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From the Washington Times

U.S. Secret Service new rules: No boozing, racy bars

by Alicia A. Caldwell and Laurie Kellman

WASHINGTON (AP) — No excessive drinking — and no alcohol at all within 10 hours of working. Disreputable establishments are off limits, as is entertaining foreigners in the hotel room.

Those are among the tightened conduct rules the U.S. Secret Service issued Friday for its agents and employees. They apply even when traveling personnel are off duty.

The new behavior policies, issued in a memorandum obtained by The Associated Press, are the agency's latest attempt to shake off a prostitution scandal that surfaced as President Barack Obama was headed to a Latin American summit in Cartagena, Colombia .

The embattled Secret Service director, Mark Sullivan , urged agents and other employees to “consider your conduct through the lens of the past several weeks.”

Sullivan said the rules “cannot address every situation that our employees will face as we execute our dual-missions throughout the world.” He added: “The absence of a specific, published standard of conduct covering an act or behavior does not mean that the act is condoned, is permissible or will not call for — and result in — corrective or disciplinary action.”

“All employees have a continuing obligation to confront expected abuses or perceived misconduct,” Sullivan said.

Ethics classes will be conducted for agency employees next week.

The agency-wide changes were intended to staunch the embarrassing disclosures since April 13, when a prostitution scandal erupted in Cartagena involving 12 Secret Service agents, officers and supervisors and 12 more enlisted military personnel who were there ahead of Obama's visit to the Summit of the Americas.

But the new policies raised questions about claims that the behavior discovered in Cartagena was an isolated incident: Why would the Secret Service formally issue new regulations covering thousands of employees if such activities were a one-time occurrence?

“It's too bad commonsense policy has to be dictated in this manner,” said Sen. Charles Grassley, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “New conduct rules are necessary to preventing more shenanigans from happening in the future, and whether these are the best, and most cost effective, rules to stop future misconduct remains to be seen.”

The new rules did not mention prostitutes or strip clubs, but they prohibit employees from allowing foreigners — except hotel staff or foreign law enforcement colleagues — into their hotel rooms. They also ban visits to “non-reputable” establishments, which were not defined. The State Department was expected to brief Secret Service employees on trips about areas and businesses considered off-limits to them.

During trips in which the presidential limousine and other bulletproof vehicles are transported by plane, senior-level chaperones will accompany agents and enforce conduct rules, including one from the agency's Office of Professional Responsibility.

In a Wonderland moment, the operator of the “Lips” strip club in San Salvador, Dan Ertel, organized a news conference late Friday and said he didn't know whether any Secret Service employees were among his customers. Ertel said the club was the only one in the country where prostitutes don't work. But a dancer who identified herself by her stage name, Yajaira, told the AP earlier in the day that she would have sex with customers for money after her shift ended.

“You can pay for dances, touch a little, but there's no sex,” she said. “But if somebody wants, if they pay me enough, we can do it after I leave at 3 in the morning.”

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Peter King, praised the new rules as “very positive steps by the Secret Service to make clear what is expected of every agent and also makes clear what will not be tolerated.”

The Secret Service already has forced eight employees from their jobs and was seeking to revoke the security clearance of another employee, which would effectively force him to resign. Three others have been cleared of serious wrongdoing. The military was conducting its own, separate investigation but canceled the security clearances of all 12 enlisted personnel.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano assured senators earlier this week that the incident in Colombia appeared to be an isolated case, saying she would be surprised if it represented a broader cultural problem. The next day, the Secret Service acknowledged it was investigating whether its employees hired strippers and prostitutes in advance of Obama's visit last year to El Salvador. Prostitution is legal in both Colombia and El Salvador.

In a confidential message to senators on Thursday, the Secret Service said its Office of Professional Responsibility had not received complaints about officer behavior in El Salvador but would investigate.

On Capitol Hill, early signs surfaced of eroding support for the Secret Service director. Grassley said Sullivan 's job could be secure if the scandal were an isolated incident. “But if it goes much deeper, you know, nothing happens or nothing's changed in Washington if heads don't roll,” Grassley said on CBS “This Morning.”

The White House said the president remained supportive of Sullivan and confident in the capabilities of the Secret Service.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/28/us-secret-service-new-rules-no-boozing-racy-bars/

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Child migrant surge to U.S. stresses support system

by Christopher Sherman

McALLEN, Texas (AP) — An unprecedented surge of children caught trudging through South Texas scrublands or crossing at border ports of entry into the U.S. without their families has sent government and nonprofit agencies scrambling to expand their shelter, legal representation and reunification services. On any given day this year, the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement has been caring for more than 2,100 unaccompanied child immigrants.

The influx came to light last week when 100 kids were taken to Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio for temporary housing. It was the first time the government has turned to the Defense Department — now, 200 boys and girls younger than 18 stay in a base dormitory.

While the issue of unaccompanied minors arriving in the U.S. isn't new, the scale of the recent increase is. From October 2011 through March, 5,252 kids landed in U.S. custody without a parent or guardian — a 93 percent increase from the same period the previous year, according to data released by the Department of Health and Human Services. In March alone, 1,390 kids arrived.

“The whole community right now is in triage mode,” said Wendy Young, executive director of Kids in Need of Defense, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that matches pro bono attorneys with unaccompanied minors navigating the immigration system. “It's important that the resources and the capacity meet the need, and we're not quite there yet.”

The Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities in 10 states range from shelters to foster homes and have about 2,500 beds. Government-contracted shelters were maxing out their emergency bed space, setting up cots in gymnasiums and other extra spaces.

“It's a much more limited set of services,” said Lauren Fisher of the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project, which helps children and their families navigate the system. “It felt something like a Red Cross shelter, a hurricane shelter.”

Unaccompanied children are first processed by the Department of Homeland Security , and then turned over to the ORR while the deportation process begins. Once in a shelter, the search begins for their relatives or an acceptable custodian, while nonprofit organizations try to match the children with pro bono attorneys. When a custodian is found, the child can leave the shelter and await immigration proceedings.

Eighty percent of the children referred to the ORR end up in a shelter, according to a report released last month by the Vera Institute of Justice — a nonprofit that developed a program to better provide access to legal services for children. The average shelter stay is 61 days, and the report found that at least 65 percent of the kids end up with a sponsor in the U.S.

The cause of the surge remains a mystery to child migrant advocates and government officials. The kids are coming from the same places as usual — Guatemala , El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico — and they offer the same range of explanations: they made the trek to look for parents already in the U.S.; they're seeking economic opportunity to send money home; they want to escape violence or abuse.

“We're talking to the children, but we don't have one solid answer,” Fisher said. “There seem to be the same reasons that we've seen before.”

Some have suggested that human smugglers are more aggressively marketing their services. Others wonder if the Border Patrol, whose presence has doubled in recent years, is simply catching more of them. But Border Patrol apprehensions of children and adults were cut in half from 2008 to 2011, and only 5 percent of those caught are unaccompanied children. Younger children commonly cross with adult smugglers at the ports of entry, while older kids join groups that follow guides through the brush.

A South Texas woman told border authorities this month that the 5-year-old girl accompanying her at the international bridge connecting Hidalgo, Texas, and Reynosa, Mexico, was her sister, according to court records. She even presented a Texas birth certificate. But the girl couldn't answer basic questions, so the woman told customs officers that she wasn't related to the girl at all. She said that a man whom she worked with in Mexico offered her $2,000 to “cross” the girl — who was actually from Guatemala — and accompany her to Houston. The woman was charged with transporting an illegal immigrant.

This week, the first ladies of Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala spoke at a three-day conference on unaccompanied minors in Washington, D.C. Mexico 's first lady, Margarita Zavala, and Honduran counterpart Rosa Elena Bonilla de Lobo noted that tougher U.S. border security made it more difficult for parents working in the U.S. to return for their children, a suggestion as to why parents increasingly would put their children in a smuggler's care.

“The statistics are worrisome,” said Rosa Maria Leal de Perez, Guatemala 's first lady. “We've had 6,000 unaccompanied children repatriated in the last year.”

The Department of Health and Human Services limited its public statements on the unaccompanied migrant children program, but it allowed a few reporters to take a short tour this week of the housing at Lackland Air Force base. They were not allowed to speak with children.

The beige, nondescript four-story dormitory is located deep on the base. When children arrive, they are issued black duffel bags filled with clothing and are allowed two phone calls a week. Three-quarters of the children are boys, most between 14 and 17 years old.

Green cots were spaced two feet apart along the stark-white walls. A media room held a large flat-screen television and a video game console; there were also board games and an outside area with a basketball hoop and two soccer goals. The kids play outside for an hour each day.

“We are looking to add some educational features that are appropriate for a 30-day temporary program,” HHS spokesman Jesse Garcia said, though the goal is to move kids to more established accommodations within 15 days.

As of late Friday, 83 kids had already been transferred out of Lackland, most to permanent facilities. Nineteen had been reunited with family.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/28/child-migrant-surge-us-stresses-support-system/

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House moves ahead with cybersecurity bill

by Donna Cassata

WASHINGTON — House Speaker John Boehner on Thursday defended a cybersecurity bill as a common-sense approach to stopping electronic attacks on critical infrastructure and companies, rejecting White House criticism that the measure could lead to invasion of Americans' privacy.

“The White House believes the government ought to control the Internet, government ought to set standards, and government ought to take care of everything that's needed for cybersecurity,” Boehner told reporters at his weekly news conference. “They're in a camp all by themselves.”

The Obama administration has threatened to veto the bill, which the House began considering on Thursday. The bipartisan bill would encourage corporations and the government to share information collected through the Internet to thwart attacks from foreign governments, terrorists and cybercriminals. The information sharing would be voluntary.

The administration argues that the bill falls short of preserving Americans' privacy by failing to set security standards and broadly allowing liability protection for companies that share information. The administration wants the Homeland Security Department to have the primary role in overseeing domestic cybersecurity.

“Cybersecurity and privacy are not mutually exclusive,” the White House said.

Boehner argued that the bill is an appropriate first step that will allow communication while moving to prevent cyberterrorism.

The House was weighing 16 amendments to the bill, with a final vote expected on Friday. At the start of debate, Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., complained that the measure would allow companies to share information with the government, including the National Security Agency .

The bill, Polis said, would create a “false choice between security and liberty.”

Yet White House opposition is not expected to derail the House bill, which has bipartisan support, Republicans and Democrats said Wednesday.

“It certainly will have an impact, I think, on the margin of the vote, but the bill is still likely to pass,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. who had hoped to amend the bill by limiting the government's ability to collect information, such as birthdays, that could be used to identify individuals. His measure reflected the concerns of the White House, but Republicans refused to allow its consideration.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., asked if she would support the bill, did not respond directly. “It's very difficult,” she told reporters, adding that several other Democrats had concerns.

Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has worked closely with Rep. C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger of Maryland, the panel's top Democrat, on the overall legislation as well as on several amendments to clarify parts of the measure. Republicans, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and companies such as Facebook and Google are receptive to the legislation because it does not impose new regulations that require business to share information, making that step voluntary.

“The basis for the administration's view is mostly based on the lack of critical infrastructure regulation, something outside of our jurisdiction,” Rogers and Ruppersberger said in a joint statement late Wednesday after the administration veto threat. “We would also draw the White House's attention to the substantial package of privacy and civil liberties improvement announced yesterday, which will be added to the bill on the floor.”

The committee had approved the bill on a 17-1 vote.

The administration backs a Senate bill sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, giving Homeland Security the authority to establish security standards.

“The government applies safety standards for cars, food, building structures and toys, to name a few,” Lieberman, Collins and Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said in a statement. “Why not do the same for the infrastructure that powers our economy and provides us with the highest standard of living in the world?”

However, that legislation remains stalled, facing opposition from senior Senate Republicans.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said during a hearing last month that the Homeland Security Department is “probably the most inefficient bureaucracy that I have ever encountered” and is ill-equipped to determine how best to secure the nation's essential infrastructure. McCain has introduced a competing bill.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/26/house-moves-ahead-cybersecurity-bill/

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From Google News

Portland using stats to curb crimes before they become a trend

by Seth Koenig

PORTLAND, Maine — Lt. Gary Rogers of the Portland Police Department says crime statistics increasingly are being used to initiate a nearly real-time response to the community's needs.

Portland police don't typically look for trends over periods of several years, he said, but rather over recent weeks and months. The practice helps commanders assign more officers to a neighborhood where certain crimes are peaking.

“We want to be able to address crime as soon as we can,” Rogers told the Bangor Daily News. “If we see a high number of car break-ins in a particular neighborhood, for instance, there are certain things we can do to prevent those things from happening. It could just be a matter of having more officers more visibly on patrol in that area. Sooner or later the guy who breaks into cars is going to get caught. If we can get him sooner, he's going to have committed [fewer] crimes.”

Reflecting that philosophy, one of Police Chief Michael J. Sauschuck's first initiatives upon his appointment as chief in February was the creation of a Community Police Advisory Board. Its membership includes members of the local business and religious communities, educators, residents and youths reflecting the diversity of Portland's neighborhoods.

Although that board is just getting rolling, it already has identified graffiti, youth connections and absentee landlord issues as initial priorities. The expectation is that the board will help the police department prioritize its enforcement and community policing efforts, as well as share information with neighborhoods about police strategies and operations.

Other crime-prevention initiatives include community policing centers in Parkside, West End, Midtown, Munjoy Hill and Portland Housing neighborhoods and “directed patrol” teams that target neighborhoods experiencing specific crime problems such as drug-dealing or prostitution. They work in the neighborhood, often undercover, until the crime problem is eliminated and then move on to another neighborhood to tackle its crime problems.

In a recent example of how those various initiatives are coordinated, Rogers cited a string of burglaries in the Old Port's commercial district this winter.

“We made some arrests but the burglaries would continue,” Rogers said.

The Old Port burglaries came up for discussion at the department's weekly meeting to flag recent crime trends and devise appropriate strategies to catch the criminals, he said. A community-policing officer was assigned to meet with business owners to alert them about the recent commercial break-ins. Pamphlets were distributed, encouraging people to report any suspicious activities in the Old Port shopping district, particularly after hours.

A break came on March 1 when patrol officers on the Old Port beat found an open door, Rogers said. They immediately called evidence technicians to the scene and the fingerprint evidence they recovered led to the arrest of a 53-year-old Portland man the next day on a charge of burglary.

The point of the story, Rogers said, isn't only that fast work on processing evidence helped the Crime Reduction Unit make an arrest; it's that a whole array of police resources and approaches immediately were put to work in the Old Port.

“The case could have been solved in another way,” Rogers said, noting an eyewitness could have reported something looking suspicious and that tip, instead of the fingerprints, could have led to the arrest.

Portland police officials, who are nearing the release of their official 2011 crime data, say they're hoping these proactive prevention approaches lead to a reduction in crimes at a time when the still-struggling economy and rampant prescription drug abuse might push the crime numbers in the opposite direction.

Rogers said the force set a goal of reducing overall crime in the city by 5 percent in 2011. While the last of the figures are being crunched in anticipation of a release early next month, Rogers said he's optimistic the police reached the milestone.

That would follow a recent report by the Institute for Economics and Peace that Maine once again ranked as the most peaceful state in the country — based on a formula that heavily weighs crime and incarceration rates.

According to statistics reported by the Illinois-based Advameg Inc. and its website city-data.com, Portland saw fewer cases of assault and arson in 2010 — 74 and 7, respectively — than at any point in the previous decade.

High numbers between 2000 and 2010 for those crimes came in 2005, when the city experienced 125 cases of assault, and 2008, a year when it saw 34 arsons.

Auto thefts declined annually from 2006 until 2010, according to city data, sliding from 193 in 2006 to just 76 in the last year for which numbers are officially available.

Drug use fuels robberies, murders

Some crimes in Portland steadily increased between 2000 and 2010, including robberies and murders. Advameg's website tracked only 56 robberies at the beginning of the decade and 129 at the end, although 2010's figure is down from a 2006 crest of 149 such crimes. There were no homicides in Portland in 2000, between one and three each year between 2001 and 2007, and four each in 2008 and 2009. In 2010, there were six.

Rogers said that robbery and murder figures in Portland can likely be traced back to increased drug use.

“It seems 15 years ago we were seeing bank robberies, but now we're seeing pharmacy robberies,” he said.

Mark Rubin, a research associate at the University of Southern Maine's Muskie School of Public Service who helps compile and track crime numbers for the state of Maine, agreed with Rogers that drug use is tied to an increase in certain types of crimes.

“Ten years ago I think a majority of your drug arrests were for marijuana,” Rubin said. “Now you're seeing more serious types of drugs. If you're talking about drugs that are far more addictive in nature, you're potentially seeing more crimes tied to those addictions.”

Theft, burglary and rape figures over the decade zigzagged in Portland, with no apparent trends. Thefts, for instance, numbered 2,120 in 2000, 2,547 in 2002, 2,332 in 2004, 2,709 in 2006, 2,157 in 2008 and 2,246 in 2010.

Rubin said that as Portland police have worked over time to perfect their week-to-week or month-to-month crime analyses in an effort to pinpoint where resources are most needed at any given time, it might have caused crime statistics to be unpredictable even as the city has become a safer place. He said having more police in targeted areas might mean crimes that would have gone unreported before are now showing up in the numbers.

“I know Portland is more aware of what's happening in the city, using technology to identify hot spots of crime, so consequently there might be better enforcement,” Rubin said. “Portland police may focus more on covering the Old Port late in the night, for instance. If there are going to be more police in high crime areas, there may be more crimes in the statistics.”

http://bangordailynews.com/2012/04/27/news/portland/portland-using-stats-to-curb-crimes-before-they-become-a-trend/?ref=videos

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Racial progress evident 20 years after Los Angeles riots

Fla. case a key test as tension simmers anew

by Marisol Bello, Haya El Nasser, and William M. Welch

LOS ANGELES - Twenty years after the Los Angeles riots that left dozens of people dead, neighborhoods in charred ruins and the nation soul-searching over the role race plays in the criminal justice system, Rodney King's plaintive "Can we all get along?" still resonates.

The King beating, seen in a grainy videotape of four White officers waling on an unarmed Black man, became a symbol of injustice for a nation with a 300-year history of racial strife -- so powerful that on April 29, 1992, when the officers were acquitted of state charges of assault and excessive force, inner-city Los Angeles erupted.

Now, the calls for fairness are heard 2,500 miles away in Sanford, Fla., in the chants of "Justice for Trayvon" as the nation wrestles with the death of Trayvon Martin. The unarmed Black teen was shot and killed by a White Hispanic neighborhood-watch volunteer who thought the youth looked suspicious.

The shooter, George Zimmerman, claimed self-defense. Authorities did not charge him until widespread public attention and nationwide rallies called for his arrest. He has pleaded not guilty.

Both cases, 20 years apart, intensify the persistent debate over how fairly Black men are treated by police and the courts. Activists, scholars and some of those involved in the cases say the incidents occurred because of a stereotype of Black men as violent aggressors.

"It's about bullying a Black man," says King, 47, who is traveling the country to promote his memoir, "The Riot Within: My Journey from Rebellion to Redemption."

"This time, a young man was bullied to death. I'm still alive; Trayvon Martin is not here."

There are differences between the cases, of course. King, then 25, was speeding and driving drunk when police stopped him in March 1991. Trayvon, 17, was walking home from a store when Zimmerman, 28, confronted him.

Still, the presumption exists that if a Black man is involved in an incident, he must be the wrongdoer, says Michelle Jacobs, a law professor at the University of Florida who studies the effect of race in prosecutions.

"It happened with Rodney King, and it's why it took Trayvon's parents and national protests before his parents could get a legitimate investigation of their son's death," she says.

Jacobs says the anger and frustration that fueled the Los Angeles riots still exists in minority communities, where people fear they will not be treated fairly by police and the courts.

But the chances that anger will break out into riots might be diminished today.

"Politically, things are different," says activist Al Sharpton, who has been holding rallies with the Martin family over their son's death. He notes that much has changed in 20 years, including the election of the first Black president and the appointment of the first Black attorney general.

But because violence is always a concern, Sharpton says, Trayvon's parents and the attorneys in the case have been calling for peaceful protests since the beginning.

The anger in the Trayvon case is palpable. The New Black Panthers offered a $10,000 bounty for Zimmerman before he was arrested. Social-media sites such as Twitter are awash with threats against him. In two incidents, Blacks allegedly beat White men in retribution for Trayvon's death.

"We don't want a repeat of 20 years ago," Sharpton says. "The worst thing that can happen is that you have an explosion and no change."

Mark O'Mara, Zimmerman's attorney, has called for calm so his client can receive a fair trial.

"He's been charged. He's been arrested. He's a criminal defendant now," O'Mara said after Zimmerman's arrest on April 11. "Let the process work. Let's not prejudge anyone any longer. The worst thing that can happen in this case is that it doesn't get tried properly."

Laurie Levenson, a Loyola Law School professor who was a frequent commentator on the King case and is following the Trayvon Martin case, noted a sense of calm with the recent protests.

"It's either we're all aging and slowing down, or there has been a learning curve and a more responsible approach is taken," she says.

"The riots didn't accomplish as much as people would want," Levenson says, recounting the death toll of 53 and the $1 billion in damages. People may now be asking, "How do we get attention in a way that's more positive?"

Much has changed in Los Angeles and the South Central neighborhood where the riots began two decades ago. Many middle-class African-American families moved out and immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries moved in.

Driving through the heart of the area, it's easy to miss the scars that remain from the 1992 riots. Most businesses have been rebuilt. The area appears busy, if not prosperous. Yet many stores, strip shopping centers and homes have iron bars on doors and windows.

Some of the first reports of violence, less than two hours after the verdict was announced, came at the intersection of Florence and Normandie avenues. It became the flash point for the riots as news cameras captured a mob pulling a White man, Reginald Denny, from his truck and beating him, nearly killing him before he was rescued.

The riots lasted six days and highlighted tensions between the Black community and the police, as well as between Black residents and Korean store owners, whose businesses were attacked.

One of the businesses at that corner remains: Tom's Liquor. James Oh, 62, is a Korean-American, a retired Army veteran who purchased Tom's with two partners three years ago. He says the business changed hands three times after the riots.

"When I bought this, I didn't think about 20 years ago what happened. I just wanted to make it a community store," he says, adding that he has put a lot of effort and energy into establishing good local relations and even extends credit to some regulars.

Teresa Jennings, 48, operates T. Jennings Bail Bonds. One of her offices, just down the street from the Southeast police station, burned during the riots. She says some things have changed -- such as more Hispanics in the neighborhood -- but crime, poverty and racial unease remain.

"There was just so much tension during those times," she says.

Now, Jennings says, police are much more responsive to the community's needs. "They've put more officers on patrol. And their approach to the community is a lot nicer."

Jennings sees strong parallels with the tensions in her community 20 years ago and the national outrage that Trayvon Martin's killing has created now. The video of King's beating at the hands of police drew national attention and inflamed local passions.

In the 20 years since the riots, Los Angeles has slowly been transforming into a model for cities trying to improve relations between police and minority communities, says Constance Rice, a civil-rights lawyer and co-founder of the Advancement Project in Los Angeles who worked to reform the Police Department.

"The LAPD was a real menace in the Black community," she says. "It was an ugly dynamic. That was the backdrop."

Rice says the arrival of Police Chief William Bratton from New York City in 2001 brought major change as the department focused on community policing, hiring more minority officers and firing or punishing officers for wrongdoing. "It transformed the mind-set," she says. "They are no longer hunters. They're part of the community."

The King beating and other videotaped incidents of police using what appeared to be excessive force brought more attention to use-of-force policies in departments across the nation, says Darrel Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

At the same time, non-lethal tools such as pepper spray and stun guns became widely available, he says. Later, video cameras in police cruisers and even on officers provided more accountability.

Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, says police have made advances in resolving conflicts peacefully and minimizing the use of force.

"Most police agencies today have adopted community policing and have made accountability and transparency a part of everything they do," he says. "That is not to say that today's police departments are perfect. But they clearly are much more professional than they were in 1992."

Others with close ties to the King case say the post-riot years have brought more scrutiny of police conduct and a citywide push for private investment in violence-torn neighborhoods.

The Rev. Cecil "Chip" Murray was pastor of First African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Central during the King case.

Much like the Rodney King case, he says, the Trayvon Martin shooting is "a classic case of our history and of the abuse of power."

"All the people are asking for is fairness and equity and that the court be impartial and be led by the facts," Murray says. If that happens, "we will have a cool climate." If not, "then we have the possibility of explosion."

Steven Clymer, one of the two prosecutors in the case against the four officers charged with violating King's civil rights, says the federal trial -- in which two of the officers were convicted -- showed that minorities can get a fair shake in the court system. Federal charges were filed after the officers were acquitted of state charges.

"To me, the importance of our case, our prosecution, was that it demonstrated that the outcome in a criminal case didn't depend on the race of the victim or the color of the victim's skin," says Clymer, now chief of the criminal division of the Northern District of New York for the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Lawyer Harland Braun, who successfully defended Officer Theodore Briseno, says that today, the public seems less likely to make "an instant judgment" about Zimmerman's guilt.

"In Rodney King, people said, 'That's it. I saw it. They beat him.' ... We got a video of it. Everyone, including myself, jumped to conclusions about what happened."

He doesn't see that in the Trayvon case. "I don't know what's going to happen with the verdict, but it's not going to be an instant judgment."

"The problem is that actual incidents like Rodney King and this case become symbolic for wrongs in general," Braun says. "I have some issues whether Rodney King was really racial. ... Anger was really more directed at the system."

The Martin case will be a test of how much change there has been in 20 years, says Benjamin Crump, the attorney for Martin's parents. Crump recalls watching the King verdict as a college student and wondering how the police could go unpunished after a beating seen on tape.

Thursday, Martin's parents were at a rally in Los Angeles, three days before the anniversary of the riots.

"You want to believe change has happened," Crump says. "We will get a more definitive answer when the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case is rendered."

King, the man at the center of the turmoil 20 years ago, says he hopes Martin's family finds justice.

"I think we are getting along better, but it's a slow process," King says, noting his example. After two of the officers were found guilty in federal court, he was eventually awarded $3.8 million by a civil jury.

"You learn patience," he says. "It was a fight all the way, but I did get justice."

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2012/04/27/20120427racial-progress-evident-20-years-los-angeles-riots.html

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From the FBI

Helping Victims of Crime
Therapy Dog Program a First for the Bureau

(Video on site)

Rachel Pierce is a victim specialist in our Office for Victim Assistance. Her partner is an 8-year-old German Shepherd/Siberian Husky mix, and together they form a unique and remarkable team.

The FBI uses a variety of working dogs, highly capable canines that can sniff out drugs and bombs, bolster security, and alert their handlers when they pick up the scent of blood. But Dolce, with his shimmering yellow coat and steel blue eyes, is the Bureau's one and only therapy dog.

The job of a victim specialist, or VS, is to ensure that victims receive the rights they are entitled to under federal law and the assistance they need to cope with crime. With his lovable personality, Dolce excels at comforting crime victims and their families. The story of how he became a VS—of the K9 variety—is a story in itself.

Pierce, a psychologist who worked for the Department of Defense and law enforcement before joining the Bureau about five years ago, suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic inflammatory disease whose symptoms can be debilitating when they strike. In 2004, she went to a local shelter looking for a puppy she could train to be a service dog. That's where she found Dolce.

“I thought it would be nice to have a dog that did some things around the house for me when my symptoms flared up,” she said. “There are days I can't move or even lift a sheet.”

After extensive service dog training, Dolce learned how to turn light switches on and off, load laundry in the washing machine, and even retrieve drinks from the refrigerator. “He is a very good service dog,” said Pierce, who is based in our Nashville Resident Agency. “But service dogs are not supposed to interact with the public.”

That was a problem, because Dolce loves people. Pierce soon realized that Dolce's intelligence and temperament would make him a terrific therapy dog. She knew from her military experience that the Army has a successful therapy dog program, and she set out to introduce a something similar at the FBI.

On her own, Pierce undertook an extensive training regimen with Dolce, and he passed registration exams given by Pet Partners and other organizations. In 2009, after spending many volunteer hours taking Dolce to nursing homes, camps for grieving children, and other places that use therapy dogs, Pierce's proposal for the K9-Assisted Victim Assistance Program was approved by the FBI and adopted as a pilot program.

Since then, she and Dolce have had a very positive impact, comforting victims and their families in murder cases, kidnappings, and bank robberies, where Dolce's presence is a calming influence on tellers who minutes before may have had a gun pointed in their faces.

Studies have shown that the presence of an animal in a stressful situation can produce a calming effect, Pierce said. “It can lower blood pressure and make you feel more relaxed.” In the immediate aftermath of a bank robbery, for example, a calm witness can better relay information about the crime to investigators.

“We have worked a lot of cases together,” Pierce said, “helping victims of child pornography and even white-collar crime, where senior citizens lost their life savings to investment scam artists. Dolce has helped a lot of people,” she added. “I am so proud of him for all the lives he has touched in a positive way.”

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2012/april/therapy-dog_042712/therapy-dog_042712