Audit finds L.A. County sheriff's officials improperly used aircraft
SourceAudit finds L.A. County sheriff's officials improperly used aircraft
By Robert Faturechi, Los Angeles Times
December 21, 2012
An audit released Thursday found that Los Angeles County sheriff's managers improperly used department aircraft, including a helicopter ride for a commander's daughter on her way to a retirement party.
In another instance, sheriff's officials used a department airplane to fly to Connecticut, costing the county more than $35,000 for a trip that would have been significantly cheaper and probably faster on a commercial flight.
But the audit also found no evidence to support other accusations directed against the department's air unit.
The county audit was prompted earlier this year by a Times report about allegations that officials were abusing aircraft privileges, purposely delaying emergency calls to make the case for more overtime pay and possibly manipulating time sheets.
Though the audit found that aircraft were improperly used, it did not find evidence to support the deputies' most troubling claims: that calls for emergency service were ignored or time sheets were manipulated. The auditor-controller's office found that those allegations were not backed up by sheriff's records.
Department spokesman Steve Whitmore called the audit an "exoneration" of the department's air support division, saying the most serious allegations were unsubstantiated.
"They're always going to find little things that are questionable," he said. "The sheriff does not accept any questionable uses of county items and is prepared to correct anything that needs correcting." [So I guess that $35,000 flight to Connecticut wasn't questionable, nor was the Tucson flight, or the Calabasas flight to East Los Angeles for the daughter of the commander]
The audit pointed to three problematic trips. Along with the $35,000 flight to Connecticut to research new helicopters, a department plane was flown to Tucson in 2010 to pick up three sheriff's officials there for a conference. The trip was recorded as a training flight, a description that "appears notably convenient," the audit found.
The third flight, also in 2010, involved the daughter of a commander being picked up in Calabasas by a sheriff's helicopter and given a ride to the commander's retirement party in East Los Angeles. At the time, the helicopter was supposed to be assigned to patrol duty.
"The daughter had allegedly been delayed by highway traffic," according to the audit.
At a county Board of Supervisors meeting in March, after the allegations were made public, the unit's captain said that one of the accusers had himself flown two relatives on a department helicopter a few years back, picking them up from North County and flying them to Los Angeles International Airport. [So if one crooked cop snitches on another crooked cop that makes it OK???]
Whitmore said the Sheriff's Department has not yet decided whether to discipline anyone involved in the questionable flights mentioned in the audit. He said he did not have any of their names, and that Sheriff Lee Baca had not yet decided whether to release those names. [Yea, and they probably will never decide to discipline anyone]
robert.faturechi@latimes.com
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.
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.
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.
Convicted New Orleans Police See Opportunity in Officials' Errors
By REUTERS
Published: December 24, 2012 at 6:28 AM ET
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors scored big victories over the past two years in a quest to pluck bad police officers from the streets of New Orleans. But legal issues and recent stumbles by the U.S. attorney raise questions about whether criminal convictions of officers will stick.
Convicted former police officer David Warren won a new trial last week in the fatal shooting of Henry Glover, whose body turned up in a burned-out car behind a river levee days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005.
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals said Warren, who fired the shot that killed Glover, should have been tried separately from others charged in the case. The court also granted another of the defendants a re-trial based on new evidence.
The rulings will likely prompt appeals in other cases, including the 2011 convictions of five police officers in connection with a post-Katrina shooting on the city's Danziger Bridge that killed two unarmed civilians and wounded four others.
"Defense lawyers can smell blood in the water," said law professor Dane Ciolino of Loyola University New Orleans. "I wouldn't be surprised to see the Danziger defendants make an argument of improper failure to sever (their cases from others) as their appeals move forward."
Along with such legal issues, the city of New Orleans faces the possibility that more than a dozen post-Katrina convictions won by federal prosecutors and a big public corruption case still in the works may be endangered by revelations of possible misconduct in the U.S. attorney's office.
U.S. Attorney Jim Letten resigned on December 6 in the throes of a scandal in which members of his inner circle admitted to posting online comments, under pseudonyms, on a public message board about cases the office was prosecuting. In addition to Letten, three members of his staff who were connected with the comments have left the office.
The Danziger Bridge defendants are already seeking new trials based on negative comments about police that they say prosecutors posted on the message boards.
In an unrelated case, a former high-ranking elected official from a suburban New Orleans jurisdiction who recently pleaded guilty to public corruption charges now is asking a federal judge to reconsider the plea in light of perceived prosecutorial misconduct.
'PUBLIC OFFICIAL A'
Among other cases that could be affected, federal prosecutors appear close to bringing charges against former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on suspicion he accepted bribes from business owners in exchange for funneling city contracts to the businesses.
Several Nagin associates have signed plea deals with the government and submitted affidavits detailing the arrangements they had with a high-ranking city official identified in filings as "Public Official A."
While Nagin is not named in the documents, attorneys for at least two of the businessmen have made it clear that Public Official A is Nagin.
How serious the misconduct issue may become for the government is a question of evidence, said former U.S. Attorney Harry Rosenberg. The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility is scrutinizing the matter and an independent investigation ordered by a judge was under way.
"The results will tell defense counsel whether they have reasonable opportunities to pursue new trials or dismissals of indictments," Rosenberg said.
He pointed to the success in the case of the late U.S. Senator Ted Stevens, whose lawyers contested his 2008 conviction for failing to report gifts from a well-connected business executive by showing that the government failed to disclose evidence. Ultimately, the U.S. attorney general asked that the charges against Stevens be dropped.
Still, Rosenberg said proving that prosecutorial misconduct occurred in New Orleans was a long shot. Defense lawyers in some federal cases were "feeling energized," he said, but the Justice Department's convictions nearly always stick.
"I suspect that the number of motions granted based upon prosecutorial misconduct are a fraction of a fraction of 1 percent," he said.
Metropolitan Crime Commission President Rafael Goyeneche said it was important to local citizens that the police officer convictions won by federal prosecutors in recent years stick.
"For too long the public has lost faith in the criminal justice system, and they're starting to see that faith restored," he said.
Noting that the civil rights cases brought by the Justice Department generally are too complex and expensive to be handled by local authorities, he said action by federal prosecutors is crucial to building support for local law enforcement.
"People need to see that if you betray the public trust, there will be a consequence," he said.
(Editing by Corrie MacLaggan, Vicki Allen and Xavier Briand)
Of course if messy yard criminals and other slobs did have a patron saint it would be
Jack Klugman or Oscar in the "Odd Couple".
'Odd Couple' star Jack Klugman dies at age 90
Associated Press Mon Dec 24, 2012 4:18 PM
The actor's son Adam says his father died Monday afternoon in Los Angeles.
In the 1970s sitcom "The Odd Couple," Klugman played sloppy sports writer Oscar to co-star Tony Randall's Felix, a fussy photographer. In "Quincy, M.E.," which aired from 1976 to 1983, Klugman played an idealistic, tough-minded medical examiner.
Klugman lost his voice to throat cancer in the 1980s but trained himself to speak again. He returned to acting in a 1993 Broadway revival of "Three Men on a Horse."
Klugman split his time between TV, movies and the New York stage. In his later years he guest-starred on TV series including "Third Watch."
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.
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.
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).
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".
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
Currently the government has created the problem by passing laws that only allow cops or police officers to carry guns at schools.
The real solution is to repeal that law and let school employees carry guns if they want to.
Horne proposes arming 1 educator per school
By Alia Beard Rau The Republic | azcentral.com
Wed Dec 26, 2012 12:52 PM
Tom Horne says he has found the “golden mean” between allowing all teachers to carry firearms and exposing children to tragedies like the school shooting in Connecticut. He is proposing that only the principal or one other staff member at each school be trained and then allowed to carry a firearm at school.
“Some have proposed teachers bringing guns to school, but I think that would create more danger than it would solve,” Horne said. “But if we did nothing, we might regret it if another incident occurs that might have been prevented.”
Such a proposal would require a change in state law, which currently only allows police officers to carry weapons in K-12 schools. Horne said Rep. David Gowan, R-Sierra Vista, will propose a bill next session. Gowan could not immediately be reached for comment.
Horne said he has not spoken to Gov. Jan Brewer about whether she would support such a measure should it pass the Legislature. Brewer typically doesn’t comment on specific legislation before it crosses her desk, but she has vetoed bills allowing guns in public buildings and on college campuses in recent years.
Horne, who formerly served as the state’s superintendent of public instruction, said the ideal solution to gun violence in schools would be to have an armed, school resource officer in every school. But he said budget constraints make that a challenge. School resource officers are trained law enforcement officers. The state in recent years cut funding for the SRO program.
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, Mohave County Sheriff Tom Sheahan and Apache County Sheriff Joe Dedman do support the proposal.
Horne said schools would not be required to arm a staff member, but that the program would give them the option. If they choose to do so, the designated principal or staff member would get free firearms training from former law enforcement officers in Horne’s office or participating sheriff’s offices.
“They would not just get marksmanship training, but also be taught good judgment, when to shoot, when not to shoot,” Horne said. “We would teach them the use of force laws, defensive tactics and properly securing the firearm.”
Horne said he came up with the idea over the holidays. He said he doesn’t know of any other state with a similar program.
“As far as I know, it’ s a new idea,” he said. “It’s an original Tom Horne idea.”
The Arizona Legislature in recent years has gained a reputation for loosening state gun restrictions, including passing a law to allow Arizonans to carry concealed weapons without a permit.
House Minority Leader Chad Campbell, D-Phoenix, said he fears Gowan’s bill could be successful.
“This is the craziest idea, and we knew something like it was coming,” Campbell, who is a gun owner, said. “But this is an extremist reaction that’s going to do nothing to help the safety of our schools at the end of the day. This is the knee-jerk reaction we need to avoid.”
Campbell said he plans to try another tactic and will propose in early January a package of bills to deal with gun reform, fully funding the school resource officer program and addressing mental health issues.
“Tom Horne talks about the fact that we can’t fund school resource officers, but we can fund a lot of things in this state if we put the money in the right place, as opposed to funding private prisons at a $50 million price tag or a lot of other things,” he said. “There’s a lot of money in this state going to the wrong priorities.”
Campbell said he has been hearing from teachers, parents and law enforcement officers who support the Legislature funding school resource officers.
“The SRO program typically has been supported by both parties,” he said. “I’m hoping partisanship doesn’t get in the way of this issue. I don’t think there’s anything more important than this.”
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.
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.
Phoenix police union to sue over uniforms
By Cecilia Chan The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Dec 27, 2012 12:49 AM
The union representing more than 2,500 Phoenix police officers
is going to court to get back the money spent on a long-used
patrol uniform the department banned earlier this year.
The Phoenix Law Enforcement Association has filed a notice of claim,
the first step toward a lawsuit, alleging the officers’ compensation
package was reduced because, over the years, they spent the
money on clothing that is now banned.
As of Oct. 1, all patrol officers must wear a more formal-looking
polyester-blend uniform with dark-blue button-down shirts and dress-style pants.
Officers favored the black, cotton-blend polo shirt and cargo pants,
saying they were comfortable.
But Police Chief Daniel V. Garcia banned them,
saying the less-formal-looking uniform offered a greater
opportunity for criminals to impersonate officers.
[I'm not a pig lover but you rarely hear of people impersonating cops. Yea, it's going to happen but is that a good reason to tell the cops they can't wear their old uniforms? Probably not!]
The city received the notice but has not had a chance to review it yet, city spokesman Jon Brodsky said Wednesday.
The annual uniform allowance is part of an officer’s wage-and-benefits package.
The allowance helps officers buy clothing and equipment for the job,
but they are not obligated to spend the money on uniforms.
[If they is true they shouldn't be bitching about the uniform change. But the real question is this in their contract with the city of Phoenix???]
This year, each officer received $1,150.
“People now have closets full of Class D uniforms that have lost their value,”
union President Joe Clure said. For that reason, the union is asking for compensation for those uniforms.
The claim is asking the city to pay an additional $1,150 to each of the 2,540 officers, which amounts to $2.9 million.
“When you sit down and negotiate wage and benefits for officers, you do it for all officers,” Clure explained.
The union also wants the banned uniform reinstated
and its future use subject to negotiations in the next contract talks.
Clure said the union is dropping its grievance complaint with the city,
which was filed by more than 100 officers in the fall,
arguing that Garcia violated a 1998 labor-agreement
negotiation that allowed officers to choose which uniform to wear.
The grievance was planned to go before an independent arbitrator
but is being dropped because the decision would not be binding, Clure said.
The union, however, still plans to move ahead with its charge of
unfair labor practices with the Phoenix Employment Relations Board, Clure said.
“We are hoping to get an order that they violated the contract and,
as part of the remedy, allow us to wear that (uniform) again,” Clure said.
Clure expects the complaint to go before a hearing officer in February.
The hearing officer would forward a report to the full board,
which would either accept, deny or modify the recommendation, he said.
The recommendation would then go to the city manager,
who can either decide to adhere to the board’s ruling or do something different, Clure said.
“It’s not binding but advisory,” he said. “Typically, from a political standpoint,
(the city manager) will do what the PERB board recommends.”
Clure said he anticipates filing a lawsuit and that
“my guess is there would be some sort of negotiated settlement at the end of the day.”
Judge: Stapley must explain deals in his lawsuit
By Michael Kiefer The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Dec 27, 2012 1:11 AM
Maricopa County Supervisor Don Stapley will have to answer more questions about property deals and criminal charges than he wants to, according to the U.S. District Court judge presiding over his lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio and former County Attorney Andrew Thomas.
And current County Attorney Bill Montgomery will have to return to the federal Court of Appeals in an attempt to get himself dismissed from one of the remaining lawsuits that came out of Thomas’ and Arpaio’s investigations of judges and county officials from 2008 to 2010.
Seven of the cases have been settled for amounts ranging from $75,000 to $975,000. (Payment of the latter to Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox is under dispute.)
Three remain involving retired Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe, because of criminal charges and a racketeering lawsuit filed against him, ostensibly as retaliation for court rulings and to prevent him from holding a court hearing over Thomas’ objections; Stapley, who was indicted twice alleging campaign-fund and disclosure crimes; and businessman Conley Wolfswinkel, whose offices were raided in a failed search for evidence against Stapley.
Stapley’s attorney, Michael Manning, had sought to limit evidence against Stapley to what was known at the time the indictments were filed. The intent is to keep defendants Thomas and Arpaio and their former deputies, Lisa Aubuchon and David Henderschott, from using this trial to try to prove the allegations they could not prove because the indictments were dismissed.
U.S. District Judge Neil Wake granted Manning’s motion but cautioned that certain evidence pertaining to Stapley’s reputation will be allowed at trial.
Among Stapley’s claims are that he was forced to sell certain property to pay his legal bills and that the criminal indictments tarnished his reputation.
But when Stapley faced the defendants’ attorneys in deposition earlier this month, Manning advised him not to answer questions about the property in question, which figured into the criminal charges against him, or about an analysis of the criminal charges done by Gila County Attorney Daisy Flores.
The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office had asked Flores to re-evaluate the evidence against Stapley. Flores wrote that there was indeed probable cause to charge Stapley with multiple felonies but that the case had been so badly botched as to make it impossible to try.
Manning and his associates argued that Flores’ evaluation came well after the time when probable cause was initially found. Private attorneys retained by the county disagreed, saying that it went to the original finding of probable cause and had been highly publicized. They asked Wake to clarify his ruling.
Late Friday, Wake ruled that the property was central to the case and that Stapley would have to answer questions.
Wake also ruled that even if Stapley didn’t want to answer questions about Flores’ opinion during the deposition, he would not be able to deny their content at trial. And if Stapley wanted to deny the allegations, he would have to explain why.
Meanwhile, Montgomery has asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss him from the Wolfswinkel lawsuit.
Montgomery argued that the lawsuit had nothing to do with him because the events occurred before he became county attorney. At first Wake agreed. But then, when Montgomery refused to turn over pertinent documents held by his office to Wolfswinkel, Wake ruled that he could still be sued in his official capacity.
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.”
Police: NBC asked to use high-capacity magazine
By Peter Hermann, Published: December 26
The host of NBC's “Meet the Press” displayed what appeared to be a high-capacity ammunition magazine on national television Sunday, embroiling the network in controversy and leaving D.C. authorities to decide whether a crime was committed.
The show’s host, David Gregory, held up what he described as a magazine that holds 30 bullets as he questioned National Rifle Association chief executive Wayne LaPierre about the Dec. 14 massacre in Newtown, Conn.
D.C. gun laws prohibit possessing a “large capacity ammunition feeding device” — defined as holding more than 10 rounds — regardless of whether it is attached to a firearm and whether there are bullets in it. The offense is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Viewers e-mailed D.C. police after watching the segment, asking them to arrest Gregory. In an e-mailed response to the Patriot Perspective blog, police wrote:
“NBC contacted [D.C. police] inquiring if they could utilize a high capacity magazine for their segment. NBC was informed that possession of a high capacity magazines is not permissible and their request was denied. This matter is currently being investigated.” A police spokeswoman confirmed that the e-mail was authentic.
Gregory appears to have used a large-capacity ammunition magazine anyway. A police official said detectives will try to determine whether it was real, how it was obtained and whether the segment was filmed in the District. The official said the investigation will entail questioning NBC producers and could conclude this week.
NBC News, through a spokeswoman, declined comment.
The situation presents authorities with an unusual decision: file charges in a crime that is infrequently prosecuted or appear unwilling to enforce the District’s gun laws. Gun rights advocates were among those who called police to complain.
“The police are in a public relations quandary,” said David Benowitz, a defense lawyer who handles gun cases in the District, Maryland and Virginia. “The question is going to be to what level of knowledge did David Gregory have that this was potentially an illegal act. . . . I presume David Gregory didn’t go out on the street and get a 30-round clip himself.”
“Maybe the NRA can fund his defense,” he joked.
Gregory used the prop as he posed a question to LaPierre in a segment that is posted on the MSNBC Web site.
“Here’s a magazine for ammunition that carries 30 bullets,” Gregory says. “Now, isn’t it possible that if we got rid of these” — he sets it down and picks up a smaller one — “if we replaced them and said, ‘Well, you can only have a magazine that carries five bullets or 10 bullets,’ isn’t it just possible that we could reduce the carnage in a situation like Newtown?”
“I don’t believe that’s going to make one difference,” LaPierre replies.
The D.C. attorney general’s office, which could decide whether to file charges, declined to comment.
Politicians and news anchors have long used guns as props. In 1993, then-Maryland Gov. William Donald Schaefer (D) pointed an unloaded pistol, provided by the Maryland State Police, at an unknowing Associated Press reporter during a news conference as he attempted to show the dangerous nature of firearms he wanted to have banned. Schaefer was not charged with a crime.
Erik Wemple and Martin Weil contributed to this report.
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.
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."
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:
Here is a link to the
article
in the Journal News of White Plains, N.Y.
For second time, Robbins police chief arrested for DUI
Staff report
12:14 p.m. CST, December 27, 2012
For the second time in nearly three years, the police chief of south suburban Robbins has been arrested for driving while drunk, officials say.
Police Chief Johnny Holmes was pulled over around 10:30 p.m. last Saturday in nearby Midlothian, according to the police report. The arresting officer said Holmes smelled of alcohol, was carrying a flask of liquor in his jacket and had a blood alcohol level of 0.194, more than twice the legal limit.
Holmes, 66, was charged with two counts of driving under the influence.
The police chief was arrested after someone called 911 and reported that a driver had almost hit her around 147th Street and Pulaski Road, according to the police report. The caller said a GMC Yukon pulled up along side her and then swerved into her lane and continued into the wrong lane, police said.
An officer spotted Holmes' Yukon making an improper turn and tried to stop him at Claire Boulevard and Pulaski Road but Holmes "failed to yield to (the officer's) emergency lights and audible siren," according to the police report. Holmes turned south on Maxey Court and finally stopped, police said.
Officers said Holmes smelled of alcohol and his eyes were bloodshot. They asked him if he had been drinking and at first he said no, "then admitted he had been recently drinking at the Posen Pub. Johnny thought he was still in Posen," the police report states. Posen is about two miles east of Midlothian.
The officers then told Holmes he would have to undergo field sobriety tests. "Oh, wow," Holmes replied, according to the police report.
Holmes failed the tests and was taken into custody, the report said. During a search, a flask of liquor was found in the front pocket of Holmes' jacket, according to the report.
In March of 2010, Holmes was also arrested in Midlothian for DUI. He was stopped on Claire Boulevard after an officer saw him swerve into oncoming traffic, police said.
Holmes did not return a message left on his phone at the police station today.
In reality any job that involves driving a car, truck or other vehicle is a dangerous job.
After all people involved in auto accidents are often killed.
In 2009, 93 people were killed each day in US traffic accidents.
That's about 34,000 people a year.
And of course being a cop is a dangerous job because it involves driving a car. Yea, sure a few cops are shot every year by criminals, but most police deaths are the result of auto accidents.
The job of being a cop rarely makes the top ten list of the most dangerous occupations in the USA. The top 3 most dangerous jobs year in and year out are fishermen, loggers and construction workers. Cops usually are in the top 20 most dangerous jobs, but rarely in the top 10.
When it comes to jobs with high murder rates again cops rarely make the top of the list. The jobs with the highest risk of being murdered usually are clerks in liquor stores or convenience stores, and cab drivers.
While cops are hated and every once in a while somebody assassinates a cop, most criminals are smart enough to realize that robbing an armed cop is a risk they should not take, and instead the rob liquor stores and Circle Ks.
This article starts out by saying 127 cops were killed this year, but later says that the leading cause of deaths was auto accidents, in this case 50 were auto accidents.
Police officer deaths down in 2012
By Eric Tucker Associated Press Thu Dec 27, 2012 7:52 AM
WASHINGTON — The number of law enforcement officers who died performing their duties in the U.S. declined by about 20 percent in 2012 after rising the two previous years, a non-profit organization reported Thursday.
The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund said in a report that
127 federal, state and local officers have died so far on the job.
The majority of officers who died were either shot or were victims of traffic accidents, figures show.
[most of those died in traffic accidents, in this case 50, not from being shot as most cops would like you to believe]
City and county police officers comprised most of the victims,
but the list also includes a prison guard in Indiana who suffered
a heart attack while responding to an unruly inmate,
a deputy sheriff in Missouri who was fatally shot while responding to an ambush
and a Coast Guard officer who was killed off the California coast while pursuing a vessel suspected of smuggling.
The toll is on pace to be the lowest since 2009, when 122 officers died,
and this year would be only the second year since 1960 that the number of fatalities has dipped below 130.
The organization, which also maintains a memorial wall in Washington
bearing the names of fallen officers, reported 165 deaths last year and 154 in 2010.
[So the group that collected this statistics is a organization that supports police officers, so I suspect the statistics will be biased towards cops]
The decline is heartening after two straight “alarming” years
and may suggest that police departments, though still battered by budget cuts,
are placing a greater emphasis on officer safety, said Craig Floyd,
the chairman and chief executive of the Washington, D.C.-based memorial organization.
[Sounds like this article is propaganda asking for more money for cops]
“I think officers are approaching these potentially life-threatening situations
in a more cautious, focused manner,” said Floyd,
noting the increased prevalence of body armor among officers.
Texas had the highest number of law enforcement fatalities at 10,
followed by Georgia (eight) and Colorado and Maryland (six each).
Thirteen of the officers who died were women.
There have been 49 firearms-related deaths this year, as of Thursday.
[So shootings accounted for only for 37% of the deaths]
Those include David Gogian and Jeff Atherly, two Topeka, Kan.,
police officers shot outside a grocery story last week while responding to a report of a suspicious vehicle,
and two West Virginia state troopers, Eric Workman and Marshall Bailey,
who were shot during an August traffic stop.
Tom Decker, a police officer in Cold Spring, Minn.,
and a father of four, was fatally shot last month in what authorities called an ambush killing.
Car crashes, though down from last year, were the leading cause of death — causing 50.
A Prince George’s County, Md., police officer who was pursuing a suspected thief died in August
when his cruiser ran off the highway and crashed into a ditch.
Another officer from the same department died in a crash two months later.
Neither officer was wearing a seat belt,
[So both deaths would have been preventable if the cops had been wearing seat belts]
prompting Police Chief Mark Magaw to stress the need for officers to buckle up inside their patrol cars.
In Willoughby, Ohio, after Patrolman Jason Gresko’s police cruiser collided with a pickup truck
en route to an emergency call in September,
Chief Jack Beckwith cited the death as a reminder to his officers to be
vigilant in responding carefully to emergencies and told his roughly
50-officer department that “this could have happened to every one of them.”
“It definitely takes a heavy toll on everybody personally that’s on the job,”
Beckwith said. “We’re small enough that everybody knows each other very well.”
Other causes of death included job-related illnesses, stabbings and helicopter crashes.
Two Atlanta police officers died in a helicopter crash in November during a nighttime search for a missing boy.
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.
Here are links to their National and Arizona web pages.
DPS probing Prescott assault involving officers
State police have taken over an investigation into an alleged Prescott bar assault involving law enforcement officers who belong to a motorcycle club.
Prescott police turned over the investigation of Saturday night's incident involving members of the Iron Brotherhood Motorcycle Club to the Department of Public Safety once police officers from neighboring Prescott Valley were recognized among the bikers, Lt. Ken Morley said Thursday.
Officers from several agencies across the state who are members of the club also were at the bar and may be subjects of the investigation, DPS spokesman Bart Graves said.
Both Graves and Morley declined to release additional details of the incident, including any names, citing the ongoing investigation.
"We are very thorough, we will take our time and we will not comment until it is over," Graves said.
The results of the probe will be handed over to Prescott police and the Yavapai County Attorney for review. DPS would coordinate any potential arrests through the county attorney, Graves said.
Prescott police were called to a hospital Saturday night where a 23-year-old Glendale man told them he was punched several times by members of a motorcycle club while at a bar. He was released after treatment.
Police determined the club was the Iron Brotherhood, which bills itself as a club for active and retired law enforcement officers who ride Harley-Davidson or other large American-made motorcycles. The group's website says it has chapters in several states, including Arizona, and requires members to go through a try out period before becoming full members, much like so-called "outlaw" motorcycle gangs.
The "Arizona Whisky Row Chapter's" Web page shows the club planned a Christmas party Saturday at a location to be determined. Prescott's bar district is also known as Whisky Row. An email was sent through the website seeking comment from members.
Prescott Valley Police spokesman Sgt. Brandon Bonney said no officers are on leave.
The other agencies whose officers may be involved were not named by the DPS.
Federal prosecutors are corrupt, incompetent???
Corrupt New Orleans cops to be released because of corrupt Federal prosecutors
I never have been a pig lover, but cops are certainly entitled to a fair trail like everybody else.
The patron saint of messy yard criminals dies???
Oscar or Jack Klugman in the 'Odd Couple' dies
While Jesus Malverde is the patron saint of dope dealers and drug smugglers,
I have never heard of a patron saint for messy yard criminals.
LOS ANGELES — Jack Klugman, who made an art of gruffness in TV's "The Odd Couple" and "Quincy, M.E.," has died at the age of 90.
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.
Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988
Here are just a few snips about the law.
Source
Big bucks spent to bust harmless marijuana growers
Wow the government sure spends huge amounts of money to bust harmless marijuana growers.
Tom Horne proposes arming 1 educator per school
As usual the government is the cause of the problem, not the solution to the problem.
Arizona’s attorney general wants to arm school principals.
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.
Cops want $1,150 each because they have to wear new uniforms
Source
Judge: Stapley must explain deals in his lawsuit against Sheriff Joe
Source
The secret CIA police - Global Response Staff or GRS
Source
Feds to bust NBC for TV display of 30 round magazine
Don't these Federal pigs have any REAL criminals to hunt down????
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.
Chicago area police chief popped for DUI - again
For second time, Robbins police chief arrested for DUI
More of the old "Do as I say, not as I do" from our government masters.
Being a cop is a dangerous job - NOT!!!!!
Cops love to brag that they have a dangerous job and they risk their lives for us everyday.
I suspect that is to justify their very high pay rates.
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
Police motorcycle gang beats up Glendale man???
Members of the Iron Brotherhood Motorcycle Club, a police motorcycle gang are accused of beating up a 23 year old Glendale man.
US Iron Brotherhood Motorcycle Club
Source
Arizona National Guard Crimes Covered Up
According to this
article
it sounds like Arizona Governor Jan Brewers
investigation into corruption within the Arizona National Guard
resulted in nothing more then a cover up of the crimes committed.