Brutal abuse at Calabasas retirement home described in testimony

A former worker is on trial on charges of abuse and torture at the upscale facility. Witnesses say Cesar Ulloa jumped on residents, body-slammed one and encouraged two to fight.

By Robert Faturechi

8:53 PM PDT, March 30, 2010

As she made her rounds at an upscale Calabasas retirement home one morning, Adelina Campos said she walked into a room and caught a fellow caregiver in the act of abusing an elderly man suffering from dementia.

The worker was in midair, hurtling from atop a dresser toward the bed, landing both knees onto the man's belly.

"I was just in shock," Campos said.

The horrible tale and other accounts of abuse are unfolding this week in the trial of Cesar Ulloa, a low-level employee accused of severely mistreating residents, some of whom would have been too dementia-ridden to alert anyone to the alleged abuse.

Ulloa, 21, is charged with seven counts of elder abuse and one count of torture. If convicted, he faces a possible life sentence. In addition to abusing the elderly man, prosecutors say, Ulloa jumped on a woman's chest and body-slammed her into a bed when she struggled. The 78-year-old woman was mute because of a brain condition. He also allegedly took the arm of one wheelchair-bound resident and used it to hit another resident who had dementia, encouraging them to fight.

"He attacked the most vulnerable people you can possibly find," Deputy Dist. Atty. Robin Allen told a Van Nuys jury. "He hit them and he laughed. This was sport."

For adults considering assisted care homes for their parents, the alleged abuses are particularly distressing because of where they're said to have occurred: Silverado Senior Living. The Calabasas facilities are about as close to a four-star hotel as retirement homes get, with relatives shelling out upward of $70,000 a year to house their loved ones.

The state attorney general's office has called elder abuse in nursing homes a serious problem. In a 12-month period between 2007 and 2008, there were 85 elder abuse convictions in California, according to the state Department of Justice. Many cases go undetected or unreported, authorities said.

The prosecutor in Ulloa's trial painted Silverado as a retirement home ripe for undetected abuse. Low-level caregivers, few of whom had more than a high school education, she said, received just days of training before taking the floor. Cameras that could have deterred brutality were installed in the halls but not in residents' rooms, where caregivers bathed and changed residents. The caregivers, who make about $10 an hour, are also responsible for escorting residents throughout the facility.

Ulloa's attorney, Daniel Teola, denied that his client ever abused residents, attributing the allegations to false rumors circulated by veteran staffers envious of Ulloa's rapid success. Just three months after being hired, Ulloa was named employee of the month.

Any injuries, Teola said, would have been incidental. Because the retirement home pledges not to restrain or sedate residents -- a necessary reality at other facilities -- patients who become combative, he said, are more prone to injury.

The attorney compared the set-up to a free-range chicken farm.

"You're going to have bruises," he said. "You're going to have fractures."

Ulloa, short and boyish, watched the proceedings calmly, breaking his stare only to scrawl notes to his attorney with a miniature pencil. His thin frame hardly filled his gray dress shirt. The Reseda resident was fired before charges were brought against him, for reasons officials at Silverado said were unrelated to the allegations of abuse. The retirement home has denied any wrongdoing.

"At Silverado we always have the greatest concern for the safety of our residents and strive in every respect to provide a safe environment at our community. Our staff are dedicated to serving our residents in a way that respects and honors them," said Loren Shook, president and chief executive of Silverado.

Ulloa, just 19 at the time of the alleged abuse, came under suspicion after a resident at the home, Elmore Kittower, died in 2007, presumably of natural causes. The day after saying goodbye to her husband of almost 50 years at his funeral, Kittower's widow got a call from a stranger. The voice on the other end was that of Campos' mother, and she told the grieving woman that her husband had been beaten to death.

"I can't talk anymore. I'm nauseated," Rita Kittower recalled saying, during testimony Monday, blinking furiously and sobbing in spurts.

Days later, with her permission, Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies exhumed the former engineer's body. Trauma was found, with signs of multiple broken bones at various stages of healing. An autopsy showed blunt force trauma as a contributing factor in his death.

Detectives launched a yearlong investigation into Ulloa and discovered other alleged victims. He was arrested Oct. 2, 2008, and has remained in custody. At trial this week, prosecution witnesses have detailed some of the suspected abuse.

Luz Alvarez, one former caregiver, testified that she saw Ulloa taunting residents, telling a male patient he "was sexing his daughter."

Another time, as she dressed one resident for breakfast, she said she witnessed Ulloa in a struggle with a combative resident. Ulloa, she said, clenched his right fist and punched the wheelchair-bound man in the stomach.

"Haven't you had enough?" Alvarez recalled Ulloa saying as he laughed at the gasping man.

When she returned to the room after dropping off her patient at breakfast, she found the punched man hunched over, his head cocked to one side, with white foamy saliva bubbling out of his mouth.

Initially, she said, she remained silent about the incident out of loyalty to her co-worker and fear of compromising her job security, but she said the image of the man foaming at the mouth haunted her. Eventually she talked to authorities.

At least one juror was moved to tears after hearing Rita Kittower testify about the death of her husband.

When asked if she was married to Elmore Kittower, the tiny 86-year-old, still wearing her wedding ring, responded in the present tense, "I am," before reminding the jury that Tuesday would have been their anniversary.

She recounted the decision to move her husband, who had suffered a debilitating stroke, to Silverado despite the home's hefty price tag.

"I think we need to do this for Dad," she recalled telling her daughter. "He's been so good to us; we need to be good to him."

The two had met in 1957, as she washed her red Ford convertible outside her West Hollywood apartment. She hosed the stranger by mistake, and the two got to talking.

Toward the end of his life, she said he could hardly speak, transformed from a kind, thoughtful man who volunteered at the local high school to a bitter and combative one. He would often spit out his meds, barking, "Chemicals."

But during some visits, his old self would resurface. He would take her hand into his, lift it to his lips and kiss it.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-elder-abuse31-2010mar31,0,1918010,print.story

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Immigration activists denounce quota memo

They call for the ouster of the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement after a top department official lamented that the pace of deportations was falling behind a goal of 400,000 annually.

By Clement tan and Teresa watanabe

March 31, 2010

Reporting from Los Angeles and Washington

A coalition of immigrant rights groups Tuesday demanded the ouster of the nation's top immigration official, charging that underlings at Immigration and Customs Enforcement were thwarting Obama administration policy by setting a quota on deportations.

"The reality is that ICE has gone rogue and needs to be reined in with dramatic action," said Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Community Change. "The agency charged with enforcing the nation's immigration laws is systematically deceiving the president and the American public."

The accusations followed a weekend report in the Washington Post about a Feb. 22 memo from a top ICE official lamenting that the pace of deportations was falling behind a goal of 400,000 annually. The memo also outlined policy changes to turn around the trend.

Bhargava's group, along with several regional activist groups, called on President Obama to replace John T. Morton, the assistant secretary in charge of ICE at the Department of Homeland Security.

The activists said the agency memo was "a clear violation" of previous statements by Morton that his agency did not set deportation quotas and diverts from the administration's stated position that it would focus deportation efforts on undocumented immigrants who commit violent crimes.

After the Post report, which was produced in collaboration with the Berkeley-based Center for Investigative Reporting, Morton released a statement saying the memo had been "withdrawn and corrected."

The statement also said the memo was issued by another official without Morton's authorization.

"We are strongly committed to carrying out our priorities to remove serious criminal offenders first and we definitively do not set quotas," Morton said.

In Los Angeles, immigrant advocates also denounced the memo as a betrayal of promises made by the Obama administration that enforcement actions would focus on criminals and exploitative employers. Instead, they said, the majority of those being picked up are immigrants with families, jobs and no criminal backgrounds.

The administration "is choosing to deport hard-working people and destroying their families," said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

Referring to Obama, she said, "It's unacceptable, especially from someone whose father was an immigrant."

Salas said she recently received a call from a tearful woman whose husband was stopped by Long Beach police for driving a car with a broken tail light. He ended up in deportation proceedings because he had no legal status. She said such desperate calls came into her coalition's office daily.

The memo, from the head of the deportation section of ICE, noted that deportations of undocumented immigrants overall were lagging behind expectations, even though deportations of criminals were on the rise.

The memo said noncriminal removals averaged 437 a day, which would result in an annual total of 159,740 -- less than half of the 400,000 quota.

The controversy over the memo follows recent efforts by immigration activists to press the administration to make immigration a priority. The issue was put on the back burner by the White House so it could focus on the healthcare overhaul.

With the healthcare vote over, liberal groups hope to shift focus in Congress to issues such as immigration reform before the midterm elections, which have the potential to reduce sizable Democratic majorities in Congress.

Advocates of tighter immigration restrictions defended Morton, saying there was no indication in the memo that he or his agency had done anything improper.

"Obama didn't promise not to enforce the law," said Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based group that wants immigration controls tightened. "He promised to change the law."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-immigration31-2010mar31,0,6889581,print.story

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Obama to unveil offshore drilling plans for oil, natural gas

The proposal through 2017 will open new areas of the mid-Atlantic region, Alaska and the eastern Gulf of Mexico for production but prohibit moves off California, Oregon and Washington.

By Jim Tankersley

March 31, 2010

Reporting from Washington

President Obama will announce new plans to drill for oil and natural gas off America's coasts Wednesday but will rule out drilling off California, Oregon and Washington state through 2017, administration officials say.

Obama's plans will include opening new areas of coastal Virginia and other parts of the mid-Atlantic region, Alaska and the eastern Gulf of Mexico for drilling. But officials say the president will block drilling in Alaska's Bristol Bay, where the George W. Bush administration's drilling plans in 2007 angered environmentalists.

According to administration officials, the plan would:

* Eventually open two-thirds of the eastern Gulf's oil and gas resources for drilling.

* Proceed with drilling off Virginia, provided the project clears environmental and military reviews.

* Study the viability of drilling off the mid- and southern Atlantic coasts.

* Study the viability of drilling in Alaska's Beaufort and Chukchi seas -- areas hotly defended by environmentalists -- but issue no new drilling leases in either sea before 2013.

The eastern Gulf of Mexico leases hinge on Congress lifting a moratorium on drilling there. Even if that happens, administration officials said, Obama's plan included no drilling within 125 miles of the Florida coastline.

The announcement, scheduled for an energy security event at Joint Base Andrews Naval Air Facility, will be Obama's first major policy step into the politically charged area of offshore drilling.

The president's drilling plans run through 2017. The likely scope and details of the proposals represent compromises that risk angering energy companies and environmentalists alike.

The proposals will be open for public comment for several months, then will be finalized by the administration.

Obama's announcement will come in the run-up to the summer driving season, as gasoline prices have begun a national march toward $3 a gallon, and beyond that in California.

The administration is pushing expanded offshore exploration as a bargaining chip in its attempts to enact sweeping legislation to curb oil imports and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Energy companies and conservatives have clamored for increased drilling since gasoline prices rose during the 2008 presidential campaign. Environmentalists contend that more drilling could lead to oil spills and the destruction of fragile ecosystems.

While campaigning for the White House, Obama called for increased, targeted drilling.

In his State of the Union address in January, the president said energy security and job creation require "making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development."

But his administration has come under heavy criticism from Republicans, who accuse it of dragging its feet on offshore exploration. Some in the GOP accuse Obama of a de-facto moratorium on new drilling.

Shortly after Obama took office, his Interior Department retracted a Bush administration proposal for drilling from 2012 to 2017. Later, a court invalidated portions of the nation's existing drilling plan.

Wednesday's announcement will set out a new 2012-17 proposal as well as more immediate plans for lease sales.

Administration officials said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, as part of Obama's new drilling plan, will scrap a planned lease sale for Bristol Bay. Obama will announce that he is reverting to the policies of Presidents George H.W. Bush and Clinton, who both blocked drilling of any kind in the bay.

Bristol Bay is a highly productive fishery and part of a Bering Sea region that supplies 40% of the nation's seafood. Congress blocked drilling there after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. President George W. Bush removed the last impediments to drilling in the bay in 2007 and had scheduled a drilling lease sale there in 2011.

The Interior Department considered opening drilling in areas off California but decided against it, officials said.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger opposes more offshore drilling, his spokesman said, but supports a proposal to allow expanded drilling off existing platforms for a set period of time. After the allotted time, the platforms would be removed.

Other governors, including Republican Bob McDonnell of Virginia, have pushed Obama to allow more drilling off their coasts.

Pending legislation could give state officials a stronger hand in those decisions. The crafters of a Senate energy and climate bill are mulling over a provision that would allow states to choose whether to open close-in offshore areas for drilling.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-drilling31-2010mar31,0,2718137,print.story

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Double suicide bombings kill 12 in Russia's Dagestan

Several of the dead are police officers. Putin denounces 'a crime against Russia.'

By Megan K. Stack

Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

4:35 AM PDT, March 31, 2010

Reporting from Moscow

Double suicide bombings struck the strife-ridden Russian republic of Dagestan on Wednesday morning, killing 12 people and injuring dozens.

The attacks came as violent punctuation to this week's bombings aboard Moscow's subway, which killed 39 and stirred fresh fears that volatility in Russia's mostly Muslim Caucasus region is seeping deep into the rest of the country.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin again lashed out at militants, saying this week's bombings could be linked and calling for reinforcement of police ranks in the north Caucasus.

"I don't rule out that the same terrorists were involved," Putin told a government presidium in Moscow. "It does not matter for us in what part of the country these crimes have been committed, or who -- people of what ethnicity or religion -- have fallen victims to these crimes. "We see this as a crime against Russia."

Wednesday morning's first bombing struck on Lenin Road in Kizlyar, the capital of Dagestan. The driver of a Russian-made off-road vehicle ignored the commands of a police patrol to pull over, the interior minister said. As the police veered closer to the car, the suicide bomber blew up the vehicle.

Less than half an hour later, when medical teams and law enforcement had rushed to the scene, a man in a police uniform walked into a group of police standing near an ambulance and blew himself up.

At least seven of the dead were police officers, including the district police chief.

The bombers chose a stretch of road close to the Interior Ministry, Federal Security Services and the FSB, the modern-day successor to the KGB. A school is also nearby.

"It is necessary to find out where the deadly cargo was heading," Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev told reporters. "It is also important to increase vigilance at police departments and executive and legislative government bodies."

The first explosion contained the equivalent of 220 pounds of TNT, investigators said. The massive bomb blasted a crater into the road.

Violence has been grinding along for years in the Caucasus, sometimes drifting from one republic to the next. In the days since the Moscow bombing, gun skirmishes have erupted in Chechnya and insurgents operating from the forest attacked a group of police in Dagestan.

But this week's attacks in Moscow have focused national attention on the country's volatile southern edge once again. The women who blew themselves up on the subway are believed to have traveled to the capital from the Caucasus.

"The explosions on the Moscow metro and today's explosions in Kizlyar are links of the same chain," Dagestani President Magomedsalam Magomedov told reporters. "These people do not need peace. They want war."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-dagestan1-2010apr1,0,2251545,print.story

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Russians have a sense of dread after subway bombings

It's not only the fear that violence is returning to Moscow, but also the feeling that Putin's decade-old approach of dealing harshly with rebels in the Caucasus isn't working.

By Megan K. Stack

March 31, 2010

Reporting from Moscow

Russia's strategy regarding its mostly Muslim southern republics has varied little over the last decade of turbulence: Answer force with force. Attacks on trains, apartment blocks and schools are met with crushing military campaigns, disappearances and death.

But on Tuesday, the day after 39 people were killed in Moscow by female suicide bombers during the morning commute, the government's handling of the Caucasus region came under criticism, even from within.

The idea of Russia suffering the wrath of people radicalized by violence in the republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan is nothing new. But this week's attack seemed to pull it back from the margins of discourse. The subway carnage has engendered not so much shock as despair at the return of a nightmare.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, widely regarded as the most powerful man in Russia, may well choose to continue the hard-hitting policy he engineered.

But elsewhere, there is an undertone of failure.

President Dmitry Medvedev invited Ella Pamfilova, head of the presidential commission on human rights, to meet with him Tuesday at the Kremlin. Afterward, he called for redoubled efforts to improve the quality of life in the republics.

"We destroy terrorists and will continue to destroy them," Medvedev said. "But it is much more difficult to create correct, modern conditions for education, for conducting business, for overcoming the clan system."

Meanwhile, the deputy chair of the security committee of the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, acknowledged in an interview that law enforcement officials had helped to radicalize people in the Caucasus by abusing their rights.

"It's not tough actions against terrorism that fuel tensions, but the violations of human rights that happen because of the incorrect actions of law enforcement organs and power structures," Gennady Gudkov said. "The population today often suffers from lawlessness coming from the law enforcement organs."

Since taking office two years ago as Putin's handpicked successor, Medvedev has often expressed himself in softer, more liberal terms. But few policies have changed. Putin's approach still appears to hold sway.

Putin, a former KGB agent, has been bellicose in response to the bombing.

"We know that they are lying low," he said of the militants. "But it is a matter of honor for the security services to drag them out of the bottom of the sewers into the light of God."

Putin has good reason to defend the use of crushing force. After a humiliating Russian military defeat in the 1990s, he launched the second Chechen war to regain control of the rebel region, cementing his political career amid popular enthusiasm for vengeance.

It was also Putin who installed the Kadyrov clan, former mountain-dwelling rebels who had fought Russian troops, to run Chechnya. The Kadyrovs were given tacit permission to ignore human rights in the name of security, as well as seemingly bottomless funds to rebuild the bombed-out capital, Grozny.

Like Putin, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov appeared to interpret Monday's subway attack as a catalyst for more violence. He called for terrorists to be "callously destroyed."

Critics in Russia have long said that the installation of the Kadyrov family, the so-called Chechenization of the counterinsurgency, was a quick solution that would eventually prove disastrous.

When Kadyrov's father was first made Chechen president by the Kremlin, the public was weary of war and Russian troops were being criticized for rights abuses.

The younger Kadyrov took over after his father was assassinated. He has used torture, secret prisons, extrajudicial killings and the burning of homes belonging to relatives of suspected fighters, rights workers say.

At the same time, he stirred religious sentiment, calling on women to cover their heads and encouraging the return of polygamy.

The result has been a radicalized population and a fervor that is now focused less on breaking free of Moscow's grip and more on waging jihad, analysts say.

Meanwhile, militants squeezed out of Chechnya have gone to Ingushetia and Dagestan, where Islamist philosophies have mingled with clan rivalries and organized crime.

"I think it's important for federal officials to try to win back public opinion, because a lot of people support" the militants, said Gregory Shvedov, editor of the Caucasian Knot website. "Not in a financial or a material way, but they support them in an ideological way. I think there are thousands of people in the North Caucasus who are not participating in jihad but who support it."

Shvedov described Russia's current approach to the Caucasus as a sort of neo-feudalism, with almost total authority given to proxy leaders.

"People in the North Caucasus feel like they don't belong to the nation but to a local leader, and those local leaders will make decisions about their lives," he said. "You want people to be citizens, to pay taxes, to belong to a federal army. Really, Moscow wants this. But it's not happening."

Less than a year ago, Moscow declared an end to its counter-terrorism operation in Chechnya. At the time, Kadyrov said he presided over a "peaceful and budding territory."

But one bloody event after another ensued: A suicide bombing nearly killed the president of Ingushetia in June. In July, human rights worker Natalia Estemirova was abducted in Chechnya and killed. Aid workers who helped children wounded by war were killed weeks later.

And then there were the huge numbers: Kidnappings, violent deaths and suicide attacks, the ghosts of a war that was supposed to have been won, all on the rise.

It took the bombings in the Moscow subway, whose tunnels run like veins binding the neighborhoods of the capital, to turn a creeping sense of despair into a firmer notion that the status quo isn't working.

Lawmakers considered imposing the death penalty for terrorist attacks. Medvedev asked judicial officials to review legal responses to terrorism.

A poll released Tuesday night by Moscow's Levada Center found that 70% of Russians considered the situation in the North Caucasus "critical" and "explosive."

Nearly half of the respondents thought the region was mostly or completely beyond the control of the federal government.

Despite the calls for a new kind of response, some are convinced that Putin, Kadyrov and the security services will turn to their usual methods.

"The state has the right to use force to protect the lives and interests of its citizens, but if under this pretext they give their blessing to systematic violation of the laws, it's counterproductive," said Alexander Cherkasov, an expert on the Caucasus with the rights group Memorial.

"They are calling for the continuation of what's been going on for 10 years: actions based on force and power."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-russia-caucasus31-2010mar31,0,102475,print.story

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'Black widows' again stir fear in Moscow

The women are indistinguishable on the street or in the subway -- until they detonate their loads in the name of revenge, usually linked to violence in Chechnya or elsewhere in the Caucasus.

By Megan K. Stack and Sergei L. Loiko

March 31, 2010

Reporting from Moscow

The "black widows" are back. These are their faces, charred and streaked with blood, shown in gruesome photographs circulated to the public Tuesday by investigators.

Their heads were severed, blown off their bodies by the force of the suicide bombs they detonated in crowded subway cars. Their eyes are closed as if in prayer.

The return of female suicide bombers from the Caucasus thrusts Moscow back into the grip of terror that this city had tried to leave behind six years ago. For a time, there was a pervasive fear of Muslim women who might be stalking the streets, indistinguishable until they detonated their explosives.

The black widows blew themselves up in subway stations, in the streets, aboard airplanes. They strapped suicide belts around their waists and helped their male colleagues hold terrified theatergoers hostage. And then they vanished from Moscow.

Police are hoping that somebody will recognize the faces of the two women who struck Monday and come forward. They are also looking for two women and a man who are suspected of helping to plan the subway bombings, which killed at least 39 people and injured dozens.

Investigators believe the suicide bombers were dropped off at a bustling Moscow market early Monday after traveling on a private bus line from the North Caucasus, a law enforcement source told Interfax news agency.

The bus driver identified the women from the pictures. He said they were accompanied by a man.

Buses are a popular way for criminals to enter the capital, he said, because the flow of passengers goes largely unmonitored. Two of the bombers who attacked in Moscow in 2004 arrived in the city on the same bus line.

It isn't that such women are the only militants to attack Russia, but their existence has a certain grip on the Russian imagination.

There are reports of women being drugged or hypnotized into compliance. But social pressures, religion and violence often drive them into the ranks of militants.

Chechen culture tends to link women's identities to their fathers, husbands and sons. And so it is no surprise that, in a place where so many men have met violent ends, there is an ample supply of women who feel that they have lost their motivation to live, and it's all the better if they can give their lives to the cause.

"Their husbands and sons were killed; their sisters and daughters raped," said Tatyana Kasatkina, executive director of Memorial, a human rights group. "It is the federal government which creates these desperate women for the underground to use as live bombs against the federal government. But those who take the hit, those who suffer in the end, are peaceful, innocent people."

There was a hope, when the second Chechen war petered out and calm returned to the streets of Moscow after 2004, that black widows would be relegated to the past.

But the violence now gripping Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan has begun to produce a new group, Kasatkina said.

"Men and boys disappear all over Chechnya and Ingushetia and Dagestan now. Women live in constant fear that their families would be destroyed. And they do get destroyed," she said.

"It is this constant, endless stress that fills the air in Chechnya that makes women lose all hope and all purpose in life except to indulge in some final expression of desperation."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-russia-bombing31-2010mar31,0,3978292,print.story

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L.A. County drops foster care agency

United Care had placed 2-year-old Viola Vanclief with Kiana Barker, who is now under investigation in the girl's death.

By Garrett Therolf

March 31, 2010

Los Angeles County supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to terminate their relationship with the troubled foster care agency that placed a 2-year-old girl with a woman who is now under investigation in connection with the child's death.

United Care, which oversaw 88 homes with 216 foster children under contract with the county, had been repeatedly cited in recent years after caregivers choked, hit or whipped their charges with a belt. In 2007, a foster child drowned while swimming unsupervised in a pool.

Craig Woods, United's executive director, said the citation record obscured his agency's strengths and urged the county to conduct a fuller investigation before severing ties.

"Terminating United Care's contract will not accomplish what is needed to reform the system," he said. "United Care has a stellar 21-year track record of partnership with the county."

Department of Children and Family Services Director Trish Ploehn said the termination was part of a larger review -- prompted by 2-year-old Viola Vanclief's death -- of the county's 57 foster agencies, which contract to care for 6,000 children.

Each of the children will be visited in the coming weeks by county social workers to verify their safety, Ploehn said. Auditors will randomly review the agencies' licensing records.

Viola's foster mother, Kiana Barker, 30, and Barker's boyfriend, James Julian, 38, were arrested earlier this month on suspicion of murder, Los Angeles police records show. They were released two days later, with no charges filed. Police continue to investigate them.

Barker, a resident of South Los Angeles, told investigators that Viola was trapped in a bed frame when she accidentally struck the child with a hammer while trying to free her, according to coroner's records.

Viola had multiple bruises on her body, records show. The county coroner deemed the death a homicide.

The case points to possible failings by three agencies: United Care, which was responsible for certifying the foster mother and checking regularly on the home; the state Department of Social Services, which licensed the agency; and the county, which placed Viola with the foster parent and also was supposed to check on her periodically.

During supervisors' questioning of Woods and their deliberations about whether to terminate United, new details emerged about missed warning signs.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said his vote to terminate United was at least partially supported by Woods' admission that the agency's social workers made errors during visits to the Barker home. According to Yaroslavsky, they did not report that many of the home's rooms were padlocked shut and that there were video cameras in most of the rooms. The purpose of the cameras was not explained.

Additionally, Yaroslavsky said he was troubled that Barker was certified as a foster parent by United Care despite a criminal record. According to a Times review of L.A. County Superior Court records, Barker was convicted of felony theft in 2002.

The newspaper disclosed earlier that she had also been the subject of five child abuse complaints, including one substantiated case involving her biological child.

Julian had a record of armed robbery, but neither United Care nor state regulators were aware he was living in the home, state records show.

Woods said his agency had known of Barker's criminal record but did not believe it was a problem because she had obtained a decision from state regulators that she did not pose a danger.

Out of 35,900 foster parents and other adults in homes overseen by foster agencies in Los Angeles County, 1,680 have obtained state exemptions for crimes that might otherwise bar them as foster parents or from being in the home, said Lizelda Lopez, spokeswoman for the state Department of Social Services.

Woods faulted the county for missing the risk factors for possible abuse in Barker's home, noting that the county was in the final stages of approving Barker to adopt Viola.

"Miss Barker was less than 30 days away from adopting this child. That adoption was being managed by DCFS," Woods said. "That adoption home study is supposed to be a lot more extensive and intrusive than a foster home certification."

Yaroslavsky responded: "Whatever mistakes our Department of Children and Family Services may have made -- and they did -- don't absolve you from fulfilling your responsibilities.

"None of us are at liberty to discuss what's being done internally in that particular case," he added, alluding to the county's possible lapses. "But suffice it to say it is as swift and appropriate as what's being recommended in your case."

The case is likely to remain under wraps for some time. Ploehn's department declined to release records related to Viola's case this week, citing a provision of a 2007 state disclosure law that permits prosecutors to keep parts of the records confidential when they believe their release might jeopardize a criminal inquiry. It is the 16th recent fatality case in which the agency has invoked the provision.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-child-death31-2010mar31,0,162323,print.story

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For Rodney Alcala victims' families, a life sentence

As the killer of Robin Samsoe, 12, and four women gets the death penalty a third time, relatives of those whose lives he took recount their losses, describe their ongoing pain.

By Paloma Esquivel

March 31, 2010

Before Rodney James Alcala was led away by sheriff's deputies Tuesday, having been sentenced to death for the third time, the friends and families of his victims addressed the defendant and the court.

Much has been written about the brief life and brutal death of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe over the three decades during which Alcala, now 66, was tried and retried for kidnapping and murdering the young ballet dancer.

Less is known about the other victims, whose names during Alcala's latest trial were often listed briefly, in order of the date of their deaths: Jill Barcomb, Georgia Wixted, Charlotte Lamb and Jill Parenteau. Before the third trial began in January, Alcala had been linked through DNA, blood and fingerprint evidence to their deaths.

On Tuesday, in a Santa Ana courtroom before Orange County Superior Court Judge Francisco Briseno, the story of each victim's life and death came into sharp relief as, one by one, their loved ones took to a lectern and spoke, at times directing their words at the former photographer and onetime "Dating Game" contestant who had been convicted of their murders.

In the summer of 1979, Jill Parenteau was 21 and ecstatic about moving out on her own. She had long brown hair and a big smile, and was smart and funny, but she could also be shy and reserved with those who didn't know her well, said her childhood friend Katherine Franco. Parenteau and her friends "did classic girlfriend things," Franco said -- they shared recipes and shopped and imagined where life would take them.

One night that summer, Parenteau and Franco visited the Handlebar Saloon, a Pasadena watering hole frequented by Alcala. They briefly met the curly-haired man, but he made little impression and the two friends didn't give him much thought, Franco said.

On June 13, 1979, Parenteau's naked body was found inside her apartment. Alcala had raped and strangled her.

"I'll never forget what it was like to see my mother, who always held her emotions in control, sob uncontrollably over losing her youngest daughter," Jill's sister, Deidreann Parenteau, told the court.

Rodney Alcala, she said, "is truly a devil who does not belong on this earth."

Georgia Wixted was the middle of three children raised by a widowed mother. While their mother worked to provide for the family, Georgia and her brother, Michael, cared for their younger sister, Anne. As a teenager, Georgia was hospitalized twice for surgery to remove tumors. The attention and care she received during those stays made her determined to become a nurse.

On Dec. 16, 1977, her naked body was found inside her Malibu apartment. Alcala had raped, strangled and beaten her with a hammer. She was 27.

"No one should have to die the way my sister did," Anne Michelena said. "No one should have to suffer that way."

Charlotte Lamb was the fourth in a family of eight children born to tenant farmers in Ohio. She had long blond hair, and everyone called her "Shug," her sister Celia Adkins said during the trial. She painted and sang and sometimes made her own skirts and dresses. After high school she headed to Los Angeles with a boyfriend.

On Charlotte's 32nd birthday, Celia called her sister. She called again and again throughout the day and got no answer.

She did not know that two days earlier -- on June 24, 1978 -- Charlotte's naked body had been found in the laundry room of an apartment complex in El Segundo. She had been raped and strangled. Her family did not learn of her death until weeks later.

On Tuesday, Robert Samsoe, brother of victim Robin, read a statement from Adkins, who was unable to return for the sentencing.

"The giant hole created when Shug was taken from us will never be filled," Adkins wrote, "but we do have memories of a sister who graced our lives with decency and beauty for a while."

Jill Barcomb was born to a Catholic family in Oneida, N.Y., a small, quiet town just outside Syracuse. Of 10 brothers and sisters, Jill was No. 5.

She was kind, with long brown hair and a big smile, her brother Bruce Barcomb said. When Bruce was 3, he told the court, he was punished for spitting spinach out at the dinner table and made to stand by the refrigerator. Jill, then 4, stood by his side, her arm around him, until the punishment was over. As a teen she sang and played trumpet, and loved roller-skating and playing at being a disc jockey.

She was a carefree spirit who left New York for California at 18. She had been here only weeks when her body was found in the Hollywood Hills in November 1977. Alcala had used a rock to smash her face and strangled her with the leg from a pair of pants.

Eight months after she was buried, Bruce Barcomb visited his sister's grave in New York. "I spoke out loud, with my voice cracking and tears beginning to stream down my cheeks in the hot and humid sun," he recalled. " 'I don't know what to do,' " he said. " 'I miss you.' "

Alcala, who sat motionless, his hands clasped in front of him while family and friends of his victims spoke, declined to make a statement at the end of the proceedings.

http://www.latimes.com/la-me-alcala31-2010mar31,0,2744345,print.story

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Another member of Christian militia Hutaree arrested

Joshua Stone, 21, whose father and brother are already in custody, surrenders in Michigan. He is one of nine 'warriors' of the anti-government group charged in an alleged plot against police.

By Richard Fausset

March 31, 2010

Reporting from Atlanta

Federal officials in Michigan have arrested a ninth member of the Hutaree, the Christian anti-government militia charged with plotting to use "weapons of mass destruction" in an attack on police.

The suspect, Joshua Matthew Stone of Clayton, Mich., surrendered to federal agents in nearby Hillsdale County, in the southern part of the state, Gina Balaya, a spokeswoman with the U.S. attorney's office in Detroit, said Tuesday.

Other members of Stone's family were already in custody -- brother David Brian Stone Jr., 19; father David Brian Stone, 45; and Tina Mae Stone, 44, David Sr.'s wife.

FBI Special Agent Sandra Berchtold, a spokeswoman in the Detroit field office, said agents surrounded a rural residence where Joshua Stone, 21, was staying with five other adults and a child.

Berchtold said they waited several hours for Stone to come out, occasionally playing recordings made by friends and family that urged him not to take a violent stand.

Stone emerged late Monday with the others in the house, who were questioned and released.

Similar encounters with fringe groups have famously ended in tragedy for the FBI. The violent siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992, and the deadly standoff at a Waco, Texas, religious compound in 1993 are considered egregious abuses of government power in some quarters. Both incidents helped spark the rise of the militia movement in the 1990s.

"We didn't want this to turn into, you know . . . anything," Berchtold said. "We wanted everybody safely on our side to go home. And we wanted Josh Stone to be safely taken to jail."

Members of the Hutaree, according to the group's website, consider themselves "Christian warriors," and were preparing for armed self-defense and the arrival of the Antichrist.

According to a federal indictment, the suspects considered local, state and federal police to be an enemy "brotherhood." Federal officials allege the suspects had been plotting to kill a local law enforcement officer, and then attack with homemade bombs the officers who came to the funeral.

All nine are facing charges of seditious conspiracy, attempted use of weapons of mass destruction, teaching the use of explosives and possessing a firearm during a crime of violence.

The Stones and four other suspects are being detained in Detroit; a ninth suspect, Thomas Piatek, 46, of Whiting, Ind., is in custody in that state. All are expected to enter pleas at court hearings Wednesday, Balaya said.

The high-profile arrests over the weekend come as part of what the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that tracks such groups, has called "an explosion of new extremist groups and activism across the nation" after the election of President Obama.

In militia circles, news of the Hutaree arrests has been met with varying responses.

Michael Vanderboegh, an Alabama blogger and former militia member, said on his website that the government went after the Hutaree as a means of smearing the reputation of a "revitalized constitutional militia movement" that, although skeptical and critical of government, is not extremist.

Lee Miracle, a coordinator for the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia, said he wasn't worried about the reputation of his group, which on its website prominently denounces "subversive or quasi-subversive" groups acting against the government.

People following the Hutaree saga "understand that it's not us," Miracle said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-militia31-2010mar31,0,2633193,print.story

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From the Daily News

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Agency: Half of foster parents criminals

County officials plan to examine how many people have qualified to become foster parents in Los Angeles despite criminal backgrounds, after the head of a troubled nonprofit agency claimed Tuesday the figure could be up to half.

Members of the Board of Supervisors remained skeptical but asked county officials to look into the issue.

The statements came during a hearing in which the supervisors voted to terminate a contract with United Care, Inc. following the death of a 2-year-old girl in a South Los Angeles foster home under the nonprofit's oversight.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky asked United Care's executive director Craig J. Woods if he knew the child's foster mother had a criminal background.

He said he did, but she had been cleared and licensed by the state, like many foster parents.

"The state has an exemption process where it has a criteria that if the particular crime was not of a violent or drug-related nature, then many of our foster parents are exempted," Woods said. "And I would estimate that to be as many as a third to half of foster parents fostering today under state licensing exemptions."

In response, Department of Children and Family Services spokesman Neil Zanville said DCFS Director Trish Ploehn contacted the state Department of Social Services' Community Care Licensing Division to find out what percentage of foster parents have some sort of criminal background.

"I don't know that half of our foster care parents are criminals," Supervisor Gloria Molina said. "I disagree with that and I'm going to look into that because I think you're wrong."

The dust-up follows the death of Viola Vanclief, a girl who died as a result of "blunt force trauma" in a death listed as a homicide, Coroner's Office Lt. Fred Corral said.

The girl was a foster child in the care of a South Los Angeles couple, Kiana Barker, 30, and her boyfriend, James Julian, 38. The couple were arrested on suspicion of beating the girl to death, apparently with a hammer, but they were released when prosecutors referred the case back to police for additional investigation.

After the girl's death, Barker told investigators that the toddler had been trapped in a bed frame and that she accidentally struck the child with a hammer while trying to free her.

The death was the most recent in a string of highly-publicized ones in recent years. Last year, 17 children died from abuse or neglect after DCFS had investigated earlier complaints of mistreatment. The figure, an increase from 2008's total of 14 deaths, includes both open and closed investigations.

In a prepared statement, Ploehn said DCFS reviewed United Care's records and placed a "Do Not Use" designation on the agency.

Meanwhile, Ploehn said DCFS is going to assess the other 57 foster family agencies in the county that oversee 2,500 foster homes with 5,800 foster children.

"Children's social workers will investigate the homes, utilizing a special tool to assess safety criteria; interviewing all children and adults residing in the homes, assessing the home itself and reviewing the agency's records ensuring all adults have criminal background clearances and all other safety criteria are met," Ploehn said.

The Auditor-Controller's Office will assist DCFS by providing two investigators to review FFA records. DCFS and the County Counsel's Office have requested the involvement of the state Community Care Licensing Division, which licenses foster parents.

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_14788933

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From the Wall Street Journal

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Militia Chief's Mistrust Festered, Friends Say

Portrait Emerges of Man Who Despised Authority; Undercover Agent Played a Role in Probe

The leader of a Michigan militia group charged this week with conspiring to kill law-enforcement officers was described Tuesday as a private, family-oriented man who nurtured a festering mistrust of governmental authority, according to people close to the family.

"On the inside of this man's brain, something evil lurks, and until you get to know him, you don't know it," said Andrea Harsh, who was engaged to David Brian Stone Sr. until the couple broke up last year.

She described Mr. Stone, a trim 45-year-old man who wears his whitish hair cropped short over spectacles and a bushy gray mustache, as having a "bubbly personality." But he became consumed by the Hutaree, she said, a southeastern Michigan militia group that described its members as "Christian warriors."

In an indictment Monday, federal authorities named Mr. Stone as leader of the Hutaree and accused him and eight members with plotting to spark an uprising against the U.S. government by killing police. Along with Mr. Stone, seven other men and one woman from Michigan, Ohio and Indiana are in being held without bond on weapons and sedition charges.

The indictment said Hutaree had practiced attacks and other military maneuvers for more than a year, and had planned to kill a law-enforcement officer, then use homemade bombs to attack officers who attended the funeral.

An undercover agent played a role in the investigation that led to Monday's indictments. Grand jury testimony by a law enforcement officer referred to an "undercover FBI agent" who worked on the case. The FBI declined to comment, but infiltration is a common tactic for law-enforcement officials targeting domestic militia groups.

Those charged in the case included Mr. Stone's current wife, Tina Mae Stone, 44; as well as two sons, David Brian Stone Jr., 19; and Joshua Matthew Stone 21. Attorneys for Ms. Stone, David Jr. and Joshua declined to comment Tuesday; the senior Mr. Stone had no attorney as of late Tuesday.

The Hutaree appears based at Mr. Stone's home, a pair of dilapidated house trailers near the intersection of dirt roads in rural Clayton, Michigan—population 303—about 85 miles southwest of Detroit. The yard this week held three cars, a dog house, debris and a gun leaning on an old washing machine.

Family members and acquaintances said Mr. Stone doesn't curse, smoke or drink alcohol and was a strict disciplinarian with his sons, whom he home-schooled from a young age. While he rarely attended church, he studied the Bible nightly, memorizing long passages, said Ms. Harsh, his ex-fiance. Several scripture passages appear on the Hutaree Web site.

On his page on the MySpace social-networking site, Mr. Stone, using the alias of "(RD) Merzonik," listed his interests as "GOD, Guns and Girls." He said he liked action and science-fiction movies and writes, "only dead people are true heroes ... so I guess I don't have any." He listed his hometown as, "Wasteland, America," and 73 MySpace friends include several state and county militias.

Mr. Stone is listed as a 1982 graduate of Sand Creek High School on an alumni Web site. Donna Stone, his ex-wife, said she met Mr. Stone in the mid-1990s when she worked at a deli counter and he was a customer. She said he was charming and funny.

But Mr. Stone increasingly displayed a stubborn streak, as well as an affinity for guns. Ms. Stone, 44, said she left him after about a decade together. "When he went from handguns to big guns, I said, 'Enough,' " she said.

Court documents reveal an undercover FBI agent was part of the investigation of a Michigan-based Christian militia group that allegedly plotted to spark an uprising against the government by killing police officers. Plus, in a major push against the health overhaul, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce plans to spend $50 million to sway election outcomes; and the News Hub discusses how a six-year high in the number of stocks hitting 52-week highs is not necessarily a bad sign for stocks.

Ms. Harsh, 40, said she began dating Mr. Stone in 2008 after meeting him at a plastics recycling factory where they worked. Mr. Stone showed her a Hutaree business card when they met, but otherwise said little about the group while they dated for several months.

After they moved in together, Ms. Harsh said, he spent hours on the computer, building the group's Web site and searching online for weapons. "His life was pretty much consumed by the Hutaree," she said.

Mr. Stone despised authority, Ms. Harsh said, particularly "anyone with a badge." She said his temper finally drove her away last year. Mr. Stone remarried a few months later.

Ron Gaydosh, 62, said he had known Mr. Stone for more than 15 years, and frequently invited the Stones over for barbecues. He described Mr. Stone as a "good guy," with "all-around good kids," and said the family enjoyed hunting and fishing.

He said Mr. Stone was easily upset by talk of the government. "Some of the things that upset Dave also upset me," said Mr. Gaydosh, who belongs to another militia group with no ties to Hutaree. They frequently discussed survivalist techniques and poked fun at government officials, he said, but "there was never any violence planned."

Mr. Gaydosh said Mr. Stone didn't like law enforcement officials driving by and shining lights at Mr. Stone's house, adding that he always referred to police as "feds." Mr. Stone also didn't like neighbors complaining about his target shooting, Mr. Gaydosh said.

It's not clear whether Mr. Stone had money troubles. Ms. Harsh said he was working at Demlow Products, an auto-industry supplier in Clayton; a person who answered the phone at the company declined to comment. Mr. Stone and his ex-wife, Donna Stone, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in 1999.

Over the past couple of years, Mr. Stone attracted more Hutaree members, Ms. Harsh said: "His goal was to have all of the states have at least one group of Hutaree."

But he scared off some potential recruits. Jon Killman said he visited Mr. Stone and his sons in December because he was interested in joining a militia to practice survival skills.

He said Mr. Stone was a gracious host and offered him coffee. But soon Mr. Killman "got a bad vibe" as the Stones started joking about police officers who'd been shot in a coffee shop in Washington state.

The family's dining room table was strewn with shotgun shells, Mr. Killman recalled. The elder Mr. Stone said the shells would be filled with gunpowder and tied to trip wires to simulate landmines.

At first "they just seemed like a down-to-earth hillbilly family," he said. "After 20 minutes into the meeting, I realized these guys are not dealing with a full deck."

Matt Savino, commander of the Lenawee Volunteer Michigan Militia near Mr. Stone's home, said in recent months Mr. Stone became "paranoid" and began asking other militia groups to join in military exercises.

Mr. Stone began talking more about how "the federal government was coming down on them" and the need to be on the offensive and retain the element of surprise, Mr. Savino said.

Ms. Harsh said Mr. Stone "always thought he could hide from the government. He thought he was invincible."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304739104575154041322442962.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5#printMode

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From the New York Times

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The Pattern of Priestly Sex Abuse

Reproduced below is a chart from the John Jay Report on sexual abuse in the Catholic priesthood, commissioned by the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops, showing the number of credible accusations of abuse across the last half-century. It's part of the basis for my column's claim that something in the moral/cultural/theological climate of the 1960s and 1970s encouraged a spike in sexual abuse, and also for my assertion that we've since seen the church come to grips with the problem, at least in the United States.

It's important to note that most of these incidents were reported in the 1990s and 2000s, years after they took place. This raises the question of whether the low numbers for the 1950s reflect a real difference between the rate of abuse in the Eisenhower era and the rate in the decades that followed, or whether it's just that fewer of the victims from the '50s have come forward with their stories, because of advanced age, greater shame, etc.

There's no way to be completely certain about this, and clearly there was abuse in the church, and horrid cover-ups as well, going back decades and centuries and more. But the John Jay data suggest that something significant really did shift, and escalate, in the years around the sexual revolution.

For one thing, the rate of so-called “short term” incidents — cases where the priest's abusive behavior reportedly lasted less than a year — remained relatively constant from the '50s through the first decade of the 21st century. The prevalence of longer-term abuse, on the other hand, followed the same pattern as the overall data, going way up in the '60s and '70s and then dropping off after 1980 (see pp. 39 of this report for the graph). The same discrepancy appears when you look at the type of molestation: male-on-female versus male-on-male, and true pedophilia versus so-called “ephebophilia” (the abuse of pubescent teenagers). To quote from the National Review Board report , which analyzed the John Jay data:

The incidence of sexual molestation of a minor under eleven years of age did not vary as greatly throughout the period as did the molestation of older children. In addition, the incidence of abuse of females did not change as dramatically as did the incidence of the abuse of males. There was, however, a more than six-fold increase in the number of reported acts of abuse of males aged eleven to seventeen between the 1950s and the 1970s.

If the abuse in the '50s (and earlier) followed roughly the same pattern as the abuse in the '70s, and just remains more underreported today, you would expect the ratios of different types of abuse — long-term versus short-term, male versus female, pedophilic versus ephebophilic — to remain relatively constant across the decades. But they don't: Instead, the post-1960 period shows a dramatic increase in reports of long-term sexual misconduct with teenage boys, and a substantially smaller increase in other types of abuse.

This data informs the conservative Catholic argument that the post-Vatican II exodus of straight men from religious life and the spread of a sexually-active gay subculture within the priesthood is the abuse scandal's “elephant in the sacristy .” Liberal Catholics might counter that the priesthood has always been disproportionately homosexual, and that the sexual revolution probably just encouraged psychologically healthy gay priests to give up on the church entirely, leaving behind a clerical population tilted toward repression, self-loathing and the dysfunctions of the closet.  Whichever narrative you prefer, though, it's hard to deny that something changed in the 1960s, and not for the better.

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/the-pattern-of-priestly-sex-abuse/?pagemode=print

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China Said to Execute Thousands in '09

HONG KONG — China executed more people last year than the rest of the world combined, according to a report published Tuesday by Amnesty International .

Amnesty said there were “thousands” of Chinese executions in 2009 — the precise number is considered a state secret — and the rights group called on Beijing to divulge how many it carries out.

The report said that at least 714 people were executed in 17 other countries, led by Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the United States. Methods of execution included beheading, stoning, electrocution, hanging, firing squads and lethal injection.

Amnesty said in its report last year that China had executed at least 1,718 people in 2008, nearly three-fourths of the 2,390 executions worldwide that year.

“The Chinese authorities claim that fewer executions are taking place,” said Claudio Cordone, Amnesty's interim secretary general. “If this is true, why won't they tell the world how many people the state put to death?”

Although admittedly incomplete, the figures from Amnesty are widely accepted. The State Department, for example, has cited the group's findings in its reports on human rights.

Iran put at least 388 people to death last year, according to the latest Amnesty report, with about a third of the executions coming in the seven weeks of protests and turmoil that followed the country's disputed presidential election in June.

In Europe in 2009, for the first time since Amnesty International began keeping records, there were no executions. Belarus is the only European nation with the death penalty still on its books; the former Soviet republic reportedly executed two men two weeks ago.

The Constitutional Court in Russia also renewed a moratorium on death sentences in November, and the Amnesty report cited the court ruling saying that the “path towards full abolition of the death penalty is irreversible.”

The United States was the only country in the Americas to execute anyone in 2009, according to the report, which said the 52 executions constituted the nation's highest total in three years. Nearly half the executions, 24, came in Texas, while New Mexico officially banned the death penalty.

Amnesty, which has long opposed the death penalty, said death sentences and executions continued to be used for political purposes, often after unfair trials, and were used “disproportionately against the poor, minorities and members of racial, ethnic and religious communities.”

The report said at least 2,001 people were sentenced to death in 56 countries in 2009.

In addition to China, seven other Asian countries were reported to have carried out a total of 26 executions last year — Bangladesh, Japan, North Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Indonesia had no executions.

Two executions in Thailand were the nation's first since 2003, the report said, as two men found guilty of drug crimes were executed by lethal injection.

Botswana and Sudan were the only countries in sub-Saharan Africa to execute criminals in 2009, while Kenya carried out what Amnesty called “the largest mass commutation of death sentences ever known.” More than 4,000 condemned prisoners in Kenya had their sentences reduced to imprisonment.

Burundi and Togo abolished the death penalty in 2009, Amnesty International said, joining 95 countries that had banned capital punishment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/world/asia/31execute.html?ref=world&src=me&pagewanted=print

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2 Detained for Dead Babies Found Along China River

BEIJING (AP) -- The bodies of 21 babies, some with hospital identification tags around their tiny ankles, washed ashore on a river in eastern China and two mortuary workers were detained for allegedly dumping them.

News footage Tuesday showed the babies -- at least one of whom was stuffed in a yellow plastic bag marked ''medical waste'' -- strewn along a dirt riverbank near a highway overpass. A few wore diapers. All were caked in mud.

Some of the babies appeared several months old, while the official Xinhua News Agency said the bodies included fetuses.

Local residents and firefighters recovered the bodies Monday after they were discovered under a bridge spanning the Guangfu River on the outskirts of Jining in Shandong province.

Interviews with residents who made the grisly find were broadcast on the Web site of the Shandong Broadcasting Company. One said he thought a body was a toy, but then he spotted several others. Another expressed concern because the river is a source of drinking water for villagers living nearby.

Hospital ID tags on eight of the babies helped investigators trace them back to the Affiliated Hospital of Jining Medical University, Xinhua reported.

Hospital mortuary workers Zhu Zhenyu and Wang Zhijun were sacked and taken away by police, Xinhua said, citing Jining government spokesman Gong Zhenhua. The babies' families had paid the pair to dispose of the bodies, but they instead dumped them at the river.

It was not clear whether Zhu and Wang dumped the bodies directly in the river or if they made an attempt to bury them.

Three top hospital officials were sacked or suspended and the government ordered the Jining Municipal Health Bureau to make a public apology, Xinhua said.

''It exposes a serious loophole in the hospital's management and indicates a lack of ethics and legal awareness of some hospital staff,'' Gong was quoted as saying. ''It exerts a very negative impact on society and teaches us a profound lesson.''

Reports said the babies ranged in age from newborns to several months old. One of the bluish-green identification tags visible in the news video says, ''Boy; mother's name is Man Hongmei; born in April 2009.''

The reports did not give the number of girls or boys. Xinhua said the bodies of the 21 babies were cremated, though it was not clear whether they had all been identified.

In China, most families are permitted to have only one or two children and a traditional preference for sons runs strong. The abandoning, aborting and killing of newborn baby girls is common in rural China, although gender-selection abortions are illegal.

Infants who die from disease are often abandoned or buried in unmarked graves, not being old enough to be formally considered part of the family. But those deaths usually occur in small numbers.

An official from the information office of China's Health Ministry said she was not aware of the case, while telephone calls to the Jining Health Bureau and the Shandong Health Bureau rang unanswered Tuesday.

More than 1,000 comments were posted on Netease, a Chinese news Web site, within hours of reports on the discovery of the bodies.

''These people are completely without conscience and morals and should be shot,'' one comment said.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/03/30/world/AP-AS-China-Dead-Babies.html?_r=1&sq=bodies

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At Key West Beach, Wondering Who's a Vagrant

KEY WEST, Fla. — Quality of life for Steve Sanderson means securing a good sleeping spot that a new arrival will never find. For Denise Skinner, it means l-i-v-i-n with a view of the ocean from the mattress in her cherry red Jeep. “It's heaven out there,” she said last week, squinting out her back window. “It's heaven.”

Simply put, as Mr. Sanderson said, “If you have to be homeless, Key West is the best place to live.”

Or at least it used to be. Over the past three months, the city police have given homeless residents more than twice as many warnings for trespassing as they did last year. Between Jan. 1 and March 23, they made 90 arrests, and the federal stimulus will ensure that the trend continues: the Key West police recently received $813,000 to add four officers to its 89-member department. Their sole mission will be quality-of-life policing.

“It's for vagrants,” said the police chief, Donald J. Lee Jr. “People who are out on the streets, disrupting the quality of life or experience for visitors, residents and businesses.” What some call vagrants, of course, others call simply down-and-out. The police say their targets are people like the homeless man arrested last week after he told two teenage girls they were sexy and offered them a swig of his Jack Daniel's. Yet in a city of 25,000 that claims to have more bars per capita than anywhere else in the country, enforcement can sometimes look selective.

The police now regularly question the homeless but ignore visitors like the man at a table near Ms. Skinner's Jeep last week. He was passed out before sunset, snoring, with a 16-ounce beer in front of him and two chickens pecking near his feet. Only his pressed shorts and a half-eaten Godiva chocolate bar suggested that he had a home.

Amateur videos online also display the challenge here of defining a quality-of-life offense.

Ignoring the trouble longtime resident Ernest Hemingway might get in if he were still alive, consider this: Does community policing mean that the guy rolling through a puddle at a crosswalk is enjoying his own quality of life or violating someone else's? If you're playing air guitar to Ozzy Osbourne , weaving back and forth on the sidewalk, are you a bother or just a passionate fan? The stars of these videos do not seem to have been arrested, though the puddle swimmer acted in front of a police car. The homeless see it as a double standard.

They say the police are “profiling” them with arrests for small infractions, like drinking outside in violation of open-container laws.

“The tourists come here and drink all day long,” said Manuel Casas, 43, who moved to the Keys from Miami five years ago. “When we sit here and have one drink, we get arrested.”

Mr. Casas was sitting at the island's main beach, at a picnic table with a half-dozen homeless friends. With raspy voices and slurred words — some actually sounded like pirates — they all said they deserved to be left alone.

“God gave us this, not the government,” Mr. Casas said of the island. “This is what he's given to us. Why can't we enjoy it?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/us/31keywest.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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From the Department of Justice

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WASHINGTON – A two-count bill of information filed today in federal court charges New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) Officer Michael Hunter with misprision of a felony (for concealing a known felony) and with conspiring with fellow NOPD officers to obstruct justice by covering up a police-involved shooting in the days after Hurricane Katrina, announced Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, Jim Letten, U. S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana and David Welker, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI New Orleans Field Office.

The Sept. 4, 2005, shooting on the Danziger Bridge left two civilians dead and four others seriously injured. According to the bill of information, the incident involved at least six other NOPD officers whom Hunter, 33, of Slidell, La., drove to the Danziger Bridge in a Budget rental truck. On the east side of the bridge, the officers encountered six civilians (five members of the B Family, and J. B., a friend of the B Family), who were walking across the bridge to get food and supplies from a supermarket.

Officers fired at the group of civilians, killing J. B. and seriously wounding four members of the B Family. Hunter and other officers then traveled to the west side of the bridge, where they encountered Lance and Ronald Madison, who were crossing the bridge on their way to the dentistry office of one of their other brothers. On the west side of the bridge, an officer shot and killed Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old man who had a severe disability.

The two-count bill of information charges Hunter with violating the federal conspiracy statute by agreeing with other officers to provide false and misleading information about the Sept. 4, 2005, shootings on the Danziger Bridge and with covering up other information in order to ensure that the shootings would appear to be legally justified. Hunter also was charged with misprision of a felony. The defendant faces a possible maximum sentence of eight years in prison and a fine of $500,000.

This case, which is ongoing, is being investigated by the New Orleans Field Office of the FBI, and is being prosecuted by Deputy Chief Bobbi Bernstein and Trial Attorney Forrest Christian of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, along with Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia K. Evans for the Eastern District of Louisiana. No further details or information will be made available at this time.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/March/10-crt-348.html

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From the FBI

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A DIFFERENT KIND OF TRAINING

What New Agents Learn from the Holocaust

03/30/10

Every year, the FBI Training Academy graduates about 1,000 new special agents following 20 weeks of intense preparation. In countless tactical and analytical scenarios, the trainees learn how to respond appropriately under the most trying conditions. 

But there is also a rigorous moral and ethical component to the training. In a poignant culmination of 21 hours spent defining the line between right and wrong, all new agents are escorted through the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. to see in horrific detail what can happen when law enforcement loses sight of what is right. The program—called Law Enforcement and Society: Lessons of the Holocaust—is a joint partnership between the Anti-Defamation League and the museum.

“It makes our people think about morality, ethics, and how to maintain those during turbulent times,” said Special Agent Douglas B. Merel, who teaches the Academy's ethical leadership course for new agents that includes the museum program. “It shows how important it is for law enforcement to maintain their core values.” In one visit on a recent Friday morning, about 50 agents-to-be filed into the museum. Over the next four hours they toured the exhibits—led in some cases by Holocaust survivors—and discussed what separates them from the law enforcement officers in Germany who were systematically co-opted by the Nazis.

In a museum conference room, Elise Jarvis, associate director of Law Enforcement Outreach for the Anti-Defamation League, whose mission is in part to secure justice and fair treatment for all citizens, is purposefully blunt in her line of questions. “So the question I'm putting out there is: What makes you different?” Jarvis asked the class. “What, at the end of the day, is going to keep you all anchored? What keeps you from sliding down that slippery slope? What keeps you from abusing your power?”

“It makes our people think about morality, ethics, and how to maintain those during turbulent times.” Supervisory Special Agent Douglas B. Merel FBI Training Division

“The purpose of the program is actually not to compare law enforcement in America today to police under the Nazis, but rather to contrast them. The program highlights the importance of law enforcement as protectors of all people and the Constitution to the safeguarding of our democracy.” Elise Jarvis Anti-Defamation League

As answers bubble up—the Constitution, personal morals, compassion, laws—instructors challenge the students to support and defend their positions.

“It's really our hope that the law enforcement officers who come to the museum see this program, see this history, and really reflect on their professional core values and their role in society today,” said Marcus A. Appelbaum, who coordinates the museum's community and leadership programs.

The law enforcement program was developed in 1999 after D.C. Metropolitan Police Chief Charles Ramsey toured the museum and recognized the value of teaching trainees about law enforcement's integral role in the Nazis' rise to power. In 2000, then-FBI Director Louis Freeh incorporated the tour into the Bureau's new agent training. In 2005, Director Robert S. Mueller said the training has never been more relevant. "At a time when law enforcement must be aggressive in stopping terror, these classes provide powerful lessons on why we must always protect civil rights and uphold the rule of law," he said. More than 60,000 law enforcement professionals—including about 10,000 new FBI agents and analysts—have gone through the program. This is the 10th year of the FBI's participation. Members of the recent new agent class said the experience really brought home their new responsibility.

“They did an excellent job of showing how the law enforcement in Nazi society was complicit,” said Lucas, a new special agent, after the program's conclusion. “It's important to try to be aware of all the circumstances around you and make sure nothing's crossing the lines, and remember why we're really here.”

http://www.fbi.gov/page2/mar10/leas_033010.html

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