U.S. helicopter raid frees two aid workers from Somali pirates

Jessica Buchanan, a 32-year-old American, and Poul Hagen Thisted, 60-year-old Dane, both from the Danish Demining Group had been kidnapped in October in the central Somali town of Galkayo, which until then had been considered relatively safe for Westerners.

Early Wednesday, the Danish Refugee Council, of which the demining group is a part of, confirmed the successful rescue operation of the two aid workers.

The overnight raid was carried out by U.S. military hellicopters and Navy seals operating out of an American base in the tiny east African nation of Djibouti. After the mission, they returned to the Djibouti base with the two.

President Barack Obama appeared to refer to the mission just before the State of the Union address when he looked at Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, and said "Good job tonight."

The October kidnapping was one of a series of kidnappings of Westerners by Somali pirates in a bid to extort high ransoms. Several kidnappings occured late last year in Kenya, Somalia's southern neighbor, triggering a Kenyan invasion in a bid to restore a stable government, which continues to this day.

Western diplomats and aid workers have been using Galkayo as a base or entry point into Somalia, with diplomatic activity on the rise since the radical Islamic rebel group Al Shabab abandoned the capital Mogadishu and retreated to its southern stronghold.

Witnesses reported a gun battle that left several pirates dead, according to news agencies. Both hostages were unharmed in the rescue.

The AP reported that Bilal Hussein, a pirate, said he had been informed by other at the scene that nine pirates has been killed.

A second pirate, Ahmed Hashi, said two helicopters attacked at about 2 a.m. the pirate compound about 12 miles north of the Somali town of Adow.

Underscoring the growing dangers of operating from Galkayo, an American engineer was kidnapped there Saturday. Many other hostages remain in Somalia, including a British tourist, several other aid workers, shipping crews and others.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/01/us-military-rescue-somalia-pirates.html

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Accused serial arsonist pleads not guilty to 100 charges

A 24-year-old German national entered a not guilty plea Tuesday in connection with 100 arson-related charges stemming from a series of fires that terrorized Los Angeles over the New Year's weekend.

With the addition of 63 new counts, Harry Burkhart now faces 100 felony charges related to 49 blazes set between Dec. 30 and Jan. 2. Most of the fires began in automobiles but often spread to homes in Hollywood, West Hollywood, Sherman Oaks and surrounding areas.

Burkhart appeared in court wearing a yellow jailhouse shirt and pants and shackled at the waist. The judge set bail at $7.5 million.

Burkhart faces 75 counts of arson, 19 counts of arson of an inhabited dwelling, two counts of arson of an uninhabited building, two counts of attempt to burn and two counts of possession of flammable materials. If convicted of all charges he faces more than 80 years in prison.

Burkhart has now been tied by prosecutors to 49 of 51 blazes set in the largest arson event in decades, officials said.

Los Angeles police and fire investigators said the German national was motivated by his hatred of the United States after federal officials jailed his mother, who was facing deportation.

On the first night, fires were concentrated in areas close to where Burkhart and his mother lived, in the Hollywood and West Hollywood areas. Over the next three nights, the arson incidents spread into the Hollywood Hills and San Fernando Valley.

Los Angeles police said they have physical evidence tying Burkhart to the arsons, including fire-starting materials found inside his minivan when he was arrested.

The majority of the fires were started by what authorities described as a common wood-like fire-starting device found in stores. The devices are normally used to start fires in fireplaces or grills, according to sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case was ongoing.

Prosecutors and investigators say they have connected Burkhart to the crimes by physical evidence including DNA. They also have a photo of a device that he dumped when he entered the German Consulate.

Also, witnesses have identified Burkhart as being near the scene of several fires, the sources said.

Federal immigration officials said they believed Burkhart was in the U.S. on a visa that was due to expire Jan. 18. Dorothee Burkhart, the mother of Harry Burkhart, told a federal judge this month that her son is mentally ill.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/01/serial-arsonist-not-guilty-plea.html

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'Barefoot Bandit' calls authorities 'fools' and 'swine'

It was a contrite, remorseful Colton Harris-Moore who told a Washington state judge in December how sorry he was for his two-year crime spree as the "Barefoot Bandit." Then he apparently went back to jail and said what he really thought -- and the feds, unfortunately for him, were listening.

"Once again, I made it through a situation I shouldn't have," he chortled, referring to the sympathetic judge who sentenced him to 7 1/2 years in prison for the string of airplane, car, boat and equipment thefts that took him from Washington state to the Bahamas.

Calling the prosecutors and police who finally cornered him "swine," "fools" and "asses," the 20-year-old Harris-Moore said the relatively light sentence was "a much appreciated recognition and validation."

What about the earlier letter he wrote to the court when he said he'd learned so much from his harrowing attempt to pilot airplanes with no formal training, an experience that supposedly "pit[ted] me face to face with my own mortality"?

Not so sorry now.

"The things I have done as far as flying and airplanes goes, is amazing. Nobody on this planet [could] have done what I have, except for the Wright brothers," Harris-Moore said in a private email, monitored by authorities, last August from the federal detention center in Seattle.

"I, as a teenager with no formal education in aviation, was not only able to pilot multiple aircraft, fly one over a thousand miles to the Bahamas. Four out of the five airplanes were flown through inclement weather or night time -- or both, again, without any formal training," he boasted.

"I am confident that anyone else would have died -- you can't just jump in an airplane and fly at night or through weather, you HAVE to be instrument-rated, but I wasn't and actually taught myself how to fly instrument, which is inconceivable to most pilots and ALL instructors."

The emails were detailed in a memorandum filed by federal prosecutors in advance of Friday's hearing in Seattle, when a federal judge will decide how much time Harris-Moore should serve on his seven federal crimes.

His federal sentence is expected to be served concurrently with his 7 1/2-year state term, but it's unclear whether Harris-Moore will receive good-behavior credit for the 18 months he has already served, his lawyer, Emma Scanlan, told The Times.

U.S. Atty. Jenny A. Durkan is asking for a 78-month federal prison term. The defense is suggesting 70 months would be more appropriate, along with $1.4 million in restitution to victims, to be paid out of a movie deal with 20th Century Fox.

Scanlan said prosecutors "cherry-picked" Harris-Moore's boastful statements out of up to 1,500 pages of emails and phone transcripts, most of which reflected the former fugitive's genuine remorse about the long string of burglaries and break-ins that terrorized the remote San Juan Islands in Washington state, where Harris-Moore grew up.

"These are private communications our client sent to his friends and family," Scanlan said. "He has fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, he's impulsive, he's 20 years old and he's working through his feelings about what's going on," she said. "He may be a 20-year-old who's mad at a sheriff and doesn't like some of the state prosecutors, but ... they seem to have been unable to find an email that shows a lack of remorse towards his victims."

Federal prosecutors are arguing that Harris-Moore carried out a deliberate plan to accumulate cash and then escape to the Bahamas, where he was finally recognized and arrested in 2010.

"The evidence proves that Mr. Harris-Moore's criminal odyssey was carefully planned and entirely intentional," the federal sentencing memorandum said. "Mr. Harris-Moore took deliberate, focused action to enrich and entertain himself at others' expense, while evading capture for as long as possible."

The memo doesn't portray the 6-foot, 5-inch youth as entirely unsympathetic. It contains images of his whimsical scrawls of bare feet on the floor of a store he burglarized, with the words "C YA!" next to them. There is also a copy of a note he left at a veterinary clinic in Raymond, Wash., in 2010 along with $100 cash for "the care of animals."

But prosecutors emphasized the difference between the braggadocio of Harris-Moore's emails to friends and his apologetic letter to the court.

"Your honor, the term of my sentence which you hand down, I will serve with humility. I was wrong and I made mistakes beyond what words can express," said his letter to the state court in December.

In that hearing, defense lawyers presented evidence that Harris-Moore was the victim of an alcoholic mother and a string of abusive father figures, so he had to begin stealing from neighbors just to feed himself. Judge Vickie Churchill declined to impose the full 10-year-sentence sought by county prosecutors in December, calling Harris-Moore's survival of his troubled childhood a "triumph of the human spirit."

Harris-Moore was only partially grateful, his emails suggest.

"So the citizens (and sheriffs) are appeased, justice is served. It's all political. I'm thankful for the judge saying what she did, but at the same time her words were greater than her actions -- she had the ability as invested in her by the people to create change, and the opportunity to stand up with compassion, but didn't reach that potential," he wrote in a Dec. 29 email, two weeks after his state sentencing.

Still, Harris-Moore appeared characteristically confident. "The sentence was at the lowest-end of the range.... And I'll end up doing less than half of that, too. I won't be out tomorrow, but I have no doubt I will emerge unscathed, with my plans back on track. Just a matter of time, no doubt," he wrote.

"I will continue to write and correspond with the individuals who have been inspired by my story," he added. "Not to view me as a role model or what the media has created, but instead to learn from my mistakes and follow their own dreams."

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

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4 Connecticut officers charged with depriving Latinos of rights

Four police officers from East Haven, Conn., were arrested Tuesday morning on federal charges that they used their authority as cops to harass, intimidate and deprive Latinos of their rights, according to federal officials.

Federal authorities began investigating East Haven police in 2009 after local activists complained that police had abused Latinos. Last month, the Department of Justice released its findings, saying there was a pattern of discrimination at the Police Department.

Officers Dennis Spaulding, David Cari and Jason Zullo and Sgt. John Miller, president of the police union, were charged with conspiracy, deprivation of rights and obstruction of justice in a federal indictment released Tuesday morning. The three officers worked the 4 p.m. to midnight shift, often supervised by Miller.

The indictment alleges that the group, “acting under the color of law did knowingly and willfully conspire and agree together and with each other” ... “to injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate members of the East Haven community in the free exercise and enjoyment of rights.”

The four were arrested Tuesday and are expected to appear in federal court later in the day, federal officials said. Speaking before the court, lawyers for the group denied the charges and said their clients are excellent officers.

Among the specific acts cited as part of the conspiracy are the assault of individuals while they were handcuffed and unreasonable searches and seizures. In addition, the quartet is accused of violating the rights of Latinos not to be arrested and detained without probable cause. Miller repeatedly slapped a man handcuffed in his car, and Spaulding threw a man to the ground and kicked him while he was handcuffed, according to the indictment.

The indictment also accuses unnamed union leaders of trying to block misconduct investigations.

Mayor Joseph Maturo, who took office Nov. 19, said he backed his police. “I stand behind the Police Department,” he told the Associated Press. “We have a great Police Department.”

In 2009, the Rev. James Manship was working to document police harassment of Latino businessmen when he was arrested and jailed while videotaping police during an arrest. He was later released but complained to the Justice Department, which opened an investigation.

The complaint also accuses some officers of assaulting Latinos in police cars and at the station. The city of East Haven, the Police Department and 20 officers are defendants in a civil lawsuit, alleging discrimination and ethnic profiling.

The federal investigation in East Haven is one of 17 under way around the country, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department said Tuesday.

The Justice Department examined East Haven records from Jan. 1, 2009, to Dec. 31, 2010. It said there was a pattern of discrimination and of poor supervision.

For example, it found that about 40% of all traffic stops by one officer involved Latinos. Overall, the department stopped Latinos at a rate of 19.9%, though the town population of Latino drivers was about 8.3% and rises only to as much as 15.5% when the surrounding areas are included.

The East Haven Police Department has come under scrutiny previously. In 2003, a federal jury ruled that a white officer used excessive force and violated the rights of a black man he fatally shot after a chase.

East Haven is about 70 miles northeast of New York City. According to the 2010 census, it has about 30,000 people and is more than 88% white. About 10.3% of the people identify themselves as Latino, up from 4.4% in the 2000 census. The Police Department has about 50 uniformed officers.

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

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From Google News

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Restoring real community policing

Gangbuster

by Colin Ross

January 25, 2012

Bringing back what many people call community policing will not cure New Haven's crime problem. Because it never really left.

Huh? Look here, supposedly knowledgeable crime columnist, you might say, it's been well established that community policing in New Haven was dead. Media outlets declared its demise, city and police officials admitted as much and residents mourned its passing. Then Chief Dean Esserman was brought back to the city specifically to revive it. Why, even you, in a column just months ago, urged candidates in the Ward 1 aldermanic election to help bring back community policing.

All true — to a point. The death and revival of community policing has been the dominant narrative for New Haven policing, and a powerful one because it harkens back to the good old days of the 1990s when Esserman first helped implement community policing and sent crime plummeting. Who doesn't want to root for the triumphant return of the good guys? But the narrative is an incomplete and only partially accurate one.

The current perception of community policing is of a strategy that mainly involves building trust for the police in neighborhoods by engaging with the community and solving conflicts before they become crimes. That strategy was indeed developed in the early 1990s, but the rumors of its death have been greatly exaggerated. Each of New Haven's 10 police districts has a manager — he or she gets to know the neighborhood, its officers, its heroes and thugs and is given some measure of autonomy in making the strategy from headquarters match the needs of the district.

This decentralization is a key aspect of effective community policy and it never went away. Different district managers certainly do better or worse at implementing it, and lackluster leadership can lead some patrol officers away from community engagement. But go to any district's monthly management meeting of police and residents to this day and you will see a largely cohesive partnership that fosters coordination and mutual respect. But none of that respect prevented last year's 34 murders.

Okay, so if decentralization and community engagement aren't what's missing from the so-called return of community policing, then what is? Some might say walking beats — the return of set areas where officers patrol and interact with the community. Unlike neighborhood engagement, these actually have faded away in recent years. At his swearing-in ceremony, Esserman proudly announced that they would return, eliciting loud cheers and applause from the audience.

But though a very public symbol of community policing, are walking beats actually that central to the strategy's crime reduction? The man who hired Esserman, Mayor John DeStefano Jr., didn't think so in 2009, nor did the police chief, James Lewis. As Lewis told me at the time, “What we saw with foot patrols is that crime would move, but it would be just two blocks over. It never went away.” Lewis successfully cut crime by 10 percent and increased residents' and cops' confidence in the department without the much-heralded walking beats.

So not the walking beats. But what then? The answer is the often-overlooked aspect of 1990s community policing that goes against the approach's public perception: sending the right people to jail. Using the combined resources of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, the New Haven Drug Gang Task Force targeted and took out the city's largest and most violent drug gangs. The arrests were often built on the intelligence gathered from community engagement, demonstrating to all that police would protect residents and that violence and drug dealing that paralyzed neighborhoods would not be tolerated.

The dual experiences of New Haven and New York confirm the necessity for the aggressive enforcement side of community policing. In the 1980s, each city's police department was lost in the woods. The NHPD was relying on ineffective, faux-macho tactics such as the beat-down posse (speaks for itself), which aroused anger at the police and did little to fight crime. The NYPD was on the opposite track, forbidding patrol officers from making drug arrests and mandating community meetings over crime-fighting. This too aroused anger: residents wanted officers to actually fight crime, not just make nice. Former NYPD Chief William J. Bratton, Esserman's mentor, finally turned things around when he decentralized authority for fighting crime and wrested control of high-crime areas away from criminals. Just as in New Haven, thanks to community engagement and aggressive enforcement, the right people went to jail and crime rates plunged.

Police say that the city's current criminals are far less organized than their 1990s predecessors. This lack of central authority makes it much harder for the deterrence that comes with enforcement to stick. But there are ways — renowned criminologist David Kennedy has already visited and is trying to show New Haven how other cities have reduced violence using a combination of persuasion, incentives and force on criminals. That would be a real return to community policing, which New Haven does desperately need, but in its full, original form.

Colin Ross is a senior in Berkeley College. His column runs on Wednesdays. Contact him at colin.ross@yale.edu

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/jan/25/ross-restoring-real-community-policingf/?print

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