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From Los Angeles Times

Mexico: Americans warned about potential attacks in Ciudad Juarez

by Mary Forgione

Los Angeles Times Daily Travel & Deal blogger

July 15, 2011

Drug cartel members may be planning attacks at the U.S. border with Mexico and on U.S. Consulate offices in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, in retaliation for the arrest this week of an accused drug-cartel leader, the consulate warned Friday.

In an emergency message, the consulate Friday advised American citizens to "remain vigilant." It said:

"Information has come to light that suggests a cartel may be targeting the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez or U.S. Ports of Entry. In the past, cartels have been willing to utilize car bombs in attacks. "

It also said it had received information that cartel members may be planning to attack rival gangs, Mexican police or the public in general.

The warning comes after Mexican authorities on Wednesday arrested Marco Antonio Guzman, who was accused of leading the armed wing of the Juarez drug cartel in northern Mexico, the Associated Press reported. It said that Guzman was suspected of involvement in the car bombing of a police station in Ciudad Juarez last year.

In violence that erupted this week in the city, 21 people were killed in 24 hours, the El Paso Times reported.

The U.S. State Department in an April 22 travel warning said Ciudad Juarez has the highest murder rate in Mexico, noting that more than 3,100 people were killed in 2010. And though it advised Americans against traveling to the area, the warning also said there was no evidence that American tourists have been targeted in the ongoing drug violence.

http://www.latimes.com/travel/deals/la-trb-juarez-mexico-warning-20110715,0,1873177,print.story

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Court rejects challenge to airport body scanners

The need to detect hidden explosives outweighs privacy concerns, says the ruling.

by David G. Savage, Washington Bureau

July 16, 2011

Reporting from Washington

A U.S. appeals court rejected a constitutional challenge to the government's use of body-imaging scanners at the nation's airports, ruling that the need to detect hidden explosives outweighs the privacy rights of travelers.

The 3-0 decision announced Friday noted that passengers may avoid the scans by opting to undergo a pat-down by a screening agent.

But since the body scanners became standard last year, more than 98% of air travelers have chosen to step into a machine, raise their arms and pose for "advanced imaging," the Transportation Security Administration said.

Before last year, the standard screening devices at airports detected guns, knives, bombs or other metallic items. But the case of the so-called "underwear bomber" in December 2009 prompted the agency to adopt the body scanners as an additional primary screening device. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian, boarded a Northwest Airlines flight in Amsterdam with plastic explosives in his underwear. He planned to detonate them before the plane landed in Detroit, but he was thwarted by other passengers and the crew.

The "advanced imaging technology" permits a screener to see nonmetallic images, including powders or liquids. But the electronic image of naked bodies set off alarms over privacy. Critics have called it a "virtual strip search."

Last year, the TSA installed 486 scanners at 78 airports, and it plans to add 500 machines this year.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington sued the TSA last year and called the full body scans "the most sweeping, most invasive and the most unaccountable suspicionless search of American travelers in history."

Its suit said the scans violate privacy rights, including the Constitution's protection against "unreasonable searches."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia reviews challenges to federal regulations. Its judges upheld the use of the scanners Friday, but not before agreeing that travelers were giving up some privacy.

"Despite the precautions taken by the TSA, it is clear that producing an image of the unclothed passenger … intrudes on his or her personal privacy in a way that a magnetometer does not," said Judge Douglas Ginsburg.

But Ginsburg concluded that the close-up searches were are reasonable and justified because lives are at stake and because the scanners — or the optional pat-down — offer the best way to prevent nonmetallic explosives from being carried on to an airplane.

"That balance [between privacy and security] clearly favors the government here," he said.

The ruling was a not a total win for the government. The judges said the TSA had not given the public the required opportunity to comment on the screening program before it was put into effect. The court ruled that the agency must do so now, but the use of body scanners could continue "without interruption," Ginsburg wrote.

Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said he was pleased the court made it clear that "travelers have a legal right to opt out of the body-scanner search."

TSA officials said they were reviewing the ruling. They also said they were testing software that would produce a "generic outline" of a human figure, but not the more revealing "passenger-specific image."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-tsa-scanners-20110716,0,2662925,print.story

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Amid Fast and Furious probe, Democrats push new gun control bill

by Christine Mai-Duc

July 15, 2011

The debate surrounding gun control laws has reignited following the Fast and Furious investigation, and the latest volley was launched Friday.

Two House Democrats introduced a bill that would make the trafficking of firearms to known felons or someone intending to commit a felony a federal offense. The bill, put forth by Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), was drafted in response to testimony from law enforcement agents, who have said current law leaves gaps in enforcement against straw purchasers who often supply drug cartels with weapons.

In a letter to congressional colleagues, Cummings cited a July 4 transcript in which embattled Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Chief Kenneth Melson asserts that a dedicated firearms trafficking law would be "most helpful" in imprisoning known traffickers.

Currently, say sponsors, violators can often only be charged with "paperwork violations" that carry light sentences, like lying on federal forms.

The proposed law carries a maximum sentence of 20 to 25 years in prison with stiffer penalties for so-called "kingpin" traffickers.

"This legislation gives law enforcement the tools they need to do their job," Maloney said.

The push comes as a congressional investigation intensifies around ATF's Operation Fast and Furious, which allowed straw purchasers to transfer thousands of weapons to Mexico in hopes of tracking trafficking routes and networks. As the probe has revealed, the agency lost track of many of the weapons, one of which surfaced at the site of the shooting death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

Cummings denied that the legislation was an attempt to detract from the ongoing investigation.

"I want to make it clear we are very troubled by Fast and Furious. It is our belief that we are going to have to look at this case very carefully and we must go where the evidence leads," said Cummings, who is the ranking member on the committee investigating the matter. "But conducting oversight is pointless unless we translate what we learn into action."

On Monday, the Obama administration announced its toughest gun control measure to date, requiring gun dealers in the Southwestern states to report more than five long gun sales in a five-day period. It was one in a series of changes ATF agents have asked for to increase their ability to corral the illegal gun trade.

The legislation has little chance of passing in a Republican-controlled House, and a powerful NRA lobby lining up to combat the latest gun control measures. Following President Obama's announcement of the new reporting rules, the organization vowed to file lawsuits with the receipt of the first letters from ATF.

"This is a blatant effort by the Obama administration and ATF to divert the focus of Congress … from their gross incompetence in the Fast and Furious scandal," wrote Chris Cox, the NRA's executive director. "This scheme will unjustly burden law-abiding retailers in border states."

But proponents argued that the NRA shouldn't have any reason to oppose the gun trafficking statute.

"This is not a 2nd Amendment issue," said Dennis Henigan, acting president of the Brady Campaign, an advocate for gun control laws. "There is no 2nd Amendment right to supply drug gangs with the firepower of an army."

The NRA continued to echo previous statements that what's needed is greater enforcement, not more laws. "The laws are already on the books," said Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesperson for the NRA, in an interview. "The problem is a lack of enforcement."

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-gun-trafficking-20110715,0,2706726,print.story

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From Google News

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Is It Time to Revisit Community Policing?

A 4-year-old boy was shot in the back two weeks ago. Thirteen people were shot or stabbed during the July 4th holiday weekend. What happened to neighborhood policing?

Six weeks ago, I wrote aPatch column about Boston crime, taking comfort in the fact that the annual number of homicides in the city had decreased by almost 50 percent during the past 20 years.

Suddenly, I'm not feeling so smug.

Two weeks ago, a four-year old boy was shot while playing in a crowded Dorchester park. Then, during the Independence Day holiday, thirteen people were stabbed or shot, four of whom lost their lives.

These acts of violence disturbed me. Shocked me.

Following the shooting of the boy, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino issued a press release expressing his “sadness and anger” but then left town for previously-scheduled trips to Washington, D.C. and Chicago.

His role was assumed by Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis, who appeared on TV expressing his deep disappointment, anger, and even despair. (Read Commissioner Davis's letter to the community.)

And, then? Well, as happens any time there's an incidence of violent crime in Boston, there was an initial outcry, a couple of newspaper articles, then general ambivalence. No more TV coverage, nothing written in the press. (Boston.com is so obsessed with another topic that it should change its name to Bulger.com.)

Broken Windows

Nineteen years have passed since the “Broken Windows” crime-fighting theory was first proposed, the idea that if you take care of the little things, you can stop big things from happening. Sometimes known as “community policing” (originally, “neighborhood policing” here in Boston), the plan is to get police officers out of their cruisers and into the neighborhoods in which they work. They keep an eye on trouble-makers in the community and build relationships with parents and members of the clergy.

Broken Windows worked for many years, locally and across the country. We called it the “ Boston Miracle”. Then everyone got tired. Or, if you will, complacent. (The Harvard Department of Sociology has covered this extensively.) Major crime continued to go down, but the decreases were smaller, incremental. I don't mean to suggest that people stopped working hard on the problem, just that less emphasis was placed on these successful crime-fighting programs. With the great economy of the 2000's, it seemed we had found solutions to our problem.

Back in the car

I thought about the current situation yesterday while passing through Copley Square. Hundreds of residents, office workers, and tourists were walking the hot and steamy streets, at times being aurally assaulted by canvassers, beggars, and a kid playing drums on buckets. An MBTA police officer had parked his cruiser (illegally) in front of the Boston Public Library, but I have to say, I didn't feel any safer.

Actually, it kind of pissed me off. That guy wasn't going to have any effect on crime in the neighborhood. He could have reacted quickly following a crime, but he wasn't deterring anyone from doing anything. Now, if he got out of his car and actually walked back and forth along the block, that would go a long way to making an impact.

Having him and his partners on the streets would reduce crime, but the true value would be in making people feel safer. The perception of random crime is the real problem for many people who live here in Boston because, regardless of the fear of being attacked, hundreds of thousands of us will never actually be a victim. The problem is, we all feel afraid we might be. Putting cops on the street would be helpful. (How about some of the new recruits?)

There's a rising fear of crime even though levels are down in almost every neighborhood of the city, according to the Boston Police Department. Compared to this time in 2010, incidences of major crime are lower in all police department districts, in all categories, except four: Homicides went from zero to one in A-1 and A-7; rapes and attempted rapes jumped by 50 percent in B-3; and burglaries and attempted burglaries increased by more than 25 percent in D-4 (which includes where I live, in the South End). Every other neighborhood has had fewer incidences of major crime, this year.

The disconnect between perception and reality has never been more pronounced. So, I have some questions for you.

Do you feel safe?

• Regardless of the statistics, do you feel safe?
• Are you afraid to live in your own neighborhood?
• Do you feel more or less safe than a year ago; five years ago; a decade ago?
• Why is crime a persistent problem in certain Boston neighborhoods?

What should be done to reduce crime?

• Increase the number of Boston police officers on the force
• Put more police officers on the beat, in the neighborhoods
• Fully fund youth jobs' programs paid for by the city and/or private industry
• Come up with additional, innovative crime-fighting programs
• Arrest more people
• Enact tougher gun laws
• Create more faith and community-based programs
• Pass laws requiring harsher sentences for major crimes

What are the major causes of crime?

• Breakdown of the nuclear / “traditional” family
• Housing projects - breeding grounds for crime
• Illegal drug trade
• Guns on the streets
• Bad economy

What seems clear is that the “costs” of committing violent crimes are not sufficient to keep someone from doing so. I'm no expert, but perhaps looking at this could help us envision one or more potential solutions. We have to make crime not pay.

Apparently, those who injure, kill, rob, or rape have no fear of the consequences. The risk of losing one's own life or losing one's freedom is not enough of a deterrent.

So what, then?

http://charlestown.patch.com/articles/is-it-time-to-revisit-community-policing

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Lebanon

Officers graduate course in community policing

BEIRUT: A group of 130 officers from the Internal Security Forces have graduated from a joint U.S. and ISF community policing training program, the American Embassy said Friday.

The eight-week training course is taught by American and Lebanese police instructors, aided by legal professionals. As part of the program, ISF officers learn the latest policing, law enforcement and community relations skills – and how to implement them effectively in real situations,” according to an embassy statement.

In congratulating the graduates at a ceremony earlier this week, Deputy Chief of Mission Candace Putman said the specialized training program was designed as a pilot project for a single ISF police unit.

However, because of the wide-ranging benefits of community policing, ISF commander General Ashraf Rifi and the ISF leadership decided to implement community-oriented policing practices throughout Lebanon. The U.S. instruction team has trained over 7,600 ISF members in basic and advanced leadership courses since January 2008, the embassy said.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Local-News/2011/Jul-16/Officers-graduate-course-in-community-policing.ashx#axzz1SHK49NWt

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Canada

New Cops officer a fan of 'old time policing' style

Const. John Smith, who conducts plenty of foot patrols, took over Ladner Community Police Station in April

When Delta police Const. John Smith took over the Ladner Community Police Station earlier this year, he did so with an eye to the past.

"I really wanted to come in here with a view to old time policing," he says.

So when the seven-year veteran of the department took over the office in Ladner Village in April, he traded in his patrol car for a pair of boots.

Smith conducts foot patrols around the community for several hours four days a week.

As he makes his way through Ladner's streets, he greets everyone he passes, stopping to chat for a minute or offer assistance when needed.

Smith, who worked as a deputy sheriff and a paramedic before making the leap into policing, says his aim is to "let people know we're here for them."

"Just get out there and be part of the community," he says.

Smith regularly checks in with businesses around Ladner as well as the seniors' centre. The officer says getting out and talking with people is a more proactive way of policing the community, adding a visible police presence on the street can help deter some criminals.

"I'm hoping my presence out there is going to be a deterrent," he says. "It's all down to that uniform presence."

Many local business people are pleased with the officer's tactics.

"We're very happy about it, extremely happy," says Chris Scurr of Ladner Cruise and Travel. "It's getting back to basic policing and community policing. Too many times, people feel that they don't have any access to police."

Smith is not looking for any accolades.

"I'm just a regular guy doing a job," he says.

The officer is, however, looking for more volunteers to help out at the Ladner CoPS office.

Delta introduced the CoPS program in Ladner and North Delta in 1992, while the Tsawwassen office was added two years later. A station constable and an army of volunteers staff each office.

The CoPS offices focus on crime prevention and awareness, and issues such as vandalism and minor theft, as well as providing access to police services.

The office offers a number of programs, including Community Crime Watch, Speed Watch, Block Watch, Home Vacation Checks and the Neighbourhood Emergency Preparedness Program.

Smith says he is looking for volunteers to help with many of the programs as well as manning the office.

For more information about the Ladner CoPS office and volunteering, call 604-940-4411 .

http://www.delta-optimist.com/news/Cops+officer+time+policing+style/5107178/story.html

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Strapped Arizona police agencies adapting

More emphasis now on basic patrol duties

by JJ Hensley

July 16, 2011

The Arizona Republic

As budgets dwindle and many Arizona law-enforcement agencies enter another year without hiring new officers, more police departments and sheriff's offices are forced to weigh their participation in broad multiagency operations against their duty to meet the core function of patrolling streets and solving neighborhood crimes.

Arizona police agencies are not alone in making such a decision. It's a growing trend among law-enforcement agencies nationwide. The result could damage some of the gains made in collaboration and crime reduction during the past two decades, experts say.

The impact is not limited to multiagency partnerships, said John Firman, director of research for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. Police departments also are eliminating positions that do not respond to emergency calls such as school-resource officers.

Police chiefs try to balance the value of such efforts with officer-on-the-street expectations of the public, he said.

"There is a mathematical formula here," Firman said. "If, in fact, the task force is doing amazing things to limit the availability of guns to criminals, then I'm going to have less crime in my neighborhoods.

"But the typical citizen is going to say, 'Whoa, you're telling me there's not going to be a cruiser coming out from 12 to 8? Wait a minute, this is ridiculous.' The image of routine patrol is a guaranteed right of being a U.S. citizen."

Police departments around Arizona are calculating their way through similar predicaments.

In the past year, the Department of Public Safety has closed its 12-member task force targeting identity theft after other agencies cut involvement. The DPS also has seen participation decrease in multiagency units that focus on gangs, illegal immigration and vehicle theft. The DPS vehicle-theft task force went from five units around the state to three in the past two years, trimming the units to one in Tucson and pulling out of Yuma completely.

Administrators at the DPS, which has lost 178 officers in the past three years, determined that the limited personnel they have need to be assigned to the agency's primary mission of patrolling Arizona's highways, Director Robert Halliday said.

The sheriff's decision to remove the deputy assigned to the U.S. Marshals Service fugitive task force falls in line with the agency's choice to pull seven of its 15 deputies out of the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center, a federally funded collaboration that brings hundreds of officers from 20 police agencies together to work in a north Phoenix office building where they share intelligence daily.

"We'll maintain the function there. It's just that we had to scale back," said Deputy Chief Brian Sands of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.

"When you don't have the staff internally, we have to start reining in some of those things we're doing with other agencies."

The Sheriff's Office has lost about 75 full-time positions in the agency's enforcement division since the beginning of the economic downturn, according to county budget documents.

Many of those positions were left vacant after deputies retired or left the agency.

Police officers assigned to work on task forces typically have all or most of their salaries paid through a combination of grants and state and federal funds, DPS Capt. Steve Harrison said. So, money isn't as big a problem as manpower. With many police agencies in a hiring freeze, administrators are pulling officers back to perform what are deemed essential functions.

"If these agencies, ourselves included, could hire more officers, that would free up more officers," Harrison said. "Until everybody's budget gets better and we can start hiring again, it's going to be hard to fill these holes. At DPS, we have to look at what's most important: officers on highway patrol or to have two squads of people on the vehicle-theft task force."

The impact of lost bodies in these task forces is hard to gauge.

Criminal-justice experts are perplexed by the decrease in violent crime that has coincided with the recession, but Firman, the research director, said the trend offers some evidence that the community-based and collaborative policing models that have evolved in the past two decades are working.

The decrease in violent crimes and auto thefts in Arizona, however, has prompted some observers to question whether police-staffing levels are in line with criminal activity.

A team of consultants from Pennsylvania recommended in May that Phoenix police eliminate 714 positions to help balance the budget, a recommendation that was based, in part, on the 17.9 percent decrease in calls for service during the past three years.

Harrison cautioned that numbers don't always tell the whole story with police work. "Public safety in general is difficult to quantify because we don't know what cases a specific detective or officer may impact or which cases their presence on the task force may have affected," he said.

While violent crime and auto thefts have gone down in the Valley in recent years, the number of fugitive felons has held fairly steady.

There were more than 40,000 unserved felony warrants in Maricopa County in 2008, when the topic became an election-year issue for Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The Sheriff's Office serves as the repository for all open warrants in the county, but every agency is responsible for targeting its own fugitives or arresting others it may encounter.

Much of that work is done annually by the U.S. Marshals Service's Arizona Wanted Violent Offender Task Force, which closed more than 1,200 open felony warrants in the Valley during the first nine months of this federal fiscal year.

Arpaio said the Sheriff's Office will continue to work with the Marshals Service "any time they need some help."

David Gonzales, U.S. marshal for Arizona, said he understands the need for agencies to allocate resources locally, but there are other benefits.

"They get the national resources of the U.S. Marshals Service," Gonzales said. "I wish the Sheriff's Office would re-evaluate their participation."

Firman said that as the trend continues and agencies scale back on their commitments to collaborations that produce results, they risk undoing some of the gains police have made in the past two decades that have led to historic decreases in crime.

"In many ways what's happening is you're taking apart an infrastructure that was built carefully on a groundwork of community policing," he said.

"Then, the question is: Can you measure that? I can't say in the year 2021 you're going to pay a heck of a price for dismantling the police infrastructure in America.

"What we're looking at as a researcher is, we're going to have wait 10 years."

.