From the Los Angeles Times

White House: Cocaine market in U.S. under 'stress'

The cocaine market in the United States is under "significant stress," reports the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Cocaine production has dropped in Colombia due to recent eradication efforts, putting stress on the U.S. market in 2009, the office announced this month. And although a direct connection between data is not sufficiently made clear, use of the drug also dropped last year in the United States, where most Colombian cocaine is destined after being moved by Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.

"Although a wide array of data now confirm the decline in use and availability of cocaine in the United States, there are still far too many Americans using drugs that drive violence and instability in other nations," said Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House office. "That is why the Obama administration is working to restore balance to our drug control efforts by emphasizing demand reduction at the same time we are supporting our international allies in their efforts to curb the supply of these drugs."

Seizures are up globally and overall purity of the coca-based drug has declined sharply, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said in its 2010 World Drug Report. (Read the "Cocaine Market" chapter here.)

Coca-leaf production is on the rise in Colombia's neighboring countries. But most cocaine originating from Bolivia or Peru is destined for Europe, the U.S. said.

Yet, worldwide, the retail market remains robust in cold dollar amounts. According to the U.N. report, citing data from 2008, users in North America spent $38 billion on cocaine that year (at an average of $108 a gram) and Europe spent $34 billion on the drug (at $101 a gram, on average).

The third-biggest market in economic terms is Oceania, which includes Australia, due to the drug's high retail cost there. The relatively small population of users in the Pacific spent $291 on average for a gram of cocaine in 2008.

The drug is contributing to a spate of cocaine-related heart attacks in Sydney, where "South American and Mexican drug barons battle for supremacy," the Herald Sun reported Saturday.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2010/12/cocaine-market-report-drug-war.html

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LAPD identifies 21 of 160 women in Grim Sleeper suspect's photos

Authorities say investigators have received 200 tips about the identities of women whose photos were released last week. Lonnie Franklin Jr. is accused of sexually assaulting and killing 10 women in South L.A.

By Andrew Blankstein and Joel Rubin

December 21, 2010

Los Angeles police said Monday they have tentatively identified 21 of the roughly 160 women whose pictures were released last week in an effort to determine whether there were additional victims linked to the alleged Grim Sleeper serial killer.

After identifying the women, police removed their pictures from the LAPD's website. One picture was of Janecia Peters, 25, who was fatally shot on New Year's Day 2007 and was among the victims Lonnie Franklin Jr. has been charged with killing, police said.

The identification of Peters in the group of photos was first reported in the Daily Beast. Members of Peters' family were unable to attend a meeting in which LAPD detectives allowed the victims' relatives to view the pictures before they were made public. Det. Dennis Kilcoyne said the department has since apologized to the family.

Franklin has been linked to Peters through DNA evidence. Other slayings in the three-decade series of killings have been linked through a combination of DNA evidence and ballistics.

Authorities also removed eight other photographs from the website after determining the women pictured were also in other photos.

Kilcoyne said detectives have received nearly 200 tips on the women's identities through phone calls, messages to their tip line and e-mails.

Two of the women whose identities have been confirmed had died of natural causes years ago, police said. Investigators also identified several missing persons in the group of photos and video stills, but Kilcoyne said it was not clear if they were potential victims.

Franklin is accused of sexually assaulting and killing 10 African American women in South L.A. He has pleaded not guilty and is in custody awaiting trial. During his arrest in July, authorities found about 1,000 photographs and hundreds of hours of video footage of women. Some of the images appeared to be innocent snapshots, but many showed the women in various states of undress and in sexual poses.

Detectives feared that some of the women may have been killed and set out to identify them. Some of the material, which was reviewed over the last several months, dated back to the 1980s and included video and digital camera images, Polaroids, conventional prints and undeveloped film.

The decision to release the photos drew criticism from Franklin's attorney, Louisa Pensanti, who said some of the images were of 18 relatives or friends of her client's. She also accused the police of tainting potential jurors.

Prior to releasing the photos, Kilcoyne said detectives asked Franklin's wife to review the images in order to identify family and friends. She declined to help, Kilcoyne said.

Police said they were sensitive to the harm and embarrassment the release of the photographs could cause women who never told their family or friends about the encounters. In the end, however, they decided that the need to identify the women outweighed the potential harm. The Times decided to publish the photographs for similar reasons.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-grim-sleeper-20101221,0,1453457,print.story

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From the New York Times

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Pope Says Sex Scandal Has Hit Unimaginable Dimension

ROME — Pope Benedict XVI said Monday that the continuing sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church had reached a “degree we could not have imagined” this year, and that the church must reflect on its failures, help the victims and prevent abusers from becoming priests.

“We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible the injustice that has occurred,” the pope said in a pointed Christmas message to the Vatican hierarchy. “We must ask ourselves what was wrong in our proclamation, in our whole way of living the Christian life, to allow such a thing to happen.”

In recent months, investigations in Ireland, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands have found that clerics had sexually abused children in the past and that the church hierarchy had often covered up the abuse.

Victims have accused the Vatican of not acting decisively and swiftly enough to discipline errant priests and of using complex bureaucracy and uneven application of church law to protect priests over children.

This month, the Vatican published a letter from 1988 that it said showed that Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Vatican's doctrinal office in charge of handling abuse, had sought ways for swifter punishment for errant priests. At the time, he was unsuccessful.

After the abuse scandal erupted in the United States in 2002, the Vatican introduced fast-track norms for punishing priests, and bishops in the United States introduced a zero-tolerance policy in which priests are suspended at the first accusation of abuse. But victims have called that too little, too late.

The Vatican has said that it is working on a series of guidelines for bishops around the world to advise them how to handle abuse cases, including reporting abuse to civil authorities in countries where it is required.

In his remarks on Monday, the pope also thanked “the many good clerics,” and “all those who work to help victims and to restore their trust in the church.”

But he focused on ways the church needed to change.

“We are well aware of the particular gravity of this sin committed by priests and of our corresponding responsibility,” the pope said. He added that the scandal should be seen “in the context of these times.”

He said that as recently as the 1970s, the devastation of pedophilia was not well understood, and that today's market in child pornography and sex tourism should also be condemned.

Seizure of Vatican Assets Upheld

ROME (AP) — A judge has upheld the seizure of $30.2 million in Vatican assets in a money-laundering investigation involving the Vatican's bank.

Italian authorities seized the money in September as part of an investigation into whether Vatican transactions had violated Italian banking transparency laws, a key weapon against organized crime and corruption

News reports quoted the judge, Maria Teresa Covatta, as saying that the intended beneficiaries of the transactions from the Vatican bank account at a Rome bank were still unclear.

Prosecutors have said that clergy members might have acted as frontmen for corrupt businessmen and mobsters. The Vatican has blamed the seizure on a “misunderstanding” and has said it can clear up the matter.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/world/europe/21pope.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Death Penalty Down in U.S., Figures Show

States are continuing a trend of executing fewer prisoners and juries are wary of sentencing criminal defendants to die, according to year-end figures compiled by a group that opposes the death penalty.

The 46 executions in 2010 constituted a nearly 12 percent drop from the previous year's total of 52, according to the group, Death Penalty Information Center, which produces an annual report on execution trends. The overall trend shows a marked drop when compared with the 85 executions in 2000.

Jurors, too, show a continuing preference for the alternative of punishing criminal defendants with sentences of life without parole. Juries handed out 114 death sentences in 2010, slightly higher than the 112 death sentences last year, and 50 percent fewer for the current decade than in the 1990s — before the widespread availability of life without parole sentences for juries in capital cases.

“There's just a whole lot more concern about the accuracy of the death penalty, the fairness and even the costs — all are contributing,” said Richard C. Dieter, the author of the report and the executive director of the center, which is in Washington. The availability of the alternative to the death penalty, Mr. Dieter said, also means that “prosecutors know it's going to be a harder sell and are seeking it less.”

The states continue to condemn far more prisoners to death than they actually execute.

There are 3,261 people on death row in the United States; California has the largest population, with 697, while New Hampshire and Wyoming have one apiece. A majority of Americans support the death penalty, with 64 percent of those surveyed by Gallup in October 2010 favoring it and 29 percent opposed.

One contributing factor in the low number of executions nationwide is the shortage of a drug used for executions — they were postponed or canceled in Arkansas, California, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

Hospira, the company that makes sodium thiopental, the drug, has said that it expects to resume production in the first quarter of 2011.

The legal director of a group that supports the death penalty, Kent S. Scheidegger, said Mr. Dieter's group had interpreted facts selectively. Mr. Scheidegger, of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, said that at least half the drop in death sentences could be attributed in part to a smaller number of murders in recent years, a fact that he and his group argue is a result of the nation's high rates of incarceration.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/us/21penalty.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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A Plan to Make Homelessness History

This is a story about a plan to end chronic homelessness in the United States. It's not an indeterminate “war on homelessness,” but a methodical approach to do away with a major social problem. Each day, roughly 700,000 people in the country are homeless. About 120,000 are chronically homeless. They often live on the streets for years and have mental disabilities, addiction problems and life-threatening diseases like heart disease, cancer and diabetes. They are also five times more likely than ordinary Americans to have suffered a traumatic brain injury, which may have precipitated their homelessness. Without direct assistance, many will remain homeless for the rest of their lives — at enormous cost to society and themselves.

Against this backdrop, the 100,000 Homes Campaign has set the goal of placing 100,000 chronically homeless people — pinpointing those who face the greatest risk of dying on the streets —  into permanent supportive housing by July 2013. It's the human welfare equivalent of NASA's race to put a man on the moon. Whether the goal is achieved or not, the campaign is shifting the way cities address a problem that has often been seen as more of a nuisance than a public health emergency.

The campaign was launched this past July by a New York-based organization called Common Ground and close to 20 organizations that focus on homelessness, veterans' affairs, mental illness, housing and health care. So far 64 communities have come on board. As of today, 6,816 people have been housed -- on track to hit 98,000 by the deadline. But organizers say they are gaining momentum.

The big story with street homelessness is that when cities make a concerted effort to reduce it, they succeed. New York, Denver, Wichita, Kansas and Norfolk, Va., for example, have reduced their street populations from 25 to 64 percent. They've done it by guiding homeless people into permanent supportive housing, with retention rates between 85 and 90 percent.

People who live on the streets tend to cycle through emergency rooms, addiction treatment, psychiatric care and jails. Housing them yields huge cost savings for society. In Los Angeles, the nation's homeless capital, 4,800 chronically homeless people — about 10 percent of the city's homeless population — consume half a billion dollars in services annually (pdf, p.23), well more than the remaining 90 percent. Providing supportive housing in Los Angeles is 40 percent cheaper than leaving people on the streets.

The shift in mindset that made it possible to solve this problem began in the early 1990s when a group called Pathways to Housing pioneered an approach called “ housing first.” Historically, homeless people had to be deemed “housing ready” — typically drug and alcohol free — before they could become eligible for permanent housing. In reality, this screened out most of the chronically homeless. Pathways showed that permanent housing was, in fact, the first thing people needed to stabilize their lives. Today, it has been adopted as government policy.

But even as a solution to chronic homelessness is within sight, housing agencies, and other groups, need to change they way they work to implement it. It's not just that there is a shortage of affordable housing, which is true. It's that, even when housing is available, public systems remain slow, complicated and confusing, and disconnected from the streets. They don't target the neediest people and they don't coordinate well with other agencies or nonprofits.

“There is no system that has existed to intentionally move people from homelessness into housing,” explains Rosanne Haggerty, Common Ground's founder, who has helped 20 U.S. cities, including New York, New Orleans and Denver, to reduce homelessness. “The problem isn't that hard to solve, but the connective tissue to make it happen has been missing.” The main role of the campaign is to help cities learn how to connect the dots.

Haggerty had to learn this herself in the late 1990s after Common Ground opened the Times Square Hotel, then the nation's largest supportive housing complex, and saw that it made no dent in street homelessness around Times Square. In response, in 2003, she launched a program called Street to Home, and recruited a graduate of West Point, Becky Kanis, who had spent nine years in the military, to reach out to every one of the 55 individuals living on the streets around Times Square, to persuade them to enter housing on their own terms.

Kanis and Haggerty wanted to learn how people on the streets lived; they were shocked to discover how they died — often in their 40s and 50s. If it were any other population, it would have constituted a health crisis. Homeless people had access to the health system — they made extensive use of emergency rooms — but their diseases were impossible to manage while they remained on the streets. Medicine for heart disease would get lost. Diabetics had no refrigerators to store insulin. Doctors couldn't follow up with cancer patients.

Drawing on the work of two doctors, James O'Connell and Stephen Hwang, who had studied the causes of death among homeless people, Common Ground created a “vulnerability index” — an algorithm to rank people on the streets by risk of death.

Street to Home's outreach used that index to prioritize the homeless around Times Square, and they managed to get every person they met — except one holdout known as “Heavy” -- into housing. “We learned that the only way to get chronically homeless people into housing was to go out and beg them to let us help them,” explained Haggerty. Along the way, Common Ground developed the strategy that is now at the heart of the campaign: hit the streets and get to know the most vulnerable people, keep talking with them until they agree to enter housing (without pre-conditions), and then blanket them with supports to keep them there.

Another thing that Common Ground discovered was that the homeless were an amalgam of many subgroups. They have now surveyed almost 14,000 chronically homeless people and found that roughly 20 percent are veterans, 10 percent are over the age of 60, 4 percent have H.I.V. or AIDS, 47 percent have a mental illness and 5 percent remain homeless because they can't find housing with their pets.

This is vital information — because there are more than 20,000 housing authorities in the country, but less than a third have subsidies for “homeless” people. Far more prevalent are government subsidies for other groups — “VASH” for veterans, “202 Housing” for the elderly, “Shelter Plus Care” for people with disabilities, “HOPWA” for people with AIDS. Historically, these big buckets have gone underutilized for the chronically homeless — because nobody knew who they were. Now they can be tapped.

With new cities joining the campaign each month, Common Ground has outlined a standard process to roll things out. A local lead organization pulls together support from politicians, businesses, nonprofit groups, foundations, and volunteers. One of the early steps is recruiting local volunteers to go into the streets to conduct vulnerability surveys with homeless people — from 4 a.m. to 6 a.m. three mornings in a row.

You might imagine that it would be hard to get people to show up in the pre-dawn hours, venture into alleyways, and ask strangers personal questions about their health. Just the opposite. In Phoenix, 175 people turned out; in San Diego, 250; in Omaha, 75; and in Chicago over 150, including Mayor Daley. In Phoenix, after the surveys were complete, organizers asked volunteers if they would like to contribute money — at $1,000 a shot — to assist homeless people with furniture and move-in expenses. In 10 minutes, they raised $50,000. “This wasn't a room of philanthropists,” Kanis added. “It was just volunteers. But you had people saying, ‘I'll take the guy in the wheelchair.' ‘We'll take the two veterans.' There was probably a five minute standing ovation.”

The other linchpin of the campaign is encouraging city partners — who participate in weekly webinars and monthly innovation sessions — to teach one another how to get around bottlenecks in government systems. “There's a half dozen things that each community struggles with that somebody has already figured out,” explains Kanis. “When you go to your housing authority with an idea they think is crazy, it helps if you can say, ‘We're just trying to do what Baltimore did…' It takes away the excuses people have for saying something will never work.

In times of emergency, people can accomplish big things. After the flash floods in Nashville this past May, citizens mobilized quickly to house the homeless who had lived near embankments for years. Until recently, however, chronic homelessness has been treated as an inconvenience, not a life or death matter. When someone has been living on the streets for 15 years, it's easy to think, ‘What's another few months?' But if you happen to know that that person is Michael, who is a 62-year-old veteran with heart disease, it's a different matter.

“We think this campaign is about much more than homelessness,” says Haggerty. “We're all feeling so concerned for our neighbors who are struggling now. This is a way to do something with neighbors that helps the most vulnerable among us in a very dramatic way. And I think the feeling of having the power to change things is something that many people are looking for these days.”

David Bornstein is the author of “How to Change the World,” which has been published in 20 languages, and “The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank,” and is co-author of “Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know.” He is the founder of dowser.org, a media site that reports on social innovation.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/20/a-plan-to-make-homelessness-history/?pagemode=print

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From the Washington Examiner

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OPINION

Mary Claire Kendall: Give thanks to our veterans

It's a reality that veterans' organizations work tirelessly to honor.

For instance, every November, American Veterans Centers (www.americanveteranscenter.org/) brings heroes of wars past and present together for a weekend recollecting freedom's price.

This year's conference, sponsored by The Washington Examiner, featured legends from the Doolittle Raiders; the "Band of Brothers"; the Tuskegee Airmen; Major League Baseball players who fought in World War II, including recently deceased Hall of Famer Bob Feller; and many decorated veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Their stories were profound.

Ed "Babe" Heffron recalled the day he and his team parachuted into Holland to liberate the Dutch from Hitler's brutal totalitarian grip.

His was the famous "Band of Brothers" immortalized in the HBO miniseries based on Stephen Ambrose's book "Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest."

He'll never forget that Dutchman, who compared losing his freedom to when his mother lost her bike, their sole means of transport. "When you hear the word freedom," this grateful soul told Heffron, "think about losing it. It's when you lose it that it means everything."

Freedom? All Heffron and his buddies could think about while flying to battle was, "What the hell am I doing up here? I could be back home having a soda or standing on the corner with the guys. ..."

He grew up fast, reflecting: "When you saw the faces of those Dutch people and the children, you knew why you were there. ... I'm telling you, if you ever get in that predicament, you'll know why you're there. Just the look on their faces was everything."

Marine Col. Harvey C. "Barney" Barnum, who received the Medal of Honor for valor in Vietnam, emphasized that "we're still at war" and offered "a prayer for those soldiers, seamen, airmen and marines who are on point tonight."

He's right. We should pray for those who are fighting, or have fought, in Iraq and Afghanistan, many now suffering war's wounds. We should especially pray for those who have paid the ultimate price -- heroes like Lt. Michael P. Murphy, a Navy SEAL who died in Afghanistan on June 28, 2005, trying to save his team on a mission deep in the Hindu Kush mountains to find a Taliban leader.

After letting goat herders pass, Taliban forces began attacking Murphy's team from a superior tactical position. Murphy then entered the fighting space to find a clear signal to communicate to his headquarters -- saying "thank you" to rescue forces before hanging up and dying.

Murphy's father Daniel recounted the private Oval Office meeting he and his wife Maureen had with President George W. Bush on Oct. 22, 2007, the day their firstborn son was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor -- the first casualty of the present wars to be so honored.

"No matter how the press plays this," the president said, "you should know ... the death of each and every one of my men affects me deeply." Then, to everyone's surprise, he proceeded to unbutton his shirt and put Michael's dog tags around his neck. He rebuttoned his shirt and said, "OK, now we're ready to go."

Afterward, according to the family, Bush broke protocol and pulled them aside. He told them, "Murphs, you did good, but I ... thought I did even better because I had Michael right next to my heart."

This week, let's return the gift of freedom Michael and his fellow troops have won for us -- by praying for them and offering tangible assistance to veterans organizations such as American Veterans Center, USO (uso.org), Veterans of Foreign Wars (vfw.org), American Legion (legion.org) and the Wounded Warrior Project (woundedwarriorproject.org) -- among many others working to say "thank you."

Mary Claire Kendall served as special assistant to the assistant secretary for health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, from 1989 to 1993.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/print/opinion/op-eds/2010/12/mary-claire-kendall-give-thanks-our-veterans

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From the White House

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President Obama Signs Critical Legislation to Prevent Child Abuse and Domestic Violence

This afternoon, I stood in the Oval Office and watched as President Obama signed the reauthorization of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) which includes the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act (FVPSA.)  As he signed this crucial bill into law, the President was surrounded by Senators and Representatives, both Democrats and Republicans, and national advocates who work every day to end domestic violence and child abuse. 

In 2008, 772,000 children were victims of abuse and neglect.  Nearly 2,000 of those children died. By providing states and local communities with new tools to identify and treat abuse and neglect, CAPTA-funded services will continue to protect children across the country.  Prevention efforts will help parents by addressing high risk-factors like substance abuse, mental illness and domestic violence.

Domestic violence still affects 1 in 4 women in states and territories across the country.  FVPSA funds nearly 1,700 shelters and service programs for victims of domestic violence and their children.  It also supports the National Domestic Violence Hotline, whose staff and volunteers answer more than 22,000 calls for help each month and link victims with the resources they need to rebuild their lives.

I'd like to thank the members of Congress whose leadership was essential to CAPTA and FVPSA's passage: Senator Tom Harkin, Senator Mike Enzi, Senator Lamar Alexander, Representative George Miller, Representative John Kline, Representative Carolyn McCarthy, and Representative Todd Platts.  I particularly want to thank Senator Chris Dodd and Representative Gwen Moore, who were the lead sponsors of FVPSA and who worked so hard to ensure the bill passed this year. 

Thanks to the bi-partisan work of members of Congress who were with us today, CAPTA and FVPSA will help end abuse, give hope to victims, and provide families with the help they need. As we gathered in the Oval Office, I was thinking of the many abuse survivors I have met over the years. Thanks to CAPTA and FVPSA, their future looks brighter.

Lynn Rosenthal is White House Advisor on Violence Against Women

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/12/20/president-obama-signs-critical-legislation-prevent-child-abuse-and-domestic-violence

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From the FBI

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Full Report: Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, January-June, 2010

The Latest Stats Show a Continuing Decline in Crime

12/20/10

We've just released our first peek into crime in 2010—with a snapshot of the first six months of the year.

The early returns are encouraging. According to the Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, January-June, 2010, the nation saw a 6.2 percent decrease in the number of reported violent crimes and a 2.8 percent decrease in the number of reported property crimes compared to data for the same time frame during 2009.

The report specifically covers the violent crimes of murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault…and the property crimes of burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft. It also includes arson, which is considered a property crime but is tracked separately for this report.

Some of the preliminary findings:

• Reported incidents of violent crime as a whole decreased in all four regions of the country—falling 0.2 percent in the Northeast, 7.2 percent in the Midwest, 7.8 percent in the South, and 7.2 percent in the West.
  
  
• In the Northeast, reported incidents of murder were up 5.7 percent, forcible rapes were up 1.1 percent, and aggravated assaults were up 2.4 percent.
  
  
• Reported incidents of property crime as a whole declined in all four regions of the country—dropping 0.2 percent in the Northeast, 2.5 percent in the Midwest, 3.6 percent in the South, and 3.1 percent in the West.
  
  
• In the Northeast, however, reported incidents of burglary rose 3.9 percent.
  
  
• Population-wise, cities with 500,000 to 999,999 residents saw the greatest decline in reported violent crimes (8.3 percent) and in property crimes (4.8 percent).

Since 1930, the FBI has been tasked with collecting, publishing, and archiving reliable uniform crime statistics for the nation. Our hope is that this report will continue to assist community leaders and law enforcement managers with formulating crime-fighting and crime prevention strategies.

Last month, we released a new tool to help these leaders and others analyze crime statistics over the past half-century. The UCR Data Tool, as it's called, enables users to perform queries on custom variables like year, agency, and type of offense. Until now, making comparisons of our crime data required searching the annual reports and then manually crunching the numbers. The data from the just-released report is not included in the new tool, since it is preliminary and represents only a partial year.

Although many of the crimes reported in our UCR statistics fall primarily under state and local jurisdiction, the FBI continues to work closely with our law enforcement partners on numerous joint task forces around the country and to offer a range of services and support. A few examples include:

- Information services like the National Crime Information Center, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, and the Law Enforcement National Data Exchange (N-DEx);

- Fingerprint and other types of forensic identification services, such as our Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System and the Combined DNA Index System.

As always, we caution against drawing conclusions about specific locations by making direct comparisons between cities. Valid assessments are only possible by carefully analyzing the range of unique conditions affecting each local law enforcement jurisdiction.

The full-year Crime in the United States, 2010 report will be released next year

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2010/december/crime_122010/crime_122010

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