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From the Los Angeles Times

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Perrault holds a copy of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin's 2nd Extra reporting the attack on Oahu. He had wanted to sleep in that morning.		Two neighbors, both Pearl Harbor survivors, are decades-old friends Paul Perrault and Anthony 'George' Mark, unaware of each other, survived the Japanese attack. Twenty years later, they found themselves neighbors on a Monrovia cul-de-sac. A bond formed between two men who never considered themselves heroes. by Corina Knoll, Los Angeles Times December 7, 2010 They were barely men at the time, unaware of each other but baptized by the same fire. Paul Perrault was 21, a naval officer aboard the light cruiser Phoenix, anchored in Pearl Harbor's East Loch. He had just risen from his bunk when cannon-like blasts tore through the morning calm. Scrambling to his post in the gunnery, he saw a sky speckled with Japanese planes. Across the harbor on Ford Island was Seaman 2nd Class Anthony "George" Mark, 18, who narrowly escaped as a plane strafed his area and bombs plunged into nearby hangars.

Chance had saved their lives. Chance made them neighbors.

::

A bond formed naturally between two men who shied from recognition.

"I wasn't impressed that George was at Pearl Harbor and George wasn't impressed that I was," Perrault said.

Instead they talked football, went to Dodgers games, rooted for UCLA and grabbed seats together at local high school games. Once, an acquaintance gave them tickets to the Super Bowl, held that year in Pasadena. Their excitement at sitting on the 50-yard line would become a running joke after their view was obstructed by players standing on the sideline.

On quiet Parkrose Avenue in Monrovia, they were separated by a carport, a lemon tree and the breezes that swept in between. Mark and his wife, Dorothy, arrived in 1960 with their son and two daughters. By then, Perrault had lived there 10 years with his wife, Orla, and their two children.

Mark beat a regular path to Perrault's stoop, and they grew comfortable in each other's backyards. They went on a trip to Las Vegas, where they casino-hopped and took in a couple of glitzy shows. They watched each other marry off children, grow gray, lose family members and battle illness.

Perrault was the introverted one, a history buff with a gentle demeanor who was likely to be found gardening or reading.

"I used to send the girls over to his house," Mark said. "They'd ask me something about school. I'd say, 'Go next door and talk to Paul.' He's sharp."

Mark preferred fishing and camping. He was animated around strangers and had a hearty laugh. An electrician, he would install Perrault's appliances and fix wiring for free.

Tucked inside their houses were medals, certificates, black-and-white photos. But they hardly spoke of the history they shared, seeing little need to compare notes outside of their mutual disdain for the mass internment of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor. The anniversary of the attack was rarely acknowledged, although Mark would sometimes wish Perrault a happy Pearl Harbor day.

Neither joined a veterans association until they were honored by one. They graciously accepted but never went to a meeting.

Mark, now 87, has returned to Oahu three times, finding more excitement in driving around the island than in attending dinners or dances where he would be among honored guests.

Perrault, 90, has never been back.

The two belong to a dwindling fraternity. An estimated 4,000 Pearl Harbor survivors are still alive.

"It was just luck — where you happened to be and how the Japanese planned to bomb," Perrault said. "People say, 'God was with you,' but I think, 'How about the 3,000 that died?' How come God wasn't with them?"

There is little to be proud of when it comes to surviving a war, Mark said. "We got out and we're out, period."

::

Mark grew up in L.A.'s El Sereno and Lincoln Heights neighborhoods, the son of Russian immigrants who ran a small grocery store. A teenager during the Great Depression, he sold newspapers, washed dishes and cleaned a butcher shop where he was paid in pork chops and lunchmeat.

He volunteered for the Navy at 17 and was trained to repair bombsights. His squadron arrived at Pearl Harbor in 1941, the day after Halloween.

Perrault had been in Hawaii since the summer. Raised in Monticello, Minn., a town that was all of six square miles, he joined the Navy after two years of college and found himself aboard the Phoenix with 900 men.

"Now that I look back on it, it was quite a shock," Perrault said. "I thought I was kind of a big shot in town and when I got out, why, I was going to do big things. But nobody really knew me or cared."

Oahu offered white sand, brilliant sunsets and a sense of safety. Days were spent patrolling peaceful waters, checking equipment and undergoing training. Perrault was at sea, in charge of the starboard aircraft gun. On land, Mark repaired and maintained bombsights and instructed others in their use.

Off-duty officers swam off the beach alongside Waikiki, played volleyball and went sightseeing. At night, the harbor twinkled with the deck lights of dozens of ships. On Dec. 6, 1941, Perrault attended a shipboard screening of the Bette Davis film "The Little Foxes." He was eager to sleep in the next day.

::

The first boom came just before 8 a.m. Running outside the hangar, Mark was greeted by a fighter plane emblazoned with scarlet circles — the unmistakable emblem of Imperial Japan, Land of the Rising Sun.

His heart hammered as he dodged gunfire and dashed back inside. Wave after wave of Japanese planes dropped torpedoes into suddenly roiling waters. When dive bombers attacked the battleship Nevada, Mark watched bodies hurtle through the air. A detonation at a nearby dock threw him into lockers. "Oh, my God, we're at war," he said.

He joined a group of mechanics pushing planes out of burning hangars, then climbed into a loft to fling metal barrels filled with gas masks to the ground.

About a mile away, Perrault sat high in the Phoenix, sickened by the panorama of fire and destruction.

A voice on the loudspeaker instructed the crew to man their battle stations. "This is not a drill!" someone barked.

Because his gun required coordinates and altitudes to operate and was not designed to target dive bombers, Perrault could do little but watch ships sink and smoke rise. Below him, the water was littered with death.

After three relentless hours, the enemy disappeared. Ford Island kicked into gear as officers cleaned and assembled machine guns, preparing for a reengagement that would never materialize. Over the next few days, equipment was salvaged, ashes were swept, bodies were gathered, losses were counted.

Perrault and Mark would later call it an incomprehensible experience, too chaotic to be terrifying.

::

A half-century has passed since their paths converged in Monrovia. Perrault was working in sales for a Pasadena laundry service. Mark was on the verge of starting his own electrical business in Los Angeles.

Now they spend most days at home, slowed by age and congestive heart failure. Perrault is legally blind, has a pacemaker and wears two hearing aids. Mark suffered a heart attack three years ago. They speak of the war only when asked and are quick to quash any allusions to bravery or heroism. They are survivors, they say, nothing more.

It was all a matter of chance — the same force that would lead them to modest homes that sit side by side on a quiet street.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1207-pearl-harbor-20101207,0,547306,print.story

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Bomb-making suspect pleads not guilty, is ordered held without bail

George Jakubec pleaded not guilty in San Diego federal court Monday to charges of possessing bomb-making materials and bank robbery.

Magistrate Judge Ruben Brooks ordered Jakubec held without bail as a flight risk and a danger to the community. A hearing was set for Jan. 18 to set a possible trial date.

Jakubec, 54, a Serbian emigre and naturalized U.S. citizen, was arrested Nov. 18 after authorities discovered a large amount of materials used in bombs like those fashioned by terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan to kill U.S. troops.

In a jailhouse interview with sheriff's deputies, Jakubec admitted robbing three banks and attempting to rob a fourth. He is now at the federal prison in downtown San Diego.

Once federal charges were filed, the state charges against Jakubec were dropped. The federal charges cover the same alleged crimes and carry a longer prison sentence if he is convicted.

Meanwhile, work continued Monday to prepare for burning the house Jakubec was renting just outside Escondido, as a method of destroying the dangerous materials inside. The controlled burn, ordered by the Sheriff's Department and to be monitored by the San Marcos and Escondido fire departments, is set for this week, depending on weather conditions.

A protective wall was built on the north side of the property and vegetation is being cleared, officials said. The California Department of Toxic Substances Control has agreed to pay for the cleanup once the fire is out.

Neighbors will be given 24 hours' warning to evacuate. Deputies remain on the site, on Via Scott, a dead-end street, to prevent injuries to the curious as the site is being prepared.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/12/bomb-making-suspect-pleads-not-guilty-ordered-held-without-bail.html

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Getting cellphones out of inmates' hands

A legislative stalemate on the issue has contributed to California prisoners' illegal possession of at least 8,500 cellphones this year.

December 7, 2010

How in the world did Charles Manson get hold of a cellphone? Apparently the same way thousands of other inmates have. Cellphones, it turns out, are ubiquitous in California's correctional facilities. Guards have confiscated 8,575 of them this year, according to the California Department of Corrections, up from 1,400 in 2007. Manson is perhaps the best-known inmate to flout the rules, but the easy access to the outside world, unmonitored by officials, is a serious problem that extends well beyond one infamous criminal. Hard-core gang leaders have been found directing drug deals, intimidating witnesses and planning escapes from their jail cells. Stiffer penalties are clearly in order for what is a genuine threat to public safety, not an infraction.

For one brief moment last summer, Democrats and Republicans united and made smuggling phones to inmates a misdemeanor punishable by fines of $5,000 to $15,000. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, however, vetoed the bill on the grounds that it did not go far enough. The practice should be a felony, he insisted, not a violation of less import than sneaking a prisoner a beer.

Now the gridlock that so infuriates voters has returned. Democrats are resisting measures that would increase the prison population — such as creating new categories of felonies — on the grounds that federal judges have ordered the state to reduce the population by more than 40,000 inmates. The number of prisoners per facility can't be reduced, however, because Republicans balk at building more prisons. So it's a stalemate on the cellphone issue for the moment.

Meanwhile, there is a thriving black market in phones. One guard made $150,000 furnishing phones to inmates, a report by an inspector general noted last year. There are various factors driving the demand for phones, but one is an effort by inmates and their families to skirt crushing fees. Inmates are supposed to use prison phones to call collect, and often when prisons enter into contracts with telephone companies, the "captive audience" is hit with exorbitant rates. According to inmate advocates, a 15-minute call from San Quentin prison to Oakland costs $5, almost twice as much as the same call from outside the prison. Last year, Los Angeles County supervisors opened up the jail phone contract to bid after learning that inmates were paying about 30% above the state average.

The solution may lie in a pilot program scheduled to begin next year that allows calls from approved cellphones. But for now the only recourse prisons have is to take away the phones when they are found and to charge inmates with violating policy. Until a rational approach to managing the problem can be reached, don't be surprised by that call from Manson.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-cellphones-20101207,0,1837545,print.story

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Arizona's overreach

The state's attempt to crack down on companies that hire illegal immigrants encroaches on federal authority.

December 7, 2010

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear a challenge to an Arizona immigration law, but not the notorious one that requires police to check the immigration status of people they detain and suspect of being illegal. The law the court will take up, which is aimed at employers that hire illegal workers, is much less objectionable as a matter of policy. But, like the more infamous statute, it encroaches on the authority of the federal government to regulate immigration. The justices should strike it down.

The Legal Arizona Workers Act aims to accomplish something everyone in the immigration debate claims to want: a crackdown on employers who encourage illegal immigration with lax hiring policies. The law would punish employers who hire illegal workers with a series of penalties leading up to a revocation of the company's charter or articles of incorporation, effectively closing the business down. Also, the law requires employers to check the status of prospective employees by using E-Verify, an Internet-based documentation system.

Although one could quibble with the specific sanctions in the Arizona law, the idea of penalizing employers who hire illegal workers is essential to effective enforcement of immigration laws, with or without enactment of comprehensive immigration reform. It's also vital that there be an expeditious way to check a worker's status. E-Verify may not be perfect, but some such system is necessary.

The problem with the Arizona law is that the state is seeking to legislate in an area reserved to the federal government. As the Obama administration pointed out in its brief, Arizona's procedures conflict with federal procedures for dealing with the hiring of illegal workers. And by making the use of E-Verify mandatory, the state overrode a decision by Congress that — with rare exceptions — use of the system be voluntary.

In defending its statute, Arizona cites language in federal law allowing states to legislate in immigration matters involving "licensing and similar laws." But the Obama administration argues that this is a licensing law in name only. "No licenses are issued under the statute, and it does not regulate licensees' professional conduct or fitness to do a particular business," the administration says in its brief. "It only imposes punishment, and only for violation of a single, across-the-board rule."

Like its other, more objectionable immigration law, Arizona's law cracking down on the hiring of illegal workers claims for the state authority that properly belongs to Congress. The court should therefore overturn it. But the frustration felt in Arizona — and elsewhere — over lackluster federal enforcement of immigration law should lead Congress to exercise its authority and approve stricter sanctions.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-arizona-20101207,0,5598372,print.story

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From the New York Times

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In the Wild, a Big Threat to Rangers: Humans

GOLDEN, Colo. — As a game warden for the state of Colorado, Todd Schmidt has a workplace that office drudges the world over might fantasize about: the staggering beauty of the Rocky Mountains.

But underneath his shirt, day in and day out, he also wears a reminder of the dangers: a bulletproof vest.

“Keeps you warm, too,” Mr. Schmidt said, patting his chest on a recent cold morning at Golden Gate Canyon State Park, about an hour west of Denver, as the snowcapped peaks of the Continental Divide shimmered in the distance.

Two recent shootings of wildlife officers — one killed in Pennsylvania while confronting an illegal hunter, the other seriously wounded after a traffic stop in southern Utah — have highlighted what rangers and wildlife managers say is an increasingly unavoidable fact. As more and more people live in proximity to forests, parks and other wild-land playgrounds, the human animal, not the wild variety, is the one to watch out for.

“We're seeing a little bit more of the urban spill into the wild spaces — city violence in the country,” said John Evans, an assistant branch chief of law enforcement operations at the National Park Service.

At this time of year, when hikers give way to hunters, there is a corollary to Mr. Evans's point that would make even the most hardened urban police officer blanch: weapons are everywhere in these woods.

“I know that everybody I confront has a gun,” said Mr. Schmidt, 36, who has five years on the job with the Colorado Division of Wildlife.

Guns also became legal in many National Parks this year under a law enacted by Congress in 2009. And many parks and recreation areas around the nation have also suffered staff cuts in recent years, reducing the presence of badge-wearing authority figures on patrol. But rangers and wildlife workers say the key variable defining the job has not changed: because of the vast distances to be covered, especially in the West, every ranger is a solo act.

In the lonely, beautiful places where they work, knowing when to walk away, or run, rangers say is Lesson 1. Fifteen wildlife or park employees have been killed on duty, most of them by gunshot, since 1980, according to the North American Wildlife Enforcement Officers Association.

“A huge portion of it is gut instinct,” said Jacob Dewhirst, 26, a state park ranger who works in western Colorado, where checks on hunters' or fishermen's licenses often take place in the lonely back country.

Many wildlife agencies have responded to the heightened dangers with new equipment and training. Since 2007, National Park rangers in many parks have been equipped with Tasers that can immobilize a would-be attacker.

Mr. Schmidt has an AR-15 semiautomatic assault-style rifle in his truck, and a computer on the dash that can — in ways old-time rangers never knew — check a vehicle license plate before a ranger's first approach.

But rangers and wardens also inhabit a mixture of roles that they say can sometimes make them more vulnerable. They are ambassadors and stewards of a public resource, and most have backgrounds in some aspect of the natural sciences. But they also have full police authority, up to and including using lethal force if necessary.

Mr. Evans described it as a duality: “A nice guy, prepared for an idiot who is ready to do me harm.”

For Mr. Schmidt, who has a degree in wildlife biology, that balancing act — welcoming and wary — comes down to always having a clear line of retreat. Whenever he stops to check a vehicle or speak to a hunter, his truck door is always left open, the engine running.

What has made the recent shootings even more chilling to many rangers is that events unfolded from encounters of the sort officers do all the time. In the Utah case, the gunman, who has still not been caught, apparently opened fire when a Utah State Parks ranger, Brody Young, 34, approached after a traffic stop. In the Pennsylvania case, David Grove, 31, was killed after he confronted a man hunting illegally with a spotlight, which makes deer and other animals disoriented and easier to shoot.

“It's very easy to comprehend exactly what David was dealing with at the time of the shooting,” said Richard A. Johnston, a regional law enforcement zone officer with the Fish and Wildlife Service , who traveled from his home in Kansas to attend Mr. Grove's funeral.

For some officers, like Ty Petersburg, who manages a heavily used district west of Denver for the Division of Wildlife, the line between urban crime and wildlife crime gets blurred all the time.

A couple of years ago, Mr. Petersburg began following a suspicious-looking vehicle on Interstate 70 — a pursuit that led all the way into the suburbs of Denver, where the driver leaped from his car to attack. Minutes later, perhaps 30 local and county police officers arrived in a siren-screaming swirl of backup that Mr. Petersburg, 31, had summoned by radio. It was a familiar scene: the police helping out their own.

More often, he said, it is the opposite case, where help is willing in spirit, but impossible in practice. Earlier this fall, for example, Mr. Petersburg was in a mountain region in the middle of nowhere and came upon a vehicle driven by a man with outstanding arrest warrants on his name and lots of cocaine in his car. He again called for backup.

“ ‘We'd like to come help you,' ” he quoted the nearest big urban county sheriff's office as saying, “ ‘But we don't have a clue where you're at.' ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/us/07rangers.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Officials Struggle to Unravel Tale of 5 Children Being Raised in Secrecy

YORK, Pa. — Louann E. Bowers ran away from home when she was 16. Now 33, she spent most of the intervening years in hiding. She raised five children in secrecy, living so far off the grid that her parents had her declared dead.

Those children, who range in age from 2 to 13, have no birth certificates, the police say, and they never went to school or got vaccines. The family lived in squalor for perhaps as long as 13 years, most of the time without electricity or running water or even a toilet.

Ms. Bowers gave birth again last week, 15 weeks prematurely. But this baby was born in a known location: in Ms. Bowers's cellblock in the York County Prison.

Ms. Bowers and Sinhue Johnson, who is in his mid-40s and is the father of the children, are in prison on charges of endangering the children's welfare. A legal conference is expected in February or March, when the case could either be settled or sent to trial.

The story of these hidden lives has shocked many in this south-central Pennsylvania manufacturing town, where the colonial architecture reflects its Revolutionary War past. The city is prosperous in some areas, but it can be rough around the edges; 23 percent of residents live below the poverty line.

“Who would even think that this could happen?” asked David Robinson, 51, a handyman who works regularly on the block of modest row houses where the police say the couple kept the children for years in one room of a house at 734 South Duke Street that is now condemned. “No way anybody, especially with kids, could have lived here.”

Christopher Reilly, a county commissioner, called the case “a tragedy” and said the children “were not socialized in an appropriate fashion.” Mr. Reilly said it was bizarre that a family of seven “could essentially live underground” in a small urban setting.

Ms. Bowers's defense lawyer, Ronald J. Gross, said his client had been “neglectful” and had “made mistakes,” but she is seeking to regain custody of her children.

The question, Mr. Gross said in an interview in his law office here, is whether her behavior was “a gross deviation from what is acceptable.”

“We believe she was pretty darn close to that line,” he said, but that she did not cross it.

While acknowledging his client's shortcomings, Mr. Gross sought to paint a picture of quaint home life. “There has been no enrollment in schools,” he said. “It's been schooling as you would see in ‘Little House on the Prairie,' where they're sitting in the house and learning and being educated.”

The police give a far different version, saying there were no records showing that the children had been educated or registered for home schooling, as state law requires. Detective Dana C. Ward Jr. of the York City Police Department, who has been investigating the case for more than a year, said the children were developmentally delayed and had vision problems and possible mental health problems.

The children are in foster care. The baby remains in the intensive-care unit of the hospital where she and Ms. Bowers were rushed after the unexpected jailhouse birth. The baby is likely to stay hospitalized for months, and then perhaps go into foster care.

Mr. Gross said the children did have birth certificates, but he would not say where they were born.

Court filings and interviews here provide a bare bones and often conflicting portrait of Ms. Bowers's life over the last 17 years. Piecing together the story has been hampered for the defense and the prosecution because Ms. Bowers and Mr. Johnson have been uncooperative and have instructed their children not to discuss their lives with anyone.

Ms. Bowers ran away from her home in East Berlin, a small town just west of here, on June 8, 1993, at age 16, possibly because she had become involved romantically with Mr. Johnson, who was her uncle by marriage.

Mr. Gross said Ms. Bowers did not become involved with Mr. Johnson until she was 18, when she was no longer a minor. It is not clear if they are married. Mr. Johnson is being represented by a public defender, who did not return repeated calls for comment.

Ms. Bowers lived in Baltimore until she was 18, Mr. Gross said, but he does not know if she worked or how she survived. Then she joined up with Mr. Johnson, apparently in York.

Mr. Gross said they lived not on Duke Street, as the police say, but with Mr. Johnson's relatives elsewhere in York, though in one room. Mr. Johnson held odd jobs like collecting scrap, Mr. Gross, said, and Ms. Bowers wore a veil, which attracted attention.

“She was seen around York; she was described as ‘the crazy lady,' ” he said. “She had her face covered, glasses, always had the walkie-talkie on hand and was almost like the town nut, if you will.”

Mr. Gross said that at one point, the boyfriend of a relative of Mr. Johnson had threatened violence against Ms. Bowers and the children and they moved to a protective shelter in Washington, D.C., for seven years.

“It was a strange situation,” Mr. Gross said. “She can't just call the police because she'll be found.” Asked why Ms. Bowers did not want to be found, Mr. Gross said, “That's what we're trying to figure out.”

Meanwhile, back in East Berlin, another drama was unfolding. In 2003, Ms. Bowers's grandmother died, according to The York Daily Record, leaving to Ms. Bowers a share of the family's $830,000 property. After searching unsuccessfully for Ms. Bowers, the family had her declared legally dead in 2004. When the grandmother's estate was settled in 2008, the newspaper said, Ms. Bowers's share of the inheritance, which was worth more than $100,000, was divided up. About $50,000 went to her mother and about $16,600 to each of her three siblings. All signed releases agreeing to return the money if it had been wrongly distributed.

A woman who answered the phone at Ms. Bowers's mother's house last week declined to be interviewed. Other relatives could not be reached for comment.

Mr. Gross said he represented Ms. Bowers only on the criminal charges and could not comment on whether she might seek to claim her inheritance. It could become relevant to her case if she wants to establish that she has some way of supporting her children when she gets out of prison.

It is not clear whether county officials did all they could to intervene.

In 2003 and 2007, York County Children and Youth Services received anonymous tips that Ms. Bowers and Mr. Johnson were harboring several children at Duke Street. But the police said officials were unable to investigate fully because Mr. Johnson had been uncooperative and they had no record of the children.

Mr. Reilly, the county commissioner, said the commissioners had determined that the child services agency had “done nothing wrong.”

“Our director said people in the agency were personally aware of the situation for many years but they couldn't actually get them when they were there or apprehend the parents,” he said, attributing the lack of intervention to “a combination of bad luck and unfortunate timing.”

A spokesman for the state's Department of Public Welfare said, “Nothing has been presented to us to indicate any failure by the county to do its job.”

In 2009, officials received another tip, and that August they found the family at a motel and took the children into custody.

Ms. Bowers and Mr. Johnson were not arrested then but were picked up in July of this year on unrelated weapons charges. In September, Detective Ward recommended that they be charged with endangering the children's welfare.

Ms. Bowers has since been taking parenting courses in prison and studying for her general-equivalency diploma, although the baby's birth derailed her plans to take the exam this month.

Reuniting the family is not necessarily plausible. “I don't know how that would benefit the children,” Mr. Reilly said.

Ms. Bowers's lawyer, however, said she would “jump through hoops” to get her children back.

“Getting her GED means she's employable, have her Social Security number run and not be worried that she'll come up a missing person,” Mr. Gross said. “She can get out, make money, pay rent, take care of business. It's going to be really different for her. I'm not even sure she's ready for it yet, but I guess time will tell.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/us/07york.html?ref=us

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Legal Challenge to the Death Penalty Begins in Texas

HOUSTON — The death penalty went on trial Monday in Texas, a state where more prisoners are executed every year than in any other and where exonerations of people on death row occur with surprising regularity.

Lawyers for John E. Green Jr., who stands accused of murdering a woman in front of her children, are arguing that the death penalty as carried out in Texas violates the Constitution because there is a high risk innocent people will be executed.

The hearing stems from a routine argument defense lawyers make in most death penalty cases. Judges rarely grant the motion, however, because the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the death penalty as outside of the ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

But Judge Kevin Fine, a Democrat elected last year, shocked many Texans by giving the argument serious consideration. As a result, his courtroom in downtown Houston became a forum Monday for defense lawyers to present a broad indictment of problems in the criminal justice system that they say lead to wrongful convictions.

They said that they hoped to prove that some of the biggest tools in the prosecution's arsenal were frequently unreliable and led to mistaken convictions: eyewitness testimony, fingerprint evidences and the testimony of informers.

Alan Curry, the chief of the appellate division in the Harris County District Attorney's Office, argued that the hearing should not be held and announced his office would not participate.

He declined to cross-examine witnesses. The prosecution has claimed that Judge Fine is biased against the death penalty and moved to remove him from the case, but the highest criminal court denied the motion.

Before the hearing started, Mr. Curry argued that the Supreme Court had already ruled that the risk of an innocent person might be executed did not make the death penalty unconstitutional. He also said Mr. Green had no standing to challenge the law, since he had yet to be convicted.

Mr. Curry argued that the fact that some innocent people had been wrongly convicted and condemned to death did not mean the evidence in Mr. Green's case was faulty.

But Richard Burr, one of the defendant's lawyers, said wrongful convictions happened so frequently in Texas that Mr. Green was at serious risk of ending up on death row. He also said the chances of overturning a bad conviction on appeal were low in Texas, which requires a defendant to show “no reasonable juror” would have convicted him.

“There is no safety net,” Mr. Burr said.

Still, Judge Fine, a maverick former defense attorney who talks openly of his past as a recovering alcoholic and has tattoos depicting his struggle with addiction, ruled the hearing should go forward.

To prevail, the defense must show the death penalty statute in Texas violates the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment because it creates a risk that innocent people will be convicted and put to death.

Texas has executed 464 people for murder in the last three decades, more than any other state, and the death penalty has widespread support here. But in at least 12 cases since 1973, people on death row in Texas have been exonerated. In addition, questions have been raised about the convictions of two men already executed for their crimes — Cameron Todd Willingham and Claude Jones.

Mr. Willingham was put to death in 2004 after being convicted of burning down his home in Corsicana in 1991, killing his three children. His guilt is now in question as arson experts have found fault in the evidence against him. Mr. Jones was executed in 2000 for the 1989 killing of a liquor store owner near Point Blank. After his death, a DNA test showed that a hair that had linked him to the crime scene did not belong to him.

Both cases are expected to be raised during the hearing.

Richard C. Dieter, the director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, was the first witness. He said that since 1973, at least 138 people sentenced to death had been later exonerated. “There certainly is a risk of executing the innocent and that risk still exists today,” he said.

“The mistakes are happening at the trial level,” Mr. Dieter said. “And then you get into the appellate level where the focus is on legal problems that might have occurred, not on whether you got the right person.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/us/07texas.html?ref=us

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Service Members Face New Threat: Identity Theft

The government warns Americans to closely guard their Social Security numbers. But it has done a poor job of protecting those same numbers for millions of people: the nation's soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.

At bases and outposts at home and around the world, military personnel continue to use their Social Security numbers as personal identifiers in dozens of everyday settings, from filling out health forms to checking out basketballs at the gym. Thousands of soldiers in Iraq even stencil the last four digits onto their laundry bags.

All of this is putting members of the military at heightened risk for identity theft.

That is the conclusion of a scathing new report written by an Army intelligence officer turned West Point professor, Lt. Col. Gregory Conti. The report concludes that the military needs to rid itself of a practice that has been widespread since the 1960s.

“Service members and their families are burdened with a work environment that shows little regard for their personal information,” the report says, adding that the service members, “their units, military preparedness and combat effectiveness all will pay a price for decades to come.”

Representatives for the military say they are aware of the problem and are taking steps to fix it, with the Navy and Marines making efforts in the last few months. The Defense Department said in 2008 that it was moving to limit the use of Social Security numbers, and in a statement last week it said the numbers would no longer appear on new military ID cards as of May.

But Colonel Conti said in an interview that the situation had not really changed: “The farther you get away from the flagpole at headquarters, those policies get overturned by operational realities.”

Social Security numbers are valuable to thieves because they often serve as a crucial identifier when dealing with banks and credit card companies. In the wrong hands they can lead to a cascade of problems, like ruined credit and, in turn, challenges for military personnel in getting security clearances or promotions.

In 2009, Social Security numbers were used in 32 percent of identity thefts in which the victims knew how their information was compromised, according to Javelin Strategy and Research, which tracks identity theft.

Javelin last looked at identity theft in the military in 2006, finding that 3.3 percent of active military personnel had been victims of such fraud that year, slightly below the 3.7 percent in the public at large. Over all, identity theft is on the rise; in 2009, the nationwide rate crept up to 4.8 percent, with each person losing $373 on average, Javelin estimated.

Most of those incidents affect individuals or households and do not make headlines. But in June, the Richmond County district attorney in Staten Island announced the indictment of a gang of identity thieves who victimized, among others, 20 soldiers at Ford Hood, Tex.

According to the district attorney's office, the soldiers' Social Security numbers were stolen from the base by a former Army member who moved to New York, and the thieves then made 2,515 attempts to abuse the soldiers' identities, obtaining checkbooks or credit cards in their names.

Officials said some of the soldiers had been singled out because they were stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan where they would be slow to catch on to the fraud. That is precisely the fear of military officials concerning the vulnerability of soldiers.

“If you're operational and you're out there, you can't do anything about the harm being done in the United States,” said Steve Muck, the Navy's chief information officer in charge of privacy policy for Marine and naval personnel. “It's a significant issue.”

In a major first step toward protecting Social Security numbers, the Department of the Navy expects to get the results this month from a broad review in which each department had to justify the use of the numbers on paperwork or remove them. Mr. Muck expects that 50 percent of the uses will be found to have been unjustified.

He cites practices already being dismantled that he says defy common sense, like using a Social Security number to check out a racquet or towel at the gym, get a flu shot or buy a pair of pants at a ship commissary. Children of military personnel as young as 10 carry ID cards with Social Security numbers, as do their parents.

Six months ago, the Department of the Navy introduced a campaign to alert personnel based overseas to the threat. One poster circulating in the Persian Gulf shows a Marine sitting in a Humvee, clad in camouflage and manning a machine gun, above the words “Who's Using My Credit Card?” The poster goes on to say that “an operational deployment is not the time to be worried about your identity being stolen,” and offers tips on detecting fraud.

Mr. Muck also has a more ambitious plan: he wants to replace the Social Security number internally with a 10-digit number that is already assigned to most service members as a computer login. He said he was waiting for approval from the Defense Department to begin carrying out this change, a process that could start early next year.

Even if and when the change comes, he said, it would not affect some current uses of Social Security numbers, like on health care forms. And it would not affect much paperwork that is governed not by the individual branches but by the Defense Department.

The new report by Colonel Conti, titled “The Military's Cultural Disregard for Personal Information” , was published Monday on the Web site of Small Wars Journal, which tracks military affairs.

Gary Tallman, a spokesman for the Army, said Colonel Conti's report, was “absolutely factual,” adding that the use of Social Security numbers was “second nature to us.”

But he also said the onus falls in large part on the Defense Department to lead the changes, because it uses the numbers “for so many things.”

The Defense Department is carrying out its own review, saying in its statement that it planned to tell its staff that they would need to justify every use of the numbers and eliminate unnecessary ones. But it added that it was “exceedingly difficult” to determine the extent to which use of the numbers within the agency had led to identity theft.

For his part, Colonel Conti said he was particularly troubled by something he saw while he was deployed in Iraq.

“For heaven's sake, I stenciled portions of my Social Security number on my laundry bag in Iraq, where it was memorized by foreign-national laundry workers trying to enhance their customer service,” he said. “I'd walk in and they'd say, ‘Number 1234, here's your laundry,' and they were very proud of that fact.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/technology/07identity.html?ref=us

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U.S. Arrests Online Seller Who Scared Customers

Federal law enforcement agents on Monday arrested a Brooklyn Internet merchant who mistreated customers because he thought their online complaints raised the profile of his business in Google searches.

The merchant, Vitaly Borker, 34, who operates a Web site called decormyeyes.com, was charged with one count each of mail fraud, wire fraud, making interstate threats and cyberstalking. The mail fraud and wire fraud charges each carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. The stalking and interstate threats charges carry a maximum sentence of five years.

He was arrested early Monday by agents of the United States Postal Inspection Service. In an arraignment in the late afternoon in United States District Court in Lower Manhattan, Judge Michael H. Dolinger denied Mr. Borker's request for bail, stating that the defendant was either “verging on psychotic” or had “an explosive personality.” Mr. Borker will be detained until a preliminary hearing, scheduled for Dec. 20.

The arrest came eight days after The New York Times published a lengthy account of Mr. Borker's campaign of intimidation against a woman named Clarabelle Rodriguez who had bought a pair of glasses from DecorMyEyes over the summer.

When she tried to return the glasses, which she believed were fakes, he threatened to sexually assault her and later sent her a photograph of the front of her apartment building. He also sent menacing e-mails, one of which stated that she had put her “hand in fire. Now it's time to get burned.”

In an interview with a reporter from The New York Times in October, Mr. Borker maintained that scaring Ms. Rodriguez — and dozens of other customers in the last three years — enhanced the standing of DecorMyEyes in Internet searches on Google. That was because Google's algorithm, he claimed, was unable to distinguish between praise and complaints. All of the negative postings translated into buzz, he said, which helped push DecorMyEyes higher in search results and increased his sales.

It is unclear if Mr. Borker was right about the cause of DecorMyEyes' surprisingly strong showing in online searches. But last week, Google published a post on its official blog stating that it had changed its search formula so that companies were penalized if they provided customers with what it called “an extremely poor user experience.”

For months, Ms. Rodriguez was unable to get much traction with any of the law enforcement entities she had called as she coped with Mr. Borker's verbal and written attacks. Now, there seems to be a competition to punish him.

He has already been charged with aggravated harassment and stalking by local authorities and is scheduled to be arraigned on those charges on Dec. 22. The state attorney general's office is conducting its own investigation and could bring additional state charges.

But federal law enforcement seemed eager to partake as well. In a statement released Monday, Preet Bharara, United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, said, “Vitaly Borker, an alleged cyberbully and fraudster, cheated his customers, and when they complained, tried to intimidate them with obscenity and threats of serious violence.”

At the arraignment, an assistant United States attorney, E. Danya Perry, argued against bail by claiming that Mr. Borker was both a flight risk and a risk to the community. She said that postal inspectors had carted off boxes of apparently counterfeit eyeglasses after searching Mr. Borker's home and had also found a handful of guns, including a semiautomatic machine gun.

Mr. Borker's lawyer, Bruce Kaye, said the weapons were stage props capable of firing only blanks, not live ammunition.

Mr. Kaye argued that Mr. Borker should be released on bail because no one had ever accused him of committing any violent acts. He added that Mr. Borker was family man — he has a wife and a 2-year-old child — and was willing to surrender his passport and post a bond worth $500,000.

Judge Dolinger said that even if Mr. Borker had not physically harmed anyone, he could still be a threat to society given his habit of terrifying his customers.

The complaint against Mr. Borker describes the accusations in detail. A DecorMyEyes customer identified as Victim 4 stated that Mr. Borker's threats included a phone call in which he said, “I can hurt you,” and, “I know where you work.”

Mr. Borker apparently sent e-mail to the company where Victim 4 worked, stating that the customer sold drugs and was gay. Another customer, identified as Victim 3, said that Mr. Borker had sent her an e-mail that included this warning: “PS: don't forget that I know where you live as well,” after she mentioned her intent to contact the New York Department of Consumer Affairs. He reportedly later called Victim 3 at all hours of the night, threatening sexual assault.

A far more subdued version of Mr. Borker appeared in court on Monday afternoon. Dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt, he said little. When he was led away by court officers, he turned to look at his wife, who was sitting in the courtroom. He appeared grief stricken and on the verge of tears.

“Sorry,” he whispered to her, as he was escorted through a side door.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/business/07borker.html?ref=us

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OPINION

Do Not Go Directly to Jail

PRISON crowding has reached crisis proportions: California's prisons, the largest state system in the country, operate at almost double their maximum capacity. The conditions there — the legacy of the war on drugs and long, mandatory sentences — are so bad that a federal court has found that they deny inmates constitutional rights to adequate health care and other basic services; the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case last week.

The lower court's decision requires California to reduce its prison population to about 110,000 inmates from 144,000 by next December. Risks to public safety from releasing that many prisoners will make this almost impossible. But the federal government can take one important step to help states comply: deport many immigrant criminals before they enter prison, not after.

Non-citizen criminals represent a significant percentage of American prisoners: in 2009, some 25 percent of federal prisoners and a smaller fraction of state prisoners were non-citizens; in California, 18,705 inmates were non-citizens. Although the federal government can deport many of them as soon as their criminal convictions become final, a century-old law provides that immigrants can be deported only after they have served their sentences here.

This provision, intended to ensure that the criminals are punished, was enacted in 1917, long before severely crowded prisons were deemed unconstitutional. This was also before legal and budgetary pressures forced prison officials to prematurely release inmates, even those with a significant recidivism risk (in California, as many as 58 percent commit new crimes within three years). Deporting criminal immigrants would make it easier to keep these potential recidivists behind bars.

Fortunately, the law now contains a potentially useful loophole: deportable criminals can be deported without serving their full sentences if they committed non-violent offenses (with some exceptions), and if the appropriate officials request earlier deportations.

As simple as it seems, this exception has rarely been employed. The federal and state governments should use it to remove as many deportable criminals as possible from their prison populations.

This is certainly not a panacea. Not every immigrant prisoner is deportable; it depends on their particular crimes and whether they can obtain a waiver. Also, the immigrants' home countries might refuse, contrary to international law, to repatriate them, and some treaties require the prisoner's consent. Even those countries that do accept convicted citizens may not imprison them at all, or not for long. There's also the prospect that repatriated prisoners, once free, will try to re-enter the United States illegally.

These objections are manageable. Diplomacy, and American cash, might persuade home countries to incarcerate repatriated criminals. The prisoner transfer treaty with Mexico can be renegotiated. And better border enforcement is already reducing re-entries.

Other options are themselves problematic or have already been tried and proved inadequate. It is costly and unpopular to build new prisons and hire more guards; California, amid a severe fiscal crisis, is already spending $9 billion a year on corrections. Easier probation and parole have their limits. Structural changes, like decriminalizing non-violent offenses and reducing the length of sentences, are promising reforms but hard to accomplish politically.

The Supreme Court will, in all likelihood, uphold the lower court's findings that California's prison conditions are unconstitutional, but will cut officials some slack in managing the remedy. That gives states and the federal government the room to try new approaches. Accelerating the deportation of criminals who will eventually be deported anyway would not end the overcrowding problem, but it would surely help.

Peter H. Schuck, a professor of law at Yale, is a co-editor of “Understanding America: The Anatomy of an Exceptional Nation.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/opinion/07Schuck.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From the Chicago Sun Times

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30 years for 3 who admitted torturing Calif. teen

ASSOCIATED PRESS

December 6, 2010

STOCKTON, Calif. (AP) — Three adults who admitted to holding captive and torturing a 16-year-old boy inside a Central California home for more than a year are each headed to prison for at least 30 years.

Michael Schumacher, 36, his wife Kelly Lau, 32, and the teen's legal guardian Caren Ramirez, 45, learned their fate Monday during their sentencing in San Joaquin County Superior Court after each pleaded guilty in October to more than a dozen felonies.

After hearing a statement from the victim's aunt, Judge Terrence Van Oss handed down the lengthy sentences: 34 years for Ramirez, 33 years for Lau and 30 years for Schumacher.

The victim, Kyle Ramirez, chose not to speak during the hearing.

Prosecutors said the teenager was beaten, burned and starved at the Tracy home of Schumacher and Lau. He managed to escape in December 2008 and showed up at a nearby fitness center covered in soot and bruises, looking emaciated and wearing a chain around his ankle.

A fourth defendant, Anthony Waiters, 31, the couple's next-door neighbor, was convicted at trial last month. He faces life in prison when he's sentenced Jan. 18.

Kyle Ramirez, now 18, took the witness stand to recount the abuse during Waiters' trial. He testified that he fled the home after hearing Schumacher and Waiters saying they were going to “chop me up and throw me in the delta.”

On Monday, the victim's maternal aunt, Sydney Perry, directly addressed Schumacher, Lau and Ramirez in an emotional statement.

“My family waited two years for this day to face you sadistic, demented monsters who tortured and abused Kyle every day. Every day,” Perry said. “And where you're going, you're going to be with monsters just like you.”

http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/2713249-418/ramirez-schumacher-lau-hearing-kyle.html?print=true

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From Google News

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Bills on bullying filed by Texas legislators

December 7, 2010

By Aman Batheja

After a rash of widely publicized suicides by youths who were victims of bullying, the Texas Legislature next year will consider redefining how schools tackle the problem.

At least seven bills related to bullying have been filed in advance of next year's legislative session.

The issue has gained traction nationally after several suicides by youths who were alleged to have been bullied for being gay, including Asher Brown, 13, of Houston, who shot himself with his father's handgun, and Tyler Clementi, 18, a Rutgers University student who jumped off a bridge. Cases of cyberbullying — harassment over the Internet or via mobile devices — are also drawing concern.

Under state law, schools must prohibit bullying in their student code of conduct, but critics say more needs to be done. Chuck Smith, deputy director of Equality Texas, which focuses on gay, lesbian and transgender issues, said anti-bullying measures will be a priority next year.

“It's something we're pursuing as a child welfare issue,” Smith said. “Bullying is not a playground skirmish.” The most wide-ranging proposal so far comes from state Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, and state Rep. Mark Strama, D-Austin. They have filed nearly identical bills similar to one Strama proposed in 2009 that ran out of time before it could get a vote in the House.

“I think frankly there will be more support in the coming session because the issue has received even more attention in the intervening year and a half,” Strama said.

Davis and Strama want to require school districts to develop a strategy to combat bullying and cyberbullying, including training school employees on the issue and launching an educational program geared toward students and parents.

Their bills would also require districts to notify a parent or guardian quickly of a student involved in bullying, and it would give school boards the power to transfer a student who is being bullied to another school.

Both bills would require districts to report annually how many bullying incidents they faced, including how many were based on race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.

“It doesn't expand what defines bullying,” Davis said. “It simply defines categories for school districts to be sensitive to.”

Davis said she included “gender identity and expression” in categories in her bill to make sure districts look at bullying situations that are due to “a perception of someone's sexuality rather than the reality.” Strama said the phrase might be added to his bill.

Exactly how much a school is expected to do to combat bullying under current law has recently come into question. In October, the U.S. Education Department issued guidelines making clear that punishing a bully isn't enough when the situation involves harassment based on a student's race or gender.

“A school's responsibility is to eliminate the hostile environment created by the harassment, address its effects, and take steps to ensure that harassment does not recur,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Russlynn Ali wrote in a letter to educators.

Fort Worth Councilman Joel Burns, who became an Internet phenomenon this year after delivering an emotional speech on gay bullying, has publicly backed Davis' bill.

“The reporting tools in Sen. Davis' bill will give us the data we need to prioritize resources and understand how we can do better educating and supporting children to learn and be a success,” Burns said.

Strama's bill has attracted? an endorsement from Facebook, which has offices in Austin and has faced criticism for not doing enough against cyberbullying.

“Facebook supports the bill and we are encouraged to see the Texas legislature take steps to keep our schools places where students can feel safe,” Facebook lobbyist Corey Owens wrote in a letter to Strama. Pat Carlson, president of the Texas Eagle Forum, a women's organization that advocates for socially conservative causes, said she is wary of state legislation taking on bullying as if it is a recent phenomenon.

“It's been around forever,” Carlson said. “I think it's awful, but why do we need to get? the government involved?? Why do we have to have a law? Why can't educators just handle the situation with common sense?” Christine Jackson of Haltom City launched Families Against Bullying after she found lacking the Birdville school district's handling of an incident in which her son was bullied. Jackson said state law should be strengthened so that schools have to be more proactive when dealing with bullies.

“There is no law in place about parental notification,” Jackson said. “That's one of the things that upset me. My son was assaulted and I wasn't notified.”

http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/12/06/2684072/bills-on-bullying-filed-by-texas.html

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From the White House

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Helping Children and Victims of Domestic Violence

In October, President Obama and Vice President Biden announced unprecedented coordination across the federal government to protect victims of domestic violence and help break the cycle of abuse. Last week, the U.S. Senate took an important step towards the same goal by reauthorizing the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) which also included the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act (FVPSA). This important legislation has broad bi-partisan support, and will help states both improve child safety and continue critically needed services for victims of domestic violence.

CAPTA helps states strengthen the efforts of child protective service agencies to prevent and treat child abuse. By providing states and local communities with new tools to identify and treat abuse and neglect, CAPTA-funded services will continue to protect our youngest victims. And, CAPTA will help parents get the help they need by addressing high risk factors like substance abuse, mental illness and domestic violence.

In spite of all the progress we have made, domestic violence still affects 1 in 4 women, and these women are not strangers - they are our friends, neighbors, co-workers and family members.  The emergency services provided under FVPSA are a lifeline for victims fleeing violence. The National Domestic Violence Hotline answers more than 22,000 calls for help each month, and connects many of these callers to their local battered women's shelter. FVPSA helps keep those shelter doors open, and links victims with the resources they need to rebuild their lives.

Taken together, CAPTA and FVPSA will help end abuse, give hope to victims, and build strong families. We commend the Senate for taking the important step of passing this legislation, and urge the U.S. House of Representatives to act quickly to make these protections and services a reality.

Lynn Rosenthal is the White House Advisor on Violence Against Women

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/12/06/helping-children-and-victims-domestic-violence

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From the Department of Homeland Security

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Readout of Secretary Napolitano's Remarks at the Bureau of Justice Assistance National Conference

Washington, D.C. - Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano today delivered remarks to more than 1,000 state and local criminal justice professionals at the 2010 Bureau of Justice Assistance National Conference - highlighting the critical role they play in protecting the nation through information-driven, community-based efforts such as the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Initiative.

 “Our adversaries are determined to strike us here at home and their tactics are constantly evolving—making our partners in state, local, and tribal law enforcement critical to our homeland security efforts,” said Secretary Napolitano. “DHS is committed to working with federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement throughout the country to share and leverage information, training and resources in order to protect against terrorism, crime and other threats.”

During her remarks, Secretary Napolitano highlighted the work of DHS and its federal partners to utilize the national network of fusion centers and community-oriented initiatives to strengthen the capacity of frontline personnel to understand, recognize, document, and share information about terrorism and other threats.

She also discussed DHS' close collaboration with the Department of Justice to expand the Nationwide SAR Initiative—an administration effort to train state and local law enforcement to recognize behaviors and indicators related to terrorism, crime and other threats; standardize how those observations are documented and analyzed; and expand and enhance the sharing of those reports with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and DHS. Currently, 24 jurisdictions—including 11 states—are participating in the SAR initiative.

Additionally, Secretary Napolitano underscored the national expansion of DHS' “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign—a simple and powerful tool to raise public awareness of indicators of terrorism, crime and other threats and emphasize the importance of reporting suspicious activity to the proper law enforcement authorities.

For more information, visit www.dhs.gov

http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr_1291672709870.shtm

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Secretary Napolitano Announces Expansion of "If You See Something, Say Something" Campaign to Walmart Stores Across the Nation

Washington, D.C. - Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano today announced the expansion of the Department's national "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign to hundreds of Walmart stores across the country - launching a new partnership between DHS and Walmart to help the American public play an active role in ensuring the safety and security of our nation.

"Homeland security starts with hometown security, and each of us plays a critical role in keeping our country and communities safe," said Secretary Napolitano. "I applaud Walmart for joining the ‘If You See Something, Say Something' campaign. This partnership will help millions of shoppers across the nation identify and report indicators of terrorism, crime and other threats to law enforcement authorities."

The "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign—originally implemented by New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority and funded, in part, by $13 million from DHS' Transit Security Grant Program—is a simple and effective program to engage the public and key frontline employees to identify and report indicators of terrorism, crime and other threats to the proper transportation and law enforcement authorities.

More than 230 Walmart stores nationwide launched the "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign today, with a total of 588 Walmart stores in 27 states joining in the coming weeks. A short video message will play at select checkout locations to remind shoppers to contact local law enforcement to report suspicious activity.

Over the past five months, DHS has worked with its federal, state, local and private sector partners, as well as the Department of Justice, to expand the "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign and Nationwide SAR Initiative to communities throughout the country—including the recent state-wide expansions of the "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign across Minnesota and New Jersey.  Partners include the Mall of America, the American Hotel & Lodging Association, Amtrak, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, sports and general aviation industries, and state and local fusion centers across the country.

In the coming months, the Department will continue to expand the "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign nationally with public education materials and outreach tools designed to help America's businesses, communities and citizens remain vigilant and play an active role in keeping the country safe.

http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr_1291648380371.shtm

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From the Department of Justice

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Attorney General Eric Holder Speaks at the Operation Broken Trust Announcement

Good morning, and thank you all for being here.

I'm pleased to be joined today by several key leaders in our collective effort to combat financial fraud – FBI Executive Assistant Director Shawn Henry and SEC Director of Enforcement Robert Khuzami, as well as the U.S. Postal Inspection Service's Chief Postal Inspector, Guy Cottrell; IRS Criminal Investigation Deputy Chief Rick Raven; and Commodity Futures Trading Commission Acting Director of Enforcement Vincent McGonagle.

We are here to announce the results of Operation Broken Trust, a three-and-a-half-month targeting of investment fraud schemes throughout the country – and a critical step forward in law enforcement's work to protect American investors, to ensure the strength of our markets, and to prevent financial fraud schemes.

While there is nothing new about conducting nationwide operations and sweeps – this one is different in that it brought together a broad array of criminal and civil enforcement tools, at both the federal and state level, to attack investment fraud schemes collectively. Operation Broken Trust is the first national operation in history to target the many different types of investment fraud schemes that prey directly on the investing public.

This historic effort has been coordinated, executed, and led by members of the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force that President Obama created in November 2009. This task force is the broadest coalition of law enforcement, investigatory and regulatory agencies ever established to combat fraud. Multiple federal agencies, as well as partners at the state level, are working together to ensure that no stone is left unturned when it comes to protecting consumers and investors.

Our mission is simple – to bring financial fraud schemes to light and those who operate them to justice. And our aggressive, coordinated approach is working.

Since Operation Broken Trust was launched on August 16 th , all across the country investment fraud cases have been prioritized. To date, the operation has involved enforcement actions against 343 criminal defendants and 189 civil defendants, whose conduct harmed more than 120,000 victims. Several individuals have been charged with defrauding men and women across the country out of thousands – and sometimes millions – of dollars. The cases in this operation involve a variety of different investment fraud schemes that have led to more than $8.3 billion in losses in just the criminal cases alone. Staggering numbers. These losses represent hard-earned money and even life savings. They represent needs that may not be met and dreams that may not be fulfilled.

All of these victims can tell a tragic and cautionary story of being misled and exploited – often by someone they trusted. In fact, many of the scam artists we've identified were preying on their own neighbors – and on the most vulnerable members of their communities. Several of those prosecuted during this operation solicited victim investors from their own churches. One man in Texas allegedly targeted his fellow parishioners, asking them to invest with him and claiming that his success in foreign exchange trading was “a blessing from God.”

In Florida, one defendant was convicted recently for his role in an investment scam that specifically targeted the local Haitian community. In Ohio, a former police officer operating a Ponzi scheme solicited investments from active and retired police officers and firefighters. And in Chicago, another Ponzi scheme resulted in more than $30 million in losses to hundreds of victims – many of them elderly, Italian immigrants.  As a result of our prosecution, the man who operated this scheme has been sentenced to more than 20 years in prison.

Many of the criminals we've identified used investor funds to support lavish lifestyles. One man operating an $880 million Ponzi scheme in Florida duped investors from across the country – and used the money to buy floor seats at professional basketball games and to make payments on his personal yacht, his beach house, and his Mercedes. A New Jersey man charged with operating an investment scam allegedly used investor funds to make payments on three different luxury cars and to pay fees at two country clubs.

With this operation, the task force is sending two messages. A message to the public: be alert for these frauds, take appropriate measures to protect yourself, and report such schemes to proper authorities when they occur. And a second message to anyone operating or attempting to operate an investment scam: we will use every tool at our disposal to find you, to stop you, and to bring you to justice. Cheating investors out of their earnings and savings is no longer a safe business plan.

Along with the agencies represented here on stage, I also want to thank the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Secret Service, and the National Association of Attorneys General. Because of their work, and the contributions of everyone involved in Operation Broken Trust, dozens of criminals who hatched fraud schemes now face significant time behind bars – including one sentence of 85 years.

Although this operation marks an important step forward, our fight to combat financial fraud goes on. The task force will continue working with consumer groups to increase financial literacy and raise awareness about the warning signs of financial scams. And we encourage investors to share tips and concerns with us by visiting stopfraud.gov. With the commitment of so many partners and with the help of an informed public, I am confident that we can take our fight against financial fraud to a new level.

http://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/ag/speeches/2010/ag-speech-101206.html

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From the FBI

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Operation Broken Trust

Historic Investment Fraud Sweep

Today, the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force announced the conclusion of Operation Broken Trust, the largest investment fraud sweep ever conducted in the U.S. 

The 231 cases in the operation involved more than 120,000 victims who lost more than $8 billion.

Operation Broken Trust—which included both criminal and civil enforcement actions that occurred from August 16 through December 1, 2010—was unveiled during a Washington, D.C. press conference attended by representatives of the agencies that make up the task force, including U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Executive Assistant Director Shawn Henry.

The goal of the operation was two-fold:

1. To root out and expose massive investment fraud scams across the nation; and
   
2. To alert the public about many phony investment scams. (See sidebar below for the FBI's prevention tips.)

Operation Broken Trust focused on scams directly targeting individual investors, rather than long-term complex corporate fraud matters. In many instances, these criminals were trusted people within their communities—sometimes neighbors, co-workers, fellow church-goers—who betrayed that trust in order to line their own pockets. And the results were often devastating, with some victims losing their life savings, their homes, their livelihoods.

Each of the cases included in the sweep involved individual investors being deceived by individuals presenting “investment opportunities” that were either completely fictitious or not structured as advertised. An overwhelming number of the cases were high-yield investment frauds and Ponzi schemes. Others involved commodities fraud, foreign exchange fraud, market manipulation (i.e., “pump-and-dump” schemes”), real estate investment fraud, business opportunity fraud, affinity fraud, and the like.

The FBI has observed a steady increase in investment frauds, in particular Ponzi and market manipulation schemes. Since January 2009, we've opened more than 200 Ponzi cases,  many with $20 million-plus losses. Based on our current caseload, the top five Ponzi scheme hot spots in the country are Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco, but keep in mind that these scams can and do happen anywhere.

We've had success in shutting down many and arresting those responsible, due in large part to our focus on partnerships—like our involvement in the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force—as well as intelligence-gathering and information-sharing efforts. And we continue to use sophisticated investigative techniques—like undercover operations to court-authorized electronic surveillance—to collect evidence in ongoing cases and to identify and stop criminals before they prey on others.

What about the victims? The FBI generally offers assistance to victims in fraud cases that fall under our jurisdiction (our partner agencies offer similar services). Our field office victim specialists can provide case status information, direct victims to organizations that can help with protecting or rebuilding credit, assist in documenting victims' losses, help cope with stress, and even find government or community-based services for victims—especially the elderly and disabled—if their financial losses are severe.

In cases with hundreds or even thousands of victims, we can provide information using websites and toll-free phone lines.

Reflecting on the importance of collaboration with our law enforcement and private sector partners in combating investment fraud , Executive Assistant Director Henry said, “Together, we are smarter. Together, we are stronger. Together, we will continue to seek out those who look to profit at the expense of the hard-working men and women of the United States of America.”

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2010/december/fraud_120610/fraud_120610

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