Early releases from county jails in California likely to continue

An Orange County judge rejects a request that the releases be halted there. And state Atty. Gen Jerry Brown has said the law in question applies to county jails as well as state prisons.

By Andrew Blankstein and Richard Winton

February 19, 2010

With the number of inmates released early from county jails across the state surpassing 2,000, there are growing signs that the controversial program will continue unabated.

On Thursday, an Orange County judge rejected a request by the Orange County sheriff's deputies union to immediately halt the early releases from that county's jail, saying that decision should be in the hands of Sheriff Sandra Hutchens.

Beginning Jan. 25, counties started releasing inmates before their terms expired, responding to a new state law designed to reduce the state prison population.

There has been much debate about whether the law applies to county jails. This week California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown sent a bulletin to local law enforcement agencies saying the law does cover county jail inmates. The bulletin said some counties miscalculated the release times of some inmates, but it did not recommend stopping early releases.

The legislation was signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last year.

Officials have said that over the next year it would reduce the prison population by 6,500 "low-level" offenders, including inmates incarcerated for nonviolent crimes such as theft and drug possession. The state prison system has not yet released prisoners early under the terms of the law.

Many of the state's largest sheriff's departments have let inmates out in response to the law. One major exception is Los Angeles County, where Sheriff Lee Baca has reiterated his refusal to allow the early releases.

"I know one thing: We are not letting anyone out under the state principles and the interpretation of that law," Baca told The Times. "No one has ever said to anyone who runs a county jail in the state of California you cannot keep people in jail."

Wayne Quint, president of the Assn. of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs, said that he would like to see the same approach to the law in Orange County and that the current interpretation was putting the public at risk.

"Our opinion is that one inmate getting out early is one too many," Quint said. "We believe that one of these released criminals is going to victimize someone."

The judge in Orange County will hold another hearing next month on whether to block further early releases.

Last week, a judge in Sacramento County ordered a halt to the early releases there. But this week the judge lifted the temporary restraining order, and the Sheriff's Department has begun early releases again. Another hearing is scheduled for Friday.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-earlyrelease19-2010feb19,0,6022607,print.story

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Suicide pilot crashes into building in Texas housing IRS offices

Joe Stack, a software engineer and amateur bassist who had 'ranted' against the tax system, plows his small plane into a building in Austin housing IRS offices. One other person also dies.

By Richard Fausset

February 19, 2010

Reporting from Austin, Texas

He was a 53-year-old software engineer who played bass in a local band and lived what by all appearances was a quiet suburban life here with his wife, who taught piano at home, and her young daughter. But, for several decades, Joe Stack also had been battling the Internal Revenue Service -- and nursing a grudge.

And on Thursday morning, he acted.

After setting fire to the family home, he drove to the municipal airport, slid into the cockpit of his single-engine Piper Cherokee and took off into the clear blue sky over Austin, authorities said. Fifteen minutes later, just before 10 a.m., he piloted his plane into the seven-story building where 190 IRS employees work in the state capital, igniting a fire that killed him and one other person and seriously injured two workers, authorities said.

The FBI said late Thursday that two bodies had been found in the building, but they had not been identified. In addition to Stack, they said, one federal worker was missing and presumed dead.

A billowing plume of black smoke rose from the building in the Echelon office park throughout the day, a vivid reminder for many of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York. The impact sent a fireball blooming up from the ground floors, and the explosion sounded like a sonic boom, shaking nearby buildings.

A person identifying himself as Stack wrote in a rambling, 3,000-word Web treatise that "I'm finally ready to stop this insanity . . . Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let's try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well."

The note, which he called a "rant," began: "If you're reading this, you're no doubt asking yourself, 'Why did this have to happen?' The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time." It was signed, "Joe Stack (1956-2010)."

The note included a litany of complaints about the tax authorities, organized religion, government bailouts and "sleazy" accountants, and a life story that included a divorce, lost jobs and struggling businesses. Stack moved from Southern California to Austin, where he remarried in 2006, hoping to find work as an engineer.

But, the note said, "I've never experienced such a hard time finding work."

The FBI is leading the investigation of Stack, and officials would not comment on the Web post. Authorities said they had no evidence that Stack's actions were related to any international terrorism group.

"It's an isolated incident," Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said.

The morning attack occurred in an office building campus once considered one of Austin's finest, next to a well-groomed neighborhood that is home to many of the professionals who flocked here to take advantage of the tech boom of the 1990s.

Some workers in the building saw the approaching plane and warned others. "There were some heroic actions on the part of some employees," Acevedo said.

Stack's two-story home on Dapplegrey Lane caught fire shortly after 9 a.m., Austin fire officials said. Neighbor Carlotta Hutchins said she heard a loud blast, ran outside and saw smoke pouring from the Stacks' home. "It's pretty much a shell right now," she said.

Hutchins said she didn't think Stack's wife, Sheryl, or her daughter, who is about 12, were home at the time. Fire officials later said neither was injured.

The neighbor described the Stacks as friendly and, outwardly at least, the family did not appear to be struggling financially. The home, purchased in 2007, was assessed at $232,066, according to property tax records. Stack also was the registered owner, in Placer County, Calif., of the Piper aircraft.

Reached by telephone in Hemet, Stack's ex-wife, Ginger Stack, to whom he was married for 18 years, said: "He was a good man. Frustrated with the IRS, yes, but a good man."

His anger at the IRS stemmed from changes Congress made to the tax laws in 1986, she said, which he considered unfair because they changed the way businesses treat independent contractors.

"I'm in shock right now," his ex-wife said between sobs. "He had good values. He really did." She said her ex-husband was an "extremely intelligent" man who also had helped raise her daughter, whom he had given away at her wedding.

Though much of Stack's life remained a mystery, his note and California tax records suggested a long-running battle with the government.

He and Ginger Stack in 1985 launched Prowess Engineering Inc., which listed an address in Chino Hills. In 1993, using the name A. Joseph Stack, he filed state documents that listed himself as chief executive of Prowess, which was described as a software engineering company in Corona. Two years later, he filed paperwork to incorporate Software Systems Services Corp. at the same address. Later, his companies listed an address in Placer County, near Sacramento.

The California Franchise Tax Board issued a suspension of Prowess in 2000 for not filing a 1994 tax return, which means the company cannot operate or collect money for services. Software Systems received another suspension in 2004, for not paying taxes in 1996 and 2002, according to Denise Azimi, a spokeswoman for the board.

Ginger Stack filed for bankruptcy in 1999, the year their divorce was finalized, citing an inability to pay $125,860 in taxes owed the IRS for 1993 and 1998.

An IRS spokesman declined to comment on Stack's tax grievances. Independent accounts by experts who read Stack's farewell note said he appeared to have many tax problems that could have triggered IRS scrutiny.

Stack, in his Web posting, said he drained his retirement account after leaving California and, because he hadn't had any income that year, didn't file a return.

"The sleazy government decided that they disagreed," he wrote, and he said he was assessed $10,000.

In Austin, Stack and his family lived about a 15-minute drive from the crash site in Scofield Farms, a neighborhood of modest houses inhabited by new arrivals over the last couple of decades as Austin's fortunes boomed.

The Stacks were in many ways a typical Austin family: he an engineer, and she a musician. Neighbors said Sheryl gave piano lessons and was working on her doctorate in music.

Natalie Kunkel, 33, who lived two doors down, was on friendly terms with Stack, his wife and her daughter. Sheryl Stack is outgoing, whereas her husband was reserved. "They seemed like a normal, typical family," Kunkel said.

It wasn't clear whether Stack had a full-time job in Austin, and he may have worked as a consultant.

Soon after moving to Austin in 2004, Stack played bass for two years in the Billy Eli Band, which recorded an album, "Amped Out." Ric Furley, the drummer, said he hadn't talked much to Stack since then, but he remembered him as a dependable guy with a good sense of humor.

"He didn't have an attitude. He didn't try to one-up anybody. He was the perfect bandmate," Furley said. "I never saw him angry. I have no way to relate to him as an angry human being."

Stack never railed about politics or the government. "I don't even know where he stood politically," Furley said. "He was the nicest guy. He didn't seem to have any issues."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-plane-crash-austin19-2010feb19,0,7250423,print.story

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THE HEROIN ROAD - part 1 of 3

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

First Of Three Parts

February 14, 2010

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.

(see part 2 below)

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THE HEROIN ROAD - part 2 of 3

Black tar moves in, and death follows

Dealers work systematically, pushing heroin in areas where users are unprepared for its potency.

By Sam Quinones

Second Of Three Parts

February 15, 2010

Reporting from Huntington, W.V.

On a Monday in September 2007, Teddy Johnson went to his son's apartment.

Adam Johnson, 22, was in his first year at Marshall University in Huntington. A history major, he played guitar, drums and bass, loved glam bands like the New York Dolls and hosted "The Oscillating Zoo," an eclectic rock show on the university radio station.

Teddy hadn't heard from his son in three days. Letting himself into the apartment, he found Adam lying lifeless on his bed, in the same shirt he'd seen him wearing three days earlier.

The cause of death: a heroin overdose.

"I had no clue," said the elder Johnson, a plumbing contractor in Huntington. "We're a small town. We weren't prepared."

The death was part of a rash of overdoses, 12 of them fatal, that shook Huntington that fall and winter. All were caused by black-tar heroin, a potent, inexpensive, semi-processed form of the drug that has spread across the United States, driven by the entrepreneurial energy and marketing savvy of immigrants from a tiny farming county in Mexico.

Immigrants from Xalisco, in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, Mexico, have brought the heroin north over the last decade, and with it a highly effective business model featuring deep discounts and convenient delivery by car. Their success is a major reason why Mexican black tar has seized a growing share of the U.S. heroin market, according to government estimates.

Xalisco networks are decentralized, with no all-powerful boss, and they largely avoid guns and violence. Staying clear of the nation's largest cities, where established organizations control the heroin trade, Xalisco dealers have cultivated markets in the mountain states and parts of the Midwest and Appalachia, often creating demand for heroin in cities and towns where there had been little or none. In many of those places, authorities report a sharp rise in heroin overdoses and deaths.

Before the string of fatal overdoses in 2007, "we didn't even consider heroin an issue," said Huntington Police Chief Skip Holbrook.

Xalisco dealers have been particularly successful in areas where addiction to prescription painkillers like OxyContin was widespread. Many of those addicts, mainly young middle- and working-class whites, switched to black tar, which is cheaper and more powerful.

In York County, S.C., pain-pill addicts became hooked on black tar purchased in Charlotte, N.C., half an hour away. "We used to get maybe one overdose death a year" caused by opiates, said Marvin Brown, commander of the county's drug unit. "We had six in the first six months" of 2009.

In the suburbs south of Salt Lake City, heroin was unheard of until dealers from Xalisco arrived, said Lt. Phil Murphy of the Utah County Major Crimes Task Force. Now, he said, young people looking for an alternative to pain pills drive to Salt Lake to score black-tar heroin.

University towns have been especially fertile markets for Xalisco heroin. Authorities in Boulder and Fort Collins, Colo. -- home to the University of Colorado and Colorado State University, respectively -- report increased overdoses caused by black-tar heroin purchased from dealers in Denver.

Ohio has also become a center of Xalisco networks, and it was through a junkie in Columbus that black tar made its way to Huntington.

Innovative, tireless

Huntington, a struggling former railroad depot and coal distribution center, has long had a flourishing trade in crack cocaine and other drugs. But there was never much heroin until dealers from Xalisco arrived in Columbus, 160 miles north.

They were innovative and tireless. Rather than sell from houses, where they would be sitting ducks for narcotics agents, or on street corners in seedy neighborhoods, they operated like a pizza delivery service. Users called a phone number. A dispatcher relayed the order to a driver, who took the heroin to the customer.

The drivers circulated around the city with doses of heroin in small uninflated balloons, each the size of a pencil eraser, which they kept hidden in their mouths. No sale was too small.

"There's nobody who'll drive across . . . Columbus to bring you one $20 balloon, but they would," Wendy Keller, who became addicted to their heroin, said in a telephone interview from a federal prison in Lexington, Ky., where she is serving a five-year term for conspiracy to distribute heroin.

Competition among Xalisco networks kept prices low. OxyContin pills cost $80 apiece and addicts needed five or six a day. Black-tar heroin was stronger and cost less than $50 for a day's fix.

By 2007, black-tar addiction had spread across Columbus, Dayton, Cleveland and other Ohio cities. At Columbus-based Maryhaven, Ohio's largest drug-treatment center, opiate addicts made up 20% of the center's patients in 1997, and many were addicted to prescription painkillers. Today, 70% are black-tar heroin addicts, said Paul Coleman, Maryhaven's president.

Xalisco heroin also penetrated the well-to-do suburbs of Delaware County, Ohio. Demand for treatment is now so great that Maryhaven recently set up a satellite clinic for heroin users there, Coleman said.

Rural Athens, Vinton, Meigs and Hawking counties have seen a tenfold increase in heroin addicts seeking treatment over the last four years, and almost all were black-tar users, said Joe Gay, director of Health Recovery Services, a drug-rehabilitation center serving those Ohio counties.

"When you see these increases, you ask why," Gay said. "The answer is availability and price. Heroin was never available in these rural counties, and now it's cheap and plentiful."

Hitting on addicts

Rick Jordan was an addict living in Columbus and, like many West Virginians, he kept close ties to his hometown, Huntington.

Family members say he and his wife Kandace met Xalisco dealers in Columbus in 1998. The couple were trying to kick an addiction to prescription opiates and had sought help at a drug-treatment center.

"The Mexicans would sit out in the parking lot, getting guys who were trying to kick," said Jordan's daughter, Tesina Ventola.

Soon the Jordans were hooked again, on cheap black tar. Rick began calling the Mexicans every day. His toddler grandchildren came to believe that the dealers were doctors, because Jordan and his wife seemed to feel better after their visits, said Ventola, the children's mother.

Around 2004, friends from Huntington began calling Jordan, hearing that he had a connection to cheap heroin. Jordan would call the Xalisco dealers. In Huntington, heroin then cost $50 per tenth of a gram and was usually diluted Colombian white powder.

Jordan would buy three balloons for $50 and keep one for himself. He'd sell the other two to a friend from Huntington for $50. The friend would return to Huntington, sell one of the balloons for $50 and keep the other for himself.

"That's where it all began," Ventola said.

Word spread through Huntington. By mid-2007, addicts were making pilgrimages to Jordan's wood-frame house west of downtown Columbus, sometimes carrying thousands of dollars in cash.

One of them was Michelle Byars, who had gotten hooked on pain pills after a back injury and switched to black-tar heroin.

"I'd show up and other people from Huntington would already be there," Byars, 34, recalled in a telephone interview from a federal prison in Connecticut.

One of the alleged Xalisco dealers in Columbus was a young man whom junkies called Carlos and whom police later identified as Juan Hernandez-Salazar (one of many aliases he has used).

His heroin was 70% pure, said Bobby Melrose, who described himself as a longtime drug user.

"I'd use two or three bags of dope to just get well, and not even reach the same high as one bag of Carlos'," Melrose said in an interview at a federal prison in Kentucky.

Via Jordan, this potent heroin got to Huntington, where addicts had little tolerance for it. Users began overdosing, and some of them died.

One was Patrick Byars, husband of Michelle Byars.

The same weekend Adam Johnson died, the Byars shot up together. Michelle woke up. Patrick didn't.

Nor did Teddy Mays. A former tire shop owner, Mays had grown addicted to OxyContin prescribed for back and knee pain. Then black tar came along. He had both in his system when he died, said Cindy Mays, his widow.

Dana Helmondollar Jr., 32, an electrical company lineman, made the same switch and met the same end, said his father.

"We were getting almost one [911 call] a day," said Gordon Merry, director of emergency medical services for Cabell County. "It taxed everyone: the EMS system, hospitals, law enforcement."

The media reported that black-tar heroin was sweeping through town, killing users. That "made people want it more," said Paul Hunter, a Huntington police narcotics officer. "Addicts are always looking for the best high."

A drug task force traced the heroin to Jordan, Carlos and his network in Columbus. In the spring and summer of 2008, authorities arrested 19 Huntington addicts -- Jordan's best customers.

Michelle Byars pleaded guilty to supplying her husband with the heroin that killed him. She is scheduled to be released from prison in 2014.

Melrose is serving a five-year term for heroin distribution. Doctors amputated his right leg because of gangrene and abscesses caused by shooting black tar into the leg.

Jordan died in a Huntington jail in July 2008.

Carlos spent a year on the run, then was arrested in Columbus last June after running a stop sign. He is awaiting trial, charged as Joel Borjas-Hernandez with conspiracy to distribute heroin that resulted in the deaths of others. If convicted, he faces 20 years to life in prison.

Unabated horror

Adam Johnson's childhood bedroom is still filled with his belongings: guitars, basses and a sound mixer; T-shirts of John Lennon and Yoko Ono and the New York Dolls; a Winnie the Pooh doll in which he hid his heroin.

Teddy Johnson buried his son across a hilltop cemetery lane from Huntington's most hallowed spot, a memorial to Marshall University football team members who were killed in a plane crash in 1970.

Johnson had a concrete bench installed and he visits three times a week to sit on the bench and think of his son.

Not long after Carlos' network was busted, a new group of Xalisco dealers went into business in Columbus. Federal officials say the trade in Xalisco heroin remains robust.

(see part 3 below)

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THE HEROIN ROAD - part 3 of 3

The good life in Xalisco can mean death in the United States

The poorest of Mexico's poor can step up to the middle class when they go north to sell black tar.

By Sam Quinones

Last Of Three Parts

February 16, 2010

Reporting from Xalisco, Mexico

As a boy, Esteban Avila had only a skinny old horse and two pairs of pants, and he lived in a swampy neighborhood called The Toad. He felt stranded across a river from the rest of the world and wondered about life on the other side.

He saw merchants pay bands to serenade them in the village plaza and dreamed of doing the same.

He had a girlfriend but no hope of marrying her because her father was the village butcher and expected a good life for his daughter.

Then Avila found an elixir and took it with him when, at 19, he went to the United States. It was black-tar heroin, and selling it turned his nightmare into a fairy tale.

Avila was part of a migration of impoverished Mexican sugar cane farm workers that has had profound repercussions for cities and towns across America. Over the last decade and a half, immigrants from the county of Xalisco (population 44,000), in the Pacific Coast state of Nayarit, have developed a vast and highly profitable business selling black-tar heroin, a cheap, potent, semi-processed form of the drug.

Their success stems from a business model that combines discount pricing, aggressive marketing and customer convenience. Addicts phone in their orders, and drivers take the heroin to them. Crew bosses sometimes make follow-up calls to make sure addicts received good service.

The heroin networks need workers, and the downtrodden villages of Xalisco County have provided a seemingly endless supply of young men eager to earn as much money as possible and take it back home.

As black-tar heroin ruined lives in the United States, it pulled the poorest out of poverty in Xalisco. Drug earnings paid for decent houses and sometimes businesses, and it made dealers' families the social equals of landowners. By addicting the children of others, they could support their own.

"I'd be lying if I said I was sorry," Avila said. "I did it out of necessity. I was tired of birthdays without gifts, of my mother wondering where the food was going to come from."

Boom times

Xalisco County begins a couple of miles south of the state capital of Tepic and spreads across 185 square miles of lush, hilly terrain. A highway curves through it to the tourist resort of Puerto Vallarta to the south.

The county seat, also named Xalisco, is a town of narrow cobblestone streets and 29,000 people. For many years, dependence on the sugar cane harvest kept the county poor. Houses had tin roofs, and few had proper plumbing.

Xalisco ostensibly still depends on sugar cane. But it is now among the top 5% of Mexican counties in terms of wealth, according to a government report.

Enormous houses with tile roofs and marble floors have gone up everywhere. In immigrant villages across Mexico, people build the first stories of houses and leave iron reinforcing bars protruding skyward until they save the money to add second stories. Often the wait is measured in years. In Xalisco, homes go up all at once.

Off Xalisco's central plaza are swanky women's clothing stores and law offices. Young men drive new Dodge Rams, Ford F-150s and an occasional Cadillac Escalade. Outside town are new subdivisions with names like Bonaventura and Puerta del Sol.

Xalisco's Corn Fair, held every August, is another measure of the town's newfound wealth. Twenty years ago, the fair's basketball tournament was a modest affair. Teams from surrounding villages competed against one another in ragged uniforms.

Then "the boys began going north and getting into the business," said one farmer. "The town just began to come up."

The tournament purse grew so fat that semi-pro teams began competing. Last year, with first prize worth close to $3,000, semi-pro squads from Mazatlan, Monterrey and Puerto Vallarta competed, each with American ringers. One local village sponsored a team made up entirely of hired players, reputedly paid for by a heroin trafficker.

Sharing in this wealth to varying degrees are 20 villages scattered across the hills south of the town of Xalisco. Esteban Avila was born in one of them, a place named for the Mexican revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata.

Avila, now 35, is in a federal prison in Texas, serving a 15-year term for conspiracy to distribute heroin. He described his odyssey in interviews with The Times on the condition that he would not talk about anyone else in the drug business.

When he was a boy, the village of Emiliano Zapata was poor and notorious for its violence. In The Toad, where Avila's family lived, roofs leaked and the hills were the bathroom. When Avila and his friends went to the village basketball court, other boys ran them off with rocks and insults.

Later, Avila wanted to join the Mexican Navy or highway patrol, but only sons of well-connected fathers were admitted, he said.

"In the United States, there's no need to be a criminal to live well," he said. "But in Mexico, they throw you into a dead end."

At 14, Avila traveled to Tijuana, then slipped across the border and made his way to the San Fernando Valley.

"I wanted to look for some new way to live, something with a future," he said. "I wasn't going to find it in the village."

But he didn't want to go to school and he was too young to work. So he returned to Emiliano Zapata and bided his time working in the sugar cane fields.

In the mid-1990s, men from Xalisco began selling black-tar heroin across America. A friend who ran a heroin network recruited Avila to work as a driver in Phoenix.

Avila, then 19, accepted. Every day, he drove around the city, his mouth full of tiny, uninflated balloons, each filled with a tenth of a gram of heroin. Addicts phoned in orders. A dispatcher relayed them to Avila, who delivered the drugs to customers and collected payment.

Five months later, he took a bus back to Xalisco with $15,000 in his pocket. He was wearing new Levi's 501s -- a prized garment in many Mexican villages.

"That night was the first time we had more than enough to eat," Avila said.

His parents never asked how he made the money.

In the Xalisco system, drivers commonly strike out on their own after a few years and set up delivery operations. In 1997, Avila told his boss that he was going to seek his own heroin market in New Mexico.

A friend told Avila about addicts in Santa Fe, so he went there. He found those addicts and through them many more, including dozens in Taos, Xalisco's sister city. A half hour away, he discovered the town of Chimayo, in the verdant Espanola Valley, with one of the highest rates of heroin addiction in the country. Soon, Avila's cheap, powerful black tar drove out the powder heroin that addicts had been using.

Avila declined to reveal where he got his heroin, other than to say that Nayarit's mountains are filled with small poppy farms and that black tar is easily made.

In Albuquerque, he bought a counterfeit birth certificate and driver's license; he crossed the border posing as an American from then on. Back in Xalisco, he hired drivers from villages near his own, paying smugglers to bring them across the border.

"Some drivers just wanted enough to build a decent house or buy a new truck. Then they were coming back home," he said. "Some wanted to fly, like I did."

He returned to Emiliano Zapata and for three years managed the business from Mexico, returning to the United States only occasionally. At home, families asked him for loans; some paid him back. Poor young men asked him for work up north.

He took his family to fine restaurants in Tepic, where they nervously rubbed elbows with the city's middle class.

"Our life changed entirely," he said. "It gave me more self-assuredness. If you have a peso in your pocket, you feel lighter of spirit. The weight of life is easier to carry."

At a fiesta in Xalisco's plaza one night, Avila and a friend paid for 11 hours of banda music, plus alcohol: a $3,000 tab.

He paid for one sister's quinceañera and another's wedding. He paid for a sister to attend college in Tepic, the first in her family to go.

Now he could give his girlfriend the life her parents expected. He stole her away to a Puerto Vallarta hotel for a weekend -- which in the village meant they were married.

Avila hired workers to build a house for his parents and men to help his father in the field. He hired a maid to help his mother. He moved his wife and children away from Emiliano Zapata and its violence and low expectations.

His father was greeted on village streets by those better off than he. He drank less, yelled less. One day, seeing his son with some cocaine, Avila's father took him aside and counseled him not to use drugs and to avoid bad habits.

"For the first time, I felt he spoke to me the way a father should speak to a son," Avila said.

Heroin opened vistas for other sugar cane cutters' sons as well. The village's moneyed classes no longer could talk down to farmers.

"We were all equal now," Avila said.

Over the next decade, networks of Xalisco dealers moved across the country, often competing with one another in such cities as Columbus, Ohio; Portland, Ore.; and Nashville.

Much of the money they earned flooded south, reaching the poorest of Xalisco County, people used to cutting cane for $8 a day.

So as quickly as dealers were arrested, they were replaced by others from Xalisco betting they could elude capture long enough to return with money for a house, truck or other mark of success.

One heroin driver from the village of Aquiles Serdan built a house with an electric garage-door opener, awing his neighbors.

Another former sugar cane worker, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the impression made by the device. "Everybody watched while the door went up by itself," he said. "People would walk by and look at it."

Seeing young men his age return from the United States with money, this man decided he wanted some too. He became a heroin driver in a southeastern U.S. city.

"I had a wife and son and I couldn't support them," he said. "I thought I'd buy land, and build us a house." He said half the young men in Aquiles Serdan left to try their luck as drivers.

In his first six weeks last year, he earned $7,000, more than he'd ever had at one time. Then he was arrested. He pleaded guilty to distributing heroin and faces up to 10 years in prison.

Back in Aquiles Serdan, 20 new houses have gone up, several with electric garage doors.

Operation Tar Pit

In 2000, Esteban Avila's fairy tale ended. He was among nearly 200 people arrested in a dozen cities in a federal investigation dubbed Operation Tar Pit. The case began in Chimayo after a rash of overdoses -- 85 deaths in three years, representing 2% of the town's population.

The arrests marked the first time the Drug Enforcement Administration had pieced together the national reach of Xalisco dealers. In Xalisco, the busts had an almost recessionary effect. "The fiesta was dead. Nobody was coming to the plaza," said a man who lived there at the time, speaking on the condition that he not be identified.

The easy money Avila made turned out to be the hardest of his life. His children are growing up without him.

Still, heroin lifted his family's horizons. Avila believes that poor people get no breaks they don't make for themselves. Had he been able to achieve anything by legal means, he would have, he says.

The truth of that is hard to know. But it does seem that black-tar heroin, as it destroyed lives in America, remade his own in Mexico and channeled his gumption unlike anything else available to him at the time.

"At least I'm not going to die wanting to know what's on the other side of that river," he said from prison. "I already know."

Audio slide shows:	Living on black tar heroin
	Black tar moves in, and death follows

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-blacktar14-2010feb14,0,7043569,print.story ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From the Wall Street Journal

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Handgun Case Creates Odd Alliances

Conservative and Liberal Groups Join in Urging the Supreme Court to Strike Down Two Illinois Gun Bans Next Month

A Supreme Court argument on gun rights slated for next month is creating strange bedfellows between conservatives and liberals and pitting gun-rights groups against each other. The court will consider March 2 whether the Constitution blocks states from restricting handguns. The case could further rework arms regulations in the aftermath of the court's 2008 decision to strike down a law for violating the Second Amendment for the first time. That decision invalidated the District of Columbia's handgun ban for infringing what the court called an "inherent right to self-defense." The capital's peculiar status as a federal enclave, however, left unclear the implications for state law. The Supreme Court will hear arguments over that question in challenges to handgun bans in Chicago and Oak Park, Ill., weighing whether the principle it set for Washington, D.C. also applies to states and local communities. The issue has scrambled traditional alliances, as gun-rights groups battle each other over how to argue the case, and some left- and right-leaning legal theorists unite over how to interpret the Constitution. The court's four conservatives made up the 5-4 majority in the 2008 ruling.

Yet the Constitutional Accountability Center, a liberal advocacy group with ties to members of the Obama administration, is also urging the justices to strike down the Illinois gun bans. The center says the case allows the court to correct a poor constitutional interpretation from the late 19th century and that establishing a federal right to self-defense could open the door to progressive readings of individual rights in future cases.

Alan Gura, the conservative attorney who will present the lead arguments at the Supreme Court against the Illinois laws, embraces that theory as well, but with a different aim. He maintains that a victory in the gun cases could pave the way for future rulings bolstering property rights and libertarian views that limit government power.

The National Rifle Association, which also challenged the Illinois gun laws, shares Mr. Gura's ultimate goal, but Mr. Gura's legal arguments puts them at odds. The NRA is primarily interested in expanding gun rights rather than broader constitutional doctrines.

In judging the justice's stances, most enigmatic may be that of Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion in the District of Columbia case.

In a 1997 book, "A Matter of Interpretation," Justice Scalia wrote that he viewed "the Second Amendment as a guarantee that the federal government would not interfere with the right of the people to keep and bear arms."

Yet, this next passage gives court watchers some pause. "Of course," Justice Scalia continued, "properly understood, it is no limitation upon arms control by the states."

Now a claim to the contrary—that the Second Amendment does limit arms control by the states—is pending. Justice Scalia declined to comment through a court spokeswoman.

Constitutional-law scholar Christopher Eisgruber, the provost of Princeton University, said that if Justice Scalia still believes what he wrote, he will let the local gun-control laws in Illinois stand. Mr. Eisgruber notes that conservatives have generally been skeptical of the reasoning liberal justices have employed to expand the sweep of individual rights under the Constitution.

Others, such as Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, say that modern methods of constitutional interpretation would allow Justice Scalia to apply the Second Amendment to strike down state gun controls, regardless of its original meaning in 1791.

During the backlash to Reconstruction, the Supreme Court took a narrow view of the 14th Amendment and in 1873 effectively mooted the "privileges or immunities'' clause. In 1886, the justices held that the Second Amendment did not limit state powers.

In the 20th century, the court came to view some rights as "fundamental" liberties protected from state infringement by the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause.

Many constitutional lawyers believe that the court erred in 1873. Mr. Gura hopes that the justices will find that armed self-defense is a "privilege or immunity" of citizenship, resurrecting the clause from the constitutional graveyard.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704269004575073771717464954.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLTopStories#printMode

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From Fox News

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Lawyer for Professor Eyed in Killings: She's Insane

February 19, 2010

Associated Press

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — 

Defense attorney Roy W. Miller said Thursday that Amy Bishop has severe mental problems that he believes to be paranoid schizophrenia. He said she gets in conflicts with people needlessly and then becomes obsessed with them.

Miller said in an interview with The Associated Press that Bishop's failure to obtain tenure at the University of Alabama in Huntsville was likely at the heart of the shootings, which occurred during a faculty meeting last Friday.

District Attorney Robert Broussard says he won't oppose a mental evaulation for Bishop. He says his office will be ready for an insanity defense in court.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,586782,00.html

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Army Investigates Alleged Attempt by Soldiers to Poison Food at Fort Jackson

February 18, 2010

FOX News

The U.S. Army is investigating allegations that soldiers were attempting to poison the food supply at Fort Jackson in South Carolina.

The ongoing probe began two months ago, Chris Grey, a spokesman for the Army's Criminal Investigation Division, told Fox News.

The Army is taking the allegations “extremely seriously,” Grey said, but so far, "there is no credible information to support the allegations."

Five suspects, detained in December, were part of an Arabic translation program called "09 Lima" and use Arabic as their first language, two sources told Fox News. Another military source said they were Muslim. It wasn't clear whether they were still being held.

Grey would not confirm or deny the sources' information.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,586721,00.html

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Milwaukee Man Reportedly Told Cellmate He Killed Women

February 18, 2010

Associated Press

MILWAUKEE  — 

A man accused of killing seven women over a 21-year period confessed to a former cellmate that he had committed murder and that it turned him on to beat and choke women, prosecutors said.

Walter E. Ellis told former cellmate Frederick Bonds in 1998 that he had killed women, and Bonds said Ellis was upset when he learned prison officials planned to take DNA samples from inmates, prosecutors said in court documents filed Feb. 5.

Ellis and Bonds shared a cell for several months when Ellis was serving time for allegedly hitting his girlfriend in the head with a hammer.

Ellis' attorney, Russell Jones, filed a motion seeking to bar Bonds' testimony, saying it wasn't relevant to the case.

A judge is expected to hear arguments on the matter at a Friday hearing.

Ellis, 49, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree intentional homicide or first-degree murder in the deaths of the women, who were killed between 1986 and 2007. Investigators suspect they were prostitutes, but some of the victim's family members dispute that. If convicted of either charge, he would face a mandatory life prison sentence, although the judge could decide whether to allow the possibility of parole.

Prosecutors say Ellis' semen was found on six of the seven women he's charged with killing. His blood was found on a can of pepper spray found at the scene of the seventh slaying. Investigators believe all the victims were strangled, and that one was also stabbed in the neck.

Ellis was in prison between 1998 and 2001, and Corrections Department officials should have collected a DNA sample at that time. Agency records showed a sample was taken from Ellis on Feb. 4, 2001, but the Justice Department discovered it had nothing from him and launched a more comprehensive probe of the entire database.

Ellis wasn't arrested until Sept. 5, 2009 after the Milwaukee police department's cold case unit sifted through thousands of cases and tested the DNA of more than 100 people.

Prosecutor Mark Williams said he didn't know why Bonds was in prison. The Department of Corrections couldn't immediately say why he was in prison.

Jones said the credibility and motives of someone relating alleged jailhouse conversations has to be questioned.

"All of sudden Walter is a target and anyone is going to try to put their name on this," he said.

Jones also filed a motion seeking a change of venue for the trial, claiming the pretrial publicity has tainted the jury pool. He also has indicated he wants to include testimony to point to the possibility of other suspects and require medical examiners and other expects to have to be cross examined about reports or tests done — some decades ago — in order for them to be admitted.

Jones is seeking to exclude testimony from 10 potential state witnesses, including two who would say Ellis was paranoid of the police. Joseph Hardmon, the son of one of Ellis' ex-girlfriends, told authorities that Ellis would hide in the basement when he saw police and he even hollowed out the inside of a couch to make a hiding space.

Jones said it was reasonable for Ellis to be afraid of the police since he was involved with prostitutes and drugs, but that his fear doesn't mean he killed the women.

Another state witness is Napoleon Clark who would testify that Ellis asked him — and he agreed — to pretend he was Ellis and give a DNA sample in his name in 2000 or 2001.

The witnesses are unable to connect Ellis to the women the days they were murdered so therefore are irrelevant, Jones said.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,586628,00.html

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From the Department of Homeland Security

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Explosive Trace Detection Usage Expanded: Give Us A Hand

Secretary Napolitano and Mexican Secretary of Public Safety Genaro García Luna Sign Declaration of Principles on Cooperative Efforts to Secure the U.S.-Mexico Border and Combat Transnational Threats

February 18, 2010

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
Contact: 202-282-8010

Mexico City—U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano and Mexican Secretary of Public Safety (SSP) Genaro García Luna today signed a Declaration of Principles of Cooperation on joint efforts to secure the U.S.-Mexico border and share information about transnational threats while streamlining legitimate travel and trade.

“The success of our efforts to crack down on criminal organizations and others who threaten the safety of our citizens requires close collaboration between the United States and Mexico ,” said Secretary Napolitano. “This declaration will allow us to better protect both nations against violent drug cartels and transnational smuggling of drugs, cash and firearms while facilitating legitimate travel and trade.”

“This agreement is an example of the cooperation and mutual understanding regarding security issues between both countries, and between DHS and SSP,” said Secretary García Luna. “The working visit of Secretary Napolitano is a consequence of the strong relationship between both institutions, and of their commitment with the rule of law, and the fight against organized crime and violence.”

The declaration signed today builds on, and expands, Mérida Initiative programs as well as current coordinated efforts between U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Mexican Federal Police and outlines principles to enhance border security, including:

• Intelligence-driven operations with precise, targeted outcomes —improving public safety and security along the border through DHS-SSP coordinated operations and investigations and focusing additional Mexican resources to combat criminal activity along the border;
  
  
• Cooperation focused on increasing bilateral situational awareness of threats —enhancing the production of reliable criminal activity reports to improve both nations' ability to share real-time information about arrests, seizures, investigations and relevant trends and threats posed by criminal organizations along the border;
  
  
• Operations designed to deny access by criminal organizations between ports of entry —enhancing coordinated surveillance capabilities; coordinating short- and long-term deployment of personnel, infrastructure and technology; coordinating efforts to identify illegal crossing points and targeting associates of criminal organizations;
  
  
• Enforcement that effectively prevents criminals from exploiting border entry points —sharing intelligence information on criminal activities, structures and strategies, and collaborating to develop strategies that limit transnational mobility of criminal associates and their family members to the extent authorized by law;
  
  
• Sufficient personnel, infrastructure and technology needed to sustain bilateral efforts —coordinating operational plans and investigative efforts to facilitate enforcement goals and sustain bilateral cooperative efforts based on available intelligence.
  

Secretary Napolitano also met yesterday with Mexican Interior Secretary Fernando Gómez-Mont to sign a protocol to enhance and streamline coordination on public communication in the case of a national security situation or disaster, and improve day-to-day exchanges of public affairs information to enhance mutual awareness and prompt coordination.

In the past year, Secretary Napolitano has made several trips to the Southwest border and Mexico to survey operations, coordinate with state and local law enforcement, and meet with Mexican officials—and has signed several agreements with Mexican officials to bolster cross-border cooperation to crack down on transnational criminal activity.

For more information, visit www.dhs.gov .

http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr_1266515652313.shtm

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From the Department of Justice

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Thank you, Laurie. It's an honor to join with you and my old friend, Tree, in opening today's conference and welcoming our participants. Many of you have traveled from all across the country to be here, and I want to thank each of you for your engagement, for your service to your communities, and for your commitment to the principles that define who we are, and who we can be, as a nation.

For well over two centuries now, we, as a people, have been striving to build a more perfect union – an America that lives up to the vision of our Founders. A country where the words of our Constitution can, finally, reach the full measure of their intent.

It is no less than this ongoing work – the fulfillment of our Constitution – that brings us together today. I'm here to discuss a responsibility that we, as stewards of our nation's criminal justice system, all share – a responsibility to ensure the fairness and integrity of that system.

I would argue that our criminal justice system is one of the most distinctive aspects of our national character. And I also would argue that it is one of the most praiseworthy. That said, we must face facts. And the facts prove that we have a serious problem on our hands.

Nearly half a century has passed since the Supreme Court's decision in Gideon v. Wainwright . The Court followed with other decisions recognizing the right to counsel in juvenile and misdemeanor cases. Today, despite the decades that have gone by, these cases have yet to be fully translated into reality.

But you already know this. All of you have read the reports and know the data. And many of you have learned this truth in the hardest of ways – by experiencing it on the ground. You've seen how, in too many of our counties and communities, some people accused of crimes – including juveniles – may never have a lawyer, either entirely or during a critical stage of the proceedings against them. In fact, juveniles sometimes waive their right to counsel without ever speaking to an attorney to help them understand what they are giving up. And our courts accept these waivers.

Meanwhile, recent reports evaluating state public defense systems are replete with examples of defendants who have languished in jail for weeks, or even months, before counsel was appointed.

When lawyers are provided to the poor, too often they cannot represent their clients properly due to insufficient resources and inadequate oversight – that is, without the building blocks of a well-functioning public defender system, the type of system set forth in the ten principles of the American Bar Association and the National Juvenile Defender Center.

As we all know, public defender programs are too many times under-funded. Too often, defenders carry huge caseloads that make it difficult, if not impossible, for them to fulfill their legal and ethical responsibilities to their clients. Lawyers buried under these caseloads often can't interview their clients properly, file appropriate motions, conduct fact investigations, or spare the time needed to ask and apply for additional grant funding. And the problem is about more than just resources. In some parts of the country, the primary institutions for the delivery of defense to the poor – I'm talking about basic public defender systems – simply do not exist.

I continue to believe that if our fellow citizens knew about the extent of this problem, they would be as troubled as you and I. Public education about this issue is critical. For when equal justice is denied, we all lose.

As a prosecutor and former judge, I know that the fundamental integrity of our criminal justice system, and our faith in it, depends on effective representation on both sides. And I recognize that some may perceive the goals of those who represent our federal, state, and local governments and the goals of those who represent the accused as forever at odds. I reject that premise. Although they may stand on different sides of an argument, the prosecution and the defense can, and must, share the same objective: Not victory, but justice. Otherwise, we are left to wonder if justice is truly being done, and left to wonder if our faith in ourselves and in our systems is misplaced.

But problems in our criminal defense system aren't just morally untenable. They're also economically unsustainable. Every taxpayer should be seriously concerned about the systemic costs of inadequate defense for the poor. When the justice system fails to get it right the first time, we all pay, often for years, for new filings, retrials, and appeals. Poor systems of defense do not make economic sense.

So, where do we go from here?

I want to speak with you clearly and honestly about this. In the last year, I have thought about, studied, and discussed the current crisis in our criminal defense system. What I've learned, and what I know for sure, is that there are no easy solutions. No single institution – not the federal government, not the Department of Justice, not a single state – can solve the problem on its own. Progress can only come from a sustained commitment to collaboration with diverse partners.

I expect every person in this room to play a role in advancing the cause of justice. Yes, everyone. And, yes, I say this with the knowledge that we have some unlikely partners among us. Some might wonder what the United States Attorney General is doing at a conference largely about the defense that poor people receive in state and local courts.

Likewise, many of you – the local officials, budget officers, and prosecutors gathered here – have not traditionally been engaged in discussions about the right to counsel. But all of us should share these concerns. It must be the concern of every person who works on behalf of the public good and in the pursuit of justice. That's what this conference is all about – expanding and improving this work; learning from each other; recruiting new partners; and making sure that, for our criminal defense community, government is viewed as an ally, not an adversary.

In particular, I think our common work must have three areas of focus. I've touched on each of these goals over the last year. But all of them are worth mentioning here again today.

First, we must commit to an ongoing dialogue about these issues. We need partners at the federal, state, and local levels, both within and outside of government, to be involved. By sharing information and working together, I believe we can build on the good work that has gone into developing model standards for our public defense systems.

Second, we must raise awareness about what we're up against. As Americans understand how some of their fellow citizens experience the criminal justice system, they will be shocked and angered – feelings I hope would compel them to become advocates for change and allies in our work.

Third, we must expand the role of the public defender. We must encourage defenders to seek solutions beyond our courtrooms and ensure that they're involved in shaping policies that will empower the communities they serve. I'm committed to making sure that public defenders are at the table when we meet with other stakeholders in the criminal justice system. I have charged the Department's leadership with calling on our components to include members of the public defense system in a range of meetings. We will also involve defenders in conferences, application review panels, and other venues where a public defense perspective can be valuable. And it should not go without saying – every state should have a public defender system. Every state.

In all of this, I stand with you and with anyone who is committed to ensuring the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Last year, when I became Attorney General, I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. I also made a promise. A promise to the citizens I serve and the colleagues I work alongside. A promise to guard the rights of all Americans and make certain that, in this country, the indigent are not invisible.

So let me assure you today that this is not a passing issue for the Department. I have asked the entire Department of Justice – in my office, in Laurie Robinson's, and in components as diverse as the Office of Legal Policy and the Criminal Division – to focus on indigent defense issues with a sense of urgency and a commitment to developing and implementing the solutions we need.

In the coming weeks, we will take concrete steps to make access to justice a permanent part of the work of the Department of Justice, with a focused effort by our leadership offices to ensure the issue gets the attention it deserves. Government must be a part of the solution – not simply by acting as a convener but also by serving as a collaborator.

Once again, we stand at the beginning of a new decade. We must seize this opportunity to return to the beliefs that guided our nation's founding and to renew the strength of our justice system.

I have every expectation that our criminal defense system can, and will, be a source of tremendous national pride. And I know that achieving this requires the best that we, as a profession and as a people, have to offer.

I pledge my own best efforts. And, today, I ask for yours.

Thank you.

http://www.justice.gov/ag/speeches/2010/ag-speech-100218.html

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Thank you, Tyrone [Parker]. I appreciate your kind words, and I want to thank you for bringing us all together – something you do as well as just about anyone in this city.

Over the years, I've been privileged to work with you and your partners. Good, strong men who have become my friends. I've watched the Alliance of Concerned Men grow from a handful of frustrated – yet, ultimately, hopeful – friends and neighbors into what it is today: one of this city's most powerful, and most successful, voices for change. You've helped to create peace in some of our most dangerous and divided neighborhoods. You've spoken out for communities in crisis. And you've stood up for families and individuals in need. This work has always begun in the same, simple way – by getting people together, by talking, and by listening.

That's what today is all about. I'm grateful to be part of this discussion. And that's why I want to talk to you this afternoon about the responsibilities we share and must fulfill. Responsibilities to ourselves, to each other, to our communities, and to the children who depend on us.

Of all the titles I've held in my life – lawyer, prosecutor, judge, U.S. Attorney, and, now, Attorney General – the one I'm most proud of is "father." It says the most about me. It also means the most to me.

As Attorney General, I have the honor of serving as our nation's chief law enforcement officer. Each day, I'm reminded of the threats we face, and I'm charged with protecting both the safety of the American people and the strength of our justice system. As solemn and imperative as these duties are, they often seem manageable in comparison to the awesome responsibilities that I feel as the father of three children. Being a good father is every bit as demanding, and every bit as important, as being the Attorney General of the United States.

Let's be clear about one thing: a father's role in the life of a child is irreplaceable. Research has proven this. For me, my own experiences parenting two teenage daughters and a 12-year-old son, is all the evidence I need.

I'm glad to be in the company of so many fellow dads and local leaders who want to focus on, and talk about, fatherhood. In the course of this discussion, I hope we will be open and honest enough to ask ourselves tough questions – father to father, parent to parent – about what our communities, as well as the federal government, can do to strengthen our families and support those fathers who are trying to do the right thing.

Open and honest communication is what the Alliance of Concerned Men is all about. I first saw this 13 years ago, when I was the U.S. Attorney here in D.C. That was 1997, the year that Darryl Hall was murdered by rival gang members in Southeast Washington. Darryl was just 12 years old, but he'd been an active gang member. And his tragic death illustrated an alarming problem. I visited the housing complex where he'd lived. That's where I met Tyrone Parker. I watched as Tyrone and his partners brokered an unprecedented truce between the two gangs whose long-running feud had led to Darryl's death. It was amazing to witness. Not only did the Alliance help enemies find common ground, they raised the spirit of a hurting city. They lifted up young people who, until that point, had seen only dark times ahead. They worked a miracle. And it was just the first of many.

I realize that this kind of extraordinary service is not done without great sacrifice. Many of you devote your time and talent, as well as your own money, to helping young people day after day. It's difficult work, for you and also for those you're working to help. One young gang member, a teenage boy who had been on the front lines of a gang war that you helped end this winter, put it this way. He said, "It's hard to come in the room and make peace with someone who's been shooting at you, who's been trying to kill you."

But if that young man can come together with his former enemies, if those who have suffered most can find healing through dialogue, then I know that we can, too. We must bring ourselves to ask tough questions and to demand more from ourselves and each other.

After all, we fathers have an opportunity today, as we do every day, to act responsibly in the lives of our children and to be better fathers to them. We can spend time with our sons and daughters. We can help with their homework. We can teach them to play well together. We can teach our sons to show respect to women. And we can teach our daughters to demand respect for themselves. We can serve as role models for how to interact with others and how to handle the challenges of life. Stated simply, we can – and we must – assume the responsibility of being involved in our children's lives. By being involved, and by setting a good example, we each have the opportunity to impact our kids' lives, as well as the future of our nation, in positive and profound ways.

Here in Washington, too many of our children are in need and living in pain. Too many kids have given up on themselves and given in to a life of violence and crime. As some of you recall, it wasn't too long ago that our city was called the most dangerous city in the world. But for all the progress we've made our young men are still more likely to experience violence here than in almost any other city in the United States.

Let me give you the statistics: 2,500 active gang members; 5,000 loose affiliates; 156 juveniles crammed into a detention center meant to house no more than 88 youth offenders; hundreds of robberies; dozens of murders.

But behind these numbers are the stories of lost children, unrealized dreams, shattered families, and grief beyond measure.

The plain truth is that youth violence is far-too common. There's no single cause and no simple solution. But we know one important contributor is the absence of a responsible, loving father. Here in D.C., where half of African-American households don't include even one grown man, the implications of this fact could not be clearer.

If we are going to call ourselves "men" then we must act like men. We must nurture and care for those we bring into this world. That's what a "man" does. We can't leave this awesome responsibility only to the women in our lives who, nevertheless, do a superb job. And we can't ask our communities to shoulder our obligations. This must end. Any man who can create a child must also help, in a meaningful way, to help raise that child.

I don't pretend that this will be easy, especially for fathers who have been incarcerated. I come here with great respect for those of you who have made mistakes but have chosen to appear here tonight because you know that someone is counting on you.

People sometimes make bad choices. And some of these choices come with a prison sentence. But we can't permit the incarceration of a parent to punish an entire family.

Today, more than 1.5 million American children have fathers in prison. More than half of these children are African American. Often, these kids struggle with anxiety, depression, learning problems, and aggression, undermining their own chances to succeed. In many cases, maintaining relationships with their parents during incarceration can improve the lives of these children. Yet, too often, our policies have failed to support these relationships.

We must find ways to help these men play a central role in their children's lives. Research reveals that men who maintain strong family ties while behind bars are more successful when they are released. They have an easier time finding jobs and staying off drugs. And they're less likely to commit new crimes after they leave our jails.

There's a theme here: family connections improve public safety, and responsible and engaged parenting improves public safety. It's time we started to think about reentry in that context.

It may surprise you to learn that approximately 700,000 people return to their communities from prison every year. Seven hundred thousand. And yet, only a small percentage of these people receive any help preparing for their return. Surely this failure must play a role in the fact that two-thirds of men released from prison are re-arrested within three years.

The good news is that here in D.C., and in communities across the country, we're giving more attention to family. We're also using science and evidence-supported policies, not political dogma, to tackle the issues of recidivism and reentry. I'm pleased that, last year, the Justice Department awarded $28 million under the Second Chance Act for reentry programs. These investments will support parenting training inside our prisons and reunification programs for when people are released.

I know that many of you have struggled with these challenges or are facing them today. And many of you have found innovative, productive solutions. I look forward to hearing your stories this afternoon.

And as we talk together, let us keep in mind the wise words of Eric Perry, the courageous D.C. teenager who summoned the Alliance last year to intervene in one of this city's deadliest gang disputes. "Now," he told reporters, "it is up to us to get our community back together."

He's exactly right. I look forward to working with all of you to figure out where we go from here and how we build the future that our communities, and our kids, deserve.

Thank you.

http://www.justice.gov/ag/speeches/2010/ag-speech-1002181.html

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