LAPD botched use of downtown crime cameras

The failures kept a series of skid row stabbings from being recorded, officials admit. Some surveillance units are broken while others were never hooked up, records show.

by Andrew Blankstein and Richard Winton, Los Angeles Times

December 24, 2011

Most of the surveillance cameras installed in downtown Los Angeles as part of an effort to help police crack down on crime have not been working for two years, according to interviews and records reviewed by The Times.

The cameras were installed over the last few years in a highly publicized partnership between local business groups, which purchased them, and the Los Angeles Police Department, which was to monitor and maintain them.

But officials said the majority of the cameras don't work. Some broke down and were never fixed. In the case of six cameras purchased to watch over Little Tokyo, LAPD officials admit that they were never plugged in to the police station's monitoring bank.

Frustration about the broken cameras has deepened in recent days after a string of recent stabbings on a block in skid row. In one case, a 53-year-old man died after being stabbed and beaten by more than half a dozen attackers. No arrests have been made.

A camera is located just above where the stabbings occurred, but officials said it was not working properly.

"It is heartbreaking to see a network of cameras gifted to the LAPD sitting idle while perpetrators of violence get away with murder on our most dangerous streets," said Estela Lopez, the executive director of the Central City East Assn., which donated 10 cameras to monitor areas of skid row in 2006 at a cost of $200,000. "Just when the demand on the missions and shelters is going up, we need to use every tool we can to keep violence from ripping this community apart."

LAPD officials acknowledged that the department has not been properly maintaining or monitoring the three dozen or so downtown cameras.

One problem is that officers were not properly trained on how to use the camera system and ended up in some cases breaking it, according to police and business officials. Officers are supposed to monitor the cameras from a control room in the Central Police Station, using joysticks to manually pan, tilt and zoom the cameras. But the system sometimes overheated because it was placed in a room the size of a closet.

The department has struggled to find a vendor who can regularly maintain the cameras.

"It's like buying a car without an extended warranty," LAPD Deputy Chief Jose Perez Jr. said. "We know the reasons it doesn't work. Now we are trying to make it work."

The situation frustrates Police Commissioner Alan Skobin, who says it reflects a larger problem.

"We need to embrace technology, but it's important that when the department promises something to the public that they follow through," Skobin said. "The department has fallen short in meeting expectations in maintenance and repair provisions."

The LAPD has about 300 cameras around the city, including ones purchased from government grants and by business groups.

The cameras have been credited with helping the LAPD drive down crime in places like MacArthur Park and Hollywood Boulevard.

But there has been criticism that the LAPD doesn't have a coordinated system for maintaining the cameras. In 2008, the Police Commission slammed the department after it discovered that some of the cameras in MacArthur Park were not working and that the LAPD's Rampart Division didn't have the money to fix them.

Some of the inoperative cameras were caked with pigeon droppings.

The LAPD has since fixed those cameras. But Lopez, of the Central City East Assn., said she's been frustrated by the department's slow response to fixing the downtown cameras.

"Frankly, I got tired of asking," she said. "I threw my hands up. It seems like at every turn there was an impediment to putting these cameras to the use for which they were intended."

The camera installations coincided with a major effort to combat crime in downtown Los Angeles, which has seen a revitalization with new lofts, restaurants and shops in the last decade. Perez said crime has fallen significantly in downtown in recent years.

But still, he and others said, the cameras can be a strong tool for police if they are working properly.

"We need to do a much better job of capitalizing on the generosity of our public and private partners by effecting a comprehensive strategy to monitor these cameras," said Capt. Horace Frank of the LAPD Central Division. "I can assure the public that we are doing just that right now."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-police-camera-20111224,0,4429022,print.story

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TSA as holiday elf? TSA launches help line for disabled travelers

Just in time for the onslaught of Christmas travelers, the Transportation Security Administration has unveiled a help line designed to assist travelers with disabilities and special medical needs. If recent headlines are any indication, some travelers might say it should have come a little sooner.

The help line, TSA Cares, provides specific information on security and screening procedures at the airport.

“TSA Cares provides passengers with disabilities and medical needs another resource to use before they fly, so they know what to expect when going through the screening process,” said TSA Administrator John Pistole in a statement. “This additional level of personal communication helps ensure that even those who do not travel often are aware of our screening policies before they arrive at the airport.”

In November, the Transportation Security Administration instituted enhanced safety inspections that allow travelers who are asked to submit to a full-body scan to instead undergo a pat-down, which includes TSA agents using their hands to check areas such as the groin and around the bra.

The inspections drew the ire of some passengers, who have lodged thousands of complaints with the agency.

The agency has faced an especially strong barrage of criticism in recent weeks, with several elderly women accusing agents of partially strip-searching them. One had a defibrillator, another had a colostomy bag.

One lawmaker, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), even introduced a bill , called the STRIP Act, that would prevent TSA agents from wearing law enforcement uniforms and police-like badges unless they receive law enforcement training.

"Congress has sat idly by as the TSA strip searches 85-year-old grandmothers in New York, pats down 3-year-olds in Chattanooga, and checks colostomy bags for explosives in Orlando. Enough is enough!" she said at the time. "The least we can do is end this impersonation, which is an insult to real cops."

Into this atmosphere comes TSA Cares. (The toll-free number is [855] 787-2227.)

The agency said in its statement that, if passengers call 72 hours in advance of their trip, TSA Cares will coordinate checkpoint support at the airport.

There would seem to be plenty of potential for checkpoint support. The American Automobile Assn. forecasts that about 91.9 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more during the holiday travel season, a 1.4% increase from last year. This year's expected travel volume represents about 30% of the total U.S. population.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/

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From Google News

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Cuba to release 2,900 prisoners as goodwill gesture

President Raul Castro said the move was a goodwill gesture after receiving numerous requests by relatives and religious institutions.

But US national Alan Gross, who is serving 15 years for crimes against the state, is not among those to be freed.

On the separate issue of foreign travel for Cubans, President Castro said it was too early to lift restrictions.

The president told the National Assembly that those who urged a lifting of travel restrictions "are forgetting the exceptional circumstances under which Cuba lives, encircled by the hostile policy... of the US government".

Cubans require an exit visa to leave the country, and it is often denied to people who work in key professions or are out of favour with the authorities.

President Castro said that 86 foreign prisoners from 25 countries would be freed, and that diplomats would be notified shortly.

However, Cuban Vice Foreign Minister Josefina Vidal told the Associated Press that American Alan Gross - jailed for taking internet equipment to the Communist-run island - "is not on the list".

Havana's refusal to free him has led to frozen relations with the United States.

Alan Gross, 62, was detained in December 2009 while he was delivering computers and communications equipment to the Jewish community in Cuba. He was sentenced in March 2011.

He was working as a contractor for the US state department.

President Castro also cited an upcoming visit by Pope Benedict XVI among the reasons for the amnesty, saying the humanitarian act showed Cuba's strength, AP reports.

Cuba's governing body, the Council of State, said some people convicted of crimes against "the security of the state" were on the list.

"All of them have completed an important portion of their sentence and shown good behaviour," read an official government statement quoted by Prensa Latina.

However, the authorities stressed that those convicted of serious crimes like murder, espionage or drug trafficking would not be part of the amnesty.

Elizardo Sanchez, who leads the independent Cuban Commission on Human Rights, attacked the president for not talking about "depenalising the exercise of human rights".

Last July, President Castro agreed after talks with Catholic Church leaders to free the 52 dissidents still behind bars after the crackdown in 2003.

The mass arrests that year, which became known as Cuba's Black Spring, provoked widespread international condemnation.

The European Union called off co-operation with the island, which was only officially resumed in 2008.

Cuba denies holding any political prisoners, saying they are mercenaries in the pay of the US aiming to destabilise the government.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-16324331?print=true

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by JACQUES BILLEAUD, Associated Press

PHOENIX (AP) — America's self-proclaimed "toughest sheriff" has been dealt another setback to his immigration enforcement efforts by a federal judge's ruling that bars deputies from detaining people based solely on the suspicion that they're in the country illegally.

The ruling issued Friday sets the stage for a possible trial in a lawsuit that alleges racial profiling in the patrols in Arizona's Maricopa County, and would further limit Sheriff Joe Arpaio's immigration authority after Washington yanked his federal powers earlier this month.

Lawyers pushing the lawsuit on behalf of five Latino clients also won class-action status that lets other Hispanics join the case if they have been detained and questioned by Arpaio's deputies as either a driver or passenger in a vehicle since January 2007.

U.S. District Judge Murray Snow hasn't yet ruled on the ultimate question of racial profiling, but notes the case's evidence could lead a judge or jury to conclude that Arpaio's office racially profiles Latinos.

"Sheriff Arpaio has made public statements that a fact-finder could interpret as endorsing racial profiling," Snow said.

The judge noted that the sheriff has said that even without authority to enforce federal immigration laws, his officers can detain people based upon their speech or they appear to be from another country.

The 40-page ruling marked a qualified victory for the lawyers who pushed the lawsuit. They didn't get the case decided without going to trial, as they had hoped, but it came closer to the result they were looking for.

"We are encouraged by the Court's recognition of the strong evidence showing the (Maricopa County Sheriff's Office's) pattern and practice of racial profiling and its conducting of operations for reasons that are racially biased," Stan Young, lead attorney for those who filed the lawsuit, said in a written statement.

Arpaio won a small victory when the judge dismissed part of a claim by a Hispanic couple who are among the five people who filed the lawsuit.

Snow ruled that one of Arpaio's deputies had probable cause to pull over the couple on a closed roadway. The couple's illegal search claim was thrown out, but the judge didn't dismiss their racial profiling claim.

Messages left for Arpaio's lawyers weren't immediately returned late Friday.

The lawsuit alleges that Maricopa County officers made some traffic stops solely because Hispanics were driving. The plaintiffs say authorities had no probable cause to pull them over and made the stops only to question their immigration status.

Arpaio has denied the racial profiling allegations, saying people pulled over in the patrols were approached because deputies had probable cause to believe they had committed crimes and that it was only afterward that deputies found many were illegal immigrants.

During the patrols known as "sweeps," deputies flood an area of a city — in some cases, heavily Latino areas — over several days to seek out traffic violators and arrest other offenders. Illegal immigrants accounted for 57 percent of the roughly 1,500 people arrested in the 20 sweeps conducted by his office in earnest since January 2008.

Separate from the lawsuit, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a Dec. 15 report that accused Arpaio's office of having a pattern of racially profiling Latinos, basing immigration enforcement on racially-charged citizen complaints and punishing Hispanic jail inmates for speaking Spanish.

Arpaio faces a Jan. 4 deadline for saying whether he wants to work out an agreement to settle the civil rights allegations. The Justice Department has said it's prepared to sue Arpaio and let a judge decide the matter if no agreement can be worked out.

The Justice Department report prompted U.S. Department of Homeland Security to strip Arpaio's office of its federal powers to verify the immigration status of jail inmates. The severing of those ties came after an October 2009 decision by Homeland Security to take away the federal immigration arrest powers from 100 of Arpaio's deputies.

Arpaio is left with only state immigration laws to carry out his patrols — and those powers were limited by the judge Friday.

Apart from the lawsuit and civil rights report against the sheriff's office, a federal grand jury also has been investigating Arpaio's office on criminal abuse-of-power allegations since at least December 2009.

Grand jurors are examining the investigative work of the sheriff's anti-public corruption squad.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gHLvu3eHioMWtEv1-bZaN6gVecCA?docId=bfad499df1f34717bfa0279f45ef5aa7

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Ham for the Holidays

More than 100 families will have holiday ham dinners thanks to the generosity of Pinellas County Sheriff's deputies, Pinellas Suncoast firefighters and volunteers from the Calvary Episcopal Church.

Rev. Robert Wagenseil of Calvary Episcopal thanked the volunteers and blessed the meals.

"Most people see you when they get a ticket or they get sick. Add this to the list. They were hungry and you fed them. They were living alone and you visited them," Wagenseil said.

Publix provide the meals at a reduced rate. Each meal included a fully cooked 6 -7 pound ham, mashed potatoes with gravy, green beans, apple juice, iced tea, white sliced bread, peanut butter, Little Debbie Christmas cakes, candy canes, and heating instructions.

The holiday ham event is in its eighth year. Feeding families in need isn't just a holiday project. Throughout the year the church continues its work through the Beach Community Food Pantry. The pantry is open every week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at the Calvary Episcopal Church from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. at 1615 First St. in Indian Rocks Beach.

The pantry is always accepting monetary donations and all non-perishable food products, as well as pet food, to keep the pantry going. If anyone would like to help with holiday meals, or the food pantry, please contact the Calvary Episcopal Church at 727-595-2374, or see the church's website for additional information.

http://pinellasbeaches.patch.com/articles/ham-for-the-holidays

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