9 Jan 2012

January 9, 2012


Why Anti-Gun Vigils Are Unlikely to Expand Federal Gun Controls

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In ceremonies from New York to Seattle, candlelight vigils are being held in 30 cities to remember the thousands who are murdered in the U.S. each year, most with guns. For gun-control advocates, it will be a day to "light a candle against the darkness of gun violence" and to demand that Congress tighten gun laws, McClatchy Newspapers report. Congress did nothing of the sort after the Tucson massacre a year ago, and the odds are good that nothing will happen this year.

Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA), a gun-control proponent who gets failing grades from the National Rifle Association, said it's just a matter of political reality. He wants Congress to repeal a 2010 law that allows loaded guns in national parks. "The problem is the NRA's got a majority in the House and Senate - that's the reality of it," said Dicks. John Velleco of the Virginia-based Gun Owners of America said Congress should instead loosen existing gun-control laws to make it easier for citizens to defend themselves with firearms. "I think the vigils completely miss the point because they're assuming that more gun-control laws will lead to fewer crimes, but we find that the opposite is true," he said. "The more gun-control laws you have, the easier it is for criminals to commit crimes." The vigils come after a particularly bloody holiday season.

McClatchy Newspapers


Caring for Dangerous Mentally Ill: Issue Year After Giffords Shooting

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The shootings of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others in Tucson a year ago highlighted the issue of getting care for people with untreated mental illness who are dangerous. It hasn't settled the question of how to do so most effectively and fairly, says the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Jared Loughner, 23, awaits trial while a federal judge decides whether authorities can forcibly administer medication for his schizophrenia.

In Wisconsin, a committee is recommending changes to the state's commitment laws, including ways to reduce the number of patients who are brought into hospitals by police and to clarify laws to allow parents more control over the care of their children. "This is such an urgent issue," said Lucinda Roy, a professor at Virginia Tech and adviser to Seung-Hui Cho, who ignored a court order for psychiatric treatment and killed 32 students and faculty members in 2007 before killing himself. The Journal Sentinel is sponsoring a forum this week on ways to identify better those who are dangerous because of their mental illness and to get them help before they do harm to themselves or others. The forum follows the newspaper's series on the subject.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel


St. Louis Police Fire Guns At High Rate; Little Outside Oversight

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St. Louis officers fire their guns at a higher rate than those in many other metropolitan forces, says a St. Louis Post-Dispatch analysis. Unlike many other departments, St. Louis has no third party checking the process. An initiative to bring prosecutors on board was decided as the Post-Dispatch made inquiries for its story but has not yet been formalized. All investigative records pertaining to the officers' actions are sealed.

A report the department commissioned in 2009 found serious fault in how deadly force was used and investigated. Of 117 police uses of deadly force in the last five years, 113 were cleared. "There's a cloak of secrecy with these things," said Gonzalo Fernandez, the attorney for one man who was shot. "The repercussion is it allows an environment of abuse to continue." In the five years ending in 2010, St. Louis officers fired up to three times more often, per reported violent crime, than those protecting other, similar-sized populations. There is no national database of shots fired by police, but the Las Vegas Review-Journal compiled data from 16 departments in the most populated cities. St. Louis, not on the list, easily topped all of them in shots fired per violent crime.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch


Armed Pharmacy Robberies Up 79% in 5 Years; Long Island Worried

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Pharmacies around the U.S. have been shaken by a rash of bold robberies by gun-wielding criminals hunting for narcotic painkillers, anti-anxiety drugs, and other controlled medications, either to quench their own addictions or to sell, says the New York Times. Nowhere has the face of the epidemic been more frightful than on Long Island, where a pair of pharmacy robberies 30 miles apart resulted in six deaths. The killings have sharply elevated tensions - some pharmacies now display signs making it clear that they do not carry oxycodone - and set off a scramble for better security.

The Drug Enforcement Administration says there were 688 armed pharmacy robberies involving controlled substances in 2010, a 79 percent increase from 2006. U.S. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) has called for better drugstore security and promoted longer sentences for pharmacy thefts. In September, a Long Island Pharmacy Crimes Task Force was created among law enforcement agencies and pharmacies to share security ideas. Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, maintains RxPatrol, a clearinghouse that tracks pharmacy crimes and offers security tips. Purdue also posts rewards for information that helps in the capture of drugstore robbers.

New York Times


Secure Communities Mandatory for Local Law Enforcement: ICE Memo

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Two years after the Secure Communities immigration enforcement program was implemented, federal officials determined that choices available to local law enforcement agencies that wished to decline or limit their participation would be "streamlined" or "eliminated," making the information-sharing program mandatory, according to a memo recently made public and quoted by the Los Angeles Times. Launched in 2008, Secure Communities was promoted to local and state leaders as a way to focus immigration enforcement efforts on "serious convicted criminals."

The program, which involves the FBI sharing fingerprints collected from county jails with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has come under fire because a large percentage of immigrants caught up in the system were never convicted of a crime or were low-level offenders. Federal officials initially said there were ways for state and local officials to drop out of the program. In a 9-page memo dated Oct. 2, 2010, a legal advisor for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said at that time that "choices available to law enforcement agencies who have thus far decided to decline or limit their participation in current information-sharing processes will be streamlined and aspects eliminated. In that way, the process, in essence, becomes 'mandatory' in 2013."

Los Angeles Times


Preliminary Data Estimate VA Wrongful Conviction Rate At 6%

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A first peek into Virginia's post-conviction DNA project data shows a potential wrongful conviction rate of 6 percent in the decade and a half before DNA testing was widely available, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The preliminary figure from the Urban Institute, which is studying the results, roughly matches the exoneration rate found in 2005, when testing in a small sample of cases cleared two men of rapes and prompted Virginia's groundbreaking project.

The 6-year-old effort aimed at clearing innocent people was made possible by a trove of biological evidence samples discovered in Virginia Department of Forensic Science files dating from 1973 through 1988. John Roman of the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center said researchers reviewing 638 Virginia cases have identified 37 "that might support exoneration and that certainly support further investigation." Roman hopes the study will indicate how many people were wrongfully convicted of serious crimes from 1973 through 1988. "I don't know how far we can go down that road," he said, "but this is probably the best attempt to get at that number that anybody's ever had. The Justice Department made a really substantial investment in this."

Richmond Times-Dispatch


Civil Libertarians Oppose Expanding New York DNA Databank

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People convicted of felonies and 36 misdemeanors are required to provide DNA in New York state. Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants to include all misdemeanor convictions, an additional 200 crimes, reports Gannett News Service. Law-enforcement organizations are supporting the measure as a means of obtaining more leads, nabbing more criminals and preventing future crimes, as well as uncovering wrongful convictions.

Supporters argue that it is common for people to escalate from committing misdemeanors to felonies. Civil libertarians believe the change would infringe on people's rights and they don't think there is enough oversight and quality control in the system. The New York Civil Liberties Union is concerned the state doesn't have the "existing rigor and capacity in our regulatory oversight to ensure these samples are collected, processed, analyzed in a way that prevents error, fraud and abuse from entering into the process."

Gannett News Service/WGRZ


"Mind Boggling" L.A. Crime Decline Needs an Explanation

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Los Angeles is in the midst of a crime drop so steep and profound it has experts scratching their heads, says Los Angeles Times columnist Sandy Banks. Crime fell in 2011 for the ninth year in a row. The city had fewer crimes last year - and a million and a half more people - than it did when "Leave It To Beaver" made its debut in 1957. "The numbers are mind-boggling," Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa tells Banks. "You can walk down Main Street in the middle of the day or night. That's something we haven't seen in my lifetime." Main Street is a downtown thoroughfare, once notorious for drugs and crime, now an area of eclectic shops and busy restaurants.

The reasons for the drop are complicated: better policing and more community involvement; fewer drugs and fuller prisons; an explosion in new technology; and the fading profile of violent gangs. The phenomenon ought to be scrutinized, Banks says. We need to know what mix of forces has conspired to drive crime down, so we can - in an era of shrinking resources - plan and spend wisely to keep this going.

Los Angeles Times


"Bad Guys More Brazen"--Police Shootings Up in Columbus

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Confrontations with increasingly violent people drove up the number of police-involved shootings in Columbus last year, police tell the Columbus Dispatch. There were 19 shootings by officers, the second-highest total in the past 15 years. Eight of the people shot were killed, the most in any year since 1997. Two people were shot in the first week of 2012.

"We're not the ones choosing to do this," said Sgt. Rich Weiner, a police spokesman. The suspect has chosen to do something that necessitates our using that kind of force." Noting the frequency of deadly ambushes of police last year, Steve Groeninger of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund said police work is growing more dangerous. Weiner said, "It seems like the bad guys are more brazen." Police are not cavalier in using deadly force, he said. Officers go through rigorous training to react along a use-of-force continuum that changes as a suspect's actions escalate, he said. Deadly force comes last on that arc. "It's still a human life, and you think of it that way."

Columbus Dispatch


In Houston, Murders and Jail Population Both Are Down

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News of Houston's lowest murder rate in decades coincides with a seemingly a counter-intuitive report that the Harris County Jail population has declined 31 percent in the last three years, says the Grits for Breakfast criminal-justice blog. In 2007, despite overcrowding and hundreds of prisoners housed in contract facilities as far away as Louisiana, Harris County voters rejected the issuance of debt for new jail construction.

Critics argued that policy changes by elected officials - particularly the District Attorney and judges - could resolve the problem without expensive new jail construction and without crime increasing, and it turned out that's exactly what's happened. The Houston Chronicle reports that dropping inmate numbers at the Harris County Jail will let the county end its nearly 5-year-old practice of shipping overflow inmates to Louisiana and other Texas counties within days. The jail population has fallen 31 percent since 2008, to 8,573.

Grits for Breakfast


Today's Protesters Must Face Consequences of Arrests

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A North Carolina college student was surprised to be handcuffed at a protest against proposed legislative cuts to education funding, says the Raleigh News & Observer. A new wave of protesters has reinvigorated civil disobedience, but that action can carry a lasting price for the individual: an arrest and its consequences.

Said the student, "It does bring up a bit of doubt. I feel like I'll be asked to explain it a lot." Through a first-time offender program, she negotiated a deal with prosecutors that allows her to perform community service in exchange for dismissal of her disorderly conduct charge. Nevertheless, she had to craft a letter to explain her actions as she pursues her ambition of becoming an educator. Public protests were often the province of cranks, chronic hecklers, or a smattering of diehards pursuing old causes. Now, old and young, people established in life and those still planning their futures, are taking up placards and storming public venues.

Raleigh News & Observer


Solitary Confinement Critics Setting Their Sights On Virginia Prisons

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At Virginia's Red Onion State Prison, more than two-thirds of the inmates live in solitary confinement, says the Washington Post. In a state where 1 in 20 prisoners are held in solitary, Red Onion, a so-called supermax prison, isolates more inmates than any other facility, keeping more than 500 of its nearly 750 charges alone for 23 hours a day in cells the size of a doctor's exam room. Virginia,one of 44 states that use solitary confinement, has 1,800 people in isolation, a sizable share of the estimated 25,000 people in solitary around the U.S.

As more becomes known about the effects of isolation - on inmate health, public safety and prison budgets - some states have begun to reconsider the practice, among them Texas, which, like Virginia, is known as a law-and-order state. Mississippi, New York, and Texas have begun to scale back the use of solitary confinement under pressure from prison watchdogs. Now critics have set their sights on Virginia, where lawyers and inmates say some of the state's 40,000 prisoners, including some with mental-health issues, have been kept in isolation for years, in one case for 14 years. The Legal Aid Justice Center, which represents 12 inmates in isolation in Virginia, has requested an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, which recently started a probe into a 1,550-bed Pennsylvania prison where inmates complain of long periods of isolation and a lack of mental-health treatment.

Washington Post