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| NEWS of the Day - June 3, 2011 |
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on some issues of interest to the community policing and neighborhood activist across the country
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following group of articles from local newspapers and other sources constitutes but a small percentage of the information available to the community policing and neighborhood activist public. It is by no means meant to cover every possible issue of interest, nor is it meant to convey any particular point of view ...
We present this simply as a convenience to our readership ... |
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From Los Angeles Times
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Jaycee Dugard's grand jury testimony provides personal account of kidnapping, rape and captors
At times, the voice is young and terrified -– an 11-year-old girl who was kidnapped during the last week of school , raped for years and kept in line under threat of pain.
At times, the voice is brave and resilient -- a mother protecting her vulnerable daughters, struggling to give them a normal life under the most horrific of circumstances.
Always, the voice is Jaycee Lee Dugard's, and the public got a real sense of it for the first time on Thursday. That's when El Dorado County Superior Court Judge Douglas C. Phimister unsealed the transcript from a secret grand jury hearing that led to the 2010 indictment of Phillip and Nancy Garrido, who abducted Dugard 20 years ago.
The Los Angeles Times, the Sacramento Bee and several other media outlets intervened in the case, seeking to have the transcripts unsealed. Attorney Karl Olson argued on behalf of the media that the right to privacy does not justify continued secrecy on behalf of a rape victim whose name was made public by law enforcement officials and whose memoir of her ordeal is scheduled to hit bookstores in July.
Dugard's family, the El Dorado County district attorney and lawyers for the Garridos vehemently disagreed. Phimister was only partly supportive, keeping more than 20% of the transcript under seal, calling the segments in which Dugard's sexual attacks were described as “disgusting” and “inappropriate,” material that “would qualify as pornography.”
“The specific description of the events that occurred would shock adults,” he said in court Thursday, “even adults who have a distorted view of intimacy.”
Phimister decried the media for “asking the court to assist in the exploitation of this child,” and declared that he would not do so. “There is a right to privacy,” he said. “What happened to this child is disgusting.”
The 123 pages that were unsealed paint a terrifying portrait of a sick man who kidnapped a little girl to satisfy his sexual perversions. Who intimidated his wife into taking part in the abduction and condoning the rapes that led to the birth of Dugard's two daughters. Who eventually wanted them all to be one big happy family. Who thought he was doing nothing wrong.
“Phillip wanted us to be a family,” Dugard testified. “He was our dad, and Nancy was their mom. You know, that's what we did…to give the kids, you know, normal as possible” a life.
On June 10, 1991, the Garridos were driving in South Lake Tahoe, when they spied Dugard, pretty in pink, heading for the school bus. She was 11 and had just yelled good bye to her stepfather, who was in their garage. It was about 7 a.m.
The Garridos' car “creeped up” behind the little girl. A voice called out, asking for directions. “And then,” Dugard testified, “his hand shoots out and I feel tingly and like losing control, and I'm in the bushes, trying to go back, and somebody is dragging me.”
Garrido, who was driving, had tased Dugard, and Nancy dragged her into the car and covered her up with blankets. They had planned, Phimister said in court Thursday, to go on a “shopping trip for a victim.”
The Garridos took Dugard back to the ramshackle warren of tents and sheds they had constructed behind their house in Antioch, an East Bay suburb. Garrido raped her on arrival.
“I was very scared,” Dugard testified about that first day. “I didn't know who he was. I didn't know why he was doing this. I just wanted to go home. I think in the bathroom I kept telling him that, you know, ‘I don't know why you're doing this.
“‘If you're holding me for ransom, my family doesn't have a lot of money,'” she continued. “I didn't know – I didn't know his purpose. I've heard about kidnapping before. They were usually for money.”
The Garridos gave her Barbie dolls during her first birthday in captivity. Garrido gave her a cat to keep her company when she complained about loneliness and then took it away because it messed up the small space where he kept Dugard prisoner.
For the first three years, until the birth of her first daughter in August 1994, Garrido would force himself on Dugard once a week or more. After the birth of the child, the frequency of the rapes slowed. Nancy, who would bring Dugard food, sometimes offered to have sex with her husband instead. She would say, “Oh, I'll take this run for you.”
After the first birth, Dugard testified, “things really changed. He said that he was eventually going to stop having sex with me and that, you, know, he's just really trying to change and he wants us all to be a family.”
The last time Garrido raped Dugard was the day her second daughter was conceived. The girl was born in November 1997.
The Garridos let Dugard pick a name. She chose Alissa. The “family” began to celebrate the little girls' birthdays together. A swing set was installed in the compound. Dugard told the grand jury that she did what she could to give her children a normal life.
But there wasn't much that she could do. She couldn't leave. At first because she was terrified -- Garrido kept a Taser around as a threat – and then because she had no place to go.
“We went places later as a family, but never by myself,” Dugard testified. “And I wanted him to teach me how to drive and stuff. And that never came. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't leave. I had the girls. I didn't know where to go, what I would do for money or anything.
“I didn't have anything.”
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/06/jaycee-dugards-grand-jury-testimony-reveals-personal-account-of-kidnapping-rape-and-captors.html#more
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Jaycee Dugard to Phillip Garrido: 'You stole my life and that of my family'
The mother of kidnapping victim Jaycee Dugard read a statement in court Thursday to Dugard's captors, Phillip and Nancy Garrido, who were sentenced to prison.
Dugard did not attend the hearing, but her mother, Terry Probyn, read a statement by Dugard directed at Phillip Garrido:
"I chose not to be here today because I refuse to waste another second of my life in your presence.... Everything you ever did to me was wrong and I hope one day you will see that.... I hated every second of every day for 18 years. You stole my life and that of my family."
In a portion of the statement directed at Nancy Garrido, Dugard wrote:
"There is no God in the universe that would condone your actions."
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/06/dugard.html
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Jaycee Dugard's kidnappers sentenced to prison
Nearly 20 years after Jaycee Lee Dugard was abducted while walking to a school bus stop, the couple who pleaded guilty in her kidnapping and rape were sentenced Thursday to prison terms that could keep them behind bars for the rest of their lives.
Phillip Garrido, a 60-year-old convicted rapist, was sentenced to 431 years to life in prison. His 55-year-old wife Nancy was sentenced to 36 years to life in prison.
In recommending that Garrido receive a sentence of 431 years to life in prison, El Dorado County Dist. Atty. Vern Pierson described the serial rapist as “a sexual predator who stole the childhood and innocence from an 11-year-old child. Defendant Garrido's actions caused her mother Terry Probyn to have to endure an 18-year-long nightmare.”
Before the Garridos' sentencing Thursday in a Placerville courtroom, a tearful Probyn addressed the court. "How could someone take away the one person in the world I loved so deeply? Where is she? Is she hungry? Is she cold? Is she hurt? My baby was gone and all my dreams turned to nightmares. She was a vulnerable child and I was unable to help her.
"During 18 years away, I could hear her crying, not with my ears, but with my heart. I could feel her pain, not with my body, but with my heart.... I lived in hell on earth. It was you Nancy Garrido and Phillip Garrido that broke my heart."
Probyn then read a statement from her daughter, who did not attend the hearing: "To Phillip Garrido, I hated every second of every day of 18 years because of you. To you Nancy, I have nothing to say."
Before sentencing Phillip Garrido, Judge Douglas C. Phimister said the "defendant lacks a soul. What you have done is beyond horrible. May you think long and hard about what you did."
Dugard, now 31, was walking to a bus stop in view of her South Lake Tahoe home on June 10, 1991, when she was kidnapped in front of her horrified stepfather. Garrido was driving the car, and Nancy snatched the child. According to court documents, they drove immediately to Antioch, a suburb east of San Francisco, where they imprisoned Dugard in a backyard warren of tents and sheds for 18 years.
She was locked in one of the backyard buildings for a year and a half as a “prisoner,” Pierson said in his statement. She did not leave the backyard for the first four years after the abduction.
“Dugard was impregnated by Phillip Garrido when she was 13 years old and had her first child at the age of 14,” Pierson said. She “was again impregnated by Phillip Garrido when she was 16 and had her second child at the age of 17.
Stephen Tapson, Nancy's attorney, has long argued that his client was not involved in “any of the sexual stuff.” She delivered Dugard's daughters and “cooperated with him under his authority, under his thumb,” he said after an earlier hearing.
The case drew international attention after Dugard and her daughters were discovered in August 2009. After pleading not guilty to multiple charges of rape and kidnapping, the Garridos agreed to a plea deal in late April that would spare Dugard from testifiying against them.
Dugard has written a memoir titled “A Stolen Life,” which will be released in July.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/06/jaycee-dugard-kidnappers-sentenced-phillip-garrido.html
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From the Department of Homeland Security
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(Video on site)
June 1: Official Start of the Hurricane Season
by Brad Carroll, Press Secretary
It's June 1, which means it is the official start of Hurricane season. With hurricane season officially here, we wanted to share a video from Administrator Fugate.
You can do your part by making sure you and your loved ones are prepared by having an emergency plan and kit . Talk with your friends and neighbors and encourage them to do the same. And you can also take steps to get prepared for a hurricane at your workplace , so talk with your human resources manager about steps you can take.
Last week was Hurricane Awareness Week and we wrote a series of blog posts to illustrate the importance of being informed about the many hazards of severe tropical weather. Here there are again if you didn't have a chance to read them:
Visit www.ready.gov/hurricanes to get prepared and embed our widget on your website to help us get the word out.
http://blog.fema.gov/2011/06/june-1-official-start-of-hurricane.html
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From the Department of Justice
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Justice Department Settles Lawsuit with Maricopa County Sheriff's Office
Settlement Comes After the Sheriff's Office Provided Information Sought in Title VI Investigation
WASHINGTON – The Justice Department today announced that it has entered in to a court-enforceable agreement with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO) and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio resolving a longstanding dispute over access to information related to the department's Title VI investigation of the sheriff's office. The settlement comes after MCSO allowed officials from the Justice Department to conduct more than 220 interviews and review hundreds of thousands of pages of documents. Prior to the litigation, MCSO refused to cooperate in full with the investigation.
On Sept. 2, 2010, the department filed a lawsuit after exhausting all cooperative measures to gain access to MCSO's documents and facilities, as part of the department's investigation of alleged discrimination in MCSO's police practices and jail operations. Since March 2009, the department attempted to secure voluntary compliance with the department's investigation and did not receive full compliance until the lawsuit was filed.
MCSO has now cooperated with the investigation by permitting the department to interview Sheriff Arpaio, command staff, deputies, detention officers and first line supervisors, as well as jail inmates. MCSO has also allowed tours of its facilities and has responded to each of the department's original document requests. Under the terms of the agreement, MCSO will continue to provide the department with access to sources of information that the department determines are pertinent to its Title VI investigation.
“After numerous requests for access to information, the department was forced to resort to litigation to compel the sheriff's office to provide us with full access to facilities, staff and documents, as required by federal law,” said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “We are pleased that since the filing of our lawsuit, the sheriff's office has reversed course and provided the department with information we have been seeking. Today's settlement shows that the Department of Justice is ready to take action against any recipient of federal funds that fails to cooperate with a civil rights investigation.”
“This is a positive development after delay upon delay by the Sheriff's Office,” said Dennis Burke, U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona. “We are working aggressively to review the facts and complete this investigation.”
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in federally assisted programs on the ground of race, color or national origin. Recipients of federal funds, such as MCSO, are obligated to provide the department with access to information and facilities pertinent to an investigation under Title VI. The department's investigation of MCSO involves alleged violations of the prohibition on national origin discrimination in Title VI; the pattern or practice provisions of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968; and the pattern or practice provisions of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.
The department's investigation remains open and ongoing. For more information on the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, please visit www.justice.gov/crt .
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2011/June/11-crt-722.html
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From the FBI
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Digital Forensics
Regional Labs Help Solve Local Crimes
05/31/11
In 2008, Illinois police received disturbing information about a Chicago woman who had taken a 3-year-old to a “sex party” in Indiana where the child and an 11-year-old girl were abused by three adults. However, by the time the tip was received, the crime had already occurred, and there seemed to be no evidence to support criminal charges.
But there was evidence, buried deep within the woman's computer, and examiners from our Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory (RCFL) in Chicago found it—a deleted e-mail titled “map to the party” that contained directions to an Indiana hotel. The evidence led to charges against all three adults, who were later convicted of aggravated sexual abuse and are currently in prison serving life sentences.
“That's just one example of what we do every day,” said John Dziedzic, a Cook County Sheriff's Office forensic examiner who is the director of the Chicago RCFL. “Evidence we produce here—and testify to in court—is crucial in a variety of major investigations.”
The FBI established the first RCFL in San Diego in 2000, and today there 16 Bureau-sponsored labs located around the country, staffed by agents and other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies (see sidebar).
Each facility is a full-service forensics laboratory and training center devoted to examining digital evidence in support of investigations—everything from child pornography and terrorism to violent crime and economic espionage cases.
Using sophisticated tools and technology, RCFLs analyze evidence from all kinds of electronic devices, including computers, cell phones, video game consoles, and even reel-to-reel tapes.
“Anything that can store data electronically can be analyzed,” said Special Agent Justin Poirier, deputy director of the Chicago RCFL.
RCFL examiners—all certified by the FBI—specialize in locating encrypted, deleted, or damaged file information that could be used as evidence in an investigation.
“Digital evidence has become part of just about every type of investigation,” Poirier said, “because today everybody uses computers and portable electronics such as cell phones.”
The benefit of having a regional forensic facility, he added, is that the FBI can bring its expertise and training directly to where it is needed.
“The idea is to create regional resources,” Poirier explained. “We train the state and local examiners, who make a three-year commitment to the RCFL. When they return to their agencies, they have expertise and access they didn't have before. And in the process, we build lasting relationships with our regional partners.”
Dziedzic added, “Instead of sending evidence to the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, we can analyze it much faster here in our own backyard.”
Chicago's RCFL was established in 2003 and consists of five FBI employees and 13 examiners from agencies including the Chicago Police Department, Cook County Sheriff's Office, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. It is the only digital forensics lab in Illinois to be accredited by the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board.
“Accreditation is the gold standard when it comes to prosecuting cases and testifying in court,” Dziedzic said. “It means that we operate at the highest professional standards.”
“Criminals are using more sophisticated electronic methods to commit crimes,” Poirier said. “This regional approach to digital forensics—pairing the Bureau with local law enforcement to collaborate on cases—is the future for law enforcement. It really works.”
http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/may/forensics_053111/forensics_053111 |
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