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From LA Times

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New LAPD chief to be announced Tuesday

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa summons the three finalists for a second round of interviews Sunday and decides to take an additional day to ponder who William J. Bratton's replacement should be.

By Joel Rubin

November 2, 2009

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will announce his selection of the city's next police chief Tuesday, the mayor's staff said Sunday evening.

After summoning the three finalists for a second round of interviews Sunday, Villaraigosa decided to take an additional day to mull over the weighty choice. The mayor had tentatively planned to name his choice for chief Monday.

Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Charlie Beck, Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell and Deputy Chief Michel Moore returned Sunday to Getty House, the mayor's official residence, to meet one-on-one with Villaraigosa for about an hour each. The candidates each met with Villaraigosa for several hours last week, and the mayor's request to see them again appeared to indicate that the choice was not an easy one.

Villaraigosa has said that picking the person to succeed William J. Bratton, who departed Saturday after seven years as chief, will be one of the most serious decisions he makes in office.

Beck, McDonnell and Moore each bring unique qualities and leadership styles to the table and would make very different chiefs. With the city facing a severe budget shortfall and general economic woes threatening to push crime higher, Bratton's successor will have the challenging task of continuing to make gains on crime rates -- or at least minimizing losses -- while keeping up morale among the rank and file.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lapd2-2009nov02,0,5839706,print.story

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Military refines a 'constant stare against our enemy'

The rapidly increasing surveillance power of unmanned aircraft gives U.S. officials an option besides troops.

By Julian E. Barnes

November 2, 2009

Reporting from Washington

The Pentagon plans to dramatically increase the surveillance capabilities of its most advanced unmanned aircraft next year, adding so many video feeds that a drone which now stares down at a single house or vehicle could keep constant watch on nearly everything that moves within an area of 1.5 square miles.

The year after that, the capability will double to 3 square miles.

Military officials predict that the impact on counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan will be impressive.

"Predators and other unmanned aircraft have just revolutionized our ability to provide a constant stare against our enemy," said a senior military official. "The next sensors, mark my words, are going to be equally revolutionary."

Unmanned MQ-9 Reaper aircraft now produce a single video feed as they fly continuously over surveillance routes, and the area they can cover largely depends on altitude. The new technology initially will increase the number of video feeds to 12 and eventually to 65.

Like the Reaper and its earlier counterpart, the Predator, the newest technology program has been given a fearsome name: the Gorgon Stare, named for the mythological creature whose gaze turns victims to stone.

Unmanned aircraft, used both for surveillance and for offensive strikes, are considered the most significant advance in military technology in a generation.

They not only have altered the conduct of warfare, but have also changed the nature of the current policy debate in Washington.

The improvements have bolstered the arguments of those in the Obama administration who oppose sending additional troops to Afghanistan. Unmanned aircraft also play a large role in the compromise plans being discussed by the administration.

The White House is considering stepping up the use of Reapers and Predators in rural Afghanistan as a way to disrupt the Taliban and militant groups without having to put thousands of additional troops in sparsely populated areas.

"The technology allows us to project power without vulnerability," said a senior Defense official. "You don't have to deploy as many people. And in the modern age you want as little stuff forward as long as you can achieve the effects as if you had lots of people forward."

But some officials caution that policymakers should not rely too heavily on the unmanned drones.

"It has made some people feel there can be a pure counter-terrorism mission without any counter-insurgency strategy," said a government official. "But that isn't truly viable without taking on a certain amount of risk."

Strikes by CIA-piloted unmanned aircraft have been deeply unpopular in Pakistan, where much of the population believes they have killed civilians as well as militants. In Afghanistan, drone missile strikes are subject to the same strict rules that apply to other airstrikes -- guidelines that have helped reduce civilian casualties.

But the government official said if the U.S. steps up the number of strikes by Predators and Reapers, collateral damage and inadvertent civilian deaths will rise.

"If you had a bead on Mullah Omar, of course you would strike," said the official. "But some $10-a-day thug, most people would say it is not worth it. . . . There is a high downside of the attacks that is always present."

Still, there is broad acceptance that unmanned aircraft and new surveillance technologies will play an outsize role.

"It is very promising and will be of great value here," said Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who leads military intelligence in Afghanistan. The Reapers' primary camera currently films 30 frames per second. To save bandwidth, the Gorgon Stare will transmit pictures at two frames per second, comparable to capturing every other step someone takes.

Computers will take the Gorgon Stare images and "quilt" them into a mosaic that shows a large swath of territory, military officials said. That will enable the Defense Department to keep unblinking watch on a midsize city or village -- turning the Reapers into a kind of heavily armed traffic camera.

Such "pattern of life" intelligence is considered crucial for analysts who are trying to hunt down members of an insurgent network. Using the video feeds, analysts will be able to zoom in on different parts of the city, or follow the movement of particular people.

Officials also plan to store weeks of video feeds on computer servers, so that analysts will be able to look back in time to follow the movements of people or vehicles.

"Using the all-seeing eye, you will find out who is important in a network, where they live, where they get their support from, where their friends are," said the senior military official. "This gives you the option to arrest the individual, talk to the individuals or . . . wait till those people have gone down a lonely stretch of road and take them out with a Hellfire missile."

Werner Dahm, the Air Force's chief scientist, said the scientific challenge for the Air Force Research Laboratories is to develop ways to automate or partially automate the analysis of all of the video of the wide-area surveillance.

Defense officials say improving and speeding analysis is as important as the technological advances in collection.

Predator and Reaper drones also can intercept electronic communications from radios, cellphones or other communication devices.

Last year, the Air Force overhauled how it organized its intelligence analysts. For the first time, video-feed analysts worked side by side with those listening to the audio.

"It is not just video resolution, it is not just signals, it is not just access to analysts," said the Defense official. "What has really evolved is the fact we can integrate a variety of information and analyze it in real time."

The number of Air Force unmanned drones available for deployment has increased significantly. In 2006, the Air Force was able to fly six drones at a time. Now operators are able to keep 38 aloft at once -- and the Air Force hopes to reach 50 by 2011.

With the wide-area surveillance technologies, the number of video feeds collected at one time is due to expand exponentially -- from 38 today to nearly 3,000 by 2013.

"This is Buzz Lightyear technology," said a military officer. "This is an unprecedented amount of information in warfare."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-drone-eyes2-2009nov02,0,7589825,print.story

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Rapist's neighbors knew something was wrong

The stench of decay clung to Anthony Sowell and his Cleveland home, where the bodies of six women were found. Now the community wrestles with self-recrimination.

By P.J. Huffstutter

November 2, 2009

Reporting from Cleveland

In this east-side Cleveland neighborhood, where gunfire and drug use are part of the landscape, there are no strangers to tragedy.

But what police discovered inside a cream-hued duplex on Imperial Avenue was horrific even here: the bodies of six women -- two stuffed into crawl spaces, some decayed beyond recognition -- in the home of a convicted rapist.

On Sunday, a day after police arrested Anthony Sowell, 50, the Cuyahoga County coroner declared what most people had surmised: All six were homicide victims. The bodies have not been identified, and Sowell has not been charged in any of the deaths.

The shocked community is grappling with self-recrimination.

"One of my neighbors has been missing since May, and now I wonder if she was in there," said Teresa Brown, 54, an usher at the nearby Perfect Peace Baptist Church. "If I'd done something, called someone, would it have made a difference?"

Cleveland police found the bodies almost by accident.

Officers arrived at the property Thursday to arrest Sowell on a separate rape charge. He wasn't there, but the smell of decay was so thick that officers headed upstairs.

They found two bodies on the living room floor.

As the days passed, investigators found another body in a freshly dug grave underneath a set of stairs in the backyard. Two more were crammed into a crawl space inside the house. The sixth was in a shallow grave in the basement.

"The stench of decay was overwhelming," said Lt. Thomas Stacho, spokesman for the police department. "The closest I got was 15 feet from an open door, and it was more than bad enough. I can't figure out how the neighbors didn't know something was wrong."

They did.

For months, they said, they gagged whenever they walked past the wood-framed house, with its listing porch and neatly mowed lawn. Some recalled that Sowell's clothing smelled bad enough to make their eyes water.

"He came into my store last week and reeked so bad, I had to open the front and back doors," said Eli Tayeh, who owns the Amira Imperial Beverage convenience store across the street. "I asked why he stunk. He shrugged, bought his beer and walked out."

Neighbors blamed the smell on mundane causes: body odor, the garbage bins Sowell picked through for scrap metal, the raw meat next door at Ray's Sausage Shop.

No one called the authorities. No one, they said, even thought to do so. After all, in Cleveland these days, help can be hard to find.

The city has been reeling from the foreclosure crisis for several years. Its unemployment rate was 10.3% in September, and it has one of the nation's highest poverty rates. Hard hit by the collapse of the steel and auto industries, Cleveland has seen its population fall by half since 1960.

On Sunday, as police guarded the property, locals and the morbidly curious walked past and took pictures. Some stopped to pray. They stared at the upper floors, where investigators had left the windows and porch door open.

Standing across the street, Tamica Pierceton wrinkled her nose in disgust.

"We kept away from him and he kept away from us," said Pierceton, 26, who lives in the predominantly black area. "We should have said something to someone. I wish I had."

Sowell moved into the duplex's upstairs unit in 2005 after serving 15 years in state prison for choking and raping a woman, investigators said. The property was owned by family members, but only his stepmother lived in the house, local media reports said.

Neighbors said Sunday that Sowell had told them his stepmother was having difficulty walking up stairs and had moved to a nursing home about a year ago.

Investigators say they are trying to find her. Police learned that she had tried to kick Sowell out after he refused to pay rent, and had not been heard from recently, Stacho said.

Sowell registered with the state as a sex offender, as required by state law, investigators said.

On Sept. 22, deputies with the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department did a spot check on him to confirm that he was living at the address where he was registered, officials said.

Later the same day, a woman contacted police and told them Sowell had choked her with an extension cord and raped her inside the home.

On Thursday, police arrived to serve a warrant for his arrest and made their discovery. Officers located and arrested Sowell on Saturday.

Only two victims were intact enough for the coroner to determine that they were black. At least four were found to have died from strangulation.

Some of the bodies were so decomposed that investigators called in an entomologist from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History to gather evidence to help narrow down when the victims were killed.

Since police asked the public for help Saturday, three people have come forward with information about missing loved ones.

"I haven't seen my sister for a year," Denice Patton told local media, holding a crumpled photocopy of the missing woman's picture.

"She lived in the neighborhood. It's aggravating, it's stressful. I just want to know where she is."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-rapist2-2009nov02,0,3037970,print.story

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Opinion

Don't count illegal immigrants? That doesn't add up

Like other efforts to make them non-people, a proposal to exclude them from the 2010 census doesn't do anything to deal with the problem.

Gregory Rodriguez

November 2, 2009

Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, has introduced legislation that, if passed, would instruct the U.S. Census Bureau not to take into account illegal immigrants and other noncitizens in the 2010 census. I'm all for it. Furthermore, I propose that the government no longer recognize deficits in budgets, record violent crimes in police reports, acknowledge casualties of war or count -- let alone give proper names! -- to hurricanes in weather reports.

Vitter's last-minute proposal -- census questionnaires, which are scheduled to be sent out in the spring, have already been printed -- is the latest in the political right's increasingly absurdist "fight" against illegal immigration. I put "fight" in quotes because these tactics actually do nothing to solve the problem of illegal immigration. Indeed, other than deprive the country's three most populous states of more congressional seats, Vitter's amendment would simply continue the restrictionists' strategy of pretending illegal immigration can be solved by depriving people of basic rights or, in this case, refusing to even acknowledge their existence.

In 21st century America, most fair-minded people know that it's simply not cool to judge large groups of people as inherently inferior or immoral based on race or cultural practices. In this multiculti era, even fanatics will avoid being called racists.

And that's the beauty of taking a strong position against "illegals." That brand is good cover for fanaticism. I mean, my goodness, how can anyone defend something or -- someone -- that is illegal! Try disagreeing with a rabid restrictionist and, before he accidentally blurts out a nasty racial epithet, he'll let you have it with a rather brilliant rhetorical question: "What is it about illegal that you don't understand?"

Let me say it again: I am against the idea of open borders. I believe our nation needs to have strong borders with clear rules and regulations as to who can enter and become members of our club. I also understand that global utopianism notwithstanding, sovereign states are the guarantors of our rights and that, by definition, these states are obliged to decide who can and cannot claim membership.

This goes double for nations that provide entitlements. The state not only protects us but provides us with some level of resources, i.e. public goods such as education, unemployment benefits, Medicare, etc. It makes sense, then, that if we want the state to provide us with these goods, we must accept that some form of exclusion is necessary. I understand and believe that not everyone can enjoy the benefits of U.S. citizenship. Like restrictionists, I therefore believe that some forms of exclusion are acceptable.

That said, the capaciousness of our Constitution grants basic protections to all people within our borders, even those who do not enjoy the privileges of citizenship. In other words, even if we deny noncitizens political and civil rights, the principles of our Constitution require that we grant them certain human rights -- some level of personal safety and dignity. When it comes to the census, what that suggests is that even though we may not count them as full members of our polity, we are still obliged to count them as individuals who occupy physical space within our national boundaries.

Discounting the existence of illegal immigrants not only has ethical significance, it has a number of practical consequences, not least of which is that a well-regulated nation needs to know how many people reside within its territory. Even rabid restrictionists would agree that, say, a police department might benefit from knowing how many individuals live in a given district. That means that some level of official recognition of illegal immigrants is required for the proper operation of government.

Part of the difficulty in dealing with illegal immigration is that it is a relatively new concept. Prior to the imposition of numerical immigration quotas in the 1920s, there was really no such thing as a class of people who were deemed "illegal." Sure, before the '20s, certain laws excluded Chinese or classes of "undesirable aliens" such as paupers or anarchists, but it was the imposition of comprehensive numerical limits that gave us the modern "illegal immigrant."

Ninety years later, we still have no idea what to do with the millions of individuals who are in the U.S. without papers. The right wing can conveniently demonize them and seek to banish them from official records, but how does that help us deal with the millions already here or keep even one more person from hopping the border?

Columbia University historian Mae M. Ngai has called the illegal immigrant the "impossible subject," a person who exists but doesn't, a person "who cannot be, and a problem that cannot be solved," at least as we currently structure ourselves. Illegal immigrants live with us, yet we do not count them in. We hire them, we even take their tax money, and yet we don't enter them in the ledger. The only thing Vitter's proposal would do is have us close our eyes just a little bit tighter.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rodriguez2-2009nov02,0,7638154,print.column

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From the Daily News

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Mayor's pick for chief to face tough days

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is expected to announce his choice for the next LAPD chief today, touching off a whirlwind campaign to win official and community approval for Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell, Deputy Chief Charlie Beck or Deputy Chief Michel Moore.

The Mayor's Office is developing a tight schedule that includes sessions with individual City Council members and the community.

Appearances are being planned for all parts of the city, from the San Fernando Valley to San Pedro, Westwood to East Los Angeles, with South Los Angeles a major target area.

It may be the most difficult eight days the nominee faces before his confirmation.

He will have to balance the demands of 14 council members - who include ex-boss Bernard Parks and reserve officers Greig Smith and Dennis Zine - along with a community that wants to ensure the reforms implemented by now-former Chief Bill Bratton continue.

Aides to Villaraigosa said he is pleased with the three finalists recommended by the Police Commission and that the one-on-one interviews with them went well.

In addition to the interviews, Villaraigosa sought advice from various civic and business leaders and also reviewed three-inch-thick dossiers on each of the candidates.

Recruiting a new police chief has turned out to be relatively easy compared with other top jobs at City Hall.

The Police Commission and city Personnel Department were able to process 23 applications for LAPD chief in less than two months, narrowing the field down to three finalists.

But management posts in four other departments have been vacant for months: Animal Services, Building and Safety, Housing, and Water and Power as well as the new Human Services Department, which consolidated the Children, Youth and Families, Human Relations and Commission on the Status of Women.

Villaraigosa appears in no real rush to fill the jobs, satisfied with the performance of those temporarily in charge and with no sense of urgency from the City Council.

Personnel officials said the selections are all in progress and believe there will be wide interest.

One problem is that the city is competing with the White House for many of the top people being considered.

Another vacancy could be coming at the Police Commission, with reports that Inspector General Andre Birotte is being considered for U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles.

It has created a buzz around City Hall, where a number of folks could be interested in applying for the IG's job.

However, if he does get offered the federal job, the city post will not open up until after January, because of his need to go through confirmation by the U.S. Senate.

Becca Doten, the personable communications director for Councilman Richard Alarc n, is a self-avowed political junkie.

Doten has worked on the bottom rungs of campaigns - making telephone calls, walking door-to-door - to help organize folks as part of the Los Angeles County Young Democrats and as political director for the California Young Democrats.

For the past several months, she has used all she has learned in a campaign to be elected to the Democratic National Committee, traveling throughout the state, sending out mailers and calling every delegate and official she could to win support.

She has her own Web site at www.dotenfordnc.com as well as Twitter and Facebook pages.

And all this for a job with no pay and that will probably cost her money for all the travel that would be involved.

She finds out soon if she was successful, when the state party meets Nov. 13-15 in San Diego.

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_13691709

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From the Washington Times

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Monday, November 2, 2009

EDITORIAL: Too much mercy for Illinois terrorist

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The price for joining al Qaeda, training to kill Americans and then secreting yourself on an Illinois college campus to wait for orders is a mere eight-year prison sentence. That's a light punishment for a man who pled guilty to a charge of conspiring to provide material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization.

U.S. District Judge Michael M. Mihm could have sent Ali al-Marri away for nearly twice as long - 15 years - but instead, he chose to show mercy for six years the Qatar native already has spent in a U.S. Navy brig.

Mercy was not on al-Marri's mind when he trained at al Qaeda camps and stayed in Pakistani safe houses. He was not contemplating the better angels of our nature when he learned how to use weapons and protect his communications from law enforcement snooping.

When al-Marri met with Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the terrorist duo were not studying how the Koran and the Bible teach forgiveness. The purpose of his training and placement in America was as part of a conspiracy to kill American civilians, to kill without thought or remorse at the order of superiors on the other side of the globe.

Mercy is a noble virtue, but in combat with an amoral enemy, mercy can deliver a dangerous message. A country where trained killers get a mere eight-year prison sentence risks being seen as spineless instead of righteous. Already, men released from the prison at Guantanamo Bay have returned to fighting against the United States.

Closing Guantanamo as President Obama has promised will bring more al-Marris to the United States, where more federal judges will have the opportunity to make mistakes that put us all at risk.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/02/too-much-mercy-for-illinois-terrorist//print/

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