Ex-detective sues NYPD and stresses need for an inspector general (The New York Daily News) and Other Thursday, April 18th, 2013 NYC Police Related News Articles

 

Thursday, April 18th, 2013 — Good Afternoon, Stay Safe

 

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NYPD $$ Lawyer Lotto $$  /  Ret. Det. Shirley Pelage Rats Out (Alleged) I.A.B. Racism

 

Ex-detective sues NYPD and stresses need for an inspector general
Retired Internal Affairs Bureau Detective Shirley Pelage filed a notice of claim Tuesday for a $15 million lawsuit against the city, alleging discriminatory treatment against her and other minority-group colleagues. She also criticized Chief Charles Campisi.

By John Marzulli — Thursday, April 18th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’

 

 

A veteran detective who served as an aide to Chief of Internal Affairs Charles Campisi says the NYPD’s corruption-fighting machine is broken and she endorses the appointment of an inspector general.

 

“I came into the Internal Affairs Bureau because I wanted to make a difference,” (??)  Shirley Pelage told the Daily News in an exclusive interview Wednesday.

 

“Now I have no faith in the unit,” Pelage, 44, said. “Internal Affairs is a broken mechanism.”

 

“I think an outside agency like an inspector general would be good because when you have someone looking over your shoulder, it keeps you on the up and up,” she said.

 

Pelage, who grew up in East New York, Brooklyn, and now lives on Staten Island, was assigned to various units within the IAB since 1999, and retired last Friday as a second-grade detective after 20 years on the force.

 

Her last assignment was at a desk outside Campisi's 12th-floor office in Police Headquarters, gathering sensitive data for the chief’s daily briefings.

 

She filed a notice of claim Tuesday for a $15 million lawsuit against the city, alleging discriminatory treatment against her and other minority-group colleagues.

 

“Nobody (in the IAB) can speak up like I am now,” she said. “They’re like the mob. They go to any lengths to protect their image and themselves.”

 

Her lawyer, Eric Sanders, said, “It is long overdue for a top-to-bottom review of IAB.”

 

An NYPD spokesman did not respond to a detailed request for comment.

 

Pelage — a mother of a 3-year-old son and a year-old daughter — was an undercover IAB investigator before working as an aide to Campisi.

 

Her earlier postings included being assigned to the IAB command center; to a group that investigated corruption in Brooklyn and on Staten Island, and to a unit that cracked down on cops parking illegally using NYPD placards, an initiative begun by Mayor Bloomberg.

 

When she made the decision to retire, “I was very sad and troubled, but I had no other recourse,” said Pelage, who attended Nazareth Regional High School in East Flatbush.

 

She said she wanted to get out of the IAB but was blocked by Campisi from being transferred.

 

“There are good people in IAB, but they’re frustrated by the leadership,” she said.

 

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NYPD Stop, Question and Frisk

 

Judge hears allegations of racial bias in fourth week of stop and frisk trial

By Danielle Tcholakian — Wednesday, April 17th, 2013; ‘Metro New York.Com’ / New York, NY

 

 

A potentially history-making trial is in its fourth week in federal court in lower Manhattan, as Judge Shira Scheindlin hears testimony from both sides of the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practice: the officers doing the stopping, and the New Yorkers they’re frisking.

 

In previous weeks, Scheindlin heard testimony from a suspended police officer, Adhyl Polanco, who claimed his supervisors pressured him to conduct a certain number of stops, tickets and arrests. She also listened to secretly-recorded tapes made by a former Brooklyn officer, also indicating a quota system.

 

Testimony was heard yesterday from Cornelio McDonald, a New Yorker who had experienced a stop-and-frisk, as well as one of the officers who stopped him, Edward French.

 

Cornelio McDonald spent most of the day on December 18, 2009 caring for his mother — feeding her and bathing her, he said — at her apartment across the street from his own home in Fresh Meadows, Queens. He left around 1 a.m., and as he weaved between two cars parked alongside the median dividing the two lanes of Parsons Boulevard, an unmarked red van a little ways away pulled a U-turn and stopped in front of him. When the occupants demanded to know where he was coming from, McDonald, feeling “trapped” between two parked cars and the van in front of him, replied, ”What are you stopping me for?”

 

When Scheindlin asked if the police ever told him why they got out of the van and patted him down, McDonald said they never mentioned the “suspicious bulge” French later described.

 

Scheindlin persisted, “They didn’t give you any reason?”

 

“They said it was to protect themselves,” he said.

 

Pressed by attorneys as to how the stop made him feel, he replied, “Embarassed. Ashamed.”

 

By McDonald’s account, he was stopped for no other reason than his race.

 

“That night, yeah,” he specified.

 

According to French, Mc Donald appeared suspicious because he was walking with his hands in his coat pockets, pressed to his body. McDonald asserted that he was trying to keep warm on a 20 or 30 degree December night.

 

The city pointed to other lawsuits in which McDonald alleged racial bias, including one against the U.S. Postal Service, accusing them of job discrimination after he was fired.

 

“It’s not the first time you believed a government entity has discriminated against you for your race, correct?” a city attorney asked.

 

After questioning how McDonald moved his body between his cars, and whether or not his responding to the stopped van with “Why are you stopping me” meant he knew the plainclothes occupants were police, the city had one last question.

 

“Is it true you consider every interaction with a police officer a stop? You consider it a stop every time an officer says hello?” the attorney asked.

 

“Yes,” McDonald said without hesitation.

 

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Some Testimony on Police Tactic Undercuts Bias Claim

By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN — Thursday, April 18th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’

 

 

One man was stopped and frisked because of his expensive red leather jacket — similar to one that a murder suspect was wearing in a wanted poster. Another man was stopped after a woman complained to the police that he was following her. Still another was stopped by officers who had watched him jostle the door of a home, trying to get in.

 

Recruited by civil rights lawyers, these men and others have testified about their encounters with the police in a federal trial weighing whether the soaring number of stop-and-frisk encounters has resulted in widespread constitutional violations for hundreds of thousands of black and Hispanic men. They were chosen to give voice to the toll that the police’s use of the tactic has inflicted on an entire demographic, their lawyers say.

 

But over the trial’s first month, some of these men’s accounts seemed to veer away from the straightforward narrative of racial profiling — and may have actually undermined the plaintiffs’ efforts to demonstrate that the police routinely disregard the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable police detentions.

 

Whether the circumstances of each case rose to the level of “reasonable suspicion” — the legal standard required for forcible street stops — is a question that the judge, Shira A. Scheindlin of Federal District Court in Manhattan, will ultimately decide. Even if she finds these individual stops fall short of that legal threshold, there is still evidence suggesting the stops were not, as the plaintiffs claim, “suspicionless and race-based.” But the civil rights lawyers bringing the case say they have presented ample evidence of race-based decision-making by police officers.

 

So far nine people have testified about more than a dozen occasions on which they were stopped. (Two more witnesses will testify.) These accounts are the foundation of a trial exploring whether the New York Police Department’s training, supervision and patrol strategies have led to weakened constitutional protections for minority men.

 

The plaintiffs’ lawyers, who are with the Center for Constitutional Rights, are asking Judge Scheindlin to put the department’s stop-and-frisk practices under judicial oversight.

 

But with five million police stops recorded since 2002, it would seem that the civil rights lawyers would be able to find witnesses to present far more conclusive accounts of unconstitutional police stops — an incongruity that lawyers for the city sought to portray during opening arguments as indicative of the case’s weakness.

 

In fact, plaintiffs’ lawyers sent mailings to thousands of people soliciting their involvement in the suit. But relatively few were willing to undergo the loss of time and privacy, in part because there were no monetary damages involved in the case, the lawyers said.

 

Darius Charney, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, asserted that the witnesses who agreed to testify nonetheless demonstrated a variety of issues with the department’s stop-and-frisk practices, such as how friskings for weapons quickly turn into illegal searches of suspects’ pockets. “This does bring out the issue of training or whether officers understand the Fourth Amendment,” he said.

 

Indeed, the judge has made a point of questioning witnesses about whether some searches went beyond what the police are authorized to conduct without further grounds for suspicion.

 

Lawyers for the plaintiffs also observed that several witnesses testified about being stopped more than once, underscoring the personal toll inflicted as a result of the police practice.

 

But the testimony offered so far has presented a more nuanced picture of police work than the one the plaintiffs had hoped to show. In several of the dozen stops described by witnesses, the police appeared to have specific reasons for suspecting that the men were engaging in criminal activity. Even a police stop of the lead plaintiff in the case, David Floyd, seems open to interpretation.

 

Sgt. James Kelly of the Police Department, one of five witnesses to testify about the stop of Mr. Floyd, said he observed Mr. Floyd and another man standing in front of a door, jostling it. He grew more suspicious, he testified, after watching them unsuccessfully try several keys in the door. “It looked like they were forcibly trying to get into a house,” Sergeant Kelly testified.

 

During the ensuing stop-and-frisk encounter, Sergeant Kelly and the two officers with him eventually accepted that the two men were not burglars but tenants: one had been locked out, and a neighbor, Mr. Floyd, had sought to let him back in.

 

In court, the city’s lead lawyer, Heidi Grossman, observed that several of the stops occurred because an individual matched a physical or “specific clothing description” of a crime suspect.

 

One stop followed an anonymous 911 caller who reported overhearing three black men planning a robbery as they walked up Broadway, near 96th Street. The caller described the men’s clothing and mentioned a disturbing detail: one of the men had a gun.

 

Nearby, officers spotted three black men seated on a bench. They were dressed much the same way as the 911 caller described the robbers. The officers ordered the men to the ground at gunpoint and frisked them before realizing they had the wrong men. One officer, in an apparent bid to explain the police interaction, radioed the dispatcher and requested that the suspects’ description be repeated, so the men could hear for themselves.

 

One of the three men, Nicholas Peart, testified that he could not remember all of what the radio dispatcher said, but he did recall one detail about one of the robbery suspects.

 

“Blue shorts, that’s what I heard that night,” he testified. He acknowledged that he had been wearing blue basketball shorts.

 

Another stop involved similar circumstances. In that instance, Clive Lino, 32, explained that he was detained for 20 minutes because of his red leather Pelle Pelle jacket. “It’s a popular jacket,” Mr. Lino testified.

 

But the two officers who stopped him testified how at the station house that very afternoon, their commander had emphasized a recent unsolved homicide, even distributing a wanted poster. It contained scant description of the suspect, mentioning a “male black” between 5 feet 9 and 6 feet, and a loosefitting, red leather jacket with the brand Pelle Pelle stitched conspicuously across it.

 

The evidence involving another stop illustrated the challenge that police officers often face when called to the scene, where they must try to quickly resolve ambiguity and discern what is happening. A woman accused a man of following her around and demanding money at a big-box pet store in Union Square. The officers stopped a man, Dominique Sindayiganza, who testified he had mistakenly entered the store, thinking it was someplace where he could buy dresses for his daughters.

 

“Upon entering the store, I realized it was a pet store,” he testified. “It was my plan to just walk out.” Instead, Mr. Sindayiganza testified, “I hear a voice saying, ‘This is the guy.’ ” Police officers surrounded him.

 

He denied wrongdoing, and after some back-and-forth, an officer instructed him to go north, apparently the opposite direction of where the woman was heading. But Mr. Sindayiganza wanted to go south, to his train station. He was arrested moments later as he discussed — or, as the officer said, argued — the matter.

 

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Stop and Frisk: Finally a Decent Day in Court for the City

By Dominic Carter — Thursday, April 18th, 2013  ‘The Huffington Post’ / New York, NY

(Op-Ed / Commentary)

 

 

It comes as no surprise:

 

The top NYPD official that ran stop and frisk supports the highly controversial police tactic as an effective law enforcement tool.

 

Just-retired Chief of Department Joseph Esposito did make a convincing case while testifying.

 

To listen to Esposito, he sounded reasonable, pointing to historic drops in crime in New York. Almost every word out of his mouth was crime prevention, how much crime the NYPD had avoided due to stop and frisk.

 

Esposito claimed repeatedly that crime in New York is down 40 percent in the last 12 years, 80 percent down in the last 20 years. This of course sets up the classic question of at what cost?

 

For this appearance, Esposito was not dressed in the manner New Yorkers have come to know him, in his traditional police commander uniform with the white trademark shirt, always standing directly behind Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. Instead Esposito was wearing a crisp neat suit. He had the feel of a well liked politician, that is until Judge Shira Scheindlin nudged him to stop with the speeches on the stand, and to answer the questions.

 

Esposito just stepped down reaching the mandatory retirement age of 63, after 44 years of service.

Every answer he gave came back to the premise of defending stop and frisk. He says the practice is not racist, though the statistics show most of the people stopped and searched by police are overwhelmingly African-American or Latino. He had an answer for that too. Esposito said police go where the crime is.

 

In fact Esposito went as far to charge that New Yorkers never complained about stop and frisk. He said that was left to the Rev. Al Sharptons of the world and other civil rights groups.

 

Esposito even had a solid reason for when it comes to the dreaded "no-no" in the world of policing, and that is quotas. Officially the public is always told quotas don't exist. Esposito explained the department does instead have productivity goals to make sure all police officers are out there doing their jobs. In other words, for some police officers that may be taking it too easy during their regular shifts, operating at almost cruise control, to then only push to really make arrests and give tickets while on overtime, earning time and a half salary. What he called 10 percent of the police force.

 

Sitting in the third row bleachers of the beautiful mahogany courtroom I glanced out the window and thought Esposito even had me going. Maybe the NYPD is completely color blind I thought?

 

But let's scratch just beneath the surface. I'm not asking you to dig far. Just inquire a bit.

 

More than 600 percent...

 

On the stand, Esposito admitted that's the percentage "stop and frisks" went up on his watch as chief of department.

 

Another figure is 88 percent.

 

That's about the percentage of people *that* after being searched by the NYPD are found to have done nothing wrong.

 

So in other words, stops are up at alarming rates, and an overwhelming majority are found to have done nothing wrong.

 

The moment Esposito walked out of the Federal courthouse, that was one of my RNN television questions for him. I said "Chief, 88 percent have done nothing wrong that are stopped, that doesn't bother you?" Esposito sounded like he's ready to move about three blocks south to City Hall:

 

Again I go back to the point of how many crimes did we prevent. How many times do we make that criminal perhaps, if it is a criminal, think twice and say you know what, I can't steal the car tonight. I'm going to go home and go to sleep because the cops are on to me. That's the part we can't measure. That the untold story that we don't get out enough. How many crimes have we prevented because of stop and frisk.

 

Then I asked Esposito the question every person that has been unfairly stopped by the NYPD would want to ask, and that is how would Esposito feel if it was his son?

 

He paused for a second, looked away, and then looked squarely in my eyes:

 

My son was stopped... I was stopped. It's not like it just happens to people of color. I was stopped in the '70s. While I was a police officer, I was stopped. I don't think they stopped me cause I was white. I think they stopped me because I had long hair and I was maybe acting suspiciously.

 

But the point that Esposito is missing, is that in African-American households across all demographics, it has become a very sad rite of passage. Fathers have to teach their sons that may be straight-A students that they will be stopped and frisked.

 

Give him this much. With almost a rapid-fire response, Esposito was quick to point out that even his family has been stopped by the NYPD, albeit years ago, but one has to wonder why on the stand, Esposito wasn't as forthcoming when he was asked repeatedly if safeguards were in place to make sure all of those police stops of African-Americans and Latinos did not amount to racial profiling.

 

But hey, it may look like a duck, and quack like a duck, however according to Esposito, stop and frisk under the NYPD is not racist. I ask all of you that are reading this, to answer the question.

 

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New York stop-and-frisk trial bares massive police abuse

By Sandy English  — Thursday, April 18th, 2013 ‘The World Socialist Web Site’ / New York, NY

 

Excerpt; desired to read the article in its entirety, go to:

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/04/18/nypd-a18.html

 

 

Plaintiffs in an ongoing trial in federal court in New York City have alleged that the city’s Police Department (NYPD) has violated the constitutional and civil rights of millions of people in its decade-long stop-and-frisk program.

 

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Case That Has Zero Evidence and Witnesses Corroboration, But Good Enough for a Full Ray Kelly Press  

 

Etan Patz murder suspect wants case dismissed

By JENNIFER PELTZ  (The Associated Press)  —  Thursday, April 18th, 2013; 7:05 a.m. EDT

 

 

NEW YORK -- A man's confession in one of the nation's most notorious child disappearances was false, peppered with questionable claims and made after almost seven hours of police questioning, his lawyer said Wednesday in court papers asking a judge to dismiss the murder case.

 

"No evidence or witnesses have been found corroborating any of the few facts" in Pedro Hernandez' statements about the 1979 vanishing of 6-year-old Etan Patz, defense lawyer Harvey Fishbein wrote, arguing that there's not enough proof to support the case.

 

While he has said before that Hernandez' startling arrest last year was the product of an untrue admission from a mentally ill suspect, Wednesday's filing fleshes out some key contentions.

 

The Manhattan district attorney's office, which has previously said there's sufficient evidence to sustain the charges, declined to comment. A judge isn't expected to rule until next month.

 

Etan vanished on May 25, 1979, on the first day his parents allowed him to walk to his school bus stop alone. He became one of the first missing children pictured on a milk carton, and the date of his disappearance became National Missing Children's Day.

 

Hernandez, of Maple Shade, N.J., was arrested last year after police got a tip that he'd told people years before that he had killed a child in New York City.

 

Hernandez then told authorities he'd seen Patz at the bus stop, lured him to a corner store where he worked with the promise of a soda and choked him in the basement. Hernandez said he tossed the boy's book bag behind a freezer in the basement, put the boy's limp body in a box and left it with some trash about a block away.

 

But nobody else reported seeing Etan actually at the bus stop and the book bag was never found, despite an extensive search for clues that likely would have included the shop basement, Fishbein says in court papers.

 

Hernandez, 52, was questioned from 8 a.m. to nearly 3 p.m. before his statements were recorded and he was read his rights, his lawyer says, arguing that the statements can't be considered voluntary and should be suppressed. Prosecutors have said Hernandez willingly talked with investigators.

 

The law surrounding exactly when a suspect being questioned must be notified of his or her rights is complex and often the subject of legal arguments.

 

Under New York law, a person can be convicted based only on a confession, so long as there's additional evidence that a crime was committed.

 

But Fishbein has said Hernandez is schizophrenic, bipolar and prone to hallucinations, so his admission can't be considered reliable. Prosecutors, however, have said there's no history of Hernandez being treated for a major psychiatric condition before his arrest, and they don't believe his confession was spurred by mental illness.

 

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Suicide of 108 Pct. P.O. Rosette Samuel

Seeking Answers to Officer’s Murder-Suicide in Memories and Notes Left Behind

By J. DAVID GOODMAN — Thursday, April 18th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’

 

 

Just before his son was born, Dason Peters finally revealed to his mother what he could no longer hide: he would be a father.

 

“Mommy, some girl has a baby from me,” his mother, Rosamund, remembered his saying. The news came as a shock; she was not only blindsided by the birth, but also unaware that her son was romantically involved with the baby’s mother, Rosette M. Samuel, a New York City police officer.

 

Officer Samuel lived only a block from Mr. Peters’s family in Brooklyn, but she was mostly a stranger to them — a fact that barely changed even after the birth of the boy. It became an odd footnote to the murder-suicide on Monday in which the officer killed Mr. Peters, their 1-year-old son, Dylan, and then herself, using a 9-millimeter handgun that she was authorized to carry off duty.

 

Detectives found two notes in Officer Samuel’s apartment: one to her 19-year-old son by a previous relationship; the other to an aunt, who she hoped would watch over the older son. Officer Samuel did not explain her motivation for killing Mr. Peters, the police said, but wrote to her eldest son that she killed his infant brother so he would not be a burden to his older brother.

 

A third note was torn up and submerged in the toilet, and the police have yet to fully determine its origin or significance.

 

The killing brought grief to a working-class corner of East Flatbush and raised disturbing questions about what had driven an outwardly stable mother to murder and suicide. Nothing in Officer Samuel’s official record appeared to indicate she was troubled, the police said.

 

After the killing, Mr. Peters’s family described an accidental pregnancy and an increasingly distant relationship held together by the routines of child care. They also recalled recent episodes that hinted at a building jealousy.

 

Mr. Peters, 33, was a proud father but kept Officer Samuel, 43, at arm’s length, his relatives said. He ate many dinners at home with his parents, with whom he lived on East 55th Street and had a close relationship, but never invited her to join.

 

The coldness was reciprocal, his family said. She never invited them to her apartment around the corner on East 56th Street. Rare phone conversations were limited to details of child care and curt messages like “I’m outside,” Mrs. Peters said.

 

“She was jealous that her life was not as smooth as his — he had all this support,” Mr. Peters’s father, Colburn, said. “We don’t know if she had the support of her parents.”

 

“They weren’t a couple; my son lives here,” Mrs. Peters said, her voice cracking.

 

Mr. Peters added: “He has a kid with her. That’s it.”

 

Relatives of Officer Samuel’s declined repeated requests for interviews.

 

The police said her 19-year-old son, who lived with her, was woken around 8 a.m. by an argument and fled when gunshots erupted. He then called 911.

 

Dason Peters traveled regularly, on cruises and back to his native Guyana, his mother said. In the days leading up to the killing, he talked frequently on his cellphone with friends in Guyana about a coming trip on Monday. His younger brother, Daron, 16, recalled that Officer Samuel came to the house on Friday to pick up Dylan after her police shift, and when she left, the cellphone was gone.

 

“Dason can’t find the phone,” his brother said. “I called the phone, nobody answered. He goes over there, then comes back over here, checks the house one more time.”

 

On the third call, Daron Peters said, Officer Samuel answered. Dason Peters went over to her apartment to retrieve the phone, and returned several hours later before rushing off to his night shift working for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

 

The pair began dating about three years ago after crossing paths at a local laundromat and, later, at a banquet where city workers mixed, said Zay John, a high school friend of Mr. Peters’s and the baby’s godmother. Mr. Peters called Officer Samuel his girlfriend for a time, she said, but “when this event happened, they weren’t together.”

 

“But,” she added, “they were committed to being co-parents.”

 

Wendy Ruderman contributed reporting.

 

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John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Gerald W. Lynch, Who Fought to Save John Jay College, Dies at 76

By DANIEL E. SLOTNIK — Thursday, April 18th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’

 

 

Gerald W. Lynch, who led the fight to preserve John Jay College of Criminal Justice when it was threatened with closing or merger because of New York City’s fiscal crisis, died on Wednesday at his home in Bridgehampton, N.Y. He was 76.

 

He died after a brief illness, said Mayra Nieves, special adviser to the president of John Jay.

 

Dr. Lynch, the college’s longest-serving president, was a psychology professor when he was named acting president of John Jay in 1975. Within weeks, the entire City University of New York system became embroiled in the fiscal crisis, and John Jay’s future was in doubt.

 

Mayor Abraham D. Beame had ordered the CUNY system to cut nearly $100 million from its budget. One solution proposed by the City University chancellor Robert J. Kibbee involved closing or merging multiple schools, one of them John Jay. The Board of Higher Education — now called the City University of New York Board of Trustees — was ready to go along, but Dr. Lynch opposed the plan.

 

He enthusiastically supported student protests, even scaling a wooden barricade with a megaphone to lead hundreds of students in chants. He also courted high-profile supporters in politics and law enforcement, including Police Commissioner Michael J. Codd and Nicholas Scoppetta, then the city’s commissioner of investigations and a teacher at John Jay. And he cut nearly $3 million with an austerity budget of his own.

 

“Even though this is radical surgery,” Dr. Lynch said, “it is better than death.”

 

The Board of Higher Education wound up merging many of the other CUNY schools, but John Jay survived.

 

Dr. Lynch was formally sworn in as president in March 1977, and remained until 2004.

 

During his tenure, John Jay became one of the top criminal justice programs in the country, and enrollment nearly doubled to 14,104 at his retirement, from 7,229 in 1976.

 

He also secured financing for John Jay’s first official home, the former Haaren High School, in the late 1980s, and persuaded the CUNY system to transform it into a blocklong state-of-the-art building on 11th Avenue that opened in 2011. A campus theater was named for him in 2004.

 

Gerald Weldon Lynch was born in Manhattan on March 24, 1937, to Alice Margaret and Edward Dewey Lynch. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Fordham and a doctorate in clinical psychology from New York University.

 

Dr. Lynch became a psychology professor at John Jay in the mid-1960s. He soon became the dean of students and eventually the vice president and acting dean of faculty members.

 

He was widely sought after as an expert on an array of topics. He led a study panel on legalizing casino gambling in New York State in the late 1970s and early 1980s under Mayor Edward I. Koch and Gov. Hugh L. Carey; advocated for the professionalization of the police and fire departments; and was a staunch opponent of capital punishment.

 

Dr. Lynch is survived by his wife, Eleanor Sherry Lynch; a son, Timothy; a daughter, Elizabeth; and a granddaughter.

 

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Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson

 

Around the Bronx: DA Robert Johnson predicts 'long term' solutions to the borough's criminal justice problems
Johnson notes that the Bronx has 4,400 pending felony cases and 30% of the city's crime, but gets only 19% of its funding

By Patrice O'Shaughnessy — Thursday, April 18th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’

 

 

Sitting in his office Wednesday morning, Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson said, “The system is — I guess you could say — in distress.”

 

Across 161st St. the line was still a block long to get into the Bronx Hall of Justice, which lately has been targeted by the state’s highest judge as well as newspaper writers as a symbol of the borough’s crippled criminal justice system.

 

A lot of the blame has been laid on Johnson.

 

Judges and defense lawyers and even the screwed-up building itself have also contributed to long years of waiting for cases to come to trial, as defendants sit in Rikers Island, innocent until proven guilty, and victims and their families wait torturously for resolution.

 

But Johnson has always been a lightning rod for criticism, such as when he indicts cops, or does not indict cops, in controversial shootings.

 

He has been in office for 24 years, and still maintains a low profile, even when the Bronx — and the entire state — was stunned a couple weeks ago by the news that Assemblyman Nelson Castro had been an informant for Johnson since 2009, before Castro was elected.

 

Castro wore a wire and nailed his fellow Bronx legislator, Eric Stevenson. Johnson gave Castro and evidence to the Manhattan U.S. Attorney. Stevenson was hit with federal corruption charges.

 

He likes to keep things low key. He shrugs off the blame for the enormous backlog of felony cases and won’t blame anyone else.

 

“The reasons are long term,” he said. “The major crime categories went down, but arrests went up dramatically, arrests for small things are a method to keep crime down.” There are 90,000 arrests a year in the Bronx.

 

He said he is trying to reduce the backlog, “but we can’t lose sight of the new cases coming in the door.”

 

He said the Bronx has 4,400 pending felony cases.

 

He says he’s asked the city to increase funding, citing that the Bronx has 30% of the crime but gets 19% of funding.

 

The judicial “SWAT” team sent to the courthouse early this year is making inroads, taking pleas to speed things along.

 

“We try to take pleas, without disservice to public safety,” he said. “We have a lot of interest in getting things done...when a case gets to 3-4 years old, that shouldn’t be, but if it gets that old because of the DA, a motion to dismiss would have been granted.

 

“We’re not losing a lot of cases because of (violating) the speedy trial law.”

 

He said he’s talked to some people who have waited years for justice.

 

“Generally they’re pretty understanding; they’re grateful for the effort we make,” he said.

 

While there is plenty of street crime to deal with, the Bronx also is a wellspring for political corruption.

 

But even by Bronx standards, having Castro as a mole in the Legislature, and building a case that Stevenson allegedly wrote legislation to help a businessman who gave him a payoff was incredible.

 

“Certainly there was something that there are enough allegations, enough indictments have come down to know that this is an area where we seldom get inside, Castro was a great opportunity.

 

He said not announcing Castro’s 2009 indictment for perjury, allowing him to run and win election to the assembly, was “not an easy decision...but it was a rare opportunity.”

 

He said while past corruption cases of Bronx officials — such as Larry Seabrook and Pedro Espada — have their shocking elements, the Stevenson case “had double in that he allowed businesspeople to draft the legislation, and he was counseling people about the perils of engaging in illegal conduct,” Johnson said.

 

But getting back to the backlog of felony cases, he said he would tell Bronxites, “We certainly sympathize with what you’re going through...we’re here to talk to you. If you are the parent of a murder victim, you know we are here.”

 

And he will not point fingers.

 

“I don’t want to speak in public just to speak,” he said. “I want to speak to the people who can get things done...we’re always working behind the scenes.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

NY/NJ Port Authority P.D.

New York Cops Give Helping Hand, and Burgers, to Boston Police

By Victoria Bekiempis — Thursday, April 18th, 2013  ‘DNAinfo.Com News’ / Manhattan

 

 

BOSTON — When Port Authority Police Officer Brett Porigow heard that two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring approximately 180, he immediately remembered Sept. 11.

 

Porigow said he recalled how difficult it was to deal with the loss of 37 Port Authority agents in the attacks — as well as hundreds of other first responders — while working 12-hour shifts for days on end.

 

What Porigow also remembered: He and his colleagues could better cope because police departments from around the country — including the Boston Police Department — came to their aid at Ground Zero and throughout New York City, he said.

 

So the Port Authority Police Benevolent Association, of which Porigow is a trustee, decided this week to send a 9-officer relief team to Boston to provide refreshments, food, and a place to relax for first responders a few blocks from the blast site. The NYPD's Patrolmen's Benevolent Association also sent a four-officer team. Both arrived in Boston late in the evening on Tuesday.

 

"We wanted to know what we could do," Porigow said. "They came to support us. We knew it was time to pay them back. We knew it was the right thing to do — that it was a call of duty in the brotherhood of law enforcement."

 

NYPD Officer and Queens resident Joe Strong added, "We knew that our brothers and sisters in Boston that responded on Sept. 11 would need our help now."

 

The Port Authority PBA will serve beverages and hot meals — such as hamburgers and hot dogs — until at least Friday, Porigow said. The Patrolmen's Benevolent Association will also provide drinks and snacks until at least the same date. Both relief stations will operate 24-hours-a-day.

 

These efforts have made members of Boston's police force feel better during a trying time, several officers said.

 

"It's like they have your back," said one officer, who declined to be named as he was on duty and not permitted to comment.

 

The officer said he had visited the station and eaten two "absolutely delicious" cheeseburgers.

 

He was as taken aback by the camaraderie, as by the snacks, he said.

 

"They actually tasted like sirloin," he said. "It's almost like you're being fed by your family."

 

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Port Authority workers travel to Boston to repay support they received after 9/11

By Steve Strunsky — Thursday, April 18th, 2013 ‘The Newark Star-Ledger’ / Newark, NJ

 

 

Port Authority Police Officers Brett Porigow and Ray Butler will never forget the 12-hour shifts they and other officers worked at Grand Zero in the months after 9/11, picking through debris or standing watch for hours on end in the bitter cold.

 

But they also remember how the job was made more tolerable by the outpouring of emotional and material support from local residents and police departments from around the country.

 

“There were departments from as far south as Florida,” said Butler, an NYPD officer at the time who later joined the PAPD. “Boston PD was there, which is one reason we were in such a hurry to get up here. We’ve been down the same road.”

 

Butler spoke by phone Wednesday from the intersection of Boylston and Berkeley streets in Boston, where he, Porigow and other members of the Port Authority Policemen’s Benevolent Association had set up a mobile canteen to provide food, coffee or just a place to sit for police and others working at the scene of Monday’s bombings.

 

“What we’re doing here is a smaller scale of what was offered to us down there,” said Porigow, a PBA trustee.

 

The union sent the mobile “cantina,” as well as its stress counselor and nine officers to Boston on Tuesday night as part of an ongoing effort to repay the generosity its own members were shown after the Sept. 11, 2011, attacks when 37 Port Authority Police officers were killed.

 

Hundreds of Boston police officers and other first-responders have helped themselves to the cookies, hot dogs or bottled water at the mobile canteen, the stress counselor, Peter Killeen, said this afternoon.

 

“They’re very appreciative,” said Killeen, who lives in Manahawkin.

 

He said counseling services weren’t needed Wednesday when it was still too soon for emergency workers to begin feeling the stress of Monday’s attack, which killed three and injured more than 170 near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

 

“It’s not until after the fact, when things start to subside, and the body starts going into the rest state, that’s when you start to realize the danger associated with the event,” said Killeen, a former Port Authority police officer who has been a licensed counselor for 22 years.

 

Perigow, who lives in Essex County, said the cantina mission was proving as gratifying for PBA members as for the first responders it is designed to support.

 

“It makes us feel, as police officers, we’re no longer separate. We’re one with the community,” he said. “We have people walking by, people from Boston, seeing what we’re doing and then going and getting food, getting coffee, and bringing it by. And it’s the kind of feeling we haven’t had since 9/11.”

 

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Long Island

Nassau County PBA Blames Police Precinct Merger For Crime Spike

By Sophia Hall (CBS News - New York)  —  Wednesday, April 17th, 2013; 10:50 a.m. EDT

 

 

MINEOLA, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) - The plan to merge police precincts was intended to save Nassau County $20 million, but the PBA said all it has done is increase major crimes.

 

PBA President James Carver told WCBS 880 reporter Sophia Hall that grand larceny and burglary is up in the areas of Great Neck, Roslyn, and Mineola with Newsday reporting the  crime rate spike at 19 percent.

 

He said those crimes are also up in the Oceanside, East Rockaway, and Valley Stream areas, with Newsday reporting the crime rate spike at 11 percent.

 

Why crime is going up? Because you’re taking busy precincts and you’ve merged them with mid-level precincts and they’re not getting the attention that they once got in the past,” Carver told Hall.

 

Carver said when people look to move to an area they look at the crime rate, and if the precincts remain merged, he said people will not move to Nassau County.

 

The Nassau County Police Department told Newsday that the numbers are misleading because the county’s crime rate is at historically low levels and just a handful of incidents can make the percentages go up.

 

Carver said the department is trying to make excuses for the increase in crime.

 

“It has gone up, whether it be a significant number or any type of number, it’s going up and they should be concerned,” Carver said.

 

Nassau County First Deputy Police Commissioner Thomas Krumpter disputes Carver’s claims, saying major crime is down by one percent and all crime is down by eight percent.

 

“It is disingenuous to go through a pile of statistics and pick out anomalies in short periods of time. Public safety is not at risk as a result of the consolidation,” Krumpter told 1010 WINS. “Nassau County has the lowest crime of any major municipality, it is the safest community in America. Anybody that would pick out stats within a large pile of statistics in order to sensationalize a story is problematic.”

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

New York State

 

County clerks lash out at Police Supt.

By  Eli George (WIVB News 4 - Buffalo)  —  Wednesday, April 17th, 2013; 8:30 p.m. EDT

 

 

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) - The group representing New York's county clerks is now saying the Superintendent of State Police has it all wrong, throwing Erie County Clerk Chris Jacobs "under the bus" in a pistol permit fiasco that saw an Amherst man's guns wrongly seized.

 

In fact, the spokesperson for the clerks says Superintendent Joseph D'Amico seems to be showing his ignorance in this controversy.

 

Superintendent D'Amico came to town Monday and blamed Erie County Clerk Chris Jacobs for David Lewis of Amherst being ordered to surrender his pistol permit and his guns, then finding out it was all a case of mistaken identity.

 

"And then the county's job is to look at it, determine if it is, in fact, their licensee, whether they want to take some sort of action. I don't recommend the removals. I can't do suspensions or revocations, that's a county function. They issue the permits, they remove the permits," D'Amico stated.

 

To that, the New York State Association of County Clerks issued a terse statement saying, D'Amico was either misreported or shows his ignorance regarding the pistol permit process and the role of county clerks in it.

 

Cortland County Clerk Elizabeth Larkin, who is also president of the state association says, by attacking Jacobs, the State Police are demeaning all county clerks.

 

"The County Clerk has no investigatory authority whatsoever. It is not our job to do investigations. We are keepers of the record - public information officers - but we do not do investigatory work at all," Larkin said.

 

And State Police not only faulted Jacobs and Erie County for the mistake, they also faulted officials in Orange County who took away the guns of another David Lewis - also an error.

 

Jacobs said, "It was just an inaccurate statement, and I think he really needs to come back and clarify that he is in the wrong here, and that the role - the investigative role - is up at the state level."

 

If you think the clerks association was "shooting from hip" when they issued that statement, the president of the group says they even discussed the D'Amico's claims with the Governor's office before they put out that release.

 

There was talk that the State Police Superintendent was misquoted but the press office never offered a clarification.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Letter from Albany Police PBA to Andrew Cuomo

(Reality Reading for NYDN Retard Michael Lupica)

 

 

http://www.nysrpa.org/files/SAFE/AlbanyPoliceUnionLetter.pdf

 

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

U.S.A.

 

Court: Police Can't Force Blood Tests

By JESS BRAVIN — Thursday, April 18th, 2013 ‘The Wall Street Journal’ / New York, NY

 

 

WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police can't force a drunken driving suspect to submit to a blood draw unless they have a warrant or can show an urgent need to act without one.

 

The 8-1 opinion rejected a position backed by the Obama administration and nearly three dozen states that argued the natural dissipation of alcohol from the bloodstream automatically created "exigent circumstances" that excuse police from the obligation of obtaining a warrant.

 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the majority opinion, holding that drawing blood for an alcohol test is subject to the standard applied to warrantless searches: The "totality of the circumstances" determines whether police action violates the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits "unreasonable searches and seizures."

 

Justice Sotomayor said there was no need to depart from that standard, which focuses on the specific facts confronting the officer, rather than giving police blanket authority to draw blood from unwilling suspects.

 

"Any compelled intrusion into the human body implicates significant, constitutionally protected privacy interests," she wrote. And while the court has significantly relaxed Fourth Amendment protections when police search a motor vehicle, she said a motorist retains a "privacy interest in preventing an agent of the government from piercing his skin."

 

The ruling, which affirms Missouri state court holdings in the case, underscores a standard that has been applied to blood draws for decades.

 

In a 1966 precedent, the high court ruled that, based on the circumstances—the officer was busy investigating a traffic accident and transporting an injured suspect to the hospital—he was excused from the warrant requirement. Obtaining a warrant would have taken additional time, during which evidence of the suspect's intoxication might disappear entirely.

 

Although all but one of the justices agreed on the outcome, they split into factions over what factors should determine when police can draw blood from an unwilling suspect without a magistrate's approval.

 

Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan joined the opinion in whole or in part.

 

Chief Justice John Roberts, joining Justices Stephen Breyer and Samuel Alito, would have been somewhat more deferential to police, writing that officers should be excused from the warrant rule when they believe they couldn't get authorization before "critical evidence" in the suspect's bloodstream dissipates.

 

Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, writing that since "the human liver eliminates alcohol from the bloodstream at a rate of approximately 0.015% to 0.020% per hour," every drunken driving arrest automatically is an exigent circumstance.

 

The case came from Cape Girardeau County, Mo., where early on Oct. 3, 2010, Tyler McNeely was pulled over in a Ford F-150 for speeding. Mr. McNeely admitted having a few beers, but refused to blow into a breathalyzer or allow his blood to be drawn.

 

State Highway Patrol Cpl. Mark Winder, brought a handcuffed Mr. McNeely to a hospital for a forcible blood draw, which showed a blood alcohol level nearly twice the legal limit of 0.08%.

 

Cpl. Winder later testified at the trial that he had no difficulty obtaining warrants to draw blood in previous instances but had read an article indicating Missouri law no longer required warrants for such cases.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Court Says Police Need Warrant for Blood Test

By ADAM LIPTAK — Thursday, April 18th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’

 

 

WASHINGTON — The fact that alcohol dissipates from the bloodstream over time does not by itself give the police the right to draw blood without a warrant in drunken-driving investigations, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday.

 

The case arose from the arrest of Tyler G. McNeely, who was pulled over for speeding on a Missouri highway and, the State Supreme Court said, exhibited “the telltale signs of intoxication — bloodshot eyes, slurred speech and the smell of alcohol on his breath.” He performed poorly on a field sobriety test and was arrested.

 

Mr. McNeely refused to take a breath test and, after being taken to a hospital, to consent to a blood test. A blood test was performed anyway, about 25 minutes after he was pulled over, and it showed a blood alcohol level of 0.15 percent, almost twice the legal limit.

 

The state court suppressed the evidence, saying there had been no “exigent circumstances” that excused the failure to obtain a warrant. “Warrantless intrusions of the body are not to be undertaken lightly,” the court said in an unsigned opinion.

 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in an opinion joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and, for the most part, Anthony M. Kennedy, affirmed the state court’s decision. Justice Sotomayor said many factors had to be considered in deciding whether a warrant was needed.

 

“Whether a warrantless blood test of a drunk-driving suspect is reasonable must be determined case by case based on the totality of the circumstances,” Justice Sotomayor wrote.

 

Among the relevant factors, she said, are “the practical problems of obtaining a warrant within a time frame that still preserves the opportunity to obtain reliable evidence.” She said technological developments made promptly obtaining a warrant possible in many circumstances.

 

In 1966, in Schmerber v. California, the United States Supreme Court said no warrant was required to take blood without the driver’s consent after an accident in which the driver and a passenger had been injured. The fact that alcohol levels diminish over time figured in the court’s analysis, as did the time it took to investigate at the scene of the accident and move the injured people to the hospital.

 

In the Missouri case, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Samuel A. Alito Jr., concurred in part and dissented in part.

 

“A police officer reading this court’s opinion would have no idea — no idea — what the Fourth Amendment requires of him,” the chief justice wrote, referring to the Constitution’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. He said it was possible “to offer guidance on how police should handle cases like the one before us.”

 

“Simply put,” the chief justice wrote, “when a drunk driving suspect fails field sobriety tests and refuses a breathalyzer, whether a warrant is required for a blood draw should come down to whether there is time to secure one.” No warrant should be required, he wrote, unless a police officer reasonably concludes that there was enough time.

 

Thirty states use electronic warrant applications, Chief Justice Roberts said. Many allow police officers to call a judge directly. A Kansas county has officers e-mail warrant applications to judges’ iPads.

 

Chief Justice Roberts said he would have returned the case to the lower court to apply the standard he proposed.

 

Justice Clarence Thomas dissented in the case, Missouri v. McNeely, No. 11-1425. “Nothing in the Fourth Amendment requires officers to allow evidence essential to enforcement of drunk-driving laws to be destroyed while they wait for a warrant to issue,” Justice Thomas wrote.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Supreme Court limits warrantless blood tests for drunken driving suspects

By Robert Barnes — Thursday, April 18th, 2013 ‘The Washington Post’ / Washington, DC

 

 

Police officers generally must try to get a warrant before forcing uncooperative drunken-driving suspects to submit to a blood test, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

 

The natural dissipation of alcohol in a person’s bloodstream does not justify an exception to the general constitutional requirements of a warrant, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the majority.

 

She said such emergencies must be determined by the circumstances in a case-by-case examination and rejected the notion that officers face a “now or never” situation in obtaining blood alcohol tests.

 

“In those drunk-driving investigations where police officers can reasonably obtain a warrant before a blood sample can be drawn without significantly undermining the efficacy of the search, the Fourth Amendment mandates that they do so,” Sotomayor wrote.

 

She was joined in her main holding by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan.

 

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. agreed with the outcome of the case, which affirmed a decision from the Missouri Supreme Court, but criticized the vagueness of the majority’s test.

 

“A police officer reading this court’s opinion would have no idea — no idea — what the Fourth Amendment requires of him, once he decides to obtain a blood sample from a drunk driving suspect who has refused a breathalyzer test,” wrote Roberts, who was joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

 

Strong words aside, Roberts’s proposed rule differed mostly by degree.

 

“If there is time to secure a warrant before blood can be drawn, the police must seek one,” Roberts wrote. “If an officer could reasonably conclude that there is not sufficient time to seek and receive a warrant, or he applies for one but does not receive a response before blood can be drawn, a warrantless blood draw may ensue.”

 

Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone justice agreeing with Missouri and the U.S. government that the metabolization of alcohol in the blood created the kind of emergency that does not require a warrant.

 

The case came from rural Cape Girardeau County, where in the early-morning hours of Oct. 3, 2010, Missouri State Highway Patrol Cpl. Mark Winder pulled over Tyler G. McNeely. McNeely, whose speech was slurred and who had alcohol on his breath, failed a field sobriety test and twice refused to take a breath test.

 

Winder arrested him and, on the way to jail, stopped by a hospital. After McNeely refused to submit to a blood test, Winder ordered a phlebotomist to draw blood anyway. Winder did not attempt to obtain a warrant because he said he thought Missouri law did not require it because of recent changes.

 

The Missouri Supreme Court unanimously disagreed and said the blood test could not be used. Courts nationwide were divided on the issue.

 

Sotomayor acknowledged that “cases will arise when anticipated delays in obtaining a warrant will justify a blood test without judicial authorization.”

 

But she disputed the notion that evidence would always be lost because of the time it takes to obtain a warrant. Some delay is inevitable anyway, she wrote, because the officer must transport a suspect to a medical facility to have the test conducted.

 

Officers can use that time to get a warrant, she said. “Well over a majority of states allow police officers or prosecutors to apply for search warrants remotely through various means, including telephonic or radio communication, electronic communication such as e-mail, and video conferencing,” she wrote.

 

She said the court recognizes the problem of drunken driving, but that about half of the states require warrants for blood draws and they have not experienced unreasonable difficulty. Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia do not have a warrant requirement.

 

Sotomayor said the decision also complies with “our recognition that any compelled intrusion into the human body implicates significant, constitutionally protected privacy interests.”

 

The case is Missouri v. Mc­Neely.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Assault on the 2nd Amendment

 

Majority of Americans say guns make homes safer

By  Scott Clement and Peyton Craighill — Thursday, April 18th, 2013 ‘The Washington Post’ / Washington, DC

 

 

The failure of popular Senate gun proposals Wednesday affirmed — even in the wake of Newtown shootings — the rigidity of the politics on the issue.

 

Lost amid the debate is the fact that for the first time a majority of Americans say having a gun in the household makes it a safer place to be, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. By a wide 51 to 29 percent margin, more people say a gun in the house makes it safer rather than more dangerous.

 

That’s a near complete reversal from a Gallup poll in 2000, when the public split 35 to 51 percent on whether guns make the home safer  or more dangerous.

 

People with guns in their homes lead the way in touting the safety benefits: 75 percent say they make the house safer, compared with just 30 percent of those with no gun at home who say the same.

 

Those who think guns make the home safer prioritize gun rights over new gun laws by 2 to 1. But for those who think guns make the home more dangerous overwhelmingly prioritize new laws to limit gun violence over protecting gun rights, by 82 to 12 percent.

 

The gun-safety coalition is led by Republicans, with about seven in 10 saying firearms make the home safer. Conservatives, white men and Southerners are all broadly supportive of the idea that guns make homes safer.

 

Those who don’t see guns adding safety are predictably on the other side of the political aisle — mainly Democrats, liberals and those with higher education.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Senate Blocks Drive for Gun Control

By JONATHAN WEISMAN — Thursday, April 18th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’

 

 

WASHINGTON — A wrenching national search for solutions to the violence that left 20 children dead in Newtown, Conn., all but ended Wednesday after the Senate defeated several measures to expand gun control.

 

In rapid succession, a bipartisan compromise to expand background checks for gun buyers, a ban on assault weapons and a ban on high-capacity gun magazines all failed to get the 60 votes needed under an agreement between both parties. Senators also turned back Republican proposals to expand permission to carry concealed weapons and to focus law enforcement efforts on prosecuting gun crimes.

 

Sitting in the Senate gallery with other survivors of recent mass shootings and their family members, Lori Haas, whose daughter was shot at Virginia Tech, and Patricia Maisch, a survivor of the mass shooting in Arizona, shouted together, “Shame on you.”

 

President Obama, speaking at the White House after the votes, echoed the cry, calling Wednesday “a pretty shameful day for Washington.”

 

Opponents of gun control from both parties said that they made their decisions based on logic, and that passions had no place in the making of momentous policy.

 

“Criminals do not submit to background checks now,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. “They will not submit to expanded background checks.”

 

It was a striking defeat for one of Mr. Obama’s highest priorities, on an issue that has consumed much of the country since Adam Lanza opened fire with an assault weapon in the halls of Sandy Hook Elementary School in December.

 

Faced with a decision either to remove substantial new gun restrictions from the bill or to allow it to fall to a filibuster next week, Senate leaders plan to put it on hold after a scattering of votes Thursday. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader and a longtime gun rights advocate who had thrown himself behind the gun control measures, is expected to pull the bill from the Senate floor and move on to an Internet sales tax measure, then an overhaul of immigration policy, which has better prospects.

 

More than 50 senators — including a few Republicans, but lacking a handful of Democrats from more conservative states — had signaled their support for the gun bill, not enough to reach the 60-vote threshold to overcome a filibuster.

 

Democratic leadership aides said the effort could be revived if a public groundswell demanded it. “The world is watching the United States Senate, and we will be held accountable,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, who helped lead the gun control effort.

 

But with the families of Sandy Hook students in the Senate gallery and a flurry of gun rights phone calls flooding Senate offices, it was hard to imagine how much more emotion could be brought to bear. Aides to senators supporting the bill said that only outside circumstances, like another mass shooting, might cause those who voted “no” to reconsider their positions.

 

“It’s almost like you can see the finish line, but you just can’t get there,” said Andrew Goddard, whose son, Colin, was hurt but survived the shooting at Virginia Tech. “It’s more annoying to be able to see it and not get to it.”

 

Mr. Obama — who avoided the gun issue in his first term and focused on proposals he thought had a better chance of passing, only to seize on expansive measures after the Newtown shootings — made last-ditch appeals to senators, including Dean Heller, Republican of Nevada, and Kelly Ayotte, Republican of New Hampshire. Both rejected his entreaties.

 

Standing in the Rose Garden next to former Representative Gabrielle Giffords and other victims of gun violence, Mr. Obama flashed anger as he said that the gun rights lobby had “willfully lied” about the legislation, and that Republicans and Democrats had “caved to the pressure.”

 

“But,” he added, “this effort is not over.”

 

For now, the gun rights lobby has proved more persuasive.

 

The National Rifle Association mobilized members to blanket the Senate with phone calls, e-mails and letters. The group also spent $500,000 on Wednesday alone, on an advertising campaign criticizing “Obama’s gun ban” and using Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a deep-pocketed gun control advocate, as a foil. “Tell your senator to listen to America’s police instead of listening to Obama and Bloomberg,” the ad said.

 

The action on Wednesday was initially supposed to be only the first series of votes in a debate to take days if not weeks. But as the measures’ chances faded this week, Senate leaders decided to rush the process, reaching a bipartisan agreement to hold nine votes in succession, each with a 60-vote threshold for passage.

 

Using the 60-vote hurdle so early in the process allowed Democrats to prevent the passage of an amendment mandating that any state with a concealed-weapons law, no matter how rigorous, would have to recognize the concealed-weapons permit of residents from any other state. The amendment received 57 votes in favor, including those of 12 Democrats, and 43 votes against.

 

Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, a lifelong backer of the N.R.A. who also pushed for new restrictions in recent weeks, made one last plea for his amendment, which would extend background checks to Internet and gun show sales. While acknowledging that “the politics are risky,” he said it was “a defining time in politics, where you know the facts are on your side.”

 

The bipartisan measure, which had appeared to have a strong chance of passage, received 55 votes before Mr. Reid changed his vote to “no” to preserve the parliamentary right to bring the measure up again. Four Republicans voted “yes”: Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, a co-author of the legislation; John McCain of Arizona; Mark Steven Kirk of Illinois; and Susan Collins of Maine. An equal number of Democrats voted “no”: Mark Begich of Alaska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Max Baucus of Montana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota. All are from states that Mr. Obama lost by wide margins last fall, and all but Ms. Heitkamp face difficult re-election campaigns in 2014.

 

Debate over the measures consumed the Senate on Wednesday, with speeches from both sides meant to stir emotions. “I choose to vote my conscience,” Mr. Reid said, announcing his decision to vote for the bans on assault weapons and magazines that carry more than 10 rounds of ammunition, “because, if tragedy strikes again — if innocents are gunned down in a classroom or a theater or a restaurant — I could not live with myself as a father, as a husband, as a grandfather or as a friend knowing that I didn’t do everything in my power to prevent it.”

 

The assault weapons vote was 40 in favor and 60 against. The magazine ban fell with 46 in favor and 54 against.

 

Even a bipartisan amendment to impose stiff penalties on gun traffickers, which was supported by the N.R.A. and expected to be adopted by voice vote, instead was defeated, receiving 58 votes, as the partisan lines hardened.

 

The successive defeats left senators on both sides of the issue dazed and disappointed. Mr. Begich said the Senate could have united behind measures with broad support, like strengthening the existing background check system with more data about would-be gun buyers who have been deemed mentally ill, rather than expanding the checks to sales not now covered. Mr. Begich also cited bolstering school safety, criminalizing gun trafficking and improving mental health programs.

 

“That’s a lot,” he said. “Is it perfect? No. But it’s a lot.”

 

Those modest steps, however, were sacrificed because other Democrats did not want to see further-reaching provisions fail at the expense of a package that the gun rights lobby wanted, aides said.

 

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What now for gun control? A look at the issue

By CONNIE CASS  (The Associated Press)  —  Thursday, April 18th, 2013; 3:02 a.m. EDT

 

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The impassioned push for new gun laws, born from the slaughter of schoolchildren, has collided with the marble-hard realities of Congress.

 

Just persuading the Senate to debate tougher laws was considered a high hurdle for gun control advocates. They did it with the aid of Newtown, Conn., families, who brought photos and stories of the slain to the Capitol. A series of Senate votes Wednesday marked the biggest moment in nearly two decades for those who want to limit guns in America, and for those who don't. Gun control failed.

 

Afterward, President Barack Obama said his administration would do what it can without Congress. And Obama said now that the issue has been revived, it won't go away.

 

But it's unclear what, if anything, comes next in gun politics. A look at the issue:

 

___

 

THE TRAGEDIES

 

Twenty children — all first-graders, just 6 or 7 years old — felled by semi-automatic rifle fire within five minutes. Six women — teachers, aides and the principal — gunned down. The shooter also took his own life and, before heading to Sandy Hook Elementary School, killed his mother.

 

The carnage in Newtown shocked a nation and its leaders. Yet, a shooting takes multiple lives at a high school or college nearly every year. Almost two years before Newtown, a congresswoman was wounded in a deadly attack that led Obama to call for "a new discussion" of gun laws. He didn't press the issue then.

 

Gun rights supporters say appealing to emotion after such tragedies leads to misguided policies that make it harder for law-abiding Americans to protect themselves. The nation should focus on protecting its schools, the National Rifle Association says.

 

Among the mass shootings that have most influenced the gun debate:

 

— July 2012 in Aurora, Colo.: A gunman sprays bullets into a packed theater on the opening night of the Batman movie "The Dark Knight Rises." Twelve people are killed, 70 injured. James Holmes, 25, is awaiting trial, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty.

 

— January 2011 in Tucson, Ariz.: Six people are fatally shot and 13 injured at a meet-and-greet event outside a supermarket for then-U.S Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. She has become an advocate for stricter gun laws as she recovers from a devastating head wound. Jared L. Loughner, 24, pleaded guilty and is serving life in prison.

 

— November 2009 at Fort Hood, Texas: Thirteen soldiers and civilians are killed and more than two dozen wounded when a gunman walks into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center and opens fire. Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan is awaiting trial.

 

— April 2007 at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg: In the deadliest U.S. school shooting, student Seung-Hui Cho kills 32 students and faculty in a dorm and a classroom building, then commits suicide.

 

— April 1999 in Littleton, Colo.: Columbine High School students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold kill 12 classmates and a teacher and wound 26 others before killing themselves in the school's library.

 

___

 

OBAMA'S PLAN

 

Obama said the Newtown horror obligated the nation to finally act to reduce gun violence. He wanted Congress to:

 

—Extend federal background checks to almost all gun sales.

 

—Pass a new, stronger ban on the sale on some semi-automatic rifles considered "assault weapons."

 

—Ban the sale of ammunition magazines with more than 10 rounds.

 

—Provide money to help more schools add police officers, psychologists, social workers or counselors.

 

—Help more people get mental health care.

 

Obama also made some changes by executive order, including:

 

—Steps to encourage states to submit more data to the federal background check system.

 

—Directing government agencies to study causes and prevention of gun violence. A law banning the use of federal money to "advocate or promote gun control" had squelched federal research.

 

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WHERE IT STANDS NOW

 

The major components of Obama's plan — background checks, the assault weapons ban, the limit on ammunition magazines — were quashed by the Senate.

 

Some members of his own Democratic Party, which controls the Senate, opposed the measures. Republicans were nearly united against them.

 

At a news conference with the president, Mark Barden, who lost his 7-year-old son, Daniel, in the Newtown shooting, said the families would return home "disappointed but not defeated."

 

Obama urged voters to pressure Congress on the issue. "This effort is not over," he said, and change will come "so long as the American people don't give up on it."

 

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SHIFTING OPINIONS

 

Public support for tightening gun laws has dropped off as the Dec. 14 school shooting slips further into the past.

 

One month after the Newtown attack, 58 percent of Americans said they supported stricter gun laws, an AP-GfK poll found. This month, support was 49 percent.

 

Some specific gun proposals still have strong appeal, however, polling shows.

 

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BACKGROUND CHECKS

 

They're hugely popular: More than 8 in 10 Americans support requiring background checks for buyers at gun shows, according to the AP-GfK poll in January. So closing the "gun-show loophole" looked like a potential place where gun control Democrats and gun rights Republicans might agree.

 

Two senators, Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va, tried to bridge the divide with a compromise that would subject buyers at gun shows and on the Internet to the checks but exempt noncommercial transactions like sales between friends and family. On Wednesday their measure was supported by a majority of senators but fell short of the 60 votes needed to advance.

 

The existing system, created under the 1993 Brady law, requires licensed gun dealers to submit a buyer's name before completing the sale. Convicted criminals and people who have been declared by a judge to be "mentally defective" are among those barred from buying a gun. Private gun owners and sellers at gun shows don't have to run the federal checks.

 

It's unclear how many buyers avoid scrutiny this way. Gun control advocates often claim that about 40 percent of guns are sold without the checks. But that's based on a survey from 20 years ago, when the background check system was just starting, and it was considered a rough approximation.

 

A few states have their own, more comprehensive background check requirements.

 

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MENTAL ILLNESS

 

Another area of public agreement: Eight in 10 Americans want more done to prevent people who are mentally ill from buying a gun, according to Pew Research Center polling.

 

One way is to do a better job of getting treatment to people who need it. Obama wants to spend $235 million in federal money to identify and treat mental illness, especially in young people, and to study how to prevent shootings. The idea has appeal on both sides of the gun control debate, as well as among advocates for the mentally ill, although they stress that most people who need care aren't violent.

 

U.S. law bans gun sales to people who have been involuntarily committed or formally found to be dangerously mentally ill by a court or similar authority. But the federal background check system is weakened by paltry information from some states. Obama says he will do more to encourage states to share their mental health records.

 

A vote on a bipartisan proposal for improving mental health programs was set for Thursday in the Senate.

 

___

 

ASSAULT WEAPONS

 

One of the most-discussed gun control ideas — reviving the 1994 ban on sales of "assault weapons" — couldn't get anywhere in Congress.

 

A majority of Americans — 55 percent — surveyed for the AP-GfK poll said they favored a ban on military-style, rapid-fire guns; about a third opposed it. Feelings run strong on both sides. Backers of gun rights are especially active lobbyists, however. These guns are popular with recreational shooters and people who consider them a menacing choice for home defense.

 

Other knocks against the proposal: Defining an "assault weapon" has always been tricky, and there's scant evidence that the old ban worked.

 

Under the now-expired law, some semi-automatic rifles and pistols were banned by name, including the Uzi, the AK-47 and the Colt AR-15, which is similar to the military's standard issue M16. Others were banned because they had a combination of characteristics listed in the law.

 

Manufacturers simply skirted the ban by producing guns under new names or by making simple design changes.

 

The 1994 law wouldn't have covered the military-looking Bushmaster .223 rifles used in the Colorado theater and Connecticut school shootings, even if the ban were still in place. The old law did apply to another aspect of those shootings — high-capacity magazines.

 

___

 

HIGH-CAPACITY MAGAZINES

 

The Senate also rejected Obama's call to revive the expired ban on sales of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

 

These devices feed bullets into the firing chamber automatically for rapid shooting. The larger the capacity, the more bullets a shooter can fire without pausing. In an attack, a killer who stops to reload might give victims a chance to flee or fight back.

 

Police said Adam Lanza came to Sandy Hook Elementary with several 30-round magazines and fired more than 150 shots. The shooter in the Colorado theater used a 100-round magazine, police said.

 

Half of Americans support a ban on the sale of high-capacity magazines, according to the AP-GfK poll. Nearly 4 in 10 oppose it.

 

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PROTECTING SCHOOLS

 

The National Rifle Association, the lead group lobbying against gun control, wants to keep the focus on protecting students at school.

 

A task force created by the gun rights group recommends that schools use specially trained armed guards or police officers to protect students, if the local community agrees. NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre says, "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

 

The NRA task force also called for private funding and federal grants to help pay for increased security. And it says schools need to improve their ability to assess threats and handle warnings of violent or antisocial behavior by students.

 

Obama has proposed spending more federal money to help schools improve safety by adding specially trained police officers and counselors and improving safety planning.

 

The public is about evenly divided on the idea of requiring an armed guard in every school, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll in March.

 

___

 

THE TOLL OF GUNS

 

Obama says he wants to address not only mass shootings but also "the epidemic of gun violence that plagues this country every single day."

 

The United States logs more than 30,000 gun deaths per year. The majority — about 6 out of 10 — are suicides. In calling for better gun control, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has talked about the death of his father, who committed suicide with a gun in 1972.

 

Homicides account for more than 10,000 deaths each year, according to National Center for Health Statistics data through 2009. Roughly 2 out of 3 murders are committed with a gun, FBI statistics show.

 

Gun advocates note that federal statistics don't capture how many lives are saved when people use firearms to protect themselves — a number that researchers have found difficult to pin down.

 

The overall rate of violent crime, including crimes with firearms, has dropped sharply over the past two decades in the U.S.

 

___

 

SECOND AMENDMENT

 

It's the Constitution's Second Amendment that guarantees a right to guns.

 

It says, "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

 

Exactly what that means has been debated for decades. In 2008 the Supreme Court ruled that it gives individuals a right to own firearms, even if they're not in a militia. But the justices also have signaled that some regulation of guns can be constitutional.

 

Which laws pass muster? The court has yet to say. Several states have gun restrictions that are tougher than U.S. law and are being challenged in court. Those cases should lead to more clarity.

 

Meanwhile, Connecticut, New York, Colorado and Maryland are tightening their gun laws in response to the recent mass shootings.

 

The January AP-GfK poll found 51 percent of Americans felt laws limiting gun ownership infringed on the public's right to bear arms; 41 percent said they do not.

 

___

 

WHO OWNS GUNS?

 

About a third of Americans say someone in their household owns a gun, according to an AP-GfK poll. But gun ownership is declining. Back in 1977, about half of households had a gun, the General Social Survey found.

 

Protection is the top reason people give, according to a Pew Research Center poll. About half of gun owners cited safety; about a third said hunting.

 

Every state but Illinois and the District of Columbia issue permits to allow people to carry concealed weapons under certain conditions. For example, the gun owner might need to pass a background check first. Some states require safety classes or a license that's hard to get. The Senate on Wednesday rejected a Republican plan to make states recognize the permits issued by other states.

 

Federal laws prevent the government from tracking how many guns are sold every year and who buys them, so there are no definitive statistics.

 

Roughly 310 million guns were owned or available for sale in the United States in 2009, according to a study by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. That's about 114 million handguns, 110 million rifles and 86 million shotguns.

 

___

 

Associated Press writer Alicia A. Caldwell and Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.

 

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Arizona moves to force sale of turned-in guns

By BOB CHRISTIE (The Associated Press)  —  Thursday, April 18th, 2013; 9:08 a.m. EDT

 

 

PHOENIX (AP) -- The months since the deadly Connecticut school shooting have seen dozens of gun buyback events across the country, with officials getting thousands of unwanted firearms off the street and sending them off to their destruction.

 

In Arizona, however, the Republican-controlled Legislature is now moving to save such guns.

 

Prompted by a gun buyback event in January in Tucson, where a 2011 shooting rampage left six dead and wounded then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 12 others, GOP lawmakers crafted a bill that would require local agencies to sell the firearms to gun dealers. The bill, which has passed both chambers of the Legislature, tightens a 2010 law that requires police to sell seized weapons.

 

Dozens of buybacks have been held this year in states from New Jersey to California, with the efforts kick-started by recent shootings that include the massacre of 20 students and six educators at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

 

They're popular among some police and elected officials who either pay cash or hand out gift cards in exchange for unwanted weapons. They're then destroyed, and officials say the guns are kept out of the hands of children or thieves.

 

The Tucson event was championed by City Councilman Steve Kozachik. The council there has voted to adopt ordinances that make it illegal to fire a gun while drunk, required background checks at gun shows on city property and mandated that lost or stolen guns be reported to police.

 

Kozachik is angry at the Legislature for pushing the bill that essentially guts cities' efforts to get guns off the streets.

 

"To me it's just more hypocrisy from the right," Kozachik said. "They're big civil libertarians when it comes to anybody's personal property until it becomes a gun that we're talking about. And then it becomes a community asset."

 

Democrats failed to keep the bill from passing the Senate Tuesday after an impassioned debate where Giffords' name was raised, and it's now headed to Republican Gov. Jan Brewer's desk for action. Brewer has not said whether she would sign it, but she's a strong gun-rights supporter and had signed the 2010 law.

 

Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, a Democrat who champions the events and survived being shot in the buttocks at the end of a 1997 Board meeting, sent a letter to Brewer Wednesday afternoon urging a veto.

 

The bill "would force the resale of guns that would otherwise never have been used for violence," she wrote. "How many lives would be lost through the use of weapons our citizens hoped to be removed from the hands of criminals?"

 

During the Senate debate, Republicans argued that guns should not be singled out for destruction when other property that comes into the hands of governments isn't.

 

"This bill doesn't really deal with guns per se, it deals with valuable property owned by the taxpayers that is being destroyed instead of being utilized for the benefit of those taxpayers," said GOP Sen. Rick Murphy, a co-sponsor of House Bill 2455. "What this comes down to it's not appropriate to tell taxpayers that they must subside with their dollars the destruction of useful property with no good reason, to accomplish nothing other than to make people feel good."

 

Democrats pushed back, arguing that the bill was all about guns and not property.

 

"It's deeply disturbing to me that (after) all that has happened to Arizona and to this country in the last couple years that this is the kind of bill that gets a fast track," said Sen. Steve Farley, who represents Tucson. "The gun doesn't have the power to go commit new crimes like that, the person has that. But guns do have powerful symbolic power when they are used in heinous crimes. So why are we making this statement here?"

 

Gun buybacks are highly visible events, embraced by many. But they have also drawn criticism. The event Kozachik sponsored was criticized by gun rights proponents as ineffective. They set up tables to pay cash for guns.

 

There is research showing that such events don't have much impact, said Michael Scott, a University of Wisconsin Law School professor who is director of the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing.

 

"The main reason that's the case is that most gun buybacks tend to yield guns that are highly unlikely to be used in crimes," including old, broken or worn-out firearms, he said.

 

There may be a small decrease in accidents, but criminals don't usually use such guns, he said.

 

Also, because people are paid for the weapons, they could turn around and buy more weapons. Plus, with an estimated 300 million guns in the U.S., there's just too many for small efforts like buybacks to make a dent, Scott said.

 

"There's just so many guns in private hands in the country that collecting a relative few of them at any one time is not going to have a big impact on their availability," he said.

 

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Surveillance Camera Evidence: ‘The New Standard for Law Enforcement’

 

Security Cameras May Be Key to Finding Boston Bomber

By Maggie Clark — Thursday, April 18th, 2013 ‘Pew's Stateline.Org’ / / Washington, DC

 

 

Video is a critical component in finding and prosecuting the bomber responsible for the Boston Marathon bloodbath. Even as first responders arrived on the scene Monday, police were already securing video footage from the vast network of surveillance cameras keeping watch over downtown Boston.

 

Since 9/11, law enforcement agencies have used federal grants to buy surveillance cameras for areas across the country plagued by crime or potentially targeted for terrorism. A surely outdated count  from 2007 said downtown Boston was watched by a network of at least 147 police surveillance cameras. On the marathon route, it’s likely that most businesses have surveillance cameras, along with every ATM and red-light traffic device with a license plate reader. Not to mention every spectator with a camera phone.

 

Combing through video evidence is the new standard in dealing with crime in public, says Grant Fredericks, a forensic video analyst who teaches forensic video technique at the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Va.

 

“Video holds more evidence than any other source: more than DNA, crime-scene analysis or eyewitness testimony,” Fredericks said. “There are people sitting at home with key evidence sitting on their hip. I think the concern going forward is getting to the video before people erase it, and ensuring that the best evidence is recovered.”

 

The buildup of the police surveillance network has not gone unchallenged. An effort by the Electronic Privacy Information Center thwarted the installation of 5,000 surveillance cameras in Washington, D.C., in 2008 after the D.C. Council refused to appropriate $866,000 to pay for it, citing privacy concerns. Activists in Seattle have for more than a year prevented a surveillance camera system from being installed along the waterfront of Puget Sound. 

 

Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis confirmed Tuesday that Boston law enforcement already has a “large amount” of video evidence being processed and urged anyone at the scene Monday to turn in photos and video to police. The task for the police is daunting. So far, there is no software capable of singlehandedly processing large amounts of video. Analysts must watch the thousands of hours of video footage collected from surveillance cameras and spectators.

 

But there is gold to be found. “If you look at events in Boston,” Fredericks said, “how many people were down at the site for setup or cheering on racers? Hundreds of thousands. And how many of those people had cameras? Practically everyone…There are hundreds of hundreds of still photos and videos of the suspect and police don’t know quite how to get at it. But it’s there, guaranteed.”

 

 

Video everywhere

 

Boston’s camera saturation is the norm in major cities. Grants from the Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security and other smaller grants to the Port of Boston allowed the city to amass hundreds of cameras since 9/11, both to monitor for national security and to deter street crime.

 

While there’s not one number of all the surveillance cameras in the United States, a project of the ACLU documented press reports from every state except Wyoming and South Dakota detailing police surveillance cameras in the states. Individual cities also have large camera networks made possible by federal grants, according to the Boston Globe.

 

In 2007, St. Paul, Minn., got a $1.2 million grant for 60 cameras for its downtown; Madison, Wis., bought a 32-camera network with a $388,000 grant; and Pittsburgh added 83 cameras to its downtown with a $2.58 million grant.

 

In the 1990s, Chicago was one of the first major cities to use police cameras to monitor high-crime areas plagued by gang violence and street-level drug crime. The cameras have also been part of policing in all major cities. In a study of police cameras in Baltimore, researchers found that after four months of setting up the cameras downtown, crime in that area was down by about 25 percent, according to a study from the Urban Institute.

 

The key isn’t just having cameras; real-time monitoring and full integration of the cameras must be part of regular policing, said Nancy La Vigne, lead author of the report. It would be a struggle to find an area without at least some surveillance cameras, said La Vigne, but the saturation necessary to see every activity isn’t typical.

 

In other mass attacks, the video system was the key investigative tool that police used to identify suspects.  It was video analysis that led police to the perpetrators of the 2005 London subway bombings in the city’s Tube system. Researchers in 2006 estimated that the United Kingdom was saturated with about 4.2 million surveillance cameras, or one camera for every 14 people, according to a study from the British Home Office.

 

After riots broke out in Vancouver after the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup final to the Boston Bruins, a team of 52 analysts led by Fredericks, the FBI instructor, reviewed over 5,000 hours of video to identify 60 individuals engaging in criminal rioting by infusing metadata on the video. That means embedding data and time stamps into the video, or inserting GPS information on people’s location on a sidewalk and tracking what direction they’re travelling.

 

The video then went into a searchable database which identified 15,000 individual criminal acts. Police said more than 1,000 charges have been filed against 351 people since riots on June 15, 2011.

 

That metadata will be the key in making sense of the mountains of footage from the Boston bombings, says Ron Brooks, the former director of the Department of Homeland Security’s San Francisco fusion center, an information-sharing operation.

 

“It goes beyond cameras—it’s our ability to use license plate reader systems, facial recognition technology, time stamping to develop a timeline, location data to develop a map of the scene and track the movement of people, placement of packages and layer in other data, like eyewitness accounts, to develop the picture and chronology of the event.”

 

That analysis, often described as “big data”, comes with a lot of privacy concerns, says Amie Stepanovich, director of the domestic surveillance project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Many worry that this video is stored indefinitely in databases without rules for how it can be used.

 

“(The bombing) is a terrible thing. We want to make sure the right person gets caught. We’re hoping that law enforcement will use this technology in a legally responsible manner,” Stepanovich said.

 

But few police departments have policies on data retention, and these videos will likely be stored permanently since the bombings will probably be a death penalty case, Fredericks said. Even though the privacy concerns are legitimate, he said, they’re not needed.

 

“When you have an ongoing investigation, the target is the terrorist, not the watcher of the race,” Fredericks said. “There’s a target (in the investigation) and there’s no way to keep track of all the people’s movements who aren’t a criminal.”

 

 

The future of evidence

 

Much of the video analysis of the footage collected in Boston is taking place at state fusion centers, created by the Department of Homeland Security to be the funnel point for intelligence from agencies at all levels of government and across the country.  In the Boston investigation, the fusion centers in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and other New England states immediately stepped up to help process evidence and review video to develop leads. Brooks said this collaboration is the result of 12 years of emergency preparedness policymaking.

 

“On 9/11, we had not developed the protocols and ability to share information,” said Brooks. “Now today, you saw an immediate collaboration between ATF, FBI, Boston police, Massachusetts state police, the fusion centers, and the Department of Homeland Security. Everyone came together quickly and understood their roles, and we didn’t see any infighting.”

 

Going forward, Fredericks expects that every police department, no matter how small, will have to get comfortable analyzing video evidence, just like they evaluate other kinds of forensic evidence.

 

“When you have crime in public areas where public is aroused to crime, you can guarantee there will be video evidence on cell phone or a camera,” he said “Video provides a chronology from before an event was planned until the arrest if you get to it soon enough. You don’t know yet what you have, so you have to get everything.”

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Chicago, Illinois

 

Chicago police officer escapes discipline despite inspector general's findings
Probe finds that contract prohibits reprimand

By Bill Ruthhart — Thursday, April 18th, 2013 ‘The Chicago Tribune’ / Chicago, IL

 

 

The Chicago Police Department declined to discipline an officer who improperly used the job to generate business for a friend's firm, according to a quarterly report released Wednesday by the city's inspector general.

 

The Police Department agreed there was "substantial probability" that the officer acted improperly but said its contract with the union prevented it from taking action, according to the report.

 

Inspector General Joseph Ferguson said his investigators determined that while serving court summonses for building violations, the officer sought to drum up business for a friend whose company offered to resolve such violations.

 

The officer visited homes with "an official city summons in one hand" and a "friend's business card in the other," according to the report. The report did not identify the officer.

 

Ferguson's office, which also accused the officer of lying to investigators, recommended that the officer be fired.

 

The Police Department said its contract with the Fraternal Order of Police prevented it from disciplining the officer in a noncriminal case because any complaint — even one from the inspector general — must be filed by a "firsthand witness," according to the report. The city's Law Department agreed.

 

"The underlying issue here is that the city's Law Department and Police Department do not differentiate between an inspector general's investigation and a general complaint from a layperson," said Jonathan Davey, a spokesman for Ferguson.

 

Law Department spokesman Roderick Drew said the city recommended no action against the officer because Ferguson did not conduct his investigation properly and any discipline could have led to a union grievance or unfair labor practice complaint.

 

Drew said Ferguson's office should have presented the accusations to the officer in writing before investigators conducted a formal interview.

 

Davey declined to respond to the reasons given by Drew for not taking action against the officer.

 

The case is the latest example of the inspector general's reach being thwarted.

 

The Illinois Supreme Court ruled unanimously last month that Ferguson cannot independently go to court to enforce a subpoena for documents from Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration. Ferguson said he has asked the mayor to turn over documents despite the ruling but that Emanuel has not responded.

 

"The IG has the same power and capability that the state IG and federal IGs have," Emanuel said Wednesday. "I don't think they're not capable of doing their job, and I think he's a good IG. Therefore, I think he can do his job."

 

When asked whether he'd reappoint Ferguson when his term is up at the end of November, Emanuel demurred.

 

"I have plenty of time," he said. "I have a couple other appointments I'm going to be working on between now and then."

 

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New Orleans, Louisiana

 

New Orleans officials blast State Police's findings in alleged French Quarter police brutality incident

By Naomi Martin — Thursday, April 18th, 2013 ‘NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune’ / New Orleans, LA

 

 

The New Orleans mayor, police chief and NAACP president lambasted the findings of a Louisiana State Police internal investigation unveiled Wednesday that found that nine white plainclothes troopers acted appropriately when they tackled two young black men in the French Quarter the Sunday before Mardi Gras. State Police officials said the U.S. Department of Justice is now reviewing the incident, which was caught on nearby surveillance video.

 

"Based on what I saw on the videotape, the State Police did not handle that incident in the right way," Mayor Mitch Landrieu said in a statement Wednesday. "Based on what I have seen, I believe it was wrong."

 

State Police Superintendent Col. Mike Edmonson told a Wednesday afternoon news conference that there would be no disciplinary action taken against any of the nine troopers involved. Edmonson said that although the tape of the incident is "unsettling" to watch, he believes the troopers acted justly and with "minimal force."

 

Edmonson said the troopers suspected the young men were in violation of curfew. But they were incorrect: One was 17 and the other was 18, which means they were not subject to curfew regulations.

 

The video, which lacks audio, shows 17-year-old Sidney Newman and 18-year-old Ferdinand Hunt standing against a wall. Suddenly, a group of plainclothes officers approaches. Some of the officers tackle the teenagers to the ground.

 

Later in the video, a uniformed NOPD officer approaches the group. She reportedly tells them she is Hunt's mother, and the officers shortly let both men go with her. Hunt's mother is NOPD officer Verna Hunt, who works in NOPD's 8th District, which patrols the French Quarter.

 

 

'Resisting' police

 

Edmonson said the troopers' use of force was justified because, as the undercover officers approached the duo around 11:10 p.m. in the 700 block of Conti Street, Hunt tried to run and Newman reached into his pants pocket.

 

"That changes the scope of the matter," Edmonson told reporters. "At that point, the officers, they don't know what they have. They believe they have something because one is trying to get away. Look, I teach my own kids if somebody comes up to you and tells you they're a police officer, you stop right there. You listen to them. And that didn't happen here."

 

According to an NOPD incident report, however, Hunt and Newman told police the plainclothes officers never identified themselves as police either verbally or with their badges. Hunt told NOPD Sgt. Mark Mumme, who wrote the report, that as the men approached and "grabbed for him," he "attempted to get back inside the restaurant by his mother."

 

In her statement to the NOPD, Officer Hunt said she had just warned her son and his friend about holding their iPhones out in the French Quarter, as there had been a recent rash of iPhone snatchings.

 

When the group of men approached, Newman told the NOPD, he hastily put his iPhone in his pants pocket "for safe keeping," the report says. One of the troopers tackled Newman to the ground, and held him there until the uniformed NOPD officer came toward them, screaming.

 

Those movements by Hunt and Newman caused the undercover officers to assume the pair was "resisting" and thus, the police were warranted in using more force, Edmonson said, arguing that the young men should have stayed still.

 

NOPD Superintendent Ronal Serpas, however, said he disagrees. "Anyone who has watched that video -- law enforcement or not -- will agree that the teenager who was brought to the ground by a state trooper should have been treated differently," Serpas said in a statement.

 

Hazel Newman, Sidney Newman's mother, told WVUE-TV that she thought the officers overreacted, and she wondered whether race was the reason.

 

"Why take a child or a young man that's 130 pounds and sling him across? Why not just walk up to him and say, 'What are you doing? What's your name or why are you here?' That's a human being," Hazel Newman told the station. "I would hate to think that it was because these boys were young black boys."

 

 

'A mother protecting her child'

 

Officer Hunt told the NOPD she exited Oceana Restaurant, where she was waiting for takeout food for her and the young men, when a cook told her there was a "problem" outside. When she first came outside, the undercover officers' badges were not visible, she told the NOPD.

 

"Get your mother-f------ hands off of my son!" Hunt yelled, according to NOPD Detective Brett Mathes' statement in the NOPD report. Mathes was the only NOPD officer accompanying the nine troopers that night.

 

State Police Sgt. Chris Jordan identified himself to Officer Hunt. "I don't give a f--- who you are! Get your f------ hands off my son!" she reportedly said. At that point, Jordan ordered the troopers to release the two young men, the report says.

 

Edmonson said he found Hunt's intervention "troubling." State Police filed a complaint with the NOPD's Public Integrity Bureau alleging Hunt had interfered with a police investigation. Edmonson said he personally wrote a letter to Serpas asking him to investigate Officer Hunt's actions.

 

While the NOPD's Public Integrity Bureau is investigating the complaint -- as they do with all formal complaints filed -- Serpas defended Officer Hunt in his statement Wednesday. "As far as NOPD Officer Verna Hunt is concerned -- first and foremost -- I saw a mother protecting her child, not a police officer interfering with an investigation," Serpas said.

 

 

The investigation

 

Both Hunts and Newman declined to participate in the State Police internal investigation. State Police investigators tried several times to interview them, Edmonson said. The internal investigation relied on statements from all the troopers involved, as well as several videos from multiple angles, Edmonson said.

 

Officer Hunt may have declined to speak out of fear of retaliation at her job or by the State Police, said Danatus King, the president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

 

"There's a good portion of the public that has an idea that the mother may have been coerced into not giving a statement," King said, noting the State Police's insistence that the NOPD investigate her actions. "That, in and of itself, is intimidating. (Fear) would be a natural reaction."

 

When asked about the possibility of the trio being afraid to speak to State Police investigators out of fear of retaliation, Edmonson responded, "My initial response is that's a sad day. But I know the public -- they don't want to hear that. Because some of them truthfully feel that. I can promise you, if you approach the Louisiana State Police, you will be treated with the utmost respect, the utmost professionalism and you will never be retaliated against from this department."

 

State Police declined to release their complete investigation in response to a public-records request by NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune.

 

King said for the public to have any confidence in the investigation, State Police should release the complete report. "It's important that all the evidence be released," he said, "because right now, the conclusion reached by the State Police is inconsistent with the only evidence the public has been made aware of."

 

At Wednesday's news conference, Edmonson said that the undercover team's 111 curfew arrests were done in "the exact same way." He said those arrests included both black and white juveniles; however, he did not break down the numbers further. He said the undercover task force was largely enforcing juvenile curfew, weapons and drug laws.

 

Such proactive policing by State Police and the NOPD, Edmonson said, "I think is why we have the only place on earth where Mardi Gras can take place and it's in a safe manner."

 

As part of his evaluation, Edmonson said he watched the video dozens of times, with his academy trainers, "frame by painstaking frame." The trainers, he said, found the troopers in the video acted consistently with the State Police's academy standards.

 

That, evidently, was not the conclusion Landrieu was hoping for.

 

"I hope that the State Police will use this video in future trainings," Landrieu said in a statement, "to teach their troopers what not to do in similar situations."

 

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Homeland Security

 

William Bratton: A Cop's-Eye View of Terrorism
A law-enforcement veteran on the Boston bombing—the steps that saved lives and the work that will catch the killer.

By WILLIAM J. BRATTON — Thursday, April 18th, 2013 ‘The Wall Street Journal’ / New York, NY

(Op-Ed / Commentary)

 

 

London -- For me the Boston Marathon has both personal and professional significance. Growing up in the city's Dorchester neighborhood in the 1950s, I used to go watch the runners every spring with my dad. It was the happiest day of the year, with schools and offices closed, the Red Sox game played early, and excited crowds packed proudly all along the course.

 

Later, throughout the 1970s and '80s, I worked the marathon as a Boston police officer, from patrolman up to commissioner of police. We planned and trained for the occasional political demonstration, but our job focused mostly on crowd control, traffic and the inevitable disorderly behavior in and around bars. Terrorism was barely a thought.

 

Even when I served as New York City police commissioner in the mid-1990s—after the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993—I spent less than 1% of my time on terrorism-related issues. The 9/11 attacks changed all that for New York, Boston and every other major city in America, including Los Angeles, where I was police chief from 2002 to 2009. Public-safety officials recognized that any public site, especially those with civic or economic symbolism, could be targeted for a spectacular act of terrorism. As far as we've come since 9/11, however, it is an impossible dream to think we can prevent every act of terror. That is a goal worth striving for, but some plots won't be deterred or foiled. So it was in Boston this week.

 

The primary task for law enforcement after such an attack is to identify the perpetrator(s), apprehend them, and examine whether this attack was a one-off or the first in a series. The longer it takes to identify perpetrators, the higher public fear will remain and the more thinly police resources will be spread. Terrorists often quickly claim credit for their attacks, but in many ways it is more diabolical for them to stay quiet, stoking public uncertainty and dissipating resources.

 

Police have been examining the remnants of the two explosive devices found on Boylston Street, which can be helpful in determining culpability. Certain people have access to certain types of explosives, and certain groups often prefer certain types of weapons. In London in the summer of 2005, for example, police were able to recognize similarities between a failed bombing attempt and the successful 7/7 bombings that had been carried out weeks before. Studying the explosives might allow police to track where particular chemicals or other components were purchased.

 

A major part of this investigation will be sorting through the photographs and video that police have requested from the public. The deluge may test the capacity of law enforcement to catalog and analyze so much material, but crucial clues are likely hiding in the digital files of marathon-goers who were unfortunate enough to be near Monday's explosions.

 

One good sign is that there don't appear to be any major turf battles going on among local, state and federal authorities involved in the investigation. The FBI quickly took leadership, thanks to protocols put in place in the late 1990s and after 9/11 that set jurisdiction for different types of incidents. This allows other agencies (at all levels of government) to fall into line and know their respective roles. When I was on the Boston force, by contrast, all sorts of incidents—for example, a plane running off the runway at Logan Airport and into the harbor—would be followed by unproductive turf battles between city and state police.

 

The past few days have also vindicated the sort of heightened preparedness emphasized by security and health officials since 9/11. Controlling crowds and directing traffic remain priorities for Boston police on the day of the marathon, but they have also drilled to prepare for much more. The police tent by the finish line has gotten bigger over the years. Whereas it was once equipped mainly to deal with exhausted and dehydrated runners, it now hosts a wide range of personnel ready to activate various contingency plans, including responding to a terrorist attack—how to deploy emergency-medical technicians, where to arrange the ingress and egress of ambulances, etc. Then there was the senior doctor from Massachusetts General Hospital who noted that his team was prepared for the gruesome injuries they encountered because they received training recently from Israeli doctors experienced with terrorist bombings.

 

Such preparedness is so important because a democratic society simply cannot secure all venues and events at all times. There is no ability to cordon off a whole marathon route and treat miles of urban streets with the degree of security at, say, a baseball stadium. It is impossible to secure everything. There will always be vulnerabilities along a 26-mile route, and police will always have to make decisions about how to deploy their finite resources.

 

Public-safety officials are doing just that in London, where I have been visiting this week and where some 35,000 runners are expected for the city's annual marathon on Sunday. Police will surely send extra resources to those parts of the course near historical sites such as Tower Bridge and Big Ben—the kind of landmarks that attract disproportionate attention from those who seek to create violent spectacles of mayhem.

 

Back in Boston, finding those responsible for Monday's grim spectacle will require authorities to investigate with precision but without tunnel vision. According to the public record, at least, there seems no reason yet to disqualify any class of suspects—from al Qaeda types to neo-Nazis, antigovernment fanatics in the mold of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, and others. After the bombing at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, investigators lost months focusing erroneously on a security guard who was near the scene.

 

Most important for law enforcement is to keep an open mind and follow the evidence wherever it leads. The public should be prepared for more false or misleading news reports like those on Wednesday announcing an arrest in the case. Ultimately it may take days, it may take years, but I am confident that the culprits behind the atrocity on Monday will be identified and apprehended.

 

Mr. Bratton, a former police commissioner in Boston and New York, and a former chief of police in Los Angeles, is CEO of the Bratton Group.

 

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                                                          Mike Bosak