Saturday, April 27th, 2013 — Good Afternoon, Stay Safe

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Ex-NYPD Academy Head Testifies at Stop-Frisk Trial

By COLLEEN LONG (The Associated Press) — Friday, April 26th, 2013; 3:32 p.m. EDT

A lot of training goes into turning someone into a New York City police officer — and they're expected to perform their jobs with integrity and professionalism.

Whether that translates to the street is one of the main issues surrounding a federal civil rights challenge to some of the nearly 5 million street stops made by police in the past decade. Lawyers for black and Hispanic men who say they have been wrongly stopped by police because of their race have sued the city to force major changes to the contentious police tactic known as stop, question and frisk.

They are trying to show that some wrongful stops happen because officers aren't properly trained or supervised, and they have spent weeks calling witnesses that depict officers as rude, clueless and, often times, racist.

But the city's first witness called Thursday, Deputy Chief James Shea, spoke at length about the training officers receive, both at the police academy and continuing education within the department. He was the former head of the police academy until he was promoted last fall to the chief of department's office in charge of the anti-gang initiative.

A large part of that training involves how to deal properly with the public, he said, offering a rare window into police behavior.

"Policing in a free society is, like all our other laws, dependent on the consent of the people you're policing," Shea said, and it's important that the public perceive the laws are being enforced fairly and impartially.

"Sometimes even if you are enforcing it in what you believe to be a fair and impartial manner, the method in which you do that leaves the perception that you weren't, and that's damaging," he said. "So we try to make them aware of that all the time so that they're aware, constantly thinking not only of what they're doing but of what perception they're leaving in the mind of the person they're dealing with."

Officers are taught that they must have reasonable suspicion in order to stop someone on the street, a standard lower than probable cause needed to justify an arrest. Like other police officials who testified before him, Shea explained that well-trained officers will use their observational skills as well as intelligence on crime patterns and problems in their precincts to determine whether there is reasonable suspicion to stop someone.

They are taught not to profile. And they are drilled on scenarios both at the academy and in the field to ensure they understand the teachings, Shea said.

Attorney Brenda Cooke showed a police training video that explained how officers should learn to look for weapons: a sagging coat, a person constantly checking his or her side or touching his or her waist, someone who runs from police or makes an abrupt turn, and a person with a suspicious bulge in his or her pants.

But none of those indicators alone mean someone actually has a weapon — and officers can't assume. They have to use discretion whether to frisk someone, and they can't just rifle through pockets. About half of those stopped are frisked.

"When I was a police officer, if someone had a bulge at their waistband it was probably, unless they were carrying tools, it was probably a firearm," said Shea, who joined the department in 1991. "Now a majority of the population carries cellphones. So they had to be trained that you have to feel it. You know what people ordinarily carry."

Many of the plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit have testified they felt the stop was unfair, the officer didn't have reasonable suspicion and they weren't treated with respect. In some cases, the stopping officer's testimony contradicted those claims.

For example, Clive Lino, 32, testified that he was stopped and interrogated by police for 20 minutes because of his red leather jacket, branded Pelle Pelle. He said he believed he was stopped because he was black. Later, the two officers who stopped him testified that their precinct commander handed out a poster of an unsolved killing that mentioned the suspect was male, black, about 6 feet tall and wearing a loose-fitting red leather Pelle jacket.

It's up to the police to explain to someone who was stopped why it happened, Shea said.

"Sometimes people are mad. It's not pleasant to be stopped by the police," Shea said. "Even if they don't understand it at that moment, if you do the right thing, then maybe later even, it will sink in — and when they're not in the immediate moment of being stopped and they have a chance to think about it."

His testimony continues Monday. The trial has been underway for more than a month. U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin has the power to order major changes to the police department and has already expressed concerns about the tactic.

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Mayoral Candidates Quizzed on Use of Drones

By KATE TAYLOR — Saturday, April 27th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’

Public safety has been a major issue in the campaign for mayor of New York this year, and for weeks the candidates have talked at length about whether they would replace the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, whether they would continue to allow the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk practice, and whether the department should be monitored by an inspector general. But on Friday, during a forum on technology, the candidates got a question that posed a new test of their views on police practices: Should the department be allowed to use unmanned drones?

Only Adolfo Carrión Jr., a former Bronx borough president running on the Independence Party line, refused to rule out using drones for surveillance. “I think the responsible answer is you use the tools that are available to you,” he said.

For Democrats, the idea was a nonstarter. “I don’t want drones peeking in people’s homes,” said William C. Thompson Jr., a former comptroller making his second bid for mayor as a Democrat.

John C. Liu, the current comptroller, compared drones to the cyborgs in “RoboCop.” Although he said that the movie was one of his favorites, he opposed having RoboCops – or drones – in New York City. And the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, another Democrat, said that, although she supported increased use of mobile cameras, “I don’t think drones are a safe security measure” in the city.

The drone question highlighted an unusual forum in which the moderator, Ben Smith, the editor of the Web site Buzzfeed, managed to catch the candidates off guard on a few occasions.

Mr. Smith noted that the venture capitalist Fred Wilson had complained about city laws that, at times, make Airbnb, a Web site that allows people to rent rooms or apartments cheaply by the night, technically illegal in New York. (An Airbnb spokeswoman said later that the legal question involved the rental of entire apartments, not rooms.) Mr. Smith asked the candidates if they thought that Airbnb should be allowed to operate in the city. He posed the question first to Mr. Liu, who seemed unfamiliar with the debate.

“Should who?” he asked quizzically.

Bill de Blasio, the public advocate, and Ms. Quinn then jumped in, both agreeing that Airbnb was potentially troublesome. Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, suggested that it exposed building residents to unwelcome comings-and-goings. Ms. Quinn said the conversion of buildings to rental units for tourists diminished the supply of affordable housing for full-time residents.

Other surprising areas of agreement emerged at the forum, which took place during a conference on technology organized by the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, at New York Law School. Mr. Stringer, a Democrat, is a candidate for comptroller.

After Mr. Liu said that as mayor he would lift the ban on students bringing cellphones to school, the other candidates onstage all quickly said that they would, too, prompting Mr. Smith to quip that “the under-18 vote” was now fully spoken for.

The candidates also all espoused interest in expanding Internet access to city residents and public school students. Mr. de Blasio, in particular, criticized Verizon several times for slowness in expanding its fiber optic service around the city, saying the service was still unavailable in many low-income neighborhoods.

However, the moment most likely to be remembered from the forum was when Mr. de Blasio, picking up on a reference by Mr. Carrión to the city’s competition with Silicon Valley for tech companies, decided to try out his Arnold Schwarzenegger impression on the crowd.

“If Arnold Schwarzenegger were here, he would say, ‘Noh-thern Califoh-nia, your domination of the tech industry is being teh-minated,’” Mr. de Blasio said, to laughs from the crowd and some groans from the others onstage.

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Raymond Kelly stresses need for communication after flap with FBI
FBI waited at least 48 hours before notifying the NYPD that it had learned through questioning Dzhokhar Tsarnaev that the suspected Boston bombers had planned to target New York

By Rocco Parascandola — Saturday, April 27th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly refused to bad-mouth FBI officials who didn’t open their mouths to give him a heads-up on a major terror case.

Kelly declined to criticize the FBI on Friday, a day after revealing that it took the feds at least 48 hours to alert the NYPD about the Boston bombers’ unrealized goal of exploding their remaining explosives in Times Square.

“I’m not going to characterize it,” Kelly said Friday when asked for his feelings about the delay in sharing information.

“We want to know things as quickly as possible,” he said. “Not really relevant that he was in bed when he made his statement. Goes back to what the potential risk was to New York City. I’ll leave it at that.”

The FBI, while interrogating suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the hospital on Sunday night into early Monday, learned of the terror suspects’ spur-of-the-moment decision to drive to New York to target Times Square.

But city officials weren’t told until Wednesday, and sources told the Daily News that Kelly was irate over the slow-in-arriving info.

Two NYPD officers from the Intelligence Division were in Boston, and neither was briefed on the New York angle to the massive investigation, a source told The News.

Dzhokhar and his older brother, Tamerlan, were armed with six pipe bombs and a homemade device rigged inside a pressure-cooker — the type of explosive used in the April 15 attack on the Boston Marathon.

The brothers’ hopes of bringing their brand of evil to the Big Apple were dashed when a hostage they had taken in the processes of carjacking his Mercedes escaped while they were fueling up, and called authorities — triggering a shootout that ended in Tamerlan’s death; Dzhokhar was collared less than a day later.

“If, in fact, the driver had not escaped from the car they may very well have been able to get to New York,” Kelly said. “Would there have been information that would have identified them en route? Unknown.”

Kelly confirmed that he spoke with FBI officials about the delay. He didn’t go into details.

“We certainly would hope that it didn’t happen again,” he said. “We want to know about anything that affects New York as quickly as possible.”

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NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly: FBI should have shared bomb info sooner
By Unnamed Author(s) (The Associated Press) — Friday, April 26th, 2013; 4:33 p.m. EDT

NEW YORK -- The FBI was too slow to inform the New York Police Department that the Boston Marathon bombing suspects had spoken of attacking Times Square, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Friday.

Federal investigators learned about the conversation during an interrogation of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the hospital that began Sunday night and went into Monday morning, officials said. The information didn't reach the NYPD until Wednesday night.

Kelly said he told the FBI that the delay was troubling.

"We did express our concerns over the lag," Kelly said following a promotions ceremony.

Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the findings Thursday during a City Hall news conference.

"We thought it was important to put that information out because the people of New York City deserve to know that," Kelly said.

Tsarnaev and his brother had been identified as suspects and were the target of a massive manhunt when, by his account, they discussed what to do with the remainder of the explosives used in the marathon attack, Kelly said. They came up with the idea of striking in Times Square, but Tsarnaev's older brother was killed and he was captured before they could leave the area and do any more harm, New York City officials said.

Still, Rep. Peter King of New York has said the information was important because "there could be other conspirators out there and the city should have been alerted so it could go into its defensive mode."

Asked what difference it would have made to have learned about the conversation sooner, Kelly responded: "I don't want to speculate. The fact of the matter was there was a 48-hour lag."

The FBI declined to comment on Friday.

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NYPD Shows Force After Boston Terror Suspects' NYC Plans Emerge

By: Vivian Lee — Friday, April 26th, 2013; 5:29 p.m. ‘NY 1 News’

(Edited for brevity and Time Square Drill)

A day after city officials learned the alleged Boston Marathon bombers were planning to attack Times Square, the NYPD was on full display as counterterrorism officers held a drill in the middle of the "Crossroads of the World" while Mayor Bloomberg paid a visit to remind New Yorkers and visitors alike that the area is safe. NY1's Vivian Lee filed the following report.

An NYPD counterterrorism drill was held in a crowded Times Square Friday shortly after Police Commissioner Ray Kelly revealed that Boston police are modeling their counter-terrorism unit after New York's.

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NYPD puts crime on the map

By REBECCA HARSHBARGER — Saturday, April 27th, 2013 ‘The New York Post’

New Yorkers will soon have access to computerized crime data now only seen by police.

Police are under orders to create a crime-mapping database that shows crime complaints broken down block by block and by police-patrol sectors, which are districts within police precincts.

The first maps will go online in six months, according to a law approved by the City Council this week with enough votes to override a veto by Mayor Bloomberg. The law requires them to be updated monthly.

Other cities already post crime data in map form.

When users click on a crime location, the map shows what kind of crime occurred and when it happened.

The only New York crime data now posted on the Web are monthly reports broken down by police precinct.

City Councilman Fernando Cabrera said he sponsored the bill because a Bronx neighborhood newspaper, The Norwood News, was having difficulty getting crime data from the police.

“I’m big on transparency,” Cabrera said.

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Democrats Said to Discuss Plan for Bronx District Attorney to Resign

By RAY RIVERA and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM — Saturday, April 27th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’

With the prosecution record of the longtime Bronx district attorney, Robert T. Johnson, under fire, the borough’s Democratic leaders have been discussing a plan that would ease the way for him to step down within months, according to several people familiar with the idea.

Though Mr. Johnson, who is New York City’s longest-serving district attorney, has not publicly expressed interest in leaving before his term is up in 2015, the chain of events being discussed by party officials would provide for him to resign and vie for a seat as a State Supreme Court justice in the Bronx in the November election.

People familiar with the plan say it is the brainchild of Assemblyman Carl E. Heastie, who as the Bronx Democratic leader holds significant sway over electoral politics in the overwhelmingly Democratic borough. He is one of the few people who other Democratic officials believe has a read on the intentions of Mr. Johnson, who is fiercely private and has few political confidants.

Mr. Heastie, who said through a spokesman that he would not “comment on speculation,” has told several close associates that Mr. Johnson, who took office in 1989, has grown “tired of the job” and “feels beaten up,” and that his discontent has only mounted as his performance has come under increasing scrutiny, according to these people. They spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to damage their relationship with Mr. Heastie.

Mr. Johnson would not say whether he was familiar with the plan or any part of it, but strongly denied in a statement any intent to quit: “I am scratching my head that you would write a story like this based on hearsay. I have no intention to leave office. I am hard at work at a job that I love and will not respond further to speculation and rumor.”

Prosecutors in the Bronx now win jury trials less than half the time, a rate that has declined significantly during Mr. Johnson’s tenure and is sharply lower than any other borough. That, combined with the high rate of cases the office declines to prosecute, has provoked concern that his policies are allowing potentially dangerous defendants to go free.

This month, The New York Times published a series of articles on the dysfunction of the criminal justice system in the Bronx that underscored failures by Mr. Johnson’s office, among other problems. It noted that his management and policies had been criticized by judges in the borough, as well as by police and city officials who believe that he has not done enough to highlight or resolve the problems.

The people familiar with the plans said party leaders were not pressuring Mr. Johnson to resign. But Mr. Heastie has made clear to associates that if Mr. Johnson does resign, he would like it to occur in time for Mr. Heastie to put his choice as a successor on the November ballot. His choice is Darcel D. Clark, who was recently appointed associate justice with the New York State Appellate Division First Department, four people familiar with the plan said. Justice Clark spent over a decade in the district attorney’s office before she was first appointed to the criminal court.

Justice Clark, reached on Friday evening, said she had no comment on the plan, adding, “I don’t know anything about it.”

The plan would call for Mr. Johnson to step down in September, after the Bronx Democratic Party’s judicial nominating convention, at which Mr. Heastie would push for Mr. Johnson to appear on the party line for the November election. The state’s complicated election and public officers law would then allow the Bronx Democratic County Committee, led by Mr. Heastie, to select Justice Clark to appear on the ballot as the party’s candidate for district attorney without her having to win a primary.

A former public defender, prosecutor and judge, Mr. Johnson won a contested election in 1988 with the backing of Democratic leaders to become the first black district attorney in the state. Since then he has easily won re-election, often without opposition. His wife is a judge on the New York State Appellate Division First Department.

Though Mr. Johnson has maintained a low public profile, his tenure has been marked by periodic controversies over his resistance to the death penalty and his challenges to the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk tactic, which critics say disproportionately targets minorities and harasses innocent people.

His stands have won him support in the Bronx, where more than 80 percent of the population is Hispanic or black. But they have also exacerbated a sometimes contentious relationship with law enforcement officers.

William Glaberson contributed reporting.

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NY / NJ Port Authority P.D.

Port Authority changes recruit age limit

By MARIA ALVAREZ — Saturday, April 27th, 2013 ‘New York Newsday’ / Melville, L.I.

The Port Authority is forgoing its rule on an age limit of 35 to entice Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to apply for its 2014 class of 175 police officers.

Those "who have served overseas have military experience" and have "learned invaluable skills on how to deal with people," said Joseph Dunne, chief of security for the Port Authority.

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Westchester

Tappan Zee Bridge: Troopers will leave Tarrytown for West Nyack during project

By Theresa Juva-Brown — Saturday, April 27th, 2013 ‘The Journal News’ / White Plains, NY

(Edited for brevity and generic law enforcement pertinence)

Tappan Zee Constructors is finalizing a deal that would temporarily move state police and Thruway Authority facilities from Tarrytown to West Nyack during construction of the new Tappan Zee Bridge, state officials confirmed Friday.

TZC is about to sign a lease for a 42,000-square-foot warehouse at 160 N. Route 303. It is the former site of The Journal News Rockland printing operation and is now owned by Hauser Brothers, a construction contracting group.

As part of the bridge project contract, TZC will tear down the existing state police and Thruway buildings on South Broadway and use the land as a construction staging area.

After the $4 billion project is completed, TZC will rebuild those facilities. In the meantime, it has agreed to pay to relocate those agencies.

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U.S.A.

Exception to Miranda Rule Is Rooted in Queens Arrest

By SAM ROBERT — Saturday, April 27th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’

No straight line connects Benjamin Quarles and Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, or stretches from Bayside, Queens, to Copley Square in Boston, or links a largely forgotten gun charge in 1980 to a terrorist bombing this month that inflicted mass casualties and left three people dead.

But one knotty legal thread does tie them together: the “public safety exception” to the Miranda warning against self-incrimination that the police are supposed to issue before questioning a suspect.

The issue is not whether suspects can be questioned before they are warned of their rights, but rather whether the answers are admissible in court. Prosecutors would have to prove that some imminent threat to public safety justified the failure to tell suspects of their right to remain silent and to consult a lawyer before being interrogated.

The public safety exception was carved out by Sol Wachtler, the former chief judge of New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, in 1982.

The Court of Appeals upheld lower court rulings that a gun seized by the police was not admissible as evidence because officers had failed to read Mr. Quarles his Miranda rights beforehand. Judge Wachtler dissented. But the Queens district attorney at the time appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which ruled that “overriding considerations of public safety” might warrant questioning suspects without first advising them of their rights.

“I wrote an opinion, later embraced by the Supreme Court, that created an ‘emergency exception’ to Miranda, allowing the police to defuse a dangerous situation before administering the warning,” Judge Wachtler recalled in a 2010 Op-Ed essay in The New York Times. “But resolving immediate emergencies is about as far as we should go in delaying the Miranda reading or creating exceptions to it.”

The United States Supreme Court’s 1984 ruling in the Quarles case is at the heart of any challenge to the admissibility of Mr. Tsarnaev’s acknowledgment to federal agents, before he was advised of his rights, that he was involved in the Boston bombing. (The link between the Quarles case and the Boston attack was reported by DNAinfo.com.)

The Quarles case began in 1980 when a woman flagged down a patrol car in Queens and said an armed man had raped her and then fled inside a supermarket on Francis Lewis Boulevard. He was cornered there by police officers, who frisked him, handcuffed him and, spotting an empty shoulder holster, asked, “Where’s the gun?”

Mr. Quarles gestured toward an empty carton of Wisk liquid detergent, where a .38-caliber snub nose pistol was recovered. Then an officer pulled a card from his wallet and read Mr. Quarles his rights.

“From the point of view of a criminal law defense attorney, you’re dealing with a complaint that says he was in possession of a loaded weapon and he had an empty holster and that he admitted to police that the gun was his and that he had bought it in Florida, so what’s left?” Steven J. Hyman, who represented Mr. Quarles, said in an interview.

“Then I’m sitting at the hearing on whether the statements were voluntary and was the gun properly seized, and an exceptionally honest police officer says they frisked him, handcuffed him, asked him where’s the gun and then gave him the Miranda warning,” Mr. Hyman recalled. “A case that was clearly a disaster from a defense point of view suddenly had issues.”

The rape charge was dropped because the woman never went to court. A State Supreme Court justice said that because the weapon was seized after the suspect had been handcuffed and questioned about its whereabouts, it could not be admitted as evidence.

The prosecutor appealed. The ruling was unanimously upheld by the Appellate Division and then 4 to 3 by the Court of Appeals, but, in effect, was reversed by the United States Supreme Court, 5 to 4, on the basis of Judge Wachtler’s exception.

The Supreme Court said the exception would not apply if the suspect was subject to “actual coercion.” That was the finding later made by a state justice in Queens who decided — “much to my amazement,” Mr. Hyman acknowledged — that a suspect could infer he was being coerced because he was surrounded at the time by a half-dozen police officers.

Mr. Hyman’s surprise was reflected in Mr. Quarles’s decision to a plea agreement, and he was eventually sentenced to probation.

“I haven’t seen him since,” Mr. Hyman said. (A Benjamin Quarles, who was born the same year as the defendant and was from Bayside, is listed in official records as having died in 2003.)

Mr. Hyman suggested that the application of the public safety exception to the Boston bombing case might be vulnerable in court. “The whole thrust of the Quarles case is spontaneity, legitimate instinct, not interrogation,” he said.

“In Boston there could be some bombs still floating someplace, but it was no longer a situation of immediate danger,” he added. “They ask him about accomplices, motives. That’s not public safety; that’s a criminal investigation. They have a right to ask. The question is, would it be admissible? I believe it is not.”

Joanna Wright, a law clerk to a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and the author of a 2011 Columbia Law Review article on the public safety exception, said, “I suspect the government would argue that to the extent that Tsarnaev worked in concert with others or had information about potential future attacks, an imminent threat still existed and therefore the exemption was justified.”

“The standard Quarles test,” Ms. Wright added, “was whether or not the suspect answered questions posed by law enforcement that were ‘reasonably prompted by a concern for the public safety’ and later case law suggests that the danger be imminent for the exception to apply.”

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Taking Insolence and Effrontery to a New High

Oregon police officer fired after drunken driving crash sues city, cites disabilities law
By STEVEN DUBOIS (The Associated Press) — Friday, April 26th, 2013; 10:23 p.m. EDT

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- A police officer fired for driving drunk in an unmarked police car while off-duty has filed a $6 million lawsuit against the city of Gresham, the police chief and others, alleging his rights were violated under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The lawsuit filed in Portland alleged the officer, Jason Servo, was suffering from alcoholism, a recognized disability under the act, and shouldn't have been dismissed.

The suit also alleged Servo was denied due process, and the police union failed to represent him adequately.

"Just as with any type of disability or disease, they should have made some kind of effort to accommodate that, or some kind of effort to work with him, and not simply sever all ties," said Shawn Kollie, one of Servo's attorneys.

Police Chief Craig Junginger was out of the office Friday. City spokeswoman Laura Shepard said officials would not discuss the case because their policy is to not talk about pending litigation.

Servo, 43, was arrested in January 2011 after he crashed into a ditch while off-duty. The lawsuit said that Servo, a detective who was the department's lead firearms instructor, had taken the police vehicle to a firearms training session in the nearby city of Troutdale. He later joined fellow officers for dinner and drinks.

"This was a common practice among (Gresham) officers and had become an inherent part of the culture," according to the lawsuit filed late Thursday.

Servo was alone when his vehicle veered into a ditch and he was not hurt. Though Servo refused to take breath or field sobriety tests, the Clackamas County sheriff's deputy who arrested him later testified before the state Department of Public Safety Standards and Training that Servo was probably one of the top 10 most intoxicated people he had arrested in almost 15 years of drunken-driving investigations.

Two months after the accident, Servo pleaded guilty to drunken driving and entered a diversion program. He fulfilled the program's requirements and the DUI was dismissed.

Servo also voluntarily entered an in-patient program at a Serenity Lane drug-and-alcohol treatment center, where he was diagnosed as an alcoholic.

"There were times where I went home and I couldn't get crime scenes out of my head; I went to drinking for that and there are other officers that do the same thing," Servo said Friday, adding that he has now been sober for 818 days.

The lawsuit alleged the chief fired Servo to save money, ignoring the known disability of alcoholism.

"I know it sounds kind of like a conspiracy theorist's claim," Kollie said, "but we do believe there was a funding issue in the Gresham police department at the time."

It could not immediately be determined how common it is for alcoholics to claim their rights have been violated under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in a fact sheet, provides an example of how an alcoholic can justly be fired, and it's similar to the Servo case.

In its example, a federal police officer is involved in an accident for which he is charged with drunken driving. About a month later, he gets a termination notice stating that his conduct makes it inappropriate for him to continue. The officer says the arrest made him realize he is an alcoholic and that he is obtaining treatment. According to the EEOC, the employer may proceed with the firing.

The example, of course, is not precise because Servo's crash happened while he was off-duty.

"The ADA has provisions in it, across the board, to not require employers to subject other people to unreasonable risk to accommodate a disability," said Bob Joondeph, executive director with Disability Rights Oregon.

Joondeph said he couldn't comment on any specifics in the Servo case, but generally accommodations for an alcoholic might include letting the worker attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings - not allowing them to drink on the job or drive drunk.

Separate from the lawsuit, Servo is appealing the standards-and-training agency's decision to strip him of his police certification.

Servo is currently working as a private investigator.

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The Drug War

US tries new aerial tools in Caribbean drug fight

By BEN FOX (The Associated Press) — Saturday, April 27th, 2013; 7:44 a.m. EDT

ABOARD THE HIGH SPEED VESSEL SWIFT (AP) -- Drug smugglers who race across the Caribbean in speedboats will typically jettison their cargo when spotted by surveillance aircraft, hoping any chance of prosecuting them will vanish with the drugs sinking to the bottom of the sea.

That may be a less winning tactic in the future. The U.S. Navy on Friday began testing two new aerial tools, borrowed from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, that officials say will make it easier to detect, track and videotape drug smugglers in action.

One of the devices on display aboard the High Speed Vessel Swift is a large, white balloon-like craft known as an aerostat, which is tethered up to 2,000 feet (600 meters) above the ship's stern. The other tool on board for tests in the Florida Straits is a type of drone that can be launched by hand from the deck.

Together, they expand the ability of Navy and Coast Guard personnel to see what's beyond their horizon, according to officials from both military branches and the contractors hoping to sell the devices to the U.S. government.

The devices should allow authorities to detect and monitor suspected drug shipments from afar for longer sustained periods, giving them a better chance of stopping the smugglers. They also should allow them to make continuous videotapes that can be used in prosecutions.

"Being able to see them and watch what they are doing even before we get there is going to give us an edge," said Chief Chris Sinclair, assistant officer in charge of a law enforcement detachment on board the Swift, a private vessel leased to the Navy that is about to begin a month long deployment to the southwestern Caribbean, tracking the busy smuggling routes off Colombia and Honduras.

Crews practiced launching and operating both systems before a small contingent of news media on board the Swift, managing to bring back video of vessels participating in a mock surveillance mission as well as radar and video images of the fishing charters and sailboats that dot the choppy seas separating Cuba from the U.S. mainland.

The drone, officially a Puma All Environment unmanned aircraft system from Aerovironment Inc. of Simi Valley, California, splashed into the water on one landing and had to be retrieved. On the second round, it clacked noisily but intact on the shifting deck of the 321-foot ship. Rear Adm. Sinclair Harris, commander of the Navy's 4th Fleet, said the devices are necessary at a time when the service is making a transition to smaller, faster ships amid budget cuts.

The aerostat, formally the Aerostar TIF-25K and made by a division of Raven Industries Inc. of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is filled with helium. It's an old technology, models of which have been used for decades, but it's packed with cameras and sensors that expand the ship's radar capability from about 5 miles (8 kilometers) to about 50 miles. That can help teams in an on-board control center to identify larger ships, which now would appear as just dots on the horizon, from as far as 15 miles (25 kilometers) away.

The Puma, meanwhile, can be sent out to inspect a vessel flagged by the larger aerostat and give a "God's eye view," of what's happening on board, a job usually handled by a plane or helicopter, said Craig Benson, director of business development for the company.

Both the aerostat and the drone have been used widely by the U.S. government for overseas actions, but Harris and others aboard the Swift said neither has been used before by the Navy to conduct counter-drug operations.

Unmanned aerial devices, however, are not new to the drug fight. U.S. Customs and Border Protection operates 10 Predator drones, including two based in Cape Canaveral, Florida, that patrol a wide swathe of the Caribbean through the Bahamas and down to south of Puerto Rico. It deployed one to the Dominican Republic last year for six weeks and has considered using one in Honduras. The others are used along the northern and southern borders of the United States.

The U.S. military has long been deeply involved in counter-drug operations in the Southern Hemisphere, coordinated by a multi-agency task force based in Key West, Florida. Navy ships and Air Force jets use their radar to track and run down smugglers, though for legal reasons the actual arrests are carried out by the Coast Guard, civilian agencies or officials from other countries.

In March, the military said it would reduce patrols and sorties in Latin America and the Caribbean because of the automatic spending cuts imposed by Congress, another argument for increased use of aerial surveillance devices like the aerostat and drone, officials said.

Representatives on the Swift from both contractors declined to say what their systems cost. But they said each can be run at a fraction of the cost of the fixed-wing planes or helicopters usually dispatched to check out suspected smugglers.

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Homeland Security

Dissent Arises on Panel Set Up to Create Communication Network for First Responders

By EDWARD WYATT — Saturday, April 27th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’

WASHINGTON — A $7 billion nationwide public safety communications network, conceived to address the failures of Sept. 11, 2001, is still in the planning stages. But one member of the board overseeing the effort says it is already rife with problems.

Sheriff Paul Fitzgerald of Story County, Iowa, delivered that assessment on Tuesday in blistering remarks to his colleagues at a meeting of the board of FirstNet, the First Responder Network Authority, created by Congress to oversee the building of the system.

Sheriff Fitzgerald said that the planning effort had already been tainted by secret meetings of small groups of directors, the withholding of financial information from some board members, conflicts of interest in the hiring of consultants and the exclusion of police and fire officials from the planning process.

“In my view, the processes thus far employed by FirstNet are killing our credibility,” Sheriff Fitzgerald told the board, according to a written copy of his remarks circulated at the meeting.

Other board members deny those charges and say that the process is working well. They point to a 14-to-1 vote by the board on Tuesday to table a resolution submitted by Sheriff Fitzgerald aimed at addressing his complaints. Among those who voted against him were the three other public safety representatives on the board.

Nevertheless, the board will review the accusations and make public the results, said Jeffrey Johnson, a board member and retired fire chief from Oregon who is chief executive of the Western Fire Chiefs Association.

“Our highest priority has always been, and continues to be, serving the public safety community,” Mr. Johnson said.

Several public safety trade groups, including the International Association of Fire Chiefs, the Metropolitan Fire Chiefs Association and the Major Cities Chiefs Association, a police group, issued statements after the meeting supporting the board and its outreach process.

Sheriff Fitzgerald’s accusations, which were first reported by the Web site fiercebroadbandwireless.com, are noteworthy because public safety officials were crucial to getting Congress to approve the system’s financing in February 2012. But they are outnumbered on the board, holding four seats compared with six members who are former executives of telecommunications companies, including the board’s chairman, Samuel Ginn. He started a wireless company that was a predecessor to Verizon Wireless.

Telecommunications companies stand to reap billions of dollars from the construction and operation of the system. The remainder of the board includes a former mayor of Denver; a government information technology expert; and representatives from the Homeland Security and Justice Departments and the Office of Management and Budget.

Sheriff Fitzgerald said that the board’s former telecommunications executives were driving the planning of the network, possibly in a way that favors “their commercial vision rather than the vision of the public safety users,” according to a written copy of his remarks circulated at the meeting. “This is supposed to be our network.”

One of the board’s first acts last year was to structure a Public Safety Advisory Committee to solicit feedback from first responders, who will be using the network to respond to emergencies.

The network is necessary, proponents say, to allow first responders from disparate jurisdictions or departments to communicate with one another at the site of an emergency.

During the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, New York Police Department commanders at the World Trade Center could not communicate by radio with Fire Department officials because their systems were incompatible. The same problem surfaced when emergency personnel from other cities responded after Hurricane Katrina and other disasters.

Before the FirstNet board organized the public safety advisers group, however, preliminary design alternatives for the FirstNet system were outlined and presented to the board by F. Craig Farrill, a former telecommunications executive who once served as chief technical officer for Vodafone AirTouch, also a predecessor to Verizon Wireless. The board then put out its alternatives for public comment.

One plan called for the network to be built through partnerships with the companies that operate many of the commercial wireless systems that are already in place.

Sheriff Fitzgerald said that the board produced no analysis of alternatives to the plan’s “heavy dependence upon commercial wireless carriers.”

But board members say that no decisions about the system’s structure have been made, and that any systems sketched out so far are more akin to outlines than blueprints.

“The board has been really aggressive about engaging the Public Safety Advisory Committee,” said Mr. Johnson, who was appointed as the board’s liaison to the public safety advisers. “As a member of public safety, I feel listened to.”

Sheriff Fitzgerald also alleged conduct — like private meetings of groups of directors — that could violate federal laws requiring government bodies to make their actions transparent to the public. The FirstNet board has met publicly five times so far.

Mr. Johnson said that all of the board’s meetings “have followed that guideline” requiring a transparent process.

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The great surveillance boom
Video surveillance is already big business. In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, expect it to get even bigger.

By Keith Proctor — Friday, April 26th, 2013; 4:56 p.m. ‘CNN Money / Fortune Magazine’

FORTUNE -- Video surveillance is big business. Expect it to get bigger. After law enforcement used closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras to help identify last week's Boston bombing suspects, lawmakers and surveillance advocates renewed calls for increased numbers of cameras nationwide.

"We need more cameras, and we need them now," ran a Slate headline.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) agrees. In an interview the day after the bombings with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell, he called for more video surveillance so that we can "stay ahead of the terrorists."

"So yes, I do favor more cameras," said King, who sits on the U.S. House Homeland Security and Intelligence committees and has also called for increased monitoring of Muslim Americans. "They're a great law enforcement method and device. And again, it keeps us ahead of the terrorists, who are constantly trying to kill us."

Law enforcement officials in New York are almost certain to oblige. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly wants to "increase significantly" the amount of surveillance equipment in Manhattan, which already has one of the country's most robust systems.

The argument for greater surveillance is straightforward. Horrible events in places like Boston remind us that we're vulnerable. The best way to limit events like last week's bombings, the argument goes, is to accept 24-hour surveillance in public spaces. And when you see someone maimed by bomb shrapnel, privacy concerns sound coldly abstract.

No amount of security can completely eliminate risk, so it's difficult to know where to draw the line. Are 10,000 cameras really twice as good as 5,000? In tragedy's aftermath, it can be tough to have a serious conversation about how much to invest. But when the goal is to push risk as close to zero as possible, spending can asymptotically stretch into infinity.

Bigger than TARP and the New Deal

The U.S. is no stranger to this dilemma. In response to security concerns after 9/11, Americans witnessed the growth of a massive domestic security apparatus, fueled by federal largesse. According to Tomdispatch's Mattea Kramer and Chris Heilman, post-9/11 federal spending on homeland security exceeds $790 billion. That's larger than TARP and, when adjusted for inflation, the New Deal.

Exactly how much the U.S. has spent on domestic surveillance is murky. Municipalities aren't particularly keen on sharing how many cameras they've installed. And homeland security grant funding, in many cases, does not require a line-item accounting of how cities have used federal funds.

Nevertheless, U.S. investment has helped fuel the growth of a global video surveillance industry. According to a 2011 report by Electronics.ca Publications, a market research firm, the video surveillance market was slated to grow from $11.5 billion in 2008 to $37.5 billion in 2015.

The post-9/11 investment legacy is apparent in the near-ubiquitous presence of law enforcement CCTV cameras. For instance, New York City has more than 4,000 cameras in Manhattan alone, according to the ACLU. Chicago's linked public and private security cameras number around 10,000. But based on international comparisons, there's still a lot of room for U.S. surveillance to grow. In London -- the Xanadu of winking, digital eyes -- surveillance cameras total an estimated half-million.

In recent years, however, the spigot of U.S. federal funding for state and local security has tightened. Homeland security grants earmarked for states dropped from $2 billion in 2003 to $294 million last year. With federal budget sequestration coming into effect, those funds may be further squeezed.

Rep. King fretted at the lack of federal commitment. The war against terror is not over, he told MSNBC. "And it's foolhardy to be making cuts in Homeland Security...."

Critics say too much of the money has been directed to small states and that grant programs lack suitable oversight. Too much money, they say, has been frittered away.

Indeed, in the years after 9/11, some expenditures were spectacularly brainless. An Indiana county used its $300,000 Electronic Emergency Message Boards -- to be used solely to alert the community of, you know, emergencies -- to advertise the volunteer fire department's fish fry. Western Michigan counties used homeland security dollars to purchase 13 $900 Sno-Cone machines.

Plenty of eyes. What about brains?

Waste aside, the question is whether surveillance investment can actually make Americans safer. When the Boston bombing suspects appeared on CCTV footage, some commentators saw it as evidence of the value of dense surveillance.

Except Boston is not a heavily surveilled city. Compared to New York or Chicago, it's a fly-weight, and lacks the centralized, government-coordinated surveillance systems of other urban areas. As detailed in a December 2011 report released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts, there are at least 55 law-enforcement cameras in Boston, 92 in surrounding cities, and approximately 600 in the metro system. Last year, Massachusetts received only $4 million in state homeland security grants. In per capita terms, it ranked 34th in the country in homeland security grant spending.

Yet in the aftermath of the Marathon bombings, residents and law enforcement responded valiantly. A range of surveillance methods were used: public and private CCTV cameras, cell phone cameras, eye witnesses. The suspects were quickly identified, and killed or apprehended. If Boston had twice as many cameras, or 10 times as many, would the suspects have been identified more quickly? Would a larger, more centralized surveillance system have deterred them? Perhaps most importantly, would law enforcement have been able to prevent the bombs from going off in the first place?

According to critics of surveillance, cameras aid investigation and apprehension in the aftermath, not the prevention, of acts of terrorism. In London, which Rudy Giuliani called the "Hollywood studio" of surveillance, cameras played an instrumental role in quickly identifying the 7/7 bombers. Sadly, it was only after the fact.

"What we saw in Boston largely confirmed what we already knew," said Ben Wizner, Director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy & Technology Project. "Cameras are ineffective at the prevention and deterrence of serious crime. They can be very effective at solving crime."

Advocates of surveillance point to advancements in technology as proof that cameras will, in the future, enhance response and assist prevention. Leaders of video surveillance -- companies like Lockheed Martin (LMT) and Northrop Grumman (NOC) -- are shifting the industry from analog to digital, and into the uncanny, science-fiction realm of smart cameras.

The future of surveillance is "video analytics," where computers will automatically analyze camera feeds to count people, register temperature changes, and, via statistical algorithms, identify suspicious behavior. No technicians required. Up to this point, surveillance has been limited by personnel: for surveillance to be useful in real-time, someone has to keep an eye on all those CCTV feeds.

And there's growing demand. A ReportsNReports analysis estimated the size of the smart surveillance and video analytics global market at $13.5 billion in 2012; it's expected to reach $39 billion by 2020.

The promise of video analytics has been oversold in the past. And yet the move toward increasingly elaborate -- and concentrated -- urban surveillance seems inevitable.

Don't expect much public opposition, either. While American aversion to the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) blunted efforts to employ surveillance drones domestically, Americans seem less bothered by security cameras. They haven't been used as high-profile tools to kill foreigners on the other side of the world. Domestic drone use feels like the government is pointing its weapons at us. Cameras are permissible because they're banal.

And, in fact, they're already here. By the thousands. There will be thousands more.

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Mike Bosak

Saturday, April 27, 2013