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From Los Angeles Times

Brown signs California Dream Act

New law covers private funding; governor signals he may also favor expanding public Cal Grants eligibility.

by Maeve Reston, Los Angeles Times

July 26, 2011

Following through on a campaign promise, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law Monday easing access to privately funded financial aid for undocumented college students. He also signaled that he was likely to back a more controversial measure allowing those students to seek state-funded tuition aid in the future.

Assemblyman Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), author of the private financial aid measure, described it as an important but incremental step toward expanding opportunities for deserving students who were brought to the U.S. illegally through no choice of their own. Cedillo is pressing ahead with a more expansive measure that would make certain undocumented students eligible for the state's Cal Grants and other forms of state tuition aid.

Brown said he was "positively inclined" to back that bill but would not make a decision until it crosses his desk.

"I'm committed to expanding opportunity wherever I can find it, and certainly these kinds of bills promote a goal of a more inclusive California and a more educated California," Brown told reporters after the bill-signing ceremony Monday.

For Brown, signing Cedillo's bill was a gesture of goodwill toward Latino voters, who helped elect him in large numbers last fall. Legislation providing education funding to undocumented students has been a top priority for many Latino groups, which have found many of their efforts thwarted so far at the federal level. Last year proponents failed to marshal enough votes in the U.S. Senate to ensure passage of the federal DREAM Act, which would have created a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. before age 16 if they attended a college or served in the military.

Brown's position on the California Dream Act was being closely monitored after he angered some prominent Latino leaders by vetoing a bill last month that would have made it easier for farmworkers to organize. Though Brown noted in his veto message that he signed legislation helping farm workers unionize during his first stint as governor in the mid-1970s, his veto was sharply criticized by the United Farm Workers, which counted the bill among their top priorities.

But several analysts who study Latino politics said the California Dream Act was far more important symbolically to many in the Latino community. Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, said the bill was viewed by many as a measure of social acceptance of Latinos because it would increase opportunity for the best and brightest among the undocumented.

The California Dream Act has drawn strong support across the Latino community, said Jaime A. Regalado, director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs.

"If [Brown] was looking at the balance sheet, understanding politically that he needed to sign one of these measures, it was not going to be competitive," Regalado said. "It's seen as a civil rights issue in the Latino community, especially for youth. The farmworkers' struggle is not necessarily seen as what it once was. This is an issue of the now, an issue of the moment, part of the Latino agenda and part of the future."

But opponents of the legislation say it will diminish opportunities for U.S. students.

"Obviously it falls into a different realm when the money is coming out of private pockets than it does when it's coming out of taxpayers' pockets," said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that advocates halting illegal immigration, "but nevertheless, foundations and other institutions that get tax exemptions should not be promoting policies that encourage people to remain illegally in the United States."

During a signing ceremony at Los Angeles City College, Brown largely brushed over the thorny politics of illegal immigration and sought to frame the legislation as part of the struggle to maintain education funding during California's budget crisis.

"The debate is very clear: shrivel public service, shrink back, retrench, retreat from higher education, from schools, from the investment in people; or make the investment," Brown said. "This is one piece of a very important mosaic, which is a California that works for everyone."

Brown used the issue last year against his Republican opponent, Meg Whitman, during a Fresno debate.

After an undocumented student had asked the candidates to explain their position on such legislation, Brown said that he backed the proposal and that Whitman wanted to kick undocumented students out of college, adding "that is wrong morally and humanly."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-brown-dream-act-20110726,0,7117085,print.story

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The strands of the Sinaloa drug cartel web

Channeling the Mexican cartel's nonstop river of cocaine onto trucks bound for cities in the U.S. requires a vast labyrinth of smugglers working in L.A. And women like Lupita, a no-nonsense psychic with a short fuse.

by Richard Marosi

Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

July 26, 2011

Second of four parts

Gabriel Dieblas Roman took orders from cartel bosses in Mexico, hard men who ruled by fear, but he wouldn't approve a shipment without talking to a plucky, middle-aged woman from Compton.

Guadalupe "Lupita" Villalobos ran a storefront botanica where Virgin of Guadalupe statuettes sat beside grinning Saint Death skeletons. She would threaten to turn neighbors into toads, and her clients believed she could divine the future by studying snail shells scattered on a tabletop.

Roman, a client, called her one day for advice on an important matter.

Sounding anxious about a pending cocaine shipment to the East Coast, he asked Villalobos to "give it a little look."

"When is it leaving?" Villalobos asked.

"Tomorrow," Roman said.

A rattling sound came over the phone, then the jangle of objects spilling on a hard surface.

"Well, everything is normal," Villalobos told Roman.

But she wasn't finished.

"Be careful, there is surveillance," she said.

Be wary of a young gordito, a chubby guy. "It seems that he has trouble with the police."

Roman knew who she meant.

"That son of a bitch is worse than a parrot," he said.

The L.A. hub

The Sinaloa cartel, Mexico's most powerful organized crime group, has its version of a corporate headquarters in gaudy mansions and hilly estates that dot the state of Sinaloa. But its U.S. distribution hub sits 1,000 miles northwest, in the immigrant neighborhoods that line the trucking corridors of Southern California.

Drugs move from Colombia to Mexico, then across the Imperial Valley to stash houses and staging areas around Los Angeles. There, scores of distribution cells take over, packaging the cocaine and concealing it in tractor-trailers headed across the United States.

As one of dozens of transportation coordinators for the cartel, Roman bought tractor-trailers, hired drivers and arranged for loads of frozen chickens as cover. He received the drugs from Eligio "Pescado" Rios, who operated a string of stash houses.

Together they formed part of a pipeline that extended across the country to a distributor living near Yankee Stadium in New York.

The shipments were relatively small, from 300 to 600 pounds, to reduce losses in the event of a seizure. Yet the drip-drip-drip of the Rios-Roman pipeline was believed to deliver a ton of cocaine a month to the Northeastern U.S.

Rios and Roman had something else in common: Both were very superstitious. Neither man was getting rich. Roman drove an old Ford Mustang, Rios a banged-up white truck he called "La Paloma" (The Dove).

Roman's family lived in a tiny house in the high-desert town of Hesperia. Rios rented a room atop a garage in Paramount. Neither flashed weapons or had serious rap sheets.

They were like hundreds of other modestly paid workers -- truckers, money couriers, load coordinators -- who kept the drug supply chain humming. Rios and Roman had something else in common: Both were very superstitious.

They relied on psychics to guide their operations, and they gave them a cut of the profits. The psychics provided advice on timing. Cartel psychics have also been known to put curses on law enforcement officers, "cleanse" stash houses, perform elaborate candle-lighting ceremonies or smear goat entrails across floors.

The strange rituals and breathless divinations were overheard by agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration investigating a major distribution network of the Sinaloa cartel. The probe had been dubbed Imperial Emperor, after a suspect named Kaiser, German for "emperor."

DEA agents in Los Angeles also took inspiration from their suspects. Rios' nickname, Pescado, means "fish" in Spanish. They dubbed their piece of the case Psychic Catfish.

Bust in Paramount

On March 1, 2006, Rios received a call from Carlos "Charlie" Cuevas, one of the cartel's lead smugglers on the California-Mexico border. Cuevas was arranging a large cocaine delivery from Mexico that night. The shipment would arrive in three Chevrolet Avalanches at the Rosewood restaurant in Paramount, southeast of Los Angeles.

Rios drove to the diner and took a seat. DEA agents waited nearby in parked cars. They had been tracking him and eavesdropping on his phone calls for weeks. Rios drove to the diner and took a seat. DEA agents waited nearby in parked cars. They had been tracking him and eavesdropping on his phone calls for weeks.

One of his stash houses was a few blocks away, on 1st Street in Paramount. Two of his brothers lived there. On weekends, they grilled carnitas on the patch of front lawn and cranked up their brassy Sinaloa music like any other family in the immigrant neighborhood. Inside, the only furnishings were a few mattresses and a television.

Rios used a toolbox built into the bed of his truck to move drugs from his stash houses to staging areas: warehouses or homes with double lots that could accommodate tractor-trailers. Mechanics and packers moved the cocaine to the trailers, taking hours to hide it in the guts of the refrigeration units. The trucks then left for the East Coast, with two drivers to keep them moving around the clock.

The different parts of the distribution system were strictly compartmentalized. Rios delivered the drugs to the staging area, but he was long gone by the time Roman arrived with the drivers. The two men had probably never met; all they knew was to follow orders from a man called Gato in Guadalajara, beyond the DEA's reach.

At 8:30 p.m., the first Avalanche showed up at the Rosewood. Rios took the key and drove to the stash house on 1st Street. The wall between the garage and a bedroom had a large cutout to allow for quick unloading. Packers in the bedroom bundled and stacked the cocaine for shipment to the staging area.

Over the next few hours, two more Avalanches pulled into the parking lot. Each time, Rios drove the SUV to the stash house for unloading and returned to the restaurant. Then he went home.

At 4 a.m., police raided the house and found nearly 455 pounds of cocaine in neatly stacked packages. Rios' brothers were arrested but he was not -- a calculated move by the DEA.

To press charges against Rios, the DEA would have had to file a probable-cause affidavit revealing the wiretap operation. That would have alerted suspects across the U.S. and in Mexico that federal agents were listening in on their conversations.

The DEA had gone to great lengths to keep the investigation secret, enlisting local law enforcement agencies to make arrests and seizures, as with the Paramount bust.

Agents kept the nervous Rios under surveillance, hoping his phone chatter and movements would tell them more about cartel operations. They didn't anticipate his next move: Rios fled to his home in Culiacan, Sinaloa, where he was promptly kidnapped by cartel enforcers.

The bust had cost the cartel about $3.3 million, and powerful people were upset. In Sinaloa, Rios was tied up and beaten over several days, leaving behind a mattress stained with his blood.

Getting desperate

Roman, a failed truck driver with a sixth-grade education, licked his upper lip when he was nervous. By mid-2006, he had ample reason to be.

Roman, a failed truck driver with a sixth-grade education, licked his upper lip when he was nervous. By mid-2006, he had ample reason to be. In recent months, truckers linked to him had been arrested in Missouri, New Jersey, Atlanta and Oklahoma, each with more than 220 pounds of cocaine. Another trucker was caught with $3.5 million in cash. Each of the seizures was carried out by a different law enforcement agency.

Now Roman had lost his main supplier -- Rios -- along with the confidence of his bosses.

He spent hours working the phones, trying to arrange a shipment. He needed cash to support his two wives -- one in California, one in Mexico -- his 11 children and stepchildren and his pregnant mistress.

In times like these, he drove to Compton to visit Villalobos at her home. Perhaps she could break his streak of bad luck.

On one visit, Roman walked past the displays of carved wooden Indian busts near the garage as a DEA agent watched from a distance. A statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe was perched atop the security fence, sprinkled with penny and nickel offerings. There were pit bulls in the backyard, a pigeon coop in the front.

Mexican psychics have been known to rub white pigeons up and down a person to absorb negative forces before releasing the birds, and any evil, into the sky. They suggest herbal baths and sometimes add hallucinogenic morning glory seeds to teas they serve their clients.

Whatever Villalobos gave Roman, it appeared to be potent. He practically staggered out the front door and had to be helped into the car by his girlfriend.

By the fall, Roman had finally lined up a shipment. He called Villalobos, who scattered her snail shells.

She gave her blessing for the delivery, but with a warning. "Tell the chubby one to be careful."

Intercepted

Three days later, Hildegardo Rivera, a driver for Roman who lived in the Central Valley farming town of McFarland, headed east in a tractor-trailer believed to be carrying cocaine.

Rivera was heavyset. It's not known whether he was the man mentioned by the psychic, but he did indeed have troubles: The DEA was tracking his movements through the GPS device in his cellphone. Rivera was heavyset. It's not known whether he was the man mentioned by the psychic, but he did indeed have troubles.

Six days after he left Southern California, Rivera's cellphone showed him to be in Keasbey, N.J., where Roman's drivers had been known to deliver cocaine and collect payment. Rivera switched phone numbers and the DEA lost track of him. Agents obtained a court order to track his new number, and by the time they resumed surveillance days later, he was heading back to California.

Agents tracked his progress through Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee. In Arkansas, Rivera stopped to pick up a load of frozen chickens.

When Rivera reached Arizona, agents in Los Angeles drove east to intercept him. One parked his unmarked car on the shoulder of Interstate 40 near Flagstaff.

The agent had never seen Rivera or his big rig. All he had to go on were DMV photographs of several of Roman's suspected truckers.

A purple truck whooshed past with a plastic human skeleton plastered to its grill. A Halloween prank, the agent thought. More trucks passed.

When the agent called for Rivera's latest location, he was surprised to hear that the truck was now west of him. The agent made a U-turn and sped back toward California.

He followed two trucks to a rest stop. Another check of the phone's GPS signal placed Rivera close by.

The agent saw the purple truck with the skeleton on the front. A man who resembled the picture of Rivera got out of the cab. The agent notified the California Highway Patrol and took off.

The plan was for the CHP to intercept Rivera at an agricultural checkpoint just inside California. That way, the DEA's cover wouldn't be blown.

After pulling Rivera over, the CHP officer opened the door of the trailer. It looked empty. A drug-sniffing dog jumped inside.

DEA agents sitting in their cars a mile away waited anxiously. After 30 minutes, a CHP officer called. No drugs, he said, but the dogs had found 155 plastic-wrapped bundles hidden in the trailer's ceiling panels.

Each contained about $20,000. The total seizure: $3.1 million.

No more help

The bust wiped out what little credibility Roman had left with his bosses. He was soon so broke he couldn't pay his utility bills. His California wife lugged buckets around their dusty Hesperia neighborhood, asking for water.

On Dec. 5, 2006, Roman called Villalobos. He used to tip her as much as $2,000 for a $20 reading, but now he said he was penniless.

She offered no sympathy.

"Sometimes one digs one's own grave," the psychic said. "I am not going to … continue with an ungrateful person."

"Don't be like that," Roman responded.

He offered to show her the police report on the money seizure, proof that he wasn't holding out on her.

She dismissed it. She didn't care that he was broke now. She felt he had cheated her when times were good.

"Listen carefully to what I am going to tell you: How many years did we work together? How many trips did we make together? Seventeen trips?"

She went on: "With me helping, everything worked out perfectly for you."

"That's right," Roman said.

Where is the money?” she said. “You screwed me when you didn't need me anymore.” "I was helping, made you boss of bosses. Where is the money?" she said. "You screwed me when you didn't need me anymore."

In May 2007, a federal grand jury in New York indicted Roman on cocaine-distribution and money-laundering charges. Among the potential witnesses: Lupita Villalobos.

Prosecutors flew her to New York, but she wouldn't leave her hotel. They leaned on her to testify. She refused.

In the end, her cooperation wasn't necessary. Roman pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 14 years.

Rios, the stash house operator who fled to Culiacan, re-entered the U.S., was arrested and pleaded guilty to conspiracy.

Rivera, the trucker, was accused of conspiracy, but the charge was dropped.

Villalobos was never charged. The psychic stuck to her story: She was a simple businesswoman trying to make a living.

"These people give me money and I tell them what they want to hear," she said. "I don't know the future."

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

Read Part One: Unraveling Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel

Coming Wednesday: Clear skies and cocaine

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-20110726,0,4541715,print.story

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U.S. Embassy in Mexico not told of ATF guns sting

Embassy officials raised concerns that U.S. guns were showing up at crime scenes in Mexico. But ATF officials kept the embassy in the dark about the operation to sell weapons to straw purchasers to trace smuggling routes.

by Richard A. Serrano, Washington Bureau

July 26, 2011

Reporting from Washington

As weapons from the United States increasingly began showing up at homicide scenes in Mexico last summer, U.S. Embassy officials cabled Washington that authorities needed to focus on small-time operators supplying guns to the drug cartels.

Embassy officials did not know that at least some of the weapons were part of an ill-fated sting run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, in which illegal straw purchasers were allowed to buy guns so smuggling routes into Mexico could be traced. Ultimately, ATF lost track of an estimated 1,700 weapons that were part of the so-called Fast and Furious operation, which began in November 2009.

Nearly 200 such guns were later recovered at crime scenes in Mexico. And two AK-47s from Fast and Furious were recovered in December at the scene of the fatal shooting of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Arizona.

DOCUMENT: Read the cable

The embassy cable, written in July 2010, is further evidence that ATF officials were keeping information about Fast and Furious from other branches of government, even after the operation lost track of some guns. The six-page document, labeled "Sensitive But Unclassified," was obtained by The Times' Washington bureau.

"This was a shout-out from the embassy in Mexico," said a government official close to the investigation of the program. "The embassy knew something was awry when all these guns started showing up down there. But they were kept in the dark. They didn't understand why the guns kept getting through and ending up at so many Mexican homicides."

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.

At ATF and Justice Department headquarters, officials declined to discuss specifics about Fast and Furious, citing ongoing investigations.

The cable was sent to the State Department in Washington and copied to about 50 officials, including then-U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual; Darren Gil, then the ATF attache in Mexico City; and his deputy, Carlos Canino.

Gil and Canino are quoted in a separate report released Monday night by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista). He and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) of the Senate Judiciary Committee are investigating Fast and Furious.

Gil and Canino testified that the embassy was "kept in the dark" about the program even as the Mexican government was complaining about so many U.S. guns in the country.

Gil said when he first queried ATF officials in Phoenix, where the program was run, they told him the bare minimum. According to Gil, George Gillett Jr., then the acting special agent in charge, said, "We have an ongoing investigation…. Thanks for calling."

He also questioned ATF headquarters in Washington, Gil said, and was told, "They have it under control."

As he learned what had gone wrong, Gil said, he realized that ATF officials did not want Pascual to know about the operation, and that ATF feared the Mexican government would find out and lodge a formal complaint.

Gil recalled "screaming and yelling" with his Washington superiors. "It's inconceivable to me to even allow weapons to knowingly cross an international border," he said.

Gil and Canino said they later were advised that senior ATF leaders, including acting Director Kenneth Melson, as well as Department of Justice officials and the U.S. attorney's office in Phoenix, all had approved Fast and Furious. Melson said it was "providing some good intelligence" on gun smuggling.

The embassy cable also indicates that U.S. officials with considerable knowledge of the drug trade and violence in Mexico disagreed with the premise on which Fast and Furious was based.

The ATF believed that large cartels were smuggling the weapons across the border, but embassy officials viewed that as a myth. Although the cartels "are the largest consumer of illegal firearms in Mexico," the cable says, "they are not the primary trafficking agents of weapons going south from the United States."

The cable advises ATF to concentrate on arresting individual Mexican traffickers living legally in the U.S.

The cable also discounts ATF's assertion that the Rio Grande had become a virtual "Iron River" of guns, with the cartels taking over gun smuggling. "Rather," the memo says, "it appears there may be thousands of small streams."

DOCUMENT: Read the cable

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-fast-furious-cable-20110726,0,7863243,print.story

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From Google News

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Guns from U.S. sting at Mexican crime scenes: report

(Reuters) - At least 122 firearms from a botched U.S. undercover operation have been found at crime scenes in Mexico or intercepted en route to drug cartels there, according to a Republican congressional report being issued on Tuesday.

Mexican authorities found AK-47 assault rifles, powerful .50 caliber rifles and other weapons in late 2009 that were later linked to the U.S. sting operation to trace weapons going across the border to Mexico, the report said.

Guns from the program, dubbed "Operation Fast and Furious," also were found at the scene of the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in the border state Arizona last December. It is not clear if they were the weapons responsible for his death.

The sting has become an embarrassment for the Obama administration and its Justice Department, rather than a victory in cracking down on the illegal flow of drugs and weapons to and from Mexico.

It has also hurt ties with Mexico, which has been battling the violent cartels in a war in which thousands have died.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and federal prosecutors had hoped the sting would help them track gun buyers reselling weapons to cartels. But U.S. agents did not follow the guns after the initial purchaser re-sold them.

The House of Representatives Oversight Committee, led by Republican Darrell Issa, and the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Charles Grassley, have been investigating the sting and will issue the report Tuesday.

Their investigators say at least 122 firearms bought by suspected gun traffickers were found at Mexican crime scenes or caught going to the cartels.

Of the 2,000 weapons sold to the suspected gun traffickers, just over half remain unaccounted for, the report added. The Justice Department said that the ATF was not aware of the majority of those gun sales when they occurred.

"Given the vast amount of 'Operation Fast and Furious' weapons possibly still in the hands of cartel members, law enforcement officials should expect more seizures and recoveries at crime scenes," said the congressional report.

The independent watchdog at the Justice Department is also conducting its own investigation of the sting operation.

The Justice Department said it could only confirm 96 guns recovered in Mexico were tied to suspects being tracked in the operation, but it said that ATF did not have complete information on how many were recovered at crime scenes there.

The agency said another 274 weapons were recovered in the United States and, so far, about a dozen were found at U.S. crime scenes, according to information given to Grassley obtained by Reuters.

Soon after the sting began, Mexican authorities arrested a young woman with 41 AK-47s and a Beowulf .50 caliber rifle that were bought the previous day by a so-called straw buyer, or somebody buying a weapon for somebody else.

She told police she was taking them to the Sinaloa drug cartel, the congressional report said.

During a May, 2001 raid by Mexican federal police on the La Familia drug cartel, in which 11 members of the group were killed and 36 were captured, some of the more than 70 weapons recovered at the scene were traced back to the U.S. sting, according to the congressional report.

Issa's committee will hold a hearing later Tuesday with current and former ATF officials including those who worked in the U.S. embassy in Mexico who complained that they were kept largely out of the loop about the scope of the operation.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/26/us-usa-guns-mexico-idUSTRE76P33T20110726?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews

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North Carolina

'Vigilante Grannies' are on the crime case

Embroidery. State bowling champ. Wife, mother, grandmom and great-grandmom.

But when vandals targeted her Stallings community in Union County a few months ago, Ritch recruited several other grandmothers to do something about it.

They call themselves the "Vigilante Grannies."

They leave notes on suspicious cars, watch who hangs out in the park and don't hesitate to contact police. Their work has already contributed to one arrest and neighbors say they feel safer in their Fairfield Plantation homes.

"It takes a serious thing and identifies it in a way that a lot of folks can relate to," Ritch said. "Our motto is, 'fear is not in our makeup.' "

But it's not like there's a roving pack of purse-wielding seniors looking to go all "Dirty Harry" at the first sign of trouble.

The grannies typically work in pairs. They don't over-react or do anything that would put them in danger. "We don't want anyone getting hurt," Ritch said. "Especially us."

Community policing experts say it's not unusual to see seniors take an active role in neighborhood watch groups. They often have a lot of free time and are very invested in their communities.

The grannies reflect the spirit of community policing, said Joe Kuhns, a UNC Charlotte criminologist who has worked on a federal community policing program.

Problem solving, partnerships with police and crime prevention are hallmarks of the program. Community policing began to be popular in the late 1980s, Kuhns said, and took off in the mid-1990s when federal money became available.

Stallings Police Chief Michael Dummett began a community policing program shortly after taking over as chief late last year. Every subdivision is assigned an officer as a point of contact, and residents are encouraged to take a more active role in partnering with police.

Dummett advises neighborhood watch members not to work alone or try to handle law enforcement duties. They should back down and contact police if dealing with someone who becomes aggressive.

The chief is proud of the grannies' work, but he and Kuhns were uneasy with the group's name because of negative associations with the word "vigilante." Added Kuhns, "I hope they don't get mad at me for saying that."

Fairfield Plantation encompasses nearly 200 homes; some are for sale in the mid-to-upper $100,000s. The community, which dates to the mid-1970s, has a pool, picnic tables and private 17-acre park.

The spate of vandalism included burning American flags. Needles and empty bottles littered the park. Picnic tables were upended.

The grannies don't know if the problems came from teens in their community or in nearby neighborhoods. They hope to be a positive influence on local youth.

When the grannies see strange cars in the area, they give Ritch the license plate number. She tracks the names through an online subscription service. If they aren't from the community, the vehicle owners can expect a personalized note on their car.

So far, they've left about a dozen.

The notes offer to give names of Realtors if they are looking to buy a home, but also serve as a reminder the community is watching them.

After the grannies saw a person sitting in his car near the pool and not getting out, despite a stream of youths approaching him, they passed the license plate to the police. The information eventually led a drug-related arrest.

Several residents said they applaud the grannies and have seen a drop in vandalism.

"It's neighbors taking care of neighbors," Ritch said.

Dummett said it's too soon to see if the grannies have had an impact on crime statistics. But anytime people know there is a higher level of security, he said it gives residents a feeling of empowerment and psychologically they feel safer.

Charmaine Nolan, 59, is youngest of the half dozen grannies. Ritch is the oldest. "This is just a fun thing we can do to help our community and keep it safe," Nolan said.

"I'm not afraid to ask someone if they live here," she said. "The (local) kids know my husband. He's a big guy. So they're respectful to me. Most of the time they don't give me no lip."

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/07/26/2481555/vigilante-grannies-are-on-the.html

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