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January, 2015 - Week 1

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France

Why did France fail to prevent the Paris terror attacks?

Seven of France's security and intelligence shortcomings, which, if resolved, could prevent the next strike.

by Anchel Pfeffer

The shortcomings of France's security and intelligence agencies have stemmed mainly from insufficient resources. The threat before last week's attacks was known, France has legislation to act against terror suspects in ways that would be unconstitutional in other countries, and its intelligence- and special-forces capabilities are first-rate.

Yet the Kouachi brothers and Amedy Coulibaly managed to bring Paris to a standstill for three days and murder 17 people before being gunned down.

After Sunday's planned show of unity in Paris, the French will return to work on Monday and the tough questions will arise. The following are the main issues the authorities face.

Resource allocation. Senior officials have repeated a refrain in recent days, especially following the revelation that surveillance of the Kouachis was curtailed last year: With 1,300 French civilians having gone to Syria and Iraq to fight with Islamist groups, and with thousands of other potential jihadists still on French soil, there simply isn't the manpower to track each of them. The answer has to be a government decision to urgently allocate more resources.

Misreading the threat. Until last week, the most significant attacks in recent years came against Jewish targets — in Toulouse and across the border in Brussels. Over the last few months, security around higher-profile Jewish sites was increased (as it was at the Charlie Hebdo offices).

But it seems this kind of security is insufficient against gunmen capable of surprising and overcoming armed guards or simply looking to murder a police officer on the street. In a large country of 67 million people, the emphasis has to be on detection and prevention.

Ignoring the older generation of jihadists. Cherif Kouachi was a follower of Farid Benyettou, a young radical preacher active over the past decade in Paris' 19th arrondissement and who with Kouachi tried to travel to fight in Iraq.

The Kouachi brothers were also in contact with Djamel Beghal, an older figure who was a member of Al-Qaida in its earlier days, even before 9/11. In 2005 Beghal was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Beghal continued to influence young Islamists from jail and afterward during house arrest. The feeling is that over the last two years the authorities concentrated on the new generation of jihadists heading for Syria; they lost sight of the more entrenched threat.

Radicalization centers in prison. At the end of the 1980s, France passed a law letting the authorities jail anyone suspected of having links to groups “planning terror,” even if these people had done nothing themselves.

At any given time there are at least 100 men behind bars due to this law, including Cherif Kouachi at one time. Many of them are mere foot soldiers, but their time in prison, usually with many other young Muslims, has turned the jails into radicalization centers.

The French government has sent moderate imams there in an attempt to deradicalize these young men, but without much success. After the main organizers are detained they are kept in a form of house arrest, but this doesn't prevent them from staying in contact with their followers.

Gaps in legislation. Despite the law allowing the jailing of suspects, the intelligence services still believe they lack the necessary powers to search electronic communications and the Internet. After last week's attacks there will be calls in France for new law-enforcement powers — a form of the U.S. Patriot Act passed following 9/11.

Cooperation between agencies. As in any country, intelligence-sharing among agencies and the police under different ministries leaves something to be desired.

On Friday, for the first time, special anti-terror units — the gendarmerie's GIGN force and the police's RAID unit — coordinated operations when GIGN stormed the print works where the Kouachis were barricaded while RAID burst into the Paris kosher grocery where Coulibaly had taken hostages. Such cooperation will have to improve if French law enforcement is to make good use of its resources for fighting terror.

Cooperation between the jihadists. One of the surprising developments in the attacks is the Kouachis' affiliation with Al-Qaida in Yemen, while Coulibaly claimed to be working for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL.

The two groups are bitter rivals in the Middle East, but their European members are often from the same neighborhood, as it were. Security services back home have to be ready for them to be working in coordination.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/world/.premium-1.636440

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Bloody Rivals: Paris attack helps Al Qaeda outshine ISIS

by Steven Edwards

The terrorist rampage at a Paris satirical magazine left the West reeling, but the attack was also the latest salvo in a lesser known fight, the public relations war between Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in which the prizes are funds from extremist benefactors around the globe and Muslim radical conscripts ready to kill and die on command.

Friday's claim from Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) that it had directed the jihadist brothers, whose commando-style raid Wednesday left 12 dead at Charlie Hebdo, would appear to be a coup for the older and more established terror network, which for much of 2014 was overshadowed as Islamic State gained momentum.

Al Qaeda's prominence among terrorist groups, undisputed in the years following 9/11, had been largely eclipsed as the newer group, also known as ISIS, seized territory in Iraq and Syria and carried out a series of high-profile beheadings that elevated its bloody brand. The Paris operation gives Al Qaeda's relevance a new boost, said Steve Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

"It will accrue to their positive development in terms of financing, reputation and all that," Emerson said. "And there'll probably be a brigade named in the brothers' memory."

French-born brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi were killed Friday in the culmination of a massive manhunt when French police stormed a printing plant 25 miles northeast of Paris where they had holed up. They reportedly told victims during Wednesday's attack on Charlie Hebdo they were with Al Qaeda, and Fox News subsequently reported that at least one of the brothers had traveled to Yemen and been in contact with terrorist training camp leaders there.

'Instead of one major terrorist group to be concerned about – there are now two serious threats. This also means more resources will be needed'
- Steve Stalinsky, MEMRI

The claim of responsibility, from one of AQAP's top Shariah officials, Harith bin Ghazi al-Nadhari, removed any lingering questions about who was behind the shocking attack.

"Some of the sons of France were disrespectful to the prophets of Allah," Al-Nadhari, said in a speech first reported by the Washington-based SITE Intelligence Group. "So a group from among the believing soldiers of Allah marched unto them, then they taught them respect and the limit of the freedom of expression."

AQAP is hoping to reclaim the mantle of the international jihadi cause for Al Qaeda, said Steve Stalinsky, executive director of U.S.-based Middle East Research Institute (MEMRI), which monitors and analyzes jihadist and other communications. Charlie Hebdo had long angered Muslim extremists throughout the world by publishing demeaning caricatures of Prophet Muhammed, and terror groups and religious leaders had called for the death of its cartoonists.

It was, to Muslim extremists everywhere, a high-value target.

Stalinsky said he expects Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula to fully maximize its success by putting out more claims and videos emphasizing its links to the brothers.“AQAP is notorious for putting out videos later, and they did that with the Underwear Bomber,” he said, referring to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was convicted and is in prison for his failed attempt to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear on a U.S.-bound flight on Christmas Day, 2009.

On Thursday, a cleric at a Mosul mosque reportedly claimed ISIS was responsible for the Paris attack, but there appears to be no corroboration for that. Elsewhere within ISIS, the blow struck in France appears to have earned respect. ISIS fighter Abu Mussab of Syria told Reuters that the Paris gunmen were "on the path of the emir (ISIS leader Al-Baghdadi) .... and our Sheikh Usama," a statement which also served as a calculated swipe at Al Qaeda by elevating Al-Baghdadi to equal status with dead Al Qaeda leader Usama Bin Laden.

The competition between the world's most feared terrorist groups is less than a year old. ISIS was an affiliate of Al Qaeda before their February, 2014 split. The decoupling was driven by the disapproval of ISIS tactics by Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawhiri, who ordered the upstart terrorist army out of Syria.

"ISIS 'is not a branch of the Al Qaeda group . . . does not have an organizational relationship with it and [Al-Qaeda] is not the group responsible for their actions," Al Qaeda's General Command said in a statement, marking the first and only time the leadership formally repudiated an affiliate.

But instead of leaving, ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi pronounced himself an "emir," and declared a caliphate – or Islamic State – in the large swath of ISIS-controlled land that has effectively blurred much of the Syrian border with Iraq. Al-Baghdadi also called on Muslims throughout the world to swear loyalty to him. In the ensuing months, ISIS thrived as it seized oil fields and an Iraqi central bank, humiliated Iraq's army and brought cities and villages populated by millions under its control. That success brought an endless stream of foreign fighters into Syria and Iraq to sign on with the terror group.

Al-Baghdadi more recently went after AQAP, Al Qaeda's Yemen-based affiliate, after a jihadist group there pledged its loyalty to him. Al-Baghdadi accepted the declaration, and declared Yemen a new province of his caliphate. AQAP risked being overshadowed in its own back yard as ISIS engaged the Yemeni army and the adversarial Yemeni Shia insurgency known as the Houthis, and incurred sympathy-inducing American drone strikes. Just last month, ISIS proudly announced the death of one of its members, in Yemen, calling Humam Al-Ta'zi, "the first martyr of the [Islamic] State to die upon Yemeni soil."

"Despite the AQAP leadership's efforts to halt ISIS's expansion in Yemen, it seems that the organization is successfully recruiting new fighters and activists," MEMRI says in an analysis – Changing Dynamics in the Global Jihad Movement – released to FoxNews.com.

With the expansion into Yemen, where Al Qaeda operates numerous and sophisticated terror training camps that prepare fighters for war and terror missions, ISIS was taking on Al Qaeda's most potent affiliate on its home turf.

While the two groups have generally stopped short of killing each other, experts warn that as long as the competition is one of one-upmanship - competing over who can best strike at the common enemy - the rivalry's real losers are the west. And American and other Western-born jihadi sympathizers have choices for joining Islamic extremist causes.

"Instead of one major terrorist group to be concerned about – there are now two serious threats. This also means more resources will be needed," Stalinsky said.

Both groups are looking to amplify their appeal to what Joseph Braude, a Middle East specialist as senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, called the "disaffected youth" of the world who are ripe for radicalization. Each successful attack and every headline one generates can help their cause, experts said. The West needs to answer with the help of Muslims who reject the extremist orthodoxy.

"The long-term strategy needs to include a proactive approach to fostering moderate elements in the Muslim world," Braude told FoxNews.com. "If we don't… these groups will continue to proliferate and metastasize."

Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the two groups will continue to compete for terrorism market share, but for the West, the danger remains the same - "the overall appeal of militant Islam."

"We will see the tide change in favor of one group or another, but I think it is a distinction without much of a difference," he said.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/01/11/paris-attacks-may-reveal-hidden-fight-for-recognition-between-al-qaeda-and/

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David Cameron and President Obama to hold security talks

The Prime Minister will fly to Washington to discuss the atrocities in France and the fight against Islamic State, as he draws up plans for joint defences against cyber-attacks with the US President

by Tim Ross

David Cameron will fly to Washington for urgent security talks with President Obama this week, in the wake of the Paris killings and the growing threat from "cyber" attacks over the internet.

The Prime Minister and the US President are expected to discuss the atrocities in France and the military campaign against jihadists in Iraq and Syria.

A key focus of the talks, taking place in the Oval Office on Thursday and Friday, is expected to be efforts to counter the increasing threat from cyber-attacks, after Sony became the victim of a high profile hacking from North Korea last year.

Mr Cameron will seek to reach a deal on joint work to defend Britain and the US against cyber attacks from rogue states and criminals, while discussions could also cover the need to develop cyber weapons to strike back against enemies.

On Saturday night, a White House spokesman said Mr Cameron would have a "working dinner" with the President on Thursday to discuss a full range of international issues, followed by talks in the Oval Office on Friday.

"The United Kingdom is a uniquely close friend and steadfast ally, and the President looks forward to beginning the New Year by working with Prime Minister Cameron on these issues and reaffirming the enduring special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom," the spokesman said.

The meetings will come as British intelligence releases an unprecedented report setting out the scale of the cyber security threat to businesses in the UK.

GCHQ is to issue new advice to help businesses protect themselves from spies acting on behalf of foreign states, commercial rivals and criminal gangs who have caused millions of pounds worth of damage and disruption.

The report, to be published by GCHQ, the government's listening station in Cheltenham, has found that more than 80 per cent of large UK companies reporting a security breach of some kind in 2014, costing between £600,000 and £1.5 million in each case.

Writing in the report, the Director of GCHQ, Robert Hannigan, says: "In GCHQ, we continue to see real threats to the UK on a daily basis, and I'm afraid the scale and rate of these attacks shows little sign of abating".

The report urges businesses to take greater steps to protect themselves from cyber-attacks. On a daily basis GCHQ sees computer systems and the information on them being compromised by malicious attackers, it says.

The GCHQ study warns that "the internet can be a hostile environment" in which "the threat of attack is ever present".

"Doing nothing is no longer an option," it says in a message to businesses. "Protect your organisation and your reputation by establishing some basic cyber defences to ensure that your name is not added to the growing list of victims.”

The government will also expand the team of “cyber specials” – volunteer software programmers and other experts in cybercrime - from 18 to 80.

In November, Sony's computer network was crippled by hackers shortly before the company was due to release The Interview, a controversial comedy depicting a fictional plot to assassinate Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader.

A succession of online leaks followed the hacking, including emails that embarrassed Hollywood stars and company executives, as well as the script for the next James Bond film.

The FBI has attributed the attack on Sony to the North Korean government.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/11337759/David-Cameron-and-President-Obama-to-hold-security-talks.html

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Al Qaeda turncoat who helped US nail Al-Awlaki warns of more sleeper cells

by Perry Chiaramonte

A former Danish motorcycle gangster who joined Al Qaeda, only to become a double agent who claims to have helped the U.S. hunt down one of the terrorist organization's top leaders, said this week's attacks in Paris prove that sleeper cells are positioned around the west, ready to carry out fresh attacks.

Morten Storm, who, as an informant for Denmark's national intelligence agency Security and Intelligence Service (PET), had first-hand dealings with Anwar Al-Awlaki while the U.S.-born cleric was head of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, said western countries must protect themselves by canceling the citizenships of homegrown radicals who travel to the Middle East to fight or train. Once radicalized, homegrown jihadists can easily blend into society until given the signal to strike, he said.

“Deception is their warfare,” Storm said on a conference call facilitated by the New York-based terrorism research group Clarion Project. “One of the things that these groups believe in is that you are allowed to trick someone into believing that you stand for something else when you really have other agendas. They will act as normal members of western society.”

“They will act as normal members of western society.”
- Morten Storm

Storm, 38, who co-wrote "Agent Storm: My Life Inside al Qaeda and the CIA," speculated that the suspects who launched the bloody, commando-style attack on French satire magazine newspaper Charlie Hebdo are likely among many such Islamist terrorists in position and ready to carry out attacks in Europe. The brothers who killed 12 in an attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Abdo had ties to Al Qaeda, and at least one had traveled to Yemen and been in contact with terror camp operators, Fox News has reported. Cherif Kouachi, 32, and Said Kouachi, 34, were killed Friday when police raided a printing plant where they had holed up two days after carrying out the savage attack, mounted in retaliation for the magazine's publishing of cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammed.

Storm was involved with drugs and violence as a member of the motorcycle gang Banditios, before going to prison in 1997. Following his release, he moved to England with a Danish Muslim convert he met in prison. There, he embraced the religion, praying five times a day and growing out his beard.

Storm claims that it was during that time that he came into contact with Al Qaeda members and had travelled to Yemen three times before he met leader Al-Awlaki in 2006. Al-Awlaki was a U.S.-born jihadist who rose through the ranks of Al Qaeda and was one of the world's most wanted terrorists before a CIA drone killed him in 2011.

"Al-Awlaki had an extra hatred toward everything not Islamic,” Storm recalled during the interview. “He believed it was his calling to bring the banners of Islam back to victory. He believed he was part of the Prophet Muhammad's belief that armies would rise. He was angry towards America for preventing this.”

Storm claims he left Islam after militants rebuffed his offer to joining their fighting ranks in Somalia. He began working with PET shortly afterward, all the while maintaining contact with Al Qaeda operatives. Through the Danish intelligence organization, he passed information to the CIA which he says led to the Sept. 30 drone strike that killed Al-Awlaki, as well as American-born terrorist Samir Khan, who published Al Qaeda's online magazine, "Inspire."

Although Storm claimed credit for Al-Awlaki's death in Danish newspaper interviews, the CIA has never confirmed or denied getting information from him. But Hans Jorgen Bonnichesen, former head of PET, has said Storm was a "very valuable agent" who had information that proved vital to international counter-terrorism efforts.

A European security official said in a 2013 AP interview that Storm may very well have been an informer, but questioned the way Storm described his own significance.

"I have a strong feeling that he's overestimating his own role," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly at the time.

But Storm said during Friday's interview that he learned the lay of the land in his travels to Yemen, and described complex training facilities where many people who came from the west engaged in combat training.

“They were extremely organized,” he said. “Many of those trained were given the chance to join fighters in battle and kill government officers and Shia Muslims.”

He said they also had religious scholars at the facilities to enforce Sharia law as well as informants at airports that could help pass operatives through from Yemen to Europe and other areas, as well as people in charge of foreign operations for the extremist group. Many of those terrorists are now fighting in Syria and Iraq, while others have died in battle. But many, Storm warned, are living among westerners.

“What they are really doing is waiting for the right moment," he said. "Then these sleeping cells eventually wake up and attack their targets.

"Al Qaeda wants to create a massive division between Muslims and non-Muslims living in Europe," he added.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/01/11/al-qaeda-turncoat-who-helped-us-nail-al-awlaki-warns-more-sleeper-cells/

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New York

New York City: Fourth-Graders Hatch Plan to Kill Teacher Using Hand Sanitizer

by Muhammad Ashan

Police said that three fourth-graders, who study at a New York elementary school, designed a plot to kill their teacher by using hand sanitizer.

The three 9-year-olds, who were at a school in Elba located in between cities of Rochester and Buffalo, bragged before their fellow students a short time before the winter break in December that they had been planning to kill their teacher. The students said that they would do it by putting antibacterial products around the classroom as the teacher had suffered allergy due to antibacterial products. A school board member got news about the plan from other parents as well as his own son.

Youth officers conducted interviews from the children who were in question. During the interview session their parents and school officials were also present. One of the students gave an indication that the teacher yelled at them more often in the class and that the class didn't like her. Another student said that a different student made the plan putting entire blame on him.

According to Genessee County Sheriff's Department report of the incident indicated that the students involved in the plan gave contradicting versions of the story to the youth officers. The school opted to tackle the issue on its own hence there will be no involvement of police in the case.

The report doesn't show the motive behind the alleged plot but it suggested that there was bullying involved and that the class had been facing trouble working together.

According to a statement by the superintendent of the school the incident was no doubt shocking for the community and the school and that there would be no comment on the incident by the school. Media is also criticized for not reporting the incident accurately.

Further on the statement claimed that department of the sheriff determined that no crime was committed and they turned back the matter over to the school district.

http://www.smnweekly.com/new-york-city-fourth-graders-hatch-plan-to-kill-teacher-using-hand-sanitizer/9516/

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Michigan

Grand Rapids Police take street-level approach to strengthen relationships with community

by Angie Jackson

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Neighborhood leaders on the city's Southwest Side remember a time when residents sat down with police to talk about a suspected drug house in their area, but one man balked at the idea of speaking to an officer.

Raised in Mexico, the man knew police there to be corrupt. He told Roosevelt Park Neighborhood Association staff who organized the meeting that officers could only arrest people, not help them, said Maria Moreno-Reyes, crime prevention and neighborhood improvement coordinator for the association.

But the man's tone changed when he realized the community officer spoke Spanish. He and other residents worked with the officer. Over time, their collaboration led to the eviction of the shady residents.

“This man ended up feeling so proud to have worked with an officer who obviously resolved the issue,” Moreno-Reyes said. “It was a great view seeing him shaking his hand and telling him, ‘Thank you.'”

Fast forward several years: Grand Rapids Police are again working to strengthen relationships between officers and residents across the city.

This street-level effort is happening at a time when the police/public relationship has become a national debate across the U.S., fueled by community protests against police actions in Ferguson, Mo., and the pro-law enforcement response after the recent slayings of two New York officers.

On the local level, Moreno-Reyes says she hears from residents who fear or don't respect police largely because they haven't had an experience to establish that trust.

Grand Rapids Police Chief David Rahinsky said he's dedicated to improving those strained relationships. The department's push to strengthen ties with the community comes partly in response to national events. If a tragedy should strike here, Rahinsky said he doesn't want there to be barriers due to lack of trust in police.

“I give the department credit in that they've done a very good job. What we're looking to do is take what has been a good relationship and take it to the next level,” said Rahinsky, who took the helm of the department in July.

He said discussions with command staff have centered on encouraging patrol officers across the city to build connections before residents have to interact with police in a stressful situation. These opportunities, such as saying hello to someone when buying a cup of coffee or interacting with kids playing in a park, are presented daily, he said.

“It's really a matter of being approachable every day, all day,” Rahinsky said. “There are a million opportunities every day. It's a whole mindset. It's seeing yourself as part of the community and seizing every opportunity to interact.”

Capt. Jeff Hertel, as commander of the South Service Area, in recent months encouraged patrol officers to step out of their cars and get to know neighbors, increasing foot patrols when weather and calls for service allowed. Hertel recently accepted another job, and this week was his last at the department.

Building trust before a crime occurs pays off, Hertel said, recalling years back when high school-age kids who witnessed a Southeast Side homicide lined up to talk to officers soon after the shooting.

“It is incumbent upon us to reach out and build a bridge to the people we serve. … particularly with people that don't typically see us as the solution,” Hertel said.

Hertel, at monthly Coffee with a Captain discussions and other meetings with citizens, heard that residents didn't see patrol officers out of the cars as often as they had in the past. People who spend time on their front porches or in their yards in the warmer months have asked why officers don't wave at them – a small gesture that Julie Niemchick, executive director of the Roosevelt Park Neighborhood Association, said can go a long way in helping police appear approachable.

“If somebody waves at you, wave at them. There are some things that they could change up,” Niemchick said of patrol officers.

The city's community police officers work closely with neighborhood association leaders, as well as schools and businesses. Their consistent, visible presence makes them popular among neighbors, some of whom feel comfortable approaching the officers directly about problems in the neighborhood.

Rahinsky is looking to grow the department's community policing footprint to add more officers and extend their hours into the evenings, he said. The budget is being reviewed to determine how many officers they could afford.

The community officers assigned to the Baxter neighborhood on the city's Southeast Side have a rapport with residents and know many of them by name, said Marian Barrera-Young, crime prevention coordinator for the Baxter Neighborhood Association.

“The kids know them, too,” she said. “Basically all of our community officers know the community, especially in Baxter because it's so small. They know everybody in their area.”

When people don't feel comfortable coming forward to police, neighborhood associations can act as the middleman. Moreno-Reyes recalled a time when a woman was hesitant to report another resident's harassing behavior because she feared retaliation. Moreno-Reyes arranged for the woman to make a police report with an officer during National Night Out. She received a personal protection order against the man, a step she likely wouldn't have taken on her own.

“I think when people are able to get to know or understand through their experience that police are there to help them, that says a lot,” Moreno-Reyes said.

When Barrera-Young talks to residents about what they want from police in their neighborhood, it comes down to a few simple things: To feel safe and know they will be treated fairly.

“I would think that everybody wants to see harmony between the police and the community,” she said. “It's hard for (police) to do their job without the community helping them. … it takes everybody to make this thing work.”

The next Grand Rapids Police Department coffee with a cop event is scheduled for 9-10 a.m. on Monday, Jan. 19, at Tim Hortons, 900 W. Fulton St., with Officer Tom Warwick, who may be reached at twarwick@grcity.us. Meetings in other sectors of the city will be scheduled in the future.

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2015/01/grand_rapids_police_take_stree.html

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Rhode Island

R.I.'s minority police officers understand life on both sides of the blue line

by AMANDA MILKOVITS

On a bitter January night 15 years ago, an off-duty black Providence officer was shot and killed by two white officers who thought he was an armed suspect.

The death of Sgt. Cornel Young Jr. ignited tensions that had simmered between the police and minority communities for decades. Some say now that the hard conversations stemming from the tragic shooting aren't over.

“We've come a long way, but we started something we never finished,” says Sgt. Raymond Hull, supervisor of the Providence police public housing unit. “Did anything productive happen? No. That was our catalyst — the issue of talking and understanding our biases.”

At the time, Young's death forced the police in Providence, and throughout the state, to face the divide between law enforcement and minorities.

The recent deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of white officers in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City are very different incidents, but they raise the same issues about police practices and race that law enforcement agencies throughout Rhode Island have faced since the night of Jan. 28, 2000.

No one feels it more, perhaps, than officers who are black and Hispanic. They straddle two worlds.

They love being police officers. They know they are leading the way for other minorities to join. They have insight into how the police can serve their communities — and what it looks like for people on the other side of the badge.

They understand why people distrust the police. A history of mistrust and division takes time to overcome.

So, they face a backlash for choosing to be “blue.”

A black officer in Woonsocket says he's been told he's “working for whitey” when he makes an arrest.

A Hispanic officer in Central Falls says he's insulted when a motorist accuses him of racial profiling. A Hispanic officer in Woonsocket says some teens taunt: “Hands up, don't shoot.”

“Several of our white officers — they may be white, but they're my brothers,” says Woonsocket Officer Enrique Sosa, an immigrant from Guatemala. “I trust them. I've been with them when they're called racists, and it's hard to see.”

The officers talk about the protests. They talk about being called “pigs.”

“You know what ‘pig' means to me? Pride, integrity and guts,” says Providence Detective Andres Perez, an immigrant from Colombia. “And those who call me that have none of that.”

STRAINS ON POLICE

Young's death pushed issues of race and policing into the public realm. Many departments implemented the recommendations of a statewide task force formed after the fatal shooting.

Some municipalities have adopted community-policing strategies, where officers make an effort to get to know residents and community leaders. They've forged partnerships with local organizations and sought help recruiting more minorities. Some, like Providence, have attained national accreditation.

Some departments have placed officers permanently in schools, where they get to know students. Providence and Pawtucket police join with street workers to help quell disputes and prevent violence.

Providence, Woonsocket and other cities have improved the way they investigate and track police misconduct. Over the last decade, more departments have invested in using less-lethal weapons, such as pepper spray and Tasers, to reduce the need for deadly force.

Leaders of local community organizations say the changes are good, but they want more.

Mario Bueno, the executive director at Progreso Latino, said the key is community policing — having officers who both reflect and get to know the people they serve.

“The police have to be an integral part of the community and not just be there to admonish,” Bueno said.

Providence Detective Anthony Roberson says mistrust can't be allowed to simmer between the police and the community they serve. The result will look like the outcry in Providence 15 years ago, or in Ferguson, Mo., last year.

“You can't ignore a history of tension between police and the community,” said Roberson. “When you proceed in the manner that it doesn't exist is when something happens.”

While police commanders tout relationships with community leaders, the same needs to happen on the street level.

The police say they understand that the person you get to know today may be the person who aids you in preventing or solving crimes tomorrow.

Yet the strain on municipal budgets has hampered community-policing efforts. The Providence Police Department dropped by 100 officers during the last several years. New officers who graduated from the academy in the fall filled half of the vacancies.

In Central Falls, the city's bankruptcy cost about 30 percent of its officers. The force was reduced from 44 to 31, while still responding to about 23,000 calls for service a year. The department has grown, and in 2015, it will add three officers, raising the roster to 39. It will also create a community police bureau.

In Woonsocket, the police rolls dropped from 104 five years ago to a low of 84 in 2013. The city will hire three officers in the spring, bringing the roster to 90, for a department that gets about 26,000 calls a year for service for a wide range of issues.

“Now, it's gotten to the point where you have to be clergy, social worker, officer … take one hat off and put on another,” says Woonsocket Officer Dave Chattman.

“How do you balance it? It's tough to do everything we have to do,” adds Sosa, the Woonsocket officer. “There are days when the radio does not stop. Thursday, Friday, Saturday night, shots fired, domestic assaults.”

They all watch what's happening nationally. “Anytime some major incident happens, we review our policies and see if they're appropriate,” said Central Falls Capt. Dorian Rave.

A bill to address racial profiling in Rhode Island was passed in the Senate in 2014 but was not taken up in a House committee. The NAACP and other activists say the bill is important because recent statistics show that minorities are disproportionately stopped and searched by the police in the state.

Some minority officers say that they've been stopped while off duty for unwarranted reasons. Detective Roberson, who is black, recalls a time several years ago when he had finished his shift. A white North Providence officer pulled him over after he had stopped at a stop sign in Providence's North End, part of Roberson's beat. The officer said, “Do you know you passed a stop sign?”

Roberson said, “Do you know you're on my post?”

The North Providence officer noticed Roberson's uniform in the back of the car and said, “I was just bored.”

Roberson said he wonders what might have happened if he weren't a police officer.

‘TEACHING MOMENT'

Raised on the South Side along with 12 siblings, Providence's Sgt. Hull remembers how “white flight” changed the city's demographics. By the mid-1980s, when the department was trying to recruit minorities to reflect the changing city, Hull and his brother Darren were hired.

That's where Hull says he learned something about biases. “As a black man, I thought everybody hated me,” Hull said. “On this job, I found out that the Irish hated the Italians. They all looked the same, but it was very enlightening to me.”

As a rookie, Hull said, he met many good people in the department — and some “horrible cops.”

He saw injured prisoners brought into the police station, and officers explaining that the suspects “fell down the stairs.” They all knew it was an inside joke, Hull said.

“It was bad here, but people wouldn't open their mouths,” Hull said. “It was a tough blue line. If you opened your mouth, you were black-balled.”

There weren't enough officers willing to risk their jobs by speaking out against the brutality, Hull said. The only option, he said, was transferring out of the cars or districts where there was trouble.

Eventually, a tragedy led to drastic changes at the Providence Police Department.

Hull was the community police supervisor for the South Side when Young was killed. A week later, the National Black Police Association called the shooting “racist.” The Police Department responded that the officers didn't realize Young was one of their own.

Hundreds of protesters took to city streets. Some called the police murderers. Some demanded that the attorney general appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the shooting. City and state commissions were formed to examine police and community relations. Young's mother filed a federal lawsuit that, she said, was intended to examine police training and policies. Police departments across Rhode Island took notice.

Young's shooting is still an underlying issue in the African-American community, Hull said: “It was a tragedy, but it was a teaching moment.”

Now 51, Hull supervises the officers in the city's public housing and serves as state representative for District 6 in Providence and North Providence. He says he knows he serves as an example to younger officers and the community. “I know there are people on the street who need my presence.”

Many of the brutal officers have been forced out, Hull said. “It's nothing like it was before,” he said, “but it hasn't gone away, because we wouldn't be where we're still at.”

There are more officers willing to do what's right, Hull said, and as one of the senior supervisors, he has more influence. But he wasn't sure there were enough.

“Police believe they are the guardians, and they are, and if you go too far, that's when you have trouble.” While the department has come a long way in becoming professional, the relationships between police and minority residents still need work, he said.

Providence Police Chief Hugh T. Clements Jr., who was a sergeant and vice president of the union when Young was killed, agrees that the conversation about race “didn't go far enough.”

“How do we get there?” Clements said. “There's no answer yet. We keep striving for perfection.”

While the basics are the same — community policing, accountability and training — the challenges in each municipality are different.

Providence has the most gangs and gun crimes of any community in Rhode Island. The department uses different strategies, such as crime mapping and intelligence gathering. The police need to target those who are involved in gangs and gun violence without making all residents in crime-ridden neighborhoods feel like the police are “just throwing a dart,” Clements said.

“You need to find a balance where you don't trample the rights of a community.”

The police keep community leaders informed about what they're doing, knowing the leaders will help spread information. An advisory board that includes leaders of neighborhood and minority groups, faith leaders and local organizations meets with Providence police regularly.

“Without question, we are a better and more community-oriented police department than we were, but we still have some work to do,” Clements said.

CULTURALLY SENSITIVE

In Central Falls, where many residents are Hispanic and Portuguese, the issue is immigration. Some residents don't speak English. Some are from countries where law enforcement is deeply distrusted. Some are undocumented.

The Police Department has a policy that officers don't ask questions about anyone's immigration status, said Capt. Dorian Rave. The police want people to feel safe enough to talk, especially if they are victims or witnesses in a crime. Even in this small department, there are Hispanic officers on every shift and two bilingual dispatchers.

“The overall pulse in this department is we have no choice but to be culturally sensitive,” said Rave. “In order for people to open up to you, you have to build that trust.”

Rave says he understands how some immigrants may fear the police, as his mother once did.

Rave was 5 when his family moved to Central Falls from Colombia, and old enough to know how the adults in his family feared the police in the old country.

They didn't have anything to do with the police here until the day someone smashed a window of their house on Worth Street. Rave was 7 at the time, and he still remembers how frightened his mother was when two white officers came to their door.

The officers sat down at the kitchen table with them and reassured his mother that her family would be safe. “They were amazing,” Rave said.

That was the moment Rave knew he wanted to be a police officer. After serving in the Air Force, he joined the Central Falls department in 2000. At 37, Rave is now the third-highest-ranked officer — and the highest-ranked Hispanic — in the department.

“It was so different from what you expect,” Rave said. “You watch ‘Cops' and it's chasing bad guys all day. But it's a complex job. On one call, you may have to use force, and the next call could be a couple having problems and you have to be a therapist. You have to be 100-percent right all the time.”

LESSON FROM FLORIDA

Woonsocket Chief Thomas Carey saw Ferguson burning and remembered St. Petersburg, Fla. He was an officer there in 1996, when a white officer shot and killed an unarmed 18-year-old black man who hit him with a stolen car.

That fatal shooting and the grand jury decision not to indict the officer, who was found justified, sparked massive riots of fires, destruction and violence. Members of a black separatist group were blamed for inciting the violence and calling for the executions of the officers involved in the shooting.

“It's afterwards when everyone tries to come together on the issues,” Carey said.

When Carey left St. Petersburg to become chief in Woonsocket in 2008, he used what they learned from the shooting.

Carey talks with ministers of predominantly African-American and Hispanic churches, holds forums to recruit minority candidates to join the police force, gets police involved in community events and uses grant money to put officers in walking beats.

Carey reaches out to leaders in the minority community to recruit more officers. He wishes more people would reach back.

So do the officers.

DIFFICULT RECRUITING

Woonsocket officer Dave Chattman was among the first black officers when he was hired 24 years ago, and he accompanies the chief to the recruitment forums. He's disappointed when few qualified people show up.

“How can we say we want more when we don't apply?” Chattman said.

Chattman drives through the city with Officer Enrique Sosa one morning, the black and Guatemalan police officers who finish each other's sentences. They represent how the city's demographics have changed.

They drive into Dunn Park, where Chattman played as a child, and into Fairmount, a diverse neighborhood where he was raised. They head up East School Street, where Chattman and other officers cracked down on the busy drug trade more than 20 years ago.

Over time, the city changed. Black residents moved on, and Hispanic residents moved in.

Sosa became the city's first Spanish-speaking officer when he was hired five years ago. He was 14 when his family emigrated from Guatemala to Cranston. He barely spoke English, and he didn't fit in with the other teenagers. His mother was working two jobs. It would have been easy for him to end up in street life.

But two youth group leaders from his family's church paid attention. One, a black man from Harlem, “taught me that I didn't have to let someone else tell me who I am,” Sosa said.

Those words, and the kindness of two Cranston officers, led Sosa to become a U.S. citizen and a police officer. He serves as an interpreter for the city's juvenile hearing board, where he sees youths who remind him of himself.

“The last kid I saw…was an angrier version of me,” Sosa said. “I said, ‘If you ever need something, you can talk to me.'”

Sosa sees relief on people's faces when they realize he speaks their language. “Being a minority in law enforcement, I'm the only one these people feel like they can trust,” he said. “But a lot of the times, the only thing I have in common with them is language. Dave and I have more in common.”

They also face backlash from people in their communities who get angry about arrests and who blame them for actions by other officers, in other cities.

“I'm proud to be an African-American,” says Chattman. “I just don't like it when people come up to me and say, ‘Why do you want to do that? Why do you want to be an Uncle Tom?'”

They try to shrug it off. They know they are encountering people at their worst moments.

“We signed up for the job, but you are asking us, as a society, to balance a lot in the job,” Sosa said. “We hope they work with us and understand we have a job to do. We've got to get away from ‘us versus them.'”

COMMUNITY DISTRUST

In mid-December, nearly 200 people attended a community forum at the South Providence Recreation Center to talk about the aftermath of events in Ferguson. The forum was held jointly by several community groups, state police and Providence police, who talked about ways they could improve their relationships.

Less than a week later, a second forum on racism and “state oppression” was held at the Southside Cultural Center. The police were not invited.

The moderator was City Councilwoman-elect Mary Kay Harris, a longtime critic of the police and how departments handle civilian complaints of brutality.

Roberson, the Providence detective, went to the forum. “I'm part of the community, and I view the police as part of the community,” he said. “I attended because it affects me, especially as an African-American.”

He listened as one person after another condemned the police and called for radical protests. Some said reform wasn't possible. One said that voting didn't matter. Another likened police work to how slaves were controlled and said police departments were built on white supremacy.

The 37-year-old detective thought about his own life.

He was raised in the housing projects in Chad Brown, Manton and Hartford Park, when crack cocaine was sweeping through the city.

The hustle brought easy money to people who had little. With the drugs came guns, as the dealers needed protection, and people started killing each other.

Police officers would pass Roberson and his friends then but didn't stop to talk; they just made arrests.

The boys talked about getting out of the projects. Even though they didn't know the officers very well, they still talked about being cops. It was a way out, and Roberson said, “There was admiration and respect for being a police officer.”

Roberson was a teenager when he realized he had to make a change. He told his friends, I'll always love you but I have to go.

Roberson attended Rhode Island's first charter school, the Chamber of Commerce Academy, and focused on his studies. A prominent Providence attorney, John Barylick, became his mentor. “He showed me another side of life that you're not really exposed to in the Hartford projects,” Roberson said.

Although Barylick wanted to send him to law school, Roberson decided to be a Providence police officer. He joined the department in 2002, just before the department went through major reforms, and began patrolling in Hartford and Manton.

His former neighbors told him: I'm glad you made it.

SURPRISE AT FORUM

As Roberson listened at the forum, he decided to speak up. “They made it seem like as a person of color, I should be a victim. I felt that's not what it is.”

Roberson took the microphone. “There comes a point where we have to take responsibility for ourselves,” he began.

Roberson told his life story, of growing up in the projects and losing friends to murder and prison. He chose to focus on school, he said, and was on track to finish his doctorate in the spring.

The crowd interrupted Roberson with loud applause. “Also,” he said, “I'm a detective with the Providence Police Department.”

The crowd paused.

There was some scattered applause, and some hecklers. Roberson responded that he treated people on his beat like his own family.

Days after the forum, Roberson was taken aback.

“I was offering it as law enforcement is a noble profession and to serve the city you grew up in, I think it's a good thing,” Roberson explained in an interview.

“What do you want? What more do you want?” he said. “I'm not saying police departments are perfect. They've made strides, and there are things that can be better.

“But we have to work together,” he added. “There's no other way around it.”

MAKING AN IMPRESSION

The dark winter evening settles over South Providence as an unmarked police cruiser pulls up to the Davey Lopes Recreation Center.

George Lindsey, the director, greets Lt. Oscar Perez and his brother, Andres, a detective.

The brothers had just visited their old house at 25-27 Elma St., an apartment house with bars on the first-floor windows, where the family first lived after immigrating from Colombia. They laughed with Lindsey, who also grew up in the neighborhood, as they remembered the Elma Street Posse.

The Perez brothers were children when they moved to Providence. They didn't speak English yet, but they knew enough to keep their distance from the posse, who thronged outside the family's house selling drugs.

Then one day, the boys watched as the police swept up the drug dealers. “When you're a little boy, seeing police officers take out a bad guy makes an impression on you,” Andres Perez said.

Their street was safe. He turned to his older brother and told him: I want to be a police officer.

‘IT'S A GOOD JOB'

The men walk inside the recreation center, where throngs of children are playing. Some slap hands with the officers as they make their way into the boxing gym. “They're all over here all the time,” Lindsey says of the police.

Oscar joined the Providence police in 1994, and Andres followed in 2002. As Oscar rose through the ranks, he sought to become the commander for the district covering the city's South Side, his old neighborhood.

They both see themselves in the children here. “It's tough growing up in this environment,” Lt. Perez says. “There's a lot of social issues, too. A lot of kids don't have a chance. It's an urban area, and there's a lot of crime.”

The lieutenant says he sought officers who wanted to work with the residents. “As a rookie, you have to get to know people,” says Detective Perez, who teaches cultural diversity at the police academy. “That's what makes you a good cop.”

The officers they met while growing up had treated them fairly, and they make an effort to do the same. They know what critics say about the “thin blue line,” but the brothers say they're not afraid to speak out if they see wrongdoing in their department.

“We definitely do not support a guy or girl committing a crime,” said Detective Perez. “I wear my uniform with pride and integrity. When bad decisions are made, it affects [us], our department and our families.”

The thin blue line means something, though, when officers are in danger. Five years ago, a suspected drug dealer opened fire on Detective Perez and other officers during a drug raid. Three detectives were shot and wounded before the police managed to wrestle the gun from the suspect.

“We're just trying to make sure we go home safe, and the community's safe, and we do what we're paid for,” said Detective Perez. “It's a tough job, but it's a good job.”

In the boxing gym, dozens of children practice for coach Robert “Beanie” Johnson Sr. His father was Lt. Perez's boxing coach when he was a boy. Like the Perez brothers, Johnson went into police work, becoming a correctional officer and Providence police reserve officer. He still lives nearby on Sassafras Street.

“When you see officers like this, you know they know everybody,” Johnson says of the brothers.

Outside, the homeless loiter at bus stops. Drug dealers gather and sex offenders wander by. Inside, the warm yellow walls of the gym echo with the voices of children. They're safe. “If they're in here, they're not out there,” Johnson said.

Over time, the kids from the neighborhood become the adults responsible for the next generation.

http://www.providencejournal.com/news/police-fire/20150110-r.i.-s-minority-police-officers-understand-life-on-both-sides-of-the-blue-line.ece

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France

French Terror Crisis Ended, One Suspect Remains at Large

by Lisa Bryant

PARIS — Two days of terror in France that left 17 people dead came to an end Friday as French police killed three suspects in twin raids. One suspect remains at large.

Police are hunting for Hayat Boumeddiene, a young woman believed to be an accomplice to Amedy Coulibaly who had bolted into a kosher supermarket in Paris on Friday holding customers and staff hostage.

OnFriday, French authorities said the two armed suspects in this week's Charlie Hebdo attack were killed and their hostage freed during a police raid northeast of Paris. A separate raid in the capital killed another gunman holding multiple hostages at a kosher supermarket in the capital, but police said four hostages died in that operation.

Explosions and gunfire sounded as police moved in Friday afternoon, almost simultaneously, on the supermarket in Paris and on the industrial town of Dammartin-en-Goele, near Charles DeGaulle international airport. Brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, named as the principal suspects in Wednesday's bloody attack on the satirical magazine in Paris, came out of hiding in a warehouse and began firing as police moved in. They were cut down in return gunfire from a large force of police on the scene.

In the Paris shootout, security forces stormed the supermarket near the Porte de Vincennes neighborhood. They killed Coulibaly. Authorities said that there had been "at least five" hostages and that four were killed, but it was not clear who killed them or when.

A police official said Coulibaly, 32, is believed to be the same man who shot and killed a policewoman south of Paris on Thursday.

Authorities also are seeking Boumeddiene who is described as an accomplice to Coulibaly. Initial reports from the scene said she may have escaped in the confusion as other shoppers fled the store.

French President Francois Hollande called Friday's violence a "horrible anti-Semitic attack." He said France will not give in to any pressure or fears.

Speaking to reporters Friday evening, Hollande thanked the security personnel who ended the standoffs and neutralized the terrorists. He called on the French people to show vigilance and unity, which he called the country's best weapon to fight against terrorism, racism and anti-Semitism.

"But France, even though it did face this challenge, even if it is aware it has within it the men and women of the security forces, a body able of courage and bravery, France is not finished with being a target of threats. Therefore, I want to urge you to be vigilant, to be united and to be mobilized," said Hollande.

A march is planned in Paris on Sunday to show national unity, and it is expected to draw the leaders of many European countries, including France, Germany, Britain, Italy and Spain.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve thanked police for their efforts to end the standoffs. He did not offer specifics about the police raids, but he vowed that France will remain mobilized to ensure security.

U.S. President Barack Obama, speaking from Knoxville, Tennessee, said the United States stands with France in supporting liberty and subverting extremism.

He congratulated French law enforcement for ending the standoffs and said the spirit of solidarity "will endure forever, long after the scourge of terrorism has vanished from this world."

American authorities were placed on alert as well. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation on Friday issued a bulletin to law enforcement agencies across the nation to be aware of the potential for attacks carried out by sympathizers of radical Islamic groups.

Police sources have linked Coulibaly to the Kouachi brothers, who were shown in a video of the Charlie Hebdo attack carrying high-powered weapons. They killed a dozen people — 10 members of the magazine's staff and two policemen — in what the French news agency AFP described as "the bloodiest attack on French soil in half a century."

The brothers and Coulibaly apparently knew each other through a common network to recruit jihadists.

Ready for martyrdom

Before gunshots and explosions erupted Friday afternoon in Dammartin-en-Goele, French security forces said they were in contact with the Kouachis. The brothers reportedly told police negotiators they were prepared to die as martyrs.

A third suspect in the Charlie Hebdo attack, 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad, had surrendered to police Wednesday. His relationship to the Kouachis remains unclear.

Before Friday's events, nine people had been taken into custody for questioning about their possible knowledge of the Charlie Hebdo attack. The satirical magazine, known for making fun of all religions, including Islam, has announced it will resume publication Wednesday, despite the loss of its director and leading cartoonists.

More than 88,000 police and security forces had been searching for the brothers.

As a precaution, police on Friday also ordered the closing of all shops in central Paris' famed Jewish Marais neighborhood. It's about a kilometer from the Charlie Hedbo offices and farther from the now-resolved hostage situations. As The Associated Press reported, the district's Rosiers Street usually teems with tourists and with French Jews in the hours before the Sabbath.

Radical Islamist ties

Both Kouachi brothers had links with radical Islam. Said, 34, received terrorist training in Yemen in 2011, The New York Times reported. Cherif, 32, was a former rapper who served prison time for his involvement in a Paris terrorist cell.

Hundreds of French nationals have headed to Iraq and Syria to join jihadist fighters.

Al-Qaida's branch in Yemen praised the attack on Charlie Hebdo . An audio recording posted on YouTube and attributed to a leader of the group, Sheikh Hareth al-Nadhari, said the assault was prompted by insults to prophets.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the ultra-right National Front party, on Friday insisted the country must fight Islamic fundamentalism.

According to The Associated Press, she said Hollande had "assured me that a profound debate on the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in our country will take place and that all the political parties will be listened to" regarding steps "to ensure the security of the country and our people."

The brothers appear to have been radicalized for some time, unlike other recent French jihadists, according to Franck Fregosi, a political scientist and expert on Islam.

Fregosi said the brothers' radicalization reflects a new trend, a sort of family event in which brothers and sisters may jointly turn to radical Islam.

Charlie Hebdo continues

Also Friday, the French newspaper Liberation made room for the surviving Charlie Hebdo journalists to prepare the satirical weekly's next edition. The newspaper plans to print 1 million copies, 30 times its regular run.

Charlie Hebdo journalists and cartoonists have returned under heavy police protection, Reuters said.

"Since a long time, Charlie Hebdo and Liberation are seen, are like brothers. It's like a fraternity," Liberation editor Pierre Fraidenraich said. His paper had welcomed Charlie Hebdo staff after the newspaper was firebombed in 2011.

Fraidenraich said his newspaper would host the Charlie Hebdo team for "all the time they want."

Grieving for victims

Meanwhile, mourning continues for those killed at the newspaper, and for the two policemen killed in the same assault.

Parisians stood in silence in a chilly rain Thursday, holding up pens and pencils as a sign of the right to free speech. The lights of the Eiffel Tower dimmed Thursday night to honor the victims.

The U.N. Security Council held a moment of silence before Thursday's meeting.

President Obama signed a book of condolence at the French Embassy in Washington. He called the killings cowardly and evil.

Since Wednesday's attack in Paris, vigils have been held around the world to pay tribute and show solidarity with the victims.

http://www.voanews.com/content/shots-carjacking-reported-hunt-for-paris-terror-subjects/2591543.html

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New York

The NYPD Slowdown's Dirty Little Secret

Cutting off low level arrests was supposed to be a bargaining tactic for police officers in New York, but not all of them want the slowdown to end

by Jacob Siegel

The police slowdown in New York, where cops have virtually stopped making certain types of low-level arrests, might be coming to an end soon. For a lot of police officers, it'll be an unhappy moment, because they never liked making the penny ante collars in the first place.

“We're coming out of what was a pretty widespread stoppage of certain types of activity, the discretionary type of activity by and large,” police commissioner Bill Bratton told NPR's Robert Siegel in an interview Friday.

In the rank and file of the police department, there are mixed feelings about the slowdown and a possible return to the status quo.

“I'd break it down like this,” an officer in East Harlem told The Daily Beast. “20 percent of the department is very active, they'd arrest their mothers if they could, and they want to get back to work. Another 20 percent doesn't want any activity period; they'd be happy to hide and nap all day.”

The officer added, “And then there's the great middle that thinks things are fine now as far as their concerned and all they want is good arrests.”

The not good arrests, by implication, were all the low level infractions policed as part of the so-called “Broken Windows” approach to law enforcement, defended by both Bratton and Mayor de Blasio. It holds that one of the ways to bust high-level crooks is to crack down on seemingly minor crimes.

Between December 29 2014—January 4 2015, arrests across New York city dropped by 56 percent and summonses were down 92 percent compared to the same time last year.

It's not novel to point out that the police slowdown, which pitted the police and their unions against city hall, granted one of the central demands of the #blacklivesmatter protestors—an end to Broken Windows policing.

Less noted though, is how many police officers are themselves ambivalent about actively enforcing low level offenses, and how that bodes for the post-slowdown future of policing in New York.

Retired NYPD lieutenant Steve Osborne made the point in an op-ed for the New York Times that was sharply critical of both de Blasio and the protestors.

“More police productivity has meant far less crime, but at a certain point New York began to feel like, yes, a police state, and the police don't like it any more than you,” Osborne wrote.

“The time has probably come for the Police Department to ease up on the low-level ‘broken-windows' stuff while re-evaluating the impact it may or may not have on real, serious crime,” he added. “No one will welcome this more than the average cop on the beat, who has been pressed to find crime where so much less of it exists.”

Day to day, no one has been telling police officers in New York how not to do their jobs.

“It sounds very unusual,” the officer in East Harlem said, “but I haven't seen any coordinated activity besides the union putting the message out and then saying jump.”

It hasn't taken much effort to coordinate the slowdown because, as Osborne notes, average beat cops were never that excited in the first place with going after public urination and loitering arrests. To them, it was a distraction from stopping more serious crimes.

Broken Windows advocates argue that some cops always resisted more active policing. When Broken Windows was first introduced, they say, police officers had to be pushed, by Bratton among other, to adopt the active policing approach that brought crime down to its current historic lows in new York.

But as New York got safer, the methods rather than the results became the measures of success. More arrests meant better policing as the tail started to wag the dog.

Bratton himself has said nearly as much in criticizing his predecessor Ray Kelly's overuse of the controversial stop and frisk tactic that overwhelmingly targeted minorities.

“The commissioner and the former mayor did a great job in the sense of keeping the community safe, keeping crime down, but one of the tools used to do that, I believe, was used too extensively,” Bratton said in March 2014.

Stop and Frisks have fallen considerably since their high in 2011 when 685,724 New Yorkers were stopped by police, but some numbers driven approaches remain embedded in the department.

As a detective in the Bronx tells The Daily Beast, “there technically are no quotas” in the police department “but you can call them what you want, “productivity goals,” they are back door quotas.”

And those back door quotas can put pressure on officers.

“I have to suspend my disbelief,” the officer in East Harlem said, “to see how sentencing a guy with an open container is going to really bring crime down.”

“Violent crimes haven't gotten worse in my little slice of heaven despite the slowdown on summonses and misdemeanors,” the officer added. “We're still responding to robbery patterns. We haven't gone down in presence for the more serious offenses.”

He acknowledged that it was too soon to say how such a policing strategy would play out over an extended period. “Whether it works will reveal itself over time. That remains to be seen.”

Once New York is out of the slowdown, it's not clear what kind of policing the city will see on the other side. Will Bratton push the police to bring arrests back up to levels before they dropped off or will the department test its ability to back off?

Maybe there will be some new middle ground possible despite the bluster and rhetoric. According to The Daily News, the combative president of the police union is pushing for just a slowdown that's a little bit faster. As one police source told the paper, “He said they should go back to at least 50% of what they used to do.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/10/the-nypd-slowdown-s-dirty-little-secret.html

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New Jersey

Police, citizens mark Law Enforcement Appreciation Day

by Andrew Ford

NEPTUNE, N.J. — Low pay, odd hours, second guessing, gunshots, evil, true evil.

The hazards police officers combat were highlighted Friday during a ceremony for Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, an event organized in the wake of perceived national ire against police.

"They are the guardians of our way of life and they deserve our support," organizer Madeline Neumann told a crowd at the Michael T. Lake Performing Arts Center at Neptune High School. "Law enforcement officers are not the enemies."

There were dozens of protests across the country last year after grand jury decisions not to indict officers involved in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Two New York police officers were killed in Brooklyn in December. The New York Times reported their killer posted on social media that he was angered about the Brown and Garner decisions.

Hundreds of officers in uniform and civilians in support gathered at the center. Bagpipes and drums played America the Beautiful . Thirteen speakers stood before an American flag backdrop for the Pledge of Allegiance, and a state police lieutenant sang the national anthem.

A reverend prayed to bring back Assata Shakur, who found asylum in Cuba after being convicted of killing a New Jersey officer. He prayed for schools to teach young people good manners and how to deal with those in authority. He prayed for increased penalties for resisting arrest.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/01/09/law-enforcement-appreciation-day/21540999/

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Michigan

Help with homework is a new community policing venture in Allendale

by Cathy Runyon

While taking classes at Grand Valley State University, Jake Mucha began to form a plan he thought would make a difference for Allendale youth.

Mucha, a community policing deputy with the Ottawa County Sheriff's Department working from the Allendale station, combined what he has observed on the job with information on literacy and graduation rates he came across in his studies. He saw a definite relationship between income and housing, and grades and school completion.

"As education rates rise, crime rates fall," Mucha said. He developed an idea to establish a "homework center" to support young people who wanted to do better in school.

"Jake came to me with the idea," said Tamika Henry, administrator at the New Options High School completion program. "This is his brainchild. He was looking for help. I knew some of my students would really benefit from something like that."

Mucha secured space in the clubhouse at Alpine Meadows mobile home community where students in grades seven through 12 can come to find a quiet place to study. They will also find volunteers to help them. A member of the Allendale Community Policing Unit, a staff member from Allendale Public Schools, and possibly volunteers from the student body at Grand Valley State University or the community will be there. The homework center is open at the clubhouse, 11400 Boyne Blvd., from 3 to 5 p.m. on Wednesdays when school is in session. The program is scheduled to launch Jan. 14.

Henry said locating the center at the clubhouse instead of on school property at the end of the day avoids transportation issues. "We wanted to be sure kids would be able to get home after school," she said.

Mucha said he doesn't know exactly how the success of the program will be monitored yet, but he expects to be able to see results soon.

For information, contact jmucha@miottawa.org, or cdill@miottawa.org.

http://www.mlive.com/jenison/index.ssf/2015/01/help_with_homework_is_a_new_co.html

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France

Police surround Paris attack suspects, at least one hostage reported taken

by Fox News

The Islamist gunmen suspected of killing 12 people in an attack on a French satirical magazine were surrounded inside a printing house northeast of Paris Friday morning and appeared to have taken a hostage, officials said.

Hundreds of French security forces backed by a convoy of ambulances streamed into Dammartin-en-Goele, a small industrial town 25 miles outside the capital in a massive operation to seize the men suspected of carrying out France's deadliest terror attack in 54 years.

The two suspects, identified as brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, were holed up Friday inside CTF Creation Tendance Decouverte. Xavier Castaing, the chief Paris police spokesman, and town hall spokeswoman Audrey Taupenas, said there appeared to be one hostage inside the printing house.

Christelle Alleume, who works across the street, said that a round of gunfire interrupted her coffee break Friday morning.

"We heard shots and we returned very fast because everyone was afraid," she told i-Tele. "We had orders to turn off the lights and not approach the windows.

Officials told Fox News that there were four people inside the business when the gunmen went inside, but three people were somehow able to leave the area.

The Associated Press reported that at least three helicopters were seen hovering above the town. At nearby Charles de Gaulle airport, two runways were briefly closed to arrivals to avoid interfering in the standoff, but were later reopened. Schools went into lockdown.

Earlier Friday, a French security official told the AP that shots were fired as the suspects stole a car in the town of in the town of Montagny Sainte Felicite in the early morning hours. French officials told Fox News that the suspects threw the car's driver out at the side of the road. The driver, who recognized the suspects, then called police and alerted them to the suspects' whereabouts.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that 88,000 security forces have mobilized to find the brothers after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices on Wednesday.

On Thursday, U.S. government sources confirmed that Said Kouachi had traveled to Yemen in 2011 and had direct contact with an Al Qaeda training camp. The other brother, Cherif, had been convicted in France of terrorism charges in 2008 for trying to join up with fighters battling in Iraq. The sources also confirmed that both brothers were on a U.S. no-fly list.

Fox News was told the investigators have made it a priority to determine whether he had contact with Al Qaeda in Yemen's leadership, including a bomb maker and a former Guantanamo Bay detainee.

French President Francois Hollande called for tolerance after the country's worst terrorist attack since 1961, in the middle of the conflict over Algerian independence from France.

"France has been struck directly in the heart of its capital, in a place where the spirit of liberty -- and thus of resistance -- breathed freely," Hollande said.

Nine people, members of the brothers' entourage, have been detained for questioning in several regions. In all, 90 people, many of them witnesses to the grisly assault on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, were questioned for information on the attackers, Cazeneuve said in a statement.

The minister confirmed reports the men were identified by the elder brother's ID card, left in an abandoned getaway car, a slip that contrasted with the seeming professionalism of the attack.

A third suspect, 18-year-old Mourad Hamyd, surrendered at a police station Wednesday evening after hearing his name linked to the attacks. His relationship to the Kouachi brothers was unclear.

Charlie Hebdo had long drawn threats for its depictions of Islam, although it also satirized other religions and political figures. The weekly paper had caricatured the Prophet Muhammad, and a sketch of Islamic State's leader was the last tweet sent out by the irreverent newspaper, minutes before the attack. Nothing has been tweeted since.

Eight journalists, two police officers, a maintenance worker and a visitor were killed in the attack.

Charlie Hebdo planned a special edition next week, produced in the offices of another paper.

Editor Stephane Charbonnier, known as Charb, who was among those slain, "symbolized secularism ... the combat against fundamentalism," his companion, Jeannette Bougrab, said on BFM-TV.

"He was ready to die for his ideas," she said.

Authorities around Europe have warned of the threat posed by the return of Western jihadis trained in warfare. France counts at least 1,200 citizens in the war zone in Syria -- headed there, returned or dead. Both the Islamic State group and Al Qaeda have threatened France -- home to Western Europe's largest Muslim population.

The French suspect in a deadly 2014 attack on a Jewish museum in Belgium had returned from fighting with extremists in Syria; and the man who rampaged in southern France in 2012, killing three soldiers and four people at a Jewish school, received paramilitary training in Pakistan.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/01/09/paris-terror-attack-suspects-reportedly-steal-car-take-hostage-in-northeast/

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France

Women, children held in second Paris hostage situation; may be related to massacre

by Fox News

A separate hostage situation, possibly related to Wednesday's massacre, has developed in France, where a gunman is believed to be holding five people including women and children.

The second case, which reportedly followed another shooting that left an unidentified victim wounded, was unfolding at a kosher grocery in the eastern Paris area known as Porte de Vincennes. The gunman in that case is armed with two AK-47s and is believed to be the same person who shot a Paris policewoman on Thursday. The situation comes as authorities had the Islamist suspects in Wednesday's massacre surrounded inside a printing plant northeast of the city.

The fresh situation would be the third shooting to rock the French capital in three days, and may be related to Wenseday's massacre, in which 12 people were killed in an attack on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, sources said.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/01/09/women-children-held-in-second-paris-hostage-situation-may-be-related-to/

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Anjem Choudary, Muslim cleric, on Paris terror: ‘It was provoked [by] French regime'

by Cheryl K. Chumley

Anjem Choudary, a radical Muslim British cleric, exchanged in a fiery back-and-forth with Newmax TV's Steve Malzberg, asking first if the host was Jewish and then claiming that the terrorist attacks in Paris were provoked by the government of France.

“It was provoked,” Mr. Choudary said during an interview on “The Steve Malzberg Show” reported by Newsmax. “The French regime, for years, has been provoking the Muslims. They banned the burka. You can't build a mosque now in Paris.”

Mr. Choudary — who recently penned an opinion piece in USA Today that included his belief that “Muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression” — then suggested that the news outlet that was targeted for the attacks, Charlie Hebdo, had it coming.

“It's open season when it comes to attacking Islam and Muslims, and this particular magazine for years have been satirizing under the guise of satirizing,” he said, Newsmax reported. “This is a euphemism for attacking the honor of the messenger Mohammad. … The French embassies around the world knew an attack was coming because the prophet said whoever insults the prophet, kill him. It was an inevitable response.”

Mr. Choudary then criticized America and Israel.

“The Americans, the Israelis, are the biggest terrorists,” he said, Newsmax reported. “They kill more people than these people in Paris. Come on, let's talk about state terrors, Let's talk about the crimes of Israel over the last 60-70 years.

The interview kicked off with Mr. Choudary pressing Mr. Malzberg to clarify whether he was Jewish, Newsmax reported. Why?

“It just makes me understand the reality of the people that I'm dealing with,” Mr. Choudary said, in answer to Mr. Malzberg's question about why he wanted to know that information.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/9/anjem-choudary-muslim-cleric-on-paris-terror-it-wa/

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Missouri

Community distrust of police leads to low percentage of homicide arrests, captain says

by KMOV Staff

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (KMOV.com) -- It wasn't a record year, but there were a staggering 159 homicides in St. Louis in 2014. Homicide detectives cleared just 71 cases, a 45 percent clearance rate.

That number is below the department's five-year average of 56 percent, which is close to the national average.

"In a year where there are 159, where you spend more time doing your scene investigation, filing your report, the lab gets backed up because there is that much more physical evidence that needs to be processed,” explained Captain Mike Sack, who oversees the homicide department for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. Sack says volume can be a problem because when you have so many cases, you don't have as many resources to conduct each investigation.

“I can tell you the biggest obstacle I face as a prosecutor trying to make this city safe is lack of community involvement,” said St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce. “That is the number one reason we are not able to hold dangerous felons accountable.”

Joyce says people won't get involved with police or prosecutors for a variety of reasons; they think someone else will do it or video and science will solve the case.

“I think there is a great degree of distrust from many members in our community against law enforcement…and against prosecutors too,” Joyce added. “There is no question about it."

Both Joyce and Sack say community policing will help build the trust that is needed to bridge the gap. They need the community's help to solve murders and prosecute killers.

“Police can't solve all these crimes ourselves. We can only rely on the science so much,” Capt. Sack said.

http://www.kmov.com/news/crime/Shocking-number-of-unsolved-homicides-from-2014-287985571.html

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Connecticut

Trust an issue, New Haven residents tell police

by Evan Lips

NEW HAVEN -- More than 100 city residents packed a Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology conference room Thursday night to pose questions about community policing to law enforcement professionals, months after grand juries in multiple states rendered controversial decisions not to prosecute several lethal use of force cases.

New Haven police Lt. Sam Brown and Assistant Chief Anthony Campbell were part of the six-member panel, and both quoted Chief Dean Esserman's stance on community policing, a philosophy they said is critical to preventing crime and tragedies before they occur.

Yet several attendees, including Newhallville resident Roger Williams, questioned whether police still engage in a pattern of profiling.

“I'll tell you right now that I'm glad social media came out,” Williams said. “If not for social media, the cops would still be beating us up. When you look at the amount of people that get pulled over in our neighborhood, you can't say there isn't some type of quota set in place.”

Williams delivered his comments after panelist Clifton Graves spoke about how, “as parents of color,” responsibility also falls on fathers and mothers to teach their children to respect others, including police officers.

“I've been pulled over a number of times,” Graves said. “Part of what we have to do is to teach them how to respect themselves and how to diffuse a situation instead of escalate it.

Michael Lawlor, Gov. Dannel Malloy's criminal justice and policy undersecretary, pointed out that it is illegal in Connecticut for police departments to maintain traffic ticket quotas. Lawlor also referred residents to www.ctrp3.org, a website that tracks every Connecticut traffic stop in real time.

“Another law requires every police officer during every traffic stop, whether or not a ticket is issued, to hand the motorist a form to explain how they can file a complaint,” Lawlor said. “If police do not hand out that form it is a violation.”

Despite some moments of friction, a sense of civility permeated Thursday's discussion. Panelist Hamden Police Chief Thomas Wydra noted that his department soon will be requiring all officers to wear body cameras.

Newhallville resident Shirley Lawrence said Thursday's dialogue was healthy and said “trust is a big thing.”

“But we have to learn how to re-trust you guys,” she said about police. “Quite a few of us have horror stories. The policies are great, but a lot of us don't see the policies actually being implemented.”

Panelist Stacy Spell, a former detective who now heads Project Longevity, said communities can forge a positive relationship with police by opening a direct line of communication with police.

“We have to speak to our stakeholders,” he said. “We have to speak to police about public safety. The more direct and open the lines are, we'll get away from things like what happened in Ferguson. The problem there was that they had no communication. They wanted to start communication after the fact.”

Spell shared his comments after Brown, Campbell and Wydra were asked how they feel the public is perceiving police following the Ferguson incident and others that occurred in Cleveland and Staten Island, New York, where unarmed black males were killed by police.

Wydra said some of his officers feel that a public sentiment of mistrust was unfairly placed upon them. Campbell echoed Wydra and noted that officers have felt more pressure being thrust at them than ever before.

“Our job is to make sure life and property are protected and then we turn it over to the legal system,” Campbell said. “But people many times relate what happens in court back to us.”

Graves said police on the front lines could help begin the process of healing and fostering better relationships by adjusting the “serve and protect” motto.

“We need to change the motto from ‘protect and serve' to ‘respect, protect and serve,'” Graves said. “What's central to the success of any community policing initiative is how we define self respect to police and respect being shown by police.”

Resident Latrice Hampton, who said she was a student under Lawlor when she took a course on criminal justice at the University of New Haven, asked how police departments can identify and weed out the “bad seeds” in their organizations.

Lawlor responded by noting that the state is collecting more data on officer performance than ever before.

“I think just collecting the data impacts behavior,” he said. “The reason we're sitting here tonight is because a lot of these incidents have been caught on camera.”

Thursday's meeting was moderated by Shahid Abdul Karim, the New Haven Register's community engagement editor. Other attendees included Alder Delphine Clyburne, D-20, and state Sen. Gary Holder-Winfield, D-New Haven.

http://www.nhregister.com/general-news/20150108/trust-an-issue-new-haven-residents-tell-police

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France

New Paris shooting as French police hunt magazine attack suspects

by William Cummings

A policewoman was killed in a shooting in southern Paris on Thursday, as a manhunt continued for the gunmen responsible for an attack on a French satirical weekly magazine that killed 12 people.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, who left an emergency government meeting to travel to the scene of Thursday's shooting, in which a street sweeper was seriously wounded, said authorities were doing their utmost to identify and arrest the attacker. He cautioned against jumping to conclusions. It was not immediately clear if the shootings are linked.

The officer had stopped to investigate a traffic accident when the firing started, Cazeneuve said.The attacker remains at large.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said there were "several arrests" overnight in the hunt for two terror suspects after three gunmen, wearing hoods and armed with Kalashnikov automatic rifles, stormed the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday, shouting Islamic phrases and killing 12 people.

Valls told RTL radio that seven people had been arrested since the attack, Reuters reported.

The suspected terrorist shooters are brothers, one of whom is well known to French law enforcement. Cherif Kouachi, now 32, served 18 months in prison on terrorism charges in 2008.

A third suspect, Mourad Hamyd,18, surrendered at a police station in Charleville-Mezieres, a small town in France's eastern Champagne region, Paris prosecutor's spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre said, the Associated Press reported. She did not specify his relationship to the Kouachi brothers.

A bulletin issued by police included the names, ages and photos of the two suspects, whom they described as "armed and dangerous." The bulletin requested anyone with information about the location of the two men to contact police, after a lead in the city of Reims proved fruitless.

Wednesday's horrific attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices left eight journalists, two police officers, a maintenance worker and a visitor dead and wounded 11 people, four of them seriously, prosecutor Francois Molins said. The publication is a satirical newspaper that has caricatured the prophet Mohammed.

One police official, speaking to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said the suspects were linked to a Yemeni terrorist network. Cedric Le Bechec, a witness who encountered the escaping gunmen, quoted the attackers as saying: "You can tell the media that it's al-Qaeda in Yemen."

After fleeing, the attackers collided with another vehicle, then hijacked another car before disappearing in broad daylight, Molins said.

President Francois Hollande called the attack a terrorist act "of exceptional barbarism," and said other attacks have been thwarted in France in recent weeks. Fears have been running high in France and elsewhere in Europe that jihadis returning from conflicts in Syria and Iraq will stage attacks at home.

France has declared Thursday a national day of mourning, and Hollande ordered flags at half-staff.

Bells rang out and public transport in Paris stood still during a nationwide moment of silence at noon. Onlookers wept while listening to bells peal at Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral, and the rector of the Paris Mosque called on Muslims to observe the moment of silence and honor victims of the "exceptional violence."

Speaking on Thursday, Hollande said the country has been "struck in the heart" of its capital city.

No group has claimed responsibility for Wednesday's attack, although a tweet from an al-Qaeda representative said the group was not claiming responsibility for the attack, but called it "inspiring," the Associated Press reports.

France is on its highest level of alert following the incident, with more than 800 extra soldiers deployed to guard media offices, places of worship, transport and other sensitive areas.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/01/08/french-terror-suspects-manhunt/21429427/

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Ohio

Police fatally shoot man at Ohio airport

by Steve Almasy

An Ohio man with a knife was shot and killed Wednesday after lunging at one airport police officer and acting in a threatening manner toward another officer, a Columbus police sergeant said.

Sgt. Rich Weiner said the man tried to buy a ticket with a woman's identification at Port Columbus International Airport, then with his own ID, but was refused. The man, who was in his early 40s and lived in the Columbus area, returned to his car, where one officer was investigating a suspicious vehicle call.

The man and the officer were talking, police said, when the suspect pulled a knife and tried to attack the officer, who opened fire. It is unclear whether the man was struck by any of the shots from the officer, but he fell, then stood up.

As he made his way toward the terminal, backup officers approached. The man, who still had a knife in his hand, was shot by one of those officers.

Weiner only said that multiple shots were fired. He didn't disclose how many times the man was struck.

The suspect had other knives hidden in his clothes, Weiner said.

"It's too early to talk about terrorism," Weiner said when asked by reporters about possible motives. "At this point, this is just a violent encounter between an armed man and the officers here."

Police refused to say at what airline counter the man had tried to purchase a ticket and where he intended to fly.

The names of the man who was killed and the police officer who shot him were not immediately released.

A bomb squad examined the car and objects on the man that raised alarm, Weiner said.

The incident was recorded on surveillance video, but it was not released.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/07/us/ohio-airport-police-shooting/

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Maryland

Man says gang ordered him to take gun into Baltimore PD

Officers are on heightened alert after they disarmed a man who took a loaded handgun into a police station on Tuesday

The Baltimore Sun

BALTIMORE — Baltimore police officers are on heightened alert after they disarmed a man who took a loaded handgun into a police station on Tuesday.

Police said Jason Armstrong, 29, told them he was acting on orders of the Black Guerrilla Family gang.

They said he walked into the Northeastern District station on Argonne Drive near Morgan State University shortly before 9 a.m. smelling of marijuana. Officers searched him and found a .22-caliber handgun with a bullet in the chamber, and marijuana and cocaine, they said.

Police said he told officers he had been ordered by BGF leaders to walk into a police district station with the gun and drugs to test police security.

"We're really lucky for a person to walk into a police station fully armed and loaded with drugs on him that we didn't end up in a terrible situation," Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts said Tuesday.

Armstrong was taken into custody and faces narcotics and gun charges, police said. His charging documents had not yet been posted to the state's online database Tuesday night, and neither he nor an attorney could be reached for comment.

Batts said the agency is telling police departments across the country about the incident and advising them to tighten security. Police in Baltimore County said they were taking precautions.

The incident Tuesday came five months after what police said was the suicide of a man in a Baltimore police station with a gun he smuggled in.

Officers have said they feel more vulnerable after the killing of two New York Police Department officers in Brooklyn last month and the shootings of two more in the Bronx on Monday.

"Another example of the interesting times we're living in. Everyone's on edge," said Baltimore City Councilman Brandon M. Scott, who represents parts of Northeast Baltimore. "The level of security we have at city buildings, we're not where we need to be and where we should be in 2015."

Batts said he plans to convene a meeting with "federal partners" including the FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to discuss the Black Guerrilla Family. Baltimore FBI spokeswoman Amy J. Thoreson said the agency has offered Baltimore police any assistance it can provide.

In early December, police union officials in New York circulated information they said they received from a Maryland police department that the gang would target its officers. Batts, asked about the warning during a Twitter chat with residents at the time, called it an "anonymous hoax."

The Baltimore FBI office later issued a memo saying the gang was targeting "white cops" in Maryland. The memo said a gang contact claimed that BGF members linked to the corruption scandal at the Baltimore City Detention Center wanted to "send a message" by attacking white officers.

On Dec. 20, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, shot his ex-girlfriend in Baltimore County, then traveled to New York and shot Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, police said. He then killed himself.

Police said Brinsley had no known gang ties. But police in New York and elsewhere tightened security.

Police in Baltimore declined to comment on any precautions they have taken.

In the Bronx on Monday, two plainclothes officers were shot while responding to a report of a robbery. They were expected to survive.

In Baltimore last month, an officer was shot and wounded during a traffic stop. Police said Officer Andrew Groman was shot by 19-year-old Donte Jones.

The shootings of Groman and the officers in New York prompted Baltimore police union president Gene Ryan to say that officers were being "targeted."

Across the city Tuesday, there were signs that police were tightening security. A cruiser was parked in front of the Southern District station, and signs on the front door and windows warned that visitors were subject to searches.

Maj. Deron Garrity, commander of the Southeastern District, sent an email to residents saying the station would be locked that night "because of recent events."

Batts would not discuss specific precautions.

"An organized gang in the city of Baltimore sent an armed suspect into our building to see our security, to test our security and that is alarming for us, that is alarming to me," he said. "I'm going to send a message along those lines to understand that we're not going to cower, we're not going to back down."

Police said Armstrong did not make any specific threats against police.

Batts said Armstrong told officers he was ordered by BGF leaders to "probe security" at the station. Baltimore Deputy Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez said Armstrong is known to police, and that his links to the BGF have been verified.

"We believe at this point from what we are getting that it is valid," Batts said.

Rodriguez said it was clear that Armstrong did not have an option but to heed the gang's order.

"We know of incidents that took place before that caused him to be in this situation," Rodriguez said. "He did not go in there on his free will. This person had very little option according to his statement."

In August, police said, a man who was taken into custody in connection with an attempted murder shot and killed himself inside the Southwestern District station with a gun he had concealed.

Police did not know at the time how Tyree Woodson, 38, was able to take the high-caliber handgun into the station. Commanders said they were investigating whether he had been frisked.

"You can't be complacent," Rodriguez said at the time. He said it was "imperative" that every suspect taken to a station is searched for weapons.

The breach prompted City Council members, including Scott, to ask whether security to protect police officers was adequate.

The city's Force Investigation Team continues to investigate Woodson's death.

In March, an officer found a loaded .22-caliber handgun as he was placing a suspect in a holding cell in the Southeastern District station. Police have not disclosed any findings of that investigation.

http://www.policeone.com/gangs/articles/8091364-Man-says-gang-ordered-him-to-take-gun-into-Baltimore-PD

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New York

Foundation to pay off slain NYPD officers' mortgages

A foundation created to honor a firefighter killed on Sept. 11 has raised enough money to pay off the mortgages and make repairs on the homes of 2 slain cops

by Deepti Hajela

NEW YORK — A foundation created to honor a firefighter killed on Sept. 11 has raised enough money to pay off the mortgages and make repairs on the homes of two slain New York Police Department officers, foundation executives announced Wednesday.

The Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation said $860,000 has been donated, and another $150,000 has been pledged for the families of Detectives Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, killed late last month as they sat in their patrol car on a Brooklyn street.

The widows of the men, along with other family members, attended the announcement, along with an audience made up primarily of police officers including members of the men's precinct. Other speakers included police and fire department officials, along with former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

"We would like to extend our greatest gratitude and appreciation to everyone who gave their generous contribution," said Liu's widow, Pei Xia Chen. In a tear-choked voice, she added, "To all my extended blue family, be safe out there and appreciate life each day."

Ramos' sister, Sindy, said there weren't "any words to express the gratitude that my sister-in-law and I have for the Tunnel to Towers Foundation.

"Nothing will ever bring my brother back, but just to know my sister-in-law and the boys can sleep just a little bit better amidst this tragedy" means a great deal, she said.

The foundation says the money will be used to pay off mortgages and make repairs to the homes, with any extra going to the two families. They reached out to the banks to get the payoff amounts.

Foundation CEO Frank Siller said there had been over 10,000 donations, coming from all over the country and internationally.

The foundation is named for his youngest brother Stephen, killed at the World Trade Center.

http://www.policeone.com/police-heroes/articles/8093404-Foundation-to-pay-off-slain-NYPD-officers-mortgages

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1795 time capsule opened, centuries after Paul Revere and Samuel Adams buried it

by Catherine E. Shoichet

More than 200 years after Samuel Adams and Paul Revere first buried it in Boston, it took an hour to remove all the objects crammed inside a tiny time capsule.

Onlookers anxiously watched the unveiling Tuesday, worrying the items might not have weathered the years very well.

"Could we actually go through the whole box, or would things prove too fragile to take out?" said Malcolm Rogers, director of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. "It was like brain surgery, with history looking down on us."

Piece by piece, Pam Hatchfield, head of objects conservation for the museum, removed each item, whispering "wow" as she first caught a glimpse of some of them.

Among the stash Hatchfield removed from the 1795 time capsule: Five folded newspapers, a Massachusetts commonwealth seal, a title page from Massachusetts colony records and at least 24 coins.

And at the bottom, an inscribed rectangular silver plate, "probably made by Paul Revere and engraved by him," Rogers said.

"That was the treasure at the end," he said.

But getting to it was a painstaking process.

It took seven hours to remove the time capsule from the Massachusetts State House in December , and more than four hours before Tuesday evening's ceremony for officials to loosen the screws that were holding it shut.

Porcupine quill, dental tool used to remove contents

At the broadcast event, which took place at the museum in front of a painting of George Washington, Hatchfield used a porcupine quill and her grandfather's dental tool to help her safely remove the contents of the 10-pound box, which was uncovered during repairs for a water leak at the State House last month.

The box-shaped capsule was placed in the State House cornerstone in 1795 by Revere, the metalsmith, engraver and Revolutionary War hero; Adams, the brewer and governor of Massachusetts; and William Scollay, a local developer, when construction began. Revere was responsible for overlaying the State House dome with copper.

The time capsule measured 5.5 x 7.5 x 1.5 inches, officials said.

It's not the first time the box has been uncovered. In 1855, during some other repairs, the time capsule was removed and its contents cleaned, only to be put back in the cornerstone for almost 160 years -- with a few objects added. The box's materials were noted in reports of the time.

But this time, historians have had the opportunity to go through the contents with modern tools. After its removal December 11, the box was taken to the Museum of Fine Arts, X-rayed and given a thorough once-over.

Having an idea about what might be inside was nothing compared to actually seeing it, Rogers told CNN.

"Though we knew a little bit about what was in the box, it was a moment of extraordinary excitement as this brass container just the size of a cigar box was slowly opened with surgical precision, and you suddenly found yourself in the presence of history," he said.

Newspapers inside the box were in "amazingly good condition," Hatchfield said.

The large number of copper coins inside might have helped protect the artifacts, she said, since copper helps block the growth of fungus.

The collection of coins recovered from the time capsule included half-cent, one-cent, half-dime, 10-cent and 25-cent coins. Another set of coins included a pine tree shilling from 1652 and a copper medal showing George Washington.

"This is the most exciting project I've ever worked on," a beaming Hatchfield told the crowd after she finished pulling out all of the box's contents, describing how thrilling it was to be part of building a bridge between the past and the present.

"This is what we, as conservators, live for," she said , sharing a fist bump with Michael Comeau, executive director of the Massachusetts Archives and Commonwealth Museum.

Going forward, conservators will work on preserving items removed from the time capsule.

They might not unfold the newspapers, Hatchfield said, in order to protect them.

If they were to go up for sale, the objects inside the box would fetch a pretty penny -- not because they're rare, but because of the history behind them, said Sebastian Clarke, an appraiser for the PBS program "Antiques Roadshow."

"The story's fantastic. George Washington was still the president of this country until 1797. ... The 17th century coin is maybe a 5 or 6,000-dollar coin, but with this story, the value increases tenfold," he said.

Experts say they haven't been able to confirm whether Paul Revere made the silver plate, which commemorates the placement of the legislature's cornerstone by Adams and Revere on July 4, 1795.

If Revere did make it, Clarke said, "the value has to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's magnificent."

But don't expect to see these objects showing up at any auction.

After the conservation process is finished, they'll go on display at the museum. And eventually, the time capsule and its contents will be placed again in the cornerstone of the Massachusetts State House, said William F. Galvin, secretary of the commonwealth.

One question still remains, Galvin said: Will officials add anything new to the time capsule before they put it back?

"The governor has wisely suggested that we might," he said, "so we'll think about it."

http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/06/us/feat-paul-revere-sam-adams-boston-time-capsule/

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Colorado

FBI investigating explosion outside NAACP office in Colorado

by Emma Lacey-Bordeaux

The FBI is investigating an explosion outside a local NAACP chapter in Colorado.

The makeshift bomb, or improvised explosive device, detonated late Tuesday morning but failed to ignite a gasoline can placed alongside it. No one was injured but the incident left some in Colorado Springs shaken.

"All of a sudden I heard this big boom," one witness told CNN affiliate KDVR. "There was smoke everywhere the building on the side was burnt."

The witness continued: "Whoever did it took off right away though. That's all I heard and it was scary."

The Denver office of the FBI said it's looking for a balding man, about 40 years old, who was seen leaving the scene in a white pickup truck with a missing or covered license plate.

The FBI has not said if the NAACP was specifically targeted. But some pointed out that the other tenant in the building, Mr. G's Hair Design Studios, likely was not.

"Who would want to bomb a beauty salon?" one member of the local NAACP chapter told CNN affiliate KCNC.

Henry D. Allen Jr., the branch's president, also raised the specter of a targeted attack, telling KCNC, "Apparently, we're doing something correct. Apparently, we have gotten someone's attention that we are working toward civil rights for all. That is making some people uncomfortable."

The NAACP is the nation's oldest civil rights organization. The group's national office says it is looking forward to a "thorough investigation" into the explosion by national and local authorities.

The FBI has asked that anyone with information call its Denver tip line at (303) 435-7787.

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/07/us/naacp-office-explosion/

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Report: Drones suck at U.S. border patrol (or vice versa)

Opinion

by Kevin Fogarty

Drones owned by consumers can be so intrusive that a woman in Federal Way, Wash., filed a lawsuit charging her neighbor with "drone stalking." Waves of complaints have been filed in San Francisco, Hawaii, a range of beaches and elsewhere about the invasion of privacy from what amounts to a flying camera zipping through private yards, balconies.

Ordinary people may be having trouble getting away from drones made for consumers, but the border patrol is having trouble getting sophisticated military drones anywhere near bad guys, according to a report today from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the Dept. of Homeland security.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has spent eight years and "hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars," but drastically understated the actual cost of the drones and has yet to even prove CBP's fleet of Predators is worth even the cost the agency admits to.

The OIG's report recommends the border patrol drop plans to spend another $443 million on even more Predators and, instead, "put those funds to better use."

This is the second time an OIG audit slammed CBP, its fleet of drones, its ability to report what it costs to fly them and even the things it claims the drones are doing.

During 2013, for example, CBP "touted drone surveillance of the entire Southwest Border," 1,993 miles of often rugged, empty country running from California to Texas.

The majority of the Predator flights were alone one 100-mile long stretch of border in Arizona and another, 70 miles long, in Texas, the report said.

That may just be apple polishing – a little exaggeration to emphasize the value of drones that patrol the 8.53 percent of the border that is critical to whatever the CBP things those drones are accomplishing.

The OIG's office thinks the Predators were in the air only 22 percent as often as they were supposed to be, and got credit for an assist in only 2 percent of the arrest of illegal border crossers.

A much bigger red flag waves from the section of the report discussing the cost and management of $20 million drones.

The border patrol division that runs the Predators is called the Office of Air and Marine (OAM). The OAM is also the group that does the Predator accounting, and reported during 2013 that it spent $2,468 per hour to operate each Predator. However, "OIG found the actual price tag to be $12,255 per hour, noting that OAM omitted such key costs as salaries for operators, equipment and overhead." None of those are the kind of inconsequential, esoteric pocket change that could easily be forgotten by patriots focusing all their attention on protecting freedom, not pinching pennies.

The costs the OIG report cited are all pretty large, pretty obvious expenses that are pretty routinely included in the accounting at organizations about which few people use the word "malfeasance."

The OIG didn't use that word. It also didn't use the word "incompetent," though it had to work pretty hard to avoid it.

The OIG did repeat its charge from the 2012 audit that the CBP doesn't focus a lot on process. It does things like buy its first pack of Predator drones without preparing any more thoroughly than they might have done if the vehicles they acquired were jeeps you can park and walk away from and not finicky, high-maintenance drones developed by the same Air Force that doesn't think it's a bad trade to do 30 hours of maintenance on an F-22 for every hour it spends in the air.

The CBP also forgot to make set criteria to decide what made a mission successful, metrics to demonstrate whether they'd met those criteria and supervisors trained in both the mission and in the operation and maintenance of the Predators.

Somewhat more fundamentally, the CBP had also failed to establish airfields sufficient and well equipped enough to launch and recover the drones, control them in the air and do all the maintenance required to get them back in the air eventually.

"On at least three occasions, NASOC Grand Forks could not conduct flight operations because maintenance could not be performed due to a lack of ground support equipment," the 2012 audit read.

By the time of the 2015 report, the CBP "still has no reliable method of measuring its performance and that its impact in stemming immigration has been minimal."

In an unusually frank dismissal of the CBP's efforts, Inspector General John Roth said in the report that, "notwithstanding the significant investment, we see no evidence that the drones contribute to a more secure border, and there is no reason to invest additional taxpayer funds at this time."

In the private sector that sentence would have been followed by a recitation of the members of the unit who were taking exciting career opportunities elsewhere.

It would be a long list.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2866099/report-drones-suck-at-u-s-border-patrol-or-vice-versa.html

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California

'Broken windows' policing isn't broken, says criminologist George L. Kelling

by Patt Morrison

I t was a simple, potent idea: a broken window, left unrepaired, invites disorder. Criminologist George L. Kelling and the late James Q. Wilson published their “broken windows” theory 33 years ago. It was taken up by major police departments, including the LAPD, as part of community policing. It called for police and community engagement to prevent local crime, down to petty offenses, and to create order as an end in itself. The mechanism was interrupting minor offenses before they could snowball and open the door to serious, perhaps violent crime. Now, since fatal police encounters with black men in Missouri and New York began with small offenses — walking in the street, selling untaxed cigarettes — there have been calls to end “broken windows” policing. But Kelling, an emeritus professor at Rutgers University and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, says “broken windows” still works.

Do people confuse and conflate broken windows with “zero-tolerance policing” or “stop, question and frisk” practices?

Yes. The other day I read that a Delaware police chief said his department was going to do broken windows with steroids. I find that pretty scary because that smacks of zealotry.

Broken windows is a tactic, an essential part of community policing that works with the community to identify problems and set priorities. It doesn't matter what problems police are up against, they need partners to resolve them, whether it's squeegee men or homeless in the subway. Broken windows is a tactic within community policing strategy.

An essay on the Atlantic website — it was the Atlantic Monthly magazine that first published your broken windows thesis in 1982 — suggested that broken windows as it's practiced now gives police carte blanche to overreact.

At times, absolutely. That's where I'm bothered by its confusion with zero tolerance. Zero tolerance suggests you don't warn, you immediately arrest. We don't want police to just be making arrests. We want them to find solutions and at times that solution is simply deciding not to do anything, or saying, “You know you're not supposed to be doing this, move along.” Robert Peel [ a British policing pioneer ] said that successful policing is measured by the absence of crime, not the activities once it occurred. Arrests are not necessarily a desirable outcome.

You and New York Police Department Commissioner William J. Bratton, the former LAPD chief, wrote in the current issue of City Journal that given the NYPD's overall record, the use of force that caused Eric Garner's death over selling “loosies” — untaxed single cigarettes — was “anomalous.” Why?

Had I been asked to look at the problem of “loosies,” my approach would have been: What is the problem? How did it come to be? Who's calling the police about it? What are the consequences [of police actions]?

They sent the police out — to do what was unclear. The only available tool they believed they had was to make an arrest. That might have been the case, but there might have been alternate things they could have done as well. Even at that, there's an enormously small number of deaths from interactions around disorderly behavior. That's what I meant by anomaly.

In New York, summonses for broken windows violations such as public drinking or bike-riding on sidewalks are disproportionately issued to young black and Latino men. Yet there is polling evidence of support for such enforcement in those same communities.

That's the paradox and the difficulty. You meet with the African American community and they have two complaints: about the aggressiveness and at times brutality of police, but even more about police not paying attention. They want “this person” dealt with, but they don't want “these people” [ the community at large ] arrested or imprisoned.

The demand for order is very strong in the African American community. In New York City, even given all the demonstrations, I could take you to neighborhoods and ask people to identify five major problems and I'm virtually certain at least three would be youths drinking in the park, prostitutes hustling fathers in front of their children, public urination and defecation. If you go to Times Square and talk to the business improvement district, you get the same kind of complaints as in the most troubled minority neighborhoods.

You regard the work of broken windows enforcement as not just the police's responsibility.

In the New York subway [ where broken windows theories were applied in the early 1990s ], there were typical theft problems, and police are pretty good at that. But you still have a population that is genuinely and in many respects tragically homeless, the emotionally disturbed, the alcohol and drug abusers. The approach we developed is, have 80-some social workers go out with police to talk this population into decent housing, therapy, drug treatment, etc. In my mind, that is the broken windows approach: Not law enforcement, but to try to get help for this population that is creating disorder in some respects; but it's a pitiful population that needs assistance.

An article in Slate argued that broken windows enforces white, middle-class standards.

One negotiates with the community. In Newark, N.J., aggressive panhandling was against the law; you could panhandle from someone moving but not someone standing still. This was negotiated with the panhandlers so they understood, if you panhandle in the following way, we're not going to bother you. If you drink out of a bottle on a side street, no problem; if you're drinking publicly [on the main thoroughfare], we're going to come after you.

[ Crime scholar ] Wesley G. Skogan's research found a broad consensus as to what constitutes disorderly behavior, and it wasn't dependent on race or class. The African American and Hispanic community want the same kind of orderliness that the white middle-class community wanted. In some respects it's a pejorative view of the African American community that somehow their values aren't very similar.

So police and the community together should figure out how to decide what broken windows offenses need more enforcement, and how?

We put these laws on the books — we need stronger guidance, especially the officer on the street. What are the guidelines? How much intervention do you want? As soon as police decided to arrest Eric Garner — maybe that was wise, maybe that was unwise — it was showdown time: Either Garner submitted, or they were going to take him. Unfortunately tragedy ensued.

Protesters are demanding reviews of broken windows policies.

If people want to criticize because police departments haven't developed proper guidelines, because the training is not adequate, that's entirely appropriate. However, they should understand what broken windows represents.

A good share of the people demonstrating seriously want to do the right thing. I think when you start tampering with a tactic that has demonstrated it works, you better do it carefully and with an eye toward improving it, not saying it's cultural imperialism, it's harassment, it's criminalization of the poor. We experimented during the '60s, '70s and '80s with not maintaining order and it was a disaster. The reason New York state incarceration has dropped so much is because of what happened in New York City [i.e., implementing broken windows ]. Tampering with that is very risky.

That doesn't mean it can't be improved, and it doesn't mean there aren't abuses.
This interview has been condensed and edited.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-morrison-kelling-20150107-column.html#page=1

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Michigan

Police need to respect and serve

by Imad Hamad

The sad reality we face in the U.S. today is that relations between the police and some of the communities they serve are troubled. The protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and in New York City have brought this reality to national attention.

We in the human rights community consider the perception of the relation between the police and policed communities as adversarial an unfortunate reality and a threat to human rights. Only reframing the relationship into one of partnership can help change this reality. This change can happen through community policing and community-police partnership.

The promotion of human rights calls for effective and comprehensive outreach initiatives and programs focusing on the advancement of trust and cooperation between law enforcement family and law enforcement agencies.

Constructive dialogue and engagement help dispel misconceptions and help both sides build a trusting relationship that can diffuse incidents that can grow into crises. The murder of the two police officers and the non-fatal shooting of two others in New York City is tragic. The protests and the violence are all indicators of a troubled reality.

Communication, dialogue and engagement all help build trust. The issue of trust is the key component toward enhancing safety and security.

Racial profiling, racism, discrimination and the degrading of human life are all elements of the real challenge that we all face. Building relationships between communities and law enforcement helps build trust that can help diffuse crises. Frank, direct and open communication can help stakeholders develop tools for handling grievances before they develop into crises. Time is due for respectful engagement and partnership between the police and the people. The police are not the enemy. Reducing community-law enforcement relations to an adversarial reality is a loss for both the police and the policed communities.

Policed communities are citizens that the police serve and protect while honoring their constitutional rights and the country's democratic values.

Communities and the police can, together, build a spirit of partnership through engagement and dialogue that can take us on the path of healing and lead us to realize our ideal of a country that values all human life and honors the dignity of all.

Imad Hamad is executive director of the American Human Rights Council, based in Dearborn.

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2015/01/07/police-respect-serve/21354785/

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New York

New York's police commissioner has to reinvent policing once more

by David Ignatius

When William J. Bratton was appointed to his second stint as New York police commissioner by Mayor Bill de Blasio in late 2013, he said he wanted every New Yorker to think of the force as “their police.” Now, a year later, Bratton leads officers who are turning their backs on the mayor of a city where many residents are furious at the cops.

The spirit of police-community partnership has been badly damaged in New York and across the country. But the best model for how to heal the racial and political divide is Bratton's own experience fixing broken police departments in New York and Los Angeles. The police chief who can be said to have reinvented policing will have to do it once more.

The strands of New York's police crisis are tangled with local and national politics, and with America's abiding racial problems. But Bratton doesn't have to perform miracles now, any more than he did when he became commissioner in a frightened and polarized New York in 1994, or when he became commissioner later in a Los Angeles still grappling with the tensions that exploded in the Rodney King beating a decade before.

Bratton has not been shy about explaining his methods, and they're a good deal more complicated than the “broken windows” and “stop and frisk” concepts that have become a shorthand for his approach. In the current mess, he could do worse than re-read his own collected works.

A starting point for Bratton's re-reinvention might be “What We've Learned About Policing,” an article he wrote in 1999 with William Andrews, his former special assistant, about the first NYPD stint. Bratton described his challenge then as motivating a disoriented, ill-managed department: “Like the corporate CEOs of that era, we began with a large, unfocused, inward-looking, bureaucratic organization, poor at internal communication or cooperation and chronically unresponsive to intelligence from the outside world.” Critics would say that description applies similarly to today's NYPD.

Bratton began in 1994 by framing a plan of action that pulled 400 recommendations draw from dispirited precinct and unit commanders, lieutenant and sergeants, as well as the police union, then as now a power that had to be reckoned with. The proposals included new uniforms, improved training, better discipline and a serious internal-affairs department. Perhaps most important, power was devolved to the precinct commanders.

Bratton's culture of accountability was also driven by technology. New computerized crime statistics, gathered and mapped in a database known as CompStat, allowed Bratton and his commanders to see precisely where crime was in the city and go after it. By stopping and frisking suspects even of minor crimes, Bratton made it much more risky for people to carry guns — with the result that gun homicides fell sharply, by 30 percent or more. This aggressive policing may have been carried too far, but at the time it was empowering for New Yorkers from every community. For a city where it had seemed that criminal gangs and drug dealers had the upper hand, the balance had been switched. Good policing is, almost by definition, community policing. As Bratton said last month at the funeral of slain officer Rafael Ramos, the police “represented the blue thread that holds our city together when disorder might pull it apart.”

Bratton's challenge when he became commissioner in Los Angeles was, if anything, even harder. The story is recounted in another City Journal article, “The LAPD Remade,” written by John Buntin in 2013. Many black and Latino residents had come to see the LAPD as an occupying army. The brutality that surfaced in the video of the Rodney King beating was part of the culture that Bratton had to change.

Bratton reformed some of the tough-guy procedures of the LAPD and began working with the city's African-American leadership. He reached out to the sharpest critics, such as John Mack of the Urban League, who later joined an official oversight body called the Board of Police Commissioners. And he began changing the racial composition of the force, so that it looked more like urban Los Angeles.

This management approach worked for Bratton in Los Angeles, as it had in New York. By 2007, his final year, crime had declined 54 percent from where it was in 2002. Buntin cites a 2009 survey reporting that 83 percent of Los Angeles residents rated the LAPD as good or excellent.

Perhaps the clearest example of the new culture of community policing was a case recounted by Jennifer Medina in the New York Times last August. It noted the difference in how the new LAPD handled the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man, Ezell Ford, shortly after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson. Mo. Where Ferguson responded with paramilitary tactics, the new LAPD flooded the city with officers who reached out to local activists and community leaders. Los Angeles remained calm, where Ferguson had exploded. There was now a “bank of trust” in the community, Earl Paysinger, an LAPD assistant chief, explained to Medina.

“The secret to the success of a community-policing program is the capabilities of patrol officers,” noted a 2005 article in Police magazine. That's the part that Bratton understands. He just has to do it again.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/01/06/new-yorks-police-commissioner-has-to-reinvent-policing-once-more/

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New York

2 NYPD officers shot, wounded responding to Bronx armed robbery

by Fox News

A massive manhunt was on in New York after two NYPD officers were shot while trying to stop a robbery in the Bronx late Monday in the latest case of the nation's largest police force coming under fire on the street.

Both Andrew Dossi and Aliro Pellarano, who had just finished a plainclothes tour, were expected to survive. The men were clocking out when a report came in of a robbery at a Chinese restaurant at about 10:30, prompting them to join a response team. Although authorities said they did not appear to be targeted, as two police shot dead in their squad car in Brooklyn last month were, the incident was a sobering reminder of the dangers of policing and of the current tension between the force and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who praised them at a news conference at St. Barnabas Hospital, where they were being treated early Tuesday.

Thank God these officers are doing well," said de Blasio. "These officers did something that was extraordinarily brave. They did it as part of their commitment. These officers had just come off their shift and upon hearing this call went back out in search of these criminals. The work they do is so profoundly important in this instance where they went above and beyond the call to protect their fellow New Yorkers."

Police were hunting for the suspects, who fired on the officers as they fled the robbery scene on foot. Pellarano was hit in the arm and grazed in the chest, while Dossi was shot in the stomach and arm. The gunmen then exchanged fire with other responding officers before carjacking a white Chevrolet Camaro, according to the New York Post. They crashed the stolen car a few blocks from the scene and fled on foot. A source told the Post that a weapon was recovered near where the car crashed.

The Post reported that one possible suspect was apprehended at nearby New York-Presbyterian Hospital, where he had sought treatment for a gunshot wound. It was not clear how he was shot.

New York Police Commissioner William Bratton described the suspects as two Hispanic men in their mid-to-late 20s. The organization COP SHOT, Citizens Outraged at Police Being Shot, has offered a $10,000 reward leading to the arrest and conviction of the suspects.

The shooting comes one day after the funeral of NYPD Officer Wenjian Liu. Liu, along with his partner Rafael Ramos, was ambushed and murdered as he sat in his patrol car in Brooklyn Dec. 20. The shooter, a man who vowed online to kill "pigs," ran into a subway station where he shot himself to death.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/01/06/2-nypd-officers-shot-wounded-by-bronx-armed-robber/

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Ohio

Youngstown, Ohio, police chief to begin community policing

by WYTV Staff

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Heading into his second year as Youngstown's police chief, Robin Lees is still working to implement a new division he had wanted in place in 2014.

Lees said he expects to hire in the immediate future to help form the Community Policing Unit.

The new program will have seven officers with one assigned to each of the city's seven wards. Last fall, council members set aside $200,000 dollars for the program, enough to pay for four of the new positions

Although community policing has been tried in the past, current staffing levels only allow officers to handle more immediate issues.

“We are a 911-driven system. We just don't have the time to put in on some of those festering problems that occur in the neighborhoods that then lead to the larger problems that come to our attention,” Lees said.

When Lees took over a year ago, the city had 152 officers, but that number has since fallen. The chief says he'd like to increase the force to 164 in part by reducing the number of captains from five to three.

“To me, that translates into service on the bottom end where we will be able to bring on patrol officers to provide service at the street level,” Lees said.

Another program that is already in place has helped to reduce violence. Lees said a homicide review program that examines cases that are 24 hours old has been successful.

“We bring in everybody from the various bureaus and divisions within the police department as well as our task force officers and prosecutors, and we sit down and we go over the facts of the case,” Lees said.

The city recorded 19 murders in 2014, the lowest rate in more than a decade.

http://wytv.com/2015/01/05/yo-police-chief-to-begin-community-policing/

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New York

NY cops turn back on mayor as he eulogizes slain officers

by The Associated Press

NEW YORK — Thousands of police turned their backs yesterday as Mayor Bill de Blasio eulogized an officer shot dead with his partner, repeating a stinging display of scorn for the mayor despite entreaties to put anger aside.

The show of disrespect came outside the funeral home where Officer Wenjian Liu was remembered as an incarnation of the American dream: a man who had emigrated from China at age 12 and devoted himself to helping others in his adopted country.

The gesture among officers watching the mayor's speech on a screen added to tensions between the mayor and rank-and-file police even as he sought to quiet them.

"Let us move forward by strengthening the bonds that unite us, and let us work together to attain peace," de Blasio said at the funeral.

Liu, 32, had served as a policeman for seven years and got married two months before he was killed with his partner, Officer Rafael Ramos, on Dec. 20.

Liu's longtime aspiration to become a police officer deepened after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, his father, Wei Tang Liu, said through tears.

And as he finished his daily work, the only child would call to say: "I'm coming home today. You can stop worrying now," the father recalled during a service that blended police tradition with references to Buddhist teachings.

Dignitaries including FBI Director James Comey and members of Congress joined police officers from around the U.S. in a throng of over 10,000 mourners.

"When one of us loses our lives, we have to come together," said Officer Lucas Grant of the Richmond County Sheriff's Office in Augusta, Georgia.

After officers turned their backs to a screen where de Blasio's remarks played during Ramos' funeral last week, Police Commissioner William Bratton sent a memo declaring "a hero's funeral is about grieving, not grievance."
But some officers and police retirees said they still felt compelled to spurn the mayor.

Police union leaders have said he contributed to an environment that allowed the officers' slayings by supporting protests following the police killings of two unarmed black men, Eric Garner in the New York City borough of Staten Island and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

"The mayor has no respect for us. Why should we have respect for him?" said retired New York Police Department Detective Camille Sanfilippo, who was among those who turned their backs yesterday.

Retired NYPD Sgt. Laurie Carson called the action "our only way to show our displeasure with the mayor.".

http://www.nj.com/jjournal-news/index.ssf/2015/01/ny_mayor_eulogizes_slain_offic.html

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Missouri

After spotlight, Ferguson faces a challenging road forward

by Allen G. Breed

FERGUSON, Mo. It's doubtful they were aware, but the rioters who torched Juanita Morris' dress shop had strayed a couple of blocks beyond the Ferguson city limits and into the town of Dellwood. Such is the indiscriminate nature of rage.

But walking amid the ashes of 28 years of work, Juanita Morris was thinking about something else: Her plans to rebuild.

"When you've been beaten to the ground, you can't do nothing but come up," she said, standing outside the charred shell of her West Florissant Avenue store, Juanita's Fashions R Boutique, on a recent frigid morning. "One brick at a time, one dress at a time ... I will rise."

Officials in and around this St. Louis suburb are trying to rebuild as well in the wake of the Aug. 9 shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, by a white police officer and the fiery riots that followed a grand jury's decision in November not to indict.

But they are finding that trust can prove more difficult to restore than buildings.

---

The saying goes that the first step toward recovery is acknowledging there's a problem. But for many of the volunteers at the I Love Ferguson store across from police headquarters, the violence following Brown's shooting and the Nov. 24 announcement that Officer Darren Wilson would not be charged seemed to come out of nowhere.

During his two terms as mayor, Brian Fletcher — who helped launch the I Love Ferguson Committee this summer — says he received plenty of complaints about potholes and barking dogs. But nothing of a racial nature.

"So the part about how some people said this has been brewing for decades was surprising a little bit," says Fletcher, who is white.

"It has truly been ironic that Ferguson became the forum to fight the large battle of diversity when, in fact, Ferguson is a very diverse city," Ruffina Farrokh Anklesaria, an ethnic Indian from Trinidad and Tobago, said as she folded T-shirts for shipment.

But across town at the Canfield Green Apartments, the disaffection and anger are palpable.

Rotting flowers and Teddy bears in St. Louis Cardinals caps line the center line of Canfield Drive, where Michael Brown's body lay for four hours in the August sun. Along the curb, someone has spray painted the words "Hands Up Don't Shoot" — the chant echoing at protests across the country.

Standing nearby, Ken "Kennyboy" Boyd repeats a rumor that at least one of the fires that destroyed a dozen businesses during the Nov. 24 unrest was actually set by a National Guard flash grenade.

"I don't know if the power got the message," says Boyd. "They want to sacrifice a whole country for one man."

The population of Ferguson is nearly 70 percent black. But at the time of Brown's death, only three of the city's 53 police officers were African-American.

Like many in the black community, Anthony Cage is convinced that police and firefighters allowed "the hood" parts of Ferguson to burn so they could justify bringing in the National Guard, "occupying us."

The 48-year-old house painter says some whites may be in denial, but police oppression of blacks "does happen. We're not just out here saying this because we ain't got nothing better to do."

---

In mid-November, Gov. Jay Nixon appointed a 16-member commission to study the "underlying social and economic conditions" that led to the unrest, and to "help chart a new path toward healing and positive change."

But if the first meetings of his Ferguson Commission are any indication, that path forward is a bumpy one.

At a meeting in St. Louis' Shaw neighborhood, the commission had invited St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson to speak about efforts to curb bias, excessive force and racial profiling within the ranks. Dotson declared that most police officers believe in the "noble cause," and that it is a few bad actors who "taint the pool for all of us."

"What happened in Ferguson in August is writing a narrative," he said. "We want that narrative to be a positive one that moves our region forward."

Several minutes into his address, the meeting dissolved into chaos.

Some complained about the panel's makeup. The only commission member with a direct Ferguson connection is a white man who owns a business in town, but no longer lives there.

Ferguson veterinarian Dan Wentz says that's no excuse.

Wentz, who is white, has attended every commission meeting and spent hours in smaller breakout discussions. But of the hundreds of people in attendance, he recognized only a few Ferguson faces. He says residents need to take ownership of the process.

"The only way change is going to happen," he says, "is for people to be involved."

---

Since Brown's death, Ferguson police have begun using body and dashboard cameras. The city council has started the process of establishing a citizen review board and is increasing monetary incentives to encourage officers to live in the city.

Chief Tom Jackson says there are now four black officers on the force. Councilors have established a scholarship to help minority recruits pay for academy training, something the city had abandoned in the past.

The department is also working with the Ferguson-Florissant School District to establish an Explorer program to create, as Mayor James W. Knowles III puts it, "a bullpen that we can hopefully recruit from, get people interested in law enforcement."

While saying "it's disheartening to see Ferguson being raised to a symbol," Knowles says the city is working especially hard to bridge the gap between law enforcement and the city's youth. During a recent council meeting, there were signs of hope.

George Taylor, 17, presented recommendations to police from the Ferguson Youth Initiative Teen Summit. Among them: Get out of your cruisers and talk to us.

"And there could be more social events with youth," the black teen said in a low voice. "Participate in intramural sports together..., have meals together to discuss relations."

The youth group also acknowledged that teens needed to do better. Improve their behavior; make better first impressions.

"Youth need to respond to police respectfully," he said. "Has to go both ways."

Shopkeeper Juanita Morris is willing to re-invest in the community.

"This whole area has been damaged," she said. "So this whole area will become new — a greater area, and a better area."

Wiping a tear from her cheek, she said the greatest crime of all would be to give up.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2015/01/05/5425989/after-spotlight-ferguson-faces.html#.VKqSZc90ypo