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The Senate approves the measure, 68 to 29, and Obama is expected to sign it. The legislation, previously passed by the House, is named for Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr.

By James Oliphant

October 23, 2009

A bill to make violence against gays and lesbians a federal hate crime cleared the Senate on Thursday and headed to the White House.

The 68-29 vote was a victory for civil rights groups that have long sought to expand the federal statute beyond attacks motivated by religion, race, color or national origin.

The bill, which President Obama is expected to sign, includes penalties for assaults based on a victim's sexual orientation, gender, disability or gender identity.

Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., whose Justice Department would be charged with enforcing the provisions, praised the bill's passage.

"There have been nearly 80,000 hate-crime incidents reported to the FBI since I first testified before Congress in support of a hate-crimes bill 11 years ago," Holder said.

Recent incidents -- such as the June shooting death of an African American security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum by a white supremacist -- "demonstrate that there are still those for whom prejudice can translate into violence," he said.

The legislation also would give federal authorities more power to help state and local law enforcement officials investigate hate crimes and would expand the federal government's ability to intervene. About 45 states have hate-crime statutes.

The bill, which was attached to a $680-billion measure outlining the Pentagon's budget, was passed by the House on Oct. 8.

Some of the 28 Republicans who opposed it said they didn't like being forced to vote on the issue as part of a defense bill.

"It's a shame that this piece of legislation was added to a bill that's supposed to be about supporting our troops," said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.).

The defense bill includes $130 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and authorizes a 3.4% pay raise for the military.

The bill would also make it a federal crime to attack members of the military because of their service.

The hate-crime measure is named for Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming who was beaten to death in 1998, and for James Byrd Jr., an African American in Texas who was chained to a pickup and dragged to death the same year.

"It has been more than 10 years since the senseless and brutal death of Matthew Shepard," said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), "and I look forward to watching President Obama sign this much-needed legislation into law."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-hate-crimes22-2009oct23,0,7203363,print.story

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L.A. Police Commission conceals the identities of 2 outside candidates applying to be next LAPD chief

The Los Angeles Police Commission today completed two days of interviews with candidates vying to be the next LAPD chief. Officials hope to select three finalists by Tuesday.

The commission, a civilian panel that oversees the Los Angeles Police Department, met with 13 applicants. All but but two were LAPD deputy chiefs and assistant chiefs.

The interviews were held at the tony City Club downtown. The commission made no effort to conceal the identities of the in-house candidates from the assembled media, but it did sneak the two outside candidates into and out of the interview room through a back hallway. When a Times reporter attempted to pursue one of the candidates, an LAPD officer blocked the hall.

Commission President John Mack defended the the decision to keep the identities of the two outside applicants concealed. He said they were sitting police chiefs elsewhere and did not want it known that they were seeking the LAPD post. Mack said he believed that it was more important to protect the candidates' identities than to inform the public about them.

With the interviews now complete, Mack said the commission would spend the next few days deliberating and vetting candidates. Barring any major delays, he said he was tentatively planning to pass the names of three finalists on to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Tuesday. 

Villaraigosa will make the final selection, and has said he would like to do so by the time that outgoing Police Chief William J. Bratton departs Oct. 31.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/10/la-police-commision-conceals-identity-of-two-outside-police-chief-candidates.html

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Dozens of gang members arrested in South L.A. sweep

More than 1,100 Los Angeles police officers and FBI agents began a crackdown on the Rollin' 40s gang before dawn today, hauling in nearly four dozen gang members and associates from their homes in pajamas, in an attempt to make a dent in one of the most violent street gangs in South Los Angeles.

“What we are trying to do is to break the grip of terror and narcotics trafficking and violence that they have had in that part of Los Angeles for many years,” said Cmdr. Andrew Smith of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Smith said the Rollin' 40s are one of the 10 most violent gangs in Los Angeles, and authorities had been investigating them for 18 months.

“Residents and police were saying enough is enough,” Smith said. “We are going to do something about these guys.”

Beginning at 5 a.m., law enforcement officials served 75 arrest warrants to "shot callers" on state and federal charges of narcotics sales, illegal weapons and various other crimes. As of 9:15 a.m., 46 were arrested. The raid targeted mostly the upper echelons of the gang.

Smith said investigators are searching secondary locations for the remaining fugitives and have issued nationwide alerts to inform other police departments they are wanted.

The FBI-LAPD operation has been able to charge gang members and associates with tougher federal statutes, which will “get them off the streets for longer period of time,” said FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller.

Many of those arrested have been indicted on federal charges that could carry sentences ranging from 20 years to life, she said.

The sweep was bordered by Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard on the north, 52nd Street on the south, the 110 Freeway on the east and Crenshaw Boulevard on the west.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/10/gang-sweeps.html#more

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Probe of Mexican drug cartel leads to hundreds of U.S. arrests

Authorities say recent raids have targeted La Familia Michoacana's fast-growing operations in California, Texas and other states.

By Josh Meyer

October 23, 2009

Reporting from Washington

Drug agents swept through Los Angeles and dozens of other locations Wednesday and Thursday, arresting more than 300 people and seizing large quantities of drugs, weapons and money in the biggest U.S. crackdown against a Mexican drug cartel.

The months-long offensive, the fruit of dozens of federal investigations over the last 3 1/2 years, will put a significant dent in the U.S. operations of La Familia Michoacana, one of Mexico's fastest-growing and deadliest cartels, authorities said.

"The sheer level and depravity of violence that this cartel has exhibited far exceeds what we unfortunately have become accustomed to from other cartels, [and] the toxic reach of its operations extends to nearly every state within our own country," Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. said at a news conference in Washington to announce the arrests.

The investigation has involved hundreds of agents and analysts from the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, as well as prosecutors and other officials from the Justice Department.

"We're hitting them where we believe it hurts the most: their revenue stream," Holder said. "By seizing their drugs and upending their supply chains, we have disrupted their business-as-usual state of operations."

In all, authorities have arrested nearly 1,200 suspected La Familia members or associates in recent months as part of "Project Coronado," the multi-agency effort to dismantle the organization's methamphetamine and cocaine distribution network in the United States.

But Holder and other officials acknowledged that La Familia has become too powerful, too politically entrenched -- and too popular with Mexico's citizens -- for the arrests to deal the cartel any kind of death blow.

"We have to work with our Mexican counterparts to really cut off the heads of these snakes and get at the heads of the cartels . . . either in Mexico or extradite them to the United States," he said.

For that to happen, U.S. authorities need the full cooperation of the Mexican government in arresting and prosecuting the leaders of La Familia. But according to court documents unsealed Thursday, few if any leaders have been taken into custody by Mexican authorities despite several being indicted in U.S. courts.

La Familia has been linked to hundreds of drug-related killings in Mexico, including the kidnapping, torture and killing of 12 federal agents in the western state of Michoacan, La Familia's home base.

Several senior U.S. drug officials said Mexico was cooperating but that La Familia's leaders were too well insulated to go after, protected not only by their own army but by corrupt police and politicians.

"It's a full-blown military operation to go in and get them," said one drug enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of U.S.-Mexico counter-narcotics relations.

A Mexican counter-narcotics official agreed, saying his country had thrown thousands of troops and police at La Familia but that the cartel's chieftains were even more elusive than others.

"They rarely spend two or three nights in the same place, and when they do, they live in these very fortified compounds," said the official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing similar sensitivities. "It is even more difficult for us because they buy not only information, but they buy protection from the very guys that are supposed to get them."

Although a relative newcomer to Mexico's drug underworld, La Familia has quickly become one of the most violent, quick to attack Mexican troops and lawmakers who have tried to halt its expansion, U.S. counter-narcotics officials said.

La Familia now competes with the established Gulf and Sinaloa cartels. But in an unusual twist, its leaders espouse a religious philosophy, asking core members to carry Bibles and attend church.

The cartel manufactures tons of methamphetamine strictly for export to the United States, prohibiting its own soldiers from using illegal drugs or selling them in Mexico, said Michele Leonhart, acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Such tactics have made La Familia something of a Robin Hood-type organization within Mexico, several drug enforcement officials said Thursday.

"We are fighting an organization whose brutal violence is driven by so-called divine justice," Leonhart said. "Accordingly, La Familia's narco-banner declared that they don't kill for money and they don't kill innocent people. However, their delivery of that message was accompanied by five severed heads rolled onto a dance floor in Uruapan, Mexico."

The indictments unsealed Thursday provide a rare look inside the highly disciplined and secretive organization, which is also involved in counterfeiting, extortion, prostitution and armed robbery.

Most of those arrested in the U.S. are believed to be foot soldiers or associates of the cartel, but some have direct ties to La Familia leadership in Michoacan, authorities said.

Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles have indicted five suspected La Familia members with the help of several undercover informants. One of the indicted is Gerardo Rodriguez-Lopez, a fugitive who authorities allege ran a methamphetamine smuggling operation from Mexico through Los Angeles County to Minnesota, Kansas, Georgia and Texas.

Overall, the DEA said, at least 24 people were arrested in Southern California during the latest raids, many of them alleged La Familia members or associates from three separate drug distribution cells.

Over the last two days, authorities arrested 90 people in Dallas and dozens more in Atlanta and other large urban hubs of La Familia.

But many other arrests occurred in small towns and rural communities in Washington state, Texas, California, Oklahoma, Missouri, North Carolina and elsewhere.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cartel-raids23-2009oct23,0,4193301,print.story

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Dust-Up

Have any Patriot Act horror stories come true?

Julian Sanchez says the government has collected far more information than needed. Jena Baker McNeill says some of the proposed changes would remove the most effective portions of the Patriot Act.

October 23, 2009

Today's topic: Where are the demonstrated examples of abuses of liberties because of the Patriot Act? Are there any provisions of the law that civil libertarians would find acceptable? Julian Sanchez and Jena Baker McNeill continue their debate on the Patriot Act, portions of which Congress is considering reauthorizing

Point: Julian Sanchez

Spoiler alert: Yes, there have been a number of well-documented abuses of power under the Patriot Act, as well as subsequent surveillance legislation. I'll detail some of them in a moment, and the ACLU has a more thorough report . As that report should make abundantly clear, it's really only a handful of the Patriot Act's dozens of provisions that civil libertarians have serious problems with, and our concern in most cases is to improve them, not eliminate them. But there are three more general points I think it's important to clarify before we delve into specifics.

First, intelligence surveillance demands especially robust safeguards precisely because it's so inherently secretive and therefore lacks many of the checks that exist in criminal investigations. Ordinary wiretaps, for instance, are always eventually disclosed to their targets and typically meant to be used as evidence in a trial, in which defense attorneys have powerful incentives to scrutinize the record closely for misbehavior. Intelligence taps are covert: Targets may never learn they've been spied on, and criminal prosecution may not be the goal. Both National Security Letters (NSLs) and so-called Section 215 orders for business records and other "tangible things" come with gag orders that remain in place long after the investigation is complete. The banks and telecommunications providers served with these orders have little incentive to expend time, money and energy challenging demands for information in court, and the few that have done so are prohibited from talking about why they believe the requests are illegitimate. Congressional oversight can help -- the Church Committee in the 1970s uncovered a stunning array of abuses stretching back decades -- but, absent some major scandal, tends to be limited in scope.

It also doesn't help that among the already documented abuses is the intelligence community's failure to fully and accurately inform Congress about their use of those powers. When legislators do become aware of problems, their ability to mobilize support for reform is hampered by their own inability to go public with their concerns. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) has repeatedly said that he believes those Section 215 orders are being misused, but citizens have no real way to evaluate the claim.

Second, "abuse" typically connotes a violation of the law, or at least the internal rules governing surveillance. But there's good reason to be concerned about some of these powers even when they're used precisely as intended. In recent hearings, Justice Department officials made quite clear that they vacuum up reams of telephone, Internet and bank records in the preliminary phases of investigations to "close down leads" and spot suspicious patterns. This is another way of saying that the vast majority of people surveilled are innocent -- not when this authority is misused, but by design. The FBI issues tens of thousands of National Security Letters each year, and the majority seek information about U.S. citizens. That information isn't discarded; it goes into a massive FBI database containing literally billions of records. Simple math suggests there just aren't that many terrorists out there.

So-called sneak-and-peek warrants that were sold as a vital tool for terrorism investigations are now overwhelmingly used in ordinary criminal investigations -- contrary to what the public was told, certainly, but in accordance with the letter of the law. If we look back to those abuses uncovered by the Church Committee, we find some cases in which surveillance of journalists, activists and even Supreme Court justices was initiated for manifestly unlawful political purposes. But just as often, information gathered in the course of an initially legitimate national security investigation was later used for an illegitimate political end.

Finally, it's important to be clear on just what sort of abuse we should be worried about. It is not primarily that investigators will decide to start spying on average Americans -- though we have learned that some National Security Agency operators find it hilarious to pass around recordings of U.S. soldiers' pillow talk. It's that all this information, even if acquired for legitimate purposes, gives the people who hold it enormous political power. A reporter, activist or senator who crossed J. Edgar Hoover might find his career ruined by an embarrassing leak to the press.

All that said, what do we know about actual abuses so far? We know two successive inspector general reports found endemic misuse of NSLs, including requests for information the FBI wasn't entitled to obtain and "exigent letters" sent when no real emergency existed. We know that in at least one case, NSLs were used to obtain records after a judge rejected an attempt to obtain them via court order, citing 1st Amendment concerns. We know expanded National Security Agency wiretap powers approved last year have led to substantial " overcollection " of Americans' purely domestic communications -- including Bill Clinton's e-mails . Many of these can be put down to sloppiness or ineptitude, though they're no less troubling.

But history teaches that if there are more deliberate abuses, we probably won't know about them for decades to come. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not wait to find out.

Julian Sanchez is a research fellow at the Cato Institute.

Counterpoint: Jena Baker McNeill

Julian, I agree that it really is only a handful of Patriot Act provisions that civil libertarians find objectionable.

Unfortunately, they're the provisions that truly matter. A Patriot Act that lacks or dilutes these key provisions is as useful as a plastic sword in a gunfight.

When you look at who in Congress is seeking to add "procedural safeguards" to the law, you begin to see that efforts to amend the Patriot Act are less about remedying "abuses" and more about squashing it all together. In fact, Feingold, who has advocated these "procedural safeguards," was the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act in 2001, and he remains one of its most outspoken critics.

It's one thing, and perfectly legitimate, to advocate "safeguards." But add too many, and you've assembled a range of bureaucratic hoops -- a great way to effectively kill a policy. And this is exactly what will happen if Congress adds even more hurdles to the ones that already serve as a check on law enforcement.

Take, for example, the "least intrusive means" standard advocated by Feingold as a "safeguard" under the business records provision. It sounds OK, but it is actually an entirely subjective legal standard. Parsing this legal jargon might excite constitutional law students, but ask a federal investigator to define it. Try and find out how it would affect his or her ability to act decisively on sensitive intelligence information.

In essence, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Yes, we could place further restrictions on the act, but doing so would be a step backward. It would inhibit the flexibility law enforcement officials need to stop modern terrorism.

The disagreement between civil libertarians and the national security crowd really comes down to a more fundamental disagreement over whether the government should be allowed to do these activities in the first place. But this isn't about "abuse," which implies going outside the lines drawn by the law. Using the law precisely as it is intended is following the law.

Civil libertarians often allude to a whole host of abuses that could result from the Patriot Act. It has long been their cause celebre that law enforcement will use personal information for nefarious purposes if given the opportunity. In this instance, this same argument for more restrictions on law enforcement investigations is, essentially, an old argument repackaged for the Patriot Act.

The act, however, has not resulted in dramatic claims of abuse. Even the widely criticized business records provision has been used only 250 times since 2001. Barring the Supreme Court's decision over the law's "material support" provision, no part of the Patriot Act has been found unconstitutional.

Nor do the Patriot Act's provisions come without strings attached. Because of the Patriot Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act application required to get roving surveillance authority is more substantial than a common warrant. And the act is full of congressional oversight mechanisms, reporting requirements and other standards as a means to make sure law enforcement is not stepping over its bounds.

If investigators are sloppy, by all means, use the legal powers already in place as a remedy. There are adequate safeguards on the books to stop this, and they should be used. But the Patriot Act is not an example of abuse; it is an example of success. The lack of terrorist attacks since 9/11 and the absence of actual abuses stand as mute but powerful witnesses to the law's effectiveness.

Jena Baker McNeill is a homeland security policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-oew-mcneill-sanchez22-2009oct23,0,2433020,print.story

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From the Daily News

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More candidates interview to be L.A.'s next police chief

City officials finished two days of interviews with candidates for police chief Thursday, grilling three high-profile prospects but surrounding two out-of-towners amid a veil of secrecy.

Los Angeles Police Commission members hope to narrow the field of 13 applicants down to the final three, possibly as early as Tuesday, commission president John Mack said after the interviews held at the City Club on Bunker Hill.

The two out-of-town applicants to succeed Police Chief William J. Bratton are police chiefs from other American cities and had requested complete anonymity, Mack said.

Those two applicants were surreptitiously escorted in and out of their interviews, in contrast to the 11 department insiders who were openly paraded past the news media.

"Nothing was done against the law," said Mack, who defended the secrecy on the basis of confidentiality of personnel matters.

Mack also denied that the commission has violated its obligation to residents of Los Angeles, who had geared up for a high level of transparency in the way the next chief is selected.

Mack said the commission hopes to review its findings from the interviews over the coming days.

On Thursday, the commission interviewed the final three of the LAPD Command Staff applicants: Michel Moore, the commanding officer of operations for the Valley Bureau; Charles L. Beck, commanding officer of the Detective Bureau; and Jim McDonnell, first assistant chief and Bratton's chief of staff.

"They have a heavy burden in there," Moore said after his interview.

Like many of the candidates, he declined further comment until after the commission finishes interviewing all candidates.

Beck called his interview "a good conversation" with some "very gifted, very intelligent people."

"It was a good chance for me to put forward my vision, and I think we'll leave it at that," he said afterward. "I don't want to compromise the process."

Beck also said, as other candidates have as well, that Bratton had set the bar high for his successor.

"But I think that he's prepared for this police department to continue. I think that he has a succession plan in mind since the day he got here. That's one of the things that makes him great. He sees the future. He deals with the future in the present, and I think this department is ready to move forward."

McDonnell was the most open with reporters in talking about his goals for the LAPD, should he be named chief.

"The chief sets the vision for the operational part, the commission sets the vision for the policy part," McDonnell said. "It's all looking to the future. How do we take the challenges that we're facing today and how do we deal with those effectively and how do we move forward so we don't lose ground on any gains we've made."

McDonnell said that his vision for the future of the LAPD "is to build on our successes."

"When you look are where we are today versus seven years ago, violent crime is down over 50 percent," he said. "We've had tremendous success there. We've got a focus that we've never had in years past. We have relationships with our peer agencies."

On Wednesday, the commission interviewed Kirk J. Albanese, deputy chief of operations for the South Bureau; Assistant Chief Earl Paysinger, director and commanding officer of the office of operations; Assistant Chief Sharon Papa, the first woman in the LAPD to hold that position.

Other candidates include Deputy Chiefs Sandy Jo MacArthur, commander of the Incident Management and Training Bureau, Richard A. Roupoli, commanding officer for the Special Operations Bureau, Terry S. Hara, commanding officer of operations West Bureau, Mark Perez, commander of the Professional Standards Bureau and Sergio G. Diaz, who oversees the LAPD's Central Bureau.

The city's Personnel Department chose the 13 semifinalists from two dozen applicants. Under the City Charter, the commission must recommend three finalists candidates to the mayor.

The commission will try to pick its three by Nov. 16. That will be more than two weeks after Bratton departs to take a new job in New York City, but an interim chief is not expected to be named.

Bratton has suggested that a member of his command staff be named his successor, saying "now is the time for an insider," though he has not publicly endorsed anyone.

Bratton, 62, is going to work for the Falls Church, Va.-based global security firm Altegrity, which specializes in bringing "professional, modern criminal justice systems" to post-conflict nations like Afghanistan and Iraq.

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_13618105

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HIV-positive patients report poor access to medical care, UCLA study says

The study was conducted by researchers at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine and published in the October issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine, a UCLA statement said.

It found that a large number of HIV-positive individuals who reported feeling stigmatized also reported poor access to care or suboptimal adherence to antiretroviral therapy.

In fact, individuals who experienced high levels of internalized stigma were four times as likely as those who didn't to report poor access to medical care, according to the study, and three times as likely to report suboptimal adherence to HIV medications.

The findings were due at least in part to the poor mental health of many of the participants, the UCLA statement said.

It said researchers found that HIV stigma was one of the strongest predictors of poor access to medical care and that both HIV stigma and poor mental health predicted suboptimal adherence to medication.

"We were surprised to find that in our models, experiencing high levels of internalized HIV stigma was one of the strongest predictors of poor access to medical care, even after controlling for sociodemographics such as gender, race and ethnicity, income, insurance status, and clinical variables such as T- cell count and years since HIV diagnosis," said the study's lead investigator, Dr. Jennifer Sayles.

The findings demonstrate the urgent need for more community dialogue, education and awareness about HIV and the stigma that surrounds the disease, said Sayles, an assistant professor of medicine at the David Geffen School and medical director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health's Office of AIDS Programs and Policy.

The two-year study focused on 202 HIV-positive men and women in Los Angeles County, many of them minorities and many with limited incomes and limited education.

Overall, one-third of the participants reported experiencing high levels of stigma, and, on average, participants described experiencing or perceiving stigma slightly less frequently than "some of the time," according to the study.

Additionally, 77 percent of participants said they had poor access to care, 42.5 percent reported suboptimal adherence to therapy, and 10.5 percent reported having no regular source of HIV care.

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_13618484

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Bratton to preside over opening of new LAPD headquarters

The Police Administration Building at 100 W. First St. replaces Parker Center, which was built in 1955.

At the ceremony starting at 10 a.m. Saturday, Bratton intends to welcome the public to tour the new building, its "environmentally friendly grounds," and the new Memorial Monument and Reflection Garden, according to the department's Media Relations Section.

The new LAPD headquarters is a 10-floor, 500,000-square-foot structure with underground parking, a 400-seat auditorium, and a cafe called "LA Reflections," according to Media Relations.

"This new police facility has finally brought us into the 21st century," Bratton said in a statement. "As society and advancements in technology change, we, too, must adapt as a police department. This state-of- the-art facility will enable us to do just that."

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_13616804

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From The Department of Justice

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Good morning. With me today are Director of the FBI, Bob Mueller; Administrator of the DEA, Michele Leonhart; and Acting Director of the ATF, Ken Melson.

We are here to announce a major law enforcement action as part of Project Coronado, a 44-month operation targeting the La Familia cartel's distribution networks within the United States.

Yesterday and this morning, more than 3,000 federal, state, and local law enforcement officials have worked throughout the United States to locate and arrest more than 300 individuals. Over the last two days, arrests have been carried out in 19 states, and we continue to make additional arrests as we speak.

This unprecedented, coordinated U.S. law enforcement action is the largest ever undertaken against a Mexican drug cartel.

Coordinated by the Special Operations Division and attorneys from the Criminal Division's Narcotics and Dangerous Drug Section, many of whom are here with us today, this operation has dealt a significant blow to La Familia's supply chain of illegal drugs, weapons, and cash flowing between Mexico and the United States.

Over the course of the operation, 1,186 people have been arrested, including the 303 people arrested yesterday and today. In Dallas alone yesterday, we arrested 77 people.

In addition to arrests, we have seized more than $32 million in U.S. currency, more than 2,700 pounds of methamphetamine, nearly 2,000 kilograms of cocaine, approximately 16,000 pounds of marijuana, and 29 pounds of heroin during the 44-month Project. In the last two days alone, we seized $3.4 million in U.S. currency and nearly 730 pounds of methamphetamine, as well as other narcotics. We have also seized close to 400 weapons, including a homemade grenade found in a search in Washington yesterday. These are drugs that were headed for our streets, and weapons that often were headed for the streets of Mexico.

I'll let DEA and ATF talk more about the specifics of some of these cases, but I want to emphasize one over-arching point: The La Familia cartel has demonstrated an incredible level of sophistication and ruthlessness. To combat this violent criminal enterprise, we must be coordinated at all levels of law enforcement. That coordinated approach is what today's takedown is all about.

For those of you who aren't familiar with La Familia, it is the newest and most violent of the five Mexican drug cartels. Alleged to have shipped large quantities of methamphetamine and cocaine from Mexico to cities throughout the United States, La Familia is one of three Mexican drug trafficking organizations against which the United States imposed sanctions earlier this year under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act.

The sheer level and depravity of violence that this cartel has exhibited far exceeds what we have, unfortunately, become accustomed to from other cartels. La Familia operates primarily from the state of Michoacán, Mexico. However, as we've shown today, their operations stretch far into the United States. Indeed, while this cartel may operate from Mexico, the toxic reach of its operations extends to nearly every state in the country.

That's why we are hitting them where it hurts the most – their revenue stream. By seizing their drugs and upending their supply chains, we have disrupted their "business as usual" state of operations.

As I have said before, this is not a one-country problem and solving it will take more than a one-country solution. The government of Mexico has taken courageous steps to combat the cartels, and we stand with them in that fight. La Familia's attacks against Mexican law enforcement officials only make the valiant efforts of our friends and partners across the border more heroic.

And just as our Mexican partners are standing strong, the cartels should know that we in the United States are not going to allow them to operate unfettered in our country. When you seek to extend your nefarious criminal networks north of the border, we will come after you – here in the United States, in Mexico, or wherever else in the world you may be found.

I and other senior Department of Justice officials have traveled to Mexico and have had productive meetings with our Mexican colleagues. It is through close, personal working relationships at all levels that together we are fighting these cartels that bring drugs and violence into our communities.

I would like to thank the thousands of brave law enforcement agents and officers who, every day, put themselves at risk in the pursuit of justice. And I'd like to say a special thank you to the agents and prosecutors who coordinated this mammoth takedown. It simply could not happen without their valiant efforts to put all the pieces of this dangerous puzzle together.

I have stood before you in the past to announce charges and arrests related to Mexican drug cartels. There is no doubt in my mind I will do so again in the future. No one strike is going to bring an immediate end to the cartels, but these sustained, direct blows to the heart of cartel operations in the United States are making a difference. With the increases in cooperation between U.S. and Mexican authorities in recent years, we are taking the fight to our adversaries, and in so doing, we are making our communities safer and more secure.

http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/speeches/2009/ag-speech-091022.html

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Project Coronado – By the Numbers

Over the past two days, 303 individuals in 19 states were arrested as part of Project Coronado – a 44-month multi-agency law enforcement investigation, which targeted the distribution network of a major Mexican drug trafficking organization known as La Familia, through coordination between federal, state and local law enforcement. 

More than 3,000 agents and officers operated across the United States to make the arrests during the two-day takedown.  During the two-day operation alone, $3.4 million in U.S. currency, 729 pounds of methamphetamine, 62 kilograms of cocaine, 967 pounds of marijuana, 144 weapons and 109 vehicles were seized by law enforcement agents. Below, a look at Project Coronado, and the overall numbers of this 44-month operation.

Project Coronado – By the Numbers

1, 186: Number of Total arrests.
1,999: Kilograms of Cocaine Seized
2,710: Pounds of Methamphetamine Seized
29: Pounds of Heroin Seized
16,390: Pounds of Marijuana Seized
$32,795,000: U.S. Currency Seized
269: Number of Vehicles Seized
389: Number of Weapons Seized
2: Number of Maritime Vessels Seized

The Attorney General announced the current results of Project Coronado at a press conference held this morning. He was joined by DEA Acting Administrator Michele M. Leonhart, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and ATF Acting Director Kenneth E. Melson.

http://blogs.usdoj.gov/blog/archives/226

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From the FBI

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Three Sentenced for Conspiring to Commit Terrorist Acts Against Americans Overseas

http://cleveland.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel09/cl102209.htm

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Forty-One Defendants Federally Indicted in Racine Gang Case

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