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From Los Angeles Times

No excuses for L.A. County's emergency communications fiasco

The meltdown of L.A. County's emergency communications project means years of wasted effort and lost opportunity.

July 31, 2011

The tragedies of 9/11 tested first responders and exposed a weakness in their systems: Police, fire and hospital personnel in many areas, Los Angeles included, communicate on different electronic platforms and thus have difficulty coordinating their responses to large, complicated catastrophes. In Los Angeles, where earthquakes pose that challenge more frequently than acts of terrorism, 9/11 alerted local officials to the need for a coordinated communications network. The county's response was to launch a joint powers effort to develop what is known as the Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System. Fully a decade later, that work is in a shambles, a meltdown that should embarrass all involved.

At the heart of this particular fiasco is a competition between Motorola and Raytheon, two large companies bidding for the right to build the communications network that would allow police officers, firefighters and others in Los Angeles County to talk to one another in an emergency. After years of research and analysis, the joint powers authority, composed of leading law enforcement and government officials, decided that Raytheon had presented the more promising and economical bid, and negotiators settled down to work out the details with the company. But problems soon complicated those talks. Motorola complained that the bids were improperly evaluated. The negotiators mistakenly shared some of Motorola's proprietary information with Raytheon. Lobbyists for Motorola suggested that Raytheon was incapable of building the system, while those for Raytheon complained of influence-peddling by Motorola.

On Thursday, the board overseeing this project retracted the bid and decided to start over. After extensive negotiation, and less than a month before finalizing a deal, lawyers for the board declared that the original request for proposals was flawed and needed to be rewritten. That amounts to years of wasted effort. It could threaten federal grant support for the project, and it means that Los Angeles will, for years to come, remain just as exposed to the danger of uncoordinated first responders as it was on that fateful day a decade ago.

There is no duty more sacred to government than the protection of its citizens. In this instance, those charged with that duty have failed.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-larics-20110731,0,5712169,print.story

Surveys find widespread violence against nurses and other hospital caregivers

Nearly 40% of employees in California emergency rooms said they had been physically assaulted on the job in the previous year

by Jessica Garrison and Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times

July 31, 2011

The patient was drunk, naked and covered in blood when he burst out of his emergency room cubicle around 2 a.m., brandishing scissors. He lunged at two nurses and began chasing them.

It took two police officers and three zaps from a Taser to subdue him.

Rattled by this attempted stabbing in 2009 and other attacks at Ventura County Medical Center, emergency room nurse Lorraine Sandoval began keeping count of every time a colleague was assaulted or threatened by patients. On average, she found, it was once or twice a day.

"We should not have to wait until a nurse, doctor or EMT or patient is seriously injured or killed before something is done," Sandoval recalled telling her bosses, who later installed an armed officer in the emergency room.

Although nearly invisible to the public except in extreme cases, violence against nurses and other hospital caregivers is commonplace in California and around the nation, according to surveys, state records and interviews with hospital employees and industry experts.

Some workers, especially in emergency rooms, say they experience some level of assault — biting, hitting, kicking and chasing — so often they consider it an unavoidable part of the job. Most attacks don't result in serious injury, but hundreds have resulted in workers' compensation claims in California alone in recent years, according to a Times review.

Nearly 40% of employees in California emergency rooms said they had been assaulted on the job in the previous year, according to a survey by UC San Francisco and other researchers in 2007. More than one in 10 emergency room nurses surveyed in 2010 said they had been attacked in the previous week, according the Emergency Nurses Assn., which represents 40,000 emergency room nurses nationally.

Many industry experts and hospital staffers say they believe violence by patients and visitors is rising but can't say for sure because it hasn't been rigorously tracked over time. The issue has recently gained attention, however, as hospital employee unions, including the California Nurses Assn., have begun pushing for broader protections and more reporting by hospitals.

The violence flares most often in emergency rooms and psychiatric wards, say staffers, researchers and security officials. In emergency rooms, waiting times have grown as increasing numbers of unemployed and uninsured patients seek basic care they can't afford to pay for in doctors' offices.

"We have a lot of men who have lost their jobs, lost their homes, 50-year-old men who have worked their whole lives," said Colleen Sichley, a 17-year nurse at Antelope Valley Hospital in Lancaster and a union representative. "They're angry. Just between the cursing and the bad language, and the physical stuff, and it's anybody" who can lash out, she said.

Staffers are obligated by law to evaluate anyone who goes for treatment, said Michael B. Jackson, an emergency room nurse at UC San Diego Medical Center. He said that whether they be gang members, drug users, psychotic patients or just "people that get frustrated with wait times," they might act out.

Acutely ill mental patients are landing in general hospitals because many lack consistent outpatient care that might keep them from deteriorating.

Hospitals sometimes blame employees for mishandling violence rather than reporting and investigating it, said Kathleen McPhaul, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Nursing who has written about hospital violence and believes it is rising. "Even if the staff did something wrong," she said, "the employer needs to take responsibility and get to the bottom of it and train the staff."

Jan Emerson-Shea, vice president for external affairs for the California Hospital Assn., said that hospitals "generally are very safe places," and that most have specific protocols to follow if trouble arises.

Every so often, a high-profile tragedy prompts hospitals to rethink their security plans. In 1993, a mentally disturbed gunman opened fire in the emergency room at Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center, wounding three doctors. Since then, County-USC and other major urban hospitals have installed metal detectors and posted armed police officers in emergency rooms.

But smaller hospitals have not always gone to the same lengths. Even facilities with armed guards don't tend to station them in private treatment areas. Assaults can be difficult to predict, and guards sometimes arrive too late.

Jackson, a former Marine, said some people give an indication that they may turn violent, such as pacing, yelling or making threats; "other times it just happens."

Jackson said he was checking in a patient once who said he was "frustrated with the system." Suddenly, the patient said, " 'Let me show you how serious I am' and then he pulled out a knife and started waving it around.... It was just me and a couple of secretaries standing behind me, and I started wrestling with this guy. I grabbed the arm that had the knife and it fell on the ground."

Nurse DeAnne Dansby said a patient tackled and tried to rape her in February 2010 in the emergency room at Mercy General Hospital in Sacramento. The patient, identified by paramedics as homeless, had been taken to the hospital earlier that morning with hypothermia, she said. As he warmed up, he became agitated. Dansby stepped in to prevent him from harming a student nurse, and the man went at her and she fell so hard to the floor that her head "ricocheted," she said.

"By the time they could get to me this guy already had my scrub pants down almost to my knees," she said. "It took 13 people to get this idiot off of me."

Weeks after the attack, Dansby said, she was diagnosed with displaced herniated discs and severed nerves. She lost the use of her left arm and can no longer move her neck enough to "look up at the sky," she said.

"That guy could have killed me," said Dansby, who received workers' compensation payments — uncontested by the hospital — before going back to Georgia and finding a less strenuous job.

Under California regulations, among the strictest in the country, all significant injuries must be reported to the state and law enforcement. But the law does not spell out what "significant" means.

Dansby said her supervisor told her: "If you are going to work for this hospital, you are not going to press charges," so she did not.

Two months after she was assaulted but before the full extent of her injuries became clear, Dansby said, she was dismissed. Because she was a probationary employee, hospital officials did not need to cite a cause.

Later, she said, the nurses union representative accused her of exaggerating her injuries to avenge her firing.

Officials at Mercy hospital issued a statement saying that "the hospital's actions were in compliance with its policies and procedures, and with California law."

Bonnie Castillo, head of the California Nurses Assn., said hospital officials discourage nurses from reporting assaults because "it interferes with their image of being a safe haven."

A 2009 study published in the Annals of Epidemiology found that more than half of hospital workers in California and New Jersey had not told their supervisors after being assaulted, in part because "workers often accept these events as part of their job."

Nine assaults involving significant injury or death were reported to California's Department of Public Health from fiscal year 2007 to fiscal 2009, according to records released to The Times. During the same period, 370 hospital workers filed compensation claims alleging that they were injured in assaults involving criminal acts, although the significance of those injuries was not clear.

Those workers' compensation numbers do not include many more people who were injured in assaults not deemed crimes, which could include attacks by someone with dementia or psychosis, said Susan Gard, head of policy for California's Division of Workers' Compensation.

The Times also reviewed crime reports taken by the Los Angeles Police Department at all hospitals in Los Angeles over a recent 10-month period, finding that not a single assault was reported at nearly a third of the 40 hospitals in the city. At California Hospital Medical Center in downtown Los Angeles, however, nine were reported, most of which clearly involved attacks on employees.

Katreena Salgado, the hospital's director of public affairs, said it's not because there's more violence at her hospital but because the administration takes the staff's safety seriously and encourages employees to report assaults by patients or visitors capable of understanding their actions.

Even low-level violence can bring great stress, staffers at many hospitals said.

Amelia Mendoza, 53, a nurse's assistant at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena for six years, was struck by a patient on her arm in April 2009, according to allegations by her family in a workers' compensation case. The assault was relatively minor, according to her family's lawyer, but her blood pressure shot up so high she required treatment.

A few days later, Mendoza was assaulted again by the same patient, her family alleged. After unsuccessfully seeking treatment at the hospital again for her blood pressure, she had a massive stroke and died last October.

This spring, a workers' compensation judge found that the death "arose out of and in the course of" her employment and that the attacks may have played a role.

In a written statement, Huntington officials said: "We strongly disagree with the decision and are proceeding with a formal appeal."

Some violence may be unavoidable, but staffers complain that they haven't been trained in the best way to contain it.

In 2008, a 338-pound patient was admitted for chest pain at a Kaiser Permanente hospital in Oakland and was observed by staffers to be angry and anxious, according to state documents. The next morning he got out of bed, took off his clothes and began punching his 68-year-old roommate in the face.

Hearing screams, a nurse ran to the room. The patient then began chasing her. "I ran," the nurse later told state investigators. "I didn't know what to do.... No one knew what to do."

The patient cornered a group of nurses by the elevators and struck four staffers before picking up a fifth employee and "swinging" him around, according to the state's investigative report.

Even after security officers handcuffed the patient and placed him in a chair, he ran away again before being wrestled to the ground.

He experienced "some degree of head trauma," according to the state report, and died a week later "after another episode of increased agitation" that was not described.

Later, the California Department of Public Health found that the hospital had failed to provide proper supervision to an acutely ill mental patient.

Kaiser officials called the case "extremely unusual" and said they had since provided training to staffers and "strengthened the hospital's security plan."

Even though extreme violence is rare, many employees and union leaders say, it often occurs after a trail of unheeded warnings.

At Danbury Hospital in Connecticut, nurses had been lodging complaints for months about violence against staff members, including a nurse who was punched in the jaw, then fell and broke her hip in 2009, said Mary Consoli, a nurse and president of the local nurses union.

Their pleas were ignored, she said, until last spring, when an 85-year-old patient with dementia took a gun out of his pocket. A nurse tried to intervene and was shot three times, sustaining long-term damage to his hand, according to Consoli.

Occupational safety investigators issued $6,000 in fines, noting a long list of previous fractures, bites and bruises to staffers.

"You don't want to be grateful for this shooting," Consoli said. "But if it wasn't for this shooting," she said, nothing would have been done.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-hospital-violence-20110731,0,2116884,print.story

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Raids on Northern California pot farms yield 101 arrests

More than 460,000 marijuana plants in and near the Mendocino National Forest are destroyed. The proliferation of such growing operations is destroying ecosystems and scaring hikers away, an official says.

by Lisa Girion, Los Angeles Times

July 31, 2011

State and federal authorities fanned out across six Northern California counties in recent weeks in a broad attack on marijuana farms in U.S. forests, officials said.

More than 460,000 pot plants were destroyed and 101 people arrested in the raids in and around the Mendocino National Forest.

The action came in response to a proliferation of marijuana farms that are destroying ecosystems and scaring hikers away, Melinda Haag, U.S. attorney for Northern California, said at a news conference announcing the operation Friday.

"The Mendocino National Forest is under attack by drug traffickers," Haag said at the news conference in Ukiah. "Visitors to the forest are increasingly intimidated by the prospect of armed drug traffickers and illegal cultivation sites.

"I've warned people who come up here during the summer to be careful when they go hiking."

The latest effort, dubbed Operation Full Court Press, targeted 56 growing sites. Authorities seized 27 guns and 11 vehicles, Haag said.

The operation also confiscated fertilizers, chemical pesticides and rat poison. With the aid of the U.S. Forest Service, 23 tons of trash and 22 miles of irrigation pipe were removed; 13 man-made dams remain to be dismantled.

"There are those who believe that growing marijuana is a harmless, peaceful activity in harmony with nature," Haag said. "This notion is, in a word, wrong."

The effort involved more than 300 people working for 25 local and federal agencies.

Illegal drug organizations have grown pot in California forests — from the Cleveland National Forest in Southern California to the Klamath National Forest in the far north — for decades. But local, state and federal authorities have stepped up eradication efforts in recent years.

In 2008, 2.5 million marijuana plants were eradicated from national forests in California, almost five times the number destroyed in 2004, according to the National Center for Drug Intelligence. And California is the national focus of such efforts; 80% of all plant eradication in U.S. forests occurs in the state.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-pot-raid-20110731,0,3752857,print.story

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From Google News

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FBI offers reward in case of missing New Hampshire girl

(Video on site)

(CNN) -- Tips continued to pour in Saturday in the disappearance of an 11-year-old New Hampshire girl, but so far none have led to the child, Assistant Attorney General Jane Young said.

"We are looking at those tips. We are honing the investigation based on those tips," she said.

The FBI offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the disappearance of Celina Cass, who vanished between 9 p.m. Monday night and the time her parents went to wake her Tuesday morning. Officials said a private citizen is also offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to Celina Cass' return.

Dive teams will be brought in Sunday to search area ponds, Young said.

About 100 investigators -- including FBI agents, New Hampshire and Vermont state police, local authorities and employees of the state's Fish and Game Department -- have been searching for Celina door-to-door in the small, tight-knit town of West Stewartstown.

"We are still aggressively, aggressively searching and hoping to bring Celina Cass home," FBI Supervisory Special Agent Kieran Ramsay said Saturday.

Help has come from as far as Virginia -- including from FBI headquarters in Quantico -- Pennsylvania and New York, Young said

Celina was last seen in her room, at her computer, at about 9 p.m. Monday night, according to police. CNN affiliate WMUR reported that her parents told authorities the girl was gone when they went to wake her up Tuesday morning.

Authorities have offered few further details on the case and an Amber Alert has not been issued. Young said that investigators are looking at computer and phone records, trying to find clues.

Celina's disappearance has rattled many in West Stewartstown, a town along the border with Vermont and Canada with a population of about 1,000 people, according to the state of New Hampshire. Friends and relatives have spent much of the past few days putting up posters and doing what they can to find the girl.

Friends have set up a Facebook page, "Missing Celina Cass," with one of the fliers serving as a profile picture. According to the flier, Celina is 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighs 95 pounds, with long brown hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing a pink shirt, pink pullover and blue shorts.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/07/30/new.hampshire.missing.girl/

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California could make Mexican drug cartels bolder

by Dennis Wyatt

July 31, 2011

The war, as they say, is going badly.

This week's massive marijuana raid in the Mendocino National Forest is a clear indicator we're in deep trouble.

Legalizing marijuana isn't going to do the trick and reduce crime.

Fifty massive grow gardens raided were clearly not for medicinal purposes.

There is strong evidence tying them into the Mexican drug cartels.

California National Guard troops joined federal and local enforcement agencies as well as the Forest Service. The heavily armed presence was in response to the fact many of these grow gardens have armed guards. And they are confronting anyone who comes near them including hikers.

In essence, Mendocino National Forest is occupied by enemy forces.

One of the pitches is that if you legalize pot you will somehow eliminate much of the crime its use triggers.

Does anyone think that the drug cartels are going to go quietly into the night? They will not concede a multi-billion dollar cash cow to Mom and Pops or some Walmart-style corporate pot growing operation without a fight.

Just look at meth production and distribution in the San Joaquin Valley. A large chunk of the “jobs” it created have been lost to Mexico. The loss of American meth, manufacturing, if you will, means the distribution is more and more under the control of the Mexican drug cartels that make the Hells Angels look like Boy Scouts in comparison.

The reason why the cartels are as far north as the Mendocino National Forest is fairly clear. And it has a lot more than the fact it is a relatively isolated area given the forest is the size of Rhode Island. Marijuana grown in California's North Coast forest tends to be of higher quality and fetches more money per ounce.

It would be Pollyanna to think that legalizing marijuana would do the same thing that legalizing alcohol did to illegal moonshine operations. Most moonshiners disappeared as big business moved to cash in.

Moonshiners didn't execute police, kill innocent people, and terrify entire towns as the drug cartels do in Mexico.

Even so, how could the cartels hold onto their control of a large chunk of the marijuana market or event expand it if California legalizes recreation use of pot? The answer is rather obvious. If California legalizes pot for recreational purposes, there are 49 other states where it still would not be legal.

States rights are an important - and sacred - part of the constitution.

But in this case Californians may want to think twice about trying to thumb their noses up at Uncle Sam at the ballot box.

The drug cartels are getting more brazen with each passing day in Mexico. Should the door open a bit more in California, not much will stop the cartels from kicking it wide open.

When it comes to organized crime, the Mexican drug cartels are rewriting the book.

Legalize recreational pot in the Golden State and you could turn California into a drug cartel war zone.

http://www.mantecabulletin.com/section/38/article/25953/

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Federal Judge Rules Florida Drug Law Unconstitutional

July 30, 2011

A federal judge has struck down a Florida drug law that convicts suspects of a drug offense even if they are unaware that the controlled substance is illegal.

U.S. District Judge Mary Scriven found the 9-year-old law unconstitutional in a decision Wednesday and called for the resentencing of Mackle Shelton, who had faced 18 years in prison.

The ruling could pave the way for drug cases currently in the courts to be thrown out.

"Obviously, we are immediately drafting motions and pursuing this line on behalf of our own clients' (cases) that are pending, but we can't do much retroactively since those cases are closed," said Bob Wesley, public defender for Orange and Osceola counties. "I think it will be a robust line of litigation for all of us who appear in Florida criminal courts."

Tampa attorney James Felman, who won the landmark case, says the Florida legislature went too far.

"What the legislature attempted to do was essentially presume guilt and then let you come in and prove your innocence if you wish to avoid being imprisoned," Felman told MyFoxTampaBay.com.

When the law was passed in 2002, Florida became the only state not to require that a suspect have knowledge that a controlled substance is illegal to be convicted. The law shifted the burden from prosecutors having to prove that a suspect knew to the defendant having to assert ignorance about the illegality of the controlled substance.

Attorney General Pam Bondi's office says they are currently reviewing the case. Many thing the state will appeal the decision.

Click here for more on this story from MyFoxTampaBay.com.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/07/30/federal-judge-rules-florida-drug-law-unconstitutional/?test=latestnews

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Businesses play key role in thwarting terror

(AP) Ultimately, it was the keen eye of a Texas gun shop clerk that helped authorities find an absentee soldier who had stashed bomb-making material in his nearby motel room for a planned attack on Fort Hood soldiers.

The enduring lesson for a post-Sept. 11 world: America's work force plays a crucial role in preventing potential terrorist attacks.

"A vigilant public and informed local law enforcement make it much more complicated for people wishing to carry out attacks to do so," said John Cohen, principal deputy counterterrorism adviser at the Homeland Security Department.

Federal and local law enforcement agencies have established programs over the past decade that encourage the public to report suspicious activity, and tips from businesses have led to multiple high-profile arrests.

Abdo, 21, who went absent without leave from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, earlier this month, was arrested Wednesday at a motel outside Fort Hood and charged with possession of an unregistered destructive device. Police say he was perhaps only a day away from unleashing bombs in a restaurant frequented by soldiers and attacking the Army post.

Abdo's alleged plan was cut short when Guns Galore employee Greg Ebert became suspicious after the soldier acted oddly while purchasing smokeless gunpowder, shotgun ammunition and a semi-automatic pistol magazine. Ebert's call to police and the soldier's subsequent arrest was a proud moment for employees of the store — the same place Maj. Nidal Hasan bought a pistol used in the Fort Hood shooting spree two years ago.

Store clerk Dave Newby said Hasan's purchase, while legal, devastated store workers and put everyone on higher alert.

"I think we all changed," he said. "It was terrible. We thought about coulda, shoulda, woulda."

Ebert noted this week that although there was "nothing extraordinary" about Abdo, he saw just enough to make him suspicious.

The retired police officer said Abdo arrived at the Killeen gun shop in a taxi — unusual for the Central Texas town — and proceeded to buy six pounds (2.7 kilograms) of smokeless gunpowder, while asking what it was. Abdo didn't say much as he paid in cash, and he didn't bother to collect his change or a receipt before returning to the waiting taxi.

"Now, he hasn't done anything unlawful — it doesn't prevent me from being curious," said Ebert, who retired from the police force last year.

Federal authorities say actions like Ebert's can keep America safe.

"The willingness of an individual to contact law enforcement about an event or incident that may be indicative of a possible threat is vital to our mission," FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said. "It may turn out not to be a threat but at least we have the opportunity to check it out."

Other business tips have been credited with preventing disaster.

A clerk at a Circuit City elecstore in New Jersey told police in 2006 that customers had asked him to make a DVD out of video footage of them firing assault weapons and screaming about jihad. The FBI later tracked six men, now known as the Fort Dix Six, who plotted to kill soldiers in a raid at the Fort Dix military base in New Jersey.

Earlier this year, two companies — Carolina Biological Supply Co. in North Carolina and Con-way Freight in Lubbock — contacted federal and local authorities about suspicions each had surrounding a purchase by Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, who has been charged with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and is scheduled to go on trial later this year.

Federal authorities said Aldawsari bought explosive materials online and planned to hide them inside dolls and baby carriages to blow up dams, nuclear plants and Bush's home. A former Texas Tech University chemical engineering student from Saudia Arabia, Aldawsari was arrested after the North Carolina company reported $435 in suspicious purchases to the FBI.

The freight company notified Lubbock police and the FBI with similar suspicions because it appeared the order wasn't intended for commercial use. Con-way Freight spokesman Gary Frantz said since Sept. 11, 2001, the company has worked with local, state and federal authorities to develop training programs that employees participate in at least once a year.

"I think we can be a force multiplied, which is a term often used by law enforcement, where private industry serves as additional eyes and ears to help authorities to uncover these activities to protect the public," Frantz said.

Carolina Biological Supply spokesman Keith Barker said his company has procedures to closely monitor orders involving "chemicals of a high degree of hazard."

"We've taken it upon ourselves to be vigilant," Barker said.

Meanwhile, "Operation Tripwire" is an FBI effort that asks certain businesses and industries — such as airlines and cruise ships — to look for and report suspicious behavior. The Department of Homeland Security has a national "If You See Something, Say Something" public awareness campaign that works with businesses and groups, such as the National Basketball Association, to promote public vigilance.

Some local law enforcement agencies also have partnered with businesses. New York Police Department detectives have asked thousands of companies to be on the lookout as part of "Operation Nexus."

"In a sense we don't know what we deter," because people don't commit crimes and get arrested, said Paul Browne, spokesman for the nation's largest police department. "But by making these things harder, and by educating people who may become unwitting players in terrorist plots, we hope to have that deterrent impact."

The Los Angeles Police Department created "iWatch," which uses brochures, public service announcements and meetings with community groups to provide advice on how to detect and report suspicious behavior.

LAPD Cmdr. Blake Chow said the program is augmented by a web-based system that lets private businesses and security firms exchange information about suspicious activities. The intelligence gleaned with these systems, along with phone tips, has helped disrupt the financing of suspected overseas terrorist organizations, he said.

"The general public is the ones that go to the same place every day to work, they know their neighbors," Chow said. "We rely on them to tell us if they see something or an individual's activities that seem out of place."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-07-31-arrested-soldier-terror-tips_n.htm

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