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From Los Angeles Times

In Norway, piecing together suspect's motives

Police describe Anders Behring Breivik as a 'right-wing Christian fundamentalist,' while friends reportedly say he had begun voicing increasingly extremist views.

by Edmund Sanders, Los Angeles Times

July 23, 2011

Reporting from Oslo, Norway

In the photographs now circulating around the world, Anders Behring Breivik looks almost preppy.

Neatly parted blond hair frames a boyishly handsome face. The upturned collar of a peach-colored polo shirt pokes through a dark Izod sweater.

It's hard to reconcile the softly smiling young man in these professional studio shots with the monster who witnesses say donned a police uniform and ruthlessly hunted down scores of young Norwegians, firing at those who jumped into freezing water in a desperate bid to escape.

Photos: Norway attack

"I'll kill every one of you," he shouted at victims, witnesses recalled.

Now it is up to investigators to fit the two seemingly incongruous images together in an effort to comprehend what motivated the man believed to be behind the attacks.

As more details emerge, Norwegians are coming to terms with the fact that rather than some radical foreign agenda shattering the idyllic society they sought to create here, the twin attacks appear to have been orchestrated by a lone home-grown terrorist — raised and educated in a middle-class family and who never had problems with the law before.

According to a Facebook page with Breivik's name and photo, the 32-year-old describes himself as a former business-school student with interests including Winston Churchill, bodybuilding and Freemasonry. His listed preferences include violent movies, war-themed video games, classical music and the HBO drama "Dexter," about a guilt-ridden serial killer.

Police are focusing on a darker side, describing him as a "right-wing Christian fundamentalist" who frequented extremist websites and left a trail of passionate, sometimes obscure rants that reflected strong anti-Islamic views, deep skepticism about the mixing of different cultures and animosity toward socialism.

Officials said they would not speculate on whether his political or religious views played a role in the attack.

But a chilling 1,500-page political manifesto, titled "A European Declaration of Independence," posted on the Internet earlier this year appears to lay out Breivik's world views. Exact authorship of the book could not be immediately verified.

Sections of the online book include "What your government, the academia and the media are hiding from you," "Documenting EU's deliberate strategy to Islamize Europe" and "How the feminists' 'War Against the Boys' paved the way for Islam."

The book calls for a "conservative revolution" and "preemptive declaration of war," including "armed resistance against the cultural Marxists/multiculturalist regimes of Western Europe."

It describes "attack strategies," including assassinating professors and carrying out coordinated assaults on multiple targets at the same time.

In a passage that appeared to predict the tactics in the twin attacks on Friday, the manifesto advises: "You will usually always be caught, so instead of going home and waiting for someone to knock at your door, move to your second target, then the third, etc."

The treatise suggests wearing a police SWAT uniform as a disguise to avoid raising suspicion while moving around with weapons. And it specifically mentions targeting annual political meetings, barbecues and gatherings that draw hundreds of people, using flame-throwers or assault rifles on the crowds. "The party delegates will flee like rats from the fire,'' the book reads.

Friends of Breivik — a single man who lived in Oslo with his mother until recently — said he began in recent years to voice ever more extremist and nationalist views, according to Norwegian media reports. He is a gun enthusiast, with several weapons registered in his name, but he did not appear to exhibit any violent behavior, other than his writings, that might have raised red flags.

On social media forums, he claimed to be a disgruntled former member of Norway's anti-tax, small-government Progress Party, according to the Norwegian Nettavisen news service.

In 2009, he founded a farming company called Breivik Geofarm, which cultivates melons and roots, according to Norway's TV2.

Now investigators are focusing on whether he used that business to buy fertilizer that could have been used to construct the powerful bomb that went off near a government facility in downtown Oslo.

On a Twitter account created recently in his name, a July 17 posting quotes British philosopher John Stuart Mill and gives little indication of a man preparing to use guns and bombs to deliver his message: "One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-norway-gunman-20110724,0,3142430,print.story

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In Norway gun ownership is common; violence and homicide are not

The nation of about 4.9 million residents reports one of the lowest per-capita homicide rates in Europe.

by Ann Simmons

Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

July 23, 2011

The shooting rampage that left at least 85 dead at a youth camp near Oslo stunned Norway, a nation of about 4.9 million residents who are far less accustomed to gun violence than the U.S.

Authorities have described the 32-year-old man arrested in connection with the shootings, as well as a bombing in downtown Oslo that left at least seven others dead, as a far-right Christian fundamentalist. A chilling manifesto attributed to the suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, that was discovered Saturday contains an image of him pointing a weapon toward the camera.

Homicide -- whether gun-related or otherwise -- is rare in Norway, which reports one of the lowest per-capita homicide rates in Europe.

A report released last year by the Norwegian Ministry of Health and Care Services examined the role of mental illness in the actions of known perpetrators there, and also noted that in more than 80% of the killings the victims were known to the assailant.

Gun ownership in Norway is common, although strict gun regulations and limitations are in place on ammunition for certain kinds of guns.

According to GunPolicy.org, an Australian university-based website, the estimated number of guns held by civilians in Norway was 1.4 million in 2007, the most recent year for which the site has such statistics for Norway.

Citing the "Small Arms Survey 2007: Guns and the City," published by Cambridge University Press, the website give the rate of private gun ownership in Norway as 31.32 firearms per 100 people, less than the reported rate in the U.S. of 88.82 firearms per 100 people.

Five homicides committed with a gun were reported in Norway in 2005, the latest year for which the site has data confirming firearm-related murders in the country. In comparison, the U.S., which has a population more than 50 times greater, had 10,158 gun-related murders the same year, or 2,000 times that of Norway.

A report last year by the Norwegian Broadcasting Co., or NRK, estimated that there are more than 1.5 million firearms in Norway, being used not only for hunting but also for shooting, one of Norway's most popular sports.

The Norwegian Rifle Assn. has 32,000 members in 520 clubs, according to NRK, and Norwegian athletes are perennial favorites in international biathlon competitions, which combine skiing and target shooting.

In addition to guns held legally, the NRK estimated another half a million had been smuggled into the county illegally.

The rules for having a gun at home have been tightened in recent years, with gun safes becoming mandatory, according to local Norwegian news reports, The end cap of guns must be removed before storage, and those without a gun safe must remove components of the weapon before it is stored, essentially disabling it. In addition, Norwegians have been told the vital parts of the weapon should be locked up separately.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-naw-norway-gun-policy-20110724,0,3136648,print.story

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Unraveling Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel

As drug smugglers from the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico sent a never-ending stream of cocaine across the border and into a vast U.S. distribution web in Los Angeles, DEA agents were watching and listening.

by Richard Marosi

Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

July 24, 2011

Reporting from Calexico, Calif.

Never lose track of the load.

It was drilled into everybody who worked for Carlos “Charlie” Cuevas. His drivers, lookouts, stash house operators, dispatchers -- they all knew. When a shipment was on the move, a pair of eyes had to move with it.

Cuevas had just sent a crew of seven men to the border crossing at Calexico, Calif. The load they were tracking was cocaine, concealed in a custom-made compartment inside a blue 2003 Honda Accord.

The car was still on the Mexican side in a 10-lane crush of vehicles inching toward the U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspection station. Amputee beggars worked the queue, along with men in broad-brimmed hats peddling trinkets, tamales and churros.

A lookout watching from a car in a nearby lane reported on the load's progress. Cuevas, juggling cellphones, demanded constant updates. If something went wrong, his boss in Sinaloa, Mexico, would want answers.

The Accord reached the line of inspection booths, and a lookout on the U.S. side picked up the surveillance. He was Roberto Daniel Lopez, an Iraq War veteran, standing near the “Welcome to Calexico” sign.

It was the usual plan: After clearing customs, the driver would head for Los Angeles, shadowed by a third lookout waiting in a car on South Imperial Avenue.

But on this hot summer evening, things were not going according to plan. Lopez called his supervisor to report a complication: The Accord was being directed to a secondary inspection area for a closer look. Drug-sniffing dogs were circling.

Cuevas rarely talked directly to his lookouts or drivers. But after being briefed by the supervisor, he made an exception. He called Lopez.

“What's happening?” he asked.

“The dogs are going crazy,” Lopez replied.

Dots on a map

Cuevas worked for the Sinaloa cartel, Mexico's most powerful organized crime group. He was in the transportation side of the business. Drugs were brought from Sinaloa state to Mexicali, Mexico, in bus tires. Cuevas' job was to move the goods across the border and deliver them to distributors in the Los Angeles area, about 200 miles away.

The flow was unceasing, and he employed about 40 drivers, lookouts and coordinators to keep pace.

The canines circling the load car that evening in August 2006 were the least of his problems. Eight agents from a Drug Enforcement Administration task force had converged on the border. Not even U.S. customs inspectors knew they were there. The agents had been following Cuevas and tapping his phones for months.

Because he was a key link between U.S. and Mexican drug distributors, his phone chatter was an intelligence gusher. Each call exposed another contact, whose phone was then tapped as well. The new contacts called other associates, leading to more taps. Soon the agents had sketched a vast, connect-the-dots map of the distribution network.

Its branches spanned the U.S. and were believed to lead back to Mexico's drug-trafficking heartland, to Victor Emilio Cazares, said to be a top lieutenant of Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman, the most wanted trafficker in the world. From his mansion outside Culiacan, Cazares allegedly oversaw the network of smugglers, distributors, truckers, pilots and stash house operators.

Other DEA investigations had targeted Mexican cartels, but this one, dubbed Operation Imperial Emperor, was providing the most complete picture of how drugs moved from Sinaloa to U.S. streets.

DEA officials were in no hurry to wrap it up. In fact, they were holding off on arrests so they could continue to study the supply chain and identify new suspects.

Imperial Emperor would eventually result in hundreds of arrests, the seizure of tens of millions of dollars in drugs and money, and the indictment of Cazares.

It would also reveal a disheartening truth: The cartel's U.S. distribution system was bigger and more resilient than anyone had imagined, a spider web connecting dozens of cities, constantly regenerating and expanding.

The guy next door

As a U.S. Marine in Fallouja, Iraq, Lopez had dodged mortar fire, navigated roads mined with explosives and received a commendation for leadership. Back home in El Centro, he couldn't even get work reading meters for the local irrigation district.

But Lopez, who had two children to support, knew another industry was always hiring.

One of the Sinaloa cartel's main pipelines runs through the antiquated U.S. port of entry at Calexico, a favorite of smugglers. The inspection station sits almost directly on the border, without the usual buffer zone of several hundred feet, so inspectors have difficulty examining cars in the approach lanes. Drug-sniffing dogs wilt in summer heat that can reach 115 degrees.

California's southeastern corner, a region of desert dunes and agricultural fields with the highest unemployment rate in the state, offered fertile ground for cartel recruiting.

Smugglers were your next-door neighbor, the guy ringing you up at Wal-Mart, the big tipper at Applebee's, the old friend at your high school reunion.

Lopez was friends with a man named Sergio Kaiser, who had married into his family. Kaiser said he owned a body shop, but his tastes seemed too flamboyant for that. He was building a house with a grand staircase modeled on the mansion in the movie “Scarface.” In reality, Kaiser was Cuevas' top lieutenant, and he told Lopez he could help him with his money troubles. There were several possibilities.

For a night's work driving a load car from Mexicali to Los Angeles, a driver shared $5,000 with his recruiter and got to keep the car.

Another entry-level position was as a lookout. One kind of lookout followed the load car from the stash house in Mexicali to the border. Another stood watch at the port of entry and reported when the car had cleared customs. Yet another tailed the load car up the freeway to Los Angeles.

Lopez accepted Kaiser's offer. Being a lookout was harmless, he figured: Just stand there and watch a car cross the border. “[He] didn't say it involved drugs, but I knew,” Lopez said. “I thought, 'What's the big deal?'“

Tricks of the trade

Cuevas owned a large tract home in Calexico and drove a late-model BMW 323. A gold chain dangled from his thick neck. Married with two children, he enjoyed the cliched perks of a smuggler's life. He went through several mistresses, treating them to breast-enhancement surgeries and trips to Disneyland and San Francisco.

He would ride his pricey sand rail in the Baja California dunes, and he always picked up the tab at restaurants or on wild weekends across the border in Mexicali. At Emmanuel's barber shop, Cuevas would jump the line to get his “fade” haircut, then pay for everybody else's trim. He took care of friends' hospital bills and lent people money, no strings attached.

“When you think of drug cartels, you think violence, guns, killing,” Lopez said in an interview. “This guy was nothing like that.”

He didn't carry weapons or surround himself with enforcers. Constantly juggling phones and buying packaging materials from Costco, he seemed more stressed out than intimidating. Cuevas had a stutter, and it worsened when his boss Cazares called from Sinaloa. He took antacids to calm an anxious stomach.

To get drugs across the border, he deployed a fleet of SUVs and cars with custom-made hidden compartments. He favored Volkswagen Jettas and Chevrolet Avalanches. Both were manufactured in Mexico, and the DEA believes cartel operatives were able to study the designs to identify voids where drugs could be concealed.

Cuevas sent the cars to a mechanic in Compton who outfitted the compartments with elaborate trapdoors. The jobs took two weeks and the mechanic charged as much as $6,500, but it was worth it. Only a complicated series of actions could spring the doors open.

One front-bumper nook could be accessed only by connecting a jumper cable from the positive battery post to the front screw of a headlight. The jolt of electricity would cause the license plate to fall off, revealing the trapdoor.

Cuevas picked his drivers with great care, rejecting people with visible tattoos or serious criminal records and sending those he hired on dry runs to test their nerves. He kept the Calexico border crossing under constant watch, focusing on the mobile X-ray machine that could see inside vehicles. It was used sparingly, and the moment inspectors drove it away, his crew went to work.

Over the years, his cars consistently eluded detection.

“I was great at it. I had never lost a car in the border,” Cuevas said. “Dogs never hit it or nothing.”

In mid-2006, however, he seemed to lose his touch.

In June, authorities had followed one of his drivers to Cudahy, near Los Angeles, and seized 163 pounds of cocaine from a stash house.

A month later, police outside El Centro stopped his best driver, a hot dog vendor from Mexicali, and found $799,000 in a hidden compartment.

Cuevas had to make the cartel whole, either in cash or by working the debt off by supervising shipments without receiving his cut. Hundreds of pounds of cocaine, meanwhile, continued to pour in every week from Sinaloa, and he was under intense pressure to keep the goods moving.

Now, on this August evening, a customs inspector had pulled his load car, the Accord, into the secondary inspection area.

“Dude, I think your guy got busted,” Lopez told Cuevas over the phone. “They've got him in handcuffs.”

Behind the dashboard and in a rear-quarter panel of the Honda, inspectors found 99 pounds of cocaine. The driver was arrested. Everybody else scattered. Lopez drove home, unconcerned. He had spent only 15 minutes at the border crossing and never got near the drugs.
Cuevas ordered his crew to dump their cellphones, in case anyone had been listening in. At the DEA's bunker-like surveillance post in nearby Imperial, the wiretap chatter went silent.

DEA agents had not expected a bust and were not happy about it. The agents had planned to let the driver cross the border and then follow him to his Los Angeles connection. Now they would have to regroup.

Waiting in the dark

Two days later, the agents sat in a van down the street from Cuevas' two-story home in Calexico, waiting for the lights to dim. Cuevas' neighbors in the subdivision of red-tile-roofed tract homes included firefighters, Department of Homeland Security officers and state prison guards.

After months of tailing Cuevas, the agents knew he favored Bud Light beer, burgers at Rally's and tacos at Jack in the Box.

They once pushed the cocaine-filled car of one of his drivers to a gasoline station after the man ran out of fuel on Interstate 5. The driver never suspected that the good Samaritans were helping so they could continue tailing him to his destination.

After midnight outside Cuevas' home, the agents started digging through his garbage cans. They were searching for a notepad, a receipt, a business card, anything with a phone number on it.

There was enough evidence to arrest Cuevas. But the goal was to expand the investigation, and that required resuming the phone surveillance. Agents hoped Cuevas had thrown away the numbers of some -- even one -- of the 30 new cellphones he had just distributed to his crew.

Sifting through trash was always a filthy chore, especially so in this case. Cuevas was the father of a newborn. The agents were elbow-deep in dirty diapers.

Finally, they pulled something from the muck. It was a piece of spiral notebook paper with numbers scrawled on it. Phone numbers.

MORE: The players | Evidence, wiretaps and testimony | How the drug pipeline worked

About this story

For several years, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration put the distribution side of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel under a microscope. This series describes the detailed picture that emerged of how the cartel moves drugs into Southern California and across the United States. Times staff writer Richard Marosi reviewed hundreds of pages of records, including DEA investigative reports, probable-cause affidavits, and transcripts of court testimony and phone surveillance. He also interviewed DEA agents, prosecutors and local law enforcement officers serving on DEA-led task forces, as well as two cartel operatives convicted in the investigation.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/cartel/la-me-cartel-20110724,0,6282239.story

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From Google News

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California

REDLANDS: Police collect used phones for seniors, victims

The RPD will collect donated cell phones and send them to the 911 Cell Phone Bank where they are processed and valued. In addition to receiving the cash value of the donated cell phones, emergency cell phones are made available to needy seniors and abuse victims on an as-needed basis.

More than 11 million cell phones are retired each month in the United States and many enter the local waste stream. As millions of people upgrade their old cell phones or receive new ones, donating them to the police department can help local residents and the local environment.

The National Association of Triads, a subsidiary of the National Sheriffs' Association, is a national partner of the 911 Cell Phone Bank. They encourage all law enforcement and victim services agencies to get involved with the 911 Cell Phone Bank.

"The 911 Cell Phone Bank has been a great partner," said Edward Hutchison the executive director of NAT. "Having this resource available enables law enforcement to focus on serving the community and lets communities give back in a small but meaningful way."

Residents are encouraged to donate their used cell phones at a local donation center:

The National Association of Triads is a partnership of law enforcement, senior citizens, and community groups that exists to promote senior safety and reduce the unwarranted fear of crime that seniors often experience. The National Association of Triads, Inc. assists law enforcement in organizing local Triad programs by providing ideas, programs, and training materials to implement in communities nationwide.

The 911 Cell Phone Bank is an initiative of The RMS Foundation, a 501c3 pending organization.

It was created to provide an ongoing and readily available source of 911 cell phones and funds to meet unexpected and urgent needs of participating law enforcement and affiliated victim services agencies. Since its inception, the 911 Cell Phone Bank has generated hundreds of thousands of dollars and tens of thousands of cell phones for victim services organizations nationwide.

It is a nationwide program designed to maximize community cell phone donations. To learn more visit http://www.911 CellPhoneBank.com

http://www.pe.com/localnews/sbcounty/stories/PE_News_Local_N_nphones24.3a07bbe.html

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