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January, 2014 - Week 3

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Did Obama Do Terrorists A Favor by Curbing the NSA?

by David Francis

President Obama's plan to limit the scope of NSA surveillance activities has disappointment privacy advocates, who said reforms did not curb spying enough. But former intelligence and officials are now warning that the changes could put American lives at risk.

In speech on Friday outlining his reforms, Obama called for an end to spying on leaders of friendly countries, requiring a court order to access data from their database of cell phone records, limiting the scope of what NSA can do when it does access the database, and the possible creation of a new body to store that data. The president also said that he would ask Congress to appoint a public advocate to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court.

Related: 3 Reasons Snowden Should Not Be Granted Clemency

Now, 17 former intelligence and national security officials and experts are warning that these changes would put Americans at risk . Among the signatories were former CIA Directors James Woolsey and Michael Hayden, former Homeland Security Advisor to the President Fran Townsend, former National Counterintelligence Executive Michelle Van Cleave and the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Pete Hoekstra.

“There is no doubt a need to discuss privacy in the era of ‘big data.' The Snowden leaks, however, should not precipitate a knee-jerk reaction to do something,” the letter read. “They should generate a thoughtful discussion of very difficult issues. This is the opportunity to implement reforms that will strengthen intelligence capabilities, protect American civil liberties, and keep America safe.”

The letter backed the repeated claims of NSA chief Keith B. Alexander, who has continually said that NSA action's stop attacks since the Snowden blowup began last summer. However, because of the clandestine nature of NSA's activities, he has been unable to prove that claim, allowing critics to charge that he's using American security as an excuse to continue unwarranted spying.

At a press conference announcing the letter, signatories of the letter backed Alexander, saying that limiting the scope of NSA's activities in ways recommended by the president would hurt intelligence gathering efforts.

Related: NSA Spying: Europe Is Shocked, Shocked About Spying

“Intelligence is the tip of the spear to keep America safe. We need a robust intelligence community to fight and combat the kind of threat that America faces today,” Hokestra said at the conference at the National Press Club.

“If I were a member of Al-Qaeda, I'd tell you to go out and endorse every one of the Presidential Review Group's recommendations,” Admiral James Lyons added.

He has a point in April, 2006, an article in the Washington Post described how terrorists were concerned that their web “chatter” could be vulnerable to government hackers.

Terrorist groups, which for years have used the Internet and its various tools to organize and communicate, are paying more attention to addressing security and privacy concerns similar to those of other Web users, counterterrorism experts say.

The Internet has long been a convenient gathering place for radical Islamists advocating violence against Western influences, known as jihadists. Through online chat, e-mail and Web postings, communities of people have relied on one another for advice, political debate, even movie reviews and biographical information on suicide bombers and religious leaders.

Recently, postings on jihadist Web sites have expressed increasing concern about spyware, password protection, and surveillance on chat rooms and instant-messaging systems.

One forum recently posted a guide for Internet safety and anonymity on the Internet, advising readers of ways to circumvent hackers or government officials.

Related: Snowden May Have Stored Doomsday Info Data on the Cloud

Regardless, many in Congress and within the tech community expressed disappointment Friday that Obama did not go far enough.

“The Fourth Amendment requires an individualized warrant based on probable cause before the government can search phone records and e-mails,” Rep. Rand Paul (R-KY) said in response to the speech. “President Obama's announced solution to the NSA spying controversy is the same unconstitutional program with a new configuration.”

“Nothing the President said today will end the unconstitutional invasion of Americans' privacy,” added Michigan Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI). Silicon Valley execs were equally disappointed in the speech.

"The commitments outlined by President Obama represent positive progress on key issues, including transparency from the government and in what companies will be allowed to disclose, extending privacy protections to non-US citizens, and FISA court reform,” a coalition of tech companies including Google, Facebook and Yahoo said in a statement. “Crucial details remain to be addressed on these issues, and additional steps are needed on other important issues, so we'll continue to work with the Administration and Congress to keep the momentum going and advocate for reforms consistent with the principles we outlined in December."

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/01/19/Did-Obama-Do-Terrorists-Favor-Curbing-NSA

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Washington

Washington Public Safety Agency Hacked

Data on 6,000 medical responses was exposed, along with 231 firefighters' birthdates, Social Security numbers, and limited medical information.

by Jeff Goldman

Washington's North East King County Regional Public Safety Communication Agency (NORCOM) recently announced that it's investigating the breach of a server that contained data on approximately 6,000 medical responses by the county's Duvall Fire District 45, Skykomish Fire Department, and Snoqualmie Pass Fire & Rescue (h/t DataBreaches.net).

The data potentially exposed includes names, addresses, birthdates, the nature of each emergency call, and initial medical conditions. The files also contained personnel data for 231 firefighters, including their driver's license information, birthdates, Social Security numbers, emergency contact numbers, and limited medical information.

"Immediately when the breach was discovered, NORCOM took swift actions to identify and analyze the depth of the breach; we are working with the Bellevue Police Department and with the United States Secret Service's Electronic Crimes Task Force on this investigation," NORCOM executive director Tom Orr said in a statement [PDF]. "We have begun notifying the people whose information was potentially compromised. Security and professionalism are paramount to NORCOM; we are implementing enhanced, significant security measures to prevent the potential for future compromised."

Protecting Android™ Applications with Secure Code Signing Certificates

All those affected are being advised to place a fraud alert on their credit files. Potentially affected people with questions should contact (425) 646-8011.

http://www.esecurityplanet.com/network-security/washington-public-safety-agency-hacked.html

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From the FBI

Prepaid Funeral Scam -- Fitting End to Multi-State Fraud Scheme

Scamming nuns. Taking advantage of the mentally disabled. Stealing from the elderly. Just when you think con men couldn't sink any lower, they do: This time, a group of fraudsters took money from individuals who prepaid their own funerals to ease the financial and emotional burdens on their families.

Recently, a Missouri man and five others were sentenced to federal prison for their role in a Ponzi-like prepaid funeral scheme that victimized some 97,000 customers in more than 16 states. The scheme caused more than $450 million in losses, smaller or non-existent death benefits for families at their most vulnerable, and huge profits that lined the pockets of the defendants.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, millions of Americans enter into contracts to prearrange their funerals and prepay some or all of the expenses involved . Laws in individual states regulate the industry, and various states have laws to help ensure that these advance payments are available when they're needed. However, protections vary widely from state to state, sometimes providing a window of opportunity for unscrupulous operators.

That's just what happened with James “Doug” Cassity and his Missouri-based company called National Prearranged Services Inc. (NPS). As early as 1992 and until 2008, Cassity and the other defendants employed by NPS or affiliated life insurance companies devised and ran a scheme to defraud purchasers of prearranged funeral contracts obtained from NPS. Also victimized were funeral homes that did business with NPS, financial institutions that served as trustees of the prearranged trusts established by NPS for their customers, and state insurance guarantee associations.

In general, here's what NPS told its customers: After discussing what the customer wanted, a price would be agreed upon and payment accepted. NPS would make arrangements with the customer-designated funeral home. In accordance with state law, the funds would be placed with a third party—depending on the state, that third party would be a financial institution that would put the funds into a trust that could be only used for safe investments (like government-backed securities)…or a life insurance company that would put the funds into a life insurance policy in the name of the customer.

Here's what NPS didn't tell its customers: The company didn't put all of the funds from customers into a trust or life insurance policy, but instead brazenly altered application documents—i.e., changing deposit amounts, naming itself as a beneficiary, converting whole life insurance policies to term life—and used the money for unauthorized purposes like risky investments, payments for existing funeral claims, and personal enrichment. In some instances, defendants even removed money previously placed in trusts and life insurance policies. And NPS routinely lied to state regulators about its practices.

And if that wasn't bad enough, NPS also purchased large blocks of prearranged funeral contracts from funeral homes that had previously entered into their own prearranged funeral contracts with customers, falsely telling these funeral homes that the contracts would be rolled over into life insurance policies.

The complex case—investigated by three federal agencies, a number of state regulatory agencies, and the Department of Justice—began in 2008 when we received information from several state agencies on the shady practices of NPS and one of its affiliated life insurance companies. It ended in November 2013, when six co-conspirators who took advantage of people's desire to protect their loved ones upon their own deaths were finally brought to justice.

Protect Yourself and Your Loved Ones Obviously, before you enter into a contract of any kind, make sure you do your due diligence on the other party (get references, check with the Better Business Bureau, etc.) But here are some additional issues to consider from the Federal Trade Commission before prepaying for funeral goods and services: - What are you paying for? Are you buying only merchandise, like a casket and vault, or are you purchasing funeral services as well? - What happens to the money you've prepaid? States have different requirements for handling funds paid for prearranged funeral services. - What happens to the interest income on money that is prepaid and put into a trust account? - Are you protected if the firm you dealt with goes out of business? - Can you cancel a contract and get a full refund if you change your mind? - What happens if you move to a different area or die while away from home? Some prepaid funeral plans can be transferred, but often at an added cost. - Be sure to tell your family about the plans you've made and where your documents are located.

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2014/january/prepaid-funeral-scam/prepaid-funeral-scam

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From the FBI

TEDAC Marks 10-Year Anniversary -- A Potent Weapon in the War on Terror

It has been 10 years since the FBI established the Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center (TEDAC), and since that time the multi-agency operation—sometimes referred to as America's bomb library—has become an essential tool in the nation's fight against terrorism.

Before TEDAC, no single government entity was responsible for analyzing and exploiting evidence and intelligence related to the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) used by international and domestic terrorists. Today, TEDAC coordinates all those efforts.

Located at the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, “TEDAC is the government's single repository for IEDs,” said Special Agent Greg Carl, TEDAC director. “The evidence and intelligence we gather from these explosives is used by law enforcement, the military, the intelligence community, and by our political decision-makers. There is no question that the work we have done—and continue to do—has helped to save American lives.”

Whether bombs come from the battlefields of Afghanistan or from homegrown terrorists within our borders, TEDAC's 13 government agency partners and 17 external partners collect the devices and send them to TEDAC to be analyzed and catalogued.

“We exploit the devices forensically,” said Carl, a veteran FBI agent who is also a bomb technician. The results are analyzed by TEDAC's Intelligence Unit (see sidebar), and disseminated to law enforcement entities and the intelligence community to provide key intelligence on terrorist networks. “Based on the forensic evidence—DNA, fingerprints, and other biometrics—we try to identify the bomb maker and also make associations, linking devices together from separate incidents.”

Since its creation in 2003, TEDAC has examined more than 100,000 IEDs from around the world and currently receives submissions at the rate of 800 per month. Two million items have been processed for latent prints—half of them this year alone. “Just from the sheer volume,” Carl said, “we have a lot of experience identifying IED components and blast damage.” As a result, he added, “we have identified over 1,000 individuals with potential ties to terrorism.”

Also based on TEDAC analysis, more than 100 people have been named to the government's Terrorist Watchlist, a database that identifies subjects known or reasonably suspected of being involved in terrorist activity. “Putting individuals on the list prevents them from entering the country,” Carl said.

Subject matter experts from TEDAC can quickly deploy to incidents—such as the Boston Marathon bombings last April—and work with FBI Evidence Response Teams and local law enforcement to collect critical evidence and quickly transport it to the FBI Laboratory in Quantico for analysis. “We sent our folks immediately to the scene in Boston to help coordinate the collection and processing of evidence,” Carl said.

TEDAC is capable of much more than evidence collection for criminal prosecution, though. “Since we also partner with the military and the intelligence community, our work is utilized by many different sources,” Carl said. The military, for example, uses TEDAC intelligence for force protection and to disrupt terror networks. Decision-makers can count on TEDAC's intelligence—based on forensic science—to help them form policy.

“And our interagency partners use TEDAC for research,” Carl added, explaining that agencies can “check out” a bomb—much like a library book—for testing and further analysis. “We maintain all of the devices that we've collected going back to the inception of the center.”

Looking back over a decade, and forward to the future—TEDAC is building a state-of-the-art facility in Huntsville, Alabama—Carl said, “I see TEDAC as good government. The fact that you have multiple agencies coming together, working toward one common cause, without duplicating resources, means that everyone benefits. And that helps make the country safer.”

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2013/december/tedac-marks-10-year-anniversary

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California

L.A. County Probation Department cleans up its ranks

by Christina Villacorte

Almost three dozen Probation Department employees were arrested for various alleged crimes in 2013, including spousal abuse, although the agency stressed that the number is far fewer than in previous years.

Probation Chief Jerry Powers said he made it a priority to clean up the ranks after seeing an average almost of one employee arrested each week in 2012, his first full year in the department.

Since he implemented what he called “integrity reforms,” arrests of Probation employees have dropped nearly 60 percent.

The department also cracked down on other misconduct and, over the last two years, it tripled the number of employees it fired, and multiplied forced resignations five-fold.

“Criminal conduct on the part of our employees will not be tolerated,” Powers said in a statement. “Where we have found misconduct, we have taken immediate action.”

Currently, the department has about 5,400 employees, mostly sworn deputies tasked with supervising juvenile delinquents or monitoring adult criminals after their release from prison.

Assistant Chief Probation Officer Don Meyer said 74 of them were arrested in 2011. The number has dropped steadily since, to 44 in 2012, and 32 in 2013.

“We don't want any arrests, but reducing the numbers by half in two years shows our new policies are having an impact,” Meyer said.

“If we could reduce it to zero — which is unrealistic — that would be nice, but we've obviously done a good job,” he added. “It's not by accident that those numbers have gone down.”

Powers, who joined the department in December 2011, ramped up the changes after FBI agents arrested Probation division manager and former Assemblyman Carl Washington inside Probation headquarters in Downey in September 2012 for defrauding banks of $200,000 while off-duty. He later pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges.

There were also arrests involving accusations of attempted murder, lewd conduct upon a child, vehicular manslaughter, burglary, spousal abuse, terrorist threats, and even student loan fraud, according to Meyer.

The vast majority, however, had to do with driving under the influence.

Robert Miller, deputy chief attorney for the Office of Independent Review, which has been investigating allegations of misconduct against Probation employees for the last three years, said the department made progress by becoming consistent in meting out punishments and, in certain cases, stiffening the punishments.

It also expanded and professionalized its internal investigations teams to ensure their disciplinary recommendations would hold up before the Civil Service Commission.

“The department has made some significant strides in taking a multipronged approach,” he said. “I think it's beginning to pay off.”

Meyer said 65 percent of those arrested were hired in 2005-2008, when Probation — in a rush to carry out federal consent decrees to beef up its ranks — stopped requiring applicants to undergo background checks.

He said Probation has since raised its hiring standards significantly, even if it means “taking longer to hire fewer applicants.”

“We don't want to compromise our hiring standards,” Meyer said. “It's not in the department's or the community's best interests to hire somebody who is not suitable to be a peace officer.”

http://www.dailynews.com/government-and-politics/20140117/la-county-probation-department-cleans-up-its-ranks

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California

FBI seeks public's help to nab pair of bank robbery suspects in 18 San Fernando Valley, Westside heists

by Rick Orlov

(Pictures on site)

The FBI issued a plea for the public's help on Friday in seeking the identity and arrest of a pair of bank robbers believed responsible for 18 heists in the San Fernando Valley and the Westside.

The robberies by the “Valley Bandit” and “Westside Gun and Bag Bandit” are not connected other than that the crimes have been occurring over the past year. Officials asked that anyone with information about either suspect contact the FBI.

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said officials were concerned about the use of weapons in both cases, as well as the frequency of the crimes.

“They have been hitting a lot more banks and more often,” Eimiller said. “When it gets to where they are using weapons, we are concerned someone could get hurt and would like to stop this as soon as possible.”

The “Valley Bandit,” described as a male Hispanic or Middle Easterner, between the ages of 25 and 35, is between 5 feet 9 and 6 feet tall, weighing from 180 to 200 pounds. He has been seen getting into a white vehicle, described as a Mercedes-Benz SUV, though he has also been linked to a four-door black Mercedes sedan.

In bank surveillance photos, the suspect has been seen wearing a baseball cap. Authorities said in all of his 10 robberies, the Valley Bandit uses a revolver held near his waist, which he points at employees and customers and demands cash.

His targets date back to December 2012 at a Bank of America in Northridge, then pick up again in a string: June 14, 2013, at Chase Bank in North Hills; June 28 at Bank of America in Winnetka; July 15 at Chase in Granada Hills; July 24 at Chase in Northridge; August 26 at Wells Fargo in Reseda; Sept 28 at Chase in Sherman Oaks; Nov. 6 at Chase in Reseda; Dec. 4 at Wells Fargo in West Hills; Dec. 14 at Chase in Granada Hills (different branch); and Jan. 16 at Wells Fargo in Canoga Park.

The Westside Gun and Bag Bandit, so monikered because he puts the cash he nets in a paper bag, is believed linked to a series of bank robberies since last May.

Officials said he has been seen wearing sunglasses and a hat that alternates between a baseball cap and a cowboy hat.

He is described as a white male 35 to 45 years old, 5 feet 9 inches to 6 feet tall and 160 to 180 pounds.

U.S. Bank has offered a $10,000 reward in the case.

Eight robberies have been linked to the Westside Bandit: May 22, 2013 at First Republic in Santa Monica; Aug. 29 at One West in Santa Monica; Sept. 25 at Union Bank in Santa Monica; Oct. 22 at U.S. Bank in Los Angeles; Nov. 4 at U.S. Bank in Santa Monica, Nov. 30 at Chase in Venice; Dec. 11 at Chase in Santa Monica; and Jan. 7 at U.S. Bank in Santa Monica (different branch).

http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20140117/fbi-seeks-publics-help-to-nab-pair-of-bank-robbery-suspects-in-18-san-fernando-valley-westside-heists

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Obama's restrictions on NSA surveillance rely on narrow definition of ‘spying'

by Barton Gellman

President Obama said Friday, in his first major speech on electronic surveillance, that “the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don't threaten our national security.”

Obama placed restrictions on access to domestic phone records collected by the National Security Agency, but the changes he announced will allow it to continue — or expand — the collection of personal data from billions of people around the world, Americans and foreign citizens alike.

Obama squares that circle with an unusually narrow definition of “spying.” It does not include the ingestion of tens of trillions of records about the telephone calls, e-mails, locations and relationships of people for whom there is no suspicion of relevance to any threat.

In his speech, and an accompanying policy directive, Obama described principles for “restricting the use of this information” — but not for gathering less of it.

Alongside the invocation of privacy and restraint, Obama gave his plainest endorsement yet of “bulk collection,” a term he used more than once and authorized explicitly in Presidential Policy Directive 28. In a footnote, the directive defined the term to mean high-volume collection “without the use of discriminants.”

That is perhaps the central feature of “the golden age of signals intelligence,” which the NSA celebrates in top-secret documents leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden. Obama for the first time put his own imprimatur on a collection philosophy that one of those documents summarized this way: “Order one of everything from the menu.”

As digital communications have multiplied, and NSA capabilities with them, the agency has shifted resources from surveillance of individual targets to the acquisition of communications on a planetary scale. That shift has fed the appetite of Big Data tools, which are designed to find unseen patterns and make connections that NSA analysts don't know to look for.

“It's noteworthy that the president addressed only the bulk collection of call records, but not any of the other bulk collection programs revealed by the media,” said Alexander Abdo, an attorney with the ACLU's national security project. “That is a glaring omission. The president needs to embrace structural reforms that will protect us from all forms of bulk collection and that will make future overreach less likely.”

In principle, these tools have the potential to reveal unknown associates of known foreign targets, although the intelligence community has struggled to offer examples. But they rely, by definition and intent, on the construction of vast databases filled almost entirely with innocent communications. Obama's view, like the NSA's, is that there is no intrusion on privacy until someone calls up the files and reads them.

Obama focused his speech on surveillance authorized by Congress and overseen by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. He spoke most concretely about the collection of domestic telephone logs from virtually every American under a provision of the Patriot Act called Section 215.

But fresh assertions of transparency did not resolve other long-standing questions. White House and intelligence spokesmen declined to say whether the NSA has used that authority to collect any other kinds of data about millions of Americans or whether Obama was committed to disclose such collection if he permits it in the future.

Obama avoided almost entirely any discussion of overseas intelligence collection that he authorized on his own, under Executive Order 12333, without legislative or judicial supervision.

The Washington Post has disclosed in recent months, based in part on the Snowden documents, that the NSA is gathering hundreds of millions of e-mail address books, breaking into private networks that link the overseas data centers of Google and Yahoo, and building a database of trillions of location records transmitted by cellphones around the world.

Those operations are sweeping in a large but unknown number of Americans, beginning with the tens of millions who travel and communicate overseas each year. For at least as many Americans, and likely more, the structure of global networks carries their purely domestic communications across foreign switches.

Under the classified rules set forth by the president, the NSA is allowed to presume that any data collected overseas belongs to a foreigner. The “minimization rules” that govern that collection, intended to protect the identities of U.S. citizens and residents, remain classified. The White House and NSA have declined requests to release them.

The NSA term for those high-volume programs is “full take” collection — the interception of entire data flows from the fiber optic cables that carry telephone calls, e-mails, faxes and video chats around the world at the speed of light.

Unless Obama says otherwise in the classified annex to his directive, those programs will carry on unabated.

Obama's approach is to “take ... privacy concerns into account” after the collection takes place. In his directive, he defined a set of broad principles for use of the data, without specifying implementing details. In his speech, the president said the NSA is already following those principles.

“The United States does not collect intelligence to suppress criticism or dissent, nor do we collect intelligence to disadvantage people on the basis of their ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation or religious beliefs,” he said. “And we do not collect intelligence to provide a competitive advantage to U.S. companies or U.S. commercial sectors.”

Some of what Obama promised in his speech he seemed to hedge in the directive. He said several times, for example, that the United States conducts surveillance only for legitimate foreign intelligence purposes. In a footnote to the directive, “foreign intelligence” is defined to include not only the capabilities and intentions of governments and terrorists but the “activities of ... foreign persons.”

In another significant footnote, Obama said the limits he ordered “shall not apply to signals intelligence activities undertaken to test or develop signals intelligence capabilities.” Signals intelligence development, or “sigdev” in NSA parlance, is the discovery of untapped communication flows and the invention of new surveillance methods to exploit them.

For example, NSA Director Keith Alexander revealed last summer that his agency had collected location data from mobile phones in the United States.

At least for now, while Congress debates its next steps, Obama said he will require that the NSA obtain court approval to search the trillions of domestic call records collected in secret since 2006.

He suggested no such limit on a far more intrusive form of domestic surveillance: the NSA's authority to search for and make use of the content of U.S. communications that are “incidentally” collected in surveillance that is targeted on foreign nationals and stored in the agency's databases.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obamas-restrictions-on-nsa-surveillance-rely-on-narrow-definition-of-spying/2014/01/17/2478cc02-7fcb-11e3-93c1-0e888170b723_story.html

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Indiana

Response to store shooting confirms police tactics

by SUMMER BALLENTINE and CHARLES WILSON

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A deadly shooting at an Indiana grocery store this week could have been much worse if not for the quick actions of two police officers who relied on training that has become commonplace since the 1999 Columbine shootings.

Cody Skipper and Jason Tripp arrived at the Elkhart store within three minutes and needed less than 60 seconds to fatally shoot a gunman who had killed two people and was threatening a third.

But experts still disagree whether patrol officers should confront a shooter immediately or wait for backup, especially if an officer is alone.

A decade ago, the Indiana officers might have waited for a specially equipped SWAT team, which was standard practice in many police departments across the country. Training for active-shooter situations has now become routine, including preparing for the possibility that lone officers could be sent to stop a rampage.

"If someone in the building is shooting, and you're the first one there, you're going in," said Indiana State Police Trooper Aaron Gaul, who trains officers from around the state.

Many security and law-enforcement professionals agree that quicker responses are needed as shootings happen more frequently.

The nation averaged five active-shooter situations annually between 2000 and 2008. Since 2009, that number has tripled, according to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

But questions linger over whether a solitary officer should act as a lone ranger and go in without help.

"The rule of thumb is never to go in alone. It's a suicide mission if you go by yourself everywhere," said Texas-based security consultant Chris Grollnek, a former police officer and Marine who now trains businesses and other organizations how to respond to active shooters.

The push toward faster responses grew out of the Columbine attack. When that massacre began, a school security officer was on the scene within minutes, but police waited outside for about 40 minutes before a SWAT team arrived.

At Columbine, the shooters "had free rein of the school," said J. Pete Blair, a professor at Texas State University who helps develop police training. "And that's where the soul searching began. When someone's in there, you really need to get in there and stop the shooting."

At the Indiana Police Academy, where about 90 percent of Indiana's police officers — including Elkhart's — are trained, rookie officers receive classroom instruction on active shootings. Officers with a year or more of experience can opt for more advanced training that includes a mock scenario at a vacant school building.

Lone officers are trained to "go straight in" with a protective vest if possible and approach the sound of shooting stealthily, using as much cover as possible, said Capt. David Younce, who handles such training at the academy in Plainfield, just west of Indianapolis.

"There's no fine line that says you have to wait for backup," Younce said.

While the ideal tactic is to gather a team of four or five officers, that isn't always possible, Blair said.

Even stopping to help victims is out of the question.

"If we stop and try to treat and help every person, we're losing seconds where seconds can cost lives," Indiana State Police Sgt. Trent Smith said.

Smith said the Elkhart officers followed that protocol.

"They went in in a professional pattern and strategically cleared that store in a matter of seconds," Smith said.

Ultimately, the first officer on the scene must pick the best course of action to prevent deaths.

"Our goal is to get in there and stop that aggressive act, whatever it is or whatever that person is doing, absolutely as fast as possible," Smith said. "We don't wait to take the time for other people to be backup."

http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Response-to-store-shooting-confirms-police-tactics-5154791.php

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Ohio

After a Prolonged Execution in Ohio, Questions Over ‘Cruel and Unusual'

by ERICA GOODE

As the lethal drugs flowed into his veins in the Ohio death chamber, Dennis B. McGuire at first “went unconscious” and his body was still, his daughter, Amber McGuire, said Friday.

But a few minutes later, she said, she was horrified to see her father struggling, his stomach heaving, a fist clenching.

“He started making all these horrible, horrible noises, and at that point, that's when I covered my eyes and my ears,” said Ms. McGuire, who watched the execution on Thursday at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, near Lucasville. “He was suffering.”

Mr. McGuire's execution, conducted with a new and untested combination of drugs, took about 25 minutes from the time the drugs were started to the time death was declared. The process, several witnesses said, was accompanied by movement and gasping, snorting and choking sounds.

It has not been established whether Mr. McGuire was conscious of pain or whether the drugs that were used were responsible for his prolonged death. But at a time when the drugs once routinely used in executions are in short supply and states are scrambling to find new formulas, the execution is stirring intense debate about the obligations of the state toward those it kills.

Ms. McGuire and her brother, also named Dennis McGuire, said Friday that they plan to file a federal lawsuit next week alleging that the execution violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

“We're mainly just hoping that no other family has to go through what we went through yesterday,” Ms. McGuire said.

Allen Bohnert, the lawyer who represented Mr. McGuire, called the execution “a failed, agonizing experiment by the State of Ohio.”

But the family of Joy Stewart, the woman Mr. McGuire raped and murdered in 1989, said in a statement that whatever Mr. McGuire's suffering, it paled in comparison with what Ms. Stewart went through at the hands of her killer. “He is being treated far more humanely than he treated her,” the statement said.

Three decades ago, lethal injection was pioneered as a more humane method of execution than electrocution or gas. But in recent years, European manufacturers of previously used drugs like pentobarbital and sodium thiopental, in response to pressure from groups opposed to the death penalty, have blocked their sale for use in executions.

Ohio, which had run out of its supply of pentobarbital, used a combination of midazolam, an anti-anxiety drug in the same family as Valium, and hydromorphone, a powerful narcotic derived from morphine. A court gave its approval to the combination, overruling lawyers for Mr. McGuire who had argued that the drugs could cause “air hunger,” a struggle for breath that, the lawyers said, could result in “agony and terror.”

But in persuading the court to allow the use of the drugs, Thomas Madden, an Ohio assistant attorney general, argued that although there are constitutional protections, “you're not entitled to a pain-free execution.”

Death penalty opponents said that the shortage of drugs has led to a chaotic national picture, with individual states trying out different drug formulas, sometimes with disturbing results. Mr. McGuire's execution was not the first in Ohio to inspire controversy: In 2009, the execution of Romell Broom was halted after executioners struggled for two hours to get an intravenous line to deliver the drugs. His lawyers argued that a second execution attempt would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Mr. Broom is still on death row.

Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University and an expert on lethal injections, said that a Supreme Court ruling that upheld Kentucky's use of a three-drug cocktail for lethal injections in 2008 was based in part on the uniformity of drug combinations across the states.

But she said, as the drugs have become less available, “That's no longer the case.” She added, “This is a very different world in 2014 than it was in 2008.”

In Wyoming, the shortage of lethal injection drugs has led State Senator Bruce Burns, Republican of Sheridan County, to propose offering a firing squad as an alternative method of execution. Currently, the gas chamber is the only alternative available in Wyoming, but the state does not have one. Mr. Burns said that given the infrequency of executions, a gas chamber is too costly to maintain. In Missouri, State Representative Rick Brattin introduced a bill on Thursday to add firing squads as an option. Utah is phasing out its firing squad option.

Debates about the relative humaneness of different execution methods have persisted as long as arguments about the death penalty itself. In 1890, electrocution was substituted for hanging in the belief that it was less painful, but George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison both fought to keep their electrical currents out of the death chamber (Mr. Westinghouse lost). Lawyers for William Kemmler, the first person to die in the electric chair, argued that the method constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

Jon Paul Rion, a lawyer representing Ms. McGuire and her brother in the lawsuit, said that the children were following their father's wishes in bringing suit.

“Before Dennis was executed he knew that this could be an issue given what the defense experts had articulated to the court, that exactly what happened in this case could happen,” Mr. Rion said. “Dennis made his son promise that if in fact the execution was as painful and disturbing as the experts predicted, he would make sure” that others would not have to face a similar ordeal.

Douglas A. Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University, said that if the McGuires did file suit, they would have to prove “by a preponderance of the evidence that he suffered unnecessary pain.”

That might be difficult, he said, because Mr. McGuire is in no position to testify and the definition of “unnecessary” is uncertain, “given that state officials were trying their darnedest to avoid having him suffer unnecessary pain.”

“By my lights, this is a very hard lawsuit to prevail,” he added. “But who knows?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/18/us/prolonged-execution-prompts-debate-over-death-penalty-methods.html?_r=0

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Massachusetts

‘Building trust' top goal as police commissioner, Evans says

by Richard Weir

Boston's newly minted top cop, setting his sights on bolstering community policing, wants to get more police officers out of their cruisers and walking the streets to better engage residents and merchants.

“It's building trust. That is going to be our No. 1 goal: building trust in the community, and strengthening community policing by having walking beats, officers out of their car, and having officers on bicycles,” Police Commissioner William B. Evans, 55, said during his swearing-in today at the Salvation Army Kroc Center of Boston in Uphams Corner.

Evans later told reporters he intends to launch a program where patrol officers will a spend four-hour-stretch of each four-day shift walking their beat.

“The community loves to see the visibility and we will make the officers as visible as possible,” he said. “They will address not only the violence but the quality of life. They will work with businesses. We will build partnerships so the community will be that much safer.”

The 33-year-veteran Boston cop and younger brother of former Hub Police Commissioner Paul Evans said his other top priorities are “stepping up intelligence” to improve homeland security in the wake of the marathon bombings; reducing violence and getting more guns off the streets; and increasing the diversity of his command staff, which is now half comprised of people of color and includes the department's first-ever black superintendent-in-chief, William Gross.

“I promise everyone in this room and the residents of the city of Boston I won't let them down,” Evans said in a humorous and heartwarming speech that touched on his roots growing up South Boston and being raised by four older brothers after his father — “our hero” — died when he was 14.

“When I stand here today it even makes me think more how proud he would be that his baby turned out to be the commissioner. He always said to my brothers, whatever you do, take care of the Mouse,” Evans said of his dad, who gave him the well-known nickname, and instilled in his boys strong family values.

“A lot of people were saying what are you going to do with William?,” said Evans, the youngest of six boys who lost his mother at age 3 and a brother, then 11, who was killed by hit-and-run driver. “And my brothers you know the oldest was 23, said, ‘What do you mean? We are going to bring him up.' They did a tremendous job. They made sure I always had money in my pocket. I was well dressed and got off to school every day.”

Paul Evans, 64, who served as police commissioner from 1993-2004, said his younger brother, who excels at working closely with communities, got his nickname because he was youngest and smallest in the family.

“But don't mistake that,” he said. “He will give you 100 push-ups and 200 sit-ups right now. He's wiry but he's by no means not a tough kid when he has to be. We are proud of him.”

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2014/01/building_trust_top_goal_as_police_commissioner_evans_says

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California

30 LAPD officers to test on-body cameras

by Tami Abdollah

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Police officers assigned to foot patrols of downtown Los Angeles began wearing on-body cameras on Wednesday as the city evaluates different models to include in its policing.

Police Commission President Steve Soboroff said 30 officers have volunteered for 90-day trials of devices provided by Arizona-based Taser International Inc. and Coban Technologies Inc. of Houston.

Each company has donated 60 of its units for the field test. At the end of the trial, 600 cameras from one of the companies will be purchased and deployed, Soboroff said.

Departments across the country have started to test on-body cameras, with the Rialto Police Department providing them to all of its officers and participating in a University of Cambridge study examining the impacts of the technology on policing.

The 12-month study found an 89 percent drop in complaints against police during the trial.

In Los Angeles, the use of on-body cameras is meant to complement the longtime city goal of equipping the department's 1,350 patrol cars with video recorders.

Since the 1991 beating of Rodney King, the LAPD has worked to bring in-car cameras to its vehicles but that effort has been stymied primarily because of budget reasons. Thus far, more than 300 cruisers are equipped with cameras in the South Bureau and the department is working to roll them out in about 380 more in the Central Bureau, said LAPD Chief Information Officer Maggie Goodrich.

Soboroff privately raised more than $1.2 million from nearly 25 donors to secure funding for the on-body cameras. The money came from Hollywood heavy hitters such as director Steven Spielberg and DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg along with former mayor Richard Riordan, media giant Casey Wasserman and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

While in-car cameras capture video in front of and inside patrol cars, on-body cameras capture video elsewhere; for example, inside a home or away from the vehicle.

Police Chief Charlie Beck has said the addition of on-body cameras will be a helpful investigative and accountability tool, as well as a less expensive option than in-car video.

Mayor Eric Garcetti said he has spoken with Beck about the importance of consulting with the community on the protocols for camera use given potential privacy concerns.

During the testing period, Soboroff said, the department will meet with the police union, which supports the cameras, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, members of the City Council, and the inspector general of the Police Commission to draw up rules on use.

“The nice thing about this is there's a real consensus among some of the biggest critics of the department and the officers and the union that they all want this transparency,” said Garcetti. “Everybody's convinced, look, this is going to show how bad the officers are or how good they are.”

A website will be created within 60 days to take comments from the public, Soboroff said.

http://www.dailynews.com/government-and-politics/20140115/30-lapd-officers-to-test-on-body-cameras

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California

Are we ready for a big earthquake?

by Jim Steinberg

Much has changed since the Jan. 17, 1994, Northridge earthquake.

Some hospitals have been rebuilt or retrofitted to roll with the shaking earth. Freeway overpasses have been strengthened with steel, giving them flexibility to move without collapsing. Building codes are stricter. Emergency crews have better training and equipment.

So is Southern California ready for The Big One?

“We have come a long way. We have done a lot. But we still have a way to go,” said Lucy Jones, seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena and newly hired earthquake adviser to the city of Los Angeles.

“We are never going to be perfectly ready.”

For planning purposes, Southern California scientists have defined The Big One as a magnitude-7.8 earthquake on the San Andreas Fault that causes damage so massive it would dwarf that of the Northridge quake, with a projected 1,800 deaths, 50,000 injuries and $200 billion in damage. That scenario has been the basis of the Great Shakeout drills that are held every year at schools, hospitals, businesses and other facilities throughout the state, and worldwide.

Seismologists insist a temblor of that size is a realistic possibility. Historically, the world has seen dozens of earthquakes larger than 7.8, while California has seen at least two — San Francisco in 1906 with a 7.9 and Fort Tejon in 1857 with a 7.9, according to state records.

As the ShakeOut website warns: “It's not a matter of if an earthquake of this size will happen — but when. And it is possible that it will happen in our lifetime.” The shaking would last for nearly two minutes and be felt throughout the region — Coachella Valley, the Inland Empire, the Antelope Valley, San Gabriel Valley and elsewhere.

Emergency service personnel frequently practice for such a catastrophe during large operations. Some, like the Great Shakeout, are pure training efforts that bring diverse public service and rescue agencies together, to practice setting up command centers and establish communications links with a myriad of operations, said Steve Ruda, a battalion chief for the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Other large-scale training exercises are real events, like the Los Angeles Marathon, he said.

These are important, both for the teamwork and multi-agency communications skills required to work them. They also provide real emergencies that need prompt solutions, said William J. Dunne, administrative director for emergency preparedness, safety and security services for the UCLA Health System.

Surveys find residents growing apathetic

While public safety professionals hone their skills, residents in the greater Los Angeles area have gone somewhat apathetic, surveys show.

Although more than 60 percent of Californians have learned how to be safe during an earthquake and what supplies they should have on hand, less than 35 percent have learned how to make their home structure safer or how to safeguard their finances, according to the California Earthquake Preparedness Survey, conducted by the UCLA School of Public Health in 2008.

Public safety officials consider some of the grades given out in that report disturbing:

- Only 40 percent of Californians have made family disaster plans. - Less than 20 percent have participated in neighborhood disaster planning. - Only 40 percent keep the recommended minimum of three gallons of water stored per person.

“One of the things that we have clearly been successful on is the number of people who know to drop, cover and hold on,” said Linda B. Bourque, founder and senior adviser for the UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters.

Immediately after an earthquake, interest in preparedness soars for a couple of years, she said.

Then it wanes.

Ruda and other public safety officials hope the publicity surrounding the 20th anniversary of the Northridge quake will rekindle earthquake preparedness among Southern California residents.

Some of that is based on his own experiences.

Ruda, a Northridge homeowner when the earthquake hit, recalls crawling down the hallway of his home during the quake and when it stopped he ordered his three children to come to his voice.

The family had earthquake kits for all, which included water, food, clothing and shoes — most of which was stored beneath beds.

Once the initial shaking stopped, family members put on their street clothes and shoes and went outside with many of their supplies.

He then went to work.

Ruda said because his wife and three children had their immediate needs cared for, they could help others in the neighborhood.

Retrofitted highway bridges survive

The 79 bridges in the Los Angeles area that were retrofitted prior to the 6.7-magnitude Northridge quake sustained only minor damage, said Caltrans spokesman Mark Dinger.

“Since then, Caltrans has further bolstered more than 1,100 additional bridges statewide after taking into account information learned from that quake and other factors,” he said.

“Bridges in Los Angeles and the rest of the state are now designed to safeguard the public against earthquakes most likely to occur over the next 1,000 years.”

“Engineers design bridges to withstand the ground forces likely to occur over a certain period, rather than design for the magnitude of a particular quake,” Dinger added.

Building codes improve safety

Codes protect the employees and contents of the huge warehousing industry that dominates the Inland Empire and still has a significant presence in Los Angeles County.

The state-mandated building codes effectively ensure that the walls of these enormous “tilt-up” buildings are “tied together” with the roofs, said Gil Estrada, building official for San Bernardino County.

“There may be some cracks and bending, but hopefully (through these structural engineering improvements) buildings will not come down, buying time for employees to exit,” he said.

But the progress is not all in straight line.

Recently Los Angeles has come under fire for allowing a number of buildings to be built over the Hollywood and Los Angeles faults, Bourque said.

“As building codes improve and more buildings remain standing during earthquakes, the relative importance of nonstructural damage increases,” says “The ShakeOut Scenario,” a 2008 document which examines in detail the implications for a magnitude-7.8 earthquake on the Southern San Andreas Fault, between the Salton Sea and Lake Hughes.

“The closer to a fault, the stronger the shaking,” said David Oglesby, a professor of geophysics at UC Riverside.

The geographic structure of the area along the fault can mitigate or worsen the effects of the shaking, with soft, water-saturated soils increasing earthquake damage the most, said Oglesby, who focuses on the physics of earthquakes.

The often-congested intersection of the 215 and 10 freeways is directly on the San Jacinto Fault, he said.

Still in development is a system that scientists are hopeful they will be able to give the public earthquake warnings, of perhaps 10 seconds to a minute, prior to the arrival of a quake, said Mark Benthien, spokesman for the Southern California Earthquake Center, a network at USC of over 600 scientists, students and others at over 60 institutions worldwide.

“While that doesn't sound like very much (time), it's enough to get under a desk, stop elevators, begin the slow-down of a train, shut off equipment and industrial processes,” Benthien said.

http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20140115/are-we-ready-for-a-big-earthquake

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California

Building safety still lacking 20 years after Northridge earthquake

by Dana Bartholomew

First came the jolt. Then the roar. Then the plunge as the three-story Northridge Meadows apartment building pancaked atop its first floor.

For James Beckcom, who lived in Apartment 338 atop the pile, the worst of the 1994 Northridge earthquake meant the awful silence that came afterward.

“There was all this noise,” recalled Beckcom, 63, of Burbank. “Then dead calm: You could have heard a pin drop. Then I heard this Asian woman crying next door: ‘Help me. Help me.'

“And then it stopped.”

The Northridge Meadows collapse killed 16 residents and injured dozens more in what became a symbol of the Jan. 17 quake. The building teetered above a partial ground-floor carport, then buckled atop its first-floor residents. A two-story parking garage also lay in ruin.

Two decades after the earthquake, Los Angeles officials say hundreds of similar “soft-story” apartment buildings could collapse in the event of a future temblor. At the same time, hundreds of older concrete high-rises, mobile homes and acute-care hospital buildings also remain at risk.

“Here we are, 20 years later, and no real progress has been made to fix the buildings that are most susceptible,” said Councilman Mitchell Englander, whose district encompasses Northridge. “We've got to take an inventory immediately and create incentives for property owners to invest.”

The danger posed by earthquakes to Southern California buildings is well known. After Northridge, some 14,500 buildings received red and yellow inspection tags for damage in Los Angeles, Ventura and Orange counties, while 90,400 got green tags, according to the California Office of Emergency Services.

When the 1933 Long Beach earthquake shook hundreds of schools to rubble, the state ordered earthquake-resistant schools. When the 1971 Sylmar earthquake destroyed Olive View Medical Center and San Fernando Veterans Administration Hospital, the state ordered earthquake-resistant hospitals.

The 1994 Northridge earthquake also pointed to deficiencies in older apartments, concrete-frame buildings, mobile homes and hospitals, nine of which became unusable.

But while hospitals throughout the state have spent billions buttressing their acute-care buildings, many still don't meet minimal seismic standards. That includes 148 of the 624 acute-care hospital buildings in Los Angeles County, according to the state Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, or one in four that could collapse in a major quake.

Hospitals, which have received numerous deadline extensions to fix the buildings, now have until 2020 to repair them so they don't hurt inhabitants, and 2030 to retrofit them to the highest possible seismic standard so they're functional after an earthquake. This week, the state created an interactive list on the state of hospital seismic readiness.

“We have really high standards in some areas and low standards in others,” said seismologist Lucy Jones, senior science adviser for risk reduction at the United States Geological Survey in Pasadena. “In Southern California, we need to deal with our problem buildings.”

Last fall, Los Angeles officials requested a survey of thousands of wood-frame soft-story apartments like the 200 damaged or destroyed in the Northridge quake. An inventory of the buildings built before 1978 would be a first step in getting them retrofitted.

Laying the groundwork for a statewide bond measure, the city also moved to conduct a comprehensive survey of its brittle concrete buildings.

Last week, Gov. Jerry Brown announced an increase in funding to map earthquake faults, for which many buildings in Los Angeles are vulnerable. Without detailed earthquake zones, buildings are being built atop respective faults with little or no seismic review.

This week, Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the city would team up with Southern California seismic expert Jones and the USGS to better prepare Los Angeles for a major quake — and to better secure its most vulnerable buildings, century-old water system, firefighting as well as a cellphone and Internet-based economy untested in a major quake.

Throughout the year, Jones will pinpoint the earthquake risk, then meet with experts, city officials, business owners and residents to recommend solutions. Of special interest, Garcetti said, were concerns of property owners during a discussion about how to retrofit private buildings.

“We've gone 20 years since the last big earthquake here,” Garcetti told reporters. “And because we haven't had a recent reminder of the power and damage of earthquakes, too many in our city have stopped thinking about how we can best prepare.

“One of the world's leading seismologists, Dr. Lucy Jones, will partner with me and my office to make recommendations.”

When the Northridge earthquake rippled across the region at 4:31 a.m., it knocked hundreds of mobile homes from their foundations. Others burned to the ground.

Jerry Chipchase, a resident of The Chatsworth Park, said while many mobile homes have been braced for quakes, many more remain at risk of fire. At his park in Chatsworth, scores of older homes have electrical power poles parked right next to homes — and less than a foot away from combustible natural gas lines.

He said he's contacted numerous fire department and local and state officials, who have refused to address the ongoing risk to seniors.

“We're going to get killed,” said Chipchase, 61. “All these old mobile homes do not meet new standards, and are at-risk in an earthquake. Grandmothers could be toast.”

When the Northridge earthquake lowered the hammer, Beckcom reeled toward a doorway to seek protection. The Vietnam-era veteran had never in his life experienced such violence — as if L.A. were being shaken by its ears.

“I was slammed like George Foreman hit me; it was just like a jackhammer,” said Beckcom, a Louisiana native and then-importer of Gulf oysters. “I couldn't even walk from the closet to the bed (before being) thrown to the floor.”

When the shaking stopped, he managed to free the stuck door, then stumbled out to help his neighbors. That's when he noticed the door of the second floor was at ground level. And that he'd ridden atop the Northridge Meadows collapse.

He found a dazed man looking for his wife. Through an 18-inch hole on what had once been the first floor, he tunneled in to also find his elderly neighbor Ruth. Both were dead.

Even now, his voice breaks when recalling the devastation.

He fully supports a Los Angeles effort to retrofit dangerous apartments, those once built with soft-story carports. “They should have done this 20 years ago,” he said. “When I go by these old apartment buildings, I just say, ‘That's a disaster waiting to happen.'?”

http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20140115/building-safety-still-lacking-20-years-after-northridge-earthquake

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Minnesota

Community policing helps curb crime in Rush City

by Jon Tatting

Sgt. Jason Foster presents year-end statistics, introduces deputy Grant Kinnamon to City Council

Community policing, a proactive approach in keeping the peace, appears to be putting a dent in crime in Rush City.

Sgt. Jason Foster, the city's supervisor contact from the Chisago County Sheriff's Office, presented statistics of the calls and incidents that he and deputies responded to over 2013 during the Jan. 13 City Council meeting.

“Our plan was to reduce burglaries and thefts, so we did more checks on businesses (and other locations) in the community,” he said of a community policing effort that went from 262 checks to 608 this year.

As a result, the number of thefts decreased from 52 in 2012 to 30 last year, and there were fewer burglaries. Most of the thefts were solved, Foster added.

In keeping the roads safe, officers kept busy with traffic stops and wrote 461 citations — 100 more than 2012. Another increase was the number of arrests, 84, which is 20 more than the year before, he presented.

“We're pleased with the numbers,” Foster said. “We believe we're having a positive impact on the community.”

In addition, deputies made anywhere from 15 to 25 stops a week at Rush City schools. The visits ranged from responding to a concern to doing a proactive check, though attempts are being made to make fewer school checks for better balance in the community.

Foster said the Sheriff's Office has drafted a letter to the school, indicating the protocol between school and officer when a concern arises. The goal is letting the school handle more of the discipline, while the Sheriff's Office will handle more of the criminal matters, he explained.

Still, “the visibility is good,” Mayor Dan Dahlberg said.

Near the end of Foster's presentation, Bob Oscarson and fellow members of the council were pleased to hear that snowmobile complaints in town are down.

“The trails are working,” Councilor Michael Louzek said.

Foster said he and officers also have been enforcing city ordinances, particularly those related to junked vehicles on property.

“I'm seeing a difference,” he noted.

At the start of his presentation, Foster introduced Deputy Grant Kinnamon, who started serving Rush City last month and will continue to do so throughout 2014. Meanwhile, Deputy Rick Lonetti will no longer be assigned to the city effective Feb. 1, as he will be moving to a general patrol position. Another deputy will be taking his post starting Feb. 1.

Foster also announced that Sheriff Rick Duncan is planning to run for another four years in this year's election. If he succeeds, it would be his second term as county sheriff.

Breaking down the numbers

On the 2013 year-end statistics, Foster said the number of calls totaled 8,682, while officers responded to 3,540 incidents in 2012.

Breaking it down, he noted there were 859 traffic stops, 84 arrests, 461 citations, 608 incidents of community-oriented policing and 5,272 area checks.

In light of crime, Foster said none were homicide, though there were six rapes, two robberies, eight assaults and eight domestic assaults. Total violent crimes in Rush City numbered 24.

In addition, deputies responded to six burglaries, 30 thefts or instances of forgery, seven reports of damage to property or vandalism and three auto thefts. There were a total of 46 property crimes and 70 other crimes (robbery, assault, etc.).

In a section labeled “other incidents,” which totaled 569, Foster noted there were 85 alarms, 35 accidents, three “simple” assaults, 35 disorderly or disturbance calls, 32 animal complaints, 129 parking complaints, 244 medical calls and six incidents of narcotics.

Communications

The City Council will receive a quarterly newsletter from the Sheriff's Office. It will provide a brief message from the sheriff and Foster, along with updated data and statistics with quarterly and year-to-date comparisons.

“One of the goals of the Sheriff's Office this year is to implement Intelligence/Target policing, and the statistical comparison is just one aspect of this approach,” Duncan said in the latest newsletter to the city.

“We take great pride in working the Rush City contract and strive to provide the highest quality law enforcement service anywhere,” Foster noted. “It is a pleasure to work with and get to know the entire city staff. I look forward to many more years working in Rush City.”

http://ecmpostreview.com/2014/01/15/community-policing-helps-curb-crime-in-rush-city/

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Massachusetts

BCPD Officers Recognized For Efforts In Campus Safety

by Julie Orenstein

When Boston College Chief of Police and Director of Public Safety John King arrived at BC in 2010, he resolved to take a community-focused approach to policing as BCPD moved forward under his direction.

A veteran of campus law enforcement, King has been instrumental in supporting and expanding community-policing initiatives on campus. Under his tenure, BCPD has also met all the requirements for accreditation from the Massachusetts Police Accreditation Commission and will officially receive its three-year accreditation in February.

For these efforts, as well as his work over a career spanning nearly 40 years, the Massachusetts Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (MACLEA) named King the inaugural winner of the D. Joseph Griffin Award for Administrative Excellence. The award was presented at the association's meeting on Dec. 19.

The honor, named for Joe Griffin, a former chief of police at Northeastern University, is intended to recognize Griffin's contributions to the profession of campus law enforcement. King and Griffin worked together at Northeastern from 1975-85, and Griffin has served as a mentor to King throughout his career.

“[Griffin] is the individual who gave me support and direction to remain in the field of campus law enforcement, and all throughout my career,” King said. “It was both a personal and professional joy to be the first recipient of this award.”

By reorganizing the department and designating a specific officer to spearhead community-policing initiatives, King has expanded BCPD's efforts at strengthening relationships with the campus community. King emphasized the importance of establishing a unified campus outlook.

“We're all part of the same community,” King said. “In policing in general, and certainly in the campus environment, there cannot be an ‘us and them.' It has to be ‘we're all together.'”

King said that, beyond formal programming or BCPD officers' acting as community resource officers (CROs) in residence halls or student organizations, community policing involves building a personal dynamic with students and administrators. The style of policing is more comfortable and less confrontational, and establishing partnerships with community members goes a long way in making people feel safer on campus.

“The interaction [with officers] becomes more natural,” King said. “The police officer, ideally, is not looked upon by a student or community member as someone who is out there looking for me to do something wrong.”

A large number of the calls BCPD receives, King said, are service calls, in which someone is in need of assistance and is seeking the police's help as part of the team to improve the situation. A goal of the community-policing efforts is to make people more comfortable in approaching a police officer as a resource.

“Our role is not to be out there merely looking for community members doing things wrong … as much as it is looking for ways to help you out,” King said.

In addition to King, two other BCPD officers were recognized at MACLEA's December meeting. Officer Keith Holland was acknowledged for his efforts to assist a student with a medical emergency while serving as member of the Bentley University Police Department last year. King noted how fortunate BCPD is now to have the benefit of Holland's services here on campus.

“He used his alertness and his training and immediately acted to take the steps to help that student who was in respiratory distress,” King said.

Recently promoted, Lt. Jeffrey Postell received the inaugural Sean Collier Award for Innovations in Community-Oriented Policing, named for the MIT police officer who was fatally shot by Boston Marathon bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev last April.

Prior to joining BCPD, Postell experienced a similar situation involving domestic terrorism as a young officer in North Carolina. While on patrol one night in 2003, Postell arrested and took into custody a suspicious man whom he believed was a burglar, but who was eventually discovered to be Eric Robert Rudolph, one of the FBI's Most Wanted Fugitives and the man behind the bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

Once at BC, then-patrol officer Postell was promoted to the rank of sergeant in 2011 with the specific responsibilities of strengthening BCPD's crime prevention and community-policing efforts. Under his leadership, the CRO program has grown to its highest level of officer participation, and the department's social media presence has significantly expanded.

In his nomination of Postell for the award, King called him a “highly motivated police officer with a strong commitment to community-policing, a passion for crime prevention and community relations, and a warm and engaging personality which frequently found him conversing with community members while on patrol and establishing strong partnerships.”

“Hearing from some of my colleagues about what Sean did at MIT, I think Lt. Postell certainly emulates that same commitment and approach here at BC,” King said.

http://www.bcheights.com/news/bcpd-officers-recognized-for-efforts-in-campus-safety-1.3130542#.UtfaFM-A05s

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California

In Defense of Investigatory Traffic Stops

by Megan Burks

Samuel Morales admits he applied to become a patrol officer in the San Diego Police Department after watching an episode of “Beach Patrol” on truTV.

“That's the place I want to work,” Morales recalled saying in 2010, then a 20-year veteran of the New York City Police Department.

Three years later, Morales patrols the division that reminds him most of New York City's diverse boroughs: Mid-City. It's situated just south of Interstate 8 and stretches from North Park to La Mesa, meaning the only waves Morales sees on the job are those of immigrants – Vietnamese refugees who settled there in the '70s, Mexican immigrants who came in the '90s, then East Africans, Burmese and Cambodians.

And there's another similarity. Some of the neighborhood's predominantly minority residents say they believe Morales and his colleagues engage in racial profiling akin to New York City's controversial stop-and-frisk policy.

Morales, who's Latino and spent most of his childhood living in Section 8 housing in South Queens, said the seemingly nebulous traffic stops at the center of the racial profiling claims are key to protecting public safety.

“My concern is: Are the people genuinely being profiled or are they upset because they were stopped and think law enforcement had more important things to do?” Morales said. “This is important.”

But there is genuine concern about discriminatory stops in the community. Abdihakim Afewerki, a 26-year-old student who often drives through City Heights and southeastern San Diego, told Voice of San Diego he was pulled over by police 10 times last year. None of the stops left a mark on his record – a fact he said suggests the officers based their investigations on the color of his skin and tattoos. A detective sergeant on the police force, a city councilman and the head of the local NAACP all echoed Afewerki's concern.

Morales, however, said when he flips on his sirens, it has nothing to do with race. Traffic stops are one of the few forms of proactive policing he can do in a city where more people drive and in a department that's stretched thin.

“Community policing is great but we don't have the resources to get out there and walk. Vehicle stops are community policing,” Morales said. “That's the tool the state has given me to do community policing.”

He said pulling people over for broken taillights or dark window tinting – as long as the infraction actually exists – allows him to run their information and potentially take dangerous people, drugs and guns off the street. And though prying into a person's background could make him or her feel like they're being profiled, Morales said it's a necessary step.

“If he was America's Most Wanted and I sent him away, I didn't do my job,” Morales said. “If I have every legal right to find out who he is and all I do is write him a citation, that's no good. No bueno.”

It's the same reasoning he uses to defend stop and frisk in New York. “It turned the city around,” he said, adding that gun crime eked up in the month following a federal judge's order to stop the practice. That ruling has since been stayed.

But The New York Times reports that crime trend was short-lived. By the end of 2013, New York City had achieved its lowest murder rate since 1963. Previous analyses showed most guns were found on people outside of stop-and-frisk zones and that the practice netted few serious criminals.

And criminal justice experts in San Diego and across the nation say addressing racial tensions between police and the community makes law enforcement easier. People in diverse communities are more likely to participate as witnesses and informants and voluntarily behave lawfully when they feel the law is applied equally.

Still, Mid-City Capt. Todd Jarvis said the routine stops are “how we catch murderers, dope dealers and all kinds of criminals.” He said he has made it clear to his officers that those stops shouldn't violate a person's Constitutional rights, and that they should complete forms mandated by the department to track the racial trends.

Morales said it's common for him and other officers to skip the data form – it's one of several required for each stop and officers often lack time between calls. But he said neglecting to fill it out isn't an effort to hide something insidious.

“I don't think we have racists in the Police Department. I don't think a racist could be in the Police Department,” Morales said. “If they really hate people, they wouldn't be able to do what we do because one way or another, you're going to have to help one of these people.”

http://voiceofsandiego.org/2014/01/15/in-defense-of-investigatory-traffic-stops/

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N.S.A. Devises Radio Pathway Into Computers

by DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the United States to conduct surveillance on those machines and can also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks.

While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet, according to N.S.A. documents, computer experts and American officials.

The technology, which the agency has used since at least 2008, relies on a covert channel of radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted surreptitiously into the computers. In some cases, they are sent to a briefcase-size relay station that intelligence agencies can set up miles away from the target.

The radio frequency technology has helped solve one of the biggest problems facing American intelligence agencies for years: getting into computers that adversaries, and some American partners, have tried to make impervious to spying or cyberattack. In most cases, the radio frequency hardware must be physically inserted by a spy, a manufacturer or an unwitting user.

The N.S.A. calls its efforts more an act of “active defense” against foreign cyberattacks than a tool to go on the offensive. But when Chinese attackers place similar software on the computer systems of American companies or government agencies, American officials have protested, often at the presidential level.

Among the most frequent targets of the N.S.A. and its Pentagon partner, United States Cyber Command, have been units of the Chinese Army, which the United States has accused of launching regular digital probes and attacks on American industrial and military targets, usually to steal secrets or intellectual property. But the program, code-named Quantum, has also been successful in inserting software into Russian military networks and systems used by the Mexican police and drug cartels, trade institutions inside the European Union, and sometime partners against terrorism like Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan, according to officials and an N.S.A. map that indicates sites of what the agency calls “computer network exploitation.”

“What's new here is the scale and the sophistication of the intelligence agency's ability to get into computers and networks to which no one has ever had access before,” said James Andrew Lewis, the cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Some of these capabilities have been around for a while, but the combination of learning how to penetrate systems to insert software and learning how to do that using radio frequencies has given the U.S. a window it's never had before.”

How the N.S.A. Uses Radio Frequencies to Penetrate Computers

The N.S.A. and the Pentagon's Cyber Command have implanted nearly 100,000 “computer network exploits” around the world, but the hardest problem is getting inside machines isolated from outside communications.

1. Tiny transceivers are built into USB plugs and inserted into target computers. Small circuit boards may be placed in computers themselves. 2. The transceivers communicate with a briefcase- size N.S.A. field station, or hidden relay station, up to eight miles away. 3. The field station communicates back to the N.S.A.'s Remote Operations Center. 4. It can also transmit malware, including the kind used in attacks against Iran's nuclear facilities.

No Domestic Use Seen

There is no evidence that the N.S.A. has implanted its software or used its radio frequency technology inside the United States. While refusing to comment on the scope of the Quantum program, the N.S.A. said its actions were not comparable to China's.

“N.S.A.'s activities are focused and specifically deployed against — and only against — valid foreign intelligence targets in response to intelligence requirements,” Vanee Vines, an agency spokeswoman, said in a statement. “We do not use foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of — or give intelligence we collect to — U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line.”

Over the past two months, parts of the program have been disclosed in documents from the trove leaked by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor. A Dutch newspaper published the map of areas where the United States has inserted spy software, sometimes in cooperation with local authorities, often covertly. Der Spiegel, a German newsmagazine, published the N.S.A.'s catalog of hardware products that can secretly transmit and receive digital signals from computers, a program called ANT. The New York Times withheld some of those details, at the request of American intelligence officials, when it reported, in the summer of 2012, on American cyberattacks on Iran.

President Obama is scheduled to announce on Friday what recommendations he is accepting from an advisory panel on changing N.S.A. practices. The panel agreed with Silicon Valley executives that some of the techniques developed by the agency to find flaws in computer systems undermine global confidence in a range of American-made information products like laptop computers and cloud services.

Embracing Silicon Valley's critique of the N.S.A., the panel has recommended banning, except in extreme cases, the N.S.A. practice of exploiting flaws in common software to aid in American surveillance and cyberattacks. It also called for an end to government efforts to weaken publicly available encryption systems, and said the government should never develop secret ways into computer systems to exploit them, which sometimes include software implants.

Richard A. Clarke, an official in the Clinton and Bush administrations who served as one of the five members of the advisory panel, explained the group's reasoning in an email last week, saying that “it is more important that we defend ourselves than that we attack others.”

“Holes in encryption software would be more of a risk to us than a benefit,” he said, adding: “If we can find the vulnerability, so can others. It's more important that we protect our power grid than that we get into China's.”

From the earliest days of the Internet, the N.S.A. had little trouble monitoring traffic because a vast majority of messages and searches were moved through servers on American soil. As the Internet expanded, so did the N.S.A.'s efforts to understand its geography. A program named Treasure Map tried to identify nearly every node and corner of the web, so that any computer or mobile device that touched it could be located.

A 2008 map, part of the Snowden trove, notes 20 programs to gain access to big fiber-optic cables — it calls them “covert, clandestine or cooperative large accesses” — not only in the United States but also in places like Hong Kong, Indonesia and the Middle East. The same map indicates that the United States had already conducted “more than 50,000 worldwide implants,” and a more recent budget document said that by the end of last year that figure would rise to about 85,000. A senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the actual figure was most likely closer to 100,000.

That map suggests how the United States was able to speed ahead with implanting malicious software on the computers around the world that it most wanted to monitor — or disable before they could be used to launch a cyberattack.

A Focus on Defense

In interviews, officials and experts said that a vast majority of such implants are intended only for surveillance and serve as an early warning system for cyberattacks directed at the United States.

“How do you ensure that Cyber Command people” are able to look at “those that are attacking us?” a senior official, who compared it to submarine warfare, asked in an interview several months ago.

“That is what the submarines do all the time,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe policy. “They track the adversary submarines.” In cyberspace, he said, the United States tries “to silently track the adversaries while they're trying to silently track you.”

If tracking subs was a Cold War cat-and-mouse game with the Soviets, tracking malware is a pursuit played most aggressively with the Chinese.

The United States has targeted Unit 61398, the Shanghai-based Chinese Army unit believed to be responsible for many of the biggest cyberattacks on the United States, in an effort to see attacks being prepared. With Australia's help, one N.S.A. document suggests, the United States has also focused on another specific Chinese Army unit.

Documents obtained by Mr. Snowden indicate that the United States has set up two data centers in China — perhaps through front companies — from which it can insert malware into computers. When the Chinese place surveillance software on American computer systems — and they have, on systems like those at the Pentagon and at The Times — the United States usually regards it as a potentially hostile act, a possible prelude to an attack. Mr. Obama laid out America's complaints about those practices to President Xi Jinping of China in a long session at a summit meeting in California last June.

At that session, Mr. Obama tried to differentiate between conducting surveillance for national security — which the United States argues is legitimate — and conducting it to steal intellectual property.

“The argument is not working,” said Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution, a co-author of a new book called “Cybersecurity and Cyberwar.” “To the Chinese, gaining economic advantage is part of national security. And the Snowden revelations have taken a lot of the pressure off” the Chinese. Still, the United States has banned the sale of computer servers from a major Chinese manufacturer, Huawei, for fear that they could contain technology to penetrate American networks.

An Old Technology

The N.S.A.'s efforts to reach computers unconnected to a network have relied on a century-old technology updated for modern times: radio transmissions.

In a catalog produced by the agency that was part of the Snowden documents released in Europe, there are page after page of devices using technology that would have brought a smile to Q, James Bond's technology supplier.

One, called Cottonmouth I, looks like a normal USB plug but has a tiny transceiver buried in it. According to the catalog, it transmits information swept from the computer “through a covert channel” that allows “data infiltration and exfiltration.” Another variant of the technology involves tiny circuit boards that can be inserted in a laptop computer — either in the field or when they are shipped from manufacturers — so that the computer is broadcasting to the N.S.A. even while the computer's user enjoys the false confidence that being walled off from the Internet constitutes real protection.

The relay station it communicates with, called Nightstand, fits in an oversize briefcase, and the system can attack a computer “from as far away as eight miles under ideal environmental conditions.” It can also insert packets of data in milliseconds, meaning that a false message or piece of programming can outrace a real one to a target computer. Similar stations create a link between the target computers and the N.S.A., even if the machines are isolated from the Internet.

Computers are not the only targets. Dropoutjeep attacks iPhones. Other hardware and software are designed to infect large network servers, including those made by the Chinese.

Most of those code names and products are now at least five years old, and they have been updated, some experts say, to make the United States less dependent on physically getting hardware into adversaries' computer systems.

The N.S.A. refused to talk about the documents that contained these descriptions, even after they were published in Europe.

“Continuous and selective publication of specific techniques and tools used by N.S.A. to pursue legitimate foreign intelligence targets is detrimental to the security of the United States and our allies,” Ms. Vines, the N.S.A. spokeswoman, said.

But the Iranians and others discovered some of those techniques years ago. The hardware in the N.S.A.'s catalog was crucial in the cyberattacks on Iran's nuclear facilities, code-named Olympic Games, that began around 2008 and proceeded through the summer of 2010, when a technical error revealed the attack software, later called Stuxnet. That was the first major test of the technology.

One feature of the Stuxnet attack was that the technology the United States slipped into Iran's nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz was able to map how it operated, then “phone home” the details. Later, that equipment was used to insert malware that blew up nearly 1,000 centrifuges, and temporarily set back Iran's program.

But the Stuxnet strike does not appear to be the last time the technology was used in Iran. In 2012, a unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps moved a rock near the country's underground Fordo nuclear enrichment plant. The rock exploded and spewed broken circuit boards that the Iranian news media described as “the remains of a device capable of intercepting data from computers at the plant.” The origins of that device have never been determined.

On Sunday, according to the semiofficial Fars news agency, Iran's Oil Ministry issued another warning about possible cyberattacks, describing a series of defenses it was erecting — and making no mention of what are suspected of being its own attacks on Saudi Arabia's largest oil producer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/15/us/nsa-effort-pries-open-computers-not-connected-to-internet.html?_r=0

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New Mexico

Police: NM school shooter is 12-year-old boy

ROSWELL, N.M. - A 12-year-old boy opened fire Tuesday morning at a Roswell middle school, seriously wounding two students before a teacher persuaded him to put down his gun and surrender, authorities said.

State Police Chief Pete Kassetas said the shooting took place around 7:30 a.m. inside the gymnasium of the Berrendo Middle School. He said the student, a seventh-grader whom he declined to identify, used a 20-gauge, sawed-off shotgun that he had sneaked into school in some sort of bag.

"I believe we have the only individual in custody right now that's responsible for this," Kassetas said.

Gov. Susana Martinez said two students were wounded, an 11-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl. She praised John Masterson, the teacher who talked the suspect into giving up, and an off-duty state police officer who also assisted.

Kassetas said authorities were in "direct contact" with the suspect's parents. The Albuquerque Journal said the boy was taken to a psychiatric hospital after a briefing hearing Tuesday afternoon, but Kassetas would say only that the boy was in state police custody. Albuquerque lawyer Robert Gorence said he was representing the suspect and that the boy's parents would issue a statement Wednesday.

The two wounded students were airlifted to a hospital in Lubbock, Texas, CBS affiliate KRQE reported. The boy was shot in the face and neck, Martinez said. He underwent a second surgery Tuesday afternoon and was in critical condition. The governor said his parents had asked that his name not be released.

Martinez identified the wounded girl as Kendal Sanders and said she was shot in the right shoulder. Kendal was admitted to the hospital in critical condition but had been upgraded to stable Tuesday night, Martinez said.

She said a school staff member sustained minor injuries in the incident but declined medical attention.

"I ask that all New Mexicans join us in praying for the families, praying for the kids," the governor said at an evening news conference.

Police would not discuss a motive, but information from nurses treating the wounded boy indicated he was the shooter's target, hospital spokesman Eric Finley said. Kassetes said investigators were executing search warrants Tuesday night on the suspect's home, his school locker and a bag.

The shooter was stopped by Masterson, an eighth-grade social studies teacher who was in another section of the gym when the shots rang out, Martinez said. She said Masterson approached the student and began urging him to put down his weapon, even though the youngster pointed the shotgun at him.

"Mr. Masterson then begins to talk to him, 'put it down,' and the young mane put the gun down and raised his hands," the governor said.

Martinez said the staff member was assisted by state police Lt. Gary Smith, who was dropping off his own child at the school as the incident unfolded. The principal saw Smith and called on him to help. Kassetas said Smith left his own child and ran to the gym.

"Imagine having to make that decision," Kassetas said.

Masterson, who also coaches track and soccer, and has taught at Berrendo for 10 years, declined to discuss his role in getting the shooter to surrender

"It was a harrowing experience,” he told the Albuquerque Journal. "All I can say was the staff there did a great job."

Superintendent Tom Burris said the school's faculty members had taken part in "active shooter" training, and the preparation paid off.

"In the 10 seconds that transpired from the time of this thing starting until the teacher had control of the weapon, there was no cowardice," Burris said. "There was protection for our kids. Everyone acted and did their duties today at Berrendo Middle School."

Kassetas said police had heard rumors that the suspect had warned some students not to go to school that day, but he said investigators had not been able to corroborate that.

Eighth-grader Odiee Carranza said she was walking to the school gym when a boy bumped into her as he rushed past. She told him to be careful, and he apologized and continued on. He ran to the gym, where he pulled a gun out of a bag or band instrument case and fired at the students, she said.

"Then he shot up in the sky, then dropped the gun, and then some teacher grabbed the kid that had the gun," Carranza said.

Carranza described the shooter as a "smart kid and a nice kid."

Sixth-grade student Anyssa Vegara told the Albuquerque Journal she was talking to a security guard when she heard a shot.

"I turned around, and all I saw was someone on the floor with their arm bleeding," Anyssa told the Journal.

She said the security guard ran to assist the injured student, and school officials ordered all the other students to their classrooms.

Eventually, Anyssa was able to text her mother, Monica Vegara.

"From the time hearing about it until the time she texted, it was a nightmare," Monica Vegara said.

Fawna Hendricks, whose son is a seventh-grader at Berrendo Middle School, told the newspaper she heard about the shooting on the radio. "Basically I jumped outta bed, threw on clothes, panicked," Hendricks said.

Another student, Gabby Vasquez, said the boy who was shot "was really nice, got along with everybody."

Two prayer services were held Tuesday night at Roswell's Calvary Baptist and First Baptist churches. Pastor Chris Mullennix said parents were worried and heartbroken, but there was a sense among many he spoke with that the community would be able to come together.

School officials said classes at the school Wednesday would be canceled but counselors would be on hand for students and parents.

Roswell, which is in the southeastern quarter of the state of New Mexico, has a population of about 50,000. The city has been rocked by gang violence in recent years and has asked Homeland Security Investigations to step in and help.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/police-boy-12-opens-fire-in-nm-school-seriously-injuring-2/

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Illinois

Geo-policing to begin in Rockford this month

by Audrey Carpenter

Rockford police will finally implement a new community policing project referred to as “geo-policing” that has been in the works for several years, and has been successfully implemented elsewhere across the nation.

Geo-policing is a form of community policing where all ranks of police officers are assigned as a “team” in a high-crime designated area of the city to lower crime, build relationships with residents and strategically problem solve.

This is different from the current method of policing in which service calls are placed and random patrol officers respond. Under the new method, the same team, consisting of patrol officers, sergeants, lieutenants, detectives and administrative personnel will work together in the same area of the city day in and day out. The same officers will respond to calls throughout the week, which will enable residents, leaders and business owners to recognize and form relationships with them, which makes reducing crime and solving problems much easier.

The first of three areas in Rockford to have the new geo-policing program will be the District 2 area, said Assistant Deputy Chief Doug Pann. The district's boundaries are the Rock River to 20th Street and from Spring Creek Road to Chicago Rockford International Airport. The new program will begin Jan. 19, Pann said in an interview with The Rock River Times .

Rockford Mayor Larry Morrissey (I) campaigned on this concept throughout his candidacy. It has long been a model police have adopted — instead of concentrating staff out of one central facility, staff is placed throughout the city strategically according to crime trends and protection needs.

Pann said the Rockford City Council is negotiating real estate for the team to have its own building in District 2. A decision on that has not been made as of yet, he said.

Sixty-five police personnel will be assigned to District 2. This includes 35 patrol officers and the rest in ranking officers and office staff.

“District 2 has had the highest calls for service in the city and the most violent crime,” Pann said.

There are only a few community policing officers who currently work on the force, and they work from the basement of the Public Safety Building on State Street, Pann explained. The new concept revolutionizes and expands that whole approach to policing, he said.

Better communication, follow-up, unity of community as well as police staff and better relationships with residents are the goals of the program, which is slated to be evaluated over the course of the next year. “Our vision is to decentralize into three separate districts over the course of the next two years,” Pann said.

He added that whatever building is chosen for the geo-policing, it will have a community room available for public use. “The goal is for the community to notice the same officers every day, have the same detectives handling cases, and have sergeants and lieutenants who are responsive as well,” he said.

Pann said they have looked to Madison, Wis., as a role model. That city has 250,000 people and has been effective in implementing the same program there. “We have modeled our program after theirs,” Pann said. “They have been doing this for 20 years now.”

http://rockrivertimes.com/news/2014/01/15/geo-policing-to-begin-in-rockford-this-month/

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Tennessee

MPD report: Crime drops slightly

by Michelle Willard

MURFREESBORO — Murfreesboro saw a slight decrease in overall crime last year, according to the 2013 Crime Statistics Report.

“Every day over 300 police officers, dispatchers, and support staff strive to create safe and livable neighborhoods throughout our city,” Chief of Police Glenn Chrisman said. “Our staff is always vigilant to detect and deter criminal activity, as well as actively engage with members of the community as part of our community policing strategy.”

According to the report, which was released Tuesday, crime fell by 2 percent overall with decreases in six categories and increases in two, Murfreesboro Police Department spokesman Sgt. Kyle Evans said in a press release.

A significant decrease was in homicides, Evans said. Murfreesboro had four homicides reported in 2012 and three reported in 2013.

“Arrests have been made in all three of the reported homicides and are currently awaiting trial,” Evans said.

The first case was the killing of Carla Pearman, and her husband, Jacob Pearman, is scheduled to go to trial in March for the crime.

The second case occurred, according to police, when Kenny Hughes shot Tangeneika Wardlow after her husband committed suicide the previous day.

The third homicide occurred, police said, when a homeless individual, Robert Burke, was assaulted by an acquaintance, Benjamin Lyle, near a temporary homeless camp.

According to the report, Murfreesboro also saw drops in the number of reported rapes from 59 in 2012 to 38 in 2013; robberies, from 141 to 134; assaults from 1,869 to 1,746; burglaries from 896 to 745 and motor vehicle thefts from 172 to 164.

The number of thefts reported jumped 6.5 percent from 2,889 in 2012 to 3,077 in 2013, the report said.

Filed as larceny, theft includes the thefts of bicycles, motor vehicle parts and accessories, shoplifting, or the stealing of any property that is not taken by force or by fraud, Evans explained

“According to FBI statistics, there were an estimated 8.9 million property crimes reported to law enforcement in 2012 with larceny being the most reported crime,” he said.

Murfreesboro statistics show similar trends in that nearly three-quarters of the reported property crimes were larceny, he said.

The number of arsons also jumped from three in 2012 to nine in 2013, according to the report.

In the traffic category, nine fatal vehicle crashes occurred in MPD's jurisdiction in 2012 and remained unchanged in 2013, Evans said, adding at least one was alcohol-related.

Of the nine fatalities on Murfreesboro roadways reported in 2013, six involved a failure to yield the right of way, two involved single vehicles that left the roadway due to speed or some impairment and one involved a pedestrian, the report said.

All of the crashes were investigated by the Fatal Accident Crash Team investigates fatal crashes, which is comprised of a team of accident reconstruction experts, Evans said.

Also MPD recently formed an aggressive driving unit to add to the efforts at reducing traffic crashes on the city's streets.

“The unit utilizes street appearance police vehicles to observe dangerous driving, noise violations, seat belt usage and other driving infractions,” Evans explained.

He added MPD also partners with the Governor's Highway Safety Office on public information campaigns and on enforcement efforts.

Efforts like these and the dedication of police officers helped reduce the overall crime rate, Chrisman said.

“The men and women that serve within the Murfreesboro Police Department are proud to see the results of their hard work and dedication, represented in reductions in crime, especially violent crime,” he said.

He also thanks the residents who take steps to make the city safer through community activism and neighborhood watches.

“Together, we will not stop with the successes seen in 2013 and will continue to work with residents and businesses to always improve the quality of life for our citizens and visitors,” he said.

http://www.dnj.com/article/20140114/NEWS01/301140030/MPD-Report-Crime-drops-slightly-Murfreesboro?nclick_check=1

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California

LAPD Chief Beck: City safer than it's been in decades

by Dakota Smith

After another year of falling crime rates, the city is safer than it's been in 60 years, Los Angeles police chief Charlie Beck announced Monday.

The number of Part 1 crimes — defined as burglaries, motor vehicles, and larceny — fell 5.2 percent last year from 2012, while violent crimes dropped 12 percent, according to statistics released Monday by the police department.

Appearing with Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti at a downtown Monday press event, Beck credited the drop in crime to better community policing tactics and increased gang reduction efforts.

“Eleven years is no accident...no one has that record,” Beck said, noting that crime has been falling that long.

“You have to go back to 1949 to find a year that was safer in the city of Los Angeles,” he added.

Throughout the year, officials release crime figures and data seen as a barometer of the city's safety. Monday's press conference outlined the crime figures for 2013.

Last year, Los Angeles saw 251 homicides, with the majority of those killings — a total of 145 — gang-related, officials said Monday. Two decades ago, the city had 850 homicides.

The number of rapes dropped 31 percent from 2012, with 639 reported rapes compared to 936 the previous year.

Beck told reporters he was proudest of the drop in gang crime, which fell 17.6 percent from 2012. Overall, gang crime is down nearly 47.9 percent from 2008, Beck said.

Amid rising crime, former mayor Antonio Villaraigosa created the Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development, or GRYD, in 2007 to target gang “zones” throughout the city.

Los Angeles, once “the home of all gang crime is now known and followed nationally as the home of the solution to gang violence,” Beck said on Monday.

While some say crime is falling because of national trends showing dropping crime numbers, Garcetti said Los Angeles is taking specific steps to reduce crime overall.

“It takes dedicated and very precise policing, and larger public safety strategies to be able to each year do this,” Garcetti said.

The “clearance” or crime-solving rate for homicides in 2013 was just below 70 percent Beck said, adding that he was comfortable with that figure. Overall clearance figures for other types of crimes in 2013 weren't immediately available.

Meanwhile, Garcetti also used Monday's press conference to announce the appointment of Eileen Decker as permanent deputy mayor for homeland security and public safety. Decker is the former federal prosecutor and deputy mayor under Villaraigosa.

http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20140113/lapd-chief-beck-city-safer-than-its-been-in-decades

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NSA programmes had 'minimal' contribution in terrorism cases: Study

The National Security Agency's recently revealed mass-level surveillance programmes reportedly had a 'minimal' contribution in the investigation of 225 terrorism cases, a new study has claimed.

According to Mashable, Obama had claimed to have knowledge of at least 50 threats that had been averted because of the snoop data, while Alexander had said that the programmes helped the agency foil close to 54 attacks.

However, the study published by the New America Foundation has revealed that the government's claims about the role of NSA's 'bulk' surveillance of web and phone data in Prism and metadata programmes are overblown and even misleading.

Researchers, headed by Peter Bergenm, who also interviewed Osama Bin Laden in 1997, have found that traditional investigative methods, such as the use of informants and targeted intelligence operations, provided the initial impetus for investigations in the majority of cases, while the contribution of NSA's bulk surveillance programs to these cases was minimal.

The study found that NSA's phone metadata programme had an impact on 1.8 percent of terrorism investigations, while PRISM had an impact on 4.4 percent cases.

It was further found that the 1.8 percent of terrorism investigation refers to only one case in which four suspects were convicted of sending 8,500 dollars to Somali terrorist group Al Shabaab, but no actual terrorist attack was alleged in the case.

The researchers opined that the overall problem for US counterterrorism officials is not that they need vaster amounts of information from the bulk surveillance programs, but that they don't sufficiently understand or widely share the information they already possess.

http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ani/nsa-programmes-had-minimal-contribution-in-terrorism-cases-study-114011400635_1.html

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Kansas

Roeland Park police want to get neighborhoods organized in community policing program

by Dan Blom

Roeland Park corporals Warren Gardner (L), and Charlie Kotcher and Police Chief John Morris (R) display some of the old neighborhood watch signs from years ago.

Roeland Park police want to get neighborhoods involved in a newly energized community policing strategy that includes a neighborhood watch and block captains.

“This is not just to deter crime,” says Roeland Park Police Chief John Morris. “If you know your neighbors, it makes it easier (in lots of situations).” The idea is to start by organizing in a three to four block area. The neighbors could meet regularly and watch out for each other.

Police now do house watches, checking the home when homeowners are away. But, Morris says, “we don't know everybody in the neighborhood.” By example, Morris says, police don't always know who has gone to Florida for a couple of months in the winter or which houses might have elderly residents who may need other kinds of help. “If you know your neighbors, it makes it easier.”

Morris sees it as a win-win that keeps the neighborhood safer for everyone, including kids, strengthens the neighborhoods and gets neighbors involved. And, it encourages neighbors to call police when they see suspicious activity. “I would rather get a call and have it turn out to be nothing, than not get called,” Morris says.

Morris hopes to launch this spring starting with a small group and then expanding. Anyone wanting to become a block captain and get the program started in their neighborhood can call the department and volunteer. Otherwise, police will look at crime statistics and find a neighborhood that looks like it might be a good starting point.

Roeland Park has had some watch programs but they have not been actively organized for years.

http://pvpost.com/2014/01/13/roeland-park-police-want-to-get-neighborhoods-organized-in-community-policing-program-24247

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California

Detractors say Brown's budget spends too much on prison expansion

by Beatriz Valenzuela

While many are praising Gov. Jerry Brown's recent budget for spending more money on education and mental health, some are calling his plan to deal with prison overcrowding a step backward.

Under his proposed budget, Brown plans to allot millions for jail and prison expansions. The state's corrections budget would grow from $9.2 billion this year to $9.8 billion in 2014-2015.

The state is moving too quickly toward jail expansion and not toward “simple strategies that could reduce the population that advocates have been asking for for years,” said Diana Zuñiga, statewide field organizer of Californians United for a Responsible Budget.

A federal three-judge panel ordered the state to reduce the prison population to 137.5 percent of prison jail capacity as a way to improve the quality of inmates' health. In October 2011, the state's prison realignment law, Assembly Bill 109, aimed to reduce the prison population by shifting the responsibility of monitoring lower-level inmates from the state to the counties.

Currently the prison population is at 145 percent of the state's total capacity. That translates to about 6,500 inmates over the court-ordered target.

The state has until April 18 to reach its goal, but the Brown administration is hoping the three-judge panel will grant a two-year extension. The budget was put together under the assumption the state will be granted the extension, said Jeffrey Callison, spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

State officials say some of the new money would be spent on rehabilitation programs and improving the quality of inmate services.

“The money being spent on jail construction, it's to improve treatment space, not to increase the bed capacity of the jails,” Callison said.

Zuñiga, however, said the budget has none of the major restorations to health and human services that California needs; it instead restores closed prison beds and plans to open thousands of new ones.

“To restore our most vital programs and rebuild poor communities and communities of color in California, we have to act now to make serious cuts to the corrections budget.”

The budget also includes some built-in reforms that will take effect immediately to reduce the population, including paroling certain infirmed inmates and those age 60 or older who have served at least 25 years behind bars and increasing good-time credits for non-violent second-strike offenders. Second-strikers could now be released after serving about two-thirds of their sentences, where they previously could only earn up to 20 percent off their sentences.

The corrections budget also includes nearly $65 million for the Department of State Hospitals to help deal with a population of more violent mentally ill inmates that has come from the state prison system.

The CDCR anticipates various changes could lead to the release of about 1,600 inmates by April 2016, including, a change that would allow counties to return inmates sentenced under AB 109 to more than 10 years in county jail. Because this could increase the prison population by about 300 inmates, it will only go into effect if the state meets the federally imposed population goal.

If the state is granted the extension, it will free up $81 million that would have gone to housing inmates and instead use it for rehabilitation programs.

It also would require all inmates convicted of a felony and sentenced to county jail to serve a split sentence. Under a split sentence, an inmate would have to serve a portion of the sentence in jail and the rest under community supervision, unless a judge concludes it's not in the interest of justice.

An additional $500 million would be used for new county jail space, on top of $500 million that is now being distributed through a grant program.

If the federal judges decide to keep the April deadline, the state will have to use other measures to reach the 137.5 percent cap including sending 4,000 inmates to out-of-state prisons.

Zuñiga and other opponents applaud some of the reforms made by the Brown administration, but say most of the money and construction is based on the two-year extension and will not do much to help the current population issues.

“This is only taking money out of programs that will educate our youth and keep them out of prison,” she said.

http://www.dailynews.com/government-and-politics/20140112/detractors-say-browns-budget-spends-too-much-on-prison-expansion

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Alabama

Dothan Police to host Coffee with a Cop

Rays Restaurant to host event

The Dothan Police Department will host a Coffee with a Cop event on Wednesday as a communication and relationship building effort with residents in the community.

The Coffee with a Cop event provides people an opportunity to meet with their local police officers and a chance to discuss any community issues.

Dothan police will host the event at Ray's Restaurant located at 1740 S. Oates St. from 7 to 9 a.m.

The event helps provide an informal atmosphere for people to discuss any issues or concerns they'd like to bring to the attention of the Dothan Police Department.

Officers who serve from several different areas within the Dothan Police Department will be at the event to talk to people.

The Coffee with a Cop program, a U.S. Department of Justice sponsored program, has already occurred in 175 cities and towns across 36 states in America, according to the www.coffeewithacop.com website.

For more information about community policing events sponsored by the Dothan Police Department see the department's Facebook page or website at www.dothan.org and select police under the Departments icon and then community service under the menu options.

http://www.dothaneagle.com/news/article_89ceea9a-7c02-11e3-9759-0019bb30f31a.html

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Connecticut

Serious Crime Down In Hartford In 2013

by Stephen Busemeyer

HARTFORD — Despite nearly two dozen homicides in the capital city last year, serious crime was down overall, and police said 2013 was “historically peaceful” at times.

Serious crime — defined as murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and auto theft — declined by about 7 percent, according to Hartford police statistics. There were 23 homicides, one more than in 2012, but for the first time in years, there were two 3-month periods with no homicides.

Along with the drop in crime, the city saw a 21 percent decline in the number of arrests, especially for nonviolent crimes — all part of the city's strategy to focus on preventing violent crime, said Lt. Brian Foley, commander of the city's major crimes division.

“We can't arrest and investigate our way out of the crime problem in Hartford,” Foley said. “We have to dedicate more and more resources to prevention.”

The city's Shooting Task Force, a police division that focuses on combating gun crimes, was cut by about half mid-year because of budget constraints. The number of shootings went up; staffing was later restored, and gun violence dropped.

Other efforts to boost employment, education and income, such as the Opportunities Hartford program and the summer youth employment program, help keep crime down in the long term, said Mayor Pedro Segarra.

Fifty-one people were arrested on murder charges in 2013 — an increase of more than 18 percent. Of the 23 homicides in 2013, police have made 12 arrests, and more are “in the pipeline,” Foley said.

Segarra said city police are solving homicides and violent crimes at a rate far above the national average.

“We're being very strategic in our efforts,” the mayor said.

Aggravated assaults, considered “violent crimes” along with murder and rape, were down by nearly 13 percent in 2013 from 2012, statistics show — from 979 incidents in 2012 to 855 incidents in 2013. Arrests were up 6.3 percent.

The number of crimes classified as rape increased from 39 to 63, but Foley attributed the increase to a change in how the crime is defined for the federal government. The definition now includes male-on-male and female-on-female assaults, among other incidents, he said.

The number of rapes is still down from 2011 and 2009, even with the more broad definition, Foley said. There were 30 rape arrests in 2012 and 31 in 2013.

But police made far fewer arrests for many nonviolent crimes.

In 2013, police made 872 arrests on drug charges, down more than 44 percent from 2012, when police tallied more than 1,500 busts. Arrests were also sharply down for robbery, burglary and breach of peace/disorderly conduct.

“Our main focus has to be on violent crime,” Foley said.

“We've turned the corner not trying to make drug arrests,” he said. “But we are focusing on where they're tied in with violent crime. Our narcotics division works directly with the shooting task force.”

Juvenile arrests were down 20 percent as well — a positive step, Foley said.

“We're trying to eliminate the pipeline from the schools to the prison,” he said. Instead of arresting youths, police should be trying to keep them out of the criminal justice system, he said.

“We have to get cops not to make arrests in those situations but make sure the proper resources are provided to the children,” Foley said.

Segarra said police will also emphasize “community policing” efforts by working closely with neighborhood groups.

“These are complicated issues that have to do with education, with employment,” Segarra said. “So we're taking a very comprehensive approach, which is why we continue to have success. We've made progress, but we have more to do.”

http://foxct.com/2014/01/12/serious-crime-down-in-hartford-in-2013/