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From Los Angeles Times

Justice in the DNA

Capitalizing on familial searching to help identify criminals through DNA raises no more moral and privacy questions than the use of fingerprint information.

May 13, 2011

Civil libertarians have a natural — and healthy — impulse to question scientific advancements in crime control. But concerns about so-called familial searching are exaggerated.

As The Times reported recently, California is a leader in making use of familial searching: the tracing of a criminal suspect through a relative's DNA. The best-known example of its use was the apprehension of Lonnie David Franklin Jr., the alleged "Grim Sleeper" serial killer. Franklin was identified because DNA he left at a crime scene partially matched that of his son, a convicted criminal whose DNA was stored in a state database.

Was it unfair to capitalize on the fact that the son's DNA happened to be in the database? Despite the obvious advantages, some civil libertarians are wary of the technique. One objection is that familial searches put an entire family under scrutiny, including innocent relatives. But that is no different from police questioning all the occupants of a house where a crime has been committed. Another concern is that DNA databases contain a disproportionate number of racial minorities. That's a real problem — as is the disproportionate number of minorities in prison populations generally — but denying the police useful evidence in specific cases is no remedy for that broader problem. Finally, some argue that familial searching might put people whose DNA partially matches that found at a crime in the position of being pressured by police to incriminate a relative. That's true, but relatives have never been off-limits to a police investigation.

An ACLU lawyer raised another concern: that as familial searching becomes more common, officials might skirt regulations designed to prevent it from being overused in trivial cases. But the specter of unnecessary assembly-line DNA searches is implausible. The state has several procedures to prevent the casual or unjustified testing of DNA, including a screening committee comprising law enforcement and forensic experts. Also, given the cost of the process — $20,000 — the state limits the use of the technique to homicide and sexual assault.

Familial searching raises no more moral and privacy questions than the use of fingerprint information. If anything, the procedures seem too restrictive — why not extend the technique to other violent crimes, as some officials seem willing to do? — but no one can say that privacy concerns are being slighted. The weightier question is whether familial searching can aid in the apprehension of criminals. That has been demonstrated beyond all doubt.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-dna-20110513,0,1099293,print.story

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From the New York Times

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Suspects in Terror Case Wanted to Kill Jews, Officials Say

The 26-year-old man from Queens had discussed growing a beard and the side curls of a Hasidic Jew, the police commissioner said, a disguise that he apparently hoped would enable him to attack a synagogue in Manhattan “and take out the whole entire building.”

His ambitions did not end there. The man, a native of Algeria, also expressed an interest in blowing up the Empire State Building, the commissioner said.

He was not a member of a terrorist group like Al Qaeda, the commissioner said. Indeed, his father said, he once sold cosmetics at Saks Fifth Avenue and was now trying to be a fashion model.

Yet driven by a hatred of Jews and a belief that Muslims are mistreated the world over, the man, Ahmed Ferhani, began piecing together a plan to commit terrorism, the authorities said on Thursday, leading to his arrest after he and an accomplice bought weapons in a police undercover operation.

Mr. Ferhani, along with a 20-year-old naturalized United States citizen from Morocco, were charged on Thursday in a terrorism case that is remarkable not only for the would-be model-actor the authorities have identified as its central player, but also for the unusual way the case was brought.

The charges were announced at a City Hall news conference with arrest photos on display, featuring comments from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg; the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly; and the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr. The case was presented in State Supreme Court, with no involvement from the F.B.I. or the United States attorney's office, typically crucial in such investigations and prosecutions.

The accusations as detailed by the three officials sounded chilling. Just before Mr. Ferhani and his co-defendant, Mohamed Mamdouh, were arrested on Manhattan's West Side on Wednesday evening, they had bought a hand grenade, three semiautomatic pistols and 150 rounds of ammunition.

They wanted to kill Jews; they mulled blowing up churches; and shortly before Mr. Ferhani was arrested at 58th Street along the West Side Highway, he asked an undercover detective, who was posing as a gun dealer, if the man could get him a bullet-resistant vest, a silencer and a police radio.

Mr. Mamdouh was arrested nearby.

“They conspired and took concrete steps to blow up synagogues and churches to advance those ideological goals and to possess and use illegal firearms and explosives,” Mr. Vance said at the news conference. “They did it for jihad, something they referred simply to as the cause, which meant the violence and armed fight against Israel, Jews and other non-Muslims and the West.”

Mr. Kelly said Mr. Ferhani, using an expletive, explained he was fed up that Muslims around the world were being treated “like dogs.”

The two men, who both live in Queens, were charged in a criminal complaint under a state terrorism statute passed after the Sept. 11 attacks that Mr. Vance said had not been used before in New York City in a terrorism case. Among the charges were second-degree conspiracy as a crime of terrorism, second-degree conspiracy as a hate crime and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon as a crime of terrorism. If convicted of the top count, the men face life in prison without parole.

The charges concluded what Mr. Kelly said was a seven-month investigation.

Major terrorism cases are generally investigated by the F.B.I.- N.Y.P.D. Joint Terrorism Task Force, staffed with police detectives and federal agents, and prosecuted by the United States attorney's office in federal court. One law enforcement official said the Police Department's Intelligence Division, which handled the case, had notified the task force about it and the group had opted not to get involved.

Little clarification was offered at the news conference, where officials offered explanations for why a case presented as a serious terrorism matter had not been brought in federal court.

“They don't take all the cases,” Mr. Bloomberg said simply, referring to the federal authorities.

The commissioner said federal authorities have the right of first refusal on any tip, adding that the case began as a local criminal matter with the district attorney's office, and “it was logical to keep it going when it morphed into a terrorism investigation.”

Mr. Vance said in this case, prosecutors worked with the local police, but suggested that in some matters, it was important to share information with federal authorities. A spokesman for the F.B.I., Timothy Flannelly, declined to comment.

The reasoning notwithstanding, Mr. Vance described Mr. Ferhani as a volatile threat.

“He was committed to violent jihad, and his plans became bigger and more violent with each passing week,” Mr. Vance said.

At Mr. Ferhani's home in Whitestone, Queens, his father said his son had befriended people who were bad influences.

“He's a very good kid,” the father, J. Ferhani, 51, said. “He got involved with a bad kid. He's a naïve person. He has a very good heart, but if somebody tries to tell him something, he always believes it.”

Told of the accusations against his son, Mr. Ferhani, a cabdriver, laughed in disbelief. “Oh my God, that's unbelievable,” he said. “Bomb a synagogue? That's not my son.”

He said his son was raised as a Muslim, in Algeria, before the family fled in 1994 at the height of its civil war. “But he's not a religious fanatic,” Mr. Ferhani said. “He doesn't pray; he drinks.”

Late in the afternoon, the two suspects appeared before Judge Melissa C. Jackson in State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

A prosecutor, Margaret E. Gandy, asked the judge to hold both men without bail. “The seriousness of this crime is considerable,” she said, adding that investigators had an overwhelming amount of evidence. As she spoke, Mr. Ferhani lifted his head and mouthed words that could not be heard from the gallery.

Neither defendant entered a formal plea, but lawyers for both said their clients denied wrongdoing. Judge Jackson ordered the men held without bail.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/nyregion/two-men-arrested-in-new-york-terror-case-police-say.html?_r=1&hp

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In Alabama, Storms Leave a Scramble for Housing

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — In the tornado-torn rural stretches and cities of the South, the scope and size of a newly homeless population are beginning to sink in.

There are as yet no solid estimates of the number of people who need places to live, although it surely will be more than 10,000, federal and state emergency officials say. And many of them are poor, working class or elderly — those most at risk of becoming permanently homeless.

“It's that middle group that was fragile, perhaps living paycheck to paycheck, who have now lost their homes and their jobs,” said Kim Burgo, vice president for disaster operations for Catholic Charities USA, which is working to feed and shelter victims.

Of particular concern are older people in the rural communities, where a third of the population is 65 or older and resources are slim.

“These are folks who have put their whole heart and soul into their homes,” Ms. Burgo said. “They may or may not have insurance. What do they do? They might be living with their son or daughter now, but how long is that going to last?”

In Tuscaloosa, the largest urban area hit, the battle looks a little different. It is a scramble for apartments that do not exist and a wait for checks from the government. And everywhere, it is a growing test of patience.

At a Red Cross Shelter, Niki and Courtney Eberhart have awakened in a sea of a hundred cots filled with strangers for 16 days now.

They roust their two teenage children for school, then start looking at apartments in anticipation of a Federal Emergency Management Agency check they think will be about $3,500.

“We're finding stuff we like, but three bedrooms for $1,200? That's ridiculous,” said Mrs. Eberhart, 40. “I can't afford that.”

Shirley Baker's mother and reluctantly gracious stepfather took her in after the April tornadoes destroyed the Tuscaloosa basement apartment she shared with her granddaughter. But no one in the house is thrilled at the prospect of a long-term stay.

“I'm 54 years old,” Ms. Baker said. “I don't like to take advantage of people, but I can't afford to be picky.”

She has been hunting for an apartment, using tips from friends and the FEMA Web site. But so far, every place she has looked at had been rented by the time she got to them.

And, like tens of thousands of other people in the South, she is waiting for a check from FEMA.

Nearly 66,000 people in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee have registered for help with the agency, which has delivered $65.7 million in aid so far. Most requests are in Alabama. Someone who has lost a home can get as much as $30,200 for help with everything from rebuilding to paying for funerals. But in reality, most people will not get the full amount.

Checks are determined by market rent, insurance and other factors. In the four Southern states hit hardest by the tornadoes, checks are averaging a little more than $4,300, according to the agency.

And some people do not get anything. Tiffany Wood's house in Pleasant Grove, Ala., near Birmingham was smashed beyond recognition. She has insurance, but she was turned down for federal aid.

“She has nothing but some clothes, and they absolutely gave her nothing but the offer of a loan,” said her mother, Vicki Wood, who, like countless other mothers in the South, suddenly has her daughter back under her roof.

“We're on top of each other, but we can't complain,” she said.

In Tuscaloosa, at least 5,000 homes and apartments were heavily damaged or lost completely in a city of 93,000 residents, according to a city estimate.

State and city inspectors spent the week combing the city, trying to determine how much foreclosed or vacant housing was available, what could be repaired, and just how many people might truly be left without somewhere to live.

Shaun Donovan, secretary of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, has suggested using existing stock and foreclosed property combined with low-cost loans to house everyone who needs it in urban areas. But Mayor Walter Maddox of Tuscaloosa is not so sure.

“I don't think you're going to find enough available stock, but I hope I'm wrong,” he said. “What I want to see from FEMA is measurable goals and objectives.”

Just to be on the safe side, Mr. Maddox has identified 12 sites around the city with sewer and water hookups that might be suitable for FEMA mobile homes .

Wherever the housing comes from, it will not be anything like the 120,000 trailers the agency bought to house victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, said Craig Fugate, the FEMA administrator.

Those trailers, which leaked so much formaldehyde that people became sick, were meant as temporary housing but instead turned into de facto housing projects filled with people who could not find permanent homes. Still, temporary housing in a new batch of FEMA trailers may be the only solution in rural communities, Mr. Fugate said.

Federal officials are trying to build on other lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina . They want to keep people as close to home as possible. That might not mean the same street, but it could mean the same town or something very close by.

The agency is also enforcing stronger requirements for identification — something that is frustrating people in shelters who have none — that are intended to help curb both the mistakes in handing out aid and the fraud that plagued the government after Hurricane Katrina. And the housing and emergency management agencies are working closely to make sure victims do not have to go through multiple layers of bureaucracy when they apply for aid, Mr. Fugate said.

That was the case for the Eberharts, who were lucky enough to find a copy of their lease and met a FEMA inspector at their ruined apartment three days after the storm. They hope to piece things together with federal aid and help from a fund at the Olive Garden restaurant where they work. But of course, they have to find an apartment first.

“There's literally no stock whatsoever,” said Travis Mackey with the Space Hunters, an apartment locator service.

Complicating matters is the annual spring migration of University of Alabama students from dormitories to apartments and the flood of people who just want an apartment for a month or two so they can rebuild.

There are higher-end places available, but they are out of reach for many of the working-class people whose neighborhoods took the most damage, Mr. Mackey said.

And people want to live close to their neighborhoods so their children can still go to the same schools.

“It's hard when you get a call from someone who said, ‘I've just lost everything and I need to start over,' and you know there just isn't much availability out there,” Mr. Mackey said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/us/13homeless.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Domesticity and Radicalism Clash in a Neo-Nazi Home

Jesse McKinley spent two months looking into the activities of the Southern California chapter of the National Socialist Movement, the nation's largest neo-Nazi group, and the chapter's leader, Jeff Hall. On May 1, midway through his reporting on the project, Mr. McKinley received word that Mr. Hall's 10-year-old son had been charged with murdering him with a handgun as he lay on the living room sofa, just a day after Mr. McKinley had spent much of the afternoon at the family home for a meeting of the group. His subsequent article on Mr. Hall and the murder, and the unusual circumstances of the case, have aroused so much reader interest that Mr. McKinley was asked to describe his impressions of Mr. Hall, his family and his world.

The first time I met Jeff Hall, I felt surrounded.

The occasion was a rally in Claremont, Calif., and I had come to Mr. Hall's house, the headquarters of the Southern California chapter of the National Socialist Movement, to rendezvous before the event. I stepped out of a rental car and into a crowd of about two dozen followers of Mr. Hall, the chapter's leader, milling about in front of his suburban home in Riverside, Calif.

There was wariness on both sides, of course; I was a reporter, and much of the N.S.M.'s press coverage — not surprisingly — has been unflattering. At one point, a member pointedly asked about my ethnic background, but was appeased when I mentioned that my grandmother was of German stock. And the appearance of the movement's members can be just as intimidating: Long derided as “Hollywood Nazis” for their fondness for old-school Nazi regalia, the group had in recent years adopted a more modern look: black jackets, pants and boots.

And on this March morning, many of the N.S.M. supporters looked the part, right down to the 14 pairs of lace holes on their boots, symbolic of the 14 Words, a neo-Nazi slogan (“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”). There were tattoos of swastikas and skulls on several members' arms and shaved heads, while others wore T-shirts with gun sights, “White Power” and the word “Skinhead” — spelled in Viking runes.

I was struck over and over by the strange clash between Mr. Hall's sunny suburban life and his dark, radical beliefs. Mr. Hall had five children, and he seemed to be an engaged father; there was a well-used swing set in the backyard, and his children clamored for his attention.

On that March morning, as members prepared for their rally, pulling out their N.S.M. banners and red plexiglass shields, Mr. Hall's 3-year-old daughter watered a rose bush and played tag with one of the members. Others chatted casually about the weather — it had rained — while also mentioning that it might wash “wash away the smell of some of the antis,” or counterprotesters they expected.

One young skinhead couple kissed affectionately on the bed of a pickup truck. “I love you baby,” the man said; an hour later, at the rally, he was shouting “Six million wasn't enough!” and “Sieg Heil!” at a larger group of counterprotesters.

The story had come to us through a freelance photographer, Julie Platner, who had already met and befriended Mr. Hall. The idea had been to spend several months chronicling Mr. Hall's chapter and, through it, the larger neo-Nazi movement.

I met with Mr. Hall and his group several times over the coming weeks, at rallies and leadership meetings, and at events as ordinary as a barbecues. Julie wasn't available that first morning, though, so when I finally met Mr. Hall, I wasn't sure what to expect. Mr. Hall, a tall man with a quick smile, seemed skeptical at first, but said Julie had vouched for me. And he quickly seemed to drop his reservations; after the rally, near the grill in his backyard, he offered to buy me a drink.

Nowhere was the complex collision of hate and happiness more evident than inside the Hall family. The news of Mr. Hall's murder came just a day after I spent an afternoon at the Halls' home for a meeting of the N.S.M. It had seemed — as much as such a meeting can seem — ordinary: there were Easter decorations on the door, and children's toys spread all about. A Barbie in a purple dress lay on the kitchen table, next to a spool of string that Mr. Hall and his 10-year-old son had been using early that day to try to fly a kite in the backyard.

The boy sat next to me during the meeting. At one point, Mr. Hall mentioned that the boy had destroyed a cabinet in the house, but didn't seem too annoyed, joking that the cabinet “was Mexican-made.” The boy moved over to sit next to his mother on the couch as she fed the family's 6-week-old from a bottle.

The boy, a sandy-haired scooter fan who liked to ride in the backyard, was to all appearances an average grade schooler. His demeanor was quiet and inquisitive. He was home-schooled and had struggled at times, being called hyperactive and sometimes violent. But last fall, the boy was evaluated by a specialist from a local charter school who found that the Hall residence was a “warm, friendly and clean environment,” dotted with “crafts, experiments and games.”

The boy, the specialist concluded, “continues to grow at a constant rate.”

At one point at the March barbecue, the boy quizzed a vendor who set up a stand to sell racially tinged merchandise — trucker caps with SS symbols, Confederate flags, Nazi buttons — about a belt with an SS insignia that he wanted his father to buy him.

“That's a death head with an iron cross,” the vendor said to the boy.

“So it goes like that?” the boy said, asking how it should be worn.

“Yeah,” the vendor said. “You want it that way, like your head. Facing up.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/us/13hall.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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In Debt, Far From Home and Claiming Servitude

HOUSTON — The television advertisements the welder saw in Hanoi were alluring, almost too good to be true. A company partly owned by the government was offering jobs in the United States that paid $15 an hour, plus overtime, far more than the man, Chin Ba Ngo, could make in Vietnam.

When he met with agents for the company, they asked for a $10,000 fee to put him in touch with an American company seeking laborers. He mortgaged his house and borrowed heavily from family members to come up with the money.

The fee was the start of a two-year ordeal that has left Mr. Ngo broke and living in exile in Houston. He is one of 50 Vietnamese welders who contend in lawsuits that they were treated like indentured servants in the United States.

A state lawsuit resulted in a $60 million out-of-court settlement against two American companies, but now a federal suit has been filed charging the Vietnamese companies that recruited the welders with taking part in a human trafficking scheme.

Through it all, the workers have contended — and the companies have denied — that they were brought here under false pretenses, treated poorly in near isolation and then cast out abruptly long before they expected to finish the work that would have helped them repay their debts.

“They want to use our labor as a business, and they want to rip us off,” Mr. Ngo said.

In interviews, four of the men described how they were recruited through Vietnam's state-sanctioned system for exporting labor and borrowed heavily to pay the required fees. It is a system that the State Department concluded in a 2010 report often leaves workers “highly vulnerable to debt bondage and forced labor.”

The four companies involved in the deal have all denied wrongdoing. Officials of the Vietnamese labor-export corporations accused the men of lying this month and denied they had been deceived or exploited. Lawyers for the two American companies who agreed to the settlement also disputed the welders' assertions that they were underpaid or were kept from leaving their lodgings.

But Tony Buzbee, a lawyer for the welders, said his clients were forced into a form of indentured servitude. Not only did they pay thousands of dollars in fees to Vietnamese companies, but they were charged high prices by their American employers for run-down housing, transportation to work and other expenses.

The workers say the American company that arranged for their travel and housing — ILP Agency LLC — also took their passports and kept them isolated, telling them the police would arrest and deport them if they left the building where they lived.

The welders said they had paid agents for the Vietnamese government-affiliated companies — Interserco and Vinamotors — fees of $6,500 to $15,000. In return, they said they were promised two and a half years of steady work in the United States, making $15 an hour.

Most mortgaged their homes and borrowed from relatives and friends to make the payments in early 2009. Some borrowed from the labor-export companies themselves, handing over the deeds to their houses.

But Coast to Coast Resources Inc., the Texas company that transported them to Houston and hired them out to a shipyard, let them go in February 2009, after only eight months of work, because their work visas had expired and the United States Department of Labor would not renew them, court documents show.

The workers owed thousands of dollars they could not repay on the low wages in Vietnam. Most rejected an offer from the owner of ILP Agency to buy them plane tickets home. A few sought help from a member of the Jehovah's Witnesses who had come to their door and left a business card.

Tammy Tran, a prominent Vietnamese-American lawyer in Houston, came to their aid, suing the American companies on their behalf and arguing, among other things, that their contracts had been breached. She also rallied local churches and Vietnamese émigrés to clothe, house and feed the workers.

In February, Coast to Coast Resources and ILP Agency reached an out-of-court settlement with the welders, agreeing to pay them a total of about $60 million in damages.

The victory was empty, however, because under the terms of the agreement, the owners of the companies were not held liable and the companies have no assets, lawyers involved in the negotiation said. The welders have yet to receive a cent.

In the meantime, the workers said they had received threats from people connected to the labor companies in Vietnam because of the lawsuit. They said they feared for their lives if they returned.

When the workers arrived in Houston in May and June 2008, they were taken to filthy, unfurnished apartments in Pasadena, Tex. Four men were asked to share each two-bedroom apartment, paying $500 a person when the apartment normally rents for a quarter of that, Mr. Ngo said.

“It was a very dirty apartment, no beds, no furniture, a bad odor, roaches running all over,” he recalled. “The carpet was filthy and the air-conditioner didn't work.”

Coast to Coast Resources also charged each of them $85 a week for a van to take them to work and to a grocery. Each was charged $280 more for welding equipment.

Scott Funk, a lawyer who represented Coast to Coast in the state suit, said a district court judge did not find the men had been manipulated or exploited. Also, he noted, the owner of the company, Kenneth W. Yarbrough, was not found liable.

Mr. Ngo and three other welders said that they worked mostly at night at Southwest Shipyard Inc. in the hulls of ships, but that they were paid by Coast to Coast, which had contracted with ILP Agency to obtain workers from Vietnam and to oversee them, according to court documents.

The welders acknowledged that even with the deductions they were able to earn $300 to $400 a week. Some managed to wire money home through a Vietnamese woman living in the same complex.

“These were legitimate workers who were here on legitimate visas and made good money, and they were disappointed they couldn't continue to make good money,” said David J. Quan, a lawyer who represented ILP Agency in the state suit.

Mr. Quan said the contracts promised only 10 months of work, with a possible extension that depended on a visa. He added that the lodgings were spartan but adequate, and that the workers had made a fair wage.

But the welders maintain they were restricted to the apartment complex and the worksite because of the deportation warnings by ILP's owner, Hung Quoc Vu. “It was like being confined in prison,” said Trang Nha, 29.

Han Thanh Phan, 30, a welder who left his infant daughter and wife behind, said the debt he owed to relatives kept him from trying to escape. “I felt that because the money I was making was so little, I had failed,” he said. “I owed my family. I did not give them what I promised.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/us/13welders.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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From the White House

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The President on TOP COPS: "It Wasn't Talk; It Was What They Did"

It was a beautiful day in the Rose Garden to honor the National Association of Police Organizations (NAPO) TOP COPS. The Vice President spoke first, reiterating the commitment that he and the President have to supporting America's law enforcement, from giving states the funding they need to keep them on the job, to better communication resources, to supporting their rights as workers. The President spoke to that commitment as well , and also commended the outstanding officers who had earned this year's title of "Top Cops":

This is the third year I've had the honor of welcoming America's Top Cops to the White House. It's kind of like the Heisman Trophy presentation for law enforcement. But I just spent a little time with these men and women inside, and I can tell you with certainty, they carry themselves with such humility. They don't say to themselves “This is it –- this year I made Top Cop.” “I'm going to train, put in long hours, and go to Washington and stand with the President.” That's not why they do what they do every single day.

None of them put together a PR package for our consideration. Some of them are still recovering from gunshot wounds suffered in the line of duty. Some have heavy hearts for partners who've been lost, and they commit themselves to their memory. And all would put forward others in their units who they would say are just as brave, or just as dedicated, or just as capable, or just as deserving of this recognition.

But, you know, a moment came when their actions earned recognition. It wasn't talk; it was what they did. They didn't know it that morning, as they pinned on a badge, or strapped on a vest, or holstered a weapon. But that day, something would happen that would make them worthy of this honor -– whether it was a random act of bravery, or a successful outcome that was the results of months or even years of painstaking and dangerous police work.

The men and women we honor today have responded with courage under withering fire to defend the innocent. They've skillfully rescued women and children from armed gang members, and have saved the life of a shooting victim when there wasn't time for paramedics to arrive. They've carried out a dangerous and deadly sting operation to get drugs off the streets. They've burst into a white-hot building to save paralyzed senior citizens whose beds were engulfed in flames. They've doggedly pursued an 18-year-old cold case until justice was done. And they've investigated last year's attempted Times Square bombing, successfully extracting a full confession and a wealth of actionable intelligence leading to arrests that have made this country safer.

Think about the strong stuff that takes. Think about the character it takes to refuse to close the books on a case forgotten by all but the victims' families; the coolness it takes to talk down an armed and hostile criminal; the courage it takes to run into flames or press forward through a hail of bullets when every natural instinct would say, “Stop. Think about yourself. Survive.”

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/05/12/president-top-cops-it-wasn-t-talk-it-was-what-they-did

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