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May 23, 2013

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California

Questions raised about huffing after college student in Claremont dies from allegedly inhaling nitrous oxide

Law enforcement say inhaling nitrous oxide is becoming common

CLAREMONT -- Law enforcement officials said inhaling nitrous oxide - which apparently killed a Claremont McKenna College student last week - is becoming abused by more and more people seeking a high, especially teens and young adults.

Ali Wallace Mirza, 19, was pronounced dead about 2 a.m. Friday at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center. Police officers reportedly found used nitrous oxide containers, also known as whippets, that are used in the food-preparation industry. Nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, is also used as an anesthetic in medical settings.

Los Angeles County sheriff's Capt. Michael Parker said Wednesday "we have found the abuse of nitrous oxide is very prevalent" among people under 21. Veronica De Alba, a deputy city attorney for Los Angeles, said Mirza's death is not an isolated incident. "Unfortunately, we're seeing usage on the rise in California, especially in Southern California," De Alba said.

http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_23301566/huffing-raises-questions-after-death-claremont-college-student

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Why power down our phones on planes? The questions fly

When Kenneth Kirchoff notices that an airline passenger has failed to power off his gadget as instructed, he'll politely point out the oversight. He might use a nonconfrontational line such as this: "Excuse me — did you realize that you didn't turn off your device?" What he doesn't mention during this brief interaction is who he is, what he knows and why you should listen to him.

If he won't share, I will.

Kirchoff is a research and development engineer with Boeing. Since 2003, he has been testing aircraft to ensure the safe usage of portable electronic devices (PEDs) onboard, focusing on how signals emitted from passengers' gadgets can muddle pilots' communications, navigation or surveillance systems. His conclusion: "Interference is possible."

The debate over PED use on planes has turned into a seething nest of Angry Birds. On one side are passengers, legislators such as Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and electronics manufacturers and suppliers. These folks question the science, and sense unfairness in the rule requiring travelers to unplug all devices during takeoff and landing. This contingent wants its e-readers, its tablets, its DVD players, its video games, its Words With Friends (that one's for you, Alec Baldwin) and other techy diversions for the entire span of the journey — not just the middle portion.

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_23297804/why-power-down-our-phones-planes-questions-fly

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Texas

Force Protection Excercise: Tests Fort Hood, community response to disaster

Suspicious packages at Central Texas College and Harker Heights High School, an explosion at a building on post and a fuel spill into an installation waterway served as training scenarios for Fort Hood's annual postwide Force Protection Exercise May 14-16.

The annual training event tests the installation's emergency response capabilities and ability to work with outside organizations in the event of a real-world incident.

“An exercise like this is very important to us,” Incident Commander and Fort Hood Fire Chief Billy Rhoads said. “It prepares us for a real-world incident.”

The most visible response during the exercise though was the arrival of police, fire and emergency medical assets and personnel as they converged on the exercise's most graphic scenario, an explosion at Resource Management's Bldg. 4613.

Victims made-up to illustrate the types of traumatic injuries seen in an explosion littered the area around the building.

http://www.forthoodsentinel.com/story.php?id=11364

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Mississippi

Moss Point taking new look at 2006 double murder cold case, asking community for assistance

MOSS POINT, Mississippi -- Moss Point Police Chief Keith Davis announced today that he is reopening a 2006 double murder cold case and has been approved to use drug forfeiture money to bring in a team of cold case specialists to bring justice in the deaths of Gary Riley and Brandon Taylor.

Riley and Taylor were shot, killed and robbed as they sat in a vehicle in a Moss Point subdivision in April of 2006.

Two suspects were arrested - LeDerrick Brown and Terrance Coleman, both of Moss Point - but the charges were dismissed right before they went to trial on capital murder trial because of the loss of evidence by the previous administration of Moss Point chief Sheila Smallman.

"We want to send a message that this case has not been forgotten," Davis said as he spoke to members of the victims' families and the media. "It's important to me to bring resolution to this case. It's important to the mayor and the board and the community."

Davis denied to reveal how much drug forfeiture money was approved for the outside cold case investigative team or to identify them specifically.

http://blog.gulflive.com/mississippi-press-news/2013/05/moss_point_taking_new_look_at.html

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May 22, 2013

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FBI suspect fatally shot; possible Boston link

WESH-TV says the victim and a friend were questioned about bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

An FBI agent shot and killed an Orlando man early Wednesday who had been questioned for several hours about his alleged ties to Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the victim's friend told local media.

FBI officials have confirmed that a man died while one of its agents was "conducting official duties," the Orlando Sentinel reports, but would not elaborate.

The Sentinel and WESH-TV identified the victim as 27-year-old Ibragim Todashev.

The television station quotes Khusn Taramiv, a friend of the victim, as saying both of them had been questioned for almost three hours Tuesday about the Boston bombing case.

Taramiv said his friend knew Boston bombings suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev because they were both mixed martial-arts fighters, WESH and The Sentinel report.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/05/22/fbi-boston-bombing-killed-orlando/2350065/

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California

Modesto police chief makes lieutenants responsible for city quadrants

MODESTO -- Modesto Police Chief Galen Carroll has implemented a plan he said will make the department more accountable and strengthen the connection between officers and the people they protect. He spoke about the plan Tuesday afternoon before the Modesto Rotary Club during a luncheon at the DoubleTree Hotel.

http://www.modbee.com/2013/05/21/2726348/modestos-top-cop-makes-lieutenants.html

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Community Leaders Say Gun Violence In The East Bay Is A Public Health Crisis (Analysis)

An Assembly hearing focusing on rising gun violence in the East Bay instead evolved into a string of community and faith-based leaders clamoring for answers over how to heal what they say is the root cause of violence in places like Oakland: socio-economic despair.

Oakland Assemblyman Rob Bonta, chair of the Assembly Select Committee on Gun Violence in the East Bay brought three panels of local officials, youth counselors and pastors together Friday to discuss the continuing rise even in crime less than 24 hours after the city suffered two more homicides Thursday night. Thirty-seven homicides have occurred in Oakland this year.

Even as an ambitious package of gun control bills sponsored by Bonta, Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner and State Sen. Loni Hancock wind through the Legislature, most panelists instead chose to focus on ideas that will foster hope, rather than the need to pick up a firearm and shoot.

Olis Simmons, a community organizer with Oakland's Youth UpRising says gang activity — the often mentioned cause of gun violence — is not the issue. “It's a clique issue,” she says, resulting from staggering unemployment in Oakland, especially in the black and Latino community, and fear. “They carry guns not because they're a predator, but because they're desperate to feel safe.”

http://oaklandlocal.com/2013/05/community-leaders-say-gun-violence-in-the-east-bay-is-a-public-health-crisis-analysis/

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May 21, 2013

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Chicago Police Return to Community Policing

The new initiative also is designed to beef up the police presence in tough neighborhoods

Flashlights in hand, the five rookie Chicago cops were walking along a darkened stretch of the gang-infested South Side neighborhood on a recent night when their radios crackled with a call of a battery in progress.

One behind the other, the five jogged the next block over, joining up with four other young officers already huddled around a man who said the two mothers of his children had just duked it out.

"Can you pull someone over if you're walking?" asked the man, surprised to see all the officers had arrived on foot.

"We're still the police, right?" one officer replied. "Absolutely, we can pull someone over. If they don't stop, we'll call (for a squad car)."

Fresh from the police academy and three months of street training, up to 16 rookie cops a night patrol some of the city's most dangerous blocks on foot as part of a new initiative that is a throwback to the department's days of old.

Superintendent Garry McCarthy calls it a return to community policing, but it also is designed to beef up the police presence in tough neighborhoods and give the new cops a taste of life on the street.

http://www.officer.com/news/10945759/chicago-police-return-to-community-policing

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May 20, 2013

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North Korea fires short-range missiles for two days in a row

(Reuters) - North Korea fired a short-range missile from its east coast on Sunday, a day after launching three of these missiles, a South Korean news agency said, ignoring calls for restraint from Western powers.

Launches by the North of short-range missiles are not uncommon but, after recent warnings from the communist state of impending nuclear war, such actions have raised concerns about the region's security.

"North Korea fired a short-range missile as it did yesterday into its east sea in the afternoon, " South Korea's news agency Yonhap reported, citing a military official.

A South Korean defense ministry official confirmed the Yonhap report, but did not provide any details.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was concerned about North Korea's launch of short-range missiles, urging Pyonyang to refrain from further launches and return to stalled nuclear talks with world powers.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/19/us-korea-north-missiles-idUSBRE94I04720130519

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Pennsylvania

Hero cop, who sat next to the first lady, charged with rape

A former "top cop," who had the honor of sitting next to first lady Michelle Obama during a televised presidential speech four years ago, is facing rape allegations.

Richard DeCoatsworth left a party with two women on Thursday, according to authorities.

The women called authorities and said once they arrived at a second, undisclosed location, the retired officer pulled a gun on them, the Philadelphia Police Department said in a statement.

He allegedly forced them "to engage in the use of narcotics and to engage in sexual acts," the statement said. He was charged with rape on Saturday.

DeCoatsworth became a hero in 2007, after an assailant shot him in the face with a shotgun, according to a White House statement preceding President Barack Obama's 2009 speech to Congress.

Then a rookie on the Philadelphia police force, DeCoatsworth had followed a group of men in a car, whose activities he found suspicious. They parked and three men got out of the vehicle.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/19/us/philadelphia-police-rape-charge/

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Should FBI manhunts use drones? US lawmakers debate

At Friday's house hearing on privacy and domestic drones, government representatives and civil rights advocates tried to wrap their brains around a drone-filled future.

Once drones are a common sight as scheduled in 2015, activists have suggested that privacy laws need an update. Police drones, for example, are already proving their use, but will privacy be threatened by more capable technology? Who should regulate their use, and how?

But some who attended the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigationshad questions beyond the issue at hand.

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, asked the assembled panel of drone tech and privacy experts: "Can you shoot down a drone over your property?" Without answering the senator directly, the expert panel pointed out the obvious safety issue of a plummeting drone.

Representatives in government, like many Americans, are still coming to grips with the reality of drone technology, which today spans the range from missile-hurling Predators that land themselves to hobbyist quadracopters with an hour-long battery life that can be carried in a backpack. At a Judiciary Committee hearing on domestic drone regulation in late March, assembled senators were tickled by the idea of a mini drone with a camera in hands of an adolescent child. On Friday, committee participants asked serious questions they hope will be answered long before the drones are flying.

http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/should-fbi-manhunts-use-drones-us-lawmakers-debate-1C9966212

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California

Oakland police struggle to rebuild — using fewer resources

'Working smarter' and reorganization can go only so far. It's not clear that the public is ready to make the investment.

OAKLAND — It was a quiet evening by this city's standards, and still the police emergency lines were lighting up.

As screams rang out behind her, a caller said her neighbor was being beaten. A woman reported that a front door down the street had been bashed in by a possible intruder. Another said a family member with a knife and supply of methamphetamine was threatening to kill herself.

By 7:30 p.m. there were 40 calls requiring squad cars on the eastern half of town but no officers available to respond. The western district wasn't faring much better.

So when a resident phoned to report that someone was removing boxes from his driveway, he was told he'd have to wait. "Can't you just have an officer drive by?' he asked the 911 dispatcher.

Managing expectations amid a rising crime rate is the latest challenge in California's most violent city.

The Oakland Police Department is under pressure to satisfy conditions of a decade-old federal court settlement that stemmed from racial profiling and improper use of force. Two of its chiefs have left in as many years. A quarter of its sworn officers have been lost since 2008 to budget cutbacks. Yet it handles about twice the emergency calls per capita as the average law enforcement agency in the state.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-oakland-police-department-20130519,0,5985741.story

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Don't want to be tracked? Turn cellphone off, says magistrate

Don't want your location to be tracked on your cellphone by police? Just turn the GPS off, otherwise you've got no expectation of privacy, a federal magistrate said recently in a ruling. The ACLU calls the decision an "opinion straight from the Twilight Zone," as well as a violation of the Fourth Amendment's protections against illegal search-and-seizure.

The case involves a New York doctor who was recently arrested and indicted by the federal government for illegally distributing oxycodone, a prescription medicine for pain. Among the various ways the doctor was tracked by law enforcement, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, was via the GPS signals from his cellphone.

"Although the DEA agents requested a search warrant and the judge found that there was probable cause to believe that the cellphone location data would assist in the location and apprehension of an individual for whom there was already a valid arrest warrant, the judge later published a 30-page opinion further stating that he didn't think the government needed to seek a search warrant in the first place," writes Chris Soghoian of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project.

The opinion by U.S. magistrate Gary R. Brown notes that the defendant in the case could have turned off his phone if he didn't want to be tracked.

http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/dont-want-be-tracked-turn-cellphone-says-magistrate-1C9954245

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