White supremacist rally at L.A. City Hall draws violent counter-protest

Two men are beaten by mobs of counter-protesters, and five are arrested for throwing objects at the neo-Nazis and their police escorts.

By Robert Faturechi and Richard Winton

April 18, 2010

A rally of about 40 white supremacists Saturday on the lawn of Los Angeles City Hall drew hundreds of counter-protesters, sparked brawls in which two people were severely beaten and ended with crowds of demonstrators hurling rocks and bottles at police and departing supremacists.

The rally, conducted by the National Socialist Movement, prompted the Los Angeles Police Department to go on tactical alert as counter-protesters from throughout the region flooded into downtown L.A. They included a wide assortment of African American, Jewish, Latino, immigrants-rights and anarchist groups.

While some counter-protesters said they had heard about the event through social media such as Twitter and had come to urge peace in the face of the group's hateful message, others had clearly come for a fight. At least five of them were arrested by the end of the demonstration for throwing eggs and rocks.

Before members of the white supremacist group had arrived, a bare-chested middle-aged man with Nazi insignias tattooed on his chest and back walked into a crowd of hundreds of counter-protesters gathered near 1st and Spring streets.

Surrounded, the man mockingly bobbed his head to the rhythm of demonstrators chanting "Nazi scum." About a dozen protesters suddenly began pelting the man with punches and kicks. He fell and was struck on the back with the wooden handle of a protester's sign, which snapped in two. Police eventually reached the man and pulled him from the melee, as blood poured from the back of his neck.

Another man was rushed by a mob on Spring Street. He was punched in the face and kicked for about 20 seconds before police made it to the scene. After that beating was broken up, the man began running south on Spring Street, only to be chased down by a protester and slugged in the face. He collapsed and his face slammed to the curb as protesters began pummeling him again.

The bloodied man was then escorted away by police. Both victims were treated and released, police said.

His sign, unclear in its intended meaning, read "Christianity=Paganism=Heathen$" with an arrow pointing at a swastika.

"Gosh, I think he just didn't have a clear message. I don't even think he was a Nazi," said one man, looking at the broken pieces of the sign left behind.

The neo-Nazi group had obtained a permit for its demonstration earlier in the week, and police prepared the rally area by taping off a section of City Hall's shaded south lawn. About 12:30 p.m., members began delivering anti-immigrant tirades and shouts of " Sie g Heil " that echoed down the street.

"We are tired of you clogging up our streets," shouted one white supremacist.

Another group member repeatedly denounced illegal immigrants, saying, "If the city supports illegal aliens and criminals, that is treason."

A counter-protester shouted back with a bullhorn.

"You're being protected by black and Latino cops, you cowards!" she said.

The rally ended around 2:30 p.m. with counter-protesters rushing toward the criminal courts building parking lot where the white supremacists had parked their cars. Dozens of them hurled rocks and glass bottles at the neo-Nazis and their police escorts.

One vehicle failed to start. As a group of white supremacists attempted to jump-start the car, others raised swastika-emblazoned shields over their heads to protect themselves from projectiles. After the white supremacists left, police allowed the crowds to dissipate.

Cmdr. David Doan said the LAPD's goal was to protect free speech and avoid using force. "There was a tremendous amount of restraint shown by our officers," he said. "We allowed both sides to exercise their 1st Amendment rights."

Doan said it was a frustrating situation for LAPD officers. "We took some rocks and bottles when they arrived, and we took some again when the car had some trouble starting."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-white-supremacist18-2010apr18,0,7661087,print.story

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In Arizona, drawing lines over border law

The normally quiet little city of Winslow is suddenly tense in the wake of lawmakers' decision to pass a strict new immigration law.

By Louis Sahagun

April 18, 2010

Reporting from Winslow, Ariz.

In the days since Arizona passed the nation's toughest law targeting illegal immigrants, this congenial Old West outpost has shown signs of splintering, with neighbors turning against neighbors and police worried about racial profiling.

At community gatherings and City Hall meetings, in homes and morning coffee klatches, tensions rose last week as Winslow residents debated the state of ethnic relations and the burden placed on their little city by both illegal immigrants and the new law's enforcement mandates.

The measure, which has yet to be signed by Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, would require police, if they suspect someone is in the country illegally, to determine the person's immigration status.

Currently, officers can ask about someone's immigration status only if the person is a suspect in another crime. Those who can't prove they are in the U.S. legally face misdemeanor charges.

Winslow police and city officials said they were loath to enforce the law because it would drain scarce resources and risk charges of racial profiling.

Leaders wonder how their 26-officer department can afford to investigate, arrest and transport suspected undocumented immigrants to the nearest prison, 30 miles away.

"At some point in time, it will boil down to this: If we enforce this new law, we are not going to be able to afford to take care of some other pressing law enforcement issues," said Jim Ferguson, city administrator of the 10,500-resident community about 150 miles northeast of Phoenix. "So there's a safety cost."

Winslow Police Officer Afton Foster agreed, and expressed personal misgivings. "It will make us look like bad guys pursuing people because of the color of their skin."

Some citizens, however, are emboldened by a provision in the law that allows them to sue police agencies to compel them to enforce it.

"Political correctness is a disease like typhoid and malaria," said lifelong Winslow resident Marie Lamar, 81. "Until we are all law-abiding citizens, the system will never work."

Lamar also said she intends to report suspected undocumented residents to police, and "complain to the City Council if the law is not enforced."

All these are weighty topics for a town that prides itself on its Route 66 heritage, and was put on the map by the Eagles hit "Take it Easy." Remember the lyrics? "Well, I'm a-standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, and such a fine sight to see. . . ."

"I have real mixed feelings about the whole immigration issue involved here," said Winslow City Atty. Dale Patton Jr. "I've practiced law for 30 years and I've seen real criminals. But most of these people are not criminals. For the most part they are good, clean, hardworking people who just want to earn a living for their families."

Amid the conflicts, illegal immigrants were taking stock of their options. The law's intent to drive them away appears to be taking hold for some.

Leoncio, 39, a restaurant manager who asked that his full name not be used because he does not have papers, shook his head in dismay and said, "You can't fight the law. Maybe I'll move back to Mexico, or to another state like Colorado, Idaho or California.

"I hate being illegal," added Leoncio, who said he had been trying to obtain legal status for nine years. "If I am arrested and deported, my wife and five children, who are citizens, will go on welfare and food stamps. Is that really what people want?"

The community is divided on that sort of question.

Under azure skies on Thursday, a group of four business leaders convened on a downtown street corner to discuss previous plans for a series of multicultural community activities this year, including an event called "Winslow Summer Nights," featuring live music.

"Winslow is a very multicultural community," said Lawrence Kenna, who owns several downtown commercial buildings. "Everybody just seems to get along."

But when the subject turned to the new immigration law, lines were drawn.

"This law seems very harsh," one woman said. "I have a relative from Mexico who is a U.S. citizen. I don't know how I would feel if she were stopped by police."

But gift shop owner Sandra Myers had her mind made up. "Yes, it's going to be hard if maybe your next-door neighbor has to return to Mexico," she said. "But things are out of control. Enough is enough."

Melissa Wallace, a labor representative at a local Arizona Department of Corrections facility, said: "It would be heart-wrenching to think that my grandchildren would have to justify their citizenship."

Tax processor Kathy Contreras overheard the comments and interjected, "I'll do what's best for Winslow. If it's state law, we need to follow it."

Former mayor Allan Affeldt, who owns the elegant La Posada Hotel near where the Los Angeles-to-Chicago Amtrak line stops twice daily, believes the tensions will be short-lived.

"I don't think there will be an ugly fight here, because we simply can't afford to enforce this law," he said.

"I predict the City Council will declare, 'Of course, we will implement the law -- when we have the resources to do so.' . . . Give city officials the rational choice between chasing undocumented people or property crimes, and they will choose the latter."

The new law comes as Winslow, with an annual budget of about $12 million, is trying to revive its tourism business by cleaning up neighborhood streets, demolishing abandoned structures and redeveloping its deteriorating downtown with vintage 1950s facades and multicultural events.

But in the dilapidated barrio locals know as Southside, Ronaldo Gonzales wondered whether the law would somehow make it harder than ever to find work to support his fiancee and her seven children.

"This law is racist and wrong, man, because police are going mix up Mexican nationals with Mexicans from the United States like me -- I was born in Idaho," he said.

"My dad gave me some advice. He said, 'You will be walking down the street one day and police will mistake you for being illegal. Just stay calm and let them know who you are.' "

Winslow City Councilman Tom Chacon, who was born and raised in Southside, would not argue with any of that. "It's scaring the hell out of people," he said. "It's a step backward. I remember when Mexican and African American children were only allowed to swim in the municipal pool on Fridays. On Saturday, the city drained the pool then refilled it for the white kids."

The immigration law has put Winslow Police Chief Stephen Garnett, pastor of Winslow's St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church, in a difficult position. Some locals are demanding aggressive enforcement of the law. Others worry the law would lead to racial profiling that would sweep up innocent U.S. citizens.

Garnett declined to comment on how he plans to proceed until he has had a chance to discuss the matter with his command staff and the Navajo County attorney.

But on Saturday, as he applied a new coat of white paint to the brick walls of his 58-year-old church, he spoke with pride of his force and its role in the community.

"My command staff includes a Native American, an African American and an Anglo, and my lead investigator is Hispanic -- you can't get more diverse, or better than that," he said.

"In Winslow, we do not tolerate racial profiling of any kind."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-arizona-immigration18-2010apr18,0,6599604,print.story

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In Nigeria, no peace from police officers

Human rights groups say security forces kill hundreds of people each year in random violence. Few are brought to justice.

By Robyn Dixon

April 18, 2010

Reporting from Kaduna, Nigeria

Abdul Wuraola knelt in the dust, pleading for mercy. He'd offended the men with guns. They screamed at him in fury. Nothing he said appeased them. It took one downward thrust of a rifle butt into his skull to fell him.

The gunmen weren't criminals. They were the police.

His crime: He'd parked carelessly on the roadside in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna to buy oranges for his breakfast.

Police and security forces in Nigeria routinely engage in random violence that results in hundreds of killings annually, according to human rights groups.

There was the truck driver who drove past a police roadblock in February in the town of Kazaure because of poor brakes. Police dragged him from the vehicle and beat him to death.

Or the student shot and killed that month in Gwarzo when police opened fire during a peaceful protest at a police station claiming that the authorities failed to properly investigate a homicide.

Or the motorcyclist killed in January for getting in the way of a police convoy in Kaduna state. "They got out and shot him," said lawyer Shehu Sani of the Civil Rights Congress, a nongovernment group.

In a rare admission, last month then-Police Minister Ibrahim Lame condemned the violence in a meeting with federal police commanders.

"The current rate of crime across the nation, rising cases of extrajudicial killings, human rights violations, robberies, high-profile assassinations and deliberate failure to comply with government directives are testimony to the sheer incapacity or willful defiance of police high command," Lame said.

"Police is your friend," reads a poster in the northern city of Kano, but many Nigerians, weary of demands for bribes, see the force as anything but friendly. The ruthless attitude of police and security forces has long been criticized by groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Shootouts in which bystanders are killed are common. Those who refuse to pay bribes to police at roadblocks are sometimes shot. Torture in police custody is frequent, according to a December Amnesty International report titled "Killing at Will." It cites numerous cases in which men were arrested, taken to police stations and never seen again. In some cases, families were unofficially told that their relatives were dead.

Police "often claim that the victim was an armed robber killed in a shootout or while trying to escape police custody," the report says. Noting that the law permits officers to shoot suspects who try to escape or avoid arrest, the report says, "In practice, [this] lets the police get away with murder."

Abdul Wuraola's wife, Muibat, crouched in a corner of her house in Kaduna, saying her prayers, her lips moving silently. When she recounted the story of her husband's death in September, she began to sob in keening, high and mournful sounds.

Police "said they were pursuing someone and accidentally he just got in the way," she said. He died the next morning in a hospital, never regaining consciousness.

Muibat found a group of students who had seen police striking her husband. "He was pleading with them, 'I'm just buying oranges for my breakfast,' " she said.

Wuraola, a mechanic, had 10 children, half of them with another wife. Muibat, who is unemployed, is left with five children and no way to support them.

Suleiman Ahmed, deputy chairman of the Civil Rights Congress, said that killings at the hands of police are common, but that police usually say they're accidental. Victims' families are usually unaware of their legal rights, he said, and "by the time they go to the police . . . the police will just humiliate them."

Although figures on extrajudicial killings are difficult to estimate, Human Rights Watch listed 7,186 "armed robbers" killed in shootouts with police from 2000 to 2004.

Amnesty International reports that the numbers probably are higher than official figures suggest: Five people a week were reportedly shot by officers at one police station in Abuja, the capital, and one mortuary in southern Nigeria reported the police delivered the bodies of 150 "unknown robbers" in a year. A cemetery in the south also reported receiving two unidentified bodies a week from police.

The Amnesty report breaks down police killings into various categories: people shot at roadblocks, people shot in police operations, those who police said were killed "in a shootout with armed robbers," those who police said were shot trying to escape, those denied life-saving medical treatment, and those tortured.

"In a country where bribes guarantee safety, those who cannot afford to pay are at risk of being shot or tortured to death by the police," the report says.

Police are poorly trained and poorly paid, and there is no culture of respect for human rights in the force, the report says. A constable's salary is about $170 a month.

All Muibat Wuraola wants is justice.

"When I became a widow, the first day I went out, I saw the policemen with their guns. I was crying, crying, crying.

"Whenever I see them, I only feel sadness," she said. "Sadness all the time."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/africa/la-fg-nigeria-police18-2010apr18,0,6686903,print.story

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FORT HANCOCK, Tex. — The giant rusty fence of metal bars along the border here, built in recent years to keep illegal immigrants from crossing into the United States, has a new nickname among local residents: Jurassic Park Gate, a nod to the barrier in a 1993 movie that kept dangerous dinosaurs at bay in a theme park.

On the other side, a brutal war between drug gangs has forced dozens of fearful families from the Mexican town of El Porvenir to come to the border seeking political asylum, and scores of other Mexicans have used special visas known as border-crossing cards to flee into the United States. They say drug gangs have laid waste to their town, burning down houses and killing people in the street.

Americans are taking in their Mexican relatives, and the local schools have swelled with traumatized children, many of whom have witnessed gangland violence, school officials say.

“It's very hard over there,” said Vicente Burciaga, 23, who fled El Porvenir a month ago with his wife, Mayra, and their infant son after gang members burned down five homes in their neighborhood and killed a neighbor. “They are killing people over there who have nothing to do with drug trafficking,” he said. “They kill you just for having seen what they are doing.”

The story of Fort Hancock, 57 miles southeast of El Paso on the Rio Grande, is echoed along the Texas border with Mexico, from Brownsville to El Paso. As the violence among drug gangs continues to spiral out of control in Mexico, more Mexican citizens are seeking refuge in the United States.

The influx of people fleeing the violence, some of whom were involved in drug dealing in Mexico, has disrupted Fort Hancock's peaceful rhythms. These days, there are more police cars prowling the dusty streets, and fear runs high among residents.

The town has only a few paved streets, one restaurant near Interstate 10, a feed store, a small grocery, a gas station and a couple of general stores. Irrigation canals carry water from the Rio Grande to alfalfa and chili fields, set amid the cactus, sand and mesquite of the Chihuahuan Desert.

About 2,000 people live here, in ramshackle trailer homes, weather-battered recreational vehicles and well-kept brick houses. The water tower boasts of the high school's six-man football team having won the state championship five times between 1986 and 1991.

A few children among the refugees belong to families involved in the drug trade, and rival gang members have threatened them, bringing the specter of gangland killings to the high school, law enforcement and school officials say.

“Some of the families who are fleeing from Mexico are doing it because they were somehow participating in these acts,” said Jose G. Franco, the school superintendent, “and if you want to get at somebody, you get at their children.”

The Hudspeth County Sheriff's Department and the state police are keeping a close eye on unknown vehicles parked near the schools. The school district has for the first time hired a law enforcement officer to patrol its three campuses and has installed security cameras. Spectators are now barred from football and basketball practices.

“The kids are a little bit on edge, you know,” said Constable Jose Sierra, who patrols the schools. “When we see a different car, we start to get phone calls.”

Not everyone coming from El Porvenir is seeking asylum. Many Mexicans in towns along the river have special border-crossing cards, which let them cross for up to 30 days to do business and shop near the border. But some have used the visas to relocate their families temporarily to Fort Hancock and other small towns on the Texas side.

Those who have temporary tourist visas or who can obtain business visas because they have enough money to start businesses in the United States are also moving their families across the border. (Cities like El Paso and San Antonio have had real estate booms and a flourishing of small businesses and Mexican restaurants as a result.)

Other Mexicans who were once happy living in Mexico are taking advantage of whatever means they have to obtain a visa and get out. Some were born in a hospital on the United States side and are American citizens, for instance, or have married citizens but have never applied for residency.

In El Paso alone, the police estimate that at least 30,000 Mexicans have moved across the border in the past two years because of the violence in Juárez and the river towns to the southeast. So many people have left El Porvenir and nearby Guadalupe Bravos that the two resemble ghost towns, former residents say.

People without access to visas, however, have been seeking asylum, even at the risk of being detained for months. In the early days of the conflict, the asylum-seekers were mostly journalists, police officers and officials who had been threatened by organized crime. But now people with ordinary jobs are showing up at the border and saying they fear for their lives.

“This is an emergency situation, a war,” said Jorge Luis Aguirre, a journalist who himself has asked for asylum after his life was threatened in 2008 in Ciudad Juárez. “It's a question of life and death for these people.”

But few Mexicans are granted asylum. Over the last three federal fiscal years, immigration judges heard 9,317 requests across the country, and granted only 183.

Fort Hancock has had a surge in applications in March and April, officials said. All told the number of people asking for asylum at ports of entry along the border alone has climbed steadily, to 338 for the federal fiscal year ended last October, from 179 two years before.

In Fort Hancock, the influx grew after one of the warring drug gangs placed a banner in El Porvenir's central square recently threatening death for anyone left in the town on Easter. In response, the Mexican authorities flooded the town with federal police officers, and the promised mayhem was averted.

A 23-year-old woman with five children, who asked to be identified only as Noemi because she feared reprisals, was one of the people who crossed the two-lane bridge over the Rio Grande the Thursday before Easter. The night before, drug cartel thugs had set fire to four houses, and she and her husband were afraid there would a blood bath that weekend, as the banner warned.

The United States customs officers sent the family to El Paso, where, after a night in a jail, Noemi and her children were allowed to enter the country pending an asylum hearing. Her husband, a farm worker, has remained locked up while officials weigh his claim to be in danger. Noemi is staying with her mother-in-law, who has legal residency, in a squalid trailer home on one of Fort Hancock's unpaved streets.

Her oldest son, a wide-eyed boy of 8, clung to her sleeve and refused to speak. Three girls, ages 4, 2 and 1, played in the desert dust at her feet or climbed on a rusted pickup. She held an infant boy of 7 months.

“All the children, the only thing they know how to play is sicarios,” she said, using the Spanish word for hired killers.

She and her children are sleeping well for the first time in months, she said, and she does not know if her family will ever be able to return to their small house on the other side of the river. They did not even bring a change of clothes with them, she said.

Mr. Franco, the school superintendent, said the schools have absorbed about 50 new students from Mexico since last year, a 10 percent increase in enrollment. Many of the new students speak no English and are dealing with the trauma of having had family members killed.

One Mexican boy in the high school, for instance, is so deeply affected by what he has seen that he is being tutored apart from other students, Mr. Franco said. Several members of the boy's family — his mother, his grandfather, an aunt and an uncle — were tortured with ice picks in El Porvenir in March, the police said.

Reports of the atrocities on the other side of the border are passed from neighbor to neighbor. Almost every family in Fort Hancock has been touched in some way by the violence.

People who have fled El Porvenir say gruesome killings are occurring daily, though newspaper reporters have been unable to enter the town to confirm them. Last month, a man and his pregnant wife were murdered outside a primary school in El Porvenir, according to residents; the man was shot but the killers were said to have cut open the woman and taken her baby, leaving her to die. In another account, gunmen were said to have killed a beggar in a wheelchair.

It was stories like these that persuaded Porfírio Flores to seek asylum for his estranged wife and their two children, who still live in El Porvenir. On the day before Easter, Mr. Flores, a 60-year-old oil worker with legal residency who lives in a cramped RV in Fort Hancock, crossed over to Mexico and escorted his wife and children to the border so they could ask for asylum. But the United States customs officers turned them down without an explanation, he said.

“What can I do? I need a lawyer,” he said, his eyebrows knit together in worry. “They are killing children over there. They are killing people who just try to make a living.”

Other families have had more success bringing their loved ones over the border. Imelda Montoya, a legal resident in the United States, brought in her grandparents on the Monday after Easter after the taco stand the family runs was burned to the ground by arsonists the night before.

The fire was the last straw, Ms. Montoya said. Two of her uncles — one worked at a carwash and another cleaned streets for the city — had been shot to death in the last year by gunmen.

At the border that Monday, the authorities let Ms. Montoya's grandmother, Beatrice Diaz, 66, enter because she had a visa allowing her to cross on errands. But her grandfather, Lorenzo Saldaña, 77, was detained pending a hearing, she said.

A day later, Mrs. Diaz sat primly in her granddaughter's house. She seemed out of place and out of time in her peasant's skirt and blouse. She had spent her entire life in El Porvenir, she said in a bewildered tone, and had never imagined she would live in the United States.

But then she had never imagined the streets of her town would echo at night with car engines roaring and gunfire. “It's very ugly now,” she said. “One cannot sleep in peace.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/us/18border.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

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When Foreclosure Threatens Elder-Care Homes

In September 2009, Sgt. Rick Turini of the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office drove to a house in San Jose to carry out a court-ordered eviction.

With foreclosures in Bay Area counties near all-time highs, the office had been routinely evicting 35 to 40 households a week. But this property was different: It was a board-and-care home for the elderly.

Neither the residents nor their families had been warned about an eviction, said Sergeant Turini, who does not recall the home's exact address.

When he arrived with his partner, the house was still occupied, and the distraught daughter of an elderly bedridden woman was struggling to get her mother into a car. A couple of teenagers doing homework in the living room looked up at the officers in shock.

“We got a call from Adult Protective Services letting us know that the house we were evicting had four or five bedridden residents, and the guy was ignoring the eviction notice,” Sergeant Turini said, referring to the owner. “I couldn't believe it had gone this far.”

He said the sheriff's department worked with agencies to arrange for the fragile inhabitants to be transferred to other facilities or sent home with relatives.

“Here at the sheriff's office we're not going to put a person who can't take care of themselves out on the street,” the sergeant said.

Because of a loophole in the law, owners of residential-care facilities for the elderly — who often double as administrators — do not have to tell their residents or the residents' families if they miss mortgage payments or are on the brink of foreclosure.

An analysis of data by The New York Times shows that more than 100 elder-care homes in the Bay Area were under foreclosure in the last six months, and that as many as 700 residents — who often need help with bathing, eating and other daily activities — may have faced eviction.

At the time they are licensed by the California Department of Social Services, owners of the homes are required to show enough financial wherewithal only to cover three months of operating costs. Unless complaints are made to the agency, current law requires that these homes be visited only every five years.

“Who is minding the shop?” asked Anthony Chicotel, a staff lawyer with the California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, which is cosponsoring legislation to increase protections for elderly residents in these homes. “The law doesn't really say. There's no obligation for them to do anything if they fall into financial distress.”

This means residents, their family members and even the staff providing care may not find out about a property's financial troubles until they see an eviction notice or a sheriff at the door.

Armed police officers could forcibly remove residents from their homes “without any notice, without preparation, without any arrangements for an alternative residence,” Mr. Chicotel said. “Not only are they losing their home, but they are losing the services that allow them to live.”

Tippy Irwin, executive director of the Ombudsman Services of San Mateo, said this trend of ousting elderly residents without warning was “unprecedented.” Her office has handled eight foreclosures of elder-care homes in the last two years, and few owners gave warning to residents or their families.

Ms. Irwin said her staff had to scramble to find new places for the residents.

“In one residence, we got wind that the sheriff had issued a three-day notice to move people in the house, and that was a Friday,” she said. “We had to move them all in one day. It's not the way it should happen.”

“Every one of these owners has been in denial,” Ms. Irwin continued. “They themselves are going through hell. They're losing their homes and their businesses. Not one of them has acknowledged what's happening.”

Brenda Wing experienced this denial first-hand in February when she went to visit her 84-year-old father in the Northstar Manor care home in Woodland. When she arrived, Ms. Wing said, there were three papers stapled to the door that said the house was going to be sold at auction. She called Stephanie Khan, the administrator, and was told that it was a misunderstanding, that the owners were refinancing.

Then, on April 7, the sheriff served an eviction notice, Ms. Wing said. She called again, and Ms. Khan again said it was a misunderstanding.

Then, Ms. Wing said, the conversation turned ugly.

“She was really angry and said, ‘You're asking me about personal finances!' ” Ms. Wing said. “I said, ‘No, I'm asking you if my dad is going to be put out on the street!' It was such a hideous conversation that I had to hang up.”

Ms. Khan confirmed the conversation and the posting of the eviction notice, but said that a loan modification was being negotiated and that the bank had lost the paperwork.

“I wouldn't tell her about my mom's financial business unless it affects the residents,” Ms. Khan said, “and the loan modification attorney said that it won't affect the residents.”

She refused to identify the loan modification lawyer, but said that if she and her mother had been told to evacuate the premises, she would have told the residents and their families.

“I would tell them to find alternative housing and give them enough time,” Ms. Khan said.

Records from DataQuick, a firm that tracks 83 million properties in the United States, show that Northstar Manor was foreclosed on and is now owned by Wells Fargo Bank. Kevin Waetke, a Wells Fargo Home Mortgage spokesman, confirmed the bank's ownership, but said that as soon as the bank learned it was a care facility with elderly residents, it delayed the eviction.

“We are working closely with the families and have assured them that we will provide all the time they need to relocate the residents in appropriate housing, however long it takes,” Mr. Waetke said.

Alexandra Morris, a gerontologist working with the Alzheimer's Association of Northern California, said that many occupants of these homes had dementia, and that an abrupt change could cause severe anxiety and decline known as transfer trauma.

“People with dementia focus on familiar people, and familiar aspects of an environment,” Ms. Morris said. “That's their anchor, and they can quite literally feel adrift when they have to move.”

Agencies that oversee these residential-care facilities for the elderly — which typically house up to six patients — have no reliable data on which homes are threatened with foreclosure or have closed because of it.

But a New York Times analysis of licensing and foreclosure data indicated that about 16 percent of the 1,600 Bay Area properties licensed as small residential-care homes has been in some stage of foreclosure since June 2006. According to RealtyTrac, a company that compiles foreclosure records, that includes more than 100 homes under foreclosure in the last six months.

It is impossible to tell from the data how many of these were operating as residential-care homes during the foreclosure proceedings or thereafter. But those properties housed as many as 700 elderly residents.

Thelma Tan's elder-care home, April Garden, in Saratoga, was among the properties in foreclosure on a list RealtyTrac updated April 4. Ms. Tan said she worked out a deal with her lender on April 5 and defended her decision to keep staff and residents in the dark.

“There's no need to alarm the families,” she said. “Of course, if something drastic was going to happen, we're required to give them notice.”

Charles Skoien, Jr., director of the Community Residential Care Association of California, said he was unaware of the spate of foreclosures and evictions in elder-care facilities. He said the licensing agency should be in those facilities long before “something like that is going down.”

Asked about legislation that would tighten requirements, Mr. Skoien said: “I think we have adequate regulations now. I don't think we need more.”

State Senator Mark Leno, Democrat of San Francisco, has introduced legislation that would make it less likely that the elderly residents in these care facilities would have no warning of a pending foreclosure. It would require people licensed to run such facilities to notify the licensing division of the Department of Social Services and the residents or their legal representative within 24 hours of notification of foreclosure, bankruptcy, missing a mortgage payment or the prospect of a utility cutoff.

The bill would also fine owners who failed to do so $100 a day, and permanently disqualify them from operating elder-care homes in California. A vote on the measure is not expected before June.

Ms. Irwin, the San Mateo ombudsman, hopes it will pass.

“We've had a terrible time in this county, and we kicked up a storm,” she said. “We need these protections in the law.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/us/18sfforeclose.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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EDITORIAL

A Safe, Loving Home

The story of Artyom Savelyev, the boy who was sent back to Russia by his American adoptive mother, is heart-wrenching. It is also threatening the dreams of thousands of other children and prospective families.

Artyom, who turned 8 on Friday, arrived in Moscow by plane this month, alone and with a note asking Russian authorities to take him back. His mother, Torry Ann Hansen, a nurse from Tennessee, wanted to return the boy to his orphanage, saying he had severe psychological problems. The family says that orphanage workers misled them about Artyom's condition.

We do not know all the details. But returning a child like he was a damaged pair of pants is profoundly wrong.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said last week that the government had halted adoptions to the United States until stronger safeguards are in place in both countries. It is unclear whether the hold applies to all United States adoptions and how long it might last.

Since 1991, 50,000 Russian children have found homes here, the vast majority with happy endings. Right now, as many as 3,500 Russian children are in the adoption pipeline; the cases of 250 American families are near completion. They should not be penalized while authorities fix what are clearly worrisome problems.

This week, an American delegation will go to Russia to discuss ways to ensure that Artyom's ordeal is not repeated. American adoption agencies do home studies on prospective parents. Russia also requires American agencies to do post-adoption assessments, but compliance is spotty. Moscow is expected to ask Washington to be the enforcer, a role it is not eager to take on. There should be more post-adoption oversight. And Washington should add a requirement that agencies provide access to follow-up counseling for parents.

The Russians need to fix their system. Many orphanages are overcrowded, with too few staff members and resources. Adoptive parents complain that they are not told key facts about their children. The Americans want to be sure adoption agencies and prospective parents have sufficient data — in advance — about a child's health. The Kremlin can also prove its concern by providing more financial support and regulation of orphanages and anyone involved in the adoption process.

Russians are understandably sensitive about sending their children abroad. The Kremlin should find ways to encourage more Russian families to adopt. Denying orphaned children a chance for a loving home outside Russia would be a tragedy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/opinion/18sun2.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From Fox News

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Gates Warns U.S. Lacks Strategy on Iran Nukes

Memo from Defense Secretary Robert Gates to the White House warns the United States lacks a nimble long-term plan for dealing with Iran's nuclear program, according to a published report.

WASHINGTON - A memo from Defense Secretary Robert Gates to the White House warned that the United States lacks a nimble long-term plan for dealing with Iran's nuclear program, according to a published report.

Gates wrote the three-page memo in January and it set off efforts in the Pentagon, White House and intelligence agencies to come up with new options, including the use of the military, The New York Times said in its Sunday editions, quoting unnamed government officials.

White House officials Saturday night strongly disagreed with the comments that the memo caused a reconsideration of the administration's approach to Iran.

"It is absolutely false that any memo touched off a reassessment of our options," National Security Council spokesman Benjamin Rhodes told The Associated Press. "This administration has been planning for all contingencies regarding Iran for many months."

One senior official described the memo as "a wake-up call," the paper reported. But the recipient of the document, Gen. James Jones, President Barack Obama's national security adviser, told the newspaper in an interview that the administration has a plan that "anticipates the full range of contingencies."

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell, who did not confirm the memo Saturday night, said the White House has reviewed many Iran options.

"The secretary believes the president and his national security team have spent an extraordinary amount of time and effort considering and preparing for the full range of contingencies with respect to Iran," Morrell said.

The U.S. is pressing for new international sanctions against Iran. The memo contemplates a situation in which sanctions and diplomacy fail to dissuade Iran from pursuing nuclear capability, the Times said.

Obama set a deadline of the end of 2009 for Iran to respond to his offer of dialogue to resolve concerns about Iran's accelerated nuclear development.

Iran spurned the offer, and since then the administration has pursued what it calls the "pressure track," a combination of stepped-up military activity in Iran's neighborhood and a hard push for a new round of international sanctions that would pinch Iran economically.

Gates and other senior members of the administration have issued increasingly stern warnings to Iran that its nuclear program is costing it friends and options worldwide, while sticking to the long-held view that a U.S. or Israeli military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities would be counterproductive.

Obama and other administration figures have drawn a line that says Iran will not be allowed to become a nuclear state, but they have not spelled out what the United States would do if Iran gained the ability to produce a weapon but does not actually field one.

Four senior administration officials told Congress last week that Iran is perhaps a year away from being able to build a weapon but that it would take two- to five additional years to turn the device into an effective weapon that could be launched against an enemy.

Iran claims its nuclear program is intended for energy production, not a weapon.

"All we really know is that Iran is widening and deepening its nuclear weapons capabilities, David Albright, founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, told the AP. "We don't have any insight into what they're thinking about doing -- whether they'll just live with a nuclear weapons capability which will probably include learning more about nuclear weapons themselves, or they'll actually build them."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/pentagon/ci.Gates+Warns+U.S.+Lacks+Strategy+on+Iran+Nukes.opinionPrint

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N.Y. Teen Charged With School Massacre Threat

A teen was arrested for threatening to go on a shooting spree at a high school on New York's Long Island, myFOXny.com reported Saturday.

NEW YORK -- A 17-year-old Long Island boy threatened to go on a shooting spree at his former school on the anniversary of the Columbine High massacre, police said.

Nathan Myres, of North Massapequa, was arraigned Saturday on a charge of making a terroristic threat.

He had been a student at Plainedge High School until earlier this year, when he transferred to a special needs program.

Nassau County police said they began investigating several days after a rumor began rippling through the school that a former pupil was planning an attack. Students told police that Myres said he was planning a Columbine-style assault to take place on Tuesday, the 11th anniversary of the Colorado tragedy in which two students killed 12 classmates and a teacher.

Police haven't found any weapons and it is possible the teen was just trying to scare people, Detective Lt. Kevin Smith said.

But, he added, "Teenagers have to understand that in this day and age, they can't make these type of threats."

Myres remained in custody Saturday. His bail was set at $25,0000. It was unclear when he would get a permanent lawyer. Myres doesn't live with his parents, police said. His mother is dead and his father lives in another state.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/crime/ci.N.Y.+Teen+Charged+With+School+Massacre+Threat.opinionPrint

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From MSNBC

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Human trafficking under spotlight in South Africa

ERMELO, South Africa - Police in this small town in eastern South Africa thought they had a problem with prostitutes they could solve in the usual way — arrest the women and get them off the streets.

Then Warrant Officer Magda Scholtz found herself doing something unusual. She talked to the women, curious about what had brought them to Ermelo. She found the problem was human traffickers.

At a heavily guarded hearing Friday, seven suspects waived their right to bail in a case in which they are accused of recruiting women and at least one 16-year-old from across South Africa and bringing them to Ermelo, where they were treated like slaves and forced into prostitution.

Two other suspects asked for more time to appeal for a bail, and a new hearing was set for month's end.

The case comes as South Africa prepares to enact tough new legislation against human traffickers. The World Cup that opens in June also has focused attention on the crime, with questions about whether trafficking might increase because of the influx of partying fans.

The women in the case before the court Friday spoke of being locked in their rooms when they weren't working and of being beaten by the suspects. Their identity documents were taken from them and they were forced to take drugs. All their earnings were taken from them, and they were given little to eat beyond rice and cheap meat.

"One girl was raped ... because she refused to work," Scholtz said.

Four women who have agreed to testify against the suspects are in a witness protection program. Scholtz said even she does not know where they are, but is confident they will appear when the time comes during trial.

Other women were afraid to testify, and the fear increased when a prostitute was found dead near the apartment complex where the women had been living. Scholtz said the dead woman, who had been strangled, had said she would testify but refused to enter the protection program.

Vanessa Barolsky, a sociologist at South Africa's Human Sciences Research Council, said police too often fail to listen to the women, children and migrants, who are the most common victims of traffickers.

"Often what happens is that people are just investigated for prostitution without anybody investigating further," she said. "There are a lot of cases that are probably lost."

Barolsky's government-supported think tank released a report in March that explored trafficking in South Africa. The report said victims included children brought from elsewhere in Africa or the South African countryside to work as street vendors, baby sitters and maids in South Africa's cities. Some work in conditions very close to slavery, and those who leave at times fall into sex work out of desperation.

Women from Asia have been recruited to South Africa with promises of greater earnings here. Some come knowing the jobs are as prostitutes, while others fall for false promises of other work.

Trafficking is not specifically a crime, making statistics hard to compile. The Ermelo case is typical — the suspects are charged under provisions of the country's sexual offenses law.

A proposed South African law that has been years in the making creates a trafficking offense, punishable by life in prison. That's comparable to the possible sentencing under the racketeering and sex crimes laws that have been used in the past to prosecute traffickers.

In addition, the proposed law criminalizes, under certain circumstances, using the services of a trafficked person, providing premises for traffickers, transporting victims, and failing to report suspected cases.

Provisions to guard against deporting victims, provide them shelter and other aid and help them get compensation from traffickers also are laid out.

Malebo Khotu-Rammopo, the point person on human trafficking for South Africa's National Prosecuting Authority, said lawmakers, prosecutors and others were still discussing how to implement the proposals, and the new law may not go into effect until late this year or early 2011.

In Ermelo, police spokesman Captain Leonard Hlathi said the young women had been promised "decent jobs" in Mpumalanga, a province whose roads include trucking routes from the neighboring countries of Swaziland and Mozambique.

"When they got to Mpumalanga, it was a different story," Hlathi said. "They were forced to work as prostitutes."

Hlathi said the lesson was clear: However desperate for work, don't set out with people making promises too good to be true. "You might not come home."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36596201/ns/world_news-africa/print/1/displaymode/1098/

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Christina Welch, shown in this 2005 photo, suffered permanent brain damaged after her father violently shook her when she was two-months old. She never learned to walk, talk, or sit by herself and died in March 2006. She was 19.

Decades after shaking baby, dad jailed again Case centers on 19-year-old who died from trauma suffered during infancy By MITCH STACY The Associated Press April 17, 2010 NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. - Soon after Christina Welch turned 18 in the spring of 2005, her biological parents asked permission to pay her a visit. Mike and Tina Wells broke down when the bed covers were pulled back and they saw the state of the girl: so severely brain damaged as a baby that she never learned to walk, talk or sit up by herself. Maureen Welch, the woman who had adopted her, walked into the kitchen to leave the three of them alone, thinking to herself that it was good the couple finally got to see what Mike Wells had done to his infant daughter. "I didn't know I hurt her that bad," he said to Welch when he came into the kitchen. He apologized and told Welch she was a guardian angel sent by God to take care of their Christina. Mike Wells was 19 when he shook his 2-month-old daughter and covered her mouth to stop her from crying. He and Tina Wells were convicted of aggravated child abuse in 1989, and each served less than a year in prison. They went on with their lives, having several more children together. They raised their growing family in weathered mobile homes in rural Pasco County northwest of Tampa, and then in central Georgia where Mike Wells worked for awhile at a used-tire shop. Neither got in serious trouble again with the law. And that might have been the end of it — a forever-sorry father having served his time and having to live with what he'd done to his child.

The same prosecutor who'd sent Mike Wells away in 1989 came after him again, this time getting a grand jury indictment charging him with murdering his daughter.

Last month, Christopher Michael Wells, now 42, pleaded no contest to second-degree murder and got a 15-year prison sentence.

His wife, who wasn't charged in Christina's death, still stays with her mother and children in a trailer in Monticello, Ga., with a yard strewn with toys and household items and secured by four barking dogs. She declined to comment and asked an Associated Press reporter to leave.

Welch, Christina's adoptive mother who is now 77, raises another disabled child she adopted in the tiny wooden house with purple trim where she loved and doted on Christina until the end. She says Mike Wells got what was coming to him, and admits that sometimes she wants to do to him exactly what he did to the child she lovingly nicknamed "Beanie."

In the next breath, she'll lament that a father who might be a different person now than he was 20 years ago is being taken away from his family.

"I don't know," she said. "I just want it all to be over."

Charges and plea deals

Prosecutor Michael Halkitis said charging Wells was an easy decision. Doctors didn't expect the child to live long after the abuse, and Halkitis' office was poised to charge him with murder back then. And he said the medical examiner was clear in his assessment that her death, even though it came nearly 20 years after the abuse, was a homicide.

Halkitis acknowledged that Wells had straightened up his life since he got out of prison, but the prosecutor said it didn't matter. Giving Wells a break never entered his mind.

Halkitis is satisfied with the plea agreement because the terms included Wells waiving the right to appeal. Halkitis acknowledged that defense attorneys had raised legitimate issues that could have tied up the case in appellate courts for years and even gotten it overturned. That won't happen now. Defense challenges had already dragged the case out for more than three years.

Beaten

Mike and Tina Wells initially took a plea deal and were sentenced to prison for unspecified acts of child abuse against Christina, Halkitis said. Since the infant suffered other injuries — broken ribs, a broken clavicle and a bruise on the head — the prosecutor said he was able to home in on the shaking and covering of the child's mouth as separate, specific acts that caused Christine's brain damage and eventual death.

The judge consistently agreed with Halkitis, rejecting the defense's double-jeopardy arguments and the claim that Wells couldn't be charged with murder because the death occurred more than a year and a day after the offense, as per old English common law.

In the end, Wells chose not to risk a trial, where he could have faced a life sentence if convicted of first-degree murder. He declined to be interviewed by The Associated Press before he went to prison, and his defense attorneys did not return numerous calls.

Halkitis said his case was strong: several noted specialists roundly agreed with the medical examiner that it was Wells' abuse that directly led to Christina's death, even though she had myriad other health problems.

And one of the star trial witnesses would have been the plainspoken Welch, who would have talked about how she turned Christina in bed every three hours, lifted her into a wheelchair for frequent outings and sat up with her as she wailed in pain the night before her death.

"It had a lot of jury appeal," the prosecutor said.

None of that matters much to Welch, who still cries sometimes when she talks about her Beanie. She and her late husband, Jim, became the child's foster parents a few months after she was injured and adopted her when she was 5. The couple had six daughters of their own, fostered hundreds of children over the years and adopted four who were disabled.

"I took the kids nobody else wanted," she said.

After her husband died 15 years ago, the diminutive woman lifted and carried Christina from the bed by herself before the state paid for a mechanical device with slings that made it easier. The track of the machine still snakes from room to room along the ceiling of the aging wooden house.

Pictures of Christina remain everywhere.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36618238/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/print/1/displaymode/1098/

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LA's ex-gangsters train to go against gang life

LOS ANGELES - The phone rang around 2 a.m., waking Teeida Townsend. "My homie got killed," the caller said.

Townsend knew how the cycle plays out here in the gang heartland of south Los Angeles: a killing, a revenge shooting, and then another. He rushed to the crime scene. Gang members were growing agitated. Beyond the yellow police tape, the bullet-riddled body of their teenage homeboy lay beneath a white sheet.

"'We have to keep calm, we don't want no retaliation, don't pick up those guns'," he remembered telling them.

Townsend's no cop. He's an ex-Crip, and one of the ranks of former gang bangers known as "gang interventionists" who police have come to rely on to ease tensions. But the recent felony convictions of several of them and the case of another accused of ordering a hit on a detective have undermined their credibility and proven an embarrassment to the city's anti-gang office that has funded them.

To bolster the program, officials are offering them training to help them walk the hazardous line between gangs and the police, without endangering themselves or others and without falling back into gang life.

"It's very difficult work to do and it takes a toll on the person," said Guillermo Cespedes, director of the Mayor's Office on Gang Reduction and Youth Development. "How to train professionals in that field is a challenge."

As ex-gang members, Townsend and his colleagues have singular access to a culture largely impenetrable to outsiders. With street credibility earned through gang exploits, doing prison time and even doing favors for gang leaders, gang code dictates these veterans are respected and have a "license to operate," or permission to move freely on gang turf.

But they must also make it clear to authorities and gang members that they no longer condone the gang life or participate in it. They can't however preach against the gang, which would alienate members.

At the same time, it can be a struggle for them to remain on the fringe of a life they swore allegiance to as teens, in some cases carrying on as a family tradition. It was a lifestyle they attested their loyalty to with tattoos, and gave them a sense of identity and community, as well as income from crime.

"The street has a hell of a pull," said 55-year-old Aquil Basheer, who runs the interventionist training course Professional Community Intervention Training Institute in South Los Angeles. "That's one of the biggest obstacles we face in this work."

City officials say it's worth taking a chance on ex-gang bangers because intervention can be uniquely effective in tamping down gang-related violence.

When an interventionist, Ronald Barron, was shot to death in February by a graffiti tagger he confronted, interventionists were called on to spread the word the killing was not gang-related, thwarting possible retaliation. When gangs held parties in parks known as "Hood Days," they negotiated with rival gangs to prevent gun-toting gatecrashers.

"I can't talk to the people you talk to," Los Angeles police Sgt. Curtis Woodle told Basheer's class. "We got to team up."

When Townsend arrived at the shooting scene on a recent Sunday morning, he set to work pacifying emotional gang members, while a colleague tried to console the victim's distraught relatives.

"They listened to me because they respect me as an O.G.," recalled the 46-year-old Townsend, referring to the term "original gangster" which means a longtime, well respected gang member.

"If you don't have no respect, these guys will laugh in your face," he said.

Dealing with armed, volatile gangsters can be dangerous work. Basheer recalled being threatened with a gun several times on the streets. "You got nothing but your own wit, personality and relationships in situations where all hell is breaking loose," he said.

Interventionists walk a particularly thin tight-rope when they interact with police. Gang members may think they are turncoats, and cops may believe they're still in the gang. They have to clarify they do not work as informants, and emphasize their focus is community safety, especially protection of children, and even individual gang members.

"It's a very, very hard line sometimes," said interventionist Leon Bryant, recalling one instance when he had to quickly allay gang members' suspicions when a cop approached him as he was talking to them.

Later, he had to tell the officer not to approach him so openly.

For many one-time gang members, families are a powerful motive to stay out of "the life."

Former homegirl Nicola Daugherty said she brought up three of her seven children to follow her footsteps. After serving prison time for selling cocaine, witnessing driveby shootings, seeing her 18-year-old brother killed, and finally changing her life through a church, she's now set on saving her own kids and others.

"I only taught my boys what I knew — gang-banging," the 40-year-old hairdresser said. "It's my duty and job to pull them out. It's still not too late."

The most successful gang interventionist is one who has made a deep personal commitment like Daugherty, experts say. But it's not always easy to immediately distinguish them. Many apply to courses after hearing about them through the grapevine.

A 37-year intervention veteran, Basheer carefully screens applicants for each class, looking at whether they have left the gang mentally, as well as physically. He tests them to see if they can work with rival gang members, wear colors associated with another gang, and cooperate with cops, for instance.

Lawyer Connie Rice, who oversees the city's contracted interventionist course, said she also looks for a spiritual transformation. "They've had an epiphany of some kind, often religious," she said.

After the courses, some interventionists are employed by nonprofit agencies under contract to the city, and others by nonprofits working independently. Salaries average about $36,000 a year. Many do the work informally as volunteers.

For Townsend, receiving letters from imprisoned former homeboys and the eyes of his five children and two grandchildren are a constant reminder not to fall back. He joined the gang at 13, and quit at 38.

"The temptation is always going to be there," he said. "But I never wanted to backslide. I've moved totally forward. God gave me a second chance. I'm trying to save some lives."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36616649/ns/us_news/print/1/displaymode/1098/

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