Homeless in Arizona

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10 officers named in sex scandal

WFLA Thu Jun 27, 2013 9:32 AM

LAKELAND, Fla. - Ten officers are being investigated after a former employee claimed that she engaged in sex acts and sexually suggestive behavior with them while they were on duty, according to video from WFLA.

Captain John Thomason, who had been spokesman for the Lakeland Police Department, was among those named in a complaint, which claims some officers commited sexual acts with the woman in patrol cars and in the office.

City Manager Doug Thomas says the investigation revealed the officers either participated in the activity - which included sexual encountours, "touching" and sexting - but didn't report it.

The same department was recently involved in a controversy when an officer had a woman "shake' her bra during a traffic stop.

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They’re Florida’s horniest! Cops in Lakeland police department snagged in massive sex scandal: report

By Philip Caulfield / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Published: Wednesday, June 26, 2013, 2:09 PM

Nearly a dozen cops and high-ranking officers at the Lakeland Police Department had sex or engaged in sexual behavior — some of it forced — with a female employee over the past seven years, an investigation found.

The explosive 59-page report by State Attorney Jerry Hill found that officers at the central Florida department engaged in a jaw-dropping list of horndog offenses including: having sex with the woman while on duty; arranging trysts at police headquarters, in squad cars and city buildings and, in one case, inside a church; trading X-rated texts with the woman and fondling her while at work.

A fireman named in the report even admitted to having sex with the woman in car outside the funeral reception for a cop killed on duty in 2011.

The allegations were first reported in Lakeland newspaper The Ledger. Lakeland is about 40 miles east of Tampa.

Some of the alleged sex acts were forced on the woman and amounted to sexual harassment, according to statements she gave to investigators.

But the state attorney's office said there wasn't enough evidence to file criminal charges, so none of the cases would be headed to court.

The allegations were the latest blow to a force that's come under fire recently for sloppy and abusive policing.

Last week, several state officials slammed the department after a woman said a cop ordered her to lift her shirt and shake her bra to prove she wasn't hiding any drugs during a routine traffic stop.

The incident was recorded by the police officer's dashboard camera and made news across the country.

In a scathing letter to the LPD Tuesday, Hill said, "Perhaps this investigation sheds some light on the serious shortcomings of your department in the areas of traffic stops, search and seizure, thoroughness of investigations, preparedness for trial and complying with Florida Public Records law," according to The Ledger.

City Manager Doug Thomas and Police Chief Lisa Womack addressed the report at a press conference Wednesday.

"The conduct alleged is an embarrassment to all the professional, hard-working members of the Lakeland Police Department and the city of Lakeland as a whole," Womack told reporters.

"I demand professional, ethical and accountable behavior from all of my employees. I am extremely disappointed." [Yea, but don't worry, nothing will change]

In all, ten officers and one Lakeland fireman were named in the report.

They were Capt. John Thomason, the police department's chief spokesman, Lt. Al Wilson, Sgt. Bryan McNabb, Sgt. Rusty Longaberger, Sgt. David Woolverton, Detective Rick Gries, Officer George Vidal and Officer Scott Hutton, former cops Steve Sherman and Rawn Haynes and Fire Inspector David Bivens.

Bivens told investigators he had sex with the woman several times while in uniform, including once in her car while it was parked outside the funeral reception for slain cop Arnulfo Crispin, 25, who was shot to death on duty in 2011.

Sherman, who resigned from the department earlier this year, admitted to having sex with the woman inside the Without Walls Church, a megachurch in Lakeland, as well as at a cemetery, The Ledger reported.

The woman told investigators that Woolverton sexually assaulted her in her office in 2008 and 2009.

Woolverton denied the charges, but admitted to having sex with the woman in his police car a few years earlier.

Thomason was the highest-ranking officer named in the report.

He admitted to sending a photo of his penis to the woman, but said they never had sex.

Source

Lakeland Police Department sex investigation

Posted: Jun 26, 2013 10:25 AM Updated: Jun 26, 2013 2:44 PM

By Chip Osowski

By Shannon Behnken

LAKELAND, FL - For the second week in a row, the Polk County State Attorney's Office has fired off a letter to Lakeland Police Chief Lisa Womack, demanding change.

Last week, State Attorney Jerry Hill wrote a letter to the chief about a bra shaking incident during a traffic stop. This week, the letter is referring to an investigation into at least 10 sworn police officers.

Chief Womack requested the investigation after a long time employee reported engaging in sex acts or sexually suggestive behavior with the officers.

Hill said Wednesday that at the time the employee reported the behavior, Chief Womack was considering firing her. He did not say why.

Named in the complaint: Captain John Thomason, who was a spokesman for the department until last night, Lt. Al Wilson, Sgt. Russell Longaberger, Sgt. Bryan McNabb, Detective Rick Gries, Officers Scott Hutton, Loretta Jackson and George Vidal and former officers Stephen Sherman and Rawn Haynes.

Thomason, Wilson, Longaberger and McNabb are currently on paid administrative leave. The other officers involved have been reassigned.

City Manager Doug Thomas says the investigation revealed the officers either participated in the activity, or knew about it and didn't tell anyone.

"Many of these individuals who claimed to have had direct knowledge of sexual encounters including consensual and alleged unwanted acts including sexting, posting of inappropriate photos, touching and sexual comments apparently failed to take or report any such actions to the Lakeland Police Department or appropriate city administrative personnel," said Thomas.

Police Chief Lisa Womack also expressed disappointment.

"I demand professional, ethical and accountable behavior from all of my employees," she said. "I am extremely disappointed."

Chief Womack says the investigation is ongoing and those involved will be disciplined.

State Attorney Jerry Hill wrote in his letter to Chief Womack, "I cannot ignore the fact that several of the officers involved in this matter are high ranking officers in your department."

He concluded the letter by writing, "I call on the City of Lakeland leaders to immediately take steps to provide Lakeland with law enforcement that is truly 'committed to excellence.''

It's been a tough two weeks for the police department. Officers have admitted to making women shake their bras out at traffic stops and having fellow officers sign blank arrest forms. 8-on-your-side also discovered cases that were dropped because judges said officers weren't telling the truth.

"It's very tough when you have a judge that says, "I find that they are untruthful, that they are lying, then it's hard for us to vouch for their credibility," Hill said.

Hill says it's time for change at the police department, but it's up to the citizens of Lakeland and city management to demand that change.

"Well, you've gotta quit compartmentalizing at some point and say, "This is the big picture of what we're dealing with in Lakeland," Hill said.

UVA student jailed for possession of bottled water, ice cream

Of course the cops were not charged with any crimes. Instead the poor woman was arrested and charged with several felonies.

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UVA student jailed for possession of bottled water, ice cream

The Daily Caller

A University of Virginia student spent a night and good part of the next day in jail after seven plain-clothes agents from the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Control division ambushed her.

The student, 20-year-old Elizabeth Daly, made the mistake of walking to her car with bottled water, cookie dough and ice cream in a dark supermarket parking lot near the UVA campus, reports The Daily Progress.

The seven agents sprung aggressively into action, suspecting that the student was carrying was a 12-pack of beer. She was actually carrying a sky-blue carton of LaCroix sparkling water.

Police admit that one of the high-strung agents vaulted onto the hood of Daly’s car. She contends that one of them also drew a gun.

It’s not clear what about Daly’s appearance gave the six police officers the belief that they had probable cause to confront her en masse.

Daly, along with two roommates who were in the car, did what reasonable, unarmed people usually do when violently pounced upon by seven people. They tried to get away.

“They were showing unidentifiable badges after they approached us, but we became frightened, as they were not in anything close to a uniform,” Daly said in a written account, according to The Daily Progress.

“I couldn’t put my windows down unless I started my car, and when I started my car they began yelling to not move the car, not to start the car. They began trying to break the windows. My roommates and I were … terrified,” the student also wrote.

According to court records obtained by the Charlottesville paper, Daly “grazed” two agents with her vehicle. At this time, the records state, the unidentified passenger in the front seat of her SUV was yelling “go, go, go” and simultaneously diving into the back seat.

Once the three students managed to make it out of the parking lot, they called 911. Daly testified that her goal was to drive immediately to a police station. However, she was stopped by a vehicle with identifiable sirens and lights.

Daly had just left an annual UVA “Take Back the Night” vigil on the famous campus founded by the man who drafted the Declaration of Independence. She was eventually able to explain that she had purchased the water and junk food for a sorority benefit. She also apologized.

The seven Alcoholic Beverage Control agents were not satisfied. They charged Daly with three felonies: one count of eluding police and two counts of assaulting a law enforcement officer. In Virginia, each of these Class Six felonies carries up to five years in prison and up to $2,500 in fines.

The seven agents then had her hauled to the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail.

The incident occurred April 11. Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman deigned to drop the criminal charges this week.

“You don’t know all the facts until you complete the investigation,” Chapman told The Daily Progress in defense of his own actions and the actions of the Alcoholic Beverage Control agents.

It’s unclear why Chapman’s investigation took some 80 days.

The Charlottesville broadsheet also does not mention how much Daly paid her defense attorney, Francis Lawrence.

A spokeswoman for Alcoholic Beverage Control’s regional office, Carol Mawyer, refused to provide details other than saying that the bureau’s agents cunningly wear plainclothes.

“This has been an extremely trying experience,” Daly wrote in her statement. “It is something to this day I cannot understand or believe has come to this point.”

Follow Eric on Twitter and send education-related story tips to erico@dailycaller.com.

Legalizing marijuana is hard. Regulating a pot industry is even harder.

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Legalizing marijuana is hard. Regulating a pot industry is even harder.

By Mike Konczal, Published: June 29, 2013 at 9:00 am

It’s not every day that a former Microsoft executive holds a press conference to announce his new venture into the exciting and profitable world of drug dealing.

But that’s exactly what happened earlier this month when Jamen Shively, a former Microsoft corporate strategy manager, announced that he wants to create the equivalent of Starbucks in the newly legalized pot industry in Washington state.

All this is happening at the same time that the Washington State Liquor Control Board is looking to finalize rules on the new, legal marijuana industry. And one of the major debates right now among board members is how much they ought to prevent or encourage the kind of market consolidation in which a few firms dominate the whole industry.

As Chris Marr of the Liquor Control Board argued, “How do you prevent a Microsoft millionaire from getting this idea and deciding that — playing by the rules — they’re going to dominate the market?” And if that is the concern, what can economics inform us about how this new market should be set up? [Chris Marr sounds like an arrogant government jerk!!!!]

To provide some background, voters in Washington state passed Initiative 502 last fall in a general ballot, creating a statewide legal market in pot. Unlike Colorado, which has passed a bill to expand its medical marijuana industry and make pot legally available to everyone, Washington is folding pot under regulations for the liquor industry. As such, the Washington Liquor Board has regulatory control over the new marijuana industry.

As with alcohol, a marijuana firm is classified as a producer, processor or retailer. The first question, therefore, is how aggressively regulators should try to check the market power of front-line sellers. As of now, if there is excess demand for licenses, which cost $1,000 each, they will be subject to lottery. Licenses can’t be traded in a secondary market, and it is possible that the regulators will cap the number of licenses per holder.

The law also requires regulation for public safety and public health. As with the tobacco industry, voters don’t want firms marketing and selling pot to underage users. And public health officials are concerned about companies marketing to “problem users” who would like to quit or reduce their usage but find themselves unable to.

If that’s the case, then perhaps having pot dealers with large market power is a good idea. Economists usually consider monopolists a problem because they produce too little of a product and charge too much for it, earning substantial profits. [Which is why marijuana should NOT be regulated by the government] But that could be a good thing for the pot industry. Safe profit margins mean that a firm might be less likely to compete on price for every potential consumer — and also much more likely to follow the law.

Yet people involved with the Washington law have two main responses to this. The first is that firms with market power could go outside the market and use their extensive profits and influence to exert political power.

“The idea is to prevent the retail industry from becoming so large that they have enough wealth and power to roll over anyone trying to enforce, expand or update the public-health-focused rules that are designed to protect the public’s health and safety,” says Roger Roffman, a University of Washington professor and author of the forthcoming book “Marijuana Nation.”

Second, consolidated firms may that they themselves pose threats to public health. “If a firm has market power, the profits they get from selling above market costs means that they can have a bigger marketing department,” says UCLA public policy professor Mark Kleiman. “In the real world, spending here will increase their market share by creating additional problem users. This, combined with lobbying efforts that will rival the alcohol industry in terms of avoiding taxes and adjusting the rules, is a major problem.”

A third argument comes from University of Chicago economics professor E. Glen Weyl. He argues that “long-term players who have market power have an incentive to get people addicted. A monopolist, in particular, has a big incentive to advertise to get people addicted over the long-term, as they are sure to reap all those rewards.” If a marijuana firm has a monopoly, then the financial gains of turning someone into a heavy, problem user of a product (rather than a specific brand) will all go to that firm. A market with smaller, fragmented firms with greater turnover would be a check on this dynamic.

Both Weyl and Kleiman argue that Washington should consider bolder ideas to regulate the industry. Weyl suggests some sort of mandatory turnover policy to discourage firms from turning people into problem users. Another possibility, which Kleiman considers, is to create a state-run nonprofit retail firm that has no interest in creating problem users or expanding the market. (Given that pot is still illegal at the federal level, this isn’t likely to happen).

Market consolidation is also an issue when it comes to a firm’s vertical structure. Under Washington state law, if a firm is a retailer, it can’t be a producer as well as a processor. This is meant to fragment the vertical chain of production, and it contrasts with Colorado’s system, in which dealers are required to grow 70 percent of what they sell (as that is how the medical marijuana system works).

Another related economic issue is the location of pot retailers. The law in Washington, as currently structured, requires pot retailers to be at least 1,000 feet away from a school, day-care facility, playground, teen arcade game center, recreation center, transit center or library. Though this may sound minor, in practice it means that it will be very difficult to put pot retailers in dense population spaces. Retailers might be limited to industrial or largely depopulated areas.

That could force what economists who study spatial models of economies call the agglomeration model — as when certain kinds of restaurants all cluster together to create an area people go to for certain goods. As Weyl notes, “often ethnic restaurants cluster into neighborhoods so that people can find the best places, creating ethnic neighborhoods. Do we want a ‘pot town’ to grow up in our cities? Perhaps not, but that is the logical consequence of forcing dealers away from a convenience model.”

Kleiman thinks the main issue with regard to pot retailers’ ultimate location has more to do with advertising and discretion than anything else. “An alcoholic trying to quit drinking will pass by alcohol in bars, billboards and grocery stores. That person uses up a lot of emotional energy always having to say no.” Instead of focusing on 1,000 feet within certain buildings, the bigger issue Kleiman emphasizes is whether storefronts and signs aggressively advertise their product.

It’s important to get these issues right because they interact with the three background constraints on this new market. The first is the black market, while the second is the legal medical marijuana market. For some reason, the medical marijuana market won’t be taxed, while the new legal market will be taxed around 25 percent. (The black market is, of course, not taxed at all.)

Note that if the price goes too high, or if the location restrictions prove too inconvenient, pot consumers might just stick with medical marijuana or the black market. State lawmakers are currently trying to get the medical marijuana market folded under the same regulations that the Liquor Board is creating for the legal pot market, and Mark Kleiman notes that police may need to escalate crackdowns on illegal distribution as they legalize the market.

A third constraint is the federal government, which enforces laws that still make pot illegal. If legalization is seen as a disaster, it is possible that the federal government will move to shut down the process by preempting state law. But even if it doesn’t, background laws will probably hurt the scale and efficiency of pot retailers.

As Jack Finlaw explains, since marijuana is banned at the federal level, new pot retailers “often cannot conduct their businesses through banks. They also cannot deduct business expenses from their federal taxes.” It is possible the normal interactions between businesses that allow them to thrive — things like having a legal bank account — won’t be immediately available.

Markets are constructed through laws and regulations, and the market for pot that is being created in Washington state is no exception. The regulators see how the consolidated alcohol industry is able to avoid taxation and accountability and are determined to avoid these problems in the new pot industry. Thus this market may help economists understand a crucial role of regulations that has lapsed in recent decades: the role of government in curbing the excess power of the private sector.

Mike Konczal is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, where he focuses on financial regulation, inequality and unemployment. He writes a weekly column for Wonkblog. Follow him on Twitter here.

Marijuana's march toward mainstream confounds feds

Marijuana's march toward mainstream confounds feds

NANCY BENAC, Associated Press, By NANCY BENAC and ALICIA A. CALDWELL, Associated Press

Updated 11:21 am, Saturday, June 29, 2013

WASHINGTON (AP) — It took 50 years for American attitudes about marijuana to zigzag from the paranoia of "Reefer Madness" to the excesses of Woodstock back to the hard line of "Just Say No."

The next 25 years took the nation from Bill Clinton, who famously "didn't inhale," to Barack Obama, who most emphatically did.

Now, in just a few short years, public opinion has moved so dramatically toward general acceptance that even those who champion legalization are surprised at how quickly attitudes are changing and states are moving to approve the drug — for medical use and just for fun.

It is a moment in America that is rife with contradictions:

—People are looking more kindly on marijuana even as science reveals more about the drug's potential dangers, particularly for young people.

—States are giving the green light to the drug in direct defiance of a federal prohibition on its use.

—Exploration of the potential medical benefit is limited by high federal hurdles to research.

Washington policymakers seem reluctant to deal with any of it.

Richard Bonnie, a University of Virginia law professor who worked for a national commission that recommended decriminalizing marijuana in 1972, sees the public taking a big leap from prohibition to a more laissez-faire approach without full deliberation.

"It's a remarkable story historically," he says. "But as a matter of public policy, it's a little worrisome."

More than a little worrisome to those in the anti-drug movement.

"We're on this hundred-mile-an-hour freight train to legalizing a third addictive substance," says Kevin Sabet, a former drug policy adviser in the Obama administration, lumping marijuana with tobacco and alcohol.

Legalization strategist Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, likes the direction the marijuana smoke is wafting. But knows his side has considerable work yet to do.

"I'm constantly reminding my allies that marijuana is not going to legalize itself," he says.

___

By the numbers:

Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes since California voters made the first move in 1996. Voters in Colorado and Washington state took the next step last year and approved pot for recreational use. Alaska is likely to vote on the same question in 2014, and a few other states are expected to put recreational use on the ballot in 2016.

Nearly half of adults have tried marijuana, 12 percent of them in the past year, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.

Fifty-two percent of adults favor legalizing marijuana, up 11 percentage points just since 2010, according to Pew.

Sixty percent think Washington shouldn't enforce federal laws against marijuana in states that have approved its use.

___

Where California led the charge on medical marijuana, the next chapter in this story is being written in Colorado and Washington state.

Policymakers there are grappling with all sorts of sticky issues revolving around one central question: How do you legally regulate the production, distribution, sale and use of marijuana for recreational purposes when federal law bans all of the above?

The Justice Department began reviewing the matter after last November's election. But seven months later, states still are on their own.

Both sides in the debate paid close attention when Obama said in December that "it does not make sense, from a prioritization point of view, for us to focus on recreational drug users in a state that has already said that under state law that's legal."

Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat who favors legalization, predicts Washington will take a hands-off approach, based on Obama's comments. But he's quick to add: "We would like to see that in writing."

The federal government already has taken a similar approach toward users in states that have approved marijuana for medical use.

It doesn't go after pot-smoking cancer patients or grandmas with glaucoma. But it also has made clear that people who are in the business of growing, selling and distributing marijuana on a large scale are subject to potential prosecution for violations of the Controlled Substances Act — even in states that have legalized medical use.

___

There's a political calculus for the president, or any other politician, in all of this.

Younger people, who tend to vote more Democratic, are more supportive of legalizing marijuana, as are people in the West, where the libertarian streak runs strong.

Despite increasing public acceptance of marijuana overall, politicians know there are complications that could come with commercializing an addictive substance. Opponents of pot are particularly worried that legalization will result in increased use by young people.

Sabet frames the conundrum for Obama: "Do you want to be the president that stops a popular cause, especially a cause that's popular within your own party? Or do you want to be the president that enables youth drug use that will have ramifications down the road?"

Marijuana legalization advocates offer politicians a rosier scenario, in which legitimate pot businesses eager to keep their operating licenses make sure not to sell to minors.

"Having a regulated system is the only way to ensure that we're not ceding control of this popular substance to the criminal market and to black marketeers," says Aaron Smith, executive director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, a trade group for legal pot businesses in the U.S.

___

While the federal government hunkers down, Colorado and Washington state are moving forward on their own with regulations covering everything from how plants will be grown to how many stores will be allowed.

Tim Lynch, director of the libertarian Cato Institute's Project on Criminal Justice, predicts "the next few years are going to be messy" as states work to bring a black-market industry into the sunshine.

California's experience with medical marijuana offers a window into potential pitfalls that can come with wider availability of pot.

Dispensaries for medical marijuana have proliferated in the state, and regulation has been lax, prompting a number of cities around the state to ban dispensaries.

In May, the California Supreme Court ruled that cities and counties can ban medical marijuana dispensaries. A few weeks later, Los Angeles voters approved a ballot measure that limits the number of pot shops in the city to 135, down from an estimated high of about 1,000.

This isn't full-scale buyer's remorse, but more a course correction before the inevitable next push for full-on legalization in the state.

___

Growing support for legalization doesn't mean everybody wants to light up: Barely one in 10 Americans used pot in the past year.

Those who do want to see marijuana legalized range from libertarians who oppose much government intervention to people who want to see an activist government aggressively regulate marijuana production and sales.

For some, money talks: Why let drug cartels rake in untaxed profits when a cut could go into government coffers?

There are other threads in the growing acceptance of pot.

People think it's not as dangerous as once believed. They worry about high school kids getting an arrest record. They see racial inequity in the way marijuana laws are enforced. They're weary of the "war on drugs."

Opponents counter with a 2012 study finding that regular use of marijuana during teen years can lead to a long-term drop in IQ, and another study indicating marijuana use can induce and exacerbate psychotic illness in susceptible people. They question the notion that regulating pot will bring in big money, saying revenue estimates are grossly exaggerated.

They reject the claim that prisons are bulging with people convicted of simple possession by citing federal statistics showing only a small percentage of federal and state inmates are behind bars for that alone.

They warn that baby boomers who draw on their own innocuous experiences with pot are overlooking the much higher potency of today's marijuana.

In 2009, concentrations of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in pot, averaged close to 10 percent in marijuana, compared with about 4 percent in the 1980s, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

"If marijuana legalization was about my old buddies at Berkeley smoking in People's Park once a week I don't think many of us would care that much," says Sabet, who helped to found Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a group that opposes legalization. "It's really about creating a new industry that's going to target kids and target minorities and our vulnerable populations just like our legal industries do today."

___

So how bad, or good, is pot?

J. Michael Bostwick, a psychiatrist at the Mayo Clinic, set out to sort through more than 100 sometimes conflicting studies after his teenage son became addicted to pot, and turned his findings into a 22-page article for Mayo Clinic Proceedings in 2012.

For all of the talk that smoking pot is no big deal, Bostwick says he determined that "it was a very big deal. There were addiction issues. There were psychosis issues.

But there was also this very large body of literature suggesting that it could potentially have very valuable pharmaceutical applications but the research was stymied" by federal barriers.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse says research is ongoing.

Dr. Nora Volkow, the institute's director, worries that legalizing pot will result in increased use of marijuana by young people, and impair their brain development.

"Think about it: Do you want a nation where your young people are stoned?" she asks.

Partisans on both sides think people in other states will keep a close eye on Colorado and Washington as they decide what happens next.

But past predictions on pot have been wildly off-base.

"Reefer Madness," the 1936 propaganda movie that pot fans turned into a cult classic in the 1970s, spins a tale of dire consequences "ending often in incurable insanity."

___

Associated Press writers Kristen Wyatt in Denver, Gene Johnson in Seattle, Lauran Neergaard in Washington and AP researcher Monika Mathur in Washington contributed to this report.

___

Follow Nancy Benac on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/nbenac and Alicia Caldwell at http://www.twitter.com/acaldwellap

Landlord challenges feds in Calif medical pot case

Landlord challenges feds in Calif medical pot case

By GREG RISLING, Associated Press

Updated 7:10 am, Saturday, June 29, 2013

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — The feds never kicked down the door of Tony Jalali's building and raided the medical pot shops that rented space from him.

Letters were sent to him informing him that having a dispensary in his Orange County office building violated U.S. law and it could be taken from him. Once a lawsuit was filed against him by the U.S. government, Jalali booted the lone remaining clinic.

Jalali now is fighting back, challenging the efforts of federal prosecutors who are using a well-established law that allows for the seizure of property linked to criminal activity. Jalali, 59, believes he's been unfairly targeted in an ongoing crackdown on pot shops across California.

"I have not even been charged with or convicted of a crime," said Jalali, who denies ever receiving notice letters. "What the government has done is wrong and we expect a federal court to stop it."

Jalali, joined by a Virginia-based public interest law firm, argues that it's unconstitutional to take his building, estimated to be worth $1.5 million, because forfeitures must be consistent with conduct. Jalali said he had no involvement with the dispensary, Releaf Health & Wellness.

As one of more than two dozen landlords ensnared in the efforts to close California pot stores, he likely faces a tough battle. The U.S. government has seized property linked to criminal activity for nearly three decades. Forfeitures accounted for nearly $4.2 billion last fiscal year.

Renting or using a property for the purpose of distributing drugs is a federal crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Federal prosecutors say the lawsuits are a measured approach targeting landlords who were notified that their tenants were operating illegally.

"Landlords across this district should be well aware by this time that if they continue to rent to pot stores, they will eventually be the recipient of a letter or the target of a lawsuit," said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman with the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles.

While there's little debate about the government's right to seize funds from money laundering or drug cartels, Jalali and his fellow pot landlords are not accused of selling the drug. Medical pot is legal in the state, but at odds with federal law.

Some observers said landlords are caught in the middle of conflicting state and federal laws.

"I think the dispensaries are a more reasonable target than the landlords," said John Worrall, a professor of criminology at University of Texas at Dallas. "But by providing the facilities they are in fact facilitating (a crime). They are doing their best to comply with the state. It's a bit of a gray area."

Critics say the civil forfeiture process is misguided because people have to prove their innocence to keep their property. Many property owners have settled out of fear while maintaining they did nothing wrong.

"It becomes unsafe for property owners to challenge the law," said lawyer Richard Hamlin, who represented a Santa Fe Springs building owner who reached a deal with federal prosecutors. "If you lose, you have a huge loss. It's like capital punishment for the property."

About two dozen of the 30 or so cases filed in the seven-county Central District of California, which stretches from San Luis Obispo to Riverside, have been settled with landlords agreeing not to rent space to dispensaries for several years.

In about half the settlements, landlords also forked over tens of thousands of dollars, including $100,000 from an Orange County building owner who had eight dispensaries as tenants.

Jalali, a software engineer who emigrated to the U.S. from Iran in the late 1970s, said he didn't think he'd get in trouble because medical pot is legal under state law. His building houses a dentist office and several other businesses.

"Civil forfeiture is the government's weapon of choice in enforcing drug laws," said attorney Scott Bullock of the Institute for Justice, the law firm that has joined Jalali in the lawsuit.

"We think it's important for this practice to be stopped and it will continue to be abused elsewhere unless a precedent is set that says it can't be done," Bullock said.

In Oakland, the city has intervened to try and halt the closure and forfeiture of Harborside Health Center, which is billed as the nation's largest pot dispensary. City officials have said closing down the store would lead to a health and safety crisis because many of the more than 100,000 patients would turn to the street to score the drug.

Richard Tamor, an attorney representing Harborside's landlord, said federal authorities could have insisted that the clinic close, rather than take legal action to seize the building.

"When you know something is going on and it's open and notorious, instead of filing a lawsuit and spending scarce government resources, just send a letter," said Tamor, who added his client would be willing to talk with federal prosecutors to resolve her case.

The four U.S. attorneys in the state targeted dispensaries because they were violating federal law and weren't complying with state law by making huge profits. More than 600 pot shops have closed in Southern California and federal prosecutors have filed criminal charges against only three dispensary operators. Jalali's former tenants were not among those who were charged.

Jalali's lawyers contend the city of Anaheim, which joined the suit, is colluding with federal prosecutors to share in the forfeiture spoils. Jalali would have to be convicted of a crime for the city to seize his building under state law, his attorneys said.

Jalali think it's hypocritical for Anaheim to crack down on dispensaries while it also benefits from the industry. The city, known as the home to Disneyland, hosts a medical marijuana expo at its convention center next week. A city official declined comment.

So Feds will slice you and dice you looking for drugs???

Source

Feds: Doctor surgically removes meth from woman's pelvic area

By Cristina Silva Associated Press Fri Jun 28, 2013 10:57 PM

PHOENIX -- A doctor surgically removed a one-pound package of methamphetamine from a woman’s pelvic area after she allegedly tried to smuggle the drugs into Arizona from Mexico, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman said Friday.

Claudia Ibarra, 31, was taken into custody this week at the Port of San Luis after federal officers suspected attempted smuggling. She crossed the border alone and on foot and is a U.S. citizen from the border city of Yuma.

Ibarra was searched at the border and then transported to a nearby medical facility where the doctor found and removed the drug package. She was stopped after exhibiting common signs of potential drug smuggling, said spokeswoman Teresa Small, who declined to elaborate.

“When they were patting her down, they realized there was something down there,” Small said.

The methamphetamine had been wrapped in black tape and a condom and inserted into Ibarra’s body, officials said. She was turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations.

Officials said it is not unusual for narcotics smugglers to hide drugs inside human bodies, either by having people swallow the package or through other means. A medical official was tasked with removing the package because exposure to the methamphetamine could have killed Ibarra, officials said.

It was not known if she had an attorney or had previously been arrested on drug-smuggling charges.

Police need warrant to open package that reeks of pot

Police need warrant to open package that reeks of pot, court says

By Maura Dolan

June 27, 2013, 11:38 a.m.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Police need a warrant to open a package in the mail that reeks of marijuana, the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday, rejecting a prosecutor’s arguments that a search was warranted under a novel “plain smell” test.

In a ruling written by Justice Goodwin Liu, the state high court dismissed arguments by Santa Barbara County prosecutors that contraband could be searched under a theory that would extend the “plain sight” test to “plain smell.” Police are generally entitled to seize evidence that is in plain sight.

Although officers had the legal right to take the FedEx package, they should have obtained a warrant before opening it, the court said. The package contained 444 grams of marijuana, and the alleged sender was charged with selling and shipping marijuana.

“There is no dispute as to whether the police lawfully seized the package without a warrant,” Liu wrote. “Because there was no justification for an immediate search of the package once it was seized, the police had no derivative authority to search the package later at the police station without a warrant."

Police took the package from a FedEx office after an employee called to report that she smelled marijuana. Officers eventually opened the package at the police station.

Thursday’s ruling was a victory for the defendant in the case, who sought to prevent prosecutors from presenting evidence of the marijuana because he said the package was unlawfully searched. The marijuana evidence must now be suppressed.

The court did not rule on whether a “plain smell” test was ever legally appropriate because prosecutors had failed to argue the theory in the trial court. The court said they were procedurally barred from introducing the argument on appeal.

ATF uses fake drugs, big bucks to snare suspects

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ATF uses fake drugs, big bucks to snare suspects

Brad Heath, USA TODAY 10:50 a.m. EDT June 28, 2013

ROMEOVILLE, Ill. — The three men in the back seat were supposed to be ready for battle.

They were waiting for a phone call that would launch a daring and dangerous crime, sending them charging through the front door of a Mexican drug ring's stash house to steal 50 pounds or more of cocaine from three armed guards. Their plan was to disguise themselves as police officers, tie up the guards, and slip away with a half-million dollars worth of drugs. If tying them up didn't work, they'd kill them all.

Only the small army of federal agents watching them knew that it was all a lie.

There was no house. No drugs.

And the only things waiting for them when the call came were a team of camouflaged federal agents with rifles and stun grenades, and the promise of a long prison sentence for a plot to steal and re-sell non-existent cocaine. stash houses 6

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the agency in charge of enforcing the nation's gun laws, has locked up more than 1,000 people by enticing them to rob drug stash houses that did not exist. The ploy has quietly become a key part of the ATF's crime-fighting arsenal, but also a controversial one: The stings are so aggressive and costly that some prosecutors have refused to allow them. They skirt the boundaries of entrapment, and in the past decade they have left at least seven suspects dead.

The ATF has more than quadrupled its use of such drug house operations since 2003, and officials say it intends to conduct even more as it seeks to lock up the "trigger pullers" who menace some of the most dangerous parts of inner-city America. Yet the vast scale of that effort has so far remained unknown outside the U.S. Justice Department.

To gauge its extent, USA TODAY reviewed thousands of pages of court records and agency files, plus hours of undercover recordings. Those records — many of which had never been made public — tell the story of how an ATF strategy meant to target armed and violent criminals has regularly used risky and expensive undercover stings to ensnare low-level crooks who jump at the bait of a criminal windfall.

In many cases, the records show the ATF accomplished precisely what it set out to do, arresting men outfitted with heavy weapons and body armor, and linked to repeated, and sometimes bloody, crimes. In the process, however, the agency also scooped up small-time drug dealers and even people with no criminal records at all, including Army Rangers. It has offered would-be robbers the chance to score millions of dollars of cocaine for a few hours of work. In at least one case, the ATF had to supply its supposed armed robbers with a gun.

The stings are the latest and perhaps clearest reflection of a broad shift by federal law enforcement away from solving crimes in favor of investigating people the government thinks are criminals. Such tactics are common in law enforcement's efforts to prevent terrorist attacks, but they are also becoming a staple of its fight against everyday street crime.

Critics, among them federal judges, say the ATF's operations are flawed. In an opinion last year, Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago dismissed the drug-house stings as a "disreputable tactic" that creates "an increased risk of entrapment because of the potential for the extensive use of inducements and unrealistic temptations to encourage the suspects' criminal conduct."

The stings work like this: When agents identify someone they suspect is ripping off drug dealers, they send in an undercover operative posing as a disgruntled courier or security guard to pitch the idea of stealing a shipment from his bosses. The potential score is almost always more than 5 kilograms of cocaine — enough drugs to fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars on the street, or to trigger sentences of 10 years or more in prison.

When the target shows up ready to commit the robbery, he and anyone else he brings with him are arrested and charged with a raft of federal crimes, the most serious of which is conspiring to sell the non-existent cocaine.

The arrests don't come cheap. A single case can go on for months and require dozens of federal agents and local police officers.

Former ATF supervisor David Chipman, who left the agency last year, said the public deserves to know more about how the ATF is using its resources. "There are huge benefits, and there are huge downsides," he said. "Do you want police to solve crimes, or do you want them to go out and prevent crimes that haven't occurred yet? What are the things you're willing to do so that your kid doesn't get shot?"

A CRACK DEALER AND A BIG SCORE

William Alexander boasted that he was exactly the type of armed and dangerous criminal the ATF is after. He was an experienced drug robber, he told an undercover agent, and a chief of Chicago's notorious Four Corner Hustlers, who commanded 17 blocks on the city's west side and had men ready to kill at his command.

Alexander was 32 years old the afternoon in January 2011 when he first slid into the passenger seat of an undercover ATF agent's pickup in a 7-Eleven parking lot in Woodridge, Ill., one of the middle-class suburbs that sprawl out west of Chicago. Alexander, 5 feet tall, introduced himself as "Little." He was, by then, a career crack dealer and recent cosmetology school dropout, though he was also out of jail and off parole for the first time in his adult life.

And while his record was long, it hardly identified him as dangerous.

Most of the people the ATF arrested in drug-house stings last year — about 80% — already had criminal records that included at least two felony convictions before the agency targeted them. But 13% had never before been found guilty of a serious crime, and even some of those with long rap sheets had not been charged with anything that would mark them as violent.

ATF officials reject the idea that they should focus only on people with violent records. "Are we supposed to wait for him to commit a (obscenity) murder before we start to target him as a bad guy?" said Charlie Smith, the head of ATF's Special Operations Division, which is responsible for approving each sting. "Are we going to sit back and say, well, this guy doesn't have a bad record? OK, so you know, throw him back out there, let him kill somebody, then when he gets a bad record, then we're going to put him in jail?"

For all the times Alexander was arrested — court records list dozens — police never found him with a gun, and he was charged with a violent crime only once, after his girlfriend, Demonisha Winters, accused him of domestic battery. The charge was dropped a few weeks later, and Winters said in an interview that Alexander never hit her.

What he did do was sell crack, though seldom more than a gram or two at a time. When Alexander was 18, police in Kokomo, Ind., caught him trying to flush two baggies of crack down an apartment toilet. Four years after that, Chicago police arrested him with a half-gram. The next year, they caught him with 10 baggies of crack. Two years later, they caught him carrying a gram of crack and a half-gram of heroin, worth about $40, according to police reports and court files.

The ATF was about to offer him something much bigger.

The undercover agent, Andrew Karceski, introduced himself as Joe. He pulled his truck around the corner, cut the engine and flipped a switch to show Alexander a hidden compartment, called a "trap," commonly used for running drugs. "They promise you one thing, and they (obscenity), they make all the money, and I take all the (obscenity) risk," he said in an exchange captured on a blurry hidden-camera video.

"They haven't paid me in two months now, and that's (obscenity)," he said. "It's just got to a point where I got to feed my kids, too, you know what I'm saying?"

"You're (obscenity) right," Alexander replied.

Then the agent laid out the basics of his proposal: Once a month, he said, his bosses had him pick up a load of cocaine from a house in the suburbs. They used a different house every time, always with two or three men inside, always armed. But the payoff would be big: "I know there's going to be (obscenity) in there. I know that," he said, a reference to drugs. "How much I can't guarantee, but I know there's going to be big (obscenity) in there. I've never seen cash, but I don't know."

Alexander said it wouldn't be a problem. "I got guys I could just say, 'Go in there and shoot everybody.' I got guys that I'll say they're smart enough to know go in there and lay everybody down without hurting anybody. I know (obscenity) that will get it done," he said.

"We'll plan it right," he promised. "We've got enough time."

'I CALL THIS GOOD LAW ENFORCEMENT'

The ATF's drug-house stings began in Miami in the early 1990s. Drug cartels were moving huge quantities of cocaine through South Florida, creating rich targets for criminals brazen enough to try to poach the shipments. The robberies were turning into shootouts — or, worse, attacks on innocent people when the robbers got the wrong address — and ATF agents wanted a way to stop them. At first, agents actually set up fake drug houses, loaded with fake cocaine. When that led to car chases and shootings in residential neighborhoods, they adopted a fictional approach instead.

The stings proliferated over the past decade. Last year, the ATF said it arrested 208 people in drug-house operations, compared with 41 a decade earlier. Most of the operations took place in Miami, Chicago, Phoenix and a few other cities, though court records show the ATF has conducted them in at least 22 states.

At the same time, the ATF dispatched agents around the country to teach the technique to other local and federal police agencies, including the U.S. Border Patrol.

As drug-house operations became more common, the agency issued a confidential order laying down the ground rules for conducting them. Officials instructed agents to make sure Justice Department lawyers would be willing to prosecute "home invasion" cases, and told them to try other techniques first, including executing search warrants. Most of the rules covered the tactical details of safely arresting the suspects.

The undated manual, a copy of which was obtained by USA TODAY, included no guidelines for selecting appropriate targets. ATF spokesman Mike Campbell said the agency has since updated the rules; ATF would not provide a copy. He said the agency's tactics have been approved by ATF lawyers and federal prosecutors; each operation must also be reviewed by field supervisors and senior officials in Washington who can shut it down if it's clear to them the targets aren't armed robbers.

"We lay out the scenario. So if they're not career robbers, I'm not for that," said Richard Marianos, an assistant ATF director who supervised some of the investigations when he led the agency's Washington field office.

Distinguishing drug robbers from loudmouths isn't easy. Drug dealers seldom report robberies to the police, so few of the robberies are investigated, let alone solved. Agents rely instead on scraps of intelligence gathered from informants (usually other criminals), convicts, 911 calls, neighborhood complaints and local police to identify and target robbery crews.

A year after the ATF arrested Alexander's crew, for example, one of its informants arranged a meeting at a Baltimore train station with two men whom city police believed to be "armed drug traffickers." One of them, Edward Ellis, had been convicted a decade earlier of armed robbery; the other, Corey Barnes, had been convicted only of street-level drug sales. The informant told them they could score up to 15 kilograms of cocaine (easily worth more than $300,000).

The informant warned them that the guards would be armed, but Ellis said they would be ready. "We got some artillery; it's just making sure you got the right artillery for the job," he said. "We ain't coming with just two handguns when a (obscenity) need more than that." But when it was time for the robbery two weeks later, none of the would-be robbers could find a car. They paid a friend to drive them. Two had pistols; a third man showed up armed with a pellet gun, according to court records.

Ellis was sentenced in April to eight years and four months in federal prison. His lawyer, Tamara Theiss, told the judge that as the case unfolded, it had become clear that the men had to go out and find weapons to use during the robbery, suggesting that if they were robbers, they were not actually armed until after the ATF approached them. "This was simply an overwhelming temptation," she said, involving "a great deal of money … in a relatively easy way." The ATF's stings "are intended to ensnare the worst of the worst, the most dangerous people in society. It's clear that they ensnared someone very different," she said.

U.S. District Court Judge James Bredar cut her off.

"In our society, what we say is the touchstone of culpability is what's in your mind, what did you intend to do," he told Ellis. People who kill by accident generally aren't punished; people who plan to kill but don't are. "No actual crime was committed, nor could it have been," but Ellis nonetheless "demonstrated a propensity to commit a very serious offense," Bredar said.

"This is a city where violence is rampant and the government is bound to undertake operations like this to find and stop those who are predisposed to this," said Bredar. "I call this good law enforcement."

A HALF-MILLION DOLLARS OF COCAINE

Alexander met the undercover agent again in early February 2011, climbing into the passenger seat of the agent's pickup in the parking lot of his apartment complex.

He had a plan: When the agent went inside to pick up his regular shipment of cocaine, Alexander and his crew would follow close behind him, guns drawn. They could tie up the guards, Alexander said. Or they could start shooting. "If you want us to get rid of 'em, (obscenity) get rid of them, too," he said. "It's whatever. … You just said as long as we get in and get out we good, right?"

Right, the agent said — especially if they got to the house early, before other couriers had a chance to pick up their own shipments. "When I get there early, there's a stack. There's 20 — 20, 30 40 (kilos). There's a ton if I'm first," he said.

But to get it, the agent reminded him, they'd have to get past two or three armed men. "You were saying revolver, man," the agent said, turning the conversation back to the guns the robbers would need. "You get on anything else? You were talking you're trying to get something a little better than that. … Find anything?" stash houses 5

William Alexander and his two accomplices were arrested with a single gun, a five-shot revolver that an ATF report concluded had been manufactured before 1918. The gun was unloaded; agents found ammunition in a van in which the suspects were transported after they were arrested, but the bullets were the wrong size for the gun.(Photo: ATF)

Alexander paused. "Tools? Nah," he said, referring to guns. But it wouldn't be a problem. A friend of his would be coming down to meet them in a few minutes, and he had the guns they needed, Alexander said. But he seemed more interested in talking about the money.

Alexander predicted he could unload 1-kilogram bricks of cocaine quickly for $20,000 to $22,000, putting the value of the heist at between $400,000 and $880,000. He said he could make even more by cooking it into crack and selling it on the street.

Alexander looked around and wondered what was taking his friend so long to show up. What happens if the police roll through and see them talking, he asked.

"Nothing against the law about talking," the agent said.

DOES IT GO TOO FAR?

Federal courts have largely approved of the ATF stings, though some have also expressed unease.

A little more than three months after agents first approached Alexander, for example, a federal appeals court in Chicago called the stings "tawdry," saying the ploy "seems to be directed at unsophisticated, and perhaps desperate, defendants who easily snap at the bait." The judges faulted agents for violating their own rules about recording meetings, but ultimately rejected the idea that the stings amount to entrapment.

Entrapment is a narrow concept. The government can't pressure an innocent person to commit a crime. But it can — and routinely does — offer people who are predisposed to crime the opportunity to commit one. Police agencies have been conducting sting operations for decades to ensnare child abusers, drug dealers, even congressmen, though the drug-house stings rely more heavily on fiction than most.

"It wears me out when you hear people sit there and say, 'Well, you created the dope,' " Smith, ATF's special operations chief, said. "Yeah, you know what? In this scenario, we did. And thank God we did. Because you know what? Now because of the fact that we did create this, my home, the home next door to me … isn't going to get their door kicked in looking for drugs that may have existed or maybe didn't exist because they had the wrong address. So when are we going to start sitting back and realizing, hey, if these guys have an opportunity and we can knock that off before it gets to that, it's better for us."

Still, the combination of the fictional nature of the crimes and the government's reliance on confidential informants to help entice prospective robbers has caused problems.

In one case, an ATF informant named David Villamonte testified that he targeted a Florida man named Cassio Slowden for a drug-house sting after parking next to him at a gas station and chatting about prison tattoos. "By his demeanor, I could tell he was young, and that he was involved in the elements," Villamonte said. When Slowden told him he had some marijuana to sell, Villamonte concluded he must have stolen it. Slowden's lawyer argued that he had been entrapped; a jury acquitted him of federal drug and weapons charges last year.

Another informant, Victor Bugarin, testified that he spoke to a suspected San Diego drug robber named Thomas Johnson only a few times before enticing him to participate in a 30-kilogram cocaine heist. Confronted with phone records showing he'd been making repeated phone calls to Johnson over more than four months, the informant admitted that his story was "apparently not" true. Johnson said he went through with the robbery plan only because Bugarin said he needed the money to keep from being evicted. A jury last year acquitted him of all but one charge; the remaining count is on appeal.

The ATF's Marianos said such conduct is not allowed. "We have many of these cases where we've stood down and said we're not going to do this because this informant is way off the playbook here," he said. Other cases were abandoned because supervisors thought the targets were inappropriate, he said.

Acquittals are uncommon. USA TODAY was able to track 512 completed prosecutions; among those, juries acquitted 22 people, because jurors either thought that they had been entrapped or weren't convinced that they had been involved enough to be part of the conspiracy. At least 89 other prosecutions are still pending in federal court. William Alexander is shown meeting with an undercover ATF agent to discuss how he could rob a drug stash house in 2011.

'I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE PREPARED, MAN'

The day before Alexander was to commit the robbery, the ATF agent pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building to go over the plan one more time.

Alexander asked him to come upstairs while he and a friend smoked marijuana. The agent declined. Then Alexander asked for a ride to a store so they could pick up some police costumes. Later, the agent said. Did they have the pistols all lined up, he asked? "Ah, yeah," Alexander replied and bit at his fingernails. "I'm gonna get on top of that today, though."

"I'm saying, man, if it's gonna be half-assed, let's just blow it off and not (obscenity) do it and wait," the agent said. "This is a one-time deal, dude."

Another man, Hugh Midderhoff, 18, sat in the back seat, wrapped in a checkered jacket and big black hat. Like Alexander, he had a criminal record, including an arrest for possessing his neighbor's stolen television, but none of the charges were related to guns. "Hey, we can get another banger," he said to the agent. "That ain't going to be (obscenity)."

The agent told them he would know the next day where to pick up his drug shipment. They would meet again at lunchtime so they could be ready when the call came.

Nine minutes before noon the next day, Alexander called to say he still did not have enough guns. He was going to meet a friend to "grab the extra utensils," he said.

A half-hour later, Alexander called again. He couldn't get any more guns. "I was supposed to be prepared, man. I been waiting for this day all this time," he said. But he was undeterred. "I'm willing to go, man. I'll do it."

The agent was quiet for a minute. "Let me call you right back, man, and see what I can come up with," he said.

He called back a few minutes later. His cousin had another pistol they could borrow, the agent said. "He got one of those things," the agent said. "He could give it to you guys, and he'll just be in the car as you guys do your thing."

The robbery was on.

'POLICE. POLICE.'

The agent and another officer posing as his cousin picked Alexander up outside his apartment. Midderhoff and another accomplice, Devin Saunders, joined him. Saunders packed a revolver into a locked compartment in the back of the agents' pickup truck, next to the pistol that the ATF supplied, and the suspects piled into the back seat. Saunders pulled on a mask and gloves.

The agents drove them 6 miles to a parking lot in a tiny forest preserve sandwiched between warehouses and trucking companies where they said they could wait for the call that would tell them the location of the stash house. On the way, they went over the plan one last time; the agents confirmed that everyone knew what they were getting into, exchanges captured by a camera hidden on the dashboard.

When they got to the preserve, one of the agents said he needed to make sure his car was locked and disappeared. A minute later, the other answered his phone and climbed out into the parking lot to take the call.

Alexander sat in the back seat, talking on a cellphone with a girlfriend who was trying to follow them in a taxi. A few seconds later, he saw something and lowered the phone. "Police," he said softly and pointed out the window. "Police." Then came the boom of a pair of stun grenades that shook the truck as a team of agents in camouflage and olive body armor rushed toward them, rifles raised. "Out of the car," one yelled, as agents yanked the three men one at a time onto the asphalt. The process took less than 30 seconds.

Those seconds are the most dangerous and costly step of a drug-house sting.

They are dangerous because, if everything goes the way agents expect, they will be confronting a crew of heavily armed men amped up to commit an especially violent crime. To deal with that risk, the ATF steers the takedowns to remote places such as forest preserves or warehouses where it's easier to take suspects by surprise and where stray bullets won't endanger the public. Then it assembles a small army of federal agents and local police officers. Smith said he recalled one pre-arrest briefing with 170 officers.

Court records show ATF agents and local police officers working with them have shot at least 13 people during takedowns in drug-house stings since 2004, killing at least seven of them. Six were killed by local police officers conducting sting operations as part of an ATF task force. Most came after suspects fired at police or tried to run them down with cars.

Four months after Alexander was arrested, a Miami-Dade Police Department SWAT team shot and killed four members of a robbery crew after they showed up at a house they thought was packed with marijuana. One of the dead was the police informant who arranged the phony robbery. "He did it out of his own good, and he got killed for it," his brother, Rudy Betancourt, said. "He planned his funeral."

THE 15-YEAR MARK

By the time agents had Alexander in handcuffs, the ATF had spent more than a month investigating him. It was clear by then the agents weren't the only ones who had been lying.

Despite his promises of a police-style raid, Alexander and the others had brought no police uniforms or handcuffs. And despite his boasts that he was a gang chief who had men ready to kill at his command, he and his accomplices had managed to come up with only a single gun, a rusted five-shot revolver with a broken handle, old enough that an ATF report concluded it had been made sometime before World War I. The report confirmed the gun could have been lethal with the right kind of ammunition, but the men didn't have that, either. The six bullets they brought were the wrong size and, when loaded, would slide harmlessly out the front.

In court, though, none of that matters.

The drug-house stings are engineered to produce long prison sentences, and they typically do precisely that.

Using court records, USA TODAY identified 484 people convicted as a result of the stings, though there are almost certainly others. Two-thirds were sent to prison for more than a decade, a sentence longer than some states impose for shootings or robberies. At least 106 are serving 20-year sentences, and nine are serving life.

It's the drugs — though non-existent — that make that possible because federal law usually imposes tougher mandatory sentences for drugs than for guns. The more drugs the agents say are likely to be in the stash house, the longer the targets' sentence is likely to be. Conspiring to distribute 5 kilograms of cocaine usually carries a mandatory 10-year sentence — or 20 years if the target has already been convicted of a drug crime.

“When you go in there and you stamp him out with a 15-to-life sentence, you make an impact in that community.” — Charlie Smith, ATF

That fact has not escaped judges' notice. The ATF's stings give agents "virtually unfettered ability to inflate the amount of drugs supposedly in the house and thereby obtain a greater sentence," a federal appeals court in California said in 2010. "The ease with which the government can manipulate these factors makes us wary." Still, most courts have said tough federal sentencing laws leave them powerless to grant shorter prison terms.

To the ATF, long sentences are the point. Fifteen years "is the mark," Smith said.

"You get the guy, you get him with a gun, and you can lock him up for 18 months for the gun. All you did was give this guy street creds," Smith said. "When you go in there and you stamp him out with a 15-to-life sentence, you make an impact in that community."

That emphasis has led to another significant shift for ATF. Over the past decade, the total number of people prosecuted in weapons cases as a result of its investigations has dropped by about 28%, according to records compiled by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. The number of people charged by the agency with drug offenses jumped 26%. Prosecutors typically classify cases based on the charges likely to produce the longest sentence.

The ATF and federal prosecutors declined to comment on Alexander's case.

Unless he strikes a deal with prosecutors, Alexander is facing a minimum of 25 years in federal prison — and maybe more, based on the quantity of drugs he planned to steal and his long rap sheet. Saunders, whose participation in the plot lasted only a few hours, was sentenced to seven years and nine months in prison. He signed on, he said in an e-mail to USA TODAY, because "the money was tempting." Midderhoff has agreed to plead guilty and cooperate with the government; he won't be sentenced until Alexander's case is resolved. His lawyer, James Young, declined to comment.

Alexander's lawyer, Michael Falconer, said he wouldn't be opposed to the drug-house stings if he thought the ATF could make sure they were aimed only at people who were already ripping off drug dealers. "But on some level," he said, "it's Orwellian that they have to create crime to prevent crime."

In a controversial and aggressive program, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has sent hundreds of people to prison for plotting to rob drug stash houses.

Contributing: Lisa Tucker in McLean, Va.

Follow @bradheath on Twitter.

Chandler Police drug rip off goes bad and cop gets killed

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Chandler officer killed in shootout identified as Carlos Ledesma

by Nathan Gonzalez, Edythe Jensen, Michael Ferraresi and Laurie Merrill - Jul. 29, 2010 03:17 PM

The Arizona Republic

The Chandler undercover police officer who police said was killed in a Phoenix shootout with drug dealers has been identified as Carlos Ledesma, a 34-year-old father of two.

During a Thursday press conference, Chandler officials said Officer Ledesma was killed during an undercover operation to purchase a large quantity of marijuana. [That is a LIE. Later articles would discover that the Chandler Police were not making a drug buy, but the Chandler Police were selling the drugs]

"(He) gave his life last night for this community," said Chandler Police Chief Sherry Kiyler [What rubbish. He died because he was a police officer trying to rob some drug dealers that turned the tables on the cops and attempted to rob the cops first]

The Phoenix Police Department said its investigating the possibility that the drug dealers planned to rob the undercover officers. [Which is what later news articles will discover]

The names of the wounded officers and suspects were not released. Neither were photos of anybody involved.

Ledesma's widow spoke to Shawn Hancock, president of the Chandler Law Enforcement Association.

"She told me he died doing what he loved, he died serving the community," Hancock said. "It's something we all hope never happens, but we realize it's part of the job.'' [Serving the community??? What rubbish!!! He was a cop participating in a police robbery]

As Chandler police come to grips with the worst they endure the slaying of a colleague in the line of duty -- officials are quickly putting together the pieces of the marijuana-buy gone wrong. [No it wasn't a marijuana buy gone bad, it was a marijuana sale that had gone bad]

Two other Chandler officers were shot, and two criminal suspects were shot and killed. The two Chandler officers are expected to survive.

At Chandler's Police Department at 250 E. Chicago Street, mourning was apparent in the form of flowers and lit candles laid at the foot of a statue of a police officer. Employees inside were choked up, some tearing. They are grieving the death of one of their own, who died trying to protect the public.

The city of Chandler has also canceled an All-America City event scheduled for Friday. Additionally, Mayor Boyd Dunn said all the items from Thursday's meeting agenda will be postponed until Aug. 16 or 19, including the hotly contested police union contract.

"We are doing our legal due diligence, but my feeling is this is not the time to do any business; we need to focus on what's important," Dunn said.

Chandler police are asking people who want to give in honor of the fallen police officer to make donations to: Wells Fargo, Account #9918672768.

The slain officer "was a good man, a good officer and father," said former Chandler Police Officer Dan Lovelace. Lovelace was with his daughter, Lucy, 4, who was adding flowers to the memorial. Lovelace said the officer was married and has at least two children.

"This is a really sobering reminder how dangerous the job is, and at any given moment, tragedy can happen," he said.

Wednesday's operation involved undercover officers trying to buy bales of marijuana, and they were apparently not wearing their vests when the worst took place, flying bullets felling cops, according to reports. [Again the Chandler Police were not BUYING the drugs, the Chandler Police were SELLING the drugs.]

One suspect fatally shot was fleeing in a car, police said. Six suspects have been detained. A Chevrolet Caprice Classic was towed away.

"The six suspects are being questioned as we speak," Martos said.

A crowd of supportive officers gathered at St. Joseph's Medical Center. One police officer was pronounced dead a short time after his Wednesday evening arrival, police said. One suffered an injury, possibly to his spleen, and though things were touch and go apparently, his prognosis had improved, according to reports.

The third officer is okay, according to reports.

"It's bad enough when one (police officer is shot)," Martos. "It's like getting punched in the gut, like getting the air sucked out of you."

The shooting happened in a neighborhood south of Lindo Park in an area where police and neighborhood leaders have grappled for years with drug-related violence. Emergency crews were called to the scene, near South 23rd Avenue and Vineyard Road, around 6:45 p.m.

The initial shootout happened on the 2300 block of Maldonado Road, authorities said, though paramedics picked up some wounded people at a nearby address on Darrel Road. Phoenix police said the incident had spilled out into the street.

Police would not say where the wounded suspects were taken or what their conditions were.

Phoenix homicide detectives and Chandler internal-affairs investigators were expected to spend several hours reconstructing the scene to determine the sequence of events leading up to the shooting.

Phoenix officers were not involved in the shooting.

Hancock said the three officers involved had varied levels of experience and longevity in the department. Hancock had been scheduled to appear at Thursday's council meeting with a crowd of officers to argue for merit raises, which has now been postponed.

About the probe into Wednesday's events, Martos said, "it is fairly complicated."

Police officers sometimes forget how dangerous the job can be. But any police will say this is the job they want to do, Martos said.

"Situations like this end up putting into perspective that they never know if they are going to home at night some days."

Chandler pig bust Mexican for p**ing in alley

tinyurl.com/chandlerarrest

bad-chandler-cop.100webspace.net

Jun 28, 2013 9:00 AM

Chandler man accused of urinating on wall in public

By Thomas Hawthorne

The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team

Thu Jun 27, 2013 1:36 PM

A Chandler man was arrested Wednesday after he was accused of urinating on a wall in public, according to court documents.

Jose Sanchez-Benitez, 51, was arrested on suspicion of urinating in public after a police officer noticed him urinating on a wall in the 390 block of S. Arizona Avenue, police said.

He was arrested after the officer spotted him urinating on the back wall of a Payless Market, police said. A puddle of urine at his feet as well as spots on his pants supported the accusations against him, police said.

State senator in sex-abuse inquiry

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State senator in sex-abuse inquiry

By Mary K. Reinhart The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jun 28, 2013 8:33 AM

Arizona Sen. Rick Murphy, a foster and adoptive parent who identifies himself as a leader on child-welfare issues, is under investigation by Peoria police and state Child Protective Services for allegations he sexually abused children in his care, according to police records.

Police said the investigation was launched Saturday, after an older teen reported repeated incidents of alleged abuse by Murphy going back at least six years. The teen also self-reported his own inappropriate sexual contact with another child in the home, the reports show.

CPS officials would not say whether they have removed any of the seven children living at the Peoria home of Murphy, 41, and his wife, Penny, 48.

The allegations prompted police to reopen an inactive 2011 case involving Murphy and a teenage foster child, Peoria City Attorney Steve Kemp told The Arizona Republic. According to a Peoria police report obtained by The Republic, the teen accused Murphy of fondling him underneath his clothing every other day for more than a month and offering to buy him a bicycle if he kept quiet.

Murphy has not been arrested or charged in either case. Late Thursday, Murphy said in a statement, “As a family, we have decided we have no comment.”

In 2011, CPS and police removed all seven children living in the four-bedroom home — the alleged victim, two adopted teens and four other foster kids — the same day the boy told his caseworker Murphy had abused him, the 2011 police report states.

CPS and police investigated the teen’s claims. Police concluded there was not enough evidence to charge Murphy, according to the report, and the state did not revoke the couple’s foster-parent license. Police received conflicting stories from the foster child and his former foster father. There was concern that the boy, who had a history of violence, vandalism and school suspensions, might have concocted the allegations so he could return to his former foster home. Murphy denied the allegations, according to that report.

During his legislative career, Murphy has been an outspoken critic of CPS. He has introduced dozens of child-welfare-related bills, including 10 this past session, many of which could benefit him and other foster and adoptive parents. This year, he fought unsuccessfully to increase state payments to foster parents.

Kemp released four heavily redacted pages from the 2011 and 2013 reports in response to a public-records request from The Republic.

According to the 2013 report, the child in Murphy’s home accused Murphy of touching the child’s penis “over and under his clothes while at their residence.” The alleged molestation occurred between January 2007 and May 2013.

The Peoria police report states police are treating that individual as both a child-molestation victim and a suspect.

Kemp said investigators looking at the 2011 case are interviewing children who have lived with the Murphys.

“Upon completion of the reopened investigation, we will then make (a) decision as to submission to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office,” Kemp said in an e-mail. “I will be working with the department on (a) continuous basis to continue to release information as promptly as we can without impacting negatively our ability to investigate both these matters.”

Murphy, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is now in his second Senate term following six years in the House. He has made CPS, foster care and adoption a centerpiece of his political career. In May, he told The Republic that he and his wife have cared for 38 children since they received their state license in 2005. They have adopted five children from CPS.

In campaign literature and in legislative debates, he cites his “daily personal experience” as a foster and adoptive father. He’s railed against CPS for allegedly failing to take children from drug-abusing parents, argued that foster kids should be free for adoption sooner and vowed to make it easier to fire CPS workers.

He has long advocated easing regulations on foster parents and allowing them to take care of more children. This year, he pushed legislation, which Gov. Jan Brewer signed, to extend licenses to two years from one and allow foster families to take in siblings or children they’ve previously cared for, even if it pushed them above their licensing limit.

“Especially in this environment, we really need to take a look at whether we should have a hard and fast limit of five (children),” Murphy said in 2011. At that time, he said he and his wife were caring for nine children.

Families are paid just over $20 a day per child, and an additional $2 to $3 a day if they’re caring for infants or teens.

Murphy, a Phoenix-area native, married Penny Raye Price in 2000. Both have been active in Republican politics for years, with Rick serving as a precinct committeeman before he was elected to the House in 2005 and Penny on the executive board of the Arrowhead Republican Women’s Club.

Rick Murphy has volunteered as a camp counselor and youth leader with his church and the Hemophilia Association, according to his campaign website and his legislative page. He also lists outdoor activities including hiking and shooting as interests.

He lists community activities including serving as a junior-high youth leader and junior-high Bible study leader at Christ’s Church of the Valley and a camp counselor and former youth mentor for the Hemophilia Association.

He attended community college in the early 1990s and earned his real-estate license in 1992.

Murphy lists his occupation as a real-estate agent on legislative and campaign materials, but state Department of Real Estate records show he let his license expire in November.

Another drug-smuggling tunnel found in Ariz.

Another drug-smuggling tunnel found in Ariz.

Associated Press Fri Jun 28, 2013 9:00 AM

NOGALES, Ariz. — An incomplete drug smuggling tunnel has been found near the Arizona-Mexico border during an inspection of Nogales' main storm drain system.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say the tunnel was discovered Tuesday while the drain running under Grand Avenue was being inspected.

Authorities found a concrete access panel embedded in the storm drain floor.

They removed the panel and found a tunnel containing tools, a core drill and forced air ventilation.

ICE investigators believe the tunnel was in the final stages of construction.

It was about 160 feet long and 2 feet wide by 3 feet tall. All but 7 feet of the tunnel is on the Arizona side of the border.

Federal authorities have shut down six cross-border smuggling tunnels in the Nogales area in fiscal year 2013.

It's not police brutality, it's "stun gun fun"

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Police investigating Taser use on Glendale 15-year-old

By D.S. Woodfill Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Fri Jun 28, 2013 10:40 AM

A Glendale resident said a police officer used excessive force when he used a Taser on her 15-year-old son.

The Glendale Police Department has begun an investigation of the May 26 incident, officials told The Republic and 12 News. They have said little on the matter, citing state law that prohibits them from discussing an ongoing internal investigation. According to a police report, the officer, who was identified as Daniel Frusciano, used the Taser after the boy pushed him and tried to hit him.

The Arizona Republic is withholding the teen’s name because he is a minor.

Lonnie and Cheryl Watson say the officer assaulted their son and they want him to lose his job.

“You got a 110-pound kid,” Lonnie said. “Did he (the officer) really feel that threatened that he needed to use a Taser on him? I don’t think so.”

According to an interview with the family, the teen got upset after his mother took away his cellphone because he did not do his chores.

The teen punched a door and stormed from the house in tears, she said. When the teen didn’t immediately return home, Cheryl began to worry and called the police to help find him.

The Watsons say their son has behavioral problems that stem from a traumatic-brain injury when he was 6. Another boy who lived nearby hit him in the head with a hammer, she said. Since then, he has struggled with depression, has trouble focusing and has memory problems. He’s also prone to seizures and can have tantrums when upset, the couple said.

An hour and a half later, the teenager returned to the family’s house near 51st and Olive avenues.

Cheryl called the department back to tell them her son was home, she said.

“They’re like, ‘OK, well there’s an officer en route, so you can just tell him that he’s home and send him on his way,’ ” she said.

Watson and her son went to the front yard to have a talk, she said. Some time later, a patrol car parked in front of the house.

The officer “gets out of the car and ... and he’s like, ‘Get over here boy,’ ” Cheryl recalled.

The boy approached the officer and that’s when things began to escalate, she recalled.

According to Cheryl, the officer said, “Get on the ground,” and her son asked, “Why?”

The officer “said something like, ‘I’m not your mom. You’re going to do as I say,’ and then grabbed him and tried to force him to get on the ground.”

Then the officer put his leg up against the small of the teen’s back and shoved him backward, she said.

The teen landed on his back, smacking his head against one of the large, decorative-river rocks in the family’s yard, she said.

“I’m screaming at him, ‘Stop it! Stop hurting my child!’ ” Cheryl said. “ ‘He’s got a brain injury.’ ”

Cheryl’s son, who was on the ground, reached back to rub his head and began to stand up, she said.

That’s when the officer took several steps back, pulled out his Taser and shot him with it, the teen said.

“It’s like sticking your finger in a lightbulb socket times a thousand,” the teen recalled.

Cheryl grabbed her cellphone and called her husband.

A second officer arrived at the house and demanded her cellphone, Cheryl said. When she refused to hand it over, the officer then grabbed her wrist, twisted her arm behind her back and shoved her face-forward into the garage door, Cheryl said.

The mother, who said she takes medication for ashoulder injury, said the pain was so extreme, it made her defecate.

Lonnie, on the phone, could hear his wife struggling with the officer.

“She’s calling me, telling me, ‘Hey, they’re out here — they’re tasing him.’ I’m like, ‘What?! What are you talking about?’ ”

Then the call ended, Lonnie said.

“I immediately got sick to my stomach,” he said.

Back at the Watson house, the second officer let Cheryl go into the house to change clothes.

“She followed me into my house,” Cheryl choked up as she recalled. “I didn’t invite her in. She followed me into my house and stood outside my bathroom door like I was some kind of criminal.”

The couple denied their son attempted to punch the officer. He was simply rubbing the back of his head after it struck the rock, they said.

The police report gives a different account of the confrontation.

According to police documents, Frusciano said he responded to the call about a missing teenager. Dispatchers reported the youth punched a hole in the wall before leaving home. Even though the teen had returned home when the officer arrived, the officer explained he still had to investigate any possible domestic violence, the report said.

The officer said in the report that once he arrived at the Watson’s house, the teen refused to sit down despite a direct order. The officer said he then put him in an “escort hold.” When the 15-year-old resisted, the officer used a “take down” maneuver, he said.

When Frusciano stepped back, he said the teen stood up, stepped toward the officer and cocked his right hand back “as if to throw a ‘haymaker’ style of punch.” That’s when Frusciano pulled out his Taser and shot the teen, according to the statement. One probe hit the teen’s chest and another hit his stomach.

As the officer struggled with the boy, Cheryl approached Frusciano and tried fighting him as well, according to statements in the report.

Another officer then arrived and “helped to calm down Cheryl,” according to statements.

The report does not say the officer put Cheryl in a submission hold and shoved her against the garage door. It does say Cheryl felt the officer was rude for saying her son “was lucky that he didn’t get punched in the face.”

The teen admitted pushing Frusciano, the report said. The 15-year-old told officers he refused to sit down when asked because he was a “rebellious teen,” the document said.

Glendale officials declined to be interviewed about the incident. In a written statement, they said before announcing an internal investigation that they were reviewing the incident to determine if the officer acted according to department policy.

“The initial call information in this case indicated that a juvenile male had punched a hole in a wall and then left the residence,” the statement said.

“Subsequent information that was obtained prior to officers’ arrival was that the juvenile had returned. However, the information regarding the criminal damage warranted a response to investigate allegations of domestic violence.”

The department later announced an internal investigation into the matter.

The department said it recommended prosecutors charge the teen with “domestic violence disorderly conduct and criminal damage.”

RELATED INFO

Taser incident

A Glendale family says a Glendale police officer used a Taser on their teenage son.

May 26: The Watson family says their son got upset over punishment he received for not doing his chores. After he left the house the parents call the police. The 15-year-old returns home before the officer arrives. When the officer arrives, there is a confrontation and he shoots the 15-year-old with a Taser.

May 27: The teen’s mother, Cheryl Watson, says she called police to complain about the officer’s actions. After numerous phone calls, Watson says she could not get any satisfactory information on how the matter was being handled. Police officials, however, say they tried contacting the family several times but were never able to reach them.

June 14: Police officers meet with Watson at her home, where she fills out a formal complaint document.

June 18: Police announce an internal investigation into the incident.

Uncle Sam spying on people that buy fireworks??? Probably.

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Feds urge fireworks sellers to watch for suspicious buyers

Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY 11:10 a.m. EDT June 29, 2013

A federal task force says that fireworks sellers should keep a close eye out for suspicious people buying fireworks.

As the frenzy for fireworks peaks in the runup to Independence Day, a federal task force is warning fireworks retailers to keep watch for suspicious purchasers.

The National Explosives Task Force issued an industry advisory Thursday warning that consumer fireworks are a "common component used in improvised explosive devices." It advised retailers to look for possible signs of suspicious activity, including customers who ask about how to take apart or modify the fireworks or who seek to purchase commercial-grade fireworks.

The advisory comes in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people and injured more than 250 on April 15. In an indictment made public Thursday, a grand jury charged Dzhokhar Tsarnaev with detonating bombs made from pressure cookers, low-explosive powder and shrapnel at the marathon. The indictment says his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, purchased 48 mortars containing 8 pounds of low-explosive powder from Phantom Fireworks, a retail store in Seabrook, N.H., on Feb. 6.

This is the second time in recent years that fireworks have been used in a terror plot. Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad, who confessed to a failed attempt to bomb Times Square in 2010, purchased fireworks from a Phantom store in Matamoros, Pa.

But the use of fireworks for nefarious acts has not dampened demand among consumers or prompted backlash from state or federal regulators. Last year, consumers purchased more than 185 million pounds of fireworks, according to data from the Commerce Department and the U.S. International Trade Commission.

All but four states — Delaware, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey — allow the sale of some types of fireworks or sparklers. No state has tightened restrictions on fireworks since the bombing, says Julie Heckman, executive director of the American Pyrotechnics Association, a trade group based in Bethesda, Md.

Now is peak fireworks season: 90% of everyday consumer pyrotechnics is sold between April 15 to July 15, Heckman says.

"I think most Americans realize that bad things can be made out of many common materials," Heckman said.

Consumer fireworks individually do not mass detonate because they contain low levels of explosive mixed with other chemicals to make the firework colorful, says Phantom CEO Bruce Zoldan. The Boston bombers, using a technique recommended by al-Qaeda, appear to have cut open the pyrotechnics to remove the powder and put it in the pressure cooker, Zoldan said.

"It's possible to get enough powder together to do something, but there are easier ways to do that," Zoldan said.

The industry, which is tightly regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Department of Transportation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and state authorities, is willing to work on ways to prevent products from being used improperly or assist law enforcement when needed, Zoldan said.

Phantom Fireworks maintains a database of customers for marketing so the company was able to identify Tsarnaev's purchase, Zoldan said.

"I think the industry will have to gather together and come up with something that will protect the industry's interests by working hand in hand with Homeland Security," he said. "If we're selling a product that's capable of being dissected, then we as an industry will have to get together to do what's right."

The industry has taken such steps before, he said. Decades ago, the industry created and funded the American Fireworks Standards Laboratory to safety test products to prevent fireworks-related injuries, he said.

"Now we need to make a proactive effort to help monitor individuals who might come in to buy fireworks for not honorable reasons," Zoldan said. "We help Americans celebrate America's birthday. We're not going to let criminals ruin that."

Traffic cams throw tiny Ohio village into turmoil

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Traffic cams throw tiny Ohio village into turmoil

By Dan Sewell Associated Press Sat Jun 29, 2013 10:09 AM

ELMWOOD PLACE, Ohio — This little village had a big problem.

Each day, thousands of cars — sometimes as many as 18,000 — rolled along Elmwood Place’s streets, crossing the third-of-a-mile town to get to neighboring Cincinnati or major employers in bustling suburbs or heavily traveled Interstate 75. Many zipped by Elmwood Place’s modest homes and small businesses at speeds well above the 25 mph limit.

Bedeviled by tight budgets, the police force was undermanned. The situation, villagers feared, was dangerous.

Then the cameras were turned on, and all hell broke loose.

Like hundreds of other U.S. communities big and small, Elmwood Place hired an outside company to install cameras to record traffic violations and mail out citations.

In the first month after the cameras began operating, late last year, 6,600 tickets went out — more than triple the village’s population. Before some unsuspecting drivers realized it, they had racked up multiple $105 citations they would learn about when their mail arrived weeks later. Some 70 parishioners, or more than half the congregation at Our Lady of Lavang Catholic Community Church, were ticketed on one Sunday last September.

Soon, there was a Facebook page promoting a boycott of the village, a petition drive against cameras, and a lawsuit against the village that threatened to wreck Elmwood Place financially. Four council members resigned. And an atmosphere of distrust and uneasiness hung over a village that traced its roots back to the 19th century, before traffic cameras or even automotive traffic.

“I think Elmwood Place tried to do something, but maybe not in the right way,” said Catherine Jones, who brought a chair and small table out of her namesake Southern-style restaurant on a recent afternoon and sat in the sun as she read her Bible and wrote out notes about the verses.

Just last year, she recalled, a pedestrian was hit and killed a couple blocks from her restaurant, near an elementary school. So she understood that something had to be done. But now she is among many small business owners worried that the cameras have given the village a speed-trap stigma.

Few things will rile citizens quicker than getting tickets in the mail, along with photos of their vehicles under a red light. The letters usually inform them they will not be assessed traffic violation “points”; nor will their insurance company be contacted. But they must pay up, or face a collection agency and damage to their credit ratings.

Supporters of camera enforcement say they stretch law enforcement resources, and they usually result in safer driving and thus save lives. Opponents see cameras giving governments a way to grab more money from taxpayer pockets, putting local policing in the hands of remote, for-profit companies, and taking society another step toward an Orwellian state of constant surveillance for misbehavior.

In Arizona, where two large photo enforcement companies are based, red-light and speed enforcement cameras have been a matter of contention for years. Gov. Jan Brewer scuttled a state program that put speed-enforcement cameras on freeways and interstates in 2010 when a contract expired; efforts to ban the devices used by many cities and towns are a yearly fixture in the Legislature.

In February, San Diego followed Los Angeles and Pasadena in dropping traffic camera citations; the mayor said they bred disrespect for the law because residents believed they were meant to make money, not reduce accidents. Legislation to require communities to get state permits before installing traffic cameras stalled this year in Iowa, while a group called Stop Big Brother has been trying to head off cameras in Iowa City.

There are 12 states that ban speed cameras, and nine prohibit red-light cameras.

Yet despite the critics and complaints, camera use is growing overall. The New York state legislature this month approved installing speed cameras in New York City school zones. Communities with traffic cameras, or automated enforcement, have increased more than fivefold across the country in less than a decade, with red-light cameras in 530 municipalities and speeding cameras in 125, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

“There is Zeitgeist in the country right now on privacy concerns, concerns about intrusion; we understand that,” said Jonathan Adkins of the Governors Highway Safety Association, which promotes safety nationally through state-level efforts. That group and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an Arlington, Va.-based nonprofit organization funded by auto insurers, say studies show cameras result in a reduction of fatal crashes caused by red light-running, and in reduced speeding in pedestrian-sensitive areas such as school zones.

“What we’ve seen from the field is red light cameras and safety cameras are both important tools in the safety tool box,” Adkins said, adding that they should complement, not replace, law enforcement and should be focused on safety, not boosting budgets.

Holly Calhoun doesn’t believe they were about safety in her hardscrabble village.

“Elmwood was just doing it because they needed money,” said the manager of Elmwood Quick Mart, which offers phone cards, lottery tickets and Mexican food, and advertises its willingness to accept food stamps.

“People couldn’t afford those tickets,” Calhoun said. “They can barely afford to pay their bills. It was pretty sad.”

Settled by German farmers and laborers who came up from Appalachian Kentucky, Elmwood Place was incorporated in 1890. Like many “inner-ring” American suburbs, it hit its peak many decades ago. Older residents recall bucolic times of moonlit concerts and tire swings hanging from backyard trees.

But outsourcing of blue-collar work made life tougher for many residents, and the village’s incomes and housing values fell well below statewide averages. Housing stock deteriorated to the point where you can buy a two-bedroom fixer-upper for less than $60,000.

When William Peskin joined the police force in 1998, there were nine officers. Now the police chief is the only full-time law enforcement officer left. He said concerns grew after accidents around the elementary school; village officials looked into traffic cameras and became convinced that they were the most practical way to make the village safer.

Cameras at the village limits and in the school zone dramatically curtailed speeding once citations started going out, Peskin said. From 20,000 speeders clocked in a two-week trial period last summer, the number soon dropped to a quarter of that.

Former county prosecutor Mike Allen filed a lawsuit against the town. Among the plaintiffs: the Rev. Chau Pham, who said church attendance dropped by a third after that Sunday when so many congregants — including him — were ticketed; David Downs, owner of St. Bernard Polishing for 25 years, who said long-time customers had vowed to shop elsewhere because they had been ticketed; and a Habitat for Humanity worker who was cited four times.

“Elmwood Place is engaging in nothing more than a high-tech game of three-card monte,” Judge Robert P. Ruehlman wrote March 7 in a colorful opinion that has heartened camera foes across the country. “It is a scam that the motorists can’t win.”

The judge said the village was on pace to assess $2 million in six months (the village’s annual budget is $1.3 million). Maryland-based Optotraffic, owner and operator of the photo enforcement system in return for 40 percent of revenue, had already reaped $500,000 in about four months.

Used words such as “scheme,” ‘’sham,” ‘’stacked,” and “total disregard for due process,” Ruehlman declared the village’s photo-enforcement ordinance invalid and unenforceable.

Elmwood Place is appealing, and believes it has the law on its side.

“It’s unfortunate that the judge doesn’t see it as a safety issue,” Peskin said.

Ohio courts have upheld camera enforcement in some of the state’s biggest cities as a legitimate exercise of local government power; the Ohio Supreme Court heard arguments in 2008 on the city of Akron’s speeding cameras and approved them.

Akron began its program in 2005 after a 5-year-old child was killed. Some 3,000 citations in the first few weeks elicited public outcry, and then a lawsuit filed by attorney Warner Mendenhall after his wife Kelly was ticketed. Mendenhall said he found in his research that camera enforcement is often inconsistently carried out, the cameras aren’t always accurate, and that in many places, they are clearly used as a revenue booster.

Steve Fallis, the city’s assistant law director, said Akron uses the cameras only in school zones, and motorists have visual warnings they are in use. Any net income from the $100 citations goes into a city safety fund, not for the general budget. And there is no fee for an administrative hearing to challenge a citation. Elmwood Place charged $25

Mendenhall, whose wife’s ticket was tossed out by the city when she appealed a lack of signage at the time, isn’t convinced the legality has been settled. Maybe, he said, Elmwood Place will be the launching pad for the challenge that gets the matter to a higher authority.

“To have this patchwork quilt of laws … I really would hope that someone would take this on up to (U.S). Supreme Court,” Mendenhall said.

Recently, passions in Elmwood Place have cooled a bit. At a June council meeting, fewer than a dozen people turned out.

Taking a cigarette break out back, Mayor Stephanie Morgan talked briefly and reluctantly about the controversy, which she described as “challenging.”

She defended the cameras. “The speeding was just horrible,” Morgan said. But asked whether her constituents agree that cameras were the best solution, the 39-year-old lifelong resident repeated the question aloud and said: “You’ll have to ask them.”

Bill Wilson, 43, is running for village council in the fall election. He returned to Elmwood Place after living in southwest Florida for 20 years; there, he said, red-light cameras, speeding cameras, accident cameras and crime security cameras are commonplace.

“You get accustomed to it,” Wilson said.

In Elmwood Place, the cameras didn’t last long enough for anyone to grow accustomed to them. But apparently, they lasted longer than folks realized: On Thursday, Judge Ruehlman found that the camera company had continued to mail out citations for weeks after he ordered that it stop. He ruled Elmwood Village in contempt and said the cameras and equipment must be seized and stored until the case is resolved.

On a recent evening just before the contempt order, Holly Calhoun left her store, crossed the street and gazed up into a camera, wondering what, if anything, it was recording. Two men in a car stopped and asked what was going on. She told them she is opposed to cameras; they each gave her a thumb’s up and drove off.

Business, Calhoun said, has been slow to rebound; most people don’t seem to believe the cameras aren’t in full operation.

Elmwood Place is caught in a speed trap of its own making. On the one hand, the village faces a crippling financial blow if litigation succeeds in forcing it to pay back all the fines already collected plus legal costs; on the other, Calhoun and others think if the village wins its case and brings back the cameras, the effects on business could be catastrophic.

“I think it’s going to become a ghost town,” she said.

Lawmaker Don Shooter charged with misdemeanors

Lawmaker Don Shooter charged with misdemeanors over confrontation at school

By Mary Jo Pitzl The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jun 28, 2013 4:11 PM

Arizona Sen. Don Shooter, R-Yuma, faces three misdemeanor counts stemming from his confrontation with a teacher at his grandson’s high school.

The charges — criminal trespass, disorderly conduct and interference with or disruption of an educational institution — were authorized Friday morning by Jay Cairns, the city prosecutor.

Cairns said the charges were filed in Yuma Municipal Court.

Police who investigated the March 22 incident had recommended assault charges against the two-term senator, as well as criminal trespass and a disruption charge regarding school classrooms.

Shooter earlier this week said his attorney was negotiating with Cairns’ office on the charges. On Friday, Shooter referred a reporter to his attorney for comment. Attorney Ed Novak did not return a call.

In March, Shooter barged into his grandson’s classroom at the EOC Charter High School and demanded to speak with the teacher, whom he believed was bullying his grandson. The teacher did not know Shooter, nor did the front-desk personnel, who tried to stop him.

The teacher, Danielle Muñoz, introduced herself to Shooter when he entered the classroom, according to the Yuma Police Department report.

When Shooter’s comments struck her as abrasive, she used her cellphone to record part of the encounter and told him he needed to leave. Other school officials encouraged Shooter to set up an appointment to discuss his concerns.

The grandson, who had only recently enrolled at the school, left the program within days of the incident, according to school officials.

Case reveals feds’ fight vs. synthetic-drug makers

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Case reveals feds’ fight vs. synthetic-drug makers

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jun 28, 2013 11:05 PM

Federal prosecutors in Phoenix have begun a monthlong quest to convict two men of selling substances in designer drugs that were, at the time, legal.

The government claims the substances found in synthetic drugs sold as White Water Rapid Glass Cleaner and Amped Lady Bug Exuberance Powder were close enough to illegal drugs that two men violated federal law when they manufactured and sold them to businesses across the country.

A jury of 11 men and six women will decide if the chemicals in the designer drugs that Michael Rocky Lane and Clinton Joseph Strunk sold were “substantially similar” to banned substances.

The case offers some insight into how prosecutors can fight the industry without laws that specifically outlaw the ever-changing chemical compounds found in the synthetic drugs.

The prosecution relies on a 1986 federal law that outlaws substances that have a similar chemical construction to illegal drugs and that are intended to have a similar effect on people. The law, known as the “analogue act,” also requires prosecutors to prove the similar substances were meant for human consumption.

The federal statute gave prosecutors another tool to go after drug producers who monitor the government’s schedule of banned substances in an effort to stay one step ahead of the law.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Pashayan said that is exactly what Lane and Strunk were doing between early 2011 and July 2012.

“These defendants here, they monitored these schedules and they did not distribute scheduled drugs,” Pashayan said. “They did, however, distribute other illegal drugs that contained chemicals similar to those already scheduled.”

Lane and Strunk’s lawyers concede they sold the chemicals, and were successful doing it, but insist Lane was running a legal business.

“This was not back-alley sales,” Lane’s attorney, Bruce Feder, told the jury. “This was businesses everywhere selling to people who came into their shops and purchased their product. It was out there like everything else, like cookies and milk.”

The federal sting that originally led to the arrest of Lane, Strunk and a handful of others was part of a nationwide undercover operation in late July 2012 known as “Operation Logjam.”

The months-long operation was made public about two weeks after Congress passed a law targeting synthetic drugs.

The local sting occurred when federal agents posing as Hells Angels purchased 2,500 powder packets of “Eight Ballz” from one of the defendants during a meeting in late June 2012 in a Valley parking lot, according to a federal affidavit.

The investigation also relied on paid informants, undercover surveillance and agents sifting through the trash outside key locations.

The government’s frequent references to cocaine and methamphetamine, and the investigators’ decision to use informants and go through the trash of Lane’s distribution business in Tempe, near Rio Salado Parkway and McClintock Road, should not send a message to the jury about the seriousness of the crimes, the defense attorneys argued.

“Cocaine and meth, it’s got nothing to do with this case, other than to try and prejudice you,” Feder told the jury.

Each side will call experts to give their opinions about whether Lane’s products were “substantially similar” in their chemical makeup to already banned substances.

Jurors are also expected to hear testimony from smoke-shop owners, synthetic-drug salespeople and users of “bath salts” about how the drug was marketed to retailers and sold to consumers, in addition to the effects Lane’s products had on users.

Many of the witnesses are also expected to testify about how popular and profitable Lane’s products were.

Jeff Paglia, a smoke-shop owner from West Virginia who allegedly received shipments of Lane’s products, is among those expected to testify. Paglia is cooperating with federal prosecutors after he was indicted last year on drug-conspiracy and money-laundering charges.

Federal investigators describe the business Paglia’s West Virginia smoke shop as brisk, with dozens of customers lining up outside the shop and rushing in as soon as the store opened to buy bath salts. An investigator saw one customer of Paglia’s shooting up in the store’s parking lot, and another bang his head against a car steering wheel after ingesting synthetic compounds, according to court documents.

Internal Revenue Service investigators believe Paglia deposited about $3 million from drug sales into bank accounts from early 2011 through early 2012.

The prosecution’s first witness on Thursday was a 26-year-old former Arizona State University student who graduated from the school in December 2010 with a biochemistry degree, but could not find a job in the field due to a misdemeanor marijuana conviction on his record.

Colin Stratford told jurors how he met Lane and quickly went to work as a chemist who helped transform Lane’s business from a small-time operation based in Lane’s Cave Creek garage to a multimillion dollar enterprise headquartered at a Tempe business complex.

Stratford said the two had a falling out after a lab report indicated the presence of a banned stimulant in some of the substances Lane received from China. Those substances were typically mixed with numbing agents to ease the burn when inhaled, and repackaged in the vibrant containers associated with synthetic compounds, according to investigators.

When the synthetic drugs turned brown and went bad, prosecutors said, they were resold as “Baja Dirt” and “Brown Sugar.”

After Stratford saw the banned substance show up on a lab report, he said he quit working with Lane.

Within a few months, Stratford was working as an operative for the Drug Enforcement Administration, where he said he was paid $5,400 for his efforts.

Many of the prosecution’s witnesses are in the same situation as Stratford.

During his 90-minute opening remarks, Pashayan showed photos of those expected to testify, and most were White, college-aged males who said they found themselves working for or doing business with Lane.

Some moved to Arizona from other states for sales work in the lucrative industry, and others worked as out-of-state distributors, selling to smoke shops, small gas stations and liquor stores, according to prosecutors.

All were trying to cash in on the success of what prosecutors have described as legitimized drug dealing.

But, like Stratford, some of those same chemists, distributors, salespeople and smoke-shop owners have now found themselves as cooperating witnesses in the government’s efforts to rein in the industry.

“These defendants made a lot of money selling these designer-drug products that got people high,” Pashayan said. “They mislabeled their products as innocuous, everyday items to skirt the law.”

But the defense attorneys believe skirting the law, as prosecutors contend, is different from breaking the law. They asked the jurors to vote with their minds and not based on how they feel about the products the suspects have admitted to selling.

“The law doesn’t punish people that you think sell bad products,” Feder said.

James Holmes to wear hidden harness anchored to floor

Source

James Holmes to wear hidden harness anchored to floor

7:46 p.m. EDT June 27, 2013

DENVER (AP) — Colorado theater shooting suspect James Holmes will be restrained during his trial by wearing a harness under his clothes that will be anchored to the floor, the judge said Thursday.

Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr. also ruled the jury will not be sequestered during the trial, which is scheduled to start in February and is expected to take four months.

Holmes is accused of killing 12 people and injuring 70 others at a movie theater in the Denver suburb of Aurora in July.

He has worn heavy shackles on his wrists and ankles during pretrial hearings. His lawyers wanted him to be unshackled during the trial, saying the restraints would make him look guilty to the jury.

Samour said Holmes has to be restrained because he is charged with violent crimes. He said jurors won't see the harness, and the anchoring cable will blend in with computer cables at the defense table.

The judge ruled earlier that Holmes can wear civilian clothing at his trial.

Holmes pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to multiple charges of murder and attempted murder. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Defense lawyers wanted the jury sequestered and wanted the jurors barred from having phones, laptop computers or any other electronics devices during the trial.

The judge said sequestration for such a long time would be costly and impractical, and would create an undue burden on jurors. He implied it also could prompt some prospective jurors to try to avoid the case.

However, Samour said he would allow defense lawyers to renew the request later if they think they have grounds to do so.

Denying jurors access to smartphones, computers, television sets and radios — along with email and the Internet — would be drastic and unfair, the judge said.

But he did rule jurors will not be allowed to have the devices in court or during deliberations.

Samour said he might seat as many as 12 alternate jurors — an unusually large number — in the event any of the 12 regular jurors is dismissed for hearing outside information or other reasons.

"The court cannot keep the jurors in a bubble, completely sealed off from the outside world," the judge said.

Samour has said 5,000 potential jurors will get a summons and that he expects 3,200 to 3,500 to respond.

Holmes' lawyers had also asked the judge to scale back the heavy security that has been present during 11 months of pretrial hearings, saying it would be "extraordinary and unnecessary" during the trial and would prejudice the jury against Holmes.

They also objected to deputies standing so close to Holmes in the courtroom that they could hear his conversations with his attorneys.

Eight Arapahoe County sheriff's deputies usually stand guard in the courtroom during hearings. Others watch from the rooftops of the two courthouse buildings and in the parking lot.

Samour said four of the deputies in the courtroom will wear uniforms during the trial, and any others will wear street clothes. He also said they will keep a reasonable distance from the defense table.

The judge overruled the defense objection to having deputies on the rooftops and in the parking lot, saying they're necessary to protect Holmes and the public.

Samour said Sheriff Grayson Robinson had agreed to the hidden harness and tether for Holmes and the plainclothes deputies in the courtroom. Samour added he trusts Robinson's expertise and will heed his advice.

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

U.S. says sheriff's deputies harassed Antelope Valley residents

U.S. says sheriff's deputies harassed Antelope Valley residents

By Robert Faturechi, Richard Winton and Frank Shyong

June 28, 2013, 7:20 p.m.

Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies harassed and intimidated blacks, Latinos and other residents in the Antelope Valley, the U.S. Justice Department has concluded after a two-year investigation.

Federal officials found a pattern of sheriff's deputies using unreasonable force, intimidation and "widespread" unlawful detentions and searches. Many of the findings involved residents who received low-income subsidized housing.

The allegations mark another setback for a troubled department that is also the subject of a federal investigation into deputy misconduct and brutality in the jail system.

Sheriff's officials said they are still negotiating with the Department of Justice over a settlement in the Antelope Valley case. But documents released Friday indicate that both sides are seeking a court-enforceable order and an independent monitor who would track the department's progress.

The findings are a vindication for Antelope Valley residents, who have long complained of surprise inspections of government-subsidized, or Section 8, housing. The checks were intended to ensure that residents meet the terms of their assistance. The inspections often involved armed sheriff's deputies, they said, which added a level of intimidation.

"This report confirms what we've been saying all along," said V. Jesse Smith, president of the Antelope Valley chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. "There is a great deal of injustice against blacks and Latinos in this community, and the good thing is that they are on the path to implementing some of these recommendations as we speak."

Civil rights attorney Connie Rice agreed, adding that it was gratifying that the Justice Department was able to expose the alleged misconduct.

"This is stuff like you used to find in the 1950s," Rice said. "It's 2013 in the big city, but when you get out into the rural areas and rural counties, things change. They don't always get the message."

The Justice Department laid out multiple areas in which deputies in the Antelope Valley abused their power:

Blacks, and to a lesser extent Latinos, were more likely than whites to be stopped and searched by deputies, even when controlling for factors other than race. Investigators concluded that deputies made stops "that appear motivated by racial bias."

Deputies commonly and improperly detained people in the back seat of their patrol cars — a tactic that must have a clear justification or else violates the Constitution and sheriff's policy. This kind of treatment was reserved not only for suspects, investigators said. Federal authorities found one instance in which two deputies handcuffed and detained in the back of their patrol car a woman who was the victim of domestic violence. They said there was "no articulated reason" for the treatment.

The department showed a pattern of unreasonable force, even against people who were handcuffed.

Supervisors failed to intervene when deputies were involved in unconstitutional policing. The investigators said the department had good policies against misconduct but found they were not often followed.

The investigators also said city officials in Palmdale and Lancaster expressed hostility toward some residents of subsidized housing. Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris said Friday he rejected the criticism.

"It is the most useless decision I have seen. All they do is come down and tell us how bad we did," Parris said. "I expected a lot more, and they are going to have to do a lot more if they want me to sign off on anything.... The idea we are at war with African Americans is not true."

Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore also took issue with the findings.

"We disagree with their assessment about us racially profiling," he said. "We've been tracking this since 2000, and our information is completely different."

He added, however, that Sheriff Lee Baca "always believes we can improve."

There are a number of possibilities after federal authorities find a pattern of misconduct in a local law enforcement agency. But based on the documents released Friday, the county's longtime monitor of the Sheriff's Department, Merrick Bobb, said it appears both sides are moving toward a consent decree. Whitmore, however, said it's too early to know if a decree will be issued.

Under a decree, both sides agree to a set of reforms, a federal judge signs off on the agreement, and a monitor is appointed to make sure the local agency follows through and reports those findings back to the judge.

The Los Angeles Police Department operated under such a decree after the Rampart corruption scandal, and it took about a decade in that case for federal oversight to be lifted.

Consent decrees are not uncommon. More recently, the police in Seattle entered into one after that agency was found to have a problem with excessive force.

Law enforcement agencies, however, do bristle under that kind of burdensome, and sometimes prolonged, federal scrutiny.

"Officers don't like it because they don't like someone looking over their shoulder; they don't like the stigma," said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School and a former federal prosecutor.

Levenson said that in this case, any consent decree would probably be much narrower in scope than the one the LAPD faced.

Federal authorities have more specific findings of wrongdoing here, and the problems are focused in the Antelope Valley, just one portion of the sheriff's sprawling jurisdiction that spans three-fourths of the county.

Other, less burdensome, settlements could involve memorandums of understanding or agreement in which the two sides also agree on a set of reforms but could possibly do so without a monitor watching over the local agency.

Those agreements typically are weaker, said Bobb, a county-appointed monitor of the Sheriff's Department and the court-appointed consent decree monitor in Seattle.

Under a consent decree, if the local agency does not live up to its promises, the feds can take it to court, and a judge can find the agency to be in contempt — which could result in a fine, or a court order.

Without a consent decree, federal authorities would have to successfully bring a new legal action in order to force the local agency to comply.

Whitmore said he was confident that the two sides would come to an "appropriate" settlement.

robert.faturechi@latimes.com

richard.winton@latimes.com

frank.shyong@latimes.com

Around the Bay Area, you're being watched

Source

Around the Bay Area, you're being watched

By Josh Richman and Angela Woodall Staff writers

Posted: 06/30/2013 01:29:21 AM PDT

Across the Bay Area -- from Pittsburg [California] to San Francisco, from Tiburon to Gilroy -- you're being watched.

And it's not just the National Security Agency secretly vacuuming up your personal data. Local police agencies are increasingly adopting Big Data technologies such as automatic license-plate readers that gather information about everyone, whether they've broken the law or not.

A lot of the information ends up on the 14th floor of a federal office building in San Francisco, where a "fusion center" run by state and local law enforcement agencies combines the data with a plethora of personal information about you, from credit reports to car rentals to unlisted phone numbers to gun licenses.

"No one has any idea of the scale of information being gathered," said Mike Katz-Lacabe, of San Leandro, who discovered this in a very personal way.

A San Leandro school board member, Katz-Lacabe said a comment he heard about license-plate readers at a city council meeting prompted him to file public-records requests that revealed not only that his Toyota Tercel's license plate had been photographed all over town, but also that it and all kinds of other information were being collated at the fusion center. "I was a little shocked," he said.

Along with many of the nation's 77 other fusion centers, the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as an antiterrorism intelligence hub. And like many of the other centers, it has morphed into a huge data center whose purpose is to solve and prevent all kinds of crimes -- from terrorist bombings to car thefts.

Authorities insist there's nothing for law-abiding people to worry about. They say they're just using the latest technology to gather and consolidate information they've used for years -- extra eyes and ears in an age of skimpy budgets and understaffed beats.

Police are also beefing up their use of video surveillance. The latest Bay Area trend allows patrol officers to view surveillance video 24/7 on their smartphones. Many Bay Area police agencies now have at least some cruisers fitted with automatic license-plate readers to scan every car they pass. This and reams of other data from 15 other counties are fed to the fusion center, where analysts search for patterns indicating suspicious activity.

Mike Sena, the Northern California fusion center's director, said his agency is simply centralizing law-enforcement information that was fragmented in the past.

"Before it would be hit or miss," he said in his office at the center, which overlooks San Francisco's Civic Center. He's quick to reject any analogies between his agency and the NSA: "We're not some big spy shop."

California's six fusion centers have been credited with tracking down men who made bomb threats to Delta Air Lines and the U.S. Embassy in Italy; foiling an attempted kidnapping in Sacramento; and helping to quickly find a suspicious tractor-trailer reportedly headed for New York's Times Square -- though the truck, when found, was deemed harmless.

But some Bay Area police collect data for more prosaic purposes.

Tiburon in 2010 installed cameras on the only two roads in and out of town so police now record the license plate of every car that enters and leaves, creating what some say is a virtual gated community.

Police Chief Michael Cronin said he had to convince the Town Council and residents that Pittsburg Police Lt. Ron Raman uses a video camera surveillance monitoring station in Pittsburg, Calif., it wasn't unduly intrusive because it captures only plates and not images of the cars' occupants. Property crimes, he said, have decreased by about a third since the well-publicized cameras were installed.

The Piedmont City Council likes the idea: It voted June 3 to spend $679,000 to install 39 license-plate readers at 15 points around the city. And Menlo Park's police chief says he wants to do the same.

Nicole Ozer, technology and civil liberties policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, said the more data that's accrued and the longer it's kept, the more potential for abuse exists. "It has very limited efficacy and real potential for harm," she said.

Other "eyes" are watching you, too.

Video cameras have become commonplace in many homes and almost every business, ATM or public building. Yet many people might not realize that police across the Bay Area use their own video surveillance systems to keep tabs on public areas, too.

A consultant's recent report to the Oakland Police Department urged it to "significantly increase the camera-monitoring capabilities of the OPD in commercial areas throughout the city to provide identifications and evidence in robbery, burglary and some shooting cases. Cameras would be monitored and recorded at the Domain Awareness Center that is currently under construction."

An Oakland police spokeswoman didn't return repeated emails and phone calls seeking details about the department's camera program.

Pittsburg police officers can now watch live video from 89 cameras throughout the city on their smartphones while out on their beats. Lt. Ron Raman said the cameras essentially let officers extend their enforcement and investigative reach.

Gilroy police Capt. Jim Gillio said the city's Downtown Merchants Association paid half of the $50,000 cost for a six-camera system, of which three cameras have been installed, so emergency dispatchers can tilt, pan and zoom in if something's happening. Gillio said the system has helped spot stolen cars and once let dispatchers quickly see that a reported kidnapping actually hadn't happened.

Richmond police Capt. Mark Gagan said "no police manager would say one technology or one method is a panacea for all crimes," but his department's 42 cameras -- placed in violent areas as well as areas often fouled by quality-of-life issues such as garbage dumping, vandalism and prostitution -- help a thinly spread police force stay atop of what's going on and have led to many arrests. Retired police officers, who both "understand what suspicious or predatory behavior looks like" and know the city's geography well, monitor the live feeds 12 to 16 hours a day, he said.

Felix Hunziker, a 47-year-old architect and Richmond resident who's involved with the North & East Neighborhood Council's residents' patrol, said he's "pretty much good with it because we do have problems in our city, and the cameras are useful tools. ... They have been useful in solving crimes; they may be a deterrent, as well."

Palo Alto, Redwood City, San Pablo, Pinole, Martinez and other Bay Area cities have cameras, too, but most don't mention it on their websites. You wouldn't know about the cameras unless you specifically asked police or city officials.

San Francisco's policy prohibits police from monitoring their cameras in real time; officers review recordings only after a crime has occurred. But after the Boston Marathon bombing in April, the chief asked that the policy be modified during big events. He also asked for more cameras.

UC Berkeley researchers' 2008 analysis of San Francisco's cameras found they had no deterrent effect on violent crime, though certain property crimes -- such as pickpocketing, purse-snatching and thefts from cars -- did decrease in areas where the cameras are located.

Camera systems already in place can have software added later that will recognize people's faces or specific objects, making all that recorded footage much more searchable and potentially invasive. It's a booming business: Intelligent video surveillance and analytics software is a $13.5 billion industry projected to almost triple to $39 billion by 2020, according to a March report from Homeland Security Research, a market research firm.

Legal doctrines supporting the government's collection of information in public spaces date to the 1960s, long before police could easily record so many aspects of our lives, said Shayana Kadidal, an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York.

"The technology simply didn't exist to allow for the government to have a camera on every street corner and record that information forever," Kadidal said. "It doesn't matter whether they actually use it to prosecute people. ... Just knowing that the information is out there casts a huge chilling effect across society."

Josh Richman covers politics. Contact him at 510-208-6428. Follow him at Twitter.com/josh_richman. Read the Political Blotter at IBAbuzz.com/politics.

How to live off the grid

Don’t want to be watched? It’s easy: Just don’t do anything, go anywhere or talk to anybody. But if you still want to live your life, there are several things you can do to reduce your exposure to government and law-enforcement snooping: Ditch the smartphone. Even with the “location services” function switched off, your phone still might use local cell towers and Wi-Fi hot spots to determine its location so long as there’s a battery in it. And, of course, your carrier is logging who you call and for how long — data we now know the government collects. If you can’t stand being out of touch, buy a “burner” prepaid phone with no contract and use a prepaid calling card to pay for calls.

Get rid of your credit and debit cards. Using a credit or debit card that’s in your name is like turning on a big neon “I’M OVER HERE, AND THIS IS WHAT I’M BUYING” light above your head. Instead, use cash to buy gift cards from companies like Visa or American Express.

Ride a bike or take public transit. Driving without a license plate can lead to a ticket for driving without registration; driving with someone else’s license plate can get you arrested. So if you want to avoid all those automatic license-plate readers out there, start pedaling or hop a bus or train.

Encrypt your online communications and hide your IP address. From email to video chats, you can choose services and applications that will make it very hard — though perhaps not impossible — for anyone but the intended recipient to see, or to trace where your computer activity originates. Protect your data. Online or on your own computer, use long, random passwords; use different passwords for every website; change your passwords often; and store those passwords in an encrypted “password safe” app. Also consider using file or disk encryption software. And to avoid malware spies, use the latest version of your operating system and firewall software while keeping your most sensitive information on devices not connected to the Internet at all.

Secret-court judges upset at portrayal of ‘collaboration’ with government

Well maybe they should stop rubber stamping all the unconstitutional search warrants the FBI, DEA, BATF, TSA, Homeland Security and other Federal police agencies ask them to approve.

Source

Secret-court judges upset at portrayal of ‘collaboration’ with government

By Carol D. Leonnig, Ellen Nakashima and Barton Gellman, Published: June 29 E-mail the writers

Recent leaks of classified documents have pointed to the role of a special court in enabling the government’s secret surveillance programs, but members of the court are chafing at the suggestion that they were collaborating with the executive branch.

A classified 2009 draft report by the National Security Agency’s inspector general relayed some details about the interaction between the court’s judges and the NSA, which sought approval for the Bush administration’s top-secret domestic surveillance programs. The report was described in The Washington Post on June 16 and released in full Thursday by The Post and the British newspaper the Guardian.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the former chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, took the highly unusual step Friday of voicing open frustration at the account in the report and court’s inability to explain its decisions.

“In my view, that draft report contains major omissions, and some inaccuracies, regarding the actions I took as Presiding Judge of the FISC and my interactions with Executive Branch officials,” Kollar-Kotelly said in a statement to The Post. It was her first public comment describing her work on the intelligence court.

The inspector general’s draft report is among the many documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, touching off a roiling national debate about the proper balance between the government’s reach into Americans’ lives and the effort to protect the nation in the Internet age.

The document portrays the surveillance court as “amenable” to the government’s legal theory to “re-create” authority for the Internet metadata program that had initially been authorized by President George W. Bush without court or congressional approval. The program was shut down in March 2004 when acting Attorney General James B. Comey and senior leaders at the Justice Department threatened to resign over what they felt was an illegal program.

Kollar-Kotelly disputed the NSA report’s suggestion of a fairly high level of coordination between the court and the NSA and Justice in 2004 to re-create certain authorities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that created the court in response to abuses of domestic surveillance in the 1960s and 1970s.

“That is incorrect,” she said. “I participated in a process of adjudication, not ‘coordination’ with the executive branch. The discussions I had with executive branch officials were in most respects typical of how I and other district court judges entertain applications for criminal wiretaps under Title III, where issues are discussed ex parte.”

The perception that the court works too closely with the government arises in large part from the tribunal’s “ex parte” nature, which means that unlike in a traditional court, there is no legal sparring between adversaries with the judge as arbiter. Instead, a Justice Department official makes the case for the government agency seeking permission to carry out surveillance inside the United States. No one speaks for the target of the surveillance or the company that is ordered to allow its networks to be tapped or to turn over its customers’ data.

Some critics say the court is a rubber stamp for government investigators because it almost never has turned down a warrant application. However, that high batting average doesn’t take into account changes the court requires in some requests and other applications that the government withdraws.

For about 30 years, the court was located on the sixth floor of the Justice Department’s headquarters, down the hall from the officials who would argue in front of it. (The court moved to the District’s federal courthouse in 2009.) “There is a collaborative process that would be unnatural in the public, criminal court setting,” said a former Justice official familiar with the court.

Kollar-Kotelly, who was the court’s chief judge from 2002 to 2006, said she could not comment further on the matter because “the underlying subjects” in the report generally remain classified by the executive branch.

Other judges on the court have confided to colleagues their frustration at the court’s portrayal, according to people familiar with their discussion.

The inspector general’s report, combined with persistent refusals by the government to declassify the opinions, have left the public in the dark about the court’s legal justifications for approving the broad surveillance programs.

“The court is a neutral party, not a collaborator or arm of the government,” said one government official close to the court. “But the information out there now leaves people wondering how and why the court endorsed these programs.”

The court historically has authorized in secret hearings classified warrants to wiretap the calls and monitor the movements of suspected criminals. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, far-reaching programs to gather Internet and telephone content and metadata were launched under presidential authority, without congressional action or approval from the surveillance court.

The Internet metadata portion of that program had to be revamped after Comey and other Justice officials threatened to resign. Metadata are information indicating facts such as an e-mail’s sender and recipient and its time and date, but not its content.

In May 2004, the NSA briefed Kollar-Kotelly on the technical aspects of that program’s collection, according to the report. She also met with the NSA director, Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, on two successive Saturdays during the summer of 2004 to discuss the issue, the report said.

“It was very professional,” Hayden said in an interview. “We of course had to explain to her what it was we had been doing, what it was we wanted to do, how we would do it, what kind of safeguards we felt able to put in. We left it to her judgment whether there was proportionality in terms of was this worth doing, in the balance between security and liberty.”

He said in response to her concerns, the agency made some technical adjustments so that “the odds were greater that you’d pick up fewer protected communications of U.S. persons.”

Said Hayden: “She wasn’t in league with us. We were down there presenting what we thought was appropriate.”

On July 14, 2004, the surveillance court for the first time approved the gathering of information by the NSA, which created the equivalent of a digital vault to hold Internet metadata. Kollar-Kotelly’s order authorized the metadata program under a FISA provision known as the “pen register/trap and trace,” or PRTT.

The ruling was a secret not just to the public and most of Congress, but to all of Kollar-Kotelly’s surveillance court colleagues. Under orders from the president, none of the court’s other 10 members could be told about the Internet metadata program, which was one prong of a larger and highly classified data-gathering effort known as the President’s Surveillance Program, or PSP.

But the importance of her order — which approved the collection based on a 1986 law typically used for phone records — was hard to overstate.

“The order essentially gave NSA the same authority to collect bulk Internet metadata that it had under the PSP,” the inspector general’s report said, with some minor caveats including reducing the number of people who could access the records.

On May 24, 2006, Kollar-Kotelly signed another order, this one authorizing the bulk collection of phone metadata from U.S. phone companies, under a FISA provision known as Section 215, or the ”business records provision,” of the USA Patriot Act.

As with the PRTT order, the Justice Department and NSA “collaboratively designed the application, prepared declarations and responded to questions from court advisers,” the inspector general’s report said. “Their previous experience in drafting the PRTT order made this process more efficient.”

The court also agreed in 2007 to permit the government to collect the content of e-mails and phone calls to and from the United States when “there is probable cause to believe” that one of the parties is a member of al-Qaeda or an associated terrorist group. That program, known today as PRISM and described in documents obtained by The Washington Post, eventually was authorized by Congress.

Kollar-Kotelly could be a stern taskmaster when she thought the NSA was overstepping its bounds. In 2004, she temporarily shut down the government’s surveillance program when she learned of a key NSA failure, The Post reported in 2006. The agency was not properly walling off information gained in warrantless surveillance and may have been using the information to obtain court warrants, which was forbidden. In 2005, the problem resurfaced and she issued a strong warning to the government that it had to fix the problem or would face trouble obtaining court warrants.

Kollar-Kotelly “understood the problems that the government, particularly the Defense Department and the intelligence community, were facing in trying to keep this country safe,” said Robert L. Deitz, former NSA general counsel under Hayden.

But, he said, the court was no rubber stamp. “The judges ask searching questions,” he said. “If they don’t get the right answer, they don’t stamp things ‘reject.’ They say, ‘I’m not signing this.’ Then we go back and say, ‘Okay, we’ve got to do this the following way.’ ”

Still secret are the 2004 decision accompanying the PRTT court order and the legal opinion accompanying the 2006 business records order.

A former senior Justice Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity, said he believes the government should consider releasing declassified summaries of relevant opinions.

“I think it would help” quell the “furor” raised by the recent disclosures, he said. “In this current environment, you may have to lean forward a little more in declassifying stuff than you otherwise would. You might be able to prepare reasonable summaries that would be helpful to the American people.”

Lawmakers and civil-liberties advocates have been pushing the Obama administration for several years to declassify these opinions and other opinions from Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel that explain the legal justification for these programs.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has led an effort to review these opinions to see what, if anything, can be declassified. But Robert S. Litt, ODNI general counsel, has argued that declassification can be difficult when so much of the legal reasoning is intertwined with facts that need to remain secret lest they tip off enemies about surveillance methods.

Still, the former official explained, segregating relevant facts from classified material is routinely done in criminal proceedings under the Classified Information Procedures Act. In those cases, the government can extract the information that is relevant to the defense, the judge approves it, and it is provided to the defense.

“This is not unheard-of in the unclassified world, and some kind of summary document can be generated,” the former official said. “Maybe that’s a middle ground that can be done.”

Sari Horwitz contributed to this report.

Gilbert pigs destroyed the live of this doctor Samer Sannoufi???

Acquitted Gilbert doctor demands $10 mil

By Parker Leavitt The Republic | azcentral.com Sun Jun 30, 2013 10:22 PM

A Gilbert doctor who was acquitted of sexual-assault charges in January is seeking a $10 million settlement from the town for what he says was wrongful arrest and indictment based on false statements by a police detective.

Samer Sannoufi, a family-medicine physician in Gilbert, was arrested in May 2012 after a patient accused him of sexual actions during an unscheduled examination.

A Maricopa County grand jury indicted him on two counts of sexual assault and one count of sexual abuse, but a jury declared him not guilty of all charges in January.

Despite winning the case, Sannoufi said he has lost his practice of about 6,000 patients while suffering emotional distress. The doctor was “severely beaten” by inmates during his time in jail, suffered “multiple facial injuries” and was denied proper medical treatment, [Did he expect any better treatment in Sheriff Joe's gulag????] according to a notice of claim filed against Gilbert.

Phoenix attorney Daniel Raynak, who is representing Sannoufi, said he will likely file a civil suit against Gilbert later this month or in August and expects the case to move to a jury trial.

Sannoufi asserts that a Gilbert police detective falsely testified to the grand jury that the doctor had “admitted to engaging in sex acts” with the victim. The detective later recanted that statement during the trial, the notice of claim says. [Cops don't consider it perjury. It's testilying, and they justify it on the grounds that it is OK to do anything to put somebody they think is a criminal in prison.]

The Gilbert Police Department declined to answer questions about the case; the town typically does not comment on pending legal matters. [ALL government entities tend to clam up when they are covering up the crimes committed by their employees]

Sannoufi blames the detective’s statements for his indictment and says the Police Department should be held responsible for his losses.

“He lost his entire medical practice as a result of this bogus arrest,” Raynak told The Arizona Republic. “He’s very disgruntled and upset with what happened here.”

Sannoufi, a graduate of the National Medical University in Kiev, Ukraine, has been licensed to practice in Arizona since 2004.

Police arrested Sannoufi after a 22-year-old woman said he had touched her inappropriately during an impromptu exam after she took her grandfather to an appointment.

During her grandfather’s visit, the woman mentioned to Sannoufi that she was having difficulty getting pregnant, according to police testimony. The woman told police that she was asked to “drop her shorts” and that the doctor performed an exam without gloves or another woman present in the room.

The woman said Sannoufi tried to arouse her during the exam. She then wore a hidden police transmitter during a follow-up appointment in an attempt to gather evidence, according to police. The doctor was arrested the next day.

Sannoufi told police that he had refused to see the patient because she had no medical insurance and that he believed she was making the allegations because she was upset, according to police testimony. The doctor said he was alone with the woman only for a minute or two while her grandfather provided a urine sample, according to police.

The trial began in November and ended two months later with the doctor’s acquittal.

The woman who brought the accusations against Sannoufi has since filed a civil suit against him, prompting a countersuit by the doctor alleging she abused the judicial process for an “ulterior purpose.”

Last year’s case was not Sannoufi’s first experience with legal trouble following an allegation of a sexual encounter with a patient.

In 2009, the Arizona Medical Board issued a letter of reprimand to Sannoufi after receiving a complaint from a 21-year-old patient who said she had a consensual sexual relationship with the doctor. The board concluded that Sannoufi knowingly made misleading statements when he denied calling or sending texts to the patient.

Ex-L.A. sheriff's narcotics sergeant charged with theft in sting

Ex-L.A. sheriff's narcotics sergeant charged with theft in sting

By Richard Winton

July 1, 2013, 2:13 p.m.

A former L.A. County sheriff's narcotics sergeant has been charged with grand theft and embezzlement by a public official for allegedly stealing about $4,000 during a sting by his own department.

Bonnie Theodore Bryant III, 57, allegedly took the money during a July 25, 2012, sting operation conducted by the criminal internal affairs unit of his own department.

Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said the 28-year department veteran was targeted in the sting. Increasingly, law enforcement agencies across the country test the integrity of their deputies and officers, especially in cases where prior accusations have been made.

Bryant is charged with one felony count each of grand theft of personal property and embezzlement by a public or private officer, said Dep. Dist. Atty. Jason Lustig. Bryant also faces a misdemeanor count of petty theft.

Bryant also allegedly stole money seized during a narcotics sting on May 15, 2012. The alleged theft, which occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store, was observed by a security guard through an external security video camera.

The guard allegedly observed Bryant place a large amount of money into a canvas bag in the trunk of his vehicle. The guard reported the alleged incident to the sheriff's department on July 5, 2012. The report triggered the sting operation.

Bryant was a narcotics task force supervisor at the times he allegedly took the money. The veteran sergeant resigned from the sheriff’s department in December 2012, the prosecutor said.

The sergeant is due in court Monday. Bryant faces up to four years and six months in state prison if convicted of all the charges.

Some L.A. pot shops shut down while others look to Garcetti for relief

Some L.A. pot shops shut down while others look to Garcetti for relief

By Sandy Banks

July 1, 2013, 10:25 p.m.

It was a going-out-of-business sale that only a pothead could love.

Cannabis-laced brownies, chocolate bars and peanut butter cups were half-price. Sleep-inducing indica buds sold out quickly. And discounted sativa was moving well among patients whose medical needs must have called for a buzz.

I was on hand as Tampa Wellness packed up to shut down, disappointing customers who had trickled in last weekend from as far as Palmdale to get medical marijuana from this small dispensary in a Reseda strip mall.

The closure was sudden and not by choice. A note taped to the shop's blacked-out front window Sunday made that point: "Due to recent elections regarding E, D and F, Tampa Wellness has been forced to shut its doors by the city attorney. We have appreciated the support of our clients and look forward to new beginnings."

E, D and F were competing medical marijuana measures on the Los Angeles city ballot in May. Most dispensary owners supported F, which would have allowed an unlimited number of outlets but scrutinized them more tightly.

Los Angeles voters, however, approved D — which limits the city's dispensaries to the 135 or so that were in business when the council began trying to regulate them in 2007.

The key word is trying. And failing, mostly.

That's why Los Angeles seems to have a giant green cross on every block.

And why, 17 years after Californians made marijuana legal for medical use — the city still is dealing with fly-by-night dispensaries, wishy-washy politicians and feuding law enforcement officials who don't agree on what the law is, much less how to enforce it.

And why it's hard to know whether this latest crackdown will launch another battle in a war of wills, or usher in an era of peace that benefits patients and collectives.

::

Tampa Wellness received one of 1,700 letters sent out by the city attorney last month, warning dispensary owners and their landlords that they could go to jail if they don't shut their doors.

Assistant City Atty. Asha Greenberg called it a courtesy letter, notifying businesses that opened after 2007 that "the passage of Prop D [makes] their continued operation illegal."

Another collective owner, Frank Sheftel also got a letter, even though his cozy Toluca Lake Collective (TLC) in North Hollywood has been in business since 2006.

His shop, which has a food pantry and offers hospice care, wound up in the illegal group because of a paperwork glitch, Sheftel said. "One list says I'm [approved]; another list says I'm not."

That kind of confusion has allowed what began as "compassionate care" to turn Los Angeles into a place that some city officials believe has more storefront pot dispensaries than Starbucks coffee shops.

City lawmakers avoided the issue for years as hundreds of dispensaries cropped up, many run by owners who cared less about patients than profits. While council members dithered, local prosecutors took a hard line: Any sale of marijuana to anyone was a crime.

Dispensaries fought back in court and the city backed down. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Police Department and federal Drug Enforcement Administration embarked on campaigns of their own: raiding shops, confiscating proceeds and hauling customers and employees to jail.

"We've used a tremendous amount of resources to go after the pot outlets, and look where we are," Sheftel noted. "It's all to no avail."

In fact, dispensaries have grown so accustomed to the city's stops and starts that some are ignoring the recent letters warning them to shut down.

I spent Saturday driving around the west San Fernando Valley, stopping at every green cross I saw. At a few shops, employees told me the letters have scared their landlords into forcing them to move out. But others said they planned to stick around; they have seen these letters before.

"That's the problem," Sheftel said. "The city's never done anything. They just keep sending letters."

::

Sheftel met Monday with an aide to newly sworn-in Mayor Eric Garcetti, who, according to the dispensary owner, promised to look into the oversight that's kept him off the approved list.

Sheftel thinks the new political regime — mayor, city prosecutor and district attorney — may bring the sort of balance this long-running problem needs.

I hope he's right. The stars do seem to be aligning properly:

The state Supreme Court has finally given cities permission to come up with their own regulatory routines. Los Angeles has a new crop of enlightened officials and support from an electorate that's sensitive to patients' needs, but sick of the proliferation of barely disguised drug dealing. And the state is considering legislation that would set standards for dispensaries and protect patients and legal collectives from harrassment and prosecution.

But there's more than the principle of compassionate care at stake. Medical marijuana is big business.

At more than a few dispensaries, staff members told me they planned to reinvent the business if it was forced to shut down. They will offer delivery services, buy the licenses of legitimate shops or become private clubs — whatever keeps them in the money and out of law enforcement's reach.

Even Tampa Wellness isn't giving up. "We are currently looking to reopen in a different location," its sign said, offering the shop's Twitter handle so patients can check their progress.

It's a cat-and-mouse game that doesn't seem on track to end soon.

Attorney David Welch, who has spent years representing dispensaries, may have put it best: "This is just another round in the constant soap opera that is medical marijuana in Los Angeles."

sandy.banks@latimes.com

Chicago cops framed these guys for murder????

Source

Another inmate in controversial prosecution files to gain his release

By Steve Mills Chicago Tribune reporter

July 2, 2013

The exoneration Friday of a Chicago man convicted of a double murder nearly two decades ago seemed like the end of the story.

It may be only the beginning.

Attorneys for a co-defendant of Daniel Taylor who also has long maintained his innocence filed a petition Monday in Cook County Circuit Court seeking his release from prison. They argued that the evidence that unraveled Taylor's conviction — police records showing he was in a lockup when the murders took place in November 1992 — undermines the entire prosecution and should result in freeing Deon Patrick as well.

"We're saying that the confessions were pieced together by the police and have a central fact in each and every one of them that can't be true — because they all have Daniel Taylor spread over all of them," said attorney Stuart Chanen, who represents Patrick. "If they're convinced Taylor was innocent, then Deon Patrick is innocent."

In arresting Taylor, Patrick and six other young men weeks after the murders, Chicago police detectives and Cook County prosecutors pointed to the fact that all eight confessed and implicated each other — strengthening the confessions in the absence of other evidence.

That supposed strength may now prove to be a weakness.

Two of Taylor's other co-defendants said Monday that, like Patrick, they will point to Taylor's release in seeking their own relief in court. Paul Phillips and Lewis Gardner, who each served about 15 years in prison for their convictions as supposed lookouts in the murders, told the Tribune they hope to find attorneys to help them overturn their convictions. That would allow them to ask for compensation from the state and file lawsuits against the police seeking big-money damages.

Phillips, who was 17 at the time of his arrest, and Gardner, who was then 15, have also maintained their innocence since their arrests in December 1992.

"Now they know it was all messed up, so it should be clear for myself and Lewis Gardner," said Phillips, who is 37 and has struggled to find work since his release from prison in 2007. "Every job I try to get, they say I've got a felony. No matter how much I try, it doesn't matter. All they do is look at my record."

Taylor was released from prison Friday, hours after prosecutors in Chicago dismissed his conviction. State's Attorney Anita Alvarez later said in a statement that her office would also examine Patrick's conviction and the case of Dennis Mixon. In a twist of sorts, Mixon has acknowledged he was involved in the double murder and has cleared his seven co-defendants of wrongdoing.

Alvarez's statement made no mention of Phillips or Gardner, but on Monday, Sally Daly, a spokeswoman for the office, said prosecutors would "examine each of the cases individually and make the appropriate determination based upon that integrity review." But the cases in which "the defendant is in custody will take priority," she said.

Timothy O'Neill, who teaches criminal procedure at John Marshall Law School, said Taylor's exoneration should help all the co-defendants but Mixon.

"Certainly it's going to help their argument. It should influence the state's attorney's office and it should influence a judge," said O'Neill, who also writes frequently about issues in criminal law. "There's no magic legal principle, but it destroys the weight of those confessions."

The case stems from the murders of Jeffrey Lassiter and Sharon Haugabook, who were shot in an apartment near Clarendon Park on the city's North Side on Nov. 16, 1992.

Police records showed that Taylor was in the lockup of the old Town Hall police station when the killings took place at 8:45 p.m. He had been arrested at 6:45 p.m. for disorderly conduct and released on bond about 10 p.m., according to the records. He was convicted in spite of the records and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Those police records were crucial to a review by Alvarez's conviction integrity unit and to her decision to set aside Taylor's conviction.

The Tribune first brought the case to light in 2001 in a series of stories investigating false confessions. Since then, the newspaper has uncovered additional evidence that supported Taylor's alibi and, by extension, undermined the convictions of his co-defendants. Taylor's attorneys, Karen Daniel and Judy Royal at the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law, have developed new evidence as well.

Taylor's efforts to prove his innocence gained momentum over the past two years. A federal appeals court declared that it was deeply concerned about the case, saying Taylor's alibi was powerful and his confession questionable. In reviewing the case as well, the state attorney general's office then turned over to Taylor's attorneys key documents that bolstered Taylor's alibi but, they asserted, had not been turned over to Taylor's attorneys at trial as required by law.

All of that may prove helpful to Patrick, Phillips and Gardner. In the papers he filed for Patrick on Monday, Chanen urged prosecutors to set aside Patrick's conviction for two reasons: because he is innocent and because, he argued, prosecutors had withheld key documents.

Chanen said the documents, though they revolve around Taylor's time in the police lockup, would have helped Patrick as well and should have been turned over by trial prosecutors Thomas Needham and Jeanne Bischoff because they would have helped undermine the entire case.

"They were all entitled to that material, not just Taylor," Chanen said.

Chanen also said the documents supporting Taylor's alibi were corroborated by Mixon's later claims that the other seven young men were not involved as well as two eyewitnesses who said they saw Mixon leave the scene with other men. Mixon has previously told the Tribune and attorneys the name of one of his alleged accomplices, but he has not revealed the others who took part in the murders. Now 51, Mixon is serving a life sentence at Menard Correctional Center.

"Mixon did a pretty astounding thing," Chanen said. "He literally threw away the jailhouse key."

In the hours before his release Friday from Menard, Taylor sought out Patrick at the prison to say goodbye. He said Patrick began to cry.

Phillips and Gardner said they learned of Taylor's release from one of Taylor's lawyers. The development has raised their hopes. The years since their release have been difficult, they said Monday in phone interviews.

Phillips said he recently landed a job as a baker at a Garrett's popcorn shop at O'Hare International Airport. But then, he said, his conviction was discovered in a background check and he lost the job. It was, he said, one more in a long line of disappointments.

Gardner, who is 34, said he has had jobs in fast food and at a carwash but has struggled too. Living now in Waukegan, he said he has had trouble supporting his girlfriend, their two children and a stepson even though he served his time. He said he does not have the money for a lawyer.

"I thought it was great what happened to Daniel," he said. "Hopefully it can help. I'm praying that it does. I want to get my name cleared and just get a decent job."

smmills@tribune.com

Court: State must pay DNA testing cost for convicts

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Court: State must pay DNA testing cost for convicts

Posted: Wednesday, July 3, 2013 6:46 am

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services

It's one thing to force those convicted of certain crimes in Arizona to submit to mandatory DNA testing for a statewide database.

But the Arizona Court of Appeals said it's quite something else to try to force those affected to actually pay for the analysis. More to the point, it's illegal.

In a unanimous decision, the three-judge panel said if the state wants a DNA sample from Garland Reyes III it has to pick up the costs itself. Judge Maurice Portley, writing for the court, said there is no evidence the Legislature ever intended to make the cost a part of the penalty criminals have to pay.

Defense attorney Neal Bassett said there has been a trend by trial courts to impose these kinds of fees.

"They're so short on money that they're creating these fees and charging people, creating them out of thin air,'' he said.

"If a private business did that, the Attorney General's Office would go after them for fraud,'' Bassett continued. "But the court thinks that since it's part of the government it can create whatever fee we want to and, since it's just criminals, we can force them to pay it.''

Tuesday's ruling should be the last word. Stephanie Grisham, spokeswoman for Attorney General Tom Horne, said her agency has no plans to seek Supreme Court review.

According to court records, Reyes was arrested after police say he was sending marijuana through the U.S. Postal Service.

A trial judge threw out several of the charges against him. But a jury convicted him of six counts of possession of marijuana.

The trial judge then ordered Reyes to submit to DNA testing as required by state law. The purpose is to add the person's profile to a state database that can be used to solve prior and future crimes.

Reyes did not contest that. But he did object to the judge ordering him to pick up the tab.

Portley said while the Legislature requires the Department of Corrections to get a DNA sample for testing, nothing in the law says who must pay.

Looking deeper, Portley said the aim of the law is "to aid investigative efforts in identifying repeat offenders by 'matching up' a person with a certain crime.''

He also noted that legislators, in the same law, established the Arizona DNA Identification System to conduct the necessary testing and analysis. More to the point, Portley said lawmakers funded the system by imposing a surcharge on criminal and traffic fines.

"The Legislature did not direct that convicted felons pay the cost of the testing,'' Portley wrote. "If the Legislature wanted a convicted felon to pay the cost of his or her DNA testing, we presume it would say so expressly.''

The appellate court also rejected arguments by the Attorney General's Office that the charge was allowed because the Legislature has authorized courts to impose fines and surcharges on felons. But Portley said this was not a fine but instead a fee, one which was not authorized.

Grisham said it now will be up to lawmakers if they want to alter the statute to require or permit trial courts to impose the testing fee.

The amount of the fee was not spelled out, either in the trial judge's order or the appellate court ruling.

Bolivian president’s plane forced to land in Austria in hunt for Snowden

American tyrants search Bolivian President's plane for Edward Snowden

And I thought my civil rights were violated when the jackbooted Chandler Police thugs falsely arrested me last week. (See this URL)

Emperor Obama really is a tyrant who thinks he is above international law and can do whatever he wants to destroy his enemies of which freedom fighter Edward Snowden is one of.

Source

Bolivian president’s plane forced to land in Austria in hunt for Snowden

By Kathy Lally and Juan Forero, Updated: Wednesday, July 3, 8:12 AM E-mail the writers

MOSCOW — Bolivian President Evo Morales’s plane, forced to land in Austria because of suspicions that American fugitive Edward Snowden was on board, was permitted to fly home Wednesday, Bolivian and European authorities said.

The search for Snowden turned into a major diplomatic fiasco, with Bolivia, Venezuela and several other Latin American countries lashing out at the United States and accusing it of having strong-armed European countries into redirecting the official Bolivian presidential plane.

Snowden, who revealed secret U.S. surveillance programs and fled to Hong Kong, then Moscow, to stay beyond American reach, was not aboard the plane, an irate David Choquehuanca, Bolivia’s foreign minister, told reporters after the Bolivian delegation landed in Vienna.

“We don’t know who invented this lie,” he said from Bolivia’s capital, La Paz.

Morales’s plane, ferrying him home from a conference in Moscow, was redirected to Vienna late Tuesday after France and Portugal refused to allow it to enter their airspace, Bolivian and Venezuelan officials said.

Authorities in Austria confirmed that the plane was searched and that Snowden, 30, was not on the flight. There was no indication that he had left Moscow, where he has been in diplomatic limbo for more than a week.

“Our airport staff have checked it over and can assure you that no one is on board who is not a Bolivian citizen,” Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger told reporters at the Vienna airport, Reuters news agency reported. He called it a “voluntary examination.” But Morales had told reporters that no Austrians had been on board.

Bolivia’s government responded angrily to the incident. Vice President Alvaro Garcia announced that the ambassadors of France and Italy and the consul for Portugal would be summoned to the Foreign Ministry in La Paz on Wednesday to explain what he called “the abuse” of redirecting Morales’s plane.

He said the representatives of those countries need to explain “these disagreeable, terrible and abusive events.”

The incident also raised the ire of governments and organizations across Latin America, which cast Morales’s troubles as a dire violation against a small country orchestrated by Washington. Even Colombia’s leftist rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), called the rerouting of the plane “an infamy.”

Jose Miguel Insulza, secretary general of the Organization of American States, which is based in Washington and is made up of governments across the Western Hemisphere, called for an explanation from the European countries that Morales’s government accused of blocking his plane’s flight path.

“Nothing justifies an action of such disrespect from the highest authorities of a country,” said Insulza, who is from Chile.

Choquehuanca said Morales’s plane was an hour from French airspace when it was told it could not enter. “Portugal has to explain to us,” he said. “France has to explain to us why they canceled” flight authorization.

The Portuguese Foreign Ministry said in a statement Wednesday that Portugal informed the Bolivians on Monday afternoon, a full day before Morales’s flight, that it would not allow the Bolivian plane to land in the country for unspecified “technical reasons” but that it would allow an overflight.

The Associated Press reported Wednesday that two officials with the French Foreign Ministry said that Morales’s plane also had authorization to fly over France. They would not comment on why Bolivian officials said otherwise. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to be publicly named, according to ministry policy.

The wire service, citing an unidentified official in Vienna, reported that the flight crew on Morales’s aircraft asked controllers at the Vienna airport for permission to land because the plane needed more fuel to continue its journey.

The aircraft took off from Vienna shortly before noon Wednesday, AP reported. Spain said the plane would be allowed to refuel in the Canary Islands, although a Foreign Ministry official declined to comment on a claim by Bolivia that the permission was contingent on allowing authorities to search the plane, the wire service said.

The White House, CIA and State Department all declined to comment on the situation involving the Bolivian aircraft. But the latest twist seemed to signal that U.S. authorities have been able to marshal support from European countries in what has been a feverish pursuit of the former National Security Agency contractor.

It also underscored how Snowden has settled still deeper into isolation as one country after another has rejected his appeals for asylum since his disclosure of a trove of highly secret documents.

The diverting of Morales’s plane is sure to fan anger against the United States, which is trying to play down new revelations of spying against European allies while trying to win support to corral Snowden even from countries such as Russia, Bolivia and Venezuela, which are sharply at odds with the Obama administration.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua called the incident over Austria “an attempt on Evo Morales’s life.” He said it was a sign of how far “the empire” — a reference to the United States — and its “lackeys” would go “to hunt down a young man who has only said the truth.”

Bolivia’s defense minister, Ruben Saavedra, who was on the flight, also blamed the United States, telling Bolivian media that “this proves with clarity an attitude of sabotage and plotting by the United States, pressuring European government.” He said that Italy, too, had barred Morales’s plane from its airspace.

For the United States, Bolivia clearly emerged as a possible sanctuary for Snowden, who was stuck in Russia after the United States revoked his passport before his arrival in Moscow on a flight from Hong Kong on June 23.

In an interview earlier Tuesday in Moscow on the state-financed RT news channel, Morales said he would consider asylum for Snowden. “Yes, why not?” he said. “Bolivia is there to welcome personalities who denounce — I don’t know if it’s espionage or control. But we are here.”

After living unseen in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport for a week, Snowden sent out 19 asylum requests Sunday night, according to WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization that has been advising him. On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he could stay here if he stopped leaking information harmful to the United States, an odd offer that Snowden refused, a presidential spokesman said Tuesday morning.

That left a list of countries, from Austria to Venezuela, to which Snowden had sent appeals. By Tuesday evening, at least eight of them — including Ecuador and Iceland, which had been asked earlier — had said an applicant must be in the country to be considered. At least three had said no, and others had not replied.

Some countries avoided him out of friendship with the United States, others for political or economic reasons. Ecuador, which at first had appeared enthusiastic, grew less so after Vice President Biden made a call to the president. To be granted asylum, Snowden would have to count on a country to defy the United States. Of those on his list, Bolivia and Venezuela were looking like the best possibilities. Both are hostile to the United States, and the presidents of both countries have heaped praise on Snowden.

Morales, who said his government had not received a formal request for asylum, in 2008 expelled the U.S. ambassador from his country and ended anti-drug cooperation with Washington.

“Bolivia, as well as Venezuela and Ecuador,” he said, “are exposed to constant surveillance from the U.S. empire.”

Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, was also in Moscow, which had convened a meeting of gas-exporting countries, and Russian media speculated that he would take Snowden to Venezuela on his official plane.

Maduro smiled at that suggestion. “We will take with us numerous agreements on investments in the oil and gas sector,” he said. He defended the former National Security Agency contractor, however, saying that Snowden had neither killed anyone nor planted a bomb and that he deserved protection. “He only told the world a large truth to prevent war,” Maduro said. “The U.S. capitalist elite are trying to control the world and are spying on friends, foes and the entire planet.”

The Obama administration on Tuesday acknowledged contacting foreign governments on Snowden’s asylum list, but a State Department spokeswoman dismissed the leaker’s claims that Washington has mounted a campaign to pressure anyone against offering him sanctuary.

“We have been in touch, as we have been for several days now, with a broad range of countries that could serve as either transit spots or final destinations,” said the spokeswoman, Jennifer Psaki. “And what we’ve been communicating is, of course, what we’ve been communicating publicly — that Mr. Snowden has been accused of leaking classified information. He is somebody that we would like to see returned to the United States.”

Late Tuesday, Maduro was preparing to fly on to Belarus — without Snowden, a member of his entourage told the Interfax news agency. Nothing could be done, the official told Interfax — the Venezuelan plane was at a different airport.

After his nine days in limbo, Snowden’s situation looked desperate. Officials here have portrayed themselves as powerless in the case because Snowden is outside their jurisdiction in the transit zone and needs a passport or other document before he can travel onward, but some Russians find that disingenuous. Russian officials always find a way to do exactly what they want, they say.

And that has raised questions about what is going on behind the scenes. Pavel Felgenhauer, a longtime military analyst and observer of the KGB’s successor, the Federal Security Service, or FSB, offered this speculative scenario: Russia must be trying to see whether it can recruit Snowden.

In an interview Tuesday, Felgenhauer said that when Putin told reporters that Snowden could stay if he stopped talking about the United States, Putin was saying that Snowden had to make a choice. Putin was telling Snowden that he would be working for Russia, not for one of the newspapers publishing his leaks, Felgenhauer said.

The reason Snowden has not been seen is that border guards, who stand at the door when an international flight lands and who work for the FSB, would have hustled him off to a safe room in the airport, or even a safe house elsewhere, Felgenhauer said. Snowden probably did not use a ticket he had to Havana on June 24, the analyst said, because his minders told him the United States would force the Aeroflot flight down when it flew over U.S. territory.

“He’s cornered psychologically,” Felgenhauer said. “You bring the guy to the breaking point to see if he’s real. By now he’s probably afraid of everything, convinced he’ll be hunted down like bin Laden if he leaves here.”

As Felgenhauer put it in a Novaya Gazeta article this week, “Snowden remained in Sheremetyevo like a suitcase with a broken-off handle: a pain to carry and a shame to throw away.”

Forero reported from Bogota, Colombia. Joby Warrick in Washington contributed to this report.

U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

Remember all the times we have been told that despite being a government entity the US Postal Service is run like a private business.

That is a big lie. In this article it certainly sounds like the the US Postal Service is a government entity that is helping the FBI, NSA, Homeland Security, CIA, DEA, BATF and other alphabet of police agencies spy on the American public.

Source

U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

By RON NIXON

Published: July 3, 2013

WASHINGTON — Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: A handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his home.

“Show all mail to supv” — supervisor — “for copying prior to going out on the street,” read the card. It included Mr. Pickering’s name, address and the type of mail that needed to be monitored. The word “confidential” was highlighted in green.

“It was a bit of a shock to see it,” said Mr. Pickering, who owns a small bookstore in Buffalo. More than a decade ago, he was a spokesman for the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group labeled eco-terrorists by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Postal officials subsequently confirmed they were indeed tracking Mr. Pickering’s mail but told him nothing else.

As the world focuses on the high-tech spying of the National Security Agency, the misplaced card offers a rare glimpse inside the seemingly low-tech but prevalent snooping of the United States Postal Service.

Mr. Pickering was targeted by a longtime surveillance system called mail covers, but that is only a forerunner of a vastly more expansive effort, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the government saves the images.

Together, the two programs show that snail mail is subject to the same kind of scrutiny that the National Security Agency has given to telephone calls and e-mail.

The mail covers program, used to monitor Mr. Pickering, is more than a century old but is still considered a powerful tool. At the request of law enforcement officials, postal workers record information from the outside of letters and parcels before they are delivered. (Actually opening the mail requires a warrant.) The information is sent to whatever law enforcement agency asked for it. Tens of thousands of pieces of mail each year undergo this scrutiny.

The Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program was created after the anthrax attacks in late 2001 that killed five people, including two postal workers. Highly secret, it seeped into public view last month when the F.B.I. cited it in its investigation of ricin-laced letters sent to President Obama and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. It enables the Postal Service to retroactively track mail correspondence at the request of law enforcement. No one disputes that it is sweeping.

“In the past, mail covers were used when you had a reason to suspect someone of a crime,” said Mark D. Rasch, the former director of the Justice Department’s computer crime unit, who worked on several fraud cases using mail covers. “Now it seems to be ‘Let’s record everyone’s mail so in the future we might go back and see who you were communicating with.’ Essentially you’ve added mail covers on millions of Americans.”

Bruce Schneier, a computer security expert and an author, said whether it was a postal worker taking down information or a computer taking images, the program was still an invasion of privacy.

“Basically they are doing the same thing as the other programs, collecting the information on the outside of your mail, the metadata, if you will, of names, addresses, return addresses and postmark locations, which gives the government a pretty good map of your contacts, even if they aren’t reading the contents,” he said.

But law enforcement officials said mail covers and the automatic mail tracking program are invaluable, even in an era of smartphones and e-mail.

In a criminal complaint filed June 7 in Federal District Court in Eastern Texas, the F.B.I. said a postal investigator tracing the ricin letters was able to narrow the search to Shannon Guess Richardson, an actress in New Boston, Tex., by examining information from the front and back images of 60 pieces of mail scanned immediately before and after the tainted letters sent to Mr. Obama and Mr. Bloomberg showing return addresses near her home. Ms. Richardson had originally accused her husband of mailing the letters, but investigators determined that he was at work during the time they were mailed.

In 2007, the F.B.I., the Internal Revenue Service and the local police in Charlotte, N.C., used information gleaned from the mail cover program to arrest Sallie Wamsley-Saxon and her husband, Donald, charging both with running a prostitution ring that took in $3 million over six years. Prosecutors said it was one of the largest and most successful such operations in the country. Investigators also used mail covers to help track banking activity and other businesses the couple operated under different names.

Other agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services, have used mail covers to track drug smugglers and Medicare fraud.

“It’s a treasure trove of information,” said James J. Wedick, a former F.B.I. agent who spent 34 years at the agency and who said he used mail covers in a number of investigations, including one that led to the prosecution of several elected officials in California on corruption charges. “Looking at just the outside of letters and other mail, I can see who you bank with, who you communicate with — all kinds of useful information that gives investigators leads that they can then follow up on with a subpoena.”

But, he said: “It can be easily abused because it’s so easy to use and you don’t have to go through a judge to get the information. You just fill out a form.”

For mail cover requests, law enforcement agencies simply submit a letter to the Postal Service, which can grant or deny a request without judicial review. Law enforcement officials say the Postal Service rarely denies a request. In other government surveillance program, such as wiretaps, a federal judge must sign off on the requests.

The mail cover surveillance requests are granted for about 30 days, and can be extended for up to 120 days. There are two kinds of mail covers: those related to criminal activity and those requested to protect national security. The criminal activity requests average 15,000 to 20,000 per year, said law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are prohibited by law from discussing the requests. The number of requests for antiterrorism mail covers has not been made public.

Law enforcement officials need warrants to open the mail, although President George W. Bush asserted in a signing statement in 2007 that the federal government had the authority to open mail without warrants in emergencies or foreign intelligence cases.

Court challenges to mail covers have generally failed because judges have ruled that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy for information contained on the outside of a letter. Officials in both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, in fact, have used the mail-cover court rulings to justify the N.S.A.’s surveillance programs, saying the electronic monitoring amounts to the same thing as a mail cover. Congress briefly conducted hearings on mail cover programs in 1976, but has not revisited the issue.

The program has led to sporadic reports of abuse. In May 2012, Mary Rose Wilcox, a Maricopa County supervisor, was awarded nearly $1 million by a federal judge after winning a lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio, known for his immigration raids in Arizona, who, among other things, obtained mail covers from the Postal Service to track her mail. The judge called the investigation into Ms. Wilcox politically motivated because she had been a frequent critic of Mr. Arpaio, objecting to what she considered the targeting of Hispanics in his immigration sweeps. The case is being appealed.

In the mid-1970s the Church Committee, a Senate panel that documented C.I.A. abuses, faulted a program created in the 1950s in New York that used mail covers to trace and sometimes open mail going to the Soviet Union from the United States.

A suit brought in 1973 by a high school student in New Jersey, whose letter to the Socialist Workers Party was traced by the F.B.I. as part of an investigation into the group, led to a rebuke from a federal judge.

Postal officials refused to discuss either mail covers or the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program.

Mr. Pickering says he suspects that the F.B.I. requested the mail cover to monitor his mail because a former associate said the bureau had called with questions about him. Last month, he filed a lawsuit against the Postal Service, the F.B.I. and other agencies, saying they were improperly withholding information.

A spokeswoman for the F.B.I. in Buffalo declined to comment.

Mr. Pickering said that although he was arrested two dozen times for acts of civil disobedience and convicted of a handful of misdemeanors, he was never involved in the arson attacks the Earth Liberation Front carried out. He said he became tired of focusing only on environmental activism and moved back to Buffalo to finish college, open his bookstore, Burning Books, and start a family.

“I’m no terrorist,” he said. “I’m an activist.”

Mr. Pickering has written books sympathetic to the liberation front, but he said his political views and past association should not make him the target of a federal investigation. “I’m just a guy who runs a bookstore and has a wife and a kid,” he said.

Maricopa County employs 13,000 people!!!!

This $58 million raise for the 13,000 Maricopa County employees will give each of them a pay raise of about $4,500. And that includes each of the police thugs that work for Sheriff Joe!!!!

Source

Maricopa County Board of Supervisors OKs $58 million in raises

By Michelle Ye Hee Lee The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jun 19, 2013 1:54 PM

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors on Wednesday approved a detailed plan to give $58 million in raises to its employees.

The county is one of the Valley’s largest employers, with a workforce of about 13,000. The board action ends a freeze of nearly six years on merit-based pay increases as the county struggled with decreasing tax revenues resulting from the economic downturn.

The wage freeze in those years created internal pay inequities, increased employee turnover and triggered ongoing struggles to recruit and retain employees with key responsibilities whose positions have cost the county more to temporarily fill with contracted experts.

The compensation plan approved Wednesday will pay for performance-based raises for employees who have worked for at least one year and have the qualifying rating in their annual performance reviews. Raises are expected to average 5 percent.

“The objective is pretty simple: It’s to retain and recruit the best employees we can,” County Manager Tom Manos said.

The board-approved policy sets a guideline for department directors and elected officials, who will determine how to distribute raises for their own employees. Each department or office will receive a lump sum equal to 5 percent of its total payroll.

The leaders of each department and elected office know their departments’ unique recruitment and retention issues that need to be addressed internally, and will have discretion to distribute raises “in the way that makes most sense,” said MaryEllen Sheppard, assistant county manager who oversees human resources and compensation.

The raises are designed to address several compensation issues created by the raise freeze, which contributed to growing employee disgruntlement over the years and made it difficult for the county to hire and keep employees.

In fiscal year 2014 budget presentations to the Board of Supervisors this spring, county elected officials unanimously pleaded with the board to restore employee raises, describing how wage stagnation affected their agencies.

The Clerk of the Court’s office, for example, has had such high turnover that between January and mid-November 2012, nearly one quarter of about 200 courtroom clerks had left the county. It takes at least five months to hire and train a clerk, creating work backlogs for remaining courtroom clerks while new hires are trained.

County officials also hope to address salary inequities among groups of employees. In some cases, newly hired workers are paid about the same as colleagues with five or six years’ experience.

The new compensation policy allows county officials to make market adjustments to address employee-turnover rates in certain specialized positions where they have had an especially difficult time recruiting and retaining employees. Those positions include county attorneys, information-technology staff, health-care workers, nurses working in jails, probation officers and sheriff’s deputies.

Consequences of not keeping employees in those positions are costly, Manos said.

“We can’t live without the services of those people and when we can hire them as employees, we hire them as contractors whose compensation far exceeds what they earn as employees,” Manos said.

The last cycle of market adjustments took place between fiscal years 2005-08, according to the new plan. Market adjustments are made to ensure employees with qualifying performance ratings are paid competitively with peers in similar classifications.

“Governmental (and many private sector) employees have not received consistent raises over the last five years. Some even took pay cuts or furloughs,” according to the new plan. “While the county is behind its competitors in terms of employee salaries, markets have not moved uniformly nor has the impact of compensation been consistent across county departments.”

Employees receiving merit raises should see their pay increase by the end of July, but market adjustments are expected to take a few months longer.

Throughout fiscal 2014, which begins July 1, county administrators will continue to track monthly turnover rates by department to see if there are other positions that they need to address, Manos said.

“When it comes to compensation, it’s hard to satisfy everybody. But I think everybody appreciates the resources that the Board of Supervisors put to this issue,” Manos said. “This is, I think, by any measure, a lot of money that’s been set aside for compensation, and reflects our board’s understanding that we need to act to retain and be able to recruit the very best employees.”

Bay Area cities battle U.S. in bid to save marijuana dispensaries

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Bay Area cities battle U.S. in bid to save marijuana dispensaries

July 3, 2013, 1:31 p.m.

OAKLAND -- Two Bay Area cities' battle to preserve access to medical marijuana heated up Wednesday, as Berkeley filed suit to block a federal forfeiture action against its oldest and largest dispensary, and Oakland – which filed a similar suit last year – prevailed with an important court ruling.

Melinda Haag, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, last year moved to seize the Oakland and San Jose properties of Harborside Health Center, the country’s largest dispensary. In May, her office filed a similar action to seize the property of Berkeley Patients Group.

Both cities have stepped in to fight the federal moves, asserting that the dispensaries comply with local and state laws and offer safe access to medical cannabis for patients who might otherwise turn to the illegal market.

In Wednesday’s claim, filed on behalf of Berkeley by the Drug Policy Alliance, the city is attempting to intercede in the forfeiture action by saying it stands to lose “substantial revenue” if Berkeley Patients Group is shuttered.

The claim also asserts that the forfeiture would undermine the city’s comprehensive efforts to regulate and control medical marijuana, and that closure of the dispensary founded in 1999 would be likely to lead to more unregulated, unpermitted dispensaries and to an increase in illicit marijuana sales on city streets.

“It is time for the federal government to wake up and stop these asset forfeiture actions,” Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates said in a statement. “Berkeley Patients Group has complied with the rules and caused no problems in the city. The federal government should not use its scarce resources to harass local law-abiding businesses.”

Also Wednesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James in San Francisco agreed to place the federal forfeiture action against Harborside’s properties on hold while Oakland appeals in its effort to intercede.

James previously ruled that Oakland – which had missed a deadline to weigh in directly on the forfeiture but filed suit on separate legal grounds – did not have the right to sue. Oakland appealed that ruling to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and Cedric Chao, representing Oakland pro bono, then went back to James to request that the forfeiture action be placed on hold until the appellate court rules.

In agreeing to do so Wednesday, James said Oakland had “demonstrated that it has a stake or interest in the action" and had raised “novel legal questions” that constitute “a matter of significant public interest” for the city and its residents.

“If this court’s analysis was incorrect, the court’s dismissal will have foreclosed Oakland from protecting its interests. Thus, at the heart of Oakland’s appeal is its right to access the federal court to assert its claims – a right of paramount importance,” James wrote.

Attorneys for the federal government had argued that the stay would hinder prosecutors' ability to enforce federal drug laws, but because the U.S. attorney’s office waited six years to file the forfeiture action – knowing Harborside was operating medical cannabis dispensaries at the properties – James concluded that no harm would be caused by a further delay.

The U.S. attorney's office could not immediately be reached Wednesday. It has consistently declined to comment on the forfeiture cases in the past.

More on that Brooklyn pig who may have framed 50 people for murder!!!!

For more articles on crooked Brooklyn cop Louis Scarcella check out this URL.

Source

Panel to Review Up to 50 Trial Convictions Involving a Discredited Detective

By FRANCES ROBLES

Published: July 1, 2013

A panel of former prosecutors, professors and retired judges has been appointed to review as many as 50 trial convictions involving a detective whose work may have sent innocent men to prison, Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, announced on Monday.

The review panel, which includes some of the most respected members of New York City’s legal community and several of Mr. Hynes’s closest friends, drew fire from a lawyer who represents several of those convicted.

Robert G. M. Keating, an adjunct law professor at Pace University who is chairman of the mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary, will lead the panel. In his 1990 book about the Howard Beach murder case, Mr. Hynes called Mr. Keating one of his “closest friends,” who jogged three miles daily with him.

The group also includes Joseph Bellacosa, a retired member of the New York State Court of Appeals and former dean at St. John’s University School of Law. Mr. Hynes and Mr. Bellacosa are godfathers to each other’s children, and Mr. Hynes was an usher at the former judge’s wedding some 50 years ago, according to the judge’s official biography posted on a court Web site.

Another member, Patricia L. Gatling, chairwoman of the New York City Commission on Human Rights, was Mr. Hynes’s first assistant district attorney for major narcotics investigations.

“It just seems like politics as usual,” said Pierre Sussman, whose client David Ranta was exonerated in March after questions were raised about the work of Louis Scarcella, a former Brooklyn North homicide detective who investigated the case.

Brooklyn prosecutors had asked a judge to dismiss a murder charge against Mr. Ranta, a former printer who served 23 years for the killing of a rabbi shot in a botched robbery. While holding out the possibility that Mr. Ranta participated in the crime, Mr. Hynes’s Conviction Integrity Unit acknowledged that Mr. Scarcella’s work was riddled with errors.

Mr. Scarcella failed to pursue a lead of another viable suspect, let jailhouse informants out to visit their girlfriends, and is believed to have told witnesses whom to choose in a lineup, the unit’s investigation found.

The district attorney opened a review of 40 criminal cases involving 50 defendants after The New York Times found, among other things, that several of the detective’s murder cases used the same witness, a crack-addicted prostitute.

Many of Mr. Scarcella’s cases dated from Mr. Hynes’s predecessor, Elizabeth Holtzman, but his office for many years had fended off inmates’ appeals.

Jerry Schmetterer, a spokesman for Mr. Hynes, said prosecutors would present the panel only with cases that appear problematic, along with prosecutors’ recommendations. He acknowledged that some critics might question the panelists’ ties to Mr. Hynes, but called them “esteemed individuals with the highest integrity.”

“The district attorney bears the responsibility of making the final decision on the cases,” Mr. Schmetterer said.

Mr. Sussman, who represents several people whose cases are under review, had several objections. First, he said, only those cases selected by prosecutors will be forwarded to the panel. And the panel itself, he said, is too stacked with former prosecutors and should have included more defense and appellate lawyers.

Mr. Bellacosa said his long friendship with Mr. Hynes would not affect his decisions on the panel, and added that as a member of the state’s highest court, he spent nearly 15 years reviewing his good friend’s work.

“We have through all of the years been very direct with one another. We have been very frank to say, ‘You’re really off base here,’ ” Mr. Bellacosa said. “The task is to lend an independent examination as to the process and to give it checks and balances: ‘Does this pass the smell test?’ ”

Other panelists include: Barbara Jones, a former federal judge and prosecutor; Roderick C. Lankler, a former special prosecutor; Susan Herman, an associate professor at Pace University; Steven M. Cohen, a former chief adviser to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo; Bruce Green, a Fordham law professor; Laura Brevetti, a former federal prosecutor and Patrolman’s Benevolent Association lawyer; William C. Thompson Sr., a former appellate judge and father of the mayoral candidate; John Walsh, a retired judge and former police prosecutor; and Telesforo (Ted) Del Valle Jr., a defense lawyer.

13 years in prison for chalk graffiti on sidewalk????

Source

San Diego chalk protester acquitted of vandalism

Associated Press Tue Jul 2, 2013 7:44 AM

SAN DIEGO — A jury on Monday acquitted an activist of vandalism charges for chalking anti-bank slogans on San Diego sidewalks, delivering a swift verdict on a prosecution that the city’s own mayor said was “stupid.”

Jeff Olson, 40, turned to his attorney, nodded and smiled as verdicts were read on charges that could have sent him to jail for 13 years — one year for each misdemeanor count — and brought a $13,000 fine. He was charged with scrawling messages with water-soluble chalk on city sidewalks outside Bank of America branches from April to August 2012, including “Shame on B of A,” ‘’No thanks, big banks,” and a drawing of an octopus reaching for dollar bills.

The San Diego Superior Court jury deliberated five hours after a four-day trial that pitted Mayor Bob Filner against City Attorney Jan Goldsmith, who prosecuted the case. Jail time is highly unusual for graffiti convictions, which typically result in fines or community service.

Filner called it a “nonsense prosecution” that responded to complaints from Bank of America.

“It’s washable chalk, it’s political slogans,” Filner said last week. “We’re not even responding to the public’s complaint … I think it’s a stupid case. It’s costing us money.”

The city attorney’s office said it offered to reduce the charges to an infraction if Olson agreed to perform community service by cleaning up graffiti, but he refused. The office said the case was referred by the police department.

“Graffiti remains vandalism in the state of California,” the city attorney’s office said. “Under the law, there is no First Amendment right to deface property, even if the writing is easily removed, whether the message is aimed at banks or any other person or group. We are, however, sympathetic to the strong public reaction to this case and the jury’s message.”

Olson, who was inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement, said he was relieved by the outcome and that the prosecution brought more attention to his views than he ever imagined possible.

“I couldn’t have done better if I rented an airplane with a banner and put billboards up all over town,” he said.

Still, he isn’t planning on more sidewalk scrawls.

“I’m going to think of a more creative way to get my message across,” he said.

The judge, who imposed a gag order on participants during the trial, refused to allow Olson’s attorney to argue that the messages were constitutionally protected free speech. Instead, the attorney argued the messages caused no damage and were not malicious.

The prosecution was the latest tiff between San Diego’s mayor and elected city attorney. Earlier this year, the mayor was a witness at a trial on behalf of an animal-rights activist for seals who was prosecuted for removing a flag at a beach that was declared open to the public. After the testimony, activist Bryan Pease pleaded guilty to misdemeanor trespassing.

Filner, who last month used his veto power to cut $500,000 from the city attorney’s budget, crashed a Goldsmith news conference in February amid a dispute over how to spend money to promote tourism. Filner accused the city attorney of “unethical and unprofessional conduct,” saying he was giving legal advice through news media.

Maricopa detective arrested on suspicion of theft

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Maricopa detective arrested on suspicion of theft

By Matthew Longdon The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Jul 2, 2013 9:23 PM

A city of Maricopa police detective was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of forgery, changing public records, theft, attempted money laundering and fraudulent schemes, according to authorities.

The Pinal County Attorney Lando Voyles and the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office investigated Jose Lizarraga, 45, after they noticed “various irregularities” with the detective’s activities, according to a statement from the Pinal County Attorney’s Office. The irregularities were not clear and a phone call to the office was not answered.

The Sheriff’s Office requested help from the FBI. The two organizations investigated and believe Lizarraga stole $1,300 while on duty in April, according to the statement.

Lizarraga was taken to the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office Adult Detention Center. Authorities believe he is a flight risk because of his frequent visits to his family in Mexico and his first-hand knowledge of border patrol and law enforcement officers, according to a statement.

His first scheduled appearance in court is July 3, according to the statement.

Web’s Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders

When you create a web page and you want to keep the information private from the world you can put a tag like this in the HTML

<META name="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">

I suspect when Google's robots gather information for the local police, FBI, Homeland Security, TSA, DEA, BATF and other alphabet soup of Federal police forces that the robots ignore the meta tag.

Or perhaps they do honor the meta tag for the information they allow the general public to search for, but give ALL the information to the American police state.

Also I have also wondered if Google's robots index and catalog the comments put on their web pages. Browsers don't display the comments in web pages but are used to document the web pages by programmers and web masters.

I suspect Google's robots index and catalog the comments in web pages and give them to Uncle Sam's spies at the NSA and other Federal agencies.

Last I suspect that NSA or other Federal agencies now has their own robots that routinely scan the internet like Google's robots do.

I know on several of my web pages I get a daily visit or two from several IP addresses in Shady Side, Maryland (76.114.149.166 and 76.114.145.234) which I suspect is a government agency spying on me. Also I get visits from several other IP address, on a less frequent basis which I also suspect are police agencies spying on me. Maybe that Shady Grove, Maryland. I always get the names mixed up.

You can put a sign on your yard and home that says

"No Trespassing"

I wonder if you could put a sign like that you your web pages that said something like

"Police keep out - No trespassing"

Source

Web’s Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders

By JAMES RISEN and NICK WINGFIELD

Published: June 19, 2013

WASHINGTON — When Max Kelly, the chief security officer for Facebook, left the social media company in 2010, he did not go to Google, Twitter or a similar Silicon Valley concern. Instead the man who was responsible for protecting the personal information of Facebook’s more than one billion users from outside attacks went to work for another giant institution that manages and analyzes large pools of data: the National Security Agency.

Spy agencies invest in Silicon Valley start-ups, award classified contracts and recruit technology experts like Max Kelly.

Mr. Kelly’s move to the spy agency, which has not previously been reported, underscores the increasingly deep connections between Silicon Valley and the agency and the degree to which they are now in the same business. Both hunt for ways to collect, analyze and exploit large pools of data about millions of Americans.

The only difference is that the N.S.A. does it for intelligence, and Silicon Valley does it to make money.

The disclosure of the spy agency’s program called Prism, which is said to collect the e-mails and other Web activity of foreigners using major Internet companies like Google, Yahoo and Facebook, has prompted the companies to deny that the agency has direct access to their computers, even as they acknowledge complying with secret N.S.A. court orders for specific data.

Yet technology experts and former intelligence officials say the convergence between Silicon Valley and the N.S.A. and the rise of data mining — both as an industry and as a crucial intelligence tool — have created a more complex reality.

Silicon Valley has what the spy agency wants: vast amounts of private data and the most sophisticated software available to analyze it. The agency in turn is one of Silicon Valley’s largest customers for what is known as data analytics, one of the valley’s fastest-growing markets. To get their hands on the latest software technology to manipulate and take advantage of large volumes of data, United States intelligence agencies invest in Silicon Valley start-ups, award classified contracts and recruit technology experts like Mr. Kelly.

“We are all in these Big Data business models,” said Ray Wang, a technology analyst and chief executive of Constellation Research, based in San Francisco. “There are a lot of connections now because the data scientists and the folks who are building these systems have a lot of common interests.”

Although Silicon Valley has sold equipment to the N.S.A. and other intelligence agencies for a generation, the interests of the two began to converge in new ways in the last few years as advances in computer storage technology drastically reduced the costs of storing enormous amounts of data — at the same time that the value of the data for use in consumer marketing began to rise. “These worlds overlap,” said Philipp S. Krüger, chief executive of Explorist, an Internet start-up in New York.

The sums the N.S.A. spends in Silicon Valley are classified, as is the agency’s total budget, which independent analysts say is $8 billion to $10 billion a year.

Despite the companies’ assertions that they cooperate with the agency only when legally compelled, current and former industry officials say the companies sometimes secretly put together teams of in-house experts to find ways to cooperate more completely with the N.S.A. and to make their customers’ information more accessible to the agency. The companies do so, the officials say, because they want to control the process themselves. They are also under subtle but powerful pressure from the N.S.A. to make access easier.

Skype, the Internet-based calling service, began its own secret program, Project Chess, to explore the legal and technical issues in making Skype calls readily available to intelligence agencies and law enforcement officials, according to people briefed on the program who asked not to be named to avoid trouble with the intelligence agencies.

Project Chess, which has never been previously disclosed, was small, limited to fewer than a dozen people inside Skype, and was developed as the company had sometimes contentious talks with the government over legal issues, said one of the people briefed on the project. The project began about five years ago, before most of the company was sold by its parent, eBay, to outside investors in 2009. Microsoft acquired Skype in an $8.5 billion deal that was completed in October 2011.

A Skype executive denied last year in a blog post that recent changes in the way Skype operated were made at the behest of Microsoft to make snooping easier for law enforcement. It appears, however, that Skype figured out how to cooperate with the intelligence community before Microsoft took over the company, according to documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, a former contractor for the N.S.A. One of the documents about the Prism program made public by Mr. Snowden says Skype joined Prism on Feb. 6, 2011.

Microsoft executives are no longer willing to affirm statements, made by Skype several years ago, that Skype calls could not be wiretapped. Frank X. Shaw, a Microsoft spokesman, declined to comment.

In its recruiting in Silicon Valley, the N.S.A. sends some of its most senior officials to lure the best of the best. No less than Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the agency’s director and the chief of the Pentagon’s Cyber Command, showed up at one of the world’s largest hacker conferences in Las Vegas last summer, looking stiff in an uncharacteristic T-shirt and jeans, to give the keynote speech. His main purpose at Defcon, the conference, was to recruit hackers for his spy agency.

N.S.A. badges are often seen on the lapels of officials at other technology and information security conferences. “They’re very open about their interest in recruiting from the hacker community,” said Jennifer Granick, the director of civil liberties at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society.

But perhaps no one embodies the tightening relationship between the N.S.A. and the valley more than Kenneth A. Minihan.

A career Air Force intelligence officer, Mr. Minihan was the director of the N.S.A. during the Clinton administration until his retirement in the late 1990s, and then he ran the agency’s outside professional networking organization. Today he is managing director of Paladin Capital Group, a venture capital firm based in Washington that in part specializes in financing start-ups that offer high-tech solutions for the N.S.A. and other intelligence agencies. In effect, Mr. Minihan is an advanced scout for the N.S.A. as it tries to capitalize on the latest technology to analyze and exploit the vast amounts of data flowing around the world and inside the United States.

The members of Paladin’s strategic advisory board include Richard C. Schaeffer Jr., a former N.S.A. executive. While Paladin is a private firm, the American intelligence community has its own in-house venture capital company, In-Q-Tel, financed by the Central Intelligence Agency to invest in high-tech start-ups.

Many software technology firms involved in data analytics are open about their connections to intelligence agencies. Gary King, a co-founder and chief scientist at Crimson Hexagon, a start-up in Boston, said in an interview that he had given talks at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., about his company’s social media analytics tools.

The future holds the prospect of ever greater cooperation between Silicon Valley and the N.S.A. because data storage is expected to increase at an annual compound rate of 53 percent through 2016, according to the International Data Corporation.

“We reached a tipping point, where the value of having user data rose beyond the cost of storing it,” said Dan Auerbach, a technology analyst with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an electronic privacy group in San Francisco. “Now we have an incentive to keep it forever.”

Social media sites in the meantime are growing as voluntary data mining operations on a scale that rivals or exceeds anything the government could attempt on its own. “You willingly hand over data to Facebook that you would never give voluntarily to the government,” said Bruce Schneier, a technologist and an author.

James Risen reported from Washington, and Nick Wingfield from Seattle. Kitty Bennett contributed reporting.

Arpaio attorneys plan to appeal racial-profiling ruling

Arpaio attorneys plan to appeal racial-profiling ruling

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jun 21, 2013 10:17 PM

Attorneys for Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio have filed a notice to appeal last month’s federal court ruling that determined the agency engaged in widespread racial profiling through its immigration-enforcement efforts.

The notice is a procedural step that ensures Arpaio will have the opportunity to file an appeal, said Jack MacIntyre, a deputy chief with the Sheriff’s Office.

Some politicians and critics of the Sheriff’s Office have asked Maricopa County administrators to deny funding for the appeal of U.S. District Judge Murray Snow’s May ruling.

The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office has researched whether county administrators or elected officials have the authority to deny Arpaio’s desire to appeal the landmark court ruling, but it appeared that issue had not been resolved as of Friday afternoon, MacIntyre said.

The county has traditionally allowed appeals on rulings like Snow’s with the potential for complex solutions, such as data-collection and -reporting systems, that can come with a significant cost, MacIntyre said.

The Sheriff’s Office signaled that it wants the circuit court, widely considered the most liberal in the country, to consider whether Snow erred when he prohibited deputies from detaining suspected undocumented immigrants while they contact federal officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and whether Snow was wrong when he barred sheriff’s deputies from detaining people suspected of violating the state laws that target illegal immigration.

The notice also indicates that Arpaio’s attorneys want the circuit court to consider whether deputies violated constitutional provisions that ensure equal protection and prohibit unwarranted searches and seizures during traffic stops related to immigration enforcement.

Snow issued a detailed ruling in late May that found sheriff’s deputies discriminated against Latino drivers during the agency’s immigration-enforcement efforts, particularly the large-scale “saturation patrols” the Sheriff’s Office conducted in the Valley from 2007 through 2010.

The lawsuit that brought the matter before Snow was filed by Manuel de Jesus Ortega Melendres, a Mexican day laborer who was in the country with a tourist visa when he was detained for more than nine hours following a 2007 traffic stop in Cave Creek.

The suit was later expanded to a class-action lawsuit that included every Latino driver sheriff’s deputies have stopped since 2007.

Critics of Arpaio’s immigration enforcement had long claimed the agency engaged in racial profiling and were vindicated by Snow’s ruling. Many of those same critics pressured the County Board of Supervisors to refuse funding for an appeal.

Supervisors, aside from Mary Rose Wilcox, refused to take a public stance on the issue, with the majority saying there were outstanding questions over legalities and logistics of the appeals process.

Arpaio fears loss of power, not money

While we are on that subject, isn't that what government is all about POWER and MONEY. And of course that is why the Arizona legislator recently just passed laws making it almost impossible for the Libertarian Party to run candidates for office.

Source

Posted on June 21, 2013 4:06 pm by EJ Montini

Arpaio fears loss of power, not money

It’s not the loss of a lawsuit that Sheriff Joe Arpaio is worried about.

It’s the loss of power.

The sheriff’s office has lost plenty of lawsuits.

Those lawsuits have resulted in millions and millions of dollars in settlements.

That has never bothered Arpaio.

The Sheriff’s Office said it will challenge the May ruling U.S. District Judge Murray Snow that said sheriff’s deputies had engaged in widespread racial profiling during immigration-enforcement patrols.

There was no money award.

Instead, it’s possible that Judge Snow will appoint an independent monitor to oversee what he believes to be the necessary policy changes in the department.

In other words, putting a person in place who can tell Arpaio’s people how to operate.

To Arpaio, that’s simply unacceptable.

No matter how much it costs.

Taxpayers already have paid over $1 million to defend the sheriff’s office in this case.

Who knows how much it will cost us before it’s all over.

None of that matters to the sheriff.

Why should it?

It’s not his money.

What does matter to him is … control.

Authority.

Power.

Go all the way back to 1999, when the county settled a lawsuit brought by the family of a man named Scott Norberg, who died in a restraint chair in Arpaio’s jail. The Norberg family was awarded $8.25 million.

Instead of anger, Arpaio acted positively triumphant.

His office issued a statement that tells you all you need to know about his priorities. After all, a man who had been convicted of no crime was dead. He left behind two young children. The monetary settlement was a whopping $8.25 million.

And the sheriff believed that he won.

How?

Well, his statement reads in part:

“I am relieved that this tentative agreement contains no admissions of fault or liability on behalf of our officers.”

The Criminal N.S.A.

The Criminal N.S.A.

By JENNIFER STISA GRANICK and CHRISTOPHER JON SPRIGMAN

Published: June 27, 2013

THE twin revelations that telecom carriers have been secretly giving the National Security Agency information about Americans’ phone calls, and that the N.S.A. has been capturing e-mail and other private communications from Internet companies as part of a secret program called Prism, have not enraged most Americans. Lulled, perhaps, by the Obama administration’s claims that these “modest encroachments on privacy” were approved by Congress and by federal judges, public opinion quickly migrated from shock to “meh.”

It didn’t help that Congressional watchdogs — with a few exceptions, like Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky — have accepted the White House’s claims of legality. The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, have called the surveillance legal. So have liberal-leaning commentators like Hendrik Hertzberg and David Ignatius.

This view is wrong — and not only, or even mainly, because of the privacy issues raised by the American Civil Liberties Union and other critics. The two programs violate both the letter and the spirit of federal law. No statute explicitly authorizes mass surveillance. Through a series of legal contortions, the Obama administration has argued that Congress, since 9/11, intended to implicitly authorize mass surveillance. But this strategy mostly consists of wordplay, fear-mongering and a highly selective reading of the law. Americans deserve better from the White House — and from President Obama, who has seemingly forgotten the constitutional law he once taught.

The administration has defended each of the two secret programs. Let’s examine them in turn.

Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contract employee and whistle-blower, has provided evidence that the government has phone record metadata on all Verizon customers, and probably on every American, going back seven years. This metadata is extremely revealing; investigators mining it might be able to infer whether we have an illness or an addiction, what our religious affiliations and political activities are, and so on.

The law under which the government collected this data, Section 215 of the Patriot Act, allows the F.B.I. to obtain court orders demanding that a person or company produce “tangible things,” upon showing reasonable grounds that the things sought are “relevant” to an authorized foreign intelligence investigation. The F.B.I. does not need to demonstrate probable cause that a crime has been committed, or any connection to terrorism.

Even in the fearful time when the Patriot Act was enacted, in October 2001, lawmakers never contemplated that Section 215 would be used for phone metadata, or for mass surveillance of any sort. Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican and one of the architects of the Patriot Act, and a man not known as a civil libertarian, has said that “Congress intended to allow the intelligence communities to access targeted information for specific investigations.” The N.S.A.’s demand for information about every American’s phone calls isn’t “targeted” at all — it’s a dragnet. “How can every call that every American makes or receives be relevant to a specific investigation?” Mr. Sensenbrenner has asked. The answer is simple: It’s not.

The government claims that under Section 215 it may seize all of our phone call information now because it might conceivably be relevant to an investigation at some later date, even if there is no particular reason to believe that any but a tiny fraction of the data collected might possibly be suspicious. That is a shockingly flimsy argument — any data might be “relevant” to an investigation eventually, if by “eventually” you mean “sometime before the end of time.” If all data is “relevant,” it makes a mockery of the already shaky concept of relevance.

Let’s turn to Prism: the streamlined, electronic seizure of communications from Internet companies. In combination with what we have already learned about the N.S.A.’s access to telecommunications and Internet infrastructure, Prism is further proof that the agency is collecting vast amounts of e-mails and other messages — including communications to, from and between Americans.

The government justifies Prism under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. Section 1881a of the act gave the president broad authority to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance. If the attorney general and the director of national intelligence certify that the purpose of the monitoring is to collect foreign intelligence information about any non­American individual or entity not known to be in the United States, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court can require companies to provide access to Americans’ international communications. The court does not approve the target or the facilities to be monitored, nor does it assess whether the government is doing enough to minimize the intrusion, correct for collection mistakes and protect privacy. Once the court issues a surveillance order, the government can issue top-secret directives to Internet companies like Google and Facebook to turn over calls, e-mails, video and voice chats, photos, voice­over IP calls (like Skype) and social networking information.

Like the Patriot Act, the FISA Amendments Act gives the government very broad surveillance authority. And yet the Prism program appears to outstrip that authority. In particular, the government “may not intentionally acquire any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known at the time of the acquisition to be located in the United States.”

The government knows that it regularly obtains Americans’ protected communications. The Washington Post reported that Prism is designed to produce at least 51 percent confidence in a target’s “foreignness” — as John Oliver of “The Daily Show” put it, “a coin flip plus 1 percent.” By turning a blind eye to the fact that 49-plus percent of the communications might be purely among Americans, the N.S.A. has intentionally acquired information it is not allowed to have, even under the terrifyingly broad auspices of the FISA Amendments Act.

How could vacuuming up Americans’ communications conform with this legal limitation? Well, as James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, told Andrea Mitchell of NBC, the N.S.A. uses the word “acquire” only when it pulls information out of its gigantic database of communications and not when it first intercepts and stores the information.

If there’s a law against torturing the English language, James Clapper is in real trouble.

The administration hides the extent of its “incidental” surveillance of Americans behind fuzzy language. When Congress reauthorized the law at the end of 2012, legislators said Americans had nothing to worry about because the surveillance could not “target” American citizens or permanent residents. Mr. Clapper offered the same assurances. Based on these statements, an ordinary citizen might think the N.S.A. cannot read Americans’ e-mails or online chats under the F.A.A. But that is a government ­fed misunderstanding.

A “target” under the act is a person or entity the government wants information on — not the people the government is trying to listen to. It’s actually O.K. under the act to grab Americans’ messages so long as they are communicating with the target, or anyone who is not in the United States.

Leave aside the Patriot Act and FISA Amendments Act for a moment, and turn to the Constitution.

The Fourth Amendment obliges the government to demonstrate probable cause before conducting invasive surveillance. There is simply no precedent under the Constitution for the government’s seizing such vast amounts of revealing data on innocent Americans’ communications.

The government has made a mockery of that protection by relying on select Supreme Court cases, decided before the era of the public Internet and cellphones, to argue that citizens have no expectation of privacy in either phone metadata or in e-mails or other private electronic messages that it stores with third parties.

This hairsplitting is inimical to privacy and contrary to what at least five justices ruled just last year in a case called United States v. Jones. One of the most conservative justices on the Court, Samuel A. Alito Jr., wrote that where even public information about individuals is monitored over the long term, at some point, government crosses a line and must comply with the protections of the Fourth Amendment. That principle is, if anything, even more true for Americans’ sensitive nonpublic information like phone metadata and social networking activity.

We may never know all the details of the mass surveillance programs, but we know this: The administration has justified them through abuse of language, intentional evasion of statutory protections, secret, unreviewable investigative procedures and constitutional arguments that make a mockery of the government’s professed concern with protecting Americans’ privacy. It’s time to call the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance programs what they are: criminal.

Jennifer Stisa Granick is the director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Christopher Jon Sprigman is a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.

Messy yard cops shake down vice-mayor of Richmond

Source

Richmond city probe finds councilman's property in worse condition than originally thought

By Robert Rogers

Contra Costa Times

Posted: 05/02/2013 07:04:40 AM PDT

RICHMOND -- An inspection in March revealed that a fenced lot full of old cars linked to City Councilman Corky Boozé contained environmental hazards worse than initially thought and that it may violate a slew of local and state laws, according to documents obtained through a public records request.

The inspection was conducted to determine the extent of the violations and what progress, if any, had been made in cleaning up the property, as demanded by the city.

In a 21-page letter addressed to Boozé and Laura Baker, the legal owner, city prosecutor Trisha Aljoe wrote that the 28,000-square-foot lot at 22 Carlson Blvd. is home to " ... unlawful, hazardous, unsafe and blighted conditions ... so extreme and extensive that it is difficult to describe."

The conditions were assessed during a March 21 inspection by city staff, accompanied by Boozé, to see whether any progress had been made following a March 6 "notice of violation and demand to abate" letter issued by the city.

"Unfortunately," Aljoe wrote, "not only have the violations not been abated as previously demanded, the magnitude of unlawful and unsafe conditions ... were far worse than the city had been able to determine from its initial observations ..."

The city's Code Enforcement Department began to lean on Boozé last year, after local resident Kate Sibley lodged numerous complaints against the property. Baker could not be reached for comment. Court documents from 2003 show Boozé told a judge that Baker was his "domestic partner of 30 years."

Boozé called the letter and the ongoing action a "political witch hunt" and said the allegations that he is violating any laws are "totally untrue." He said Councilman Tom Butt, his political rival, "orchestrated the whole thing."

"The city has more important business than to be taking sides in a political vendetta between two council members," Boozé said.

Reached Tuesday, Butt said he did talk with Sibley before her complaints but that Boozé needs to follow the law.

"Corky is in denial," Butt said.

The property is owned by Baker, a Vallejo resident who took ownership in 1996, according to county records. Baker took over the property amid years of bitter legal battles between the city and Boozé and his son Kevin over violations and blighted conditions.

Boozé, 69, holds a business license for auto body repair and restoration at the site, adjacent to the Richmond Greenway and just beneath elevated BART tracks. Behind a 6-foot fence lies old cars and car parts, along with other metals and industrial tools. Single-family homes are Boozé's immediate neighbors and dot the surrounding blocks.

Code Enforcement officials are set to conduct an inspection of the property at 1 p.m. Thursday, after Boozé requested a reschedule of an earlier inspection.

In the letter, Aljoe wrote that the city fire marshall determined the property poses "a fire hazard and danger to public safety, health and welfare, particularly the ... residential dwellings in proximity."

The letter lists more than 20 alleged violations of local and state law and includes an inventory of more than 40 vehicles, along with piles of car batteries, unmarked containers of toxic liquids and evidence of "significant soil contamination" that will require cleanup.

Code Enforcement Director Tim Higares said the city always hopes for voluntary compliance, but sometimes litigation is necessary to compel compliance.

"We give people every opportunity to comply," Higares said. "Corky has been cooperative, not combative."

Boozé disputed the allegations that he is in violation of any ordinances but said he has been tidying up ahead of the inspection.

"I do business of the city as an elected representative all day," Boozé said. "And I am working on this, too."

Contact Robert Rogers at 510-262-2726 or rrogers@bayareanewsgroup.com and follow Twitter.com/roberthrogers

Source

Property linked to Richmond councilman subject of city probe

By Robert Rogers

Contra Costa Times

Posted: 03/11/2013 04:49:07 PM PDT

RICHMOND -- The city is demanding that a junk-strewn property linked to City Councilman Corky Boozé be cleaned up after finding it in violation of several codes and a 1997 court order, according to documents obtained through a public records request.

The property, a 28,000-square-foot lot with a 756-square-foot office building, sits at 22 Carlson Blvd., adjacent to the Richmond Greenway and just beneath elevated BART tracks. Behind a 6-foot fence lies old cars and car parts, along with other metals and industrial tools.

The property is owned by Laura Baker, a resident of Vallejo who took ownership in 1996, according to county records. Baker took over the property amid years of bitter legal battles between the city and Boozé and his son Kevin over violations and blighted conditions.

In a five-page letter, city prosecutor Trisha Aljoe demanded that Baker abate the property and scheduled a compliance inspection for 1 p.m. March 18. Boozé holds a business license for auto body repair and restoration at the site and is referred to in the letter as the "tenant."

"It is clear, based on ... overwhelming evidence, that your tenant is maintaining the property in violation and contempt of the (1997) court order," the letter reads.

Reached by phone, Aljoe acknowledged the action against the property but declined further comment, citing the ongoing investigation.

Boozé, 69, gave a reporter a tour of the property's perimeter last week, noting the secure fencing and complaining that city property adjacent to the site seems to violate its own codes. Boozé said the only holes in his fencing, one of many violations alleged by the city, were small bullet holes that dot the side along Carlson, a hazard of doing business in a rough neighborhood.

Boozé said the city's investigation is motivated by politics. He alleges that a rival councilman and politically active resident conspired to turn up the heat.

"This is just a pure political witch hunt," Boozé said. "This thing has (Councilman) Tom Butt, the (Richmond Progressive Alliance) and its allies written all over it. There was never a problem until they started harassing the city staff about it."

Baker could not be reached for comment. Court documents from 2003 show Boozé told a judge that Baker was his "domestic partner of 30 years." Boozé said Friday he and Baker "broke up years ago."

County records show that Baker owns at least two other properties in the city, both of which critics link to Boozé. One of Baker's properties, a commercial building in the 3300 block of Cutting Boulevard, has been the subject of debate over whether the city should lease it for a new police substation on the southside. Boozé has been the main proponent of that plan.

In November, a Richmond resident began sending emails to city staff complaining about the Carlson Boulevard property and alleging that it belonged to Councilman Boozé.

Butt said he told the resident, Kate Sibley, that the property belonged to Boozé but that she and other neighbors had been bothered by the site for years.

"They were flummoxed, and so I helped her get some information and pursue her complaint," Butt said.

Butt said the situation was rife with hypocrisy, noting that Boozé made several public presentations accusing owners of the SS Red Oak Victory Ship of violating city codes.

"People who live in glass houses should not throw rocks," Butt said.

Contact Robert Rogers at 510-262-2726 or rrogers@bayareanewsgroup.com and follow Twitter.com/roberthrogers.

Tempe officer caught texting while operating police motorcycle

Source

Tempe officer caught texting while operating police motorcycle

Posted: Friday, June 28, 2013 5:02 pm

ABC15.com

A Tempe motorcycle officer has been disciplined after being caught texting while on the road.

Police spokesman Steve Carbajal said the Tempe Police Department does not condone this type of distracted driving and the department has specific policies prohibiting texting while operating police vehicles.

Carbajal said the department is now training its officers on distracted driving so it doesn’t happen again. [Yea, sure!!!!!]

The officer caught texting has not been identified.

Tempe, Swiss police swap beats for TV show

Source

Tempe, Swiss police swap beats for TV show

By Brennan Smith The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Jun 18, 2013 12:25 PM

Tempe police Detectives Denison Dawson and Jessica Dever-Jakusz went out on traffic patrol together, something both officers had done frequently in their tenure with the city.

However, instead of patrolling the streets of Tempe like any other shift, they were 5,750 miles away, checking for violations among the drivers of Zurich, Switzerland.

Dawson and Dever-Jakusz had been whisked away for a week as participants on the Swiss television show “Job Swap,” trading places with two Swiss officers, who came to Tempe to work.

Dawson and Dever-Jakusz, with a combined 23 years on the Tempe force, had little to no idea of what they were getting themselves into.

“Chocolate, cheese and the Alps, that’s all I knew about it. I didn’t really know much about Switzerland,” Dever-Jakusz said. “I tried to Google a little bit, but even then, things were pretty basic.”

She had traveled to Mexico and Canada but had never been abroad. Dawson, however, had never been outside the U.S.

“I saw it as a life-changing experience,” Dawson said. “I’ve never traveled. I’ve never been abroad and I’ve never had a passport, so for me this was all overwhelming.”

The Tempe officers had less than 24 hours between the announcement they had been selected for the show and their flight. On top of it all, Dawson had a phobia of air travel, making the 12-hour journey across the Atlantic even more difficult.

Luckily, Dever-Jakusz had brought a stuffed monkey with her, which Dawson cuddled to ease his nerves.

“I was holding this monkey, caressing it. Any time I felt turbulence and I was shaking, I would squeeze his stomach,” Dawson said. “He was my comfort.”

When they finally arrived, the officers went straight to filming the TV show with no rest for the weary travelers as their life as Zurich police officers began immediately.

On the flip side of the Atlantic, Claudia Brandenberg had arrived in Tempe to begin her time as an exchange officer. Brandenberg, a native of Bern, the Swiss capital, hadn’t owned a television for 15 years and thought the “Job Swap” producers would pick someone “taller and more blonde,” but she applied anyway to appease her sense of adventure.

“I’m always interested in new things. If I can learn something new and get to know new people, especially when I can travel abroad, even better,” Brandenberg said.

Brandenberg had traveled around Europe, Australia, South Africa, Canada and a few places in the U.S., but had little preconception of Arizona. She acknowledged that she didn’t even know how to pronounce “Tempe” initially, but said she felt like a “VIP” from the beginning within the Tempe Police Department.

“They showed us everything and we were like part of the team, not like a visitor,” Brandenberg said. “Of course, we didn’t have our weapons, but when we went on patrol, we were part of the team.” [Maybe the royal rulers of Tempe should take the guns away from ALL their cops, after all the Tempe City Council is a bunch of gun grabbers who want to flush the 2nd Amendment down the toilet and disarm us serfs they rule over]

Brandenberg traveled to Arizona with fellow Officer Harald Plüss, who could not be reached for comment.

They were put to work immediately, splitting time between car patrol, bike patrol and even work with the SWAT team as the cameras rolled to document their time in the desert.

“This is real police work and it’s not so different from the police work we do in Switzerland,” Brandenberg said.

Back in Zurich, Denison and Dever-Jakusz were adjusting to having BMWs as patrol cars and the vastly different rules of the road in Switzerland. For example, motorists can lose their license for passing someone on the right or for braking on the highway, while most towns have only one speed-limit sign that encompasses the entire area.

The two responded to a major single-vehicle crash and were surprised to see the road left open for passing traffic and an on-call doctor responding rather than paramedics or firefighters.

“They don’t shut down the streets, either, which is different. If that was here, until we figured out what was going on, we would have shut down the whole street,” Denison said. [What a novel idea, leaving the road open so that traffic can drive around the accident, instead of causing huge traffic jams like the cops do in Arizona, by totally blocking off the roads!!! I suspect that's for the safety of the officer, and the cops could care less about us serfs that they pretend to serve]

The officers were staying in the picturesque town of Bülach on the outskirts of Zurich, but found they were reminded of home often by the film crew and Swiss police. One of the show’s producers was eating a Snickers candy bar during filming, while several of the officers had ring tones of American songs, including Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.”

In Tempe, Brandenberg found the Arizona heat to be unbearable. Even in the middle of the night during Mill Avenue bike patrols, she was drenched with sweat.

“We went on bike patrol at 2 a.m. in the morning and it was still 33 degrees Celsius (91 degrees Fahrenheit),” Brandenberg said. “It made me feel very hot.”

The Swiss officer said she also found it odd that officers could execute search warrants of homes in the U.S. after the person living there has been arrested.

“This is not possible in Switzerland,” Brandenberg said. “There has to be always someone there because they can accuse officers of theft.” [How nice, the European police actually admit that some cops are crooked, instead of pretending it is impossible for a cop to commit a crime like they do in America]

Amid all the work and filming, all three officers had their chances to have fun. For Dever-Jakusz, it was competing in a regatta, racing a sailboat over the waters of Lake Zurich. Dawson got to drive a Maserati on the autobahn, reaching speeds close to 100 mph that would have earned him a hefty ticket in Tempe. Brandenberg got a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon, which she enjoyed, even if she found the Fish River Canyon from her travels in Namibia slightly more impressive. [Yep, just as I said at the begining. It sounds like the cops got a nice vacation paid by the taxpayers of Tempe!!!!]

However, they also said the hectic filming and short visit left little time for actual tourism.

“We didn’t do a lot of sightseeing. It was work, work, work,” Denison said. “We saw the countryside, but we don’t know what all Switzerland has to offer.”

Brandenberg said she couldn’t even describe what the city looked like. She kept seeing pictures of the Mill Avenue Bridge, but had no idea where it was or why it was significant because she was wrapped up in producing the show. [Well duh, probably because it isn't significant, and it's just a stinking bridge that runs over what used to be a dry river, but is now Tempe Town Toilet]

“I have no idea what this bridge is, if this bridge is famous or something like that,” Brandenberg said. “I have no idea.” [Well, Miss Brandenberg, it's not famous, it's just a bridge that goes over Tempe Town Toilet]

All three found that the notion of police camaraderie transcended the differences in culture, making lifelong friendships through a common respect for the badge and the uniform.

“Everywhere we went people knew us,” Dawson said. “They were shaking our hands, taking pictures with us. The royal treatment.” [I bet the only people doing the handshaking and picture taking were their fellow cops. In Tempe, the police are hated by the serfs they rule over]

Brandenberg said she is planning to visit her brother in Atlanta next spring and wants to make a stop in Phoenix along the way. Dawson and Dever-Jakusz are already planning a reunion trip and have invited the officers they worked with in Zurich to come to Arizona.

Dawson, who could barely stomach travel a few weeks ago, now wants to go to Berlin and South Africa. He has caught the travel bug, searching for new cultures like the loving and inspiring one he found in Zurich.

“I need to get stamps,” Dawson said. “I need to get that passport stamped.”

Into the mind of ... Kyrsten Sinema

Kyrsten Sinema shovels the BS???

Remember Kyrsten Sinema is the Arizona Senator who introduced a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana. Kyrsten Sinema is now a US Congresswoman.

I guess the title of this article should have been "Vote for me and I will give you free stuff"

Source

Into the mind of ... Kyrsten Sinema

The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jul 5, 2013 6:27 PM

The first-term congresswoman reflects on her first six months in Washington.

After six months in Congress, what’s the No. 1 thing you’ve learned about the place?

I’ve learned I can still get a lot done for Congressional District 9 even though leaders in Congress aren’t accomplishing much. [I suspect Kyrsten Sinema means that she has accomplished tons of stuff while her fellow slackers have accomplished nothing. Of course if you ask me I would have said none of them have accomplished anything - well other then robbing us blind and micro-managing our lives]

In our district office, social workers help constituents solve problems every day. In our D.C. office, we help businesses access federal agencies, support local groups seeking federal grant funding, and advocate for the issues important to CD9 residents and businesses. [Translation - vote for ME and I will give you free stuff - lots of free government pork!!!!!]

What’s the biggest difference between the Legislature and Congress?

I’ve always believed that relationships are key to solving problems.

In the Legislature, my relationships with Republicans and Democrats alike helped me serve my constituents well. In Congress, I’m working to build bipartisan relationships as well, though it’ll take a bit longer to make friends with all 537 of my colleagues! [Kyrsten, you didn't answer the question. It was "What’s the biggest difference between the Legislature and Congress?" - But I guess the main purpose of this article is to tell the voters that if they vote for you, you will give them free stuff, so who cares if you answer the question]

What’s the biggest frustration? The biggest satisfaction?

Unfortunately, issues that shouldn’t be partisan, like military sexual trauma and college affordability, have been stymied by political posturing in Congress. Leaders in Congress should stop playing games and get to work solving our country’s challenges.

However, our office has been able to make a tremendous difference in the lives of CD9 residents.

For example, we recently helped Glen in Phoenix, who has a brain tumor. Last month, Glen had to choose to either buy expensive medicine to treat his tumor or buy a replacement bed for his home.

We worked with local charities and the pharmaceutical company to help him get both a bed and his life-saving medication. [Again - vote for ME and I will give you free stuff - lots of free government pork!!!!!]

As a member of the minority party, it’s hard to get a bill passed. What have you been able to accomplish?

Congress is pretty divided right now and sadly, they’re not getting much done.

I’m proud to be one of the founding members of the United Solutions Caucus. We’re a group of 38 freshmen, Democrats and Republicans, working together to solve our fiscal crisis and reduce our debt and deficit. [Don't make me laugh Kyrsten, when it comes to taxing and spending in the Arizona legislator you were number #1. I am sure that in the US Congress you are also the #1 Congresswoman when it comes to taxing and spending. You reduce our debt??? Again don't make me laugh!!! Kyrsten, as the debt goes up you will probably cause it to increase more then any other Congressperson!!!!]

We’ve introduced the SAVE Act, which cuts $200 billion in wasteful spending. Earlier this year, I helped pass the Violence Against Women Act.

Are there any issues you’re working on with other Arizona members? [Well other then that "vote for ME and I will give you free stuff" nonsense]

I’m working with Reps. Matt Salmon and Raul Grijalva on a bill to prevent the NSA from gathering innocent civilians’ private data. [Give me a break Kyrsten, on every election sign of your you have the fact that you are supported by the police unions on the signs. I find it hard to believe that you are trying to reduce the police state, when the police unions helped you get elected!!!] Reps. Ron Barber, Ann Kirkpatrick and I are working on legislation to help veterans get quicker and better access to VA services. [More of the old "vote for ME and I will give you free stuff" nonsense]

You and Salmon, a Republican, have made several joint appearances. What’s the connection?

Our offices work closely together on constituent cases, and Matt and I share similar views on issues like global competitiveness, increasing foreign investment in Arizona companies, and increasing trade and exports. Plus, he’s a good guy and we get along.

What will immigration reform look like when the House is finished with it?

It’s too early to predict, but I’m committed to a bill that secures our border [so you do support the police state - 20,000 new Border Patrol cops???], creates a workable plan for a future flow of workers into the United States, and settles the status of “dreamers” and hard-working families living in the U.S. Compromise must be a part of any viable solution, and I hope the House is ready to get to “yes.” I certainly am! [Kyrsten, when a politician like you says "compromise" it means "if you vote for my pork, I will vote for your pork". Kyrsten with that in mind, I suspect you know how to compromise better then any other Congressman or Senator in Washington D.C.]

Death-penalty trials create big costs for taxpayers

Source

Death-penalty trials create big costs for taxpayers

By Michael Kiefer The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Jul 4, 2013 12:15 AM

Much has been made of the $1,687,000 spent so far to defend Jodi Arias in her murder case; that figure only covers until April, and the trial ran through May.

There also will be the cost of a new trial if Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery decides to go back to court to seek the death penalty.

Defendants are entitled to two attorneys, an investigator and a mitigation specialist. For comparison, the cost of defending “Baseline Killer” Mark Goudeau, who was sentenced to death in 2011, was $2,053,856, according to Maricopa County officials. [Even if he was convicted I have my doubts about Mark Goudeau being guilty. I suspect there is a good chance he was framed by the Phoenix Police. I am kind of surprised that alleged Libertarian Marc Victor thinks he is guilty]

And Jeffrey Martinson, whose trial in his son’s death ended in mistrial last year because of juror misconduct, has cost taxpayers $2,974,034 to date. Martinson will go back to trial, though the County Attorney’s Office has dropped its intent to seek the death penalty.

Critics of immigration bill say pork was added

A government welfare program for police officers???

The bill hires 20,000 NEW BP cops, increasing the number of cops in the Border Patrol from 20,000 to 40,000

Source

Critics of immigration bill say pork was added

By Dan Nowicki The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jul 5, 2013 11:23 PM

As debate rages over the sweeping immigration-reform package passed last month by the Senate, critics of the bill are accusing its backers of adding pork-barrel giveaways to win votes, an age-old complaint about Capitol Hill lawmaking.

They’re calling a provision that benefits Alaska’s fishing industry “the Alaska Seafood Special,” singling out its aid for Las Vegas tourism, and denigrating billions in border-security enhancements in southern Arizona as pork for Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake.

One politician’s pork, however, is another’s prudent or even essential spending.

Backers of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” bill say this line of attack is an attempt to paint it as a rerun of President Barack Obama’s controversial health-care overhaul of 2010, which remains infamous in Republican circles for parochial provisions such as the so-called “Cornhusker Kickback” inserted at the behest of then-Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb.

Supporters say, for example, that it is unfair to portray the bill’s $46.3 billion in border-security measures as pork because that spending relates directly to a central responsibility of the federal government.

Any backroom deal-making, they say, is minor by historical standards.

Still, the criticism has put McCain and Flake — Arizona Republicans with reputations as two of Capitol Hill’s fiercest foes of earmarks and wasteful spending — in the awkward position of defending the legislation against charges of pork. McCain and Flake were two of the Gang of Eight’s four Republican members and helped negotiate the bipartisan compromise, which would provide a pathway to citizenship for many of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants already settled in the United States.

“Let’s be honest: There was some of the old-style politics,” Flake told The Arizona Republic. “I can tell you, though, I’ve been around this process, and it’s very rare that you get a bill that is this all-encompassing with so few parochial provisions like that.”

Questioned provisions

The landmark immigration bill, which the Senate passed June 27 on a 68-32 vote, picked up support last month after its proposed spending on U.S.-Mexican border security was dramatically increased.

An amendment by Republican Sens. John Hoeven of North Dakota and Bob Corker of Tennessee would add, among other things, 350 miles of pedestrian fencing to the 350 miles already in place on the border and nearly double the number of U.S. Border Patrol agents, from about 20,000 to 40,000.

The bill also orders the purchase of certain kinds of border technology and equipment, such as certain makes and models of the Sikorsky Aircraft Corp.’s Black Hawk helicopter, leaving Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano with limited flexibility to choose alternatives.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., quipped on the Senate floor that “there are federal contracting firms high-fiving at the prospect of all of the spending.”

Other parochial additions also have drawn scrutiny. Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Mark Begich, D-Alaska, pressed for and received special consideration for the Alaska seafood industry. The legislation identifies fish-processing in the state as a “shortage occupation,” giving it an advantage under the bill’s proposed new W-Visa program for lesser-skilled workers.

“We might as well call this the Alaska Seafood Special,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a critic of the Alaska provision and the overall immigration bill.

In a written statement, Begich said he and Murkowski worked together “to make sure this bill protects Alaska seafood processors by ensuring a steady source of seasonal staffing in order to keep our Alaska economy strong.”

Attention also has focused on a $1.5 billion, two-year job program for unemployed 16- to 24-year-olds that Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., got included in the immigration bill.

Opponents characterized it as more ill-advised spending reminiscent of Obama’s 2009 economic-stimulus package.

Flake said the Sanders program is paid for by revenue generated by the bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., an immigration-reform supporter, got funding extended for national travel-promotion efforts that benefit Las Vegas.

Other items in the legislation have been linked to Gang of Eight members.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham secured more visas for the meat industry in his home state of South Carolina; and Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Michael Bennet, D-Colo., made sure the cruise-ship and ski industries important to their respective home states also received special consideration under the bill’s new visa system.

In an interview, McCain said he doesn’t view the immigration bill as containing any traditional pork. Some of the provisions that have drawn criticism were attempts to fairly address bona fide needs of unique labor forces, he said.

“There may have been a little of that (parochialism and making deals for votes), but overall, they were legitimate requirements,” McCain told The Republic. “Honestly, I was not involved in any of that, because of my principles. But, for example, the Alaska one was sold to me based on the unique circumstances concerning them. Then, there were a couple of other provisions that had to do with groups of unique people.”

‘It’s not pork’

Cornyn, the Senate minority whip, decried the bill as “a litany of de facto earmarks, carve-outs and pet spending initiatives” and seemed to suggest that McCain and Flake were hypocrites for accepting $250 million to boost immigration-related prosecutions in the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector in Arizona.

“There are nine Border Patrol sectors, but the Tucson Sector is the surprise beneficiary of $250 million in a special earmark in this bill,” Cornyn said on the Senate floor.

“I would just ask the simple question: Don’t all of the border sectors need increased funding for prosecutions? Well, I believe the answer is yes, and so carving out the Tucson Sector for special treatment, I believe, is entirely inappropriate. So, we see that even longtime opponents of earmarks are now co-sponsoring legislation that is filled with de facto earmarks, including one that benefits their states alone.”

McCain and Flake flatly rejected the argument that the border measures are pork for Arizona. The two have long stressed that the Tucson Sector is the nation’s busiest for undocumented immigration and covers the part of the border most in need of attention.

“It’s the federal government’s responsibility to secure the border, and these appropriations and the items that are put on the border are to fulfill that purpose,” said Flake, who while serving in the House was instrumental in enacting a moratorium on earmarks. “It’s not pork.”

Steve Ellis, vice president of the budget watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, agreed that the Senate-passed flood of border spending, although it may be overkill, doesn’t fit the classic definitions of earmarks or pork. However, the makers of the bill’s mandated technology, such as Northrop Grumman Corp.’s Vehicle and Dismount Exploitation Radar, or VADER system, clearly would come out as big winners if the bill became law, he said.

The bill would require the purchase of six VADER systems, which rely on aerial drones, at an estimated total price of $55.8 million.

“This isn’t really being done by Corker and Hoeven to benefit their constituents, per se,” Ellis said. “They’re not bringing back the bacon to Tennessee and North Dakota.”

‘It’s political cover’

But Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which opposes the bill, suggested that the border-security amendment is a different kind of payoff for senators. The Washington, D.C.-based center backs more enforcement and overall reductions in immigration.

“They were buying votes there, too, but in a different way,” Krikorian said. “This was so Corker and Hoeven and a couple of others could posture about how tough they are on border security. In other words, it’s political cover.”

Other provisions clearly were intended to win over specific senators, such as the Alaska one critics have been calling the “Crab-husker Kickback” and “the Alaska Purchase,” Krikorian said.

“When you have a 1,200-page bill, it’s going to be full of that kind of junk,” he said.

“The amnesty bill is based on these kinds of corrupt bargains. There’s really no other way to put it.”

Immigrant-rights advocates, who support the bill even though they believe its border-security elements are excessive, aren’t buying the pork criticism.

Foes of the bill, which still must pass the Republican-controlled House in some form, are trying to fuel conservative skepticism by emphasizing the legislation’s length, as Krikorian did, and claiming it is stuffed with sweetheart deals, said Frank Sharry, executive director of the pro-reform organization America’s Voice.

“They’re doing everything they can to equate this bill to ‘Obamacare,’ ” Sharry said. “It’s such a tired strategy.”

Android security flaw gives Homeland Security easy access to your phone????

Android security flaw gives NSA, CIA, Homeland Security, FBI, BATF, DEA, TSA, IRS, ICE, La Migra, ATF and a whole slew of other alphabet police agencies easy access to your phone????

Source

Android security flaw affects 99 percent of phones, researcher says

By Hayley Tsukayama, Published: July 5 E-mail the writer

Security researchers believe they have found a major security flaw in the Google’s Android mobile operating system, which could affect up to 99 percent of Android phones now in consumers’ hands.

In results published Wednesday by the Bluebox Security research firm, chief technology officer Jeff Forristal said the flaw gave hackers a “master key” into the Android system.

Google declined to comment on the report.

The problem lies in the security verification process that has been used on the Google Play applications store since the release of Android 1.6. It could leave up to 900 million devices open to hackers. The flaw, the research firm said, is a weakness in the way that Android applications verify changes to their code. The weakness would allow hackers to “turn any legitimate application into a malicious Trojan” without flagging the attention of Google’s app store, a mobile phone or the person using an application.

The result, researchers said, would be that anyone who breaks into an app this way would have access to the data that app collects and — if an app made by the device manufacturer gets exploited — could even “take over normal functioning of a phone.”

In the post, Forristal said that Bluebox reported the security flaw to Google in February. In an interview with CIO, he said that some manufacturers have already released fixes for the problem, specifically naming the Samsung Galaxy S4.

Security is a common concern on Android phones, in part because the open nature of the system also means that it’s easy for anyone to find out how it works. Android is the OS of choice for 75 percent of the world’s smartphones, IDC reported in May. But a report released in March from the F-Secure security firm found that 79 percent of all mobile malware found in 2012 was running on Android phones.

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that so many smartphone manufacturers use their own versions of the Android operating system, making it more difficult to get system updates that may include security fixes out to customers.

Related stories:

As smartphone market matures, makers race to wow consumers

‘Fragmentation’ leaves Android phones vulnerable to hackers, scammers

Majority of mobile malware on Android phones, security firm says

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Lincoln’s Surveillance State

President Lincoln was reading our telegraphs????

Don't laugh, at the time it was considered a high-tech police state.

Source

Lincoln’s Surveillance State

By DAVID T. Z. MINDICH

Published: July 5, 2013

COLCHESTER, Vt. — BY leaking details of the National Security Agency’s data-mining program, Edward J. Snowden revealed that the government’s surveillance efforts were far more extensive than previously understood. Many commentators have deemed the government’s activities alarming and unprecedented. The N.S.A.’s program is indeed alarming — but not, from a historical perspective, unprecedented. And history suggests that we should worry less about the surveillance itself and more about when the war in whose name the surveillance is being conducted will end.

In 1862, after President Abraham Lincoln appointed him secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton penned a letter to the president requesting sweeping powers, which would include total control of the telegraph lines. By rerouting those lines through his office, Stanton would keep tabs on vast amounts of communication, journalistic, governmental and personal. On the back of Stanton’s letter Lincoln scribbled his approval: “The Secretary of War has my authority to exercise his discretion in the matter within mentioned.”

I came across this letter in the 1990s in the Library of Congress while researching Stanton’s wartime efforts to control the press, which included censorship, intimidation and extrajudicial arrests of reporters. On the same day he received control of the telegraphs, Stanton put an assistant secretary in charge of two areas: press relations and the newly formed secret police. Stanton ultimately had dozens of newspapermen arrested on questionable charges. Within Stanton’s first month in office, a reporter for The New York Herald, who had insisted that he be given news ahead of other reporters, was arrested as a spy.

Having the telegraph lines running through Stanton’s office made his department the nexus of war information; Lincoln visited regularly to get the latest on the war. Stanton collected news from generals, telegraph operators and reporters. He had a journalist’s love of breaking the story and an autocrat’s obsession with information control. He used his power over the telegraphs to influence what journalists did or didn’t publish. In 1862, the House Judiciary Committee took up the question of “telegraphic censorship” and called for restraint on the part of the administration’s censors.

When I first read Stanton’s requests to Lincoln asking for broad powers, I accepted his information control as a necessary evil. Lincoln was fighting for a cause of the utmost importance in the face of enormous challenges. The benefits of information monitoring, censorship and extrajudicial tactics, though disturbing, were arguably worth their price.

But part of the reason this calculus was acceptable to me was that the trade-offs were not permanent. As the war ended, the emergency measures were rolled back. Information — telegraph and otherwise — began to flow freely again.

So it has been with many wars: a cycle of draconian measures followed by contraction. During the First World War, the Supreme Court found that Charles T. Schenck posed a “clear and present danger” for advocating opposition to the draft; later such speech became more permissible. During the Second World War, habeas corpus was suspended several times — most notably in Hawaii after the Pearl Harbor attack — but afterward such suspensions became rare.

This is why, if you are a critic of the N.S.A.’s surveillance program, it is imperative that the war on terror reach its culmination. In May, President Obama declared that “this war, like all wars, must end.” If history is any guide, ending the seemingly endless state of war is the first step in returning our civil liberties.

Until then, we will continue to see acts of governmental overreach that would make even Stanton blush. “I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the President, if I had a personal e-mail,” Mr. Snowden told The Guardian. And unlike Stanton’s telegraph operation, which housed just a handful of telegraphers, the current national security apparatus is huge. An estimated 483,000 government contractors had top-secret security clearances in 2012. That’s a lot of Snowdens to trust with your information.

David T. Z. Mindich, a professor of media studies, journalism and digital arts at Saint Michael’s College, is the author of “Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don’t Follow the News.”

Arizona court ruling upholds DUI test for marijuana

Source

Arizona court ruling upholds DUI test for marijuana

Posted on February 14, 2013 by admin

Associated Press Wed Feb 13, 2013 5:10 PM

PHOENIX — An appeals court has issued a ruling that upholds the right of authorities to prosecute pot smokers in Arizona for driving under the influence even when there is no evidence that they are actually high.

The ruling by the Court of Appeals focuses on the chemical compounds in marijuana that show up in blood and urine tests after people smoke pot. One chemical compound causes drivers to be impaired; another is a chemical that stays in people’s systems for weeks after they’ve smoked marijuana but doesn’t affect impairment.

The court ruled that both compounds apply to Arizona law, meaning a driver doesn’t have to actually be impaired to get prosecuted for DUI. As long as there is evidence of marijuana in their system, they can get a DUI, the court said.

The ruling overturns a decision by a lower court judge who said it didn’t make sense to prosecute a person with no evidence they’re under the influence.

The lower court judge cited the proliferation of states easing their marijuana laws, but the Court of Appeals ruling issued Tuesday dismissed that by saying Arizona’s medical marijuana law is irrelevant regarding DUI.

The Legislature adopted the decades-old comprehensive DUI law to protect public safety, so a provision on prohibited substances and their resulting chemical compounds should be interpreted broadly to include inactive compounds as well as active ones, the Court of Appeals said.

The case stems from a 2010 traffic stop in Maricopa County. The motorist’s blood test revealed only a chemical compound that is found in the blood after another compound produced from ingesting marijuana breaks down.

According to testimony by a prosecution criminalist, the compound found in the man’s blood doesn’t impair the ability to drive but can remain detectable for four weeks.

The man’s lawyer argued Arizona’s DUI law bars only marijuana and “its metabolite,” so only the first derivative compound that actually impairs drivers is prohibited.

Two lower court judges agreed, with one upholding the other’s dismissal of the case against the motorist, Hrach Shilgevorkyan.

Superior Court Commissioner Myra Harris’ ruling noted that several states have decriminalized pot, and that a growing number of states, including Arizona, have legalized medical marijuana.

“Residents of these states, particularly those geographically near Arizona, are likely to travel to Arizona,” Harris said in her 2012 ruling upholding the dismissal. “It would be irrational for Arizona to prosecute a defendant for an act that might have occurred outside of Arizona several weeks earlier.”

However, the Court of Appeals sided with prosecutors who appealed, saying that allowing the testing for marijuana’s active compound would unduly restrict law enforcement.

The ruling said it serves the Legislature’s intention to have a flat ban on driving under the influence to interpret the DUI law’s reference to a prohibited substance and “its metabolite” as covering both a substance’s active and inactive compounds.

Michael Alarid III, a lawyer for Shilgevorkyan, said he’ll ask the Arizona Supreme Court to consider an appeal.

He added the testing issue is increasingly important because people legally using pot in two Western states — Washington and Colorado — that last year approved marijuana decriminalization laws could be convicted of DUI if arrested while driving in Arizona weeks later.

Feds planned to arm drones

Feds to murder dope dealers & Mexicans with drones????

Feds to murder dope dealers & Mexicans with drones????

I have posted a number of articles where I made snide comments like "I wonder when the police will start using drone air strikes on American soil to murder drug dealers and blow up suspect drug houses"

Looks like that part of the American police state could be just around the corner.

Sadly the Feds may also use drones against brown skinned folks who sneak across the border too.

Here is a quote from the article:

"According to the document, titled 'Concept of Operations for CBP’s Predator B Unmanned Aircraft System,' the weapons would be used against “targets of interest,” described as people or vehicles carrying smugglers or undocumented migrants"

Feds planned to arm drones

By Bob Ortega The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Jul 4, 2013 12:17 AM

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security developed plans at least three years ago to mount weapons on drones operated by Customs and Border Protection — though the agency denied Wednesday that it has any current plans to use armed drones.

The plans, outlining the idea of mounting “expendables or non-lethal weapons” on CBP drones, are disclosed in a 2010 document signed by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

The document was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and first posted Tuesday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco non-profit focused on cyberspace free speech, privacy and consumer-rights issues.

According to the document, titled “Concept of Operations for CBP’s Predator B Unmanned Aircraft System,” the weapons would be used against “targets of interest,” described as people or vehicles carrying smugglers or undocumented migrants.

The DHS and CBP declined to answer specific questions about the document, but issued a statement Wednesday that “CBP has no plans to arm its unmanned-aircraft systems with non-lethal weapons or weapons of any kind.”

However, civil-rights advocates are concerned that Napolitano signed off on a document positing plans to place even “non-lethal” weapons on drones.

“We’ve never seen this before in any proposals to fly drones domestically,” said Jennifer Lynch, an attorney for the foundation, which first requested the documents last summer and then filed suit in October.

She said the foundation obtained the document last month.

In June, departing FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledged in a Senate hearing that his agency has deployed surveillance drones, even though it hasn’t yet drafted regulations for their use.

“Weaponizing drones, even with non-lethal weapons, creates too much of a danger to the public,” said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, D.C. “And it is an open question what a ‘non-lethal’ weapon is. … Something that could incapacitate a person in the middle of a desert could be hugely problematic. We think that, in the United States, drones should be used for surveillance alone, and only under strong legal protections.”

The DHS document was heavily redacted, with pages of text blacked out. None of the material released details what “expendables” or “non-lethal” weapons would be.

Currently, the CBP operates 10 drones. It plans to have 17 by 2017. The “Gang of Eight” immigration bill passed by the Senate last week calls for the CBP and its subagency, the Border Patrol, to operate drones 24 hours a day, seven days a week along the southern border. If some version of that bill passes the House, as many as 24 additional drones could be deployed.

By law, to ensure that drone operations don’t pose a safety risk to civil aviation, the Federal Aviation Administration must issue “certificates of authorization” for all unmanned- aerial-vehicle operations.

In response to a query from The Arizona Republic, the FAA issued a statement Wednesday saying that it “has not approved any certificates of authorization for law-enforcement agencies that authorize armed operations.”

The FAA hadn’t responded by deadline when asked whether it has received requests to authorize armed operations.

In February, at a drone convention in northern Virginia, the FAA official charged with regulating unmanned aircraft said that FAA rules bar using weapons on drones.

“We currently have rules in the books that deal with releasing anything from an aircraft, period. Those rules are in place, and that would prohibit weapons from being installed on a civil aircraft,” including on unmanned aircraft, the FAA’s Jim Williams said, according to the Washington Times.

Williams couldn’t be reached Tuesday or Wednesday. When asked for the regulation Williams cited, an agency spokesman gave a regulation that says: “No pilot in command of a civil aircraft may allow any object to be dropped from that aircraft in flight that creates a hazard to persons or property. However, this section does not prohibit the dropping of any object if reasonable precautions are taken to avoid injury or damage to persons or property.”

Amos Guiora, a law professor at the University of Utah and the author of a book on drone use, “Legitimate Target,” said that the Obama administration hasn’t articulated a clear policy on either domestic or overseas drone use and that neither Republicans nor Democrats in Congress have been eager to limit the executive branch in this area.

“This is the new Wild West,” he said. “They have no clear criteria, no articulation of the threat, no articulation of what constitutes a legitimate target.”

Meanwhile, flight logs of CBP drones obtained and posted Wednesday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation showed that the CBP has lent its drones more than 200 times in recent years to other federal and state agencies, including the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Marshals Service, the U.S. Forest Service and state law-enforcement agencies in Minnesota, North Dakota and Texas, among others.

Desplegaría EU 40 helicópteros en la frontera: WP

Let's face it the "War on Drugs" is all about $$$MONEY$$$

Source

Desplegaría EU 40 helicópteros en la frontera: WP

Revela ‘The Washington Post’ que de aprobarse la enmienda de seguridad fronteriza en la Cámara de Representantes, la industria armamentista se vería beneficiada.

Una flotilla de 40 helicópteros sería desplegada en la frontera con México si la enmienda de seguridad incluida en la iniciativa de reforma migratoria es adoptada por la Cámara de Representantes estadunidense, reveló este martes The Washington Post.

Sin embargo, las adquisiciones ordenadas bajo la misma representarán una bonanza para algunas de las mayores empresas del ramo de defensa gracias a las especificaciones contenidas en la propuesta de los senadores republicanos Bob Corker y John Hoeven.

Algunos de los beneficiarios incluyen empresas como Bell, Northrop Grumman, Sikorsky y American Eurocopter, de acuerdo con un listado de parte del equipo que el Departamento de Seguridad Interna (DHS) deberá adquirir si la enmienda es adoptada por la cámara baja.

El periódico The Washington Post recordó que la enmienda fue introducida a fin de que un mayor número de republicanos aprobara la iniciativa en el Senado, con la esperanza de mejorar sus prospectos en la Cámara de Representantes, donde enfrenta serias resistencias.

Críticos del proyecto, como el senador republicano por Oklahoma, Tom Coburn, calificaron las enmiendas como un paquete de estímulo para empresas de este ramo.

"El dinero de los contribuyentes debería mejorar la seguridad fronteriza y no ofrecer un estímulo para contratistas, por desgracia eso es lo que hace la iniciativa del Senado", dijo el legislador al diario.

La enmienda ordena la adquisición de 15 helicópteros Black Hawk fabricados por Sikorsky con un costo superior cada uno a los 17 millones de dólares, algunos de los cuales tiene tecnología digital.

El Departamento de Seguridad Interna (DHS) deberá adquirir también ocho helicópteros livianos fabricados por American Eurocopter, con un precio de tres millones de dólares cada uno, así como 17 helicópteros UH-1N fabricados por Bell.

The Washington Post enfatizó que en este caso se trata de un modelo tan viejo que la compañía no lo fabrica más.

La iniciativa también establece la adquisición de seis sistemas de radar fabricados por Northrop Grumman, cada uno de los cuales tiene un costo de 9.3 millones de dólares.

La enmienda representó una adición de 38 mil millones de dólares a los ocho millones considerados en un inicio.

El grueso de esa partida, 30 mil millones de dólares serán destinados para la contratación de más de 19 mil agentes de la patrulla fronteriza en la próxima década, que se sumarán a los 21 mil que en la actualidad están en servicio.

Aunque la enmienda permite al DHS sustituir el equipo a adquirir si así lo determina conveniente, organismos civiles de supervisión estimaron que esas especificaciones resultarán en compras directas y no resultado de un proceso de licitación.

"Los legisladores han puesto sus huellas a favor de productos específicos y eso es difícil de ignorar para una agencia", dijo el vicepresidente del grupo Taxpayers for Common Sense, Steven Ellis.

Cops have hand held fingerprinting machines to ID you

I was falsely arrested on June 25, 2013 in Chandler and videotaped about 9 minutes of the false arrest. In the video at this URL http://tinyurl.com/chandlerarrest you can Chandler piggy G Pederson telling me that I didn't have any stinking 5th Amendment rights in that case after I mentioned that in Miranda v Arizona the Supremes said that when a person takes the 5th the police must "immediately cease questioning" the person.

Source

Valley police departments utiliizing digital fingerprinting

By Michelle Mitchell The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Jul 8, 2013 11:22 PM

A hand-held device that resembles a cellphone and taps fingerprint databases to help police officers identify people in the field is catching on with several departments in the Valley.

Officers say the devices are a valuable tool — particularly when they encounter people who aren’t carrying ID cards or who give false information.

“With these finger scanners ... you’re talking less than a minute (and) you know who you’re dealing with,” Chandler Sgt. Joe Favazzo said.

“The safety factor and the time-saving factors are just amazing.”

Not everyone is as sold on them, however, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, which has voiced privacy concerns.

The devices also raise concerns about identity theft and how that personal information is stored and transferred, particularly if a person is not charged with a crime, said Alessandra Soler, executive director of the ACLU of Arizona.

The devices are not designed to store fingerprint data — although they could be modified to do that — but to transfer the information through the officer’s existing in-car computer system, said Robert Horton, spokesman for manufacturer MorphoTrak.

Police departments in Mesa, Tempe and Phoenix began a pilot program last year using the MorphoTrak scanners.

Tempe and Mesa have now expanded those pilot programs.

“We were sold on how fantastic they are,” Tempe Police Sgt. Mike Pooley said.

“It gives us a very quick response.”

Tempe had 14 scanners during the pilot and recently purchased 30 more.

Other departments have signed on, including Chandler, which bought 36 scanners; Scottsdale, which purchased 10, and Peoria, which bought five as a trial.

Chandler police skipped a smaller-scale pilot after hearing about their effectiveness from Mesa police officers through the East Valley Gang and Criminal Information Fusion Center, Favazzo said.

The cost of the scanners varies, but Valley cities paid about $1,200 to $1,800 per unit.

The devices allow officers in the field to scan a person’s fingerprints and compare them to local, state and federal databases.

The scanners will save officers time when someone does not have identification or provides false information, Favazzo said.

Without these devices, officers run variations of the name and birth date provided in an attempt to locate a driver’s license, warrant or other information about the person, Favazzo said.

If that does not work, officers will take the person to the station, [i.e. -falsely arrest them and make them prove they are not a criminal before releasing them] fingerprint them and wait for identity information.

“It will also let us know right away if we are dealing with a violent felon before we ever transport them,” Favazzo said.

The Tempe Police Department recently discovered by using the mobile fingerprint scanner that a man they had encountered was wanted by the FBI, Pooley said.

“We would have ended up letting this guy go,” he said.

Police departments find that the devices save them money by not having to transport people to the station and that they act as a force multiplier by keeping officers on the street, MorphoTrak’s Horton said.

The device will scan two fingerprints and the officer will receive a response in 30 seconds to several minutes, he said.

The Phoenix Police Department, which received three scanners last year as part of a pilot program, still is evaluating whether to expand the program, Sgt. Tommy Thompson said.

“Obviously as technology advances, we want to be involved in those advances, but we want to make sure they meet our needs and they’re a useful tool,” Thompson said.

Officers say they are sensitive to privacy concerns expressed by the ACLU. [Yea, sure. Like in my case where I am always told I don't have any stinking 5th Amendment right to refuse police questioning, which is almost always followed by an illegal search of my wallet in which the cop is hoping to find my ID]

Mesa officers are not trying to collect personal information, Sgt. Tony Landato said. [That's 100 percent BS. That is the WHOLE purpose of the fingerprint scanners - to get person information about the person - i.e. name and date of birth so the cops can search for outstanding warrants]

“We’re not taking a census,” Landato said. “We’re just trying to ensure the accuracy of the information that we’re taking down.

“If we can do this in a way that’s quicker for the officer and quicker for the citizen, then, hey, we both win.”

The state and FBI fingerprint databases that the scanners check do not contain citizenship or immigration-status information, although that could be possible in the future if the scanners are connected to Department of Homeland Security databases, Horton said.

The state ACLU’s Soler said departments should create policies that inform people who are not under arrest that they have the right to refuse submitting their fingerprints. [Yea, sure. Like I am always lied to by the police and told I don't have any 5th Amendment right to refuse to answer police questions]

“It’s critical that we think about these things before rolling out these new high-tech systems, and more often than not that doesn’t happen,” she said. “In this day and age when the technology so far outpaces the privacy laws, the individuals end up giving up a lot in terms of their privacy.”

The use of fingerprint scanners falls under existing Mesa Police Department policy, Landato said.

“We’re not going to fingerprint somebody unless we’ve got them under arrest or we have their consent,” he said. [Yea, I'm am 100 percent positive that is a big lie!!!!! I was also falsely arrested by the Mesa Police who also told me I didn't have any stinking 5th Amendment rights. See false arrest by Mesa Police and lawsuit against Mesa Police]

Tempe police are writing a policy that would require officers to get consent from a person who is not under arrest, Pooley said. [Yea, sure. I also sure the Tempe for false arrest]

“Right now, there’s no authority that can compel a person to put their fingers on one of these gadgets, short of them being arrested,” said Sigmund Popko, clinical professor of law at Arizona State University. [Rubbish, what are you going to do when a cop with a gun and a badge forces you to give him your fingerprints??? Resist and be killed????]

While drivers are required to provide a license if they are pulled over, a passenger or pedestrian who is not in violation of a law would not be required to provide identification or fingerprints, said attorney John Phebus, vice chair of the criminal-justice section of the State Bar of Arizona. [Of course the police routinely lie to these people and tell them they are required to]

“Most people don’t know you can say no,” Phebus said. “When you’re in that moment, it’s awful hard to say no.”

Reach the reporter at michelle .mitchell@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-7983.

RELATED INFO

Handheld, mobile fingerprint scanners About the scanner

What it does: The MorphoIDent handheld device scans a person’s fingerprints and transfers the information to a police officer’s phone or computer via Bluetooth or USB. It compares prints with state and federal fingerprint databases and reports a name and date of birth if a match is found.

Manufacturer: MorphoTrak, based in Alexandria, Va.

Cost: Varies, but Valley departments have paid $1,200 to $1,800 per device.

Dimensions: About 5 inches by 3 inches. Weight is about 5 ounces.

Who’s using the devices

Several Valley police departments are testing or using handheld, mobile fingerprint scanners:.

Chandler: 36 scanners, expected to be in use by August.

Glendale: 2 scanners (pilot), not yet deployed.

Tempe: 44 scanners, 14 currently in use.

Peoria: 5 scanners (pilot), purchased two months ago, not yet deployed.

Phoenix: 3 scanners (pilot), in use since the fall.

Scottsdale: 10 scanners, expected to be in use by late July.

Bill Montgomery wants to frame Debra Milke a second time

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Debra Milke to be retried in Peoria killing of 4-year-old son

By Michael Kiefer The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Jul 8, 2013 5:10 PM

Just hours after a U.S. District Court judge on Monday ordered that Debra Milke be released from custody unless the State of Arizona declared its intent to retry her for the 1989 murder of her 4-year-old son, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office did just that.

Milke, 49, will go back to trial, and the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office will try to put her back on death row.

Her conviction was thrown out earlier this year by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals because of a tainted confession supposedly obtained by a Phoenix police officer with an extensive record of misconduct. At Milke’s original trial, it was his word against hers, and Milke was convicted even though there was no recording and no witness to the confession that Milke said was never made.

Milke’s attorney, Michael Kimmerer, said that the prosecutor assigned to the case told him that the questionable ex-police officer, Armando Saldate, was expected to testify in the upcoming trial.

“It’s disappointing to see (County Attorney) Bill Montgomery stick up and validate Saldate’s actions,” Kimmerer said.

Kimmerer said that he will attempt to secure bond for Milke after she is transferred from state prison to the Maricopa County Jail.

“The County Attorney has said publicly that his office was preparing to retry the case and today’s notices confirm that officially with the court,” said Jerry Cobb, a spokesman for Montgomery.

Milke was charged with first-degree murder, accused of conspiring with two acquaintances to kill her son Christopher in 1989.

According to court records and media accounts, Milke found the child to be an inconvenience and asked James Styers, her roommate, to kill him. She dressed the child in his favorite clothes and cowboy boots and told him that he was going to Metrocenter mall to see Santa Claus, court records said.

Another man, Roger Scott, drove Christopher and Styers to a pizzeria, and then to the desert near 99th Avenue and Happy Valley Road in Peoria, where Styers shot the boy three times in the back of the head, according to court records. Both men blamed the shooting on the other.

Styers and Scott were also sentenced to death and are nearing the end of their appeals.

The Laws You Can’t See

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The Laws You Can’t See

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Published: July 8, 2013 225 Comments

In the month since a national security contractor leaked classified documents revealing a vast sweep of Americans’ phone records by the federal government, people across the country have disagreed about the extent to which our expectation of personal privacy must yield to the demands of national security.

Under normal circumstances, this could be a healthy, informed debate on a matter of overwhelming importance — the debate President Obama said he welcomed in the days after the revelations of the surveillance programs.

But this is a debate in which almost none of us know what we’re talking about.

As Eric Lichtblau reported in The Times on Sunday, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has for years been developing what is effectively a secret and unchallenged body of law on core Fourth Amendment issues, producing lengthy classified rulings based on the arguments of the federal government — the only party allowed in the courtroom. In recent years, the court, originally established by Congress to approve wiretap orders, has extended its reach to consider requests related to nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks. Its rulings, some of which approach 100 pages, have established the court as a final arbiter in these matters.

But the court is as opaque as it is powerful. Every attempt to understand the court’s rulings devolves into a fog of hypothesis and speculation.

The few public officials with knowledge of the surveillance court’s work either censor themselves as required by law, as Senator Ron Wyden has done in his valiant efforts to draw attention to the full scope of these programs, or they offer murky, even misleading statements, as the director of national intelligence, James Clapper Jr., did before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in March.

As outrageous as the blanket secrecy of the surveillance court is, we are equally troubled by the complete absence of any adversarial process, the heart of our legal system. The government in 2012 made 1,789 requests to conduct electronic surveillance; the court approved 1,788 (the government withdrew the other). It is possible that not a single one of these 1,788 requests violated established law, but the public will never know because no one was allowed to make a counterargument.

When judicial secrecy is coupled with a one-sided presentation of the issues, the result is a court whose reach is expanding far beyond its original mandate and without any substantive check. This is a perversion of the American justice system, and it is not necessary.

Even before the latest revelations of government snooping, some members of Congress were trying to provide that check. In a letter to the court in February, Senator Dianne Feinstein and three others asked that any rulings with a “significant interpretation of the law” be declassified. In response, the court’s presiding judge, Reggie Walton, wrote that the court could provide only summaries of its rulings, because the full opinions contained classified information. But he balked at releasing summaries, which he feared would create “misunderstanding or confusion.” It is difficult to imagine how releasing information would make the confusion worse.

Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, recently reintroduced a bill that would require declassification. It was defeated in December. In light of the national uproar over the most recent revelations, the leadership in Congress should push to pass it and begin to shine some light on this dark corner of the judicial system.

We don’t know what we’ll find. The surveillance court may be strictly adhering to the limits of the Fourth Amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court. Or not. And that’s the problem: This court has morphed into an odd hybrid that seems to exist outside the justice system, even as its power grows in ways that we can’t see.

Mesa council approves $130 million bond vote

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Mesa council approves $130 million bond vote; Spring Training Museum not included

Posted: Tuesday, July 9, 2013 11:16 am | Updated: 11:20 am, Tue Jul 9, 2013.

By Eric Mungenast, Tribune

After removing one major project from the list of options, the Mesa City Council approved a motion to call for a more than $130 million bond election in November.

The bonds, totaling $130.8 million, are split into projects related to infrastructure improvements and public safety upgrades. The former encompasses $79.1 million worth of street upgrades in downtown Mesa — one project includes the addition of bike lanes along Mesa Drive between 8th Avenue and Main Street — and in areas like the Fiesta Mall and around Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport.

The public safety projects, which add up to $51.7 million, listed on the ballot include the purchase of a $3.1 million helicopter for the Mesa Police Department and a $16 million communications center for the Mesa Fire Department. During a July 1 study session, Mesa fire chief Harry Beck said the second communications center would operate in tandem with the one the department currently uses and would act as a backup in case a problem arose at the current center.

If approved, some projects tied to the bond funding would receive funding for the last half of the 2013-14 fiscal year, and the funding for the final projects would conclude after the 2016-17 fiscal year.

Missing from the bond the council approved is the Arizona Spring Training Experience, Museum and Community Center operated by the Mesa Historical Museum. Formerly known as the Cactus League Experience, the center would host approximately 4,000 pieces of baseball memorabilia and had a bond figure of $17 million.

At the council’s July 8 study session, however, Mesa Historical Museum CEO Lisa Anderson requested the council remove that item from the bond list, as she said the organization had new opportunities it wants to explore.

“We’ve determined there is a tremendous potential to develop this project beyond event the scope we’ve presented to you thus far,” she said.

Voters could have a shot to vote on the issue next year, as Anderson said the organization might ask the council to put it up for a vote in 2014.

Mayor Scott Smith said it was better to wait for at least a year to compensate for what he called a short timeframe to get the project organized and tie up loose ends, and he said the delay could result in a better final product.

“I appreciate your willingness to step up and do something that’s better for Mesa in the long run because I think we’re going to have a killer project,” he said.

The council approved the motion to put the other two bond packages on the ballot with a 6-0 vote, as vice-mayor Alex Finter was absent from the meeting.

This will mark the second year in a row Mesa residents will have an opportunity to vote on at least one bond issue; in 2012, voters approved a $70 million in city bonds for projects related to parks, open space, recreational and aquatics facility improvements, as well as a $230 million bond for the Mesa Unified School District. City chief financial officer Michael Kennington wrote in an email Mesa has a general obligation bond debt of $326 million.

Contact writer: (480) 898-5647 or emungenast@evtrib.com

Man charged in Casa Grande blast wants evidence suppressed

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Man charged in Casa Grande blast wants evidence suppressed

The Associated Press Tue Jul 9, 2013 9:52 AM

Lawyers for an Iraqi man charged with detonating a homemade explosive device outside a Social Security Administration office in Arizona are asking a judge to throw out evidence collected by investigators during searches of his home and car.

Attorneys for Abdullatif Ali Aldosary say the search warrant used by investigators wasn’t supported by probable cause to believe he damaged federal property with an explosive.

Authorities say Aldosary researched bomb-making materials and gathered chemicals before detonating an explosive outside the agency’s Casa Grande office on Nov. 30.

No one was injured in the blast.

He has pleaded not guilty to maliciously damaging federal property with explosives, being a felon in possession of a gun and ammunition and attempted interference with the administration of the federal agency.

Files of bin Laden raid stashed within CIA

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Files of bin Laden raid stashed within CIA

Agency now can shield info on SEAL operation

Jul. 8, 2013

WASHINGTON — The top U.S. special operations commander, Adm. William McRaven, ordered military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA, where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made public.

The secret move, described briefly in a draft report by the Pentagon’s inspector general, set off no alarms within the Obama administration even though it appears to have sidestepped federal rules and perhaps also the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

An acknowledgment by McRaven was quietly removed from the final version of an inspector general’s report published weeks ago. A spokesman for the admiral declined to comment. The CIA, noting that the bin Laden mission was overseen by then-CIA Director Leon Panetta before he became defense secretary, said the SEALs were effectively assigned to work temporarily for the CIA, which has presidential authority to conduct covert operations.

“Documents related to the raid were handled in a manner consistent with the fact that the operation was conducted under the direction of the CIA director,” agency spokesman Preston Golson said in an emailed statement. “Records of a CIA operation such as the (bin Laden) raid, which were created during the conduct of the operation by persons acting under the authority of the CIA Director, are CIA records.”

Golson said it is “absolutely false” that records were moved to the CIA to avoid the legal requirements of the Freedom of Information Act. Effort to protect identities

The records transfer was part of an effort by McRaven to protect the names of the personnel involved in the raid, according to the inspector general’s draft report.

But secretly moving the records allowed the Pentagon to tell The Associated Press that it couldn’t find any documents inside the Defense Department that AP had requested more than two years ago, and would represent a new strategy for the U.S. government to shield even its most sensitive activities from public scrutiny.

“Welcome to the shell game in place of open government,” said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a private research institute at George Washington University. “Guess which shell the records are under. If you guess the right shell, we might show them to you. It’s ridiculous.”

McRaven’s directive sent the only copies of the military’s records about the raid to the CIA. The agency has special authority to prevent the release of “operational files” in ways that can’t effectively be challenged in federal court.

The Federal Records Act would not permit agencies “to purge records just on a whim,” said Dan Metcalfe, who oversaw the U.S. government’s compliance with the Freedom of Information Act as former director of the Justice Department’s Office of Information and Privacy. “I don’t think there’s an exception allowing an agency to say, ‘Well, we didn’t destroy it. We just deleted it here after transmitting it over there.’ High-level officials ought to know better.”

It was not immediately clear exactly which Defense Department records were purged and transferred, when it happened or under what authority, if any, they were sent to the CIA. No government agencies the AP contacted would discuss details of the transfer. Follow-up to 'Zero Dark Thirty'

The AP asked for files about the mission in more than 20 separate requests, mostly submitted in May 2011 — several were sent a day after President Barack Obama announced that the world’s most wanted terrorist had been killed in a firefight.

McRaven’s unusual order would have remained secret had it not been mentioned in a single sentence on the final page in the inspector general’s draft report. That report examined whether the Obama administration gave special access to Hollywood executives planning a film, “Zero Dark Thirty,” about the raid. The draft report was obtained and posted online last month by the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group in Washington.

McRaven described steps he took to protect the identities of the SEALs after the raid, directing that their names and photographs not be released.

“This effort included purging the combatant command’s systems of all records related to the operation and providing these records to another government agency,” according to the draft report. The sentence was dropped from the report’s final version.

Current and former Defense Department officials knowledgeable about McRaven’s directive and the inspector general’s report told AP the description of the order in the draft report is accurate. The reference to “another government agency” was code for the CIA, they said. These individuals spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Latinos now less likely to report crimes to police, poll says

Latinos now less likely to report crimes to police, poll says

May 07, 2013|By Brian Bennett

WASHINGTON – Many Latinos say they are less likely than before to report crimes because local police are increasingly involved in enforcing immigration laws, leading to a sharp increase in deportations, according to a new study.

About 44% of Latinos surveyed said they were less likely now to contact police if they were victims of a crime because they fear officers will inquire about their immigration status or the status of people they know. The figure jumps to 70% among Latinos who are in the country unlawfully.

“There is fear that is really widespread,” said Nik Theodore, an associate professor of urban planning and policy at University of Illinois at Chicago and the author of the study.

The report, “Insecure Communities: Latino Perceptions of Police Involvement in Immigration Enforcement,” is based on a telephone survey of 2,004 Latinos in Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago and Phoenix. The results are scheduled to be released Tuesday.

The survey was sponsored by the think tank PolicyLink of Oakland and conducted by Lake Research Partners, a polling firm in Washington, D.C., between Nov. 17 and Dec. 10.

“Over the last four years or so, the extent of deportations has seeped into the community’s consciousness,” Theodore said. “Trust has been undermined and that potentially has lasting implications.”

The Obama administration deported 409,849 people in fiscal year 2012, a 40% increase from 2007. Officials have attributed the increase in part to a fingerprint sharing program in local jails that notifies federal immigration agents when people arrested are in the country unlawfully or overstayed their visas.

Some officials have warned that the fingerprint sharing program, called Secure Communities, has deterred some crime victims from coming forward to aid police.

“This report highlights how local law enforcement's greater role in immigration enforcement has created mistrust between the Latino community and local police, making all of our communities less safe from crime," said Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.). Polis will host a panel discussion about the report on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

Colorado last week repealed a state law that had required police to report individuals suspected of being in the country illegally.

“This confirms what police experts have been saying for decades,” said Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of MALDEF, a Latino nonprofit civil rights organization based in Los Angeles. “We have to have policies that make it clear there will be a separation between local police and immigration enforcement.”

brian.bennett@latimes.com

Twitter: @bybrianbennett

Extraen drogas del cuerpo a mujer en Arizona

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Extraen drogas del cuerpo a mujer en Arizona

por CRISTINA SILVA - 06/29/2013

The Associated Press

PHOENIX, Arizona, EE.UU. - Un médico extrajo quirúrgicamente un paquete de metanfetamina de medio kilogramo de peso de la zona pélvica de una mujer después que supuestamente trató de pasarla de México a Arizona, informó el viernes una portavoz del Servicio Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza.

Claudia Ibarra, de 31 años, fue detenida esta semana en Puerto de San Luis cuando un agente federal sospechó del extraño intento de contrabando. Ibarra, que cruzó la frontera sola a pie, es ciudadana estadounidense de la ciudad fronteriza de Yuma.

Ibarra fue sometida a un registro en la frontera y entonces trasladada a una instalación médica cercana, donde el médico detectó y le extrajo el paquete de drogas. La mujer fue detenida por mostrar señales comunes de tráfico de drogas, dijo la portavoz Teresa Small, quien declinó ofrecer más detalles.

"Cuando la estaban cateando se dieron cuenta que tenía algo ahí", dijo Small.

La metanfetamina, envuelta en un preservativo y cinta adhesiva negra, estaba insertada en el cuerpo de Ibarra, quien fue entregada a la rama de investigaciones de la Policía de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas.

Las autoridades dijeron que no es inusual que los traficantes de drogas las escondan dentro del cuerpo, ya sea tragándose el paquete o a través de otros medios. Un oficial médico fue encargado de extraerle el paquete porque si se rompía la metanfetamina podía haber matado a Ibarra.

No se sabía si Ibarra tiene un abogado o ha sido arrestado anteriormente por tráfico de drogas.

Trazan plan para asegurar la frontera

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Trazan plan para asegurar la frontera

Washington, EU

por Agencia Reforma - Jul. 4, 2013 01:28 PM

La Voz

El plan para reforzar la frontera con México incluido en la reforma migratoria aprobada recientemente en el Senado de Estados Unidos especifica qué tipo de armamento y tecnología tiene que ser adquirida.

El plan incluye, por ejemplo, la compra de 6 sistemas de radar aéreo de la compañía Northrop Grumman valorados en 9.3 millones de dólares.

Además prevé la adquisición de 15 helicópteros "Black Hawk" de la empresa Sikorsky, cada uno de los cuales cuesta 17 millones de dólares.

También se contempla adquirir 8 helicópteros ligeros de la compañía American Eurocopter, cuyo precio de mercado asciende a 3 millones de dólares por pieza.

La compra de otros 17 helicópteros UH-1N de la compañía Bell, un modelo que además ya no se produce, también vienen mencionados en la reforma migratoria del Senado.

Con la excepción de casos como los descritos, la mayor parte del equipo no aparece detallado con el nombre de la empresa en cuestión, sino por su modelo genérico.

Así, por ejemplo, se plantea comprar 4 mil 595 sensores automáticos de tierra y 104 dispositivos de detección de isótopos radiactivos.

Lo que preocupa a analistas y a críticos es que no se estén respetando las reglas básicas de las licitaciones públicas, que en teoría no deberían manifestar preferencias por una marca o modelo.

Algunas voces han sugerido que los promotores del plan de blindaje fronterizo están más preocupados por beneficiar a ciertas empresas que por atajar la inmigración ilegal.

"Los fondos de los contribuyentes deberían gastarse en mejorar la seguridad fronteriza, no en ofrecer estímulos a los contratistas", dijo el republicano Tom Coburn, senador por Oklahoma.

Las expectativas de las empresas de armamento y seguridad de Estados Unidos han quedado muy dañadas en los últimos años por la retirada de las tropas de Afganistán e Irak.

Fuentes del Departamento de Seguridad consultadas por The Washington Post dijeron, por el contrario, que el plan está basado en sugerencias de la Agencia de Frontera y Aduanas realizadas en 2010.

En teoría, el Departamento de Seguridad podría escoger sus propios contratistas al margen de lo que diga la ley si así lo considera necesario, siempre que informe de ello al Congreso con 60 días de antelación.

How do you spell revenue??? DUI tickets.

Source

Holiday DUI enforcement efforts lead to 367 arrests

Posted: Monday, July 8, 2013 2:55 pm | Updated: 3:14 pm, Mon Jul 8, 2013.

TRIBUNE

Arizona's statewide DUI enforcement efforts resulted in 367 DUI arrests during the recent holiday. More than 870 officers participated across the state, including the East Valley.

There were 6,074 contacts made July 1-8, according to the Governor's Office of Highway Safety. The average known blood alcohol content was 0.149. There were 175 seat-belt citations given and 2,605 other citations made.

Last year there were 13,583 contacts made and 678 DUI arrests. More than 1,800 officers participated.

Phoenix police officer is sunk by own camera