Sunday, June 2, 2013

For Bloomberg, Gun Control Fight Shifts to State Capitals (The New York Times) and Other Sunday, June 2nd, 2013 NYC Police Related News Articles

 

 

From: Cowboy [mailto:cowboy1@erols.com]
Sent: Sunday, June 02, 2013 5:41 PM
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: For Bloomberg, Gun Control Fight Shifts to State Capitals (The New York Times) and Other Sunday, June 2nd, 2013 NYC Police Related News Articles

 

 

 

Sunday, June 2nd, 2013 — Good Morning, Stay Safe

 

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For Bloomberg, Gun Control Fight Shifts to State Capitals

By JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZ — Sunday, June 2nd, 2013 ‘The New York Times’

 

 

CARSON CITY, Nev. — John W. Griffin is a fast-talking, whiskey-loving, fifth-generation Nevadan who spends his days as a lobbyist courting lawmakers in Stetsons. He advocates for luxury casinos, once brokered a dispute between a brothel and a nightclub, and has helped feuding families resolve tussles over cattle crossings.

 

Now he is representing the ultimate city slicker, Michael R. Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, who, undaunted by defeat in Congress, is taking his campaign for stricter gun laws to the nation’s state capitals, including here, where a bill to expand the use of criminal background checks is before the State Legislature.

 

“I thought, ‘Heck, that’s going to be a tough battle,’ ” Mr. Griffin said. “But for a man with unmatchable resources, there’s good reason to be hopeful.”

 

Fortified by several million dollars in contributions that have come in since the Newtown school massacre in December, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the national coalition Mr. Bloomberg co-founded and finances, says it has deployed more than 50 people across the country, building grass-roots organizations and dispatching foot soldiers to pressure local politicians.

 

In Washington State, where a Bloomberg-backed background-checks bill was defeated in the Legislature this year, the coalition is assisting with a ballot initiative on the same issue. In Oregon, the group has hired lobbyists to revive long-stalled legislation to regulate private gun sales. In Colorado, where the coalition helped pass stricter gun laws this year, it is preparing to defend lawmakers against a recall effort pushed by the National Rifle Association.

 

Mr. Bloomberg faces an uphill battle — many of the states he seeks to influence are places where guns are dear and New York is not. He is going up against well-organized networks of gun enthusiasts, with scores of rural voters eager to block his every move.

 

Some lobbyists working on behalf of the mayors’ coalition say they have been given a piece of cautionary advice: avoid mentioning Mr. Bloomberg’s name, for fear that it could alienate potential allies. “I don’t think we’ve ever used the word Bloomberg,” Mr. Griffin said.

 

Although the coalition says it did not instruct lobbyists to omit the mayor’s name, it is clear that Mr. Bloomberg’s high profile has made him the focal point of much of the anger that has accompanied the debate over gun rights. On Wednesday, New York City authorities revealed that the mayor and his coalition had been sent letters tainted with the deadly poison ricin, prompting a federal investigation examining whether the letters were linked to a similar one that had been addressed to President Obama.

 

Despite repeated setbacks to his efforts to pass gun laws, Mr. Bloomberg has vowed to accelerate his campaign, even after his mayoralty ends in December. The issue is important not only nationally, but also locally, his aides say, because 85 percent of the guns used in crimes in New York City are acquired out-of-state.

 

“We don’t give up,” said John Feinblatt, who oversees Mayors Against Illegal Guns and serves as Mr. Bloomberg’s chief policy adviser. “We’re here for the long haul.”

 

The coalition would not offer details on how much it is spending on state efforts, and Mr. Griffin, who was approached a few weeks ago by an emissary for the group, declined to say how much his firm was being paid. The coalition has spent tens of thousands of dollars on television ads in Nevada — a relatively inexpensive media market.

 

The mayor, whose net worth is estimated at $27 billion, has repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to use his money to fight for gun control. Last year, he bankrolled an $11 million campaign largely focused on building support for federal regulations to reduce gun violence, and this year, his political action committee spent $2.3 million to defeat candidates who opposed gun control in a special election for an Illinois House seat. Also this year, the mayors’ coalition hired a team in Minnesota and pushed, unsuccessfully, for expanded use of background checks. It helped lead successful efforts in more liberal states, including Maryland, Delaware and Connecticut.

 

In Carson City, lawmakers credit Mr. Bloomberg with jump-starting a gun bill that had stalled in Nevada, even though both chambers of the Legislature are controlled by Democrats. The bill, modest by standards in more liberal states, would require criminal background checks in private gun sales, including at gun shows and online; currently, background checks are mandatory only if a gun is purchased through a licensed dealer.

 

Mr. Bloomberg’s team coordinated a phone call campaign to legislators, flew in families affected by gun violence to meet with lawmakers, and provided advice on minimizing the cost of background checks.

 

The effort has not been without hiccups: Michael Roberson, a Republican who is the Senate minority leader, was infuriated when he learned the group had gone to his home to urge his wife to support the guns bill. A flier distributed by the coalition asked voters to call the senator to ask “why he wants to make it easy for convicted felons, domestic abusers, and the dangerously mentally ill to buy guns.”

 

But the broader bill, with background checks, passed the State Senate late in May, and the measure now has enough support to pass the Assembly. This weekend, in the final days of the Nevada Legislature’s session, Mr. Bloomberg’s team is concentrating on winning over a handful of Assembly Republicans, hoping a show of bipartisan support would prompt Gov. Brian Sandoval, a Republican, to reconsider a threatened veto. The coalition is also airing a television ad urging Nevadans to ask Mr. Sandoval to sign the legislation.

 

At one point, 11 lobbyists for the coalition were squaring off with one lobbyist for the National Rifle Association at the Nevada capital. But Billy Vassiliadis, who runs a prominent lobbying firm, said he quickly dropped out of the effort after deciding that Mr. Bloomberg’s battle was unwinnable.

 

“Taking part in a production, rather than actual work, was not in our interest,” Mr. Vassiliadis said. He said Mr. Bloomberg needed to spend more time educating the public about the benefits of background checks.

 

But Mr. Griffin, 40, has stuck with Mr. Bloomberg, whom he previously knew only from watching the MSNBC show “Morning Joe.” He and his team have become something of a spectacle in the halls of the Legislature, mocked by some as puppets of a billionaire, admired by others as symbols of smart campaigning.

 

Mr. Griffin has advised Mayors Against Illegal Guns on advertisements, gathered cellphone numbers of lawmakers to pass along to the coalition, even noting that one lawmaker was an avid country music fan and might benefit from a call from a celebrity in the mayor’s orbit.

 

Some Republicans believe Mr. Bloomberg’s involvement has stalled attempts at a compromise that could have won the governor’s support.

 

“Bloomberg is engaged in too many crusades,” said Assemblyman Wesley Duncan, one of the Republicans courted by the coalition. “He’s lost credibility. Now you have people from out-of-state telling Nevadans what to do, instead of activists from within.”

 

And John Ellison, an assemblyman who represents a rural Nevada district, said: “I have the right to self-protection. I’m not going to allow Bloomberg or whoever to take those rights away from me.”

 

Nevada, where the words “battle born” appear on the state flag, has a history of support for gun rights, but the state is changing fast — its urban centers are booming, and Hispanics now make up 27 percent of the population.

 

The state has also seen gun violence up close. In 2011, about two miles from the State Legislature, a gunman killed four people at an IHOP restaurant and then killed himself.

 

Justin C. Jones, a Democratic state senator from Las Vegas who sponsored the background checks bill in the Nevada Legislature, said Mr. Bloomberg had successfully revived an issue that might easily have been ignored.

 

Mr. Jones said he hoped Mr. Bloomberg would continue to be involved in Nevada politics. He faces re-election next year — he won by just 301 votes in 2012 — and in the past, Mr. Bloomberg has offered political and financial support to candidates who back his policies.

 

“It never hurts,” Mr. Jones said, “to have friends with money.”

 

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New Jersey

Possible motive emerges in Edison cop's alleged arson attack on captain's home

By Mark Mueller  — Sunday, June 2nd, 2013 ‘The Newark Star-Ledger’ / Newark, NJ

 

 

The Edison police officer charged this month with torching his captain’s home was recently ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation and transferred to a new shift after receiving his 11th excessive force complaint in a decade, three law enforcement officials with knowledge of the situation said.

 

Michael Dotro, 35, who has a history of confrontations on and off the job, was summoned to a meeting in late March with Chief Thomas Bryan and Capt. Mark Anderko, who has a role in meting out discipline as commander of the department’s administration bureau.

 

Dotro was told during the meeting he would be required to submit to a fitness-for-duty evaluation with the department’s psychologist and would be moved from midnights to a day shift, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.

 

Dotro ultimately saw the psychologist and was cleared to return to duty.

 

Two months after that initial meeting, Anderko’s Monroe Township home was set ablaze with an accelerant before sunrise May 20 as he, his wife, his two young children and his 92-year-old mother slept inside. All escaped unharmed, though the house was heavily damaged.

 

The personnel actions involving Dotro provide the first hint of a motive in the arson attack, which has led to new calls for state oversight of the troubled department, the subject of a two-part series in The Star-Ledger in December.

 

Dotro, a 10-year veteran, was charged with five counts of attempted murder May 23 after an hours-long search of his Manalapan home. He remains jailed on $5 million cash bail.

 

Acting Middlesex County Prosecutor Andrew Carey, whose office is leading the probe, declined to comment.

 

Bryan, now in his fifth year as chief, would not discuss the investigation or the actions against Dotro. In a statement, he said he will continue working toward "much-needed reforms" in the department, which has been driven by a vicious internal war and which has produced an inordinate number of officers who misbehave or break the law.

 

"Some have helped my (reform) efforts," Bryan said. "Others have resisted my efforts or worked with the wrong elements in my department. On behalf of the citizens of Edison, and the vast majority of the people in our fine department, I ask, in the face of this most recent outrageous act, can anyone doubt that these reforms are deserving of complete support?

 

"I hope not, as I intend to proceed with my reforms and hope to have the support of all concerned."

 

The chief said Dotro, who earns $118,000 annually, has been suspended without pay.

 

Dotro’s lawyer, Lawrence Bitterman, declined comment other than to say he will seek a bail reduction in the days ahead.

 

The incident that led to the psychological evaluation and the officer’s transfer occurred March 22, when Dotro participated in the arrest of several juveniles for setting shopping carts on fire, the law enforcement officials said.

 

When one of the youths fled, Dotro gave chase and caught him. A day or two later, the officials said, the teen’s mother filed an excessive force complaint, citing marks on her son’s neck. An internal affairs inquiry into the arrest continues.

 

While several officers on the force told The Star-Ledger Dotro did nothing improper during the arrest, the complaint stoked growing concern among commanders about Dotro, who had 10 previous excessive force complaints — two of which resulted in lawsuits — and at least 16 complaints overall, according to the law enforcement officials.

 

Just months earlier, the married patrolman was accused of harassing a 25-year-old woman who works as a clerk in the department’s violations bureau. After the woman filed a complaint, her tires were slashed, two of the law enforcement officials said.

 

Dotro also was one of the prime suspects in the 2008 theft of a police car from the department’s parking lot.

 

Though the theft was believed to have been a prank, it triggered a homeland security alert and drew in the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force because of post-9/11 concerns that police vehicles could be used in terrorist attacks.

 

According to internal affairs correspondence obtained by The Star-Ledger last year, Dotro and two other officers initially agreed to take responsibility for the theft. They changed their minds when they were told they could not be guaranteed light punishment, the correspondence shows. The investigation remains open.

 

The same year, Dotro had a fistfight with his 68-year-old neighbor after a dispute about a shed on the officer’s property.

 

The neighbor, Dennis Sassa, accused Dotro of sucker-punching him and pummeling him repeatedly when he fell to the ground. Dotro, who was 31 at the time, accused the older man of charging him with a brick. Both men were acquitted in municipal court.

 

Leading up to the fight, as Dotro and Sassa frequently argued, a shed on Sassa’s property was set on fire, with flames spreading to a camper and Sassa’s house. Though no one was charged, detectives investigating the arson at Anderko’s home questioned Sassa anew two weeks ago about the 2008 fire.

 

Now, with Dotro facing decades behind bars if convicted of the attempted murder counts, officers and lawmakers alike are questioning how he managed to remain on the force for so long given the number and pattern of complaints against him.

 

Assemblyman Peter Barnes III (D-Middlesex) said the attack on Anderko and his family highlights the need for state monitoring of Edison’s internal affairs unit.

 

"The way internal affairs complaints have been handled in Edison is part of the problem," Barnes said.

 

In response to The Star-Ledger series on Edison last year, Barnes and Assemblyman Gordon Johnson (D-Bergen) sponsored a bill that would require the state Attorney General’s Office to take over all internal affairs functions of the department for two years.

 

The bill passed the full Assembly in March by a vote of 46-24, with six abstentions.

 

State Sen. Nicholas Scutari (D-Union) introduced a Senate version of the measure May 13, a week before Anderko’s home was torched. The bill remains in the Senate Law and Public Safety Committee.

 

In January, the Attorney General’s Office stepped up oversight of Edison’s internal affairs unit in conjunction with the county prosecutor’s office, requiring written summaries of every investigation. In a statement, a spokesman for Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa suggested further action was unnecessary.

 

"Through the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office, we have been monitoring the internal affairs function of the Edison Police Department on a case-by-case basis since the start of the year, and there have been strong, objective results indicating stability," said the spokesman, Peter Aseltine. "That monitoring will continue."

 

Referring to the attack on Anderko, Aseltine added, "This was an extreme and unprecedented act by one officer who is now charged with very serious crimes. This is not an issue of oversight."

 

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Putting a new face on N.J. state troopers

BY  ANTHONY CAMPISI — Sunday, June 2nd, 2013  ‘The Bergen Record’ / Hackensack, N.J.

 

 

When it came time to put together a class of state police cadets for the first time in two years, New Jersey’s law en­forcement officials went directly to black and Latino candidates. They advertised on television and radio stations with large black and Latino audiences, target­ed urban neighborhoods and colleges with large minority student populations and held recruitment events at black churches.

 

The effort was an attempt to turn the corner on decades of rocky race relations. And it required the state police and the Attorney General’s Office to work close­ly with some of the same civil rights groups and churches that led the charge against widespread racial profiling by troopers in the 1990s. Their criticism pro­voked a national scandal and led to court­ordered federal monitoring of the force that only ended in 2009.

 

Civil rights groups had also been pres­suring the Christie administration to diversify the ranks of the state police - and were on the verge of filing suit against the state - when Attorney General Jeffrey S. Chiesa came into office a year and a half ago with a mandate to recruit more minority troopers. He quickly reached out to community leaders to get them onboard with an aggressive and unprecedented recruiting effort targeting minority applicants.

 

The result is a class of recruits now in the midst of a rigorous 25week training program that is expected to yield a batch of new troopers more diverse than any in the history of the state police and to serve as a model for the future integration of a force that historically has been largely white.

 

More than half of the members of the current class are minorities, with 27 percent of the class composed of Latinos, and African-Americans making up 17 percent. Six percent are Asian. It is the first of four such classes planned over the next two years.

 

It may also mark the turning point in the relationship between the state police and leaders of the state's minority populations. That would stand in stark contrast to how New Jersey's civil rights groups and black church leaders felt about the force over recent decades, when they alleged the state police discriminated against minorities in their hiring practices. They won a court settlement, most recently renewed in 2000, forcing officials to revamp their policies and change a college education requirement. The groups were also granted the right to monitor hiring.

 

However, advocates weren't pleased with how that settlement had been implemented, pointing to the previous cadet class of 2011 - which included only five black cadets.

 

Officials this time around, however, pledged that they would make a special effort to attract minority recruits.

 

"We had to go out and tell them that if you give us qualified applicants we will give them a fair opportunity," said Maj. Gerald Lewis, who directed recruitment efforts for the state police as a community affairs commander. "We pretty much hit anywhere that we even thought we'd remotely find qualified candidates." Trooper Dwayne Golding, who was a cadet in 2011, said he didn't have anyone to guide him through the recruitment process - though he described the application process as "very informative" and attended a recruitment night at a state police barracks after deciding to apply.

 

Golding, who had been working at a car rental company, said he missed the application deadline for an earlier class.

 

"I always thought about being a trooper, [but] I didn't know about the process," said Golding, who is Jamaican. "I did it on my own."

 

 

Making good

 

Chiesa told lawmakers at a recent state Senate Budget Committee hearing that the makeup of the new academy class shows that New Jersey is making good on a long-standing promise to increase minority representation on its state police force.

 

The strategy included forging close ties with community leaders, especially pastors, who helped identify qualified candidates, Lewis said. Churches in predominantly black neighborhoods, like Paradise Baptist Church in Newark, were persuaded to host recruitment events, Lewis said. There were also personal visits by Chiesa and Col. Rick Fuentes, the state police superintendent, to drum up applicants at New Jersey colleges.

 

A number of prominent black pastors lauded the state for its efforts.

 

The Rev. Steffie Bartley hosted a state police recruitment event at his church, New Hope Memorial Baptist, in Elizabeth, attended by both Chiesa and Fuentes.

 

Bartley, a chapter president of the civil rights group founded by the Rev. Al Sharpton, said his involvement convinced congregants that their applications would be treated fairly despite the state police's problems with race relations in the past.

 

He said his church also carefully tracked applicants' progress through the selection process - making sure that paperwork was filed on time and things like old traffic tickets were resolved before they posed a problem.

 

"We kind of stayed with them, followed up on what the requirements were," Bartley said. "I was assured that if we had potential candidates that met their criteria that went through the process that things would look better" and the force would get more diverse over time.

 

And because he is a childhood friend of Lewis, he trusted the state to follow through.

 

The Rev. Kenneth Clayton of St. Luke Baptist Church in Paterson said the state police asked him to hold a recruitment event.

 

This was "the way to bring that [racial] disparity to an end," said Clayton, a local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People leader. "I thought it made sense to come to the urban communities and reach out throughout the state." The event drew minority applicants from across Bergen and Passaic counties.

 

 

Improved process

 

George B. Gore, political action chairman of the New Jersey NAACP, agreed that the new academy class appears to reflect a marked improvement over previous recruitment efforts.

 

Gore said previous recruitment efforts garnered too many minority applicants who couldn't meet the state's educational requirements and background check. He said the state failed to recruit minority applicants attending college in New Jersey who he said were more likely than those with less education to make it through the yearlong screening process.

 

Only about 6 percent of the 20,000 applicants were accepted into the current cadet class.

 

This time around, the NAACP successfully pressured the state police to deemphasize the importance of personal interviews on the selection process, arguing that they posed difficulties for potential minority recruits who live in poor neighborhoods.

 

"You come to my house, and because I live in the hood that's a strike against me," Gore said.

 

He cautioned, however, that despite the progress that has been made, the force is actually set to become less diverse over the next few years because of a wave of expected retirements.

 

"I'm losing more [minority troopers] than I've actually gotten through" the latest class, he said.

 

Officials plan to add 500 troopers to the force to replace troopers who are expected to retire over the next several years, though it is not known how many cadets will make it through the intensive 25-week residential program at the state police training academy in Sea Girt. The current class is scheduled to graduate in October.

 

More still needs to be done, said David L. Rose, a Washington, D.C., attorney who litigated the recruitment discrimination case against the state police.

 

"We think they've really done a good job in recruiting black men," he said. "This class includes no black women." The current class includes only six women. Three are white, two are Latina and one is Native American, according to data provided by the state police.

 

Chiesa has said the state would review physical requirements for the job to make sure women can meet them.

 

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F.B.I.

Murder trial of once-feared Bulger set to begin in Boston; witness list packed with mobsters

By Unnamed Author(s)  (The Associated Press)  —  Sunday, June 2nd, 2013; 10:23 a.m. EDT

 

 

BOSTON — James “Whitey” Bulger is no longer the feared man who swaggered around South Boston and later became one of the nation’s most-wanted fugitives.

 

At 83, the bright platinum hair that earned Bulger his nickname is all but gone and his reputed status as the leader of a violent gang has passed.

 

But as Bulger’s long-awaited trial gets underway, it’s clear that the passage of time has done little to diminish Boston’s fascination with Bulger.

 

“He’s a survivor. He’s had a very long shelf life in a profession where that is not typical,” said Dick Lehr, who has co-written two books about Bulger, including the biography “Whitey: The Life of America’s Most Notorious Mob Boss.”

 

“The many faces of Whitey make him intriguing,” Lehr said.

 

Those faces include his early image as a modern-day Robin Hood and harmless tough guy who gave turkey dinners to his working-class neighbors at Thanksgiving and kept drug dealers out of the neighborhood. That image was crushed when authorities began digging up bodies.

 

Bulger would eventually be charged with playing a role in 19 murders but fled in late 1994 after former FBI Agent John Connolly Jr. tipped him off that he was about to be indicted. He remained a fugitive for more than 16 years before finally being captured in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2011.

 

Bulger’s trial, set to begin this week with jury selection, promises to have all the glamour and gore of a TV mob drama. Prosecutors plan to call a collection of infamous mob figures, including Bulger’s former partner, Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, who is now serving a life sentence for 10 murders and admitted pulling the teeth out of some of the gang’s victims, including his own girlfriend.

 

Former hit man John Martorano, who admitted killing 20 people, will also take the stand, as will Kevin Weeks, a former Bulger lieutenant who eventually led authorities to half a dozen bodies.

 

Bulger’s lawyers have made it clear that they will attack the credibility of men they describe as “once-reviled criminal defendants” whom prosecutors have eagerly transformed into “loyal government witnesses.”

 

“The government now offers these men as witnesses against James Bulger with no apparent regard for their complete lack of credibility,” attorneys J.W. Carney Jr. and Hank Brennan wrote in a recent court filing.

 

Bulger, who grew up in a South Boston housing project, earned his first arrests as a juvenile and went on to serve time in Alcatraz and other federal prisons for bank robberies. He became one of the most notorious criminals in Boston, while his younger brother, William Bulger, became one of the most powerful politicians in Massachusetts, leading the state Senate for 17 years. William Bulger is expected to attend his brother’s trial.

 

“If you go back to his childhood, he was nothing more than an incorrigible juvenile who was destined to go on to live a life of criminality, and that’s exactly what he did,” said Tom Duffy, a retired state police major who was one of the lead Bulger investigators.

 

Bulger, an inspiration for the 2006 Martin Scorsese film, “The Departed,” headed the Winter Hill Gang, a largely Irish gang that ran loan-sharking, gambling and drug rackets.

 

“I think his basic credo was to live your life in a Machiavellian way. As a result of that, he put a great emphasis on intimidation and deception. He was a master at deception,” Duffy said.

 

After Bulger went on the run, the public learned that he had been working as an FBI informant for years, providing information on the New England Mob — his gang’s main rivals — even while he was committing a long list of his own crimes, including murder, prosecutors say.

 

The revelations of the corrupt relationship embarrassed the FBI and led to Connolly being convicted of racketeering.

 

Law enforcement officials who felt thwarted for years as they investigated Bulger say the trial may give them a long overdue sense of justice.

 

“We were frustrated because he was being protected by the FBI, but we didn’t know to what extent,” said retired state police Detective Lt. Bob Long, who investigated Bulger in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

 

Bulger’s lawyers planned to use an immunity defense at his trial, arguing that federal prosecutor Jeremiah O’Sullivan, now deceased, granted Bulger immunity from prosecution for his crimes.

 

But Judge Denise Casper rejected that request, finding that any purported immunity agreement is “not a defense to the crimes charged.”

 

Bulger’s lawyers have also denied that he was an FBI informant. They’ve said Bulger will take the witness stand to testify in his own defense.

 

The defense is sure to emphasize for the jury how Martorano, Weeks and Flemmi all struck deals with prosecutors for reduced sentences in exchange for their cooperation. The defense has also indicated it plans to emphasize that Justice Department lawyers depicted the men as unreliable while defending lawsuits accusing the FBI of facilitating Bulger’s crimes, but they are now using them as their star witnesses against Bulger.

 

“Mr. Bulger believes that he will have a fair trial if he is able to present the whole truth concerning his relationship with the Department of Justice and FBI, including that he was never an informant,” Carney said in an email.

 

Prosecutors declined to comment before Bulger’s trial.

 

For some of the victims’ families, the trial is a chance to get answers.

 

Billy O’Brien was born four days after his father, William O’Brien, was gunned down in March 1973. Authorities say Bulger and his gang killed O’Brien and 10 others in a dispute with members of a rival group.

 

O’Brien never got to meet his father, but growing up in South Boston, he would see Bulger around the neighborhood.

 

“You’d have all this crazy stuff that runs through your head. You’re seeing someone that’s responsible for killing your father. You have all these things that come to you that you want to say, but I’m a kid then. What was I going to do?” O’Brien said.

 

“I want to know the reason why my father was killed,” he said.

 

“I’m still looking for that to this day.”

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Added scrutiny as Phila. police shootings mount

By Mark Fazlollah, Dylan Purcell, and Craig R. McCoy — Sunday, June 2nd, 2013 ‘The Philadelphia Inquirer’ / Philadelphia, PA

 

 

In the space of eight months, Philadelphia Police Officer Larry Shields twice made the decision to shoot.

 

The first time, Shields shot and wounded a man who he said had pointed a Glock at him in a North Philadelphia house. The wounded man has since sued the city, but he was arrested after the encounter and police Internal Affairs and the District Attorney's Office have backed Shields.

 

The second time, Shields fired upon an unarmed man in the victim's Southwest Philadelphia house.

 

This spring, the city paid the wounded man $2.5 million to settle a potential lawsuit, the biggest such payout in connection with a police shooting in at least a decade.

 

But again, the District Attorney's Office ruled it a justified shooting.

 

In fact, a spokeswoman for the office, which reviews all cases of police gunfire, said she did not believe prosecutors had found fault with any on-duty police shooting since Seth Williams became D.A. in 2010.

 

The police Internal Affairs unit has also overwhelmingly found officers justified in shootings, top police officials say.

 

Police gunfire is newly under scrutiny now that Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey has asked for federal assistance in a comprehensive review of the use of deadly force by the department.

 

Ramsey took the step amid a violent week in which officers shot seven civilians, killing four. In six of the shootings, the suspects were brandishing handguns; in the seventh, an officer shot and killed a man who lunged at officers with a knife.

 

He also sought the study after reviewing comprehensive statistics that showed police fatally shot or wounded 52 people last year, the highest figure since Ramsey became commissioner in 2008.

 

That was a 50 percent jump over the 35 people shot and wounded the previous year.

 

In recent years, taxpayer payments to settle lawsuits filed by shooting victims have also soared. Since 2009, the city has paid $11.6 million to resolve such suits, with annual payouts far higher than in previous years, records show.

 

Even though police and prosecutors have cleared the officers of wrongdoing, city lawyers have settled more than 50 shooting civil suits in recent years. The lawyers say they were taking a tactical step to avoid the financial risk of courtroom verdicts.

 

That spending was paced by the $2.5 million paid to settle a suit threatened by victim Stephen Moore, whom Shields shot in November 2011 in Southwest Philadelphia after entering the man's home in an investigation.

 

Shields was not on duty Friday at the 18th Police District, and top police officials said he would not be made available for an interview.

 

In the 2011 shooting, Moore's in-laws, who were at odds with him, called 911 to say someone was in the house without permission. Responding, Shields pushed open the front door, which Moore had left unlocked. That triggered a burglar alarm.

 

When Moore went downstairs to check on the alarm, Shields shot him. Shields reportedly told investigators he fired after Moore made a threatening movement toward his waist. Moore denied that and said Shields had shot without warning, and without identifying himself as a police officer.

 

Moore's attorney, Robert J. Levant, said the settlement was fair and just. "He received significant gunshot wounds," Levant said. "He suffered loss of significant functions of his hand and arm, as well as permanent lung damage."

 

The second-largest settlement of the decade was a $1.5 million payment last year to John James, a motorcyclist shot in the leg by Officer Richard DeCoatsworth in 2009.

 

In a subsequent trial, a jury found James guilty of reckless endangerment and fleeing an officer but acquitted him of the more serious charge of aggravated assault.

 

DeCoatsworth is the former hero officer who survived a shotgun blast to the face and who sat next to the first lady when President Obama addressed Congress in 2009. Last month, the officer was charged with raping two women at gunpoint.

 

Paul J. Hetznecker, a Philadelphia lawyer suing the department over an unarmed man police shot dead in a stolen car two years ago, said reviews by police Internal Affairs and prosecutors had been virtually meaningless for many years.

 

"It's an entrenched culture that has failed to train and to investigate excessive force over decades," he said. "It has reached a crisis point."

 

In a news conference Friday, Ramsey said that even with the flurry of gunfire, Philadelphia appeared to be on track to have fewer police shootings this year compared with last year. So far this year, police have shot 22 people.

 

"I expect our officers to protect themselves and the public," Mayor Nutter said at the news conference.

 

For Ramsey, there was a bit of deja vu in his request for help.

 

In 1999, a year after he took command of police in Washington, Ramsey asked the U.S. Justice Department to study that department's firearms policies. He did so after the Washington Post found D.C. police shot and killed people at a higher rate than any other major city police force.

 

Over time, that behavior changed. By 2000, D.C police use of firearms had fallen by half compared with three years earlier.

 

In requesting help for Philadelphia, Ramsey cited reviews undertaken in recent years in New York City and Las Vegas.

 

In New York, the police commissioner asked the RAND Corp., the research nonprofit based in California, for help in early 2007.

 

The timing was significant. In a notorious case the previous November, five police officers fired 50 shots into a car driven by 23-year-old Sean Bell, killing him. Though the officers involved were ultimately acquitted of criminal charges, the city paid $7 million to settle a wrongful-death lawsuit.

 

In its review, Rand urged the NYPD to dramatically improve its firearms instruction, moving beyond mere target practice to "scenario-based training and role-playing workshops."

 

In Las Vegas, officials of a U.S. Justice Department program known as COPS - for Community Oriented Policing Services - reached out to local police after a five-part newspaper series and the Nevada ACLU raised questions about a series of police shootings there. Among other findings, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported in 2011 that in Las Vegas, much as in Philadelphia, department investigators had cleared officers 99 percent of the time.

 

In the end, Las Vegas police and federal officials, assisted by private consultants, released a sweeping report with 75 findings and recommendations for reform.

 

The study urged Las Vegas to strengthen its investigations of deadly-force cases and to create a new office to follow through on all reforms. The department also agreed to make public detailed reports on each shooting.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

Homeland Security

 

Charles Krauthammer: Obama's Dorothy Doctrine

By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER — Saturday, June 1st, 2013;  ‘The Washington Post’ /  / Washington, DC

(Op-Ed / Commentary)

 

"This war, like all wars, must end. That's what history advises . "

- Barack Obama, May 23

 

 

NICE THOUGHT. But much as Obama would like to close his eyes, click his heels three times and declare the war on terror over, war is a two-way street.

 

That's what history advises: Two sides to fight it, two to end it. By surrender (World War II), by armistice (Korea and Vietnam) or when the enemy simply disappears from the field (the Cold War).

 

Obama says enough is enough. He doesn't want us on "a perpetual wartime footing." Well, the Cold War lasted 45 years. The war on terror, 12 so far. By Obama's calculus, we should have declared the Cold War over in 1958 and left Western Europe, our Pacific allies, the entire free world to fend for itself - and consigned Eastern Europe to endless darkness.

 

John F. Kennedy summoned the nation to the burdens of the long twilight struggle. Obama, agonizing publicly about the awful burdens of command (which he twice sought in election), wants out. For him and for us.

 

He doesn't just want to revise and update the September 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which many conservatives have called for. He wants to repeal it.

 

He admits that the AUMF establishes the basis both in domestic and international law to conduct crucial defensive operations, such as drone strikes. Why, then, abolish the authority to do what we sometimes need to do?

 

Because that will make the war go away? Persuade our enemies to retire to their caves?

 

This is John Lennon, bumper-sticker foreign policy - Imagine World Peace. Obama pretends that the tide of war is receding. But it's demonstrably not. It's metastasizing to Mali, to the Algerian desert, to the North African states falling under the Muslim Brotherhood, to Yemen, to the savage civil war in Syria, now spilling over into Lebanon and destabilizing Jordan. Even Sinai, tranquil for 35 years, is descending into chaos.

 

It's not war that's receding. It's America. Under Obama. And it is precisely in the power vacuum left behind that war is rising. Obama declares Assad must go. The same wish-as-policy fecklessness from our bystander President. Two years - and 70,000 dead - later, Obama keeps repeating the wish even as the tide of battle is altered by the new arbiters of Syria's future - Iran, Hezbollah and Russia. Where does every party to the Syrian conflict go on bended knee? To Moscow, as Washington recedes into irrelevance.

 

But the ultimate expression of Obama's Dorothy Doctrine is Guantanamo. It must close. Must, mind you.

 

OK. Let's accept the dubious proposition that the Yemeni prisoners could be sent home without coming back to fight us. And that others could be convicted in court and put in U.S. prisons.

 

Now the rub. Obama openly admits that "even after we take these steps one issue will remain -- just how to deal with those Gitmo detainees who we know have participated in dangerous plots or attacks but who cannot be prosecuted."

 

Well, yes. That's always been the problem with Gitmo. It's not a question of geography. The issue is indefinite detention - whether at Gitmo, a Colorado supermax or St. Helena.

 

Can't try 'em, can't release 'em. Having posed the central question, what is Obama's answer? "I am confident that this legacy problem can be resolved."

 

That's it! I kid you not. He's had four plus years to think this one through - and he openly admits he's got no answer.

 

Because there is none. Hence the need for Gitmo. Other war’s end, at which point prisoners are repatriated. But in this war, the other side has no intention of surrender or armistice. They will fight until the caliphate is established or until Jihadism is as utterly defeated as fascism and communism. That's the reason - the only reason - for the detention conundrum.

 

There is no solution to indefinite detention when the detainees are committed to indefinite war.

 

Obama's fantasies are twinned. He can no more wish the detention away than he can the war.

 

We were defenseless on 9/11 because, despite bin Laden's open written declaration of war in 1996, we pretended for years that no war against us had even begun. Obama would return us to pre-9/11 defenselessness - casting Islamist terror as a law-enforcement issue and removing the legal basis for treating it as armed conflict - by pretending that the war is over.

 

It's enough to make you weep.

 

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                                                          Mike Bosak

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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