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Navy, Marines make drinking illegal????

Wow less then one beer will make you test more then .01!!!! I guess this will effectively make drinking in the military illegal????
Any Marine or sailor who tests positive at .01% or higher to be referred for counseling.
Source

Marines to undergo random Breathalyzer tests beginning in 2013

December 23, 2012 | 9:14 am

Starting Jan. 1, Marines at Camp Pendleton and other bases will be subject to random Breathalyzer tests twice a year under what is billed as the toughest anti-drinking policy in the U.S. military.

An order issued by Lt. Gen. R.E. Milstead Jr., deputy commandant for manpower and reserve affairs, calls for any Marine or sailor who tests positive at .01% or higher to be referred for counseling. Any Marine or sailor who tests .04% or higher will be referred to medical personnel to determine fitness for duty.

Milstead notes that while the new order “is primarily for deterrence and education,” nothing precludes commanders from handing out punishment. Each unit will have an officer or staff non-commissioned officer to act as the alcohol screening program coordinator.

In California, a driver with .08% blood alcohol is considered drunk, and his or her driver's license is immediately suspended. A single drink can lead to a positive test of .01%. [Can??? A better statement is a single drink WILL lead to a positive test of .01% or more]

In September, a study by the U.S. Institute of Medicine, sponsored by the Department of Defense, found that binge drinking, often called “sport drinking,” is increasing among military personnel in all branches.

In 1998, 35% of personnel admitted to binge drinking in the previous year. In 2008, the last year for which statistics were available, that figure had risen to 47%. Twenty percent of personnel classify themselves as “heavy” drinkers.

Noting that “alcohol has long been part of military culture,” the study's authors, including professors from USC and UC San Francisco, called for better leadership from the top of the chain of command in curbing excess drinking. Among the recommendations was “routine screening for excessive alcohol consumption.”

Under the Marine order, monthly reports will be kept by each Marine unit about the results of the alcohol screening program and quarterly reports will be submitted to Marine Corps headquarters.

In the last year for which statistics are available, the Marine Corps reported 13 alcohol-related deaths among Marines in locations in this country and abroad. Included were Marines killed by vehicle and motorcycle crashes, one from falling 17 stories from a building, one from attempting to run across a freeway near Camp Pendleton, and several deaths that occurred during binge drinking when a Marine passed out and could not be revived.

Officials have also expressed alarm at the link between alcohol abuse and cases of domestic violence and sexual assault.

In June, a Marine Corps report indicated that there had been 333 reported cases of sexual assault corpswide in the previous year and that in most cases the victim, the aggressor or both had been drinking.

In a precede to that report, Commandant Gen. James Amos wrote that, “Despite our efforts, we have been ineffective at addressing and eliminating sexual assault within our ranks.”


Marines’ new alcohol policy strictest in U.S. military

Source

Marines’ new alcohol policy strictest in U.S. military

By Rowan Scarborough

The Washington Times

Thursday, December 20, 2012

The Marine Corps‘ new on-duty standard for drinking alcohol is so strict that less than one drink at lunch would trigger a “positive” and get a warrior in hot water.

The Washington Times reported earlier this week that the Corps sent a Dec. 12 message to commanders officially beginning mandatory breath tests for all 197,000 Marines twice each year.

A reading of just .01 percent subjects a Marine to counseling. A Marine who registers a .04 must be examined by medical staff for fitness for duty.

The Corps is the first among the Army, Air Force and Navy to begin random mandatory testing of all personnel. The Army leaves test decisions up to a commander and prohibits a blood alcohol content (BAC) at .05 percent or higher. The Air Force also instructs commanders to order alcohol tests when appropriate but has no compulsory program.

The Navy said last March it plans to conduct mandatory breath tests. A spokeswoman says the program will not start until next year.

Overall, this makes the new Corps anti-alcohol testing the military’s strictest.

The Marine memo calls a “positive test result” a reading of .01 or greater, which results in automatic “screening and treatment as appropriate.”

“I think it’s outrageously low,” said Neal Puckett, a defense attorney and retired Marine Corps judge advocate. “Guess it’s zero tolerance for alcohol just like the zero tolerance for drugs.”

“No one would be impaired at a 0.01 alcohol concentration,” said Bruce Goldberger, a University of Florida professor and a renowned forensic toxicologist, to The Times.

For an average-size man of 150 pounds, one drink would register a .02 reading, Mr. Goldberger said. For an average woman, he said, a single drink would result in a .03.

“So if you look at a scenario where someone in the Marine Corps goes to a bar and drinks two drinks, that would give him a BAC of a .04,” he said. “It would take him about two to three hours to clear the alcohol in the bloodstream.”

“It’s possible if a Marine goes to a bar and is drinking a substantial amount of alcohol over the course of an evening, and he gets himself to a BAC of 1.5 or 2.0, if they are tested first thing in the morning when they report to duty, they may still have some alcohol in their blood and test positive,” he added.

Mr. Goldberger, who is director of toxicology at the university’s Department of Pathology, said various breath testers, often referred to as “Breathalyzers,” are reliable and accurate.

He said any Marine picked for a random test who has recently gargled with mouthwash should be given 20 minutes or so to let the alcohol disappear before blowing into the machine.

A reading of .01 “is very low,” he said, meaning the Marine Corps must ensure that the breath testers it uses can discern a “negative” score from a minimal reading.

Mr. Goldberger said the “industry standard” is generally .02 for employees, a less strict measurement than the Corps‘.

Marine spokeswoman Maj. Shawn Haney told The Times that the Corps conducted pilot random testing from May to October at three locations, including the Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C. Of 797 Marines tested, 99.99 passed, she said.

A Corps statement said: “Breathalyzer testing will enable commanders to test 100 percent of the Marines in their unit in order to take appropriate actions related to the health and safety of Marines such as training, education and referral to substance abuse counseling.”

The Marine Corps did not respond to a question from The Times on why it chose .01 as a “positive” reading requiring corrective action.

Army regulations say an on-duty soldier with .05 BAC or more is subject to discipline under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and can receive a less-than-honorable discharge.

Commanders may set limits below .05 and bar alcohol consumption altogether on deployment.

“Someone who blows a .05 while on duty could potentially be not fit for duty since there are effects of alcohol even at low levels,” said Mr. Goldberger, who was a key defense witness in the acquittal of former Major League pitcher Roger Clemens on charges he lied about taking performance enhancing drugs.

A blood-alcohol content of .08 — which means eight one-hundredths of 1 percent of the blood by volume is alcohol — is the U.S. standard for drunkenness while driving. Concentration, reasoning, depth perception and other skills can be impaired by a blood-alcohol content lower than .08.

The armed forces for years have required mandatory drug testing. The services have wrestled with the idea of doing to same for alcohol given the belief that domestic violence and sexual assaults are often rooted in excessive drinking.

In September, in a study requested by the Pentagon, the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded drug and alcohol abuse by military personnel constitutes a “public health crisis” and “both are detrimental to force readiness and psychological fitness.”


Senator From Idaho Is Charged With D.U.I.

More of the old "Do as I say, not as I do" from our government masters.

Source

Senator From Idaho Is Charged With D.U.I.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: December 23, 2012 at 9:37 PM ET

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — Authorities say U.S. Sen. Michael Crapo (KRAY'-poh) has been arrested and charged with driving under the influence in suburban Washington, D.C.

Police in Alexandria, Va., said Sunday that the Idaho Republican was pulled over early Sunday morning after his vehicle ran a red light. Police spokesman Jody Donaldson said Crapo failed field sobriety tests and was arrested at about 12:45 a.m. He was transported to the Alexandria jail and released on an unsecured $1,000 bond about four hours later

Donaldson said he didn't immediately know what Crapo's blood alcohol level was.

Crapo has a Jan. 4 court date.

The senator issued a statement late Sunday saying he was "deeply sorry" for his actions and would deal with whatever penalty comes his way.

A Mormon, Crapo has been in the Senate since 1998, and served for six years in the House before that.


Idaho Republican senator charged with drunk driving

Source

Idaho Republican senator charged with drunk driving

By Nick Carey Reuters

10:34 p.m. CST, December 23, 2012

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho was arrested early on Sunday in a Washington suburb and charged with driving under the influence, police said.

An officer stopped Crapo in Alexandria, Virginia, after spotting a vehicle running a red traffic signal, city police said in a statement.

The senior senator from Idaho was "arrested after failing several field sobriety tests," it said.

Crapo was alone in his own car. His blood alcohol content was 0.11 percent, the statement said, above Virginia's maximum of 0.08 percent.

Crapo, 61, was taken into custody without incident and released on an unsecured bond of $1,000. He is due to appear in court on January 4.

Crapo said in a statement that he was "deeply sorry" for the incident.

"I made a mistake for which I apologize to my family, my Idaho constituents and any others who have put their trust in me," he said.

"I accept total responsibility and will deal with whatever penalty comes my way in this matter."

Crapo has served in the U.S. Senate since 1999 after six years in the U.S. House of Representatives representing Idaho's 2nd district. He was re-elected to the Senate in 2010.

Crapo is a Mormon who has been quoted in the press as saying he abstains from drinking alcohol.

Known as a fiscal and social conservative, Crapo has a lifetime score of 80 percent from the conservative Club for Growth.

A graduate of Brigham Young University and Harvard Law School, Crapo is a member of the Senate Banking Committee and the chamber's budget and finance panels.

He was a member of the so-called "Gang of Six" senators that worked in 2011 toward a deficit-reduction deal that Congress failed to adopt.


Medical-pot battle grows testy

These folks hypocrites who profess majority rule, but when they get outvoted turn around and say the election didn't count, because they didn't win.

Source

Medical-pot battle grows testy

By Michelle Ye Hee Lee The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Dec 24, 2012 8:38 PM

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery is alleging that an attorney who represents a proposed medical-marijuana dispensary violated ethics rules by attempting to dissuade the Board of Supervisors, Montgomery’s client, from taking his advice.

Acting on that advice, the Board of Supervisors declined to follow the state’s medical-marijuana law and has disallowed medical-marijuana dispensaries or cultivation sites within the county’s jurisdiction. Montgomery had warned the board that county employees who carry out the state law may be subject to federal prosecution because marijuana is not a federally approved drug.

But Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Michael Gordon rejected that claim earlier this month. He ruled that county officials must give the White Mountain Health Center paperwork showing whether it complies with dispensary zoning rules.

The center last week applied for zoning clearance for five location options near Sun City. The county did not verify any of the proposed locations because they would not comply with zoning ordinances.

Jeffrey Kaufman, attorney for the center, had accused the county of purposely stalling action on the center’s application to prevent it from obtaining a state operating license. The center became embroiled in a legal controversy over the state’s medical-marijuana law and whether it contradicts the federal Controlled Substances Act.

Voters in 2010 approved the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act, which allows qualifying patients with certain debilitating medical conditions to use marijuana.

After Gordon’s ruling rejecting Montgomery’s arguments, Kaufman wrote a Dec.14 letter to the Board of Supervisors asking its cooperation for the center to open a dispensary near Sun City at a “location that is acceptable to all of us.”

Since the ruling, at least two dispensaries — one in Glendale and another in Tucson — have opened their doors. The Board of Supervisors last week unanimously approved Montgomery’s request to appeal the ruling.

“Frankly, we have continuously reached out to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, hoping to agree upon a mutually-acceptable location for our client’s medical marijuana dispensary. ... Unfortunately, Mr. Montgomery’s response has never changed. He continues to insist that marijuana is against federal law and that the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act is unenforceable,” Kaufman wrote.

“We are writing this letter to you because we know that you are not required to follow Mr. Montgomery’s advice,” Kaufman wrote.

Montgomery responded to Kaufman’s letter about a week later, chiding Kaufman for attempting to sidestep him and contacting his clients without consent from him or his office. He said Kaufman failed to attend last week’s board meeting, when Kaufman could have spoken during a public-comment period on Gordon’s ruling.

Montgomery accused Kaufman of an ethical violation as a lawyer and said his office is preparing a state Bar complaint against him.

“This letter is not intended to invite a discussion, debate or negotiation over your behavior. It is to advise you” of the pending Bar complaint, Montgomery wrote.

“Your attempts to circumvent my role as advisor to the Board and supplant my advice with your own also irresponsibly places Board members in the precarious position of acting contrary to a written opinion of a county attorney,” Montgomery wrote.

The County Attorney’s Office declined to comment further. The complaint had not been filed Monday.

In an interview, Kaufman said, “I didn’t realize I wasn’t allowed to contact the Board of Supervisors. I’m still not sure that I wasn’t allowed to contact them. They aren’t a party to the lawsuit, but if I’d done something wrong I’m sincerely sorry about it.”

He added: “Why would there be a need to publicly chastise me when all he had to do was report my conduct to the state Bar? I’m just totally perplexed why they would make a letter chastising me public record.”


Click, print, shoot: Downloadable guns are possible

Wow, I didn't even know they had a law that makes guns illegal that can't be detected by x-rays or metal scanners!!!
the Undetectable Firearms Act, which makes it illegal to build guns that can’t be detected by either X-rays or metal scanners.
I included some stuff on the Undetectable Firearms Act following this article.

Source

Click, print, shoot: Downloadable guns are possible

Associated Press

Associated Press Mon Dec 24, 2012 8:53 PM

SAN FRANCISCO - Download a gun’s design plans to your computer, build it on a three-dimensional printer and fire it minutes later. No background checks, no questions asked.

Sound far-fetched? It’s not. And that is disquieting for gun control advocates.

At least one group, called Defense Distributed, is claiming to have created downloadable weapon parts that can be built using the new generation of printer that uses plastics and other materials to create 3-D objects with moving parts.

University of Texas law student Cody Wilson, 24, the leader of Defense Distributed’s “Wiki Weapons” project, says the group last month test fired a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle — similar to one of the weapons used in last week’s Connecticut school massacre — which was built with some key parts created on a 3-D printer. The gun was fired six times before it broke.

Though no independent observer was there to verify the test, a short video clip showing the gun firing and breaking was posted to YouTube.

Federal firearms regulators said they are aware of the technology’s gun-making potential but do not believe an entire weapon has yet been made.

Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., said the prospect of such guns becoming reality is reason enough for the renewal of the Undetectable Firearms Act, which makes it illegal to build guns that can’t be detected by either X-rays or metal scanners.

That law expires at the end of 2013.

“What’s chilling is that last month a group of kids used a 3-D printer to actually manufacture (key parts) of the AR-15 and fire six bullets,” Israel said. “When the (act) was last renewed in 2003, a gun made by a 3-D printer was like a ‘Star Trek’ episode, but now we know it’s real.”

Even with gun control pushed to the top of the national political conversation, Wilson is steadfast about reaching his goal of making a fully downloadable gun.


Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988

Here are just a few snips about the law.
Source

UnOfficial Edited Summary

4/27/1988--Introduced.

Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988 - Amends the Federal criminal code to make it unlawful to manufacture, assemble, import, sell, ship, or deliver (or knowingly possess, transfer, or receive) any firearm which is not:

(1) as detectable as the Minimum Security Standard Exemplar (after the removal of grips, stocks, and magazines) by walk-through metal detectors calibrated to detect the Exemplar; or

(2) detectable by airport cabinet x-ray systems.

Defines the term "Minimum Security Standard Exemplar" to mean a firearm substitute used for testing that resembles a revolver, is made of stainless steel, and weighs 3.7 ounces.

Prohibits the Secretary of the Treasury from authorizing the importation of undetectable firearms.

Makes it unlawful to knowingly possess, or attempt to possess, a firearm or dangerous weapon in a Federal courthouse.

Makes it a Federal criminal offense to possess explosives in FAA regulated airports.

Source

Undetectable Firearms Act:

Representative Bill Hughes of New Jersey introduced The Undetectable Firearms Act on April 21, 1988 with 17 co-sponsors. You may remember Bill from the infamous amendment 777 of the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986. The purpose of this legislation was to ban the manufacturing or possession of firearms capable of passing through a metal detector without detection.

The law was amended by the House Judiciary Committee and finally approved by the House on April 10, 1988 with a vote of 413 – 4.

The Senate received the bill and integrated it with S2180. After this, both the House and Senate further amended the bill. Both the House and Senate approved the final version on October 21, 1988. President Ronald Reagan signed it on November 10, 1988, making it Public Law 100-649.

The general affect of this legislation was to ban the manufacturing or possession of a firearm that has less of an x-ray or metal detector signature than a plastic test gun containing 3.7 oz of 17-4 stainless steel.

The legislation did allow exceptions for the use of such weapons by government entities such as the military and CIA. It also allowed the manufacturing or possession of such a weapon for the intent of having the government test it to see if it meets the above criteria.

The act had a sunset clause, rendering it void ten years after inception (November 10, 1998). The bill was allowed to sunset, and nothing was done about it for five years.

In 2003, a bill was passed to re-authorize the ban for another 10 years. This was HR3348 and was signed into law on December 9, 2003, becoming Public Law 108-174. This will sunset on December 9, 2013 unless renewed. Hopefully, they let it die.

The really funny thing about this legislation, is that the guns in question do not exist, and never have (outside of the movies).


Big bucks spent to bust harmless marijuana growers

Wow the government sure spends huge amounts of money to bust harmless marijuana growers.

  • Two spotters with night-vision scopes take positions on the ridge
  • Thermal imaging aircraft circling high above was not detecting anyone on the ground
  • trail cameras hadn't captured images of men delivering supplies
  • A U.S. Forest Service agent unleashes a German shepherd
  • Based on our intelligence, which includes thousands of cellphone numbers and wiretaps
  • A helicopter comes with a net to lift the marijuana out.
  • It takes two more [helicopter] flights to get the trash out.
  • two aircraft, 43 agents, seven scientists and land managers take part in the operation
  • This raid of a marijuana farm cost the taxpayers $35,000 to $40,000.

This is why I like to call the "War on Drugs" a jobs program for cops. The war on drugs is big money for the cops, judges, prosecutors, and prison guards that fight it. There is also big bucks for the "War on Drugs" for all the companies in the military industrial complex that supply the military tools to fight the "War on Drugs".

Source

Roots of pot cultivation in national forests are hard to trace

By Joe Mozingo, Los Angeles Times

December 26, 2012, 12:23 a.m.

WELDON, Calif. — A few minutes after 4 a.m., agents in camouflage cluster in a dusty field in Kern County. "Movement needs to be slow, deliberate and quiet," the team leader whispers. "Lock and load now."

They check their ammunition and assault rifles, not exactly sure whom they might meet in the dark: heavily armed Mexican drug traffickers, or just poorly paid fieldworkers camping miserably in the brush.

Twenty minutes later, after a lights-off drive for a mile, the agents climb out of two pickup trucks and sift into the high desert brush.

The granite faces of the Southern Sierra are washed in the light of a full moon. Two spotters with night-vision scopes take positions on the ridge to monitor the marijuana grow, tucked deep in a cleft of the canyon.

The rest of the agents hunker down in some sumac waiting for the call to move in. The action has to be precisely timed with raids in Bakersfield, where they hope to capture the leaders of the organization.

They have no idea how many people are up here. Thermal imaging aircraft circling high above was not detecting anyone on the ground. And trail cameras hadn't captured images of men delivering supplies for more than a week. Maybe the growers have already harvested and cleared out.

Word comes on the radio to go into the site.

The agents fan out in the gray of dawn. A U.S. Forest Service agent unleashes a German shepherd and follows it up a piney slope. After several minutes, the dog begins barking furiously.

"We have movement," shouts the Forest Service officer. "Hands up."

::

Such raids have become commonplace in California, part of a costly, frustrating campaign to eradicate ever-bigger, more destructive marijuana farms and dismantle the shadowy groups that are creating them.

Pot cultivated on public lands surged in the last decade, a side effect of the medical cannabis boom. In 2001, several hundred thousand plants were seized in the state. By 2010, authorities pulled up a record 7.4 million plants, mostly on public land.

Law enforcement long called these grows on public land "cartel grows," and hoped to work from the busts in the forest up the drug hierarchy, maybe all the way to the Sinaloa Cartel or the Zetas.

But after years of raids and work with informants and wiretaps, agents realize the operations seemed to be run by independent groups of Mexican nationals, often using undocumented fieldworkers from their home regions.

Tommy Lanier, director of the National Marijuana Initiative, part of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said there was scant evidence that the cartels exerted much control over marijuana growing in the national forests.

"Based on our intelligence, which includes thousands of cellphone numbers and wiretaps, we haven't been able to connect anyone to a major cartel," he said.

Lanier said authorities have long mislabeled marijuana grown on public land as "cartel grows" because Mexican nationals are arrested in the majority of cases, and the narrative of fighting drug cartels helps them secure federal funding.

He doesn't rule out that some of the cash flowing south of the border makes its way to members of those groups. He just doesn't believe they are actively directing activities up here.

"We've had undercover agents at the highest level of these groups, breaking bread and drinking tequila," says Roy Giorgi, commander of the Mountain and Valley Marijuana Investigation Team, a multi-agency organization headquartered in Sacramento. "Even at their most comfortable, the leaders never said, 'Hey, we're working for the Zetas.' "

In Giorgi's jurisdiction, the majority of the people arrested or investigated are originally from the state of Michoacan, where marijuana growing and immigration to the U.S. are entrenched.

In their hometowns, growers have to sell their marijuana to cartels for a fraction of what they could make in California. When they come north, they see opportunity in the state's vast wilderness. They have the know-how and perseverance to set up clandestine farms and live for months at a time in extremely rugged spots. Loncheros — lunchmen — often make weekly supply runs in the middle of the night, bringing food, beer and fertilizer. The workers wear camouflage, often sleep in the brush-covered tents, cook on propane stoves in crude kitchens and supplement their food by poaching deer and other wildlife.

Giorgi says these organizations can still be well-financed, heavily armed and dangerous.

Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman realized at a community meeting in 2010 how bad the situation was in the Mendocino National Forest when five of the eight people who went to the microphone said basically: "I was out in the national forest … herding cows or sheep or hiking or fishing. And someone shot at me. So I'm not going into the national forest."

The following summer, Allman helped lead a task force on a three-week purge of pot from the area. They pulled out 632,000 plants, 42 miles of irrigation line and 52 tons of garbage. Agents arrested 132 people and confiscated 38 guns.

Is the forest safe today? "I'll put it this way," Allman said. "I'd go camping in the National Forest, but I wouldn't let my sister go."

Would he camp unarmed? "No."

A Mexican-born grower working just outside Mendocino National Forest said the cartels may not run the grows, but the criminal ties to Mexico are vastly complex and dangerous. He hears stories all the time of drug gang shakedowns, and workers held captive in the forest, with threats to their families back home.

"There was a guy working right here," he said, pointing over the hill from his grow, "he thought he was working in Texas."

The grower operates in the quasi-legal medical marijuana world and has contacts on the public land grows. He asked to remain anonymous because he feared for his safety.

He said he thinks law enforcement has little grasp of what's going on because no one arrested will put their family at risk to speak with them, even for a lighter sentence.

Lanier said agents are making progress. This season, they have seized about 3 million plants, less than half the number of last year. But with such a shadowy enemy, success is hard to gauge.

It's not clear if the numbers mean fewer plants are being grown on public land, or just fewer are being found. Since the state Campaign Against Marijuana Planting was disbanded last year, agents spend less time on aerial surveillance. And local sheriffs in pot-growing counties like Mendocino and Humboldt have far less resources devoted to seeking out and eradicating plants than they had in the past.

"It's hard to know if there's less being grown if you're not looking," said Humboldt County Sheriff Lt. Steve Knight.

::

The investigation into the Kern County grow, just south of the Sequoia National Forest, began when a game warden spotted spilled fertilizer at a road turnout that had been a drop-off spot for marijuana growers four years before.

The warden set up surveillance and saw a Jeep Cherokee dropping off supplies several times. Two wardens pulled over the driver, Francisco Barrazarivas, for speeding one night in July. While one officer conducted a field sobriety test, the other placed a GPS device on his car, according to an affidavit filed with the search warrant.

Barrazarivas drove to a house in Bakersfield and was seen transferring two dark bags to a sedan, which was unloaded five houses up the block.

That second house was associated with a man named Ignacio Gomez, an illegal immigrant from Michoacan suspected to be the leader of a group that grows marijuana on public lands in Kern and Tulare counties, according to a Forest Service report included in the affidavit.

The raids come in the early morning Aug. 3.

In all, two aircraft, 43 agents, seven scientists and land managers, and eight volunteers would take part in the joint operation — at a cost of $35,000 to $40,000.

Two young men in camouflage are pulled out of a brush-covered tent. A Glock pistol is found in one of their sleeping bags, but neither man tried to grab it. They are the fieldworkers.

Game wardens trudge down the canyon with their guns drawn. They pass another tent and kitchen area overflowing with trash. Strung up on sticks is some type of salted game meats.

About 50 yards down in the canyon, they find 450 brilliant green marijuana plants all but glowing amid the dry summer brush. Many more stalks have already been harvested.

The scene is an ecological mess. Cottonwood trees and willows have been cut down to let in sunlight. Bags of fertilizer and trays of rat poison are strewn about. A dead hawk lies on one footpath. A coyote carcass is rotting up the hill.

A volunteer clean-up crew starts pulling up the hoses and rubbish. A helicopter comes with a net to lift the marijuana out. It takes two more flights to get the trash out.

Word comes on the radio that no one at the Bakersfield houses was arrested in relation to the grows. Gomez and Barrazarivas were gone.

The two men arrested in the woods are Cruz Soria, 27, of Bakersfield, and Mairo Correa-Garcia, an 18-year-old illegal immigrant from Michoacan.

Correa-Garcia's lawyer, Dale Blickenstaff, said later that the young man told him he had been in the United States for a year and was working in Washington state, then came to Bakersfield when he heard there were better opportunities.

He was recruited to work for $100 a day — great pay for farm labor — and had been up on the grow site for a month.

Soria is now awaiting trial. Correa-Garcia pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years in federal prison.

Neither one told investigators whom they were working for. They said they didn't know.

joe.mozingo@latimes.com


California inspired -- and now inspired by -- other states' marijuana legalization measures

Source

California inspired -- and now inspired by -- other states' marijuana legalization measures

By Josh Richman

jrichman@bayareanewsgroup.com

Posted: 12/24/2012 04:29:40 AM PST

Many marijuana activists always thought California would be the first state to legalize the drug for recreational use, but their dreams faded in 2010 when the state's voters rejected Proposition 19.

Yet the legalization measure's poor timing, lackluster funding and vague regulatory plan offered vital lessons that allowed activists in Colorado and Washington state to succeed last month where California had failed. Now activists in the Golden State are, in turn, scrutinizing those states' successful campaigns to prepare themselves for another California measure down the road.

"This isn't over until we say it's over, and we won't say it's over until we win," said Dale Sky Jones, chairwoman of the Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform.

Jones, executive chancellor of Oakland's Oaksterdam University (a cannabis industry training school) said California's next effort is already under way. Proposition 19's backers hosted a summit meeting Dec. 7 at Oaksterdam with the people behind five other legalization measures that failed to make it onto the ballot in the past two years. The groups agreed to work together to avoid competing measures.

"The coalition in California is now stronger than ever and bigger than ever and moving forward," Jones said, adding that activists will probably put their full effort behind a measure on 2016's presidential election ballot, though it hasn't ruled out 2014.

California's pot activists might have better luck next time, said Jonathan Caulkins, a Carnegie Mellon University professor whose research focuses on marijuana legalization. "The general trajectory of support nationwide is increasing and reaching a tipping point," he said.

Los Gatos-Monte Sereno police Chief Scott Seaman, president of the California Police Chiefs Association, said law enforcement agencies are watching Colorado and Washington, too -- with the expectation that the federal ban on marijuana will make those states' laws unworkable. And that, he said, would be for the best.

"I am deeply concerned for our youth, who could misinterpret legalization as permission for them to engage even more in consumption," he said. [Translation - he doesn't want marijuana to be legalized because arresting harmless pot smokers is a jobs program for cops!!!]

Alison Holcomb, campaign director for Washington's Initiative 502, said Proposition 19 offered encouragement. Only 46.5 percent of voters supported it, yet it still got more votes than Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman in November 2010. And that was in a nonpresidential election, with limited funding in a state with some of the nation's costliest media markets. "That gave us a lot of hope this could be done sooner than advocates had thought possible," Holcomb said.

But Holcomb, the American Civil Liberties Union of A man, who identified himself as "Professor Gizmo," lights up a pipe minutes before the law legalizing the recreational use of marijuana went into effect in Seattle, Washington December 5, 2012. REUTERS/Cliff Despeaux (Cliff DesPeaux) Washington's drug policy director, said Washington activists also looked at California's exit polls and newspaper editorials. Not one editorial board backed Proposition 19, she said, "not even in San Francisco or Berkeley."

To win endorsements and voter support, they realized, their initiative needed to propose a full statewide regulatory system for production, distribution and taxation, instead of a hodgepodge of local statutes as Proposition 19 would have allowed, Holcomb said.

Also, they saw Californians had worried about legalization's impact on safe driving, so they drafted their measure to include DUI standards for THC, the chemical in marijuana that gets people high.

Similarly, the backers of Colorado's Amendment 64 talked to Proposition 19's proponents soon after the 2010 defeat, said Colorado campaign co-director Brian Vicente. They, too, saw the need for a state-run regulatory program rather than a local patchwork.

"This was regimented in terms of how we laid out that marijuana should be taxed like alcohol, and that made a lot of sense to people," he said, noting that earmarking a big chunk of the projected tax revenue for schools also helped.

Vicente also credits Amendment 64's success to its being on the ballot in a presidential election, which attracts more young and minority voters. "Those voting blocs really support ending the drug war," he said.

Colorado and Washington voters 21 and older are now free to inhale as they wish, but Carnegie Mellon University's Caulkins -- a former co-director of Rand's Drug Policy Research Center in Santa Monica -- said the bigger deal is what will come over the next year as the two states enact laws regulating production, distribution and sales, as the initiatives require. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration won't kick in every stoner's door, but could target big, for-profit marijuana farms and stores, he predicted.

In an ABC News interview that aired Friday, President Barack Obama said recreational marijuana users in the two states should not be a "top priority" of federal law enforcement. But that's similar to what he has said about people using marijuana as medicine in 18 states, including California, that allow it. [What a rubbish!!! President Obama said he would not arrest medical marijuana users, but he sent in his DEA thugs to shut down California medical marijuana dispensaries]

Yet the federal government still pressures or prosecutes growers and sellers in medical marijuana states, so the president's words offered no assurances that the same won't be true in Colorado and Washington.

"It sounds like the same failed policy and selective prosecution will continue," Jones said.

Caulkins agreed. "This is an election that absolutely did not resolve the issue" of whether the feds or states will be in charge of marijuana laws, he said. "It just put it in play."

Josh Richman covers politics. Contact him at 510-208-6428. Follow him at Twitter.com/josh_richman. Read the Political Blotter at IBAbuzz.com/politics.


175 people sent to federal prisons for breaking imaginary laws???

If you are naive enough to think you will get a fair trial if you are mistakenly arrested for something you didn't do you better read this articles.

In this article 175 people have been convicted of imaginary crimes and sent to prison for those imaginary crimes.

The article also make you wonder how competent the private attorneys people paid to represent them are. Same question for the public defenders that probably represented many of these people for free.

Source

Hundreds of federal prisoners could be freed

By Brad Heath USA Today Wed Dec 26, 2012 10:40 AM

WASHINGTON -- An internal U.S. Justice Department review has identified at least 175 federal prisoners who must be either released or resentenced because they have been kept locked up improperly.

The review, which followed a USA TODAY investigation, found that some of those prisoners should never have been sent to prison because they had not committed a federal crime; others received sentences vastly longer than the law allows.

All of the problems stem from a misunderstanding about which North Carolina state convictions were serious enough to outlaw gun possession or require extended prison sentences under federal law.

The number of prisoners who will ultimately be freed or given shorter sentences is likely to be significantly higher than 175 because the examination by federal prosecutors was confined to the smallest of North Carolina’s three federal court districts. Justice Department spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle said “many more” cases could be upended by the time prosecutors and federal courts resolve them all.

USA TODAY’s investigation in June identified 60 people who were imprisoned even though an appeals court said that what they had done was not a federal crime. Still, USA TODAY found that Justice Department lawyers did almost nothing to notify the prisoners -- many of whom did not know they were innocent -- and asked federal judges to keep them locked up anyway. The Justice Department reversed that position in August.

Since then, federal judges have ordered the government to free at least 32 prisoners, and have taken 12 more off post-prison supervision, court records show. Some had served up to eight years in prison before they were freed.

“That’s a huge number,” said University of San Francisco law professor Richard Leo. He said it is uncommon for any federal convictions to be overturned, let alone for so many to happen in a single episode.

The Justice Department’s examination, completed in September but never made public, is the first estimate of just how big that number could be. Ripley Rand, the U.S. Attorney in Greensboro, N.C., where prosecutors conducted the review, said as many as a third of the gun cases his office prosecuted in recent years could be thrown out. So many prisoners have filed legal cases challenging their convictions that he has assigned three prosecutors to them full time.

Prosecutors in the state’s other two districts did not conduct a similar case-by-case review, and don’t yet know how many of their own cases are in jeopardy. Instead, officials said they are working with defense lawyers to identify cases that should be overturned.

Among those prisoners is Travis Dixon, who was convicted in 2006 of illegally possessing a .44-caliber revolver. Court records show none of his prior state convictions was serious enough to make owning a firearm a federal crime. Justice Department lawyers agree; in September they asked a federal court to overturn his conviction and let Dixon go.

But Dixon is still in federal prison in South Carolina while he waits for a judge to act on the request. “I’m just not understanding why they’re taking this long,” he said in an e-mail.

Another prisoner, Marion Howard, was freed only after he wrote a letter to the judge asking her to “please rule on my case before the holidays” so he could get home to see his family. The judge freed him on Dec. 5.

Federal law bans people from having a gun if they have previously been convicted of a crime that could have put them in prison for more than a year. In North Carolina, however, state law set the maximum punishment for a crime based in part on the criminal record of whoever committed it, meaning some people who committed crimes such as possessing cocaine faced sentences of more than a year, while those with shorter records face only a few months.

For years, federal courts there said that didn’t matter. If someone with a long record could have gone to prison for more than a year, then all who had committed that crime are felons and cannot legally have a gun, the courts maintained. But last year, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals said judges had been getting the law wrong, ruling that only people who could have faced more than a year in prison for their crimes qualify as felons.

The decision meant that low-level state convictions should not have been enough to outlaw gun possession or to justify extra-long prison sentences for people who went on to be convicted of federal crimes.

It will take at least a year to untangle all the cases like those, Rand said. His office’s 20 criminal lawyers have been swamped by so many prisoners challenging their sentences that they have been forced to delay some other criminal prosecutions. “It’s definitely been a huge burden,” he said.


The secret CIA police - Global Response Staff or GRS

Source

CIA’s Global Response Staff emerging from shadows after incidents in Libya and Pakistan

By Greg Miller and Julie Tate, Published: December 26

The rapid collapse of a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya exposed the vulnerabilities of State Department facilities overseas. But the CIA’s ability to fend off a second attack that same night provided a glimpse of a key element in the agency’s defensive arsenal: a secret security force created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Two of the Americans killed in Benghazi were members of the CIA’s Global Response Staff, an innocuously named organization that has recruited hundreds of former U.S. Special Forces operatives to serve as armed guards for the agency’s spies.

The GRS, as it is known, is designed to stay in the shadows, training teams to work undercover and provide an unobtrusive layer of security for CIA officers in high-risk outposts.

But a series of deadly scrapes over the past four years has illuminated the GRS’s expanding role, as well as its emerging status as one of the CIA’s most dangerous assignments.

Of the 14 CIA employees killed since 2009, five worked for the GRS, all as contractors. They include two killed at Benghazi, as well as three others who were within the blast radius on Dec. 31, 2009, when a Jordanian double agent detonated a suicide bomb at a CIA compound in Khost, Afghanistan.

GRS contractors have also been involved in shootouts in which only foreign nationals were killed, including one that triggered a diplomatic crisis. While working for the CIA, Raymond Davis was jailed for weeks in Pakistan last year after killing two men in what he said was an armed robbery attempt in Lahore.

The increasingly conspicuous role of the GRS is part of a broader expansion of the CIA’s paramilitary capabilities over the past 10 years. Beyond hiring former U.S. military commandos, the agency has collaborated with U.S. Special Operations teams on missions including the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and has killed thousands of Islamist militants and civilians with its fleet of armed drones.

CIA veterans said that GRS teams have become a critical component of conventional espionage, providing protection for case officers whose counterterrorism assignments carry a level of risk that rarely accompanied the cloak-and-dagger encounters of the Cold War.

Spywork used to require slipping solo through cities in Eastern Europe. Now, “clandestine human intelligence involves showing up in a Land Cruiser with some [former] Deltas or SEALs, picking up an asset and then dumping him back there when you are through,” said a former CIA officer who worked closely with the security group overseas.

Bodyguard details have become so essential to espionage that the CIA has overhauled its training program at the Farm — its case officer academy in southern Virginia — to teach spies the basics of working with GRS teams.

The security apparatus relies heavily on contractors who are drawn by relatively high pay and flexible schedules that give them several months off each year. In turn, they agree to high-risk assignments in places such as Benghazi and are largely left on their own to take basic precautions, such as finding health and life insurance.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said the GRS has about 125 employees working abroad at any given time, with at least that many rotating through cycles of training and off-time in the United States.

At least half are contractors, who often earn $140,000 or more a year and typically serve 90- or 120-day assignments abroad. Full-time GRS staff officers — those who are permanent CIA employees — earn slightly less but collect benefits and are typically put in supervisory roles.

The work is lucrative enough that recruiting is done largely by word of mouth, said one former U.S. intelligence official. Candidates tend to be members of U.S. Special Forces units who have recently retired, or veterans of police department SWAT teams.

Most GRS recruits arrive with skills in handling the weapons they will carry, including Glock handguns and M4 rifles. But they undergo additional training so they do not call attention to the presence or movements of the CIA officers they are in position to protect.

Although the agency created the GRS to protect officers in war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan, it has been expanded to protect secret drone bases as well as CIA facilities and officers in locations including Yemen, Lebanon and Djibouti.

In some cases, elite GRS units provide security for personnel from other agencies, including National Security Agency teams deploying sensors or eavesdropping equipment in conflict zones, a former special operator said. The most skilled security operators are informally known as “scorpions.”

“They don’t learn languages, they’re not meeting foreign nationals and they’re not writing up intelligence reports,” a former U.S. intelligence official said. Their main tasks are to map escape routes from meeting places, pat down informants and provide an “envelope” of security, the former official said, all while knowing that “if push comes to shove, you’re going to have to shoot.”

The consequences in such cases can be severe. Former CIA officials who worked with the GRS still wince at the fallout from Davis’s inability to avoid capture as well as his decision to open fire in the middle of a busy street in Pakistan. The former security contractor, who did not respond to requests for comment, said he was doing basic “area familiarization” work, meaning learning his surroundings and possibly mapping routes of escape, when he was confronted by two Pakistanis traveling by motorcycle.

Davis became trapped at the scene, and his arrest provoked a diplomatic standoff between two tense allies in the fight against terrorism.

The CIA took heavy criticism for the clumsiness of the Davis episode, temporarily suspending the drone campaign in Pakistan before U.S. payments to the families of the men Davis had killed helped secure his release.

By contrast, the CIA and its security units were praised — albeit indirectly — in a report released last week that was otherwise sharply critical of the State Department security failures that contributed to the deaths of four Americans in Libya three months ago.

In Benghazi, a GRS team rushed to a burning State Department compound in an attempt to rescue U.S. diplomats, then evacuated survivors to a nearby CIA site that also came under attack. Two GRS contractors who had taken positions on the roof of the site were killed by mortar strikes.

Among those killed was Glen Doherty, a GRS contractor on his second CIA assignment in Libya who had served in about 10 other places, including Mexico City, according to his sister, Kathleen Quigley.

“Was he aware of the risks? Absolutely,” Quigley said in an interview, although she noted that “he wasn’t there to protect an embassy. He was there to recover RPGs,” meaning he was providing security for CIA teams tracking Libyan stockpiles of rocket-propelled grenades.

Doherty took the CIA job for the pay and abundant time off, as well as the chance to continue serving the U.S. government abroad, Quigley said.

When Doherty died, he left debts that included loans on two houses in California, Quigley said. He had no life insurance. CIA officials told Doherty’s family that they had recommended companies willing to underwrite such policies, but that agency coverage was not available for contractors.

Quigley did not criticize the agency, but added: “It’s so sad for a guy like that to go out and have nothing to show for it, except, frankly, a lot of debt.”

The CIA declined to comment.

Quigley said her family has started a foundation in Doherty’s name to help other families of current and former U.S. Special Operations troops who have been killed. A separate organization performs a similar function for families of slain CIA officers.

The CIA Memorial Foundation pays college costs for children of CIA officers who were killed and recently began providing payments of about $5,000 to families to help pay for funeral-related costs.

The organization is paying tuition and other costs for 28 dependents of slain agency employees, and an additional 77 will be eligible when they reach college age, said Jerry Komisar, a CIA veteran who is president of the foundation.

The organization’s obligations have grown in recent months, a stretch that ranks as among the deadliest for the CIA since the attack on Khost. After Doherty and Tyrone Woods were killed in Benghazi, three other CIA officers — all staff employees — were killed in Afghanistan.

The foundation covers contractors who work for the GRS. “I often wonder why people take those kinds of risks,” Komisar said. “It’s got to be an opportunity for them to bring in more cash. But the downside is, you put yourself at great risk. My heart goes out to them.”


Listing of New York Gun owners from the Journal News of White Plains, N.Y.

This is one reason you shouldn't be required to register anything with the government.

While I think most people are smart enough not to use this information to lynch gun owners I suspect it does happen in other areas.

In Arizona "sex offenders" are required to register with the government and their addresses are public information that the government puts on the web so that anybody can views.

The term "sex offender" sounds really bad, but in Arizona and many other states the definition of a "sex offender" is so broad it includes a person who was arrested for taking a leak in an alley. That's something almost all of us are guilty of.

Source

N.Y. news site stirs outrage after publishing gun owners' names

December 26, 2012, 3:51 p.m.

In the annals of the gun debate, both the act and the outrage that followed are familiar: On Saturday, the Journal News of White Plains, N.Y., published an interactive map showing the names and addresses of thousands of handgun permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties.

Click on a dot and zoom in: You'll get a name and an address of everybody who owns a handgun permit, which the paper obtained through a public records request.

The story soon dominated the Internet. Through Wednesday, it was still drawing outrage from online commentators as well as from conservative political interests such as Breitbart.com, which saw a media outlet targeting law-abiding gun owners' privacy -- and safety -- after a polarizing tragedy in Newtown, Conn.

“I am outraged by this as you have put me, my family, friends and others at risk," wrote Keisha Sutton on the newspaper's Facebook page. "My family and friends consist of law enforcement officers and 'licensed' handgun owners.”

Others argued that publishing such personal information would drive gun owners to the black market.

CynDee Royle, the newspaper's editor and vice president/news, was not surprised at the reaction.

"We knew publication of the database would be controversial," she said, "but we felt sharing as much information as we could about gun ownership in our area was important in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings.”

Al Tompkins, a faculty member at the nonprofit Poynter Institute for journalism, criticized the database, saying in an email published on Poynter.org: "Publishing gun owners’ names makes them targets for theft or public ridicule."

But that may not happen, according to a study by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technologythat examined the aftermath of a similar gun-ownership data dump by a newspaper.

In 2008, the Commercial Appeal in Memphis published a searchable database of concealed-carry handgun permit owners in Tennessee that included names and ZIP codes of gun owners (but not addresses). A similar furor followed. "What they've done is give criminals a lighted pathway to [burglarize] the homes of gun owners," Chris Cox, now the top lobbyist for the National Rifle Assn., told the paper at the time.

But that concern turned out to be wrong, according to the 2010 study by Alessandro Acquisti, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon, and Catherine Tucker, a professor at MIT, titled "Guns, Privacy and Crime."

Using the information published by the Commercial Appeal, they found burglaries in 2009 declined 18% in the city's ZIP codes with the most concealed-carry permits and generally increased in ZIP codes with the fewest.

The researchers found no difference for violent crimes, such as assault, that often lack premeditation.

The study also suggested that, following publication of the Memphis database, burglary risk instead shifted to areas with fewer gun registrations. In fact, the study noted that the "results suggest that, despite activism on the part of gun owners against the publication of such databases, it may actually be gun permit holders who benefi ted" from publication.

In an email, Acquisti said that, to his knowledge, the study was the first to examine how publicizing the location of guns affected crime rates.

He called the issue “extremely complex” and cautioned about making generalizations from one study. Even though he didn’t find evidence that publishing gun owners’ general locations put owners in danger, he said a “lack of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

Acquisti said it was an “open question” whether increasingly precise location data, like that published on the Journal News' website, would affect burglar behavior.

The findings don't clear up a different NRA talking point -- that as its top strategist Cox had put it, "The essence of right-to-carry is that in a world where wolves cannot distinguish between lions and lambs, the whole flock is safer." In other words, instead of claiming gun privacy as a means of protection for those who choose to carry, the lions-and-lambs argument holds that gun privacy protects the general public, including those who don't own a gun.

"Frequently, in this debate, personal privacy is contrasted to collective security," the study's authors wrote. "However, there are situations where the opposite may happen: criminals may use personal data to choose which potential victims to avoid. Our results bear witness to the nuances of this debate."


Source

Map of handgun owners published in New York newspaper

By Eileen AJ Connelly

Associated Press

Posted: 12/27/2012 08:08:07 AM PST

NEW YORK -- A newspaper's publication of the names and addresses of handgun permit holders in two New York counties has sparked online discussions -- and a healthy dose of outrage.

The Journal News, a Gannett Co. newspaper covering three counties in the Hudson Valley north of New York City and operating the website lohud.com, posted a story Sunday detailing a public-records request it filed to obtain the information.

The 1,800-word story headlined, "The gun owner next door: What you don't know about the weapons in your neighborhood," said the information was sought after the Dec. 14 school shooting in Newtown, Conn., about 50 miles northeast of the paper's headquarters in White Plains. A gunman killed his mother, drove to an elementary school and massacred 20 first-graders and six adults, then shot himself. All the weapons used were legally owned by his mother.

The Journal News story includes comments from both sides of the gun-rights debate and presents the data as answering concerns of those who would like to know whether there are guns in their neighborhood. It reports that about 44,000 people in Westchester, Putnam and Rockland counties are licensed to own a handgun and that rifles and shotguns can be purchased without a permit.

It was accompanied online by maps of the results for Westchester and Rockland counties; similar details had not yet been provided by Putnam County. A reader clicking on the maps can see the name and address of each pistol or revolver permit holder. Accompanying text states that inclusion does not necessarily mean that an individual owns a weapon, just who obtained a license.

By Wednesday afternoon, the maps had been shared about 30,000 times on Facebook and other social media.

Most online comments have criticized the publication of the data, and many suggest it puts the permit holders in danger because criminals have a guide to places they can steal guns. Others maintain it tells criminals who does not have a gun and may be easier to victimize, or where to find law enforcement figures against whom they might hold a grudge.

Some responded by publicizing the home addresses and phone numbers of the reporter who wrote the piece, along with other journalists at the paper and even senior executives of Gannett. Many echoed the idea that publicizing gun permit holders' names is tantamount to accusing them of doing something wrong, comparing the move to publishing lists of registered sex offenders.

The Journal News is standing behind the project. It said in the story that it published a similar list in 2006.

"Frequently, the work of journalists is not popular. One of our roles is to report publicly available information on timely issues, even when unpopular," Janet Hasson, president and publisher of The Journal News Media Group, said in an emailed statement. "We knew publication of the database (as well as the accompanying article providing context) would be controversial, but we felt sharing information about gun permits in our area was important in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings."

Roy Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, a Florida-based journalism think tank, said publishing the data was "too indiscriminate."

He, too, compared the maps to similar efforts involving sex-offender registries or lists of those arrested for driving under the influence, noting that such a move is usually done to indicate a serious problem that requires a neighbor or parent to maintain vigilance.

"You get the connotation that somehow there's something essentially wrong with this behavior," he said of the gun permit database.

"My predisposition is to support the journalism," Clark said. "I want to be persuaded that this story or this practice has some higher social purpose, but I can't find it."

Also common among the comments on the lohud.com were suggestions about suing the paper for violating permit-holders' privacy rights. Such a move would likely be unsuccessful.

"The media has no liability for publishing public information," said Edward Rudofsky, a First Amendment attorney at Zane and Rudofsky in New York. The issue does present a clash between First and Second amendment rights, he said, but in general, the law protects publishing public information unless the intent was to harm someone.

Here is a link to the article with the map of gun owners in it:


Source

Here is a link to the article in the Journal News of White Plains, N.Y.


Do we need a cop that is paid $96,200 at every high school????

Do we need a police officer that is paid $96,200 at every high school????

Do we need a school resource officer that is paid $96,200 at every high school????
Source

Funding affects West Valley school-resource officers

By Melissa Leu and Eddi Trevizo The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Dec 27, 2012 9:47 AM

Some West Valley schools have police officers on campus, an idea that got a renewed push by the National Rifle Association.

The NRA is advocating for armed guards on every school campus after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., where a gunman killed 20 children and six educators this month.

Currently, there is a divide among high schools. Those in such cities as Avondale, Peoria and Surprise have police officers, called school-resource officers, on campus, while many high schools in Glendale do not.

It comes down to money. [So it sounds like most schools will gladly have a cop, police officer or school resource officers on their campus - As long as the school doesn't have to pay the cops $96,200 yearly salary]

As the recession hit, funding for school-resource officers dried up, causing the Glendale Police Department to pull back its officers from schools.

State funding for school officers was cut nearly in half amid tight finances the past five years. A Democrat state lawmaker is calling to renew that funding.

Beyond money, the proposal is one that is sure to spark conversation in West Valley communities and beyond.

“Obviously, we think it’s the right thing to do to have a police officer there for our middle schools and high schools — because they already are there,” said Christy Agosta, a school-board member in the Deer Valley Unified School District.

Whether to have armed guards in elementary schools is a tougher question.

“As a parent, as well as a school-board member, having my kids have to go by armed security arriving at schools is kind of a heartbreaking thought,” Agosta said. “I’m mixed. … If there had been an armed guard standing outside Sandy Hook, those parents still might have their children. So it’s hard to say we shouldn’t.”

She said such a decision would have to come after a community conversation.

School-resource officers are armed and have the authority of a police officer [and they ARE POLICE OFFICERS], but their duties go beyond security. They offer lessons on law-related issues and add a friendly face on campus for students and staff to turn to for advice.

Police officials credit them with reducing the number of student disciplinary problems.

In 2011, before Centennial High School in Peoria hired its resource officer, the school reported 318 disciplinary incidents. That dropped to 147 incidents, according to Peoria police.

Centennial resource Officer Dave Fernandez typically starts his day at 6:30 a.m. in the school parking lot, helping parents navigate traffic. [Why do you need a cop that is paid an average of $96,200 a year to help parents navigate traffic???]

After about an hour, he heads to his office to answer e-mails, and if nothing major is happening, he walks the campus. [So most of the time he does nothing. Well other then answer e-mails and help parents navigate traffic. And this guy is paid an average of $96,200]

“The best way to see if there is an issue is to be outside looking and talking to people,” Fernandez said.

He said the Sandy Hook shootings were a tragedy. “But we think about these things constantly not just after something has occurred.”

Dale Nicol, principal at Sunrise Mountain High School in Peoria, said resource officers act as a preventive measure.

“He can gather (information) as a result of making connections with students. [I suspect teachers and other school employees can also gather (information) as a result of making connections with students. Do you really need a cop that is making an average of $96,200 a year to do that???] Consequently, we can intervene and stop negative behaviors before they escalate,” Nicol said.

But a divide exists among the Peoria district schools, which stretch across Glendale and Peoria.

The district partners with the city to pay for resource officers in its Peoria-based high schools, but Glendale does not provide funding.

“The police department’s budget is not able to support funding of these positions at this time,” Glendale police spokeswoman Tracey Breeden said.

She noted districts can hire off-duty officers to work in schools.

For the Peoria district, the cost of having officers in Glendale high schools is beyond its budget.

“Grant opportunities are scarce. It becomes funding issues for both the city and the school district,” said Steve Savoy, Peoria’s administrator for K-12 academic services.

The salary of Peoria’s school-resource officers averages $96,200 per year including benefits, Peoria police spokeswoman Amanda Jacinto said. In the past, it was paid by a combination of grants and school district and city budgets.

When the money disappeared, the Peoria district and police partnered to continue the program. The district pays about $30,000 toward the officers’ salaries, and Peoria police pay the rest.

The district relies on neighborhood patrol officers at its Glendale high schools.

The Deer Valley district shoulders the cost of paying officers $30 to $35 an hour for each of its five high schools and three middle schools in Glendale and Phoenix, said Bill Gahn, the district’s director of school operations.

The district earmarks about $300,000 in its budget, which is supplemented through event ticket sales.

An officer is almost always on campus during school hours and after-school events, but the same officer doesn’t always work every day of the week, Gahn said.

“It adds a calming presence on campus,” Gahn said.

Two years ago, Glendale Union had to eliminate its school-resource officers. At one point, the district had officers at seven of its nine campuses in Glendale and Phoenix, district spokeswoman Kim Mesquita said.

That number declined with state grant funding. When the district failed to win the grant last school year, the officers disappeared completely. The district now relies mostly on teachers and administrators to pick up the slack.

Avondale’s Agua Fria Union High School District has a resource officer at each school, funded with state grants and shared costs with local police departments.

Surprise’s Dysart Unified School District has resource officers at each of its four high schools with grant funding.

The district’s 20 elementary schools do not have resource officers, Dysart spokesman Jim Dean said.

Resource officers are rare in elementary schools.

Sometimes it’s simply hard to fill the position, said Jim Cummings, spokesman for the Glendale Elementary School District.

His district received federal funding five years ago for officers at Challenger and Landmark schools, but had to return some of that money because of a lack of candidates, Cummings said.

As a result, schools rely on patrol officers.

“When we call, (police are) here in minutes,” Cummings said.

School officials note that elementary schools typically have less of a need for officers than in high schools, where drugs, theft and violence may be more common.

Patrol officers assigned to Peoria and Glendale neighborhoods regularly check in with elementary principals and students, Peoria’s Savoy said.

The Litchfield Elementary School District used to provide resource officers for its middle schools in partnership with the Avondale and Goodyear police departments and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

The program was cut amid budget constraints in 2009.

“We would approve of armed security at our schools if the state or federal government paid for it,” said Litchfield Elementary spokeswoman Ann Donahue, noting the district would not be able to cover the costs.

Whether that happens remains to be seen.

State Superintendent John Huppenthal on Friday noted the NRA’s proposal would be a large expense to an already financially stressed education system.

House Minority Leader Chad Campbell, D-Phoenix, said he plans to introduce legislation in 2013 to fully fund and train school resource officers at every Arizona school.

Meanwhile, conversations will continue over what parents and residents want for their schools.

Dysart school board member Jerry Enyon said concerns are high, but school officials go through training and routinely practice safety drills.

“They know what to do to keep the kids as safe as possible,” Enyon said.

Reporter Anne Ryman contributed to this article.


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Homeless in Arizona

stinking title