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From the New York Times

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Happy Motoring: Traffic Deaths at 61-Year Low

It may not seem that way when some knucklehead speeds past you on the right, but driving is getting much, much safer: last year the United States recorded the fewest traffic deaths in more than 60 years, according to federal data released on Friday.

An estimated 32,788 people were killed in traffic accidents in 2010, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That represents a 25 percent decline since 2005, when there were 43,510 traffic fatalities, and the fewest deaths since 1949 — when “On The Town” won the Academy Award for best score for a musical, a new magazine called Motor Trend named the Cadillac as its first car of the year, and when there were far fewer drivers on America's pre-Interstate roads.

“Last year's drop in traffic fatalities is welcome news, and it proves that we can make a difference,” the transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, said in a statement. “Still, too many of our friends and neighbors are killed in preventable roadway tragedies every day. We will continue doing everything possible to make cars safer, increase seat belt use, put a stop to drunk driving and distracted driving and encourage drivers to put safety first.”

The reason driving deaths have declined so steeply over the past five years is something of a mystery, but officials and experts point to a combination of factors. Old cars are being replaced by newer models with more safety features, including air bags and antilock brakes. Highways are built or refurbished with more attention to safety, with features like rumble strips and cable median barriers to separate cars from oncoming traffic. Seat belt use is believed to be up, and stricter car-seat laws have made the days when children bounced around in the back of station wagons a distant memory.

But other Western nations have seen even greater declines over the last decade, and the fatality rate is still higher in the United States than in many other countries.

Whatever the explanation, the decline in deaths was not merely caused by the drop in driving as the Great Recession wore on. Measured by deaths per miles traveled, which filters out the effect of less driving, the roadways were safer as well.

In 2005, there were 1.46 deaths for every 100 million miles traveled, and last year the rate dropped to 1.09. (In 1949, by comparison, the rate was 7.13.) And last year there were fewer deaths, even as there was more driving: traffic deaths dropped an estimated 3 percent in 2010 from 2009, but officials estimated that the number of miles traveled rose by 0.7 percent. The Northeast did see an increase in traffic deaths last year, but every other part of the country saw a decline.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/us/01driving.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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2 Former Officers Sentenced in a Killing After Katrina

NEW ORLEANS — Two former police officers were sentenced to prison on Thursday in the killing of an unarmed civilian and the burning of his body in the days after Hurricane Katrina in a case that exposed the city's troubled police department.

One of the officers, David Warren, was sentenced by Judge Lance M. Africk of Federal District Court here to 25 years and 9 months in prison for a civil rights violation resulting in the death of Henry Glover, 31. Mr. Warren was also convicted of using a firearm to commit manslaughter.

The other officer, Greg McRae, was sentenced to 17 years and 3 months for obstructing justice and other charges in the burning of Mr. Glover's body.

On Sept. 2, 2005, Officer Warren shot Mr. Glover from the second floor of a strip mall that was being used as a police substation. Mr. Glover had been preparing to leave the city and was picking up suitcases that had been looted. He was shot as he was running away; at trial, Mr. Warren said he had fired in self-defense.

The wounded Mr. Glover was taken by a group of bystanders to a nearby school that was being used a makeshift police station. There, officers surrounded the men and handcuffed them.

Officer McRae drove off in the bystanders' car with Mr. Glover in the back seat; he then burned Mr. Glover's body and the car with a traffic flare.

The men were convicted in December. A third, Travis McCabe, a former lieutenant, was convicted of perjury and obstructing justice for drawing up a false police report; he has not been sentenced. Mr. Warren was ordered to pay $7,642.32 to Mr. Glover's family for funeral expenses; Mr. McRae was ordered to pay $6,000 as restitution for the burned car.

Federal investigators began looking into Mr. Glover's death after The Nation, in a joint investigative project with ProPublica, published an article about the killing in 2008.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/us/01police.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Justice Department to Review Seattle Police's Use of Force

SEATTLE — The Justice Department said Thursday that it would conduct a comprehensive investigation of the Seattle Police Department after a series of episodes in which police officers have been accused of using unnecessary force and discriminating against minorities.

The decision follows a preliminary investigation the department announced earlier this year amid a public backlash after an officer shot and killed a woodcarver who was a member of a First Nations tribe of Canada.

The carver, John T. Williams, was frequently seen at work in downtown Seattle. He sometimes drank heavily and his hearing was limited. He was shot by a police officer on an August afternoon last year after refusing to put down his carving knife.

A police review found that the shooting was unjustified, but the officer who shot Mr. Williams, Ian Birk, was not charged. Local prosecutors said state law involving police shootings prevented them from filing charges. Mr. Birk resigned from the force.

The killing followed other problems with the police over the past year that have rattled this city. In one case, an officer was caught on video kicking and threatening a Hispanic man. In another, an officer was caught on video punching a young black woman who resisted him after she was stopped for jaywalking.

The shooting of Mr. Williams and the subsequent decision not to press charges against Mr. Birk prompted street protests and calls for changes to state laws. The family of Mr. Williams and the American Civil Liberties Union were among those pressing law enforcement to do more.

The Justice Department investigation is being led by its Civil Rights Division and by the office of Jenny Durkan, the United States attorney for Western Washington.

“There's no one incident that was determinative,” Ms Durkan said, referring to the decision to open a full investigation. “But I think that what we did determined there is enough information here that we have an obligation to look more closely.”

Chief John Diaz of the Seattle Police told The Seattle Times on Thursday that he welcomed the investigation and had encouraged the department to make it as wide as possible.

“I'm just looking at this as a way of getting a free audit from the Department of Justice,” Mr. Diaz said. “We have nothing to hide. And we're always looking to improve what we're doing.”

In his State of the City speech in February, Mayor Mike McGinn pointed out that about 80 percent of police officers live outside the city. He suggested that in the future, the department hire officers who better understand the city and its “commitment to racial and social justice.”

Ms. Durkan said the investigation would not focus on trying to bring charges against officers for their roles in past episodes.

But she said it could lead to formal changes in department policies and to findings that federal laws have been violated. The department is now investing 15 police departments across the country, including Seattle's.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/us/01seattle.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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LI bones not Shannan's

by SELIM ALGAR

April 1, 2011

The plot thickens.

A fifth corpse found off a Long Island beach Tuesday evening is not Shannan Gilbert, a missing New Jersey prostitute, as had been expected, Suffolk cops revealed yesterday.

The announcement only adds to the mystery surrounding the discovery of five bodies near Gilgo Beach, four of which had already been identified as missing hookers.

Cops have worked on the assumption that the victims were all slain by a serial killer.

The four identified victims were all petite white women in their 20s who advertised their services on the Internet.

Observers thought that the fifth set of bones -- discovered Tuesday evening -- likely belonged to Gilbert.

The Jersey City Craigslist prostitute, who was last seen running from a john's house in a panic just miles from where the bodies were discovered, certainly fit the mold.

But cops confirmed yesterday that the latest corpse does not belong to Gilbert, and has yet to be identified. It was found a mile away from the cluster of bodies that had previously been discovered.

A police source said that the latest discovery has detectives wondering if additional bodies are strewn in the area. The search will resume Monday.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/li_bones_not_shannan_I7Q8qgpl2ZKNAQ4Ft7lMCM

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2 Chicago police officers face sexual assault investigation

(CNN) -- Two Chicago police officers are under investigation for alleged sexual assault and have been "relieved of their police powers," according to a statement released Thursday by the city's police department.

Chicago's top law enforcement officer on Thursday called their actions "inappropriate."

"You can't justify it," Chicago Police Superintendent Terry Hillard said Thursday. "What they did, allegedly have done, was inappropriate and was against the law."

Investigators refused to provide further details about the incident. However, CNN affiliate WLS-TV reported Thursday that the alleged attack on a 22-year-old woman took place Wednesday morning after she accepted a ride home from the on-duty officers.

WLS attributed the information to a police report on the incident.

According to the report cited by WLS, the woman initially did not reject sexual advances from the officers. The report stated that the woman had sex with one of the officers in the passenger seat of a department SUV.

The three later played strip poker at her apartment, according to the report cited by WLS. The woman told investigators she was too afraid at first to refuse sex with the officers, but later ran out of the apartment screaming for help, according to the report cited by WLS.

Chicago Police Chief of Detectives Tom Byrne told reporters that neither officer has been charged.

"At this point in time it is an active ongoing criminal investigation, but we also need to have the evidence worked up prior to any charging," Byrne said.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/04/01/illinois.police.investigaton/

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F.B.I. Seeks Help Cracking Code in Victim's Notes

It sounds like the beginning of a good whodunit, or at least a “Law and Order” episode: A body is found. In the victim's pants are two notes written in some sort of code. The F.B.I. is called in and concludes the man was murdered.

But the encrypted notes have the F.B.I. stumped — so stumped that this week, after years of trying to decipher them, it posted what amounted to a public request for help on its Web site. The two notes, a jumble of letters and numbers occasionally set off with parentheses, have also flummoxed members of the American Cryptogram Association, which the F.B.I. has consulted.

The body of Ricky McCormick was found in 1999, in a cornfield west of West Alton, Mo.

The F.B.I., drawn into the case because of the two mysterious notes, came to believe that Mr. McCormick, 41, was murdered and that the encrypted notes might lead to the killer.

“We are really good at what we do,” Dan Olson, chief of the F.B.I.'s Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit, said in a statement on the site. “But we could use some help with this one.” The notes, he said, are part of one of the unit's “top unsolved cases.”

“Breaking the code could reveal the victim's whereabouts before his death and could lead to the solution of a homicide,” Mr. Olson said.

If Mr. McCormick's end has the makings of a television episode, his life appears to have largely been marginal.

Detectives in Saint Charles County, where Mr. McCormick was found dead, describe him as living on and off with his elderly mother and spending much of his time on the street. A high school dropout, Mr. McCormick lived off disability checks he received for chronic heart and lung ailments.

The police said Mr. McCormick never married, but he had at least four children, although he appeared to have had no significant relationships with them.

In addition to a few misdemeanor offenses, he had been convicted of statutory rape and served about 11 months of a three-year prison sentence, the police said.

He was last seen getting a checkup at a St. Louis hospital on June 25, 1999, five days before a farmer discovered his decomposing body near West Alton. No one had reported him missing.

The St. Charles County medical examiner's office said Thursday that the cause and manner of Mr. McCormick's death remained undetermined, even after an autopsy and toxicology exam.

Law enforcement officials, however, are convinced Mr. McCormick was murdered, even though they have found no weapons, witnesses or wounds to support the theory.

It remains a puzzle why he might have decided one day to visit an agricultural area. Mr. McCormick did not own a car and the area is not served by buses or trains.

“Why was he in the middle of a farm field 30 miles from where he lived in a place he didn't know anyone?” asked Detective Michael Yarbrough, one of the investigators. He said Mr. McCormick's mother, who could not be reached Thursday, told investigators that her son had written in a secret language since he was a child, but that she had never understood it either.

And whether or not the code leads to answers about his death, the F.B.I. officials say they would like to see it broken.

“Even if we found out that he was writing a grocery list or a love letter, we would still want to see how the code is solved,” Mr. Olson said. “This is a cipher system we know nothing about.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/us/01code.html?src=mv

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From the Department of Justice

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Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez of the Civil Rights Divison Speaks on the Justice Department's Investigation into the Seattle Police Department

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. The purpose of today's call is to announce that we have alerted Mayor McGinn and the Seattle Police Department that the Justice Department is launching a comprehensive investigation of the SPD concerning allegations of the use of excessive force and discriminatory policing.

As you all know, the Civil Rights Division, along with U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan's office, conducted a preliminary review over the last several months. Based upon information gathered during our preliminary review, we believe a formal investigation is warranted to determine whether there has been a pattern or practice of violations of the Constitution or federal law.

When conducting investigations such as this one, we aim to gather as much information as possible from as many sources as we can. We will examine department policies and practices, review records and observe police officers in the field. We will talk to department leadership and rank and file officers. We will also engage with the community – a critical part of the process of determining whether violations have occurred and how a police department can be improved.

Our goal with this investigation – as with all of our police pattern and practice investigations – is simple: to ensure that the community has an effective, accountable police department that controls crime, ensures respect for the Constitution, and earns the trust of the public it is charged with protecting.

We do not prejudge our investigations – rather we gather all available facts to determine whether violations have occurred. If we determine that they have, we will work with the city and the Police Department to develop a plan to remedy them. Our experience has shown that, when we have cooperation from a city and its police department, we can more efficiently conduct our investigation.

Effective, accountable policing is critical for any healthy community. The Justice Department's interest is ensuring that the people of Seattle can rely upon their police department to protect public safety and respect their rights.

Civil rights enforcement is a joint venture between the Civil Rights Division and U.S. Attorneys. We have worked very closely with U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan, a critical partner to the Civil Rights Division, who will talk more about the investigation.

http://www.justice.gov/crt/opa/pr/speeches/2011/crt-speech-110331.html

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Protect the Civil Rights of American Muslims Outreach and Enforcement Efforts

The Department of Justice is actively working to protect American Muslims, as well as members of the Arab, Sikh and South Asian communities, from threats and violence directed at them because of their religion or ethnicity, and to prevent acts of discrimination against them in the workplace, schools, and many other areas.

Hate Crimes

Examples of prosecutions:

• On February 23, 2011, an Arlington, Texas, man pleaded guilty to setting fire to playground equipment at a mosque in July 2010.
  
  
• An Illinois man pleaded guilty on August 11, 2010, to sending a threatening email to a mosque in Urbana, Illinois. He was sentenced on November 3, 2010 to 12 month's incarceration.
  
  
• Three Tennessee men pleaded guilty to spray painting swastikas and “white power” on a mosque in Columbia, Tennessee, and then starting a fire that completely destroyed the mosque. In 2009, two of the men were sentenced to more than 14 and 15 years in prison. In 2010, the third was sentenced to more than 6 years in prison for his role in the crime.
  
  
• On March 11, 2010, a husband and wife were convicted of harassing with ethnic slurs and assaulting an Indian-American couple while they were using a public beach in South Lake Tahoe. The male victim suffered multiple broken facial bones. On June 30, 2010, the defendants were sentenced to 18 months incarceration each.

Other Civil Rights Enforcement

• Employment Discrimination : The Department is working to protect the fundamental American value of free exercise of religion, and ensuring that Americans are not forced to decide between their faith and their jobs. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 contains a “reasonable accommodation” provision requiring employers to reasonably accommodate employee's religious observances and practices unless doing so would create an undue hardship on the employer.
  
  
  • The Department is currently suing the New York City MTA over its refusal to permit Muslim and Sikh bus and subway drivers to wear religious headcoverings on the job. The case was filed in 2004.
    
    
  • On November 12, 2010, the Department reached a consent decree in a case involving a Muslim correction worker in Essex County, New Jersey who had been fired for refusing to remove her headscarf.
    
    
  • Oregon Religious Clothing Ban: In response to an Oregon law passed in July 2009, reaffirming a provision banning school teachers from wearing any “religious dress,” purportedly on separation of church and state grounds, the Civil Rights Division opened a Title VII investigation. The law could have prevented Muslims, Sikhs, and Jews from wearing religious headcoverings, Christians from wearing crosses, and other draconian results. The Division closed the investigation in April 2010, after the state repealed the law.
    
    
  • On December 13, 2010, the Department filed a complaint against the Board of Education, Berkeley School District 87 for discriminating against a Muslim teacher on account of her religion in violation of Title VII. The complaint alleges that the teacher requested, as a religious accommodation, but was denied an unpaid leave of absence from December 1, 2008 to December 19, 2008, or 15 work days, to perform Hajj, a pilgrimage required by her religion.
    
    
• Education Discrimination : The Department has investigated many cases of harassment of Muslim students. The Department is working closely with the Department of Education on various anti-bullying initiatives.
  
  
  • The Department reached a settlement in 2005 in a case in Cape Henlopen, Delaware, in which a teacher singled out an elementary student because she was Muslim. The teacher's actions had led to severe harassment by other students.
    
    
  • The Department reached a settlement in 2007 with a Texas school district to allow Muslim students to pray together at lunchtime in a room in which other students were permitted to gather for various nonreligious uses.
    
    
  • In January 2010, the Department sent a letter to the Lewiston, Maine, school district regarding a complaint that a Muslim student was not permitted to pray. The school changed its policy to allow the student to pray on school grounds.
    
    
  • The Department intervened in 2004 on behalf of a Muslim schoolgirl in Oklahoma who was suspended for wearing a hijab, or headscarf. The matter was resolved by a consent decree that allows the student to wear the headscarf, and requires the school to consider requests for religious accommodations from other students.
    
    
• Use of Land for Religious Purposes : The Department has been active in protecting the rights of mosques and Islamic schools under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA).
  
  
  • In 2009, the Civil Rights Division closed its investigation of Wayne Township, New Jersey, in which the municipality delayed a mosque's building permits for several years, and then tried to use its eminent domain power to seize the land to leave it undeveloped. The Civil Rights Division in 2007 filed a brief with the federal district court arguing that RLUIPA applied to the case, and the court agreed.
    
    
  • In October 2010, the Department filed a friend-of-the-court brief in a Tennessee state court proceeding in which neighbors of a proposed mosque challenged the county's granting of a building permit. The neighbors argued that the county was wrong to treat the mosque in the same manner that it would treat a church. The Department's brief argued that RLUIPA required such equal treatment. The court agreed in a decision on November 17, 2010.
    
    
  • Of 24 RLUIPA matters involving mosques opened by the Civil Rights Division since 9/11, 14 have been opened in the past ten months.
    
    
• Access to Public Facilities : The Department initiated an investigation of the Georgia courts after receiving complaints that three Muslim women had been barred from courthouses for wearing headscarves. The Department closed the review in August 2009, after the courts modified the policy to permit headcoverings for those with religious or medical reasons for doing so.

Outreach to the American Muslim Community

The Department recognizes that effective enforcement of the civil rights laws requires engagement with affected communities.

• The Attorney General has held a number of meetings with Muslim American leaders, including a meeting with interfaith leaders from a wide variety of faiths on September 7, 2010, addressing the recent rash of hate crimes and hate incidents against Muslims and what the Department of Justice and the faith communities could do to reduce such incidents.
  
  
• The Civil Rights Division holds a bimonthly interagency meeting that brings together top officials from federal agencies and leaders of the Muslim, Arab, Sikh and South Asian communities to address civil rights issues.
  
  
• The Attorney General has made engagement with the Muslim-American and Arab-American communities a priority, and U.S. Attorneys around the country are active in reaching out to Muslim communities in their districts, tailored to local situations and issues.
  
  
• The Department of Justice's Community Relations Service has held more than 250 town and community meetings around the country since 9/11 addressing backlash-related issues, and has deployed conflict resolution specialists to more than 50 communities to alleviate tensions in the wake of backlash incidents.

Guide from the Department of Justice for National Crime Victims Rights Week.

Designed to help communities and victim assistance providers promote awareness of crime victim issues, the Guide includes educational content, campaign materials, artwork, and a theme video. Explore the Guide online or download all materials for use offline.

http://ovc.ncjrs.gov/ncvrw2011/index.html

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