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From the Los Angeles Times

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Tripoli chaos raises fear of missiles going to terrorists

The U.S., mindful of lessons from Iraq, has urged Libyan rebels to secure weapons depots to prevent shoulder-fired missiles and others from falling into the hands of Al Qaeda and its affiliates.

by Ken Dilanian, Los Angeles Times

August 25, 2011

Reporting from Washington

In November 2002, Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists fired two shoulder-launched missiles at a chartered Israeli passenger jet as it took off from Mombasa, Kenya.

Both shots missed, but it was an unnerving reminder that portable surface-to-air missiles have hit 40 civilian aircraft since 1975, mostly in war zones, causing 28 crashes and killing more than 800 people, according to a State Department report.

The collapse of Moammar Kadafi's regime in Libya has prompted fear that terrorists may obtain shoulder-fired missiles from Libyan weapons depots, just as Iraqi insurgents pilfered arsenals after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Pentagon officials have estimated that Kadafi's forces had 20,000 portable missiles. Most are Soviet-made SA-7s from the 1970s, however, and may not be operational. But a Russian company recently said that it had sold Kadafi's military an unspecified number of SA-24s, which are more modern.

The Obama administration has urged Libyan rebels to secure the depots and is cautioning nearby countries to watch for missiles or other munitions being smuggled across their borders.

Some evidence suggests that has happened.

In April, Chad's president, Idriss Deby, said a cache of surface-to-air missiles and launchers from Libya had been smuggled to Al Qaeda's African affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Algerian officials have given similar accounts.

U.S. officials have not publicly confirmed the smuggling reports, but Pentagon spokesman Dave Lapan said Libyan missiles are a concern because of their portability.

"Together with the State Department, we are working with our allies and partners in the region to help prevent the proliferation of Libya's inventory of shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles," he said Thursday.

The State Department has awarded $3 million to two humanitarian groups — the British branch of the Mines Advisory Group and the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action — to help clear weapons, mines and munitions in rebel-held parts of Libya.

The Libyan conflict has limited the groups' access, however, and spokesmen for the two groups said that, as of Thursday, they had found and destroyed only four missiles, which are called Man-Portable Air Defense Systems.

Libya has at least 523 arms bunkers, said Valeria Fabbroni of the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action. The rebels have tried to put up fences and post guards as they capture sites, but the challenge is "massive," she said.

"I think the risk is significant because the forces controlling Libya right now are not well organized, they're not well disciplined, they don't have formal security protocols," said J. Christian Kessler, who retired in 2008 as head of the State Department's Office of Conventional Arms Threat Reduction. "My guess is that the closest thing they have to inventory on ammo is, 'Nuts, we're getting low, find some more.'"

"We need to assume that X percent of the inventory will leak," he said. "Where it leaks to, how badly it leaks, those are guesses."

Terrorists have never downed a commercial airliner with a portable missile. But insurgent groups have shot down a chartered helicopter and cargo planes in Iraq and Somalia in recent years.

In 2002, Abu Huzifa, an Al Qaeda operative from Sudan, acknowledged firing an SA-7 at a U.S. military plane as it took off from Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. It missed, and he was later arrested.

The missile was from the same production batch that was used in the failed attack against the Israeli aircraft later that year in Kenya, investigators determined.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-libya-shoulder-missiles-20110826,0,7844742,print.story

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From Google News

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Ariz. sues feds over Voting Rights Act

State's lawsuit claims law is unconstitutional; Holder defends requirement

Opening up a new front in its legal battles with the Obama administration, the state of Arizona on Thursday challenged the federal Voting Rights Act, prompting a swift response from Attorney General Eric Holder.

Arizona is challenging the law's requirement that the state seek Justice Department approval for any changes in how elections are conducted. Many states are subject to the law's pre-clearance requirement, generally to remedy past restrictions that discouraged minority voting.

"Arizona is still penalized for archaic violations that were corrected with the implementation of bilingual ballots prior to the 1974 elections," said the state's Attorney General Tom Horne. He noted that in 1974, Arizona became the second state to elect a Hispanic governor.

The state's lawsuit claims the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional, Horne said, "because it suspects all changes to state election law, however innocuous, until pre-clearance is given by the federal government."

The state objects to seeking federal approval to dissolve school districts that have no students and annex them to adjoining districts. "A statute as innocuous as this has to go through an approval process with the Justice Department. Such laws cannot be justified by any power delegated to the federal government by the Constitution," says the state's lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court in Washington, DC.

Vowing to fight the challenge, Holder said the provisions challenged in this case, including the pre-clearance requirement, "were reauthorized by Congress in 2006 with overwhelming and bipartisan support. The Justice Department will continue to enforce the Voting Rights Act, including each of the provisions challenged today," he said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44280196/ns/politics-more_politics/

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Community Policing Defined

Community policing is a philosophy that promotes organizational strategies, which support the systematic use of partnerships and problem-solving techniques, to proactively address the immediate conditions that give rise to public safety issues such as crime, social disorder, and fear of crime.

Community Policing is comprised of three key components:

• Community Partnerships
  
  Collaborative partnerships between the law enforcement agency and the individuals and organizations they serve to develop solutions to problems and increase trust in police.
  • Other Government Agencies
  • Community Members/Groups
  • Nonprofits/Service Providers
  • Private Businesses
  • Media
    
    
• Organizational Transformation
  
  The alignment of organizational management, structure, personnel, and information systems to support community partnerships and proactive problem solving.
  
  Agency Management
  • Climate and culture
  • Leadership
  • Labor relations
  • Decision-making
  • Strategic planning
  • Policies
  • Organizational evaluations
  • Transparency
  • Organizational Structure
  
  Geographic assignment of officers
  • Despecialization
  • Resources and finances
  
  Personnel
  • Recruitment, hiring, and selection
  • Personnel supervision/evaluations
  • Training
  
  Information Systems (Technology)
  • Communication/access to data
  • Quality and accuracy of data
    
    
• Problem Solving
  
  The process of engaging in the proactive and systematic examination of identified problems to develop and rigorously evaluate effective responses.
  • Scanning: Identifying and prioritizing problems
  • Analysis: Researching what is known about the problem
  • Response: Developing solutions to bring about lasting reductions in the number and extent of problems
  • Assessment: Evaluating the success of the responses
  • Using the crime triangle to focus on immediate conditions (victim/offender/location)

To learn more about Community Policing, please refer to our Community Policing Defined publication.

http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/print.asp?item=36

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Opinion

Winning crime statistics but failing communities

Aug. 25, 2011

A recently published Journal Sentinel interview with Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn over policing goals, and the subsequent support of his policy by Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, suggests that police cannot protect the community against violent crime and provide the kind of police coverage to Milwaukee neighborhoods necessary to stem the hemorrhaging of citizens' quality of life.

If that is true, the chief and mayor need to be confronted by the reality that the citizens who are paying the bills aren't happy with the decisions they have made.

It is apparently easier to quantify crime statistics than the growing fragility of communities, and it is important to point out that the delays in service result in criminals becoming emboldened. When the police actually implemented community policing, not just talked about it, they realized that homes are not just property.

For most of us, homes represent our biggest single investment and represent our personal "castles." Beyond the economic disaster of property depreciation, which we are all living through, many neighborhoods are losing their sterling reputations for being a place to live and raise families.

The ring of safety that has surrounded neighborhoods such as Sherman Park is shrinking. Ask any of the some 45,000 people who have lived in that neighborhood for some years about conditions. Try to find one who will tell you that quality of life is on the rise and that they are optimistic about the future.

The community is doing its part, joining block clubs, working on foreclosures, getting the City of Milwaukee and the banking community to come together with grass-roots organizations to stem the tide of destruction and make a difference. But we will not prevail without a mayor and a police chief who see beyond their own agendas.

Many of us are unclear about whose agenda it is and how it got approved. It is only rarely, such as in the articles in early August, when the mayor and the chief have even been clear about where they will deploy and on what grounds.

There is a call to know why we should expect "less" and how much "more" is going to cost.

Howard W. Karsh of Milwaukee is a retired community developer who serves on a number of community groups and who has been a columnist for the National Jewish Post and Opinion for 40 years. Email hkarsh@gmail.com

http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/128427553.html

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Facebook, Myspace Tied to Teen Substance Abuse Risk

by ESTHER FRENCH, Family Practice News Digital Network

08/24/11

WASHINGTON – Substance abuse is a bigger problem for adolescents who daily spend time on social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace, as 70% of American adolescents say they do, according to a survey released Aug. 24 by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

Of those adolescents, 26% reported drinking alcohol, 10% reported using tobacco, and 13% reported using marijuana. The numbers are much lower for adolescents who do not frequent these sites: 9% for alcohol, 2% for tobacco, and 7% for marijuana.

In addition, adolescents who had seen photos on social networking sites of children and adolescents who were drunk, passed out, or using drugs had a greater likelihood of substance abuse and were more likely to have easy access to alcohol, marijuana, and prescription drugs without a prescription.

CASA Columbia randomly selected households and surveyed more than 2,000 adolescents aged 12-17 years – and about 500 of their parents – over the telephone and the Internet. CASA conducted this 16th annual national survey during March-May 2011, not to determine the percentage of teens who smoke, drink, and use drugs, but rather to identify factors that affect the likelihood of substance abuse.

"We're not talking about causation here. We're talking about association," the center's founder and chairman, Joseph A. Califano, Jr. said at a press conference in Washington announcing the results. "We think it would be an important healthy factor for these pictures not to be on social networking sites."

The CASA report also included several findings about cyber bullying, which often occurs through social networking:

The CASA survey results also showed that almost one-third of adolescents watch "suggestive teen programming," such as "Gossip Girl," or "16 and Pregnant," or "Skins," and they were twice as likely to have used tobacco and almost twice as likely to have used alcohol as were teens who did not watch these shows. Easier access to these substances also was associated with watching these shows.

Dr. John R. Knight, a pediatrician who directs the Center for Adolescent Substance Abuse Research at Children's Hospital Boston, said in an interview that he was not surprised by the survey results. "The only thing that's surprising to me is that the media companies haven't done anything about it," he said.

On MTV's "Jersey Shore," a reality show mentioned in the survey, young adults regularly consume excessive amounts of alcohol. Dr. Knight said he turned on the show one time and was "appalled."

Multiple studies have confirmed that the likelihood of substance abuse by teenagers increases when they are exposed to mass media that show tobacco, alcohol, and illegal drugs in a positive or glamorous light. And in the 1990s, the medical community fought to oust the cartoon character Joe Camel from cigarette advertisements, because it appeared to target children.

But online social networking is a relatively new phenomenon – and one that has helped teens overcome addictions by connecting them with online support groups.

"Social networking is a two-edged sword," said Dr. Knight, who was not affiliated with the CASA report. "It can be destructive, but it also helps young people in recovery from substance abuse."

Of parents surveyed, 89% did not think social networking sites increased the likelihood of drug use for teens, and 87% thought the same about alcohol.

Lisa J. Merlo, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist with expertise in this area, said in an interview that it is important to ask adolescents about the amount of time they spend on social networking sites. Dr. Merlo of the University of Florida, Gainesville, who was not affiliated with the CASA report, also advised talking to parents about the importance of monitoring teens' online activity – which 64% of parents in the survey said they do.

The report noted that teens who eat dinner with their families five to seven times a week do not have as high a risk for substance abuse as do those teens who have infrequent family dinners.

Mr. Califano reprimanded social networking sites for allowing the display of pictures of children and teens drunk, passed out, or using drugs. "We think it would be an important healthy factor for these pictures not to be on social networking sites. ... Continuing to provide the electronic vehicle for transmitting such images constitutes electronic child abuse," he said in a statement accompanying the survey report.

Advances in neuroscience and longitudinal studies show that exposure to alcohol, tobacco, and drugs at a young age leads to greater chances for permanent neurotoxic damage and psychological disorders later in life, Dr. Knight said.

"The data are shouting at us," he said. "We must protect these young people."

Knowledge Networks administered the Internet component of the survey, which 546 male teens and 491 female teens, along with 528 of their parents, completed. QEV Analytics conducted the telephone component, which 478 male teens and 528 female teens completed. CASA required parental or guardian consent for interviewing the adolescents, which was refused in 13.6% of eligible households.

Both components of the survey asked teens whether anyone could see or overhear their responses, but this did not appear to have an inhibiting impact on their answers. The findings note that confidentiality agreements, self-reporting, and the parental permission requirement might contribute to underreporting of substance abuse.

http://www.familypracticenews.com/index.php?id=2934&type=98&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=62360&cHash=da03e20e36

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