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Add this to notes Since I gave my email address to the NORML president he has never contacted me about working on the web site. But he did send me one email with my name it it And he hasn't added me to the NORML email list I suspect he is also spreading lies about me Put this in a NORML section on the new web page
Sky Harbor Airport shut down over a few lousy ounces of marijuana??? Let's see if this was that expensive $300+ an ounce medical marijuana then less then 3 ounces of pot shut down Sky Harbor Airport. If this was normally price black market weed that sells for $50 to $100 an ounce then a lousy 7 to 14 ounces of weed caused Sky Harbor Airport to shut down. I really haven't keep up with prices of pounds or kilos of weed for years, but I suspect this might have been a deal for a pound or kilo of weed, if they still even sell kilos. One website I looked at says marijuana wholesales for between $350 and $700 a pound in Arizona. Your going to cry when you hear this. When I was in high school and college you could buy a stinking kilo of marijuana for $100. Yes, I said a kilo, that's 2.2 pounds. In those days ounce bags which were called lids cost $10. http://news.yahoo.com/police-airport-lockdown-followed-drug-shooting-152600660.html Police: Airport lockdown followed drug shooting Associated Press TEMPE, Ariz. (AP) — An attempted drug transaction triggered a shooting that led to a three-hour lockdown of the busiest terminal at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, police said Friday. One of three suspects arrested in the case told police that the trio had gone to a Tempe gas station Thursday afternoon to meet a man and buy $700 worth of marijuana. They told police that the man got into their car and took out a gun and was shot in the ensuing struggle. The three suspects — two men and a woman — were pursued in a high-speed chase that ended at the Phoenix airport. All three ran from the car, but two were quickly apprehended. A second man remained at large for about three hours as hundreds of officers searched Terminal 4. He ultimately was found hiding in a parking garage. The lockdown of the terminal, which is one of three at Sky Harbor, resulted in 25 flight cancellations and delays of others. Tempe police on Friday identified the suspects as Layron Dejarnette, 25; Louis Anthony Clark, 25, and Rosetta Salazar, 18. It could not be immediately determined Friday afternoon if any of them have attorneys yet. Dejarnette was being held on suspicion of reckless driving, conspiracy and unlawful flight from law enforcement. Salazar was accused of marijuana possession, conspiracy and use of an electronic communication for a drug transaction, police said. They said Clark was being held on aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, disorderly conduct with a weapon, tampering with evidence, conspiracy, possession of a weapon by a prohibited person and discharging a firearm in the city limits. The man who was shot remained hospitalized but is expected to live, according to police. His name hasn't been released.
For years I have said the "War on Drugs" is nothing but a "jobs program for cops" and a "government welfare program for police departments". This editorial seems to agree with that. Of course the "War on Drugs" is also a "War on the American people" and a "War on the Bill of Rights" http://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/os-ed-medical-marijuana-sheriffs-092014-20140919-story.html Why sheriffs oppose medical pot: Profits, not public safety By Ray Strack, Guest columnist The opposition of the Florida Sheriffs Association to Amendment 2 has more to do with cash than public safety. The sheriffs have become so accustomed to federal anti-drug money and property forfeitures that they resist any change that might someday shut off their pipeline of cash, cars and property. Consider Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, Florida's most vocal opponent of medical-marijuana reform. During his highly publicized debate with attorney John Morgan, Judd vigorously defended his motives: "It may come as a shock to you," he told the audience in Lakeland, "but our budget is not predicated on arrests; it's not predicated on seizures; it's not created so we can spend that operating money on cars, or capital equipment, or operating equipment, or salaries." Hogwash. According to Justice Department records, the Polk County Sheriff's Office took in more than $1.2 million from the federal Assets Forfeiture Fund just since 2007, part of the $230 million that all of Florida's law-enforcement agencies received from the fund during that period. The fund distributes the proceeds of property seized in law-enforcement asset forfeitures, primarily from those suspected of drug crimes. No arrest is even required, and the standard of proof is significantly less than in a criminal case, making it a favorite tool of police and prosecutors. Carrying excess cash? It can be confiscated if officials can convince a judge the funds came from drug trafficking. Caught driving with a marijuana cigarette? Your car can be hauled away. Between 1989 and 2010, U.S. attorneys seized at least $12.6 billion in assets, with the fund growing sixfold in just two decades, and from $2.9 billion to $4.4 billion in 2012 alone. The states were quick to jump on the forfeiture bandwagon, and Florida was no exception. According to a 2010 Institute for Justice study, Florida law-enforcement agencies seized $104 million in assets between 2001 and 2003. Florida's Contraband Forfeiture Act lets the sheriffs and other local law-enforcement agencies keep 85 percent of the value of the property they seize, with the remainder given to charities — doubtless buying considerable good will for the elected sheriffs at campaign time. Where does the money go? In 2003, it was reported that top Tampa police officials kept a 43-vehicle fleet of captured cars that included five Lincoln Navigators, a pair of Ford Expeditions, a BMW, a Lexus and — former Police Chief Bennie Holder's personal favorite — a $38,000 Chevy Tahoe. More recently, federal officials froze nearly $30 million that had been seized by police in tiny Bal Harbor (population 2,574), after the department was found spending the money on a $100,000 35-foot boat with three Mercury outboards, a $7,000 police chiefs' banquet, a $15,000 laser virtual firing range and an "anti-drug beach bash," with a reported price tag of $21,000. In the Broward County town of Sunrise, millions in soon-to-be-forfeited cash led narcotics officers to lure international drug buyers into suburban restaurants so the department could confiscate $6 million in just two years. Much of the money went for police overtime in coordinating the seizures, with one narcotics detective in 2012 bringing home a combined salary and overtime of $183,156 — more than his chief of police earned. Law enforcement should be about protecting the public, not pocketing profits. The Niagara of forfeited money flowing into sheriffs' offices and police departments distorts the police mission — and, in the case of Florida's Amendment 2, has blinded some law-enforcement administrators to the compassionate benefits of medical marijuana. No amount of money justifies turning otherwise law-abiding patients into criminals or forcing sick people into the illicit drug market, where their dollars support drug cartels and criminal gangs. The only risk posed by Amendment 2 is to the police administrators' bottom lines. Ray Strack, who worked 27 years as a U.S. Customs special agent, is the principal Florida spokesperson for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a national organization. Copyright © 2014, Orlando Sentinel
Don't think of them as "public servants", think of them as "royal government rulers". http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_26566995/audit-some-abuses-san-jose-employee-credit-cards Audit: Some abuses of San Jose employee credit cards By Mike Rosenberg mrosenberg@mercurynews.com Posted: 09/19/2014 11:20:48 AM PDT10 Comments | SAN JOSE -- A new audit has found that most San Jose city workers are judicious users of taxpayer-backed credit cards, but there are apparently a few bad apples out there making some pretty lavish purchases with your money. Consider one unnamed employee who used his city of San Jose procurement card, or "P-Card," to rent a brand new BMW for a couple weeks after his own car got totaled, costing taxpayers $550. Then there are the City Hall workers who charged taxpayers $10 delivery fees to have food and beverage delivered upstairs from the first-floor coffee cart at City Hall. Or the group of 28 city workers and delegates who dropped $2,800 on dinner -- including $700 on alcohol -- at an "expensive downtown restaurant" and charged it to the public. And the city worker who splurged $2,250 total for 10 VIP tickets for non-city employees at an awards dinner. The report released Thursday by City Auditor Sharon Erickson tracked some of the $12 million in purchases made over the past year by 900 city workers who have P-Cards. The workers aren't identified in any way. The Finance Department, which oversees the P-Card program, says it's looking into each incident of presumed wrongdoing and has already taken away cards from some workers as a result of the audit. The auditor made several recommendations to ensure closer scrutiny of the credit cards, most of which the city has agreed to implement. Finance Director Julia Cooper noted the city was pleased that, despite a few glaring examples to the contrary, the vast majority of city workers complied with the rules. The city, like many government agencies, uses P-Cards for small or routine purchases as a way to cut down on staff time it says is better spent on larger buys. The departments of environmental services, parks and recreation and public works charge the most money on their P-Cards. Contact Mike Rosenberg at 408-975-9346. Follow him on Twitter at Twitter.com/RosenbergMerc
‘Stop-and-Frisk’ Ebbs, but Still Hangs Over Brooklyn Lives Cops - F*ck the 4th Amendment!!!! You ain't got no Constitutional rights in NYC!!! http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/20/nyregion/friskings-ebb-but-still-hang-over-brooklyn-lives.html?hpw&rref=nyregion&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpHedThumbWell&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well ‘Stop-and-Frisk’ Ebbs, but Still Hangs Over Brooklyn Lives By JOSEPH GOLDSTEINSEPT. 19, 2014 In the projects of Brownsville, Brooklyn, the New York Police Department’s new strategy, Omnipresence, is what it says. Despite promises of change, to some it feels like stop and frisk by another name. In the housing projects of eastern Brooklyn, some young men no longer clasp hands when greeting each other, they say, fearful that their grasp might be mistaken for a drug deal and invite a search by the police. Friends heading to the bodega sometimes split up, worried that walking in a group will attract police attention. They are subtle yet telling changes, lasting effects of years of police stops of young men, mostly in black and Latino neighborhoods. Often the stops were without legal justification, a federal court found last year. Today, “stop-and-frisk” as New York City knew it is over, undone by a torrent of public outrage and political pressure, and by legal challenges that culminated in the ruling that the Police Department’s drastically increased use of the street stops of black and Hispanic men over the preceding decade was unconstitutional. The police remain a visible presence in the borough’s Brownsville neighborhood, where the vast and violent expanse of public housing had made the neighborhood a proving ground for the department’s use of the tactics as a way to curb gun violence. As part of a new strategy called Omnipresence, the officers now stand on street corners like sentries, only rarely confronting young men and patting them down for weapons. But the residents of Brownsville, conditioned by the years of the stop-and-frisk tactics, still view these officers warily. In dozens of interviews over the summer, people in Brownsville described how stop-and-frisk’s legacy was still felt in the altered rhythms of daily life, like the walk to the bodega. Some people head indoors earlier, they say, because darkness brings not only the increased threat of violence, but also a lower threshold for being stopped by the police. Some people are hesitant to visit friends or relatives in neighboring projects, where they risk being stopped on suspicion of trespass. And instead of enthusiastic handshakes, a bump of the fists or the elbows is a more common greeting among the young men. Elsewhere that might have seemed the influence of professional athletes; in Brownsville, it took hold as an adaptation to a consuming police presence. “No open palm anymore; we just do elbows,” Pharaoh Pearson, a 38-year-old club promoter, said recently as he and two friends sat in the courtyard of the Tilden Houses in Brownsville. “That’s an automatic search because they say we were doing hand-to-hand transactions,” said one of Mr. Pearson’s friends, Ernest Payne, a construction worker and milk deliveryman. Photo Tijay Lewis, 15, holding his brother, Harlem, 4. Credit Victor J. Blue for The New York Times Under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the number of street stops soared as they became a cornerstone of his administration’s antigun efforts, each encounter documented by an officer on a form known as a 250. The stops rarely turned up evidence of criminality but became a fact of life for young black and Hispanic men in high-crime neighborhoods, and public housing projects in particular. By the time Bill de Blasio took office as mayor this year, less than five months after a federal judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, ruled against the city’s use of stop-and-frisk tactics, the practice was declining precipitously. Mayor de Blasio heralded the change as an important step toward improving police-community relations after years of increasingly aggressive policing under Mr. Bloomberg and his police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly. But there are limits to how quickly campaign pledges and court rulings can change how people feel about the police, particularly in neighborhoods where high levels of crime make the police a perpetual and often aggressive presence. While Brownsville is safer than it was in the early 1990s, when the local police precinct, the 73rd, recorded more than 70 homicides in some years, it is still a dangerous place. This year, as of Sept. 7, the 73rd Precinct had recorded 13 homicides, including at least four in the projects, and more than 400 shootings, stabbings and other felony assaults. So even as the confrontational, often intrusive stop-and-frisk encounters have significantly declined, police officers today remain ever-present in the projects of Brownsville. The new strategy for policing the projects is taking shape night by night. Officers stand at posts, often along the perimeter of the towers of the Tilden Houses or at the edge of low-rise brick buildings of the neighboring Brownsville Houses. For the most part, they seem to hang back. To add to their visibility, officers park their cars on the sidewalk and turn on the flashing roof lights. At night, the blue beams illuminate the brick of the projects for hours on end, projecting both a sense of emergency and control. Residents of the projects study the officers with a mix of wariness and curiosity, as they and the police both try to discern the rules of engagement in a post-stop-and-frisk era. “They’ll be here all night,” said a 20-year-old man who watched the officer pacing near the flashing blue lights. The man, who declined to give his name, acknowledged, “They don’t stop people as much as they used to, a few months ago.” But if the number of police stops has declined, stops and summonses for matters like congregating outside a building entrance remain a core part of policing the projects. Enforcement of minor offenses has been a hallmark of Mr. de Blasio’s police commissioner, William J. Bratton, since his days as chief of the transit police and his first tour, under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, as police commissioner. And it is a strategy he has shown little sign of abandoning, even after Eric Garner died in July after a struggle with police officers on Staten Island who were trying to arrest him for selling loose, untaxed cigarettes. In Brownsville, the frustration flowing from such enforcement is not hard to find. Dan Richardson, 48, said that on a sweltering morning this summer, he stopped into a restaurant for a cup of ice water and continued down busy Rockaway Avenue. A police car pulled alongside him. An officer asked what was in the cup, evidently suspecting liquor. “When I told them it was water, he got out of the car and reached his hand out for the cup and put it up to his nose,” recalled Mr. Richardson, who lives in neighboring East New York but grew up in Brownsville and is back often. The officer, realizing it was water, tried to give back the cup, but Mr. Richardson replied, “I don’t want the water after you done put your nose in it and sniffed it.” So the officer threw the cup on the ground, Mr. Richardson said. Car stops and searches, which are not reflected in the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk totals, are also a source of friction, some people in the neighborhood say. “They pull up on you and knock on your window, pull you over, and they ask to search your car,” said Lamel Battle, a 28-year-old construction worker. He said he was most recently pulled over two months earlier in an encounter in which officers searched the trunk of his car, finding nothing. “They ask you how your day is going — one guy will try to talk to you for a minute, try to calm you down, while they’re searching your car,” said Mr. Battle, who won a $50,000 settlement from the city after a lawsuit stemming from a 2007 disorderly-conduct arrest. “It’s regular.” Photo A police officer watching local residents after an arrest during a patrol in the Albany Houses project in Brooklyn. Replacing the blanket use of stop-and-frisk tactics, the police have adopted a strategy they call Omnipresence, keeping officers visible in high-crime areas. Credit Victor J. Blue for The New York Times Today, teenagers and young men in Brownsville live in the shadow of years of police encounters — as they were heading to the store, or sitting on courtyard benches, or walking to church — that accustomed them to having to prove their innocence to police again and again. “Sometimes I’ll let them check me so they don’t think I have anything to hide,” Tijay Lewis, 15, said of what happens when officers stop him for a frisk. “I tell them I don’t have any guns on me. They say, ‘That’s for me to find out.’ ” Tijay said he had been stopped 10 times since turning 13. “I’m black so I get stopped a lot of times,” he said as he stood with his father, David, 36, and his 4-year-old brother, Harlem, in the courtyard of the Tilden Houses. But Tijay observed that it had been months since he was last stopped. “It feels a little bit different,” he said of the atmosphere of the Tilden Houses. When Tijay is outside, his father tries to keep a close watch. If he loses Tijay in the crowd of teenagers, Mr. Lewis will send him inside to change the color of his shirt. He wants his son easier to spot should trouble break out.
Why Arizona health care is so expensive Dr. John Ammon blames it on your US Congressmen, Congresswoman and US Senators!!!! http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2014/09/19/arizona-health-care-expensive/15886839/ Why Arizona health care is so expensive John Ammon, AZ I See It 4:21 p.m. MST September 19, 2014 Doctor: Politicians have been wrapping health care in red tape for generations. Obamacare is only making it worse. aca cost In my 36 years as a practicing physician, there have been few constants, but one of them is health care's ever-increasing price tag. I was reminded of this recently by the news that Arizonans will face another round of premium increases in 2015. Arizonans will pay an average of 11.2 percent more for individual plans sold over the marketplace ("Report: Arizona's ACA plans to hike rates 21 percent," Aug. 21). It's important to understand what is driving these price increases. Contrary to what many politicians say, doctors aren't to blame. Neither are insurance companies, typically cast by politicians as the villains in the American health-care drama. Much of the blame actually lies with the politicians and the bureaucrats they've empowered over decades of health-care "reforms." They wrap doctors, insurers and the entire health-care industry in burdensome regulations — red tape that dramatically increases health-care costs. Politicians have been wrapping health care in red tape for generations. When Washington or our state government passes a health-care reform bill, they usually establish a new government agency or commission with sweeping authority to dictate how doctors and insurers operate, what services we can and can't provide, and how we must report what we do back to the government. These laws are passed and these agencies are presumably established with the best of intentions. Unfortunately, the regulatory burden they create is a major contributing factor in health care's constantly increasing costs. Consider the Affordable Care Act. Passed in 2010, the law commonly known as "Obamacare" empowered bureaucrats in Washington to rewrite large sections of American health-care law. After two years, they had already created some 13,000 pages of regulation. They have written and promulgated many thousands — perhaps tens of thousands —more since then. These regulations are substantial. They affect what happens in treatment and waiting rooms, the operating room, and everywhere in between. Doctors, insurers, and health-care workers must understand and follow them to the letter. If not, we physicians face fines, possible license revocation or possible criminal charges. But it isn't easy to understand what the regulations mean. Bureaucratic language is not plain English. So armies of personnel and lawyers are hired to help us figure out and implement them. It takes another army to fill out the paperwork, file it, and fax it between offices, insurance companies and the government agencies that ultimately pull the strings. Everyone who's ever been to a doctor's office knows this. There are dozens of employees behind the front desk. There's also a wall, or maybe an entire room, full of files that are increasingly being sent between offices and government agencies. The whole system is incredibly complex and expensive to maintain. Complying with government health-care regulations cost untold billions of dollars every year. Medicare and Medicaid alone can take up some 40 percent of the overhead costs in the average doctor's practice. Insurance companies must deal with comparable regulatory burdens. All of these costs are reflected in your premiums. And this problem has created a vicious cycle in American health care. As health care became more expensive, politicians passed Obamacare to fix it. Yet the law only made the problem worse by cementing health care in even more regulation and expense. Arizonans learned this the hard way over the past year. When Obamacare first went into effect earlier this year, premiums on our state's open market health-care plans —the plans purchased on healthcare.gov — increased by 51 percent. Washington tried to undo some of the damage with further regulation in recent months, yet now premiums are expected to increase by a further 11 percent in 2015. Further increases are inevitable, and neither doctors nor insurance companies can stop it. Health care will continue to get more expensive until physicians and patients take decision-making power back from bureaucrats. Only then can health care's costs be reined in. Dr. John Ammon is an anesthesiologist who practices in Phoenix. -------- Health Insurance Premiums Arizona is among the states expected to experience the highest increase in Obamacare health insurance premiums in 2015, according to a study released by the PriceWaterhouseCoopers Health Research Institute. Here are the 9 states where increases for individual marketplace plans will be the highest. Health Insurance Premiums Indiana 2015 average rate: $514 Average premium increase: 15.4 percent Number of issuers: 9 Health Insurance Premiums Tennessee 2015 average rate: $360 Average premium increase: 13.8 percent Number of issuers: 8 Health Insurance Premiums Kansas 2015 average rate: $352 Average premium increase: 13.6 percent Number of issuers: 5 Health Insurance Premiums Vermont 2015 average rate: N/A Average premium increase: 12.6 percent Number of issuers: 2 Health Insurance Premiums Arkansas 2015 average rate: N/A Average premium increase: 11.7 percent Number of issuers: 8 Health Insurance Premiums Iowa 2015 average rate: N/A Average premium increase: 11.5 percent Number of issuers: 2 Health Insurance Premiums Virginia 2015 average rate: $351 Average premium increase: 11.3 percent Number of issuers: 9 Health Insurance Premiums Arizona 2015 average rate: $331 Average premium increase: 11.2 percent Number of issuers: 6 Health Insurance Premiums North Carolina 2015 average rate: $415 Average premium increase: 10.8 percent Number of issuers: 4
Come on, I thought having a gun and a badge meant that you could have sex with any woman you want??? Well at least that's what the cops seem to think. http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/mesa/2014/09/19/mesa-officer-accused-sex-crime-bond-abrk/15900329/ Mesa police officer accused of sex crimes out on bond Tyler Fingert, The Republic | azcentral.com 3:03 p.m. MST September 19, 2014 The Mesa police officer accused of molesting three women, including a 14-year-old girl he encountered during a police stop, was released from custody this week after a judge determined there was not enough evidence to hold him without bond. Justin Cherry, 34, appeared in Maricopa County Superior Court on Friday for a pre-trial conference after being released earlier this week when he posted a $5,500 cash bond. Cherry was originally held without bond following his Aug. 1 arrest, but Judge Phemonia Miller on Sept. 10 rule that Cherry should be eligible for release after a hearing in which Cherry's attorneys presented evidence in his favor, according to court records. "Based upon the evidence presented, this Court cannot find that the proof is evident or the presumption great that the Defendant committed the instant offenses," Miller wrote. Cherry, his attorney and representatives of the Maricopa County Attorney's Office all declined to comment on the case. Mesa Police began investigating allegations against Cherry in September 2013 after a woman claimed that Cherry sexually assaulted her while he was responding to her call to police, according to court records. Court records showed that one other woman reported that Cherry inappropriately touched her during a police call. Following the reports of alleged sexual assault,detectives went through Cherry's police reports from January to July 2013, looking for any contact he had with other women, according to records, and police identified 20 women. Detectives spoke with several women and a 14-year-old girl investigators interviewed said she felt uncomfortable during her traffic stop with Cherry in May 2013, documents showed. Court records showed that detectives spoke with the girl in November 2013 about her encounter with Cherry. She told detectives she was stopped with one other person while she riding a bicycle on the street. She stated that before she was brought home and cited for curfew violation she was checked by Cherry and said she felt uncomfortable when Cherry touched her in an area around her chest and waistline. "I was scared...I was crying because he handcuffed me and put me in the back of the car," she said. On Friday, Superior Court Commissioner Virginia Richter set Cherry's trial date for May 2015.
Tempe Town Lake 'unsafe' water sample threatens race I wasn't lying when I called it "Tempe Town Toilet" years ago!!!! For more on that check out: http://tempetowntoilet.100webspace.net/ Tempe loves these events because they make lots of money off of them. But us local residents hate them because they cause nothing but noise and parking problems. And now for the article http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe/2014/09/19/tempe-town-lake-unsafe-water-sample-threatens-race/15906329/ Tempe Town Lake 'unsafe' water sample threatens race Dianna M. Náñez, The Republic | azcentral.com 1:58 p.m. MST September 19, 2014 Tempe has received water samples from Town Lake taken Thursday morning that show E. coli bacteria more than 10 times higher than the state's allowable safety levels for swimming, placing the swimming portion of a large triathlon Sunday in jeopardy. "Yesterday's E. coli reading in the middle sample was 2,420," Tempe officials said in a news release. "The state standard for full-body contact is 235." The results may force cancellation of the swimming portion of Sunday's Life Time Tri Tempe, which draws hundreds of athletes. Nikki Ripley, a Tempe spokeswoman, told The Arizona Republic Friday that the swim proceeding as scheduled would be dependent upon water-quality testing. The water was sampled again Friday. Results will be available Saturday morning. The triathlon organizer is planning to proceed Sunday with the competition as a duathlon, with bike and running elements only, dropping the swim if water quality still is not safe. Bacteria levels increased following last week's record rainfall, from which storm-water runoff entered Town Lake from upstream sources.
You never know when one of the cops from the Arizona Department of Agriculture is going to encounter an armed potato, tomato or artichoke!!! You gotta give them enough firepower to defeat these armed vegetable terrorists. http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/2014/09/19/agriculture-agents-riot-shotguns/15934439/ U.S. military gives state agriculture agents M-16s Stephen Hamway, Cronkite News 8:57 p.m. MST September 19, 2014 Of the nearly 800 fully automatic M-16s Arizona law-enforcement organizations have received under a Department of Defense program that gives away surplus military hardware, 13 have gone to a state agency better known for serving farmers and ranchers and protecting consumers. A review of state-level data on the so-called 1033 program found that the Arizona Department of Agriculture also received nine 12-gauge shotguns described as "riot type," a term generally applied to shotguns with shorter barrels and larger magazines than those used by hunters. Laura Oxley, a spokeswoman for the agency, declined a request to interview officials overseeing the weapons and their use or to comment on the acquisitions. She instead e-mailed a statement noting that the Department of Agriculture has "fewer than a dozen" officers certified by the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board patrolling areas that are "mostly rural and frontier." The statement said officers who have undergone special training have M-16s as part of their standard-issue equipment. The department's 2012-13 annual report noted its participation in the 1033 program and the acquisition of 13 M-16s. It also said officers were equipped with 10 "rifleman sets" — military-style backpacks that hold ammunition magazines, water bladders and other tactical gear. "The rifleman sets greatly enhance the officer's survivability if they ever find themselves on their own in the field and have a need (for) water and equipment in one bag," the report said. The report listed the training status of nine certified officers. It also listed the efforts of an Office of Special Investigations where a supervisor and investigator "have gone through extensive training to investigate criminal and civil misconduct involving native plant theft and destruction; theft, killing and cruelty of livestock; illegal slaughter and processing of food animals; archaeological site destruction and theft of cultural resources." The report cited 45 cases of alleged criminal/civil violations involving native plants, livestock and food safety, "of which 29 resulted in criminal referral." It mentioned "24 native plant cases that resulted in successful compliance," as well as investigations involving three suspicious cases of livestock deaths.
When the police break the law and terrorize us civilians who pays the bill??? Us civilians!!! http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/2014/09/20/mcso-racial-profiling-suit-fees/15944391/ Costs for MCSO racial-profiling suit top $30 million Megan Cassidy, The Republic | azcentral.com 11:22 p.m. MST September 19, 2014 Attorneys fees, extra support staff and a new internal oversight bureau have added millions of dollars to the bill for a Maricopa County Sheriff's Office lawsuit and subsequent reforms imposed by a federal judge who found that the agency's immigration-enforcement policies racially profiled Latinos. Costs stemming from the federal class-action suit now stand at $30.2 million, not including more than $10 million to be paid out annually in recurring fees, according to court documents. Sheriff's officials in December estimated that $21.9 million of taxpayer dollars would be allocated to pay for the ruling's requirements over the ensuing 18 months. But since then, that figure has grown to $23.8 million and plaintiffs attorneys have been awarded $4.4 million, according to court and county documents. The sheriff's defense attorneys have been paid $1.97 million since court proceedings began, according to county records. County spokeswoman Cari Gerchick said that officials will mostly tap into the county's general fund to cover the costs and that some of the expenses will be paid out from the Sheriff's Office detention fund. Defense attorney Tim Casey said that the reform is an evolving process and that additional expenses are to be expected as the agency works to fall in line with the court's requirements. "All these things are part of complying with the order that are necessary and appropriate to do so," he said. "The (judge's) monitor has made a number of helpful suggestions on how to achieve compliance — that's why you see these developments at the MCSO." Costs will continue to mount over the next several years — albeit at a diminished rate — as the agency complies with the orders and appeals the case, said Dan Pochoda, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona and one of the plaintiffs attorneys in the case. Pochoda said the bulk of the fees could have been avoided had the Sheriff's Office agreed to settlements proposed by the plaintiffs in the ACLU's case, as well as a separate, ongoing racial-profiling case initiated by the U.S. Department of Justice. "They didn't believe they had done wrong, so there were never any meaningful settlement negotiations," he said. The federal lawsuit was initiated in 2007 after Mexican tourist Manuel de Jesus Ortega Melendres was stopped by sheriff's deputies outside a Cave Creek church where day laborers often gathered. Melendres, the passenger in a car driven by a White driver, was in the United States legally and claimed that deputies unlawfully detained him for nine hours. The case grew to class-action status, including complaints from two Hispanic siblings from Chicago, who felt they were profiled by deputies, and an assistant to former Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, whose Hispanic husband claims he was detained and cited while White motorists were treated differently. The lawsuit did not explicitly seek monetary damages. Instead, plaintiffs asked for a declaration that spells out what deputies can do when stopping suspects, as well as a court-appointed monitor to make sure the agency abides by those rules. In an exhaustive and itemized Oct. 2 ruling, U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow ordered sweeping reforms at the Sheriff's Office, intended to prevent what he had earlier concluded to be systematic discrimination against Latinos during traffic stops and saturation patrols. Among these developments are increased data collection, anti-bias training for deputies, cameras in deputies' vehicles and a court-appointed monitor to ensure the agency is fulfilling the judge's orders. These stipulations demanded the purchase of various big-ticket items, such as a $4.2 million one-time fee for in-car recording equipment and $486,530 for the hardware and overtime allocated to the electronic data-entry system. In August, the Sheriff's Office requested additional fees to cover other portions of Snow's order that call for an improved structure for fielding residents' complaints and an "early intervention system" intended to flag bad seeds throughout the agency. The agency additionally asked for funds to create a Bureau of Internal Oversight to supervise the implementation of the various orders. The Sheriff's Office must comply for three consecutive years before it can request that court-ordered oversight be lifted, and it must be in substantial compliance with every court order for one year before that clock can start. Big-ticket items $1.725 million annual contract (maximum) for court-appointed monitor. $4.4 million in plaintiffs attorneys fees to date. $1.97 million in defense attorneys fees to date. $4.7 million for in-car recording equipment for fiscal 2014 and 2015, including both non-recurring and operating costs. $1.78 million for an MCSO "implementation unit," designed to oversee compliance with court orders. Cost is for fiscal 2014 and 2015, including both non-recurring and operating costs. Sources: Maricopa County and Maricopa County Sheriff's Office estimates Community meeting A community meeting will be held next week by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office's court-appointed monitor, Robert Warshaw. According to the meeting agenda, Warshaw will "explain his role as a representative of the Court, answer questions, listen to community members' experiences and concerns regarding the MCSO's policies and practices, and inform community members of any significant actions that the MCSO has taken to implement reform." It will be the third community meeting since June. Where: Frank Elementary School, 8409 S. Avenida del Yaqu, Guadalupe, AZ 85283. When: 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday.
Suburbs squeeze medical pot firms for cash donations They are not "bribes", they are "campaign contributions"!!!! Honest, ask the people that receive them!!!! http://my.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-81413269/ Suburbs squeeze medical pot firms for cash donations By Robert McCoppin, Tribune reporter 3:08 am, September 19, 2014 Those who want in on Illinois' fledgling medical marijuana industry are wooing local communities to let them operate within their borders — in some cases promising donations to local organizations or a cut of the profits. Monday is the deadline for businesses to apply for state licenses, and among the many provisions for potential operators is that they have local approval for a place to grow or sell medical cannabis and can point to "community benefits." Competition for approved sites has gotten so intense that some municipalities are requiring that businesses pay them a cut of their revenues if they want local support. In Elk Grove Village, no fewer than nine competing businesses have entered into preliminary agreements with the municipality. Should any win state approval to operate, the businesses each have agreed to donate up to $75,000 to local nonprofit groups and to fork over up to 5 percent of their gross sales to the village. Elsewhere in the Chicago area, developers are offering special contributions to get local support — inverting the more typical practice of local governments offering incentives to lure businesses to town. One suburb is even creating its own charitable foundation to collect and spend the cash infusion. In a state with a long, often corrupt tradition of pay-to-play, the arrangements have raised some concern among business owners and watchdogs groups. The payments are not prohibited, as long as they're not enriching elected officials directly, regulators say. But they must be disclosed for consideration when the state reviews business applications and awards licenses. "I think it's fair," Elk Grove Village Mayor Craig Johnson said. "No one has balked at it, so obviously they know it's fair, too, because of what we have to offer." Elk Grove Village purports to have the largest business park in the nation, with close access to highways, rail and O'Hare International Airport, as well as wealthy north and west suburbs. Because the village straddles two counties and two state police districts, it could become home to two dispensaries and two cultivation warehouses. And, Johnson said, it has a number of vacant buildings in its industrial district — the kind of out-of-the-way sites that many community members, namely parents, have made clear they prefer. State regulators will ultimately dole out licenses for up to 21 cultivation centers and 60 dispensaries statewide. Patients who have a qualifying medical condition can be certified to buy marijuana, officials hope, by sometime next spring. The communities willing to welcome the businesses stand to cash in through various means. In the city of McHenry, which has endorsed a proposed cultivation center, officials are seeking 1.75 percent of net earnings in the first five years, then up to 3.5 percent in the following years. City officials also have requested that the business donate up to $10,000 a year for the McHenry Riverwalk and historic Petersen Farm. In return, the city sent a letter of support for the project to the state Department of Agriculture, which will award cultivation center permits based on a scoring system that judges security, business plans and other factors. Applications also get credit for community benefits, which the local donations are meant to satisfy. In East Dundee, officials have created a foundation to handle any money that might come from a cultivation center and dispensary proposed by Alternative Treatments LLC. Where the money would be channeled isn't yet defined but could include drug abuse prevention and treatment. The village is proposing that the company make an annual donation of a percentage of sales, though the amount has to be negotiated. Following a trend in economic development, village officials had considered such a foundation before, but now they have a proposed source of revenue, Village Administrator Robert Skurla said. "We're not just saying you've got to pay a ransom. The law states you have to have a community investment," Skurla said. "We'll do that for you." Sam Borek, an attorney for Alternative Treatments, would not be specific but said the company had offered a "very generous contribution" to East Dundee. He said he felt it was a reasonable accommodation and a smart move by municipalities that can get it. Like many medical marijuana entrepreneurs, Alternative Treatments has submitted proposals to several communities in hopes of finding the most profitable locations. "A good location is part of the price of doing business," he said. Such payments are not uncommon in other states with medical marijuana, where businesses sometimes donate up to 10 percent of sales to their host communities, said Michael Mayes, CEO and president of the Quantum 9 cannabis consulting company in Chicago. "In Connecticut you see incredibly lofty community benefit plans, because municipalities were (not) accepting of the program itself," Mayes said. "It depends on the municipality and public perception. The best plans I've seen say the money will help build a school or roads. They have a specific community benefit." While he said Chicago is seen as the "gold mine" of the industry in Illinois, the city has been slow to act publicly. Dispensaries can set up shop in many business and commercial districts — provided they are granted a special-use permit from the city Zoning Board of Appeals, appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel. So far the city has received more than a dozen requests, and the first zoning applications could be heard by the zoning panel next month, officials said. In south suburban University Park, businesses owners said village officials have requested contributions to community groups, plus 0.5 percent of gross income. Local officials did not respond to requests for confirmation. Tanisha Patterson, who is part of a medical marijuana investor group called The MedMen of Illinois, said its members are happy to make the contribution. "Whatever a community is asking, we're definitely in support of that," Patterson said. Investors are seeking any advantage to get their applications approved, including team members who qualify for minority and veteran ownership status. Patterson and her mother, Glenda White, who are African-American, are both part of The MedMen group, which is seeking multiple sites, including in University Park, for cultivation centers and dispensaries. Patterson said the group also plans to partner with local schools to offer drug abuse education. Other local governments are not seeking defined payments but are hoping to gain sales and property taxes and other income while generating jobs. Officials in Batavia, which runs its own electric utility, estimated the city could take in $300,000 annually in electricity bills from a proposed cultivation center, which would use large amounts of power to run grow lights. "We haven't entered anything you'd call an inducement," City Administrator Bill McGrath said. "We don't have many other legal businesses saying, 'We'll pay you.' But we don't want to make it conditional (on payments). The citizens need to know we're looking at this straight up. "I don't want to pass judgment on other municipalities," he added. "I don't want to use the term 'pay to play,' but (the concept) weirded me out." He's not the only one concerned about the appearance of payments. At a public hearing last month in Chicago, Tanya Griffin, a managing member of TGS Illinois, which is proposing marijuana businesses, raised concerns about the issue with state regulators. Bob Morgan, coordinator of the state medical marijuana program, stressed that the applications would be judged purely on merit, with the names of applicants deleted so judges won't know whom they are evaluating. But he suggested a hands-off approach to legal financial arrangements with local governments. Abe Scarr, director of Illinois Public Interest Research Group, was not familiar with specifics of the proposals but sounded a general note of caution. "It would raise some concerns anytime you have a private business giving money to an official or government body in return for what sounds like a political favor," he said. "You would think these things should be done on merit and their value to a community." Tribune reporter Hal Dardick contributed. rmccoppin@tribune.com Twitter @RobertMcCoppin
Drugging Our Kids If YOU use drugs you will be throw in prison. But then the folks at CPS drug the kiddies under their control to shut them up it's no big deal??? http://www.mercurynews.com/health/ci_26562339/drugging-our-kids-california-calls-new-checks-psych Drugging Our Kids: California calls for new checks on psych meds for foster kids By Karen de Sá kdesa@mercurynews.com Posted: 09/19/2014 06:00:18 AM PDT Drugging Our Kids In a significant step toward curbing the overuse of psychiatric drugs in California's foster care system, doctors will soon be required to get extra authorization to prescribe antipsychotics, a new safeguard to protect some of the state's most overmedicated children. Beginning Oct. 1, a state pharmacist must verify the "medical necessity" of each antipsychotic prescription before the medications can be given to children who are 17 and younger and covered by Medi-Cal, the state's health program for the poor that also includes foster children. The tightened restrictions come three years after the federal government called on states to better monitor the use of psychotropic medications on foster children. "Drugging Our Kids," an investigation published last month by this newspaper, revealed how antipsychotics -- the most powerful class of psych drugs -- are often prescribed to manage troubled foster children's behavior, not the rare mental illnesses that the drugs are approved to treat. Doctors involved in statewide efforts to curb overmedication of foster youth called the new measure a good start -- though they say it's still up for debate whether it will have a widespread impact. The newspaper found nearly one out of four adolescents in California's foster care system was prescribed psychotropic medications over the last decade -- more than triple the rate of all adolescents nationwide. And of significant concern: Sixty percent of the state's medicated foster children were prescribed at least one antipsychotic. The newspaper's story has prompted an investigation of physicians by the California Medical Board and reviews underway in Los Angeles and Santa Clara -- the two counties responsible for the vast majority of California foster children. Supervisors in both counties have called for reports and increased oversight of how the drugs are prescribed locally. "No kid should be drugged just for convenience sake," Santa Clara County Supervisor Ken Yeager said. "Kids in foster care have already gone through a lot, and we owe it to them to make sure we have proper safeguards in place to protect their developing brains." In Los Angeles County, the department of mental health is finalizing a report due back to supervisors later this month, following a request by Supervisor Michael Antonovich. Two other counties have already been reviewing their medication practices. Alameda County set out to examine the use of psych meds in the local foster care and probation systems almost a year ago in a project funded by the philanthropic Zellerbach Family Foundation. And in the Central Valley county of Madera, officials have created alternatives to behavior management with medication -- by better training foster parents and social workers, ensuring individual therapy is provided, and linking child welfare interventions with efforts in the classroom. According to statewide data that tracks court authorizations of psychotropic prescriptions for foster youth, Madera County youth are now prescribed at about one-third the statewide rate. "Our policies are written that way -- that you push back and ask questions," said Danny Morris, Madera County's deputy director of social services. "Our social workers are trained that you ask questions, regardless of what it is, even if it's cold medicine for our youth." The new requirements on prescribing antipsychotics from the state Department of Health Care Services have been in the works since June, as part of a lengthy review of psych meds in the foster care system. The special authorization has been required since 2006 on prescriptions for children 5 and younger, but will now be expanded to all children. State officials say that the "treatment authorization reviews" have been effective in scaling back the prescribing of antipsychotics to very young children. "We are committed to work to ensure that our process allows children to receive the appropriate medications they need, when they need them," said Norman Williams, a department spokesman. In practical terms, the change means additional paperwork for already-burdened physicians, given that there will soon be an extra layer of approval required before a child's caregiver can pick up medications at the pharmacy. Longtime child psychiatrist George Stewart, who serves on a state clinical work group said the "added nuisance" for doctors of having to obtain another layer of review before prescribing antipsychotics "may slow down the prescribing of them a bit." Stewart said filling out the new Treatment Authorization Review and calling the pharmacy to provide additional information will take time, but it's unclear how stringent the new system will be. In his 40 years of prescribing to foster youth, Stewart added: "I've never been refused a TAR for a medication." Morris noted that he does not believe most prescribers to foster children have bad intentions. But he said too often, "they may make a decision based on a 10-minute session they've had," or they are under contract with a group home interested in keeping children sedated and well-behaved. Still, he said reckless prescribers must be held accountable. "If a doctor is prescribing medication inappropriately toward a child in foster care -- or any child for that matter -- then criminal charges should be brought against that doctor," Morris said, "because that's an abuse of their power." Contact Karen de Sá at 408-920-5781.
UC campus chancellors granted hefty pay raises of up to 20 percent Our government masters treat themselves very well!!! http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_26566627/uc-campus-chancellors-granted-hefty-pay-raises-up UC campus chancellors granted hefty pay raises of up to 20 percent Associated Press Posted: 09/19/2014 10:04:00 AM PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- The University of California's board of regents is boosting the six-figure salaries of its chancellors by as much as 20 percent. The Los Angeles Times (http://lat.ms/1plEHlP) reports that the raises granted Thursday are part of a three-year plan to bring the salaries of top UC officials in line with those of their counterparts at other major research institutions. The 10-campus system's three lowest-paid chancellors -- at Santa Cruz, Merced and Riverside -- had their salaries set at $383,160. That meant 20 percent increases for the chancellors of Santa Cruz and Merced and a 5.1 percent boost for Riverside's top official. The UC's highest paid chancellor is San Francisco's Sam Hawgood, who receives $750,000 a year. Newly hired Irvine Chancellor Howard Gillman will be paid $485,000 a year. ------ Information from: Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com AP-WF-09-19-14 1646GMT http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-81416072/ Regents OK raises up to 20% for UC chancellors By Larry Gordon September 18, 2014, 8:19 p.m. The UC regents Thursday awarded pay increases of as much as 20% to the leaders of the Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Merced and Riverside campuses and set the annual salary of the new UC Irvine chancellor, Howard Gillman, at $485,000. The regents said the raises were a first step over the next three years to bring the 10-campus heads up to nationally competitive rates of rival research institutions. Some UC chancellors had not had increases in seven years until July, when they received a 3% hike. The pay scale is now awkwardly structured so that some veteran chancellors are paid significantly less than those who were more recently hired, the regents said. The issue of high executive compensation at the UC and Cal State systems remains a sensitive one even as the worst of the financial crisis has eased. Gov. Jerry Brown, who is a UC regent and has been sharply critical of similar pay raises, did not attend the regents' meeting in San Francisco and his office said he had no comment Thursday on the latest action. Gillman's $485,000 is $93,000 higher than that of predecessor Michael Drake, who recently left Irvine to head Ohio State University. Gillman, who won unanimous regents' approval as chancellor Thursday, had been UC Irvine's interim chancellor since June and came to the 29,000-student campus in Orange County as provost and executive vice chancellor a year before that. The regents also focused on chancellors with the lowest annual salaries. They brought three of them up to $383,160, which meant 20% raises for George Blumenthal of UC Santa Cruz and Dorothy Leland of UC Merced and 5.1% for UC Riverside's Kim Wilcox; a 20% increase gives UC Santa Barbara's Henry Yang $389,340. UC San Francisco's Sam Hawgood, who started in July, is the highest-paid UC chancellor, at $750,000. In hoping to erase disparities, regents noted that Gene Block, who came to UCLA in 2007, is paid $428,480, which is below what Gillman will be paid at a smaller campus. (In addition to salaries, chancellors receive housing or housing allowances.) UC President Janet Napolitano discussed surveys showing that the average UC chancellor's salary is about $90,000 below public universities nationwide that are members of the elite research-oriented Assn. of American Universities and more than $350,000 below the average at such top private schools. UC chancellors, she said, "run some of the largest higher education institutions in the country and the best higher education institutions in the country. It is my strong belief that we need to pay our chancellors within a competitive range." The regents agreed and authorized a study on increasing all chancellors' pay to competitive levels over three years. Not everyone was pleased. "At a time when resources are needed to prevent tuition hikes and perform much-needed safety maintenance, huge raises for UC's highest-paid executives sends the wrong message about UC's priorities to the public we are here to serve," Todd Stenhouse, a spokesman for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Local 3299, said later. The union, which represents UC custodians, gardeners, medical technicians and patient care workers, settled a contract with the system earlier this year after several job walkouts and much tension. In a related matter, Napolitano proposed streamlining the hiring of UC's highest-paid athletic coaches so quick job offers are possible. She sought to bypass traditional votes by regents, to allow chancellors to set coaches' pay below $500,000 and to allow her to approve any more lucrative contracts. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and several other regents objected to what they saw as taking important responsibility from them as UC is studying how athletes' grades and graduation rates should figure in coaches' job evaluations. In a rare instance of bucking Napolitano's lead, regents shelved the proposal for more review, possibly linking it to a study about athletes' classroom achievements. Gillman, 55, who grew up in the San Fernando Valley and was the first in his family to attend college, said in an interview that he wanted the 50-year-old Irvine campus to keep hiring and retaining top academic talent. "This is a young campus that is incredibly accomplished but still very ambitious," he said. The school must "continue the momentum in its ascendancy." Gillman said he would strengthen ties with the Orange County community, at the campus medical center, in business and technology partnerships, the arts and K-12 schools. "I want Orange County to feel that we are not here just for us but the reason we exist is to make a broader contribution to human well-being," he said. larry.gordon@latimes.com Twitter: @larrygordonlat
Let's hope they legalize marijuana in Washington D.C. But I also hope this isn't one of those sh*tty worthless laws which pretend to legalize marijuana but still make it a felony more them a small amount of marijuana. I am not sure what the exact amounts are but I think in both Colorado and Washington state it is still a felony to have more then some set amount of marijuana like say 2.5 ounces. Also I wonder if this law will allow people to grow their own marijuana or if it's one of those sh*tty laws that continue to make it a felony to grow marijuana. I think all the sh*tty propositions and initiatives backed by MPP or Marijuana Policy Project make it a felony to both grow marijuana and possess more then some small amount of marijuana like say 2 or 3 ounces. Yes, we should legalize marijuana in Arizona, but we don't want a sh*tty MPP back law that allows people to be sent to prison for growing marijuana or possessing some small amount of marijuana. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/poll-dc-voters-poised-to-legalize-pot-elevating-national-debate-over-marijuana/2014/09/18/08360f90-3dfe-11e4-b0ea-8141703bbf6f_story.html?tid=hpModule_99d5f542-86a2-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394&hpid=z12 Poll: D.C. voters poised to legalize pot, elevating national debate over marijuana By Aaron C. Davis and Peyton M. Craighill September 18 at 4:00 PM Voters in the District of Columbia are poised to follow Colorado and Washington state into a closely watched experiment to legalize marijuana, according to a new NBC4/Washington Post/Marist poll. By an almost 2-to-1 margin, likely voters in the city’s Nov. 4 election say they support Initiative 71, a ballot measure that would legalize possession, home cultivation and the sale of paraphernalia to smoke marijuana in the nation’s capital. The results show an electorate unshaken — even emboldened — nine months after legal marijuana sales began in Colorado and six months after D.C. lawmakers stripped away jail time for possession, making it just a $25 offense. Although the District has so far felt little fallout from those moves, full legalization on the streets surrounding the White House would thrust the District into an untenable conflict with federal drug laws, potentially hastening the arrival of a larger national debate. It would also complicate it. Legalization in the District is fused with the weighty issues of civil rights and drug arrest rates among African Americans. In faraway Western states that have legalized marijuana, those issues have been largely secondary to civil liberties and drug safety. Support for legalized marijuana in D.C. A band of pro-marijuana activists supporting Initiative 71, in fact, have almost no money in their campaign account and may not run a single ad, but support seems increasingly hardened in part because of a major shift toward support among African Americans. The District’s black residents, who now account for half its population, once opposed marijuana legalization, partly out of fear it could lead to addiction among black youths. But as new studies have suggested otherwise, that attitude has evolved. One study last year showed that blacks account for nine out of 10 arrests for simple drug possession in the District, while another showed that was the case even as usage likely varied little among races. According to the poll, 56 percent of likely African American voters say they would vote for legalization, a near identical number to a broader question about support for legalization asked in a Washington Post poll in January. Together, the polls confirm a complete reversal of opinions among African Americans from four years ago. Then, 37 percent were in favor of legalization and 55 percent opposed. The District’s rapidly changing demographics also help explain the possible success of the initiative. In four years, the population in the District has swelled by 45,000, or 7.4 percent, and many newcomers are young, white and increasingly affluent. More than 7 in 10 voters in these groups support legalization. All that puts the District far to the left of the legalization discussion nationally with the country closely divided at 49 percent in favor and 48 percent opposed, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll earlier this year. Nina Moiseiwitsch, 19, a college student studying biomedical engineering in New York, said she is certain to vote absentee in the District to be heard on the marijuana issue. The government and police “have better things to focus on than trying to keep on top of something they really can’t,” she said. “I think it’s a distraction from . . . harder drugs that really are a problem in D.C. And it could become safer once regulated.” Activists collected more than 57,000 signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot. They pushed forward even as some pro-marijuana groups urged restraint, concerned legalization in the District risks forcing Congress to react. As it is, votes will be held in the District, Alaska and Oregon to decide legalization in November. Alaskans voted down a similar measure a decade ago but also have no criminal or monetary fines for possession. The measure in Oregon led by a bare majority in a poll five months ago. Voters in Florida also appear certain to approve a medical marijuana measure in November. The measure would allow people 21 and older to possess as much as two ounces of marijuana for personal use and to grow up to three marijuana plants at home. To keep from triggering a prohibition on ballot measures that run afoul of federal law, Initiative 71 does not spell out that the District would allow for the sale of marijuana. That would be left up to regulations to be written and approved by the next mayor and D.C. Council. They also would have broad power to alter the measure. Against that backdrop, the increasing likelihood that Initiative 71 will pass could force candidates for mayor — Democrat Muriel Bowser, a council member representing Ward 4; David A. Catania, an at-large council member running as an independent; and Carol Schwartz, a former council member also running as an independent — to offer more thorough explanations on their views of the issue. Bowser and Catania have said they would vote for legalization, but neither has shown a propensity for direct conflict with federal law enforcement over drug laws. Schwartz opposes legalization. During the council debate on decriminalizing marijuana in the spring, Bowser supported doing so, but she said allowing residents to possess marijuana begged the question of how they would come to obtain it. “Dealing with how people can procure this decriminalized marijuana has to be the second step,” she said. Catania was instrumental in establishing the District’s medical marijuana program, but for years he sought to do so cautiously, in order to not draw the scrutiny of federal agents based in the District that enforce federal drug laws. Catania, however, was among the most vocal supporters of decriminalization and sought to confront U.S. Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) this summer when he attached a provision to a federal spending bill that could undercut the District’s effort to reduce fines for possession to $25. Still, a vote for legalization would require more of the next mayor, including following through with whatever plan might be approved to sell and tax the plant and to prepare for the almost certain attempts by Republicans such as Harris to interfere with the plan in Congress. The NBC4/Washington Post/Marist poll was conducted Sept. 14 to 16 among a random sample of 1,249 D.C. adults reached on conventional and cellular phones. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus four percentage points among the sample of 572 likely voters.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/09/19/archaeologists-unearth-hidden-death-chambers-used-to-kill-a-quarter-million-jews-at-notorious-camp/?hpid=z4 Archaeologists unearth hidden death chambers used to kill a quarter-million Jews at notorious camp By Terrence McCoy September 19 at 3:07 AM Few sites across war-torn Poland harbor more secrets of atrocity and horror than the Nazi concentration camp of Sobibor. Different from Auschwitz, which almost immediately yielded the full scope of the crimes committed there, the history of Sobibor in eastern Poland was initially hidden and opaque. Unlike Auschwitz, the fate of Sobibor wasn’t liberation. It was obliteration. The Nazis who had run the camp tried to extinguish every remnant of it in 1943, painting over its grounds with a farm, trees and asphalt. Besides a railroad track and the commander’s house, Haaretz noted, nothing remained of the camp. Save for the testimonies of the few survivors, who could only provide scant recollections of small areas of the camp, Sobibor had been lost to history. But now, more than 70 years later, relics of genocide have surfaced, bringing more clarity to the murder of an estimated 250,000 Jews there than ever before. Buried beneath an asphalt road were a series of well-preserved gas chamber walls that archaeologists say will help elucidate the secrets of Sobibor. Beneath the road were brick rows, stacked four deep — the exoskeleton of four gas chambers. “The discovery of the gas chambers at Sobibor is a very important finding in Holocaust research,” historian David Silberklang, editor of Yad Vashem Studies, said in a statement. “It is important to understand that there were no survivors from among the Jews who worked in the area of the gas chambers. Therefore, these findings are all that is left of those murdered there, and they open a window onto the day-to-day suffering of these people.” But the discoveries didn’t end with the gas chambers. Thousands of items that belonged to those murdered were also left buried in a well the Germans had plugged. “We found earrings, gold wedding rings and a ring with the inscription, ‘with this ring you are consecrated to me,’ in Hebrew letters,” Israeli archaeologist Yoram Haimi told Haaretz. “We also found a large Magen David [the Star of David] and a coin dated 1927 from Palestine.” Taken together, the mementos retell the story of Sobibor — a story as much of resistance as it was of the Holocaust. Established in March 1942, the camp was cramped and small, extending 1,300 by 2,000 feet, according to the Jewish Virtual Library. It was composed of three parts: administration, barracks and gas chambers — brick buildings into which carbon monoxide was fed. Before the chambers was a road called Himmelfahrsstrasse: “Road to Heaven.” When Jews arrived at those buildings, a man stood dressed in a white coat, according to one German officer who later testified to what happened there. “He used to wear a white coat to give the impression he was a physician,” the officer said, according to the Holocaust Education and Archive Research Team. He “announced to the Jews that they would be sent to work. But before this they would have to take baths and undergo disinfection. … After the Jews had entered the gas chambers, the Ukrainians closed the doors, the motor was switched on … and after the gassing, the doors were opened and the corpses were removed.” Polish archaeologist Wojciech Mazurek said Nazis bred geese at the site. It was “to drown out these shouts so that prisoners could not have heard these shouts, these torments,” Reuters quoted him saying. But then the flow of prisoners entering the camp began to winnow, and its inhabitants began to suspect they all would soon be killed, according to Sobibor Interviews. This was also around the time a man named Alexander Pechersky, a Jewish Soviet prisoner of war, arrived at the camp. He soon devised a plan that would twin vengeance with escape: Kill as many Nazi guards as possible and then bolt free. The uprising surged on Oct. 14, 1943, and several guards were killed, sending hundreds of prisoners fleeing into the surrounding woods. Many were tracked down and killed, but some were not — and their triumph led to the camp’s closing. As the Germans pulled out, they tried to wipe clean any sign of what occurred there — the lives lost, the items prisoners had kept. For years, “the site has remained bare, lacking any characteristic traces of it being a former extermination camp,” according to Yad Vashem. Only now, researchers said, are the gaps in the narrative filling in. “After eight years of excavations at Sobibor, this is a great achievement,” said researcher Yoram Haimi, who lost two uncles at the camp. “We have reached our goal — the discovery of the gas chambers.” Terrence McCoy is a foreign affairs writer at the Washington Post. He served in the U.S. Peace Corps in Cambodia and studied international politics at Columbia University. Follow him on Twitter here.
Maricopa County Sheriff's office intent on changing it's image???? Yea, sure!!!! According to this article Sheriff Joe and his goons at the Maricopa County Sheriff's office want to change their image. I suspect that all they want to change and have no intent whatsoever of firing all the corrupt criminals that work for Sheriff Joe and terrorize the citizens of Maricopa County and Phoenix!!!! Hey, and I learned a new Spanish word out of this article. Until now I didn't know that 'sic' means the same in Spanish as English!!!! Well that's why I read all the Spanish language newspapers and magazines every week. To improve my Spanish!!! http://www.lavozarizona.com/story/inicio/2014/09/18/hector-martines-arpaio/15839741/ La oficina del alguacil intenta cambiar su imagen Héctor Martínez, originario de Nogales, Arizona, es la persona encargada de tender un puente de entendimiento entre el alguacil Joe Arpaio y la comunidad. Matthew Cassey, La Voz 3:20 p.m. MST septiembre 18, 2014 Héctor Martínez, originario de Nogales, Arizona, es la persona encargada de tender un puente de entendimiento entre el alguacil Joe Arpaio y la comunidad Héctor Martínez creció en Nogales, Arizona y tiene 11 años en la oficina del alguacil del condado de Maricopa Joe Arpaio. Martínez fue uno de los alguaciles que fue capacitado como agente para implementar leyes federales de inmigración bajo un acuerdo conocido como 287g. El gobierno federal revocó dicho convenio. En enero, tomó un nuevo puesto, Oficial de Enlace Comunitario, con el cual está encargado en mejorar las relaciones entre el alguacil y la comunidad, especialmente los hispanos. Martínez ha sido objeto de algunas críticas por las posturas controversiales del Arpaio, uno de los alguaciles más duros con los inmigrantes en la nación. Arpaio ha enfrentado no solo críticas si no demandas judiciales que van desde acusaciones de perfilamiento racial hasta discriminar a los latinos de una manera sistemática. El nuevo puesto de Martínez es resultado del caso de Manuel de Jesús Ortega Melendres. Alguaciles detuvieron a Melendres por nueve horas en 2007, aunque tenía permiso migratorio para estar en Estados Unidos. En 2013, un juez federal decidió que los alguaciles violaron los derechos constitucionales de Melendres y otros latinos y ordenó que Arpaio creara el puesto que ahora Martínez ocupa. Martínez tiene la labor de limar asperezas y mejorar la imagen de MCSO. Esta semana se reunió con La Voz para platicar sobre cómo le va en su nuevo puesto y qué lo motiva a seguir dicha carrera. ¿Cómo llegaste a tomar la decisión de ser policía? "Es algo que yo quise hacer desde joven. Cuando viví en Nogales vi a los policías allí y cómo era la profesión. En ese tiempo no me gustaba a mí lo que eran los policías de allí porque nosotros, como hispanos, eramos mayoría... vimos que los policías algunas veces nos maltrataban, pero hay veces que hacían cosas que nosotros vimos que no eran justas...cuando vine a Phoenix vi el otro lado, más profesional y me gustó la diferencia de cómo son—la profesionalismo aquí en otra ciudad (sic)". Como Ud. es Oficial de Enlace Comunitario, ¿Cuáles son sus metas además de lo que señala el mandato judicial? "Mi meta que yo quiero es que la gente—y no solamente la gente hispana, pero de cualquier raíz u otra cultura—se enteren quién es el sheriff y quien es la oficina del aguacil. Que es lo que hacemos en realidad". ¿Qué pasó por su mente cuando supo que la posición era suya? "Yo dije que iba a ser algo difícil. Estaba un poco nervioso pero dije que es algo que yo creo que puedo hacer. Más, era algo que necesitamos para mejorar la comunicación y relaciones entre la oficina del alguacil y la comunidad. Tomará tiempo para cumplir. Pero sí se puede". ¿Cómo puede aumentar la confianza en la comunidad hispana cuando antes se dedicaba a arrestar a indocumentados? "No me dedicaba a arrestar indocumentados. Sí estuve certificado bajo la 287g, que es certificado del ICE, del Departamento de Seguridad Interna, pero eso es parte del trabajo... "Como cualquier otro trabajo, uno tiene que cumplir con su deber y no es porque estábamos arrestando a indocumentados. Arrestamos a gente que quebró la ley y resulta que estaban indocumentados". "Yo cuando estuve en esa posición, mi mayoría eran casos de robo de identidad. Y eso es un delito. La gente no sabe que tanto hacen daño cuando alguien se roba la identidad de alguien. Esos casos son totalmente diferente que de decir 'nomás estar arrestando a gente hispana.' Porque esos delitos te puedo decir como comenzamos el caso y como terminamos. Era una investigación bien larga y la gente, los sospechosos, nosotros no sabíamos en ese tiempo que eran indocumentados. Lo único que sabíamos era se estaba robando la identidad de alguien más que muchas veces fue de otra persona hispana". "La mayoría de la gente hispana entiende que estamos haciendo nuestro trabajo. Hay veces cuando se confunden es cuando oyen en las noticias las cosas que dice la gente—los activistas—los asustan creer que nomás estamos atrás de la gente hispana y no es cierto. Es lo que nosotros queremos aclarar que eso no es lo que hacemos. Y otra cosa es que no enforzamos a las leyes de inmigración. La gente todavía todavía creen que estamos enforzando a las leyes de inmigración y no es así". "Ahorita nos estamos organizando y tratando de crecer esta división. Yo soy el único alguacil ahorita. Estamos tratando de hacer esto más grande y los aguaciles se especializan en salir y hacer cosas comunitarias. Cada distrito, tenemos los aguaciles que patrullan. Muchos de ellos ya hacen cosas comunitarias, hacen eventos y hacen cosas para las escuelas". ¿Qué están haciendo ahora mismo para construir mejores relaciones entre la comunidad hispana y la oficina del alguacil? "[Estamos] relacionando más con la comunidad. Los distritos del condado, los alguaciles que patrullan tienen más comunicación con la comunidad. Hacen más eventos". "Lo que es mi puesto yo también estoy haciendo juntas con la comunidad hispana. Grupos chicos y hablo con ellos. Les explico lo que es la oficina del aguacil. Lo que hacemos lo que no hacemos. Hacer los entender quiénes somos de verdad". "No queremos que nos tengan miedo. Al contrario estamos allí para ellos. La única manera que vamos estar atrás de ellos es si cometen un delito. Es la única razón que vamos a parar a alguien y arrestar a alguien, si cometen un delito (sic)".
Did you know that one out of every seven Americans receives Food Stamps or SNAP as they are called. Yes that's 1 out of every 7 Americans are on the dole and get Food Stamps. That number is up, 10 years ago only 1 out of every 10 Americans received Food Stamps. And it was the same probably for the last 20 years prior to that. When I wrote software for Arizona DES 20 years ago I was surprised to learn that 1 out of 10 people received food stamps. I am not sure how many Americans receive other forms of welfare from Uncle Sam but I suspect the number is huge. Last I admit I hate Russell Pearce. He is nothing more then a jackbooted, racist police thug who terrorizes the citizens he pretends to serve. But some of what he said about America being a welfare state is true. http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/letters/2014/09/18/pearce-drew-punishment-for-being-right-on-welfare/15860381/ Pearce drew punishment for being right on welfare Kelley Kregle 6:18 p.m. MST September 18, 2014 It's hard to believe I'm the only American who is fed up with all the families who can't afford the kids they have but continue to have more children at my expense. Offer them permanent sterilization if they want it or else give them a Norplant so we don't have to worry about them "forgetting" to take a pill. The only Americans against drug and alcohol testing for welfare recipients must surely be either the recipients themselves or political-interest groups. I, like most people, work hard for my money and resent it being used to support lazy addicts and their lifestyle. I can't believe I'm defending Russell Pearce, but the fact that he had to resign his GOP job for taking this position is disgusting. Arizona politics as usual. The citizens are not represented, only special-interest groups. Our system is completely broken and corrupt. —Kelley Kregle, Mesa
Yes, I have a very negative opinion of government, so while I suspect that John Sanders is right on this I don't have the evidence to prove it. But the real problem with government is when they f*ck up things royal they never go out of business like companies in the private sector do when they screw things up royal. If John Sanders is right, ADOT will continue to operate as usual, and continue to get more money and continue to screw things up. Which is why we need to move things like this from government to the private sector. http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/letters/2014/09/18/adot-should-bear-some-responsibility-for-floods/15861227/ ADOT should bear some responsibility for floods John Sanders 6:39 p.m. MST September 18, 2014 It would appear that with all the flooding last week, ADOT may have some, if not a lot, of responsibility for the damage and inconvenience suffered. Who monitors what the Arizona Department of Transportation does? Who looks after the pumps that failed? Why was runoff on U.S. 60 pumped into an already full retention basin? What's going to happen if the rains come again? Were any lessons learned? On a wider scope, who decides where ADOT spends its funds? Certainly not coordinating freeway traffic lights with the city's. Why construct a beautifully landscaped and solar-lighted walkway and intersection in Gila Bend with Highway 85 that no one seems to use, or a monstrous pedestrian bridge over Interstate 17 near Glendale Avenue? Why not finish widening the patchwork-quilt freeway between Phoenix and Tucson, where thousands will benefit from three lanes every day! I could go on and on. ADOT is another government agency that needs close monitoring! —John Sanders, Phoenix
Rep. Sinema: Speed reform of VA system Remember when U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema was a member of the Arizona Legislator she tried flush Arizona's Medical Marijuana Act or Prop 203 down the toilet by slapping a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana. That's tax would have added a $900 and ounce tax on to medical marijuana that currently costs $300 an ounce in medical marijuana dispensaries. That tax would have bankrupted some sick people who need medical marijuana. The good news is U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema tax wasn't passed into law. When I knew U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema she was an anti-war protester who didn't like abusive government tyrants. Now based on the voting records of U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema it looks like she has switched sides and now supports the police state and military industrial complex. http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/politics/2014/09/19/states-congressional-leaders-demand-prompt-va-reforms/15869813/ Rep. Sinema: Speed reform of VA system Paul Giblin, The Republic | azcentral.com 10:27 p.m. MST September 18, 2014 U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema said she received a lot of promises, but not many answers during a meeting with Secretary of Veterans Affairs Bob McDonald Thursday, the day after a contentious hearing about delayed care for veterans at the Phoenix VA hospital. Sinema, D-Ariz., said she told McDonald she was frustrated by the slow pace of reform in the Phoenix VA Health Care System, which earlier this year became the epicenter of a national scandal over long VA patient wait times and the manipulation of wait-time data by administrators to obtain pay bonuses. Sinema said she urged McDonald to: • Fire top administrators found guilty of wrongdoing. • Hire new top administrators to run the facility. • Open a 300,000-square-foot auxiliary clinic to treat more patients. • Complete the hiring of 1,000 new medical personnel to improve staffing. Her requests echoed recommendations U.S. Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake, both R-Ariz., made in a letter to McDonald Tuesday. McDonald told the congresswoman he would provide timetables next week for the likely completion of each of the actions, Sinema said in a teleconference after the meeting. McDonald did not immediately respond to The Arizona Republic messages seeking comment. Sinema and Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz., a member of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, both said they believed Wednesday's hearing before the House VA committee removed ambiguity about a link between delays in VA care and patient deaths. VA committee Chairman Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., former VA physician Sam Foote and other critics claimed that a VA Office of Inspector General report that was issued on Aug. 26 whitewashed the impact of delays in care on patients' deaths. Under heated questioning, acting Inspector General Richard Griffin acknowledged that the VA's broken appointment system "may have contributed" to patient deaths. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that when people who are ill don't get the care that they need, they get sicker or they die," Sinema said. "I mean, I'm not a doctor, but it's pretty clear." Acknowledging the impact should help guide future VA policy, she said. In a separate interview with The Republic, Kirkpatrick said the hearing produced some answers, but additional questions remain regarding how the VA will improve its culture and processes. More details about the scandal are likely to emerge from ongoing criminal investigations into the Phoenix VA, she said. Sinema noted that Congress approved and the president signed on Aug. 7 legislation that provided funds for a new VA clinic in Phoenix, and granted new authority to the VA secretary to fire bureaucrats who engage in wrongdoing. The VA has yet to implement either measure, said Sinema, whose district includes the Phoenix VA hospital. McDonald told her that guidance on how to use the law would be distributed to Veterans Affairs employees by Friday, she said. Implementation of the law is likely to have an impact on Phoenix VA Director Sharon Helman, Associate Director Lance Robinson and Health Administration Services Director Brad Curry, who were placed on leave May 1 after misconduct at the VA surfaced. RELATED: VA rips ad by Sinema on vet's suicide They remain on the VA's payroll, and it is unclear when they could be ousted, because they retain the right to appeal actions to terminate them. Sinema asked McDonald to make public time lines of best-case and worst-case scenarios to complete the personnel moves. McDonald promised to develop the time lines by next week. Sinema said she would distribute them to the media. McDonald told Sinema he cannot appoint a permanent director for the Phoenix hospital until the current director has been terminated, she said. McDonald also had no answer about when or where a proposed new auxiliary clinic might open, Sinema said. She urged McDonald to consider remodeling an existing building within 10 miles of the VA hospital, because it would be faster than following the VA's "byzantine, lengthy and bureaucratic" processes to build a new facility, she said. McDonald told Sinema more than 160 new employees have come aboard since the VA-reform law was signed. "Of course, 1,000 were slated, so that still leaves a significant number of over 800 additional professions to be hired," Sinema said.
Border chief vows better use-of-force transparency Trust us things are going to get better!!! Honest!!!! We are going to investigate ourselves and this time we will really punish the bad guys that work for us!!!! Honest!!!! Swear to God!!!!! And hey, if you actually beleived any of that BS I just laid on you, I have some land in Florida I would like to sell you!!!! http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/immigration/2014/09/18/immigration-border-force-investigate-wrongdoing/15839559/ Border chief vows better use-of-force transparency Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske addresses the media Thursday. He announced new measures he said were meant to bring greater transparency and accountability to the CBP, effectively the federal government’s largest law-enforcement agency. Dennis Wagner/The Republic Bob Ortega and Dennis Wagner, The Republic | azcentral.com 8:42 p.m. MST September 18, 2014 WASHINGTON — Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske acknowledged past problems within the agency Thursday as he announced several measures he said will bring greater transparency and accountability to the federal government's largest law-enforcement organization. "Things haven't been fine in the past; I think that's been very clear," he said during a press conference. Countering criticisms that the CBP and the Border Patrol have not held agents accountable in questionable use-of-force cases and have not been transparent in their investigations, Kerlikowske said the CBP will: Change how use-of-force incidents involving agents or officers are investigated, giving lead authority to the CBP's Internal Affairs division. Create an interagency review board that will examine every new use-of-force incident. The CBP didn't say what agencies will be represented on that board. Create an "integrity advisory panel," led by former Drug Enforcement Administration head Karen Tandy and New York City Police Department Commissioner William Bratton, to advise the CBP on law-enforcement "best practices." Start allowing sector chiefs to answer questions from the press and public about such use-of-force incidents — once chiefs have been trained in media relations. Begin testing body cameras that would record agents' interactions with the public, though not in the field this year. After making public its use-of-force policies for the first time in May, the CBP has continued to draw criticism for moving slowly to take steps to hold agents accountable. Just last week, the CBP's Internal Affairs chief, Mark Alan Morgan, said that no agent or officer had been formally disciplined in a use-of-force death since at least 2004. Since 2005, as The Arizona Republic first reported last December, agents and officers have killed 46 people in use-of-force incidents. Those include incidents in which agents shot unarmed youths in the back who were fleeing; incidents in which agents' versions of events were disproved by bystanders' cellphone videos; incidents in which agents fired across the border into Mexico; and incidents in which agents already charged with other offenses were still on duty when they shot and killed people. These and other incidents are included in a database of more than 15,000 pages of CBP, Homeland Security and FBI documents obtained by The Republic through Freedom of Information Act requests covering use of force by agents and officers from 2005 through last year. In none of the 46 use-of-force deaths have any agents been held accountable by the Department of Justice or the court system. There are federal civil suits against the agents, filed by the families of those killed, underway or pending in nine of the deaths. Outside groups were both optimistic and skeptical about the announced changes. "This new policy is a positive first step" toward better investigations of abuses and misconduct, said Jennifer Podkul of the Women's Refugee Commission, a New York-based human-rights group. But Podkul also called on the CBP to include a wide array of outside representatives on the advisory panel. "It has been a year now since CBP made the initial promise of a pilot program with the cameras," said Chris Rickerd, the American Civil Liberties Union's policy counsel in Washington, D.C. He said that although he was glad to hear some progress on cameras, "there isn't the sense of urgency we'd like to see." Rickerd also questioned the membership of the review board and advisory panel, saying that for the sake of transparency and accountability, they should include participants from outside government. He said that enough other law-enforcement agencies include outside monitors on review panels to "have proven that it's a law-enforcement 'best practice.'" Kerlikowske said Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson had agreed to give the CBP's Internal Affairs division primary criminal investigative authority as part of making the process of investigations more unified and timely. Internal Affairs will continue to take referrals from Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General. But the change streamlines a process that previously involved three separate bodies within the DHS, with the CBP's Internal Affairs division essentially at the tail end of the process. The FBI and county sheriffs and attorneys offices will continue to conduct criminal investigations of incidents within their jurisdictions. But now, Kerlikowske said, "we own the responsibility to make sure we're doing a good job." He didn't announce how quickly all the changes will be rolled out. For example, chiefs are being given public-relations and media training before they being using their authority to answer questions about cases, he said. The CBP has acquired a variety of lapel and body cameras that it will test from October through December at its Artesia, N.M., training facility, Kerlikowske said. The subsequent use of cameras in the field will have to be negotiated with the unions representing agents and officers, he said. Shawn Moran, spokesman for the National Border Patrol Council, said the union still has many questions about the cameras, such as how they will be used and how footage would be stored, retained and used in any investigations. The ACLU is asking many of the same questions. "Will they use them consistently?" asked James Duff Lyall, an ACLU attorney based in Tucson. "Or will you see what we sometimes see in some local police departments that sometimes have problems keeping the cameras on during questionable incidents?"
Remember our government masters who rule over us are always more honest and ethical then the serfs they rule over. Well at least that's what they want us to think!!!!! http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/peoria/2014/09/19/peoria-council-candidate-investigated/15869755/ Peoria council candidate investigated Jackee Coe, The Republic | azcentral.com 9:10 p.m. MST September 18, 2014 Peoria has hired a private law firm to investigate a city councilman who has family connections to a group that launched political attacks on a rival candidate. A resident filed a complaint against Ben Toma, claiming Toma coordinated with an independent expenditure committee and had compensated a family member on that committee. Both are violations of state law. The committee, called the Best Peoria Can Be, sent mailers slamming a rival candidate days before the primary election in August. Toma said he had not known that a relative had formed the committee and funded the mailer, but the committee's address is listed as the house of Toma's mother, and his brother-in-law is the group's treasurer. Toma has been on the council since being appointed in June. He has denied allegations that he had any involvement with the committee or knew anything about it but said he "can't refute the actual content of (the mailer) because it does appear to be true." RELATED: Familiar faces make up new Peoria council "This investigation is nothing but a political stunt, in my opinion, to try to change the subject from the content of what the attack was," he said. Mailers sent to voters in the Mesquite District in northern Peoria claimed that because one of Toma's opponents, Bridget Binsbacher, has the support of firefighters, she "is owned by the unions" and could turn Peoria "into Detroit."Another claimed she would use the council position to steer funds to a non-profit where she is executive director. The non-profit, the Peoria Diamond Club, receives some of its funding from the city and provides tens of thousands of volunteer hours at the city-owned sports complex during spring training, along with raising funds and administering grants for local youth groups. Binsbacher said she would resign her post if she is elected to the council. Still, a supporter of Binsbacher worked with her campaign team to craft a complaint against Toma, asking the city attorney for an investigation of whether Toma illegally collaborated with the committee. Marvin Shadman said he filed the complaint because he doesn't like "dirty politics." "I thought it was illegal what they were doing," he said. "You're not supposed to have your family involved in that, and to say that you don't know what's going on, I find that hard to believe." The investigation has added to an already controversial election that saw a federal judge cancel the Aug. 26 primary days before the election after another candidate in the race, Ken Krieger, was twice was left off early ballots. The primary is set for Nov. 4, with a runoff on March 10, if necessary. Because Toma is on the City Council, the city attorney hired a private law firm, Curtis, Goodwin, Sullivan, Udall and Schwab PLC, to investigate the complaint. According to state law, independent-expenditure committees cannot have any coordination with candidates, including if any member of the expenditure committee also is a member of the candidate's campaign or any committee member receives "any form of compensation or reimbursement from the candidate." In another twist, Toma's brother-in-law, who is the treasurer, also had been listed as an employee of Toma's real-estate firm on the firm's website. Toma said his brother-in-law never worked for his company and was listed only as the information-technology manager for Toma Partners LLC because he set up a remote-access server for the company a few years ago and the only compensation he received was being listed on the company site. His name since has been removed. Toma said his sister and brother-in-law are living with his parents while they are having a new home built, and he speculated that is why the committee's address is his mother's home. He said he has cooperated with investigators, who he said have combed through his personal and professional emails, looked through company tax records and conducted interviews. Attorney Phyllis Smiley, who is conducting the investigation, did not give any details of the investigation but said it will be completed before the Nov. 4 election. Robert Johnson, Binsbacher's campaign manager, doubted Toma's claim that he has not been involved with the independent-expenditure committee because he said the amount of evidence is "remarkable." "There are lots of independent expenditures and lots of independent-expenditure committees that are formed. We have never seen one this blatant," Johnson said. "It's ridiculous."
http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe/2014/09/18/storms-dump-town-lake-headaches-tempe/15867385/ Storms dump Town Lake headaches on Tempe Arizona's recent storms dumped Town Lake headaches on Tempe, leaving city officials acknowledging they are no match for Mother Nature. Construction on the $40.8 million steel dam on the lake's western edge has been halted indefinitely after last week's record rainfall flooded the work site in the normally parched Salt River bed. Storm-water runoff has contributed to turning lake water near the western dam into a foul mix of green algae, sludge and garbage. And Wednesday's rain forced the city to cancel a popular swim/run race at the lake that was scheduled to draw about 250 athletes. The city is in wait-and-see mode as to whether a larger triathlon scheduled Sunday will get the all-clear. Nikki Ripley, a Tempe spokeswoman, said the city learned on Wednesday that enough rain had fallen to trigger mandatory water-quality testing. About 24 hours is needed to get results. With Thursday's swim/run less than 24 hours from starting, the city was out of time to ensure the safety of athletes. Last week, state officials with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality had warned against swimming in Town Lake because storm-water runoff can carry fecal bacteria and chemicals. "It was still raining and they (city officials) saw there's another (storm) cell behind it," Ripley said. "They just said, 'It wasn't realistic. Let's just cancel it.' " Tempe Mayor Mark Mitchell said he believes the costly dam project would remain on track, but he said weather delays from the powerful, historic Valley storms are out of the city's control. "It's an act of god," Mitchell said. "When it's safe to get back going, we're going to get back going." The dam construction site has been flooded since Sept. 8 when the Valley was battered by the aftermath of a hurricane-related storm. Tempe is now dealing with the effects of a second hurricane-related storm rolling into Arizona cities. Tempe officials were hopeful PCL Construction, Inc., the contractor for the dam, could check the work site last Friday and judge when dam construction could restart. But storm-water runoff continued to flow into the lake and over the western-end rubber dam, flooding the work site in the Salt River bed. On Monday, workers got a reprieve. With water no longer flowing over the dam, they used a pump to push water out of the construction site and into a channel flowing westward into the river bed. The breather was short-lived. By Wednesday, a second storm brought new rain, and waterfalls again were spilling over the lake dam. Tempe officials said that any assessment on restarting dam construction would have to wait until after the storms pass and the work site dries. Workers were excavating the river bed of earth to ready it for 61,100 tons of concrete for the dam foundation. Under an agreement with Bridgestone Industrial Products, Inc., Tempe must remove the temporary rubber dam that was installed in 2010 after the lake's original rubber dam failed, emptying the lake of nearly 1 billion gallons of water. If the dam is not removed by December, 2015, the city could face hefty fines. Tempe officials told The Arizona Republic that the agreement with Bridgestone allows for delays that are considered an "act of god." Wednesday's afternoon storms were not enough to push the putrid sludge over the western dam. Last week, Tempe officials said the scum at Town Lake is cleaned regularly, but by Monday, the sun-baked mix of stagnant sludge, garbage and green algae had gone from smelly to putrid. The foul muck has continued to pool up against the western rubber dam. Floating in the warm lake water Wednesday afternoon were dead fish, water bottles, grass, tree branches, garbage bags, convenience-store soda cups, Styrofoam containers and a soccer ball. Mallard ducks swam in the dark sludge that was expanding eastward in the lake. "There's a dead-animal smell," said Charlie Noble, a Chandler resident who walked Monday on the pedestrian bridge that straddles the western dam. "Putrid. Poop. Dead fish." That's how three Arizona State University students biking at Town Lake Wednesday described the odor steaming off the mixture. Last week, City Manager Andrew Ching said that the mess likely accumulated in the days since the massive storm but that he expected it would be cleaned by a contractor Tempe pays to maintain the lake. On Monday evening, responding to The Arizona Republic's questions about why the situation at Town Lake had worsened over the weekend, Ching said the contractor is focused on cleaning lake areas between the eastern and western buoys, the stretch of water used for kayaking, canoeing, paddleboarding and city-approved swimming events like triathlons. The sludge near the western dam is outside of those boundaries. Ching and Ripley, the city spokeswoman, could not provide a timeline for when the mess would be cleaned. "It's going to be a continual clean-up process," Ripley said. Valley residents who enjoy the scenic lake were appalled by the stench, questioned the lake's water quality and worried whether bacteria and mosquitoes were breeding. The sludge is in a high-profile area that sees hundreds of daily visitors. By Monday, water in the boat marina on the lake's eastern end also had begun to smell. Ching said water quality had been tested at several lake sites last week in advance of a swimming event over the weekend. He said the results showed the water was safe for swimming. Tempe officials said that a mosquito count is conducted weekly at Town Lake. However, officials could not immediately confirm Monday whether the stagnant water near the western dam had been tested for mosquitoes that may carry the West Nile Virus. With more rain expected this week, Tempe officials said they are preparing for the worst. "We're watching, and we're always going to be prepared," Mitchell said. "We did take immediate action (after last week's storm) and started cleaning up debris in the water. "This was an unprecedented storm. Clean up will take a little bit of time." Ellen Churchill walked the lake Friday with her husband, Bill. Churchill said she was shocked to see so much garbage and algae floating in the lake. "I thought it looked pretty disgusting," she said. Churchill said she and her husband love the picturesque lake setting. She questioned why Tempe had not already sent a cleanup crew. "I don't see it going away by itself, so I hope they get somebody out here to clean it up," Churchill said. Since the storm, Valley residents have been concerned about stagnant waters becoming breeding grounds for mosquitoes that can carry the West Nile Virus. Tempe is responsible for Town Lake mosquito monitoring, said Johnny Diloné, a spokesman with Maricopa County Environmental Services Department, which monitors West Nile complaints and mosquito breeding at other county sites. He said the county sets mosquito traps in surrounding Town Lake neighborhoods and industrial areas. Diloné said residents can report mosquito-breeding sites to the county or the city. Aida Waters of Mesa walked her dog, Copper, past the city's pedestrian bridge Friday. Waters worried about the water quality. "It was a little oily and filthy. It's just this crud that's floating," she said. "People canoe in there and they're paddleboarding. I don't want to be swimming in the waters." Tempe used to regularly post the lake's water quality for the public on the city's website. The last posted water-quality reading was March 2013. Last week, Ching said the city has the water-quality reports and would post them this week. As of Wednesday, the reports had not been posted. Linda Taunt, deputy director of the ADEQ's water-quality division, said the historic rainfall in the Valley last week caused dirty storm-water runoff from upstream to flow into Town Lake. Taunt said water may be flowing into Town Lake from Indian Bend Wash, the Mesa wastewater treatment plant and Arizona Department of Transportation canal runoff. "There's all kinds of fecal bacteria and fertilizers," she said. "This might not be the best time to be paddleboarding. Sure, you're supposed to stay on the board but even people who aren't novices can end up face-first into the lake. "I would not want to be swimming in it today. Kayaking and canoeing, that's fine." Taunt said anyone who has concerns about water quality may contact the city for copies of the testing reports. If the testing shows poor water quality, the public may contact the state water-safety agency to report concerns. "We could work with DHS (the state Department of Health Services) to determine if we would not allow full-body contact with the water," she said. The state agency typically tests for some Town Lake swimming events. At the end of each year, the agency requests Tempe's testing for an annual Arizona lakes water-quality report.
Muslims accuse some officials of stoking fear H. L. Mencken's quote at work: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/politics/2014/09/19/muslims-accuse-officials-stoking-fear/15870293/ Muslims accuse some officials of stoking fear Islam expert labels them 'known Muslim Brotherhood' members after they oppose his visit. Daniel Gonzalez and Dan Nowicki, The Republic | azcentral.com 6:57 a.m. MST September 19, 2014 Muslim community leaders are worried that some elected officials in Arizona and across the country are stoking a rise in Islamophobia in the wake of recent beheadings and other terrorist acts by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria militant group. They cite as just one example a training session Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery scheduled for today that purports to teach law-enforcement officers in the Valley about the threat of Islamic terrorists. The training session has drawn criticism from the ACLU and a cross-section of local religious leaders because it will be led by a former FBI agent, John Guandolo, who critics say spreads anti-Muslim rhetoric in the name of fighting terrorism. "The timing could not be worse, given the fact that John Guandolo is an individual who promotes anti-Muslim conspiracy theories and bigoted notions that effectively scapegoat the entire Muslim community," said Michele Lefkowith, the Southwest regional investigative researcher for the Anti-Defamation League. Muslim leaders say other elected officials are also fanning anti-Muslim sentiments by perpetuating claims that ISIS-trained terrorists are on the verge of entering the U.S. through the border with Mexico. Last weekend, U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., cited on the E.W. Jackson radio program a Judicial Watch report that ISIS is present in Ciudad Juarez, a city in Mexico across from El Paso, Texas, "so there's no question that they have designs on trying to come into Arizona." Franks did not respond to requests for comment. U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has also expressed concern that ISIS could enter the U.S., saying the border is not secure. 'Political points' Muslim leaders say they fear that those claims, which have been dismissed by Department of Homeland Security officials, are being made to promote political agendas and could make the public suspicious of all Muslims. "It's a way for them to score political points," said Imraan Siddiqi, chairman of the Arizona branch of the Council of American Islamic Relations. Muslims, he said, have been equally "horrified" by the terrorist acts committed by members of ISIS, including the recent beheadings of two American journalists and a British aid worker. "Obviously every single Muslim out there condemns what ISIS is doing," Siddiqi said. Ahmad Shqeirat, the iman of the Tempe mosque, said, "I am not aware of any credited Muslim scholar or organization who sympathizes (with) ISIS terrorist actions." He noted that ISIS has killed many Muslims and that "Muslims are suffering from ISIS aggression, too." Muslim leaders say they are alarmed that some elected officials have linked the actions of extremist groups with Islam. Earlier this month, Oklahoma state Rep. John Bennett came under fire after he posted comments on his Facebook page saying "the Quran clearly states that non Muslims should be killed" and that Christians should be "wary of individuals claiming to be Muslim American," according to news reports. Local Muslim community leaders noted two recent incidents in New York that have raised concerns among Muslim-Americans. Earlier this month, two Arab-American civil-rights activists were attacked by a man who threatened to "cut your heads off like your people did to us," according to the New York Daily News. Also this month, the Daily News reported that a Pakistani family was attacked in New York by a man who yelled "What are you doing in my neighborhood? Get out, Arab," before throwing the husband to the ground. After the attacks, the New York office of CAIR urged Muslims to exercise caution in public spaces. Local Muslim community leaders say they are not aware of any recent anti-Muslim incidents in Arizona. Flake weighs in U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said he didn't think local Muslims needed to fear a new wave of reprisals as a result of the U.S. escalation against ISIS. He said opinions have been formed a long time ago and doubted ISIS would change any of them. "There have been extremists that have been around for a while, whether it's al-Qaida or ISIS or whatever," Flake said. "I don't know that it's worse than it was before in terms of stereotypes or opinions." Flake also says he doesn't put much credence into the speculation that ISIS extremists are poised to cross the border into the United States from Mexico. "Those who are in a position to know a little more have refuted that," Flake said Thursday. "I think we would have heard it from credible sources here if that were the case." McCain said that the border issue is a legitimate concern and that Homeland Security officials haven't ruled out the possibility. He also referred to a counter-terrorism operation in Australia that leaders there said thwarted an ISIS plan to behead a random citizen. "I, of course, know of no plot or information, but look at what just happened in Australia," McCain told The Arizona Republic on Thursday. "There is no doubt that the Internet has proved an extremely useful tool for ISIS to do recruiting. … They also can get on board an airliner and come into the United States, but they may be able to carry stuff across the border." Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., said he doubts the heightened awareness about ISIS will lead to Islamophobia. "We're at war with extremist jihadists, and not every Muslim is an extremist jihadist," Salmon said. "So, no, I don't believe that there is going to be some mass hysteria toward the Muslim population." Montgomery has refused requests by local Muslim leaders and the ACLU to cancel today's training session over concerns that it will be used to promote hate toward Muslims. On Thursday, Montgomery sent a three-page letter to ACLU legal director Don Pochoda defending his decision to continue with the training by Guandolo, called "Understanding the Threat." The purpose of the training, Montgomery wrote, is to help local law-enforcement officers and prosecutors understand how extremists who use language from the Quran to "justify their actions and inspire others to act accordingly" and avoid stereotyping Muslims in general. Some extremist groups also use the Bible to justify racist views and acts, he said in the letter. But he wouldn't consider training law-enforcement officers about these groups to "be detracting or defaming Christianity," Montgomery wrote. Even so, Jerry Cobb, Montgomery's spokesman, confirmed that Montgomery called Guandolo and asked him to remove a blog post branding the leaders of several local Islamic communities as "known MB," an apparent reference to the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood. "The county attorney immediately contacted him and expressed his concern, and they took it down," Cobb said. ON THE BEAT Daniel González covers immigration and minority communities for The Republic's watchdog team. He was a finalist for the American Society of News Editors award for Distinguished Writing on Diversity this year. How to reach him daniel.gonzalez@arizonarepublic.com Phone: 602-444-8312 Twitter: @azdangonzalez Dan Nowicki covers national politics, with an emphasis on the U.S. Senate and presidential races. In 2007 and 2008, he traveled around the country covering U.S. Sen. John McCain's unsuccessful White House run. He has been with The Republic since 2002. How to reach him dan.nowicki@arizonarepublic.com Phone: 602-444-8275 Twitter: @dannowicki |