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From LA Times

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UCLA stabbing again puts focus on college students' mental health

The attack in a campus lab recalls memories of the Virginia Tech massacre and Northern Illinois University shootings. Since then, schools say they are more aggressive at addressing troubled students.

By Larry Gordon

October 25, 2009

The recent arrest of a UCLA student in the brutal stabbing of a classmate in a campus chemistry lab has again focused attention on an issue that gripped the nation after the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech: the mental health of troubled college students.

The Virginia Tech shootings, which left 32 victims and the gunman dead, raised difficult questions about how a disturbed student could have been allowed to remain at the school despite danger signs.

Since then, campuses in California and around the country say they watch their students ever more closely for signs of possible mental illness or other problems. They have set up teams of counselors, police and administrators to screen reports about potentially troubled students and to discuss treatment or discipline. And many colleges are prepared to act more quickly than in the past, particularly if there is any explicit warning of violence, college mental health and other experts say.

The Virginia Tech killings were followed last year by a deadly attack at Northern Illinois University, in which a former graduate student killed five students and himself.

Since the two incidents, "campuses are more on guard and aggressive about these issues," said Brian Van Brunt, president-elect of the American College Counseling Assn.

Many colleges now require a mental health assessment for a troubled student to stay enrolled and more readily expel those who refuse to comply, said Van Brunt, who heads the counseling center at Western Kentucky University.

But the road to identifying troubled students and treating them or intervening is less clear-cut when there is no threat or hint of violence against themselves or others, he and other college counselors said. Although campus safety is the first concern, civil liberties and privacy also must be safeguarded as more students with mental health problems attend college than in the past, they emphasized.

Such tensions are expected to be explored in legal proceedings against Damon Thompson, the UCLA student who allegedly slashed the throat of a 20-year-old female student in a lab Oct. 8. The woman was hospitalized for 10 days and released in good condition, officials said. Thompson, who has pleaded not guilty to an attempted murder charge and is being held on $3-million bail, had no previous criminal record or complaints against him, campus police reported.

However, faculty and students have said that Thompson, 20, had exhibited erratic and perhaps delusional behavior in the past, although not of a specifically violent nature.

Last year, Stephen Frank, a UCLA associate professor, notified campus authorities about paranoid and accusatory e-mails that Thompson had sent him. Frank said he learned recently that other professors had made similar reports but also were told that UCLA could not force the student into treatment.

The professor said he understands that troubled students cannot be expelled unless there is a threatening situation, but he contends that UCLA dropped the ball by not keeping tabs on Thompson.

"I'm not trying to imply that the tragedy could have been prevented. I'm not that prescient," Frank said last week. "I'm simply saying there was a possibility if somebody had been paying attention."

Thompson's defense attorney, Robin B. Berkovitz, said she needed more time to research his mental health record before commenting.

UCLA officials said that Thompson was known to the Student Affairs office, which includes counseling, before the attack, but that privacy rules prevent them from discussing specifics. In an interview, Elizabeth Gong-Guy, director of UCLA's Counseling and Psychological Services, spoke in general about what would prompt the school to take action against a troubled or potentially violent student.

"We take very seriously our duty to protect the safety and security of the campus. If there is a student who is seen as an active danger to themselves or others, we act very, very aggressively," she said, adding that options include hospitalization or calling in police.

But Gong-Guy said erratic behavior that does not violate conduct rules could lead to no action other than asking the student to meet with a psychologist for assessment.

Being odd "is not necessarily a sign of a mental health issue and certainly not a sign of danger or violence," she said. "If you were the brilliant student who was also paranoid and not hurting anybody and not breaking any rules, it's not clear how a public university could deny you the right to attend college."

Symptoms of mental illness may first appear during a student's college years. But mental health issues are center stage on campuses in ways unthinkable a generation or so ago, in part because thousands of students with severe depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are able to attend college thanks to medicines not available in the past.

Yet some students, away from parental supervision, stop taking the psychotropic medicines they need, said Emil Rodolfa, UC Davis' director of Counseling and Psychological Services. "Students come here and feel a sense of freedom and say, 'I don't really need my medicines any more.' And that is not so helpful to them or to the environment," he said.

Rodolfa said his campus has seen sharp increases in the number of students seeking counseling, from about 8% of the student body in 2002 to 14% last year. He attributed that to higher numbers of students with previously diagnosed problems and to a generation that finds it "more acceptable to say I'm stressed or depressed today."

Colleges try to retain students if they are not violent, said Keith Anderson, chairman of the American College Health Assn.'s best practices task force in mental health. "The goal is to keep them in school, keep them functioning and engaged, and in treatment at the same time," said Anderson, who is a staff psychologist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Tory, N.Y. In the great majority of cases, that proves successful, he said.

Concerns about another Virginia Tech-like tragedy are valid, Anderson said. But he emphasized that "campuses are very safe places" and that such incidents occur rarely.

In a recent survey of campus health officials, the American College Counseling Assn. found that 10% of students sought some psychological counseling last year and that 93% of the schools surveyed had seen increasing numbers of students "with severe psychological problems."

The report noted "growing intolerance by faculty and others about students perceived to be odd."

At UC Santa Barbara, Michael D. Young, vice chancellor for student affairs, also said that student mental health problems are rising. Young said that during the first decade of his 30 years in the field, he had to suspend one student a year on average because of a threat or violent behavior. More recently, six to seven students a year are suspended or decide to leave school just before such discipline, he said.

In 2001, a UC Santa Barbara student with a history of mental problems and drug abuse drove his car into a crowd of pedestrians in a nearby neighborhood, killing four people. A judge found the student, David Attias, guilty of second-degree murder, ruled him insane and committed him indefinitely to a mental hospital.

Young, who is co-chair of the UC system's Student Mental Health Oversight Committee, two years ago helped persuade UC leaders to provide additional funding to hire psychologists and counselors across the 10 campuses. Now the state's financial crisis threatens those gains, he said.

"The problem certainly has not gone away," he said. "The increasing numbers and severity of student psychological distress have not diminished."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-college-mental25-2009oct25,0,7831184,print.story

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With new police headquarters, LAPD ends an era

The grand opening marks the move away from Parker Center and coincides with William J. Bratton's final week as police chief.

By Ruben Vives

October 25, 2009

Dozens of uniformed officers, city officials, supporters and their families gathered downtown Saturday to celebrate the formal opening of the new -- and still nameless -- Los Angeles Police Department headquarters.

City Hall, across the street, was reflected in the new building's windows, while a gigantic American flag was draped over part of the structure's exterior, occasionally moving in the gentle breeze that gave relief to those sitting under the blistering sun.

The Los Angeles Police Department Band, taiko drummers and Mexican folk dancers provided a musical backdrop for the occasion.

"What a beautiful Los Angeles morning it is," Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told those attending the ceremony. "Today we can celebrate great progress. Today we can celebrate the changes, perceptions and opinions of our Police Department."

Construction of the 500,000-square-foot building began about three years ago. A price tag of $437 million covers the headquarters complex and three related structures nearby. Funds came from Proposition Q, a public safety facilities bond measure approved by voters in March 2002.

The bond measure also provided money for the repair of some LAPD stations, as well the construction of new ones in Canoga Park, Koreatown, San Pedro and Boyle Heights.

On Saturday, Police Chief William J. Bratton, who is leaving the department at the end of this week, talked about the symbolically significant location of the new headquarters -- flanked on three sides by City Hall, the Caltrans building and the Los Angeles Times. He said those three neighbors represented the Police Department's obligation to serve the community, its requirement to cooperate with state, federal and county governments and its need for transparency to the media and public.

"You couldn't ask for a better siting," Bratton said.

Two things remain to be decided: the name of the building and the identity of a new chief to sit in its 10th-floor executive office.

In April, political and civic leaders expressed anger over a proposal to name the new headquarters after the late Police Chief William H. Parker.

Parker, who led the LAPD in the 1950s and '60s, is widely credited for cleaning up a department that was seen as corrupt and poorly run. But he has also been blamed for officers' discrimination against minorities -- especially blacks and Latinos -- and brutality.

The opening of the new building represents an end to that era, city and police officials say.

"Our department has emerged from that dark cloud," Villaraigosa said. "The weight of the past instead has transformed this department into the strongest, most well-equipped, most respectful force this city has ever seen."

Few members of the public attended Saturday's ceremony. But that did not dampen the enthusiasm of those who did.

Julie Hogenboom, 44, and Ray Raemancuso, 9, stared intently at a memorial for fallen officers and gushed over the headquarters.

"It's a cool new building," Ray said. "It's got a helipad!"

Inside the new auditorium, Elena Asucan, 41, a civilian employee with the LAPD, and her two children -- Melia, 16, and Alexander, 4 -- watched a time-lapse video of the building's construction.

"It's amazing," Asucan said. "One day it was groundbreaking; next thing you know you had steel beams, then glass all over it."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lapd-opening25-2009oct25,0,2075485,print.story

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How a girl's stark words got lost in the Polanski spectacle

Samantha Gailey, at 13, was unequivocal in her testimony against Polanski. But her account was turned into something almost benign.

By Joe Mozingo

October 25, 2009

In the flat light of the grand jury room, a nervous, deeply embarrassed 13-year-old girl sat alone -- no attorney, no mother, no friend -- facing three tiers of middle-aged strangers silently studying her from their leather armchairs.

The questions that day in March 1977 were clinical in tone.

The answers would set off a furor from Hollywood to London and Paris that has yet to subside.

Samantha Gailey -- sandy brown hair, dimpled chin, missing class at her junior high in Woodland Hills -- described her alleged rape by director Roman Polanski two weeks before at Jack Nicholson's home above Franklin Canyon. She clutched a small heart charm her friend had given her.

"After he kissed you, did he say anything?" asked the prosecutor, Roger Gunson.

"No," the girl said.

"Did you say anything?"

"No, besides I was just going, 'No, come on, let's go home. . . .' He said, 'I'll take you home soon.' "

"Then what happened?"

"And then he went down and started performing cuddliness."

"What does that mean?"

"It means he went down on me, or he placed his mouth on my vagina. . . . I was ready to cry. I was kind of -- I was going, 'No. Come on. Stop it.' But I was afraid."

Samantha's testimony that day was unequivocal: She had kept trying to get away from him, putting her clothes back on, saying no repeatedly. She had made up a lie about having asthma to get out of a Jacuzzi. He persisted. She was scared. She did not physically fight him off. He began to have sex with her, then, concerned she might get pregnant, switched to anal sex. When he drove her home, he told her not to tell her mom, adding, "You know, when I first met you, I promised myself I wouldn't do anything like this with you."

A generation of spectacle would follow: Polanski's indictment, his plea deal, his flight from the country, allegations of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct, his decades of exile and critical success, his Oscar, a sympathetic HBO documentary last year, his rearrest in Switzerland last month.

Along the way, various people would scrub the core allegations into something more benign -- a probation officer would deem the crime a "spontaneous" act of "poor judgment," a prison psychiatrist would call it "playful mutual eroticism."

But Samantha's stark testimony has never been seriously impugned, in or out of court. When she sued Polanski years later for sexual assault, he pleaded the 5th when asked if he illegally gave her champagne and part of a quaalude pill, then performed oral copulation on her and sodomized her.

An extensive review of several thousand court documents, as well as numerous interviews, shows a basic dynamic defining the entire saga -- one force trying to drive debate away from a young girl's unshaken allegations, and another trying to reel it back in.

Now with the debate renewed by his arrest, the 32-year legal, media and cultural odyssey may finally be coming to an end.

Taking pictures

Samantha met Polanski through her mother, Susan, a television actress who had had small roles in episodes of "Starsky and Hutch" and "Police Woman." The director said he had an assignment to photograph young girls for a Paris fashion magazine, Vogue Hommes, and had heard about Samantha from a mutual friend.

Polanski went to her home on the afternoon of Feb. 20 and took some pictures in the hills nearby. He picked her up again March 10, stopped at Jacqueline Bisset's house and, as the light was fading, went to Nicholson's compound on Mulholland Drive.

Polanski dropped Samantha off at her home a few hours later and went about his business. He met with Robert De Niro that evening to discuss making a movie based on a William Goldman novel, "Magic."

The next night, a team of seven police investigators and prosecutors pulled up to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

Polanski was meeting friends in the lobby. The boyish, 43-year-old Polish director was as recognizable as any star, known not just for his movies but the extremes of his life -- the death of his mother at Auschwitz, his playboy image, the killing of his wife, Sharon Tate, and their unborn child by the Manson family.

The lead detective, Philip Vannatter, spotted him and strode up, quietly saying he had a warrant for his arrest and needed to search his room.

"We don't want to create a sensation," the detective said, according to Polanski's 1984 autobiography. Polanski asked what the charge was.

"Rape."

Polanski led him to the suite, according to Vannatter's grand jury testimony. As they walked, the detective saw him pull what looked like a tablet out of his coat pocket and lower his cupped hand, as if he were going to drop it on the floor.

Vannatter opened his hand below Polanski's. "Why don't you drop it into my hand instead of the floor?" he said. It was a quaalude pill, marked "Rorer 714."

In the suite, Vannatter and his team collected cameras, lenses, film, slides and negatives, and found a small vial of prescription quaaludes. They arrested Polanski and drove to Nicholson's house with another search warrant.

Polanski was talking feverishly along the way. "He was nervous as a hen on a hot rock," Vannatter, who was later a key figure in the O.J. Simpson case, recalled this month.

"He kept asking me if he could have the quaalude back all night because he was so nervous."

Before the grand jury

While the commotion over Polanski's arrest raged, the detectives built their case. Vannatter was looking to put him in prison for 15 to 20 years.

The physical evidence was strong, but not perfect. The photos developed from Polanski's film showed Samantha topless, drinking champagne in a Jacuzzi. The pills matched the one she described. A police criminalist could not find sperm in her underwear, but a chemical test indicated semen. The doctor who examined Samantha found no bruises or tearing, but would explain that this was common when no force was involved.

The district attorney took the case to the grand jury on March 24. As is usual, there would be no cross-examination, no public, no media. The 23-member panel would decide if there was enough evidence to go to trial.

The first witness was Samantha's mother, Susan Gailey. Deputy Dist. Atty. Gunson inquired about the first photo shoot.

"Did you ask Polanski if you could go?"

"Yes," Gailey said. "And he said, 'No, that he would rather be alone with her because she will respond more naturally.' "

She said he and Samantha returned at dusk. "He came in for a while," she said. "He drew some pictures of pirates for her. . . ."

Polanski came back a little over two weeks later, after a trip to New York. Again, he and Samantha drove off in the late afternoon.

"When was the next time that you heard from Samantha?" Gunson asked.

"I had a phone call at about 6 o'clock," she began, and then paused to backtrack. "Before she went, she had indicated to me that she didn't like him. . . ."

Gunson cut her off. "May that be stricken from the record?"

"OK," she continued. "I asked her if she was OK. And she said, 'Uh-huh.' . . . . And I said, 'Do you want me to pick you up?' And she said, 'No.' And then Polanski got on the phone and he said they were at Jack Nicholson's house, and the sun went down so fast that they didn't get very many pictures, and there was artificial light there, and a Jacuzzi there, and that they were going to take some pictures there. . . .

"I thought, why a Jacuzzi? But I didn't say anything. I mean I just didn't. "

When Samantha returned some time after 8, she rushed to tell her mom something before Polanski walked in.

"She was kind of weird-looking. . . . I said, 'What's the matter?' because I thought something was really wrong. And she said, 'I told him I had asthma because I didn't want to get in the Jacuzzi. I just wanted you to know that.' "

Her daughter went to her bedroom to change as Polanski walked in.

"What did he say?" Gunson asked.

"Asked me about her asthma. . . . And I said, 'Yeah it's really too bad.' And then he said, 'What kind of medicine does she take for that?' And I said, 'Oh, lot of different kinds,' just fumbling around. . . ."

Gailey asked to see some of the photos from the previous shoot. Polanski brought a slide viewer from the car.

She, her boyfriend, and her 20-year-old daughter, Kim, gathered around to see.

"We looked at about five or six that were just head shots," she said. "And then all of the sudden there was a shot of Samantha bare to her waist with just her jeans on. And Kim stepped back. And I stepped back. And the dog peed on the floor, and Kim went for the dog and threw her out. . . . It must have been some kind of energy thing happening because she never does that.

"And then I just sat there and thought, 'Well, but I don't want to make a scene. . . . So I am going to . . . be calm for minute. . . .' I decided not to say anything so that Samantha would not feel like she did an awful thing and cause a big scene. I thought I would wait and get him out of the house. . . .

"He made a phone call, and then he gave Kim a lecture about how she shouldn't have disciplined the dog like that. And then he left."

Kim testified that later that night Samantha's boyfriend Steve came over and she heard the two of them talking about what had happened. Kim told her mother, who called the police.

Telling of topless photos

Gunson called his key witness to the stand after lunch.

He guided Samantha through the events between meeting Polanski and being photographed by him in the chaparral above her home.

"What did Mr. Polanski say with respect to posing without anything on your top?" he asked.

"He said, 'Here, take off your top now.' And I thought they were for the shots that you got so you don't see anything on your shoulders."

"When you returned home, did you tell your mother that he had taken photographs of you without a top?

"No. . . . I was just going to say I don't want to get any more pictures taken again."

From the three tiers, the grand jurors studied her closely, assessing her credibility, her morality.

In the front row, Jean Biegenzahn, then 48, thought she looked like a normal young girl, much like her own 15-year-old daughter. "She was so scared, and here are 23 old fogies watching her," she recalled this month.

Biegenzahn believed her.

Joanne Smallwood, the youngest juror at 39, did too. She also thought Samantha was "fast" for her age.

Samantha would later describe herself at 13 as a girl speeding out of a tomboy childhood. She wanted to be a movie star. "I had a 17-year-old boyfriend who drove a Camaro, but my room was knee-deep in clothes," she told People magazine in 1997. "I had a Spider-Man poster on the wall, and I kept pet rats."

Next the prosecutor came to March 10. Samantha described Polanski taking more topless shots, pouring them champagne, then later offering her part of a quaalude, marked Rorer 714.

"Why did you take it?" Gunson asked.

"I don't know. I must have been pretty drunk or else I wouldn't have," she said.

Jurors questioned her behavior. Not only did she not physically resist Polanski, she had to admit she'd had sex before -- twice, she said -- had been drunk before, and had tried part of a quaalude before.

She continued: He wanted to take pictures in the Jacuzzi. No one else was in the house. She got in. He told her to take off her underwear. She did. He took a few pictures, then went into the bathroom and came back naked. He got into the deep part of the hot tub.

"He goes, 'Come on down here.' And I said, 'No, no, I got to get out.' And he goes, 'No, come down here.' And then I said that I had asthma and that I couldn't. . . . And he said, 'Just come down here a second.' So I finally went down. . . . And he goes, 'Doesn't it feel better down here?'

"And he was like holding me up because it is almost over my head. And I went, 'Yeah, but I better get out.'"

She said she wrapped a towel around her, and Polanski jumped in the pool.

"I walked over and he goes, 'Get in here.' "

She resisted again. He coaxed her.

She said she swam the length of the pool, got out, went to the bathroom, put on her underwear and started drying off.

"I said I wanted to go home because I needed to take my medicine. . . . He said, 'Yeah, I'll take you home soon.'

"I was going, 'No, I think I better go home,' because I was afraid. So I just went and I sat down on the couch' " in an adjoining bedroom.

She said he started kissing her and then pulled off her panties. Gunson asked her if she felt "under the influence" at the time, and why.

"Yes. . . . I can barely remember anything that happened," she said.

"Is there any other reason?"

"No, I was just kind of dizzy, you know, like things were kind of blurry sometimes. I was having trouble with my coordination, like walking and stuff."

She said he started performing oral sex on her and then moved to intercourse.

"He goes, 'Are you on the pill?' And I went, 'No.' And he goes, 'When did you last have your period?' And I said, 'I don't know. . . . He goes, 'Would you want me to go in through your back?' And I went, 'No.' "

She said a woman -- later identified as Nicholson's then-girlfriend, Anjelica Huston -- came home and Polanski stopped briefly to talk to her through a crack in the door. "I got up and put my underwear on and started walking toward the door. . . . He sat me back down again. . . . Then he started to have intercourse with me again and then he just stopped."

On the drive home, Samantha said he told her "something like, 'This is our little secret.' "

The grand jury deliberated just 23 minutes. The panel returned with an indictment of Polanski on six counts: furnishing a controlled substance to a minor, lewd and lascivious act upon child under 14, perversion, sodomy, unlawful sexual intercourse, rape by use of drugs.

'Lack of coercion'

Polanski pleaded not guilty April 15, and the case was transferred to the Santa Monica courtroom of Judge Laurence J. Rittenband.

In a pretrial hearing, Polanski's attorney, Douglas Dalton, indicated that he would delve into Samantha's sex history and seek a psychiatric evaluation of her. "The facts indicate that before the alleged act in this case, this girl had engaged in sexual activity," Dalton told the media. "We want to know about it, we want to know who was involved, when. We want to know why these other people were not prosecuted. And this is a thing we want to fully develop."

The European media wanted to develop this too. They went to Samantha's school and house, talked to her friends, trying to learn more about the girl whose allegations threatened to bring down a veritable cult figure in Europe, where Polanski was not-so-secretly dating a 15-year-old girl, Nastassja Kinski, with no public outcry, no arrest. Samantha was cast as the temptress.

Her attorney told the court that Samantha did not want to go through a trial.

Things were looking bleak for Polanski as well. Vogue Hommes denied that he had any assignment, according to his autobiography. Anjelica Huston, who could put him in the bedroom with the girl, agreed to testify against him in exchange for a cocaine possession charge against her being dropped (from the search of Nicholson's home).

The day before trial was to begin in August, the attorneys announced Polanski would plead guilty to "unlawful intercourse with a minor" in return for dropping of the more serious charges.

Samantha's attorney, Lawrence Silver, wrote the judge urging him to accept the plea deal. He said his client's goal was not to seek "the incarceration of the defendant, but rather, the admission by him of wrongdoing. . . ."

"Whatever harm has come to her as a victim would be exacerbated in the extreme if this case went to trial," he wrote. "A member of the media last Friday in anticipation said this case "promised to be one of the most sensational 'Hollywood' trials. . . . This is not the place for a recovering young girl."

Rittenband accepted the plea deal. Vannatter was furious that Polanski was avoiding a long sentence.

Dist. Atty. John Van de Kamp said in a statement that the plea achieved "substantial justice" without destroying the girl's privacy.

The plea was the first step in scrubbing Samantha's original allegations clean. The crime was beginning to sound like something consensual, "making love," as Polanski would describe it in his book. Now he had to deal only with the public relations fallout of something he didn't even view as a crime.

But Polanski's legal problems were not over. Rittenband could sentence him to up to 50 years in prison, although no one expected that. The sentence would likely depend on what the probation officer, Irwin Gold, recommended.

The probation report scrubbed the allegations even more.

A psychiatrist, Dr. Alvin Davis, who analyzed Polanski for the report, concluded there was "transient poor judgment and loss of normal inhibitions in circumstances of intimacy and collaboration in creative work, with some coincidental alcohol and drug intoxication." He described the "physical maturity and willingness and provocativeness of victim, and the lack of coercion by defendant and his solicitude concerning pregnancy."

"Incarceration," he wrote, "would impose an unusual degree of stress and hardship because of his highly sensitive personality. . . ."

Gold ignored the most damaging parts of Samantha's testimony and focused on the few quotes about her hazy memory. He was clearly impressed by the tragedies Polanski had overcome. "The defendant has not only survived, he has prevailed . . . and has become one of the leading creative forces of the last two decades."

In a highly unusual passage, he gushed about Hollywood.

"Possibly not since Renaissance Italy has there been such a gathering of creative minds in one locale as there has been in Los Angeles County during the past half century. . . . While enriching the community with their presence, they have brought with them the manners and mores of their native lands which in rare instances have been at variance with those of their adoptive land."

His conclusion: "It is believed that incalculable emotional damage could result from incarcerating the defendant whose own life has been a seemingly unending series of punishments."

Judge Rittenband ordered Polanski to undergo a 90-day psychiatric study at the state prison in Chino. Both Gunson and Dalton understood that this would be Polanski's punishment, according to declarations they signed recently.

Polanski reported to Chino on Dec. 16. He was released after 42 days.

The psychiatric report, made public in a recent appellate court filing, echoed the probation report.

"There was no evidence that the offense was in any way characterized by destructive or insensitive attitude toward the victim," wrote Philip S. Wagner, Chino's chief psychiatrist. "Polanski's attitude was undoubtedly seductive, but considerate. The relationship with his victim developed from an attitude of professionalism, to playful mutual eroticism. . . . Polanski seems to have been unaware at the time that he was involving himself in a criminal offense, an isolated instance of naivete, unusual in a mature, sophisticated man."

Rittenband called the report a "whitewash."

He met in chambers with Gunson and Dalton on Jan. 30 to discuss the sentencing two days later. He told them he wanted Polanski to do more time in prison -- and then leave the country, according to the attorneys' declarations. Rittenband said he would send him back to Chino for 48 days to complete the 90-day stint, then release him, if Polanski agreed to voluntary deportation. If not, he would face a longer prison term.

Dalton relayed that to his client. Polanski left the lawyer's office, drove to LAX and bought the last seat on the next British Airways flight to London.

The banner headline in The Times the next day: "Polanski Flees!"

Attorney decries judge

Rittenband called a news conference in his chambers. "The crime to which Mr. Polanski pleaded guilty was a crime of moral turpitude, and that makes him subject to deportation," he said. "I feel he does not belong in this country."

On Valentine's Day, Dalton filed a motion that the judge should be disqualified for prejudice against Polanski. He argued that Rittenband improperly used the psychiatric study to incarcerate Polanski, that he had no authority to compel his deportation, that his public statements violated the California Rules of Judicial Conduct, and that he was letting critical media coverage, angry letters and advice from friends influence him.

Dalton told the media that day that "there is a good possibility Roman would come back if another judge is assigned to the case."

Rittenband "categorically" denied any misconduct, but removed himself from the case "to avoid needless delays" and to encourage Polanski to return.

Polanski opted to stay in France.

Six years into his exile, in his autobiography, "Roman, by Polanski," he laid out his version of the night at Nicholson's. "We dried ourselves and each other. She said she was feeling better. Then, very gently, I began to kiss and caress her. After this had gone on for some time, I led her over to the couch. There was no doubt about the girl's experience and lack of inhibition."

Polanski said he was surprised to learn later that Samantha had lied about having asthma. "Why she did so baffles me to this day."

A settlement is reached

On a quiet court day just before New Year's Eve 1988, an oddly named lawsuit landed at the Santa Monica courthouse: Jane Doe vs. R. Rpolanski.

Samantha Gailey, then 25 and living in Kauai, was suing the director for sexual assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress and false imprisonment. The court allowed the lawsuit to stand under the false name, Rpolanski, effectively hiding it from the public.

Many of the documents are now missing, and much of the case was handled outside of court by a private judge. But when a panel of the 2nd District Court of Appeal weighed in on the case in February 1993, the judges referenced some interesting points.

In a footnote, they said Gailey had asked Polanski for admissions that he gave her champagne and quaaludes, had oral sex with her and sodomized her. Polanski asserted his 5th Amendment right not to answer on the grounds that the answers "may tend to be incriminating."

The panel also said the trial judge in the civil case "found substantial evidence of oppressive conduct by Polanski and a strong likelihood that a jury would find despicable conduct on the part of Polanski."

Polanski settled with Gailey on Oct. 12, 1993.

Handwritten on a record of that day's court proceedings were circled notations: "250,000 + 500,000 + maybe 500,000," and the words "Settled" and "Confidential."

Polanski would apparently fail to live up to the agreement, because in late 1995 Gailey's attorney was back in court trying to collect money. He wrote that the confidential settlement required Polanski to pay her $500,000 by Oct. 11, 1995. With interest, he now owed her $601,583.87.

Polanski's attorney in the civil case, David Finkle, says the matter was ultimately resolved, but would not specify how.

The next year Samantha publicly forgave Polanski. Using her married name, Geimer, she went on the TV show "Inside Edition" in 1997 and described what happened to her. Geimer repeated what she told the grand jury, saying she was crying and begging him to stop, but added that he "wasn't forceful or mean or anything like that."

"It wasn't rape," she said.

The same year Polanski's attorney met with Gunson, the prosecutor, in the chambers of Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler to discuss how the criminal case could be resolved. Geimer wrote Fidler, urging leniency for Polanski and saying it was her opinion "that the 42 days he has already served is excessive."

But the negotiations fell apart.

Sympathetic documentary

The latest chapter of the saga -- the one that would lead to the arrest -- began last year with the HBO documentary, "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired," directed by Marina Zenovich. The film looked like the ultimate boon for the fugitive director, focusing on the allegations of misconduct against Rittenband, who died in 1993, and raising questions about what happened in the meetings with Fidler.

Dalton told the filmmaker that Fidler was ready to hold a hearing and let Polanski go without more time in custody, but wanted the hearing televised -- a condition Polanski wouldn't accept. A court spokesman, Alan Parachini, called this a "complete fabrication."

This dispute would become another sideshow to overshadow the events of March 10, 1977.

Much like the probation report, the documentary sanitized the core allegations, presenting selected bits of Samantha's grand jury testimony interspersed with Polanski's description of what happened.

Samantha: "He reached over and kissed me and I was telling him, 'No, you know. . . . Keep away."

Polanski: "She wasn't unresponsive. There was no doubt about her experience and lack of inhibition."

Samantha: "I was kind of dizzy, you know, like things were kind of blurry. I can barely remember anything that happened."

The film delved into the allegations against Rittenband. Dalton and Gunson recalled private meetings in which the judge told them what to argue at the sentencing hearing, even as his decision was already made. Another prosecutor, David Wells, said he was constantly in the judge's ear about the case and planted the idea of the psychiatric study at Chino.

Polanski's attorneys jumped on Wells' statements as the key basis for a full-throttle push to have the case thrown out -- their first public move in 30 years.

They had now cleared every obstacle they could. They had the victim on their side. They had Wells. They had Gunson saying the judge acted in bad faith. They even had a transcript of the filmmaker's interview with Richard Doyle, one of current Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley's bureau directors, saying he believed Rittenband abused his authority. (Doyle also said he thought Polanski's crime was "extremely calculated. . . . I don't think he had any intention of doing a photo spread of the girl.")

They filed a motion for dismissal on Dec. 8.

Judge Peter Espinoza said in February that Polanski needed to appear in court before he would hear the evidence. He hinted the director might have a case. "There was substantial, it seems to me, misconduct that occurred during the pendency of this case," Espinoza said.

Polanski's attorneys went to the appeals court in July with a petition to order the lower court to dismiss the prosecution.

"Despite feigning offense at Mr. Polanski's absence from California, the district attorney has never sought extradition or other relief, knowing, of course, that such relief would require litigation of the misconduct in this petition," they wrote.

On Sept. 22, Cooley drafted a warrant for his arrest. Polanski, now 76, was arrested four days later while getting off the airplane in Zurich.

Four days after that, Wells told the media he made up the stories in the documentary about Rittenband. "I'd like to speak of it as an inept statement but the reality is that it was a lie."

Polanski remains in custody fighting his extradition. His attorneys said he will go bankrupt if he is held much longer. On Tuesday, Switzerland's top criminal court rejected Polanski's appeal to be released on bail.

He may soon be back in Los Angeles to answer what a nervous young girl said 32 years ago.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-polanski25-2009oct25,0,3922034,print.story

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Editorial

Privacy and the Patriot Act

In the aftermath of 9/11, legislators cut legal corners to protect the nation. Congress should amend that now by revising certain expiring provisions of the law.

October 25, 2009

Along with the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and the Bush administration's illegal eavesdropping on U.S. citizens, the USA Patriot Act came to symbolize the excesses of the post-9/11 war on terrorism. Now, as it weighs the extension of three expiring provisions, the Democratic-controlled Congress has an opportunity to restore key privacy protections that were forgotten in the aftermath of the attacks.

Earlier this month, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill to renew the provisions and sent it to the Senate floor. Unfortunately, though the bill is an improvement over current law, it still falls short. The full Senate and House, where an extension bill was introduced last week , can do better.

The USA Patriot Act, supported by members of Congress from both parties and signed by President George W. Bush only 6 1/2 weeks after 9/11, is formally known as the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001. The grandiose title, like the law's hasty enactment, reflected the national resolve to do something, anything, to prevent a repeat of 9/11.

Some parts of the original act were relatively uncontroversial, including those permitting the CIA and the FBI to share information more freely and allowing investigators to seek warrants for "roving wiretaps" targeted at individuals rather than telephone numbers. Others, however, unjustifiably eroded privacy rights. Particularly troubling were rules governing the acquisition of financial and other records that allowed investigators to conduct fishing expeditions -- as long as the documents were deemed "relevant" to a search for terrorists.

In December, three provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire: those dealing with roving wiretaps and the acquisition of records, and another (added in 2004) that allows surveillance of what are known as “lone wolf” terrorist suspects . All three extensions strike us as reasonable, though in one case further privacy protections are essential.

In the era of disposable cellphones, it makes sense for investigators, with a court order, to be able to listen in on a targeted suspect's calls regardless of where he is. And roving wiretaps long have been used in criminal investigations.

More problematic is the provision allowing court orders for business records and other "tangible things" -- popularly known as the "library records" provision because of fears that investigators would monitor the reading habits of citizens (even though the law doesn't mention library records specifically). The Judiciary Committee bill explicitly makes it harder to obtain library records and requires investigators to show a court that the material sought is reasonably likely to be relevant to an intelligence investigation. Under current law, by contrast, a judge is supposed to presume that the materials are relevant. Even with that refinement, "relevance to an investigation" is too loose a standard for a court order. As Sens. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) and Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) proposed, the bill should be revised to require a tighter connection to a particular foreign agent or terrorist.

Finally, the bill would extend the lone wolf provision, under which investigators can seek a warrant to spy on a suspected terrorist even if he is not affiliated with a foreign power or organized terrorist group. Critics argue that this provision -- which the Obama administration says has never been employed -- is unnecessary because any suspected terrorist acting alone could be investigated under criminal laws. True, but the collection of foreign intelligence had previously been subject to rules different from those of a criminal investigation. On balance, the committee was right to extend this provision. Not every foreign terrorist is a card-carrying member of Al Qaeda and thus is not always so easily spotted and monitored.

The Patriot Act's greatest threat to personal privacy lies not in any of the provisions set to expire but in the law's expansion of the use of national security letters, subpoenas that allow the FBI to obtain records without a warrant. In 2008, the FBI issued 24,744 letters involving the records of 7,225 people. Not surprisingly, there have been abuses. In 2007, after an investigation of four FBI offices, the Justice Department's inspector general found irregularities in 22% of documents related to the issuance of national security letters. Last year, he found that the FBI had made "significant progress" in correcting violations.

Even so, the criteria for issuing the letters are too vague. At present, the government must merely certify that the information sought is relevant to an authorized investigation. The bill approved by the Judiciary Committee would increase the burden on the government slightly by requiring a written statement of specific facts demonstrating relevance. A narrower amendment by Feingold and Durbin -- which would have required issuance of national security letters to be related to a suspected foreign agent or terrorist or a possible confederate -- was rejected by the committee. It should be added on the Senate floor or in an eventual conference with the House.

The other problem with national security letters is that the companies or other institutions that receive them are not allowed to reveal that fact publicly, though they can appeal them in a closed hearing in federal District Court. Feingold proposed that the government certify that disclosure of the request would result in serious harm, and that the gag be lifted in a year's time unless the government presented new evidence that secrecy was necessary. The final version of the Patriot Act extension legislation should include those safeguards.

The committee also approved new limits on "sneak and peek" searches of a property conducted in the absence of the owner or resident. Currently, the targets of such searches must be informed within 30 days after the search; the committee reduced that to seven days.

It's easy amid this welter of technical provisions to lose sight of the overarching question: To what degree can invasions of privacy be justified by the need to investigate and prevent acts of terrorism? In the aftermath of 9/11, both Congress and the executive branch needlessly cut legal corners. It's time to make amends.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-patriot25-2009oct25,0,1659381,print.story

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From The Washington Times

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Sunday, October 25, 2009

In immigration war, environment is a neglected casualty

Stephen Dinan

BUENOS AIRES N.W.R., Arizona | Michael M. Hawkes, manager of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, reaches across his desk and pulls out a homemade blue-and-red bumper sticker that reads, "Littering is always a crime."

It turns out that here on the U.S.-Mexico border, even that is a controversial statement — because it's aimed at the humanitarian groups that drop gallon jugs of water on public lands to help illegal immigrants crossing the rugged borderlands.

Mr. Hawkes says dealing with those groups now takes up most of his time, and it only builds on top of the pile of other pressures — an army of illegal immigrants and drug smugglers, some of them armed, facing off against the U.S. Border Patrol — that have transformed his wildlife sanctuary into ground zero for the nation's immigration wars.

Situated in the middle of southern Arizona, Buenos Aires is among the hardest-hit. But the same story is repeated across the U.S.-Mexico border on refuges, Indian reservations, national forests and the rest of the federal lands that make up 40 percent of the boundary between the two countries.

The clear losers in the clash are the land, and the plants and animals that live on the edge in this beautiful but precarious environment — innocent bystanders caught up in an escalating, seemingly endless war between the immigrants, smugglers and the drug cartels and the authorities charged with catching them.

•••

An estimated 300,000 illegal immigrants traversed Buenos Aires' 118,000 acres in 2007, leaving tons of trash, rusting abandoned cars, biologically hazardous waste and vehicle tracks that reduced parts of the landscape to a dusty wasteland.

That hurts just about every aspect of the refuge's mission, which was established in 1985 to try to preserve the endangered masked bobwhite quail, one of seven endangered species on the refuge.

In the last two years, though, border security has been built up, with more manpower and a fence across the entire refuge boundary with Mexico. The result, according to Mr. Hawkes: The number of illegal crossers dropped to 20,600 in fiscal year 2009, or just 7 percent of what it was in 2007. Abandoned cars dropped from 100 in 2007 to zero in the most recent 12-month period. The land near the fence is already recovering.

"I've heard a lot of conservationists down on the fence. From my standpoint, it's been a blessing for this refuge, it really has," Mr. Hawkes said. "I'm the black sheep of the bunch because I think [Border Patrol is] doing a great job."

But environmentalists counter that while individual species might be helped — the lesser long-nosed bat, for example, which had at one point been ousted from its roosting cave on Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in western Arizona — that's more than offset by the overall disruption to species migration.

Dan Millis with the Sierra Club's Borderlands Campaign points to a stack of photos documenting desert toads, roadrunners and mule deer staring forlornly at the fence, apparently blocked in their efforts to be on the other side.

"Hands down, the security effort to try to stop the flow of undocumented immigration is, and always has been, from our perspective, far more damaging to the environment than the flow of migrants themselves," he said.

"The fact is, this trash and these footpaths are really a short-term problem that has a quick fix in terms of pick up the trash, rehabilitate the paths," he said. "This border wall does not have a quick fix, and in fact is having a very negative environmental impact that is causing extreme damage now."

Academic work on the problem is just beginning.

A study earlier this year by Aaron D. Flesch, a graduate student at the University of Montana, suggested that the cactus ferruginous pygmy-owl, which was at one point listed as an endangered species, generally flies far lower than the height of the border fence — suggesting that the species' population could be split in two. The same study also found that Desert Bighorn Sheep could face localized extinctions because populations are cut off from one another by fencing.

•••

There are lives at stake here. Each year, dozens of immigrants unable to handle miles-long walks through heat that averages 100-degree highs in the summer are found dead on public lands. Thousands more give up and light signal fires or use emergency-call stations to summon help.

To combat that, humanitarian groups regularly cart water out to the remote regions of the border. And that's what prompted Mr. Hawkes to print up his "Littering is always a crime" bumper sticker. It was meant to send a message to one group in particular, No More Deaths, a volunteer group that had dropped the water jugs along popular immigrant trails through the refuge, and who named its campaign "Humanitarian Aid Is Never a Crime."

"They've become just as much of a problem as the illegals," Mr. Hawkes said. It's so bad that he's asked — and the local U.S. attorney has agreed — to take the littering cases to court. Two men have been convicted, and more than a dozen are awaiting trial.

The Rev. Gene Lefebvre, who works with No More Deaths, said the group has asked that the littering cases be dropped. And after operating outside the law, they're now in negotiations with Mr. Hawkes to try to get official sanction for their activities.

Mr. Lefebvre says his group had a brief meeting with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and since then, negotiations with Mr. Hawkes on a compromise have made progress. No More Deaths has even offered to haul out trash every time they go in with their water jugs, and to make sure they carry out more than they carry in.

"Border Patrol is not our enemy. Neither is Mike. We want to come out of this with a solution that lets more migrants live, and we'll be happy with that, and make every effort on the environmental side to make Mike's jobs better," he said.

•••

For years, the rugged, remote nature of southern Arizona was its main protection against incursions by illegal immigrants. It was far easier for immigrants to go through more populated areas in California and Texas, so Arizona was spared.

But in the 1990s, the Border Patrol closed down those urban corridors, pushing the illegal flows straight into Arizona and the most fragile parts of the Sonoran Desert. The drug smugglers soon followed suit. The cartels' ability to adapt to the changing circumstances north of the border is remarkable.

One innovation was to post spotters inside the U.S., oftentimes on federal lands, to keep track of Border Patrol and other law enforcement movements. The one-man rock nest on a ridgeline overlooking Interstate 8 at Milemarker 141 is typical. The spot is well-camouflaged and if it weren't for the pile of empty Bud Light cans and water bottles with Spanish labels, almost impossible to spot unless you knew exactly where to look.

The smuggling cartels have thousands of these lookouts stations across southern Arizona, manned by low-level employees or people who owe a debt to the cartel.

"They're everywhere. On the smuggling corridors, most of the high points that give a good perspective of the smuggling routes or trails, there are lookouts in those areas," said Patrick Brasington, the chief law enforcement officer for the Bureau of Land Management's Phoenix office, which oversees the land near Milemarker 141.

That brazen approach extends to the fragile landscape as well. Mr. Brasington said smugglers have actually cut a miles-long, two-track road through wilderness on BLM land, moving rocks and flush-cutting to the ground trees, brush and cactus.

Mr. Brasington described one vehicle where smugglers had apparently tried but failed to change flat tires and instead left it propped up on boulders.

"They just devastated this area. It looked like a football field, where people had been playing there in the mud for months," he said.

In Ironwood Forest National Monument, haulers used to collect 40,000 to 50,000 pounds of trash a year. But in the fiscal year that just ended that dropped to 30,000 pounds — parts of the monument are just too dangerous for contractors to pick up the trash.

•••

The public lands agencies are well aware of that danger to their employees.

Mr. Hawkes said two state game wardens were shot at on his wildlife refuge last year, and law enforcement reports over the years detail other dangerous run-ins, including the death of Park Service Ranger Kris Eggle, gunned down on Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in 2002 by a drug cartel hit man fleeing Mexico.

It has gotten so bad that agencies require employees here to take special training, and have issued special rules on how to operate. The U.S. Forest Service warns managers not to send employees out on nighttime assignments, while the Fish and Wildlife Service said a law enforcement escort is required for employees working at night.

Despite those rules, hunters, campers, hikers and tourists enjoying the public lands don't see those same warnings. Instead, the most common alert they see is a road sign such as the one near Ironwood Forest National Monument that reads: "Travel caution: smuggling and illegal immigration may be encountered in this area."

A 2002 report by a drug task force in Arizona described what civilians have faced on public lands: carjacking and robbery, having rocks thrown at them and having their homes along the border invaded by immigrants looking for food, money or anything else they can carry.

Except for the occasional sign or Web site notice, the Interior Department does not publicize how dangerous the borders can be.

But a department employee did collect partial data up until he retired in late 2008. According to his figures, more than 99 percent of all marijuana seized on or near department lands over the last three years was seized along the border. The borderlands also accounted for more than 90 percent of the cocaine and more than 90 percent of vehicles seized and stolen vehicles recovered on Interior Department lands.

The border region accounted for about a quarter of the threats or violent incidents recorded in all the country's national parks, wildlife refuges, BLM land and Indian reservations, even though the borderlands account for a minuscule fraction of total department lands.

The agencies say there's a reason they issue the extra warnings to their own staffs: They fear that being government employees makes them particular targets. The Fish and Wildlife Service's new instructions issued earlier this month advise employees not to wear uniforms or any other official insignia while doing fieldwork.

Mr. Hawkes had his own, odd run-in.

Two weeks after he moved into a trailer home on the refuge, an immigrant broke in while Mr. Hawkes was out — and helped himself to a leftover dinner.

The man ate pork and beans, he stole Mr. Hawkes' new sneakers, a cell phone and the phone's charger — and then he washed the dishes he'd used, and wrote a note asking Mr. Hawkes to view his actions with compassion.

"It's just a matter of time until someone gets murdered, raped, shot," Mr. Hawkes said.

•••

Even the supporters of the border fence acknowledge it's not a cure-all.

Mr. Hawkes said the flow of immigrants on his refuge now looks like an hourglass, with the wall preventing incursions at the southern end, but with the immigrants and smugglers bleeding back onto his land farther north.

And he says the fence — which extends a mile on either side of his refuge, but then turns into vehicle barriers — could end up hurting some of the refuge's species if it were built farther out.

He says he's hoping the better technology promised by SBInet, the much-anticipated but long-delayed "virtual fence" the government has been promising, will be the answer to the competing challenges of security and resource management.

The only problem: SBInet is proceeding very slowly, thanks in part to the need to comply with environmental laws.

Those laws have always been a thorn in the side of the Border Patrol, illustrating again the clash of interests between law enforcement and environmental stewardship.

One Border Patrol agent recalled a few years back when the agency wanted to begin horse patrols on Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. The Park Service, which runs the monument, came back with a strange demand: that the horses be fed with seedless alfalfa, so that when they defecated they wouldn't be bringing in seeds of an invasive species.

More recently, Congress had to give the Homeland Security secretary authority to waive three dozen environmental laws to help expedite construction of the fence.

But the fights go on.

In a report last month, the Government Accountability Office said the Homeland Security and the Interior departments have been feuding over how much information the Border Patrol should provide to obtain environmental permits to build towers on public lands.

The issue has since erupted onto the House and Senate floors.

Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, attached an amendment to a Senate spending bill this year that would make sure wilderness designations aren't used to keep the Border Patrol agents from doing their job.

"The tragedy is that the very intent of the Department of Interior to protect the environment is actually being made worse by their policy of not allowing law enforcement efforts, i.e., the Border Patrol, into those areas," Mr. Coburn argued.

His amendment was accepted unanimously by the Senate, but still must survive a final House-Senate compromise bill.

On the House side, Republicans managed to attach an amendment to a national heritage area designation in Arizona that says the Department of Homeland Security must be consulted in such matters.

"I don't think Americans really know that when a Border Patrol agent crosses into a national park, he has to get out of his car, park it and walk," said Rep. Rob Bishop, the Utah Republican who has been leading the fight to give Border Patrol greater operating freedom. "I don't think they realize that the Border Patrol has to consult with the National Park Service before they can put up an antenna on that border."

•••

Nowhere are the fights between security and public lands managers more acute than those places officially designated as "wilderness" — a heightened level of protection for places the government deems so pristine they should be preserved in that state, free from man-made intrusions.

Once land is given the wilderness designation, tough new rules go into effect for permissible activities there. The no-nos include building or improving roads and putting up permanent structures like towers — exactly what the Border Patrol needs to do.

One Border Patrol agent recalled as a young agent 10 years ago, agents were not above cutting their own trails on those lands if it meant easier access and more apprehensions.

"We had people driving across, creating little two-tracks to get roads in there. I was the idiot driving. We've progressed past that, way past," the agent said.

Land managers and law enforcement officers like Mr. Brasington agreed that cooperation is better today between their agencies and the Border Patrol than ever before.

The agencies have reached several memorandums of understanding, and in some cases the Border Patrol has even paid to rehabilitate land they've affected, or paid to have the agencies improve roads in non-wilderness areas.

"What's working really well is the education part for Homeland Security folks," Mr. Brasington said. "They have opened their doors to us in the past couple years to come in and educate the officers, explain to them what a wilderness area is. … I don't think I'm seeing new damage caused by Border Patrol or the other folks who patrol our area."

Mark South, a former Forest Service employee who decades ago wrote the guidelines for some of the wilderness designations here, now thinks efforts to write new wilderness into law go too far.

"Tell me, which is doing more damage to the environment: the fence or the people coming through, the trails, the litter, the water bottles?" he said. "I think now, with what we're seeing along the border, trying to preserve anything beyond the existing laws now is pointless. Are wilderness needed? Yeah. How much is too much?"

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/25/environment-casualty-immigration-war//print/

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Sunday, October 25, 2009

H1N1 a national emergency

Sean Lengell

The White House has declared the 2009 H1N1 "swine flu" pandemic a national emergency, a designation that will make it easier for medical facilities to handle a surge of patients infected with the potentially deadly virus.

The president's action on Saturday is intended to remove bureaucratic roadblocks and make it easier for the sick to seek treatment and medical providers to provide it immediately. It also will allow medical facilities to waive certain standard requirements for Medicare, Medicaid and other federal health insurance programs on a case-by-case basis.

"The foundation of our national approach to the H1N1 flu has been preparedness at all levels - personal, business and government - and this proclamation helps that effort by advancing our overall response capability," said President Obama in a statement released by the White House.

Mr. Obama signed the proclamation designating the flu a national emergency late Friday and formally notified Congress on Saturday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Friday that the H1N1 flu has become widespread in 46 states, a level comparable to the peak of ordinary flu seasons, but occurring far earlier and with more waves of infection expected.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius initially declared the flu strain a "public health emergency" in April, renewing the declaration in July and again on Oct. 1.

But Mr. Obama said "given that the rapid increase in illness across the nation may overburden health care resources," raising the level of the virus to national emergency status was warranted.

The new declaration clears the way for medical providers to bypass federal requirements that, for example, could prevent hospitals from establishing off-site, alternate care facilities that could help them deal with emergency department demands.

Because of delays in producing the swine flu vaccine, the government has backed off initial, optimistic estimates that as many as 120 million vaccine doses would be available by mid-October. As of Wednesday, only 11 million doses had been shipped to health departments, doctors' offices and other providers across the country, the CDC said.

The government now hopes to have about 50 million doses of swine flu vaccine out by mid-November and 150 million in December.

Hospitals and state health officials nationwide have asked healthy adults to step aside and allow children, pregnant women and people with underlying health problems to have the first crack at H1N1 influenza vaccinations.

Virginia Health Commissioner Dr. Karen Remley said Friday that the CDC had allocated fewer than 400,000 doses of vaccine to the state so far because of manufacturing delays. No vaccination sites have yet received all of what they had originally anticipated, she said.

Federal health officials say that the swine flu is more widespread now than it ever has been, resulting in more than 1,000 deaths so far in the United States. About 100 pediatric swine flu deaths have been reported.

The only states without widespread flu are Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey and South Carolina, the agency said.

Swine flu has hit young adults and children the hardest, while seasonal flu normally is more dangerous to people older than 65. Seasonal flu normally peaks sometime between late November and early March.

"As a nation, we have prepared at all levels of government, and as individuals and communities, taking unprecedented steps to counter the emerging pandemic," Mr. Obama said. "Nevertheless, the 2009 H1N1 pandemic continues to evolve."

The H1N1 flu isn't confined within U.S. borders. The World Health Organization on Friday reported more than 414,000 laboratory-confirmed cases of H1N1 worldwide, with nearly 5,000 deaths.

While many drug manufacturers and national governments around the globe initially said that a single dose of the vaccine was sufficient for most adults, some health officials are beginning to question that strategy. Europe's drugs watchdog, the European Medicines Agency, said Friday that giving two doses of the vaccine was preferable.

Swine flu vaccine supplies in the U.S. are being hindered by production delays at two unidentified drugmakers, as well as by GlaxoSmithKline PLC's failure to gain regulatory approval for its product, a government official said Friday.

The U.S. won't get the 195 million doses it had planned for by the end of the year because of the delays, said Nicole Lurie, Health and Human Services' assistant secretary for preparedness and response.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/25/h1n1-a-national-emergency//print/

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• OCTOBER 24, 2009

  Police for Profit

  A big property seizure case hits the Supreme Court.

  With states and cities struggling with deficits, one fertile source of revenue has been money or property seized by police in possible connection with crimes. Not to be left behind, Illinois has pursued this tactic aggressively, using a law which encourages both police departments and prosecutors to take property for forfeiture, long before the accused ever get their day in court.

  This practice was challenged at the Supreme Court recently in Alvarez v. Smith , where six people allege that police use of the Illinois Drug Asset Forfeiture Procedure Act violated their right to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. Though forfeiture laws are designed to strip criminals of ill-gotten gains, three of the six were never charged with a crime. All six had their property or money taken without a warrant and had to wait for months or years without a hearing on the legitimacy of the forfeiture.

  By now, the individual cases in Illinois have been resolved with either a forfeiture or a return of the property, leading the Justices to question during oral argument whether the case should be dismissed as moot. Whether the court considers the details in Alvarez, the court will soon need to resolve when detention of property violates due process.

  Under Illinois law, the state has 187 days after property is seized to file forfeiture proceedings. Meanwhile, of forfeited funds seized, 25% lands in the lap of the prosecutor's office. Another 65% goes to the department that seized the property, giving police added incentive to take the property to pad their budgets. Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted this police incentive with concern.

  The numbers can be hefty. In 2008, the Chicago Police Department bragged it took in some $13.5 million in asset forfeitures, nearly double what it had seized the previous year. Golly. Inquiring minds will wonder if there were actually double the situations that called for asset forfeiture last year, or if the Chicago PD is simply more assertive about detaining property when the city is short of money.

  The case comes from the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which vindicated the citizens when it ruled that the time between forfeiture and judicial hearing presented an unconstitutional delay. The court required the state to provide property owners with an informal hearing to establish whether there is probable cause to continue to keep the property in custody.

  The question for the Supreme Court is whether to uphold what's known as the "Mathews standard," a well-worn method by which courts determine how individuals may challenge government "takings." The standard requires courts to take into account the individual harm caused by a property seizure as well as the risk of mistakes and the cost of additional hearings or other procedures. Illinois prefers a looser standard, allowing the state to continue to delay due process.

  The Illinois law compares awkwardly with the federal Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000. As the Cato Institute details in an amicus brief, while the two laws may establish comparable time frames, federal civil forfeiture actions can often run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, a level of cost and complexity well beyond the property at issue under the Illinois drug law. The better match-up is with other state forfeiture laws, and here Illinois performs miserably, taking many times as long to provide a hearing as the likes of Florida, Iowa, Arizona, Missouri and Texas.

  We're all for relieving criminals of illegal profits, but civil forfeiture laws must be used with caution and oversight lest they infringe on fundamental rights. Alvarez v. Smith provides an opportunity to restore the balance of justice to citizens.

  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574469360661231536.html#printMode

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