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January 23, 2011

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Gunfire shatters a new sense of calm

As Los Angeles grows safer, high-profile shootings can reinforce long-held perceptions of danger.

Last week started off with a heady breeze of optimism in a place where often none has been felt. In Compton, according to Tuesday's Times, residents are now able to enjoy the things people in other places take for granted, because much of the gunfire is gone.

They can sit on their front porches. They can walk their kids to school. They can push their grandbabies on the swings at the neighborhood park, without the risk that once accompanied those everyday pleasures.

Crime in Compton, the paper noted, is way down from last year — and far, far removed from the bloody 1990s. That is of a piece with the rest of the county.

On Monday, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department announced that the homicide rate in regions it patrols was lower last year than any time since 1965, accounting for changes in population. The Los Angeles Police Department had earlier released tallies that showed that 2010 brought the lowest number of homicides since 1967, when the city was almost a third smaller.

"You just don't have the fear there used to be before," one Compton resident told The Times for the article on Tuesday's front page.

Hours after that was published, and a few miles away, the fear roared back.

Los Angeles Times

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Servant or snoop in the parking garage?

To help absent-minded shoppers searching for 'lost' automobiles, Santa Monica Place installs the nation's first camera-based 'Find Your Car' system. Despite a few bugs, the technology is gaining fans — but there are privacy concerns.

Anyone who has ever tramped through a dim, Escher-esque parking garage in search of a "lost" automobile might welcome an abracadabra technology that could help locate it.

But what if that magic involved an array of 24/7 surveillance cameras and was also available to police and auto repossessers? What if it could be tapped by jilted lovers, or that angry guy you accidentally cut off in traffic? Would the convenience be worth the loss of privacy?

Those are some of the questions civil libertarians and others are asking as technology capable of spying on motorists and pedestrians is converted to widespread commercial use.

Santa Monica Place recently unveiled the nation's first camera-based "Find Your Car" system. Shoppers who have lost track of their vehicle amid a maze of concrete ramps and angled stripes can simply punch their license plate number into a kiosk touch screen, which then displays a photo of the car and its location.

In Sacramento, the Police Department and Arden Fair Mall partnered to install license plate readers on mall security vehicles. The vehicles roam parking lots and garages in search of "hot list" vehicles provided by the state Department of Justice. If a car with a "hot" plate is spotted, mall security guards view closed-circuit TV footage to locate the vehicle's driver and alert police.

To date, the scans have helped police recover 44 stolen vehicles and arrest 38 individuals, according to mall security manager Steve Reed.

Los Angeles Times

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Gun laws were tougher in old Tombstone

No need to check your firearm today in the Arizona town famed for the gunfight at the OK Corral.

A billboard just outside this Old West town promises "Gunfights Daily!" and tourists line up each afternoon to watch costumed cowboys and lawmen reenact the bloody gunfight at the OK Corral with blazing six-shooters.

But as with much of the Wild West, myth has replaced history. The 1881 shootout took place in a narrow alley, not at the corral. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday weren't seen as heroic until later; they were initially charged with murder.

And one fact is usually ignored: Back then, Tombstone had far stricter gun control than it does today. In fact, the American West's most infamous gun battle erupted when the marshal tried to enforce a local ordinance that barred carrying firearms in public. A judge had fined one of the victims $25 earlier that day for packing a pistol.

"You could wear your gun into town, but you had to check it at the sheriff's office or the Grand Hotel, and you couldn't pick it up again until you were leaving town," said Bob Boze Bell, executive editor of True West Magazine, which celebrates the Old West. "It was an effort to control the violence."

Los Angeles Times

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Two Weeks After Rampage in Tucson, Survivors Struggle With ‘What If?'

TUCSON — What if he had not had that second cup of coffee? What if he had not asked the cashier about the two-for-one special on cigarettes? Maybe he would have been there a minute, or just 30 seconds, earlier. Maybe that would have been enough.

Joseph Zamudio was like any of the other witnesses to the Jan. 8 shooting rampage here — terrified, bewildered, furious. But he had a gun with him that day, when a young man opened fire, killing six people and wounding 13, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

So now Mr. Zamudio wakes up at night breathless, unable to fall back to sleep, torturing himself about whether he might have done more that morning to stop the gunman.

As victims and witnesses in the shootings replay the day in their minds, some — like Mr. Zamudio, who was there to buy cigarettes and ended up helping restrain the gunman — ask themselves what they could have, maybe should have, done differently.

What if Ms. Giffords's aides had requested security? What if the bystanders had been quicker to tackle Jared L. Loughner, the 22-year-old accused in the shootings? What if they had just gone somewhere else that day? Why did they live when others, standing just inches away, had died?

Psychologists have a term for it: “survivor's guilt.”

New York Times

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Squalid Abortion Clinic Escaped State Oversight

PHILADELPHIA — For years, state health officials missed some unsettling patterns at the three-story brick abortion clinic on Lancaster Avenue.

It was always open late, way past the time the pizza place next door closed at midnight. The women who emerged from it — often poor blacks and Hispanics — appeared dazed and in pain, and sometimes left in ambulances. The doctor who ran the clinic, Kermit Gosnell, had been sued at least 15 times for malpractice. Two women died while under his care.

But the dangerous practices went unnoticed, except by the women who experienced them. They were discovered entirely by accident, during a prescription drug raid by federal agents last February.

The clinic — now closed, with dead plants in its windows and old mail on its front desk — stands as a grim reminder of how degrading it was for the women who went there and how long state officials ignored their complaints.

On Wednesday, the Philadelphia district attorney, Seth Williams, indicted Dr. Gosnell on eight counts of murder in the deaths of seven infants and a Bhutanese refugee who died after a late-term abortion in 2009.

A grand jury report issued on the same day offered its own theory on why so little happened for so long.

“We think the reason no one acted is because the women in question were poor and of color,” the report said, “and because the victims were infants without identities, and because the subject was the political football of abortion.”

New York Times

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OPINION

Legacy of a Fence

I fell in love with Janet Napolitano before I ever met her, back in 2005, when she was governor of Arizona and had this to say about the proposal in Washington to build a fence along the Mexican border:

“You show me a 50-foot wall and I'll show you a 51-foot ladder.”

You don't hear that kind of blunt-spoken common sense from public officials very often, and we didn't hear much more of it from Janet Napolitano once she became President Obama 's secretary of homeland security, in charge of the very same fence.

Eventually, the actual fence ground to a halt at something short of 700 miles as the project morphed into a “virtual fence” that was supposed to use the latest technology to catch trespassers across the 2,000-mile southern border. Finally, last weekend, on the same quiet Friday on which the president announced an easing of restrictions on travel to Cuba , Secretary Napolitano announced that the virtual fence was history. She said her department had concluded, after spending $1 billion on the first 53 miles, that the project failed to meet “current standards for viability and cost effectiveness.”

Further efforts would be tailored to specific local conditions, Secretary Napolitano said, explaining: “There is no one-size-fits-all solution to meet our border technology needs.”

While I think Governor Napolitano would have come to that conclusion somewhere short of the first billion, my purpose here is not to beat up on her. To the contrary, I assume she exercised her valuable common sense inside the government and was responsible for bringing this misbegotten substitute for an immigration policy to its inglorious end.

New York Times

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EDITORIAL

Housing and a Chance

If the federal government is going to end homelessness among veterans in five years, as Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki has vowed to do, then it will have to find a way to help the hard cases. These are the long-term street people — men mostly, many fragile in mind or body, often addicted to alcohol or drugs. They shuttle from shelter to street to emergency room, burning up caregivers' energy and social-service dollars.

A new program in Los Angeles seeks to break that cycle for a small number of the most troubled veterans using a strategy known as “housing first.” This approach, which has been successfully used by the Department of Housing and Urban Development for nearly a decade, doesn't wait for people to sober up or get a job before they are given a place to stay. A permanent home, provided through a Section 8 voucher, instead becomes the anchor that makes all the rest possible: addiction services, therapy, sobriety, a steady job.

Critics worry that the vouchers come with no strings attached, so the incentive for positive change disappears. The numbers tell a different story. Federal officials reported a 30 percent drop in homelessness from 2005 to 2007, crediting the “housing first” programs. But the downturn has since hit hard, and new crops of soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan are returning to a brutal job market. Veterans currently make up an estimated 13 percent of the people in America's shelters. There are believed to be more than 17,000 homeless veterans in Los Angeles County alone.

Despite the size of the problem, there is nowhere near enough money these days for ambitious programs. The Senate adjourned last year without passing a bill to increase V.A. financing for homeless services by $50 million a year. Advocates are promising to be creative and keep trying.

The Los Angeles pilot, called Vets to Home Project 60, for the 60 people it aims to help over the next two years, comes with no new funds, just new coordination among Veterans Affairs, Los Angeles County and several small nonprofit organizations. Organizers say that this is the first time these agencies have worked together this way toward one focused goal. We hope it works, and proves worthy of rolling out nationwide to meet the great unmet need.

New York Times

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January 22, 2011

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Gabrielle Giffords leaves Tucson

A plane carrying Gabrielle Giffords takes off from an Air Force base en route to Houston, where she will begin a stay at a rehabilitation center.

As residents lined the streets to bid a bittersweet farewell to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was moved to a renowned rehabilitation hospital in Houston on Friday, she responded to their cheers with a smile and even tears, her doctor said.

"She could hear it," said Dr. Randall Friese, a trauma surgeon who accompanied Giffords to Texas. "She smiled, and then she actually teared up a little bit. It was very emotional, very heart-wrenching."

So was the raw sentiment on the streets of Tucson, an outpouring of reverence and respect that appeared to bind the battered city together 13 days after a gunman killed six people and wounded 13, including Giffords.

The Arizona Democrat, who was shot through the head, left her hometown with the kind of police motorcade and live TV coverage often reserved for a head of state.

Los Angeles Times

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Maker of anesthetic used in executions is discontinuing drug

Death penalty states could face long-term complications after the move by the only U.S. manufacturer of sodium thiopental. California may have to revise laws governing its three-injection protocol.

The sole U.S. maker of the anesthetic used in executions announced Friday it would stop manufacturing sodium thiopental to prevent its product from being used to put prisoners to death.

Discontinuance of the drug that has been in short supply nationwide for the past year portends long-term complications for death penalty states. Some, like California, might have to revise laws governing executions and those seeking supplies from foreign makers may be turned away by countries that condemn capital punishment.

In California, the legal guidance for carrying out executions was amended in August after three years of debate and deliberation. The state's new protocols specify use of sodium thiopental as the first drug in the three-injection sequence, and any substitution would require the state to again revise the protocols, said Elisabeth Semel, a UC Berkeley law professor and director of the law school's Death Penalty Clinic.

Legal challenges to lethal-injection procedures have kept executions on hold for five years in California, where 718 prisoners are on death row. Corrections officials' attempt to carry out the execution of murderer Albert Greenwood Brown in September was thwarted by the litigation, as well as by the expiration of the state's last few grams of sodium thiopental.

Los Angeles Times

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Parents vs. 'Skins'

Think the MTV show's depictions of teenage sex and drug use are terrible? Then monitor your kids.

On the third episode of MTV's new series "Skins," a high school student takes erectile dysfunction pills and, with the camera filming him from behind, runs naked down the street. His tumescence serves as a running joke throughout the episode. The new show is a hit among middle schoolers, and the actor in the aforementioned scene is 17 years old.

According to the New York Times, MTV is taking steps to edit out some of the more objectionable content in this episode — not because it's inappropriate for teen viewers but because network executives are worried they may be charged with violating child pornography laws.

MTV and other basic-cable networks have been pushing the envelope on sexual and violent content for decades, but seldom have they aired anything as brazen as "Skins," a scripted series starring a troupe of unknown actors between the ages of 15 and 19. A remake of a series that originally aired in Britain, it is loaded with teen sex, masturbation and casual drug use. The conservative Parents Television Council calls it the "most dangerous program that has ever been foisted on your children."

The show does cross a boundary when it comes to TV depictions of sex involving minors, but any kid who's been to a Judd Apatow movie has seen worse. Today's teens have easy access to Internet porn, pay-cable sex shows and other entertainment offerings that scandalize those from earlier generations; MTV isn't alone in degrading cultural standards. Of course, that doesn't entirely excuse the network, which is breathtakingly disingenuous about its practices. It claims in a release that "Skins" is meant to be viewed by adults, and to prove it the channel airs the show at or after 10 p.m. Eastern time and has slapped a TV-MA rating on it, meaning it's theoretically unsuitable for those under 17. If airing programs late at night ever put off teens, the strategy has been rendered obsolete by digital video recorders. And the notion that a show starring teen actors, playing characters dealing with teen issues, on a network watched mostly by teens, is actually intended for adults is laughable.

The Parents Television Council is lobbying for a Justice Department investigation of MTV, but looking for government remedies is ineffective and unwise; we suspect the network's editors are smart enough to skirt prosecution. The Federal Communications Commission doesn't regulate the content of cable networks, and even if it did, a crackdown on shows like "Skins" would be a bad idea, because adults should be able to watch whatever they like on cable and federal attempts to protect kids from adult programming have never been successful. The best and most appropriate ways for parents to protect their kids from objectionable material on TV are to monitor their viewing and to learn to use the V-chip.

Los Angeles Times

U.N. Urges Inquiry of Migrants' Disappearance in Mexico

MEXICO CITY — The United Nations top human rights official pressed Mexico on Friday to investigate the disappearance of 40 Central American migrants last month and determine whether the military and the police were complicit.

The statement, by Navi Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, reflects heightened pressure on Mexico, which human rights groups accuse of falling short on promises to protect migrants from thieves, rapists, murderers and corrupt officers as they head to the United States.

The migrants, believed to be mostly Salvadoran and Guatemalan, were part of a group of 250 people on a freight train in southern Oaxaca State. Ms. Pillay said they were initially detained on Dec. 16 by the police, immigration officers and military personnel.

Some were taken into custody. But about 150 managed to continue traveling on the train, run by the federal government-owned Ferrocarril del Istmo de Tehuantepec.

The train operator demanded money from the migrants and, after scoffing at the sum they mustered, the train was boarded a short while later by armed gunmen who robbed and beat some of the migrants and abducted 40 of them, Ms. Pillay said.

New York Times

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In Tucson, Solace From Relatives of Past Killers

TUCSON — Few visitors make their way past the cactus garden and into the dark ranch-style home where Randy and Amy Loughner have spent much time grieving alone. The rampage in which their troubled 22-year-old son is accused opened a fault line between them and the rest of this recovering city.

But beyond Tucson, two people who have never met the Loughners are now seeking them out, and others are likely to follow.

When Jared L. Loughner was identified as the gunman who shot 19 people here two Saturdays ago, his parents joined a circle whose membership is a curse: the kin of those who have gone on killing sprees. Now, others in this circle of relatives are beginning to issue invitations to the Loughners.

David Kaczynski, brother of Theodore J. Kaczynski, the Unabomber, left a message with Mr. Loughner's public defender offering his ear if the parents wanted to talk to “someone with a similar experience,” he recalled.

Robert P. Hyde of Albuquerque had the same instinct. The brother of a mentally ill man who killed five people, two of them police officers, Mr. Hyde looked up the Loughners' address and mailed them a letter inviting them to contact him. The gist of his letter, Mr. Hyde said by phone, was that “what happened is not your fault.”

New York Times

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Mayors See No End to Hard Choices for Cities

WASHINGTON — Despite having one of the highest crime rates in the nation, Camden, N.J., laid off nearly half its police force this week after failing to win concessions from its unions. On the other side of the country, Vallejo, Calif., was filing a bankruptcy plan that proposed paying some creditors as little as a nickel or 20 cents on each dollar they are owed.

These are hard times for cities, and the mood was grim as more than 200 mayors gathered here this week for the winter meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors.

Many mayors have already raised taxes, cut services and laid off workers, even police and firefighters. Now they are girding themselves for more tough times, as falling home values are belatedly showing up in property tax assessments, and struggling states are threatening to cut aid to cities.

“I came in full of idealism — I was going to change my city,” said Mayor Bill Finch of Bridgeport, Conn., who has laid off 160 workers. “You get involved in government because you want to do more for the people, you want to show them that government can work and local government, by and large, really does work for the people — directly, you can't hide. But then you say you've got to pay the same amount of taxes, and you're going to get less.”

New York Times

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Removing the Roadblocks to Rehabilitation

What works and what doesn't work to solve a social problem is often no mystery.  The mystery is why we so often persist in doing what doesn't work.  The topic of Tuesday's column -- prisoner re-entry into the community — offers myriad examples.   One is the practice of dropping people getting out of jail or prison right back into the neighborhoods where they got in trouble in the first place.  Intuition tells us that this is a bad idea: the old street corners and the old friends seem like a recipe for the old troubles.  Research on this idea is rare and hard to do — it's tough to get around the problem that the person who chooses not to go home may have other qualities that make him successful.

A study published in 2009 in the American Sociological Review by David Kirk, a sociologist at the University of Texas, confirms our intuition.   Kirk took advantage of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, which prevented some New Orleans residents getting out of prison from going back to their old neighborhoods.  For the prisoners, this consequence of Katrina turned out to carry a hidden blessing. Those who couldn't go home did significantly better at avoiding future incarceration than those who lived in neighborhoods where they could and did go home.

Prisoners are often aware of the temptations they will face upon resuming their old lives.  Nearly half of the prisoners in Illinois surveyed by the Urban Institute said they didn't want to go back home upon release.  But states not only encourage people to go home again, some of them demand it — in most states, prisoners released on parole are legally required to go back to their county of last residence.

This rule is one of many protocols for dealing with former prisoners that seem to make little sense.  Many prisoners are sent home to arrive in the middle of the night with only a few dollars in their pockets.  Virtually no one in prison in the United States today can get methadone maintenance therapy, the gold standard drug treatment.  Prisoners are no longer eligible for the grants that used to make getting a college education in prison possible. This system is designed to fail.  And it does.

New York Times

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January 21, 2011

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Officials arrest 110 accused of mob activities

Raids targeting alleged members of the major East Coast crime families underscore the futility of federal efforts to wipe out the Mafia.

It was Christmastime on the icy shores of New Jersey, and "The Bull," a heavy in the Genovese crime family, was looking for his holiday bonus, authorities said. Longshoremen knew better than to argue when The Bull came calling, because nobody who wanted to live argued with the mob.

If they did, they might end up like the two men in the Shamrock Bar in Queens: shot dead after quarreling with a mobster over a spilled drink.

On Thursday, law enforcement officials announced the arrests of the alleged perpetrators of the Christmas shakedowns and the Shamrock Bar killer, along with more than 100 other suspected organized crime members in the biggest mob bust in recent history.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. came to Brooklyn — where 12 of the 16 indictments were unsealed — to announce the operation. The details seemed ripped from the pages of Prohibition-era tabloids: men with nicknames like "Lumpy," "Mush," "The Claw," "Jello," "Meatball," and "Jack the Whack"; and allegations of extortionate extensions of credit to gamblers in a mob-organized baccarat game and beatings to force debtors to repay loan sharks.

Los Angeles Times

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More attention urged for border agent's killing in Arizona

After the massive response to the Tucson shootings, Nogales is frustrated about lack of progress on another violent death.

It was shortly after 11 p.m. one night in December when an elite unit of the U.S. Border Patrol, making its way through the inky darkness of Peck Canyon, ran into a pack of heavily armed men.

A gunfight broke out, and when it was over, Agent Brian Terry, a three-year veteran of the force, was dead. Four Mexicans were taken into custody, one of them shot in the abdomen and back. By daybreak, a massive sweep was underway in search of a fifth suspect who had disappeared into the night.

The agent's death happened in the wake of a wave of robberies, rapes and assaults — most unreported, police say, because they are directed at illegal migrants and drug runners.

Yet more than a month after Terry's death, prosecutors still have filed no homicide charges against the unidentified men in custody, nor have they caught the fifth suspect, who may have been the triggerman.

After the massive law enforcement response to the Jan. 8 shootings of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others, there is frustration here that Terry's death has not taken the same priority.

Los Angeles Times

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South Korean forces storm hijacked ship, free hostages

Commandos board the Samho Jewelry and kill eight Somali pirates.

South Korean special forces launched a dramatic high-seas rescue of 21 seamen hijacked by pirates last week aboard their South-Korean-operated freighter in a top-secret operation that killed eight Somali abductors, officials here announced Friday.

The skipper of the South Korea chemical carrier Samho Jewelry was also shot in the stomach during the melee in the Arabian Sea but his wounds were not life-threatening, officials said. Five pirates were captured in the predawn military raid.

"Our special forces stormed the hijacked Samho Jewelry earlier today and freed all hostages," said Col. Lee Bung-woo, a spokesman at South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff. "During the operation, our forces killed some Somali pirates and all of the hostages were confirmed alive."

The cargo ship's crew consisted of eight South Koreans, two Indonesians and 11 citizens from Myanmar, officials said.

The rescue off the African coast was good news for South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who has been under fire for his perceived weak responses to two attacks by North Korea last year -- a March torpedoing of a southern war ship that killed 46 crewmen and the north's November artillery shelling of a southern-controlled island that killed four people.

Los Angeles Times

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$80,000 offered for leads in shooting of school officer near El Camino High

Los Angeles officials announced Thursday that they will be offering an $80,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the gunman who wounded a school police officer in Woodland Hills, sparking a massive hunt that shut down a seven-square-mile swath of the west San Fernando Valley and left more than 9,000 students locked for hours in their classrooms.

The officer, eight-year Los Angeles school police veteran Jeff Stenroos, was shot in the 5500 block of Manton Avenue adjacent to El Camino Real High School on Wednesday morning by a white man in his 40s with a thin build and graying hair pulled into a ponytail.

A composite sketch of the man was released Thursday afternoon and investigators said they believe someone in the area of the shooting will recognize him and urged them to contact police.

"We suspect he is a local," LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said of the gunman.

Officials also introduced the Good Samaritan who helped the fallen officer by using his police radio to make an "officer needs help" call to emergency dispatchers. Michael Brodey, a member of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, also assisted Stenroos as they waited for help to arrive.

"What I did yesterday is just what I'm trained to do," said Brodey. He said that training aided him in helping other victims in emergencies, including giving a choking woman in a restaurant the Heimlich maneuver and providing first aid to a worker who had been struck by a vehicle on Mulholland Drive.

At the urging of police, Brodey did not elaborate on what he saw and heard before, during or after the shooting or describe what brought him to the area.

Los Angeles Times

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Truck driver pleads guilty to hauling tons of marijuana smuggled into U.S. in tunnel

A 29-year-old Oceanside man pleaded guilty Thursday to hauling nearly 20,000 pounds of marijuana to distribution locations in California after the pot was smuggled into the U.S. through a narcotics tunnel.

Carlos Cunningham admitted in federal court in San Diego to driving truckloads of pot from a warehouse in San Diego near the tunnel's opening. He faces a mandatory prison sentence of at least 10 years.

The tunnel was discovered Nov. 2. Federal agents seized 28,782 pounds of marijuana inside the warehouse. Mexican authorities seized 9,878 pounds of marijuana at the tunnel's entrance inside a home in Tijuana.

Driving a tractor-trailer, Cunningham made multiple stops throughout Southern California, authorities said. Cunningham was arrested at the Temecula checkpoint along Interstate 15 while driving north to make deliveries.

Los Angeles Times

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Report Says Militants in Pearl Killing Still at Large

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Nine years after the American reporter Daniel Pearl was captured and killed by operatives of Al Qaeda in Pakistan, more than a dozen of the militants involved in his murder remain at large, a testament to the lack of will by Pakistani authorities to prosecute the cases, according to a report released Thursday.

Some of the 14 men who are known to have played a role in the death of Mr. Pearl, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, committed other terrorist acts in Pakistan, including an attack on a hotel in Karachi in which 11 French engineers were killed, and the attempted assassination of the former president, Pervez Musharraf, the report says.

A senior Pakistani law enforcement official who was closely involved in the Pearl case and worked with American investigators confirmed in an interview on Thursday that the 14 men had not been prosecuted.

The Pakistani official, who declined to be named because he said he had received death threats from the militants, said there was “sufficient evidence to link them to Pearl's case.”

“This is a $1 million question as to where their people are and why they weren't arrested or tried in this case,” the law enforcement official said. All of the 14 men had committed “major acts of terrorism” in the four or five years after the Pearl killing, the official said.

New York Times

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As U.S. Patients Await Organ Transplants, Potential Donors Struggle for Visas

The clock is ticking for Dr. Gabriel Danovitch's patient. Dr. Danovitch, a transplant surgeon at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, is treating an immigrant from Mexico in his 40s whose kidneys have failed. The patient is a good candidate for a transplant and has a donor, his brother.

But there is a big problem: His brother is a Mexican citizen whose application for a visa to come to the United States was not granted.

Physicians who perform transplants say patients who need organ donations from a family member or other close match outside the United States face hurdles that are often hard to surmount. Difficulties in obtaining visas leave many potential donors frustrated and force their sick relatives in the United States to wait months or even years on a list for organs like a liver or kidney.

In other cases, poor families cannot afford to pay for the donors to travel to the United States and undergo organ-removal operations that can require hospital stays of up to three weeks. In some states, Medicaid does not cover any of a donor's expenses, and private insurance policies vary greatly in how much they will cover.

Getting organ donations is always difficult, but medical authorities say the problems have gotten worse for immigrants with the tightening of visa policies after the terrorist attacks in 2001. And with the slowdown in the economy, some states have been cutting back financial aid to transplant patients and donors.

New York Times

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2 Miami Officers Killed in Shootout

Two police officers and a murder suspect died in a shootout in Miami on Thursday while the authorities were trying to serve a homicide warrant, officials said.

One of the police officers, Roger Castillo, a 21-year veteran, died at the scene in Miami's Liberty City neighborhood, Lt. Rosanna Cordero-Stutz of the Miami-Dade Police Department said. The other officer, Amanda Haworth, 44, died during surgery Thursday afternoon, the police said.

Mayor Carlos Alvarez said the officers, part of the criminal unit of the department's warrant division, had been serving a first-degree murder warrant on Johnny Simms, 22. Officers at the scene killed Mr. Simms, who was armed with a handgun, the police said.

The unit works with the United States Marshals Service and other law enforcement agencies in South Florida.

“They go after the worst of the worst,” Mr. Alvarez said. The suspect, he said, “chose to shoot it out with police.”

New York Times

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OPINION

Myth of the Hero Gunslinger

But before the Tucson tragedy fades into tired talking points, it's worth dissecting the crime scene once more to see how this idea fared in actual battle.

First, one bit of throat-clearing: I'm a third-generation Westerner, and grew up around guns, hunters of all possible fauna, and Second Amendment enthusiasts who wore camouflage nine months out of the year. Generally, I don't have a problem with any of that.

Back to Tucson. On the day of the shooting, a young man named Joseph Zamudio was leaving a drugstore when he saw the chaos at the Safeway parking lot. Zamudio was armed, carrying his 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol. Heroically, he rushed to the scene, fingering his weapon, ready to fire.

Now, in the view of the more-guns proponents, Zamudio might have been able to prevent any carnage, or maybe even gotten off a shot before someone was killed.

New York Times

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Kennedy's famous 'Ask not' speech remembered on 50th anniversary

WASHINGTON -- Fifty years ago Thursday, President John F. Kennedy told the world that "the torch had been passed to a new generation of Americans" whom he challenged to "ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country."

Caroline Kennedy told the Associated Press that she has been thinking over her father's oft-quoted inaugural speech from Jan. 20, 1961, when he proclaimed that Americans "shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

"I think he really expanded and redefined our idea of what it means to be a citizen -- that everybody has something to contribute and everybody has something to give back to this country that's given us so much," Caroline Kennedy said.

Kennedy joined members of her father's administration, civil rights activists, astronaut Buzz Aldrin and members of the first class of the Peace Corps -- which John F. Kennedy established -- on Thursday at the Capitol to mark the 35th president's legacy.

Speaking at a ceremony in the rotunda, Vice President Joe Biden said Kennedy's cause was to bring America back "to what it should be."

Associated Press

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Winter Storms and Extreme Cold

While the danger from winter weather varies across the country, nearly all Americans, regardless of where they live, are likely to face some type of severe winter weather at some point in their lives. That could mean snow or subfreezing temperatures, as well as strong winds or even ice or heavy rain storms.

One of the primary concerns is the winter weather's ability to knock out heat, power and communications services to your home or office, sometimes for days at a time. The National Weather Service refers to winter storms as the “Deceptive Killers” because most deaths are indirectly related to the storm. Instead, people die in traffic accidents on icy roads and of hypothermia from prolonged exposure to cold. It is important to be prepared for winter weather before it strikes.

Step 1: Get a Kit

Step 2: Make a Plan

Step 3: Be Informed

Ready.gov

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Attorney General Eric Holder Speaks at the Press Conference on Organized Crime Arrests

Good morning, and thank you all for being here.

Today I'm joined by several key leaders, and partners, in our work to combat organized crime – Janice Fedarcyk, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI's New York Division; Daniel Petrole, Acting Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Labor; Lanny Breuer, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's Criminal Division; Loretta Lynch, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York; Preet Bharara, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York; Paul Fishman, United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey; Peter F. Neronha, United States Attorney for the District of Rhode Island; and Ray Kelly, Commissioner of the New York City Police Department.

We are pleased to announce an important step forward in our nation's ongoing fight against the organized crime families of La Cosa Nostra – the mafia.

Today, more than 800 federal, state and local law enforcement officials have arrested over 110 individuals, including dozens of La Cosa Nostra members and associates. In total, 127 people have been charged in 16 indictments unsealed today in four districts in New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.

This is one of the largest single-day operations against the mafia in the FBI's history, both in terms of the number of defendants arrested and charged, and the scope of the criminal activity alleged. Defendants from numerous La Cosa Nostra families have been charged, including defendants from all five New York-based families: the Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Luchese families.

Dept of Justice

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Mafia Takedown

Largest Coordinated Arrest in FBI History

Early this morning FBI agents and partner law enforcement officers began arresting nearly 130 members of the Mafia in New York C ity and other East Coast cities charged in the largest nationally coordinated organized crime takedown in the Bureau's history.

Members of New York's infamous Five Families—the Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, and Luchese crime organizations—were rounded up along with members of the New Jersery-based DeCavalcante family and New England Mafia to face charges including murder, drug trafficking, arson, loan sharking, illegal gambling, witness tampering, labor racketeering, and extortion. In one case involving the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) at the Ports of New York and New Jersey, the alleged extortion has been going on for years.

More than 30 of the subjects indicted were “made” members of the Mafia (see graphic), including several high-ranking family members. The arrests, predominantly in New York, are expected to seriously disrupt some of the crime families' operations.

"The notion that today's mob families are more genteel and less violent than in the past is put to lie by the charges contained in the indictments unsealed today,” said Janice Fedarcyk, assistant director in charge of our New York Field Office. “Even more of a myth is the notion that the mob is a thing of the past; that La Cosa Nostra is a shadow of its former self.”

FBI

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January 20, 2011

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Gunshots again cause turmoil in L.A. Unified schools

Nine campuses were locked down after a school officer was shot outside El Camino High — just a day after two students were shot at Gardena High. A Bell High student was also shot on his way home from school.

A second day of violence shook the Los Angeles Unified School District on Wednesday, with the shooting of a school police officer prompting officials to seal off a large swath of Woodland Hills and place about 9,000 students on lockdown for hours.

More than 350 officers swarmed through the West San Fernando Valley looking for the gunman, blocking people from entering or exiting a seven-square-mile area.

The shooting occurred just before noon adjacent to El Camino Real High School, where Officer Jeffrey Stenroos was patrolling. A gunman fired multiple shots at Stenroos, hitting him in the chest. A bulletproof vest prevented the bullet from penetrating his body, and his injuries are considered minor.

The shootings came a day after a student brought a gun onto the campus of Gardena High School. The gun accidentally went off in a classroom, police officials said, and two students were hit.

Los Angeles Times

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Mental health in Arizona: A case study

Gov. Jan Brewer, long a champion of services for the mentally ill, reluctantly agreed to cut funding amid a budget crisis. It's just one example of the battle mental health advocates across the U.S. face as cash-strapped legislatures chop services.

When Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer took office in 2009, she restored funding to a mental health and drug treatment program. She also forced state agencies to justify their funding requests by arguing why their needs were greater than those of programs for the mentally ill.

Throughout her political career, Brewer had championed mental health services, though rarely discussed one connection: Her son Ronald has lived in a state mental facility for much of the last two decades. He had been found not guilty of kidnapping and sexual assault by reason of insanity.

Yet, in 2010, Brewer agreed to cut in half state funding for the Department of Health Services, reducing services to about 14,000 mentally ill Arizonans.

Brewer's reluctant acquiescence to the cuts reflects not only the state's dire budget crisis — it must fill a $1.2-billion budget chasm this year — but the tough battle mental health advocates face in securing funding for such services.

Across the country, mental health advocates say, cash-strapped legislatures have been chopping services for the anxious, depressed and schizophrenic. Since 2009, states have shaved more than $2 billion from such programs and axed more than 4,000 inpatient beds, said Michael Fitzpatrick, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

About one-fifth of states have passed or proposed cuts in mental health budgets for the next fiscal year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Los Angeles Times

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State hospital workers demand improved safety conditions

About 200 staff members at troubled Napa State Hospital gathered outside the state psychiatric hospital Wednesday to demand improved safety conditions for themselves and the roughly 1,100 severely ill patients treated there.

The boisterous rally came nearly three months after psychiatric technician Donna Gross, 54, was strangled on hospital grounds. A patient has been charged in her death, and another patient is being held on assault charges in connection with a savage beating of a rehabilitation therapist just six weeks later that fractured the employee's skull in four places.

“Death Should Not Be the Price We Pay for Safety,” read one sign waved by a worker to honking supporters outside the hospital. “DMH Lets Nurses Die,” read another, echoing a common theme of anger toward the state Department of Mental Health, which operates the state hospitals, for ignoring repeated calls for better safety.

The staff had been seeking improved conditions for several years, internal memos and documents show, but complaints to management yielded no change. Gross' slaying, however, has propelled psychiatric technicians, nurses, rehab therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists and hospital police to work together in a rare show of unity to demand change.

Dr. Richard Frishman, a Napa State Hospital psychiatrist, held up a photo of himself with a battered and blackened face –- the result of a 2008 beating by a patient –- as he urged his fellow workers to demand  swift reform.

Los Angeles Times

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27 arrested in raid of Los Angeles gang Lennox 13

Federal agents and local authorities on Wednesday arrested 27 people allegedly linked to the Los Angeles street gang Lennox 13.

Nearly 500 officers connected with a federal and state drug task force and L.A. County sheriff's deputies made the arrests after an 18-month probe into the Lennox 13 gang.

Many of those arrested were indicted in a federal racketeering case alleging the gang is a criminal enterprise that had engaged in violent crimes, extortion and narcotics trafficking. Others are being charged with separate federal or local crimes, and some face illegal-immigration prosecution and deportation.

The centerpiece of the investigation is an 11-count indictment alleging violations of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. The indictment names 15 defendants, nine of whom were taken into custody Wednesday.

Los Angeles Times

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Doctor Is Charged in Killing of Newborns

An abortion doctor who served minority and immigrant women in his clinic in Philadelphia was charged with multiple counts of murder on Wednesday in the deaths of a woman and seven newborn babies whose spinal cords had been cut with scissors, the district attorney's office said.

Prosecutors charged Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 69, with eight counts of murder in the deaths of Karnamaya Mongar, 41, a refugee from Nepal, who received high doses of anesthetic for an illegal late-term abortion performed in 2009 and of seven infants who were born, killed and then disposed of in Dr. Gosnell's West Philadelphia clinic, the Women's Medical Society.

Prosecutors laid out their case in a 281-page grand jury document that read like a grisly script. Plastic bags and mineral water bottles holding aborted fetuses were found stashed in Dr. Gosnell's clinic. Jars containing the severed feet of babies lined a shelf, the Philadelphia district attorney, Seth Williams, said in a statement.

Dr. Gosnell, a family practitioner who was not certified in obstetrics, performed late-term abortions, after 24 weeks, which are illegal, and employed staff members who were not trained medical professionals, including a teenage girl, prosecutors said. Nine of his employees were also charged.

New York Times

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FBI investigates bomb attempt at parade

The FBI is investigating whether racial bias could have played a role in the apparent attempted bombing of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade route in Spokane, Wash., officials said Wednesday.

Three city employees spotted an unattended black backpack on a bench about an hour before the parade honoring the slain civil rights leader was to start on Monday. When they looked inside and saw wires, they alerted Spokane police, who defused a potentially lethal explosive device, officials said.

No one was injured in the incident, which came amid growing concern nationally over what authorities call a wave of homegrown terrorism. But if the bomb had gone off, it could have caused multiple deaths or injuries, officials said.

"The device appeared to be operational, it appeared to be deadly, and it was intended to inflict multiple casualties,'' said Special Agent Frederick Gutt, a spokesman for the FBI's Seattle field office.

Law enforcement sources familiar with the device, which is being analyzed at the FBI lab in Quantico, Va., said it had a remote detonator and was positioned so that any blast would have been directed at the crowd of marchers. "Someone obviously took some time with it,'' said one source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is unfolding.

Washington Post

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Jared Lee Loughner Indicted

TUCSON , Ariz. - A federal grand jury in Tucson, today returned an initial three-count indictment against Jared Lee Loughner for attempting to kill U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, and two of her aides, Ron Barber and Pamela Simon.

Today's charges represent the initial indictment in the investigation of the Jan. 8 shooting in Tucson.

“Today, the Grand Jury returned an initial three-count indictment against Jared Lee Loughner in the Tucson shooting case. We are in the early stages of this ongoing investigation. We have made considerable progress in a short period of time,” said U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke. “This case also involves potential death-penalty charges, and Department rules require us to pursue a deliberate and thorough process. Today's charges are just the beginning of our legal action, and we are working diligently to ensure that our investigation is thorough and that justice is done for the victims and their families.”

The charges meet the requirement under the Federal Criminal Code which mandates that the United States bring an indictment within 30 days of arrest of the defendant.  

The indictment alleges that Loughner, 22, of Tucson, attempted to assassinate Gabrielle Giffords, a Member of Congress, 18 USC 351(c,), and attempted to murder two federal employees, Ron Barber and Pamela Simon, 18 USC 1114 and 1113.

Department of Justice

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Alleged Terrorist Charged with Conspiracy to Kill Americans in Iraq Defendant Charged with Being Member of Network Responsible for the Deaths of Five American Soldiers

WASHINGTON -- Faruq Khalil Muhammad ‘Isa, 38, also known as “Faruk Khalil Muhammad ‘Isa,” “Sayfildin Tahir Sharif,” and “Tahir Sharif Sayfildin,” was arrested in Canada today pursuant to a U.S. provisional arrest warrant, based on a complaint in the United States charging him with conspiring to kill Americans abroad and with providing material support to that terrorist conspiracy to kill Americans abroad. The U.S. government will seek the defendant's extradition to face the charges.

The charges were announced by David Kris, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; Loretta E. Lynch, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York; and Janice K. Fedarcyk, Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of the FBI. The government's investigation is being conducted by the FBI New York Joint Terrorism Task Force, with assistance provided by the Department of Defense, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the government of Tunisia.

The defendant is charged in connection with his support for a multinational terrorist network that conducted multiple suicide bombings in Iraq and that is responsible for the deaths of five American soldiers. According to the complaint, filed on Jan. 14, 2011, in the Eastern District of New York, the five American soldiers were killed on April 10, 2009, when a Tunisian jihadist, whose travel to and activities in Iraq were facilitated by the terrorist network, drove a truck laden with explosives to the gate of the U.S. Military's Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul, Iraq. The jihadist exchanged fire with Iraqi police officers and then the American convoy that was exiting the base. The truck detonated approximately 50 yards from the gate, alongside the last vehicle in the U.S. convoy, leaving a 60-foot crater in the ground.

Department of Justice

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January 19, 2011

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Spokane bomb casualties could have been severe, FBI says

The device was found on the route of Spokane's annual Unity March, held on Martin Luther King Day.

A "potentially deadly" explosive device that could have caused severe casualties was found along the intended route of a Martin Luther King Day march in Spokane, Wash., half an hour before the event was to begin, the FBI said Tuesday.

The annual Unity March was rerouted after city workers noticed a black Swiss Army backpack apparently abandoned on a bench about 9:25 a.m. Monday, said Frank Harrill, the supervisory senior resident agent in the FBI's Seattle division.

The device inside "clearly would have had the potential to inflict multiple casualties, injury and death, to humans," Harrill said in an interview Tuesday. He declined to describe the device.

The FBI said the backpack also contained two T-shirts — one from the 2010 Stevens County Relay for Life, an American Cancer Society fundraiser, and the other reading, "Treasure Island Spring 2009."

About 1,500 people marched along the new route without incident while the Spokane Explosives Disposal Unit neutralized the device.

No one has claimed responsibility or offered a motive, Harrill said. But he called the connection with the King Day march "inescapable."

Los Angeles Times

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L.A. Unified to review search policy in wake of Gardena High shooting

District officials consider whether the screening policy needs to be updated. One Gardena student said weapons checks using hand-held metal detectors occurred 'once in a blue moon.'

Administrators and staff randomly search students for weapons on Los Angeles city school campuses, but officials acknowledged that it is nearly impossible to keep all weapons away from classrooms.

Two students were shot Tuesday at Gardena High School when a classmate's gun went off. The weapon was in his backpack and it reportedly fired when he put the bag on his desk. A girl was shot in the head and a boy was hit in the neck.

It was the second time a gun was found on a Los Angeles Unified School District campus since classes began this school year, according to district officials. A gun was found at Sylmar High earlier this year after administrators received a tip. Officials found 11 firearms the year before and six in the 2008-09 school year.

Students caught with weapons are expelled from L.A. Unified for at least one year, according to state and federal law. Since 2005, two students from Gardena High have been expelled for having firearms, district officials said.

Steven Zipperman, the school district's police chief, told the school board Tuesday that it was possible the 17-year-old suspect was not checked for weapons.

Los Angeles Times

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Judge rules against new state ammunition rules

Californians who buy handgun ammunition will not have to supply their thumbprint, photo ID and other information starting Feb. 1 after a judge in Fresno ruled Tuesday that a new state law mandating the information is unconstitutionally vague.

The law, signed in 2009 by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, was meant to give law enforcement officers a better opportunity to track criminals buying ammunition.

But Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Hamilton issued a summary judgment against the law, which also required ammo buyers to provide their birth date and address, and issued an injunction preventing the state from enforcing it Feb. 1. The law also would have prevented mail-order sales of handgun ammunition.

The judge sided Tuesday with former Tehama County Sheriff Clay Parker, who filed a lawsuit arguing that the law was not clear.

"I'm pleased," Parker said. "My whole concern was: What is the definition of handgun ammunition? There is a lot of ammunition that goes both in handguns and long-guns."

Sen. Kevin De Leon (D-Los Angeles), who wrote AB 962, is considering his legal and legislative options, including a possible appeal, said Dan Reeves, his chief of staff.

"The code section defining handgun ammo is very similar to the federal definition and has been on the books for 30 years," Reeves said in an e-mail. "Today a judge ruled in a summary judgment it was unconstitutionally vague."

Los Angeles Times

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L.A. County supervisors call for better mental health evaluations of students

Los Angeles County Supervisors voted Tuesday to develop a plan to step up identification of students who show signs of mental health problems that could pose a public safety concern.

The proposal by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky cited a case uncovered last week at Cal State Northridge. In that incident, a student was charged with possession of explosive materials and a firearm that authorities said were found in his dorm room after he allegedly threatened staff and students.

The supervisors asked staff to report back in two months on how best to expand a program -- the School Threat Assessment Response Team -- involving Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health workers and Los Angeles police. Since its inception in 2008, the team has responded to approximately 250 incidents at elementary, middle and high schools, and colleges.

Although supervisors acknowledged that it was too early to know if the shooting Tuesday at Gardena High School involved mental health issues, they said it might prove to be further reason for the increased vigilance.

“This kind of shocking occurrence proves that we must do everything in our power to eradicate the roots and causes of violence on our campuses,” Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas said. “I strongly encourage the rapid response to the motion before us.”

Los Angeles Times

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Getting Someone to Psychiatric Treatment Can Be Difficult and Inconclusive

TUCSON —What are you supposed to do with someone like Jared L. Loughner?

That question is as difficult to answer today as it was in the years and months and days leading up to the shooting here that left 6 dead and 13 wounded.

Millions of Americans have wondered about a troubled loved one, friend or co-worker, fearing not so much an act of violence, but — far more likely — self-inflicted harm, landing in the streets, in jail or on suicide watch. But those in a position to help often struggle with how to distinguish ominous behavior from the merely odd, the red flags from the red herrings.

In Mr. Loughner's case there is no evidence that he ever received a formal diagnosis of mental illness, let alone treatment. Yet many psychiatrists say that the warning sings of a descent into psychosis were there for months, and perhaps far longer.

Moving a person who is resistant into treatment is an emotional, sometimes exhausting process that in the end may not lead to real changes in behavior. Mental health resources are scarce in most states, laws make it difficult to commit an adult involuntarily, and even after receiving treatment, patients frequently stop taking their medication or seeing a therapist, believing that they are no longer ill.

The Virginia Tech gunman was committed involuntarily before killing 32 people in a 2007 rampage.

New York Times

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Hospital Visitation Regulations Go Into Effect Today

"There are few moments in our lives that call for greater compassion and companionship than when a loved one is admitted to the hospital.  In these hours of need and moments of pain and anxiety, all of us would hope to have a hand to hold, a shoulder on which to lean – a loved one to be there for us, as we would be there for them."

With those words on April 15, 2010 President Obama directed HHS Secretary Sebelius to initiate rulemaking to ensure that hospitals that participate in Medicare and Medicaid respect the rights of patients to designate visitors.  The President further advised that the rule should ensure that participating hospitals may not deny visitation privileges based on factors including sexual orientation or gender identity. 

Today the new Hospital Visitation Regulations go into effect. 

This policy impacts millions of LGBT Americans and their families.  The President saw an injustice and felt very strongly about correcting this and has spoken about it often over the years.  I want to thank HHS Secretary Sebelius and her team for their resolve to see this rule implemented.  In fact, long before this rule was finalized, back in June, 2010 the Secretary laid the groundwork by reaching out to leaders of major hospital associations asking them to encourage their member hospitals to not wait for the formal rulemaking to run its course regarding patient-centered visitation rights suggested by the President.

This significant policy change is due in no small part to the journeys of two incredibly courageous and passionate women, Janice Langbehn and Charlene Strong.  Both lived through unimaginable experiences with the loss of their wives and life partners.   While I never had the opportunity to meet Janice's wife Lisa Pond, or Charlene's wife Kate Fleming, I have had the honor to meet and work with Janice and Charlene.  I want to thank them for bringing us all into their lives and for sharing themselves and their families with us, and for using their voices to make lives better for LGBT families.

The White House

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Successes in Gang Enforcement

From Coast to Coast

Last week, a long-time member and so-called “shot caller” for the Varrio Hawaiian Gardens (VHG) street gang in Los Angeles, California was sentenced to 30 years in prison for helping coordinate the racketeering activities of the gang, including carjackings, kidnappings, and drug trafficking. A sheriff's deputy was also murdered during the VHG's reign.

The  week before that, on the other side of the country, the last in a line of 25 gang members named in a racketeering conspiracy in Albany, New York pled guilty in federal court to his involvement in the Original Gangster Killers gang that engaged in criminal activities like drug trafficking, firearms possession, assault, robbery, and attempted murder. He faces a maximum of 40 years in prison.

And in other parts of the country, the FBI and our many law enforcement partners—local, state, and federal—have effectively shut down a number of violent and extremely dangerous street gangs:

• New Haven, Connecticut: 35 people were indicted on federal drug and firearms violations after an operation targeting members and associates of several street gangs.
• Denver, Colorado: 35 people—many of them gang members—were indicted on charges of trafficking large amounts of cocaine to the Denver area every week.
• Omaha, Nebraska: 12 individuals—most gang members--were charged with drug trafficking and firearms violations and are also believed to have been involved in other crimes like assaults, witness intimidation, and robberies.

FBI

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January 18, 2011

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South Gate man wanted in death of daughter is caught in Mexico

A man wanted in connection with the death of his 10-month-old daughter has been apprehended in Mexico, authorities said Monday night.

Jose Deras, 20, was being held by authorities in Mexico City pending extradition requests, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said. 

Authorities said Deras allegedly assaulted his wife and daughter. The girl died of blunt-force trauma, according to authorities.

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

Deras allegedly assaulted his wife and baby on Saturday about 5:40 p.m. at their home in the 5100 block of McCallum Avenue, police said.

Los Angeles Times

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Authorities from L.A.-area task force seize 43 kilos of cocaine, $2.3 million in cash

Two men were booked into the Santa Monica jail on drug charges after a multi-agency task force seized 47 kilos of cocaine and $2.3 million in cash, police said Monday.

The task force of federal agents and local police officers uncovered the cash and cocaine Wednesday at a Valencia warehouse after serving search warrants at three Los Angeles-area locations, said the Santa Monica Police Department, whose officers were part of the effort.

Vasile Babuschin and Sergei Souetov, both Canadian citizens, were arrested and booked on narcotics charges, police said.

Babuschin was detained as he arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on a flight from Canada. He led investigators to suspected drug-storage locations, according to police.

The money was in a safe that had to be cut open by firefighters.

Los Angeles Times

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Shooting Suspect Had Been Known to Use Potent, and Legal, Hallucinogen

TUCSON — No one has suggested that his use of a hallucinogenic herb or any other drugs contributed to Jared L. Loughner's apparent mental unraveling that culminated with his being charged in a devastating outburst of violence here.

Yet it is striking how closely the typical effects of smoking the herb, Salvia divinorum -- which federal drug officials warn can closely mimic psychosis — matched Mr. Loughner's own comments about how he saw the world, like his often-repeated assertion that he spent most of his waking hours in a dream world that he had learned to control.

Salvia is a potent but legal drug marketed with promises of producing a transcendental spiritual journey: out-of-body experiences, existence in multiple realities, the revelation of secret knowledge and, according to one online seller, “permanent mind-altering change in perception.”

Mr. Loughner, 22, was at one point a frequent user of the plant, also known as diviner's sage, which he began smoking while in high school during a time in which he was also experimenting with marijuana, hallucinogenic mushrooms and other drugs, according to friends. Mental health professionals warn that drug use can both aggravate and mask the onset of mental illness.

New York Times

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Ghailani's Lawyers Detail Terror Defense Strategy

The jury had been deliberating over four days in the trial of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani when it sent a note to the judge, asking how much the defendant needed to know about Al Qaeda's conspiracies to bomb and kill in order to be convicted.

To the defense lawyers, the issue of what their client knew was pivotal, as they had been arguing that Mr. Ghailani — the first former Guantánamo detainee tried in a civilian court — was duped into assisting in the 1998 conspiracy to bomb two American Embassies in East Africa.

“This is it right here,” one lawyer, Steve Zissou, wrote in an e-mail to the rest of the defense team, about two hours after the federal jury in Manhattan concluded deliberations for the day on Nov. 16. “The entire case rests on this charge. Everybody please think and dream about this all night and let's be ready tomorrow.”

The next morning, the judge gave the jury a new instruction, including key language sought by the defense. Late that afternoon, Mr. Ghailani was acquitted of more than 280 counts of murder and conspiracy, while being convicted of just one count of conspiracy to destroy government buildings and property. The jury also found that his conduct had directly caused the death of a person, which meant that he could receive life imprisonment when he is sentenced next Tuesday.

The jury has not explained how it reached that decision, and with conjecture that the verdict reflected a compromise by a sharply divided panel, no one knows what the jurors had believed about Mr. Ghailani's guilt or innocence.

New York Times

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A Good Time to Offer First-Aid Training for All

WHEN the shooting rampage happened here, I was on the other side of town. But it occurred to me afterward that even if I had been at the horrific scene outside that Safeway supermarket, I would have been of no help whatsoever.

The last formal first-aid training I had was when I was in the Boy Scouts during the Eisenhower administration. So this seems a good time to reflect on how we can be prepared to lend a hand in dire situations.

On that fateful day, we saw how so many bystanders, ordinary citizens suddenly confronted with a stunning emergency, were prepared to literally hit the ground and assist gravely wounded victims with first aid, even while the stench of gunfire hung in the air.

As business travelers, we expose ourselves to a wide range of environments and circumstances. We presume that we are always in control, but somewhere in the back of our minds, we vaguely sense that things can abruptly go very wrong. Sudden illness, violent crime, an airplane disaster, epidemic, terrorism, tsunami, earthquake are all possible (though statistically unlikely) as business travel spans ever-wider areas of the globe.

In Tucson, lives literally were saved by the immediate response of a surprising number of ordinary citizens who happened to have been trained in basic first aid.

New York Times

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Interfering With Flight?

The announcement over the plane's speaker seems as much a part of the routine before takeoff as the demonstration of how to buckle a seat belt: Please turn off all electronic devices.

But some passengers invariably ignore the request, perhaps thinking that their iPods or e-books do not count. And really, does it matter if the devices are left on?

The answer, it turns out, is that sometimes it may.

“It's a good news-bad news thing,” said David Carson, an engineer with Boeing. Electronic devices do not cause problems in every case, he said. “And that's good,” he said. “It's bad in that people assume it never will.”

Passengers are taking an increasing array of devices on board planes — cellphones, tablets, GPS units and more. Many of these devices transmit a signal, and all of them emit electromagnetic waves, which, in theory, could interfere with the plane's electronics. At the same time, older planes might not have the best shielding against the latest generation of devices, some engineers said.

New York Times

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How Many Deaths Are Enough?

On April 22, 2008, almost exactly one year after 32 students and faculty members were slain in the massacre at Virginia Tech, the dealer who had sold one of the weapons used by the gunman delivered a public lecture on the school's campus. His point: that people at Virginia Tech should be allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus.

Eric Thompson, owner of the online firearms store that sold a .22-caliber semiautomatic handgun to the shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, did not think that his appearance at Virginia Tech was disrespectful or that his position was extreme. He felt so strongly that college students should be allowed to be armed while engaged in their campus activities that he offered discounts to any students who wanted to buy guns from him.

Thompson spun the discounts as altruistic. He told ABCNews.com, “This offers students and people who might not have otherwise been able to afford a weapon to purchase one at a hefty discount and at a significant expense to myself.”

The sale to Cho was not Thompson's only unfortunate link to a mass killer. His firm sold a pair of 9-millimeter Glock magazines and a holster to Steven Kazmierczak, a 27-year-old graduate student in DeKalb, Ill., who, on the afternoon of Feb. 14, 2008, went heavily armed into an auditorium-type lecture hall at Northern Illinois University. Kazmierczak walked onto the stage in front of a crowd of students and opened fire. He killed five people and wounded 18 others before killing himself.

New York Times

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For Ex-Prisoners, a Haven Away From the Streets

This year, the United States will release nearly three-quarters of a million people from prison, a record high.   Nationally, 2.3 million people are in prison in the United States, and 95 percent of them will, at some point, get out and go home.

Society has a strong interest in keeping them home — in helping them to become law-abiding citizens instead of falling back into their old ways and returning to prison.  But American programs for newly released prisoners echo the typical follies of our criminal justice system:  our politicians usually believe that voters only want the emotional satisfactions of meting out maximum punishment, even if these policies lead to even more crime.

The usual package granted to someone released from prison in New York state is $40, a bus ticket and the considerable stigma that follows an ex-offender.  Since prisoners are often held far away from their families and states charge astronomical rates for prison phone calls, prisoners often lose touch with their loved ones and may not have anyone to take them in when they get home.  They may arrive in their home cities with no plans, other than — worrisomely — those hatched with fellow prisoners.  They have little prospect for jobs or housing.  Since many don't get effective drug treatment in prison, they might still crave a fix, which costs money.  It is little wonder that some former prisoners fall back into crime within hours or days.

New York Times

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Indiana's Answer to Prison Costs

For states that are serious about trimming deficits, out-of-control prison costs are a good place to start cutting. The expenses of housing and caring for more than one million state prison inmates has quadrupled in the last decade from about $12 billion a year to more $52 billion a year. This, in turn, has squeezed budgets for essential programs like education.

Governors seeking wisdom on how to proceed could start by looking at what Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, is trying to accomplish in Indiana.

The centerpiece of Mr. Daniels's approach is a set of reforms governing sentencing and parole. Judges would be allowed to fit sentences to crimes and have the flexibility to impose shorter sentences for nonviolent offenses. A poorly structured parole system would be reorganized to focus on offenders who actually present a risk to public safety.

Addicts would be given drug treatment to try to make them less likely to be rearrested. And there would be incentives for towns to handle low-level offenders instead of sending them into more costly state prisons.

Mr. Daniels devoted the last year to building a wide political consensus behind these ideas, beginning with a study from the Council of State Governments Justice Center, a prison policy group that has helped several states revise their corrections strategies.

New York Times

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The Insanity Defense, Post-Hinckley

As the country struggles to find meaning in the horrific Tucson shooting, another heated national debate over gun violence comes to mind: the furious reaction to the acquittal, by reason of insanity, of John Hinckley Jr., the man who tried to kill President Ronald Reagan.

Nearly 30 years later, Mr. Hinckley remains in a psychiatric ward, with permission in recent years to leave in his mother's custody for limited visits. After the acquittal, politicians across the country blamed the insanity defense for excusing a detestable and miserable young man from imprisonment. Vowing that it would boost public safety and ensure another Hinckley would not “get off,” the federal government and 38 states rewrote their laws, establishing a much more difficult standard of proof.

The most common test had been that a person could be found insane if the defendant “lacks substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.” Most of the new restrictions reduced the test to a simple question: Did the defendant not know what he or she was doing?

A generation later, we know this retrenchment was based on misconceptions, above all that the defense was commonly, and successfully, used. A study of eight states from 1976 to 1987 documented that the defense was employed in less than 1 percent of criminal cases and only a quarter of those defendants were acquitted by reason of insanity.

New York Times

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Calif. city considers DUI mug shots on Facebook

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Police in a city ranked top in the state for alcohol-related traffic fatalities might soon be trying a new tactic to keep drunken drivers off the road: Electronic shaming on Facebook.

In a contentious move that has raised the hackles of privacy advocates and been met with resistance from a police department fearful of alienating residents, a councilman in Huntington Beach wants police to begin posting the mug shots of everyone who is arrested more than once for driving while under the influence.

"If it takes shaming people to save lives, I am willing to do it," said Devin Dwyer, the councilman behind the proposal. "I'm hoping it prevents others from getting behind the wheel and getting inebriated."

Dwyer initially wanted the police department to post on Facebook photographs of everyone arrested for DUI in the bar-laden beach town just south of Los Angeles. He has watered down his proposal — now only repeat offenders would be featured on the virtual wall of shame — in hopes of winning support from the rest of the seven-member council, which is set to vote on the issue Tuesday.

Huntington Beach, a city of about 200,000 famed for its Surf City alias, an off-leash dog beach and a downtown packed with bars, is ranked top out of 56 California cities of similar size for the number of alcohol-related traffic fatalities. In 2009, 195 people were killed or injured.

Drunken driving laws are aggressively enforced, and in 2009, there were 1,687 DUI arrests.

Kensington slaying suspect arrested

At 10 a.m. Monday, a state police DNA database got a hit identifying the so-called Kensington strangler, police said, as 22-year-old Antonio Rodriguez, sparking a massive manhunt across the city.

By 6:30 p.m., authorities had tracked down and arrested Rodriguez, suspected of raping and strangling three women since November. He was being held on outstanding bench warrants.

Detectives planned Monday night to take another DNA sample, which they expected to conclusively link him to the killings that have gripped the city.

"To the people in the Kensington area, they can rest easy," said Homicide Capt. James Clark. "We believe we have this killer off the street."

Rodriguez, a convicted felon, was required to submit his DNA when he was released from jail this summer. It had been waiting to be uploaded into the state police database since Oct. 25, because of a backlog that averages about eight weeks.

Philadelphia Inquirer

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New faces of Detroit rapist emerge

Three faces, each unique, all the possible face of a suspected serial rapist preying on women in Detroit.

The Detroit Police Department released two new composite sketches Monday of the suspect, based on information from the victims.

Each shows a man with a dark complexion and facial hair and lists the man as either 5-foot-8 or 5-foot-9, but there are slight differences in features, such as the nose and shape of the face. One portrays a man in a black skullcap, and another shows a man with facial blemishes.

And, maybe most importantly, police announced that forensic evidence that could help eliminate or confirm suspects is being tested.

"We don't want people to be gripped by fear," Detroit Police Chief Ralph Godbee Jr. said. "We are not going to let this monster cripple us."

Detroit Free Press

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January 17, 2011

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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.

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."

Los Angeles Times

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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 .

Los Angeles 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.

New York Times

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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.”

New York Times

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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.

New York Times

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