Court Case Winds Down In New York's Stop-And-Frisk Challenge (NPR News) and Other Monday, May 20th, 2013 NYC Police Related News Articles

 

 

Monday, May 20th, 2013 — Good Afternoon, Stay Safe

 

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NYPD Stop, Question and Frisk  Search

 

Court Case Winds Down In New York's Stop-And-Frisk Challenge

By Margot Adler — Monday, May 20th, 2013 ‘NPR News’  / Washington, DC

 

 

Closing arguments are set to take place Monday in the federal class action trial involving New York City's stop-and-frisk policy. The trial has been going on for two months in Manhattan.

 

Plaintiffs in Floyd v. City of New York claim the New York Police Department, its supervisors and its union pressured police officers to stop, question and frisk hundreds of thousands of people each year, even establishing quotas. They argue that 88 percent of the stops involved blacks and Hispanic's, mostly men, and were in fact a form of racial profiling.

 

The police and the city argued that that these policies were goals, not quotas, and have made the city the safest big city in America.

 

"I can't imagine any rational person saying that the techniques are not working, and that we should stop them," says Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

 

The city also argued that these stops took place in high crime areas where the crime was often black on black or Hispanic on Hispanic. As NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly told public radio station WNYC: "Ninety-six percent of the shooting victims in New York City are black or Hispanic. Crime is down in this city in the last two decades 80 percent."

 

Joseph Esposito, who was chief of department of the NYPD until this year, testified at the trial that he had heard no complaints about racial profiling.

 

That brought Judge Shira Scheindlin up short. You never heard that from any community group, she asked.

 

But plaintiffs like Nicholas Pert and David Ourlicht told NPR a different story.

 

"I remember squad cars pulling up; they just pulled up aggressively, and the cops came out with their guns drawn," Pert says.

 

Threw me against the wall," Ourlicht says. "Took everything out of my pockets, threw it on the floor, dumped my bag on the floor, my books and everything."

 

"It left me embarrassed, humiliated and upset," Pert adds.

 

Other testimony by whistle blowing cops provided recordings at the trial where supervisors told officers to push up the number of stops.

 

"The police are told to get numbers," says Jonathan Moore a lawyer for the plaintiffs. "This is not what stop and frisk should be. Stop and frisk is a legitimate tool for law enforcement to use. It should not be the way you measure an officer's future in the New York City Police Department."

 

Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued very few of the stops led to arrests or even the discovery of illegal guns. And even though the numbers of stops went down significantly in 2012, we are talking about almost 5 million stops in 10 years.

 

Plaintiffs are asking Judge Scheindlin to put the NYPD's stop and frisk policies under judicial oversight, something the city and the NYPD definitely oppose.

 

The trial is really about two different questions. Police have the authority to stop someone, but at what point does that stop and that search violate the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution? Secondly, is the pattern of stop and frisk a form of racial profiling?

 

Ian Weinstein, a professor of Law at Fordham University, says stop and frisk can only be used if there is a suspicion of a crime. If the judge finds there is a pattern of exceeding lawful authority, "particularly to frisk someone for weapons, and to search, in other words, go in pockets, ask them to empty a bag, that is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. That would justify an oversight commission, different sorts of remedies that the plaintiffs have proposed without addressing the question of racial discrimination and racial profiling."

 

Proving racial profiling is much harder, Weinstein says. "You have to show intent, and that can be difficult to prove."

 

Standards of proof have become more demanding, he says, and the culture of race claims has shifted over 20 years.

 

"Courts are less receptive, the society is less receptive and we see this in the Supreme Court's movement."

 

Closing arguments are expected to take all of Monday, and the judge's ruling is not expected for several months.

 

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Civil Rights Trial on NYPD Tactic Closing

By COLLEEN LONG (The Associated Press) — Monday, May 20th, 2013; 2:23 a.m. EDT

 

 

NEW YORK -- The federal civil rights challenge to the contentious New York Police Department tactic of stop, question and frisk is closing after more than nine weeks of testimony from men who say they were wrongly stopped because of their race and police officers and officials who believe the nation's largest force operates with integrity.

 

U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin was scheduled to hear summations in the lengthy trial Monday. She must then examine more than 7,000 pages of trial record and may order major changes to the policy, reforms that could have a nationwide impact on how police departments operate.

 

More than 5 million stops have been made in New York in the past decade, mostly of black and Hispanic men. Police must have reasonable suspicion to stop someone, a standard lower than probable cause needed to justify an arrest. Only about 10 percent result in arrests.

 

About a dozen black and Hispanic men told the judge of disturbing and uncomfortable encounters with police that left them feeling confused, angry and scared. One witness, 24-year-old Nicholas Peart from Harlem, wept on the stand as he described how he was handcuffed and put into the back of a squad car. A teenager told how he was stopped walking down the street. In each instance, the witnesses said they could find no basis for the stops other than they were minorities. But many of the officers who did the stopping also explained their legal reasoning.

 

Lawyers for the men who sued police say officers are making illegal stops in part because they felt pressure from superiors instituting illegal quotas. Some officers testified said they were punished for not making enough stops and were harassed by fellow officers upset they had blown the whistle. Yet others said no quotas existed and they never felt pressure to make a stop.

 

The trial has provided a rare window into the NYPD, with about a dozen officials testifying on how they do their jobs. Officers are told to stop the "the right people, at the right time in the right location," a phrase first heard in the early days of the case on a secret recording made by one whistleblower officer during a heated exchange over his performance evaluation. Since then, it has been repeated by nearly every official who testified.

 

"It's a tool that needs to be used properly, and as borough commanders you should have adequate checks and balances in place, and you should be looking at them with your staff," said Deputy Chief James Hall, who is in charge of patrol. "There is a focus on when it is used ... right time, right location, you know, right individual."

 

Police have said the phrase means the location where crimes have been occurring, at the time they have been occurring, and an individual who matches the description of a crime suspect, or someone who appears about to commit a crime. Lawyers for the men who have sued say, though, that the phrase is code for targeting blacks and Hispanics in poor neighborhoods.

 

Plaintiffs say a court monitor must be appointed to facilitate changes in training, supervision and the documentation of street stops. An expert for the city testified that the department has already enough checks and balances already in place.

 

The tactic has become a city flashpoint, with the mayor and police commissioner defending it is a necessary crime-fighting tool, and other city lawmakers calling for major change.

 

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NYPD stop-and-frisk: Judge calls criticism 'below-the-belt'

By LARRY NEUMEISTER   (The Associated Press)  —  Sunday, May 19th, 2013; 12:49 p.m. EDT

 

 

The federal judge presiding over civil rights challenges to the stop-and-frisk practices of the New York Police Department has no doubt where she stands with the government.

 

"I know I'm not their favorite judge," U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin said during an Associated Press interview Friday. It was another moment of candor for a judge known for her call-it-as-she-sees-it manner and willingness to confront government lawyers in a courthouse where many judges — former federal prosecutors themselves — seem less inclined.

 

"I do think that I treat the government as only one more litigant," she said during the interview that proceeded with a single rule: no questions about the trial over police tactics that reaches closing arguments Monday.

 

The trial has put the NYPD and City Hall on the defensive as they justify a long-running policy of stopping, questioning and frisking some residents to deter crime. Critics say it discriminates against blacks and Hispanics. Scheindlin is not being asked to ban the tactic, since it has been found to be legal, but she does have the power to order reforms in how it is implemented.

 

During the trial, she's shown an impatience with lawyers on both sides when they stray from the topic at hand, and a willingness to directly question witnesses — including police supervisors — about the nuts and bolts of trying to keep streets safe.

 

"I don't think they're entitled to deference," she said of government attorneys. "I think some of the judges are a little more timid to maybe disagree with the U.S. attorney's office. ... They have to prove their case like anybody else. I don't give them special respect. Maybe some judges do because they came from the office, they know the people there, whatever. I try not to do that."

 

Scheindlin, 66, appointed by President Bill Clinton, has had plenty of high-profile cases in 19 years in federal court, including three trials of John "Junior" Gotti, the son of the late legendary mob boss John Gotti, two trials of a California student who knew two of the Sept. 11 hijackers and the trial of international arms dealer Viktor Bout.

 

The AP interview came after a New York Daily News article revealed that the staff of Mayor Michael Bloomberg had reviewed her record to show that 60 percent of her 15 written "search-and-seizure" rulings since she took the bench in 1994 had gone against law enforcement.

 

The judge called it a "below-the-belt attack" on judicial independence. She said it was rare when any judge grants a request to suppress evidence in a law enforcement case and that inclusion of the numerous times when she rejected the requests with oral rulings from the bench would likely reduce the total to less than 5 percent.

 

She said reports that the mayor's office was behind the study made it worse.

 

"If that's true, that's quite disgraceful," Scheindlin said. "It was very discouraging and upsetting. I can't say it has no toll."

 

Of such criticism, she said: "It's very painful. Judges can't really easily defend themselves. ... To attack the judge personally is completely inappropriate and intimidates judges or it is intended to intimidate judges or it has an effect on other judges and that worries me."

 

A Bloomberg spokesman said Saturday, "We did a simple search of publicly available written decisions, as the media is also free to do."

 

The New York County Lawyers' Association called the report meaningless because it sampled so few Scheindlin rulings.

 

Scheindlin has faced heat before, most notably a decade ago when she presided over the trials of Osama Awadallah and one newspaper labeled her "Osama's best friend," a reference that some could misinterpret to refer to Osama bin Laden.

 

"You could be in danger, physically," she said.

 

The Awadallah case is memorable to Scheindlin for how it reflected the mood of the attitude across the country after the Sept. 11 attacks. Awadallah, born in Venezuela and raised in Jordan, was a young immigrant in San Diego who was picked up as a material witness after his telephone number was found in a car that one of the hijackers drove to the airport on Sept. 11. Prosecutors agreed he was no terrorist but claimed he intentionally misled grand jurors about how well he knew one of the terrorists. Defense attorneys said he was left confused after 20 days in detention.

 

She said she learned in talking to jurors after Awadallah's first trial that they came within one vote of convicting him of false statements. At the next trial, he was exonerated.

 

"Same evidence. Same prosecutor. Same defense lawyers. Jury goes from 11-to-1 to 12-zip," she recalled. "So I asked what happened. The answer is the country had turned in a new direction."

 

She said immediately after Sept. 11, "people were so worried and so terrified that the next attack was around the corner that they were willing to cede many of their civil liberties."

 

She added: "The second half of the (President George W.) Bush term, Bush policies were not popular any longer. People were much more distant from the event of 9/11. Now they were more concerned with civil liberties and less concerned with the security threat. ... I thought it was dramatically shown by what happened in that case."

 

In choosing law clerks, Scheindlin looks for varied experience like her own. She has been a prosecutor and a defense lawyer and was once politically active.

 

"I don't want a kid who's just done seven straight years of A's at Harvard," she said. "I want to know that they've done something, worked somewhere. Some experience. Some work. Some life. That makes for a rounded person."

 

And should they someday become a judge, it makes them well prepared for the rare case of impact.

 

"That's the day you live for, to do something that you believe is right and that is upheld as right and has a national impact, that's great," Scheindlin said. "That's why people want to be judges, I think, so they can make a difference."

 

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Officer Serrano’s Hidden Camera
The stop-and-frisk trials of Pedro Serrano: NYPD rat, NYPD hero.

By Jennifer Gonnerman — Monday, May 20th, 2013 ‘New York Magazine’ / New York, NY

 

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

http://nymag.com/news/features/pedro-serrano-2013-5/

 

 

Officer Pedro Serrano walked through the heavy wooden doors of the 40th Precinct in the South Bronx and headed upstairs to the locker room. For eight years he’d been working out of this 89-year-old station house, with its broken fax machines and crummy computers. “We work in a shithole,” the cops there would say, “but it’s our shithole.” Serrano, 43, had the day off—he’d stopped by only to pick up some papers—but when he got close to his locker, he noticed something strange. Someone had placed a dozen rat stickers on the door.

 

There was a blue rat baring sharp teeth; a red rat curled up tight; another rat posing next to the word dirty. And dangling from his combination lock was a spring-loaded rat trap. A ­minute or two passed before his initial shock subsided. “Now it begins,” he said to himself. “The little game that’s going to start—it’s real now.”

 

Serrano snapped off the trap so he could open his locker, but he decided the stickers should stay. “I don’t want to let these people think that they won,” he told himself. If this display had been intended to scare Serrano into silence, it had the opposite effect: The sight of all those rats made him even more determined to testify in federal court against the NYPD.

 

Serrano enrolled in the NYPD academy in the summer of 2004. He was old for a rookie—at 34, he’d just made the age cutoff—and in January 2005, he got his first assignment: the 40th Precinct. He had lived in the Bronx since arriving from Puerto Rico when he was a year old. Just two miles separated the 4-0’s station house from the apartment on Fox Street where he’d lived as a child. And it helped that he spoke Spanish; almost three-­quarters of the 4-0’s residents are Latino.

 

No matter how well he knew the Bronx, leaving the police academy and joining a precinct felt disorienting. “The minute you got out of training—different world,” he says. “Ninety percent of the stuff they taught you did not exist.” At the academy, for example, he’d been told never to target anyone solely because of his skin color. The message seemed unambiguous: “If you racial-profile, you’re going to get fired.”

 

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Outside Inspector-General for the NYPD

 

Quinn’s bill bugs ‘all’ cops
Affects feds, too

By SALLY GOLDENBERG — Monday, May 20th, 2013 ‘The New York Post’

 

 

A controversial bill to create an inspector general to oversee the NYPD contains a provision that would allow the IG to access and make public sensitive information related to joint investigations with other law-enforcement agencies, The Post has learned.

 

The measure states that the city’s Department of Investigation commissioner — who would oversee the IG — could “review, study audit and make recommendations relating to the operations, policies, programs and practices, including ongoing partnerships with other law-enforcement agencies.”

 

The City Council recently added a line that states a mayor will have “discretion to determine how sensitive information . . . shall be treated.”

 

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly is highlighting this section as he tries to dissuade council members from supporting the bill, which is being pushed by Council Speaker and Democratic mayoral candidate Christine Quinn.

 

She has enough votes to override an all-but-certain veto by Mayor Bloomberg.

 

“The provision for IG access to information regarding the department’s partnerships or cooperation with other agencies makes joint task forces with the FBI on terrorism, ATF on gun trafficking and DEA on big narcotics cases impossible to maintain,” said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.

 

Councilman Peter Vallone (D-Queens), who chairs the Public Safety Committee, said he has yet to schedule a vote on the IG bill because that line would discourage other agencies from working with the NYPD.

 

“If anyone thinks the CIA or the FBI is going to agree to turn their documents over to the inspector general, they’re nuts,” Vallone said.

 

Without his support, Quinn would have to force a vote through a rarely used measure called a motion to discharge.

 

Such a move would be awkward for Quinn, who has tightly controlled the council’s legislative agenda for the past seven years.

 

Councilman Brad Lander (D-Brooklyn), a co-sponsor of the bill, called Vallone’s argument a “scare tactic.”

 

Lander said the Department of Investigation can already access information related to any city agency.

 

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Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly rejects calls for more oversight after successful lawsuits against NYPD
'The city is too willing to settle the cases,' Kelly said after reports that he promoted a sergeant involved in at least 15 lawsuits that resulted in nearly $500,000 in settlements.

By Barry Paddock , Chelsia Rose Marcius AND Rocco Parascandola — Monday, May 20th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’

 

 

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly blasted critics calling for the NYPD to monitor successful lawsuits against cops in the wake of a Daily News investigation.

 

“The city is too willing to settle the cases,” Kelly said Sunday when asked about the front-page story detailing the rising number of lawsuits and settlements involving NYPD officers. “We need a lot more trials and efforts to determine the true facts in many of these allegations.”

 

The News reported that Kelly promoted a Brooklyn North Narcotics sergeant, Daniel Sbarra, to lieutenant despite at least 15 lawsuits involving him that resulted in nearly $500,000 in settlements. Kelly called the News story “unfair.”

 

“There are certain units that are going to, just by the nature of their activities, generate excessive civilian complaints and lawsuits,” he said.

 

But Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., head of the Council’s Public Safety Committee and a steady supporter of Kelly’s, said more oversight is needed.

 

“The Police Department absolutely needs to be looking at these settlements — not only to save the city money but to get cops who are trouble off the street,” Vallone (D-Queens) said.

 

City controller and mayoral candidate John Liu pressed for scrutiny of the suits in his latest annual report.

 

“If there aren’t changes and the claims continue to go up, that’s just a waste of taxpayer money,” Liu told The News.

 

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, who is also running for mayor, renewed his call for an inspector general to oversee the NYPD.

 

“An IG would ensure accountability and transparency, and would be uniquely positioned to review cases like these and discover the truth,” de Blasio said.

 

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Los Angeles, Chicago and Seattle have saved money for decades by analyzing lawsuits against police departments
The NYPD formally reviews cases that result in payouts of $250,000 or more. Payouts from suits reached an all-time high of $185 million in 2011

By Rocco Parascandola, John Marzulli And Dareh Gregorian — Sunday, May 19th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’

 

 

While the NYPD has been ignoring calls to track and analyze lawsuits against it for decades, other cities have saved tens of millions of dollars by doing so.

 

Los Angeles, Chicago and Seattle all analyze their lawsuits in order to identify problem officers and behavior, but the NYPD only formally reviews cases that result in payouts of $250,000 or more — less than 1% of settlements and awards each year.

 

The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department began analyzing data from suits in the early ’90s, and saw a $30 million drop in payouts in the first four years. A similar system helped the LAPD see a drop from 828 claims and $58 million in payouts in 2001, to 223 claims and $20.4 million in payouts in 2012.

 

The NYPD created a lawsuit-tracking unit in 1994, but disbanded it.

 

members, and the New York City Bar Association — which included a database tracking NYPD lawsuits in its recommendations for the next mayor.

 

“No business would allow itself to pay huge amounts of money for claims without saying, ‘Why are we paying all this money?’” said Holtzman.

 

But the NYPD has — payouts from its lawsuits reached an all-time high of $185.6 million in fiscal year 2011.

 

City Councilman Peter Vallone introduced a bill in 2009 that would have forced the NYPD to submit lawsuit info to the council, but it never made it onto the floor for a vote. He’s hoping to pass a broader bill this session.

 

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Cardillo Mosque Dishonor and Embarrassment

 

‘One Police Plaza’

Chief Al Seedman: Legend and Fact

By: Leonard Levitt – Monday, May 20th, 2013 ‘NYPD Confidential.Com’

(Op-Ed / Commentary)

 

 

The flamboyant former Chief of Detectives Al Seedman died last week at the age of 94, and a legend was already in the making.

 

In the NY Times, Seedman was eulogized as the tough-talking, cigar chomping, first and only Jewish Chief of Detectives who, as the novelist Jerome Charyn put it, “seemed more Irish than the Irish.”

 

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly issued a statement, saying Seedman “came to epitomize for investigators the world over the image of a no-nonsense Chief determined to get his man.”

 

Then, thinking perhaps of the John Ford movie “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” and its immortalized line “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” Kelly, added of Seedman: “The image and reality were one and the same.”

 

But contrary to Kelly’s words, for Seedman -— like much of the NYPD — image and reality were not one and the same. The legend was not the fact.

 

Seedman may have been one tough cop on the street, but when it came to taking responsibility for the most controversial decision of his career, he ran away and hid. Then he let someone else take the heat.

 

That decision occurred on April, 14, 1972, when Seedman ordered the release of 16 suspects in the fatal shooting of Police Officer Philip Cardillo inside Nation of Islam Mosque 7 in Harlem  — a shooting that remains unsolved and still resonates within the police department today, 41 years later.

 

Seedman hid his role, allowing then Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Ward — who a decade later would become the city’s first black police commissioner — to be blamed.

 

Feelings towards Ward within the department at that time then became so hostile that the president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association wrote in the PBA newsletter that Ward “should either resign or be fired.”

 

The truth was discovered 11 years later, in 1983, after Mayor Ed Koch announced Ward’s appointment as police commissioner.

 

Newsday reporter Gerald McKelvey found it in a secret and long-hidden police document, known as the Blue Book, which was the department’s internal investigation of the shooting.

 

The document said that Seedman had made “the reluctant decision” to release the suspects to stem a riot raging outside the mosque because of the heavy police presence following Cardillo’s shooting.

 

The Blue Book appeared to explain, if not justify, Seedman’s order by saying that he was influenced by three men — Ward, newly elected Harlem Congressman Charles Rangel and Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrahkan, all of whom “took the position that the street would return to normal if the police were removed from the area including the mosque.”

 

After the Newsday story appeared, this reporter caught up with Seedman, who had quit the department two weeks after Cardillo’s shooting — probably because he feared repercussions from his order.

 

“What is this document?” he said, when asked about the Blue Book. “I never heard of it.”

 

But, informed of the Blue Book’s contents, he acknowledged his order to release the suspects. When asked why he hadn’t acknowledged his role at the time and instead allowed Ward to twist in the wind for the next 11 years, he answered, “What good would it have done?”

 

What good, indeed!

 

Despite his acknowledgement, Seedman’s friends in the Shomrim Society of Jewish police officers continue to maintain that he was pressured into his decision by Ward, Rangel and Farrakhan.

 

Subsequent books on the mosque shooting — as well as Seedman’s autobiography, written with Peter Hellman in 1974 — make no mention that the order to release the suspects was Seedman’s.

 

Subsequent articles about him in the mainstream media also failed to acknowledge his role.

 

Then, two years ago, in an updated version of his autobiography, to be released on the 39th anniversary of the mosque shooting, Seedman offered a new version of why he retired so suddenly, two weeks after Cardillo’s shooting.

 

The NY Times headlined its online column of Mar. 24, 2011: “A Former Chief’s New Word on Why He Resigned.” Citing the book’s publicist, the column stated that the new edition would “at last” reveal “the real reason” for his resignation — which Seedman had hidden from his co-author Hellman in the first edition.

 

The culprit: Seedman’s boss, then Chief Inspector Michael Codd, who Seedman had contacted from the mosque at the height of the riot.

 

An email from Hellman put it this way: Seedman resigned because of a “feeling of betrayal over his being ordered by Chief Inspector Mike Codd by phone to get out of the mosque.”

 

So I called up Seedman, who was living in Florida. Again, I asked him about his order to release the mosque suspects.

 

Only then, at age 92, did Seedman for the first time publicly exonerate Ward.

 

“That was my decision,” he said. He [Ward] had nothing to do with my decision. Nothing whatsoever.”

 

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UP IN SMOKE. Legend and fact collided again last week when Commissioner Kelly and State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced the arrests of 16 Palestinians for smuggling cigarettes, earning them an estimated profit of $55 million.

 

Kelly stated that three of the cigarette suspects were also suspected terrorists.

 

Kelly said that Mohannad Seif had once lived in the same building as Mousa Abu Marzouk, the personal secretary to the chief fundraiser of the terrorist group Hamas, who was deported in 1997.

 

Kelly described a second cigarette smuggler, Muaffaq Askar, as a “confidant” of Rashid Baz, who was convicted of fatally shooting an Hasidic Jew on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1995.

 

He said that a third, Youssef Odeh, had financial ties to Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheik currently serving a life sentence for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

 

“This case started because we were being vigilant about terrorism,” Kelly said. “We discovered that individuals who were on our radar for links to known terrors were engaged in a massive raid on the New York treasury.”

 

Well, here’s another take on that.

 

The NYPD did indeed have its eye on at least three of them.

 

Take Askar, who sources say was under investigation by the NYPD as early 2003.

 

According to a 2006 NYPD Intelligence Document obtained by this column and by the Associated Press as part of its Pulitzer Prize-winning series on the NYPD’s spying on Muslim New Yorkers, Askar was described as a “Tier Two Person of Interest.”

 

He was listed as:

 

“Owner of Sunset Pizzeria and 99 cents store

 

“Has raised at least $50,000 for Hamas

 

348 calls to Ibrahim Qunbar — Brooklyn resident (arrested 1/18/05 with $22,000 USC at JFK on way to Amman, Jordan)

 

Linked to Rashid Baz while he is in prison; sent gifts and visited

 

Sold weapon (380 Lorcin) in pizzeria to member of Netas gang

 

Wants to establish training camp for young Muslims to prepare them for the future

 

Has repeatedly made anti-American statements.”

 

The NYPD was so on Askar’s case that according to his lawyer, Lamis Jamal Deek, they at one point stripped-searched him and handcuffed his 14-year-old son to a radiator for five hours in a police precinct.

 

Question: So what happened? After ten years of surveillance did the NYPD lose interest in him?

 

Or did the NYPD just lose him?

 

With all these terrorism possibilities hanging over him, how was Askar able to elude the NYPD’s watchful eyes, ears and nose and join a cigarette smuggling ring that operated for seven years, earning a profit of $55 million?

 

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A SMALL MIRACLE:  The Daily News published a front-page story Sunday detailing the alleged abuses of Brooklyn North narcotics lieutenant Daniel Sbarra.

 

The News says Sbarra has 60 lawsuits against him, costing the city $500,000 in settlements. It adds that Sbarra also has 30 civilian complaints and has been the target of between five to 10 Internal Affairs investigations.

 

While great on police reporting, the News under Ray Kelly never clinches the deal either with an editorial or with allowing its reporters to follow through on their own stories.  So will a bigger miracle occur?  Will the News write an editorial about Sbarra’s abuses?

 

Will an even bigger miracle occur? Will the News allow its reporters to follow the story and investigate the apparently systemic failings of IAB to discipline Sbarra and other officers like him?

 

Will the biggest miracle yet occur? Will the News allow its reporters to investigate why Commissioner Kelly continues to support him?

 

Edited by Donald Forst

 

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Slow 911 response might have cost slaying victim her life
Brooklyn woman bled out from box-cutter attack during delay to get medical help dispatched

By Joe Kemp And Ginger Adams Otis — Monday, May 20th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’

 

 

It was a call for help that ended in a homicide — and an ambulance dispatched so late that paramedics were robbed of a potential shot at saving a woman’s life.

 

A Brooklyn woman gashed with a box cutter by her boyfriend was left unconscious and bleeding without medical care for 15 minutes after a 911 call got lost in the city’s emergency response system, the Daily News has learned.

 

Dangerously low staffing levels and human error in the overworked system may have contributed to the delay in getting an ambulance to the scene, according to documents obtained by The News.

 

Relatives were outraged by the fate of Raynell Howington, 49, whose death was declared a homicide by the city medical examiner.

 

“I just laid my mom to rest, and this is a terrible, shocking tragedy,” said Carmelia Howington, one of the dead woman’s five children. “There are still a lot of unanswered questions.”

 

Howington died May 3 after she was attacked in the lobby of the group facility on MacDougal St. in Brownsville where she lived. She suffered slash wounds to her neck that cut her trachea and jugular vein, an autopsy showed.

 

The NYPD did not respond to a request for comment, and the FDNY said only that the emergency response is being investigated.

 

Sources involved in the 911 system at both agencies said officials have pulled recordings of the incident for internal review. The records, reviewed by The News, revealed that an NYPD operator at 1:44 p.m. answered a call for help for a woman under attack. The operator tried to switch the call to a medically trained FDNY/EMS dispatcher, but no one was available.

 

“Ringing no answer,” read the operator’s notes.

 

As The News reported earlier this month, FDNY staffing at its 911 EMS call center is down about 300 employees. The agency is training new hires at a frantic pace to address the shortage.

 

NYPD operators are likewise stretched thin as the agency tries to train workers on a new computer system, sources said.

 

The NYPD’s 911 operator told the caller that help was on the way and immediately alerted a squad car. The medical information was transferred via computer to the relay EMS operator.

 

The call was entered into the EMS system at 1:46 p.m. as an “injury,” records show — not a high-priority emergency, even though the NYPD operator correctly noted Howington was unconscious and “bleeding heavily.”But those critical details were apparently missed.

 

Cops were at the address by 1:47 p.m., records show, and immediately alerted EMS dispatchers by computer that the situation was dire.

 

“Rush EMS to location,” said the first message at 1:48 p.m., stating that Howington had been slashed by a box cutter.

 

Two minutes later, the cops signaled time was running out.

 

“Female likely at this time,” the officers messaged EMS, meaning Howington was on the verge of death.

 

Cops were also sending computerized messages back and forth to each other — notes that are visible to EMS operators if the overloaded personnel have time to read them. “Female cut all over heavy bleeding,” cops wrote.

 

Seven minutes later, at 1:57 p.m., cops noted Howington was “confirmed DOA at this time.”

 

Four minutes later, at 2:01 p.m., an EMS operator finally appeared to react.

 

The call’s status was changed to the highest-possible priority, records show. An ambulance was dispatched and arrived at 2:04 p.m. But it was too late.

 

It’s not clear whether the delay in getting an ambulance to the scene within those first critical minutes would have saved the woman’s life. Her boyfriend, Benjamin Braxton, 49, was charged with her murder.

 

Matthew Howington, another one of the victim’s children, said the family was devastated.

 

“We loved our mom so much,” he said. “She did everything for her kids. I just wish we could have prevented this.”

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Long Island

In Decision to Enter Home Near Hofstra, a Life-or-Death Calculation

By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ — Monday, May 20th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’

 

 

When a Nassau County police officer confronted a gunman holding a college student hostage in her home on Friday night, he was forced, in an instant, to make a life-or-death calculation: Open fire and risk hitting the hostage, or hesitate and risk losing the hostage and being killed himself.

 

The officer’s decision to fire, killing the gunman along with the student, will be parsed in the coming weeks as the authorities continue an investigation into the episode, which unfolded after the police interrupted a home invasion in Uniondale, N.Y., near Hofstra University.

 

While questions remain, enough details have emerged to paint a picture of a police operation that in the course of a few minutes spiraled out of control.

 

Officers who arrived first on the scene believed that they were confronting an armed robber but knew nothing about the hostages, the police said. That gap in knowledge was critical, experts said, possibly leading to missteps that inflamed an already dangerous situation and ultimately led to tragedy.

 

Most critical, experts said, was the decision by the officer who ultimately opened fire to enter the home in the first place.

 

That decision quite likely eliminated the opportunity to negotiate with the gunman, said Eugene O’Donnell, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former New York City police officer. In any hostage crisis, he said, the first step for the police is to create a situation in which officers are in control.

 

“You arrive, secure the location and you really essentially buy time if you can; you call for negotiators,” Mr. O’Donnell said.

 

“The lack of time is an enemy, the lack of floor knowledge is an enemy and it greatly increases the chances of a bad outcome.”

 

Only minutes elapsed from the time the police were summoned to the home on California Avenue about 2:30 a.m. Friday until the shots were fired. Hostage negotiators were summoned, but they did not reach the scene in time, said Deputy Inspector Kenneth Lack, of the Nassau County Police.

 

“The first time they knew there were hostages was when the officers were already in the house,” Inspector Lack said, citing details from a preliminary investigation.

 

Once inside the house, the officers had few options. One took up position outside the front door, while the other stayed inside on the ground floor by a staircase, the police said.

 

On the upper level was the gunman, Dalton Smith, 30, a Hempstead resident with an extensive criminal record who was wanted for a parole violation. With him were the college student, Andrea Rebello, 21, and a male resident of the home. Ms. Rebello’s twin sister, Jessica, and another female resident had escaped unharmed.

 

At one point, Mr. Smith pushed the male hostage down the stairs, before grabbing Ms. Rebello in a headlock, slowly moving down the stairs and heading toward the back door. It is not clear when Mr. Smith noticed the police officer inside the house.

 

After threatening to kill Ms. Rebello, Mr. Smith pointed his 9-millimeter pistol at the officer, a 12-year veteran of the force who has not yet been identified. The officer fired, hitting Mr. Smith seven times and killing him. The eighth bullet hit Ms. Rebello in the head. Questions remain about whether the officer should have opened fire given the likelihood of hitting the hostage. The police have refused to discuss whether the officer followed police protocol.

 

A former firearms trainer for the New York Police Department, who asked for anonymity because he maintained close ties with active-duty officers, said a situation like this one — an armed gunman pointing a weapon in proximity to a victim — was “the worst-case nightmare for cops.”

 

He said such situations required a balance between protecting the victim and the officers themselves.

 

“I would hate to be in that situation myself,” the former trainer said, “but the bottom line is if a police officer believes that his death or the death of a civilian is imminent, he is absolutely justified in utilizing deadly force.”

 

Yet for Ms. Rebello’s family, news that she died from a police bullet compounded the agony of their loss.

 

“It’s worse,” Henry Santos, Ms. Rebello’s godfather, said at the family home in Tarrytown, N.Y., on Sunday morning. He called it “a second shock.”

 

Ms. Rebello’s parents have yet to comment publicly about her death. A handwritten sign posted by the family’s front door Sunday morning read: “Please respect the family’s privacy. We are in a state of grief, thank you, but we are not talking.”

 

A spokesman for the Nassau County district attorney, Kathleen M. Rice, said on Sunday evening that “the D.A.’s office reviews the facts and circumstances of every police-involved shooting.”

 

At Hofstra on Sunday, moments of silence for Ms. Rebello were held at the opening of four commencement ceremonies. Graduates wore white ribbons on their robes in her memory.

 

“I want to express our community’s collective grief and our sorrow over the senseless and tragic death of a very young member of the Hofstra family,” Stuart Rabinowitz, the university’s president, said at a ceremony for undergraduates.

 

Senator Charles E. Schumer called Ms. Rebello’s death “heartbreaking” and wondered aloud why Mr. Smith, who was paroled in February, had been freed from prison, in light of a criminal record that included multiple arrests as well as convictions for armed robbery and assault.

 

“The robber who ended up causing her death, causing the whole encounter, was obviously a repeat offender, and I have real questions as to why this robber was allowed to roam the streets, armed, preying on innocent college students,” Mr. Schumer said at a news conference.

 

Alan Feuer, Randy Leonard and Angela Macropoulos contributed reporting.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

LI cop ‘inconsolable’ over friendly-fire death of Hofstra student during hostage standoff
‘Torn up’ at killing beauty he tried to save

By C.J. SULLIVAN and KIERAN CROWLEY — Monday, May 20th, 2013 ‘The New York Post’

 

 

The Nassau County cop who fatally shot a Hofstra University student during a terrifying home-invasion standoff is “inconsolable,” sources told The Post yesterday.

 

“He blames himself and keeps replaying it in his mind,” a police source said. “He is torn up about the poor girl.”

 

The veteran officer was identified by sources as Officer Nikolas Budimlic, 42, a former NYPD cop with two young kids of his own, including a daughter.

 

Budimlic accidently shot and killed 21-year-old Andrea Rebello on Friday as violent felon Dalton Smith held her in a headlock and used her as a human shield while he trained a 9mm pistol at the officer.

 

Budimlic fired eight shots at Smith. Seven bullets hit the perp; one struck Rebello in the head, authorities said.

 

Rebello’s family was still reeling yesterday from the news that friendly fire had killed the pretty public-relations major — whose twin sister, Jessica, was in the Uniondale home with her moments before the bloodshed.

 

“The family is in severe shock over this. This has been the worst,” said Rebello’s godfather, Henry Santos. “When we found out [she was killed by an officer] it was a real second shock . . . like it happened again.”

 

Nassau police sources insisted Budimlic — a 12-year Nassau veteran who also spent seven years in the NYPD — followed police rules in an impossible situation.

 

“It was a tragic accident. There’s no reason to believe that any protocol was not followed,” one source said.

 

“There’s no playbook. You arrive at a home, and the guy has a gun to the victim’s head — what do you do?” the source said. “You rely on your training and your instincts and hope for the best outcome.”

 

Budimlic and another officer were the first to respond to the early-morning call at the rented California Avenue home where the twins had just returned with a group of pals after toasting their last day of classes.

 

Authorities said Smith — wanted on a parole violation and fresh off a prison stint for attempted robbery — broke into the home and brandished a gun at the terrified group.

 

Smith allowed one of the friends, Shannon Thomas, to leave the house, presumably to go to an ATM to get him money, Jessica’s boyfriend, John Kourtessis, told The Post on Saturday.

 

Instead, Thomas left and called 911 and said the perp was putting a gun to her friends’ heads.

 

Police responding to a known hostage situation are required to call for backup, a Nassau law-enforcement source said yesterday.

 

“And under no circumstances should they go through that front door,” the source said.

 

But — despite radio transmissions mentioning hostages — it wasn’t clear if Budimlic and his partner heard the broadcast, another source said.

 

The two cops arrived at the house just as Jessica was escaping through the front door, screaming that Smith had a gun.

 

Budimlic saw movement in the house and stepped inside. Almost instantly, he was separated from his partner when the front door slammed shut and locked the other cop out.

 

“The officer was trapped inside,’’ a source said of Budimlic.

 

Budimlic then “hid behind a wall” hoping to surprise Smith, the source said.

 

When the terrified Kourtessis, hiding behind a couch, suddenly yelled that police were inside the house, Smith pulled Rebello closer and spotted Budimlic, the source said.

 

“The officer lost the element of surprise” and was alone with no backup, the source said.

 

The Nassau DA’s Office has been a part of the investigation from the beginning and will receive the results of the inquiries and decide whether anything needs to be presented to a grand jury.

 

Several people answering the phone at Budimlic’s home hung up on a reporter. Other relatives declined to comment.

 

Additional reporting by Rebecca Rosenberg and Jeane MacIntosh

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Police Responding to Home Invasion Were Unaware of Hostages in Standoff
Police Say Officer Didn't Know He Would Face Hostage Situation

By JOSH DAWSEY and WILL JAMES — Monday, May 20th, 2013 ‘The Wall Street Journal’ / New York, NY

 

 

A Long Island police officer who accidentally shot and killed a 21-year-old Hofstra University student early Friday didn't know he would face a hostage situation when he entered the woman's home, authorities said Sunday.

 

Responding to a home invasion robbery Friday morning, the Nassau County officer was told a man with a gun was inside the house but he was confronted with an even more complicated, dangerous situation when he stepped inside, authorities said: an armed suspect, holding a young woman in a headlock and using her as a body shield.

 

The suspect, Dalton Smith, raised his gun, and the officer fired eight times, authorities said. Seven bullets struck Mr. Smith, killing him. One bullet struck Andrea Rebello, a public-relations major who died from her injury. "The opportunity to treat this like a hostage situation didn't present itself in the extraordinary state when this happened," said Inspector Kenneth Lack, a spokesman for the Nassau police.

 

Had the officer known there was a hostage, teams of officers with surveillance and communications equipment would have surrounded the house before an attempt was made to enter it, Inspector Lack said.

 

Police didn't identify the officer, a 12-year veteran who is now on sick leave. The officer declined to comment through the department.

 

The botched home invasion rocked the Hofstra community, where students openly grieved at commencement ceremonies for Ms. Rebello, a junior from Tarrytown, N.Y., in Westchester County. Students wore white ribbons in her honor.

 

University President Stuart Rabinowitz quoted advice from a Bob Marley song that Ms. Rebello enjoyed. "It was: 'Live the life you love, and love the life you live," Mr. Rabinowitz said.

 

On a blog she kept online, Ms. Rebello chronicled creative cooking adventures and called herself "100% Portuguese." Her high school principal remembered her as an outgoing, happy student who was a member of an honor society. Ms. Rebello's family declined to comment. Her funeral is scheduled for Wednesday.

 

The alleged suspect, Mr. Smith, had been released from prison in February after serving time for an attempted robbery conviction.

 

Around 2:20 a.m. on Friday, Mr. Smith entered the two-story off-campus home that Ms. Rebello shared with her twin sister and other roommates through an open door, police said. He forced four residents upstairs to retrieve money, jewelry and other valuables, then released a female resident to withdraw money from a bank account, Det. Lt. John Azzata said. Mr. Smith told her he would kill a resident if she didn't come back in eight minutes, police said. She called 911. When two police officers arrived, Mr. Smith told Ms. Rebello's sister, Jessica, to answer the door and tell the officers "that there's no problem at the scene and to go away," Lt. Azzata said. But she then ran outside and screamed, "He's got a gun." But they weren't told other victims were inside by Ms. Rebello, police said.

 

When Mr. Smith became aware of the officers' presence, he said "I'm going to kill her," and he pointed his gun at the officer, prompting the officer to fire, Lt. Azzata said. Mr. Smith didn't fire any shots, Lt. Azzata said. His gun had one round in the chamber and one in the magazine.

 

Joe Jackson contributed to this article.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

U.S.A.

 

Monday, May 20th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’ Editorial:

Eavesdropping on Internet Communications

 

 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has a new plan to intercept Internet messages, calls and video chats. Instead of requiring companies like Skype and Google to build surveillance capabilities into their services as it suggested in 2010, the F.B.I. now proposes fining companies that fail to comply with court-ordered wiretaps.

 

The new approach has met less opposition from other agencies, like the Commerce Department, than the earlier plan, which went nowhere because some officials worried that it would hurt innovation by imposing expensive and technically difficult requirements on start-up Internet-based communication services.

 

Fines, some officials believe, would be less of a burden on new businesses because they might not have to worry about developing the ability to conduct wiretaps right away. The White House is evaluating the plan for submission to Congress.

 

The F.B.I. has long complained that it is becoming ever harder to carry out court-approved, real-time eavesdropping on criminal suspects since people are communicating without picking up a phone. The agency argues that the monitoring of Internet-based services does not expand government surveillance, but merely updates the current wiretap law. Judges would still have to authorize wiretaps, and would impose the fines if the services did not comply.

 

But tech companies and advocates for greater privacy and security say the threat of fines would still force companies to build complex wiretapping capabilities into their services from the start (allowing wiretapping on peer-to-peer services like Skype will be particularly difficult). And they argue that opening systems to surveillance could make them vulnerable to hackers, a serious problem.

 

Some experts say there are other ways to monitor suspects. A recent paper by four academics in the journal IEEE Security & Privacy argues that the government could get court orders to install software directly on the computers of suspects instead of going through Internet companies.

 

The administration and Congress need to analyze carefully the F.B.I.’s proposal, details of which have not been made public. New rules will have to strike the right balance between privacy and cybersecurity and the government’s need to monitor criminal activity.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Glitch in widely used polygraph can skew results

By Marisa Taylor — Monday, May 20th, 2013 ‘The McClatchy Newspapers’

 

 

WASHINGTON — Police departments and federal agencies across the country are using a type of polygraph despite evidence of a technical problem that could label truthful people as liars or the guilty as innocent, McClatchy has found.

 

As a result, innocent people might have been labeled criminal suspects, faced greater scrutiny while on probation or lost out on jobs. Or, just as alarming, spies and criminals may have escaped detection.

 

The technical glitch produced errors in the computerized measurements of sweat in one of the most popular polygraphs, the LX4000. Although polygraphers first noticed the problem a decade ago, many government agencies hadn’t known about the risk of inaccurate measurements until McClatchy recently raised questions about it.

 

The manufacturer, Lafayette Instrument Co. Inc., described the phenomenon as “occasional” and “minor,” but it couldn’t say exactly how often it occurs. Even after one federal agency became concerned and stopped using the measurement and a veteran polygrapher at another witnessed it repeatedly change test results, the extent and the source of the problem weren’t independently studied nor openly debated. In the meantime, tens of thousands of Americans were polygraphed on the LX4000.

 

The controversy casts new doubt on the reliability and usefulness of polygraphs, which are popularly known as lie detectors and whose tests are banned for use as evidence by most U.S. courts. Scientists have long questioned whether polygraphers can accurately identify liars by interpreting measurements of blood pressure, sweat activity and respiration. But polygraphers themselves say they rely on the measurements to be accurate for their daily, high-stakes decisions about people’s lives.

 

“We’re talking about using a procedure that has a very weak scientific foundation and making it worse,” said William Iacono, a University of Minnesota psychology professor who’s researched polygraph testing. “I already don’t have very much confidence in how government agencies conduct these tests. Now, they might as well be flipping a coin.”

 

Despite the scientific skepticism, intelligence and law enforcement agencies see polygraph as useful in obtaining confessions to wrongdoing that wouldn’t otherwise be uncovered. Fifteen federal agencies and many police departments across the country rely on polygraph testing to help make hiring or firing decisions. Sex offenders and other felons often undergo testing to comply with probation or court-ordered psychological treatment. Police detectives and prosecutors rule out criminal suspects who pass and scrutinize those who don’t.

 

In its ongoing series about polygraph use by government agencies, McClatchy found that such testing has flourished despite being banned for use by most private employers 25 years ago. For federal jobs alone, more than 70,000 people are polygraphed each year, and most can’t challenge the results in court or allege abusive tactics. While supporters say accuracy can be 85 to 95 percent, polygraphs aren’t required to meet any independent testing standards to verify the accuracy of their measurements, unlike medical or other computerized equipment.

 

The concerns about the LX4000 only add to the criticism.

 

“If you buy all of the propositions that the physiological measurements are a reliable proxy for truth telling or deception, then the whole premise depends upon a machine that can precisely record those measurements,” said Gene Iredale, a San Diego attorney. “If you don’t have that, then you have a hope piled on a speculation, and on top of it all an error-filled system.”

 

In the absence of an independent assessment, polygraphers depend on the federal government, the manufacturer or one another to be notified of a problem with the technology. Many polygraphers, however, told McClatchy they didn’t know about the possibility of inaccurate measurements or that they could occur in other polygraphs that use the same technology.

 

“If this was being debated, I would have liked to have known about it,” said Danny Fields, the supervisor of the Kansas City Missouri Police Department’s polygraph section, which used the LX4000 for years before replacing it with a newer Lafayette model. “I believe in polygraph 100 percent, but I want to make sure it’s working like it’s supposed to be working.”

 

The polygraph profession is highly secretive, and many agencies cite national security or law enforcement interests as barring them from answering questions. Of 63 federal, local and state agencies contacted by McClatchy, only 40 would say what types of machines they used. Of those, 27 state and local agencies said they either currently use or have used the LX4000, including big city police departments such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. None of those agencies said they were reviewing their previous tests for errors, although some people who’d failed polygraph tests said they thought they’d been inaccurately labeled. Ten federal agencies have used Lafayette polygraphs.

 

“I’m astounded that a government agency would rely on this machine to make any decision,” said John Stauffer, a Chicago accountant who was denied an FBI job in 2011 because he didn’t pass his polygraph test. “I’ve always known that I shouldn’t have failed. Now I wonder whether this was the problem.”

 

Scientists have experimented for more than a century with running a minuscule amount of electricity through sweat glands in the fingertips as a way to gauge emotions and mental effort. In the past two decades, however, polygraphs marketed to government agencies have changed the way perspiration is measured.

 

As a result, the LX4000 measures sweat in two ways. One method, known as the manual mode, directly measures the secretions from sweat glands, as scientists traditionally have done. The other, known as the automatic mode, electronically filters the measurements and is designed to smooth out the sometimes erratic graphic representations and make them easier to interpret.

 

David Reisinger, a veteran federal polygrapher, said he first witnessed a problem with the LX4000 in 2005, while discussing a test with a Lafayette employee by phone. When he switched between the two modes, he noticed a difference in the measurements.

 

“It was so significant I noticed the problem immediately,” said Reisinger, a polygrapher at the Defense Intelligence Agency at the time. “It jumped right off the screen at me.”

 

Reisinger pressed the company to look into it because he saw it could change the outcome of a test depending on the setting. Polygraphers assign numbers to sweat measurements and add them up for a final score that’s supposed to show whether someone is lying. In a test where one point can make a difference, Reisinger documented up to a 16-point difference between the two modes.

 

He notified his supervisors, and Lafayette pledged to fix it. Years and dozens of examples later, the company still hadn’t, he said.

 

“What troubled me is that they couldn’t tell me which measurement was accurate,” he said.

 

The Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations noticed a problem as early as 2002, the year the LX4000 hit the market. A spokeswoman said her law enforcement agency was concerned that it could change the outcome of tests, and sought out Lafayette officials.

 

“They recommended that all polygraph charts be collected in the manual mode,” spokeswoman Linda Card said in a statement. “As a result of the possible flaw in the automatic mode, we, as an organization, directed the use of only the manual mode” during testing.

 

The manufacturer’s advice apparently didn’t reach other government agencies.

 

“This is news to me,” Reisinger said. “The manufacturer never told us that.”

 

Instead, Lafayette described the problem to the Defense Intelligence Agency as “minor” and repairable. In one email , then -Lafayette Operations Manager Mark Lane told the agency in 2007 that company officials felt “extremely confident” they could fix it, adding that they had “devoted our entire engineering efforts” to fixing the automatic mode.

 

“We certainly agree that this is an issue that needs to be resolved,” he told DIA officials.

 

Word of the problem spread unofficially. At one point, a CIA employee called Reisinger to request information about the issue. He sent along what he knew.

 

In 2009, Reisinger told his bosses that he’d seen several software updates and none of them appeared to fix the problem. By then, he’d become an official who reviewed tests to make sure polygraphers were complying with federal standards. He recommended that the Defense Intelligence Agency stop using the LX4000. The DIA, which decided not to switch machines, refused to comment for this story.

 

“I felt the manufacturer had given us the runaround and was never completely straightforward about what was going on,” Reisinger said. “I didn’t think we could trust them anymore.”

 

According to a 2002 federal training document, Lafayette advised polygraphers to use the automatic mode, although the company now says it doesn’t recommend one mode over the other.

 

“Lafayette Instrument Company . . . has helped customers to select technology and procedures that best serve their objectives,” the company said in a statement.

 

After a McClatchy reporter asked about the problem, Lafayette sent a notice to customers in March acknowledging that a difference in measurements could occur but described it as a “rare” phenomenon that it had attempted to eliminate with improvements to its machines. The company pledged to test its polygraphs to determine the extent of the problem, although it added in a statement to McClatchy that “anecdotal experience tells us that different . . . modes are in agreement most of the time.”

 

Lafayette, meanwhile, has been marketing a new model, the LX5000, that it said has the same “potential for occasional differences,” like any polygraph that has an automatic mode.

 

When McClatchy asked the manufacturer why it hadn’t sent out a notice earlier, officials responded that it was “not productive” to discuss such a question.

 

“In this case, it is impossible to speculate about ‘why’ because what you perceived as a newly discovered ‘problem’ is actually a known” phenomenon, Lafayette wrote to a reporter.

 

Gary Berntson, an Ohio State University professor of psychology who’s studied such sweat measurements, agreed with the company that differences in measurements were likely a rare occurrence.

 

“But the cost of such an outcome to the individual could be huge,” said Berntson, a former consultant to Lafayette. “The crux here is proper disclosure. The manufacturer needs to alert the user of potential biases, however subtle or rare.”

 

Charles Honts, a psychology professor with Boise State University who’s also researched polygraph, questioned why the manufacturer or the federal government didn’t weigh in with clearer guidance since both witnessed the problem repeatedly.

 

Honts and several other scientists who research polygraph previously warned government agencies not to rely only on the automatic mode because research had shown the risk of errors in that measurement in any polygraph.

 

“The insidious thing is that this phenomenon biases tests against the innocent, and the government knows that,” said Honts, who’s worked on research for a Lafayette competitor. “This is just another example of science being ignored.”

 

In fact, Lafayette sent McClatchy documents of what it described as evidence that the same problem occurs in an unnamed competitor’s polygraphs, but it asserted “the examples provided . . . are in fact not common whether using our instrument or those (of) our competitors.”

 

One competitor, Limestone Technologies Inc., has made public assertions that its polygraph measurements are better than Lafayette’s.

 

Scientists, however, said it was impossible to know whether one company’s polygraph is better than another’s without independent testing, adding that the problem with differences between the two modes was likely made worse by bad practices. Many agencies use stainless steel electrodes without the recommended gel for measuring the sweat, which could yield erratic readings in the more reliable manual mode. As a result, polygraphers might be tempted to turn to the automatic mode, which is viewed as easier to interpret.

 

“We’ve been saying this for 30 years,” said John Kircher, a researcher and psychology professor at the University of Utah who helped invent one of the earliest computerized polygraphs in 1979. “But no one seems to be listening.”

 

The National Center for Credibility Assessment, the federal polygraph training academy, declined to comment, citing national security concerns.

 

The FBI, Secret Service, Customs and Border Protection, Drug Enforcement Administration, State Department and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also refused to comment, but federal records show they’ve contracted to buy Lafayette’s polygraphs, often without competitive bidding. According to company and government documents, a new LX5000 can range from $3,200 to $9,500. The CIA and the National Reconnaissance Office also have used the company’s polygraphs, but those contracting records are kept secret and officials there wouldn’t comment.

 

Several police departments, however, said they weren’t disturbed by the news because they hadn’t noticed inaccurate measurements. Tommy Thompson, spokesman for the Phoenix Police Department, said his polygraphers had “over 60 years of experience collectively” and added that “no disparities have ever been noticed.” Others said they thought supervisors would catch any error before it had a significant impact on a test.

 

But Phoenix and many other government agencies generally rely on the automatic mode. As a result, veteran polygraphers would be unlikely to notice any difference between the two measurements, even if it were occurring routinely.

 

“If you don’t flip to the other mode, you’d be oblivious to the fact that it’s even different,” Reisinger said.

 

Scientists said the federal government and manufacturers should be warning polygraphers about the technological pitfalls. Iacono conducted his own laboratory tests of older Lafayette machines in the 1990s and didn’t find any issue with their earlier measurements. In fact, he found the machines to be as good as scientific equipment that cost much more.

 

“Because of that, I have never criticized the actual measurements, and I’ve always thought they’ve only made them better,” Iacono said. “What this shows is that they’ve actually made them worse and they can’t fix the problem.”

 

Tish Wells, Emma Kantrowitz and Kevin G. Hall contributed to this article.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

F.B.I.

Two FBI agents killed in training accident

By William M. Welch — Monday, May 20th, 2013 ‘USA Today’

 

 

Two FBI agents with the agency's hostage rescue team have died in a training accident off the coast of Virginia, the FBI said Sunday.

 

The agency identified them as special agents Christopher Lorek, 41, and Stephen Shaw, 40. Both were members of the elite team, which is based at Quantico, Va.

 

The agency said the cause of the deaths was "under review.''

 

WAVY-TV in Norfolk reported that the agents were killed in an accident involving a helicopter during a training exercise.

 

"We mourn the loss of two brave and courageous men,'' FBI Director Robert S. Mueller said in a statement. "Like all who serve on the Hostage Rescue Team, they accept the highest risk each and every day, when training and on operational missions, to keep our nation safe. Our hearts are with their wives, children, and other loved ones who feel their loss most deeply. And they will always be part of the FBI family."

 

Lorek joined the FBI in 1996 and is survived by his wife and two daughters, ages 11 and 8, the agency said. Shaw joined the FBI in 2005 and is survived by his wife, a daughter, 3, and a son, 1.

 

A spokeswoman for the FBI's Norfolk office, Vanessa Torres, said the accident happened Friday afternoon off the coast of Virginia Beach, the Associated Press reported.

 

Wavy.com reported the agents were taken to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital by helicopter.

 

FBI spokeswoman Kathleen Wright at the agency's Washington, D.C., headquarters declined to comment beyond the agency's statement.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

2 FBI Agents Killed in Training Accident in Va.

By Unnamed Author(s) (The Associated Press)  —  Monday, May 20th, 2013; 6:33 a.m. EDT

 

 

VIRGINIA BEACH — Two FBI special agents on the agency's elite Hostage Rescue Team have been killed in a training accident in Virginia, officials said Sunday.

 

The accident happened off the coast of Virginia Beach on Friday, the FBI's national press office announced in a statement Sunday. No other details were given and the cause is under investigation.

 

The special agents were identified as Christopher Lorek, 41, and Stephen Shaw, 40. Lorek joined the FBI in 1996 and is survived by a wife and two daughters, 11 and 8. Shaw joined in 2005 and is survived by a daughter, 3, and son, 1.

 

"We mourn the loss of two brave and courageous men," Director Robert Mueller said in the statement. "Like all who serve on the Hostage Rescue Team, they accept the highest risk each and every day, when training and on operational missions, to keep our nation safe. Our hearts are with their wives, children, and other loved ones who feel their loss most deeply. And they will always be part of the FBI Family."

 

The Hostage Rescue Team is part of the Critical Incident Response Group based at Quantico in northern Virginia. Most recently, members of the team successfully rescued a 5-year-old boy from a small underground bunker where he was being held hostage by a 65-year-old man. The man was killed by agents.

 

Trained in military tactics and outfitted with combat-style gear and weapons, the group was formed 30 years ago in preparation for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. The team is deployed quickly to trouble spots and provides assistance to local FBI offices during hostage situations. It has participated in hostage situations more than 800 times in the U.S. and elsewhere since 1983.

 

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Cleveland, Ohio

 

Police visited Ariel Castro's section of Seymour Avenue often while women were captives
(In the Last 10 Years Cleveland Police Had 160 Calls for Service on the Block of the Kidnapped Women)

By Rachel Dissell — Sunday, May 19th, 2013;  ‘The Cleveland Plain Dealer’ / Cleveland, OH

 

 

For around a decade, while authorities say Ariel Castro kept three women imprisoned inside his dilapidated white colonial, residents of the short stretch of Seymour Avenue where he lived reported a litany of other crimes that brought police to the block.

 

Since 2002, when Michelle Knight disappeared, Cleveland police came to Castro's section of the street between West 25th Street and Scranton Avenue to take crime reports nearly 160 times — a little more than once month — for fewer than 20 homes.

 

The Plain Dealer analyzed its database of thousands of Cleveland Police crime reports to draw a picture of what drew officers to the now infamous street while the missing women were captives there. The newspaper found:

 

There were more than 35 assaults, many of them domestic crimes against women, which resulted in busted lips, bleeding noses and violated protection orders.

 

Police investigated a dozen drug-related crimes — including a crop of 9-foot tall marijuana plants growing in a garden within view of the sidewalk.

 

And 10 people were reported missing; though several of the cases involved multiple reports about habitual runaways. All now appear to have returned home.

 

The rest of the reports, include an array of quality-of-life crimes — break-ins, stolen cars and slashed tires, common to many neighborhoods throughout the city.

 

The database contains most -- but not all -- police reports. It doesn't include calls about crimes for which no report was made.

 

For perspective, more crimes were reported on Castro's block than on the section of Imperial Avenue where Anthony Sowell lived and preyed on women, raping and killing 11 and attacking several more, during that nearly 11-year stretch, the paper's analysis shows.

 

Police say Castro went to lengths to hide the women — and later a child — in the two-story home he purchased in the early 1990s for just $12,000.

 

Knight, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus went missing from within blocks of each other near Lorain Avenue on Cleveland's West Side, a few miles from Castro's neighborhood.

 

The 52-year-old is charged with raping all three women and kidnapping them. He is also charged with kidnapping Berry's daughter, who was born in the home six years ago. Paternity tests revealed Castro fathered the child.

 

Castro's attorneys have said he is not a "monster" and that he plans to plead not guilty.

 

But what, if anything, does the general level of crime and chaos on the street mean? Are some neighborhoods natural havens for criminals to perpetuate perverted crimes? Or can they happen just as easily on a suburban street or rural road?

 

Crime does impact residents' abilities to be connected with others in the neighborhood, said Ronnie Dunn, an associate professor of urban studies at Cleveland State.

 

Dunn said a transient community that lacks block clubs or social supports can lead to a culture of fear where people shutter themselves in their homes and close their blinds.

 

"That is the perfect environment for crimes to proliferate," he said. And for crimes to possibly go unnoticed or unreported.

 

That environment includes a street studded with vacant lots and boarded up homes on Seymour Avenue.

 

Dunn said the covered and boarded windows of Castro's occupied home should have raised concerns. It should have been noted and followed up on by building inspectors, especially since the home was occupied, he said.

 

"That should be a clear indication that something was amiss," he said.

 

The last building code violations for Castro dated to 2000 and appeared to still be active. Those were for debris in his yard, weak or missing porch railings and exterior maintenance issues.

 

But there are a number of other houses on the street with boarded up windows too, including a the house next door and one next to it.

 

Families who have lived on the street for years attribute the decay to an increasing number of homes that became high turnover rentals. Others say the neighborhood seems safer in recent years after police chased away drug dealers. Records show narcotics officers searched three homes, including one two doors from Castro's house.

 

Seymour Avenue is among a section of streets wedged between the outer edge of Tremont and Ohio City, two neighborhoods that have seen enormous growth and investment in the last decade.

 

As that happened, Councilman Brian Cummins said, responsibility for the area was essentially punted back and forth between several community development agencies — some of which dissolved — resulting in a lack of neighborhood support for years.

 

The solid block club and neighborhood watch coalitions that thrive nearby are non-existent in the Seymour area.

 

"It's definitely what I would call a border area," Cummins said. "And it does need more attention." Though he said Seymour Avenue doesn't appear to have more crime than other disfranchised streets.

 

Nelson Cintron Jr., a former councilman for the area who lives blocks from Castro's home, said he understands the array of barriers that keep residents from connecting with community services.

 

Language is one of them.

 

The area around Seymour Avenue has the highest concentration of Hispanics in the city, many who still communicate primarily in Spanish.

 

Cintron said many letters and invitations to community events are sent in English, so people remain uninformed about what is happening in their neighborhood.

 

"I think this is more of a wakeup call -- what just happened in your own backyard?" he said. And he thinks the government should work harder to help the residents.

 

"It's a process of educating them and it hasn't been a priority as much as it has been in other areas. This area has just been abandoned, really."

 

Cintron said poor families who feel marginalized often are reluctant to speak up, afraid they will call attention to their own problems.

 

"If they are worried about having heat in their homes or child services being called, they aren't going to say anything unless they have to."

 

Linda Johanek runs the Domestic Violence & Child Advocacy Center headquartered blocks from Castro's home. In fact, one of his brothers' homes borders her parking lot.

 

Johanek was not surprised by the seemingly high level of domestic violence reports on the street, on average more than one a year. She said the center's Latina Project has grown significantly in recent years and that minority women report domestic violence at a higher rate, though in reality family abuse happens everywhere, not just in urban areas.

 

Predators, as Castro is accused of being, have a high-level of experience in manipulating people and hiding their actions, she said.

 

Johanek also surmised that with so much going on the high-poverty surroundings, people may not have the time or energy to complain about boarded up windows or other odd behaviors.

 

"If you are from a neighborhood where there are sporadic boarded up houses, you may not take notice," she said. "If you are used to noise and police on the street, certain things might not stick out that would to others."

 

Tom Bier, at retired Cleveland State professor who has studied Cleveland's housing and how public police impacts neighborhoods, said all the things people have opined about in the past few weeks could contribute to an environment where someone could feel comfortable enough to think he could get away with a crime like this for a decade.

 

"But bizarre happenings can happen anywhere," he said. "In that respect many of these questions could be unanswerable. But I think the odds are that you will find more (heinous crimes) in low income or economically distressed neighborhoods."

 

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California

 

California to enforce 'micro-stamping' gun law
Serial numbers must be 'micro-stamped' on cartridges

By BOB EGELKO — Sunday, May 19th, 2013;  ‘The San Francisco Chronicle’ / San Francisco, CA

 

 

SAN FRANCISCO — A hotly contested California gun-control law that was passed in 2007 is finally ready to be implemented, Attorney General Kamala Harris said this week: a requirement that every new semiautomatic handgun contain "micro-stamping" technology that would allow police to trace a weapon from cartridges found at a crime scene.

 

The law, signed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, made California the first state to require micro-stamping, which engraves the gun's serial number on each cartridge. But the legislation specified that it would take effect only when the technology was available and all private patents had expired.

 

Gun owners group Calguns Foundation tried to forestall the law at one point by paying a $555 fee in an attempt to extend a patent held by the inventor, who wanted it to lapse. Gun manufacturers said the technology was expensive and ineffective, and a National Rifle Association lawyer has threatened a lawsuit.

 

But at a Los Angeles news conference Friday, Harris announced that micro-stamping had cleared all technological and patenting hurdles and would be required on newly sold semiautomatics, effective immediately.

 

"The patents have been cleared, which means that this very important technology will help us as law enforcement in identifying and locating people who have illegally used firearms," Harris said.

 

Attorney Benjamin Van Houten of the San Francisco-based Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence said the announcement should send a message to other states, the Obama administration and the gun industry that "this is the future and it's really critical to helping law enforcement solve gun crimes."

Implementation of micro-stamping "moves California to the forefront of the nation in combating gun crime," said the law's author, former Assemblyman Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles.

 

C.D. Michel, the NRA's West Coast regional attorney, had a much grimmer prediction.

 

"This is not going to help solve crimes," he said. "It's easily defeated, easily wears out and can be used to lead police down false alleys" if the serial numbers are altered.

 

Worse yet, Michel said, manufacturers will be unwilling to add this expensive feature to guns sold in a single state, and will instead keep manufacturing weapons for the other states, where demand already far exceeds supply. The effect, he said, would be a ban on new semiautomatic handguns in California, which the NRA will challenge in court.

 

Van Houten, in response, said, "The gun lobby makes wild claims about the impact on the California gun market" every time the state enacts a new gun-safety requirement.

 

The technology was invented in the 1990s by Todd Lizotte, an engineer and NRA member, who has said for more than a year that he no longer claimed patent rights and wanted California to implement micro-stamping.

 

But Harris' office said the state had to wait until it was no longer legally possible for Lizotte to renew his patents.

 

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Oakland, California

Oakland Police, Crime Rising, Trying to Rebuild Force, Earn Public Trust

By Ted Gest  — Monday, May 20th, 2013 ‘The John Jay College of Criminal Justice Crime & Justice News’ / Washington, DC

 

 

Managing expectations amid a rising crime rate is the latest challenge in Oakland, California's most violent city, says the Los Angeles Times. The police department is under pressure to satisfy conditions of a decade-old federal court settlement that stemmed from racial profiling and improper use of force. Two chiefs have left in two years. A quarter of its sworn officers have been lost since 2008 to budget cutbacks. The city handles about twice the emergency calls per capita as the average law enforcement agency in the state.

 

As the department works to rebuild its force and earn citizens' trust, it offers lessons on how deeply the nature of policing changes when resources are cut to the bone. "There are places in the country right now like Oakland that are at a tipping point," said Chuck Wexler of the Police Executive Research Forum. "They are really testing how much police make a difference."

 

Oakland is now the nation's robbery capital, after a 24 percent jump last year. A 43 percent rise in burglaries left the lone full-time investigator drowning in 13,000 cases. Neighborhoods plagued by burglaries and robberies pushed to keep "problem-solving officers," who analyze patterns and causes of crime. The rising number of homicides and shootings in gang-afflicted areas forced a reshuffling.

 

It's not an uncommon story: A fourth of agencies surveyed nationwide in 2010 by the Major Cities Chiefs Association had cut back on traffic, property crime and drug investigations; more than a third had sliced into community policing. In 2011, the Justice Department tallied 12,000 law enforcement layoffs and 30,000 unfilled positions.

 

 

To read the full Los Angeles Times article, go to:  http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-oakland-police-department-20130519,0,5985741.story

 

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Immigration Enforcement  /  Illegal Aliens

 

Cartel towns pose challenge for immigration reform

By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN  (The Associated Press)  —  Monday, May 20th, 2013; 10:34 a.m. EDT

 

 

MATAMOROS, Mexico (AP) -- Just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, stands a dormitory-style shelter filled with people recently deported from the U.S. and other migrants waiting to cross the border.

 

The long rows of bunk beds offer immigrants a place to rest on their long journey. But the shelter is no safe haven in a town controlled by the Gulf cartel. Armed men once showed up and took away 15 men, who were probably put to work as gunmen, lookouts or human mules hauling bales of marijuana into the United States.

 

As Congress takes up immigration reform, lawmakers may have to confront the reality of this place and others like it, where people say the current system of immigration enforcement and deportation produces a constant flow of people north and south that provides the cartel with a vulnerable labor pool and steady source of revenue.

 

"This vicious circle favors organized crime because the migrant is going to pay" for safe passage, said the Rev. Francisco Gallardo, who oversees immigrant-assistance efforts for the Matamoros Catholic diocese.

 

If Congress sends more resources to the border, the government will also need to account for shifting patterns in immigrant arrests.

 

The cartel controls who crosses the border and profits from each immigrant by taxing human smugglers. At the shelter, the cartel threat was so alarming that shelter administrators began encouraging immigrants to go into the streets during the day, thinking they would be harder to round up than at the shelter.

 

There have been record numbers of deportations in recent years and tens of thousands landed in Tamaulipas already this year, the state that borders Texas from Matamoros to Nuevo Laredo. Arizona is often singled out as the busiest border crossing for immigrants entering the U.S., but more and more migrants are being caught in the southernmost tip of Texas, in the Border Patrol's Rio Grande Valley sector.

 

Apprehension statistics are imperfect measures because they only capture a fraction of the real flow, but the arrest numbers are definitely shifting.

 

Arrests in the Tucson, Ariz., sector dropped 3 percent last year, while Rio Grande Valley arrests rose 65 percent. In March alone, the Border Patrol made more than 16,000 immigrant arrests in the Rio Grande Valley sector, a 67 percent increase from the same month last year, according to the agency.

 

Immigrant deaths are also up. The sector reported last month that about 70 bodies were found in the first six months of the fiscal year, more than twice as many as the previous year.

 

The makeup of the immigrants apprehended here is changing, too, driven by people flowing out of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. The Border Patrol made 94,532 arrests of non-Mexican immigrants along the Southwest border last year, more than double the year before. And nearly half of those came in the Rio Grande Valley sector.

 

The Border Patrol is responding by redirecting personnel, including sending most new graduates from its academy to the Rio Grande Valley, according to senior Border Patrol officials.

 

When immigrants from Central America and Mexico arrive in Matamoros ahead of their trip to America, they are met by smugglers who have to pay the cartel tax for every person they take across the border.

 

Attempts to cross alone are met with violence. Some immigrants are kidnapped and their families extorted by the organization.

 

Reported murders in Tamaulipas, the state that borders Texas from Matamoros to Nuevo Laredo, increased more than 250 percent in the past four years, according to the Mexican government. Official statistics are generally thought to undercount the real toll. Soldiers recently killed six gunmen in a clash in Matamoros.

 

And yet, even with the high-degree of danger for immigrants crossing this part of the border, they keep coming.

 

Central American migrants continue to use the route up the Gulf Coast side of Mexico and through Tamaulipas because it's the shortest to the U.S., said Rodolfo Casillas Ramirez, a professor at Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales in Mexico City. The smugglers choose the route, and even if immigrants have heard about the violence in Tamaulipas, "they trust that the premium they've paid includes the rite of passage," he said.

 

They continue to leave their home countries for economic reasons. Although the U.S. economy has provided fewer jobs for immigrants during the Great Recession and a long, slow recovery, opportunities south of the border have been even more limited, Casillas said.

 

That's why the Rev. Alejandro Solalinde, a Roman Catholic priest who founded a shelter for immigrants in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, said the answer is in regional development, not increased border security.

 

"This situation has grown because ultimately the migrants are merchandise and organized crime profits in volume," he said during a recent visit to Matamoros.

 

Rep. Filemon Vela, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee whose district includes Brownsville, said the immigration-reform debate has so far left out discussion of the security and economic development in Mexico.

 

"The incentive for people to cross over illegally from Mexico will never subside until these individuals feel safe and until they are able to feed themselves and their families," Vela said.

 

At the 150-bed shelter, more than half of the immigrants have just been deported from the U.S., Gallardo said. The others are immigrants preparing to cross. He said shelter workers constantly chase out infiltrators who are paid by smugglers to recruit inside.

 

At Solalinde's shelter in southern Mexico, threats from organized crime forced them to bring in four state police officers and four federal ones, who have lived at his shelter for the past year as protection. Solalinde now travels with bodyguards after having fled Mexico for a couple of months last year following threats.

 

One immigrant at the Matamoros shelter was a 48-year-old man who would only give his name as "Gordo" because he feared for his safety. He said he had arrived two days earlier after traveling from Copan, Honduras. Gordo said he had lived in Los Angeles for 10 years but had been in Honduras for the past four. He was trying to make it back to California, where he has a 15-year-old daughter.

 

Asked about his prospects for successfully crossing the river, he said: "It's difficult, not so much for the Border Patrol" but for the cartels.

 

---

 

Associated Press Writer Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.

 

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Larger Union That Enforces Immigration Opposes Bill

By JULIA PRESTON — Monday, May 20th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’

 

 

A labor union representing 12,000 federal officers who issue immigration documents will join forces on Monday with the union representing deportation agents to publicly oppose a bill overhauling the immigration system that is making its way through the Senate, arguing that the legislation would weaken public safety.

 

The two unions represent a total of 20,000 employees in the Department of Homeland Security who would play a central role in carrying out the ambitious legislation, either by reviewing applications from millions of immigrants who could gain new legal status through the bill or by expelling illegal immigrants who did not qualify.

 

A letter to Congress that excoriates the Senate proposal, and that the immigration officers’ union signed for the first time, reveals simmering unrest among Homeland Security employees, who have been asked to carry out broad and fast-paced immigration policy shifts by the Obama administration. Deportation agents have been instructed to focus heavily on removing serious criminal offenders, while immigration officers have been urged to accelerate their decisions on granting legal papers and reprieves from deportation.

 

The criticism of the bill from inside the system gives new political fuel to its most staunch opponents — among them Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama — when they had been battling on the defensive.

 

The labor alliance also raises the influence of the federal officer who leads the union that represents most deportation agents, the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council. The officer, Chris Crane, has emerged as a star witness for the opposition to the overhaul and a troublesome adversary for Obama administration officials working to promote it.

 

Mr. Crane first wrote to Congress on May 9, saying the Senate bill was tailored to meet the demands of “special interests,” and calling it “a dramatic step in the wrong direction” on public safety and interior enforcement. He said the proposal would give administration officials too much discretion in choosing which immigration laws to enforce. Mr. Sessions helped circulate Mr. Crane’s letter.

 

In a statement that the unions expected to release Monday — but that was given to some reporters on Sunday — Kenneth Palinkas, president of the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council, said he had added his signature to Mr. Crane’s letter. Mr. Palinkas, whose union represents 12,000 employees of the agency that approves documents, said the officers had been “pressured to rubber stamp applications instead of conducting diligent case review and investigation.”

 

Support from another immigration union considerably strengthens Mr. Crane’s hand. Up to now, his law enforcement allies had been far outnumbered by groups that rallied behind the Senate bill and the White House. Also, Mr. Crane does not represent the more than 8,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who handle criminal investigations, hunting down human traffickers and drug smugglers. They have much smoother relations with the administration.

 

Mr. Crane has testified repeatedly this year in Capitol Hill hearings, mostly invited by conservative Republicans who reject any measure that would offer a path to citizenship to illegal immigrants. Although his delivery is measured and cool, Mr. Crane’s message is invariably scorching: he says the Obama administration has pandered to groups that advocate for those immigrants while hobbling the agents he represents, preventing them from doing their work.

 

Opponents of the bill, written by a bipartisan group of eight senators, are increasingly relying on Mr. Crane to bolster their case. Last week, another pillar of conservative resistance, the Heritage Foundation, was badly weakened when many Republicans dismissed a study it published on the bill’s costs. One author of the study, Jason Richwine, resigned under criticism of his past writings asserting that some immigrants had lower intelligence. Many conservative talk radio hosts are softening on the legislation.

 

But Mr. Crane is not holding any of his fire. At a hearing in February, he spoke shortly after his top boss, the secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano. He accused her point blank of running a department afflicted with “gross mismanagement and overall corruption.”

 

In April, Mr. Crane strode into the news conference where the eight senators who wrote the bill presented it to the public for the first time. He repeatedly raised his hand and asked the senators to “take a question from law enforcement.” Federal marshals finally stepped forward to march him out of the room.

 

With debate on the bill moving quickly in the Senate, Mr. Crane’s broadside attacks are a vexing irritant to administration officials, who argue that the time is right for Congress to offer a path to citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants because enforcement is stronger than ever. Claiming the authority of agents in the trenches, Mr. Crane depicts an almost opposite reality.

 

The sweeping Senate bill would offer legal status and eventually citizenship for an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants, tighten border security, and speed visa reviews for more than four million immigrants who have applied legally and are waiting in backlogs.

 

Homeland Security officials vehemently dispute Mr. Crane’s view of their enforcement record, saying he has used the guise of labor advocacy to pursue his own political agenda, aligning squarely with the most right-wing opponents of the overhaul. They point to official figures showing that the Obama administration has deported more than 1.4 million immigrants.

 

Last week, Latino and labor organizations called on President Obama to suspend most deportations, protesting that thousands of people from their communities are still being expelled each week.

 

In an interview in Salt Lake City, where he is based, Mr. Crane dismissed those groups as simply mistaken. “This department under this administration is doing anything and everything they can not to arrest any alien in the interior of the United States,” he contended.

 

Up to now, Mr. Crane had managed to speak loudly from a small platform. His national council represents about 7,700 of the 20,000 employees of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Mr. Crane, who joined the agency 10 years ago after two tours of duty in the Marine Corps, was elected to a second term as union president in August.

 

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Homeland Security

 

Military expert: Boston bombing 'not an anomaly'
Former lieutenant general Michael Barbero says "Boston is not an anomaly."

By Tom Vanden Brook — Monday, May 20th, 2013 ‘USA Today’

 

 

WASHINGTON — The threat from homemade bombs — the top killer of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq — will persist for decades and likely become a more prevalent menace domestically, according to the former top Pentagon officer charged with fighting improvised explosive devices.

 

Michael Barbero, an Army lieutenant general who retired Friday, talked about IEDs and the threat they pose to U.S. citizens and their toll in Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere in a recent interview.

 

"This is here to stay," said Barbero, who led the Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO). "It's too cheap, too readily available, a whole generation of bomb makers. Boston is not an anomaly."

 

The homemade bombs detonated at the Boston Marathon killed three people and wounded more than 260 others, many of whom had limbs severed by the shrapnel of bombs cobbled together with pressure cookers and nails.

 

The United States ranks in the top five among countries reporting IED attacks, Barbero said. Most of the domestic attacks involve pipe bombs on timers, he said. The attempted attack on New York's Times Square in 2010 involved a vehicle Nissan Pathfinder filled with propane, gasoline and fertilizer. Passers-by alerted police, and the bomb failed to explode. Faisal Shahzad is serving a life sentence for the attempted attack.

 

"We were lucky," Barbero said. "A couple hundred pounds in the middle of Times Square? Very bad, very bad. But he screwed up the fusing, and we had good police work."

 

The best way to fight the IED threat is to trace bombmaking networks to IEDs through forensic evidence such as fingerprints and DNA, Barbero said. He worries that lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan will be lost if JIEDDO is allowed to wither.

 

"I'm concerned that's not sufficiently funded. Basic forensics, labs — that's a game-changer at the tactical level," he said.

 

JIEDDO analysts helped examine the Boston bombs, Barbero said. The organization also probes social networks — the command-and-control vehicle for bombmaking networks.

 

Peter Singer, director of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at the Brookings Institution, said Barbero's concern about the long-term threat of IEDs is on target. "Unfortunately, the past data and likely future trends show that IEDs are here to stay, both on battlefields abroad and in terror cases at home," he said.

 

Capabilities that JIEDDO has will continue to be in demand. Officials will have to decide if JIEDDO remains in place or its expertise is parceled out to other parts of government, Singer said.

 

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Known/suspected terrorists in witness protection flew on commercial planes

By Zach Rausnitz — Monday, May 20th, 2013 ‘Fierce Homeland Security.Com’

 

 

The federal witness protection program has taken in individuals considered known or suspected terrorists, but program officials didn't share the new identities of those individuals with national security stakeholders, a new report from the Justice Department office of inspector general says.

 

The Witness Security Program, administered by the U.S. Marshals Service, has admitted known or suspected terrorists who cooperated with investigations of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and other major terrorist attacks and plots. (The Terrorist Watchlist, maintained by the FBI, doesn't include a designation for former known or suspected terrorists though, the report notes.)

 

Participants in the program get new names and documents, but program officials did not pass those along to the FBI until the OIG brought this to the Justice Department's attention. As a result, some participants who were on the Transportation Security Administration's No Fly list flew on commercial planes without TSA knowing, the report says.

 

After auditors noticed this failure to share information, the Marshals Service disclosed to the FBI the new identities of most of the known or suspected terrorists in witness protection.

 

Except for one individual who has not yet received a new identity, the FBI looked into all the participants the Marshals Service disclosed and found no threats to national security.

 

But auditors say that as of March, the DOJ did not definitively know how many known or suspected terrorists had entered witness protection, and the department was continuing to review thousands of case files.

 

In 2010, program officials and the FBI tried to establish a formal process to address the information-sharing issues involving witness protection participants. But they couldn't reach an agreement then about how many individuals at the FBI would have access to witness information. Program officials expressed concern for confidentiality and for the safety of witnesses, the report says.

 

But once DOJ senior leadership became aware of the program's information-sharing lapses, it immediately initiated corrective actions, says the report, which makes 16 recommendations. For 15 of those, corrective actions have already been implemented, and the remaining one is in progress.

 

The changes include sharing the identities of participants with the FBI if they're known or suspected terrorists, performing threat assessments for those individuals and monitoring them more closely.

 

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                                                          Mike Bosak