House passes 'Billy's Law' on missing persons

A measure named for Janice Smolinski's son, who disappeared in 2004, would help expand the database of missing people and unidentified remains, partly by requiring the FBI to share what it knows.

By Richard Simon

6:14 PM PST, February 23, 2010

Reporting from Washington

As the House on Tuesday approved "Billy's Law," a bill designed to aid families searching for missing loved ones, Janice Smolinski had more than a casual interest.

Her son, Billy, for whom the legislation is named, disappeared more than five years ago.

The measure, which seeks to expand online public information on missing people and unidentified remains, comes in the wake of missing-persons cases that have drawn national attention, including that of Mitrice Richardson, 24, who disappeared after being released from the Malibu-Lost Hills Station of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in September without her car, cellphone or purse.

The legislation grows out of Smolinski's search for her son, who went missing at age 31 in 2004 in Connecticut. She said authorities think he was killed.

"In our search to find our son we encountered a Pandora's box," she testified at a recent congressional hearing. "And when we opened it, we unleashed the nightmare plaguing the world of the missing and the unidentified dead."

Smolinski and her husband, Bill, "met law enforcement that didn't understand how to handle an adult missing-persons case, and then ran into a national system of disconnected and inaccessible databases that didn't allow them to be true partners in the search," Rep. Christopher S. Murphy (D-Conn.) said Tuesday. Murphy is the Smolinskis' congressman and the bill's chief sponsor.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who was a sponsor of the bill, said that in Richardson's case, her family "would be able to access certain information updated by law enforcement and be better-equipped to monitor official activity and contribute to their own findings."

If a better-coordinated effort had been in place at the time of Richardson's disappearance, Waters said, "I'm confident that we'd have a better understanding of what happened to Mitrice Richardson."

Richardson's family has conducted four fruitless searches for the young woman, including one of the most extensive searches in the history of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.

While the online National Missing and Unidentified Persons System contains information on 2,856 missing people and 6,241 unidentified remains for public use, it doesn't include thousands of FBI records. Compounding the problem, authorities are required to report missing people under age 21, but not missing adults.

"It's likely that many missing-persons cases remain open for failure to connect missing-person profiles with unidentified remains that are being held," said Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas), another sponsor of the bill.

The legislation requires the FBI to share information, excluding sensitive and confidential data, with the public database. It authorizes $50 million in grants over five years to encourage state and local officials to share information on missing people and unidentified remains.

The grants program, Murphy said, would "make sure that all the information that a coroner may have in California is posted onto a national database so a family searching for their missing loved one in Connecticut has that information."

Smolinski, who has a 34-year-old daughter, never expected to be lobbying for federal legislation.

"We have tried to change the system so no family would have to endure the anguish that we have lived through these past five years."

A similar bill was introduced Tuesday in the Senate.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-missing24-2010feb24,0,7621938,print.story

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Anthem Blue Cross plans to go ahead with rate hikes in California

Executives at the health insurer and its parent firm, WellPoint, defend increases of as much as 39% in a hearing before an Assembly panel. The changes are slated to go into effect May 1.

By Duke Helfand

February 24, 2010

Reporting from Sacramento

Executives from California health insurance giant Anthem Blue Cross, under fire for scheduled rate hikes of up to 39%, insisted Tuesday that their premiums were fair and legal, and they told lawmakers they expected that the increases would go forward.

Appearing before the state Assembly's health committee, the officials said that they believed rate increases for individual health insurance policies, delayed until May 1 while being reviewed by the Department of Insurance, would survive scrutiny by regulators

The testimony came as members of the committee lashed out at Anthem for its proposed rate hikes and its corporate profit a day before the rate controversy moves to Washington, where a congressional subcommittee holds a hearing Wednesday.

At issue are steep premium increases for many of Anthem's 800,000 California customers who buy policies for themselves because they do not have insurance through employers.

The increases, which had been scheduled to take effect March 1, were delayed while independent actuaries, hired by California's insurance commissioner, review whether they are justified under state law.

Since word of rate increases in late January, the hikes and the profit of Anthem's parent company, WellPoint Inc., have come under attack by customers, insurance brokers, consumer advocates, regulators, lawmakers and the Obama administration.

President Obama on Monday proposed an expansion of federal authority to regulate health insurance rate increases such as Anthem's as part of his national healthcare reform package.

In Sacramento, Anthem's president, Leslie Margolin, told the committee that much of the public frustration over the rate hikes was misdirected and should be aimed at the nation's healthcare system.

"This debate and this inquiry cannot and should not be just about the insurance industry or the delivery system or regulators or legislators or customers or brokers," Margolin said.

"We have wasted precious time and precious resources doing battle with each other," she added. "We must come together collaboratively and strategically to address the distressing symptoms of our troubled system -- rising premiums, for example -- and to address the fundamental underlying causes of our collective failure."

The health committee's chairman, Assemblyman Dave Jones (D-Sacramento), called the Anthem hikes "astonishing" as he renewed his call for the state to regulate health insurance rates the way it limits increases for auto and property insurance.

"Are you planning to go forward with the rate increases?" Jones asked executives from Anthem and Wellpoint during Tuesday's hearing in Sacramento.

James Oatman, WellPoint's vice president and general manager of individual business, responded: "We believe the rate increase we have applied for is consistent with all the laws of the state of California. We are advocating that those rates are appropriate rates."

The California Department of Insurance will allow Anthem's rate increases only if outside actuaries certify that the company spends at least 70% of its premiums on medical claims, as required by state law, a department spokesman said. That review should be finished by mid-April. Anthem officials have said they meet the standard.

If the spending falls below the 70% level, "we will exercise our full regulatory authority to force them to lower their rates," department spokesman Darrel Ng said. "Our rule is to ensure they follow state law. The company has been consistent with asserting that its rates are legal."

Oatman testified with Anthem President Margolin. Both defended Anthem's profit margin during an often-testy hearing, saying it was 2.5% to 5%, a figure they said put it in line with other insurers.

A Times analysis of Anthem's financial reports to regulators showed Anthem has transferred more than $4.2 billion in dividends to WellPoint since 2004. "How much profit is enough?" Jones asked the executives.

"We have no interest in profit beyond the range I have described to you," Margolin responded. "Profits in the range of 2.5% to 5% are reasonable profits. They are appropriate profits. They are profits that we have as . . . a responsibility to keep a viable business surviving."

Jones was unmoved by her testimony. "Have you no shame?" he said.

Anthem began notifying policyholders in January of the proposed rate hikes. The company told customers at the time that it might also depart from its typical practice of increasing premiums annually and instead do so more often.

Anthem is not the only insurer across the country to raise rates by double digits, but its increases have caused a national furor over insurance costs. Critics have roundly condemned the increases, saying they vastly exceed the rise of national healthcare spending.

Indianapolis-based WellPoint, which has taken the lead defending the rates, said that less than a quarter of those affected would see increases of 35% to 39%. The average will be about 25%, while some policyholders will see rates drop by as much as 20%, company executives said.

WellPoint has argued that the higher premiums reflect soaring medical costs and the changing pool of individual policyholders. Younger and healthier customers are forgoing insurance in the tough economy, leaving older and sicker people with greater health needs to share the cost of individual coverage, the company said.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-insure24-2010feb24,0,2866459,print.story

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2 teens shot at school in Colorado

Associated Press

February 24, 2010

Littleton, Colo.

A teacher tackled a man armed with a high-powered rifle after two teenage students were shot at a suburban Denver middle school Tuesday.

The students, one male and one female, were wounded about 3:30 p.m. outside Deer Creek Middle School in Littleton, Jefferson County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Jacki Kelley said.

Both victims were expected to survive.

Student Steven Seagraves said he was about 10 feet away when an adult approached students and asked them: "Do you guys go to this school?"

When the students said they did, he shot them, Seagraves said.

Seventh-grade math teacher David Benke, a former college basketball player, tackled the suspect.

Bus driver Steve Potter said he and another driver helped hold the man until police arrived.

"He's the real hero," Potter said of Benke. "All the credit goes to him."

The suspect's name hasn't been released, but authorities say he's 32.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-colorado-shootings24-2010feb24,0,6647989,print.story

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Pediatrician Charged With Molesting 103 Patients, Videotaping Sex Acts

Pediatrician's office looked like playground, was allegedly scene of abuse.

KTLA News

February 23, 2010

DOVER, Del. -- Prosecutors expect to add more counts to a lengthy indictment against a Delaware pediatrician charged with serial molestation of 103 children.

A grand jury returned a 160-page indictment Monday against Dr. Earl Bradley of Lewes with 471 counts of sexual crimes.

The case has shocked the close-knit coastal community of Lewes and the central Delaware town of Milford, where Bradley closed an office in 2005 after police investigated him.

Bradley's attorney, Eugene Maurer, said he would seek to move the trial out of Sussex County.

But he said the "real battleground" in the case will be Bradley's mental state, not what is seen on videotapes seized from Bradley's home and office or alleged in the indictment.

Announcing the grand jury's indictment, Attorney General Beau Biden said all of the alleged victims, mainly girls but including one boy, were caught on more than 13 hours of video recordings, some dating to 1998.

"The charges in this indictment are unique in the history of the state of Delaware, as far as I can tell," he said.

The charges against Bradley include rape, sexual exploitation of a child, unlawful sexual contact, continuous sexual abuse of a child, assault and reckless endangering.

Bradley, who was arrested in December and initially charged with 29 felony counts for allegedly abusing nine children, is being held with bail set at $2.9 million.

His medical license was permanently revoked by the state Board of Medical Practice last week.

Maurer said he had not read the indictment but was not surprised by the allegations.

"I'm sure they have their reasons for including all these different victims in this indictment," said Maurer, noting that under state law, a single conviction of rape would be enough to put Bradley behind bars for life.

The indictment alleges Bradley was videotaping his sexual exploitation of patients as far back as December 1998. Many victims were assaulted repeatedly, some on consecutive days, according to the indictment, which alleges that one girl was raped more than a dozen times over a period that lasted more than a year.

Authorities would not say whether they think Bradley had videotaped all of his alleged assaults or whether there may be more victims.

"I expect that we will add to this indictment with new charges over the coming months," Biden said.

He encouraged parents and victims of Bradley, "regardless of age or gender," to contact prosecutors, who have sent out about 3,100 letters to Bradley's patients and set up an office in Lewes to handle complaints and direct potential victims and their families to counseling and other services.

Sussex County prosecutor Paula Ryan declined to say how many alleged victims seen on videotape have been identified by name, or to provide an age range. The indictment refers to each alleged victim only as "Jane Doe" or "John Doe."

After years of suspicions among parents and questions about his strange behavior from colleagues, Bradley was arrested after a 2-year-old girl told her mother that the doctor hurt her in December when he took her to a basement room of his office after an exam.

While prosecutors allege regular and repeated abuse by Bradley, the indictment contains a gap of more than a year, from October 2004 to June 2006, in which no alleged crimes are listed.

Biden and Gov. Jack Markell have ordered reviews to determine whether doctors, hospitals, state agencies or law enforcement authorities failed to comply with a state law that requires all such entities to report to the medical licensing board in writing within 30 days if they believe a doctor is or "may be" guilty of unprofessional conduct.

Biden said Monday that those investigations are aimed at determining "how this physician could lurk in our midst for as long as he did."

http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-peds-molester,0,7273733,print.story

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New 'Confession' in Natalee Holloway Case Called 'Lies and Fantasy'

Associated Press

February 23, 2010

ORANJESTAD, Aruba -- The key suspect in the much publicized Natalee Holloway disappearance, Joran van der Sloot, has admitted to disposing of the American student's body.

Van der Sloot told the German news agency RTL that he disposed of Holloway's body in a swamp on the island of Aruba.

Joran van der Sloot made the statements in front of RTL's cameras.

However, the chief prosecutor in Aruba has called the statements "lies and fantasy."

Reports say this confession is similar to the one van der Sloot made two years ago to a Dutch crime reporter, which he later claimed he had made up to impress the reporter..

Holloway was on vacation in May 2005 with about 100 classmates celebrating their graduation from Mountain Brook High School near Birmingham, Alabama.

Mom Convicted of Killing Daughters, Keeping Bodies in Freezer

Associated Press

February 22, 2010

ROCKVILLE, Md. -- A Maryland woman who adopted three children despite a troubled past was convicted Monday of murdering two of the girls, whose bodies were stored in a freezer as the woman continued collecting payments meant to help with their care.

Renee Bowman, 44, kept the bodies of the two young girls on ice for months while she continued to collect subsidies paid to parents who adopt special-needs children in the District of Columbia, receiving a total of about $150,000 since adopting the girls.

The bodies were found after the third daughter escaped by jumping out a window. The girl, now 9 and living with new foster parents, testified in the murder trial last week about the abuse she and her sisters endured -- being beaten with a baseball bat and shoes and choked until they lost consciousness.

The girl's older sisters, Minnet and Jasmine Bowman, were both younger than 10 when they died, though authorities were never able to determine exactly when the murders occurred. Nobody knew they were missing, and there are no records the children were ever enrolled in school. Prosecutors said Bowman killed them while the family was living in Rockville and took the freezer with her when the family moved first to Charles County and later to Lusby, in Calvert County.

Bowman showed no emotion as she listened to the verdict -- guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and three counts of first-degree child abuse. Jurors deliberated for about two hours.

Prosecutors said they would ask for life in prison without the possibility of parole when Bowman is sentenced March 22. Bowman's attorneys did not immediately return a call seeking comment. She has already been sentenced to 25 years in prison in Calvert County for abusing the surviving girl.

Afterward, jurors said the main issue was whether to convict her of first- or second-degree murder. Bowman's lawyer had argued the killings weren't premeditated.

"I am not going to insult your intelligence and say to you that she did not hurt those children, that she did not abuse those children," public defender Alan Drew told the jury. "Renee Bowman is not guilty of first-degree premeditated murder."

However, prosecutors argued the killings were deliberate, and Bowman's former cellmate testified that Bowman confided to her that she smothered them.

"She made a decision to go down, take a pillow, and smother these children," Montgomery County State's Attorney John McCarthy said in his closing arguments.

During her testimony, the surviving girl clutched a Valentine's Day teddy bear as she told the jury about the abuse she suffered at the hands of the woman she called her "ex-mother"

She said she and her sisters were kept in a locked room in their Rockville home.

"There was a bucket where we went to the bathroom because we weren't allowed out of the room," she said.

McCarthy asked the girl where she had been beaten the worst. Asked to demonstrate on the bear, she pointed to its backside and its crotch.

The girl often waved happily at her foster mother during the testimony and talked about the books she likes to read. That contrasted sharply to a photo McCarthy showed that was taken in the hospital after she was found. In the photo, she stares with frightened eyes and part of her lip is missing -- a result of the abuse, authorities say.

Bowman was able to adopt the children despite being convicted of threatening a 72-year-old man over damage to her car. She also had filed for bankruptcy, even though D.C. officials said financial stability is a requirement for adoption.

http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-mom-freezer,0,2666581,print.story

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From the Wall Street Journal

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Justices Wrestle With Terror Law

WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court wrestled to find the line between First Amendment rights and the fight against terrorism Tuesday during oral arguments over a law barring people from providing "material support" to foreign terrorist organizations.

Prosecutors favor the material-support charge because it is broad enough to cover a range of activities linked to terrorist organizations, from collecting funds to shouldering a rifle. But by making it a crime to provide "training," "personnel" and "expert advice" to such groups—even for, say, peaceful ends such as disaster relief—the law sweeps too far into the rights of U.S. citizens to speak and associate freely, critics say.

The lawsuit was filed in 1998 by people who wanted to offer what they view as benign support to the Kurdistan Workers Party in the Middle East and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka, which the U.S. designated as foreign terrorist organizations in 1997.

Though neither group has targeted Americans, justices were aware of the case's implications.

"Suppose the group is not the two that we have here, but al Qaeda and the Taliban?" Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor challenging the law.

"It would pose a very different constitutional question," Mr. Cole said, as lending support to groups taking up arms against the U.S. could be considered akin to treason or aiding the enemy.

Mr. Cole's clients filed suit seeking a court ruling that their intended activities, such as helping the Tigers get aid following the 2004 tsunami in Asia, were not covered by the law. "It is advocating only lawful, peaceable activities," Mr. Cole said.

Justice Anthony Kennedy suggested that it could be difficult to draw such a bright line. "If you get tsunami money, that frees up your other assets for terrorist money, so why can't the government forbid teaching how to get that money?" he said.

Solicitor General Elena Kagan, representing the government, said that was the law's point.

"Hezbollah builds bombs. Hezbollah also builds homes," she said, referring to the Lebanon-based Shiite Muslim faction that is also designated a foreign-terrorist organization. "What Congress decided was when you help Hezbollah build homes, you are also helping Hezbollah build bombs."

Several justices seemed troubled by the claim that virtually any interaction with such groups could be prohibited. The government has said that even filing legal briefs on behalf of a designated organization would violate the law.

"Under the definition of this statute, teaching these members to play the harmonica would be unlawful," Justice Sonia Sotomayor said.

A decision in the case, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, is expected by July.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703503804575083802268379756.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5#printMode

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U.S. Charges 22 in Identity-Theft Scheme

NEW YORK—Federal and state authorities said Tuesday that 22 individuals have been charged in an identity-theft ring involving the sale of New York drivers' licenses to convicted felons using stolen identities and generating more than $1 million.

At a news conference, Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, and New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said six individuals, including two New York State Department of Motor Vehicles employees in the New York City area, who were allegedly members of the ring were arrested Tuesday. A seventh individual remains at large.

Fifteen customers also were charged in the case.

"The fraud ring's client base was essentially a rap sheet," Mr. Bharara said.

Prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan alleged that Wilch DeWalt was the ring's leader, acting as a one-stop shop for fake identity documents.

Mr. Bharara said convicted felons and others were able to obtain a package of identification documents using stolen identities, including birth certificates, fake work identification documents, Social Security cards and New York drivers' licenses.

Customers were charged $7,000 to $10,000 per identification package and the scheme generated more than $1 million, Mr. Bharara said.

More than 200 people obtained New York Department of Motor Vehicle documents through the ring, prosecutors said.

An undercover agent, as part of an enforcement action known as "Operation Two Face," allegedly told Mr. DeWalt that he had been previously deported from the country and was on a "no-fly" list because he was a suspected terrorist, prosecutors said. The undercover officer represented he wanted a driver's license so he could travel to Canada and then fly to Pakistan, prosecutors said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the New York State Office of the Inspector General, the New York State DMV, the U.S. Social Security Administration's Inspector General's office, the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. State Department's Diplomatic Security Service also were involved in the probe.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704188104575083613080990430.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5#printMode

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From the White House

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Make Your Voice Heard

On February 6, the White House Open Government Initiative launched a government wide public participation opportunity unprecedented in the history of our democracy. As part of the Open Government Directive issued in early December, every major agency published an open government website . These pages went live in early February complete with the latest news and updates, downloadable data unique to that agency, and information about how each agency is moving to implement the President's call for a more transparent, participatory, and collaborative government. These new websites also incorporate a mechanism for online civic engagement.

These websites will be most effective with broad input from as many members of the public as possible visiting these sites and providing feedback on the development of each agency's open government plan, including ideas for how to make the agency more effective and efficient and suggestions for data that should be published online.  These public brainstorms utilize similar free, easy-to-use tools as the White House used in soliciting public engagement in developing its open government agenda. People can post an idea, comment on the ideas of others, and rate and rank ideas to provide the agency with an ordered list of categorized suggestions. This is the first time something like this has been tried across the entire executive branch and we are eager to solicit input.

Now through March 19th, the American people can make a difference by logging on to each agency's open government page and making your voices heard. We hope you will assist us in this historic effort to bridge the gap between citizens and their government.  It would be particularly helpful for you to provide specific suggestions for what agencies should include in required elements of their plans.  These elements include a strategic action plan to improve transparency, as well as agency proposals to use technology platforms and other innovative methods (e.g., prizes and competition) to improve collaboration. 

Start participating today – visit one or more of these websites and provide feedback:

To see the tops ideas across government, visit OpenGovTracker.com or view the agency contact information for a complete list of all agencies, their contact information, their dialog tool URLs and RSS feeds, and other ways for the public to submit ideas. Ideas and comments that are submitted via email, phone, or other means will be posted on the agency's dialog site by moderators. That will allow others to comment and vote on these ideas.

This is only the latest effort by the Administration to make the government more transparent.  Our other concrete commitments to openness include issuing the Open Government Directive , putting up more government information than ever before on data.gov and recovery.gov , reforming the government's FOIA processes , providing on-line access to White House staff financial reports and salaries , issuing an executive order to fight unnecessary secrecy and speed declassification , reversing an executive order that previously limited access to presidential records , and webcasting White House meetings and conferences . The release also compliments our new lobbying rules, which in addition to closing the revolving door for lobbyists who work in government have also emphasized expanding disclosure of lobbyist contacts with the government .  And the President capped the year off by calling in the State of the Union for b old transparency initiatives (pdf) as part of his reform agenda for 2010 and the years ahead.

Tina Tchen is Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Public Engagement

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/02/23/make-your-voice-heard

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From the Department of Homeland Security

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Bomb Scare: An ODD Solution

A new and better way to detect explosives

Picture this. It's a typical fall morning in downtown Washington, DC. You just exited the metro, and you're walking to your office. You smile at the newspaper seller, inhale the aroma from a nearby coffee shop, and wait for the "Walk" signal that you never seem to make.

Then something catches your eye: Is that an unattended lunchbox underneath a park bench? Upon closer look, you notice that the box is misshapen and appears to be leaking. You immediately pull out your cell phone and dial 9-1-1.

For anyone who has spent a significant amount of time in an urban setting, the scene of a bomb squad responding to a report of a suspicious package is all too familiar. But just how do they determine if that lunchbox is someone's leftovers or a lethal weapon? The most common way is an imaging technique called spectroscopy .

As its name suggests, spectroscopy uses the color spectrum to shed light on a package's makeup. Since it uses visible light only, spectroscopy can't see through a lunchbox. What it can see is residue, or microscopic schmutz , on the box's outer layer, which can provide telltale clues about what's inside.

Using spectroscopy, the bomb squadder will beam a laser at the package, then compare the reflected "light signature"—an optical fingerprint, if you will—against a library of known signatures for chemical compounds, such as nitroglycerin. If there's nitro inside, chances are that some of it will be found in the package's residue.

This method presents two problems. First, there's distance. Many threat detection methods require either the person or the detector to be physically near the bomb, making spectroscopy extremely dangerous. Second, approaches like spectroscopy, which rely on reflected light, often are not sensitive or selective enough, especially in the real world where chemical signatures may overlap or be contaminated. Think of light signatures as fingerprints. Capturing a fingerprint from a clean surface is not especially difficult—all one needs is some cellophane tape. But in real life, surfaces are anything but clean, and dust, French fry grease, or even ink stains can cause a backpack or lunch pail to bear small deposits of several different chemicals, each with a unique optical fingerprint. To minimize false alarms, a detector must be both sensitive and selective.

"Spectroscopy is good, but it only gets you so far," says Eric Houser, a program manager in the  Explosives Division  of the Department of Homeland Security's  Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) . The wave of the future may lie in a technology called optimal dynamic detection (ODD), which overcomes many of spectroscopy's limitations.

The ODD project began in the summer of 2008, when researchers from Princeton University and Los Alamos National Laboratory pitched the concept to S&T. As a result, the Directorate signed a contract to fund research at the two labs for a proof of concept. A year and a half later, after several rounds of successful tests, researchers have successfully demonstrated the science of ODD. The goal now: to develop a portable prototype in the next three years that can be field-tested.

But back to the science, which of course is the real eye-opener. "At the risk of oversimplifying, this is quantum control applied to explosives detection," warns Houser.

Here's how ODD works:

1. A bomb technician beams a "raw" laser pulse toward a suspicious bag, looking for a specific explosive.
   
   
2. The pulse passes through an electro-optical filter, gaining clarity as it is bent through lenses, reflected by mirrors and amplified by chips. When the technician tunes the laser to a new frequency, the filter reshapes the laser's pulse. As it is bent, reflected, and electronically processed, the pulse changes amplitude.
   
   
3. The shaped pulse hits the chemical environment around the lunchbox and excites the energy state of the material of interest, emitting an energy "signature." Since the pulse was precisely defined, so is the signature.
   
   
4. A second laser, called an analyzing "probe," is beamed through the excited molecules, measuring its spectrum. The probe beam passes into an electro-optical detector stationed on the other side of the target.
   
   
5. The pulse laser's final shape is stored and analyzed. If the signature looks like that of an explosive, it can conclusively be traced to the explosive molecules that emitted it, which may be found on the bag's fabric or zipper.
   
   

In this way, ODD reduces background signals, which interfere with the identification process of a potential bomb, and amplifies the return signal, which illuminates the threat. The light energy going in is precisely defined, which makes it easier than spectroscopy to read the energy coming out.

"In evaluating a potential bomb, you're looking for a needle in a haystack," explains Houser. "ODD helps bring the needle to the forefront." In a word, ODD offers control . And with greater control comes greater accuracy. The result may well save precious minutes when a minute saved can means scores of lives.

http://www.dhs.gov/files/programs/gc_1266428311640.shtm

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From ICE

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2 tons of marijuana in tanker trailer seized by ICE, 1 arrested

McALLEN, Texas - A local man is in federal custody without bond following the discovery of more than two tons of marijuana in a tanker trailer parked on the grounds of a McAllen area residence. This announcement was made by U.S. Attorney José Angel Moreno, Southern District of Texas, and Special Agent in Charge Jerry Robinette of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Jaime Fernandez Cantu was taken into federal custody on Feb. 18 and charged with possession with intent to distribute 2,198.5 kilograms of marijuana. He has remained in federal custody without bond since his arrest pending a detention hearing scheduled for Feb. 23 before U. S. Magistrate Judge Peter Ormsby.

According to the criminal complaint filed on Feb. 19, ICE agents and McAllen Police Department officers discovered 206 bundles containing more than 4,397 pounds of marijuana inside a tanker trailer parked at a residence on N. Ware Rd. in McAllen.

The criminal offense of possessing with intent to distribute more than 1000 kilograms of marijuana carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years imprisonment up to a life term of imprisonment, and a $4 million fine.

A criminal complaint is merely an accusation of criminal conduct, not evidence. A defendant is presumed innocent unless and until convicted through due process of law

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/1002/100223mcallen.htm

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From the FBI

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What's Behind America's Falling Crime Rate

Health care, climate change, terrorism — is it even possible to solve big problems? The mood in Washington is not very hopeful these days. But take a look at what has happened to one of the biggest, toughest problems facing the country 20 years ago: violent crime. For years, Americans ranked crime at or near the top of their list of urgent issues. Every politician, from alderman to President, was expected to have a crime-fighting agenda, yet many experts despaired of solutions. By 1991, the murder rate in the U.S. reached a near record 9.8 per 100,000 people. Meanwhile, criminologists began to theorize that a looming generation of so-called superpredators would soon make things even worse. (See the top 10 crime stories of 2009.)

Then, a breakthrough. Crime rates started falling. Apart from a few bumps and plateaus, they continued to drop through boom times and recessions, through peace and war, under Democrats and Republicans. Last year's murder rate may be the lowest since the mid-1960s, according to preliminary statistics released by the Department of Justice. The human dimension of this turnaround is extraordinary: had the rate remained unchanged, an additional 170,000 Americans would have been murdered in the years since 1992. That's more U.S. lives than were lost in combat in World War I, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq — combined. In a single year, 2008, lower crime rates meant 40,000 fewer rapes, 380,000 fewer robberies, half a million fewer aggravated assaults and 1.6 million fewer burglaries than we would have seen if rates had remained at peak levels. (See pictures of crime in Middle America.)

There's a catch, though. No one can convincingly explain exactly how the crime problem was solved. Police chiefs around the country credit improved police work. Demographers cite changing demographics of an aging population. Some theorists point to the evolution of the drug trade at both the wholesale and retail levels, while for veterans of the Clinton Administration, the preferred explanation is their initiative to hire more cops. Renegade economist Steven Levitt has speculated that legalized abortion caused the drop in crime. (Fewer unwanted babies in the 1970s and '80s grew up to be thugs in the 1990s and beyond.)

The truth probably lies in a mix of these factors, plus one more: the steep rise in the number of Americans in prison. As local, state and federal governments face an era of diminished resources, they will need a better understanding of how and why crime rates tumbled. A sour economy need not mean a return to lawless streets, but continued success in fighting crime will require more brains, especially in those neighborhoods where violence is still rampant and public safety is a tattered dream.

The Lockup Factor

In his book Why Crime Rates Fell , Tufts University sociologist John Conklin concluded that up to half of the improvement was due to a single factor: more people in prison. The U.S. prison population grew by more than half a million during the 1990s and continued to grow, although more slowly, in the next decade. Go back half a century: as sentencing became more lenient in the 1960s and '70s, the crime rate started to rise. When lawmakers responded to the crime wave by building prisons and mandating tough sentences, the number of prisoners increased and the number of crimes fell.

See the top 25 crimes of the century.

Common sense, you might think. But this is not a popular conclusion among criminologists, according to Conklin. "There is a tendency, perhaps for ideological reasons, not to want to see the connection," he says. Incarceration is to crime what amputation is to gangrene — it can work, but a humane physician would rather find a way to prevent wounds and cure infections before the saw is necessary. Prison is expensive, demoralizing and deadening. "Increased sentencing in some communities has removed entire generations of young men" from some minority communities, says San Francisco police chief George Gascón. "Has that been a factor in lowering crime? I think it probably has. I think it also probably has had a detrimental effect on those communities."

Prisoners leave saddened parents, abandoned mates, fatherless children. Of course, in many cases, those families are better off with their violent relatives behind bars. But a court system that clobbers first-time offenders with mandatory sentences — sometimes for nonviolent crimes — will inevitably lock up thousands of not-so-bad guys alongside the hardened criminals. Not everyone agrees on the definition of a nonviolent criminal, but studies have estimated that as many as one-third of all U.S. prison inmates are in that category, most of them locked up on drug charges. (See the top 10 crime duos.)

R. Dwayne Betts may be one of those not-so-bad guys, sentenced to nine years in an adult prison on a first offense at age 16. It's hard to know if a less severe punishment would have worked. Betts hijacked a stranger's car at gunpoint, which is a dangerous and depraved thing to do. But he also showed signs of promise, having earned his high school diploma a year ahead of schedule. Betts gradually learned to navigate the violence and boredom of prison and emerged in 2006 ready to launch a respectable life, enrolling in college, getting married and writing a book called A Question of Freedom . He looks on those prison years as a costly void, "a waste of society's time and money in the sense that I didn't get any rehabilitation or any educational opportunities." Most inmates, Betts continues, can't do what he has done; they don't have the tools. "I was fortunate in that I knew how to read, I liked books, was pretty intelligent, and I knew I had no intention of being locked up for the rest of my life."

With government budgets hammered red by the Great Recession, the high cost and human toll of the lock-'em-up strategy has made it hard to sustain. California lawmakers decided last month to cut the number of state prisoners by 6,500 in the coming year. Other states are already at work, on a smaller scale. In 2008, the most recent year for which data are available, 20 states reduced their prisoner counts by a total of nearly 10,000 inmates. As a result, according to the Justice Department, the number of state and federal prisoners grew by less than 1% nationwide — the smallest increase in nearly a decade. (The number of blacks behind bars is, in fact, falling as the rate of incarceration among African Americans has dropped nearly 10% from its peak.)

The Data-Processing Factor

In interviews with police chiefs across the country, TIME heard the same story again and again. It is the saga of a revolution in law enforcement, a new way of battling the bad guys, and it begins, at least in some tellings, with a colorful New York City transit cop named Jack Maple. He worked the subways back when the city was averaging four, five, almost six murders a day, and even though the experts informed him that crime was inseparable from such "root causes" as poverty and despair, Maple developed a theory that the key cause was criminals. If police collected and analyzed enough data, they could figure out where the criminals liked to operate and when they tended to be there. Voilà: go there and arrest them, and crime would go down.

Maple sold his boss, William Bratton, on the idea of data-driven policing, and when Bratton was promoted to police commissioner under New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in 1994, his ideas went citywide. They evolved into CompStat, a real-time database of crime statistics and other intelligence useful for pinpointing trouble spots and targeting resources. CompStat put precinct captains and district commanders in the hot seat, and results followed. Crime plummeted. The city of fear became one of the safest major cities in America, and Commissioner Bratton landed on the cover of TIME .

A new survey of retired New York City police supervisors, however, confirms what many skeptics have suspected for years. Pressure from the twice-weekly CompStat reviews inspired a certain amount of fudging (exactly how much is unknown). Police hunted for bargains on eBay so that they could adjust theft reports to reflect lower values of stolen goods, magically transforming major crimes into minor ones. A fight involving a weapon — aggravated assault — might become a mere fistfight by the time the police report was filed. Nevertheless, behind the gamesmanship was a genuine drop in crime. (Murder is down an astonishing 80% from its peak in New York City, and it's very hard to fudge a murder.) Similar declines have been recorded in many other cities.

Versions of CompStat now shape police work in metropolitan areas from coast to coast. In the Maryland suburbs of Washington, for example, Prince George's County chief Roberto Hylton sings the praises of "a technology that we call Active Crime Reporting, which provides information every 15 minutes, so I can see, even from a laptop away from work, the whole crime picture of the county. I can shift resources. It actually provides me with the trends, patterns that have occurred the previous week, previous day, maybe even the previous year." Paired with a program to improve trust and communication between police and crime-plagued communities, the data-driven approach is working, Hylton says.

The New Economy of Crime

Criminologists will tell you, however, that the tale of CompStat is not the whole story. New York City's crime rate actually began to drop a couple of years before Giuliani became mayor. And rates began falling in cities without CompStat at about the same time — though not as rapidly as in New York. For while police were changing tactics, the criminals were shifting gears too.

The high-crime hell of the 1980s and early '90s was a period of chaos in the illegal drug trade. Powder cocaine was generally measured and sold in multiple-dose amounts behind locked doors, but crack was relatively cheap and highly portable. Upstart young dealers saw an opening and shouldered their way into a business long dominated by established kingpins. Trading valuable drugs for ready cash in plain sight was a recipe for robbery and intimidation. Dealers armed themselves for protection, and soon every teenage squabble in crack territory carried a risk that bullets would fly.

From that low point, the drug business has settled down in most cities. Distribution is better organized. Crack use has fallen by perhaps 20%, according to UCLA criminal-justice expert Mark Kleiman, as younger users have turned against a drug that had devastated their neighborhoods. Opiates and marijuana are illegal, just like cocaine, but they don't turn users into paranoid, agitated, would-be supermen. "A heroin corner is a happy corner" where junkies quietly nod off, says David Simon, creator of the TV series The Wire , who used to cover cops for the Baltimore Sun .

Criminologist Conklin believes that two statistics in particular — median age and the unemployment rate — help explain the ebb and flow of crime. Violence is typically a young man's vice; it has been said that the most effective crime-fighting tool is a 30th birthday. The arrival of teenage baby boomers in the 1960s coincided with a rise in crime, and rates have declined as America has grown older. The median age in 1990, near the peak of the crime wave, was 32, according to Conklin. A decade later, it was over 35. Today, it is 36-plus. (It is also true that today's young men are less prone to crime. The juvenile crime rate in 2007, the most recent available, was the lowest in at least a generation.)

"The effect of unemployment," Conklin adds, "is problematic." Indeed it is. Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute dissected this issue in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. "As the economy started shedding jobs in 2008," she wrote, "criminologists and pundits predicted that crime would shoot up, since poverty, as the 'root causes' theory holds, begets criminals. Instead, the opposite happened. Over 7 million lost jobs later, crime has plummeted to its lowest level since the early 1960s." To Mac Donald, this is proof that data-driven police work and tougher sentencing are the answer to crime — not social-welfare programs. Conklin thinks it may be too soon to tell. "The unemployment rate began to spike less than a year ago. We may yet see the pressure show up in crime rates," he says. It's fair to say, though, that the belief in a simple cause-and-effect relationship between income and crime has worn pretty thin. (See more about crime.)

The danger of chronic joblessness is that jobs are a part of the social fabric. Ideally, they connect people to constructive projects and well-ordered institutions. They foster self-discipline and reward responsibility. Some optimists theorize that crime rates might continue to drop in coming years as police pit their strength against a dwindling army of criminals. In his recent book, When Brute Force Fails , UCLA's Kleiman argues that new strategies for targeting repeat offenders — including reforms to make probation an effective sanction rather than a feckless joke — could cut crime and reduce prison populations simultaneously. Safer communities, in turn, might produce more hopeful and well-disciplined kids. It's a sweet image to contemplate in this sour era, but a lack of jobs is a cloud over the picture.

A more realistic view might be the one dramatized in Simon's HBO series, The Wire . In 60 episodes spread across five seasons from 2002 to 2008, the program humanized this tangled question of crime fighting with penetrating sophistication. CompStat-obsessed politicians fostered numbers-fudging in the ranks. Cool-headed drug lords struggled to tame their war-torn industry. Gangs battled for turf under the nodding gaze of needy junkies. Prisons warehoused the violent and nonviolent with little regard for who could be rehabilitated. It made for award-winning drama, but it also was a reminder that in every American city, neighborhoods remain where violence still reigns and it simply isn't safe to walk around. And national crime statistics mean nothing to the millions of people who live there.

In those places, the crime problem isn't solved; the fight is scarcely begun. To the many factors that have combined to cool the nation's violent fever, more must be added — more creativity, more pragmatism, more honest concern for the victims of inner-city crime. It's a daunting prospect. The will to keep working on the most persistent pockets of lawlessness will be severely tested in this era of unbalanced budgets. You might be tempted to say it's hopeless. But that's what people were saying 20 years ago, just before progress broke through.

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