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From the Los Angeles Times

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Costly virtual border fence in tatters

The U.S. is set to defund the troubled project. It was intended to keep a high-tech eye on the Mexican border.

By Brian Bennett, Tribune Washington Bureau

October 22, 2010

Reporting from Washington

The Department of Homeland Security, positioning itself to cut its losses on a so-called invisible fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, has decided not to exercise a one-year option for Boeing to continue work on the troubled multibillion-dollar project involving high-tech cameras, radar and vibration sensors.

The result, after an investment of more than $1 billion, may be a system with only 53 miles of unreliable coverage along the nearly 2,000-mile border.

The virtual fence was intended to link advanced monitoring technologies to command centers for Border Patrol to identify and thwart human trafficking and drug smuggling. But from the beginning, the program has been plagued by missed deadlines and the limitations of existing electronics in rugged, unpredictable wilderness where high winds and a tumbleweed can be enough to trigger an alarm.

Homeland Security officials decided on Sept. 21 not to invoke the department's option with Boeing, the principle contractor on the project, and instead extended the deal only to mid-November, Boeing officials confirmed this week. Boeing has charged the department more than $850 million since the project began in 2006.

The government has not released an independent assessment of the program completed in July, but with the two-month Boeing extension about to run out, several members of Congress expect the Homeland Security Department to rule soon on the fate of the invisible fence, the high-tech portion of the $4.4-billion Secure Border Initiative.

Homeland Security spokesman Matt Chandler would only say that a new way forward for the program "is expected shortly."

But given that the virtual fence has yet to pass muster even in the 53-mile test area — two sections in Arizona that officials acknowledge won't be fully operational until 2013 — and the government's lack of interest in extending Boeing's contract, most do not expect the department to invest billions more in a project that has continually disappointed.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he hoped Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano would act soon. "The program is headed in the wrong direction," Thompson said.

"It would be a great shame to scrap SBInet," said Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), who has encouraged the department to bring to the Southwest the technology the U.S. military is using on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. "Technology is key to solving these border issues."

Even as scrutiny of the program has increased in the last year, Boeing has not provided accurate information on the progress of the program, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report released Oct. 18. The study found an unusually high number of errors in the data Boeing gave to the Homeland Security Department.

A spokeswoman for Boeing said the company had "worked closely with Customs and Border Protection to overcome past performance and management challenges." She added that Boeing was committed to completing the testing and delivery of the system at the Tucson and Ajo, Ariz., stations, which comprise the 53-mile test zones.

Some of the technology, such as remote cameras, night-vision video and mobile surveillance, is being used by agents in the Arizona test areas, which see a high level of cross-border traffic. But the effectiveness is far from what was requested by Homeland Security officials and promised by Boeing when the project began.

Daytime cameras are able to monitor only half of the distance expected. Ground sensors can identify off-road vehicles, but not humans, as initially envisioned by the government.

"It turned out to be a harder technological problem than we ever anticipated," said Mark Borkowski, executive director of the electronic fence program at the Homeland Security Department, earlier this year. "We thought it would be very easy, and it wasn't."

Congress was sold on the initiative as a way to combine newfangled gadgetry with old-fashioned fences to secure the entire expanse of the U.S. border with Mexico. Physical fencing has been installed over 600 miles of terrain under the program. But the technological portion, called SBInet, has languished.

Randolph C. Hite, who monitors the program as GAO director for information technology architecture systems, praised Homeland Security officials' decision to extend Boeing's contract on a short-term basis while it takes a close look at the program's worthiness.

"I think it is a prudent step," Hite said.

In the meantime, Homeland Security spokesman Chandler said Customs and Border Protection would determine "if there are alternatives that may more efficiently, effectively and economically meet our nation's border security needs."

Trouble with the invisible fence began in the design phase, when the Homeland Security Department set demands for the technology that surpassed what was available at the time. The department required, for example, that the system help Border Patrol agents be in position to apprehend 90% of the incursions over the border, but the technology has achieved only a fraction of that goal. Citing problems with the program, Napolitano announced in March that she was freezing funding to the initiative outside of Arizona.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-invisible-fence-20101022,0,6834240,print.story

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OPINION

What triggers the suicide bomber

Foreign occupation, not religious fervor, is the primary motivation behind this form of terrorism.

By Robert Pape

October 22, 2010

On Oct. 23, 1983, a suicide bomber drove a truck laden with explosives into the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 Marines as they slept. This dark chapter of American history was one of the country's first experiences with suicide attack since the Japanese kamikaze pilots during World War II. The attack, combined with the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut that April and a sustained terrorism campaign waged by the group that came to be known as Hezbollah, was a major reason President Reagan ordered American forces to leave Lebanon in 1984.

The barracks bombing is perhaps the most well known attack in Lebanon during that period, but it was far from an isolated incident. Hezbollah's campaign of suicide terrorism, mainly against American, French and Israeli military forces along with Western political targets, killed about 900 people. And the attacks would serve as a major inspiration for future terrorist groups that adopted similar tactics, most notably Hamas, Al Qaeda and the Tamil Tigers.

At the time, the prevailing narrative was that these attacks in Lebanon were the result of Shiite Muslim fundamentalism. It has become a common refrain over the last several decades that religion, and Islam in particular, is the primary cause of suicide bombings. This is an easy, convenient and clear argument that fits with the United States' approach to the war on terror over the last decade.

There is just one problem with this argument: It's wrong.

Research I and my colleagues conducted at the University of Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, in which we analyzed each of the more than 2,200 suicide attacks that have taken place throughout the world since 1980, shows that though other factors matter, the primary driver of suicide terrorism is foreign occupation.

In Lebanon, for example, of the 32 successful suicide attackers from 1982 through 1989 whose ideology was identifiable, 22 were communists and socialists with no commitment to religious extremism; five were Christian. Religion served as an auxiliary recruiting tool, but the root cause of the attacks was foreign occupation, and the attacks were designed to coerce the occupying forces — Israel, France and the United States — to withdraw.

The United States has not learned the lessons from Lebanon and is failing to realize that prolonged troop deployments abroad are leading to an increase in suicide attacks and violence against troops and civilians.

What we should be doing is asking whether our military presence in Afghanistan and continued campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan are making us safer. Unfortunately, our research suggests just the opposite.

A more effective approach would be to revert to a policy of working with local governments and institutions and selectively using air power and special forces to accomplish important military objectives. This is an intermediate approach that is neither "cutting and running" nor "staying and dying." It is a way to achieve political objectives without subjecting U.S. forces to unnecessary harm and without further inflaming local passions that in turn lead to a rise of hatred and violence against an occupying power.

Many worry that shifting to such a policy would embolden the terrorists. However, Hezbollah suicide attackers did not follow the Americans to New York, or the French to Paris or even the Israelis to Tel Aviv after those nations left Lebanon. Since the last Israeli ground forces left in May 2000, there has not been a single Hezbollah suicide attack, not even in the summer of 2006, during the three-week air war between Israel and Hezbollah. To be sure, ordinary terrorism has continued, but causing far fewer deaths than suicide attacks.

The U.S. has important strategic interests in Afghanistan and the region and in the Middle East, and it should use all instruments of national power to achieve them. But to continue on the current path is to ignore the causal link between foreign occupation and terrorism, which will make it less likely that we will be able to eradicate this threat in the years ahead.

Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and an expert on terrorism and international security, is the author of the just-released "Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-pape-fgn-occupation-20101022,0,2582415,print.story

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EDITORIAL

NPR's overreaction

NPR overreacted by firing news analyst Juan Williams after he admitted his own biases in the context of a cautionary statement. Such comments have a place in public discussion of uncomfortable subjects.

October 22, 2010

It can be hard to determine when a public figure has said something so offensive that he or she should be fired. But this much should be obvious: There has to be room in our public discourse for an honest statement, civilly expressed, even if it is prejudicial. NPR overreacted by dumping news analyst Juan Williams after he expressed personal nervousness on Fox News about boarding planes with Muslims who wear religious clothing

Williams' comments were no doubt hurtful to Muslims, and ignorant as well. But they were not a fiery fomenting of hatred or a harangue against all Muslims in this country. They were open admissions of his own biases that reflect our society's tendency, post-9/11, to categorize Muslims in unflattering ways.

To some extent, Williams was a victim of the same kind of out-of-context information-clipping as Shirley Sherrod, the African American official who was ousted from the U.S. Department of Agriculture this summer after a video excerpt of a speech made it sound as though she had discriminated against a white farmer who sought her help. The anecdote was actually part of a broader speech in which Sherrod denounced racial prejudice.

In Williams' fuller comments on Fox News, he warned conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly to be more careful to differentiate between Muslims and Muslim terrorists, and reminded him that when people criticize, for example, the anti-gay Christians who protest at military funerals, they don't blame the problem on Christians in general. NPR says it fired Williams because, by expressing personal viewpoints in outside gigs, he violated its ethical standards for news analysts. But Williams has been offering his opinions for a long time; at the very least, NPR's timing is bad.

Williams is not the first to have lost his job over controversial comments about race, religion or gender. There was legendary White House correspondent Helen Thomas' exhortation to Israeli Jews to "get the hell out of Palestine" and move back to Germany and Poland; Rick Sanchez, fired from CNN after a series of rants that included calling President Obama a "cotton-pickin' president" and suggesting that "everyone who runs CNN" was Jewish; and Obama's economic adviser, Larry Summers, who as president of Harvard University wondered aloud whether innate differences in aptitude might be part of the reason why women were underrepresented in the sciences.

Some comments are outrageously offensive and worthy of disciplinary measures; others are dopey but relatively harmless, and some are sincere admissions of common biases. But if our first reaction to every statement that makes us uncomfortable is unmitigated horror and a swift kick out the door, we run the risk of closing off all honest debate about difficult subjects.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-williams-20101022,0,7994468,print.story

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OPINION

Facts, not furor

Evidence, not emotion, must dictate how L.A. County handles the most vulnerable children under its care.

By Mark Ridley-Thomas and Michael D. Antonovich

October 22, 2010

Few tragedies compare to the death of a child, and in Los Angeles County, too many children die at the hands of parents or caregivers.

But in Los Angeles there is an additional disgrace: the fueling of panic over child fatalities by government officials and the news media, who continue to operate in an environment clouded by incomplete and misunderstood facts.

Are child deaths related to the Department of Children and Family Services rising precipitously? What data do we have, and what is the context? What does the data really show about the policies of the DCFS? Answers to these questions are getting lost in the furor surrounding reports of child deaths in the news media and at Board of Supervisors meetings.

News reports and officials have done little so far to put the current level of fatalities in perspective. As we see it, these are some of the fundamental sources of confusion:

The term "child death" can mean too many things.

Last year, according to the DCFS, 55 children who had department case histories were homicide victims. That fact alone evokes for many an image of an infant or toddler killed in an abusive home, when the DCFS should have spotted danger.

But "children" includes those up to 18 years old. A closer look at the 55 homicides shows that 35 were of teenagers shot or stabbed to death in assaults, many in gang-related incidents. Three youths were shot by police officers.

The label "DCFS history" applies to any child who has been the subject of an abuse complaint; the history remains with the child even if the complaint was found to be false. These children in most cases were not young children, and few were still under the care of the DCFS.

The number of children killed by parents, foster parents or relatives acting as guardians have been effectively constant since the 1990s. These figures have been overlooked.

In 1998, 20 children with DCFS histories were killed by parents, foster parents or relatives acting as guardians. In 2008, there were 14 such fatalities. The number varied from 11 to 20 in the years between. These figures are published in a widely circulated report by the county's Inter-Agency Council on Abuse and Neglect Child Death Review team, but have been forgotten amid the frenzy surrounding the DCFS.

These numbers are significant for many reasons, not least because of speculation that the DCFS' emphasis on keeping children with parents or family members, rather than putting them in foster care, has resulted in increased harm to children. But these homicide figures — the most consistent data in hand that cover the period of time since the department adopted its policy of keeping kids in families — do not show that children would be safer in foster care.

The increase in a broader category — "abuse and neglect" child deaths — may or may not be significant in terms of policy decisions. We don't know yet.

The latest cause for alarm has been a reported jump in "abuse and neglect" deaths of children with DCFS histories, from 18 in 2008 to 26 in 2009. (For 2010, the figure is 21, through August.)

These numbers need context. They include homicides at the hands of parents, foster parents and relatives acting as guardians, but they also include deaths that aren't considered homicides. There is subjectivity involved in making these determinations, and the definition of "abuse and neglect" has recently been expanded. For example, these numbers now include certain drownings, suicides, deaths from medical neglect and other types of deaths that might previously have been labeled accidental.

It should also be noted that so far we have annual data based on the new definition for only the last two years, a paltry level of comparison. And these are relatively small numbers.

Drawing conclusions from small numbers is always dangerous. A bump from 18 to 26 deaths, in a DCFS child population of about 33,000, is reason for intense scrutiny of the cases, but the increase represents less than .03% of the DCFS' total caseload.

Any preventable child fatality in Los Angeles County is one too many, and none of this is to say the county's child protection system isn't in the midst of a crisis. More oversight is needed. More complete and consistent data must be presented to the public and to the board. We support independent reviews of the DCFS, and we will continue to hold the department accountable, along with other agencies responsible for the well-being of children, the departments of mental health, health, public health and social services.

We must step back from the furor over child deaths and deal with facts. The speculation that the DCFS' policy — keeping children with family members rather than placing them in foster care — is causing or allowing more child deaths is just that, speculation.

Facts need to dictate how Los Angeles handles its most vulnerable children. Before we call for a major reversal in child welfare policy, one that could lead to a rush of children being taken from their parents prematurely, we need to honestly evaluate where we are today. Evidence, not emotion, needs to fuel the debate.

Mark Ridley-Thomas and Michael D. Antonovich are members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-antonovich-dcfs-20101022,0,7742567,print.story

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From the L.A. Daily News

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Fatal car crashes involving teen drivers drop By Tony Castro LA Daily News Fatal car crashes involving teen drivers in California dropped by more than half over five years in what officials are calling a welcome side effect of the recession. The number of teen highway deaths in the state fell 54 percent from 145 in 2004 to 67 in 2008, according to a new federal report. That exceeds the national decline of about a third in the same period. While the federal report credits the drop to tougher state limits on younger drivers, California officials also attribute the significant decline to the recession, noting that fatal car crashes have declined for all age groups. "The economy certainly has something to do with it," said Chris Cochran, spokesman for the Governor's Office of Traffic Safety. "People are driving fewer miles, and teens don't have as much money as adults so they're driving even less. "In California, we also have tougher graduated driver laws. Those 16- and 17-year-olds are getting more instruction before they're allowed to drive, and – even then – with more restrictions. "People are also buckling up their seat belts more. It's the whole gamut of traffic safety initiatives that are taking effect." Officials cite the fact that the most significant drop in fatal car crashes involving teen drivers in the state occurred from 2007, when the economy began to decline, to 2008.

Car fatalities involving teen drivers in 2007 numbered 130 and fell to the low of 67 in 2008, according to the federal report.

Statistics compiled by the California Highway Patrol also reflect a similar drop – from 134 in 2007 to 77 in 2008.

The number of deaths nationally linked to teen driver accidents fell from about 2,200 in 2004 to 1,400 in 2008, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.

The CDC said it had taken an interest in the issue because car crashes are the leading cause of death for teens in the United States, and accidents while driving cause 36 percent of all deaths in this age group.

The new report examined accidents with drivers who were 16 or 17, and it covers the period from 2004 to 2008, the last year for which driver fatality statistics are available.

California also records accidents in which the teen driver has been at fault. According to the state, the driver was at fault in 111 of the 158 car fatalities involving a teen driver in 2004. In 2008, of the 77 car fatalities involving a teen driver, the driver was at fault in 56 crashes.

Several factors might explain how more lives are being saved, officials said, among them safer cars and tougher drivers license laws limiting when teens can drive.

California, New Jersey and New York had very low rates of teens involved in accidents, the report said.

"The relatively low rates of crash involvement for young drivers in New Jersey and New York might be related to licensing policies," the report said.

"New Jersey is the only state with a minimum licensing age of 17 years; in New York City, the minimum age is 18 years, except for persons who take a state-approved driver education course and meet other requirements, who may be licensed at aged 17 years."

In California, teens taking a state-approved driver education course and meeting other requirements can receive a learner's permit at the age of 15 and get a restricted license at 16.

"Tougher laws on teen licensing have essentially raised the driving age," said Russ Rader, spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an Arlington, Va.-based research group funded by auto insurance companies.

"Many 16-year-olds are not on the road any more with full privileged driver licenses. Tougher laws have taken some of the riskier drivers off the road – and the less exposure, the fewer cashes."

Wyoming had the highest death rate in car crashes involving teen drivers, the CDC reported.

Rader said graduated drivers licensing programs, as they are called, began appearing in 1996 and now 49 states have them. Some are more restrictive than others, which may be one reason why death rates vary by state, Rader said.

Wyoming has a graduated drivers licensing program, but authorities consider it somewhat lax. For example, younger teens are allowed to drive until 11 p.m., while other states force them off the roads starting at 9 p.m.

"Graduated license laws that restrict when a teen can get a license and place restrictions like no night driving after a certain time or no driving with other teens in the car have proven to be effective," said Rader.

"Their aim has been to take teens out of most dangerous driving situations, and in many states they're succeeding."

http://www.dailynews.com/ci_16398174

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Kids take shelter from the quake at the start of the disaster drill. As part of the Great CA ShakeOut, Providence High School and Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center held a full-scale exercise designed to encourage preparation for the "Big One." Emergency management agencies, first responders & a rescue teams searched classrooms after the "quake" to tend to "injured students."

Great California ShakeOut exercise helps Southland prepare for the 'big one' By Dana Bartholomew LA Daily News "Can any of you walk? What's your name, buddy?" asked Burbank fire Capt. Ken Allen, whose paramedics burst into classrooms where student actors covered in fake blood lay beneath a jumble of desks, file cabinets and debris. "We'll get you taken care of." Call it a mix of Hollywood – Walt Disney and Warner Bros. studios are just down the street – and ardent preparation by some of the world's foremost earthquake experts and emergency management agencies. Across Los Angeles County, 2.8 million schoolchildren, office workers and others dropped to the floor, took cover under desks and held on until the imaginary shaking stopped, while more than 100 hospitals were on alert. During the third annual ShakeOut, 7.9 million residents across California who had registered for the drill teamed up with hospitals, fire departments and emergency responders to stage elaborate search-and-rescue missions and medical triage. The drill was considered vital preparation for "The Big One" – an overdue temblor 50 times more powerful than the 6.7-magnitude Northridge Earthquake that killed 72 people and caused $20 billion in damage in 1994.

It was launched after scientists determined that a 7.8-magnitude quake in Southern California would spark 1,600 fires, damage 300,000 buildings and inflict $213 billion in economic losses – after killing 1,800 residents and injuring tens of thousands more.

The U.S. Geological Survey has forecast a 46 percent chance of a 7.5-magnitude or greater quake in the next 30 years, probably in Southern California.

To prepare for it, officials have drilled into the minds of Californians to "Drop, cover and hold on," as residents are often injured trying to flee a shaking building.

They also urge residents to develop an emergency evacuation plan, stockpile three days of food, water and medicines for people and pets, store an emergency radio and know where to turn off the gas.

"At some point, our luck is going to run out," said Lucy Jones, chief scientist at the USGS and an expert on Southern California earthquakes. "What we are doing here is getting ready for it."

The Burbank event involved hundreds of students, scores of emergency responders and an army of media. It was studied by dignitaries from as far away as Chile and Turkey, which face similar seismic threats as California.

"We are learning," said Roberto Hern ndez, a retired colonel with the Joint Chief Command of Chile, where 500 died during an 8.8-magnitude temblor in February. "I think that practice is very important to saving lives. Practice. And practice."

The day at Providence High began with 375 sleepy-eyed students sitting at their desks throughout the campus at Buena Vista Street and the 134 Freeway.

Then at 10:21 a.m., an alarm sounded through the public address system: "This is an earthquake drill: Drop. Cover. And hold on."

Hundreds of bodies hit the floor, including Alice Ross and Vince McManus in Marisa Bradfield's homeroom. That's when Mrs. Bradfield, wearing a plaid porkpie hat, and 18 uniformed students curled into balls beneath their desks.

While no one was "injured" in Room 202, others didn't fare so well. In Room 212 next door, desks were overturned, filing cabinets tipped over, and four students lay beneath the rubble, their faces bloody, their limbs gored.

The destruction was repeated up and down halls lined with bright red lockers. As students filed out of the 55-year-old school, scores of firefighters rushed in. And as the paramedics loaded groaning teens into ambulances, Providence Saint Joseph set up a temporary outdoor ER clinic to treat a crush of earthquake-related injuries.

"It's going very well," said Ken Kondo, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management, one of the partners in the Earthquake Country Alliance, which organized the drill. "They're doing exactly what they trained to do."

At precisely 10:21 a.m. Thursday, the Golden State rocked as nearly 8 million students, teachers and office workers dove under their desks to "drop, cover and hold on" during the world's largest earthquake preparedness drill.

But nowhere was the Great California ShakeOut more vivid than at Providence High School in Burbank, where the imaginary 7.8-magnitude jolt sent dozens of students streaming into Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center next door.

http://www.dailynews.com/ci_16398227

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In this Aug. 18, 2009 photo, the Correctional Association of New York's Women in Prison Project, New York Civil Liberties Union, and Women on the Rise Telling Her Story (WORTH), hold a protest in front of Gov. David Paterson's office in New York, to call on the governor to sign the Anti-Shackling Bill. On Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2009, Paterson signed into law a bill that largely bans the use of restraints on inmates during childbirth, making New York the sixth state in the country to do so, a spokesperson said. A report being released Thursday, Oct. 21, 2010 by the National Women's Law Center and the Rebecca Project for Human Rights says the number of women in America's state prisons has reached a record high, yet many states have inadequate policies for dealing with the large portion of them who have children or are pregnant.

Report faults state prisons' treatment of mothers By David Crary, The Associated Press The number of women in America's state prisons has reached a record high, yet many states have inadequate policies for dealing with the large portion of them who have children or are pregnant, according to a new 50-state survey. The report, being released today by the National Women's Law Center and the Rebecca Project for Human Rights, analyzes policies in three areas – prenatal care, shackling of pregnant women during childbirth, and community-based alternatives to incarceration enabling mothers to be with their children. Only one state, Pennsylvania, received an A. "It's shameful that so many states fail to have laws and policies to protect this vulnerable population of unseen and largely forgotten women," said Jill Morrison, a co-author of the report and senior counsel at the law center. As a backdrop to its findings, the report noted the number of women in prison ç more than 115,000 as of 2009 – has risen at a higher rate than that of men since the introduction of mandatory sentencing policies for many drug offenses. It said most of the women are nonviolent, first-time offenders, and about two-thirds have at least one child under 18. According to the report, pregnant women entering prison often have high-risk pregnancies, yet many states lack comprehensive policies to ensure they receive essential prenatal care.

The report said a majority of states do not require medical examinations as a component of prenatal care, and do not offer pregnant women screening for HIV/AIDS.

The report also said most states have failed to implement strict limits on the use of shackles or other restraints on mothers during labor and delivery. Morrison said the actual use of shackles during childbirth has likely declined in recent years, but she complained that many states lacked firm, clear-cut regulations governing the practice.

The report also urged continued expansion of community-based alternative sentencing programs, including drug-treatment programs, for women who have children and were convicted of nonviolent offenses.

"These treatment programs permit mothers and children to heal together in community-based facilities and consistently show successful outcomes for children's health and stability," the report said.

2010 photo of Shawanna Nelson and son, Jordan, in Little Rock, Arkansas. She was shackled to a hospital bed in 2003 while giving birth to her son when serving time for credit card fraud.

Some of the states that received low grades in the survey disagreed with how they were characterized – notably in regard to F's given for prenatal care. Mississippi's corrections department said all incarcerated pregnant women in its custody receive prenatal care from qualified physicians. Anne Cybulski-Sandlian, health services program manager for Wyoming's corrections department, said the private company running the state prison for women was required to meet national standards for its medical program, including prenatal care. According to the report, Wyoming is one of 16 states that do not provide alternative community-based sentencing enabling some mothers to be with their children. "The department is poised and ready to move forward if that is something that is legislatively changed," Cybulski-Sandlian said. South Carolina, which received an 'F' grade overall, vigorously defended its policies on prenatal care and shackling, saying there were misrepresented in the report. "When the S.C. Department of Corrections receives a pregnant inmate through our courts, she is afforded complete medical and prenatal care," department spokesman Josh Gelinas said in an e-mail. He said pregnant women past the 20 th week of pregnancy are not restrained except for specific security reasons. Morrison said a primary purpose of the report was to encourage greater accountability and consistency in how incarcerated mothers are treated. "We know some states that are doing the right thing that don't have policies, and some states that have good policies that aren't doing the right thing," she said. "We want prisoners and their families to know what they're entitled to." Morrison said the use of shackles during childbirth has abated in part because of individual women who've taken a stand against the practice after enduring it.

Among them is Shawanna Nelson, 37, of Little Rock, Ark., who was shackled to a hospital bed while giving birth to her son in 2003 when she was serving time for credit card fraud.

Released in 2004, Nelson sued the state prison system, saying that the shackling – while she was experiencing severe contractions – caused lasting hip and back injuries.

In July, a federal jury found that Nelson's civil rights has been violated and awarded her $1. Nelson, who works for a nonprofit that helps grandparent caregivers, says her son, Jordan, is thriving and she is proud of pursuing the lawsuit despite the nominal award.

"The case was never about money," she said. "It helped bring attention to the situation."

Malika Saada Saar, executive director of the Rebecca Project and co-author of the new report, said further reforms in the treatment of imprisoned mothers could have far-reaching impact.

Better-designed programs "will offer incarcerated mothers and their families a meaningful chance to break the cycle of generational addiction, incarceration and poverty and achieve family stability," Saar said.

http://www.dailynews.com/crime/ci_16390845

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From the New York Times

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Serbia Tested as War Crimes Suspect Roams Free

BELGRADE — After 15 years on the run — sometimes in plain sight at soccer matches and weddings and sometimes deep in the fabric of this secretive city — Europe's most wanted war-crimes suspect, Ratko Mladic, is being hidden by no more than a handful of loyalists, most probably in a neighborhood of Communist-era housing towers, according to investigators and some of his past associates.

The diminished circumstances of the former Bosnian Serb general, who once was protected by scores of allies and Serbian government officials, make him ripe for capture, according to these people. But a softening by several European countries on whether his arrest should be a prerequisite for Serbia's admission to the European Union is raising questions about whether he will ever face justice.

These developments make this a seminal moment not only in the search for Mr. Mladic but also in Europe's often agonized deliberations over how much to encourage the manhunt in the face of deeply conflicting priorities. In the name of unity and stability, should Europe put a premium on rehabilitating a battered country that became a pariah state in the Balkan wars of the 1990's?

Or in the name of its human rights tradition, should Europe first require a friendly Serbian government to make the politically difficult arrest of a man blamed for the worst ethnically motivated mass murder on the Continent since World War II? That involved the massacre of about 8,000 Muslim men and boys from the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, an enclave under the failed protection of United Nations peacekeepers from the Netherlands.

An investigation into Mr. Mladic's whereabouts, how he has eluded capture, and Europe's shifting response to him paints a picture of a man of obstinate will and bravado, slowly and haltingly being drawn into a shrinking world of shadows. Over the years, as European pressure for an arrest intensified and then retreated, he received vital, little known, assistance from Serbian military forces and several of the country's past governments.

By all accounts, one of the most effective points of pressure was withholding consideration of E.U. membership until Serbia produced Mr. Mladic.

But as Europe has struggled with the dilemma, time seems to have played its hand. The vividness of the wartime horrors has receded outside the Balkans. Mr. Mladic has gotten older, and, according to many people, sicker and more isolated, probably moving from nondescript apartment to nondescript apartment in New Belgrade, a sprawling extension of Belgrade across the Sava River.

The two-year-old government of Boris Tadic has been overtly pro-Western and has vowed to apprehend Mr. Mladic, even though he has defied arrest for more than two years after his fellow fugitive, the former Bosnian strongman Radovan Karadzic, was brought in.

Given all of this, there are strong indications that when European foreign ministers meet in Luxembourg next Monday, the balance could tip away from requiring an immediate arrest and that an E.U. admission process that would take several years could start.

“Your future is the European Union and that future must accrue as soon as possible,” the Greek prime minister, George Papandreou, said in Belgrade this month, a comment representative of others made in Belgrade over the past month, by officials from France, Germany, Belgium and other E.U. members. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton also visited and offered encouragement to the government.

But some senior European officials and human rights groups are unrelenting in believing that a compromise over Mr. Mladic would undermine international law and amount to a moral failure.

“The arrest should be a number one priority,” Serge Brammertz, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, said in an interview.

At a commemoration of the massacre this summer, he was one of many speakers to urge a quick capture. “I said in Srebrenica at the summer memorial that this was the most emotional moment for me in my three years with the tribunal,” Mr. Brammertz recalled. “I could see that for all of the survivors and relatives, Srebrenica is not an event from the past, but something dominating their life, not only today but for tomorrow. And the number one priority for the victims is to see Mladic in the Hague.”

Although the European Union halted accession talks in 2006 when Serbia failed to arrest Mr. Mladic, Dutch diplomats say they are now the lone holdouts for an arrest as a prerequisite for resuming the discussions. They are hoping to forestall action until December, when Mr. Brammertz issues his annual report evaluating Serbia's effort in the manhunt. In the last few days, to the consternation of some E.U. officials, he has called for more aggressiveness.

Mariko Peters, a Green member in the Dutch Parliament, which passed a resolution this month seeking to delay a decision, acknowledged, “Our Dutch position has become more isolated.”

“Many nations are weighing Mladic's capture as just one of many factors — stabilization of the Balkans, the Kosovo issue, upcoming Serbian elections and the need to give rewards to democratic forces that are weak,” she said.

Mr. Tadic, the Serbian president, has been adamant that he is dedicated to a capture. In response to written questions, he wrote, “This government of Serbia is doing absolutely everything in its power to locate and arrest him.”

Given history, many analysts in Serbia and beyond remain skeptical.

“It's easy to hide successfully when nobody wants to find you,” said a key protector of Mr. Mladic's fellow fugitive, Mr. Karadzic, offering a wry smile.

Out in the open

Mr. Mladic, who commanded Bosnian Serb forces, has proved a wily foe — tough, resourceful and abetted by military-trained protectors, according to more than two dozen sources, including government investigators, two loyalists who aided him and Mr. Karadzic, and five family friends, including the family priest.

A tall, burly man of 68 with a ruddy face and sharp blue eyes, Mr. Mladic was born in a remote Bosnian Serb village, Bozanovici. He was shaped by poverty and the killing of his partisan father by soldiers of the Nazi puppet state in Croatia. His rise in the Yugoslav Army was swift.

In 1992, one month after a Bosnian majority voted to secede from Yugoslavia, Mr. Mladic's forces launched the three-and-a-half-year siege of Sarajevo, killing 10,000 people, including 3,500 children. In July 1995, the Srebrenica men and boys were led to killing fields where they were shot with hands bound. The Bosnian war ended five months later.

That year, an international court in The Hague indicted Mr. Mladic twice, for war crimes in the Sarajevo siege and for genocide in the Srebrenica massacre. He became a fugitive at a time when 60,000 NATO troops were on the ground, raising questions about why he was not seized. American and European diplomats say a consensus prevailed that no country wanted to spill its soldiers' blood in a battle with Mr. Mladic's armed protectors — which has left Serbian governments asking why they should risk the same.

Mr. Mladic certainly did not lie low for many years. Protected by Serbia's nationalist president, Slobodan Milosevic, he visited for several years the grave of his daughter, Ana, who committed suicide with his favorite pistol in 1994. He enjoyed a Chinese-Yugoslav soccer match surrounded by bodyguards at a Belgrade stadium in 2000. His framed photograph hung in bars like the Crazy House in New Belgrade. He prayed at his brother's funeral in 2001 in a jogging suit and sunglasses with a young woman on his arm, according to the family priest, Vojislav Carkic, who said local men blocked off the cemetery road.

One protector — a Serbian military officer who was later arrested — recalled that Mr. Mladic lived fairly openly in a house guarded by a private 52-man security detail with four cars. Last year, a former Mladic bodyguard, Branislav Puhalo, testified that the unit was established in 1997 on Mr. Milosevic's orders.

For Mr. Mladic, this was the easiest time.

Doubts grow about manhunt

After 13 calamitous years, Mr. Milosevic was ousted in October 2000 after a popular uprising.

In 2001, a new government, threatened with the loss of American aid and World Bank loans, arrested him on genocide charges and sent him to The Hague.

Mr. Mladic pulled back from public view and began to move among military barracks, according to friends, who said they would visit him to play table tennis or chess. As he did, the myth of his fugitive cunning only grew. In 2002, the government signed a cooperation agreement with the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. It eventually asked him to leave the Topcider barracks in Dedinje, an exclusive Belgrade district where he was hiding. According to Vladimir Vukcevic, Serbia's war crimes prosecutor, he simply refused.

The Topcider barracks, built in the 1960s under the dictator Josip Broz Tito, was an ideal hiding place, as it concealed an underground city carved into a hill. Mr. Milosevic is believed to have hidden behind its thick, reinforced concrete walls during the NATO bombing of 1999.

The military authorities tried to smoke Mr. Mladic out by summoning a police helicopter to hover over the barracks, dropping a decoy rope ladder to pretend a raid was imminent. But that did little more than provoke Mr. Mladic to speed away, a level further into Belgrade.

Investigators say that they chose not to attempt an arrest out of fear of a violent shoot-out with Mr. Mladic's ardent military supporters. This, along with other subsequent failures to make an arrest, intensified doubts about whether the manhunt was genuine.

At one point, a former protector said, 50 bodyguards formed a human shield when investigators showed up at one of the safe houses Mr. Mladic began to use, and he fashioned another escape.

There were other near showdowns. In March 2003, the Serbian prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, pledged to arrest him to pave the way for E.U. admission. Days later, a sniper killed Mr. Djindjic.

‘Snitch culture' aids movement

When their network was vibrant, Mladic loyalists would meet routinely in four crowded public lobbies in Belgrade — summoned by the code, “waiting room,” according to a former protector who is now on trial in Belgrade with more than a dozen others for helping Mr. Mladic. All were brought in at a time of intense Western pressure.

As the former protector described the process as it worked in 2006, they discarded mobile telephones and SIM cards 4 kilometers, or 2.5 miles, from their gatherings in crowded places where they could easily blend in. Meeting face to face, they hardly spoke, discussing protection logistics by exchanging written messages that they burned.

Mr. Mladic's pursuers came from two agencies, one military and another that reported to senior government officials, and sometimes they clashed. According to an agent involved, military intelligence labeled one of its actions “Operation Network.” Mr. Mladic was referred to as “The Host.”

A former member of the government's surveillance operation — who described with precision the monitoring of Mr. Mladic and Mr. Karadzic — said investigators knew the fugitives' hiding places until February 2008, five months before the Tadic government took over and Mr. Karadzic was apprehended. Until then, the official said, the surveillance team did not receive an order to make an arrest.

The former investigator said teams stalked both men outside their apartments and followed their helpers on grocery trips. Until his arrest on genocide charges in 2007, they said, the mastermind of the network that shielded Mr. Mladic was Zdravko Tolimir, a former general and an assistant commander of intelligence in the Bosnian Serb Army who is now on trial in The Hague.

The investigators received technical help from the United States and other countries, but those forces have dwindled. And even when at full strength, according to Mr. Mladic's protectors and investigators, they faced an insidious force that often undid their efforts — an elaborate “snitch culture” in which officials in military and state intelligence regularly tipped off Mladic operatives.

Perhaps with such insight, Mr. Mladic visited his dying mother's bedside in 2003, Father Carkic, the family priest, related, and then vanished before investigators arrived. His mother's marble tomb, located in a verdant Bosnian cemetery, is inscribed: Provided by Ratko Mladic.

Pressure and concessions

Mr. Mladic's support from Serbian governments ebbed and flowed, shaped by national politics and the West's inconsistent pressure.

But on many occasions, his protection reached to the political elite, investigators say. Mr. Vukcevic, the prosecutor, said that Vojislav Kostunica, prime minister from 2004 to 2008, pressured him to try those accused of war crimes in Serbia, to shield them from the potentially harsher justice of The Hague.

When he refused, he said, Mr. Kostunica tried to oust him, but was blocked by the West, particularly the United States. Mr. Kostunica has vigorously denied in the Serbian media that he knew the whereabouts of Mr. Mladic or Mr. Karadzic or obstructed the search.

Still, Western officials detected a long-running pattern: Whenever pressure increased, the Serbs made limited concessions. When pressure receded, efforts evaporated. The authorities staged raids targeting Mr. Mladic and Mr. Karadzic through the first half of 2008, for example. But in interviews, Serbian investigators and protectors of the two men said members of Serbian state intelligence services were simultaneously watching Mr. Mladic and Mr. Karadzic in their true hiding place, far from the drama.

“This game has been going on now for five to six years,” a Western diplomat said. “They are either waiting for him to die — a stroke or kidney problems — or hoping to get into the European Union without doing anything.”

‘Very disciplined' fugitive

The government's boldest move took place in 2006. In raids on homes and hangouts, the government arrested more than a dozen protectors, culminating in the arrest a year later of the network's supposed organizer, Mr. Tolimir, the former Bosnian Serb general. The actions severely damaged the network, but there is a belief that they, too, actually worked to help Mr. Mladic.

To Mr. Vukcevic, the Serbian prosecutor, the arrest of a key protector, whom he identified as Stanko Ristic, was devastating. “It sent a message to Mladic to run away and hide,” Mr. Vukcevic said. “It was catastrophic.”

After the arrests, one investigator, who said he monitored Mr. Mladic through 2008 outside his apartments, described a fugitive still at large, but in a smaller way, reduced to an ascetic existence in the large, gray towers of New Belgrade, where he could disappear like a ghost.

Mr. Mladic “was very disciplined,” the investigator recalled. “He stayed in his apartment and food and supplies were brought to him. He lived in tall buildings with 40 other apartments in New Belgrade where there are only 54 police officers for 70,000 people. He was never seen leaving the apartment even to go to the park. It was like he was under house arrest.”

Investigators and friends of Mr. Mladic say his network is now likely down to one or two people — deeply loyal associates, with probable links to the former Yugoslav Army — who aid him in a way roughly parallel to what a former protector says was the way Mr. Karadzic was helped.

One of his allies described how Mr. Karadzic shifted among a collection of 12 apartments in New Belgrade once every five months and survived monthly on €200, or about $280, for groceries. Protectors delivered newspapers, bread, even fresh salmon. Funds came from former associates, say friends.

But Mr. Mladic's life is likely harder. Mr. Karadzic disguised himself as a New Age guru with a bushy beard and circulated in public. Mr. Mladic's friends said he has refused an elaborate disguise, preferring an underground existence, and that he may be sick.

In a raid in March 2009 on the Bosnian home of Dusan Todic, a former military associate of Mr. Mladic, European Union troops found evidence that Mr. Mladic had used Mr. Todic's military medical identification to seek care in Serbia.

Is he alive, or dead?

The Serbian authorities, pressed by Western countries since Mr. Karadzic's arrest in 2008, have clearly been intensifying pressure on Mr. Mladic's family.

His wife, Bosiljka, whose nervous tick has intensified under constant surveillance, was detained in June and questioned for possessing unregistered weapons that the authorities knew about for years, according to Milos Saljic, the family's lawyer. Darko, Mr. Mladic's son, is routinely searched at airports and his computer business clients have been pressured to break contracts, Mr. Saljic added. Darko's wife, Biljana, was recently fired from a position at the state telecommunications company.

“They want to destroy the family,” Mr. Saljic said, noting that relatives sought a court order to declare him dead to relieve pressure. Prosecutors say the family was really trying to recover assets, including a $50,000 pension, frozen by the state.

Yet some friends insist that Mr. Mladic is indeed dead, having committed suicide to foil the manhunt, or that he will choose to take his life if he cannot thwart an attempted arrest.

The Serbian authorities say that regardless of how the European Union treats Belgrade's application, they will press for an arrest. “Serbia will bring its international obligations to completion,” Mr. Tadic, the president, wrote in response to written questions.

On a recent, misty, gray afternoon in Srebrenica, rows of marble tombstones were mixed with freshly turned red dirt.

The remains of victims — heads, arms, legs, scattered and concealed by Bosnian Serbian forces — are still being discovered 15 years after the killings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/22/world/europe/22iht-mladic.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Canadian Colonel Is Given 2 Life Jail Terms

BELLEVILLE, Ontario — When Col. David Russell Williams pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder on Monday, he was condemned under Canadian law to a sentence of life in prison without any chance of parole for 25 years.

On Thursday, the four-day court hearing for Colonel Williams, 47, came to a close with that sentence being imposed, twice, along with penalties for 84 other sexually related crimes he committed while commander of Canada's largest air force base, in Trenton.

While details of his crimes have been leaking out since his arrest in February, their depravity did not become fully apparent until prosecutors cataloged them in court this week with a thoroughness meant to ensure that he would never be paroled. They appear to have succeeded.

After saying that Colonel Williams “will forever be remembered as a sadosexual serial killer,” Justice Robert F. Scott sentenced him to the two life sentences in the murders of two women, two 10-year sentences for sexual assaults and one-year sentences for each of the 82 break-ins he committed to steal underwear from girls and women to satisfy himself sexually.

He was also fined 8,800 Canadian dollars — $100 for each offense he confessed to (about $8,600, or around $97 per offense) — to be paid to a victims' impact fund.

The court ordered that the colonel's sport utility vehicle be crushed along with the cameras he used to document his thefts, assaults and murders, and that the hundreds of recovered undergarments be incinerated. The military said it would strip him of rank and all honors — though it was unable to block his pension.

The courtroom recitation had another effect: pushing Canadians' initial shock over the case into horror, loathing and rage, and prompting calls for the death penalty, which this country abolished in 1976. Canadians poured their disgust out to reporters, on talk radio and online. At the courthouse, a woman protested this week with a handwritten sign demanding execution. Drivers shouted approval.

In a halting address to the court shortly before he was sentenced, the disgraced colonel called the public reaction “understandable hatred.”

“Most will find it impossible to accept,” Colonel Williams said as he stood, sniffling. “But the fact is I deeply regret what I have done and the harm I know I have caused to many.”

He added, with long breaks to maintain his composure, “I've committed despicable crimes.”

Colonel Williams was put into an unmarked van for an hourlong drive to a maximum security prison in Kingston.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/22/world/americas/22canada.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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From the Chicago Sun Times

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Universal School students hold a homemade American flag sign at the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview

Muslim Americans rally to get out vote Leaders hope to turn frustration into action this fall October 22, 2010 BY AMY LEE The so-called Ground Zero mosque. The Florida pastor intent on torching Qurans. And the Disneyland hostess barred from wearing a hijab. Kiran Ansari cites those issues and others as proof that "Islamophobia" is on the rise in the United States and underscores the need for Muslim Americans to get involved in the democratic process. "Those things have a ripple effect on us here in Chicago," said Ansari, 34, who will cast a ballot for the first time when she votes early this month for the Nov. 2 election. "We want to translate these sad and very terrible things into empowerment and understanding," Ansari said.

She was among dozens of Muslims who gathered Thursday afternoon at the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview for a get-out-the-vote rally to encourage the Muslim community to cast ballots in the mid-term election. For months, leaders of the Muslim community have pushed for members to register to vote, get educated on the issues and candidates and turn out for early voting or at their polling places on Nov. 2. They dubbed the movement "Our Vote is Our Power" and hope to mobilize 20,000 Muslim voters to the polls.

The goal is simple: Turn frustration into action, especially on issues such as immigration reform and refugee rights.

"American Muslims are not a threat to this nation," said Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a federation of 63 mosques and Muslim organizations in Illinois.

"The threat to this nation is those who would divide us based on race, faith or ethnicity because those are the ones who undermine our values."

Chicago area Muslims say they are subjected to racial profiling and encounter roadblocks when seeking zoning permits to build or expand mosques and Islamic centers.

"We will respond by going to the polls on Election Day," said Lawrence Benito, deputy director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

On Thursday, the groups also affixed homemade signs declaring "Real heros vote!" and "We are America" to a bus that drove about 50 Muslim voters to the Oak Lawn Village Hall to participate in early voting.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/elections/2824752,CST-NWS-muslimvote22.article

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From the White House

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President Obama: It Gets Better

Recently, several young people have taken their own lives after being bullied for being gay – or perceived as being gay – by their peers. Their deaths are shocking and heartbreaking tragedies. No one should have to endure relentless harassment or tormenting. No one should ever feel so alone or desperate that they feel they have nowhere to turn. We each share a responsibility to protect our young people. And we also have an obligation to set an example of respect and kindness, regardless of our differences.

This is personal to me. When I was a young adult, I faced the jokes and taunting that too many of our youth face today, and I considered suicide as a way out.  But I was fortunate.  One of my co-workers recognized that I was hurting, and I soon confided in her.  She cared enough to push me to seek help.  She saved my life.  I will always be grateful for her compassion and support – the same compassion and support that so many kids need today. 

In the wake of these terrible tragedies, thousands of Americans have come together to share their stories of hope and encouragement for LGBT youth who are struggling as part of the It Gets Better Project.  Their messages are simple: no matter how difficult or hopeless life may seem when you're a young person who's been tormented by your peers or feels like you don't fit in: life will get better.

President Obama is committed to ending bullying, harassment and discrimination in all its forms in our schools and communities.  That's why he recorded this message.

Last year, the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services joined forces with four other departments to create a federal task force on bullying.  In August 2010, the task force staged the first-ever National Bullying Summit, bringing together 150 top state, local, civic, and corporate leaders to begin mapping out a national plan to end bullying.   The task force also launched a new website, www.bullyinginfo.org, which brings all the federal resources on bullying together in one place for the first time ever. 

If you're a young person who's been bullied or harassed by your peers, or you're a parent or teacher who knows a young person being bullied or harassed, here are a few resources that can help you:

The Trevor Project
The Trevor Project is determined to end suicide among LBGTQ youth by providing resources and a nationwide, 24 hour hotline.  If you are considering suicide or need help, call: 866-4-U-TREVOR.

BullyingInfo.org
BullyingInfo.org is a project of the Interagency Working Group on Youth Programs (IWGYP) focused on providing tools and resources for youth, parents, teachers and mental health providers to prevent and address bullying. 

It Gets Better Project
President Obama's video is just one of thousands of videos submitted by people across the country to inspire and encourage LGBT youth who are struggling.  You can watch more videos at ItGetsBetterProject.com.

For even more information and resources visit:

• Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN)
• Matthew Shepard Foundation
• Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG)

A transcript of the President's video is here.

Brian Bond is Deputy Director of the Office of Public Engagement

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/10/21/president-obama-it-gets-better

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From the Department of Justice

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Uzbek Man Pleads Guilty to Charges for Involvement in a Racketeering Enterprise That Engaged in Forced Labor

WASHINGTON – A citizen of Uzbekistan residing in Mission, Kan., pleaded guilty late yesterday to charges for his role as the leader of a criminal enterprise that engaged in forced labor, fraud in foreign labor contracting, visa fraud, mail fraud, identity theft, tax evasion and money laundering, the Justice Department announced today.  Today's conviction was prosecuted under the statute prohibiting fraud in foreign labor contracting enacted as part of the Trafficking Victim's Reauthorization Act of 2008.  

According to court documents, Abrorkhodja Askarkhodjaev, 31, pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy, fraud in foreign labor contracting, evasion of corporate employment tax, and identity theft. As leader of this criminal enterprise, Askarkhodjaev arranged for the recruitment and exploitation of foreign national workers. Many of these workers were recruited with false promises related to the terms, conditions and nature of their employment. Once the enterprise obtained the workers' presence in the United States, it maintained their labor through threats of deportation and other adverse immigration consequences.

"The defendant exploited foreign workers and subjected them to servitude through intimidation and fear. The coercion these victims endured rendered them victims of a form of modern-day slavery that is an intolerable deprivation of individual rights," said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. "The Department of Justice will continue to vigorously prosecute cases of human trafficking."

"This investigation led to the guilty plea of an individual who, with other defendants, abused the Department of Labor's foreign labor certification program to fraudulently obtain visas for foreign workers who were victims of human trafficking and other violations. It highlights the OIG's commitment in protecting the integrity of this program and the OIG will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to investigate this type of crime." stated Daniel R. Petrole, Acting Inspector General, United States Department of Labor.

"The leader of a global criminal enterprise sought to profit from the oppression of vulnerable foreign workers," said Beth Phillips, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri. "Confronted with the overwhelming evidence we were prepared to present to the jury, on the day of his trial the defendant admitted his guilt and now will be held accountable for his actions."

"This guilty plea underscores the commitment of ICE Homeland Security Investigations to investigate and dismantle human trafficking organizations," said Gary Hartwig, special agent in charge of ICE HSI in Chicago. "This illegal and immoral enterprise exploited foreign workers and subjected them to intolerable living conditions.  However, it also defrauded legitimate guest worker visa programs so the ringleaders could maximize their criminal profits."

Multiple co-defendants have previously pleaded guilty in connection with the case. Co-defendant Kristen Dougherty is set for trial beginning Oct. 25, 2010.

In announcing the plea, Assistant Attorney General Perez and U.S. Attorney Phillips commended the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Department of Labor, the Internal Revenue Service, the Kansas Department of Revenue and the Independence Police Department for their work in this cooperative investigation and prosecution. Assistant United States Attorneys William Meiners and Trey Alford and Civil Rights Division Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit Trial Attorney Jim Felte prosecuted this case for the government.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/October/10-crt-1186.html

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From ICE

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Feds indict 61 in multi-agency drug probe focusing on Los Angeles-area gangs

Operation "Red Rein" targeted gangs' key meth and cocaine suppliers

LOS ANGELES - More than 800 federal and local law enforcement officers fanned out across the Southland Thursday morning in a massive takedown capping a three-year, multi-agency investigation that targeted major methamphetamine and cocaine suppliers to some of the most violent street gangs based in Los Angeles, Long Beach, and La Puente.

As of mid-morning, 40 of the suspects facing federal charges in the case were in custody.

A total of 21 are still being sought. Additionally, one other individual was detained on a state parole violation. Besides the arrests, the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office filed a civil "abatement" lawsuit Thursday to shut down drug trafficking activities at a notorious hotel used as a hangout by a Harbor Area gang.

Thursday's arrests come after a federal grand jury returned six indictments that name a total of 61 defendants, many of them documented gang members, who allegedly trafficked in large quantities of cocaine and meth that various gangs resold. The charges in the indictments include conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine and cocaine as well as firearms violations. The federal defendants were expected to be arraigned in United States District Court Thursday afternoon.

"This collaborative law enforcement action began as an investigation into drug trafficking in Wilmington and expanded into a case that charges members of 10 different street gangs," said United States Attorney André Birotte Jr. "A federal grand jury has charged key players involved in the distribution of crack cocaine in Wilmington, large-scale methamphetamine dealers in La Puente, and gun traffickers."

The investigation leading to Thursday's enforcement action, which was called Operation "Red Rein," was spearheaded by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI); the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF); and the Los Angeles Police Department.

Operation Red Rein began in the wake of the multi-agency "Cruces" investigation, which in 2007 resulted in the arrest of nearly four dozen drug dealers and weapons traffickers in the Wilmington area. The law enforcement agencies involved in Operation Red Rein initiated the probe three years ago to identify the origins of the cocaine being distributed as crack by two Harbor Area street gangs -- the East Side Pain and Waterfront Piru. Focusing initially on street-level crack cocaine dealers, investigators identified traffickers who dealt pound quantities of methamphetamine and kilogram quantities of cocaine, much of which was converted into crack cocaine.

One federal indictment charges 40 defendants, many of whom are affiliated with the Wilmington-based East Side Pain street gang, with participating in a conspiracy to distribute powder cocaine and crack cocaine. Using a variety of investigative techniques -- including telephone wiretaps, informants and surveillance -- investigators determined that gang members were responsible for funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of crack cocaine a month onto the streets of the Harbor Area of Los Angeles. This indictment charges Trond Thomas Sr., an East Side Pain member, and Robert Lee Campbell Jr., a Waterfront Piru, both of whom allegedly purchased powder cocaine from defendant Jesus Lamberto Olea, who is a member of the East Side Wilmas. The crack cocaine indictment also charges Marcos Louie Gallardo, a Puente 13 member, with selling cocaine to Thomas, who allegedly converted the powder cocaine to crack cocaine.

During the investigation into cocaine trafficking in the Harbor Area, authorities learned that in addition to selling cocaine, Gallardo was also selling large quantities of methamphetamine in La Puente. This part of the investigation resulted in a second indictment that focuses on the Puente 13 gang and charges 18 defendants in a conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine.

The six indictments include defendants who are members of East Side Wilmas, North Side Wilmas, Harbor City Crips, Compton Avenue Crips, Fruit Town Piru, El Monte Flores and Primera Flats.

"As a result of this investigation and enforcement action, we've dismantled an entire drug trafficking network, from the street dealer to the actual supplier," said Claude Arnold, special agent in charge for the ICE Office of Homeland Security Investigations in Los Angeles. "We believe these defendants were responsible for funneling large quantities of cocaine and methamphetamine into our communities. With today's arrests, we've shut down that potentially deadly supply chain and cut off what was a key source of cash for some of the most ruthless and violent gangs operating in this area."

The six federal indictments charge a total of 61 defendants - 58 of whom face mandatory minimum sentences of either 10 or 20 years in federal prison.

"Today's operation is an outstanding example of the police partnerships working to successfully improve the quality of life in the communities we serve," said Los Angeles Deputy Chief of Police Pat Gannon, Operations-South Bureau. "This is the culmination of a long-term partnership with law enforcement agencies which significantly reduced the operations of a number of street gangs operating the Harbor Area of Los Angeles. Our message to gang members in LA is this -- don't underestimate the will of law enforcement to put you in jail. We will take as much time and effort necessary to make sure your criminal enterprises are ended."

"I am so very proud that even in these times of extraordinarily tight budgets, this broad coalition of law enforcement agencies was able to work together to get the job done and to provide meaningful help to communities like Wilmington, which for too long has been plagued by gang violence and drug dealing," said Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich. "Our abatement cases against known gang hangouts will work in concert with the law enforcement action today in order to ensure these criminals are no longer able to find a safe haven from which to terrorize our citizens."

In addition to making the arrests, federal and local investigators executed federal and state search warrants Thursday related to the case at residences throughout the greater Los Angeles area. Those searches resulted in the discovery of a meth lab, more than 1.5 pounds of meth, five pounds of marijuana, nearly 100 marijuana plants, more than $20,000 in cash, and four firearms, including a shotgun. Prior enforcement actions in the investigation resulted in the seizure of more than 54 pounds of meth, more than six pounds of crack cocaine, more than five pounds of powder cocaine and 17 weapons.

"ATF is on the front line combating violent crime and will continue to actively pursue criminals that use firearms in their illegal activity as seen with today's arrests," said John A. Torres, special agent in charge, ATF Los Angeles. "This was a great collaboration by investigating the 'worst of the worst' which removed 17 firearms from the neighborhoods that were used in crimes of violence and as tools of the trade by drug traffickers."

The three lead agencies in the investigation received substantial assistance during the case and with Thursday's operation from U.S. Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations; the U.S. Marshals Service; the California Highway Patrol; the sheriff's departments of Los Angeles and Riverside counties; and the Anaheim, Azusa, Baldwin Park, Costa Mesa, Fontana, Long Beach, Montclair, Montebello and West Covina police departments.

ICE's participation in this investigation is part of HSI's ongoing nationwide anti-gang initiative known as Operation Community Shield. Since Operation Community Shield began in February 2005, HSI agents nationwide have arrested more than 18,000 gang members and gang associates, including more than 3,600 here in the Los Angeles area.

Under Operation Community Shield, ICE HSI is using its powerful immigration and customs authorities in a coordinated, national campaign against criminal street gangs across the country.

http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1010/101021losangeles.htm

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Leader of alien smuggling organization sentenced to almost 16 years in prison

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas - The convicted leader of an alien smuggling organization was sentenced on Tuesday to more than 15 years in prison for transporting illegal aliens that resulted in injuries to 18 individuals. The sentence was announced by U. S. Attorney José Angel Moreno, S. District of Texas. The investigation was conducted by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

Servando "El Chino" Alvarado-Casas, 29, a Mexican national illegally residing in Houston, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge John Rainey to a total of 190 months imprisonment. Alvarado-Casas was also sentenced to 120 months imprisonment for his conviction for being a felon possessing firearms; the two sentences will be served concurrently. Alvarado-Casas pleaded guilty in July to conspiracy to transport illegal aliens. Alvarado-Casas is subject to deportation after he completes his prison sentence.

The charges stem from a Nov. 24, 2009 single-vehicle accident in Jim Wells County resulting in injury to 17 illegal aliens and the driver, Patricio Rebollar Jr., 29, of Houston. The investigation by agents with ICE HSI and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Border Patrol (BP) led to identifying, arresting and charging the following eight members of the smuggling organization: Herman Valdez, 29, and Nuvia Nancy Martinez, 25, of Houston, both arrested the following day; Jorge Luis Gomez-Rosales, 24; Juan Manuel Valdez-Fuentes, 26; Jaime Roman Bustamonte, 27; Victor Manuel Campuzano, 23; Miguel Alvarado-Casas, 36; and the leader of the organization, "El Chino" Alvarado-Casas.

The Nov. 24, 2009 car accident occurred when a pickup truck traveling on FM 2295 left the roadway and drove through a fence before going over a 40-foot embankment. Rebollar was identified as the driver of the vehicle transporting the 17 passengers. All the passengers were determined to be illegal aliens from Mexico and Guatemala. All 18 individuals were transported to area hospitals. The investigation led to identifying a scout vehicle, normally used to divert law enforcement during illegal smuggling operations, traveling with the pickup. Valdez and Martinez were identified as the occupants of the scout vehicle. Gomez-Rosales, who was injured in the accident, was later identified as the brush guide. All of the injured illegal aliens were later released from the hospital.

On May 5, ICE HSI and the Houston Police Department made additional arrests and executed several search warrants in Houston, including one at Servando Alvarado-Casas' residence. Federal agents seized $75,000 in U.S. currency and multiple firearms, including a stolen assault rifle found at his residence. "El Chino" was identified as the leader of the alien smuggling organization believed to be responsible for smuggling thousands of illegal aliens into the United States.

Of the nine arrested, Valdez, Martinez, Rebollar, Gomez-Rosales and Valdez-Fuentes have all pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport illegal aliens; they will be sentenced later this year. A trial date has been set next month for the three remaining defendants charged in the conspiracy.

Alvarado-Casas has been held in custody without bond since his arrest. He will remain in custody to serve his sentence.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Lance Watt, Southern District of Texas, prosecuted this case.

http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1010/101021corpuschristi.htm

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From the ATF

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Alleged Members of the 18th Street Gang Indicted in a Rackateerinng Conspiracy Involving Five Murders, Extortion, Armed Robbery and Obstructing Justice

Greenbelt , Maryland - A federal grand jury today indicted the following alleged members of the 18th Street Gang for conspiracy to participate in a racketeering enterprise, which engaged in murder and attempted murder, including the murder of three individuals in Maryland and two individuals in Washington, D.C., armed robberies, and obstruction of justice:

• Mario Molina-Valladares, a/k/a Tiger, age 32, of Hyattsville, Maryland;
• Edgar Mauricio Rogel Vasquez, a/k/a Paradise, Carlos Mauricio Barahona age 25, of Wheaton, Maryland;
• Omar Rafael Villegas-Martinez, a/k/a Lunar, age 35, of Gaithersburg, Maryland;
• Hector Antonio Amaya Flores, a/k/a Nené, age 34, of Upper Marlboro, Maryland;
• Jose Rivera Dominguez, a/k/a Pirra, age 20, of Silver Spring, Maryland;
• Ysaud Flores, a/k/a Snyder, age 31, of Germantown, Maryland; and
• Joel Ventura-Quintanilla, a/k/a Clon, age 24, of Germantown, Maryland.

All of the defendants are charged in the RICO conspiracy. Molina-Valladares, Vasquez and Martinez are also charged with conspiracy to obstruct a criminal investigation and proceeding and obstruction of a criminal investigation and proceeding. Amaya Flores is also charged with being an alien in possession of a firearm and ammunition and Dominguez is charged with making false statements.

The second superseding indictment was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein, Special Agent in Charge Theresa R. Stoop of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — Baltimore Field Division; Chief Mark P. Sroka of the Gaithersburg Police Department; Chief Roberto L. Hylton of the Prince George's County Police Department; Chief J. Thomas Manger of the Montgomery County Police Department; Chief Cathy Lanier of the Metropolitan Police Department; Chief Larry Brownlee of the Maryland National Capital Park Police — Prince George's County Division; Montgomery County Sheriff Raymond M. Kight and Special Agent in Charge Richard A. McFeely of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

According to the six count superseding indictment, the 18th Street gang originated in the Los Angeles, California area, and operates in Central America and across the United States, including Maryland. The gang is divided into subsets called cliques, including the Shatto Park Locos, Hollywood Locos and Hoover Locos. 18th Street members operate according to various rules, which include, to attack and kill persons suspected of belonging to rival gangs; to remain loyal to the gang; and to not cooperate with law enforcement investigating crimes committed by gang members. The gang enforced these and other rules by meting out punishment for their violation, including physically beating the violating gang member for 36 seconds, known as a 36, or for serious transgressions, ordering and carrying out the murder of a violating gang member; known as a green light. 18th Street gang members sometimes wear tattoos and clothing bearing the number 18, to signify their membership in the gang.

The superseding indictment alleges that as part of the conspiracy, on May 5, 2007, Molina-Valladares, Vasquez and Villegas-Martinez murdered Jose Carcamo in Hyattsville, Maryland. After the murder, the indictment alleges that Molina-Valladares, Vasquez and Villegas-Martinez directed that false information about the shooting of Jose Carcamo be provided to law enforcement officials. Thereafter, the indictment alleges that Martinez and another gang member provided false information about the murder to law enforcement. The indictment charges that on approximately January 19, 2009, Flores and Ventura-Quintanilla participated in the kidnapping and murder of Dennys Guzman-Saenz in Gaithersburg, Maryland and on February 8, 2009, Flores and Ventura-Quintanilla murdered Manuel Garcia-Fuentes, in Washington, D.C. Further, the indictment alleges that on December 31, 2008, in Hyattsville, Maryland, an 18th Street gang member shot and killed Jairon Osorio and on May 10, 2009, an 18th Street gang member stabbed and killed Julio Palestin-Lascarez in Washington, D.C.

The indictment also charges Amaya Flores with being an alien in possession of a firearm and ammunition and charges Dominguez with making false statements to agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on February 23, 2010, falsely stating that he was not a member of the 18th Street gang, had never attended an 18th Street gang meeting, and that he did not know the 18th Street gang members whose photos agents showed him.

Molina-Valladares, Vasquez, Villegas-Martinez, Flores and Ventura-Quintanilla face a maximum sentence of life in prison, and Amaya Flores and Dominguez face a maximum of 20 years in prison, on the racketeering conspiracy. Molina-Valladares, Vasquez and Villegas-Martinez also face 20 years in prison for conspiracy to obstruct a criminal investigation and proceeding; obstructing a criminal investigation; and obstructing a criminal proceeding. Amaya Flores also faces a maximum of 10 years in prison for being an alien in possession of a firearm and ammunition, and Dominguez also faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison for making false statement. The defendants are in custody.

An indictment is not a finding of guilt. An individual charged by indictment is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty at some later criminal proceedings.

U.S. Attorney Rosentstein expressed his appreciation to District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen; Montgomery County State's Attorney John McCarthy; and Prince Georges County State's Attorney Glenn F. Ivey, and their offices, for their assistance in the investigation and prosecution of this case.

United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein commended the members of ATF -led Regional Area Gang Enforcement (RAGE) Task Force, including the Gaithersburg Police Department, the Prince George's County Police Department, Montgomery County Police Department, Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, and the Maryland National Capital Park Police — Prince George's County Division, as well as the Metropolitan Police Department and the FBI for their work in this investigation. Mr. Rosenstein thanked Assistant United States Attorneys William Moomau and Michael Pauzé, who are prosecuting the case.

http://www.atf.gov/press/releases/2010/10/102110-18th-street-gang-indicted-on-racketerring-conspiracy.html

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