Sunday, April 7th, 2013 — Good Afternoon, Stay Safe
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NYPD $$ Lawyer Lotto $$ Bonanza / $250 Million
NYC is Pressed to Settle Central Park Jogger Case
By COLLEEN LONG (The Associated Press) — Saturday, April 6th, 2013; 2:49 p.m. EDT
NEW YORK—New York is a safer, less fearful place than it was in 1990, when murders hit an all-time high, race relations were raw and the city felt under siege from drug dealers and gangs on “wilding” sprees. But one major piece of unfinished business from back then still hangs over the city and its legal system: the Central Park jogger case.
Five black and Hispanic boys were convicted that year in the rape and grisly beating of a white woman jogging in the park, and they went on to serve six to 13 years in prison before their convictions were thrown out in 2002 because of evidence linking someone else to the crime.
They sued police and prosecutors for $250 million. But the lawsuit has languished for a decade with no resolution in sight.
Now, a growing chorus of lawmakers is asking New York City to settle with the five men. And the pressure is likely to build in the coming weeks with the broadcast of a documentary on the case by filmmaker Ken Burns. It airs on PBS on April 16.
“All of us want this over, but it’s about someone taking responsibility for what they did to us,” said one of the five, Yusef Salaam, now 38. “The money can’t buy back our lives.”
The attack on 28-year-old investment banker Trisha Meili occurred on April 19, 1989. It was one of the most notorious crimes in New York City history and it mesmerized the nation, serving as a lurid symbol of the city’s racial and class divide and its rampant crime. It gave rise to the term “wilding” for urban mayhem by teenagers.
“Drugs. Guns. Gangs. New York City was just crime central at that time,” said former New York Detective Kirk Burkhalter, recalling an era so blood-soaked that the city had a record 2,245 homicides in 1990, compared with 414 last year. “You were scared to ride the trains after dark. It was such a different place.”
When Meili was found in the brush, more than 75 percent of her blood had drained from her body and her skull was smashed. She was in a coma for 12 days, left with permanent damage, and remembers nothing about the attack. The Associated Press does not usually name victims of sexual assault, but Meili later went public as a motivational speaker and wrote a book.
Raymond Santana and Kevin Richardson, both 14 at the time, Antron McCray and Salaam, 15, and Korey Wise, 16, were rounded up and arrested. After hours of interrogation, four of them recorded confessions on video, in some cases with the boys’ parents in the room. At the trials, their lawyers argued the confessions were coerced. At the time, DNA testing was not sophisticated enough to make or break the case.
In 2002, a re-examination of the case found that DNA on the victim’s sock pointed to Matias Reyes, a murderer and serial rapist who confessed that he alone attacked the jogger. Then-District Attorney Robert Morgenthau stopped short of declaring the Central Park Five innocent but withdrew all charges and did not seek a retrial. (The statute of limitations for charging Reyes had run out; he is serving a life sentence for other crimes.)
Roger Wareham, one of the lawyers for the five, said the DNA was the key.
“There was never any forensic evidence that tied them to this case,” he said. “In 1989, everybody might not have been forensic savvy, but now, after ‘Law and Order,’ everybody knows if there’s no DNA, they didn’t do it.”
But an overturned conviction does not automatically mean there was any wrongdoing by prosecutors or police. Legal experts say the case is taking a long time in part because of the money and reputations at stake. If it were to go to trial, lawyers would have to prove police and prosecutors acted improperly. A settlement could be reached without the city having to admit wrongdoing, but so far the city hasn’t offered.
And no trial date has been set.
“This is an embarrassing chapter in the city’s history, which is why I think why the city would be anxious to settle it,” said Richard Klein, a Touro Law School professor who recently hosted a panel on the documentary. “Even if you have a different mayor and a different DA, there are so many people who look so bad.”
Celeste Koeleveld, an attorney for New York, said the city did nothing wrong in prosecuting the case.
“Nothing unearthed since the trials, including Matias Reyes’ connection to the attack on the jogger, changes that fact,” Koeleveld said. “Indeed, it was well known at the time of the trials that an unidentified male’s DNA was present.”
The two-hour documentary, “The Central Park Five,” makes the case that the men were wrongly convicted. Burns, acclaimed for his documentaries on Civil War, baseball and Prohibition, put the project together with his daughter Sarah Burns and her husband.
Sarah Burns worked as a summer paralegal in the office of one of the lawyers handling the lawsuit and wrote a 2011 book on the case, “The Central Park Five: A Chronicle of a City Wilding.” The documentary was released last fall in some theaters.
“It was my daughter’s passion and my daughter’s outrage for this,” Ken Burns said. “I was in New York at the time that this crime took place and was shocked as everyone else. … And then I was aware when they were exonerated and I was angry that there was so little coverage. But it was Sarah who really ran with this.”
The film uses extensive interviews with the men and their families, and lawyers for the city went to court to demand outtakes for use in the civil case. A federal judge earlier this year refused the request. Burns said the city was just stalling, “hoping that the five will run out of patience.”
The city Law Department said the move didn’t hold up anything.
City Comptroller John Liu, who is running for mayor, and other state and city politicians, including members of the City Council, have all spoken out in the past six months, demanding City Hall settle.
“We are approaching 10 years,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald L. Ellis, who is presiding over the case, said recently. “Somebody ought to get their day in court.”
The defendants’ lives since they got out of prison have not been easy. Wise was recently re-arrested. McCray moved away. Santana sold drugs and was sent back to prison, but now, along with Richardson and Salaam, has become the public face of the case, speaking out against wrongful convictions and racial profiling.
“We are over being angry. Now it’s about helping others, raising our own families right,” said Santana, now 38.
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NYPD $$ Lawyer Lotto $$ Bonanza / $61 Million
Pawn biz refuses to ‘sell out’
By KATHIANNE BONIELLO — Sunday, April 7th, 2013 ‘The New York Post’
They refuse to be pawns to a police state.
A city pawnbroker company is suing the NYPD in Brooklyn federal court for $61 million, claiming it’s being bullied to reveal transactions in a national database.
The Gem Pawnbrokers chain says cops harassed staffers at its Brooklyn and Queens shops, threatened them and even slapped them with penny-ante violations in an effort to get the shops to sign up for a service called LeadsOnline that enables law enforcement to track goods and the people who pawn them, a suit charges.
Pawn shops are required by law to keep, and let cops inspect, records of what they buy and sell, the date and time of the transaction, along with the seller’s physical description, name and address.
LeadsOnline collects this information in an online database police can access from their desks, but pawnshops aren’t required to participate in the system.
Gem’s owners say they stopped using the Texas-based LeadsOnline because they feared the service violated federal privacy laws, which they are required to follow.
Because pawnbrokers often loan people money in exchange for merchandise, they are similar to banks and required to keep most transaction information private from the general public, Gem lawyer Paul Solda said.
The lawyer charged that police are using LeadsOnline to circumvent the spirit of the law when it comes to pawnshops. Instead of inspecting Gem’s books on a regular basis for irregularities, wanted suspects or known stolen items, police are simply fishing for arrests by zeroing in on the names of ex-cons.
“What the police were doing was calling every other day and asking them to put criminal holds on [merchandise]” without court paperwork, Solda said.
Police say keeping track of pawnshop business is a key weapon in catching crooks fencing stolen property.
Gem, with more than 20 stores in the five boroughs, “has been targeted by the NYPD for the last two years plus, because they got off LeadsOnline,” the lawyer said.
Staffers were “subjected to constant threats, intimidation and disruptive actions,” according to the suit.
Police allegedly made clear the crackdown would “only end when and if they cede to the demands of the NYPD and ‘become compliant,’ ” Gem charges in court documents.
About 2,100 law-enforcement agencies across the country use LeadsOnline, says the service, which bills itself as helping police solve crimes.
Solda said cops issued more than half a dozen misdemeanor violations to their shops in Brooklyn and Queens, all of which have been dismissed in court.
He slammed the NYPD’s alleged actions as “shocking” and said they reveal an “inherent prejudice” that assumes pawnshops are a hotbed of criminal activity.
“What the police don’t understand is that, 99.9 percent of the time, these are good people doing good transactions,” he said.
LeadsOnline did not return a request for comment. The city had not yet reviewed the lawsuit, a Law Department spokeswoman said.
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NYPD $$ Lawyer Lotto $$ Pittance / $500,000
Lost gal’s guinea-pig NYPD suit
By KATHIANNE BONIELLO — Sunday, April 7th, 2013 ‘The New York Post’
She stopped to get directions — and got sent to the slammer.
A Yonkers woman claims police falsely accused her of drunken driving and used her as a “guinea pig” in order to teach a rookie officer how to process an arrest, according to a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court.
Debra Carey, 54, says she got lost in The Bronx after a day at the beach last summer and pulled over to ask a group of cops for help.
An officer asked for her license and registration, then quickly collared her, the suit states. The officer allegedly cited the administrative assistant’s red face, nervous demeanor and stuttering as reasons to take her in. Carey says she was sunburned and justly nervous.
She also claims that she was kept in a holding cell for 90 minutes despite a breath test’s having come back clean.
She seeks $500,000 in damages.
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NYPD $$ Lawyer Lotto $$ Score / 122 Pct. P.O. Nicholas Rentas
Staten Island woman settles accident suit with NYPD, city for $275,000
By Frank Donnelly — Sunday, April 7th, 2013 ‘The Staten Island Advance’ / Staten Island
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - A Bay Terrace woman was just blocks away from her home on a summer's evening four years ago when near-tragedy struck.
Catherine Lorenzo's car collided with an unmarked police car on Hylan Boulevard as the officers inside were responding to a 911 call.
The impact sent both cars careening, and Ms. Lorenzo was badly hurt, suffering rib fractures, a collapsed lung and other injuries.
Ms. Lorenzo, 59, who survived her injuries, recently received some positive news with the settlement of her lawsuit against the city and Police Department for $275,000, said her lawyer.
"It's always a dangerous situation for drivers on the road when emergency vehicles are responding to an emergency. It could have been much worse," said Ms. Lorenzo's lawyer, Jonathan D'Agostino of Eltingville.
The incident occurred July 9, 2009, at 11 p.m. on Hylan Boulevard in Bay Terrace.
Ms. Lorenzo was New Dorp-bound on Hylan in her 2005 Hyundai Accent.
At the intersection of Bay Terrace, she turned left with the green turn arrow in her favor, said D'Agostino.
As she turned, an unmarked police car driven by Officer Nicholas Rentas collided with her. The police vehicle was Great Kills-bound on Hylan and went through a red light, D'Agostino said.
According to the police accident report, Rentas said he was en route to an assault call and had activated his siren and turret light. He said he was traveling with the green light and Ms. Lorenzo turned into him, said the accident report.
Advance reports said the unmarked police car was a nondescript, gray Chevrolet Impala.
According to state law, the driver of an emergency vehicle may proceed past a steady or flashing red signal or a stop sign "only after slowing down as may be necessary for safe operation." That driver may exceed the maximum speed limits "so long as he does not endanger life or property."
The Advance reported the Chevrolet smacked hood-first into a telephone pole after the collision. The Hyundai skidded a few feet down Hylan, turning it around.
Ms. Lorenzo, Rentas and a sergeant riding in the police car were taken to the hospital.
Ms. Lorenzo suffered multiple injuries, including four rib fractures, a partially collapsed lung, cervical injuries and a fractured arm, said D'Agostino.
She sued the city, the Police Department and Rentas in state Supreme Court, St. George. Rentas was an Advance Police Officer of the Month in 2011.
A spokeswoman for the city Law Department, which represented the city and Police Department, said the settlement was "in the best interest of all parties."
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122 Precinct Pit Bull Shoot
Police shoot at dog at Staten Island's Schmul Park in Travis
By Ryan Lavis — Sunday, April 7th, 2013 ‘The Staten Island Advance’ / Staten Island
Police officers shot at a dog after it attacked its owner earlier this afternoon in Schmul Park, Travis.
Around 1 p.m. Saturday, police responded to the Roswell Avenue park where a woman's dogs turned on her after she tried to separate them from fighting, police said.
Witnesses described the dogs as pit bulls, however, police could not confirm last night the breed of the dogs.
"Responding officers tried to help her, and in the attempt to get the dog off her, shots were fired," a police spokesman said.
Officials could not say whether the dog had died, or if the officer's bullets had even struck it. The woman suffered hand injuries and was taken to Richmond University Medical Center, West Brighton, police said.
Ray Rehueo, who lives across the street from the park, said that two women were walking their three pit bulls at the far end of the park, near the dirt ball fields. Two of the dogs began to scuffle, and apparently attacked their owner when she tried to break it up. One dog was off its leash, he said.
Rehueo heard five gun shots and then saw the dog running up from the field, bleeding heavily from its side. Blood stains still marked the pavement at the scene on Saturday evening.
Rehueo said that a police officer patrolling the park saw the attack and was the one who fired on the pit bull.
"He saw how aggressive the dog got and shot it. I'm sure he did the right thing. You see a pit bull attacking a woman -- practically taking her hand off -- you gotta do what you gotta do," Rehueo said.
Police could not confirm that account, and said it was also unknown whether the dog sustained its injuries from the shots fired or from its fight with the other dog.
Several other witnesses, who declined to give their names, said that they have feared something like this happening for quite some time. "I always see these dogs off their leashes. It was just a matter of time before they attacked someone, even if it was the owner," said a witness who lives near the park.
He also said that on one occasion, the same pit bull ran up to his young daughter, who was playing in the driveway at the time. "It's scary. There's too many kids around this area to let dogs off their leash. No dog is harmless. They have teeth. They could bite."
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Cop grid tribute
By NATASHA VELEZ — Sunday, April 7th, 2013 ‘The New York Post’
The NYPD football team played a game last night in memory of a Manhattan cop and teammate recently killed in a car crash on Long Island.
Joseph Pritchard, 30, of North Babylon died March 25 in a crash on the Long Island Expressway.
The NYPD’s team defeated the Long Island Panthers 7-0.
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New Jersey
Many Camden residents hopeful about new police force
By Darran Simon — Sunday, April 7th, 2013 ‘The Philadelphia Inquirer’ / Philadelphia, PA
Twenty years ago, two men, one toting a sawed-off shotgun, the other wielding a pistol, barged into Frank's Deli. Paul Kang, whose parents bought the place in the 1980s, remembers being so scared during the robbery that he trembled for the rest of day.
Frank's hasn't been robbed since, but there is crime all around in Camden's Waterfront South neighborhood, where men sell drugs on street corners. In January 2011, 20-year-old Anjanea Williams was shot dead outside Frank's, caught in the cross fire between drug dealers.
"It might be impossible to do, but I think just going back to the old school, and having cops walk the beat and be a presence . . . it deters crime," Kang said, sipping his fourth cup of coffee one afternoon as customers bustled around.
Proponents of a new county force - which will replace the beleaguered 141-year-old Camden Police Department by April 30 - say residents and shopkeepers like Kang will soon get their wish: more police officers, many on bicycle patrols and walking the beat.
Backed by Gov. Christie, the new department is already becoming a reality. More than 100 officers - many of whom have never worked in the city - will be sworn in Monday; 23 of them will hit the streets for two months of training alongside a dozen former city officers who will supervise them.
They will have to learn neighborhoods and identify community issues and address them. More officers, including many former city officers, are expected to follow each week. By the end of the month, the force will have nearly 300 officers, and eventually, it will reach 400.
In interviews across the city, residents - from a father whose son survived a gunshot to the head to a woman whose daughter's sleepover was interrupted by the pop-pop of gunshots - generally expressed optimism, though some cautiously, about the new force.
"The people I talk to are like 'Bring in it on,' " said Sister Helen Cole, a social worker with Guadalupe Family Services in North Camden who started an annual peace vigil in 1995, when the city reached a then-record of 58 homicides. "They're tired of being known as the city with all this violence. They're raising their kids here, and some of them are working really hard."
But amid optimism, there is also concern that new officers - who hail from departments in Evesham and Trenton, to name just two - may neither be familiar with the city nor sensitive to its residents.
Camden, a city of 77,0000, is consistently one of the nation's most dangerous and poorest cities. Last year, the city recorded 67 homicides, a record. As of Friday, there were 12 homicides - one more than this time last year.
The new force's metro division, which will patrol only Camden, will be substantially larger than the one it is replacing, now fewer than 230 officers. Suburban towns, so far, have balked on joining the county force.
County officials said they are able to support a bigger force because it is not governed by current police contracts, which they term overly generous. The budget for the new force is estimated to be $63 million, about $6 million higher than what the city had budgeted for its current force. Camden's budget is subsidized by the state.
Christie has signed off on more than $5 million in start-up costs. But it's unclear what long-term financial commitment Camden will get from the governor, who has said he wants to wean cities off state aid. An itemized operating budget has not been released.
"I do think other agencies and other governments are watching to see how this unfolds, and if it's a good idea," said Louis Tuthill, an assistant professor of criminology at Rutgers University-Camden.
Joe Cordero, a police consultant who was hired to create the force and spent more than 20 years with the New York Police Department, said his approach was rooted in part in an encounter he had with a grandmother in the South Bronx in the 1990s.
At a community meeting where the NYPD touted the success of a drug sweep and the arrest of about a dozen people for murder, the woman put her hand on her hip and demanded that officers do something about the stolen cars and streetwalkers in her neighborhood.
"Perception of crime and safety is personal. It's subjective," said Cordero, who in 2007 became New Jersey's first state director of gangs, guns, and violent crime. "And so if we're going to claim victory because we've achieved something measurable, we have to make it resonate with people."
Cordero said there was an expectation that "this process is going to bring out the change people want," though he warned against quick judgments.
"My caution is that when you flip the switch, we should not expect that crime is going to drop precipitously overnight," he said. "We should not expect . . . that people are going to feel safer just because there is a new organization and there is a new approach."
Laura Sánchez, a social worker who has lived in Fairview Village with her family for a dozen years, said she had warmed to the idea of the new force and was "excited."
She said she had heard gunshots ring out more frequently, several times a week. Recently the sound of gunshots rustled her daughter and a friend from a light sleep. The two girls burst into Sánchez's room.
"They said: 'Did you hear those shots? We don't want to go back downstairs. Come with us,' " Sánchez said.
She sat with the girls for 45 minutes until they fell asleep.
Cole, the social worker at Guadalupe Family Services, said she was curious to see the outcome.
Like some in Camden, Cole sees an antiunion strategy in the dismantling of the city department. "As much as I know it's been a struggle for some of my friends who are police officers, and the whole union-busting process . . . I just want to see something different," she said.
The transition has left a bad taste with some officers. Harry Leon, 43, a Camden police lieutenant, said he and several dozen officers who were offered jobs were led into a hallway of the county's police services building March 18. Commanding officers watched as a supervisor offered them conditional employment.
"You had to decide . . . right on the spot," Leon said. He would have faced giving up seniority and 250 sick days amassed over 23 years.
"You can walk into McDonald's, they'll interview you and at least let you think about it," he said.
Leon said another officer cried as she agreed to sign on.
He himself was offered $104,000 without explanation - a decrease from his base salary of $110,000. Some lower-ranked officers were promoted, he said.
He wanted the job - just not the offer, he said.
He retired as of Monday - one day short of the start of his 24th year. Last week, he and his wife searched for a home in Phoenix, where their two adult sons attend school.
"To give your best years and for them not to be fair, that's the bitterness I leave with," said Leon, who hopes to find another job in law enforcement. "I feel a sense of 'I didn't make it to the finish line.' "
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U.S.A.
Wearing a Badge, and a Video Camera
By RANDALL STROSS — Sunday, April 7th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’
HERE’S a fraught encounter: one police officer, one civilian and anger felt by one or both. Afterward, it may be hard to sort out who did what to whom.
Now, some police departments are using miniaturized video cameras and their microphones to capture, in full detail, officers’ interactions with civilians. The cameras are so small that they can be attached to a collar, a cap or even to the side of an officer’s sunglasses. High-capacity battery packs can last for an extended shift. And all of the videos are uploaded automatically to a central server that serves as a kind of digital evidence locker.
William A. Farrar, the police chief in Rialto, Calif., has been investigating whether officers’ use of video cameras can bring measurable benefits to relations between the police and civilians. Officers in Rialto, which has a population of about 100,000, already carry Taser weapons equipped with small video cameras that activate when the weapon is armed, and the officers have long worn digital audio recorders.
But when Mr. Farrar told his uniformed patrol officers of his plans to introduce the new, wearable video cameras, “it wasn’t the easiest sell,” he said, especially to some older officers who initially were “questioning why ‘big brother’ should see everything they do.”
He said he reminded them that civilians could use their cellphones to record interactions, “so instead of relying on somebody else’s partial picture of what occurred, why not have your own?” he asked. “In this way, you have the real one.”
Last year, Mr. Farrar used the new wearable video cameras to conduct a continuing experiment in his department, in collaboration with Barak Ariel, a visiting fellow at the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge an assistant professor at Hebrew University.
Half of Rialto’s uniformed patrol officers on each week’s schedule have been randomly assigned the cameras, also made by Taser International. Whenever officers wear the cameras, they are expected to activate them when they leave the patrol car to speak with a civilian.
A convenient feature of the camera is its “pre-event video buffer,” which continuously records and holds the most recent 30 seconds of video when the camera is off. In this way, the initial activity that prompts the officer to turn on the camera is more likely to be captured automatically, too.
THE Rialto study began in February 2012 and will run until this July. The results from the first 12 months are striking. Even with only half of the 54 uniformed patrol officers wearing cameras at any given time, the department over all had an 88 percent decline in the number of complaints filed against officers, compared with the 12 months before the study, to 3 from 24.
Rialto’s police officers also used force nearly 60 percent less often — in 25 instances, compared with 61. When force was used, it was twice as likely to have been applied by the officers who weren’t wearing cameras during that shift, the study found. And, lest skeptics think that the officers with cameras are selective about which encounters they record, Mr. Farrar noted that those officers who apply force while wearing a camera have always captured the incident on video.
As small as the cameras are, they seem to be noticeable to civilians, he said. “When you look at an officer,” he said, “it kind of sticks out.” Citizens have sometimes asked officers, “Hey, are you wearing a camera?” and the officers say they are, he reported.
But what about the privacy implications? Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, says: “We don’t like the networks of police-run video cameras that are being set up in an increasing number of cities. We don’t think the government should be watching over the population en masse.” But requiring police officers to wear video cameras is different, he says: “When it comes to the citizenry watching the government, we like that.”
Mr. Stanley says that all parties stand to benefit — the public is protected from police misconduct, and officers are protected from bogus complaints. “There are many police officers who’ve had a cloud fall over them because of an unfounded accusation of abuse,” he said. “Now police officers won’t have to worry so much about that kind of thing.”
Mr. Farrar says officers have told him of cases when citizens arrived at a Rialto police station to file a complaint and the supervisor was able to retrieve and play on the spot the video of what had transpired. “The individuals left the station with basically no other things to say and have never come back,” he said.
The A.C.L.U. does have a few concerns about possible misuse of the recordings. Mr. Stanley says civilians shouldn’t have to worry that a video will be leaked and show up on CNN. Nor would he approve of the police storing years of videos and then using them for other purposes, like trolling for crimes with which to charge civilians. He suggests policies specifying that the videos be deleted after a certain short period.
A spokesman for Taser International said it had received orders from various police departments, including those in Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City and Hartford, as well as Fort Worth, Tex.; Chesapeake, Va.; and Modesto, Calif. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the police department of BART, the transit system, has bought 210 cameras and is training its officers in their use, part of changes undertaken after a BART police officer’s fatal shooting of an unarmed man in 2009.
Before the cameras, “there were so many situations where it was ‘he said, she said,’ and juries tend to believe police officers over accused criminals,” Mr. Stanley says. “The technology really has the potential to level the playing field in any kind of controversy or allegation of abuse.”
Mr. Farrar recently completed a master’s degree in applied criminology and police management at the University of Cambridge. (It required only six weeks a year of residency in England.) And he wrote about the video-camera experiment in his thesis.
He says his goal is to equip all uniformed officers in his department with the video cameras. “Video is very transparent,” he said. “It’s the whole enchilada.”
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In Shift, Police Advise Taking an Active Role to Counter Mass Attacks
By ERICA GOODE — Sunday, April 7th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’
The speed and deadliness of recent high-profile shootings have prompted police departments to recommend fleeing, hiding or fighting in the event of a mass attack, instead of remaining passive and waiting for help.
The shift represents a “sea change,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which recently held a meeting in Washington to discuss shootings like those in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo.
The traditional advice to the public has been “don’t get involved, call 911,” Mr. Wexler said, adding, “There’s a recognition in these ‘active shooter’ situations that there may be a need for citizens to act in a way that perhaps they haven’t been trained for or equipped to deal with.”
Mr. Wexler and others noted that the change echoes a transformation in police procedures that began after the shooting at Columbine High School in 1999, when some departments began telling officers who arrived first on a scene to act immediately rather than waiting for backup. Since then, the approach has become widespread, as a succession of high-profile shootings across the country has made it clear that no city or town is immune and that police agencies must be prepared to take an active approach.
“We used to sit outside and set up a perimeter and wait for the SWAT team to get there,” said Michael Dirden, an executive assistant chief of the Houston Police Department. “Now it’s a recognition that time is of the essence and those initial responders have to go in,” he said, adding that since the Virginia Tech University shooting in 2007, the department has been training first responders to move in on their own when they encounter active gunfire.
Research on mass shootings over the last decade has bolstered the idea that people at the scene of an attack have a better chance of survival if they take an active stance rather than waiting to be rescued by the police, who in many cases cannot get there fast enough to prevent the loss of life.
In an analysis of 84 such shooting cases in the United States from 2000 to 2010, for example, researchers at Texas State University found that the average time it took for the police to respond was three minutes.
“But you see that about half the attacks are over before the police get there, even when they arrive quickly,” said J. Pete Blair, director for research of the university’s Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center and an author of the research, which is set to be published in a book this year.
In the absence of a police presence, how victims responded often made the difference between life and death, Dr. Blair said.
In 16 of the attacks studied by the researchers, civilians were able to stop the perpetrator, subduing him in 13 cases and shooting him in 3 cases. In other attacks, civilians have obstructed or delayed the gunman until the police arrived.
As part of the research, Dr. Blair and his colleagues looked at survival rates and the actions taken by people in classrooms under attack during the Virginia Tech massacre, in which Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 students and teachers before killing himself.
In two classrooms, the students and instructors tried to hide or play dead after Mr. Cho entered. Nearly all were shot, and most died. In a third classroom, Prof. Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, told his students to jump out the second-story window while he tried to hold the classroom door shut, delaying Mr. Cho from coming in. Professor Librescu was killed, but many of the students survived, and only three were injured by gunfire. In another classroom, where the students and teacher blocked the door with a heavy desk and held it in place, Mr. Cho could not get in, and everyone lived.
“The take-home message is that you’re not helpless and the actions you take matter,” Dr. Blair said. “You can help yourself and certainly buy time for the police to get there.”
Kristina Anderson, 26, who was shot three times during the Virginia Tech attack, said that every situation is different but that she thinks it can help for people to develop a plan for how they might act if a mass shooting occurred.
“Everywhere I go now, I think about exits and doorways and potential places to hide and things to barricade and fight back with,” Ms. Anderson said. “Some person has to take action and lead.”
Two instructional videos, one produced by Houston’s Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security and the other by the University of Wisconsin’s police department, recommend that civilians fight an attacker if options like escaping or hiding are not available.
Dennis Storemski, a former executive assistant chief in Houston’s police department and director of the public safety office that produced the video, called “Run. Hide. Fight.,” said the decision to produce it emerged from a realization that while first responders were “fairly well prepared” to deal with mass shootings, the public was not. The video has received over two million hits on YouTube, and the office gets requests every day from other police departments and government agencies that would like to use it, Mr. Storemski said.
He said initially, the suggestion that victims should fight back as a last resort stirred some controversy.
“We had a few people that thought that was not a wise idea,” Mr. Storemski said, but that in some cases fighting back might be the only option.
Susan Riseling, chief of police at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, said the Virginia Tech episode changed her thinking about how to advise students because it was clear that Mr. Cho had “one goal, and that seemed to be to kill as many people as possible before ending his life.”
The department’s video, screened during training sessions around the state but not available online, tells students to escape or conceal themselves if possible, but if those options are not available, to fight. In the video, students are shown throwing a garbage can at an attacker and charging at him as a group.
“If you’re face to face and you know that this person is all about death, you’ve got to take some action to fight,” Chief Riseling said.
What she worries about most, she said, is that spree shootings are becoming so common that she suspects people have begun to accept them as a normal part of life.
“That’s the sad part of it,” Chief Riseling said. “This should never be normal.”
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Newtown tragedy spurs gun buybacks
By Chuck Raasch and Jodi Upton — Sunday, April 7th, 2013 ‘The USA Today’
After the December school shooting in Newtown, Conn., Phil and Judy Rohn dug into their pockets and offered $2,600 for a gun buyback program through the police department in their hometown of North Andover, Mass. Last month, 27 firearms were turned in - one more than they had hoped for to commemorate the 26 dead children and adults murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary.
"We were just so struck by that tragedy, and you always say, 'what can we do?,' " said Phil Rohn, 55, a supervisor in the city electric department in nearby Peabody, Mass.
More than 60 gun buybacks resulting in the buybacks of more than 28,000 guns have occurred across the country since the Newtown tragedy, and at least another dozen buybacks are planned in coming weeks, according to an analysis by USA TODAY. Many were created or moved up on the calendar in response to that tragedy. Some offered cash plus perks that ranged from sports tickets to hams.
According to press reports and interviews, police or private organizations shelled out an average of $130 per gun, meaning that nearly $3.7 million has been spent on the buybacks. The largest were in Tampa, Fla., and Trenton, N.J., where more than 2,500 firearms were turned over in each location.
The impact of buybacks in a country in which there are an estimated 300 million firearms has long been debated.
"Criminals with a hot gun or a stolen gun - you are not going to drop that gun off at a gun buyback unless you are a really dumb criminal," said John Firman, director of research for the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
But, he said, buybacks raise awareness about where people can take unwanted guns, and they can be a lifeline for people who may feel threatened by guns in the home, like those vulnerable to domestic abuse. Firman also said police always seek a "lucky factor" in coming across a gun that may help solve a crime.
Rohn, who owns guns and considers himself a Second Amendment defender, said he does not believe more gun laws are the answer. But if his buyback got one unwanted gun off the streets that might have been stolen or used in a crime or resulted in an accident, it was worth it, he said. "Anyone I talked to thought it was a positive thing," he said of his North Andover neighbors.
Elsewhere:
• In New York City, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said five years of gun buybacks that have resulted in nearly 9,000 guns being turned over to district attorneys or in houses of worship have contributed to the city's lowest murder rate in 50 years. Hip-hop music executive Michael "Blue" Williams has added a twist: His "Guns for Greatness," offers $200 and mentoring opportunities for young people who turn in guns. A late March buyback netted 115 guns at a Brooklyn church, including 89 handguns and one assault rifle. Kelly said the guns will be melted into coat hangers. "The mentoring part is so important," Williams said, "because these young kids out here need an option - they need something to do besides just do the right thing (and) turn in a gun."
• A buyback in Tampa in February that offered $75 and tickets to the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey team or the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team brought in an "overwhelming number" of illegal, sawed-off shotguns, said Hillsborough County Sheriff's Capt. Chad Chronister. Police found later that 17 of the guns had been reported stolen, including one that was stolen in 1973, he said.
• In Blytheville, Ark., a consortium of local businesses and ministers sponsored a buyback a week after the Dec. 14 Newtown shooting. People who turned in guns were given $75 and a ham from private donors. About 15 guns were turned in, including one that had been reported stolen, which was returned to its owner, according to City Council member John Musgraves. The buyback had been scheduled before the Newtown shootings, but "after what happened there it really made us look at things," Musgraves said. He said another buyback is being planned for early summer.
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Taping of Farm Cruelty Is Becoming the Crime
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. — Sunday, April 7th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’
On one covert video, farm workers illegally burn the ankles of Tennessee walking horses with chemicals. Another captures workers in Wyoming punching and kicking pigs and flinging piglets into the air. And at one of the country’s largest egg suppliers, a video shows hens caged alongside rotting bird corpses, while workers burn and snap off the beaks of young chicks.
Each video — all shot in the last two years by undercover animal rights activists — drew a swift response: Federal prosecutors in Tennessee charged the horse trainer and other workers, who have pleaded guilty, with violating the Horse Protection Act. Local authorities in Wyoming charged nine farm employees with cruelty to animals. And the egg supplier, which operates in Iowa and other states, lost one of its biggest customers, McDonald’s, which said the video played a part in its decision.
But a dozen or so state legislatures have had a different reaction: They proposed or enacted bills that would make it illegal to covertly videotape livestock farms, or apply for a job at one without disclosing ties to animal rights groups. They have also drafted measures to require such videos to be given to the authorities almost immediately, which activists say would thwart any meaningful undercover investigation of large factory farms.
Critics call them “Ag-Gag” bills.
Some of the legislation appears inspired by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a business advocacy group with hundreds of state representatives from farm states as members. The group creates model bills, drafted by lobbyists and lawmakers, that in the past have included such things as “stand your ground” gun laws and tighter voter identification rules.
One of the group’s model bills, “The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act,” prohibits filming or taking pictures on livestock farms to “defame the facility or its owner.” Violators would be placed on a “terrorist registry.”
Officials from the group did not respond to a request for comment.
Animal rights activists say they have not seen legislation that would require them to register as terrorists, but they say other measures — including laws passed last year in Iowa, Utah and Missouri — make it nearly impossible to produce similar undercover exposés. Some groups say that they have curtailed activism in those states.
“It definitely has had a chilling effect on our ability to conduct undercover investigations,” said Vandhana Bala, general counsel for Mercy for Animals, which has shot many videos, including the egg-farm investigation in 2011. (McDonald’s said that video showed “disturbing and completely unacceptable” behavior, but that none of the online clips were from the Iowa farm that supplied its eggs. Ms. Bala, though, said that some video showing bird carcasses in cages did come from that facility.)
The American Farm Bureau Federation, which lobbies for the agricultural and meat industries, criticized the mistreatment seen on some videos. But the group cautions that some methods represent best practices endorsed by animal-care experts.
The videos may seem troubling to someone unfamiliar with farming, said Kelli Ludlum, the group’s director of Congressional relations, but they can be like seeing open-heart surgery for the first time.
“They could be performing a perfect procedure, but you would consider it abhorrent that they were cutting a person open,” she said.
In coming weeks, Indiana and Tennessee are expected to vote on similar measures, while states from California to Pennsylvania continue to debate them.
Opponents have scored some recent victories, as a handful of bills have died, including those in New Mexico and New Hampshire. In Wyoming, the legislation stalled after loud opposition from animal rights advocates, including Bob Barker, former host of “The Price is Right.”
In Indiana, an expansive bill became one of the most controversial of the state legislative session, drawing heated opposition from labor groups and the state press association, which said the measure violated the First Amendment.
After numerous constitutional objections, the bill was redrafted and will be unveiled Monday, said Greg Steuerwald, a Republican state representative and chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
The new bill would require job applicants to disclose material information or face criminal penalties, a provision that opponents say would prevent undercover operatives from obtaining employment. And employees who do something beyond the scope of their jobs could be charged with criminal trespass.
An employee who took a video on a livestock farm with his phone and gave it to someone else would “probably” run afoul of the proposed law, Mr. Steuerwald said. The bill will apply not just to farms, but to all employers, he added.
Nancy J. Guyott, the president of the Indiana chapter of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said she feared that the legislation would punish whistle-blowers.
Nationally, animal rights advocates fear that they will lose a valuable tool that fills the void of what they say is weak or nonexistent regulation.
Livestock companies say that their businesses have suffered financially from unfair videos that are less about protecting animals than persuading consumers to stop eating meat.
Don Lehe, a Republican state representative from a rural district in Indiana, said online videos can cast farmers in a false light and give them little opportunity to correct the record.
“That property owner is essentially guilty before they had the chance to address the issue,” Mr. Lehe said.
As for whistle-blowers, advocates for the meat industry say that they are protected from prosecution by provisions in some bills that give them 24 to 48 hours to turn over videos to legal authorities.
“If an abuse has occurred and they have evidence of it, why are they holding on to it?” said Dale Moore, executive director of public policy for the American Farm Bureau Federation.
But animal rights groups say investigations take months to complete.
Undercover workers cannot document a pattern of abuse, gather enough evidence to force a government investigation and determine whether managers condone the abuse within one to two days, said Matt Dominguez, who works on farm animal protection at the Humane Society of the United States.
“Instead of working to prevent future abuses, the factory farms want to silence them,” he said. “What they really want is for the whistle to be blown on the whistle-blower.”
The Humane Society was responsible for a number of undercover investigations, including the videos of the Wyoming pig farm and the Tennessee walking horses.
Video shot in 2011 showed workers dripping caustic chemicals onto the horses’ ankles and clasping metal chains onto the injured tissue. This illegal and excruciating technique, known as “soring,” forces the horse to thrust its front legs forward after every painful step to exaggerate the distinctive high-stepping gait favored by breeders. The video also showed a worker hitting a horse in the head with a large piece of wood.
The Humane Society first voluntarily turned over the video to law enforcement. By the time the video was publicly disclosed, federal prosecutors had filed charges. A week later, they announced guilty pleas from the horse trainer and other workers.
Prosecutors later credited the Humane Society with prompting the federal investigation and establishing “evidence instrumental to the case.”
That aid to prosecutors shows the importance of lengthy undercover investigations that would be prevented by laws requiring video to be turned over within one or two days, Mr. Dominguez said.
“At the first sign of animal cruelty, we’d have to pull our investigator out, and we wouldn’t be able to build a case that leads to charges.”
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Baltimore, Maryland
Baltimore Police internal affairs chief resigns
Grayling Williams, hired a year ago to improve public trust, leaving for another job, spokesman says
By Justin Fenton — Sunday, April 7th, 2013 ‘The Baltimore Sun’ / Baltimore, MD
The Baltimore Police Department's internal affairs chief is leaving the agency, a little more than a year after being brought on to reassure the public that a scandal-weary agency would get tougher policing itself, a spokesman confirmed.
Grayling Williams, who joined the department last January from the Department of Homeland Security's counter narcotics office, resigned Thursday to pursue another opportunity, chief spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said. Williams referred a reporter's questions to the spokesman.
Williams was hired by Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III, at the time a rare outside hire made in hopes of increasing public trust after a series of scandals, a move that attracted the attention of the New York Times.
After being introduced to the media, however, Williams had a decidedly low-profile public role.
New Commissioner Anthony W. Batts, appointed in the fall, has since made several outside hires, including bringing on a deputy commissioner from the Los Angeles Police Department to lead a new "professional standards" bureau overseeing Williams' office.
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Iowa
Iowa meth law decreases manufacturing, but not use, of drug
By NICK HYTREK — Sunday, April 7th, 2013 ‘The Sioux City Journal’ / Sioux City, Iowa
SIOUX CITY | In the days when all cold medications were out in front of the pharmacy counter, products like Sudafed and Actifed flew off the shelves across Iowa.
People cooking up methamphetamine in makeshift laboratories loaded up on medications containing pseudoephedrine, a decongestant found in many cold and allergy medications -- and a main ingredient in the manufacturing of meth.
"They would come in and buy boxes and boxes. At the time, nobody really knew what was going on," said Rob Rehal, a pharmacist and co-owner of Greenville Pharmacy, 2705 Correctionville Road.
But since the passage of laws requiring products containing pseudoephedrine to be kept behind the counter as well as limiting the purchase of them, those products stay in stock much longer. A system that electronically tracks pseudoephedrine purchases has also cut into sales.
Those restrictions have reduced the manufacture of meth in Iowa, law enforcement officers, prosecutors and drug treatment counselors say, but the craving for meth has not decreased.
"The demand is still here. People are still using. They're just finding different ways of getting the product," said Amy Klocke, an assistant Woodbury County Attorney who prosecutes drug cases brought forward by the Tri-State Drug Task Force.
INTENT OF THE LAW
From the time Senate File 169 was first proposed in the Iowa Legislature, those backing the bill knew it probably wouldn't have a dramatic impact on meth use.
Passed in 2005, the law required medications containing pseudoephedrine to be kept behind the pharmacist's counter. Buyers were required to show a photo ID to purchase those medicines and were limited to buying no more than 7.5 grams -- two or three boxes -- per person during a 30-day period. People with a doctor's prescription can buy more.
The law aimed to make Iowa safer, to protect citizens from the health hazards posed by methamphetamine manufacturing.
In 2004, officers responded to 1,504 meth lab incidents, more than double the number in 2000. Those labs contained tubing and glassware filled and tainted with hazardous chemicals such as lithium, anhydrous ammonia, ether in unknown quantities and combinations, said Don Sikorski, resident agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office in Sioux City and the Tri-State Drug Task Force.
"You'd find a pot of bubbling liquid and didn't know what was in it or how long before it might blow up," Sikorski said.
Labs did blow up, injuring those making the meth and destroying property. Toxic chemicals soaked into carpets and walls, contaminating houses and causing health problems for residents who moved in after the meth cooks left.
Of course, state officials wanted to see meth use decrease, but they were just as concerned about public safety when they pushed for the pseudoephedrine limits, said Dale Woolery, associate director of the Governor's Office of Drug Control Policy.
"It really wasn't the strategy that it would have anything to do with demand," Woolery said of the law. "The word I like to use, but I'm not sure is the best word, is mitigating. We're mitigating the risks and making it more difficult for people to produce meth in Iowa."
The law had an immediate impact. Meth lab incidents dropped to 331 in 2006 and bottomed out at 200 in 2008.
MANUFACTURERS ADJUST
But the meth cooks adjusted. Pharmacists were required to keep written logs of pseudoephedrine purchases, but that only enabled them to track who was buying at their store. Producers quickly realized they could send friends to buy the pseudoephedrine limit at every store in the area and still amass large quantities.
The state responded in 2010 by implementing an electronic tracking system that follows pseudoephedrine sales in real time. When a person buys two boxes at Pharmacy A, the pharmacist enters the sale into the system. If the buyer goes to Pharmacy B five minutes later to buy two more boxes, the system will flag it and the pharmacist there will deny the sale. The system not only allows retailers to keep people from buying more than their limit, it gives law enforcement the ability to track suspicious individuals and buying patterns.
As a result, meth production has changed.
Klocke said some producers have decided that making their own meth just isn't worth it. They can't produce as much, and have to give much of what they do make as payment to friends who bought pseudoephedrine for them.
"It's not an efficient way to sell drugs when you have to give your product to friends," Klocke said. "It's still here, but the quantities are smaller."
Sikorski said there are fewer large-scale meth producers now. Most are "mom-and-pop" producers who make only enough to support their own habit and maybe share with friends.
Instead of the large labs, meth makers now utilize the "one-pot" or "shake-and-bake" method to produce the drug. In both procedures, chemicals are mixed in a plastic 2-liter or 32-ounce beverage bottle and shaken. The procedure produces smaller quantities of meth, but it's faster, easier to hide and, as a result, harder for law enforcement to catch. As producers have figured out the law and switched methods, meth lab incidents have risen from that low of 200 in 2008 to 379 in 2012.
"We have more labs than we want, but not as many as we used to have," Woolery said. "These are morphing, changing challenges."
Sikorski said most meth in Iowa now comes from the southwestern United States.
"The laws have drastically cut down on the local manufacturing of meth, but demand in the area is going to dictate whether the drug trafficking organizations are going to take the risk to bring it across state lines and into Iowa," Sikorski said. "They don't care what the law here is. They're just deciding whether to bring it in or not."
DEMAND STILL HERE
That demand for meth is still here, though perhaps not as much as it once was.
"We still have people who are addicted to meth, but it is decreasing," said Amy Bloch, vice president of clinical services at Jackson Recovery Centers in Sioux City. "Before, it was so accessible. It was easy to get to. It's still there, but harder to get."
Meth addicts still crave the drug, Bloch said, but because it's harder to get, new drug users are finding other ways to get high.
"It's still a problem," Bloch said. "Before, it was an epidemic. I would say it's not at that level anymore. There's still the same number of addicts, they're just using different substances."
Bloch said the safety aspect of the pseudoephedrine law has been a real benefit. Jackson Recovery counselors see fewer clients coming in with burns from meth lab mishaps or who have lost custody of their children because they were making meth at home.
In that respect, though she still sees roughly the same number of meth-related cases, Klocke said the pseudoephedrine laws have been successful.
"I don't think it's changed use, but it's been a very good law because we don't have the explosions in neighborhood homes (anymore)," she said.
WHAT NEXT?
Regulating access to pseudoephedrine is only a piece of the puzzle to reduce meth use.
"We've certainly had progress. I think it's a little dangerous to think of eradication because I don't know if it's achievable in the short term," Woolery said. "It's an imperfect response, but I think it's been an effective response."
Some advocates call for making pseudoephedrine a prescription-only substance.
"We don't know that would reduce the risk anymore," Woolery said. "Reducing the amount produced in Iowa does little to reduce the appetite when most of the meth in the state has always been imported. Addressing the appetite is much more complicated."
In addition to effective laws, Woolery said treatment of meth addicts and public information campaigns to discourage young people from using the drug in the first place must continue, Woolery said.
"Prevention and treatment -- that's where we're going to make inroads on the demand and appetite," he said.
Pseudoephedrine laws and tracking systems were a good start and have proven successful, Woolery said. Meth labs are now smaller in size and scope. Law enforcement officers spend more time and resources going after meth traffickers rather than responding to meth lab incidents.
"It's making the problem smaller than it was," Woolery said. "We think Iowans are much better off today than they were in 2004."
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Mike Bosak
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