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March 6, 2011

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Colombia assuming instructor role for other militaries

As part of a regional counter-narcotics push, Colombia is helping train the armed forces of Mexico and 13 other Latin American and Caribbean nations, many of which get U.S. financial assistance.

Before his helicopter training run, Mexican air force Lt. Isaac Garcia got some pointers from battle-hardened chopper jockey Col. Donall Tascon of Colombia.

Garcia knew that Tascon taught classes during the day and sometimes flew dangerous missions against leftist rebels at night, and that he had chalked up 2,500 hours of flight time, much of it on special operations and perilous rescue missions. He didn't have to be told that for the Colombian pilot, fighting a drug war was anything but an academic exercise.

"We have a lot to learn from Colombia. We're now going through what they have experienced for the last 20 years," the 27-year-old Garcia said later of the drug-fueled violence plaguing Mexico. "What Colombian pilots know about night missions, flying over difficult terrain, and participating in joint task forces is invaluable to us."

Garcia, who says Colombia's history gives its pilots and trainers a unique credibility, is one of 18 Mexican helicopter pilots undergoing training at a Colombian air base two hours southwest of Bogota, the capital. The curriculum includes special operations, rescue missions, weaponry and battle tactics.

Colombia, as part of a regional counter-narcotics push, is helping train the armed forces of Mexico and 13 other Latin American and Caribbean nations, many of which receive U.S. financial assistance. Garcia's 32-week helicopter training course, for example, costs about $75,000 per pilot, officials said, and is funded through the Merida Initiative anti-drug aid the U.S. provides Mexico. In addition to pilot training, Colombia instructs others in skills such as conducting criminal investigations, processing intelligence and deploying soldiers in jungle warfare.

Los Angeles Times

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On immigration, momentum shifts away from Arizona

A year after SB 1070 inspired a call for similar laws around the country, other states have failed to follow suit. Only Utah has passed a diluted version.

A year ago, a revolution on immigration enforcement seemed underway, with legislators in at least 20 states vowing to follow the lead of Arizona's tough new law targeting illegal immigrants. These days, the momentum has shifted. In at least six states, the proposals have been voted down or have simply died. Many of the other proposals have not even made it past one legislative chamber.

The most-discussed provision in the Arizona law requires police to investigate the status of people they legally stop whom they also suspect are illegal immigrants. But even in Arizona, several tough immigration proposals have been stalled in the Senate, with business leaders and some Republicans arguing that the state does not need more controversy.

The one state whose Legislature has passed an Arizona-style law, Utah, only approved a diluted bill accompanied by another measure that goes in a dramatically different direction.

The Utah Legislature on Friday voted to create ID cards for "guest workers" and their families, provided they pay a fine and don't commit serious crimes. Immigrants who entered the country illegally would be fined up to $2,500. Immigrants who entered the country legally but were not complying with federal immigration law would be fined $1,000.

"Why not put something in place where, in five years, we can say we did something, rather than sending a few people home?" said state Rep. Bill Wright, who wrote the law. "Sending a few people home will not solve our problems." Utah's measure is essentially a state version of the comprehensive immigration reform that many backers of the Arizona approach deride as amnesty.

Los Angeles Times

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Report finds 20% of Californians struggled to feed their families in 2010

In poll, 1 in 5 California residents said there were times last year when they couldn't afford enough food. The state ranks No. 16 for food hardship, with the Fresno and Inland Empire areas particularly hard-hit.

One in five Californians struggled to afford enough food for themselves and their families last year, according to a new report by the Food Research and Action Center. The rate in California was slightly higher than the national average of 18%.

Jim Weill, president of the Washington-based nonprofit, said the figures underscore the need for a strong nutrition safety net — including food stamps and school meals — for families that continue to struggle as the economy begins to recover. "While the nation's Great Recession may have technically ended in mid-2009, it has not yet ended for many of the nation's households," Weill said in a statement Thursday. "For them, 2010 was the third year of a terrible recession that is widely damaging the ability to meet basic needs."

The report was based on data collected for the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which conducted telephone interviews with more than 350,000 people in 2010, including 35,543 people in California. Just over 20% of California respondents answered yes to the question: "Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?"

That places the state at No. 16 in the nation for food hardship, the report said. The highest rate was recorded in Mississippi, where nearly 28% said they did not always have enough money to buy food. The lowest rate, just over 10%, was in North Dakota.

The report also looked at food hardship in the 100 metropolitan statistical areas with the largest number of respondents. These areas were defined by the Census Bureau and include cities and their surrounding communities. The two highest metropolitan rates were in California: 27% in the Fresno area and 26% in Riverside, San Bernardino and Ontario. The rate in Bakersfield was 24%; Los Angeles, Long Beach and Santa Ana came in at 21%.

In an interview Friday, Weill blamed California's high rate of food hardship on above-average unemployment and low participation in the federal food stamp program. Just half of eligible Californians were receiving the benefit in 2008, the most recent year for which federal estimates are available. "One way that California can deal with its outsized hunger problem is to get food stamps to people who are eligible," Weill said.

Los Angeles Times

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Texas college students at center of gun legislation debate

Student activists at the University of Texas are protesting and supporting the bill that would allow concealed handguns on college campuses in the state. But most students and faculty seem opposed.

Konrad Sliwowski stood in the shadow of the University of Texas clock tower surrounded by the lunchtime clamor: the student election volunteers in handmade "Vote Big John" T-shirts, the Lego Club, and activists against human trafficking stationed near fliers advertising a screening of "Airplane!"

"I don't like guns in any kind of situation," the 22-year-old senior said recently while passing out fliers for a lecture on Rwanda. "School is already an emotional battleground. To add on a physicality to it, you could really stir things up."

Sliwowski and his classmates — not yet born when a student gunman opened fire atop the clock tower in the summer of 1966 — are now at the center of a debate over whether to allow concealed handguns on Texas college campuses.

A proposed law would make Texas one of the few places in the nation where faculty, staff and students with concealed handgun licenses could bring guns inside campus buildings.

Supporters say it would give them the same rights of self-defense they have off campus and could help prevent massacres like the one at Virginia Tech that claimed 32 lives in 2007. The bill has substantial political support at the state Capitol, but remains weeks away from a vote.

About 500,000 people have concealed handgun licenses in Texas, a state where handguns are allowed inside the Capitol and hunters outnumber the population of South Dakota. State law requires that concealed handgun carriers be at least 21, complete a training course and pass a background check.

Los Angeles Times

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With Drive (and Without a Law Degree), a Texan Fights for Immigrants

DALLAS — The calls from Malaysia come in daily to Ralph Isenberg, a Texas businessman who has become an unorthodox advocate for immigrants in extreme distress. From the office of his commercial real estate company here, Mr. Isenberg confers by webcam with Saad Nabeel, a college student who once lived in Texas but now calls from Kuala Lumpur.

Mr. Nabeel's mood shifts from hopeful cheer to reeling despair. And Mr. Isenberg reassures him, time and again, that despite the daunting odds, he will one day return to live in the United States.

The alliance of Mr. Isenberg, by his own description a hard-driving Jew, and Mr. Nabeel, a Muslim engineering student from Bangladesh who was deported last year, is one of the more unusual tales in the history of immigrants' struggles to prevail in the American immigration system.

Mr. Nabeel's case is one of several dozen that Mr. Isenberg has taken up in recent years, voluntarily and with singular zeal, often when lawyers have concluded that they are too hard to handle. And immigration cases do not come any harder than Mr. Nabeel's.

Until a year ago, Mr. Nabeel, now 20, hardly thought of himself as an immigrant. He had been living in the United States since he was 3, when his father brought the family here because of threats from political adversaries in Bangladesh. Mr. Nabeel was studying electrical engineering on a full scholarship he won at the University of Texas, Arlington.

But in 2001, his father's petition for political asylum was denied. A separate application for resident status was approved, but then it stalled in visa backlogs. In November 2009, immigration authorities detained Mr. Nabeel's father and ordered the whole family deported. Mr. Nabeel was expelled to Bangladesh in January 2010.

Since then, Mr. Nabeel has become a refugee himself, fleeing in fright from Bangladesh to Malaysia. Now he is lying low there, longing for the United States.

New York Times

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Proving Torture, to Help Win Asylum

A MAN from Mauritania sat stone-faced, cradling his head, which bore a scar that marked the spot where his master had gouged him with a piece of firewood, he told the doctor. A Congolese businessman showed a deformed knee that, to the doctor's trained eye, indicated a forced fracture. And a man from Southeast Asia was sure that a mark on his lower torso was evidence of a beating with a bat, though a medical examination showed that it was a sign of a fungal infection.

All three were sharing their scars and their stories with Dr. Ramin Asgary, director of the human rights program at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, whose testimony and affidavits have played a crucial role in convincing immigration judges that people seeking asylum were victims of torture in their home countries.

Dr. Asgary, 42, and his students have examined about 130 refugees, many over the past three years in an unused playroom at Mount Sinai, sifting through stories of baton blows, glass slashes and cigarette burns for evidence of abuse — or signs of fraud. “Every story is a new story,” he said in an interview. “It never gets routine.”

In the 2009-10 fiscal year, the New York asylum office of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services received 7,975 applications for asylum — an increase from 6,769 in 2009.

Dr. Asgary, an assistant professor of medicine at Mount Sinai who previously worked for Doctors Without Borders, runs one of several clinics across the city evaluating people who claim to have been tortured. Lawyers and immigrants' advocates refer asylum seekers to him; he does the evaluations, provides affidavits and testifies, if needed, without charge. The legal standard for being granted asylum is a well-founded fear of persecution if the person is sent back. Past torture may be evidence that such a fear is real.

New York Times

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States Prosecute Fewer Teenagers in Adult Courts

A generation after record levels of youth crime spurred a nationwide movement to prosecute more teenagers as adults, a consensus is emerging that many young delinquents have been mishandled by the adult court system. Last year, Connecticut stopped treating all 16-year-old defendants as adults, and next year will do the same for 17-year-olds. Illinois recently transferred certain low-level offenders younger than 18 into its juvenile system. And in January, lawmakers in Massachusetts introduced a bill to raise the age of adulthood in matters of crime, and their counterparts in Wisconsin and North Carolina intend to do the same.

By year's end, New York might be the only state where adulthood, in criminal matters, begins on the 16th birthday. The changes followed studies that concluded that older adolescents differed significantly from adults in their capacity to make sound decisions, and benefited more from systems focused on treatment rather than on incarceration.

A 2010 report by Wisconsin's juvenile justice commission to the governor, James E. Doyle, and the Legislature found that “for many, if not most, youthful offenders, the juvenile justice system is better able to redirect their behavior,” in large part because of the greater availability of social services.

Most of the studies pointed to a 2005 decision by the United States Supreme Court in Roper v. Simmons that outlawed the death penalty for defendants who were younger than 18 when their crimes were committed, because of the “general differences” distinguishing them from adults — a lack of maturity, greater susceptibility to peer pressure and undeveloped character.

New York Times

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New Laws to Control Immigration Pass in Utah

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The Utah Legislature has approved an immigration package that includes an enforcement law reminiscent of Arizona's but is tempered by a bill for a guest worker program for illegal immigrants. The measures, approved by the State Senate and House on Friday night, would allow illegal immigrants to get a permit to work in the state. They also include a requirement that the police check the immigrant status of anyone stopped for a felony or serious misdemeanor.

Supporters said that the package balanced economic needs and compassion; opponents argued that it would probably encourage more illegal immigration. State lawmakers initially balked at the enforcement measure because of a likely backlash feared by some. But State Representative Stephen Sandstrom, a Republican, garnered enough support after amending it to focus on more serious crimes.

An Arizona law approved last year drew nationwide attention over provisions requiring the police, while enforcing other laws, to question a person's immigration status if they had reasonable suspicion they were here illegally. A federal judge ordered that aspect of the law put on hold. Representative Bill Wright, a Republican who sponsored the Utah bill creating the guest worker program, said that if the state could secure a federal waiver, the program could become a model for the rest of the country.

The bill would allow illegal immigrants to get a permit to live and work in Utah with their families. The most vocal critic of that provision, Representative Chris Herrod, a Republican, said that a guest worker program would draw more illegal immigrants to the state.

“People think we'll be seen as compassionate,” Mr. Herrod said. “People will actually see us as weak. They will see we don't care about the rule of law.”

New York Times

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Giving Life After Death Row

EIGHT years ago I was sentenced to death for the murders of my wife and three children. I am guilty. I once thought that I could fool others into believing this was not true. Failing that, I tried to convince myself that it didn't matter. But gradually, the enormity of what I did seeped in; that was followed by remorse and then a wish to make amends.

I spend 22 hours a day locked in a 6 foot by 8 foot box on Oregon's death row. There is no way to atone for my crimes, but I believe that a profound benefit to society can come from my circumstances. I have asked to end my remaining appeals, and then donate my organs after my execution to those who need them. But my request has been rejected by the prison authorities.

According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, there are more than 110,000 Americans on organ waiting lists. Around 19 of them die each day. There are more than 3,000 prisoners on death row in the United States, and just one inmate could save up to eight lives by donating a healthy heart, lungs, kidneys, liver and other transplantable tissues.

There is no law barring inmates condemned to death in the United States from donating their organs, but I haven't found any prisons that allow it. The main explanation is that Oregon and most other states use a sequence of three drugs for lethal injections that damages the organs. But Ohio and Washington use a larger dose of just one drug, a fast-acting barbiturate that doesn't destroy organs. If states would switch to a one-drug regimen, inmates' organs could be saved.

Another common concern is that the organs of prisoners may be tainted by infections, H.I.V. or hepatitis. Though the prison population does have a higher prevalence of such diseases than do non-prisoners, thorough testing can easily determine whether a prisoner's organs are healthy. These tests would be more reliable than many given to, say, a victim of a car crash who had signed up to be a donor; in the rush to transplant organs after an accident, there is less time for a full risk analysis.

There are also fears about security — that, for example, prisoners will volunteer to donate organs as part of an elaborate escape scheme. But prisoners around the country make hospital trips for medical reasons every day. And in any case, executions have to take place on prison grounds, so the organ removal would take place there as well.

New York Times

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EDITORIAL

How Not to Assign Kidneys

MORE than 87,000 Americans suffering from end-stage renal disease are on dialysis and awaiting a kidney transplant. Fewer than 17,000 of them are likely to have new kidneys by the end of the year.

The United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit group that manages the nation's organ transplant system, wants to change the system for allocating kidneys from deceased donors. While organs from living donors are usually directed to a particular person, kidneys from the deceased are distributed under a formula devised by the network. The proposal is supposed to provide deceased-donor kidneys of higher quality to healthier, younger patients instead of to elderly ones who presumably have fewer years to live.

It sounds simple enough. But the strategy could result in fewer kidneys going from living donors to young candidates, and could lead to more deaths of older or sicker candidates on the waiting list. Moreover, it would do nothing to address the fundamental problem: the persistent shortage of kidneys from donors, both living and deceased.

The proposal would set up a two-pronged strategy that is intended to increase the number of life-years gained for every donor kidney. Under the proposal, the top 20 percent of kidneys from deceased donors who had been young and healthy would be assigned to the top 20 percent of young healthy candidates. In other words, the best deceased-donor kidneys would be given to patients likeliest to have long lives ahead of them.

The other 80 percent of deceased-donor kidneys would be allocated first to local candidates within a 15-year age range of the donor, and if no potential candidate were identified, then to the broader pool of candidates. (For example, candidates aged 25 to 55 would get priority for a kidney from a 40-year-old donor who had just died.)

But while the goal is understandable, the proposal is flawed. For one thing, our ability to forecast the success of any particular transplant is limited. The models used to predict whether both the kidney and the recipient survive in any individual operation are correct only 60 percent to 70 percent of the time; sometimes kidneys don't last as long as expected. So basing a vast shift in policy on a model that is just two-thirds accurate should give us pause.

New York Times

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East Coast Rapist Suspect Attempts Suicide

Thomas has been arrested in connection with a string of sexual assaults from Rhode Island to Virginia. Initial rape charges against the unemployed trucker have been filed in Connecticut and Virginia. Authorities in New Haven say that DNA evidence may tie him to 17 attacks on women, which took place over the span of a decade.

Police said the "East Coast Rapist" approached women on foot, using weapons like a knife, a screw driver, or a hand gun.

He also lived in District Heights in Prince George's County from June 1994 to August of 2006. Several of the attacks happened in the county during that time period. It was a Prince William County source gave the tip that led police to Thomas' New Haven residence. Prince William County was the site of the East Coast Rapist's last attack. Two teenagers in 2009 were raped behind a shopping center while coming home from trick or treating.

In New Haven, DNA from the end of a discarded cigarette butt that provided enough evidence for police to make an arrest.

NBC News

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March 5, 2011

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Jared Loughner charged with murder in Arizona shootings

Jared Loughner is charged with killing Judge John Roll and an aide to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, counts that could lead to the death penalty.

Prosecutors moved closer to seeking the death penalty for Jared Lee Loughner, charging him for the first time with the murder of a federal judge and a congressional aide in the shooting rampage earlier this year that also critically wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).

Loughner, 22, was indicted by a federal grand jury on the new murder allegations, and federal prosecutors in Phoenix said the case now involved "potential death-penalty charges." Six people were killed and 13 others wounded by gunfire Jan. 8 at Giffords' Congress on Your Corner event in Tucson.

"This was an attack on Congresswoman Giffords, her constituents and her staff," said U.S. Atty. Dennis Burke in Phoenix, announcing the 49-count indictment that his office obtained Thursday and made public Friday. "Lives were extinguished while exercising one of the most precious rights of American citizens: the right to meet freely and openly with their member of Congress."

Burke said that Department of Justice rules required the government "to pursue a deliberate and thorough process" before announcing whether it will seek Loughner's death. He said that process includes consulting with those who were wounded and the families of the dead, and "consideration of all evidence relevant to guilt and punishment."

Loughner earlier was indicted on a series of assault charges, and pleaded not guilty. U.S. District Judge Larry Burns of San Diego, who will be trying the case, has set a hearing for Wednesday on the new indictment.

The new charges state that Loughner, firing a Glock 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol, killed U.S. District Judge John M. Roll while he "was engaged in and on account of the performance of his official duties."

Los Angeles Times

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Allegations against Sheen illustrate challenges police face in domestic abuse cases

Allegations that Charlie Sheen threatened to harm his wife point up the difficulties officials sometimes confront in dealing with domestic violence cases, some experts said.

Sheen's wife, Brooke Mueller, said this week that the TV star threatened to stab her in the eye. She also said he vowed to decapitate her and send her severed head to her mother.

Her statements were enough for an L.A. judge to issue a temporary restraining order against Sheen, who has already been convicted twice for domestic violence. But the statements were not enough for the Los Angeles Police Department to open a criminal investigation. LAPD officials said they've discussed the issue and determined that they can only launch a probe if Mueller files a complaint, which as of Friday she has not.

“It is incumbent on her to come forward and make a police report,” said Sgt. Mitzi Grasso. “Our hands are tied.”

Those who help domestic violence victims said Sheen's case is in many ways similar to others they see -- women who get restraining orders but are too frightened or otherwise unwilling to report incidents to police.

They say getting domestic abuse victims to file police reports is a continuing struggle. Victims sometimes fear that reporting an abuser to police will lead to the abuser's arrest and make life more difficult -– financially or emotionally -– for the children.

Los Angeles Times

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Twenty years after the beating of Rodney King, the LAPD is a changed operation

In the wake of the videotaped police attack on motorist Rodney King, the department has learned to embrace video scrutiny.

It was shortly after midnight, 20 years ago Thursday, when George Holliday awoke to the sounds of police sirens outside his Lake View Terrace apartment. Grabbing his clunky Sony Handycam, he stepped out on his balcony and changed the Los Angeles Police Department forever.

The nine minutes of grainy video footage he captured of Los Angeles police beating Rodney King helped to spur dramatic reforms in a department that many felt operated with impunity. The video played a central role in the criminal trial of four officers, whose not-guilty verdicts in 1992 triggered days of rioting in Los Angeles in which more than 50 people died.

The simple existence of the video was something unusual in itself. Relatively few people then had video cameras, Holliday did — and had the wherewithal to turn it on.

"It was just coincidence," Holliday reflected in an interview a decade ago. "Or luck."

Today, things are far different and the tape that so tainted the LAPD has a clear legacy in how officers think about their jobs. Police now work in a YouTube world in which cellphones double as cameras, news helicopters transmit close-up footage of unfolding police pursuits, and surveillance cameras capture arrests or shootings. Police officials are increasingly recording their officers. Compared to the cops who beat King, officers these days hit the streets with a new reality ingrained in their minds: Someone is always watching.

"Early on in their training, I always tell them, 'I don't care if you're in a bathroom taking care of your personal business…. Whatever you do, assume it will be caught on video,' " said Sgt. Heather Fungaroli, who supervises recruits at the LAPD's academy. "We tell them if they're doing the right thing then they have no reason to worry."

Los Angeles Times

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Gunman in Germany Wanted ‘Revenge' for Afghanistan

FRANKFURT — Arid Uka, the 21-year-old man suspected of killing two American airmen this week, has told investigators that he was seeking revenge for the deployment of Americans in Afghanistan after watching radical Islamist videos on the Internet, German authorities said Friday.

Prosecutors say that Mr. Uka, who is also accused of wounding two others in the attack on an American military bus at Frankfurt airport on Wednesday, had tried to kill more servicemen but failed to do so only because his gun jammed.

“The bus was waiting at the terminal, and one serviceman after the other got on it,” said a German security official, who was not authorized to speak publicly . Mr. Uka asked the last one for a cigarette, “then he asked the soldier if they were heading to Afghanistan.”

When the serviceman answered yes, the official said, Mr. Uka shot him with a handgun in the back of the head.

“He then entered the bus, shouted ‘God is the greatest' and opened fire and killed the driver with a shot in the head and injured two other soldiers,” the official said.

When Mr. Uka held his gun to the head of a fifth man and pressed the trigger twice, it jammed because a cartridge had snagged inside. The serviceman then chased and caught Mr. Uka outside the bus. German police soon arrested him.

New York Times

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Concerns Raised Over Young Police Chief

MEXICO CITY — Marisol Valles García, the young mother who took the job of police chief in her violence-ravaged town when nobody else would, has not been to work in three days. On Friday, it appeared she might not be planning to come back soon.

A human rights official in Chihuahua State said that Ms. Valles might have been threatened and crossed into Texas. But her bosses said she asked for a few days of leave to attend to her baby son, who had been ill.

Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson, who is in charge of the Ciudad Juárez office of the state human rights commission, said he had spoken to someone who had accompanied Ms. Valles to the border and watched her cross the bridge. He did not know if she had crossed alone or with family.

“We are trying to reach her to help her,” said Mr. de la Rosa, who said that he had not spoken to her and that he was trying to confirm reports that she had been threatened.

But officials in Praxedis G. Guerrero, where Ms. Valles was appointed police chief last October, when she was 20, said they had no reason to be suspicious.

“She is still our colleague,” said Andrés Morales Arreola, the town hall secretary in Praxedis. “In her talks with the mayor, she had not shown any sign of receiving threats,” he said.

What is clear is that the situation in Praxedis, about 60 miles southeast of Ciudad Juárez, was not auspicious for Ms. Valles's job security when she became police chief. The town is one of a group of farming towns in the Valley of Juárez hugging the Texas border that has been swept by drug violence as gunmen from the Sinaloa and Juárez cartels battle over smuggling routes.

New York Times

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Mexico: Soldiers Held in Trafficking

The Mexican Army has ordered three junior officers and 10 soldiers to stand trial on drug trafficking and organized crime charges after they were reportedly caught with more than a ton of methamphetamine and 66 pounds of cocaine.

The military announced earlier that several soldiers were arrested last week with drugs at a military checkpoint south of Tijuana, across the border from San Diego. It was not clear whether it was the same group named in the charges announced Thursday.

The Defense Department said in a statement it would “in no way tolerate” such acts. The troops were charged within the military justice system.

Corruption is widespread among the Mexican police, and some experts worry it could spread to the tens of thousands of soldiers assigned to fight drug traffickers.

New York Times

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EDITORIAL

The Anti-Arizonans

Washington's inaction on immigration reform has left the states feeling abandoned and wondering what to do. When the frustration boils over, as it has most scarily in Arizona, Republicans have been pushing what amounts to vigilantism — states taking on federal enforcement, shouldering aside civil rights and the Constitution and spending whatever it takes to get rid of illegal immigrants. It's a seductively simple vision, and lawmakers across the country are grasping at it, pushing Arizona-style copycat laws.

Thank goodness for the pushback. In dozens of states considering such crackdowns — including Nebraska, Indiana, Oklahoma, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas — elected officials, law enforcers, business owners, religious leaders and regular citizens are providing the calm voices and cool judgment that are lacking in the shimmering heat of Phoenix.

They are reminding their representatives that replacing federal immigration policy with a crazy quilt of state-led enforcement schemes is only a recipe for more lawlessness and social disruption, for expensive lawsuits and busted budgets, lost jobs and boycotts. And all without fixing the problem.

This isn't just an immigrants' cause. Business owners in places like Kansas and Texas, the attorney general in Indiana, Catholic and Protestant bishops in Mississippi — these and hundreds of other community leaders have been sending a contrary message.

The businesses say bills to force employers to check workers' legal status are redundant, costly and anticompetitive. The clergy members have denounced bills to criminalize acts of charity, like driving an undocumented immigrant to church or the doctor. Lawyers have said new layers of enforcement paperwork would heavily burden legitimate business and overwhelm state bureaucracies.

Police chiefs and sheriffs are leading the skeptical resistance to the bills, which frequently involve having local police checking the immigration status of people they stop. A report released on Thursday by a national police research group looked at cities where police officials had been drawn into heated immigration debates. Its conclusions: federal enforcement is no job for local officers, who should be forbidden to arrest or detain people solely because of their immigration status.

The reasons: it costs too much, prompts false-arrest lawsuits and frightens law-abiding immigrants. “I have a responsibility to provide service to the entire community — no matter how they got here,” said Chief Charlie Deane of the Prince William County Police Department in Virginia. “It is in the best interest of our community to trust the police.”

The chiefs of Nebraska's two largest police departments — in Lincoln and Omaha — recently told the State Legislature basically the same thing. A peculiar mix of nativism and immigration panic has pushed the immigration debate far out into the desert of extremism. It's going to take a serious effort by saner voices to ensure that what happens in Arizona stays there.

New York Times

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Fla. police identify children found in canal

DELRAY BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The boy and girl whose bodies were found stuffed into luggage and thrown into a south Florida canal are believed to be the children of a woman found dead in a landfill last summer, police said Friday.

Investigators said they have positively identified the children's bodies found Wednesday as siblings Jermaine McNeil, 10, and Ju'tyra Allen, 6. They believe their mother, Felicia Brown, is the woman whose body was found in a West Palm Beach landfill last August.

Sgt. Nicole Guerriero, a spokeswoman for the Delray Beach Police, said the three lived with Clem Beauchamp, who investigators say is their only suspect in the deaths. He has not been charged with their slayings but is being held on an unrelated weapons charge.

Police said they didn't expect any charges in the case for several days, at the earliest. Meantime, the release of the victims' identities Friday horrified friends and relatives, including Brown's sister, 22-year-old Margaret Gissone.

Three other children who lived in Beauchamp's home were taken from his girlfriend and put into the custody of the Department of Children and Families, Guerriero said Friday. The girlfriend was questioned in the killings but is not considered a suspect, police said.

Associated Press

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Tata case puts focus on arrest process

Real life seldom works that way, although legal experts say it is common to make an arrest before obtaining a warrant.

The Houston Fire Department and Harris County District Attorney's Office spent much of the past week trying to explain how the woman who ran a west Houston home day care was able to vanish before investigators could get a warrant for her arrest.

Jessica Rene Tata, 22, disappeared Feb. 26, one day before charges were filed in connection with a fire that killed four children and injured three others. A U.S. citizen, Tata is thought to be in Nigeria, where she has family.

On Friday, the U.S. Marshals Service added Tata to its 15 Most Wanted fugitive list and offered a reward of up to $25,000 for information that leads to her arrest.

The day before, a grand jury indicted Tata on four counts of manslaughter. And federal prosecutors now have charged her with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. She earlier had been charged with six counts of reckless injury to a child and three counts of child abandonment.

Tata's disappearance left many wondering what, if anything, could have been done to prevent her leaving the country.

Chron.com

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Burlington case puts spotlight on legal challenges of trying children as adults

Teen killers are not unusual in Colorado, but a preteen, like the boy in Burlington now accused of killing his parents, poses unique challenges for the criminal justice system.

As long as the boy is in the juvenile system, prosecutors and judges must carefully balance the best interests of the boy against those of the public, and even his family, who are relatives of both the victims and the defendant.

"Nobody wants to forever throw away the life of a 12-year-old child," said Peggy Jessel, chief prosecutor in the Boulder County district attorney's juvenile division. "They will try everything they can to rehabilitate him if it can be done."

On Friday, 13th Judicial District Attorney Robert Watson filed a petition in juvenile court declaring the boy delinquent in the killing of his parents.

The boy, who has both a guardian ad litem and public defender representing his interests, was advised Wednesday that the petition could include two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder and two counts of first-degree assault for attacks on his younger siblings. The details are all sealed in juvenile court.

The bodies of Charles Long, 50, and Marilyn Long, 51, were found Tuesday night at 783 Lowell Ave. in Burlington. Two of their children, Sara, 5, and Ethan, 9, were flown to Denver to be treated for injuries suffered in the incident.

Denver Post

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Chemicals Used in "Spice" and "K2" Type Products Now Under Federal Control and Regulation

DEA Will Study Whether To Permanently Control Five Substances

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) today exercised its emergency scheduling authority to control five chemicals (JWH-018, JWH-073, JWH-200, CP-47,497, and cannabicyclohexanol) used to make so-called “fake pot” products. Except as authorized by law, this action makes possessing and selling these chemicals or the products that contain them illegal in the United States. This emergency action was necessary to prevent an imminent threat to public health and safety. The temporary scheduling action will remain in effect for at least one year while the DEA and the United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) further study whether these chemicals should be permanently controlled.

The Final Order was published today in the Federal Register to alert the public to this action. These chemicals will be controlled for at least 12 months, with the possibility of a six month extension. They are designated as Schedule I substances, the most restrictive category under the Controlled Substances Act. Schedule I substances are reserved for those substances with a high potential for abuse, no accepted medical use for treatment in the United States and a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug under medical supervision.

Over the past couple of years, smokeable herbal products marketed as being “legal” and as providing a marijuana-like high, have become increasingly popular, particularly among teens and young adults. These products consist of plant material that has been coated with research chemicals that claim to mimic THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, and are sold at a variety of retail outlets, in head shops, and over the Internet. These chemicals, however, have not been approved by the FDA for human consumption, and there is no oversight of the manufacturing process. Brands such as “Spice,” “K2,” “Blaze,” and “Red X Dawn” are labeled as herbal incense to mask their intended purpose.

DEA

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March 4, 2011

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U.S. gun-tracing operation let firearms into criminal hands

A federal operation aimed at tracing weapons to Mexican drug cartels lost track of hundreds, including two guns found at the scene of a Border Patrol agent's killing in Arizona.

A federal operation that allowed weapons from the U.S. to pass into the hands of suspected gun smugglers so they could be traced to the higher echelons of Mexican drug cartels has lost track of hundreds of firearms, many of which have been linked to crimes, including the fatal shooting of a Border Patrol agent in December.

The investigation, known as Operation Fast and Furious, was conducted even though U.S. authorities suspected that some of the weapons might be used in crimes, according to a variety of federal agents who voiced anguished objections to the operation.

Many of the weapons have spread across the most violence-torn states in Mexico, with at least 195 linked to some form of crime or law enforcement action, according to documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity and The Times.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which ran the operation, said that 1,765 guns were sold to suspected smugglers during a 15-month period of the investigation. Of those, 797 were recovered on both sides of the border, including 195 in Mexico after they were used in crimes, collected during arrests or intercepted through other law enforcement operations.

John Dodson, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who worked on Operation Fast and Furious, said in an interview with the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit research group based in Washington, that he was still haunted by his participation in the investigation.

"With the number of guns we let walk, we'll never know how many people were killed, raped, robbed," he said. "There is nothing we can do to round up those guns. They are gone."

Los Angeles Times

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The right to be vile

The Supreme Court was correct that Westboro Baptist Church is protected by the 1st Amendment.

Faced with a conflict between freedom of speech and the protection of grieving parents from abuse, the Supreme Court on Wednesday made the only choice allowed by the 1st Amendment. It ruled in favor of Pastor Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church, which pickets military funerals claiming that the deaths of service members are divine retribution for America's toleration of homosexuality.

Westboro Baptist had been sued by the father of Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder, a Marine killed in Iraq. Protesters from the church had gathered outside Snyder's funeral holding signs reading "God hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11," "America is doomed," "Don't pray for the USA," "Thank God for IEDs," "Thank God for dead soldiers," "Pope in Hell," "Priests rape boys," "God hates fags," "You're going to hell" and "God hates you."

Speaking for an 8-1 majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. persuasively countered three arguments against Phelps, who was ordered by a trial court to pay Snyder damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress.

First, Roberts responded to the claim that Phelps and the other protesters invaded the funeral. He noted that not only were the protesters 1,000 feet away but that Snyder's father couldn't read their signs. Furthermore, Roberts noted, "None of the picketers entered church property or went to the cemetery. They did not yell or use profanity, and there was no violence associated with the picketing."

Second, Roberts said that Westboro's anti-gay and anti-Catholic rants involved matters of public concern of the sort protected by the 1st Amendment. "The 'content' of Westboro's signs plainly relates to broad issues of interest to society at large," he wrote, adding that "the issues they highlight — the political and moral conduct of the United States and its citizens, the fate of our nation, homosexuality in the military and scandals involving the Catholic clergy — are matters of public import."

Finally and most important, Roberts emphasized that the outrageousness of Westboro's speech didn't deprive it of 1st Amendment protection. He cited a passage from the 1989 decision in which the court ruled that protesters had the right to burn the American flag: "If there is a bedrock principle underlying the 1st Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable."

Although this case was described as a difficult one for the court, in fact the outcome was based on well-established principles. That explains why eight justices — liberals and conservatives — voted to affirm the church's right to free speech. That will be little consolation to Snyder's father, or others who thought that the Westboro Baptist Church crossed a legal as well as a moral line. But it's the right decision.

Los Angeles Times

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Working with Mexico

Thursday's meeting in Washington provides a much-needed opportunity for President Obama and Mexican President Calderon to get bilateral relations back on track.

When Mexican President Felipe Calderon visits Washington on Thursday, it will be his fifth and most important visit since 2006.

Relations between the two countries are strained. Leaked diplomatic cables and the killing of a U.S. immigration agent in Mexico by suspected drug traffickers are stealing headlines and threatening to derail diplomatic efforts. Thursday's meeting provides a much-needed opportunity for President Obama and Calderon to get bilateral relations back on track.

First and foremost, they must push forward with a binational plan to fight Mexican drug cartels and quell the violence that threatens to spill across the border. The U.S. has already pledged more than $1.4 billion as part of the 2008 Merida Initiative aimed at providing equipment and technical assistance. Mexican officials have said that some of the help has yet to arrive. Both sides must air those concerns privately and move forward.

The death of a U.S. immigration agent in Mexico last month has raised questions about the effectiveness of the strategy currently in place. Calderon has repeatedly pushed American officials to stop the flow of illicit guns and money across the border, as well as drug consumption in the U.S. As this page has argued, Obama should approve a request by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to trace bulk gun sales in four border states.

Obama should also move quickly to comply with the North American Free Trade Agreement and allow Mexican trucks access to U.S. roads. Mexican officials are rightly angered by our failure to comply with a treaty U.S. officials negotiated but have not honored for much of the past 16 years.

And although comprehensive immigration reform remains a distant dream in the U.S., frank discussions about illegal immigration are in order. The flow of immigrants may be down, thanks to the economic crisis in the U.S. and ramped-up enforcement, but those coming are taking bigger risks and facing greater dangers. Immigration laws must be enforced, but secure borders shouldn't make migrants easy prey for criminals and corrupt officials.

And although Obama can't stop state lawmakers who are threatening to adopt draconian anti-immigrant laws like that passed in Arizona, he can support alternative legislation such as the DREAM Act, which would provide qualified students who are in the U.S. illegally a conditional path to legalization.

Obama and Calderon are smart enough to understand that the stakes are too high and the relationship between the United States and Mexico too important to let recent tensions sidetrack this meeting. The alternative is unacceptable.

Los Angeles Times

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Immigrant's Health Crisis Leaves Her Family on Sideline

MILLERSVILLE, Md. — When Jerome Ndayishimiye entered the overheated room at the nursing home where his 58-year-old mother lay under a tightly tucked blanket, he quickly closed the curtains around her bed and turned on her boom box so that a melodic Rwandan song enveloped them. He stroked her forehead and her eyes fluttered open and closed again.

“At this point, I do not know whether to say hello or goodbye,” Mr. Ndayishimiye said Saturday, choosing instead to ask her softly, in their native language, how she was feeling. She stirred again but did not answer; Rachel Nyirahabiyambere, a legal immigrant from Rwanda, has been in a persistent vegetative state since having a major stroke in April.

On Feb. 19, Ms. Nyirahabiyambere's feeding tube was removed on the order of her court-appointed guardian. Her six adult children — including two United States citizens — vehemently opposed that decision. But they were helpless to block it when Georgetown University Medical Center, frustrated in its efforts to discharge Ms. Nyirahabiyambere after she had spent eight costly months there without insurance, sought a guardian to make decisions that the family would not make.

“Now we are powerless spectators, just watching our mother die,” said Mr. Ndayishimiye, 33, who teaches health information management at the State University of New York's Institute of Technology in Utica. “In our culture, we would never sentence a person to die from hunger.”

Decision-making on behalf of patients in persistent vegetative states is always a delicate matter, especially if, like Ms. Nyirahabiyambere, they have not left a directive. Her case, which has received no public attention, underscores the thorny issues that arise when a severely brain-damaged person's life is sustained by medical technology.

New York Times

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Police Chiefs Wary of Immigration Role

As many state legislatures consider laws to expand the role of local police departments in immigration control, police chiefs across the country say they are reluctant to take on these tasks and want clear lines drawn between local crime-fighting and federal immigration enforcement, according to a new report by a police research group.

Dozens of police department commanders who participated in the report recommended that local officers should be explicitly prohibited from arresting people solely because of their immigration status, and should have orders to protect victims and witnesses regardless of that status.

The report, issued on Thursday by the Police Executive Research Forum, cites worries among police chiefs that if they are pulled into immigration enforcement, a job that was limited until recently to federal agents, their ties to immigrant communities will be eroded, with the result that crimes would not be reported and witnesses would be afraid to cooperate in investigations.

While police chiefs have spoken out against efforts to increase their immigration role in cities like Phoenix and Los Angeles, which have been embroiled in debates on the issue, the report makes clear how widespread the concerns are among commanders. Top officers from Salt Lake City, Topeka, Kan., Elgin and Peoria, Ill., Framingham, Mass., and Miami were among the chiefs and sheriffs supporting the recommendations in the report.

Arizona has gone furthest among the states to authorize local police departments to participate in an immigration crackdown, with a law passed last April. It ordered officers to question anyone they stopped about immigration status based on a “reasonable suspicion” that the person was an illegal immigrant. The Obama administration sued Arizona over the statute and federal courts have suspended its central provisions.

New York Times

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Terror Suspects in New Jersey Plead Guilty

NEWARK — Two New Jersey men who were thwarted in a plan to join an armed Islamic group in Somalia pleaded guilty on Thursday to a felony conspiracy charge in federal court.

The men, Mohamed Mahmood Alessa, 21, and Carlos Eduardo Almonte, 24, were arrested at Kennedy International Airport in June as they tried to board separate flights to Egypt. From there they planned to journey to Somalia to join the Shabab, a fearsome insurgent group affiliated with Al Qaeda.

Their arrests in June -- along with the arrest a month earlier of the Times Square car bomb suspect, Faisal Shahzad — underscored the concern over terrorists born or raised in the United States. Mr. Shahzad worked and owned a home in Connecticut; and the New Jersey suspects were products of communities not far from Manhattan: Mr. Alessa lived in North Bergen, Mr. Almonte in Elmwood Park.

There was no evidence in the public record that Mr. Almonte and Mr. Alessa had established contact with the Shabab, but officials said the guilty pleas were a reminder of the importance of sustained vigilance to prevent terrorist attacks.

“One of the goals of organizations like Al Shabab and Al Qaeda is to influence people both here and abroad to get them to join the fight,” Paul J. Fishman, the United States attorney for New Jersey, said after the hearing. “We are very, very focused in New Jersey and around the country on combating that threat.”

The two men appeared together before Judge Dickinson R. Debevoise in United States District Court in Newark, wearing long beards and blue smocks. They pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder people outside the United States “whose beliefs and practices did not accord with their extremist ideology,” court papers said.

New York Times

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More Than 1,000 Lost Pets Recovered with Revolutionary Missing Pet System

Mark Jakubczak, founder of PetAmberAlert.com, announced today that between 2009 and 2010, his company has helped recover more than 1,000 lost pets and returned them to their homes.

PetAmberAlert.com was inspired by Amber Alert, the alert system that uses mass communication channels to send out information when a child is missing or taken.

When a pet is lost, PetAmberAlert.com uses phones, faxes and computers to alert thousands of neighbors, animal shelters, pet stores, police stations, and veterinary offices in the area within an hour a pet is reported missing. The system uses specialized software to reach people anywhere in the United States and Canada.

“When pets go missing, pet owners cannot spread the word fast enough. That is why I created a fast, reliable missing pet alert system,” Jakubczak said.

Sys-Con.com

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Engaging Voluntary Agencies Before, During, and After a Disaster

Voluntary agencies are a vital part of a community's ability to prepare for, respond to and recovery from disasters. Before a disaster, voluntary agencies help communities and families get prepared by providing disaster training, raising awareness regarding vital health and safety issues. After a disaster strikes, voluntary and faith-based organizations respond alongside state and local emergency responders, helping to address immediate needs of survivors.

At FEMA, we engage the vitally important voluntary agency sector through Voluntary Agency Liaisons (VALs). VALs act as a bridge between the community and the government.

To better understand the roles of a VAL, here is a quick Q&A on the work that they do before, during and after a disaster.

What is the role of a VAL before a disaster?

Once a disaster strikes, what role does a VAL play in the response?

How do VALs work with voluntary agencies to assist in the Long Term Recovery?

FEMA

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Operation Power Outage

Armenian Organized Crime Group Targeted

The Southern California crime ring called Armenian Power may look like a traditional street gang—members identify themselves with tattoos and gang clothing—but the group is really an international organized crime enterprise whose illegal activities allegedly range from bank fraud and identity theft to violent extortion and kidnapping.

Operation Power Outage—a nearly three-year investigation conducted by our Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force in Los Angeles—culminated last week with the arrests of 83 Armenian Power members on a variety of federal and state charges that include racketeering, drug trafficking, smuggling cell phones into prisons, and theft from the elderly. All told, the group allegedly bilked victims out of at least $10 million.

In one scheme, Armenian Power—known as AP—caused more than $2 million in losses when members secretly installed "skimming" devices in cash register credit card swipe machines at Southern California 99 Cents Only stores to steal customer account information. Then they used the skimmed information to create counterfeit debit and credit cards to empty accounts.

“There is no crime too big or too small for this group,” said Special Agent Louis Perez, who supervises the Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force that built the case against AP.

“This is not just a group of thugs committing crimes in their neighborhood,” added Perez. “AP is sophisticated, and they have international ties. That's what sets them apart from traditional gangs.”

FBI

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March 3, 2011

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Germans see attack on U.S. airmen as possible act of Islamic terrorism

The suspect, an Albanian from Kosovo, will appear in federal court today. The attack left 2 dead and 2 wounded.

BERLIN -- The attack on a busload of U.S. Air Force troops at Frankfurt airport that killed two is being investigated as a possible act of Islamic terrorism, German federal prosecutors said Thursday. Two airmen were also wounded late Wednesday when a man identified as a 21-year-old ethnic Albanian from Kosovo fired on the servicemen at close range.

"The suspect is accused of killing two U.S. military personnel and seriously injuring two others," federal prosecutors said in a statement. "Given the circumstances, there is a suspicion that the act was motivated by Islamism."

Federal prosecutors said they had taken over the investigation of the Wednesday afternoon shooting, and are working on conjunction with Frankfurt and federal police, as well as American authorities. The suspect was taken into custody immediately after the shooting and is to appear later Thursday in federal court.

Frankfurt police spokesman Juergen Linker told the DAPD news agency that one airman remained in critical condition after being shot in the head. The other wounded airman was not in life-threatening condition, Linker said. Both men were being treated at the Frankfurt University clinic. None of the victims have yet been identified.

The attacker's family in northern Kosovo identified him as Arid Uka, whose family has been living in Germany for 40 years. His uncle, Rexhep Uka, said the young man worked at Frankfurt airport and was a devout Muslim. Police said the attacker had an altercation with U.S. military personnel in front of a bus outside the airport's Terminal 2. They said the man started shooting, then boarded the bus briefly and was apprehended by police when he tried to escape.

The airmen were based in Britain, a U.S. Air Force spokesman for the Lakenheath airfield in eastern England said. They were bound to Ramstein Air Base from where they were to have been deployed to support an overseas operation, the U.S. military said, without elaborating. The U.S. has some 50,000 troops stationed in Germany. It operates several major facilities in the Frankfurt region, including the Ramstein Air Base, which is often used as a logistical hub for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In Washington, President Barack Obama promised to "spare no effort" in investigating the slayings. "I'm saddened and I'm outraged by this attack," he said.

Los Angeles Times

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10 hospitalized prisoners to get prompt hearings under medical parole law, receiver says

The federal receiver overseeing California's prisons says inmates who no longer pose a threat to public safety will be scheduled for hearings under a law meant to save taxpayers the yearly $800,000-per-inmate cost of round-the-clock supervision.

Ten of California's sickest and most costly inmates — some are in comas, some are paralyzed — will be promptly scheduled for parole hearings, corrections authorities announced Wednesday.

An article in Wednesday's Los Angeles Times detailed how, despite being chained to bed frames, such inmates are guarded around the clock by multiple corrections officers at an annual cost to taxpayers of roughly $800,000 per inmate.

"You look at these inmates and say, 'This person is not going anywhere,'" said J. Clark Kelso, the receiver appointed by a federal court to oversee California's troubled prison health services.

Kelso said he met with Corrections Department Secretary Matthew Cate on Wednesday morning and the two agreed to schedule parole hearings for the 10, who are no longer deemed a threat to public safety.

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a medical parole law in September to spare taxpayers the expense of guarding such inmates. But as of last week, corrections officials had not scheduled a single parole hearing. They said they were still working on regulations to carry out the law.

The receiver's office and state prison officials have been at odds about how quickly to nudge these ailing inmates toward parole. The receiver has argued that paroling them right away would save money. Prison officials insisted they needed time to formulate rules and make sure the law is applied consistently.

Kelso said the department would no longer wait for new regulations to be written.

All of the 10 inmates selected by Kelso are being treated in hospitals outside of prison, where their care costs taxpayers more than $2 million a year on average. About 40% of that goes to salaries, benefits and overtime for guards, many of whom consider the assignment a plum job.

Los Angeles Times

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Supreme Court sides with churchgoers who picketed military funeral

The justices say members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas have the right to carry anti-gay and other signs at U.S. troops' funerals, however offensive their message may be considered.

Ruling in a case that pressed the outer limits of free speech, the Supreme Court on Wednesday said that even anti-gay protesters who picketed the funerals of U.S. troops with signs reading, "Thank God for Dead Soldiers," cannot be sued.

In an 8-1 decision, the justices upheld an appellate court's decision to strike down a jury verdict against Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan. Phelps and his family gained national attention — and stirred deep anger — for using military funerals as a backdrop to proclaim an anti-gay and anti-military message.

The church believes that the United States is too tolerant of sin and that the death of American soldiers is God's punishment.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said that when the disputed words "address matters of public import on public property" and when the protest is conducted "in a peaceful manner, in full compliance with the guidance of local officials," they are protected.

Roberts cited past rulings that shielded offensive words and outrageous protests.

He pointed to the decision that freed protesters who burned the American flag and another that protected a Hustler magazine satirist who portrayed the Rev. Jerry Falwell in an outhouse. Last year, Roberts spoke for the court in striking down on free-speech grounds a law that made it crime to sell videos of illegal dog-fighting.

The "bedrock principle underlying the 1st Amendment," Roberts said in quoting the flag-burning ruling by the late liberal Justice William J. Brennan Jr., is that the government cannot punish words or ideas "simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable."

Los Angeles Times

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RFK assassin Sirhan Sirhan's parole rejected

A California parole board in Coalinga on Wednesday rejected a parole request by the the man who assassinated Robert F. Kennedy. Sirhan Sirhan has spent 42 years behind bars for the assassination in 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel.

This was his 13th parole hearing. The parole board has repeatedly rejected Sirhan's appeals for release for failing to accept responsibility or show remorse for Kennedy's death. Sirhan's attorney, William F. Pepper, told the Associated Press that his client had no memory of the events and suggested a second gunman was involved in the crime.

Pepper, who is based in New York, gained publicity for his efforts to prove the innocence of James Earl Ray in the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Pepper says Ray, who was convicted of killing King two months before Kennedy was slain, was framed by the federal government and that King was killed in a conspiracy involving the FBI, the CIA, the military, the Memphis police and organized crime figures from New Orleans and Memphis. Ray, who confessed to killing King and then recanted and won the support of King's widow and children, died in 1998.

Sirhan, now 66, shot Kennedy on June 5, 1968, moments after the New York senator had claimed victory in the California presidential primary. Sirhan was convicted and sentenced to death in April 1969. The sentence was commuted to life in prison with the possibility of parole when the death penalty was outlawed in California in 1972 before being re-instituted.

In Sirhan's case, he said on the day of the killing, "I did it for my country." At his trial, Sirhan said on the witness stand that he killed Kennedy "premeditatedly with 20 years of malice aforethought."

Los Angeles Times

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Thirteen-year-old girl reported missing fled to avoid arranged marriage, authorities say

A 13-year-old Hesperia girl reported missing by her family on Feb. 22 apparently left to avoid being taken to Pakistan for an arranged marriage, San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department officials said Wednesday.

Detectives found Jessie Marie Bender safe and in good condition in an Apple Valley motel, where she was being hidden by another family member. Jesse and her three siblings have been taken into protective custody by county social services pending the outcome of the investigation.

Bender's mother had told detectives that her daughter did not want to go on a two-month family trip to Pakistan and ran away. She later told police her daughter may have been abducted by someone she had been corresponding with on Facebook, triggering a massive search for the teenager that included local law enforcement, the FBI, agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S.Marshals Service and detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department and Chicago Police Department.

After combing through cellphone records and computer data and interviewing her friends and families, however, sheriff's detectives found no evidence that her disappearance was related to her correspondence on Facebook and that the family's initial reports were false.

“Bender family members misled detectives and withheld critical information and as a result delayed the investigation and recovery of their daughter Jesse Bender," Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Roxanne Walker said in a news release. “It was revealed that a member of the Bender family concealed Jess in the town of Apple Valley out of fear that she would be taken to Pakistan for an arranged marriage."

The investigation is ongoing and will be forwarded to the San Bernardino County district attorney's office for review.

Los Angeles Times

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L.A. mayor and police chief back federal ban on large-capacity ammunition magazines

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Police Chief Charlie Beck and other top officials voiced their support Wednesday for federal legislation that would ban large-capacity ammunition magazines such as the one used by the alleged gunman in the Tucson shooting rampage.

“It boils down to simple math: It's 20 lives,” said Beck, describing the difference between a 10- and 30-round magazine attached to a weapon.

The pending federal law — H.R. 308, sponsored by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) — would ban magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. Chances of its passage are considered slim amid strong opposition from gun-rights advocates. A large-capacity magazine was used in the January rampage in Tucson that left six dead and 13 wounded.

Displayed on a table beside Beck at a City Hall news conference Wednesday was an array of seized semi-automatic weapons. Such seizures have risen dramatically since a federal assault weapons ban expired in 2004, City Attorney Carmen Trutanich said.

Also among those expressing support for the ban on large-capacity ammunition magazines were several mothers who have lost children to shootings. “We have to do something about these weapons,” said Sheri Barnett, 67, whose 27-year-old son was shot and killed in Los Angeles in 1998 in what police called a gang-related incident. The City Council last month approved a resolution co-sponsored by Council President Eric Garcetti and Councilman Paul Koretz expressing support for the proposed federal law targeting large-capacity magazines.

City lawmakers are considering a separate proposal, authored by Garcetti, to ban the so-called open carry of handguns within the city limits. That provision would outlaw the carrying of legally owned handguns that are unloaded and kept in a visible place. Under current state law, carrying such unloaded weapons is generally legal, though proposed state legislation would prohibit the practice. Gun rights advocates oppose the effort to restrict open carry of handguns as a violation of their constitutional rights.

Los Angeles Times

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Afghan Tells of Ordeal at the ‘Center of Al Qaeda'

KABUL, Afghanistan — Abdul Khaliq Farahi's kidnappers attacked fast, smashing into his car to stall it, seizing him and executing his driver as he tried to make a phone call. Within seconds, they were driving away to a hide-out just 20 minutes away.

It was Sept. 23, 2008, and Mr. Farahi, the Afghan consul general in the Pakistani border town of Peshawar, was driving home from work. His kidnapping was one of a series singling out foreign officials that included the taking of an Iranian diplomat and an attempt to kidnap the American consul, Lynne Tracey, who escaped thanks to the quick reactions of her driver.

Mr. Farahi, 52, spent two years and two months as a captive of Arab members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas. Questioned under torture for the first six months, he was moved 17 times. Apart from the first days when local Pakistani and Afghan militants handled him, he was always held by Arabs, he said.

He spoke for the first time at length about his two-year ordeal in an interview in a hotel in downtown Kabul, just yards from the presidential palace where he has been living as a guest of President Hamid Karzai since his release last November. Within days of being snatched, Mr. Farahi was driven deep into the mountains of South Waziristan, one of the most inaccessible of Pakistan's tribal territories, where Islamist militants run a virtual ministate beyond the control of the Pakistani government.

He found himself in a remote valley. Inside one of a few small huts, an Arab man was waiting for him.

“ ‘Whatever you need, we are ready to bring you,' ” Mr. Farahi recalled the Arab's saying. “ ‘We will start the questions tomorrow.' ”

“I understood this is the center of Al Qaeda,” he said. His interrogator was in his 20s, gave his name as Hassan and spoke English with a British accent, he said. “When I saw them, I realized they were Al Qaeda. I thought they would kill me, that first they would ask me questions and then they would kill me.”

New York Times

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Suburb's Veneer Cracks: Mother Is Held in Deaths

TAMPA — The Tampa Palms neighborhood here is the kind of place people move to get away from crime.

Stucco homes with neatly trimmed lawns and spacious lanais nestle inside gated “villages” with names like Lancaster and Oxford Place. Real estate agents point out the proximity of “topnotch” schools, the 18-hole golf course and other upscale amenities that “cater to a perpetually-on-vacation-like lifestyle.”

But in recent weeks, the residents have become all too aware of how deceptive surface appearances can be. On Jan. 28, the police arrived at a two-story house on a quiet cul-de-sac in Tampa Palms to find Julie Schenecker unconscious on the patio, blood on her white bathrobe. Inside were the bodies of her two children, Calyx, 16, and Beau, 13.

Ms. Schenecker, 50, the wife of a high-level military intelligence officer, has been charged with the murders. When questioned, police said, she admitted to shooting her children and complained that they were “disrespectful and mouthy and that she was going to deal with it.”

To the police, the physical evidence suggested a chilling sequence of events. Ms. Schenecker appeared to have shot Beau with a .38-caliber handgun the previous afternoon while driving him to soccer practice, one bullet piercing the windshield and two striking his body. She then drove home and parked the van in the garage, where his body was found slumped inside the front passenger seat, the seat belt still buckled. Calyx Schenecker was on the computer in an upstairs bedroom when she was killed. Two bullets hit her, one in the back of the head and one in the face. The bodies of both children were covered with blankets.

New York Times

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Study Finds Criminal Pasts of Nursing Home Workers

WASHINGTON — More than 90 percent of nursing homes employ one or more people who have been convicted of at least one crime, federal investigators said Wednesday in a new report. In addition, they said, 5 percent of all nursing home employees have at least one criminal conviction.

The report was issued by Daniel R. Levinson, inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, who obtained the names of more than 35,000 nursing home employees and then checked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to see if they had criminal records.

“Our analysis of F.B.I. criminal history records revealed that 92 percent of nursing facilities employed at least one individual with at least one criminal conviction,” Mr. Levinson said. “Nearly half of nursing facilities employed five or more individuals with at least one conviction. For example, a nursing facility with a total of 164 employees had 34 employees with at least one conviction each.”

Charlene A. Harrington, a professor at the School of Nursing of the University of California, San Francisco, said: “This sounds like a very important study. It cries out for additional regulation. Residents in these homes are so vulnerable.”

The inspector general said that no federal law or regulation specifically required nursing homes to check federal or state criminal history records for prospective employees. Ten states require a check of F.B.I. and state records, Mr. Levinson said, while 33 require a check of state records, and the remainder do not have explicit requirements.

New York Times

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12-year-old boy held in deaths of parents, injuries to siblings at Burlington home

Charles Long, 50, and Marilyn Long, 51, were found dead in their Burlington home Tuesday evening after the boy called 911 to report that three people had been shot.

Ethan, 9, and Sara, 5, were also found in the home. They were flown to an undisclosed Denver hospital.

Investigators said the children were in critical condition but declined to reveal their injuries. Their church pastor said the children had also been attacked with a knife.

They declined to release details but announced at 2:30 p.m. that the boy had been taken into custody.

TSA staff jet blew it

A passenger managed to waltz past JFK's ramped-up security gantlet with three boxcutters in his carry-on luggage -- easily boarding an international flight while carrying the weapon of choice of the 9/11 hijackers, sources told The Post yesterday.

The stunning breach grounded the flight for three hours Saturday night and drew fury from Port Authority cops, who accused the Transportation Security Administration of being asleep on the job.

"In case anyone has forgotten, the TSA was created because of a couple boxcutter incidents," said one PAPD source, referring to the weapons used by al Qaeda operatives to commandeer the jets they later slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11.

The two TSA agents and supervisor who completely missed the blades at a security checkpoint "will all be disciplined and undergo remedial training," said spokeswoman Ann Davis.

The incident happened at around 10 p.m. Saturday as factory worker Eusebio D. Peraltalajara, 45, of Jersey City waltzed past the screeners on his way to a Dominican Republic-bound flight, the sources said. Agent Ahmir Wilkerson, supervisor Anthony DeJesus and at least one other screener allowed his carry-on luggage -- with the boxcutters with razor blades -- to pass through the X-ray machine, police sources said.

Once aboard Santiago-bound Flight 837, flight attendant Fausto Penaloda, 40, asked him to stow his luggage in the overhead storage bin. As Peraltalajara's shoved it into the compartment, Penaloda saw the boxcutters fall out of the bag, according to a police report. He grabbed the boxcutters and alerted the captain and first officer.

Divers to search canal where bodies found

DELRAY BEACH, Fla. (WSVN) -- Divers are set to continue searching a South Florida canal, where the bodies of two children were found stuffed in luggage.

The Delray Beach Police Department's dive team plans to return there Thursday morning, one day after their gruesome discovery. The body of a little girl, believed to be between six and 10 years old, was found in a duffle bag floating in the canal Wednesday morning. Hours later, the body of a boy, believed to be between 10 and 12 years old, was found stuffed in a suitcase a half-mile away.

A homeowner was the first to alert police after noticing something suspicious floating in the canal.

Delray Beach Police said the canal is so large that the bodies could've been dumped from multiple locations. "This is really devastating, it's devastating for them, and for all of us as an agency," said Delray Beach Police Department Sergeant Nicole Guerriero. "It's horrific to think that something happened to these two children and this is the way that they were found. It's something that no one, as a police officer or as a detective, ever wants to see."

Police said the bodies didn't immediately match the descriptions of any known missing children. It is unclear how long the bodies have been floating in the canal.

The bodies have been transported to the medical examiner's office for autopsies.

WSVN

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Mickey Rooney Warns of Elder Financial Abuse in Hearing

March 2 (Bloomberg) -- Actor Mickey Rooney said Congress should pass legislation to protect elders from abuse in a hearing before the Senate Special Committee on Aging today.

“My money was stolen from me, by someone close,” said Rooney, 90, an entertainment legend whose credits include the “Andy Hardy” film series and movies such as “Night at the Museum.” “I was eventually and completely stripped of the ability to make even the most basic decisions in my own life.”

Rooney told other seniors who may be victims not to stay silent as he did for years. “You are not alone and you have nothing to be ashamed of,” he said.

Senator Herb Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat and chairman of the aging committee, said he was reintroducing the “Elder Abuse Victims Act” today. The bill would establish an Office of Elder Justice within the Department of Justice and strengthen enforcement in cases of abuse. Kohl said he would also introduce another bill to address domestic abuse in later life.

Rooney received a temporary restraining order Feb. 14 in California Superior Court in Los Angeles against his stepson, Christopher Aber, who was allegedly harming Rooney physically and financially. Rooney is “extremely fearful of Chris, who has taken control of Mickey's personal and financial affairs,” the court document said.

“Allegations that Mr. Aber threatens, intimidates, harasses, yells and screams at Mr. Rooney are false,” said Aber's lawyer, John O'Meara, a partner at Bremer Whyte Brown & O'Meara LLP in Woodland Hills, California.

Business Week

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Mug Shot Program Promotes Prevention

In hopes of getting the attention of teens by appealing to their vanity, an Oregon Sheriff's Department has developed a new prevention program called "From Drugs to Mugs." By using mug shots of real drug users over a period of time, the program shows stark evidence of the effect of drugs on the appearance of hardcore drug users.

The side-by-side mug shots show the damage that meth, cocaine and heroin can do over the years, and sometimes in a few months.

The From Drugs to Mugs program is the work of Multnomah County Sheriff's Deputy Bret King, who also put together the Faces of Meth program which is also used as a prevention tool in schools in Oregon and throughout the country.

See Also : See the Mug Shots

About Alcoholism

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Statement Before the Senate Judiciary Committee

Good morning, Chairman Klobuchar, ranking member, and distinguished members of the committee. I am pleased to be here with you today to discuss the FBI's efforts to combat crimes against children.

Seventy-nine years ago this month, the FBI and its partners embarked upon an investigation into one of the most notorious crimes of the last century. On the evening of March 1, 1932, the 20-month-old son of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh was taken from his bedroom in the night. Two months later, the body of Charles Lindbergh, Jr., was discovered a short distance from his family's home in Hopewell, New Jersey. Our work on that case was the genesis for congressional consideration and ultimate passage of the Federal Kidnapping Act, which made transporting kidnapping victims over state lines a federal offense.

The investigation, conducted in support of the New Jersey State Police, saw the FBI's use of partnerships and other innovative tools of the day to solve that crime. When fingerprint, handwriting analysis, and other investigative tools failed to unveil the suspect, the FBI and its partners at the Treasury Department and the New York Police Department tracked the proceeds of the crime directly to the killer. In September 1934, Bruno Richard Hauptmann was arrested for the kidnapping and murder. Just four years after little Charles Lindbergh, Jr., was taken from his crib, Hauptmann was executed for his crimes.

In the last seven decades many things have changed. We now live in a world where cell phones and laptops abound. This globalization of our society clearly has its benefits, allowing us to learn, communicate, and conduct business in ways that were unimaginable just 20 years ago. However, an increasingly global world has also provided child predators with ready access to our most innocent citizens.

In that time, much has also changed in the way the FBI conducts its investigations. Ready response teams are stationed across the country and able to quickly respond to abductions. In today's toolkit, investigators will find cutting-edge forensic tools such as DNA, trace evidence, impression evidence, and digital forensics. Through globalization, law enforcement also has the ability to quickly share information with partners the world over and our outreach programs play an integral role in prevention.

The FBI has several programs in place to both educate parents and children about the dangers posed by violent predators and to recover missing and endangered children should they be taken. Through our Child Abduction Rapid Deployment teams, Innocence Lost National Initiative, Innocent Images National Initiative, Office of Victim Assistance, and numerous community outreach programs, the FBI and its partners are working to make our global world a safer place for our children.

FBI

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March 2, 2011

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Despite medical parole law, hospitalized prisoners are costing California taxpayers millions

With California mired in a budget crisis, guarding incapacitated prisoners at outside hospitals continues to cost taxpayers millions as the state figures out how to implement a new medical parole law.

A degenerative nerve disease has left 57-year-old California inmate Edward Ortiz semi-paralyzed in a private Bay Area hospital for the last year. The breathing tube in his throat tethers him to a ventilator at one end of the bed; steel bracelets shackle his ankles to safety rails at the other.

Still, California taxpayers are shelling out roughly $800,000 a year to prevent his escape. The guards watching Ortiz one day last week said department policy requires one corrections officer at the foot of his bed around the clock and another guard at the door. A sergeant also has to be there, to supervise.

"Some of this is ridiculous, but you can't argue with policy," said Corrections Officer Allan Roper as he stared down at the unconscious Ortiz, a convicted child molester who requires medical attention beyond the prison system's capabilities.

Authorities have identified 25 "permanently medically incapacitated" inmates being treated at outside hospitals who are candidates for parole because they no longer pose a threat to the public. Californians will pay more than $50 million to treat them this year, between $19 million and $21 million of that for guards' salaries, benefits and overtime, according to data from the federal receiver who oversees California prison healthcare.

The final amount will depend on how many of the guards are paid overtime.

In September, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a "medical parole" law designed to spare taxpayers the cost of guarding inmates like Ortiz and dozens of others who officials say are incapacitated. Some are in comas, others paraplegic.

If the prisoners were released from custody, the medical costs would shift to their families if they could afford to pay, or to other government programs if they could not. The expense of guarding the patients would be eliminated.

Los Angeles Times

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New photo of Sirhan Sirhan, RFK assassin, is released as he seeks freedom

Sirhan Sirhan, who has spent 42 years behind bars for the assassination U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, will have his 13th parole hearing Wednesday.

Sirhan's attorney William F. Pepper told the Associated Press that his client had no memory of the events and suggested a second gunman was involved in the crime.

Pepper, who is based in New York, gained publicity for his efforts to prove the innocence of James Earl Ray in the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and Sirhan Sirhan in the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

Pepper claims that James Earl Ray, who was convicted of killing civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. two months before Kennedy was slain, was framed by the federal government and that King was killed in a conspiracy involving the FBI, the CIA, the military, the Memphis police and organized-crime figures from New Orleans and Memphis. Ray, who confessed to killing King and then recanted and won the support of King's widow and children, died in 1998.

Sirhan, now 66, shot Kennedy on June 5, 1968, moments after he claimed victory in the California presidential primary at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Sirhan was convicted and sentenced to death in April 1969. (He is seen above in a new photo released by the state.) The sentence was commuted to life in prison with the possibility of parole when the death penalty was outlawed in California in 1972 before being re-instituted.

In Sirhan's case, he said on the day of the killing, "I did it for my country." At his trial, Sirhan said on the witness stand that he killed Kennedy "premeditatedly with 20 years of malice aforethought."

The parole board has repeatedly rejected Sirhan's appeals for release for failing to accept responsibility or show remorse for Kennedy's death.

Los Angeles Times

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Police Departments Turn to Volunteers

FRESNO, Calif. — Roman Sarkisian easily passes for your average Fresno police officer: crew cut, tight-set jaw and “just-the-facts” demeanor.

“I like to do law enforcement stuff,” said Mr. Sarkisian, 23, an immigrant from the republic of Georgia who is studying criminology at the city college here. “I like helping out putting bad guys in jail.”

But Mr. Sarkisian is not a police officer, and he does not carry a gun or a Taser. He is a police volunteer, part of an experiment by departments across the country that enlists trained amateurs to perform a broad — and occasionally dangerous — array of investigative duties like collecting evidence, interviewing witnesses, searching for missing persons and stolen vehicles and looking into long-dormant cases.

Hamstrung by shrinking budgets, the police say the volunteers are indispensable in dealing with low-level offenses and allow sworn officers to focus on more pressing crimes and more violent criminals.

“We had the option to either stop handling those calls or do it in a different manner,” said Fresno's police chief, Jerry Dyer, whose department has lost more than 300 employees in recent years. “I've always operated under the premise of no risk, no success. And in this instance, I felt we really didn't have very much to lose.”

Other chiefs facing budget problems are also using volunteers. In Mesa, Ariz, a Phoenix suburb, 10 of them have been trained to process crime scenes, dust for fingerprints and even swab for DNA. In Pasadena, Calif, a team of retirees is combating identity theft — and, apparently, their own ennui.

“Once I retired and cleaned up my house, I was bored,” said Liz Diott, 67, a former vice president at the Bank of America who now works 20 hours a week at the Pasadena Police Department. “It keeps me on my toes.”

Civilians have long taken on administrative or menial duties for the police -- there are volunteer programs at some 2,100 departments nationwide, according to the International Association of Chiefs of Police -- and some departments, including in New York City, use auxiliary officers for traffic control, beat patrols and other duties.

New York Times

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Hundreds Arrested in Gang Crackdown

An anti-gang dragnet has led to the arrest of 678 gang members and their associates, most of them immigrants, in 168 cities, federal officials announced Tuesday.

The three-month-long operation focused on groups with ties to international drug trafficking, said officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security.

Some 447 of the defendants were charged with crimes while the rest were arrested for administrative immigration violations, officials said.

The offensive was part of a five-year campaign by immigration officials to combat violent street gangs by prosecuting and deporting their members.

New York Times

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Nine kids expelled over fight club brawls caught on tape

TACOMA, Wash. -- There were dozens of fights inside the school, and no one knew. And when word got out, nine sixth-graders at Stewart Middle School were expelled on Monday.

The students had formed a fight club, according to school officials who say they won't tolerate this type of behavior. But some parents feel the school officials failed as well; they say it's the responsibility of the teachers inside to enforce security. The footage shows two young boys engaged in a heated battle with fists flying through the air in reckless abandon.

"No one said they didn't want to do it. No one was forced into it," said Peter King, Jr., one of the expelled students. "The closest I've seen someone get hurt is a bloody lip." King says about 25 of his friends participated in these organized brawls, and he recorded about 15 of them on his cell phone.

The fights, he said, began just over a month ago. They'd take place after school inside the boys' bathroom. And through it all, no teachers were ever aware -- something King's father calls unacceptable. "After 20 or 30 fights, someone should've accidentally walked into the bathroom," said Peter King, Sr.

A spokesperson for Tacoma Public Schools says changes are on the way. Teachers will patrol the grounds more vigilantly, and the bathroom in question will be locked at the end of the school day. But King, Sr. says that's not enough. He says the real problem here isn't so much the fighting, but rather the lack of awareness by the faculty. They, too, need to be held accountable, he said.

"Fire principals and teachers," said the boy's father. "If they are going to be that stiff on the kids, then I think it's only fair that they're that stiff on the other party that was just as equally responsible for what happened, which is the school."

The students were expelled on an emergency basis. Officials said the length of the students' suspensions will be determined on a case-by-case basis. Each student's disciplinary history will be a factor, they said.

KomonNews.com

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678 gang members and associates arrested during Project Southern Tempest

ICE makes arrest of 20,000th gang member

WASHINGTON - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) announced today the arrests of 678 gang members and associates from 133 different gangs during Project Southern Tempest, an intensive ICE HSI-led law enforcement operation executed in 168 U.S. cities targeting gangs affiliated with drug trafficking organizations (DTO).

Through Project Southern Tempest, ICE HSI agents worked side by side with 173 of our federal, state and local law enforcement partners to apprehend individuals from 13 gangs affiliated with DTOs in Mexico. More than 46 percent of those arrested during this operation were members or associates of gangs with ties to DTOs.

During this operation, which started in December 2010 and culminated in February 2011, the ICE HSI-led Salt Lake City Operation Community Shield Task Force arrested the 20,000 gang member since inception of the anti-gang program in 2005.

Transnational criminal street gangs have significant numbers of foreign-national members and are frequently involved in human smuggling and trafficking; narcotics smuggling and distribution; identity theft and benefit fraud; money laundering and bulk cash smuggling; weapons smuggling and arms trafficking; cyber crimes; export violations; and other crimes with a nexus to the border.

"Project Southern Tempest is the largest ever ICE-led gang enforcement operation targeting gangs with ties to drug trafficking organizations," said ICE Director John Morton. "Through gang enforcement operations like Project Southern Tempest and Project Big Freeze last year, ICE will continue to disrupt and dismantle these transnational gangs and rid our streets not only of drug dealers, but the violence associated with the drug trade."

"ICE is an important partner in bringing federal prosecutions against dangerous gang members," said U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia Sally Quillian Yates. "Since Operation Community Shield began in 2005, ICE investigations in our District alone have resulted in numerous indictments against gang members, including charges for seven separate murders, at least five carjackings, several armed robberies and over 40 criminal immigration offenses. The partnership between ICE and our office serves to make neighborhoods stronger and safer by removing and prosecuting criminal gang members."

ICE

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Three Dallas-Area Men Arrested on Federal Firearms Charges Related to Trafficking Firearms to a Mexican Drug Cartel

Ballistic Tests Trace One of the Firearms Used in February 2011 Shooting of ICE Agents to One of the Defendants

DALLAS—Three individuals have been arrested by agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), assisted by other state and local law enforcement, on federal firearms charges outlined in two complaints, announced U.S. Attorney James T. Jacks for the Northern District of Texas and Special Agent in Charge Robert R. Champion of the ATF's Dallas Field Office.

Ranferi Osorio, 27, and his brother, Otilio Osorio, 22, were arrested yesterday at their home on East Colonial Drive in Lancaster, Texas. Each Osorio brother is charged with possessing firearms with an obliterated serial number. Separately, according to information contained in one complaint, Mexican officials recently seized three firearms that were used in the deadly shooting on Feb. 15, 2011, of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent. One of the firearms recovered was traced by ATF to Otilio Osorio.

An additional defendant, Kelvin Leon Morrison, 25, who is charged in a separate federal criminal complaint, was arrested at his home next door to the Osorio brothers. Morrison is charged with knowingly making false statements in connection with the acquisition of firearms and dealing in firearms without a license.

A detention hearing for Morrison and Otilio Osorio is scheduled for today at 2:00 p.m. CT before U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul D. Stickney in Dallas. Ranferi Osorio's detention hearing is scheduled for March 4, 2011, at 2:00 p.m. CT before Judge Stickney.

According to court documents filed in both cases, a Dallas ATF confidential informant (CI) arranged a meeting in early November 2010 with individuals who had firearms to be transported from Dallas to Laredo. The meeting was arranged related to an investigation of Los Zetas, a notoriously violent and ruthless drug trafficking organization. The weapons in question were ultimately seized by U.S. law enforcement near Laredo, before crossing the U.S./Mexico border.

FBI

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March 1, 2011

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Pirates kidnap 3 Danish children, 4 adults in Indian Ocean

The Danish Foreign Ministry says the youths, ages 12 to 16, were seized along with their parents and two others on board a sailing vessel. It's believed to be the first time that children have been victims of pirates in the recent spate of hostage-taking off eastern Africa.

Three children are among seven Danes who have been kidnapped by pirates in the Indian Ocean, Danish officials said Monday.

The youths, ages 12 to 16, were taken captive along with their parents and two other adults on board a sailing vessel that put out a distress call Thursday, the Danish Foreign Ministry said. Media reports said the ship was on its way to Somalia, but the purpose of the voyage was unclear.

It's believed to be the first time that children have been victims in the spate of hostage-taking bedeviling the waters off eastern Africa. Lene Espersen, Denmark's foreign minister, said officials were in close contact with the victims' families.

"It is almost unbearable to think that there are children involved," she said in a statement Monday.

Espersen said the Danish government would not say much about the situation, for fear that media attention could make things worse. Just two days before the Danish boat issued its distress signal, four Americans aboard another hijacked ship were shot and killed by their Somali captors.

Pirates have become a major scourge in recent years on the high seas of the Indian Ocean and around the Gulf of Aden. Although international naval forces have stepped up patrols, the area is too vast to be made completely safe.

The pirates have mostly hijacked cargo ships and their crew, but amateur sailors on smaller vessels have also been taken.

Los Angeles Times

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Couple confess to kidnapping Jaycee Lee Dugard, attorney says

Phillip and Nancy Garrido reportedly admit holding the girl captive for 18 years in a ramshackle compound in Northern California, where she gave birth to two daughters after being repeatedly raped.

Phillip and Nancy Garrido have confessed to authorities that they kidnapped Jaycee Lee Dugard in 1991 and held her captive for 18 years in a ramshackle compound in Northern California, where she gave birth to two daughters after being repeatedly raped, a defense attorney said Monday.

Stephen Tapson, Nancy's court-appointed attorney, told reporters outside El Dorado County Superior Court that the couple confessed to the crimes, which made international headlines when Dugard was discovered nearly two years ago, because Phillip, 59, is hoping that his wife's sentence will be reduced.

Tapson said authorities have offered Nancy, 55, a plea agreement that would put her behind bars for nearly 242 years to life and have offered Phillip a sentence of 440 years to life.

After a brief hearing Monday afternoon, Tapson said the couple had met with sheriff's investigators within the last month and had given a "full confession."

They have been charged with nearly 30 counts of kidnapping, rape and false imprisonment. According to a grand jury indictment, Phillip videotaped some of the rapes. He fathered Dugard's children.

"As far as being involved in any of the sexual stuff, she wasn't," Tapson said of Nancy. "She's guilty, obviously, of kidnapping and a bunch of other charges…. She should be able to walk on the beach, probably with a walker, at some point in time before she dies."

The couple were married in 1981 at the U.S. penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan., where Phillip was serving a 50-year sentence for a 1976 kidnapping and rape.

Los Angeles Times

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Bill to Criminalize Laser Pranks Advances

People who knowingly aim laser pointers at aircraft — which can distract or temporarily blind pilots — would be committing a federal crime subject to up to five years in prison under a measure passed by the House on Monday.

The Senate approved the measure a month ago. The two chambers must now decide whether to send it to President Obama as separate legislation or an amendment to another bill.

The Federal Aviation Administration says 2,836 people pointed lasers at planes and helicopters in 2010.

New York Times

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Marking the 8th Anniversary of the Department of Homeland Security

Today marks the 8th anniversary of the Department of Homeland Security. As I said in my “State of America's Homeland Security” address in January, our nation is more secure than it was two years ago, and more secure than when DHS was founded. Nonetheless, our work never stops.

I am joining my predecessors, Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, today at a public commemoration of the Department's 8th anniversary. We'll speak to the history and progress of the last eight years, and to the dedication and service of the more than 230,000 men and women of DHS. A live video stream of the event will be available here.

Since it was formed in 2003, DHS has achieved remarkable progress across our key missions: preventing terrorism; securing our borders; enforcing our immigration laws; securing cyberspace; and ensuring resilience to disasters.

But we know that we have more work to do to counter the evolving threats we face. We must remind ourselves that our mission – a secure homeland – requires our constant vigilance, hard work, and determination to prepare for, prevent, respond to, and recover from terrorism and other threats.

As I often say, homeland security begins with hometown security. Working hand in hand with first responders, state, local, tribal and territorial governments, community groups, international partners and the private sector, we have made great strides in protecting our nation from terrorism and other threats while building a culture of resiliency and preparedness in our communities. Security is, indeed, a shared responsibility.

I invite you to watch and to learn more about how DHS is working every day to secure our nation. I look forward to the coming years, as we build on the foundation we celebrate today.

White House

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Help Us Catch the East Coast Rapist

New Digital Billboard Campaign Launched

Investigation involves 12 sexual assaults or attempted sexual assaults between 1997 and 2009 by the same offender. Each of the assaults is linked by DNA.

A new digital billboard campaign launched today aims to help investigators catch the "East Coast Rapist," a violent serial offender who has attacked or attempted to attack a dozen women in Maryland, Virginia, Connecticut, and Rhode Island for more than a decade.

The billboards feature composite sketches of the rapist and a toll-free telephone number where people can call to provide information. “These billboards give local police departments and the FBI an added edge to identify, locate, and apprehend the subject,” said Ronald Hosko, special agent in charge of the Criminal Division in our Washington Field Office. “The public is the most important tool law enforcement has for solving crimes like this.”

The East Coast Rapist attacked his first victim in February 1997 in a Maryland suburb of Washington D.C. He approached the 25-year-old victim on a bicycle as she walked home from work. The attacker began a conversation but then pulled a gun, forced the woman into nearby woods, and raped her.

Since then, 11 more attacks or attempted attacks have occurred. The female victims have been white, black, and Hispanic. The rapist generally approaches victims outdoors on foot and threatens them with a weapon—usually a knife or a handgun. He sometimes wears a black mask or hooded sweatshirt to conceal his face. He typically asks for money, giving victims the impression they are being robbed. But after the assault, no robbery occurs.

The attacker is described as a black male between the ages of 20 and 40 who is 5'7" to 6' tall, weighs between 150 and 200 pounds, and has a medium to muscular build. In addition to a mask and hooded sweatshirt, he has worn a variety of clothes during attacks, including green overalls, a green camouflage coat or black jacket, dark sweatpants or blue jeans, tan boots or light-colored tennis shoes, a black hair rag, and a brown or black hat.

FBI

February 28, 2011

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Texas landowners stuck on wrong side of border fence

In and around Brownsville, Rio Grande farm and pastureland — even some homes — end up on the 'Mexican' side of the Homeland Security Department's border barrier.

The Rio Grande once ran wide and deep behind the four-room house that Pamela Taylor and her husband hammered together more than half a century ago. Migrant workers had to take a ferry upriver to get across from Mexico, and a flood once inundated the family's citrus groves.

Over time, the waters receded, the river narrowed and Mexico got closer. Thieves led by a one-legged man stole Taylor's horses from the barn and beans off the stove. Drug smugglers hid marijuana in her bushes. Migrant workers would camp in her front yard and bring her fresh tortillas in the morning.

The once-swift river now could be crossed with little more than a leaky inner tube. Still, there was some comfort in knowing that, on the map anyway, the Rio Grande marked the international boundary. Nowadays, Taylor isn't so sure.

The Homeland Security Department last year put up a tall steel barrier across the fields from Taylor's home. The government calls it the border fence, but it was erected about a quarter-mile north of the Rio Grande, leaving Taylor's home between the fence and the river. Her two acres now lie on a strip of land that isn't Mexico but doesn't really seem like the United States either.

The government doesn't keep count, but Taylor and other residents think there are about eight houses stranded on the other side of the fence.

Los Angeles Times

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Stormy seas off Somalia

2011 is shaping up to be a boom year for piracy.

The killing of four Americans who were taken hostage aboard the yacht Quest off the coast of Oman serves as an ominous warning that pirate activity will increase in 2011 despite large-scale naval deployments in the Gulf of Aden.

The incident also underscores the limits of raw power. Those aboard the Quest, although surrounded by warships and tracked by a helicopter, still met a tragic end.

Indeed, intercepting a hijacked vessel is an anomaly. In most cases pirates can act with impunity because of the enormous area that naval patrols need to cover. Only rarely will the authorities be in the vicinity of a ship or yacht under attack.

Last year, there were 445 actual or attempted acts of piracy off the Horn of Africa, the highest total on record. This despite international countermeasures that include multilateral task forces — Combined Task Force 151, NATO's Operation Ocean Shield and the European Union's EU NAVFOR — as well as unilateral deployments that combined involve 28 countries. A world of patrols has not stopped piracy, nor kept it from constantly ratcheting up to 1,650 incidents since 2006.

Why not?

The main reason is a lack of effective governance in Somalia. Many pirate syndicates operating off the Horn of Africa trace their origin to coastal clan militias that formed following the collapse of the Siad Barre regime in Somalia. These gangs initially sought to prevent poaching of fish stocks and the illegal dumping of hazardous waste. But they soon evolved into criminal enterprises that intercepted and "taxed" any vessel transiting their self-defined territorial waters. That unruly legacy continues to pervade Somalia, which has no functioning central authority and no way of curtailing the activities of pirate syndicates.

Los Angeles Times

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Tracking the gun-runners

The Obama administration appears poised to allow the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to track bulk sales of semiautomatic long guns.

Violence along the U.S.-Mexico border continues to spiral upward, with all-too-frequent reports of bullet-ridden bodies turning up on street corners, in parks, on deserted highways, even at quinceaneras .

A complex combination of drugs, corruption and poverty may be behind the bloodletting. But the source of the weapons used to kill is easily identified: The U.S. accounts for an estimated 85% of guns seized by Mexican authorities, according to a 2009 Government Accountability Office report.

For years, U.S. officials have been promising to clamp down on gun-runners who supply drug cartels and human smugglers. Now, the Obama administration has the opportunity to make good on that pledge, by granting a request by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to track bulk sales of semiautomatic long guns. The new rule would require the 8,500 licensed gun shops in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas to report to the agency any sale of two or more rifles of greater than .22 caliber to the same person over five days.

It's a sensible and, if anything, too-modest plan that could provide valuable tips to ATF agents and help reduce violence on both sides of the border. President Obama should not only approve it, he should expand it to apply to all gun sellers nationwide. Limiting the rule to the four border states will only push the illicit trade into the nearest state where smugglers can load up on AK-47-style assault weapons.

Los Angeles Times

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28 in Mexico Killed in Attacks

MEXICO CITY (AP) — At least 28 people were killed in attacks over the weekend along Mexico's border with Texas and on the Pacific Coast, the authorities said Sunday. In Coahuila State, across the border from Texas, nine men died late Saturday when gunmen opened fire inside two bars in separate attacks, state prosecutors said in a statement. Eleven others were wounded.

Five other men were killed the same night in a bar in Ciudad Juárez, which is across the Rio Grande from El Paso and is notorious for its drug cartels, said Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for the Chihuahua State prosecutors' office. In three of Mexico's Pacific Coast states, at least 14 more people were killed in drug-related violence.

The police in Acapulco found the bodies of four men inside a trash container; all had been shot, and three of their throats had been slit. The body of a fifth man was found along a highway, said prosecutors in Guerrero State, where Acapulco is located. In Nayarit State, soldiers killed four people who were believed to be drug traffickers, the Defense Department said in a statement.

The soldiers were on patrol along a river in the town of Santiago when gunmen opened fire, the Defense Department said. After the shooting, the soldiers seized a car, 12 weapons, 12 grenades and radio communication equipment, it said. Meanwhile, in Michoacán State, police officers found the bodies of five men in different areas of Morelia, the capital, state prosecutors said. All of the victims had been shot in the head.

More than 35,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderón ordered a military offensive against the country's drug gangs shortly after taking office in December 2006.

New York Times

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