FDA addresses radiation safety

The agency aims to protect patients from unnecessary exposure, with safety controls on medical devices and development of more precise dosing standards.

By Andrew Zajac and Alan Zarembo

February 10, 2010

Reporting from Los Angeles and Washington

The Food and Drug Administration has decided to impose new safety controls on medical imaging devices and encourage development of more precise dosing standards in a bid to reduce unnecessary exposure of patients to diagnostic radiation.

The agency also will promote a personal medical imaging history card that will enable patients to keep track of the number of images, and the amount of radiation, they receive over time, according to a medical imaging safety initiative unveiled Tuesday.

The safety push comes months after Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles discovered that it had accidentally exposed more than 260 patients to eight times the normal dose of radiation for CT brain scans over a period of 18 months.

Two other Los Angeles County healthcare facilities -- Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Burbank and Glendale Adventist Medical Center -- and one hospital in Huntsville, Ala., reported possible overdoses by imaging equipment to at least 104 people.

"We're aware that the exposure of the American public to [diagnostic] radiation was increasing fairly dramatically over the past 20 years," said Jeffrey Shuren, director of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health. "These tests can provide tremendous medical benefit. We're trying to optimize that benefit while lowering the risk."

The FDA will hold a public meeting March 30 and 31 to collect suggestions about new safety features and training that should be required for CT and fluoroscopic devices, Shuren said.

Equipment might be automatically calibrated to a recommended dose for a given procedure, so that any dosage increase would require an action by the operator. Equipment might also be designed to require identification of the operator as a way of tracking errors.

Shuren said regulators also are looking at software upgrades and other fixes to existing equipment.

In addition, the FDA is encouraging the development of a voluntary national database to determine the optimal dosages for a given procedure, fine-tuned to variables such as age and body type. Such a database also would allow individual practitioners to measure their use of radiation against that of their peers, Shuren said.

The FDA effort will build on data gathering already underway by the American College of Radiology and the National Council for Radiation Protection.

Some medical radiation experts questioned whether the FDA went far enough.

Requiring scanner manufacturers to add safeguards to their machines would have prevented the CT overdoses at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said David Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University Medical Center. But "it doesn't address what I see as the central issue: too many CT scans being done without medical justification," he said.

The number of CT scans performed in the U.S. each year has climbed to more than 70 million, more than triple the number in 1995.

The trend is driven by a variety of factors, including economic incentives for doctors and hospitals to order tests, and doctors' fear of being sued if they miss a problem.

CT has become standard procedure in emergency rooms for diagnosing head injuries, kidney stones and appendicitis. Scans are often repeated as part of routine follow-up or if a patient is transferred.

Shuren said the FDA was not directly addressing the question of medical justification because "it's really outside FDA's scope." But Shuren pointed out that putting imaging history cards in the hands of patients will call attention to previous exposures to diagnostic radiation.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-fda10-2010feb10,0,7994372,print.story

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Vancouver wrestles with homelessness

The city's downtown Eastside area is home to some of the worst poverty in Canada. Advocates fear the homeless will be swept away as the Olympics begin.

By Kim Murphy

February 9, 2010

Reporting from Vancouver, Canada

Dawn Bergman was meticulous about preparing her shelter. When temperatures one December night in 2008 plummeted to 22 degrees -- unusually frigid for Vancouver -- she smoothed blankets and a tarp over the top of her large metal cart.

Three times, police and outreach workers stopped by, summoned by reports of someone crying. Didn't she want them to take her to a shelter? No, she answered. Someone would steal her stuff if she left it unguarded on the sidewalk. She borrowed a lighter for her candles, which had gone out. The cop handed her a cigarette too.

Quit waking me up, Bergman said.

The next call came at 4:30 a.m., when someone reported seeing Bergman sitting upright in her cart, knees bent, arms at her sides, engulfed in flames. Her body was charred, her airway full of soot, her blood full of carbon monoxide, cocaine and morphine -- her soul long gone.

"People living in the street . . . they're bundled up, they're under an overhang and, in the end, we can't force them into a shelter," said police Supt. Bud Lemcke, who oversees the downtown Eastside area -- home to some of the worst poverty in Canada.

Vancouver frequently ranks among the most livable cities in North America, with multimillion-dollar condos offering breathtaking views of blue waterways and snowy mountains. But the downtown Eastside remains a netherworld of open-air drug-dealing, makeshift sidewalk shelters, public drunkenness and prostitution. It is home to 40% of Vancouver's robberies and assaults. And while it features North America's only legal heroin injection center, downtown Eastside has an HIV rate of 30% -- on par with Botswana.

For many in this city that prides itself on its social contract, Bergman's horrifying death was the last straw. The government announced the opening of five emergency shelters, 14 new permanent public-housing developments and plans to purchase and revamp 25 inner-city hotels. The British Columbia legislature passed a law giving police more power to get endangered people into shelters.

But with the Olympic Games approaching, there were widespread predictions that the police, as is often the case in host cities, would round up the homeless in a final cosmetic hose-down before the dignitaries swept into town.

"I swear to you on my mother's grave, that is not going to happen," Lemcke pledged to an activist recently. "We will protect the rights of people down there, and the world will see what the world sees on the downtown Eastside. The world needs to know."

Officials estimate there were 1,600 homeless people in Vancouver in 2008, the most recent count. Advocacy groups say the recession and the demolition of seedy hotels to make way for upscale condos have pushed the number closer to 3,000.

Activists for the homeless fear the real crisis will come in April, when all seven of the emergency shelters that were opened this winter will run out of funding. And the city has yet to find a way to pay for six of the new public-housing projects.

"Vancouver started down this road with [the World's Fair] Expo in 1986. We were told it would make us a world-class city. What it brought us was world-class housing prices and . . . world-class drug-dealing," said Judy Graves, the city's tenant assistance coordinator.

"One neighborhood after another has been gentrifying . . . to the point where we have only one neighborhood where the poor can afford to live -- the downtown Eastside," Graves said. "And now gentrification is pushing at the downtown Eastside. And the Olympics, of course, will force the cost of land up again."

Vancouver had little or no homelessness problem 15 years ago. But Canada, like the U.S., moved to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill in the 1980s -- and like the U.S., it provided few follow-up assistance programs. At the same time, the federal government got out of the business of building public housing, transferring responsibility to the provinces.

"People are kind of getting used to [homelessness], thinking, well, it's like prostitution or robbery, we're never going to be able to solve it," said Jill Davidson, the city's assistant housing director. "Well, we can solve it. Because we had it solved only 15 years ago."

In part to protest the billions of dollars being spent on the Vancouver Games, activists staged the Poverty Olympics here Sunday -- featuring events such as a wrestling match between community members and a character called Mr. Condo.

"The kids end up defeating the developer," said one of the organizers, Wendy Pedersen. "That's the cathartic ending."

The Pivot Legal Society also is distributing 500 red pop-up tents to be erected as living quarters for the homeless in prominent places during the Olympics, which get underway Friday.

Hoping to tell their side of the story, the city and provincial governments -- along with 30 nonprofit groups -- opened an information center in the downtown Eastside with posters touting housing projects and community programs. "Learn about real people transforming lives in the face of daunting challenges," says a handout for Olympics visitors. "It's a story of hope, renewal and revitalization."

But many out-of-towners may not get much of a feel for the neighborhood. A special car lane will whisk athletes and VIPs past a vista of bottle-recycling centers and down-market sidewalk vendors. (Among the items a bearded man was offering for sale one recent afternoon were a computer monitor and a bundt cake.)

Visitors also may drive right by what used to be First United Church. After Bergman's death, the congregation decided to open the sanctuary 24 hours a day as a shelter that could accommodate about 300 homeless people. Several rows of pews were cleared out to make way for beds; sleeping bodies sprawl along the remaining benches.

"We became an indoor park," minister Ric Matthews said.

Shawn Bayes of the Elizabeth Fry Society of Greater Vancouver, which operates several women's shelters, said Bergman was among those who avoid co-ed shelters for fear of sexual assault, beatings and theft.

"When she got to the point that she really needed to feel safe," Bayes said, "she would come in and she would sleep for days."

Ellen Silvergieter, director of advocacy services at St. Paul's Anglican Church, said one of her outreach workers encountered Bergman the night she died.

"He tried to get her to go to a shelter. . . . She had mental health problems; she had addiction problems. She should have had some housing with some supports in place," Silvergieter said.

"There wasn't any. And there still isn't."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-vancouver-homeless10-2010feb10,0,1391304,print.story

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L.A. County to pursue more federal aid for poorest residents

With Los Angeles County facing record levels of unemployment, and with more state welfare cuts looming, the Board of Supervisors approved a plan Tuesday to begin shifting responsibility for helping some of the most destitute to the federal government.

County officials set aside $7.2 million in this year's budget to help general relief recipients though the difficult process of applying for federal disability assistance or finding work. They plan to use the funds to help beneficiaries get into stable housing, locate medical records and obtain the detailed health assessments they need to apply for supplementary security income or veterans' benefits.

County officials say the program will be mutually beneficial. Instead of getting $221 a month in county-funded general relief, people with qualifying disabilities and little or no income could get up to $850 in supplemental security income. Instead of relying on county emergency rooms, they would become eligible for Medi-Cal.

L.A. County is projected to have nearly 100,000 general relief recipients by June, the highest level in more than a decade, as more jobs are lost and unemployment benefits run out. Faced with a persistent budget gap, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing cuts to state welfare programs that could increase the general relief rolls even further.

Even with one of the lowest cash-assistance rates of any urban county in the nation, payments to this population are expected to reach $200 million by the end of this fiscal year. Nearly $800 million more will be spent on other services for general relief recipients, including healthcare and law enforcement costs, according to county projections.

“That's not some small potatoes,” said Supervisor Don Knabe, who submitted a motion in April calling for a restructuring of the general relief program. “While the effort is to save net county costs and to get them into the right program...at the end of the day the people who need these programs are going to get better treatment. So I think it's a win-win.”

County officials estimate as many as 60% of general relief recipients are homeless. A significant number also suffer mental and physical disabilities that can make it difficult for them to navigate the welfare system.

A pilot project that began under the county's homelessness prevention program in 2006 found that general relief participants who received housing subsidies were twice as likely to find work or get approved for Supplemental Security Income. 

Central to the current plan is a decision to increase the number of subsidies available to those seeking employment or federal aid from 900 to 10,000 by December 2014. Recipients would be required to contribute $100 of each general relief check toward their housing costs and the county would provide an additional $400 month.

Community-based groups that work with the poor welcomed the approach Tuesday, saying that getting the chronically homeless into stable housing would make it easier to link them to services that can help them find jobs and obtain benefits.

“While the grant levels aren't going up ... the program itself I think will assist many more people in successfully getting on to another stage in their lives, and not be dependent on this resource which you can't really live on,” said Ruth Schwartz, executive director of Shelter Partnership, which participated in a working group that produced most of the proposals approved Tuesday and at an earlier board meeting in October.

Two pilot projects are planned to test different ways in which community organizations can help the county sign up more general relief recipients for federal aid. County social workers told the board they have already helped thousands to do this and want to remain part of the process. 

Among those who recently moved from county to federal benefits is Mark Kelly, a military veteran diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I went eight months on the streets in the same clothes," Kelly told the board.  "Now I'm in a system that works if you are willing to work it."

County officials believe the program will pay for itself and expect to recoup $14.3 million in savings from the $7.2 million investment. But given the magnitude of the expansion in housing subsidies, board members were anxious to include review mechanisms.

Although the board rejected a proposal by Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas to appoint a dedicated oversight group, it approved a recommendation that the county's chief executive and director of public social services report back to them in June 2012 on the outcomes. The number of subsidies in effect at that point is not allowed to increase without authorization from the board.

“We have a very obvious stake in this,” said Ridley-Thomas, whose district includes nearly four in 10 general relief recipients. “The good news from my point of view is that [general relief] is being made more efficient and more cost-effective and therefore it will do a better job of servicing more people.”

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/02/la-county-to-pursue-more-federal-aid-for-poorest-residents.html#more

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Law enforcement strip-search practice constitutional, appeals court rules

Blanket strip searches of incoming jail inmates are constitutional and necessary to prevent the smuggling of contraband into detention centers, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The decision by a full 11-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals replaces a smaller panel's ruling in 2008 that strip searches are so dehumanizing that they violate a person's constitutional rights if conducted without good reason to suspect that the individual is carrying drugs or weapons.

The ruling undermined one of several civil rights violations that antiwar protester Mary Bull and eight others alleged in their class-action lawsuit against the city and county of San Francisco. The protesters alleged they were mistreated by authorities when arrested during a November 2002 demonstration.

“This is not a final defeat at all. It opens the case to move forward,” attorney Mark E. Merin said of Tuesday's fractured ruling, noting that the arrestees' complaint was headed for trial by jury in federal district court.

Writing for the majority, Judge Sandra S. Ikuta, an appointee of President George W. Bush, said the court had found the strip-search policy “reasonable under the 4h Amendment.” She pointed out that the searches had produced hundreds of caches of drugs, money, shanks, knives and other items that can pose risk to jail personnel and other inmates.

Four separate opinions were filed by the 11 judges, including a dissent written by Judge Sidney R. Thomas and joined by three fellow appointees of President Clinton.

Thomas had written the 2008 ruling against strip searches without probable cause, saying that “the intrusiveness of body-cavity searches cannot be overstated.”

In his dissent, Thomas recounted that Bull had been arrested at a peaceful protest, slammed to a concrete floor during booking, stripped and subjected to a body-cavity search, then left naked in a cell for 11 hours. She was subjected to a second strip search before being released without charges.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/

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Former Tustin Hospital executive agrees to guilty plea in skid row patient scheme

A former top executive at Tustin Hospital and Medical Center agreed in court papers filed Tuesday to plead guilty to charges of paying illegal kickbacks for homeless patients recruited from Los Angeles' skid row.

Vincent Rubio, 49, was the chief financial officer when authorities raided the hospital two years ago while investigating a multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud taxpayer-funded healthcare programs by using thousands of patients rounded up from skid row for unnecessary medical tests and procedures.

Rubio, who faces up to 15 years in prison, is the fifth person charged in the scheme. Federal prosecutors and investigators are pursuing several other targets in the probe.

"Mr. Rubio is cooperating with the ongoing investigation," said assistant U.S. attorney Consuelo Woodhead.

Rubio is due in court next month. He admitted in the plea agreement that he helped orchestrate payments to a skid row center operator, Estill Mitts, and another unnamed person, who recruited homeless people and arranged their transportation to Tustin Hospital.

The hospital would then run up thousands of dollars in medical bills paid by Medicare and Medi-Cal. Under Rubio's direction, the hospital paid $2.3 million to the skid row recruiters who allegedly guaranteed 40 to 50 patients a month, authorities said.

The hospital netted $10.6 million from Medicare and Med-Cal from those patients, according to court papers.

Rubio also acknowledged that he pocketed kickbacks from the skid row recruiters and failed to report taxes on those proceeds. In 2005 alone, he failed to list $38,000 in extra income on his taxes, according to court papers. 

Mitts, 65, of Los Angeles pleaded guilty in 2008 to conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, money laundering and tax evasion. He is scheduled to be sentenced June 21.

Rudra Sabaratnam, 65, one of the owners of City of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles, pleaded guilty in 2008 to paying illegal kickbacks for patient referrals. He is scheduled to be sentenced in April.

Dante Nicholson, 52, senior vice president of City of Angels, pleaded guilty in 2009 to paying illegal kickbacks for patient referrals and is scheduled to be sentenced in June.

Robert Bourseau, co-owner of City of Angels, pleaded guilty in 2009 to paying illegal kickbacks and is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 22.

Tustin Hospital is a subsidiary of Pacific Health Corp., which also owns Los Angeles Metropolitan Medical Center, Anaheim General Hospital and Bellflower Medical Center.

Those institutions, along with Rubio, Tustin Hospital CEO Daniel Davis and two admitting physicians have been sued by the city of Los Angeles. The elaborate enterprise was uncovered after the Los Angeles Police Department discovered several ambulances dropping off patients on skid row.

Investigators soon learned it was more than a case of patient dumping as they tracked patients back to Mitts' 7th Street assessment center.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/02/former-tustin-hospital-executive-agrees-to-guilty-plea-in-skid-row-patient-scheme.html#more

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OPINION

Come together, right now, over immigration reform

The message out of Massachusetts might not have been one of voter anger, but a push for solutions in Washington.

By Tamar Jacoby

February 10, 2010

Like a door slamming shut, the conventional wisdom is hardening. The chances that Congress will take up comprehensive immigration reform this year are increasingly seen as poor to nil.

What killed the prospect, many think, was the Massachusetts special election to replace the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. Democrats and Republicans both heard the message: Voters are angry at Washington, and incumbents are at risk for their political lives.

And many lawmakers drew what seemed like the obvious conclusion: Don't touch anything controversial between now and election day in November. Stick to the blandest diet possible, nothing but political comfort food.

And of course, immigration reform is anything but political comfort food.

But what if that wasn't the message from Massachusetts? What if the real message was that voters want solutions; want Democrats and Republicans to stop bickering and start working together to solve problems?

If this was the message -- and I believe it was -- lawmakers need to think very differently about how to behave in the months ahead. And Democrats and Republicans ought to be looking hard for issues they can come together on.

This was never going to be an easy year for Congress to take up immigration reform. Yes, President Obama had promised it was on the agenda for 2010. And yes, a powerful new coalition of Latinos and immigrant-rights activists was demanding it get done. But stubborn unemployment made it hard to imagine passing any bill that appeared to help immigrant workers at the expense of citizens. And the ever-more-entrenched partisanship in Washington made it look all but impossible to find the votes.

After all, even with large Democratic majorities in Congress, in order to pass immigration reform, the president was going to need Republicans. Yet as 2009 became 2010, no more than a handful of Republicans had voted for any of the White House's top proposals. The GOP was making hay on just saying no. And even if Democrats and Republicans could agree on how to fix immigration -- as some very liberal Democrats and very conservative Republicans had agreed on in the past -- the sour political climate seemed to doom any effort to cooperate.

But this is where the Massachusetts message comes in -- if anyone is listening.

A new approach won't come easily to either party, now or next year when Republicans will no doubt have more seats in Congress. It's far from clear that either Democrats or Republicans mean what they've been saying in recent weeks about working together. And of course, even if bipartisanship were to break out like spring fever, immigration isn't likely to be the first issue the two sides tackle together.

Still, if the climate were to shift -- if the parties could come together on, say, jobs or the deficit, if they saw that voters approved and rewarded them for a new approach -- it might not seem so far-fetched to try cooperating on immigration.

The legislative process would have to work very differently than it has been working, or more often, not working. Democrats and Republicans would have to start the drafting process together, rather than one party proposing a fully baked bill and expecting the other to sign on submissively. Democrats would have to make it harder for the GOP to just say no, by building on provisions that Republican voters are in favor of -- including, in this case, tougher enforcement of immigration law. And lawmakers from both parties would have to find ways to tell voters something that sounds counterintuitive but that most economists support: Immigration actually creates jobs for Americans and will be crucial for the nation's economic recovery.

A tall order? Yes. But not impossible. Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have been working for months in a genuinely consensual way to craft a balanced, bipartisan immigration reform bill. And far from dooming it, as many think, the Massachusetts election could start the thaw that creates space for a measure to move.

When might that happen? When will Democrats and Republicans decide to come together and govern from the center to solve the problems we face as a nation?

Whatever their views on immigration, that's a question all Americans should want answered.

Tamar Jacoby is president of ImmigrationWorks USA, a national federation of employers advocating immigration reform.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-jacoby10-2010feb10,0,1024612,print.story

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Healthcare reform prelude: double-digit increases in premiums?

If WellPoint's Anthem BlueCross is trying to make the case for an individual mandate to buy health insurance, it certainly picked a lousy way to go about it.

The insurer plans to raise premiums by up to 39% this year, prompting a flurry of complaints from customers, insurance brokers and regulators. Two top Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee joined the scrum Tuesday, demanding that WellPoint explain all the rate hikes its subsidiaries have imposed since Jan. 1, 2009 -- just before Congress started work on healthcare reform legislation.

(Click here to download the committee's letter)

You might think that the recession would hold down healthcare costs -- after all, that's what happened in the first year of the downturn, 2008. No one's going to ignore a broken arm or a child with a high fever, obviously, but people will skip a trip to the doctor for some ailments when times are tough.

But in defense of its proposed premium increases, Anthem pointed to something else ...

Unfortunately, in the weak economy many people who do not have health conditions are foregoing buying insurance. This leaves fewer people, often with significantly greater medical needs, in the insured pool.

In other words, when healthy people try to save money by dropping their insurance, the cost of treating everyone else is spread across a smaller customer base. The insurers' trade association, America's Health Insurance Plans, added that small businesses are also dropping coverage or passing on more costs to their employees, prompting more youthful, healthy workers to go uninsured. And when people who have no coverage rack up medical bills they can't afford to pay, those costs get passed on to the people who have insurance.

The solution? According to the statement released by Anthem, it's "sustainable health care reform to manage the steadily rising costs of hospitals, drugs and doctors." That's not an endorsement of the Democrats' comprehensive proposals; no, the company said, Congress needs to "go back to the beginning and get health care reform done right."

WellPoint CEO Angela Braly helpfully laid out several suggestions for how reform could be "done right" in a lengthy interview that the Wall Street Journal published Saturday. Foremost on her list was controlling the rapidly increasing costs imposed by doctors and hospitals, a situation she would address by giving consumers more information about the cost and quality of the care they're seeking. But she also advocated a "meaningful requirement" that everyone carry insurance, and that consumers with expensive ailments or risky profiles be foisted off on public-private insurance pools. Loose translation: send WellPoint more customers who won't cost much to insure, and have the government pick up part of the tab for covering the ones who cost the most.

Somehow, slapping customers with a massive increase in premiums doesn't seem like an effective way to build support for an individual mandate. Nor am I finding it easy to understand how Anthem justified increases of up to 39% when Braly says its customers' healthcare costs went up 8.9% last year. In fact, even 8.9% seems high, given what actuaries at the Department of Health and Human Services reported recently about hospital, physician and prescription drug spending in 2009. Of course, rates are based on projections for the coming year, and AHIP says sharp increases are expected in all sorts of healthcare costs.

Braly's certainly right about the need for lawmakers to add more aggressive cost-control efforts to the healthcare reform bill, as well as the value of giving consumers more information about costs and outcomes. (I would offer just this one quibble: My HMO makes it well-nigh unaffordable for me to use anyone other than my chosen "personal care physician" and the network of specialists and facilities that doctor is associated with. So unless the rules imposed on me change, telling me that there's a better, cheaper hospital in another part of town won't do me or my insurer any good.) I also think an individual mandate has to be part of the comprehensive solution, and that high-risk insurance pools can be a good idea. I'm not sure Braly's formulation, however, is designed to help WellPoint's customers as much as it would help WellPoint.

http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2010/02/anthem-bluecross-wellpoint-premiums-healthcare-reform.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpinionLa+%28L.A.+Times+-+Opinion+Blog%29

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From the Daily News

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FBI asks for public's help in finding Ex-President Bandit

The suspect is described as black, about 40, with a medium build, said Laura Eimiller of the FBI.

The man wore a Nixon mask when he robbed a U.S. Bank branch on Nov. 25, and a Santa Barbara Bank & Trust branch on Dec. 2, Eimiller said.

"During both robberies, the bandit was armed with a handgun, which he brandished liberally throughout the bank to enforce orders given to victims in the bank," Eimiller said in a statement.

"The bandit, while exhibiting violence, had been described by witnesses has having a calm demeanor," Eimiller said.

He also robbed a U.S. Bank branch on Jan. 19, and a bank of the West branch on Jan. 22, Eimiller said.

In the latest crime, he had white powder on his face, and wore a green jumpsuit, gray cloth gloves and a baseball cap, along with a white bandana tied around his head, Eimiller said. He was armed with a handgun.

"The bandit entered the bank with three white banker's boxes, and stated he had a delivery," Eimiller said. "He then advised he was robbing the bank, and ordered the employees to provide him with cash. During the robbery, the bandit threatened to shoot an employee before exiting the bank."

Authorities circulated surveillance photos of the suspect, and announced that some reward money is available, Eimiller said. Anyone knowing more about the case was urged to call the FBI; the LAPD; 911; or the 24-hour number 888-CANT-HIDE.

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_14363840

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RELEASED RELIEF

It's not just Californians who are bothered by the fact that we spend too much money to lock up too many in our prisons. And it's not just progressives who worry about the side effects of locking up hundreds of thousands with very little effort made to rehabilitate them.

Add to that list no less than U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. While he's sometimes seen as aligned with a moderate wing on the high court, it was Kennedy, after all, who wrote the recent ruling allowing big business to go back to contributing cash in big ways to political campaigns. He's certainly no Tom Hayden.

In a speech last week at Pepperdine Law School, Kennedy laid into California prison policies that, he said, keep "185,000 people in prison at $32,500 a year" each. (That's his figure; other ways of doing the arithmetic add up to more than $50,000 a year in costs to taxpayers for each prisoner.)

It's true that he added the classical liberal comparison with the way things are in the Old World: Sentences in California are eight times as long here as those meted out in European courts, he said. But his real zinger went to the heart of some of California's fiscal problems: union control of the public monies.

"The `three-strikes' law sponsor is the correctional officers' union and that is sick!" he said. It's true that it wasn't just law-and-order and victims'-rights groups that were behind the legislation that mandates life sentences for three-time criminals. The giant prison guard union, using rhetoric aimed at getting Californians worried about their safety, pushed through what amounted to a full-employment law for its members.

It's not that any Californian who is not a criminal wants to see a mass release of inmates as the key to balancing our budget. But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to release some of those who are incarcerated in the face of both the financial mess and a series of lawsuits aimed at easing prison and jail overcrowding is a sane response to an insane situation.

At first glance, it sounds like an awful idea to release anyone in prison before their sentence is up. More criminals on the streets sooner, right? That's the logic behind the fear-mongers. One opponent said that California already has the nation's highest recidivism rate.

What wasn't said was the reason that's a fact is that California is the only state that automatically sends parolees back to prison for the slightest violation, such as missing one appointment with the state's already overworked parole agents.

Officials in the state Department of Corrections, as opposed to union bosses, welcome the sensible early release of nonviolent offenders to address both budget and overcrowding problems. As they note, it will allow them to focus on the worst of the worst - serious and violent parolees. Meanwhile, warrantless searches of all parolees will still be allowed at any time.

Those sent to California prisons for serious crimes are not part of any early-release programs - they're going to remain guests of the state for a long time.

The crime rate is well down in California - and Los Angeles in particular - just as the prison population is up. Since we can't afford to build new prisons, we must be smarter about how, and for how long, we lock people up.

http://www.dailynews.com/opinions/ci_14369947

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From the Washington Times

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1 million fewer illegals in U.S., study says

by Stephen Dinan

The number of illegal immigrants in the United States dropped by nearly 1 million from 2007 to 2009 as the Bush administration ramped up enforcement efforts just as the economy took a dive, according to new figures the Homeland Security Department released Tuesday.

The drop - which analysts said is unprecedented in modern history - indicates that more illegal immigrants left to go back home, and that fewer illegal immigrants actually tried to cross the border in 2007 and 2008 - data that will play a major role when Congress takes up the immigration issue later this year.

Homeland Security demographers said the nation's population of illegal immigrants totaled 10.8 million in January 2009, down from a peak of 11.8 million in 2007, and from 11.6 million in January 2008. The reduction was powered in large part by a drop in illegal immigrants from Mexico, which saw a decline of nearly 400,000.

The numbers, based on U.S. Census Bureau data, come as President Obama and a bipartisan group of senators seek to push a new overhaul bill that would legalize most illegal immigrants and revamp the legal immigration system.

After the last effort to pass an immigration bill failed in mid-2007, the Bush administration announced it would step up enforcement efforts, including high-profile raids and new powers to enforce immigration laws for some state and local police departments. At almost the same time, the economy entered a recession in December 2007, lessening the attraction of the country for would-be immigrants.

Matthew Chandler, a Homeland Security spokesman, said both factors likely contributed to the dropping numbers.

"When employment opportunities shrink as they have during the current recession and particularly in those industries employing large numbers of unauthorized immigrants, then it would not be unexpected to see a decrease in the unauthorized population," he said.

Mr. Chandler also credited the "unprecedented resources" his department has devoted to stopping crime and smuggling along the Southwest border, as well as what he called "smarter and more effective immigration-law enforcement."

Late last year, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the stepped-up enforcement has proven to be effective, and said the government has shown it can secure the borders. She argued the time is now ripe to move to a broader legalization bill.

But Steven A. Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, which backs a crackdown on immigration, said the numbers poke a hole in one of the arguments for legalization - the notion that illegal immigrants are here to stay, so legalizing them is the only option.

"This suggests that that may not be the case - that in fact the numbers can go down. It's not inexorable. Instead of growing, it's fallen quite a bit," he said.

Every year about this time the Department of Homeland Security releases an estimate of the nation's illegal-immigrant population. The department warned that year-to-year data can be uncertain.

But the Homeland Security numbers match a study Mr. Camarota released last summer that also estimated the illegal-immigrant population at about 10.8 million at the beginning of 2009.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/10/1-million-fewer-illegals-in-us-new-study-says//print/
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