Law enforcement keeping an eye out for distracted drivers

The Transportation Department has launched a pilot program in two East Coast cities to find out if increased patrols reduce unsafe cellphone use while driving.

By Clement Tan

April 9, 2010

Reporting from Washington

The Department of Transportation on Thursday stepped up its campaign against distracted driving, announcing its first pilot program to study whether increased law enforcement would reduce distracted driving in two East Coast cities.

"Law enforcement will be out on the roads in Syracuse, N.Y., and Hartford, Conn., with one simple message," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement. "If a driver is caught with a cellphone in one hand, they'll end up with a ticket in the other."

The $600,000 program, modeled on previous safe-driving programs to curb drunk driving and improve seat belt usage, also involves a paid advertising campaign aimed at men and women up to age 49.

The campaign using radio, TV and print ads began April 1 and will continue until April 16 in the Hartford and Syracuse metropolitan areas.

The first wave of high-visibility enforcement began Thursday and will last nine days in Syracuse; in Hartford it will begin Saturday and run through April 16. Subsequent enforcement waves in both cities will take place throughout the year.

Connecticut and New York are among only eight U.S. states and territories , including California, to ban the use of all hand-held devices, including cellphones, while driving.

Twenty states and territories, including California, as well as Washington, D.C., have a ban on texting while driving, while six states have laws that prohibit local jurisdictions from enacting restrictions, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The federal government also introduced new regulations in January that would subject truck and bus drivers who text while driving commercial vehicles to civil or criminal penalties of up to $2,750.

The Transportation Department said results from the pilot study would serve as a model nationwide for employing high-visibility enforcement, education and outreach to reduce distracted-driving behaviors.

In 2008, 5,870 people were killed and an estimated 515,000 people were injured in police-reported crashes in which at least one form of driver distraction was reported, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-distracted-driving9-2010apr09,0,1769627,print.story

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Hemet City Council to consider emergency action to fortify buildings

In the wake of attacks against Hemet police officers , the City Council will consider a resolution next week to take emergency measures to "harden" city buildings against violence.

 A council resolution cites law enforcement intelligence indicating that city buildings are the likely targets of attacks. A primary target is the Police Department headquarters, according to city documents.

"Intelligence reports indicate that the police facility is the likely focus of future criminal acts," Capt. Dave Brown wrote in a memo to council members. "Immediate action is required to harden these facilities."

No specific suspects have been named. But last month, authorities led raids on the Vagos outlaw motorcycle gang , which was described as an "extreme threat" to law enforcement. The group has a large  presence in Hemet. Thirty people were arrested on charges that included possession of drugs and weapons.

Then in early March, police said, a "dangerous" device was found near the unmarked car of a task force member. That was followed the arson of several city trucks on March 23.

OPINION

The dangers of growing DNA databases

The practice of retaining genetic samples from people arrested for a crime but not convicted is growing in the U.S. It has serious human rights implications.

By Osagie K. Obasogie

April 9, 2010

President Obama may have given credence to a relatively new but questionable law enforcement practice that the rest of the developed world is starting to shun: taking and retaining DNA samples from individuals arrested for a crime but not convicted. That is, putting innocent people's DNA in criminal databases.

During an interview with the president last month on the television program "America's Most Wanted," host John Walsh enthusiastically supported the expansion of this practice in the United States, saying, "We now have 18 states who are taking DNA upon arrest. England has done it for years. It's no different than fingerprinting or a booking photo." To which President Obama said, "It's the right thing to do."

But many in the human rights community disagree. For example, the European Court of Human Rights unanimously ruled in 2008 that the United Kingdom's policy of keeping arrestees' genetic samples after their release -- the very practice that Walsh (and by implication Obama) endorses -- violates a right respecting private and family life codified by the European Convention on Human Rights. At the time of the decision, the U.K. database included more than 4.5 million DNA profiles -- more than 5% of its population. One-fifth of these profiles were taken from people without a criminal record.

The court's reasoning was fairly straightforward: When a person has not been convicted, genetic profiles may contain so much personal information -- ancestry, familial relationships, etc. -- that governments should not be allowed to hold and analyze them indefinitely.

Technically, this ruling applies only to the U.K and other jurisdictions bound by the court's decision. But the practice raises similar legal concerns under U.S. law as its use is growing among state and federal law enforcement agencies.

At the federal level, U.S. Justice Department policies are expanding to allow law enforcement to collect and retain DNA profiles from all detained immigrants and persons arrested for federal crimes. This will add an estimated 1.2 million people -- many of whom are likely not to have been convicted of a crime -- to the national database each year.

But the most radical and consequential changes are occurring at the state level. At first, only a handful of smaller states authorized retaining DNA profiles from all felony arrestees. But California's Proposition 69, passed in 2004 with an arrestee provision taking effect in 2009, allows DNA collection and retention from anyone arrested for a felony, whether they are later convicted or not.

As the most populous state in the nation and its most influential laboratory of policymaking, California is poised to become an anti-human rights trailblazer. And with both federal and state databases, it's quite burdensome for innocent people to have their DNA removed from the files.

Advocates of expanding criminal databases argue that including innocent people's DNA protects communities and saves lives. This is the "more the merrier" approach to crime fighting: The more DNA profiles in a database, the more likely a sample left at a crime scene might find a match that leads to an arrest. As for being innocent, there's nothing to worry about if you don't plan on doing anything wrong, right? Or as Walsh argues, it's no different than taking a booking photo.

Not so fast. DNA forensics is both an art and a science. It involves complex statistical calculations and requires extremely careful handling to prevent errors; sample contamination and other problems have been well documented. While any two genetic profiles can be matched with a high degree of certainty, large forensic database scans have led to perplexing results.

Take, for example, a 2005 examination of Arizona's criminal database. The entire enterprise of DNA databases is based on the idea that no two people share the same profile. But Arizona's database of 65,000-plus entries was shown to have more than 100 profiles that were similar enough for many experts to consider them a "match."

In separate studies, it has been reported that Illinois' and Maryland's databases had hundreds of seemingly unique genetic profiles matching one another. This is a phenomenon that suggests people convicted solely on evidence from DNA databases may have profiles that coincidentally match the real perpetrators', leading innocent people to be incarcerated. Or worse.

How is this possible? We simply don't know, in part because state and federal officials have stonewalled scientists' request to study these databases.

The bottom line is, as UC Berkeley law professor Erin Murphy said in a 2008 article, "We're putting too much faith in a new technology whose limitations and uncertainties we don't yet fully understand."

But the question is not only how many people this policy shift might affect, but which ones? Policies that expand DNA databases are almost sure to exacerbate racial bias in the criminal justice system. The grossly disproportionate number of imprisoned blacks and Latinos reflects, in part, the disproportionate policing of their communities.

Although blacks make up only about 13% of the population, estimates show that they constitute at least 40% of the federal DNA database. Including arrestees who are not convicted will only widen such disparities.

The U.S. criminal justice system is notorious for its long list of practices that others in the developed world consider to be blatant human rights violations. Our zealous pursuit of criminals must be balanced with respecting human rights.

The president's support for expanding DNA databases to include arrestees who are not convicted and are later released may not only run counter to a growing international consensus concerning human rights, but also against America's long-standing commitment that people are innocent until proven guilty. This includes the basic idea that government shouldn't constantly look over innocent people's shoulders. Or in this case, their genes.

Osagie K. Obasogie is an associate professor of law at UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, a visiting scholar at UC San Francisco and a senior fellow at the Center for Genetics and Society in Berkeley.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-obasogie9-2010apr09,0,1688150,print.story

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From the Daily News

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Drone used in search for missing woman

A small, unmanned aircraft scoured the depths of the Malibu canyons Thursday, recording hi-resolution photos of areas that police have had trouble reaching by helicopter and foot in the search for a woman who has been missing since September.

The photos were sent back to a San Diego State University lab to be processed. Homicide detectives planned to analyze the photos today or Saturday to determine if the images contained any evidence of the whereabouts of 24-year-old Mitrice Richardson, said Steve Whitmore, spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

Richardson was last seen in the Malibu area after being released from the Malibu-Lost Hills sheriff's station. The 24-year-old Cal State Fullerton graduate and psychology intern disappeared after being released from the station after 1 a.m. on Sept. 17. She had been booked for allegedly failing to pay an $89 bill at Geoffrey's restaurant in Malibu. Her car was impounded and she was without her purse and cell phone.

The drone, remote-controlled by researcher Michael Hennig from SDSU's Immersive Visualization Center, was used in the high-profile search of Chelsea King, who was found dead in San Diego last month after being missing since February.

"It can get really low as opposed to a helicopter and can get some really good close-up pictures," said Gina Jacobs, SDSU spokeswoman.

"And it's pretty silent so it doesn't disturb the environment."

Hennig is also the co-director of RP Search Services, a nonprofit group that provides unmanned vehicles with high resolution imaging systems for search and recovery efforts. He volunteered the drone in Richardson's search, Whitmore said.

The drone, with a four-foot wingspan, spent at least five hours taking nearly 500 photos of six spots of interest in the Malibu hills and canyons, totaling an area of about eight square miles.

One spot was where Richardson was last seen after a resident on Cold Canyon Road reported a woman resting in the backyard. Another was near a vehicle tunnel that investigators thought she could have gone around to avoid cars.

The drone also scanned the area where Richardson's scent had been picked up by dogs.

Latice Sutton, Richardson's mother, was holding on to the hope something would turn up in the photos, providing a clue of her daughter's whereabouts. "I am hoping that some evidence can lead us to where she is located because I truly contend that if she's alive, I believe she's being held," said Sutton, who could do little except watch investigators launch the drone. "Or they're going to find her remains. My hope is that they find evidence."

"Either which way, I want my daughter," Sutton said. "I want to bring her home."

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_14848250

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From the Daily News

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Cpl. Larry L. Maxam, United States Marine Corps

War hero honored By Dennis McCarthy 04/08/2010 On Feb. 2, 1968, a young Burbank man named Larry L. Maxam died in a place this nation has tried hard to forget. Vietnam. The 20-year-old Burbank High grad never got the due he deserved from his hometown. Next week, he will. Pacific Park in Burbank will be renamed the Larry L. Maxam Memorial Park, and this is why. He was a genuine war hero. President Richard M. Nixon awarded the U.S. Marine our nation's highest military award, the Medal of Honor, posthumously for what he did that day 42 years ago. His story should be required reading in every middle and high school history class when teachers get to that dark chapter in our history. They should tell their students it was so unfair that the scars of an unpopular war were carried by the men we sent over there to fight it. They were doing their job.

The teachers should have the kids read the citation accompanying the Medal of Honor awarded Maxam. See that his actions were verified by his fellow Marines in Company D of the Third Marine Division. Half a dozen of them will be attending the park renaming ceremony.

Summarized, this is what Maxam did. Already wounded by grenade fragments, he ran to an abandoned machine gun and began firing on the advancing enemy.

"Corporal Maxam's position received a direct hit from a rocket propelled grenade, knocking him backwards and inflicting severe wounds to his face and right eye," the citation reads.

Maxam got up and kept firing. He was hit again with small arms fire. He got back up and kept firing.

"He gallantly continued to deliver intense machine gun fire, causing the enemy to retreat to cover. In a desperate attempt to silence his weapon, the North Vietnamese threw hand grenades and rifle fire against him, inflicting two additional wounds.

"Too weak to reload his machine gun, Corporal Maxam fell to a prone position and continued to deliver effective fire with his rifle.

"After one and a half hours, during which he was hit repeatedly, he succumbed to his wounds, having successfully defended nearly one half of the perimeter single-handedly."

That is how you win the Medal of Honor.

Maxam has no local family. A sister and brother are coming to the ceremony from their homes in Australia. So is his first cousin Gary Saldutti, living in Sacramento.

He heard about the ceremony when a West Point historian writing a book about Medal of Honor winners mentioned it in passing.

Saldutti had already given his cousin the due he deserved for his bravery.

"When my wife and I learned our second child was going to be a boy we started thinking about names," he said from Sacramento Thursday.

"We talked about naming him after my cousin Larry, but neither of us liked the name Larry. I called his brother in Australia to tell him what we were thinking."

That's when he learned Maxam's buddies and commander in Vietnam never called him Larry. To them, he was Max.

"We named our son Maxam," Saldutti said.

Forty-two years is a long time to wait be honored by your hometown, Mickey DePalo agrees, but better late than never.

"He's the only Medal of Honor recipient from Burbank, and yes, we should have done this before. But with the support of many groups and the city, we're doing it now," said the chairman of the City of Burbank's Veterans Commemorative Committee.

"We're hoping that when young kids go to the park and read the plaque honoring Larry, they'll stop and think about other young men and women who died for their country."

You can always hope.

If you're driving by the new Larry L. Maxam Memorial Park in the next few weeks, and wonder who he is, now you know.

A local hometown boy who became a genuine war hero.

The dedication ceremony will be Saturday, April 17, at 11 a.m. at the park, 3715 Pacific Ave., in Burbank.

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_14847542

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Reseda man convicted of torturing 80-year-old

VAN NUYS — A former employee of an assisted-living facility in Calabasas was convicted today of torturing an 80-year-old resident and abusing three other residents.

The Van Nuys Superior Court jury convicted Cesar Ulloa, 21, of one count of torture and seven counts of elder abuse, according to Deputy District Attorney Robin Allen.

Ulloa is facing life in prison when he returns to court May 26 for sentencing.

The Reseda man - who worked as a caregiver at Silverado Senior Living between February 2007 and November 2007 - was arrested in October 2008 following an 11-month investigation that began after an anonymous whistleblower claimed that 80-year-old Elmore Kittower had been the victim of foul play.

An autopsy determined that the retired engineer had died on Nov. 6, 2007, of a blood clot in his lung, but the investigation by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department determined that Kittower had been abused for months, authorities said shortly after Ulloa's arrest. Ulloa punched the victim and attacked him on numerous occasions, resulting in rib fractures and other injuries, according to the District Attorney's Office.

Authorities said he also abused two other men and a woman at the center, which bills itself as specializing in senior and dementia care.

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_14846903

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From the New York Times

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Privacy Issues Hinder Plan on Tracking Terror Assets

MADRID — The United States stands ready to cooperate if plans for a new European Union system for tracking terrorism financing come through, a senior Treasury Department official said here on Thursday. But he would not say whether that cooperation would go so far as to share American bank account data.

Last month, the European Commission , the executive body of the European Union, unveiled plans to develop a homegrown system to track terrorist finances as a response to a similar American program. Although the American assets-tracking system operates under agreement with the European Union, it has been widely criticized as a breach of European citizens' privacy. And the commission has stressed that it expects any such European system to require that the United States contribute information on American citizens' transactions.

Speaking on the eve of a meeting between American and European justice and interior ministers here, the American treasury official, Stuart A. Levey , the under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said Washington was committed to working with any new European system “under the basis of reciprocity.”

Asked whether that might involve allowing European terrorism investigators direct access to data from American bank accounts, Mr. Levey would not say. In terms of overall investigative cooperation, he said, “You have to create the right circumstances, but we would cooperate.”

Opposition to the American tracking system has been particularly virulent in the European Parliament , whose members have demanded that the European Commission renegotiate the original agreement to strengthen its privacy rules.

The American delegation here is headed by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and the homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano . Mr. Holder said Thursday at a news conference that the banking-data agreement was “a vital tool, and it is important that the program be put back in an active mode as soon as we can.”

“We recognize that there have been questions raised in Europe, and one of our goals is to highlight the extensive privacy safeguards that have been put in place,” Mr. Holder said. “Given the nature of the agreement and the effectiveness of the agreement that we had in place before, I am confident that we can work our way through the concerns that we had.”

At the Madrid meeting on Friday, the Europeans are also expected to push for more concessions from Washington in order to draw up a new agreement on the sharing of airline passenger data. The current accord, struck in 1997, has run into widespread privacy concerns in Europe about the United States' handling of personal data.

Among these demands, the European Union justice commissioner, Viviane Reding , is expected to seek from her American counterparts a commitment that European citizens would be able to sue in United States courts if they believe that passenger data handed over by airlines has been misused.

The meeting in Madrid comes as the United States has begun applying new screening rules for air passengers going to America, following an attempted bombing on Dec. 25 on a plane flying from Amsterdam to Detroit. While the rules have received broad endorsement from industry experts, they have also met with opposition from European privacy advocates.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/world/europe/09spain.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Teaching About Web Includes Troublesome Parts

MILPITAS, Calif. — When Kevin Jenkins wanted to teach his fourth-grade students at Spangler Elementary here how to use the Internet, he created a site where they could post photographs, drawings and surveys.

And they did. But to his dismay, some of his students posted surveys like “Who's the most popular classmate?” and “Who's the best-liked?”

Mr. Jenkins's students “liked being able to express themselves in a place where they're basically by themselves at a computer,” he said. “They're not thinking that everyone's going to see it.”

The first wave of parental anxiety about the Internet focused on security and adult predators. But that has since given way to concerns about how their children are acting online toward their friends and rivals, and what impression their online profiles might create in the minds of college admissions officers or future employers.

Incidents like the recent suicide of a freshman girl at South Hadley High School in Massachusetts after she was bullied online and at school have reinforced the notion that many children still seem unaware how the Internet can transform typical adolescent behavior — popularity contests, cliquish snubs, macho boasts, sexual flirtations, claims about drinking and drugs — into something not only public, but also permanent.

The South Hadley case is leading some states to re-examine their laws against bullying; while more than 40 states address the issue, they tend to focus on punishment, not prevention.

Mr. Jenkins this year began using lessons from Common Sense Media , which tries to teach students to consider their online behavior before they get into trouble.

Financed largely by foundation money, Common Sense will offer a free curriculum to schools this fall that teaches students how to behave online. New York City and Omaha have decided to offer it to their public schools; Denver, the District of Columbia, Florida, Los Angeles, Maine and Virginia are considering it.

“You want to light a fire under someone's fanny?” said Liz Perle, editor in chief of Common Sense Media. “Have your child post something that is close to a hate crime.”

And the Internet is where children are growing up. The average young person spends seven and a half hours a day with a computer, television or smart phone, according to a January study from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Considering that the time is mostly outside of school, the results suggest that almost every extracurricular hour is devoted to online life .

Common Sense's classes, based on research by Howard Gardner, a Harvard psychology and education professor, are grouped into topics he calls “ethical fault lines”: identity (how do you present yourself online?); privacy (the world can see everything you write); ownership (plagiarism, reproducing creative work); credibility (legitimate sources of information); and community (interacting with others).

Raquel Kusunoki, a sixth-grade teacher at Spangler, recently asked Mr. Jenkins, now an educational technology specialist for the school district, to teach Common Sense classes to her students. The class listened as Mr. Jenkins read a story about a girl who got annoyed when her parents quizzed her about details from her online journal.

Lucas Navarrete, 13, asked, “What's their right to read her personal stuff?” adding, “They have no right!”

“Maybe they're worried,” suggested Morgan Windham, a soft-spoken girl.

“It's public!” argued Aren Santos.

“O.K., O.K., if it was a personal diary and they read it, would you be happy?” Lucas asked. “They have no right, see?”

Mr. Jenkins asked the class if there is a difference between a private diary on paper and a public online diary. But the class could not agree.

“I would just keep it to myself and tell only people that were really, really close to me,” Cindy Nguyen said after class. “We want to have our personal, private space.”

That blurred line between public and private space is what Common Sense tries to address.

“That sense of invulnerability that high school students tend to have, thinking they can control everything, before the Internet there may have been some truth to that,” said Ted Brodheim, chief information officer for the New York City Department of Education. “I don't think they fully grasp that when they make some of these decisions, it's not something they can pull back from.”

Common Sense bases all its case studies on real life, and insists on the students' participation. “If you just stand up and deliver a lecture on intellectual property, it has no meaning for the kids,” said Constance M. Yowell, director of education for the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation , which has provided financing.

But some media experts say that in focusing on social issues, Common Sense misses some of the larger, structural problems facing children online.

“We can't make the awareness of Web issues solely person- and relationship-centered,” said Joseph Turow, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania . Children should learn things like what a cookie or a Web virus is, and how corporations profit from tracking consumers online, he said.

In San Francisco, the Schools of the Sacred Heart, related boys' and girls' schools, met with parents earlier this year to discuss their Common Sense pilot program with Sister Anne Wachter, the head of the girls' school.

“The messes they get into with friends, or jumping onto someone's site and sending a message,” she said. “They don't know, sometimes, how to manage the social, emotional stuff that comes up.”

Crowded into a basement math classroom, the parents listened to a teacher, Bill Jennings, discuss lessons he had been trying. In front of Sister Wachter and the parents, many of whom are Catholic, he gave an example of a social-networking message the girls might see about a new student: “Amy is a slut; her mom's a whore.”

There was startled silence from the parents.

“If I came up with five scenarios for Maya, they'd probably be so far from that — they're not calling someone's mother a whore,” said Sheila Chatterjee, a parent of a seventh grader.

“But the language of that is what they hear,” Mr. Jennings said.

“It's authentic,” Ms. Chatterjee agreed.

Shirin Oshidari, who has a son in seventh grade, said this lesson seemed obvious. “To me, it's exactly how you behave person to person,” she said. “Everything you write, the college you want to go to, they will see it. And the job you want to get, they will see it.”

Jaime Dominguez, the head of the boys school, said: “The hard part is, as adults we see that connection. They don't.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/education/09cyberkids.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Documents Detail a Girl's Final Days of Bullying

Phoebe Prince, the 15-year-old who killed herself after relentless taunting, spent her final days in fear of girls who had threatened to beat her up, according to the first official accounts released in a case in Massachusetts that gained wide attention last week, when six students were charged with felonies.

Ms. Prince, who entered South Hadley High last fall after moving from Ireland, was in emotional torment after weeks of being called an “Irish slut” and other names, and also became increasingly worried about the loudly voiced physical threats, students told investigators. She told a friend that she was “not a tough girl” and “would not know how to fight,” and at one point she asked friends to surround her as she walked in the hall.

The documents were prepared by the district attorney for the Northwestern District in Massachusetts in support of charges against three 16-year-old students. They provide the first detailed accounts of verbal abuse and physical threats that prosecutors say were heaped upon Ms. Prince right up to the afternoon of Jan. 14, when she walked home crying and hanged herself from a stairwell.

They also describe evidence suggesting that some teachers and administrators had known for weeks about the harassment but failed to stop it, a contention that school officials have disputed.

The 40 pages of documents summarize the alleged crimes of the three girls who were arraigned Thursday in Hadley — Ashley Longe, Flannery Mullins and Sharon Chanon Velazquez. They have been charged as youthful offenders with felonies including violation of civil rights and stalking, and have also been charged with similar crimes under juvenile laws. Three other students — Sean Mulveyhill, 17, Kayla Narey, 17, and Austin Renaud, 18 — have been charged as adults, including charges of statutory rape against the two male students. The accused students have pleaded not guilty.

“When all the details become known, I am certain that my client will be cleared of these charges,” Colin Keefe, a lawyer for Ms. Velazquez, said Thursday in a statement.

The documents did little to end the disagreement over how much school officials knew about Ms. Prince's hazing. Her parents say that before the start of school in September, Ms. Prince's aunt told an assistant principal that Phoebe had been bullied at school in Ireland and might need help, according to the parents' spokesman, Darby O'Brien.

In an interview Thursday, Gus Sayer, the superintendent of schools, responded to the parents' assertion and to the documents, which say that teachers were nearby when Ms. Velazquez yelled epithets at her in the lunchroom, for example, and cite students who say they reported other incidents to the authorities.

Mr. Sayer said that under privacy rules, he could not discuss the conversation with the aunt.

He said that Ms. Prince had initially thrived at school but that after an incident in November that he could not describe, officials realized that she had become unhappy, and started monitoring her. “We were aware of some of the things that changed for Phoebe, but we weren't aware of any bullying,” Mr. Sayer said. “If she had said she was being bullied we would have acted on it immediately.”

Mr. Sayer said school administrators learned about the bullying only about a week before Ms. Prince's death, when three of the hazing incidents described in the documents were reported, modifying his earlier assertion of two incidents. In one case, a teacher saw Ms. Velazquez bring Ms. Prince to tears before class and reported it; Ms. Velazquez, who had often been heard berating Ms. Prince and who said she would “punch her in the face,” was suspended for one day, the court documents said.

The harassment grew out of Ms. Prince's brief relationships with boys from two different social groups, the prosecutors said. Sometime in November, Mr. Mulveyhill, a senior and a football star, broke up with Ms. Prince, a freshman, and resumed dating Ms. Narey, a junior. Mr. Mulveyhill then joined with Ms. Narey and their friend Ms. Longe in belittling Ms. Prince.

In December, Ms. Prince had a brief relationship with Mr. Renaud, the prosecutors said, drawing the wrath of his sometime girlfriend, Ms. Mullins, and her friend Ms. Velazquez.

Ms. Mullins later spread word that she was going to “beat Phoebe up.” Ms. Prince told friends that she “was scared and wanted to go home,” her friends told investigators, and went to see an administrator. But she later returned to class and told them that nothing was being done and she was still frightened.

Mr. Sayer confirmed that Ms. Prince had gone to a school officer crying at least once, although it was not certain this was the same incident, but that she did not report the bullying.

On Jan. 13, Ms. Prince described the physical threats to a friend, according to the documents, and said that school “has been close to intolerable lately.”

The next day the hazing only intensified.

Ms. Prince tried to ignore the taunts. But as she walked home that afternoon, the documents said, Ms. Longe passed by in a car and threw an empty energy-drink can at her, called her a name and laughed. Ms. Prince walked home crying and later that afternoon, her younger sister found her hanging by a scarf from the apartment stairwell.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/us/09bully.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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