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From Los Angeles Times

Trutanich draws criticism with $2-million check

City attorney is accused of a political ploy for offering money to the Sheriff's Department for processing rape kits when the law says it must be used for consumer protection.

by Jack Leonard, Los Angeles Times

August 7, 2011

When does hand-delivering a check for $2 million for a worthy cause land you in hot water?

For Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich, who is raising money for a possible run for district attorney, it was when he proposed using that hefty sum for a program that would help one of his political allies.

The money had come from a legal settlement won by city lawyers against an outdoor advertising company. Under state law, half of the settlement must be given to the county for consumer protection enforcement and, in the past, the county has doled out those funds to the district attorney's office — the office Trutanich may seek in next year's election.

But when Trutanich personally carried the $2,025,000 check to the county's chief executive, bodyguard in tow, he suggested using the money for a different purpose: testing DNA samples from rape victims.

As it happens, the head of the county agency that would have received the money under Trutanich's proposal — Sheriff Lee Baca — has been publicly urging people to persuade Trutanich to run for district attorney.

Trutanich's suggestion on how to spend the county's share of the legal settlement met with a rare rebuke from his friend Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, who said such a move would probably be unlawful and called it a "political ploy."

In an interview last week, Cooley said he supports testing DNA evidence from rape victims but noted that the sheriff's backlog of untested DNA rape kit evidence was recently cleared up. Cooley said he was skeptical of Trutanich's motives.

"Act like you're doing something to solve a problem that doesn't exist — that's a ploy," Cooley said, adding that the decision to hand-deliver the check was "bizarre."

With Cooley expected to retire next year, the dispute over the funds exposes a rift between Los Angeles' two top prosecutors a year before voters will elect a new district attorney for the first time in more than a decade.

County officials ultimately rejected Trutanich's suggestion, saying that the law required them to use the money for prosecuting consumer fraud, environmental violations and other consumer protection crimes.

But Trutanich called the decision a missed opportunity and denied any political motive. He said he has been concerned about untested DNA crime evidence, which has been a major problem for the Sheriff's Department and the LAPD in recent years.

Trutanich argued that the legal settlement could have been used to help prevent any future backlog in DNA evidence from rapes or other crimes, and said the district attorney's office would actually be among many to benefit.

"What greater consumer protection can there be?" Trutanich said. "There is absolutely no political motive involved whatsoever. None. Zero. Zilch."

Trutanich, whose office received an equal amount of money from the settlement, is using his office's share of the funds for consumer protection prosecutions, not rape kit testing. His chief deputy, William W. Carter, said that without the money his office would have to close its program that targets slum rentals, mortgage fraud and illegal billboards but that the county doesn't face such a threat because its share of the settlement was an unexpected windfall.

Trutanich also said he did not see anything unusual about hand-delivering a large check to the county.

"I don't put $2 million in the mail…. I'd rather be safe than sorry," he said. "We had the best intentions and we decided to give the $2 million to the county and ask the … county to look at ways to make L.A. safer. That's it."

Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said Baca has spoken to Trutanich over the years about the DNA rape kit backlog but was unaware of the city attorney's recent suggestion. He said Baca would not comment.

Trutanich has yet to formally announce whether he will run for district attorney, but he has so far raised more than $500,000 for a possible election campaign — nearly double that of any other candidate for district attorney.

Cooley was a strong supporter of Trutanich's successful bid for city attorney in 2009 but has endorsed his own chief deputy, Jacquelyn Lacey, in the 2012 race for district attorney. He said he has urged Trutanich to live up to his 2009 campaign pledge not to seek another office while serving as city attorney.

Cooley said last week that the dispute over the consumer protection funds was unrelated to the 2012 campaign. "Not honoring his promise to the voters and to me and everyone else is totally separate from this," he said.

The money at the center of the controversy involves a lawsuit that the city attorney's office filed against CBS Outdoor Inc. over its use of supergraphics on four buildings in Hollywood and downtown.

The city alleged that the firm did not have city approval for the signs. The company denied wrongdoing but it agreed earlier this year to pay the city attorney's office $4,050,000 to settle the case.

In a letter handed to Los Angeles County Chief Executive Officer William T Fujioka along with the check, Trutanich said he hoped "that these monies will be used in the processing of DNA rape kits in order to protect rape and other abuse victims in the city and county of Los Angeles."

Fujioka said the money would have had to go to the Sheriff's Department to satisfy Trutanich's request.

Under Proposition 64, which California voters approved in 2004, government agencies must plow such legal settlement money back into enforcing consumer protection laws. Using those funds on DNA testing would violate the law, said William Stern, a partner at Morrison & Foerster and one of the lead authors of Proposition 64.

"Nobody would dispute that it's a worthy cause," he said, "but it's not a consumer protection cause."

A month after Trutanich handed over the check, the district attorney's office sent a letter to the city attorney's office warning that using the funds for anything but consumer protection prosecutions would violate the law. The July 11 letter, obtained by The Times through a public records act request, also expressed concerns that the city attorney's office had delayed providing the funds to the county.

A week later, Carter, Trutanich's chief deputy, sent a written response denying any delay. Carter wrote that he hoped the district attorney's office would in the future thank city prosecutors for their hard work rather than chastising them.

"It's no good deed goes … unpunished," Carter said in an interview. "We make a suggestion, and people project the worst onto it."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-trutanich-20110808,0,6734254,print.story

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Police, neighbors piecing together Ohio rampage

A northeast Ohio man ran through his small-town neighborhood Sunday killing seven people, including his girlfriend, before he was shot and killed in an exchange of gunfire with police, authorities said.

From the Associated Press

August 8, 2011

COPLEY, Ohio

A gunman killed seven people and wounded another, before being killed himself in a gunfight with police.

Police say the gunman shot his girlfriend in one home before 11 a.m. Sunday, then ran to a next-door neighbor's house, where he shot her brother and gunned down four neighbors in the Ohio town of Copley.

He then chased four people -- two through neighboring backyards -- shooting one of them before bursting into a nearby home, where two others had sought refuge.

Photos: Shooting in Ohio

Police said he shot his eighth victim in that home and left, only to get into a gunfight outside with a police officer and a citizen who had been a police officer. The gunman, whose name was not released, was killed.

Only one of those shot survived. Police said that victim was taken to an area hospital but did not disclose a condition or identity. None of the victims was identified and their ages were not disclosed.

Neighbors said the dead included an 11-year-old boy; a school official said he had been told two of the victims were students at the local high school. Neighbors say at least three victims were from one family.

Gilbert Elie, who has lived in the neighborhood for 11 years, heard the gunshots and cries for help as he got ready for church. In an account that differed slightly from the police version, Elie said he went to a house across the street and found the woman who lived there lying in the driveway, her husband shot near the garage, and their young granddaughter and another woman shot in the front seat of a vehicle, the windows apparently blown out by gunfire.

A third woman came out of the house next door and tried to talk to Elie, he said, but their brief exchange ended abruptly when a man followed her out of the house and shot her, sending the 76-year-old Elie running for safety behind a truck.

"She was talking to me, and he come up behind her and shot her, so I figured, maybe I'm next," he told The Associated Press. He hid until he could see the gunman was gone, then returned home. Police arrived, and Elie said he heard a second round of shots coming from behind the houses and assumed officers had killed the gunman.

Elie said his neighbors, Russ and Gerdie Johnson, lived across the street. He said the ordeal has left residents of their well-kept neighborhood shaken.

"They're all in shock," said Elie.

Elie described the gunman as generally unfriendly, a rarity on the street, and said he often worked on his car outside his house but never waved at anyone.

Police, who did not have a motive, planned a news conference at noon Monday.

The neighborhood remained blocked off by police late Sunday.

Around sunset, about 200 people assembled at a park for an impromptu candlelight vigil for the shooting victims in their town and crime victims elsewhere. Some residents said they set up a memorial fund.

Some saw a double rainbow, including Kelly Kerr Gill, who was one of more than 100 people who posted condolences on a special Facebook page set up for one of the families that apparently lost several members. "Your double rainbow sent from heaven did not go un-noticed … was truly a sign from God that those taken are ok," she wrote.

The Rev. Jeff Bogue of the Grace Church of Greater Akron prayed with those gathered at the vigil about faith in the wake of violence.

"This is troubling Lord, why such evil would come to our little township," he said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-naw-ohio-rampage-20110808,0,7452835,print.story

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L.A. County may pull its own handoff when state inmates arrive

Officials say they are considering a plan to contract out the influx of inmates to a San Joaquin Valley lockup — but only as a last resort.

by Robert Faturechi, Los Angeles Times

August 8, 2011

Los Angeles County officials are exploring an unconventional solution for handling the prisoners the state is passing off to them: passing them off to someone else.

By year's end, hundreds of criminals who would have done their time in state prisons are expected to go instead to county lockups as part of the governor's plan to thin the population in California's chronically overcrowded prisons.

Taking some of those inmates and shipping them out again is being considered as a last resort, county officials said. But it's being taken seriously enough that county staff have been seeking outside advice on the idea, and a team of sheriff's officials recently took a trip to the San Joaquin Valley to scope out a potential lockup.

L.A. County jails have faced hitting capacity before, resorting to early release and other solutions for shedding prisoners; but never before have inmates been housed out of county.

Asked whether he could think of any other county that has done so, state Sheriffs' Assn. President Mark Pazin said, "No, never and I've been doing this for 30-plus years. We just don't do that."

It would also undermine one of the much-touted arguments for Sacramento's plan to divert state inmates to local jails: that keeping criminal offenders closer to home and their family and friends gives them a better shot at rehabilitation.

"Oftentimes, individuals lose support when they're taken far away," said Oscar Hidalgo, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Receiving visits from loved ones is said to keep inmates motivated. And prison rehabilitation programs are often tailored to each region's unique problems. For example, Hidalgo said, programming in parts of Northern California may be more oriented toward drug rehabilitation, while those in Los Angeles would more strongly emphasize gang issues.

But Lt. Wayne Bilowit, a Sheriff's Department lobbyist, rejected the notion that keeping inmates close to home was a primary rationale for the governor's "realignment" plan.

"In theory, yes, that's one good thing, they're closer to home," he said. "But this is all about [the state] easing off their prison population crisis."

Many of the inmates expected to be housed by the county face sentences of 90 days or less. Nonetheless, if housed in state prisons, they would be required to go through lengthy — and costly — health and gang-affiliation screenings. The state, which is expected to provide funding to the counties for these new inmates, still expects a net savings from realignment by cutting out the intake screenings.

Bilowit said the message from Sacramento has been to "put them wherever you need to put them. Just don't send them back to us."

Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore downplayed the possibility that L.A. County inmates will be sent away. It hasn't been ruled out, he said, but inmates would be relocated only under extreme circumstances because, among other reasons, Sheriff Lee Baca does not want to lose control over those inmates' rehabilitation programs. Options such as electronic monitoring, home detention and work release would all be preferable, Whitmore said, to sending the inmates elsewhere or releasing them back into the community early.

"If you characterize it as 'no,' 'possible' or 'probable,' it's 'possible,' " said Lt. Mark McCorkle of the sheriff's custody support services unit.

Aides for the county's supervisors recently met with state officials about their experiences contracting inmates out to "community correctional facilities" — low-level lockups across the state that are run by local governments but have catered to state inmates. For these facilities, which are losing their flow of inmates from the state, scoring new clientele from counties may be the only way to stay afloat.

The facility looked at by the Sheriff's Department is in the small town of Taft, about 30 miles from Bakersfield and more than 100 miles from L.A. One sheriff's official said the group that checked it out was "pleasantly surprised" by the lockup.

Any contracts to ship off L.A. prisoners would be issued by the Board of Supervisors. Anna Pembedjian, the justice deputy for Supervisor Michael Antonovich, said her office would be inclined to outsource inmates rather than release them early.

"In lieu of releasing convicted felons back in the community, we would consider it," she said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-sheriff-prisoners-20110808,0,1194803,print.story

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Chief calls San Diego officer's death 'an assassination'

Officials release grim details of the shooting of Jeremy Henwood, 36, a 4th-year officer who served with Marines in Afghanistan. Bystanders came to his aid and helped officers quickly track down the shooter.

by Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times

August 7, 2011

Reporting from San Diego

As a captain in the Marine Corps Reserves, Jeremy Henwood deployed to one of the most dangerous regions in Afghanistan, where Taliban fighters use roadside bombs and snipers to kill or maim as many American troops as possible.

Dozens of Marines were killed and hundreds were wounded, some grievously, during his tour.

But Henwood, 36, returned home in May without a scratch and was proud of his yearlong deployment. He was equally pleased to get back to the San Diego Police Department, which assigned him to patrol in City Heights, an up-and-coming blue-collar neighborhood that, like much of San Diego, is enjoying a sharp decrease in crime.

His tour of duty on a relatively tranquil home front came to a tragic end early Sunday, when he died of wounds from a point-blank shotgun blast the day before.

Police Chief Bill Lansdowne, a cop for four decades, had trouble finding words to describe the shooting by a petty criminal who drove alongside Henwood's patrol car and opened fire. The suspect was pursued and shot dead by other officers.

The slaying, said an ashen-faced Lansdowne, "was an assassination."

Police gave the following account of the crime: While Henwood's patrol car was stopped at a stop sign, the driver of a black Audi signaled with his lights, apparently to draw the officer's attention. The driver then pulled alongside the cruiser, lowered his front passenger-side window, leveled a shotgun and fired, striking the officer's head.

The driver of the Audi, later identified as Dejon Marquee White, 23, turned out to be a suspect in a shooting minutes earlier in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant in nearby El Cajon. There is no evidence Henwood knew about the incident, authorities said.

"Jeremy had no indication he was in danger," said Lansdowne, backed at a news conference by a dozen members of his command staff and officers from other departments who responded to the incident: the El Cajon Police Department, San Diego County Sheriff's Department and California Highway Patrol.

As the Audi sped away, bystanders rushed to Henwood's aid. One man attempted emergency first aid. His wife took down a description of the Audi and its license-plate number. She used the radio in Henwood's car to alert the police dispatcher.

It was the kind of help from the community that San Diego officers, including Henwood, have tried to encourage in City Heights. Henwood had said it was the kind of neighborhood where a good beat cop could make a difference, giving adults a sense of security and their children some promise for the future, according to officers who knew him.

Within seconds the dispatcher's alert, "officer down," brought dozens of officers.

Henwood was rushed to the emergency room of a local hospital. Lansdowne and other high-ranking and rank-and-file officers raced to the hospital.

Henwood's parents were alerted and flew from Texas to San Diego that night. At the hospital, the family and medical officials discussed the possibility of harvesting Henwood's organs for transplant.

In a decision that Lansdowne praised as courageous, the family gave its approval. Henwood, who was unmarried, died at 1:45 a.m. Sunday. He had been a San Diego police officer for four years.

For the well-regarded San Diego department, the shooting followed a series of tragedies and scandals in recent months.

"This department is pulling together once again," Lansdowne said. "This department is becoming a family as never before."

On Aug. 1, Officer David Hall, 41, a 14-year veteran, committed suicide at his home. He was facing criminal charges of drunk driving and hit-and-run in an off-duty incident.

On July 18, Det. Donna Williams, 52, a 31-year veteran and mainstay of the child-abuse unit, was stabbed to death in her home along with her 18-year-old daughter, Briana. Williams' 24-year-old son, Brian, has been charged; his lawyer says he is suffering from mental illness.

And on Oct. 28, Officer Christopher Wilson, 50, a 17-year veteran, was fatally wounded while assisting law enforcement in a late-night probation check on a drug suspect in the Skyline neighborhood. Three people have been charged in his death.

The department also has been struggling with allegations of officer misconduct, including rape, spousal abuse, stalking and excessive force. Four of 10 high-profile allegations involve on-duty conduct.

In response, Lansdowne, chief of the 1,800-officer department since 2003, has instituted a series of measures, including a hot line for citizens to report abuse, training supervisors in "early intervention" for troubled officers, and improved psychological screening for officers.

Within an hour of Henwood's shooting, witnesses' descriptions of the gunman and the Audi helped officers locate Dejon Marquee White outside an apartment building.

When he reached for a shotgun, several officers opened fire, killing him, said Capt. Jim Collins of the department's homicide squad.

For several hours police surrounded an apartment building, believing a second suspect was barricaded inside. Finally forcing their way into the apartment, SWAT officers found no one.

But they did find a rambling, semi-coherent suicide note apparently written by White.

The motive for the shooting at the El Cajon fast-food restaurant parking lot is unknown, Collins said. The victim is expected to survive, according to a homicide official with the San Diego County Sheriff's Department.

At the Sunday news conference announcing Henwood's death, Councilman Todd Gloria, who represents City Heights, spoke of "a senseless, tragic loss of this hero."

Mayor Jerry Sanders, a former police chief, said later that Henwood's death "is another grim reminder that our police officers put their lives on the line every day to protect our community."

Henwood's name will be added to a monument in front of police headquarters that lists 31 officers killed in the line of duty since 1913.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cop-killed-20110808,0,6754920,print.story

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Guarding child welfare

For decades, child welfare programs swung back and forth, depending on the latest outrage. The county Department of Children and Family Services needs a permanent leader who will stand up to the Board of Supervisors.

August 8, 2011

It starts with the death of a child. There is no event more tragic than the death of an innocent due to an adult's abuse or neglect. Now add government — too blind to the needs of its most vulnerable charges, perhaps, or too prone to snatch children from their homes and too unwilling or too clueless to help troubled families. The final ingredient: Public outrage and demands for change.

For decades, those were the factors that determined child welfare policy. High-profile cases of abuse at the hands of violent or addicted parents resulted in panic and waves of removals, supposedly in the interests of child safety. Abuse in foster homes led officials to send children the other way, back to their families. Instead of a ladder leading upward, child welfare programs seemed to operate like a pendulum, swinging back and forth depending on the latest outrage. Instead of progress, child welfare advocates faced the depressingly perpetual: abuse and neglect of children; the destructive cold war between politicians and bureaucrats; lack of adequate funding; policy changes spurred by child deaths rather than hard data.

But progress is real. Studies that follow children who were kept with their families or placed with relatives show that they do better in school, have fewer run-ins with the law and have better prospects for the future than their counterparts removed to foster care.

Los Angeles County now has the fewest children in foster care in years, but that by itself doesn't mean the county is doing the best it can. For the Department of Children and Family Services to do its work, it needs support and guidance — and breathing room — from the Board of Supervisors. Instead, the board forced out Trish Ploehn as department director in December, and has since then run through Antonia Jimenez and now Jackie Contreras. In May the board, demonstrating its inability to distinguish between management and oversight, took direct control of the department from county Chief Executive Officer William T Fujioka.

Now supervisors have appointed county welfare chief Philip L. Browning to temporarily lead the department. It's a good move; Browning is a well-regarded administrator. But what the department really needs, and soon, is a permanent leader who will stand up to the supervisors and not allow them to make panic, rather than progress, the key factor in department decision-making.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-childwelfare-20110808,0,3774877,print.story

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Home sweet shopping cart

Just when you had given up all hope and thought that the authorities had the final word, for a moment at least, 'the universe bends toward justice.'

by Jeff Dietrich

August 8, 2011

It looked like an anti-terrorist takedown: five cop cars, 10 police officers, a yellow skip loader and a 5-ton dump truck. They screeched to a halt and blocked off 6th Street in front of our soup kitchen in downtown Los Angeles. But their target this spring was not a suicide bomber or a hidden nuclear device; it was the four red shopping carts parked in front of our building. Those of us who had worked on skid row for a while were not surprised; we'd seen it all before.

It has been standard city policy since the mid-1980s to have the aforementioned convoy of skip loader, dump truck and police escort patrol the streets of skid row to confiscate the unattended possessions of homeless people — belongings deemed superfluous, excessive or simply trash. Often these sweeps would take medication, identification papers and family photos, the last vestiges of past lives.

Between 1989 and 2005, three lawsuits, two by civil rights attorney Carol Sobel, were filed and won in state and federal courts against the city of Los Angeles regarding the rights of the homeless. As a result, the police are required to give sufficient notice before removing property of the homeless, and the city must pay damages to homeless people for possessions that had been taken and dumped rather than stored for a certain length of time.

Despite these court victories and the periodic interdiction of homeless activists, the city and police have continued their policy of what amounts to theft from the homeless.

Like a battle-weary soldier who has seen too much, you can get a hard heart. But on this particular occasion, one of our volunteers from the suburbs observed the entire episode and was shocked. "Can't we do something about this?" Richard asked. "They just took everybody's stuff. They were just eating lunch and when they rushed out to grab their shopping carts, the police said, 'No, this is abandoned property.' "

It's always unsettling for our volunteers from the suburbs. They think the rules that apply there should apply on skid row. But that's not how it works. Despite those court cases, if you are gone for five minutes to wash, eat or relieve yourself, you can lose all of your possessions. If you leave a friend in charge of your shopping cart and the police suspect that your friend is not the actual owner — boom — gone to the city dump. I felt like the cop in that old Jack Nicholson movie. I imagined myself saying to our volunteer, "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

So inured had I become to the way things are that I did not even bother to contact Carol Sobel about the incident. Fortunately, others did. She came, took depositions, collected photos and went back to federal court.

I was heartened but did not have high expectations for the hearing. The way city officials and police tell their story of skid row, everyone on the streets is either a drug addict or a dealer, and those people do not have a constitutional right to security in their person or property. So in June, when we gathered in the august federal courtroom, I was expecting an affirmation of police impunity.

But I was as unprepared as the deputy city attorney was for the announcement that Judge Philip Gutierrez made: Before we begin today, I need to inform the court that in 1980 I was a summer intern at the Catholic Worker soup kitchen. I chopped onions, I served food and I cleaned toilets. But I have had no contact with them since. Therefore I see no reason to recuse myself from this case.

Whoa! Our jaws dropped. At the end of the court day we got the federal injunction halting the seizure and destruction of the personal property of the homeless. The judge ruled that homeless individuals have an expectation of privacy in their property, even if left on the sidewalk for short periods. Richard was elated. For him, it confirmed that the system works. I was in a state of shock. Where did this come from?

We are all formed by our individual life experiences. We are raised Republican or Democrat; Protestant, Jewish or Catholic. But Gutierrez, however improbably, appears to have been formed in some measure by his experience of chopping onions, cleaning toilets and serving food to the homeless at the Catholic Worker soup kitchen.

I'm not saying that's the only reason he ruled the way he did, but from the perspective of those of us who work with the homeless, and the perspective of the homeless folks who push shopping carts containing the last of their earthly treasures, it is like one of those unlikely biblical stories.

Just when you give up all hope, just when you think that the authorities have the final word, just when you think that the rules of the suburbs cannot possibly apply on skid row, for a moment at least, to paraphrase the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., "the universe bends toward justice."

Jeff Dietrich is the director of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker and has worked on skid row for 40 years. His most recent book, "Broken and Shared: Food, Dignity, and the Poor on Los Angeles' Skid Row," will be published this fall.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-dietrich-justice-20110808,0,411742,print.story

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From Google News

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Security to be tight at ground zero site

Law enforcement officials say terrorists see the memorial site as possibly too tempting a target to resist.

by TOM HAYS

NEW YORK - Few New Yorkers noticed earlier this summer when a dozen police horses boarded in a stable in lower Manhattan were loaded into trailers and moved uptown. The New York Police Department relocated the horses to build a temporary staging area for 220 officers newly assigned to protect ground zero.

The lower Manhattan force will eventually grow to 670.

A key job will be to perform airport-style screenings on the multiple thousands who will visit the Sept. 11 memorial at the site after it opens this fall, as well as to keep a watchful eye on all visitors with an array of closed-circuit cameras.

While the resurrection of the 16-acre property may be viewed by most Americans as a triumph of the nation's resolve, law enforcement believes terrorists see it as another chance to prove their tenacity.

"Without question it is a target, because it has tremendous symbolism," said James Kallstrom, a former top FBI official who headed the agency's New York City office in the 1990s. "Going back and attacking a landmark that was already attacked once is the ultimate challenge."

The site isn't the target of any known plot, but it "remains squarely in the terrorists' crosshairs," said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

Fears of a repeated plot against the site years ago moved its signature skyscraper several feet from its original spot. An original plan putting 1 World Trade Center 25 feet off a state highway near the Hudson River raised concerns by the NYPD that it could be vulnerable to car or truck bombs. A redesign moved it farther off the street and incorporated a windowless 200-foot base.

To make the base of the 1,776-foot tower less bunker-like, the new plan called for a facade of 2,000 glass panels attached to aluminum screens. But tests showed that the glass failed to shatter into harmless bits as hoped and the Port Authority, which owns the site, had to send architects back to the drawing board.

Developers and law enforcement also have grappled with how to best police the anticipated steady flow of tourists, workers and commerce at the site without turning it into an inhospitable, armed camp.

Kallstrom, while the top counterterrorism adviser to former Gov. George Pataki in the mid-2000s, was an architect of an ambitious security plan for 1 World Trade Center -- scheduled to open in 2013 -- the National September 11 Memorial & Museum and other office towers and transit at the site.

The measures -- combining architectural innovation, high-tech gadgetry and good old-fashioned manpower provided by the NYPD, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police and private security firms -- will make it "a very, very secure site," Kallstrom said.

One particularly ambitious piece of the plan calls for screening every car, truck and other vehicle for radioactive materials -- evidence of a possible dirty bomb -- as they enter lower Manhattan.

http://www.startribune.com/nation/127116603.html

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California

From street to surf: Community policing reaches youths

LOS ANGELES -- As morning broke over the city on a recent Monday, cops assigned to the Los Angeles Police Department's Southeast Division went about their normal routine, patrolling the streets. There was, as always, plenty to do. The division's 10-square-mile area has some of the highest crime and poverty rates in the city and is home to 120 documented gangs and three of the city's roughest housing projects.

But 18 miles and a world away, Officer Scott Burkett was working a very different beat. Having traded his uniform for a wetsuit, the 15-year LAPD veteran was in the water at Torrance Beach with about two dozen kids from the Watts-area neighborhood that Southeast patrols, teaching them to surf.

Surfing as crime-fighting strategy?

"It's about changing the relationship between the Watts community and the LAPD," said Southeast Capt. Phil Tingirides, a first-time surfer who got in the water as well. "To do that, we've got to get the kids, and we've got to get them early."

In recent years, the violent crime rates in the city's Southeast neighborhoods were too high to allow officers to work on anything but patrol, gang units and other traditional assignments, Tingirides said. But in 2009, after a few years of declines in crime, he asked Burkett to start a youth activities program.

"We got to the point where we felt we could move away from just violent crime suppression and make a move toward this sort of thing, which is about trying to impact the future instead of just throwing cops up against every crime that occurs."

It's not exactly revolutionary thinking: For years, police departments have been trying with varying success to implement so-called community-based policing strategies. But to try it in a place like Southeast, where distrust toward the police historically runs deep, and to commit to it so heavily - Tingirides said he has 13 officers working full time on several community-relations programs - speaks volumes.

Tingirides believes Burkett's Police Activities League, another program that focuses on at-risk children, and one for students interested becoming cops, are paying dividends. Since they started, juvenile arrests in the division have dropped about 40 percent, he said.

For his part, Burkett, 43, was ready for a change of pace when Tingirides approached. He had worked several assignments and spent most of his career patrolling the streets in Southeast. In 2008, he was awarded the department's highest honor, the Medal of Valor, for confronting a gunman who had shot a man with an assault rifle.

"For the most part, officers don't come on the job to work with kids. It's about hooking and booking," he says, using police jargon for making arrests. "But I had all that behind me. And this sounded like a really cool opportunity. Now that I'm in it, I see that it really does make a difference."

Working with three other Southeast officers, he has thrown himself fully into the program. Instead of waiting for kids to show up, officers went in search of the kids. They knocked on doors at area schools and persuaded principals to use the program as a reward for good grades and attendance.

Erin Craig, assistant principal at College Ready Academy High School No. 11, said the school has come to depend heavily on Burkett and the others, who are on campus several times a week. Ten of Craig's students were surfing on Monday.

"We try to keep the kids busy as much as possible," she said. "The more we can keep them off the streets, the less chance the gangs have of getting to them and corrupting them."

Each week, the officers coordinate three or four activities, Burkett said. There are frequent outings to Staples Center for Lakers, Clippers and Kings games, museum trips and other day trips. But, in an area where kids rarely venture far beyond their neighborhood, Burkett is also focused on giving kids experiences they otherwise wouldn't have. Along with the surfing, there have been kayaking outings, ski lessons at Big Bear and camping trips.

About 400 kids are involved in the program each year, Tingirides says.

Because the program is a nonprofit, Burkett leans on old friends, connections and a blunt "What are you going to do to help the kids?" approach to encourage people to donate the cash and resources needed for each outing.

For surf camp, he walked into the offices of water sports company Body Glove without an appointment and asked to speak with Russ Lesser, the company president.

"He told me what he wanted to do, and I said, 'How many wetsuits do you need?'" Lesser says. Burkett also turned to the YMCA chapter in Torrance, where he grew up. The organization provided some of the instructors and the surfboards.

After managing to get up on a board and ride his first ever wave, Johnathan Rodriguez, 14, stood shivering but smiling on the beach.

"It gives us something to look forward to," he said of the program.

http://www.sacbee.com/2011/08/08/v-print/3823309/from-street-to-surf-community.html

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Georgia

Gainesville school resource officers back in schools today

Officers educate besides protecting

“They're actually a big asset to the community,” said Kevin Holbrook, public information officer for the Gainesville Police Department. “They deal with anything that may arise in the schools, and they also do a lot of education. It's not just being reactive but a little more proactive. It kind of falls under the community policing approach.”

Charles Newman has served as a school resource officer since 1994 and currently works at Gainesville High School.

“We are liaison officers,” he said. “Really we are a go-between between the police department and the school system. That's our No. l function.”

Some of the officers' daily duties include working on cases with Juvenile Court and the Department of Family and Children's Services.

“Counselors report if you have child abuse cases, neglect cases; we're the first ones they report to,” said Chris Coy, resource officer at Wood's Mill Academy.

When not handling legal issues or conflicts in the schools, the resource officers often act as counselors. Holbrook said many students find the resource officers to be a great source to seek advice and talk about any issues they may be facing.

“We basically walk the halls, talk to people. People come to your office to talk to you about whatever. So really it's just to be there as a counselor and an information source,” Newman said.

Not only do the officers act as counselors, but many times teachers request them to assist in teaching lessons to the students. Some of the topics include the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, searches and seizures, or something as simple as life skills, Newman said.

“Basically whatever that teacher teaches, sometimes they want you to build on areas that they're focusing on,” he said.
In past years, the resource officers have taught the Gang Resistance Education and Training Program, but with increased school populations and lack of funding they have not been able to continue the program. The program is designed to be a 13-week program, but with only three resource officers and a large amount of students, the officers do not have the time to dedicate to the program, Coy said.

Officers in Hall County system also help with driving programs and patrolling traffic.

“They taught the teen driver program this summer and then they held a class with the National Association of School Resource Officers ... so they're getting back into the schools and getting back into the swing of things,” said Col. Jeff Strickland, chief deputy for the Hall County Sheriff's Office.

The resource officers ensure that traffic runs smoothly in the mornings before the school day begins and in the afternoons when school lets out. They also spend the day at the school to handle incidents that occur on school campuses.

“They patrol the campus in the morning, in their car and on foot and handle any kind of issues that arise,” Strickland said. “They handle any type issue that would arise in the school from petty theft to an assault. The school resource officer handles that along with our Criminal Investigations Division.”

Coy said students often have a negative image of law enforcement and having resource officers in the schools helps students realize they are there to help them.

“A lot of our kids, the only contact they have with law enforcement is at a negative level and by us being in the schools and working close with them, we build a rapport with them and they see that we're just not there to lock somebody up or take somebody to jail or to write a ticket,” Coy said.

Holbrook said the officers are not only valuable to the students but also to the department because they can often assist in criminal investigations.

“If we're working on any type of case that involves a juvenile or student, we can call these guys and they'll more than likely know anything there is to know about that child,” he said.

Although many students look up to the resource officers, they still realize the officers are members of law enforcement and have a job to do, Coy said.

“They know who I am, they know what I do, they know where the line is drawn. I will be their friend until I have to step up and do my job.”

http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/section/6/article/54121/

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