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From the Los Angeles Times

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Senator proposes policy to stop rejected military enlistees from buying guns

Tucson shooting suspect Jared Lee Loughner failed an Army drug test. Sen. Charles Schumer urges a new policy that he says would have flagged Loughner in the FBI database when he tried to buy a gun.

by Matea Gold, Washington Bureau

January 16, 2011

Reporting from Washington

Sen. Charles E. Schumer urged the Obama administration on Sunday to require the military to inform the FBI when a prospective enlistee is rejected for excessive drug use, saying such a policy would have prevented suspected Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughner from buying a weapon.

Loughner had attempted to enlist in the Army but was rejected for failing a drug test, according to a report in the Associated Press.

Schumer, a New York Democrat, said such a requirement would ensure that potential recruits found to be using drugs would be flagged in an FBI database — even as he acknowledged that there was little political support for comprehensive gun control efforts.

"Let's be honest here: There haven't been the votes in the Congress for gun control," Schumer said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "We're looking for some things where we can maybe find some common ground."

Republicans have resisted calls for gun control since the Arizona shootings that left six dead and 13 wounded, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, saying the incident speaks to the need for better mental health intervention, not further gun control.

"The problem with gun laws is they limit the ability to defend yourself," Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said on "Meet the Press." "The people that are going to commit a crime or are going to do something crazy aren't going to pay attention to the laws in the first place. Let's fix the real problem: Here's a mentally deranged person who had access to a gun that should not have had access to a gun."

Republicans are getting little push-back from Democrats, who after championing gun control in the 1980s and 1990s have largely backed away from the issue, wary of losing support among rural voters.

There have been a few gun control proposals since the Tucson shootings.

One by Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) would ban the sale and import of high-capacity ammunition magazines like the one authorities say was used in Tucson. Such magazines were prohibited under the 1994 assault-weapons ban, which was enacted during Bill Clinton's presidency and lapsed a decade later.

Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell on Sunday urged lawmakers to restore the ban.

"We need a rational discussion on guns, where we put aside the pressure from interest groups and we take a look and say, 'Does any citizen protecting themselves or their home or using a handgun to hunt, do they need a clip that has 33 bullets in it?' " he said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "And the answer is, 'Of course not.' I think the nation's spirits would be lifted if the Congress acted quickly with the president and reinstated the assault-weapons ban, which also had the ban on these large magazines, these clips that carried 30-plus bullets."

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times on Friday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who was the principal sponsor of the assault-weapons ban, admitted that there was little political will to support a measure that could be seen as curtailing gun rights. "It's a very hard battle now," she said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-guns-loughner-20110117,0,4162255,print.story

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South Gate man sought in death of baby daughter

Authorities on Sunday were searching for a South Gate man wanted in connection with the death of his 10-month-old daughter.

Jose Deras, 20, was last seen driving a black, four-door 2008 Nissan Sentra with the California license plate 6FYB170, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

Deras allegedly assaulted his wife and baby on Saturday around 5:40 p.m. at their home in the 5100 block of McCallum Avenue, according to the South Gate Police Department. Authorities said the infant died of blunt-force trauma.

Sheriff homicide detectives were later called to assist South Gate police in the death investigation.

Deras is described as a Latino man, about 5 feet 8 inches and 160 pounds, with a dragon tattoo on his right shoulder and skulls inked above it. He has curly black hair, a slight moustache and goatee.

Anyone with information on his whereabouts can call the sheriff's homicide bureau at (323) 890-5500 or the South Gate Police Department at (323) 563-5400 . Callers also can make anonymous tips by dialing (800) 222-8477 .

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/01/south-gate-man-sought-in-the-death-of-his-infant-baby.html

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From the New York Times

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Following the Sirens, Ready to Help

TUCSON — Suzanne Burros had finished her errands at the pharmacy and the bank when she heard the sirens screaming past. When she heard another siren moments later, she knew her services would be needed.

Ms. Burros was not merely another Saturday shopper. She is a victim advocate, trained to work with the police and help people through crises like the shooting rampage outside a Tucson Safeway store on Jan. 8 that left six people dead and more than a dozen others injured, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

Ms. Burros followed a sheriff's car that day into the parking lot of Safeway, the same grocery store where she has shopped for 17 years. Just minutes before, she had bought gum and hand lotion at the Walgreen's next door.

As she stepped out of her car, someone said that lots of people had been shot. She was shaking as she rushed over.

Ms. Burros is part of an unusual group that has been largely overlooked in the shooting's aftermath: the victim services division of the Pima County attorney's office. It is primarily staffed with volunteers like Ms. Burros, a 48-year-old stay-at-home mother. They rush to crime scenes and police incidents to help victims, witnesses and family members cope with crisis.

The office was created more than three decades ago and has worked with crisis victims across the country; a team went to New York after the Sept. 11 attacks, and another traveled to Oklahoma City after the 1995 bombing at the federal building.

Their job is to help trauma survivors cope with their grief and prepare for the difficult road ahead. “There are triggers that they don't anticipate that might throw them back into a crisis state,” said Kent Burbank, the director of the program. “Letting them know that's normal is really important.”

In the nearly two years that Ms. Burros has been volunteering with the office, she has worked with domestic abuse victims, the relatives of an infant who drowned and families that discovered loved ones dead at home. “Suicides,” she said, “are not fun.”

But that Saturday, as the scale of the violence became clear, she realized that she had never worked on anything like it. No one in Tucson had.

As she approached the scene, she told a police officer she was with victim services. “He said, ‘Get everyone here that you can,' ” she recalled. Nearly three dozen of her colleagues rushed to the parking lot. They stayed until nightfall, and then moved to University Medical Center, where they helped dozens more friends and family members of the dead and wounded.

At the Safeway, they did not interfere with the work of the ambulance crews or the police. Instead, they worked with those who were not severely wounded or those who were in shock.

Ms. Burros spent about an hour with a woman who had seen several of her friends who worked for Ms. Giffords get shot. The woman was shaking uncontrollably and screaming in grief.

“You just comfort these people, and you just help them deal with what they're seeing,” Ms. Burros said. “My job was to let her know that someone was there to be with her.”

For Ms. Burros, this was not just another job — she lives only four blocks away.

“This was so close to home that I was having a hard time,” she said. “But I wanted to help other people.”

She moved on to Walgreen's. The cashier who had checked her out that morning had been outside on a break when the gunman opened fire. She and her colleagues had not been hurt, but they were struggling to cope with the day's events. Ms. Burros and her partner, Marcia Daunora, spent four hours working with them inside the store.

“I was there for people that were traumatized, and these were people that I knew,” Ms. Burros said. “I just felt like I was there for somebody.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/us/17responder.html?ref=us

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Husband's Message About Giffords: ‘She's a Fighter'

TUCSON — On a day when Representative Gabrielle Giffords's condition was upgraded to serious from critical, her husband, Mark Kelly, spoke publicly for the first time on Sunday. He left his wife's hospital bedside to take the stage at a memorial service for Gabriel Zimmerman, an aide who was killed in the shooting rampage that left Ms. Giffords grievously wounded.

Mr. Kelly told the several hundred mourners gathered in the courtyard at the Tucson Museum of Art that he had just come from the hospital and that his wife was “improving a little bit each day. She's a fighter.”

“I know someday she'll get to tell you how she felt about Gabe herself,” Mr. Kelly said.

His wife loved Mr. Zimmerman “like a younger brother,” he said, and was inspired by “his idealism, his strength and his warmth.”

At almost the exact same time, about a half-hour's drive east, another shooting victim — Dorwan Stoddard, 76, known as Dory to friends — was eulogized at a church filled with hundreds of mourners.

“There are no monuments to Dory, there are no streets named after him,” said the Rev. Mike Nowak, his pastor. “He was just an ordinary man. He did not become a hero that day — he was a hero every day of his life.”

At University Medical Center, officials said on Sunday that Ms. Giffords's condition was upgraded because she was no longer on a ventilator. Doctors announced on Saturday that they placed a tracheotomy tube in Ms. Giffords's throat as a precautionary measure.

“The congresswoman continues to do well,” a spokeswoman said in a statement. “She is breathing on her own. Yesterday's procedures were successful and uneventful.”

Jared L. Loughner, the man charged in the shooting that left six dead and 13 wounded, is in the custody of federal marshals at the medium-security Federal Correctional Institution in Phoenix, which houses almost 1,100 prisoners about 25 miles north of downtown.

According to an official familiar with the prison, Mr. Loughner, who federal records say is registered as inmate No. 15213-196, is being held in “segregation” for his own protection. Prisoners in segregation are closely monitored, the official said, and generally spend 23 hours of the day alone in their cells and have an hour or so a day for exercise and showering.

Mr. Loughner, 22, has no contact with other prisoners, said the official, who added that the prison's past inmates included Salvatore Gravano, the Mafia informer and hit man known as Sammy the Bull.

The funerals on Sunday marked the fourth and fifth for victims of the shooting, leaving just one remaining, that of Dorothy Morris, 76, whose husband, George, remains hospitalized after the shooting. A date has not yet been set, said Bill Royle, a family friend, because it depends in part on Mr. Morris's recovery.

On this cool, sunny day, it seemed as though this reeling community, despite the tears, had finally begun to slip back into a semblance of its former rhythms, as the horde of news media that descended upon the city finally began to pack up and leave.

Grocery carts trundled through the aisles at the Safeway where the shooting occurred, though shoppers continued to pause and reflect in front of a makeshift memorial outside. The neighborhood where Mr. Loughner lived with his parents, Randy and Amy, was quiet on Sunday afternoon, with nary a satellite truck in sight.

About 300 people gathered at a midtown park on Sunday morning and marched about two miles to Ms. Giffords's district office in what organizers called a “walk for peace” to honor the victims of the shooting.

The event was the brainchild of Amanda Lopez, 23, and Amanda Hutchison, 20, who had been grappling with how respond to the rampage, ultimately coming up with the idea of the peace walk.

Some marchers carried babies in slings or pushed strollers, others walked their dogs. To avoid politicizing the event, the organizers decided not to allow anyone to hold signs, but distributed yellow ribbons to commemorate the victims.

“It's time for people to reflect, for the city of Tucson and the rest of the country to come together and reflect,” said Yvette Patterson, 42, who was among the marchers. “It's important that we really see the humanity in each other. If we don't start to lower our barriers, maybe we could get torn apart.”

When the crowd reached a collection of tributes outside Ms. Giffords's office, a woman began singing “Amazing Grace.” Others in the crowd softly sang along.

The effects of the shooting, like pebbles in a pond, continued to ripple on Sunday, as one of the 13 people wounded spent the day in a mental health center by police order.

The wounded person, J. Eric Fuller, 63, a military veteran, was arrested on Saturday after disrupting a forum being taped for broadcast by ABC News. He was said to have blurted out “You're dead” to Trent Humphries, the founder of the Tucson Tea Party, who was speaking.

Mr. Fuller had showed flashes of anger, railing against the “Tea Party crime syndicate” in an interview with The New York Times in the early days after the shooting.

He was being held for a 72-hour mental health evaluation, said Jason Ogan, a spokesman for the Pima County sheriff's office.

The sheriff's office forwarded charges of threats, intimidation and disorderly conduct against Mr. Fuller to the county attorney's office, Mr. Ogan said.

At Mr. Zimmerman's service, Mr. Kelly, an astronaut who is supposed to lead the crew of the shuttle Endeavour this spring on its final mission, spoke for several minutes. He was one of a long train of speakers that included childhood friends, relatives and staff members in Ms. Giffords's office.

As Ms. Giffords's director of community outreach, Mr. Zimmerman helped prepare for the “Congress on Your Corner” event at the Safeway on Jan. 8. He arrived early, as he often did. When Ms. Giffords was shot, Mr. Zimmerman, 30, was standing nearby and lunged to help her.

He was remembered on Sunday as a passionate idealist, able to put anyone at ease, dedicating his life to helping others.

He proposed to his girlfriend last summer while on a 5 a.m. run through the mountains. He was addicted to diet sodas. He was so good with angry callers that his nickname in the office was “The Constituent Whisperer.”

Ron Barber, another of Ms. Giffords's aides who was shot in the attack, took the stage with the help of a walker. He said Mr. Zimmerman was a genius at connecting with people from across the political and social spectrums.

“He had the integrity, he had the heart, he had the personality,” Mr. Barber said.

The story of Mr. Stoddard, mourned at the day's other funeral, has become part of the tragedy's lore. When the gunfire erupted, Mr. Stoddard knocked down his wife, Mavy, and threw his body on top of hers to protect her. Mrs. Stoddard was shot three times in the leg but was released from the hospital last week.

As the service was about to end, Mrs. Stoddard went to the microphone, wearing a red jacket and sitting in a wheelchair. Her hands shaking but her voice strong and firm, she said: “I am the woman who was married to this man. He loved God, and he loved me, and spoiled me rotten.”

A wave of laughter went through the audience. “The journey will be very, very difficult, but he died for me, and I must live for him,” she said.

“I will survive,” she added. “We will not let that gunman take that away.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/us/17giffords.html?_r=1&ref=us&pagewanted=print

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EDITORIAL

‘A Joy to Be Free'

During his 30 years in prison, Cornelius Dupree Jr. twice rejected his chance for freedom because an admission of guilt for rape and robbery was the price of parole. “Whatever your truth is, you have to stick with it,” Mr. Dupree explained this month after a Texas judge exonerated him of the 1979 crime on the basis of DNA evidence kept in long-term county storage.

Mr. Dupree's freedom highlighted the fact that Dallas County, unlike so many other jurisdictions, bothered to retain DNA samples across decades. No less a factor is an exemplary change in the attitude of the district attorney's office. For the last four years, under the leadership of District Attorney Craig Watkins, it has cooperated in the DNA exoneration of 21 wrongly convicted citizens who lost decades of their freedom.

All but one were convicted on the basis of incorrect eyewitness testimony. Faulty IDs account for three of four of the 265 convictions overturned nationally by DNA evidence, according to Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project, the advocacy group helping Mr. Dupree.

“It's been proven that the system needs to be fixed,” Mr. Watkins declared. The former defense attorney is urging the Texas Legislature to combat a “convict at all costs” mentality by enacting a precise protocol to curb the kind of zealous identification shortcuts taken against Mr. Dupree. State lawmakers are reported to be open to the idea. The Legislature faced up to the increase in DNA exonerations two years ago when it enacted the nation's most generous compensation law, providing $80,000 for each year of freedom unjustly lost.

Texas, with its crowded death row, has hardly been the model of criminal justice. But the lessons of the Dupree case cry out for mandating long-term storage of DNA evidence nationwide, and reform of patently unjust identification methods. “It's a joy to be free again,” Mr. Dupree said as a dozen other exonorees observed a new Texas tradition of gathering to greet the latest person proved innocent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/opinion/17mon3.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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