Professor's arrest roils Alabama campus after shootings

Amy Bishop is charged with capital murder in the shooting deaths of three fellow biology professors. A Massachusetts police chief discloses that Bishop fatally shot her own brother in 1986.

By Richard Fausset

February 14, 2010

Reporting from Huntsville, Ala.

In this Southern city famed for its science and technology, residents are coming to grips with perhaps the most unsettling fact in Friday's campus shooting: The suspect was not a student but a professor.

And, it was learned Saturday that she had fatally shot her brother in 1986.

Amy Bishop, 45, a neurobiologist and assistant professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, was arrested shortly after the incident and charged with capital murder.

She is accused of killing three of her colleagues and injuring three more during a faculty meeting.

According to her campus biography, Bishop holds a doctorate in genetics from Harvard University. In 2008, UAH President David Williams predicted that one of her cell-research advances would "change the way biological and medical research is conducted."

On Saturday, students struggled to process the news of her arrest on this historically low-key campus best known for churning out engineers.

LaMardra Moore, a nursing graduate student who took an anatomy and physiology class from Bishop as an undergraduate, said she was shocked that police had arrested a teacher -- one of "the people you're supposed to go and confide in."

In a news conference Saturday, Huntsville Police Chief Henry Reyes declined to discuss a motive for the shootings.

But Bishop was apparently not happy with the school: In recent months, she had been denied a tenured faculty position, said college spokesman Ray Garner. Dick Reeves, chairman of a company that plans to market one of Bishop's innovations, said she was upset by the slight.

On Saturday, the story took an odd twist when Braintree, Mass., Police Chief Paul Frazier announced that Bishop had shot and killed her brother in December 1986 after an argument. The police report of the incident could not be found, but the officer who wrote it up recalled that Bishop was arrested after fleeing the scene with a shotgun, Frazier said in a statement.

But Bishop was released when the booking officer received a call from then-Chief John Polio, or a captain calling on the chief's behalf, Frazier said.

Late Saturday, the Norfolk County district attorney's office in Massachusetts released a state police report of the incident from its archives. It states that Bishop and her mother told police the shooting was an accident that occurred when Bishop was trying to unload the shotgun.

In 2003, it was apparently tenure that was a key goal for Bishop when she and her family moved from Massachusetts to Alabama. Neighbor Bill Armstrong said Bishop told him that "you almost had to win a Nobel Prize to get tenure at Harvard."

Bishop, her four children and her husband, Jim Anderson -- a sometime-collaborator in her research -- settled in a two-story house about 12 miles from campus. They were outspoken Northeastern liberals whose political yard signs stood out a little on their suburban lot facing a cul-de-sac called Scarlett O'Hara Circle.

Some neighbors found them to be friendly. Others clashed with them. Armstrong said that Bishop passed around a petition to get another neighbor's dogs to quiet down. Armstrong signed the petition; he said Bishop and the dogs' owner eventually ended up in court.

"She really got intense about getting that situation done," he said. She had an intense personality in general, he said.

On campus, Bishop taught introductory and advanced classes. Nursing student Moore recalled that Bishop seemed passionate about science, though somewhat awkward socially. She also remembers grueling tests.

"She was very interested in details," Moore said. "I heard she was getting tougher over the years too."

On Friday, Bishop was one of about a dozen members of the biology department meeting in a conference room around 4 p.m. According to police, she took out a 9-millimeter handgun and began shooting.

Gopi Podila, the department chairman, was killed, as were professors Maria Davis and Adriel Johnson. Three others were hospitalized; two of them are in critical condition, and one has been released.

Police said they arrested Bishop outside the building; she did not resist.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-huntsville-shooting14-2010feb14,0,6269719,print.story

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THE HEROIN ROAD

A lethal business model targets Middle America

Sugar cane farmers from a tiny Mexican county use savvy marketing and low prices to push black-tar heroin in the United States.

By Sam Quinones

February 14, 2010

First Of Three Parts

Immigrants from an obscure corner of Mexico are changing heroin use in many parts of America.

Farm boys from a tiny county that once depended on sugar cane have perfected an ingenious business model for selling a semi-processed form of Mexican heroin known as black tar.

Using convenient delivery by car and aggressive marketing, they have moved into cities and small towns across the United States, often creating demand for heroin where there was little or none. In many of those places, authorities report increases in overdoses and deaths.

Immigrants from Xalisco in the Pacific Coast state of Nayarit, Mexico, they have brought an audacious entrepreneurial spirit to the heroin trade. Their success stems from both their product, which is cheaper and more potent than Colombian heroin, and their business model, which places a premium on customer convenience and satisfaction.

Users need not venture into dangerous neighborhoods for their fix. Instead, they phone in their orders and drivers take the drug to them. Crew bosses sometimes call users after a delivery to check on the quality of service. They encourage users to bring in new customers, rewarding them with free heroin if they do.

In contrast to Mexico's big cartels -- violent, top-down organizations that mainly enrich a small group -- the Xalisco networks are small, decentralized businesses. Each is run by an entrepreneur whose workers may soon strike out on their own and become his competitors. They have no all-powerful leader and rarely use guns, according to narcotics investigators and imprisoned former dealers.

Leaving the wholesale business to the cartels, they have mined outsize profits from the retail trade, selling heroin a tenth of a gram at a time. Competition among the networks has reduced prices, further spreading heroin addiction.

"I call them the Xalisco boys," said Dennis Chavez, a Denver police narcotics officer who has arrested dozens of dealers from Xalisco (pronounced ha-LEES-ko ) and has studied their connections to other cities. "They're nationwide."

Their acumen and energy are a major reason why Mexican heroin has become more pervasive in this country, gaining market share at a time when heroin use overall is stable or declining, according to government estimates.

The Xalisco retail strategy has "absolutely changed the user and the methods of usage," said Chris Long, a police narcotics officer in Charlotte, N.C., where competition among Xalisco dealers has cut prices from $25 to $12.50 per dose of black-tar heroin. "It's almost like Wal-Mart: 'We're going to keep our prices cheap and grow from there.' It works."

Xalisco bosses have avoided the nation's largest cities with established heroin organizations. Instead, using Southern California and Phoenix as staging areas, they have established networks in Salt Lake City; Reno; Boise, Idaho; Indianapolis; Nashville; and Myrtle Beach, S.C., among other places. From those cities, their heroin -- called black tar because it's sticky and dark -- has made its way into suburbs and small towns.

In Ohio, where Xalisco networks arrived around 1998, black tar has contributed to one of the country's worst heroin problems. Since then, deaths from heroin overdoses have risen more than threefold, to 229 in 2008, according to the Ohio Department of Health. The number of heroin addicts admitted to state-funded treatment centers has quintupled, to nearly 15,000.

In Denver, fatal heroin overdoses rose from six in 2004 to 27 in 2008 after Xalisco networks became established.

The dealers have been especially successful in parts of Appalachia and the Rust Belt with high rates of addiction to OxyContin, Percocet and other prescription painkillers. They market their heroin as a cheap, potent alternative to pills.

There are no official estimates of how much money Xalisco networks make, but narcotics agents who have busted and interrogated dealers say that a cell with six to eight drivers working seven days a week can gross up to $80,000 a week.

Among the idiosyncrasies of Xalisco dealers is that they generally do not sell to African Americans or Latinos. Instead, they have focused on middle- and working-class whites, believing them to be a safer and more profitable clientele, according to narcotics investigators and former dealers. "They're going to move to a city with many young white people," Chavez said. "That's who uses their drug and that's who they're not afraid of."

Xalisco networks have expanded despite federal investigations in 2000 and 2006 that sent almost 300 people to prison.

Only in recent years have narcotics agents grasped the full reach of the system and its origins in Xalisco, which lies at the foot of volcanic mountains where opium poppies grow.

The county consists of the town of Xalisco and 20 villages with a total population of 44,000 -- about the size of Los Angeles' Silver Lake neighborhood. Landless sugar-cane workers, eager to grasp their version of the American Dream, provide a virtually endless supply of labor for the heroin networks, one reason the system has proved so hard to eradicate.

The rise of the Xalisco networks is a peculiar tale of dope, poverty and business smarts that connects a remote corner of Mexico with vast stretches of America's heartland.

Max tells his story

Two pioneers of the Xalisco model met in the early 1990s in the Northern Nevada Correctional Center, where they were serving time for drug offenses. One of them agreed to discuss the system's beginnings and its spread on the condition that he be identified only as Max, an alias he said he used as a heroin dealer.

Max said he was familiar with the U.S. heroin trade and that his partner, a native of Xalisco, had access to supplies of black tar and workers from his hometown. When the two were released from prison, Max said, they set up a heroin ring in Reno.

At the time, dealers sold heroin from houses, which police could easily target. Max and his partner had a better idea: Dealers could circulate in cars and receive instructions via pager (and later by cellphone).

Soon a system evolved: Drivers carried heroin doses in their mouths in tiny uninflated balloons, each about the size of a pencil eraser. Addicts dialed a number, as if ordering pizza. The dispatcher would page the driver with a code indicating where to meet the addict.

If drivers were busted, the small amounts of heroin and the absence of paraphernalia reduced the risk of lengthy prison sentences. To avoid attracting attention, they dressed modestly, drove beat-up cars and never carried weapons.

From Reno, the partners expanded to Salt Lake City, Denver, Honolulu and other cities.

Max said the heroin was manufactured in Xalisco. According to court records, dealers and investigators, the Xalisco entrepreneurs paid the Arellano-Felix cartel for permission to take it across the border in Tijuana.

The heroin wound up in the Panorama City apartment of a couple from Xalisco, who repackaged it and sent it to the networks via courier or Federal Express, according to federal court records.

Max, who went to federal prison for his role in the scheme, said one reason the system did not evolve into a cartel controlled by one person or family is that Xalisco County is made up of ranchos , small villages famous for their independent spirit and intense rivalries.

"We're real envious of each other. Families cannot work together," he said.

Still the system was there for anyone to use. It also appeared in Southern California, where many Xalisco immigrants live. It's unclear whether those dealers copied Max and his partner or came up with a similar system on their own.

Returning frequently to Xalisco, immigrants compared notes on how to improve the business model. As word spread, more farm boys went north to see how it was done. Youths hired as drivers would learn the business, then go back home and secure their own supplies of black tar. They returned to the United States as crew chiefs.

"Whoever gets the customers, it's because he's got better stuff or better service," Max said. "Nobody tells anybody what to do."

New business model

In the summer of 1995, Ed Ruplinger, a sheriff's narcotics investigator in Boise, noticed Mexicans tooling around town selling heroin packed in small balloons hidden in their mouths.

After arresting a few of them, Ruplinger found they were from a place he'd never heard of: Nayarit, Mexico. Tapping their phones with court approval, he discovered most of the calls were placed to a man named Cesar "Polla" Garcia-Langarica in Ontario, Calif.

"He was the first McDonald's in town, so to speak," Ruplinger said.

Almost all of his calls were to people in Xalisco, later identified as his assistants.

Ruplinger determined that Garcia-Langarica also had cells in Portland, Ore., Honolulu and Salt Lake City. He overheard him saying he'd moved into Boise because competition from other Xalisco networks had forced him out of Denver.

Boise wasn't Garcia-Langarica's for long either. One of his former drivers became a competing crew boss. Still, "they were not shooting each other in the street," Ruplinger said. "They'd know each other. It was just a job. I kept realizing that this is huge."

In 1998, officers raided apartments in Boise. Five of Garcia-Langarica's employees pleaded guilty and received prison terms. Garcia-Langarica, who was also indicted, remains a fugitive.

In Portland, black-tar heroin had been dealt on downtown streets by Hondurans or Guatemalans -- until the late 1990s. Then, police noticed that new dealers, all from Nayarit, were making deliveries by car all over the city.

In 1999, Multnomah County Health Department workers, examining coroner's reports, found that deaths from black-tar heroin overdoses had more than doubled since 1996, to more than 100 a year. An ad campaign urging junkies not to shoot up alone helped drive down that figure, although lately it has crept back to the levels of the late '90s.

In Portland and elsewhere, competition among Xalisco dealers and the resulting lower prices changed the nature of the heroin trade. No longer were burglaries and holdups the measure of a city's heroin problem. Junkies could maintain their habits cheaply. A spike in overdoses was the mark of black-tar heroin's arrival.

"The classic picture of a heroin addict is someone who steals," said Gary Oxman, a Multnomah County Health Department doctor who conducted the study of overdoses. "That disappears when you have low-cost heroin. You could maintain a moderate heroin habit for about the same price as a six-pack of premium beer."

It was the same in other cities where Xalisco dealers settled. In Denver, addicts say the cost of a dose of black tar has dropped as low as $8.

In the Utah County suburbs of Salt Lake City, it was more than $50 a dose in the early 1990s.

"Now we're seeing it for $10 to $15 per balloon," said Bruce Chandler, program services manager for the county's Foothill Treatment Center.

Eastern expansion

Until the late 1990s, Mexican black-tar heroin was available only west of the Mississippi. To the east, Colombian powder heroin predominated.

But over the last decade, production of Mexican heroin has climbed rapidly, reaching an estimated 18 metric tons in 2007, while Colombian output has dropped, partly because of U.S.-funded efforts to eradicate Colombian poppy fields, according to the 2009 National Drug Threat Assessment issued by the U.S. Justice Department.

As a result, "Mexican criminal groups are expanding Mexican heroin distribution in eastern states, where previously only South American heroin had been available," the report said. Estimates of Mexican and Colombian heroin production in the report suggest that black tar now accounts for two-thirds or more of the U.S. heroin market.

According to narcotics agents and former dealers, Xalisco immigrants drove black tar's eastward expansion, moving into Columbus and from there to parts of rural Ohio and Pennsylvania and to Nashville and Charlotte.

In many of these places, heroin had been rare. Addicts more commonly used prescription pain pills.

Black tar is cheaper than pain medications. Xalisco dealers exploited that advantage and pushed relentlessly for new customers. Addicts in Columbus say they offered rewards for referrals to new users: eight or 10 free balloons of heroin for every $1,000 in sales an addict brought in.

Typical of these heroin entrepreneurs was a youth who called himself Manny Munoz-Lopez. He began as a driver in Columbus and rose to become a cell leader when others sold their networks and returned to Mexico.

In 2006, he expanded to the suburbs of Pittsburgh, where police say he took the name Julio Ramirez. Prosecutors say he recruited junkies at methadone clinics to be salesmen as well as customers.

Gary Palacios, now serving a prison term in Pennsylvania for selling heroin, said he became Ramirez's wholesaler for north Pittsburgh. Ramirez shook up the local market, he said. Before, dealers waited for users to come to them. Ramirez's drivers actively sought out customers. For every 20 balloons an addict bought, Ramirez gave five free ones, Palacios said.

Pittsburgh junkies had been using diluted white powder from Colombia. "We brought that tar up and . . . the junkies fell in love," Palacios said in a telephone interview. "It was way cheaper and way more powerful."

In 2007, state narcotics agents busted the ring, arresting Ramirez, Palacios and others. Ramirez, sentenced to seven to 15 years for conspiracy to distribute heroin, did not respond to a letter requesting an interview.

"They really created a market that didn't exist before they got here," said Marnie Sheehan-Balchon, the deputy state attorney general who prosecuted the case.

Xalisco networks soon were operating across the Eastern United States. In Charlotte, Chris Long noticed them when he became a narcotics investigator in 2001, and he has been arresting dealers ever since.

"They're all from Xalisco," Long said.

Expanding from Charlotte, they carved out territories in Greenville, N.C., and Charleston and Myrtle Beach, S.C.

"It will not go away," said Will Kitelinger, a Myrtle Beach narcotics agent. When a driver is arrested, a replacement arrives within two weeks and is quickly up to speed, he said. "They literally know where the customers live and go to their houses and introduce themselves."

Xalisco's Sanchez family turned Nashville into a distribution hub, according to federal investigators and an indictment. In 2006, they dispatched a young driver named Hector to Indianapolis to conquer new territory.

"We were looking to expand the heroin market to more places in the United States," Hector said by phone from the federal prison where he is serving time for conspiracy to distribute heroin. He was interviewed on the condition that his last name not be disclosed.

"They told me 'We're going to give you three ounces to go to Indiana.' You want to begin in a place that's clean and you make it grow."

Hector said he paid his drivers, all from Xalisco, $1,000 a week plus expenses. He soon had dozens of customers and was ordering new supplies every four days, he said.

"It was some of the strongest I've ever seen," said Floyd Warriner, a longtime drug user from Indianapolis who is serving a 10-year federal prison term for conspiracy to distribute heroin.

More than 50 Sanchez workers were arrested in a nationwide bust in 2006. But the Xalisco networks continued to proliferate, and their product began to appear in communities where users weren't prepared for its potency.

Among them was a small town in West Virginia, 160 miles south of Columbus, where before the fall of 2007, few people had ever heard of black-tar heroin.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-me-blacktar14-2010feb14,0,2111153,print.story

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From the Daily News

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Lawyer misconduct rises with foreclosure record

SAN FRANCISCO - Warren Jacobs was desperate when he received a "robo-call" promising to help him stave off foreclosure of his home near Dallas.

The father of six had lost his construction job, lacked health insurance and couldn't pay bills for his 17-year-old daughter's cancer treatment, let alone his mortgage.

So on Jan. 21, he dialed the return number and was connected to the United Law Group. Minutes later Jacobs agreed to scrape together $2,000 to pay the Irvine, Calif. law firm.

He unwittingly became one of the many thousands of homeowners authorities allege have been taken in by unscrupulous or incompetent loan modification attorneys who rushed into a burgeoning legal niche: helping financially struggling homeowners re-negotiate their mortgages.

Ripoffs of homeowners have become so commonplace that state bar associations from Florida to Arizona are warning their members of the many ethical pitfalls awaiting those who exploit the mortgage crisis. The California State Bar launched a task force a year ago to examine thousands of homeowner complaints about foreclosure lawyers.

Currently, the California Bar is investigating more than 400 attorneys who are suspected of ripping off thousands of homeowners across the country.

The organization that licenses and disciplines California's more than 250,000 lawyers already has suspended or obtained the resignations of 15 lawyers while disciplinary charges are pending.

The first to be charged was Sean Rutledge, founder of the law firm that purported to represent Jacobs and 13 other homeowners.

Just months after securing a law license, Rutledge had been flying high. His United Law Group ramped up to several lawyers and opened offices in other states.

Today his license is suspended, his nascent career lies in tatters and he is under investigation in California and Ohio for taking fees of up to $3,500 from desperate homeowners then allegedly doing little - or nothing - to save their homes.

The California Bar formally charged Rutledge in July with not only failing to perform vital tasks to stop foreclosures, but calling his clients "losers" during the rare occasions they could get him to return their telephone calls.

Rutledge has denied the allegations and said he would contest the state Bar's attempts to disbar him. He is appealing the dismissal of a lawsuit he filed against the state Bar, alleging that it violated federal laws protecting the disabled. He suffers from diabetes and alleges state Bar investigators ignored his need for treatment when scheduling meetings, among other claims.

He did not return e-mail messages seeking comment, and could not be reached through the United Law Group, which remains in business and calls the focus on its founder and firm a "witch hunt."

January represented the 11th straight month of more than 300,000 properties receiving foreclosure filings in the country, according to Irvine-based RealtyTrac, which is predicting a record 3 million foreclosures this year.

There were a 190,360 foreclosure in California last year compared to 236,000 in 2008, according to MDA DataQuick.

The California Legislature in October passed a law barring attorneys from collecting advance fees for foreclosure work, an action that has prompted many to leave the field and soured others on entering it.

Meanwhile, some who have entered the field are looking at possible prison time, in addition to disciplinary action. Christopher Diener of Irvine is being held without bail in the Orange County Jail on 98 theft counts for allegedly scamming more than 400 homeowners out of $1.25 million.

"The complaints are still going through the roof," said Suzan Anderson, the Bar's lead mortgage fraud prosecutor, who receives more than 30 complaints daily and expects many more lawyers to lose their licenses.

Many of the complaints, like Texas homeowner Jacobs', are about do-nothing attorneys.

Jacobs told Bar investigators that Rutledge's law firm advised him to stop making mortgage payments and to cease communicating with the bank.

When the bank moved to seize the house for which Jacobs paid $175,000 in 2003, the law firm failed to formally request "forbearance," as it promised, to delay foreclosure. On June 1, he hired another lawyer to file bankruptcy on his behalf to stave off foreclosure the next day. In September, he agreed to a new payment plan with his bank and continues to live in the 4,000 square-foot house in suburban Dallas.

"I nearly ended up in a homeless shelter," Jacobs said.

Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray filed a lawsuit against Rutledge and the United Law Group earlier this month alleging they defrauded homeowners in that state.

United Law Group spokeswoman Nina Vultaggio and others contend that the crackdown on lawyers has been motivated by the financial industry. She alleged that the financial industry is the biggest villain in the mortgage crisis and wants to deprive their customers of legal representation during complicated negotiations to save homes.

"When you get into trouble, you need an attorney to talk to these negotiators," Vultaggio said.

United Law Group has filed class action lawsuits against Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Washington Mutual, alleging unfair business practices, she said. The banks deny the allegations.

Rutledge resigned from the firm in December, saying in a press release that the state Bar's investigation was too much of a distraction for the firm's clients.

Legal experts still strongly recommend homeowners in peril hire attorneys to counsel them in how best to deal with their lenders. But state Bar officials warn clients to research a lawyer's background to avoid the problems Jacobs and many other desperate homeowners said they encountered.

For his part, Jacobs says he is still waiting for United Law Group to refund the fee he paid in January.

"I truly need to be reimbursed for the $2000," he said, "to help me get out the deeper hole ULG has dug for my family."

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_14395692

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From the Wall Street Journal

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Alabama Professor Shot, Killed Brother in 1986

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- The professor accused of killing three colleagues during a faculty meeting was a Harvard-educated neurobiologist, inventor and mother whose life had been marred by a violent episode in her distant past.

More than two decades ago, police said Amy Bishop fatally shot her teenage brother at their Massachusetts home in what officers at the time logged as an accident -- though authorities said Saturday that records of the shooting are missing.

Ms. Bishop had just months left teaching at the University of Alabama in Huntsville when police said she opened fire with a handgun Friday in a room filled with a dozen of her colleagues from the school's biology department. Ms. Bishop, a rare woman suspected in a workplace shooting, was to leave after this semester because she had been denied tenure.

Police say she is 42, but the university's Web site lists her as 44.

Some have said she was upset after being denied the job-for-life security afforded tenured academics, and the husband of one victim and one of Ms. Bishop's students said they were told the shooting stemmed from the school's refusal to grant her such status.

Authorities have refused to discuss a motive, and school spokesman Ray Garner said the faculty meeting wasn't called to discuss tenure.

Three people were reportedly killed and at least one person wounded in a shooting at the University of Alabama-Huntsville. Video courtesy Fox News.

William Setzer, chairman of chemistry department at UAH, said Ms. Bishop was appealing the decision made last year.

"Politics and personalities" always play a role in the tenure process, he said. "In a close department it's more so. If you have any lone wolves or bizarre personalities, it's a problem and I'm thinking that certainly came into play here."

The three killed were Gopi K. Podila, the chairman of the Department of Biological Sciences, and two other faculty members, Maria Ragland Davis and Adriel Johnson. The wounded were still recovering in hospitals early Saturday. Luis Cruz-Vera was in fair condition; Joseph Leahy in critical condition; and staffer Stephanie Monticciolo also was in critical condition.

Descriptions of Ms. Bishop from students and colleagues were mixed. Some saw a strange woman who had difficulty relating to her students, while others described a witty, intelligent teacher.

Students and colleagues described Ms. Bishop as intelligent, but someone who often had difficulty explaining difficult concepts.

She shot her brother, an 18-year-old accomplished violinist, in the chest in 1986, said Paul Frazier, the police chief in Braintree, Mass., where the shooting occurred. Ms. Bishop fired at least three shots, hitting her brother once and hitting her bedroom wall before police took her into custody at gunpoint, he said.

Mr. Frazier said the police chief at the time told officers to release Ms. Bishop to her mother before she could be booked. It was logged as an accident.

But Mr. Frazier's account was disputed by former police Chief John Polio, who told The Associated Press he didn't call officers to tell them to release Ms. Bishop. "There's no cover-up, no missing records," he said.

Attempts by AP to track down addresses and phone numbers for Ms. Bishop's family in the Braintree area weren't immediately successful Saturday. The current police chief said he believed her family had moved away.

After being educated at Harvard University, Ms. Bishop moved to Huntsville and in 2003 became an associate professor at the University of Alabama's campus there. The school, with about 7,500 students, has close ties with NASA and is known for its engineering and science programs.

Mr. Setzer, the chemistry chairman, said he was not aware of the incident with Ms. Bishop's brother.

Ms. Bishop and her husband placed third in a statewide university business-plan competition in July 2007, presenting a portable cell incubator they had invented. They won $25,000 to help start a company to market the device.

Her husband, James Anderson, was detained and questioned by police but has not been charged. Police said Ms. Bishop was quickly caught after Friday's shooting. A 9-millimeter handgun was found in the bathroom of the building where the shootings occurred, and Huntsville police spokesman Sgt. Mark Roberts said Ms. Bishop did not have a permit for it.

Ms. Bishop was in custody and it wasn't immediately known if she has an attorney. No one was home at the couple's house.

Several experts said campus shootings commonly occur because the shooter has some kind of festering grievance that university officials haven't addressed, and the granting of tenure can be a polarizing and politicized process for many academics.

"Universities tend to string it out without resolution, tolerate too much and to have a cumbersome decision process that endangers the comfort of many and the safety of some," said Dr. Park Dietz, who is president of Threat Assessment Group Inc., a Newport Beach, Calif.-based violence prevention firm.

Tenure, which makes firing and other discipline difficult if not impossible, can seem generous to outsiders. But the job protection gives professors the freedom to express ideas and conduct studies without fear of reprisal. The system typically emphasizes research over teaching, and tenured professors typically are paid more.

While it's rare for the stresses of the tenure process to incur violence, what's even rarer is for a woman to be accused in such an incident like the one Friday that also left three of Ms. Bishop's colleagues injured, two critically.

"Workplace shootings of that kind are overwhelmingly male," said Franklin E. Zimring, a law professor and director of violence prevention at the University of California, Berkeley. "Going postal was essentially a monopoly position of the XY chromosome."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704124704575063561350818900.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_3#printMode

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From Fox News

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Gun Rights Advocates Target California Detective Following Facebook Posts

Sunday , February 14, 2010

By Joshua Rhett Miller

FOX News

Gun rights advocates have a California police detective in their crosshairs after he apparently posted comments on Facebook advocating that "open carry" supporters should be shot.

East Palo Alto Police Det. Rod Tuason apparently posted the remarks on his Facebook page in response to a friend's status update, which suggested that gun advocates who carry unloaded weapons openly — which is legal in California — should do so in places like "Oakland, Richmond and East Palo Alto" and not just in "hoity toity" cities.

"Haha we had one guy last week try to do it!" Tuason replied. "He got proned out [laid face-down on the ground] and reminded where he was at and that turds will jack him for his gun in a heartbeat!"

Several comments later, the detective suggested shooting the gun rights advocates, some of whom have carried firearms openly in recent weeks in California's Bay Area, particularly at Starbucks locations.

"Sounds like you had someone practicing their 2nd amendment rights last night!" Tuason wrote. "Should've pulled the AR out and prone them all out! And if one of them makes a furtive movement … 2 weeks off!!!" -- referring to the modified duty, commonly known as desk duty, that typically follows any instance in which an officer is investigated for firing his weapon.

Those comments caught the attention of a California attorney and blogger, as well as a Virginia man who started a Facebook group calling for Tuason's termination.

John Taylor, whose Facebook group had 54 members as of midday Friday, said the Facebook thread confirmed gun owners' worst fears.

"Any sworn officer who suggests shooting law-abiding citizens for exercising their most basic constitutional rights deserves the full wrath of America's gun owners," Taylor told FoxNews.com. "It's an affront."

California's Penal Code makes it illegal to carry concealed weapons without a county-issued license. But it is legal to carry an unloaded weapon in plain view in a holster. In most cases, it is illegal for an unconcealed weapon to be loaded.

Taylor, of Arlington, Va., who has a concealed weapons permit in his home state, said he planned to write a letter to the East Palo Alto Police Department demanding that Tuason be fired.

"The targeting, harassment and intimidation of law-abiding citizens who are peacefully agitating for their rights by a police officer is an abomination to the Constitution, and is in fact the exact reason our Founding Fathers created the Second Amendment," Taylor said. " Police officers who think they are going to get between law-abiding Americans and their Second Amendment rights are going to find themselves in the line of fire."

Tuason's comments were first noticed by California attorney Kevin Thomason, who posted a screen grab of the detective's remarks on his Web site on Sunday.

"[Tuason] didn't realize that actual PRO-GUN people also read Facebook," Thomason wrote. "Amazingly, he posted the following comment about law abiding gun owners on a friend's page. Basically, he's saying 'prone them out' (face down on the ground), and if anyone moves, kill them. I don't make this crap up."

Thomason, a member of the National Rifle Association, wrote that Tuason's comments were "worth a call" to the East Palo Alto City Council, as well as to his superior officers.

Tuason, who has since removed his Facebook profile, did not return messages seeking comment on Friday. He is reportedly being investigated by the police department's professional standards division regarding the Facebook remarks.

East Palo Alto Police Sgt. Rod Norris said he was unable to comment on the matter, but Capt. Carl Estelle told the San Jose Mercury News that police officials must be careful not to violate Tuason's First Amendment rights, since the comments appeared on his personal Web site.

"In no way are his personal comments reflective of any policies or procedures here at the department nor does he speak for the police department," Estelle told the newspaper.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,585807,00.html

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Accused Jaycee Kidnapper's Parole File Released

Saturday , February 13, 2010

Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO — 

Newly released parole records show that accused kidnapper Phillip Garrido complained in 2008 about having to wear a monitoring device because he had not been in trouble with the law for 19 years — nearly as long as he allegedly held Jaycee Dugard captive in his backyard.

The 120 pages of records released Friday by California corrections officials paint a portrait of a convicted rapist who, once he was released from federal and Nevada state prisons, appeared to grudgingly comply with the conditions set by parole agents. The parole followed his imprisonment for a 1977 conviction in the rape and kidnapping of a Nevada casino worker.

Numerous details on Garrido's background and Dugard's captivity have emerged since he was arrested in August, but the new documents that cover the period from June 1999 to the arrest shed more light on his activities and the approach taken by law enforcement. He and his wife, Nancy Garrido, have pleaded not guilty.

They were made available after several news organizations sued to have them made public. The parole file had previously been turned over to the Office of the Inspector General, which issued a report last fall blasting corrections officials for lapses in oversight and missing chances to catch Garrido sooner.

The paperwork shows that in recent years, agents thought Garrido sometimes acted oddly. At least one agent saw a girl, who Garrido said was his niece, at the home. An agent also wrote notes about "cursory" visual inspections of the house.

"(Garrido) was acting very strange, weird to say the least by ranting on about God and loudly saying songs, other than that, nothing out of the ordinary," an agent wrote in June 2008.

When he was ordered to meet with his parole agent in April 2008 to receive an ankle monitor to check his whereabouts, Garrido submitted a one-page letter arguing that he should not have to wear it in part because he had founded a church and wanted to travel to the University of California, Berkeley to discuss his religion. The presentation, he claimed, "will gain the attention of world leaders."

"Be informed if you so choose to place me on this program I am advised to have an attorney present. The reasoning here is simple it concerns the continued progress and perfectly clean record I have with the State of California and the fact that I have nineteen years behind me. The program is as stated for: High Risk Sex offenders. The Sheriff's office has me at low risk and as a continued cooperative indivudal."

Earlier documents provided by Garrido to the FBI shortly before his arrest showed he believed that God spoke to him through an electronic device he had built and claimed cured sex offenders.

The documents also show that less than a month before he was arrested, the 58-year-old Garrido initialed papers promising not to have contact with girls between the ages of 14 and 18 or to have a social or romantic relationship with anyone who had custody of a child.

Garrido was living at the time with the daughters he sired with Dugard, who were 11 and 14.

In granting Garrido early release from his federal parole in May 1999, his U.S. government parole agent based in Nevada wrote Garrido to "thank you for your cooperation over this period of supervision and I hope that you will continue to do well."

Because he was also convicted of the same rape in Nevada, state parole officials decided to keep Garrido on life parole. But they wanted him supervised in California, where he had been living since he got out of prison.

When he had his first encounter with California parole in 1999, the agent's opinion of Garrido also seemed high, writing: "He is stable and the prognosis of success is good."

Only months later, the same parole agent, Al Fulbright, recommended that Nevada terminate Garrido's parole, a bid that apparently failed.

The documents released Friday also outline the events leading up to the Garridos arrest, including some details not mentioned before about the conversations Garrido had with law enforcement.

Dugard, for example, seemed to be aware that her parents had moved from Northern California, where she was abducted, to the southern part of the state.

"A long, long, long long time ago, I kidnapped and raped her," Garrido told his parole agent the day he was arrested, according to the documents.

"I asked him if Jaycee knew where her parents were, and he said, somewhere in Los Angeles," the agent wrote in the report.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,585727,00.html

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From MSNBC

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E. coli fears spark massive meat recall

MONTEBELLO, California - A Southern California meatpacking firm has significantly expanded its recall of ground beef and veal that might be contaminated with E. coli.

The recall includes approximately an additional 4.9 million pounds of products by Huntington Meat Packing Inc. under the Huntington, Imperial Meat Co. and El Rancho brands, the Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service said Friday.

The original recall was announced Jan. 18 and was for 864,000 pounds of meat.

E. coli is a potentially deadly germ that can cause bloody diarrhea, dehydration and, in severe cases, kidney failure. The germ can be killed by cooking fresh and frozen meat products to an internal temperature of 160 degrees (71 Celsius).

There have been no reports of illnesses associated with consumption of the products, the food safety agency said.

The affected beef and veal was sold to distribution centers, restaurants and hotels in California between Jan 4. and Jan. 22, 2010. Each box bears the establishment number "EST. 17967" inside the USDA mark of inspection.

Criminal investigation

The products include ground beef patties, diced beef, veal patties and beef burrito filling mix.

The original recall was expanded based on evidence collected in an ongoing criminal investigation being conducted by the Office of the Inspector General, according to FSIS. Inspectors found the products were prepared in a manner that did not follow rules to prevent food safety hazards.

The agency also said the investigation found Huntington's food safety records to be unreliable.

A call to the Montebello-based company was not immediately returned Saturday.

FSIS inspectors conduct regular checks to make sure firms that have recalled products notify their customers of the problem and take steps to make sure the products are off the market.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35391632/ns/health-food_safety/

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Informants for feds face deportation

SAUGERTIES, N.Y. - Only a few years ago the lives of Emilio and Analia Maya brimmed with possibility, their little cafe thrived, and their hard-fought dream of life in America seemed enticingly within reach.

They had emigrated from Argentina in the late 1990s and settled in this picturesque village near the Catskills, working in restaurants, becoming respected members of the community. Emilio joined the volunteer fire department. Analia, his sister, volunteered as a translator for the local police.

Life was hard, but happy, and they had big plans. They were saving to open a restaurant where Emilio, now 34, would whip up Argentine specialties while Analia, 30, served customers.

But that was before the siblings struck their deal.

Like so many other immigrant workers, the Mayas had overstayed their visitor visas years earlier. They were haunted by the fact they could be deported at any time.

Though she loved life in America, Analia yearned to be able to travel freely, to once again see friends and relatives in Argentina, to glimpse the familiar, snowcapped peaks of the Andes.

One day she turned to her friend, police officer Sidney Mills, who regularly recruited the Mayas to help with cases involving Hispanics. Mills didn't hesitate.

"They were doing right by the community," he says. "I thought I should do right by them."

So in March 2005 Mills arranged a meeting at the station between Analia and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents Kelly McManus and Morgan Langer. They peppered her with questions about the kind of information she could provide, about why she wanted to stay in the U.S. "I want to finish college and become a translator," she said.

According to Mills the deal was straightforward: In exchange for working as informants, ICE would help the Mayas get coveted S visas, which, in rare instances, are awarded to immigrants who help law enforcement.

"It was very clear," Mills says. "That was the deal they thought they had made."

Five years later, the Mayas insist they held up their end of the bargain, risking their lives in hours of undercover work, wearing wires and using fake names. But for reasons they do not understand, ICE agents abruptly turned against them — and they now face imminent deportation.

Confidential informants

Analia was elated the day they sealed the deal. Emilio was more wary. How could they trust the very people charged with deporting them?

But the agents were friendly and professional. They were looking for information on people involved with drugs, gangs, human smuggling operations, prostitution and selling false papers. They made it clear they couldn't pay for information, and the couple would have to sign forms stating that they would never talk about their undercover work, not even to their immediate family.

And so the Mayas were inducted into the murky world of "CIs" — confidential informants — a world filled with suspicion and deceit and danger, a world in which, undercover, they were no longer Analia and Emilio Maya, but Ana and Edwin Martinez.

At first, the work seemed simple enough. At soccer practice, in the restaurant, even grocery shopping, the Mayas would initiate conversations about information the agents were seeking. They would meet McManus and Langer in supermarket parking lots and inspect photographs of suspects. ICE wasn't interested in regular people working illegally, Analia says. "They were looking for the big fish. The really bad ones."

Emilio wasn't so sure. On the street the S visa is known as the "snitch" visa. What if word got out that the Mayas were informing on immigrants like themselves?

And yet the promised reward was dazzling. The Mayas were about to open their restaurant, Tango cafe. Their parents had followed from Argentina and were helping them. What undocumented immigrant wouldn't leap at the opportunity to become legal?

In February 2006, the agents decided to take the next step. They wired Emilio and sent him to a Main Street house that operated a prostitution ring.

Mills remembers the night clearly — how he, McManus, Langer and Analia sat in an unmarked car, listening as Emilio asked about the girls, where they came from, who brought them, the cost. Analia was shaking. What if they discovered the recorder? What if they turned on her brother?

The agents were pleased. Later that month they drove the Mayas to the ICE office in New York, where they were handed work permits valid for one year. As long as they were with ICE, the permits would be renewed every year.

Analia and Emilio were ecstatic. This was the first step, they thought. The S visa would surely follow.

Wearing a wire

That September, agents sent Analia on an undercover job in a cosmetic factory in Port Jervis 70 miles away, where she pretended to be an illegal immigrant from Mexico. She was to get information on hiring practices, on who provided the false papers, and on the managers.

For five weeks, Analia lived in a hotel near Port Jervis, working the 7:30 am to 3:30 p.m. shift at the factory. Agents would pick her up at 4:30 in the morning, slip on the wire — a small device she wore in her jeans pocket — drive her to a parking lot where a van picked up the workers. When her shift ended, they would pick her up, debrief her, and drive her back to the hotel.

Standing for hours on the assembly line was exhausting, and trying to pry information from managers even harder. Nights were miserable, alone in the hotel. And there was the constant fear of being exposed.

In the end, an old injury — a broken collar bone that hadn't healed properly — landed Analia in the emergency room. Doctors said she couldn't work in the factory anymore.

For the most part, Analia said she never felt in serious danger, though Emilio described several close calls.

On one occasion, Emilio said, he was wired and sent to a run-down neighborhood in Newburgh to buy a false papers from a woman named Maria. But Maria drove to another location and agents lost track of him. Terrified that he would be discovered, Emilio walked for miles before agents caught up with him.

By the summer of 2007, Emilio's nerves were frayed. "We had given them information on a gang, on a smuggling operation, on drugs, and still we had nothing," he said.

But when he demanded an explanation from ICE, the response was chilling, Emilio recalled: If the Mayas stopped informing, they risked immediate deportation.

Wanting more information

Analia dismissed it as an idle threat. After all, they had made a deal with an agency of the U.S. government.

But things were changing. In 2008, the Mayas say, agents began demanding information on terrorism and guns — information the Mayas couldn't provide. The couple continued offering tips about local activities, but they were no longer sent on undercover jobs.

In many ways, it was a relief. They were busy running the restaurant. Emilio had married his girlfriend and they had a baby girl. Analia was pregnant with her son. They had little time for information gathering, though the question was never far from their minds: Where did they stand with ICE?

The answer came in May 2009, when, according to Emilio agents bluntly said that unless he delivered information on weapons and terrorism, he would be deported.

What about the promised visas? What about their deal?

"They said the information I gave them wasn't good enough," Emilio says.

Seeking congressman's help

Analia was frantic. Where could they turn for help? They had no written proof of their deal. What would happen to them?

In desperation, she confided in a customer at Tango — U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey, who had stopped for lunch with his daughter. Sobbing, Analia told him everything. "Calm down," the congressman said. "The government doesn't use people and throw them away."

The next week, Hinchey's office began researching their case — and, the Mayas say, ICE stopped taking their calls.

No one foresaw what happened next.

On Nov. 17, as he left his house for work, Emilio was surrounded by ICE agents pointing guns. "We are deactivating you," they said, slapping him in handcuffs and shackles, as Analia begged McManus for answers: "Where are you taking him?"

Emilio was "out of status" and would be deported, McManus said.

Behind bars

Emilio was locked up in Pike County jail in Hawley, Pa., for 15 days, though he was given no explanation and charged with no crime. Distraught, Analia called Mills, who listened in shock. A 10-year veteran of the police department, Mills had long worked undercover narcotics operations, sometimes with the FBI. And though he had never dealt with ICE before, he assumed "the rules would be the same."

"You protect your sources," Mills says. "And you never renege on a deal."

Now Mills is torn between the belief that the Mayas deserve to be rewarded for their work, and the nagging feeling that, "there must be something I don't know."

If there is, ICE hasn't revealed it. The only explanation Hinchey's staff received was that none of the information the Mayas provided had led to arrests or prosecutions.

Emilio was released on a 90-day stay on the eve of his deportation in December after Hinchey personally called ICE. When the 90 days are up — March 2 — Emilio must leave the country voluntarily or face deportation. Analia faces her own hearing in immigration court on March 5.

ICE spokesman Brian Hale said the agency couldn't discuss any case involving informants. In general, he said, ICE uses "alien informants" in a "significant public benefit parole" program, which may eventually lead to visas. "There has to be a significant benefit to the government," Hale said. "That is the standard."

Suspicion from Latinos

Critics of ICE say it is not unusual for the agency to treat informants poorly.

"They use the most vulnerable people to do dangerous work, make them all sorts of promises and then just abandon them," says New York immigration lawyer Claudia Slovinsky, who doesn't know of anyone who has received an S visa.

The plight of the Mayas has divided this historic village on the Hudson. Weekenders have flocked to their aid, signing petitions, holding fundraisers, bombarding Hinchey and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's offices with letters of support. Gillibrand's staff has asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano review the case. And Hinchey submitted a rare private bill requesting the Mayas be granted legal status. But there are complex rules governing private bills and they are extremely difficult to pass.

Meanwhile, the reaction from the Latino community has been suspicion and fear.

Latinos don't come to Tango anymore. They shun Emilio and Analia at the bank and the supermarket. Emilio has been dropped by his local soccer team. Analia's friends won't return calls because they fear her phone is tapped.

The Mayas understand. Even if they avoid deportation, they wonder about their prospects in Saugerties. "What kind of a life can we have here," Analia says, "when so many people are enemies?"

For now, the clock is ticking and the strain shows. Emilio is on the verge of leaving for Argentina, knowing he will not be able to return. Analia says she cannot run the restaurant on their own, and besides, she wouldn't want to stay in the country without him.

Tango still opens at 7 every morning. Customers breeze in and coo at the babies, and Analia greets them with a smile. In the kitchen, Emilio distracts himself with cooking. But as the deadline looms and the family awaits its fate, nothing in the cozy little cafe feels the same.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35383376/ns/us_news-life/

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