Homeless in Arizona

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Medical-pot dispensaries require redefining Gilbert 'parks'

by Parker Leavitt - Oct. 15, 2012 08:31 AM

The Republic | azcentral.com

Gilbert may soon add a definition of "park" to its Land Development Code after a lack of clarity on the issue last year caused problems for proposed medical-marijuana dispensaries trying to comply with the town's rigorous regulations.

A full year after the Gilbert Planning Commission initiated a town-code amendment, the panel this month voted in support of new definitions for public and private parks. The proposed code changes must still go before the Town Council for final approval.

Meanwhile, a state lottery in August granted preliminary approval for one marijuana dispensary to open in Gilbert, although the state has not released details about which applicant was chosen.

So far, Gilbert has only awarded a required use-permit to one potential dispensary, D.R.H. Enterprises. Owner Devon Haile did not respond to a request for an interview, and it remains unclear if and when the dispensary can open.

Gilbert prohibits marijuana dispenaries within 1,000 feet of a park, day-care center, school or place of worship, but the code never described what sort of facilities the town considered to be park space.

Differing interpretations ultimately doomed plans for two dispensaries last year, when the council overturned the Planning Commission's near-unanimous decision to grant use permits for the businesses to operate in north Gilbert industrial complexes.

Some argued a true park should have playground equipment, picnic tables and sport courts, while others extended the definition to retention basins and green areas. Some even suggested outdoor employee-break areas might also be considered miniature parks.

The uncertainty made it tough for would-be dispensary owners to find a suitable location because nearly every possible site has at least some green space nearby.

The confusion led Gilbert residents Paul and Robin Schroeder, who had hoped to open a "mom-and-pop" dispensary, to threaten the town with a lawsuit, claiming they were "duped" into believing their application was viable.

Initially, the Schroeders' dispensary won the blessing of town officials and the Planning Commission despite a challenge from nearby business owner Joe Turner, who claimed the proposed came within 1,000 feet of a park.

The council, which had taken a harsh stance against medical-pot dispensaries, later overturned the Planning Commission's approval while acknowledging the code language related to parks needed clarification.

Arizona voters approved the medical-pot program in 2010, prompting municipalities to enact their own laws restricting where and how marijuana dispensaries can operate.

An ordinance approved by the council in January 2011 limits dispensaries' hours of operation, which could not be earlier than 8 a.m. nor later than 6 p.m.

The ordinance also requires dispensaries to be housed in permanent buildings with a security plan reviewed by town officials. Dispensaries in Gilbert can't sell other merchandise, and cultivation can only take place inside a closed, locked building, not on a farm, according to the ordinance.

While dispensaries have yet to materialize around the state, there are hundreds of approved medical-marijuana patients in Gilbert's two statistical areas, which roughly divide the town into western and eastern halves.

Through Sept. 19, the state had approved 343 patients in west Gilbert and 642 patients in east Gilbert, according to the Department of Health Services.

Statewide, more than 32,000 patients are qualified to use medical marijuana, with men outnumbering women nearly three to one, according to a DHS report.

Patients can cite a variety of medical conditions when applying for permission to use marijuana, and about nine in 10 reported "chronic pain" among their conditions, according to DHS.

Let's outlaw intelligence

Let's outlaw intelligence

Oct. 15, 2012 06:14 PM

To paraphrase Will Rogers, let's outlaw intelligence in America.

If it works as well as prohibition of alcohol in the 1930s did and as well as the "war on drugs" currently does, in five years, we'll be the smartest nation on the planet.

-- Bill Betz, Mesa

Will marijuana be legalized????

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Marijuana backers in the West courting conservative pols

Tancredo compares issue to NY ban on sugary drinks

by Kristen Wyatt - Oct. 16, 2012 10:59 PM

Associated Press

DENVER - It's not all hippies backing November's marijuana legalization votes in Colorado, Oregon and Washington.

Appealing to Western individualism and a mistrust of federal government, activists have lined up some prominent conservatives, from one-time presidential hopefuls Tom Tancredo and Ron Paul to Republican-turned-Libertarian presidential candidate and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson.

"This is truly a nonpartisan issue," said Mark Slaugh, a volunteer for the Colorado initiative who is based in Colorado Springs, which has more Republicans than anywhere else in the state.

"States' rights! States' rights!" Slaugh cried as he handed out flyers about the state's pot measure outside a rally last month by Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan.

"It's fiscally prudent. It would be taxed, regulated, monitored. It makes a lot of sense to Republicans," he said.

Most Republicans still oppose legalization. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney vows to enforce federal law. When Ryan told a Colorado Springs TV station in September that medical marijuana was "up to Coloradans to decide," his campaign backtracked and said he agreed with Romney.

When activists make their appeal, it goes like this: States should dictate drug law. Decades of federal prohibition have failed where personal responsibility and old-fashioned parenting will succeed. Politicians back East have no business dictating what the states do.

"What is the law against marijuana if it isn't the Nanny State telling you what you can do and what you can't do to your body and with your body?" asked Tancredo, a former Republican congressman from suburban Denver who briefly ran for president in 2008 and endorsed the measure.

He compared federal law to New York City's ban on sugary sodas.

Tancredo launched a radio ad this week in which he compares marijuana prohibition to alcohol prohibition as a "failed government program" that, in this case, "steers Colorado money to criminals in Mexico."

"Proponents of big government have duped us into supporting a similar prohibition of marijuana -- even though it can be used safely and responsibly by adults," Tancredo said.

Pot supporters have lined up other surprising allies this year, even as many Democrats oppose the measures. Conservative stalwart Pat Robertson, for example, said marijuana should be legal.

In Washington state, Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Michael Baumgartner is running a longshot bid to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, who opposes it.

"It's taking a different approach to a very expensive drug war, and potentially a better approach," he said.

In Oregon, at least one Republican state Senate candidate backs legalization. Cliff Hutchison reasoned that legalizing pot would "cut wasteful government spending on corrections and reduce drug gang violence."

Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, is fiscally conservative but supports such liberal causes as legalizing marijuana, immigration reform and abortion rights. He's said that if elected he would pardon all non-violent prisoners convicted of marijuana-related offenses in federal court.

Pro-pot conservatives have counterparts on the other side -- Democrats who say pot shouldn't be legal without a doctor's recommendation. Democratic governors in Colorado and Washington oppose legalization. Oregon's Democratic governor has not taken a stand.

President Barack Obama's administration has shut down medical marijuana dispensaries in California and Colorado.

Republican Colorado state Sen. Steve King is a frequent critic of Colorado's medical marijuana law. Conservatives abhor government, but they also fear legalization would increase children's drug use, he said. "It's pretty easy to come in and say, 'Let's decrease government.' And I'm all for that. This just isn't the place to start," King said.

"We have a next generation to protect," he said.

Pot smokers force burglars to get naked

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Tempe man forces 2 burglary suspects to strip, police say

by Jackee Coe - Oct. 16, 2012 09:57 PM

The Republic | azcentral.com

A Tempe man who forced two men to strip naked after catching them burglarizing his car later was arrested after police discovered he had drugs and an alligator in his home, officials said.

Anthony Burton, 29, was booked into jail on suspicion of illegal possession of marijuana, drug paraphernalia and live wildlife, Tempe Police Department spokesman Sgt. Jeff Glover said. Anthony Gammon, 18, and Alberto Rosciano, 20, were booked on counts of burglary, possession of burglary tools, misconduct involving weapons and possession of drug paraphernalia.

About 3:15 a.m. Monday, Burton confronted Gammon and Rosciano with a handgun as they were breaking into his 2007 maroon Dodge Charger in the parking lot of an apartment complex near Priest Drive and Southern Avenue, police said. Burton forced the two men at gunpoint back to his apartment, where he demanded they return everything they had stolen from his car, police said.

Burton then forced Gammon and Rosciano to remove all their clothing, supposedly to ensure they didn't have additional stolen items, he said. Burton told them to leave but refused to give them back their clothes, only giving them their keys, police said.

Witnesses saw the men in the parking lot of the complex as they were leaving and called police, Glover said. They gave officers descriptions of both the men and their vehicle. Officers stopped Gammon and Rosciano, who still were naked, near Rural Road and U.S. 60, and later arrested them.

When officers went to Burton's apartment to talk to him about the incident, they discovered marijuana, several items of drug paraphernalia, and a live approximately 13-inch American alligator in a glass cage, Glover said. Burton apparently bought the gator over the Internet from a Florida company that breeds reptiles.

"So everybody was arrested," Glover said.

Burton was not booked on counts related to forcing Gammon and Rosciano to strip naked because investigators believe he did so as a victim attempting to ensure his own safety from the suspected burglars, Glover said.

Detectives can review the case later and decide to add additional charges, but what those charges are would depend on several factors, he said.

The alligator was turned over to the Phoenix Herpetological Society. American alligators can grow to up to 14 feet long and weigh 1,000 pounds.

Curator Daniel Marchand said the herpetological society will find a home for the reptile, which he estimated is about a year and a half old.

"We're a no-kill facility so we are connected with zoos and sanctuaries throughout the United States," he said.

Marchand said they have "hundreds" of alligators come through, even though they are "100 percent illegal" to have in Arizona. They have found homes for most of them, are still looking for homes for others and have others still that they will keep because they have grown too big to place elsewhere.

Most people who have alligators in Arizona "don't care about the dangers it poses to them or their children or anybody around them," Marchand said.

DEA is "biased" on marijuana?

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Medical marijuana advocates seek reclassification of drug

By David G. Savage, Washington Bureau

October 16, 2012, 7:39 p.m.

WASHINGTON — A medical marijuana advocate urged a federal appeals court to require the U.S. government to relax, or at least rethink, a more-than-40-year-old rule that treats marijuana as a highly dangerous drug with no medical value.

Federal drug regulators "have failed to weigh the evidence" from a growing number of medical studies showing that marijuana is effective for relieving pain and nausea, said Joe Elford, counsel for Americans for Safe Access.

In his legal brief, he said the Drug Enforcement Administration displayed a "bias" against marijuana by ignoring its medical benefits and exaggerating its danger. That is the only way to explain how the "federal government could conclude that marijuana is as harmful as heroin and PCP and even more harmful than methamphetamine, cocaine and opium," he told the court.

Elford was challenging the DEA's insistence that marijuana is properly classified as a Schedule I drug, meaning it has no accepted medical benefits and has a high potential for abuse. This classification means, for example, that doctors at the Veterans Administration may not give marijuana to a disabled veteran to treat his chronic pain, he said, citing the plight of one of the plaintiffs in the case. If marijuana were reclassified, Elford said, it would help doctors and patients by permitting its use under medical supervision.

Marijuana's classification as a Schedule I drug dates to 1970, when Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act. On two occasions since then, marijuana advocates have petitioned the DEA to reconsider the classification, citing the medical benefits of cannabis. They also noted that 16 states and the District of Columbia have opted to allow medical use of marijuana in some instances.

But the DEA turned down the most recent petition last year and made no change in the classification schedule. By way of explanation, the agency said there was not a scientific consensus on the medical benefits of marijuana. It also said marijuana has many "chemical components" that are not well understood.

During Tuesday's argument, a Justice Department lawyer said the government remained convinced of the danger of marijuana. "It's the most widely abused drug in the United States," said Lena Watkins, the government lawyer.

The case was heard by a veteran panel of three judges who questioned whether they were in a position to reject the DEA's determination.

"Don't we have to defer to their judgment" on what the medical studies show? asked Judge Merrick Garland. "We're not scientists. They are." [Rubbish, the DEA thugs are not scientists, they are mostly cops. Cops who's only mission is to arrest and jail Americans who use drugs the DEA doesn't approve of]

"The real question is to what extent we have to defer to the agency," added Judge Harry Edwards. The two judges said they could not overturn the DEA's decision unless they found it to be "arbitrary and capricious."

Elford responded that the judges should send the case back to the DEA to require the agency to hold a hearing to consider research over the last decade on the benefits of marijuana.

Judge Karen Henderson, the third member of the panel, noted that changing the classification of marijuana would not decriminalize it. "It would still be illegal," she said.

david.savage@latimes.com

Will Privacy Go to the Drug Dogs?

Will Privacy Go to the Dogs?

By JEFFREY A. MEYER

Published: October 16, 2012

THIS Halloween, the United States Supreme Court will devote its day to dogs. The court will hear two cases from Florida to test whether “police dog sniffs” violate our privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. These two cases have not yet grabbed many headlines, but the court’s decisions could shape our rights to privacy in profound and surprising ways.

The Fourth Amendment protects the right of the people to be free from “unreasonable searches and seizures.” Ordinarily, unless the police trespass or otherwise intrude upon a reasonable expectation of privacy, they need not have probable cause or a warrant to justify their investigative activity. For decades now, the court has struggled with what it means for a person to have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” — especially when the police investigate with sense-enhancing means or technology.

One of the new cases asks the court to clarify how accurate a dog must be in terms of its past identification of contraband — for, as Justice David H. Souter once warned in dissent, “The infallible dog, however, is a creature of legal fiction.”

My wife and I learned this firsthand at the Supreme Court itself several years ago. We were visiting the court for a reunion dinner of former law clerks of Justice Harry A. Blackmun. My mistake was to drive a car in which our dog — a tennis-ball-loving Australian shepherd — often rode. As we drove up to the back gate of the court to enter its highly secure underground parking garage, an officer emerged from a guard shack with a fearsome bomb-sniffing German shepherd and circled our car. The bomb dog suddenly perked up, and the officer coldly instructed me to open the trunk of my car. I watched as the court’s canine rose up on its haunches — tail wagging — and snagged from inside one of my dog’s prized tennis balls. No bombs or contraband were found.

The second of the court’s new dog cases asks if the police may take a drug-sniffing dog to the front porch of a home to sniff for evidence of marijuana inside. The court has always accorded special privacy protection for people’s homes. In 2001, the court ruled, in an opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia, that police officers violated a homeowner’s privacy when they parked across the street from a home and, without a warrant, used a thermal imaging device to scan the outside of the house for signs of unusual heat inside that might be caused by high-intensity lighting, which is often used to grow marijuana.

If the police can’t thermal-scan your home from the street, why let them dog-scan it from your front porch? The government argues that a dog is alerted only by illegal contraband, while a thermal imager is set off more generally by “innocent” and “guilty” heat of all kinds coming from a home — whether from grow lights or from, as Justice Scalia noted in the thermal imager case, “the lady of the house” as she “takes her daily sauna and bath.”

But, arguably, this distinction is misplaced. If the court rules for the government in the home-sniff case, it is hard to see why the police could not station drug-sniffing dogs outside the entrances to every school, supermarket and movie theater as a routine form of drug interdiction. Dog sniffs would never involve a privacy intrusion and therefore would not trigger the requirement that the police obtain a warrant or have individual suspicion.

Moreover, today’s dogs will give way to tomorrow’s high-tech contraband-scanning devices that, under the reasoning pressed in the dog cases, would free the government to conduct routine scans of people’s homes or their bodies for all manner of contraband (or possibly for noncontraband, like marijuana grow lights, that are most commonly associated with illegality).

In the meantime, those of us who neither live in gated communities nor build gates to keep the police from our porches will retain much less privacy protection in our homes, despite the court’s past assurance that “every man’s house is his castle” and even the “poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all forces of government.” This is the danger of basing the Constitution’s protection on the efficacy of a dog’s nose or the latest high-tech sensing device rather than on the privacy of the intimate space that a dog or device allows the police to invade.

On Oct. 31, the court will have the chance to preserve a long-held tenet of American privacy. The right choice is to affirm our rights in our homes and our persons to be free, in the absence of emergency circumstances, from the warrantless use of dogs and sense-enhancing technology.

Jeffrey A. Meyer is a professor at Quinnipiac University School of Law and a visiting professor at Yale Law School.

BP thugs shoot Mexican teenager in the back?

Border Patrol scrutinized over teen's shooting death

by Bob Ortega - Oct. 18, 2012 12:07 AM

The Republic | azcentral.com

NOGALES, Ariz. - There was nothing unusual about the call to the Border Patrol and Nogales police on Oct. 10 to report two men climbing the border fence to bring drugs into the United States.

It also was not unusual that once Border Patrol agents arrived at the scene and attempted to arrest the men, who were now fleeing back to Mexico, one or more people began to hurl rocks over the fence at the agents from the Mexico side of the border.

The decision by one or more agents to open fire on the rock throwers, though, is another matter. It is the subject of furious disagreement between the Border Patrol and critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union and human-rights advocates, who say agents resort to deadly force too often. The Mexican government has condemned the shooting and called for a thorough investigation.

At least one Border Patrol agent fired shots through an opening in the fence. Moments later, Mexican police found the body of a 16-year-old boy on the ground in front of a medical office. Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez had been shot eight times. Police investigators marked 11 bullet holes on the walls of the medical office.

Elena Rodriguez is the 18th person to be killed by Border Patrol agents since January 2010, with all but two of those deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border, says Vicki Gaubeca, director of the ACLU's Regional Center for Border Rights, in Las Cruces, N.M. Eight of those killed allegedly had been throwing rocks at Border Patrol officers.

In the most recent incident, there are discrepancies between the Border Patrol's version of events and accounts of witnesses on the Mexican side of the border. The Border Patrol said its agent fired at someone who was throwing rocks at the agents over the fence. Elena Rodriguez's family has said all the bullets entered the boy's body from behind.

The discrepancies may be resolved: A Border Patrol spokesman says video cameras on the border fence were in operation during the incident. Those recordings have been turned over to FBI investigators. Sonora's attorney general also has requested a copy from the Department of Justice, the attorney general's spokeswoman, Sandra Hurtado, said.

The FBI was on the scene hours after the incident and has collected reports from the agents and Nogales police officers. It is standard for the FBI to investigate deadly incidents involving the Border Patrol.

Use of deadly force

Even before Elena Rodriguez's death, the ACLU, several members of Congress and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights had this year called for an independent, comprehensive investigation into Customs and Border Protection's policies on use of force.

ACLU attorney Chris Rickerd has criticized agents' actions in several deaths involving border agents, including a March 21, 2011, incident in which a Border Patrol officer in Douglas shot a 19-year-old U.S. citizen, Carlos Lamadrid, three times in the back as Lamadrid fled into Agua Prieta, Mexico. Rickerd said the Border Patrol should explain what disciplinary actions it takes when agents violate use-of-force policies.

The Border Patrol didn't respond by deadline to questions from The Republic about what disciplinary actions, if any, have been taken related to the 18 deaths.

Customs and Border Protection spokesman Michael Friel said the agency's use of force is based on the Department of Justice's policy. "Law-enforcement personnel are trained to use deadly force in circumstances that pose a threat to their lives, the lives of their fellow law-enforcement partners and innocent third parties," he said.

CBP wouldn't provide additional details on its use-of-force policy. But rocks are considered potentially lethal, and the agency typically has not disciplined officers for firing at rock throwers.

The agency doesn't classify rock-throwing incidents separately from other assaults on agents, but Friel said that such incidents are the most common type of assault along the border, numbering in the hundreds over the past three years.

No agents have been killed in rock-throwing incidents. Since early 2010, seven Border Patrol agents have been killed on duty: five in vehicle accidents; one, Brian Terry, was shot by drug smugglers in 2010; and one, Nicholas Ivie, was shot in a friendly-fire incident two weeks ago near Bisbee.

Lt. Carlos Jimenez of the Nogales Police Department said it's common for drug cartels to hire people as border lookouts "and to tell them if something goes bad to throw rocks to distract or deter law-enforcement officers ... They'll pay anybody willing to do it, youths, old people. They don't discriminate by age or gender."

Elena Rodriguez's mother, Araceli Rodriguez, insisted that her son would not have been involved in drug activity and must have been walking in the area when he was shot less than four blocks from his home.

"He wasn't a bad boy," she said tearfully in an interview at her home in Nogales, Sonora. A framed photograph of her son surrounded by flowers stood on a nearby table.

"They killed my little boy, and I want to know why. I want to know why they shot him so many times, why they shot him in the back," she said. "We want justice."

The Border Patrol declined to discuss details of the Elena Rodriguez case, citing the FBI investigation.

Responding to the scene

Nogales, Ariz., police Officer Quinardo Garcia was the first of several officers to respond to a report, at 11:16 p.m. on Oct. 10, of two men climbing over the border fence from Mexico.

Garcia said in a report that he saw two men carrying bundles of marijuana on their backs, jumping down from the fence onto the Arizona side and running toward houses on a street facing the fence. He chased them into a driveway and lost sight of them.

Moments later, he said, the first of several Border Patrol agents arrived, along with a police K-9 officer, John Zuniga.

In his report, Zuniga wrote that he spotted the two men, who had dropped their bundles, trying to climb back over the fence into Mexico. After Zuniga and Border Patrol agents yelled at them to get down from the fence, Zuniga reported that he "heard several rocks start hitting the ground, and I looked up and could see the rocks flying through the air."

As he took his dog back to his vehicle, Zuniga heard gunfire. When he looked up, he saw an agent standing by the fence.

Neither Zuniga nor Garcia reported seeing shots fired.

"I then heard an agent say, 'There is one 10-7,' which means out of service or no longer alive," Zuniga wrote in the report.

The Border Patrol initially told the public that an agent had fired and someone "appeared" to have been hit. The agency has not said whether more than one agent fired shots.

Across the fence, in his home and medical office on Calle Internacional, a street that runs along the border, Dr. Luis Contreras Sanchez was surfing the Internet when he heard someone run past his window, followed by at least eight shots, he said in an interview with The Republic.

"I turned out the light, dove down and called the police," he said. "I didn't hear anyone screaming or yelling outside, or I'd have gone out."

Minutes later, police arrived, Contreras Sanchez said. He looked out and saw the boy face down on the sidewalk.

While Border Patrol officials said that the agent fired after rock-throwers ignored repeated orders to stop, Contreras Sanchez said he didn't hear such orders. The Nogales Police Department's reports don't mention orders for the rock-throwers to stop. Actions criticized

To some Border Patrol critics, even if Elena Rodriguez was throwing rocks, the agent's response was not justified.

"If you see photos of where he was standing and where he allegedly was throwing rocks, from that distance, how lethal could those rocks be? How defensible is it to shoot someone?" asks the ACLU's Gaubeca.

The fence where the incident occurred was rebuilt a year ago as part of a project to construct more than 650 miles of new barriers mandated by Congress to tighten border security.

The new fence covers a 2.8-mile stretch from one end of Nogales to the other. Built of parallel beams constructed from a triple layer of rebar, concrete and steel, the fence averages 18 to 20 feet in height and has an extra steel barrier on top to make it harder to scale.

When it was completed during the summer of 2011, officials said the fence would better protect border agents from rock-throwers because unlike the old sheet-metal fence, which was 10 to 12 feet high, agents can see through it.

It may have had an impact. Border Patrol officers in the Tucson Sector, which includes Nogales, reported 251 assaults for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2011, a 40 percent drop from the previous fiscal year.

At the main border crossing in Nogales, the fence is at street level. Moving west, toward Contreras Sanchez's office, three blocks away, the fence climbs a steep hill on the U.S. side. Where Elena Rodriguez was shot, the base of the fence is 25 feet above street level; the top of the fence is roughly 45 feet above where the boy was shot.

The angle is such that it would be all but impossible for a rock-thrower to hit someone near the fence on the U.S. side.

Elena Rodriguez's family has hired a U.S. attorney, Luis Parra, to sue the Border Patrol.

Similar cross-border suits in recent years have been dismissed by U.S. courts. For example, 15-year-old Sergio Hernandez-Guereca was shot twice and killed by a Border Patrol officer in El Paso in June 2010, allegedly while throwing rocks as the agent arrested another youth.

The Department of Justice declined to prosecute the agent, saying he hadn't violated CBP's use-of-force policies or training. The department declined an extradition request by the state government of Chihuahua. Federal district courts twice dismissed suits by the family, alleging wrongful death and violation of the boy's rights. In both cases, U.S. District Judge David Briones ruled that U.S. constitutional protections don't apply because Hernandez-Guereca was a Mexican citizen and in Mexico at the time he was killed. An appeal to the 5th Circuit Court is pending.

David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego, called the judge's ruling "a legitimate legal interpretation in the absence of any higher court ruling that suggests otherwise . . . It exposes one of the many challenges of the border region that are not well captured in national law."

He said firing a gun on one side of an international border doesn't necessarily create legal responsibility for the impact in the neighboring country.

Gaubeca said that while the Mexican government could ask to extradite the Border Patrol agent, the U.S. government can, as it has before, simply say no.

"How do you wrestle with the issue of causing harm on the other side of an international boundary, and what remedy is there for people who feel this is a wrongful shooting or an inappropriate use of lethal force?" Gaubeca asked.

This, she argues, is why it's particularly important for the Border Patrol to train its agents to defuse confrontations.

Since 2007, when the George W. Bush administration launched a major expansion, the Border Patrol has nearly doubled in size, to more than 21,000 agents. To recruit and quickly hire that many new agents, the Border Patrol reduced requirements, deferred background checks and omitted lie-detector tests that had been standard, and shortened training that officers receive, said John Carlos Frey, a filmmaker who this year produced a documentary on the patrol for the PBS program "Need to Know."

Rickerd, of the ACLU, said in a recent blog post that the Border Patrol should "make clear whether or not it abides by best law enforcement practices," in terms of the training it gives agents, whether it equips them with adequate protective gear that would reduce their need to use deadly force, and what plans it has to install dashboard-mounted and other cameras to record its agents' actions.

On Monday, as she waited to meet with state police for any news on the investigation, Araceli Rodriguez shared one of the many questions to which she'd like an answer: "Why didn't the Border Patrol agents just fire a warning shot in the air?"

Mexico lying about murdering drug lord Heriberto Lazcano???

Source

Mexican officials hoping to use Lazcano's dead parents for ID

October 17, 2012 | 12:31 pm

MEXICO CITY — Just in time for the Day of the Dead, the weird, ghoulish story of Mexican drug lord Heriberto Lazcano just got weirder and more ghoulish.

After killing a man they claim was Lazcano in a firefight this month — but then promptly losing possession of his body — Mexican officials are trying to get permission to exhume Lazcano’s late parents in order to prove, by use of DNA tests, that the man who was felled in a hail of bullets outside of a Coahuila baseball stadium really was him.

The Mexican Navy insists it is “100% certain” that it was Lazcano, leader of the notorious Zetas cartel, who was slain in the shootout in the border state of Coahuila. But government officials have had a hard time convincing the public that they got their man, because the body was stolen shortly after the shooting by armed commandos, who snatched the corpse from a funeral parlor in the middle of the night.

Naval officials say that a fingerprint match confirms the body’s identity (the prints were taken before the body was stolen, they say). But the doubters run from everyday Mexicans, many of whom have a taste for conspiracy, to ex-President Vicente Fox, who said recently that the story seemed like a tough one to swallow. [link in Spanish the article in Spanish follows this article here]

The missing body has become an embarrassment for the administration of outgoing President Felipe Calderon, which should have been able to count Lazcano’s slaying as an unalloyed victory in its war on the narco gangs. Instead, Mexican papers have been full of withering jokes at its expense — one cartoon recently made reference to the popular zombie TV series “The Walking Dead” — and bizarre info-graphics comparing photos of the face of the living “El Lazca” with the bloated, dead face that is supposed to be his as well.

Enter into the mess an assistant federal prosecutor, Cuitlahuac Salinas, who said in a news conference Wednesday that while experts were “certain” they had identified the body, they were trying to get the proper permits to dig up Lazcano’s parents in the state of Hidalgo, in order to “obtain their genetic profile.”

It is not clear what genetic material officials have of Lazcano’s to use for comparison purposes. Before joining the Zetas, the drug lord was a member of the Mexican army. He also spent some time in a Mexican jail.

Salinas said his office was also trying to find Lazcano’s living sisters, as well. But in this case, at least so far, the living have proved as elusive as the dead.

Critica Fox al gobierno por el 'mal manejo' del caso 'Lazca'

Critica Fox al gobierno por el 'mal manejo' del caso 'Lazca'

Policía • 15 Octubre 2012 - 4:30am — Daniel Martínez

Insiste en propuesta de legalizar drogas: "Reitero mi posición a favor de la legalización; me parece que es la gran solución".

Guanajuato • El ex presidente Vicente Fox criticó al gobierno de Felipe Calderón por la forma en que se manejó la muerte de Heriberto Lazcano, El Lazca, presunto líder absoluto de Los Zetas.

Acusó a las autoridades federales de querer “presumir” con el abatimiento de uno de los hombres del narcotráfico más buscados en México y tachó de increíble la presunta desaparición del cuerpo del jefe zeta.

“No sé cómo pretenden que nos traguemos una rueda de molino con este asunto de El Lazca, tan mal manejado que realmente deja en evidencia que lo único que se busca es presumir ante la opinión pública cosas a la carrera, sin el debido sustento”, mencionó en San Cristóbal.

Fox se declaró a favor de la legalización de las drogas y señaló que es uno de los caminos para frenar el tráfico de estupefacientes hacia Estados Unidos.

“Reitero mi posición a favor de la legalización; me parece que es la gran solución y alguien tiene que empezar esa idea, porque al esperar que Estados Unidos y su ciudadanía avancen hacia una legalización se está perdiendo un tiempo valioso para México.”

El ex mandatario se dijo esperanzado de que el presidente electo Enrique Peña Nieto adopte nuevas estrategias para frenar el narcotráfico en territorio nacional y evitar con ello los muertos que deja el crimen organizado.

“Algún día llegará, que un presidente de México diga: ¡Jóvenes, se acabó! Es su tarea, ustedes detengan la droga allá en la frontera, México no tiene que estar pagando este precio brutal de muertos”, afirmó.

Señaló que el derramamiento de sangre no solo se traduce en la pérdida de vidas humanas, sino en la ausencia de capital extranjero para las inversiones.

Declaró que la presencia del Ejército en las calles es parte del problema, ya que su lugar está en los cuarteles.

“Con esta estrategia lo único que estamos haciendo es engordar el caldo a Estados Unidos; en realidad nos tienen trabajando para ellos: en México no se produce droga, no se consume droga en cantidades mayores, por tanto, el trabajo y la tarea solo la estamos haciendo para ese país.”

DEA Painkiller Crackdown Targets Drug Distributors

Source

A New Painkiller Crackdown Targets Drug Distributors

By BARRY MEIER

Published: October 17, 2012

A local druggist in Newport Beach, Calif., never expected that the federal government’s recent crackdown on distributors of prescription painkillers would ensnare him.

But in June, Cardinal Health, a major distributor, abruptly cut off his supplies of narcotics like OxyContin and Percocet. A few months earlier, the Drug Enforcement Administration had accused Cardinal of ignoring signs that some pharmacies in Florida that it supplied with such drugs might be feeding street demand for them.

Cardinal told the druggist, Michael Pavlovich, that the volume of pain drugs and other controlled medications he was dispensing was too high, a situation he said was explainable. His pharmacy specializes in pain patients, he said. Still, it took weeks for Cardinal to start supplying him again, and even then, it limited its shipments to about 15 percent of his previous orders. As a result, Mr. Pavlovich said, many of his patients had to go elsewhere to get prescriptions filled.

“We have to convince them that our dispensing is legitimate,” he said of his dealings with Cardinal.

Cardinal’s crackdown on Mr. Pavlovich was a sign of a new approach by the D.E.A. to stem the growing misuse and abuse of painkillers. In the last decade, the agency has tried a variety of tactics with limited success, from arresting hundreds of doctors to closing scores of pharmacies. Now, it and other agencies are moving up the pharmaceutical food chain, putting pressure on distributors like Cardinal, which act as middlemen between drug makers and the pharmacies and doctors that dispense painkillers.

In response, the distributors are scrambling to limit their liability by more closely monitoring their distribution pipelines and cutting off some customers.

Since January, for example, Cardinal has cut ties with a dozen pharmacies in states including Arizona, California, Nevada and Oklahoma, interviews and court records show. In doing so, the wholesaler, which is based in Columbus, Ohio, cited audits suggesting that people seeking to buy prescription drugs illegally might have targeted the store in question.

Several of the affected drugstores sued Cardinal unsuccessfully to resume supplies, but documents filed in those actions show that until recently, the wholesaler shipped large volumes of pain pills to the stores for months, if not years.

George S. Barrett, Cardinal’s chairman and chief executive, said the company had tightened the criteria it used in determining whether to sell narcotics to a pharmacy. In May, Cardinal settled the action brought by the D.E.A. in connection with its Florida sales by agreeing to suspend shipments of controlled drugs, like narcotics, from a facility in that state for two years. It could also face a significant fine.

“We had a strong antidiversion system in place, but no system is perfect,” Mr. Barrett said. Among other steps, the company said it had created a special committee to regularly evaluate pharmacies that order high volumes of narcotic drugs.

Another major distributor, AmerisourceBergen, recently disclosed that it faces a federal criminal inquiry into its oversight of painkiller sales. And in June, West Virginia officials filed a lawsuit against 14 drug distributors, including Cardinal and AmerisourceBergen, charging that they had fed illicit painkiller use in that state. The companies have denied wrongdoing.

D.E.A. officials have heralded the Cardinal action as the forerunner of a more aggressive approach to the painkiller problem. But critics say that for years, the agency did little to scrutinize distributors who were making tens of millions of dollars from the prescriptions generated by pain clinics in Florida, Ohio and other states. These facilities, often described as “pill mills,” employed doctors who wrote narcotics prescriptions after cursory examinations of patients.

“In the case of West Virginia, they have done nothing,” said a lawyer in Charleston, James M. Cagle, who is working on the state’s action against distributors.

The drug distribution system is a sprawling one that involves about 800 companies, which range in size from a few giants like Cardinal to hundreds of small firms. For wholesalers, the markup on medications can be small, sometimes a few pennies a pill. But with billions of pills sold annually, the profits can be big. Narcotic painkillers are now the most widely prescribed drugs in the United States, with sales last year of $8.5 billion.

This is not the first time the industry has faced scrutiny. In 2008, Cardinal paid $34 million to settle charges that it failed to alert the D.E.A. to suspicious orders for millions of pain pills that it was shipping to Internet pharmacies — operations that for years supplied the illicit market. The same year, another big distributor, McKesson, paid $13 million to settle similar charges. As part of the agreements, both companies denied wrongdoing.

Executives like Mr. Barrett of Cardinal say that it is often difficult for a distributor to tell whether a pharmacy or a doctor is serving legitimate pain patients or supplying illicit drug demand. And distributors have long complained that the D.E.A. has never issued specific guidelines for when they should stop shipping to a customer.

But agency officials say that wholesalers know about the red flags. For example, the agency charged that Cardinal was selling 50 times the amount of pain pills containing the narcotic oxycodone, the active ingredient in OxyContin and other drugs, to its four top pharmacy customers in Florida than it was supplying to the average drugstore in that state.

Cardinal failed to scrutinize such sales, the agency said, even violating the safeguards it promised to put in place when it agreed to settle the government charges in connection with its supplying of Internet pharmacies. “Everyone is making a large amount of money on these drugs,” said Joseph T. Rannazzisi, a deputy assistant administrator of the D.E.A. division that oversees legal drugs, like painkillers.

The D.E.A. is able to track where painkillers are going because distributors regularly file reports detailing their shipments to customers. But just how aggressively the agency uses that data is anyone’s guess.

An agency employee, Michelle Cooper, testified last year that she had attended a training session at which instructors described how investigators like her could use the database to identify suspicious distributors. In doing so, they pointed to data showing that a distributor had suddenly started shipping large and growing volumes of pain pills to Florida drugstores.

It was only later that Ms. Cooper discovered that the case involved a real distributor, not a hypothetical one, and that the company was still making those shipments despite the agency’s apparent awareness of them.

“I didn’t believe the numbers they were showing us were real,” she said. “I thought it was for training purposes.”

Ms. Cooper subsequently investigated the company, Keysource Medical, which agreed last year to give up its license to distribute narcotic drugs.

Faced with Congressional pressure, agency officials like Mr. Rannazzisi have said that they are increasing the ranks of investigators like Ms. Cooper, and that they provide distribution data to state officials when local authorities request it as part of an investigation.

But state officials say it would be more helpful to get that data routinely so they can act more quickly against rogue clinics and pharmacies. For years, Ohio law enforcement authorities did not know which distributors were supplying the many pill mills operating in the state, one official said. If the D.E.A. had supplied that information, “we would have known about the number of shipments going into Ohio and where they were going,” said Aaron Haslam, an assistant state attorney general.

Also, while the D.E.A. brings actions against distributors like Cardinal for failing to notify the agency of a “suspicious order” from a pharmacy or other customer, it does not share those reports with officials in the state where the pharmacy is based.

In response to a request from The New York Times, the agency even declined to disclose the number of such reports it received annually. A spokeswoman, Barbara Carreno, said in a statement that the agency considered such statistics “law enforcement sensitive” information, but she did not elaborate.

The Times has filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking that data.

Medical marijuana faces key test in court

Medical marijuana faces key test in court

By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Oct 18, 2012 10:32 PM

The top lawyers for the state and county, strong opponents of Arizona’s medical-marijuana laws, will argue in court today that federal drug laws pre-empt the voter-approved law.

Attorneys arguing on behalf of White Mountain Health Center of Sun City, meanwhile, charge that state law does not require anyone to violate federal laws by issuing permits for medical-marijuana activities since the state has decriminalized those acts. In their lawsuit, they also allege that Maricopa County illegally rejected the center’s registration certificate, which is among the state requirements to become a medical-marijuana dispensary applicant.

At stake is the future of medical marijuana in Arizona, one of 17 states to approve the drug to treat certain medical conditions. If government lawyers prevail, they would shut down the legal growing of marijuana and ensure that dispensaries do not open — making it impossible for patients to legally obtain pot.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Michael Gordon will hear arguments at 3 p.m.

“What it would not shut down is that people who qualify can have cards to show a policeman that their possession was not illegal, but they’d have no legal way to obtain marijuana,” said Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne. He added that the law provides no way for patients to legally purchase marijuana from out of state or on the Internet.

Supporters of medical marijuana strongly disagree with the idea that the state law requires government workers to engage in activities that would expose them to liabilities under the federal Controlled Substances Act, which makes possession, sale or use of marijuana a crime.

“The (Arizona Medical Marijuana Act) has decriminalized a subset of marijuana laws for a subset of people,” said Ezekiel Edwards, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s criminal-law reform project. “This is a validly passed law from the people of Arizona seeking to get a form of medicine for people who really need and want to use it.”

Each side cites various federal and state court cases to bolster its case. Each side also vows to appeal if the judge does not rule its way.

Voters in 2010 passed the measure to allow people with certain debilitating medical conditions, including chronic pain, cancer and muscle spasms, to use medical marijuana. They must obtain a recommendation from a physician and register with the state, which issues identification cards to qualified patients and caregivers. Caregivers can grow 12 plants for up to five patients. Users are limited to 2.5ounces every two weeks.

More than 32,000 people have permission to use medical marijuana in Arizona, and most can also grow their own until the dispensaries open — if they ever do.

Under the law, state health officials can license up to 126 dispensaries throughout designated areas. The law does not limit how much marijuana dispensary operators can grow.

In August, the state Health Department selected 97 dispensary owners to have the opportunity to sell marijuana and operate cultivation sites to grow if they complete certain steps.

That same day, Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said he would use the Sun City dispensary case as a vehicle to test the federal pre-emption argument. That dispensary is located in an unincorporated area and requires county-zoning approval before it can seek other permits from the state. Montgomery had advised county officials not to participate in the medical-marijuana program, saying employees could risk prosecution under federal drug laws.

Meanwhile, Horne issued a non-binding legal opinion, saying federal drug laws trump the state law when it comes to “cultivating, selling and dispensing” pot. Montgomery and Horne have cited recent crackdowns by federal prosecutors in other states to bolster their arguments.

But U.S. Attorney for Arizona John Leonardo has told The Arizona Republic that while the contradiction between federal and state laws has created anxiety, “to focus our efforts on individuals who are in compliance with state law and may be using marijuana for medicinal purposes, including treating such serious diseases as cancer, would not be the likely and most efficient use of our resources.”

Paul Bender, an Arizona State University constitutional-law professor, said it is extraordinarily unusual that the top lawyers for the state and county are challenging a voter-approved law, since they typically are defending such laws. Bender said he believes politics is motivating their challenge, although he acknowledged the conflict between federal and state laws.

“The legal question is: If you have a federal statute which could be used to pre-empt state law, but the federal government doesn’t use it, should the state go ahead and follow it’s own law?” Bender asked. “That’s the issue. The most sensible thing to do would be to … go ahead and do what the people of Arizona want to do unless the federal government comes in and says stop.”

The legal battle has angered medical-marijuana advocates, many who believe prosecutors are trying to obstruct the will of voters and keep the ill from a form of medicine that they say allows them to tolerate pain better than traditional medicine.

So far, state health officials have issued 37 dispensary-registration certificates, but none has completed the necessary steps to open. Some have said they will wait for the outcome of this case before investing more money.

Tucson pot dispensary 1 step from opening

Tucson pot dispensary 1 step from opening

by Peter Corbett - Oct. 18, 2012 09:58 PM

The Republic | azcentral.com

A southeast Tucson medical-marijuana dispensary is the first in Arizona to request a state inspection, the final step before it could open.

The Green Halo dispensary is one of 37 in Arizona, including 11 in the Valley, that have so far been awarded dispensary registration certificates by the Arizona Department of Health Services.

The state has until late November to review Green Halo's required documents and inspect its facility, said Harmony Duport, the ADHS chief of inspections and compliance.

"It's possible they could open this year," Duport said.

That would be more than two years after voters approved the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act.

Ken Sobel, manager of Green Halo LLC, hopes the state inspection of his planned dispensary off Interstate 10 at 7710 S. Wilmot Road can be completed much sooner than the 45 days ADHS is allowed.

"The primary reason this is all going forward is that there are a lot of patients that need this medicine," he said.

Sobel, an attorney, plans to operate two Green Halo dispensaries, and is involved with three others in the Tucson area.

No dispensary has yet opened in Arizona, partly because state and Maricopa County officials allege federal law trumps the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act. Dispensary-certificate holders are awaiting a Maricopa County Superior Court ruling on the matter in the White Mountain Health Center lawsuit.

The court will hear arguments on the case today.

White Mountain wants to operate a dispensary in Sun City at 99th Avenue and Greenway Road. Once Judge Michael Gordon rules in the case, White Mountain partner Butch Williams said it would take a month to build a dispensary within the company's leased building in Sun City.

Elsewhere, the operator of what could be Scottsdale's first medical-marijuana dispensary has taken the first steps to open a facility northwest of Pima Road and Via de Ventura.

Monarch Wellness Centers Inc. was awarded a dispensary registration certificate Sept. 13 and filed a copy with Scottsdale. Dustin Johnson, Monarch president, declined comment on his plans.

CIA wants drones to kill with

Fair trial. Ask the CIA if you deserve a "fair trial" and they will tell you that you won't get a fair trail if they decide you are a criminal. The CIA will give you a fair chance to run from a drone launched missile if they decide to execute you for crimes you have allegedly committed.

I can only wonder when the DEA will be requesting drones to executed suspected drug dealers with!

Source

CIA seeks to expand drone fleet, officials say

By Greg Miller, Published: October 18

The CIA is urging the White House to approve a significant expansion of the agency’s fleet of armed drones, a move that would extend the spy service’s decade-long transformation into a paramilitary force, U.S. officials said.

The proposal by CIA Director David H. Petraeus would bolster the agency’s ability to sustain its campaigns of lethal strikes in Pakistan and Yemen and enable it, if directed, to shift aircraft to emerging al-Qaeda threats in North Africa or other trouble spots, officials said.

If approved, the CIA could add as many as 10 drones, the officials said, to an inventory that has ranged between 30 and 35 over the past few years.

The outcome has broad implications for counterterrorism policy and whether the CIA gradually returns to being an organization focused mainly on gathering intelligence, or remains a central player in the targeted killing of terrorism suspects abroad.

In the past, officials from the Pentagon and other departments have raised concerns about the CIA’s expanding arsenal and involvement in lethal operations, but a senior Defense official said that the Pentagon had not opposed the agency’s current plan.

Officials from the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon declined to comment on the proposal. Officials who discussed it did so on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitive nature of the subject.

One U.S. official said the request reflects a concern that political turmoil across the Middle East and North Africa has created new openings for al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

“With what happened in Libya, we’re realizing that these places are going to heat up,” the official said, referring to the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi. No decisions have been made about moving armed CIA drones into these regions, but officials have begun to map out contingencies. “I think we’re actually looking forward a little bit,” the official said.

White House officials are particularly concerned about the emergence of al-Qaeda’s affiliate in North Africa, which has gained weapons and territory following the collapse of the governments in Libya and Mali. Seeking to bolster surveillance in the region, the United States has been forced to rely on small, unarmed turboprop aircraft disguised as private planes.

Meanwhile, the campaign of U.S. airstrikes in Yemen has heated up. Yemeni officials said a strike on Thursday — the 35th this year — killed at least seven al-Qaeda-linked militants near Jaar, a town in southern Yemen previously controlled by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the terrorist group’s affiliate is known.

The CIA’s proposal would have to be evaluated by a group led by President Obama’s counter­terrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, officials said.

The group, which includes senior officials from the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies, is directly involved in deciding which alleged al-Qaeda operatives are added to “kill” lists. But current and former officials said the group also plays a lesser-known role as referee in deciding the allocation of assets, including whether the CIA or the Defense Department takes possession of newly delivered drones.

“You have to state your requirements and the system has to agree that your requirements trump somebody else,” said a former high-ranking official who participated in the deliberations. “Sometimes there is a food fight.”

The administration has touted the collaboration between the CIA and the military in counterterrorism operations, contributing to a blurring of their traditional roles. In Yemen, the CIA routinely “borrows” the aircraft of the military’s Joint Special Operations Command to carry out strikes. The JSOC is increasingly engaged in activities that resemble espionage.

The CIA’s request for more drones indicates that Petraeus has become convinced that there are limits to those sharing arrangements and that the agency needs full control over a larger number of aircraft.

The U.S. military’s fleet dwarfs that of the CIA. A Pentagon report issued this year counted 246 Predators, Reapers and Global Hawks in the Air Force inventory alone, with hundreds of other remotely piloted aircraft distributed among the Army, the Navy and the Marines.

Petraeus, who had control of large portions of those fleets while serving as U.S. commander in Iraq and Afghanistan, has had to adjust to a different resource scale at the CIA, officials said. The agency’s budget has begun to tighten, after double-digit increases over much of the past decade.

“He’s not used to the small budget over there,” a U.S. congressional official said. In briefings on Capitol Hill, Petraeus often marvels at the agency’s role relative to its resources, saying, “We do so well with so little money we have.” The official declined to comment on whether Petraeus had requested additional drones.

Early in his tenure at the CIA, Petraeus was forced into a triage situation with the agency’s inventory of armed drones. To augment the hunt for Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born cleric linked to al-Qaeda terrorist plots, Petraeus moved several CIA drones from Pakistan to Yemen. After Awlaki was killed in a drone strike, the aircraft were sent back to Pakistan, officials said.

The number of strikes in Pakistan has dropped from 122 two years ago to 40 this year, according to the New America Foundation. But officials said the agency has not cut back on its patrols there, despite the killing of Osama bin Laden and a dwindling number of targets.

The agency continues to search for bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and has carried out dozens of strikes against the Haqqani network, a militant group behind attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

The CIA also maintains a separate, smaller fleet of stealth surveillance aircraft. Stealth drones were used to monitor bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Their use in surveillance flights over Iran’s nuclear facilities was exposed when one crashed in that country last year.

Any move to expand the reach of the CIA’s fleet of armed drones probably would require the agency to establish additional secret bases. The agency relies on U.S. military pilots to fly the planes from bases in the southwestern United States but has been reluctant to share overseas landing strips with the Defense Department.

CIA Predators that are used in Pakistan are flown out of airstrips along the border in Afghanistan. The agency opened a secret base on the Arabian Peninsula when it began flights over Yemen, even though JSOC planes are flown from a separate facility in Djibouti.

Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.

LA Sheriff sued for refusing to release people on bail

ACLU sues Sheriff Baca over bail refusals

By Cindy Chang, Los Angeles Times

October 19, 2012, 12:05 a.m.

The American Civil Liberties Union is suing Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca on behalf of people who say they were denied bail for minor offenses after being flagged by immigration authorities.

British filmmaker Duncan Roy, who says he spent nearly three months in L.A. County jails without a chance to post bail, is one of the five plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which will be filed today in U.S. District Court.

Roy was arrested Nov. 15 in Malibu on an extortion charge. He was in the country legally but was identified as a suspected illegal immigrant through a federal program called Secure Communities, which sends the fingerprints of all arrestees through an immigration database.

Sheriff's Department officials rejected Roy's repeated efforts to post $35,000 bail, citing a detention order by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the lawsuit alleges.

The ACLU and other plaintiffs' attorneys say the bail denials have been a blanket practice by the Sheriff's Department, affecting thousands of people who are subjected to ICE holds in local jails. The lawsuit notes that the denials may have ceased in the last week.

A Baca spokeswoman said she had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment on its specifics. She disputed the charge that the Sheriff's Department has denied bail to anyone because of ICE holds.

"If you are able to post bail — say it's $10,000 — and you're an immigrant from wherever. With or without an ICE hold, we accept that," said the spokeswoman, Nicole Nishida.

A report by prison expert James Austin cites data from Baca's office indicating that at least 20,000 Los Angeles County inmates, nearly all of them Latino males, were subjected to ICE holds in 2011.

As many as 17 other counties, including Orange, San Bernardino, Sacramento and San Diego, also allegedly deny bail for defendants with ICE holds, according to John Bench, president of the Golden State Bail Agents Assn.

"The principle of bail is something so fundamental, that you shouldn't be held until you're found guilty," said Jennie Pasquarella, an ACLU attorney involved in the lawsuit.

The dangerous conditions in the nation's largest jail system, which will be overseen by a special monitor after a scathing report by a blue ribbon panel, add "insult to injury" for anyone detained unnecessarily, Pasquarella added.

The Obama administration's deportation policies, which rely on cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities, have come under fire in California. Legislation that would have prohibited sheriffs and police departments from enforcing ICE holds in most cases was vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown last month.

Denying bail to arrestees would go above and beyond Secure Communities, which requires only that local law enforcement agencies honor the 48-hour ICE holds.

Alain Martinez-Perez, another plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit, was arrested in December following a domestic dispute. He spent several days behind bars while his cousin's efforts to post bail were rejected because he was under an immigration hold, the lawsuit says.

"People should not be abused in this way," Martinez-Perez, a 37-year-old immigrant from Mexico, said in an interview. "The law should reflect the need to protect all people. We come to America to make better lives, not to be abused and treated differently from others."

cindy.chang@latimes.com

Police use of drones concerns activists

Police use of drones concerns activists

Justin Berton

Updated 10:57 p.m., Thursday, October 18, 2012

Imagine a day when an unmanned aircraft can follow a homicide suspect driving on Interstate 880 and silently track him to his hideout in the East Bay.

Police say that day is coming - possibly by next year. Remote-controlled aircraft known as drones will help their efforts to fight crime and make officers safer, and save taxpayers from the rising costs of fueling and maintaining helicopters.

Critics, however, worry that law enforcement's use of the flying cameras will result in privacy abuses and open the door to the unwarranted surveillance of residents and, eventually, entire neighborhoods.

Imagine a day, they say, when an unmanned aircraft silently follows a resident from his front door to work under the guise of community policing.

On Thursday, civil rights attorneys and antidrone activists gathered outside Oakland City Hall to criticize an Alameda County Sheriff's Office plan to buy the high-tech gadgets. It would be among the first law enforcement agencies in the state to do so.

Deputies tested the machines two months ago and have applied for a federal grant that could bring the first aerial device to the county by 2013.

Sgt. J.D. Nelson, a spokesman for the sheriff, said deputies would deploy a drone only in emergencies, just as the department uses helicopters today.

New tool, same rules

The drone's cameras could give officers an aerial view of unfolding crime scenes such as hostage situations, or track dangerous suspects who flee into backyards or wooded areas, Nelson said. Instead of fueling a $3 million helicopter, officers could remotely launch a battery-powered drone that costs $50,000 to $100,000.

The 4-pound model tested by deputies, loaded with high-definition cameras, zipped through the air at a height of 400 feet for several hours without having to be recharged.

"We could use them in search-and-rescue operations," Nelson said, "which could save someone's life."

Critics suspicious

For all the good intentions, Sheriff Gregory Ahern incited privacy advocates this week when he said he would also use the unmanned devices to scout for marijuana farms and characterized such work as "proactive policing." Critics view that as code for spying on large swaths of territory, such as high-crime neighborhoods.

"It will become integrated into their everyday police tactics," said Rachel Herzing, an activist with Critical Resistance, a national group that advocates for alternatives to imprisonment. "A few years ago, we didn't see tanks or armored vehicles in the streets of Oakland. Now we see it and it's become almost normal."

Linda Lye, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, echoed the concern that local police were purchasing military tools normally reserved for war and had not come up with a worthy rationale for deploying drones.

"When law enforcement has dangerous and powerful tools in their arsenal, they'll use them," Lye said. "The invitation to abuse this tool is enormous."

Use is spreading

Domestic agencies and private groups have dramatically increased their use of drones in recent years, just as the military has come to rely on them in wars.

Fire crews in some states use drones in wildlands to see what a blaze is doing behind the firewall. Environmentalists use them to monitor animals in remote areas. State law enforcement agencies in Texas and Arizona have purchased planes to monitor the U.S.-Mexican border.

The use of drones by local law enforcement agencies is still rare, but experts agree a push of federal money and a drop in the cost of the technology will give hundreds of local police departments the incentive to start using the planes in coming years.

Legal issues

The rise of the machines is certain to lead to legal battles down the road, said Jim Dempsey, vice president for public policy at San Francisco's Center for Democracy and Technology.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that what's viewable from the air is fair game for police, Dempsey said. But if a drone tails a suspect for an extended period, the courts may want police to obtain a search warrant, he said.

Dempsey said the technology was outpacing the law books, and that "this issue is headed straight for the Supreme Court."

Trevor Timm, a spokesman with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said his group wanted local police departments to work with privacy advocates to draft regulations on when drones could be used.

"We want to make sure there are robust rules in place before they fill up the skies of the Bay Area," Timm said. "Right now, it's cheap, it's easy, and there's no rules of the road. It could get out of control very fast."

Justin Berton is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jberton@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @justinberton

Bill Montgomery wants medical marijuana facilities shut down???

Source

Prosecutors want judge to rule Arizona medical marijuana facilities are prevented by federal law

Posted: Friday, October 19, 2012 5:31 pm

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services

Prosecutors urged a judge Friday to declare medical marijuana dispensaries and growing facilities as preempted by federal law.

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said there's no question but that marijuana remains illegal under federal law. And he told Judge Michael Gordon that law classifies marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug for which there is no legitimate medical use.

What that means, Montgomery argued, is the state is powerless to do anything that ultimately results in the state issuing a license to someone to sell marijuana. If nothing else, he said the requirements of the 2010 voter-approved law for public officials to act put them in the position where they could be prosecuted under federal law for aiding someone else in obtaining the drug.

Most immediately, Montgomery wants Gordon to block a bid by the owners of White Mountain Health Center to open a dispensary in Sun City. But he ultimately hopes to get an appellate level ruling that any action by any government official that paves the way to a dispensary is illegal, effectively banning not only the shops that will sell the drug but the facilities to grow it legally.

In fact, Montgomery ultimately wants courts to say it is illegal for the state Department of Health Services to even issue identification cards to those who have a doctor's recommendation to use the drug.

That last argument, however, proved too much for Assistant Attorney General Charles Grubbe.

He agreed that the state cannot authorize someone to sell or grow marijuana commercially, which is what a dispensary permit would do.

But Grubbe said all the ID cards do is identify those with specific medical conditions for which a doctor believes marijuana would be helpful. More to the point, the cards can be used by state and local police to show that person should not be charged under state law with illegal drug possession.

The specific issue before Gordon stems from a requirement that anyone seeking a state dispensary permit must provide documentation to the Department of Health Services that the site is properly zoned.

In this case, Maricopa County officials, acting under Montgomery's advice, refused to provide the necessary letter. The county is involved because Sun City is an unincorporated area.

Dispensary owners sued, asking Gordon to order the county to issue the letter.

Montgomery told the judge he can't do that.

"If we were to provide that information ... it will lead to the establishing in Maricopa County of a Schedule 1 distribution facility,'' he said.

Gordon noted, though, that nothing requires Arizona to have any laws making possession, sale or transportation of marijuana a crime. He said -- and Montgomery agreed -- that would allow the state to decriminalize marijuana.

"Since you can back out of the whole thing, why can't you just back out of part of it,'' the judge asked, allowing some people to sell and use marijuana.

Montgomery responded that the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act does not just decriminalize marijuana but actually regulates it. And that, he said, puts it in direct conflict with federal law.

"There is a way to do it,'' Montgomery said of decriminalization. "This is not it.''

Gordon called that the "ultimate irony.''

"So maybe the lesson to be learned is that the voters ought not to have been so directed in telling the state how to enforce its statutes,'' he said, simply decriminalizing the drug for some without state oversight and regulation.

But attorney Zeke Edwards, representing the clinic owners, said it should not be necessary for the state to choose between total regulation or total deregulation.

"Arizona has the right to decriminalize some medical marijuana activity,'' he said.

He also told Gordon that Montgomery's arguments are based on the premise that state and county workers are at risk of prosecution for simply processing zoning papers or dispensary permits. He said there's no basis for that.

Edwards pointed out that when Dennis Burke was the U.S. Attorney for Arizona he wrote a letter to state health officials spelling out that compliance with state medical marijuana laws provides no shield from prosecution under the federal Controlled Substances Act. But Edwards said that Burke, in listing who might face liability, did not include public employees for processing papers.

Gordon could sidestep at least part of the dispute if he decides he does not want to order the county to provide the necessary zoning certification. Instead, he could declare the requirement for the letter legally unnecessary.

Arredondo left giant black mark on Tempe

Richardson: Arredondo left giant black mark on Tempe

Posted: Friday, October 19, 2012 8:12 am

Guest Commentary by Bill Richardson

Ex-Tempe City Council member Ben Arredondo is nothing more than a crooked politician who took advantage of his position of power for personal gain.

On Oct. 5, Arredondo, a member of the Tempe City Council from 1994 to 2010 and at that time a member of the State Leglislature since 2010, pled guilty in U. S. District Court in Phoenix to felony charges involving bribery and misappropriating scholarship funds. A plea agreement made with the U.S. Attorney’s Office recommends he serve 27 to 51 months in prison, and Arredondo subsequently gave up his senate seat.

Arredondo reportedly took $6,000 worth of bribes from undercover FBI agents posing as developers who wanted to do business in Tempe and diverted $50,000 in scholarship funds to family members.

The story continues to make headlines.

The Arizona Republic reported on July 14 Tempe Vice Mayor Joel Navarro, Council members Corey Woods and Robin Arredondo-Savage — Ben Arredondo’s niece — also met with Arredondo and undercover FBI agents and that longtime City of Tempe lobbyist Mike Williams could be tied to the FBI probe. Navarro, Woods, Arredondo-Savage and Williams have not been charged criminally.

A May 16 story reported Arredondo “accepted expensive tickets to sporting events from Fiesta Bowl executives after helping the bowl secure a $6.45 million subsidy from Tempe in 2005.” No charges were filed in this case against Arredondo or a host of other elected officials who were playing patty-cake with the Fiesta Bowl.

Several Fiesta Bowl officials have pled guilty to crimes. And a story from May 2011 said “Arredondo was intimately involved with ASU, Insight and the Fiesta Bowl, he was continually involved in negotiations. Arredondo also was close to Gary Husk, who, in addition to lobbying for the Fiesta Bowl, had been a paid consultant for Tempe.”

According to the December 2002 Los Vecinos Newsletter (download a PDF copy at evtnow.com/4f1 http://www.asu.edu/copp/urban/reports/files/Vecinos1202.pdf ), a Feb 24, 2005 East Valley Tribune story and Tempe records, Husk was paid a total of nearly $500,000 for consulting work at the police department and the city’s diversity office from 2002 to 2007.

Husk is reportedly under criminal investigation.

Besides being a crook, Arredondo was a Godfather-like figure in Tempe who used his political power to dictate as much city policy as possible. He also used his power to promote those in his camp of followers. His tentacles reached far and had a powerful grip. He pretty much got what he wanted most of the time.

An Oct. 5 Arizona Republic story quoted Arredondo as telling undercover FBI agents, “You guys will ask, you guys will have. I don’t know how else to say it. We’ll be just fine because not only we’re covered at the city, we’re covered now at the state.” His statement tells me he was confident the fake developers were going to get what they needed in Tempe even with his new presence at the legislature.

I have to wonder if the behind the scenes meeting between Arredondo, council members, purported developers and maybe even city staff is how Tempe does the people’s business on a regular basis? It’s obvious someone involved in the Arredondo meetings with undercover FBI agents knew a payoff was necessary to get the Tempe project done.

Is this is how Arredondo always did the people’s business?

Arredondo joins a growing list of corrupt Arizona officials. He’s the second Tempe official convicted of corruption charges. In 1994, City Magistrate Stephen Mirretti pled guilty to bribery and fraud. Mirretti’s circle of powerful friends included officials at city hall and the police department, just like Arredondo’s.

As best I can tell, Tempe could hold the record for city officials going to prison. It may also hold the record for the highest crime rate around. Corruption and crime usually go hand in hand.

Ben Arredondo the crook has left a giant black mark on Tempe. A black mark city officials have yet to show it doesn’t deserve.

Retired Mesa master police officer Bill Richardson lives in the East Valley and can be reached at bill.richardson@cox.net.

Bus companies trace your moves for the police???

Source

Commuters' privacy is being clipped

Published 5:04 p.m., Friday, October 19, 2012

Bay Area officials are encouraging public transit commuters to adopt the Clipper card, which is accepted by every major Bay Area transit system. The cards are convenient and easy to use, so it's not surprising that people are adopting them enthusiastically - there are more than 1 million active cards in circulation.

But those commuters may be surprised at how much their Clipper cards know about them. If you use a Clipper card, your every move on public transit can be stored for up to seven years - even after an account is closed.

Since the card was launched in 2010, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission has reported receiving three search warrants or subpoenas for customers' information. There's also a smartphone app that allows anyone to scan a Clipper card and bring up the owner's transit history.

If all of this sounds familiar, that's because it is: This is an ongoing privacy battle with technologies ranging from Google to FasTrak. Unfortunately, the technological devices that rely on privacy invasions seem to be proliferating faster than the legal challenges against them.

But the Clipper card dilemma should be an easy one to resolve. California has a law, passed in 2010, that limits the use of data collected through FasTrak devices. We urge the Legislature to draft a similar bill for Clipper cards as soon as it returns to session.

In the meantime, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission should adopt a disclosure policy for Clipper customers, who in all likelihood are unaware that their data is being collected.

Buscan legalizar posesión de marijuana en tres entidades de EU

Buscan legalizar posesión de mariguana en tres entidades de EU

Una iniciativa similar fue derrotada hace dos años en el estado de California; Colorado, Oregon y Washington, buscan legalizar la posesión de pequeñas cantidades de la droga.

Activistas en tres entidades de Estados Unidos -Colorado, Oregon y Washington buscan legalizar la posesión de pequeñas cantidades de mariguana, y dos de ellas tienen altas probabilidades de tener éxito, apuntó The Wall Street Journal.

Pese a que una iniciativa similar fue derrotada hace dos años en el estado de California, las tres entidades en cuestión buscan aprobar leyes que legalizarían la posesión de pequeñas cantidades de la droga para cualquiera mayor de 21 años de edad, e incluso cobrar impuestos sobre su venta.

Las medidas irían más allá de las leyes que actualmente permiten el uso médico de la mariguana en 17 entidades de Estados Unidos, y de las varias que ya han despenalizado la posesión de la hierba mediante una pequeña multa.

Las propuestas van en contra de las leyes federales, que penalizan la posesión de mariguana aún en pequeñas cantidades, aunque ese delito es perseguido sólo en contadas ocasiones por las autoridades de la federación.

Pese a que exdirectores de la Agencia Atidrogas (DEA) han solicitado al procurador general que se oponga de manera pública a tales medidas, éste no se ha pronunciado sobre el particular, pese a que manifestó su desacuerdo con la iniciativa votada en California en 2010.

El Departamento de Estado, por su parte, tampoco quiso comentar sobre el tema, de acuerdo con la nota publicada en la edición de este lunes del diario The Wall Street Journal.

Las iniciativas ponen de relieve el cambio de actitudes en los votantes, debido en parte a que los jóvenes y otros segmentos de la población críticos de la criminalización de la mariguana constituyen un porcentaje cada vez mayor del electorado.

Un encuesta conducida por la empresa Gallup halló que 50 por ciento de los estadounidenses favorece la legalización de la mariguana, frente a 12 por ciento que tenía esa opinión en 1969, cuando comenzaron a realizarse tales sondeos.

Were some issues missing from these debates?

Hey, we all know that either Obamney or Rombama is going to win the election, so what hard could there be in letting the Libertarians and Greens into the debate. It would give us some new interesting ideas.

Like legalizing drugs, ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and repealing the unconstitutional Patriot Act.

Sheriff Joe's IT guy

And no I don't work for Sheriff Joe and wouldn't work for him if you paid me.

Let's hope Sheriff Joe loses this election and is replaced by Paul Penzone.

Of course Paul Penzone isn't much better then Sheriff Joe, but it certainly would be nice to get rid of Sheriff Joe who has been terrorizing the citizens of Maricopa County for the last 20 years.

Chandler Police continue selling marijuana and cocaine

Source

Chandler police arrest 2 in marijuana, cocaine sting

By Danielle Grobmeier The Arizona Republic-12

News Breaking News Team Fri Oct 19, 2012 9:55 AM

Chandler police arrested two men on suspicion of attempting to purchase 200 pounds of marijuana and two kilos of cocaine in a sting operation, according to court documents.

Ricardo Orton Dailey, 32, and Pablo Miguel Valdez, 34, both of Phoenix, are accused of conspiracy to commit marijuana possession for sale, conspiracy to commit narcotic drug possession for sale, marijuana possession for sale, narcotic drug possession for sale and money laundering, according to the documents.

Police said Valdez alleged agreed to purchase the marijuana at $490 per pound and the cocaine at $23,000 per kilo. Valdez and Dailey met up Wednesday with the seller, who was working for police, the documents state.

Police intervened while the men were counting money using a counting machine. According to the documents, police found the men were carrying $68,000.

Scottsdale-based Taser donates $300K to police

Source

Scottsdale-based Taser donates $300K to police

By Kevin Johnson USA Today Mon Oct 22, 2012 2:23 PM

WASHINGTON - The nation’s largest association of police chiefs, which has advised thousands of its members on the appropriate use of stun guns, accepted a $300,000 donation from the foundation associated with Scottsdale-based Taser International, the biggest supplier of stun guns to law enforcement.

The contribution to the International Association of Chiefs of Police Foundation, the organization’s philanthropic arm, raises questions because police are a primary source of business for the Arizona company.

The rapid deployment of stun guns across the country, and questions related to their safety, prompted the International Association of Chiefs of Police in 2007 to publish guidelines for “selecting, acquiring and using” the devices.

And as recently as this year, the police-chiefs association cited the increasing use of stun guns in a report on police use-of-force issues.

Police-chiefs association and Taser officials said they found nothing wrong with the gift, saying the contribution — the largest ever to the association foundation — would provide funds to families of officers killed in the line of duty.

But law-enforcement and criminal-justice analysts said the donation raises questions about the police-chiefs association’s ability to engage in future reviews involving the technology and whether the contribution represented a de facto endorsement.

“When you accept that kind of donation, you create an impression that you view the product favorably,” said Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest police union. “There is an appearance issue here.”

Samuel Walker, a University of Nebraska criminologist who has written on police-accountability issues, said the relationship “raises serious concerns.”

“It’s like a non-profit taking funds from the tobacco industry and being involved in studies on smoking and lung cancer,” Walker said.

Taser spokesman Steve Tuttle said the company sought no favored treatment for its products in the decision to contribute.

“We did this (foundation contribution) for the highest of purposes,” Tuttle said, adding that the company’s foundation had initially raised the funds to assist the families of fallen officers.

The gift was announced earlier this month at the police-chiefs association’s annual conference in San Diego. Taser said it was transferring the money from its own foundation, which provides aid to the families of police killed in the line of duty, so that it could be administered by the chiefs’ group.

James McMahon, the police-chiefs association’s chief of staff, said the contribution had no connection to the association’s research program. He said the foundation is a separate entity under the association and Taser’s donation represented a transaction “from one foundation to another.”

AG Tom Horne redacts anything that makes him look bad???

I bet that was a smoke screen to cover up his crimes.

Source

Redacted parts of AG Office documents allege impropriety

By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Oct 23, 2012 12:34 AM

The Arizona Attorney General’s Office redacted allegations about an alleged affair between Tom Horne and one of his subordinates, and disparaging information about another employee and political ally, a comparison of documents shows.

The redactions could violate state public-records law, some legal experts say.

The Arizona Public Records Law requires state and local government agencies to make various public records open for inspection by any person unless it is confidential by law, or if privacy interests outweigh the public’s interest or if disclosure is not in the state’s best interest.

The Attorney General’s Office in August produced for The Arizona Republic and other media hundreds of records that stemmed from a 2011 internal investigation Horne ordered into suspected media leaks. The records included eight memos — some with large areas redacted — summarizing interviews of attorney-general employees by Horne’s investigator, Margaret “Meg” Hinchey.

Earlier this month, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office produced unredacted versions of six Hinchey memos as part of the records it released tied to an investigation into alleged campaign-finance violations by Horne and his employee Kathleen Winn. County Attorney Bill Montgomery has accused the pair of illegally coordinating tactics during the 2010 election with an independent-expenditure committee Winn chaired. Horne and Winn deny the allegations and have vowed to fight them in court.

A comparison of the two versions of six memos shows the Attorney General’s Office redacted information about an alleged personal relationship between Horne, a married man, and Assistant Attorney General Carmen Chenal, a long-time Horne employee and confidant.

The office also redacted an employee statement that focused on Winn performing private work on government time — a practice that Horne personally sanctioned — as well as remarks witnesses made about Winn’s behavior.

When asked Monday if he would comment on the personal allegations against him, Horne responded via text, “Cole’s characterization is appropriate.”

Arizona Solicitor General David Cole, who oversaw the redactions, said “speculative, mean spirited, nasty gossip that can be false and that can be the subject of lawsuits for defamation does not serve the public interest.”

Chenal could not be reached for comment late Monday.

Winn said statements made by witnesses about her were false, describing one witness as “mentally unstable,” and Hinchey as a sloppy investigator who must not have fully understood witnesses’ statements.

Amy Rezzonico, Horne’s spokeswoman, said the redactions were consistent with state law, and based on privacy, confidentiality and the best interests of the state. In an e-mailed statement, she wrote it is office policy “to redact information that is known to be defamatory and false. It is also the policy of this office to redact extraneous gossip, innuendo, rumors, and hurtful remarks that have nothing to do with the legitimate functions of the agency and that can cause damage to individuals and the agency.”

First Amendment lawyers and experts, however, said the records shed light on the conduct of public officials and should not be redacted.

“The courts have consistently held that just because something is embarrassing to a public official does not mean that it should not be released as part of a public-records request,” said lawyer Dan Barr, who reviewed both versions of the memos. “The best interests of the state do not equate with the best interests of public officials.”

Lawyers also pointed to the attorney general’s own handbook, a guide for agencies to use when determining which documents are subject to public scrutiny under the Arizona Public Records Law. That handbook specifically cites one Arizona court, which found, “The cloak of confidentiality may not be used, however, to save an officer or public body from inconvenience or embarrassment.”

Cole, who reports to Horne, said Horne was not involved in deciding what information was redacted.

Cole wrote in an e-mail to The Republic that he has a public-records committee comprised of seasoned lawyers to ensure the agency follows the law. He cited case law that he believes shows his office acted properly in redacting the material.

Kathryn Marquoit, assistant ombudsman for public access at the state ombudsman’s office, has not reviewed the redactions. Generally, she said, agencies must find that it would be an invasion of privacy before it redacts such information.

“Just because it’s personal information doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an invasion of privacy,” she said, saying in this case, the agency appears to try to make a case that the information is not public because it does not deal with the public business.

“But I think that’s a tough argument to make,” she said.

In July 2011, Horne handpicked Hinchey to conduct a confidential internal investigation to determine if someone within the office had leaked information to the PhoenixNew Times regarding his hiring of Chenal despite a history of problems with her law license. Hinchey interviewed numerous employees, obtained access to staff phone records and e-mails, and searched Winn’s office once she became the suspected source of the leak.

The Attorney General’s Office’s redactions to Hinchey’s notes included:

Numerous references to an alleged affair between Horne and Chenal. Lucia de Vernai, a legal assistant, stated she heard Winn mention the rumor of an affair between Horne and Chenal five to ten times.

Assistant Attorney General Michael Flynn recalled another employee telling him about a video of Horne and Chenal walking together and that “Horne’s arms swung in a manner, that just prior to going off camera, that one might think AG Horne was about to give Chenal a ‘butt pat.’”

Numerous references to employees dislike of Winn because of her alleged “jealousy” of other women she perceived to be close to Horne, her alleged treatment of other employees and Winn’s alleged giddiness after the New Times wrote a story about the alleged affair between Horne and Chenal.

Linnea Heap, a collector in the agency, stated Winn made “snarky” comments about Heap’s friendship with Chenal and said Winn talked about being contacted by a reporter about “the rumor of an affair” between Chenal and Horne.

Heap also recalled a conversation with Winn during the 2010 campaign, according to the notes. “Heap indicated that she thinks Winn desires the attention and that it seems she is now trying to be ‘Mrs. AG,’” the notes stated.

Winn told The Republic she is happily married and is not jealous of any women at the office.

“I’m very secure in who I am,” she said. “I have a great relationship with the AG.”

De Vernai recalled a conversation she had with Winn, in which she said Winn stated, “C’mon. If Tom was going to have an affair, who do you think he would have one with? Carmen or me?”

De Vernai also recalled a dinner, where Winn told her, Chenal and one other woman, “I’m the new girlfriend. You’re the crabby old one.” De Vernai said the other woman, who helped out during the 2010 election, responded she would “arm wrestle” Winn for Horne.

Winn said she did not say that.

Numerous references to employees’ exasperation with Winn, whom one employee alleged inserts herself into work-related matters she was not qualified to handle. For example, Flynn was uncomfortable that Winn allegedly gave her personal cellphone number to a juvenile who sought her advice on an incident while attending a “sexting” lecture. “Flynn does not think Winn should have done that as she makes herself a witness to a crime and likely is not qualified to provide such ‘counseling,’” Hinchey’s notes read.

Flynn also told Hinchey he had the impression Winn thinks she is a “cop, an attorney and a counselor.” Hinchey wrote Flynn was aware of Winn “conducting her own investigation into some party level activity related to precinct party voting.”

Former Assistant Attorney General Gerald Richard told Hinchey that Winn once asked him to get Chenal to use her relationship with Horne to get Winn a raise. Winn earns an annual salary of about $100,000.

Winn said she does not recall that conversation.

De Vernai said she believed Winn, who has a real-estate-related background, “solicits employees” as clients, and that she has reported concerns about Winn twice to Horne who responded he “won’t fire her.”

Winn said she has never solicited work from employees. Records provided to The Republic in the past show Horne allowed Winn to perform private real-estate-related work on government time.

Tom Horne's office withholds public information to protect ... Tom Horne

I bet that was a smoke screen to cover up his crimes.

Source

Tom Horne's office withholds public information to protect ... Tom Horne

By LAURIE ROBERTS

Mon, Oct 22 2012

We take you now to the latest in As the State Spins, the daytime drama starring everybody’s favorite attorney general, Tom Horne.

When we last left our story, we had learned that our hero was suspected of having an affair with an assistant attorney general he’d hired – a woman whose qualifications were, let’s just say, less than impressive. And, that Horne and another of his hires – a women who ran a supposedly independent campaign to help get him elected – have been accused of violating campaign-finance laws.

The state’s top law enforcement official has dodged accusations of an affair and denied trying to cheat his way into office by coordinating with a supposedly “independent” campaign that was pouring money into his 2010 election bid.

Which brings us to today’s episode: Public Records, Schmublic Records…. in which we learn that the Attorney General’s Office has been hiding records about embarrassing stuff. Things like his rumored affair with Assistant Attorney General Carmen Chenal and questions about the on-the-job conduct of Kathleen Winn, his campaign ally-turned-community-outreach-coordinator.

The story actually began in July 2011, when New Times columnist Stephen Lemons questioned why Horne would hire Chenal given that she had, among other things, long ago been suspended from practicing law.

(That is, until Horne helped her get her license back. She’s now on probation while serving as an assistant attorney general.)

Horne immediately launched an internal investigation. No, not to find out why his office was paying a six-figure salary to a woman who had questionable credentials, but to find the source of the leak to Lemons.

Instead, the investigator found evidence suggesting that Horne had violated state law by coordinating with Winn’s independent campaign. In August, Horne’s office released results of the leak investigation, as Arizona’s Public Records Law required. But the records were heavily censored.

Earlier this month, we found out why. That’s when Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, in announcing that Horne and Winn had violated campaign-finance laws, released a clean copy of the records.

Turns out all those pages blacked out by the Attorney General’s Office contained interviews with staffers who talked of Horne’s rumored long-time affair with Chenal. Of reports that Winn was calling herself Horne’s “new girlfriend” and “inserting herself” into cases where she had no business, given that she is neither an attorney nor an investigator. Of concerns that Winn was working on her mortgage broker business on state time.

Horne spokeswoman Amy Rezzonico said in an e-mail that the records were withheld “on the bases of privacy, confidentiality and best interests of the state.”

Indeed, the Arizona Supreme Court has said that records may be withheld “where recognition of the interests of privacy, confidentiality or the best interest of the state in carrying out its legitimate activities outweigh the general policy of open access.”

The court also has said the state must “specifically demonstrate how production of the documents would violate the rights of privacy or confidentiality or would be detrimental to the best interests of the state.”

The question here is, was Horne’s interest in keeping this stuff quiet in the best interest of the state? Or in the best interest of Horne?

Two experts on Arizona’s Public Records Law tell me there was no legitimate reason to withhold what were clearly public records.

“The courts have held that embarrassment for a public official is not a reason to redact information,” said attorney Dan Barr, who represents the First Amendment Coalition of Arizona.

Attorney David Bodney, who represents The Republic and 12News, called it “a risky overbroad approach to public information that prohibits the ability of the public to monitor the conduct.”

The people who control the information, however, seem to think it’s perfectly acceptable to pick and choose what you and I get to know about how the chief law enforcement agency in the state is operated. Horne’s solicitor general, Dave Cole, said in an e-mail that a committee of lawyers in the Attorney General’s Office decided not to disclose the information and that Horne wasn’t involved in the decision.

“Speculative, mean spirited nasty gossip that can be false and that can be the subject of lawsuits for defamation does not serve the public interest,” Cole said.

Translation, Horne’s people weren’t protecting Horne. Or his assistant attorney general/rumored girlfriend. Or his campaign pal who now does…whatever it is she does over there at the Attorney General’s Office.

No, they were protecting us.

Really, they were.

As the state spins, you see, it also unravels.

N.Y. police informant: Paid for ‘baiting’ Muslims

Maybe a good way to reduce crime would be to fire all the cops who are tricking people into committing crimes. That would certainly reduce the crime rate.

And of course I suspect the FBI and Homeland Security is doing the same stuff at the Federal level. I have posted a number of article where the FBI has created bomb plots and then arrested people the tricked into participating in the fake bomb plots.

Source

N.Y. police informant: Paid for ‘baiting’ Muslims

By Matt Apuzzo Associated Press Tue Oct 23, 2012 7:28 AM

NEW YORK — A paid informant for the New York Police Department’s intelligence unit was under orders to “bait” Muslims into saying bad things as he lived a double life, snapping pictures inside mosques and collecting the names of innocent people attending study groups on Islam, he told The Associated Press.

Shamiur Rahman, a 19-year-old U.S. citizen of Bengali descent who has now denounced his work as an informant, said police told him to embrace a strategy called “create and capture.” He said it involved creating a conversation about jihad or terrorism, then capturing the response to send to the NYPD. For his work, he earned as much as $1,000 a month and goodwill from the police after a string of minor marijuana arrests.

“We need you to pretend to be one of them,” Rahman recalled the police telling him. “It’s street theater.”

Rahman, who said he plans to move to the Caribbean, said he now believes his work as an informant against Muslims in New York was “detrimental to the Constitution.” After he disclosed to friends details about his work for the police — and after he told the police that he had been interviewed by the AP — he stopped receiving text messages from his NYPD handler, “Steve,” and his handler’s NYPD phone number was disconnected.

Rahman’s account shows how the NYPD unleashed informants on Muslim neighborhoods, often without specific targets or criminal leads. Much of what Rahman said represents a tactic the NYPD has denied using.

The AP corroborated Rahman’s account through arrest records and weeks of text messages between Rahman and his police handler. The AP also reviewed the photos Rahman sent to police. Friends confirmed Rahman was at certain events when he said he was there, and former NYPD officials, while not personally familiar with Rahman, said the tactics he described were used by informants.

Informants like Rahman are a central component of the NYPD’s wide-ranging programs to monitor life in Muslim neighborhoods since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Police officers have eavesdropped inside Muslim businesses, trained video cameras on mosques and collected license plates of worshippers. Informants who trawl the mosques — known informally as “mosque crawlers” — tell police what the imam says at sermons and provide police lists of attendees, even when there’s no evidence they committed a crime.

The programs were built with unprecedented help from the CIA.

Police recruited Rahman in late January, after his third arrest on misdemeanor drug charges, which Rahman believed would lead to serious legal consequences. An NYPD plainclothes officer approached him in jail and asked whether he wanted to turn his life around.

The next month, Rahman said, he was on the NYPD’s payroll.

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne did not immediately return a message seeking comment Tuesday. He has denied widespread NYPD spying, saying police only follow leads.

In an Oct. 15 interview with the AP, however, Rahman said he received little training and spied on “everything and anyone.” He took pictures inside the many mosques he visited and eavesdropped on imams. By his own measure, he said he was very good at his job and his handler never once told him he was collecting too much, no matter whom he was spying on.

Rahman said he thought he was doing important work protecting New York City and considered himself a hero.

One of his earliest assignments was to spy on a lecture at the Muslim Student Association at John Jay College in Manhattan. The speaker was Ali Abdul Karim, the head of security at the Masjid At-Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn. The NYPD had been concerned about Karim for years and already had infiltrated the mosque, according to NYPD documents obtained by the AP.

Rahman also was instructed to monitor the student group itself, though he wasn’t told to target anyone specifically. His NYPD handler told him to take pictures of people at the events, determine who belonged to the student association and identify its leadership.

On Feb. 23, Rahman attended the event with Karim and listened, ready to catch what he called a “speaker’s gaffe.” The NYPD was interested in buzz words such as “jihad” and “revolution,” he said. Any radical rhetoric, the NYPD told him, needed to be reported.

Talha Shahbaz, then the vice president of the student group, met Rahman at the event. As Karim was finishing his talk on Malcolm X’s legacy, Rahman told Shahbaz that he wanted to know more about the student group. They had briefly attended the same high school.

Rahman said he wanted to turn his life around and stop using drugs, and said he believed Islam could provide a purpose in life. In the following days, Rahman friended him on Facebook and the two exchanged phone numbers. Shahbaz, a Pakistani who came to the U.S. more three years ago, introduced Rahman to other Muslims.

“He was telling us how he loved Islam and it’s changing him,” said Asad Dandia, who also became friends with Rahman.

Secretly, Rahman was mining his new friends for details about their lives, taking pictures of them when they ate at restaurants and writing down license plates on the orders of the NYPD.

On the NYPD’s instructions, he went to more events at John Jay, including when Siraj Wahhaj spoke in May. Wahhaj, 62, is a prominent but controversial New York imam who has attracted the attention of authorities for years. Prosecutors included his name on a list of people they said “may be alleged as co-conspirators” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, though he was never charged. In 2004, the NYPD placed Wahhaj on an internal terrorism watch list and noted: “Political ideology moderately radical and anti-American.”

That evening at John Jay, a friend took a photograph of Wahhaj with a grinning Rahman.

Rahman said he kept an eye on the MSA and used Shahbaz and his friends to facilitate traveling to events organized by the Islamic Circle of North America and Muslim American Society. The society’s annual convention in Connecticut draws a large number of Muslims and plenty of attention from the NYPD. According to NYPD documents obtained by the AP, the NYPD sent three informants there in 2008 and was keeping an eye on the group’s former president.

Rahman was told to spy on the speakers and collect information. The conference was called “Defending Religious Freedom.” Shahbaz paid Rahman’s travel expenses.

Rahman said he never witnessed any criminal activity or saw anybody do anything wrong.

He said he sometimes intentionally misinterpreted what people had said. For example, Rahman said he would ask people what they thought about the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya, knowing the subject was inflammatory. It was easy to take statements out of context, he said. He said wanted to please his NYPD handler, whom he trusted and liked.

“I was trying to get money,” Rahman said. “I was playing the game.”

Rahman said police never discussed the activities of the people he was assigned to target for spying. He said police told him once, “We don’t think they’re doing anything wrong. We just need to be sure.”

On some days, Rahman spent hours and covered miles in his undercover role. On Sept. 16, for example, he made his way in the morning to the Al Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn, snapping photographs of an imam and the sign-up sheet for those attending a regular class on Islamic instruction. He also provided their cell phone numbers to the NYPD. That evening he spied on people at Masjid Al-Ansar, also in Brooklyn.

Text messages on his phone showed that Rahman also took pictures last month of people attending the 27th annual Muslim Day Parade in Manhattan. The parade’s grand marshal was New York City Councilman Robert Jackson.

Rahman said he eventually tired of spying on his friends, noting that at times they delivered food to needy Muslim families. He said he once identified another NYPD informant spying on him. He took $200 more from the NYPD and told them he was done as an informant. He said the NYPD offered him more money, which he declined. He told friends on Facebook in early October that he had been a police spy but had quit. He also traded Facebook messages with Shahbaz, admitting he had spied on students at John Jay.

“I was an informant for the NYPD, for a little while, to investigate terrorism,” he wrote on Oct. 2. He said he no longer thought it was right. Perhaps he had been hunting terrorists, he said, “but I doubt it.”

“I hated that I was using people to make money,” Rahman said. “I made a mistake.”

Top 20 airports where people are robbed by TSA agents.

Source

The Top 20 Airports for TSA Theft

By MEGAN CHUCHMACH | ABC News

Your suitcase has been tagged and whisked away for a TSA security check before being loaded onto a plane en route to your final destination. How safe are the belongings inside? The TSA has fired nearly 400 employees for allegedly stealing from travelers, and for the first time, the agency is revealing the airports where those fired employees worked.

Newly released figures provided to ABC News by the TSA in response to a Freedom of Information Act request show that, unsurprisingly, many of the country's busiest airports also rank at the top for TSA employees fired for theft.

Sixteen of the top 20 airports for theft firings are also in the top 20 airports in terms of passengers passing through.

At the head of the list is Miami International Airport, which ranks twelfth in passengers but first in TSA theft firings, with 29 employees terminated for theft from 2002 through December 2011. JFK International Airport in New York is second with 27 firings, and Los Angeles International Airport is third with 24 firings. JFK ranks sixth in passenger traffic, while LAX is third. Chicago, while second in traffic, ranked 20th in theft firings.

The four airports listed in the TSA's top 20 list of employee firings for theft that aren't also among the FAA's top 20 for passenger activity are Salt Lake City International, Washington Dulles, Louis Armstrong New Orleans International, and San Diego International.

The top airports across the U.S. for TSA employees fired for theft are:

1. Miami International Airport (29)

2. JFK International Airport (27)

3. Los Angeles International Airport (24)

4. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (17)

5. Las Vegas-McCarren International Airport (15)

6. Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and New York-Laguardia Airport (14 each)

8. Newark Liberty, Philadelphia International, and Seattle-Tacoma International airports (12 each)

11. Orlando International Airport (11)

12. Houston-George Bush Intercontinental Airport and Salt Lake City International Airport (10 each)

14. Washington Dulles International Airport (9)

15. Detroit Metro Airport and Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (7)

17. Boston-Logan International, Denver International and San Diego International airports (6)

20. Chicago O'Hare International Airport (5)

During a recent ABC News investigation, an iPad left behind at a security checkpoint at the Orlando airport was tracked as it moved 30 miles away to the home of the TSA officer last seen handling it.

Confronted two weeks later by ABC News, the TSA officer, Andy Ramirez, at first denied having the missing iPad, but ultimately turned it over after blaming his wife for taking it from the airport. Ramirez was later fired by the TSA.

The iPad was one of ten purposely left behind at TSA checkpoints at major airports with a history of theft by government screeners, as part of an ABC News investigation into the TSA's ongoing problem with theft of passenger belongings. The other nine iPads were returned to ABC News after being left behind.

The agency disputes that theft is a widespread problem, however, saying the number of officers fired "represents less than one-half of one percent of officers that have been employed" by TSA.

Obama wants to murder suspected criminals

Targeted killing is now so routine that the Obama administration has spent much of the past year codifying and streamlining the processes that sustain it.

The only question I have is when will the President allow the DEA to add names of suspected drug dealers to his murder list.

Of course first it will only be suspected drug dealers in foreign countries, then over time suspected drug dealers in America will be added to the list.

Source

Plan for hunting terrorists signals U.S. intends to keep adding names to kill lists

By Greg Miller, Published: October 23

Editor’s note: This project, based on interviews with dozens of current and former national security officials, intelligence analysts and others, examines evolving U.S. counterterrorism policies and the practice of targeted killing. This is the first of three stories.

Over the past two years, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation targeting list called the “disposition matrix.”

The matrix contains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed against an accounting of the resources being marshaled to track them down, including sealed indictments and clandestine operations. U.S. officials said the database is designed to go beyond existing kill lists, mapping plans for the “disposition” of suspects beyond the reach of American drones.

Although the matrix is a work in progress, the effort to create it reflects a reality setting in among the nation’s counterterrorism ranks: The United States’ conventional wars are winding down, but the government expects to continue adding names to kill or capture lists for years.

Among senior Obama administration officials, there is a broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade. Given the way al-Qaeda continues to metastasize, some officials said no clear end is in sight.

“We can’t possibly kill everyone who wants to harm us,” a senior administration official said. “It’s a necessary part of what we do. . . . We’re not going to wind up in 10 years in a world of everybody holding hands and saying, ‘We love America.’ ”

That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism. Targeting lists that were regarded as finite emergency measures after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are now fixtures of the national security apparatus. The rosters expand and contract with the pace of drone strikes but never go to zero.

Meanwhile, a significant milestone looms: The number of militants and civilians killed in the drone campaign over the past 10 years will soon exceed 3,000 by certain estimates, surpassing the number of people al-Qaeda killed in the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Obama administration has touted its successes against the terrorist network, including the death of Osama bin Laden, as signature achievements that argue for President Obama’s reelection. The administration has taken tentative steps toward greater transparency, formally acknowledging for the first time the United States’ use of armed drones.

Less visible is the extent to which Obama has institutionalized the highly classified practice of targeted killing, transforming ad-hoc elements into a counterterrorism infrastructure capable of sustaining a seemingly permanent war. Spokesmen for the White House, the National Counterterrorism Center, the CIA and other agencies declined to comment on the matrix or other counterterrorism programs.

Privately, officials acknowledge that the development of the matrix is part of a series of moves, in Washington and overseas, to embed counterterrorism tools into U.S. policy for the long haul.

White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan is seeking to codify the administration’s approach to generating capture/kill lists, part of a broader effort to guide future administrations through the counterterrorism processes that Obama has embraced.

CIA Director David H. Petraeus is pushing for an expansion of the agency’s fleet of armed drones, U.S. officials said. The proposal, which would need White House approval, reflects the agency’s transformation into a paramilitary force, and makes clear that it does not intend to dismantle its drone program and return to its pre-Sept. 11 focus on gathering intelligence.

The U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, which carried out the raid that killed bin Laden, has moved commando teams into suspected terrorist hotbeds in Africa. A rugged U.S. outpost in Djibouti has been transformed into a launching pad for counterterrorism operations across the Horn of Africa and the Middle East.

JSOC also has established a secret targeting center across the Potomac River from Washington, current and former U.S. officials said. The elite command’s targeting cells have traditionally been located near the front lines of its missions, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. But JSOC created a “national capital region” task force that is a 15-minute commute from the White House so it could be more directly involved in deliberations about al-Qaeda lists.

The developments were described by current and former officials from the White House and the Pentagon, as well as intelligence and counterterrorism agencies. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

These counterterrorism components have been affixed to a legal foundation for targeted killing that the Obama administration has discussed more openly over the past year. In a series of speeches, administration officials have cited legal bases, including the congressional authorization to use military force granted after the Sept. 11 attacks, as well as the nation’s right to defend itself.

Critics contend that those justifications have become more tenuous as the drone campaign has expanded far beyond the core group of al-Qaeda operatives behind the strikes on New York and Washington. Critics note that the administration still doesn’t confirm the CIA’s involvement or the identities of those who are killed. Certain strikes are now under legal challenge, including the killings last year in Yemen of U.S.-born al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son.

Counterterrorism experts said the reliance on targeted killing is self-perpetuating, yielding undeniable short-term results that may obscure long-term costs.

“The problem with the drone is it’s like your lawn mower,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst and Obama counterterrorism adviser. “You’ve got to mow the lawn all the time. The minute you stop mowing, the grass is going to grow back.”

An evolving database

The United States now operates multiple drone programs, including acknowledged U.S. military patrols over conflict zones in Afghanistan and Libya, and classified CIA surveillance flights over Iran.

Strikes against al-Qaeda, however, are carried out under secret lethal programs involving the CIA and JSOC. The matrix was developed by the NCTC, under former director Michael Leiter, to augment those organizations’ separate but overlapping kill lists, officials said.

The result is a single, continually evolving database in which biographies, locations, known associates and affiliated organizations are all catalogued. So are strategies for taking targets down, including extradition requests, capture operations and drone patrols.

Obama’s decision to shutter the CIA’s secret prisons ended a program that had become a source of international scorn, but it also complicated the pursuit of terrorists. Unless a suspect surfaced in the sights of a drone in Pakistan or Yemen, the United States had to scramble to figure out what to do.

“We had a disposition problem,” said a former U.S. counterterrorism official involved in developing the matrix.

The database is meant to map out contingencies, creating an operational menu that spells out each agency’s role in case a suspect surfaces in an unexpected spot. “If he’s in Saudi Arabia, pick up with the Saudis,” the former official said. “If traveling overseas to al-Shabaab [in Somalia] we can pick him up by ship. If in Yemen, kill or have the Yemenis pick him up.”

Officials declined to disclose the identities of suspects on the matrix. They pointed, however, to the capture last year of alleged al-Qaeda operative Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame off the coast of Yemen. Warsame was held for two months aboard a U.S. ship before being transferred to the custody of the Justice Department and charged in federal court in New York.

“Warsame was a classic case of ‘What are we going to do with him?’ ” the former counterterrorism official said. In such cases, the matrix lays out plans, including which U.S. naval vessels are in the vicinity and which charges the Justice Department should prepare.

“Clearly, there were people in Yemen that we had on the matrix,” as well as others in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the former counterterrorism official said. The matrix was a way to be ready if they moved. “How do we deal with these guys in transit? You weren’t going to fire a drone if they were moving through Turkey or Iran.”

Officials described the matrix as a database in development, although its status is unclear. Some said it has not been implemented because it is too cumbersome. Others, including officials from the White House, Congress and intelligence agencies, described it as a blueprint that could help the United States adapt to al-Qaeda’s morphing structure and its efforts to exploit turmoil across North Africa and the Middle East.

A year after Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta declared the core of al-Qaeda near strategic defeat, officials see an array of emerging threats beyond Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia — the three countries where almost all U.S. drone strikes have occurred.

The Arab spring has upended U.S. counterterrorism partnerships in countries including Egypt where U.S. officials fear al-Qaeda could establish new roots. The network’s affiliate in North Africa, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, has seized territory in northern Mali and acquired weapons that were smuggled out of Libya.

“Egypt worries me to no end,” a high-ranking administration official said. “Look at Libya, Algeria and Mali and then across the Sahel. You’re talking about such wide expanses of territory, with open borders and military, security and intelligence capabilities that are basically nonexistent.”

Streamlining targeted killing

The creation of the matrix and the institutionalization of kill/capture lists reflect a shift that is as psychological as it is strategic.

Before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States recoiled at the idea of targeted killing. The Sept. 11 commission recounted how the Clinton administration had passed on a series of opportunities to target bin Laden in the years before the attacks — before armed drones existed. President Bill Clinton approved a set of cruise-missile strikes in 1998 after al-Qaeda bombed embassies in East Africa, but after extensive deliberation, and the group’s leader escaped harm.

Targeted killing is now so routine that the Obama administration has spent much of the past year codifying and streamlining the processes that sustain it.

This year, the White House scrapped a system in which the Pentagon and the National Security Council had overlapping roles in scrutinizing the names being added to U.S. target lists.

Now the system functions like a funnel, starting with input from half a dozen agencies and narrowing through layers of review until proposed revisions are laid on Brennan’s desk, and subsequently presented to the president.

Video-conference calls that were previously convened by Adm. Mike Mullen, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have been discontinued. Officials said Brennan thought the process shouldn’t be run by those who pull the trigger on strikes.

“What changed is rather than the chairman doing that, John chairs the meeting,” said Leiter, the former head of the NCTC.

The administration has also elevated the role of the NCTC, which was conceived as a clearinghouse for threat data and has no operational capability. Under Brennan, who served as its founding director, the center has emerged as a targeting hub.

Other entities have far more resources focused on al-Qaeda. The CIA, JSOC and U.S. Central Command have hundreds of analysts devoted to the terrorist network’s franchise in Yemen, while the NCTC has fewer than two dozen. But the center controls a key function.

“It is the keeper of the criteria,” a former U.S. counterterrorism official said, meaning that it is in charge of culling names from al-Qaeda databases for targeting lists based on criteria dictated by the White House.

The criteria are classified but center on obvious questions: Who are the operational leaders? Who are the key facilitators? A typical White House request will direct the NCTC to generate a list of al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen involved in carrying out or plotting attacks against U.S. personnel in Sanaa.

The lists are reviewed at regular three-month intervals during meetings at the NCTC headquarters that involve analysts from other organizations, including the CIA, the State Department and JSOC. Officials stress that these sessions don’t equate to approval for additions to kill lists, an authority that rests exclusively with the White House.

With no objections — and officials said those have been rare — names are submitted to a panel of National Security Council officials that is chaired by Brennan and includes the deputy directors of the CIA and the FBI, as well as top officials from the State Department, the Pentagon and the NCTC.

Obama approves the criteria for lists and signs off on drone strikes outside Pakistan, where decisions on when to fire are made by the director of the CIA. But aside from Obama’s presence at “Terror Tuesday” meetings — which generally are devoted to discussing terrorism threats and trends rather than approving targets — the president’s involvement is more indirect.

“The president would never come to a deputies meeting,” a senior administration official said, although participants recalled cases in which Brennan stepped out of the situation room to get Obama’s direction on questions the group couldn’t resolve.

The review process is compressed but not skipped when the CIA or JSOC has compelling intelligence and a narrow window in which to strike, officials said. The approach also applies to the development of criteria for “signature strikes,” which allow the CIA and JSOC to hit targets based on patterns of activity — packing a vehicle with explosives, for example — even when the identities of those who would be killed is unclear.

A model approach

For an administration that is the first to embrace targeted killing on a wide scale, officials seem confident that they have devised an approach that is so bureaucratically, legally and morally sound that future administrations will follow suit.

During Monday’s presidential debate, Republican nominee Mitt Romney made it clear that he would continue the drone campaign. “We can’t kill our way out of this,” he said, but added later that Obama was “right to up the usage” of drone strikes and that he would do the same.

As Obama nears the end of his term, officials said the kill list in Pakistan has slipped to fewer than 10 al-Qaeda targets, down from as many as two dozen. The agency now aims many of its Predator strikes at the Haqqani network, which has been blamed for attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

In Yemen, the number of militants on the list has ranged from 10 to 15, officials said, and is not likely to slip into the single digits anytime soon, even though there have been 36 U.S. airstrikes this year.

The number of targets on the lists isn’t fixed, officials said, but fluctuates based on adjustments to criteria. Officials defended the arrangement even while acknowledging an erosion in the caliber of operatives placed in the drones’ cross hairs.

“Is the person currently Number 4 as good as the Number 4 seven years ago? Probably not,” said a former senior U.S. counterterrorism official involved in the process until earlier this year. “But it doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous.”

In focusing on bureaucratic refinements, the administration has largely avoided confronting more fundamental questions about the lists. Internal doubts about the effectiveness of the drone campaign are almost nonexistent. So are apparent alternatives.

“When you rely on a particular tactic, it starts to become the core of your strategy — you see the puff of smoke, and he’s gone,” said Paul Pillar, a former deputy director of the CIA’s counterterrorism center. “When we institutionalize certain things, including targeted killing, it does cross a threshold that makes it harder to cross back.”

For a decade, the dimensions of the drone campaign have been driven by short-term objectives: the degradation of al-Qaeda and the prevention of a follow-on, large-scale attack on American soil.

Side effects are more difficult to measure — including the extent to which strikes breed more enemies of the United States — but could be more consequential if the campaign continues for 10 more years.

“We are looking at something that is potentially indefinite,” Pillar said. “We have to pay particular attention, maybe more than we collectively have so far, to the longer-term pros and cons to the methods we use.”

Obama administration officials at times have sought to trigger debate over how long the nation might employ the kill lists. But officials said the discussions became dead ends.

In one instance, Mullen, the former Joint Chiefs chairman, returned from Pakistan and recounted a heated confrontation with his counterpart, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

Mullen told White House and counterterrorism officials that the Pakistani military chief had demanded an answer to a seemingly reasonable question: After hundreds of drone strikes, how could the United States possibly still be working its way through a “top 20” list?

The issue resurfaced after the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden. Seeking to repair a rift with Pakistan, Panetta, the CIA director, told Kayani and others that the United States had only a handful of targets left and would be able to wind down the drone campaign.

A senior aide to Panetta disputed this account, and said Panetta mentioned the shrinking target list during his trip to Islamabad but didn’t raise the prospect that drone strikes would end. Two former U.S. officials said the White House told Panetta to avoid even hinting at commitments the United States was not prepared to keep.

“We didn’t want to get into the business of limitless lists,” said a former senior U.S. counterterrorism official who spent years overseeing the lists. “There is this apparatus created to deal with counterterrorism. It’s still useful. The question is: When will it stop being useful? I don’t know.”

Karen DeYoung, Craig Whitlock and Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne nailed for hit and run.

And of course this is another one of those articles where our blow hard, crooked politicians and police give us the line of "Do as I say, not as I do"

Source

Arizona AG cited in hit-run accident

By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez The Republic - azcentral.com Wed Oct 24, 2012 5:52 PM

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne has received a misdemeanor citation alleging he caused paint damage to the bumper of a parked vehicle during a March 27 fender bender that he did not report.

The accident was witnessed by two FBI special agents who were tailing Horne as part of an investigation into alleged campaign-finance violations. The FBI turned the information over to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. Earlier this month, county officials referred the matter to the city of Phoenix.

The state’s top prosecutor issued a brief, written statement about the citation shortly after 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Phoenix Police Department Sgt. Trent Crump said detectives from the Vehicular Crimes Unit cited Horne Wednesday morning.

The citation was for one count of leaving the scene of a collision/unattended vehicle, a class three misdemeanor and the lowest-level misdemeanor offense. Crump said the ticket includes a court date and refers Horne to Phoenix Municipal Court.

“I first learned of my possible involvement in this incident several months ago, and requested from investigating authorities the name of the owner of the vehicle so I could immediately pay for any damage I may have caused,” the statement read. “For some unknown reason I received no response. Hopefully, I can now obtain this information or the owner will contact me so I can pay for any damage that I may have unknowingly caused.”

Phoenix police and city prosecutors have not released public records about the accident to The Republic.

Other public records obtained by the newspaper from the county attorney’s office detail the crash. Maricopa County Attorney's Detective Mark Stribling wrote an April 19 memo describing how FBI agents Brian Grehoski and Merv Mason watched the accident and the minutes leading up to it. Stribling wrote that agents saw Carmen Chenal, a longtime Horne confidante and employee, leave the Attorney General's Office during lunch hour, get into a vehicle and drive to a downtown Phoenix parking garage. Horne then left the office and drove his gold Jaguar into the same garage.

Horne and Chenal then left the garage, with Horne driving the vehicle originally driven by Chenal, Stribling wrote. Chenal was in the passenger seat.

“Horne was now wearing a baseball hat and he drove to Carmen's residence where Horne backed into a white Range Rover,” Stribling wrote. “Horne and Chenal then drove away, parked in a parking garage and both walked into residential area where Chenal lived.”

Drug war - It's a jobs program for cops.

Source

Report: Police made 1,600 arrests at Mesa schools since 2009

Posted: Wednesday, October 24, 2012 8:43 pm

By Corey Rangel, ABC15

A report compiled by the Mesa Police Department shows officers made nearly 1,600 arrests in the past few years at junior and high schools in the Mesa School District.

The numbers include arrests from 2009 to the first half of 2012 at all of the district’s six high schools and 15 junior high schools.

According to police records, from 2009 to 2011, police made arrested nearly 700 people at the high schools.

Each year the number of arrests went up.

Drug offenses were the most common reason officers took someone into custody. Other reasons included things like vandalism, assault, and trespassing.

A school district spokesperson, Helen Hollands, said more than 27,000 students go to junior and high school and pointed out the majority of arrests were for non-violent crimes.

The arrests include students and adults.

1 shot at Tempe medical marijuana facility

Source

1 shot at Tempe medical marijuana facility

Posted: Thursday, October 25, 2012 10:57 pm

By ABC15

Police said one person was taken to the hospital Thursday night after being shot at a medical marijuana Co-op in Tempe.

Police spokeswoman Molly Enright said the shooting happened at the AZ Go Green Co-Op near Southern Avenue and Rural Road around 7:20 p.m.

Enright said multiple suspects entered the Co-op, confronted a store employee, hit the employee and then shot him.

Police said the suspects fled on foot before police arrived. They are described as black males; and one of the suspects is described as being in his early 20s with a thin build.

Enright said the intentions of the shooting suspects are unknown. There did not appear to be any property removed from the business.

The victim was treated by Tempe firefighters and transported to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries.

Enright said police are still searching for at least three suspects, but there could be as many as six involved.

Officers told ABC15 AZ Go Green has a history with police. The business has been the subject of a joint investigation by Tempe Police and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Police believe the business has been operating outside the medical marijuana legislation that was passed by Arizona voters.

Enright said the investigation remains active and ongoing.

Vote por Penzone para Sheriff

Cops use the old Terry V Ohio lie to illegally search people???

Every day in the State Press, which is the newspaper of Arizona State University they run an article on the 2nd page which lists arrests made by the ASU and Tempe police.

If your read the article every day, you will notice that most of the arrests made by the ASU cops are for victimless "drug war" crimes.

There are also a lot of arrest for alchol use too, but I suspect that is because there are a lot of people under 21 who live at the ASU dorms or hang out in Tempe that like to drink. But I also consider underage drinking a victimless crime like I consider using illegal drugs.

Source

Man arrested after trying to evade police

By Ana Ramirez

October 24, 2012 at 8:27 pm

Tempe Police reported the following incidents Wednesday:

An 18-year-old Tempe man was arrested Sunday at Lemon Street and Rural Road on suspicion of marijuana and drug paraphernalia possession, according to a police report.

Officers started following the man when he left as a passenger in a vehicle after seeing police, police reported.

Police followed the vehicle through two apartment complexes before it pulled into a dead-end parking lot, according to the report.

Police stopped the vehicle when they realized there was no license plate light, police reported.

Officers felt several lumps in his pockets during a routine weapons search, according to the report.

The search revealed the lumps were plastic baggies and a pill bottle, both of which contained marijuana, police reported.

The man told police there was a total of eight grams of marijuana between the pill bottle and the bags, according to the report.

Police found a scale with marijuana residue under the passenger seat after a K-9 search, police reported.

The man said he purchased the scale because he didn’t want people to “rip him off,” according to the report.

He said he had purchased the marijuana 30 minutes prior to his encounter with police from a drug dealer at Lemon Street and Terrace Road, police reported.

Police found white rolling papers in his wallet, according to the report.

The man was transported to the Tempe City Jail, where he was booked and released for possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia.

A 26-year-old Tempe man was arrested Sunday at University Drive and River Drive on suspicion of marijuana possession and being in possession of a firearm while in possession of illegal drugs, according to a police report.

Officers arrested the man after stopping his vehicle because it had white lights in the back, police reported.

The officer noticed a black holster with a semi-automatic handgun next to the driver, according to the report.

Officers noticed an odor of marijuana when the man exited his vehicle, police reported.

Police found a container with marijuana in the man’s left pocket, according to the report.

The man said he purchased the marijuana for $10 and said he didn’t know it was illegal to have a firearm while in possession of illegal drugs, police reported.

The man was transported to Tempe City Jail, where he was booked and released for possession of marijuana and for having a firearm while being in possession of an illegal drug, according to the report.

Reports compiled by Ana Ramirez. Reach the reporter at amrami13@asu.edu

Sharpshooter in helicopter murders suspected drug smugglers

Source

Trooper fired from chopper to stop truck, kills 2

By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN and JUAN CARLOS LLORCA

Associated Press

LA JOYA, Texas (AP) — A Texas state trooper who fired on a pickup truck from a helicopter and killed two illegal immigrants during a chase through the desert was trying to disable the vehicle and suspected it was being used to smuggle drugs, authorities said Friday.

The disclosure came a day after the incident that left two Guatemalan nationals dead on an isolated gravel road near the town of La Joya, just north of the Mexico border.

State game wardens were the first to encounter the truck Thursday. After the driver refused to stop, they radioed for help and state police responded, according to Parks and Wildlife Department spokesman Mike Cox.

When the helicopter with a sharpshooter arrived, officers concluded that the truck appeared to be carrying a "typical covered drug load" on its bed and was travelling at reckless speeds, police said.

After the shots were fired and the truck's tires blown out, the driver lost control and crashed into a ditch. State police said a preliminary investigation revealed that the shots fired from the helicopter struck the vehicle's occupants.

Eight people who were in the truck were arrested. At least seven of them were also from Guatemala. No drugs were found.

The Guatemalan consul in McAllen, Alba Caceres, told The Associated Press that the surviving witnesses told her "one died immediately, the other was apparently taken to a hospital and died on the way."

The sharpshooter was placed on administrative leave, a standard procedure after such incidents.

An expert on police chases said the decision to fire on the truck was "a reckless act" that served "no legitimate law enforcement purpose."

"In 25 years following police pursuits, I hadn't seen a situation where an officer shot a speeding vehicle from a helicopter," said Geoffrey Alpert, professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina. Such action would be reasonable only if "you know for sure the person driving the car deserves to die and that there are no other occupants."

In general, he said, law enforcement agencies allow the use of deadly force only when the car is being used as a weapon, not "just on a hunch," Alpert added.

The Texas Department of Public Safety referred questions about its policy governing the use of deadly force to its general manual, which says troopers are allowed to use such force when defending themselves or someone else from serious harm or death. Shooting at vehicles is justified to disable a vehicle or when deadly force is deemed necessary.

Other law enforcement agencies that patrol the border say they have similar limits on the practice.

For instance, federal Customs and Borders Protection agents "are trained to use deadly force in circumstances that pose a threat to their lives, the lives of their fellow law enforcement partners and innocent third parties," agency spokesman Doug Mosier said.

But a report presented Thursday to the United Nations by the American Civil Liberties Union said shootings and excessive force by Customs and Border Protection agents on the border have left at least 20 individuals dead or seriously hurt since January 2010.

Of those, eight cases involved agents responding to reports of people throwing rocks. Six involved people killed while standing on the Mexican side of the border.

In recent years, Texas state police have increased their presence in the border area, deploying more agents, more helicopters and more boats to patrol the Rio Grande.

Troopers are regularly involved in high-speed pursuits, often chasing drug smugglers into the river and back to Mexico.

Agency Director Stephen McCraw has said state police were pushed into that role because the federal government's efforts to secure the border have been insufficient.

Diplomats quickly began their own investigation into the chase.

The head of the Guatemalan Consulate in McAllen said she is demanding federal and state authorities provide an explanation.

"I am baffled. I can't understand how this could happen," Caceres said. "I understand that the agents are doing their job, that they are protecting their border. But if there is someone who is responsible for this, he has to pay."

The Guatemalans started their journey 19 days ago near Guatemala City, with plans to stay with friends and relatives in New York, New Jersey and Houston, she said.

They were covered with a tarp, but as the car sped away from the game warden and the helicopter, the men "were having lots of trouble holding on to that tarp, Caceres said. "They must have seen them."

Mesa schools combatting drug use among students

Source

Mesa schools combatting drug use among students

Posted: Sunday, October 28, 2012 8:06 am

By Michelle Reese, Tribune | 0 comments

Valley teenagers are turning to synthetic drugs that are widely available, as evidenced by last week’s incident at Mesa High School.

Seven students reported feeling ill and were found to have high blood pressure and rapid heart rates. Four were transported to a hospital. One told police he had smoked spice.

Spice a substance often sold as an incense in smoke shops. And while the state Legislature has made moves to ban ingredients in the synthetic drug, manufacturers change the composition to get it back on the market. Like marijuana, it is most often smoked, though it does not give off the same scent.

“Groups are moving much faster than the legal system can move to change around components to still provide it over the counter,” said David Shuff, director of guidance for the Mesa Unified School District.

Shuff’s department works with students who are found to display drug behavior. On first offense, they are given an automatic five-day suspension with recommendation for a longer suspension.

But then they are also given the option to take part in the district’s Taking Charge program, an anti-drug program that must be attended by student and at least one parent. Participants must attend four workshops in a row – they are held on Tuesday and Thursday nights – before they can return to school, unless a family is referring a student to counseling or rehabilitation. The class focuses on teaching students to make good choices and points out the consequences of bad ones.

Shuff said a few years ago, the most common drug found to be used by students was alcohol. But there’s been a shift now to marijuana, he said, and spice is often classified under the same offense.

“We are seeing more marijuana than alcohol. A lot of that was fueled by spice,” he said. “Synthetic drugs have become accessible enough that it’s probably in some ways easier for a kid to get spice than cigarettes … If a kid is busted for marijuana, it was probably spice. We’re seeing it used interchangeably.”

But it doesn’t matter if it’s spice – in a “legal” form – or marijuana. The school district consequences can be the same.

“Our policies and regulations do not require us to determine whether or not it is an illegal substance if a kid comes to school under the influence,” Shuff said.

But police do get involved when necessary.

“When you’re dealing with drugs or illegal drugs, it can be a police action,” Mesa Police Det. Steve Berry said. “At the senior highs, we have school resource officers to deal with issues on campus. Drugs can be one of them. Certainly if a kid is caught on campus with any type of drug or substance, the SRO (school resource officer) will be notified and take appropriate action,” including trying to figure out where the student received the substance.

Shuff said last school year, 650 students participated in Taking Charge, less than 2 percent of the student enrollment.

“In most cases, kids who have been caught take Taking Charge. A majority go on to be successful in school and finish up. Hopefully, it was an isolated incident,” he said. Student who are caught a second time in a calendar year may be referred to an alternative school where they’ll get involved in Community Bridges’ “Project Success” program. Community Bridges offers community prevention and education as well as treatment programs in the Valley.

Contact writer: (480) 898-6549 or mreese@evtrib.com

Will Supreme Court turn up its nose at drug-sniffing dogs?

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Will Supreme Court turn up its nose at drug-sniffing dogs?

Jonathan Stempel Reuters

12:36 p.m. CDT, October 28, 2012

The court is scheduled on Wednesday to hear Florida's appeal of two decisions by that state's highest court that found the detection of drugs by trained police dogs had violated the constitutional ban on unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

These arguments involve distinctly different issues: whether a dog can sniff outside a home without a warrant, and how qualified a dog must be to do a legitimate sniff.

They give the Supreme Court a chance to extend, or limit, prior decisions giving police a long leash to use dogs, including for suitcases at airports and cars stopped at checkpoints.

"If the court vindicates the ability of police to use dogs without probable cause, and that a sniff outside a car justifies searching that car, it could enhance their ability to use dogs for law enforcement," said Richard Garnett, a University of Notre Dame law professor and clerk for former Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

Like others in law enforcement, Florida maintains that dog "alerts" are not searches because they uncover illegal activities that deserve no privacy protection.

The retired Justice David Souter mocked that idea in a dissent from a 2005 pro-sniff decision, saying it supposes that a trained canine becomes an "infallible dog" that never errs.

At least 23 U.S. states joined each of Florida's appeals, calling drug-detecting dogs "essential weapons" at the forefront of efforts to stop illegal drug production and sales.

The Supreme Court is often their ally in search cases, typically siding with the police.

SANCTITY OF THE HOME

One of Wednesday's cases, Florida v. Jardines, concerns a December 5, 2006, search outside Joelis Jardines' home nearMiami.

A "crime stopper" had tipped police that marijuana was growing inside. Relying on that tip, a detective, joined by Franky, approached. Trained to find the strongest odor, Franky went to the front door, sniffed the base, and sat down.

That was the alert his handlers were looking for. After obtaining a search warrant, police found marijuana plants inside the home. Jardines was arrested for possessing more than 25 pounds of marijuana, and stealing the electricity to grow it.

In voiding the search, Florida's highest court called Franky's sniff an "unreasonable government intrusion into the sanctity of the home." There, it said, the expectation of privacy was much greater than in a car or an airport.

The court also likened Franky to the heat-sensing thermal imagers that the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 2001 decision that cut across ideological lines, said could not without a warrant be used outside a home to detect marijuana growing inside.

Where the government uses a device "not in general public use" to uncover details about a home, "the surveillance is a 'search' and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant," Justice Antonin Scalia then wrote for a 5-4 majority.

"Jardines is a line-drawing case: the question is can police use the dog at the front door," said Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University and former clerk to JusticeAnthony Kennedy. "If a warrant were needed, police would never use the dog at a house, because then they could just go inside."

TELLTALE NERVES

Wednesday's other case, Florida v. Harris, involves a search not of a house, but of Clayton Harris' pickup truck.

An officer pulled over Harris near Bristol, Florida, in the state's panhandle, on June 24, 2006, after seeing that the truck had an expired tag. An open beer can lay in the cup holder.

Nervous, shaking and breathing rapidly, Harris would not let the officer search his truck. Out came Aldo, who was led around the truck for a "free air sniff."

Near the driver's door handle, Aldo gave his alert, becoming excited and then sitting down. The officer then searched the truck's interior, and found 200 pseudoephedrine pills and 8,000 matches, which are ingredients formethamphetamine.

Harris pleaded no contest, but he got a reprieve. The Florida Supreme Court said the state did not show Aldo's reliability as a drug detector with evidence of his training, certification and performance, and his handler's experience.

By comparison, Franky had no such problems, according to court papers. At the time of Jardines' search, he had made 399 positive alerts. The result: seizures of roughly one ton of marijuana and 34 pounds of cocaine andheroin.

"The state's 'credentials alone' canine-reliability test is based on an overgeneralized assertion - that all trained or certified drug-detection dogs are reliable in the field," a group of 34 law professors said in a brief supporting Harris.

Regardless of how the court rules in both cases, police will go on using dogs for drug detection. The questions are when, and how.

Decisions in both cases are expected by the end of June.

The cases are Florida v. Jardines, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 11-564; and Florida v. Harris, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 11-817.

(The story was refiled to make clear drug-sniffing dogs in headline)

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Howard Goller and Tim Dobbyn)

7 detained, over $100K of marijuana seized in vehicle stop

7 detained, over $100K of marijuana seized in vehicle stop

By Laurie Merrill The Republic | azcentral.com Sun Oct 28, 2012 9:15 PM

Seven people were apprehended and more than $100,000 of marijuana was seized early Sunday after an Arizona Department of Public Safety officer stopped a vehicle near Maricopa and evaded a truck that tried to ram him, a spokesman says.

The attempted police car ramming by the driver of a Nissan pick-up truck appears to be a tactic in the drug war, said DPS spokesman Bart Graves. The Nissan and a second truck seemed to be trying to distract the officer from discovering a half dozen bales of marijuana in a third car, a Cadillac Escalade, Graves said.

Officers were still searching for the Nissan truck driver, who fled the scene with others, Graves said.

The incident began unfolding at 8:30 a.m. Sunday when a DPS officer headed north on State Route 347 attempted to pull over a Ford F150 pick-up truck, said Graves.

As he was stopping the Ford, he looked in his rear-view mirror and saw that the Nissan pick-up truck accelerating and about to ram the rear of his Chevrolet Tahoe, Graves said.

“The Nissan pick-up truck tried to strike our officer’s car,” said Graves.

The driver had apparently interrupted a caravan of three cars, a Cadillac Escalade truck in the lead, followed by the Ford and the Nissan, Graves said.

The officer evaded the collision by pulling swiftly onto the shoulder, Graves said.

“He has patrolled that area for years, he has seen about every thing there is to see,” Graves said of the K9 officer.

The Nissan driver pulled over and the occupants fled into the dessert, Graves said.

Meanwhile, it appeared that the Escalade driver was also accelerating in an attempt to ram the officer’s car, but instead headed north on the highway, Graves said.

After the Escalade was stopped, DPS seized about six bales of marijuana, about $100,000 worth, from the truck bed, Graves said. He said the marijuana hadn’t been weighed as of Sunday afternoon.

It appeared that the Nissan and Ford had been deployed to keep police from finding the marijuana, Graves said.

“What is significant here is these distracting vehicles,” Graves said. “That is how desperate these guys have become. They will do anything to prevent authorities from seizing their drugs.”

It appears that the occupants of the Nissan tossed weapons into the desert as they ran, Graves said, which officers were seeking.

DPS officers were interviewing the seven suspects and had not made arrests late Sunday afternoon, Graves said.

The United States Border Patrol, Chandler police and a Phoenix police helicopter joined the search for the occupants of the Nissan, most of whom tried to flee on foot, Graves aid.

“We couldn’t have done it without them,” Graves said.

Susan Oldridge wants to jail drug users???

Source

Jail vs. drug treatment

Oct. 28, 2012 08:06 PM

Regarding "Funding wrong agency" (Letters, Wednesday):

If it wasn't for the problem that treatment is only successful in remedying drug and alcohol addiction probably less than 10 percent of the time, the letter writer who insisted we should spend more money on it would have a point.

The treatment industry attempts to hide these abysmal results by changing the definition of success from "not using drugs anymore" to "using them less." How many productive members of society do you know who "use drugs less"? Lot's of productive members of society use drugs. John Hopkins, the founder of the John Hopkins Medical Institute was a heroin addict. Sigmund Freud was a cocaine addict. It's only when drugs become illegal and people have to pay black-market prices for drugs that the laws against drugs cause crime!

Until treatment that works is available, incarceration protects the rest of us from some of the addicts' burglaries, identity theft, financial support of gangs, etc. The webmaster is in 100 percent favor of jailing criminals who commit real crimes, like burglaries and theft. How every the webmaster thinks it is wrong to jail people for victimless crimes that harm no one such as the use or sales of illegal drugs

It also slows down the rate at which they bear children that taxpayers are required to support and protect.

-- Susan Oldridge, Peoria

Mesa Medical-Marijuana Club Busted by Gilbert PD

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Mesa Medical-Marijuana Club Busted by Gilbert PD; Paul Bellesen, Chad Czarnecki and Robert Ryan Face Charges

By Ray Stern Mon., Oct. 29 2012 at 3:38 PM

Valley marijuana patients lost another over-the-counter source for their meds earlier this month when Gilbert police raided Arizona Natural Solutions in Mesa.

The cannabis/compassion club at 1055 North Mesa Drive had been operating since at least February, when its principals began its Facebook page and incorporated as a non-profit business in Arizona. Billing itself as a "cooperative educational center," ANS also distributed killer bud to patients, as its Facebook site shows.

Gilbert police raided the place on October 5, serving a search warrant and seizing "suspected marijuana, candy, cookies, powder, suspected ecstasy, and US currency," Gilbert police Sergeant Jesse Sanger wrote to New Times. No information was offered about the reason for the raid.

Paul Bellesen, 22, Chad Czarnecki, 24, and Robert Ryan, 25, are accused of selling pot and "narcotics," (this is another example of police wanting to utilize the ludicrous state statute that defines marijuana products like hashish as something other than marijuana), and possessing drug paraphernalia. Police also want Bellesen charged with possessing a firearm as part of a drug offense.

Arizona Natural Solution's Facebook site says this is a picture of "Paul Beezy" [Paul Bellesen] next to some Holy Grail Kush plants.

Although the raid occurred nearly a month ago, Gilbert police failed to issue a news release about it for some reason. We heard about the bust from a reader, but Mesa and Phoenix police disavowed knowledge of it. We only recently heard that it had been Gilbert's doing, and Sanger confirmed that. But we'll just point here that police in Gilbert, Phoenix and Tempe have all taken part in raids of compassion clubs, but the agencies never put out news releases about these actions. It's as if they're embarrassed at what they're doing.

At the least, police know the foundation for these raids is not as firm as in a non-medical-marijuana-related drug bust. Last year, Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne declared that compassion clubs are breaking the law if they're distributing marijuana, even if the clubs claim they merely give away pot for "free" to donation-paying members. Horne asked a Maricopa County Superior Court judge to rule that the clubs' business model is illegal under the voter-approved, 2010 medical-marijuana law. But the case was settled without any resolution of the clubs' legal status.

County Attorney Bill Montgomery, a staunch prohibitionist, has his prosecutors busy on a few different criminal cases involving medical-pot clubs and their operators, (like Allan Sobol, whom we wrote about in August). But the cases have taken a while to wend through the courts, and there have been no convictions yet.

Besides the clubs already raided, police have announced publicly that they have several investigations active on other businesses. The Green Cross in Mesa, for example, has been under investigation since the bust of the makers of Zonka Bars. And Tempe police say that Top Shelf Meds, where an employee was shot by an unknown assailant last week, is currently under investigation.

Arizona Natural Solutions put out a short note on Facebook on October 8 to give members some info about what happened.

"Sorry to all patients but to let you know, we are all ok and safe. Love you guys it was all worth it if I even helped one person, Love, You know who," a post by the club states.

Asked by a Facebook friend if cops shut them down, ANS replied, "Not shut down. They came and went threw [sic] everything. We are choosing to close the doors."

The club's friends lament the action in their responses. One, from Chris Benhoff, says, " As a cancer patient i hate to see this. Good people like paul who help people like me should be rewarded not punished. Stay up paul your a great person- chris patient 150."

More than 32,000 medical-marijuana patients are now registered in Arizona, but right-wing leaders in the state have so far thwarted voters' wishes for state-authorized dispensaries. As long as they remain open, the cannabis/compassion clubs are these legal pot patients' only alternative to the black market.

Let government bureaucrats out law any drug they want????

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McClellan: Mesa High drug incident reinforces ongoing spice, bath salts problem

Posted: Tuesday, October 30, 2012 7:23 am

Guest commentary by Mike McClellan

“Seven Mesa High students taken to hospital.”

You might’ve seen that headline recently. It reinforces an ongoing problem in our state, a problem one legislator attempted to address last session, only to be shot down.

That problem is “spice” or “bath salts,” legal substances that kids increasingly are consuming, substances that provide those kids the high they’re looking for, substances that have resulted in hospitalizations, some for long-term psychiatric problems, and even deaths. if you ask me that sounds like the same problem we have with booze! Of course the American governments "war on booze" was a dismal failure like the current "war on drugs"

So why do bath salts and spice remain legal? Two answers, at least for Arizona.

One is the way the makers of spice keep ahead of the law. What happens is this: A product is put out there, it results in the kinds of problems outlined above, and then the state outlaws the chemical compound that creates that product.

The chemists making the product then alter the compound, and suddenly they have another “legal” substance to sell.

This is the history of bath salts since their inception, the law always behind the chemists’ ability to alter their concoctions to keep them legal.

Hospital emergency rooms increasingly treat kids high on these bath salts, kids who legally purchase them at convenience stores or head shops. Kids are quickly addicted to the substances, which can induce paranoia, panic attacks, sudden mood swings and reckless behavior, not to mention rapid heartbeat over an extended time, chest pains, and, in some cases, heart attacks.

So in the last legislative session, State Sen. Linda Gray introduced a bill that would give the state more power over these drugs.

Currently, here’s how the system works in Arizona: The state identifies a substance, but if the Legislature hasn’t banned that particular combination of chemicals, the state must wait until the Legislature convenes and passes a law specifically outlawing that combination.

Which means? For months at a time, law enforcement cannot go after substances the Legislature hasn’t banned (unless the federal government has first).

In response to that dilemma, Sen. Gray introduced this bill:

“It would give the Arizona State Board of Pharmacy power to add chemicals to its controlled-substances list without legislative approval to ban chemicals used in new bath-salts derivations without waiting for lawmakers to return to session and pass a bill banning the new versions.” Now that's scarey. Allow a bunch of unelected bureaucrats to make any drug they want illegal!!!

The bill also “required board members to consult with a Department of Public Safety forensic scientist, who typically would identify new drugs for legislators and ensure chemicals met certain criteria before they could be banned.” Now that's even scarier. Allow a bunch of unelected cops to make any drug they want illegal!!!

Sounds reasonable, right? No! It sounds horrible!!!! Give the experts the power to ban in real time the chemicals used in the latest synthetic drug formulas, but with the same oversight by the DPS used by legislators to craft laws to ban specific chemicals. Plus, it allows those drugs to be outlawed at any time; as is, it takes a bill passed by the Legislature to enact bans.

Not good enough for Gilbert state legislator Eddie Farnsworth, and enough House Republicans, however. Because when the bill reached the House floor, it got deep-sixed.

Farnsworth, who helped lead the charge against the bill, believed it gave too much power to the State Board of Pharmacy, believing it violated separation of power.

Said Farnsworth, “What we have to be very careful of is that we don’t decide that somehow the ends of trying to prevent people from committing crimes is going to justify the means of destroying the protections we have in the Constitution.”

I’m not sure just what “protections” are threatened by Gray’s bill, but I do know this:

The bills Farnsworth voted for — the ones that have banned specific chemical compounds — came from . . . wait for it, wait for it . . . the Arizona State Board of Pharmacy.

Maybe Gray will once again introduce her perfectly reasonable bill in January. And probably Farnsworth will once again be successful in shooting it down. But certainly more kids will be damaged by their use of bath salts, apparently a fair exchange for saving Farnsworth’s Constitutional “protections.”

Horne hit-and-run caused more than $1,000 in damage, records

Remember the guy who causes this hit and run accident is Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne.

When Tom Horne isn't crashing into other cars on his way to an alleged affair with Carmen Chenal is is demanding that Gov Brewer declare Prop 203 null and void so he can resume jailing medical marijuana smokers.

Source

Horne hit-and-run caused more than $1,000 in damage, records

By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Oct 30, 2012 12:22 PM

New Phoenix Police Department records show that the hit-and-run fender bender that Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne and one of his employees were involved in last spring caused more than $1,000 in damages to the other vehicle.

The documents were released Tuesday to The Arizona Republic and 12 News in response to public-records requests.

The owner of the 2008 Range Rover that was struck, Kevin Montaño of Goodyear, said it is unclear how the damages will be repaired because the insurer of the vehicle driven by Horne needs to further investigate the accident.

“He’s a man,” Montaño said. “It happens. I wasn't in the vehicle, I wasn't aware of the impact he felt when it hit. He says he didn't even feel anything. You've got to take him at his word, you know?”

Montaño said he has never spoken with the attorney general.

Horne last week received a misdemeanor citation alleging he caused paint damage to the bumper of a parked vehicle during a March 27 fender bender that he did not report. The citation was for one count of leaving the scene of a collision/unattended vehicle, a class three misdemeanor. Police have said the ticket includes a Nov. 2 court date and refers Horne to Phoenix Municipal Court.

The accident was witnessed by two FBI special agents who were tailing Horne as part of an investigation into alleged campaign-finance violations. The FBI turned the information over to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. Earlier this month, county officials referred the matter to the city of Phoenix.

Other public records obtained by the newspaper from the county attorney’s office detail the crash. Maricopa County Attorney's Detective Mark Stribling wrote an April 19 memo describing how FBI agents Brian Grehoski and Merv Mason watched the accident and the minutes leading up to it. Stribling wrote that agents saw Carmen Chenal, a longtime Horne confidante and employee, leave the Attorney General's Office during lunch hour, get into a borrowed car, and drive to a downtown Phoenix parking garage. Horne then left the office and drove his gold Jaguar into the same garage.

Horne and Chenal then left the garage, with Horne driving the vehicle originally driven by Chenal, Stribling wrote. Chenal was in the passenger seat. Horne was wearing a baseball cap as they drove to Carmen’s residence.

After the accident, the Phoenix report states, Horne “stopped for an estimated 10 to 20 seconds. Neither Tom nor Carmen got out or opened the windows to look out to see the damage. Tom pulled away and parked the vehicle in another area of the parking garage and the two of them walked through the resident gate and went into Carmen’s apartment.”

The new records show images of the damage to the Range Rover, which include dark paint streaks on the bumper. A repair estimate by Penske Automotive Collison in Scottsdale indicates the costs to repair it would be $1,070.95, including parts, paint and labor.

Horne declined to speak to Phoenix police who investigated the case. His spokeswoman, Amy Rezzonico, and employee Linnea Heap, whose Volkswagon car Horne was driving during the accident, also declined to speak to the police.

In an April 20 interview with the FBI, Heap first tells agents that Chenal “told me that someone had hit the bumper,” according to transcripts. Heap stated Chenal saw minor damage when she “came to the car.” The agents chided Heap for protecting Chenal, her friend, and pointed out that Martha Stewart went to prison for lying to the FBI, not securities fraud.

Heap later changed her story, saying Chenal told her that Horne hit the Range Rover while backing up in the parking garage. Chenal told Phoenix police that she looked out of the window to see if there was any damage to the Rover, and that there was none. She said the damage to Heap’s car was no more than $150.

Horne’s versions of his response to the accident have varied, and they conflict with authorities’ records. He has told The Republic he could not remember who he was with when the accident occured, but on the same day told other media outlets he was with Chenal. He told one TV station he didn’t see ay damage to the Range Rover. And he told another TV station he hardly remembered the accident.

But records show neither Horne nor Chenal “made any attempt to check for damage or make any kind of notification to the vehicle owner,” such as leaving a note. Records also show Rezzonico told the FBI Horne paled when he recounted the accident days later to her.

More on dope sniffing dogs and the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court to revisit use of dogs as basis for drug searches

By David G. Savage, Washington Bureau

October 31, 2012

WASHINGTON — Researchers at UC Davis set up a simple experiment to test police dogs and their fabled ability to detect drugs. They told 18 police dog handlers they had hidden small amounts of illegal drugs in four rooms of a church.

Over two days of testing, the drug-sniffing dogs alerted their handlers repeatedly and in every room — 225 times in all. And they were twice as likely to alert on spots marked with red construction paper that the handlers had been told would indicate drugs.

But in fact, no drugs were in any of the rooms, suggesting the "handler's beliefs" and their "hidden cues" may trigger the dog to alert on a target of suspicion, the researchers said.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will revisit the constitutionality of using police dogs to trigger searches of cars and homes in a pair of cases from Florida. The justices will decide whether the 4th Amendment's ban on "unreasonable searches" requires the police to have more than an alert from a drug-sniffing dog before they open the trunk of a car or enter a home.

Nationwide, dogs are the leading weapon in the government's war on drugs. Florida alone has more than 1,000 K-9 units, and they were responsible for more than 130,000 arrests last year.

In the past, the high court has given the police a green light to conduct searches whenever a "well-trained narcotics detection dog" gives an alert. No one disputes that canines have an extraordinary ability to detect odors, and they can be invaluable in finding items such as hidden explosives or human remains.

But some experts in animal science are urging the justices to be cautious before allowing police dogs to serve as a substitute for search warrants.

Alerts from drug-detecting dogs "should be viewed with a healthy skepticism," said Auburn University professor Lawrence J. Myers, who has studied canines for decades. He said some dogs and their handlers were highly reliable, while others were not.

The UC Davis study "got an enormous reaction in the field," he said, because it showed the handlers, not the dogs, may be responsible for some of the alerts. "This is a major problem, and we've known it for a long time. The behavior of the handler affects the behavior of the animal," he said.

But Florida prosecutors and police dog handlers say that evidence of a dog's good training and certification should be enough to demonstrate their reliability. "If a dog is tested in a controlled setting, you know if the dog is wrong or right," said Arthur Daus, a lawyer for the National Police Canine Assn.

Last year, the Chicago Tribune reported on data from several suburban police districts, which found only 44% of the car searches that were triggered by an alert from sniffer dogs resulted in the discovery of drugs or drug paraphernalia in the vehicle.

Police officers usually discount these "false" alerts, suggesting they are probably triggered by "residual odors" in the vehicle. The dog may have detected the odor of marijuana or cocaine that had been kept in the trunk weeks before, they say.

But Myers said experiments in a controlled environment — like the church in the UC Davis study — also found some dogs and their handlers were wrong more often than right in detecting narcotics.

Last year, the Florida Supreme Court said it was not convinced drug-sniffing dogs were always reliable enough to justify searches of cars on the highway. "There is no uniform standard in this state or nationwide for acceptable level of training, testing or certification for drug-detection dogs," the state justices said. And the "potential for false alerts and for handler error" means that innocent motorists may be subjected to embarrassing searches, they said.

To justify a search that is triggered by a drug-sniffing dog, the police must furnish a trial judge with the canine's "field performance records, including any unverified alerts," as well as evidence of its training and certification, the state justices said.

The case to be heard Wednesday began when a police officer went on patrol near Tallahassee with "his K-9 partner Aldo," a German shepherd. The officer stopped a pickup with an expired tag. The nervous motorist, Clayton Harris, refused to permit a search of his truck.

After Aldo circled the vehicle and alerted next to a door, the officer said he had probable cause to search inside. He found a bag of pseudoephedrine pills, thousands of matches and other ingredients for making methamphetamine.

Harris pleaded no contest to the drug charges, but the state justices ruled the search of his truck was unconstitutional because the police had not furnished objective evidence of Aldo's reliability.

In a second case, the Florida court overturned the conviction of a Miami man for growing marijuana in his house. An officer had taken a drug-sniffing dog to the man's front porch, and the alert furnished the probable cause to obtain a search warrant.

However, the Supreme Court agreed to hear appeals from Florida's attorney general in the cases, Florida vs. Harris and Florida vs. Jardines.

Kenneth Furton, a chemist at Florida International University in Miami, led a group of scientists who studied police dogs. He said it was not good enough to allow police agencies to test their own dogs.

A dog and his handler must be tested on multiple vehicles, and "they need to be correct nine out of 10 times," he said.

david.savage@latimes.com

Preckwinkle drops bullet tax, keeps gun tax

Preckwinkle drops bullet tax, keeps gun tax

By Hal Dardick Tribune reporter

10:43 a.m. CDT, October 31, 2012

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle today dropped plans for a five-cent bullet tax, but still wants to charge a $25 tax on every gun purchase.

The compromise was negotiated over several days with Commissioners John Fritchey and Edwin Reyes, both Chicago Democrats, who had balked at the guns and ammo taxes.

In exchange for their support, Preckwinkle agreed to create a $2 million fund to combat gun violence. Fritchey had proposed dedicating $1.4 million to anti-gun violence efforts. She also agreed to exempt law-enforcement officers from having to pay the tax, which helped convince Reyes to support the plan.

An undetermined portion of the $2 million would be granted to “non-profits with a track record of effective violence prevention and community outreach.” About $100,000 would be used to crack down on illegal gun purchases.

An advisory board that will award the grants also would look at gun courts in other jurisdictions and come up with a recommendation for the county by July 1, Preckwinkle said.

Although Preckwinkle dropped immediate plans for the ammo tax of a nickel per bullet, she said the county will continue to look at the idea. As it was proposed, the taxes on some boxes of bullets would have been greater than the cost of the bullets themselves, Preckwinkle said.

The bullet tax was projected to raise $400,000 in revenue. The gun tax would raise $600,000, Budget Director Andrea Gibson said.

The revenue would help defray the cost of medical care for people who are shot and then treated at county-run, taxpayer subsidized Cook County Hospital. The hospital treats about 670 gunshot victims at year at an average cost of $52,000, Preckwinkle said.

hdardick@tribune.com

Former North Chicago chief accused of stealing seized drug money

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Former North Chicago chief accused of stealing seized drug money

By Robert McCoppin Tribune reporter

4:29 p.m. CDT, October 30, 2012

A former North Chicago police chief was arrested and charged today with theft of more than $140,000 that had been seized from drug arrests, officials announced.

Former Chief Michael Newsome was accused of using the money to buy a new car and do home repairs on his kitchen, among other personal expenditures, Lake County Assistant State’s Attorney Steve Scheller said.

Newsome, who left office in February amid a public uproar over alleged police brutality within the department, was charged with an ongoing theft of more than $140,000 from April of 2011 through March 31 of this year, Scheller said.

Newsome, 51, was also charged with a separate count of theft of $500 to $10,000, stemming from an allegation that he withdrew an amount of money on May 4 of last year to pay for his children's school, authorities said.

Additionally, Newsome was charged with official misconduct and misapplication of funds, officials said.

Earlier this year, Mayor Leon Rockingham Jr. directed Newsome’s successor, Chief James Jackson, to review all internal police policies, according to a statement from the city. In doing so, Jackson discovered questionable withdrawals from the asset forfeiture account maintained by the police department. Money seized from drug arrests is deposited into that account.

After that discovery, the mayor directed the chief to notify the Lake County State’s Attorney’s office, which opened an investigation, resulting in today’s arrest. Newsome surrendered to officials this morning and was released after posting $25,000 bond, officials said.

In the press release, Rockingham said that if the charges are proven, it would be “an enormous betrayal of trust.”

rmccoppin@tribune.com

Battle Amnesty International Must Win

AI fights the unconstitutional FISA law

Battle Amnesty International Must Win

Posted on October 31, 2012 | Author: Nick Dranias

This past Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on the constitutionality of secret warrantless dragnet surveillance of international electronic communications. Amnesty International, which often communicates with Americans who are residents of foreign countries, has challenged the secret surveillance law, known as “FISA,” by arguing that the Fourth Amendment was meant to bar such warrantless surveillance. Although the challenge involves national security issues, its ultimate outcome could have a direct impact on all types of laws that authorize the government to access the private information of its citizens.

Amnesty International and its allies have faced a serious obstacle in making their constitutional arguments. The Obama administration is using the same arguments the Bush Administration used, claiming that the only injury that can allow a lawsuit to move forward under the Fourth Amendment is proof that someone has actually suffered a loss of privacy from warrantless surveillance. This, of course, is a virtually insurmountable hurdle when the surveillance is conducted in secret. In response, Amnesty has claimed its injury is international travel costs that have been incurred because people must communicate in person, rather than using telephones or email.

But there is a better argument. It involves recognizing that the Fourth Amendment does not merely protect against invasions of privacy. The Fourth Amendment guarantees “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects.” As such, the loss of “security” in our property and private communications is the primary injury that the Fourth Amendment seeks to prevent.

That injury—insecurity in property and private communications—is clear and concrete when the federal government dragoons internet servers to intercept and pierce the private communications of Americans. Hopefully, the Supreme Court will stand with Amnesty International. A win in this case is important to defend the liberties of Americans at home and abroad.

Smugglers fail in ramp attempt over border fence

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Smugglers fail in ramp attempt over border fence

Associated Press Wed Oct 31, 2012 9:57 AM

YUMA — Federal authorities in southwestern Arizona say suspected smugglers tried to drive over a 14-foot-high border fence using a makeshift ramp.

But the Jeep stalled at the top of the ramp after it became high centered and the two suspects fled into Mexico early Tuesday.

U.S. Border Patrol agents from the Yuma Station say they were patrolling in the Imperial Sand Dunes area just after midnight when they saw the silver Jeep Cherokee attempting to drive over the International Boundary fence.

After removing the Jeep from the fence, agents seized both the vehicle and the ramp.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the suspects were trying to smuggle drugs or illegal immigrants into Arizona.

Legalizing marijuana will cut into the cartels profit???

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U.S. pot legalization cuts cartel profits, study says

Associated Press Wed Oct 31, 2012 3:59 PM

MEXICO CITY — A study released Wednesday by a respected Mexican think tank contends that proposals to legalize the recreational use of marijuana in Colorado, Oregon and Washington could cut Mexican drug cartels’ earnings from traffic to the U.S. by as much as 30 percent.

Opponents questioned some of the study’s assumptions, saying the proposals could also offer new opportunities for cartels to operate inside the U.S. and replace any profit lost to a drop in international smuggling.

The ballot measures to be decided on Nov. 6 would allow adults to possess small amounts of pot under a regimen of state regulation and taxation. Polls have shown tight races in Washington and Colorado, with Washington’s measure appearing to have the best chance of passing. Oregon’s measure, which would impose the fewest regulations, does not appear likely to pass.

The study by the Mexican Competitiveness Institute, “If Our Neighbors Legalize,” assumes that legalization in any state would allow growers there to produce marijuana relatively cheaply and create an illicit flow to other states, where the drug could be made available at cheaper prices and higher quality than Mexican marijuana smuggled across the international border.

The report, based on previous studies by U.S. experts including those at the RAND Corporation, assumes that Mexican cartels earn more than $6 billion a year from drug smuggling to the U.S.

It calculates the hypothetical, post-legalization price of marijuana produced in Oregon, Washington and Colorado and sold within those states and smuggled to other states. It then assumes that purchasers around the U.S. will choose domestic marijuana when it is sold cheaper than the current price of Mexican marijuana. That choice will lead to a loss of $1.425 billion to the cartels if Colorado legalizes, $1.372 billion if Washington approves the ballot measure, and $1.839 billion if Oregon votes yes, the study says.

It only looks at the effects of legalization in individual states, and does not calculate what would happen if more than one legalized marijuana.

Opponents of the ballot measures said the study bolsters one of their principal objections, that it will turn any state with legal marijuana into a producer for the rest of the country.

They said, however, that they did not believe that production will rob the cartels of significant profits, saying instead that they thought Mexican drug lords would instead try to participate in legal production inside the U.S.

“If I were a cartel member and I knew Colorado and Washington had it legal, I’d get a couple front people and do my business out of those states. Why would I not?” said Thomas J. Gorman, head of the Rocky Mountain High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a government agency that coordinates anti-drug efforts by local, state and federal agencies in four Western states.

The Mexican government has said that drug legalization in some U.S. states could make it harder to prosecute growers and dealers in Mexico, because they would be producing a product potentially destined for a place where it is legal.

Alejandro Hope, an author of the study and a former high-ranking officer in Mexico’s domestic intelligence service, acknowledged that the study made a series of assumptions that may not be prove to be true, including the assumption that the U.S. federal government would not aggressively investigate and prosecute movement of marijuana out of a state where it’s legal.

A post-legalization federal crackdown could make domestically grown marijuana uncompetitive with Mexican pot in many states, he said, meaning cartels would see less of a cut in profits.

“Diversion is a problem we’ll continue to have to monitor,” said Alison Holcomb, campaign manager with New Approach Washington, the group pushing Washington state’s legalization measure. “But the question is to the extent that is happening, is it better that the money is going to licensed, regulated businesses instead of going to Mexico?”

A RAND study of a proposal to legalize marijuana in California in 2010 asserted that could cut cartel drug income by 20 percent.

Death Penalty - A jobs program for lawyers??? Probably!!!

People who receive the death penalty routinely spend 20+ years in prison before being executed.

The people what benefit hugely from this are the prosecutors, judges, and public defenders who are paid big bucks to work them thru the mandatory appeals process.

This article says California has spent about $4 billion to execute 13 inmates. That is a cost of $307 million per execution. I suspect money paid to the the judges, prosecutors and public defenders involved in these state sponsored murders ate up a large amount of those costs.

And of course that doesn't even address the issue that innocent people have been executed by the government and that more innocent people will be murdered by the government as long as the death penalty exists.

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Foes say death penalty is too costly

By Paul Elias Associated Press Fri Nov 2, 2012 12:08 AM

SAN FRANCISCO -- Death penalty opponents in California are trying a new argument this year: Abolish capital punishment because the cash-strapped state can’t afford it.

Voters in the state with the nation’s largest death row will decide Tuesday whether to repeal the death penalty. Proponents of Proposition 34 say incarceration and litigation costs are too high for too little return.

California has spent about $4 billion since capital punishment resumed in 1977, yet just 13 inmates have been put to death.

An independent analysis says the state would save between $100 million and $130 million a year by converting death sentences to life without parole.

“The death penalty is a giant rathole where so much of California’s budget is thrown with no discernible benefit,” said Diane Wilson, whose husband, a police officer, was killed by a man now on death row.

A supporter of Proposition 34, she said the death sentence given to her husband’s killer “didn’t change anything. I still don’t have a husband, and my children and family are devastated.”

Opponents say the argument is merely a smoke screen by opponents of capital punishment.

“He deserves the ultimate punishment for what he did to my daughter,” said Marc Klaas, whose 12-year-old daughter, Polly, was abducted, raped and killed by Richard Allen Davis in 1993.

Klaas, an outspoken Proposition 34 opponent, said that rather than do away with the death penalty, the appeals process should be streamlined.

Three former California governors have spoken out against the initiative.

One, Republican Pete Wilson, co-wrote the official argument that says the groups pushing Proposition 34 are most responsible for the high costs of housing death row inmates and paying for their appeals.

Is the term "honest cop" an oxymoron? In most cases yes!!!

2 Chicago cops say blowing whistle led to retaliation

Officers allege in federal lawsuit that they were penalized for going to the FBI

By Annie Sweeney and Steve Mills, Chicago Tribune reporters

8:15 a.m. CDT, November 2, 2012

The two veteran Chicago police officers were sent to the Ida B. Wells public housing complex to work undercover and catch drug dealers. But what Shannon Spalding and Daniel Echeverria found was nothing their bosses wanted to know about, the officers allege in a whistle-blower lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court.

The two officers, according to the lawsuit, discovered that colleagues on the police force were shaking down drug dealers and framing innocent people. But when they told their supervisors, they were told to "disregard" the wrongdoing. And when, as a last resort, they went to the FBI with their claims, high-ranking police officials labeled them "rats" and retaliated against them by putting them in do-nothing jobs.

"This is what will happen to you if you go against sworn personnel," Spalding said in an interview at her lawyers' office. "If you don't want a code of silence, you don't treat officers like this. ... It's cost us everything. My career is over. ... Nobody wants to work with me anymore."

"I almost feel punished for doing the right thing," Echeverria added.

With the lawsuit, Spalding, who has been with the department for 16 years , and Echeverria, a 13-year veteran, made public their previously unknown role in the FBI investigation that led to corruption charges against two colleagues, Sgt. Ronald Watts and Officer Kallatt Mohammed. Mohammed pleaded guilty to extorting payoffs from heroin and crack dealers and was sentenced last week to 18 months in prison. Watts has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

The lawsuit was filed as high-ranking Chicago police officers have been forced to answer questions at an unrelated federal trial about the so-called code of silence culture inside the department and whether it discourages officers from reporting wayward colleagues. That trial involves allegations that officers tried to protect Officer Anthony Abbate after he brutally assaulted a female bartender while he was off-duty and drunk.

According to the lawsuit, which names the city and a dozen high-ranking officers as defendants, Spalding and Echeverria said that, for all their efforts, they were removed from their narcotics unit assignment and shuttled around the department to lesser jobs far from their homes and at bad hours. At one point, they alleged, they were stuck inside a small office at the police academy for more than two months without any duties.

Spalding said she was once approached by an FBI officer about a decade ago asking if she had evidence that Watts was corrupt. It wasn't until late 2006 or early 2007 when the two officers were working in the narcotics unit in the Wentworth District that they learned of the alleged corruption, they said.

Echeverria said he was skeptical at first but heard the allegations from so many informants and other sources that he came to see them as credible. When he and Spalding reported the allegations to their supervisors, they learned they were common knowledge but were told to "disregard" them, they alleged.

According to the lawsuit, a number of high-ranking officers, including several commanders, discouraged them from informing on officers and ignored their information. Frustrated with the department, they walked into the offices of the FBI and told their story. They said they believed they were doing the right thing. What's more, they said, a former internal affairs chief had promised them their work on the undercover investigation would lead to promotions and coveted assignments.

"At the end of the day, we're officers. It's information someone has to do something about," Spalding said. "Even if it's drug dealers or people from the projects, they deserve to be protected."

The two alleged that when supervisors learned of their role in the undercover investigation, they called them "rats" and passed along that sensitive information to others in the department. When they complained to supervisors about the alleged retaliation, one told them, "Look, everyone is against you, so you don't want to piss me off," they alleged.

Another told them, "Sometimes you have to turn a blind eye" to wrongdoing, according to the lawsuit.

Spalding and Echeverria said they look back on their decision to investigate colleagues with a mix of pride and great regret.

"Had I known then what I know now," Spalding said as her voice trailed off.

asweeney@tribune.com smmills@tribune.com

In Iran, drug trafficking soars as sanctions take bigger bite

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In Iran, drug trafficking soars as sanctions take bigger bite

By Joby Warrick, Updated: Thursday, November 1, 8:11 AM

TURKAN, Azerbaijan — Even as Western sanctions ravage their economy, some Iranians are reaping a cash harvest from an unexpected source: a booming illicit drug industry that law enforcement officials say is producing record quantities of a powerful synthetic drug.

The surge in drug trafficking from a country with one of the world’s highest rates of opium addiction has alarmed police and intelligence officials from Europe to Southeast Asia, where authorities say they are witnessing a flood of high-quality methamphetamine of Iranian origin.

Drug-related violence has spilled into the Caucasus. Regional officials say heavily armed drug gangs wage pitched battles with police and border guards, sometimes using weapons and military hardware taken from battlefields in Afghanistan and Iran.

In Azerbaijan, Iran’s northern neighbor, naval patrols in the Caspian Sea are playing cat-and-mouse with Iranian smugglers who use modified speedboats. On land, captured Iranians have been found carrying U.S.-made night-vision goggles, and some have used bombs and armored vehicles to smash through checkpoints, Western and Middle Eastern officials say.

Iran has acknowledged that the country faces a serious drug problem. Its officials point to slayings of hundreds of police and border guards as evidence that Iran is a victim of increasingly violent criminal networks. Iranian officials enacted tougher drug laws last year as part of a crackdown that also led to the confiscation of more than three tons of methamphetamine and the execution of dozens of suspected drug dealers.

“Meth and heroin dealers are now treated the same,” Iranian police commander Brig. Gen. Esmaeil Mogaddam assured a gathering of drug-enforcement officials from 11 countries who met at an Interpol conference earlier this year in Tehran.

But U.S. and Middle Eastern intelligence officials say Iran has paid far less attention to the flow of drugs heading out of the country than into it, often failing to cooperate with overseas counterparts attempting to track the flow of drugs.

“Iran is a black hole,” said a senior U.S. law enforcement official familiar with drug trafficking in the region.

At least some of the overseas routes are protected by Iran’s Quds Force, an elite unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with a long history of smuggling contraband, according to U.S. officials, several of whom insisted on anonymity in discussing confidential assessments of Iran’s drug trade. The Quds Force is closely allied with Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militant group with deep ties to drug trafficking around the world, including Latin America.

“Both of these organizations are now heavily involved in the global drug trade,” Michael Braun, the former operations chief for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said at a congressional hearing in February. “Their participation in that effort presents them with myriad opportunities with which to build their terrorist and criminal capacity in the Western Hemisphere and elsewhere.”

Iran is hardly the only country tied to the region’s drug trade. Huge profits from sales of narcotics and methamphetamines have attracted criminal gangs from Russia, Turkey and Central Asian states.

But U.S. officials say Iranians are becoming a dominant player, particularly when it comes to methamphetamine, the highly addictive synthetic stimulant. Iranian drug-makers are mass-producing a form of methamphetamine that is exceptionally pure — so refined that American drug agents say it is almost certainly made by professional chemists in pharmaceutical-grade laboratories.

Some of the drugs are couriered out of Iran through the Caucasus, where weak governments and porous borders provide an easy route to the drug markets in Western Europe and beyond, counternarcotics officials and regional experts say.

“The region could be the poster child for the nexus of crime and corruption,” said Richard Kauzlarich, a U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan in the 1990s and now deputy director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center, a research center at the George Mason University’s School of Public Policy. “Unfortunately, it’s a problem for which there is no short-term fix.”

‘A needle in a haystack’

For Azerbaijani security officials, the challenge is as plain as the blinking lights on the enormous radar screen at Turkan, where the headquarters for the main coast guard station on the Caspian Sea is based. Here, officers in green uniforms look for blips that might represent drug runners trying to sneak across the maritime border with Iran.

Whenever an unidentified craft is spotted — often well after dark on moonless nights — coast guard patrols race to intercept the vessel before it can pull into one of the myriad coves and islands along the coast.

Lately, the Iranian crews have shown remarkable resourcefulness in such skirmishes, said Maj. Gen. Farhad Tagi-zada, deputy chief of the country’s State Border Service.

“The more we improve our techniques, the more they increase their sophistication,” Tagi-zada, a trim, mustachioed veteran of multiple scrapes with Iranian smugglers. “They are forever trying new methods to try to keep ahead.”

Azerbaijan’s fleet of cutters and rapid-response boats, partly paid for by U.S. funds, have used a combination of technology and doggedness to make some major busts. Tagi-zada is particularly proud of an arrest in August, when one of his ships caught up with a small Iranian vessel that had cut its engine to drift past the patrol in the inky darkness.

“The smugglers claimed to be fishing, but it was obvious they were lying,” Tagi-zada recalled.

After combing the boat and finding nothing, the officers decided to check the seabed beneath the vessel, convinced that the Iranians had tossed their contraband overboard. Divers searched for three days in 60-foot-deep water before finding nearly 25 pounds of heroin wrapped in cellophane, Tagi-zada said.

“They were very surprised we had found the stuff in the sea,” he said of the three Iranians, who now face trial on smuggling charges. “It truly was like finding a needle in a haystack.”

Patrols along Azerbaijan’s land border with Iran have encountered drug gangs with enough firepower to fight a small war. At least seven border guards have been killed in fights with smugglers wielding assault rifles and grenades. Authorities said heavier weapons have been used by drug traffickers to punch holes through a wall built by Iran along its eastern border with Afghanistan.

“There have been incidents of wall-breaching involving cars packed with explosives, and even tanks,” said a senior security official with the Azerbaijani government, insisting on anonymity in discussing a problem that affects diplomatic relations with Iran.

The official said Azerbaijan has notified U.S diplomats about seized military hardware including what he called “extremely sophisticated night-vision goggles,” that still bear U.S. labels.

“Clearly these were stolen or they were abandoned or dropped,” the official said, “presumably by forces in Iraq or Afghanistan.”

State Department officials declined comment on the claim.

The spread of Iranian meth

Privately, Azerbaijani officials complain about what they see as Iranian hypocrisy in the regional drug war. They accuse Iran’s leaders of making a show of executing drug traffickers at home while doing little to stop the flow of drugs across the border.

Officially, the two countries are allies when it comes to drug smuggling and their governments have worked together to shut down specific networks.

Few such channels are available for the United States, which has no diplomatic relations with Iran. In recent months, federal law enforcement officials have watched Iranian drug networks expand to take on new products and markets. Of greatest concern, say U.S. counternarcotics officials, is the emergence of high-quality laboratories in Iran for producing methamphetamine.

Since Iran’s base of indigenous meth users is relatively small, production of the drug appears to be aimed exclusively at foreign markets, said the senior U.S. law enforcement official who tracks the Middle Eastern drug trade.

“They don’t have a market for it, so they’ve been shipping it to South Asia, and more recently, to Western countries,” said the official, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press. “It is nearly 100 percent pure, and that is indicative of pharmacy involvement.”

So far, only a few containers of Iranian meth have turned up in western countries, the official said. U.S. officials fear that may change.

“They already have the networks, and they’re good at moving stuff back and forth,” the official said. “Our biggest concern now is that they’re trying to open routes to the United States.”

Legal marijuana & gay marriage in Washington???

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Same-sex marriage leading in Washington

Joe Garofoli

Updated 10:51 p.m., Thursday, November 1, 2012

Tacoma, Wash. --

If you believe the polls, and many people here are wary even when they're favorable, then Washington voters are poised to legalize two things Californians haven't: same-sex marriage and marijuana.

With ballot measures on both issues before Washington voters Tuesday, the lessons learned from California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in 2008, and Proposition 19, which would have made marijuana legal but was shot down in 2010, have been echoing across Washington for months.

Some voters are noticing a different tone to the campaigns, with the issues being framed differently in a state where, in the case of marriage, there are proportionately fewer churchgoers than in California. In the case of the marijuana measure, there is far less political opposition from law enforcement.

"I feel like this campaign is coming from a different place than where Prop. 8 was coming from," Georgina Mendoza of Seattle, a 23-year-old graduate student and former Santa Barbara resident, told a canvasser supporting same-sex marriage who showed up on her doorstep this week.

"Prop. 8 seemed like it was all about civil rights and fairness. Which is good," Mendoza said. "But there's a lot more talk about family here this time."

In California and other states, polls often have shown early support for same-sex marriage and marijuana, only to have it fade as doubts and negative ad attacks swelled by election day. Across the nation, similar measures have been rejected in all 32 states where they have been on the ballot. Same-sex marriage measures are also on the ballots in Maryland, Minnesota and Maine. Passed by Legislature

A survey released Thursday by the nonpartisan KCTS 9 Washington Poll shows that 58 percent of voters support Referendum 74, which asks voters whether they approve or reject a law approved by the Washington Legislature this year and signed in February by Gov. Christine Gregoire, while 38 percent oppose it. The marijuana-legalization measure, known as Initiative 502, has the backing of 55 percent of likely voters, with 38 percent opposed, according to the survey.

Washington has consistently been a socially liberal state, said Mark A. Smith, an expert on religion and politics and a University of Washington political science professor.

Drawing on national and local research led by Oakland pollster Amy Simon, supporters of same-sex marriage have crafted a campaign that focuses on connecting with voters about how marriage is a universal value. Their ads recount the journeys that straight pastors and parents of gay children have taken in coming to support same-sex marriage.

Besides allowing same-sex couples to marry, the measure would give clergy and religious organizations the right to refuse to perform or recognize any marriage ceremony. Broadened outreach

People familiar with the California campaign in 2008 say same-sex marriage proponents have tried to broaden their outreach in Washington. Volunteers say at least half of the people staffing phone banks and performing door-to-door canvasses are straight.

"When we got married a year ago, I realized how important it is to me to say, 'This is my husband,' " said Jessica Gavre, a 29-year-old who spent her first anniversary this week making calls in support of the measure in Tacoma with her husband, Steven Green. "But our gay and lesbian friends can never say that. And that matters to me."

Democratic state Rep. Laurie Jinkins, the first openly lesbian member of Washington's Legislature, said convincing voters has involved a "slow buildup" over years. Three years ago, voters affirmed a domestic partnership law, often known as "everything but" marriage.

Marijuana - Will Gary Johnson cost Obama the election in Colorado???

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Up in smoke: How Gary Johnson and a Colorado marijuana initiative could cost Obama the election

BOULDER, Colorado—Dressed in a sports jacket, a faded peace-symbol T-shirt and blue jeans, the Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson was playing to a rapturous overflow crowd at the University of Colorado. The man who could be the Ralph Nader of 2012 beguiled his largely male, mostly student audience with his views on the second-biggest issue on the Colorado ballot this year: Amendment 64, which would legalize marijuana.

“I’m the only candidate running for president of the United States who wants to end the drug war now,” Johnson, a former Republican governor of New Mexico, said Monday night to cheers. “Colorado has the opportunity to change worldwide drug policy by voting for Issue 64.”

Johnson, who first endorsed marijuana legalization in 1999, is a Ron Paul libertarian with a deep toke of social permissiveness. Even though he was an asterisk in the 2012 Republican presidential primaries, Johnson and his pro-pot stance could be a surprise factor in a swing state where all the polls point to a tie. As Jeff Orrok, the Colorado chairman of the Libertarian Party, puts it, “We’re getting a fair amount of synergy around Amendment 64.”

Like Nader in Florida’s hanging-chad 2000 election, Johnson will draw only a small percentage of the presidential vote in Colorado. A new CNN/ORC poll gives Johnson 4 percent of the vote in Colorado. But many other Obama-vs-Romney poll questionnaires in Colorado do not mention Johnson by name, instead lumping him with other minor-party candidates (including comedian Roseanne Barr) under a vague designation called “Other.”

But it’s not blowing smoke to believe that Johnson could corral enough support from tepidly pro-Obama younger voters to make an electoral difference in a state as evenly divided as Colorado.

Confronting the curse that haunts all third-party candidates, Johnson stressed to his supporters that they’re not disenfranchising themselves by voting him. “Wasting your vote is voting for someone you don’t believe in,” Johnson said Monday night as his acolytes demonstrated a libertarian disdain for fire-marshal rules about blocking the aisles in the college auditorium where he spoke.

In an interview backstage after the speech, as fans clamored for autographs, Johnson impatiently waved off any comparisons to the third-party candidacy of Nader, who Democrats blame for costing Al Gore the 2000 election in Florida.“I think that voting one’s conscience is how you change the system,” he said. “If I get a certain number of votes it affects Romney in ways that he…”

Here, Johnson broke off the thought to mention the pressure that his “hero” Ron Paul is already putting on the Republican nominee. “Romney pays a bit of lip service [to libertarian principles],” Johnson said, “but maybe he goes beyond paying lip service.”

At moments like this, Johnson’s Republican roots are showing. But in both his speech and the interview, Johnson claimed to have been beguiled by Obama’s rhetoric, even though he voted for the Constitution Party presidential candidate in 2008. “I was very optimistic on gay rights, very optimistic on the war and I was very optimistic on the drug war,” Johnson told me. “Those were three categories that definitely were going to improve under Obama. And they haven’t.”

Johnson is, by no means, a one-issue candidate, and his supporters in Boulder roared when he proclaimed, “I would have vetoed the Patriot Act.” But even if Johnson waffled a little on the immediate legalization of cocaine (“We will not go from A-to-Z overnight”), this is a candidate firmly on the side of the stoners. If Colorado passes Amendment 64, Johnson said in his stump speech, pumping for the allure of reefer-madness Colorado vacations, “it will send a message when everyone in the country wants to go Denver for the weekend to chill out.”

Polls suggest that Amendment 64 is likely to pass. Introducing Johnson in Boulder on Monday night, Denver shock jock Uncle Nasty (a.k.a. Gregg Stone) said, “I truly believe 64 will pass and we’ll go to war with the feds.”

While war is undoubtedly an exaggeration, the Obama administration (and, needless to say, a potential Romney presidency) has shown scant sympathy for the medical marijuana programs that are legal in some form in Colorado and 16 other states.

Coupled with a deadlocked presidential race in Colorado, Amendment 64 adds a dazed and confused element to Campaign 2012. “What Gary Johnson does is make the winning margin for president in Colorado 48.5 percent,” said Democratic political consultant Rick Ridder, who has advised the Amendment 64 campaign. “It’s unclear at this point who Johnson takes votes from. Traditionally, the Libertarian candidate draws from Republicans. But this year, it’s uncertain because of 64.”

It seems ludicrous that a state referendum on marijuana could influence who gets the codes to America’s nuclear weapons next Jan. 20. But it once seemed unfathomable that Jewish voters in Florida’s Palm Beach County mistakenly punching Pat Buchanan’s name could, in effect, elect George W. Bush president in 2000. That’s the hallucinogenic wonder of American politics—anything can happen, and all too frequently does.

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne pleads not guilty to hit-and-run

If you ask me I think that is just to cover up his crimes.

Source

Tom Horne pleads not guilty to hit-and-run

By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Nov 2, 2012 12:35 PM

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne has pleaded not guilty in connection with the hit-and-run of a parked vehicle that FBI agents witnessed last spring.

Horne’s attorney entered the plea late Thursday in Phoenix Municipal Court so the arraignment was canceled and a pretrial conference was scheduled for Nov 21.

Horne, the state’s top prosecutor, is charged with a Class 3 misdemeanor for leaving the scene of an accident with an unattended vehicle. The Class 3 misdemeanor carries a maximum of 30 days in jail and a $500 fine.

The March 27 incident was witnessed by two FBI special agents who were tailing Horne as part of an investigation into alleged campaign-finance violations.

Horne in a statement has said the accident “may have caused no damage to that vehicle. At worst, pictures show nothing but some scratched paint."

Phoenix Police Department records show that the fender bender caused more than $1,000 in paint damage to the bumper of the other vehicle.

Public records obtained by The Arizona Republic from the County Attorney’s Office detail the crash. County attorney’s Detective Mark Stribling wrote an April 19 memo describing how FBI Agents Brian Grehoski and Merv Mason watched the accident and the minutes leading up to it.

Stribling wrote that agents saw Carmen Chenal, a longtime Horne confidante and employee, leave the Attorney General’s Office during lunch hour, get into a borrowed Volkswagen car and drive to a downtown Phoenix parking garage. Horne then left the office and drove his gold Jaguar into the same garage. Horne and Chenal then left the garage, with Horne driving the vehicle originally driven by Chenal, Stribling wrote. Chenal was in the passenger seat. Horne was wearing a baseball cap as they drove to Chenal’s residence.

After the accident, the Phoenix report states, Horne “stopped for an estimated 10 to 20 seconds.”

“Neither Tom nor Carmen got out or opened the windows to look out to see the damage,” the report adds. “Tom pulled away and parked the vehicle in another area of the parking garage, and the two of them walked through the resident gate and went into Carmen’s apartment.”

Authorities concluded that Horne, a married man, did not leave a note so he could hide a relationship with Chenal.

An FBI report released by Phoenix police Tuesday states, “It should be noted that through the course of the investigation, SA (Special Agent) Grehoski and SA Mason learned that Horne is having an extramarital affair with Chenal and that they utilize Chenal’s apartment in furtherance of that affair. Though motive is not an element of the criminal statute listed above, it stands to reason that Horne did not want any record of his presence in the parking garage of Chenal’s apartment complex, thus he did not leave a note.”

Horne’s versions of his response to the accident have varied, and they conflict with authorities’ records. He has told The Republic he could not remember whom he was with when the accident occurred, but on the same day told other media outlets he was with Chenal. He told one TV station he didn’t see any damage to the Range Rover. And he told another TV station that he hardly remembered the accident.

But records show that neither Horne nor Chenal “made any attempt to check for damage or make any kind of notification to the vehicle owner,” such as leaving a note.

Adiós Arpaio

It's time to boot Sheriff Joe Arpaio out of office. Sheriff Joe is not only the worst Sheriff in Maricopa County, Sheriff Joe is the worst sheriff in the world!

Tempe medical-pot robbery video released

Tempe medical-pot robbery video released

By D.S. Woodfill Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Sat Nov 3, 2012 9:17 AM

Police have released video of a robbery last week at a Tempe medical-marijuana cooperative where an employee was shot.

The security video taken from the AzGoGreen Co-op at near at Southern Avenue and Rural Road four show four men with guns bum-rushing an employee and striking him in the head. One of the robbers then shot the employee, a 33-year-old man, as they left the business.

The robbery occurred Oct. 25 at about 7 p.m., police said.

Police are offering a $1,000 reward to anyone who can lead police to the suspects. Police describe the suspects at three African American-men in their late teens to early 20s and a Caucasian male in his late teens to early 20s. All were described as having thin builds and wearing athletic apparel and hats. One man wore a wide-brimmed gardeners hat.

Paramedics took the victim to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries, where he underwent surgery. His current medical condition is unknown.

It’s still not clear what the robbers took from the business. The police department has not said, but investigators are investigating the incident as an armed robbery and aggravated assault.

Police ask anyone with information to call Silent Witness at 480-948-6377.

Scottsdale Rep David Burnell Smith busted for DUI

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Arizona lawmaker arrested on DUI charge

By Ashton Buccola The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Fri Nov 2, 2012 11:49 PM

State Rep. David Burnell Smith was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence in north Scottsdale on Oct. 21 after his car was seen swerving, police said.

Smith had a blood-alcohol level of 0.137 percent, police said. The legal limit is 0.08 percent.

Smith, a Republican who represents northeast Phoenix, Carefree, Cave Creek and northwest Scottsdale, appeared to be invoking legislative immunity when he was pulled over, officials said.

“Do you know who I am?” Smith asked the arresting officer, according to a police report.

He was pulled over about 7:30 p.m. in the area of Pima and Lone Mountain roads and stumbled out of the car, police said.

Smith declined to comment Friday. Arizona House Speaker Andy Tobin could not be immediately reached for comment.

Smith could not have legally claimed legislative immunity because the Legislature is not in session.

He was arrested on suspicion of DUI and was transported to Scottsdale Healthcare Shea Medical Center for a blood test, police said.

Police were tipped off to Smith at 6:57 p.m., when a motorist on Pima Road called police and reported that a late-model Chrysler 300 was swerving into oncoming traffic, according to officials.

Police said they found a car matching the description swerving in and out of its lane on a two-lane stretch of Pima Road near Lone Mountain Road.

When police attempted to pull the Chrysler over, it stopped abruptly in the middle of Pima Road, just north of Westland Road.

The car blocked 2 to 3 feet of the roadway, officers said.

After calling another officer to assist him, the arresting officer attempted to conduct sobriety tests on Smith, who refused, police said.

After officers placed him in handcuffs, Smith agreed to have his breath analyzed but refused standard field-sobriety tests, police said.

In using the machine, Smith initially inhaled several times, causing error readings before finally agreeing to exhale, officers said.

Smith ran for re-election to the House this year but lost in the Republican primary. He leaves office at the end of the year.

He is a personal-injury attorney at Smith Law Firm in Scottsdale.

Specializations listed on his company website include DUI and DWI arrest defenses.

Information regarding his court date was not immediately available.

Horne an embarrassment (hopefully) to himself

Horne an embarrassment (hopefully) to himself

By EJ MONTINI

Sat, Nov 03 2012 6:29 PM

“What is wrong with you?” asked the guy on the phone. “You used to go for the throat. I can’t BELIEVE you haven’t carved up (Attorney General) Tom Horne about that whole thing with the car and the woman and leaving the accident. Seriously, what’s up?”

I told him the truth: I feel bad for Horne’s wife.

I don’t know her, but I’ve heard from someone who does that she is a very nice woman. I’d imagine these are difficult days for her and I don’t have the literary skills to make fun of her all-too-deserving husband without making things worse for her.

“Hey, a woman knows what she’s getting into when she marries a politician,” the caller said.

That’s true.

Spouses of politicians become accustomed to hearing and reading unpleasant things about their partners. Just as the children and extended families of other public figures get used to hearing criticism about a loved one’s job performance, whether their careers are in sports, entertainment or even the media. (Just ask my kids.)

Horne is no exception.

He's gotten bad press over allegations he was involved in an independent expenditure committee that attacked his Democratic opponent, Felicia Rotellini, during the 2010 race for AG.

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, a fellow Republican, concluded that Horne was close with Business Leaders for Arizona, a committee that raised and spent more than $500,000 to attack Rotellini with TV ads.

"There were contemporaneous e-mails and telephone conversations on how much money was expected from this particular source of funds, and what ... needed to be the message, concerns over the content of the commercial in production, and active communications about why maybe some of the messaging needed to be changed," Montgomery said.

And that’s not the only problem Horne has had.

He brought with him to the AG’s office a host of cronies from the state education department, where he was the elected superintendent.

He allegedly went after a whistle blower in the AGs when whistle blowers are among the most valuable people we have for routing out injustice.

He stood by and watched silently when the state legislature “swept” $50 million from the $97 million Arizona received as part of a nationwide lawsuit settlement, money that was meant to help struggling Arizona homeowners.

At the very least the state’s top cop should stand up for vulnerable citizens. He didn’t.

All of that is fair game.

This is different.

This time when Attorney General Horne made the news it had less to do with affairs of state than with the state of an affair. There was an incident tied to an alleged tryst with an employee that involved a minor hit-and-run that wasn’t reported.

While under surveillance by the FBI (There are legitimate question about why that was going on.) Horne and an employee named Carmen Chenal left the AG’s office at lunch time in separate cars. She borrowed a Volkswagen from a friend. He drove his Jaguar. They parked in a Phoenix garage near one another. Horne got out of his car, put on a baseball cap (a lame disguise) and then got into the VW. Horne was driving when agents said the VW hit a parked car and drove away without stopping to assess the damage, now estimated at over $1,000.

According to the FBI report released by Phoenix police: “It should be noted that through the course of the investigation, SA (Special Agent) Grehoski and SA Mason learned that Horne is having an extramarital affair with Chenal and that they utilize Chenal’s apartment in furtherance of that affair. Though motive is not an element of the criminal statute listed above, it stands to reason that Horne did not want any record of his presence in the parking garage of Chenal’s apartment complex, thus he did not leave a note.”

A paragraph with as much sordid information as that is a gold mine for a sarcastic hack like me.

So why not exploit it? Shouldn’t Horne be embarrassed?

Yes.

But no one else should.

Unless, maybe, you voted for him.

Zetas cartel occupies Mexico state of Coahuila

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MEXICO UNDER SIEGE

Zetas cartel occupies Mexico state of Coahuila

By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times

November 3, 2012, 7:47 p.m.

SALTILLO, Mexico — Few outside Coahuila state noticed. Headlines were rare. But steadily, inexorably, Mexico's third-largest state slipped under the control of its deadliest drug cartel, the Zetas.

The aggressively expanding Zetas took advantage of three things in this state right across the border from Texas: rampant political corruption, an intimidated and silent public, and, if new statements by the former governor are to be believed, a complicit and profiting segment of the business elite. It took scarcely three years.

What happened to Coahuila has been replicated in several Mexican states — not just the violent ones that get the most attention, but others that have more quietly succumbed to cartel domination. Their tragedies cast Mexico's security situation and democratic strength in a much darker light than is usually acknowledged by government officials who have been waging a war against the drug gangs for six years.

"We are a people under siege, and it is a region-wide problem," said Raul Vera, the Roman Catholic bishop of Coahuila. A violence once limited to a small corner of the state has now spread in ways few imagined, he said.

What sets the Zetas apart from other cartels, in addition to a gruesome brutality designed to terrorize, is their determination to dominate territory by controlling all aspects of local criminal businesses.

Not content to simply smuggle drugs through a region, the Zetas move in, confront every local crime boss in charge of contraband, pirated CDs, prostitution, street drug sales and after-hour clubs, and announce that they are taking over. The locals have to comply or risk death.

And so it was in Coahuila. One common threat from Zeta extortionists, according to Saltillo businessmen: a thousand pesos, or three fingers.

With the Zetas meeting little resistance, wheels greased by a corrupt local government, there was little violence. But the people of Coahuila found themselves under the yoke of a vicious cartel nonetheless.

"It was as if it all fell from the sky to the Earth," said Eduardo Calderon, a psychologist who works with migrants, many of whom have been killed in the conflict. "We all knew it was happening, but it was as if it happened in silence."

The "silence" ended in rapid-fire succession in a few weeks' time starting mid-September. Coahuila saw one of the biggest mass prison breaks in history, staged by Zetas to free Zetas; the killing of the son of one of the country's most prominent political families (a police chief is the top suspect); and, on Oct. 7, the apparent slaying of the Zetas' top leader by federal troops who say they stumbled upon him as he watched a baseball game.

"Apparent" because armed commandos brazenly stole the body from local authorities within hours of the shooting. The military insists that the dead man was Heriberto Lazcano, Mexico's most feared fugitive, acknowledging that he had been living comfortably and freely in Coahuila for some time.

"He was like Pedro in his house," former Gov. Humberto Moreira said, using an expression that means he was totally at home and could go anywhere.

The Zetas had such confident dominion over the state that Lazcano, alias the Executioner, and the other top Zeta leader, Miguel Angel Trevino, regularly used a vast Coahuila game reserve to hunt zebras they imported from Africa.

Since their formation in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a paramilitary bodyguard for the then-dominant Gulf cartel, the Zetas operated primarily in Tamaulipas state on Mexico's northeastern shoulder and down the coast of Veracruz and into Guatemala.

For most of that time, Coahuila, rich in coal mines and with a booming auto industry, was used by cartels as little more than a transit route for drugs across the border. The Zetas maintained a presence limited to Torreon, the southwestern Coahuila city that served as a bulwark against the powerful Sinaloa cartel that reigned in neighboring Durango state.

In 2010, the Zetas broke away from the Gulf cartel, triggering a war that bloodied much of Tamaulipas and spilled over into neighboring states. Coahuila, with its rugged mountains and sparsely populated tracts, became a refuge for the Zetas, and they spread out across the state, including this heretofore calm capital, Saltillo.

Even if the violence hasn't been as ghastly as in other parts of Mexico, nearly 300 people, many of them professionals, have vanished in Coahuila, probably kidnapped by the Zetas for ransom or for their skills.

The man in charge of Coahuila during most of the Zeta takeover was Moreira, the former governor. After five years in office, he left the position a year ahead of schedule, in early 2011, to assume the national leadership of the Institutional Revolutionary Party on the eve of its triumphant return to presidential power after more than a decade.

But scandal followed Moreira, including a debt of more than $3 million he had saddled Coahuila with, allegedly from fraudulent loans. He was eventually forced to quit the PRI leadership, dashing what many thought to be his presidential aspirations.

Tragedy followed when Moreira's son Jose Eduardo was shot twice in the head execution-style in the Coahuila town of Acuna early last month. Investigators believe that most of the Acuna police department turned Jose Eduardo over to the Zetas as a reprisal for the killing of a nephew of Trevino. The police chief was arrested.

Killing the son of a former governor — and nephew of the current one, Humberto's brother Ruben — was a rare strike by drug traffickers into the heart of Mexico's political elite.

In mourning, Humberto Moreira gave a series of remarkably candid interviews in which he accused entrepreneurs from Coahuila's mining sector of sharing the wealth with top drug traffickers who in turn used the money to buy weapons and pay off their troops. They killed his son, he said.

Mining in Coahuila is huge and notoriously dangerous, with companies routinely flouting safety regulations and workers dying in explosions and accidents. The depth to which drug traffickers have penetrated the industry is being investigated by federal authorities.

The question on the minds of many Mexicans was: If Moreira was so aware of criminal penetration, why didn't he stop it?

Critics suggest that during his tenure, he was happy to turn a blind eye to the growth of the Zetas as long as he could pursue his business and political interests. He denies that now and says fighting organized crime was up to the federal government; the federal government blames state officials, in Coahuila and elsewhere, for coddling the drug lords.

"The northern governors have long cut deals with the cartels that operate in their domains. The pattern in the north is cooperation," said George W. Grayson, a Mexico scholar at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., who has written extensively on the Zetas and Mexican issues.

"The Coahuila police are among the most corrupt in all Mexico."

The extent to which the Zetas' tentacles had penetrated state government became clear this year when federal authorities discovered a protection racket that dated well into Humberto Moreira's administration and was led by none other than the brother of the state attorney general. According to the federal investigation, he and 10 other state officials were being paid roughly $60,000 a month by the Zetas to leak information to the gang.

The nearly 3 million residents of Coahuila, meanwhile, find ways to survive and accommodate.

In rural areas where the Zetas are most commonly seen on the streets, people have learned to be mute and blind. In cities such as Saltillo, they change their habits, don't go out at night, send their children to school in other cities.

A businessman whose family has lived here for generations said, "We are in a state of war, without realizing when or how we got there."

wilkinson@latimes.com

Crece en el norte consumo de drogas

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Crece en el norte consumo de drogas

México, DF

por Agencia Reforma - Nov. 2, 2012 09:42 AM

La Voz

La Encuesta Nacional de Adicciones 2011, que fue difundida esta semana, revela que la tendencia en el consumo de cualquier droga ilícita se incrementó en la zona norte del País.

Aunque a nivel nacional se advierte una estabilización en el porcentaje de la población usuaria entre 2008 y 2011, al pasar de 1.4 a 1.5, la zona Noroccidental rebasa la media.

Según el documento, la prevalencia en dicha región que abarca Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sonora y Sinaloa subió de 2.5 a 2.8 por ciento.

En la zona Nororiental que agrupa Nuevo León, Tamaulipas y San Luis Potosí, pasó de 1.8 a 2.4 por ciento en el mismo lapso.

En tanto, los habitantes del Centro Sur -Veracruz, Oaxaca, Guerrero y Michoacán- aunado a la Occidental -Zacatecas, Aguascalientes, Jalisco, Colima, Nayarit-, también incrementaron el consumo.

"Por tipo de droga, la mariguana es la droga que más se consume en todas las regiones y en segundo lugar está la cocaína. Es importante mencionar que en la región Centro, junto con la cocaína, los inhalables son la segunda droga de preferencia", agrega.

Varias de las entidades federativas en la lista se cuentan entre las principales donde el Gobierno federal ha focalizado el combate contra las organizaciones criminales.

"Haber estado expuesto a drogas (que se la hayan ofrecido regalada o comprada), no estudiar, una baja percepción de riesgo sobre el consumo de drogas, o una alta tolerancia ante el consumo de drogas de su mejor amigo, son factores que predicen el consumo.

"Los datos muestran la necesidad de reforzar las acciones desarrolladas para reducir la demanda de drogas si bien el consumo en general se ha estabilizado, es importante ampliar la política de prevención y tratamiento y dirigir más acciones hacia la población adulta joven", asienta la ENA.

Ex-Santa Fe Springs councilman gets 2 years in pot shop bribery

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Ex-Santa Fe Springs councilman gets 2 years in pot shop bribery

November 5, 2012 | 2:05 pm

A former Santa Fe Springs city councilman was sentenced to two years in federal prison Monday for taking $11,500 in bribes from the owner of a medical marijuana dispensary, an investigation that ignited a widespread corruption probe in nearby Cudahy.

“This was pure greed,” U.S. District Court Judge Stephen V. Wilson said when he sentenced Joseph Serrano Sr.

Serrano continued to take cash from the owner of the pot house even after being interviewed twice by FBI agents. A day after talking to the agents, he met with the informant outside a Sizzler in La Mirada, where the informant paid him $1,700.

When he took the bribes in 2010 and 2011, Santa Fe Springs was considering limiting the number of marijuana stores in the city or banning them entirely.

In return for the payments, Serrano promised to help the dispensary owner stay in business and provide him with inside information. Serrano was one of two council members on a subcommittee studying marijuana stores in the city.

In his sentencing memo, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph N. Akrotirianakis mentioned recent federal corruption cases in Los Angeles County.

“Corruption at the highest levels of smaller cities' local government appears to be rampant in Los Angeles County and in this judicial district, and the need for general deterrence is acute,” he wrote.

Serrano, a health-insurance salesman, had served as a councilman for nine years. He resigned after his arrest.

After he was shaken down by Serrano, the dispensary owner became an FBI informant. He served the same role in Cudahy, where his taped conversations with Councilmen David Silva and Osvaldo Conde and code enforcement chief Angel Perales led to their indictments. All three have pleaded guilty to soliciting and accepting a total of $17,000 in bribes. They are awaiting sentencing.

Documents prosecutors released this summer, including taped conversations, revealed Cudahy to be a city steeped in corruption, where bribes seemed an accepted part of doing business. The documents reference fixed council elections, cash passed to city officials in a shoe box and drug runs to buy narcotics for use in City Hall. The investigation is continuing.

Serrano, who struggled to maintain his composure when addressing the judge Monday, said he took the bribes because of financial difficulties. The judge said that wasn’t an excuse.

The former councilman, who also must serve three years probation and pay $10,000 restitution, had asked for probation, while prosecutors sought a 37-month jail sentence.

Nearly $250,000 of marijuana seized at the border

Nearly $250,000 of marijuana seized at the border

By Amber McMurray The Arizona Republic- 12 News Breaking News Team Mon Nov 5, 2012 7:12 PM

Border Patrol agents from Yuma Sector’s Wellton Station seized close to 500 pounds of marijuana worth nearly $250,000 in two separate drug busts this week, Border Patrol agents said.

On Saturday near Gila Bend agents found six people traveling on foot with large backpacks. Agents found close to 200 pounds of marijuana worth more than $95,000 in the backpacks. The suspects were turned over to Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, agent Spencer Tippets said.

Near Camp Grip on Sunday agents found six abandoned burlap backpacks containing more than 300 pounds of marijuana worth more than $150,000. The drugs were seized for destruction, Tippets said.

“The probabilities of arrest and associated penalties cause smugglers to often abandon their drug loads rather than risk apprehension and prosecution,” Tippets said.

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