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From the Los Angeles Times

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Border agents foil several attempts by sea smugglers

Mexican sea smugglers appear to be ramping up their efforts to land illegal immigrants and drugs on California beaches, with U.S. border agents foiling at least five smuggling attempts in the first five days of this month.

In one day alone, April 4, authorities from the multi-agency Maritime Unified Command seized three vessels, one of them an abandoned panga near Dana Point with 740 pounds of marijuana on board, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials.

Authorities that day also seized a 16-foot pleasure craft near San Diego's Shelter Island carrying four illegal immigrants, and intercepted a boat off Del Mar with 12 illegal immigrants on board. Three other men on that fishing vessel were charged with human smuggling.

On April 1, border agents arrested six illegal immigrants after their Bayliner pleasure craft landed ashore at Moonlight Beach in Encinitas. On April 5, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter intercepted a boat 20 miles off La Jolla carrying 16 Mexican nationals, two of whom were charged with alien smuggling.

Smugglers have taken to the high seas in response to increased enforcement on land. Border authorities have expanded the Maritime Unified Command to Orange County, but the recent surge may be a sign that enforcement efforts are not deterring smugglers.

The smuggling groups charge immigrants as much as $6,000 to take them from isolated launching spots near Rosarito Beach and Ensenada to Southern California beaches. The rickety vessels, carrying as many as 20 people, have at times broken down in high seas, and at least two immigrants have drowned.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/

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U.S. not doing enough to decrease drug consumption, former Mexican president says

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox, a onetime U.S. ally in the war on drugs who now pushes for drug legalization, said the U.S. is not doing enough to decrease drug consumption and stop the flow of weapons to Mexico.

Prohibiting drugs doesn't work, Fox said at a news conference in San Diego, and while Mexico has failed to defeat organized crime groups, the U.S. has also failed to control drug distribution within the country.

Fox, a member of the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, drew a comparison between drug use, and people's sexual orientation and a woman's right to an abortion.

“We're talking about the last frontier of prohibition. Tell me something else that is prohibited today? Abortion is permitted. Marriage between same-sex (people) now is permitted … smoking cigarettes is permitted, alcohol is permitted,” Fox said.

Fox, who was in San Diego raising funds for his presidential library, has become an outspoken proponent of drug legalization, joining other prominent former Latin American politicians who believe law enforcement efforts to defeat organized crime groups are futile.

His view on legalization prompted Point Loma Nazarene University earlier this year to rescind its invitation to have him speak at their San Diego campus. During his visit, Fox gave speeches at a convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and at the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego.

“Given some of our constituents we felt it necessary to weigh that in,” said Michele Corbett, the marketing director for Point Loma Nazarene University, referring to Fox's views on drugs. “We are a church- affiliated university and we take a strong stance against the use of drugs.”

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/

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$50,000 reward offered for information on woman's body found downtown near recycled trash

A $50,000 reward was announced Thursday for information that could identify a woman's remains and lead detectives to those responsible for her death, the Los Angeles Police Department said.

The decomposed female body, dubbed by police as Jane Doe No. 52, .was found with recycled trash last September near downtown Los Angeles, authorities said

The L.A. County coroner's office has classified her death as murder but has been unable to determine the cause of death “due to an extreme state of decomposition,” according to a statement by police.

A forensic anthropologist has been able to determine the woman was white, which could also mean she was of Latino or Native American origin, and she was between 50 and 70 years old, police said.

A sketch artist has been able to create a composite of a middle-aged woman with shoulder-length hair and some age lines.

One of the woman's identifying features includes a dental crown described by a forensic dentist as “very high quality” and most likely performed by an experienced dentist within two weeks of her death, police said.

A jeweler estimated the ring to be more than 40 years old, based on wear patterns, police said.

“Not knowing the cause of death nor the woman's identity makes this case extremely challenging,” Lt. Paul Vernon, commanding officer of the Central Detective Division, said in a statement.

He noted authorities were hopeful the deceased woman's dentist might recognize the dental work, the sketch or the ring.

“We have no doubt that identifying Jane Doe No. 52 will lead us to someone who knows how she died,” Vernon said.

Detectives have created a Facebook page called the Body Recycler, on which the public can get and provide information.

Citizens with information are also urged to call Det. Thayer Lake of the Central Homicide Unit at (213) 972-1254 .

Anonymous tips can be called into Crimestoppers at (800) 222-8477 , or by texting 274637 with a cellphone. All text messages should begin with the letters LAPD.

The $50,000 reward is being sponsored by Los Angeles City Councilman Ed Reyes.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/04/50000-reward-for-information-on-womans-body-found-near-la-recycled-trash.html

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Los Angeles and Long Beach ports are on the front lines of a crackdown on counterfeit goods

The busiest port complex in the U.S. accounts for about 40% of illegal goods, including fake electronics, toys, cigarettes and designer jeans and handbags.

by Ronald D. White, Los Angeles Times

April 8, 2011

The massive Long Beach warehouse is as well stocked as any big-box discount store, filled with brand-new electronics, designer jeans, famous-label handbags and toys.

And cigarettes. Cartons and cartons of them, seemingly enough to supply a small kingdom.

There are no shoppers, however. All of the goods in this 500,000-square-foot warehouse were seized by federal agents — mostly counterfeits, along with banned items such as elephant ivory and drug paraphernalia.

Smuggling is on the rise, with seizures by U.S. Customs and Border Protection up 35% in fiscal year 2010 from 2009. And the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are the front line.

The twin ports account for about 40% of all seizures by Customs and Border Protection. That reflects their status as the nation's busiest port complex and as the main cargo gateway from Asia, whose workshops are as good at making knockoffs as they are at making the real thing.

Customs officials acknowledge that they are struggling to intercept the vast quantities of illegal goods that make their way into the ports each day, hidden among legitimate shipments of clothing, auto parts and housewares.

Thanks to technological advances such as sophisticated 3-D printers, counterfeiting iPhones, PlayStation game consoles and other goods has never been easier. Selling them has gotten easier too, as the advent of online markets such as Craigslist and EBay has allowed smugglers to bypass fences in the criminal underworld and sell directly to consumers.

Apprehending contraband shipments, meanwhile, has never been harder. About 50,000 cargo containers a day, laden with $1 billion in goods, move through the local ports' 15,300 acres of channels, wharves and terminals. Each 40-foot container is large enough to carry about 12,300 shoeboxes, 20,000 toy dolls or 6,600 dresses on hangers.

Smugglers also have gotten wiser, mixing in their wares with legitimate shipments to make detection more difficult.

"We're not seeing containers that are just filled with contraband like we used to. We're seizing smaller amounts, but we're finding it more often," said Todd Hoffman, the Customs and Border Protection director at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

In January, for instance, Customs and Border Protection officials seized 22,000 cartons of counterfeit Marlboro Light 100s and Marlboro Gold cigarettes, worth $1.1 million, that were found alongside legitimate cargo in a container with a shipping invoice that read "hang tags and hang plugs."

Authorities also have found knockoffs of True Religion and other designer jeans that had distinctively stitched pockets concealed by innocuous denim patches, or cases in which cheap handbags covered counterfeits of expensive Kate Spades and Louis Vuittons, customs officer Guillermina Escobar said.

After smugglers get their hands on the counterfeit products, they remove the disguises and sell the goods as the real thing.

"They have even begun sending the fake bags and wallets and other items separately by sea cargo containers, and sending the fake logos and decals by air freight so that they can be attached to the counterfeits later," Escobar said.

Investigators in January raided several discount stores in downtown Los Angeles, where they snared more than $10 million worth of bogus iPods and other counterfeit and stolen merchandise. The fakes arrived through the harbor as parts meant to be reassembled and labeled before being sold, said Ron Boyd, chief of the Los Angeles Port Police's 200-member force.

To intercept illegal goods, customs officials rely on both electronic scans of containers as well as physical inspections, in which they crack open containers and poke around inside. Now and then, they get lucky with a tip from an informant.

Detection efforts at all seaports, airports and border crossings were stepped up after the 9/11 terror attacks, as authorities sought primarily to prevent weapons and explosives from entering the country. As an outgrowth, they began finding more counterfeit consumer goods as well.

At the L.A. and Long Beach ports, all containers are screened with mobile scanners or pass-through machines resembling giant metal detectors, which test for radiation that might indicate the presence of explosives — or lately, problematic cargo from Japan. The machines are sensitive enough to register a false positive from something as innocuous as cat litter.

Through Customs and Border Protection's Container Security Initiative, high-risk boxes are scanned overseas, before they depart for the U.S. Currently, 58 of the world's largest seaports have agreed to allow those inspections and 95% of all high-risk shipments are being scanned at those ports, said Jaime Ruiz, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection in Southern California.

After arriving in the U.S., 5% to 10% of containers are physically inspected for smuggled goods or other things that don't belong, according to a customs investigator who didn't want to be identified because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.

Several factors contribute to the decision to open a container for inspection, including the country from which the cargo originates, shipping manifests that arouse suspicions and whether the importer has certified its foreign suppliers through a federal program, as Target Corp. has done.

The U.S. government says it is pushing companies to join this Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, which requires major U.S. importers to lean on their foreign suppliers to ensure that nothing illegal or dangerous is slipped in with their cargo. More than 10,000 companies have joined.

At the local ports, containers are taken for inspection to Customs and Border Protection's Long Beach warehouse, where on a recent day nearly 90 boxes were being unloaded. The merchandise warehouse is one of several run by the agency at the ports; others handle items such as food, refrigerated products, drugs and weapons.

Along with counterfeits, the warehouse also stores legitimate products with phony lab test stickers, which could pose a safety risk to U.S. consumers, and banned items such as elephant ivory and whale teeth. The warehouse has also held items that violated export controls and were confiscated on their way out of the U.S., such as high-performance analog-to-digital converters and equipment to manufacture assault rifles.

Smuggling of foreign-made counterfeit cigarettes into the U.S. has become such a problem that legitimate manufacturers are stepping up their own sleuthing.

Philip Morris USA Inc. sends plainclothes investigators to stores to buy and test cigarettes for authenticity, spokesman David Sutton said. The investigators also sift through discarded packs for clues, even digging through the trash at sports events.

The company recently sued dozens of businesses in Southern California and China for allegedly selling counterfeit Marlboro, Parliament and Virginia Slims cigarettes in stores and online.

"For the average consumer, it would be virtually impossible to tell the difference between an authentic pack and a counterfeit pack of cigarettes," Sutton said. "And every 40-foot container of counterfeits represents a loss of $350,000 in state and federal excise taxes.

Nearly all counterfeit and contraband items are destroyed by outside contractors under federal government supervision. Counterfeit cigarettes, for example, are burned in high-heat incinerators or crushed, Ruiz said.

Perhaps to the dismay of aficionados, confiscated Cuban cigars meet the same fate.

There are exceptions. If brand-owning businesses give permission, seized items can be donated to help the needy in other countries.

"We can't run the risk of those items being sold back into the U.S. market, so they have to be moved overseas," Ruiz said.

A recently seized shipment of several thousand pencils with fake National Football League team logos will find its way into classrooms in Africa through World Vision Africa.

"There could be a classroom full of Dallas Cowboy fans there soon," Ruiz quipped, "although they might not realize it."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-port-smuggling-20110408,0,2096026.story

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Social experiment: Know thy neighbor

The author asked himself: Do I live in a community or just in a house on a street of people whose lives are separate from my own? And he wondered: What if he could deliberately get to know these strangers?

by Peter Lovenheim

April 8, 2011

When I was growing up in upstate New York in the late 1950s and '60s, people didn't exercise in public the way they do now. You didn't see adults jogging, biking or power-walking on the street.

Except one. Nearly every day, a middle-aged woman of slight build walked rapidly through our suburban neighborhood, usually with her head down. No one knew her name, so we called her the Walker. She usually wore a simple blue or yellow dress, if memory serves, and when it rained she would wear a clear plastic raincoat with a hood pulled over her head. In the winter I recall a long, cloth coat, also with a hood; in driving snow she'd cover her face with a scarf.

Forty years later, when I'd moved with my wife and children back to what had been my parents' home, I was amazed to see the same woman still walking through the neighborhood.

Resolved, finally, to meet her, I approached her one afternoon in 2003.

"Excuse me, " I began. "I've lived on this street a long time and have always noticed you walking."

Up close, she looked older, smaller and frailer than I had imagined.

"Yes," she said. "I've been walking here a long time."

Her voice was shaky, but she spoke with a clear diction. She said she'd walked in the neighborhood almost every day since 1960.

"You've walked on our street every day for more than 40 years?" I asked.

"I didn't miss many," she said, smiling.

"In just one more year, I'll be 90," she added.

Her name was Grace Field.

In answer to my question, Grace said that in all the years she'd been at it, few people had stopped to speak with her.

I was, at the time, writing a book about how Americans live as neighbors and asked Grace if she'd be willing to talk with me about that. She agreed, and a few days later, I met her at her home. It turned out she lived in an apartment nearby. She'd never married, lived alone and walked each day, she said, for exercise.

Among the things I learned about Grace was that as a young woman she had studied at the Juilliard School and was an accomplished harpist and pianist.

What a waste, I thought; if only we'd gotten to know her, Grace might have made an interesting friend. Maybe she even could have given music lessons to children in the neighborhood.

I had not been particularly interested in neighborhoods until about 10 years ago when a tragedy occurred on my street: One evening, a man shot and killed his wife and then himself; their two middle school-age children ran screaming into the night. The kids soon moved to their grandparents' house in another part of town. What struck me about this event — besides the tragedy — was that a family who had lived on my street for seven years had, in essence, vanished overnight. Yet the effect on my neighborhood seemed slight. No one, including me, knew the family well. In fact, as far as I could tell, no one seemed to know anyone beyond a casual, superficial level.

I asked myself: Do I live in a community or just in a house on a street surrounded by people whose lives are entirely separate from my own? And I wondered: What if I could deliberately get to know these strangers on my street — know them in a meaningful way — what would I learn and how might it change the neighborhood?

Admittedly, the methodology I stumbled upon — sleeping over at my neighbors' houses — seems eccentric. In practice, though, it worked well. Fully half the neighbors I asked — after we'd gotten to know each other through initial interviews — said yes. And the connections forged did help transform strangers into friends and a disconnected group of people into something more resembling a community. When we discovered, for example, that one neighbor, a single mom, had breast cancer, we patched together a group of neighbors to drive her to doctors and help watch her kids after school.

In this age of cheap long distance, discount airlines and the Internet, when we can create community anywhere, why do neighborhoods still matter? They matter because we are all mortal, and if we have an emergency, a friend even 10 minutes away may be a friend too far.

They matter because all our resources are finite, and if you're baking a cake at night and have to drive to the supermarket for a bottle of vanilla — as one of my neighbors confessed she recently had done — instead of borrowing from the person next door, you're wasting gas, energy and your own valuable time.

They matter because our society is too fragmented, and if we want to start rebuilding a healthy civil society by learning to understand and live peacefully with people whose ideas about religion, morality and politics may be different from our own, a very good place to start is with the people in our own apartment building or on our own block.

And neighborhoods matter because the people closest to us may be able to enrich our lives in ways we'll never know unless we actually know them. That strange lady who studied at Juilliard and who walked through my neighborhood daily for forty years? I wish she'd been my piano teacher; knowing I'd be seeing her every day, I might have practiced more.

For me, getting to know my neighbors was a kind of social experiment, a journey of discovery down my own street. Most neighbors, I came to understand, want more or less the same thing: to live among others with a sense of common humanity, expressed through a willingness to know and be known. To achieve that, you don't have to sleep over. You just need to pick up the phone, send an e-mail or knock on a door. Chances are pretty good the person on the other side will welcome you.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-lovenheim-neighborhoods-20110408,0,1694707,print.story

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From the New York Times

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Gunman Opens Fire at School in Brazil, Killing 12 Children

by ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

RIO DE JANEIRO — As family members mourned their loved ones and kept vigil at hospitals for the injured, this city searched for understanding Thursday after a shooting at a public school left 12 students dead and 12 others wounded.

Brazil is no stranger to urban violence, especially the kind of violence in gang-controlled slums that have given this city one of the highest murder rates in the world. But the specter of the schoolhouse massacre was thought to be a mostly American affliction.

On Thursday, the Tasso da Silveira elementary and middle school, a three-story aqua-and-yellow schoolhouse in the working-class neighborhood of Realengo, on the west side of Rio, joined the ranks of Columbine High School in 1999 and Virginia Tech University in 2007, sites of other school shootings. For the victims' families, the massacre brought those tragedies home.

“We hear about terrorists abroad and we think it will never happen here,” said Clemilson Perreira Chagas, 30, whose cousin Jessica Perreira, 15, was killed Thursday. “But it does.”

The police said that Wellington Menezes de Oliveira, 24, entered Tasso de Silveira around 8 a.m. A former student at the school, Mr. Oliveira told a teacher who recognized him that he was there to speak to a class.

Minutes later, with an ammunition belt strapped to his waist and a .38-caliber pistol in one hand and a .32-caliber gun in the other, he opened fire wildly in two first-floor classrooms. The classroom walls are covered with bullet holes from the shots that missed, the police said.

The children began running and trying to hide. A boy who was wounded fled the school and found a police officer nearby, officials said.

The officer, Sgt. Marcio Alves, saw Mr. Oliveira leaving a classroom and ordered him to drop the guns. Mr. Oliveira ignored the order and began climbing a staircase to more classrooms, Sergeant Alves recounted later. Sergeant Alves shot, hitting the gunman in the leg.

Mr. Oliveira then shot himself in the head.

During the attack, having stopped to reload twice, Mr. Oliveira killed 10 girls and 2 boys, ages 12 to 14. They died from bullet wounds mostly to the head and chest, said Martha Rocha, the chief of Rio's Civil Police.

A letter found in Mr. Oliveira's pocket made it clear that the attack was premeditated, and that he intended to die, but it offered no motive for the shootings.

Instead, he left explicit instructions for his burial — he wanted to be near his adopted mother, who died in 2009 — and the disposition of his house, which he wanted to donate to an animal shelter. He asked to be buried in a way that reflected some aspects of Islamic tradition, including in a white sheet he said he left in a bag on the first floor of the school, but he also asked Jesus for eternal life.

In the only reference to his deed, he sought “God's forgiveness for what I have done.”

A longtime neighbor and former member of Mr. Oliveira's church said Mr. Oliveira had been a lifelong Jehovah's Witness before turning to Islam two years ago. Other neighbors on the street where he grew up said he had few friends and spent many hours in front of his computer on social networking sites. In the past year, several said, he had taken to wearing black clothing.

“People thought it was strange when he began wearing black, but we could never imagine he was going to do something like this,” said Fabio Santos, 27, who said he knew him for more than 10 years. “Maybe it was because his mother and grandmother had died.”

After his mother died, he and his father moved away. It was around that time that he left his job as a warehouse manager for a food exporter, Mr. Santos said. Mr. Oliveira came back to the Realengo house alone now and again, neighbors said.

“He was a very lonely person,” said Elda Lira, 55, a neighbor who said she had known him since he was a baby. “He was always isolated and in his own world.”

Sérgio Cabral, Rio's governor, called him an “animal and psychopath.”

Mr. Cabral has been at the heart of efforts to reduce gun violence in Rio ahead of the city's twin billing on the world stage — the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. But those efforts have been focused on clearing out violent drug gangs from some of Rio's most dangerous slums, not on securing schools from armed former students.

Brazil has also been struggling to contain the flow of arms that feed the violence.

With students and family members in a state of shock, Eduardo Paes, Rio's mayor, said the school would remain closed on Friday.

But family members of the victims questioned whether the school should ever reopen.

“I heard there was blood splattered all over the school,” said Bianca Assis, 24, whose cousin Edson Clayton, 14, was among the wounded. “What mother will allow her child to ever go back there?” As a minimum, she said, the state needed to provide more security in the schools.

“If the school continues to be open” to unchecked visitors, “these kinds of things will continue to happen,” Ms. Assis said. “Today we had dead people, tomorrow we will have rapes.”

Friends and family members huddled outside the Albert Schweitzer Hospital on Thursday, waiting anxiously for news, as surgeons inside treated wounded students.

By early afternoon, news of the shooting had spread throughout the country, shocking officials. President Dilma Rousseff became visibly emotional at an event in Brasília when she asked those present to observe a minute of silence for the “defenseless children” in Realengo.

“This type of crime is not characteristic of our country,” she said. “All of us here, men and women, are united to repudiate this type of violence.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/world/americas/08brazil.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

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Mexican Authorities, Investigating Hijacking, Find 59 Bodies

MEXICO CITY — The discovery of 59 bodies buried in mass graves in northern Mexico led officials on Thursday to acknowledge that criminal gangs had begun to inflict a new form of terror: stopping buses and removing passengers, some never to be seen again.

Reports of these abductions began to emerge two weeks ago from a long-distance bus company and from terrified passengers who had witnessed people being taken off a bus, Morelos Canseco Gomez, an official in the Tamaulipas State Interior Ministry, said in a radio interview.

Mr. Canseco said it appeared to be a new kind of crime, one in which criminals “stop the bus, select passengers, take them hostage.” He added that it was a “criminal modus operandi that has not been detected on this scale here in Tamaulipas.”

The gangs have been working along the highway between the cities of San Luis Potosi and Reynosa, which is on the border across from McAllen, Texas.

Mr. Canseco said it was unclear why gangs were removing people from buses. They may have been trying to forcibly recruit passengers as foot soldiers, or they may have intended to hold them for ransom, he said. It may also be that the missing men were heading to the United States and that the gangs took them off the bus to extort payment to get them across the border.

Security forces rescued five people being held by a gang, all whom had been kidnapped from a bus, Mr. Canseco said. They helped lead the security forces to the mass graves.

The bodies have not yet been identified, and so it has not been confirmed that they were those of other kidnapped bus passengers. Soldiers have arrested 14 people in connection with the mass graves, said Alejandro Poiré, the security spokesman for the federal government. “There are lines of investigation and information generated from the arrests to lead to the full identification of the entire criminal cell responsible for these acts,” he said.

The federal government will reinforce security along the highway, he said.The graves were found in the municipality of San Fernando, where 72 migrants from Central and South America were killed last August.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/world/americas/08mexico.html?pagewanted=print

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Instead of Helping, Trustee Program Is Hurting Veterans, Families Say

LANCASTER, Tex. — During the Korean War, Billy Brown faced enemy bullets, starvation and bitter cold. Now the benefits that he earned for his sacrifice have been tied up by the Department of Veterans Affairs, which in 2009 diverted his payments to trustees who have taken control not only of those funds, but of his life savings of some $100,000 as well.

Richard Wortham, Mr. Brown's son, gained power of attorney for his father four years before the department stepped in, and found out about his father's new financial minder only when he tried to withdraw money from the bank. “They said we no longer had access to his money — we could only get it from the fiduciary,” Mr. Wortham said.

What began as a broad effort to safeguard ailing veterans and their families from financial loss and abuse has turned into what lawyers and veterans' advocates call a mismanaged and poorly regulated bureaucracy that not only fails to respond to veterans' needs but in some cases creates new problems.

Families of veterans like Mr. Brown, 80, and William E. Freeman, whose sister was denied the ability to manage his benefits, and beneficiaries like Dennis Keyser, whose appointed trustee turned out to be a felon, say the system is badly flawed.

The person the department appointed to handle Mr. Brown's affairs, Marcus Brown (no relation), listed his occupation as a “cabinet specialist” and has a high school education; the family said he informed them that they would have to petition him for purchases. While the family has not accused Marcus Brown of abusing the funds — and his lawyer, Logan Odeneal, notes that his client has served as a manager of benefits for some 80 veterans and “his accountings always balance to the penny” — the family found him unresponsive and chafed at what they saw as an unnecessary imposition.

When Mr. Wortham fought the appointment in court, the department argued that such decisions were theirs alone to make and beyond appeal or judicial review.

“The process the V.A. has, it's not working,” Mr. Wortham said, sitting at the foot of his father's bed in a nursing home here. “It's not working for Dad, and it's not working for other veterans.”

The department says it has appointed people to manage 111,407 accounts with a cumulative value of more than $3.2 billion. They earn up to 4 percent commission on the money under their care. The department, in a statement, said that beneficiaries had access to due process before a final decision was reached about appointing a beneficiary, and that the financial managers were carefully vetted. Once appointed, they “may also be required to prepare annual accountings.” In making the choice, the agency said, “priority is given to a family member if qualified and willing to serve.”

The department's inspector general has warned, however, that the department does not do enough to protect its veterans from the risks of faithless fiduciaries. A report last year said that the program was not “effectively protecting the V.A.-derived income and estates of incompetent beneficiaries” or providing “effective oversight.”

The report stated that 315 fraud investigations from October 1998 to March 2010 had “resulted in 132 arrests and monetary recoveries of $7.4 million in restitution, fines, penalties and administrative judgments.”

Thomas J. Pamperin, deputy under secretary for disability assistance at the department's Veterans Benefits Administration, declined to discuss individual cases, except to say “there are always two sides to a story.” He said if family members felt an appointment was inappropriate, they could ask the department to review the decision, and the “the program office would consider that,” he said.

He stressed that the number of court cases concerning such matters was small, and that while some family members might feel otherwise, “we are extremely cognizant of the need to look out for the veterans' best interest, and not to be capricious and arbitrary in our actions.”

Douglas J. Rosinski, a lawyer in Columbia, S.C., who represents Mr. Brown's family and three other families with complaints about the system, disagreed. “There are many hundreds, if not thousands of potential cases” around the country, he said, and called abuses of the system “a hidden tragedy of the most defenseless of our veterans.”

Jim Strickland, who runs the Web site VAwatchdogtoday.org, said that cases like those of Mr. Brown, Mr. Freeman and Mr. Keyser were “happening all over the country.”

“The law says veterans have the right to due process,” he said, but “when the fiduciary process is initiated, that all goes out the window.”

Mr. Keyser, 40, got a double shock concerning the manager of his benefits. Because he has cerebral palsy, Mr. Keyser had been receiving his late father's benefits for several years. But last summer, the telephone line for the department's appointee, James M. Hammonds, was disconnected. Mr. Keyser's caretaker, Bob Albertson, did some digging and discovered that Mr. Hammonds had been convicted of tax fraud. Then he dug a bit further and discovered that Mr. Hammonds had died in May.

Another veteran in the Dallas area, Mr. Freeman, 56 and schizophrenic, had moved in with his sister, Debora Allen. Ms. Allen, who also takes care of her father, obtained veterans benefits for her older brother and expected to be named his benefits manager since she had obtained power of attorney.

But she said the department had deemed her ineligible because she was unemployed — which she needs to be, she said, so she can care full-time for her family. “They said: ‘This is what we decided. It's better if we handle it. We have the right people,' ” she recalled. When she asked the department for some of her brother's money for a car so she could drive him to doctors' appointments, she was turned down. “It's his money!” she said.

When families have sued, the government generally responds with briefs stating that the decision to appoint a fiduciary is solely within the jurisdiction of the Department of Veterans Affairs and not subject to judicial review. The government's strategy in state cases is to say that only the federal court system established for veterans' cases can review the claims — but the government has also told the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims that those decisions “are entirely discretionary” under the veterans affairs secretary and so “the court has no jurisdiction” over appointment protests.

Katrina Eagle, a veterans advocate in California, filed a brief in the Freeman case recently, decrying what she called a “cynical litigation strategy” that deprives veterans of due process rights under the Fifth Amendment. “Like many other veterans with V.A.-appointed fiduciaries, Mr. Freeman has been trapped in a legal quagmire because the secretary asserts that whatever tribunal is hearing a challenge does not have jurisdiction to hear that challenge,” Ms. Eagle said.

Mr. Rosinski, Billy Brown's lawyer, said, “You have more process with a traffic ticket than you do with this.”

The path of Mr. Brown's case has been particularly tortuous. In January, after a hearing in a Texas court in which a judge stated that he was inclined to assert jurisdiction in the matter, Mr. Wortham received a letter from the veterans department announcing that it had appointed a new manager for his father's benefits.

A local lawyer for Mr. Brown's family, Don Uloth, persuaded a judge to issue a temporary restraining order prohibiting any of Mr. Brown's funds from being transferred or sent to anyone but Mr. Wortham or Mr. Brown.

But the day after receiving the department's letter, and a day before the judge's action, the department closed all of Mr. Brown's bank accounts and sent all of his funds to the new manager of benefits. Then last month, the government got the case transferred to federal court — a move that Mr. Rosinski suggests was intended only to delay matters and to avoid, at least temporarily, an unfriendly decision. Since then, the department has frozen payments of Mr. Brown's allowance, a move that Mr. Rosinski characterized as retribution.

Meanwhile, Mr. Brown's life continues to ebb. He suffers from chronic pulmonary obstructive disease and diabetes, and has had at least one stroke.

“There's nobody beyond the law,” Mr. Wortham said in promising to continue to fight to get his father's money back under his family's control. “I'll be here to my last dying breath, fighting for my dad.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/us/08vets.html?pagewanted=print

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OPINION

When Blame Isn't Enough

Washington

THE death of Marchella Pierce, a 4-year-old girl in Brooklyn who was beaten, malnourished and tied to a bed, has again aroused anger over child welfare in New York City. Her mother stands accused of murder, and a caseworker and a supervisor were charged last month with criminally negligent homicide.

Reading about Marchella's death in September brought back painful memories. When I was the director of child welfare in the District of Columbia I often woke up at 3 a.m., fearing all that could go wrong. During my tenure, there were increases in adoptions and speedier investigations, and more children went to live with foster families rather than in institutions. But substandard care and terrible cases also continued.

Because there is so much to fix, improvements and calamities can happen simultaneously in long-troubled child welfare systems. In Washington, where I took over from a court-appointed receiver, the work ranged from reducing caseloads to overhauling information technology, contracting, licensing and personnel systems. On good days, we reminded ourselves that it was all worth it. But when a child was hurt or killed, we often reacted defensively, fearing that a misdirected public outcry could undercut our plans for reform.

After I left that job, I kept looking for solutions. For ideas, I examined institutions like airlines and some hospitals that have reduced deaths and injuries. Through rigorous data analysis, they have developed systemic approaches to safety, focusing on clear communication, minimum-staffing requirements and “fail-safe” strategies to reduce the consequences of inevitable human error. Such strategies — including checklists and passing on information at crucial moments like shift changes — can be applied to protecting children.

Findings from the Institute of Medicine, the Commonwealth Fund and other organizations point to several lessons from safety initiatives in these fields:

• You can't fix a systemwide problem by simply blaming or retraining individuals. When systems are broken, workers respond in counterproductive ways. They try “workarounds,” as when a nurse guesses at a doctor's unreadable handwriting on a prescription because she is afraid to ask. Or they withhold information to avoid responsibility, wanting someone else to make a decision even if it is wrong. Blaming individuals can also make it harder to recruit and keep the most qualified employees. (In child welfare, talented caseworkers too often give up on investigating troubled families and gravitate to handling adoptions.)

• You can't learn what's wrong with the system from just one case. Understanding what to fix requires analyzing many cases, including deaths, injuries and “near misses.” That is why airline safety analysts collect information about maintenance problems and planes that come too close to each other on the runways or in the air, and why hospitals study medication errors. Looking just at Marchella's death focuses attention on the caseworker, while looking at more cases gets us closer to understanding trends and patterns.

• You can't understand problems and fix them unless you create a culture in which employees share information without fear. The Department of Veterans Affairs increased reporting of potentially dangerous errors by promising hospital staff members they would not be punished unless the mistake was intentional or criminal or involved substance abuse. Pilots who anonymously report an unsafe episode receive a number they can use in an investigation to show that they made a report, shielding them from punishment in most circumstances.

These insights can yield simple fixes. In 2005, for example, the Illinois inspector general found that a failure to identify parents' mental health and substance abuse problems was a common feature in child deaths. Harried caseworkers who had to substantiate a complaint of abuse or neglect didn't have enough time to thoroughly investigate whether drug addiction and mental illness were involved. When state forms required them to choose yes or no in those first hectic days, they chose no — and often no one came back to help the families. So the inspector general urged the state to give workers another option, one that would indicate a need for continuing assessment in these in-between cases.

But we need to aim even higher. The Department of Health and Human Services should create a national commission to review deaths and serious injuries to children from abuse and neglect. Among other things, it should examine practices in sectors with strong safety records; look at deficiencies in access by parents to drug counseling and psychiatric care; and recommend procedures for caseworkers to report mistakes anonymously without getting blamed.

For too long, we have had a stalemate: Child welfare experts, worried that anger over high-profile deaths often leads to the unnecessary removal of children from their homes to an overloaded foster care system, are reluctant to talk about systemic safety improvements. Meanwhile, the number of children who die each year from abuse or neglect in the United States — an estimated 1,770 in 2009, or 2.3 deaths for every 100,000 children — has been rising.

There is a way out. Making sweeping policy changes and scapegoating individuals are not the best way to enhance safety, but rather, clear-headed, evidence-driven examination of the resources, conditions and communication that guide decision-making in the workplace. That way Marchella's death will not become just another example of the cycle of outrage and failure.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/opinion/08golden.html?pagewanted=print

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From the Department of Justice

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Attorney General Eric Holder Speaks at National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention Summit

Washington, D.C. ~ Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Thank you, Barney [Melekian]. I appreciate your kind words, and I'm especially grateful for your leadership of the COPS Office – and your commitment to preventing and combating youth violence.

Thank you all for being here – and for being part of this critical summit.

This gathering marks an important step forward in what I know – and what I pledge – will be an ongoing conversation about how we can address violence among – and directed toward – our nation's young people.

Throughout my career, I have seen the devastating effects of youth violence. Today, as Attorney General – and, above all, as the father of three teenage children – I am determined to make the progress that our children deserve.

I know you share this commitment. Just as important, you understand what we're up against. Though you're approaching this work from a variety of perspectives, you've all seen the ways that violent crime has ravaged too many of our communities, shattered too many young lives, and stolen too many promising futures.

It's encouraging to see such a diverse group of leaders and community stakeholders gathered here to advance the goals that we share. We have elected officials and policy experts, law enforcement officers and educators, advocates and researchers, public-health experts and social services providers, as well as concerned parents, coaches, and community and faith leaders. You are an extraordinary group. And I want to thank Laurie Robinson and her team in our Office of Justice Programs for their outstanding work in bringing everyone together.

The great strength of this forum lies in the broad scope of your expertise. It lies in the unprecedented interagency alliances – and multi-disciplinary partnerships – that you have forged. And its potential for success is reflected in the six innovative, comprehensive plans that you have gathered to review.

In Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, Salinas, and San Jose, networks of diverse partners have joined forces to find innovative solutions to the problems that give rise to youth violence. Although the communities that you serve confront unique challenges, each of you has signaled – and, no doubt, will prove – the value of bringing all relevant stakeholders to the discussion table. In the past, it has been common practice to tackle the issues surrounding youth violence in isolation and piecemeal. But I'm pleased that this forum has called for a more collaborative, more effective approach.

This means focusing on prevention, intervention, enforcement, and reentry. It means relying on research and analysis to target resources. And it means regularly evaluating progress as we move forward.

Today, as you discuss six comprehensive youth violence prevention plans, you are also sending a powerful message – that, in this country, we will not give up on our children. Let me say that again. We will not give up on our children. We will protect them in every way we can. We will empower them as well as we know how. And we will challenge them to make good decisions – and to contribute to the work of strengthening our nation and honoring our founding principles of security, opportunity, and justice for all.

I am proud that our nation's Justice Department has taken a central role in facilitating this work. On behalf of my colleagues across the Department – and on behalf of Secretary Duncan, a key leader in this effort, and on behalf the Administration as a whole – I want to pledge our ongoing support for your efforts.

The issue of youth violence – and the need for new channels for communication and cooperation – is something that Secretary Duncan and I have discussed often over the last two years as we've worked to expand educational opportunities for our children, to improve school safety, and to ensure that civil rights are protected in every classroom in America.

As many of you know, in the fall of 2009, the two of us traveled together to Chicago to meet with teachers, parents, civic leaders, and young people in the wake of an alarming violent crime streak that resulted in the deaths of forty Chicago Public School students that year. But you may not know that we also made a commitment – to greater collaboration between the Departments of Justice and Education and our colleagues across the federal government, and to the work of forging and strengthening partnerships beyond our agencies.

The simple truth is that, when it comes to protecting safety and opportunity for all of our citizens, government can't do it alone. We need a variety of perspectives; we need to test multiple strategies; and, above all, we need to broaden our approach. In short, we need your expertise. We need your ideas. We need your help.

That's why this summit marks such a critical – and promising – step forward.

I know that this work is a priority for each of you – and for the partners you've engaged back home. As Valerie Jarrett said yesterday, it is also a top priority for President Obama – and for senior officials across our federal government. As I've told my fellow Cabinet members, who are also engaged in and excited about your work, I am confident that the individual prevention plans that you've created will set the stage for a new era of engagement, cooperation, and collaboration across local jurisdictions, state lines, and federal agencies.

This work could hardly be more urgent. Today, we know that the majority of our young people – more than 60 percent of them – have been exposed to crime, abuse, and violence. We've learned that these patterns aren't limited to any one region, community, or demographic group. We know that violence can take many forms, from pushing, hitting, and bullying – to witnessing gun, knife, gang, and domestic violence. We've also seen that exposure can happen at home, during school, on our streets, and even online – where children face new and unprecedented threats every day. And we know that exposure to violence – as a witness or a victim – can have devastating, long-term effects on our children – increasing their chances for depression, substance-abuse, and violent behavior.

In addition to these findings, it is now clear that enforcement, prosecution, and incarceration – while key components in our fight to ensure public safety – are merely pieces of the larger puzzle for addressing and eliminating youth violence.

We also need sustained investments, effective prevention and intervention strategies, widely available after-school programs, more summer jobs, and the adult support necessary to raise graduation rates and expand opportunities for achievement and contribution.

Today's challenges demand that we educate both parents and kids; that we provide teachers, civic leaders, and public health officials with up-to-date information about youth violence trends and indicators; and that we train lawyers and law enforcement officers to respond more effectively when violence occurs.

Unfortunately, it's not yet possible to reach every child who needs our help. And, in spite of our best efforts, we know that some young people will start down the wrong path. But for them, we must provide opportunities to break destructive cycles and to grow into productive members of society.

Today, as I look out on the partners gathered here, I am confident that we're heading in the right direction. Already, positive – and historic – investments are being made. For the first time, the Justice Department is directing resources for the express purpose of reducing childhood exposure to violence. We're also working to raise awareness of its ramifications; to advance scientific inquiry on its causes and characteristics; and, of course, to counter its negative impact. We've awarded millions in grants – and are striving to sustain high levels of support – to help strengthen your work, and to take our collective efforts to the next level.

But the real story isn't here in Washington. The real story is in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, Salinas, and San Jose – six diverse cities where the problem of youth violence is clear – and where we found the local leadership, and the innovative spirit, to take on this challenge.

I am excited about the progress that you have made – and are now poised to build upon. But I know that this is just the beginning. I also know that we're only going to be able to move forward if we are willing to reaffirm our commitment – and to redouble our efforts – to work together.

In this partnership, here's what you can expect from today's Justice Department. We will continue to provide a meeting ground for your work – forums for discussion and new opportunities to learn about and replicate successful efforts.

And here's what we expect from you: insights from the front lines; information about what works and what doesn't; guidance, advice, and recommendations.

So as the initiatives you've developed take hold – and, no doubt, lead to positive transformations – let me assure you of my commitment – and that of the entire Justice Department – to measuring progress, sharing innovations, and facilitating collaboration across the public and private sectors.

In this time of growing demands and limited budgets – I know that achieving our shared goals will not be easy. And I realize that progress may not come as quickly as we would like.

But our children are counting on us. Our communities are counting on us. And we cannot – and will not – let them down.

This is not just our professional obligation – this is our moral calling.

Our nation will be defined, and its progress will be determined, by the support that we provide – and the doors that we open – for our young people. The priorities that we set now are what will allow America's next generation of leaders to rise above the current threats and obstacles and seize tomorrow's opportunities. This is our great test – and, in many ways, it is the single most consequential challenge we face in determining America's future.

So let us seize this moment. Let us build upon the extraordinary work that you have begun. Let us seek out ways to implement and improve upon the plans you're presenting today. And let us find new ways to measure progress and ensure accountability.

Above all, let us lift up six American cities as examples of what it means to break down traditional barriers and find creative solutions to our most critical problems. Then let us broaden our efforts by sharing the lessons we learn with other communities across the country. Let us remake our nation.

Once again, thank you all for your critical insights, your diligent work, and your dedication to addressing and preventing youth violence.

I'm grateful for your partnership. I'm counting on you all. And I look forward to all that we will accomplish together.

http://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/ag/speeches/2011/ag-speech-110405.html

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Attorney General Eric Holder Speaks at the National Crime Victims' Rights Week National Observance and Candlelight Ceremony

Washington, D.C. ~ Thursday, April 7, 2011

Thank you, Laurie [Robinson]. It is an honor, once again, to be part of this annual ceremony. I want to thank you and Joye [Frost] – and your colleagues across the Office of Justice Programs and, especially, the Office for Victims of Crimes – for your work in bringing us all together this evening, and for the contributions that you make every day to bring hope, healing and – above all – justice to crime victims and their families.

I also want to welcome the other Justice Department leaders and partners who are with us – in particular, United States Attorney Ron Machen.

Your commitment to assisting and empowering crime victims is making a difference here in Washington, and across the country.

Thank you all for being here.

For exactly three decades – since National Crime Victims' Rights Week was established in 1981 – we have set aside these days of reflection as an important opportunity to signal our support for crime victims, to give voice to their suffering, and to light the way toward a hopeful future.

Tonight, as we join together to commemorate this year's National Crime Victims' Rights Week, it is clear that we are also bound by our common goals, by our shared concerns, and by our collective resolve to do more to protect those at risk and in need – and to support every person, every family, and every community now struggling to overcome the devastating effects of crime.

Many people in this room understand – all too well – just how critical, and how urgent, this work is. And I'd particularly like to recognize, and welcome, the many courageous survivors who have joined us tonight – along with the distinguished awardees we will be honoring tomorrow afternoon.

Your stories remind us that – although far too much cruelty remains in this world – with strength and support, healing and progress are possible. And each one of you is proof that our continued vigilance against violence and abuse remains essential.

Few understand this as well, or as intimately, as Judy Shepard – our keynote speaker – and her husband Dennis. Thank you both for joining us – and for the extraordinary work that you have done to transform an unspeakable act of violence into a powerful call for change.

The devastating loss of your son Matthew, more than a decade ago, was not only a tragedy for your family and for our nation. It also marked a turning point in America's history, and sparked a movement that compelled millions across the country – and around the world – to demand justice for Matthew, and for every victim of hate-fueled violence.

We are honored that you are here to share your story with us. And we are grateful for the contributions – and the enormous personal sacrifices – that you have made to raise awareness about hate crimes and to help prevent and combat these heinous acts.

Tonight, I want to assure you that advancing this work is a top priority for me, for President Obama and this administration, and for my colleagues across the Justice Department.

During the two years that I've been privileged to serve as Attorney General, I'm especially proud of the steps that have been taken to implement and to aggressively enforce the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

For years, many of us worked together to push for this critical legislation. And since President Obama signed it into law at the end of 2009, the Justice Department has been working tirelessly to serve victims – and to protect potential victims – of hate crimes.

As we speak, our Civil Rights Division's Criminal Section is working on more than 80 open matters, utilizing innovative legal tools – and every available resource – to bring justice to those who have been targeted because of their race, religion, ethnicity, or nationality – and now, under the landmark law that bears Matthew's name – their gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.

The Justice Department has also strengthened efforts to combat bullying, child exploitation, and cyber crimes targeting children. We've broadened our work to end human trafficking, domestic violence, and sexual assault. And we are spearheading the administration's Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, which – since its launch in late 2009 – has made extraordinary strides in fighting fraud and financial crimes, securing asset recoveries, and protecting fraud victims.

I am proud to report that – despite growing demands and limited budgets – no money has been cut from program investments supported by the Crime Victims Fund. And we can all be encouraged that the President has requested additional funding to build on current crime prevention initiatives – including promising strategies aimed at reducing violence against women and victimization in Indian country.

But – as you all know – if we are going to reach all of the communities and people who need our help, government can't do it alone. Only with the engagement of state and local authorities – along with community activists, advocates, and partners like you – can we secure our communities and support victims in rebuilding their lives.

So this evening – as we share a moment of silence and reflection – let us also rededicate ourselves to taking our work to the next level, and to identifying new ways to protect and empower those who need our help.

I pledge my own best efforts. And I look forward to all that we will accomplish together.

Thank you.

http://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/ag/speeches/2011/ag-speech-110407.html

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