Homeless in Arizona

Judge rules against 'America's toughest sheriff' in racial profiling lawsuit

Tim Gaynor and David Schwartz Reuters

10:35 a.m. CDT, May 25, 2013

PHOENIX (Reuters) - Arizona lawman Joe Arpaio violated the constitutional rights of Latino drivers in his crackdown on illegal immigration, a federal judge found on Friday, and ordered him to stop using race as a factor in law enforcement decisions.

The ruling against the Maricopa County sheriff came in response to a class-action lawsuit brought by Hispanic drivers that tested whether police can target illegal immigrants without racially profiling U.S. citizens and legal residents of Hispanic origin.

U.S. District Court Judge Murray Snow ruled that the sheriff's policies violated the drivers' constitutional rights and ordered Arpaio's office to cease using race or ancestry as a grounds to stop, detain or hold occupants of vehicles - some of them in crime sweeps dubbed "saturation patrols."

"The great weight of the evidence is that all types of saturation patrols at issue in this case incorporated race as a consideration into their operations," Snow said in a written ruling.

He added that race had factored into which vehicles the deputies decided to stop, and into who they decided to investigate for immigration violations.

The lawsuit contended that Arpaio, who styles himself "America's toughest sheriff," and his officers violated the constitutional rights of both U.S. citizens and legal immigrants alike in their zeal to crack down on people they believe to be in the country illegally.

The ruling came days after a U.S. Senate panel approved a landmark comprehensive immigration legislation that would usher in the biggest changes in immigration policy in a generation if passed by Congress.

The bill would put 11 million immigrants without legal status on a 13-year path to citizenship while further strengthening security along the porous southwestern border with Mexico.

Arpaio declined to comment on the ruling. An attorney representing the sheriff's office said his clients were "deeply disappointed by the ruling" and would lodge an appeal.

"The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office has always held the position that they never have used race and never will use race in making a law enforcement decision," attorney Tim Casey told Reuters.

"We do disagree with the findings and my clients do intend to appeal, but at the same time ... we will work with the court and with the opposing counsel to comply fully with the letter and the spirit of this order," he added.

'ILLEGAL AND PLAIN UN-AMERICAN'

Cecillia Wang, director of the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants' Rights Project and plaintiffs' counsel, called the judge's ruling "an important victory that will resound far beyond Maricopa County."

"Singling people out for traffic stops and detentions simply because they're Latino is illegal and just plain un-American," Wang said after the ruling was made public.

"Let this be a warning to anyone who hides behind a badge to wage their own private campaign against Latinos or immigrants that there is no exception in the Constitution for violating people's rights in immigration enforcement."

During testimony in the non-jury trial last year, Arpaio said he was against racial profiling and denied his office arrested people because of the color of their skin.

The sheriff, who won re-election to a sixth term in November, has been a lightning rod for controversy over his aggressive enforcement of immigration laws in the state, which borders Mexico, as well as an investigation into the validity of President Barack Obama's U.S. birth certificate.

The lawsuit was brought against Arpaio and his office on behalf of five Hispanic drivers who said they had been stopped by deputies because of their ethnicity.

The plaintiffs, which include the Somos America immigrants' rights coalition and all Latino drivers stopped by the sheriff's office since 2007, were seeking corrective action but not monetary damages.

Arpaio has been the subject of other probes and lawsuits. In August, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona said it had closed a criminal investigation into accusations of financial misconduct by Arpaio, and it declined to bring charges.

A separate U.S. Justice Department investigation and lawsuit relating to accusations of civil rights abuses by Arpaio's office is ongoing.

Arizona has been at the heart of a bitter national debate over immigration since Republican Governor Jan Brewer signed a 2010 crackdown on illegal immigration.

The federal government challenged the crackdown in court and said the U.S. Constitution gives it sole authority over immigration policy. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, has allowed to stand the part of the law permitting police to question people they stop about their immigration status.

Snow scheduled a hearing in the case for June 14 at 9:30 a.m. at the Sandra Day O'Connor U.S. Federal Courthouse in Phoenix.

(Reporting by Tim Gaynor and David Schwartz; Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Eric Walsh, Toni Reinhold)

CeaseFire complains police interfere with group's push to ease gang conflicts

CeaseFire complains police interfere with group's push to ease gang conflicts

By Jeremy Gorner, Chicago Tribune reporter

May 25, 2013

CeaseFire Illinois workers say Chicago police officers are increasingly ordering them off street corners in Woodlawn along with gang members, interfering with their efforts to tamp down violence in the crime-plagued neighborhood.

The alleged harassment is the latest sign of tension between CeaseFire and police at a time when the two are supposed to be partners under a first-of-its-kind city contract to reduce shootings and killings in the South Side community.

Adam Collins, a spokesman for Superintendent Garry McCarthy, defended the police conduct, saying officers have a right "in the interest of public safety" to disperse groups off street corners "where gang members are known to congregate."

But CeaseFire workers say it is interfering with their work mediating conflicts, which often involves talking to rival gang members hanging out on the same corners. Over the last two months, as police disperse gang members, officers have routinely been rousting CeaseFire workers — known as "violence-interrupters" — off corners along 63rd Street near King Drive, CeaseFire said.

Police should be able to distinguish gang members easily from CeaseFire workers clad in their trademark orange shirts and nylon jackets, noted Marilyn Pitchford, program manager for CeaseFire Woodlawn.

"The police don't trust some of the staff. They think some of the staff is in the gang life," Pitchford said of CeaseFire workers, many of them ex-cons. "They think once you get that stripe on your back, you continue to be part of that environment."

CeaseFire points out that in the two beats where its Woodlawn workers operate as part of the pilot program, no homicides have occurred this year.

Some law enforcement sources, however, credit an added police presence for the drop in violence.

Regardless, Tio Hardiman, CeaseFire's executive director, expressed frustration over complaints that police are hassling his Woodlawn workers at a time that their efforts are helping reduce shootings.

"Why are you telling us to get off the street when homicides are down?" Hardiman asked. "They need to stop interfering with our work because we don't interfere with their work. ... We're supposed to have a partnership."

The CeaseFire workers in Woodlawn and North Lawndale on the West Side operate as part of a one-year, $1 million contract that was forged as Mayor Rahm Emanuel looked for even unorthodox solutions last year as Chicago grappled with runaway violence that saw homicides exceed 500 for the first time in four years.

McCarthy, though, does little to hide his disdain for CeaseFire, saying that group doesn't want to work with the police and even dissuades gang members from cooperating with law enforcement. Over the years, Chicago police put little trust in CeaseFire since it depends so heavily on former gang members for its workers.

But distrust of the police is also deeply rooted in CeaseFire. The anti-violence group agreed to the contract last year only if police pledged not to use its workers as informants, saying they would lose credibility with gang members if they came off as snitches for authorities.

Last week, two CeaseFire workers in Woodlawn, speaking on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation by police, said officers in marked and unmarked squad cars pull up periodically while they're talking with gang members, angrily telling everyone to get off the corner.

They said most of the problems have occurred at 63rd Street and Vernon Avenue, a busy corner with a fish and chicken restaurant, a liquor store and a CTA Green Line station — all spots where the interrupters said rival gang members frequent and have the potential to clash.

One of the violence-interrupters said they risk arrest if they don't comply with the police order to disperse — and that would mean they would be fired under the city contract. Yet if they don't talk to gang members on those corners, they're not doing their jobs, he said.

"We're in a lose-lose (situation)," he complained as he stood by a wrought-iron gate outside the restaurant. "If we move like they're telling us to do in a hot spot … and something (bad) happens right there, it makes us look bad."

At a meeting Thursday about the problem, Hardiman said police refused to allow CeaseFire workers and the gang members to congregate along the 63rd Street corridor.

Hardiman said he thinks a potential solution could be for CeaseFire workers to try to discourage the gang members from gathering in those areas.

"You need the police just like you need CeaseFire, OK?" Hardiman said. "Just like the churches need a preacher. So we're not going to try and dismiss what the police are all about."

jgorner@tribune.com

Judge Finds Violations of Rights by Sheriff Joe

Judge Finds Violations of Rights by Sheriff

By FERNANDA SANTOS

Published: May 24, 2013

PHOENIX — A federal judge ruled on Friday that Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his deputies had violated the constitutional rights of Latinos by targeting them during raids and traffic stops here and throughout Maricopa County.

With his ruling, Judge G. Murray Snow of United States District Court delivered the most decisive defeat so far to Sheriff Arpaio, who has come to symbolize Arizona’s strict approach to immigration enforcement by making it the leading mission for many of the 800 deputies under his command at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

At 142 pages, the decision is peppered with stinging criticism of the policies and practices espoused by Sheriff Arpaio, who Judge Snow said had turned much of his focus to arresting immigrants who were in the country illegally, in most cases civil violations, at the expense of fighting crimes.

He said the sheriff relied on racial profiling and illegal detentions to target Latinos, using their ethnicity as the main basis for suspecting they were in the country illegally. Many of the people targeted were American citizens or legal residents.

“In an immigration enforcement context,” Judge Snow ruled, the sheriff’s office “did not believe that it constituted racial profiling to consider race as one factor among others in making law enforcement decisions.” In fact, he said its plans and policies confirmed that, “in the context of immigration enforcement,” deputies “could consider race as one factor among others.”

The ruling prohibits the sheriff’s office from using “race or Latino ancestry” as a factor in deciding to stop any vehicle with Latino occupants, or as a factor in deciding whether they may be in the country without authorization.

It also prohibits deputies from reporting a vehicle’s Latino occupants to federal immigration authorities or detaining, holding or arresting them, unless there is more than just a “reasonable belief” that they are in the country illegally. To detain them, the ruling said, the deputies must also have reasonable suspicion that the occupants are violating the state’s human-trafficking and employment laws or committing other crimes.

Tim Casey, a lawyer for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, said the office intended to appeal, but in the meantime it would “comply with the letter and spirit of the court’s decision.”

He said the office’s position is that it “has never used race and never will use race to make any law enforcement decision.”

The office relied on training from the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, he said, adding, “It’s obvious it received bad training from the federal government.”

The ruling is a result of a federal civil trial last summer in which Sheriff Arpaio and his office were accused in a class-action lawsuit of singling out Latinos for stops, questioning and detention. It says deputies considered the prevalence of Latinos when deciding where to carry out enforcement operations, in many cases in response to complaints based solely on assumptions that Latinos or “Mexicans,” as some complainants put it, were necessarily illegal immigrants.

Regardless of the type of enforcement — workplace raids, traffic stops or targeted patrols in areas frequented by day laborers — Sheriff Arpaio’s deputies were required to keep track of the number of people arrested on federal immigration violations, as well as state charges, Judge Snow said. In news releases, Sheriff Arpaio’s office often referred to the operations as integral parts of the sheriff’s “illegal immigrant stance.”

Cecillia Wang, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups that brought the lawsuit, said, “Let this be a warning to anyone who hides behind a badge to wage their own private campaign against Latinos or immigrants that there is no exception in the Constitution for violating people’s rights in immigration enforcement.”

Ravi Somaiya contributed reporting from New York

Obama, No more drone murders!!! Honest!!! Trust me!!!

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Obama's drone rules leave unanswered questions

By JULIE PACE, AP White House Correspondent

Updated 1:37 am, Saturday, May 25, 2013

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama left plenty of ambiguity in new policy guidelines that he says will restrict how and when the U.S. can launch targeted drone strikes, leaving himself significant power over how and when the weapons can be deployed.

National security experts say it's imperative to leave some room in the guidelines, given the evolving fight against terrorism. But civil rights advocates argue too little has been revealed about the program to ensure its legality, even as the president takes steps to remove some of the secrecy.

"Obama said that there would be more limits on targeted killings, a step in the right direction," said Kenneth Roth, executive director at Human Rights Watch. "But a mere promise that the US will work within established guidelines that remain secret provides little confidence that the US is complying with international law."

An unclassified version of the newly established drone guidelines was made public Thursday in conjunction with Obama's wide-ranging address on U.S. counterterrorism policies. Congress' Intelligence committees and the Capitol Hill leadership have been briefed on the more detailed, classified policies, but because those documents are secret, there's no way of knowing how much more clarity they provide.

The president has already been using some of the guidelines to determine when to launch drone strikes, administration officials said. Codifying the strictest standards, they argue, will ultimately reduce the number of approved attacks.

Among the newly public rules is a preference for capturing suspects instead of killing them, which gives the U.S. an opportunity to gather intelligence and disrupt terrorist plots. The guidelines also state that a target must pose a continuing and imminent threat to the U.S.

However, the public guidelines don't spell out how the U.S. determines whether capture is feasible, nor does it define what constitutes an imminent threat.

Former State Department official James Andrew Lewis said Obama must retain some flexibility, given the fluid threats facing the U.S.

"The use of force and engagement of force always require a degree of discretion," said Lewis, now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "We don't want to change that."

The guidelines also mandate that the U.S. have "near certainty" that no civilians will be killed in a strike. Civilian deaths, particularly in Pakistan, have angered local populations and contributed to a rise in anti-American sentiments in the volatile region.

Shahzad Akbar, a Pakistani lawyer who has filed many court cases on behalf of drone victims' families, said that while he appreciated Obama's concern about civilian casualties, he wasn't confident the new guidelines would change U.S. actions.

"The problem remains the same because there is no transparency and accountability for the CIA because it will remain inside the system and not be visible to outsiders," he said.

Obama, in his most expansive discussion of the drone program, said in his speech Thursday to the National Defense University that he is haunted by the unintentional deaths. But he argued that targeted strikes result in fewer civilian deaths than indiscriminate bombing campaigns.

"By narrowly targeting our action against those who want to kill us, and not the people they hide among, we are choosing the course of action least likely to result in the loss of innocent life," Obama said.

Administration officials said the new guidelines are applicable regardless of whether the target is a foreigner or U.S. citizen.

Polling suggests the American people broadly support the use of drones to target suspected terrorists in foreign countries, though support drops somewhat if the suspect is a U.S. citizen. A Gallup poll in March found 65 percent of Americans favor using drone strikes in other countries against suspected terrorists, while only 41 percent favored the use of drone strikes overseas against U.S. citizens who are suspected terrorists.

Despite the public support, Obama has come under increased pressure from an unusual coalition of members of Congress of both parties who have pressed for greater transparency and oversight of the drone program.

Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., who serves on the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees, said he would review the guidelines to ensure they keep "with our values as a nation," but indicated lawmakers may ask for additional overtures.

"I commend the president for his effort to define the boundaries of U.S. counterterrorism operations and for stating a commitment to increased accountability," Udall said. "While this is helpful and important, more needs to be done."

Relevant congressional committees are already notified when drone strikes occur. But it's unclear how the administration, under Obama's new transparency pledge, will handle public notifications, particularly when Americans are killed.

The public only knew about the deaths of three Americans by drone strikes through media reports and the fourth when Attorney General Eric Holder disclosed it in a letter to Congress on the eve of the speech.

Under current policy, the official U.S. figures of number of strikes and estimated deaths remain classified.

According to the New America Foundation which maintains a database of the strikes, the CIA and the military have carried out an estimated 416 drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, resulting in 3,364 estimated deaths, including militants and civilians. The Associated Press also has reported a drone strike in Somalia in 2012 that killed one.

The think tank compiles its numbers by combining reports in major news media that rely on local officials and eyewitness accounts.

Strikes in Pakistan spiked in 2010 under Obama to 122, but the number has dropped to 12 so far this year. Strikes were originally carried out with permission of the Pakistani government of Pervez Musharraf, though subsequent Pakistani governments have demanded strikes cease.

The CIA and the military have carried out some 69 strikes in Yemen, with the Yemeni government's permission.

___

Associated Press writer Sebastian Abbot in Islamabad contributed to this report.

___

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

Judge: Ariz. sheriff's office profiles Latinos

Judge: Ariz. sheriff's office profiles Latinos

By JACQUES BILLEAUD and WALTER BERRY Associated Press

Posted: 05/25/2013 01:28:35 AM PDT

PHOENIX—A federal judge has ruled that the office of America's self-proclaimed toughest sheriff systematically singled out Latinos in its trademark immigration patrols, marking the first finding by a court that the agency racially profiles people.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Murray Snow in Phoenix backs up years of allegations from Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's critics who say his officers violate the constitutional rights of Latinos in relying on race in their immigration enforcement.

Snow, whose ruling Friday came more than eight months after a seven-day, non-jury trial, also ruled Arpaio's deputies unreasonably prolonged the detentions of people who were pulled over.

The ruling marks a thorough repudiation of the immigration patrols that made Arpaio a national political figure, and it represents a victory for those who pushed the lawsuit.

"For too long the sheriff has been victimizing the people he's meant to serve with his discriminatory policy," said Cecillia D. Wang, director of the ACLU Immigrants' Right Project. "Today we're seeing justice for everyone in the county."

Monetary damages weren't sought in the lawsuit but rather a declaration that Arpaio's office engages in racial profiling and an order that requires it to make policy changes.

Stanley Young, the lead lawyer who argued the case against Arpaio, said Snow set a hearing for June 14 where he will hear from the two sides on how to make sure the orders in the ruling are carried out.

The sheriff, who has repeatedly denied the allegations, won't face jail time as a result of Friday's ruling.

Tim Casey, Arapio's lead attorney in the case, said an appeal was planned in the next 30 days.

"In the meantime, we will meet with the court and comply with the letter and spirit of the order," he said.

A small group of Latinos alleged in their lawsuit that Arpaio's deputies pulled over some vehicles only to make immigration status checks. The group asked Snow to issue injunctions barring the sheriff's office from discriminatory policing and the judge ruled that more remedies could be ordered in the future.

The group also accused the sheriff of ordering some immigration patrols not based on reports of crime but rather on letters and emails from Arizonans who complained about people with dark skin congregating in an area or speaking Spanish. The group's attorneys noted Arpaio sent thank-you notes to some who wrote the complaints.

The sheriff said his deputies only stop people when they think a crime has been committed and that he wasn't the person who picked the location of the patrols. His lawyers said there was nothing wrong with the thank-you notes.

Young, the group's lawyer, said he was still reading the decision Friday but noted it contained "very detailed findings of discriminatory intent and effect."

Casey said that MCSO's position "is that it has never used race and will never use race in its law-enforcement decisions." He added the sheriff's office relied on "bad training" from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

A call to ICE officials in Phoenix for comment wasn't immediately returned Friday evening.

Arpaio, who turns 81 next month, was elected in November to his sixth consecutive term as sheriff in Arizona's most populous county.

Known for jailing inmates in tents and making prisoners wear pink underwear, Arpaio started doing immigration enforcement in 2006 amid Arizona voter frustration with the state's role as the nation's busiest illegal entryway.

Snow wrote that "in the absence of further facts that would give rise to reasonable suspicion or probable cause that a violation of either federal criminal law or applicable state law is occurring," Arpaio's office now is enjoined from enforcing its policy "on checking the immigration status of people detained without state charges, using Hispanic ancestry or race as any factor in making law enforcement decisions pertaining to whether a person is authorized to be in the country, and unconstitutionally lengthening stops."

Snow added "the evidence introduced at trial establishes that, in the past, the MCSO has aggressively protected its right to engage in immigration and immigration-related enforcement operations even when it had no accurate legal basis for doing so."

The trial that ended Aug. 2 focused on Latinos who were stopped during both routine traffic patrols and special immigration patrols known as "sweeps."

During the sweeps, deputies flood an area of a city—in some cases, heavily Latino areas—over several days to seek out traffic violators and arrest other offenders. Immigrants who were in the country illegally accounted for 57 percent of the 1,500 people arrested in the 20 sweeps conducted by his office since January 2008, according to figures provided by Arpaio's office.

At trial, plaintiffs' lawyers drew testimony from witnesses who broke down in tears as they described encounters with authorities, saying they were pulled over because they were Hispanic and officers wanted to check their immigration status, not because they had committed an infraction. The sheriff's attorneys disputed such characterizations, typically working to show that officers had probable cause to stop the drivers based on a traffic violation.

Plaintiffs' lawyers also presented statistics to show Latinos are more likely to be stopped on days of immigration patrols and showed emails containing offensive jokes about people of Mexican heritage that were circulated among sheriff's department employees, including a supervisor in Arpaio's immigrant smuggling squad.

Defense lawyers disputed the statistical findings and said officers who circulated offensive jokes were disciplined. They also denied the complaint letters prompted patrols with a discriminatory motive.

The ruling used Arpaio's own words in interviews, news conferences and press releases against him as he trumpeted his efforts in cracking down on immigrants. When it came to making traffic stops, Arpaio said in 2007 that deputies are not bound by state laws in finding a reason to stop immigrants.

"Ours is an operation, whether it's the state law or the federal, to go after illegals, not the crime first, that they happen to be illegals," the ruling quoted Arpaio as saying. "My program, my philosophy is a pure program. You go after illegals. I'm not afraid to say that. And you go after them and you lock them up."

Some immigrant traffic stops were made "purely on the observation of the undercover officers that the vehicles had picked up Hispanic day laborers from sites where Latino day laborers were known to gather," the ruling said.

The judge also said the sheriff's office declared on many occasions that racial profiling is strictly prohibited and not tolerated, while witnesses said it was appropriate to consider race as a factor in rounding up immigrants.

"This is a blow to" the sheriff's office, said David A. Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who studied racial profiling and wrote a book on the subject.

Arpaio's lawyers will have "an uphill climb" in the appeals process because of all "the gross statistical evidence," he said.

NYPD street stops called profiling, big change sought

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NYPD street stops called profiling, big change sought

By Colleen Long Associated Press Sat May 25, 2013 9:08 AM

NEW YORK — It once was an accepted tactic as old as policing itself and, according to the New York Police Department, a key to the city’s dramatic drop in crime: patrol officers stopping young men on the street to see if they’re up to no good. [What what I have read all of this would be illegal in Arizona]

But thanks to rising concerns about racial profiling, a lawsuit and a 10-week trial with testimony ending May 20, the tool the NYPD calls stop, question and frisk has been scrutinized like never before. A judge could rule to change the way the department makes the stops to better protect civil rights. But skeptics warn the changes could come with a price. [Yea, we could go from being a police state in NYC to a free country!]

“It’s hard to see how a cop will be able to leave the station house without some potential adverse impact on his personnel folder if it all goes into effect,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a professor of police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “The public may suffer, too — what officer would want to engage someone on the street if he’s looking over his shoulder all the time?” [If a police officer is afraid of someone looking over his shoulder he is probably doing something illegal and shouldn't be a police officer]

The men who sued the NYPD because they believe they were stopped solely for being minorities want across-the-board reforms that include more supervision from department superiors, more comprehensive training and stricter discipline for officers who make illegal stops. They also want a court-appointed monitor to oversee the reforms. [I think that is 100 percent BS. The police should be forbidden from stopping anybody, unless the person is committing a crime.]

Samuel Walker, a University of Nebraska criminology professor and expert in police policy working pro bono for the plaintiffs, proposed a database where information on an officer — complaints, days on patrol, stop and frisks, and arrests made — would be collected and analyzed to catch potential problem officers. Right now there is no centralized database. [If a police officer is violating somebody's constitutional rights he should be fired, not entered in some silly database.]

He said sergeants and other supervisors must review officer conduct, not solely their enforcement numbers, and they should be reviewing officers quarterly, not annually. He suggested more training for officers on racial profiling and stop and frisk at the police academy and on the job.

Community input on how to implement the changes through phone surveys, mailings and calls to people who have reported incidents with police should be included.

“A comprehensive approach is absolutely essential because if any one of the components is absent or weak and ineffective, the entire accountability system begins to collapse,” Walker said.

The reforms are necessary, lawyers say, because they believe the policy has created a culture of fear in minority communities. The tactic has existed in some form for decades, but the volume of stops increased dramatically under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and about 5 million stop and frisks have been made during the past decade.

U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin is not being asked to ban the tactic, which has already been found to be legal. Her options are to leave it as is or order reforms, which appear likely since she’s ruled previously on related cases that changes are needed. [I think she should ban the activity! Period!!!]

Mid-trial, city lawmakers said they’d reached broad agreement on a proposal to create an inspector general to oversee the department in part because of stop and frisk and a series of stories by The Associated Press on the monitoring of Muslims. The inspector general would function on a macro level weighing in on policy, while the court monitor would enforce nuts-and-bolts changes related to the stop-and-frisk policy.

But morale is already low among the rank-and-file and such changes might make it worse for them, O’Donnell said. [Any cop who's moral is low because they are not allowed to stop and search anybody they want to stop should be fired!!!]

“This will all rain down on the cops,” he said. “The mayor is bullet proof. All the policy makers who formulate or acquiesce to this strategy will be held harmless.”

But O’Donnell, and other experts not related to the case, say some reforms are necessary.

“A court has recognized that while stops and frisk are a legal tactic, what we have going on here is way too much of a good thing,” said David Harris, a University of Pittsburgh law professor who is an expert on street stops.

“Crime has gone down, down, down and especially in minority communities. And still there is a fair degree of alienation and anger. What is happening is that they’re glad there’s less crime than there used to be, but does it have to be done like this? Is there another way?” [If you ask me I would rather live with more crime, then live in a police state where I am shaken down by police criminals]

The city’s expert witness, James Stewart, the director for the Law Enforcement and Justice Policy at the Center for Naval Analysis, said the department already does much of what the lawsuit seeks. Officers receive extensive training at the academy, a training officer is assigned to police precincts and the department has beefed up safeguards to the stop-and-frisk policy.

To add unnecessary oversight would create additional work and heap more stress on officers who perform an already difficult, dangerous job, the city experts said. Stewart referred to cameras worn by officers in another city, and the judge seized on it, wondering whether it should be used in the NYPD on an experimental basis. [That's 100 percent BS. From what I have read most of this stop and frisk nonsense is done to find people who have marijuana and are certainly not dangerous criminals]

“I’m intrigued by it,” Scheindlin said. “It seems to me it would solve a lot of problems.”

Police and city officials question why — in a city that has seen a precipitous drop in crime — they’re under fire. [Duh!!! Because the police are now criminals who are terrorizing the people they pretend to protect!!!]

“The attacks most often come from those who play no constructive role in keeping our city safe, but rather view their jobs as pointing fingers from the steps of City Hall,” Bloomberg said in a recent speech to police. “Some of them scream that they know better than you how to run the department.” [No these attacks come from people who are tired of living in a police state and would like to return to a normal world where we are assumed innocent until proven guilty, not the current NYC police state of being guilty until you prove you are innocent]

Amanda Bynes: 'Sexually harassed' by police officer

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Amanda Bynes: 'Sexually harassed' by police officer

Amanda Bynes claims she was ''sexually harassed'' by a police officer who arrested her on Thursday night (May 23).

The 'She's All That' star - who was charged with attempted evidence tampering, reckless endangerment and marijuana possession in court on Friday (May 24) after being arrested at her New York City apartment - has accused an officer of slapping her vagina and lying about her throwing a bong out of the window.

The 27-year-old actress addressed her legal troubles in a lengthy rant on Twitter on Saturday (May 25), writing: ''Don't believe the reports about me being arrested. It's all lies. I was sexually harassed by one of the cops the night before last which is who then arrested me. He lied and said I threw a bong out the window when I opened the window for fresh air. Hilarious. He slapped my vagina. Sexual harassment. Big deal. I then called the cops on him. He handcuffed me, which I resisted, quite unlike any of the reports stated.''

The actress is upset she was initially sent to the hospital, a move which she describes as ''offensive.''

She said: ''Then I was sent to a mental hospital. Offensive. I kept asking for my lawyer but they wouldn't let me. The cops were creepy. The cop sexually harassed me, they found no pot on me or bong outside my window. That's why the judge let me go. Don't believe any reports.'' [Sadly cops frequently use the "mentally ill" card to lock you up in a nut house, when they don't have any evidence to arrest you for a crime. Here in Arizona it is relatively easy for the police to lock you up for being "insane" when they don't have any evidence to arrest you for a real crime. I think that is also true in many other states. Here in Arizona the Secret Service used the "mentally ill card" to arrest Kevin Walsh and lock him in a mental institution when they didn't have any evidence to arrest him for threatening the life of President George W. Bush]

Amanda's parents are reportedly worried she is bipolar or schizophrenic. [So what!!! About one percent of the population is either bipolar or schizophrenic. And while both illnesses have been demonized, people with these illnesses are in general harmless. Google both terms and you will be surprised to find out that most of the stuff you think you know about both illnesses is wrong]

A source told gossip website TMZ.com that the 27-year-old actress's recent erratic behavior is not enough for her to be placed under a 5150, California's Welfare Institutions Code, to be evaluated under involuntary psychiatric hold for 72 hours.

The insider said that her parents Lynn and Rick are eager to secure an involuntary conservatorship, similar to Britney Spears, but have been told her conduct has not been severe enough for a judge to take away her legal rights and she has not been diagnosed with any mental illness.

Sex-offender data is used to collect money and intimidate

I have always disliked the governments requirement that sex offenders are required to register with the government and have their personal information placed in online databases that anybody can view on the internet.

I think the governments intent is to humiliate, belittle and intimidate the alleged sex offenders and it doesn't serve any legitimate function of protecting public.

Last the term "sex offender" is misleading. If you get arrested for taking a leak in an alley under Arizona's laws you are considered a "sex offender" and required to register under this stupid law.

Transparency isn't coming easily to Obama White House

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Transparency isn't coming easily to Obama White House

By Christi Parsons and Kathleen Hennessey, Washington Bureau

May 25, 2013, 6:09 p.m.

WASHINGTON — The White House decided to release internal emails about the deadly attack on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya — but only after summaries of the exchanges had leaked.

The president's spokesman disclosed details of closed-door discussions about a report that found the IRS targeted conservative groups — but did so in a drip-drip-drip fashion that only raised more questions.

And in a speech meant to expose the top-secret drone program to public examination, President Obama shrouded key details, such as whether the CIA would still use drones.

Caught up in a public relations crisis, White House officials have drawn open a few curtains, revealing once-secret documents and answering queries that they would ordinarily have dismissed with an eye roll.

But the sharing has been selective and done under duress. It has come in fits and starts to an administration that promised to be the most open in American history.

Many allies of the president think that with this burst of sunshine he has arrested the run of bad news and taken charge of the "narrative." Even in some Obama-friendly quarters, though, the sharing is seen as too little and too late, and all the more disappointing for the high hopes Obama had set for transparency at the outset of his presidency.

Civil liberties advocates are disappointed that Obama's drone speech glossed over some of the more difficult legal and moral aspects of targeted killings. The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, a Democrat, questioned the candor of former officials at the Internal Revenue Service.

Lanny Davis, who handled scandals for the Clinton White House, has been critical of the Obama administration.

"The nontransparency instinct of the Obama White House is more about not understanding effective, proactive crisis management," said Davis, who remains an Obama supporter. "The idea is to inoculate by being transparent."

President Clinton survived scandals with the help of advisors known for strategically leaking information that was damaging. One tactic was a document "dump" delivered Friday evening in the hope the story would be old news by Monday.

"You help write bad stories," Davis said. "That's counterintuitive. But you know this stuff is coming out, so it's to your advantage to get it all out quickly, all completely, and make sure it's over and done."

Obama set out to do more than just play defense against scandal. Right after taking office, he sent a memo to federal agencies and promised an "unprecedented level of openness in government." His was the first modern administration to release White House visitor logs.

Before long, though, advocates for open government began to complain that the administration was resisting public records requests and going after whistle-blowers and leakers with vigor.

Then news broke that the Department of Justice had subpoenaed phone records of the Associated Press and emails of a Fox News journalist in pursuit of government leakers. The media peppered the White House with questions about its commitment to the 1st Amendment.

Obama aides went to work to allay concerns. They called in veterans of past administrations and campaigns to ask for advice. Democratic strategists say they talked about candor.

Tad Devine, senior advisor to former Democratic presidential nominees Al Gore and John F. Kerry, thinks the Obama team is embracing the idea. "They understand that by putting out a lot of information they reduce the risk that the Republicans can convince people and the press that they are hiding something," Devine said. "They also understand that time is their enemy in dealing with issues of this nature."

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has recently entertained a much wider variety of questions, disclosing names of senior staffers involved in internal meetings and even talking about a conversation he had with Obama about media freedoms. He usually declines to "read out" such events.

Still, administration officials let their account of the IRS troubles evolve — particularly regarding the question of when the White House learned the agency was inappropriately targeting groups that sought tax-exempt status by singling out those with the words "tea party" or "patriots" in their applications.

The White House has struggled to "give accurate information on a timely basis," said Martha Joynt Kumar, a political science professor at Towson University who studies the White House and its relationship with media.

"In this case, you can see they've been slow to gather the facts, and it has damaged them," Kumar said. "It has kept the story rolling and makes it appears as though they're not on top of it."

With his administration's transparency under fire, Obama departed from his focus on drones in his speech last week to address it. He said he was troubled that leak investigations could chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable.

But he also argued that openness isn't always the most important value — that sometimes the nation's security is at stake. The challenge, he said, is in "striking the right balance."

christi.parsons@latimes.com

kathleen.hennessey@latimes.com

If My Data Is an Open Book, Why Can’t I Read It?

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If My Data Is an Open Book, Why Can’t I Read It?

By NATASHA SINGER

Published: May 25, 2013

OUR mobile carriers know our locations: where our phones travel during working hours and leisure time, where they reside overnight when we sleep. Verizon Wireless even sells demographic profiles of customer groups — including ZIP codes for where they “live, work, shop and more” — to marketers. But when I called my wireless providers, Verizon and T-Mobile, last week in search of data on my comings and goings, call-center agents told me that their companies didn’t share customers’ own location logs with them without a subpoena.

Consolidated Edison monitors my household’s energy consumption and provides a chart of monthly utility use. But when I sought more granular information, so I could learn which of my recharging devices gobbles up the most electricity, I found that Con Ed doesn’t automatically provide customers with data about hourly or even daily use. Robert McGee, a spokesman for Con Ed, suggested that I might go down to the basement once an hour and check the meter myself.

Then there is my health club, which keeps track of my visits through swipes of my membership card. Yet when I recently asked for an online log of those visits, I was offered a one-time printout for the year — if I were willing to wait a half-hour.

Never mind all the hoopla about the presumed benefits of an “open data” society. In our day-to-day lives, many of us are being kept in the data dark.

“The fact that I am producing data and companies are collecting it to monetize it, if I can’t get a copy myself, I do consider it unfair,” says Latanya Sweeney, the director of the Data Privacy Lab at Harvard, where she is a professor of government and technology.

Of course, she notes, we can replicate the information that companies collect and collate about us with third-party apps or other workarounds, but we shouldn’t have to resort to redundancy. Professor Sweeney says: “We would like to see people have access to all of the data that they produce.”

In fact, a few companies are challenging the norm of corporate data hoarding by actually sharing some information with the customers who generate it — and offering tools to put it to use. It’s a small but provocative trend in the United States, where only a handful of industries, like health care and credit, are required by federal law to provide people with access to their records.

Last year, San Diego Gas and Electric, a utility, introduced an online energy management program in which customers can view their electricity use in monthly, daily or hourly increments. There is even a practical benefit: customers can earn credits by reducing energy consumption during peak hours.

About one-quarter of the company’s 1.2 million residential customers have tried the program, says Caroline Winn, the company’s vice president for customer services. Newer features, she says, allow customers to download their own use files. Or they can choose to give permission for the utility to share their records directly with a handful of apps that can analyze the data and suggest ways to reduce energy consumption.

“The customer owns their data,” Ms. Winn says. “Whether they want to use our app or somebody else’s, we want to make sure we are facilitating that.”

(Con Ed in New York also offers customers reduced pricing if they use electricity during off-peak hours. But the program requires the installation of a special meter.)

People might feel more comfortable about being subject to data-mining if companies did a better job of demonstrating a direct benefit to them, argues Jules Polonetsky, director of the Future of Privacy Forum, an industry financed research organization in Washington. One model for this, he says, is the product recommendation engine at Amazon, which lets customers view their purchase histories and excise one-off items they bought for friends that might not represent their own personal tastes.

“They are providing transparency as a feature,” Mr. Polonetsky says. “I can tweak their algorithm in a way that is mutually useful.” (Amazon is one of the sponsors of his organization.)

Even so, companies rarely offer customers more than a cropped snapshot of their activities.

Right now, for example, fitness enthusiasts who use blood pressure monitors, calorie calculators and movement sensors typically can’t collate the data for a unified view of their wellness, Doc Searls, a technology writer who has experienced this kind of problem himself, told me. If people could easily integrate their data, he wrote in a recent blog post, they might be able to correlate weight loss to a particular workout routine or diet. Those companies that do allow customers to export their files and integrate their data elsewhere, he says, have a market advantage over companies that are data misers.

“Stock data, bank data, and bond data are all more valuable when they are looked at together,” says Mr. Searls, the author of “The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge.” “If I have a choice between apps and one of them shares the data that I can use more easily, I am going to choose that one.”

INTEL, for instance, recently introduced a “data economy” project, intended to encourage companies to think of consumers as participants in the information economy, and not just as data-harvesting opportunities. The venture includes a site called WeTheData.com, which looks at current obstacles to information sharing.

Ken Anderson, a senior research scientist at Intel Labs who oversees the project, compares corporate data-hoarding today to a faulty mind-set of the fast-food industry in the early 1980s. Back then, he says, fast-food chains thought that they should open outlets only at a good distance from their competitors. But when food courts in malls became popular, he says, those restaurant chains realized that they benefited from shared retail space.

“If you put it all in one place, you get more business,” says Mr. Anderson, a cultural anthropologist who studies how people interact with technology.

The same goes for consumer data. He envisions an online answer to food courts — an information smorgasbord where consumers could browse their own records. “We are trying to show companies the value of opening data up” he says, “and having them be more communal in nature.”

Drivers licenses for illegals???

Assembly panel advances driver authorization cards bill

By SEAN WHALEY

LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL CAPITAL BUREAU

CARSON CITY — An Assembly committee on Saturday passed a bill that would allow people who are not in the country legally to acquire driver authorization cards.

The Assembly Transportation Committee approved Senate Bill 303 with two no votes from Assemblymen John Hambrick, R-Las Vegas, and Jim Wheeler, R-Gardnerville.

Both lawmakers said they reserve the right to change their votes, although Hambrick said his constituents are uniformly opposed to the measure.

Wheeler said he wants to be satisfied that the cards cannot be used to register to vote.

The bill already passed the Senate this past week on a 20-1 vote. It is expected to be approved by the full Assembly and be signed into law by Gov. Brian Sandoval.

Under the bill, people in the country illegally would have to pass a driving test before they could acquire the card, which cannot be used for identification purposes. The annual fee for renewing the driver’s card is $18.50.

Four states, including Utah and New Mexico, allow people who are not in the United States legally to drive.

“It will bring safer roads and additional funding for the highway fund,” said Senate Majority Leader Mo Denis, D-Las Vegas, the author of the measure.

Denis said in previous testimony that about 60,000 of the 100,000 people who live in Nevada illegally are expected to get the card.

The cost of the cards would bring in about $3.4 million over the next two years, compared with Department of Motor Vehicles’ costs of $1.6 million. The cards would be available starting Jan. 1. [So the law is really about raising revenue, and has nothing to do with making the roads safe!!!]

In supporting the bill in the Senate, Sen. Mark Hutchison, R-Las Vegas, said the bill does not change immigration status.

“It makes a lot of sense from a public safety standpoint,” he said.

Contact Capital Bureau reporter Sean Whaley at swhaley@reviewjournal.com or 775-687-3900.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio - We don't racially profile Mexicans

Probation for Ben Arredondo - Prison for for CEO John Junker

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Feds seek prison for ex-Fiesta Bowl CEO John Junker

By Craig Harris The Republic | azcentral.com Sat May 25, 2013 10:44 PM

Federal prosecutors plan to seek a prison term of one year and one day for former Fiesta Bowl chief executive John Junker, who last year pleaded guilty to a felony conspiracy charge stemming from his role in an illegal campaign- finance scheme.

Junker’s federal sentencing is scheduled for June 24 in U.S. District Court in Phoenix. He also faces eventual sentencing in July on a state felony charge involving the same activities.

The federal prosecutors’ calls for a prison term for Junker were revealed in court filings last week.

Six current and former Fiesta Bowl employees were convicted of crimes stemming from the campaign-finance scheme uncovered by The Arizona Republic in 2009. If Junker goes to prison, he will be the only one to spend time behind bars. The lead prosecutor argues that Junker should do time because he led other bowl employees to break the law.

The Republic reported in December 2009 that certain then-current and past bowl employees said bowl funds were used to reimburse staff members who were encouraged to write checks to specific political candidates.

The employees told the newspaper that the effort was coordinated by Junker and others at the bowl, a tax-exempt non-profit organization, and that the money was delivered by lobbyists whom the bowl employed.

During much of the last decade, 11 staffers were reimbursed with bowl funds for more than $40,000 in political donations to local, state and federal candidates who were in positions to grant political favors.

The Republic’s report ultimately led to state and federal criminal investigations. Five current and former employees last year were sentenced to probation in state and federal courts. Four paid fines of up to $4,600.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Galati, who is prosecuting Junker, did not return a call for comment. But his intention to seek prison time for Junker was disclosed by Junker’s attorney, Stephen Dichter, in a court filing last week seeking probation.

Dichter stated that the U.S. Attorney’s Office recently told him it would seek a prison sentence for Junker, and the filing said Senior U.S. Probation Officer Lisa Fields indicated that Junker’s crime calls for a prison sentence of 10 to 16 months. Fields did not return a call.

Galati, in a court filing earlier this month, said Junker was well aware of the employee-reimbursement scheme. Galati wrote that Junker directed the bowl’s chief operating officer to use bonuses to reimburse employees, and employees “committed crimes at Mr. Junker’s behest.”

Dichter argued in court filings and in an interview that Junker should receive no prison time because he assisted in the state’s ongoing investigation, and the U.S. Supreme Court subsequently struck down some campaign-finance laws relevant to the Fiesta Bowl matter. Dichter would not make Junker available for an interview.

“The conduct, yes, was illegal when it was done,” Dichter said. “But it’s not illegal anymore, and the amount of (Fiesta Bowl) money is very, very small.”

Dichter added that the amount of money involved in the Fiesta Bowl case is a fraction of the “dark money” funneled through non-profit organizations during the 2012 presidential election.

Dichter, a former federal prosecutor, said the sentence sought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office would allow Junker to get a 15 percent reduction for good behavior during time served. That would shave nearly two months off the sentence.

Junker in 2009 denied to The Republic that the campaign-contribution scheme occurred. A cover-up eventually was exposed to the bowl’s own board chairman by Junker’s assistant.

A subsequent independent investigation commissioned by the bowl substantiated The Republic’s revelations and uncovered other questionable financial activities.

It found that the political donations were made to build relationships with politicians who had influence over local stadium issues that affected the bowl. Donations also were made to federal candidates who could protect the bowl’s status and the controversial Bowl Championship Series, which had received antitrust threats.

There is no indication that any of the politicians who received contributions from bowl employees knew they were illegal. Bowl employees no longer make campaign contributions, and the Fiesta Bowl has cut ties with lobbyists and implemented a series of management reforms.

The Fiesta Bowl recently was named a member of the new College Football Playoff after enacting those reforms.

Junker was fired in March 2011 after the investigation found he received improper reimbursements, misspent bowl funds and was a key player in the illegal campaign-contribution scheme.

Junker pleaded guilty nearly a year later to the federal conspiracy charge. He also pleaded guilty in February 2012 to a state felony charge of soliciting a fraudulent scheme for his role in the campaign-contribution scandal. He also paid the bowl $62,500 in restitution.

After Junker pleaded, the offices of the U.S. attorney and the Arizona attorney general agreed to postpone his sentencing until this summer. They based their decisions on Junker’s willingness to help the Attorney General’s Office in an ongoing criminal investigation focused on Gary Husk, a former bowl lobbyist who has not been charged.

The Attorney General’s Office and FBI agents in late January 2012 raided Husk’s Phoenix office. Husk has maintained his innocence, but Junker and other current and former bowl employees have implicated him in the scheme.

The Attorney General’s Office did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

Junker faces sentencing on his state conviction on July 8 in Maricopa County Superior Court. The state has not publicly indicated if it will request prison time.

Junker’s plea agreement with state and federal prosecutors says he cannot serve more than a total of 21/2 years behind bars on both charges, but he also is eligible for parole.

He currently works for the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Phoenix.

Dichter said he has 10 letters supporting probation for Junker that he will submit to the courts. Dichter said he lined up “some interesting people” to support Junker, but he has not identified them.

Feds don’t look good draped in the Fifth

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Feds don’t look good draped in the Fifth

By Joe Davidson, Published: May 22

Like plaids with stripes, federal employees wrapped in the Fifth Amendment don’t look good.

We all have the right to wear clothes that clash, and all in this country have the right not to provide testimony that could be used against them.

But when federal workers invoke that right, as Lois Lerner did at a House hearing Wednesday, it comes at a cost. A public servant who refuses to answer questions from Congress about the public’s business clashes with the public’s expectations.

By asserting her right, Lerner further undermined the credibility of her employer, the Internal Revenue Service, an agency whose reputation has been beaten bloody by the scandal over the targeting of conservative organizations.

It’s not fair, but it is inevitable — and understandable — that Lerner’s refusal to answer questions gives the impression that she has something to hide about her involvement in the targeting.

That’s a tough spot for someone who has developed a reputation for fairness over nearly 35 years of federal service. “I am very proud of the work that I have done in government,” she said.

Ironically, Lerner, the IRS director of exempt organizations, seems to be the only one who tried to stop the targeting, which is not to say her hands are totally clean.

When she learned that IRS staffers were using inappropriate criteria, she “immediately directed that the criteria be changed,” according to an inspector general’s report.

Yet, as she acknowledged, members of Congress “have accused me of providing false information” and The Washington Post’s Fact Checker has awarded her four Pinocchios, signifying “whoppers” for “misstatements and weasely wording” in previous statements.

Actually, Lerner did testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing, but only through her prepared statement. Her attorney, William W. Taylor III, had tried to get her excused from the hearing because of an ongoing Justice Department criminal investigation, saying in a letter to the panel that having her appear “merely to assert her Fifth Amendment privilege would have no purpose other than to embarrass or burden her.”

Lerner seemed more defiant than embarrassed.

Succeeding in having it both ways, she provided her side of the story but refused to answer questions, raising heated objections from at least a couple of Republicans.

“I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations, and I have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee,” she said with emphasis. “And while I would very much like to answer the committee’s questions today, I have been advised by my counsel to assert my constitutional right not to testify or answer questions related to the subject matter of this hearing. . . .

“Because I’m asserting my right not to testify, I know that some people will assume that I’ve done something wrong. I have not. One of the basic functions of the Fifth Amendment is to protect innocent individuals, and that is the protection I’m invoking today.”

Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said he would like to recall Lerner, contending that she might have effectively waved her right not to answer all questions when she read her prepared statement and verified a document in response to his request. Some lawmakers have called for her head, underscoring her reason to avoid providing any ammunition to critics and investigators.

At Tuesday’s Senate Finance Committee hearing into the IRS, the first question from Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) was “Why weren’t people then fired or transferred” after the agency’s management learned at least a year ago about the use of such terms as “tea party” in the selection of groups for extra scrutiny.

Steven Miller, the acting IRS commissioner, said one employee was transferred and another was recommended for oral counseling. Also, Miller’s resignation has been accepted, and Joseph Grant, commissioner of the agency’s tax exempt and government entities divisions, announced plans to retire.

But neither of them was initially responsible for the decision to resume the targeting after Lerner tried to stop it. Who was responsible? Nobody seems to know.

“The IG said he doesn’t know who made the decision to resume; the IRS commissioner doesn’t know who made the decision to resume,” said an exasperated Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.) to Miller at the Senate session. “I mean, did you ask these questions?”

Miller’s response: “I was told a name, and it turned out they didn’t think that was the correct name.”

I don’t favor letting federal employees, especially the lower-level folks, twist in the wind, or naming them publicly for bureaucratic mistakes, if that’s what this was. Yet the inability of the top man in the IRS to say who is responsible for this scandal after all this time, after all these inquiries, is incredible.

But rather than a coverup, this smells of the bad management documented in the inspector general’s report. Issa noted that this scandal involves a very small number of IRS employees. They were failed by their leadership.

“One thing is clear,” Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) told the House hearing, “we see here at least terrible incompetence in the absence of the normal managerial oversight you’d expect in any federal agency, certainly the IRS. . . . The civil servants are doing their incompetent best, I suppose.”

Twitter: @JoeDavidsonWP

Previous columns by Joe Davidson are available at wapo.st/JoeDavidson.

Game and Fish cop embezzles $13,600

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DPS inquiry: Game and Fish official stole agency funds

By Dennis Wagner The Republic | azcentral.com Mon May 27, 2013 10:50 PM

A former law-enforcement boss at the Arizona Game and Fish Department embezzled thousands of dollars from an undercover account set up to catch wildlife poachers and should be charged with felony theft, a state police investigation concludes.

The Department of Public Safety report alleges that John G. Romero, who resigned while under investigation in early February, set up a covert bank account using his old undercover name and siphoned public money for three years before it was detected.

Investigative findings, including a request for prosecution, were submitted to Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne more than two months ago. No charges have been filed to date, and a spokeswoman for the Attorney General’s Office said she could not comment.

Romero, who could not be reached, told investigators he did not use funds for personal expenses, according to the report. But he admitted a failure to maintain records or to get payments approved, the report says.

Gary Hovatter, special assistant to the Game and Fish director, said the 22-year officer retired with full benefits.

Hovatter said a claim may be filed for recovery of the cash. He also said the matter was referred to the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board, which regulates law-enforcement officers and is empowered to withdraw certification.

According to the DPS report, Game and Fish officials requested an independent probe in October after an audit of the Operation Game Thief program, designed to catch wildlife poachers. Records showed cash withdrawals by an unknown person named Greg D. Gomez. Romero had been given that pseudonym, with a matching driver’s license and Social Security card, years earlier when he worked undercover in the department’s Special Operations Unit.

Game and Fish officials told DPS investigators that the fake identity was canceled in 2000 and that Romero had not worked undercover since 2004. They said Romero never received permission to resurrect the identity or create a covert bank account and never filed expense reports concerning the payouts.

The DPS report says at least $13,600 went into the “Gomez” account, which was linked to Romero’s home address. Nearly all that money was withdrawn.

DPS investigators concluded that Romero improperly authorized his own expenses and was not challenged because the employee who issued checks “knows not to ask any questions” about undercover operations.

State police said that most of the withdrawals by Romero took place on days when he did not work and when his personal bank account was low or empty.

The report says Romero failed to provide documentation of how the funds were used and stammered when asked to explain, as illustrated by a transcribed excerpt: “You know, I spend it on, uh, you know, mostly it’s for the uh, you know, the payment of, of, of services. Uh, use it for the, uh, the, you know, I help out other regions with, uh, with payments of, of, uh, just informant money or projects or, you know, just different things of that nature.”

Romero told investigators he kept his activity reports at home but was “not the best bookkeeper. … It seems like I’m playing fast and loose with this,” he added, “and sometimes I do.”

Romero, whose salary was $65,362, wrote the Game and Fish Department’s policy manuals for investigations and special operations. He was a nationally recognized expert on illegal trafficking of reptiles and served as a training officer.

Department records obtained via a public-records request show that Romero had been promoted through the ranks to a top enforcement job despite repeated disciplinary memos for failure to maintain and submit official records.

Hovatter said Game and Fish administrators have taken steps to prevent future violations of financial-accountability rules at the agency.

Reach the reporter at dennis.wagner@arizonarepublic.com.

Controversies dog Game and Fish Department

Controversies dog Game and Fish Department

By Dennis Wagner The Republic | azcentral Mon May 27, 2013 10:36 PM

The alleged embezzlement of public funds by Arizona Game and Fish Department Officer John Romero is among several controversies to plague the agency in recent years:

In 2009, Game and Fish employees were intimately involved in the trapping and subsequent death of Macho B, Arizona’s only wild jaguar. The depth of the department’s involvement and its attempts to cover its tracks only became more widely known over the last 18 months.

Last month, Game and Fish Commission Chairman Jack Husted resigned amid allegations that he sexually harassed female employees in the agency. His resignation statement said he was sorry that some people misinterpreted a “personal style of communication” that included hugging and joking.

It was not Husted’s first taste of controversy. He previously was criticized for encouraging a juvenile hunter to shoot and kill a prairie dog out of season.

Nonetheless, remaining Game and Fish commissioners honored Husted two weeks ago after their meeting in Kingman, giving him a lifetime hunting license.

John “J.W.” Harris, the new chairman, said the lifetime hunting license was a personal gift bought by commissioners and presented at a private party.

Harris said the harassment allegations never resulted in a formal complaint or investigation, and there was no reason for further inquiry because, “It’s over and done with. He’s resigned and is moving on with his life.”

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Crane McClennen awarded Pinetop-area game Warden Shawn Wagner $100,000 in damages, plus attorney fees and back pay, in December after he was suspended in connection with an elk hunt. The judge ruled the department trampled Wagner’s rights and retaliated against him for pointing out “mismanagement and abuse of authority, and potentially a gross waste of monies.”

While off-duty in September 2010, court records show, Wagner went bow-hunting with several other current or former wildlife officers and a local judge. Minutes before sunset, Wagner shot and wounded a bull elk, but the animal ran off, leaving a blood trail that hunters could not follow after dark.

Considering the wound to be fatal, they agreed to return at dawn to find it. Wagner was scheduled for surgery the next day, so he left his game tag behind for placement on the carcass. But the elk was still standing when located by his companions the next morning, so one of Wagner’s companions finished it off.

According to court records, “All the persons there agreed Wagner had inflicted the mortal wound and thus they considered it to be Wagner’s elk, so they decided to put Wagner’s tag on it.”

Three Game and Fish law-enforcement supervisors agreed that his tag was used appropriately. But Romero, then head of Operation Game Thief, concluded there were two potential violations regarding the tagging of the kill with a game tag issued to someone who was not present. Game and Fish administrators, concerned about possible headlines, did preliminary interviews to determine if a full investigation was warranted.

Wagner balked, arguing that informal questions violated his rights under state law and department policies. He requested intervention from Game and Fish Department Director Larry Voyles.

Voyles asked the state Department of Juvenile Corrections to assign an independent investigator. Wagner was interrogated and given a two-day suspension. He appealed to Voyles, who rescinded the suspension but ordered a new probe by the Arizona Department of Corrections. It resulted in reinstatement of the suspension.

After exhausting his appeals, Wagner sued Game and Fish for retaliation and won a $100,000 judgment now under challenge.

In 2007, Michael Malik Sr., a multimillionaire Michigan developer and casino entrepreneur, paid $135,000 at auction for a year-round permit to hunt elk anywhere in Arizona. Bidding for the so-called “Governor’s Tag” is conducted as an annual Game and Fish fundraiser.

Malik reportedly paid thousands of dollars to a Lakeside man who directed him to a trophy elk in a private meadow just outside of town. Shortly after jetting to Arizona, Malik wounded the large bull, which ran to a nearby housing tract and fell to its knees.

Members of the hunting party told Wagner, who was patrolling the area, that they had permission to shoot near the homes. Wagner authorized Malik to put the elk out of its misery, according to Malik’s attorney, Bruce Griffen.

Griffen said two shots were required. The rifle reports attracted local residents who loved the elk and were horrified at the spectacle.

“Women and children were screaming and yelling,” Griffen noted. “The whole thing was horrible.”

Wagner confiscated the elk and issued two citations to Malik for shooting unlawfully within a quarter-mile of an occupied residence. At trial in Pinetop-Lakeside Justice Court, Malik was acquitted on one charge but found guilty on another.

Griffen said the conviction was overturned on appeal, but reinstated by a higher court.

Malik was sentenced to community service and ordered to write an apology letter to the resident on whose land the elk died. The Game and Fish Commission fined Malik nearly $15,000 and banned him from hunting in Arizona and 32 other states for five years.

The elk’s head with velveteen antlers, valued at $27,000, now greets visitors at Game and Fish headquarters.

Did John McCain illegally sneak into Syria???

So I suspect that John McCain is a hypocrite who is against illegal immigration to the US, but thinks he is above the law and can do what he wants.

Of course personally I think that any crime that involves illegally crossing a border is a victimless crime which shouldn't be a crime.

Source

Sen. McCain makes trip to Syria to visit rebels

Associated Press Mon May 27, 2013 6:04 PM

WASHINGTON — Sen. John McCain, a proponent of arming Syrian rebels, quietly slipped into Syria for a meeting with anti-government fighters Monday.

Spokeswoman Rachael Dean confirms the Arizona Republican made the visit. She declined further comment about the trip.

The visit took place amid meetings in Paris involving efforts to secure participation of Syria’s fractured opposition in an international peace conference in Geneva.

And in Brussels, the European Union decided late Monday to lift the arms embargo on the Syrian opposition while maintaining all other sanctions against Bashar Assad’s regime after June 1, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said following the meeting.

Two years of violence in Syria has killed more than 70,000 people. President Barack Obama has demanded that Assad leave power, while Russia has stood by Syria, its closest ally in the Arab world.

McCain has been a fierce critic of Obama administration policy there while stopping short of backing U.S. ground troops in Syria, but he supports aggressive military steps against the Assad regime.

Gen. Salem Idris, chief of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army, accompanied McCain across the Turkey-Syria border. McCain met with leaders of the Free Syrian Army from across the country, who asked him for increased U.S. support, including heavy weapons, a no-fly zone and airstrikes on Syrian government and Hezbollah forces, according to The Daily Beast, which first reported the senator’s unannounced visit.

The White House declined to comment late Monday.

A State Department official said the department was aware of McCain crossing into Syrian territory on Monday. Further questions were referred to McCain’s office.

Last Tuesday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to provide weapons to rebels in Syria, as well as military training to vetted rebel groups and sanctions against anyone who sells oil or transfers arms to the Assad regime. McCain is a member of the committee.

——

Associated Press writer Bradley Klapper in Paris contributed to this report.

Tempe ambulance contract now a no-bid process

Tempe ambulance contract now a no-bid process

By Dianna M. Náñez The Republic | azcentral.com Fri May 17, 2013 9:10 AM

Only one company is competing for Tempe’s lucrative contract for ambulance services to support the Fire Department.

The Tempe City Council chose to allow only Professional Medical Transport to compete for the contract because city officials believe that the state’s approval last year of Rural/Metro Corp.’s purchase of that company effectively ended competitiveness in the market.

The only state-approved ambulance providers that Tempe may contract with are Rural/Metro or its subsidiaries, PMT and Southwest Ambulance.

Before the state allowed Rural/Metro to purchase PMT, Southwest and PMT were owned by separate companies and would compete for Tempe’s contract.

“The new corporate alignment ... has eliminated the independence that once existed between Professional Medical Transport and Southwest Ambulance, thereby creating a sole-source environment,” stated a staff report for the council to review last month.

On April 18, the Tempe City Council approved a seven-week “sole-source” contract renewal with PMT for emergency medical services.

Tempe Fire Chief Greg Ruiz said he expects to bring a contract recommendation to the council in mid-June.

However, Ruiz said that if Tempe and PMT cannot negotiate a contract that is in the best interest of residents, [residents???, no you mean the members of the city council who get bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions from the ambulance companies] then the council has the option after the seven-week period to open the contract to bids.

Tempe may negotiate only with state-approved ambulance providers that hold a certificate of necessities to provide service in the city. Terry Mullins, bureau chief for the Arizona Department of Health Services, said the three certificate holders in Tempe are Rural/Metro, PMT and Southwest.

No-bid contracts historically have drawn scrutiny because there are concerns about nepotism and whether residents will get the best services if no other company is allowed to enter the market to bid for a government contract.

Historically, Tempe has negotiated its contract for emergency medical transportation services through a competitive bid process.

In about 2008, PMT won the Tempe contract over Southwest, which had held the contract.

Ruiz said he believes that it made sense to allow only PMT to negotiate for the contract because there would be little benefit to creating an open-bid process if Rural/Metro would ultimately have final approval of the final contract details.

“Because Rural/Metro now owns Southwest Ambulance and PMT ... it’s really Rural/Metro we’re going through,” Ruiz said.

While there is no cost to the city for the contract, because PMT collects payment for services directly from customers, municipal contracts for ambulance services are highly sought after because they are lucrative.

Ruiz said PMT has provided quality services.

The Tempe Fire Department rated PMT’s performance and gave the company A ratings for exceeding standards in all but one area, timeliness of performance, for which it received a B rating for meeting standards.

Among the innovative services the Fire Department and PMT have implemented is housing PMT ambulances in Tempe fire stations. PMT paramedics working side-by-side with Tempe firefighters has resulted in a stronger relationship, vital when responding to medical emergencies, Ruiz said.

PMT paramedics are working out of two Tempe fire stations but the city hopes to expand the program, he said. PMT makes a lease payment to the city for the shared space.

The current PMT contract also provides funding to Tempe to hire civilian paramedics that work for the city but are not part of the public-safety retirement system, Ruiz said.

The public-private partnership allows PMT to reimburse the city for the civilian paramedics’ salary.

Michelle Angle, a PMT spokeswoman, said that PMT has a strong partnership with Tempe. Angle spotlighted PMT’s response times, management of traumatic brain injuries and the company’s paramedics training alongside Tempe firefighters in shared fire stations.

“It’s a streamlined system. Our folks are making their (firefighters’) jobs easier,” Angle said. “I think you would be hard-pressed to find a provider that would be able to provide better than we have.”

Phoenix tries to screw victims of light rail construction???

Court ruling means Phoenix may owe damages to businessowner impacted by light-rail construction

Posted: Monday, May 27, 2013 10:34 pm

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services

Business owners whose access is even partly blocked by a street improvement project can get damages if the value of their property is decreased, the Arizona Court of Appeals has ruled.

In a unanimous decision, the judges slapped down efforts by Phoenix to avoid paying damages to the owner of a property which lost access to traffic from Jefferson Street due to the light rail. Click here to find out more!

Attorneys for the city conceded the project permanently blocked two driveways facing Jefferson Street. They said, though, John Garretson still had access from Madison Street.

That, the lawyers argued, means he suffered no loss. And a trial judge agreed, throwing out Garretson's claim.

But Judge Michael Brown, writing for the court, said Garretson has raised genuine issues of whether the city's action "materially impaired'' the right of access and, in doing so, diminished the value of his property. He said that entitles Garretson to take his case to court.

The issue surrounds about 36,000 square feet Garretson owns bounded by Jefferson, Madison and First streets. The property is currently used as a commercial parking lot.

Garretson and the city did agree to provide the city a temporary construction easement on part of the property, with the value to be determined later.

The final project involved the city putting tracks on the south side of Jefferson Street, between the one-way traffic and the property. That also included construction of a concrete barrier on the south side of the tracks, permanently blocking the two driveways which had allowed access to Jefferson Street.

When Garretson sought compensation, the city argued that it had used its authority to control access to roadways as part of its police power. That, they said, means there is no requirement to compensate Garretson for any damage to the property.

Anyway, they said, because people could still get to the property from other streets, access had not been "substantially impaired'' in any way justifying compensation.

The trial judge, in tossing the case, accepted the latter theory.

Brown said that is not the case.

"When the government eliminates a property owner's established access to an abutting street and the owner retains access from another street, the owner is not necessarily foreclosed from obtaining compensation for damages to the property under the Arizona Constitution,'' he wrote.

Brown said while the facts of this case are unique, there is precedent for that conclusion.

For example, he cited a 1960 Arizona Supreme Court ruling involving a property along a state road where motorists going either direction had access.

That was replaced with a controlled-access highway. The property was still accessible, but only by traveling about 1,500 feet on a frontage road.

In that case, Brown said, the high court said someone whose land is adjacent to a road has a property right to that ingress and egress.

And eight years later, the Supreme Court said while property owners have no right to insist that traffic pass directly in front, that does not mean they cannot profit from that traffic flow.

That, then, goes to the issue of whether or not Garretson can prove he has been damaged.

One engineer hired by Garretson said the loss of Jefferson Street access impaired the potential to develop the property. That expert said it would decrease the potential for office space from 295,000 square feet to 125,000.

An appraiser said the property is in a "strategic location,'' being within walking distance of the baseball stadium, the basketball arena and the Phoenix Civic Plaza. That report also noted the property was zoned for high density mixed-used development.

The appraiser said the loss of access -- and the loss of "site prominence'' -- to Jefferson makes the value of the property "substantially inferior to the location it enjoyed in the before condition.''

All that, Brown wrote, entitles Brown to make his case to a jury that access to his property was materially impaired and seek damages.

Brown said, though, the appellate court was not saying how much Garretson should get, if anything.

Prison guards sell drugs for prisoners????

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Maryland’s prison system struggles to police thousands of guards and inmates

By Annys Shin and Aaron C. Davis, Published: May 27 E-mail the writers

She could have been fired years ago for allegedly letting gang members stage a brutal attack on an inmate in his cell. Instead, corrections officer Antonia Allison was allowed to resign from her job at the Baltimore City Detention Center in 2006 without any mark on her personnel record and then return to the state-run jail nine months later, prison system officials acknowledge.

Last month, Allison, 27, became one of 13 corrections officers indicted in a corruption case so widespread and brazen that it astounded law enforcement officials across the country. The guards are accused of helping a violent prison gang operate a drug-trafficking and money-laundering operation that involved smuggled pills and cellphones, sexual liaisons and thousands of dollars in cash payments. Allison plans to plead not guilty to the charges, said her lawyer, Chris Purpura.

How Allison wound up being rehired — even as she later agreed to pay a settlement to the inmate attacked on her watch in 2006 — is emblematic of a Maryland correctional system that has struggled for years to police its 7,500 guards and nearly 26,000 inmates.

A review of court records and interviews with current and former law enforcement officers, jail administrators, state officials, union representatives and corrections experts paints a picture of a failed disciplinary system, with little if any deterrent for corrections officers who smuggle contraband or even have sex with inmates.

The prison system’s small cadre of full-time permanent investigators — just 19 in a state with 24 corrections facilities — has remained virtually the same since Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) took office more than six years ago.

Their ranks did not grow after a report, issued the month O’Malley was elected to his first term, warned that there were nearly 300 gang members inside the detention center. Nor were more full-fledged investigators added after a 2009 investigation led by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration found a hive of corruption and flagrant gang activity at the Maryland Correctional Institution in Jessup and the Metropolitan Transition Center in Baltimore. Evidence from that probe suggested the problems were just as serious at the detention center, the state’s largest jail and long one of its most troubled.

“There was a sense that this isn’t going to get fixed until we get a case so big, so shocking that it would reallocate resources or change laws,” said a law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the current investigation. “We figured we needed national attention to force the Maryland legislature to act.”

The problems appear to be deeply rooted.

Allison, who could not be reached for comment, might have faced criminal charges in the assault on inmate Tashma McFadden, who was stabbed 32 times in July 2006, said one former jail supervisor, who agreed to discuss the incident only on the condition that he not be identified by name. But an internal investigation was derailed when a sympathetic supervisor suggested she quit after the attack, he said.

Allison, who denied any role in the assault, later attributed her resignation to injuries suffered in a car accident, according to a court deposition she gave in 2009.

Prison system officials said guards who resign in lieu of dismissal are supposed to be “red-flagged” and barred from being rehired. They said that there was no explanation in Allison’s personnel file for her 2006 departure and that they could not explain why she was able to return. But they confirmed that by July 2007, she was back in uniform at the jail, where prosecutors allege she eventually went to work for Black Guerilla Family operative Tavon White smuggling marijuana and prescription pills.

The jail supervisor said he was astounded when Allison was rehired. “Dishonest officers feel empowered” when they beat the system, he said. “And you see what happened.”

A dysfunctional system

Allison and the 12 other indicted officers operated in an environment where there was “no effective punishment,” federal investigators said in charging documents. The guards allegedly served as drug mules and, in several cases, had sex with inmates, with little fear of serious consequences. Four of the indicted officers became pregnant by White, and two tattooed his name on their bodies. Only one of the guards has entered a plea on the charges, saying she is not guilty; Allison and the others have yet to be arraigned.

O’Malley and Gary D. Maynard, the head of the prison system, have expressed revulsion at the allegations, while defending their record of rooting out corruption.

Statistics show the department’s disciplinary system does work, said Rick Binetti, state corrections spokesman.

Since O’Malley took office, 112 corrections officers have been fired or forced to resign because of alleged wrongdoing, Binetti said. When officers challenge the dismissals, judges uphold the firings three-quarters of the time.

But departmental records also show that Maryland relies heavily on forced resignations: 41 of the 112 resigned in lieu of dismissal or charges being filed in court. Maryland, in fact, rarely prosecutes officers for offenses short of violent abuses of inmates, state and court records show. By comparison, Virginia fired nearly 100 of its 12,000 guards last year, state officials there said.

Maryland officials acknowledged that changes are needed, especially at the detention center. The governor’s office said Monday night that O’Malley will soon announce the creation of a task force to investigate and prosecute gang activity and corruption at the jail. The 10-person task force will be made up of corrections investigators, Maryland State Police officers and an assistant state’s attorney in Baltimore.

The chief of security at the Baltimore jail has been replaced. This month, Maynard moved his office into the detention center and vowed to cleanse the jail of its culture of complicity.

The head of the prison system’s internal investigations unit announced his resignation two weeks ago, though officials maintain that his departure is unrelated to the probe at the jail. And O’Malley has ordered a review of the disciplinary process, which was altered three years ago to give corrections officers the right to appeal certain suspensions, firings and other punishments to a board of their peers. The Correctional Officers’ Bill of Rights was criticized by federal investigators last month for making it too hard to weed out compromised guards. But, as the Antonia Allison case demonstrates, the disciplinary dysfunction at the jail existed long before those protections were signed into law.

It isn’t clear whether the extraordinary scope of problems at the jail exists anywhere else in the prison system. But the system’s internal investigation and disciplinary process is undermanned, undertrained, and underfunded statewide, a review of policies, staffing levels and caseloads shows.

While the number of full-time investigators has stayed the same, their caseload has doubled over the past six years, from 700 to 1,400 — part of an effort to prosecute inmates who obtain cellphones and use them to conduct criminal business behind bars.

Although investigators are supposed to police both corrections officers and inmates, the vast majority of the state’s resources are devoted to convicts. Last year, more than 90 percent of the cases pursued by investigators involved crimes committed by inmates.

The unit also does not have enough staff to keep investigators on shifts overnight or on weekends. Investigators are on call for major cases but have to come in from home.

Asked if they have pressed for more resources in a system with an operating budget of $1.3 billion, two corrections officials sidestepped the question.

“If you ask any police force, they’ll tell you they could use more officers,” said one of the officials, both of whom were made available to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity. “We are trying to do our best to investigate all criminal and administrative cases that come across our table.”

The efforts of the investigators can be hampered by the frontline corrections officers assigned by wardens to police their fellow guards.

Those officers often perform the initial legwork that can make or break a case. Yet they are not given polygraph tests to ensure their integrity, and they get almost no additional training. They also have no police powers. As a result, when corrections officers are caught smuggling contraband into the jail, there is no one on-site who can make an arrest.

That’s different from most big-city jails, including the District’s central detention facility and New York’s on Rikers Island, where the jails maintain closer ties with local police forces and have sworn officers on-site. Internal affairs investigators in the District work at the jail.

At the Baltimore detention center, even if guards or other employees are caught with drugs that would be illegal to possess outside the jail, they can simply leave the premises before law enforcement arrives, current and former officers said.

“A supervisor can say, ‘I order you to stay in that chair,’ but if the employee says, ‘Oh, I’m sick, I have a fever,’ they can’t stop that person from going home,” one of the corrections officials said.

Afterward, it becomes far easier for prison administrators to seek resignations from the accused than to pursue criminal charges, current and former officers and jail officials said.

Investigators often encounter a code of silence among the guards, criminal justice experts and former corrections officers said. “You are fighting that culture of people not wanting to testify or provide information against another officer,” said former federal prison warden Peter Carlson.

Jail officials aren’t always eager to expose corruption inside their walls either, said Frank A. Colaprete, an expert on internal investigations in corrections.

“Everyone is trying to keep their jobs,” he said. “They don’t want publicity or embarrassment.”

Increasing caseloads

The prison system’s Internal Investigative Unit is tucked at the end of an office park in Savage, a half-hour south of Baltimore.

Its 19 investigators are the only ones wearing a corrections badge who have passed a polygraph exam and received police academy training.

The investigators have had ­notable successes, including the 2006 second-degree murder conviction of a corrections officer for stomping to death an inmate at Baltimore’s central booking facility next to the detention center.

Another investigation into a 2008 assault of a single inmate at a state prison in Hagerstown led to the termination of 26 officers. In that case, an inmate who assaulted an officer was later beaten by guards repeatedly over three consecutive eight-hour shifts. Fourteen of the fired guards faced criminal charges. Six were convicted and three went to prison.

But in between such big cases, the unit has struggled to keep pace with a mounting and increasingly complex caseload, driven largely by the emphasis on prosecuting inmates for having cellphones.

The effort is the result of the 2009 investigation into corruption and gang activity. Using cellphones smuggled in by corrupt officers, Black Guerilla Family leader Eric Brown orchestrated drug deals and initiated violent attacks on adversaries from behind bars. He spent some of the profits on crab imperial and Grey Goose vodka, which he had delivered to his cell at the Metropolitan Transition Center in Baltimore with room service-like ease.

In the wake of that scandal, the unit hired two technicians to collect evidence from cellphones recovered from the state’s prisons. They also stepped up their partnerships with federal and local law enforcement agencies.

As cellphone cases have taken up more of the investigators’ time, current and former officers said the department has been less focused on fraternization and other misconduct by officers that allegedly fed the criminal activity inside the detention center.

Inmates at the Baltimore jail reported the second-highest rate of sexual contact with guards of any jail in the country, according to a federal survey released this month. Nearly 7 percent reported having sexual contact with officers. Nationwide, the rate was less than 2 percent.

Black Guerilla Family members at the detention center allegedly used sex to secure the allegiance of some of the 13 indicted corrections officers, all of whom were women.

Allison is not among the corrections officers accused of having sex with inmates. But her name was added to a confidential list of officers suspected of gang ties after she allegedly let members of the Bloods stab McFadden on July 6, 2006, according to court documents that contain the internal memo prepared for the warden.

She resigned in the middle of an internal investigation. McFadden, who was serving jail time for a drug-dealing conviction, sued her in federal court in 2008, seeking damages for his injuries.

In a court deposition she gave in 2009 in connection with the lawsuit, she said a prison system investigator interviewed her about the incident shortly after she returned to work and read her her rights. She invoked her Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, she said, because “I didn’t know what he was talking about.”

The prison system’s investigative unit then sent the case on to the state’s attorney’s office, but nothing happened, according to court records.

In the 2009 deposition, Allison denied being part of the attack or being a member of a gang, maintaining that she resigned from her job because of injuries to her back and wrist from a car accident.

Allison, the daughter of a police officer, was taking college classes in hopes of becoming a forensic pathologist. She tried unsuccessfully to have the lawsuit dismissed. Just before the trial was to begin, McFadden learned from corrections officials that Bloods inmates were planning to assault him over the case. He settled.

Allison paid him restitution for several years, his attorney said, while she continued to work at the jail. She was earning almost $42,000 a year when she was charged last month with working for the inmates she was supposed to be guarding. v Ann E. Marimow and Jennifer Jenkins contributed to this report

How do you spell revenue??? Photo radar bandits!!!!

Speed cameras keep clicking away in the District

By Ashley Halsey III, Published: May 27 E-mail the writer

The $8 million box sits unmolested but detested beside a pillar in a tunnel that carries four lanes of traffic near the very heart of town.

It clicks, it flashes, it clicks, it flashes.

That box and the cameras inside it have generated 61,061 speeding tickets in the past seven months, transferring $8.1 million from the wallets of K Street drivers into the District’s treasury. The cameras, which sit where four lanes of K Street dip under Washington Circle, is on pace to set a District record for cash earned by a speed camera.

There are orange warning signs — “Photo Enforced” — hanging beneath the 25 mph signs on either end of the tunnel, but they are missed or ignored by an average of 305 drivers a day who receive speeding tickets in the mail.

The revenue from speed cameras and red-light cameras has grown to become a noteworthy piece in the District’s $12.1 billion budget since the devices made their debut 14 years ago. Overall, they took in $84.9 million in fiscal 2012. Since the current fiscal year began Oct. 1, the 10 most-profitable speed cameras have issued $29.5 million in tickets.

Some who are ticketed complain that the District is out for the money rather than being concerned about safety or the law. City officials deny that charge.

Safety experts say people should not use that defense for violating speeding laws.

“The opposition is a reflection of the public’s inability or unwillingness to view speeding as a safety issue,” said Jonathan Adkins of the Governors Highway Safety Association, a coalition of state safety officials. “Some states reported that when gas prices were very high, speeds decreased. So, maybe once the public feels they will get a ticket if they speed, we will see a change. Drivers may slow down to save a buck but not slow down to potentially save a life.”

There is a solid body of research to support the argument that cameras reduce the risky behavior that causes accidents. Speeding was a factor in about a third of all traffic deaths nationwide, and the rate has been about the same in the Washington region, although in 2010 it played a role in 38 percent of the fatalities, according to data compiled by the regional transportation planning board.

The wide mix of state laws on speed-camera use seems to reflect the relative novelty of the tool. Twelve states expressly prohibit use of speed cameras; seven states permit limited use; the District and two states allow them; and 29 states have no laws regarding them.

Virginia has no law on speed cameras. Maryland limits speed cameras to work zones and school zones.

In a world where many drivers treat the speed limit more as a recommendation than gospel, and where a police officer with a radar gun has been considered bad luck rather than a high probability, the advent of speed cameras already has seen results.

When people in the District learn of a camera’s location — and they are posted on the police department’s Web site — they slow down to the speed limit as they approach. The drivers behind them may not know the reason for the relative crawl, but they have no choice but to slow down, too.

That leads to a question: As the District becomes accustomed to the tens of millions of dollars in camera fines, will it run low on cash if more people begin obeying the law? Once again, the fact that these devices are relatively new to the urban landscape makes the answer unclear.

“Does there come a point where the city’s not making money or even losing money? I think that’s a possibility in the long run,” said Anne T. McCartt, senior vice president for research at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. “That certainly would be the ultimate goal from a safety point of view. In the long run, you would expect violations to go down. That’s the purpose, and that’s going to happen.”

But she doubts speed cameras will grow so effective that they put themselves out of business. “Experience would say that drivers really like to speed; it’s hard to persuade people not to speed,” she said.

So far this fiscal year, the camera inside a 5-foot-tall steel box on K Street is by far the most productive in the District. After its $8.1 million in revenue, a camera on southbound D.C. 295 ranks second with 33,495 tickets valued at $4.6 million. The previous year’s leader, in the 600 block of New York Avenue NE, is third with 31,949 tickets worth $4.7 million, a drop in volume but increase in value because it is now in a work zone where fines are higher.

Rounding out the top speed cameras: another on D.C. 295, this one on the northbound side (19,685 tickets, $3.1 million); 2200 block of South Dakota Avenue (17,685 tickets, $1.7 million); 3500 Massachusetts Avenue (13,618 tickets, $1.5 million); two more cameras on D.C. 295, one southbound (13,172 tickets, $1.5 million) and one northbound (12,350 tickets, $2.4 million); and 1900 Branch Avenue (10,819 tickets, $1.8 million).

Kickbacks as 'a natural part of business' at Fannie Mae alleged

Kickbacks as 'a natural part of business' at Fannie Mae alleged

By E. Scott Reckard, Los Angeles Times

May 27, 2013, 7:00 p.m.

Before dawn one hazy March day in L.A., Armando Granillo pulled his SUV into a Starbucks near MacArthur Park, where he planned to pick up an envelope full of cash from an Arizona real estate broker, federal investigators say.

Granillo, a foreclosure specialist at mortgage giant Fannie Mae, expected to drive off with $11,200 — an illegal kickback for steering foreclosure listings to brokers, authorities allege in court records.

Granillo would leave in handcuffs. And investigators are now looking into assertions by Granillo and another former Fannie Mae foreclosure specialist that such kickbacks were "a natural part of business" at the government-sponsored housing finance company, as Granillo allegedly told the broker in a wiretapped conversation.

Investigators are examining whether other workers in Fannie Mae's Irvine office solicited illegal payments, according to three people with knowledge of the probe, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Granillo at first offered to cooperate with investigators but later declined to talk, two of the people said.

Another former foreclosure specialist in Irvine, Cecelia Carter, contends in an Orange County Superior Court lawsuit that Fannie Mae fired her in 2011 for trying to expose the kickbacks.

Fannie Mae is the nation's biggest buyer of home loans and guarantor of mortgages bundled for sale to investors. Granillo was among more than 50 workers in Fannie Mae's Irvine office, which opened in late 2008 after Fannie buckled under the weight of mass defaults on the home loans it had guaranteed. Taxpayers spent $116 billion bailing out the company, which remains under U.S. government control.

The workers' jobs were to move thousands of homes in Western states off Fannie's books through foreclosure sales, giving Granillo the power to select the brokers, who make commissions on each sale. In exchange, investigators allege, he demanded a 20% cut of the Arizona broker's commissions.

In the sting in Los Angeles, federal investigators had wired the broker, identified in court records only as A.M., for sound and video. "As Granillo raised his hands ... I saw him holding the manila envelope containing the cash," special agent James Shields wrote in an affidavit, filed in federal court to support three fraud charges.

The 44-year-old Huntington Beach resident has pleaded not guilty and remains free on bond pending trial, scheduled for Aug. 6 in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana. He could not be reached, and his public defender, David Israel Wasserman, declined to comment.

In a post-crisis era, foreclosure listings are a premium commodity for brokers, as buyers and investors swarm for bargains in beaten-down housing markets in Arizona and California. Fannie Mae is a trove of listings, having sold about 740,000 repossessed properties since 2009.

Regulators are keeping a close watch for kickback deals as the housing market heats up and new regulations take hold following the mortgage meltdown, which exposed widespread corruption in the housing and lending markets. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray said his 2-year-old agency has moved to shut down kickback operations not only because they're illegal but also because they reduce competition and increase costs to the public.

"The CFPB will continue to take action against schemes designed to let service providers profit through unscrupulous and illegal business practices," he said this month in announcing a settlement with a homebuilder accused in a kickback scheme. The consumer bureau also fined four mortgage insurers $15.4 million last month over alleged kickbacks.

A Fannie Mae spokesman declined to comment on allegations involving the Irvine office but released a statement saying the company has warned its staff repeatedly against seeking payments from real estate agents.

"While wrongdoing by Fannie Mae's [foreclosure] employees is rare, we take all allegations seriously," the company said in the statement.

Granillo worked near John Wayne Airport in a high-rise whose lobby has no listing for Fannie's eighth-floor office — a safeguard to prevent disruptions from foreclosed borrowers and other disgruntled members of the public, Carter said.

The specialists working there decide who can market homes most effectively, what to spend on maintenance and rehabilitation, how to deal with liens on properties, and whether to accept bids from potential buyers that the brokers bring to them.

Among the brokers Granillo worked with was A.M., in Tucson, whose Fannie Mae foreclosure listings had totaled no more than 15 until last fall. After raising the tally to 100, Granillo allegedly told the broker that the increase would continue — so long as he received a cut of the broker's sales commissions.

The broker told Granillo he "would think about it," according to the affidavit. Instead, he called an FBI agent, who got the broker in touch with the Office of Inspector General at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Fannie Mae's regulator.

On Feb. 2, Granillo drove to Arizona and met the broker, who was wearing recording devices, at a restaurant in a Tempe mall. Promising to help A.M. close sales and "put other Realtors in Tucson out of business," Granillo said he needed extra money because his wife, instead of working, often had to stay home with their autistic daughter, the affidavit says.

Prosecutors say Granillo described the scheme as illegal but "a natural part of business," like getting baseball tickets for doing a deal. What's more, the affidavit alleges, he told the broker not to speak to other workers in the Irvine office, whom he said were "engaged in similar conduct."

Carter, 47, of Riverside, filed her wrongful termination suit this month, seeking compensation for lost wages and punitive damages for Fannie Mae's "reckless disregard" of her rights.

She contends the company failed to address her complaints about numerous improprieties, including marketing homes without clear title and assigning brokers to list homes in markets with which they were unfamiliar. She also alleges discrimination based on her age and race.

The suit says she was fired for reporting her suspicions about employees soliciting kickbacks, including Granillo and certain managers. She said she began raising those suspicions in 2009 and ultimately took them to higher-ups in Washington, D.C., at Fannie Mae's human relations and ethics offices.

Fannie Mae spokesman Andrew Wilson said the company doesn't comment on litigation and personnel matters.

A 10-page Fannie Mae internal investigation on Carter's accusations, obtained by The Times, said she produced no hard evidence of kickbacks and had never seen money change hands.

One of Carter's lawyers, Peter M. Whelan of Bernabei & Wachtel in Washington, called that investigation "a sham," saying Fannie Mae had not even tried to interview one employee whom Carter had accused of taking kickbacks — a manager who had been fired.

A footnote in the report said the manager "no longer works at the company, which would make review of this contention superfluous because investigations could direct no action in the matter."

scott.reckard@latimes.com

FBI operates child porn website????

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FBI shared child porn to nab pedophiles; Washington home raided

BY LEVI PULKKINEN, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

Published 10:19 pm, Monday, May 27, 2013

The FBI seized and ran a child pornography service late last year as investigators worked to identify its customers, one Western Washington man allegedly among them.

Following a lengthy investigation, Nebraska-based agents raided the large child pornography service in November hoping to catch users who shared thousands of images showing children being raped, displayed and abused.

The Bureau ran the service for two weeks while attempting to identify more than 5,000 customers, according to a Seattle FBI agent's statements to the court. Court records indicate the site continued to distribute child pornography online while under FBI control; the Seattle-based special agent, a specialist in online crimes against children, detailed the investigation earlier this month in a statement to the court.

The investigation appears to mark a departure for the Bureau and other federal law enforcement agencies aiming to root out child porn purveyors.

Historically, child pornography investigations stem from tips made to law enforcement, interactions with undercover officers posing as customers or reviews of documentation seized during searches of child porn clearinghouses like the one recently raided in Nebraska. While investigators are known to have posed as child porn dealers – a 2011 effort involved targeted emails to suspected pedophiles – it is not apparent that the FBI previously dealt child porn as part of a sting.

The Nebraska investigation is still in its early stages, and, while charges appear to be forthcoming, no one being prosecuted has been publicly tied to the site thus far. Information obtained during the investigation resulted in a search of one Western Washington home, and investigators are presently reviewing computers seized during that April search.

The FBI declined requests to discuss the investigation or investigators’ motivations to continue operating the site. Court records indicate investigators hoped to trace customers and were unable to do so through traditional means.

“This remains an ongoing investigation, and local court rules and Department of Justice policy prohibit me from providing more information at this time,” said Sandy Breault, spokeswoman for the FBI Omaha Division. “As in any given matter, if charges are filed, they will eventually become a matter of public record.”

1,000s of images shared during investigation

Named only as “Website A” in an April 10 search warrant affidavit filed by the Seattle-based agent, the child pornography service was described as an online bulletin board with the primary business of advertising and sharing child pornography.

The affidavit was obtained by seattlepi.com earlier in May through a publicly accessible court records system. It has since been sealed.

Agents in the Omaha area seized “Website A” on Nov. 16 and continued to operate it until Dec. 2, monitoring messages from users of the website, the Seattle special agent told the court. The site was shut down Dec. 2.

At the time the service was shuttered it had more than 5,600 users and 24,000 posts, nearly all of which related to child pornography. At least 10,000 photos of children being posed nude, raped or otherwise abused were broadcast through the site.

Writing the court, the special agent recounted the site users’ discussions on how to avoid detection by police. One went so far as to publish a lengthy guide on encryption, and protections placed on the service impeded investigators’ work.

Most often, though, “Website A” users chatted about their shared interests – the rape and molestation of children. Message threads on the site included “How to lure a child in my car,” “Meeting other pedos in real life,” and “Do kids LIKE anal sex?”

On Nov. 9, a U.S. District Court judge in Nebraska approved a request by law enforcement agents to track down the website’s users.

Arizona Guard whistle-blowers get to speak at Capitol

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Arizona Guard whistle-blowers get to speak at Capitol

By Dennis Wagner The Republic | azcentral.com Tue May 28, 2013 10:55 PM

About a half-dozen National Guard whistle-blowers who spoke during a public forum Tuesday at the state Capitol said leadership shortcomings are to blame for a state military organization rife with corrupt conduct.

“We already have rules and regulations ... about how we’re supposed to conduct ourselves,” Lt. Col. Rob White said. “The problem is when officers don’t uphold those standards.”

“Soldiers and airmen are praying for justice to be restored to the Arizona National Guard,” added Seth Israel, a former staff sergeant who said he turned in all of his medals and retired because of retaliation he faced for reporting sexual harassment and other wrongdoing. “The leadership knew about these issues before they reached critical mass, but no one stood up.”

Those comments came during a discussion hosted by Rep. Debbie McCune Davis, D-Phoenix, and other House Democrats in the wake of last month’s independent investigation blasting the Guard’s culture.

The National Guard Bureau, a federal umbrella organization, launched its probe after The Arizona Republic documented systemic misconduct that included sexual abuse, cronyism, fraud, theft, drug dealing and reprisal against victims. The review team concluded that fraternization by Guard commanders established a “perception that the leadership lacked the moral high ground to take appropriate steps when disciplinary matters arose.”

Gov. Jan Brewer, who ordered the inquiry, subsequently instructed Maj. Gen. Hugo Salazar to prepare and execute reforms in the organization of about 8,000 soldiers, airmen and civilian personnel.

White and others who testified Tuesday said they lost faith in the Guard’s administration and turned to the media last year after failing to win reform through complaints to superior officers, inspectors general, the governor and members of Congress.

Paul Forshey, who retired as the Guard’s legal counsel, or JAG officer, said he decided to speak out last year after Salazar fired Brig. Gen. Michael Colangelo, then the Air Guard’s commander. Colangelo had terminated two subordinate officers for misconduct. His decision was sanctioned by Salazar, who nevertheless issued a letter of reprimand and later dismissed Colangelo.

“He gave him that letter knowing it to be false,” Forshey said.

Forshey noted that the independent investigation substantiated a corrupt culture, and said Brewer employed “a Jedi mind trick” when she declared that the Arizona Guard is “not broken.”

Brewer spokesman Matthew Benson said Tuesday’s hearing illustrates why the governor sought an independent review.

“That assessment has led to a corrective action plan, which will be implemented to lessen incidents of misconduct and make certain violations are addressed quickly and consistently,” he added.

Salazar, who has told Brewer he intends to retire before the end of the year, could not be reached for comment. However, Col. Steve Smith defended his boss at the forum, and complained that news coverage of the controversy has been inaccurate.

“I still believe we have a very strong organization,” said Smith, who was promoted to a new command this month. “We have great leadership. ... There is no other institution in this state of Arizona that is more trusted than the National Guard.”

Others maintained that the Guard has a toxic atmosphere, and questioned Salazar’s ability to create a new culture.

“This culture lacks integrity at the top,” said Cynthia Dowdall,the ex-wife of a retired Air Guard officer. “It’s a culture that destroys many military members and many military families.”

McCune Davis said she convened Tuesday’s informal session after GOP legislative leaders declined to hold formal hearings. A panel of six House Democrats listened to public comments.

“The Arizona Guard — and its reputation — is something we must protect,” McCune Davis said.

McCune Davis said she will submit a report to Brewer. She declined comment on whether Salazar should remain as Guard commander.

Goldwater Institute threatens suit over Phoenix practice of ‘spiking’ pensions

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Goldwater Institute threatens suit over Phoenix practice of ‘spiking’ pensions

By Craig Harris The Republic | azcentral.com Tue May 28, 2013 11:23 PM

The Goldwater Institute has threatened to sue Phoenix if the city does not end a legally questionable policy that allows police officers and firefighters to increase the amount of their pensions by cashing in unused sick leave, vacation and other benefits.

The Phoenix-based conservative watchdog group, which has a history of winning suits against municipalities, sent a letter late last week to Mayor Greg Stanton, saying state law is clear that the practice of “spiking” pensions is illegal. The letter also said “attempts to evade the obvious meaning of this law are, at best, erroneous, at worst, dishonest.”

Stanton, who had campaigned on pension reform but has taken no action to end pension spiking by public-safety officers, declined an interview request. [Just like he also campaigned and promised to remove the temporary sales tax which he didn't.]

His spokeswoman, Sarah Muench, issued a statement saying Stanton “will ask for a meeting to bring together the Goldwater Institute and our City Attorney.” [Sounds like Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton is just shoveling the BS to keep the reporters and public at bay for a little bit longer]

“He looks forward to discussing it. He has no further comment at this time,” Muench said.

One Fire Department captain, meanwhile, said Goldwater would be wasting taxpayer funds if it forced Phoenix to defend itself in court. [Of course the only people that benefit from this practice are members of the Phoenix Fire Department and Phoenix Police Department]

If a lawsuit is filed, Goldwater likely will seek a judgment declaring the practice illegal.

In the face of such a judgment, the statewide Public Safety Personnel Retirement System would have no choice but to seek refunds from retired police officers and firefighters who received enhanced pension benefits because of pay spiking, system administrator Jared Smout said.

“We would have to figure out what their pension should have been, and any overpayment, and collect that,” Smout said. “The way we typically collect is by reducing pensions. ... This potentially would affect a large amount of people.”

The city could avoid a legal judgment by voluntarily agreeing to change its policy.

In that case, it is unclear whether the retirement system would try to recoup past overpayments, because it could face a lawsuit by retirees. [Who have been stealing our tax dollars and want to keep the stolen loot]

Smout said the retirement system would prefer to have a court ruling in advance so that whatever steps it takes to recoup overpayments are legally binding and less vulnerable to litigation.

It is unknown how many Phoenix retirees could be affected, but such repayments could be significant.

For example, in one instance, a former assistant fire chief increased his lump-sum retirement check by roughly a quarter of a million dollars, to $795,983, and he increased his annual pension benefits by more than $40,000 — to $130,046 a year.

There are approximately 2,400 Phoenix retirees receiving benefits from the Public Safety Personnel Retirement System. Rank-and-file officers say they have been unfairly criticized by the public as greedy because a few high-ranking executives have significantly enhanced their pensions through spiking. [Have to disagree with that. The retired rank and file police officers and firemen screw the taxpayers just as much as the high ranking ones]

However, there has been no organized movement to curb abuses in the pension system.

Smout said the Public Safety Personnel Retirement System, of which Phoenix is the largest member, has requested information from the city on its justification for allowing police officers and firefighters to spike their pensions.

The pension fund has taken no action against the city and has stated that pension spiking by Phoenix only hurts the city because it results in a larger bill the city must pay to the state pension trust for retirement benefits.

Phoenix budgeted $109 million this fiscal year for public-safety pension costs, and that figure will increase by $20 million for the fiscal year that begins July 1. In fiscal 2003, the city paid $7.2 million.

Pension spiking accounts for only a portion of the increased payment. Substantial investment losses by the pension trust, and other factors such as highly paid and experienced public-safety officers, account for the city’s increased payments.

An inquiry by the state pension system, and Goldwater’s legal threat, come after The Arizona Republic earlier this month reported the city’s pension-spiking policy, which has allowed a few retirees to become millionaires shortly after retirement.

The newspaper also found that the spiking policy allowed a few police officers and firefighters to make more in retirement than when they worked.

The average public-safety pension for a Phoenix retiree is $59,341, about $10,000 more than the statewide average. There are 153 Phoenix public-safety retirees who receive pensions greater than $88,000 — more than two times the average income in Arizona.

The Republic initially reported that pension spiking occurs because the city allows public-safety officers to cash in unused sick leave, vacation and deferred compensation to calculate their pensions.

The Republic has since learned that the city also counts compensation paid for emergency shifts, bonuses and vehicle and cellphone allowances to be calculated into salary totals that determine pension benefits.

State law says “unused sick leave, payment in lieu of vacation, payment for unused compensatory time or payment for any fringe benefits” cannot be used as compensation to compute retirement benefits.

State law also says that only “base salary, overtime pay, shift differential pay, military differential wage pay, compensatory time used by an employee in lieu of overtime not otherwise paid by an employer and holiday pay” may be used to calculate pension benefits.

Final compensation and length of service are the key components in determining the amount of a public pension in Arizona. The more a person makes at the end of a career, the higher the lifetime pension. Salary spiking, therefore, increases pensions and the long-term costs for taxpayers.

The city issued a statement Tuesday saying that its public-safety employees have bargained for fewer vacation and sick days in exchange for a higher salary. It also said that, in certain circumstances, an employee can quit accruing sick and vacation leave in return for additional salary.

The statement also said “whether a public- safety employee’s compensation is pensionable under state statute is a decision to be made by the PSPRS administrators.”

Smout and other public-safety administrators said they do not have the resources to determine whether an employee’s compensation is “pensionable.” Instead, they say, they rely upon the accuracy and honesty of governments that are part of the system to report the accurate compensation of public-safety officers.

Jon Riches, an attorney from Goldwater, said the demand letter was intended to put the city on notice.

“Hopefully, they will take action to change these policies. If the policy remains as it is, it’s difficult to imagine a situation where a lawsuit wouldn’t occur,” Riches said. “Hopefully, Phoenix does the right thing and changes a policy that is abusive and illegal.”

City Councilman Sal DiCiccio, an outspoken critic of the costs of public pensions, agreed.

“Under the best case scenario, the city of Phoenix is purposely circumventing the law. In the worst case, which is the current situation, the city is breaking the law,” he said.

But John Teffy, a Phoenix Fire Department captain, said Goldwater should stand down.

“It seems to me that if the Goldwater Institute took the time to understand how the city works and how contracts work, they would know there is a much simpler way to address this than with (threats of) frivolous lawsuits,” Teffy said.

Police: Scottsdale chef found with marijuana

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Police: Scottsdale chef found with marijuana, suspended license

By Matthew Longdon The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Wed May 29, 2013 6:31 AM

Chef Eddie Matney was recently arrested on charges of drug possession and driving on a suspended license, Scottsdale police say.

Matney, owner and executive chef at Eddie’s House in Scottsdale, was stopped last week by Scottsdale police near 68th Street and Camelback Road because of an obscured license plate, according to police.

They say a subsequent check showed Matney’s registration and driving privileges had been suspended. While waiting for a tow truck, police officers say they found marijuana in Matney’s vehicle. [In Arizona if you don't have a valid car registration the police are allowed to steal your car, and hold it hostage till you prove your innocent of the crime. The bottom line is this practice is just a form of legalize theft used by the police to raise money]

In a statement Tuesday night, Matney said “a very small amount of marijuana was found with fishing equipment.”

The same day, Matney told 12 News he doesn’t smoke marijuana and doesn’t know why it was in the vehicle. He also said he didn’t know his license was suspended.

Woman framed for having 12 pounds of pot in Mexico????

Family of Goodyear woman jailed in Mexico says she's not guilty

Authorities said they found marijuana under bus seat

By Daniel González The Republic | azcentral.com Tue May 28, 2013 10:41 PM

Yanira Maldonado has spent more than a week in prison in Mexico after Mexican officials found 12 pounds of marijuana under her bus seat, but family members say the Mormon mother from Goodyear is the victim of a nightmarish mistake.

Family members believe that someone else may have been trying to smuggle the marijuana and that Maldonado just happened to be sitting in the seat where the drugs were hidden.

“We feel we have a strong case,” said Larry Maldonado, Yanira’s father-in-law.

Yanira was returning to the Valley with her husband, Gary Maldonado, on May 22 when they passed through a military checkpoint near Hermosillo and the drugs were found. She has been trying to prove her innocence ever since. She is being held in a prison in Nogales, Sonora, Larry said.

A federal judge in Nogales listened to witnesses Tuesday, and the family hopes to know by Friday whether the case will be dismissed, he said.

Yanira and Gary married one year ago and have seven children together from previous marriages, Larry said. They are both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and met at church, he added.

Yanira is a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Mexico. She works with disabled children. Gary is an American born in the U.S. He works in the information-technology field, his father said.

The case has attracted national attention since family members began publicizing Yanira’s imprisonment on social media.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake also has gotten involved after family members contacted the Arizona Republican.

Flake spoke about the case with Mexico’s deputy ambassador to the U.S., Mabel Gomez Oliver, on Saturday and Sunday, an official in Flake’s office said. Flake also spoke with Gary Maldonado on Sunday.

Larry Maldonado said Yanira and Gary feel like they are living in a nightmare.

They left Phoenix by bus on May 19 to attend a funeral for Yanira’s aunt near Los Mochis in the state of Sinaloa, Larry said.

On May 22, they were headed back to Phoenix on the same Mexican bus line, when they passed through a military checkpoint near Hermosillo.

The soldiers ordered everyone off the bus and took them to a room where their luggage was X-rayed, Brandon Klippel, Gary’s brother-in-law, said in an e-mail.

Yanira and Gary were the only Americans on the bus, Klippel said.

At first, the soldiers told Gary they had found the marijuana under his seat and arrested him, Klippel said. But then, police went to his cell and told him they thought the drugs had been found under his wife’s seat and under an open seat on the bus and arrested her, he said.

Klippel said in the e-mail that Gary’s Mexican court-appointed defense attorney suggested he try bribing Mexican authorities to have the case dismissed, telling him, “You know how it works in Mexico, right?”

Through the lawyer, Gary offered to pay Mexican authorities $3,500 and then upped the offer to $5,000 after being told the initial offer wasn’t enough, Larry said. In the end, neither bribe was accepted, he said.

Officials at the Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C., declined to be interviewed about the case.

They issued a statement that said Mexico’s government is in close communication with the U.S. government “to guarantee Mrs. Maldonado’s right to consular assistance.”

“Mrs. Maldonado’s rights to a defense counsel and due process are being observed,” the statement said.

A spokesman at the U.S. State Department said during a briefing Tuesday in Washington that officials from the U.S. Consulate in Nogales had met with the Maldonados on Friday to make sure their rights were being protected.

Erik Lee, associate director at Arizona State University’s North American Center for Transborder Studies, said American citizens have long complained about Mexican police asking for bribes to settle traffic violations.

But he found it unlikely that federal authorities in Mexico would try to plant drugs on American citizens for bribes because of the risk of causing an international furor that could hurt tourism, the country’s major source of income.

“That is pretty high stakes,” Lee said. “That goes against their economic interests.”

What’s more, Mexico’s government in recent years has been trying to clamp down on police corruption and bribes at the state and local levels, he said.

Republic reporter Dan Nowicki contributed to this article

Innocent man freed from prison gets master’s degree

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Innocent man freed from prison gets master’s degree

By Jonathan Bandler (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal News Wed May 29, 2013 7:02 AM

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. - When he last donned a cap and gown, Jeffrey Deskovic was a 20-year-old convict getting an associate degree at an upstate prison.

That was in 1994. It took 12 more years for him to prove he had been wrongfully convicted of the rape and murder of a Peekskill schoolmate and get out of prison.

On Tuesday, he marched near the front of the procession at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice graduation ceremony as he received his master’s degree.

It was an important milestone for the 39-year-old exoneree, who sat in the front row during the ceremony at the Javits Center in Manhattan and was recognized in the school president’s remarks.

“I got a bit emotional there because it was surreal thinking about how far I’ve come,” he said. “I had a real sense of accomplishment and it touched me to walk across that stage and hear the cheers.”

He was 17 when convicted in the 1989 slaying of 15-year-old Angela Correa, even though the jury knew his DNA didn’t match the evidence. He had been arrested after giving a false confession to police after hours of interrogation. [The police probably used a technique called the "9 Step Reid Method" to get the confession. The "9 Step Reid Method" replaced the old technique of beating people with physical rubber hoses to get confessions by using psychological rubbers hoses to mentally beat confessions out of them]

He was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison and spent years trying to get the DNA evidence retested.

After the Innocence Project got involved, the evidence was retested and the real killer, Steven Cunningham, was identified. Deskovic was released in September 2006, nearly 16 years into his prison term.

He has so far received $8.3 million from New York state and Westchester County, and his federal lawsuit against Peekskill and Putnam County is still pending. He used $1.5 million of his compensation money last year to start The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice, which fights wrongful convictions and assists those exonerated.

At the graduation, honorary degrees went to Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, co-founders of the Innocence Project, which has helped win exoneration for 307 people through DNA testing.

Scheck said Deskovic’s case was emblematic of the work of freeing the innocent.

“We were able to learn a lot of lessons about what went wrong with the criminal-justice system and how to fix it,” Scheck told the crowd, adding that Deskovic is “carrying on that mission.”

The work for Deskovic seems never-ending. From the foundation’s Rye Brook, N.Y., office, he oversees a staff of four, plus interns.

They have received more than 800 requests and have taken on 12 cases, 10 murder convictions, an assault and an arson. Each accepted case has to have two things -- a plausible claim of innocence, “not just a hunch,” Deskovic says -- and a concrete direction to go in. They are paying close attention to cases from Brooklyn as the District Attorney’s Office reviews 50 convictions linked to a homicide detective whose handling of witnesses has come under scrutiny.

Deskovic meets with potential donors, speaks at conferences and lends his voice at protests. He has stood outside courthouses in White Plains and New York City, handing out the foundation’s Thinking Juror’s Handbook. It offers his story, a primer on wrongful convictions and a heavy pitch for unswayed jurors to hold their ground.

He even found time to learn Spanish and guest-host a WVOX radio show.

But there are constant frustrations. He still struggles socially. And he wants to help everyone but knows he can’t.

There was an “awkward moment” Thursday while speaking with people at The Castle, the Fortune Society’s halfway house for ex-cons in Harlem, as some in the audience tried to get his help on convictions they claimed were bogus.

“People think I have this super-large staff and we can take on anything,” he said. “I know what it’s like to be on the other side of that and it bothers me.”

Although waiting for a big success to spur fundraising, the foundation did play a role this year in the release of William Lopez, who served more than 22 years for the 1989 murder of a Brooklyn drug dealer. The foundation helped track down a witness in the Dominican Republic. He testified by video earlier this year, insisting that Lopez was not the killer.

Once freed, Lopez got help from the foundation with temporary housing and finding a therapist. And when Lopez moved into a new apartment last week, Deskovic took to Facebook with an appeal for some of the furniture, appliances and other items Lopez needed to fill it.

“He’s been awesome, everything he’s done to help me acclimate,” Lopez said Tuesday afternoon. “You hear people who say ‘When I get out I’m going to do this and this to help people,’ but not many of them do. Jeffrey keeps doing it. He means business.”

Deskovic’s thesis on wrongful convictions offered a dozen causes for innocent people ending up in prison and remedies for each. One of his thesis advisers at John Jay, Andrew Karmen, called Deskovic an “inspiration.”

“He’s resilient, someone who went through an unfathomable, unbelievable experience losing all those years of his life who can now speak with authority on these issues,” said Karmen, who serves on the foundation’s board. “He sees injustice and he wants to prevent it from happening to other people.”

Deskovic doesn’t rule out more education, maybe even law school. But it won’t be immediate. He has too much on his plate.

“I enjoy school, I wish I was going back in the fall,” he said. “But until the foundation takes off, how can I?”

Judge: Joe Arpaio heeded his supporters, not the law

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Judge: Joe Arpaio heeded his supporters, not the law

With just hours left in the drive to recall Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, campaign organizers are scrambling to grab the manna as it floats down from heaven.

Or in this case, from a federal judge.

U.S. District Court Judge Murray Snow ruled late on Friday afternoon that Arpaio and his deputies have been and are unconstitutionally targeting Latinos in the sheriff’s six-year-old campaign to rid the county of people here illegally.

The 142-page ruling is detailed and devastating as it outlines a rogue agency that stopped cars specifically because they had brown people in them and continued arresting Latinos for suspected immigration violations even after it lost the authority to do so.

This, because of a sheriff who opted to do the popular thing rather than the constitutional one.

And perhaps worst of all for Arpaio, the ruling was written by a conservative judge appointed by George W. Bush.

Naturally, the sheriff plans to appeal, contending through his lawyer that no racial profiling occurred.

I suspect the Go-Joe crowd – what’s left of them — will rally ‘round.

“There are so many people who don’t care that he violates the Constitution,” retired lawyer-turned-Episcopal priest Glenn Jenks told me. “All they know is he gets the bad guys and that’s what they want.”

Rev. Jenks was the rector at Good Shepherd of the Hills Episcopal Church in Cave Creek when the church’s day-labor operation became Arpaio’s first target in September 2007.

“He just showed up one morning with deputies parked outside the church and we were getting word deputies were stopping any person that went out with a brown person in the car, dismissing the driver immediately and investigating … the worker,” Jenks said.

It was there that Arpaio’s deputies managed to bag a Mexican man and hold him for eight hours for a suspected immigration violation. This, despite the visa in the man’s wallet.

Manuel de Jesus Ortega Melendres sued on behalf of himself and other Latinos targeted. Sadly, it’s taken more than five years and two election cycles to sort out what happened here.

In his ruling, Judge Snow noted that MCSO would station undercover detectives at Good Shepherd and other day-labor centers then radio patrol officers to stop any driver who left with Latinos in the car on the pretext of a traffic violation. The driver then would get a warning or at most a citation while the passengers’ immigration status was investigated based solely on the fact that they were Latino – a constitutional no-no.

Ditto for the sheriff’s saturation patrols that were ostensibly intended to pick up anyone in a designated area for any violation yet remarkably seemed to focus on Latino drivers.

“The great weight of the evidence is that all types of saturation patrols at issue in this case incorporated race as a consideration into their operations, both in design and execution, the vehicles the deputies decided to stop, and in the decisions made as to whom to investigate for immigration violations,” Snow wrote.

He wrote a lot of other things as well. About an agency that engages in a “institutionalized consideration of race in MCSO operations.” About “its failure to observe normal standards of police conduct.”

About a sheriff who is “aggressively responsive to the wishes of a significant portion of the Maricopa County electorate” but not so much to the constitution that he has sworn to uphold — the one that protects all people.

Arpaio’s critics hailed the judge’s ruling.

“In the long run, the office of sheriff is being de-legitimized,” attorney Josh Nunez told me.

“If he really had the people’s best interests at heart, he would resign and acknowledge that people no longer trust his department and he is not the person to clean it up,” said Lilia Alvarez, manager of the Arpaio-recall campaign.

Knowing that’ll never happen, she and other recall organizers have set up Camp Recall Arpaio at 2nd Avenue and Jefferson, hoping for a last-minute surge in support. The four-month campaign has been hampered by a lack of funding, largely because organizers didn’t wait to give voters a chance to want to reconsider their November vote.

Now the group has until 5 p.m. Thursday to turn in the valid signatures of 335,317 voters. Alvarez on Tuesday estimated the group has about 300,000 signatures and needs another 70,000 to ensure an adequate cushion.

Double that cushion and maybe there’s a chance.

OK, with less than 48 hours to go, there’s no chance.

And that, given Judge Snow’s ruling, is a shame.

If a cop doesn't think he will get a fair trial what chance does a civilian have???

Vindication for an LAPD officer who was fired from the force

By Joel Rubin, Los Angeles Times

May 27, 2013, 9:14 p.m.

Just 11 months into his job as a Los Angeles police officer, Sergio Arreola had a choice to make: resign or be fired.

The day before, April 11, 2012, he had been handcuffed and booked by Pomona police for allegedly assaulting them during a traffic accident investigation and resisting arrest. Arreola's captain had issued the ultimatum after getting word of the incident from Pomona officials.

The 25-year-old Marine veteran, who had dreamed about becoming an LAPD cop, felt his world crumbling around him.

For a moment, the young officer considered resigning. Doing so, the captain told him, would spare him the black mark of being fired and give him a chance at finding another job. But Arreola dismissed the idea just as quickly. Resigning would signal that he had done something wrong.

He told the captain that he hadn't done any of the things the Pomona officers alleged. Arreola asked the captain to investigate the situation before signing the paper that would boot him from the force. He offered the captain the phone number for a tow truck driver who had witnessed the incident and told him that at least one other witness, his brother-in-law, had recorded a video of it.

"With all due respect, I have done a lot for this country and I've worked really hard to get here — to get to this position as a police officer," Arreola said. "I'm not going to resign. If you want to terminate me, go ahead."

The captain was unmoved. The Pomona officers' description of the incident made it clear that Arreola was not LAPD material.

Arreola turned in his equipment and left the station for what he assumed would be the last time. Once out of earshot in the parking garage, he dialed his wife.

"He fired me," Arreola told her, tears streaming down his face.

Arreola had been on the way to his in-law's house in Pomona after having finished an overnight shift when his wife called. A relative had gotten into a minor traffic accident nearby, she told him. She gave Arreola the location and asked him to meet her there.

Pomona police Officer Eric Hamilton, who first responded to the call of a single car accident in a quiet neighborhood, said in his arrest report that Arreola immediately was aggressive and belligerent when he arrived, refusing to obey Hamilton's commands.

When Arreola identified himself as an off-duty LAPD officer, Hamilton demanded to see his badge. Arreola went to his trunk to pull out the rain jacket where he had pinned his badge and lifted it up for the officer to see. Hamilton had an audio recording device running. [Why do cops always tell the cop that stopped them they are cops??? Is it to get special treatment??? I wonder if it would do any good to show the cop that pulled me over to show him my employment badge that shows I work at Wennie World, the finest hot dog stand in the world!!!]

On the recording, a copy of which The Times has obtained, Hamilton is heard telling other officers after the arrest that he was so suspicious of Arreola that he "broke leather" — cop lingo for unclasping the safety lock on his gun holster — as he saw Arreola move toward the trunk and kept a grip on his gun in case he needed to draw it quickly.

Worried that he was losing control of the situation, Hamilton put out a call over the radio, asking for assistance to deal with a combative LAPD officer. Officer Chris Tucker heard the call and rushed to the scene. Both officers described Arreola's demeanor as "extremely angry," and, within minutes of arriving, Tucker attempted to handcuff Arreola. He tackled him to the ground when Arreola "began to twist and tense up, pulling his arms from our grasp," Tucker said in his report. Hamilton quickly came over to assist. The officers alleged that Arreola tried to punch Hamilton in the face as they restrained him.

But, according to Arreola, it was Hamilton who was hostile from the outset. As he approached the intersection, Arreola recalled seeing Hamilton yelling at this wife. Confused, Arreola said he got out of his car and, from about 30 feet away, called out to his wife, "What's going on, Erika? Let's go."

Hamilton responded angrily, swearing at Arreola and telling his wife to "shut up" while pulling her back by the elbow, Arreola recounted in his official account of the incident to LAPD officials. Arreola acknowledged that he told Hamilton a few times that he shouldn't be talking to his wife "like a criminal" over something as minor as a one-car traffic accident. Hamilton, he said, responded with more profanities and threatened to arrest Arreola. At that point, Arreola said, he asked Hamilton to call for his supervisor.

Arreola denied ever resisting the officers. Tucker, he said, intentionally pulled him off balance while he was being frisked and, when Arreola stumbled, the officer used it as an excuse to take him to the ground.

On Hamilton's recording, the officer is heard telling Arreola repeatedly to "stop resisting" and Arreola saying that he is not resisting. Arreola is also heard pleading with onlookers to record the scene. Once on the ground, Arreola said, the officers punched him repeatedly. Hamilton, he said, bent his left arm back violently and Tucker attempted to subdue him by using a choke hold.

Through the head of the union that represents Pomona police, both Hamilton and Tucker declined to be interviewed for this article. The union official cited an ongoing internal investigation by the Pomona department into the officers' conduct, which he said bars them from speaking publicly.

Based on the officers' account of Arreola's behavior, prosecutors in the L.A. County district attorney's office charged Arreola with three misdemeanors for resisting arrest, assaulting Hamilton and obstructing the officers' work. Although they eventually dropped the assault charge, Robert Rico, Arreola's attorney in the criminal trial, said prosecutors refused to discuss any sort of deal on the other two accusations. Their only concession, Rico said, was to spare Arreola time in jail if he pleaded guilty to the charges.

The hard line that prosecutors took was moot, since Arreola wouldn't consider a deal. "They've ruined my life, they've ruined my name," he recalled saying when Rico gave him the option to plead guilty. "What's the worst they can do? Send me to jail?"

In the months leading up to his trial, Arreola struggled to keep himself and his wife afloat. He ran his credit card to its limit and refinanced his house and car loans. He borrowed money from his wife's father to keep them going while he studied at a local college hoping for a degree that would help him land a new job. Peter Casey, an LAPD lieutenant who had supervised him, wrote a check to help cover his legal fees.

Arreola's chances at trial appeared bleak. The tow truck driver did not testify, telling Rico he had been harassed by a Pomona detective, the attorney said. [So cops do threaten people with physical harm to prevent them from testifying, just like the Mafia does???] And Pomona police claimed they found no video of the arrest on the brother-in-law's phone, despite his insistence that he recorded it, according to Rico. [I'm sure the Pomona cops will deny erasing the video, like the Bakersfield and Kern County Sheriff's office denied erasing the video of a man beaten to death by Kern County Sheriff's officers in Bakersfield] But several of Arreola's supervisors and old partners testified on his behalf, describing him as soft spoken and respectful. Arreola himself took the unusual step of testifying. And, at one point, the judge told the jury to disregard the testimony of a Pomona sergeant because it was factually wrong.

Rico said he used the audio recording to show that Arreola had followed the officer's orders and not been combative. On the recording, jurors heard Arreola telling Hamilton, "You know I didn't do anything," and Hamilton retorting by calling Arreola "a fool."

Later in the recording, as Hamilton tells Arreola's wife that he's arresting her as well, Hamilton said, "I'm going to make sure your husband is never a police officer in the state of California again. I'll talk to Chief Beck myself personally," referring to the LAPD chief.

And jurors listened as Hamilton and Tucker recounted the arrest for other officers. "I just about broke his left arm. I wanted to break his arm," Hamilton said.

"I had my arm around him to choke his ass out," Tucker said.

The jury found Arreola not guilty.

The acquittal was important, but it wasn't everything.

Earlier this month, Arreola once again was summoned into the captain's office where he had been told his career with the LAPD was over. This time, the captain, who declined to be interviewed, wanted to welcome Arreola back to the force — a result of months of negotiations between department officials and Matthew McNicholas, an attorney representing Arreola in a lawsuit against Hamilton, Tucker and the Pomona Police Department.

"It feels good," Arreola said of returning to the job. "I want to show the LAPD that the people who supported me and believed in me were right all along."

joel.rubin@latimes.com

Hicks: Amanda Bynes pot charges going up in smoke

Well no, she probably was framed by the cops as she has said all along!!!!

Source

Hicks: Amanda Bynes pot charges going up in smoke

By Tony Hicks

Contra Costa Times

Posted: 05/29/2013 09:53:10 AM PDT

New York Police were apparently not able to, technically, find marijuana on Amanda Bynes last week.

Isn't that kind of like falling into the ocean and not being able to, technically, find water?

According to TMZ, the drug possession case against Amanda Bynes is falling apart, as police realize they have no hard evidence that Bynes was in possession of pot.

And we all scoffed when she threw her bong out the window.

Turns out, Amanda Bynes may be some sort of criminal genius who understands the methodology of law enforcement case-building against a suspected drug perpetrator better than any of us.

Or she just got lucky.

A police official told the website the police report mentions nothing about any marijuana recovered at the scene. According to the report, officers saw Bynes throw what they believe was "drug paraphernalia" out the window. The report also says cops smelled "a strong odor of marijuana."

I guess it was to difficult to look out the window and see where that bong landed.

CURSE YOU and your clever ways, Amanda Bynes. We will MEET AGAIN!

Funny enough, a TMZ producer found broken glass on a sub-roof under Bynes' window, and called police to see if they already inspected it. Cops arrived a short time later and scouted out the scene.

Uh ... guys, I know you're TMZ and all, but you aren't supposed to be doing the cops' work for them.

Besides, the problem is -- as pointed out by the law enforcement experts at TMZ (no, really, they're pretty good) -- it can't be determined whether anyone tampered with the glass, since so much time went by (during which, it also rained). So it's likely the bong couldn't be used as evidence in court.

CURSE YOU, Amanda Bynes, super-criminal!

Contact Tony Hicks at Facebook.com/BayAreaNewsGroup.TonyHicks or Twitter.com/insertfoot.

Colo. marijuana regulations signed into law

If it were not for taxes a bottle of beer or whiskey wouldn't cost any more then a bottle of soda pop.

But our government masters seem to think that every time we take a sip of liquor they have a God given right to reach into our wallets and steal a few dollars in taxes.

Marijuana is a stinking weed. It grows any where. And once you eliminate the black market by legalizing it, a kilo of weed shouldn't cost any more then a head of lettuce or a pound of tomatoes.

Of course with legalizing marijuana it seems our government masters want to keep the price of weed at the same outrageous prices as the black market currently demands. Greedy government crooks want to make all the money instead of the drug smugglers and sellers who risk their lives to provide us with the illegal drugs Americans want.

Source

Colo. marijuana regulations signed into law

Associated Press Wed May 29, 2013 9:38 AM

DENVER — A set of laws to govern how recreational marijuana should be grown, sold and taxed was signed into law Tuesday in Colorado, where Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper called the measures the state's best attempt to navigate the uncharted territory of legalized recreational pot.

The laws cover how the drug should be raised and packaged, with purchasing limits for out-of-state visitors and a new marijuana driving limit as an analogy to blood alcohol levels. Hickenlooper didn't support marijuana legalization last year, but he praised the regulatory package as a good first crack at safely overseeing the drug. [Yea, now with dollar signs in his eyes Governor John Hickenlooper wants to shake down pot smokers for as much cash as he can!!!]

"Recreational marijuana is really a completely new entity," Hickenlooper said, calling the pot rules "commonsense" oversight, such as required potency labeling and a requirement that marijuana is to be sold in child-proof opaque packing with labels clearly stating the drug may not be safe.

Colorado voters approved recreational marijuana as a constitutional amendment last year. The state allows adults over 21 to possess up to an ounce of the drug. Adults can grow up to six plants, or buy pot in retail stores, which are slated to open in January.

The governor said Tuesday he believes the federal government will soon respond to the fact that Colorado and Washington state are in violation of federal drug law. But Hickenlooper didn't have a specific idea of when.

"We think that it will be relatively soon. We are optimistic that they are going to be a little more specific in their approach on this issue," Hickenlooper said. Pressed for details, the governor jokingly referred to unrelated scandals surrounding the U.S. Department of Justice.

"They've been kind of busy," Hickenlooper said.

Colorado's new marijuana laws include buying limits for out-of-state visitors. Visitors over 21 would be limited to one-fourth of an ounce in a single retail transaction, though they could legally possess the full ounce. [Sounds like a replay of the same draconian laws that used to apply to marijuana the illegal drug]

Colorado laws attempt to curb public use of marijuana by banning its sale in places that sell food and drink that aren't infused with the drug, an attempt to prevent Amsterdam-style pot cafes. Food laced with the drug also would have to be to-go orders.

Colorado's laws also include a first-in-the-nation requirement that marijuana magazines such as High Times be kept behind the counter in stores that allow people under 21. That provision has prompted promises by attorneys representing at least two publications to challenge the restriction, which would treat pot magazines similar to pornography. [Sounds like the First Amendment is a victim of legalized marijuana in Colorado]

Besides the magazine restriction, Colorado's laws differ in several more ways from proposed marijuana regulations pending in Washington state. Colorado makes no attempt to ban concentrated marijuana, or hashish, unlike Washington. Colorado also has different possession limits on edible marijuana. Colorado also is planning a brief grandfather period during which only current medical marijuana business owners could sell recreational pot.

Both states are poised to require all pot-related businesses to have security systems, 24-hour video surveillance and insurance. [Looks like the politicians are using marijuana legalization to justify a bigger and better police state] One of the Colorado laws signed Tuesday gives state pot businesses a chance to claim business deductions on their taxes, something currently prohibited because the industry is illegal under federal law.

Colorado's laws also propose a series of new taxes on the drug. If voters agree this fall, recreational pot would face a 15 percent excise tax, with the proceeds marked for school construction. There would also be a new recreational pot sales tax of 10 percent, in addition to regular statewide and local sales taxes. [Wow the crooks in Colorado want to shake down pot smokers for a 25 percent tax. Well, at least that is better then Arizona Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema's outrageous proposal of a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana. She is pretty well hated by the marijuana community in Arizona for that, although her police supporters love her for the tax] The special sales tax would be spent on marijuana regulation and new educational efforts to keep the drug away from children.

"Public safety and the safety of our children were at the forefront of our minds," said Sen. Randy Baumgardner, R-Hot Sulphur Springs, the sponsor of some of the pot bills. [If he said cold hard case was at the forefront of our minds I would agree with him. But saying it's for "the safety of our children" is a big lie!!!]

Lawmakers and a few dozen marijuana legalization activists on hand to see the pot bills signed into law agreed that marijuana laws will see many changes in coming years if the federal government doesn't intervene.

"We are going to be talking about marijuana in the state of Colorado for some time," predicted Rep. Mark Waller, R-Colorado Springs, a sponsor of the stoned-driving law.

Mason Tvert, spokesman for the national legalization advocacy group the Marijuana Policy Project, predicted a lot of states will watch to see how recreational pot regulation works in Colorado and Washington.

"We can regulate the sale of alcohol in a responsible manner, and there's no reason we can't regulate the sale of something objectively less harmful — marijuana," Tvert said.

Arizona sued over ban on abortions based on sex, race

Of course our government masters don't want to use that common sense on this issue. Instead they think abortion is wrong and are planning on using the force of the government to prevent woman from having abortions.

Source

Arizona sued over ban on abortions based on sex, race

Associated Press Wed May 29, 2013 12:08 PM

Civil rights groups are suing Arizona to block a 2011 law that bans abortions based on the race or sex of the child and makes it a felony to knowingly provide a sex- or race-based abortion.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona filed the federal lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of two civil rights groups. They say the law unconstitutionally singles out Asian and black women based on stereotypes and the sponsors’ beliefs that Asian and black women may choose an abortion because of race or the baby’s sex.

The suit seeks an injunction blocking the law.

Republican Rep. Steve Montengro was a sponsor of the 2011 law and says it was needed to protect the dignity of life and not allow abortions based on sex or race.

Source Posted on May 29, 2013 12:01 pm by EJ Montini

State sued, again, over abortion law

Arizona is getting sued – again – due to a misguided, overreaching anti-abortion law passed by the legislature.

So what else is new?

Just last week the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals struck down an Arizona law that would have outlawed abortions performed after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The Arizona law, passed in 2011, was struck down by a unanimous three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit (including a conservative appointed by the first President Bush), which wrote in part, “A woman has a constitutional right to choose to terminate her pregnancy before the fetus is viable. A prohibition on the exercise of that right is per se unconstitutional.”

Being “per say unconstitutional” doesn’t mean much in the abortion argument.

The abortion argument is more about emotion.

More about appeasing powerful political interests.

Now the state is being sued for having passed HB 2443, a classic solution in search of a problem.

The law outlaws abortions performed to prevent the births of female and minority babies.

There is no evidence this is a problem in Arizona.

None.

All the law does, in essence, is raise unnecessary and unwarranted suspicion of African American and Asian American women.

So the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Arizona filed a lawsuit on behalf of the NAACP of Maricopa County and the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF).

In challenging the law, Mariam Yeung, Executive Director of NAPAWF, issued a statement that reads in part:

“HB 2443 perpetuates anti-immigrant sentiment by unfairly stereotyping Asian women who seek an abortion. This is deeply offensive to our community.

“By assuming Asian American women, because of our culture, will choose to terminate pregnancies based on sex, this law turns Asian American women into suspects and encourages invasive scrutiny of our motives that other women would not be subjected to. The law is cloaked in the language of civil rights and equality for women, but it is a wolf in sheep’s clothing…”

Funny (not in a ha ha way), that’s a description I’ve heard more than once for the Arizona Legislature.

$81 million fine for pouring bleach down the drain???

Source

Wal-Mart pleads guilty for Calif. hazardous waste

In this May 9, 2013 photo, a worker pushes

By Paul Elias and Greg Risling Associated Press Tue May 28, 2013 2:22 PM

SAN FRANCISCO — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will pay $81 million after pleading guilty to criminal charges the company dumped hazardous waste across California, a company spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Wal-Mart entered the plea in San Francisco federal court to misdemeanor counts of negligently dumping pollutants from its stores into sanitation drains across the state, spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan said.

As part of the plea, the company will pay the substantial fine that also will cover charges in Missouri.

The plea agreements announced Tuesday end a nearly decade-old investigation involving more than 20 prosecutors and 32 environmental groups.

In 2010, the company agreed to pay $27.6 million to settle similar allegations made by California authorities that led to the overhaul of its hazardous waste compliance program nationwide. The state investigation began eight years ago when a San Diego County health department employee saw a worker pouring bleach down a drain.

In another instance, officials said a Solano County boy was found playing in a mound of fertilizer near a Wal-Mart garden section. The yellow-tinted powder contained ammonium sulfate, a chemical compound that causes irritation to people’s skin, eyes and respiratory tract.

“We have fixed the problem,” Buchanan said. “We are obviously happy that this is the final resolution.” [I suspect the state of California is only happy with one resolution and that is the $81 million resolution]

Court documents show the illegal dumping occurred in 16 California counties between 2003 and 2005. Federal prosecutors said the company didn’t train its employees on how to handle and dispose hazardous materials at its stores.

The result, prosecutors say, was that waste was tossed into local trash bins or poured into the local sewer systems. The waste also was improperly taken to one of several product return centers throughout the United Sates without proper safety documentation.

Buchanan said employees are better trained on how clean up, transport and dispose of dangerous products such as fertilizer that are spilled in the store or have their packages damaged.

For instance, workers are armed with scanners that tell them whether a damaged package is considered to contain a hazardous material and are trained on how to handle it, she said.

Microsoft Marijuana????

Former Microsoft manager has big ideas about marketing retail pot

By Bob Young

Seattle Times staff reporter

Former Microsoft manager Jamen Shively wants to create the first national brand of retail marijuana and to open pot trade with Mexico.

Shively plans to announce that and more in a Thursday news conference he says will feature Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico.

“Let’s go big or go home,” Shively said. “We’re going to mint more millionaires than Microsoft with this business.”

He’s acquiring medical-marijuana dispensaries in Washington and Colorado, he said, and plans to become the leader in both the medical and adult-recreational pot markets. He sees the marijuana market as the only one of its size in which there does not exist a single established brand.

He and Fox plan to announce a proposal for regulating the trade of marijuana between the two countries, he said.

Some details of the trade agreement remain to be worked out, such as how to get around international rules forbidding legal pot, Shively admitted.

“I don’t know how exactly that would be done, but I know it’s been done in other industries,” he said.

Alison Holcomb, primary author of the state’s legal-marijuana law, said Shively faces a huge obstacle in the federal government’s prohibition of marijuana.

“Having a national chain of marijuana-based companies is not only explicitly counter to the existing prohibition, but also counter to the government’s expressed concern about business growing too large,” said Holcomb, drug-policy director for the ACLU of Washington.

But Shively, 45, likened the federal prohibition to the Berlin Wall and said it’s crumbling, with fewer defenders every day.

He also said he’s created a way to shield investors from federal regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And, he contends a venture this size is too big to operate recklessly and take risks — such as diverting legal pot to black markets — that the federal government is most concerned about.

“What we’re all about is making it extremely professional and having the highest quality and efficiencies,” he said.

What if the feds were to come after him?

Shively paraphrased Obi-Wan Kenobi. “He said ‘Darth, if you strike me down I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.’”

If she were Shively’s attorney, Holcomb said, she’d advise him to read the so-called Cole memorandum from the U.S. Department of Justice. It “explicitly mentioned a concern with operations involving thousands of plants and millions of dollars” and is evidence of the federal concern with big pot businesses.

Shively, though, seems undeterred. He has become almost evangelical about pot and its benefits, particularly for medical patients, such as his father who has prostate cancer.

“I’ve just fallen in love with the plant,” he said. “Especially in the medical realm I’ve gone from entrepreneur to advocate to activist, seriously.”

Shively worked at Microsoft six years, he said, and had the title of corporate strategy manager. He said he’s been smoking pot for a year and a half.

Bob Young: 206-464-2174 or byoung@seattletimes.com

Ruling prompts changes at MCSO

Source

Ruling prompts changes at MCSO

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Wed May 29, 2013 10:32 PM

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office human-smuggling unit no longer patrols county highways looking for undocumented immigrants, and any plans for work-site enforcement operations have been put on hold following a federal judge’s ruling that found the agency discriminated against Latinos.

The ramifications of last week’s landmark federal-court decision have started to appear in the day-to-day operations at the Sheriff’s Office, but experts said the ruling will likely have a broader impact on other police departments around the country that relied on the same legal advice as MCSO to pursue similar immigration-enforcement policing methods.

Kevin Johnson, dean of the law school at the University of California-Davis, said the judge’s ruling that Arpaio’s office engaged in racial profiling has put other police departments that followed the guidance of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach on notice that their methods are flawed.

Johnson said that U.S. District Judge Murray Snow’s ruling Friday was a clear rebuke of the way sheriff’s deputies had been trained and called into question Kobach’s legal interpretation that local police have inherent authority to be involved in immigration enforcement, which MCSO and other agencies had relied on.

“It seems to me that police departments across the country are on notice that maybe Kris Kobach is not the best person you want to put together a program that is going to withstand legal scrutiny,” Johnson said.

But Kobach, a professor of law and an architect of Arizona’s immigration-enforcement law known as Senate Bill 1070, defended his interpretation of federal law.

And he said it was Snow’s analysis of the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures, that was flawed and inconsistent with legal precedent. [Yea, the tyrants that support the police state always say the 4th Amendment doesn't apply to them. How silly of us to think the 4th Amendment means what it says. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized"]

“The judge has written his opinion in a way that doesn’t respect the inherent authority of local law enforcement,” Kobach said. [Translation - I got a gun and a badge and can do anything I want. F* the Constitution, I got a gun and a badge]

Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s immigration-enforcement program was, in his words, a “pure program … you go after illegals.”

Those words came back to bite Arpaio in Snow’s 142-page ruling that settled long-standing racial-profiling allegations against the Sheriff’s Office in favor of a group of citizens that grew to include every Latino stopped by deputies since 2007.

The judge drew heavily from Arpaio’s news releases and media statements to illustrate the sharp contrasts between what the sheriff and his deputies said on the witness stand vs. what they said when immigration-enforcement efforts were at their peak.

Part of the controversy over the program came from the use of traffic stops to engage in immigration enforcement. The relatively routine stops for minor traffic violations gave deputies an opening to come into contact with drivers and passengers. If the deputies became suspicious that vehicle occupants were in the country without authorization, based on factors like language, appearance and ethnicity, the deputies could ask their immigration status.

That practice, driven by political considerations and public perceptions, Snow ruled, led to more Latino drivers being stopped during certain sheriff’s operations and longer detention times for Latinos while they waited for deputies to confirm their immigration status, which Snow found to be in violation of the Constitution.

Snow found flawed training that the Sheriff’s Office offered its deputies compounded the errors.

“This training erroneously instructed MCSO deputies that a person within the country without authorization was necessarily committing a federal crime, and they thus maintained the authority to detain them for criminal violations,” Snow wrote.

Much of the sheriff’s ability to enforce federal immigration law is rooted in a theory that gives local police “inherent authority” to administer federal statutes.

Before 2009, that authority was bolstered by an agreement with the federal government that gave 160 deputies training to enforce federal immigration law. After the Department of Homeland Security rescinded that agreement with the Sheriff’s Office in October 2009, the Sheriff’s Office contracted with Kobach to offer training for all of Arpaio’s deputies.

Kobach, who was paid $300 per hour for his work with the Sheriff’s Office, opens the training videos with a primer on the legal basis of “inherent authority.” [Wow! He gets paid $300 an hour to help Sheriff Joe flush our rights down the toilet!!!]

Snow spent a good portion of his ruling dismantling that argument. Experts said the federal judge’s position should serve as a cautionary sign to other agencies that have incorporated Kobach’s line of reasoning into their enforcement practices.

“Here you have a fairly clear rebuke by a federal court of what officers were being trained in and what they were doing,” said Johnson, the UC-Davis law-school dean.

“(Snow) is a conservative in the way that respects the rule of the law, and he took some offense to the fact that Sheriff Arpaio can say things like, ‘They took away my 287(g) agreement, but I can do what I want anyway,’ ” Johnson said.

“This claim of inherent authority and ability to do whatever the heck the head of the Sheriff’s Office wants to do was something that stuck in Judge Snow’s craw. This is a nation ruled by laws, and I think this judge takes the rule of law seriously.” [Somebody needs to tell Judge Snow that if you got a gun and a badge you are above the law!!! Or at least that's what Sheriff Joe would like]

Kobach first appeared in Arizona when he was a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He agreed to help the state defend its employer-sanctions law, which gives prosecutors the power to revoke the business license of an employer found to have knowingly hired an illegal immigrant, and later made a name for himself as an author of SB 1070.

Kobach’s stance on immigration enforcement stems from his work in the U.S. Justice Department, which in 2002 issued an opinion that gave local police the inherent authority to enforce immigration law.

Kobach said Snow’s ruling was inconsistent with legal precedent, including last year’s Supreme Court decision that struck down much of SB 1070.

“There are a number of elements of the injunction that are really dramatic and go way beyond what the law allows,” Kobach said. “This injunction suggests that holding a person for a few extra minutes while they (local police) make that phone call (to federal agencies) is prohibited.”

The ruling is sound in its stance against targeting motorists and passengers because of their race, Kobach said, but Snow’s view of the inherent powers of local police is wrong. [yea, some how Judge Snow doesn't realize that if you have a gun and a badge you can do anything you want and you are above the Constitution!!!! Well at least that's how Sheriff Joe thinks.]

“At that point, the judge starts making mistakes. The judge has written his opinion in a way that doesn’t respect the inherent authority of local law enforcement,” Kobach said. “This opinion could potentially cripple state and federal cooperation on enforcement of immigration law.” [And we certainly wouldn't want every cop in America to think he had to obey the law. Hey any cop knows when you have a gun and a badge you are above the law. As Tempe Police Sergeant Chuck Schoville said on the Tempe government propaganda TV channel Tempe StreetBeat - “You know why you say I’m right? Because I’ve got a gun and a badge. I’m always right.” ]

Arpaio has promised to adhere to the ruling, though he disagrees with it, and pulling the members of the human-smuggling unit off Maricopa County highways was part of that plan, he said. [Give Sheriff Joe 30 days and he will be telling the media he ain't going to let some stinking judge tell him how to do his job. Hey, he's got a gun and a badge and will do what he feels like]

The 16 deputies in that unit, along with six assigned to investigate work-site violations, will all continue to investigate and follow up on suspects charged with violating Arizona law, Arpaio said.

“As sheriff, I uphold the law. The court’s order is now clear: we will no longer detain persons believed to be in the country without authorization whom we cannot arrest on state charges. I have already so instructed my deputies,” Arpaio said in a statement.

Snow’s ruling can be read as another step in the ongoing definition of state and federal roles when it comes to immigration enforcement, said David Harris, a University of Pittsburgh professor and national expert on racial profiling.

Arpaio and Arizona both rose to the national forefront of the immigration-enforcement movement, he said, and the Supreme Court ruling on SB 1070 and the District Court ruling on the sheriff’s enforcement tactics have helped paint a complete picture for observers nationwide.

“To the extent that people said, ‘Hey, they did it in Arizona, and it’s working there,’ they may also now say, ‘A federal court has said, This is wrong, it’s unconstitutional and it’s going to stop,’ ” Harris said. “In the formal sense, the ruling doesn’t reach beyond Arizona, but it will have a wide ripple effect across the country because Arizona was the first state to try this type of enforcement.”

Arpaio’s attorneys have vowed to appeal Snow’s order, and Lyle Mann, executive director of the Arizona police standards board, said it will take an Appeals Court ruling to set the kind of precedent that could require Arizona officials to offer police new training.

Kobach anticipates an appeal against Snow’s ruling. “The ruling is legally weak,” he said. “The final word on this particular case is still coming.”

Former Phoenix prison guard convicted of sex abuse

Source

Former Phoenix prison guard convicted of sex abuse

By Matthew Longdon The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Wed May 29, 2013 8:05 PM

A former prison guard has been convicted of sexually abusing two inmates at a federal facility in Phoenix.

A jury found Jose Arnulfo Martinez, 49, of Phoenix, guilty of six counts of sexual abuse of a ward Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Phoenix.

Martinez sexually abused two inmates three times each in 2008 and 2010, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona.

Martinez worked for the Bureau of Prisons at the Federal Correctional Institution in Phoenix and supervised federal inmates.

“Federal prison inmates have a right to serve their court-ordered sentences without having to endure sexual abuse by anyone, and especially not at the hands of those who are entrusted with their care,” U.S. Attorney John S. Leonardo said in a prepared statement.

Each count of sexual abuse of a ward faces a maximum penalty of up to 15 years in prison, a $250,000 fine or both. The sentencing has been scheduled for Aug. 26.

$1 million bail for a silly prank!!!!

Source

Disneyland worker arrested in park’s dry-ice blast

Associated Press Thu May 30, 2013 8:08 AM

ANAHEIM, California — Police arrested a Disneyland employee on suspicion of putting a so-called dry ice bomb in a theme park trash can where it exploded, authorities said Wednesday.

No one was injured in the small blast, but Disneyland briefly evacuated the Mickey’s Toontown section where the incident occurred Tuesday. The trash can did not blow up.

Christian Barnes, 22, of Long Beach was arrested for investigation of possessing a destructive device, just hours after the blast, police Sgt. Bob Dunn said in a statement.

It wasn’t immediately clear how police connected Barnes to the blast and Dunn did not return repeated calls. Police said earlier they would scrutinize social media and surveillance footage.

Disneyland spokeswoman Suzi Brown released a statement Wednesday saying the resort was working closely with authorities.

Barnes will be suspended or fired, she said.

Barnes, who worked as an outdoor vendor for the resort, was held on $1 million bail, Dunn said.

Dunn said Barnes was cooperating with investigators, telling them the blast was an isolated incident with results he did not expect, Dunn said. Dunn did not elaborate.

Barnes’ case had not yet been presented to prosecutors, said Farrah Emami, a spokeswoman for the Orange County district attorney’s office. The bail amount could change when prosecutors get the case and charges are decided, she said.

Detectives found fragments of a water bottle in the trash can and believe Barnes placed dry ice inside it to create the explosion, the police spokesman said.

A telephone listing for a Christian Barnes in Long Beach rang unanswered Wednesday.

So-called dry ice bombs are easy to make, and on a much smaller scale, are sometimes used as classroom chemistry demonstrations, said John Goodpaster, an explosives expert at the Purdue School of Science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

The size of the explosion, however, can vary greatly depending on the container’s size, material and the amount of dry ice used, he said.

The devices could cause injuries to those nearby if the built-up pressure was high enough, including cuts from flying bottle shards, he said.

“This is a simple device. It’s not a pipe bomb filled with gunpowder, but it definitely will generate an explosion,” Goodpaster said.

“If somebody was throwing something out, they could have been injured.”

Disneyland vendor linked to Toontown blast due in court

Disneyland vendor linked to Toontown blast due in court

By Joseph Serna and Andrew Blankstein

May 30, 2013, 6:16 a.m.

A Long Beach man accused of exploding a dry ice bomb at Disneyland is scheduled to appear in Orange County Superior Court on Thursday morning.

Christian Barnes, 22, is being held in lieu of $1-million bail in connection with the Tuesday afternoon explosion in a Toontown trash can. [A million dollar bond for a silly prank that hurt no one and caused no damage?] The blast did little if any damage to the trash can and caused no injuries, officials said, [well yes, it is a million dollar bond for a silly prank that hurt no one and caused no damage] but did spook park guests and forced Disneyland to close Toontown for two hours while the Orange County Sheriff’s Department bomb squad swept the area.

“He’s not no one that would do something to hurt anyone or anything like that,” Christian’s father, Raymond Barnes, told KTLA.

Neither Anaheim police nor Disney officials would discuss whether they believed the dry ice bomb was a prank or something more sinister.

Anaheim Police Sgt. Bob Dunn would only say that though it took “some knowledge to construct something like this,” Barnes did not appear to be aware of the potential consequences of his actions. [Yea, making a CO2 pop bottle bomb is some real rocket science that requires a PHD!!! You have to know how to twist the cap off of a 2 liter Pepsi or Coke bottle. Real rocket science there any 5 year old could do. Then it gets more complex and you have to add some dry ice. And last but not least the you have to screw the cap back on the Pepsi bottle. Come on 5th graders in Arizona have been arrested for making harmless CO2 pop bottle bombs here!]

“This is a very serious incident with very serious consequences that could include the injury or death of people,” Dunn said. [yea, and somebody that farts on a subway could cause almost as much mayhem]

Barnes was an outdoor soda vendor who had easy access to the dry ice used to keep the refreshments cold, a park official said.

Investigators believe that the dry ice was placed in a plastic water bottle and that the pressure that built up in the container as the dry ice got warmer caused the explosion about 5:30 p.m. [Damn I wonder why the cops are choosing to give out this highly technical information that could allow people with out PHDs in physics to make pop bottle bombs!!!]

Disneyland spokeswoman Suzi Brown would not discuss details of the incident but said in a prepared statement: “We take matters like this very seriously and are working closely with local authorities.”

Some IED incidents I was involved in????

Father of Chechen killed in Florida says FBI murdered him

Father of Chechen killed in Florida says FBI murdered him

By Will Englund, Thursday, May 30, 8:17 AM E-mail the writer

MOSCOW – After FBI agents questioned Ibragim Todashev for hours on end about one of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing, his father alleged Thursday, they murdered him to keep him from talking.

Abdulbaki Todashev, who applied Thursday for a U.S. visa so that he can pick up his son’s body in Orlando, where he died, said that he has heard nothing from U.S. officials about the May 22 shooting.

“I want justice, I want an investigation,” he said at a Moscow news conference. “They come to your house like bandits, and they shoot you.”

Ibragim Todashev, 27, was an acquaintance of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the alleged organizer of the Boston bombing. Todashev had moved to Florida two years ago from Massachusetts, his father said. He said FBI officials questioned him on three separate occasions this spring.

The first time, they asked him about the bombing. The second time, his father said, they asked him about a triple murder in Waltham, Mass., that police suspect Tsarnaev may have carried out. The third interview, which took place at Todashev’s home and included Massachusetts state troopers, ended with his death, his father said.

Despite earlier accounts of the incident,two law enforcement officials told The Washington Post on Wednesday that Todashev was not armed. He was shot seven times. The FBI has said that he attacked an agent, just moments after confessing to his part in the Waltham slayings.

The elder Todashev displayed photographs of his son’s body — apparently the same pictures as those shown by the younger man’s widow at a Florida news conference Wednesday evening — that he said show six shots to the body and a “control” shot to the back of the head.

“This is proof of cold-blooded murder,” said Maxim Shevchenko, a journalist and member of the presidential human rights council who organized Thursday’s news conference.

It was an “extrajudicial execution,” said Zaurbek Sadakhanov, a Chechen lawyer who also was present. “Why was he interrogated three times without a lawyer? Why no recording? Why seven shots? And why should I believe their version? Why do American policemen believe they can do whatever they want?”

Todashev’s father said his son had been planning to return to Chechnya on May 24, though he had apparently canceled his tickets before he was killed on May 22. He suggested that the FBI didn’t want his son to return to Russia.

“Maybe my son knew some sort of information that the police didn’t want to get out,” he said. “They shut him up. That’s my opinion.”

Ibragim Todashev was the eldest of 12 children. His father said the family fled Chechnya after the wars of secession erupted, eventually finding a haven in the Volga River city of Saratov. Abdulbaki Todashev had once studied to be a veterinarian there, in the Soviet era.

Ibragim Todashev studied English for three years in Saratov, then, in 2008, returned with his family to by-then more stable Chechnya and completed his fourth year of higher education at Grozny University, his father said. The elder Todashev got a job with the city, and today he is the head of the administrative unit of the Grozny mayor’s office.

As soon as he left the university, Ibragim Todashev went to the United States on a program that enabled him to perfect his English, his father said. Three or four months later, when it was time to return, he called his father and said he wanted to stay on a while.

“I wasn’t against it,” the father said. Chechnya was still struggling, and life in the United States had to be more secure. Ibragim was living in Boston, and got to know Tsarnaev because they belonged to the same gym, his father said. They had each other’s phone numbers, “but they were never close friends,” he said.

Ibragim Todashev applied for a green card, which meant he had to stay in the United States. He stayed active in mixed martial arts, but a knee injury and surgery on his meniscus put an end to those dreams. Two months ago, his father said, he received the green card, and that’s when he started making plans to come back to Grozny for a visit, knowing he would be able to reenter the United States .

After the Boston bombing, the younger Todashev called his father and told him he was being watched. He said he didn’t believe Tsarnaev and his brother Dzhokhar were responsible for the bombing. “This is a set-up,” he told his father. And he told him about the first two rounds of questioning by the FBI.

Todashev said he learned of his son’s death when Khusen Taramov, a friend and fellow-Chechen, called him. Taramov had been at Todashev’s apartment the night of May 22. The FBI called and asked Ibragim Todashev to come by for more questioning, but he told them they could find him at home, his father said Thursday.

When they arrived, they took Taramov aside and interrogated him outdoors for several hours, the father said, then told him to go. A few hours later, the younger Todashev was shot.

Abdulbaki Todashev is convinced his son is innocent of the Waltham murders. “I raised him. I know what kind of person he is,” he said.

Shevchenko decried the “systematic persecution of Chechens” in the United States and criticized the Russian Foreign Ministry for not doing more to stand up for Chechens who are abroad.

The lawyer, Sadakhanov, said he had some advice for Taramov: Leave the country. “Nowadays it’s not safe to be a witness in the United States,” he said.

Uncle Thompson supports the police state in NYC???

Source

Thompson Sees No Need to Bar a Police Tactic

By MICHAEL BARBARO

Published: May 29, 2013

The aggressive era of stop-and-frisk policing in New York City is, in every sense of the word, on trial: the subject of a high-stakes federal court case, scorching denunciations from civil rights leaders and emotional calls for its dismantlement by liberal lawmakers.

But in a stand that is surprising black leaders and worrying some allies, William C. Thompson Jr., the sole African-American candidate for mayor, is steadfastly unwilling to join the tear-it-down chorus.

Instead, Mr. Thompson is embracing elements of the polarizing crime-fighting strategy and winning praise from an unlikely duo deeply associated with it: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

On Wednesday, Mr. Thompson’s restrained approach paid by far its biggest political dividend when a coalition of unions representing about 100,000 city law enforcement officials voted to endorse his Democratic campaign, making clear that what appealed to its members was his comparatively conservative posture on criminal justice, according to people told of the decision.

But in a city whose racial politics are never far from view, Mr. Thompson’s moderate stance on an issue that has consumed the city’s black and Latino community is inflaming a number of high-profile African-American Democrats, even holding up the endorsement of a party stalwart, the Rev. Al Sharpton.

Mr. Sharpton, who likens opposition to stop-and-frisk tactics to a snowballing social movement, has let Mr. Thompson know that he is displeased with his views on policing and should not assume that black voters will automatically support his candidacy.

“I don’t think it’s wise to be distant from a social movement if you are going to run for mayor of this city, especially as a black candidate,” Mr. Sharpton said in an interview. “I have expressed this to Thompson.”

“This,” Mr. Sharpton added, “is not a marginal issue.”

Mr. Thompson’s message, more law-and-order than reactive liberal activist, is upending assumptions about a black candidate for mayor in a city where David N. Dinkins struggled with the perception that he could not control crime and urban decay in the early 1990s.

In an interview, Mr. Thompson spoke of an “overreaction to stop and frisk” that he said glossed over its usefulness as a police tool, even as he forcefully criticized its excesses over the past few years.

As rivals call for the abolition of stop-and-frisk tactics as a routine police procedure, and an independent inspector general to monitor the police, Mr. Thompson said the right way to curb abuses was by asserting his values on the Police Department when he becomes mayor, not through a patchwork of quick fixes that could hamstring him once in office.

His criminal justice platform, he said, “isn’t about running for mayor; it’s about governing.”

Still, Mr. Thompson is now bucking the left wing of his party on three fronts: by pledging to keep stop-and-frisk operations as a crime-fighting tool; proposing an inspector general who operates within the Police Department, rather than outside of it (“I don’t want to create additional bureaucracy,” he said); and opposing a City Council bill that would open state courts to legal claims of racial profiling by the Police Department. (He said it would divert precious city finances to endless legal bills.)

In each case, at least one of his rivals in the mayor’s race — and in some cases, several of them — has staked out territory to his left, forcing Mr. Thompson to defend his Democratic credentials on what are possibly the most emotional questions of the 2013 campaign.

During a candidate forum a few weeks ago, John C. Liu, a Democratic candidate, called on Mr. Thompson to join him in demanding the abolition of stop-and-frisk policing.

The exchange that followed produced the most memorable — and poignantly personal — exchange in the mayor’s race.

“I’m the one who has to worry about my son getting shot on the street,” Mr. Thompson thundered.

In the interview, Mr. Thompson said he was deeply affected watching crime overtake and oppress neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where he grew up, in the early 1990s.

But his personal experiences cut both ways, simultaneously fueling his fury over what he calls the “misuse and abuse” of the stop-and-frisk policy. Friends and acquaintances have been stopped by police “for no other reason than who you are,” he said.

And Mr. Thompson recalled his discomfort at having to prepare his stepson, then 13, for the likelihood that he could be stopped by the police, a conversation that Mr. Thompson said his own father never had to have with him. “Be calm,” Mr. Thompson counseled.

“Why am I having this conversation with a 13-year-old, who really is just a child?” he recalled thinking to himself.

Though it has won him new political partners, like the United Uniformed Workers of New York, the coalition of 20 law enforcement unions, Mr. Thompson’s measured police plan may have cost him old friends.

On Wednesday, District Council 37, the city’s largest municipal labor union, decided to endorse Mr. Liu, after backing Mr. Thompson in 2009. Mr. Liu’s outspoken opposition to the stop-and-frisk policy played a role, according to a union official involved in the discussions, who said rank-and-file members saw less courage in Mr. Thompson’s position.

The question, for Mr. Thompson, is whether black and Latino voters, who will prove crucial to his Democratic campaign, will share those reservations.

A Quinnipiac University poll, released last month, showed that while 59 percent of white voters approved of the stop-and-frisk tactic, 72 percent of black voters and 58 percent of Latino voters disapproved of it.

Those numbers, combined with the surging rates of police stops in recent years, have left several black leaders scratching their heads over Mr. Thompson’s policies.

Jumaane D. Williams, a city councilman from Brooklyn who has sponsored legislation against stop-and-frisk tactics, bluntly suggested that Mr. Thompson was taking the allegiance of black voters for granted.

“I think he believes that the color of his skin is what’s needed to get to communities of color, rather than standing on the correct substance of issues,” he said.

Mr. Thompson dismissed that claim as “ridiculous.” He added: “I would never take support of black voters for granted. Ever.”

As he outlines his position, Mr. Thompson at times echoes the oratory of Mr. Bloomberg, stop-and-frisk policing’s biggest champion, who has said: “I understand that innocent people don’t like to be stopped. But innocent people don’t like to be shot and killed, either.”

Unlike Mr. Bloomberg, however, he also gives voice to the anger and pain of those who find the tactic dehumanizing.

And, underscoring his desire to reassure those uneasy about a return to lawlessness in post-Bloomberg New York, he has pushed for the hiring of 2,000 additional police officers.

“It’s an extremely tricky balance,” said Representative Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat from Brooklyn and Queens, who is black and has yet to make an endorsement in the mayor’s race. Mr. Jeffries has repeatedly spoken out against excessive use of stop-and-frisk policing.

“He has to convince one set of New Yorkers that he will continue dramatic declines in crime and keep our city one of the safest in the country,” Mr. Jeffries said, “and on the other hand, he has to convince an aggrieved community of color that the Police Department on his watch will behave in a dramatically different fashion.”

Inside Mr. Thompson’s political operation, there have at times been open disagreements over his policies on policing.

But Mr. Thompson has argued back that every neighborhood deserves the sense of security that has become the new normal in the city’s wealthier precincts. “I haven’t been shy,” he said, “about making sure that all communities in this city are entitled to safety.”

Cops draw blood from teenager suspected of smoking pot

Ariz. high court rules on blood test of juvenile

Associated Press Thu May 30, 2013 11:21 AM

The Arizona Supreme Court says the constitutional protections on searches and seizures means that voluntary consent of a person accused of DUI is needed to justify a blood draw by police without a warrant.

The court's ruled Thursday in a case involving a blood draw performed by a Pima County sheriff's deputy on a 16-year-old high school student who allegedly drove to school while under the influence of marijuana.

The student agreed to have his blood drawn but the Supreme Court says the consent wasn't truly voluntary because he'd earlier been handcuffed and was told he had to submit to testing.

The Supreme Court said its ruling doesn't cover whether the juvenile lacked the legal capacity to consent or whether the blood draw violated his parents' rights.

Montgomery weighing retrials for Arias, Milke

Source

County murder cases in flux

Montgomery weighing retrials for Arias, Milke

By Michael Kiefer The Republic | azcentral.com Fri May 31, 2013 7:28 AM

They are two femme fatale murder cases a generation apart. But over the next few months, Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery has to make hard decisions about whether to take them both back to court.

Should he retry Debra Milke, whose 23-year-old conviction and death sentence were recently overturned in federal court because of a tainted confession, or let her go free?

And should he take celebrity murderer Jodi Arias before a new jury to try to finesse a death sentence or plead her to a life sentence to cut the county’s losses?

He doesn’t know yet. His decisions could have political as well as legal implications as both cases have garnered international publicity and revolve around the hot-button issue of the death penalty.

In all likelihood, he will go forward on both cases and decide whether to settle them later.

“Right now, we are preparing for trial in both of those cases,” Montgomery told The Arizona Republic. “It would be irresponsible not to prepare, regardless of what final decisions are made.”

That would mean setting a trial date for Milke within 90 days and then evaluating whether he has a case.

Arias already has a trial date of July 18, but because one of Arias’ defense attorneys, Jennifer Willmott, has a conflict with the date, it will likely be moved back, giving Montgomery more time to ponder his options.

“I do not feel pressed to make any immediate decisions in either of the two cases,” Montgomery said. “If there’s more time to consider, I’m going to take it.”

According to figures gathered by the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Phoenix, 24 death-penalty juries in Arizona have reached an impasse in the penalty stage of the trial since 2003. Of those, only seven cases that were retried ended in death penalties. In most instances, death was taken off the table and the defendant was sentenced to life in prison.

The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office was the only office in the state that seated new juries to try to obtain death sentences.

“I think you have to ask the question if this is the best use of public resources,” former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard said.

At a news conference on Thursday, Montgomery said he was open to discussion with Arias’ defense attorneys.

“If they were to make an offer for resolution, I think I have an ethical responsibility to consider that,” Montgomery said.

Willmott was cautious.

“We’re not making any decisions at this time,” she said.

Montgomery will consult the family of victim Travis Alexander. He will consult with his brain trust, prosecutors with more experience than he has.

“It most likely will be ultimately my decision,” he said.

Montgomery has assigned a prosecutor to the Milke case, Vince Imbordino, a veteran death-penalty prosecutor who tried “Serial Shooters” Dale Hausner, and Sam Dieteman, as well as Dale’s brother Jeff Hausner, who is serving sentences for two non-fatal stabbings during the crime spree.

Imbordino also twice obtained death penalties against David Lamar Anthony, a Peoria man who killed his wife and her children, dumped them in drums of acid and buried them in the desert.

Milke’s attorney, Mike Kimerer, however, is hoping she will soon be released and is pressing for a speedy trial.

Regardless of how the general public feels, Montgomery does not necessarily have a fail-proof position in either case.

Milke, 49, was charged with first-degree murder, accused of conspiring with two acquaintances to kill her son Christopher in 1989. All three were convicted in Maricopa County Superior Court and sentenced to death.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out her 23-year-old murder conviction in March because her conviction depended largely on a confession obtained by a Phoenix police detective who had a history of lying to grand juries and extracting confessions even from unconscious suspects on hospital gurneys. There were no witnesses to Milke’s confession, and it was not recorded. Milke denied she ever confessed.

On Wednesday, a U.S. District Court judge in Phoenix ordered that the detective’s personnel record be turned over to prosecutors and defense attorneys within 21 days.

The case could be difficult to retry 25 years after the fact if the confession is completely thrown out. But that would have to be determined in evidentiary hearings.

Arias, 32, was found guilty of first-degree murder on May 8 after a salacious four-month trial that went viral on the Internet and through social media. She confessed to killing her secret lover, Travis Alexander, 30, who was found dead in his shower in 2008 — shot in the head, stabbed nearly 30 times, and his throat slit. But the jury was unable to agree whether she should be sentenced to death or life in prison.

Because the Arias case was so heavily publicized, though, it may be difficult to seat an impartial jury to reconsider her sentence.

“I really do believe this will be a significant appellate issue in the future,” former Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley said. “I know the public is clamoring for her head, but (Montgomery) has a greater obligation to ensure that confidence in the system is maintained.”

And it would be difficult to change venue because other Arizona counties would be hard-pressed to come up with the facilities and the resources to handle a trial of such magnitude.

“That is a practical matter,” Montgomery said.

Montgomery has said that the cost of a trial should not be an issue in the case.

But Romley doesn’t agree.

“Money comes into play no matter what,” he said. “It shouldn’t be the primary issue, but it comes into play. I think he should seriously consider an agreement of life without possibility of parole.”

Paul Charlton, former U.S. attorney for Arizona, said that as a prosecutor he would have three questions to consider before going forward.

“First, is this what the survivors want?” he asked. “Do they understand the risks involved?”

But as he and Montgomery both point out, the survivors do not ultimately make the decision.

“What kind of resources would you need to carry on the trial?” Charlton continued.

Put another way, how many other cases would get short shrift if all resources were going to this case?

Finally, he said, “is justice better served by trying to reach an agreement with the defendants?”

There may be political risks, as well. If Montgomery continues with either case, he runs the risk of losing, which may be more damaging than settling out front. “I refuse to sit down and figure out the political calculations,” he said.

Montgomery doesn’t have to make any final decisions now.

“There’s no deadline in reaching agreement with the parties,” Charlton said. “There may be a good reason not to shut the door right now.”

Romley and Charton had the same advice.

“Just do what you think is right.”

Did SB 1070 drive Pro’s Ranch Markets out of business????

Source

Pro’s Ranch Markets files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy

By Brandon Brown , The Republic | azcentral.com Thu May 30, 2013 7:47 PM

Pro’s Ranch Markets filed for bankruptcy reorganization this week, citing a negative perception of Hispanics and immigrants in Arizona as one of the reasons for its financial trouble.

The California-based grocery store, which focuses on Latin American foods and has seven locations in Arizona, filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a move that allows the retailer to restructure its debt while continuing to operate.

In its court documents, Pro’s Ranch Markets lists a number of reasons why the company had to file for bankruptcy. Those reasons include a decline in the U.S. economy, especially in the Southwest; loss of construction and blue-collar jobs; and an “adverse, negative and chilling effect of the perception of the State of Arizona towards immigrants and Hispanics including the passage of SB 1070.” A 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down much of SB 1070, which made it a state crime to be in the country illegally.

“We are here for the community and for the people that are here,” said Rick Provenzano, Pro’s Ranch Markets’ chief operating officer.

The company’s bankruptcy filings, submitted Tuesday, also said that “(Pro Ranch Markets) were effectively singled out for an immigration audit to which no other competitor was subjected.”

Pro’s Ranch Markets owes $10 million to $50 million to different creditors, according to court documents. The largest debts are to Unified Grocers, Royal Palm Foods LLC and Marcus Food Co. The company, according to its bankruptcy filing, has estimated assets between $1 million and $10 million.

Metro Phoenix is known to be one of the most competitive grocery markets in the nation. Provenzano said Pro’s Ranch Markets distinguishes itself with hot food and bakery sections, where everything is made from scratch.

In a statement, Chief Financial Officer Michael Provenzano Jr. said the company has obtained a loan commitment of $3 million to continue normal operations through the reorganization process.

Pro’s Ranch Markets operates 11 grocery stores: seven in Arizona, two in New Mexico and two in Texas. It also has a corporate office and warehouse in California and a warehouse in Phoenix. The company employs 2,200 people.

Filing under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code allows a business to reorganize rather than liquidate like a Chapter 7 bankruptcy does. Rick Provenzano said the company is in the early stages of the reorganization process and that the first thing it will do is communicate with its employees, vendors and the community.

“Our stores are full of groceries, the music turned up, and we are open for business,” Provenzano said.

He said that all stores will be open the same hours and there will be no layoffs.

“We need our vendors, we need our customers, we need our team members. We need all three,” Provenzano said.

His father, store founder Mike Provenzano, said the most important thing was to make sure employees get their paychecks today. He said paychecks are ready and that the next step is to talk with vendors about the financial problems.

“We are being as honest as we can be with our vendors,” Mike Provenzano said.

In 2012, Pro’s Ranch Markets was named Arizona Retailer of the Year by the Arizona Food Marketing Alliance.

Arizona mother freed from Mexican jail, heads home

Arizona mother freed from Mexican jail, heads home

By Daniel González The Republic | azcentral.com Fri May 31, 2013 7:50 AM

NOGALES, Ariz. — A mother from Goodyear whose detention in a Mexico jail on suspicion of drug smuggling made international headlines, inspired a “Free Yanira” hashtag on Twitter and won the attention of politicians on both sides of the border was freed by a judge late Thursday after spending nine days in jail.

A small sedan carrying Yanira Maldonado and her family members could be seen crossing through the Nogales port of entry at 12:20 a.m. Friday morning.

A short time earlier, when she was released from prison, a tearful Maldonado stood on the steps of the detention center and expressed her gratitude to her family, her attorney and even the director of the prison who made the facility comfortable in her final days there.

“I want to say, ‘Thank you,’ first to God because I’m free now,” Maldonado said, surrounded by family members. “I’m very grateful that I’m free, for my family, for my children.”

She also thanked the media for bringing the international focus to her case.

“Through you, my situation was extended to the whole world,” she said.

Maldonado said she believes drug smugglers were responsible for hiding the marijuana found under her bus seat and she just happened to be the unlucky passenger who sat there.

“I don’t think I was targeted. Maybe (I was) unlucky,” Maldonado said later during an emotional 2:30 a.m. press conference next to the pool of her hotel in Nogales, Arizona just hours after she was released from a Mexican jail. “Somebody smuggled them there, and I probably sat in the wrong seat.”

Yanira seemed remarkably composed considering the ordeal she had just been through. Smiling often, she sat holding hands with her husband, Gary Maldonado, during the entire 20-minute press conference. He kept his arm around her shoulder as she talked about what it was like to be held in a jail suspected of being a drug smuggler, and then after nine long days being told she was being released.

“I yelled. I’m free. I’m free. I’m free. I was innocent, so I was very happy to be out,” she said.

She said she felt “very sad” when she was first put in jail.

“I could not believe I was there because I was innocent,” she said.

A devote member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Maldonado said she relied on her faith to get her through what family members have called a “nightmare” for her and her husband, Gary. [Sadly religion is part of the problem here. The religious nut jobs are partly responsible for passing many of the draconian laws that make victimless crimes like drug use, gambling, prostitution, pornography and gay sex illegal. And of course many of these laws against victimless crimes have draconian sentences with them. In Arizona when a person is arrested for having child porn, they get a mandatory 10 years in prison for each picture they have and the sentences must be served consecutively, which means people in Arizona who are convicted of having child porn are frequently sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole]

Yanira said she passed the time in jail praying and reading scriptures with other inmates from a copy of the Book of Mormon she found at the jail. On Sunday, she said she also led several other inmates in a fast.

News of her pending release began to spread after a pivotal court hearing earlier in the day.

Family members said a surveillance video shown during a court hearing Thursday helped prove that Yanira Maldonado was not trying to smuggle bundles of marijuana as had been alleged by Mexican federal authorities last week.

News of Maldonado’s release late Thursday drew reaction from Arizona politicians who have taken an interest in her plight, including members of the state’s congressional delegation.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who has been assisting the family, confirmed on Twitter that she was being set free. He tweeted at 10:28 p.m.: “Great news. Just had it confirmed by Consul General. Yanira Maldonado has been released.” [What a joke!!! U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake who is part of the ruling class that caused the problem by passing America's insane and unconstitutional drug war laws seems to take to take credit for the release of Yanira Maldonado]

Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Mesa, also released a statement saying he was thrilled that Maldonado’s release, which her family began to anticipate Thursday afternoon, was finally a reality. [What a joke!!! Rep. Matt Salmon who is part of the ruling class that caused the problem by passing America's insane and unconstitutional drug war laws seems to take to take credit for the release of Yanira Maldonado]

“I received encouraging reports from her husband Gary earlier today that her release looked promising and was constantly assured in my conversations with U.S. and Mexican officials that this situation would be resolved fairly and quickly,” Salmon wrote. “I am heartened that this was the case and Mrs. Maldonado is now coming home where she belongs.” [So what jerk!!! You are also responsible for passing the unconstitutional drug laws which are the cause of the problem!!!]

Family spokesman Brandon Klippel told the media about 10 p.m. that Maldonado was being freed from the jail in Nogales, Sonora, where she had been held since May 22. Media saw her leave the jail just after 11 p.m. into the waiting arms of her husband and other family members.

Klippel, brother-in-law of Yanira Maldonado’s husband, Gary, said she would immediately cross the border into the United States.

Her husband, Gary, said at a news conference earlier Thursday that the family was optimistic Maldonado, 42, would be released after surveillance video showed her boarding a bus in Mexico on her way back to Arizona carrying two blankets, two water bottles and her purse, but no drugs. She had been arrested after soldiers found drugs under her seat on the bus.

“She was in a good mood because she feels she is going to get out,” he said.

His father, Larry Maldonado, said he was among a room full of people allowed to watch the 20-minute surveillance video before it was turned over to the judge, who later decided to dismiss the drug-smuggling case. Her attorney subpoenaed the bus company to obtain the tape.

Had she been found guilty, she could have faced 10 years in prison in Mexico, Larry said.

Yanira’s arrest drew international attention after family members began publicizing the case on social media. They insisted she was not guilty and said she was the victim of a nightmarish mistake that turned the lives of her and her husband upside down.

Flake and Salmon have been in contact with family members as well as with U.S. State Department officials and officials from the Mexican Embassy.

Yanira said she was told around 9:30 p.m. Thursday that she was being set free, but Mexican authorities never explained why she was arrested and detained nor did they offer an apology. In fact, she said won’t know for three months whether federal prosecutors will try to appeal a judge’s decision to release her and not pursue drug trafficking charges.

On Thursday, Mexican officials told The Arizona Republic that Yanira was detained because Mexican soldiers found 12.3 pounds of marijuana hidden under her seat and an empty seat near her while she was traveling on a commercial passenger bus with her husband.

The couple were sitting together, with Gary in the aisle seat and Yanira in the window seat, said Larry, who added that there were empty seats around them.

“As a matter of fact, she was sitting over the drugs. So, because of that, she was arrested as a suspect of drug trafficking,” said Denise Coronado, a spokeswoman for the regional office of Mexico’s Secretariat of National Defense in Sonora. Coronado said the bus driver was also arrested, which is standard protocol.

Mexican soldiers found the drugs after the bus was stopped at 8 a.m. May 22 for a routine inspection near Querobabi in the state of Sonora, Coronado said. Querobabi is about 60 miles north of Hermosillo on the highway between Hermosillo and Nogales.

The case was then turned over to federal prosecutors, who are responsible for investigating whether the drugs belonged to Yanira, Coronado said.

Coronado said soldiers have found marijuana hidden on commercial passenger buses in the past, but “it is not common.”

Patricia Monroy, a spokeswoman for the Mexican Attorney General’s Office in Sonora, and Lydia Antonio de la Garza, a spokeswoman for the Mexican Embassy, declined to answer questions about the case.

Yanira and Gary, 41, were returning to the Valley after attending a funeral for Yanira’s aunt near Los Mochis in Sinaloa, the Mexican state south of Sonora, when the bus passed through the military checkpoint, Larry said.

Family members presented testimony and evidence to try to prove Yanira was not guilty, he said. Five witnesses testified in court on her behalf on Tuesday, including her husband, Larry said. Two relatives who drove Yanira and Gary to the bus station and two bus passengers testified, Yanira’s father-in-law said.

On Wednesday, the soldiers who found the drugs were scheduled to testify, but they did not show up, Larry said.

Coronado said the soldiers were not given sufficient notice to leave their posts near Hermosillo and make the 11:30 a.m. hearing.

Despite the ordeal, Maldonado said she plans to return to Mexico, although not anytime soon. She said she was born there and still has many family members living in Mexico, including several uncles who are fishermen in Sinaloa, a coastal state known for fishing, agriculture and drug trafficking. Yanira is a naturalized U.S. citizen, and Gary is a U.S. citizen.

“I love Mexico,” Maldonado said. “Mexico is a beautiful country. Don’t take this wrong.” On her next trip to Mexico, Yanira said she will drive, not take the bus.

She said she experienced a great sense of relief when she crossed the border back into the United States.

“I felt, I’m home, finally,” she said.

Reporter J.J. Hensley contributed to this report.

Judge Snow's Decision Damns Not Just Arpaio, but All of Maricopa County

One of the reasons "constitutions" are created is so that governments will not trample on the rights of minorities.

Sadly the restrictions on government in "constitutions" are routinely ignored because our government masters think that those restrictions will get in their way of their visions of good governments in which they aid the majority segments of the population who wants to terrorize minorities they dislike.

And when that happens you get things like Sheriff Joe's reign of terror. Also the insane and unconstitutional drug war is another example.

Source

Judge Snow's Decision Damns Not Just Arpaio, but All of Maricopa County

By Stephen Lemons Thursday, May 30 2013

Shortly after the release of U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow's 142-page ruling in the 5 1/2-year-long civil rights lawsuit Melendres v. Arpaio, members of the Hispanic and activist communities gathered at Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox's El Portal restaurant for an impromptu press conference.

Essentially, Snow found that the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office under Joe Arpaio had engaged for years in a pattern and practice of discriminatory policing aimed at Latinos.

He issued a broad injunctive order forbidding the use of "race or Latino ancestry" by the MCSO for law enforcement functions, including stopping vehicles, detaining those vehicles' occupants, and investigating them for violations of federal immigration law, in addition to state laws such as the human-smuggling and employer-sanctions laws.

Snow's decision was a long time coming. The original lawsuit was filed in late 2007 and finally went to trial before Snow last summer. In that time, Arpaio twice was re-elected, using Hispanic-hunting sweeps and employer raids to bolster his popularity with a majority of Maricopa County's electorate.

Several of the community leaders attending the El Portal press conference called on Arpaio to resign and praised Snow's detailed and unambiguous analysis of the evidence presented at trial and of the testimonies of Arpaio, his henchmen, and his deputies.

Others expressed the desire for Snow to appoint a monitor over the MCSO to ensure that Arpaio's office complies. This would be a smart move, considering that the MCSO was found to have destroyed evidence in the case and that the MCSO already violated a previous injunctive order from Snow.

The general mood at Wilcox's restaurant was one of vindication. After all, everyone present was intimately familiar with Arpaio's harassment and terrorizing of Maricopa County's Latino community.

Not that Arpaio has ever kept secret the bigoted nature of his law enforcement priorities. Snow often uses Arpaio's own words and the language in his agency's press releases to illustrate the MCSO's malicious intent.

Of all the speakers, veteran criminal attorney and civil rights activists Antonio Bustamante made the most salient point.

"The majority of people in Maricopa County allowed this to happen," he told the news media. "We have that kind of majority, that kind of community. That is the greatest outrage. Because that is to whom Arpaio was playing. That was his audience."

In fact, it is safe to say that Arpaio would not have turned the MCSO into an immigration-enforcement agency without the approval of the county's electorate.

To be sure, Arpaio's corruption and brutality precedes the wave of post-9/11 nativism that engulfed this state. But Arpaio's embrace of bigotry as a guiding principle of law enforcement did not create the wave. He just rode it.

In 2005, when his deputies arrested nativist wacko Patrick Haab for holding seven Mexicans at gunpoint at a Valley rest stop, Arpaio decried Haab as a vigilante.

"You don't go around pulling guns on people," Arpaio said of Haab at the time. "Being illegal is not a serious crime. You can't go to jail for being an illegal alien . . . You can only be deported."

Arpaio was behind the curve. The Minuteman Project was ongoing at the border, already drawing extremists and opportunists such as neo-Nazi and eventual baby-killer J.T. Ready and minutewoman and future murderess Shawna Forde, among others.

Up 'til that point, Arpaio's shtick had been cruelty toward the incarcerated. Even though more than 70 percent of those in his jails were pre-trial detainees, the idea of punishment before trial was popular with the electorate, even when it involved guards choking people to death in restraint chairs or denying a diabetic her medication until she slipped into a coma and died.

Keeping his vast incarceration complex a harsh and occasionally fatal one guaranteed Arpaio a high approval rating. On the Haab incident, however, he faced backlash from angry whites, while a relative newcomer, Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas (later to be disbarred and disgraced), earned cheers for refusing to charge Haab.

A cunning and adept politician, Arpaio took note and began to act accordingly. The MCSO created a Human Smuggling Unit in 2006 and began to take advantage of Thomas' interpretation of a new state anti-human-smuggling statute, in which Thomas asserted that the average migrant could be prosecuted for helping to smuggle himself or herself into the country.

"I'm going to catch as many [illegal immigrants] as I can and throw them in my jail," Arpaio told the Associated Press in 2006 while announcing a new 250-member anti-immigration posse. "And the jails are not that nice."

And what about the efforts of pro-immigration advocates and civil libertarians to stop him in court?

"I get sued when I go to the toilet," he harrumphed. "If they think I'm going to slow down because of these threats, I've got news for them — I'm not going to slow down. I'll do more of it."

It was just this sort of bluster that Joe's fans loved. And, interestingly, it was just the sort of bluster absent on Friday when Snow's ruling was published.

In the recent past, when the U.S. Department of Justice issued a letter finding that the MCSO engages in discriminatory policing or when the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement jerked its grant of immigration authority to Arpaio's gendarmes under the so-called 287(g) program, Arpaio used such incidents as an opportunity for a chest-thumping news conference, a media stunt, or both.

This time, the MCSO's reply came from Arpaio attorney Tim Casey, promising an appeal and offering the conflicting assertions that the MCSO does not engage in racial profiling and that whatever the MCSO did was ICE's fault because it was ICE that trained the MCSO on immigration to begin with.

That last bit from Casey ignored ICE's removing the MCSO's 287(g) field authority in 2009, in large part because the Sheriff's Office was running roughshod over the U.S. Constitution with its large-scale anti-immigrant sweeps.

Arpaio's office knew it was going to lose its 287(g) authority before it actually was taken way. So, as Snow recounts in his ruling, Deputy Chief Brian Sands asked Human Smuggling Unit Sergeant Brett Palmer to "conduct legal research into whether the MCSO had authority to enforce immigration law absent the authorization of the Department of Homeland Security."

Palmer is not a lawyer, and if you've ever seen him interviewed, you might assume that Walmart wasn't hiring security guards the day he applied to be a deputy sheriff.

Still, after an Internet search, Palmer reported back to Sands that local cops do have authority "to investigate and arrest violators of federal immigration statutes," without the knowledge of the feds. He even cited a federal law to this effect.

There was one big problem, however: The law didn't exist. This didn't stop Arpaio from citing it during an interview with right-wing TV pundit Glenn Beck not long after his losing 287(g) field authority.

Palmer, his colleagues, Arpaio, and a large portion of the public also were under the delusion that all undocumented persons were guilty of a federal criminal offense.

Snow disabuses them of this misconception, in part, by quoting from the U.S. Supreme Court's Senate Bill 1070 ruling in Arizona vs. United States.

"As a general rule," the Supreme Court wrote, "it is not a crime for a removable alien to remain present in the United States. If the police stop someone based on nothing more than possible removability, the usual predicate for an arrest is absent."

Casey's contention that it was ICE that trained the MCSO to racially profile has an element of truth to it. Deputies testified that ICE taught them that race could be used as a factor, if not the sole factor, in detaining people and inquiring into their immigration status.

But Snow finds that this belief is a misinterpretation of a Supreme Court decision, one rejected by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which held that "in locations where a significant portion of the legal resident population is of Hispanic ancestry, Hispanic descent was not a permissible factor to consider, either alone or in conjunction with other factors, in forming reasonable suspicion justifying the detention of a suspect based on his or her unauthorized presence."

No doubt, the 287(g) program, dusted off and proliferated by the administration of President George W. Bush as part of the response to the 9/11 attacks, was fatally flawed.

Nevertheless, when then-Governor Janet Napolitano and the Bush administration conspired in 2007 to bring the 287(g) program to Arizona and give Napolitano's political pal Arpaio the largest 287(g) force in the nation, they were handing a dangerous new law enforcement tool to a bad actor engaged in persistent violations of civil rights.

Napolitano and the Bush administration also were introducing 287(g) to Arizona at a time when anti-Mexican animus was reaching a fever pitch. That a power-mad egomaniac like Arpaio would go nuclear with his new toy was predictable.

But the complicity of ICE and Napolitano (currently Homeland Defense secretary) does not alleviate any of the MCSO's guilt or the guilt of the majority of a public that applauded Arpaio's every racist deed and action.

The MCSO simply assumed it did not engage in racial profiling, and as long as it had a legitimate reason to stop a vehicle or person, MCSO satraps figured they were off the hook.

But Snow observes that several deputies testified that they could develop probable cause to pull over any vehicle after just following it for a couple of minutes.

With this in mind, the MCSO's poorly defined "zero tolerance" policy became a license to racially profile, since the MCSO made it clear before, during, and after its sweeps that the purpose of these "crime-suppression operations" was the arrest of as many illegal immigrants as possible.

The court found credible expert testimony that Latinos were far more likely to be stopped, detained, and arrested during the sweeps, in some cases 54 percent more likely.

This was backed up by a study of MCSO records — at least those the MCSO did not destroy — and by anecdotal evidence as well, such as one Hispanic driver whose ID was checked while that of his non-Hispanic wife was never asked for, an unusual occurrence considering that MCSO deputies were known for checking the ID of all Latinos in a vehicle.

Perhaps the most egregious example comes from the arrest of the lead plaintiff in the case, Manuel de Jesus Ortega-Melendres, who, in 2007, was a passenger in a vehicle driven by an Anglo.

The deputy who pulled over the car was ordered by the Human Smuggling Unit to follow it and develop probable cause to stop it. This after Melendres, a day laborer, got into the driver's truck. (Note: Another bit of Archie Bunker-like bigotry by the MCSO was that it equated day laborers with illegal immigrants, something Snow remarks upon.)

The driver was pulled over for speeding and got off with a warning. Though Melendres was authorized to be in the country, and had the proof on him, the MCSO turned him over to ICE nonetheless. ICE eventually cut him loose after examining his documents.

I and other witnesses to Arpaio's sweeps have seen human suffering and fear on a grand scale: crying children separated from their mothers, Latinos afraid to take to the roads, pedestrians stopped and forced to identify themselves, Hispanic kids menaced by black and gold MCSO cars, and deputies patrolling the streets in ski masks.

There were many in the county who fought back — an army of volunteers led by Phoenix Copwatch dogged MCSO vehicles during the sweeeps. Human rights activist Lydia Guzman of Respect/Respeto helped lawyers with first-person accounts of profiling she culled from those who contacted her.

Attorneys from the ACLU of Arizona, like Annie Lai and Dan Pochoda, spent countless hours researching and investigating the sweeps. Pochoda was even wrongly arrested during one of the MCSO's first large-scale actions, at Pruitt's Furniture in Phoenix.

Activists such as Sal Reza and Carlos Garcia organized the community and documented the racism overwhelming us all. Many, including Reza, were arrested in acts of civil disobedience, and Reza also was targeted by the MCSO and wrongfully arrested in retaliation.

There were the plaintiffs like Melendres, brave enough to come forward and submit themselves to scrutiny, and the many lawyers who worked on the lawsuit, including those who argued for the plaintiffs in front of Snow, such as Cecillia Wang of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project and Stanley Young of the firm Covington & Burling LLP.

When this era of American history is written, future generations will look at Arizona as the repository of the sort of ugliness the Deep South was during the civil rights struggle.

They'll look at the photos and videos of the moms in handcuffs, the lines of arrestees, a self-inflated sheriff, high on his own authority, and they'll wonder, "What did you do to stop it?"

And if you don't have an answer, well, that is your own unique form of punishment.

Not that you're alone in Maricopa County.

The laws against drugs kill people????

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Man dies in Mesa after being arrested, stunned

By Matthew Longdon The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Thu May 30, 2013 8:20 PM

A 25-year-old man died Thursday night in Mesa after he was arrested, stunned with a Taser and medically cleared by paramedics, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.

The U.S. Marshals fugitive task force received a warrant for the former prisoner on Wednesday after he was accused of violating his probation by failing a drug test, according to David Gonzales, U.S. Marshal for Arizona.

Authorities are not publicly identifying the man until his family is notified of his death, Gonzales said.

Investigators located the man late Thursday afternoon near Broadway Road and Country Club Drive, and boxed him in with their vehicles, Gonzales said.

The man became combative after investigators reached him, forcing the Marshals deputies to deploy a Taser, Gonzales said.

The U.S. Marshals policy calls for paramedics to medically clear suspects who are stunned with a Taser, Gonzales said, and medical professionals evaluated the man and determined he was OK to go to jail.

After the man was in custody, investigators discovered evidence that may have linked him to an earlier home invasion in Mesa and called local detectives to the scene, Gonzales said.

The man became agitated as he waited in the back of a law-enforcement car, Gonzales said. Paramedics were called back to the scene and took the man to the hospital where he was pronounced dead shortly before 6 p.m., Gonzales said.

Mesa homicide detectives are investigating the man’s death, according to the Marshals service.

Will Arpaio finally become a sheriff?

Will Arpaio finally become a sheriff?

Joe Arpaio has never been a sheriff, but he has played one on TV.

His five terms in office represent the longest running drama/sit-com/soap opera/cartoon in Arizona history.

From the moment he was elected for the first time in 1992 Arpaio scripted a role for himself that was much more colorful, much more controversial and much more filmable than that of an actual sheriff. Since then he has starred in his own movie, a tragicomic cowboy fantasy that those of us in the media willing put on video and that was transformed by audiences throughout the world into a personal and political blockbuster for Arpaio.

He declared himself the “toughest sheriff in America” and for the past 20 years much of America (and a majority of voters in Maricopa County) actually took that claim seriously.

But things have changed.

Even though the recall effort against him will not end up forcing an election it has managed to force an element of the real world into the Arpaio fairy tale.

And the storyline is straight out of the Brothers Grimm.

Perhaps, finally, the Arpaio story will morph into a reality show.

I was here in 1993 when the newly elected sheriff announced that he wanted to “surround the county” with roadblocks so that his deputies could check every vehicle for drugs.

The county attorney at the time, Rick Romley, gently reminded the sheriff of a little thing called the U.S. Constitution, which conflicted with that particular episode of the Joe Arpaio show.

So he scripted a new story line.

Arpaio became an instant folk hero by opening Tent City and forcing inmates to wear pink underwear and black- and white-striped uniforms.

His publicity stunts not only attracted world-wide attention and thrilled local voters, but generated more interest than local news reports about inmates who died in the jail of abusive treatment.

Lawsuits filed against his office didn’t get nearly the attention than, say, the introduction of chain gangs.

Or the purchase of an armored vehicle.

When Arpaio joined the anti-immigrant crusade of disbarred former county attorney Andrew Thomas the sheriff’s star temporarily shone even brighter.

A few years ago then-Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon urged a gathering of the national press to investigate the sheriff immigration sweeps.

“Come to Phoenix and stop this madness,” Gordon said. “Let’s turn the eyes of the nation on this.”

Arpaio scoffed.

“He doesn’t have to call (on the media), because they’re here every day,” the sheriff said. “I’ve been on 3,000 national shows as sheriff.”

He got tremendous exposure for his Tea Party-instigated investigation into President Barack Obama’s birth certificate at a time there were reports of hundreds of sexual-abuse cases involving children that were not properly handled by his department.

He announced (then decided against it) that he would parade a chain-gang of DUI offenders who were not legal citizens outside Chase Field during Major League Baseball’s all-star weekend.

And yet he seemed puzzled by those who called his antics and policies racist.

On the night of his last re-election Arpaio told me, “My job hasn’t changed at all. I still have the same policies. Illegal immigration was a big change five years ago. I didn’t know it would be that controversial. I would like to get together with the Latino community, but they scream at ya.”

It wasn’t the screaming that finally got to him, however.

It was the quiet, reasoned decision of U.S. District Judge Murray Snow, who issued a 142-page ruling that found Arpaio’s office has engaged in racial profiling.

Because of this the sheriff’s deputies are banned from using race as a factor in detaining people for suspected immigration violations and from arresting suspected illegal immigrants who are not accused of committing state crimes.

The sheriff said he will appeal the judge’s decision.

That’s too bad.

While he awaits another ruling, however, Arpaio could occupy his time by overseeing the operation of the county jails, the enforcement of warrants, the protection of the courts and the policing of unincorporated areas in the county.

In other words, the sheriff might temporarily give up his acting career in order to become a sheriff.