shootout, a Riverside police officer and an Irvine couple as part of a plot to retaliate against the Los Angeles Police Department for firing him in 2009.

Samuel Walker, emeritus professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska Omaha, was critical of the decision to use the "burner" tear gas canisters.

"It's true, he was firing at them. But he was cornered. He was trapped. At that point, there was no rush in the sense that he was barricaded. The standard rules on barricade situations are that you can wait the person out," Walker said. "To use a known incendiary device raises some very serious questions in my mind."

Other law enforcement experts interviewed by The Times, however, said the move was justified. Even though SWAT officers were certain to have known a fire was a strong possibility, the use of the gas was reasonable in the face of the deadly threat Dorner presented, they said. Allowing the standoff to carry on into the night, they emphasized, would have added an unpredictable element to the drama that officials were smart to avoid.

"What difference does it make if one of the officers puts a … round in his head, drives the armored vehicle over his body when they are knocking the building down, or he dies in a conflagration?" said David Klinger, a use-of-force expert at the University of Missouri at St. Louis and a former LAPD officer. "If he is trying to surrender you can't do any of those things … But if he is actively trying to murder people, there's no doubt that deadly force is appropriate and it doesn't matter what method is used to deliver it."

Geoffery Alpert, a professor at the University of South Carolina who also specializes in police tactics, agreed.

"I don't understand what the big deal is," Alpert said. "This man had already shot two officers and was suspected of murdering other people. He wasn't responding in a rational manner. The actions you take have to remove the threat and if it requires extreme measures, then so be it."

joel.rubin@latimes.com

andrew.blankstein@latimes.com

Times staff writers Richard Winton, Phil Willon, Kate Mather, Joseph Serna and Ruben Vives contributed to this report.

Legal Loophole Could Hold Up $1M Christopher Dorner Reward

Legal Loophole Could Hold Up $1M Dorner Reward

By RUSSELL GOLDMAN | ABC News

A legal loophole could prevent good Samaritans, instrumental in ending the manhunt for a fugitive ex-cop accused of killing four people, from claiming more than $1 million in reward money because Christopher Dorner died and was not captured.

Last weekend, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa pledged $1 million, sourced from private individuals, companies and unions, "for information that will lead to Mr. Dorner's capture."

The L.A. City Council followed up with its own promise of a $100,000 reward, for information "leading to the identification, apprehension and conviction of Christopher Dorner."

But Dorner, accused of killing four people and threatening the lives of several dozen more, was never captured, apprehended or convicted. Instead, he died following a standoff with police near Big Bear, Calif., when the cabin in which he was barricaded burned down with him inside.

The mayor's office has not yet determined if the reward could still be paid out given Dorner died.

"At this time, no decision has been made on the reward," Villaraigosa's spokesman Peter Sanders told ABC News.com in an email.

So far, none of the privately sourced "funds have been deposited into the City's 'Special Reward Trust Fund,'" according to the Frank T. Mateljan, spokesman for the city attorney.

That still leaves an additional $100,000 that the city council could pay with municipal money, but there legal questions there, as well.

"The reward is definitely still on the table," said Jessica Tarman, spokeswoman for Councilman Daniel Zine.

But there are still plenty of questions.

The council ultimately decides how and to whom the reward will get paid. If its members are feeling generous, they could interpret the language of the original offer to make sure a worthy recipient gets paid.

"Arguably, city law is broad enough to allow payment to persons who assisted in the "identification, apprehension OR arrest and conviction" of a suspect," Metaljan said in an email [emphasis his].

If the city decides to honor the reward, there are still multiple steps before a claimant can be paid.

Anyone who thinks they are worthy must apply in writing. That claim would then be reviewed by the LAPD robbery and homicide division, and a recommendation would be made to the police commissioner. The commissioner would tell the council to consider the claim, and the council would vote on it.

So far, no one has come forward to ask for the reward. More than 1,000 leads were called to a city hotline

One couple seems most deserving, if they decide to seek the reward. Jim and Karen Reynolds, a couple in whose Big Bear, Calif., home Dorner is believed to have hidden for days, called in the tip Tuesday that ultimately put police on the trail to Dorner's final location.

On Tuesday, the couple found Dorner at their home. He briefly held them captive, but they managed to escape and call in their tip.

Report on MCSO sex crimes cases proves the system is broken

Oh, so you would like to look at the public records that document how the "system" f*cked things up. For that you will have to pay Sheriff Joe $5,000 for a copy of the public records. That is something that isn't mentioned in this article.

Or you can go to Sheriff Joe's public records office, which has recently reduced its hours to 9am to 11am and 1pm to 4pm to make it more difficult for you to view the report for free.

And you thought bankers hours of 9 to 5 were short. Hell, Sheriff Joe's public records office hours are even shorter. It is only open a lousy 5 hours a day. And I suspect if you go there the cops in the office will jerk you around and make it impossible for you to do more then one or two hours worth of viewing in the lousy 5 hours a day they are open.

Source

McClellan: Report on MCSO sex crimes cases proves the system is broken

Posted: Friday, February 15, 2013 8:03 am

Guest Commentary by Mike McClellan

It was the system.

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office recently released a 10,000 page report on its horribly botched, horribly run, Special Victims Unit.

A complete and total mess.

And who’s at fault for this fiasco, one that left rapes uninvestigated, one that left, at least in one case, rapists to rape again?

The “system.”

No, not any specific MCSO official, no detective, not the Sheriff, of course.

The system.

It was a systemic failure, not a failure of individuals. Says the MCSO investigator Brian Sands, “This systematic problem could not then, and cannot now, be properly addressed or corrected by disciplining a few individuals.”

One news report noted, “Sands wrote that officers fell short in their duties because they were assigned an overwhelming volume of complex, time-consuming cases to investigate. The squad had too few detectives, and budget restrictions limited overtime hours.”

So the system failed, eh? But the report contradicts itself.

The released documents, for example, identify specific detectives who deep-sixed sex crime investigations, one even taking evidence boxes home with him, storing them in his garage.

Who in the “system” repeatedly ignored pleas from SVU supervisors asking for more personnel, with the existing detectives overwhelmed by their caseloads?

Who knows? The report doesn’t identify who ignored the repeated requests.

And who in the “system” was responsible for diverting almost $600,000 provided by the County Board of Supervisors, money earmarked for six more detectives in the SVU? And where did that money go? Did the “system” just swallow it up?

Who knows? The report cannot account for either where that money actually went or who made the decision to divert it elsewhere?

And who in “the system” diverted resources and personnel from the SVU to animal-abuse crimes? And why did MCSO place so much emphasis on crimes against animals but ignored rapes?

Who knows? The report doesn’t explain.

And in the “system” diverted resources and personnel from the SVU to the illegal immigrant “crime suppression sweeps” so popular within the MCSO?

Who knows? The report doesn’t explain.

Nope, no single individual within the MCSO bears any responsibility for the fiasco.

Well, one does, but he’s long gone. Arpaio henchman/Chief Deputy David Hendershott is named occasionally in the report.

I believe that is called “a fall guy.”

But if the Buck Stops Here, at the top, isn’t Sheriff Joe Arpaio ultimately responsible for the fiasco? I’ll leave it to you to answer that question.

Fake IDs - For Mexicans it's a felony, for college kids it's a misdemeanor.

Source

Latinos assail Maricopa County Attorney Montgomery over ID-theft charges

By Jim Walsh The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Feb 15, 2013 10:28 PM

Hispanic activists say undocumented immigrants are victims of selective enforcement and inequality under Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery’s prosecution of identity-theft charges.

The activists said that, although college students receive alcohol-diversion classes for using a fake identification card to obtain liquor, undocumented immigrants are charged with felonies and spend months in jail for the same offense.

“What’s the bigger crime, using a fake ID to get drunk or to support a family,’’ said Lydia Guzman, a spokeswoman for the League of United Latin American Citizens.

Tempe police said this week that they had seized more than 1,700 fake ID cards last year, with most defendants avoiding records by attending the diversion program.

The activists said Montgomery’s true intent is to set up undocumented immigrants for deportation, a charge Montgomery denied emphatically, saying he has no authority over federal immigration policies.

“This office does not, this office will not, engage in any systemic effort to deport people from the United States,’’ Montgomery said.

Montgomery said LULAC’s argument is “irresponsible’’ because Arizona law bars him from prosecuting young adults for using fake IDs to obtain alcohol as identity theft because the crime is a misdemeanor and is covered by a different statute.

He said the identity theft and forgery charges his office files against undocumented immigrants are appropriate and have been effective in significantly reducing identity theft in Arizona.

“For about a decade, Arizona was Number 1 in the nation for identity theft,’’ Montgomery said.

But in 2011, Arizona dropped to fourth in identity theft, he said, with the number of complaints falling from more than 10,000 in 2006 to fewer than 7,000.

The percentage of identity-theft cases motivated by employment also has dropped from 39 percent in 2006 to 25 percent in 2011, Montgomery said.

“The percentage of ID-theft cases for employment has declined significantly,’’ Montgomery said. “Arizona law prohibits treating those cases the same way.’’

But Delia Salvatierra, a defense attorney who specializes in immigration, said identify-theft laws should be enforced against drug addicts stealing people’s bank-account numbers to rip them off.

She said Montgomery’s office has become harsher by filling a higher class of felony forgery charges to prevent undocumented immigrants from being released on bond.

Salvatierra said prosecutors used to file lesser criminal impersonation charges that allowed defendants to post bond.

She said defendants are often charged with multiple counts of forgery and eventually plead guilty to one count, leading to certain deportation by federal authorities.

“It’s a decision he makes because he wants an immigration consequence,’’ Salvatierra said. “It’s to separate families and permanently banish (immigrants) from the country.’’

David Cutrer, another attorney, said he defended two clients who were eventually found not guilty of identity theft and forgery, with one spending six months in jail, the other nine months in jail.

“They are hell-bent on prosecuting these cases, whether the evidence supports them or not,’’ Cutrer said.

He said Montgomery is “not a bad man by any stretch of the imagination, but politics are involved here.’’

Drones are taking to the skies in the U.S.

Source

Drones are taking to the skies in the U.S.

By Brian Bennett and Joel Rubin, Los Angeles Times

February 15, 2013, 5:20 p.m.

WASHINGTON — While a national debate has erupted over the Obama administration's lethal drone strikes overseas, federal authorities have stepped up efforts to license surveillance drones for law enforcement and other uses in U.S. airspace, spurring growing concern about violations of privacy.

The Federal Aviation Administration said Friday it had issued 1,428 permits to domestic drone operators since 2007, far more than were previously known. Some 327 permits are still listed as active.

Operators include police, universities, state transportation departments and at least seven federal agencies. The remotely controlled aircraft vary widely, from devices as small as model airplanes to large unarmed Predators.

The FAA, which has a September 2015 deadline from Congress to open the nation's airspace to drone traffic, has estimated 10,000 drones could be aloft five years later. The FAA this week solicited proposals to create six sites across the country to test drones, a crucial step before widespread government and commercial use is approved.

Local and state law enforcement agencies are expected to be among the largest customers.

Earlier this month, TV footage showed a midsized drone circling over the bunker in southeast Alabama where a 65-year-old gunman held a 5-year-old boy hostage. After a tense standoff, an FBI team stormed the bunker, rescued the boy and shot his captor. Authorities refused to say who was operating the AeroVironment drone, which has a 9-foot wingspan.

In Colorado, the Mesa County Sheriff's Office has used a fixed-wing drone to search for lost hikers in the mountains, and a helicopter drone to help crews battling fires. Flying manned planes or helicopters would cost at least $600 an hour, explained Ben Miller, who heads the program.

"We fly [drones] for less than $25 an hour," Miller said. "It's just a new way to put a camera up that's affordable." [I kind of doubt that. In Arizona most cops start at $50,000/yr which is about $25 an hour. So in Phoenix the minimum cost of operating a drone would be about $25/hr before you figure in the cost of the drone and related equipment.]

Big-city police departments, including Los Angeles, have tested drones but are holding back on buying them until the FAA issues clear guidelines about operating in congested airspace, among other issues.

"You've got to take baby steps with this," said Michael Downing, the LAPD deputy chief for counter-terrorism and special operations.

Los Angeles Police Department officials went to Simi Valley in December, he said, to watch a demonstration of a helicopter-like device that measured about 18 inches on each side and was powered by four propellers. It could fly about 90 minutes on its battery.

Downing said the LAPD was "pursuing the idea of purchasing" drones, but wouldn't do so unless the FAA granted permission to fly them, and until the department could draw up policies on how to keep within privacy laws.

If the LAPD bought drones, Downing said, it initially would use them at major public events such as the Oscars or large protests. In time, drones could be flown to track fleeing suspects and assist in investigations. Tiny drones could even be used to fly inside buildings to shoot video if a suspect has barricaded himself within.

In theory, drones can offer unblinking eye-in-the-sky coverage. They can carry high-resolution video cameras, infrared sensors, license plate readers, listening devices and other high-tech gear. Companies have marketed drones disguised as sea gulls and other birds to mask their use.

That's the problem, according to civil liberties groups. The technology is evolving faster than the law. Congress and courts haven't determined whether drone surveillance would violate privacy laws more than manned planes or helicopters, or whether drone operators may be held liable for criminal trespassing, stalking or harassment.

"Americans have the right to know if and how the government is using drones to spy on them," said Catherine Crump, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which has called for updating laws to protect privacy.

A backlash has already started.

In Congress, Reps. Ted Poe (R-Texas) and Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) introduced privacy legislation Thursday that would require police to get a warrant or a court order before operating a drone to collect information on individuals.

"We need to protect against obtrusive search and surveillance by government and civilian use," Poe said in a telephone interview. A similar bill failed last year.

Legislatures in 15 states are considering proposals to limit drone use. The City Council in Charlottesville, Va., passed a resolution on Feb. 4 barring local police from using drones — which they don't yet have — to collect evidence in criminal cases.

In Seattle, Mayor Mike McGinn ordered police to return two Draganflyer X6 helicopter drones earlier this month after privacy advocates and others protested. The police said they had hoped to use them for search-and-rescue operations.

Federal agencies fly drones to assist in disasters, check flood damage, do crop surveys and more. U.S. Customs and Border Protection flies the largest fleet, 10 unarmed Predators, along the northern and southern borders to help track smugglers and illegal immigrants.

Although flying drones might appear as easy as playing a video game, pilots and crews require extensive training.

In 2004 and 2005, the U.S. Marshals Service tested two small drones in remote areas to help them track fugitives, according to law enforcement officials and documents released to the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act. The Marshals Service abandoned the program after both drones crashed.

Except in rare cases, the military is barred from using drones in U.S. airspace to conduct surveillance or pursue individuals. No state or federal agency has proposed arming domestic drones with weapons, but the prospect has raised alarms in Congress and elsewhere.

In response to a question during an online Google chat Thursday, President Obama said drones had never been used to kill "an American citizen on American soil."

"The rules outside of the United States are going to be different than the rules inside the United States, in part because our capacity, for example, to capture terrorists in the United States are very different than in the foothills or mountains of Afghanistan or Pakistan," Obama said.

No drone was sent up to help find suspected killer Christopher Dorner after his truck was found burning near Big Bear Lake on Feb. 7, said Al Daniel, an officer in the aviation division of the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department. But Customs and Border Protection transmitted secure video from a Pilatus PC-12 plane to police commanders on the ground.

Despite a massive manhunt, Dorner vanished and authorities speculated he had escaped to Mexico. Five days later, however, he was found in a snowbound cabin near his truck and died after a shootout and fire.

The long delay, and the embarrassing fact that Dorner was hiding close by the police command post, sparked sharp criticism of police tactics and abilities.

Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, said an aerial drone might have helped find Dorner more quickly.

"The search would have been much wider and quicker because you'd have an unmanned aircraft looking," he said. "You can cover more ground."

brian.bennett@latimes.com

joel.rubin@latimes.com

Bennett reported from Washington and Rubin from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Robert Faturechi in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Booze & Drug Wars - Jobs program for cops???

Source

Des Plaines cops face suspensions in DUI pay investigation, city says

By Jonathan Bullington Tribune reporter

4:23 p.m. CST, February 15, 2013

Several Des Plaines police officers face possible suspensions stemming from a city investigation of alleged misreporting of DUI arrests to obtain overtime pay, officials said.

The overtime pay reportedly came from a federally funded grant designed to catch drunk drivers and seat-belt violators.

Des Plaines Police Chief William Kushner said Friday that several officers would be suspended and the department may seek a resignation in one case. He would not name the officers or comment on how many officers faced discipline.

Kushner declined to provide details on what the officers may be accused of doing, but said an internal investigation of this nature typically centers on violations of department rules and policies.

The city’s internal investigation, which Kushner said concluded last week, does not preclude any officer from criminal prosecution in the ongoing federal investigation.

Kushner said the department is “putting steps in place to ensure nothing like this would ever happen again.”

“We want to put this behind us and move forward,” he added.

City Manager Michael Bartholomew confirmed that several officers face suspensions, but referred specific questions on any possible disciplinary action to Kushner.

Des Plaines launched an internal investigation independent of an ongoing federal investigation into how the city’s police department managed the grant, according to Bartholomew.

In 2011, Des Plaines was awarded $116,190, the third-largest Sustained Traffic Enforcement Program grant in the state. The department had taken in $22,504 as of last March, when city leaders told the Illinois Department of Transportation that paperwork submitted for the grant might have included arrests made by officers who weren't actually working on grant-funded time, IDOT officials have said.

IDOT cut off the grant and allowed Des Plaines to investigate. The former commander who oversaw the program retired shortly after the grant was suspended.

jbullington@tribune.com

San Diego mayor screwed charities out of $2 million???

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San Diego ex-mayor used charity funds to cover gambling debts

By Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times

February 15, 2013, 4:21 a.m.

SAN DIEGO — She married a fabulously wealthy man decades her elder, and became the first female mayor of San Diego. But when Maureen O'Connor left public life, she spent countless hours seated in front of video-poker machines.

Over a nine-year period, she wagered an estimated $1 billion, including millions from a charity set up by her late husband, who founded Jack in the Box.

That was the portrait that emerged in court Thursday as the frail former mayor tearfully acknowledged she skimmed more than $2 million from a charity founded by her late husband, Robert O. Peterson.

O'Connor, 66, admitted in a plea deal that she had a gambling addiction and is nearly destitute. Her lawyer, prominent defense attorney Eugene Iredale, suggested that a brain tumor may have impaired her reasoning; he gave reporters copies of her brain scan from a 2011 surgery.

O'Connor's rapidly declining medical condition "renders it highly improbable — if not impossible — that she could be brought to trial," according to court documents filed by federal prosecutors.

"This is a sad day for the city of San Diego," said Assistant U.S. Atty. Phillip Halpern. "Maureen O'Connor was born and raised in this town. She rose from humble origins.... She dedicated much of her life, personal and professional, to improving this city."

The $1-billion gambling binge stretched from 2000 to 2009, according to court documents. In 2008 and 2009, when the fortune she had inherited was not enough, she began taking from the R.P. Foundation to cover her losses.

Despite being ahead more than $1 billion at one point, O'Connor "suffered even larger gambling losses," according to prosecutors. Her net loss, Iredale said, was about $13 million.

She was considered such a high-roller that Las Vegas casinos would send a private jet to pick her up in San Diego. Records show that O'Connor won $100,000 at the Barona casino in San Diego County, while at roughly the same time she needed to cash a $100,000 check at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.

Those who knew the former political doyenne said she had become a recluse, inscrutable even to those she counted as friends.

"I considered myself one of her closest friends, but I would call her and she wouldn't return my call," said lawyer Louis Wolfsheimer. "I didn't want anything from her, just to know how she was. But it looked like she was becoming reclusive."

In a bargain with prosecutors, O'Connor agreed to repay $2,088,000 to the R.P. Foundation started by Peterson, which supported charities such as City of Hope, San Diego Hospice, and the Alzheimer's Assn., and was driven into insolvency in 2009 by O'Connor's misappropriation of funds, prosecutors said.

"I never meant to hurt the city," an emotional O'Connor told reporters gathered at a restaurant close to the federal courthouse. She promised to repay the foundation but declined to answer questions.

Prosecutors agreed to defer prosecution for two years. If O'Connor violates no further laws and makes restitution, the charge of making illegal financial transactions may be dismissed. Under the agreement, O'Connor acknowledged her guilt but was allowed to plead not guilty.

If convicted, O'Connor could have faced a maximum 10-year prison sentence and a fine of up to $250,000.

The daughter of a boxer who made his living as a cabbie and sometime bookie, O'Connor, a Democrat, rocketed to political prominence in 1971 when she was elected to the City Council at age 25. A onetime champion swimmer, O'Connor was working as a physical education teacher at a Catholic school and was pushed into politics when a group of students she took to a City Council meeting was treated rudely.

She met Peterson, 30 years her senior, when the Republican known for supporting liberal candidates and liberal causes offered to contribute to her council campaign. Political reform was in the air, and once elected, O'Connor helped persuade the council to adopt contribution limits, a reform later emulated by the state.

A close ally of then-Mayor Pete Wilson, O'Connor served two terms on the council and later was appointed to the Port Commission.

After marrying Peterson, O'Connor became a political anomaly in San Diego: although wealthy, she cultivated a base of political support in lower-income neighborhoods south of Interstate 8, the traditional dividing line of San Diego politics. When she traveled in minority neighborhoods, adults would come from their homes to wave at her; to all, she was known merely as Maureen.

As mayor, O'Connor organized a Russian arts festival and prowled the streets with the police chief, talking to prostitutes as she and Chief Bob Burgreen looked for information about a string of killings targeting streetwalkers. She went incognito as a homeless person to see how the homeless were treated in San Diego; she worked on a city garbage truck to experience the day-to-day life of blue-collar city workers.

As a politician, O'Connor was often a favorite of reporters, the bane of pro-growth business interests, and a frustrating enigma to Democratic candidates who unsuccessfully sought her endorsement. She preferred the company of longtime friends and members of her family, particularly her twin Mavourneen; the two reside together in La Jolla.

In 1986, after then-Mayor Roger Hedgecock was driven from office by campaign code convictions, O'Connor was elected mayor, the first woman to hold that office. Three years earlier, Hedgecock, a Republican, had beaten O'Connor in a divisive, angry campaign. Reelected in 1988, she declined to seek a third term as mayor, leaving office in 1992.

Peterson, who had made a fortune in the restaurant, banking and hotel industries, died in 1994 at age 78, after a long battle with leukemia. The couple had no children. After leaving the mayor's office, O'Connor dropped quickly from public life.

With the deaths of her other close friends — McDonald's heiress Joan Kroc in 2003, newspaper publisher Helen Copley in 2004, and actress Mercedes McCambridge in 2004 — O'Connor devoted more of her time to gambling as the addiction took hold. She became a regular at casinos in California, Las Vegas and Atlantic City, winning enormous sums at video poker and other games but losing even more, according to court documents.

Finally, she liquidated her savings, sold numerous properties and auctioned off her personal effects. But when that was not enough, she turned to the foundation, on which she served as trustee. Transferring foundation money to her personal accounts violated the foundation's tax-exempt status, prosecutors said.

Even when O'Connor won, she continued to gamble rather than repay the foundation, "throwing good money after bad," prosecutors said.

In the end, the Internal Revenue Service launched an investigation after noting that she was writing checks of $100,000 to casinos to cover losses. In 2011, O'Connor underwent surgery for the brain tumor, leaving her physically impaired.

As part of her plea agreement, O'Connor agreed to settle "all tax liability resulting from her receipt" of money from the foundation. She also agreed to seek treatment for her gambling addiction.

Although she is currently without income or a bank account, O'Connor's economic status could reverse if she wins a civil lawsuit filed against a German bank involved in the 2005 purchase of a resort in Mendocino County that O'Connor had purchased in 1998.

O'Connor sold the Heritage House for $19.5 million but has alleged that she was the victim of fraud in the sale. A settlement or victory at trial could provide the millions needed to pay restitution to the foundation and also the tax liabilities involved with the misallocation of its funds.

"No figure, regardless of how much good they've done or how much they've given to charity, can escape criminal liability with impunity," said U.S. Atty. Laura Duffy.

One of O'Connor's major worries, defense attorney Iredale said, "is fear of losing her reputation."

tony.perry@latimes.com

Inmate exonerated in '06 Oakland shooting

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Inmate exonerated in '06 Oakland shooting

Demian Bulwa

Updated 6:22 am, Saturday, February 16, 2013

A man who has spent nearly seven years in prison for a shooting in West Oakland is on the brink of being released after his attorneys argued he was the innocent victim of shoddy police work and lying witnesses who have since recanted.

Alameda County prosecutors, who put 51-year-old Ronald Ross in state prison for attempted murder and assault with a firearm, conceded Friday that his conviction should not stand and said they would ask a Superior Court judge to free him.

"The district attorney doesn't have confidence the verdict was fully supported given all of the circumstances," said Assistant District Attorney Micheal O'Connor.

Friday's developments mean that Ross, who has been serving a sentence of 25 years to life at San Quentin State Prison, is probably days away from the end of an unusual and lengthy legal saga.

Ross, who had no record of violence, was arrested by Oakland police after the shooting victim, Renardo Williams, picked him out of a lineup of six photos, Ross' attorneys said. Bedside lineup

They said police showed the lineup to him at his hospital bedside three days after he was shot in front of his apartment at the Campbell Village complex on April 15, 2006.

Ross' attorneys said he had been included in the lineup because of a loose connection - his mother had, years earlier, lived in the same building as a woman whose family was in a dispute with Williams when he was shot.

But the lawyers said Williams now admits he never thought Ross was the shooter and implicated him only because he was pressured by police and feared the real gunman - the father of a boy Williams had beaten with a stick a day earlier - would come after him.

That man, Steven Embrey Sr., is now at Santa Rita Jail, accused of an Oakland crime spree in July 2011 in which he allegedly shot a man and fired upon another while pulling street robberies in a bulletproof vest.

"They never investigated the dad," said Elliot Peters, one of Ross' attorneys. "They never put him in a photo spread. We don't know why."

Another lawyer, Linda Starr, said, "This is one of the tragedies of wrongful convictions. The actual perpetrator is out there committing other offenses."

The investigating officer, Sgt. Steven Lovell, who has retired from the Oakland force, did not return a telephone message Friday.

Sgt. Chris Bolton, chief of staff for Police Chief Howard Jordan, said: "If there's any issue with how one of our officers conducted a lineup, that's something we'll take a look at."

The other two eyewitnesses who testified against Ross at his trial were 14-year-old boys. Ross' attorneys say one didn't see the shooting and the other was Embrey's son.

According to the attorneys, the son now says the gunman was his father - who was angry at Williams for the stick beating.

'You hit my son?'

The elder Embrey, who is 40, spoke to Ross' lawyers in December. He said he, his son and a friend named "Dennis" had gone to Williams' apartment and confronted him over the stick beating.

"Dude came out, and (my son) said, 'That's him right there,' " Embrey told the attorneys, according to a transcript they filed in Alameda County Superior Court. "And I said, 'You hit my son?' And he said, 'Yeah. I'd do it again.' "

Embrey said he started to take off his shirt to fight Williams when his friend said, "I got this," and shot Williams with a small-caliber handgun.

Prosecutors have contested some of the arguments presented by Ross' attorneys but concede that Ross should go free.

Judge Jon Rolefson said during Friday's hearing that prosecutors must turn in an amended response to Ross' petition to toss the conviction. At a hearing next Friday, Rolefson could grant the petition, then order Ross released.

Ross, who is in Santa Rita Jail after being brought back from San Quentin, smiled in court as his attorneys explained his case was nearing an end. Wearing a yellow shirt, glasses, a mustache and his long hair in a ponytail, he did not speak.

Outside court, his mother, 77-year-old Thelma Ross, said she was angry that he would be held for another week but was "excited and overwhelmed" that he had been exonerated. At her son's trial, jurors had ignored her testimony that, at the time of the shooting, he had been at home with her.

"I blame the system," Thelma Ross said. "It ain't right what they did. Seven years of his life is gone. They ought to be ashamed of themselves."

Free representation

Ronald Ross was given free representation by attorneys from the San Francisco law firm Keker and Van Nest and the Northern California Innocence Project at Santa Clara University. Their four-year probe was led by McArthur Investigations of Oakland.

The lawyers said the case was symptomatic of problems with eyewitness identifications, which stand as one of the chief causes of wrongful convictions around the nation.

They said Ross, shocked by his conviction in 2006, had cried during his sentencing and shouted, "I had nothing to do with this."

Demian Bulwa is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: dbulwa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @demianbulwa

The cost to see public records

Sheriff Joe doesn't want you to see these public records

The article or blog was written by Stephen Lemons who uses the title the "Feathered Bastard".

According to the article Sheriff Joe is charging $5,000 to get a copy of the 10,000 page report on the botched investigations of hundreds of sex crimes in Maricopa County.

Per the Arizona Public Records law you are allowed to view public records anytime a government office is open.

Normally the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday thru Friday.

But just to make it difficult for you to view the report for free, Sheriff Joe has changed the office hours to 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. in the morning and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m in the afternoon.

Many government agencies will take a report like this which is very interesting to the media, scan it and put it on a CD and let the public have it for the cost of the CD, which is usually under a dollar.

Of course Sheriff Joe Arpaio doesn't want you to see the report and that is why he is only selling pages of the report for 50 cents a copy or $5,000 for the whole report.

Hay víctimas pero no hay culpables

There are victims, but don't blame Sheriff Joe's goons

Hay víctimas pero no hay culpables

Phoenix, Arizona

por Eduardo Bernal - Feb. 15, 2013 11:21 AM La Voz

Pese a que una investigación interna de la Oficina del Sheriff del Condado Maricopa de al menos 10 mil documentos revela que no existe "un solo culpable" y se le atribuye el problema al sistema, la controversia sigue rodeando a esta agencia del orden público que busca desesperadamente deslindarse de acusaciones de negligencia al no haber investigado casos de abusos sexual a menores.

La Oficina del Sheriff del Condado Maricopa (MCSO, por sus siglas en inglés), reveló los resultados de la investigación, que duró más de 5 años, el pasado lunes 11 de febrero, y en la misma se concluye que fue la falta de recursos monetarios y humanos, lo que provocó que más de 400 casos de abuso sexual no fueran investigados adecuadamente o no investigados del todo.

La investigación fue iniciada en 2008 debido a que se acusó de negligencia a la oficina de Arpaio en numerosos casos de abuso sexual, la mayoría en contra de menores de edad.

Brian Sands, jefe de personal de MCSO, explicó que: "las deficiencias identificadas no fueron problemas que resultaron de la conducta de un individuo o varios, sino por que la unidad de crímenes sexuales estaba inadecuadamente equipada con los recursos para acompletar sus tareas", explicó a agentes encargados de la investigación interna.

Por su parte líderes comunitarios explican que Arpaio, una vez más está esquivando responsabilidades. "Arpaio nuevamente no está tomando responsabilidad y nos está diciendo mentiras", explicó Randy Parraz, organizador comunitario.

Los casos en cuestión fueron reportados en un periodo de dos años (2005-2007), lapso en el que la población de El Mirage contrató los servicios de MCSO por más de 2 millones de dólares para que se encargara de la seguridad de esa comunidad.

Es decir, cobraron por un trabajo que no hicieron y no hay un solo culpable. Además, MCSO señaló que los detectives y supervisores de la Unidad de Víctimas Especiales que manejaron estos casos no enfrentarán ningún tipo de reprimenda.

De acuerdo con Lydia Guzmán de Respect/Respeto, organización que forma parte de una coalición que busca destituir a Arpaio, es mentira que MCSO no tuviera los recursos suficientes, pero fueron gastados en pagos relacionados con demandas y en redadas antiinmigrantes.

Arpaio, quien fue reelegido por sexta vez el pasado mes de noviembre, se encuentra en una situación en la que tiene que lidiar con demandas millonarias, arreglos fuera de corte y una posible destitución.

Protesters show support for Christopher Dorner

Protesters show support for Christopher Dorner

February 16, 2013 | 1:44 pm

Dozens of protesters gathered outside the Los Angeles Police Department headquarters downtown Saturday afternoon, holding signs of support for Christopher Dorner, the fired police officer suspected of killing four people.

Those gathered said they were protesting police corruption and the way the massive manhunt for Dorner was conducted. Authorities said Dorner appears to have died from a self-inflected gunshot wound after a shootout with police in Big Bear on Tuesday, ending a deadly rampage that stretched across Southern California.

Protesters said they believed Dorner’s claims that he was unfairly fired from the department in 2009 – grievances described in a lengthy online manifesto that has been attributed to him. Dorner also claimed that he was the victim of racism.

Protesters also said they were appalled by police mistakenly shooting at passengers in two separate trucks in Torrance, wrongly believing Dorner might be in the vehicles. One woman was shot in the back and is still recovering.

The protesters emphasized that they did not condone the killings of which Dorner is accused.

Michael Nam, 30, stood at the corner of 1st and Main Streets with a sign, painted by his girlfriend, showing a tombstone and the words “RIP Habeas Corpus.” The tombstone was engulfed in flames.

Nam, of Lomita, said he was disturbed by the burning of a mountain cabin near Big Bear where Dorner barricaded himself with a high-powered sniper rifle, smoke bombs and a cache of ammo. The blaze started shortly after police fired "pyrotechnic" tear gas into the cabin; the canisters are known as "burners" because the intense heat they emit often causes a fire.

But authorities have maintained that the fire was not intentionally set. [Yea, and the FBI and BATF also say the fire at Waco was not intentionally set either.]

Dorner, whose charred body was found in the cabin, appears to have died of a single gunshot wound to the head, authorities said.

“How the police handled this -– they were the judge, the jury and the executioner,” Nam said. “As an American citizen, you have the right to a trial and due process by law.”

Nam, a former Marine and a current member of the Army National Guard, said he has combat experience from deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He said he has been in situations in which a combatant has been barricaded and successfully waited until the person surrendered, eventually getting “tired and coming out on their own.”

Nam said it was “pretty obvious” police wanted Dorner dead. “What I saw was a complete disregard for the Bill of Rights,” Nam said.

San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon, during a news conference Friday, defended the tactics used by his agency in the shootout at the mountain cabin, which left one of his deputies dead and another seriously wounded.

“The bottom line is the deputy sheriffs of this department, and the law enforcement officers from the surrounding area, did an outstanding job,” he said. “They ran into the line of fire.”

Protesters on Saturday said they organized the event through a Facebook page called “I support Christopher Jordan Dorner.” The Facebook post announcing the protest tells attendees to “keep it PEACEFUL” and to bring recording equipment.

The Facebook page states: “This is not a page about supporting the killing of innocent people. It’s supporting fighting back against corrupt cops and bringing to light what they do.”

As the protesters stood Saturday, drivers passing by honked, waved and gave thumbs up. A handful of officers watched from police headquarters across the street.

Nam said he spoke to the officers before the protest began about what the protesters should do to keep the event peaceful. He said the officers were respectful.

The protesters marched around the block, circling an intersection near the department headquarters. They chanted, “LAPD, you are guilty.”

Signs expressed anger at police and support for Dorner.

“If you’re not enraged, you’re not paying attention,” one sign read.

“Why couldn’t we hear his side?”

“Clear his name! Christopher Dorner”

Liliana Alaniz, 40, came with her family -– her mother, sister, nieces and daughters -– from Long Beach to join the protest, which she said was her first.

“I really, really believe he was innocent in the firing case,” Alaniz said of Dorner.

Alaniz held a sign that read, “Trying to clear your name.”

Her daughter, Andrea Tovar, said Dorner “has his supporters.”

“Murder is never right, but neither is the law when it’s unjust,” said Tovar, 18. She said police need to know they “can’t get away with everything.”