Monday, April 15, 2013

Female cop kills boyfriend, toddler in Brooklyn before killing self: police (The New York Daily News) and Other Monday, April 15th, 2013 NYC Police Related News Articles

Monday, April 15th, 2013 — Good Afternoon, Stay Safe

 

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108 Pct. P.O. Rosette Samuel:  Confines of the 63 Precinct:  805 East 56th Street

 


Female cop
kills boyfriend, toddler in Brooklyn before killing self: police
A 19-year-old son escaped and called police. Cops now investigating the grisly East Flatbush shooting.
By Tom Tracy , Rocco Parascandola , Edgar Sandoval AND Ginger Adams Otis — Monday, April 15th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’

 

 

A veteran city cop with 13 years on the job fatally shot her boyfriend and their 1-year-old son before turning the gun on herself in her Brooklyn home Monday, police said.

 

Sources identified the officer as Rosette Samuel, 43, who worked out of the 108th Precinct in Queens. Cops discovered the boyfriend’s body lying in the hallway of their ground-floor apartment at E. 56th St. in East Flatbush.

 

The cop, 43, and her infant son were found lying on a bed, authorities said. She had a gun at her side but authorities don’t know if it was her NYPD-issued service weapon, sources said.

 

"She shot those two then took her own life," a police source said.

 

Police didn’t find a suicide note at the scene but are checking Samuel’s e-mails to see if they shed light on the violence, a source said.

 

A relative named Jeff Joseph who said he lives a few streets away from Samuel’s apartment raced over on a bike when he heard something had happened to his cousin.

 

Tears streamed down his face as he took in the news that Samuel had allegedly killed her baby, the baby’s father, and herself.

 

"She was a very good girl," said Joseph, who didn’t give his age but appeared to be in his 40s. “She always did good with her life. I didn't make trouble because of her."

 

There were no signs of a struggle inside the apartment nor were there any breakfast preparations were under way, indicating the shootings likely occurred first thing in the morning, a police source said.

 

The dead man was believed to be between 30 and 40, cops said. His name was not immediately released.

 

The lone survivor in the apparent murder-suicide was the woman’s 19-year-old son from a previous relationship. He heard gunshots and escaped through a back window, then called police. He fled the apartment wearing only a pair of blue boxers and a windbreaker, witnesses said.

 

Joseph and neighbors identified him as Dondre Samuel.

 

Police said the female cop had worked out of a precinct covering Long Island City and Sunnyside in Queens. She earned $97,064 with overtime in 2012, according to See Through NY payroll records.

 

The family occupied the first-floor apartment of a two-story home.

 

Neighbors on the leafy, tree-lined street were shocked by the news of the double-murder-suicide on their otherwise quiet block.

 

"I just heard someone died. I don't know how anyone can do that," said shaken-up neighbor Ricky Lascare. "A kid died too. It's sad. It makes me sad."

 

Another resident said he always felt safe knowing there was a cop on the block.

 

"The cop is supposed to protect the block. If she can't protect her own house, how is she going to protect the block? Some people just can't handle it," the 44-year-old said.

 

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Officer Killed Her Boyfriend and Son in Murder-Suicide, Police Say

By WENDY RUDERMAN — Monday, April 15th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’

 

 

An off-duty police officer was believed to have shot and killed her boyfriend and their 1-year-old son, and then turned the gun on herself in an apparent murder-suicide at their Brooklyn home on Monday morning, investigators said.

 

The officer’s 19-year-old son managed to escape the three-story house on East 56th Street by fleeing through a bedroom window after hearing the sound of gunshots, said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman.

 

The son, who had been asleep in a rear bedroom, called 911 at about 8:30 a.m., and met responding officers at the front of the house in the Flatlands neighborhood, where the family rented a first-floor apartment, Mr. Browne said.

 

The bodies of the officer and baby were found, face up, on a bed in a bedroom that investigators believe the couple shared with their young child; a crib sat near the bed against a bedroom wall, Mr. Browne said. Officers discovered the body of the infant’s father lying just inside the home’s entrance in the front hallway.

 

“It was a tough crime scene,” said Mr. Browne, his words slightly halted.

 

The officer, identified by sources and property records as Rosette M. Samuel, 43, joined the police force in September 2000 and was most recently assigned to the 108th Precinct in Queens.

 

The 19-year-old, who was not identified, is Ms. Samuel’s son from a previous relationship. The infant’s father was also not identified.

 

There was nothing in the officer’s departmental record to suggest that she was troubled, the police said.

 

 

Joseph Goldstein, J. David Goodman and Nate Schweber contributed reporting.

 

 

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‘One Police Plaza’

Ray, Where Art Thou?

By: Leonard Levitt – Monday, April 15th, 2013 ‘NYPD Confidential.Com’

(Op-Ed / Commentary)

 

 

At least to this reporter, the most intriguing question of the current Stop and Frisk trial is why Police Commissioner Ray Kelly is not testifying.

 

Here is the longest-serving and most powerful police commissioner in city history.

 

Here is his signature policy, which has evolved into the single biggest police controversy of his decade-long tenure, one that strikes at the heart of his leadership, and he won’t come to court to defend it.

 

The stakes are enormous.

 

There is the real possibility that the presiding federal judge, Shira Scheindlin, might appoint an outside monitor to supervise the department, something unprecedented in New York City and a challenge to Kelly’s legacy.

 

The city’s witness list includes 100 people — from cops to precinct commanders to top brass.

 

Last week, Joe Esposito, the recently retired Chief of Department, the NYPD’s highest ranking uniformed officer, testified. Kelly’s spokesman Paul Browne, considered the most powerful man in the department after Kelly himself, is to testify this week.

 

But not the police commissioner. Why?

 

Jonathan Moore, the plaintiffs’ lead attorney, said that, when the case began five years before, he tried, unsuccessfully, to depose Kelly.

 

“Early in the case we asked to do the deposition of him because he is the top guy in the NYPD. The city didn’t want to make him available. They said he was too busy.”

 

Chris Dunn of the NY Civil Liberties Union, which is a participant in the trial, said, “Given the importance of this trial, the idea that Commissioner Kelly is too busy to testify is laughable.“

 

Judge Scheindlin has taken note of Kelly’s absence.

 

After the former police captain and now State Senator Eric Adams charged that Kelly had told him that the police stopped black youths “to instill fear of the police,” Kelly filed an affidavit saying Adams’s testimony was “absolutely, categorically untrue.”

 

Scheindlin refused to allow the city’s lawyers to introduce his affidavit, saying that if Kelly wanted to make his point he would have to testify.

 

“If he’d like to come here, he’s welcome in this courtroom,” she said.

 

So why is Kelly refusing to testify?

 

There are both advantages and disadvantages.

 

For someone as concerned about his image as Kelly, he avoids having to answer uncomfortable questions about a controversial policy that targets young black males, raising the bugaboo of “racism,” a sore and sensitive subject for the NYPD.

 

He also avoids placing himself in a position where he can be lectured by Scheindlin, who has already proven herself somebody to be reckoned with.

 

Take the exchange that occurred last week between her and Esposito.

 

As Esposito began to explain that what has been overlooked in the Stop and Frisk controversy is “how many crimes are prevented by stopping a person that is giving us reasonable suspicion,” Scheindlin cut him off.

 

His answer, she said, was “turning into a narrative, otherwise known as a speech, and I am not here for that purpose.”

 

Yet it was not Esposito who cranked up Stop and Frisk, leading to five million stops, mostly of black males between the ages of 14-21, since Kelly’s return as police commissioner in 2002.

 

Indeed, Kelly is nothing if not a micromanager, regarded as so hands-on that not even a transfer or promotion can occur without his approval.

 

“Have you discussed with Commissioner Kelly the toll that the policies that are being challenged here may be having on a generation of black and Hispanic youth?” Moore asked Esposito.

 

“I discussed the issue of stop, question, frisk with Commissioner Kelly and those issues may have come up,” Esposito answered.

 

As the Times’s Joseph Goldstein wrote: “But details were not forthcoming.”

 

So is Kelly the general who takes credit for his troops’ successes, then vanishes when danger approaches?

 

Well, for the past ten years he has trumpeted his every success both in lowering the city’s crime rate to record levels and claiming to have kept the city safe from terrorism.

 

Yet when the subject of race arises, Kelly has been especially prickly — and vulnerable for overreacting.

 

In 2004, Richard Neri, a white police officer, shot and killed Timothy Stansbury, an unarmed 19-year-old black youth, on the roof of his Brooklyn apartment building. Kelly immediately condemned Neri. Before the department’s investigation had been completed, Kelly announced that there was “no justification” for the shooting. A grand jury subsequently declined to indict Neri, concluding the shooting was accidental. Kelly ate some crow for his premature comment on the shooting.

 

In 2008, Emergency Service Unit Lieutenant Michael Pigott ordered one of his officers to taser Iman Morales, an emotionally disturbed Hispanic man who, holding an eight-foot-long fluorescent lightbulb, was menacing another officer trying to rescue him. Morales then fell to his death.

 

With the incident caught on cell phone and replayed again and again on the six o’clock news, Kelly gave the lieutenant no quarter. He stripped Pigott of his gun and badge, placed him on desk duty at another unit and warned him he faced criminal charges and prison. Eight days after the incident the lieutenant shot himself to death.

 

On the other hand, Kelly’s refusal to testify may be part of a designed strategy.

 

It allows him to issue his own statements, as he did with Adams; to offer justifications for his policies, as he did before Al Sharpton’s National Action League; and to lash out at the trial’s proceedings, as he did recently in the Wall Street Journal.

 

In the Journal interview, he said an outside monitor undermines the authority of the police commissioner and called it, “one of the biggest scams in law enforcement.” Democratic politicians, he maintained, were using it as a means to win the primary.

 

He also called Scheindlin biased. ”The judge is very much in their corner and has been all along throughout her career,” he said.

 

The question then is, who is making the decision to keep Kelly from testifying.

 

Was the strategy designed by the city’s lawyers? Or by Kelly, who has been granted iconic standing in the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg?

 

“He [Kelly] is above everything,” Moore said. “To settle a case with the city, you have to go to the NYPD to get their imprimatur. Even if the city says yes, the police can still say no.”

 

Says Dunn: “Lawyer calculus is different from Kelly’s or Bloomberg’s calculus. The decision not to have Kelly testify has enormous implications for the trial. The mayor and police commissioner almost certainly had a political reason for this decision.”

 

Corporation Counsel Michael Cardozo, who attended the trial when Esposito testified, said outside the courtroom last week that he would not discuss the city’s legal strategy as to why Kelly was not testifying.

 

Asked by this reporter whether the call was his or Kelly’s, Cardozo walked away.

 

Edited by Donald Forst

 

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NYPD - PAPD:   Déjà Vu

 

NYPD stifling bids to defect to PAPD

By PHILIP MESSING — Monday, April 15th, 2013 ‘The New York Post’

 

 

The NYPD is thwarting attempts by dozens of city cops to get higher-paying jobs with the Port Authority police, by refusing to hand over their disciplinary records, The Post has learned.

 

The NYPD went to court in 2006 and won the right to refuse to share the information — which sources at the time said was an effort to stop the drain of cops to the PA Police Department.

 

The issue surfaced again recently when the PAPD lifted a long hiring freeze.

 

Three weeks ago, the PA, eager to hire 175 new cops in August, held an orientation for about 2,400 potential police candidates in Jersey City — including 60 current NYPD cops.

 

All had passed a PAPD entrance exam seven years ago.

 

But the city cops were “summoned by name to a separate room and never seen again,” explained a source.

 

Each was told his candidacy had been “deferred” because the NYPD was refusing to provide the PA with his full employment and disciplinary record.

 

Because the PA can’t fully vet them, they can’t be hired, the sources added.

 

PA cops earn $90,000 annually after five years, while an NYPD officer earns a base salary of $76,488 after 5 1/2 years of service.

 

The NYPD did not return requests for comment.

 

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Independent Inspector General for the NYPD

 

Adding another layer of oversight to NYPD will serve no purpose
Guest columnist Ernie Naspretto argues administrative bureaucratic plan is needless

By Ernie Naspretto — Monday, April 15th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’

(Op-Ed / Commentary)

 

 

The election-year brainstorm to add another layer of administrative bureaucratic oversight to the NYPD will serve absolutely no purpose other than to give some recent college graduates with criminal justice degrees an opportunity to land a city job.

 

It seems most of the major mayoral candidates will say literally anything they perceive as politically expedient — in this case installing a new inspector general to monitor our terrible police department. You know, that same terrible department filled with racist cops whose strategies in battling crime help bring down the murder rate to the lowest it’s been in 50 years.

 

New Yorkers have heard it a million times over the years. Apparently, the new flavor of the month is the stop, question and frisk procedure. With a case now in federal court overseen by a judge who appears just to be going through the motions before she rules against the NYPD, the political arena is ripe for police bashing.

 

I was one of those criminal justice graduates in 1980 when I was hired as a confidential investigator for the Inspector General for the Department of Employment, which no longer exists.

 

Here’s the reality of the inspector general program: In its present form, it was instituted by Mayor Ed Koch in the late 1970s during his first term. The IG acts as the eyes and ears of a given agency’s commissioner, but is supposed to work relatively independently of that commissioner. The office also serves as an auditor in some ways. The IG can investigate anything from minor administrative violations to outright criminal behavior, the latter eventually being referred to the Department of Investigation which will make arrests. These are all useful functions.

 

As a former NYPD captain, I would like to share some perspective. Keep in mind, I don’t need your vote, so my observations are probably more credible and genuine than those of would-be, hope-to-be, probably-won’t-be mayors.

 

Let’s see what units, agencies and other government bodies monitor and investigate the NYPD. Internally, the department has a Quality Assurance Division, individual borough inspection units, individual bureau (patrol, detective, narcotics, etc) inspection units and, of course, internal affairs. Ask any cop assigned to these internal units how many Christmas cards he or she receives from fellow cops. Not many. Externally, we have the five district attorneys, two U.S. attorneys, the Civilian Complaint Review Board and I’m sure there are more that I can’t remember right now.

 

The point: There isn’t a government agency on this planet that has more oversight, internally or externally, than the NYPD. What will this new inspector general do that isn’t being done already? Well, as previously mentioned, some recent college grads will get jobs, but they’ll be provisional, meaning not protected by civil service, so applicants beware. These “investigators” will have a wealth of experience from various criminal justice classes where they saw slides of crime scenes and graphs. This new hot IG office will generate a lot of press releases that very few media outlets will pick up or care about. And, taxpayers will get stuck with the bill for salaries, rent, vehicles, health insurance, sick time, etc. The bang for the buck will amount to no more than a puff. Ask teachers who have to use their own money to buy pencils for their students if this is a good way for the city to spend tax dollars.

 

Addressing the stop-and-frisk issue is very important. But, true change will only come about through philosophical changes on top which must filter down through the ranks, i.e. discontinuing these stop-and-frisk reports as a measure of productivity at Compstat meetings.

 

The issue will not go away because a new taxpayer-funded agency filled with provisional investigators is formed.

 

Ernie Naspretto is a retired NYPD captain and former Daily News crime reporter.

 

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NYPD Stop, Question and Frisk Trial

 

The trouble with the frisk trial
What about the anguish caused by the violent crime that cops fight?

By Heather Mac Donald — Monday, April 15th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’
(Op-Ed / Commentary)

 

 

The stop, question and frisk lawsuit against the New York Police Department has featured testimony about being frisked and searched that is almost pornographic in its detail. Under questioning from their lawyers, plaintiffs have luridly described how officers ran their hands up the insides of their legs or patted down their backsides.

 

The plaintiffs’ attorneys have focused with equal intensity on how their clients felt during the stops. The answers inevitably come back: humiliated, degraded, criminalized. One witness broke down in tears on the stand describing being handcuffed and put in the back of a police car outside his apartment.

 

Such testimony is powerful and deserves to be heard. Supporters of proactive policing must always bear in mind that the tactic imposes real costs on innocent people who have been stopped, however legally justified the stop. Being jacked up against a wall and frisked when you have done nothing wrong can be scary, infuriating and alienating; such a burden must be weighed against the tactic’s benefits.

 

But the picture of NYPD policing being drawn by attorneys from the Center for Constitutional Rights and the law firm of Covington & Burling is fatally incomplete. Here is what we are not hearing that would balance the equation: equally graphic descriptions of how bullets tear through flesh, what a homicide victim looks like after being shot and how morgues smell in the middle of the night.

 

But no mother who has lost a child to gun violence will break down in tears on the stand describing what it felt like to receive the news of her child’s death, because U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin has ruled that all such testimony must be kept out of the courtroom.

 

Scheindlin’s evidentiary rulings on such matters are only partially correct. She is on firmest ground excluding evidence of the contribution of proactive policing to New York’s record-breaking crime drop. The question before the court is whether the NYPD is knowingly engaged in the widespread practice of unconstitutional, race-based stops. The fact that such a regime, if it exists, may be effective in lowering crime is not relevant to assessing its legality.

 

But if the efficacy of stops is irrelevant to the case against the NYPD, so, too, are the feelings of the plaintiffs who have been stopped. The fact that someone felt degraded does not mean that the officer did not have legal grounds for accosting him.

 

In allowing and even encouraging such testimony, Scheindlin is simply bulking up a one-sided, emotional brief against the NYPD. If the plaintiffs can testify about their feelings, crime victims and their families should be able to testify about theirs.

 

Plaintiffs’ counsel has so far failed to make the case that the NYPD is engaged in systemic illegal behavior. But even were Scheindlin to rule in favor of the city and uphold the department’s stop, question and frisk practices — a highly unlikely outcome in light of her previous statements and rulings — the question of whether to end the tactic will remain in the political arena.

 

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Monday, April 15th, 2013 ‘The New York Post’ Editorial:

Clearing the cops

 

 

Surprise: The big lawsuit against the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program, which enters its fifth week today, is actually doing the city a service — by proving, with each passing day of the trial, that critics have no valid legal claim against it.

 

Indeed, New Yorkers can take some comfort in how rapidly the case is falling apart.

 

Consider:

 

* Of some 4.6 million documented stops between 2004 and 2012, the strongest “victims” that could be produced include one who admitted having lied about his stop and another who is black but concedes he has “no idea” if cops detained him based on race — a key charge leveled by plaintiffs.

 

Plus, a review panel cleared the police in many of the stops in question.

 

* An NYPD inspector who allegedly instructed a cop to target minorities turns out to have told him to do just the opposite.

 

Far from being racist, the inspector seems to be a staunch defender of minorities: On tape, he stresses to his underling that “99 percent of the people in this community are great, hard-working people who deserve to walk to the train stop, walk to their car” without fear of being shot.

 

* An “expert” who was supposed to prove the stops are unjustified was able to show cops failing to cite good reasons for them only 6 percent of the time.

 

* The plaintiffs’ lawyers resorted to having state Sen. Eric Adams testify that Commissioner Ray Kelly once said he sought to “target” minorities in order to “instill fear in them” that they could be stopped whenever they stepped outdoors.

 

Please. Adams has made a career of calling the NYPD racist. And, to no surprise, no one else who heard Kelly’s comments was able to back up Adams’ claim.

 

If this is the best the plaintiffs can do, the city can sure feel good about its cops.

 

No, the trial’s not over. Nor does the weakness of the case guarantee it’ll end with stop-and-frisk exonerated: Judge Shira Scheindlin has made clear that she believed the NYPD guilty long before the first witness even took the stand.

 

Still, as cops use stop-and-frisk every day to keep New Yorkers safe, it’s nice to see the allegations against the program so publicly discredited in court.

 

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NYPD ‘Operation Lucky Bag’

 

Take the Bait? NYPD Anti-Theft Tactics Criticized

By TOM HAYS  (The Associated Press)  —  Sunday, April 14th, 2013; 8:59 p.m. EDT

 

 

Sometimes the bait is a small amount of cash in a stray wallet. Or a credit card. Even a pack of cigarettes can do the trick.

 

Police in New York City leave the items unattended — on subway platforms, on park benches, in cars — and wait to see if someone grabs them.

 

The New York Police Department says the practice has been a valuable tool for catching career criminals and deterring thefts in public places. But a recent court ruling throwing out a larceny case against a Bronx woman cast a harsh light on a tactic critics say too often sweeps up innocent people.

 

Judge Linda Poust Lopez found that there was no proof Deirdre Myers tried to steal anything — and that she was framed by a sting that took the tactic way too far.

 

Upholding the charges "would greatly damage the confidence and trust of the public in the fairness and effectiveness of the criminal justice system, and rightly so," the judge wrote.

 

Myers, a 40-year-old single mother with no criminal record, has since sued the city, claiming she and her daughter were traumatized by a wrongful arrest in 2010.

 

"You know how embarrassing and humiliating this was?" Myers said. "I'd never been stopped by the police for anything in my life."

 

The city Law Department is still reviewing Myers' lawsuit, city attorney Raju Sundaran said in a statement. But, he added, "undercover sting operations are lawful and help reduce crime."

 

The judge suggested that Myers' brush with the law had its roots in the so-called lucky bag operation that the NYPD began in 2006 to deter thefts of wallets, shopping bags, smartphones and other valuables in the subways.

 

A typical scenario was for a plainclothes officer to place a handbag with cash on a train platform and briefly look or step away. Anyone who took the bag, then passed up chances to return it to the undercover cop or to report it to a uniformed officer posted nearby could be locked up.

 

At the time, police credited the subway operation with driving down crime there. They say they still use the tactic when they see a spike in thefts of personal property in public places such as Grand Central Terminal or Central Park. But they now require more evidence of intent — a suspect trying to hide a wallet or taking cash out of it and throwing it away — before making an arrest.

 

Last year, police arrested a tourist from Atlanta in Central Park after he picked up a purse and took out $27 stashed inside, according to court papers in another pending civil case. He ended up paying a $120 fine as part of a plea bargain.

 

Authorities began using "bait cars" about six years ago in the Bronx to combat a chronic problem with car thefts and break-ins in working-class neighborhoods. In most cases, police plant property — an iPad, a pack of cigarettes — in plain sight as the bait for thieves but make sure the car is locked so that a suspect would have to take the extra step of breaking in before being arrested.

 

But the strategy used in the Myers case "was certainly the most extreme version of the operation that we've seen," said her attorney, Ann Mauer.

 

According to court papers and to Myers' account, she and her daughter Kenya, then a 15-year-old high school student, were sitting on the stoop of their building when the sting unfolded

 

"It seemed like everybody in the Bronx was out that night," she said in an interview monitored by Vik Pawar, her attorney in her federal lawsuit.

 

The summer scene was interrupted by a bit of theater staged by police: A dark car raced down the block before stopping. Another vehicle carrying plainclothes officers wasn't far behind. When the driver got out and ran, the officers gave chase, yelling, "Stop! Police!" her suit says.

 

Myers' daughter, seeing that the driver left the car door open, went over and peered inside to see personal items that included what looked like a bundle of cash — in reality, a dollar bill wrapped around pieces of newspaper. The girl had called her mother over when another set of police officers suddenly pulled up in a van and forced them to the ground, according to Myers' account.

 

"Get on the floor? For what?" Myers recalled telling the officers.

 

The officers took them into custody, even though they never touched anything inside the car, the suit says. While entering a stationhouse in handcuffs, Myers spotted the driver of the car standing outside, smoking a cigarette. It dawned on her that he was an undercover with a starring role in the sting — a suspicion supported by the court ruling.

 

"I thought I was in 'The Twilight Zone,'" she said.

 

The girl ultimately wasn't charged. But her mother spent more than two years fighting charges of petty larceny and possession of stolen property.

 

A spokesman for the Bronx District Attorney's office conceded that the bait car had been left unlocked and said prosecutors would not appeal the judge's ruling. He declined to comment further.

 

Though defense attorneys in the Bronx say there have been a few other cases involving bait cars and pretend police pursuits, the tactic hasn't drawn much attention outside the borough.

 

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union and a lucky bag critic, said she wasn't aware that police were using decoy cars until asked about the Myers case.

 

"It's such a bizarre and extreme attempt to set somebody up," Lieberman said. "It's like lucky bag on steroids."

 

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The NYPD's Taunting Thieves with iPads and Purses Full of Cash

By Adam Clark Estes — Sunday, April 14th, 2013 ‘The Atlantic Wire’ / Washington, DC

 

 

New York City isn't necessarily known to be home to the country's friendliest police force, but the NYPD's latest tactics for cutting down on petty theft sound downright mean. The method involves leaving valuable items — a purse full of cash, an iPad, a wallet, a pack of cigarettes — unattended and waiting to see if people decide to rip it off. The NYPD says the technique "has been a valuable tool for catching career criminals and deterring thefts in public places," according to the Associated Press. Critics, however, maintain that these sting operations border on entrapment.

 

Although the NYPD's been doing this for years, objections to the method are just now bubbling up in the courts. It would be hard to think of a more telling example of an innocent person being tricked into quasi-criminal behavior than the case of Deirdre Myers, a 40-year-old single mother who was arrested in the Bronx in 2010 for basically looking inside of a car. The incident almost sounds like a prank. Myers was stoop-sitting in front of her building when a car being followed by police squealed to a stop in the street. The driver jumped out and ran; the police chased after him. Confused by the whole scene Myers went to have a look inside of the would-be perpetrator's abandoned car, where she saw what appeared to be a roll of cash sitting inside. But without having reached for the bait at all, Myers found herself on the ground in handcuffs. She was confused when the cops that arrested her pulled up to the station and she saw the driver of the abandoned car smoking a cigarette out front. He was an undercover officer.

 

The NYPD seems to these entrapment-like strategies. It helps get the arrest count up and every now and again they probably do catch a career criminal or real bad guy. They've discussed using the technique to identify individuals who might commit a mass shooting and have drawn criticism for using it as an anti-terrorism technique. The NYPD's been criticized for this practiced, nicknamed Operation Lucky Bag, in recent years as well, after some said it was "ill advised and… a clear violation of civil rights." However, arresting single mothers for looking inside of abandoned cars is just crazy. "It's such a bizarre and extreme attempt to set somebody up," executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union Donna Lieberman told the AP. "It's like lucky bag on steroids."

 

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Judge Rules Against NYPD Theft-Baiting

By Adam Martin — Sunday, April 14th, 2013; 2:45 p.m. ‘New York Magazine’

 

 

A New York City judge's harshly worded ruling has brought some attention to yet another questionable NYPD tactic: setting up elaborate scenes to encourage acts of theft. After a two-year legal fight, Judge Linda Poust Lopez has dismissed the larceny case against the Bronx's Deirdre Myers, a 40-year-old single mother with no criminal history who was arrested as a result of an "bait car" sting in 2010. Myers and her 15-year-old daughter, Kenya, were sitting on their stoop when, according to the AP, a dark car raced down the block before stopping. Another vehicle carrying plainclothes officers wasn't far behind. When the driver got out and ran, the officers gave chase, yelling, "Stop! Police!"

 

Myers' daughter, seeing that the driver left the car door open, went over and peered inside to see personal items that included what looked like a bundle of cash — in reality, a dollar bill wrapped around pieces of newspaper. The girl had called her mother over when another set of police officers suddenly pulled up in a van and forced them to the ground ... The officers took them into custody, even though they never touched anything inside the car, the suit says.

 

Judge Lopez ruled that upholding the charges against Myers "would greatly damage the confidence and trust of the public in the fairness and effectiveness of the criminal justice system, and rightly so." While what happened to Myers was described as "extreme," the strategy behind it isn't new. Back in 2006, the NYPD began conducting so-called "lucky bag operations" as a way to deter subway theft: A plainclothes officer would leave a cash-filled handbag on the train platform and then watch to see if anyone picked it up. People who "passed up chances to return it to the undercover cop or to report it to a uniformed officer posted nearby" were subject to arrest. Shortly after, the NYPD started planting valuables in locked cars "so that a suspect would have to take the extra step of breaking in before being arrested."

 

A spokesman for the Bronx District Attorney's office said that prosecutors would not appeal the ruling. However, defense lawyers in the Bronx have said that they are aware of "a few other" incidents featuring theatrics like those in the Myers case, while New York Civil Liberties executive director Donna Lieberman told the AP that she had only learned of the "bait cars" because of the incident. So, this probably isn't the last we'll hear about this particular program.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

NYPD $$ Lawyer Lotto $$ Bonanza

 

Monday, April 15th, 2013 ‘The New York Post’ Editorial:

Occupy easy street

 

 

New York just saw a huge victory for the 1 percent: Occupy Wall Street’s lawyers.

 

Last Tuesday, the city settled a lawsuit brought by Occupy Wall Street protesters who claimed police had seized and destroyed their library in November 2011. The city agreed to pay them $47,000. That’s a pittance compared to what civil-rights attorney Norman Siegel’s firm earned for repping the protesters in that suit.

 

Siegel’s firm pulled in $185,000 in legal fees — four times more than Occupy won for its ruined books. Rather than coming from their clients, about 95 percent of that tab will be picked up by city taxpayers, thanks to a federal law that allows civil-rights lawyers to collect big paydays when they win cases.

 

“It’s not unusual that firms sometimes get more than the clients,” Siegel said, noting that he had originally sought an even larger fee from the city, about $235,000 in all.

 

Well, not everyone can be as pure of spirit as the squatters of Zuccotti Park.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

NYPD Forgotten History

 

Tomorrow Will Be the 143rd Anniversary of the Establishment of the NYPD

The Formal Change of Command Ceremony Establishing the NYPD was Held at 12 noon on Saturday, April 16th, 1870
By: Retired Sergeant Michael E.J. Bosak

© 2008 – All rights reserved

 

 

Many old time MOS will remember that the department had celebrated the 150th Anniversary of the establishment of the NYPD in 1995.

 

The ceremonies that were held at 1 PP were all very professional and impressive. There was even a “150th Anniversary Brest Bar” issued by the department. Calendar and posters exclaimed the same.  Not to mention that the auditorium at 1 Police Plaza for many years was adored with a huge 1845-1995 150 Years sign.   

 

However, there was only one slight little problem – 1845 wasn’t the year that the NYPD was established. 

 

In 1845 New York City got its first organized police department, but it wasn’t the NYPD.

 

When the department celebrated its supposed 150th Anniversary, we were deceived big-time by a few devious and historically-illiterate individuals, who basically winged it or had their own agendas. (Hint: One has written a number of  books on NYPD history and is frequently quoted in the newspapers fronting for Raymond Kelly.)

 

They just made it up! There is no other logical reason for it having happened.  Just ask yourself, have you ever seen the day and date anywhere from the department giving you the exact date that the NYPD was established in 1845?

 

The answer is a resounding no!!  Not at the Police Museum, not at John Jay and certainly not at One Police Plaza.

 

Anyway, in April of 1857, that Tammany led New York City Municipal Police Department that was created in 1845, was replaced by a Republican sponsored New York State statute that established the Metropolitan Police District and took the power and responsibility for policing the City of New York away from the Democrats and gave it to the Republicans in Albany.

 

Twelve years later, the Democrats under William M. Tweed, the chairman of the New York County Democratic Committee and Grand Sachem of the Tammany Society, won a resounding victory in the 1869 elections that gave both houses of the legislature back to the Democrats, and put a democrat into office as governor.

 

On April 5th, 1870, two laws supported by Tweed were passed, signed by the governor and became law. The first was a new state election law, pertinent to New York City. 

 

The second was a piece of legislation, sponsored by Tweed himself, which came to be known as the “Tweed Charter” or Chapter 137 of the NYS Laws of 1870 that established the NYPD. It was passed by the state senate 30 to 2 and signed into law that night by the then Governor John Hoffman.

 

Article Seven of this ‘Tweed Charter,’ took the responsibility for policing the City of New York from the state’s Metropolitan Police Department and gave it to the NYPD, which it created.

 

This Tweed Charter, as amended on April 15th, 1870, was implemented to the full extent of the law the next day. 

 

The state’s Metropolitan Police Department continued to exist and still policed the City of Brooklyn, Long Island City, Westchester (Yonkers) and Richmond Counties, which at the time were not part of New York City.

 

The change of command ceremony took place at 12 noon on Saturday, the 16th of April, 1870 at the ‘Central Office of Police,’ 300 Mulberry Street.

 

- - -

 

 

Here’s the short story of the passing of that police torch in the words of those who have gone before us that were there.

 

On April 11, 1870, the first four (4) men appointed as Police Commissioner on the NYPD released this first official statement to the public:

 

“The new charter provides that the department of police shall consist of a board of police composed of four commissioners, and said board shall be the head of said department. The commissioners shall be first appointed for respective terms of eight, seven, six and five years. For vacancies occurring or for terms succeeding expiration of office the term of office to each commissioner shall be eight years. Each member of the board of police shall receive an annual salary equal to the salary designated to the Recorder of the City of New York.

 

The old Police Board is thus disposed of by the Charter. The City of New York is hereby excepted from the provisions of an act entitled, “An act to establish a Metropolitan Police District and to provide for the government thereof,” passed April 15, 1857, and of the acts amendatory thereof, and any sections of statutes and provisions of law which created said district are hereby repealed.

 

Section seventy-six furthermore says that upon notice to the Board of Metropolitan Police by the commissioners first appointed under this act of their appointment and qualification the powers and duties of the said Board of Metropolitan Police and of the officers of the said board (except as herein provided) shall cease and be no longer operative within the city and county of New York. All powers and duties of the Board of Metropolitan Police and of the members of the Metropolitan Police Force heretofore exercised according to law, and all the provisions of law which related to the police of the Metropolitan Police district, so far as they are not respectively in conflict or inconsistent with the provisions of this act, are hereby devolved upon the police department herein created, and upon the police force hereby established, and shall be extended and applied to the Police Department created by this act.

 

 

Joseph S. Bosworth

Henry Smith

Matthew T. Brennan

Benjamin F. Manierre 

 

 

NOTE:  By law two of the NYPD police commissioners had to be Democrats and two Republicans.  Bosworth and Brennan were Democrats and Henry Smith and Ben Manierre were Republicans in name only, actually having somewhat strong ties to Boss Tweed.

 

- - -

 

Metropolitan Police Department’s Superintendant of Police John A. Kennedy Letter of Resignation

Note:   Kennedy was appointed NYPD acting Superintendant of Police on April 11, 1870. He was to hold that position to 12 noon of April 16, 1870 to facilitate the transfer of men and property to the newly created NYPD – a position that technically had no men to command.

 

 

Office of the Superintendent of

Metropolitan Police

New York, April 11, 1870

 

 

To the COMMISSIONERS OF METROPOLITAN POLICE:

 

    Gentlemen – In view of the change to be effected under recent legislation in the unity and government of the police organization with the Metropolitan district, I deem it proper to anticipate a final dissolution of the said district by tendering to your honorable Board my resignation of the office of Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police of the State of New York, to take effect on the 16th inst.; also my resignation of the office of Superintendent of the Police Department of the city of New York, devolved on me by the act creating that department, passed April 5, 1870

 

    Allow me, gentlemen, to make acknowledgments to you for the generous support I have received from you in the discharge of the duties of my office and for the many acts of kindness each of you has extended to me personally during the period of our official connection.

 

    Hoping your new relations to the public may prove as successful as the old one in enforcing the laws, protecting persons and property and preserving good order, I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

 

/ s /

 

JOHN A.  KENNEDY, Superintendent

 

- - -

The new NYPD Board of Police Commissioners on April 11th, 1870 unanimously appointed Captain John Jourdan of the Metropolitan PD’s 6th Precinct as NYPD’s first Superintendant of Police to take effect on the 16th.  He was summoned to the Central Office of Police, 300 Mulberry Street and accepted the position. He would be the NYPD’s first ‘Chief of Department’.

 

- - -

 

 

N.Y.P.D. General Order # 1
(Establishes the Department)

 

GENERAL ORDER # 1

OFFICE SUPERINTENDENT OF POLICE

300 Mulberry Street, New York, April 12, 1870

 

 

Captain ____________, ______________ Precinct – It becomes my duty to announce to the officers and members of the force that the Board of Police of the Police Department of the city of New York was this day duly organized, the following Commissioners being present:  Joseph S. Bosworth, Henry Smith, , Matthew T. Brennan and Benjamin F. Manierre. Commissioner Bosworth was elected President, Commissioner Brennan, Treasurer, and Mr. Seth C. Hawley, Chief Clerk. 

 

The resignation of Superintendent of Police Kennedy having been accepted, to take effect on the 16th inst., Captain John Jourdan was unanimously elected to the office of Superintendent of Police of the city of New York, and will assume the duties of that office on Saturday, the 16th inst., on and after which day you will recognize and obey him accordingly.

 

/ s /

 

            JOHN A. KENNEDY, Superintendent

 

/ s /

 

GEORGE W. DILKS, Inspector

 

- - -


The Change of Command Ceremony as reported in the New York Herald 

 

 

The New Police Regime
Installation of Superintendent Jourdan – Kennedy Happy – Jourdan Ditto – Declaration of Policy – No Quarter to Thieves – “Eternal Vigilance” – Politics Ignored – Honors to  One of Jourdan’s Pupils

Unnamed Author(s) – Tuesday, April 17th, 1870 ‘The New York Herald’ / New York, NY

 

 

The 16th day of April will long be remembered by the police force of the city of New York as the epoch from which commences what promises to be radical reform in the administration of the police system. Superintendent Kennedy yesterday laid down the crown and scepter; with which he has ruled the metropolis for nearly ten years, and they were modestly lifted by John Jourdan, his successor.

 

 

THE EXCITEMENT ABOUT THE BUILDING

 

It was announced that the ceremony of transfer would take place at noon. At an early hour in the morning a large number of captains, sergeants and citizens crowded the rooms in expectation of the event. Mr. Kennedy, who, with all his eccentricities, is unusually esteemed by the force, spent the morning in packing up and receiving the congratulations of friends upon his relief from the responsible cares of the office he has so long filled. He had a pleasant smile and the word for everyone who approached him and was in an unusually good humor. About half-past eleven Superintendent Jourdan appeared in the building and at once proceeded to Mr. Kennedy’s room, where he was closeted for some minutes.  As he emerged several prominent citizens expressed their congratulations and welcomed him to the building. He proceeded to Commissioner Brennan’s room and was in consultation with him for a few minutes.

 

Later in the day – at noon precisely – Mr. Jourdan proceeded to Mr. Kennedy’s office, followed by Mr Bosworth, president of the Board.  The outer room was instantly thronged by officers and citizens, who followed the three officials to President Bosworth’s room on the second floor.

 

 

THE CEREMONIES OF INDUCTION

 

Commissioners Brennan and Smith not being in attendance,

 

Judge Bosworth remarked to James Hawley, Jr., with a smile, “Inform Messrs. Smith and Brennan that the bride and bridegroom await them.”  Those officials came in, when Superintendent Kennedy straightened himself up to his full height and remarked:  -

 

(Edited for brevity: Lots of flowery speeches followed and are omitted here for the sake of space.)

 

- - -

 

NYPD’s ‘First’ UF 49

 

The following communication was handed out to all who attended the ceremony and given to each member of the force:

 

New York, April 16, 1870

Office of the Superintendent of Police
No. 300 Mulberry Street.

 

 

To the Police Force of the Police Department of the City of New York

 

In assuming this day command of the Police Force, as its chief executive officer, I naturally feel an embarrassment when considering that my predecessor had ten years experience as your Superintendent. You can relieve this by your generous cooperation.

 

Having been during seventeen year your comrade and friend, and having been successively promoted from the ranks to my present position, I ought to be familiar with all your wants, and with every detail of Police duty. I will simply endeavor to deserve your confidence and aid you in retaining that of the public.

 

Let us all remember we are public servants, endowed by law at times with summary and disagreeable powers, which we should use firmly but courteously. Let us never forget our grave responsibilities as guardians of public rights and protectors of vast property interests.

 

Our numbers are really inadequate to the Police wants of the great Metropolis, yet we can supply that deficiency by vigilance and conscientious interest in our respective trusts.

 

Our criminal foes are numerous, intimately banded together, wary, cunning and at times bold. Into our Metropolis flock, the depraved come from all cities of the world, as well as the Union. In dealing with such a large criminal class, and in guarding citizens or strangers let us owe nothing to political influence, but depend upon fidelity to our several oaths of office.

 

The exercise of Police duty is seldom popular. That duty is often subjected to grave misunderstanding, but we can diminish misunderstandings by always controlling our tempers.

 

Let our best motive be, first, to prevent crime, and next, never to compromise with it. Let our intercourse with the higher ministers of the law always be respectful, and when our primary responsibilities of detection or arrest are discharged, let us never criticize performance of appropriate responsibility by others in any branch of the administration of justice.

 

 

                                                                                             JOHN JOURDAN, Superintendent

 

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Bronx Criminal Court

 

Faltering Courts, Mired in Delays

By WILLIAM GLABERSON — Sunday, April 14th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’

 

 

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

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/nyregion/justice-denied-bronx-court-system-mired-in-delays.html  

 

 

The Bronx courts are failing.

 

With criminal cases languishing for years, a plague of delays in the Bronx criminal courts is undermining one of the central ideals of the justice system, the promise of a speedy trial.

 

At a time of slashed judicial budgets across the country, the Bronx offers a stark picture of what happens when an overwhelmed justice system can no longer keep pace: Old cases pile up, prosecutions fail at alarming rates, lives stall while waiting for court hearings and trust in the system and its ability to protect the public evaporates.

 

In the Bronx in recent years, there were more people in jail waiting years for their trials than in the rest of the city combined, court data show. The borough was responsible for more than half of the cases in New York City’s criminal courts that were over two years old, and for two-thirds of the defendants waiting for their trials in jail for more than five years.

 

In January, 73 percent of all Bronx felony cases exceeded the courts’ own time targets, far more than any other borough.

 

And over the last two decades, the Bronx prosecutors’ jury conviction rate has plummeted. Less than half of jury trials now end in guilty verdicts, far fewer than elsewhere in the city, raising questions about whether rapists, robbers and killers are going free because the borough’s justice system is broken.

 

Just up the street from Yankee Stadium, that rare Bronx institution that gets the rest of the city’s attention, the gleaming glass courthouse has quietly become a place where dysfunction is expected. Failures by nearly every component of the criminal justice system have contributed to what is known inside the building as a “culture of delay.”

 

That includes a district attorney whose policies have contributed to a decline that extends over his long tenure, defense lawyers who exploit delays at every turn to help their clients beat charges, judges who are unable or unwilling to take command of their courtrooms and court administrators who overlooked the growing crisis while refusing requests for more resources. All of this happens in the poorest borough in the city, a place lacking the political clout to stir outrage and force reform.

 

Months of court visits in the Bronx beginning last June — which included observations of trials, examinations of case files and transcripts in scores of cases, analyses of law enforcement statistics and reports, and dozens of interviews with crime victims, witnesses, defendants, lawyers, court officials, judges and jurors — showed the broad range of problems afflicting the borough’s justice system.

 

For years trials have been postponed every week because there were not enough judges. But less compelling reasons are also sufficient, including prosecutors’ vacation plans and defense lawyers’ birthdays. Even excuses like a backache and a picnic were deemed sound enough to keep the courts waiting.

 

-  -   -

 

Courts in Slow Motion, Aided by the Defense

By WILLIAM GLABERSON — Monday, April 15th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/15/nyregion/justice-denied-courts-in-slow-motion-aided-by-defense.html?ref=nyregion  

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

New York State

 

Supreme Court rejects challenge to NY gun law

By Unnamed Author(s)  (The Associated Press)  —  Monday, April 15th, 2013; 9:47 a.m. EDT

 

 

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is staying out of the gun debate for now.

 

The justices on Monday declined to hear a challenge to a strict New York law that makes it difficult for residents to get a license to carry a concealed handgun in public.

 

The court did not comment in turning away an appeal from five state residents and the Second Amendment Foundation. Their lawsuit also drew support from the National Rifle Association and 20 states.

 

The high court action comes amid an intensifying congressional debate on new gun control measures. The issue has resurfaced prominently in Washington in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school shooting that killed 20 children and six adults.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Court avoids gun rights dispute

By Lyle Denniston — Monday, April 15th, 2013 ‘SCOTUS Blog’ / / Washington, DC

 

 

The Supreme Court, following a pattern that is now quite well established, chose again on Monday to remain on the sidelines as the national debate over gun ownership heats up in the political realm.   Without comment, the Justices denied review of the latest attempt to test whether the Second Amendment right to have a gun extends beyond the home.

 

The denial of review in Kachalsky, et al., v. Cacace, et al. (docket 12-845) was the latest in a series of denials of attempts to get the Justices to explore the reach of the Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, recognizing a Second Amendment right to have a gun for personal self-defense.  That decision, though, was limited to a right to have a gun ready to shoot inside one’s own home.

 

In the Heller decision, the Court emphasized that the personal right it was recognizing for the first time was not an “absolute” right, and that gun ownership could be subjected to “reasonable” regulations.   It provided some examples, such as having a gun in a sensitive public place, but that list was not intended to be complete.   That has left it to Congress and to state legislatures to decide whether they want to impose new forms of gun control.

 

Because the Court does not explain orders denying review, there is no way to know why the Justices would again choose not to get involved in a controversy that, in essence, the Heller decision itself has deepened.   One of the most common reasons for the Justices to grant review is the existence of a split among lower courts on a significant constitutional issue.   There is now such a clear split among federal appeals courts on whether constitutional gun rights extend beyond the home, and yet that was not sufficient to draw the Court back into the center of the controversy in the new case from New York.  The new case sought to test the constitutionality of limiting a citizen’s right to a license to carry a concealed gun in public to those who can show they have a “proper cause” for their belief that they need a gun for self-defense away from home.

 

Strong supporters of gun rights have argued that the Second Amendment right recognized in Heller was sweeping in scope, while supporters of gun control have argued that the decision leaves legislators with wide leeway to impose new restrictions.  There will be no final resolution of that dispute, as a constitutional matter, until the Supreme Court chooses to do decide it.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Justices decline to take gun case, New York law stands

By Richard Wolf — Monday, April 15th, 2013 ‘USA Today’

 

 

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Monday declined to consider whether the Second Amendment protects the right to carry a gun outside the home.

 

The decision lets stand a federal appeals court decision that upheld New York's restrictions on carrying guns in public – a law similar to that in nine other states, including California.

 

Instead, the high court is more likely to await an appeal from Illinois to a federal appeals court ruling that struck down its more restrictive law – one that bans nearly all guns outside the home.

 

In the New York case, the state attorney general's office had argued in its brief to the Supreme Court that the lower-court decision should stand. The state has a "compelling interest in public safety and crime prevention" that makes gun regulation necessary, it said.

 

Those challenging the New York law argued that as a result, the right to bear arms is "illusory." Their brief to the Supreme Court contended that such a restriction hasn't been placed on the freedom of speech, worship — or even abortion.

 

Despite declining the New York case, the Supreme Court is virtually certain to weigh in on the issue soon. That's because lower federal courts have issued split decisions on state laws designed to restrict the prevalence of handguns on the streets.

 

"It's only a matter of time before the court decides whether people have a right to carry guns in public," says Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor and author of Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America. "This is the biggest unanswered question about the Second Amendment."

 

The requests for high-court review come as federal and state lawmakers are considering new gun laws in the wake of December's killing of 26 students and staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. The murders by a lone gunman have boosted public support for gun controls.

 

While 17 states have passed new laws since the Newtown shootings and Congress is considering national legislation, most of the court action is in the other direction — challenges by firearms groups to state restrictions.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Suit targets holes in gov’s gun ban

By FREDRIC U. DICKER — Monday, April 15th, 2013 ‘The New York Post’

 

 

The state’s largest gun owners’ group will seek a preliminary injunction in federal court today to block several sections of Gov. Cuomo’s tough new anti-gun law, including a bizarre provision that even the governor can’t justify, The Post has learned.

 

The unusual section of the new SAFE Act takes effect today, and while it allows legal gun owners to put 10 bullets in the magazines of their semiautomatic rifles and pistols during competitions at shooting ranges, it makes it illegal for them to put more than seven bullets in the same gun magazines in their own homes — even if their lives are in danger.

 

“The seven-round home-protection ban directly and immediately impacts the ability of law-abiding gun owners in New York to defend themselves and their loved ones against criminal attack,’’ said White Plains lawyer Brian Stapleton, who represents the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association (NYSRPA).

 

“The distinction the state has drawn in allowing individuals to possess and load 10-round magazines for sporting purposes at a gun range but to prohibit by law possession of the same magazine at home for purposes of self-defense makes no sense whatsoever and violates the equal-protection requirements of the law and defeats the core purpose of the Second Amendment,’’ Stapleton continued.

 

The NYSRPA’s injunction request will be filed with US District Court Judge William Skretny in Buffalo, in whose court the association filed a general lawsuit last month challenging the constitutionality of most of the SAFE Act’s provisions, including a ban on the sale of military-style assault rifles, a requirement that existing ones be registered, and restrictions on ammunition sales.

 

Cuomo and his aides have been unable to explain the rationale behind allowing legitimate gun owners to load 10 rounds for target shooting but only seven rounds for self-defense at home, except to say “police experts’’ believe seven rounds should be the maximum allowed for personal protection.

 

The NYSRPA had originally planned to ask the federal court to issue an immediate temporary restraining order blocking the new regulations, but shifted gears and sought a preliminary injunction instead because the legal threshold for winning one is considered easier to attain.

 

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office will defend the new law, and the federal court isn’t expected to rule on the request for an injunction for at least several weeks.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

New York's 'assault weapon' registration begins

By Michael Virtanen  (The Associated Press)  —  Monday, April 15th, 2013; 11:09 a.m. EDT

 

 

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- Key measures of New York's tough new gun law have kicked in, meaning owners of firearms now reclassified as assault weapons are required to register the guns. There are also new limits on the number of bullets allowed in magazines.

 

The new provisions took effect Monday. New York's affiliate of the National Rifle Association says it expects to ask a federal judge late in the afternoon to immediately halt the magazine limit.

 

The New York State Rifle & Pistol Association says the law violates the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens "to keep commonly possessed firearms."

 

Association president Tom King says they are advising members to obey the law until it's proven unconstitutional.

 

State police have posted online forms for registrations required by April 15, 2014.

 

Key measures of New York's tough new gun law are set to kick in, with owners of guns now reclassified as assault weapons required to register the firearms and new limits on the number of bullets allowed in magazines.

 

As the new provisions take effect Monday, New York's affiliate of the National Rifle Association said it plans to head to court to seek an immediate halt to the magazine limit.

 

Gov. Andrew Cuomo calls those and other provisions in the state's new gun law common sense while dismissing criticisms he says come from "extreme fringe conservatives" who claim the government has no right to regulate guns.

 

"Yes, they are against it, but they are the extremists and the extremists shouldn't win, especially on this issue when it is so important to the majority," Cuomo said in a radio interview Wednesday. "In politics, we have to be willing to take on the extremists, otherwise you will see paralysis."

 

New York's new gun restrictions, the first in the nation passed following December's massacre at a Connecticut elementary school, limit state gun owners to no more than seven bullets in magazines, except at competitions or firing ranges.

 

The new regulations in New York commence as the U.S. Senate prepares to debate expanded gun legislation and weeks after Connecticut joined Colorado in signing into law tougher new gun restrictions.

 

The New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, the state's NRA affiliate, has a pending federal lawsuit against the new provisions. It plans to ask a judge Monday for an immediate halt to the magazine limit. The new registrations, required over the next year, will be the group's focus later.

 

The law violates the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens "to keep commonly possessed firearms" at home for self-defense and for other lawful purposes, the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association said in court papers. It is advising members to obey the law in the meantime.

 

"We are lawful and legal citizens of New York state and we always obey the law," association President Tom King said. "It's as simple as that."

 

State Police planned to post forms on their website for registration starting Monday. Owners of those guns, now banned from in-state sales, are required within a year to register them. Alternatively, they can legally sell them to a licensed dealer or out of state by next Jan. 15.

 

Rich Davenport, recording secretary of the Erie County Federation of Sportsmen's Clubs, said their nearly 11,000 members are united in opposition to the law, which he considers a hasty, illogical and emotional response to the Newtown, Conn., school shooting. He also questioned likely compliance with the registration requirement.

 

"I'm guessing it'll be pretty low," said Davenport, a longtime hunter. He said that even though he's not personally affected by the registration provision, "I'm offended as an American."

 

The toughest part of the new statute - banning in-state sales of those guns newly classified as "assault weapons" - immediately took effect Jan. 15. The new classification related to a single military-style feature, such as a pistol grip on semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines. Other listed features include a folding or thumbhole stock, bayonet mount, flash suppressor, or second protruding grip held by the non-trigger hand.

 

It requires owners to register an estimated 1 million guns previously not classified as assault weapons by April 15, 2014, though law enforcement officials acknowledge they don't know exactly how many such guns New Yorkers have.

 

The assault weapon definition also applies to some shotguns and handguns. They include shotguns that are semi-automatic, or self-loading, and have another feature, such as a folding stock, a second handgrip held by the non-shooting hand or the ability to accept a detachable magazine.

 

Also covered are semi-automatic pistols that can take detachable magazines and have another feature, such as a folding or thumbhole stock, a second handgrip and a threaded barrel that can accept a silencer.

 

Many county boards in New York have passed resolutions urging at least partial repeal of the law while warning that new registration requirements would be a costly burden on them.

 

Herkimer County Clerk Sylvia Rowan said Thursday she had received no registration forms for those guns. "There's a lot of confusion on this," she said.

 

Rowan noted that she had received few formal requests filed from the holders of the county's 12,000 pistol permits to exempt their information from public disclosure, something else authorized under the new law.

 

Passed Jan. 15, a month after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., the statute originally banned magazines with more than seven bullets effective April 15. Connecticut officials said that shooter Adam Lanza used a semi-automatic Bushmaster AR-15 and five 30-round magazines to kill 20 children and six adults in minutes.

 

However, acknowledging that manufacturers don't make seven-bullet magazines, the Cuomo administration and New York lawmakers amended their law on March 29, keeping 10-bullet magazines legal but generally illegal to load them with more than seven bullets.

 

The new Colorado bill, signed into law last month, bans ammunition magazines that hold more than 15 rounds.

 

____

 

Online: State Police gun law guidance, registration form: http://www.governor.ny.gov/nysafeact/gun-owners

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

New Jersey

 

N.J. Senate Democrats to introduce 12 new gun control measures    (Updated)

By Matt Friedman — Monday, April 15th, 2013 ‘The Newark Star-Ledger’ / Newark, NJ

 

 

TRENTON — Two months after the state Assembly passed a sweeping package of 22 gun-control bills, state Senate Democrats answered today with their own, less-stringent plan to reduce gun violence.

 

Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) announced he and two other Democratic senators plan to introduce several bills on Monday, including one he described as a “centerpiece” that would require instant criminal background checks for gun buyers.

 

“I worked with Majority Leader (Loretta) Weinberg and Law and Public Safety Chairman (Donald) Norcross, as well as advocates on both sides of the discussion, to compile a package of bills that will serve as a national model on gun safety,” Sweeney said.

 

On Wednesday, a task force formed by Gov. Chris Christie to study gun violence suggested fine-tuning state laws to cut down on straw purchases of illegal guns from out of state and recommended making sure there is a “presumption against” allowing those who have been involuntarily committed to mental institutions from getting gun permits.

 

But the report did not offer any major changes to the current state gun laws.

 

The flurry of gun legislation in New Jersey and in Washington was touched off by the shooting deaths of 20 elementary-school children in Newtown, Conn., in December.

 

According to a news release today, the Senate “centerpiece” bill would create a new photo ID for gun buyers to make instant background checks possible, require immediate revocation of the permit upon criminal conviction or involuntarily mental health commitment, mandate firearms safety training to get a permit, and create a single permit for both handgun and hunting rifle purchases.

 

The Democrats plan to introduce 11 other bills.

 

Some are new, including upgrading penalties for dealers who sell to people they know are ineligible to buy guns, allowing authorities to seize the cars of those caught illegally trafficking guns and making gun smugglers ineligible for early release from prison.

 

But some of the most high-profile bills that Assembly Democrats recently passed were not part of the package, including one that would reduce the capacity of ammunition magazines from 15 to 10 and one that would require ammunition sales be made face to face.

 

The senators also do not plan to introduce a bill requiring state authorities to seize weapons if a mental health professional thinks the owner poses a threat to himself or others.

 

Unlike the prime movers of the gun legislation in the Assembly, Sweeney represents a partly rural district and could face a tough re-election battle this year.

 

But Weinberg, a Democrat from Bergen County, who has pushed for even tougher measures, said she was satisfied with Sweeney’s efforts.

 

“I think that Steve Sweeney did a terrific job in meeting the people who were pressuring on one side, like me … and kind of what you would expect on the other side,” Weinberg said.

 

Some bills passed by the Assembly did make it into the Senate package, like a ban on gun purchases by those on the “no fly” list, a ban on the .50-caliber Barrett assault rifle, the establishment of “gun-free school zones” and the barring of state pension investments in companies that make, sell or import assault rifles for civilian use.

 

Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-Essex) said that she was not upset by the omission of some bills and that she and other Assembly members were still negotiating with the senators about what to include.

 

“So far so good,” Oliver said. “The door’s not closed. It’s a work in progress.”

Scott Bach, executive director of the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs, said the state doesn’t need any new gun laws.

 

“New Jersey already has some of the toughest gun laws in the nation,” Bach said. “More of the same will not stop another criminal or madman — their only impact is on the law-abiding.”

 

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U.S.A.

 

High court may decide on carrying guns outside home
As Congress and state legislatures debate gun control, the high court is likely to hear a case in the near future challenging state restrictions on carrying guns outside the home.

By Richard Wolf — Monday, April 15th, 2013 ‘USA Today’

 

 

WASHINGTON — Guns are on the docket in Congress and dozens of state legislatures. Can the Supreme Court be far behind?

 

The court may decide as early as Monday to consider whether the Second Amendment's right to keep a gun for self-defense extends outside the home.

 

The case under consideration is a challenge to New York's law that requires "proper cause" to carry a weapon in public. Ten states, including California, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Maryland, have similar restrictions. Most have been challenged in court.

 

Whether it grants the petition from New York or waits for another case, the court is virtually certain to weigh in soon. That's because lower federal courts have issued split decisions on state laws designed to restrict the prevalence of handguns on the streets.

 

"It's only a matter of time before the court decides whether people have a right to carry guns in public," says Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor and author of Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America. "This is the biggest unanswered question about the Second Amendment."

 

The requests for high-court review come as federal and state lawmakers are considering new gun laws in the wake of December's killing of 26 students and staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. The murders by a lone gunman have boosted public support for gun controls.

 

While 17 states have passed new laws since the Newtown shootings and Congress is considering national legislation, most of the court action is in the other direction — challenges by firearms groups to state restrictions.

 

The challenges are a natural outgrowth of the Supreme Court's 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which upheld the right to possess firearms in the home for self-defense but left a wide berth for restrictions.

 

"Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the court's 5-4 majority.

 

Heller clearly wasn't the final word on the Second Amendment. In fact, the New York appeals court ruling upholding the state's law said it "raises more questions than it answers."

 

Asked recently whether the Second Amendment's right to bear arms is as unequivocal as the First Amendment's right to free speech, Scalia said, "We're going to find out, aren't we?" — an indication he expects the court to hear a gun rights case in the near future.

 

"There are doubtless limits (on gun rights), but what they are, we will see," Scalia said.

 

Most of the lower-court cases involve laws that require applicants to demonstrate a particular need for a permit to carry guns in public. State officials contend street crime is more prevalent than inside private homes. Opponents say the restrictions render the Second Amendment impotent.

 

Perhaps the biggest battle is in Illinois, the only state (along with the District of Columbia) to prohibit carrying concealed weapons under most circumstances. A federal district court upheld the ban, but a three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck it down.

 

"The right to 'bear' as distinct from the right to 'keep' arms is unlikely to refer to the home," Judge Richard Posner ruled in December. "A right to bear arms thus implies a right to carry a loaded gun outside the home."

 

The state has yet to appeal that decision. Its attorney general, Lisa Madigan, is considering a run for governor, and while a Supreme Court challenge might be popular in Chicago, it could run afoul of gun enthusiasts in rural Illinois.

 

Petitions from state governments usually carry more sway with the high court than others, so the justices may decide to wait for that case. It also would present them with a more narrow question to resolve, rather than addressing lesser restrictions in 10 states from New England to Hawaii.

 

Another strike against the New York case is that it comes from the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over Connecticut, where the Newtown shootings occurred. That could make it an awkward case for the high court to hear.

 

The New York attorney general's office argues in its brief to the Supreme Court that the lower-court decision should stand. The state has a "compelling interest in public safety and crime prevention" that makes gun regulation necessary, it says.

 

Those challenging the New York law argue that as a result, the right to bear arms is "illusory." Their brief to the Supreme Court contends that such a restriction hasn't been placed on the freedom of speech, worship — or even abortion.

 

"The New York law is in complete conflict with the idea that people enjoy a Second Amendment right to bear arms," says Alan Gura, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, who successfully argued the Heller case. "If this can be done to the Second Amendment, look out."

 

Proponents of gun control note that most appeals-court decisions have upheld state restrictions. The Illinois case, they say, applied to the lone state with a full ban rather than limits on who can be licensed.

 

"There is no suggestion in the Supreme Court's Second Amendment cases that there is a broad right to carry guns in public," says Jonathan Lowy, director of the Legal Action Project at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

 

One way or another, most Supreme Court experts say, the justices cannot avoid the issue because of varying opinions coming out of the lower courts.

 

"There really is a circuit split out there," says Paul Clement, the former U.S. solicitor general, who represents the National Rifle Association on this and other Second Amendment cases. "They're eventually going to have to take it."

 

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Rifts in Both Parties Complicate Odds for Gun Measure

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER and JONATHAN WEISMAN — Monday, April 15th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’

 

 

WASHINGTON — Deep divisions within both parties over a bipartisan measure to extend background checks for gun buyers are threatening its chances as the Senate this week begins debating the first broad gun control legislation in nearly 20 years.

 

In spite of a vote last Thursday in favor of debating new gun measures, some Democrats who are facing re-election next year in conservative states have already said they will not vote for the background check measure offered by Senators Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, and Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, forcing Democrats to look desperately across the aisle to fill the gaps.

 

Republicans, in the meantime, are bitterly torn between moderates who feel pressure to respond to polls showing a majority of Americans in support of some new gun regulations and conservatives who are deeply opposed to them.

 

Further, an impending immigration bill may force Republicans to choose between softening their stance on either immigration or guns, but not both.

 

Sixty-eight senators, pressured by the families of those killed in gun violence, came together last week to overcome a filibuster threat that would have quashed the debate on a broader gun bill. But many of those votes are clearly not translating into yes votes for the only background check measure that has attracted bipartisan support.

 

“We’ve got some work to do,” Mr. Manchin said in an interview Sunday. “You’ve got some very close Democratic colleagues who are having some difficulties, and our Republican colleagues are trying to get comfortable.”

 

On Sunday, a small gun rights group, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, came out in favor of the Toomey-Manchin amendment, prompting Mr. Manchin to say he hoped the endorsement would help win more yes votes. Also on Sunday, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said he was inclined to support the measure; his vote, should it be yes, could bring along others and push the bill toward the 60 votes needed for final passage. .

 

And supporters of gun safety legislation, including President Obama, plan to campaign all week to win over some lawmakers who have expressed misgivings. Public pressure to pass gun legislation is also intensifying, with the families of the people killed in the Newtown, Conn., school massacre last year waging a highly public, and potent, campaign to win over lawmakers.

 

But an accounting of likely votes shows how difficult it could be to pass new gun legislation.

 

Senator Mark Begich, Democrat of Alaska, says he will vote against the measure, and at least three other Democrats are expected to join him in trying to defeat it, including Heidi Heitkamp, a freshman senator from North Dakota. Some left-leaning Democrats may also balk because of the gun-rights provisions that have been added to the bill to entice Republicans.

 

Among the 16 Republicans who joined 50 Democrats and two independents in voting last week to proceed to consideration of gun legislation, roughly seven have already decided not to support the measure. Another half-dozen Republicans who voted to proceed on the bill remain ambivalent.

 

The Republican Senators Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Bob Corker of Tennessee, all of whom voted to proceed on the bill, are no votes right now, and several others are expected to also vote down the amendment on Tuesday, the expected day of the vote.

 

It is also unclear whether Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, a likely yes vote who has been largely absent in the 113th Congress, would show up for the crucial vote this week.

 

Mr. Manchin, who spent much of last week buttonholing colleagues at the Senate gym and giving out handwritten pleas for support on the Senate floor, said he felt certain that people who read the bill would find their objections quelled. “The thing is, the easiest vote for me or any senator to make is ‘no,’ ” he said.

 

The Republican conflict came to the fore last week during a closed-door luncheon for Senate Republicans, when Senator Susan Collins, of Maine, eyes blazing, stood up and complained about a series of attack ads that she was facing back home from a gun-rights group with deep ties to Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky.

 

Ms. Collins, who faces re-election next year, said the gun ads were an example of the kind of internal Republican warfare that has hindered the party in Senate races the last two elections. She supports the amendments and other components of the new gun regulations legislation, and she released a lengthy statement on Sunday explaining her thinking.

 

Her comments, according to several Republican aides, ignited a tense debate, similar to many the party has faced since its loss in the race for the White House last year. Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, stood to say he had been raising money for Ms. Collins’ re-election, only to watch her have to spend it to defend herself against the attack from the gun group, which has been directed at other members as well.

 

Ms. Collins warned her colleagues that if she loses a primary to a strong opponent with gun-rights credentials, it could well cost the party her seat.

 

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a freshman ally of Mr. Paul’s, jumped in to promise he had nothing to do with the group, according to officials briefed on the event. Then Mr. Paul, feeling attacked, stormed out. (A spokeswoman for Mr. Paul did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)

 

The Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, is facing his own re-election race and appears to have ceded leadership on the gun issue to more junior senators, Mr. Cruz, on the pro-gun group side of the debate, and Senator Mark Steven Kirk of Illinois, who supports new regulations.

 

Don Stewart, a spokesman for Mr. McConnell, said the senator had encouraged the search for compromise. “Senator McConnell’s views on the Second Amendment have been consistent throughout his career,” he said. “He encourages his members to be involved and actually believes in broader member involvement, not less.”

 

Should the background check amendment fail, a broader package of new gun legislation would continue to the Senate floor, but wounded. It would increase penalties for illegal gun sales, stop some trafficking and improve mental health reporting.

 

This amendment was set to replace the background check provision of the original legislation, which would also create harsher penalties for the so-called straw purchasing of guns, in which people buy guns for others who are not able to do so legally. Subsequent amendments, dealing with mental health, a ban on assault weapons and other issues, are expected in the days ahead before a vote on the overall measure.

 

Both Mr. Manchin and Mr. Toomey spent much of the weekend pleading with their colleagues for support. Former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was critically wounded in a mass shooting, will be in the Capitol this week pressing members on their votes.

 

Mr. McCain, who is involved in potential new immigration legislation, offered Mr. Manchin and Mr. Toomey their best hope on Sunday. “Eighty percent of the American people want to see a better background checks procedure,” he said on the CNN program “State of the Union.” “I am very favorably disposed.”

 

Many Republicans who are considering supporting changes to the immigration system may see little upside to supporting the gun legislation as well.

 

“One of the reasons Republicans don’t have a governing majority is that we often pick the wrong fights,” Mr. Alexander said in speech in Lewisburg, Tenn., on Friday night. “Voting to prevent a debate on gun rights is an argument Republicans will lose with the American people. Defending Second Amendment rights is an argument Republicans will win with the American people.”

 

Mr. Manchin said he would continue to try to persuade his colleagues. “If you believe in something you have to work for it,” he said. “If you don’t you have to question why we are here.”

 

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Monday, April 15th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’ Editorial:

On Guns, a Mixed Report >From the States

 

 

The good, the bad and the ugly are emerging from statehouses across the nation as lawmakers address wildly different gun proposals prompted by the Newtown, Conn., massacre in December.

 

In some states, gun safety is being notably strengthened; in others, it is being considerably weakened by the gun lobby in the name of protecting gun rights. So far, five states have passed seven laws that enhance gun safety, while 10 others have enacted 17 laws undermining controls, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which tracks the issue.

 

The message here is clear: There remains a powerful need for broad federal legislation to close potentially lethal interstate loopholes.

 

On the negative side of the gun safety ledger, Arkansas lawmakers have voted to allow guns in churches and on college campuses. South Dakota legislators authorized school boards to arm teachers. Tennessee residents will now be entitled to store weapons in their car at the workplace, even if the boss objects. Patently unconstitutional proposals declaring any new federal gun control null have been introduced in 36 state legislatures, according to the Sunlight Foundation.

 

Regressive gun politics are at play in small towns, too. The Nelson, Ga., City Council recently enacted the Family Protection Ordinance, which requires heads of households to own guns and ammunition. Council members said the law was a show of support for gun rights more than a mandate they actually expected to enforce.

 

On the positive side of the ledger, Maryland has approved some of the strongest measures in the true meaning of gun control — banning assault weapons, focusing on the mentally ill and firearms, and requiring that gun buyers be fingerprinted and given classes in gun safety and target practice. These and stronger laws in New York, Connecticut and Colorado are important local steps forward. But they still require companion federal controls if they are to be fully effective and not compromised by more lenient states.

 

The power of the gun lobby’s campaign money and propaganda has been clear in statehouses for decades, and gun rights supporters sense that it is growing as time passes since the Newtown carnage. “The knees have stopped jerking,” a spokesman for the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms told The Wall Street Journal.

 

At this point, both sides in the debate openly wonder — despite the Senate’s positive decision to allow a vote on background checks — whether Congress will fully face up to the issue.

 

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Chicago, Illinois   /  FOP Prez on Payroll

 

Police union boss on payroll of big Rahm Emanuel campaign donor
By CHRIS FUSCO — Monday, April 15th, 2013 ‘The Chicago Sun-Times’ / Chicago, IL

 

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

http://www.suntimes.com/news/watchdogs/19372692-452/police-union-boss-on-payroll-of-big-rahm-emanuel-campaign-donor.html

 

 

One of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s biggest campaign contributors has the president of the Fraternal Order of Police on his company’s payroll — a relationship that’s come to light as Emanuel and the union try to negotiate a new contract for 10,400 Chicago cops.

 

The connection between Emanuel donor Howard Labkon and FOP Lodge No. 7 President Michael K. Shields is spelled out in a court case in which Shields got an order of protection last year against an FOP lawyer he said threatened his family after the union stopped giving him business.

 

Labkon and his family have been major campaign contributors to Emanuel. Altogether, they and their companies have given $156,500 to Emanuel campaign funds, plus another $50,000 to the mayor’s inaugural committee, records show.

 

Labkon employs Shields and his brother, Officer Daniel J. Shields, to schedule security workers for General Iron Industries, his family’s scrap-metal recycling company on North Clifton, records show.

 

The Shields brothers came to work for the Near North Side business through their father, Joseph Shields, a retired police lieutenant who has been involved in security with General Iron for about 20 years, according to Dennis Culloton, a spokesman for the company.

 

The Labkons haven’t discussed the FOP contract talks with Emanuel, Shields or aides to either man, Culloton says.

 

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The Drug War

 

Opium Production in Afghanistan Increases for Third Year

By ROD NORDLAND — Monday, April 15th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’

 

 

KABUL, Afghanistan — For the third year in a row, opium cultivation has increased across Afghanistan, reversing earlier gains from a decade-long international and Afghan government effort to combat the drug trade, according to a United Nations report released on Monday.

 

The report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime increased concerns among international law enforcement officials that if the trend continues, opium would be the country’s major economic activity after the departure of foreign military forces in 2014, raising the specter of what one referred to as “the world’s first true narco-state.” Afghanistan is already the world’s largest producer of opium, and last year had accounted for 75 percent of the world’s heroin supply.

 

“The assumption is it will reach again to 90 percent this year,” said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the United Nations’ top counternarcotics official here.

 

The report, the Afghanistan Opium Risk Assessment 2013, based on extensive surveying around the country, found that opium cultivation has increased in 12 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. In only one province, eastern Herat, is cultivation expected to decrease.

 

Overall, the acreage of farmland in opium production is expected to top the figure in 2008, when 388,000 acres were devoted to opium cultivation, Mr. Lemahieu said. After 2008, eradication and crop substitution efforts, as well as a cash incentive program for provinces that eradicated all opium poppy crops, helped to reduce that dramatically through 2010.

 

This year, however, three provinces, Balkh, Faryab and Takhar in the north and west, are in danger of losing their poppy-free status, according to the report. Opium production has remained particularly high in southern Helmand Province, the country’s major opium-producing area, and in Kandahar Province, both places where the surge of American troops helped to beat back Taliban influence. More than 70 percent of opium production now takes place in surge provinces.

 

The report suggests that the insurgents took advantage of insecurity in those areas to assist opium farmers and win over popular support. Opium cultivation has increased most dramatically wherever there has been insecurity.

 

“This country is on its way to becoming the world’s first true narco-state,” said one international law enforcement official. “The opium trade is a much bigger part of the economy already than narcotics ever were in Bolivia.”

 

The United Nations has estimated in the past that opium trafficking constitutes 15 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product, a figure that is expected to rise as international military and development spending declines with the NATO withdrawal at the end of 2014.

 

The mining sector, the other big hope of economic self-sufficiency for Afghanistan, is still moribund, as the Afghan Parliament continues to bicker over a mining law and lack of security and legal clarity has so far prevented large-scale exploitation of mineral resources.

 

The increase in opium poppy cultivation is attributed mainly to historically high prices for opium; prices began rising dramatically in 2010 when a poppy blight severely cut back production, but they have remained high since. Farmers are paid as much as $203 a kilogram for harvested opium, compared to only 43 cents a kilo for wheat or $1.25 for rice, according to the report.

 

Mr. Lemahieu praised efforts of the Afghan Ministry of Counternarcotics but said international donors had greatly underfunded programs to combat trafficking, with only $300,000 of a requested $11 million pledged this year.

 

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Homeland Security

U.S. Rethinks How to Respond to Nuclear Disaster

By MATTHEW L. WALD — Monday, April 15th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’

 

 

WASHINGTON — Two years after the Fukushima nuclear accident in northern Japan, the United States government is using lessons from that disaster to rewrite its plans for responding to radiation contamination, focusing on long-term cleanup instead of emergency response. But the proposals have set off vehement opposition from critics of nuclear power.

 

On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency expects to publish in the Federal Register a draft document that would change its long-standing advice to state and local governments about how to limit long-term exposure to radiation after a reactor accident or a “dirty bomb” attack. By reducing the projections for how much radiation exposure is likely in the years after such an episode, the proposal could also reduce the amount of contaminated land that would have to be abandoned.

 

A federally chartered research group will close its comment period on Monday on a draft report that it has prepared for the Department of Homeland Security and that lays out long-term cleanup standards.

 

In March 2011, a large earthquake and tsunami damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant, causing fuel at three of its reactors to melt and forcing the evacuation of 160,000 people from their homes. The Japanese are still debating how much cleanup is needed and when the level of radiation will drop enough for people to return.

 

Since the accident, governments have started paying more attention to long-term questions in addition to the emergency response. Experts say that one lesson of Fukushima is that in an accident, there will be no dispute over evacuating affected areas; the question, instead, will be how soon people will be able to return, if at all.

 

Authors of the two documents emphasize they are not seeking to change existing standards on radiation levels that are considered safe. The E.P.A. document does, however, change the assumptions about how much dose people in a contaminated area will receive.

 

“We are not in any way relaxing advice about cleanup standards or allowable doses,” said Jonathan D. Edwards, the director of the Radiation Protection Division of the E.P.A. On the question of how clean is clean enough, yardsticks used for programs like the Superfund will continue to be used, and “are not being changed in any way,” he said.

 

But groups that oppose nuclear power said that the E.P.A. document, called Protective Action Guidelines, and the report prepared for the Department of Homeland Security would allow a sharp increase in the amount of radioactive contamination allowed in food and water, and the allowable doses from irradiation by radioactive particles that would be deposited in an accident.

 

Some of the changes are not in the documents but are in other reports that are mentioned in footnotes, said Daniel Hirsch, president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a California group. The E.P.A., he said, was “trying to bury the bad stuff in footnote references to a whole series of other documents.”

 

One clear change in the protective action guidelines, which are being updated for the first time since 1991, was to change the assumption of how much radiation people might be exposed to over time in an affected area. That is because after Fukushima, Mr. Edwards said, it became clear that the initial radiation level could be reduced significantly by cleanup.

 

“We are assuming it won’t just lay fallow for 50 years,” Mr. Edwards said.

 

The debate over the appropriate response to a nuclear incident tracks with the larger divide over the safety of nuclear power. Within the industry, many experts say that current standards are overly protective, prohibiting exposures that are smaller than the ones that a member of the public would incur by moving to a location with higher natural levels of radiation from the sun and other sources.

 

But the industry has dedicated opponents who ascribe a far higher risk to a given dose of radiation, and say that the risk is not worth the effort.

 

“The document is admitting that nuclear power is a dangerous industry,” said Diane D’Arrigo of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, an antinuclear group. “Should industries be allowed to operate that could put us into that condition?”

 

However, Rod Adams, a former engineering officer on a nuclear submarine who favors nuclear energy, cited studies that argued that areas around Fukushima should be reoccupied, and wrote on his blog that while the new proposed limits are virtually unchanged, “the limits could be relaxed by a factor of 50 and still keep the public safe.”

 

A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Nicole Stickel, said that her department had not yet reviewed the report.

 

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                                                          Mike Bosak

 

 

 

 

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