Another girl's death, another law

Legislative reaction to grief has not always proved effective in dealing with sex offenders.

By Cathleen Decker

March 14, 2010

Their names, breezy and alive, conjure the girls they used to be before they collided with horror.

There was Megan Kanka, the 7-year-old from New Jersey. Her rape and murder at the hands of a neighbor who -- unknown to her parents -- was a sex offender inspired Megan's Law. That statute led to electronic lists of offenders' addresses.

There was Jessica Lunsford, the 9-year-old from Florida. Her rape and murder 150 yards from her home led to Jessica's Law, which banned predators from living near where children congregate.

There was Amber Hagerman, the 9-year-old from Texas. Her abduction and murder led to the creation of Amber Alerts, advising the public about missing children.

Into that sorrowful sorority may come Chelsea King, the 17-year-old Poway High School student who went out for a run and was found days later in a shallow grave. A registered sex offender has been charged with raping and killing her.

Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, a Republican from San Diego, announced last week that along with the King family, he was moving to create Chelsea's Law. It will be meant, as the other laws before it, to prevent what befell them from visiting any other family.

"We really have an obligation to focus in and say 'what can we do to make this better?' " Fletcher said. No specifics have yet been determined, but Fletcher said he was looking at extending sentences and parole requirements, among other things.

If history is any guide, Chelsea's Law will be embraced by victims' groups, law enforcement and politicians of all persuasions. When the alternative is violent vengeance, a legislative reaction to such wrenching grief can seem measured and civil.

But the near-universal appeal of such laws has stilled the basic questions that inform debates over less emotionally freighted subjects. For one thing, do their restrictions actually work? Given California's woeful financial state, with the corrections system under intense pressure to save more and more money while it imprisons and monitors more and more felons, do they make sense?

At least some of the time, according to both state studies and analysts, they do not. But the measures drive forward, as if penance for the past.

The most heralded such measure recently was Proposition 83 -- informally known as Jessica's Law -- which passed resoundingly in California in November 2006. Similar laws have been passed in dozens of other states. Besides extending prison sentences for sex offenses, the law bans offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park where children play and says they can be monitored for life with tracking devices. It also expands the definition of offenders who can be kept in custody with mental health holds after their criminal sentences are served.

A January report by the state's Sexual Offender Management Board portrayed the effect of Jessica's Law as difficult to determine at best, and wrong-headed at worst.

The requirement that offenders live away from children has required many to stay away from their own relatives or to become homeless -- both instances of instability that put them "at increased risk of re-offense," the report said.

The report also challenged the premise of the law's residency restrictions.

"The hypothesis that sex offenders who live in close proximity to schools, parks and other places children congregate have an increased likelihood of sexually re-offending remains unsupported by research," the report said. "On the contrary . . . there is almost no correlation between sex offenders living near restricted areas and where they commit their offenses."

California spends an estimated $80 million annually on ankle-bracelet monitoring of high-risk offenders, but the report suggested that there is no indication that the public is safer from felons monitored by global positioning systems than from those unmonitored.

"The law was passed with little information about how it would be implemented or evidence of whether GPS technology would protect Californians from sex offenders," the report said.

Jessica's Law also requires state officials to run a far larger number of sexual offenders through the mental health system to see if they qualify for civil incarceration. Costs for those evaluations rose from $161,000 per month before the proposition to more than $1 million monthly after its passage. The number of felons who remain in custody as a result went from about seven a month before the law to 10.

Franklin Zimring, a UC Berkeley law professor who has studied the measures, said they have largely become "symbolic politics." Few have bothered to question whether the measures actually promote public safety, he said, because of the stigma of defending sex offenders.

"Nobody wants to be photographed in close embrace with sex offenders," he said. "Unless something is very expensive, it's not apt to get much political scrutiny."

Fiscal calculations can seem cruel when measured against a life, but in California's present straits that calculation is hard to avoid. While state officials spend millions on monitoring that has questionable effect, for example, prison-based treatment programs have gone unfunded.

"Currently there is no formal sex offender treatment . . . in the adult prison system," said the report, which "strongly recommended" it.

Fletcher said that in drafting Chelsea's Law, he would draw together experts to craft something meaningful. He acknowledged the difficulty, however, if those experts propose throwing more money at the corrections system, where budgets for many programs have shrunk dramatically in recent years.

"There's a lot of potential savings within the corrections system," he said. He brushed aside the notion of a tax hike to fund strictures imposed by his measure.

"Let's get through the process," he said. "It's a fair question. But I think the state has enough money to do this. I think it is a question of priorities."

There is no time frame yet for proposing the law that will carry Chelsea's name, he added.

"Everyone wants action now," he said. "We owe it to the memory of Chelsea King to make sure that we do this right."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-week14-2010mar14,0,5837387,print.story

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Gang shooting victim must overcome pain to walk again

A 10-year-old girl is shot three times. 'Why do you intentionally shoot kids?' her stepfather asks.

By Kate Linthicum

March 14, 2010

Four days after 10-year-old Erica Miranda was shot while playing basketball outside her home, a physical therapist walked into her hospital room and told her it was time to try to get up.

From her bed, Erica looked up at the blond woman in scrubs. She looked at her mother, who had been by her side nearly every minute since the suspected gang shooting. She looked at her stepfather, who massaged her shoulder and wiped away the tears dribbling down her cheeks.

"It's all right, mami," he said.

But really, it wasn't.

Three bullets tore into Erica's back, knee and hip on March 2 when a young man walked up to a crowded street corner in Compton and pulled out a handgun. Los Angeles County sheriff's investigators say the shooter acted methodically, first aiming and firing at Erica, then at a 17-year-old relative of her stepfather and finally at a 45-year-old family friend. Both males were shot three times and survived.

Erica will not be paralyzed, doctors say. But there is significant nerve damage in her right leg. When the physical therapist asked her to flex her foot, she grimaced with effort and pain. Except for the tiniest twitch of the tendon in her ankle, her foot lay motionless.

A lanky fourth-grader with long black braids, Erica is a spelling bee champion and a standout on her elementary school's basketball team. It may be months until she walks again.

Although Erica has not talked about the shooting, she knows what happened, said her stepfather, Alonzo Lemmie, 36. And she knows that she has a long recovery ahead. "Unfortunately, she gets it," he said. "You can't side-talk her. There aren't too many things she doesn't understand."

Child victims of gang violence are not so uncommon. At a news conference Friday in which Los Angeles County sheriff's detectives pleaded for the public's help in identifying the man who shot Erica, they also asked for help solving another case, a March 7 drive-by shooting that sent an 18-month-old girl to the hospital with gunshot wounds to her hand and face.

Erica and her family live on the east side of Compton, in an area affiliated with the Lueders Park Piru gang. Their home is on the corner of a dead-end street lined with trees and stucco houses with gated yards.

Erica's mother, Shameka Harris, 28, was sitting inside the house braiding a friend's hair about 5 p.m. when she heard the pop of gunfire outside.

"I heard shots so I ran to my baby," Harris said. "I saw my baby on the ground. I thought she was ducking. But she was shot. Then I looked down and saw all the blood on the ground. She said, 'Mom, I can't see. I can't feel my legs.' "

The shooter fled. The two males with whom Erica had been playing basketball also lay wounded on the ground.

The 17-year-old victim may have been involved with gangs, Erica's stepfather said. He speculated that the shooter "was maybe trying to make a statement, trying to say something."

"But our 10-year-old daughter haven't done nothing to nobody," Lemmie said. "Why do you intentionally shoot kids?"

At the hospital, Erica underwent surgery on her large intestine, where one of the bullets had lodged. The operation was successful, although it left her with a colostomy bag taped to her abdomen. Doctors have told her family that they will remove it in the next several weeks.

Erica's parents have left the hospital only a few times. At night, Lemmie sleeps in the back of his truck in the parking garage and Harris stays awake, praying, in a chair next to her daughter's bed. Their life is now marked by new rituals -- trips to the windowless cafeteria for chili fries, walks outside to smoke. The breaks bring little relief.

"This is not a happy environment at all," Lemmie said. "It's sick kids everywhere. You see babies hooked up to machines. You can hear them crying."

In Erica's room, as a child wailed next door, the physical therapist tenderly slipped hospital socks onto Erica's feet. You've been lying on your back for too long, the therapist told Erica. In order to get better later, you need to try to sit up now.

The girl listened as the therapist described how she would help her first up onto her forearms, next over to the side of the bed and into a waiting wheelchair. "Can you explain that again?" Erica asked. The woman did. And then, with the help of her parents and not a single sob, Erica began to move.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-shooting-survivor14-2010mar14,0,410749,print.story

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Strong earthquake rocks central Japan

The 6.6 quake gets large buildings swaying in Tokyo, but only light damage is reported. The government says there is no danger of a tsunami

From the Associated Press

4:48 AM PDT, March 14, 2010

TOKYO — A strong magnitude 6.6 earthquake hit off the eastern coast of Japan on Sunday, rattling buildings across a broad swath of the country, including the crowded capital.

There were no reports of casualties, with only light damage to structures near the epicenter, according to local officials.

The quake hit at 5:08 p.m. and was felt most strongly in central Fukushima prefecture about 130 miles northeast of Tokyo, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.

"It was fairly strong, but didn't knock over anything in the office," said Ken Yoshida, a town official in Naraha, one of the hardest-hit areas. He said an earthen wall in town was partially toppled.

The earthquake was centered about 50 miles off the eastern coast at a depth of about 25 miles, the meteorological agency said.

The government said there was no danger of a tsunami, although slight changes to ocean levels were a possibility in some areas.

The quake was strong enough to gently sway large buildings in Tokyo and was felt across a broad stretch of Japan's main Honshu and northern Hokkaido islands.

Japan's early warning system predicted the earthquake just before it hit, with public broadcaster NHK interrupting a sumo match to warn residents to take cover.

The country is one of the world's most earthquake-prone. In 1995, a magnitude-7.2 quake in the western port city of Kobe killed 6,400 people.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fgw-japan-quake15-2010mar15,0,6681348,print.story

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The dream: Plant a tree for each veteran

Hoping to go national, the nonprofit Veterans for Trees starts with 11 seedlings in a Kern County park.

By Esmeralda Bermudez

March 14, 2010

Reporting from Frazier Park, Calif.

If Richard Sheffield's idea takes root, the trees will be planted everywhere: the parks of California, golf courses in Colorado, school lawns in New Jersey . . .

He envisions an army of firs, maples, dogwoods and pines all across the United States -- one tree for every American veteran who ever served.

How many are we talking?

"I have no idea," said Sheffield, an Air Force veteran who works as a landscaper and nursery owner. "There must be millions, but we're ready."

On Saturday morning, Sheffield's dream began to take shape as members of the nonprofit Veterans for Trees held their first tree-planting ceremony in the Kern County community of Frazier Park. They shoveled soil at Frazier Mountain Park to make places for 11 small trees -- including blue spruces, autumn blaze maples and quaking aspens. Next to a pair of pines, they placed the names of two local Vietnam War veterans: Frankie Sanchez, 71, and Simba Wiley Roberts, 61.

Surrounded by snowcapped mountains and the buzz of passing traffic, members of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 9791 presented the colors, a Girl Scout troop led the Pledge of Allegiance and an Air Force Honor Guard caringly displayed, then folded, the American flag.

"I feel such great gratitude for the appreciation of my service," Roberts said. "That's all any one of us have ever wanted. For somebody to give a damn. And this -- this is much more than that."

The event took place near the Brian Cody Prosser Veterans Memorial, a monument honoring one of the first soldiers killed in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. The 28-year-old who used to work at the local lumberyard was well known in Frazier Park, a mountain community with one library, one post office and fewer than 4,000 people. He was killed Dec. 5, 2001, by "friendly fire."

Sheffield hopes to persuade wholesale nurseries and retail garden stores nationwide to offer veteran trees. Trunks will be wrapped in red, white and blue and carry a tag detailing the memorial program's mission. One dollar from each sale will be donated to the nonprofit to keep growing the program. So far, a handful of wholesale nurseries and nearly 20 retailers have enrolled.

"It's a win-win for veterans and for the environment," Sheffield said.

Sanchez watched quietly as four other veterans dug into the ground to plant the pine in his honor. Nearly four decades have passed since he returned from Vietnam. He settled into a mellow life in Frazier, a peaceful place with spotty cellphone reception and little traffic.

Still, he doesn't forget his military days. Any time he drives past Prosser's memorial and spots a tear in one of the monument's six flags, he replaces it.

"It's the least I could do," Sanchez said.

As the other veterans shoveled his tree into place a few feet from the monument, Sanchez leaned over to pick up a small sprig that had fallen on the ground. Quietly, he put it in his pocket.

"I saw it fall," he said. "And thought it would be nice to have part of it with me always."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-vet-tree14-2010mar14,0,5610974,print.story

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OPINION

Law and disorders

Untreated, some mentally ill people pose a deadly risk. Laura's Law could help, but only two California counties participate.

By Carla Jacobs

March 14, 2010

In the 1960s, California led the nation in psychiatric deinstitutionalization. Today, the failure of that policy can be seen on the streets of every major city in the state.

The evidence is overwhelming that when untreated people with severe mental illness are left on their own, tragedies happen. Yet an estimated 1.5 million individuals with severe mental illness go untreated in the U.S.

Take the case of Terry Jackson, a 21-year-old schizophrenic man who was killed by San Bernardino police officers last year after they found him agitated and behaving bizarrely in a park. Jackson's mother later noted that when her son didn't take his medication, "he would start talking to aliens."

Or the case of Adrian Bonadie, a 34-year-old Montclair man with schizophrenia who stands accused of shooting and killing his parents. According to an Associated Press report, Bonadie's sister told police at the time of his arrest last year that he was extremely paranoid and believed people were trying to poison him. She said he refused to take his medication. Bonadie pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder.

And then there's the case of 90-year-old Harry Gluck and his 77-year-old wife, Jean, who were hacked to death in their Carlsbad home last year. Their 44-year-old son, Dennis, was charged with their murder and pleaded not guilty. According to news reports, Dennis has schizophrenia but didn't take medication. In an affidavit seeking a restraining order filed years before his death, Harry Gluck wrote that his son had consulted psychiatrists but always stopped when doctors wanted to prescribe medication for him.

Both Adrian Bonadie and Dennis Gluck were found by the courts to be incompetent to stand trial. The proceedings against them have been suspended while they receive treatment at Patton State Hospital.

If only Jackson, Bonadie and Gluck had been ordered to receive treatment before these tragedies occurred.

Simply throwing open the doors of mental hospitals and assuming that mental patients will find appropriate treatment in their communities is absurd. Many people with severe mental illness are too sick to recognize that they need help and so won't seek out or accept medical intervention.

In California, there is a ray of hope in cases in which ill people refuse treatment. In 2002, the Legislature passed "Laura's Law," which allows for court- ordered compulsory treatment for some of the most severely mentally ill individuals. But counties have been very slow to embrace the law.

Laura's Law was modeled after "Kendra's Law" in New York, which has had great success in getting treatment for severely mentally ill people. Both statutes were named after young women killed by men with severe, untreated mental illness and provide for court-ordered intervention for people too sick to seek treatment on their own.

Research by the New York Office of Mental Health shows that during the 10 years Kendra programs have been operating, more than 9,000 individuals have been helped. Participants in the program have seen an 83% decline in arrests, an 87% decline in incarcerations, a 74% reduction in homelessness and a 77% reduction in hospitalizations.

Independent researchers from Duke and Columbia universities found that Kendra's Law reduced violence, suicide and victimization of its participants. It also reduced the social and economic costs associated with the relapses, hospitalizations and arrests that plague so many people with severe mental illness.

Could such a program have prevented the tragedies that struck the Gluck, Jackson and Bonadie families? Quite possibly. All three families were worried in advance about the worsening mental states of their ill loved ones. That deterioration might have been prevented with proper treatment, and Laura's Law would have allowed professionals to intervene swiftly and to compel treatment if necessary.

So why hasn't the law been widely implemented? Unfortunately, it is up to the discretion of counties in California whether or not they participate, and Laura's Law sets up barriers to participation. When the law was being written, opponents of court- ordered treatment demanded and got language inserted that requires counties wanting to participate to guarantee that funding for Laura's Law will not result in reduction of existing voluntary services. So far, only two boards of supervisors have had the political guts to make such guarantees -- Nevada and Los Angeles counties. Both have started programs that are promising, but they are still very small.

Mentally ill Californians -- and their families -- deserve more. And they just might get it if counties throughout the state would implement Laura's Law.

Carla Jacobs, a board member of the Treatment Advocacy Center, is a veteran mental health activist.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-jacobs14-2010mar14,0,2330752,print.story

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From the Wall Street Journal

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Obama Outlines Sweeping Education Revamp

Obama's education revamp would set firmer standards for success while lifting nearly all the measures that the Bush law used to try to prod change at failing schools.

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration plans to upend how the government measures and encourages success in the country's public schools as part of a sweeping proposal to rewrite President George W. Bush's signature No Child Left Behind law.

The administration's blueprint, which would cast aside many of the core principles of the 2002 Bush law, kicks off what is sure to be months of heated debate in Congress over how to recalibrate the federal government's role in the nation's 98,000 public elementary and high schools. The administration unveiled the plan Saturday, and immediately sparked disagreement over the direction of federal education policy.

The proposal reflects the administration's belief, shared by many in the teaching profession, that the Bush-era law is too prescriptive and too punitive, and that it allows states to set too low a bar for measuring whether a school is succeeding or not. Critics have also singled out the law's heavy focus on standardized tests and its emphasis on reading and math over other skills.

The Obama version would essentially flip the government's focus by setting firmer, nation-wide goals for success while allowing more latitude for how states reach those goals. The proposal would also judge schools by the growth of individual students instead of overall class performance. The aim is to assure that high school graduates are "college-ready and career-ready."

"We don't think we should micromanage the schools from Washington," Education Secretary Arne Duncan told reporters on Friday. "We want to hold educators accountable but let them be creative."

If put into law, the plan would mark a significant lessening of the government's role in guiding behavior within school districts.

The existing law requires the country's public schools to show annual progress, as measured by standardized test scores. Schools that fall short must offer special tutoring and options for students to transfer, among other steps mandated from Washington.

The administration plans to drop those prescriptions, thus leaving it up to states and local administrators how to improve lagging schools. The administration does plan to be more forceful, though, in pushing for significant changes—including mass firings of teachers—in the country's worst schools, which Mr. Duncan describes as the "bottom 5%."

Key Democrats applauded the overall plan, but it raised immediate concerns within some education groups and the powerful teachers unions.

"This appears to place 100% responsibility on teachers and administrators while giving them 0% authority to act," said Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, the country's second largest teachers union.

Amy Wilkins, vice president at Education Trust, says the administration's new plan could reward only the top 10% of schools and call for action at the bottom, while ignoring all the schools in between. "You can't say we're going to get all kids college ready and ignore 85% of the schools. The rewards don't reach them that far down and the negative consequences don't reach that high. So there's nothing in the middle,'" she said. "If you're a school that is in the bottom 25%, you could just be in the bottom 25% and just sit there."

The administration presented its ideas in outline form Friday to members of Congress, unions, education groups and reporters, on condition that the outline not be released untill Saturday. Mr. Duncan, who made a flurry of calls to governors over the weekend, has kept much of the proposal intentionally sketchy, hoping to engage Republicans by leaving many of the details to Congress.

"This is a broad blueprint, not proposed legislation," Mr. Duncan said, adding that bipartisan leadership in Congress "asked us to come forward with a blueprint this week."

Much of the new blueprint will sound familiar to states now competing for the $4.35 billion in grants under the administration's signature Race to the Top program, which is prodding states to make a raft of legal and administrative changes in exchange for hundreds of millions in federal aid.

The administration now wants to make the Race to the Top's emphasis on carrots over sticks a permanent part of the nation's education law by converting more federal funding into competitive grants. Federal aid would then be awarded more according to academic progress and the pace of local improvements, instead of being allotted simply to match the number of needy students. The administration's 2011 budget seeks to increase competitive funding by $3 billion.

The states are already moving to put in place some of the biggest components of the Obama plan. Most important is the push, led by the nation's governors, to agree to a uniform set of national academic standards, so that students would learn the same math and English basics in the same grade in all states. Only Texas and Alaska have opted out of the drive to agree to common standards by early summer.

That effort comes as states are also moving to adopt data-collection systems that would allow school districts to track a student's performance from kindergarten through high school.

Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee gave tentative support to the Obama plan. "Instead of getting bogged down in a comprehensive reauthorization of a 1,000-page bill, Congress needs to focus on an agreed set of problems with No Child Left Behind and fix what's wrong," he said. "Secretary Duncan's blueprint is a good beginning."

Rep. George Miller (D-CA), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, tried and failed two years ago to launch a revamp of the Bush law. The Obama blueprint, he said, "lays the right markers to help us reset the bar for our students and the nation."

Rep. John Kline, the ranking Republican on the House education committee, said he agrees "we need high standards and rigorous academic goals to keep our students competitive in the 21st century." But he said he feared the administration is "tilting the scale too far in the direction of federal control, taking too many decisions away from local school boards and states."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703780204575119214011184980.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_3#printMode

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From Fox News

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Series of Drug-Related Shootings Kill 24 in Mexico

Saturday , March 13, 2010

Associated Press

ACAPULCO, Mexico — 

A series of shootings killed 24 people Saturday in a Pacific coast state plagued by drug gang violence. Nearly half died in one shootout between soldiers and armed men.

The gunbattle erupted when attackers opened fire on soldiers patrolling the small town of Ajuchitlan del Progreso, said Valentin Diaz, director of the Guerrero state investigative police. Ten gunmen and one soldier were killed, he said.

Diaz said the shootout broke out in the middle of the day in the center of the town as it was full of bystanders. He said state police were investigating and soldiers had reinforced security.

President Felipe Calderon has deployed tens of thousands of troops to Guerrero and other drug-trafficking hotspots across Mexico in an effort to root out cartels. Gang violence has surged since the crackdown began three years ago, claiming more than 17,900 lives.

Thirteen other people were killed in Guerrero in several other incidents before dawn, according to a state police report.

Two decapitated men were found on a scenic road packed with nightclubs in the resort city of Acapulco. Another man was found shot to death on the edge of the city.

Gunmen, meanwhile, killed five police officers on patrol in Tuncingo, a rural area outside Acapulco. In the same area, police found the bullet-ridden bodies of five other men, including two who had been beheaded.

Police mentioned no possible motives, and it was unclear if the killings were related.

Several cartels are fighting over drug dealing turf and trafficking routes in Guerrero. Gang violence occurs almost every day in the state, but Saturday was unusually bloody.

Farther to the south in the state of Chiapas, which borders Guatemala, a grenade explosion inside a car killed one man and wounded another. State prosecutors said the dead man was holding the weapon when it exploded.

Investigators believe the victim belonged to the Zetas drug gang and had been about to throw the grenade at federal police offices in the state capital, Tuxtla Gutierrez.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,589187,00.html

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Mexico Drug War Hits New Bloody Level in Border City

Saturday , March 13, 2010

Associated Press

REYNOSA, Mexico  — 

This border city and others near the eastern end of the U.S. border escaped the worst of Mexico's bloody drug war for years, but now the bodies are piling up, several journalists are reportedly missing or dead and once-busy streets are empty after dark.

The crumbling of an alliance between two Mexican drug gangs has plunged the 200-mile stretch of border into violence, raising fears of a new front in the drug war, a U.S. anti-drug official told The Associated Press.

In Mexican border cities stretching from Matamoros near the Gulf to Nuevo Laredo, gunfire has been heard almost daily, and at least 49 people were killed in drug war-related violence in less than six weeks.

Reynosa's main plaza and Calle Hidalgo, a pedestrian shopping street, still bustle during the day. Shoeshiners were doing brisk business on a recent afternoon. But the streets are deserted by evening, clothing store manager Manuel Diaz said.

"I imagine they (shoppers) are scared, because there are no customers in the street," he said. Diaz himself kept his children home from school last month when rumors of abductions terrorized parents and many schools suspended classes.

Drug gangs have set up vehicle "checkpoints" along highways to the U.S. border, apparently to look for their rivals, according to the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey, two hours south of the Texas border. As a result, the U.S. Consulate offices in the area had restricted travel of their employees to Reynosa, but lifted that ban Monday.

While the Pacific coast city of Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, have long been wracked by open warfare among rival cartels, border cities to the east had enjoyed relative calm under The Company, a drug-trafficking duopoly formed by the Gulf cartel and the Zetas.

The tenuous union was broken when a member of the Zetas was killed in Reynosa in January, perhaps because he was in the Gulf cartel's territory without properly announcing himself, said Will Glaspy, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office across the border in McAllen, Texas.

The Zetas — a gang comprised of former Gulf cartel hit men — demanded that the Gulf cartel hand over the men responsible. Battles followed when the Gulf cartel refused, Glaspy said.

The clash is the latest of several power struggles among drug traffickers that have led to an upsurge of violence throughout the country, said Jorge Chabat, a Mexican expert on drug cartels.

There were four major cartels a decade ago, Chabat said, "and now we have at least seven."

Drug violence has killed almost 18,000 people throughout Mexico since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against drug traffickers in December 2006. Most of the killings have been among rival smugglers, according to the federal government.

Whether the surge in violence from Nuevo Laredo to Matamoros is a taste of the bloodshed to come or a brutal blip has yet to be seen. But it has been an unwelcome glimpse of the violence seen more commonly in other parts of the country since 2006.

Eight journalists were kidnapped in Reynosa between Feb. 18 and March 3, according to the Inter-American Press Association. One was found dead with signs of torture. Two were released alive and five are still missing.

State prosecutors in Tamaulipas and the federal Attorney General's Office in Mexico City could not immediately confirm the report. The press association said those close to the victims had been too afraid to report the abductions.

The Company controlled drug trafficking along hundreds of miles of terrain at the eastern end of the U.S.-Mexico border, according to a federal indictment of Company chiefs unsealed last year in Washington. The group moves tons of marijuana and cocaine through border city regions, each managed by a different boss.

The Zetas, originally Mexican special forces soldiers recruited to be the Gulf cartel's muscle in the 1990s, have evolved into a drug-trafficking force of their own. The Gulf, Sinaloa and La Familia cartels appear to have united against them, Glaspy said.

A banner hung in Reynosa's main plaza last week addressed to Calderon asked for the withdrawal of the military so that the sides could fight it out among themselves. It was signed by the "fusion of Mexican cartels united against the 'Z' (Zetas)."

The Mexican army's 8th Division has had a visible presence in border cities since late 2007, and has recently found signs of drug gangs escalating their battles along this stretch of border.

Late last month, a military patrol responding to the scene of a shootout in the border town of Camargo found 22 vehicles shot up and abandoned, six rifles, 96 magazines for various weapons, 2,300 rounds of ammunition and more than two dozen grenades.

On Feb. 23, military patrols confronted armed groups in several border towns, killing six gunmen and seizing 14 vehicles — two armored — 29 guns, 1,700 rounds of ammunition, 88 magazines for various weapons, 10 grenades and two Kevlar helmets.

Two days later, a military patrol killed four gunmen traveling in a Cadillac Escalade in Matamoros.

Convoys of as many as a dozen shiny new Ford F150 pickup trucks loaded with masked rifle-toting federal police have become common sights.

The violence against the journalists has led local media to censor themselves, leaving residents on their own to separate fact from pervasive rumors. Residents tweet to let each other know of the latest gunbattle and what streets to avoid, and Reynosa officials have set up their own feed on the social networking site Twitter.

Ramiro Sanchez, 72, set aside his newspaper one recent afternoon to say he thought most of what was scaring people was rumor. But, he said, it was hard to judge because it was impossible to know what local media aren't reporting. In any case, the retired construction worker said, people are staying inside their homes at night, and Americans aren't crossing the bridge to shop anymore.

Asked if an all-out drug war was a possibility for Reynosa, Sanchez said, "You can't know where it's going to go, but I think we're still far from that."

Glaspy, the DEA head, said there are "multiple scenarios that could play out," and added, "We're hopeful that cooler heads will prevail."

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,589179,00.html

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American Linked to Terror Plot Brainwashed 6-Year-Old Son, Family Says

Sunday , March 14, 2010

He was being turned into a baby bomber.

The 6-year-old son of a Colorado nursing student who ran off to Europe to join a terrorist murder cell was brainwashed into a hate-filled Islamic fundamentalist zombie, his family said Saturday, The New York Post reported.

"He said that Christians will burn in hellfire," the child's grandmother, Christine Mott, told The Post. "That's what they are teaching this baby."

The boy's mom, Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, 31, converted to Islam over the last year. Her family said she struck up an Internet friendship with another Colorado radical, Najibullah Zazi, an Al Qaeda associate who pleaded guilty last month in a plot to set off bombs in the New York subway system.

Her conversion was so complete, Paulin-Ramirez changed her son's name from Christian to the Islamic name Walid after enrolling him in a fire-breathing Muslim school in Ireland.

The terror mom's stepfather, George Mott, said he talked by phone once with the boy at the school and the boy said: "We are building pipes [pipe bombs], like the Fourth of July!"

Paulin-Ramirez ditched her life in the Rocky Mountain city of Leadville, Colo., last September, and allegedly joined a small group of radical Islamists in Ireland who planned to claim a $100,000 Al Qaeda bounty by killing a Swedish cartoonist who drew the prophet Mohammed as a dog.

She was arrested Tuesday in a series of raids in the cities of Waterford and Cork, along with other members of the group. They included Colleen LaRose, 46, of Pennsylvania, another blond American woman who called herself "JihadJane" and has been in custody since October.

The Colorado woman's parents believe she was recruited by LaRose, who they say introduced her to her Algerian husband.

Paulin-Ramirez was released by Irish authorities yesterday, although charges may still be forthcoming, said a spokesman for the Irish police.

Her son, who was affectionately known to his grandmother as "Baby Huey," occasionally contacted relatives in Colorado — and what he said stunned relatives.

"I talked to Huey on Monday. He said they taught him how to shoot a gun," Christine Mott said. "They taught him how to kick and fight . . . We're Democrats. We won't even buy him a toy gun."

Christine said that she became estranged from her daughter who sank into the radical Islamic lifestyle. But as the boy's brainwashing became apparent, Mott confronted Paulin-Ramirez.

"When Huey said, 'Christians will burn in hell,' I told Jamie, 'I'm sick and tired of this hate for Christians.' Jamie said, 'It's the truth.'

"The boy was not allowed to associate with non-Muslim children, and he gets beat up by the Muslim kids because they know he's not one of them," she added.

George Mott, is himself a Muslim convert who speaks Arabic. He said that once as he talked to the boy on the phone, he could hear a Jihadi recruitment tape playing in the background talking of death to Zionists and America.

Before the boy left, he was like any other 6-year-old, George Mott said. He was into normal things like cartoons, cars and dinosaurs. "I figured him to be a paleontologist," he said.

"He has not been in school since they left there," George said. "He's in an Islamic school. They're teaching him hate."

Christian's father is a Mexican immigrant, Alejandro Carreon, who was deported a few years ago, relatives said. They do not know where he is now.

Paulin-Ramirez wore full Islamic robes and head scarves to her son's soccer games.

"It was like a neon sign that said 'Look at me,' " Christine Mott said.

George Mott said that Christian, who is currently in Irish foster care, told them his mom had married a man named Ali in New York. The Washington Post reported that Paulin-Ramirez may have been motivated to travel to Ireland for the rendezvous out of a love for him rather than by a fervent belief in terrorism.

As she began to become more deeply involved with Islam last summer, Paulin-Ramirez hit it off with failed terror bomber Zazi.

"When I saw him [Zazi] on TV, I said 'That's the fool Jamie's been talking with,' " George said. "She was on the line with Zazi and also with 'JihadJane,' all talking at the same time."

Paulin-Ramirez befriended a Pakistani man over the Internet, and offered to help him come to the United States to take flying lessons.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,589203,00.html

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From the FBI

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Online Child Pornography/Child Sexual Exploitation Investigations

The Innocent Images National Initiative (IINI), a component of FBI's Cyber Crimes Program, is an intelligence driven, proactive, multi-agency investigative operation to combat the proliferation of child pornography/child sexual exploitation (CP/CSE) facilitated by an online computer. The IINI provides centralized coordination and analysis of case information that by its very nature is national and international in scope, requiring unprecedented coordination with state, local, and international governments and among FBI field offices and Legal Attachés.

Today, computer telecommunications have become one of the most prevalent techniques used by pedophiles to share illegal photographic images of minors and to lure children into illicit sexual relationships. The Internet has dramatically increased the access of the preferential sex offenders to the population they seek to victimize and provides them greater access to a community of people who validate their sexual preferences.

The mission of the IINI is to reduce the vulnerability of children to acts of sexual exploitation and abuse which are facilitated through the use of computers; to identify and rescue child victims; to investigate and prosecute sexual predators who use the Internet and other online services to sexually exploit children for personal or financial gain; and to strengthen the capabilities of federal, state, local, and international law enforcement through training programs and investigative assistance.

The History of the Innocent Images National Initiative

While investigating the disappearance of a juvenile in May 1993, FBI special agents and Prince George's County, Maryland, police detectives identified two suspects who had sexually exploited numerous juveniles over a 25-year period. Investigation into these activities determined that adults were routinely utilizing computers to transmit sexually explicit images to minors and in some instances to lure minors into engaging in illicit sexual activity. Further investigation and discussions with experts, both within the FBI and in the private sector, revealed that the utilization of computer telecommunications was rapidly becoming one of the most prevalent techniques by which some sex offenders shared pornographic images of minors and identified and recruited children into sexually illicit relationships. In 1995, based on information developed during this investigation, the Innocent Images National Initiative was started to address the illicit activities conducted by users of commercial and private online services and the Internet.

The IINI is managed by the Innocent Images Unit within the FBI's Cyber Division at FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC. Innocent Images field supervisors and investigative personnel work closely with the Innocent Images Unit regarding all IINI investigative, administrative, policy, and training matters. The IINI provides a coordinated FBI response to this nationwide crime problem by collating and analyzing information obtained from all available sources.

Today the FBI's Innocent Images National Initiative focuses on:

• Online organizations, enterprises, and communities that exploit children for profit or personal gain.
  
  
• Major distributors of child pornography, such as those who appear to have transmitted a large volume of child pornography via an online computer on several occasions to several other people.
  
  
• Producers of child pornography.
  
  
• Individuals who travel, or indicate a willingness to travel, for the purpose of engaging in sexual activity with a minor.
  
  
• Possessors of child pornography.
  

The FBI and the Department of Justice review all files and select the most egregious subjects for prosecution. In addition, the IINI works to identify child victims and obtain appropriate services/assistance for them and to establish a law enforcement presence on the Internet that will act as a deterrent to those who seek to sexually exploit children.

The Growth of the Innocent Images National Initiative

Over the last several years, the FBI, local and state law enforcement, and the public have developed an increased awareness of the CP/CSE crime problem, and more incidents of online CP/CSE are being identified for investigation than ever before. In fact, more personnel resources are currently expended towards violations worked under the IINI than any other program within the FBI's Cyber Division. Between fiscal years 1996 and 2007, there was a 2062 percent increase in the number of IINI cases opened (113 to 2443) throughout the FBI. It is anticipated that the number of cases opened and the resources utilized to address the crime problem will continue to rise.

The increase in Innocent Images investigations demonstrated the need for a mechanism to track subject transactions and to correlate the seemingly unrelated activities of thousands of subjects in a cyberspace environment. As a result, the Innocent Images case management system was developed and has proven to be an effective system to archive and retrieve the information necessary to identify and target priority subjects. All relevant data obtained during an undercover session is loaded into the Innocent Images case management system where it is updated, reviewed, and analyzed on a daily basis to identify priority subjects.

Innocent Images National Initiative Investigations

IINI undercover operations are being conducted in many FBI field offices by task forces that combine the resources of the FBI with other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. Each of the FBI's 56 field offices has worked investigations developed by the IINI. International investigations are coordinated through the FBI's Legal Attaché program, which coordinates investigations with the appropriate foreign law enforcement. IINI investigations are also coordinated with Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Forces, which are funded by the Department of Justice. Furthermore, IINI training is provided to all law enforcement involved in these investigations, including federal, state, local, and foreign law enforcement agencies.

During the early stages of Innocent Images, a substantial amount of time was spent conducting investigations on commercial online service providers that provide numerous easily accessible “chat rooms” in which teenagers and pre-teens can meet and converse with each other. By using chat rooms, children can chat for hours with unknown individuals, often without the knowledge or approval of their parents. Investigation revealed that computer-sex offenders utilized the chat rooms to contact children, since children do not know whether they are chatting with a 14-year-old or a 40-year-old. Chat rooms offer the advantage of immediate communication around the world and provide the pedophile with an anonymous means of identifying and recruiting children into sexually illicit relationships.

Innocent Images has expanded to include investigations involving all areas of the Internet and online services including:

• Internet websites that post child pornography
  
  
• Internet News Groups
  
  
• Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Channels
  
  
• File Servers (“FServes”)
  
  
• Online Groups and Organizations (eGroups)
  
  
• Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file-sharing programs
  
  
• Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) and other online forums
  

FBI agents and task force officers go online undercover into predicated locations utilizing fictitious screen names and engaging in real-time chat or e-mail conversations with subjects to obtain evidence of criminal activity. Investigation of specific online locations can be initiated through:

• A citizen complaint
  
  
• A complaint by an online service provider
  
  
• A referral from a law enforcement agency
  
  
• The name of the online location (such as a chat room), which can suggest illicit activity
  

The Innocent Images International Task Force became operational on October 6, 2004 and includes law enforcement officers from the following countries: United Kingdom, Norway, Finland, Ukraine, Belarus, Australia, Thailand, the Philippines, Croatia, Latvia, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Canada, Sweden, Fiji, Cyprus, Iceland, Denmark, Panama, and Europol. To date, more than 47 international officers have traveled to the United States and have worked side-by-side with special agents of the FBI at the Innocent Images Unit. The task force allows for the real-time transfer of information from and to the FBI and between task-force members and their countries. Task Force officers stay in the United States for several months and remain an integral part of the task force once they return to their home countries. The FBI's Innocent Images International Task Force successfully brings together law enforcement from around the world to address the global crime problem of online child exploitation.

The most common crimes investigated under the IINI are in violation of Title 18 United States Code (USC):

The FBI has taken the necessary steps to ensure that the Innocent Images National Initiative remains viable and productive through the use of new technology and sophisticated investigative techniques, coordination of the national investigative strategy, and a national liaison initiative with a significant number of commercial and independent online service providers. The Innocent Images National Initiative has been highly successful. It has proven to be a logical, efficient, and effective method to identify and investigate individuals who are using the Internet for the sole purpose of sexually exploiting children.

http://www.fbi.gov/publications/innocent.htm

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