From the Los Angeles Times

Jamiel Shaw holds a memorial pin featuring his son, Jamiel Shaw II, who was gunned down in Los Angeles by a gang member and illegal immigrant. Shaw joined others who've also lost loved ones to homicide at a holiday party in Carson sponsored by the San Pedro-based nonprofit Justice for Murdered Children.

A party where pain is the main guest At a holiday get-together in Carson sponsored by Justice for Murdered Children, families who've lost loved ones to homicide share stories about the torment they've endured. by Mike Anton, Los Angeles Times December 19, 2010 It was a party sponsored by an organization you pray you should never need, a party where the sign-in sheet was full of names of the dead. Frank, shot dead by a drug dealer over a debt that wasn't his. Jamiel, shot dead while talking on his mobile phone by a suspect who chose him at random. Danny, shot dead walking home from work. "He was shot 12 feet from his front door three years ago," said Donna Arviso, who is Danny Arviso's aunt. He was 19 and wearing his uniform from his shipping-and-receiving job at the Port of Los Angeles. Despite a $50,000 reward, the case remains unsolved. "The pain never goes away," she said.

On Saturday, though, the pain was at least shared during a holiday party and toy giveaway sponsored by Justice for Murdered Children, a San Pedro-based nonprofit that advocates for and offers assistance to families who have lost loved ones to homicide.

Family members of several dozen murder victims attended the event at a Carson community center. Each was asked to sign in with the name of the deceased, followed by the gender and ages of the children who would be receiving donated toys gift-wrapped by volunteers.

"For parents who've lost children, the holidays are the hardest time of year to cope," said Joyce Mason, a member of the group's governing committee.

"A lot of times, parents will just shut down emotionally because of depression. They'll tend to forget the needs of their other kids — forget to even buy them presents. Here, the kids can still celebrate the holiday without putting pressure on Mom and Dad."

Mason understands all this from experience. Her nephew was gunned down six years ago after a friend of his got into an altercation. He was 19.

"Every person here has a story," Mason said.

Jamiel Shaw's story made headlines.

His 17-year-old son, Jamiel Shaw II, was gunned down near his home in L.A.'s Arlington Heights neighborhood in 2008, allegedly by a gang member and illegal immigrant who had been released from jail the day before.

The apparently random killing of Shaw, a high school football star who was being recruited by Stanford and Rutgers, stunned people.

"He was just out looking for someone to kill," his father said of the alleged shooter, who is awaiting trial and faces the death penalty. "Every year I see his friends, they're all growing up. But my son will always be 17. It's like living your life in the past tense."

Unlike Shaw's story, most of those shared among victims' families Saturday never made the evening news.

Instead, they remain torments shouldered by loved ones in private, all-too-familiar stories that make Justice for Murdered Children an organization with no shortage of potential members.

"To get to help other kids and other families who've gone through what my family has gone through," Arviso said, describing her involvement with the group. "This has been my therapy."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-justice-party-20101219,0,6259280.story

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Easing life's final choices

Palliative care is poorly understood, but the doctors who practice it believe it is good medicine.

by Thomas Curwen, Los Angeles Times

December 18, 2010

Elvin Flynn is a dying man, but no one here is about to deprive him of his chances to live. He lies in a hospital bed on the seventh floor of the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, a fungal infection threatening his central nervous system.

He's already on a rigorous regimen of antibiotics. More surgery is an option but after three operations, he says he's had enough. There's the hyperbaric chamber; a concentrated dose of oxygen might help.

His doctors believe the odds are long. His condition is complicated by a disease in his bone marrow, and they're waiting to find out what Flynn, 78, and his wife, Dixie, want to do.

The couple is reluctant to have this conversation. To say no to further treatment means that death is imminent. To say yes means living longer in the limbo of the hospital, no positive outcome guaranteed.

David Wallenstein would like to help. He is a specialist in palliative care, a field that lies between curing disease and entering hospice, a poorly understood and slowly evolving discipline of healthcare today.

Its practitioners are like other physicians. They run clinics, offer consultations but are skilled in leading discussions other doctors avoid. They are not shy about addressing the limitations of treatment. Nor are they averse to talking about the end of life.

"You are the tour guide to the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and as that guide, you have to carry the baggage, point out the stony road and suggest possible alternatives," says Judith Ford, who worked with Wallenstein before returning to England in 2006 to become a math teacher. Ford headed the palliative care program at UCLA for nearly six years.

Wallenstein is more matter-of-fact. "My job is to convince patients that I have something of benefit to them when they may feel there is absolutely no reason in the world to trust a physician," he says.

Today he is nervous about meeting Flynn, but it's always been this way. Even before palliative care was associated with "death panels" during the recent healthcare debate, he could see patients tense when he introduced himself.

They assume he has been sent to restrict their care, so he begins asking about pain and symptoms, an introduction that often leads to a conversation about the patient's goals for treatment. He isn't about to limit anyone's choices. He just wants patients like Flynn — those who have been fighting disease for so long that all they know is the fight — to realize all of their options.

Sometimes there is more to life than fighting death.

--

Black circles rim Flynn's eyes, the emergence of necrotic tissue from the infection. His nose is partly covered by a bandage. To fight the infection, surgeons removed his septum, part of his sinuses and palate.

Wallenstein introduces himself. Dixie is at lunch. The doctor pulls up a chair and asks Flynn about his condition. The patient's answer is candid and to the point.

Six years ago he was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome, a leukemia-like disease in his bone marrow that has made the recent infection so difficult to cure. He didn't expect to live this long and suspects that he hasn't much time left.

After a decade practicing palliative medicine, Wallenstein, 53, has seen a range of reactions from patients with terminal diseases. Some have come to terms with their illnesses. Some are terrified. Others are tired, even depressed, and anticipate the end. Others are fighters, willing to pursue treatment through cycles of remission and relapse, no matter the cost.

Last August palliative care received a boost when the New England Journal of Medicine published a study showing that early palliative intervention among some cancer patients improved their quality of life and led to longer survival rates.

The journal also published an editorial with a surprisingly simple message: "… reducing patients' misery may help them live longer." But the editors admitted to the challenge that these specialists face in their practice. Most physicians "tend to perceive palliative care as … what we do when there is nothing more that we can do."

Even with evidence that palliative care reduces costs and avoids unwanted and futile intensive care, the specialty is undervalued. Its doctors see patients at the request of the primary physician, who can reject their recommendations, and compensating doctors for leading end-of-life discussions is complicated.

"Healthcare reimbursement tends to favor high-tech and procedure orientations like surgery and endoscopy over the less dramatic like spending time talking," says Thomas Strouse, a colleague of Wallenstein's at UCLA. It is a situation, Strouse believes, reflective of "a society not quite knowing what to do with the activity of sitting with a patient and family and identifying goals of care."

Wallenstein hopes this will change, but for now he is undeterred, confident in his training and the purpose of this medicine. He has seen how dying patients are marginalized, even discriminated against by doctors who pull back when they feel that nothing more can be done. Death will always be sad, he says, but it doesn't have to be horrific.

In the 1980s, he worked as a social worker in the AIDS unit of a Chicago hospital and still remembers the patient who was in so much pain that he wanted to kill himself. The attending physician dismissed the behavior as "drug seeking."

"Well, he's dying," Wallenstein recalls saying. "Shouldn't he be comfortable?"

The doctor wasn't going to be questioned. "Damn it," he said. "If you can do my job better than me, you can go to medical school."

Wallenstein did, studying internal medicine and anesthesiology before completing a fellowship in pain and palliative care.

--

Alice Chen, one of Flynn's physicians, called for the consult. A recent MRI showed progression of the infection, known as mucormycosis, and she knew the Flynns had to decide whether to stop the antibiotics and give up on other possible treatments. It would be a lengthy and sensitive conversation.

Terminal illnesses often challenge doctors, who may see up to 20 patients a day and are so strictly schooled to find cures that anything else is thought of as a failure.

"As a physician," says Chen, 31, "it requires a very different mind-set to accept that disease is winning and that our role is now to ease the path rather than to change its course."

Two days later Wallenstein drops in again on Flynn, who mentions discomfort in his lower right chest. Pain and symptom management is always the first order of business. Wallenstein wants to keep his patients lucid, but he also realizes that any suffering will make thinking about the future more difficult.

He leans over and feels Flynn's abdomen. He thinks there might be a cracked rib. Flynn had had a bad cough. Wallenstein wants to recommend an X-ray and a course of methadone, a long-acting opioid, and morphine as necessary.

Years ago when he announced he was going into palliative care, one of his teachers in medical school scoffed. "Why don't you do something useful?" he said. "You'll just be pouring morphine, and a nurse can do that."

Wallenstein understood the derision. Pain is difficult to treat, and listening is not a glamorous procedure. It takes time and trust and a little effort, and its outcome is hard to quantify, especially in healthcare environments where algorithms measure likely success rates. Through his work with AIDS patients, though, Wallenstein learned that good medicine doesn't always reach for a cure.

"I feel sadness for many of my patients. How could I not? But I deal with these emotions privately," says Wallenstein, a master of contradictory impulses, detached and present, clinical and concerned.

--

The next day Wallenstein wants to see if the new medications have helped. Flynn has just woken up. His wife is at his side.

"Are you thinking about any new solution for what you've been struggling with?" Wallenstein asks after an assessment. He has a calm manner with a voice that is high and wispy.

Flynn mentions the hyperbaric chamber. He tried it once and found it too claustrophobic, but he's wondering if it would help.

"Do you want my opinion?"

Flynn nods.

"I don't believe it will make any difference. You see, here," Wallenstein says, meaning this hospital, this institution and its doctors, "there is always something more that we can do. I'm not telling you not to try, but I'm trying to look at the bigger picture."

Flynn understands. "I'm not afraid to go," he says, his voice muffled as a side effect of the surgeries.

"What makes you unafraid?" Wallenstein asks.

"I've known the Lord since I was a kid," Flynn says, looking skyward. "I've been going to church since I was 2 weeks old."

Wallenstein does not discuss religion with his patients. He doesn't share that he is Episcopal or that he believes in the resurrection, but he believes that Flynn's faith will make it easier for the couple.

A nurse walks into the room and starts hooking up a transfusion of blood to keep the bone marrow disease in check. After a moment of silence, Wallenstein continues.

"One last question," he says. "Do you have anything that you want to do?"

"No." Flynn reaches for Dixie and asks her. She shakes her head.

Then a thought comes to Flynn.

"I want to sing solo in my church," he says, back home in Ridgecrest, Calif.

Then, without prompting and in spite of the hollow resonance of his voice, he begins a song from the Baptist hymnal:

How can I say thanks

for the things You have done for me?

Things so undeserved,

Yet You gave to prove Your love for me....

Wallenstein is moved but contains himself. He's gratified that Flynn mentioned this wish.

Yesterday Wallenstein and the palliative care nurse privately discussed treatment if the fungal infection were to reach Flynn's brain. They agreed that it would be best to stop giving him blood transfusions, so he could die of the disease in his bone marrow, which would be easier to manage than the infection.

Neither alternative is good, but they wanted to be realistic, and one day, perhaps soon, this will have to be discussed.

Now Wallenstein wonders if it would be possible to get Flynn into his church again. Maybe he could sing from a wheelchair.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1219-end-of-life-doctor-20101219,0,2547902,print.story

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Mexican drug cartels find youths to be easy prey

Faced with a poor education system and dismal job prospects, boys and girls as young as 11 are lured into acting as mules, peddlers, lookouts — even executioners — for drug cartels offering easy money.

by Ken Ellingwood and Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times

December 18, 2010

Reporting from Jiutepec, Mexico, and Mexico City

The curly-haired suspect in the sweatshirt faced the flash of news cameras, looking impossibly small.

"When did you start to kill?" he was asked. "How much did you earn?" "How many did you execute?"

He said he began killing at age 11. A drug cartel paid him $200 a week. He'd killed four people.

"How?" came the final question.

"I cut their throats," he replied. Then masked Mexican soldiers hustled him off, the way they do other drug suspects.

The detainee's name was Edgar Jimenez Lugo, but everyone knew him as Ponchi.

He's 14 years old.

In shin-length shorts and flip-flops, the San Diego-born boy was a cheerful fixture on the pothole-marked streets of his neighborhood on the gritty side of Jiutepec, a town near Cuernavaca that's a weekend retreat for residents of Mexico City.

But whispers swirled that he'd fallen in with a dangerous crowd, that he was riding around in spiffy cars.

Edgar's father, David Jimenez, said he had caught the boy smelling of alcohol at a local basketball court, but nothing worse. He had to admit, though, that he had no idea how his son spent his time.

"He was kind of forgotten," Jimenez said.

Edgar had long ago abandoned school and lately seemed a fleeting, ghostlike presence in the ramshackle compound he shared with aunts and uncles. One close relative said she hadn't seen him since April.

Authorities began hunting the teen in November, after someone named "Ponchis" was mentioned prominently in a video posted on YouTube that purportedly showed masked members of a hit team for the fraying Beltran Leyva cartel posing with rifles.

The boy's father acknowledges that his son appeared in the video but said the teen posed as part of a "game."

"Everything they're saying about him is a lie," said Jimenez, a 44-year-old security guard. "He hasn't done the barbarous things they say."

Facing reporters on the night of his arrest this month, Edgar said he had no parents.

"They're dead," he said.

Youths 'divert from their destiny'

Edgar's arrest was one more shocking twist in Mexico's 4-year-old drug war: Could a boy who stands barely chin high to a grown man be a bloodthirsty cartel assassin?

The case has shaken Mexico, possibly because the answer is so clear. Faced with an abysmal education system and even worse job prospects — and lured by easy drug money and the clout that comes with it — thousands of ever-younger youths are joining the ranks of violent cartels.

The virtually endless supply of young foot soldiers keeps the cartels well-stocked with thugs, gunmen, mules, peddlers and lookouts. As vulnerable kids fall through the cracks, Mexico risks losing part of a generation.

"These kids are victimizers, but they are also victims," said Miguel Barrera, a former gangster who now works to rescue violent teens from the streets.

About a million youths are considered at risk and easy prey for cartels, according to studies by the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City. It is a precarious and probably short life. The young foot soldiers are little more than cannon fodder.

As much as 5% of the more than 30,000 people killed in the drug wars in the last four years were minors, according to civic groups; some were innocents caught up in the violence, but many were active participants.

Police and military officials say they are capturing a larger number of youths in operations against cartels.

Two suspects in the August massacre of 72 Central and South American immigrants in northern Mexico were 17 and 14. In February, officials in the state of Tabasco announced the capture of a 13-year-old girl who they said had been recruited by drug traffickers and trained to kill.

The phenomenon has crashed into a legal system unprepared for youths charged with grave offenses, spurring a movement to lower the age at which suspects can be tried and punished as adults.

In terms of prevention, however, there are only a few programs aimed at stopping cartel recruitment and little political will to tackle the problem.

"The great danger I see in Mexico," said author and social commentator Carlos Fuentes, "is that young Mexicans, those less than 30 years of age, which is nearly half of the population, divert from their destiny and turn to crime."

Drugs a gateway to violence

When he was 14, Jose Andres Mendoza stalked the chaotic streets of Mexico City's slums armed with a 9-millimeter pistol that he used to rob passengers on buses. He had long ago dropped out of school and would spend "weeks at a time" high on pot.

The boy, called "Tulo," sold drugs at his old school and in his neighborhood, a rough barrio that climbs steep hills on the northeastern edge of Mexico City.

It's the kind of place where you can buy drugs "like a stick of gum," as locals put it, where stray dogs roam, junkies and dealers with shaved heads fight for corners, gunfire punctuates the night, and streets are littered with discarded condoms.

"We'd pistol-whip the guys on buses to get their money," Tulo said. "I like money. I like the clothes. I like having good tennis shoes. The name brands."

For many youths, the passage to organized crime begins with drug use. Historically, Mexico had been a transit point for drugs, not a consumer nation. But that changed in the last decade, and the number of addicts has doubled, according to the government. The drug of choice tends to be marijuana or crack cocaine, but many of the poorer kids inhale highly toxic solvents such as paint thinner.

Tulo says it's a harsh drug. "It makes you see things and hear voices," he said.

Now 15, Tulo is tall and gangly, with gel-spiked hair and a large silver necklace bearing a miniature of St. Jude Thaddeus, the saint of desperate cases.

He says he's shot only one person, another gangster who angered him. He's been knifed. His 15-year-old girlfriend was shot to death at a wild dance party a month ago. Earlier in the year his teenage cousin, a drug dealer, was stabbed about 30 times.

He said he's trying to get out of the criminal life.

Tulo's father beat his mother before abandoning the family. They are poor, living in the same concrete and tin-roof home that Tulo's grandparents shared when they were first married.

His mother, Guadalupe Castaneda, 37, is dignified and friendly and has struggled to keep her son safe.

"I talked to him and told him not to do those things," she said. "But inside my humble house is one thing, and out there when he hangs with his friends, it's another."

A symptom of larger problems

Edgar, the boy known as Ponchi, was arrested at the Cuernavaca airport as he and his 19-year-old sister, Elizabeth, tried to board a plane for Tijuana. Authorities said they found two handguns and packets of cocaine in their luggage.

Relatives said the pair planned to cross the border to join their mother, Yolanda Jimenez Lugo, who has lived in San Diego for years.

Military officials have yet to lay out their evidence for the charges of homicide, arms and drug possession, and involvement in organized crime. But they say Edgar appears in another video in which a man is shown hanged by the arms and tortured. Other young detainees have said Edgar directed them to bury the bodies of slain drug rivals.

Family members say he was coerced by armed soldiers into making incriminating statements to reporters soon after his Dec. 2 capture.

The accusations against Edgar have laid bare darker aspects of life in small-town Mexico. Residents say the quaint plaza of the Tejalpa neighborhood bristles after sunset with drug dealers, who can make $500 a night peddling marijuana and cocaine.

"The same ones who supply the drugs — they work for them. It's easy money," said 17-year-old Jibran Barrera, a high school student who wore a marijuana emblem on his belt buckle. He said he has never sold drugs, but has friends who do.

Jibran said he didn't view the accusations against Edgar as so hard to fathom. "That's how he was making a living," Jibran said. "In these times, hardly anyone has money."

The episode has also forced the Jimenez family to face its past failings. In the 1990s, child-welfare officials removed all six Jimenez children from their parents' custody in San Diego, where the family lived at the time. David Jimenez said the reason was the couple's violent fighting.

The paternal grandmother, Carmen Solis, was appointed legal guardian and brought the children to Mexico while Edgar, the youngest, was still a baby. But her death in 2004 left the family rudderless, one relative said, and hit Edgar especially hard.

The boy stopped going to school after third grade because he didn't like it.

"I neglected him a little," David Jimenez said during an interview in the nearly empty house that belonged to his late mother.

He said the boy's sister, Elizabeth, was rubbing elbows with reputed underworld figures, including a suspected enforcer named Jesus Radilla Hernandez who has been tied to a flurry of beheadings and other killings in the Cuernavaca area.

Edgar told reporters after his arrest that he killed at Radilla's behest, but only under threat of death and the influence of marijuana.

David Jimenez insisted his son was "not a monster."

"Right now all the poverty in the country pulls kids into doing things they shouldn't. They say, 'I'll give you some money and you take this package over there, deliver it there.' And without knowing what they're carrying, the children do it," Jimenez said.

Could the same have happened to Ponchi?

"Maybe," the father said, looking defeated. "Maybe he was a kid who also got swept up in all that."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-foot-soldiers-20101219,0,4821006,print.story

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In North Carolina, a racial uproar over schools stirs old echoes

When Charlotte's majority-white board voted to close several predominantly black and Latino schools, the ensuing tumult raised the specter of the civil rights era. But the district has also won praise for minority education.

by Richard Fausset, Los Angeles Times

December 19, 2010

Reporting from Charlotte, N.C.

Confronted with depressing revenue numbers, this Southern city's school board reluctantly embraced a solution that is increasingly common in America's struggling economy: They voted to close schools, 10 of them.

The decision last month sparked a racially charged uproar. The district is 33% white. The majority of the school board is white. In the schools targeted for closure, 95% of students are minorities.

Before the vote, hundreds of residents, including many worried black and Latino parents, packed public forums to protest. Charges of racism were leveled, and the local head of the NAACP was hauled away from one meeting in handcuffs. School board members have received threatening letters.

Yet, strangely, this season of tumult has also been a season of triumph for a district where the leadership professes to put a premium on educating its poor and minority students.

In an October ceremony at New York's Museum of Modern Art attended by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the Broad Foundation awarded $250,000 to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, ranking it among the top five large school districts in the nation that have improved learning for poor children and students of color.

How could this school system be simultaneously viewed as hero and villain? The disconnect — and dilemma — has rattled Charlotte, a banking hub that has long prided itself on being moderate by Southern standards, a place traditionally more interested in commerce than conflict.

"I think there was this sense we could make a businesslike decision and move through it and go on to the next thing," Anthony Foxx, the city's second black mayor, said of the closures. "But you know, as much as we've moved on chronologically from the past, there's still some residual issues there."

Over the last half century, Charlotte's 135,000-student school system has toggled from segregation to integration and back. Once again, many blacks and whites are separate. And now, hard times are exposing deep differences in the way residents perceive — and measure — what is equal.

The seeds of the conflict were planted in 1971, when the Supreme Court, in Swann vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, mandated an integration plan for the district, and in so doing, approved busing plans nationwide.

The year of the landmark ruling, a fire was set in the offices of Julius L. Chambers, the African American attorney who represented the plaintiffs. But over time, many in Charlotte, including many leading white families, came to take pride in the relative success of busing. Residents called Charlotte "the city that made desegregation work."

It lasted about two decades. Support began unraveling in the 1990s, especially as newcomers flocked to Charlotte to work in its banks and other businesses. Many were Northern white-collar workers who were uncomfortable with integrated schools and concerned about what they saw as a lack of rigor in the classroom.

"I believe they conflated desegregation with a generally inferior Southern education," said Roslyn Arlin Mickelson, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. "That started a movement from below from newcomers that busing has got to end."

By 1999, a federal judge ordered an end to Charlotte's integration efforts, finding that the district had "eliminated … the vestiges of past discrimination in the traditional areas of school operations."

When parents were allowed to send their children to their neighborhood schools, racially mixed campuses quickly reverted to being either predominantly white and wealthy in the suburbs, or, in the inner city, primarily poor and minority.

That was the scene the current superintendent, Peter Gorman, encountered when he joined the district in 2006.

By that time, the district was working hard to maintain "equity." There were rules governing the allocation of staff, supplies and facilities on inner-city campuses, and a committee to monitor it all, said LaTarzja Henry, a district spokeswoman.

It was what Henry calls the "stuff and things" model. To Gorman it seemed to miss the mark. He noted how the district, in the name of "equity," leaned on a principal to create a chess club at one struggling school because other schools had chess clubs.

The principal dutifully assigned a teacher to head the new club. But to do so, the teacher was forced to abandon an after-school literacy program.

"We could be in compliance with our equity policy, and not have kids graduate from school," Gorman said. "I went to the board and said we've got to increase the graduation rate, the college-going rate.... We needed to focus more on outcomes for kids."

The board and Gorman, former head of Tustin Unified School District in Orange County, began to change things. The equity committee was disbanded. Gorman lumped some low-performing schools into an "achievement zone" eligible for extra funds, staff and professional development (a plan that was dismantled this year because of budget pressures).

He instituted a nationally recognized system that successfully encouraged his best-performing principals to take reassignments in low-performing schools. A new staffing formula gave greater weight to poor students in determining student-teacher ratios.

District records show that between the 2005-06 and 2009-10 school years, black students narrowed the achievement gap with whites by nine points in math tests for grades 3 to 8, with similar achievements in Algebra I and English I. Latino students, too, showed improvements.

Gaps also narrowed between disadvantaged students and the rich — though Charlotte's white and wealthy, in aggregate, still far outperform minorities and the poor.

The Broad Foundation, the Los Angeles-based nonprofit founded by philanthropists Edythe and Eli Broad, cited the district's innovations as reasons for its success.

For some white board members, the innovations also helped justify the closure of the black and minority schools.

Eric C. Davis, the school board chairman, said the 10 closed campuses suffered from a combination of poor academic performance and empty classroom space. Given the looming budget shortfall, which could reach $100 million next year, he said it made more sense to close down underused buildings in an effort to save money to pay successful teachers.

He also argued that families in the suburbs were paying a price for the added attention to the inner-city schools.

It is the suburbs, he said, that typically lose the star principals when they are assigned to the inner city. It is suburban schools that have overstuffed classrooms because of the lopsided spending on poor students.

In the suburbs, Davis said, "there's already pain and sacrifice going on."

However, both Davis and Gorman are aware that their arguments have been difficult to sell to parents and students who are about to lose something as tangible as a school, particularly given the history that preceded the Swann case.

In a letter, the local chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People referred to that background as it urged the board to postpone its Nov. 9 vote. "The school system has a long history, dating back to the days of segregated schools, of providing inferior educational opportunities, resources and facilities to African American and disadvantaged communities," the letter stated.

The hassle and hurt will be tangible for DeAndra Alex and her son Deon, a freshman at E.E. Waddell High School, which is more than 90% minority and is being shuttered to make way for a mixed-race K-8 magnet school. Alex said Deon would probably be sent to a school about nine miles away. Waddell is about a mile from her home.

Alex and other parents at the targeted schools say they have repeatedly tried, with little success, to have the school board redraw its attendance boundaries so that unused classrooms in the inner city might be filled with kids from suburban schools, many of which are overcrowded. They were also dismayed when a number of majority-white schools originally on the closure list were removed by the board.

"What this is doing is awakening a beast in hibernation," she said: "The civil rights movement."

Louise Woods, a white former board member, said recently that the latest conflagration, with its name calling and wounded feelings, had made her "heartsick."

Back when the schools were integrated, she said, there was a sense that "you really had to do right by everybody, that I can't ignore your child because he might be in school with my child."

With segregated campuses, she said, "we're not interacting with each other anymore ... and it's very easy to not be sensitive" to the feelings and needs of others.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-charlotte-schools-20101219,0,2429558,print.story

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Gwen Taylor, 61, was killed Dec. 11 in Inglewood by bullets aimed at a teenage boy, police said.

Despite publicity, grandmother's killing prompts not a single tip to police by Sandy Banks Los Angeles Times December 18, 2010 Inglewood police are still investigating the case of a woman killed in front of her grandchildren at an Inglewood park Dec. 11, adding they've received no tips from the public in the high-profile case. Times columnist Sandy Banks looked at the the case, saying it reminded her of a 13-year-old killing of a boy at another Inglewood Park: Police aren't certain yet that last Saturday's shooting of Gwen Taylor was gang-related. "But that's the way we're looking at it now," said Inglewood Police Sgt. Brian Spencer. "We know she was leaving the park and was in no way involved in anything that had to do with the shots being fired." The 61-year-old grandmother was killed by stray bullets aimed at a teenage boy who ducked behind a car, police said. She had just loaded her grandkids' toys in the car, after the family's annual Christmas dinner with her husband's military buddies. Spencer said police have not received a single call about the crime. "Nothing to WeTip or Crimestoppers," he said. "Someone witnessed something. Maybe they recognize the guy from the neighborhood; they saw someone running from the park. We need someone to come forward. It's difficult to make a case without that kind of help."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/

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Errant bullets shatter lives

A grandmother's slaying is the latest such tragedy. The mother of a 7-year-old killed 13 years ago in similar fashion has devoted herself to counseling would-be gang members.

by Sandy Banks

Los Angeles Times

December 18, 2010

I worried that news accounts of the shooting death at Inglewood's Rogers Park of a grandma on a family outing would feel like a bullet to the heart of Rhonda Foster.

Foster's son, Evan, died in similar fashion 13 years ago this month; the victim of errant bullets in a gang-related shooting at Inglewood's Darby Park. I'd written about the family over the years and often thought about them.

But Foster hadn't heard much about last Saturday's shooting. She's been too busy counseling would-be gang members — trying to keep them from taking up guns.

That's been her mission since 7-year-old Evan was shot to death in the back seat of their car as the family was about to head home from the park after picking up his basketball trophy. Three young men were sentenced to 20 years to life for his murder. They were not aiming for Evan, but sprayed the parking lot with an assault rifle to even the score for a rival gang's attack.

Police aren't certain yet that last Saturday's shooting of Gwen Taylor was gang-related. "But that's the way we're looking at it now," said Inglewood Police Sgt. Brian Spencer. "We know she was leaving the park and was in no way involved in anything that had to do with the shots being fired."

The 61-year-old grandmother was killed by stray bullets aimed at a teenage boy who ducked behind a car, police said. She had just loaded her grandkids' toys in the car, after the family's annual Christmas dinner with her husband's military buddies.

Spencer said police have not received a single call about the crime. "Nothing to WeTip or Crimestoppers," he said. "Someone witnessed something. Maybe they recognize the guy from the neighborhood; they saw someone running from the park.

"We need someone to come forward. It's difficult to make a case without that kind of help."

Taylor's family will bury her Thursday. "We haven't heard anything. We're just waiting," her daughter Mimi said.

Foster remembers that numb feeling from the days after Evan's death. But information from gang associates helped land Evan's killers behind bars before the child's body was laid to rest.

There is something about the murder of a child that seems to stifle the "no snitching" edict. When 5-year-old Aaron Shannon was killed in his backyard this Halloween while showing off his Spider-Man costume, police were flooded with tips from the streets and arrested two gang members before the next weekend.

But that's cold comfort to a mourning family. That's why Rhonda and her husband, Ruett, turned Evan's death into a reclamation project.

Ruett became a pastor after Evan's death. Rhonda counsels children with Community Build, a city-sponsored gang prevention project. They visit prisons, schools and community groups, talking about what it meant to lose their son.

They seem to understand — as much as middle-class, church-going folks can — the circumstances that breed gangs and glamorize guns.

"They're typical kids when you're dealing with them one on one," said Rhonda, whose office in a Crenshaw area mall draws troubled children and worried families. "But they're not thinking beyond themselves." They're impulsive, angry, surrounded by bad influences.

Statistically, the battle is being won. Gang crime is down on almost every front. But retaliation is still a powerful concept. And all the counseling in the world can't solve what Foster considers a central problem: the availability of guns and bullets.

"They're caught up in the moment. They have easy access to weapons, this impulsivity, these major issues going on at home. They get themselves in these kind of situations."

And someone dies.

Gun control laws have always been a hard sell. But Foster thinks that would change "if people would just take the time to really see what is being presented and how sensible it is."

"The city of Los Angeles has ordinances to keep ammunition behind the counter, instead of out on the shelves where it can easily be stolen," she pointed out. "The average citizen thinks that's so basic it should already be in place everywhere. But it's not."

Making it harder for young people to get ammunition "might give them a chance to cool off. They might decide to do something else," she said.

Ten years ago, Foster joined Women Against Gun Violence, which pushes for tougher gun laws and sends young victims of gun violence to "reverse the acceptance of gun violence as normal behavior" by warning their peers away from the lifestyle.

A scroll through the group's online memorial took me beyond the victims we write about — the high-powered agent, the saintly grandma, the innocent trick-or-treater in costume — to the holes guns have left in private lives.

There's 12-year-old Timmy, not much different from Evan, seen through his grieving father's eyes. "He played Nintendo, enjoyed riding his bike, collected Pokemon cards and loved to read Harry Potter books." If Timmy Koppos had had a chance to grow up, "he wanted to be a professional mover, like his dad."

And family matriarch Mary Ann Bramlett, as sprightly and loving as Gwen Taylor: "She took care of herself, enjoyed great health … owned and maintained her own home" at 81, her daughter wrote; until "the cowardly use of a gun" took her from them.

You never really get over the loss, Foster told me. And every new murder reminds you.

Every random shooting, every errant bullet leaves a family in shambles behind it.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1218-banks-20101218,0,2483191.column

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Exiled by fear

The land of her youth no longer exists, replaced by a Mexico where her friends don't leave their homes at night and where corpses hang from bridges.

By Lorenza Muñoz

December 19, 2010

I have never before thought of myself as an exile. All my life I have traveled between Mexico, where I was born, and Los Angeles, my home since I was 6. What do I, whose parents freely chose to leave their country for the United States so many years ago, have in common with Vietnamese, Cubans, Iranians and Iraqis who were forced to flee their homelands, never to return?

Fear.

The headlines tell the story: "Mexico Under Siege," "Deadly Drug Violence Claims Hundreds of Lives," "U.S. Warns of Danger in Mexico as Violence Increases." Or the one about the 14-year-old who matter-of-factly told authorities he had killed people by chopping off their heads and then added, as if exonerating himself, that at least he "never went and hung the bodies from bridges or anything like that."

That story is particularly chilling to me because many of those bodies were hung from bridges in Cuernavaca, the city where my mother's family lives, where I spent summers visiting from the United States. Friends there tell stories of shielding their children's eyes from the dangling corpses that seem to be falling from the sky.

In Cuernavaca, and in Mexico City, our friends do not leave their homes at night. Conversations in restaurants are whispered — no one wants to be overheard saying so and so was kidnapped or that so and so is a narco. You never know who is sitting next to you. Many people we know have been kidnapped. The 2007 death of Silvia Vargas, a highly publicized kidnapping, hit close to home. Her dad was once my summer swim coach.

That 14-year-old killer is part of a new generation in Mexico that is being called los ni-nis , the "neither-nors," lost boys and young men who proclaim they neither study nor work. They have found plenty to do, however, acting as the cartels' killers, mules and torturers. Usually, the reports say, they are so doped up, they don't even recognize or feel the carnage they are inflicting.

I know that, as with most countries, Mexico has always had a dark and wild side. My own mother and aunt were kidnapped by a powerful cacique in the 1960s. He thought my 14-year-old aunt, with her green eyes, white skin and black hair, was so beautiful he had to have her.

Fortunately, my nervy and intelligent mother (also a great beauty) was with her, and she was able to figure out an escape: opening the door of the moving car, grabbing her little sister's hand and running against traffic down Mexico City's largest boulevard, Paseo de la Reforma.

For several months after the kidnapping, my aunt was escorted to school every day by a friend who was a general in the army. The issue was resolved quietly by my grandfather, a military doctor, when he met privately with the cacique. Nobody knows what was said, but the dirty old man never bothered my aunt or mother again.

In the 1980s and '90s, there were always stories of crimes. During the summers I spent with my cousins in Mexico, we were trained to give a cop his bribe and never allow them to take us in. Somehow, the crime stories always had a twist of kindness or mercy to them that made them almost comical. In his early 80s, my step-grandfather was mugged every week after depositing his money in the bank at the same time on Fridays. But the muggers were always polite and apologized for having to take his money. A friend who was carjacked was given bus fare.

There is nothing funny in the stories being told today. There is only fear and lament. And yet, life goes on. My cousins, aunts and uncles will all spend Christmas in Acapulco. They will dance, eat, swim in the sea. I hear the sadness in my grandmother's voice when I tell her we won't be visiting this year. I feel my voice catching as I think about her, 90 years old, sitting in her living room holding the telephone. I remember how beautiful Christmastime is in Mexico, everything decorated in the crimson hues of the season. I can see the poinsettias, noche buenas , blooming in the languid gardens in Cuernavaca, a place the Aztecs called the City of Eternal Spring. The Mexico I like to remember is about love and warmth and family.

I know I am giving in to the media frenzy that sensationalizes the crimes and only covers the horrors in Mexico. But now I have children of my own, and having children makes one a coward.

If my family were to make the trip, most likely, the worst wouldn't happen. After all, the majority of the violence is occurring between drug dealers and their henchmen. Crime rates in general are much worse in Brazil and Venezuela, for instance.

But what if we were to drive under one of those bridges on the wrong day? How would I explain the sight of those hideous, lifeless bodies hanging from above? Or what if our cab driver happened to work for a narco? Or what if we got caught in the crossfire of a shootout? There is no more negotiating, as my grandfather likely did more than 40 years ago. Just ask Silvia Vargas' parents or the family of the National Action Party, or PAN, leader Diego Fernandez de Cevallos, who has been missing since May.

It is an ugly, ugly time in Mexico. So now I too have joined the ranks of so many immigrants, exiled in fear, who dare not go back. To be honest, we cannot — because the place and the time we seek no longer exists.

Lorenza Muñoz is a former Los Angeles Times staff writer who has completed her first novel, "The Weight of Flight."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-munoz-mexico-20101219,0,5623596.story

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An open-and-shut case

Dependency courts, where cases of child abuse and neglect are heard, should be open to the public.

December 19, 2010

The problems of Los Angeles County's Department of Children and Family Services are too numerous to list and too serious to ignore. County supervisors addressed one last week by moving aside the head of the troubled agency. Those that remain range from uneven and onerous caseloads to technological limitations to inexperienced workers handling delicate matters beyond their capacity. Compounding all of those issues, however, is one problem that can and should be fixed: Dependency courts, where cases of child abuse and neglect are heard, should be open to the public.

Some may regard it as unsurprising that a newspaper would favor open judicial proceedings, and in one sense it is: We do generally believe that the public's interests are most reliably served when records and actions of government agencies, including courts, are subject to scrutiny by the media and the public. But this proposal for openness is not special pleading by the media. Already, juvenile and dependency hearings may be open if the presiding officer concludes there are compelling public interests in lifting the presumption of secrecy. Because news organizations are the rare institution with both resources and interest in openness, many of those cases that journalists seek to observe are opened.

That leaves others out, however, including child welfare advocates, interested parties and those who simply want to see justice done, but lack the knowledge or money to hire lawyers and fight their way into court.

It is natural to want to protect the privacy of children, and no system should be cavalier about their interests. But reversing the presumption of secrecy in these proceedings would not endanger children or expose them to harmful publicity. Just as judges today have the power to open proceedings when the public interest demands it, they would have the authority under the new system to shut hearings when the child's interests compelled it.

Meanwhile, openness would subject others in the system to scrutiny. The actions — or inaction — of social workers would be matters of public debate; decisions about whether to pull children out of their homes or to leave them with their families would be reviewable. Serious philosophical and practical differences about the county's foster care system would be opened for public consideration: Does DCFS remove too many children from their homes when there are allegations of abuse? Does it leave too many in the hands of abusive parents or reunite them too quickly? Those are hard questions to answer even with full information; under the current rules, they are even harder to debate because the basic facts are hidden.

Just this past year, a young boy who talked of suicide and complained of abuse at the hands of his mother and her boyfriend was left in their home after a visit by a social worker. The boy hanged himself that night. Was the social worker negligent? Some county officials think so; others have defended the employee. But in a system shielded from public view and notorious for protecting workers from discipline even when they badly err, it is all but impossible for outsiders to say with certainty.

Openness also would strike one measure of irrationality from the courts. Today, a parent who is charged with criminal neglect is tried in an open courtroom in Superior Court, while the related dependency case is heard in a closed chamber. There is no logic to this. An open criminal proceeding helps protect the rights of the accused and allows the public to assess the work of its representatives. That's no less true in dependency than it is in criminal court. It is silly to think that legitimate privacy interests are being protected by a closed proceeding when the same facts are being disclosed in an open courtroom down the street.

Agencies that once resisted this sensible reform are gradually coming around. DCFS itself is now recommending open hearings, which it says "will provide greater transparency and result in a better understanding of child protective services, encourage necessary reforms and strengthen community partnerships essential to improving the safety of children from abuse and neglect." The Board of Supervisors has endorsed that language and is preparing to lobby for a bill in Sacramento that would open hearings. Similar bills by former state Sen. Adam Schiff and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg failed, but DCFS' support means that much of the earlier opposition has melted away. The coming year offers a realistic chance of success.

Indeed, opening hearings ought to be regarded as a necessary first step, not the ultimate goal. Once dependency courts have been opened by state law, the next step should be to open records as well. As with hearings, they could be withheld at the discretion of a judge, but records of the public work of public employees should be released unless there is a compelling reason for privacy.

Among the most fervent advocates of transparency is Michael Nash, the presiding judge of Los Angeles County Juvenile Court. He backed the efforts of Schiff and Steinberg and has urged the Legislature to finally adopt legislation to open dependency proceedings. He's done that even though one group that would be more closely watched if hearings were open is judges.

Judges and others involved in child welfare, Nash said last week, "need to be accountable to the public we serve." The current emphasis on closed hearings, he added, has worked to undermine the primary responsibility of dependency courts: the protection of children. "The main entity that's protected by closing these proceedings is the system itself," he argued. And that system, as Nash noted, "is far from perfect."

More than 20 states presently conduct proceedings in their dependency courts openly, along the lines that Nash proposes for California. Oregon has a respected system, as does Minnesota. Their successes have helped convince those who once feared openness that it in fact has protected children, not exposed or harmed them. California has missed previous chances to lead in this area. Now, it should catch up with those that have paved the way. Then, at last, the children of this county and others will know that their fates will not be sealed in secret, but that those whose responsibility it is to care for them will be held accountable for doing it well.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-dcfs-20101219,0,4032355,print.story

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Helping homeless addicts can take a whole team

Many, like Daniel, are self-medicating for depression or another mental illness. But his case shows that with the right help, there is hope.

By Susan Partovi

December 19, 2010

I started seeing Daniel in June 2005 at a small urgent-care clinic I run for mostly injection-drug users on skid row. An addict, he was a tall, thin man with long, stringy gray hair and an unkempt beard. My notes from our initial conversation described him as "disheveled, dirty and lethargic." On subsequent visits, he often had food or vomit in his beard and would come to the clinic smelling of urine. He seldom had much to say.

Then, in May 2006, I saw a different side of Daniel, whom I will refer to only by his first name to protect his privacy, although he has agreed to let me tell his story. During one of his visits to the clinic, he kept his head down and tears welled up in his powder-blue eyes, but he talked as he never had before. Things weren't good. He'd been jumped the previous week, he told me in his Kentucky drawl. He hated who he'd become, he said — a loner, someone who didn't care about others. "I used to play the guitar professionally," he said regretfully. "I was in a band. I had a life."

Listening to him, I had a realization: He was severely depressed. Until then, I'd assumed that he, like so many others on skid row, was schizophrenic. Schizophrenia is frustratingly difficult to treat, but depression has many effective treatments. My realization about his depression also put his addiction in a different light. He might well be using heroin in an attempt to treat his depression.

Most of the drug addicts I see are self-treating, whether for mental illness, chronic pain or both. Perhaps if we could treat the underlying depression, Daniel might be able to stop self-medicating with heroin. Homeless people die young: Their average lifespan, according to studies, is 47. So getting Daniel off drugs and off the streets was a high priority.

That did not prove easy. I tried, after realizing he was depressed, to refer him to a mental health clinic. But he never went. Finally, I gave him some samples of Seroquel, which treats depression and psychosis. After that, I didn't see him for two months. When he finally came again, he had a short explanation: "Got picked up." Jail. "I was thinking about ending it all, Doc…. on my birthday." Again I prodded him to try the Seroquel.

Instead, he again quit coming to the clinic regularly.

Through much of 2007 and 2008, I saw Daniel only sporadically. He came in when he had a medical issue that needed attention — at one point he had a painful groin hernia — then we didn't see him for a while. But there was one big change in 2008. A new county program was connecting mentally ill homeless patients with case managers who could help them obtain psychiatric and medical care, drug treatment and housing.

Daniel qualified for the program and was assigned to a caseworker, Pearlina. But I soon heard that he wasn't keeping his appointments with her. Meanwhile, he had increased his heroin use to deal with the pain from his hernia. Because of his addiction, finding a hospital that would perform surgery was complicated.

I called his caseworker. "Pearlina," I told her, "you're going to have to come to the needle exchange in order to see him." She agreed, and the director of the needle exchange agreed to call the next time Daniel showed up.

Finally, Daniel met with Pearlina at the needle exchange. But he continued to frustrate us. He never kept the psychiatry appointments I made for him. And he also missed a preoperative appointment to get his hernia taken care of. Pearlina found a sober-living home for Daniel, but he left after a day.

Over the next couple of months, there were a few signs of progress, but they were usually followed by disappointment. James took Daniel to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get an ID card. He also hooked him up with a methadone clinic. But then Daniel missed his appointment with the methadone clinic because he got arrested.

In December 2008, looking at Daniel's now mango-sized hernia, I realized we needed to intervene more dramatically. He couldn't stop heroin because of the pain from his hernia. He couldn't get clean without being housed. Finally, the Harbor- UCLA family medicine team agreed to hospitalize Daniel for his pre-op evaluation, and a surgeon colleague agreed to operate on him. Pearlina found Daniel housing at the Weingart Center in the skid row area, so he would have a place to go after discharge. I requested that Daniel be provided with methadone while he was hospitalized. And James got a methadone clinic to hold a spot for Daniel for when he was discharged. Most important, Daniel agreed to it all.

On Feb. 9, 2009, Daniel had surgery. The next month, at his request, he entered a detox program, followed by a 90-day residential drug treatment program. He also started taking psychiatric medication.

When I next saw him, a couple of months later, his hair was shiny and his beard was nicely trimmed. He had gained about 40 pounds. He had life in his powder-blue eyes.

Studies have shown that housing the homeless cuts death rates by up to 500%, and that assertive community treatment for people with mental illness, which includes housing, results in people being 62% less symptomatic. These things often take, as was the case with Daniel, a team of professionals all pulling in the same direction. That kind of intervention and care are expensive. But in many cases, they are far less expensive than the alternative: a cycle of arrests, hospitalizations and emergency medical treatments.

Despite their effectiveness, county programs like the one that helped Daniel are always threatened by budget constraints. But we need to keep fighting for them, so that men and women like Daniel have a shot at fulfilling lives.

After Daniel's drug treatment, Pearlina and others helped him find a sober-living house in San Pedro. He's still there today, where he remains clean and sober. He's saving up to buy a guitar.

Susan Partovi is an attending physician at Harbor-UCLA and the medical director for Homeless Health Care Los Angeles.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-partovi-homeless-20101219,0,5686859.story

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From the New York Times

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Moscow Police Arrest 500 to Deter Protests

MOSCOW (AP) — The Moscow police have arrested 500 people to prevent them from attending rival protests over the killing of a soccer fan and the ethnic violence that followed, Russian news agencies reported Saturday.

The soccer fan was fatally shot with rubber bullets two weeks ago during a fight with people from Russia's Caucasus region at a bus stop in Moscow.

After the killing, mobs attacked people they believed to be migrants from the Caucasus or Central Asia in a riot outside the Kremlin on Dec. 11.

People from the Caucasus, who are typically darker-skinned than northern Russians and more likely to be Muslim, have traditionally been victims of ethnic discrimination in Russia.

The police have largely kept a lid on protests since then, arresting hundreds of people, both Slavs and non-Slavs.

Opposition leaders have accused the authorities of encouraging the violence as a pretext for introducing legislation that would mandate prison sentences for people who participate in unauthorized rallies, rather than the current minimum fine.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/world/europe/19russia.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Wrestler Sees Legal Move; Prosecutor Sees Assault

CLOVIS, Calif. — At 17 years old, Preston Hill is known around the Fresno area as an accomplished wrestler, a leader of his high school team, the Buchanan Bears, and a potential candidate for a college scholarship in the sport he loves.

But over the past several months, Preston has been battling another opponent, the Fresno County district attorney, who has charged him with a bizarre crime: using a wrestling move to sexually assault a teammate.

According to a police report, during a July practice Preston used a maneuver informally known as a “butt drag” — which involves grabbing the haunch of an opponent to gain leverage — to roughly and intimately assault a smaller, younger wrestler on his team in retaliation for a supposed affront.

Preston has denied attacking the younger boy, who is 14, telling the investigating officer that he was merely executing a common maneuver that “everyone does,” in order to “to motivate people who don't move on the mats.”

“Hill replied that this was a wrestling move,” according to the police report.

The case, which is expected to go to trial next month, shocked students and parents alike in this Fresno suburb, and brought accusations of both lax supervision by coaches and overzealousness by prosecutors. It has also cast an unwelcome pall on high school wrestling, and again raised questions about bullying in schools, particularly in the often macho arena of sports.

Mike Moyer, the executive director of the National Wrestling Coaches Association, a nonprofit group, said he had been fielding questions about the case, which was first reported by The Fresno Bee. In addition to explaining what a “butt drag” is, he said, he has also been trying to reassure people that the behavior that allegedly happened on the mat is not a regular occurrence.

“There is no sport that is more closely refereed; it would be harder to get away with something in wrestling than any other sport,” he said. “But unfortunately, in contact sports, cheap shots and illegal techniques happen all the time.”

The police in Clovis, a middle-class enclave where wrestling is a proud tradition, say the case began over the summer. The 14-year-old accuser, who has not been identified, told the police that he had been “bullied by several students,” including Preston Hill, who, the younger boy said, had made a habit of taking his drinking water during practice.

On July 15, however, according to the younger boy's account, he refused to hand his water over, prompting threats from Preston, including menacing gestures. The police report states that at a practice that evening, Preston purposefully stood near the younger boy during a wrestling exercise and, when the coach whistled for wrestling to begin, threw the younger boy down, pinned him to the mat and performed an invasive “butt drag” maneuver.

If convicted of misdemeanor sexual battery, Preston could face six months in county jail. He has been suspended from Buchanan High School, a handsome suburban school that won the state wrestling team championship in 2006. The school district declined to comment on the specifics of the case, citing student confidentiality laws.

This month, a Fresno County judge delayed the trial to allow the district attorney time to gather more evidence, and ordered both sides in the case not to talk about it. But a person close to the Hill family, who requested anonymity because of the order, said there seemed to be a number of inconsistencies in the accuser's account and a lack of witnesses, a detail borne out by the police report.

The Bee reported that the Fresno County district attorney had considered dropping the case, until prosecutors found a witness to the threat alleged to have been made by Preston. The district attorney did not respond to requests for comment.

But the Hill family representative said Preston, who had hoped to gain a wrestling scholarship, refused to take a deal from the district attorney because he says he did not do anything wrong.

The 14-year-old accuser's father, Ross Rice, said it would have been easier not to press charges. “But that's the wrong attitude,” he said. “That's when you can end up with a Columbine situation.”

Mr. Rice said that he had nothing against wrestling — he competed in the sport in high school — but that “there needs to be some serious clarity by coaches and the national wresting community on moves that are close to that part of the body.”

Wrestling coaches say that while grabbing the backs of the legs and buttocks during a match could lead to accidental groping, there is no legitimate reason for a wrestler to get as invasive as Preston is accused of being.

“There's absolutely no advantage in doing that,” said Dennis DeLiddo, a former coach at nearby Fresno State University. “And we don't want guys like that in the sport anyway, if they're probing.”

Several classmates of Preston's at Buchanan High School said the accusation seemed out of character.

“Everyone knows him for being Preston Hill, the wrestler,” said James Munro, a 16-year-old junior. “No one has any problems with him.”

Katy Tudor, a friend of Preston's and a wrestler, was more blunt. “You have to expect that things are going to happen that you don't like; you're going to get hurt,” she said. “If you don't like it, go play basketball.”

One recent Friday evening, the wrestling season seemed in full swing, with a tournament at a rival high school, Clovis West. Inside the gym, six mats of matches were going on at once, with a constant tweeting of referee's whistles and a steady array of headlocks, half nelsons and takedowns.

On the Buchanan bench,

Coach Tyrell Blanche was animated, rubbing wrestlers' shoulders and cheering them on. But he has declined to comment on the case, though he may be called to testify at trial. Preston's defense lawyer, Stephen Quade, told The Bee that he would call several witnesses when court convenes on Jan. 13.

Among those watching the tournament was Mr. DeLiddo, who said the incident had cast his sport in a bad light. “I don't know the motive behind this, but I'm here to defend the sport,” he said. “That sort of thing has got nothing to do with wrestling.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/us/19wrestler.html?ref=us

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Transplants Cut, Arizona Is Challenged by Survivors

PHOENIX — First, it was distraught patients awaiting organ transplants who protested Arizona's decision to no longer cover such operations under its Medicaid program.

Now, Arizonans who received such transplants, and are alive and well as a result of them, are questioning the data that lawmakers relied on to make their controversial benefit cuts.

“They say it's too expensive,” said Star Boelter, 52, who had a stem cell transplant that was paid for by Arizona's Medicaid program in 2009 after suffering from leukemia. “Well, how much is life worth? They say most people die. Well, I'm alive because of my transplant.”

When Arizona lawmakers voted last spring to cut some state-financed transplant coverage, they relied on data provided by state health officials showing that the procedures were rarely successful. But transplant experts and some patients who have undergone the now-discontinued procedures question the state's numbers.

For bone marrow transplants, the legislators were told that 13 of 14 patients covered by the state's Medicaid program who underwent that procedure died within six months. The 14th patient could not be tracked, state health officials told the Legislature, and might have died as well.

But Kim Marie Urick, a leukemia survivor, wants the state's leaders to know that she is able to ride her three horses outside Sedona and spend time with her husband and son thanks to a bone marrow transplant that Arizona's Medicaid program paid for on June 4, 2009.

“I was about five days away from dying,” she said in a telephone interview. “I essentially had no immune system. If it wasn't for the bone marrow transplant, I wouldn't be here right now.”

The cure rate for bone marrow transplants cited in the report to the Legislature was either zero or 7 percent, depending on whether that unidentified 14th patient lived. But transplant experts put the actual survival rate, based on national studies, at over 40 percent.

Dr. Jeffrey R. Schriber, medical director of the Blood and Marrow Transplant Program at Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center in Phoenix, has written to Gov. Jan Brewer and state lawmakers telling them that their decisions were based on incomplete data that gave the wrong picture. His data show the success rate for bone marrow transplants covered by Arizona's Medicaid program at slightly higher than the national average. Of 20 operations performed at Banner in recent years, 9 patients have survived, he said.

State Representative John Kavanagh, a Republican and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, has said that if new data was presented, he would be willing to reconsider at least some of the cuts to the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, as the Medicaid program is known, when the Legislature returns to session next month to tackle the state's budget crisis.

But Ms. Brewer has not acknowledged that the cuts she signed into law might have been based on incomplete data. She repeated the figure that 13 out of 14 bone marrow transplant recipients died in Arizona while discussing the issue with Greta van Susteren on Fox News last week. “Because Arizona has been hit with a devastating budget deficit, we have had to do some difficult decisions,” she said, adding later, “We have no other choices.”

But Democrats disagree, especially State Representative Anna Tovar, who underwent a bone marrow transplant herself a decade ago, although not as part of the state Medicaid plan. She has been among the most vocal critics of the transplant cuts, calling for a special session this month to reconsider the decision.

Ms. Tovar's body rejected the bone marrow transplant in 2001, and she then underwent a stem cell transplant the next year. “I'm living proof that these transplants do work,” she said.

Ms. Urick, 53, still remembers when she learned that she was being considered for a transplant that might extend her life. “To be told there's a way you can live is one of the most wonderful things you can ever hear,” she said. “I can't imagine what those who are waiting for transplants now and can't afford them are going through.”

As for her, Ms. Urick said, “I plan on living another 20, 30 or 40 years.”

Ms. Boelter, a massage therapist, is back to providing relief to others. “I'm working,” she said. “I'm paying taxes, just as I've done for most of my life.”

Another leukemia survivor, Michael Cheshaek, 27, who underwent a bone marrow transplant in 2008, remains on disability but still credits the operation with allowing him to live.

“We send money all over the world to help people, and those who are suffering at home are not getting the help they need,” said Mr. Cheshaek, whose operation was covered under his private insurance coverage, which his mother supplemented with money from her retirement plan.

Bone marrow transplants are not the only ones in which legislators used questionable data to make their decision, transplant experts say. The American Society of Transplant Surgeons called Arizona's transplant cuts “decisions with no medical justification.”

Liver transplants for those with hepatitis C, which the state also discontinued, have a survival rate exceeding 80 percent after one year and 60 percent after five years, the transplant group said. Arizona's study of such procedures was far more pessimistic, saying such transplants “do not significantly affect the diseases they are intended to cure.”

For lung transplants, the transplant society called them “life saving, not palliative,” in response to the Arizona study, which labeled them “more palliative than curative.”

James Healy, 25, a student at Arizona State University, had a state-financed bone marrow transplant in 2009 and is back at school part time studying applied psychology . “I'm well on my way to recovery,” said Mr. Healy, who suffered from leukemia. “I've started school again, and I'm getting out and about. I've seen other people go through it, and I've gone through it. We're very much alive.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/us/19transplant.html?ref=us

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Online Detectives Can Unmask Mr. or Ms. Wrong

Never mind whether your date is smart or good-looking. How do you know you aren't flirting with a felon?

For a small fee, a nascent crop of companies wants to help you find out by running background checks on the potential flames you encounter on Match.com, eHarmony or any of the nation's nearly 1,500 dating Web sites.

At the same time, at least two states, New York and New Jersey, have begun regulating Internet dating sites, and legal experts say they believe changes to the liability laws that protect such sites are on the horizon.

And you thought your mother was the only one who wanted to vet your love life.

The focus on background screenings comes as some 20 million Americans are using dating sites, more than double the number five years ago, according to the market research firm IBISWorld. While they are finding casual dates and even love, they are also encountering married people pretending to be single or, worse, sexual predators and convicted felons.

No one has put a number on how much violence stems from dating sites, according to groups that keep track of rape and other violent crimes, like the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Center for Victims of Crime.

Yet plenty of crime stories begin with two people skimming each other's online dating profiles. Consider the widely reported case of Jeffrey Marsalis, a serial rapist in Philadelphia who met his victims on Match.com.

Such perils have been around since the dawn of the Internet, an ideal medium for complex cover-ups. But now that online dating is a billion-dollar industry, state officials, public safety advocates and enterprising businesses are calling for further safeguards.

Whether it is possible, however, to effectively screen people and make sites more truthful is unclear. After all, members are not always honest about their age and weight.

“What we want to do is provide some degree of safety,” said Robert Buchholz, a retired New York State Police captain who, with Andrew J. Scott, a former police chief in Boca Raton, Fla., founded MyMatchChecker.com, a Web site that went live in April, enabling people to request background checks on anyone they have met on a dating site.

Mr. Buchholz and Mr. Scott, who each have more than 30 years of law enforcement experience, said that having daughters inspired them to try to make online dating safer. Their company offers a basic background search for $9.95.

In addition to Web sites, a flurry of mobile phone apps aim to make background checks as quick and easy as ordering a pizza: Just plug in a couple of facts like a name and birth date. ValiMate, the creator of the Instant National Criminal Search app, even allows users to send the results of the check to a friend for added safety.

Date Check, from Intelius, encourages users to “look up before you hook up.” The app is marketed to women who want to perform a background check on would-be Romeos “in the time it takes to redo your lip gloss.” (Industry professionals say that predators are usually men.)

State officials are also pushing for safer Internet dating. A law that takes effect this month in New York State, the Internet Dating Safety Act, requires sites to post common-sense safety tips, like “meet in a public place.”

Assemblywoman Audrey I. Pheffer, a sponsor of the Internet law, said that it grew out of her realization that online dating had become ubiquitous, even among people she “never dreamed” would pursue romance online.

Some states have considered similar legislation but ultimately rejected it. New York's law is like one passed in 2008 by New Jersey, which also requires dating sites with a membership fee to inform users whether they do criminal background checks (most do not).

Such legislation was championed by True.com, one of the first major online dating companies to screen members to determine if they are married, felons or sexual offenders (about 2 percent of those who try to sign up are rejected, they said). Ruben Buell, the company's president, said that the type of checks it conducted were inexpensive. “You're talking pennies per check.”

Still, most online dating companies question whether such checks can be effective. They contend that because state and county databases are incomplete, the checks give daters a false sense of security. Even advocates of criminal screenings concede that they are imperfect because the databases vary in quality and availability. Some counties, for instance, do not keep digital records. Others do not provide data about sex offenders.

“If I really knew that there was great ability for us to not let anyone on the site that shouldn't be on the site, I would do it,” said Mandy Ginsberg, the general manager and executive vice president of Match.com. Background checks, she said, might lead daters to think everyone they encounter on the sites is safe. (Ms. Pheffer said she originally wanted background checks but decided against them for the same reason.)

Critics also point out that companies that conduct background screenings are not necessarily perfect. Some have mishandled information. Another concern involves mobile apps, which can provide personal information to people who may abuse it.

Braden Cox, a policy counsel for NetChoice, a group that advocates for Internet companies, said that background screenings were well intentioned but that most could be thwarted.

“Most people, thankfully, are good people on these Web sites,” said Mr. Cox, who speaks from experience: a few weeks ago he married a woman he met on Match.com.

Dating sites have no incentive to police their members. The Communications Decency Act absolves Internet service providers of liability because the sites are not considered the publishers of the information on their pages — their members are. The reasoning is that sites would not be able to operate if they were responsible for everything posted by their users. Lawyers have tried to get around this law, but “they usually fail,” said Brian Carver, an assistant professor at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. “Every start-up depends on this protection.”

Parry Aftab, a lawyer and safety expert, says she is increasingly hearing about alarming cases involving online dating, like pedophiles who woo single mothers to get near their children. She expects there will be challenges to that immunity if sites accept money from members and have knowledge of criminal behavior.

Meanwhile, she advises singles to be cautious. “Don't give up your heart so fast,” she said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/us/19date.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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The Gifts of Hope

So what would your aunt prefer as a holiday gift — another Mariah Carey CD, or the knowledge that she's sending a little girl in Haiti to school for a year?

Unless you're cursed with the oddest aunt ever, the answer is probably the latter. In that spirit, this column will serve as a sort of Humanitarian Gift Guide: I'll lay out some of the loftiest gifts of all, those that touch human lives and connect us. As I did last year, I'm going to skip over the big organizations that most people have heard of. So by all means, buy your kids a $30 beehive (or an $850 camel) for a needy family through Heifer International, or write a check to the International Rescue Committee for its terrific work in Congo — but my focus today is groups that never make the spotlight:

Arzu (ArzuStudioHope.org) employs women in Afghanistan to make carpets for export. The women get decent wages, but their families must commit to sending children to school and to allowing women to attend literacy and health classes and receive medical help in childbirth. Rugs start at $250 and bracelets at $10, or a $20 donation pays for a water filter for a worker's family.

First Book (firstbook.org) addresses a basic problem facing poor kids in America: They don't have books. One study found that in low-income neighborhoods, there is only one age-appropriate book for every 300 children. So First Book supports antipoverty organizations with children's books — and above all, gets kids reading. A $100 gift will supply 50 books for a mentor to tutor a child in reading for a year. And $20 will get 10 books in the hands of kids to help discover the joys of reading.

Fonkoze (fonkoze.org) is a terrific poverty-fighting organization if Haiti is on your mind, nearly a year after the earthquake. A $20 gift will send a rural Haitian child to elementary school for a year, while $50 will buy a family a pregnant goat. Or $100 supports a family for 13 weeks while it starts a business.

Another terrific Haiti-focused organization is Partners in Health, (pih.org), founded by Dr. Paul Farmer, the Harvard Medical School professor. A $100 donation pays for enough therapeutic food (a bit like peanut butter) to treat a severely malnourished child for one month. Or $50 provides seeds, agricultural implements and training for a family to grow more food for itself.

Panzi Hospital (panzifoundation.org) treats victims of sexual violence in eastern Congo, rape capital of the world. It's run by Dr. Denis Mukwege, who should be a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. A $10 donation pays for transport to the hospital for a rape survivor; $100 pays for counseling and literacy and skill training for a survivor for a month.

Camfed (camfed.org), short for the Campaign for Female Education, sends girls to school in Africa and provides a broad support system for them. A $300 donation pays for a girl to attend middle school for a year in rural Zambia, and $25 sends a girl to elementary school.

The Nurse-Family Partnership program (nursefamilypartnership.org) is a stellar organization in the United States that works with first-time mothers to try to break the cycle of poverty. It sends nurses to at-risk women who are pregnant for the first time, continuing the visits until the child turns 2. The result seems to be less alcohol and drug abuse during pregnancy, and better child-rearing afterward, so that the children are less likely to tangle with the law even years later. A $150 gift provides periodic coaching and support for a young nurse by a senior nurse for a month.

Edna Hospital (ednahospital.org) is a dazzling maternity hospital in Somaliland, an area with one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. Edna Adan Ismail, a Somali nurse- midwife who rose in the ranks of the World Health Organization and also served as Somaliland's foreign minister, founded the hospital with her life's savings and supports it with her United Nations pension. A $50 gift pays for a woman to get four prenatal visits, a hospital delivery, and one postnatal visit. Or $150 pays for a lifesaving C-section for a woman in obstructed labor.

The Somaly Mam Foundation fights sex slavery in Cambodia and around the world (somaly.org). It is run by Somaly Mam, who was sold into Cambodian brothels as a young girl before escaping years later. For $50, you can buy a lovely silk scarf made by a trafficking survivor; $25 buys a necklace made by a survivor.

One of the paradoxes of living in a wealthy country is that we accumulate tremendous purchasing power, yet it's harder and harder for us to give friends and family presents that are meaningful. In this holiday season, sometimes a scarf from a prostituted Cambodian girl, or a scholarship for a Zambian child, is the most heartwarming gift of all.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/opinion/19kristof.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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Andrew Alexander Tanner

Michigan Father Claims Three Sons are Alive by Jan Barrett BloggerNews - All News December 16, 2010 John Russell Skelton is refusing to tell Lenawee County Circuit Judge Margaret Noe where his three sons are other than that they are with an “organization”.  The three boys, Andrew, 9, Alexander, 7 and Tanner Skelton, 5 have been missing since the weekend after Thanksgiving.

Skeleton's parents visited with him last week and they reported that he told them that the boys are alive and well but he refused to tell them where they are also, claiming he is protecting them from their mother, Tanya Skelton who is a registered sex offender in Michigan for having sex with a 14 year old boy that was a neighbor.

Although there is a $10,000 reward offered for information that will lead them to finding the children, no one has come forth. There has been several hundreds of tips called in but none that lead them to the boys. Police Chief Weeks assures everyone that every tip called in is treated as top priority and is checked out thoroughly. They just haven't received the right tip yet.

If anyone has seen these boys please call your local police and report it. It is almost Christmas and if these boys are by some miracle still alive please help the police get them back to their family where they can enjoy the holidays. My prayers are with them in hopes that God will lead them home. Look at their pictures, look at their eyes. Remember what they look like just in case you by some chance do see them and then call the authorities.

My prayers always ask that all the missing children be returned to their loved ones especially with us in the midst of the Christmas holidays. May God be with these boys, Haleigh Cummings, Adji Desir and all the others as well.

http://www.bloggernews.net/125741

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