Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 — Good Afternoon, Stay Safe
- - - - -
Fired (Former) 73rd Precinct P.O. Monty Green
NYPD cop fired for allegedly pimping women sues undercover detective who helped take him down
Monty Green filed a $30 million lawsuit Tuesday against multiple defendants, saying he was railroaded by the NYPD after the district attorney's office declined to prosecute him.
By John Marzulli — Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’
The NYPD cop fired for allegedly pimping out women is suing the sexy undercover detective code-named "Candy" who posed as a hooker to take him down.
Ex-cop Monty Green filed a $30 million lawsuit Tuesday, saying he was railroaded by the NYPD after the district attorney's office declined to prosecute him.
Green says the Internal Affairs Bureau failed to uncover any evidence that he was a pimp and built a case against him based on "street banter" he engaged in with Candy, who is identified in the suit as Undercover 5024.
"He found her attractive and only wanted to have sex with her," Green's lawyer, Eric Sanders, told the Daily News. "He did not solicit Candy for sexual favors in exchange for monies."
The suit, filed in Brooklyn Federal Court, alleges that Candy was a member of a team of female undercover IAB detectives known as "Charlie's Angels" in reference to IAB Chief Charles Campisi, who is also a defendant in the suit.
Green, 31, was dumped in December by Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly after a department trial.
He was secretly recorded asking Candy if she was "looking for a daddy," which he contends was just flirty talk.
The suit, filed in Brooklyn Federal Court, also alleges that IAB disproportionately targets African-American cops like Green.
A spokeswoman for the Law Department had no immediate comment on the suit.
The investigators enjoyed themselves plenty while tailing Green inside a sleazy downtown Brooklyn bar called Rockwell's where they drank booze and touched nude dancers "for their own sexual gratification," according to the suit.
_______________________________________________________________________
Sloppy Police Work by Auto Crime / TARU
Motorcycle-theft-ring case moving forward despite flaws: New York judge
A Manhattan judge slammed police work in a high-profile probe of a motorcycle theft ring — but did not toss the case on account of the blunders.
By Shayna Jacobs — Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’
A Manhattan judge slammed police work in a high-profile probe of a motorcycle theft ring — but did not toss the case on account of the blunders.
Two surveillance videos were lost and two cameras failed to record during the 17-month sting, which ended in a host of arrests last year, according to pretrial revelations.
“The loss was inadvertent, although certainly was clumsy and negligent,” Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marcy Kahn said.
Four defendants in the case are going on trial in May. Defense lawyers asked for charges to be scrapped or for at least an exclusion of testimony and evidence. But Kahn ruled that she will instead instruct jurors that they can discredit testimony based on absent evidence.
The four suspects each face 25 years in prison for their alleged roles in the two-wheeled capers.
More than half of those busted have already pleaded guilty.
At least 10 guns and 50 expensive motorcycles were collected in the sweep last year after a joint investigation by the NYPD and the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
_______________________________________________________________________
Bloomberg Addresses NYPD Chiefs [ Handpicked Audience Mandated to Attend Speech ] at 1 PP
( Seven Pertinent Articles - Down the Middle – Pro & Con Slants )
NYC mayor staunchly defends police policies
By JENNIFER PELTZ (The Associated Press) — Tuesday, April 30th, 2013; 7:32 p.m. EDT
NEW YORK (AP) — In a pugnacious defense of what he called a police force bombarded by politics, Mayor Michael Bloomberg lashed out Tuesday at critics of the New York Police Department's stop and frisk practice and surveillance programs.
"The NYPD is under attack," the mayor said in a speech that lauded the department for lower crime rates, raised the specter of terrorism and excoriated supporters of legislation that would rein in stop and frisk. He also was critical of mayoral candidates, the media and legal groups that have sued over the practice.
"Stop playing politics with public safety. Look at what's happened in Boston. Remember what happened here on 9/11. Remember all of those who have been killed by gun violence and the families they left behind," Bloomberg said. "We owe it to all of them to give our officers all the tools they need to protect innocent lives, or people will needlessly die, and we'll all be responsible."
It was a message the mayor has sent before, amid an ongoing federal civil rights trial over stop and frisk and City Council hearings on setting new rules for the tactic. He also has repeatedly embraced the NYPD's surveillance and other counterterrorism programs after a series of stories by The Associated Press on the department's widespread spying on Muslims.
But the more than 20-minute speech and setting — at police headquarters, in front of a room full of uniformed officials — telegraphed a stepped-up, aggressive response to those who question whether the nation's largest police department has overstepped its bounds.
Some were quick to push back.
"He may be fighting a culture war. We're trying to pass legislation to address real problems," Councilman Brad Lander, a sponsor of the proposed legislation, said by phone. Communities United for Police Reform, a coalition of civil rights and community groups backing the measures, said Bloomberg was engaging in "dangerous scare tactics."
Stop and frisk — the practice of stopping, questioning and sometimes patting down people seen as doing something questionable but not necessarily meriting arrest — has become a flashpoint as the stops rose dramatically in the last decade, to nearly 700,000 in 2011. They dropped to 533,000 last year.
Critics say the stops treat innocent people like criminals and are tainted with racial profiling, noting that more than 80 percent of those approached are black or Hispanic; these groups make up 54 percent of the population. Civil rights and minority advocates and some lawmakers also see the tactic as ineffective because more than 85 percent do not result in arrests or weapons being confiscated.
The mayor has long insisted the stops are based on suspicious behavior, not racial bias, and are a powerful tool for curtailing crime.
The demographics of those stopped reflect not racism but statistics, as a great majority of crime suspects are black or Hispanic, he said Tuesday. And where critics see a dearth of weapons being found, he sees a deterrent.
"There is no doubt that stops are a vitally important reason" why New York has lower rates of major crimes than other big American cities, he said.
The stops have spurred protests, have become a must-address issue for mayoral candidates and have engendered the ongoing federal trial and negotiations propelling the City Council proposals toward a vote.
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the Democratic front-runner in the mayor's race, is supporting a measure that would create an inspector general to look at the NYPD's policies and procedures, saying that would improve relations between police and citizens. She said last week she opposed but wouldn't block a vote on a proposal that would make it easier for people to sue over stops they felt reflected racial profiling.
Bloomberg said the lawsuit proposal would "allow New York State judges to micromanage the NYPD." An inspector general could muddy policy, confusing officers, and make other law enforcement agencies reluctant to share information with the NYPD, for fear the inspector might have access to it, he said.
Supporters call those criticisms off-base. Some key agencies that work with the NYPD, including the FBI, have inspectors general themselves, noted Councilman Jumaane Williams.
Bloomberg didn't name names in rapping mayoral candidates for supporting the proposals.
But several responded, either to slap back at Bloomberg or to praise him. While Democratic Public Advocate Bill de Blasio said Bloomberg was "fear-mongering," Republican and former Metropolitan Transportation Authority chairman Joseph Lhota declared he and the mayor "are on the same page."
Other hopefuls sought middle ground. Adolfo Carrion, a Democrat-turned-unaffiliated former federal housing official running on the Independence Party line, doesn't support the measures. But "the mayor needs to own up to the fact that we can do better," Carrion said by phone, suggesting officers felt undue pressure to make lots of stops.
Bloomberg also lambasted the media, particularly The New York Times, saying the newspaper hasn't done enough to report on gun violence even while editorializing against stop and frisk.
Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha responded that the newspaper "aggressively covers violence in the city's neighborhoods" and noted that the editorial board is separate from its news coverage.
_______________________________________________________________________
Bloomberg accuses the Times and NYCLU of a racial double standard
By Azi Paybarah — Tuesday, April 30th, 2013 ‘Capital New York’ / New York, NY
Mayor Michael Bloomberg today accused the New York Times and civil-liberties activists of a form of racial bias, for focusing criticism on the NYPD's stop-and-frisk program instead of on shooting victims, who are predominantly black and Latino.
In a speech at the New York Police Department headquarters this morning, Bloomberg singled out the case of 17-year-old Alphonza Bryant, who was "shot and killed while standing with friends near his home" in the Bronx.
Bloomberg said Bryant was not the intended target of the alleged shooter, and "just a victim of too many guns on our streets. But after his murder, no outrage from the Center for Constitutional Rights, or the NYCLU [New York Civil Liberties Union]. There was not a mention of his murder in our papers, our paper of record, the New York Times. 'All the news that's fit to print' did not include the murder of 17-year-old Alfonso Bryant. Do you think that if a white 17-year-old prep student from Manhattan had been murdered, the Times would have ignored it? Me neither."
The mayor said that four days after Bryant's "murder went unreported by the Times, the paper published another editorial attacking stop, question and frisk."
A Times op-ed columnist did in fact write about Bryant's death, (on-line only, as part of a compendium) following, and citing coverage of the shooting in the Daily News, but that was dismissed by Bloomberg's aides as inadequate.
"[C]iting the Daily News coverage on line doesn't exactly cut it," Bloomberg's senior adviser, Howard Wolfson wrote on Twitter.
A spokesperson for the Times did not immediately have a comment.
The speech at One Police Plaza this morning was also an assault on Bloombeg's would-be Democratic successors, all of whom favor reducing the overall number of stop-and-frisks conducted by the NYPD. (Comptroller John Liu favors abolishing the tactic entirely.)
The mayor also criticized a bill he said would unfairly restrict police officers from using racial information to narrow their search for suspects, and potentially expose officers to litigation "for doing their jobs."
Bloomberg gave a hypothetical example: If a suspect reported he or she was assaulted by "a 20-something-year-old white man with a blue windbreaker" then "the officer under this bill could only use the color of the windbreaker as a lead."
And "the officer would have to stop 80-year-old black women if they were wearing blue windbreakers," the mayor said.
The bill in question is opposed by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and former comptroller Bill Thompson. Quinn has said that she will nevertheless allow the bill to be voted on in the City Council, where it is expected to pass, possibly with enough votes to override an expected mayoral veto.
The mayor said critics of the NYPD who accuse the agency of racial profiling were "irrational" for comparing the ethnicity of suspects stopped to their percentage of the general population. The mayor said it was more logical to compare the suspects stopped to the people described as assailants by victims.
Bloomberg has 245 days left, and is intent on preserving as much of his public safety agenda as possible.
He criticized a call to create an inspector general's office to oversee NYPD policy and suggested it would weaken the city's ability to fight terrorism. The mayor said other counter-terrorism agencies that work with the NYPD "might be less willing to share information with us if they were concerned it could be released" to an I.G. or the City Council.
"God forbid terrorists succeed in striking our city because of politically driven law undermines that undermines the NYPD's intelligence-gathering efforts," he said.
UPDATE: Independence Party mayoral candidate Adolfo Carrion, Jr., says he agrees with Bloomberg's criticism of the Times and others for not paying more attention to shooting victims like Bryant. It "points to the arrogance of the limousine liberal in American politics," Carrion said in an interview. "If the kid was from an upper-class family in New York City, it would have been on the cover of the paper."
Carrion said he believes the NYPD can be effective in fighting crime while at the same time reducing the number of stop-and-frisks. But he agreed with Bloomberg's concern about not blocking the NYPD's surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations. At a recent mayoral forum with Democratic candidates, Carrion stood apart in saying he was open to using drones to help the department gather information.
Democratic candidate Sal Albanese, a former councilman, said his primary opponents were "living on another planet" and "have flip-flopped and engaged in political theater in regard to the inspector general, an undemocratic and expensive position that would do nothing to protect civil liberties and do everything to stand in the way of smart policing."
Bill Thompson and John Liu initially supported the inspector general bill. Thompson now opposes the current version of it and wants to see an I.G. that reports to the police commissioner, which the bill's sponsors find objectionable. Liu now opposes the bill for not going far enough to police the police.
UPDATE: “Mayor Bloomberg is trying to deflect criticism of the City’s stop-and-frisk practice by accusing The New York Times of bias. Among those critical of the practice is The New York Times editorial board, which is separate from the news side of the newspaper. The Times aggressively covers violence in the city's neighborhoods, and to select one murder as evidence to the contrary is disingenuous. His claim of racial bias is absurd.”
UPDATE: In a statement, Thompson said "The current legislation on racial profiling and an Inspector General astride the Police Department are the wrong solutions to the problem" and that "The right solution is a new mayor."
_______________________________________________________________________
Bloomberg Fulminates Against ‘Finger Pointing’ Critics
By Pervaiz Shallwani — Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 ‘The Wall Street Journal’ / New York, NY
Mayor Michael Bloomberg delivered a blistering address Tuesday defending his public-safety policies and the New York Police Department, which he claimed has been “under attack” by potential successors engaged in election-year politics.
Crossing the street from City Hall to police headquarters, Mr. Bloomberg defended the law-enforcement practices being scrutinized by critics as the same ones that helped cut crime rates to historic lows during his 12-year tenure.
“The attacks most often come from those who play no constructive role in keeping our city safe, but rather view their jobs as pointing fingers from the steps of City Hall,” said Mr. Bloomberg, on what marked his 245th day left in office. “My message is simple: Stop playing politics with public safety. Look at what’s happened in Boston. Remember what happened here on 9/11.”
The roughly 20-minute speech before a room full of senior NYPD leaders comes as local lawmakers and a federal court case have presented a growing challenge to the constitutionality of the police force’s stop-and-frisk strategy. Opponents argue that policy unfairly targets minorities, particularly black and Latino men.
City Council members are currently considering bills that would create an inspector general with oversight over the NYPD and limit the use of racial information when hunting for criminal suspects.
“In both cases,” Mr. Bloomberg said, “opponents argue that the NYPD is targeting people because of their race or ethnicity. In both cases, they could not be more wrong.”
The mayor, in a somewhat routine fashion, used the address to criticize the City Council and the Democratic candidates running to replace him. He also singled out the New York Times for criticism, chastising the newspaper for what he said was a failure to cover the murder of a 17-year-old boy in the Bronx. Mr. Bloomberg described the boy as an innocent bystander in what police believe was a case of mistaken identity.
“Do you think that if a white 17-year-old prep student from Manhattan had been murdered, the Times would have ignored it?” Mr. Bloomberg asked. “Me neither,” chiding both newspaper editorials and civil-rights groups for not speaking out against the murder while continuing to attack stop-and-frisk.
“Mayor Bloomberg is trying to deflect criticism of the city’s stop-and-frisk practice by accusing the New York Times of bias,” said Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokeswoman for the newspaper. She pointed out that criticism of the policy comes from editorial board, which operates separately from the news-gathering side of the organization.
“His claim of racial bias is absurd,” Ms. Rhoades Ha said of the mayor.
On legislation for an inspector general to monitor police, Mr. Bloomberg said it would fracture the command structure and make it harder to enforce accountability because there would be an appearance of a rival power,” aside from the police commissioner.
The mayor also warned that the bill would “undermine” counterintelligence gathering by making other law-enforcement agencies less likely to share information with their counterparts in the NYPD, who might be compelled to turn over information to the inspector general and ultimately the City Council.
Mr. Bloomberg said the second bill, which abolishes racial profiling, was unnecessary because his administration has already passed a similar bill. “What the bill would do is to preclude the NYPD from using key information, including gender, age and race, to identify suspects,” he said.
As a hypothetical example, the mayor cited an armed suspect described by a witness as a 20-something white man wearing a blue windbreaker. He said the proposed legislation would require officers to ignore all the information provided by the witness except the color of the windbreaker.
“Even more absurd,” he added, “if they stop someone who perfectly fits the description provided — a 20-something white man wearing a blue windbreaker — and that person turns out not to be the shooter, that person could sue the NYPD.”
Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, a Democratic mayoral candidate who has supported the push for an inspector general, called the mayor’s remarks “fear-mongering” and said he “can’t hide the fact that his administration’s overuse and misuse of stop-and-frisk has ripped apart police-community relations, putting our officers and our neighborhoods at risk.”
William Thompson, a former city comptroller also vying for the Democratic mayoral bid, agreed with Mr. Bloomberg’s opposition to both pieces of legislation, even while calling stop-and-frisk a “problem.”
“The right solution is a new mayor who understands that protecting people’s safety and protecting people’s rights are both the mayor’s job,” Mr. Thompson said in reply to Mr. Bloomberg’s speech. “We need to fix stop and frisk so we can restore trust between communities and the police and ensure that we target criminals, not innocent citizens for no other reason than the color of their skin, their background or their beliefs.”
_______________________________________________________________________
Mayor Bloomberg slams opposition to stop and frisk after silence over murder of Bronx teen
Bloomberg attacked the Center for Constitutional Rights, the New York Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times, which did not even cover the senseless shooting death of 17-year-old Alphonso Bryant.
By Jennifer Fermino — Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’
A fired-up Mayor Bloomberg blasted his potential successors for bashing the NYPD to win the election.
Invoking the senseless murder last week of a promising Bronx teen, Bloomberg accused mayoral hopefuls of putting concerns about police stop-and-frisk tactics ahead of children’s lives.
“(The candidates) never had responsibility for public safety and strategy and are putting ideology and election-year politics above public safety,” he said, without naming names.
The candidates and other critics of stop-and-frisk are quick to trash the police, he said, but all were silent last week when 17-year-old Alphonso Bryant was shot to death in the Bronx.
“After his murder, there was no outrage from the Center for Constitutional Rights or the NYCLU,” a disgusted Bloomberg said, referring to two groups that vehemently oppose the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy.
Alphonso, who had just been fitted for his prom tuxedo, was shot nine times while hanging out with friends near his home.
Addressing head-on charges that the stop-and-frisk policy unfairly targets minority-group members — a claim that is at the heart of a federal discrimination lawsuit against the NYPD — Bloomberg pointed out that Alphonso was black.
“We cannot allow Alphonso to become a statistic. Alphonso was a person. He had a loving mother. Family. Friends,” the mayor said.
Bloomberg also blasted The New York Times, which he sarcastically called the “paper of record,” for ignoring Alphonso’s death but publishing, four days later, an editorial condemning stop-and-frisk as a “widely loathed practice.”
“Do you think if a white 17-year-old prep school student from Manhattan had been murdered, The Times would have ignored it?” he asked. “Me, neither.”
In an interview with the Daily News shortly after Alphonso’s death, his mother said that his graduation photos had just arrived in the mail. “We just got to remember who he was,” she mournfully told The News.
Candidates vying for City Hall should heed her words, Bloomberg warned.
“Protecting people from street crime and protecting our city against another terrorist attack is the most important job of any mayor,” he said.
Bloomberg didn’t single out any candidates, but most of the Democratic mayoral wanna-bes have taken positions critical of the NYPD.
City Controller John Liu has called for the abolishment of stop-and-frisk, and the other Democratic hopefuls have said the program needs to be reformed.
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a longtime Bloomberg ally and leading mayoral contender, angered the mayor in March when she came out in favor of a bill that would create an inspector general to oversee the NYPD, which Bloomberg said would create unnecessary bureaucracy.
“Whose policies should an officer on the street follow — and how would he or she know that their partner would be following the same procedures when the bullets start flying?” Bloomberg asked. “With confusion comes deadly consequences to our police officers and to the public that they are sworn to protect.”
In a statement, Quinn (D-Manhattan) said she agreed with parts of Bloomberg’s speech, but differed with his harsh assessment on the inspector general bill.
“I believe that we can — that we must — have both safe streets and stronger police-community relations,” she said.
Public Advocate Bill de Blasio supports the creation of an inspector general as well as a bill Bloomberg called “a dangerous piece of legislation” that would prohibit cops from using race as a determining factor when stopping a suspect.
He accused the mayor of “fear-mongering.”
“Mayor Bloomberg offers a false choice between public safety and our basic constitutional rights,” he said. “We can have both, but only with the common-sense accountability and protections Mayor Bloomberg so strenuously opposes.”
Liu said stop-and-frisk is racial profiling.
“There are police strategies such as focused deterrence that are more effective, as shown in cities where crime has declined without widespread stop-and-frisk,” he said.
_______________________________________________________________________
Critics of Police Would Make New Yorkers Less Safe, Bloomberg Says
By J. DAVID GOODMAN — Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 ‘The New York Times’
With criticism of the police infusing the Democratic race to succeed him, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Tuesday offered a staunch defense of the New York Police Department, as well as a spirited attack against its critics.
Mr. Bloomberg, speaking at Police Headquarters, took a swipe at those suing the department in Federal District Court in Manhattan over the stop -and-frisk practices. But he saved his strongest words for legislators and mayoral candidates “playing politics with people’s lives.”
“Look at what’s happened in Boston,” he said. “Remember what happened here on 9/11. Remember all of those who’ve been killed by gun violence and the families they left behind.”
The mayor described criticism of the police as politically motivated. “The attacks most often come from those who play no constructive role in keeping our city safe but, rather, view their jobs as pointing fingers from the steps of City Hall,” he said.
He condemned two bills before the City Council. One would install an independent inspector general to review police practices and has the support of the Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, a Democrat running for mayor; another would address accusations of profiling against officers.
Both bills, sponsored by Councilmen Jumaane D. Williams and Brad Lander, have the support of a majority on the Council and, in the case of the inspector general proposal, enough votes to override a probable mayoral veto. They are regular topics at candidate forums on public safety.
Without singling any out by name, the mayor directed his comments to city legislators and candidates backing the bills and forcefully suggested they were making New Yorkers less safe.
The bill establishing an inspector general might result in less willingness from other agencies to share information with the Police Department, he said, if that information could be released to an independent monitor. “God forbid terrorists succeed in striking our city because of a politically driven law that undermines the N.Y.P.D.’s intelligence gathering efforts,” he said.
Mr. Bloomberg called the profiling bill “a dangerous piece of legislation, and anyone who supports it is courting disaster.”
In a statement after the speech, Ms. Quinn emphasized that she agreed with the mayor on many points but that she differed “strongly” on the issue of an inspector general.
Mr. Williams said: “The way the mayor discussed it, these are terrible bills. I’m just happy they are not the bills I’m presenting.” He added that the profiling bill “absolutely” would allow officers to use race in describing suspects. (The mayor suggested that under the proposal the police could cite the color of suspects’ clothing, but not their skin.)
Mr. Bloomberg delivered his remarks to a room filled with police chiefs and other leaders of the department, including Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly.
“Let me begin by saying something you don’t hear often enough,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “Thank you.”
He pointed to statistics on reductions in murders and gun violence in New York and told senior police officials that they had redefined modern policing: “You prevent crimes from happening.”
Even as he addressed those assembled, Mr. Bloomberg’s comments appeared to be directed far beyond the brick corridors of 1 Police Plaza. At one point, he made pointed remarks about the news media — and The New York Times in particular — for its scant or nonexistent coverage of the shooting death of a 17-year-old boy in the Bronx last week. The police said the teenager, Alphonza Bryant, was shot around 8 p.m. on a sidewalk a few blocks from his home after two suspects who had walked past him a little earlier returned, and one of them began shooting.
The mayor called Mr. Bryant “a victim of too many guns on our streets” and linked the murder to the broader debate over police stops. “When police stop and ask a 17-year-old a question based on reasonable suspicion of a crime, there is outrage,” he said. “Yet when a 17-year-old is standing on the corner near his home at 8:15 in the evening and gets shot and killed, there is silence.”
After his remarks, the assembled police chiefs rose to applaud.
_______________________________________________________________________
Mayor Bloomberg rips NY Times over stop and frisk coverage
By REBECCA HARSHBARGER and BOB FREDERICKS — Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 ‘The New York Post’
Mayor Bloomberg today unleashed an attack on The New York Times, accusing the paper of hypocrisy for publishing an editorial against the NYPD’s stop and frisk policy days after the “paper of record” didn’t bother covering of the murder of a black teenager.
“Last week, a Bronx resident named Alphonza Bryant was shot and killed while standing with friends near his home. He was 17. Like most murder victims in our city, he was a minority,” a frustrated Bloomberg told NYPD brass during an address at 1 Police Plaza.
“He was just a victim of too many guns on our streets. But after his murder ... there was not even a mention of his murder in our paper of record, the New York Times. All the news that’s fit to print did not include the murder of a 17-year-old Alphonza Bryant.”
Bryant was gunned down near his home in Foxhurst April 22, weeks before his senior prom and graduation from Urban Assembly Bronx Studio for Writers and Artists in exactly the kind of violent crime stop and frisk aims to prevent by taking guns off the street.
“Four days after Alphonza Bryant’s murder went unreported by the Times, the paper published another editorial attacking stop, question, and frisk. They called it a wildly loathed practice, even though a growing number of mothers and fathers who have had their children murdered with guns have been speaking out in support of stop, question, and frisk,” the mayor said.
“Let me tell you now what I loathe. I loathe that 17-year-old minority children can be senselessly murdered in the Bronx and some of the media doesn’t even consider it news.”
Bloomberg pointedly accused the paper of a double standard in its crime coverage, saying the paper ignores gun violence in minority neighborhoods - but would play it differently if the victim were wealthy and white.
“Do you think that a white 17-year-old prep student from Manhattan had been murdered, the Times would have ignored it?” Hizzoner asked. “I believe the life of every 17 year old and every child and every adult is precious, and I wake up every morning thinking about what we can do to protect the lives of innocent New Yorkers and spare more people the pain and heartbreak that we’ve seen far too much,” Bloomberg said.
The story was covered by several media outlets, including The Post.
Bryant was hanging out with pals on Fox Street about 8:15 p.m. when two thugs walked by, cops said.
The pair returned a short time later and one opened fire, squeezing off nine shots, fatally wounding Bryant in the torso.
Cops said it wasn’t even clear if the teen was the intended target.
“After his murder, there was no outrage from the Center for Constitutional Rights, or the NYCLU,” Bloomberg noted, citing frequent critics of the policy who are also plaintiffs in a suit against the city claiming it discriminates against minorities. “He was just a victim of too many guns on our streets.”
The NYCLU said today in a statement, ""It's a lot easier to trash the NYCLU than to acknowledge the widespread dissatisfaction the community feels with an NYPD that acts like it's above the law and accountable to no one."
Bloomberg insisted that stop and frisk saves lives - and that the majority of those saved are minorities.
“About 90 percent of our murder victims in our city are black or Latino.
The fact of the matter is that when police stop and ask a 17 year old a question based on a reasonable suspicion of a crime there is outrage. Yet when a 17-year-old is standing on the street corner near his home at 8:15 in the evening and gets shot and killed, there is silence,” Bloomberg said in remarks that prompted a thunderous standing ovation from the police chiefs and other brass present.
A Times spokeswoman did not immediately return a call for comment.
_______________________________________________________________________
Mike Bloomberg’s ugly “stop and frisk” freakout
He equates the NYCLU with the NRA, race-baits the New York Times and lets the NYPD profile blacks and Muslims
By Joan Walsh — Tuesday, April 30th, 2013 ‘Salon Magazine’ / New York, NY
One of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s finest moments, at least until his recent all-out advocacy for gun control, was when he choked up during a moving speech defending the development of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque in 2010. Remember that? Republicans were making it a big campaign issue, even President Obama took his time before kinda-sorta defending it, but Bloomberg made a big speech in front of the Statue of Liberty and defended the fundamental American right of New York Muslims to build a community center where they wanted it.
This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions or favor one over another. The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place in our city, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan.
Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11, and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values and play into our enemies’ hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that.
Of course, Bloomberg has been going both ways on religious tolerance and civil liberties for a while now – also tolerating Police Commissioner Ray Kelly’s draconian surveillance and harassment of local Muslims. So I shouldn’t have been shocked when Bloomberg lost it Tuesday over mounting criticism of Kelly’s “stop and frisk” policies, which disproportionately target young African-American men. Shamefully, he equated the NYCLU with the NRA – it’s not the first time he’s done that – and even got in a little race-baiting against the New York Times.
While the Times has editorialized against stop-and-frisk, Bloomberg claimed the paper didn’t cover the murder of Alphonza Bryant, a 17-year-old African-American, in the Bronx last week. “I loathe that a 17-year-old can be senselessly murdered in the Bronx, and the media doesn’t cover it,” Bloomberg ranted. “Do you think if a white 17-year-old prep student from Manhattan was murdered, the Times would have ignored it? I think not.”
Nice. Mayor Stop and Frisk is the real friend of African-Americans, unlike those white elitists at the New York Times.
In fact, the Times did cover the Bryant murder, in a Joe Nocera roundup of gun violence April 25. Bloomberg spokesman Howard Wolfson claims that shouldn’t count because Nocera just linked to New York Daily News stories on the killing. Glad Wolfson is now the Times ombudsman; somebody tell Margaret Sullivan she’s out of a job.
I asked the Times for comment but didn’t hear until after this post went up. The New York Times’s Danielle Rhodes-Ha just emailed: “Mayor Bloomberg is trying to deflect criticism of the City’s stop-and-frisk practice by accusing The New York Times of bias. Among those critical of the practice is The New York Times editorial board, which is separate from the news side of the newspaper. The Times aggressively covers violence in the city’s neighborhoods, and to select one murder as evidence to the contrary is disingenuous. His claim of racial bias is absurd.”
Bloomberg also criticized demands for an inspector general to oversee NYPD counterterror policy in the wake of mounting criticism of Kelly’s Muslim profiling. “God forbid terrorists succeed in striking our city because of a politically driven law that undermines the NYPD’s intelligence-gathering efforts,” he said.
Sadly, the normally stoic mayor has been indulging Ray Kelly’s fervid fantasies about the Tsarnaev brothers’ supposed plans to target Times Square after Boston – based on some hospital bed information from Dzohkhar, the surviving stoner suspect. The notion that these knockoff jihadis waited four days after their Boston attack to head for Manhattan to mount a terror plot, with no money and no gas, at the very moment their faces had been released to the world (they were almost immediately identified), seems ludicrous to me. It sounds like it could have been Tsarnaev’s pain meds talking.
Interestingly, just a day before, Kelly and Bloomberg had been mocking the brothers’ supposed plans to “party” in New York, and boasting about the city’s capacity to deter attacks like the Boston bombing. But suddenly it seemed politically useful to cower at the thought of the wrong-way Tsarnaevs targeting Bloomberg and Kelly’s supposedly well-defended city. “The fact that New York City was next on the terrorists’ list … shows just how crucial it is for the NYPD to continue to expand its counterterrorism capabilities and intelligence gathering capabilities,” Bloomberg intoned. Kelly took shots at the FBI for failing to immediately notify him of the “danger,” but it’s worth noting that the FBI has itself criticized Kelly’s aggressive Muslim surveillance, suggesting in at least one case that it bordered on entrapment.
Just as Bloomberg tries to have it both ways on religious tolerance toward Muslims, he’s also having it both ways on how well he and Kelly are protecting the city against supposedly lethal Islamic extremism. The guy who once made a stirring stand on civil liberties shames himself by comparing the NYCLU to the NRA. But we’ll give the NYCLU the last word. Here’s what it posted today:
_______________________________________________________________________
NYC Mayoral Race and Raymond Kelly
With Democratic Mayoral Field in Flux, de Blasio Assails Quinn
By KATE TAYLOR — Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 ‘The New York Times’
(Edited for brevity and NYPD pertinence)
Bill de Blasio has hammered Christine C. Quinn over her closeness to the mayor, mocked her as the “best friend” of the real estate industry, and accused her of being soft on the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly.
A desire to attract attention seemed in play last week, when Mr. de Blasio, in the final minutes of a televised debate on public safety, accused Ms. Quinn of changing her position on policing issues, and engaging in “revisionist history” about her views.
“The fact is, you only moved on stop-and-frisk because there was tremendous public pressure — you weren’t willing to challenge Ray Kelly previously,” Mr. de Blasio said, adding, “Let’s be clear and not act like this is something you’ve been committed to long term.”
_______________________________________________________________________
NYPD: Too Many Cops Are Shiftless, Donut-Loving "Malcontents"
By Christopher Robbins — Tuesday, April 30th, 2013 ‘The Gothamist’ / New York, NY
You're not the only one who kills time at work curling up with a newspaper and the knowledge that your direct deposit will hit your checking account at 12:01 a.m. on Friday. According to top NYPD officials, 10% of uniformed officers are shiftless "malcontents," which is why strict performance goals (not the Q-word!) have to be instituted. This defense has been repeatedly presented by the City and the NYPD during the landmark stop-and-frisk trial, and has prompted the harshest sentence we've ever seen come out of the New York Times' police bureau: "Indeed, some police officers need to be weaned off the idea that they are paid to drive around in their patrol cars, eating doughnuts."
Throughout the federal trial lawyers for the plaintiffs, who are challenging the constitutionality of stop-and-frisk, have played tapes that seem to incriminate commanding officers of instituting quotas.
Not so, Deputy Inspector Steven Mauriello testified. The man you hear on the tape yelling to his subordinates that they need more collars or U-250s (stop-and-frisks) is really just trying to motivate his men to work while they're on overtime.
“The sergeant is complaining that the cops on overtime didn’t want to get out of the car,” Mauriello testified. “He doesn’t want them sitting in the car reading the newspaper.”
Quotas aside, this is another mystifying issue. Why does so much police work get done when they're making time-and-a-half? (And why aren't more cops better at making those crazy sound effects?)
Former Chief of Department Joseph Esposito, who testified that 10% of uniformed officers were "complete malcontents that will do as little as possible no matter how well you treat them," implored his men to raise the amount of police activity recorded on straight time.
"Raw number of 250s are up, but Cs and 250s are done on overtime and that will come back to hurt us," Esposito told one commander, according to the minutes of a CompStat meeting obtained by the plaintiffs. In another, Esposito says, "We have to handle at squad, precinct level. We need to be a lot more proactive. Your gun collars are down and straight time activity is down."
Esposito went on to explain what he meant:
And when you see 60 percent of the activity, in this case it's criminal court summonses were done on overtime, it's something that has to be looked at. Why? Why couldn't the officer see it on overtime and not on straight time?
It is an indicator that he or she says, you know what, I don't have to work hard on straight time, I will wait for the overtime and do it then. We can't have that. We have to have the officer being an officer whenever he or she is at work.
_______________________________________________________________________
Murder Trail in the Execution of 75 Precinct Hero Peter Figoski
Detective: Suspect had conflicting stories
By WILLIAM MURPHY — Tuesday, April 30th, 2013 ‘New York Newsday’ / Melville, L.I.
The alleged leader of a robbery crew who is accused in the murder of NYPD officer Peter Figoski after the lawman walked in on a botched robbery in Brooklyn gave conflicting accounts of his activities that night, according to the testimony of two detectives Monday.
Nelson Morales, 28, of Ozone Park, Queens, "gave me three different versions," Det. John Mullins testified in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn.
Det. Thomas McKiernan testified later in the day that Morales then wrote out a statement to clear up the oral statements, but wrote a second statement when detectives questioned him further.
Justice Alan Marrus ruled after the hearings that all the statements would be admissible when Morales and co-defendant Kevin Santos, 32, also of Ozone Park, go on trial in the murder of Figoski, 47, a West Babylon resident with four daughters.
The triggerman, Lamont Pride, 28, of North Carolina, was convicted of murder and sentenced in February to 45 years to life in prison.
The alleged getaway driver, Michael Velez, 23, of Ozone Park, was acquitted of all charges after a joint trial with Pride, but before separate juries.
Morales and Santos will also have separate juries.
All the defendants were charged with felony murder because they allegedly committed an underlying felony, robbery, that resulted in Figoski's death in the early morning hours of Dec. 12, 2011.
The pretrial hearings will continue Tuesday with Marrus expected to rule on the admissibility of statements by Santos.
McKiernan testified that as he led Santos to Central Booking after his arrest, Santos said: "Excuse me sir. Can I be charged with murder if I didn't pull the trigger?"
_______________________________________________________________________
44 Precinct P.O. Nivia Fontanez (Not Job Related)
NYPD cop hit with Medicaid fraud rap
Nivia Fontanez, 31, allegedly fleeced Medicaid out of $12,000 in health insurance benefits for which she was ineligible, according to court documents.
By Shayna Jacobs AND Shane Dixon Kavanaugh — Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’
An NYPD officer was charged on Tuesday with lining her pockets with thousands of dollars in illicit welfare benefits before she became a cop, officials said.
Nivia Fontanez, 31, fleeced Medicaid out of $12,000 in health insurance benefits between January 2004 and May 2008, court documents allege. She made too much money at that time to get coverage.
Two months later, she joined the NYPD and worked out of the Bronx’s 44th Precinct stationhouse. She was arraigned Tuesday on grand larceny and welfare fraud charges. She’s suspended pending the case’s outcome.
_______________________________________________________________________
Bronx Criminal Court and NYPD Stop, Question and Frisk Program
In Misdemeanor Cases, Long Waits for Elusive Trials
By WILLIAM GLABERSON — Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 ‘The New York Times’
Excerpt; desired to read the article in its entirety, go to:
Court delays of as long as five years in felony cases have pushed the Bronx criminal courts into the bottom ranks of courts nationally, reaching what even the judges call crisis levels.
But that backlog has a less-noted companion. The courts are so dysfunctional that those accused of minor offenses — misdemeanors like trespassing or driving with a suspended license — have all but lost the fundamental guarantee of the American legal system: the right to a trial.
The rights of the accused were not the only ideals compromised. The inability to get a judge to provide a complete hearing or a full decision in a single case meant the Bronx courts ignored pressing constitutional questions about the city’s controversial stop-and-frisk program. There were no hearings that allowed Bronx judges to wrestle with the fraught issues of public safety versus civil liberties, and no rulings that provided the police with firm guidelines about what the Constitution allowed when someone was searched in the street.
The Criminal Court’s absence from the debate is particularly glaring in the Bronx, where nearly 1 in 10 residents were stopped and frisked by the police in 2010 and 2011, according to new data compiled by Columbia University.
For years, trials have been vanishing in the lower criminal courts around the country, transforming them into plea-bargaining mills. That trend can upend basic legal concepts, creating such profound disincentives to fighting a case that the accused are effectively treated as if they are presumed guilty rather than innocent. In New York, critics have long said the city’s Criminal Courts have so abdicated their function that it is a stretch to call them courts at all.
_______________________________________________________________________
New York State
Studios Fret That New York’s Gun Laws Could Hamper Film Production
By THOMAS KAPLAN — Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 ‘The New York Times’
ALBANY — The sweeping gun control measure signed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and hailed by Democratic leaders has a surprising critic: Hollywood.
Officials in the movie and television industry say the new laws could prevent them from using the lifelike assault weapons and high-capacity magazines that they have employed in shows like “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and films like “The Dark Knight Rises.”
Twenty-seven pilots, television and feature projects, including programs like “Blue Bloods” and “Person of Interest,” are now in production in New York State using assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. Industry workers say that they need to use real weapons for verisimilitude, that it would be impractical to try to manufacture fake weapons that could fire blanks, and that the entertainment industry should not be penalized accidentally by a law intended as a response to mass shootings.
“Weapons are part of our history as a culture as humans,” said Ryder Washburn, vice president of the Specialists, a leading supplier of firearms for productions that is based in Manhattan. “To tell stories, you need them.”
Mr. Cuomo has gone out of his way to promote the industry’s success; on Monday, he issued one news release to say the state was on track to break its record for the number of television pilots shot in a year, and another to announce that “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” would begin production this week in Rochester. The governor has also enjoyed political support from Hollywood: a rare out-of-state fund-raiser as governor was held at the Los Angeles home of an HBO executive.
But industry officials say the state’s hastily developed gun control measures pose an unexpected challenge to their growing production business in New York — the possibility that fake police officers on television could be treated as real-life criminals.
“Without clarification that the use of prop guns is still permitted on sets, many of the dozens of productions currently shooting in New York could be forced to go elsewhere,” said Vans Stevenson, the senior vice president for state government affairs at the Motion Picture Association, which is the powerful trade association of the movie business.
But some lawmakers, feeling stung by conservative and upstate voters over the gun-control law, do not wish to vote on it again, even to make what the industry describes as a technical correction. Gun rights activists, who are challenging the new firearm restrictions in court, have mocked the idea of a so-called Hollywood exception.
“They’re saying, ‘Why are we being held to this standard when Hollywood is getting a pass, and they’re the ones who are promoting the violence?’ ” said Thomas H. King, the president of the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association.
The new laws expand New York’s ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and beginning next January, they will prohibit the possession of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. Movie industry lawyers who have reviewed the measure say that they are concerned that the ban could apply to the magazines used in prop guns on dozens of productions in New York State.
Firearms on film and television sets are modified to shoot blanks; in some cases, the barrels are completely blocked off. But the guns, in many cases, feature magazines with a capacity above 10 rounds, and industry officials worry that uncertainty over potential legal liability could be enough to drive studios to relocate their productions to other states.
Asked about the industry’s concerns in February, Mr. Cuomo expressed support for revising the law. “There’s no reason not to make a change like that to give an industry comfort,” he said at the time. But since then, as it has become clear that any changes to the gun law will be difficult to get through the Legislature, administration officials have begun arguing that the law will not affect film productions, and say they are no longer pursuing an amendment.
The New York Police Department already grants permits to allow the use of firearms in productions, and California offers an entertainment firearms permit. Mr. Stevenson, the motion picture association official, said he believed Mr. Cuomo and lawmakers could agree on a fix, “as their intention with this law was never to impact the use of props on set.”
But Republicans, in particular, are not eager to revisit the issue. The Republican leader in the State Senate, Dean G. Skelos of Long Island, said recently that he would oppose an exemption for movie productions. “I don’t believe they should be treated any differently,” Mr. Skelos said in an interview with The Buffalo News.
Entertainment is big business in New York, and both Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, an independent, and Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, have courted and celebrated the film and television production industry. Film production in New York was responsible for more than 46,000 jobs in 2011, according to a study prepared for the motion picture association. The budget that the Legislature approved in late March included a provision to extend the industry’s tax credit, which was set to expire at the end of 2014, for another five years.
“You’d hate to lose a $100 million picture because there was a scene in it that required automatic weapons and we were unable to accommodate them,” said John Ford, the president of Local 52 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.
Mr. Ford knows the issue firsthand — he once handled firearms on the sets of “NYPD Blue” and “Goodfellas.”
“Say what you want about violence and guns and whatnot in the movies, but the fact of the matter is we don’t get to decide the content of the movies,” he said. “If there’s not a little wiggle room in there for us, then they’ll make the movies somewhere else. It’ll just cost us jobs.”
Some New Yorkers whose livelihoods depend on the film industry are worried that lawmakers are not taking the issue seriously enough, and are not comforted by general reassurances from politicians. Bohdan Bushell, a special effects coordinator at J & M Special Effects in Brooklyn, which supplies firearms for independent films and Broadway shows like “Phantom of the Opera” and “Jersey Boys,” said any uncertainty could drive studios to move out of state.
“If a producer has to jump through more flaming hoops than they already do to shoot in this crazy city of ours, they’re going to go: ‘When is too many hoops? Is this the last one? Am I done now?’ ” Mr. Bushell said.
“California is hungry for our work,” he added. “The Southern states with huge tax incentives — Louisiana springs to mind — have very little problem with whatever form of firearm you’d like to carry around with you.”
Industry officials said they tried to warn Mr. Cuomo’s office, as it was drafting a gun control bill, that the legislation could affect the film and television production. They were joined by Mr. Bloomberg’s office, which says it told the governor’s office, before the gun measure was passed, that the movie and television industry was concerned.
But the bill was passed rapidly: Mr. Cuomo, a longtime gun-control supporter, was eager to move when public outrage was high, because, he said, that was the only way to get the Legislature to act on the issue. The Legislature moved so fast — the Senate approved the measure on its first day in session, and the Assembly on its second — that few lawmakers, and almost no one in the general public, had time to read, digest or debate the details.
“There was no chance for anybody to weigh in — like, ‘Hey, you forgot to take this into account,’ ” said Tom J. O’Donnell, the president of the Theatrical Teamsters Local 817, which represents transportation workers, casting directors and commercial location managers.
Now industry workers are pleading for elected officials to take a second look. Mr. Washburn, the theatrical armorer, said he had already made two trips to Albany, and had spoken to at least 20 lawmakers as well as aides to the governor.
Mr. Washburn, who recently finished filming “A Walk Among the Tombstones,” a movie starring Liam Neeson, at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, said Albany lawmakers should not underestimate how quickly one of the state’s most prosperous industries could shrink.
“Our generators are on wheels, our carts are on wheels, our trucks are on wheels,” he said. “Everything is on wheels, and it goes where it’s wanted.”
_______________________________________________________________________
New Jersey
N.J. forwards names for federal gun-ban database
By Chris Mondics — Sunday, April 28th, 2013 ‘The Philadelphia Inquirer / Philadelphia, PA
TRENTON - The names of hundreds of thousands of current and former New Jersey residents who have been involuntarily committed to psychiatric facilities have been added to an FBI database used to bar firearms purchases by people with criminal records or a history of mental illness.
New Jersey court officials said that they began forwarding digital records to the FBI earlier this year and that they expect to complete the program by the end of May.
The Civil Commitment Automated Tracking system has turned over identities of 280,000 people subject to involuntary civil commitment dating to 1975 in 16 of the state's 21 counties. The five remaining counties - Atlantic, Essex, Hudson, Monmouth and Bergen - likely will be added by the end of May.
Officials of the New Jersey Administrative Office of the Courts say they expect the total number of people whose names have been sent to the FBI will reach about 420,000.
"The program has already demonstrated its usefulness in promoting public safety," said Glenn A. Grant, a New Jersey appellate judge who is serving as acting director of the New Jersey court system. "More than 85 gun purchases were denied based on the records the court provided to the New Jersey State Police for referral to the federal registry.
The data collection began in 2010 and has been paid for with $2.7 million in federal grant money for staff to input paper records, as well as to transfer existing computer records to a state database. The program involves only involuntary commitments, cases in which people have been found by a judge to pose a danger to themselves or others because of mental illness. People who seek treatment on their own and ask to be placed in a psychiatric facility are not included in the registry.
The issue of access to firearms by people with psychiatric histories received intense focus in 2011 when U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was critically wounded and six people were killed at an event near Tucson, Ariz., by a gunman later found to be a paranoid schizophrenic, and again last year following the shootings of 26 children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Conn., by a youth with a history of isolation and seemingly troubled behavior.
It is unlikely that Adam Lanza, the shooter in Newtown, would have been flagged by the background check system, since he used weapons purchased by his mother and apparently never had been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility.
But the shootings prompted intense discussion about how to reduce gun violence by restricting firearms sales, including restricting purchases by people suffering from psychiatric disorders.
The federal database dates to the early 1990s, when Congress passed the Brady Act, authorizing federal background checks for gun buyers for criminal histories and a five-day waiting period before a gun sale could be completed.
Following the Columbine High School shootings in 1999, Congress passed legislation calling for instant background checks, and the FBI established the National Instant Criminal Background Check System at its information center in West Virginia.
The law also required that gun buyers be screened for mental health disorders, but those records were scattered in county courthouses around the country and hard to access. In 2007, following the massacre at Virginia Tech of 32 people by a student with a history of mental illness, Congress authorized grants to states to encourage creation of databases containing the names of people who had been involuntarily committed that could be integrated with the federal background check system.
The pace has been slow. At least 14 states still do not participate, and while New Jersey began gathering records of people adjudicated mentally ill in 2010, it had forwarded only 17 names to the FBI by the time of the Newtown killings last year.
Since then, according to Jack McCarthy, the state court system's chief technology officer, a flood of information has been forwarded to the federal government. Moreover, a system is in place now to automatically update the database as new information comes in.
McCarthy says the information is carefully screened and tested for accuracy to avoid misidentification.
People who have been barred from purchasing weapons because a background check revealed a previous mental health history can try to have the record expunged, Judge Grant said.
No such cases have emerged yet in New Jersey, but Grant said they likely would involve an appearance by the person seeking to purchase a weapon before the court that authorized the commitment in the first place. If a judge concludes that, based on the evidence, the person has recovered, authorities would be required to remove that person's name from the database, Grant said.
_______________________________________________________________________
U.S.A.
Boston Bombings Show Future Use for Police Drones
By Maggie Clark — Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 ‘Pew's Stateline.Org’ / Washington, DC
Even if police drones weren’t used in the manhunt for the Boston Marathon suspects, drones have become central to the post-bombing discussion of surveillance techniques. Boston Police Chief Edward F. Davis said he wants to use drones at next year’s Boston Marathon, calling them “a good idea.”
Using a drone to pursue fleeing suspects like the Tsarnaev brothers would be legal under both state and federal law. But pre-emptively hovering drones over an event still makes many uncomfortable. Lawmakers in Florida, Virginia and Idaho already prohibit that kind of drone surveillance at events, and more are debating it.
“Every state bill would allow a drone in a manhunt or chase,” said Ben Wizner, director of the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, “and there’s no question that law enforcement would have had probable cause to use drones in pursuit (of the Boston suspects). But states have decided that they don’t want that kind of constant-surveillance-use of drones at events, where everything is recorded.”
Despite the call for more surveillance cameras after the successful identification of the Boston suspects using video footage, opposition to police use of drones in Massachusetts is moving ahead. Republican Sen. Robert Hedlund, who is sponsoring a bill to regulate law enforcement use of drones in Massachusetts, wants to require warrants before police can use drones and place restrictions on how video footage collected from drones can be retained.
“My opinions about drone use haven’t changed since the bombings,” said Hedlund, who remains skeptical of any drone surveillance.
Florida lawmakers also balked at the idea of using drones for crowd control earlier this year. After an Orlando-area sheriff suggested at a state Senate committee hearing that drones could be useful in crowd surveillance at big events, like college football games or parades, lawmakers recoiled with references to Big Brother.
Still, use of an unmanned aircraft could have helped first-responders even more effectively assess the immediate threats following the explosions on April 15, said Mario Mairena, government relations manager for the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, which represents the industry. Hedlund’s bill, like the 30-plus other state bills making their way through the legislative process, would not prohibit drone use in emergencies like the one at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
The response to the bombings is an important test case in the discussion surrounding domestic surveillance, said Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington.
“I don’t think (the Boston bombing) will reframe the surveillance debate, and people will persist in their skepticism (of drones) even after this event,” Calo said. “If attitudes about drones change, it will be over time, probably because of non-surveillance uses of drones that people get accustomed to, like in agriculture, or by hobbyists. That’s the way people are going to get acclimated to drones, not from police use.”
State Drone Limits
For all the discussion in statehouses, few police departments actually have drones that they can deploy, even in a crisis. As Stateline has previously reported, nine law enforcement agencies in six states use drones, and nine other agencies have applied to the Federal Aviation Administration to use drones in the future. According to the ACLU, at least 37 states have debated drone-related legislation this year.
In Massachusetts, Hedlund and eight other state lawmakers are sponsoring a bill that would limit how law enforcement could use drones, in preparation for a time when police agencies in the state actually have them. According to FAA records, no Massachusetts police agencies have applied to the FAA for permission to use a drone or been approved to use one.
The Massachusetts bill, like legislation nationwide, would require police to obtain a search warrant for any surveillance. Police could use drones to respond to an attack or a national security emergency, which likely would have included searching for the suspects in the Boston bombings.
In addition to state laws, police are bound by strict guidelines for drone use set by the FAA, which requires police agencies to get permission from the FAA before sending a drone into the sky to avoid hitting any other aircraft that might be in the same airspace. Police can only fly the drone within the line of sight of the operator, which essentially turns the drone into a remote-control plane with a camera on board. Additionally, the drone can only go as high as 400 feet and must weigh less than 25 pounds, which means that it can only stay in the air between 30 and 90 minutes.
For practical purposes, this means driving the drone to the scene, using it, taking it down and driving it away. Under these guidelines, said Stephen Ingley, executive director of the Airborne Law Enforcement Association, “You’re not going to be able follow someone for 10 miles. The (drone) would be able to do short surveillance before an event, maybe survey the crowd, and once an exigent event happened, the system would be up in the air…providing a different vantage point.”
Despite those limits from the FAA, state lawmakers in Florida and Idaho have enacted laws requiring a warrant before police can use drones, and Virginia enacted a two-year moratorium on any law enforcement use of drones. In all three states, however, lawmakers carved out exceptions for circumstances such as threats to national security or imminent danger.
Surveillance Expansion Unlikely
Privacy advocates acknowledge that in situations like the Boston Marathon bombings, drones can be even more useful than fixed surveillance cameras to quickly scan the entire area for evidence. Concerns pop up, however, when it comes to how the video collected from these cameras is organized and stored.
For instance, said Wizner of the ACLU, there are very graphic images of crime victims in the security-camera-collected footage, which under current federal policies will probably be retained indefinitely. Should the Massachusetts bill become law, any video footage collected from police drones that was not within the scope of a warrant would have to be deleted 24 hours after the collection of the video.
“Being a victim should not land you in a government database forever,” said Wizner.
In the near term, despite the calls for drones from Boston’s police chief, big investments in more surveillance do not seem likely for Massachusetts. “I don’t think there is a clamor for new or more extensive surveillance,” said Gavi Wolfe, legislative counsel for the ACLU of Massachusetts. “People are talking about standing up for freedom in the face of terror, and a rush to increase surveillance would run counter to that.”
Federal grants to states for emergency preparedness and homeland security are also at an all-time low. In Massachusetts, funding from the state homeland security grant program is down 76 percent over the last five years, as Stateline has previously reported.
_______________________________________________________________________
Poll Finds Strong Acceptance for Public Surveillance
By MARK LANDLER and DALIA SUSSMAN — Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 ‘The New York Times’
WASHINGTON — Americans overwhelmingly favor installing video surveillance cameras in public places, judging the infringement on their privacy as an acceptable trade-off for greater security from terrorist attacks, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.
A week after the Boston Marathon attack, which was unraveled after the release of video footage of the two suspects flushed them out of hiding, 78 percent of people said surveillance cameras were a good idea, the poll found.
The receptiveness to cameras on street corners reflects a public that regards terrorism as a fact of life in the United States — 9 out of 10 people polled said Americans would always have to live with the risk — but also a threat that many believe the government can combat effectively through rigorous law enforcement and proper regulation.
For all that confidence, there are lingering questions about the role of the nation’s intelligence agencies before the attacks, with people divided about whether they had collected information that could have prevented them (41 percent said they had; 45 percent said they had not).
The murkiness of the case — the Tsarnaev brothers’ ties to the Caucasus; the warnings from Russian intelligence about potential extremist sympathies — has clearly left an impression on the public. A majority, 53 percent, said the suspects had links to a larger terrorist group, while 32 percent said they had acted alone.
President Obama, in a White House news conference on Tuesday, defended the performance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security, saying the agencies had done their job, while acknowledging, “This is hard stuff.”
The poll suggested that Americans are willing to tolerate further tough measures to foil future attacks. Sixty-six percent said information about how to make explosives should not be allowed on the Internet, where it would be available to aspiring terrorists, even if some would view that as a form of censorship. Thirty percent said it should be permitted in the interest of free expression.
More broadly, only 20 percent of people said they believed the government had gone too far in restricting civil liberties in the fight against terrorism, while 26 percent said it had not gone far enough and 49 percent said the balance was about right. In 2011, the share of those worried about losing civil liberties (25 percent) was larger than that favoring more intrusive government approach (17 percent).
“I know some people are paranoid about the government intruding on their privacy,” Judith Richards, a retired teacher from New Paltz, N.Y., said in a follow-up interview. “But with all the horrible things that have been happening, I think you have to trust this as a way to protect our well-being.”
Jennifer Lopez, 26, a saleswoman in Pembroke Pines, Fla., said: “There are cameras in stores and supermarkets. Our families would be safer and surveillance cameras would provide evidence to help agencies pursue people, like they just did in Boston.”
The nationwide poll of 965 adults was conducted on landlines and cellular phones from April 24 to April 28, five days after the manhunt for the surviving suspect in the Boston bombings, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, ended with his capture in a backyard in Watertown, Mass. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
Polls taken in the aftermath of terrorist attacks often show spikes in the public’s fears of another attack. In a CBS News poll a year ago, just 10 percent of people said another attack in the United States in the next few months was “very likely,” while 27 percent said it was “somewhat likely.” In the most recent survey, 24 percent said it was very likely and 42 percent somewhat likely.
There is also evidence that fears about immigrants have increased modestly. Forty-nine percent said the risk of terrorism had risen in the United States because of legal immigration. The last time that question was asked, in 2007, the percentage was 42 percent.
Still, other responses were unchanged since the Boston bombings: Twenty-three percent said they were very concerned about a terrorist attack in the area in which they live, about the same as said so in 2010. Fifty-six percent said they approved of Mr. Obama’s handling of terrorism, essentially unchanged from a CBS News poll in February.
Mr. Obama said the law enforcement system had functioned as it should in the days after the bombings. He also said the F.B.I. had properly handled the information it received from Russian intelligence agencies about the older of the two suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, even as Mr. Obama conceded the difficulty of preventing attacks. “People, I think, understand that we’ve got to do everything we can to prevent these kinds of attacks from taking place,” Mr. Obama said. But he added, “We’re not going to stop living our lives because warped, twisted individuals try to intimidate us.”
Underscoring the president’s point, a large majority of those polled, 72 percent, said they did not plan to avoid large public events to reduce their exposure to potential terrorist attacks. That confidence came even as people were divided about whether their state and local authorities were prepared to deal with such an attack (48 percent said they were prepared; 41 percent said they were not).
Federal and local law enforcement agencies won high praise in the poll for their handling of the bombings — 84 percent approved — and some people in follow-up interviews seemed to regard the way the F.B.I. worked with the Boston and other police forces as a template for the future.
“If we’re going to have to live with the threat of terrorism, I think it is incredibly important that it be controlled at the local level,” said Lynn Francis, 52, a retired insurance agent in Rowlett, Tex. “If there is national intelligence, it needs to be shared with local government as quickly as possible and followed up on. National and local authorities should work together.”
Kath Buffington, a retired teacher from Rochester, N.Y., said she was rattled by the images of a locked-down Boston, even if it was warranted in this case. But she said that in a country dealing with the threat of terrorism since the September 2001 attacks, the fight against it should not be a pretext for more pervasive forms of surveillance.
“I don’t have a problem with cameras as long as they are public,” Ms. Buffington said. “But wiretapping without a warrant goes too far, now that the immediate 9/11 crisis is over.”
Mark Landler reported from Washington, and Dalia Sussman from New York. Megan Thee-Brenan, Allison Kopicki and Marina Stefan contributed reporting from New York.
_______________________________________________________________________
Cleveland, Ohio
A dozen Cleveland police supervisors to face disciplinary hearings for roles in deadly Nov. 29 chase
By Leila Atassi — Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 ‘The Cleveland Plain Dealer’ / Cleveland, OH
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Twelve Cleveland police supervisors, including a captain and a lieutenant, will face disciplinary hearings in the coming weeks, each charged with a slate of departmental policy violations stemming from the Nov. 29 high-speed chase that ended with a hail of gunfire and two dead suspects.
Police Chief Michael McGrath said during a news conference Tuesday that his office and the department's Integrity Control Section have reviewed the supervisors' actions that night and determined that they appear to have violated the department's mission statement, standards of conduct, several rules on vehicle pursuits and generally failed to keep the chase under control.
The supervisors in question are Capt. Ulrich Zouhar, Lt. Paul Wilson, Sgt. Mathew Putnam, Sgt. Michael Donegan, Sgt. Patricia Coleman, Sgt. Randolph Daley, Sgt. Jason Edens, Sgt. Brian Chetnick, Sgt. Brian Lockwood, Sgt. Mark Bickerstaff, Sgt. Matthew Gallagher and Sgt. Richard Martinez.
All have been with the department since at least 1998; Zouhar is a 28-year veteran of the force.
The supervisors will be heard before either McGrath, who can issue penalties ranging from a written reprimand to a 10-day suspension, or Safety Director Martin Flask, who handles more severe penalties, including termination.
The announcement builds upon the findings released last week of an internal investigation into the chase, which concluded that more than a third of all Cleveland police patrol officers on duty that night appear to have defied orders or abandoned their respective districts to join the deadly pursuit, at speeds reaching 125 mph.
The city's review, conducted by a special panel of police and city administrators, was limited to examining the actions of officers and supervisors during the chase that spanned 19 miles and ended in an East Cleveland parking lot with a barrage of bullets.
Suspects Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams were killed. Both were unarmed at the time of the shooting.
The administrative review, so far, has not addressed the use of deadly force because that issue is at the heart of an open criminal case, now in the hands of Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty.
McGrath said Tuesday that his office will turn its attention toward the patrol officers involved once the supervisors' cases are concluded.
The internal review panel's report last week indicated that six supervisors were accused of infractions related to the pursuit policy, while five were accused of violating rules on driving during an emergency. The 12 charged this week include several accused of violations that do not fit into either of those categories.
Lt. Brian Betley, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, which represents supervisors, said in an interview Tuesday that he has been heavily involved in the investigative process so far, having witnessed the collection of statements from all 46 of the supervisors who were on duty that night.
He commended the panel for an exhaustive investigation, but criticized the city for taking it up before a grand jury makes decisions about potential criminal charges.
_______________________________________________________________________
Colorado
Law enforcement groups decry Colorado marijuana bills
By John Ingold — Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 ‘The Denver Post’ / Denver, CO
Colorado law enforcement officials have sent a letter to Gov. John Hickenlooper saying they are worried that the state could botch regulations for recreational marijuana.
In the letter, sent Tuesday, the officials say they fear there is "the potential for the passage of marijuana laws which are a grave disservice to the public." At the Capitol, the leaders say, there is a "concerted effort to continue to undermine law enforcements effort to keep our youth safe and stop diversion."
"We have strong concerns that if Amendment 64 is not implemented properly, we will become the nation's supplier of choice for marijuana," the officials wrote in the letter, signed, "Sincerely yours on behalf of the public safety which we are sworn to protect."
The letter was sent by members of the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police, the Colorado District Attorneys Council, the County Sheriffs of Colorado and the Colorado Drug Investigators Association. The groups sent the letter to Hickenlooper, leaders in both the Colorado House and Senate and state Attorney General John Suthers.
Provocatively, a copy of the letter was also sent to U.S. Attorney John Walsh, whose office considers all marijuana illegal and could move to shut down the state's nascent system of regulated pot stores.
The letter is the latest sign of a breakdown in consensus at the Capitol on the best way to regulate recreational marijuana — which Colorado voters legalized in November with the passage of Amendment 64. While Democrats, Republicans, law enforcement groups, marijuana advocates and others worked together on a special marijuana task force to draft proposed regulations, the debate over the regulations has become a divisive, partisan affair.
On Tuesday, the state House gave its final approval to a bill setting proposed tax rates for retail marijuana sales, on a 37-27 party-line vote. The bill, House Bill 1318, proposes a 15 percent excise tax and an initial 10 percent sales tax on pot sales. Republicans said the rates are too high and that voters — who have to give the final OK for the taxes — may balk.
On Monday, the House gave final approval to a bill laying out the industry structure for marijuana business, in another vote that broke largely on party lines.
"It is extremely unfortunate they became partisan bills when it was a bipartisan process," said Rep. Dan Pabon, a Denver Democrat who was the sponsor of the bill passed Monday, House Bill 1317.
Both bills now head to the Senate.
Another bill — Senate Bill 283, which has also been contentious even though it contains only "consensus" proposals for marijuana regulation — is scheduled to be debated Wednesday in the Senate.
The law enforcement groups cite two specific concerns about the bills in their letter to Hickenlooper. The groups say they are upset that funding training for police officers to better identify drugged drivers has been made optional and that funding was also cut for studies to examine the consequences of marijuana legalization.
"Simply put, money cannot drive this decision," the groups state in the letter.
The groups also say they worry lawmakers may strip out a provision in HB 1317 that creates a scientific definition of stoned driving. A separate bill on that subject died in a Senate committee, but lawmakers in the House inserted it into HB 1317.
And the groups say they are wary of potential efforts to weaken a bill on drug-endangered children, which proposes that children who are present in homes where marijuana is being grown could be considered victims of child abuse — even if the pot is grown in compliance with state law. That bill, Senate Bill 278, is also awaiting a debate in the full Senate.
The legislature has until May 8 to approve all the bills before the session ends.
_______________________________________________________________________
Portland, Oregon
Record settlement in shooting by Portland police officer should push police reforms, lawyer says
By Maxine Bernstein — Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 ‘The Oregonian’ / Portland, OR
The city of Portland will pay $2.3 million to settle a federal lawsuit filed by William Kyle Monroe, a man diagnosed with bipolar disorder who was permanently disabled after Police Officer Dane Reister mistakenly fired lethal rounds at him from a beanbag shotgun in June 2011.
The proposed settlement, the largest in the city's history, came Monday night after city attorneys and Monroe's lawyer Thane Tienson met all day in a mediation session with U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken. It must still go before the City Council for approval.
"This was clearly a situation that should have been handled without the need of force," Tienson said Tuesday. "Monroe was simply acting weirdly. Reister put himself on the call, barking out commands -- the completely wrong way to approach it."
Tienson said he hopes that the significant sum will spur meaningful reforms by the Police Bureau -- "not only in training, but in the way the Police Bureau responds to claims of people who are in emotional crisis. The record speaks for itself.
"How many times do we need to have huge settlements before they realize they need to do things differently?" he said.
The day after the shooting, then-Mayor Sam Adams and the police chief called it "a tragic mistake." The city didn't dispute that the officer was at fault, and most of the mediation centered on how much to pay Monroe in damages.
"The Police Bureau continues to hope for Mr. Monroe's full recovery and the Bureau recognizes that this incident has been extremely difficult for everyone involved," Police Chief Mike Reese said in a statement.
Reister has pleaded not guilty in Multnomah County Circuit Court to charges of third- and fourth- degree assault and negligent wounding in the June 30, 2011, shooting. He remains on paid leave.
The settlement will help pay for Monroe's ongoing medical costs and lost wages, his lawyer said. Reister's gunshots fractured Monroe's pelvis and punctured his bladder, abdomen and colon. A fourth shot, fired from less than 15 feet away, left a "softball-size hole in his left leg" and severed the sciatic nerve, according to Monroe's suit.
Monroe, who was 20 at the time, narrowly escaped bleeding to death only because OHSU Hospital was near the shooting scene, Tienson said.
"It's a very fortunate thing he didn't die," he said. "Mr. Monroe wanted to put this case behind him and get on with his life, and that's a decision I respect."
Monroe's lawsuit accused Reister, the police chief and the city of violating his civil rights through false arrest, assault and negligence. It alleged that the chief could have prevented such a mistake by prohibiting officers from mixing lethal ammunition with less-lethal bean bag munitions in their duty bags, as Reister did. The suit also contended that the bureau had failed to adequately discipline officers who are "predisposed" to using excessive force.
According to the suit, Monroe lived in Hillsboro and had intended to drive to Bremerton, Wash., to visit his mother the day before the shooting, but he became disoriented and was suffering from a paranoid mania.
He ended up in Lair Hill Park the next morning, where children from a day camp were playing. Monroe pulled discarded flowers out of a park garbage bin and tossed them near the children. Camp supervisors told Monroe to leave. Police received two 9-1-1 calls from camp officials. The camp director said in the second call that Monroe may have had a pocketknife up his sleeve.
Reister responded to the call. He spotted Monroe on Southwest Naito Parkway, commanded him to stop and get down on his knees with his hands behind his head. Reister asked Monroe whether he had any weapons, and Monroe emptied his pockets, discarding his miniature Swiss Army knife, the suit said. Monroe put his hands behind his head but asked why he should get on his knees. Reister grabbed his beanbag shotgun from his car as two more officers arrived.
Monroe assured police he hadn't done anything wrong as he backed away, then began running and yelled for help. Without warning, the suit said, Reister fired five times. The fifth round jammed because of Reister's "excessively rapid firing," the suit said.
Reister's lawyer, Janet Hoffman, has argued in court that Reister's mistake resulted from the Police Bureau's "gross negligence" and "woefully inadequate" practices and policies surrounding the handling of less-lethal firearms and ammunition.
On the day of the shooting, Reister checked out a less-lethal shotgun from Central Precinct's armory, left the precinct and walked across the street to what his lawyer called a "dimly lit" basement of an adjacent parking garage. There, he found his duty bag, walked to his patrol car in the garage and loaded the beanbag shotgun with lethal rounds.
Four months later, the police chief issued a new policy, requiring that beanbag ammunition be stored only in a carrier attached to the side or stock of the orange-painted 12-gauge beanbag shotguns. He also Tuesday drew attention to the bureau's new Behavioral Health Unit, which is designed to send officers with special training to help people with mental health issues.
Five years before Monroe's shooting, Reister mistakenly fired a loaded riot-suppression launcher during training, injuring an officer posing as a protester with a smoke round.
Monroe's suit called for Reister to lose his job. That's not part of the proposed settlement, Tienson said.
"That's a decision the city has yet to decide," he said. "I think my client would like to see that happen."
_______________________________________________________________________
Mexico
Mexico’s Curbs on U.S. Role in Drug Fight Spark Friction
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD, DAMIEN CAVE and GINGER THOMPSON — Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 ‘The New York Times’
MEXICO CITY — In their joint fight against drug traffickers, the United States and Mexico have forged an unusually close relationship in recent years, with the Americans regularly conducting polygraph tests on elite Mexican security officials to root out anyone who had been corrupted.
But shortly after Mexico’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, took office in December, American agents got a clear message that the dynamics, with Washington holding the clear upper hand, were about to change.
“So do we get to polygraph you?” one incoming Mexican official asked his American counterparts, alarming United States security officials who consider the vetting of the Mexicans central to tracking down drug kingpins. The Mexican government briefly stopped its vetted officials from cooperating in sensitive investigations. The Americans are waiting to see if Mexico allows polygraphs when assigning new members to units, a senior Obama administration official said.
In another clash, American security officials were recently asked to leave an important intelligence center in Monterrey, where they had worked side by side with an array of Mexican military and police commanders collecting and analyzing tips and intelligence on drug gangs. The Mexicans, scoffing at the notion of Americans’ having so much contact with different agencies, questioned the value of the center and made clear that they would put tighter reins on the sharing of drug intelligence.
There have long been political sensitivities in Mexico over allowing too much American involvement. But the recent policy changes have rattled American officials used to far fewer restrictions than they have faced in years.
Asked about security cooperation with Mexico at a news conference on Tuesday, President Obama said: “We’ve made great strides in the coordination and cooperation between our two governments over the last several years. But my suspicion is, is that things can be improved.”
Mr. Obama suggested that many of Mexico’s changes “had to do with refinements and improvements in terms of how Mexican authorities work with each other, how they coordinate more effectively, and it has less to do with how they’re dealing with us, per se.” He added, “So I’m not going to yet judge how this will alter the relationship between the United States and Mexico until I’ve heard directly from them to see what exactly are they trying to accomplish.”
Mr. Obama is scheduled to visit Mexico on Thursday and Friday on a mission publicly intended to broaden economic ties.
But behind the scenes, the Americans are coming to grips with a scaling back of the level of coordination that existed during the presidency of Felipe Calderón, which included American drones flying deep into Mexican territory and American spy technology helping to track high-level suspects.
In an interview, Mexico’s interior minister, Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, made no apologies. He defended the moves, including the creation of a “one-stop window” in his department to screen and handle all intelligence, in the name of efficiency and “a new phase” in fighting crime.
In a country worn down by tens of thousands of people killed in a drug war, he said Mexico needed to emphasize smart intelligence over the militarized “combating violence with more violence” approach of the Calderón years.
But American officials here see the changes as a way to minimize American involvement and manage the image of the violence, rather than confronting it with clear strategies.
The lack of certainty over Mexico’s plans and commitment has jeopardized new security assistance from the United States. Plans to release $246 million, the latest installment of a $1.9 billion anticrime package known as the Merida initiative, have been held up by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont. His office has been waiting for months for more details from the State Department and the Mexican government on how the money would be spent and what it might accomplish.
A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to provide a more candid assessment, said a recent visit by Mr. Osorio Chong to Washington helped calm some fears. A delegation of Mexican officials is also expected to visit in the coming weeks to explain the country’s plans to members of Congress.
But there is growing anxiety that the violence has not diminished, with daily killings hovering around 50 since last fall. Some American officials say they are increasingly worried by public and private signs suggesting that Mr. Peña Nieto, the young face of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ran Mexico for 71 years, is putting the government’s crime-fighting image above its actions.
“The cosmetics — that’s what they care about,” one American official said, insisting on anonymity so as not to worsen already tense relations.
“The impression they seem to want to send is ‘We got this,’ ” one former American official said, asking for anonymity because he was discussing private conversations. “But it’s clear to us, no, they don’t. Not yet.”
A senior administration official, asked for a sign of progress or a recent accomplishment in security matters, struggled with the question until pointing to the extradition to the United States of a few men on drug charges, conceding they were not big fish. Other extradition requests appear stalled; there were 155 last year, mostly for drug offenses, the highest in nearly a decade.
Tuesday evening, less than 48 hours before Mr. Obama’s arrival and with mounting questions on whether Mexico would go after kingpins, Mexico announced it had captured Inés Coronel, the father-in-law of the most-wanted capo, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo. It was unclear if the United States played a role in the arrest.
If so, it would represent a step beyond the Mexican discomfort with Americans operating on their turf that emerged in December, just after Mr. Peña Nieto’s inauguration. It solidified after an explosion on Jan. 31 at the office complex of the state oil company, Pemex, in which 37 people died and more than 120 were injured.
Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were invited to help investigate. But after they suggested in a preliminary assessment that a bomb might have caused the blast, the agency’s role in the investigation was cut short, American officials said, adding that Mexican officials canceled a visit by a team of investigators from the United States.
An administration official said that while American explosives experts were not allowed to contribute as much as they could have to the investigation, creating a sense that the Mexicans were rushing to conclude that the blast was an accident.
On Feb. 4, the attorney general of Mexico announced that the cause was an unexplained buildup of gas, possibly methane, that was ignited by a spark in the basement of one of the buildings.
The American ambassador was invited to the news conference on the findings, but a State Department official said the level of American involvement in the investigation did not warrant the ambassador’s presence. With the American agents leaving the cooperative center in Monterrey, which was first reported by The Washington Post on Sunday, and the development of the one-stop intelligence mechanism, the United States is worried and is seeking more information.
“We’re still figuring out what that means,” a senior administration official said of the new intelligence arrangement.
But the fear is that it will diminish the access that American law enforcement and intelligence agencies have established with branches of the Mexican police and military. Those hard-fought relationships could disintegrate if American agents have to go through a central office to communicate and share knowledge with their Mexican counterparts, some American officials say.
Randal C. Archibold and Damien Cave reported from Mexico City, and Ginger Thompson from New York.
_______________________________________________________________________
Homeland Security
F.B.I. Collars Up (Making False Statements / Hindering Prosecution)
Boston police: 3 more suspects in custody after marathon bombings
By Unnamed Author(s) (The Associated Press) — Wednesday, May 1st, 2013; 11:31 a.m. EDT
BOSTON — Three more suspects have been taken into custody in the marathon bombings, city police said Wednesday.
The police department made the announcement in a tweet Wednesday morning, saying more details would follow. Police spokeswoman Cheryl Fiandaca confirmed the tweet but referred all other questions to the FBI.
_______________________________________________________________________
Saudi Arabia 'warned the United States IN WRITING about Boston Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2012'
* Saudis developed intelligence separately from Russia, which also warned the U.S. about the accused Boston bomber
* A letter to the Department of Homeland Security allegedly named Tsarnaev and three Pakistanis as potential jihadis worthy of U.S. investigation
* Red flags from Saudi Arabia to have included Tsarnaev's name and information about a planned explosive attack on a major U.S. city
* Saudi foreign minister, national security chief both met with Obama in the oval office in early 2013
By David Martosko and The American Media Institute — Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 ‘The Daily Mail’ / London, England
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia sent a written warning about accused Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2012, long before pressure-cooker blasts killed three and injured hundreds, according to a senior Saudi government official with direct knowledge of the document.
The Saudi warning, the official told MailOnline, was separate from the multiple red flags raised by Russian intelligence in 2011, and was based on human intelligence developed independently in Yemen.
Citing security concerns, the Saudi government also denied an entry visa to the elder Tsarnaev brother in December 2011, when he hoped to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, the source said. Tsarnaev's plans to visit Saudi Arabia have not been previously disclosed.
The Saudis' warning to the U.S. government was also shared with the British government. 'It was very specific’ and warned that 'something was going to happen in a major U.S. city,' the Saudi official said during an extensive interview.
It 'did name Tamerlan specifically,' he added. The 'government-to-government' letter, which he said was sent to the Department of Homeland Security at the highest level, did not name Boston or suggest a date for his planned attack.
If true, the account will produce added pressure on the Homeland Security department and the White House to explain their collective inaction after similar warnings were offered about Tsarnaev by the Russian government.
A DHS official denied, however, that the agency received any such warning from Saudi intelligence about Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
'DHS has no knowledge of any communication from the Saudi government regarding information on the suspects in the Boston Marathon Bombing prior to the attack,' MailOnline learned from one Homeland Security official who declined to be named in this report.
The White House took a similar view. 'We and other relevant U.S. government agencies have no record of such a letter being received,' said Caitlin Hayden, a spokesperson for the president’s National Security Council.
The letter likely came to DHS via the Saudi Ministry of Interior, the agency tasked with protecting the Saudi kingdom’s homeland.
A Homeland Security official confirmed Tuesday evening on the condition of anonymity that the 2012 letter exists, saying he had heard of the Saudi communication before MailOnline inquired about it.
An aide to a Republican member of the House Homeland Security Committee speculated Tuesday about why the Obama administration contradicted the knowledgeable Saudi official.
‘It is possible the Department of Homeland Security received the information from the Saudi government but never passed it on to the White House,’ the GOP staffer said. 'Communication between DHS and the White House's national security apparatus isn't always what it should be.’
'I can easily see it happening where one hand didn't know what the other was doing because of a turf war.'
'Just like the different agencies in the Boston JTTF [Joint Terrorism Task Force] want credit for breaking the Tsarnaev case,' the aide added, 'they sometimes jealously guard the very intel they should be sharing the most freely. Sometimes it makes no sense at all.'
House Homeland Security Committee chairman Mike McCaul plans to announce on Wednesday an investigative hearing to probe what U.S. intelligence knew prior to the Boston attacks, two senior Republican sources told MailOnline.
Separately, President Obama announced Tuesday that the U.S. government will launch a wide-ranging inquiry into the sharing of information among the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security and other intelligence and law-enforcement agencies of the federal government.
'We want to leave no stone unturned,' the president said in a rare White House press conference.
The internal review will be led by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and several inspectors general.
'This is not an investigation,' Clapper’s spokesman Shawn Turner said in a prepared statement. 'This is an independent review of information-sharing procedures. It is limited to the handling of information related to the suspects prior to the attack.'
It is not yet clear whether information from Saudi Arabia will be involved in Clapper's inter-agency review.
Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz appeared on CNN Tuesday afternoon, upbraiding the Obama administration for presuming that the federal government's handling of intelligence prior to the Boston bombings was appropriate and effective.
'As soon as the bombing happened we had officials, locally and from the feds, saying, "Oh, this was an isolated case, there was just one person involved." We didn't know that,' Chaffetz said.
The 'starting point' for a federal investigation, he said, must be, 'This is unacceptable, we will not stand for it, we will get to the bottom of it, and we will not rest until we figure it out.'
'Mr. President,' he said, addressing Obama, 'the starting point should be an intolerance that this thing happened.'
The high-ranking Saudi official whom MailOnlne interviewed at length provided a wealth of detail about the warning he says his government sent to the United States. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk publicly about foreign intelligence, or about Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic relationship with the United States.
He suggested that the Saudi Ministry of Interior sent the letter out of an abundance of caution in order to be helpful to the United States, even though its intelligence on Tsarnaev wasn't yet fully developed.
'With Saudi Arabia it's always code red,' he said. 'There's no code orange, or code yellow. Always red.'
The Saudi government, he added, alerted the U.S. in part because it believed American authorities should be inspecting packages that came to Tsarnaev in the mail in order to search for bomb-making components.
The written warning also allegedly named three Pakistanis who may be of interest to British authorities. The official declined to provide more details about the warning to the UK, but said the two governments received the same information.
The Ministry of Interior, he said, sent the letters in 2012, likely after Tsarnaev returned from Russia to the United States in July.
President Barack Obama's published schedule indicates that he met in the Oval Office with Prince Mohammed bin Naif bin Abdulaziz, the Saudi Interior minister, on January 14, 2013.
The Saudis denied Tsarnaev entry to the kingdom when he sought to travel to Mecca in December 2011 for a pilgrimage known as an Umrah – one that is undertaken during months that don’t fall within the regular Hajj period of the year.
That rejected application came one month before he traveled to Russia, where U.S. intelligence sources believe he acquired training enabling him to construct and detonate the bombs that he and his younger brother placed hear the Boston Marathon’s finish line.
The younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, is in federal custody at a prison medical facility.
The Saudi official speculated that Tsarnaev's residence in the United States might have made it more difficult for him to gain entry into the kingdom.
'U.S.-based Muslims who become radicalized and want to visit Mecca create an unusual problem,' he said, compelling the Saudi government 'to carefully examine applications.'
In the wake of the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal met with Secretary of State John Kerry on April 16, and then had an unscheduled meeting with President Obama on April 17.
'This is the DNA of the Saudi government,' said the Saudi official, referring to officials in the royal court in Riyadh. 'This is how they work. They sent the letter, but that wasn't enough. They then sent the top guy to meet personally with the president.'
He dismissed the idea that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was likely trained by al Qaeda while he was outside the United States last year.
The Saudis' Yemen-based sources, he explained, said militants referred to Tamerlan dismissively as ‘the volunteer.’
'He was a gung-ho, self motivated jihadi who wasn't tasked by a larger group,' he said.
'There is no reason for anyone in Afghanistan to have in his thinking a scenario like this,' the official added, referring to pressure-cooker bombs at the Boston Marathon. 'He took the initiative. That’s why they call him "the volunteer."'
'The Boston thing is beneath them,’ he said of al Qaeda. ‘They don't think like this. This is like a firecracker to them. They want something big.'
Tamerlan may have boasted about his plans online, the Saudi official said, offering an explanation for how Yemen-based sources first learned of him. Islamist militants have well-developed social networks that can enable news to migrate quickly across vast distances.
The Saudi government sometimes tracks such radicals by launching fake jihadi websites to attract extremists. The Ministry of Interior then tracks them electronically, often across the world, and shares information with governments it considers friendly, including the United States.
'The Saudi Arabian government is doing everything it can to wipe out these people and treat America as a true friend,' the official said.
The Saudi intelligence services have a long history of providing credible information to America and Great Britain about looming threats.
'This is the fourth time the Saudi Arabian government has given the U.S. specific intel' about a possible terror plot, the official said, citing prior warnings about Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber who repeatedly tried to light a fuse in his shoe to bring down American Airlines flight 63 bound for Miami in December 2001.
He also cited the 300-gram 'ink-cartridge bombs' planted on two cargo planes headed for the United States from Yemen in October 2010. Those explosives were intercepted in Dubai, and at an East Midlands airport in Great Britain.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev's namesake was a 15-century Central Asian warlord who referred to himself as ‘the sword of Islam.’ Sometimes spelled 'Tamerlane' in English, he was known for his cruelty.
When he conquered Baghdad, he reportedly made a pyramid of human skulls from unfortunate residents of that city.
Although still revered in Chechnya and throughout Central Asia, the original Tamerlane is sometimes vilified in modern-day Saudi textbooks.
Richard Miniter contributed the American Media Institute’s reporting for this story.
- - -
ALSO REPORTED: The Guardian Newspaper, also based in London, England, reports that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev immediately invoked all his rights under the United States Constitution, specifically his right to remain silent when he was collared. One now has to assume, if true, whatever statements are attributed to him from the beginning may not be fact, since he was uncooperative. Also, if true, it makes all the other arguments about reading him his ‘Miranda Warnings’ moot. He already knew them. - Mike
Report: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's repeated requests for a lawyer were ignored
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/29/tsarnaev-right-to-counsel-denied
_______________________________________________________________________
As Bombing Inquiry Proceeds, Obama Offers Measured Praise for F.B.I.
By SCOTT SHANE and ELLEN BARRY — Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 ‘The New York Times’
WASHINGTON — President Obama offered measured support on Tuesday for the F.B.I.’s handling of a tip from Russian intelligence about one of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings but said his administration would “review every step that was taken” to see if more could have been done to prevent the attack.
“Based on what I’ve seen so far, the F.B.I. performed its duties. Department of Homeland Security did what it was supposed to be doing,” Mr. Obama said at a White House news conference. “But this is hard stuff.”
The president suggested that the two brothers accused in the marathon bombings, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, were “self-radicalized” and therefore harder to catch than terrorists who are part of a large network. He said Russian officials had been “very cooperative” since the attack on April 15, as American investigators have traveled to Dagestan in southern Russia to try to reconstruct the activities of Tamerlan during a six-month visit last year.
While Mr. Obama noted that the inquiry was still under way, his remarks appeared to play down the possibility that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who died after a police shootout, was trained or directed by a militant group in Russia’s turbulent Caucasus region.
With the core of Al Qaeda in Pakistan weakened, Mr. Obama said, “one of the dangers that we now face are self-radicalized individuals who are already here in the United States.” Plots by such people, he said, “are in some ways more difficult to prevent.”
In a move the president called “standard procedure,” the inspectors general of the intelligence agencies will review how the Russian warning, also sent to the C.I.A., and any other relevant information was shared among agencies. The review will be overseen by the inspector general of the intelligence community, I. Charles McCullough III, and will involve his counterparts at the Department of Justice, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, officials said.
Some members of Congress have suggested that the F.B.I. failed to follow up adequately after receiving a warning in March 2011 about Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother, Zubeidat, whom Russian intelligence had reportedly overheard talking about jihad on the telephone. The warning, according to the F.B.I., said that Tamerlan was a follower of radical Islam, had changed drastically and planned to travel to Russia to connect with underground groups.
Asked about a statement by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, that the country “is going backwards on national security,” Mr. Obama curtly rejected that view. “No. Mr. Graham is not right on this issue, although I’m sure it generated some headlines,” he said.
After the Russian warning, Mr. Obama said: “It’s not as if the F.B.I. did nothing. They not only investigated the older brother; they interviewed the older brother. They concluded that there were no signs that he was engaging in extremist activity.”
F.B.I. investigators continued Tuesday to focus on Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s widow, Katherine Russell, to see whether she played any role in the attack or in helping him and his brother, Dzhokhar, 19, try to cover up their actions, knowingly or unknowingly.
After finding traces of female DNA and a fingerprint on bomb remnants, technicians were checking for matches with Ms. Russell and several other people. Ms. Russell’s lawyer said she “will continue to meet with law enforcement, as she has done for many hours over the past week, and provide as much assistance to the investigation as she can.” But two law enforcement officials said she had stopped cooperating with the authorities in recent days. “Her and her lawyer have now clammed up,” one of the officials said on Tuesday afternoon.
That has heightened the suspicions of investigators, one of the officials said. Meanwhile, the lawyers for Ms. Russell said in a statement that she had been told by officials from the Massachusetts medical examiner’s office that they were prepared to release Mr. Tsarnaev’s remains. The statement said it was Ms. Russell’s “wish that his remains be released to the Tsarnaev family, and we will communicate her wishes to the proper authorities.”
“Katherine and her family continue to be deeply saddened by the harm that has been caused,” the statement said. “They mourn for the loss of life and the terrible consequences these events have had for those who have been injured and for their families.”
In Russia, officials denied news reports that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been watched during his visit to Dagestan last year.
“Tamerlan Tsarnaev was not under the surveillance of the Center for Combating Extremism, or other police agencies,” said Fatina Ubaidatova, a spokeswoman for Dagestan’s Interior Ministry. “He did not commit any offenses in Dagestan, according to our sources. Police do not intervene in law-abiding citizens’ private lives.”
American experts on Russian security measures in Dagestan expressed skepticism about the assertion. Because Mr. Tsarnaev had already been flagged as potentially dangerous, they said it was highly likely that he was watched while in Makhachkala, the regional capital.
In an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, Mr. Tsarnaev’s parents, Zubeidat and Anzor, rejected reports that their son had been seen meeting with militant suspects in Dagestan. The newspaper Novaya Gazeta, citing an unidentified official in the anti-extremism unit of Dagestan’s Interior Ministry, reported that intelligence services had seen Tamerlan meeting with Mahmoud Mansur Nidal, a militant suspect who was killed on May 19 after a standoff with Russian authorities in Makhachkala.
“I have never heard this name from the mouth of my son,” Mrs. Tsarnaeva said in a telephone interview. “He never met with any Mahmoud, and I don’t know what all this talk is about.”
She said that she was certain that Tamerlan had not connected with underground groups because “he never went out anywhere.” She said he was under scrutiny from his father after he traveled from the United States to join Tamerlan on May 2 — though that was four months after Tamerlan reached Dagestan.
“His father says that he protected him as a hen protects its egg,” she said. “He came, and he was a very open boy and very naïve.”
Both parents said that Tamerlan left Russia in July — without picking up the renewed Russian passport that was his stated reason for visiting Russia — because he was a green card holder and feared jeopardizing his status. Green card holders who stay outside the United States for more than six months are subject to prolonged questioning on return.
Anzor Tsarnaev said he had urged Tamerlan to get American citizenship before deciding whether to move permanently to Russia, because, as he said, “you may change your mind again.”
Mrs. Tsarnaeva also rejected reports that the Russian security agency had wiretapped a phone call in which she and Tamerlan discussed jihad. She said Western reporting on the investigation was full of inaccuracies.
“I am shocked,” she said. “I can see lie after lie. I am very disappointed. I could not imagine that people could be smeared like this without any reason. This subject has never been discussed with my son or anyone else.”
Scott Shane reported from Washington, and Ellen Barry from Moscow. Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting from Washington, Serge F. Kovaleski from New York, and Andrew Roth from Makhachkala, Russia.
_______________________________________________________________________
Mike Bosak
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment