Homeless in Arizona

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Phoenix police officers reaffirm pledge; chief's plan is seen as insult by some

By Cecilia Chan The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Dec 27, 2012 11:07 PM

Phoenix Police Chief Daniel V. Garcia wants officers to take their oath of office every January.

The Police Department is kicking off the annual practice on Jan. 3 at City Hall with a reaffirmation of the chief and his top staff, which includes commanders, public-information officers and some lieutenants. A municipal judge will preside over the ceremony. Rank-and-file officers will have the opportunity to voluntarily retake the oath at their precincts and bureaus in January.

“I feel very strongly about our commitment to the duties we perform and believe that reaffirming our oath of office will strengthen our resolve to provide the best service possible,” Garcia said in a message to officers. “Reaffirming this oath will bring to mind these solemn promises of duty, service, and commitment to the citizens of Phoenix.”

Garcia’s decision isn’t sitting well with some rank-and-file officers, who called it unnecessary to reaffirm their commitment to the job every year.

Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, which represents 2,540 officers, said reaffirming the oath is a “show that really doesn’t mean anything.”

“We got some calls from (officers) who were offended,” union President Joe Clure said.

“I’ve been a police officer for 30 years with one oath of office when I graduated from the police academy, and it still applies to me,” he said. “When you take an oath of office ... that’s for life.”

Police recruits take the oath of office when they graduate from the academy. Although the practice was not in effect at the Dallas Police Department where Garcia served 34 years, the chief wants to begin an annual tradition in Phoenix, said police spokesman Trent Crump.

At least one national expert says he doesn’t know of any police agency that asks its officers to take their oath every year.

Crump said the chief’s intent was to “implement it as as spirit of pride in the profession of policing.”

“It’s to show our commitment to the community and to remind them what our oath is,” said Crump, who plans to reaffirm his oath. “It is a reminder to bring to the forefront exactly what we raised our hands up to swear.”

Since taking the helm in May, Garcia has touted the nobility of policing and said that meant setting high standards and holding officers accountable. [Yea, I'm sure the Mafia has the same high stands that holds grunt and file members accountable to the higher up bosses]

Union Vice President Ken Crane said the oath of office “doesn’t come with an expiration date.”

“If you need to be reminded of why you are doing this job, you probably don’t deserve to be a cop to begin with,” Crane said. “That is why many feel it’s an insult.”

Crane questioned why elected officials such as City Council members and Superior Court judges don’t take their oath of office ever year.

“I don’t think in Phoenix there is a huge lack of public trust in the Police Department,” [sad but true, most people in America think cops are honest] Crane said. “We’ve got a great police force and great men and women who do their job every day.”

William Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, said he’s not aware of an annual reaffirmation of an oath of office with any law-enforcement agency or elected office.

“But it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exit,” said Johnson, whose group is a lobbying coalition of police unions and associations.

“That type of stuff can be an affirmation, a reaffirmation, of ideals and aspirations they want to hold officers to,” Johnson said. “I don’t think it hurts if it doesn’t become a big event to pull people off the street to do that when they could be answering calls.”

However, if the reaffirmation comes off as if something is wrong and the department needs to keep reminding people about their job, then officers might be offended, Johnson said.

“I can see how it may be rubbing officers the wrong way,” he said. “It’s a matter of how it’s done and why it’s done, not just the fact of the oath itself.”

---

The oath taken by Phoenix Police officers

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution and laws of the United States of America and the state of Arizona; and to the charter and ordinances of the city of Phoenix, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge the duties assigned to me as a police officer according to the best of my ability, so help me God (or so I do affirm).”

Police motorcycle gang beats up Glendale man???

DPS probing Prescott assault involving officers

Associated Press Thu Dec 27, 2012 1:33 PM

PRESCOTT — State police have taken over an investigation into an alleged Prescott bar assault involving law enforcement officers who belong to a motorcycle club.

Prescott police Lt. Ken Morley says the department turned over the investigation of Saturday night’s incident involving members of the Iron Brotherhood Motorcycle Club to the Department of Public Safety once Prescott Valley police officers were recognized among the bikers.

DPS spokesman Bart Graves said Thursday that officers from several agencies across the state may be subjects of the investigation.

Prescott police say they were called to a hospital Saturday night and a 23-year-old Glendale man told them he was punched several times by members of the club. He was released after treatment.

Prescott Valley Police spokesman Sgt. Brandon Bonney says no officers are on leave.

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Last but not least here is another article which has a lot more details about this police beating.

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The police officers involved in this incident allegedly are members of a nationwide motorcycle gang or motorcycle club called the Iron Brotherhood Motorcycle Club

Here are links to their national and Arizona chapters of the Iron Brotherhood Motorcycle Club or I guess you could say Iron Brotherhood Police Motorcycle Gang

US Iron Brotherhood Motorcycle Club

Arizona Iron Brotherhood Motorcycle Club

Prescott Valley Police Chief Bill Fessler Denies Bar-Fight Allegations

Bad cop. No doughnut.

Prescott Valley Police Chief Bill Fessler Denies Bar-Fight Allegations, But Resigns From Motorcycle Club

By Ray Stern Mon., Dec. 31 2012 at 4:36 PM

Prescott Valley Police Chief Bill Fessler says he was at Prescott bar on December 22 with other motorcycle club members, but denies involvement in a fight.

Prescott Valley Police Chief Bill Fessler released a statement over the weekend to quell rumors that he was involved in a December 22 Prescott bar fight in which a Glendale man was injured.

The incident came to light after the 23-year-old victim showed up at a hospital with facial injuries, saying he'd been attacked by members of a motorcycle club.

When Prescott police started to investigate, they quickly learned it was a law-enforcement club, and that the alleged attackers were off-duty police officers. The probe was turned over to the state Department of Public Safety to avoid an appearance of a conflict of interest; Prescott Valley is a small town just east of Prescott.

Fessler admits to being at the bar at the time, and also to being a former motorcycle club member, but says that rumors that high-ranking Prescott Valley officers were involved in the "altercation" will be proven to the contrary. He says he has resigned his membership in the club, reportedly the Iron Brotherhood Motorcycle Club.

This ain't your your grandpappy's law-enforcement motorcycle club.

Fessler released a two-page letter to the media in which he whines repeatedly about his name and that of other officers being tarnished in the press. Yet Fessler's complaints are tardy -- this is the first statement he's made about the incident. New Times, for instance, called him last week for comment, but received no reply.

The chief writes that his "biggest disappointment" is that the hard work of the Prescott Valley PD employees is being "disregarded and shadowed" by media reports.

He also implies that the off-duty cops in the motorcycle club had hotel rooms and designated drivers as a safety precaution for the bikers' boozing on Whiskey Row.

The Glendale was treated and release without any serious injuries after the fight, but Fessler's right for thinking this incident -- as reported so far -- sheds a bad light on his department, and has raised awareness of law-enforcement biker clubs, but not in a good way. The Arizona members accused of being in the bar fight are part of the Whiskey Row chapter, says the Prescott Daily Courier.

Iron Brotherhood's national Web site revs up computer users with a crunchy Slipknot song to get them in a bad-boy mood. On the site, you'll learn that members of the club, made up of cops, "respect all clubs and the colors they wear." But the web author denies the club members associate with "1%er" clubs, a.k.a., "outlaw" clubs.

The Glendale victim, while being punched in the face by people who were dressed as bikers, apparently didn't know about the Iron Brotherhood's code of ethics.

Off-Duty Cops at Prescott Bar Mistaken for Motorcycle Gang by Glendale Assault Victim

Bad cop. No doughnut.

Off-Duty Cops at Prescott Bar Mistaken for Motorcycle Gang by Glendale Assault Victim

By Ray Stern Thu., Dec. 27 2012 at 7:55 AM

A group of off-duty cops at a Prescott bar were mistaken for violent motorcycle gang members by a Glendale man who says he was assaulted by them.

Prescott police talked to the 23-year-old victim at about 11 p.m. on Saturday night while he was being treated at the Yavapai Regional Medical Center's west campus, says a Prescott PD news release.

The victim told the officer he was at a downtown Prescott bar and believed he'd been punched repeatedly by several "members of a motorcycle club." His face took the brunt of the beating, but he was released from the hospital apparently without serious injuries.

When police started checking up on the situation, they soon learned the alleged group of thugs were actually off-duty police officers.

"A preliminary investigation revealed that the individuals involved in this incident were off-duty law enforcement officers from throughout the state," the news release says. "Prescott police officers on-scene collected evidence from the location of the reported assault and statements from witnesses."

Prescott Police Chief Mike Kabbel has asked the state Department of Public Safety to conduct an independent criminal investigation of the incident.

The Prescott Daily Courier, which broke the story last night, quotes a DPS spokeswoman saying that "members of the Prescott Valley Police Department" were implicated.

Commander Art Askew of the Prescott Valley Police Department tells New Times this morning that while it's true that officers from his agency were at the bar, "this was not solely a Prescott Valley police" incident.

We ask Askew if he was involved -- he says he wasn't, and therefore has no firsthand info about the situation.

His agency has no further comment, he says.

It'll take DPS at least a few weeks to do this investigation, we figure. Meantime, we'll have to guess which other agencies were involved. Which local police agency employs people most likely to be mistaken for a motorcycle gang?

Our first guess: At least one deputy from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.

How to reduce your property taxes? Bribe the county assessor!!!!

Assessor's office was off the radar

By Jack Dolan and Ruben Vives, Los Angeles Times

December 27, 2012, 5:24 p.m.

On his first day as a special assistant to Los Angeles County Assessor John Noguez, David Zoraster was surprised to see the methodical, data-driven process of property appraisal replaced with a system known within the office as "Let's Make a Deal."

One of Noguez's deputies ignored appraisals valuing the site of Hollywood's Old Spaghetti Factory site at $16 million to $18 million, and sided with the property owner's tax consultant — Ramin Salari, a prominent Noguez campaign fundraiser — who said the parcels were worth only $10.5 million.

A week later, Noguez dropped it to $7.8 million. The deals generated $427,000 in tax refunds for the owner and a substantial fee for Salari.

"I felt they gave away the farm," said Zoraster, when he resigned from the department after four months.

In October, prosecutors filed charges alleging what Zoraster and others in the office had suspected: The Old Spaghetti Factory was part of a massive bribery scheme. Noguez and at least one of his deputies took $460,000 from Salari in exchange for millions in tax cuts on dozens of properties, according to investigators.

So far Noguez, Salari and two former assessor's office employees have been charged in the alleged corruption.

As the details of the case have emerged through a yearlong Times investigation and in court documents, it remains unclear how such a scheme could have gone undetected. So many of the steps were carried out in plain sight, leaving witnesses and an extensive paper trail.

At least part of the answer lies in the obscurity the assessor's office, the lack of outside scrutiny and the sheer size of the property tax rolls, which make it difficult to detect reductions, even when they amount to hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Los Angeles County assessor oversees the nation's largest local tax roll — more than 2 million properties worth more than a trillion dollars. Even a slight reduction in the assessed value of a property can produce a windfall in tax savings for the owner for years to come.

Despite that power, few Angelenos could have named the county assessor before the Noguez scandal made headlines.

"I think I even voted for the guy," said one investigator from the district attorney's office working on the case, who spoke on background because he isn't authorized to address the media. "But honestly, who remembers?" The last time the public showed active interest in the office was in the late 1980s. They weren't concerned about corruption; they were fighting off efforts by local politicians to boost their budgets by appointing assessors who would be more willing to raise property taxes.

In 1988, Californians overwhelmingly approved a state constitutional amendment requiring all county assessors to be elected.

Historically, the job has attracted low-key candidates, rank-and-file employees who worked their way up through the assessor's bureaucracy and, when the boss retired, ran for the agency's top job without much public attention.

Noguez aimed to change that. Tall and handsome, with a game show host's easy charm, he spent his evenings on the town, meeting with real estate industry groups. Colleagues envisioned him as a state legislator one day, maybe a congressman.

For his campaign, Noguez raised the kind of money that would impress Democratic Party bosses, whose support he would need if he chose to run for higher office.

He collected well over $1 million for a race in which his chief rival was a little-known Southeast Los Angeles County real estate agent who raised less than $50,000.

Much of Noguez's money came from business people — developers, big property owners, tax consultants — who had big tax bills. When Noguez won in November 2010, they got extraordinary access.

For most residential properties, the appraisal process is simple. The tax value is the price the house sold for and then goes up by no more than 2% every year.

Commercial property appraisal is more subjective. The assessor can reduce values based not only on the property value, but also on the profitability of the enterprise. Owners of idle factories or empty apartment buildings frequently ask for reductions.

Noguez set a new tone in the office, referring to high-profile property owners and campaign contributors as "family."

Shortly after Noguez's election, a low-level appraiser in the Sylmar office disagreed with a request from Salari, the tax consultant, to reduce the value of a North Hollywood apartment building from $44 million to $30 million.

Noguez sent two of his top deputies and Salari to the appraiser's office to complain. Noguez participated via speakerphone.

Noguez said in a February interview that he saw nothing wrong with sending a campaign contributor to the meeting: "We encourage the outside community to come in with general information and help us."

But Santos Kreimann, who was appointed to lead the agency after Noguez went on paid leave in June, said it was a violation of office policy. There has to be a clear separation between the day-to-day workings of the assessor's office and campaign contributors, Kreimann said. "When Mr. Noguez came in, that line may have blurred."

There's little oversight of California's 58 county assessor offices. The state Board of Equalization audits them every few years but focuses on policies and practices.

In normal economic times, when Los Angeles property values seem relentlessly on the rise, large reductions might have attracted more scrutiny. But during the recession, there was less reason to question a drop in value.

The only outside agency that closely monitors the assessor's office is the county's Assessment Appeals Board — lawyers and real estate experts appointed by county supervisors to hear complaints from owners who think the assessor's office has overvalued their property.

But the board's job is to referee disputes, not raise questions when the property owner and assessor are in agreement.

In those cases, the board is happy to approve the deal and move on.

"I think there was a certain amount of expediency desired by the board," said Sharon Moller, a top assessor's office administrator. "And a certain amount of relief when things moved quickly."

The developers who bought the Old Spaghetti Factory site had filed two appeals for 2008 and 2009. They languished until Noguez took office and placed a deputy, Mark McNeil, in charge of handling appeals.

Cases, including the Old Spaghetti Factory, were soon being settled in favor of Noguez's campaign supporters.

McNeil was arrested in October and charged with conspiracy and misappropriation by a public officer. He pleaded not guilty and posted bail.

Noguez, who also pleaded not guilty, has been in jail since October, unable to make his $1.16-million bail because he must prove any money used for his defense did not come from illegal activity. [Sounds like that flushes your right to bail and a fair trial down the toilet!!!]

Noguez's attorney did not respond to requests for comment. McNeil's attorney, Vicki Podberesky, said: "I firmly believe that McNeil did absolutely nothing inappropriate. ...Ultimately, it was the responsibility of the appeals board to make the decisions."

Salari's attorney, Mark Werksman, said all of the reductions his client won were warranted. "He is an aggressive advocate who does his homework," Werksman said. "The system was set up to allow the flexibility that we've seen."

In the aftermath of the Noguez scandal, Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich put an advisory measure on the November ballot asking the voters if the county should push for a constitutional amendment that would allow the supervisors to appoint the assessor, presumably providing greater accountability and oversight.

The answer was a resounding "no" — 78% of voters opposed it.

The supervisors, saying the public's confidence in the assessor's office had eroded, banned tax agents, such as Salari, from contributing to assessor's races.

The measure went into effect Dec. 13.

jack.dolan@latimes.com

ruben.vives@latimes.com

Politicians have lousy work ethics???

Source

No more excuses, Ald. Jackson

December 28, 2012

Chicago Ald. Sandi Jackson, 7th, bristled recently when reporters asked about her lousy attendance at City Council meetings.

"I think my constituents understand this. I'm not going to respond to one or two people who have some angst about my attendance in City Council," she said. "This has been a tough year for me, there's no doubt about that."

Count us among those with what Jackson calls "some angst" and we would call "some envy." Who else can skip this much work and still get paid?

While it's true that Ald. Jackson has experienced a difficult year — her husband, former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., was hospitalized in June for bipolar disorder amid a federal investigation into misuse of campaign funds, and continues to recuperate — even that unfortunate chain of events doesn't explain away her remarkable absenteeism.

Records from the city clerk's office show she missed five of 16 City Council meetings this year. She made it to four committee meetings out of 72.

Four of 72.

Last year, she made it to all but two council meetings, according to attendance records. But from May 2011, when Mayor Rahm Emanuel reshuffled committee assignments, through December 2011, she missed 34 committee meetings out of 38. That was the year before her husband's hospitalization.

Turns out Ald. Jackson's chronic absenteeism isn't unique. Many aldermen have spotty attendance records at committee meetings. And that's where the work gets done. The idea that Chicago aldermen, who earn more than $100,000 a year, can show up for monthly council meetings, pancake breakfasts and fundraising parties but skip the bread-and-butter committee work is disturbing.

Some aldermen argue that their time is best spent in their wards. They can't make it downtown five days a week. No matter, they're basically saying to the constituents who fund their splendid salaries, that routinely missing committee meetings makes them all the more dependent on Emanuel's staff and lobbyists to bring them up to speed on complex issues. Who needs to hear actual testimony on important concerns facing the city when they can get thumbnail versions from others? Hey, a schedule uncluttered by actually representing the people of the ward leaves more time for those long lunches and popularity-building public appearances.

If committees are, indeed, pointless, then Emanuel should shrink the committee structure much further. The council reduced the number of committees last year from 19 to 16. If they're such a bore for the aldermen, how about eliminating a few more to save taxpayer money?

Not all aldermen consider committee work a waste of time. Ald. Tim Cullerton, 38th, has one of the best attendance records for council and committee meetings.

"From my perspective, I'm assigned to committees, and whether it's routine legislation or important legislation, it's my responsibility to be there as the elected official," he says.

Jackson says she has gotten a lot done in her ward despite her spotty attendance downtown. She downplays her absenteeism as if it's much ado about nothing.

That's ironic.

Until his illness sidelined him in June, her husband often boasted of his impeccable voting record in Congress. Rep. Jackson rarely missed a vote on the House floor, even if it meant schlepping back to the Capitol at 9 p.m. At least one member of the family thought it was important to be present.

District Attorney Jay Boyarsky committed misconduct

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San Jose: Ruling finds DA's right-hand man committed misconduct

By Tracey Kaplan

tkaplan@mercurynews.com

Posted: 12/27/2012 06:58:02 PM PST

SAN JOSE -- In a scathing opinion published Thursday, a state appellate court reversed a judgment against a felon accused of being a sexually violent predator, saying the prosecutor handling the case -- now District Attorney Jeff Rosen's right-hand man -- engaged in a "pervasive pattern'' of misconduct.

The misconduct finding against Chief Assistant District Attorney Jay Boyarsky is the first black mark against Rosen's administration since he took office two years ago on an ethics platform and appointed Boyarsky as his top assistant.

But Rosen handled the situation Thursday with the same low-key aplomb he employed as a homicide prosecutor to defuse potential courtroom crises. Boyarsky, who is also Rosen's best friend, tried the case when he was a line prosecutor, before Rosen came into office.

"We respect the court's decision," Rosen said. "Any prosecutor in my office may err, and when we do, we learn from it and improve."

The ruling, written by Conrad Rushing, the presiding judge of the 6th District Court of Appeal, stems from a civil court hearing in Santa Clara County in which Dariel Shazier was involuntarily committed to a state mental hospital on the grounds that he was a sexually violent predator.

Boyarsky erred by asking improper questions of the witnesses that elicited inflammatory answers and by making improper arguments to the jury, Rushing wrote. For instance, Boyarsky implied without offering any evidence that Shazier had molested other boys. The prosecutor also essentially asked jurors what their friends and family would think of them if they found Shazier wasn't a predator.

"This is not a case in which the prosecutor engaged in a few minor incidents of improper conduct," Rushing wrote. "Rather, the prosecutor engaged in a pervasive pattern of inappropriate questions, comment and argument throughout the entire trial."

Boyarsky said he accepts the court's ruling about his conduct, though he made his arguments in "good faith."

"Based on the court's opinion, if I had it to do over again," he said, "I would make my arguments differently."

Although the ruling reverses the involuntary civil commitment order, Shazier will remain at Coalinga State Hospital while the case is pending. Rosen noted Shazier has a "serious history of sexually preying on young teenagers," and said his office will try him again if doctors conclude he is a predator. Under another scenario, the state Attorney General's Office could appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court, which could strike down the appellate decision, allowing the involuntary commitment to a mental hospital to stand.

The case dates back to 1994, when Shazier pleaded guilty to sodomy with a minor under 14, sodomy with a minor under 18 and oral copulation where the victim is unable to resist due to an intoxicating substance. He was sentenced to 17 years and eight months in prison.

Shortly before he was to be released, the DA's Office sought to have him involuntarily committed to a state mental hospital on the grounds he was a sexually violent predator. The first attempt resulted in a mistrial when the jury voted 11-1 in favor of finding he was a predator. The second attempt, by now-disgraced former prosecutor Ben Field, was also reversed on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct.

To qualify Shazier as a predator, Boyarsky had to show he had "a diagnosable mental disorder that predisposes him to sexual violence.''

Two of the two state doctors testifying for Boyarsky said Shazier has hebephilia, a sexual attraction to teenage boys who have attained puberty. However, hebephilia is not classified as a mental illness, Rushing noted. One of the doctors also testified that the defendant was not a pedophile and was not aroused by force or violence, and that the only reason his prior crimes were considered nonconsensual was because the victims were minors who could not legally consent.

Rushing said that Shazier presented a "vigorous defense," including evidence that he had spent the last 15 years while incarcerated seeking every voluntary treatment available. In addition, while incarcerated, the defendant had many opportunities to re-offend, as there were vulnerable teenage boys housed with him, but did not do so.

Dallas Sacher, director of the Sixth District Appellate Program, which handled the appeal, praised the ruling.

"Nobody in their right mind wants people on the street doing this to boys," Sacher said. "But creating a make-believe genre of crazy people isn't right either. The ends do not justify the means."

A spokesman for the Attorney General said,"Our office is reviewing the opinion in order to determine whether further action is warranted. We argued in our appellate court brief that none of the cited instances constituted prosecutorial misconduct and reversal was not required because it is not 'reasonably probable that a result more favorable to the defendant would have occurred' absent the misconduct."

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

FCC proposes changes to lower pay-phone rates for prisoners

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FCC proposes changes to lower pay-phone rates for prisoners

By Christine Mai-Duc

December 28, 2012, 12:37 p.m.

The Federal Communications Commission has officially proposed new rules that would lower interstate pay-phone rates for prisoners and their families, an issue it has been considering for nine years.

The agency said it is proposing rate caps, eliminating per-call fees, and other changes that would lower the costs of keeping in touch for inmates, who in some states can pay as much as $15 for a 15-minute phone call.

"This is not just an issue of markets and rates; it is a broader issue of social justice," said Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel in a statement posted on the agency’s website. "When a single phone call may cost as much as a month of unlimited phone service, the financial burden of staying in touch may be too much for inmates’ families to bear." Rosenworcel is one of three appointees of President Obama on the five-person commission.

Commissioner Ajit Pai, a Republican, said he believed in rates set by the free market, but was open to changing rules in the nation’s prisons. "Choice and competition are not hallmarks of life behind bars,” Pai said in a statement. "Inmates cannot choose among multiple carriers for lower rates."

The move comes a little over a month after the regulatory agency sought comment on a number of proposals stemming from a nearly decade-long lawsuit filed by Martha Wright, a grandmother who struggled with the costs of staying in touch with her then-incarcerated grandson.

“We’ve been waiting for FCC action for 10 years now,” said Deborah Golden, an attorney with the D.C. Prisoners’ Project, who has worked on the case for a decade. “We are so happy that something can move forward.”

Civil rights and religious groups have long argued that the rates, which some call exorbitant, cut off prisoners from their families and make it more likely that they’ll commit a crime again once released.

“Families who want to stay connected to their loved ones spend as much as the cost of a new iPhone every month," Golden said. "It just reached a point where the FCC had to act.”

[Updated 1:37 p.m. PST Dec. 28: FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, also an Obama appointee, said he was "pleased that we're moving forward ... on this important issue, which affects the families of inmates, prisoner rehabilitation, and prison security."]

Rates are set by contracts between state and local governments and phone companies, who often pay agencies a “commission” for each prison site. The result is widely varying rates; a 15-minute long-distance phone call can cost $2.36 in Massachusetts, and as much as $17 in Georgia, according to a report by the Prison Policy Initiative, a Massachusetts think tank.

The prison phone market is dominated by two companies – Global Tel*Link Corp. and Securus Technologies, Inc., who make up 80% of the market, according to Standard & Poor’s. Neither company has responded to requests for comment.

FBI removes many redactions in Marilyn Monroe file

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FBI removes many redactions in Marilyn Monroe file

By Anthony McCartney

Associated Press

Posted: 12/28/2012 06:17:11 AM PST

LOS ANGELES -- FBI files on Marilyn Monroe that could not be located earlier this year have been found and re-issued, revealing the names of some of the movie star's acquaintances who drew concern from government officials and her own entourage.

The files had previously been heavily redacted, but more details are now public in a version of the file recently obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act. The updated files reveal that some in Monroe's inner circle were concerned about her association with Frederick Vanderbilt Field, who was disinherited from his wealthy family over his leftist views.

The FBI's files on Monroe show the extent the agency was monitoring the actress for ties to communism in the years before her death in August 1962. A trip to Mexico earlier that year to shop for furniture brought her in contact with Field, who was living in the country with his wife in self-imposed exile. Informants reported to the FBI that a "mutual infatuation" had developed between Field and Monroe, which caused concern among some in her inner circle, including her therapist, the files state.

"This situation caused considerable dismay among Miss Monroe's entourage and also among the (American Communist Group in Mexico)," the file states. It includes references to an interior decorator who worked with Monroe's analyst reporting her connection to Field to the doctor.

Field's autobiography devotes an entire chapter to Monroe's Mexico trip, "An Indian Summer Interlude." He mentions that he and his wife accompanied Monroe on shopping trips and meals and he only mentions politics once in a passage on their dinnertime conversations.

"She talked mostly about herself and some of the people who had been or still were important to her," Field wrote in "From Right to Left." "She told us about her strong feelings for civil rights, for black equality, as well as her admiration for what was being done in China, her anger at red-baiting and McCarthyism and her hatred of (FBI director) J. Edgar Hoover."

Under Hoover's watch, the FBI kept tabs on the political and social lives of many celebrities, including Frank Sinatra, Charlie Chaplin and Monroe's ex-husband Arthur Miller. The bureau has also been involved in numerous investigations about crimes against celebrities, including threats against Elizabeth Taylor, an extortion case involving Clark Gable and more recently, trying to solve who killed rapper Notorious B.I.G.

The AP had sought the removal of redactions from Monroe's FBI files earlier this year as part of a series of stories on the 50th anniversary of Monroe's death. The FBI had reported that it had transferred the files to a National Archives facility in Maryland, but archivists said the documents had not been received. A few months after requesting details on the transfer, the FBI released an updated version of the files that eliminate dozens of redactions.

For years, the files have intrigued investigators, biographers and those who don't believe Monroe's death at her Los Angeles area home was a suicide.

A 1982 investigation by the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office found no evidence of foul play after reviewing all available investigative records, but noted that the FBI files were "heavily censored."

That characterization intrigued the man who performed Monroe's autopsy, Dr. Thomas Noguchi. While the DA investigation concluded he conducted a thorough autopsy, Noguchi has conceded that no one will likely ever know all the details of Monroe's death. The FBI files and confidential interviews conducted with the actress' friends that have never been made public might help, he wrote in his 1983 memoir "Coroner."

"On the basis of my own involvement in the case, beginning with the autopsy, I would call Monroe's suicide 'very probable,'" Noguchi wrote. "But I also believe that until the complete FBI files are made public and the notes and interviews of the suicide panel released, controversy will continue to swirl around her death."

Monroe's file begins in 1955 and mostly focuses on her travels and associations, searching for signs of leftist views and possible ties to communism. One entry, which previously had been almost completely redacted, concerned intelligence that Monroe and other entertainers sought visas to visit Russia that year.

The file continues up until the months before her death, and also includes several news stories and references to Norman Mailer's biography of the actress, which focused on questions about whether Monroe was killed by the government.

For all the focus on Monroe's closeness to suspected communists, the bureau never found any proof she was a member of the party.

"Subject's views are very positively and concisely leftist; however, if she is being actively used by the Communist Party, it is not general knowledge among those working with the movement in Los Angeles," a July 1962 entry in Monroe's file states.

Sounds like the Chinese are copying the American Patriot Act???

China Toughens Its Restrictions on Use of the Internet

By KEITH BRADSHER

Published: December 28, 2012

HONG KONG — The Chinese government issued new rules on Friday requiring Internet users to provide their real names to service providers, while assigning Internet companies greater responsibility for deleting forbidden postings and reporting them to the authorities.

The decision came as government censors have sharply stepped up restrictions on China’s international Internet traffic in recent weeks. The restrictions are making it harder for businesses to protect commercial secrets and for individuals to view overseas Web sites that the Chinese Communist Party deems politically sensitive.

The new regulations, issued by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, allow Internet users to continue to adopt pseudonyms for their online postings, but only if they first provide their real names to service providers, a measure that could chill some of the vibrant discourse on the country’s Twitter-like microblogs. The authorities periodically detain and even jail Internet users for politically sensitive comments, such as calls for a multiparty democracy or accusations of impropriety by local officials.

Any entity providing Internet access, including over fixed-line or mobile phones, “should when signing agreements with users or confirming provision of services, demand that users provide true information about their identities,” the committee ordered.

In recent weeks, Internet users in China have exposed a series of sexual and financial scandals that have led to the resignations or dismissals of at least 10 local officials. International news media have also published a series of reports in recent months on the accumulation of wealth by the family members of China’s leaders, and some Web sites carrying such reports, including Bloomberg’s and the English- and Chinese-language sites of The New York Times, have been assiduously blocked, while Internet comments about them have been swiftly deleted.

The regulations issued Friday build on a series of similar administrative guidelines and municipal rules issued over the past year. China’s mostly private Internet service providers have been slow to comply with them, fearing the reactions of their customers. The committee’s decision has much greater legal force, and puts far more pressure on Chinese Internet providers to comply more quickly and more comprehensively, Internet specialists said.

In what appeared to be an effort to make the decision more palatable to the Chinese public, the committee also included a mandate for businesses in China to be more cautious in gathering and protecting electronic data.

“Nowadays on the Internet there are very serious problems with citizens’ personal electronic information being recklessly collected, used without approval, illegally disclosed, and even traded and sold,” Li Fei, a deputy director of the committee’s legislative affairs panel, said on Friday at a news conference in Beijing. “There are also a large number of cases of invasive attacks on information systems to steal personal electronic information, as well as lawbreaking on the Internet through swindles and through defaming and slandering others.”

Mr. Li denied that the government was seeking to prevent the exposure of corruption.

“When citizens exercise these rights according to the law, no organization or individual can use any reason or excuse to interfere, and cannot suppress them or exact revenge,” he said. “At the same time, when citizens exercise their rights, including through use of the Internet, they should stay within the bounds of the Constitution and the laws, and must not harm the legitimate rights and interests of the state, society, the collective or of other citizens.”

A spokesman for the National People’s Congress said that 145 members of the committee voted in favor of the new rules, with 5 abstaining and 1 voting against them.

The requirement for real names appeared to be aimed particularly at cellphone companies and other providers of mobile Internet access. At the news conference, an official from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Zhao Zhiguo, said that nearly all fixed-line services now had real-name registration, but that only about 70 percent of mobile phones were registered under real names.

The authorities have made it harder in the last several years to buy a cellphone chip with a new phone number anonymously. New buyers are required to register with their identity documents before making international calls.

“To implement the relevant requirements of this decision, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will improve its regulatory system and draft a detailed implementation plan to fully develop authenticated identity administration for telephone users,” Mr. Zhao said.

China’s censors have begun blocking more foreign Web sites and, in recent weeks, have sharply stepped up the blocking of virtual private networks, or VPNs. A VPN is a tool for encrypted computer communication that is widely used by businesses and individuals in China to protect against prying by the government and state-owned enterprises, and to circumvent China’s blocking of a long and lengthening list of overseas Web sites that cover subjects the government considers politically sensitive.

The Chinese government has been experimenting over the past two years with ways to identify and block VPNs, said Xiao Qiang, the leader of a team of Chinese Internet researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. But the government did not begin deploying that capability on a considerable scale until September, and it has stepped up its use of blocking since then, particularly in the weeks leading up to the Communist Party’s National Congress in early November, he said.

Although many had expected the blocking of Web sites and VPNs to recede after the party congress, that has not happened. Mr. Xiao said that the Chinese blocking of VPNs was “technically savvy and politically self-destructive,” in that it may allow the authorities to more effectively monitor communications and interfere with the dissemination of politically sensitive information, but at a high price in terms of antagonizing computer users across China.

Taken together, political analysts said, the various Internet moves suggest that while the new team of leaders selected at the party congress may be talking about reforms, including further opening of the economy to international competition, the new leaders remain very wary of freer political discourse, and may even pursue further restrictions.

A review of search terms on Google, one way of tracking subjects of interest in China, shows a surge in searches for the term “VPN” that began in late August, peaked in early November at the start of the party congress and has stayed high ever since.

Deng Xiaoping, China’s paramount leader in the 1980s and 1990s, famously observed that in opening up the country’s economy to the world after the Cultural Revolution, some “flies” would inevitably come in. Bill Bishop, a social media specialist based in Beijing, said that the latest policy moves suggested, “They’ve got some very smart computer scientists trying to figure out how to keep the digital flies away.”

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year - Please drive drunk - We need the money!!!!!

Source

Arizona DUI task forces prepare for busiest time of year

By Grant Francis The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Thu Dec 27, 2012 10:04 PM

DUI task forces across Arizona are preparing for what they call their most intense week, authorities said.

Twelve task forces have been organized this year to help curb a growing number of DUI and extreme DUI arrests, according to the Arizona Governor’s Office of Highway Safety.

“The next five days will be very intense,” said Alberto Gutier, director of the Office of Highway Safety.

Gutier said the number of DUI related arrests increases significantly during the holiday season, which begins the day after Thanksgiving, and lasts through New Year’s Day.

“We go very big during the holidays,” he said about this year’s task forces, which consist of 40 to 100 officers and are made up from more than 70 law enforcement agencies across the state working with the Office of Highway Safety.

In Arizona, law enforcement rarely employs the DUI checkpoint method, Gutier said. Instead, officers are organized into patrols and target different areas, he said.

Officers are gathered at several “command centers” around the Valley and briefed on their assigned areas before going out on patrol.

“The message we’re trying to get out there, is that we’re everywhere,” Gutier said.

While the number of overall DUI’s during the holidays has increased since 2011, Gutier says he is more concerned with the number of extreme DUI’s, which can occur when a suspect’s blood alcohol content is over .150 percent.

“People can lose their jobs after one of these arrests,” Gutier said.

Extreme DUI arrests rose from 788 in 2011 to 888 in 2012, according to statewide DUI enforcement statistics.

Total DUI arrests, which includes extreme, aggravated, misdemeanor and arrests with priors, rose from 2,888 in 2011 to 3,353 in 2012, the statistics show.

“It’s so easy to have a designated driver, or just ask a friend to drop you off and call a cab when you’re done,” he said.

Congress repeals 4th Amendment??? - Again

Federal Power to Intercept Messages Is Extended

Federal Power to Intercept Messages Is Extended

By ROBERT PEAR

Published: December 28, 2012

WASHINGTON — Congress gave final approval on Friday to a bill extending the government’s power to intercept electronic communications of spy and terrorism suspects, after the Senate voted down proposals from several Democrats and Republicans to increase protections of civil liberties and privacy.

The Senate passed the bill by a vote of 73 to 23, clearing it for approval by President Obama, who strongly supports it. Intelligence agencies said the bill was their highest legislative priority.

Critics of the bill, including Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democrat, and Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Republican, expressed concern that electronic surveillance, though directed at noncitizens, inevitably swept up communications of Americans as well.

“The Fourth Amendment was written in a different time and a different age, but its necessity and its truth are timeless,” Mr. Paul said, referring to the constitutional ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. “Over the past few decades, our right to privacy has been eroded. We have become lazy and haphazard in our vigilance. [We haven't become anything. Congress has become tyrannical] Digital records seem to get less protection than paper records.”

The bill, which extends the government’s surveillance authority for five years, was approved in the House by a vote of 301 to 118 in September. Mr. Obama is expected to sign the bill in the next few days. [Obama isn't a freedom fighter anymore then Hitler or Stalin was!!!]

Congressional critics of the bill said that they suspected that intelligence agencies were picking up the communications of many Americans, but that they could not be sure because the agencies would not provide even rough estimates of how many people inside the United States had had communications collected under authority of the surveillance law, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The inspector general of the National Security Agency told Congress that preparing such an estimate was beyond the capacity of his office.

The chief Senate supporter of the bill, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, said the proposed amendments were unnecessary. Moreover, she said, any changes would be subject to approval by the House, and the resulting delay could hamper the government’s use of important intelligence-gathering tools, for which authority is set to expire next week.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was adopted in 1978 and amended in 2008, with the addition of new surveillance authority and procedures, which are continued by the bill approved on Friday. The 2008 law was passed after the disclosure that President George W. Bush had authorized eavesdropping inside the United States, to search for evidence of terrorist activity, without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying.

Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, said that he and Mr. Wyden were concerned that “a loophole” in the 2008 law “could allow the government to effectively conduct warrantless searches for Americans’ communications.”

James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, told Congress, “There is no loophole in the law.”

By a vote of 52 to 43, the Senate on Friday rejected a proposal by Mr. Wyden to require the national intelligence director to tell Congress if the government had collected any domestic e-mail or telephone conversations under the surveillance law.

The Senate also rejected, 54 to 37, an amendment that would have required disclosure of information about significant decisions by a special federal court that reviews applications for electronic surveillance in foreign intelligence cases.

The amendment was proposed by one of the most liberal senators, Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, and one of the most conservative, Mike Lee, Republican of Utah.

The No. 2 Senate Democrat, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, said the surveillance law “does not have adequate checks and balances to protect the constitutional rights of innocent American citizens.” [Yea, but the 4th Amendment does, and the law flushes the 4th down the toilet]

“It is supposed to focus on foreign intelligence,” Mr. Durbin said, “but the reality is that this legislation permits targeting an innocent American in the United States as long as an additional purpose of the surveillance is targeting a person outside the United States.”

However, 30 Democrats joined 42 Republicans and one independent in voting for the bill. Three Republicans — Mr. Lee, Mr. Paul and Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — voted against the bill, as did 19 Democrats and one independent.

Mr. Merkley said the administration should provide at least unclassified summaries of major decisions by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

“An open and democratic society such as ours should not be governed by secret laws,” Mr. Merkley said, “and judicial interpretations are as much a part of the law as the words that make up our statute.”

Mrs. Feinstein said the law allowed intelligence agencies to go to the court and get warrants for surveillance of “a category of foreign persons,” without showing probable cause to believe that each person was working for a foreign power or a terrorist group.

Mr. Wyden said these writs reminded him of the “general warrants that so upset the colonists” more than 200 years ago. [Gasp - Are they saying the American government has become tyrannical and needs to be overthrown like the British tyrants were??? - Probably]

“The founding fathers could never have envisioned tweeting and Twitter and the Internet,” Mr. Wyden said. “Advances in technology gave government officials the power to invade individual privacy in a host of new ways.”

Love cops? You will probably love Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema

In the past when Kyrsten Sinema her elections signs always said that the police unions supported her.

While I suspect Kyrsten Sinema will disagree with my statement that she supports the police state, she certainly is a big fan of law enforcement. And her voting record is proof of that. She routinely votes for pork for cops.

Here are some articles Kyrsten Sinema.

Bloomberg blames Apple thefts for rise in New York's crime rate

Source

Bloomberg blames Apple thefts for rise in New York's crime rate

By Salvador Rodriguez

December 28, 2012, 2:50 p.m.

How high is the demand for Apple products? Well in New York City, where most crime is going down, Apple thefts are going up.

There have been so many iPhones, iPads and other Apple devices stolen in 2012 that overall crime in New York went up 3.3% for the year despite all-time lows for the city in homicides and shootings, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

Apple thefts have increased by 3,890 this year.

“If you just took away the jump in Apple, we’d be down for the year,” said Marc La Vorgna, Bloomberg’s press secretary, according to the New York Times reported.

QUIZ: Test your Apple knowledge

So what are Apple users in New York City to do? Bloomberg suggests keeping your Apple device in a snug, hard-to-reach pocket.

“Put it in a pocket in sort of a more body-fitting, tighter clothes, that you can feel if it was -- if somebody put their hand in your pocket, not just an outside coat pocket,” Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show, the newspaper reported.

Politicians are not held accountable for their actions???

Source

Judge dismisses suit against Russell Pearce

by Alia Beard Rau - Dec. 28, 2012 02:30 PM

The Republic | azcentral.com

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that activist Salvador Reza filed against then-Senate President Russell Pearce after Pearce had Reza thrown out of the Senate building in 2011.

Reza was among protesters at a marathon hearing of several immigration bills in February 2011 that drew a rowdy crowd of opponents to the Senate. Two days later, when Reza returned to the Senate, police told Reza he'd been banned from the building, with approval from Pearce. Reza refused to leave and was arrested on suspicion of trespassing. No charges were ever filed.

Democratic lawmakers accused Pearce, the Republican lawmaker behind the controversial immigration law Senate Bill 1070 who was later recalled, of banning certain immigration-rights leaders. Pearce denied it, saying he gave Capitol police the authority to ban anyone who had been disruptive during the immigration hearing.

Pearce said the decision was a security issue. Reza alleged he was targeted because of his Mexican ancestry and his public criticism of Pearce.

Reza sued Pearce, alleging his rights of freedom of speech, assembly, association, to petition and communicate with his elected representatives, and his right to due process and equal protection were violated.

In his ruling Thursday, Judge Frederick Martone said the Senate building is a "limited public forum" where some First Amendment restrictions are permissible as long as they are reasonable and not an effort to suppress speech just because public officials oppose the speaker's view. Thus, he said, restricting access to the Senate building is constitutionally permissible if is was reasonable and viewpoint neutral.

Martone said Reza was unable to provide any evidence to support his claim that his rights were violated because of his Mexican ancestry or political viewpoint.

Source

Judge dismisses activist’s suit against Pearce

Associated Press Fri Dec 28, 2012 12:06 PM

A federal judge has dismissed an immigration activist’s lawsuit accusing former Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce of illegally barring him from the Senate buildings.

U.S. District Judge Frederick Martone’s ruling on Thursday said activist Salvador Reza was properly barred from the Senate buildings by Pearce after security officials identified him as a person who was disruptive at a hearing.

Martone’s ruling says Reza produced no evidence to back up his allegation Pearce barred him because he is Mexican-American. And Martone wrote that Pearce’s actions were reasonable given his role in maintaining decorum in the Senate.

Reza was among vocal protesters attending a Feb. 22, 2011 Senate hearing on immigration bills. The next day, police arrested Reza on suspicion of trespassing but he was never formally charged.

Using the Connecticut shooting to create a jobs program for cops???

Do each of the nations approximately 70,000 schools need a police officers to protect against an incident which only happens one or twice every 10 years or so? I don't really think that is a cost efficient solution.

However if you are a police chief and want to expand your empire, hiring 70,000 new cops sounds like a great idea for an empire building bureaucrat. Even if it isn't cost efficient it is a way to increase your pay and empire size.

Source

Experts: Trained police necessary to protect schools

John Gastaldo

Rich Agundez

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The student's attack began with a shotgun blast through the windows of a California high school. Rich Agundez, the El Cajon policeman assigned to the school, felt his mind shift into overdrive.

People yelled at him amid the chaos but he didn't hear. He experienced "a tunnel vision of concentration."

While two teachers and three students were injured when the glass shattered in the 2001 attack on Granite Hills High School, Agundez confronted the assailant and wounded him before he could get inside the school and use his second weapon, a handgun.

The National Rifle Association's response to a Connecticut school massacre envisions, in part, having trained, armed volunteers in every school in America. But Agundez, school safety experts and school board members say there's a huge difference between a trained law enforcement officer who becomes part of the school family and a guard with a gun. [Translation - He wants to create jobs for police officers, not armed guards who are not police officers.]

The NRA's proposal has sparked a debate across the country as gun control rises once again as a national issue. President Obama promised to present a plan in January to confront gun violence in the aftermath of the killing of 20 Sandy Hook Elementary School students and six teachers in Newtown, Conn.

Agundez said what happened before the shooting in the San Diego County school should frame the debate over the NRA's proposal.

After a shooting at another county school just weeks before, Agundez had trained the staff in how to lock down the school, assigned evacuation points, instructed teachers to lock doors, close curtains and turn off the lights. He even told them computers should be used where possible to communicate, to lessen the chaos.

And his training? A former SWAT team member, Agundez's preparation placed him in simulated stressful situations.

The kids in the school knew to follow his advice because they knew him. He spoke in their classrooms and counseled them when they came to him with problems.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, school boards, administrators, teachers and parents are reviewing their security measures.

School security officers can range from the best-trained police officers to unarmed private guards. Some big-city districts with gang and crime problems formed their own police agencies years ago.

Others, after the murder of 13 people at Columbine High School in 1999, started joint agreements with local police departments to have officers assigned to schools - even though that was no guarantee of preventing violence. A trained police officer at Columbine confronted one of two shooters but couldn't prevent the death of 13 people.

"Our association would be uncomfortable with volunteers," [Of course they are uncomfortable with volunteers, it means less jobs for police officers] said Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers - whose members are mostly trained law enforcement officers who "become part of the school family.' " [I think a better title for their group would be National Association of Police Officers who work in Schools. "Resource Officers" is just a politically correct word for cops that work in schools]

Canady questioned how police agencies responding to reports of a shooter would know whether the person with a gun is a volunteer or the assailant. [You can ask the same question and say how would the cops know if a person was a teacher or the assailant?]

Former Rep. Asa Hutchinson, who also was a top Homeland Security official and will head the NRA effort, said the program will have two key elements.

One is a model security plan "based on the latest, most up-to-date technical information from the foremost experts in their fields." Each school could tweak the plan to its own circumstances, and "armed, trained, qualified school security personnel will be but one element."

The second element may prove the more controversial because, to avoid massive funding for local authorities, it would use volunteers. Hutchinson said in his home state of Arkansas, his son was a volunteer with a local group "Watchdog Dads," who volunteered at schools to patrol playgrounds and provide added security.

He said retired police officers, former members of the military or rescue personnel would be among those likely to volunteer.

There's debate over whether anyone should have a gun in a school, even a trained law enforcement officer.

"In general teachers don't want guns in schools, period," said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, one of the two large unions representing teachers. He added that one size does not fit all districts and said the union has supported schools that wanted a trained officer. Most teachers, he said, do not want to be armed themselves.

"It's a school. It's not a place where guns should be," he commented.

The security situation around the country is mixed.

• Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne proposed a plan to allow one educator in each school to carry a gun. [Isn't Tom Horne the guy who is trying to distract the public from his alleged affair with Carmen Chenal and the alleged hit and run accident he was involved in on his way to an alleged affair with Carmen Chenal???]

• Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio says he has the authority to mobilize private citizens to fight crime and plans to post armed private posse members around the perimeter of schools. He said he hasn't spoken to specific school districts and doesn't plan to have the citizen posse members inside the buildings. [ Sheriff Joe is just a publicity hound who is using the Connecticut shooting to get attention for himself]

• The Snohomish School District north of Seattle got rid of its school officers because of the expense.

• The Las Vegas-based Clark County School District has its own police department and places armed officers in and around its 49 high school campuses. Officers patrol outside elementary and middle schools. The Washoe County School District in Nevada also has a police force that was authorized about a decade ago to carry guns on campus.

• In Milwaukee, a dozen city police officers cover the school district but spend most of their time in seven of the 25 high schools. In Madison, Wis., an armed police officer has worked in each of the district's four high schools since the mid-1990s.

• A Utah group is offering free concealed-weapons permit training for teachers as a result of the Connecticut shootings.

Source

"I would select an experienced, tactically trained, on-duty police officer. I would have them in every school in the United States, preschool through college" - The author who is an ex-cop and owner of a police training school has a vested interest in hiring more cops.

Only armed guards can protect against shootings

Saturday December 29, 2012 4:39 AM

The discussion concerning active-shooter situations needs to remain productive and on-topic.

Some of that discussion involves the controversial option of arming teachers and other qualified concealed-carry-permit holders. Some politicians and media folks have attempted to hijack the narrative on the subject and offer nonsensical solutions. [So if you are not a cop, you are too stupid to be involved in this discussion???] Those of us in law enforcement must reinforce those who voice legitimate solutions. Our kids are being murdered in elementary schools. We have no choice but to make ourselves heard.

Law-enforcement professionals have done a pretty good job over the past 14 years in training and preparing for such situations. [Yea, but off hand I don't remember then stopping ANY shootings. The shooters usually commit suicide, or are arrested after they leave the scene] As a former police officer and co-owner of North American SWAT Training Association, I have been directly involved in this training and preparation for thousands of officers and educators throughout the United States since 1999. [So he has a vested interest in hiring more cops] In many cases, responding officers and educators have limited the number of casualties. This comprehensive approach to training and preparation must continue and be improved upon.

Historically, a homicidal-suicidal active shooter stops killing innocent people only when he or she is confronted by a responsible person carrying a gun. [Yes I remember a few of these incidents the cop were cowards and didn't confront the assailants. Columbine was one of them.]

Therefore, we must cause this confrontation to take place within seconds of when an active shooter starts his or her rampage.

The only way to ensure this is to have a responsible and armed person at the scene when the situation begins. Like most, I would prefer to hand-pick those individuals for this assignment. I would select an experienced, tactically trained, on-duty police officer. I would have them in every school in the United States, preschool through college. [And of course after those thousands of cops are hired I will make of buck off of training a few of them]

But I'm not convinced that we have enough sworn personnel or resources to accomplish that task.

Another option: Recruit off-duty and retired police officers, paid or volunteer. How many active and retired officers, former military personnel and other qualified gun owners already volunteer in their kids’ and grandkids’ schools? I would gladly volunteer for the assignment.

Another option: Arming responsible teachers who are proficient in the use of firearms. It has worked successfully in some school districts throughout Texas and other states. The Harrold School District in Texas has an excellent plan that includes all of the necessary selection, training and policy procedures.

Law enforcement would need to assist educators in establishing a safe and workable plan.

Like most officers, I want to be there when an active-shooter situation erupts. If I can't be there, I want a fellow officer to confront the shooter. If we can't be there in the first 30-90 seconds, I want someone else armed and prepared to end the situation. [If you ask me it's highly unlikely that a school cop will get their in 30 to 90 seconds]

When the lives of our children are at stake, we can't afford to take any solution off the table. [Translation I want to make a few bucks training cops, and I think you can afford to pay me] Politicians and celebrities are provided individualized, armed security 24/7. How can we justify depriving our children of at least one armed security professional per school?

JAMES J. SCANLON

General partner, North American SWAT Training Association

Westerville

City Council members use discretionary accounts to rip off taxpayers???

Source

Discretionary council funds scrutinized

By David Madrid The Republic | azcentral.com Sun Dec 30, 2012 12:16 AM

A Phoenix councilman [Phoenix Vice Mayor Michael Johnson who is a former Phoenix Police Officer] used more than $20,000 to attend conferences.

A West Valley councilwoman [Glendale Councilwoman Norma Alvarez] used $18,000 to pave a road in her district.

A small-city mayor [Surprise Mayor Lyn Truitt] spent nearly $70 to buy shirts and monogram “mayor” on them.

All three tapped so-called discretionary funds, public money that is spent at a council member’s discretion with little public scrutiny.

In the last two years, 10 Valley cities have spent $1.2 million in taxpayer funds for meals, travel, construction projects and iPads, an investigation by The Arizona Republic has found.

The money also was used to pay for more run-of-the-mill expenses like photos, picture frames, candy for a parade and appreciation plaques. [Stuff that is really needed by the taxpayers - at least that's what these royal rulers say]

These purchases were made as recession-battered cities have cut jobs, delayed maintenance and asked residents to cope with fewer services.

Supporters of discretionary funds say they are a useful tool and can pay for neighborhood projects, charity donations, lobbying trips and training for newly elected leaders. [And increasing their income without the taxpayers finding out, well except when articles like this are published]

Critics worry that the main beneficiaries are council members themselves. [and the critics are right] While the funds are just a sliver of a multimillion-dollar city budget, local politicians can use the money to take pricey trips or raise their profile by splurging on favored projects in their districts, some say.

Despite city leaders’ best intentions, discretionary funds are ripe for misuse or even abuse, according to ethics experts and some city leaders.

“You can spend on just about anything you want,” said Surprise City Councilman Mike Woodard, who has been critical of the funds and helped change how they are handled in his city.

“It’s not appropriate,” he said.

How it works

A discretionary account is a pool of money, often taken from a city’s general fund, that is set aside for an individual council member to use at his or her discretion. It’s a common practice among city councils around the country. In the Valley, 10 cities, including Phoenix, Peoria, Glendale, Mesa, Chandler and Avondale, maintain discretionary funds, which range from $500 to more than $30,000 a year.

Council members vote on the amount they are allowed to spend each year. In some cities, mayors receive more than other council members. [If a council member votes themselves a $5,000 pay raise everybody finds out about it. If instead they vote themselves a $5,000 increase in discretionary money nobody finds out.]

Although the amounts are outlined in the city budget, details on how the money is spent is not discussed in public meetings.

Still, most communities have discretionary-fund policies, though they vary widely in the level of oversight. Some cities won’t cut a check unless an expense meets discretionary-fund rules. Others merely ask council members to provide receipts.

Avondale’s policy, for example, is informal. “Council member discretionary funds ... can be used for any legal public purpose such as official City travel, educational opportunities such as training or conferences, support of non-profit organizations, etc.,” it states. [And the taxpayers rarely find out when they are used for illegal purchases]

Several cities allow council members to “roll over” unused dollars to the next year or to borrow money from council colleagues when they run out of cash. [Sounds more like an illegal slush fund then a discretionary fund!!!]

The Phoenix council has an executive assistant who acts as a gatekeeper approving each expense. [Yea, an executive assistant that works for the person spending the money. Ask an accountant if this is a good "internal control" to keep the money from being used illegally and they will tell you it isn't!!!!]

Tracking the spending often falls to a city administrator, who can’t hold a public official accountable, said Judy Nadler, a senior fellow in government ethics at Santa Clara University, in Santa Clara, Calif.

The Republic examined council and mayor discretionary funds with travel and capital spending for fiscal years 2010-11 and 2011-12.

Other Valley city councils without discretionary funds pay for these expenses through the budget process. The Republic did not examine those budgets.

Conferences and travel

The Republic analysis shows that about 15 percent of discretionary funds were spent on travel and conference-related expenses in 2010-11 and 2011-12. [So it's really travel and party money, that is kept secret from the taxpayers???]

Officials in Valley cities without discretionary funds also use taxpayer money to travel but do it through the budget process, allowing public input.

Local leaders who support the out-of-town trips say they help cement federal support for local programs. Conferences help council members learn how to better represent their constituents. [These guys were elected to city government officers, there is no need for them to hobnob with government officials in Washington D.C.]

The benefits of such travel, supporters and critics agree, can be hard to quantify. [And that's why city council members love these discretionary accounts]

Phoenix Vice Mayor Michael Johnson spent more than $22,000 in discretionary funds on conference-related hotels and travel. He spent more discretionary funds on hotels and travel than any other council member or mayor in the Valley. That included hotel bills for National League of City conferences totaling more than $5,000 for two stays at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. [Wow! I wonder when he has time to work at his real job in Phoenix as a Phoenix Council member]

For those conferences, he stayed in the hotel for at least a week, said Johnson, who serves on the Advisory Board of the National League of Cities. He was also the president of the National Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials, a group within the league.

The benefits to the city of his trips far exceed the money he spent on travel, Johnson added. [Of course he didn't give the Arizona Republic any hard numbers] In addition to attending the conferences, he met with the state’s congressional delegation and had a sit-down meeting with President Barack Obama.

However, it is difficult to calculate how many dollars exactly those trips brought to Phoenix, Johnson said. “It’s hard to say, ‘Well, can you tell me the exact amount you were responsible for?’ That would be difficult to say,” he said.

Those meetings helped Phoenix get utility subsidies for the poor and allowed the city to keep its share of Community Development Block Grants, a federal program that aims to spur development in low-income neighborhoods, the councilman said. The trips also helped bring the league’s 2011 Congress of Cities conference to Phoenix, which generated $4.5 million in direct spending, Johnson said.

Avondale Mayor Marie Lopez Rogers, who is president of the National League of Cities, said conferences are valuable for new and experienced city leaders alike. At league conferences, council members learn about open-meeting laws, new technological advances and how to handle the relationships between city leaders and city employees, Rogers said. She used discretionary funds for her travel to conferences but was reimbursed for most of it by the national league.

But Phoenix City Councilman Sal DiCiccio said he doesn’t see the value in extensive conference attendance. “Quite frankly, if it was that important for someone to go, you don’t have to have more than one person go to those things to represent your city,” DiCiccio said.

And in the age of teleconferencing, such travel can be reduced, said Kevin McCarthy, president of the Arizona Tax Research Association.

But Rogers said that in politics a conference call is not always as effective as an in-person visit. When Goodyear and Litchfield Park needed to prod federal officials about polluted groundwater or when federal grants to cities were on the chopping block, local leaders had to travel to Washington, she said. [Of course the city council members will use any lame excuse they can to take the money and run.]

“Certainly we can use technology,” she said. “We use technology as much as we can, but politics is about relationships, and if you don’t build those face-to-face contacts, you lose something.”

Construction projects

Some city leaders pour discretionary funds into neighborhoods, using it to pay for projects that might not otherwise receive funding but also to bolster council members’ political profiles. The money can pay to stucco old walls, paint graffiti-covered fences, and help local homeowners associations pay for improvements. For example, Peoria City Councilwoman Joan Evans spent $1,275 for community-pool improvements at Lake Pleasant Estates.

Council members say this is often an ideal way to spend the money, making small, badly needed upgrades in their community. [So if the money is spent this way it means the normal way government operates isn't working???]

Ethics experts warn that this kind of spending may encourage council members to use the money for political advantage.

In February, Glendale Councilwoman Norma Alvarez paid Vulcan Materials Co. $18,138 from her discretionary account to provide asphalt for repairs to Griffin Lane, a quarter-mile-long, dead-end neighborhood street. City workers paved the road. [I bet everybody on that block voted to reelect Glendale Councilwoman Norma Alvarez. Of course she will say the $18,138 wasn't used to buy votes]

It was legitimate discretionary spending: Glendale’s policy allows each council member to spend up to $15,000 on construction or equipment. [Legitimate doesn't mean ethical. ]

Alvarez said that south Glendale is not the city’s priority but that the repaving was something constituents wanted. The city could not otherwise have afforded it at a time when Glendale was cutting library services and recreation programs. [Well if the city couldn't have afforded it she shouldn't have spent the money]

“The project was needed,” she said. “I was told I had miscellaneous money to go to conferences and so forth. ... I have spent all the money in the neighborhoods.”

Stuart Kent, Glendale executive director of public works, said Griffin Lane was on a list of streets identified as below standards and in need of work. City employees repaved the road at Alvarez’s request, he said.

In Peoria, Vice Mayor Ron Aames spends almost 75 percent of his discretionary funds on neighborhood-improvement projects, [buying votes in his district??? I'm sure he will have a lame excuse to deny that] some of which he features prominently in newsletters he sends to constituents. The articles feature photographs of Aames and residents smiling in front of the improvements such as neighborhood-entry signs.

Aames, who was unopposed in his bid for a second term in the November 2010 election, said he isn’t campaigning using discretionary funds. He defended the newsletters, saying his constituents have a right to know what he is doing. [But he didn't say it's a lot cheaper to spend the taxpayers money to get himself reelected, then spending his own money]

“Communication is important,” he said. “I do it primarily so people know who I am and are aware that they can make such requests, and we do this in the district.”

It is difficult to say whether officials are touting such projects to lay the groundwork for their next election, said James Svara, a professor in the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University. “Is that a project of sufficient importance that it warrants being done, compared with other uses that money could be put to?” he asked. [Then if this stuff is so questionable, then it probably shouldn't be done]

Aames said the projects return tax money to citizens. [Liar, liar, pants on fire???] Using discretionary funds allows him to work directly with residents, instead of directing them to a city program. [And it sure buys a lot of votes when it comes to getting reelected]

Charities

Another popular, and significant, discretionary expenditure is donating money to charity. [There is nothing I hate more then charity at gun point. That's when our government rulers tax you so they can give YOUR money to THEIR favorite charity.]

Especially in bad economic times, discretionary money helps non-profits provide valuable services to residents, council members say. But the donations can raise questions about relationships between city leaders and those who benefit from the gift.

Phoenix City Councilwoman Thelda Williams spent almost $3,000 at Turf Paradise for a dance and dinner to raise money for the Pioneer Arizona Living History Museum and Village, a city park in her district. She said the Pioneer ball raised $15,000 for the museum. [Maybe, since the party was pay with taxpayer money, the public should have been invited to attend it free of charge. But Phoenix City Councilwoman Thelda Williams probably wouldn't like that!!]

“I do an annual fundraiser for them, and we do it there, because they give us the best price,” she said of Turf Paradise, a horse-racing track, which isn’t in her district.

Williams received a $430 campaign donation from Ronald Simms, a co-owner of Turf Paradise. But Williams said the donation had nothing to do withher choosing the racetrack for the event. “You’re talking horses. It’s in the pioneer theme,” she said. [Honest, it's not a bribe. Honest, it's not a bribe]

In 2010, Woodard, the Surprise councilman, donated $1,200 to a holiday-lights extravaganza at a private home known as the “Christmas House.” Woodard said he was criticized for giving money to private citizens, and people speculated that he bought decorations for the house or paid the electric bill. Rather, the money paid for toys to give to hundreds of children who came to see the house, Woodard said.

“I would do it again given the opportunity, but the way it is now, it would have to be approved by the council,” he said.

Another Surprise politician, former Mayor Lyn Truitt, made several unusual purchases using discretionary funds. While Truitt was mayor, the council bought iPads using the funds. He said council members had a choice between iPads or laptops. Other cities have purchased iPads for council members but went through the public budgeting process to buy them.

Truitt also spent $68 on shirts and a jacket, which he had embroidered with his title and name. That way, residents and visitors who didn’t know him could identify him, he said. “I believe it was an appropriate council expenditure,” he said. [and the rest of us believe that he ripped off the taxpayers]

Future accountability

While some city leaders are uneasy about how discretionary funds are being spent, few outside groups monitor them.

The money is a small fraction of overall city budgets. For example, in Phoenix, City Council and mayoral discretionary spending totals about $80,000 annually, while the city budget is $3.5 billion. [I think what they are saying is since the city of Phoenix annually spends $3.5 billion it's no big deal if the members of the Phoenix city council rip off the taxpayers for $80,000 annually???]

Still, some are advocating changes in the way discretionary funds are handled.

In Surprise, Woodard has successfully pushed for change. This year, the council agreed to cut its discretionary budget and pool the money in a community-outreach pot. Any spending from the community-outreach fund requires a council vote.

Earlier this month, Glendale’s City Council offered to reduce each council member’s discretionary fund from $33,000 to $9,000 annually. The decision comes as city leaders consider eliminating 64 full-time positions to save $6 million during the next fiscal year.

Nadler, the university ethics fellow, said she doesn’t see any movement across the country to end discretionary funds or revise how they are handled. But, she said, given cities’ financial struggles, the time has come to do so. “We’ve reduced police forces. We’ve reduced the hours at the library,” she said.

“So we cannot afford to waste one dime on expenses that are not legitimate and that do not advance the work elected officials are charged to do on behalf of the public,” Nadler said.

Phoenix: Spending limit not exceeded - Honest that's what the mayor says!!!!

Phoenix: Spending limit not exceeded

By David Madrid The Republic | azcentral.com Sun Dec 30, 2012 12:13 AM

Former Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon overspent his discretionary funds while he was in office.

Or he didn’t.

City figures show that in fiscal year 2010-11 Gordon spent $17,000 more than the $5,000 limit on the taxpayer-funded account. [I'm sure he will say that this looks bad, but honest, he didn't rip off the taxpayers for $12,000]

A city spokeswoman sees it differently. [Well let's say a city spokeswoman that works for Mayor Gordon and is paid by Mayor Gordon, and is only accountable to Mayor Gordon sees it differently] Since Gordon’s total spending that year was lower than his total $1.6 million mayoral budget, it’s not important if the former mayor overspent in one category.

The Arizona Republic requested discretionary-fund spending data from 10 cities — including Phoenix — that have such accounts for city-council members. The other cities are Glendale, Peoria, Mesa, Avondale, Chandler, Tolleson, Litchfield Park, Goodyear and Surprise.

The funds are supposed to be spent on expenses that ultimately help residents. In many cities, council members and mayors must follow some guidelines. For some, however, there is little oversight and city leaders spend the money as they see fit.

Gordon was Phoenix’s mayor from 2004 to 2012.

Toni Maccarone, a Phoenix spokeswoman, said Gordon’s total office budget in fiscal year 2010-11 was $1,588,202. His year-end actual spending was $1,338,332, she said.

So therefore, Gordon’s office was $249,870 under its budget, she said.

“That is what is important for the overall city budgeting process, not whether one particular line item in the budget was over or under, because departments can make up for it with underspending in other areas of their budgets,” Maccarone said.

In Phoenix, the mayor’s and council members’ budgets are divided into several categories, said Mario Paniagua, Phoenix budget and research director.

Gordon’s overall $1.6 million budget included discretionary funds as well as money for personnel services that covered staff costs, contractual services and office supplies.

The discretionary budget is for the mayor and council’s miscellaneous expenses including constituent services, outreach and travel, Paniagua said.

In an interview, Gordon said he filled out proper paperwork for the discretionary-account expenses, which were approved.

According to city documents, Gordon spent $14,085 of his discretionary funds over the two fiscal years on conferences and business travel.

The rest of his discretionary money paid for event-support services and office supplies.

In addition to the taxpayer-funded money, Gordon controlled an account that was funded by donations from developers and other political supporters.

“What I call my discretionary funds, I raised all privately and had the downtown partnership oversee that,” he said.

Valley officials' purchases using discretionary funds

Valley officials' purchases using discretionary funds

The Republic | azcentral.com Sun Dec 30, 2012 12:08 AM

In the last two years, 10 Valley cities have spent $1.2 million in taxpayer funds for meals, travel, construction projects and iPads, an investigation by The Arizona Republic has found.

Here is a closer look at some of the more unusual uses of discretionary funds:

Phoenix City Councilwoman Thelda Williams spent almost $3,000 at Turf Paradise to help pay for a museum fundraiser. The horse-racing track is co-owned by a campaign donor.

Glendale Councilwoman Norma Alvarez paid more than $18,000 to repave a road. Without her help, she says, the road would have remained a low city priority.

Former Surprise Mayor Lyn Truitt bought an iPad with discretionary funds. He said the council chose to purchase iPads because they are less cumbersome than laptops and help with constituent email and keeping a city calendar.

Truitt also spent $68 on shirts and a jacket, which he had embroidered with his title and name. He said that helped residents because people who didn’t know him were able to identify him when he was in public and could approach him. [Sorry Mayor Truitt a 50 cent name tag would have been a lot cheaper!!!]

Phoenix City Councilman Michael Nowakowski paid $5,822 over two years to a children’s inflatable bounce house business to rent a screen and projector used for a movies in the park program in Southwest Phoenix.

Former Surprise Councilman Mike Woodard, a foe of most discretionary spending, donated $1,200 to the “Christmas House” which featured many holiday lights. Woodard was criticized by residents for giving money to private citizens. He said the money was used to buy toys for children, and he would do it again.

Mayoral and city council discretionary fund spending

Mayoral and city council discretionary fund spending

A discretionary account is a pool of money, often taken from a city’s general fund, that is set aside for an individual council member to use at his or her discretion. The use of discretionary funds is a common practice among city councils around the country.

In the Valley, 10 cities, including Phoenix, Peoria, Glendale, Mesa, Chandler and Avondale maintain discretionary funds. Funds across the Valley range from $500 a year to $33,000.

Some cities allow their councils and mayors to roll over unspent discretionary funds into next year's budgets. Peoria, Glendale and Avondale all allow for this. Avondale and Goodyear allows council members to give some of their discretionary budget to other members.

The following individuals spent more than their budgets in either Fiscal Year 2011 or Fiscal Year 2012: Avondale Mayor Marie Lopez Rogers went over $500 in FY 2012 and Vice Mayor Stephanie Karlin went over her FY 2011 budget by $872.

Phil Gordon went over his FY 2011 budget of $5,000, spending $21,955.53.

In Mesa, Mayor Scott Smith spent $23,227.94 in FY 2012, going over his $18,000 by $5,227.94. [This is the same Mayor Scott Smith who is going to help the Feds reign in their spending and balance the budget??? What a joke!!!!]

[To see the graphs that came with this article check out the original article in the Arizona Republic here]

Phoenix police shaking down jaywalkers!!!

Source

Posted on December 29, 2012 5:00 pm by EJ Montini

Written from the wrong side of the tracks

On a recent chilly evening at the northwest terminus of the Phoenix light rail a Phoenix Police reserve officer afforded me the rare opportunity to ponder one of life’s imponderables.

Ordinarily, I don’t ponder.

Pondering requires a person to look at all sides of a situation, to study the various angles, to carefully weigh the arguments and, after serious research and thorough investigation, reach a logical conclusion.

Just the opposite of column writing.

But since I had to stand there on the sidewalk and wait for the nice police officer to fill out the “non-traffic citation” he was giving me, why not ponder?

It’s not as if I hadn’t done my share of pondering in the past.

As a boy in parochial school, for example, I remember a smart-alecky kid in class (okay, me) asking a beleaguered nun, “If a guy doesn’t pay the bill for his exorcism does he get repossessed?”

These are the kind of questions I’m talking about.

You’ve heard them. Things like:

If nothing sticks to Teflon, how do they get Teflon to stick to the pan?

Or:

What was the best thing BEFORE slice bread?

Or:

If ignorance is bliss, why aren’t there more happy people?

Rarely do such questions have answers. Or so I thought, until I took the light rail home and became the living, breathing answer to one of the great imponderables about Phoenix. Which is:

In a city where no one travels by foot can a man get a jaywalking ticket?

Yes.

It happened like this:

When the light-rail train stopped at the station at 19th Avenue and Montebello the first thing disembarking passengers did was look toward the traffic signal to the south. Since the light was red and no cars were in the north bound lanes of 19th many passengers simply hopped down from the platform and dashed across the street rather than schlepping to the crosswalk at the stoplight.

This happens all the time.

Except that, this time, about a dozen or so officers waited for us in the darkness across 19th. [We are paying a dozen or so cops between $25 and $50+ an hour to hunt down jaywalkers??] There was no way for them to nab all of the jaywalkers, so officers focused their attention on the old, the slow-footed and those lugging shoulder bags stuffed with papers and laptops.

In other words, me.

Two officers quibbled over who would get to write my ticket while several younger, swifter offenders skipped over a nearby wall and disappeared into the shadows of the adjacent Target parking lot.

“Sir, do you know what you did wrong?” an officer asked me.

“I think so,” I said. “First, I failed to spot you lurking in the dark. Second, I didn’t take the opportunity to out-run you.” [Sorry EJ Montini, buy you should always take the 5th and refuse to answer any and all police questions. Remember anything you say will be used against you. Second, never smart off to police thugs. You may get a beating. And there isn't much you can do when a cop illegally beats you up. Who are you going to complain to? One of the cops that watched the first cop beat you up???]

Officially, I was cited for violating Phoenix City Code 36-403.8: “Travel in any mode across the guideway except at marked crossing.” The fine: $57, plus a $15 “court technology” fee. [“court technology” just a lame excuse to jack up the ticket by 26 percent]

There is now legal paperwork proving something about me that many people have long suspected: I come from the wrong side of the tracks.

The officer told me I could fight the case in court or simply pay the fine.

And what if I don’t pay?

Will I be hunted down by a fugitive jaywalker squad and have my shoes confiscated?

Will I have my walking privileges restricted, so that I am only permitted to walk from the door of my house to the door of my car, and then from the parking garage at work to my office. (Something everyone else in Phoenix already does.)

Will I be ordered to attach an interlock device to my shoes, one that sounds an alarm if I stray from the sidewalk?

Is there a state-required defensive walking class I’ll be ordered to attend?

Or is it even worse.

Will I be confined to a treadmill and forced by Sheriff Joe Arpaio to wear black-and-white striped socks and fuzzy pink slippers?

Questions like this are probably best resolved by the judicial system. [Don't count on the judicial system, which is really a kangaroo court run by the city of Phoenix on doing anything other then rubber stamping the $72 fine, well really a $57 fine plus a $15 “court technology” fee]

Or not.

On a deeper philosophical level, however, it turns out that proving it IS possible to get a jaywalking ticket in Phoenix has only led to another imponderable question.

That is:

Why did the journalist cross the road?

Tucson gun buyback effort raises legal questions

Source

Tucson gun buyback effort raises legal questions

Associated Press Sat Dec 29, 2012 12:43 PM

TUCSON — An effort to raise money for a gun buyback program in Tucson is prompting questions about a change in state law.

Councilman Steve Kozachik is raising $5,000 so Tucson residents may have a way to dispose of unwanted firearms while making money in the process.

“With the success other cities have had with voluntary gun buybacks, I want to test the water to see how Tucson residents respond,” Kozachik told the Arizona Daily Star. “The rules are simple: Bring in your gun on a totally voluntary basis, no questions asked, and you’ll trade it for a Safeway $50 gift card.”

But Todd Rathner, a member of the National Rifle Association’s board of directors, said any buyback program would be meaningless since the police department would be required to return or resell the weapons under a change made earlier this year to state law.

“The police would have to take the guns and run them through the national database. If they are stolen, they are returned to the owner,” he said. “If they are not stolen, (the Tucson Police Department) is mandated by state law to sell them to the public.”

The police department checks every gun it receives to ensure they aren’t stolen or have been used to commit a crime. Spokeswoman Sgt. Maria Hawke said the department holds several “destruction boards” throughout the year to dispose of things such as illicit drugs and guns and the same process would hold true for guns purchased through a buyback program.

Hawke said the department is researching how the statute applies to its practices regarding the disposal of firearms.

Rathner contends that destruction of firearms would put the department in violation of the law.

“If they are in violation of state law, we will see them in a courtroom or we will change the law and have them sanctioned financially,” he said.

City Attorney Mike Rankin believes the law is intended to apply to guns seized by police, not those firearms voluntarily surrendered by their owners.

Kozachik said he doesn’t understand why the NRA would oppose a voluntary program like the one he’s proposing.

Ken Rineer, president of Gun Owners of Arizona, said he has reservations over losing guns committed during a crime, people unwittingly selling antique firearms and the legal issues regarding who is a licensed gun dealer when large numbers of weapons are purchased.

“I don’t know if these issues can be laid to rest if they follow the no-question policy,” Rineer said. He added that buyback programs work well as symbolism but have minor impacts in the real world.

Obama: Gun control ‘not something I will be putting off’

Obama: Gun control ‘not something I will be putting off’

Posted by Sean Sullivan on December 30, 2012 at 9:01 am

President Obama reiterated his commitment to passing new gun control measures in an interview broadcast on Sunday morning, saying he would like to get such legislation done in the first year of his second term. He also expressed skepticism about a proposal to put more armed guards in schools across the country.

“The question is are we going to be able to have a national conversation and move something through Congress,” Obama said on NBC News’s “Meet The Press.” “I’d like to get it done in the first year. I will put forward a very specific proposal based on the recommendations that Joe Biden’s task force is putting together as we speak. And so this is not something that I will be putting off.”

Obama, who recently established a task force led by Vice President Biden to offer recommendations for how to best curb gun violence, also pushed back against an idea the National Rifle Association put forth following the mass shooting earlier this month at a school in Newtown, Conn. As gun control advocates called for tighter restrictions, the NRA urged that armed guards be placed in schools to deter and defend against future acts of violence.

“I am skeptical that the only answer is putting more guns in schools. And I think the vast majority of the American people are skeptical that that somehow is going to solve our problem,” Obama said.

Obama reiterated his support for a ban on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines that gun control advocates in Congress have said they will be pushing for.

“Here’s the bottom line. We’re not going to get this done unless the American people decide it’s important,” Obama added.

Drone War Spurs Militants to Deadly Reprisals

Drone War Spurs Militants to Deadly Reprisals

By DECLAN WALSH

Published: December 29, 2012 180 Comments

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — They are dead men talking, and they know it. Gulping nervously, the prisoners stare into the video camera, spilling tales of intrigue, betrayal and paid espionage on behalf of the United States. Some speak in trembling voices, a glint of fear in their eyes. Others look resigned. All plead for their lives.

Pakistan militants punish accused informers aiding drone attacks by taping their confessions and executions.

“I am a spy and I took part in four attacks,” said Sidinkay, a young tribesman who said he was paid $350 to help direct C.I.A. drones to their targets in Pakistan’s tribal belt. Sweat glistened on his forehead; he rocked nervously as he spoke. “Stay away from the Americans,” he said in an imploring voice. “Stay away from their dollars.”

Al Qaeda and the Taliban have few defenses against the American drones that endlessly prowl the skies over the bustling militant hubs of North and South Waziristan in northwestern Pakistan, along the Afghan border. C.I.A. missiles killed at least 246 people in 2012, most of them Islamist militants, according to watchdog groups that monitor the strikes. The dead included Abu Yahya al-Libi, the Qaeda ideologue and deputy leader.

Despite the technological superiority of their enemy, however, the militants do possess one powerful countermeasure.

For several years now, militant enforcers have scoured the tribal belt in search of informers who help the C.I.A. find and kill the spy agency’s jihadist quarry. The militants’ technique — often more witch hunt than investigation — follows a well-established pattern. Accused tribesmen are abducted from homes and workplaces at gunpoint and tortured. A sham religious court hears their case, usually declaring them guilty. Then they are forced to speak into a video camera.

The taped confessions, which are later distributed on CD, vary in style and content. But their endings are the same: execution by hanging, beheading or firing squad.

In Sidinkay’s last moments, the camera shows him standing in a dusty field with three other prisoners, all blindfolded, illuminated by car headlights. A volley of shots rings out, and the three others are mowed down. But Sidinkay, apparently untouched, is left standing. For a tragic instant, the accused spy shuffles about, confused. Then fresh shots ring out and he, too, crumples to the ground.

These macabre recordings offer a glimpse into a little-seen side of the drone war in Waziristan, a paranoid shadow conflict between militants and a faceless American enemy in which ordinary Pakistanis have often become unwitting victims.

Outside the tribal belt, the issue of civilian casualties has dominated the debate about American drones. At least 473 noncombatants have been killed by C.I.A.-directed strikes since 2004, according to monitoring groups — a toll frequently highlighted by critics of the drones like the Pakistani politician Imran Khan. Still, strike accuracy seems to be improving: just seven civilian deaths have been confirmed in 2012, down from 68 the previous year, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which has been critical of the Obama administration’s drone campaign.

And civilian lives are threatened by militants, too. As the American campaign has cut deeply into the commands of both the Taliban and Al Qaeda, drone-fearing militants have turned to the local community for reprisals, mounting a concerted campaign of fear and intimidation that has claimed dozens of lives and further stressed the already fragile order of tribal society.

The video messages from accused spies are intended to send a stark message, regardless of whether innocents are among those caught up in the deadly dragnet. The confessions are delivered at gunpoint, and usually follow extensive torture, including hanging from hooks for up to a month, human rights groups say.

“In every civilized society, the penalty for spying is death,” said a senior commander with the Pakistani Taliban, speaking on the condition of anonymity from Waziristan.

Although each of myriad militant factions in Waziristan operates its own death squads, by far the most formidable is the Ittehad-e-Mujahedeen Khorasan, a shadowy group that experts consider to be Al Qaeda’s local counterintelligence wing. Since it emerged in 2009, the group, which is led by Arab and Uzbek militants, has carefully cultivated a sinister image through video theatrics and the ruthless application of violence.

Black-clad Khorasan militants, their faces covered in balaclavas, roam across North Waziristan in jeeps with tinted windows. In one video clip from 2011, Khorasan fighters are seen searching traffic under a cluster of palm trees outside Mir Ali, a notorious militant hub. Then they move into the town center, distributing leaflets to shoppers, before executing three men outside a gas station.

“Spies, your days are numbered because we are carrying out raids,” chants the video soundtrack.

Thought to number dozens of militants, the Khorasan cooperates closely with the Afghan warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani, who is based in North Waziristan. A sister organization in Afghanistan has been responsible for 250 assassinations and executions, according to American military intelligence.

“Everyone’s frightened of them,” said Mustafa Qadri of Amnesty International, which recently published a report on human rights abuses by both the military and militants in the tribal belt. “No one really knows who is behind them. But they are very professional.”

The videotapes produced by Khorasan and other groups offer a stark, if one-dimensional, picture of their spy hunt. A review of 20 video confessions by The New York Times, as well as interviews with residents of the tribal belt, suggest the suspects are largely poor tribesmen — barbers, construction workers, Afghan migrants.

The jittery accounts of the accused men reveal dramatic stories of espionage: furtive meetings with handlers; disguising themselves as Taliban fighters, fruit sellers or even heroin addicts; payment of between $150 and $450 per drone strike; and placing American-supplied electronic tracking devices, often wrapped in cigarette foil, near the houses and cars of Qaeda fugitives.

But the videos are also portraits of fear and confusion, infused with poignant, even darkly comic, moments. Curiously, some say they have been hired through Pakistani military intelligence officials who are identified by name, directly contradicting the Pakistan government’s official stance that it vehemently opposes the drone strikes. An official with Inter-Services Intelligence, speaking on the customary condition of anonymity, said any suggestion of Pakistani cooperation was “hogwash.”

Quite clearly, the video accounts are stage-managed. Behind the camera, an unseen militant prompts the prisoners to speak. Some say they have been told they will be freed if they tell the “truth.” Others are preparing for death. “Tell my parents that I owe 250 rupees to a guy from our village,” Hamidullah, a bearded Afghan migrant, said in a quavering voice. “After I die, please repay the money to him.”

Death is not inevitable, however. Suleman Wazir, a 20-year-old goat herder from South Waziristan, said militants abducted him in September on suspicion of being a spy. “They held me in a dungeon and flogged me hundreds of times. They told me I would die,” he said in a video interview recorded through an intermediary in Waziristan. But after some weeks, Mr. Wazir said, his relatives intervened through tribal elders and persuaded the Taliban of his innocence. Upon presentation of five goats to the militants, he was set free, he said.

The Taliban and Al Qaeda have become obsessed with “patrai” — a local word for a small metallic device, now synonymous with the tiny electronic tagging devices that militants believe the C.I.A. uses to find them. In 2009 Mr. Libi, the Qaeda deputy, published an article illustrated with photographs of such devices, warning of their dangers. He was killed in a drone strike near Mir Ali in June.

This year, the Taliban released a video purporting to show one such device: an inchlong electronic circuit board, cased in transparent plastic, that, when connected to a nine-volt battery, pulsed with an infrared light. A spokesman for the C.I.A. declined to comment on details of the drone program. But a former American intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that the agency does use such GPS devices, which are commercially available in the United States through stores that supply the military.

As a result, the Taliban are adapting. Wali ur-Rehman, a senior Taliban commander, said in an interview last spring that his fighters had started to scan all visiting vehicles with camcorders set to infrared mode in order to detect potential tracking devices.

Still, the Taliban may be overestimating the importance of such devices. A former Obama administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the subject, said that satellites and aerial surveillance planes — whose powerful sensors sweep up mobile phone, Internet and radio intercepts from the tribal belt — provide much of the drone program’s electronic intelligence. Other experts said many American intelligence informers in Waziristan are recruited in Afghanistan, where a C.I.A. base in the border province of Khost was attacked by a suicide bomber three years ago.

On the ground, though, the spy war has further destabilized a tribal society already dangerously weakened by years of violence. Paranoia about the profusion of tracking chips has fueled rivalries between different clans who accused one another of planting the devices.

“People start to think that other tribes are throwing the chips. There is so much confusion and mistrust created within the tribal communities. Drone attacks have intensified existing mistrust,” one tribesman told researchers from Columbia Law School, as part of a study into the effects of the drone campaign, last May.

The Khorasan’s brutality has alienated even some of its putative allies. In September 2011, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a leading warlord in North Waziristan, publicly withdrew his support for the group after coming under pressure from tribal supporters over the number of apparently innocent tribesmen who had been executed as spies. In a statement, the Khorasan responded that it would pursue its objectives “at all costs and not spare anyone.”

Amid the long knives and paranoia, some tribesmen believe there is no option but to flee. Some of those accused of espionage run to the gulf states; others make it to the sprawling slums of the port of Karachi. In an ethnic Pashtun neighborhood of that city, one elderly man described how he fled with his family after the execution of his son in 2009.

“I was afraid the militants would also kill me and my family,” said the man, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Still now, his life remained in danger, he added, because the Taliban believed he was spending what they said was his son’s ill-gotten money. But it was simply untrue, the old man insisted: “My son was innocent.”

Reasonable Restrictions on your First and Second Amendment rights

Imagine that the First Amendment is subject to just a few 'reasonable restrictions.'

All you have to do, it turns out, is apply for a federal Churchgoing License, a federal Prayer Permit, a federal Publication Permit, or a federal Letter-to-the-Editor License, whichever is appropriate.

The forms are free! Of course, you have to submit to fingerprinting. You have to mail in with your application and your fingerprint card a signed letter from your local sheriff or chief of police, stating he has no objections.

The application fee is $200. The waiting period to hear whether you've been approved generally runs about six months.

If you ask me there are NO reasonable restrictions on your rights.

Nearly 29 percent of high schoolers smoke marijuana

Also I suspect, that Arizona Criminal Justice Commission created this study or report for the purpose of demonizing medical marijuana.

Source

Arizona study: Nearly 29 percent of high schoolers smoke marijuana

Posted: Sunday, December 30, 2012 2:30 pm

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services

Close to one out of every eight high schoolers who admitted to smoking marijuana recently say they got it from a medical marijuana cardholder.

The biennial study done by the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission found that nearly 29 percent of students in grades 10 through 12 admitted to having smoked marijuana at some point. And more than 14 percent said they had inhaled in the last 30 days. [About the ONLY person I have ever heard who claimed to smoke marijuana but didn't inhale was President Clinton]

Not surprisingly, the vast majority said they had obtained the drug from a friend, with family and relatives also a major source. [Duh! Where else are you going to get it? From an enemy? From the police? From Attorney General Tom Horne? From Governor Jan Brewer?]

But 11.6 percent said they got the marijuana from one of the more than 33,000 individuals who have the state's permission to legally grow or purchase marijuana for their own medical conditions. Because the survey allows multiple responses, that could include friends and family members.

Deputy Pima County Attorney Rick Unklesbay said the response could have been foretold.

"I don't think people should be surprised by the fact that easier access to marijuana by medical card holders will lead to easier abuse by minors,'' he said.

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Mongtomery, who is trying to shut down the whole program, concurred.

"When you wind up with a purported medical marijuana system that in reality is a recreational use system, I would say that this is a foreseeable consequence,'' he said. And Montgomery said he believes that Arizona will see the same sort of increase in unauthorized teen use that has been recorded in other states with medical marijuana laws.

Cory Nelson, a deputy assistant director of the Arizona Department of Health Services which administers the medical marijuana program, said his agency is paying attention to the numbers of teens who said they got the drugs from a cardholder. But Nelson said people should not lose sight of other numbers in the report.

"We've got almost 80 percent who say they're getting it from friends, and another 15 percent that say they're getting it from family,'' he said. "So we need to make sure we are looking at all those areas and not just the one.''

Nelson said, though, he is not minimizing the problem.

"If people are giving away their marijuana, they certainly are committing a crime ... in providing that substance to somebody that's not authorized to have it.''

Montgomery said one thing he would be interested in learning is whether the cardholder who is providing the marijuana is a fellow teen or an adult.

In general, the 2010 Arizona law allows adults who have a doctor's recommendation to get a state-issued ID card allowing them to obtain up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks. But the law also allows parents or guardians to obtain a recommendation for a minor child, albeit with some additional hurdles.

The question that remains is whether police or prosecutors can do much about this aspect of the problem.

"When you have a juvenile who is in possession of marijuana, it's not a standard course of questioning to ask, 'Where did you get it from?' '' Montgomery said. [That is a bold face lie!!! It is routine for the police to ask people who are arrested for possession of illegal drugs where they got the drugs. In fact the government routinely drops some or all of the charges when people snitch and tell the police where they got their drugs.] "You'd have to have someone volunteer information about where they procured the marijuana.''

Unklesbay said that arrests of individuals for having small amounts of marijuana are rare.

He said some people get charged with possession if they're already being arrested for something else and the marijuana charge "just gets tacked on.'' In other circumstances, though, if someone is found with a small amount of the drug, it is likely to result in nothing more than a citation to show up in city court "and no follow-up investigation is done.''

Unklesbay said it is up to police to find out why a minor has marijuana and whether they got it from a legal cardholder.

"They can use the juvenile's statement to go after the adult who transfers it,'' he said. "I think they'd be interested in that kind of abuse of the medical certificate.''

Nelson said that, aside from criminal penalties, any cardholder who gives away or sells marijuana to someone not authorized to have it faces loss of the card. He acknowledged, though, that can require a full-blown hearing.

Repeated calls to Joe Yuhas, spokesman for the Arizona Medical Marijuana Policy Project, the group that pushed the 2010 initiative, were not returned. Neither were calls to the national Marijuana Policy Project which provided some of the funding for the campaign.

Attorney General Tom Horne, who also opposes the law, said the findings in the report about teen use and where they get it is consistent with other information about the medical marijuana program.

"The number of young males with medical cards is all out of proportion to the number of young males that suffer from the kinds of ailments that we're supposed to be giving cards for,'' he said, calling the law "badly abused.'' [I suspect Attorney General Tom Horne will use any lame excuse to give him the opportunity to throw harmless pot smokers in prison]

Figures from the health department show nearly three-fourths of all cardholders are male, with nearly half of cardholders younger than 40.

Close to 90 percent of patients approved for use of the drug are complaining of chronic pain; the closest second is nausea at 7.5 percent.

Desperate for weapons, Syrian rebels make their own, fix tanks

I guess you could extend that to any metal working tools from micrometers to socket wrenches. Same for a huge number of common chemicals like fertilizer (ammonium nitrate), the stuff Timothy McVey used to blow up the FBI building. And don't forget that steak knife on your kitchen table. You could easily kill somebody with it.

Source

Desperate for weapons, Syrian rebels make their own, fix tanks

By Yara Bayoumy | Reuters

ALEPPO PROVINCE, Syria (Reuters) - At a converted warehouse in the midst of a block of residential homes in a northern Syrian town, men are hard at work at giant lathes, shavings of metal gathering around them.

Sacks of potassium nitrate and sugar lie nearby.

In a neat row against the wall is the finished product, homemade mortars. Syrian rebels say they have been forced to make them because their calls for heavy weapons and ammunition to fight President Bashar al-Assad have gone unanswered.

"No one's giving us any support. So we're working on our own to strike Bashar," said a bearded man spinning the metal to create the warhead.

Using the Internet, the workshop of about seven men work together to try and perfect the crude weapons. For explosives, they pick out TNT from unexploded rockets that Assad's forces have fired towards them and repackage them into their own weapons. Each gave different estimates of the mortars' range.

"We're volunteers, we were workers, we were never soldiers. They're locally made. They don't have the strength of the regime's rockets, but they are having good effects," said Abu Mohammed, who said the mortars created a 3-1/2 meter crater.

Another worker said the mortars, which take about a day to make, could reach a distance of 6 km (almost 4 miles).

Although the rebels, who are mostly Sunni Muslim fighters, have made big gains in the northern and eastern parts of Syria in the 21-month conflict, they are outgunned by Assad's forces.

Some rebel groups are receiving supplies from Gulf states, and Western countries say they are giving non-lethal aid. But many rebels say they have not received anything.

Colonel Abdel-Jabbar Oqaidi, who heads the rebels' military council in Aleppo province, told Reuters last week that his forces are fighting without any help from the Western and Arab governments which want Assad removed from power.

"We aren't able to get any weapons from abroad. We have nothing except for the rifle to fight with," said another man at the workshop.

OLD TANKS

The success rate of the weapons is questionable. Two men said the mortars hit 80 to 90 percent of the targets, but there have been problems. Sometimes the mortars do not detonate, other times they explode prematurely.

"The more we practice, the more experience we get," said one of the men, explaining how they discovered that if they let the propelling agent mixture set for too long it absorbed humidity, which in turn stopped the mortar from detonating.

At one of the Aleppo frontline positions, rebels fired the mortars from a homemade tube, fashioned from piping on a mount made from a car axle.

The rebels have also been working on refurbishing weaponry acquired during takeovers of Assad's military bases.

Parked in a residential street, a group of men have been working on fixing a T-72 tank whose gear box was blown.

Abu Jumaa, one of the mechanics working on the 1970s tank, said fighters had taken it from an infantry college in north Syria that had recently fallen to rebel forces.

"We have no tanks, no planes, no artillery. All we have is what we get in spoils and we go to war against him (Assad) with what we get. That's the reality. We're forced to do this," he told Reuters.

"These tanks are useless in the first place. It can't be called a tank, It's a lump of scrap iron," he said gesturing at the chipped army green metal.

Rebel fighters on the frontline consistently complain of shortages of weapons and ammunition that have forced them to stop advances and focus on keeping the ground they have gained.

"We get 3,000 bullets a month. No anti-aircraft missiles ... everything is from the military bases (we take over)," said one young rebel fighter from the Supporters of Mohammed Brigade, wearing a plaid yellow and black turban.

Even though the rebels have managed to seize large quantities of weapons from military bases, they struggle with a chronic shortage of ammunition and weapons to target Assad's fighter jets.

"You see how the planes are striking all of us, not differentiating between old and young ... God has helped us, we've made these rockets and we're using them to hit back at them all over again," said Abu Mohammed.

N.C. governor signs pardons for Wilmington 10

Source

N.C. governor signs pardons for Wilmington 10

Associated Press Mon Dec 31, 2012 3:06 PM

RALEIGH, N.C. — Outgoing North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue issued pardons Monday to the Wilmington 10, a group wrongly convicted 40 years ago in a notorious Civil Rights-era prosecution that led to accusations that the state was holding political prisoners.

Perdue issued pardons of innocence Monday for the nine black men and one white woman who received prison sentences totaling nearly 300 years for the 1971 firebombing of a Wilmington grocery store during three days of violence that included the shooting of a black teenager by police.

The pardon means the state no longer thinks the 10 — four of whom have since died — committed a crime.

“I have decided to grant these pardons because the more facts I have learned about the Wilmington Ten, the more appalled I have become about the manner in which their convictions were obtained,” Perdue said in a news release Monday.

The three key witnesses in the case later recanted their testimony. Amnesty International and other groups took up the issue, portraying the Wilmington 10 as political prisoners.

In 1978, then-Gov. Jim Hunt commuted their sentences but withheld a pardon. Two years later, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., threw out the convictions, saying perjury and prosecutorial misconduct were factors in the verdicts.

“We are tremendously grateful to Gov. Perdue for her courage,” said Benjamin Chavis, the former national NAACP executive director who was in jail and prison for about five years before his release. “This is a historic day for North Carolina and the United States. People should be innocent until proven guilty, not persecuted for standing up for equal rights and justice.”

In addition to Chavis, the surviving members of the Wilmington 10 are Reginald Epps, James McKoy, Wayne Moore, Marvin Patrick and Willie Earl Vereen. Those who have died are Jerry Jacobs, Ann Shepard, Connie Tindall and Joe Wright.

The bombing of the white-owned Mike’s Grocery occurred less than three years after the 1968 assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Schools in Wilmington and New Hanover County hadn’t desegregated, and black students began a boycott.

The United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, for whom Chavis worked, sent him to Wilmington to advise the students. On Feb. 6, 1971, the white-owned Mike’s Grocery was firebombed, and police killed a black teenager that night. A day later, a white man was shot and killed.

The National Guard then moved in to end the violence.

The Wilmington 10 were convicted in October 1972 on charges of conspiracy to firebomb Mike’s Grocery and conspiracy to assault emergency personnel who responded to the fire.

The trial was held in Burgaw in Pender County after a judge declared a mistrial the first time. A jury of 10 blacks and two whites had been seated in the first trial when prosecutor Jay Stroud said he was sick, and the judge declared the mistrial. At the second trial, a jury of 10 whites and two blacks was seated.

The three key witnesses who took the stand for the prosecution recanted their testimony in 1976. And the prosecutor, Stroud, became a flashpoint for the Wilmington 10 supporters.

In November, NAACP state leaders said they believe newly uncovered notes show Stroud tried to keep blacks off the first jury and seat whites he thought were sympathetic to the Ku Klux Klan.

They showed the notes on a poster board, saying the handwriting on the legal paper appeared to match notes from other prosecution records in the case.

At the top of the list of 100 jurors, the notes said, “stay away from black men.” A capital “B’’ was beside the names of black jurors. The notes identify one potential black juror as an “Uncle Tom type,” and beside the names of several white people, notations include “KKK?” and “good!!”

“This conduct is disgraceful,” Perdue said. “It is utterly incompatible with basic notions of fairness and with every ideal that North Carolina holds dear. The legitimacy of our criminal justice system hinges on it operating in a fair and equitable manner with justice being dispensed based on innocence or guilt — not based on race or other forms of prejudice.”

Stroud told the StarNews of Wilmington that he wrote some of the notes but declined to confirm that to the AP in November. On Monday, he told the AP that he wouldn’t have written “stay away from black men,” and said someone could have forged the notes.

The N.C. State Bar lists Stroud as a former defense attorney whose status is inactive at his request. Stroud has been arrested more than a dozen times in the past six years, and his son told The Gaston Gazette in 2011 that his father suffers with bipolar disease and that he was diagnosed about the same time he graduated from law school.

“I think she has made a mistake,” Stroud said of Perdue on Monday. “The case was prosecuted fairly, and the jury reached a unanimous verdict fairly quickly after a six-week trial. And they found all 10 defendants unanimously guilty of all charges. And I think her decision is flying in the face of the jury’s verdict.”

——

Associated Press writer Michael Biesecker in Raleigh contributed to this story.

———

Martha Waggoner can be reached at http://twitter.com/mjwaggonernc

This Federal job pays $186,000 to do nothing!!!!!

Federal bureaucrats put on PAID leave can get stuck in an ill-defined limbo for years

I bet some poor smuck who is making minimum wage doing backbreaking work would dream about this job.

The article also seems to say that the Feds have flushed the First Amendment down the toilet and give Federal employees PAID leave to attend religious events.

There are 64 reasons listed in the “Administrative Leave/Excused Absence” section of the Office of Personnel Management rule book that officially allow government employees paid time off. They range from giving blood to attending a Boy or Girl Scout jamboree.

If the Boy Scouts are your cup of tea, I see nothing wrong with that. But since it is a quasi-religious organization you should not be paid with tax dollars to attend Boy Scout events.

These government bureaucrats in DC are not alone. In Arizona, Phoenix police officers who are accused of misconduct often are placed on PAID leave for months or years at a time waiting for their case to be resolved. Phoenix cops start at around $50,000/yr or $25/hr and many make over $100,000/yr or $50/hr.

Source

Civil servants put on paid leave can get stuck in an ill-defined limbo

By Lisa Rein, Published: December 30

Paul Brachfeld, the inspector general for the National Archives, plans to ring in the new year with his wife with a relaxed visit to their vacation home near Bethany Beach, Del. In October, the couple took a cruise to Puerto Rico. Brachfeld runs every morning in Silver Spring, hikes with Spree, his Jack Russell terrier, in the woods most afternoons and catches up with his adult daughters in the evening. All while collecting his $186,000 government salary.

These days, his life seems like one long vacation. The veteran watchdog for the historical records agency is entering his fourth month on paid time off, one of an unspecified number of federal employees who are collecting paychecks and benefits to do . . . nothing. At least nothing to advance the immediate interests of the government.

Brachfeld, 54, was put on paid administrative leave in September after an employee on his staff accused him of misconduct. He has not yet been interviewed by the panel that investigates complaints against inspectors general. It meets just four times a year.

Cases like his, in which a civil servant is accused of breaking rules, can go on for months and even years. Some involve accusations of cut-and-dried misconduct — threatening violence, for example — that lead to paid leave while the case is investigated. Other employees are caught up in more ambiguous circumstances, like blowing the whistle on wrongdoing or filing a complaint of employment discrimination.

In a system that rarely fires people, no one can say how many are on paid administrative leave. It’s one number the government apparently doesn’t track.

“It’s the federal government’s dirty little secret, how much they do it,” said Debra D’Agostino, founding partner of the Federal Practice Group, an employment law firm.

Brachfeld, who was put on leave by the Archives chief after a dispute with an agent on his staff, said he was “placed under virtual home detention” based on “untested smears” to which has not been able to respond. The agent claims the inspector general altered audits, used vulgar language and gave CBS News’s “60 Minutes” sensitive information before its release was authorized.

There are 64 reasons listed in the “Administrative Leave/Excused Absence” section of the Office of Personnel Management rule book that officially allow government employees paid time off. They range from giving blood to attending a Boy or Girl Scout jamboree. And then there are the Brachfelds of the federal world, who are paid to do nothing or banished to perform telework with the kind of flexible schedule in which no meaningful assignments materialize.

The status is not, as some critics of public-sector workers might conclude, a day at the beach — Brachfeld actually had to put in for vacation time to take get his.

“I’ve had clients [on paid leave] for long periods of time who absolutely hated it,” said William Bransford, general counsel for the Senior Executives Association, which represents 7,000 government executives. “The perception that’s spun is that this is a paid vacation. But employees want to know what’s going to happen to them as quickly as anybody else.”

Getting paid not to work supposedly requires close supervision by managers. It means moving up the General Schedule pay scale, accruing a pension and vacation and sick days until you’re either fired or cleared to return to the office. While they’re not working, idled employees are not allowed to take another job.

Blake DeVolld, a civilian Air Force intelligence officer, was stripped of his top- secret security clearance in 2006 after his ex-wife, in a bitter divorce, told the FBI she had found 15 classified pages in a box in his basement.

For three years, while he was under investigation, DeVolld, 52, scanned personnel records into a computer in a glass-enclosed room at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center in Springfield, Ohio. Then he was suspended without pay for two more years.

After six years, the Air Force exonerated him last June and reinstated his clearance.

“They can put you in this status and leave you in there forever,” he said of the 1,000 days he drew a $93,000 salary to push papers. “It wasn’t really meaningful work, I’ll tell you that. I caught up on my reading.”

Much the same story unfolded for Maria Jones and William Porter, program analysts at the Energy and Health and Human Services departments, respectively, after they filed equal-employment-opportunity complaints with their agencies alleging racial discrimination by their supervisors.

Jones, 49, says she was put on paid leave for eight months, receiving her $89,750 salary until she was fired last March. She said her boss, who was black, had created a hostile work environment with disparaging comments about white employees. Jones is black.

At home in Prince George’s County, she was instructed to call her supervisor at the Office of Fossil Energy at 7:30 every morning to “find out what my schedule was.” But he was never in the office at that hour, so she left a voice mail. She says she talked to him twice in eight months.

“It benefited me because I was getting paid,” Jones said. “But it was a waste of federal dollars. Why did it take that long to fire me?” Like all of the six employees, Jones says her performance reviews became unfavorable before she was put on leave.

Porter, who makes $112,000, says his duties billing for reimbursement for disaster expenses were taken away and he was sent to an office with no work for a year after he complained that his boss, who is white, created a hostile work environment with negative comments about blacks, including Louis Farrakan. Porter, who is black, then told managers he has an anxiety disorder that was triggered by his agency’s failure to give him meaningful work.

He was dispatched to a year-long detail for Tricare, the military health system, which assigned him to telework. But Porter says months passed without his ever hearing from a supervisor, and he was given very few assignments. “They’re having me sit and do nothing and I’m collecting six figures.”

Peter Van Buren, a former foreign service officer who penned an unflattering book in 2011 about his year leading two reconstruction teams in Iraq, was sent home to Falls Church for two months on administrative leave after he wrote an offensive post about Hillary Clinton on an unauthorized blog just as his book was published. Then he was assigned to telework that consisted of copying Internet addresses into a file from a computer in his bedroom. This continued for 11 months while he drew his $150,000 salary.

“Telework is a great way to deep-six somebody,” Van Buren said. “And the State Department can say, ‘We’ve got another guy teleworking!’ ” He retired in September under an agreement with the agency, years sooner and with a smaller pension than he had planned.

And Stephen Patrick, a courier who transports nuclear material and drove a government car 340 miles without authorization, was finally fired from the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is part of the Energy Department, in August. His tug-of-war with his bosses after he challenged a 30-day suspension lasted five years. For four of them, Patrick, 45, was on administrative leave in Canton, Ohio, making $47,000 plus automatic raises.

Their agencies declined to comment on DeVolld, Jones, Porter, Van Buren, Patrick and Brachfeld, saying they were not authorized to discuss personnel issues.

No official limits

Private companies tend to tackle thorny personnel issues differently. A problem employee can be placed on leave with pay. “But the notion of extending it indefinitely? It’s anathema to a private employer,” said Barbara Brown, a Washington employment attorney.

In government, civil service protections mean that firing someone is not so easy, even when they deserve it.

“Every time I hear these kind of stories, I think, ‘Ye gods! It takes government a long time to make a decision!’ ” said Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a longtime advocate for whistleblowers and critic of government inefficiency. “It’s a culture within all of government — we’ve been handling personnel issues this way for 40 years, so we’d better keep doing it this way.”

“Resolving these cases gets put to the bottom of the to-do list,” said D’Agostino, the employment lawyer. “Meanwhile, the employee is still accruing time. At agencies that are downsizing, it makes it hard to function.”

Unions and managers say it is rare for do-nothing status to draw out. But it’s an area where managers have wide discretion.

Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said paid leave is used “in rare circumstances” while an employee who is “considered a potential threat to themselves or others in the workplace” is being investigated.

There are no official limits on how long the limbo can go on. In 1990, in the case of a Forest Service employee put on paid leave for 22 weeks, the comptroller general ruled, “We are unaware of any legal basis where . . . an employee can be placed on extended administrative leave with pay.”

“It’s used for employees who are not meeting conditions of employment,” said Terry Sutherland, spokesman for the Pentagon Force Protection Agency. He said administrative leave decisions are made “at a very senior level” and “looked at very closely.”

“The intent is it’s supposed to be very quick and simple,” Sutherland said. “When it goes beyond those normal situations, we ask, ‘What did this individual do? Would bringing them back be disruptive?’ ”

He acknowledged that long-term leave “is not good for the person, and not good for the agency.”

Life, post-leave

The six employees say their experience showed an ugly side of due process. They all say that after conflicts with their supervisors, they were marginalized in an attempt to get them to quit. That’s often easier for the government than firing, which, as Patrick’s case shows, can take years and end up in litigation.

It took the Energy Department four months to officially fire Patrick after they sent him a termination notice. This followed a slew of psychological evaluations, accusations, memos and appeals by him and his supervisors. He fought them at every step, won an appeal in 2008 and was ordered back to his courier job by a top Energy official.

But the agency kept blocking his certification to guard nuclear materials, and without it he could not keep his job.

“I appealed a 30-day suspension and they were hellbent to get rid of me right then and there,” he said. “I took a freaking government vehicle out to dinner. When all is said and done, you’re talking to a federal employee who got paid a government salary for five years and didn’t do a damn thing.” He is suing to get his job back based on his bosses’ failure to reinstate him after he was ordered back to work.

DeVolld says his ordeal so sapped his pride that he chose to leave the Air Force after he was cleared. He now teaches intelligence and national security at a Christian college near his home.

“This thing took five years and ruined my career,” he said. He filed a lawsuit against the Air Force in federal court in Ohio in December, charging that his two-year suspension without pay violated his due process rights.

Porter is now back at Health and Human Services on administrative leave. He has given his supervisors doctors’ notes certifying his readiness to work. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission did not advance his complaint, but he is suing HHS in federal court, alleging that the government denied his rights under the Americans With Disabilities Act.

He cared for his dying mother-in-law and is now digging a hole for a patio in his garden in Upper Marlboro. “My doctors tell me to keep busy,” he said.

If he could do things over, he said, “I would have shut my mouth.”

Paul Brachfeld, meanwhile, continues to collect his paycheck, and awaits the opportunity to tell his side of his story.

Elgin Police Department is racist???

Veteran cop sues Elgin, 2 fellow police employees, claims racial bias

By Kate Thayer Tribune reporter

5:37 p.m. CST, December 31, 2012

An Elgin police officer is suing the city and two Police Department employees, claiming a racist culture exists within the department, with racial slurs tolerated, the Ku Klux Klan celebrated and black officers treated unequally.

Phillipp D. Brown, an officer since 1996, filed a federal lawsuit last week against the city of Elgin, Lt. Sean Rafferty and professional standards officer James Barnes.

The lawsuit claims the city failed to address racial discrimination in the Police Department against employees and citizens. The complaint also states officers were allowed to routinely use racial slurs against Brown and other black officers. It alleges incidents dating back more than 10 years. Brown also claims he lost opportunities at work due to his complaints of discrimination.

William Cogley, Elgin’s corporation counsel, said the claims in the lawsuit were unfounded.

“I have no comment other than the suit is unfounded and we intend to defend ourselves,” he said.

Rafferty and Barnes, who are white, are named in the lawsuit for their alleged role in creating a hostile work environment, and for allegedly failing to act on Brown’s complaints. Neither could be reached for comment Monday.

Brown, who declined to speak Monday and referred all comment to his attorneys, is seeking punitive damages from Rafferty and Barnes, as well as compensatory damages and lost overtime pay from the city, among other relief.

Brown’s attorneys, Laurie Burgess and Steven Saltzman, could not be reached for comment.

The complaint alleges many racially charged incidents, including officers using racial slurs on several occasions to describe black people, including Brown’s infant son. Brown also received text messages containing slurs, according to the lawsuit.

Sometime about 2000, according to the suit, Rafferty, Brown and other officers attended a football game in Indianapolis. While there, Rafferty and another officer posed in front of a monument that makes mention of the Ku Klux Klan. With their hands forming a “K” they stated, “If you are looking for the Klan, we’re right here,” according to the lawsuit.

A photograph of the incident was passed around the department after the trip and resurfaced last year, the complaint states. The incident resulted in a five-day suspension for Rafferty last year, according to department records.

The lawsuit also alleges incidents when blacks were treated differently than whites during traffic stops involving drugs. Brown, who worked with Rafferty in the department’s gang unit, was at first afraid to report the incidents for fear of losing his job, the complaint states. He later transferred to a different unit.

About 2006, Rafferty accused Brown of leaking information to gang members during his role as an Elgin High School officer liaison. As a result, Brown was placed on desk duty for two years, losing out on overtime pay opportunities, the lawsuit claims.

An investigation resulted in no charges, and Brown denied the claims. However, he remained serving in the lower level duty, according to the complaint.

Eventually, Brown complained to a supervisor about several of the incidents, but no action was taken after a five-month investigation, the lawsuit states.

Brown, who says he suffered emotional distress, asks in the lawsuit for racial sensitivity training and a three-year monitoring period by the court “to ensure that the racially hostile work environment at the (police department) is and remains destroyed.” kthayer@tribune.com

Using highly paid cops to do the work of garbage collectors???

Source

Santa Clara County deputies clear tons of gear from remote pot growing operations

By Eric Kurhi

ekurhi@mercurynews.com

Posted: 12/31/2012 08:37:56 PM PST

Dangling on ropes suspended from a helicopter, sheriff's deputies were dropped into eight rough and remote Santa Clara County locations last week to dismantle clandestine marijuana operations and haul out environmentally unfriendly gear.

That included miles of black plastic irrigation tubing, propane tanks, car batteries, camping supplies and gardening equipment, along with food wrappers and other trash. Deputies found a Honda muffler on an isolated mountainside that they believe was used to cut down noise produced by a generator.

All told, the efforts by the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office Marijuana Eradication Team and several state Department of Fish and Game wardens cleared four tons of material from marijuana fields off Pacheco Pass Highway, Croy Road, Casa Loma Road, Gilroy Hot Springs Road and areas inside Henry W. Coe State Park.

No arrests were made, but officials hope it will deter future fields from springing up as well as prevent pollutants from entering creeks and tributaries.

"It's amazing just how much damage the unlawful marijuana cultivators cause to the environment, and the amount of trash they bring to these pristine locations in our county," stated Detective Jeff Puente, a full-time member of the sheriff's Marijuana Eradication Team, in a news release. "As an avid outdoorsman it saddens me to think of the amount of time it will take for these areas to fully recover."

The crews are taken to the sites -- which would likely be a four- or five-hour hike -- via "short hauling," or hanging from 100-foot lines dangling from a helicopter.

Sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Jose Cardoza said the operations are found in various ways -- sometimes from a tip, other times by authorities seeking them out, including from the air.

According to the release, it is "a common method used which allows for less time hiking into the site and easier removal of the garbage," which would otherwise take days to pull out.

In 2012, the Marijuana Eradication Team removed more than 91,000 plants and 500 pounds of marijuana at various grow operations, 22 of them outdoors and seven indoors. They made 21 arrests and confiscated nine guns.

The sheriff's office receives grant money from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency to fund eradication and environmental cleanup operations.

Contact Eric Kurhi at 408-920-5852. Follow him at Twitter.com/erickurhi.

How do you spell revenue - DUI tickets

Source

More than 4,000 Arizona drivers arrested by holiday DUI task force

By Jackee Coe The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Jan 1, 2013 1:36 PM

Nearly 4,400 people statewide were arrested on suspicion of DUI between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve by officers participating in regional saturation enforcements, according to the Arizona Governor’s Office of Highway Safety.

Officers arrested 4,371 people between Nov. 24 and Jan. 1, including 1,098 people on suspicion of extreme DUI, 450 on suspicion of aggravated DUI, and 934 DUI drug arrests, according to GOHS. Of the 81,934 total people stopped, there were 1,964 designated drivers, and 34,974 non-DUI citations were handed out.

The average blood-alcohol content of those arrested was 0.15 percent. The legal limit is 0.08 percent.

The totals continued an upward trend over the last three years in several areas, including extreme DUI, seat-belt citations and child-restraint violations. During the same period last year, police arrested 4,058 people, and in 2010 arrested 3,880. The number of designated drivers also has increased, from 1,391 in 2010 and 1,927 in 2011.

A cumulative total of 2,247 officers participated in the multiple DUI task force deployments between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve. [Cops also love these DUI sweeps because they are paid lots of overtime.]

From Jan. 1, 2012 through Jan. 1, 2013, officers working on the task forces arrested 27,710 people on suspicion of DUI, including 8,080 on suspicion of extreme DUI, 3,275 on suspicion of aggravated DUI and 3,919 drug DUI arrests. Officers also handed out 338,101 non-DUI citations among the 787,946 people stopped. There were 6,242 designated drivers.

Highway Safety Office Director Alberto Gutier said the goal of the DUI task forces is “to reduce crashes, fatalities and injuries on our streets and highways by enforcing DUI and traffic laws in our state.” [Yea, and Alberto Gutier forgot to say the MOST IMPORTANT GOAL - to raise REVENUE]

Simple Things to Protect Your Privacy

10 Incredibly Simple Things You Should Be Doing to Protect Your Privacy

By Kashmir Hill | Forbes – Mon, Dec 31, 2012 10:55 AM EST

Over the weekend, I wound up at Washington, D.C.’s Trapeze School with a group of friends. Before one of them headed up a ladder to attempt a somersault landing from the trapeze bar, she handed me her phone and asked me to take photos. “What’s the password?” I asked. “I don’t use one,” she replied. My jaw dropped as it often does when someone I know tells me they’re choosing not to take one of the very simplest steps for privacy protection, allowing anyone to snoop through their phone with the greatest of ease, to see whichever messages, photos, and sensitive apps they please.

So this post is for you, guy with no iPad password, and for you, girl who stays signed into Gmail on her boyfriend’s computer, and for you, person walking down the street having a loud conversation on your mobile phone about your recent doctor’s diagnosis of that rash thing you have. These are the really, really simple things you should be doing to keep casual intruders from invading your privacy.

1. Password protect your devices: your smartphone, your iPad, your computer, your tablet, etc. Some open bookers tell me it’s “annoying” to take two seconds to type in a password before they can use their phone. C’mon, folks. Choosing not to password protect these devices is the digital equivalent of leaving your home or car unlocked. If you’re lucky, no one will take advantage of the access. Or maybe the contents will be ravaged and your favorite speakers and/or secrets stolen. If you’re not paranoid enough, spend some time reading entries in Reddit Relationships, where many an Internet user goes to discuss issues of the heart. A good percentage of the entries start, “I know I shouldn’t have, but I peeked at my gf’s phone and read her text messages, and…”

2. Put a Google Alert on your name. This is an incredibly easy way to stay on top of what’s being said about you online. It takes less than a minute to do. Go here. [ http://www.google.com/alerts ] Enter your name, and variations of your name, with quotation marks around it. Boom. You’re done.

3. Sign out of Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, etc. when you’re done with your emailing, social networking, tweeting, and other forms of time-wasting. Not only will this slightly reduce the amount of tracking of you as you surf the Web, this prevents someone who later sits down at your computer from loading one of these up and getting snoopy. If you’re using someone else’s or a public computer, this is especially important. Yes, people actually forget to do this, with terrible outcomes.

4. Don’t give out your email address, phone number, or zip code when asked. Obviously, if a sketchy dude in a bar asks for your phone number, you say no. But when the asker is a uniform-wearing employee at Best Buy, many a consumer hands over their digits when asked. Stores often use this info to help profile you and your purchase. You can say no. If you feel badly about it, just pretend the employee is the sketchy dude in the bar.

5. Encrypt your computer. The word “encrypt” may sound like a betrayal of the simplicity I promised in the headline, but this is actually quite easy to do, especially if you’re a MacHead. Encrypting your computer means that someone has to have your password (or encryption key) in order to peek at its contents should they get access to your hard drive. On a Mac, you just go to your settings, choose “Security and Privacy,” go to “FileVault,” choose the “Turn on FileVault” option. Boom goes the encryption dynamite. PC folk need to use Bitlocker [ technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766295%28v=ws.10%29.aspx ].

6. Gmailers, turn on 2-step authentication in Gmail. The biggest takeaway from the epic hack of Wired’s Mat Honan was that it probably wouldn’t have happened if he’d turned on “2-step verification” in Gmail. This simple little step turns your phone into a security fob — in order for your Gmail account to be accessed from a new device, a person (hopefully you) needs a code that’s sent to your phone. This means that even if someone gets your password somehow, they won’t be able to use it to sign into your account from a strange computer. Google says that millions of people use this tool, and that “thousands more enroll each day.” Be one of those people. The downside: It’s annoying if your phone battery dies or if you’re traveling abroad. The upside: you can print a piece of paper to take with you, says James Fallows at the Atlantic. Alternately, you can turn it off when you’re going to be abroad or phone-less. Or you can leave it permanently turned off, and increase your risk of getting epically hacked. Decision’s yours.

7. Pay in cash for embarrassing items. Don’t want a purchase to be easily tracked back to you? You’ve seen the movies! Use cash. One data mining CEO says this is how he pays for hamburgers and junk food these days.

8. Change Your Facebook settings to “Friends Only.” You’d think with the many Facebook privacy stories over the years that everyone would have their accounts locked down and boarded up like Florida houses before a hurricane. Not so. There are still plenty of Facebookers that are as exposed on the platform as Katy Perry at a water park. Visit your Facebook privacy settings. Make sure this “default privacy” setting isn’t set to public, and if it’s set to “Custom,” make sure you know and are comfortable with any “Networks” you’re sharing with.

9. Clear your browser history and cookies on a regular basis. When’s the last time you did that? If you just shrugged, consider changing your browser settings so that this is automatically cleared every session. Go to the “privacy” setting in your Browser’s “Options.” Tell it to “never remember your history.” This will reduce the amount you’re tracked online. Consider a browser add-on like TACO to further reduce tracking of your online behavior. [If the police arrest you or get a search warrant they will definitely look at your browser history. Erase it to make life difficult for police who want to make life difficult for you. Also remember that even if you erase your browser history, many web sites keep logs showing each time you visited their sites. ]

10. Use an IP masker. When you visit a website, you leave a footprint behind in the form of IP information. If you want to visit someone’s blog without their necessarily knowing it’s you — say if you’re checking out a biz competitor, a love interest, or an ex — you should consider masking your computer’s fingerprint, which at the very least gives away your approximate location and service provider. A person looking at their analytics would notice me as a regular visitor from Washington, D.C. for example, and would probably even be able to tell that I was visiting from a Forbes network address. To hide this, you can download Tor [ https://www.torproject.org/ ] or use an easy browser-based option.

These are some of the easiest things you can do to protect your privacy. Ignoring these is like sending your personal information out onto the trapeze without a safety net. It might do fine… or it could get ugly. These are simple tips for basic privacy; if you’re in a high-risk situation where you require privacy from malicious actors, check out EFF’s surveillance self-defense tips [ https://ssd.eff.org/ ].

Do we need a cop that is paid $96,200 at every high school????

Do we need a police officer that is paid $96,200 at every high school????

Do we need a school resource officer that is paid $96,200 at every high school????

Funding affects West Valley school-resource officers

By Melissa Leu and Eddi Trevizo The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Dec 27, 2012 9:47 AM

Some West Valley schools have police officers on campus, an idea that got a renewed push by the National Rifle Association.

The NRA is advocating for armed guards on every school campus after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., where a gunman killed 20 children and six educators this month.

Currently, there is a divide among high schools. Those in such cities as Avondale, Peoria and Surprise have police officers, called school-resource officers, on campus, while many high schools in Glendale do not.

It comes down to money. [So it sounds like most schools will gladly have a cop, police officer or school resource officers on their campus - As long as the school doesn't have to pay the cops $96,200 yearly salary]

As the recession hit, funding for school-resource officers dried up, causing the Glendale Police Department to pull back its officers from schools.

State funding for school officers was cut nearly in half amid tight finances the past five years. A Democrat state lawmaker is calling to renew that funding.

Beyond money, the proposal is one that is sure to spark conversation in West Valley communities and beyond.

“Obviously, we think it’s the right thing to do to have a police officer there for our middle schools and high schools — because they already are there,” said Christy Agosta, a school-board member in the Deer Valley Unified School District.

Whether to have armed guards in elementary schools is a tougher question.

“As a parent, as well as a school-board member, having my kids have to go by armed security arriving at schools is kind of a heartbreaking thought,” Agosta said. “I’m mixed. … If there had been an armed guard standing outside Sandy Hook, those parents still might have their children. So it’s hard to say we shouldn’t.”

She said such a decision would have to come after a community conversation.

School-resource officers are armed and have the authority of a police officer [and they ARE POLICE OFFICERS], but their duties go beyond security. They offer lessons on law-related issues and add a friendly face on campus for students and staff to turn to for advice.

Police officials credit them with reducing the number of student disciplinary problems.

In 2011, before Centennial High School in Peoria hired its resource officer, the school reported 318 disciplinary incidents. That dropped to 147 incidents, according to Peoria police.

Centennial resource Officer Dave Fernandez typically starts his day at 6:30 a.m. in the school parking lot, helping parents navigate traffic. [Why do you need a cop that is paid an average of $96,200 a year to help parents navigate traffic???]

After about an hour, he heads to his office to answer e-mails, and if nothing major is happening, he walks the campus. [So most of the time he does nothing. Well other then answer e-mails and help parents navigate traffic. And this guy is paid an average of $96,200]

“The best way to see if there is an issue is to be outside looking and talking to people,” Fernandez said.

He said the Sandy Hook shootings were a tragedy. “But we think about these things constantly not just after something has occurred.”

Dale Nicol, principal at Sunrise Mountain High School in Peoria, said resource officers act as a preventive measure.

“He can gather (information) as a result of making connections with students. [I suspect teachers and other school employees can also gather (information) as a result of making connections with students. Do you really need a cop that is making an average of $96,200 a year to do that???] Consequently, we can intervene and stop negative behaviors before they escalate,” Nicol said.

But a divide exists among the Peoria district schools, which stretch across Glendale and Peoria.

The district partners with the city to pay for resource officers in its Peoria-based high schools, but Glendale does not provide funding.

“The police department’s budget is not able to support funding of these positions at this time,” Glendale police spokeswoman Tracey Breeden said.

She noted districts can hire off-duty officers to work in schools.

For the Peoria district, the cost of having officers in Glendale high schools is beyond its budget.

“Grant opportunities are scarce. It becomes funding issues for both the city and the school district,” said Steve Savoy, Peoria’s administrator for K-12 academic services.

The salary of Peoria’s school-resource officers averages $96,200 per year including benefits, Peoria police spokeswoman Amanda Jacinto said. In the past, it was paid by a combination of grants and school district and city budgets.

When the money disappeared, the Peoria district and police partnered to continue the program. The district pays about $30,000 toward the officers’ salaries, and Peoria police pay the rest.

The district relies on neighborhood patrol officers at its Glendale high schools.

The Deer Valley district shoulders the cost of paying officers $30 to $35 an hour for each of its five high schools and three middle schools in Glendale and Phoenix, said Bill Gahn, the district’s director of school operations.

The district earmarks about $300,000 in its budget, which is supplemented through event ticket sales.

An officer is almost always on campus during school hours and after-school events, but the same officer doesn’t always work every day of the week, Gahn said.

“It adds a calming presence on campus,” Gahn said.

Two years ago, Glendale Union had to eliminate its school-resource officers. At one point, the district had officers at seven of its nine campuses in Glendale and Phoenix, district spokeswoman Kim Mesquita said.

That number declined with state grant funding. When the district failed to win the grant last school year, the officers disappeared completely. The district now relies mostly on teachers and administrators to pick up the slack.

Avondale’s Agua Fria Union High School District has a resource officer at each school, funded with state grants and shared costs with local police departments.

Surprise’s Dysart Unified School District has resource officers at each of its four high schools with grant funding.

The district’s 20 elementary schools do not have resource officers, Dysart spokesman Jim Dean said.

Resource officers are rare in elementary schools.

Sometimes it’s simply hard to fill the position, said Jim Cummings, spokesman for the Glendale Elementary School District.

His district received federal funding five years ago for officers at Challenger and Landmark schools, but had to return some of that money because of a lack of candidates, Cummings said.

As a result, schools rely on patrol officers.

“When we call, (police are) here in minutes,” Cummings said.

School officials note that elementary schools typically have less of a need for officers than in high schools, where drugs, theft and violence may be more common.

Patrol officers assigned to Peoria and Glendale neighborhoods regularly check in with elementary principals and students, Peoria’s Savoy said.

The Litchfield Elementary School District used to provide resource officers for its middle schools in partnership with the Avondale and Goodyear police departments and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

The program was cut amid budget constraints in 2009.

“We would approve of armed security at our schools if the state or federal government paid for it,” said Litchfield Elementary spokeswoman Ann Donahue, noting the district would not be able to cover the costs.

Whether that happens remains to be seen.

State Superintendent John Huppenthal on Friday noted the NRA’s proposal would be a large expense to an already financially stressed education system.

House Minority Leader Chad Campbell, D-Phoenix, said he plans to introduce legislation in 2013 to fully fund and train school resource officers at every Arizona school.

Meanwhile, conversations will continue over what parents and residents want for their schools.

Dysart school board member Jerry Enyon said concerns are high, but school officials go through training and routinely practice safety drills.

“They know what to do to keep the kids as safe as possible,” Enyon said.

Reporter Anne Ryman contributed to this article.

Renditions continue under Obama, despite due-process concerns

Renditions continue under Obama, despite due-process concerns

By Craig Whitlock, Published: January 1

The three European men with Somali roots were arrested on a murky pretext in August as they passed through the small African country of Djibouti. But the reason soon became clear when they were visited in their jail cells by a succession of American interrogators.

U.S. agents accused the men — two of them Swedes, the other a longtime resident of Britain — of supporting al-Shabab, an Islamist militia in Somalia that Washington considers a terrorist group. Two months after their arrest, the prisoners were secretly indicted by a federal grand jury in New York, then clandestinely taken into custody by the FBI and flown to the United States to face trial.

The secret arrests and detentions came to light Dec. 21 when the suspects made a brief appearance in a Brooklyn courtroom.

The men are the latest example of how the Obama administration has embraced rendition — the practice of holding and interrogating terrorism suspects in other countries without due process — despite widespread condemnation of the tactic in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Renditions are taking on renewed significance because the administration and Congress have not reached agreement on a consistent legal pathway for apprehending terrorism suspects overseas and bringing them to justice.

Congress has thwarted President Obama’s pledge to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and has created barriers against trying al-Qaeda suspects in civilian courts, including new restrictions in a defense authorization bill passed last month. The White House, meanwhile, has resisted lawmakers’ efforts to hold suspects in military custody and try them before military commissions.

The impasse and lack of detention options, critics say, have led to a de facto policy under which the administration finds it easier to kill terrorism suspects, a key reason for the surge of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Renditions, though controversial and complex, represent one of the few alternatives.

“In a way, rendition has become even more important than before,” said Clara Gutteridge, director of the London-based Equal Justice Forum, a human rights group that investigates national security cases and that opposes the practice.

Because of the secrecy involved, it is not known how many renditions have taken place during Obama’s first term. But his administration has not disavowed the practice. In 2009, a White House task force on interrogation and detainee transfers recommended that the government be allowed to continue using renditions, but with greater oversight, so that suspects were not subject to harsh interrogation techniques, as some were during the George W. Bush administration.

Scarce details in case

The U.S. government has revealed little about the circumstances under which the three alleged al-Shabab supporters were arrested. Most court papers remain under seal.

In a statement, the FBI and federal prosecutors for the Eastern District of New York said the defendants were “apprehended in Africa by local authorities while on their way to Yemen” in early August. The statement did not spell out where they were detained or why.

The FBI made no mention of any U.S. involvement with the suspects until Oct. 18, when a federal grand jury handed up the sealed indictment. The FBI said its agents took custody of the men on Nov. 14, but the bureau did not specify where or from whom. A spokesman for federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York did not respond to a phone message and e-mail seeking comment.

Defense attorneys and others familiar with the case, however, said the men were arrested in Djibouti, a close ally of Washington. The tiny African country hosts a major U.S. military base, Camp Lemonnier, that serves as a combat hub for drone flights and counterterrorism operations. Djibouti also has a decade-long history of cooperating with the United States on renditions.

The Swedish Foreign Ministry confirmed that two of the men — Ali Yasin Ahmed, 23, and Mohamed Yusuf, 29 — are Swedish citizens and were detained in Djibouti in August.

Anders Jorle, a spokesman for the ministry in Stockholm, said Swedish diplomats were allowed to visit the men in Djibouti and New York to provide consular assistance.

“This does not mean that the Swedish government has taken any position on the issue of their guilt or innocence,” Jorle said in a telephone interview. “That is a question for the U.S. judicial system.”

Lawyers assigned to represent the defendants in federal court in Brooklyn said the men were interrogated for months in Djibouti even though no charges were pending against them — something that would be prohibited in the United States.

“The Djiboutians were only interested in them because the United States of America was interested in them,” said Ephraim Savitt, an attorney for Yusuf. “I don’t have to be Einstein to figure that out.”

Harry C. Batchelder Jr., an attorney for the third suspect, Mahdi Hashi, 23, concurred. “Let’s just put it this way: They were sojourning in Djibouti, and all of a sudden, after they met their friendly FBI agents and CIA agents — who didn’t identify themselves — my client found himself stateless and in a U.S. court,” said Batchelder, whose client is a native of Somalia who grew up in Britain.

The sequence described by the lawyers matches a pattern from other rendition cases in which U.S. intelligence agents have secretly interrogated suspects for months without legal oversight before handing over the prisoners to the FBI for prosecution.

A rendition in Nigeria

In December 2011, a federal court hearing for another al-Shabab suspect, an Eritrean citizen named Mohamed Ibrahim Ahmed, revealed that he had been questioned in a Ni­ger­ian jail by what a U.S. interrogator described as a “dirty” team of American agents who ignored the suspect’s right to remain silent or have a lawyer, according to court proceedings.

Later, the Eritrean was interviewed by a “clean” team of U.S. agents who were careful to notify him of his Miranda rights and obtain confessions for trial. Once that task was completed, he was transported to U.S. federal court in Manhattan to face terrorism charges. His American attorneys sought to toss out his statements on the grounds that they were illegally coerced, but the defendant pleaded guilty before a judge could rule on that question.

A diplomatic cable released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks makes clear that Ni­ger­ian authorities were reluctant to detain Ahmed and held him for four months under pressure from U.S. officials.

Robin Sanders, the U.S. ambassador to Nigeria at the time, chided high-ranking officials there in a February 2010 meeting for nearly allowing Ahmed to depart on an international flight “because they did not want to hold him any longer,” according to the classified cable summarizing the meeting. He was finally handed over to FBI agents, but only after he was indicted by a U.S. grand jury.

In the more recent Djibouti rendition, defense attorneys challenged the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts, saying there is no evidence that the defendants targeted or threatened Americans or U.S. interests.

“That is the $64,000 question. I said to the assistant U.S. attorney, ‘Did he blow up an embassy? No,’ ” said Susan G. Kellman, who represents Ali Yasin Ahmed, one of the Swedish defendants. “Why are we holding them? What did they do to insult us?”

A deficit of evidence

The State Department officially categorized al-Shabab as a terrorist organization in 2008, making it illegal for Americans or non-citizens to support the group. Still, Obama administration officials acknowledge that most al-Shabab fighters are merely participants in Somalia’s long-running civil war and that only a few are involved in international terrorism.

Savitt, the attorney for Yusuf, acknowledged that his client fought on behalf of al-Shabab against Somali forces backed by the United States. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I’m not going to deny that allegation, put it that way.”

But Savitt said that was not a legitimate reason to prosecute Yusuf in the United States. “The last thing in the world we really need to do is apprehend and lock up 10,000 al-Shabab fighters or bring them into the court system,” he said.

Authorities in Sweden and Britain had monitored the three men for years as they traveled back and forth to Somalia, but neither country assembled enough evidence to press criminal charges.

“These guys are well known to Swedish security forces,” said a Swedish official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

Sweden’s security agencies have cooperated in the past with U.S. officials on rendition cases by sharing intelligence about targets. Mark Vadasz, a spokesman for the Swedish Security Police Service, declined to comment on whether the agency played a role in the cases involving Yusuf and Ahmed.

Last summer, before he was detained in Djibouti, British authorities notified Hashi’s family that they were taking the unusual step of stripping him of his citizenship, citing his “extremist” activities.

Hashi and his family have denied the allegation. In 2009, Hashi filed an official complaint of harassment against MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, saying agents had pressured him to become an informant.

A spokesman for Britain’s Home Office, which issued the citizenship order, declined to comment or to say whether British officials cooperated with the United States on the rendition.

Asim Qureshi, executive director of CagePrisoners, a British human rights group that has advocated on behalf of Hashi, said the case was too weak to pass muster in a European court.

“A cynic would say it’s easier to get a conviction under spurious evidence in the United States than anywhere else,” he said. “Just alleging somebody is a member of al-Shabab won’t get you very far in the U.K. A judge would just throw out the case before it even gets started.”

Julie Tate contributed to this report.

NYC cops lose evidence, but ask courts to convict!

Source

Flooding of 2 Police Warehouses Destroys Evidence Needed for Criminal Trials

By J. DAVID GOODMAN

Published: January 1, 2013

Perched on a narrow crook of land jutting into New York Harbor, the Erie Basin auto pound and evidence warehouse seems a logical place to store hundreds of seized cars, thousands of guns and 9,846 barrels of evidence containing sensitive DNA material.

It is easy for the New York Police Department to safeguard the secluded bunker, in Red Hook, Brooklyn, from potential thieves.

But not, it turns out, from the surrounding water.

As Hurricane Sandy lashed the city, the surge breached the warehouse’s roll-top doors and hurtled hundreds — perhaps thousands — of its barrels into the wet muck. The storm wreaked similar havoc at another Police Department warehouse by the water, along Kingsland Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Now, the damage is having an impact on the courts.

In at least six criminal trials in recent weeks, a police official has had to testify that evidence was inaccessible, but still existed, said Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the Police Department.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers said they were concerned that many more cases could emerge. “This is likely to be the tip of the iceberg,” said Steven Banks, chief lawyer for the Legal Aid Society.

A defendant in Brooklyn, Manuel Castro, was one of the first people convicted of a crime based, in part, on DNA evidence destroyed during Hurricane Sandy. A jury found him guilty of robbery and attempted assault after a judge allowed testimony on evidence — a jacket and boots — that could not be produced in court because both articles had been at the Greenpoint warehouse, Mr. Banks said.

“We believe the ruling that permitted the evidence to come in was incorrect and we are appealing,” Mr. Banks said, adding that the situation was “a recipe for wrongful convictions.”

Police officials have responded to the storm’s destruction by seeking advice from one of the only departments in the country with recent experience in this area: the New Orleans police.

Since Hurricane Sandy hit on Oct. 29, Phil T. Pulaski, the chief of detectives, and others in New York have been in phone contact with counterparts in the South, said Lt. Scott Lindsly, who helps oversee property and evidence for the New Orleans Police Department.

“We’re still dealing with this stuff ourselves,” Lieutenant Lindsly said.

Mounds of waterlogged evidence bags continue to cause headaches in New Orleans more than seven years after Hurricane Katrina, pointing to the difficulty of preserving DNA evidence after flooding.

“If you don’t keep it properly stored, you’re affecting somebody’s life,” said Robbie Keen, who directs a federally financed DNA project in New Orleans that is still trying to recover evidence.

Ms. Keen said some of the damaged biological evidence from Hurricane Katrina had been successfully tested, but some had been lost.

The New York Police Department has assigned 20 officers, 6 civilians and a captain to recover evidence at the two warehouses, under the supervision of Robert S. Martinez, director of the department’s Support Services Bureau, Mr. Browne said. The department may also hire a private contractor to help with the cleanup of damaged documents, as New Orleans did.

Mr. Browne said an occupational safety team within the Police Department determined that the two warehouses had been contaminated, with substances including raw sewage, and that they had to be closed to workers. It was not clear when they would be safe to enter.

Longstanding problems in the vast police storage system have compounded the storm’s effects.

While the department now puts bar codes on evidence, it relied on paper records until a few years ago. The antiquated system still provides the only way to track millions of items in the department’s 11 storage areas.

“It was all piles — piles, piles, piles,” said John W. Cassidy, a retired officer who spent more than a decade in the property division. “It’s not like it was organized. You could have 50 vouchers on one pile.”

Before bar codes were used, important pieces of evidence could occasionally go missing, “despite extensive search efforts by the N.Y.P.D.,” according to the Innocence Project, an organization dedicated to using DNA evidence to exonerate the wrongfully convicted.

A month before Hurricane Sandy, the United States Justice Department gave $1.25 million to the Police Department and the Innocence Project to go back and organize DNA evidence that might help overturn wrongful convictions.

Since August, the Police Department has been considering consolidation of its five evidence warehouses — including the two that flooded — into a single, new warehouse, Mr. Browne said. He said there were no plans to repair the damaged warehouses. Instead, evidence recovered from Greenpoint and Erie Basin is to be transferred to an interim site in Brooklyn until the single evidence bunker is built.

In addition to the nearly 10,000 barrels kept at Erie Basin, Mr. Browne said there were an additional 1,177 barrels of DNA evidence at the Kingsland Avenue location. Each barrel could contain a single piece of evidence — like a bloody blanket — or many smaller items in individual paper bags or envelopes. (Paper is favored over plastic, which can hasten bacterial contamination.)

Roughly 5,000 “narcotics items” and 3,250 firearms were also stored at the Erie Basin warehouse, Mr. Browne said.

Evidence for a coming rape trial in Manhattan — the so-called rape kit — had been stored at the Greenpoint location, the defense lawyer in the case said. The lawyer, Edward V. Sapone, said prosecutors told him that the kit might have been damaged in the storm.

Mr. Sapone said he had been concerned because he believed the evidence stored inside would help prove his client’s innocence.

It turned out that one element in the kit — a pubic hair — had not been at the warehouse during the storm because it was being tested.

Mr. Sapone said he received a message on Monday that the prosecutor was going to recommend dismissal of the case because the hair did not match Mr. Sapone’s client’s.

But without a trial, the effect of the storm on the rest of that rape kit — and possibly others — will not be made public in court hearings.

In New York State, evidence in criminal cases is not presented until a trial begins. And if a plea bargain is offered and accepted beforehand, it is not presented at all.

“The government may well be fashioning plea deals based upon the lack of underlying evidence,” Mr. Banks, of Legal Aid, said. “We can ask if it’s there, but they don’t have to tell.”

Dishwasher popped for using invalid Social Security number???

Source

Police arrest man accused of misusing Social Security number to work

By Jim Walsh The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jan 2, 2013 5:57 PM

Mesa police arrested a man they suspect was using somebody’s else Social Security number for 14 years to work at a Phoenix restaurant, according to a court document.

Authorities found out that something was wrong when the U.S. Internal Revenue Service informed a 21-year-old man that he owed back taxes for 2005, 2006 and 2007, said Detective Steve Berry, a Mesa police spokesman.

Berry said it was obvious that something was wrong because the man was too young to work during those years and was not using his Social Security number for other purposes.

Police detectives eventually used state Department of Economic Security records to trace the number to an Applebee’s restaurant in east Phoenix, where the man who rightfully holds the number has never worked, the court document said.

The Social Security Administration verified that the number belonged to the man, not to suspect Felipe de Jesus Martinez, 34.

Martinez was using his real name, but not his proper date of birth, according to the court document.

On Dec. 31, Mesa police arrested Martinez and accused of identity theft for employment.

An Employment Eligibility Verification form provided by Applebee’s said Martinez had worked at the restaurant since Feb. 1, 1998, the court document said.

Martinez admitted to police during an interview in Spanish at the Mesa jail that he purchased the Social Security number when he first arrived from Mexico.

Berry said the man who rightfully holds the Social Security number would have been 7 when his Social Security number was being misused, making it possible for the misuse to continue for years.

Police investigated after receiving a complaint. They are not targeting fraud associated with immigration, Berry said

New York newspaper that reported gun permits using armed guards

Maybe now they realize that guns are useful for self defense, in addition to their intended Second Amendment purpose of allowing the people to overthrow government tyrants.

Of course the main reason these gun control laws are passes is because our government masters don't like the serfs they rule over to be able to defend themselves.

Source

New York newspaper that reported gun permits using armed guards

Associated Press Thu Jan 3, 2013 7:22 AM

WHITE PLAINS, New York — A New York state newspaper that created a public outcry when it published the names and addresses of residents with handgun permits is being protected by armed guards.

Journal News publisher Janet Hasson told the New York Times, “The safety of my staff is my top priority.”

The newspaper last month published online maps with the names and addresses of pistol permit holders in two counties it covers. It sought the public records after the school shooting in nearby Newtown, Connecticut.

Critics say the publication is an invasion of privacy.

Priest gets 8 years for looking at dirty pictures.

Even if the priest is a pervert, I don't consider looking at dirty pictures a crime and I think the arrest and incarceration of this guy is a waste of our tax dollars.

The guy is lucky he is not in Arizona. With our draconian laws he would have been sentenced to at least a 100 years in prison with no possibility of parole.

Last but not least from this article it seems like our religious leaders are hypocrites who routinely give us the line "Do as I say, not as I do"

Source

Suspended priest given 8-year prison sentence

Associated Press Wed Jan 2, 2013 7:48 PM

PITTSBURGH — A suspended Pittsburgh-area priest will serve more than eight years in prison for collecting thousands of images of child pornography on his computer, books and compact discs.

The sentence the Rev. Bartley Sorensen received Wednesday was more than the five-year mandatory minimum he sought but less than the 10-year maximum he faced.

The 63-year-old Roman Catholic priest was arrested by Allegheny County authorities in December 2011 after an employee at St. John Fisher Parish in Churchill noticed him looking at a photo of a pantsless young boy on his computer.

Federal officials took over the investigation after a computer search turned up thousands of child pornography images, some of them sadomasochistic.

Sorensen pleaded guilty in May. At his sentencing, he expressed remorse to everyone but the young boys depicted in the pornography

Boy, 6, suspended from Silver Spring school for pointing finger like a gun

Boy, 6, suspended from Silver Spring school for pointing finger like a gun

By Donna St. George, Published: January 2

The parents of a 6-year-old Silver Spring boy are fighting the first-grader’s suspension from a Montgomery County public school for pointing his finger like a gun and saying “pow,” an incident school officials characterized in a disciplinary letter as a threat “to shoot a student.”

The first-grader was suspended for one day, Dec. 21. The family’s attorney filed an appeal Wednesday, asking that the incident be expunged from the boy’s school record amid concerns of long-term fallout.

The boy “had no intention to shoot anyone,” said attorney Robin Ficker, who described the child as soft-spoken, with no propensity for violence. “He’s skinny and meek. In his words, he was playing.”

The suspension came in a week when the nation was reeling from the massacre that claimed the lives of 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. — and left elected leaders, educators and parents debating how best to keep schools safe.

But it also comes as leaders in Maryland and a growing number of states are working to reduce out-of-school suspensions, which have increased greatly in the past several decades and are linked in studies to lower achievement and students dropping out of school.

Ficker attributed some of the reaction by school officials to the widespread alarm that followed the Newtown shootings. But he contended that the school system’s portrayal of the episode could be damaging to the boy. The Washington Post generally does not identify juveniles accused of crimes or other wrongdoing.

“They took the worst possible interpretation of this little child’s actions, and five years from now, if he gets into a tussle, they’re going to look back and say, ‘This is one bad little kid,’ ” Ficker said.

Montgomery schools spokesman Dana Tofig said he could not discuss individual students for privacy reasons. But in a written statement, Tofig said the suspension “was not a kneejerk reaction to a single incident.”

In disciplining young students, Tofig added: “We always make sure there is clear conversation with the student and parents about any behaviors that have to change and what the consequences are if that behavior doesn’t change.”

School officials recognize that “suspending a student is a serious matter, and that is especially true of a student who is in our early grades,” Tofig said, adding that school officials must deal with behavior that affects a school’s sense of safety and security.

Across the Washington region, school systems have suspended thousands of students in the early grades, according to a 2012 Washington Post analysis that showed kindergartners and first-graders had been ousted for disciplinary offenses in nearly every local school system.

In Silver Spring, the 6-year-old’s parents received a Dec. 20 letter from Renee Garraway, an assistant principal at Roscoe Nix Elementary School, saying that their son “threatened to shoot a student” and that he had been spoken to earlier about similar behavior.

Responding to questions from the family’s attorney, school officials later offered more detail, responding in a letter that an assistant principal had warned one parent that the child’s behavior could lead to a suspension. At school, a counselor “had an extended conversation” with the child to emphasize “the inappropriateness of using objects to make shooting gestures,” and an assistant principal had talked to the boy about the “seriousness” of the issue, the letter said.

“Yet, after the meeting with the counselor and assistant principal, [the boy] chose to point his finger at a female classmate and say ‘Pow,’ ” wrote Judith S. Bresler, the school system’s attorney.

The boy attended school Wednesday, and school officials are considering the appeal, according to the family’s attorney.

The suspension comes as the Maryland State Board of Education is preparing for a final vote in the coming weeks on proposed regulations that would transform the use of out-of-school suspension for minor offenses. The new regulations ban zero-tolerance approaches and require school systems to adopt a rehabilitative philosophy toward discipline, with the goal of limiting suspensions and teaching positive behavior.

aaa9_police.html#passwordprotectitagainsillegalsearches

A good reason to password protect your cell phone!!!!!

"Police also searched Palmer’s cellphone and found text messages that police said revealed suspected drug deals, police said"

Here is another interesting article from the police magazine Law and Order which encourages cops to search the cell phones of everybody they stop.

Again that is a good reason to password protect your cellphone and refuse to give the cops your password. Take the 5th Amendment. It's your right!!!!!

Source

Police accuse Mesa man of selling marijuana

By Jonathan Reid

The Arizona Republic-12

News Breaking News Team

Thu Jan 3, 2013 12:00 PM

Mesa police on Tuesday arrested a 21-year-old Mesa man on suspicion of possession of marijuana for sale after they found six baggies containing marijuana and a digital scale in his vehicle while conducting a traffic stop, according to a court document.

On Jan. 1, police conducted a traffic stop on a vehicle at about 11:55 p.m. in reference to a missing headlight at 1200 W. Main St. in Mesa, according to police.

While contacting the driver, Robert Palmer IV, police reportedly smelled the odor of marijuana coming from inside the vehicle, police said.

Upon conducting a license check, police learned that Palmer’s license was suspended and called to impound the vehicle, according to a court document.

Police, while searching the vehicle prior to it being impounded, found six baggies containing a green-leafy substance, later confirmed by police to be marijuana, a digital scale and drug paraphernalia, according to police.

Police also searched Palmer’s cellphone and found text messages that police said revealed suspected drug deals, police said.

Palmer told police that the bag was his and that he owned the marijuana and paraphernalia inside, according to a court document. He said he did not sell marijuana, according to police.

Palmer was arrested on suspicion of possession of marijuana for sale and possession of drug paraphernalia , according to a court document.

Rep. John Kavanagh hopes to repeal medical-marijuana law

"Rep. John Kavanagh, said new findings that some teens were obtaining pot from medical marijuana cardholders “was the last straw.”"

Does Rep. John Kavanagh want to make liquor illegal for adults because some kids illegally get booze from adults???

Does Rep. John Kavanagh want to make prescription drugs other then marijuana illegal for adults because some kids illegally get reds, uppers, downers and other prescription drugs from adults???

Does Rep. John Kavanagh want to make x-rated movies illegal for adults because some kids illegally rent or buy them from adults???

Does Rep. John Kavanagh want to make guns and bullets illegal for adults because some kids illegally buy them from adults???

Source

Arizona lawmaker hopes to repeal medical-marijuana law

By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez The Republic I azcentral Thu Jan 3, 2013 5:40 PM

A state lawmaker wants to repeal Arizona’s controversial medical marijuana law, which allows people with certain medical conditions to legally grow, sell and use the drug.

Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, on Thursday 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 upcoming legislative session begins Jan. 14.

Kavanagh told The Arizona Republic that voters deserve the right to rethink whether the law, approved by voters in 2010, should have passed in the first place. [Translation - Kavanagh hates marijuana and will use any lame excuse to make it illegal again]

He said new findings that some teens were obtaining pot from medical marijuana cardholders “was the last straw.” That survey information was included in the biennial study by Arizona Criminal Justice Commission, which found nearly one out of every nine students in Grades 8, 10 and 12 who responded to a survey said they got the drug from patients or caregivers who are legally allowed to use marijuana. [I suspect the only reason the biennial study by Arizona Criminal Justice Commission was done was to give the members of the government who hate medical marijuana a lame excuse to make it illegal again]

“This simply lets the voters rethink a decision they made on faulty — and absent —information,” Kavanagh said. “Nobody ever dreamed they’d (medical marijuana cardholders) be supplying school children.” [That is a lie. Prop 203 specifically makes it illegal for patients to give their marijuana to non-patients. Anybody who thought that a few patients wouldn't break the law is dreaming.]

Arizona voters approved the medical marijuana law in 2010 by a narrow margin of about 4,300 votes.

“This measure barely passed at the polls … and people were misled to believe that its recipients would be cancer patients on chemotherapy and glaucoma sufferers — but now they represent a fraction of the users,” Kavanagh said. [That is a bold faced lie. Prop 203 clearly says patients can get medical marijuana for SEVERE AND CHRONIC PAIN, and that's what most people get medical pot for!]

Nearly 34,000 Arizonans are allowed to smoke or grow marijuana, according to the state Department of Health Services. Of them, 3.76 percent use marijuana to ease cancer symptoms; less than 2 percent cite glaucoma. The overwhelming majority — 90 percent — cite severe and chronic pain.

Kavanagh thinks he’ll have “overwhelming support” by the Legislature, which “was cool on the idea to begin with.” [And sadly I think he is right. The Legislature is out of touch with the people]

Kavanagh, like many other Republicans, is also concerned that the state's medical marijuana law conflicts with federal drug laws.

It's OK to give the finger to the pigs????

NY court: Flipping finger at cops not worth arrest

Associated Press Thu Jan 3, 2013 7:43 PM

NEW YORK — A Vietnam veteran and retired airline pilot arrested after giving the finger to a police officer can sue police for malicious prosecution, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday as it reversed a lower-court judge who found the actions of officers reasonable.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals noted that the act of giving the finger was “a gesture of insult known for centuries” and restored the claim brought by John Swartz and his wife after their May 2006 encounter with police as they drove through the upstate New York village of St. Johnsville, 50 miles west of Albany.

A lower-court judge in Albany had tossed out the couple’s claim prior to trial after police maintained they stopped Swartz’s car, which his wife was driving, because they feared the finger gesture was a sign of a domestic dispute.

The appeals court said such a conclusion was unreasonable given “the nearly universal recognition that this gesture is an insult.” It pointed out in a footnote that Strepsiades was portrayed by Aristophanes as extending the middle finger to insult Aristotle and that the first recorded use of the gesture in the United States may have occurred in 1886, when a joint baseball team photograph of the Boston Beaneaters and the New York Giants showed a Boston pitcher giving the finger to the Giants.

“Indeed, such a gesture alone cannot establish probable cause to believe a disorderly conduct violation has occurred,” the court said.

But the 2nd Circuit stopped short of saying Swartz’s lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, was a sure winner. It noted that a defense of qualified immunity and the lawfulness of the arrest will “appropriately be in issue at trial.”

A lawyer for the police officers who arrested Swartz did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment Thursday.

Swartz’s lawyer, Elmer Robert Keach III, praised the court’s decision, calling it an “important victory for civil rights.”

“It reaffirms that just because you insult a police officer doesn’t give that police officer the right to detain you or arrest you and take away your liberty,” he said.

Keach said Swartz was particularly upset because he was handcuffed and arrested in front of his grandchildren on Memorial Day.

Swartz was arrested after he reached his arm out the passenger side of a vehicle and over its roof and gave the finger to a local police officer after he saw the officer using a radar detector. Swartz and his wife, who were not speeding or committing any other traffic violation, then continued to the home of the wife’s son. Once there, they got out of the car, and a police car arrived, its lights flashing, the appeals court said.

As Swartz walked to the car’s trunk, he was ordered back in the car. He initially refused but later complied, the court said.

When an officer asked to see a driver’s license and registration, Swartz told his wife not to show anything, prompting the officer to say, “Shut your mouth. Your ass is in enough trouble,” the 2nd Circuit said.

After collecting the documents, the officer returned to his car and summoned backup, prompting three more officers to arrive at the scene. The officer then returned to the car, gave back the documents and told Swartz and his wife they could leave. Swartz got out of his car and asked to speak to the officer, but other officers blocked his path.

Swartz was arrested after he either muttered or shouted, depending upon who recalls the event, that he felt humiliated. A charge of disorderly conduct brought against him was dismissed.

Arizona Republic hates medical marijuana!!!

Marijuana haters in the government are demanding that medical marijuana be made illegal because a few kids get marijuana from medical marijuana card holders.

Of course these same folks are not demanding that other prescription drugs which kids illegally acquire from adults be made illegal for ALL people.

Nor are these folks are not demanding that liquor which kids illegally acquire from adults be made illegal for ALL people.

Nor are these folks are not demanding that cigarettes which kids illegally acquire from adults be made illegal for ALL people.

Nor are these folks are not demanding that guns and bullets which kids illegally acquire from adults be made illegal for ALL people.

Nor are these folks are not demanding that x-rated movies which kids illegally acquire from adults be made illegal for ALL people.

Source

January 04, 2013 |

Opinions

Where do we go from here?

Jan. 4, 2013 12:00 AM

The Republic | azcentral.com

Hoax. Bogus. Sham.

Yes, we're talking about Arizona's medical-marijuana law.

The handful of people who might really benefit from unproven medical benefits of a street drug were destined to be far outnumbered by the potheads who no longer need to buy the drug on the street. Always.

The latest evidence that this hoax is a hoax? An Arizona Criminal Justice Commission survey in which 11.6 percent of eighth-, 10th- and 12th-grade students who smoked pot in the past 30 days said they got it from somebody with an approved Arizona medical-marijuana user card.

Gee, what a surprise.

Voters were misled in 2010 when they passed the medical-marijuana initiative. Medicine is prescribed by doctors and picked up at pharmacies. It doesn't come through pot docs operating out of glammed-up head shops.

The long and expensive war on drugs has proved to be unwinnable. [True] But the solution is an honest discussion about where we go from here. [Wrong. This is just another lame excuse to continue the insane war on drugs which the author of this article just admitted is a dismal failure]

The answer was not the dishonest effort at back-door legalization that pretends cannabis is medicine.

Cops accused of egging superior’s house

Source

Cops accused of egging superior’s house

Fri Jan 4, 2013 8:38 AM

NEWTON, Mass. — Massachusetts police responding to reports of teenagers tossing eggs at a house last month got quite a surprise when they tracked down the suspects.

A department spokesman tells The MetroWest Daily News (http://bit.ly/VHWaXJ ) the three people who egged the house in Framingham early Dec. 11 were fellow law enforcement officers serving with the Newton police. They were off duty at the time.

They told Framingham police the egging incident was “a prank, a joke between friends.”

The homeowner is a Newton police sergeant and their superior officer. He says is handling the matter internally.

No charges were filed, and the Newton officers were not publicly identified.

Source

Off-duty Newton police get caught egging house in Framingham

By Norman Miller and Trevor Jones

Wicked Local Newton

Posted Jan 03, 2013 @ 06:13 PM

NEWTON — Three Newton police officers had egg on their faces last month. The trio were caught by Framingham police after egging the house of a superior officer.

The incident occurred at approximately 1:51 a.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 11, according to Framingham police, when officers responded to a report of two male “teenagers” throwing eggs at a Griffin Road residence. The caller said the pair drove off in a red car.

Framingham police stopped the car at 2 a.m. near the residence, and identified the occupants as two Newton police officers, according to Lt. Ron Brandolini, a Framingham police spokesman.

The driver admitted the pair had just egged the home but said, “It was a prank, a joke between friends.”

As Framingham police headed back to the residence to speak with the homeowner, a third Newton police officer was found. Framingham police said he also took part in the egging.

Framingham police didn’t identify any of the Newton Police officers involved.

Framingham police spoke to the homeowner, a Newton police sergeant, who said he would handle the matter internally within the department.

No charges were filed against the Newton officers.

Newton Police Chief Howard Mintz wasn’t immediately available for comment for this report.

LAPD narcotics agents forced sex acts on women???

Source

2 LAPD officers allegedly forced sex acts on women

By Joel Rubin and Jack Leonard, Los Angeles Times

January 3, 2013, 5:22 p.m.

Two Los Angeles Police Department officers are under investigation for allegedly preying on women over a period of five years, luring them into an unmarked car and forcing them to perform sex acts, according to court records.

Detectives from the LAPD's internal affairs unit suspect that Officers Luis Valenzuela and James Nichols targeted at least four women whom they had arrested previously or who worked for them as informants, according to a search warrant reviewed by The Times.

The pair repeatedly used the threat of jail to get women into their car and drove them to secluded areas where one of the officers demanded sex while the other kept watch, the warrant alleges.

Valenzuela and Nichols worked together until recently as narcotics officers in the Hollywood Division. Investigators have identified four women who encountered the pair and made similar independent accusations against them.

The warrant cites sexually explicit text messages that one alleged victim claims she exchanged with the officers after their encounters. Last month, investigators obtained the woman's cellphone and computers in hopes of finding the messages the officers are alleged to have written. The department has yet to examine the electronic devices, a police official said.

Investigators had planned to confront the officers in a surprise operation early next week, but were forced to accelerate those plans Thursday, when one of the women unexpectedly filed a lawsuit against the officers. Fearing that Valenzuela and Nichols might destroy evidence, investigators rushed to sequester the officers and seize their computers and phones, police confirmed.

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck emphasized Thursday that the investigation was ongoing, but added he was "saddened by the allegations. If they are true, it would be horrific," he said.

Valenzuela, a 15-year department veteran, and Nichols, a 12-year veteran, were expected to be assigned to their homes pending the outcome of the probe, the head of the internal affairs group said. The officers could not be reached for comment.

The first woman to accuse Valenzuela and Nichols came forward in January 2010, when she told a supervisor in their narcotics unit that the officers had stopped her more than a year earlier, according to the warrant. The woman, who worked as a confidential informant for the narcotics unit and knew the men, said they were dressed in plain clothes and driving a Volkswagen Jetta. Valenzuela threatened to take the woman to jail if she refused to get in the car, then got into the back seat with her and exposed himself, telling the woman to touch him, the warrant said.

An investigation into the woman's claim went nowhere when the detective assigned to the case was unable to locate her, according to the warrant.

A year later, however, another woman demanded to speak to a supervisor after being arrested and taken to the LAPD's Hollywood station. Sometime in late 2009, according to the warrant, two officers driving a Jetta pulled up alongside her as she was walking her dog in Hollywood. The officers, whom she recognized as the same cops who had arrested her in a previous encounter, ordered her into the car, the woman recounted. It is not known why she was arrested.

Believing that the officers were investigating a case, the woman said she felt compelled to comply. Valenzuela then got into the back seat with the woman and handed her dog to Nichols, who drove the car a short distance to a more secluded area. "Why don't you cut out that tough girl crap," the woman recounted Valenzuela saying as he "unzipped his pants and forced [her] head down toward his lap and physically held her head down" as he forced her to perform oral sex on him, according to police records contained in the warrant.

The woman said she didn't report the incident immediately because she felt humiliated, thought no one would believe her and feared for her safety. Police noted that the woman displayed erratic behavior while recounting the events. Later, she made violent threats while in custody and was transported to a hospital.

Based on this allegation, the department reopened the investigation into the pair. The investigator assigned to the case interviewed this second accuser and managed, as well, to find the first woman who had come forward the year before. She, too, gave a statement, saying she had refused Valenzuela's commands to fondle him.

For reasons not explained in the warrant, the department's investigation made little progress for the next 18 months. During this time, police records show, the officers were transferred, with Valenzuela being reassigned to the Olympic Division and Nichols to the Northeast Division. (Nichols was involved in the high-profile arrest last year of Brian C. Mulligan, an executive at Deutsche Bank, who alleged he was the victim of excessive force. Police contend that Mulligan, while deranged on drugs, charged at Nichols and suffered injuries while Nichols and his partner took him into custody).

Cmdr. Rick Webb, who heads the LAPD's internal affairs group, declined to comment on the specifics of the probe, but said such cases are often difficult to complete.

The case picked up steam again in July 2012, when a man left a phone message for the vice unit at the Northeast station, saying he was a member of the Echo Park neighborhood watch and had been told by a prostitute that patrol officers in the area were picking up prostitutes and letting them go in exchange for oral sex, the warrant said.

Two more months passed before a third internal affairs officer was assigned to look into the Echo Park claim. The investigator was aware of the earlier allegations against Valenzuela and Nichols and "thought the circumstances and location were very similar."

It is not clear how, but the investigator identified another two women who reported encounters in which Nichols and Valenzuela had sought sexual favors in exchange for leniency.

One said Nichols had detained her in July 2011, handcuffed her and driven her to a quiet location. Removing the restraints, Nichols exposed himself and said, "You don't want to go to jail today, do you?" the woman recalled. Fearing she would be arrested, the woman performed oral sex on Nichols, who then released her, she said. She said Nichols had done the same thing to her six years earlier.

The other woman discovered by the internal affairs investigator alleged that she became a confidential informant for Valenzuela and Nichols after she was arrested, according to the warrant. Valenzuela, she said, told her that having sex with him would help her avoid jail, according to the warrant. She alleged that she had sex with the officer twice, once when he was off duty at her apartment in Los Angeles, and the second time in the back seat of an undercover police car while he was on duty. She said she was afraid he would send her back to jail if she refused.

She said Nichols contacted her in January 2011 and told her he would cancel her obligation to inform for him if she would have sex with him.

The woman filed a lawsuit against the city on Wednesday, alleging that the officers forced her to have sex with them several times in exchange for keeping her out of jail. The Times in general does not name the victims of alleged sex crimes.

That lawsuit was first reported by City News Service. Despite the officers' promises, the woman was sentenced to jail in April 2011 and remains there, the lawsuit alleged. A district attorney's spokeswoman said the woman is serving more than seven years in jail for possession of cocaine with intent to sell and identity theft.

joel.rubin@latimes.com

jack.leonard@latimes.com

Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.

Cops hate it when DNA proves they framed people

Source

Lawyers, Saying DNA Cleared Inmate, Pursue Access to Data

By ETHAN BRONNER

Published: January 3, 2013

MOUNT OLIVE, W.Va. — Convicted of robbing and raping an 83-year-old woman, Joseph A. Buffey at 19 was no one’s idea of a choirboy. A marijuana smoker and high school dropout, he was out thieving on the night in question 11 years ago and broke into the Salvation Army near the woman’s home to steal the bell-ringing money.

He confessed to the rape and was sentenced to 70 years in the maximum security prison here in southern West Virginia where road names end in “Hollow” and “Creek” and coal is king. But for much of the past decade he has claimed that he was pressed into the confession and a plea deal by the police and his lawyer. He said he never entered the victim’s home, never touched her.

After years of being ignored, Mr. Buffey recently learned that DNA tests from intimate material at the crime scene establish with certainty the identity of the rapist: another man incarcerated at a different state prison who had a history of assaulting women.

If proceedings go as his lawyers hope, Mr. Buffey’s story will be one more in the several hundred exonerations nationwide brought about partly by new DNA techniques, many involving false confessions. But it took 18 months of litigation to get the state to test the DNA against its database of felons, and Mr. Buffey’s lawyers say his case is therefore something more: proof that laws are needed to remove the databases from the exclusive grip of prosecutors and law enforcement to make them available to defense lawyers.

“There is incredible exculpatory power in the databases that the government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on over the years,” said Nina Morrison, a senior lawyer in the case. “But law enforcement runs the databases, and even when you go to court to force their hand, they throw up roadblocks. And judges say they don’t have the power to force them.”

Steven Benjamin, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said getting access to these databases was a major concern and one that is on the agenda of his group’s winter meeting next month in Washington.

“This is a national problem, a huge and recurring one,” he said. “Juries expect the defense to be able to prove that if your client didn’t do it, who did? Science doesn’t belong to the government, but they act like it does. Unless the defense is given access to this information, the playing field remains uneven in criminal justice.”

Almost every state has a law permitting some post-conviction DNA testing (although the Supreme Court has ruled that it is not a constitutional right). But only nine — Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas — have laws granting defendants access to the DNA databases, known as the Combined DNA Index System, or Codis.

Many legal experts, even some prosecutors, think that number needs to be greatly expanded as states and the federal government increase the size of the databases.

“You’d think there would be a federal rule or a statute in every state creating the clear obligation to do a Codis search in any case where the defense wants it,” said Brandon L. Garrett, a professor of law at the University of Virginia.

In a case last year in Washington, D.C., DNA evidence was used to free a man who had spent more than two decades in prison for a rape he had not committed, but the United States attorney did not disclose the identity of the man linked by Codis to the crime. Sandra K. Levick of the Public Defender Service there has resorted to the Freedom of Information Act to try to oblige the government to reveal his identity.

“This is terribly vital information, not only to exonerate the innocent but also to learn what went wrong and to use that knowledge to improve our criminal justice system,” Ms. Levick said.

In the case of Mr. Buffey, Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project, which is working to free him, contended that the state had no interest in exploring DNA evidence after it had Mr. Buffey’s confession. “This state was more interested in covering up what happened here than in finding the person who committed a vicious rape of an old woman and could have been on the streets committing more of them.”

The assistant prosecutor, David J. Romano, vigorously rejected Mr. Scheck’s accusations. Mr. Buffey, he said, “is not low IQ.” He continued: “Raping an 83-year-old lady is about as bad as it gets. Why would someone plead guilty and say they were sorry several months later if they really had no participation in it? [Because the police used the "9 Step Reid Method" to get the confession. The "9 Step Reid Method" is more or less a way to get a confession by beating the suspect with psychological rubber hoses.] The fact that someone else’s DNA has been identified only tells us that someone else took part. Buffey could have penetrated without ejaculation.” [Well then why did the woman say ONE man raped her. She never said TWO men raped her. - That's just a lame excuse to justify framing the guy for a crime he didn't commit and letting him rot in prison for 10 years]

Sitting in a loose khaki uniform in the prison’s tiny cinder-block visiting room, Mr. Buffey said he had not “slept a wink” since he heard the news of the DNA match. “They have finally actually found who it was,” he said. Asked why he confessed to something he had not done, he replied, “I know it’s hard to believe, but you’d be surprised what you’d confess to under certain circumstances.” [The "9 Step Reid Method" is very efficient at getting confessions. The "9 Step Reid Method" is so good it routines gets innocent people to confess. The "9 Step Reid Method" is pretty much like beating a person with a psychological rubber hose to get the confession - and it's legal!!!!]

The details of Mr. Buffey’s case are murky. He was with two men that night, both recreational drug users who had been in trouble before, and they were a quarter-mile from the rape victim’s house in the town of Clarksburg. The victim was the mother of a Clarksburg police officer, so detectives took the crime personally, and the town’s 16,000 inhabitants were stunned. The victim, who is still alive at 94 but suffering now from dementia, told the police then that there had been one attacker who raped and sodomized her after leading her around her house with a knife in search of cash. She never mentioned a second man.

Mr. Buffey’s lawyer, Thomas Dyer, said in a telephone interview that he assumed Mr. Buffey had participated in the rape and robbery and that was why he sought a plea deal. Mr. Dyer believed — mistakenly — that given Mr. Buffey’s age, he would get a minimal sentence and serve only 10 years. [Wow! What a deal, 10 years for a crime you didn't commit!!!!]

Mr. Buffey said that at Mr. Dyer’s urging he confessed and apologized but then regretted it and tried to take back the plea. Mr. Dyer said it was too late. Later Mr. Buffey unsuccessfully sought a new trial, partly on grounds of lawyer incompetence. [Sounds like the lawyer Mr. Dyer was representing the police, not his client Mr. Buffey]

The Innocence Project lawyers got involved in this case after Mr. Buffey sent them a letter a few years ago. When they ran the test on the victim’s rape kit in the spring of 2011 and it showed that it was not Mr. Buffey’s DNA present at the crime scene, they asked to run the results through the West Virginia database of felons to see if another match existed. The judge approved, but the prosecutor refused, saying that the laboratory that had done the testing was not certified by the state. The judge then said he did not have the authority to order the state to violate its own rules.

The Innocence Project offered to run the test again through a certified lab. But the prosecutor turned down the request, saying there was “no good reason to do so” and adding, “the state does not believe such testing will or can prove the defendant’s innocence after his guilty plea.”

The judge ordered the test to go forward. The state again resisted but a month ago backed down.

Some prosecutors are open to a change in rules governing Codis. “We, as law enforcement and prosecutors, are obligated to seek the truth and follow the evidence, and DNA should be entered into Codis,” said Scott Burns, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association. “It seems like there should be laws for it, and I agree that the defense should be given the information.”

Controversy also exists over who should be included in Codis — all felons or also those charged but not yet convicted. The Supreme Court will hear a case from Maryland on this issue early this year.

Meanwhile, Mr. Buffey remains in prison, awaiting a March hearing when his lawyers will argue that the DNA match with another inmate means he should not spend another day behind bars.

Fired State Trooper Accused of Faking DUI Arrests

Fired State Trooper Accused of Faking DUI Arrests

By JOHN SCHRIFFEN

Good Morning America

@GMA on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook

A class-action lawsuit has been filed against a former Utah Highway Patrol trooper and her superiors alleging that she filed false DUI charges during her career.

The department fired Lisa Steed in November for alleged misconduct related to her duties.

Attorney Michael Studebaker, who is one of the lawyers leading the class-action lawsuit, says he has been contacted by at least 40 people claiming Steed wrongfully arrested them on DUI or drug charges.

"Culture of corruption. The stories are just rampant," said Studebaker, who filed the lawsuit Dec. 14 in District Court in Salt Lake County.

Lawyers have yet to determine exactly how much the plaintiffs will seek in monetary damages.

One of the alleged victims was Michael Choate, who says Steed pulled him over for speeding with his wife in the car.

"She said she clocked me at 73. I said as fastest I was going was about 62," Choate said.

Choate was arrested and charged with DUI, but the charge was reduced to having an open container of alcohol in the car after a blood test showed he was not drunk. Choate says he was forced to pay $3,000 in fines to get his car back.

Choate was also upset that his wife was forced to find her own way home after his arrest.

"They dropped her off at a Burger King," he said. "She didn't have any money, she didn't have her cellphone with her. She had to borrow a quarter from a lady to make a phone call."

Steed and her attorney have not responded to requests for comment. Utah Highway Patrol says it cannot comment on pending litigation.

She is under investigation by the FBI.

Studebaker also cites a dashcam video from a 2011 traffic stop that he says shows Steed's pulling over a woman driver. The video shows the driver performing a series of sobriety tests. Studebaker says the unidentified woman passed all the tests with flying colors but was still arrested for DUI.

Charges were later dropped after a blood test found no alcohol in her system, Studebaker says. The driver has since joined the lawsuit against Steed.

Steed was named Utah Highway Patrol's "Trooper of the Year" in 2007 for making more than 200 DUI arrests, a reward that Studebaker says should be taken away from her.

Steed herself has admitted in the past that she did not follow proper protocol while administering a DUI check. At a court hearing in May 2012, Steed admitted that, while she was administering a blood-alcohol test on Theron Alexander March 2010, she removed her microphone in order to perform an unauthorized action.

An attorney representing Alexander told ABC News last year that Steed's actions could call all her cases into question.

"The cumulative facts may well have a significant ripple effect across every case she's touched," Salt Lake City attorney Joseph Jardine said in March. "This could become the basis for overturning multiple convictions in the past."

Steed's attorney, Greg Skordas, has said he does not believe that the incident is any reflection of his client's credibility.

"It doesn't affect her credibility. It affects the way she does things, her ability to follow instructions," Skordas told ABCNews.com in March. "It doesn't mean she's dishonest."

In 2009, dashcam video showed Steed stun-gunning Ryan Jones, a motorist who was later determined to be sober.

The case was settled in November 2011 when the state paid Jones $40,000 without admitting wrongdoing.

When asked about that case, Skordas said, "She took her lumps, she was reprimanded and we move on."

Tempe shakes down drivers that visit Downtown Tempe!!!!

Downtown Tempe parking changes discourages customers

By the Southeast Valley editorial board

Here’s a candidate for a textbook approach to discouraging business:

Extend the hours that payment is required around downtown businesses from 6 to 10 p.m. Post the hours on the meters in such small type that only a professional meter reader, or maybe a mind reader, could decipher. [Hey the royals rulers of Tempe can make a lot more money by shaking people down for a $42 fine if they hide the hours and make people think parking is free after 6 pm like it used to be, then collecting the lousy $5/hr parking fee]

Then charge $42 for anybody who gets a parking ticket.

That’s what the city of Tempe has done in and around the Mill Avenue area, as well as on College Avenue and Fifth Street in downtown Tempe. And this is what has to change.

Business, civic and community leaders recently expressed concern about the parking situation when members of Mayor Mark Mitchell’s advisory group met recently. Some of them are worried that parking is becoming such a hassle that customers might throw up their hands and avoid Mill altogether. [We are told that government is here to help us, but as in this case we usually get screwed by government]

They discussed the issue with the Downtown Tempe Community, which manages the Mill Avenue District for landowners and manages city-owned parking. [How come a private corporation (DTC Inc or Downtown Tempe Community Inc) manages the city owned parking???? Also note that the elected members of the Tempe City Council are also on the board of the private non-government corporation]

Among those expressing concern were Harry Mitchell, the city’s former longtime mayor and a former congressman, and Mill Avenue restaurant owner Julian Wright.

Paying for a parking space at night that used to be free after 6 p.m. then returning to one’s car to find a $42 ticket “is off the charts ridiculous,” Wright said.

Changes could easily be made.

The time for charged parking should be scaled back to 6 p.m.

Signs should be posted that clearly spell out the hours and the fines involved, so that downtown customers need not have 20/10 vision to figure out the lay of the land.

Mitchell said the city could require businesses to contribute money to provide free parking because it would benefit their customers. [What a JERK!!!! I thought the taxes we all paid were supposed to pay for that!!!]

All of these ideas are worthy, if city leaders really want to maintain Mill Avenue as a popular destination. [I suspect the royals rulers of Tempe are more interested in shaking down people that visit Mill Avenue for money, then having Mill Avenue be a popular destination!!!]

Medical-pot patients decry how state bans home-growing within 25 miles of dispensaries

Source

Medical-pot patients decry how state bans home-growing within 25 miles of dispensaries

By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez The Republic

azcentral.com Sat Jan 5, 2013 8:37 AM

Medical-marijuana patients and advocates are decrying state health officials’ interpretation of a rule that bans growth of the plant within 25miles of an operating dispensary.

Authors of the state’s medical-marijuana law intended to limit home growers by forcing people to buy at dispensaries. But amid prolonged legal battles over the law, no dispensaries opened and home-growing flourished.

But the opening of four medical-marijuana dispensaries in Phoenix, Tucson and Cochise County have brought the 25-mile rule to the forefront.

Over time, the vast majority of patients who live within 25miles of dispensaries will not be permitted to legally cultivate pot. The Arizona Department of Health Services, which oversees the program, issues cards that allow patients to use medical marijuana, grow it or both. Those cards must be renewed each year, and those who live within 25miles of an operating dispensary will not be allowed to grow the plant.

But how the distance is calculated, whether it’s “as the crow flies” or “as the car drives,” is a key point of controversy.

State health officials interpret the rule as the area within a 25-mile radius of a dispensary.

Many patients and advocates, however, say the rule should be interpreted as driving distance — actual mileage measured on an odometer driving from one location to another. They argue that the state’s interpretation unfairly covers too much ground and bans too many people from growing in their homes.

New figures obtained by The Arizona Republic from the ADHS show that 64 percent of the state’s population lives within a 25-mile radius of a dispensary.

The agency reports that nearly 49 percent of Arizonans are within 25 miles of the Glendaledispensary; less than half of a percentage point of Arizonans live within 25miles of the Cochise County dispensary; and nearly 15percent of state residents live within 25miles of the two Tucson-area dispensaries.

Within the medical-marijuana community, controversy over the 25-mile rule has dominated discussion.

Lately, it has fired up the audience on WeEducated, a Web talk show about medical marijuana in Arizona, said Kristie Austin, 31, a show host.

“It should not be measured as the crow flies,” said Austin, of Phoenix.

“It should be measured by roads — like via MapQuest. If you live on the other side of a mountain range, and it takes two hours to get to a dispensary, that’s ridiculous.”

Austin is a medical-marijuana cardholder who uses the drug to ease pain brought on by endometriosis.

Like many other medical-marijuana patients, Austin also argues that the 25-mile rule places unfair burdens on patients who either can’t drive or must leave their neighborhoods to get their medicine.

Patients also argue that the rule forces them to pay more for their medicine. It’s cheaper to grow the plant at home rather than spend hundreds of dollars each month at dispensaries for their supplies, they say.

Those arguments don’t sway state ADHS Director Will Humble, who stands by his agency’s interpretation of the rule.

He pointed out that the rule was written into the voter-approved law and, therefore, his agency is required to implement it.

“This is not something we can change,” he said.

Not easily, at least.

The Legislature could alter the rule with a three-quarters vote, or voters could amend the law.

Humble said that when the agency in 2011 decided to interpret the 25-mile rule “as the crow files,” there was “hardly any feedback” from the public. In recent months, the agency has received some complaints from cardholders, he said.

“One of the things you have to do, when writing the rules, is you need to make it generally applicable — so, 25miles means 25miles,” he told The Republic. “Roads change over time. Sometimes, there’s dirt roads, washes. ... Roads get graded, they become impassable. Sometimes, local jurisdictions change roads and make them dead-ends. There’s just so many variables if you were to try to measure by roads.”

If dispensaries continue to open at the current pace, legal home cultivation of marijuana will be virtually non-existent, Humble said.

That doesn’t sit well with patients like Richard Kline, a Glendale resident who uses medical marijuana for the chronic pain from neck and back injuries caused by motorcycle wrecks and getting dragged by a truck.

Kline said he and his wife, also a medical-marijuana patient, will struggle to pay for their medicine once they renew their medical-marijuana cards.

The couple live about 5 miles from a dispensary in Glendale, which opened last month.

“This rule and how the state is reading it — as the crow flies — is just outrageous,” Kline said.

Blink positively identifies murderer???

Source

Ohio murder victim’s eye blink at center of trial

By Kimball Perry Cincinnati Enquirer Sat Jan 5, 2013 9:24 AM

CINCINNATI -- As David Chandler was dying from gunshots wounds, he “told” Cincinnati police who shot him.

Chandler, 35, didn’t speak or write out his killer’s name. In a controversial case that made national headlines, Chandler named Ricardo “O’’ Woods as his killer by blinking.

Woods’ murder trial is set to start Monday before Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Beth Myers. The judge already has ruled that Chandler’s “dying declaration” and the video police made of him blinking his killer’s nickname can be used.

The reliability of a blink as testimony that could send a man to prison for life is “the major issue in the case,” said Kory Jackson, Woods’ attorney.

Woods has battled with Assistant Prosecutors Jocelyn Chess and David Prem in the case for more than two years over the identification issue. Now, Jackson has brought in noted attorney Barry Scheck, a co-founder of the Innocence Project and an attorney for O.J. Simpson during Simpson’s controversial murder trial.

“They will be asking the judge to reconsider her ruling on admitting the video,” Jackson said.

Chandler and two others were in a car at 2:30 a.m. Oct. 28, 2010, in Cincinnati’s West End. Chandler was trying to buy drugs from someone other than Woods, his regular dealer. Woods, who believed Chandler owed him money from previous drug deals, became irate when he saw Chandler trying to buy from another dealer. Police say Woods shot Chandler in the head and neck. Woods previously served prison time for a drug trafficking conviction.

Chandler was taken to a hospital where he stayed for two weeks before dying Nov. 12. In that time, Cincinnati police videotaped him blinking the identification of the shooter. He was supposed to blink twice for “No” and three times for “Yes” as police pointed to each letter of the alphabet, trying to get Chandler to name the shooter.

Eventually, police said Chandler blinked yes when the letter “O’’ - Woods’ nickname on the street - was pointed to and again when he was shown a picture of Woods and asked if it was Woods who shot him. The judge ruled that was sufficient for the videotape to be shown to jurors.

Jackson continues to disagree, saying the video shows Chandler’s identification is weak.

“It’s not reliable and it’s not something a jury should base a conviction on,” Jackson said.

In 2007, two men were convicted in Boynton Beach, Fla., of murder and attempted robbery after being identified by a man blinking his eyes, the Associated Press previously reported. The man, who was paralyzed and later died in the shooting, identified both men by blinking when shown photos of the men.

The National District Attorneys Association didn’t immediately respond to requests for other cases where victims identified defendants by eye blinks.

Woods, 34, is charged with murder, felonious assault and weapons charges. They carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.

First Amendment null and void for poorly dressed people in Mohave County?????

Mohave County board to revise dress code for meetings

Associated Press Fri Jan 4, 2013 9:53 AM

BULLHEAD CITY, Ariz. — The Mohave County Board of Supervisors plans to revise the dress code for people attending its meetings at the county seat in Kingman.

The Mohave Daily News reports that the board has directed county staff to revise the dress code for attending board meetings and to prepare a shorter version.

Supervisor Hildy Angius says she had a problem with banning people wearing a flag on their shirt or hat, while Supervisor Joy Brotherton says she’s confident that the public will dress decently at board meetings.

The board also started reviewing security policies for county buildings, including whether to reverse a ban on taking guns into the administration building.

The supervisors directed staff to evaluate whether guns should be allowed in the administration building. Guns were banned there in March 2010.

Make medical pot illegal because kids get it from patients????

I doubt if the these people are going to say because some kids illegally get booze from adults that booze should be made illegal for adults.

I doubt if the these people are going to say because some kids illegally get other prescription drugs besides marijuana from adults that all other prescription drugs should be made illegal for adults.

I doubt if the these people are going to say because some kids illegally get x-rated movies from adults that x-rated movies should be made illegal for adults.

I doubt if the these people are going to say because some kids illegally get guns and ammo from adults that guns and ammo should be made illegal for adults.

Source

Marijuana supporters say lawmakers miss point of teen use study

Posted: Saturday, January 5, 2013 8:03 am |

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services

The organization that funded Arizona's 2010 medical marijuana initiative says lawmakers who now want voters to scrap the program are missing the point of a study on teen use.

Morgan Fox, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, acknowledged Friday that the report by the Criminal Justice Commission shows more than one out of every nine high school students who regularly use the drug said they got it from a legal medical marijuana user.

But Fox pointed out that overall teen marijuana use last year is lower than it was in 2010 when the initiative was approved. All that's changed, he said, is where the students are getting it.

In fact, Fox said, an argument could be made that every teen who gets it from a medical marijuana user -- the report does not say when it was given to them, sold or stolen -- may mean a teen who was not having to buy the drug from a dealer, someone who might be selling more dangerous drugs and is involved with organized crime.

The group is fighting back following publication of the latest ACJC study about teen use of everything from tobacco and alcohol to marijuana, prescription drugs and heroin.

One question specifically added this year, though, was asking teens where they got their marijuana, something not asked before.

The overwhelming majority of high schoolers who admitted to having smoked in the last 30 days said they got the drug from friends. But 11.6 percent said it came from someone who has a state-issued card allowing them to obtain and possess up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks.

"We definitely don't think that this abuse (of marijuana by teens) is something that should be laughed off or that it's not important,'' Fox said. "But it's certainly not important enough to rise to the level of denying qualified patients their ability to use this medicine.''

And Fox said it's wrong to link legalizing marijuana for medical use with teen abuse.

"Increased available of marijuana to qualified patients is not causing an increase in marijuana use, which is pretty much what everyone is alleging here,'' he said.

The latest ACJC report puts the number of teens using marijuana in the last 30 days at 14.3 percent. That compares with 14.8 percent in 2010, though it is higher than the 12.5 percent from the 2008 report.

But Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said none of that deters him from pushing his proposal, introduced earlier this week, to ask voters in 2014 to repeal the 2010 initiative.

Kavanagh said he was already questioning the program before the ACJC report, saying that the program is not what was sold to voters. He said only a small minority of the more than 33,000 who hold state-issued medical marijuana cards report suffering from cancer or glaucoma, with most saying they were suffering from "subjective back pain.''

What the report showed -- and added to his desire to repeal the program -- was that some of the marijuana earmarked for patients is being diverted to minors.

"Whether it's responsible for an increase or a decrease (in teen use) is totally irrelevant,'' Kavanagh said.

Fox, however, said that is precisely should be the focus for lawmakers when they consider repealing the medical marijuana initiative -- and, ultimately, voters if the Kavanagh proposal gets that far.

"Teens have always thought that marijuana was a lot easier to get than alcohol,'' he said.

"The fact that this substance is more widely available for qualified patients I'm not sure is really increasing the availability,'' Fox continued. "Teenagers are going to find marijuana, one way or the other.''

It was Fox's organization that put up close to $469,000 of the nearly $800,000 spent in 2010 to promote Proposition 203. Fox said, though, that no decision has been made whether the Marijuana Policy Project will get involved with any campaign to defeat a repeal measure if that gets on the 2014 ballot.

Marijuana use by Arizona high schoolers:

Rep. John Kavanagh wants to ban medical marijuana

Arizona lawmaker looks to give voters chance at repealing marijuana law

Posted: Friday, January 4, 2013 6:24 pm | Updated: 7:34 pm, Fri Jan 4, 2013.

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services | 7 comments

PHOENIX -- Saying voters have seen enough, a veteran lawmaker wants to give them a chance to repeal the state's 2-year-old medical marijuana program.

The proposal by Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, would repeal the entirety of Proposition 203 approved in 2010. Kavanagh said the measure, which passed by just 4,340 votes out of nearly 1.7 million ballots statewide, has proven to be a failure.

Kavanagh likely could get the 16 votes in the Senate and 31 in the House he needs to put the issue back before voters. But he still could have an uphill fight at the ballot box despite the narrow margin of support in 2010.

The trend nationwide at the ballot box has been in the other direction. And voters in two states -- Colorado and Washington -- actually agreed last year to make possession of small amounts of the drug legal, even without a medical reason.

Kavanagh said he never was a fan of Proposition 203 which allows those with a doctor's recommendation to get a card from the state allowing them to obtain up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks. But it was a recent story, first reported last week by Capitol Media Services, that got his attention.

"The revelation ... that one out of nine school children who smoke marijuana illegally acquire it from cardholders to me was the last straw,'' he said.

Kavanagh acknowledged that the report, prepared by the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission, was not confined to what percentage of high schoolers got their marijuana from cardholders.

It also revealed that about one in six said they got their alcohol from a parent or guardian, with about an equal number saying they got it from another family member. And close to 30 percent who used prescription drugs to get high -- and not for medical reasons -- said they obtained them from the home medicine cabinet.

But Kavanagh said those facts do not mean the state should not do what it can to shut off the supply of marijuana where it can.

"Let's crack down on parents and people who provide the other substances to kids,'' he said. "Let's not simply add a third item and make it even more available to children.''

Kavanagh said the fact that cardholders are selling or giving away some of their marijuana should not be a surprise. He pointed out that the amount of the drug people can obtain legally adds up to close to four pounds a year.

No one involved with the original ballot measure returned calls late Thursday.

During the 2010 election, Andrew Myers, campaign manager for the medical who managed the medical marijuana initiative, acknowledged that the amount might seem excessive at first glance. But he said that is based on the idea that everyone with a prescription will smoke it.

He said ingesting marijuana is "the easiest route'' for many people, including including the vulnerable and frail, to get its effects. Myers said that, quite simply, it takes more marijuana being eaten or put into tea to get the same effect as lighting it up.

Misuse by cardholders aside, Kavanagh said the experience with the law, which first took effect in 2011, shows it has not lived up to its promotion.

"The voters were sold a bill of misinformation,'' Kavanagh said. "They were led to believe that the users would be sympathetic cancer victims on chemotherapy and glaucoma sufferers when, in reality, they're only a small part of the users.''

Data from the state Department of Health Services, which administers the program, show that nearly three-fourths of the more than 33,000 cardholders are male, with nearly half of them younger than 40. And close to 90 percent of patients approved for use of the drug are complaining of chronic pain; the closest second is nausea at 7.5 percent.

While backers of the medical marijuana initiative needed to gather about 150,000 valid signatures to put the issue on the 2010 ballot, Kavanagh's proposal has a much smaller hurdle: He needs the backing of just 31 representatives and 16 senators to put the question of repeal back before voters in 2014; it does not even require the signature of Gov. Jan Brewer.

Kavanagh conceded that there was no well-funded campaign against Proposition 203 in 2010. Proponents spent close to $795,000; the foes had less than $25,000.

But Kavanagh said he is hoping those against the proposal come forward this time -- assuming his measure is approved by the Legislature -- to provide the financing for a campaign.

Proposition 203 actually was defeated in 12 of the state's 15 counties. But that was more than countered by very strong support in Pima and Coconino counties; it also was approved in Santa Cruz County.

Mexico considers marijuana legalization after ballot wins in U.S.

Mexico considers marijuana legalization after ballot wins in U.S.

By Richard Fausset, Los Angeles Times

January 4, 2013, 6:54 p.m.

MEXICO CITY — Forgive the Mexicans for trying to get this straight:

So now the United States, which has spent decades battling Mexican marijuana, is on a legalization bender?

The same United States that long viewed cannabis as a menace, funding crop-poisoning programs, tearing up auto bodies at the border, and deploying sniffer dogs, fiber-optic scopes and backscatter X-ray machines to detect the lowly weed?

The success of legalization initiatives in Colorado and Washington in November has sparked a new conversation in a nation that is one of the world's top marijuana growers: Should Mexico, which has suffered mightily in its war against the deadly drug cartels, follow the Western states' lead?

Mexico's new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, opposes legalization, but he also told CNN recently that the news from Washington and Colorado "could bring us to rethinking the strategy."

Such rethinking has already begun. Shortly after the approval of the U.S. ballot measures, the governor of Colima state, Mario Anguiano, floated the idea of a legalization referendum for his small coastal state. In the Mexican Congress, Fernando Belaunzaran, a lawmaker with the left-wing Democratic Revolution Party, has introduced a national legalization bill. The cartels probably derive 20% to 25% of their drug export revenue from marijuana, and Belaunzaran contends that legalization will eat into profit that allows the cartels to buy the advanced weapons that are the cause of much bloodshed.

"It's a matter of life or death," Belaunzaran said in a recent news conference. "And after 60,000 deceased" — an estimate of the death toll in the six-year war against the cartels — "no one can say that it isn't essential to Mexicans' lives."

Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera called for a national legalization forum a month before the Colorado and Washington votes. Since then, a number of prominent Mexican voices have questioned the wisdom of following the strict prohibitionist policies still favored by the U.S. government when many Americans at the state and local levels have rejected those policies at the ballot box.

In Mexico City's centrist Reforma newspaper, columnist Sergio Aguayo called the broadening legalization movement in the United States a "slap in the face" to former Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who had vigorously pursued the cartels for the bulk of a term that ended Dec. 1.

Although the fight did little to stop the flow of drugs, Aguayo said, Calderon declined to substantively challenge the zero-tolerance line coming from Washington, D.C.

"He had an ethical responsibility to lead the search for alternatives," Aguayo wrote. "He did not do that, despite the evidence that was accumulating that history was passing him by."

Columnist Claudio Lomnitz struck a giddier tone in the liberal paper La Jornada, imagining a future in which Mexican artisanal pot is marketed much like fine tequila. He even suggested future brand names for Mexican cannabis strains, based on the Cold War-era gringo counterculture the stuff helped fuel: On the Road, perhaps, or Howl.

At this point, there is limited public support for legalization here. A poll released in November showed that 79% of Mexicans remained opposed to the idea. By comparison, a Gallup poll released last month showed 50% of U.S. residents against legalization and 48% in favor.

The fact that the Mexican public is generally less buzzed about legalization comes as no surprise to Isaac Campos, a historian at the University of Cincinnati, who said conservative attitudes on drug use have deep roots in Mexico.

Mexico, he says in a book published in April, outlawed marijuana in 1920, 17 years before the U.S. did, and Mexican newspapers of the era pushed the idea that marijuana smokers were mentally unstable and prone to violence.

In recent years, however, the idea of legalization has been moving closer to the mainstream, said Jorge Hernandez, president of Mexico's Collective for a Comprehensive Drug Policy, which supports the loosening of marijuana laws.

In 2009, the Mexican legislature decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana and hard drugs. But Hernandez said the conversation remains "immature" in Mexico, "in the sense that the people use emotions and moral questions to debate it, and haven't had a real technical-regulatory debate."

The national legalization bill will probably face stiff opposition in Congress. Hernandez has his own issues with the bill, but said that even if it fails, it may end up "opening a space" for further discussion.

Peña Nieto has used similar language, although what the new president means by a "space for rethinking" drug war policy, while opposing legalization, is anyone's guess. He might be waiting to see whether polls in Mexico move in a Colorado-like direction.

But even then, endorsing legalization could risk damaging Mexico's relationship with the U.S., and jeopardize the millions of drug war dollars Washington pours into the country.

Although President Obama recently said he would not make it a priority to go after recreational pot smokers in Colorado and Washington state, he reiterated that he does not support legalization, and the sale, possession and cultivation of the plant remain illegal under federal law.

In recent months, Latin American leaders have grown bolder in challenging the U.S. position. Uruguay's parliament was poised to pass a sweeping pot legalization measure, but President Jose Mujica recently asked lawmakers to wait because polls there also show that the public is reluctant to legalize.

Mexico's Calderon said in September somewhat cryptically that "market alternatives" might be one solution to the hemispheric drug problem. A number of other current and former heads of state have been more direct in their support for legalization, or at least a serious debate on the topic.

A study released by the Mexican Competitiveness Institute in October estimated that legalization measures in Colorado, Washington and Oregon (where legalization failed) would mean that American consumers would enjoy less expensive and higher-quality U.S. weed, eating into Mexican drug cartel profit, creating "the most important structural shock that narco-trafficking has experienced in a generation."

But what if Mexico were to legalize weed? Reforma columnist Ximena Peredo contends that it would "open the doors to enormous possibilities for growth" in Mexico, though Alejandro Hope, coauthor of the Competitiveness Institute's report, is not so sure. The risks involved in getting marijuana to market are what makes it so expensive, he said, and legalization could cause prices to plummet.

Moreover, the drug cartels, facing increased heat in the drug market, have already branched out to kidnapping, extortion and human trafficking. Would shutting down their pot operations just push the cartels into even more acts of violent crime?

Marijuana is "part of our patrimony," said Adrian Vaquier, a 37-year-old cellphone service salesman who was walking outside Hernandez's Mexico City drug legalization office. It was smoked by Pancho Villa's peasant soldiers in the Mexican Revolution and mentioned prominently in the famous corrido "La Cucaracha," he said.

At the same time, he said, the current strategy isn't working while making the cartel leaders rich: "Just like Al Capone."

richard.fausset@latimes.com

Court rejects SF plan on chronic drinkers

Source

Court rejects SF plan on chronic drinkers

Updated 10:39 pm, Friday, January 4, 2013

San Francisco's four-month effort to get chronic drinkers into treatment by threatening them with jail for contempt when they repeatedly fail to appear in court has been brought to an abrupt end by a state appeals court.

A day after Thursday's ruling by the First District Court of Appeal, a Superior Court judge withdrew other pending contempt cases and District Attorney George Gascón said he would probably start using criminal charges to pressure chronic inebriates to get off the streets and into treatment.

Mayor Ed Lee was more noncommittal. Spokeswoman Christine Falvey said resorting to criminal prosecutions would lead to "costly trials and clogging up the courts," but city officials will consider all options.

Since September, Lee, Gascón and police have tried a new approach against offenders, many of them homeless, who fail to show up in court after being cited numerous times for public drunkenness and similar low-level offenses.

Those with more than 20 such charges were arrested, jailed for several days, then told by a judge that they would be held in contempt for breaking a promise to appear in court, which they had signed on the back of each citation. Threatened with five days in jail for each violation, most of them entered treatment, Falvey said.

But in Thursday's ruling, the court said civil contempt - which, unlike a criminal charge, does not entitle a defendant to a trial - can be imposed only on someone who disobeys a "lawful judgment, order or process of the court."

That doesn't cover a defendant who merely violates his own promise to appear, even if it's recorded on a citation approved by the court, the three-judge panel said. The court noted that failure to appear is also a crime punishable by up to six months in jail, but Gascón's office hasn't filed criminal charges in those cases. Public defender's challenge

Public Defender Jeff Adachi's office had brought the challenge on behalf of Warren Morris, 53, who had been cited 22 times for various minor offenses, some involving alcohol, between June 2010 and June 2012 and had never shown up in court.

He was not prosecuted in any of those 22 cases but was cited for contempt, threatened with 110 days in jail and held in custody for about a week, Adachi said. He said Morris appeared in court Friday and heard his contempt case dismissed.

"We must provide effective substance-abuse treatment that does not come at the expense of constitutional rights of citizens," including the right to a trial, Adachi said in response to the ruling. He said the Chronic Inebriate Court, as the city's program was called, "attempted to do an end-run around this right."

Of the first nine defendants threatened with contempt, Adachi said, at least three were sober and were already undergoing treatment on their own. He said San Francisco should follow the example of San Diego, which gives such defendants the choice of criminal prosecution or treatment.

Gascón said he's prepared to try that approach, "recognizing that in some cases we probably will have to go to trial. It seems to be the only tool that we have available." Court's proposal

The Superior Court's presiding judge, Cynthia Ming-mei Lee, said the court last fall proposed prosecutions for defendants who failed to appear on alcohol-related charges, but Gascón turned the suggestion down.

Falvey, the mayor's spokeswoman, said city officials "have never looked at this as stepping over anybody's rights."

"The mayor is disappointed in the ruling," she said. "It's not going to stop us from identifying other steps to make sure that people who are living in crisis on our streets get immediate services."

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: begelko@sfchronicle.com

Silver Lake resident told to tear down part of his home

Messy yard cops at work!!!!

Silver Lake resident told to tear down part of his home

By Bob Pool, Los Angeles Times

January 4, 2013, 8:09 p.m.

A Silver Lake homeowner upset that a house is being constructed just inches from his 90-year-old residence has been ordered by Los Angeles officials to tear down the portion of his dwelling closest to the new house.

The ruling is a blow to Richard Kaye, who had demanded that the three-story structure being built within arm's reach of his covered rear balcony be torn down and rebuilt farther away from the property line.

But the city's Department of Building and Safety determined that a 5-foot portion of Kaye's balcony and a corner of his garage jut over the property line and extend into the next lot, where developer Chong Lee's house is in the framing stage.

A code enforcement violation order issued this week to Kaye states that the balcony and garage were constructed without required inspections and permits and that the balcony is "deteriorated or defective."

In an interview, however, Kaye said he will not take a sledgehammer to either the second-floor deck or the garage and instead will go to court to prove that both structures were built under a city permit issued in 1923 when his house was constructed.

"What if I don't tear it down? The proper way to deal with the property line issue is to negotiate in court. I'm not going to tear down the deck without assurance it can be rebuilt right where it is," Kaye said after learning that the city had issued a substandard order notice. "I'll chain myself to the balcony. Let them come and arrest me."

The dispute was first reported by The Times earlier this week. Lee has said that Kaye's rear deck looked like it was not properly engineered. "The balcony is really dangerous. It's old. Code enforcement will evaluate it. I feel bad for him," Lee said.

As part of the enforcement order sent Wednesday to Kaye, a Feb. 1 compliance deadline was set and he was assessed fees totaling $356 to cover the cost of the enforcement inspection. Failure to pay the fees by then will result in their escalating to $1,176, officials said.

According to David Lara, a spokesman for the department, Kaye would have to obtain a lot-line adjustment in order to avoid demolition. But it is unlikely that Lee would agree to that since he already began construction.

Lara said the code enforcement action was triggered by a complaint the department received Dec. 18.

The city's code enforcement report concludes that construction of the garage and balcony was "performed and concealed" without obtaining the required inspections. It says the balcony is substandard because of deteriorated decking and floor supports. The balcony sticks about five feet over what the city says is the property line, and one corner of the garage sticks about a foot over the line.

Kaye said that on Wednesday he faxed documentation to Building and Safety officials that show that the balcony and garage were constructed in 1923 under an approved city building permit. He said that in 1924 the city approved a lot-split that created the parcel that Lee is building on. The city's notice of violation had been prepared Dec. 27, six days before the faxes were sent.

"The deck is clearly part of the original house. The house was built with cantilevers for the deck that come from the inside," said Kaye, who owns and operates the Koda sushi restaurant and sake bar on Sunset Boulevard and purchased his Robinson Street home in 2002.

Kaye has argued that city inspectors erred by telling Lee to use white correction fluid to cover over the outline of Kaye's balcony and garage on the plot plan he submitted for Building and Safety approval. The city building code states that "any misrepresentation in any writing submitted to the department" is punishable as a misdemeanor, Kaye said.

"The department is doing a cover-up of their mistake. The issuance of a permit for the work next door is where the problem began," he said.

"I'm disappointed. Building and Safety is going to get sued."

Building and Safety's Lara said there is no evidence of correction fluid shown on microfilm images of Lee's project. But he said the plot plan does not depict Kaye's balcony or garage corner protruding into Lee's lot.

bob.pool@latimes.com

Woman is deported after $1,200 casino win

Source

Woman is deported after $1,200 casino win

A Mexican woman was deported last month because of her illegal immigration status after she and her daughter won a $1,200 jackpot at a Tucson casino.

Officials at the Casino del Sol Resort say they called Pascua Yaqui police because it appeared that Mirna Valenzuela's identification was potentially fraudulent.

Valenzuela's ID checked out, but police determined she was in the country illegally, The Arizona Republic reported.

The daughter, Zamira Osorio, also was determined to be in the United States illegally, but she was released because she qualifies for the Obama administration's deferred-action program for young people.

Casino Chief Executive Officer Wendell Long said Valenzuela's winnings are still at the casino and that she can claim them. Osorio said her mother is still in Mexico.

On StarNet: Find extensive coverage of immigration issues at azstarnet.com/border

Chicago deputy fire chief busted for attempted murder and rape???

Chicago Ridge fire official put on leave after attack charges

By Naomi Nix Tribune reporter

10:34 p.m. CST, January 6, 2013

A Chicago Ridge deputy fire chief Sunday evening was being held on $150,000 bond after prosecutors alleged that he broke into a neighbor's home wearing a ski mask and carrying a knife.

Gary Swiercz, 49, of the 8100 block of West 168th Place in Tinley Park, has been charged with attempted murder, home invasion, aggravated unlawful restraint, aggravated attempted criminal sexual assault and residential burglary, authorities said.

Cook County Circuit Judge Adam Bourgeois Jr. also ordered electronic monitoring if Swiercz posts bail.

Swiercz, who has been with the department for about 24 years, was placed on paid leave Saturday, Chicago Ridge Mayor Gene Siegel said. Swiercz started in the department as a firefighter, earning the rank of deputy chief about five years ago, the mayor said.

"I am surprised and shocked and do extend our best wishes to the victim," Siegel said. "That was an awful thing that she had to endure.

"There was never anything in his history that would make you think something like this would happen," he added. "I don't think there was any indication that something was wrong … It's really weird and hard to believe that this happened. That he could have done something like this."

Swiercz allegedly broke into the home of a woman in his condo building early Saturday while wearing a ski mask and carrying a folding knife. He also had duct tape, rope, a sex toy and lubricant, Assistant State's Attorney Dan Calandriello said in court.

Prosecutors alleged during a bond hearing that Swiercz put his hand on the woman's mouth while she was sleeping, then put a 3-inch blade to her throat and threatened to slash it. He held her hands together and forced her into the kitchen, where he pushed her against a cabinet, Calandriello said.

He threw her to the ground, grabbed her by the hair and slammed her to the ground multiple times, authorities allege. She suffered a swollen lip and a knot to the back on her head, Calandriello said.

Swiercz fled through the rear door of the home, and witnesses saw him throwing items into a Dumpster, Calandriello said.

Swiercz's attorney, Colleen McSweeney Moore, called the incident "out of character" for the deputy fire chief. She speculated in court that a medication error could have played a role in the incident, but in an interview outside court she could not elaborate.

Swiercz served as the fire chief in Worth between 2005 and 2008, his attorney said.

Police were called to the condo building about 2:35 a.m. Saturday on a report of a home invasion, the Tinley Park police said. Upon arriving at the scene, police said they found Swiercz in the condominium parking lot and took him into custody. The woman was treated for minor injuries at the scene, police said.

nnix@tribune.com

Twitter @nsnix87

Arizona Criminal Justice Commission study is just a shame

Source

Lack of arrests raises doubt about pot study

Jan. 5, 2013 02:56 PM

Lately I have been noticing a lot of news items concerning our state's medical-marijuana law -- repeal efforts by legislators, court challenges, editorial comments by our media sources.

Now, I see a study by the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission, which cites surveys showing that 11.6 percent of eighth- to 12th-grade students illegally receiving drugs from medically approved users. What I'm not seeing in the media, (maybe I'm not turning to the right page, or the right channel at the right time) are stories of arrests concerning these obvious lawbreakers.

Could we have descended into "Reefer Madness" hysteria already? You remember all the unsubstantiated stories of madness and sociopathic behavior foisted by government officials in an attempt to sway public opinion and dissuade marijuana use.

It seems to me that if there were solid evidence of this blatant abuse, arrests would have been made in very public ways to impress upon the public that this is indeed happening.

'Nuff said.

-- Marvin N. Jarecki, Glendale

Mayors and council members who are gun grabbers don't want to obey the law???

Source

Police wrestle with new law on gun disposal

by JJ Hensley - Jan. 5, 2013 11:13 PM

The Republic | azcentral.com

Thousands of seized guns could be offered for sale or trade to licensed firearms dealers because of a new state law designed to prohibit Arizona police agencies from destroying weapons they confiscate.

The law went into effect in early August, forcing some agencies to stockpile weapons they used to scrap as they try to establish agreements with federally licensed firearms dealers that they can do business with.

It raises questions about what police can do with weapons collected through gun buyback programs such as one recently proposed by a Tucson City Council member. It also raises broader policy questions about whether putting weapons back into circulation makes good public-safety sense.

The law was the result of a years-long effort to establish a uniform statewide police policy on the disposal of weapons collected through forfeiture cases in which the weapon is surrendered to authorities via a court order after the owner is convicted of a felony in which a deadly weapon was used.

State law previously attempted to mandate the sale of confiscated weapons, but it allowed Arizona cities and towns to turn their own police policies into municipal ordinances requiring the destruction of seized weapons.

Officials in Peoria did just that.

But Peoria police have now changed department policy to comply with the new law, and they expect to begin selling forfeited weapons within the year, according to a department spokeswoman. Peoria police have confiscated 49 guns since the legislation took effect, and they believe 28 may be eligible to be sold.

Phoenix has collected more than 180 forfeited weapons since the law took effect, and police are storing them until city officials can find a vendor to whom the department can trade or sell the weapons.

The Arizona Citizens Defense League, a Tucson-based non-profit organization that advocates for gun rights, supported the bill. The group's spokesman, Charles Heller, cites several reasons to support the notion that Arizona cities and towns cannot make their own decisions about the disposal of forfeited weapons.

Destroying perfectly good weapons is a waste of resources that could benefit taxpayers, Heller said. He also noted that Arizona cities are not allowed to create their own ordinances when it comes to other weapons regulations.

Ultimately, destroying forfeited weapons does nothing to make a community safer, Heller said.

"It's a (self-gratifying) process, thinking if you take a gun out of circulation that isn't being used, it will affect crime," Heller said. "(The law) is in part addressing waste by government. It's also addressing intent to do something inane."

Yet some current and former law-enforcement officers worry that the law forces police to put weapons back on the streets in communities where guns are already in abundant supply, and removes the latitude to make what should be a local decision. What works in Springerville, for example, might not be appropriate in south Phoenix.

Phoenix City Councilman Michael Johnson, a former police homicide detective whose district includes areas that have traditionally struggled with gun violence, said he wants Phoenix police to continue destroying weapons if that is what administrators believe is best.

"Certainly, from being a law-enforcement officer, and having the opportunity to investigate homicides and robberies and crimes involving the use of weapons, I'm just a firm believer that the more ability people have (to get a gun), the more opportunity it provides for them to have a violent encounter with a weapon," Johnson said.

Little opposition

The bill establishing the new law went through the Legislature without much opposition.

At a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in January 2012, the League of Arizona Cities and Towns expressed nominal opposition on the record, but no one spoke against the proposal.

Ken Strobeck, the league's executive director, was unaware the bill passed until a reporter contacted him last week.

"We're not opposing the sale of weapons," Strobeck said, but he added that the group is opposed to the one-size-fits-all approach the law enacted.

"We felt like it was an imposition on a decision that should have been made at the city level, as to how we wanted to deal with them," Strobeck said. "We didn't think it was appropriate to insist that all forfeited weapons be returned to the public."

A member of the Citizens Defense League told the Senate Judiciary Committee last year that local agencies were "leaving money on the table" by not selling the weapons.

Heller could provide no estimate of how much the bill could save taxpayers, nor could any law-enforcement agency that currently trades weapons or is preparing to do so.

The bill's sponsor, Sen. Rick Murphy, R-Glendale, did not respond to requests for comment.

Arizona House Minority Leader Chad Campbell, D-Phoenix, was one of 12 lawmakers to vote against the proposal when it reached the House floor last March. Campbell said he plans to introduce a proposal to repeal the bill as part of a gun-violence package he will unveil later this week. "There's no significant gain to the taxpayer whatsoever. I don't believe that for a second," Campbell said. "Local agencies should be able to do what they want with any type of weapon law enforcement confiscates."

Awaiting court orders

Regardless of what happens at the Legislature, some law-enforcement agencies around the state are preparing to begin selling and trading forfeited weapons as soon as they are able.

Other agencies are preparing to conduct business as usual.

The Arizona Department of Public Safety has always sold or traded forfeited weapons with licensed dealers, typically in exchange for ammunition that officers can use in training, said Phil Case, the department's chief financial officer.

"We historically have struggled with our budget to meet our training needs with respect to ammunition," he said. "This is one way we supplement that."

The agency has not sold or traded any weapons since the legislation went into effect, he said.

Mesa police have taken the opposite approach, destroying most weapons the agency receives through forfeiture. The department's legal advisers focused on language in the legislation that requires a court order to sell the weapon, said Detective Steve Berry, a department spokesman.

"Although the legislation has changed on this issue, our policy has not changed," Berry said. "If we received a specific court order to sell a gun, then we would comply and do so. Barring any court order, we will continue to dispose of them as we have in the past."

A Glendale police spokeswoman said officials there would also await a court order before selling weapons.

The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office has had a policy in place allowing the agency to sell or trade forfeited weapons, but it has not been the practice to do so. No forfeited weapons have been traded for at least 10 years, said Deputy Chief Jack MacIntyre.

More than 1,500 weapons have accumulated through the years, and MacIntyre said the agency is processing each gun now to determine which are eligible to hand over to licensed firearms dealers. The agency, like others, will not sell or trade fully automatic weapons or those that have been modified, such as a sawed-off shotgun. MacIntyre said administrators also are reluctant to put cheap or poorly constructed weapons on the market.

"They have to have some appreciable value that would make them less likely to fall into the hands of the average street hood," MacIntyre said. "The destruction of anything that is remotely suspect or looks cheap or has marginal market value and therefore minimal resale value is really a policy decision by the office. I don't think it's mandated by the legislation."

The bill's supporters would likely differ with the Sheriff's Office's point of view, which is exactly the problem with the legislation, Campbell said.

"If an agency wants to put them back on the street, that's great. If they feel there's a need not to put them back on the street, they should be able to do that," he said. "There's no rationale for this law. It's creating more problems."

A Tucson councilman's recent proposal to have a gun buyback in the city also raised potential legal issues that police could face from the legislation. Tucson police are not coordinating the proposed buyback, but the department will be the recipient of any weapons turned in.

Tucson Sgt. Maria Hawke said the department would not have to sell any weapons received through a buyback because the guns would not technically be forfeited and therefore would not be subject to the new law.

Heller, the Citizens Defense League spokesman, disagreed, pointing to another statute that defines "property" as goods that have been abandoned or unclaimed.

Sheriff Joe wants to send troops to Mexico????

Joe Arpaio propone enviar tropas a México para frenar la violencia

Joe Arpaio propone enviar tropas a México para frenar la violencia

Aseguró que se necesita más que apoyo económico.

El alguacil de Maricopa, Joe Arpaio, famoso por sus posturas antiinmigrantes, se refirió a la violencia generada por el narcotráfico, señalando que para frenar ese problema el gobierno de Estados Unidos debería enviar tropas a México.

Arpaio, de 80 años y quien comenzó su carrera como agente antinarcóticos, concedió una entrevista telefónica al diario Excélsior, en la que dijo que México necesita más que dinero y helicópteros contra el crimen.

"Creo que debemos de ayudar a México entrando allí con nuestra Patrulla Fronteriza y nuestros militares, trabajando juntos para tratar de aliviar las masacres de los cárteles", señaló.

Además, agregó que el hecho de enviar tropas estadounidenses a territorio mexicano no significa una invasión.

"No estoy hablando de invadir a México. Si podemos ser operativos en Afganistán y en Irak, ¿por qué no podemos ayudar a nuestro vecino a ser operativo y darle equipos?"

"Siempre estamos diciendo: ‘Les dimos equipo, les dimos entrenamiento’. Siempre ha sido lo mismo en los últimos 50 años y nada ha cambiado", dijo Arpaio durante la entrevista, quien en noviembre fue reelegido por sexta vez consecutiva como sheriff.

Podría reunirse con el presidente Peña Nieto

Durante la conversación con Excélsior, el alguacil aseguró estar dispuesto a reunirse con el presidente Enrique Peña Nieto y sugirió enviar apoyo militar y policiaco estadounidense para enfrentar a los cárteles de la droga.

Tras recordar que hace unas décadas ejerció actividades operativas en México, dijo estar dispuesto a venir a hablar con el presidente sin temor a los tres o cuatro cárteles de la droga que le han puesto precio a su cabeza.

En otro tema, Joe Arpaio, se refirió a la ley antiinmigrante SB1070, la más estricta en la historia de Estados Unidos, señalando que si tanto molesta esa ley a los mexicanos, que negocien para cambiarla, pues su deber como policía se limita a hacerla cumplir, no a legislar.

"¿Por qué la gente del Consulado General de México no viene a verme? Yo acostumbraba llevarme bien con los otros cónsules generales de México. ¿Por qué les da miedo venir a ver al sheriff? El cónsul viene a ver a algunos alcaldes, pero no viene a ver al sheriff cuando yo soy el que pone a los mexicanos en las cárceles", dijo vía telefónica desde la ciudad de Phoenix.

Propuso negociar soluciones concretas

Asimismo, añadió que "la inmigración ilegal se convirtió en un gran acontecimiento político hace varios años. La gente empezó a hablar de eso, los políticos hablaron de eso, el presidente Obama habla de eso. Todo el mundo habla de eso, pero nunca se ha hecho gran cosa al respecto".

A un mes de haber sido reelegido por sexta vez consecutiva como alguacil del condado de Maricopa, Arpaio se pronunció por negociar soluciones concretas a la inmigración indocumentada y el narcotráfico en vez de hablar y hablar sin lograr nada.

"Creo que debemos de ayudar a México entrando allí con nuestra patrulla fronteriza y nuestros militares, trabajando juntos para tratar de aliviar las masacres de los cárteles, las matanzas de gente inocente y para darles los recursos juntos. No estoy hablando de invadir México", dijo.

México presentó recurso contra la SB1070

El escrito de "Amigo de la Corte" busca bloquear que el transporte y albergue de indocumentados sea un delito.

El Gobierno de México anunció su apoyo judicial a un recurso legal presentado ante un tribunal de apelaciones de Estados Unidos contra varias disposiciones de la ley de Arizona que criminalizan el transporte de inmigrantes ilegales.

La Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores de México (SRE), dijo en un comunicado que había presentado un escrito como "amigo de la Corte" ante el Tribunal de Apelaciones del Noveno Circuito de Estados Unidos.

La intención es, según explicó, apoyar "un nuevo recurso legal interpuesto por una coalición de organizaciones de la sociedad civil estadounidense contra la Ley SB1070 de Arizona".

Vigencia a medias

La SB1070 de Arizona fue promulgada el 23 de abril de 2010 por la gobernadora Jan Brewer. Algunas de sus polémicas disposiciones fueron rechazadas por la Corte Suprema de Justicia y Cortes Federales, pero permite, por ejemplo, que policías arresten a individuos si tienen duda razonable que se trate de indocumentados.

El fallo la Suprema Corte emitido a finales de junio frenó la sección quinta de la SB1070 que criminaliza el transporte y alojamiento de inmigrantes sin autorización para permanecer legalmente en el país. Sin embargo, en noviembre el gobierno de Arizona presentó una impugnación para aplicar la sección, al tiempo que varias organizaciones sociales estadounidenses presentaron un recurso para que se mantenga suspendida.

El escrito enviado por México lo convierte en "Amigo de la Corte" (Amicus Curiae), una instancia que realizan terceros ajenos a un litigio para apoyar la demanda entablada por organizaciones defensoras de los derechos de los inmigrantes contra los intentos del gobierno estatal de Arizona de criminalizar el transporte y albergue de indocumentados.

Depende de la corte

Queda en manos del tribunal que ventila la demanda admitir o no la petición presentada por el gobierno de México.

"El Gobierno de México reitera que la entrada en vigor de la sección cinco de la Ley SB1070 incidiría negativamente en las relaciones bilaterales e impediría la colaboración bilateral efectiva", explicó la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores en el comunicado.

"crearía normas migratorias distintas a las previstas en la legislación federal, que criminalizarían la migración y tendrían el potencial de propiciar su aplicación selectiva, lo que afectaría los derechos fundamentales de los nacionales mexicanos que residen o visitan Arizona", añadió.

México dice también que continuará defendiendo "los derechos fundamentales de todos los mexicanos en el exterior, sin importar su condición migratoria".

Estados Unidos tiene una población estimada de 11 millones de inmigrantes indocumentados. De ellos, cerca del 59% es de origen mexicano.

Arizona reacciona

Horas después de la petición hecha por la cancillería de México, Matt Benson, portavoz de la gobernadora Brewer, dijo que la prohibición dispuesta en la ley de inmigración de Arizona es congruente con la ley federal, y aseguró que México interfiere sobre el particular en los tribunales federales estadounidenses.

"La misma ley de inmigración de México es considerablemente más severa que cualquier medida impuesta como resultado de la SB1070. ¿Cree el gobierno mexicano que la ley federal estadounidense casi idéntica perjudica las relaciones diplomáticas entre Estados Unidos y México?", preguntó Benson.

No es la primera vez que México y otros gobiernos extranjeros intervienen en disputas en torno a leyes de inmigración que castigan severamente la inmigración indocumentada en Estados Unidos.

Priest's 911 call 'after getting stuck in handcuffs'

Yes, any smuck can use a bobby pin, safety pin or paper clip to open a pair of handcuffs, but before locking yourself up like this you should always practice, practice, practice.

And its probably a good idea to keep your real handcuff key nearby in case you destroy your bobby pin, safety pin or paper clip.

Source

US priest's 911 call 'after getting stuck in handcuffs'

By Mark Hughes, New York

9:03PM GMT 07 Jan 2013

A US priest has taken a leave of absence after he apparently phoned the emergency services to report that he was stuck in a pair of handcuffs, according to an audio clip released by an American newspaper.

The priest, from Springfield, Illinois, is also reported to have been wearing “some sort of gag” when police arrived, according to the Illinois Times newspaper.

The newspaper released audio of the 911 call in which the priest, whose voice is muffled, tells the operator: “Hi there, I’m stuck in a pair of handcuffs. I’m going to need help getting out before this becomes a medical emergency.”

Apparently struggling to hear him, the operator asks the priest to repeat his problem, before asking: “You’re stuck in a pair of handcuffs?”

He replies: “(I was) playing with them and I need help getting out.”

The Diocese of Springfield said that the Bishop Thomas Paprocki granted the priest’s request for a leave of absence before Christmas.

A spokesman for the diocese of Springfield refused to comment further on the priest’s current whereabouts or status, adding only: “He came to the bishop before anyone was aware of the incident. He came to the bishop and asked for help and was granted leave.”

Source

Priest's 911 call after getting stuck in handcuffs goes viral

10:55 PM, Jan 7, 2013

Written by Kevin Held

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (KSDK) - A Springfield, Illinois priest remains on a leave of absence after a bizarre emergency and a call to 911.

It was just days ago that the now infamous 911 call was released to the Illinois Times newspaper. It's gone viral on the internet, and people all over the world want to know what Father Tom Donovan of St. Aloysius Church was doing November 28 with handcuffs and a mask.

Father Donovan asked for a leave of absence, according to diocese spokeswoman Kathie Sass.

While headline writers are having a field day with the priest who was tied up at the moment, the episode remains painful for church members.

"It's hard to see something happen to one of our priests and we continue as a diocese, especially the parishes where Father Donovan worked, continue to offer our prayers for his well being," Sass said.

What was Father Donovan doing? Was he alone the whole time? What's his future with St. Aloysias? Those questions remain at this time.

KSDK

Steve Benson - Gun Grabber

Judge Limits a Police Stop-and-Frisk Program in the Bronx

Judge Limits a Police Stop-and-Frisk Program in the Bronx

By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

Published: January 8, 2013

A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that the New York Police Department’s practice of stopping people suspected of trespassing outside private buildings in the Bronx was unconstitutional.

The decision appears to be one of the more significant federal rulings during the Bloomberg administration on the Police Department’s use of stop-and-frisk tactics, which the administration has credited with helping lower crime rates in the city.

The case was narrowly focused on police stops in front of the private residential buildings enrolled in the Trespass Affidavit Program in the Bronx. Under that program, which includes several thousand residential buildings, property managers have asked the police to seek out trespassers and arrest them on sight.

But Judge Shira A. Scheindlin of Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled Tuesday that the Police Department was routinely stopping people outside such buildings without reasonable suspicion that they were trespassing.

“While it may be difficult to say where, precisely, to draw the line between constitutional and unconstitutional police encounters, such a line exists, and the N.Y.P.D. has systematically crossed it when making trespass stops outside TAP buildings in the Bronx,” Judge Scheindlin ruled.

“For those of us who do not fear being stopped as we approach or leave our own homes or those of our friends and families, it is difficult to believe that residents of one of our boroughs live under such a threat. In light of the evidence presented at the hearing, however, I am compelled to conclude that this is the case.”

The lawsuit, Ligon v. the City of New York, is one of three related cases involving stop-and-frisk practices before Judge Scheindlin. The broadest reaching case accuses the police of stopping and frisking hundreds of thousands of people a year solely on the basis of race; Judge Scheindlin granted that lawsuit class-action status in May. The third case challenges police stops at public housing projects.

In the decision released on Tuesday, the judge ordered the police “to cease performing trespass stops” outside the private buildings in the program unless officers have reasonable suspicion, a legal standard that requires police officers to be acting on more than just a hunch.

The fact that a person was merely seen entering or leaving a building was not enough to permit the police to stop someone, “even if the building is located in a high-crime area, and regardless of the time of day,” the judge ruled. Nor was it enough for an officer to conduct a stop simply because the officer had observed the person move furtively, Judge Scheindlin said. (The forms that the police fill out after each street stop offer “furtive” movements as a basis for the stop).

The court decision also orders the Police Department to create a formal written policy “specifying the limited circumstances in which it is legally permissible to stop a person outside a TAP building on a suspicion of trespass,” and to revise the training of officers and to alter some of the training literature and videos used to teach officers how to conduct lawful stops.

The judge cited evidence presented at a lengthy hearing in October that many of the people stopped were in fact guests of tenants and had a right to be in the buildings.

“Because any member of the public could conceivably find herself outside a TAP building in the Bronx, the public at large has a liberty and dignity interest in bringing an end to the practice of unconstitutional stops at issue in this case,” the judge wrote.

Judge Scheindlin observed that “enforcing constitutional restrictions” in the case could restrict the police’s ability to provide security to the residents of those buildings.

The police have argued that the Trespass Affidavit Program is an important tool that allows them to enforce a degree of peace and quiet in buildings that do not have doormen and where residents contend with drug sales and disorder in their hallways.

But Judge Scheindlin found “that the public interest in liberty and dignity under the Fourth Amendment trumps whatever modicum of added safety might theoretically be gained from the N.Y.P.D.'s making unconstitutional trespass stops outside TAP buildings in the Bronx.”

Using a "corporation" to drive in the car pool lane???

Source

Court: Marin man can't use corporate personhood to beat carpool lane ticket

By Will Jason, Marin Independent Journal

Posted: 01/08/2013 07:15:59 AM PST

MARIN COUNTY -- Corporations may have many of the same rights as people, but those rights do not include riding in the carpool lane in Novato.

That was the message Monday at Marin County Superior Court traffic hearing, where San Rafael activist Jonathan Frieman appeared to contest a $489 carpool fine.

His argument? He was not riding alone in the carpool lane on Highway 101 in October, as alleged by police, because his corporation -- a stack of papers named "JoMiJO Foundation" -- was riding shotgun. Therefore, he was obeying the signs reading, "2 or more persons per vehicle."

His lawyer, Ford Greene cited a section of state vehicle code defining "person" as, "a natural person, firm, copartnership, association, limited liability company, or corporation."

With a hint of amusement, Marin County Traffic Referee Frank Drago said it was a "novel argument." But the goal of the carpool law in question is clear, he said before ruling against Frieman.

"Obviously the goal of the section (of law) is to reduce the volume of cars on the highway," he said.

Frieman and Green, a San Anselmo town councilman, said they would appeal.

"A driver can't be expected to divine the intent of the legislature," Greene said after the hearing. "The driver is entitled to rely on the plain language that's used and 'person' is what's used on the signs along the side of the freeway, and person is what's used in the vehicle code."

In reality, the case has little to do with carpool lanes.

Frieman, co-founder of the Center for Corporate Policy and a local political activist who battled against the opening of a Target store in San Rafael, said the traffic case is about corporate power.

He said he has driven solo in carpool lanes for years, hoping to be pulled over so he could argue about the rights corporations have accrued through more than 125 years of legal precedent. He said the country has gone too far in giving corporations many of the same constitutional rights as people.

"It's to get folks to learn more and understand the absurdity of corporate power," he said.

Contact Will Jason via email at wjason@marinij.com or via Twitter at http://twitter.com/willjason

Babeu: Make Pinal lieutenants, captains at-will employees

Babeu: Make Pinal lieutenants, captains at-will employees

By Lindsey Collom The Republic | azcentral.com

Tue Jan 8, 2013 11:26 PM

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu will have increased hiring-and-firing authority if county supervisors approve a measure today that would reclassify Sheriff’s Office lieutenants and captains as at-will employees.

Babeu’s controversial plan has already prompted the early retirement of a captain who says he was targeted for a pay cut and dismissal if the plan were approved and whose exit was punctuated by a scathing e-mail accusing the sheriff of a power grab designed to make room for political appointees and loyalists.

If passed, the captain, plus eight lieutenants in patrol and investigations, seven lieutenants in the jail, and one director would lose the right to appeal any disciplinary actions before the county’s merit board. At-will employees can be terminated at any time without cause.

One police management expert said it would be a mistake to reclassify lieutenants as at-will employees. To do so would inhibit a supervisor’s ability to make decisions and contribute to a group-think mentality, said James Drylie, a retired police captain and executive director for the School of Criminal Justice and Public Administration at Kean University in New Jersey.

Lieutenants need the “security of knowing that if I do make a decision, even if it’s the wrong decision, this is my job,” Drylie said. “An at-will employee, that person may not have that sense of confidence, that sense of responsibility.”

Board Chairman Steve Miller said he hopes Babeu will explain his motivation to county supervisors during today’s meeting in Florence, where members are scheduled to vote on the measure.

“To me, it seems like it would drive down morale,” Miller said, adding that he needs more information to make a decision.

Babeu said his proposal would inspire better policing.

“Any senior-level leaders and managers within the Sheriff’s Office exercise my command authority,” Babeu wrote in a Dec. 28 memo to county supervisors. “These leaders are not first-line supervisors, yet are responsible for large and important responsibilities within the Sheriff’s Office.”

The reclassification “will allow the Sheriff’s Office to manage to an even higher level of performance,” he added.

A similar measure was briefly considered in Maricopa County following a Sheriff’s Office scandal in 2010. The scandal led to the swift dismissal of two at-will employees, former Chief Deputy David Hendershott and Deputy Chief Larry Black, while an exempt employee, Capt. Joel Fox, appealed his termination for months. Maricopa County officials decided to leave the existing system in place.

Pinal County policy allows Babeu to classify 10 percent of his workforce as at-will employees. Under the plan, Babeu said, he would have a total of 37 at-will positions, or about 6 percent of Sheriff’s Office employees.

The lieutenants in patrol and investigations would get a salary increase, which the sheriff proposes to draw from a jail-improvement fund to spare any impact on the general fund.

The captain, however, was slated to lose more than $14,000 in annual salary. The other reclassified employees would stay at their same wage.

PCSO’s patrol bureau commander, Jeffrey Karns, a nearly 20-year veteran, identified himself as the captain who had taken early retirement in a lengthy e-mail he sent to Babeu and copied to all Sheriff’s Office employees Tuesday.

In the e-mail, Karns underscored his “stellar career” at PCSO — he competitively tested and was promoted through every classified rank in the agency — and accused Babeu of “bulling ahead with punitive measures designed either to force my retirement or to put me in a terminable position.”

Karns, who retired Tuesday, said it was common knowledge that he was planning to leave in April, and he alleged that Babeu’s executive staff warned he would be terminated once he became an at-will employee.

Karns criticized Babeu’s plan as adding to the “existing terrible morale” and creating an “atmosphere of constant nagging fear, constant tension and constant stress” for unclassified employees.

In response to a request for comment, Chief Deputy Steve Henry said: “It is troubling Captain Karns reacted in such a manner to this organizational change to improve operations in the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office. Captain Karns has always been very supportive of the many organizational changes and leadership decisions Sheriff Babeu has made during the past four years.”

Attached to Henry’s statement was a Jan. 2 e-mail from Karns to Babeu that applauded the sheriff’s willingness to entertain “radical ideas” in relation to gun rights. Babeu has made multiple appearances on cable news shows in recent weeks, promoting an idea for arming at least one educator in every school. Also attached was a letter Karns wrote as part of PCSO’s bid to nominate Babeu for the 2011 Ferris E. Lucas Award for Sheriff of the Year, which he received from the National Sheriffs’ Association.

Babeu’s proposal to reclassify the status of “command-level leaders” is among the first to be decided by the newly expanded Board of Supervisors.

State law required Pinal County to grow from three supervisor districts to five when its population surpassed 200,000 people. The 2010 census showed Pinal County with more than 375,000 residents, up from 179,727 in 2000.

The board, which had been Democrat-controlled since the county’s charter, now has a 4-1 Republican majority.

Babeu had lobbied hard for his own slate of Republican supervisor candidates, only one of whom — new Supervisor Cheryl Chase — was elected in November. Chase had chaired Babeu’s sheriff campaign in 2008 and was appointed as PCSO’s community-relations director when he took office in January 2009.

Republic reporter JJ Hensley contributed to this article.

Gun Grabbing Gabrielle Giffords

Recovering Giffords takes on new fight

By Shaun McKinnon The Republic | azcentral.com

Wed Jan 9, 2013 12:56 AM

Two years after being shot in the head, former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona still struggles to speak, even as she and her husband, Mark Kelly, add their voices to one of the more lopsided debates in American politics, pledging to take on the influential gun lobby.

On Tuesday, the second anniversary of the mass shooting outside Tucson that killed six and wounded 13, Giffords and Kelly offered a new glimpse into her steady but clearly frustrating recovery.

In an interview with ABC News, Giffords struggled at times to express herself, acknowledging that her ability to speak couldn’t yet keep up with her thoughts.

“Slowly, so slowly,” she said of her progress. She nodded eagerly when Kelly or Diane Sawyer, the ABC anchorwoman, helped her complete a sentence or an idea. Her one-word answer to a question about gun violence — “Enough” — lit up news accounts and social media in advance of the interview.

Giffords and Kelly, a former space-shuttle commander, used the ABC interview and a newspaper column to launch Americans for Responsible Solutions, a political-action committee that the couple said will support elected officials who want to pursue gun-control measures.

“Until now, the gun lobby’s political contributions, advertising and lobbying have dwarfed spending from anti-gun-violence groups. No longer,” Giffords and Kelly wrote in a column published in USA Today and The Arizona Republic on the second anniversary of the Jan. 8, 2011, shooting.

Speaking with Sawyer, Giffords and Kelly said they were moved to act after the December attack that killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. The couple met with victims’ families last week.

“When it can happen to children in a classroom, it’s time to say — ” Sawyer prompted.

“Enough,” Giffords said.

Sawyer asked Giffords about comments in an earlier interview that she wasn’t angry about what had happened to her. Do you still feel that way, Sawyer wanted to know.

“No,” Giffords said. She does get angry now. “Complicated.”

Giffords was shot in the head during the attack at a constituent event outside a grocery store near Tucson. The gunman, Jared Loughner, was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and was sentenced in November to seven life terms in prison.

Kelly used Loughner’s sentencing to criticize elected officials for ignoring gun violence. He issued a stronger statement after the Newtown attack and delivered the bluntest assessment yet in the newspaper column Tuesday, accusing Congress of failing to act even after one of their own was shot.

“Special interests purporting to represent gun owners but really advancing the interests of an ideological fringe have used big money and influence to cow Congress into submission,” the couple wrote.

The political-action committee is intended to help balance the power and money wielded by gun-rights organizations, such as the National Rifle Association. Gun-rights groups have in recent years outspent gun-control advocates by as much as 10-to-1, according to an analysis by the non-profit Center for Responsive Politics.

One of the nation’s most prominent gun-control organizations commended Giffords and Kelly in a statement Tuesday.

“Gabby and Mark have shown incredible courage and commitment since that tragic day in Tucson two years ago,” said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “They have increased their effort to ending senseless gun violence.”

The NRA and other gun-rights groups have said they will not back away from their position that attempting to control guns violates the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Some of Giffords’ former House colleagues remain opposed to sweeping gun legislation.

“We need to look at the cause of the problem,” said Apryl Marie Fogel, a spokeswoman for Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz. Even with gun control, “people with untreated mental illness would be committing the same types of crimes but with other weapons.”

Video from the interview showed Giffords walking alongside Kelly and a service dog named Nelson. They said Giffords has been able to ride a horse and could soon reclaim one of her favorite activities, riding a bicycle.

Giffords told Sawyer she works daily with “physical therapy, yoga, speech therapy.”

“Gabby works very hard in her rehab,” Kelly told Sawyer. “Now we intend to work very hard on this new project.”

Republic reporter Rebekah L. Sanders contributed to this story.

More on Gun Grabbing Gabrielle Giffords

Gabrielle Giffords takes aim at the NRA

For a woman who has difficulty speaking, Gabby Giffords came through loud and clear on Tuesday, calling for a national conversation about gun violence and taking direct aim at the National Rifle Association.

All of a sudden there is hope that something substantive might actually be possible in the wake of Newtown and Aurora and Tucson and too many other places where hideous attacks have gone unanswered by the people who claim to lead us.

Now there is Giffords, finding her voice.

“Special interests purporting to represent gun owners but really advancing the interest of an ideological fringe have used big money and influence to cow Congress into submission,” she and husband Mark Kelly wrote Tuesday, on the second anniversary of the Tucson massacre. “Rather than working to find the balance between our rights and the regulation of a dangerous product, these groups have cast simple protections for our communities as existential threats to individual liberties. Rather than conducting a dialogue, they threaten those who divert from their orthodoxy with political extinction.”

After Columbine, there were calls to plug the gun-show loophole that allows anybody – nut or not — to buy a gun from a private source, no questions asked. But in Congress, cue the crickets.

After Virginia Tech, there was a movement to flag would-be gun buyers with documented mental problems. But it never led to more rigorous background checks.

After Tucson, there was all-too-brief talk about outlawing high-capacity magazines. Since then we’ve seen Aurora and now Newtown, where extended magazines contributed to extended, heart wrenching carnage.

So what does the NRA suggest? Posting armed volunteers at the schools.

Not good enough, Mr. LaPierre. Not this time.

We need to have a calm, considered conversation in this country, about guns and about mental illness and about what we can do to at least try to prevent another massacre. (And yes, I’m aware that nuts can resort to putting bombs in their underwear and in their fertilizer. But I refuse to accept that as an excuse to do nothing.)

Rick Stein of Scottsdale, a longtime NRA member, says a ban on guns that resemble military assault weapons would be nothing more than feel-good legislation. “What we oppose,” he told me on Tuesday, “is any sort of effort to call the gun the problem.”

Stein believes the answer lies in better reporting of those with mental illness and in holding parents and others criminally liable when they know someone is a danger yet do nothing to prevent that person from getting a gun.

Stein makes an important point. The problem is guns in the hands of the wrong people.

But Sam Polito of Tucson, makes an important point as well. He, too, is a longtime NRA member, one who advocates plugging the gun-show loophole and banning extended magazines such as the 33-round affair that Jared Loughner used to shoot Giffords and 18 other people.

“If he had had a ten-round clip or an eight-round clip for that type of pistol,” Polito said, “he wouldn’t have harmed so many people because when he went to change magazines, you will recall they took him down.”

And saved lives.

Surely we can agree that we need to toughen laws that allow the mentally ill to legally obtain weapons – and even to get them back after the police confiscate them, as Kristi Stadler’s story on Sunday so sadly illustrated.

Surely, we can agree to have a rational conversation about what might work. Unfortunately, it’s a conversation the NRA and the politicians who reside in its hip pocket seem determined to thwart. Instead, they whip up citizens to believe the government is coming after grandpa’s hunting rifle.

But now comes Giffords, a gun owner and longtime Second Amendment supporter who seems determined not the let the conversation fade away. Not this time. Not when an entire class of first graders lies dead in their graves.

Giffords and Kelly have formed Americans for Responsible Solutions, a political-action committed aimed at balancing out the money that allows the NRA to control politics in this country.

“We can’t just hope that the last shooting tragedy will prevent the next,” they wrote. “Achieving reforms to reduce gun violence and prevent mass shootings will mean matching gun lobbyists in their reach and resources.”

It’s an ambitious plan, trying to break the hold of the NRA and inject some sanity into our gun laws. Others have tried and failed. An empty first-grade classroom demands that we try again.

It seems somehow fitting, almost ordained, that Giffords would lead the way.

Who better, after all, to pull off a miracle than the woman who is a miracle?

A rant from gun grabber EJ Montini

Posted on January 7, 2013 4:03 pm by EJ Montini

The only gun reform that will work

Gov. Jan Brewer says that she is willing to consider some form of legislation aimed at curtailing gun violence. Good for her.

The same is true of the federal government.

There no doubt will be a series of suggestions, but there is only one type of gun reform that has a chance to work.

Just one.

It is this: Every gun sale, EVERY ONE, whether from a dealer or from a private owner, must include a background check.

That’s it.

There are other areas of reform that will help in small ways (officers in schools, better mental health screening) but without requiring a background check for every transaction all of those reforms are more about what feels good rather than what actually DOES good.

It is estimated that roughly 40 percent of firearm purchases are made between two private individuals, not licensed gun dealers.

If that is allowed to continue, there is no reasonable way to prevent a mentally ill person from acquiring a weapon.

Or a criminal. Or a terrorist. Or a kid. Or anyone else.

We can close the so-called gun show loophole, which currently allows individuals at gun shows to purchase weapons without background checks when buying from private individuals.

But that wouldn’t prevent people from answering gun-sale ads online or purchasing weapons any number of other ways.

We need a universal background check for every sale.

Would requiring a background check for every single gun sale be a burden for private sellers and private purchasers?

Yes.

Would it prevent people from selling or buying weapons?

No.

A system could be worked out.

Would requiring background checks for every sale prevent all potentially dangerous people from getting weapons?

No.

There will always be those who break the law.

But that is true of every law.

A background check for every sale will make it more difficult for the wrong people to acquire weapons.

That’s the best we can hope for.

It’s the only strategy that has a chance to do good rather than simple make us feel good.

Although, honestly, would any of us feel good about a series of gun violence “reforms” that would still allow 40 percent of weapons sales to go on completely unregulated?

Obama wants to take our guns

White House tries to keep momentum on gun control

Associated Press Tue Jan 8, 2013 5:04 PM

WASHINGTON — Less than a month after a horrific elementary school shooting, the White House is fighting to keep the momentum for new gun legislation amid signs it’s losing ground in Congress to other pressing issues.

Vice President Joe Biden has invited the National Rifle Association and other gun-owner groups for talks at the White House on Thursday. On Wednesday, the vice president will meet with victims’ organizations and representatives from the video game and entertainment industries. The administration’s goal is to forge consensus over proposals to curb gun violence.

President Barack Obama wants Biden to report back to him with policy proposals by the end of January. Obama has vowed to move swiftly on the recommendations, a package expected to include both legislative proposals and executive action.

“He is mindful of the need to act,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Tuesday.

But as the shock and sorrow over the Newtown, Conn., shooting fades, the tough fight facing the White House and gun-control backers is growing clearer. Gun-rights advocates, including the powerful NRA, are digging in against tighter legislation, conservative groups are launching pro-gun initiatives and the Senate’s top Republican has warned it could be spring before Capitol Hill begins considering any gun legislation.

“The biggest problem we have at the moment is spending and debt,” Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on Sunday. “That’s going to dominate the Congress between now and the end of March. None of these issues will have the kind of priority as spending and debt over the next two or three months.”

Tuesday marked the second anniversary of the Tucson, Ariz., attack that killed six people and critically injured former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Following that shooting, Obama called for a national dialogue on gun violence. But his words were followed by little action.

Giffords took a prominent role in the gun debate on Tuesday’s anniversary. She and husband Mark Kelly, a former astronaut, wrote in an op-ed published in USA Today that their Americans for Responsible Solutions initiative would help raise money to support greater gun control efforts “to balance the influence of the gun lobby.” Kelly has indicated that he and Giffords want to become a prominent voice for gun control and hope to start a national conversation about gun violence.

There was also little national progress on curbing gun bloodshed following shootings at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater, a Texas Army base or a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, all of which occurred during Obama’s first term.

Still, the killing of 6- and 7-year-olds at Newtown’s Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14 did appear to stir a deeper reaction from the White House and Capitol Hill. Obama pushed gun control to the top of his domestic agenda for the first time and pledged to put the full weight of his presidency behind the issue. And some Republican and conservative lawmakers with strong gun rights records also took the extraordinary step of calling for a discussion on new measures.

But other gun-rights advocates have shown less flexibility. The NRA has rejected stricter gun legislation and suggested instead that the government put armed guards in every school in America as a way to curb violence. A coalition of conservative groups is also organizing a “gun appreciation day” later this month, to coincide with Obama’s inauguration.

The president hopes to announce his administration’s next steps to tackle gun violence shortly after he is sworn in for a second term on Jan. 21.

Obama wants Congress to reinstate a ban on military-style assault weapons, close loopholes that allow gun buyers to skirt background checks and restrict high-capacity magazines. Other recommendations to the Biden group include making gun trafficking a felony, getting the Justice Department to prosecute people caught lying on gun background-check forms and ordering federal agencies to send data to the National Gun Background Check Database.

Some of those steps could be taken through executive action, without the approval of Congress. White House officials say Obama will not finalize any actions until receiving Biden’s recommendations.

Gun-rights lawmakers and outside groups have also insisted that any policy response to the Newtown shooting also include an examination of mental health policies and the impact of violent movies and video games. To those people, the White House has pledged a comprehensive response.

“It is not a problem that can be solved by any specific action or single action that the government might take,” Carney said. “It’s a problem that encompasses issues of mental health, of education, as well as access to guns.”

In addition to Biden’s meetings this week, Education Secretary Arne Duncan will meet with parent and teacher groups, while Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will meet with mental health and disability advocates.

The White House said other meetings are also scheduled with community organizations, business owners and religious leaders.

———

Associated Press writer Philip Elliott contributed to this report.

———

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC.

More on gun grabbers Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kelly

Can Giffords revive gun-control cause?

By Ronald J. Hansen The Republic | azcentral.com

Wed Jan 9, 2013 11:32 PM

Gabrielle Giffords’ decision this week to help raise money to promote gun control could test the financial limits of her appeal by directly aligning her with an issue that has floundered in politics for decades.

In the months after she was shot in the head on Jan. 8, 2011, a wave of support from sympathetic donors helped the then-congresswoman raise $1 million in campaign contributions, nearly all of which was spent that year. A vaguely centrist political-action committee that bears her name scarcely made a ripple in 2012, raising less than $30,000 since its August debut.

Now Giffords and her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, have created Americans for Responsible Solutions, an organization that includes a “super PAC” that can raise and spend unlimited funds for political messaging as long as it doesn’t coordinate with others.

The move underscores and tries to build on Giffords’ status as perhaps the most visible face of the gun-control movement, which has gained renewed energy since a spate of mass shootings, including the murder last month of 20 elementary-school students and seven adults in Newtown, Conn.

Patrick Egan, an assistant politics professor at New York University, said Giffords will pay at least some political price for her activism, but she is well-positioned to bring new resources to the issue, which has been dominated for years by gun-rights groups that are far more organized and well-funded.

“It’s clear she’s spending political capital. Whenever anyone does that ... inevitably it’s going to make them a less nonpartisan figure,” he said. “You’re not going to find a more sympathetic person for this cause than Gabrielle Giffords. She’s a likable person and comes across as very reasonable.”

Giffords’ reputation as a moderate from the West also can help broaden the group’s appeal, Egan said. Besides, a few wealthy benefactors can sustain it.

Underscoring that point was a report Wednesday by USA Today that a wealthy Texas lawyer who is treasurer of Americans for Responsible Solutions donated $1 million and that online donations had reached $400,000 in a single day.

“I think the PAC will do all right financially. With a super PAC, you don’t need a lot of people giving. You just need a few people giving a lot of money,” said Clyde Wilcox, a government professor at Georgetown University who researches money in politics and public opinion. “But raising money and changing the framework of the debate is a different matter. In the long run, it takes a lot of money to drive public opinion.”

Campaign-finance records show that outrage over the massacre near Tucson has had only a modest longer-term financial benefit on Giffords’ broader political aims.

The committee that funded Giffords’ campaign activities raised $1 million from the time she was shot through the end of 2011. Nearly half of it came from PACs as her supporters tried to keep her financially viable if she sought another term. Throughout the year she remained a member of Congress, her campaign committee stayed busy, spending more than $500,000 on operations. Most of that went to consultants and staff salaries.

After Giffords resigned her seat in January 2012 and with no campaign to manage, her committee transferred more than $300,000 to the national and state Democratic Party in 2012. It also refunded $130,000 to individuals and PACs last year.

In August, Giffords formed Gabby PAC, an organization to support border and veterans’ issues. Records show it raised less than $30,000 and spent less than $15,000 during the election season. Giffords’ candidate committee still has $333,000, though it’s unclear whether that money can be transferred to her newest endeavor.

Generally, the Federal Election Commission prohibits campaign funds from going to organizations that benefit the candidate or their family. Last year, the FEC permitted Texas Gov. Rick Perry to convert his presidential committee to a PAC and use any funds the donors didn’t want back. Records show Giffords created a new super PAC rather than amend her existing candidate committee.

Before Giffords, the gun-control movement’s most powerful symbol had been James Brady, President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, who was among those wounded in a 1981 assassination attempt against Reagan.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the gun-control organization that bears his name, is linked to legislation passed in the 1990s but hasn’t managed to compete with gun-rights groups in political contributions.

The decline in the gun-control movement is reflected in the Brady Campaign’s flagging fundraising. In 2005, the organization reported $5.7 million in revenue, according to its tax records. By 2010, that had fallen to $2.9 million.

By comparison, the National Rifle Association, the most well-known gun-rights group, raised $164 million in 2005, peaked at $332 million in 2007 and dipped to $228 million in 2010. Its political arm has poured millions into congressional races each campaign cycle.

Experts say the NRA might see another surge of financial support from gun enthusiasts concerned by the renewed push for gun-control legislation.

Ray La Raja, an associate political-science professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst who studies interest groups, said Giffords’ creation of a super PAC rather than a push for legislation signals a long-range plan that is a departure from other gun-control efforts.

“She wants to make this a part of her legacy,” he said.

Egan said Giffords’ group may have its biggest impact by providing financial support in select races involving moderates from either party who support gun-control measures and face reprisals from gun-rights groups.

“If they can help those kinds of candidates — and it may just be a handful — survive strong electoral challenges, then I think it can declare a victory,” he said.

By early Wednesday, Giffords’ organization claimed to have nearly 24,000 supporters on Facebook.

Reach the reporter at ronald.hansen@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4493.

FBI changes focus of firearms training

Source

FBI changes focus of firearms training

By Kevin Johnson USA Today Tue Jan 8, 2013 9:06 PM

QUANTICO, Va. -- The FBI has broken with its long-standing firearms training regimen, putting a new emphasis on close-quarters combat to reflect the overwhelming number of shootings in which suspects are confronting officers at point-blank range.

New training protocols were formally implemented last January after a review of nearly 200 shootings involving FBI agents during a 17-year period. The analysis found that 75 percent of the incidents involved suspects who were within 3 yards of agents when shots were exchanged.

The move represents a dramatic shift for the agency, which for more than three decades has relied on long-range marksmanship training. Apart from the new shooting regimen, agents are also being exposed to technology borrowed from Hollywood.

The technology helps agents apply skills acquired on the shooting range to virtual scenarios involving the pursuit of armed suspects in schools, office buildings, apartment complexes and other potential targets.

The virtual simulation technology, developed by Georgia-based Motion Reality Inc., won a 2005 Academy Award for technical achievement in character animation.

In its law enforcement adaptation, virtual scenarios are fed from computers in agents’ backpacks to viewfinders. This transforms an empty room into virtual worlds where agents are pitted against animated armed suspects — many of them in close-range encounters.

John Wilson, chief of the FBI’s virtual simulation program, says the system is also capable of “negatively rewarding” trainees’ bad decisions by transmitting jolts to their bodies that simulate gunshots.

FBI training instructor Larry “Pogo” Akin, who helps supervise trainees on the live-shooting range, said, “The thing that jumps out at you from the (shooting incident) research is that if we’re not preparing agents to get off three to four rounds at a target between zero and 3 yards, then we’re not preparing them for what is likely to happen in the real world.”

The FBI’s research predates more recent fatal shootings of local law enforcement officers, many of whom were victims of close-range ambush attacks while answering calls for service or serving warrants.

A Justice Department analysis of 63 killings of local police in 2011 found 7percent were ambush or execution-style assaults.

Bud Colonna, chief of the FBI’s Firearms Training Unit, said FBI Director Robert Mueller personally oversaw the live-firearm training changes, meeting with instructors at the bureau’s sprawling training facility here and taking part in the actual shooting drills.

Until last January, the pistol-qualification course required agents to participate in quarterly exercises in which they fired 50 rounds, more than half of them from between 15 and 25 yards. The new course involves 60 rounds, with 40 of those fired from between 3 and 7 yards.

The new live-fire training is separate from the virtual simulation unit, housed in a converted storage room in Quantico since its launch in February. But the missions of both training units underscore the new emphasis on armed confrontations in close quarters.

For now, the simulation system serves to teach agents the proper way to enter and clear rooms in search of potential suspects, confront armed assailants and determine when deadly force is appropriate.

“When you are in these exercises, people forget that these are virtual scenarios,” said Tom McLaughlin, Motion Reality’s chief executive. “The brain believes this is real. We make these to be as close as you would find in the real world.”

The system can build in blueprints and schematics of any known suspect hideout or hostage location.

Once built, the system would allow agents to train before launching operations against suspected targets. Until now, rehearsals for some major operations required the full or partial physical construction of target locations.

Last month, Wilson said, the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team, began using the simulator.

“The possibilities are endless,” Wilson said.

The CIA's double standard on secrecy

Secret Double Standard

By TED GUP

Published: January 8, 2013

IN the last week, the American public has been reminded of the Central Intelligence Agency’s contradictory attitude toward secrecy. In a critique of “Zero Dark Thirty,” published last Thursday in The Washington Post, a former deputy director of the C.I.A., Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., defended the use of waterboarding and said that operatives used small plastic bottles, not buckets as depicted in the film, to carry out this interrogation method on three notable terrorists. On Sunday, The New York Times reported on the Justice Department’s case against a former C.I.A. officer, John C. Kiriakou, a critic of waterboarding who faces 30 months in prison for sharing the name of a covert operative with a reporter, who never used the name in print.

The contrast points to the real threat to secrecy, which comes not from the likes of Mr. Kiriakou but from the agency itself. The C.I.A. invokes secrecy to serve its interests but abandons it to burnish its image and discredit critics.

Over the years, I have interviewed many active and retired C.I.A. personnel who were not authorized to speak with me; they included heads of the agency’s clandestine service, analysts and well over 100 case officers, including station chiefs. Five former directors of central intelligence have spoken to me, mostly “on background.” Not one of these interviewees, to my knowledge, was taken to the woodshed, though our discussions invariably touched on classified territory.

Somewhere along the way, the agency that clung to “neither confirm nor deny” had morphed into one that selectively enforces its edicts on secrecy, using different standards depending on rank, message, internal politics and whim.

I am no fan of excessive secrecy, or of prosecuting whistle-blowers or leakers whose actions cannot be shown to have damaged American security. The C.I.A. needs secrecy, as do those who place their lives in the agency’s hands, but the agency cannot have it both ways.

What message did it send when George J. Tenet, its former director, refused to explain the intelligence debacle involving nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but later got a seven-figure book contract and became a highly paid speaker? How is it that Milton Bearden, a former covert operative, got agency permission to write a book (“The Main Enemy”) with a New York Times reporter? What of the many memoirs written by ex-spooks like Robert Baer (“See No Evil,” and, with his wife, another former C.I.A. operative, “The Company We Keep”), Tony Mendez (“The Master of Disguise”), Lindsay Moran (“Blowing My Cover”), Melissa Boyle Mahle (“Denial and Deception”) and Floyd L. Paseman (“A Spy’s Journey”)?

These works help us understand the shadowy business of intelligence gathering, but collectively they may be undermining the credo of espionage: it is not a spectator sport. And how do we explain the profusion of former C.I.A. operatives who are now on-air pundits?

There was a time at the C.I.A., not so long ago, when the notion of cashing in on one’s access to secrets was considered contemptible. How, then, does one explain how Chase Brandon, a former C.I.A. covert operative, became the agency’s liaison with Hollywood (“Mission Impossible III”)? And what of the International Spy Museum, a for-profit entity in Washington headed by a former covert C.I.A. officer, Peter Earnest? (The museum gift shop’s most popular T-shirt says “Deny Everything.”)

The agency can be quite creative in evading its own strictures on secrecy. When I was researching a book on covert operatives killed in the line of duty — a book the C.I.A. tried to persuade me not to write — a senior agency employee called me. He gave me the ISBN number and part of the title of an obscure book, and advised me to find a copy. When I did, I saw what he had left out of the title: the name of a deceased covert operative. Why? So he could pass a polygraph test if asked if he had ever given a reporter the name of an operative. All that training in tradecraft, and it was used to evade the very secrecy it was designed to protect.

Now consider Mr. Rodriguez. As recently as 2005, national security reporters were told that they could not use his full name — unusual for someone at such a senior position — though he was no longer in the field and was overseeing covert operations from Washington. Under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, even reporters can be prosecuted for unmasking operatives. So journalists complied and referred to Mr. Rodriguez simply as “Jose.” Mr. Rodriguez oversaw — and then ordered the destruction of videotapes that documented — the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding. He is now a published author and public speaker. The agency has no apparent problem with that; after all, he is defending not only his own handiwork but also the agency’s.

The confidentiality of clandestine work is and must be a core value at the C.I.A. But the agency’s arbitrary and selective application of secrecy rules threatens its already fragile credibility. If confirmed, John O. Brennan, whom President Obama has nominated to lead the C.I.A., should demand more consistent and less self-serving application of those rules.

Ted Gup is the author of “The Book of Honor: Covert Lives and Classified Deaths at the C.I.A.” and a fellow at Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics.

Court weighs warrantless blood tests in DUI cases

Source

Court weighs warrantless blood tests in DUI cases

Associated Press Wed Jan 9, 2013 11:41 AM

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is considering whether police must get a warrant before ordering a blood test on an unwilling drunken-driving suspect.

The justices heard arguments Wednesday in a case involving a disputed blood test from Missouri. Police stopped a speeding, swerving car and the driver, who had two previous drunken-driving convictions, refused to submit to a breath test to measure the alcohol level in his body.

The justices appeared to struggle with whether the dissipation of alcohol in the blood over time is reason enough for police to call for a blood test without first getting a warrant.

In siding with defendant Tyler McNeely, the Missouri Supreme Court said police need a warrant to take a suspect’s blood except when a delay could threaten a life or destroy potential evidence.

The state court upheld an order throwing out the results of the blood test, which showed that McNeely’s blood-alcohol content was .154 percent, well above the .08 percent legal limit.

Lawyers for Missouri and the Obama administration urged the justices to reject the state court decision and allow police to forgo a time-consuming process. In 2010, the administration said, more than 10,000 people died in crashes involving alcohol-impaired drivers, an average of one death every 51 minutes.

“Here, police are facing the certain destruction of blood-alcohol evidence,” Justice Department lawyer Nicole Saharsky said.

But several justices suggested that law enforcement officers should at least usually try to obtain a warrant. “Why shouldn’t the determination be made case to case?” Justice Antonin Scalia asked.

All 50 states have laws requiring drivers who are arrested on suspicion of driving while drunk to consent to a blood alcohol test, and refusal to submit to the test generally leads to suspension of a driver license. In addition, prosecutors can use the refusal against a defendant at trial. [So I guess that means the 4th and 5th Amendments are null and void]

In Missouri, a driver who won’t agree to either a breath or blood test can have his license suspended for a year. The American Civil Liberties Union, representing McNeely, said that the suspension is only 30 days for drivers with no previous convictions who take the test and are found to be impaired.

But McNeely may have had more reason than most to object to taking the test. Missouri said McNeely faced a felony charge with a maximum prison term of four years because of his two prior convictions.

He failed several field sobriety tests and the arresting officer, Cpl. Mark Winder of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, said McNeely’s speech was slurred and he was unsteady on his feet. [Failing a field sobriety test doesn't mean anything. Any defense attorney will tell you the tests are subjective and meaningless. In fact one public defender told us she asked the police who made DUI arrests to take the test in the courtroom and that despite being stone cold sober the cops routinely had difficulties passing their field sobriety tests]

There seemed little dispute that Winder had enough evidence to get a warrant for a blood test, but chose not to. Instead, he drove McNeely to a hospital. A technician drew blood from McNeely, who was handcuffed throughout the process. Winder’s decision set in motion the Supreme Court case.

A decision is expected by summer.

The case is Missouri v. McNeely, 11-1425.

Cops place fake prostitution ads!!!!

Source

Ex-CEO gets 4 weeks in Phoenix prostitution case

By Michael Kiefer The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Jan 8, 2013 6:57 PM

Former Sunflower Farmers Market CEO Michael Gilliland was sentenced to 30 days in jail and one year of probation Tuesday after he pleaded guilty to attempted pandering.

Gilliland was originally charged with child prostitution after being caught in a Phoenix police sting in February 2011, but in August, he entered into a plea agreement to the lesser charge of attempted pandering.

Maricopa County Superior Court Commissioner Steven Lynch ordered Gilliland to surrender by 4 p.m. Tuesday.

Gilliland answered a decoy newspaper ad for an escort, and when he called the number, an undercover police detective played the part of a prostitute and told Gilliland she was only 17 years old. Gilliland showed up anyway at a hotel room near Interstate 17 and Dunlap Road, where he was arrested.

Gilliland resigned from his position at Sunflower after his arrest, and the chain was later sold to Sprouts Farmers Market of Boulder, Colo.

Politicians use Connecticut murders to demand more cops and gun control

Arizona lawmakers to begin session split over solutions

By Alia Beard Rau The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jan 9, 2013 11:35 PM

Gun control and school safety are emerging as hot-button issues for Arizona’s 2013 legislative session, which begins Monday. But with conflicting proposals among even members of the same party, the conversation is likely to become divisive rather than reassuring in the wake of December’s massacre at a Connecticut elementary school.

In general, Republicans are pushing to put more armed individuals in schools, while Democrats want to toughen state gun laws. But some common ground is emerging in the area of funding school-resource officers and services for the seriously mentally ill.

There is also a move afoot at the national level, but various proposals are also swirling there. Vice President Joe Biden kicked off a week of meetings Wednesday to gather input on the best way to prevent gun violence. Among the participants was Arizonan Hildy Saizow, president of the grass-roots group Arizonans for Gun Safety.

Arizona House Minority Leader Chad Campbell on Wednesday introduced his $261 million Arizona Safer Schools, Safer Communities Plan, which includes more money for school-resource officers and school counselors, increased state funding for services for the mentally ill, and gun-law reforms.

His bill is the latest in a series of measures proposed by politicians throughout the state in response to the Connecticut shooting.

“It’s time to have an adult conversation and avoid the partisan nature this conversation has had in the past couple of years,” said Campbell, D-Phoenix.

Today, Senate Assistant Minority Leader Linda Lopez will unveil details of her proposal to reform state gun laws. Her plan includes requiring background checks for all private and gun-show gun sales and banning high-capacity ammunition magazines.

Both plans face an uphill battle in the Republican-dominated Legislature, which in recent years pushed for some of the loosest gun laws in the nation, including successfully passing a measure to allow Arizonans to carry concealed weapons without any training or a permit. The Legislature also passed bills to allow guns on college campuses and in public buildings, but Republican Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed them.

Brewer this week said she is open to addressing school-safety issues, including possibly providing more state funding for school-resource officers.

Brewer spokesman Matthew Benson said the governor will introduce a plan of her own in the coming days.

“The governor is the leader,” Benson said. “She recognizes the importance of making sure our kids have a safe place to learn. She’s been studying the issue and has held off on coming forward with a plan until she felt she was ready.”

Benson declined to comment on the specific gun proposals.

“Governor Brewer is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, but she does recognize that there is a balance with public safety,” he said. “We have safe zones like public buildings and schools where we don’t have guns.”

Republican lawmakers will also introduce plans of their own.

No related bills have been officially filed yet, but state Attorney General Tom Horne has proposed allowing each school to train and arm its principal or another staff member.

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu has voiced support for arming school employees.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio wants to put armed volunteer Sheriff’s Office posse members near schools.

Senate President Andy Biggs said his party is still developing a plan, which will include additional safety measures for schools.

“We haven’t yet narrowed it down, but one of the things we need to really focus on is the seriously mentally ill,” he said. “It seems to me that’s where the bulk of these problems seem to be coming from.”

Biggs said state leaders need to avoid any knee-jerk response and provide a structure for leaders and the community to talk about a rational solution.

“I have a sense that everybody in the public has a different answer, everything from seize all guns and melt them down to arm everybody in schools, and everything in between,” he said. “This is a very sensitive and emotional issue. It’s going to require some deep thought and discussion and dialogue.”

Charles Heller, spokesman for the Arizona Citizens Defense League, a gun-rights group behind many of Arizona’s prior efforts to loosen gun laws, said he’s not interested in any new laws regulating guns.

“More school-resource officers are not a bad idea if they’re not stuck in a classroom teaching DARE classes. And the idea of studying security circumstances in every school is brilliant, ” he said. “But we don’t need a single new law.”

He said he supports training gun users, but not as a state law. He said background checks don’t work. He supports allowing retired law-enforcement and military personnel to work as armed security in the schools.

“What we can do is be vigilant and be armed,” he said.

Lopez said the debate over funding mental-health care should be a separate budget discussion from gun-law reform.

“You need a multipronged approach, but if we can’t get the funding in place right away, if we can’t get the services, we at least need to do something to impede access to high-capacity magazine clips and make sure we have a universal background check on every gun sale,” Lopez said.

Lopez said she’s skeptical that Republicans will support any gun reforms and dismissed their argument that they need to focus on the budget.

“That’s a cop-out,” she said. “Yes, the budget is important. But this is an important issue, as well.”

Sen. Steve Gallardo, D-Phoenix, criticized Campbell’s plan, saying the House leader is wasting an opportunity by trying to do too much. He said Democrats should focus on pushing through a few key issues that can realistically succeed. He is pushing to focus on gun safety, including requiring individuals to report any lost or stolen gun, and reinstating gun-training requirements.

“Over the last 10 years that I’ve been here, I’ve introduced a firearms bill every year, and we’ve never had a real discussion,” he said. “I think, because of Connecticut, we’re at a point where the public wants to have a real discussion. But too many ideas muddy up the water.”

Phoenix cop accused of sex with 2 teen boys gives interview

Source

Former Phoenix officer accused of sex with 2 teen boys gives interview

By Cecilia Chan The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jan 9, 2013 7:27 PM

Christopher J. Wilson spends his days pacing, reading and thinking about his life.

“I focus on what kind of life I have and what kind of future I have, which is pretty much non-existent,” Wilson says. “My life is over. Every day I think about it.”

Since his Aug. 7 arrest, the former Phoenix police officer spends his day in a 12-foot by 7-foot cell, facing 10 felony counts of sexual conduct with two underage boys. The Arizona Republic does not name victims of sexual crimes.

Wilson is housed alone for his protection in the administrative segregation unit of Lower Buckeye Jail in Phoenix. He is confined to his cell 23 hours a day, only allowed outside for an hour a day to a small recreation yard, where he says he looks at the freedom he used to have.

“What I want the public to know about me is I am not a monster as the media is portraying me,” said Wilson, who spent his 44th birthday in jail. “I didn’t use my position to groom these individuals. I am just a normal person, trying to live my life.”

Wilson is accused of having two sexual encounters with a 17-year-old and once with a 14-year-old boy. Wilson worked as a liaison to the Valley's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and met his accusers through his job, police has said.

Wilson, who is openly gay, was a 14-year veteran with the Phoenix Police Department receiving glowing annual reviews from his supervisors.

Wilson said he chose law enforcement because he loved serving the community. He also served four years in the U.S. Navy and a brief stint as a detention officer with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

Wilson told The Republic on Wednesday that he “wasn’t big into the gay scene,” drinking alcohol or going to gay bars.

Instead, Wilson, who’s had steady boyfriends, preferred mountain hiking or catching a movie with friends.

According to court records, the mother of the 14-year-old boy learned of the encounter and contacted the authorities.

The family of the 14-year-old has since filed a $10 million notice of claim, the first step toward a lawsuit, against the Phoenix Police Department, Wilson and Assistant Chief of Police Tracy Montgomery.

It alleges that the department and Montgomery were negligent in the supervision of Wilson, which resulted in the “sexual molestation” of the 14-year-old, who is traumatized.

City spokeswoman Toni Maccarone said the claim is under review and could not comment further.

Wilson said he was not a boyfriend or dated the older boy, who was living on his own.

Wilson said he did buy three suits and shirts for the older boy for work because someone had done the same for him when he was a struggling police reservist in Colorado.

“I did this out of my own good will,” said Wilson, who added he didn’t expect anything in return. “We were just friends.”

His attorney Robert Campos would not let Wilson discuss any specifics about the allegations.

Though Wilson acknowledged to police he knew both boys were underage and took the blame, Campos said Wilson neither admits or denies the allegations.

He also said that Wilson’s statements to police during his interrogation may not be admissible but declined to go into detail.

During Wednesday’s interview, Campos hinted at the strategy he might pursue to defend Wilson in court.

Campos characterized the two boys as “young adults” who have some culpability, not victims. Campos painted the two boys as far more mature than their age and experienced in relationships with older men.

Campos said the encounter, although unlawful, was one of mutual consent. He said the media have portrayed Wilson as a pedophile going after young children or grooming them a long time for sex.

“Certainly that is not the case here,” Campos said.

Instead, “it appears from our perspective (the two boys) set this up” and “they had already in their minds the potential of having some kind of relationship with my client,” he said.

Campos said Wilson was not blaming the victims but “he is saying they aren’t blameless.”

“My client used poor judgment,” Campos said. “And he was quite cooperative with the authorities but cooperation does not equate with justice in our system and that is a huge problem.”

Wilson says he regrets what has happened.

“I would have done things different,” he said. “Losing everything that I love hurts.”

BATF makes up imaginary gun laws

Arizona gun dealers challenge rifle-reporting requirement

Associated Press Wed Jan 9, 2013 11:25 AM

WASHINGTON — A lawyer for two Arizona gun dealers argued Wednesday that the Obama administration in trying to halt the flow of U.S. guns to Mexican drug gangs overstepped its legal authority when it required dealers in Southwestern border states to report when customers buy multiple high-powered rifles.

Attorney Richard Gardiner told a federal appeals court panel Wednesday that the directive requires gun dealers to create a records system and the government has no authority to do that.

At issue is a requirement that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives imposed in 2011 on gun sellers in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. The requirement, issued in what is known as a demand letter, compels those sellers to report to the ATF when anyone buys — within a five-day period — two or more semi-automatic weapons capable of accepting a detachable magazine and with a caliber greater than .22. The ATF says the requirement is needed to help stop the flow of guns to Mexican drug cartels.

Judge Harry T. Edwards, an appointee of Democratic President Jimmy Carter, asked Gardiner if the model number on a rifle would indicate whether it was covered by the ATF requirement.

“It might,” Gardiner replied, but added that the person doing the record-keeping might not be able to tell that.

“Oh, come on, that can’t be right,” Edwards said, suggesting that the person who owns the federal license to sell firearms would know.

Gardiner, who is representing J&G Sales, Ltd., of Prescott, Ariz., and Foothills Firearms, LLC, of Yuma, Ariz., said that nothing in the law allows for the presumption that the federal licensee would have that knowledge.

Judge Judith W. Rogers, an appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton, asked if the types of rifles covered by the demand letter were unusual.

Gardiner said they were not: “There are probably 100 million of them in the United States — if not more.” Gardiner said that the definition is so broad it covers rifles for everything from target practice to hunting wolves, deer or bear, or even smaller game.

Justice Department lawyer Michael Raab said sellers should be able to determine by the manufacturer and model number if a particular rifle is covered by the requirement. He also said that sellers were told they can call the ATF’s firearm’s technology branch if they have any questions.

“We’re not aware of any requests or confusion,” he said.

The third judge on the panel, Karen LeCraft Henderson, who was appointed by Republican President George H.W. Bush, asked Raab about al measure Congress passes every year banning the ATF from establishing a national firearms registry. Raab noted that the ATF already requires sellers nationwide to report when someone purchases two or more pistols or revolvers within five days, which is not being challenged in this case. The ATF demand letter at issue here, Raab said, is “much narrower.”

The appeals court is reviewing the case as the Obama administration works to meet a self-imposed Jan. 31 deadline for proposals to curb gun violence in the wake of last month’s massacre of 20 children and six adults at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school. President Barack Obama has already called on Congress to reinstate a ban on military-style assault weapons, close loopholes that allow gun buyers to skirt background checks and restrict high-capacity magazines.

Last year, U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer rejected a challenge to the ATF requirement by the two Arizona gun sellers and the firearms industry trade group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation. In court papers, the trade group argues that the agency didn’t have the legal authority to issue the requirement, and even if it did, its decision to impose it on every retailer in the border states was arbitrary and capricious.

“There is no rational law enforcement connection between the problem ATF sought to address — illegal firearms trafficking from the United States to Mexico — and merely conducting a lawful retail firearms business from premises located in one of the border states,” the trade group wrote in its appeal brief. It also said that Collyer’s review was “at best perfunctory,” and claimed that she “rubber stamped” the ATF’s policy. Collyer is an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush.

AZ Republic wants to expand the insane "War on Drugs"

Their harebrained solution is to let government bureaucrats (read the police) on the fly make any drug they want illegal.

Sadly that is the wrong direction to go.

The only reason people use "spice" and "bath salts" is because they are legal, while safer drugs, such as marijuana are illegal.

The real solution to this problem is legalize all other drugs.

While I am positive marijuana is harmless drug, I am not really sure if methamphetamine is that much safer then "bath salts".

But I think that should be a personal choice, not the governments choice. Kind of like when a person willingly chooses to poison themselves by smoking "safer" cigarettes, instead of "unsafe" cigars. Or by willing eating ice cream and cake for dinner instead of a salad.

I also suspect any law that allows the police to make laws on the fly would be unconstitutional, and dangerous.

Source

Designer-drug effort must go statewide

The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Jan 10, 2013 7:52 AM

In Yavapai County, smart law enforcement won a significant victory against an insidious foe, but the Legislature needs to give communities across the state better tools to combat synthetic psychoactive drugs.

Sold openly as “spice” or “bath salts,” these substances are designed to mimic marijuana or methamphetamine highs. Users, who may be reassured by the fact the poisons are sold legally, have suffered serious mental and physical harm, including death.

State law bans the sale of specific formulas of these poisons, but the chemists who design them need only make a few tweaks to get around that. Lawmakers resisted a more comprehensive ban that would have allowed law enforcement to act quickly against new formulations. The stuff remains widely available in stores and on the Internet.

Enter Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk. She made the case in court that these poisons are a public nuisance.

After issuing a preliminary injunction in September, Yavapai Superior Court issued a permanent injunction in late December to ban all known retailers in Yavapai County from selling synthetic psychoactive drugs.

Yavapai County Superior Court Judge Michael Bluff’s order gave a hair-curling description of the proven dangers of these designer drugs, which cause even more intense and unpredictable reactions than the illegal substances they mimic.

Users can suffer “increased heart rate, possible stroke and cardiovascular collapse, seizures, and in some cases death,” the judge wrote.

“Users often suffer from delusions and hallucinations, exhibiting signs of severe psychosis, paranoia and anxiety. Users ... will often engage in aggressive acts of violence against medical and law enforcement personnel trying to assist them, and innocent bystanders. Users will often suffer long-term effects from the drugs such as psychosis, insomnia and self-mutilation,” Bluff wrote.

Polk credits her deputy prosecutor, Scott Blake, for coming up with the unique approach of tagging these poisons as a public nuisance. Polk gets credit for using her office wisely to pursue a good idea to great effect.

But the victory is not complete by any means.

“While this solution is working thus far for Yavapai County,” Polk said in an e-mail, “the Legislature needs to act this session to protect other communities across the state.”

Polk’s injunction applies to known retailers in Yavapai County. Identifying and monitoring such shops is easier in a rural county than it would be in more urban settings. What’s more, Polk is attempting to stop Internet vendors from sending synthetic psychoactive drugs to her county. The ease of buying these drugs online — and the profitability of selling them — makes this a challenge across the state.

In 2010 and 2011, the Legislature banned the original two designer drugs by formula. But the chemists merely altered the formula and put the poisons back on the market. This time, lawmakers need to pass a bill that can “keep up with the ever-changing formulas in the world of synthetic drugs,” Polk said.

Polk offered a model for going after these substances. It is smart and creative.

The Legislature needs to make the push against these insidious drugs even more comprehensive.

Boneheads at FDA require lower dosages for sleeping pills???

Contrary to the friggen geniuses at the FDA, when people buy these newer sleeping pills that don't work as well because of the lower drug dosage they will just take more pills to make them work just as well as the older higher dosage pills.

It is highly unlikely the FDA will cause people to use less of the actual drug.

That is just as stupid as the BATF demanding brewers reduce the alcohol content of beer to cut down on the consumption of alcohol. People are just going to drink an extra beer or two to make up for the lower alcohol content, or they will switch to hard liquor.

How many times do I have to say "Government is the cause of the problem, not the solution to the problem"

Source

FDA to require lower recommended dosages for sleep drugs

By Brady Dennis, Thursday, January 10, 9:44 AM

The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it will require manufacturers of popular sleep drugs such as Ambien and Zolpimist to scale back their recommended dosages — particularly for women — in light of data showing that some people remain dangerously impaired into the morning hours, even as they climb behind the wheel of a car.

The new edict applies to drugs that contain zolpidem, a widely-used ingredient in sleep aids. It will force drug makers to slash the recommended doses by half for women, in hopes that if patients have less of the drug in their systems in the morning, it will reduce the risk of impaired driving.

Because women’s bodies eliminate zolpidem more slowly than men, the FDA told manufacturers to lower recommended doses for women to 5 milligrams from 10 milligrams for immediate-release products such as Edluar, Zolpimist and Ambien. Dosages for extended-release products would drop from 12.5 milligrams to 6.25 milligrams, officials said. The agency also said drug makers should consider lowering recommended dose for men.

“To decrease the potential risk of impairment with all insomnia drugs, health care professionals should prescribe, and patients should take, the lowest dose capable of treating the patient’s insomnia,” Ellis Unger, director of the FDA’s Office of Drug Evaluation, said in a statement. “Patients who must drive in the morning or perform some other activity requiring full alertness should talk to their health care professional about whether their sleep medicine is appropriate.”

The agency said the new requirements came after driving simulation and laboratory studies submitted to the FDA showed that 8 hours after taking zolpidem, as many as 15 percent of women and 3 percent of men still had enough of the drug in their blood to impair their driving “to a degree that increases the risk of a motor vehicle accident.” Even higher-percentages of patients experienced potential impairment the morning after using extended-release zolpidem products.

Officials cautioned that even people with high levels of zolpidem in their blood could remain impaired even if they feel wide awake.

“All insomnia drugs are potent medications, and they must be used carefully,” Russell Katz, M.D., director of FDA’s Division of Neurology Products, said in a statement.

According to the agency, doctors dispensed about 39 million prescriptions for zolpidem products in 2011, and about 9 million patients received zolpidem products from U.S. outpatient retail pharmacies. Sixty-three percent of those were female.

FDA said it will continue to evaluate the risk of next-morning impairment with other insomnia drugs.

American Presidents - Life Time Emperors???

Obama signs law giving himself, Bush lifetime Secret Service guard

By Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News | The Ticket

President Barack Obama on Thursday signed into a law a measure giving him, George W. Bush and future former presidents and their spouses lifetime Secret Service protection, the White House announced.

The legislation, crafted by Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, rolls back a mid-1990s law that imposed a 10-year limit on Secret Service protection for former presidents. Bush would have been the first former commander in chief affected.

At the time, lawmakers who supported the measure said it would save the government millions of dollars. They also argued that former presidents could hire private security firms (as Richard Nixon did after he decided to forgo Secret Service protection in 1985).

The bill had sailed through Congress with bipartisan support—it cleared the House of Representatives by voice vote in early December, and then it zipped through the Senate unopposed. The law also provides protection for former presidents’ kids until age 16. But “protection of a spouse shall terminate in the event of remarriage.”

The Secret Service started protecting presidents in 1901 after the assassination of William McKinley. In 1965, Congress passed a law authorizing the agency, which is now a part of the Department of Homeland Security, to protect former presidents for life.

Yuma Police ordered to return marijuana they stole from California woman

Ariz. court orders county sheriff to return pot to California woman

By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Jan 10, 2013 4:37 PM

The Arizona Court of Appeals has ruled the Yuma County Sheriff’s Office must give back marijuana that was seized from a California woman who had permission to use the drug for medical purposes.

Valerie Okun was stopped in 2011 at a Border Patrol checkpoint near Yuma. Authorities seized marijuana and other contraband from her car. She was cited for violating Arizona drug laws and the case was turned over to Yuma County officials. The charges were dismissed after she showed she was authorized to possess marijuana under California law.

The Arizona Medical Marijuana Act honors other states’ medical marijuana cards and allows them to possess up to 2 1/2 ounces of the drug.

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

The appellate court affirmed Thursday the Superior Court’s ruling and required the sheriff to return the marijuana to Okun, saying it was not subject to forfeiture under state law.

“Moreover, the Sheriff is immune from prosecution under the federal law for acts taken in compliance with a court order,” the three-judge panel wrote.

The appellate court would not consider the state’s argument that the state’s medical marijuana law is pre-empted by federal law, “We do not question the general proposition that when federal law actually conflicts with state law, federal law controls,” the opinion said.

A spokesman for the Yuma County Sheriff's Office said officials are reviewing the opinion.

Voters in 2010 passed the medical-marijuana measure to allow people with certain debilitating medical conditions — including chronic pain, cancer and muscle spasms — to use marijuana. They must obtain a recommendation from a physician and register with the state Department of Health Services, which oversees the program and issues identification cards to qualified patients and caregivers.

Patients are limited to purchasing 2 1/2 ounces every two weeks. More than 33,000 people have permission to use medical marijuana in Arizona.

Cop commits perjury in Mesa murder trial???

Source

Jodi Arias trial: Defense accuses detective of perjury

By Michael Kiefer The Republic | azcentral.com

Thu Jan 10, 2013 7:16 PM

The dispute over how Jodi Arias killed her lover came to a head late Thursday when the Arias defense team accused the prosecution’s lead detective of perjury and asked for a mistrial in her murder case.

The motion was denied, but the record was made.

Arias, 30, is on trial in Maricopa County Superior Court in the June 2008 slaying of Travis Alexander, 32, who told his friends that Arias was a stalker but secretly invited her to his Mesa home to have sex.

During one of those trysts, after hours of sex play that reportedly included bondage and explicit photography, Arias shot and stabbed Alexander, and nearly cut his head off when she slit his throat.

The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office has charged her with first-degree murder. Arias claims she killed in self-defense.

The theory of how the killing unfolded, as corroborated by Arias, was fixed for nearly four years.

In 2009, during hearings before a different judge to determine whether there was probable cause to seek the death penalty against Arias, Detective Esteban Flores told the court that based on his conversations with the county medical examiner and his study of the scene, Arias first shot Alexander. The shot, it was said, may or may not have knocked him out initially, but ultimately, Alexander then fought with Arias as she stabbed him 27 times and slit his throat. Later, Flores repeated that theory of the crime in TV interviews and sworn statements to Arias’ legal team.

But right before the case went to trial, the story changed.

In his opening statements Jan. 2, Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Juan Martinez told the jury that Arias first stabbed Alexander, then slit his throat and put a bullet in his head after he was already dead.

The difference in the sequence of events could mean the difference between life and death for Arias. If Arias put a bullet in Alexander to finish him off, it could make her self-defense claim less likely. And it would heighten the perception that Arias acted with premeditation instead of the kind of blind rage that could result in a second-degree murder verdict.

On Tuesday, Medical Examiner Kevin Horn testified that the gunshot likely would have incapacitated Alexander, making it unlikely he fought back. Because Alexander had extensive defensive cuts on his arms and legs, he obviously put up a fight. Therefore, Horn said, it was unlikely he was shot first. And Horn denied ever speaking to Flores about the sequence of wounds.

Thursday, after hours of tedious testimony about blood spatter and DNA evidence, Arias’ lead defense attorney, Kirk Nurmi, had a chance to grill Flores over the change of facts.

At first, Flores claimed that he didn’t recall whether he heard Horn’s testimony two days earlier. As to his change of opinion of how Alexander died, he said, “That was my understanding at the time... I’m not a doctor.”

Over vigorous objections from Martinez, Nurmi pushed the question about Flores’ inaccuracy.

“It was not inaccurate, it was mistaken,” Flores said.

“That’s a pretty big misunderstanding, isn’t it? “ Nurmi asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” Flores replied.

Then, when Martinez got his chance to redirect Flores’ testimony, Flores, the lead investigator in the case, stuck to the new version of events and reiterated he had been mistaken in his earlier account.

After the jury was dismissed for the day, Nurmi requested a mistrial, saying that Flores had committed perjury in his testimony.

In open court, Judge Sherry Stephens read aloud the ruling made at the 2009 hearing by Judge Sally Duncan, who was handling the case at the time:

“The State presented evidence that the victim was first shot on the right side of his head near his eye with a .25 caliber handgun and that the bullet lodged in his left cheek. This wound was not fatal and may or may not have rendered the victim unconscious. The victim did not remain unconscious, based on the infliction of the other wounds and the location of blood spatter evidence in the bathroom sink and blood in the hallway. In addition, the defendant told police that the victim was unconscious after being shot but then crawled around and was stabbed.”

Nurmi pointed out that Martinez had never corrected that “mistaken” version for the record.

But Stephens said that the 2009 ruling was not about the sequence of events, but rather about determining whether that there was probable cause to find that the crime was heinous and depraved, thereby qualifying Arias for the death penalty. Regardless of which wounds came first, Stephens said, there was still probable cause that the crime was heinous and depraved, and she denied Nurmi’s motion.

Trial resumes Monday.

A government issued photo ID to buy a magic marker????

Source

Phoenix group targets graffiti laws, seeks harsher penalties

By Alia Beard Rau The Republic | azcentral.com

Thu Jan 10, 2013 10:54 PM

As Arizona cities, lobbyists, unions and activist groups firm up their legislative goals for 2013, a group of Phoenix residents is looking for a little help with graffiti.

Phoenix’s Anti-Graffiti Task Force hopes the Legislature, which convenes Monday, will consider a proposal that includes additional penalties for offenders and new requirements for stores that sell graffiti materials.

Under current state law, it is considered criminal damage to inscribe a message, slogan, sign or symbol on any public or private building, structure or surface, except for the ground, without the owner’s permission. The penalties vary: Damage of $250 or less is a Class 2 misdemeanor, punishable by fines and up to four months in jail; damage of $10,000 or more is a Class 4 felony punishable by fines and up to three years in prison. There are tougher penalties for repeat offenders.

State law allows counties to adopt and enforce their own ordinances related to the prevention and removal of graffiti. It gives counties limited ability to restrict the way stores display graffiti implements.

Task force member and Phoenix resident Ginnie Ann Sumner said this is the first time the task force has worked on possible legislation. Phoenix Councilmen Michael Nowakowski and Tom Simplot co-chair the task force, which launched in 2011.

The Phoenix Neighborhood Services Department [i.e. - the Phoenix Messy Yard Police] is hosting Graffiti Free Phoenix: Day at the Legislature at the state Capitol today and is asking residents to attend and show their support for anti-graffiti legislation. City staff will train participants in how to get involved in the legislative process.

“The city estimates that it costs, with SRP, APS and city departments, $6 million a year to paint out graffiti. And police will tell you that graffiti is a gateway to other crimes,” Sumner, a former teacher, said. “What we’re interested in doing is helping those who get involved in graffiti learn that there are consequences for their actions.”

The task force is seeking legislation that includes:

Requiring juveniles convicted of a graffiti crime to pay for damages and perform community service.

Suspending a convicted juvenile’s driver’s license. [what does driving have to do with graffiti or vise versa???]

Revoking a convicted adult’s license.

Making it a crime to sell or give a graffiti implement such as spray paint or an etching tool to a juvenile.

Making it a crime for a juvenile to possess a graffiti implement in most situations. [So kids with magic markers or paint can's will be assumed to be criminals???]

Requiring stores to keep graffiti implements under lock and key.

Setting up procedures to require adults to show ID when buying a graffiti implement.

Sumner said the goal of legislation is to solve the city’s graffiti problem and address the social concerns that surround the crime.

“We are responsible for our social health, and we need to do something to help both our juveniles and our adults, rather than just painting over the problem,” she said.

City staff said graffiti has not increased over the past year, but is a consistent problem. Sumner said the problem in her Pierce Unified neighborhood in east Phoenix varies depending on the time of year, how warm it is at night and whether school is in session. But she said her husband, and many other Phoenix volunteers, go out almost daily to help city staff remove graffiti.

The task force does not yet have a legislative sponsor for its graffiti proposal, but Phoenix Government Relations Director Karen Peters said she’s optimistic they’ll have one soon. Phoenix is also working with other cities and the League of Arizona Cities and Towns on the effort.

She said city staff has created a draft bill.

“We’re talking with potential sponsors,” Peters said.

House Minority Leader Chad Campbell, D-Phoenix, has for years unsuccessfully introduced bills attempting to increase penalties and restrictions related to graffiti. Peters said he is one of the lawmakers they are talking to.

Peters said this resident-based effort to seek legislative help to solve the city’s graffiti problem is unique. Once there is a legislative sponsor and a bill number, Peters said they will make a significant push for even more public support.

“I think this level of community engagement will be vital to our success,” she said.

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Graffiti Free Phoenix Day

The Phoenix Neighborhood Services Department is hosting Graffiti Free Phoenix: Day at the Arizona Legislature from 9-11 a.m. today at the Capitol, 1700 W. Washington St. Residents are encouraged to attend and sign up in support of toughening state graffiti laws.

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton will say anything to get elected????

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton lied about repealing the Phoenix sales tax on food????

I suspect the real reason Greg Stanton doesn't want to repeal the sales tax on food is because he knows that most of the tax goes to pay for the 3,000 or so Phoenix cops and he knows if he keeps the tax he is guarentted 3,000 votes from Phoenix Police Officers.

It sounds like Phoenix City Mayor Greg Stanton is selling us little people out to the police in exchange for a few votes.

Didn't Judas sell Jesus out for 13 pieces of silver?

I guess Mayor Greg Stanton is selling out the people Phoenix to the police for for a lousy 2 percent tax on food.

Source

Is Greg Stanton waffling on food-tax repeal?

During his 2011 campaign for mayor – a campaign in which his opponent Wes Gullet pledged an immediate repeal of the city’s food tax — Greg Stanton said he supported an early end to the 2 percent tax. Specifically, April 2013.

The delay, Stanton explained at the time, was simply to give the city time to consider the consequences of losing the estimated $50 million a year the city reaps by taxing residents who wish to eat.

Stanton’s had a year to consider those consequences. Given that he supported City Manager David Cavazo’s 33 percent, $78,000 pay raise last fall – a raise retroactive to July 1 – I’m guessing Stanton and the crew has had ample time to consider the matter.

Now along comes a pair of city councilmen, calling on Stanton to keep his word. (Don’t you just hate it when people remember what you said on the campaign trail?)

“Since imposing that tax, Phoenix has made great strides with a much improved financial position,” Councilmen Sal DiCiccio and Jim Waring wrote, in a memo to the mayor.

The tax, approved in 2010 with a whopping 24 hours of notice to the public that must pay it, is now set to expire in 2015. Two other council members — Bill Gates and Thelda Williams — also support an early end to the tax, which would make Stanton the likely swing vote.

Stanton told The Republic’s Dustin Gardiner that he won’t make a decision on the repeal until he’s gotten the lowdown from Cavazos about whether the city can afford it.

“I’m going to ask the city manager to give us an honest assessment about the food tax,” he told Gardiner. “My commitment was to do as little harm to public safety as possible.”

Actually, mayor, your commitment was to repeal the tax.