California Watch - Public Safety

Drug agents closing in on NFL player's pot supplier

Andrew Becker — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 08:05:03 +0000

Andrew Becker

Jerome Simpson

California drug enforcement agents say they are closing in on the suspected marijuana suppliers to pro football player Jerome Simpson, four months after the Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver received a 2.5-pound package of Northern California pot sent to his suburban Kentucky home.

The investigation likely includes at least one other person with ties to the National Football League, a state Department of Justice spokeswoman said.

“We’re following up on leads in Northern California and getting close to wrapping that up,” said Michelle Gregory, the spokeswoman. “It’s going to be pretty big.”

Simpson, 25, was indicted Thursday by a grand jury in Kenton County, Ky., on a charge of trafficking more than 8 ounces of marijuana, according to the indictment. Simpson’s attorney, Burr Travis, said the case starts and stops with his client, who plans to plead not guilty at his Jan. 30 arraignment.

In what authorities say is an unrelated investigation, another NFL player, former Chicago Bears wide receiver Sam Hurd, also faces drug-trafficking charges following his arrest last month in Chicago. Police reportedly have a "double-digit" list of players to whom he supplied drugs.

Jeffrey Beall/FlickrSam Hurd

Hurd is scheduled to enter a plea Wednesday at an arraignment hearing in U.S. District Court in Dallas. He was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents after he allegedly told an undercover agent at a Chicago-area restaurant that he wanted to purchase 1,000 pounds of marijuana and up to 10 kilograms of cocaine a week, according to the criminal complaint.

Hurd, 26, was indicted on Jan. 4. He faces up to 40 years in prison and a $2 million fine.

Hurd’s attorney, David E. Kenner, did not return calls seeking comment. Kenner, who helped rapper Snoop Dogg beat a murder charge, has said Hurd will plead not guilty. Kenner has adamantly denied that Hurd supplied drugs to other players.

The Chicago Bears waived Hurd shortly after his arrest. In what was his first season with the Bears, the wide receiver caught eight passes for 109 yards. He played for the Dallas Cowboys for five seasons.

Simpson, a four-year veteran, had a career-best season with 50 catches for 725 yards and four touchdowns.

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said the league is aware of the cases against Hurd and Simpson, but declined to comment on whether it has opened a broader investigation into possible issues of drug trafficking and drug use among its players.

Since Sept. 20, when state narcotics agents intercepted in Sacramento a shipment of marijuana originally sent from Eureka, Calif., to Simpson’s home in the Cincinnati suburb of Crestview Hills, Ky., state and federal authorities in California have watched to see if Kentucky officials would charge Simpson.

“As it was only a small amount of marijuana … it is more appropriate for charges to be filed in Kentucky courts,” said Lauren Horwood, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Sacramento. “We are more interested to know who the supplier is.”

Kenton County Commonwealth Attorney Rob Sanders, the Kentucky state prosecutor who sought the indictment, said he doesn’t expect any other people to be charged in Kentucky, even if it appeared Simpson intended to distribute the marijuana.

“Three pounds is far more marijuana than any one person could consume in a lifetime,” he said. “Some people out there may want to prove me wrong; nevertheless, the quantity of marijuana alone is indicative of an intent to distribute.”

The indictment was delayed a month because of scheduling conflicts, not because of the NFL season, Sanders said. He declined to comment on whether authorities outside of Kentucky or California were involved in any investigation or if federal officials plan to prosecute other possible suspects.

Simpson, whom Sanders said cooperated with the police investigation, faces up to five years in prison and a maximum fine of $10,000.

Calif. marijuana tracked to NFL player's home

Fatal shooting highlights struggle to regulate replica guns

Susan Ferriss — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:36:20 +0000

Anonymous

Office of Sen. Kevin de Leon LA Police Chief Charlie Beck shows a real Beretta handgun next to a BB gun manufactured to look like the real thing.

The fatal police shooting earlier this month of a Texas middle school student clutching a BB gun – the latest in a series of incidents involving imitation firearms – spotlights how localities and states have struggled to identify and control both look-alike toys and guns that fire something other than bullets.

Like virtually every issue involving firearms, this one is complex and fraught with political peril.

While real school shootings are rare, children show up at schools with imitation guns often enough to raise concerns, especially among law enforcement personnel. In California, for example, about 1,330 school suspensions were issued to students for bringing imitation firearms to school during the 2010-11 academic year, according to state data analyzed by the Center for Public Integrity. Seventy California students were expelled for this offense during the same year.

And, even though some U.S. cities and states forbid it, kids regularly play with increasingly real-looking guns in neighborhood streets, parks or forests and in their own yards, sometimes attracting police attention that ends in children’s deaths.

Regulation of imitation guns exists but is limited at the federal level. Instead, a confusing patchwork of laws to regulate the sale, use, and color of replicas has developed among states and communities. But whenever proposals to restrict imitation guns come up, controversy and opposition are sure to follow.

The state of California was the scene of such a high-stakes battle over an attempt at “look-alike” gun control last year. A measure to impose mandatory bright color requirements on all BB and pellet guns – so that police could easily identify them as imitation – failed under a heavy campaign of criticism from gun rights groups and others that it was misguided.

Reports of deaths, injuries and close calls involving imitation firearms have been frequent in recent years. In 2007, a 12-year-old boy in West Memphis, Ark., was shot dead by a police officer who was on a stakeout and reportedly fired at the boy because he made an “evasive” movement and appeared to have a gun he didn’t drop. Police later said the boy had a toy closely resembling a real handgun.

In 2007, a San Diego police officer reportedly shot and killed a teenager who had an imitation revolver on the passenger side of a car seat. That same year, a police officer reportedly nearly opened fire on one of three teens who were playing with real-looking guns on a school playground in Azusa.

On Jan. 4, in Brownsville, Texas, a panicked assistant principal called 911 and reported that a student was in a hallway brandishing a black gun. Police entered and later said that they repeatedly warned Jaime Gonzalez Jr. to drop his weapon before an officer fatally shot him. It turned out the boy, 15, had a black “nonpowder” BB gun that closely resembled a high-powered Glock firearm, according to police.

Since 1989, federal law has required that “look-alike or imitation” toy firearms be manufactured or imported with a permanent bright orange plug at the end of a non-shooting barrel or a body that’s brightly colored. So-called “airsoft” guns that shoot lower-speed plastic pellets are also subject to federal color requirements that they have an orange collar on the muzzle or transparent or neon-colored bodies. Some states have enacted their own laws governing appearances. In California, for example, non-firing toy guns are supposed to always be brightly colored.

The imitation firearm in the Brownsville case, though, had no special markings. The 1989 federal law excludes traditional BB guns and pellet guns whose “muzzle velocity is too high for them to be considered mere toys,” said Henry Wixon, chief counsel for the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, which regulates the fake firearms. Yet, these types of “airguns” are not firearms either, Wixon said, so they are not subject to government rules regulating real guns.

The Brownsville boy’s parents said they didn’t know how he got the BB gun, which minors are barred from purchasing. Public reaction to the Gonzalez boy’s shooting has focused heavily on the difficulties police face when in the heat of the moment and on parental responsibility to ensure that kids don’t play carelessly with imitation firearms, and never take them to school.

But communities have discovered that kids have avenues to get toy guns without parents‘ knowledge. And they’ve also discovered that existing state laws are often violated, including some states’ requirements that toy guns be of a loud color only.

In 2007 and 2008 the city councils of San Diego and Dallas, Texas, both approved, with police backing, local ordinances to block ice cream trucks from selling cheap toy guns to kids. Schools in both cities were alarmed that children were buying the toy guns, and that many lacked the federally required bright orange muzzle markings. Trucks selling the guns were often parked near schools.

A number of cities scattered around the country have taken other steps, including enacting bans on sales or the firing of BB or pellet guns inside city limits, but more often clamping down on public display of any replicas.

Farmers Branch, Texas, among other Texas municipalities, banned the public brandishing of all imitation guns in a manner that could incite alarm after local police officers had close calls; in one instance, officers reportedly aimed their firearms at a child who was pointing his cap gun at other kids.

Gun rights groups have often objected to local restrictions, though, insisting that federal law largely pre-empts states and cities from regulating the manufacture, sale or distribution of traditional BB and pellet guns excluded from the 1989 law.

Another reason cities have adopted restrictions is the growth in people using real-looking fake weapons, sometimes with orange markings removed or painted over, to commit serious crimes. In many jurisdictions, using a fake gun is considered, legally, just as serious a crime as using a real one to commit a robbery, for instance, or to intimidate someone.

At the state level, New York, since the 1980s, has banned the sale of any imitation gun that can reasonably be perceived as a real firearm unless it is a color other than the standard black, blue or silver colors of real guns, or clearly marked with a bright orange stripe over the entire barrel.

When he was attorney general, current Gov. Andrew Cuomo complained of widespread violations and sent warning letters in 2009 to 100 companies demanding that they stop manufacturing toy guns that violated the state’s law. New York City, for its part, has banned special paint used to color parts of real guns in a bright coating, as well as almost all consumer purchases, possession and unlicensed casual use of BB and pellet guns within city limits.

Pellet gun companies warn customers who shop online that local prohibitions bar them from shipping to New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia and a few other jurisdictions.

There have also been short-lived attempts to modify federal laws dealing with imitation guns.

Between 1995 and 2007, Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., introduced federal legislation seven times that would have banned or limited the manufacture and sale of any toy handgun that had the shape or size of a real firearm. The proposals didn’t make it out of committees. Towns’ staff said he was motivated to act by the death of a young boy in his Brooklyn district who was holding a toy gun in dim light in his apartment building and was shot by a police officer.

Golden State debate

The California legislative struggle was rooted in a December 2010 incident in Los Angeles, where a 13-year-old was shot and paralyzed by a city police officer when officers investigating burglaries came across three youths playing with dark-colored pellet guns in a street at twilight. Since 2005, California law has prohibited most public brandishing of imitation guns on streets and front yards.

Officers said two boys halted and dropped their guns. One failed to comply with a command, officers said, and was shot and grievously injured. The paralyzed boy’s mother said her son was trying to pull out his replica gun to drop it when he was shot, according to Dan Reeves, chief of staff for California state Sen. Kevin de Leon of Los Angeles. Whatever the reality, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said the wounded boy’s imitation gun closely resembled his own Beretta service revolver, Reeves said.

And while the paralyzed boy’s pellet gun did have an orange mark around the tip of the barrel, police said, the officer who shot the boy said he didn’t see it.

Beck then came out in support of action to increase bright color markings to distinguish between firearms and “nonpowder” pellet guns.

So de Leon sponsored a bill last year that would have imposed a sweeping new state requirement on pellet and BB guns. The measure would have required that any BB or pellet gun sold in California be manufactured only with transparent bodies or in certain neon colors, a mandate similar to the state’s color requirement for toys. Backers said the measure was designed to try to prevent shootings of innocent young people by police officers who have to make split-second decisions.

But the legislation was vigorously opposed by the National Rifle Association and makers and vendors of replica firearms. One of the main arguments pellet-gun industry representatives put forth was that parts of real guns are now being painted neon colors – including pink – and that police would be endangered by confusion. Reeves, de Leon’s staffer, said opponents organized an effective campaign. “It seemed that every teenage boy between here and Kentucky was writing to us against this,” he said.

Opponents also argued that the proposal was pre-empted by federal law excluding higher velocity airguns from color requirements. They additionally said it could create a false sense of security by implying that BB and pellet guns were entirely safe, when in reality those weapons could be lethal in certain circumstances. Reeves also noted that said some legislators faced stiff opposition from manufacturers and vendors in their districts, and police chiefs were divided.

In spite of the California Legislature’s reputation for liberalism on gun control, the measure ultimately failed. The bill passed the Democratic-controlled state Senate, where de Leon introduced it, on a 21-16 vote.

But when the bill went to the Democratic-controlled Assembly, it faltered, as key committee members yielded to pressure from pellet-gun vendors and paintball businesses, Reeves said. De Leon amended the bill to exclude paintball guns from the proposed color requirement, but the measure still failed in the Assembly’s public safety committee.

To salvage his end goal, Reeves said, de Leon ultimately performed a “gut and amend” on the bill, changing it to give cities in California the right to impose restrictions such as the color requirements. That version passed the committee, but when the bill was returned again for another adjustment, the same committee killed it, with some members changing their votes.

Some of the members’ reversal was designed to snub de Leon because he didn’t back other Democrats’ proposals in the Assembly last year, Reeves said, or to show the gun lobby that they don’t always vote against it. But others, Reeves said, were not convinced the problem was widespread, and “they made the calculation: ‘I’ve got a lot of people who sell these things in my district, so why do I want to upset the apple cart?’ ”

Reeves said Los Angeles police chief Beck made a personal, powerful appeal to legislators at the state Capitol last year, and that he’d like to push the proposal again. In the wake of the Gonzalez boy’s death in Texas, Reeves said, “I think we need to have better documentation to show that this is a growing trend, and that as these guns get more popular, kids are getting shot because of them.”

This story was produced by the Center for Public Integrity.

Monterey, Alameda counties have highest youth homicide rates

Tia Ghose — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:05:03 +0000

Tia Ghose

Bliznetsov/istockphoto.com

Monterey County had the highest youth homicide rate in California in 2010, followed by Alameda County, according to an analysis conducted by the Violence Policy Center, a nonprofit group focused on curbing firearms violence.

The homicide rate for 10- to 24-year-olds in Monterey County, which includes Salinas, was 24.36 per 100,000, nearly triple the statewide rate. Alameda County, which includes Oakland, had a rate of 18.41 per 100,000. El Dorado, Humboldt, Napa, Placer and Sonoma counties had no youth killings in 2010.

The study [PDF] analyzed 35 California counties with at least 25,000 people between the ages of 10 and 24. Statewide, the vast majority of the slayings involved firearms.

Salinas has long struggled with violence.

"Our neighborhoods – especially on the east side – have experienced so much death and violence over the last 20 to 30 years that a lot of these people have started to display symptoms of PTSD," said Brian Contreras, who co-founded the Second Chance youth program, which works to prevent gang violence in Monterey County. "Our kids don't want to go out at night."

The high youth homicide rate in Monterey County may be due in part to an entrenched gang culture and a lack of activities, he said. "There's really nothing to do, not stuff for young people."

Oakland also has traditionally struggled with long-standing gang problems, said Billie Weiss, an epidemiologist at UCLA, who studies injury and violence prevention. Risk factors for youth violence include high unemployment, poverty and drug trafficking in the community, she said.

Despite the high rate in some counties, there are signs that youth violence might be decreasing in California. Statewide, the youth homicide rate dropped from 10.5 per 100,000 in 2009 to 8.5 in 2010. The rate fell even further in Monterey County: In 2009, the rate was more than 31 per 100,000.

"Even though they're number one, their rate has gotten better," said Josh Sugarmann, study co-author and executive director of the Violence Policy Center. Alameda County also saw its youth homicide rate decline from 20.69 in 2009.

Monterey County's rate for 2011 likely will drop when the numbers are finalized. Salinas had less than half the number of shootings in 2011 that it did in 2010. Contreras credits coordinated efforts by violence prevention organizations, community groups and law enforcement.

Efforts to teach neighborhood residents the warning signs of violence, as well as programs to help the community heal, have had an impact, he said. Police initiated a cease-fire program for high-risk gang members and also stepped up arrests of key gang members, he said. Plans for a new soccer complex and upgrades to the overcrowded, aging library also might help reduce youth violence, Contreras said.

The homicide numbers don't capture the full toll of gun violence because they don't account for non-fatal shootings and suicides, Weiss said.

"While homicides are easiest for us to get at, they are the tip of the iceberg," she said.

Victims of stray bullets often children

Oakland 3rd in nation for youth firearm murder

Young black males far more likely to be murder victims

Feds continue push to nationalize criminal intelligence data

Andrew Becker — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:05:03 +0000

Andrew Becker and G.W. Schulz

Federal Bureau of InvestigationFBI officials and other state and federal police want to swap criminal information through a national database.

In the latest push by federal law enforcement agencies to nationalize criminal intelligence data gathered by state and local police, Minnesota is weighing whether to link a statewide database with an FBI information-sharing system, despite concerns by privacy and open-government advocates about the accuracy of such data, among other issues.

A task force made up of police, probation officers, judges, public defenders and other members will make a final decision next week on whether to recommend to the Minnesota Legislature that the state participate. Several agencies in California already belong to the program, known as the National Data Exchange, or N-DEx. The program became fully operational nationwide last summer.

“Allowing law enforcement records to be forwarded to N-Dex would be a benefit to law enforcement agencies not only in Minnesota, but also across the nation,” Ron Sager, president of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association, wrote in support of the program. “As we are all aware, criminals are not concerned with geographic or political jurisdictional boundaries.”

The Land of 10,000 Lakes has some of the nation’s strictest data privacy laws, which have restricted the sharing of information on a federal level. Any decision to share information on a statewide level would require a change to Minnesota law.

The information-sharing system allows police – including military, federal, state and local agencies – and other law enforcement, such as prison officials, to access and swap criminal-related data, such as a subject’s name, the type of contact with law enforcement and any charges.

More than 113 million records [PDF] were in the system as of August 2011, including about 10 million from four California databases. Texas was the biggest contributor, with more than 46 million records.

While police and prosecutors widely support the entire state joining the program, privacy advocates warn against such data-sharing practices.

Robert Sykora, chief information officer for the Minnesota Board of Public Defense, said such information sharing would essentially federalize local police records, which could be passed along to other federal agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Federal Bureau of InvestigationAn FBI database, whose process is depicted above, allows state and local police to swap crime information with federal agents and other police nationwide.

Sykora has opposed other data practices in the state, including a decision by state law enforcement officials to collect and retain criminal intelligence data, known as suspicious activity reports, that didn’t appear to rise to the level of reasonable suspicion, and a subsequent decision to restrict public access to those reports.

The Center for Investigative Reporting, in conjunction with National Public Radio and "PBS NewsHour," reported last year on one program at the Mall of America in Bloomington, a Minneapolis suburb. Through a public-records request, CIR and NPR obtained 125 suspicious activity reports, totaling more than 1,000 pages of records.

In protest of the new criminal intelligence data policy, Sykora resigned in November 2011 from a privacy policy advisory group to the state fusion center, an information-sharing hub run by the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which along with the FBI had received many of the mall's reports. In his letter to Michael Bosacker, who runs the state fusion center, Sykora challenged state law enforcement leaders on their shift in data practices about concealing records.

"I believe it is contrary to the spirit and letter of the law to effectively keep those reports concealed by classifying them as 'security data' – a classification the Legislature never intended to be used for what is effectively police intelligence data," he wrote. "I strongly disagree with you and your agency about these issues because of history’s loud message that when governments begin to keep surreptitious records about law-abiding members of society, abuses of our most valued civil liberties are certain to follow."

The decision to block public scrutiny of the suspicious activity reports came after CIR obtained the majority of the reports, most of which had been forwarded by the mall's counterterrorism unit to the Bloomington Police Department. In response to a follow-up request for more reports, CIR was told that the documents had been declared “private security data” under state law.

“This declaration was made jointly by the Bloomington Police Department, the MN Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the Department of Homeland Security after the documents were released to you in 2010,” Lisa C. Netzer, an associate Bloomington city attorney, wrote in an April 2011 e-mail to CIR. “Due to this declaration, I cannot release any additional information.”

Sykora warned that his state's decision to collect, maintain and restrict public scrutiny of criminal intelligence data, despite concerns over privacy and lack of transparency, was a predictor of things to come nationwide.

When it comes to collecting and restricting public access to criminal intelligence data, "The message is: 'You don't want to be protected from terrorism?' " he said. "They won't stop at anything to get that information."

Private company hoarding license-plate data on US drivers

G.W. Schulz — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:05:03 +0000

G.W. Schulz

Courtesy of Steve ReedSecurity guards at the Arden Fair mall in Sacramento see this visual interface after digitally scanning a license plate.

Capitalizing on one of the fastest-growing trends in law enforcement, a private California-based company has compiled a database bulging with more than 550 million license-plate records on both innocent and criminal drivers that can be searched by police.

The technology has raised alarms among civil libertarians, who say it threatens the privacy of drivers. It’s also evidence that 21st-century technology may be evolving too quickly for the courts and public opinion to keep up. The U.S. Supreme Court is only now addressing whether investigators can secretly attach a GPS monitoring device to cars without a warrant.

A ruling in that case has yet to be handed down, but a telling exchange occurred during oral arguments. Chief Justice John Roberts asked lawyers for the government if even he and other members of the court could feasibly be tracked by GPS without a warrant. Yes, came the answer.

Meanwhile, police around the country have been affixing high-tech scanners to the exterior of their patrol cars, snapping a picture of every passing license plate and automatically comparing them to databases of outstanding warrants, stolen cars and wanted bank robbers.

The units work by sounding an in-car alert if the scanner comes across a license plate of interest to police, whereas before, patrol officers generally needed some reason to take an interest in the vehicle, like a traffic violation.

But when a license plate is scanned, the driver’s geographic location is also recorded and saved, along with the date and time, each of which amounts to a record or data point. Such data collection occurs regardless of whether the driver is a wanted criminal, and the vast majority are not.

While privacy rules restrict what police can do with their own databases, Vigilant Video, headquartered in Livermore, Calif., offers a loophole. It’s a private business not required to operate by those same rules.

The company sells its own brand of license-plate readers and has customers around the nation, including in Springfield, Ill.; Kings Point, N.Y.; and Orange, Conn. But Vigilant distinguished itself from competitors by going one step further and collecting hundreds of millions of scans to create what’s known as the National Vehicle Location Service.

A West Coast sales manager for the company, Randy Robinson, said the scanners – as well as data from them compiled in the location system – do far more than simply help identify stolen vehicles. Stories abound of the technology also being used by police to stop wanted killers, bank robbers and drug suspects. Kidnappers could be intercepted, too.

“I just sit back and think, ‘Who would want to thwart officers from doing their jobs more effectively, faster, more efficiently?’ If it was your son or daughter (missing), what would you say?”

Robinson isn't troubled by the thought of his own data being compiled, and he said others shouldn’t worry either if they haven’t violated the law. After all, he said, police could even track him down if necessary. He also pointed out that there’s nothing wrong with Vigilant taking what amounts to public photographs.

While some technology makes it safer for police to perform their jobs or enables them to more easily share information, license-plate recognition has the potential to both transform public safety for the better and undermine rules designed to protect law-abiding Americans from police overreach.

“It’s no different than if you have an officer that manually enters tags,” argued Capt. Johnny Jennings of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department in North Carolina. “They’ve automated this ability to where (the scanner) actually runs the tag for you and compares it to a variety of databases. … We were able to come through with some significant reductions in stolen vehicles.”

Just one patrol officer can log information for thousands of cars in a single shift. Multiply that by an ever-growing number of police departments adopting the technology – often with help from homeland security grants and funds from President Barack Obama’s 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – and the result is an extraordinary volume of data on motorists.

With enough scans, a portrait of your habits begins to emerge, making it a valuable intelligence tool police can use to determine where and when cars were scanned.

“We think once those snapshots become sufficiently dense, it rises to the level of the equivalent of GPS tracking,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union. “Each snapshot of a license plate is a pixel. How many pixels do you need before you have a photograph?”

Lee Tien agrees. He’s a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco and said the ability of police to identify perpetrators in real time is less worrisome than the stockpiling of historic driver data.

“Any time you’re talking about movements in public which you can archive, or any data you can archive over time, then it’s like a way-back machine. ‘Gee, we’ll be able to reconstruct the movements of your car or your cell phone,’ ” Tien said. “ … It’s incredibly revealing, so I think it’s pretty clear this is a big issue.”

The potential value of this new law enforcement tool is undeniable, however

Auto thefts at Sacramento’s Arden Fair mall have dropped from 77 in 2006, before private security deployed license-plate scanners there, to just eight in 2011. Steve Reed, a retired police officer now serving as the mall’s security chief, used $50,000 in federal homeland security grants to purchase four scanners.

Through a unique partnership with the Sacramento Police Department, Reed said, 68 stolen vehicles were recovered at the mall, and 46 arrests have been made since early 2009.

“If a child was abducted here – which hasn’t happened – and they only had a partial plate and knew it was a yellow car, (police) have the capability to go in there and put in the partial plate and go through all the pictures of cars we’ve seen and then actually find the car,” Reed said.

One man now sits in an Arkansas federal correctional facility after he was linked to a stolen car at the mall – also found in his possession were multiple credit cards, ATM cards, Social Security cards and altered checks belonging to victims of mail theft. In another case, authorities broke up a retail theft ring after an in-car alert at the mall led them to a group of people shoplifting inside. A later search of the trunk revealed thousands more in stolen goods.

Arden Fair officials get rid of the records they generate after 30 days, simply because Reed can’t store them all. His guards also do not search across historical data – the watchers can merely wait to be alerted if they’ve happened upon a license plate of interest.

Jennings of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said four of his cruisers today have scanners deployed, and the department began using them about five years ago during a surge in stolen vehicles. One of his detectives managed to collar an auto-burglary suspect with just a partial plate. But the technology isn’t a catch-all. The department simultaneously launched a public information campaign teaching drivers how to prevent auto theft from occurring in the first place, Jennings said.

His department also destroys irrelevant records after 180 days and does not have the ability to search data nationwide through the National Vehicle Location Service.

Roughly 1,200 new users working in law enforcement are signed up to search the location system every month, and agencies don’t have to be a customer of Vigilant, nor do they have to contribute their own data, company sales manager Robinson said. It’s free to the law enforcement community and amounts to a spectacular form of advertising for Vigilant.

Police aren’t the only ones contributing to the database’s size.

Additional records are flowing in from private auto repossession companies that specialize in tracking down debtors no longer making payments on their cars. Imagine tow trucks armed with scanners cruising through apartment complexes and along residential streets, simultaneously searching for delinquent borrowers and generating new leads if a motorist in the future stops paying his or her note.

Some could argue it’s not unlike Google's Street View, except that far fewer people have ever heard of Vigilant Video and its participating fleet of 2,000 so-called “scout” cars. Robinson is quick to emphasize that only authorized law enforcement agencies can search data generated by both private scout cars and patrol vehicles.

“What’s extraordinary to me are the types of cases that are being solved,” Robinson said. “(Police) can go back and say, ‘Who was in the area? Who was in the neighborhood?’ They can call that person up and question them and say, ‘Look, I’ve got a rape victim. You’re a known serial rapist or a rapist who just got out on parole. Why were you two blocks away on that night?’ ”

Seismic Safety Commission meeting

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:59:24 +0000

California Watch's On Shaky Ground series has focused on the systematic failures of the state's chief regulator of construction standards for public schools. At this meeting of the state Seismic Safety Commission, State Architect Chet Widom will present the state auditor's report on the Division of the State Architect. California Watch reporter Corey G. Johnson will also attend.

Location

Delta King Hotel

1000 Front St.

Sacramento, CA

United States

See map: Google Maps

Savings from '3 strikes' reform may be smaller than claimed

Ryan Gabrielson — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:05:03 +0000

Ryan Gabrielson

oneword/istockphoto.com

Prisoners serving long sentences under California’s “three strikes” law are so expensive that legislative analysts say releasing some of them early could eventually save the state $100 million.

A proposed ballot measure, called the Three Strikes Reform Act of 2012 [PDF], would amend the landmark sentencing law that brought jail terms of 25 years to life to criminals convicted of three offenses.

Major savings to California taxpayers are central to proponents’ pitch for the measure. But if it passes, the big reduction in state prison spending is not guaranteed.

The measure would narrow courts’ authority to sentence “third-strikers” to 25 years or more in prison unless their new offense is serious or violent in nature. Secondly, it would allow a select group of third-strikers serving a decades-long sentence for a minor crime to apply for a reduced term.

Written by a pair of Stanford University law professors, David Mills and Michael Romano, the initiative contends it would “save hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars every year for at least ten years.”

The state Legislative Analyst’s Office agreed late last year that it would cut prison costs [PDF], though not quite as significantly as claimed. Savings from the measure could save California more than $100 million in total after years of releasing third-strikers early, the office’s report states.

But it isn’t clear yet how many prisoners would be eligible for reduced sentences.

“The measure bars some third strikers with specified current and prior crimes (such as murder and certain sex, gun, and drug felonies) from being eligible for resentencing," the legislative analyst's report said.

Judges would have final say on cutting prison time, based on whether an inmate poses an “unreasonable risk to public safety.”

Dan Newman, a spokesman for the initiative’s supporters, said they estimate there are about 3,000 third-strikers incarcerated on a minor conviction who could apply to the court.

Data from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation suggests the real number is much lower.

At the end of December, state prisons held 4,501 third-strikers on convictions for non-violent or non-sexual crimes, Lee Seale, head of research and internal oversight at the corrections department, said in a written statement.

A large majority of them (3,187) had been previously sentenced to prison for “crimes against persons.” That category includes murder and several violent and sex offenses that would exclude prisoners from asking for a reduced term.

Only 1,314 third-strikers have no prior crime against persons on their records.

This calculation does not provide a precise accounting of how many third-strikers might benefit, or how much money taxpayers could save.

The measure’s proponents still must gather 504,760 voter signatures to secure a spot on the November ballot.

The California State Auditor detailed in a 2010 report that third-strikers cost the state almost $20 billion over the course of their incarceration. A third of that expense was for health care.

Third-strikers are older than the general prison population. Corrections department figures show that 88 percent of inmates with three strikes [PDF] are at least 40 years old. Only about 42 percent [PDF] of all California inmates are among the over-40 set.

There are obvious reasons for the disparity. To collect three strikes takes at least three convictions, which often are spaced out by stretches in prison. Further, long sentences are the whole point of the law. Most third-strikers receive at least 25 years, according to state corrections data.

Prosecutors move to shut down Mendocino pot permit program

Michael Montgomery — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:05:03 +0000

Michael Montgomery

Michael Montgomery/California WatchMedical marijuana grower Matthew Cohen examines plants at his Mendocino County farm before a raid by federal drug agents last year.

Mendocino County’s ambitious effort to regulate marijuana production – the first of its kind in California and the nation – is facing growing uncertainty following new threats of legal action by federal prosecutors.

The controversial program, which began two years ago, authorizes growers to cultivate up to 99 marijuana plants, provided they follow local and state medical marijuana rules, pay thousands of dollars in fees to the county and submit to inspections by sheriff's deputies.

The program has proven popular with growers seeking a safe harbor – nearly 100 registered for last fall’s harvest – and county officials assert that drawing a bright line between legal and illegal marijuana growing benefits the safety of the wider public.

“We’re trying to bring order from chaos,” County Supervisor John McCowen said in a 2011 interview. McCowen earlier had sought to ban marijuana cultivation, but soon realized it was a losing proposition in a county where pot – legal and illegal – is widely seen as the biggest cash crop.

But just as the program has gained local acceptance, it’s facing growing pressure from federal law enforcement.

In October, DEA agents raided a farm near Ukiah owned by Matthew Cohen, a well-known medical marijuana grower who helped draft the county’s cultivation ordinance.

The agents destroyed dozens of marijuana plants and seized permits and other documents issued by county officials. According to Cohen, one agent involved in the raid said Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman deserved jail time for cooperating with growers.

Last week, federal prosecutors stepped up the pressure further by informing Mendocino officials that the program was in violation of federal drug laws and that the county faced litigation and other enforcement actions if it continued, according to drug enforcement officials.

“They told the county to shut the program down,” said one official who was briefed on the matter. The official said Melinda Haag, U.S. attorney for California’s Northern District, gave the county two weeks to take action.

A spokesman for Haag declined to comment.

At an Oct. 7 press conference announcing a statewide pushback on California’s marijuana industry, Haag raised concerns about cities and counties that were “licensing and ostensibly authorizing the commercial and very profitable cultivation and distribution of marijuana.”

“In our view, these licensing schemes are inconsistent with federal law,” she said.

Haag stopped short of threatening to prosecute local officials who authorize marijuana cultivation, but federal prosecutors in other states have warned that anyone who facilitates commercial pot production –including elected officials – risked possible criminal penalties.

Mendocino County officials, who were expected to discuss the matter during yesterday's Board of Supervisors meeting, declined to answer questions about the new warnings from the U.S. Justice Department. According to an agenda posted on Mendocino County’s website, the board met in closed session with legal counsel Jeanine Nadel to discuss “significant exposure to litigation.”

“As of this moment, no decision has been made to suspend the program,” McCowen said following yesterday's meeting.

Nadel did not return phone calls, but in an interview last month, she pointed to a recent court case that raised questions about the future of the county’s program.

In Pack v. Long Beach, the state Court of Appeals ruled that authorizing marijuana production or distribution through a permit program placed a local government in violation of federal law.

Medical marijuana advocates have asked the California Supreme Court to review the decision, but so far, judges have not decided whether to hear the case. If the ruling stands, legal experts say it could force many medical marijuana operators out of business and spur Mendocino to stop regulating medical marijuana production.

“If the Pack decision stands, I think we would have issue with our permitting procedure,” Nadel told SF Weekly. Allman, Mendocino's sheriff, said that his office has no pending permit applications but that they usually arrive closer to the start of the growing season in April.

At the October press conference, Haag expressed hope that the Pack decision would draw local governments into closer compliance with the federal Controlled Substances Act.

“My guess is that there are many cities and counties around the state right now that are analyzing the Pack decision,” she said. “And they will hopefully be making some changes as a result.”

A version of this story aired on KQED’s "The California Report," where the audio is available

Border agency seeks more unmanned aircraft use in Calif.

Andrew Becker — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 08:05:03 +0000

Andrew Becker

U.S. Customs and Border ProtectionU.S. Customs and Border Protection has added unmanned surveillance aircraft, like the one above, and wants to deploy them east of San Diego.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials are looking to expand the use of remotely piloted surveillance aircraft to cover nearly all of California, allowing the unmanned vehicles to fly over the last major section of the Southwest border.

The agency's Office of Air and Marine expects the Federal Aviation Administration this year to permit it to extend its unmanned aircraft operations into airspace just east of the San Diego metropolitan area, border agency spokeswoman Gina Gray said.

Hailed by some, including U.S. Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., for their cutting-edge technology, the unmanned aircraft’s expense – and efficacy – has been criticized by others.

At a cost of $18.5 million each to operate – including radar and sensor systems, maintenance, a ground control station, and the aircraft itself – the unmanned aircraft have been credited with helping to seize 46,600 pounds of illicit drugs and catching a relatively small number of people, 7,500, engaged in illegal activity along the border since late 2005.

Gray said it would be unfair to measure the program's success by drug interdiction or border-crosser apprehensions alone, as the unmanned aircraft aren’t used solely for border security. The aircraft also assist in emergency and disaster response efforts.

The border agency has a fleet of nine Predator B aerial vehicles, including one deployed late last month to Arizona and another in October in Texas. Officials anticipate another aircraft will be deployed this summer in Florida. The aircraft, which can stay aloft for 20 hours, already patrol about 1,200 miles along the Southwest border from just east of El Centro in southeastern California to the Gulf of Mexico.

The agency flew more unmanned aircraft missions in the 2011 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, than any other year. More than 100 personnel are trained on the aircraft system, according to Department of Homeland Security records.

Customs and Border Protection Assistant Commissioner Michael C. Kostelnik, a retired U.S. Air Force major general who oversees the agency’s air and marine operations, including the unmanned aircraft program, testified in July 2010 [PDF] that no other agency aircraft has the capabilities of the Predator B.

The unmanned aircraft operations "provide leading-edge capabilities to homeland security missions,” Kostelnik said.

The expansion of the unmanned aerial vehicle program comes as the number of U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions in the San Diego sector dropped for the third year in a row, down from a decade-high of 162,390 in 2008 to 42,447 last year, according to U.S. Border Patrol records.

The border agency's unmanned aircraft program, in operation since 2005, has four so-called Certificates of Authorization issued by the FAA to fly along the southern border. The border agency also has unmanned aircraft operating on the northern border.

Such approvals are required by the FAA for public-use aircraft – such as planes used by law enforcement, universities or land agencies – to fly in the national airspace. For Customs and Border Protection, the border-region airspace extends about 15 miles into the United States.

FAA spokesman Les Dorr Jr. declined to comment on the border agency's proposed use of the airspace, citing agency policy to not discuss such matters because of privacy concerns or law enforcement-sensitive operations. As of September, there were 285 certificates issued to 85 users nationwide.

The border agency’s plan to stretch the program into the more populous Southern California area – and future goals to expand the fleet to 24 aircraft – worries some air safety advocates. A Predator B aircraft crashed [PDF] outside of Nogales, Ariz., in April 2006.

“We have always been opposed to any unmanned aircraft flying in the United States,” said Gail Dunham, executive director of the National Air Disaster Alliance/Foundation, which advocates for greater air safety standards, citing the potential for disaster. “This is insane in a heavily populated area.”

Shawn Moran, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents about 20,000 Border Patrol agents, said the money would be better spent on other things.

“CBP has the tendency to go out and buy flashy equipment and cutting-edge technology,” he said. “You could have all the cameras, UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), 2,500 miles of fence, but that’s all totally worthless if you can’t get an agent there to make an arrest.”

New handgun regulation faces federal lawsuit

Ryan Gabrielson — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 08:05:02 +0000

Ryan Gabrielson

Federico Stevanin/freedigitalphotos.net

A new California law that prohibits the carrying of an unloaded handgun in public already is under legal attack.

Charles Nichols, who has set up an advocay group in Redondo Beach, filed a lawsuit late last year in federal court against the state seeking to overturn restrictions on where he can display a handgun.

AB 144, which took effect this week, expands California’s firearm regulations to prohibit people from openly carrying an unloaded handgun outside of a person’s home or vehicle. It already was illegal to publicly carry a loaded handgun.

Nichols’ complaint contends that such state laws violate the Second Amendment, protecting the right to keep and bear arms for personal safety.

California law allows handgun owners to openly carry their weapons only when they are in imminent danger.

Handgun restrictions have been at higher risk of reversal since 2008, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down strict regulations on the weapons in Washington, D.C.

California’s restrictions should face a similar fate as those of the nation’s capital, Nichols argues in the lawsuit. “By banning fully functional, loaded handguns from being openly carried for the purpose of self-defense, (California’s statute) is a more restrictive ban than the law struck down in (Washington) as unconstitutional,” he wrote.

Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, D-Pasadena, wrote AB 144 and said the law in no way infringes on gun owners’ rights.

“We’re not taking anybody’s right to hunt away, or anybody’s right to be a security guard, or to protect your home,” Portantino said. “But you don’t need a gun to buy a cheeseburger or to buy a cup of coffee.”

The legislator described the measure as closing a loophole in state law, which previously regulated handguns only when they contained bullets. A person could openly display a handgun if the ammunition was in a jacket pocket.

This scenario alarmed police across the state, who received calls to check unconcealed weapons in public, Portantino said. The California Police Chiefs Association supported the legislation.

“The problem was caused by the proliferation of unnecessary display of weapons,” Portantino said.

Advocates for openly carrying firearms contend that state and local governments are reaching beyond their discretion with AB 144 and similar laws.

Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor and expert in firearm regulations, said the gun-rights crowd has a point. According to the Supreme Court’s ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, “the right to keep and bear arms includes a right not just to possess guns, but also to bear them in the sense of carry them,” Volokh said.

However, the federal courts have upheld regulation of concealed weapons, which require a special permit in much of the country.

California’s concealed weapons permitting process varies by location and is operated by county sheriffs or city police departments. In his complaint, Nichols cites his difficultly in obtaining a concealed weapon permit as further justification for openly carrying a handgun.

In the 19th century, Volokh said, the public viewed concealed weapons with suspicion. Now, people prefer not seeing firearms.

“By today’s standards, carrying openly is seen as an in-your-face sort of act in a way that carrying concealed is not,” he said.