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From the Los Angeles Times

Iran frees American Sarah Shourd from prison

State media say $500,000 bail was posted. Two men seized with her 13 months ago remain in custody.

By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times

September 15, 2010

Reporting from Istanbul, Turkey

— Iran released American Sarah E. Shourd from Tehran's Evin prison Tuesday on $500,000 bail, the website of Iran's state-owned English-language Press TV and other Iranian media reported.

She has been handed over to the Swiss Embassy, which handles United States interests in Iran in the absence of diplomatic relations between Washington and Tehran, according to the semi-official Iranian Students News Agency, or ISNA.

Shourd, 32 along with friends Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal, were arrested by Iranian authorities more than 13 months ago during what their relatives say was an ill-fated hiking trip along the Iran-Iraq border.

They were formally charged this week with espionage and illegally entering Iran. The prosecutor said Fattal and Bauer would be held in jail for at least another two months.

It was not immediately clear whether Shourd would be able to immediately leave Iran, but her lawyer and a judiciary official indicated earlier this week that she could. Her mother has said Shourd has medical problems.

The Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jaffari-Dowlatabadi said in a statement that Shourd's backers had put up a bank note for the $500,000, reported the semi-official Iranian Labor News Agency, or ILNA. U.S. government officials have been quoted saying that no American money would be used for the bail.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-hiker-20100915,0,6159309.story

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Court program offers a more rehabilitative way of handling veterans

L.A. County joins surge of courts offering veterans convicted of drug offenses or nonviolent crimes counseling and treatment instead of jail. But it's not a free pass, the judge warns.

By Jack Leonard, Los Angeles Times

September 14, 2010

Michael Baldwin, a veteran of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, sat in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom dressed in a very different uniform from the ones he wore serving his country in Guam, Japan and Germany.

Clad in blue jail scrubs, the 44-year-old faced the possibility of prison for stealing perfume and cologne from department stores.

But Baldwin was one of four former servicemen offered the chance to avoid jail and turn their lives around as part of a Los Angeles County court initiative launched Monday that aims to help veterans in trouble with the law.

The program is one of a growing number around the country to offer veterans an alternative to jail by providing substance abuse counseling as well as mental health and medical treatment.

Those who make it through the program, which can last up to two years, will earn the chance to have their cases dismissed or their charges reduced.

Many participants are expected to stumble along the way. Those who repeatedly fail or flout the program's rules can wind up back behind bars.

"This is not a get-out-of-jail-free card," Superior Court Judge Michael A. Tynan warned participants at the program's first court hearing. "Your issues may or may not be your fault, but your recovery is totally your responsibility."

Tynan, a former Army medic, said he expects that many of the defendants will have drug or alcohol addictions.

At Monday's hearing, he talked briefly with Baldwin about his time in the military, including their shared experience of being stationed at the Army base at Ft. Riley, Kan.

Baldwin told the judge he had been sober for 90 days — about as long as he had been in jail — following eight years of addiction.

Next to Baldwin sat Ricky Grisom, a 52-year-old former Marine who was convicted of drug possession last month.

"How long have you been using drugs?" Tynan asked him.

Grisom sighed. "A few years. I'm finding it very, very difficult to stop."

Cocaine was his drug of choice, the veteran explained.

"We're here to help you," Tynan responded.

The judge ordered that both men be released from jail to a representative of the Department of Veterans Affairs so that the agency could assess their needs and find them a treatment facility.

Defendants who qualify for VA benefits and are charged with relatively minor, nonviolent felonies are eligible for the program. Tynan said he would also consider cases in which veterans were accused of fighting or other violence, as long as no weapons were used and no one was seriously hurt.

The new program marks the nation's 42nd veterans court since the first one opened in January 2008 in Buffalo, N.Y., according to the National Assn. of Drug Court Professionals, which provides help in setting up veterans courts.

"That's pretty incredible progress," said Chris Deutsch, a spokesman for the association.

Underlying the growth is concern over the large number of veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan and the toll their combat service might take.

Studies have shown that many troops suffer from post-traumatic stress and other disorders. And while the vast majority of veterans never wind up in legal trouble, psychiatrists and law enforcement officials agree that traumas caused by combat can lead to substance abuse and criminality.

"In the past, we haven't always risen to the occasion to give them they help they need," Deutsch said. "There is a recognition of that and a desire to make sure that doesn't happen again."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-veterans-20100914,0,1015344,print.story

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Illegal immigrants held in isolated jails struggle for legal help, survey finds

The majority are in facilities beyond the reach of legal aid groups, resulting in caseloads of 100 detainees per attorney, a rights group reports. An additional 10% have no access to any legal aid.

By Ken Dilanian, Tribune Washington Bureau

September 14, 2010

Reporting from Washington

Even as the Obama administration seeks to create a more humane system of detention for illegal immigrants, most continue to be held in rural jails without ready access to legal representation, a human rights group says in a report to be released today.

In a survey of immigration detention facilities nationwide, the Chicago-based National Immigrant Justice Center found that more than half did not offer detainees information about their rights, and 78% prohibited private phone calls with lawyers.

More than 80% of detainees were in facilities that were isolated and beyond the reach of legal aid organizations, resulting in heavy caseloads of 100 detainees per immigration attorney, the survey found. Ten percent of detainees were held in facilities in which they had no access at all to legal aid groups.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, detains about 400,000 immigrants annually at a cost of $1.7 billion this fiscal year, its budget documents say. Agency head John Morton has pledged to overhaul the detention system after years of news reports spotlighting poor treatment and deaths of detainees.

Illegal immigrants facing deportation proceedings have no guaranteed right to a lawyer, but a network of nonprofit organizations offers legal help to immigrants in detention. That network is overstretched, and immigrants are often moved to facilities that are far from legal support groups, said the report by the justice center. The report surveyed 150 immigration detention facilities that accounted for 97% of the detention beds.

"While access to legal counsel is a foundation of the U.S. justice system, our survey found that the government continues to detain thousands of men and women in remote facilities where access to counsel is limited or nonexistent," said Mary Meg McCarthy, executive director of the National Immigrant Justice Center. "In some facilities, it is impossible for detained immigrants to find attorneys."

Federal officials said they were making progress in helping provide legal help for detained immigrants.

"ICE is committed to allowing detainees access to telephones, legal counsel and law library resources," agency spokesman Brian Hale said in a statement. "ICE is working with our stakeholders, including the U.S. Department of Justice … and nongovernmental organizations, to expand and support pro bono representation for those in our custody."

The issue of lawyers for immigrant detainees is not new. Last year, the Constitution Project, a bipartisan legal group that promotes the right to legal counsel, argued in a report that the government should consider public funding for legal aid to detained immigrants.

Illegal immigrants ordered held are placed in a patchwork of about 350 mostly private facilities, many of them in less populated parts of the country. Detainees often find themselves transferred to facilities far from their homes, families and friends.

Last month, the immigration enforcement agency unveiled an online detainee locator to allow people to find and track those in custody.

"They do seem to be on the road to making some substantial reforms," said Carl Shusterman, a former immigration official who practices immigration law in Los Angeles.

Nevertheless, Shusterman said, he recently had a client who was transferred to El Paso and a lawyer had to fly out to a hearing to represent the man. He won his case and was not deported.

A 2005 Migration Policy Institute study found that 41% of detainees applying to become lawful permanent residents who had legal counsel won their cases, compared with 21% of those without representation. In asylum cases, 18% of detainees with lawyers were granted asylum, compared with 3% for those without.

Granting immigrants better access to counsel could even save taxpayer money, the immigrant justice group argues, because detainees often would be released sooner, saving the $122-a-day cost of detention.

Obama cites 'legitimate fears' about debt

The president says conservatives are 'right to be concerned' about deficit spending, but he says that extending tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans would only exacerbate the problem.

By Michael A. Memoli, Tribune Washington Bureau

September 13, 2010

President Obama acknowledged Monday that the government's response to the financial crisis created "legitimate fears" about the nation's growing debt, but argued that extending tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans would only exacerbate the problem.

Speaking in the backyard of a Northern Virginia family before an audience that included small-business owners, Obama renewed his debate with Republicans over the best course to jump-start a sluggish economy, just as members of Congress returned to Washington.

"The vast majority of Democrats think that because wages and incomes had flatlined for middle class families … [they] should definitely get an extension of the tax cuts that were instituted in 2001 and 2003," he said. "We could get that done this week. But we're still in this wrestling match with John Boehner and Mitch McConnell about the last 2 to 3 percent, where on average we'd be giving them $100,000 for people making $1 million or more."

That would be worth consideration, he continued, except that the nation "just can't afford" the additional $700-billion price tag.

Obama continued to make the case that the economy was growing, albeit slower than many had hoped, and reiterated new proposals to provide additional stimulus.

"I have never been more confident about the future of our economy, if we stay on track and we deal with some of these longstanding problems that we haven't dealt with in decades," he said.

But he also addressed growing unease about government spending that was represented by protests in Washington on Sunday by conservative activists.

"They saw the Recovery Act, they saw TARP, they saw the auto bailout. They look at this and [say], 'God, all these huge numbers are adding up.' So they're right to be concerned about that," he said. "I think that there's an opportunity for Democrats and Republicans to come together and to say, what are the tough decisions that we can make right now that won't squash the recovery … but how can we get ourselves on a trajectory where mid-term and long term we're starting to bring our debt and deficits slowly under control."

He pointed to recommendations that will be coming after the election from his fiscal responsibility commission as the first step in doing so, but returned to the idea of tax cut extensions as an example of what is unsustainable given the debt challenges.

"We can't give away $700 billion to folks who don't need it and think somehow that we're going to balance our budget," he said.

Congressional Republicans today have signaled that they would oppose any effort by the administration and Democrats to allow any tax cuts to expire. In doing so, they argued that House Minority Leader John Boehner had not, as the White House argued, "blinked" by saying he would consider only voting on an extension middle class.

"Raising taxes in this environment is a non-starter for me and millions of American small business people who are struggling to keep the lights on and meet their payroll obligations," House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said in a statement.

FBI reports 5% drop in crime rate

The numbers, continuing a 20-year trend, defy expectations of higher crime during a period of economic problems.

By David G. Savage, Tribune Washington Bureau

September 14, 2010

Reporting from Washington

The nation's crime rate dropped 5% last year, continuing a 20-year trend that has cut the incidence of major crimes nearly in half, according to FBI statistics .

Crime experts have cited several possible explanations for the falling crime rate, including better policing, a swelling of the prison population, the decline of the crack cocaine epidemic and an aging population. But regardless of the reason, crime fell sharply during the 1990s and has declined gradually since then.

Last year, the rate of murders and manslaughter was 5.0 per 100,000 Americans, down from 9.8 in 1991. Overall, the rate of violent crimes fell more than a third during that time, from a rate of 758 per 100,000 in 1991 to 429 last year. This number includes homicides, rapes, robberies and assaults.

Common property crimes also declined sharply over the last two decades. For example, the FBI counted 1,661,000 thefts of motor vehicles in 1991. Last year, it counted 794,616, a drop of 164,000 vehicle thefts from 2008.

"This is good news. It should get more attention," said John Conklin, a Tufts University sociologist who has written widely on crime and its causes.

He said the recent declines contradicted predictions that a bad economy and high unemployment would lead to an increase in thefts, robberies and other crimes. Conklin studied the steep decline in crime rates in the 1990s and concluded the most significant cause was the increase in the prison population.

"If you lock up a lot more people, you will probably see reduced crime," he said. "That's doesn't necessarily mean I recommend a 'lock-them-up' policy. We have the world's highest rate of incarceration."

The FBI released its final crime statistics for 2009 on Monday, following up on estimates released in March. Its final report highlighted the across-the-board drop in crime between 2008 and 2009. Robberies declined by 8%, murders by 7.3%, aggravated assaults by 4.2% and rapes by 2.6%. The number of property crimes fell by 4.6%, including a 17% drop in motor vehicle thefts.

The FBI breaks down its national data by four regions, and it reported that property and violent crimes were highest in the South and lowest in the Northeast.

Congress must act to end electronic fishing expeditions at the border

No matter how the courts rule on an ACLU lawsuit over customs agents seizing laptops and viewing their contents, lawmakers should remedy such invasions of privacy.

EDITORIAL

September 13, 2010

Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union challenged in court the Department of Homeland Security's policy of allowing customs agents to seize and view the contents of laptops and other electronic devices without reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. The lawsuit is a worthy attempt to close a gaping loophole in the protection of personal privacy. But courts so far have been inhospitable to such claims, which is why Congress must act.

According to the ACLU's complaint, between Oct. 1, 2008, and June 2, 2010, more than 6,500 travelers — nearly 3,000 of them U.S. citizens — had their electronic devices searched as they crossed U.S. borders under policies promulgated by two Homeland Security agencies: U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The lead plaintiff is Pascal Abidor, a U.S.-French dual citizen and doctoral student at McGill University in Montreal. Returning to the United States by train in May, Abidor had his laptop seized. After a customs agent found images related to Islamic studies, Abidor's academic specialty, he was handcuffed and detained. His laptop was finally returned to him 11 days later, after agents viewed several personal files, including the transcript of a chat with his girlfriend.

Two federal appeals courts — in cases involving child pornography found on computers — have ruled that border searches, even without a warrant or reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, are broadly permissible under the government's sovereign right to secure the borders.

The ACLU, however, maintains that such searches of laptops and other devices violate both the 4th Amendment prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures and the 1st Amendment's protection of free expression. We agree. Searching a computer, which can contain a wealth of personal information, is much more intrusive than inspecting baggage for drugs, weapons or other contraband.

Possession of child pornography is a vile offense, as is terrorism, but in combating those and other crimes, law enforcement agents aren't free to randomly search homes. Neither should they be allowed to engage in electronic fishing expeditions at the border.

Two bills introduced in the last Congress would provide a legislative remedy for such invasions of privacy. A proposal by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) would make it clear that the sovereign power of the United States doesn't include the right to require any person entering the United States to submit to a search of the electronic contents of a laptop or similar device. (Her bill does allow searches based on other legal standards, such as reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.) A more detailed bill offered by Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) would apply only to citizens and U.S. residents and would require reasonable suspicion for searches of electronic equipment and probable cause to seize such equipment.

We would prefer legislation covering all travelers that incorporated Feingold's standards. Such legislation should be adopted regardless of how the courts rule.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-laptops-20100913,0,5851332,print.story

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From the New York Times

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I.M.F. Calls for Countries to Focus on Creating Jobs

OSLO — Rising long-term unemployment, especially among young people, poses the next big threat to the global economic recovery, the International Monetary Fund warned on Monday.

Slower growth is forcing governments to expand social safety nets and stimulate job creation even as they rein in finances. But with hundreds of millions of people unemployed worldwide, Dominique Strauss-Kahn , the managing director of the I.M.F., said the financial crisis “won't be over until unemployment significantly decreases.”

Mr. Strauss-Kahn urged governments to start factoring back-to-work policies into their overall equation for stoking growth. He added, in remarks at an employment forum with the International Labor Organization , that a failure to halt persistent high joblessness could fan social tensions in several countries and restrain growth over time.

Youth unemployment in the 33 countries that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has risen 18.8 percent from 2007 to 2009, or by about four million people, with the sharpest hits in Spain and Ireland, according to agency calculations.

The percentage of people in the 33 countries out of work for 12 months or more was stuck at around 24 percent last year, down from more than 30 percent a few years ago, but still too high for many policy makers.

While governments hit by the financial crisis have had to tighten their belts, in part to address investor concern about rising debt, countries that need to rebuild credibility should first reallocate spending to get the long-term unemployed and young people back into the labor market, said Olivier J. Blanchard, the I.M.F.'s chief economist.

“Within any given budget, this is probably more useful than spending the money to build some road to somewhere,” he said in an interview.

Countries that have so far avoided the harsh judgment of financial markets could afford a small increase in debt to ward off persistent joblessness, Mr. Blanchard said. He added that such a move could pay for itself in the form of increased economic activity.

The European Union said on Monday that growth in Europe this year was already starting to cool, after rising more quickly than expected in the winter and spring to an estimated 1.7 percent, from 0.9 percent. The pace is weakening as government stimulus measures fade and austerity programs kick in, while businesses remain reluctant to hire.

Policy makers at the conference referred to the prospect of rising long-term unemployment as a crisis, especially for millions of young people who were finishing their education and eager to work, but who found themselves shut out of the labor market.

Youth unemployment, in particular, is taking on greater urgency as governments look for ways to finance the pensions and health care of large numbers of retirees in coming years, especially in developed countries.

Perhaps the bigger danger, conference participants said, is that a psychology of permanent unemployment could set in, especially among the young, setting the stage for what Mr. Strauss-Kahn said would be “a lost generation of people disconnected from the labor market.”

A persistent inability to drive employment would pose other undesirable challenges for societies, he said, including rising health risks and health care costs, and educational challenges for children of unemployed parents, especially in lower-income countries with poor safety nets.

Juan Somavia, the director general of the International Labor Organization, said 210 million people were looking for work around the world after the financial crisis, and that 440 million jobs would need to be created in the next 10 years.

Politicians speaking at the conference, including Prime Minister George A. Papandreou of Greece and Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain, did not discuss how their countries or others with shaky finances would pay for the immense costs of a wish list that included increasing training for the unemployed and propelling job creation for the private sector.

But Mr. Papandreou, who has slashed pensions and wages as part of an austerity plan, referred repeatedly to billions of dollars that banks and corporations had stashed away in offshore tax havens. He said that an eventual repatriation of these funds could help offset governments' efforts to repair the human costs of the financial crisis.

Flushing out that money, the subject of an apparent new push by some European governments, will be a challenge, he acknowledged.

The average length of time that the typical unemployed person has been looking for work has jumped in several countries in the last year. In the United States, for example, it has hit a high of around 35 weeks.

Mr. Blanchard of the I.M.F. said the United States, too, should consider subsidies to help the long-term unemployed, even as a heated political debate takes place over the best way to allocate funds to reduce joblessness and take care of those out of work.

“On the fiscal side, one of the issues in the United States is that there are uncertainties about the medium and the long term,” he said. “There are some uncertainties that the government at this stage has yet a fully clear plan to stabilize debt. That makes markets nervous, so this is probably something that should be done.”

When that occurs, the American government would have more room to consider programs like subsidies for the long-term unemployed, he added.

Mr. Papandreou, who has witnessed violent protests and frequent strikes in Greece amid an abrasive mix of deficit reduction and high unemployment, cautioned that persistent joblessness and a sense that governments were not doing enough to address it could also lead to further discontent and civil unrest.

In some cases, added Mr. Strauss-Kahn, it could even lead to war.

Jens Stoltenberg , the prime minister of Norway, said, “We must avoid a situation where high unemployment becomes permanent.”

Mr. Zapatero said Spain, which is battling unemployment of around 20 percent and high joblessness among the young, had been pushing major investments in retraining to prepare people to jump back into the labor force. Still elusive, however, is how those being retrained will move into jobs if few new ones are created, at least in the private sector. For now, Mr. Zapatero said, he considered a person engaged in retraining programs to be “working for a country.”

Other countries like Germany have sought to suppress layoffs by getting labor unions, employers and employees to agree to reduced wages and work hours when times are tough. But Stephen J. Nickell, an economics professor at Oxford University , said that while such “short work” programs worked in the manufacturing sector, they were useless in industries like housing construction, where thousands of jobs were lost when bubbles burst on both sides of the Atlantic.

Christine Lagarde, the French finance minister, said France, where unemployment is at 10 percent, was experimenting with efforts to create jobs by making it easier to become self-employed. The country is leaning more heavily on apprenticeship programs that give people on-the-job experience and then easier entry to the work force.

Two years ago, the government started a program that delayed taxes and business charges on small businesses until they made a profit. That, she said, has led more than 530,000 people to declare self-employment status in the last two years.

“If there's no flexible entry to the labor market, or use of apprenticeship programs, youth unemployment explodes,” Mr. Nickell of Oxford said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/business/global/14euro.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Anti-Immigrant Party Rises in Sweden

MALMO, Sweden — Jimmie Akesson, 31, looks more like an up-and-coming advertising executive than a seasoned politician. But Mr. Akesson, the leader of the Sweden Democrats, does not believe in a soft sell: He wants to cut immigration by 90 percent, and he thinks that the growth of Sweden's Muslim population is the country's biggest foreign threat since World War II.

Sweden, which is seen by many people as a guardian of liberalism and tolerance, has never elected to Parliament a member of any party who campaigned openly against immigration. That could change in elections on Sunday.

Opinion polls suggest that the Sweden Democrats will exceed the 4 percent threshold needed to reach Parliament. An alliance of center-right parties appears to have a narrow overall lead, according to the surveys, but the Sweden Democrats could hold the balance of power, something that could create a political crisis.

That prospect has jolted a nation in which even some of Mr. Akesson's fiercest critics now acknowledge that too little has been done to integrate immigrants. Political analysts also say that the rise of the populist right shows that Sweden is being buffeted by broad political currents familiar in other European countries.

Mainstream politicians are taking this development seriously. “These kinds of parties, they thrive on uncertainty and political crises,” said Finance Minister Anders Borg, a member of the governing Moderate Party. “They need to create turmoil and crisis, so we will push hard to their voters: Is this really a responsible choice?”

For most of the last century, Social Democrats dominated politics here, but in 2006 the center-right Moderates came to power under Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. This time, the parties are standing as competing blocs: one from the center-right, led by the Moderates, and one from the center-left, led by the Social Democratic leader Mona Sahlin, who in running for prime minister could become the first woman to hold that job in Sweden if she is elected.

Though sidelined from much of the official campaign, the Sweden Democrats have nonetheless attracted attention. Their biggest coup involved a blunt 30-second advertisement that showed a white pensioner being overtaken by a group of Muslim women in burqas as they rushed toward a line for welfare payments.

One station refused at first to broadcast the ad, before agreeing to do so with parts obscured. The ad generated enormous publicity and made the Sweden Democrats appear to be victims of censorship.

In a televised debate on Sunday, Mr. Reinfeldt and Ms. Sahlin ruled out working with the Sweden Democrats if their coalitions did not win an absolute majority.

But Mr. Akesson, speaking before the debate, said he thought the Moderates could find themselves in need of his party to form a governing majority. “I think now, if you look at the polls, it is not impossible for the right alliance to get a full majority,” he said. “But if they don't, they need us to stay in government.”

Mr. Akesson contended that his party could win as much as 8 percent of the vote. “We are quite confident,” he said. “We are underestimated in those polls. We have grown a lot since the last elections.”

Though the party was created in 1988, it has grown slowly, recently building strongholds in southern Sweden in cities like Malmo and Landskrona.

The populist right has been helped by structural changes in politics, analysts say. While mainstream parties, particularly the Social Democrats, could once rely on a strong core vote, loyalties are fading, said Jenny Madestam, a political scientist at Stockholm University.

The collectivist, egalitarian ideas that have been associated with Sweden for decades are fading. The debate over immigration in Sweden mirrors the debate elsewhere in Europe, where economic pressures have exacerbated tensions over the role of Islam on the continent.

“There is a general change in Swedish society,” Ms. Madestam said. “Social democratic ideas are losing their grip on Sweden, and we are getting more and more individualistic. These collectivist ideas are not so strong.”

Ibrahim Baylan, the national secretary of the opposition Social Democrats, who came to Sweden from Turkey when he was 10, said the recession and unemployment were largely responsible for the rise of the populist right.

“You find a lot of people who are young, without any job or education and without any hope of getting a job,” Mr. Baylan said.

But he also said that it was harder to integrate immigrants than it once was. Many immigrants are arriving from poor nations, and some are illiterate in their own language and therefore face extra difficulties learning Swedish, Mr. Baylan said.

“The opportunities are still very big in this country, but we have a situation that is totally different,” Mr. Baylan said. “The people coming here are less skilled than in the 1970s and 1980s.”

At the main mosque and Islamic center in Malmo, Beyzat Becirov, who came to Sweden from Yugoslavia more than 40 years ago, said that most Swedes were welcoming, but that perhaps 2 to 4 percent of the population seemed to say “that economic problems are due to the Muslims.”

He said there had been dozens of attacks on the mosque, including a serious fire in 2003. In one office, he pointed to a window with a bullet hole. As for Mr. Akesson's Sweden Democrats, he said that their support was not substantial, before adding, “But Hitler 's support started small.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/world/europe/14iht-sweden.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Zimbabwe: Health Workers Released on Bail

Six health workers with a California-based Christian AIDS charity, who are accused of failing to register and practicing without the supervision of a pharmacist, were each released on $200 bail Monday. The four Americans, one New Zealander and one Zimbabwean had been jailed since Thursday in Harare. (Their lawyer had earlier erroneously identified the New Zealander as an American). They are scheduled to return to court on Sept. 27.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/world/africa/14zimbabwe-HEALTHWORKER_BRF.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Civil Rights Photographer Unmasked as Informer

ATLANTA — That photo of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King , Jr. riding one of the first desegregated buses in Montgomery, Ala.? He took it. The well-known image of black sanitation workers carrying “I Am a Man” signs in Memphis? His. He was the only photojournalist to document the entire trial in the murder of Emmett Till, and he was there in Room 306 of the Lorraine Hotel, Dr. King's room, on the night he was assassinated.

But now an unsettling asterisk must be added to the legacy of Ernest C. Withers, one of the most celebrated photographers of the civil rights era: He was a paid F.B.I. informer.

On Sunday, The Commercial Appeal in Memphis published the results of a two-year investigation that showed Mr. Withers, who died in 2007 at age 85, had collaborated closely with two F.B.I. agents in the 1960s to keep tabs on the civil rights movement. It was an astonishing revelation about a former police officer nicknamed the Original Civil Rights Photographer, whose previous claim to fame had been the trust he engendered among high-ranking civil rights leaders, including Dr. King.

“It is an amazing betrayal,” said Athan Theoharis, a historian at Marquette University who has written books about the F.B.I. “It really speaks to the degree that the F.B.I. was able to engage individuals within the civil rights movement. This man was so well trusted.”

From at least 1968 to 1970, Mr. Withers, who was black, provided photographs, biographical information and scheduling details to two F.B.I. agents in the bureau's Memphis domestic surveillance program, Howell Lowe and William H. Lawrence, according to numerous reports summarizing their meetings. The reports were obtained by the newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act and posted on its Web site.

A clerical error appears to have allowed for Mr. Withers's identity to be divulged: In most cases in the reports, references to Mr. Withers and his informer number, ME 338-R, have been blacked out. But in several locations, the F.B.I. appears to have forgotten to hide them. The F.B.I. said Monday that it was not clear what had caused the lapse in privacy and was looking into the incident.

Civil rights leaders have responded to the revelation with a mixture of dismay, sadness and disbelief. “If this is true, then Ernie abused our friendship,” said the Rev. James M. Lawson Jr., a retired minister who organized civil rights rallies throughout the South in the 1960s.

Others were more forgiving. “It's not surprising,” said Andrew Young, a civil rights organizer who later became mayor of Atlanta. “We knew that everything we did was bugged, although we didn't suspect Withers individually.”

Many details of Mr. Withers's relationship with the F.B.I. remain unknown. The bureau keeps files on all informers, but has declined repeated requests to release Mr. Withers's, which would presumably explain how much he was paid by the F.B.I., how he was recruited and how long he served as an informer.

At the time of his death, Mr. Withers had the largest catalog of any individual photographer covering the civil rights movement in the South, said Tony Decaneas, the owner of the Panopticon Gallery in Boston, the exclusive agent for Mr. Withers. His photographs have been collected in four books, and his family was planning to open a museum, named after him.

His work shows remarkable intimacy with and access to top civil rights leaders. Friends used to say he had a knack for being in the right place at the right time. But while he was growing close to top civil rights leaders, Mr. Withers was also meeting regularly with the F.B.I. agents, disclosing details about plans for marches and political beliefs of the leaders, even personal information like the leaders' car tag numbers.

David J. Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize -winning historian who has written biographies of Dr. King, said many civil rights workers gave confidential interviews to the F.B.I. and C.I.A. , and were automatically classified as “informants.” The difference, Mr. Garrow said, is the evidence that Mr. Withers was being paid.

Although Mr. Withers's motivation is not known, Mr. Garrow said informers were rarely motivated by the financial compensation, which “wasn't enough money to live on.” But Marc Perrusquia, who wrote the article for The Commercial Appeal, noted that Mr. Withers had eight children and might have struggled to support them.

The children of Mr. Withers did not respond to requests for comment. But one daughter, Rosalind Withers, told local news organizations that she did not find the report conclusive.

“This is the first time I've heard of this in my life,” Ms. Withers told The Commercial Appeal. “My father's not here to defend himself. That is a very, very strong, strong accusation.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/us/14photographer.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Confessing to Crime, but Innocent

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Eddie Lowery lost 10 years of his life for a crime he did not commit. There was no physical evidence at his trial for rape, but one overwhelming factor put him away: he confessed.

At trial, the jury heard details that prosecutors insisted only the rapist could have known, including the fact that the rapist hit the 75-year-old victim in the head with the handle of a silver table knife he found in the house. DNA evidence would later show that another man committed the crime. But that vindication would come only years after Mr. Lowery had served his sentence and was paroled in 1991.

“I beat myself up a lot” about having confessed, Mr. Lowery said in a recent interview. “I thought I was the only dummy who did that.”

But more than 40 others have given confessions since 1976 that DNA evidence later showed were false, according to records compiled by Brandon L. Garrett, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. Experts have long known that some kinds of people — including the mentally impaired, the mentally ill, the young and the easily led — are the likeliest to be induced to confess. There are also people like Mr. Lowery, who says he was just pressed beyond endurance by persistent interrogators.

New research shows how people who were apparently uninvolved in a crime could provide such a detailed account of what occurred, allowing prosecutors to claim that only the defendant could have committed the crime.

An article by Professor Garrett draws on trial transcripts, recorded confessions and other background materials to show how incriminating facts got into those confessions — by police introducing important facts about the case, whether intentionally or unintentionally, during the interrogation.

To defense lawyers, the new research is eye opening. “In the past, if somebody confessed, that was the end,” said Peter J. Neufeld , a founder of the Innocence Project , an organization based in Manhattan. “You couldn't imagine going forward.”

The notion that such detailed confessions might be deemed voluntary because the defendants were not beaten or coerced suggests that courts should not simply look at whether confessions are voluntary, Mr. Neufeld said. “They should look at whether they are reliable.”

Professor Garrett said he was surprised by the complexity of the confessions he studied. “I expected, and think people intuitively think, that a false confession would look flimsy,” like someone saying simply, “I did it,” he said.

Instead, he said, “almost all of these confessions looked uncannily reliable,” rich in telling detail that almost inevitably had to come from the police. “I had known that in a couple of these cases, contamination could have occurred,” he said, using a term in police circles for introducing facts into the interrogation process. “I didn't expect to see that almost all of them had been contaminated.”

Of the exonerated defendants in the Garrett study, 26 — more than half — were “mentally disabled,” under 18 at the time or both. Most were subjected to lengthy, high-pressure interrogations, and none had a lawyer present. Thirteen of them were taken to the crime scene.

Mr. Lowery's case shows how contamination occurs. He had come under suspicion, he now believes, because he had been partying and ran his car into a parked car the night of the rape, generating a police report. Officers grilled him for more than seven hours, insisting from the start that he had committed the crime.

Mr. Lowery took a lie detector test to prove he was innocent, but the officers told him that he had failed it.

“I didn't know any way out of that, except to tell them what they wanted to hear,” he recalled. “And then get a lawyer to prove my innocence.”

Proving innocence after a confession, however, is rare. Eight of the defendants in Professor Garrett's study had actually been cleared by DNA evidence before trial, but the courts convicted them anyway.

In one such case involving Jeffrey Deskovic, who spent 16 years in prison for a murder in Poughkeepsie, prosecutors argued that the victim may have been sexually active and so the DNA evidence may have come from another liaison she had. The prosecutors asked the jury to focus on Mr. Deskovic's highly detailed confession and convict him.

While Professor Garrett suggests that leaking facts during interrogations is sometimes unintentional, Mr. Lowery said that the contamination of his questioning was clearly intentional.

After his initial confession, he said, the interrogators went over the crime with him in detail — asking how he did it, but correcting him when he got the facts wrong. How did he get in? “I said, ‘I kicked in the front door.' ” But the rapist had used the back door, so he admitted to having gone around to the back. “They fed me the answers,” he recalled.

Some defendants' confessions even include mistakes fed by the police. Earl Washington Jr., a mentally impaired man who spent 18 years in prison and came within hours of being executed for a murder he did not commit, stated in his confession that the victim had worn a halter top. In fact, she had worn a sundress, but an initial police report had stated that she wore a halter top.

Steven A. Drizin, the director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University School of Law, said the significance of contamination could not be understated. While errors might lead to wrongful arrest , “it's contamination that is the primary factor in wrongful convictions,” he said. “Juries demand details from the suspect that make the confession appear to be reliable — that's where these cases go south.”

Jim Trainum, a former policeman who now advises police departments on training officers to avoid false confessions, explained that few of them intend to contaminate an interrogation or convict the innocent.

“You become so fixated on ‘This is the right person, this is the guilty person' that you tend to ignore everything else,” he said. The problem with false confessions, he said, is “the wrong person is still out there, and he's able to reoffend.”

Mr. Trainum has become an advocate of videotaping entire interrogations. Requirements for recording confessions vary widely across the country. Ten states require videotaping of at least some interrogations, like those in crimes that carry the death penalty, and seven state supreme courts have required or strongly encouraged recording.

These days Mr. Lowery, 51, lives in suburban Kansas City, in a house he is renovating with some of the $7.5 million in settlement money he received, along with apologies from officials in Riley County, Kan., where he was arrested and interrogated.

He has trouble putting the past behind him. “I was embarrassed,” he said. “You run in to so many people who say, ‘I would never confess to a crime.' ”

He does not argue with them, because he knows they did not experience what he went through. “You've never been in a situation so intense, and you're naïve about your rights,” he said. “You don't know what you'll say to get out of that situation.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/us/14confess.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Racial Disparity in School Suspensions

In many of the nation's middle schools, black boys were nearly three times as likely to be suspended as white boys, according to a new study, which also found that black girls were suspended at four times the rate of white girls.

School authorities also suspended Hispanic and American Indian middle school students at higher rates than white students, though not at such disproportionate rates as for black children, the study found. Asian students were less likely to be suspended than whites.

The study analyzed four decades of federal Department of Education data on suspensions, with a special focus on figures from 2002 and 2006, that were drawn from 9,220 of the nation's 16,000 public middle schools.

The study, “Suspended Education: Urban Middle Schools in Crisis,” was published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights organization.

The co-authors, Daniel J. Losen, a senior associate at the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles , and Russell Skiba, a professor at Indiana University , said they focused on suspensions from middle schools because recent research had shown that students' middle school experience was crucial for determining future academic success.

One recent study of 400 incarcerated high school freshmen in Baltimore found that two-thirds had been suspended at least once in middle school.

Federal law requires schools to expel students for weapons possession and incidents involving the most serious safety issues. The authors said they focused on suspensions, which often result from fighting, abusive language and classroom disruptions, because they were a measure that school administrators can apply at their discretion.

Throughout America's public schools, in kindergarten through high school, the percent of students suspended each year nearly doubled from the early 1970s through 2006, the authors said, an increase that they associate, in part, with the rise of so-called zero-tolerance school discipline policies.

In 1973, on average, 3.7 percent of public school students of all races were suspended at least once. By 2006, that percentage had risen to 6.9 percent.

Both in 1973 and in 2006, black students were suspended at higher rates than whites, but over that period, the gap increased. In 1973, 6 percent of all black students were suspended. In 2006, 15 percent of all blacks were suspended.

Among the students attending one of the 9,220 middle schools in the study sample, 28 percent of black boys and 18 percent of black girls, compared with 10 percent of white boys and 4 percent of white girls, were suspended in 2006, the study found.

The researchers found wide disparities in suspension rates among different city school systems and even among middle schools in the same district.

Using the federal data, they calculated suspension rates for middle school students, broken down by race, in 18 large urban districts.

Two districts showed especially high rates. In Palm Beach County, Fla., and Milwaukee, more than 50 percent of black male middle school students were suspended at least once in 2006, the study showed.

Jennie Dorsey, director of family services in the Milwaukee district, said the district had recognized that its suspension rate was too high and had begun a program aimed at changing students' behavior without suspensions.

The program has brought only modest reductions in the suspension rate so far, but Ms. Dorsey predicted sharper reductions over several years.

Nat Harrington, a spokesman for the Palm Beach County district, disputed the study's statistics, but acknowledged that “all the data show an unacceptably high number of black students being suspended.” He said the district was using several strategies to reduce suspensions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/education/14suspend.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Marijuana Ballot Measure in California Wins Support of Union, Officials Say

LOS ANGELES — A ballot measure to make California the first state to legalize the sale and use of marijuana has won the support of one of the state's most powerful union, officials said Monday, offering the proposition a shot of mainstream legitimacy as well as a potential financial and organizational lift.

The decision by the executive board of the Service Employees International Union of California will be announced in the next few days, according to officials who have been briefed about it but were not allowed to speak publicly before it was announced.

The measure has faced strong opposition from law enforcement groups, including Sheriff Lee Baca of Los Angeles County, who said he would lead a campaign against it as a threat to public safety.

But the proposal also won support on Monday from some former law enforcement officials, including police officers, judges and prosecutors.

The measure, known as Proposition, 19 would legalize, regulate and tax the sale of marijuana. It has been promoted as a way to raise money for the financially beleaguered state, while dealing a setback to Mexican drug cartels.

The measure is quickly emerging as one of the top — and most contentious — ballot issues in the nation this November. Polls show that it has the support of a slight majority of voters. But political analysts said that this kind of measure, given the social stigma that comes with illicit drug use, could prove difficult to poll.

At the very least, the support by the S.E.I.U., which claims over 700,000 members in the state, could make it easier for other groups to rally around the measure. More practically, it means access to the union's considerable campaign apparatus, which could finance mailings, telephone calls and leaflets.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/us/14marijuana.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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A Recovery's Long Odds

We can keep wishing and hoping for a powerful economic recovery to pull the U.S. out of its doldrums, but I wouldn't count on it. Ordinary American families no longer have the purchasing power to build a strong recovery and keep it going.

Americans are not being honest with themselves about the structural changes in the economy that have bestowed fabulous wealth on a tiny sliver at the top, while undermining the living standards of the middle class and absolutely crushing the poor. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have a viable strategy for reversing this dreadful state of affairs. (There is no evidence the G.O.P. even wants to.)

Robert Reich, in his new book, “Aftershock,” gives us one of the clearest explanations to date of what has happened — how the United States went from what he calls “the Great Prosperity” of 1947 to 1975 to the Great Recession that has hobbled the U.S. economy and darkened the future of younger Americans.

He gives the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve credit for moving quickly in terms of fiscal and monetary policies to prevent the economic crash of 2008 from driving the U.S. into a second great depression. “But,” he writes, “we did not learn the larger lesson of the 1930s: that when the distribution of income gets too far out of whack, the economy needs to be reorganized so the broad middle class has enough buying power to rejuvenate the economy over the longer term.”

The middle class is finally on its knees. Jobs are scarce and good jobs even scarcer. Government and corporate policies have been whacking working Americans every which way for the past three or four decades. While globalization and technological wizardry were wreaking employment havoc, the movers and shakers in government and in the board rooms of the great corporations were embracing privatization and deregulation with the fervor of fanatics. The safety net was shredded, unions were brutally attacked and demonized, employment training and jobs programs were eliminated, higher education costs skyrocketed, and the nation's infrastructure, a key to long-term industrial and economic health, deteriorated.

It's a wonder matters aren't worse.

While all this was happening, working people, including those in the vast middle class, coped as best they could. Women went into the paid work force in droves. Many workers increased their hours or took on second and third jobs. Savings were drained and debt of every imaginable kind — from credit cards to mortgages to student loans — exploded.

With those coping mechanisms now exhausted, it's painfully obvious that the economy has failed working Americans.

There was plenty of growth, but the economic benefits went overwhelmingly — and unfairly — to those already at the top. Mr. Reich cites the work of analysts who have tracked the increasing share of national income that has gone to the top 1 percent of earners since the 1970s, when their share was 8 percent to 9 percent. In the 1980s, it rose to 10 percent to 14 percent. In the late-'90s, it was 15 percent to 19 percent. In 2005, it passed 21 percent. By 2007, the last year for which complete data are available, the richest 1 percent were taking more than 23 percent of all income.

The richest one-tenth of 1 percent , representing just 13,000 households, took in more than 11 percent of total income in 2007.

That does not leave enough spending power with the rest of the population to sustain a flourishing economy. This is a point emphasized in “Aftershock.” Mr. Reich, a former labor secretary in the Clinton administration, writes: “The wages of the typical American hardly increased in the three decades leading up to the Crash of 2008, considering inflation. In the 2000s, they actually dropped.”

A male worker earning the median wage in 2007 earned less than the median wage, adjusted for inflation, of a male worker 30 years earlier. A typical son, in other words, is earning less than his dad did at the same age.

This is what has happened with ordinary workers as the wealth at the top has soared into the stratosphere.

With so much of the middle class and the rest of working America tapped out, there is not enough consumer demand for the goods and services that the U.S. economy is capable of producing. Without that demand, there are precious few prospects for a robust recovery.

If matters stay the same, with working people perpetually struggling in an environment of ever-increasing economic insecurity and inequality, the very stability of the society will be undermined.

The U.S. economy needs to be rebalanced so that the benefits are shared more widely, more equitably. There are many ways to do this, but what is most important right now is to recognize this central fact, to focus on it and to begin seriously considering the most constructive options.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/opinion/14herbert.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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Foreign Stimulus

THE debate over Arizona's controversial immigration law and Congress's passage last month of another border security bill gives the impression that the only problem with our immigration policy is its inability to keep people from entering the country illegally. Not so. The country has an antiquated, jerry-built immigration system that fails on almost every count. The good news is that there is a way to replace it that will promote economic growth while reducing the flow of illegal workers.

First, work-based visas should become the norm in immigration, not the exception. The United States issues about 1.1 million green cards a year and allocates roughly 85 percent to family members of American citizens or legal residents, people seeking humanitarian refuge and “diversity immigrants,” who come from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States.

The remaining 15 percent go to people who are immigrating for work reasons — but half of these are for workers' spouses and children, leaving a mere 7 percent for so-called principal workers, most of whom are highly skilled. No other major Western economy gives such a low priority to employment-based immigration, and for good reason: these immigrants are the most skilled and least likely to be a burden on taxpayers.

With so few slots allocated to work-based green cards, wait times continue to grow. Immigrants typically enter on temporary visas and adjust to permanent status over time. But most green card categories have strict numerical limits that fall far short of the number of immigrants on temporary visas who wish to stay. The most recent data suggest that 1.1 million approved applicants are waiting for employment-based green cards. Immigrants from China and India are among the most adversely affected because, in general, no more than 7 percent of green cards can be allotted each year to applicants from any one country.

There is a better way. Provisional work-based visas, sponsored by employers and valid as long as the holder has a job, should replace green cards as the primary path to legal immigration. These visas should not be subject to country quotas and should be open-ended, so that people who don't seek permanent residency will not get kicked out of the country, as happens now.

The visas would be “portable” — that is, the holder wouldn't be tied to one employer — to ensure that workers are treated fairly. But because these visas would be tied to employment, immigrants would have to leave the country if the economy deteriorated and they couldn't find work.

In place of our current system's lotteries and “first-come, first-served” policies, the government should hold regular auctions where companies can bid for permits to bring in foreign workers. Employers would bid highest for the most-valued workers, creating a selection mechanism that wouldn't rely on the judgment of bureaucrats or the paperwork skills of immigration lawyers.

Separate auctions would be run for high- and low-skilled workers, because permit prices would depend on prospective wages. Bringing low-skilled workers into the program is vital to stemming illegal immigration, as the current system's lack of sufficient visas for the low-skilled is a main reason that people cross the border illegally.

These auctions would be more efficient than the current system because they would respond to changes in labor demand. When prices rose, the government could react by increasing the number of permits, better syncing immigration with the business cycle. Work-based immigration would rise with economic growth and fall with rising unemployment.

Finally, the auctions would provide the government with new revenue in an era of huge deficits. Some of that money might be used to offset costs incurred by states or localities with large numbers of immigrants, or to retrain American workers displaced by immigration.

For the past two decades, policy makers have tinkered on the margins of the immigration system, reacting to the latest crisis or political priority. Greater emphasis on work-based immigration as part of a coherent immigration process would go a long way to enhance our economy's competitiveness and the nation's well-being.

Pia Orrenius, a research officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and Madeline Zavodny, a professor of economics at Agnes Scott College, are the authors of “Beside the Golden Door: U.S. Immigration Reform in a New Era of Globalization.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/opinion/14orrenius.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From the Chicago Sun Times

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Crime soars on CTA

Electronic gear targeted as robberies, thefts rise for 4 yrs.

September 14, 2010

BY MARY WISNIEWSKI, Transportation Reporter

Keep a good grip on your iPod the next time you ride the CTA.

Thefts and robberies have risen dramatically on CTA buses, trains and L platforms in the last four years -- and are on the rise again this year.

Overall, crime on the CTA has risen by more than 26 percent since 2006, according to data obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times and the Better Government Association.

The number of crimes on the CTA has risen each of the last four years -- from 1,538 in 2006 to 1,942 in 2009, Chicago Police Department data show.

And that trend continues this year, with crime on the CTA on pace to be up 12 percent -- even though ridership rose just 0.4 percent in the first six months of 2010 compared with the same period last year.

"People tend to get engrossed in their phones or their iPods and not pay attention," said Noelle Gaffney, a CTA spokeswoman, noting a jump in thefts of electronic devices.

Despite the increase in robberies, Gaffney said the CTA is a "very safe system."

The number of aggravated assaults and batteries on CTA buses, the L and L platforms is on pace to dip from last year. The most recent murder on the CTA was in 2008, when Julian High School senior Kiyanna Salter was shot after two men got in an argument and started shooting on a bus on 71st Street in Grand Crossing.

The year before, another Julian student was killed on a bus, when a reputed gang member opened fire, killing Blair Holt, 16, the son of a Chicago Police officer.

But other types of crimes remain a problem.

Like pickpocketing. That's what happened to Jim Oldenburg. Riding a crowded Lawrence Avenue bus in May, Oldenburg became the victim of a classic pickpocket maneuver -- one man stepped on his foot to distract him, while an accomplice slipped Oldenburg's wallet from his back pocket.

"I imagine they look for times when they know the train or the bus is going to be supercrowded," said Oldenburg, 57, who lives in the Mayfair neighborhood on the Northwest Side. "There's going to be ripe pickings."

The most frequent target areas for CTA crimes: downtown and the Near North Side. The attraction is obvious: crowds, with tourists and locals often too wrapped up in their iPods or reading to pay attention.

L stops such as Jackson -- where riders can connect between the Blue and Red lines -- and Roosevelt -- with connections to the Orange, Green and Red lines -- seem to be particularly popular with thieves, according to Michael Fuentes, national director of the Guardian Angels volunteer crime-fighting group. The police did not provide crime data at specific L stops.

Gaffney said the CTA has put up posters and fliers cautioning riders to pay attention to their surroundings. A poster campaign last year warned about pickpockets.

Now, the CTA is working on a new poster, aimed at making riders aware that electronic devices are often targeted by thieves, who frequently single out people sitting or standing near the door of an L or bus, so they can snatch an iPod or other device, then make a quick escape.

"You have to pay attention; you have to put your laptop away," said Fuentes. "If you have that much work, maybe you shouldn't be on the train -- maybe you should still be at work."

The CTA also has added more security cameras. It already had cameras on all buses, has added at least one camera to every L stop and plans to use federal Homeland Security funds to put multiple cameras at all L stops by year's end. Also, the CTA is testing new L cars equipped with cameras and is aiming to get cameras on older L cars, as well.

Cameras have helped make arrests, Gaffney said. Just last week, a Berwyn man was charged with battery, accused of groping a woman at the Blue Line LaSalle Street station. Torrence Ivy, 22, was arrested after his picture, captured by a CTA camera, was sent out on a police alert.

But cameras have their limits. The footage is usually recorded over in a day or two. So the police have to ask for it right away -- or lose it.

Oldenburg said he reported his theft to the CTA and the police immediately, but nothing came of it.

"I got the impression when I talked to these guys at the CTA that I was intruding on their time," said Oldenburg.

Asked about Oldenburg's complaint, the CTA ended up taking unspecified disciplinary action against a garage manager for failing to follow up, according to Gaffney, who said the police did not request security video of the theft.

Crime on the CTA makes an impact on riders, said McLean Fletcher, 24, of Irving Park. She said she rides the CTA less often since she was robbed last summer. She said a woman across the aisle on the L kept looking at her and pointing -- but Fletcher didn't know what it was about. She later realized that her wallet was stolen and that the woman had been trying to warn her but was afraid to speak up.

"I've become much more cautious about throwing my bag on my shoulder when I'm standing -- I put it in front of me," said Fletcher. "I feel a lot safer with my car."

http://www.suntimes.com/news/transportation/2706110,CST-NWS-ctacrime14.article

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From  the Department of Justice

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Statement of Attorney General Eric Holder on 2009 Crime Statistics

WASHINGTON – "Today's report showing violent crime declined in 2009 is an encouraging sign that our nation continues to make progress in the fight against crime. Although there are many reasons behind the decline, one thing is certain: smarter policing practices and investments in law enforcement play a significant role in reducing violent and property crime.

"In 2009, the Obama administration provided over four billion dollars in support to law enforcement and criminal justice initiatives through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, including one billion in COPS funding to keep police officers on the street. We also provided an additional $519 million in Byrne Justice Assistance Grants to support our state and local criminal justice partners. These investments have helped maintain public safety and encourage new criminal justice innovations in state and local jurisdictions across the country and have now funded over 16,000 jobs, many of which would have been lost without passage of the Recovery Act.

"The decrease in violent crime has a real impact on the lives of millions of Americans, but we have much more to do. We will continue to support our state and local partners and to implement the tough, smart policing policies that we know make a difference in the fight against crime."

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/September/10-ag-1019.html

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Attorney General Eric Holder Speaks at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial September 11th Ceremony

Thank you, Herb [Giobbi], for your kind words, your leadership, and your commitment to our nation's police officers and their families.

I am honored to be with all of you here this morning. And I am grateful for the opportunity to pay tribute, as well as my respects, to the 72 officers who – on September 11, 2001 – made the ultimate sacrifice.

Today, as we read the names of these fallen heroes, we also reflect on their lives, their legacies, their courage, and their special calling – a calling to serve others; a calling that's shared by every member of our nation's law enforcement community; and a calling that's firmly founded on the principles of self-sacrifice and personal bravery which were so vividly exemplified by each of these men and women whom we honor here this morning.

Nine years ago today, New York State Court Officer Mitchel Wallace was heading to work in downtown Manhattan. At first, it was just a routine, beautiful autumn morning. But suddenly, the unspeakable – the unimaginable – unfolded overhead. When Officer Wallace looked up, he saw a searing image that none of us will ever forget. And he began running – toward the catastrophe. When Officer Mitchel arrived at the World Trade Center, which was engulfed in flames and flying debris, he called his fiancé. She frantically urged him to stay away. “It's an attack,” she declared, “not an accident!” But Officer Mitchel had already made his choice. He simply and resolutely responded: “I have to help.”

“I have to help.”

Those four words may not have been said aloud by all 72 officers we honor here this morning. But rest assured, this was the silent mantra that guided each of them on that fateful day – and throughout their lives. Yes, “I have to help” was the simple but profound precept that drove them to choose – without second thought – duty over fear, compassion over caution, and the safety of others over the safety of themselves.

Officer James Lynch was out on sick leave when he heard the horrific news about the Twin Towers. But he did not hesitate. He phoned his co-captain and announced, “I'm going in.”

Officer David LeMagne, barely one year on the job, was at his PATH post in Jersey City. He was told to stay put. But, citing his training as a paramedic, he asked to be sent into the storm.

At the World Trade Center, New York Fire Marshal Ronald Bucca sprinted up 78 flights of stairs – as others around him raced down.

Officer Mark Ellis, just 26, and Officer Ramon Suarez – in his sixteenth year on the force – were not at the World Trade Center when the attacks began. But they flagged down a taxi and raced to the site. They were among the first to arrive. And they were among the dozens of extraordinary officers who, in the face of danger and devastation, responded with courage, resolve and a determination to save lives

And Inspector Anthony Infante made the last decision of his life on that beautiful September morning that had so unexpectedly and inexplicably turned so horrifying – he gave his coat to a stranger, hoping it would provide protection from the surrounding flames.

These are the heroes we remember today. These are the law enforcement officers we will never forget.

My brother, William, is a retired Port Authority police officer. For him, for me, for many of you, and for so many Americans, the engravings on this wall are more than names on a memorial. They are smiles, spirits, personalities, moments, first encounters –and last words. They are personal memories etched forever on our hearts. And they are critical and constant reminders of why the Department of Justice has been – and will continue – working tirelessly to combat terrorism in all its forms, and to hold accountable all those responsible for the September 11 th attacks in a manner that is consistent with our nation's values.

This work goes on. It will always remain my highest priority. That is my solemn promise to all of you. It is also my sacred obligation to the 2,996 Americans we continue to mourn, and to the 72 law enforcement officers we now honor.

Today and beyond, let us carry on their work. Let us build upon their commitment to their fellow citizens and to the principles of justice that define our nation. And let us take their dream – of a world that is better and safer and more just – and make it our own. And let us do so by adopting their watchwords: “I have to help.”

Thank you. May God bless these fallen officers, and may God bless the United States of America.

http://www.justice.gov/ag/speeches/2010/ag-speech-100911.html

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From the FBI

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NEW CRIME STATISTICS Crime Rates Continue to Fall 09/13/10 Full Report: Crime in the United States, 2009 During 2009, violent crime declined for the third year in a row, with an estimated 5.3 percent drop from 2008 figures. Property crime continued to fall as well—for a seventh straight year—with an estimated decrease of 4.6 percent. That's according to our just-released report, Crime in the United States, 2009. These latest statistics come 80 years to the month after we took over the responsibility of compiling and publishing the nation's crime data from the International Association of Chiefs of Police. The categories back in 1930 were almost identical to what we have today—murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, larceny-theft, burglary, and auto theft. (Arson came later.)

Some crime highlights from the 2009 report:

• Each of the violent crime categories decreased from 2008—murder (7.3 percent), robbery (8.0 percent), aggravated assault (4.2 percent), and forcible rape (2.6 percent).
  
  
• Each of the property crime categories also dropped from 2008—motor vehicle theft (17.1 percent), larceny-theft (4.0 percent), and burglary (1.3 percent).
  
  
• Among the 1,318,398 violent crimes were 15,241 murders; 88,097 forcible rapes; 408,217 robberies; and 806,843 aggravated assaults.
  
  
• Among the 9,320,971 property crimes were an estimated 2,199,125 burglaries; 6,327,230 larceny-thefts; 794,616 thefts of motor vehicles; and 58,871 arsons.
  
  
• During 2009, the South accounted for 42.5 percent of all violent crime in the nation, followed by the West (22.9 percent), the Midwest (19.6 percent), and the Northeast (15.0 percent).
  
  
• During 2009, 43.9 percent of all property crimes in the U.S. were recorded in the South, with 22.7 percent in the West, 20.8 percent in the Midwest, and 12.6 percent in the Northeast.

Additional report highlights on criminals and victims :

• In 2009, agencies nationwide made about 13.7 million arrests, excluding traffic violations. Of those arrests, an estimated 581,765 were for violent crimes.
  
  
• Nearly 75 percent of all arrested persons in the nation during 2009 were male. Slightly more than 77 percent of all murder victims were also male.
  
  
• Firearms were used in 67.1 percent of the nation's murders, along with 42.6 percent of robberies and 20.9 percent of aggravated assaults. (Weapons data is not collected for forcible rapes.)
  
  
• Collectively, victims of property crimes (excluding arson) lost an estimated $15.2 billion during 2009.

Where do these numbers come from? From the 17,985 city, county, university and college, state, tribal, and federal agencies who participated in the Uniform Crime Reporting program in 2009.These agencies represent 96.3 percent of the nation's population.

The report also contains plenty of additional details, charts, and tables on crime during 2009, including more on offenses, criminals, victims, weapons used, geographic locations, etc. To find out about the crime picture in your state, go to our State Totals table. 

As always, a word of warning about drawing conclusions of the data by making direct comparisons between cities—valid assessments are possible only with careful study and analysis of the range of unique conditions affecting each local law enforcement jurisdiction.

http://www.fbi.gov/page2/september10/crime_091310.html

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