Orange County cop shoots himself
SourcePublished: Dec. 18, 2012 Updated: 10:10 p.m.
Officer injured when weapon accidentally discharges
By SEAN EMERY / ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
SANTA ANA – A Sheriff's Department special officer accidently shot and injured himself at a county building Tuesday afternoon, authorities said.
The officer "accidently discharged" his duty weapon while removing it at the end of his shift at the Orange County Healthcare Agency building on West Fifth Street shortly after 4 p.m., Lt. Steve Gill of the Orange County Sheriff's Department said.
The bullet reportedly struck the officer in his right thigh. Gill said no one else was injured.
The officer's injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.
Contact the writer: 714-796-7939 or semery@ocregister.com
Airline mogul gets 30 years in child-porn case
Associated Press Wed Dec 19, 2012 11:09 AM
BROWNSVILLE, Texas — The founder of a Texas cargo airline has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for federal child pornography charges.
Robert L. Hedrick was accused by prosecutors of having explicit chats with undercover officers posing as young teenage girls. The 61-year-old founder of Pan American Airways was convicted May 21 of three federal counts.
He was sentenced Wednesday morning in South Texas.
Hedrick was arrested last year after Wisconsin and Louisiana authorities traced chats to an online account registered to him. Investigators said they later found he had saved 2,400 pornographic images.
Hedrick has maintained his innocence.
He had faced up to 20 years in prison for distribution of child pornography. He was also convicted of transferring obscene materials to a minor and attempted sexual exploitation of children.
I think firemen are the same way. And again in most city governments most of the employees are cops followed by firemen. And again most city budgets the police department is the most expensive item on the budget followed by the fire department budget.
Shine a light on backroom union deals
Posted on December 19, 2012 | Author: Nick Dranias
Secret government union collective bargaining is the law in eleven states, including Alaska, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Wisconsin. By statute, these states expressly require secrecy in collective bargaining.
Similarly, in Arizona, at least eight major cities keep collective bargaining with government unions in the dark. The secrecy imposed by towns like Avondale, Chandler and Maricopa even expressly prohibit anyone from sharing records of negotiations with elected officials and the news media. Elected officials and the public simply cannot meaningfully check and balance collective bargaining negotiations when they do not oversee them and the law keeps them and the news media blind, deaf and dumb during the process. When total secrecy in negotiations is combined with laws forcing Arizona cities to engage in collective bargaining—euphemistically called “meet and confer” ordinances—government unions are free to deploy maximum leverage in negotiations while hiding from any meaningful oversight.
That leverage has a price. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that state and local government employees make nearly 43 percent more per hour on average in total compensation than private sector workers. Even when controlling for similar occupations and skills, a study commissioned by Citizens Against Government Waste found state employees in Arizona make nearly 20 percent more per hour on average than their private sector counterparts.
The presence of government unions and the strength of collective bargaining laws explain a large portion of the pay gap between government employees and private sector employees. Arizona could save $550 million every year in excessive pay to public employees simply by banning government union collective bargaining. But the next best reform involves shining a light on the backroom deal making.
It’s time for public labor unions to conduct their negotiations in the light of day.
30 years in prison for looking at dirty pictures????
That sounds a bit draconian for a victimless crime.
Shine a light on backroom Arizona union employee deals
Remember that most city employees are cops and they are usually union members who's salaries are set with these secret backroom deals. In most city governments the police department is the most expensive item on the budget.
Arizona group says allowing guns in schools is overdue
Source
Arizona group says allowing guns in schools is overdue
Associated Press Wed Dec 19, 2012 12:36 PM
A group that advocates for pro-gun, state legislation said Wednesday guns should be allowed in Arizona public schools to provide protection against shootings such as the one in Connecticut.
“It’s long past time to, at the very least, allow our school faculty and staff the option to be trained and armed,” the Arizona Citizens Defense League said in a statement. “Only then will they be capable of dealing with a situation like this.”
Amid public debate over what to do in response to the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, the league is “now looking at things that can be done to heighten security in schools,” spokesman Charles Heller said during an earlier interview. “We hadn’t been before.”
Arizona law now generally bans taking guns on school grounds.
The statement by the league decried the violence in Connecticut and stopped short of announcing a 2013 legislative proposal to allow guns on campuses.
Heller said his group is considering options, but he couldn’t discuss specifics. The session starts in mid-January, and no proposed bills filed as yet deal with gun issues.
Gun control proposals went nowhere in the Republican-led Arizona Legislature after the January 2011 shooting that wounded then-Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson.
In the next two legislative sessions, state lawmakers twice approved bills to allow guns in many public buildings without airport-style security and once to allow them on higher-education campuses.
However, Republican Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed all three versions of those two bills that reached her desk. She said in May her veto of the latest such bill reflected public unease.
A Brewer spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the league’s statement.
Arizona has permissive gun laws and a Wild West heritage. Guns can be carried openly, sometimes jolting newcomers, particularly in urban areas.
On Monday, Brewer sounded disinclined to weaken the right to bear arms in response to the Connecticut shooting.
“I’m not sure if it’s something that needs to be addressed in that respect,” Brewer said, adding that a stronger behavioral health system “would probably be something that we ought to look into.”
Hildy Saizow, president of Arizonans for Gun Safety, said relaxation of gun-free zones at schools and other places would be “really extremist legislation.”
Instead, now is the time to support national legislation that should include toughening requirements for background checks of gun purchasers, Saizow said.
Alan Korwin, a Scottsdale author and publisher of books on gun laws, said the media is whipping public sentiment into a “mob mentality” in favor of new gun restrictions after the Connecticut shootings.
That ignores the benefits of allowing guns where they’re not now allowed, he said.
Gun-free zones “enable criminals and infringe on the rights and abilities of Americans to protect themselves and their children,” Korwin said. “We trust teachers with our children. Certainly they should be qualified” to have guns at schools.
An Arizona legislator who sponsored a bill after the 2011 Tucson shooting to prohibit extended magazines that hold more than 10 bullets said it would be dangerous to allow guns at schools.
“I do not see anything good of a massive arms race on our college campuses or, God forbid, on our elementary schools,” said Rep. Steve Farley. “There’s no good that’s going to come of that.”
Farley, a Tucson Democrat who becomes a state senator in January, said he won’t re-introduce a new version of his bill in 2013. Such restrictions are best handled by Washington to avoid a patchwork of state laws, he said.
Farley said he proposed the 2011 bill because Tucson shooter Jared Loughner fired 30 shots from a handgun with an extended magazine. Six people were killed and 13 injured in the attack, and Farley said there would have been less carnage if Loughner had to reload sooner.
Farley’s bill died after not getting a hearing from a House committee.
Farley also said he wants the Legislature to consider providing adequate funding for programs to identify and treat mentally ill people and to protect children from physical abuse so they don’t develop psychological problems.
California parks officials improperly boosted pay, audit finds
Some people think the best way to prevent government abuse it to write a tight constitution that forces government employees to be accountable to the taxpayers.But when the same employees that abuse the rules are also in charge of enforcing the rules the system will never work. That's despite a wonderful well written constitution that is supposed to prevent abuses.
And of course whenever these abuses are discovered the elected officials always promise to create more rules to prevent future abuses. Of course those new rules will be enforced by the same people that abuse the system so the system never works, despite layer after layer of rules that are suppose to prevent abuses.
California parks officials improperly boosted pay, audit finds
By Chris Megerian, Los Angeles Times
December 18, 2012, 9:43 p.m.
SACRAMENTO — Managers at the California parks department circumvented payroll policies and boosted salaries improperly, the state controller said Tuesday.
Controller John Chiang said the payouts were made with "deliberate disregard for internal controls, along with little oversight and poorly trained staff. When security protocols and authorization requirements so easily can be overridden, it invites the abuse of public funds."
Chiang said that bad record keeping in the department made it impossible to determine a total for the amount of money improperly paid.
The payroll issues are coming to light months after revelations last summer that parks officials had a hidden $54-million surplus at a time when the department was cutting services and threatening to close parks. Disclosure of unused funds led to the ouster of department Director Ruth Coleman.
The payroll problems took many forms, the controller's office said. One involved "out of class" payments, which is extra money paid to employees for handling duties outside their regular responsibilities. Over a three-year period, 203 employees received a total of $520,000 for such work, but a lack of documentation prevented officials from determining how much of those payments were improper, the office said.
In another example, several temporary employees were allowed to exceed their annual ceiling of 1,500 hours of work.
The parks department conceded Tuesday that it had made errors.
"We acknowledge and it is widely known that some very unfortunate events occurred at the Department of Parks and Recreation, in particular with the mismanagement of payroll systems and data," spokesman Roy Stearns said. The department is using the controller's findings to "continue to improve and safeguard our payroll systems," he said.
Stearns said officials would try to have employees return any overpayments.
Last month, Gov. Jerry Brown appointed a retired Marine general, Anthony Jackson, to replace Coleman as director. Jackson is awaiting Senate approval.
"We see these audits and investigations as a catalyst for change," Jackson said in a statement. He said the department will "work diligently to earn back the trust of our fellow state agencies and the people of the state of California."
The state Department of Finance is conducting its own audit of the parks department. Spokesman H.D. Palmer said the findings could be released before the end of the year.
chris.megerian@latimes.com
LA County County Assessor receives his $197,000 salary despite being in jail
Our government rulers work for you! Honest, they are public servants!Of course when you read articles like this, you realized that my previous statement is 100 percent BS.
Our government rulers are our royal masters who consider us serfs that are supposed to support them like royalty. They don't work for US, they work for themselves.
And as this article shows they steal every cent they can from US and give it to THEMSELVES.
Noguez will keep salary — with raise — despite being in jail
By Jack Dolan and Abby Sewell, Los Angeles Times
December 19, 2012
Los Angeles County Assessor John Noguez will keep receiving his $197,000 salary in jail. The Board of Supervisors discussed his fate behind closed doors Tuesday and did not remove him from office.
Noguez has been in jail since mid-October. He is charged with taking $185,000 in bribes from a tax consultant — and campaign fundraiser — to lower property taxes for his clients.
Noguez, who was elected assessor in 2010, has not worked since June, when he placed himself on paid leave of absence to concentrate on preparing a legal defense to the corruption allegations swirling around him.
While on leave, he got a cost-of-living raise in July, boosting his annual salary from $192,000 to $197,000.
Elected officials in California typically can't be removed from office unless they are convicted of a job-related crime or voted out in a recall. On Tuesday, the supervisors considered invoking a rarely used provision that would have allowed them to remove Noguez for failing to perform his duties for three consecutive months.
After the closed session, Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich said, "My personal feeling is he has not abandoned his job by virtue of choice — he's been incarcerated for allegations of corruption and until a court of law convicts him of a crime, he's still the assessor of Los Angeles County."
Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said the board will continue consulting with attorneys regarding options, but he did not expect any "concrete response" until the new year.
On Sept. 12, nearly 90 days after taking his leave, Noguez met briefly with assessor's office staff, effectively resetting the clock. But sources say that he has not had any meaningful contact with the office since then.
Noguez has been in jail since Oct. 17, unable to make his $1.16-million bail. He must prove that any money he uses for his defense was not obtained through criminal means.
Attendance was sparse at two recent fundraisers hosted by friends hoping to get him out.
If county supervisors had determined that Noguez's prolonged absence constituted abandonment of his job, they could have appointed someone else to take his place and collect the assessor's salary. The most likely candidate was Santos Kreimann, a veteran county manager selected to run the assessor's office in June after Noguez took his leave.
Noguez's $5,000 raise in July was not reviewed or approved by the supervisors, said county spokesman David Sommers. Under county code, the assessor's salary goes up every July 1 in accordance with the consumer price index. The same applies to the sheriff and the district attorney, who are also elected.
Other county employees have not received a cost-of-living raise since 2009, Sommers said.
jack.dolan@latimes.com
abby.sewell@latimes.com
Emperor Obama goes into gun grabbing mode!!!!
SourceObama demands new gun policies after shooting
Associated Press Wed Dec 19, 2012 12:16 PM
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Wednesday demanded “concrete proposals” on curbing gun violence that he could send to Congress no later than January — an urgent effort to build on the growing political consensus over gun restrictions following last week’s massacre of children at a Connecticut school.
It was a tough new tone for the president, whose first four years were largely quiet on the issue amid widespread political reluctance to tackle a powerful gun-rights lobby. But emotions have been high after the gunman in Friday’s shooting used a semi-automatic rifle to kill 20 young children and six adults at the school, shooting many several times and at close range, after killing his mother at home. He then killed himself.
“This time, the words need to lead to action,” Obama said. He said he will push legislation “without delay” and urged Congress to hold votes on the bill next year.
“The fact that this problem is complex can no longer be an excuse for doing nothing,” Obama said. “The fact that we can’t prevent every act of violence doesn’t mean we can’t steadily reduce the violence.”
The president listed eight people across the country who had been killed by gun violence since Friday’s shooting.
As part of his call for “real progress, right now,” Obama pressed Congress to reinstate an assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004. He also called for stricter background checks for people who seek to purchase weapons and limited high-capacity clips.
Vice President Joe Biden, a longtime gun control advocate with decades of experience in the Senate, will lead a team that will include members of Obama’s administration and outside groups.
The administration will have to make its gun control push in the middle of tense negotiations with Congress to avoid the “fiscal cliff” of billions of dollars in tax increases and deep spending cuts that will kick in at the end of the year without a deal.
Notably, the first question asked of Obama during a press conference after his gun announcement was about the fiscal talks.
In the days since the shooting, Obama has vowed to use “whatever power this office holds” to safeguard the nation’s children after Friday’s shooting. Funerals for the victims continued Wednesday, along with the wake for the school’s beloved principal.
The shooting has prompted several congressional gun-rights supporters to consider new legislation to control firearms, and there are concerns in the administration and elsewhere that their willingness to engage could fade as the shock and sorrow over the shooting eases.
The most powerful supporter of gun owners and the gun industry, the National Rifle Association, broke its silence Tuesday, four days after the shooting. In a statement, it pledged “to help to make sure this never happens again” and has scheduled a news conference for Friday.
Obama challenged the NRA to join the broader effort to reduce gun violence, saying, “Hopefully they’ll do some self-reflection.”
With the NRA promising “meaningful contributions” and Obama vowing “meaningful action,” the challenge in Washington is to turn words into action. Ideas so far have ranged from banning people from buying more than one gun a month to arming teachers.
The challenge will be striking the right balance with protecting the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms. Firearms are in a third or more of U.S. households, and suspicion runs deep of an overbearing government whenever it proposes expanding federal authority.
Many pro-gun lawmakers also have called for a greater focus on mental health issues and the impact of violent entertainment like video games. Obama also prefers a holistic approach, with aides saying stricter gun laws alone are not the answer.
Obama said Wednesday that the U.S. needs to make access to mental health care as easy as access to a gun.
Still, much of the immediate focus is on gun control, an issue that has been dormant in Washington for years despite several mass shootings.
The policy process Obama was announcing Wednesday was expected to include input from the departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services. The heads of those agencies met with Obama at the White House on Monday. The Department of Homeland Security is also expected to play a key role.
Pressure for change has come from several sources this week.
As shares in publicly traded gun manufacturers dropped, the largest firearms maker in the United States said Tuesday it was being put up for sale by its owner, private equity group Cerberus Capital Management, which called the shooting a “watershed event” in the debate over gun control. Freedom Group International makes Bushmaster rifles, the weapons thought to have been used in Friday’s killings.
In California, proposed legislation would increase the restrictions on purchasing ammunition by requiring buyers to get a permit, undergo a background check and pay a fee.
The U.S. Conference of Mayors wrote Obama and Congress calling for “stronger gun laws, a reversal of the culture of violence in this country, a commission to examine violence in the nation, and more adequate funding for the mental health system.”
The mayors asked for a ban on assault weapons and other high-capacity magazines, like those reportedly used in the school shooting; a stronger national background check system for gun purchasers; and stronger penalties for straw purchases of guns, in which legal buyers acquire weapons for other people.
Formerly pro-gun Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said “a thoughtful debate about how to change laws” is coming soon. Republican Sen. Charles Grassley has said the debate must include guns and mental health. And NRA member Sen. Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat, said it’s time to begin an honest discussion about gun control and said he wasn’t afraid of the political consequences.
The comments are significant. Grassley is senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which probably would take the first action on any gun control legislation. Reid sets the Senate schedule.
Phoenix cops shoot macabre video, then sue Phoenix over it.
Source
Phoenix police detail inquiry into year-end video that showed crime scenes
By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Dec 19, 2012 10:31 PM
The year-end video starts out innocently enough, with photos of a squad of Phoenix police detectives enjoying themselves on the job and at holiday parties past.
But about 10 minutes in, the images take a turn toward the macabre, with celebratory photos quickly replaced by images of dead and decomposing bodies the officers encountered through their work.
One slide in the presentation offers a warning before the grisly crime-scene photos appear: “If disgusting is not your thing NOW is the time to avoid the TV!”
Those images, first discovered following an anonymous memo to a police lieutenant nearly a year ago, led a Phoenix review board to recommend that police fire the investigator responsible for putting the video together, along with an array of suspensions for other detectives who contributed photos to the presentation.
The firing and recommended suspensions, which range from eight hours to six weeks of unpaid leave, will be appealed once the five officers involved are officially served with notice of their punishments, according to the union representing Phoenix officers.
The case is also the subject of a $2.9 million notice of claim that four officers filed against the city and police officials in August alleging defamation and infliction of emotional distress.
The appeals are not focused on whether the involved officers deserve to be punished for their roles in making the video, said Phoenix police Officer Ken Crane, a vice president of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, a labor group that represents some Phoenix officers. Instead, Crane said, the union is concerned with the disparate punishment handed down, which left the investigator who put together the video, Detective Courtney Mayo, without a job while the supervisor who contributed photos to the presentation received a suspension.
“We are appealing the discipline, not to say we don’t think there should be any discipline, but certainly with regard to the one officer who was terminated was very disparate compared with the supervisor,” he said.
Phoenix police released records of their internal probe of the incident, including the video, still images of the offensive photos and detailed investigative files, on Wednesday afternoon — more than a year after the party took place and word of the crime-scene video spread through the department.
The officers who filed a notice of claim against the city effectively waived confidentiality rights they are afforded under state law and are therefore identified throughout the report. Mayo’s supervisor did not join in the potential lawsuit with the others, and her name remains redacted.
The records indicate that Mayo’s supervisor in the violent-crimes unit provided Mayo with 19 of the 30 photos included in the presentation. The supervisor told investigators that she kept the photos for her own comparison with medical examiners’ reports and for use in a death-investigation course she teaches. The supervisor was not at the holiday party when the video was shown, and she told Phoenix investigators that she was shocked by what the video contained.
“My intention, obviously, was not this kind of video or how crude it was,” the supervisor told police investigators. “That was not my intention … And, in hindsight, I probably should have never given these photos to Courtney. And I, that, I’m gonna fall on the sword for that. I should’ve never done that. I still didn’t know it was going to be that bad. I mean, it was terrible.”
Members of the Phoenix police Professional Standards Bureau who conducted the internal investigation into the video shared their information with criminal investigators, who concluded no laws were broken.
The anonymous tipster who brought the video to the attention of police administrators said otherwise.
“This behavior is not only immoral and unethical but criminal,” the tipster wrote days after the party. “A person tasked with investigating another human being’s death should be compassionate and understanding. An officer with a personality and lust for such disgusting behavior has no business conducting death investigations.”
The officers involved, and others who once supervised the unit of overnight detectives in the violent-crimes bureau, were suspended early this year, and, according to the documents released Wednesday, investigators quickly determined who had a hand in the video.
During interviews with investigators, the officers explained that some of the photos were taken at crime scenes with their personal cellphones for their records, some of the images were taken from the Internet and others were of the officers receiving “buried body” training.
Mayo told investigators the video’s purpose was to highlight the squad’s work in the past year, with visual reminders to jog the memories of investigators. None of the photos was of an ongoing investigation, she said.
“It wasn’t even like we were laughing at it,” she said. “It wasn’t even, like, funny, like ‘Oh, that’s a funny one.’ It’s not so funny, but it’s just part of our daily work. That’s what it’s about. It’s not about, you know, disrespecting anybody or embarrassing a family member. I wasn’t trying to be mean to anybody. Maybe, maybe I’m desensitized beyond whatever. I don’t know.”
Mayo was among the detectives who filed the notice of claim against Phoenix, alleging that police were involved in an “overzealous and ill-informed attack on the officers.”
That pending legal action left Phoenix police with little to say after the documents were released.
“The unprofessional conduct of those involved in creating this video has been dealt with appropriately by the department,” said Sgt. Trent Crump, a department spokesman. “One employee was terminated for her part in producing the video, and four others received suspensions. The Phoenix Police Department is committed to ensuring the highest levels of public trust.”
Phoenix officers demoted over video file $2.9 million claim
Source
Phoenix officers demoted over video file $2.9 million claim
by Dustin Gardiner - Aug. 10, 2012 07:29 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Four Phoenix police officers accused of showing photos of corpses in a video slide show during a holiday party have filed a $2.9 million notice of claim against the city.
The officers say they were suspended and demoted from the night detective squad to routine patrol earlier this year after the department received an anonymous complaint about the video. Their unit had worked non-criminal deaths, such as suicides, drug overdoses and grisly car accidents.
Officers Courtney Mayo, Howard Pacifico, Brandy Villareal and Jeffrey Johnson state in the claim that the city improperly characterized the video, defamed them and caused severe emotional distress. They are seeking monetary damages, and they want the department to reinstate them to their old positions.
Phoenix officials were served with the claim late last week. They said an internal investigation into the officers' actions is being conducted.
When the incident came to light in February, acting Police Chief Joe Yahner and Mayor Greg Stanton swiftly condemned the officers' actions, saying they were outraged that the officers had shown victims of crime in an inappropriate manner. The department also put two supervisors in the night unit on administrative leave.
"I am extremely disappointed in the unprofessional conduct and the total lack of respect shown to those we are trusted to serve," Yahner said at the time.
Mayo said the city's actions resulted in the loss of her first child due to a second-term miscarriage, which her obstetrician attributed to stress. The claim says she was portrayed as a "monster" and could not defend herself because of a departmental gag order.
"No matter what demand could be made upon the city, nothing will ever restore what she lost," the notice states.
Phoenix spokesman Jon Brodsky said the city is reviewing the claim and could not comment. The Police Department's internal inquiry continues, but the officers have returned to work and have been cleared of any criminal conduct.
Brodsky said the officers were reassigned to positions in patrol, not demoted as they contend. He said their pay-rates did not change.
A notice of claim is a precursor to a lawsuit and is required before somebody can sue a government entity. Mayo is asking for $2 million to settle the dispute; the other officers are each asking for $300,000.
According to the claim, the officers said they showed the video once, at a party last December with members of their squad, and it included 28 photos of non-homicide death investigations. They contend the slide show was personal and documented "memorable moments, experiences and inside jokes the squad had shared that year."
Their claim states that city officials made defamatory comments about the officers before the department properly investigated the situation and that the officials created a false perception that the photos depicted victims of crimes.
Republic reporter JJ Hensley contributed to this article.
Arizona Senator Scott Bundgaard files lawsuit against Phoenix
SourceBundgaard files lawsuit against Phoenix
By Dustin Gardiner The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Dec 19, 2012 10:07 PM
Former state Sen. Scott Bundgaard has filed a lawsuit against the city of Phoenix, alleging that city employees conspired to falsely portray him as an abuser rather than a victim in a freeway fight with his ex-girlfriend nearly two years ago.
In a complaint filed against the city in Maricopa County Superior Court on Tuesday, Bundgaard claims that during the course of a police investigation and Senate ethics inquiry, city personnel withheld evidence, defamed him, invaded his medical privacy, caused him to lose employment and inflicted severe emotional distress.
Bundgaard is seeking an unspecified amount in damages. He had earlier filed a notice of claim, a precursor to the lawsuit, against the city seeking $10 million.
The case centers on Bundgaard’s arrest and a police investigation stemming from a February 2011 fight between him and then-girlfriend Aubry Ballard in the median of the Piestewa Freeway. During the quarrel, witnesses said, he hit Ballard, yanked her from the car into the HOV lane and shook her.
Bundgaard’s complaint paints a much different picture of the incident, saying he had been assaulted by an intoxicated and “out of control” Ballard. He alleges that while he was driving, Ballard took his firearm out of the console and waived it around, forcing him to take it from her.
Ballard told investigators that Bundgaard hit her in the chest after he became enraged during an argument. She said she never touched his gun.
The lawsuit names former Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, former Police Chief Jack Harris and several police officers, as well as publicist David Leibowitz, who worked on a contract basis for Gordon. Ballard, who is not a city employee, also was named.
Phoenix spokeswoman Toni Maccarone declined to comment on the complaint Wednesday afternoon. She said the city had not yet received the document.
Much of the 48-page complaint is focused on a Senate Ethics Committee hearing, where Bundgaard says the city’s police officers presented false and defamatory information that ultimately forced him to resign from the Legislature on Jan. 6 because his colleagues were moving to have him expelled.
The complaint states that the actions of city employees involved were “so extreme that they shock the conscious of an orderly society that places trust in its criminal justice processes and personnel.”
Bundgaard’s complaint, prepared by attorney Suzanne Dallimore, says police officers had falsely testified that Bundgaard refused to take a blood-alcohol test the night of the incident.
Police had testified that he smelled of alcohol and refused sobriety tests.
Police have said they did not arrest Bundgaard that night because he invoked legislative immunity, a provision in the state Constitution that protects lawmakers from being arrested in many cases while the Legislature is in session. Bundgaard has repeatedly said he did not claim immunity.
City prosecutors eventually charged Bundgaard with misdemeanor assault and reckless endangerment, and he later pleaded no contest to misdemeanor endangerment.
The complaint states that Gordon, who was mayor at the time of the incident, sought to discredit Bundgaard and instructed Leibowitz to represent Ballard at taxpayers’ expense.
Bundgaard alleges that Gordon bore him ill will because Bundgaard was advocating a bill that would have changed government-procurement requirements.
Leibowitz said his representation of Ballard had nothing to do with his work for the city or any other clients. He said Ballard is a close childhood friend of his wife.
“Aubry is a family friend of mine, and I stepped up to help her,” Leibowitz said, calling the complaint a “ridiculous conspiracy” story. “I wasn’t going to stand by and watch an innocent person be slandered,” he said.
Religious Leaders Push for Gun Control
SourceReligious Leaders Push Congregants on Gun Control, Sensing a Watershed Moment
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: December 19, 2012
Religious leaders across the country this week vowed to mobilize their congregants to push for gun control legislation and provide the ground support for politicians willing to take on the gun lobby, saying the time has come for action beyond praying and comforting the families of those killed.
A group of clergy members, representing mainline and evangelical Protestants, Catholics, Jews and Muslims, plans to lead off the campaign in front of the Washington National Cathedral at an event on Friday timed to mark the moment a week before when a young gunman opened fire in a school in Newtown, Conn.
The cathedral will toll its funeral bell 28 times, once for each victim, including 20 children, 6 teachers and school administrators and the mother of the killer, as well as the gunman, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who shot and killed himself.
“Everyone in this city seems to be in terror of the gun lobby. But I believe the gun lobby is no match for the cross lobby,” said the Very Rev. Gary Hall, dean of the Washington National Cathedral, in an impassioned sermon on Sunday that has become a rallying cry for gun control. People in the cathedral’s pews rose and applauded.
Dean Hall said in an interview that he and Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington were calling on their parishioners to support four specific steps: bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, tightening rules for sales at gun shows and re-examining care for the mentally ill.
Clergy members have been involved in gun control efforts for at least three decades because, they say, they are the ones called to give the eulogies at funerals and comfort victims’ families. But they acknowledge that they have been unable to mount a sustained grass-roots movement against gun violence — partly because they have not made it a priority, and partly because their efforts have been overshadowed by the organizational and fund-raising power of the gun lobby.
Faiths United to Prevent Gun Violence, a two-year-old coalition that now counts 40 religious groups as members, has only one part-time employee, Vincent DeMarco, who is simultaneously organizing coalitions on obesity, health care and smoking. Asked his budget, he laughed and said, “de minimis.”
However, Jim Winkler, general secretary of the United Methodist Church’s public policy arm, the General Board of Church and Society, said he was seeing some signs that the shooting in Newtown could be a watershed. His office immediately sent out an “action alert” on gun control to bishops and other church leaders, and he said he was surprised how many wrote back thanking him effusively.
“I could tell there was this real need, real hunger, at least in my denomination, for there to be some response that is not only prayers and expressions of sadness, but also a call to action,” Mr. Winkler said. “And it came from some who wouldn’t normally care that much about public policy action, but who would be more interested in spiritual responses.”
The primary organizer of the news conference on Friday, Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, in Washington, said, “This is not likely an issue that we’ll have a sustained campaign on in the absence of political leadership. But if political leaders act, the religious community will be strongly engaged.”
On Wednesday, President Obama said in a news conference that he would make preventing gun violence a legislative priority, but that it would take “a wave of Americans” to move it forward.
Religious groups that sent out calls for action on guns to their members in the last five days include the Council of Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the PICO National Network, an advocacy group, and many Jewish organizations.
But advocating limits on guns is controversial within many religious groups, and many evangelicals are opposed. A CBS News poll conducted Dec. 14-16, after the massacre in Newtown, showed that while 69 percent of Catholics said they wanted stricter laws on gun control, only 37 percent of white evangelical Christians agreed.
The evangelical leaders expected at the cathedral event on Friday are relatively moderate: the Rev. Richard Cizik, president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, and Rev. Gabriel Salguero, president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition.
Mark DeMoss, a prominent evangelical who recently served as an adviser to the campaign of the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, stepped forward after the tragedy in Newtown, telling Politico.com that measures to address gun control, mental health treatment and violence in the media should all be on the table.
But he said in an interview that evangelicals were unlikely to support gun control efforts because they do not want to break ranks with the Republican Party, and because they tend to see gun violence as a concern to be addressed spiritually, rather than through policy change.
He said he also considered violence a spiritual problem, but said he saw a “double standard” at work. Evangelical clergy, he said, have boycotted the manufacturers of violent video games and pornography, but on guns they say, “No, this is just as spiritual matter of the heart.”
The Rev. Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said in an interview that his group had never taken a position on gun control but might now “take a harder look.” He pointed out that a rarely read part of the Christmas story is King Herod’s slaughter of the innocents.
“Mary and Joseph fled. It’s a part of the story, and they took decisive action. This is now a part of our story,” he said, referring to shooting rampages, “and we need to take decisive action.”
Obama wants to take your guns!!!!!
SourceObama Vows Fast Action in New Push for Gun Control
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
Published: December 19, 2012
WASHINGTON — President Obama declared on Wednesday that he would make gun control a “central issue” as he opens his second term, promising to submit broad new firearm proposals to Congress no later than January and to employ the full power of his office to overcome deep-seated political resistance.
Leading House Republicans responded to the president’s pledge in the aftermath of the Connecticut school massacre by restating their firm opposition to new limits on guns or ammunition, setting up the possibility of a bitter legislative battle and a philosophical clash over the Second Amendment soon after Mr. Obama’s inauguration.
Having avoided a politically difficult debate over guns for four years, Mr. Obama vowed to restart a national conversation about their role in American society, the need for better access to mental health services and the impact of exceedingly violent images in the nation’s culture.
He warned that the conversation — which has produced little serious change after previous mass shootings — will be a short one, followed by specific legislative proposals that he intends to campaign for, starting with his State of the Union address next month.
“This time, the words need to lead to action,” Mr. Obama said. “I will use all the powers of this office to help advance efforts aimed at preventing more tragedies like this.”
At an appearance in the White House briefing room, the president said that he had directed Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to lead an interagency effort to develop what the White House said would be a multifaceted approach to preventing mass shootings like the one in Newtown, Conn., last week and the many other gun deaths that occur each year.
As evidence of the brutal cost of gun violence, Mr. Obama said that since Friday’s school shooting in Connecticut, guns had led to the deaths of police officers in Memphis and Topeka, Kan.; a woman in Las Vegas; three people in an Alabama hospital; and a 4-year-old in a drive-by shooting in Missouri. They are, he said, victims of “violence that we cannot accept as routine.”
Accompanied by Mr. Biden, the president signaled his support for new limits on high-capacity clips and assault weapons, as well as a desire to close regulatory loopholes affecting gun shows. He promised to confront the broad pro-gun sentiment in Congress that has for years blocked gun control measures.
That opposition shows little signs of fading away. While the death of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday appears to have persuaded some Democratic lawmakers to support new gun control measures, there has been little indication that Republicans who control the House — and are in a standoff with Mr. Obama over taxes — are willing to accept such restrictions.
House Democrats urged Speaker John A. Boehner on Wednesday to bring a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines to a vote by Saturday — a step he is highly unlikely to take.
Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, an influential conservative leader, said in a statement that “it is clear that criminals will always find ways to acquire weapons and use them to commit acts of violence.”
“Passing more restrictions on law-abiding citizens will not deter this type of crime,” he said.
Mr. Jordan and other House Republicans declined to be interviewed, saying through aides that it was time to mourn, not to debate policy.
“There will be plenty of time to have this conversation,” said Brittany Lesser, a spokeswoman for Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, “but it is not amidst the funerals of these brave young children and adults.”
This week, Mr. King told an Iowa radio station, KSCJ, that “political opportunists didn’t wait 24 hours before they decided they were going to go after some kind of a gun ban.” He also expressed doubt about gun control measures, saying, “We all had our cap pistols when I was growing up, and that didn’t seem to cause mass murders in the street.”
Representative Howard Coble, Republican of North Carolina, said in an interview that he thought the talk of gun control was “probably a rush to judgment” that missed the real issue.
“I think it’s more of a mental health problem than a gun problem right now,” he said. “Traditionally states that enact rigid, inflexible gun laws do not show a corresponding diminishment in crime.”
While Mr. Coble said he would want to study any proposal made by the president, he said fellow Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, which would consider any gun recommendations, probably agree with his views.
One senior Republican, Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, signaled an openness to review Mr. Obama’s proposals.
“As the president said, no set of laws will prevent every future horrific act of violence or eliminate evil from our society, but we can do better,” Mr. Sensenbrenner said in an e-mailed response to questions.
Mr. Sensenbrenner noted that he had co-sponsored the Brady gun control bill in the 1990s. “Our country must also grapple with difficult questions about the identification and care of individuals with mental illnesses,” he said.
On Wednesday the president said that Mr. Biden’s group would propose new laws and actions in January, and that those would be “proposals that I then intend to push without delay.” Mr. Obama said Mr. Biden’s effort was “not some Washington commission” that would take six months and produce a report that was shelved.
“I urge the new Congress to hold votes on these new measures next year, in a timely manner,” Mr. Obama said.
White House aides said Mr. Biden would meet with law enforcement officials from across the country on Thursday, along with cabinet officials from the departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Education and Health and Human Services.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York praised Mr. Obama’s announcement and said he offered his “full support” to Mr. Biden in a phone conversation on Wednesday. But Mr. Bloomberg, a vocal advocate of tougher gun control, also urged the president to take executive actions in the meantime, including making a recess appointment of a new director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Republicans have blocked an appointment to the post for years.
“The country needs his leadership if we are going to reduce the daily bloodshed from gun violence that we have seen for too long,” Mr. Bloomberg said of Mr. Obama.
Gun control advocates have urged the White House and lawmakers to move rapidly to enact new gun control measures before the killings in Connecticut fade from the public’s consciousness. Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, has said she intends to introduce a new ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines on the first day of the next Congress in January.
During his first term, Mr. Obama largely avoided the issue of gun control, even as high-powered firearms were used in several mass shootings. Asked bluntly about his lack of past action on the issue, the president appeared irritated, citing the economic crisis, the collapse of the auto industry and two wars as matters that demanded attention.
“I don’t think I’ve been on vacation,” he said curtly.
He then conceded, “All of us have to do some reflection on how we prioritize what we do here in Washington.”
California gun grabbing
SourceMore gun laws on the way in California?
By Steven Harmon
Bay Area News Group
Posted: 12/19/2012 04:11:48 PM PST
SACRAMENTO -- Even with the nation's toughest gun control laws, some California legislators are seeking more restrictions following last week's deadly Connecticut shooting rampage that took the lives of 20 young children and seven adults.
Among at least four proposals, one would prohibit semi-automatic weapons like AR-15s and AK-47s from having devices known as "bullet buttons," which allow easy reloading of multi-bullet ammunition clips. Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, introduced a similar bill last year that died in the Assembly. His proposal would also prohibit add-on kits to adapt weapons for high-capacity bullet clips.
"While we cannot stop every senseless act of gun violence, surely we can strengthen our laws to limit such tragedies in the future," Yee said.
Other bills would require annual permits for ammunition purchases, mandate school safety plans and permanently deny weapons to mentally ill people.
Gun-control advocates say that a climate of permissive gun laws has made the United States one of the most violent countries in the developed world. Gun-rights groups maintain that citizens with appropriate weaponry can prevent tragedies such as the Newtown shooting because the "good guys" can kill gunmen at the first sign of a shooting spree.
California goes beyond federal law in requiring background checks on individuals who try to buy firearms at gun shops and gun shows. It also requires a 10-day waiting period for handgun and rifle purchases.
The state has approved 45 gun-control laws since 1989, when the state became the first in the nation to ban military-style assault weapons after the slaying of five children and wounding of 29 others in a Stockton schoolyard.
Yee plans to push another bill to require yearly registration and background checks for gun ownership.
Another bill, by Sen. Kevin DeLeon, D-Los Angeles, would require a background check and permit — with annual updates -- for anyone wishing to buy ammunition.
"For the sake of our children and the memory of the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre, it's time for an honest and rational debate on gun control and how to keep ammunition out of the hands of criminals," De Leon said.
Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, is relaunching a bill to firm up the school safety laws by requiring schools to establish emergency-response plans for eruptions of violence on school grounds.
"President Obama stated our first task is to care for our children," said Lieu, whose two young sons attend a public elementary school. "When children attend public school, they are in the care of the state and we better make sure they are as safe as possible."
The state does not have accurate figures on how many public schools have school-safety plans that outline emergency steps, Lieu said.
Republicans are generally opposed to gun-control laws, but Sen. Ted Gaines, R-Roseville, has a bill to keep firearms permanently out of the hands of the mentally ill.
California prohibits gun possession for anyone with a mental disorder who is found by a court to be a danger to others, or for those deemed as mentally disordered sex offenders. But, people with mental disorders can seek court approval for gun permits later. Gaines' bill would forbid them from petitioning the courts to have a gun.
"I hope everyone with any mental illness gets the treatment and rehabilitation they need to live a healthy and productive life," Gaines said. "But if the court has ruled you are a danger to others, that's it. That is your one strike. We are not going to pave the way for you to own a firearm ever again."
Contact Steven Harmon at 916-441-2101. Follow him at Twitter.com/ssharmon. Read the Political Blotter at IBAbuzz.com/politics.
Second just what part of the US Constitution gives the Feds to pass laws making it illegal for people to swim and play with whales????
Feds looking for swimmers who rode dead whale
Associated Press Thu Dec 20, 2012 10:21 AM
DEERFIELD BEACH, Fla. — Federal officials are looking for the two swimmers who were seen riding a dying whale in South Florida.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration asks anyone with more information to call their hotline (800-856-1964).
The South Florida Sun Sentinel reports
(http://sunsent.nl/REHGf4)
a Pompano Beach resident snapped a picture of one man riding the dying whale Sunday morning. The swimmers could face a misdemeanor conviction of harassing a marine mammal, which carries a maximum penalty of one year in jail and a fine of up to $100,000.
City officials had the 40-foot sperm whale carcass towed out to sea rather than allow scientists to perform a necropsy. Federal officials argued that learning the animal’s cause of death would provide invaluable information for conservation.
Feds look for men who rode dying whale
4:40 a.m. EST, December 20, 2012
The carcass of a 30-foot sperm whale that washed up Monday in Deerfield Beach is gone but the hunt goes on for two swimmers who may contributed to its death.
A Pompano Beach resident snapped a picture of one man riding the dying whale Sunday morning. A misdemeanor conviction of harassing a marine mammal carries a maximum penalty of one year in jail and a fine of up to $100,000.
Anyone with information is asked to call National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's hotline, 800-856-1964.
Mike Clary
Feds looking for swimmers who rode dead whale
Don't these pigs have any REAL criminals to hunt down???
Scott Bundgaard: I was framed!
Source
Posted on December 20, 2012 11:41 am by Laurie Roberts
Scott Bundgaard: I was framed!
The Bundgaard Chronicles, Chapter 3,425: In which the long suffering ex-senator sues the city, claiming he was framed by, well, everybody.
Brutalized by his (now-ex) girlfriend, falsely nailed as an abuser rather than the victim he is, Scott Bundgaard smells a conspiracy afoot. And so he filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the city of Phoenix, claiming he was defamed and distressed by the city’s nefarious police force, which has conspired to make him look like something other than the choir boy that he is.
As a result of their fiendish plot, the good senator was forced to resign from the Legislature and compelled to plead no contest to misdemeanor reckless endangerment, requiring him to undergo domestic violence counseling.
Apparently, the city undertook this dastardly scheme at the direction of then-Mayor Phil Gordon and with the help of Gordon’s PR handmaiden, David Leibowitz. This because Bundgaard was advocating a bill that would have allowed more public scrutiny of government procurement practices – something the mayor didn’t want due to his girlfriend’s connection with the company that holds the city’s bus contract.
Really, that’s the motive.
You will recall that this epic tale began just before midnight on a Friday in February 2011. The then-Senate majority leader was still basking in the glow of his Dancing with the Stars charity rumba when hostilities broke out as he and his girlfriend headed north on Arizona 51.
There’s no way to know what happened inside Bundgaard’s Mercedes that night. He says she started it. She says he started it. They both had minor injuries. At some point, Bundgaard pulled into the median and the fight spilled onto the freeway.
In his lawsuit, Bundgaard says he was initially treated as the victim, as befitting his role as a white knight trying to keep his drunken, gun waving wreck of a girlfriend from hurting herself. This, he explains, is why he was sent home while she was sent to jail.
As for the four police officers who later told the Senate Ethics Committee that he avoided jail because he invoked legislative immunity from arrest that night? Setup job. They all lied and hid information that would have proved him to be the victim.
“They assumed that even a falling-down drunk woman is to be believed over a sober man showing multiple bleeding wounds about his face and torn clothing,” the lawsuit says. “They construed all facts against the male involved in the event.”
The lawsuit contains no mention of the five independent witnesses on the road that night, all of whom later testified that he was the aggressor once the fight spilled into public view. In his earlier claim for $10 million, Bundgaard contended that they were tainted, one and all, by media coverage.
The lawsuit tells quite a story, complete with a number of “co-conspirators”, including then-Senate Ethics Chairman Ron Gould, a trio of attorneys who worked on the ethics investigation and the police department’s polygraph expert, who testified that lie-detector test produced by Bundgaard was a joke.
Among the city’s transgressions: lying to the media, conspiring with the Senate Ethics Committee, disclosing his brush with crime as a young man, blindsiding him with what he claims is false testimony about a previous assault on his girlfriend and oh yeah, hiding records that would have “vindicated” him.
Near as I can tell, he’s referring to a one-page report by a Phoenix motorcycle officer who wrote that Bundgaard wasn’t impaired the night of the freeway fight. Several other officers had said they detected alcohol on the senator’s breath. The motorcycle officer’s report was released in June 2011, but Team Bundgaard didn’t get it, despite several public-records requests.
Clearly, there is only one explanation: Everybody had it in for Bundgaard.
To recap, the ex-girlfriend is lying, at least five police officers are lying and five witnesses are either lying or brainwashed. All part of some built-in bias against men and a dastardly plot by the city to bury Scott Bundgaard, who is coming up on year two of keeping this two-day story in the news.
“The Defendants’ and their co-conspirators’ conduct caused Plaintiff the loss of his reputation for honesty, integrity, non-violence and fair treatment of women,” the lawsuit says. “Their conduct has made it impossible for Plaintiff to find suitable work not only in Arizona, but also within the United States.”
Well, somebody’s conduct did anyway.
Don't these pigs have any real criminals to hunt down????
Judge: La. woman can flip finger in holiday lights
Wow the cops are even threatening to arrest the woman for violating imaganiary laws.
The officer told Childs she would be violating the city’s “obscenity statute”SourceHowever, Denham Springs doesn’t have an obscenity statute
Judge: La. woman can flip finger in holiday lights
Associated Press Thu Dec 20, 2012 7:06 PM
NEW ORLEANS — A Louisiana woman ran afoul of police when she gave her neighbors an unusual holiday greeting, hanging Christmas lights in the shape of a middle finger.
Sarah Childs was in a dispute with some of her neighbors in Denham Springs, just east of Baton Rouge, so she decided to send a message with her decorations. Neighbors complained and police threatened to arrest her, so she and the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana sued the city.
A judge ruled in her favor Thursday.
“I imagine it will be back up before too long,” ACLU of Louisiana executive director Marjorie Esman said of the display.
Childs erected the lights on her roof last month. She has removed them twice — once after a police officer told her she could be fined and again after another officer threatened to arrest her, her lawsuit said.
U.S. District Judge James Brady issued an order temporarily barring city officials from interfering with the display. The two-page order said the city’s “continued efforts” to prevent Childs from displaying her holiday lights will violate her rights to free speech and due process. He scheduled a Jan. 7 hearing in Baton Rouge.
Denham Springs attorney Paeton Burkett said the city will comply with Brady’s order, but she declined to comment on the lawsuit.
“We’re going to sit down with everybody involved and see if there’s any merit to it,” she said.
Mayor Jimmy Durbin and Police Chief Scott Jones, who are named as defendants, didn’t immediately respond to calls seeking comment.
The suit said the police department dispatched an officer to Childs’ home after several neighbors complained directly to the mayor. The officer told Childs she would be violating the city’s “obscenity statute” and could be fined if she didn’t take it down, according to the lawsuit. However, Denham Springs doesn’t have an obscenity statute, the suit said. [Wow reminds me of the Papago Park incident where a Phoenix Park ranger threatened to arrest us for violating an imaginary Phoenix law making it illegal to shoot photos in a park with out a $100 permit.]
Childs removed the lights but put them back up after the ACLU defended her in an open letter to the city. That time, the display showed two hands with extended middle fingers.
After another round of complaints, the city responded with a “collateral attack,” issuing her two tickets, according to the suit. One accused her of obstructing the flow of traffic as she walked down the side of a street. Another ticket accused her of disturbing the peace while singing an impromptu song about her neighborhood dispute while standing in her driveway.
“Childs’ impromptu song allegedly contained some obscenities directed at her neighbors, so the city cited her for simple assault,” the suit said.
The ACLU would not say exactly what the neighborhood dispute was about, and a no one answered at a telephone listing for Childs.
$800,835 settlement with beaten jail inmate OK’d
Source
$800,835 settlement with beaten jail inmate OK’d
By Michael Kiefer The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Dec 20, 2012 4:24 PM
Delano Yanes was beaten in jail by a Maricopa County sheriff’s detention officer in 2003 after he was arrested and charged with murdering his infant son. Then, he was charged with aggravated assault for the fight in the jail.
None of the charges stuck. On Wednesday, the county Board of Supervisors approved a settlement of $800,835 to compensate Yanes, 34, for malicious prosecution on the assault charge.
Prosecutors claimed that Yanes sodomized his 11-month-old son until his heart burst. Later, it was alleged that a detention officer was so enraged at the crime that he decided to mete out justice himself. But a jury acquitted Yanes of murder, and the state later dropped the aggravated-assault charge.
Yanes sued over the jail incident, and in 2010, a civil court jury awarded him $855,000 in compensatory and punitive damages against the county.
But last month, the punitive damages were thrown out when the Arizona Court of Appeals ruled that Yanes had not suffered severe emotional harm or had seen his civil rights violated. The appellate panel, however, upheld $650,000 in damages for prosecuting Yanes for assault without probable cause.
With interest, Yanes would be due more than $813,600, and rather than go back to court, the two sides reached settlement.
20,000 murders caused by Mexico's war on drugs???
Remember that war on drugs in Mexico is being financed by the American government.More than 20,000 missing in Mexico in past 6 years
Associated Press Thu Dec 20, 2012 10:07 PM
MEXICO CITY — A civic organization released a database on Thursday that it says contains official information on more than 20,000 people who disappeared in Mexico over the past six years, a period that also saw thousands of people killed after the government launched a crackdown against drug cartels.
Propuesta Civica, or Civic Proposal, said the database it posted on its website contains details on 20,851 missing people that it says were collected by the federal Attorney General’s Office during the just-ended administration of President Felipe Calderon.
The missing include police officers, bricklayers, housewives, lawyers, students, businessmen and more than 1,200 children under age 11. They are listed one by one with such details as name, age, gender and the date and place where the person disappeared.
The database also includes chilling details of kidnappings, including the case of a man who was taken by a group of gunmen who stormed into his workplace in the city of Gomez Palacio, in the northern state of Durango, and took him away while his co-workers watched.
Another report details the disappearance of three businessmen in the western state of Michoacan, a place dominated by the Knights Templar drug cartel, a quasi-religious organization that controls most of the state. The report says the men were kidnapped in the town of Patzcuaro by gunmen traveling in two pickup trucks.
A spokesman for federal prosecutors, who would not allow his name to be used under the agency’s rules, said the Attorney General’s Office had no knowledge of the document.
Civic Proposal executive director Pilar Talavera said the database doesn’t contain enough information to determine how many of the disappearances are linked to the drug war.
She also said the report has inconsistencies that raise questions about whether all the missing are included.
For instance, the northern state of Baja California, where the border city of Tijuana is located, has only 15 people reported as missing even though it had hundreds of people killed as warring drug gangs fought for control. Baja California is also the state where soldiers in 2009 detained a man who confessed to disposing of at least 300 bodies over a decade by dissolving them in vats of lye.
Mexico City, with 7,137 people on the list, has the largest number of missing in the country, but the capital is one of the cities least affected by drug-related violence.
Despite the inconsistencies, the organization decided to publish the database to pressure the government to release official information on the missing, Talavera said.
“This database is one of the few sources of information that civil society has had access to (and that can help) to start to comprehend the true magnitude of violence in Mexico in the last six years,” she said.
Numbers vary on just how many people have disappeared in recent years. Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission says that 24,000 people were reported missing between 2000 and mid-2012. It says nearly 16,000 bodies found over the years remain unidentified.
The database, which Civic Proposal said it got from a Los Angeles Times reporter, was released three weeks after the Washington Post published a story saying it had received a list of missing people created by the Mexican Attorney General’s Office that recorded more than 25,000 disappearances.
In a letter to new President Enrique Pena, Human Rights Watch’s director for the Americas, Jose Miguel Vivanco, said that if the numbers quoted by the Post were correct, they would “place the wave of disappearances in Mexico that took place during President Felipe Calderon’s six-year administration as the worst in the history of Latin America.”
In Chile, about 1,200 people disappeared during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. In Colombia, non-governmental organizations and authorities say at least 50,000 people have gone missing during more than 40 years of internal violence.
Between 2006 and 2012, Calderon waged a campaign against organized crime that included the unprecedented deployment of thousands of soldiers. It is estimated by some that there were at least 70,000 deaths tied to organized crime violence during his six-year term, which ended Nov. 30.
If one of us serfs claims to be damaged by the government they usually force us to file a law suit and go thru a long and expensive trial. But when our royal government rulers who are part of the system file a claim it sounds like they are paid off rather well and rather quickly with an out of court settlement.
County settles with another official tied to infighting
By Michael Kiefer The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Dec 20, 2012 4:47 PM
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors on Wednesday approved another settlement for a county official caught up in the county’s battles with Sheriff Joe Arpaio and former County Attorney Andrew Thomas from 2008 to 2010.
Deputy County Manager Sandi Wilson settled her lawsuit against the county for $122,000 and a promise of employment until 2016. Among other things, Thomas and Arpaio had named her as a defendant in a federal racketeering lawsuit and had attempted to obtain an indictment against her on other charges.
In a conversation with The Arizona Republic last week, Wilson’s attorney, Michael Manning, said the lawsuit had left her with a “toxic resume” that would prevent her from seeking employment elsewhere.
Supervisors Mary Rose Wilcox and Don Stapley, who both have litigation pending from the Arpaio-Thomas attacks, excused themselves from voting; the remaining three supervisors unanimously approved the settlement.
It was the seventh settlement from the 2008-10 political infighting. Three cases remain active, and the county is in mediation to try to settle those out of court.
The battles started when Stapley was indicted in late 2008 on charges related to his campaign-finance disclosure forms and ended long after Thomas resigned from office in April 2010 in an unsuccessful run for Arizona attorney general.
Along the way, Stapley was indicted again on campaign-fund charges and Wilcox was indicted on charges related to loans she had taken out. Criminal charges were filed against a sitting Superior Court judge, and three other judges were named in the racketeering lawsuit, along with other county officials.
All the cases fell apart after a Superior Court judge ruled that the Wilcox indictment had been filed as retaliation against a political adversary. Thomas was disbarred for bringing the cases. He and Arpaio were spared being charged criminally for their actions, despite a lengthy federal investigation.
To date, $1,397,000 has been awarded in settlements. An additional $975,000 awarded to Wilcox by a federal judge is under appeal in federal court. The following sums do not include the money paid in attorneys fees or the millions of dollars spent to defend the county against the lawsuits:
Retired Judge Gary Donahoe,Stapley and businessman Conley Wolfswinkel, whose offices were raided in attempts to gather evidence against Stapley, still have claims pending in court.
Stapley, who is also represented by Manning, is attempting to stave off admission of certain evidence that may lessen a settlement amount or work against him if his case goes to trial.
U.S. District Judge Neil Wake, who is presiding over all the cases, has ruled in open court that evidence and testimony against Stapley will be limited to what was known at the time that Thomas established probable cause to ask a grand jury to hand up indictments against Stapley.
The Yavapai County Attorney’s Office, which handled the Stapley case briefly, felt there was reason to press on. After the case had been dismissed, Gila County Attorney Daisy Flores wrote an opinion saying that there was probable cause to charge Stapley but that the case had been so badly botched as to make it impossible to try.
Wake also stated in court that information regarding Stapley’s reputation had been discussed publicly. Wake said, “What was out there is all subject to discovery. It seems to me it’s obviously going to be admissible evidence.”
At issue now is the timing of the Flores opinion. Stapley is alleging that his reputation was tarnished by the indictments; attorneys retained by the county are saying that the Flores opinion was widely publicized and comments on what was known at the time Stapley was indicted.
Ex-Yuma teacher gets 5 years in child-porn case
Associated Press Thu Dec 20, 2012 11:29 AM
YUMA — A former teacher at Yuma High School has been sentenced to five years in prison and lifetime probation for possessing child pornography.
Michael Aaron Cox was arrested by members of the Arizona Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force in August after a monthlong Internet investigation. A search of the 37-year-old’s home found pornographic images of children on his computer. He was originally charged with 10 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor but pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted exploitation of a minor in October.
The Yuma Sun reports the former teacher and athletic trainer was formally sentenced last month.
In tiny Texas town, teachers are armed with concealed weapons, a 'better' solution than a security guard
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Thursday, December 20, 2012, 10:41 AM
HARROLD, Texas — In this tiny Texas town, children and their parents don’t give much thought to safety at the community’s lone school — mostly because some of the teachers are carrying concealed weapons.
In remote Harrold, the nearest sheriff’s office is 30 minutes away, and people tend to know — and trust — one another. So the school board voted to let teachers bring guns to school.
“We don’t have money for a security guard, but this is a better solution,” Superintendent David Thweatt said. “A shooter could take out a guard or officer with a visible, holstered weapon, but our teachers have master’s degrees, are older and have had extensive training. And their guns are hidden. We can protect our children.”
In the awful aftermath of last week’s Connecticut elementary school shooting, lawmakers in a growing number of states — including Oklahoma, Missouri, Minnesota, South Dakota and Oregon — have said they will consider laws allowing teachers and school administrators to carry firearms at school.
Texas law bans guns in schools unless the school has given written authorization. Arizona and six other states have similar laws with exceptions for people who have licenses to carry concealed weapons.
Harrold’s school board voted unanimously in 2007 to allow employees to carry weapons. After obtaining a state concealed-weapons permit, each employee who wants to carry a weapon must be approved by the board based on his or her personality and reaction to a crisis, Thweatt said.
Employees also must undergo training in crisis intervention and hostage situations. And they must use bullets that minimize the risk of ricochet, similar to those carried by air marshals on planes.
CaRae Reinisch, who lives in the nearby community of Elliott, said she took her children out of a larger school and enrolled them in Harrold two years ago, partly because she felt they would be safer in a building with armed teachers.
“I think it’s a great idea for trained teachers to carry weapons,” Reinish said. “But I hate that it has come to this.”
The superintendent won’t disclose how many of the school’s 50 employees carry weapons, saying that revealing that number might jeopardize school security.
The school, about 150 miles northwest of Fort Worth near the Oklahoma border, has 103 students from kindergarten through 12th grade. Most of them rarely think about who is carrying a gun.
“This is the first time in a long time that I’ve thought about it,” said Matt Templeton, the principal’s 17-year-old son. “And that’s because of what happened” in Connecticut.
Thweatt said other Texas schools allow teachers to carry weapons, but he would not reveal their locations, saying they are afraid of negative publicity.
The Texas Education Agency said it had not heard of any other schools with such a policy. And the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence did not know of any other districts nationwide that allow school employees to carry concealed handguns.
But that may change soon.
Oklahoma state Rep. Mark McCullough said he is working on a bill that would allow teachers and administrators to receive firearms training through the Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training, which would authorize them to carry weapons at school and at school events. Other states are proposing or considering similar measures.
However, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder this week vetoed legislation that would have allowed concealed weapons in schools, churches and day care centers, saying he seeks a more “thoughtful review” that includes school emergency policies and mental health-related issues.
In Texas, guns have an honored place in the state’s culture, and politicians often describe owning a gun as essential to being Texan. At the state Capitol, concealed handgun license holders are allowed to skip the metal detectors that scan visitors.
Gov. Rick Perry has indicated he would prefer to give gun owners the widest possible latitude. Just days after the Connecticut attack, Perry said permit holders should be able to carry concealed weapons in any public place.
Last year, many Texas lawmakers supported a plan to give college students and professors with concealed handgun licenses the right to carry guns on campus, but the measure failed.
Opponents insist that having more people armed at a school, especially teachers or administrators who aren’t trained to deal with crime on a daily basis, could lead to more injuries and deaths. They point to an August shooting outside the Empire State Building, where police killed a laid-off clothing designer after he fatally shot his former colleague. Nine bystanders were wounded by police gunfire, ricochets and fragments.
“You are going to put teachers, people teaching 6-year-olds in a school, and expect them to respond to an active-shooter situation?” said Ladd Everitt, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, who called the idea of arming teachers “madness.”
Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner said she would not have felt better if teachers at her children’s Seattle school had been armed during a May shooting at a nearby cafe. A gunman killed four people at the cafe and another woman during a carjacking before killing himself. The school went on lockdown as a precaution.
“It would be highly concerning to me to know that guns were around my kids each and every day. ... Increasing our arms is not the answer,” said Rowe-Finkbeiner, co-founder and CEO of MomsRising.org.
Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign, said focusing on arming teachers distracts from the “real things” that could help prevent a school shooting “and at worse it furthers a dangerous conversation that only talks about guns as protection without a discussion about the serious risks they present.”
As the debate continues, Harrold’s school plans to leave its policy unchanged.
“Nothing is 100 percent at all. ... But hope makes for a terrible plan, hoping that (a tragedy) won’t happen,” Thweatt said. “My question is: What have you done about it? How have you planned?”
County settles with another official tied to infighting
When Maricopa county government bureaucrats claim damages against
the county from this article it sounds like they are paid off very and paid very quickly.
5 years in prison for looking at dirty pictures???
Jesus, don't these pigs have any real criminals to hunt down????
In tiny Texas town, teachers are armed with concealed weapons
Source
Air Force asks ESPN for help in analyzing drone footage
Source
Air Force asks ESPN for help in analyzing drone footage
Published December 20, 2012
Predators, Raptors and More: The Wide World of Drones
The U.S. Air Force confirms a new addition to its unmanned arsenal.
The Air Force is tapping ESPN to help sift and analyze the massive amounts of video footage from drone missions.
As the number of unmanned aircraft around the world and the flood of footage being transmitted in real-time keeps expanding, the Air Force is faced with the task of pouring through the data. Enter: ESPN.
"We need to be careful we don't drown in the data," David Deptula, a former Air Force lieutenant general, said, according to a report in USA Today.
Drone video transmissions returned some 327,384 hours of surveillance video in 2011. Currently, much of what drones do is complete "pattern of life" missions, which involve recording compounds for days at a time.
The Air Force turned to the sports cable network to see how it sorts through the large amounts of game footage it gets everyday, USA Today reports. A meeting between Air Force officials and ESPN did not, however, result in any technological breakthroughs.
One Air Force official said the visit with ESPN had helped with developing skills and expertise, particularly in training.
Military turns to ESPN to help analyze drone footage
SourceMilitary turns to ESPN to help analyze drone footage
By Jim Michaels, USA TODAY11:54p.m. EST December 19, 2012
JOINT BASE LANGLEY-EUSTIS, Va. – Can SportsCenter teach the military something about combating terrorists?
After rapidly expanding the number of drones around the world, the Air Force is now reaching out to ESPN and other experts in video analysis to keep up with the flood of footage the unmanned aircraft are transmitting.
"They're looking at anything and everything they can right now," said Air Force Col. Mike Shortsleeve, commander of a unit here that monitors drone videos.
The remote-controlled aircraft are mounted with cameras that transmit real-time video of terrorism suspects to military analysts in the USA.
The amount of video streaming into this base, one of a number of sites that monitors and analyzes the images, is immense. Drone video transmissions rose to 327,384 hours last year, up from 4,806 in 2001.
Given the huge amount of feeds, the Air Force has launched an aggressive effort to seek out technology or techniques that will help them process video without adding more people to stare at monitors.
"We need to be careful we don't drown in the data," said David Deptula, a retired Air Force lieutenant general and a senior military scholar at the Air Force Academy.
Air Force officials have met with the sports cable network ESPN to discuss how it handles large amounts of video that stream in. The visit resulted in no technological breakthroughs, but helped in developing training and expertise, the Air Force said.
Here at Langley, Air Force analysts sit for hours at a stretch in a vast room that is illuminated only by bank after bank of monitors. The drones are piloted elsewhere, often at a base in Nevada, but the video arrives here. The video is analyzed and fused with other types of intelligence, such as still photos or communications intercepts.
Much of what drones do now are called "pattern of life" missions which involve staring down at a compound for days. That information can help avoid civilian casualties, for example, by determining when children leave for school every day before a raid is launched.
It can also tell military analysts when something seems amiss, perhaps signaling the arrival of a terrorist leader. It's time consuming work that could be made more efficient if there were technology that could automate the monitoring of videos, looking for signs that seem out of the ordinary.
"The real value added would be if I could have that tool go back and say, 'How many times has this vehicle appeared in this geographic area over the last 30 days?' and it automatically searches volumes of full-motion video," said Col. Jeffrey Kruse, commander of the 480th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing.
The importance of video analysis is apparent in the hunt for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
It took 6,000 hours of surveillance video to pinpoint the location of the al-Qaeda leader who oversaw a bloody insurrection in Iraq as drones followed the movements of his known associates. On June 7, 2006, two U.S. Air Force jets dropped two 500-pound bombs on the building in which he was located in Iraq.
"You can't catch bad guys unless you know where they are and what they're doing," Deptula said.
Feds cover up DEA murder??? Probably!!!!
LAPD says DEA not cooperating on probe into suspect’s death
SourceDEA not cooperating on probe into suspect’s death, LAPD says
December 21, 2012 | 7:17 am
Los Angeles Police Department officials said their efforts to investigate an in-custody death of a drug suspect has been hampered by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which has refused to allow its agents to cooperate for more than two years.
The suspect died shortly after he was arrested in a DEA operation, according to LAPD records. An autopsy found that the suspect's ribs had been fractured in 21 places and coroner's officials concluded that the injuries were caused by "blunt force." The fractures led to internal bleeding, which ultimately killed the man, the coroner found.
Without assistance from the DEA, they cannot determine how the man's injuries occurred, according to documents reviewed by The Times.
The LAPD believes DEA agents may have caused the injuries when they placed the suspect on his stomach while handcuffing him, according to the documents. But without being able to interview the DEA agents who made the arrest, it's impossible for the detectives to determine whether excessive force was used.
Dawn Dearden, a spokeswoman for the DEA, said the U.S. Justice Department's own Office of the Inspector General is conducting an investigation into the death to determine whether DEA agents broke federal civil rights laws by using excessive force when arresting the man. Dearden said the DEA has provided the LAPD with some information and documentation about the incident.
"However, it is not uncommon for an agent under multiple ongoing investigations to decline specific law enforcement interviews until an inspector general investigation is completed," she said.
LAPD officials said they need to conduct their own homicide investigation. Chief Charlie Beck outlined the department's struggles with the case in a report recently submitted to the Los Angeles Police Commission. Beck reports to the civilian panel on all serious use-of-force cases and in-custody deaths.
Beck wrote that his detectives had made "numerous requests" to the DEA for interviews with the involved agents but have repeatedly "been met with negative results."
Chicago cop admits drinking before fatal shooting, according to court filing
Source
Chicago cop admits drinking before fatal shooting, according to court filing
By Jeremy Gorner, Steve Mills and Stacy St. Clair, Chicago Tribune reporters
9:15 a.m. CST, December 21, 2012
A Chicago police officer involved in a controversial fatal shooting admitted that he drank "multiple" beers before he went to work that night, but the city waited more than five hours to give him a Breathalyzer test, according to a new court filing by an attorney for the slain man's estate.
A video of the incident shows Officer Gildardo Sierra firing three shots into Flint Farmer's back as the Chicago man lay bleeding on a parkway early on June 7, 2011. The incident was the third shooting by Sierra in six months — and the second fatality, records show.
Hours after Thursday's filing, the city settled with Farmer's estate in its civil rights lawsuit. Neither side would disclose the financial terms of the settlement.
The Police Department ruled the Farmer shooting justified, but Superintendent Garry McCarthy later told the Tribune that he considers the case "a big problem" and that the officer involved should not have been on the street given his history of shootings.
Thursday's filing by the attorney for Farmer's estate indicates that Sierra admitted during a psychological evaluation that he drank "multiple beers" before starting the midnight shift on the night Farmer was killed. The psychological report also said that after the incident Sierra "was nervous ... about his then-upcoming mandatory alcohol breath test because he might test positive for alcohol," according to the court filing.
The filing does not say how many beers Sierra purportedly drank or what his blood-alcohol test showed.
Sierra, however, denied consuming any alcohol while being treated at Little Company of Mary Hospital in Evergreen Park shortly after the 1:45 a.m. shooting, according to the filing.
The city waited about 5 hours and 20 minutes after the shooting — and about 9 hours after Sierra's shift began — to administer the alcohol test, the filing said.
The Independent Police Review Authority, the city agency that investigates officer-involved shootings, referred all three incidents to the Cook County state's attorney's office so prosecutors could determine whether the shootings violated state criminal law, IPRA chief Ilana Rosenzweig said Thursday.
A spokeswoman for State's Attorney Anita Alvarez said the investigation is ongoing. The Tribune has reported that the FBI is also investigating the shootings.
The alleged failure to quickly administer a Breathalyzer test to Sierra after Farmer's shooting reflects what has been a problem in the department. A December 2007 Tribune investigation, "Shielded From the Truth," showed that supervisors often waited hours to administer breath tests to officers, both on- and off-duty, raising questions about how aggressively the department investigates shootings involving officers.
Indeed, the Tribune found that department officials sometimes considered these shootings administrative matters and treated the officers with deference rather than matters deserving rigorous scrutiny.
That crucial delay comes at a cost: It allows an officer's blood-alcohol level to drop, sometimes under the legal level of intoxication. That forces prosecutors — if they bring a criminal case — to extrapolate the officer's blood-alcohol content, a move that defense lawyers typically challenge.
The delay in administering a Breathalyzer test also played a major role in the trial earlier this year of Officer Richard Bolling, who was off duty when he struck and killed a 13-year-old boy riding his bicycle in May 2009.
Bolling, who was stopped by police driving the wrong way down a one-way street not far from the crash scene, wasn't given a field sobriety test until about two hours after the crash. Nearly another three hours later, he was given the Breathalyzer and blew a 0.079, just under the state legal limit of 0.08.
According to testimony, a supervisor told other officers to wait to test Bolling until higher-ranking commanders arrived, leaving Bolling to sober up in the back of a police car. Cook County prosecutors alleged that the supervisors gave Bolling preferential treatment.
In January, a jury found him guilty of aggravated DUI, reckless homicide and leaving the scene of a fatal accident. The veteran narcotics officer was sentenced to three years in prison.
Sierra, 32, who joined the department 10 years ago, was stripped of his police powers and has been working at the city's 311 center since the shooting.
He is paid about $75,000 a year, according to 2011 city data.
Before Farmer's death, Sierra, a patrol officer in the Englewood district, had wounded a 19-year-old man in a shooting in March 2011 and killed Darius Pinex, 27, in January 2011.
In Sierra's deposition for the lawsuit, he testified that he wasn't given a "mandatory psychological debriefing" as required by the department following both those shootings, according to Thursday's filing.
Sierra continued working the overnight shift in Englewood after the first two shootings, typically patrolling from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. He was on duty shortly before 2 a.m. on June 7 when he and a partner responded to a domestic-disturbance call allegedly involving Farmer and his girlfriend in the 6200 block of South Honore Avenue.
Confronted by the officers about beating his girlfriend and her 3-year-old daughter, Farmer allegedly fled through an empty lot to South Wolcott Avenue, one street west. He got as far as the parkway when the officer yelled at him.
Police reports said Farmer put his hands in his pocket and pulled out a dark object.
"Don't do it," a witness heard an officer shout. The warning was followed by gunfire.
Farmer, a 29-year-old unemployed sales clerk, was shot in the abdomen and thigh and fell to the ground.
Moments later, a squad car responded to the scene, officials said, and captured video of Sierra as he stepped onto the parkway, walked about the unarmed Farmer in a semicircle and fired three more shots.
Farmer, who was not carrying a gun, was pronounced dead at the scene. A cellphone was found near his body.
Sierra fired 16 bullets, seven of which hit Farmer, according to police records.
After Farmer's death, McCarthy implemented a policy in which an officer's history is reviewed after a shooting, officials have said.
jgorner@tribune.com
smmills@tribune.com
sstclair@tribune.com
And I suspect the ban won't apply to cops!!!!
The article didn't say that but from this line I think it won't apply to the police:
San Francisco moves to ban hollow-point bullets
San Francisco moves to ban hollow-point bullets
"Ammunition designed especially for law enforcement and the military has no reason to be in our homes and on our streets"
Source
San Francisco moves to ban hollow-point bullets
Associated Press
Posted: 12/21/2012 11:38:13 AM PST
SAN FRANCISCO -- Hollow-point bullets and other ammunition designed to cause extreme damage could soon be banned in San Francisco.
Mayor Ed Lee, Supervisor Malia Cohen and police Chief Greg Suhr said on Thursday that high-powered, military-style weapons and ammunition have no place in the city.
The San Francisco Chronicle (http://bit.ly/Wta69J) says Cohen will introduce legislation next month that would ban hollow-point bullets and other ammunition meant to cause extreme damage. The law will also require that sellers notify police when more than 500 rounds of ammunition are being purchased.
The announcement comes a week after the shootings of 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut school.
An earlier San Francisco plan to ban automatic weapons was thwarted by the court. The mayor says the latest proposal will likely face legal challenges.
------
Information from: San Francisco Chronicle, http://www.sfgate.com
S.F. seeks to crack down on ammunition
Marisa Lagos, Published 5:03 pm, Thursday, December 20, 2012
Saying that high-powered, military-style weapons and ammunition [The Hague Convention of 1899, Declaration III, prohibits the use in international warfare of hollow point bullets] have no place in San Francisco, city leaders on Thursday announced a proposal to ban the possession of hollow bullets and require anyone buying more than 500 rounds at a time to notify the Police Department.
The announcement by Mayor Ed Lee, Supervisor Malia Cohen and Police Chief Greg Suhr came less than a week after the Connecticut school massacre in which 26 people were killed by a gunman wielding a semiautomatic Bushmaster rifle. San Francisco tried banning semiautomatic weapons altogether in city limits, but was stymied by the courts; Lee said the latest proposal will also probably face legal challenges, but city officials decided "we've got to do something more."
The legislation, which will be introduced by Cohen Jan. 15, would bar anyone from possessing hollow-point bullets and other ammunition meant to cause extreme damage, and require sellers - including online stores - to automatically notify police when anyone in San Francisco purchases more than 500 rounds of ammunition at a time. Cohen said she is responding not just to the recent school shooting but to ongoing violence in her district.
"Ammunition designed especially for law enforcement and the military has no reason to be in our homes and on our streets," Lee said, adding that he supports Sen. Dianne Feinstein's move to ban assault rifles at the federal level and of state lawmakers' proposals to tighten background checks and other requirements.
Dr. Andre Campbell, a trauma surgeon at San Francisco General Hospital, said he has worked in emergency rooms for 24 years and watched injuries become more devastating as high-powered weapons and bullets have become more commonplace.
"When they strike a victim, it's like a bomb going off," said Campbell. "The reality is, there are people killed every day with these weapons."
Suhr, who was standing next to a table of artillery claimed by police in last week's gun buyback, said getting even one weapon off the streets makes a difference.
"I would say to the NRA and anyone else who says these guns are not a problem - then if it's not a problem, if it's not making a difference, it shouldn't make a difference banning it," he said.
- Marisa Lagos
SNIP
E-mail: cityinsider@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SFCityInsider.
NRA - Largest gun control organization in America???
Many people have called the NRA the largest gun control organization in the USA.If the NRA is calling for cops to have guns in schools instead of teachers I certainly agree with the folks that say the NRA is the largest gun organization in the USA.
The NRA should be protecting the right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms, not creating a jobs program for cops.
The NRA should be demanding that teachers and school employees be allowed to carry guns to work.
Newtown: NRA calls for armed officer in every school
Associated Press Fri Dec 21, 2012 11:31 AM
The most powerful gun-rights lobby in the U.S. said Friday it wants to address gun violence by having an armed police officer in every school in the country. [What rubbish!!!! We need less cops, not more of them!!!!!]
The comments by the National Rifle Association came exactly a week after a gunman killed 26 people at a Connecticut school, including 20 children ages 6 and 7. The comments were the group’s first substantial ones since the shooting, while pressure has mounted in Washington and elsewhere for more measures against gun violence.
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” said the NRA’s executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre.
At least two protesters broke up his announcement, despite tight security. One man held up a large red banner that said “NRA killing our kids.” The protesters were taken away by security, shouting that guns in schools are not the answer.
The 4.3 million-member National Rifle Association may be facing its toughest challenge in the wake of national horror over last week’s killing of children, many of them shot multiple times and at close range by high-powered rifle.
LaPierre brushed aside the idea that gun control legislation is needed, saying, “20,000 other laws have failed.” Instead, he blamed video games, movies and music videos for exposing children to a violent culture day in and day out.
He also blamed the media, saying it has “demonized lawful gun owners” and “rewards (mass shooters) with wall-to-wall attention.”
As “some have tried to exploit tragedy for political gain, we have remained respectfully silent,” he added.
He refused to take any questions from the audience.
Reaction to the NRA comments was sharp.
“Their press conference was a shameful evasion of the crisis facing our country,” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was outspoken for more gun control measures even before the shooting, said in a statement. “Instead of offering solutions to a problem they have helped create, they offered a paranoid, dystopian vision of a more dangerous and violent America where everyone is armed and no place is safe.” [The NRA's solution of a cop in every classroom isn't much different then Michael Bloomberg's. They both want to take guns away from the public and give them to the government!]
LaPierre announced that former Rep. Asa Hutchison will lead an NRA program that will develop a model security plan for schools that relies on armed volunteers.
Shortly after LaPierre spoke, four people were reported killed in a mass shooting along a rural road in Pennslvania.
The NRA largely disappeared from public debate after the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, choosing atypical silence as a strategy as the nation sought answers after the rampage. The NRA temporarily took down its Facebook page and kept quiet on Twitter.
Five more funerals or memorials were being held Friday in Newtown.
Since the shooting, President Barack Obama has demanded “real action, right now” against gun violence and called on the NRA to join the effort. His administration has been moving quickly after several congressional gun-rights supporters said they would consider new legislation to control firearms.
Obama has said he wants proposals on reducing gun violence that he can take to Congress by January, and he put Vice President Joe Biden, a gun control advocate with decades of experience in the Senate, in charge of the effort.
The president said in a video released early Friday that the White House has received an outpouring of support for stricter gun laws over the past week. “We hear you,” he said.
A “We the People” petition on the White House website allows the public to submit petitions. Nearly 200,000 people have urged Obama to address gun control in one petition, and petitions related to gun violence have amassed more than 400,000 signatures.
At the same time, however, gun shops across the country have reported higher sales, including of assault weapons. A spike in gun sales is not uncommon after mass shootings.
Obama has already asked Congress to reinstate an assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 and pass legislation that would end a provision that allows people to purchase firearms from private parties without a background check.
The president also has indicated that he wants Congress to pursue the possibility of limiting high-capacity magazines, which the 20-year-old gunman used in last week’s shooting.
Obama wants to build on a rare national mood after years of hesitation by politicians across the country to take on the issue of gun violence — and the NRA.
“I’ve been doing this for 17 years, and I’ve never seen something like this in terms of response,” said Brian Malte, spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, based in Washington, D.C. “The whole dynamic depends on whether the American public and people in certain states have had enough.”
The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism released a report Thursday showing that the Newtown shooting has led to more discussion about gun policy on social media than previous rampages. The report says users advocating for gun control were more numerous than those defending current gun laws.
Legislators, mostly Democrats, in California and New York plan a push to tighten what are already some of the most stringent state gun-control laws.
Meanwhile, Republicans in Oklahoma, Tennessee, South Carolina and Florida have called for making it easier for teachers and other adults to have weapons in schools.
A Pew Research Center survey taken Dec. 17-19, after the shooting, registered an increase in the percentage of Americans who prioritize gun control (49 percent) over gun owner rights (42 percent).
Those figures were statistically even in July. The December telephone survey included 1,219 adults in all 50 states. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.
———
Associated Press writer Philip Elliott contributed.
Marijuana, Not Yet Legal for Californians, Might as Well Be
SourceMarijuana, Not Yet Legal for Californians, Might as Well Be
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: December 20, 2012
LOS ANGELES — Let Colorado and Washington be the marijuana trailblazers. Let them struggle with the messy details of what it means to actually legalize the drug. Marijuana is, as a practical matter, already legal in much of California.
No matter that its recreational use remains technically against the law. Marijuana has, in many parts of this state, become the equivalent of a beer in a paper bag on the streets of Greenwich Village. It is losing whatever stigma it ever had and still has in many parts of the country, including New York City, where the kind of open marijuana use that is common here would attract the attention of any passing law officer.
“It’s shocking, from my perspective, the number of people that we all know who are recreational marijuana users,” said Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor. “These are incredibly upstanding citizens: Leaders in our community, and exceptional people. Increasingly, people are willing to share how they use it and not be ashamed of it.”
Marijuana can be smelled in suburban backyards in neighborhoods from Hollywood to Topanga Canyon as dusk falls — what in other places is known as the cocktail hour — often wafting in from three sides. In some homes in Beverly Hills and San Francisco, it is offered at the start of a dinner party with the customary ease of a host offering a chilled Bombay Sapphire martini.
Lighting up a cigarette (the tobacco kind) can get you booted from many venues in this rigorously antitobacco state. But no one seemed to mind as marijuana smoke filled the air at an outdoor concert at the Hollywood Bowl in September or even in the much more intimate, enclosed atmosphere of the Troubadour in West Hollywood during a Mountain Goats concert last week.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former Republican governor, ticked off the acceptance of open marijuana smoking in a list of reasons he thought Venice was such a wonderful place for his morning bicycle rides. With so many people smoking in so many places, he said in an interview this year, there was no reason to light up one’s own joint.
“You just inhale, and you live off everyone else,” said Mr. Schwarzenegger, who as governor signed a law decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana.
Some Californians react disdainfully to anyone from out of state who still harbors illicit associations with the drug. Bill Maher, the television host, was speaking about the prevalence of marijuana smoking at dinner parties hosted by Sue Mengers, a retired Hollywood agent famous for her high-powered gatherings of actors and journalists, in an interview after her death last year. “I used to bring her pot,” he said. “And I wasn’t the only one.”
When a reporter sought to ascertain whether this was an on-the-record conversation, Mr. Maher responded tartly: “Where do you think you are? This is California in the year 2011.”
John Burton, the state Democratic chairman, said he recalled an era when the drug was stigmatized under tough antidrug laws. He called the changes in thinking toward marijuana one of the two most striking shifts in public attitude he had seen in 40 years here (the other was gay rights).
“I can remember when your second conviction of having a single marijuana cigarette would get you two to 20 in San Quentin,” he said.
In a Field Poll of California voters conducted in October 2010, 47 percent of respondents said they had smoked marijuana at least once, and 50 percent said it should be legalized. The poll was taken shortly before Californians voted down, by a narrow margin, an initiative to decriminalize marijuana.
“In a Republican year, the legalization came within two points,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant who worked on the campaign in favor of the initiative. He said that was evidence of the “fact that the public has evolved on the issue and is ahead of the pols.”
A study by the California Office of Traffic Safety last month found that motorists were more likely to be driving under the influence of marijuana than under the influence of alcohol.
Still, there are limits. No matter how much attitudes in California may have changed, it remains illegal in most of the country — as Californians have been reminded by a series of crackdowns by the Justice Department on medical marijuana here. People who use the drug recreationally, who said they would think nothing of offering a visitor a joint upon walking through the door, declined to be quoted by name, citing the risks to career and professional concerns.
That was the case even as they talked about marijuana becoming commonly consumed by professionals and not just, as one person put it, activists and aging hippies. Descriptions of marijuana being offered to arriving guests at parties, as an alternative to a beer, are common.
In places like Venice and Berkeley, marijuana has been a cultural presence, albeit an underground one, since the 1960s. It began moving from the edges after voters approved the legalization of medical marijuana in 1996.
That has clearly been a major contributor to the mainstreaming of marijuana. There is no longer any need for distasteful and legally compromising entanglements with old-fashioned drug dealers, several marijuana users said, because it is now possible to buy from a medical marijuana shop or a friend, or a friend of a friend growing it for ostensibly medical purposes.
That has also meant, several users said,¸that the quality of marijuana is more reliable and varied, and there are fewer concerns about subsidizing a criminal network. It also means, it seems, prices here are lower than they are in many parts of the country.
Mr. Newsom — who said he did not smoke marijuana himself — said that the ubiquity of the drug had led him to believe that laws against it were counterproductive and archaic. He supports its legalization, a notable position for a Democrat widely considered one of the leading contenders to be the next governor.
“These laws just don’t make sense anymore,” he said. “It’s time for politicians to come out of the closet on this.”
In this case a 6 year old Tucson boy brought a gun to school, probably because he was afraid he would be shot like the children in Connecticut.
The cops used that as an excuse to run his fathers name thru their computers looking for arrest warrants, and sadly his father had a warrant for his arrest and was jailed.
I am sure that is the REAL reason the cops have their silly zero tolerance programs for trivial traffic and other violations.
In Mesa the cops routinely shake down people for minor, trivial jay walking violations at the light rail station on Sycamore and Main Street.
Again I suspect the main reason for doing that is not to prevent jaywalking but so the cops can run everybody's name they stop thru the computer looking for arrest warrants.
I also say it is a jobs program for cops, and a lame excuse to raise revenue for the city of Mesa. I suspect those are also other reasons the cops do it.
Tucson boy found with gun in backpack at school
Associated Press Fri Dec 21, 2012 9:52 PM
TUCSON -- Authorities say a 6-year-old boy who took a handgun to a Tucson school in his backpack has been turned over to state child-welfare officials.
Tucson police said the unidentified child became ill late Thursday morning and was sent to the nurse’s office at the Amphitheater School District school.
As the boy was being prepared to be sent home, a staff member found the handgun in the backpack.
School officials called 911 and police came to the school.
The Arizona Daily Star reports that police discovered the father had a felony warrant for a parole violation.
The father was arrested Thursday night, and police said charges were pending.
His name hadn’t been released as of Friday.
Investigators said the boy’s mother was questioned and released.
They added that it remained unclear who owns the gun that the boy brought to school.
Of course that is probably something expected of politicians who will lie and say anything to get elected.
Obama also lied to and sold out the the gays, pot smokers and anti-war folks to get their votes, so it's not earth shaking news that he also lied to and sold out the Latino voters.
Obama administration sets deportation record: 409,849
By Alan Gomez Associated Press Fri Dec 21, 2012 9:02 PM
For the fourth year in a row, the Obama administration set a record for the number of people it deported. In 2012, the total reached 409,849.
President Obama has received a lot of support from Hispanic voters, who voted for him 71-27 percent over Republican challenger Mitt Romney in the November elections. But his deportation record has remained a major disappointment to immigrant rights groups throughout his first term.
The number of people deported under Obama has risen in each of his four years in office, culminating in the record set in fiscal year 2012.
“That’s a dubious accomplishment,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, which supports a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s 11million illegal immigrants. “In reality, these numbers reflect the urgency with which our government needs to create a better immigration process. Instead of spending our limited resources on deportations, we need laws that strengthen our families, our communities and our economy.”
Department of Homeland Security officials say the criticism is misguided, since they are not just increasing the number of people they deport. Over Obama’s first term, the department has increased the percentage of deportees who are convicted criminals or fall into other high-priority categories.
During President George W. Bush’s last year in office, 33 percent of the people deported by the U.S. were convicted criminals. The Obama administration has increased that percentage each year, reaching 55 percent in 2012.
In all, 96 percent of the people deported fall into Homeland Security’s priority categories, including recent border-crossers, repeat immigration violators and fugitives from immigration court.
“While the FY 2012 removals indicate that we continue to make progress in focusing resources on criminal and priority aliens, with more convicted criminals being removed from the country than ever before, we are constantly looking for ways to ensure that we are doing everything we can to utilize our resources in a way that maximizes public safety,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton said in a statement.
From this article it sounds like professional and college sports teams think they have some type of God given right to keep you from gambling. What rubbish!!!!
Sadly it sounds like the US Congress has sold out to these sport teams passing laws making gambling illegal just for them.
Leagues can sue N.J. over sports betting
By David Porter Associated Press Sat Dec 22, 2012 8:37 AM
NEWARK, N.J. — New Jersey’s battle with the four major professional sports leagues and the NCAA will continue after a judge on Friday rejected arguments that the leagues couldn’t prove they would be harmed if the state moves ahead with its plans to allow sports gambling.
In denying the state’s request to dismiss the lawsuit by the NBA, NHL, NFL, Major League Baseball and the NCAA, U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp agreed that they have standing to file the suit because expanding legal sports betting to New Jersey would negatively affect perception of their games.
In his ruling, Shipp cited studies offered by the leagues that showed fans’ negative attitudes toward game-fixing and sports gambling.
“While most of these studies alone may not constitute a direct causal link between legalized gambling and negative issues of perception on the part of Plaintiffs’ fans, sufficient support to draw this conclusion exists,” Shipp wrote.
New Jersey also has argued in court papers that a 1990s law prohibiting sports gambling in all but four states is unconstitutional, and Shipp ordered that a date for oral argument on that issue will be issued after Jan. 20.
The federal law prohibited sports gambling in all states but Nevada, where bettors can gamble on single games, and three other states that were allowed to offer multi-game parlay betting. New Jersey has argued the law usurps the authority of state legislatures and discriminates by “grandfathering” in some states.
On Friday, a nationwide poll released by Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind found that 51 percent of Americans support making sports gambling legal everywhere.
The leagues filed suit in August after Gov. Chris Christie vowed to defy a federal ban on sports wagering. Christie signed a sports betting law in January, limiting bets to the Atlantic City casinos and the state’s horse racing tracks.
New Jersey has said it plans to license sports betting as soon as January, and in October published regulations governing licenses. But the state agreed to give the leagues 30 days’ notice before it grants any licenses and hasn’t done so yet, the state attorney general’s office said last week.
The state, represented by former U.S. solicitor general Theodore Olson, had argued before Shipp last Tuesday that the leagues are as popular as they’ve ever been despite the existence of legal gambling in Nevada and more widespread illegal gambling.
The NCAA has said it will relocate several championship events scheduled to be held in New Jersey next year because of the state’s sports gambling push.
And from the point of being a fantastic government welfare program that gives billions of dollars in corporate welfare to companies in the military industrial complex the BioWatch program is a huge success.
Troubled BioWatch program at a crossroads
By David Willman, Los Angeles Times
December 21, 2012, 4:14 p.m.
WASHINGTON — Year after year, health officials meeting at invitation-only government conferences leveled with one another about Biowatch, the nation's system for detecting deadly pathogens that might be unleashed into the air by terrorists.
They shared stories of repeated false alarms — mistaken warnings of germ attacks from Los Angeles to New York City. Some questioned whether BioWatch worked at all.
They did not publicize their misgivings. Indeed, the sponsor of the conferences, the U.S. Homeland Security Department, insists that BioWatch's operations, in more than 30 cities, be kept mostly secret.
Now, congressional investigators want Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to open the books on the 9-year-old program and explain why $3.1 billion in additional spending is warranted.
The move by the House Energy and Commerce Committee — spurred by reports in the Los Angeles Times about BioWatch's deficiencies — puts the program at a crossroads.
On one side is mounting evidence that the technology does not work. On the other are companies eager to tap federal contracts, politicians fearful of voting against any program created to fight terrorism, and a top Homeland Security official who says the program is functioning properly.
Government records show that BioWatch signaled attacks more than 100 times when none had occurred. Nor is the system sensitive enough to reliably detect low yet infectious concentrations of such pathogens as anthrax, smallpox or plague, according to specialists familiar with test results and computer modeling. Another defect is BioWatch's inability to distinguish between particular pathogens that are genetically similar, but benign.
Lab and field tests found similar problems in the latest technology intended for BioWatch, "Generation 3." The congressional investigators are seeking internal documents illuminating BioWatch's performance, plus the private comments of Napolitano's top science and technology advisor, Dr. Tara O'Toole, who recommended killing Generation 3.
O'Toole's skepticism is shared by Dr. Donald A. Henderson, a renowned epidemiologist who led the global eradication of smallpox. Henderson, a federal anti-terrorism advisor when BioWatch was launched in 2003, says he has yet to see a "scientific justification" for it.
"It has never stood the test of rationality," Henderson said. "This whole concept is just preposterous."
Political ties
But as Napolitano weighs whether to deploy Generation 3 — at the cost of $3.1 billion over its first five years — the program will not be easy to scale back.
The company in line to install Generation 3, Northrop Grumman Corp., is a major donor to federal campaigns with a broad presence in Washington.
From 2004 to 2012, the company's political action committee gave more than $6 million to congressional candidates, campaign finance records show. Northrop Grumman, a top defense contractor, ranked No. 10 this year among all PAC donors to congressional campaigns.
Northrop Grumman also hired the former head of BioWatch, Dr. Jeffrey W. Runge, as an advisor to assist its pursuit of the Generation 3 contract.
On Sept. 27, Runge told invitees to the Harvard Faculty Club that a survey he designed for what he called "homeland security related professionals" had found support for deploying the new technology, regardless of potential shortcomings.
Rather than wait for more research to refine Generation 3, Runge told the gathering, "the respondents seem to be saying … 'Deploy the detectors, even if they can't pick up every intentional pathogen or genetic variation, and deal with the problems later.'"
Runge, who provided his prepared remarks to The Times, said Northrop Grumman solicited his advice a few months after he left the government in 2008 and paid him an hourly rate. The consulting arrangement ended in summer 2009, he said.
Runge said the company paid him to explain how the Homeland Security Department "is thinking, how Congress is thinking, about the future of biodetection." Among those he briefed, Runge said, was Northrop Grumman's project manager for Generation 3.
In 2010 and 2011, Northrop Grumman donated a total of $100,000 to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group, which, beginning in July, circulated three commentaries supporting federal funding for BioWatch and Generation 3. The donations were disclosed in the group's annual reports.
Steven P. Bucci, a Heritage Foundation senior fellow, wrote on July 11, "BioWatch is far from an 'unnecessary expenditure.' Congress should thus continue to fund the program."
The third Heritage essay, issued Dec. 12 and also written by Bucci, said that although BioWatch was "only marginally effective," Napolitano and President Obama should stay the course. "Cutting funding to this project," he wrote, "leaves us vulnerable in a way that will cripple our future security." Bucci said his writings were his own.
Asked for comment, a spokesman for Northrop Grumman, Brandon R. Belote III, said the company "recognizes the importance of participating in the democratic process."
For politicians determined to appear resolute against terrorism, fully funding BioWatch might carry less risk than scaling it back.
"If somebody cancels the program, and a week later there's a release, they'll never, ever recover from making that decision," said George Mason University microbiologist Stephen Prior, who co-wrote a 2004 National Defense University study of BioWatch. "If they don't make that decision, they can't be wrong."
Meanwhile, the Homeland Security Department's chief medical officer, Dr. Alexander Garza, has assured Congress that BioWatch is performing effectively. In March, Garza told a House subcommittee that the Generation 3 system was "right where it needs to be," but he did not cite the deficiencies found by the tests of prototype sensors.
On Sept. 13, Garza told another congressional hearing that, in his view, none of the existing system's mistaken detections of benign organisms as lethal pathogens were false alarms. Though each of the laboratory-confirmed results signaled potential terrorist attacks, Garza asserted that they were not false alarms because authorities never ordered evacuations or other emergency measures.
The panel members voiced concerns about BioWatch. None, however, pressed Garza to explain his basis for defending BioWatch's misidentifications of the harmless organisms. Nor did they question Garza about the system's poor sensitivity.
Eroded confidence
When he announced the program in his 2003 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush said BioWatch would "protect our people and our homeland." He called it "the nation's first early-warning network of sensors to detect biological attack."
BioWatch units placed in public places suck air through composite filters all day and night. Once every 24 hours, the filters are delivered to public health laboratories, where technicians search for the DNA of the targeted pathogens. Under Generation 3, BioWatch would be converted to automated sensors, each a "lab in a box," designed to both capture and test samples of air.
The first false alarms occurred soon after BioWatch's deployment, demonstrating that it could not distinguish between the most commonly signaled pathogen, tularemia, and "near-neighbor" organisms that pose no life-threatening harm.
Previously unpublicized Homeland Security materials show that the Houston area alone racked up more than 30 false alarms as of mid-2008, nearly all for the germ that causes tularemia, also known as rabbit fever.
The many false alarms nationwide — including results that caused tense deliberations among health officials at the 2008 Democratic National Convention and at championship sporting events — have eroded confidence in the system.
Local, state and federal officials faced with a BioWatch alarm have not once evacuated an area or dispensed antibiotics or other emergency medicines. They have instead monitored hospitals for days or weeks in search of potential victims before deciding to disregard the alarms, a wait-and-see approach counter to the rationale for BioWatch.
The Homeland Security Department's emphasis on keeping the details quiet is reinforced at the annual BioWatch conferences, according to attendees and government documents. The 2008 conference included such workshops as "Loose Lips Sink Collectors! Managing Media Inquiries about BioWatch," and "Psychology of Press Releases."
Last month, leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee said Homeland Security had withheld key documents that the panel had asked for in July. In a letter to Napolitano, the committee said the episode raised "serious questions about the department's willingness to cooperate."
The department has pledged cooperation, and Napolitano, a former governor of Arizona, has delegated the public defense of BioWatch to Garza, also a presidential appointee. Garza has said that scientists are working "to improve BioWatch to keep the nation safe from any potential biological threats."
In recent interviews, more than a dozen specialists who have worked with or examined BioWatch said it should be independently assessed, and scaled back or dismantled.
Dr. Arthur L. Kellermann, a physician and public health researcher at Rand Corp. who studied BioWatch from 2007 to 2009 as a member of a National Academy of Sciences committee, said it "has generated nothing but false alarms."
Kellermann and other specialists said the money spent on BioWatch could have paid for training and equipment to help medical professionals more quickly diagnose a patient exposed to an attack. The many false alarms, they said, invite complacency.
"After you hear a certain amount of car alarms in your neighborhood, you stop worrying about them," Kellermann said.
david.willman@latimes.com
Peña Nieto team decries past drug cartel strategy — and keeps it
By Richard Fausset, Los Angeles Times
December 21, 2012, 4:43 p.m.
MEXICO CITY — You find the capos of the drug trade, and you arrest them or kill them.
That, in its simplest form, was the idea behind the so-called kingpin strategy that former Mexican President Felipe Calderon pursued with zeal for most of his six-year term. As his administration drew to an end this year, he would often mention, as a point of pride, that his government had taken out two-thirds of Mexico's 37 most wanted criminals.
But as new President Enrique Peña Nieto rolled out his crime-fighting strategy this week, his team was explicit about the trouble that "kingpin" had wrought:
On Monday, Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said the strategy caused a fragmentation of criminal groups that had made them "more violent and much more dangerous," as they branched out into homicide, extortion, robbery and kidnapping.
The next day, Jesus Murillo Karam, the new attorney general, said in a radio interview that the strategy was responsible for spawning 60 to 80 small and medium-sized organized crime groups.
But just because the strategy has taken some hits doesn't mean it's dead. And Peña Nieto, who took office Dec. 1, is unlikely to kill it.
His Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico as a quasi-dictatorship for 70 years, was notorious for looking the other way when it came to organized crime, and Peña Nieto, 46, has promised that the party will not return to its old habits.
Peña Nieto is also unlikely to jeopardize the generous security assistance provided by the United States, which helped design the kingpin strategy. The U.S. is intimately involved in carrying it out, providing intelligence on drug leaders' whereabouts and spending millions to strengthen the Mexican security forces who act on that intelligence.
All of which probably explains why, shortly after the ministers' criticism of kingpin, a top presidential advisor told The Times that the new government had no plans to abandon it.
"That will not stop at all," said the advisor, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak on the record.
But there will be changes. The pursuit of capos, the Peña Nieto advisor said, will be a quieter affair than during the Calderon administration, their neutralization presented with less fanfare. Calderon's aggressive crackdown on cartels has been criticized as having done little to stop the flow of drugs while exacerbating violence, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths.
Peña Nieto, in a speech Monday before Mexico's National Public Security Council, said that "evaluation and feedback" would be a pillar of his crime-fighting strategy, though he was vague on the details. He emphasized, as he has many times, that his government would make it a top priority to focus on solutions that reduce the number of homicides, kidnappings and extortions.
Osorio Chong said that between 2006, when Calderon's term started, and 2011, kidnappings increased 83%; violent robberies, 65%; and highway robberies, 100%.
The kingpin strategy was based on a similar plan in Colombia in the 1990s, said Shannon O'Neil, the senior fellow for Latin American studies at the U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations. Colombian cartel leaders at the time were directing their violence against the state, targeting high-profile federal officials for assassination. When the capos were taken out, the threats to the federal government were reduced.
Peña Nieto's full security plan is still coming into focus, with some elements more specific than others: He has promised to create a gendarmerie to patrol the most violent areas, and 15 federal police units that will focus only on extortion and kidnapping. He has also called for a revision of arraigo, the practice of detaining suspects for up to 80 days for serious crimes that was commonly used under Calderon but which rarely resulted in the suspect being prosecuted.
In his speech Monday, Peña Nieto also vowed to launch a national human rights program, more robust crime prevention programs, better planning and coordination, plus a system, as yet undefined, to evaluate it all.
Jorge Chabat, a professor at Mexico City's Center for Economic Research and Teaching, said Peña Nieto was in a difficult position because he wants to show that he'll fight the drug war in a way that distinguishes him from Calderon, but at the same time, "there's little room to maneuver in terms of changing the security strategy. In reality, there aren't many options."
Columnist Carlos Puig, writing in the newspaper Milenio, criticized the speech for lacking substance and detail. But he was pleased that Peña Nieto was striking a different tone than Calderon, a tone decidedly more wonkish and not "the speech of a valiant warrior."
richard.fausset@latimes.com
Cecilia Sanchez of The Times' Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.
S.F. cops crack down on pot in Haight
Don't these pigs have any REAL criminals to arrest???
Source
S.F. cops crack down on pot in Haight
Shoshana Walter, Bay Citizen
Updated 9:00 pm, Friday, December 21, 2012
San Francisco police Capt. Greg Corrales strolled down a dirt path in Golden Gate Park, wearing a pair of black jeans, a Giants cap and a jersey that read "Grumpy." He was looking for someone to arrest.
As Corrales, 64, approached Alvord Lake, a ragged young man caught his eye and pinched a finger and thumb between his lips.
Corrales knew the sign: weed for sale.
The undercover captain said he wanted $20 worth of marijuana, pocketed his purchase and disappeared into the park. Moments later, a team of officers swooped in to arrest the unsuspecting seller.
The police operation was one of 50 undercover busts Corrales has led since transferring to the Haight-Ashbury district in June to lead a crackdown on street-level marijuana dealing. In a buy-bust operation, an undercover officer poses as a customer and buys drugs from an individual he or she suspects of selling them.
To many residents, the arrests are a welcome relief in a neighborhood they say is overrun by aggressive vagrants and dealers. But to marijuana legalization activists and residents who fondly recall the Haight of the 1960s, the campaign represents a return to a time of zero tolerance for peace, love and pot.
In the district that was the birthplace of the hippie revolution, police are jailing suspects for amounts of marijuana that, in a possession case, would amount to a $100 ticket.
"The people of San Francisco have voted repeatedly they don't want marijuana laws enforced," said Dennis Peron, a longtime medical marijuana activist. "It's a waste of time."
Small-time busts
Some of the operations have netted repeat offenders, including several suspects with guns or outstanding warrants. But most of the suspects carried small amounts of marijuana. Some had medical marijuana ID cards. Corrales, a former head of the narcotics division, said he didn't care.
"It really doesn't matter," he said. "They can't sell."
Ted Loewenberg, president of the Haight Ashbury Improvement Association, is among those who approve of the crackdown. He moved into the neighborhood in 1989, in the midst of a crack epidemic.
"I got to see the everyday reality of what the drug culture did to people," Loewenberg said.
He and about 30 others formed a group called RAD - Residents Against Druggies. A few nights a week, they armed themselves with two-way radios and walked the streets, looking for buyers and dealers.
"If we saw someone we suspected of buying, we would circle around them and just make them so uncomfortable they didn't want to buy," recalled Susan Strolis, a waitress who moved to the neighborhood in 1985.
Easing pot laws
But others in the city wanted to decriminalize marijuana. In 1991, voters passed Proposition P, urging the state to legalize medical marijuana. Peron opened the Cannabis Buyers' Club, the country's first dispensary, in 1992.
Corrales, a former Marine, had made a name for himself as a young undercover officer in the 1970s. His specialty was the buy-bust targeting heroin dealers in the housing projects.
By 1994, he was a captain and headed the narcotics division. Corrales said he couldn't ignore Peron.
"He got so brazen, he went on the television show 'Hard Copy.' They had a segment with him showing the reporters around," Corrales recalled. "He was a marijuana dealer."
Peron was leading the statewide campaign for Proposition 215 to legalize medical marijuana. Corrales and his undercover investigators found evidence that Peron was selling marijuana to customers who were not ill. But then-District Attorney Terence Hallinan refused to prosecute.
By then, Hallinan had visited Peron's medical marijuana club. "I thought it was great," he recalled. "There were people there with AIDS. Everyone had company and friends. It didn't make sense to me to go raiding that. So they went around me."
Raid backfired
Corrales took his case to then-Attorney General Dan Lungren, an aspiring Republican gubernatorial candidate and Prop. 215 opponent. In the summer of 1996, with voters considering the measure, Lungren led a raid on Peron's dispensary.
The raid, however, created sympathy for Peron's cause. Californians voted in favor of the initiative; the police chief banished Corrales from narcotics.
In the Haight, many merchants and residents now clamor for Corrales' aggressive strategies.
After residents complained to the Police Commission in February about open marijuana dealing, an impatient Chief Greg Suhr ordered a buy-bust team into the district and replaced the district's captain with Corrales.
Now the number of buy-busts in the Haight has more than tripled.
"I could see if it was crack cocaine or something harsh like meth," said 25-year-old Michael Fulmore, who is fighting two felony charges after giving an undercover officer a gram of marijuana in March. "But this is pot. A gram of weed. It's like a ticket. Not a felony."
Caught off guard
Corrales has no qualms about the buy-bust operations.
"When I first went out there, they were careless," he said. "I probably could have bought marijuana in a suit and tie because there had been no enforcement, so nobody was paranoid. Now they're more careful."
He was still wearing his "Grumpy" shirt on that day in June when he returned to the group of men at the lake.
"Got anything?" he asked.
"Not for you, we don't," one replied, muttering "pig" under his breath.
Corrales feigned outrage.
"I'm 75 damn years old," he yelled, adding more than a decade to his age. "How the hell am I going to be a cop?"
"Calm down," the young man said. "We gotta be careful. Our buddy just got busted. How much do you want?"
Corrales walked away with another $20 worth of marijuana. And his officers made their second buy-bust arrest of the day.
This Bay Citizen is part of the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting. E-mail: swalter@baycitizen.org
New audit finds California state parks department has more budget discrepancies
By Paul Rogers
progers@mercurynews.com
Posted: 12/21/2012 05:16:30 PM PST
A new audit Friday revealed millions of dollars in unspent donations and other financial irregularities at California's state parks department, six months after the agency's director resigned in a scandal over hidden money.
Last July former director Ruth Coleman stepped down amid revelations that the department had hidden $54 million in state funds from budget officials while the governor was threatening to close parks to save money.
The audit, released Friday by the state Department of Finance, did not uncover embezzlement or missing money.
But it did reveal what auditors concluded was "minimal oversight by executive management" and "inadequate controls" in the way the department keeps its books, trains its staff and oversees private donations.
"We found risks that could put the department at risk of possible abuse, waste and fraud if controls aren't strengthened," said Frances Parmelee, a CPA and audit manager of the state finance department.
Among the problems:
At a time of tight budgets, state parks staff members failed to spend $3.9 million in a fund meant for donations and bequests. The total fund balance is $20 million. Although there is no evidence that parks officials were spending donations in ways other than donors intended, some of the $3.9 million, which came from interest and donations that hadn't been given for a specific purpose, has sat unspent since as far back as 2004.
The department did not provide clear rules or oversight of employee credit cards. As a result, auditors found $3,351 that was spent on unallowable items, including memberships in professional organizations, two-way radios and high-speed internet service.
Budget managers have not provided clear training and policies for lower-level employees to ensure the agency's funds are consistently and accurately reported to other state departments.
State parks officials accepted the audit and said they are already correcting the deficiencies.
"State parks sees this evaluation as a catalyst for improving all systems," said Major Gen. Anthony Jackson, a former Marine commander whom Gov. Jerry Brown appointed as the new state parks director last month. "And we are confident that by incorporating all recommendations for improvements, state parks will be stronger and more accountable."
The audit also confirmed that the $54 million that parks employees had kept in two accounts for years without reporting it to the Department of Finance or governor's budget officials was accurate and is not any larger than previously reported. They said the concealment of funds dates back at least to 1993, but could not offer a reason why. Some sources have said that it originated with an accounting formula glitch years ago that mid-level employees did not want to reveal for fear of reprimand.
Two other investigations -- one by the state attorney general and one by the state auditor -- are ongoing with results expected soon. Those investigators are talking with former director Coleman and other officials who have since resigned or been fired.
"Parks are an incredibly valuable asset to the citizens of California," said Elizabeth Goldstein, president of the California State Parks Foundation, an environmental group. "What happened last summer was very disappointing to those of us in the parks community. We all got socked in the chest. This moment now is about finding out what happened, fixing the problems and moving on."
Paul Rogers covers resources and environmental issues. Contact him at 408-920-5045. Follow him at Twitter.com/PaulRogersSJMN.
In this article Phoenix City Councilman Sal DiCiccio defends his
vote to give Phoenix City Manager David Cavazos a
33 percent raise of
$78,000
bumping his salary from
$237,000 to $315,000 a year.
Here are some
articles
about that $78,000 pay raise the members of the Phoenix
City Council voted to give to Phoenix City Manager David Cavazos.
Into the mind of ... Sal DiCiccio
Dec. 22, 2012 12:00 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com
The Phoenix City Council member [Sal DiCiccio] explains why City Manager David Cavazos deserved a large raise.
Your vote for City Manager David Cavazos' 33 percent raise was a surprise. How much flak are you getting?
Some. David has been an outstanding manager. The council knew this would be a tough decision, but it was correct. Citizens have every right to seek answers; it's their money.
Look what we accomplished last year, the plan for the future, and then decide if it was right. The pay increase was partially based on his accomplishments, but more importantly we created specific performance measures ensuring structural change and reforms.
It is no secret government reform is my No. 1 priority. For Phoenix to compete in a global economy, a new structure is required. We need the right quarterback who can move the ball. David is Phoenix's franchise player.
You made your mark looking for every possible cut. Why did you think the pay increase was justified?
Significant government waste has been cut, and we are going to do more. Here are specific reforms and savings passed this year alone: We created a best-in-the-country 24-hour model -- businesses big and small can get permits and begin operations within 24 hours. Other cities take 6 to 8 months. We had no property-tax or rate increase, no water/sewer increase, while other governments raised them.
Phoenix was the first government to adopt zero-based budgeting, guaranteeing transparency. We have the largest-ever "rainy-day fund" ($41 million) and cut $59 million per year, including significant red tape.
Those were great accomplishments, but the future demands more, and performance measures for David will ensure long-term structural changes:
1. Save: $100 million per year. 2. Job creation: Cut more red tape by expanding the 24-hour model. 3. Customer service: All departments move to 24/7 operations and be known for it nationally. 4. Personnel reform: Move from entitlement structure to pay for performance. 5. Continue increasing the rainy-day fund.
What do you say to people who note the median household income in Phoenix is barely more than half the additional pay Cavazos will receive?
With $41 million in the rainy-day fund, $59 million saved through innovations and efficiencies and $277 million deficit erased, we have seen a $377 million shift since David took over.
You've pushed to reduce red tape at City Hall. How is it going?
We're winning big! Big and small businesses can now start operations in Phoenix in 24 hours, in what took 6-8 months, making Phoenix the best place nationally for business.
This summer, we will move to electronic and instantaneous permitting.
What else is on your plate?
Council members Thelda Williams, Michael Nowakowski and I are working together to make domestic violence a top priority for Phoenix, as it was when I was on the council in the 1990s. We want to make Phoenix the best nationally.
Nowakowski and I have been working on a plan to improve trade with Mexico, our biggest and underexplored partner.
Cavazos, Councilman Jim Waring and I are working to change Phoenix's culture to be customer-focused and be the first nationally to adopt a 24/7 model for our departments.
I have been working hard with Valley cities promoting the 24-hour job-creation model. Imagine if our entire region was known for this.
Lawsuit accuses MCSO of racial profiling
By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Dec 22, 2012 10:56 PM
Throughout the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office’s racial-profiling trial that unfolded in downtown Phoenix last summer, Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his top aides testified that deputies did not unreasonably target minority residents and that there were adequate measures in place to ensure deputies engaged in constitutional policing.
But a little more than a month after the trial ended, two deputies encountered a Black college student at a gas station in Cave Creek and delivered a message as they placed him under arrest for resisting arrest, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court.
“(A deputy), while yelling at the plaintiff, made it clear by stating that ‘people like him’ did not belong there, implying that because plaintiff was African-American that he could not go into a convenience store in a ‘White’ neighborhood,” according to the complaint. “The defendant officers then unlawfully arrested plaintiff without any legal basis to do so.”
The deputies originally claimed the plaintiff, 21-year-old Blake Edward Smalley, resisted arrest — though there was no underlying charge leading to the arrest — and later added an allegation that Smalley had an open container of alcohol in his car, according to the lawsuit.
Both charges were later “scratched” by the Superior Court, Smalley’s attorney said.
Smalley’s car had run out of gas blocks away from the convenience store, which is what brought Smalley to the Chevron near Carefree Highway and Cave Creek Road in the first place, said Robert Trop,Smalley’s attorney. The lawsuit claims Smalley spent 15 hours in custody before he was released.
“The bottom line is he has not done anything wrong. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Trop said. “But he really wasn’t. He’s just a young Arizona State student using a convenience store.”
The Sheriff’s Office declined to comment on the lawsuit or whether either of the deputies involved had been punished for the incident. The agency was not aware of Smalley’s complaint before the lawsuit was filed, according to a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office.
Smalley’s encounter began early in the morning on Sept. 22 when his car ran out of gas and he walked to the gas station in search of help, according to the complaint filed late last month in U.S. District Court. Smalley bought a pack of gum, and Deputy Chris Contino followed him out of the store, asking Smalley about the location of his car.
“During the entire time plaintiff was questioned, his car was not on the store premises or within close proximity to it,” according to court documents. “There was no basis to conclude that plaintiff committed, or was about to commit, any crime.”
Contino searched Smalley, handcuffed him and threw him to the ground, according to the complaint. Video of the entire episode was captured by a surveillance camera.
“During this time, (an unknown deputy) was yelling and screaming at the plaintiff, telling him that it was part of the officers’ jobs to ‘keep pieces of (expletive) like you off the street,’” the lawsuit states.
That same deputy later warned Smalley that “people like him” did not belong in the neighborhood. In fact, Smalley’s home was less than three miles from the store.
Smalley’s criminal history consists of a 2009 traffic offense, according to court records.
Smalley’s lawsuit alleges the Sheriff’s Office violated Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure and the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.
The same issues were at play in the sheriff’s racial-profiling trial last summer. U.S. District Judge Murray Snow received the final written arguments in the racial-profiling case in mid-August and has yet to rule. The allegations in that case stem from a deputy’s 2007 traffic stop in Cave Creek that left Manuel de Jesus Ortega Melendres, a Mexican tourist in the U.S. legally, detained for nine hours.
Trop, Smalley’s attorney, said in court documents that the September incident involving his client proves little has changed in the Sheriff’s Office. The agency also faces a separate U.S. Justice Department lawsuit that was filed after federal investigators uncovered what they claim were egregious examples of racial profiling.
The Justice Department lawsuit was filed after the Sheriff’s Office dismissed the idea of appointing an independent monitor to oversee remedies the federal government proposed to correct profiling.
All of that will come into play in Smalley’s case, Trop said.
“Normally you just have the case,” he said. “You don’t have a bunch of other cases and the federal government trying to prove the same thing.”
I am too lazy to cut and past all the text so here are some links to the articles:
Tiny URLs:
It's not about a fair trial, it's about making cops look like heroes!!!!
Review of FBI forensics does not extend to federally trained state, local examiners
By Spencer S. Hsu, Published: December 22
Thousands of criminal cases at the state and local level may have relied on exaggerated testimony or false forensic evidence to convict defendants of murder, rape and other felonies.
The forensic experts in these cases were trained by the same elite FBI team whose members gave misleading court testimony about hair matches and later taught the local examiners to follow the same suspect practices, according to interviews and documents.
In July, the Justice Department announced a nationwide review of all cases handled by the FBI Laboratory’s hair and fibers unit before 2000 — at least 21,000 cases — to determine whether improper lab reports or testimony might have contributed to wrongful convictions.
But about three dozen FBI agents trained 600 to 1,000 state and local examiners to apply the same standards that have proved problematic.
None of the local cases is included in the federal review. As a result, legal experts say, although the federal inquiry is laudable, the number of flawed cases at the state and local levels could be even higher, and those are going uncorrected.
The FBI review was prompted by a series of articles in The Washington Post about errors at the bureau’s renowned crime lab involving microscopic hair comparisons. The articles highlighted the cases of two District men who each spent more than 20 years in prison based on false hair matches by FBI experts. Since The Post’s articles, the men have been declared innocent by D.C. Superior Court judges.
Two high-profile local-level cases illustrate how far the FBI training problems spread.
In 2004, former Montana crime lab director Arnold Melnikoff was fired and more than 700 cases questioned because of what reviewers called egregious scientific errors involving the accuracy of hair matches dating to the 1970s. His defense was that he was taught by the FBI and that many FBI-trained colleagues testified in similar ways, according to previously undisclosed court records.
In 2001, Oklahoma City police crime lab supervisor Joyce Gilchrist lost her job and more than 1,400 of her cases were questioned after an FBI reviewer found that she made claims about her matches that were “beyond the acceptable limits of science.” Court filings show that Gilchrist received her only in-depth instruction in hair comparison from the FBI in 1981 and that she, like many practitioners, went largely unsupervised.
Federal officials, asked about state and local problems, said the FBI has committed significant resources to speed the federal review but that state and local police and prosecutors would have to decide whether to undertake comparable efforts.
FBI spokeswoman Ann Todd defended the training of local examiners as “continuing education” intended to supplement formal training provided by other labs. The FBI did not qualify examiners, a responsibility shared by individual labs and certification bodies, she said.
Michael Wright, president of the National District Attorneys Association, said local prosecutors cannot simply order labs to audit all or even a sample of cases handled by FBI-trained examiners, because such an undertaking might be time- and cost-prohibitive for smaller agencies.
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Here are some more articles on how corrupt or incompetent forensic technicians help cops make themselves look like heroes by framing almost everybody the cops accuse of a crime.
washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/local/forensic-analysis-methods
Cops will use any lame excuse to stop you and search for arrest warrants
The cops will use any excuse to run your name thru the computer to see if you have warrants out for your arrest.
Obama sold out the Mexican and Latino community
Obama broke his promise to the Mexican community!
Sports teams have a right to keep you from gambling???
Sports teams think they have a right to keep you from gambling???
BioWatch - another huge waste of government money
Of course the Homeland Security Department disagrees with my statement and thinks the BioWatch program is a huge success.
President Enrique Peña Nieto continues Felipe Calderon insane "drug war"
Looks like things are not going to get better in Mexico and that the new Mexican President, Enrique Peña Nieto will continue Felipe Calderon insane "drug war" which has been financed by the American government.
"Peña Nieto is also unlikely to jeopardize the generous security assistance provided by the United States, which helped design the kingpin strategy. The U.S. is intimately involved in carrying it out, providing intelligence on drug leaders' whereabouts and spending millions to strengthen the Mexican security forces who act on that intelligence"
Source
San Francisco cops crack down on pot in Haight
San Francisco narcotics agent Captain Greg Corrales is proud to arrest harmless people for the victimless crime of selling marijuana
California government bureaucrats hide $54 million???
Source
Phoenix City Council member Sal DiCiccio - Phoney baloney Libertarian
Phoenix City Council member Sal DiCiccio likes to paint himself
as a conservative Libertarian,
but he isn't any more of a Libertarian then Hitler.
Sheriff Joe's goons are equal opportunity racists??
From this article it sounds like Sheriff Joe's goons are equal opportunity racists that treat Blacks just as bad as they treat Mexicans!!!
Washington Post articles on guns & gun control
After this weeks shooting in Connecticut
on Sunday, December 23, 2012 the Washington Post ran a number of articles on guns and gun control.
Corrupt lab techs guarantee you won't get a fair trial
Review of FBI forensics does not extend to federally trained state, local examiners
You're going to get a fair trial??? Don't make me laugh!!!!