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From the Los Angeles Times

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Chester Turner, serial killer on death row, is charged with four more murders

Investigators say DNA links serial killer Chester Dewayne Turner to the slayings of four women. In some cases, others had been accused of the crimes now attributed to Turner, who is on death row.

by Jack Leonard and Andrew Blankstein, Los Angeles Times

February 2, 2011

Chester Dewayne Turner, one of Los Angeles' most prolific serial killers who prowled the streets of South L.A. in the 1980s and '90s, was charged Tuesday with four additional murders linked to him through DNA.

The charges were filed after a DNA test recently connected Turner to the 1997 slaying of Cynthia Annette Johnson, whose killing had been considered cleared by the LAPD after the arrest and unsuccessful prosecution of another suspect. A department criminalist inadvertently included evidence from the Johnson case for testing last year as part of the LAPD's effort to reduce the backlog of untested sexual assault kits, Det. Cliff Shepard said.

The remaining three murder counts stem from killings in which authorities long suspected Turner but never filed charges against him.

In two cases, another man was wrongfully convicted and spent 11 years behind bars until his release in 2004, when DNA linked Turner to the killings. In the fourth case, DNA connected Turner to the case after he had been charged with multiple killings in 2004. All four of the victims were strangled.

Turner, 44, was sentenced to death in 2007 for the murder of 10 women, one of whom was 6 1/2 months pregnant.

"He needs to be held accountable for what he did," said L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Grace, who helped prosecute Turner. "It's very important for everyone in the city, particularly those in South L.A., that the justice system does value the lives of people killed."

Turner's attorney, John Tyre, questioned the decision to file new charges when his client is already on death row. "We need to spend our money on better places than trying to put someone to death twice," he said.

Turner, a one-time pizza deliveryman, was one of at least five serial killers who roamed South L.A. in the 1980s and '90s. Most of his victims were raped and strangled.

In the latest filing, prosecutors allege that Turner was responsible for the killing of Johnson, 30; Elandra Bunn, 33; Mary Edwards, 41; and Debra Williams, 32.

Johnson's body was discovered in an alley near an African Methodist Episcopal Church on Central Avenue and 105th Street.

Within months, police made an unrelated drug arrest of two men in a crack house. One of the men told detectives that his associate had confessed to the killing.

William Johnson, no relation to the victim, later testified in court that he saw Rodney Lavell Greene walk away with the victim toward the church on Central Avenue shortly before the killing. Later, William Johnson said, he and Greene were smoking crack cocaine when Greene confessed that he had beaten the victim and killed her with a baseball bat because she had refused to have sex with him.

But the coroner's office said that the victim had been strangled, most likely with the killer's hands, not a bat, and that there was no evidence she had been beaten. Greene's attorney, Bruce L. Karey, said prosecutors dropped the murder charge on the day of Greene's trial.

But the case was considered cleared by the Los Angeles Police Department until last year's genetic test linked the killing to Turner.

As with Cynthia Annette Johnson's slaying, police came to suspect someone other than Turner in the 1992 killings of Edwards and Williams.

Detectives discovered that David Allen Jones, a part-time janitor, had been charged with the attempted rape of a woman near where three slaying victims, including Edwards and Williams, had been found.

After denying that he killed the women, Jones, under detectives' prodding, admitted to having sex and smoking crack cocaine with them. A psychiatrist described Jones as having the mental capacity of an 8-year-old. Jones was convicted in 1995 of killing the three women and was sentenced to 36 years to life in prison.

He was released in 2004 after DNA tests exonerated him and implicated Turner in the Edwards and Williams killings. Shepard, the lead LAPD detective on the Turner case, said that Turner is a suspect in the third slaying — and three others — but that evidence from those crimes has been destroyed.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-serial-killer-20110202,0,5459219,print.story

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LAPD clears decades-old backlog of untested DNA evidence

The testing has resulted in the arrest of hundreds of suspects. But shortages in the department's lab mean police can't keep pace with new evidence collected in rape and sexual assault cases.

by Joel Rubin, Los Angeles Times

February 2, 2011

The Los Angeles Police Department has cleared a decades-old backlog of untested DNA evidence collected in rapes and other sexual assaults and made hundreds of arrests because of the testing, the department reported Tuesday.

The accomplishment was tempered somewhat, however, by continued staffing shortages in the department's laboratory that remains too small to keep pace with new cases.

Victim advocate groups and elected officials in late 2008 put intense pressure on the LAPD to address the thousands of pieces of DNA evidence that had sat untouched in storage freezers for years. The department counted 6,132 untested rape kits, which contained samples of semen, blood, hair or other genetic material collected from victims' bodies and crime scenes. Analysis of the material can help identify perpetrators by matching DNA to the genetic profiles of felons stored in law enforcement databases.

LAPD officials have spent the last two years scraping together federal grants, public funds and private donations to outsource the testing to private labs. They have also lobbied elected officials for special permission to add more analysts to the LAPD's lab despite a citywide hiring freeze.

All of the untouched kits have now been analyzed, Capt. Kevin McClure told the Los Angeles Police Commission. The effort has paid dividends. Last year, the department identified and arrested about 300 people using DNA evidence collected at crime scenes, mostly sexual assault or rape cases, McClure said.

McClure acknowledged the department still has work to do on the backlog issue. Nearly 500 of the rape kits from the backlog have been tested by outside labs but await a final review by LAPD staff, which is required by federal guidelines.

Until that review is completed, the DNA profile extracted from the evidence cannot be uploaded to the law enforcement databases to search for a perpetrator's identity. McClure estimated it would take about two months to complete the reviews.

The department has also struggled to keep up with the 125 rape kits from new cases that, on average, are submitted each month, McClure said. Nearly 400 kits from recent cases are awaiting final review by the LAPD and about 275 others are yet to be tested, according to department figures. By this summer, the LAPD's own lab will have added enough staff to conduct testing in all sexual assault cases, said laboratory director Greg Matheson.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lapd-dna-tests-20110202,0,1384477,print.story

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38th Street gang members arrested in federal indictment alleging murder, drug trafficking

Several dozen members of Los Angeles' 38th Street gang were arrested Tuesday under a federal racketeering indictment alleging that they are responsible for numerous murders and large-scale drug trafficking, as well as impersonating federal agents and using a child as a shooter.

The early morning raids involving 800 law enforcement officers targeted one of L.A.'s oldest gangs, known for its deep ties with the Mexican Mafia prison gang. Investigators documented numerous plots, including one in which a gang member claims to have directed a 14-year-old girl to shoot a rival gang member as part of her initiation, according to the affidavit.

In another incident, gang members dressed as FBI agents and other law enforcement officers shot their way into a South Gate house, where they tied up and kidnapped a man, prosecutors said Tuesday. During a subsequent high-speed chase, the victim was allegedly executed with a bullet to his head, according to prosecutors.

During the pre-dawn raids Tuesday, LAPD officers and special agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives arrested 37 defendants on federal indictments; 20 more people were taken into custody on state weapons and narcotics charges.

"We targeted 87 members and associates of a violent street gang, which terrorized one of our communities," said Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck.

Authorities seized about 7 kilograms of cocaine, a pound of methamphetamine, 23 firearms and about $250,000 in cash Tuesday when they searched multiple homes.

The 38th Street gang is the subject of a 130-page grand jury indictment alleging violations of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute. Some 53 defendants are charged with violating the federal law by acting on behalf of the gang and participating in murders, murder plots, attempted murders, narcotics trafficking, robberies, extortion and witness intimidation.

Most of the defendants in the racketeering case face up to life in federal prison if convicted. It is the latest in a series of federal racketeering cases against Los Angeles gangs. The indictment alleges the 38th Street gang engaged in the distribution of methamphetamine, cocaine and crack cocaine.

Agents and officers made a series of seizures during the investigation, including one detailed in the indictment in which authorities confiscated more than 2 kilograms of methamphetamine, nearly 4 kilograms of cocaine and more than $61,000 from one stash house.

The gang allegedly imported narcotics from Mexico and provided "street-level" distribution amounts to numerous gang members and associates, who sold the drugs in gang territory.

"The 38th Street gang has had a devastating impact throughout the communities of South Los Angeles," said Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent in Charge Timothy J. Landrum.

To support their narcotics trafficking and to control their claimed territory, gang members kept an arsenal of firearms, including handguns, shotguns, assault rifles and machine guns, according to John A. Torres, Special Agent in Charge, ATF Los Angeles Field Division. Torres said his agents seized more than 80 firearms in the course of this gang investigation.

In addition to the federal RICO indictment, a grand jury returned five, single-defendant indictments that allege weapons and narcotics offenses.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/02/los-angeles-street-gang-indicted.html

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From the New York Times

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In Mexico, Massacres but Claims of Progress

ACAPULCO, Mexico — Only a week into the new year, 15 human heads sat outside a gleaming shopping center on the other side of the lush hills that frame this seaside resort's big tourist hotels. Within hours, several bodies turned up in a taxi and elsewhere, bringing the number of victims to 33 in a single weekend, scattered around a side of town few visitors see.

Then two weeks later, the government announced that it had captured the leader of a shadowy criminal organization believed to be responsible for the mayhem, as well as for the disappearance of 20 men who came here for vacation last fall.

The twin events — the shock of yet another massacre and the government's ability to take down those it believes responsible — define the seesawing battle for the right to claim victory at a critical juncture in Mexico's organized crime war.

The increase in violence is indisputable. The government says more than 34,600 have been killed in the four years since President Felipe Calderón took office and threw the federal police and military at the cartels, with last year's toll, 15,273, the heaviest yet.

Mexican and American officials, crediting American training of the military and what they consider to be an increasingly professional federal police force, point out that more than half of the 37 most wanted crime bosses announced last year have been captured or killed. The government also maintains that the last quarter of 2010 showed a decline in the pace of killings.

But the public does not seem to believe it. A poll released Jan. 11 by Mexico's national statistics institute found that more than 70 percent of respondents believed that the country's security had worsened since 2009.

The findings mirrored similar research by pollsters showing that, for the first time in recent years, Mexicans are more worried about safety than the economy, a near reversal from the year before.

“There is a disconnect between what the government thinks it is achieving and what the public perceives as happening,” said Denise Dresser, a veteran political analyst in Mexico City. Because Mr. Calderón “made the war the center of gravity of his term, he is now being evaluated on whether he is winning it, and the public perception is he is not winning.”

Both Mexican and American officials, who say the two countries have never worked closer in fighting crime, are facing growing pressure to prove that their strategy is working. With Republicans now in control of the House of Representatives, the Obama administration will face renewed scrutiny to account for the $1.4 billion, multiyear Merida Initiative, the cornerstone of American aid in Mexico's drug fight.

“Right now I am concerned whether the administration is focused on giving Merida a chance,” said Representative Connie Mack, the Florida Republican who is the new chairman of a House subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. He says that while he supports the initiative, he will call hearings over what he considers the slow pace in which it has been carried out.

“There is a lack of execution,” Mr. Mack said. “We are going to find out why this is.”

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a visit to Mexico last week to reiterate American support for the Mexican drug fight, said $500 million in Merida money would be allocated this year.

But unlike in the past year, when the emphasis was on delivering helicopters and other equipment, United States Embassy officials said the aid this year would focus on attacking the impunity that lets criminals get away with murder, by shoring up local and state police forces and the justice system. Only about 2 percent of those charged with organized-crime-related offenses face trial in Mexico, American officials have said.

Carlos Pascual, the United States ambassador, argued that the longstanding impunity, not Mr. Calderón's offensive, should be blamed for the violence.

“The vast majority of the violence we've seen over the past decade in Mexico is not because it has arisen as a result of taking on organized crime,” he said, adding, “It's that you've had impunity within the country because there has never been a legacy of investing in state and local police and in a judicial system that was able to crack down and contain it.”

Alarmed at the high death toll, the Mexican Congress summoned Mr. Calderón's top police official, Genaro García Luna, to a hearing on Monday to explain the violence here and in several northern states. Mr. García Luna said a corner was being turned, but legislators, chiefly from opposition parties, did not appear convinced.

“The country is under a security crisis, a crisis without precedent in the history of the country, a systemic crisis that you guys, Mr. Secretary, appear to ignore,” said Senator Ricardo Monreal Ávila.

Mr. Calderón, who has struggled politically since narrowly winning office in 2006, has found his proposals to revamp local policing and prevent money laundering stalled in congress. At the same time, human rights groups and the State Department, concerned over accusations of abuse and unexplained disappearances and deaths, are pressing for civilian trials of military personnel.

The coming months may prove even more challenging for Mr. Calderón because his political opponents may be wary of handing him and his party any victories ahead of the presidential election next year, which is likely to focus on security, political analysts said.

The government responds to critics by citing the many kingpins it has killed or captured. “The major networks that kidnap, extort and smuggle drugs are being taken apart,” Alejandro Poiré, the government's security spokesman, told reporters last week. “Through this, the federal government is building true, authentic security for our country.”

But Mr. Calderón has also tried to reassure tourists and investors that Mexico is about more than drugs and thugs. He urged government officials last week to emphasize the positive about Mexico and, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, he sought to do much the same.

That message is literally plastered on billboards here carrying the slogan, “Habla bien de Aca,” urging residents and visitors to “speak well” of the city.

Acapulco has long been two towns. Along the coast is the fading playland for celebrities, with towering hotels and resorts. Over the hills is a sprawl of slums and working-class neighborhoods housing the people who clean the rooms, serve the food and drive the taxis.

With at least three drug trafficking organizations vying for smuggling routes through here, violence has exploded in the last few years, occasionally coming close to tourist sites and ushering in platoons of federal police officers and the military.

“They have put all the focus on using the military and the federal police without nearly as much attention on the other pieces you need to fight organized crime, like attacking corruption and investing in social programs to prevent it in the first place,” said Edgardo Buscaglia, a former adviser to the United Nations on organized crime.

Tourism officials here say the hotels are three-quarters or more full, though a view on the streets finds many empty restaurant tables, few trinkets moving off shelves and the city's famed cliff divers hurling into the sea for only a smattering of applause.

“It is clear the criminals did this to Acapulco, but we do not know why the police cannot control it,” said Alejandro, a candy vendor who declined to give his full name for fear of reprisals by the police or criminals. “I have to pay a bribe to the gangs every week or I will have trouble.”

Roving patrols of masked and heavily armed federal officers and soldiers caravan through traffic, at once reassuring and rattling visitors.

“It is unsettling,” said Katherine Williams, 67, a retired teacher from Toronto. “But,” she added, waiting for a truck with soldiers to pass as she headed to a Starbucks, “I have not had any problems, and if you stick to the beach area you would never know there were any troubles here.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/world/americas/02mexico.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

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11.2 Million Illegal Immigrants in U.S. in 2010, Report Says; No Change From '09

About 11.2 million illegal immigrants were living in the United States in 2010, a number essentially unchanged from the previous year, according to a report published Tuesday by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington.

Despite continuing high unemployment among American workers, record deportations by the Obama administration and expanding efforts by states to crack down, the number of unauthorized immigrants in the work force — about eight million — was also unchanged, the Pew report found. Those workers were about 5 percent of the American work force.

The population of illegal immigrants leveled off after peaking in 2007 at 12 million, then dropping sharply over two years to 11.1 million in 2009, according to the report, which is based on census data. The declines occurred primarily because fewer people from Mexico and Central America came illegally to the United States, Pew concluded.

The report found no evidence of an exodus of illegal immigrants from the country. In particular there is no sign that Mexicans, who are the largest group — 58 percent — of illegal immigrants, are leaving in larger numbers, the report finds.

The Pew report suggests that the high numbers of unauthorized immigrants are confounding enforcement efforts by the Obama administration and also a recent spate of measures by state legislatures to crack down locally on illegal immigration. Federal immigration authorities deported about 400,000 immigrants in each of the last two years, the highest numbers in the country's history, according to Department of Homeland Security officials.

“We just don't see indications that enforcement is pushing people to leave the U.S.,” said Jeffrey S. Passel, a demographer and co-author, with D'Vera Cohn, of the Pew report.

The report's findings appeared to bring bad news for groups advocating for a strategy called attrition through enforcement, which inspired many of the tougher state measures, including a law Arizona enacted last year that caused a furor. According to supporters, those laws are intended to make life so difficult for illegal immigrants that they will opt to go home. Although much of Arizona's law was held up by federal courts, other states, including Georgia, Oklahoma and South Carolina, have also adopted tough laws in recent years.

But some advocates for that approach said the Obama administration's decision to end high-profile raids in workplaces might have contributed to illegal immigrants' remaining here.

“It could be that the shift away from work-site enforcement is making it more attractive for illegal immigrants to stay here, since they do not feel as threatened at work,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, which seeks reduced immigration to the United States.

The Pew report found that about 350,000 babies were born in 2009 to families with at least one illegal immigrant parent, a number also unchanged from the previous year, representing about 8 percent of all newborns.

Conservative lawmakers in Congress and state legislatures have announced initiatives to cancel automatic United States citizenship for children born here of illegal immigrant parents. They argue that birthright citizenship, which is described in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, encourages illegal immigrants to sneak in to have babies here in order to gain American citizenship for them.

The Pew report found that about two-thirds of the illegal immigrant parents of the newborns had been living in the United States for at least five years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/us/02immig.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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7th Youth Arrested in Bullying of Teenager in Philadelphia

PHILADELPHIA — A seventh teenager was arrested on Tuesday in a bullying incident in which a 13-year-old student was kicked and beaten before being hung by his coat from a spiked fence post, the police said.

The attack on the 13-year-old boy, whose family came to the United States to escape the war in Liberia in 2000, was recorded on video by one of the suspects.

The boy, Nadin Khoury, was left suspended from the seven-foot-high fence on Jan. 11 after being dragged, punched, kicked and placed upside down in a tree in Upper Darby, a Philadelphia suburb, said Superintendent Michael Chitwood of the Upper Darby Township Police.

The attack took place about 1 p.m. outside an apartment building about a mile from the Opportunity Center, a public school for students with behavioral problems. All seven suspects and Nadin attended the school, Superintendent Chitwood said.

Nadin was bruised but not otherwise injured in the attack.

The suspects, whose ages range from 13 to 17, face charges including kidnapping, false imprisonment, terroristic threats and conspiracy. If convicted, they face probation or time in a juvenile detention center, Superintendent Chitwood said. Two of the suspects have prior convictions for assault.

Six of the suspects were arrested at school on Monday morning and led away in handcuffs in an operation intended to demonstrate to other students that bullying can lead to criminal charges, the superintendent said.

Nadin's mother, Rebecca Wright, said her son was picked on because her appearance and accent set her apart from other blacks. Ms. Wright, 38, who has two other children, said she had left Liberia to escape the civil war there, which had resulted in “terrible stuff” happening to her and her family.

“One of the reasons I came to the U.S. was that these horrible things wouldn't happen to us,” she said. “When I came to the U.S., I was very happy.”

Ms. Wright said Nadin had bruises “all over him.” She said he had been bullied twice before, by the same suspects and others.

The Upper Darby School District's superintendent, Louis F. DeVlieger, defended the Opportunity Center, saying it had a successful record in rehabilitating most students who were placed there.

“However, apparently the students taken by the police today chose to continue to make bad decisions that ultimately resulted in their arrests and removal from school,” Mr. DeVlieger said in a statement issued on Monday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/us/02bully.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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Woman called 'Jihad Jane' pleads guilty

Philadelphia (CNN) -- Colleen LaRose, the woman who authorities say called herself "Jihad Jane" on YouTube, has changed her mind about fighting government charges that she was plotting to wage violent jihad overseas. She pleaded guilty to all counts Tuesday at a federal change-of-plea hearing in Philadelphia.

LaRose was indicted in 2009 on four counts, including conspiring to support terrorists and kill someone overseas. She was allegedly part of a plot to murder Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, who outraged some by depicting the prophet Mohammed with the body of a dog in 2007.

Five other co-conspirators were allegedly involved, but never named by the government.

LaRose also is accused of lying to a federal agent and attempted identity theft.

Her lawyer, Mark Wilson, would not comment after Tuesday's hearing nor about whether his client has been cooperating with authorities in hopes of avoiding a potential life sentence.

She has spent nearly two years behind bars since her arrest, but Wilson does not think LaRose will be freed after being given credit for time served.

"She will do time," Wilson added.

A source familiar with her imprisonment says LaRose has been held in a federal detention center isolated from other prisoners in a special housing unit since October 2009. She spends 23 hours a day in her cell.

Wilson would not talk about her situation other than to say "she's been doing remarkably well, considering the circumstances."

In 2009, LaRose had been sharing a home with a boyfriend and taking care of his elderly father near Philadelphia before suddenly disappearing. At the time, her boyfriend told CNN that she spent a lot of time on his computer. That computer and others were seized after LaRose's arrest.

She was taken into custody in Ireland, according to federal authorities.

Court papers stated LaRose allegedly was recruiting women online who had passports and could travel in Europe and elsewhere to support violent jihad.

The alleged terrorist conspiracy began in June 2008, when LaRose posted a comment on You Tube under the username "JihadJane," saying she was "desperate to do something somehow to help" Muslims, according to a federal indictment.

Jamie Ramirez, a Colorado woman, was later added to LaRose's case. She is charged with one count of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and faces a maximum of 15 years in jail. She was arrested in Ireland after LaRose.

According to a superseding indictment, LaRose sent an electronic communication to Ramirez in August 2009 in which she allegedly stated "soon i (sic) will be moving to europe (sic) to be with other brothers & sisters ....when i (sic) get to europe (sic), i (sic) will send for you to come be with me there. (T)his place will be like a training camp as well as a home.''

"i (sic) would love to go over there, " Ramirez allegedly responded, according to the indictment.

Ramirez's trial is set for May 2.

"I have no news about her case," her defense lawyer Jeremy Ibrahim said.

Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pennsylvania, whose district office is a few blocks from LaRose's former home, said he's not surprised at her guilty plea.

"She's probably not the cream of the terrorist crop ... (but) one doesn't have to be very bright to carry out an attack. That's why we take every one of these folks very seriously," Dent said.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/02/01/pennsylvania.terror.case/?hpt=T2

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From the Department of Justice

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Department of Justice Announces Launch of Human Trafficking Enhanced Enforcement Initiative

WASHINGTON – The Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Labor announced today the launch of a nationwide Human Trafficking Enhanced Enforcement Initiative designed to streamline federal criminal investigations and prosecutions of human trafficking offenses.

As part of the Enhanced Enforcement Initiative, specialized Anti-Trafficking Coordination Teams, known as ACTeams, will be convened in select pilot districts around the country. The ACTeams, comprised of prosecutors and agents from multiple federal enforcement agencies, will implement a strategic action plan to combat identified human trafficking threats. The ACTeams will focus on developing federal criminal human trafficking investigations and prosecutions to vindicate the rights of human trafficking victims, bring traffickers to justice and dismantle human trafficking networks.

The ACTeam structure not only enhances coordination among federal prosecutors and federal agents on the front lines of federal human trafficking investigations and prosecutions, but also enhances coordination between front-line enforcement efforts and the specialized units at the Department of Justice and federal agency headquarters. The ACTeam Initiative was developed through interagency collaboration among the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Labor to streamline rapidly expanding human trafficking enforcement efforts.

“This modern-day slavery is an affront to human dignity, and each and every case we prosecute should send a powerful signal that human trafficking will not be tolerated in the United States,” said Attorney General Eric Holder. “The Human Trafficking Enhanced Enforcement Initiative takes our anti-trafficking enforcement efforts to the next level by building on the most effective tool in our anti-trafficking arsenal: partnerships.”

“Working together, the entire U.S. government continues to make progress in convicting traffickers, dismantling their criminal networks and protecting their victims ,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. “Combating human trafficking is a shared responsibility, and the ACTeam Initiative is a critical step in successfully leveraging all our federal, state and local resources to crack down on these criminals.”

“This pilot is a necessary tool in the federal government's crackdown on human trafficking,” added Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis.  “Victims of these contemptuous acts have been left in an unfamiliar land with no family, no support systems, and no way to make a life for themselves.  We must do whatever we can to ensure that victims of trafficking receive full restitution, including denied wages.”

On Oct. 29, 2010, at an event commemorating the 10 th anniversary of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the Department of Justice announced that the Interagency ACTeam Initiative would be implemented in conjunction with directives within the Department of Justice to enhance coordination among the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys, U.S. Attorney's Offices and the department's subject matter experts in the Civil Rights Division's Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section.

The ACTeam initiative follows the July 22, 2010, launch of the Department of Homeland Security's Blue Campaign, which includes new web-based training for law enforcement officers, enhanced resources for trafficking victims and expanded public awareness campaigns. The ACTeam Initiative also follows the Department of Labor's March 15, 2010, announcement that it would, in coordination with other federal agencies, begin certifying U non-immigrant visas for human trafficking victims and other qualifying crime victims who are identified during the course of labor investigations and enforcement actions.

The locations of the pilot ACTeams will be announced upon completion of a competitive interagency selection process.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2011/February/11-ag-140.html

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Attorney General Eric Holder Speaks at the President's Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons Meeting

Washington, D.C. ~ Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Thank you, Secretary Clinton. It's an honor and privilege to join my colleagues to mark the many breakthroughs we've made over the past year – and the momentum we've generated for the year ahead – in our fight to end human trafficking.

This past year – for the third year in a row – the Department of Justice prosecuted more human trafficking cases than ever before. This modern-day slavery is an affront to human dignity, and each and every case we prosecute should send a powerful signal that human trafficking will not be tolerated in the United States.

Our prosecutions have brought long-overdue justice to victims from Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, the Philippines, Thailand and Mexico, as well as from our own country. We have liberated adults, children, men and women exploited for sex and labor in virtually every corner of our nation. We have secured long sentences against individual traffickers. And we have dismantled large, transnational organized criminal enterprises that have exploited victims across the United States, depriving them of freedom and dignity.

But we have more to do – and farther to go. On the Tenth Anniversary of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act last fall, I committed that the Justice Department would be launching a Human Trafficking Enhanced Enforcement Initiative to take our counter-trafficking enforcement efforts to the next level by building on the most effective tool in our anti-trafficking arsenal: partnerships.

Today, I'm pleased to announce the launch of this initiative, which will streamline federal criminal investigations and prosecutions of human trafficking. The Department of Homeland Security and Department of Labor have collaborated closely with the Justice Department in this historic effort, and I want to thank Secretaries Napolitano and Solis for their expertise and shared commitment.

As part of this fight against human trafficking, specialized Anti-Trafficking Coordination Teams, known as ACTeams, will be convened in a number of pilot districts nationwide. Under the leadership of the highest-ranking federal law enforcement officials in the districts, these teams will bring together federal agents and prosecutors across agency lines to combat human trafficking threats, dismantle human trafficking networks and bring traffickers to justice.

The launch of these ACTeams will enable us to leverage the assets and expertise of each federal enforcement agency more effectively than ever before. But we will not rest until this unprecedented collaboration translates into the results that matter most: the liberation of victims and the prosecution of traffickers.

We are all inspired by the courage of survivors who have escaped from bondage and energized by the strength of our partnerships. But, above all, we are firm in our resolve to do more than ever before to end human trafficking. The efforts announced today – and the work being undertaken across the government – are an important step forward toward winning this fight.

http://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/ag/speeches/2011/ag-speech-110201.html

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From the FBI

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New and Improved N-DEx

About to Go Nationwide

02/01/11

Colorado law enforcement working an organized crime case identified a “person of interest” during its investigation but couldn't find a current address or much else on the individual.

So a state trooper searched our Law Enforcement National Data Exchange, or N-DEx, which revealed the subject as a person of interest in an out-of-state drug case worked by a federal agency. The trooper contacted that agency and learned that this individual had been named in other drug-related cases in California.

Based on that information, the trooper began reaching out to other federal, state, and local agencies in California and beyond…and soon discovered that his subject was a member of a violent gang headquartered in Los Angeles that, up until then, wasn't known to be operating in Colorado.

This process of connecting the dots between seemingly unrelated pieces of criminal data housed in different places is the backbone of N-DEx. The system enables its law enforcement users to submit certain data to a central repository—located at our Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division in West Virginia—where it's compared against data already on file from local, state, tribal, and federal agencies to identify links and similarities among persons, places, things, and activities across jurisdictional boundaries.

Until now, N-DEx—accessed through a highly secure Internet site—has only been a viable option for a relatively limited number of agencies.

Now, we're about to take N-DEx to the next level: When its final phase is delivered later this month, N-DEx will truly live up to its name…and over time will be available to thousands more law enforcement and criminal justice agencies around the country.

A quick look at how N-DEx has evolved:

• 2008: The first phase gave participating agencies basic capabilities, including the ability to create link analysis charts and to search several thousand incident/case report records and arrest data to help determine a person's true identity.  

• 2009: The second phase supported 100 million searchable records and added the capability to do full-text and geospatial searches. It also enabled users to exchange information with each other and to subscribe to automatic notifications concerning people/cases of interest to them.

This month's third and final phase will add probation and parole information to the database, as well as enhancements to some of its existing capabilities. And best of all, the N-DEx interface has been completely redone, giving it the look and feel of a commercial search engine, complete with filters and more streamlined result sets. Now, N-DEx will now be able to support 200 million searchable records, and with future modification, that number can readily increase to two billion records.

Entering information into N-DEx is easy. Agencies participating in state or regional information-sharing systems that “feed” N-DEx don't have to do anything. For other agencies, once their data is mapped to N-DEx, contributing data will be as easy as a monthly download and submission. And for smaller agencies without automated record management systems or with fewer records, information can be loaded manually.

Bottom line: N-DEx is a powerful investigative tool that will, according to CJIS Assistant Director Dan Roberts, “help keep our communities safer, not only by linking criminal justice data together as never before, but also by enabling investigative partnerships across jurisdictions.”  

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/february/ndex_020111/ndex_020111

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