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From the Los Angeles Times

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Blowing the whistle on drug firms

A tiny pharmacy in Florida has built a lucrative niche market: filing lawsuits against drug makers that overcharge Medicare and Medicaid.

by Andrew Zajac, Washington Bureau

January 24, 2011

Reporting from Washington

Last December, a specialty pharmacy in Florida enjoyed its best month ever — posting a hefty $168.7 million in revenues.

But it wasn't filling prescriptions that made Ven-A-Care of the Florida Keys Inc. such a success.

Tiny Ven-A-Care has developed a lucrative niche market: blowing the whistle on drug companies that overcharge Medicare and Medicaid — and collecting tens of millions of dollars in reward money.

Unlike most whistle-blowers who help the government with one case after they encounter wrongdoing, Ven-A-Care has filed suits alleging fraudulent conduct against dozens of drug companies supplying pharmacies and healthcare providers.

The company's whistle-blowing essentially works like this:

The company conducts research, comparing the prices it paid for drugs with the prices reported by drug makers to the government for reimbursement. Ven-A-Care files suit, on behalf of the government, when it spots large discrepancies between the two sets of prices.

The spreads can be dramatic.

A 2005 California suit alleged that a 1-gram vial of the antibiotic vancomycin was sold to providers for $6.29, but billed to Medi-Cal for $58.37, while 50-milligram tablets of the blood pressure medication atenolol were billed to pharmacies at $3.04 and to Medi-Cal at $70.30.

"I think Ven-A-Care has played a key role and possibly the predominant role in alerting state and federal governments about … fraud," said Nicholas Paul, a supervising deputy attorney general for the state of California, which filed the 2005 suit against 39 drug companies based on Ven-A-Care allegations. It has so far recovered about $95 million.

Joined frequently by the Justice Department or a state, the suits have yielded a string of handsome returns to Ven-A-Care and even more to state and federal governments.

Since 2000, the company has won settlements in at least 18 such suits. Three settlements announced last month brought the fees awarded the company and its attorneys since 2000 to more than $380 million.

State and federal governments, meanwhile, have collected about $2.2 billion from those cases. They have also changed reimbursement practices in an effort to make it harder for healthcare providers to reap windfall profits from drugs.

Both in recoveries for themselves and for taxpayers, Ven-A-Care's partners are apparently the most successful whistle-blowers in U.S. history.

"They're cleaning up a huge cesspool. Without their efforts, taxpayers would be gouged out of I don't know how much money," said L. Timothy Terry, an attorney and one-time Nevada state Medicaid fraud investigator who now represents whistle-blowers.

The Obama administration has made combating healthcare fraud a priority, encouraging whistle-blowers to come forward and opening a record number of new healthcare fraud cases. In 2010, federal prosecutors collected a record $2.5 billion via claims initiated by whistle-blowers, according to an announcement Monday by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Ven-A-Care is not without its detractors. Some complain that their awards are too large.

"We're spending tens of millions of dollars as a reward for information. The question is, 'Is it necessary?' " said Michael Loucks, formerly an influential healthcare fraud federal prosecutor in Boston who oversaw numerous multimillion-dollar, whistleblower-inspired settlements with drug companies.

Loucks, now a defense attorney, said whistle-blower payments should be capped at $2 million. "Somebody will still blow the whistle," he said.

Ven-A-Care attorney Jim Breen said large settlements were necessary to cover the expenses of mounting suits.

"If we're capped, we could never do what we've done — we couldn't return that amount of money to the government," he said. "In my average case, I probably have at least two major law firms, plus local counsel, opposing me. Cases like this require you to marshal millions of dollars."

Ven-A-Care's whistle-blower suits came after years of complaints the company made to lawmakers and healthcare bureaucrats about overpayments by Medicare and Medicaid connected to inflation of the average wholesale price, or AWP. This price was a benchmark used as the basis for reimbursement by the government insurance programs for the poor and elderly.

Ven-A-Care argues that drug companies have charged doctors, pharmacies and other providers a much lower price for drugs and allowed them to keep the spread between that price and a government reimbursement based on inflated AWPs, as a means of building the drug firms' market share.

"It destroys the price advantage of generic drugs," said Pat O'Connell, a whistle-blowers' attorney in Austin, Texas.

Ven-A-Care was created 23 years ago when a young Florida pharmacist named Luis Cobo and a nurse named T. Mark Jones went into the business of supplying intravenous drugs for AIDS and cancer patients.

Ven-A-Care's allies note that, until this month, no one had taken a case triggered by a Ven-A-Care complaint to trial. The trial of a state of Texas suit based on a Ven-A-Care filing, against Icelandic pharmaceutical firm Actavis, began Jan. 10 in Austin.

Cobo, Jones and two other Ven-A-Care partners involved in the suits did not return messages seeking comment.

Ven-A-Care's critics say federal participation is an unfair advantage because it can trigger a criminal investigation and an eventual conviction, which can lead to banishment from the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

Drug firms have also tried to derail Ven-A-Care suits by arguing that the company functions as a professional whistle-blower rather than a pharmacy and thus lacks the firsthand knowledge of fraud required by law.

Abbott Laboratories, for example, asked a judge to throw out what it called a "parasitic" Ven-A-Care case because "Ven-A-Care's officers candidly admit that they learned of Abbott's alleged 'fraud' by researching … catalogs and other publications that were equally available to thousands of other pharmacies."

But a judge declined to dismiss the case, and on Dec. 7, the Justice Department announced that Abbott had agreed to pay $126.5 million to settle Ven-A-Care complaints.

Attorney O'Connell acknowledged that whistle-blowing can have a mercenary aspect.

"It's a bounty hunting system. There's no reason to sugarcoat it," he said.

The firm's partners came to whistle-blowing reluctantly, associates say.

Disturbed by the price spreads, Ven-A-Care's office manager at the time, Zachary Bentley, once tried unsuccessfully to return a federal check that he thought was too big.

In one case, he found his firm was being charged only $49 per unit for a nutritional supplement when the government was reimbursing $428 per unit. Some years before, Bentley recalled, the Pentagon had been under fire for paying exorbitant prices for toilet seats on airplanes.

Hoping to awaken federal officials to the wasteful spending, Bentley bought a toilet seat and mailed it to Washington.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-whistle-blower-20110124,0,4892344,print.story

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Insurers are scouring social media for evidence of fraud

If someone receiving disability benefits for a bad back brags on Facebook or Twitter about finishing a marathon, chances are their insurance company will find out and stop the checks.

by Shan Li

January 24, 2011

Now there's another reason to be careful about what you post on Facebook: Your insurance company may be watching.

Nathalie Blanchard found out the hard way.

Struggling with depression, the 30-year-old from Quebec, Canada, took a medical leave in early 2008 from her job as an IBM technician. Soon after, she began receiving monthly disability benefits from her insurer, Manulife Financial Corp.

A year later and without warning, the payments stopped.

A representative of the Toronto insurance company told Blanchard that Manulife used photos of her on Facebook — showing her frolicking at a beach and hanging out at a pub — to determine she was depression-free and able to work, said Tom Lavin, Blanchard's attorney.

"They just assumed from the pictures that she was a fraud," Lavin said, "without investigating further before terminating Nathalie's benefits."

Blanchard sued Manulife, accusing Manulife of failing to talk to her doctor and neglecting to inform her before cutting off payments. The case is scheduled for trial next January.

Manulife, citing ongoing legal proceedings, declined to comment on the case but said in a statement: "We would not deny or terminate a valid claim solely based on information published on websites such as Facebook."

Social-networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace have become the go-to places where employers, college admissions officers and divorce lawyers can do background checks. Armed with the information, police have caught fugitives, lawyers have discredited witnesses and companies have discovered perfect-on-paper applicants engaged in illegal or simply embarrassing behavior.

And now insurance companies are exploiting the free, easily accessible websites.

Such sites have become the latest tools in detecting fraud, which the industry says costs the U.S. as much as $80 billion a year and accounts for 3% to 10% of total annual healthcare spending.

Investigators who once followed people with cameras now sit behind desks "mining databases and searching Facebook," said Frank Scapili, spokesman for the National Insurance Crime Bureau, a nonprofit that investigates suspect claims for insurance partners such as Allstate and State Farm.

"They look out for things that don't add up," he said, "like someone who claimed they hurt their back too badly to work and then bragged on Facebook about running a marathon."

Social-networking sites have become such "standard tools" that Peter Foley, vice president of claims at American Insurance Assn., said that investigators could be considered negligent if they didn't conduct at least "a quick scan of social media to check for contradictions."

But the evidence gathered on these sites, Foley and other insurance experts caution, should be used only as a launch pad for further investigations and never as final proof of fraud.

More ambitious insurance companies are even exploring the possibility of using online data to help underwrite policies.

Celent, the insurance consulting arm of financial and insurance brokerage firm Marsh & McLennan Cos. recently published a study titled "Leveraging Social Networks: An In-Depth View for Insurers" and suggested that social-networking data could be used to help price policies.

Mike Fitzgerald, a Celent senior analyst, said life insurance companies could find social media especially valuable for comparing what people will admit about lifestyle choices and medical histories in applications, and what they reveal online.

That could range from "liking" a cancer support group online to signs of high-risk behavior. "If someone claims they don't go sky diving often, but it clearly indicates on their online profile that they do it every weekend they can get away," Fitzgerald said, "That would raise a red flag for insurers."

Social media is "part of a new and emerging risk to the insurance sector" that could affect pricing and rating of policies in the future, said Gary Pickering, sales and marketing director for British insurer Legal & General Group. But many insurance lawyers decry such practices and warn of a future when insurance companies could monitor online profiles for reasons to raise premiums or deny claims.

"The situation is coming up more and more in court where lawyers for insurance companies lay traps for the insured based on pictures or postings on Facebook or Twitter," said Vedica Puri, a partner at Pillsbury & Levinson, a San Francisco law firm that specializes in insurance.

"Photos can be years old. People joke or write things in jest, but insurance companies use everything. Even if it's not true, it can be very damning," she said.

Lawyer John Beals of Piering Law Firm in Sacramento requires all his clients to either shut down or tighten privacy settings on their social media profiles as a precaution, he said.

Insurance companies will "bring up anything — photos of you drinking to prove that you have bad character," he said. "Even if it's unrelated, just the impression that you are doing something wrong can sink a case."

Lawyers and industry experts said that one of the dangers for consumers is people's desire to present themselves in the best light, even if it hurts an insurance claim.

Or as Lavin puts it: "No one puts pictures of themselves crying in a dark room, even if that's what they're doing 18 hours a day."

The whole thing is just symptomatic of technology running ahead of the people who are using it," he said. "It's kind of like the early years of flight when planes are crashing all over the place. Society has not come to terms with how to manage social networking."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-facebook-evidence-20110125,0,3088386,print.story

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Canadians arrest Moreno Valley man in connection with 1982 massacre

U.S. Justice Department officials seek extradition in the killing in Guatemala of more than 150 civilians, including children.

by Phil Willon, Los Angeles Times

January 25, 2011

A Moreno Valley martial arts instructor suspected of belonging to the Guatemalan military unit that killed more than 150 civilians, including children, in the country's infamous Dos Erres massacre in 1982 has been arrested on immigration fraud charges after fleeing from federal authorities last year.

Jorge Sosa, 52, was arrested by Canadian authorities last week while visiting his parents near Calgary, and Justice Department officials are seeking his extradition back to California. Sosa holds both Canadian and U.S. citizenship.

Sosa is accused of concealing his foreign military service and of lying under oath when he said he had never committed any crime or offense when he applied for U.S. citizenship in March 2008, authorities said.

If convicted, Sosa could be sentenced to a maximum of 15 years in federal prison and would be stripped of his U.S. citizenship and deported, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles.

Authorities said that Sosa, also known as Jorge Vinicio Sosa Orantes, was a commander in a special forces unit known as the Kaibiles, which interrogated and then killed men, women and children while searching their Guatemalan village for guerrilla fighters who had ambushed a military convoy.

"During the course of these interrogations, the special patrol proceeded to systematically kill the men, women, and children at Dos Erres by, among other methods, hitting them in the head with a sledgehammer and throwing them into a well,'' according to an Orange County federal grand jury indictment handed down Sept. 1. "Members of the special patrol also forcibly raped many of the women and girls at Dos Erres before killing them.''

Skeletal remains of about 150 people were later found in the village well, according to federal officials.

Sosa's 25-year-old daughter, Christina Sosa, said the federal government is using her father as a political scapegoat for the atrocity while the man who allegedly ordered the killings — Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, a former president known for his "scorched earth" campaign against the rebels — still serves in Guatemala's Congress.

"Other people are paying for his wrongdoing,'' she said. "Everybody has been portraying my father as this monster. They haven't even heard his side of the story. The fact is, he was just a young soldier when this happened.''

Her father never spoke of the killings at Dos Erres, a small village near Las Cruces, and the family was shocked to hear that he had been implicated in the massacre, she said.

The Sosa family fled to California in the mid-1980s after being threatened by the government and other parties in the country's bloody civil war, according to his daughter, who wanted the name of her hometown withheld because she fears for her family's safety.

"My family started speaking out. They did not like everything that was going on. They did not support the government,'' she said. "My dad was in the military…. It just wasn't safe for us to be there.''

Federal authorities searched Sosa's Moreno Valley home in May, and they suspect he fled the country in June, Mrozek said.

He was taken into custody by the Lethbridge Regional Police on Jan. 18. Mrozek said. Returning Sosa to California could take months unless Sosa agrees to waive his right for an extradition hearing, he said.

Sosa has not decided whether to fight extradition back to the U.S., his daughter said.

Another member of the military unit, Gilberto Jordan of South Florida, was sentenced in September to 10 years in prison for unlawfully procuring his U.S. citizenship by lying about his role in the Dos Erres massacre. Pedro Pimentel-Rios of Santa Ana, identified as a third member of the military unit,, was taken into custody by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and is awaiting a deportation hearing.

Jordan reportedly admitted to federal officials that he threw a baby down a well and killed other residents of the village. According to U.S. authorities, more than 150 were killed in the massacre, but some estimates place the death toll closer to 250.

"It is regarded as one of the most atrocious atrocities during the conflict,'' said Adriana Beltran of the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights advocacy organization. "Many small children and infants were beaten against walls and trees. Many women were raped.''

The soldiers surrounded the village, preventing anyone from escaping, and searched every home for weapons. They separated the men from the women and children, then systematically started killing the villagers, according to the indictment against Sosa.

An official with the Guatemalan Embassy in Washington declined to comment about the case but said that the Guatemalan government is investigating the atrocity and has filed charges against some members of the military unit, and that judicial proceedings are pending. As an elected member of the Guatemalan Congress, Gen. Efrain Rios Montt is immune from prosecution, the official said.

In 2009, the Inter-American Court on Human Rights, the legal arm of the Organization of American States, condemned the Guatemalan government for failing to investigate the 1982 massacre and punish the soldiers responsible.

The court, which is based in Costa Rica, ordered the Guatemalan government to pay $3.2 million in reparations to those who survived and to the relatives of those killed. They also ordered the Guatemalan government to identify the officials who ordered the massacre.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-war-criminal-20110125,0,2572167,print.story

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Moscow airport bombing kills 35

The blast at an arrival hall at Domodedovo Airport serving Moscow was a suicide attack, officials say. They say they are looking for three Chechen men in connection with the attack.

by Sergei L. Loiko, Los Angeles Times

January 25, 2011

Reporting from Moscow

A suicide bomber slipped into a crowd waiting for international passengers arriving at Moscow's newest and busiest airport, setting off a huge blast that killed 35 people and highlighted another weak spot in security for global air travelers.

The attack at Domodedovo Airport illustrates how difficult it is to safeguard public areas at terminals, even as the United States and other governments engaged in a cat-and-mouse battle with would-be bombers have tightened screenings of passengers and their luggage.

In the United States, such public areas at airports are protected by a hodgepodge of security agencies. In Moscow, visitors are supposed to pass through a metal detector, but one survivor of Monday's attack said he saw no one being required to do so.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing, which also wounded about 130 people. However, Russia has suffered repeated attacks by Islamic militants from the Caucasus region. Russia has fought two wars against separatists in Chechnya and other republics there, and though the military campaign has largely ended, sporadic violence continues.

Russian officials said they were searching for three Chechen men in connection with the bombing, and added that the attack might be linked to the Dec. 31 explosion of a homemade bomb in a Moscow apartment. A woman who officials believe was being prepared to carry out a suicide attack was killed in that blast.

Domodedovo Airport, which underwent a massive renovation and expansion in the last decade, is about 25 miles southeast of central Moscow and is the largest of three airports serving the capital. In 2004, a pair of suicide bombers there were able to buy tickets illegally from airport personnel and went on to detonate explosives while aboard separate flights, killing 90 people.

Flights from Germany and Britain were among those arriving about the time of the explosion late Monday afternoon, and Russian officials said two British citizens were among the dead.

One witness said he believes he saw the bomber from the back, a man who was in the middle of about 150 people clustered in the cavernous hall awaiting passengers. He said the man was dressed in a black coat and hat, and had a suitcase at his feet.

"At that very moment when I was looking at him, he disappeared in an explosion," said the witness, 30-year-old Artyom Zhilenkov. "I think it came from the suitcase. I was standing between two columns propping up the ceiling, and that is what I think saved my life, cushioning the shock wave. People all around me were lying on the ground. A choking smoke was quickly filling up the place."

Zhilenkov, a former military officer who was meeting a friend arriving from Dusseldorf, Germany, said in a telephone interview that he ran for the exit fearing a second explosion, but then turned back to help the injured.

"The place was full of dead people, torn-off limbs, arms and legs and people who were still alive — writhing on the floor helplessly and in great pain," Zhilenkov said. He said he and another uninjured man put a woman whose leg was nearly severed onto a luggage cart.

"She was screaming in agony all the time we were rolling the cart to the exit. We left her outside where she could at least get some fresh air and ran back," he said, adding that he then helped another man whose leg had been severed.

The bomb was packed "full of metal pieces" and had the force of between 15 and 22 pounds of TNT, a source in the Russian Investigation Committee told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency. Grainy cellphone pictures showed bodies piled up in the smoky hall.

Another witness described hearing what seemed like fireworks followed by chaos.

"I was sitting near a cafe reading a newspaper when I heard a sound of an explosion as if a fireworks was going off, which seemed very strange to me given that it is an airport," Sergei Glukhov said in a telephone interview.

"Then people began screaming and running and I saw a man who was wiping blood pouring from his head over his eyes with one hand and trying to make a telephone call with the other," said Glukhov, who was waiting for his brother to arrive from Munich.

The hall was equipped with a metal detector to screen visitors coming to meet passengers, Zhilenkov said, but no one seemed to be using it.

"Neither did I, and nobody said a word to me," he said.

U.S. officials said they had not increased security at domestic airports, which have been on alert since an attempt to blow up two U.S.-bound cargo planes in October. An offshoot of Al Qaeda operating on the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for that plot.

Heightened security procedures in place since then include "unpredictable security measures" such as checking bags at random for traces of explosives and using bomb-sniffing dogs, "including before the checkpoint," said Kristin Lee, a spokeswoman with the Transportation Security Administration.

Access to ticketing and baggage claim areas typically doesn't require passing through a checkpoint or showing identification. The Moscow bombing "shows how vulnerable these targets are," said Rick Nelson, director of the homeland security and counter-terrorism program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

It would be safest to search everyone who enters a public area, said Nelson, but that's not realistic. "More can always be done, but you have to weigh the cost in terms of dollars and civil liberties."

President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton condemned the attack. "The United States remains ready to support the Russian government as it seeks to bring these perpetrators to justice," Clinton said in a statement.

Russia President Dmitry Medvedev ordered special security measures at airports and other transportation centers. Domodedovo reopened a couple of hours after the explosion, but increased security resulted in huge crowds of people at the entrances, where they were searched extensively.

"We need to get to the bottom of this," Medvedev said. "The main thing is to render assistance and support to the victims."

One lawmaker lashed out at the government, saying it was reacting rather than systematically working to address the root causes of terrorism. The last major attack in Moscow was in March, when a double bombing on the Moscow metro system killed about 40 people and left dozens injured. That attack was traced to remote villages in Dagestan, another of the Caucasus republics.

"We can try to turn every airport, every school, every train, subway station and a shop into a special regime emergency zone, but this won't help … because it is impossible to live in a besieged fortress all the time," said Gennady Gudkov, deputy chairman of the lower house of parliament's Security Committee. "What we should do and what has not been done properly is combat corruption, lawlessness, humiliation of our citizens and lack of fair, unbiased justice, especially in the Caucasus."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-moscow-blast-20110125,0,5057992,print.story

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Researcher projects 5,000 will die in Ciudad Juarez in 2011

An artificial-intelligence model generated by a university researcher in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, projects that 5,000 people will be killed in the violent border city this year. The same model projected at the start of 2010 that 3,000 would be killed in the greater Juarez area, a figure that eventually reached 3,111 -- about a 94% accuracy rate.

It may seem far-fetched to make such long-term projections on a fluid criminal conflict such as the drug war in Juarez. Researcher Alberto Ochoa, in an interview with La Plaza on Monday, said his model is based on methods that mimic biology-based, or "bioinspired," patterns. Barring a "radical change" in Ciudad Juarez -- where the Juarez and Sinaloa cartels are battling over the drug-trafficking route across the U.S. border into El Paso, Texas -- his projection foresees a figure of roughly 5,000 dead.

"This technique is nothing new," Ochoa said from the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez, where he is a researcher at the Center for Social Investigations. "It's not the most accurate model but it is based heavily on reality."

"It's not Excel," the researcher added, referring to the commonly used software program. "The model has to be fed, values have to be adjusted. It's complicated."

By differing measures, Juarez ranks as the most violent city in Mexico, most violent in the Western Hemisphere, or even the most violent in the world, the local newspaper El Diario reported earlier this month (link in Spanish). Juarez, with a current population of 1.3 million, has lost more than 230,000 residents in an "exodus" from the daily barrage of drug-related killings, kidnappings and extortion operations.

"And no one does nothing," Ochoa said. "It's going to get worse."

The 3,111 figure of deaths in Juarez in 2010 is used among local news outlets, citing figures from the Juarez morgue, and includes homicides in the greater Juarez area. Within Juarez city limits, the federal government's recently released homicide database says 2,738 people died there in 2010.

On Sunday in Juarez, gunmen opened fire on a group of young people playing soccer at a new government-built field, killing seven, authorities said.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2011/01/juarez-model-deaths-2011-artificial-intelligence-drug-war

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Not guilty plea is entered for Jared Loughner in Tucson attacks

The suspect smiles through a court appearance in which he is arraigned on charges that he tried to assassinate Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and two of her aides in the shooting rampage that killed six.

by Nicholas Riccardi, Los Angeles Times

January 25, 2011

Reporting from Phoenix

His hands and feet shackled, Jared Lee Loughner on Monday shuffled into the special proceedings courtroom in the federal courthouse here to answer charges that he tried to assassinate U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords during a shooting rampage that killed six.

He was beaming.

Loughner, 22, continued to flash an uncanny, self-satisfied grin throughout the otherwise routine nine-minute arraignment. He sat down and leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs. He glanced at the domed room, normally used for naturalization ceremonies or other special events, and his smile got even broader. His attorney, Judy Clarke, whispered something to him. Loughner chortled.

Clarke asked U.S. District Court Judge Larry A. Burns to enter a plea for her client. Burns recorded Loughner as pleading not guilty. Loughner stared straight ahead and kept smiling.

A grand jury had indicted Loughner in the Jan. 8 shooting of Giffords and two of her aides at a Tucson shopping center. More charges are expected in the slayings of Gabriel Zimmerman, a Giffords staffer, and John M. Roll, the presiding judge of the federal courthouse in Tucson. Those charges could make Loughner eligible for the death penalty if he is convicted.

Monday's hearing was Loughner's second court appearance since the attack. In a mug shot released on the day of his prior appearance, he sported a shaved head and deep smile. Some of his hair has grown back since then. On Monday he wore glasses, an orange jumpsuit and canvas sneakers.

All Arizona judges have recused themselves from the case, so it is being heard by Judge Burns of San Diego. Legal observers expect the case to pivot on an insanity defense. Loughner left behind a trail of disjointed writings, and numerous friends and acquaintances have said they thought he was mentally unstable.

Burns asked Clarke if her client's state of mind enabled him to understand the charges and her job representing him. "We are not raising that issue at this time," said Clarke, a veteran capital-defense attorney who also represented Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski and Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph. Both escaped death and are serving life sentences.

Clarke said she did not object to a motion by federal prosecutors to move later hearings back to Tucson, although legal observers expect her to eventually try to have the trial moved out of state. Prosecutors said they have turned over to Clarke 45 discs worth of material taken from Loughner's computer and 250 interviews with witnesses.

Then Burns adjourned the hearing, and U.S. marshals led Loughner back to his cell.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-jared-loughner-20110125,0,6633056,print.story

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From the New York Times

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By Nature, Airports Have Risks

How do you fully secure something as big and sprawling as an international airport against a terrorist bombing like the one on Monday at Domodedovo Airport in Moscow?

You cannot, security experts I spoke with on Monday say. Airports are by definition public places requiring relatively free access.

The experts have long contended that serious holes in security at airports have been neglected while most of the effort and money goes into looking for weapons on passengers at checkpoints.

But they have also warned that a sensational incident in one place can lead to widespread overreaction and demands for quick fixes.

“It always does,” said Bruce Schneier, a security technology consultant and author who has long argued that there is no such thing as perfect security, and that pretending otherwise is foolish.

Douglas R. Laird, a former Secret Service agent and onetime head of security for Northwest Airlines who now operates an aviation security consulting firm, Laird & Associates, made much the same case.

“At some point, it needs to be made clear that nothing is 100 percent secure,” he said. “With airports, if you were to build a new terminal from scratch, sure, you could do a better job of anticipating certain security issues.

“But still, we're talking about public areas,” he said. “It doesn't matter if it's an airline terminal, a train station or the front of Macy's — as long as you have free access, you're going to have these potential issues.”

One measure already in place that could address threats like the terrorist attack in the Moscow terminal is what the Transportation Security Administration in the United States refers to as a behavioral detection officer program. In the program, plainclothes officers trained in what the agency calls “nonintrusive behavior observation and analysis” mingle with crowds, looking for signs of potential trouble in physical behavior.

The T.S.A. has more than 3,000 behavioral detection officers at 161 of the 450 or so commercial airports in the United States. Usually, they work near checkpoints, but they are also elsewhere in airport terminals.

A spokesman for the agency, Greg Soule, said passengers may notice “unpredictable security measures in all areas of U.S. airports, including before the checkpoint.” He said the T.S.A. was monitoring reports from Moscow and sharing information with international agencies.

Christopher Bidwell, the vice president for security at Airports Council International North America, which represents domestic airports, said airports had regularly assigned local law officers to augment the T.S.A. undercover officers and federal air marshals in terminals.

After the Moscow attack, travelers in the United States will quickly see an increase in random security checks “above and beyond the baseline measures currently in place,” he said, including checks in public areas like baggage claim and ticketing.

Airport terminals operate in two zones, the already secure areas and the public areas. As many news reports since the 2001 terrorist attacks have shown, there are problems even in the secure areas, with poorly supervised access points, as well as inadequate credentialing and monitoring of some airport employees and delivery people.

In the public areas, experts say, behavioral detection can be useful as part of a protection program that also includes sophisticated intelligence gathering.

For most airports, adding physical security to public spaces is as much an engineering issue as a procedural one, as Mr. Laird pointed out. In places like India, where air travel is growing rapidly and many airports are being built or expanded, new designs allow for stricter access to terminals. Often, people without tickets or reservations are diverted from main terminals.

But Joe Brancatelli, the publisher of JoeSentMe.com, a site for business travelers, said, “They've merely pushed back the perimeters.” People still have to come to the airport, he said.

While technology for detecting explosives is being improved, the main defense is vigilance, despite its limitations. Behavioral detection is a part of the highly regarded Israeli aviation security system, for example, though the Israeli process is time-consuming and perhaps more invasive than would be acceptable in the United States, where more than 1.5 million people a day pass through the T.S.A. checkpoints.

Behavioral profiling is “a good idea, assuming it's done right,” said Mr. Schneier, who nevertheless has serious reservations about how it is being done here. “You can go around looking for people who look suspicious, which works great if you actually know what suspicious looks like, rather than just deciding, this guy dresses funny and his food doesn't smell right.”

Mr. Laird, who retired from the Secret Service in 1989 to become the global head of security at Northwest Airlines, agreed that a cadre of trained behavioral detection officers can add a layer of security in a place like an airline terminal. But he said the quality of training needed to be emphasized as well as the great difficulty of securing any big public place against terrorists, who can simply choose another site.

“Nothing in public is ever going to be anything near 100 percent secure in a free society,” he said. On the other hand, he said, “good, well-trained cops are a little like good lifeguards. You need to have the ability, but what you look for is: what stands out here?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/business/25road.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1295964058-Wx6srD934n5tg0C2DCVjZg&pagewanted=print

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Unusual Wave of Violence Strikes Police Officers

MIAMI — As thousands of law enforcement officers gathered inside the American Airlines Arena here Monday morning for a funeral for two slain Miami-Dade police officers, news quickly spread that two more officers had been shot and killed a few hours earlier — this time in St. Petersburg, Fla.

It was an eerie repeat of the police shootings last Thursday in Miami. In both cases, officers were killed as they tried to serve an arrest warrant.

“This is a chief's worst nightmare,” said St. Petersburg's police chief, Chuck Harmon. “To lose two officers in one day is a tremendous loss to our department and our community.”

The Florida shootings are part of a wave of violence that law enforcement officials called highly unusual. Thirteen officers have been shot in the United States since Thursday, four fatally and several others critically wounded.

“It's unbelievable,” said Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a research group in Washington. “I can't remember this many shootings happening in such a short period of time.”

Already this year, 10 police officers have been killed in the line of duty, after an especially deadly year for law enforcement. In 2010, 61 federal, state and local officers were killed by gunfire, a 24 percent increase from 2009, when 49 were killed in the line of duty, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, a nonprofit group.

“It's a very troubling trend where officers are being put at greater risk than ever before,” said Craig W. Floyd, the group's chairman. “Many of these criminals are outgunning our police officers. We're seeing criminals with high-velocity clips on their guns.”

The police shootings come at a time when violent-crime rates are down markedly in most American cities.

One possible explanation for the spike in shootings is that many police departments increased their emphasis on executing arrest warrants against repeat violent offenders.

Mr. Wexler and several senior police officials said they also believed that the shootings reflected a broader lack of respect for authority in American society.

“This has become less of a horrific event to some,” said Jody Weis, superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, where five officers were shot and killed between June and December of last year, one of them while on duty. “Unfortunately, we have a lot of young men who are willing to shoot first.”

In St. Petersburg, the two slain men were identified as Sgt. Thomas J. Baitinger, 48, and Officer Jeffrey A. Yaslowitz, 39, both at least 10-year veterans. Officer Yaslowitz, who was married with three children, had finished his regular shift and was heading home when he responded to a call for backup. Sergeant Baitinger, who was married, was part of the backup team. Although he was wearing a bulletproof vest, Sergeant Baitinger was mortally wounded by a shot fired through the floor of the attic that hit an unprotected area, the police said.

Shortly before 7 a.m. Monday, a St. Petersburg officer and a United States Marshal's deputy, both of whom were members of a fugitive task force, arrived at a home in south St. Petersburg to serve a felony arrest warrant for aggravated battery to the suspect, Hydra Lacy Jr., 39. Mr. Lacy was a known sex offender, court records show. “He was someone we wanted to get off the streets,” Chief Harmon said. “And after today obviously you can see why.”

A woman at the house told the police that Mr. Lacy was hiding in the attic. After the police called for backup, one officer and the deputy marshal were shot in a gun battle. Not long afterward, another police officer who tried to rescue the injured deputy was shot and killed, the police said. In all, more than 100 bullets were exchanged between officers from a police SWAT team and the suspect, the authorities said.

The deputy marshal was listed in stable condition Monday.

By Monday afternoon, the police confirmed that they had found Mr. Lacy's body in the house. It was unclear whether he had shot himself or was killed in the gun battle.

Mr. Lacy was sentenced in Pinellas County, Fla., to 15 years for sexual battery with a weapon or force, and five years for false imprisonment and aggravated child abuse of a victim younger than 13, state criminal records show. He was released from state prison in 2001.

Mr. Lacy was the brother of Jeff Lacy, a former International Boxing Federation super-middleweight champion.

In south St. Petersburg, a resident who described himself as a friend of Mr. Lacy but who declined to give his name said that Mr. Lacy had recently told him the police were searching for him, but that he had vowed he would never return to prison.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/us/25shootings.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Tucson Attack Reawakens Pain From Virginia Tech

BLACKSBURG, Va. — In the parlance of trauma, Jerzy Nowak considers himself a “secondary victim.” His wife, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak , a French teacher, was one of the 32 people killed at Virginia Tech here on April 16, 2007, by a crazed gunman who then killed himself in the worst campus shooting in American history.

The effects of that massacre linger, and they reverberate anew every time another gunman goes on another rampage, as one did this month in Tucson.

Mental health experts say it generally takes two to five years for secondary victims — loved ones and survivors of such traumatic events — to “come to terms with new realities” and “reconstruct a new life.” Mr. Nowak, 64, is nearing his fourth year, and he still does not use the word “recovery.”

“You never recover,” he said sadly the other day, in a thick Polish accent. “This is a myth. You just learn to live. Or adapt. This is a big word, ‘recovery.' ”

The traditional stages of grief are achingly familiar by now, but like Tolstoy's unhappy families, each secondary victim and survivor travels involuntarily through those stages in his or her own way. Mr. Nowak agreed to talk about his experience in the hope that doing so might provide some solace and guidance for families and survivors in Tucson.

He grew up on a subsistence farm in communist Poland, and rose to become chairman of Virginia Tech's department of horticulture. After the shootings, he helped found the university's Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention, which was dedicated in 2008, and became its director.

His office is literally at the scene of the crime, or the major scene: in Norris Hall, the stone academic building where Seung-Hui Cho, a senior at Virginia Tech, slaughtered 30 people (he had already killed two others in a dormitory). In the second-floor classroom adjacent to Mr. Nowak's new office, Mr. Cho killed Ms. Couture-Nowak, a French Canadian who was 49, and 11 students, wounding six others during their French class. The carnage blocked the police from opening the door.

“It was very likely my wife was killed somewhere in this spot,” Mr. Nowak said, looking down at the floor through the classroom door.

“It was very hard for me to come here” at first, he said. “I would come on soft knees” — he thought his knees would give way. Now he no longer relives what he calls “the tragedy,” but he often revisits it.

Planning the nonviolence center and transforming what he described as an “old, cold-war classroom” into a modern, light-filled space helped keep him distracted and busy.

Mr. Nowak was across campus on the day of the shooting and was not really sure where his wife was. Calls to her cellphone went unanswered. (The police would later report the haunting sound of cellphones ringing inside body bags as the dead were carried out.) She missed picking up their 12-year-old daughter, Sylvie, from school. At 12:30 a.m., about 15 hours after Ms. Couture-Nowak was killed, two university officials arrived at the Nowak house. The family had just moved there six weeks before, and Ms. Couture-Nowak, a charismatic woman who loved to cook, had been enjoying her new kitchen appliances and planning a garden. The officials confirmed Mr. Nowak's worst fear.

Later, he woke up Sylvie, embraced her and whispered the grim news in her ear. After a while, she told her father that there was a boy in her class whose mother had died of cancer two years before and that he was O.K.

This father and daughter were starting fresh with each other; Ms. Couture-Nowak had been the glue holding the family together.

“There were just the two of us now, and we hardly knew each other,” Mr. Nowak said. “So we had to build a relationship, and it was hard on both of us.”

The first few days were overwhelming. His phone company proved a particular annoyance. The voice-mail box at home was full, but he could not remember the access code (Ms. Couture-Nowak, who managed the household and finances, was also the keeper of the codes), and it was a frustrating ordeal to retrieve it. The company also charged him for her cellphone for a few months after she was killed, but eventually sent a refund.

On the first day, they had 100 visitors. On the second day, he said, he finally fell apart as he pondered what lay ahead. In the near term, he had to decide whether Ms. Couture-Nowak should be cremated, which they had never discussed, and how to keep what he called “snooping journalists” away. In the long term, he worried about raising a daughter alone and keeping his job and whether, without his wife's income, he would have to sell their new house.

As family members began arriving from Canada — the Red Cross provided shuttle service from the airport — they helped with answering the phone, doing household chores and handling the news media.

More than 700 people came to the funeral, including a woman whom Mr. Nowak hardly knew. She began hovering in the Nowak house for 10 to 12 hours a day and sat in the family section at the funeral, though she was not a relative. She turned out to be a stalker. One day, while Mr. Nowak was cleaning the kitchen floor, the woman declared her love for him. He reported her to the police, then wrote to her, asking her to stay away, which she did.

At work, Mr. Nowak became stressed, having to manage his department at a time of budget cuts and collective mourning. He initially lost weight, but later gained it back — so much, in fact, that his wedding ring cut into his finger and he no longer wears it.

Ms. Couture-Nowak was a triathlete, and when her family came for the funeral, they brought a videotape of her winning a race in Nova Scotia. Sylvie told her father she wanted to train for a triathlon, too, and a few months later, she won her first meet for her age group, which was then 13. “When she crossed the line, she said, ‘Dad, I wish Mom could see me,' ” he said, tears in his eyes at the recollection.

His daughter still has recurring nightmares, he said, in which her mother is dying in front of her. “Having to imagine it may be worse than actually seeing it,” Mr. Nowak said. He said that in his dreams, he constantly reassures his wife that she does not need to worry about him and Sylvie. In these dreams, his wife never speaks.

One development he did not expect was the support on campus for gun rights. The owner of the online company that sold Mr. Cho one of the guns he used spoke at Virginia Tech (university officials allowed it, but denounced his “insensitivity”) and offered discounts to students, saying they needed to protect themselves. In addition, some students advocated on behalf of concealed-carry laws. Mr. Nowak said they bullied students who had joined a nonviolence club. “We lost half the members of the nonviolence club because they were afraid,” he said.

When he heard about Tucson, he thought, “Oh, no, not again.”

“It's hard for me to comprehend that someone who is mentally ill is not treated and is ignored by his peers and can buy guns,” he said. “This is not an individual right; this is an individual crime.”

The right, he said, is to safety.

Mr. Nowak works with at-risk youths, as he always has, and Sylvie now has her driver's license, but the past is hard to escape. They still receive calls and cards on Ms. Couture-Nowak's birthday and on the anniversary of the shootings. There are memorial services every year, lectures, dedications, tributes during football games, all drawing them back. A foundation for victims and survivors is seeking approval for a Virginia license plate that would say “In Remembrance, April 16, 2007.”

“I have to ask not to receive these cards,” Mr. Nowak said. “My daughter says: ‘Why are they doing this to us, Dad? When will this be over? Why don't they let us live?' ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/us/25vatech.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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States Help Ex-Inmates Find Jobs

Faced with yawning budget gaps and high unemployment, California, Michigan, New York and several other states are attacking both problems with a surprising strategy: helping ex-convicts find jobs to keep them from ending up back in prison.

The approach is backed by prisoner advocates as well as liberal and conservative government officials, who say it pays off in cold, hard numbers. Michigan, for example, spends $35,000 a year to keep someone in prison — more than the cost of educating a University of Michigan student. Through vigorous job placement programs and prudent use of parole, state officials say they have cut the prison population by 7,500, or about 15 percent, over the last four years, yielding more than $200 million in annual savings. Michigan spends $56 million a year on various re-entry programs, including substance abuse treatment and job training.

“We had a $2 billion prison budget, and if you look at the costs saved by not having the system the size it was, we save a lot of money,” said Patricia Caruso, who was Michigan's corrections commissioner from 2003 through 2010. “If we spend some of that $2 billion on something else — like re-entry programs — and that results in success, that's a better approach.”

All told, the 50 states and the federal government spend $69 billion a year to house two million prisoners, prompting many budget cutters to see billions in potential savings by trimming the prison population. Each year, more than 600,000 inmates are released nationwide, but studies show that two-thirds are re-arrested within three years.

“An exorbitant amount of money is dedicated to incarcerating people,” said Nancy La Vigne, director of the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute. “There are ways you can go about reducing the number of people incarcerated. The best way to help them successfully integrate into society and become independent, law-abiding citizens is to make sure they get a job.”

Pushed by faith-based organizations and helped by federal stimulus money, California, Michigan, New York and other states expanded jobs programs in recent years to give prisoners a second chance and to reduce recidivism. The nation's overall jobless rate is 9.4 percent, but various studies have found unemployment rates of 50 percent or higher for former prisoners nine months or a year after their release.

Many states remain enthusiastic about the re-entry programs, but in a few states facing deficits, like Kansas, officials are cutting them back, partly because of the curtailment of federal stimulus dollars that helped finance them.

“There's a lot of national momentum to expand strategies to reduce recidivism, and a lot of that is focusing on connecting people to jobs,” said Michael Thompson, director of the Council of State Governments Justice Center, a research organization for state policy makers. “At the same time, some states that want to accomplish those goals are concerned about cutting money where they can and are putting some of these programs on the chopping block.”

Brian Vork, executive director of 70 Times 7 Life Recovery, a faith-based nonprofit in Holland, Mich., that helped place 60 former prisoners into jobs last year, said he had seen firsthand what a difference a job can make. His organization, whose name refers to a biblical passage in which Jesus speaks of how many times to forgive sinners, has set up a construction company — part apprenticeship program, part life-skills mentor — that allows him to size up the offenders who participate.

“You get some people who really want to change, and then you get some people who want all the bad things to stop happening to them regardless of their behavior,” Mr. Vork said. “What makes it all worthwhile is when you see the light bulb go off in some people.”

Take Robert Satterfield, 46, who spent five and a half years in prison on embezzlement and other charges. After being released, he spent several fruitless months searching for work and then turned to 70 Times 7 for guidance and training. Mr. Vork recommended him to Premier Finishing, a metalworking company with 16 employees.

Premier's owner, Andy Ribbens, said the six former inmates working for him were among his best employees. “These guys will do whatever it takes,” he said. “Maybe they had their come-to-Jesus moment in prison: ‘If I ever get out of here, I don't want to ever go back.' Their attitude is second to none, although it's not every ex-offender.”

Mr. Satterfield is grateful for his second chance. He has received several raises since being hired 16 months ago, with his pay jumping to $13 an hour from $9.

“I feel blessed that this company is willing to give me a chance,” he said. “I'm giving back now. I'm part of the taxpaying rolls. I don't like paying taxes, but I prefer that to being on food stamps.”

In New York, the state and city are channeling money to groups like America Works and the Center for Employment Opportunities to train and place offenders, while Illinois is sending money to the Safer Foundation in Chicago.

Assisted by federal stimulus funds, several states have provided employers with wage subsidies — up to $2,500 in New York's case — if they hire an offender for at least six months.

With 170,000 inmates, California is under orders from a federal judge to reduce its prison population by about 25,000 because of severe overcrowding. That has many Californians worried that a flood of newly released inmates will cause crime to spike.

Jerry Brown, the governor of California, has proposed expanding county job-placement programs for former inmates as part of a broader move to shift more state prisoners to county jails.

Meanwhile, federal support is drying up. Three years ago, under President George W. Bush, Congress passed the Second Chance Act in a bipartisan vote. It gave states money for re-entry programs, including $100 million in the year that ended last September. While no federal budget has yet been passed for this fiscal year, the Senate Appropriations Committee has voted to cut funding to $50 million.

“The reality is many of these programs are disappearing,” said Joan Petersilia, a Stanford law professor and an adviser to Mr. Brown on criminal justice matters.

While state officials and prisoner advocates argue that these job programs for prisoners are worth the investment, the efforts sometimes face angry resistance.

“We often hear, why on earth should we want to help these guys, and where is the help for my son and daughter who haven't done anything wrong?” said Pat Nolan, a former Republican leader of the California State Assembly who served prison time for taking bribes and is now vice president of the Prison Fellowship, a Christian ministry to prisoners. “I don't think there should be a preference for someone with a record, but there shouldn't be a permanent black mark against them either, unless we want to condemn them to life on the margins of society and elicit the behavior that leads to.”

Glenn E. Martin, vice president with the Fortune Society, a Manhattan group that helps offenders find jobs, said that persistently high unemployment had made placing former inmates even more challenging. “You have many more people in the labor market who are overqualified, and that makes it much more competitive for our people,” he said.

Candice Ellison, 22, a New Yorker who spent two and a half years in prison for assault, has applied for scores of jobs in the last six months, to no avail. She has turned to the Fortune Society, and it has helped her buy interview clothes and coached her on how to discuss her conviction with prospective employers.

“Some of my high school friends say it's not that hard to get a job, but for people like me with a criminal background, it's like 20 times harder,” she said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/business/25offender.html?adxnnl=1&ref=us&adxnnlx=1295964707-kH79Q8msaN9B5OELlupfLg&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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Detroit precinct shooter suspected in girl's kidnapping

Attack came after 13-year-old reported assault

by GINA DAMRON, M.L. ELRICK and ELISHA ANDERSON

Detroit Free Press Staff Writers

Lamar D. Moore calmly walked into the Detroit Police Department's Northwestern District station just after shift change Sunday afternoon, when few officers were in the building, and approached the front desk while concealing a pistol-grip shotgun.

Details emerged Monday night that may explain what first appeared to be an unprovoked attack.

Moore had been implicated in the kidnapping and sexual assault of a runaway teenage girl, according to an official familiar with the investigation.

She escaped Sunday afternoon from Moore's house on Sorrento, sought help and police were called, according to the official, who said it was after this that Moore shot up the station.

Struck were Cmdr. Brian Davis, who was working Sunday to get briefed on an earlier nightclub shooting; Sgts. Ray Saati and Carrie Schulz, and Officer David Anderson. All four survived. Two still were hospitalized Monday.

During the ambush, officers at the station returned fire, killing Moore.

A lot of questions remained but one thing seemed certain, a source said: Moore couldn't have expected to win the gunfight.

He walked in with only a few rounds.

Gunman's home was raided

As four Detroit police officers who were shot inside a district station Sunday recovered Monday, information was surfacing about the gunman who ambushed them.

Lamar D. Moore, 38, was shot and killed by police after he opened fire in the Detroit Police Department's Northwestern District.

Cmdr. Brian Davis and Officer David Anderson are in stable condition at Sinai-Grace Hospital and Sgts. Ray Saati and Carrie Schulz, who was struck in her bulletproof vest, were treated and released.

"The perpetrator's intent was evil," Detroit Police Chief Ralph Godbee Jr. said after watching security video of the shooting.

Godbee said the officers acted heroically.

"In a split second, their lives changed," he said.

Though police have given no motive for his actions, new information about Moore has surfaced.

According to an official familiar with the investigation, Moore was implicated in kidnapping and sexually assaulting a runaway teen. According to the official, Moore shot up the station Sunday after the girl left his home to get help that afternoon.

Police, who raided Moore's home because of the sex crime investigation -- and independently of the shooting -- later made the connection between the two, the official said.

A police spokeswoman could not be reached for comment Monday night.

According to court records, Moore attended a court hearing last Tuesday where he was ordered to pay $57 a month for child support and health care for a 4-year-old son. Court records say Moore was self-employed.

People who answered the door at the home of Stephanie Freeman, who sued Moore for child support, declined to comment Monday afternoon.

According to a Detroit police official, Moore was arrested in 2010 on a misdemeanor drug charge.

And before that, in November 1996, he had a run-in with Dearborn police when he was stopped near an Amtrak station and charged with obstruction. Two weeks later, he pleaded guilty to resisting and obstructing police and paid a $300 fine.

Then, six years later, he was charged with three felony drug charges in Navajo County, Ariz., where he pleaded guilty to attempted transportation of marijuana for sale and spent six months in the county jail, according to court records.

Godbee said at a news conference Monday that he couldn't speculate as to the motive for the attack. He did say that one of Moore's relatives -- confirmed by the Free Press to be Venson R. Hibbit -- was being sentenced Monday on murder charges.

Reached by phone Monday, Moore's grandmother told the Free Press she has no idea why her grandson might have shot up the police district.

Another relative, whose relation to Moore is unclear, said Moore was a good person and that she and her children were "all he had."

"It's shocking that anything like this occurred," the woman, whose name is not known, said, adding she didn't know the circumstances of the shooting. "I don't know what happened, I don't know what they did and I don't know what he did."

Outside a home on Roselawn Monday, John Sellers said his brother, who died two years ago of cancer, was friends with Moore. He said Moore used to have his mail sent to the Roselawn home and, at one point, lived in the house. The most recent mail he received for Moore, Sellers said, was his driver's license.

Sellers said he knew Moore well and he always "seemed like a friendly, happy-go-lucky guy."

He said Moore worked as a handyman with his brother at one point and said Moore has children.

In describing Moore, Sellers said he "always had a smile on his face."

According to officials familiar with the investigation, Moore entered the district Sunday with a calm demeanor, passing officers leaving the building as he approached the front door.

Inside, Cmdr. Brian Davis was reportedly working so he could be briefed on the non-fatal shootings of five people at a strip club over the weekend, according to an official familiar with the investigation.

Davis was standing next to Saati at the front desk when Moore came in and began shooting. Schulz was hit in her bulletproof vest and Anderson and Saati were both grazed by shots.

Moore leaped over the tall front desk, standing within feet of Davis, who returned fireuntil he was hit in the hand, dropped his gun and turned to get away, being struck in the back, the source said.

Officers shot and killed Moore.

Godbee said security changes will be made throughout the city's precincts and districts, but he wouldn't talk about specifics, saying it would defeat the purpose of the changes. He did say some things will be visible while others will not.

Ilitch Holdings offered police 12 handheld metal detectors, which the department intends to use, Godbee said.

At the time of the shooting, the station had access via a revolving door and two traditional glass doors. Officers sit behind the 5-foot-high front desk. There was no bulletproof glass or metal detectors prior to the shooting, according to an employee in the building.

It appeared a metal detector had been installed at the district Monday, when the building reopened to the public about 4 p.m. Police spokeswoman Sgt. Eren Stephens didn't confirm the metal detector, but said security measures had been added.

Godbee said counseling will be provided for every officer who wants it, with special attention given to those in the 6th and 8th Precincts, which are housed in the northwestern district building.

"We've got some heavy lifting to do," he said.

Once the investigation into the shooting is complete, members of the Detroit City Council said Monday, they plan to pursue security options at all the police precincts and districts. But they warned against drastic steps that would hinder the public's access to police.

"Precincts are community centers; we want the community to come in and out of them," said Council President Pro Tem Gary Brown, a former deputy police chief with the city. "We have to be careful we don't disconnect from the community.

"With that said, we are obligated to protect our police officers who put their lives on the line every day."

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artikkel?Avis=C4&Dato=20110125&Kategori=NEWS01&Lopenr=101250413&Ref=AR&template=fullarticle

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From the Department of Homeland Security

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The Department of Homeland Security's Commitment to Military Families

Secret Service Site Security Training Gains a High-Tech Edge

Chemical releases, suicide bombers, air and subsurface threats:  the U.S. Secret Service needs to be prepared to handle these real-life incidents.  Training to respond to such incidents, however, has been more theoretical than practical. Now, with the help from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science & Technology Directorate (S&T), the Secret Service is giving training scenarios a high-tech edge:  moving from static tabletop models to virtual kiosks with gaming technology and 3D modeling.

For the past 40 years, a miniature model environment called “Tiny Town” has been one of the methods used to teach Secret Service agents and officers how to prepare a site security plan. The model includes different sites -- an airport, outdoor stadium, urban rally site and a hotel interior -- and uses scaled models of buildings, cars and security assets. The scenario-based training allows students to illustrate a dignitary's entire itinerary and accommodate unrelated, concurrent activities in a public venue.  Various elements of a visit are covered, such as an arrival, rope line or public remarks.  The class works as a whole and in small groups to develop and present their security plan. 

Enter videogame technology.  The Secret Service's James J. Rowley Training Center near Washington, D.C., sought to take these scenarios beyond a static environment to encompass the dynamic threat spectrum that exists today, while taking full advantage of the latest computer software technology.  The agency's Security and Incident Modeling Lab wanted to update Tiny Town and create a more relevant and flexible training tool. 

• 3D models and game-based virtual environments
• Simulated chemical plume dispersion for making and assessing decisions
• A touch interface to foster collaborative, interactive involvement by student teams
• A means to devise, configure, and test a security plan that is simple, engaging, and flexible
• Both third- and first-person viewing perspectives for overhead site evaluation and for a virtual “walk-through” of the site, reflecting how it would be performed in the field.

The new technology consists of three kiosks, each composed of a 55” Perceptive Pixel touch screen with an attached projector and camera, and a computer running Virtual Battle Space (VBS2) as the base simulation game. The kiosks can accommodate a team of up to four students, and each kiosk's synthetic environment, along with the team's crafted site security plan, can be displayed on a large wall-mounted LED 3D TV monitor for conducting class briefings and demonstrating simulated security challenges.

In addition to training new recruits, SSPT can also provide in-service protective details with advanced training on a range of scenarios, including preparation against chemical, biological or radiological attacks, armed assaults, suicide bombers and other threats.

Future enhancements to SSPT will include modeling the resulting health effects and crowd behaviors of a chemical, radiological or biological attack, to better prepare personnel for a more comprehensive array of scenarios and the necessary life-saving actions required to protect dignitaries and the public alike.

The Site Security Planning Tool development is expected to be completed and activated by spring 2011.

http://www.dhs.gov/files/programs/gc_1295637658955.shtm

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From the Department of Justice Justice

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Department Releases Proposed Rule in Accordance with the Prison Rape Elimination Act Proposed Regulation Contains Four Sets of Standards Aimed at Combating Sexual Abuse in Prisons

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department today released a proposed rule that aims to prevent and respond to sexual abuse in incarceration settings, in accordance with the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). Based on recommendations of the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission (NPREC), the proposed rule contains four sets of national standards aimed at combating sexual abuse in four types of confinement facilities: adult prisons and jails, juvenile facilities, lockups and community confinement facilities.

A 60-day public comment period will follow publication in the Federal Register, after which the department will make revisions as warranted and the standards will be published as a final rule. The department expects the final rule will be published by the end of the year.

“Sexual abuse is a crime, not punishment for a crime,” said Attorney General Eric Holder. “The Department of Justice's goal is to eliminate these acts of violence by taking deliberative and concrete steps to ensure the health and safety of prisoners. In crafting our proposed rule, we have aimed to build a durable set of standards that are attainable, effective and consistent with the Prison Rape Elimination Act's requirements and goals."

In developing the proposed rule, the department convened listening sessions with key stakeholders, performed an extensive analysis of the anticipated costs and benefits of the standards, and reviewed more than 650 comments that were submitted in response to an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. The standards are based on recommendations by the NPREC, which was created by PREA to study sexual abuse in confinement settings and disbanded in 2009 after issuing its final report, which included recommended standards. The department's revisions aim to make the standards more effective, clarify the responsibilities imposed on correctional agencies, and comply with relevant law, including PREA's requirement that the new standards not “impose substantial additional costs compared to the costs presently expended by federal, state and local prison authorities.” In addition, the department attempted to ensure that correctional agencies will be able to implement these standards without jeopardizing other programs vital to protecting inmates and ensuring their eventual reintegration into society.

The standards seek to prevent sexual abuse and to reduce the harm that it causes when it occurs. Each of the four sets of standards consists of 11 categories: prevention planning; responsive planning; training and education; screening for risk of sexual victimization and abusiveness; reporting; official response following an inmate report; investigations; discipline; medical and mental care; data collection and review; and audits.

Among other things, the proposed standards would require correctional agencies to: 

• Ban cross-gender strip searches, and for juveniles, cross-gender pat-down searches;
• Check the backgrounds of new hires and not hire past abusers;
• Establish an evidence protocol to preserve evidence following an incident and train investigators to act promptly and diligently;
• Screen inmates through a process that takes into account their safety and assign them to housing in a way that best protects them;
• Provide multiple methods to report sexual abuse;
• Provide inmates access to outside victim advocates for emotional support services related to sexual abuse;
• Provide appropriate medical and mental health care to victims;
• Prepare a written policy mandating zero tolerance toward all forms of sexual abuse and sexual harassment;
• Discipline staff and inmate assailants appropriately, with termination as the presumptive disciplinary sanction for staff who have engaged in sexual touching;
• Train employees on their responsibilities in preventing, recognizing and responding to sexual abuse;
• Allow inmates a reasonable amount of time to file grievances so as to preserve their ability to seek legal redress after exhausting administrative remedies; and
• Conduct audits to assess compliance.

The Justice Department's complete rule can be found online at: www.ojp.usdoj.gov/programs/pdfs/prea_nprm.pdf. Following publication in the Federal Register, the proposed rule will be available at www.regulations.gov, through which comments on the proposed rule may be submitted.

Once published, the standards will be immediately binding on the federal Bureau of Prisons. States that do not comply with the standards are subject to a five percent reduction in funds they would otherwise receive for prison purposes from the department unless the governor certifies that five percent of such funds will be used to enable compliance in future years.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2011/January/11-ag-098.html

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From ICE

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Truck driver re-sentenced to nearly 34 years in federal prison for his role in the deaths of 19 illegal aliens in Victoria, TX, in 2003

HOUSTON - The driver of the insulated tractor trailer used in a smuggling operation which left 19 aliens dead in the deadliest smuggling operation ever in the district was re-sentenced on Monday to 33 years and nine months imprisonment without the possibility of parole, announced U.S. Attorney José Angel Moreno, Southern District of Texas. The investigation was conducted by the Houston, San Antonio, Harlingen, Brownsville and McAllen, Texas, offices of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

Tyrone Mapletoft Williams, 40, was re-sentenced by U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal to 405 months imprisonment on each of 19 counts of conviction - counts 40 through 58 of the indictment - relating to the 19 deceased victims of the ill-fated smuggling operation in May 2003. Williams was the driver of a tractor trailer discovered abandoned at a truck stop in Victoria, Texas, during the early hours of May 14, 2003.

Victoria law enforcement officers who arrived at the location came upon the bodies of 17 smuggled foreign nationals in and around the trailer who had died as a result of being transported inside Williams' insulated trailer. Two additional trailer occupants subsequently died of their injuries at Victoria-area hospitals. The resulting 19 deaths associated with this smuggling operation established it as the deadliest in the district.

Williams was originally sentenced to life imprisonment on each of these 19 counts of conviction by a jury's verdict. However, the case was remanded to the District Court for re-sentencing after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion finding that Williams' punishment on these counts of conviction should have been assessed by the court and not the jury.

Williams was convicted by a jury of conspiring with others to transport and harbor illegal aliens for commercial advantage and financial gain. Williams' actions caused serious bodily injury, placed a life in jeopardy or caused death as alleged in count one of the indictment and further found his conduct placed a life in jeopardy. Judge Rosenthal previously sentenced Williams to 405 months imprisonment for this count of conviction which was upheld by the appellate court.

In counts 21 through 39, Williams was charged with unlawfully transporting 19 of the 55 surviving aliens. Judge Rosenthal had previously sentenced Williams to the statutory maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment on each of these counts. These sentences were also upheld on appeal. The sentences on all counts of conviction are to be served concurrently. Williams has been in federal custody since his May 2003 arrest. He will remain in custody to serve out his sentences. There is no parole in the federal prison system.

This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Daniel C. Rodriguez, Jeffery Vaden and Tony R. Roberts. The case was investigated conducted by the Houston, San Antonio, Harlingen, Brownsville and McAllen, Texas, offices of ICE HSI, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Office of the Inspector General, the Texas Department of Public Safety including the Texas Rangers, the Victoria County Sheriff's Department, and police departments in McAllen, Harlingen and Victoria, Texas.

http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1101/110124corpuschristi.htm

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ICE arrests 77 in operation targeting criminal aliens and immigration fugitives

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - More than 70 criminal aliens, immigration fugitives and immigration violators are facing deportation and criminal charges following a four-day enforcement operation spearheaded by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Fugitive Operations Teams (FOTs) in and around Grand Rapids, Mich.

During the operation, which concluded late yesterday, ICE made a total of 77 arrests in Kent, Calhoun, Ottawa, Kalamazoo, Berrien, St. Joseph and Mason counties.

Of those taken into custody, 22 were aliens with prior criminal convictions, six had been previously deported who returned to the United States illegally after being removed, and 35 were immigration fugitives who failed to comply with a final order of deportation issued by an immigration judge. The remaining illegal aliens arrested were encountered by ERO officers during the course of the four-day operation.

Their criminal histories included prior arrests and convictions for a variety of violations, including manslaughter, criminal sexual conduct, weapons violations, reentry after deportation, and assault and disorderly conduct among others. Since many of the individuals have outstanding orders of deportation or have been previously deported, they are subject to immediate removal from the country.

"A top priority for the Detroit Field Office is to locate and arrest criminal aliens and ultimately remove them from our country in a safe and humane manner," said Rebecca Adducci, field office director for ICE ERO in Detroit. "This operation is yet another example of the critical role that targeted immigration enforcement plays in protecting our communities."

Below are two case examples of those arrested during this operation:

• A 32-year-old man from Laos who is a permanent resident had prior convictions for manslaughter and discharge of a firearm from a moving vehicle. He was arrested at his home and will remain in custody until his appearance before a federal immigration judge.
• A 46-year-old man from Mexico who is a permanent resident has been convicted for criminal sexual conduct against a victim under the age of thirteen. He was arrested at his home and will remain in custody until his appearance before a federal immigration judge.

The U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan has accepted prosecution for four aliens who reentered the U.S. after being deported, two others are pending a prosecution decision. If convicted, they face a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
The remaining aliens will be held by ICE pending the completion of their criminal cases, a hearing before an immigration judge, or the completion of travel arrangements.

The group included 64 males and 13 females from five different countries - Mexico (41), Guatemala (27), Honduras (7), Laos (1), China (1).

This enforcement action was spearheaded by ICE's Fugitive Operations Program, which is responsible for locating, arresting and removing at-large criminal aliens and immigration fugitives. ICE's Fugitive Operations Teams (FOTs) give top priority to cases involving aliens who pose a threat to national security and public safety, including members of transnational street gangs and child sex offenders.

As a result of the FOT's efforts, the nation's fugitive alien population continues to decline. Estimates now place the number of immigration fugitives in the United States as slightly under 525,000, a decrease of more than 71,000 since October 2007.

Largely as a result of these initiatives, ICE last year removed more than 392,800 aliens from the United States, which is a record number; of that number more than 195,700 were aliens with criminal convictions.

ICE's Fugitive Operations Program is just one facet of the Department of Homeland Security's broader strategy to heighten the federal government's effectiveness at identifying and removing dangerous criminal aliens from the United States. Other initiatives that figure prominently in this effort are the Criminal Alien Program, Secure Communities and the agency's partnerships with state and local law enforcement agencies under 287(g).

http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1101/110121grandrapids.htm

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