Saturday, June 1st, 2013 — Good Morning, Stay Safe

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Problems With New Software For NYPD's 911 System Stress Out Operators, Dispatchers

By: Dean Meminger — Friday, May 31st, 2013; 9:03 p.m. ‘NY 1 News’ / New York

Operators and dispatchers say they're stressed out since the city installed new software this week that's meant to upgrade the NYPD's 911 computer system. NY1's Dean Meminger filed the following report.

Since the New York City Police Department started running the new software at the 911 call center in Brooklyn Wednesday, the system has crashed at least three times. The union representing 911 operators said it's put them under a big strain.

"They're going to do what they can to make this system work, but it is up to this billion-dollar system," said Alma Roper of the clerical division of DC 37. "It's not the 911 operator."

The new computer-aided dispatch system, or ICAD, cost $73 million to install. The police department didn't allow NY1 in to see the new system in operation, so the video above is of a previous visit to the center. The new software replaces a system which was in place since the 1960s.

When the new system went down, the screens on some computers went dark, forcing workers to use paper slips to write down emergencies and pass them off to dispatchers that send out police, firefighters and EMS crews.

The mayor said every computer system has bugs to work out.

"Sitting here with an old system, that's not what you need for the future," he said. "So we're fighting the battle, put the money in, have a backup system. Nobody, we didn't miss any calls. It didn't slow anything down."

However, 911 workers say writing emergencies on paper instead of using computers does slow down the process.

One worker, whose identity NY1 disguised, spoke with NY1 about the process.

"By the time a radio dispatcher goes through the slips that was run into him, he had to find out what is a priority job to send out first. That could take another two or three minutes," the worker said. "It slows down the system tremendously."

City Councilman Peter Vallone chairs the public safety committee. He said the overall upgrade of 911 needs a closer look.

"After being seven years late and $1 billion over budget does give us, does raise the level of concern regarding this system," Vallone said. "We will be holding hearings to make sure it is the appropriate system for this city."

The police department insisted that the new system will be an improvement in fighting crime and responding to emergencies once the kinks are worked out.

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3rd day of 911 ‘call waiting’ amid glitches

By JAMIE SCHRAM — Saturday, June 1st, 2013 ‘The New York Post’

The city’s brand-new 911 system went down yesterday for a half hour — the third day in a row it was riddled with glitches.

The failure brought down the EMS computer system, as well as the terminals in the ambulances, a source said.

“What happens if it goes down? We go back to the caveman days,” said an FDNY source.

“You have to write everything down on paper or index card.”

It was unclear how many calls it affected, but it came “in the beginning of the summer, where call volume can skyrocket at any time,” the source said.

“I hope that these incidents don’t occur on days where we have seriously high call volumes, because it may affect services.”

The snafu came just hours after Mayor Bloomberg downplayed the severity of the glitches.

“I mean, it works. It has some bugs in it. All new systems have,” he said on his weekly radio show.

“We’ve got a backup system. And, you know, you wish you didn’t have bugs, but that’s not the real world.”

The system crashed for six minutes Thursday and failed for hours Wednesday night, as the NYPD changed over from its old system.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Thursday that the system would have to be reviewed.

“This happened again, so it has to be thoroughly examined,” he said.

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Glitches in new NYC 911 system

By COLLEEN LONG and JENNIFER PELTZ (The Associated Press) — Friday, May 31st, 2013; 2:08 p.m. EDT

NEW YORK — Operators at the nation's largest 911 hub were forced to use pen and paper to communicate emergencies to dispatchers this week when a piece of the new system stalled, the latest glitch in the $2 billion effort to modernize New York City's aging system that failed during the Sept. 11 attacks.

City officials said no noticeable delays were reported.

"The replacement of any large complex system invariably will have kinks that need to be worked out," spokesman John McCarthy said. "That is why backup systems and procedures are in place to ensure incoming calls are taken and responded to without any noticeable delay."

The city's emergency system works like this: Callers dial 911, and a New York Police Department operator answers. The operator farms out the emergency to the appropriate agency: emergency services, fire, police or sometimes all, depending on what the caller says. Each agency has a separate dispatch to communicate with its responders.

The old system has been in place for decades. On Sept. 11, 2001, operators were unaware that fire chiefs were evacuating the doomed twin towers because the city had no way of relaying that information. The federal Sept. 11 Commission concluded the flaws denied people potentially life-saving information.

When Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office in 2002, he made it a priority to modernize. The new system uses sleeker, easier technology to access and share information, and in theory, get details to the appropriate responder faster. The $2 billion figure includes a new backup call center being built in the Bronx, the land purchased for that building and millions in upgrades to the current call center in Manhattan.

The problems this week involve one piece of the giant ongoing overhaul, the new dispatch computer system, rolled out Wednesday on the first hot day of the year, when emergency calls usually spike. It went down for about 12 minutes that day. Telephone operators could still receive calls with no trouble, but they filled out information by hand on slips of paper, and runners took the paper to the appropriate dispatcher, located on the same floor, who radioed responders.

It also went down Thursday for a total of about an hour around noon, then again Thursday evening around 7 p.m. for about two minutes, police and city officials said.

Alma Roper, a leader of the union representing the city's operators, said usually the operator asks questions and types the answers where they're automatically passed along to dispatchers.

"You're losing at least two or three seconds, if not more than that," said Roper, who started as a 911 operator in 1989. And while the delays might be short, "when you have a child hit by a car, you don't have no time to waste. And that's what 911 is about — it's an emergency," she said.

City officials said there have been extra personnel on hand to help launch the new technology, and there were people to handle the paper system. No glitches were reported Friday.

The 911 system was swamped with more than 10,000 calls per half-hour — 10 times the normal volume — at the height of Superstorm Sandy. Union leaders and officials said the Oct. 29 storm made plain the system's inadequacies.

Israel Miranda, president of Uniformed EMTs, Paramedics and Fire Inspectors Local 2507, told city council members at a January hearing that the 911 technology denied service to New Yorkers during Sandy. He cited records showing that scores of calls within minutes were marked by a notation that means no responders were dispatched.

Deputy Mayor Caswell Holloway, however, insisted the 911 technology did not fail. The Fire Department said the not-dispatched calls may have been duplicates, calls from areas that rescuers knew were inaccessible or calls from people who were trapped in their homes but not experiencing medical problems, because those with medical issues got priority.

And during the crippling blizzard of 2010, the call system was overwhelmed as the city was preparing to install new technology. An outside review released last year found the upgraded system sent some responders to the wrong address and slowed fire and medical dispatchers' efforts to give instructions to callers. It also said operators waste time repeating questions and use inconsistent questioning procedures.

Last year, John Liu, the city comptroller and now a candidate for mayor, released a scathing audit saying Bloomberg's administration had overpaid for the system and mismanaged it. He reiterated his criticisms in a statement Thursday. Bloomberg has brushed off Liu's claims.

Roper, executive vice president of NYC Clerical-Administrative Employees Local 1549, which represents the roughly 1,160 city operators and supervisors, said the upgrades are adding stress for 911 operators and urged the city to hire additional staff.

"It's good to know that we're upgrading and doing something better for the public of New York City ... but if you're going to spend the money on a system, this system should never fail," Roper said.

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Maker of city’s new 911 computer system has history of failure
So far, New York’s $88 million computer-aided dispatch system by Alabama-based Intergraph Corp. (ICAD) has crashed four times in three days. But the writing was on the wall long before the city signed up with ICAD, as San Jose, Calif., and Nassau County can attest.

By Juan Gonzalez — Saturday, June 1st, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’

Another computer crash struck the city’s 911 call center Friday afternoon — the fourth such outage since the NYPD launched a new $88 million computer-aided dispatch system three days ago.

The latest glitch severed computer links between EMS dispatchers and 911 operators at the call center in downtown Brooklyn for nearly half an hour.

Operators resorted once again to jotting down information from callers to 911 on slips of paper. They then used runners to rush those slips to EMS dispatchers in other parts of the building.

FDNY spokesman Frank Gribbon insisted this outage had nothing to do with the new system, but was caused by human error: Someone mistakenly powered down a server and caused all dispatch computers to crash.

“So why does the crash happen just when the new system has been installed?” said EMS dispatchers union president Israel Miranda.

With these outages mounting — another eight-minute one occurred Thursday night in the police dispatch room — Mayor Bloomberg tried to soothe growing public safety concerns during his radio show Friday morning.

“It works,” Bloomberg said of the new system; it just has some “bugs. You wish you didn’t have bugs but that’s the real world.”

Before saying more, Bloomberg should ask one of his aides for a copy of the city’s own background check on Intergraph Corp., the Alabama-based company that produced this new system, known as ICAD.

He would find that the Department of Investigations noted clear “caution” warnings about Intergraph before the company was granted the dispatch contract in 2008. Those cautions, summarized in the company’s vendor filing, included “multiple investigations by various government agencies” of contracts that Intergraph had won.

Take, for example, the giant mess in San Jose, Calif.

In June 2004, Intergraph rolled out a new computer dispatch system for the San Jose police and fire departments. Such a public furor ensued that a civil grand jury was empaneled to investigate.

That grand jury produced a scathing report the following year, one that virtually mirrors the escalating outages that have occurred in our own city this week.

“A total breakdown of the system occurred on several occasions during the first few days,” the report found. “Police officers and (telephone operators) found that dispatch workstation computers and (mobile) terminals would ‘crash,’ causing them to have to operate manually (paper and pencil).”

Many of the problems, the report said, “were so mission critical that they were thought by some to endanger the safety of the public and police officers.”

The report depicts escalating tensions and recriminations among police, 911 operators and their superiors, with some errors in the system persisting for months.

The grand jury also blasted San Jose officials for failing to first run a pilot program of the new Intergraph system and for failing to keep the old dispatch system running as a backup.

And San Jose was not Intergraph’s only headache. After the company installed a new dispatch system in Nassau County in 2007, complaints surged there as well of similar problems.

An Intergraph spokeswoman declined to comment and referred all questions to the NYPD.

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Saturday, June 1st, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’ Editorial:

Who does 911 call?
Police Commissioner Kelly must fix bugs in the city's emergency phone system

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has put the NYPD at the forefront of using technology to fight crime and guard against terror. He has assembled security cameras, environmental sensors, license plate readers, radiation detectors, law enforcement databases and more into a Domain Awareness System that’s the envy of police forces around the world.

And then there’s 911.

After an $88 million upgrade, the city’s new $2 billion emergency response system blinked on and off this week. Operators reverted to writing information on slips of paper and handing them to runners, who then raced the information to dispatchers.

The Police and Fire departments say all calls were handled in due course, which is the least anyone should expect and hardly inspires confidence. The same is true of Mayor Bloomberg’s assurance that, while operative, the system has “bugs.” He said: “You wish you didn’t have bugs, but that’s the real world.”

Right. But some bugs can kill.

Let’s get this fixed. Now.

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Independent I.G. For NYPD

Rangel nix on NYPD oversight

By SALLY GOLDENBERG — Saturday, June 1st, 2013 ‘The New York Post’

Even one of New York’s most prominent black leaders thinks having an independent inspector general probing the NYPD is a bad idea.

Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel, the dean of the New York congressional delegation, says such oversight is unnecessary.

“I haven’t embraced it because I would like to believe that the City Council could provide that oversight without transferring it to someone else,” Rangel told The Post.

He said he plans to endorse former city Comptroller Bill Thompson in the Democratic mayoral primary. Thompson also is against the oversight bill, while Council Speaker and mayoral rival Christine Quinn is a chief proponent of the measure.

Rangel also took a neutral stance on the NYPD’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy. He said he supports the crime-fighting tactic if it’s not abused.

“If people have reason to believe someone is carrying a dangerous weapon, they should be able to stop and search them. And I also believe that citizens are entitled to dignity and respect and that the police have to remember that,” he said.

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NYPD Surveillance of Muslims

Fact-checking a flip-flop accusation against Bill Thompson

By Azi Paybarah — Friday, May 31st, 2013 ‘Capital New York’ / New York, NY

Here's a look at former councilman Sal Albanese's accusation that former comptroller Bill Thompson flip-flopped on the issue of the New York Police Department's surveillance program, which critics say unfairly targets Muslim institutions.

Albanese accused Thompson of saying one thing about the issue during a May 5 candidate forum hosted by two Muslim groups, and later telling The Jewish Press something different at a May 30 candidate forum.

At the first forum, Thompson said the tactics were constitutional, but not appropriate. "Is it right and would you tolerate it is something very different," he said. "Is it right, absolutely not. To single a group out, to follow people, to infiltrate mosques, and book stores, to be able to do all of those things — is it right? Absolutely not. Should it be done? Positively not. Would I allow it? Definitely not."

Later, Thompson added, "I think we're all concerned, are people following legitimate leads. That's one thing. They were following nothing. There were no leads. There was no information. The NYPD, I'm sure at the direction of its commissioner, in fact just infiltrated just because. They weren't following anything."

That's actually very similar to what he told The Jewish Press later.

"If they're following leads, I'd want to make sure that the police department follow those legitimate leads in any community. The one thing I have never favored is to target any one community just because of who people are and what they worship. I think that is dangerous," And: "I'm not going to go down that path."

Thompson also said, "When it comes to the NYPD following legitimate leads, I'm going to make sure that happens, anywhere."

Albanese appears to have focused on part of Thompson's response in each of the two different forums. In each instance, Thompson differentiated between the current practice, which he characterized as a proactive spying strategy not based on any specific leads, and surveillance law enforcement would need to conduct in response to a suspected threat.

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Homi of Ret. NYPD Police Officer Jimmy LaRossa

Emotions runs high as judge accepts plea in former NYPD officer’s killing

By Jim Bradley — Saturday, June 1st, 2013 ‘WSOC TV News’ / Charlotte, NC

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Family and friends of former New York City police officer Jimmy LaRossa filled a Mecklenburg County courtroom Friday morning. They walked out frustrated after LaRossa's estranged wife was sentenced to three to five years in prison for his killing.

"What happened in the courtroom was very frustrating for us," said Harvey Katowitz, who heads a group of former NYPD members who live in the Charlotte area. "Justice was not done."

Carole LaRossa pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter charges. Her attorneys painted a portrait of an abusive relationship between the LaRossas and claimed both had substance abuse problems.

Prosecutors said there was evidence from stab wounds to Carole LaRossa's breast that she had been attacked by her ex-husband. They admitted that Carole LaRossa had offered different versions of what happened the night of April 10, 2012.

"Each of her versions as she described them included the aspect that she had acted in self-defense, that she was under threat from Mr. LaRossa," said prosecutor Bill Stetzer.

Jimmy LaRossa's supporters criticized the investigation of the case and said evidence wasn't considered. Prosecutors and the judge disputed that. In fact the judge said that because of the number of letters he received from Jimmy LaRossa's family and friends, he took the extraordinary step of meeting with prosecutors and defense attorneys to go over the evidence each had collected.

"They talked about the evidence and the strengths and weaknesses of the case," said Superior Court Judge Robert Bell. "After talking with them I am satisfied that this resolution is appropriate."

It wasn't enough to satisfy Jimmy LaRossa's niece Lauren Cox.

"My uncle is not the monster he's been made out to be," Cox said. "He deserved better than this."

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Wife’s plea bargain angers friends, family of slain ex-cop

By Michael Gordon — Saturday, June 1st, 2013 ‘The Charlotte Observer’ / New York, NY

The prosecutors and judge called the plea bargain a “fair and just” decision.

But an audience teeming with former police officers said it wasn’t even close.

Last year, Carole LaRossa was charged with murder in the stabbing death of her estranged husband James. In an emotional hearing Friday that drew onlookers to the Mecklenburg County Courthouse from three distant states, LaRossa pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter.

Originally facing life imprisonment, she was sentenced to between 38 and 58 months.

In the end, prosecutors said they could not prove that the 50-year-old Waxhaw resident and New York transplant had not acted in self-defense when she stabbed her husband to death in April 2012.

Carole LaRossa said she feared for her life that day, that she had been sexually assaulted and that James LaRossa had cut her breasts with a knife.

“This is where the evidence has led us,” said Bill Stetzer, head of the homicide team for the Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office. “We believe we convicted her of the crime she was guilty of.”

Yet the prosecutor’s decision to allow Carole LaRossa to plead to a lesser crime outraged the victim’s family and supporters. They say the violence LaRossa displayed undermines her claims of self-defense.

They also resented how James LaRossa was presented in court by both sides.

“When the district attorney got up to speak, you would have thought he was representing her, for godsakes,” said John Sabato, a longtime friend of the couple. “It was like she was the victim and he was the defendant.”

“Jimmy” LaRossa was a veteran New York City police officer. After retiring to Charlotte in 2008, he volunteered with the “Charlotte 10-13” club – the numbers are code in New York precincts for an officer in danger or needing help.

Indeed, a wide blue line of former New York cops filled the courtroom of Superior Court Judge Robert Bell on Friday. Many wore buttons with the victim’s photo.

Yet once the hearing began, they heard LaRossa described as an agent of violence in a volatile marriage. Assistant District Attorney David Kelly said LaRossa also had been bounced from a pain-treatment program after testing positive for cocaine.

As the defense team of David Rudolph and Sonya Pfeiffer introduced more details of Jimmy LaRossa’s alleged violent outbursts, a group of Mecklenburg deputies lead a muttering and visibly angry Sabato from the courtroom. He slammed the door to the chambers as he left.

After the hearing, he said a deputy had overheard his comment on how his friend and NYC police partner was being portrayed.

“This is horse----,” he had said.

A shattered glass

According to attorneys on both sides, the LaRossa killing started with a dog.

Carole LaRossa claims she went to her ex-husband’s south Charlotte apartment to pick up dog food because she had agreed to watch her husband’s pet while he played golf the next day.

During the visit, she said she told LaRossa he had to move the rest of his belongings out of the Waxhaw house they once shared.

The retired police officer, who had been drinking, grew angry and started jabbing her breasts with a knife.

Carole said she broke a wine glass over Jimmy’s head, and he dropped the knife. She said she picked up the knife and stabbed him twice in the chest. Kelly, the prosecutor, said either one of those wounds could have been fatal.

When Jimmy fell to the ground, Carole kept stabbing him. In all, investigators counted 19 wounds.

Prosecutors said that while Carol LaRossa had used “excessive force,” the evidence they gathered could not disprove her claims of self-defense.

They offered the plea bargain in January.

LaRossa’s relatives and friends responded by sending dozens of letters to Judge Bell, insisting that manslaughter was too lenient and that the prosecutors had ignored important evidence.

For Friday’s hearing, they traveled from as far away as New York, New Jersey and Texas to be in Courtroom 5370. Their slogan: “Remember Jimmy.” Their hope: Persuade the judge to reject the plea bargain and force prosecutors to take the murder charge to trial.

Before the hearing, Carole LaRossa sat alone between her lawyers and a few family members. She did not speak.

Lauren Cox, Jimmy LaRossa’s niece and godchild, read an emotional statement to the judge. The daughter of a NYPD officer, Cox said the killing had ripped a family apart.

“I want my Aunt Carole to know,” she said through sobs, “... her time on earth will one day come to an end.

“When that day comes, my uncle Jimmy will be standing at the Golden Gates to greet her, as God turns her away.”

A fresh start

Before sentencing, the judge spoke to the victim’s family and friends. He told them because of their letters, he had taken the unusual step before the hearing of meeting with attorneys for both sides to examine the evidence.

He said the accounts he had received about Jimmy LaRossa “spoke volumes” about the person he had been.

Still, he said, the law must be based on facts and not emotion. “This resolution is appropriate,” he told them.

Defense attorney David Rudolph had sounded a similar theme in court.

“This is a tragedy for everyone,” he said. “The truth has been found to be somewhere within the extremes of what people believe. No one is happy here.”

After sentencing, the family and former police officers filed into the hallway. Some were already teary-eyed. Others grumbled that 15 uniformed deputies were needed to control a room filled with former cops.

Cox said she found Bell’s words contradictory. If her uncle had the qualities cited by the judge, “Why do you believe he was a big enough monster to abuse his wife?”

Reached later at his Waxhaw home, Sabato said he “had lost two friends.”

He had known the LaRossas since the late 1980s, when he and Jimmy became partners on the NYPD. In the 12 years they worked together, he said, he never saw LaRossa behave like what he heard in the courtroom.

When Sabato moved to the Charlotte area in 2007, he suggested his friends follow.

A year later, the LaRossas bought a home nearby.

They were looking, Sabato said, for a fresh start.

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Long Island

Long Beach PBA officers awarded raises

By PATRICK WHITTLE — Saturday, June 1st, 2013 ‘New York Newsday’ / Melville, L.I.

A state arbitrator has awarded Long Beach police a back-pay agreement that will give officers a 20.75 percent pay increase over seven years.

Long Beach police officers, who will make an average of $96,514.02 in fiscal 2013-14, according to the city's budget, have not received a raise since 2008. The 61-member Police Benevolent Association has been without a contract since that year.

The arbitrator's award, released May 29, gives police five years of retroactive raises and two years of raises in 2013-14 and 2014-15. Compounded, the total raise is 22.7 percent, city officials said.

Long Beach officials and police union leadership declined to speculate on the dollar amount of the back-pay award. John C. McLaughlin, the city council's lone Republican, speculated Friday that it would cost the city between $3 million and $4 million, which he said it likely would have to pay through borrowing.

The award is sobering news for a city that has been struggling to dig out of a fiscal crisis, McLaughlin said. "The city's going to be in big trouble here," he said. "The only way they could pay for it is to borrow it unless some magical money came from somewhere."

City council president Scott Mandel said in a statement that the award provides some savings but does not go far enough to protect taxpayers.

"While our cops on the street continue to do a great job, we are disappointed by the arbitrator's decision based on the fiscal challenges our City and residents are facing," he said in the statement.

The city's police union believes the award is "fair on both sides," said union president Kenny Apple. "Guys haven't had a raise in five years. People are extremely happy that it's finally over," Apple said.

Long Beach officials released a statement Friday that said the arbitration agreement reduces termination pay by 16.6 percent, which will save the city more than $850,000 on current employees and carry over to the future. Health care co-pay reimbursements have also been eliminated, the statement said.

The award also includes an "unprecedentedly low" 1 percent twice-a-year increase for the final three years, the statement said.

All told, the agreement includes cost savings of more than $2.8 million, Mandel said in his statement.

The award comes on the heels of the city's approval of its 2013-14 budget, an $83.4-million spending plan that is a 2 percent decrease from the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. The budget carries a 1.5 percent tax increase.

Long Beach Republicans chided the city's Democratic leadership over the size of the award. "The city is taking a beating," city Republican spokesman Jim Hennessy said.

City manager Jack Schnirman did not return requests for comment.

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New Jersey

Veteran West Orange cop allegedly falsified nearly $3K in overtime, authorities say
(Lieutenant Takes a Collar)

By Eunice Lee — Saturday, June 1st, 2013 ‘The Newark Star-Ledger’ / Newark, NJ

WEST ORANGE — A longtime police lieutenant in West Orange allegedly falsified about $3,000 in overtime during roughly four months, according to a complaint filed by the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office.

Richard Levens submitted documents where he claimed “he had worked certain hours on duty as a West Orange police officer and extra duty jobs ... knowing that he did not work those hours, or that he only worked a portion of the hours,” says the complaint dated May 22.

He received $2,920.75 in compensation for claiming hours he did not actually work — a crime of third-degree theft — from Nov. 28, 2012, to March 19, 2013, according to the prosecutor’s office.

A 24-year veteran of the township police department, Levens was suspended without pay on May 22, the same day the complaint was signed. He was charged by summons and had his gun removed, according to Katherine Carter, a spokeswoman for the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office. Levens, 45, of Randolph, earns an annual salary of $123,156, public records show.

Attorney Charles Sciarra, who is representing Levens, emphasized the veteran police lieutenant’s past track record, which he said includes more than 1,000 arrests and working on an FBI task force to protect children against predators.

“My client has a long exemplary record. We’re going to try to piece together what’s being alleged,” Sciarra said.

Previously, Levens was credited for performing several heroic rescues, according to past news reports. In 1994, Levens and other West Orange police and firefighters pulled off a daring rescue after a 19-year-old woman fell from the top of the 200-foot-tall quarry wall behind Eagle Rock Avenue and Smith Manor Boulevard.

Police and firefighters were able to rescue the woman, who was clinging to a small branch about 50 feet down the face of the quarry wall, with a rescue basket, rope and fire ladders.

In 1989, Levens made the news after he and then Sgt. Roy Isakson dove into the municipal pool’s diving tank and pulled out a 12-year-old boy who had been submerged for more than 10 minutes. For five to eight minutes until the rescue squad arrived Levens and other officers administered CPR to Marcus Williams of Orange.

Then police chief Edward Palardy said that “as a result of CPR, he (Williams) was revived” before being transported to a local hospital, in critical condition. Williams and two friends had apparently climbed the 10-foot fence surrounding the pool complex, reports said. Williams died the next day and his two unidentified companions, ages 12 and 9, were charged with criminal trespass.

Levens is scheduled for a June 19 court appearance.

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U.S.A.

Crime Statistics Reveal 93 Percent Of US Law Enforcement Officer Homicides Result From Firearms

By Unnamed Author(s) — Saturday, June 1st, 2013 ‘MNT Medical News Today’

While occupational homicides continue to decline in the U.S., law enforcement remains one of the deadliest jobs in America. A new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health The report found documents that 93 percent of homicides of law enforcement officers between 1996 and 2010 were committed with firearms. Among those homicides, 10 percent were committed using the officer's own service weapon. The findings, published by the journal BMJ Injury Prevention, could help develop new procedures to reduce risk to officers.

"Law enforcement officers across the U.S. are highly trained, yet it remains a dangerous and demanding profession," said study author, David Swedler, a PhD candidate with Bloomberg School's Department of Health Policy and Management and the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy. "We owe it to our law enforcement professionals to make their jobs as safe as possible. By analyzing the circumstances of these homicides, we can improve training and procedures to reduce risk to officers."

According to the study, 796 officers were murdered on the job between 1996 and 2010, excluding the deaths of the 72 law enforcement officers killed during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Over 90 percent of these homicides of officers were committed using firearms, with short-barreled weapons being used 72 percent of the time. In 43 percent of incidents in which an officer was killed, the officer was working alone. In 58 percent of the incidents, the officer was wearing body armor for protection.

The most common encounter that resulted in homicide of an officer was response to a "disturbance call." In 29 percent of these cases, the assailant was waiting to ambush the officer. Eighteen percent of all response calls resulted in a "secondary ambush" of the officer after the initial encounter had begun. More than half (52 percent) of these "secondary ambush" encounters involved high-powered, long-barrel weapons. The highest rates of law enforcement homicide occurred in states in the southeastern United States. The lowest rates occurred in the New England states.

"This study allowed us to systematically explore the circumstances of these law enforcement officer fatalities, which can help develop targeted policies and practices to keep officers safe in the line of duty," said Keshia M. Pollack, PhD, MPH, author of the study, and associate professor of Health Policy and Management and director of the Occupational Injury Epidemiology and Prevention Training Program.

The analysis was based on crime statistics available to the public: the Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) reports from the FBI.

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Border-State Gun Dealers Must Report Sales, Court Rules

The U.S. government can require gun dealers in border states to disclose records of certain firearm sales, a federal appeals court has ruled, upholding a key component of the government's recent crackdown on illegal gun trafficking.

By Ashby Jones — Saturday, June 1st , 2013 ‘The Wall Street Journal’ / New York, NY

The ruling on Friday, by a unanimous three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Washington, comes over strenuous objection by the firearms industry. And it could renew calls among gun-rights supporters that the government’s program trammels rights of gun sellers and owners.

In 2011, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearm and Explosives began issuing so-called “demand letters” to a number of gun dealers in four southwest border states: Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.

Such letters required any dealer who made numerous sales of semi-automatic weapons to the same buyer within 5 days to file a report with the ATF detailing the transactions. The move was part of a renewed effort to reduce gun trafficking from the U.S. to Mexico. The ATF is part of the Justice Department.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearm industry’s trade association, sued the agency in Washington, D.C. federal court. The foundation argued that the ATF lacked the legal authority to make such demands.

The lower court disagreed, and the D.C. Circuit on Friday upheld that ruling.

The appeals court first noted that the 1968 federal Gun Control Act gives the ATF broad authority to combat gun crimes, including trafficking. It then ruled that the ATF program in regard to the border states falls within that authority.

“The [Gun Control Act] unambiguously authorizes the demand letter,” wrote Judge Karen Henderson, for the panel, before noting the modest scope of the new ATF program. The “demand letter requires information only about a limited subset of firearms transactions . . . ”

The court also noted that, since 1975, federally licensed dealers have had to make similar reports in regard to handguns. “Searching records for multiple sales of a particular type of firearm to the same customer is nothing new,” wrote Judge Henderson.

The NSSF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“It’s a common-sense ruling,” said Jon Lowy, of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Mr. Lowy called the ATF’s authority “extremely limited,” adding: “it doesn’t ban the sale of a bunch of assault weapons; it just requires the sale to be reported so the government can help keep the guns out of criminals’ hands.”

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department declined to comment.

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Court allows rule designed to find bulk rifle sales

By David Ingram (Reuters) — Friday, May 31st, 2013; 1:46 p.m. EDT

(Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a gun reporting rule that the Obama administration adopted in 2011 to try to detect bulk sales of semi-automatic rifles to Mexican drug gangs.

A unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the administration acted within its authority to adopt the rule, which affects firearms sellers in states bordering Mexico.

The Gun Control Act of 1968 "unambiguously authorizes" the rule, and it is unrealistic to argue, as gun retailers and manufacturers did, that the rule is too burdensome, Judge Karen Henderson wrote for the panel of three judges.

The rule requires stores in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas to notify federal law enforcement when someone buys two or more of a specific type of firearm within five business days.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) adopted the notice requirement amid soaring drug violence in Mexico, carried out in part using firearms that originated in the United States.

Retailers and gunmakers, including the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group based in Newtown, Connecticut, scene of the December school massacre, sued to block the rule.

With the failure of new gun control proposals in Congress since the Newtown shooting, which killed 20 elementary school children, the rule stands as one of the few firearms measures put in place by President Barack Obama's administration.

A spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An ATF spokeswoman also did not immediately respond.

The measure applies only to high-caliber, semi-automatic rifles that can use a detachable magazine.

Thousands of firearms are believed to cross the border illegally into Mexico each year, and semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines are a favorite of drug traffickers, the ATF said in a report last year.

Mexican authorities recovered more than 68,000 U.S.-sourced guns from 2007 to 2011, the ATF said.

The case is National Shooting Sports Foundation Inc, et al, v. B. Todd Jones, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, No. 12-5009.

(Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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F.B.I.

New York Tenure Shaped F.B.I. Nominee’s Security Views

By BENJAMIN WEISER — Saturday, June 1st, 2013 ‘The New York Times’

One fall day in 1977, a high school senior and his younger brother were at home alone in Allendale, N.J., when a gunman broke into their house and ordered them to lie on a bed. The intruder aimed the gun at the younger brother’s ear and threatened to “blow his head off” if the older boy moved.

The brothers eventually managed to escape, and although a man was arrested, no indictment was ever brought. “I have a very keen sense of what it did to me,” the older boy recalled a decade ago. “I thought I was going to die.”

That boy was James B. Comey, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan, who has reportedly been selected by President Obama to be the next chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But just as Mr. Comey’s handling of terrorism and insider trading cases in New York shaped his view of national security and law enforcement, he made it clear that his empathy for crime victims came from a much earlier source: the night that he and brother were held up at gunpoint in suburban New Jersey.

“People are always talking about being mugged, but I know what people feel after something like that,” he said in a 2002 interview with The New York Times.

Today, Mr. Comey, a Republican, is perhaps best known for his tenure as the United States deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush who vigorously countered efforts by White House aides to reauthorize a program of surveillance without warrants. But he spent his formative law enforcement years in New York, where he served as a young prosecutor in the 1980s and returned as the United States attorney four months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Looking back at those years provides an insight into an aggressive prosecutor who garnered many fans inside and outside of his office, but also critics who contended that his approach imperiled the civil rights of defendants, like the time he defended the government’s decision to have a high-profile terrorism suspect declared an enemy combatant.

“The F.B.I. director today,” said Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the former United States attorney in Chicago and a longtime friend of Mr. Comey’s, “has to be focused on keeping people safe from terrorists and cybercrime but also from bank robbers and fraudsters, and to do that within the rule of law. I think Jim gets that.”

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said Mr. Comey “served as prosecutor at a time when New York’s focus shifted from crime to terrorism, and the ability to oversee both will be just what he needs at the F.B.I.”

Mr. Comey, who is 52 and 6-foot-8, was born in Yonkers. His grandfather, William J. Comey, was a patrolman during the Prohibition era and worked his way up to lead the Police Department there. He graduated in 1982 from the College of William and Mary and obtained a law degree in 1985 from the University of Chicago.

While clerking for Judge John M. Walker Jr. in Manhattan, he decided to become a prosecutor after watching two assistant United States attorneys handle a stormy bail hearing for a reputed Genovese crime boss.

After a year in private practice, he joined the office of Rudolph W. Giuliani, then the United States attorney in Manhattan. A member of the hiring committee was a prosecutor named Louis J. Freeh, who later served as F.B.I. director in the Clinton administration.

Mr. Comey spent six years in the office. His most significant case involved a racketeering, murder and drug trafficking trial in 1993 of four members of the Gambino crime family crew, which he tried with Mr. Fitzgerald, then his colleague.

About 10 years later, as deputy attorney general, Mr. Comey appointed Mr. Fitzgerald as special counsel to investigate the leak that led to the prosecution of I. Lewis Libby Jr., a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Mr. Comey left New York in 1993 for Richmond, Va., where he was in private practice and worked as a senior federal prosecutor. In 2002, he returned to Manhattan as United States attorney.

He had a tough act to follow: Mary Jo White had served in the post for almost a decade, but the return was smooth. “He wasn’t just some guy who came from D.C. or Virginia,” said Roberto Finzi, a former colleague. “He was one of us who was coming back. And people really felt that and appreciated that.”

In his nearly two years in that position, Mr. Comey’s office prosecuted such high-profile defendants as Martha Stewart, executives of Adelphia Communications and WorldCom, as well as Lynne F. Stewart, a lawyer who was charged with material support for terrorism.

He also aggressively defended the decision to declare Jose Padilla, an American citizen accused of trying to build a radioactive bomb, an enemy combatant.

When Mr. Comey was named deputy attorney general in late 2003, Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which had filed a brief in support of Mr. Padilla, said that “nothing about Mr. Comey’s tenure in New York suggests he will be a friend of the Constitution when he joins John Ashcroft in Washington.”

Mr. Dunn echoed those thoughts on Friday, extending them to cover most of Mr. Comey’s tenure from 2003 to 2005 as deputy attorney general. Mr. Comey’s confirmation hearing, he said, “will provide an important opportunity to assure that the F.B.I. fully understands its role in protecting civil liberties.”

Mr. Comey declined to comment.

But another critic’s view has evolved. Walter E. Dellinger III, the lawyer who in 2005 argued Martha Stewart’s appeal, said of Mr. Comey: “I believed then, and still believe, that his office’s decision” to prosecute Ms. Stewart was “a mistaken exercise of prosecutorial judgment.”

But Mr. Dellinger said he had since heard Mr. Comey speak about the tensions between national security and individual rights, and found him to be “very thoughtful on those issues,” to have a “fine sense of the complex balance one needs to make.”

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Ricin

'The perfect poison': Ricin used in 3 recent cases

By Holbrook Mohr (The Associated Press) — Friday, May 31st, 2013; 4:48 p.m. EDT

JACKSON, Miss. — The key ingredient — castor beans — is easy to find. Crude instructions for extracting the lethal poison in them can be found on the Internet. And it doesn't require a chemistry degree or sophisticated lab equipment.

The FBI is investigating at least three cases over the past month and a half in which ricin was mailed to President Barack Obama and other public figures.

Ricin has been sent to officials sporadically over the years, but experts say that there seems to be a recent uptick and that copycat attacks — made possible by the relative ease of extracting the poison — may be the reason.

"I can absolutely promise you that when these kinds of things happen, we're going to have copycats. We expect them. We prepare for them. And we catch them," said Murray Cohen, founder of the Atlanta-based Frontline Foundation, which trains workers in how to respond to bioterrorism and epidemics.

Security and counterterrorism expert Michael Fagel, who teaches at Northwestern University and is a veteran of ricin investigations, said ricin may be employed because castor beans are so easy to come by.

The plants grow wild along highways and in other spots in the U.S. They are also considered ornamental by some gardeners and are cultivated for medicinal castor oil and other products.

"And you can go on the Internet and find out any one of a gazillion recipes on how to make ricin," Fagel said, adding that it takes only a beginner's knowledge of science to "weaponize" it.

If inhaled, ricin can cause respiratory failure, among other symptoms. If swallowed, it can shut down the liver and other organs, resulting in death. The amount of ricin that can fit on the head of a pin is said to be enough to kill an adult if properly prepared. No antidote is available, though researchers are trying to develop one.

Despite the poison's fearsome reputation, a draft of a 2010 Homeland Security Department handbook lists only one person killed by ricin, and that was a 1978 assassination in London involving injection with a ricin pellet. Someone associated with Bulgaria's secret police used a special umbrella to fire the pellet into a Bulgarian dissident.

The first of the three recent ricin investigations in the U.S. began in April. An Elvis impersonator, Kevin Curtis, was jailed and accused of sending poisoned letters to Obama, a U.S. senator and a Mississippi judge. Then Curtis was suddenly released from jail when the FBI shifted its focus to his longtime foe, James Everett Dutschke. He was charged with making ricin.

The FBI said Dutschke, a former martial arts instructor and unsuccessful candidate for various political offices, bought his castor beans on eBay and may have used a coffee grinder to turn them into a powder from recipes he downloaded on his computer.

Then in May, three poison-tainted letters were mailed from Spokane, Wash., to Obama, a federal judge and a post office. A fourth letter sent to Fairchild Air Force Base near Spokane also tested positive for the poison. The FBI is trying to locate a fifth letter it suspects was mailed to the CIA in McLean, Va.

Matthew Ryan Buquet, a 37-year-old janitor and a registered sex offender, was charged last week with mailing a threatening communication. He has pleaded not guilty.

In the most recent case, authorities say ricin-laced letters were sent to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his Washington gun control group. Those letters were postmarked from Shreveport, La., but could have been mailed from Arkansas, Louisiana or Texas, officials said.

Cohen said it appears the ricin in all three cases was a crude form that's relatively easy to make. It would require laboratory equipment and scientific knowledge to make a more potent, weapons-grade version, he said.

Soon after the ricin case in Mississippi, the Congressional Research Service wrote a report for Congress that said recipes for ricin are available "on the Internet, from commercial bookstores, in patents and in scientific literature."

"The quality of these directions varies. Some directions would produce only crude preparations, while others would produce nearly pure ricin," the report said.

Thomas Pittman, a retired professor at the University of Southern Mississippi and an expert in toxicology, said ricin has a number of qualities that make it desirable to someone bent on doing harm: The ingredients are relatively easy to obtain, it's not that hard to make a crude form of it, it's deadly and it's hard to detect in a victim's body.

"It's the perfect poison," he said.

The congressional report noted some ricin cases over the years.

In 2008, authorities said a man in Las Vegas may have accidentally poisoned himself with ricin that he had made from a backyard castor plant. Roger Bergendorff told The Associated Press at the time that he made the ricin just for the sake of having it, and swore he had no intention of harming anyone. He was sentenced to more than three years in prison.

In 2003, someone sent a ricin-laced letter to the Transportation Department that was critical of new rules governing truck drivers. A similar letter was addressed to the White House the following month. Both were intercepted and nobody was hurt.

In 2004, ricin was detected in a letter sent to then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's Washington office.

___

Associated Press writers Jason Keyser in Chicago and Doug Esser in Seattle contributed to this report.

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Illinois / The Carrying Of Concealed Weapons

Holdout on concealed carry, Ill. gov gets gun bill

By JOHN O'CONNOR (The Associated Press) — Friday, May 31st, 2013; 9:19 p.m. EDT

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) -- Illinois would join the rest of the nation in allowing the carrying of concealed weapons under legislation approved by the General Assembly on Friday - hours before lawmakers were scheduled to adjourn for the summer and days before a federal court's deadline.

The gun measure was a hard-fought compromise between gun rights activists across the state and gun control advocates trying to keep a lid on crime in Chicago. It now goes to Gov. Pat Quinn, a Chicago Democrat, who has not indicated whether he will sign it.

An 89-28 vote by the Illinois House on Friday sealed the compromise worked out after the federal appeals court ordered in December that Illinois end its ban on concealed carry by June 9. Earlier in the day, the Senate OK'd the plan 45-12. Both margins are big enough to withstand a gubernatorial veto.

Both critics and proponents of the measure said they were concerned about a lack of action before the court's deadline. Past that point, no one knew what would happen, said Sen. Gary Forby, a southern Illinois Democrat who sponsored the final settlement.

"Some people (would say) `I can carry anything I want to,'" Forby said. "Some towns will say, `We can make laws and stop everything now.' And no one will know, from Cairo, Ill., to Chicago, ... what the law is."

The plan would prohibit the possession of guns in such places as schools, taverns and parks, but would allow a gun to be kept securely in a car. It did not include an earlier proposal to eliminate all local gun ordinances, including Chicago's current ban on assault weapons, but would curb local control on handguns and lawful transportation of firearms.

It would require the Illinois State Police to issue a concealed carry permit to any gun owner with a Firearm Owners Identification card who passes a background check, pays a $150 fee and undergoes 16 hours of training - the most required by any state.

On another gun matter, the Senate defeated a proposed ban on ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. Quinn and Senate Democratic leaders had pushed the initiative in Springfield alongside parents of three schoolchildren who were fatally shot in December at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

But the measure was defeated in the Senate, 28-31.

Quinn referenced the Connecticut school shooting in a prepared statement, saying he was disappointed lawmakers didn't snag the opportunity to "minimize the chance of this unthinkable violence happening in Illinois."

On guns, Illinois has been long divided along geographic, as well as political, lines. Chicago Democrats rage against street violence while conservatives in other parts of the state, particularly southern Illinois, maintain loyalty to the Second Amendment.

But the need for a consensus rose in December, when the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Illinois' ban on concealed weapons is unconstitutional. All other states allow concealed carry, although 10 states have more restrictive laws than what is proposed in Illinois.

The Illinois House endorsed a more permissive plan last week, but it took the extra step of invalidating all local ordinances on firearms, including the Chicago ban on assault-style weapons, and drew the fierce opposition of Quinn, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and Senate Democrats, who rejected it.

But Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago, a supporter of tougher restrictions, negotiated with House members and others to forge Friday's compromise. It overrides local regulations on handguns or those that further restrict the ability of lawful gun owners to transport unloaded or broken-down weapons. It would leave other current ordinances intact, but ban future assault-weapons prohibitions.

Chicago got what it wished in terms of nearly two dozen specific places declared gun-free, including mass transit buses and guns. Emanuel said in a statement the bill "strikes a better balance between the rights of gun owners and the unique public safety needs of Chicago."

Other Democrats complained the measure fell short.

"It's too loosely written," said Sen. Kimberly Lightford, a Maywood Democrat who argued for cities to be able to regulate guns based on their needs. "It doesn't protect us at all."

Raoul made concessions on carrying guns in establishments that serve alcohol. Residents would be allowed to carry guns into restaurants and other businesses that serve alcohol if liquor comprises no more than 50 percent of their sales. Rep. Ann Williams, D-Chicago, said guns and alcohol don't mix.

"I don't think there's anything wrong if I want to go to Applebee's ... and sitting there, just having food, being able to protect myself and my family," said sponsoring Rep. Brandon Phelps.

Phelps, a Democrat from Harrisburg in far southern Illinois, was also able to keep in a provision making automobiles a "safe harbor" - meaning a secured gun could be kept in a car, even if it's parked in a prohibited place.

---

The bill is HB183.

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New Orleans, Louisiana

Federal appeals court orders temporary stay of NOPD consent decree

By Ramon Antonio Vargas — Friday, May 31st , 2013 ‘The New Orleans Times-Picayune’ / New Orleans, LA

A federal appeals court Thursday (May 30) ordered a temporary halt to the consent decree that mandates widespread changes at the New Orleans Police Department. A 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel granted the halt while it awaits and then considers a reply from the U.S. Department of Justice to a motion for an emergency stay pending an appeal of the consent decree from Mayor Mitch Landrieu's administration, due by noon Monday (June 3).

The Landrieu administration in February asked the 5th Circuit to review U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan's decision in January to endorse the consent decree. The mayor's office has argued that the city can't afford to carry out the police pact while there is a separate consent decree in place aimed at reforming conditions at Orleans Parish Prison.

The city also has contended that the consent decree was tainted by the anonymous online comments of former federal prosecutor Sal Perricone. Landrieu's administration furthermore said that Perricone, as a point man for the Department of Justice in the decree negotiations, had "ulterior motives" that the city only discovered after vitriolic posts of his on NOLA.com came to light.

Perricone resigned from the U.S. Attorney's Office last March, four months before the city agreed to the consent decree. But the city argues that it didn't learn about Perricone's online bashing of the NOPD until later, when one of his NOLA.com handles, "legacyusa," was linked to him.

The decision Thursday follows a series of legal defeats for the Landrieu administration in Morgan's courtroom.

Morgan in February shot down a request from the city to stay the adoption of the consent decree, explaining that getting started in earnest on the changes at NOPD is in the public's best interest given the unconstitutional practices the Justice Department had found in the department. On May 23, she ruled against the city's request for her to vacate the consent decree, which she deemed "a fair, adequate and reasonable solution for transforming the NOPD into a world class police force."

The city quickly pleaded with Morgan to again stay the consent decree. She didn't even wait 24 hours to reject that petition.

Morgan ruled that the city hadn't shown it was likely to triumph in the appellate court; that citizens wouldn't be harmed if she granted a stay; or that a stay is in the public's interest.

Late Wednesday (May 29), the city moved for an emergency stay pending an appeal it has said it intended to file in the 5th Circuit on the endorsement of the NOPD consent decree. The motion, submitted by City Attorney Sharonda Williams, mentioned the contract of about $7 million that is to be given to the NOPD consent decree monitor and suggested it is unjust to award the job before the Landrieu administration's appeal is dealt with.

"Forcing the city to execute such a costly contract while its appeal is pending deprives the city of any meaningful appellate opportunities and will irreparably harm ... its residents," the motion said.

The city's motion also claimed that New Orleans had already implemented "meaningful reforms and can continue to do so" on its own without spending the "exorbitant fees" required by the consent decree. According to the Landrieu administration's motion, having to carry out the NOPD and OPP consent decrees simultaneously would essentially doom the city's daily operations.

The city says it would have to furlough its employees and police officers for 30 days; cut workers' pay by 17.7 percent; lay off 800 personnel, among them more than 300 cops; and slice 45 percent of New Orleans' operating budget, "leaving most departments unable to function."

The NOPD consent decree could cost $55 million over five years. The city has said the OPP one may run $22 million annually or up to $110 million total, though the federal court has yet to determine the cost.

The ruling in favor of the city Thursday came from Judges Edith Jones, James Dennis and Catharina Haynes, and it is in effect "until further order" of the appellate court, according to the record. President Ronald Reagan appointed Jones; President Bill Clinton appointed Dennis; and President George W. Bush appointed Haynes.

Meanwhile, the final meeting of the committee tasked with evaluating the finalists seeking the job of consent decree monitor which was scheduled for Friday (May 31) has been canceled -- at least until the circuit court issues new orders. That meeting was originally set for April 30 but was pushed back a number of times.

After news of Thursday's ruling spread, Landrieu spokesman Ryan Berni said in a prepared statement, "We are pleased the court has issued a temporary stay of the consent decree. We will continue to reform the NOPD while ensuring that the city remains financially stable."

However, other consent decree process stakeholders expressed frustration with the city.

One of them, Raymond Burkart III, a lawyer and spokesman for the local Fraternal Order of Police lodge, said the consent decree turned out to be more expensive than it needed to be because officials insisted on including changes to secondary employment for officers, such as paid details. Burkart and FOP disagree that paid details have anything to do with constitutional policing, which the consent decree is designed to produce.

As part of its efforts to shelve the consent decree, the city has argued that it's unclear whether the secondary employment reforms in the agreement comply with federal labor law. But Burkart opined that the city started raising those concerns too late.

"This case has gotten out of control because the city refused to work with every stakeholder," Burkart said. "We commend the court for staying this so everyone can take a breath and re-evaluate the situation we are now all in."

For his part, W.C. Johnson, an organizer with Community United for Change, called the Landrieu administration's motion to stay in the 5th Circuit just another example of the city "doing everything possible to delay and/or derail the consent decree," dismissing its complaints about the agreement's high costs.

"The city has no problems raising money for any and every project it feels is necessary -- Mardi Gras, the Super Bowl," said Johnson, whose group advocates for victims of police brutality. "I don't know why they don't understand that constitutional policing is going to benefit ... the city."

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Los Angeles, California

Deputy says he wore wire for FBI in probe of L.A. County Sheriff's Dept.
Edwin Tamayo says the agency asked him to record a captain as part of an investigation of alleged improper fundraising for Carmen Trutanich.

By Robert Faturechi, Jack Leonard and Andrew Blankstein — Saturday, June 1st, 2013 ‘The Los Angeles Times’ / Los Angeles, CA

A Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy wore a wire for the FBI last month, secretly recording a department supervisor as part of an investigation into allegations of improper fundraising, the deputy and his attorneys said.

Deputy Edwin Tamayo told The Times that FBI agents asked him to wear the wire after he told them that a captain gathered him and other subordinates at a patrol station barbecue pit and ordered them to sell tickets to a 2011 fundraiser for Carmen Trutanich's unsuccessful bid for district attorney. He declined to say which department supervisor he recorded.

While federal authorities have used wires in investigations of law enforcement agencies before, this is the first indication that the bureau has used the tactic as part of its expansive probe of the Sheriff's Department.

Tamayo, a 12-year department veteran who is now on leave, came forward after facing criminal allegations of his own. He said he was accused of fixing a traffic ticket for a bribe. He denies the allegation but declined to say if he ever did other official favors for residents in his affluent patrol area.

Tamayo said he told federal agents that the captain instructed about a dozen sheriff's employees to sell 10 fundraiser tickets each, saying the order came down through the chain of command from Sheriff Lee Baca — an allegation his spokesman denied. It is unclear what specific law such conduct might violate.

Tamayo provided The Times with a text message exchange he said he had with an FBI agent during the secret recording. The messages show Tamayo being coached on how to use his recording equipment and what to say.

In one text, Tamayo is instructed to mention Trutanich and to bring up "the difference between the truth and staying loyal." Do so "at your own pace," he was advised.

"You're doing fine.... End well so you can stay in touch," the messages continue. "OK when you have a chance turn everything off, we'll meet you at ihop."

The Times was not able to corroborate Tamayo's allegations. For example, of the 10 individuals he said he sold fundraising tickets to, the names of only three could be found on Trutanich's donor rolls. Asked about the lack of documentation, Tamayo said many of those who gave did not want their names on the donor list. One of those not on the rolls told The Times that though he had donated and volunteered for the Sheriff's Department before, he did not recall giving in this instance and did not remember meeting Tamayo.

The captain whom Tamayo accused of misconduct declined to comment, referring questions to his attorney, who did not return calls.

It's unclear what the FBI's interest level is in the improper political fundraising allegation. The FBI has been investigating the sheriff's jails since at least 2011. An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment.

Two other deputies told The Times that they too were asked by the FBI to wear a wire. One said he was asked to record meetings he had scheduled inside department headquarters with high-ranking sheriff's officials, but ultimately the request was withdrawn. The other said he refused requests to record a department supervisor. The deputies asked to remain anonymous because they are not authorized to speak to the media about the ongoing federal probe.

Baca's spokesman, Steve Whitmore, said any claim that Baca ordered sheriff's employees to raise money for the Trutanich event was "absurd."

"The sheriff," he said, "has never pressured or ordered anybody to engage in fundraising."

Baca has been an active campaigner for politicians across the county for years. His endorsement of Trutanich for district attorney drew criticism last year after he appeared in uniform in an Internet campaign ad — a violation of state law. The video was quickly edited to remove Baca's image, after inquiries from The Times.

Tamayo said he knew of nothing to suggest that Trutanich was aware of any order to employees to sell fundraiser tickets. Representatives of Trutanich did not respond to requests for comment.

Paul Tanaka, whom Baca recently ousted as the department's second in command, contends that the sheriff has engaged in improper campaigning in the past. He said that in about 2004, when Baca was campaigning for a sales tax increase to fund law enforcement, he ordered former Undersheriff Larry Waldie to go to tow companies that had sheriff's contracts and pressure them to donate.

"I don't remember the exact words but something to the effect of 'We make them a lot of money because of the tow contracts with us so they should contribute to this campaign,'" said Tanaka, who is considering running against Baca next year. Tanaka, who has himself been criticized for accepting political donations from sheriff's employees, called Baca's request improper: "The tow companies are not obligated to part with their hard-earned money."

Whitmore denied that Baca gave such an order. Reached by phone, Waldie declined to comment.

Tamayo claims that the captain also ordered him to routinely pick up donations for the agency — sometimes in what appeared to be envelopes full of cash — from wealthy residents in the area. The captain, Tamayo said, would compare big givers to golf balls, saying: "Tee 'em up.... See how far they go."

It is a common practice for law enforcement agencies to raise donations for their departments or charitable causes, but Tamayo said the donors he picked up money from received special treatment from the Sheriff's Department.

One of Tamayo's attorneys, Jacob Glucksman, said he arranged and attended the meeting between the FBI and Tamayo at which agents asked the deputy to wear a wire.

"He felt that the FBI was the only credible and trustworthy place to go," said Glucksman, a former county prosecutor.

Tamayo's other attorney, Greg Smith, who ran unsuccessfully for city attorney this year, also said Tamayo wore a wire for the FBI.

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Homeland Security

National Security Letters

Judge orders Google to give customer data to FBI

By PAUL ELIAS (The Associated Press) — Saturday, June 1st, 2013; 4:19 a.m. EDT

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A federal judge has ruled that Google Inc. must comply with the FBI's warrantless demands for customer data, rejecting the company's argument that the government's practice of issuing so-called national security letters to telecommunication companies, Internet service providers, banks and others was unconstitutional and unnecessary.

FBI counter-terrorism agents began issuing the secret letters, which don't require a judge's approval, after Congress passed the USA Patriot Act in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The letters are used to collect unlimited kinds of sensitive, private information, such as financial and phone records and have prompted complaints of government privacy violations in the name of national security. Many of Google's services, including its dominant search engine and the popular Gmail application, have become daily habits for millions of people.

In a ruling written May 20 and obtained Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston ordered Google to comply with the FBI's demands.

But she put her ruling on hold until the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals could decide the matter. Until then, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company must comply with the letters unless it shows the FBI didn't follow proper procedures in making its demands for customer data in the 19 letters Google is challenging, she said.

After receiving sworn statements from two top-ranking FBI officials, Illston said she was satisfied that 17 of the 19 letters were issued properly. She wanted more information on two other letters.

It was unclear from the judge's ruling what type of information the government sought to obtain with the letters. It was also unclear who the government was targeting.

The decision from the San Francisco-based Illston comes several months after she ruled in a separate case brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation over the letters. She ruled in March that the FBI's demand that recipients refrain from telling anyone - including customers - that they had received the letters was a violation of free speech rights.

Kurt Opsah, an attorney with the foundation, said it could be many more months before the appeals court rules on the constitutionality of the letters in the Google case.

"We are disappointed that the same judge who declared these letters unconstitutional is now requiring compliance with them," Opsah said on Friday.

Illston's May 20 order omits any mention of Google or that the proceedings have been closed to the public. But the judge said "the petitioner" was involved in a similar case filed on April 22 in New York federal court.

Public records show that on that same day, the federal government filed a "petition to enforce National Security Letter" against Google after the company declined to cooperate with government demands.

Google can still appeal Illston's decision. The company declined comment Friday.

In 2007, the Justice Department's inspector general found widespread violations in the FBI's use of the letters, including demands without proper authorization and information obtained in non-emergency circumstances. The FBI has tightened oversight of the system.

The FBI made 16,511 national security letter requests for information regarding 7,201 people in 2011, the latest data available.

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Mike Bosak

Sunday, June 2, 2013