Former Marine jailed in Mexico over gun. Parents fight for release of 27-year-old war veteran

By Kelli Kennedy - The Associated Press
Posted : Wednesday Dec 12, 2012 6:59:01 EST

MIAMI — A South Florida family is fighting to get their son, a Marine veteran, released from a prison in a dangerous area in Mexico while facing charges that he carried across the border a shotgun with a barrel that’s an inch too short.

Jon Hammar and his friend were on their way to Costa Rica in August and planned to drive across the Mexican border near Matamoros in a Winnebago filled with surfboards and camping gear. Hammar, 27, asked U.S. border agents what to do with the unloaded shotgun, which his family said belonged to his great-grandfather.

“They examined it, they weighed it, they said you have to fill out this form,” his father, Jon Hammar, told The Associated Press in a phone interview Tuesday from his home near Miami.

But when the pair crossed the border and handed the paperwork to Mexican officials, they impounded the RV and jailed the men, saying it was illegal to carry that type of gun. Hammar’s friend was later released because the gun did not belong to him.

The family’s attorney said Mexican law prohibits civilians from carrying certain types of guns, such as sawed-off shotguns, which can be more easily concealed. Mexican law prohibits shotguns with a barrel of less than 25 inches (63.5 centimeters). Family attorney Eddie Varon-Levy said Mexican officials measured the barrel on Hammar’s shotgun as 24 inches (61 centimeters). It has not been sawed off.

Family members said the gun was purchased at Sears and blamed U.S. officials for telling Hammar he could bring it across the border in the first place.

Varon-Levy also questioned the way Mexican officials measured the gun, because the measurements can differ depending on where they are taken on the barrel.

He said dealing with Mexican authorities has also been difficult. He said Hammar was brought to court a few weeks ago, where officials tried to convince him to plead guilty without a lawyer present. Varon-Levy said he didn’t show up because he was told there was a continuance.

“I am fuming,” he said.

Hammar could face 12 years in prison, but Varon-Levy said that’s unlikely. He wants to get the charges downgraded, hoping Hammar can plead guilty to a lesser charge of carrying an unregistered weapon, which carries only a fine.

Hammar served in Iraq and Afghanistan before being honorably discharged from the Marines in 2007. His mother said surfing helped him cope after he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Mexican authorities have fully guaranteed his right to Consular assistance; therefore Mr. Hammar has been in contact with U.S. Consular officers in Mexico who have regularly visited him,” Ricardo Alday, spokesman for the Mexican Embassy, said in a statement. “The possession of any weapon restricted for the use of the Army in Mexico is a Federal crime, regardless of whether you declare it or not upon entering the country, and must be automatically prosecuted.”

Alday said Harmmar was detained in Tamaulipas “and as any other detainee facing criminal charges he has the right to defense counsel and a fair trial. In addition, his life and integrity are protected by national and international laws.”

Meanwhile, Hammar is being held in one of the most dangerous areas in Mexico.

Matamoros is the long-time headquarters of the Gulf Cartel, which has been engaged in a bloody struggle with its former security guards, the Zetas, since early 2010 for the lucrative drug routes along the eastern end of the Texas-Mexico border. An October 2011 fight among inmates at the prison left 20 dead and 12 injured.

At first, Hammar was held with the general population, filled mostly with members of drug cartels. Now he is periodically chained to his bed in a cell by himself, said his father, who speaks with his son by phone occasionally.

“Sometimes he’s got his head on good. We’re like just, ‘Hang in there. We’re doing everything we can.’ Other days, it’s like, it’s not as good,” Jon Hammar said, sighing heavily and struggling to steady his voice.

In August, the family received a frightening middle-of-the-night phone call from the cartel demanding money, said Jon Hammar, a 48-year-old software engineer.

“‘Lady, this isn’t about the police. This is our house. We have your son. We’re going to kill him if you don’t send us money,’“ Hammar said, recounting the phone call.

The couple planned to wire the money to an account, but officials at the U.S. consulate intervened and contacted prison officials. His son was moved into a private cell the next day, he said.

A spokesman for the State Department said officials have visited Hammar three times, spoken with him by phone and contacted prison officials to stop them from chaining him to the bed.

“The safety and well-being of U.S. citizens is something we take very seriously,” said Peter Velasco.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, spoke on the Senate floor Tuesday, asking Mexican authorities to release Hammar.

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen also urged the State Department to work incessantly to reunite Hammar with his family and said she’s disappointed the agency has not told her what efforts have been made.

The Miami Republican said she plans to contact the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Patrol about Hammar’s arrest. His mother emailed Ros-Lehtinen and asked for help.

“The Hammar family has suffered a great deal since their son’s unjust incarceration in August and the details they have provided to my office are gripping and a clear abuse of Jon’s human rights,” she said in a statement.

Associated Press Writer Christopher Sherman in McAllen, Texas, contributed to this report.

Veterans Day Remembering Those Who Served

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek9sBHz1tnU

The Spy Who GPS-Tagged Me Private investigators who use GPS trackers to monitor suspected cheating spouses are in a legal gray area.

The Spy Who GPS-Tagged Me
Private investigators who use GPS trackers to monitor suspected cheating spouses are in a legal gray area.

By Ryan Gallagher|Posted Friday, Nov. 9, 2012, at 8:33 AM ET

The tools once reserved for intelligence operatives have become increasingly cheap and available in recent years, and perhaps no one has benefited from this more than private investigators who make their money by monitoring suspected cheaters. No longer do they have to sit outside a seedy motel for hours, trying to take pictures of a philandering husband and his mistress entering a room together. They need only attach a GPS device to the suspected adulterer’s car, and the client’s suspicions can be confirmed.

In a landmark ruling in January, the Supreme Court held that law enforcement use of GPS trackers to monitor movements constitutes a “search.” That means the technology falls under the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, making it difficult for police to put a tracker on a car without first obtaining a warrant. But for private individuals, laws around the use of GPS trackers remain patchy, differing state to state.

Take California, Texas, Virginia, and Minnesota. These states allow private individuals to use tracking devices where the owner of a vehicle consents to it being monitored. Where there is no consent, it is considered a misdemeanor that can result in a fine and a jail sentence of six to 12 months. If a vehicle is jointly owned—say, by a husband and wife—and one owner wants to secretly track the other, it’s a murky area that’s as ethically dubious as it is legally contentious. However, that isn’t stopping private investigators—some of whom appear willing to track any vehicle regardless of its ownership.
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In a bid to find out whether private eyes are adhering to the law, earlier this month I decided to dabble in a bit of undercover investigating of my own. Posing as a suspicious wife and using a fake email address, I wrote to a number of PIs in the states with the strictest laws on the use of GPS surveillance trackers. Those I randomly selected were all advertising a GPS service openly on their websites, and I emailed to request a quote for how much it would cost to “GPS monitor movements of my husband's car” over a two-week period.

Of the 20 investigators I contacted, 16 replied, and only one declined to offer me some sort of GPS tracking citing legal concerns. The majority of the PIs said they would do it on the condition that my name was on the title of the car, with some offering to provide a DVD of its movements and others offering “real-time” surveillance of the vehicle for me to watch live via cellphone or computer.

Two separate investigators in California I approached expressed no immediate concern for the state’s GPS tracking law, which unequivocally outlaws tracking a car without the consent of its owner. Still using the fake name and email address, I asked whether the investigators would be willing and able to monitor more than one vehicle at a time. “There is another person who I believe is involved with my husband and it would be useful for me to check her car's movements at the same time as my husband's,” I wrote.

The response from Irvine, Calif.-based Hudson Investigations was a straight yes. “I could do it for $1200 including install and removal,” company boss Rick Hudson, a former Orange County police officer, told me. I received a similarly affirmative answer from Western Investigations, a firm headquartered near San Diego that claims on its website to be one of the most experienced PI agencies in California. “You are looking at a total of $1,800 for 2 vehicles for 2 weeks of the tracking,” Western Investigations’ general manager wrote. “We will give you access to monitor it yourself during the entire course of the investigation. And if you would like a location history report at the conclusion of the investigation, we can do so as well.”

When I subsequently contacted Western Investigations under my real name about this story, I asked whether it was aware the service I requested is classified as a misdemeanor under California’s penal code. “If I gave you the wrong impression then I was mistaken,” the GM wrote back in an email, insisting that the company would not install a tracking device without the consent of the registered owner. Western Investigations’ owner Patrick Schneemann then told me in a separate message, “I can assure you that our company policy is that we do not use GPS in our investigations unless we have consent from the owner of the vehicle.”

Rick Hudson at Hudson Investigations said he was sure he had mentioned the legal constraints in his emails (he didn’t) and said that he wouldn’t put a tracker on any vehicle without signing a GPS agreement with the customer that says that they have the authorization. Hudson added that he gets “so many calls regarding these tracking units that it's crazy.”

Other PI companies were reluctant to directly help me track the vehicles but instead offered to sell or rent me GPS tracking equipment. This would mean any unlawful use of the tracker would be on my shoulders and not those of a PI. In one instance, even after I informed Texas-based LP Dynamics that I was looking to track two vehicles, one of which had no ownership connection to me, I was offered "2 passive GPS units" for $125 each. A company representative emailed: "Just place on a vehicle, remove when you want and download to your computer to see where they have been." When I later contacted the company for this story, CEO Michael Morrison emailed that "we are a licensed private investigation corporation and not an attorney." Morrison rightly stated that LP Dynamics follows Texas law "to the letter" because the penal code covers only the installation of tracking systems but not the sale of the devices. This could be considered something of a legal loophole.

The solitary exception was California-based Orange Investigations, run by former military policeman Ryan Garrahy. Of the 16 that responded to me, Garrahy was the only PI to completely stonewall my request. Orange Investigations has previously provided GPS tracking for its clients, but Garrahy said he has stopped doing so “at this particular time” because of concerns about a possible rise in civil suits linked to the Supreme Court decision in January.

Overall, the impression I got was that it was not difficult to find companies willing to help me track any vehicle, which could potentially result in a misdemeanor being committed. Even the investigators who were more cautious, telling me that they would only track a vehicle I had an “ownership interest” in, were on shaky ground. Though a case in Minnesota last year ruled that it was acceptable to use a GPS tracker on your spouse if you co-own the car, there is far from a legal consensus on the matter in other states.

Austin, Texas-based criminal lawyer Ian Inglis told me he thought that the Texas statute on tracking wasn’t constructed with joint ownership in mind. “Even if there’s no criminal liability, there could be some civil liability, and it might look bad in a divorce, too,” Inglis said. “Whether it’s your husband or wife, it’s a bad idea to track anybody’s car without their permission.”

In California, similarly, it’s a gray area. Hanni Fakhoury, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said he wasn’t aware of any statutory California law that addressed the joint ownership question. Fakhoury referred to Georgia v. Randolph, a Supreme Court case where it was ruled that there needed to be joint agreement for the lawful search of a jointly owned property. According to Fakhoury, the joint consent deemed necessary in Randolph is consistent with other California law and so could feasibly apply to the use of trackers on a jointly owned vehicle. (Californian wiretap law, for instance, requires both parties to a conversation to consent to having the conversation recorded—unlike federal wiretap law, which only requires one party to consent.)

Contentious legal issues aside, what’s clear is that the use of GPS tracking devices is very far from being under control. While law enforcement agencies are now bound to consider the trackers as covered by the Fourth Amendment, in the private domain there’s a lack of clarity when it comes to the regulation. Where there are laws, in some cases they are being ignored, and where there is any ambiguity, it is being exploited—often by individuals who stand to make a profit.

As is frequently the case in the realm of surveillance, the technology is out of step with the law. High-tech tracking tools that would a decade ago have rarely been used outside police and military circles are available today to anyone with a credit card and access to the Internet. The technology is continuing to advance and is simultaneously becoming cheaper. And that’s not going to change any time soon.

SpyBase, a surveillance gadgets retailer based out of Torrance, Calif., has seen in recent years a rapid increase in sales of GPS trackers, a trend that’s continuing. The store’s owner, who didn’t want to be named, told me GPS trackers were his “best-sellers,” and that a sophisticated $299 real-time tracker called the PTX 5 was his customers’ favorite.

“PIs, police, private citizens,” he said. “It’s a very big market.”

This article arises from Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, the New America Foundation, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, visit the Future Tense blog and the Future Tense home page. You can also follow us on Twitter.



http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/11/gps_trackers_to_monitor_cheating_spouses_a_legal_gray_area_for_private_investigators.single.html#pagebreak_anchor_2

Appeals Court OKs Warrantless, Real-Time Mobile Phone Tracking

Appeals Court OKs Warrantless, Real-Time Mobile Phone Tracking

WIRED.com
By David KravetsEmail Author
08.14.12,  4:06 PM

A federal appeals court on Wednesday said the authorities do not need a probable-cause warrant to track a suspect’s every move via GPS signals from a suspect’s mobile phone.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ruling 2-1, upheld a 20-year term for a drug courier nabbed with 1,100 pounds of marijuana in a motorhome camper the authorities tracked via his mobile phone pinging cell towers from Arizona to a Texas truck stop.

The decision, a big boost for the government’s surveillance powers, comes as prosecutors are shifting their focus to warrantless cell-tower location tracking of suspects in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling in January sharply limiting the use of GPS vehicle trackers. The Supreme Court found law enforcement should acquire probable-cause warrants from judges to affix GPS devices to vehicles and monitor their every move.

The court of appeals ruling comes a month after a congressional inquiry found that law enforcement made 1.3 million requests for cellphone data last year alone while seeking out subscriber information like text messages, location data and calling records.
Judge John M. Rogers wrote for the majority: (.pdf)

If a tool used to transport contraband gives off a signal that can be tracked for location, certainly the police can track the signal. The law cannot be that a criminal is entitled to rely on the expected untrackability of his tools. Otherwise, dogs could not be used to track a fugitive if the fugitive did not know that the dog hounds had his scent. A getaway car could not be identified and followed based on the license plate number if the driver reasonably thought he had gotten away unseen. The recent nature of cell phone location technology does not change this. If it did, then technology would help criminals but not the police.

The appeals court distinguished this case from a GPS case decided by the Supreme Court. The high court ruled that the physical act of installing a GPS device on a target’s vehicle amounted to a search, which usually necessitates a probable cause warrant under the Fourth Amendment.

“Here, the monitoring of the location of the contraband-carrying vehicle as it crossed the country is no more of a comprehensively invasive search than if instead the car was identified in Arizona and then tracked visually and the search handed off from one local authority to another as the vehicles progressed. That the officers were able to use less expensive and more efficient means to track the vehicles is only to their credit,” Rogers wrote.

Another appeals court, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, is also mulling a similar issue, one involving historical cell-site data. And the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2010 that warrants were required to get cell-site location data. Split rulings generally leads the Supreme Court to step in and clear the conflicts.

In all of the cases, including the 5th Circuit case, the Obama administration maintains that Americans have no expectation of privacy in cell-site records because they are “in the possession of a third party” — the mobile phone companies. What’s more, the authorities maintain that the cell site data is not as precise as GPS tracking and “there is no trespass or physical intrusion on a customer’s cellphone when the government obtains historical cell-site records from a provider.”
In the wake of the Supreme Court loss in January, the government has turned to relying even more on warrantless mobile-phone GPS tracking. In that case, the justices reversed the life sentence of a District of Columbia area drug dealer, Antoine Jones, who was the subject of 28 days of warrantless GPS surveillance via a device the FBI secretly attached to his vehicle.

Responding to the Jones decision, the FBI has pulled the plug on 3,000 GPS-tracking devices, and is seeking to introduce cell-site data, obtained without a warrant, in a bid to keep Jones in prison.
Wednesday’s ruling wasn’t unanimous on all counts, however.
Judge Bernice Donald upheld the conviction, based on the police’s “good faith’ exemption” to the warrant requirement. But Donald wrote that the majority was wrong in its theory of the case.

I would not characterize the question before us as whether society is prepared to recognize a legitimate expectation of privacy in the GPS data emitted from a cell phone used to effectuate drug trafficking. Rather, in keeping with the principle that the law affords the same constitutional protections to criminals and law-abiding citizens alike, the question is simply whether society is prepared to recognize a legitimate expectation of privacy in the GPS data emitted from any cell phone. Because I would answer this question in the affirmative, I cannot join Part II.A of the majority opinion.

 Here's a link to thew 6th Circuit Opinion:  6TH Circuit Opinion

Sentencing Day For Christopher Butler "Dirty Private Eye"

Chris Butler choked up as his sentence was read.

By Lisa Fernandez and Jodi Hernandez 

NBC Bay Area

Tuesday, Sep 25, 2012 

A former Antioch police officer and private investigator was sentenced Tuesday afternoon to eight years in prison following a high-profile string of arrests that disgraced the Contra Costa County California Narcotic Enforcement Team last year.

U.S. District Court Judge Saundra Armstrong in Oakland also ordered Butler to pay a $20,000 fine. Butler, dressed in a tan jail jumpsuit, choked up as his sentence was handed down.

"I want to apologize to the community for the anxiety, fear and suffering I caused," Butler said.

He also apologized "to the law enforcement community for the embarrassment and betrayal inflicted on it."

He added a final apology: "I apologize to my family and friends who supported me through all of this."

The sentencing follows his guilty plea in May to six charges, including extortion, robbery and conspiring to deal drugs. His probation officer recommended more than 12 years in prison.

Butler's sentence was much stiffer than what his associate received. Former San Ramon police office Louis Lombardi was sentenced to three years in prison for his role in the CNET scandal. Lombardi plead guilty to stealing $40,000 in cash and guns while serving search warrants.

Butler had achieved some fame by hooking a reality TV show contract and hiring "Mommy P.I.s," attractive women whose job was to lure men into cheating on their wives. And in court, he admitted to bribing a Contra Costa County sheriff's deputy, Stephen Tanabe, with cocaine and a gun to make drunk driving arrests of men he was investigating. These have since been dubbed, "dirty DUI" stings, and Butler has earned the nickname, the "Dirty P.I."

Butler testified to a lot: He admitted setting up a massage parlor, which provided sexual services.

And he testified that  former squad commander Norman Wielsch gave him marijuana and steroids, which he then gave to a colleague at his private eye firm. He also said he drove Wielsch to various spots where they took 586 grams of methamphetamine from evidence lockers. One of those pounds, he said, sold  for $9,800. He admitted to taking $30,000 worth of drugs.

Wielsh and Tanabe have both pleaded not guilty to similar charges. 

The drug team, known as CNET, was disbanded last February.

In March, NBC Bay Area was the first media organization to obtain the undercover video showing Butler and Wielsch in an apparent drug transaction at Butler's office in Concord. To see that video, click below.

Sentencing Day For Christopher Butler "Dirty Private Eye" 

Imprisoned detective may pose risk to star clients

Imprisoned detective may pose risk to star clients

Published October 25, 2012

Associated Press

Four years after a private eye went to prison for wiretapping phones of the rich and famous on behalf of celebrities and Hollywood heavyweights, his clients are facing hefty bills for his skullduggery.

In the first of more than a dozen lawsuits against Anthony Pellicano's well-heeled clients, a jury last week ruled against the ex-wife of a billionaire philanthropist, awarding $4 million to his three adult children and former personal assistant after she violated their privacy.

The verdict could spell trouble for other former clients who have been sued, such as Paramount studio head Brad Grey and one-time superagent Michael Ovitz.

The case against the ex-wife, Jacqueline Colburn, is the first to be tried before a jury stemming from a criminal probe that ensnared Pellicano for targeting Sylvester Stallone, Garry Shandling and Kevin Nealon and for work he did for others like Chris Rock and an attorney who represented MGM mogul Kirk Kerkorian in a child custody battle.

Pellicano, 68, is now serving 15 years in a federal prison in Texas after being convicted in 2008 of racketeering and more than six dozen other counts, including conspiracy, wire fraud and wiretapping. He is scheduled to be released in March 2019.

The trial billed as a blockbuster that would reveal the seedier side of Hollywood fizzled in the end as Pellicano kept silent, acting as his own lawyer.

The evidence showed he dug up dirt on clients' rivals by bribing phone company employees to install wiretapping software and had rogue police officers search databases for personal information. The information was used in hardball negotiations for business disputes, divorces and lawsuits.

Clients such as Grey, Ovitz and comedian Rock were never charged in the case and they insisted they didn't know about Pellicano's tactics. Kerkorian also has said that he had no knowledge of any wiretapping being used.

Grey and Ovitz are now facing lawsuits that could be costly and where the evidence is potentially stronger than the Colburn case, which relied largely on testimony and not on FBI reports or damning audio tapes made by Pellicano.

"I would think people will think long and hard about their exposure," said attorney Lawrence Segal, who represented Richard Colburn's children. "A lot of defendants may be thinking that in the absence of actual recordings they stand a decent chance of a defense. But we were able to prevail on a largely circumstantial case."

About a dozen lawsuits have moved slowly through the legal system alleging wiretapping and privacy invasion. Among the other defendants are AT&T and the cities of Beverly Hills and Los Angeles, where the police officers who provided information to Pellicano worked.

Most of the lawsuits are pending before a judge but have been mired by appeals in the criminal case, which allows Pellicano and others to preserve their right against self-incrimination, and the exchange of documents between attorneys was put on hold for many months. No trial dates have even been set.

A settlement in some of the lawsuits has been reached, said attorney Brian Kabateck, who represents several Pellicano victims, but a deal hasn't been finalized. He said the Colburn verdict provides some reassurance to his clients.

"It shows that juries are still outraged about this behavior even though it was many years ago," he said. "I think it sends a message to the defendants that they are going to have to pay real money."
The verdict in the Colburn case is a fraction of the fortune billionaire philanthropist left behind when he died in 2004 at age 92.

Evidence showed that his eighth wife, Jacqueline, who was nearly 50 years younger, paid Pellicano at least $115,000 to snoop on her husband after he was caught having phone sex with another woman, according to the lawsuit.

Ex-Pellicano employee Richard Campau testified that Colburn was in the private eye's office regularly listening to audio tapes of calls to and from the family home. Physical therapist David Powers also testified that Colburn bragged to him that she had hired the best private investigator in Los Angeles and he was using wiretaps.

There were an estimated 500 calls that were wiretapped by Pellicano over a 10-month period which captured numerous personal, medical and business matters involving the three adult children from a prior marriage and the ex-personal assistant, all of whom believed their conversations were private.

They "never knew of the surreptitious eavesdropping and certainly never agreed to put their personal lives on public display," said plaintiffs' attorney Wayne Skigen.

The lawsuit focused solely on the ex-wife and Pellicano and wasn't bogged down by suing large entities, such as the phone company or any cities. Segal and Skigen are seeking a default judgment against Pellicano because he hasn't responded to their claims.

Attempts to reach Jacqueline Colburn's attorney, Stanley McKiernan, were unsuccessful Wednesday. McKiernan has said there isn't any evidence showing Pellicano wiretapped on his client's behalf.

Federal authorities started investigating Pellicano after former Los Angeles Times reporter Anita Busch found a dead fish with a rose in its mouth on her car along with a sign reading "stop" in June 2002.

Busch testified at the criminal trial that she believed Ovitz and Pellicano had orchestrated the threat because she co-wrote articles about the agent's alleged financial troubles while his talent agency was in talks to be acquired.

Ovitz is a defendant in a lawsuit filed by Busch. He has yet to give a deposition.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2012/10/25/imprisoned-detective-may-pose-risk-to-star-clients/?intcmp=features#ixzz2ALobA0ET

California Limits Spousal Support

California Limits Spousal Support
By Rita Fuerst Adams, National Executive Director,
Fathers and Families

California Governor Jerry Brown has signed legislation introduced by Assembly member Toni Atkins, (D-San Diego) that prevents victims from being forced to pay spousal support to ex-husbands or wives who are convicted of violent crime against them. Assembly Bill 1522 was inspired by the case of a San Diego-area woman, Crystal Harris, who was ordered to pay her former husband monthly spousal support during the pendency of his criminal trial. After he was convicted and sentenced to six years, Harris was ordered to pay a portion of his legal fees.

San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie M. Dumanis announced the legislation earlier this year and testified before the California Senate Judiciary Committee in support of it. Current California law already prevents spousal support in cases of attempted murder or soliciting the murder of a spouse. AB 1522 adds violent abuse felonies to the list of convictions that disqualify a person from obtaining financial benefits from their ex-spouse in a divorce proceeding.

While Judges in California have had the discretion to deny spousal support or alimony in cases of felony offenses, this new law makes it mandatory in cases where the spousal support would have been paid by the injured party. The language is gender neutral. Fathers and Families hopes the implementation is also gender neutral.

According to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, more than 56 percent of divorce lawyers across the United States report an increase in mothers paying child support to fathers in the last three year and 47 percent note a rise in the number of women making monthly alimony payments to their ex-husbands. The study did not report on how much of an increase there has been in cases of mothers paying child support or the actual rise in women paying alimony.

Crystal Harris’ case brought national attention to the loophole in the law. “I never want to think of another rape victim having to go through the re-victimization process that I went through,” Harris said.

The bill garnered strong bi-partisan legislative support from Senators Joel Anderson, R-El Cajon; Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego; Juan Vargas, D-San Diego; and Mark Wyland, R-Carlsbad; and Assembly members Marty Block, D- Lemon Grove; Ben Hueso, D-Chula Vista; Martin Garrick, R-Carlsbad; Kevin Jeffries, R- Murrieta; Brian Jones, R-Santee; Jeff Miller, R-Orange; and Holly Mitchell, D-Culver City.

Woman Sues Ex Over Trove of Secret Tapes

Woman Sues Ex Over Trove of Secret Tapes
By ABC News
09-19-2012

An Ohio woman is suing her ex-husband after she said he spied on her with a hidden video camera, microphone and a GPS for months in their home.

Cathy Zang learned about the recordings during their 2009 divorce proceedings after 14 years of marriage, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Her ex-husband, Joe Zang, a homebuilder in Ohio, admitted to installing all the equipment, but denied doing anything wrong, according to court documents.

After learning of the secret recordings, Cathy Zang searched her home and found numerous recording devices.

"There it is! There it is! I found it. In the eye hole right here on the plug, I mean outlet," said her son, Zach Holbrook, on the recording.

"He [Joe Zang] put small microphones and small cameras in wall outlets and disguised them as actual wall outlets. It's a complete view of the computer area, the kitchen area, the living room area," said Cathy Zang's attorney, Don Roberts.

Joe Zang and his attorney did not return ABC News' calls.

One secret recording in particular captured a vicious fight between the couple, including the exact moment the police showed up during the dispute.

"You grabbed me and you shook me and you pushed me. Good God, what is wrong with you?" Zang could be heard asking her husband in the recordings.

While the Zangs' divorce is now final and out of court, the recordings are at the center of a federal court battle over the right to privacy amidst 21st century technology.  Two lawsuits are now pending in U.S. District Court that involve nearly a dozen of the former couple's friends and family and a computer monitoring software company, as first reported by the Cincinnati Enquirer.

One suit was filed by Javier Luis, a Florida man whose online conversations with Cathy Zang were monitored, while the other was filed by Zang herself.  Both lawsuits seek hundreds of thousands of dollars  for wiretapping and invasion of privacy, the Enquirer reports.

"He was hacking into my personal computer account and getting into my e-mail. At some point he had a GPS on my car," Cathy Zang told ABC News.

"There are some embarrassing things that I wouldn't want other people to see because I was in the privacy of my own home," she said.

It's not clear what laws Joe Zang has broken since he installed the devices in his own home.

"What do you do when both people pay the bills? When both people's names are on the deed?

 When both people share the same computer, purchased it together? It's very difficult for a prosecutor then to say, well you have committed a crime against this other person," said legal analyst Sunny Hostin, a former federal prosecutor.

Ohio and federal wiretapping laws permit audio recording as long as one of the parties in the conversation is aware of the recording.

NOTE:  

HIDDEN AUDIO VISUAL RECORDINGS:   California's wiretapping law is a "two-party consent" law. California makes it a crime to record or eavesdrop on any confidential communication, including a private conversation or telephone call, without the consent of all parties to the conversation. See Cal. Penal Code § 632. The statute applies to "confidential communications" -- i.e., conversations in which one of the parties has an objectively reasonable expectation that no one is listening in or overhearing the conversation. See Flanagan v. Flanagan, 41 P.3d 575, 576-77, 578-82 (Cal. 2002).  A California appellate court has ruled that this statute applies to the use of hidden video cameras to record conversations as well. See California v. Gibbons, 215 Cal. App. 3d 1204 (Cal Ct. App. 1989). 


COMPUTER SPYWARE:   A miss-concept between many P.I.s, attorneys and the general public is that when married, you can record your spouse, install spyware on community computers to view emails, IM, keystrokes, passwords, etc.  Regardless if two people are married, the spouse does not automatically forfeit his/her right to privacy.   If one spouse does not share their password to a private account with the other, they DO have an expectation of privacy.  Ca Penal Code 502(c)(2) prohibits access to a computer, computer system, to take, copy, or use any data without permission.


CALIFORNIA GPS LAWS:  637.7.  (a) No person or entity in this state shall use an electronic tracking device to determine the location or movement of a person.

(b) This section shall not apply when the registered owner, lessor, or lessee of a vehicle has consented to the use of the electronic tracking device with respect to that vehicle.

(d) As used in this section, "electronic tracking device" means any device attached to a vehicle or other movable thing that reveals its location or movement by the transmission of electronic signals.

(e) A violation of this section is a misdemeanor.


http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/woman-sues-ex-over-trove-secret-tapes-141340634--abc-news-topstories.html

In California, the 1973 case of NOBLE v. SEARS ROEBUCK, held the attorney partially liable the torts committed by a P.I.

Divorce Lawyer Is Sued Along with Client Who Secretly Monitored Wife on Video

ABA Journal 
Posted Sep 12, 2012 7:10 AM CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss

A well-known Cincinnati lawyer is among the defendants in two federal privacy lawsuits filed by a woman and her online friend claiming the attorney intended to use secret surveillance in divorce proceedings.
Plaintiff Catherine Zang alleges her then-husband, Cincinnati home builder Joseph Zang, spied on her with a hidden video camera and microphone, as well as computer-tracking software, the Cincinnati Enquirer reports. Catherine Zang and the friend, Javier Luis, seek hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages for wiretapping and invasion of privacy.
Catherine Zang says she discovered the devices in 2009 after her husband’s divorce lawyer, Mary Jill Donovan, revealed she had evidence portraying Catherine Zang in “unflattering, embarrassing and private settings,” the suit says. The complaint claims Donovan intended to use the evidence to obtain a favorable settlement for Joseph Zang.
Joseph Zang has admitted installing the monitoring devices, but has said he did nothing wrong, the story says. Donovan did not respond to the newspaper’s request for comment and Joseph Zang declined to comment.
At issue in the suit is the reach of federal and Ohio federal wiretapping laws, the story says. The laws permit audio recordings as long as one of the parties is aware of the recording. Catherine Zang argues near constant surveillance was not permitted under the laws, however, because her husband wasn’t always at home during the taping.
Surveillance between spouses is becoming more common, according to Ken Altshuler, president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. “There’s absolutely been an increase in this,” he told the Enquirer. “They have very sophisticated technology now.”

  
 

Judges fear social media jeopardizing fair trials

 The Columbus Dispatch
By  Kathy Lynn Gray  and  John Futty

Monday September 10, 2012 7:49 AM

Report from jury duty: defendant looks like a murderer. GUILTY. Waiting for opening remarks.
That tweet from comedian Steve Martin, followed by a string of other “jury duty” tweets, was met with laughter by some and alarm by others. Was he really tweeting from the jury box?
He wasn’t; he was just joking. But judges aren’t amused in the least if real jurors take to Twitter. Or to Facebook, Google or other social media or search engines.
A Franklin County jury was deliberating a murder case last week when a juror announced that she had looked up the definition of a legal term on her tablet computer. Before she could read it aloud, other jurors told her she had violated the judge’s order not to do outside research. Less than two hours later, Common Pleas Judge Tim Horton had removed the woman from the jury.
It was the second time in 15 months that a Franklin County judge had dismissed a juror for using an electronic device to research a case.
“We’re all very concerned. These are just the times it gets reported. What about the ones who are doing it and not telling anyone?” said Charles Schneider, the administrative judge for Common Pleas Court.
Judges in federal, state and municipal courts always have warned jurors not to investigate a case on their own. But the instant access that cellphones and personal computers provide to the Internet makes it easier than ever for jurors to violate those instructions and imperil a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial.
In a national survey last year, 6 percent of federal district judges said one or more jurors in their cases had used social media to communicate during a trial or deliberations.
To combat that, nearly 30 percent of judges confiscated phones and other electronic devices during jury deliberations, and 22 percent did so at the start of each day of trial, the survey found. The majority only warned jurors verbally not to use social media.
“Repeat, repeat, repeat” is the mantra.
Instructions written by committees of the Ohio State Bar Association and the Ohio Judicial Conference in 2010 suggest that judges warn jurors before a trial starts, at the end of each day of the trial, at the end of the trial and whenever else they find it necessary.
U.S. District Judge Edmund A. Sargus Jr. does that and specifically mentions Twitter and Facebook.
“A lot of people would just think, ‘I Facebook about everything else I’m doing, I’ll Facebook about this trial, too,’  ” Sargus said. But his experience has been that once jurors are told to avoid social media and he explains why, they do.
“Jurors here take the job very seriously,” he said. Stephanie Rawlings, the senior law clerk for District Judge George C. Smith, said the prevalence of cellphones has complicated efforts to reduce jurors’ exposure to information about a trial.
“We haven’t heard of any problems that have arisen,” she said. “But whether people follow the judge’s orders, who knows?”
In some states, such as California, jurors can be jailed on contempt charges if they post information about a trial on social media.
Last September, Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Daniel T. Hogan fined a juror $900 for using his cellphone to find a defendant’s criminal record and share it with another juror.
“There needs to be an example made, as publically as possible, that this behavior won’t be tolerated,” Hogan said.
But a study in the March edition of the University of Illinois Law Review found that it is “uncommon for jurors to face any consequences beyond dismissal” for Internet misconduct. It advocated penalizing violators.
In last week’s case, Judge Horton didn’t penalize the juror beyond dismissing her. The woman had indicated during questioning by the judge and attorneys that she was under a psychiatrist’s care and “seemed to have some personal issues,” Horton said. “In certain cases, strong penalties might be warranted. This wasn’t one to treat as malicious or like she was trying to screw up the process.”



http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/09/10/judges-fear-social-media-jeopardizing-fair-trials.html

Cybercrime costs U.S. consumers $20.7 billion

Cybercrime costs U.S. consumers $20.7 billion

An annual cybercrime report has said that over the past 12 months, cybercrime has cost U.S. consumers billions of dollars.

by Charlie Osborne

September 5, 2012 3:09 AM PDT

U.S. consumers lost $20.7 billion to cybercrime over the past 12 months, with 71 million Americans falling victim to online perps, according to new research.


Meanwhile, worldwide losses resulting from cybercrime including malware attacks and phishing hit $110 billion between July 2011 and the end of July 2012, a report by security company Symantec (PDF) has found.

On average, each victim experienced $197 in direct financial loss. In the United States, the average loss was $290.

According to the report, an estimated 556 million adults across the world had first-hand experience of cybercrime over the period -- more than the entire population of the European Union. The figure equates to nearly half of all adults online (46 percent), and is up from 45 percent a year ago.



There has been an increase in cybercrime that takes advantage of social networks and mobile technology, according to the report, with 21 percent of online adults reporting having fallen prey to social or mobile crime. The study also found that 15 percent of Web users have had their social-networking account infiltrated, and 1 in 10 have been victims of fake links or scams through a social network.

Seventy-five percent of those who participated in the study believed that cybercriminals are gearing more towards social networks.

Over 13,000 participants across 24 countries were interviewed for the report.




http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57506216-83/cybercrime-costs-u.s-consumers-$20.7-billion/?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=News-Security&Privacy

Private Investigator falsely accused Costa Mesa Councilman Jim Righeimer of driving drunk linked to union law firm

Published: Aug. 25, 2012 Updated: 7:17 p.m.

Righeimer accuser linked to union law firm

By TONY SAAVEDRA, ELYSSE JAMES and MICHAEL MELLO / 

THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

COSTA MESA - The mystery caller who falsely accused Costa Mesa Councilman
Jim Righeimer of driving drunk is a private investigator linked to a law
firm that worked for the Costa Mesa Police Association.

Dispatch tapes obtained by The Orange County Register identified the caller
as Chris Lanzillo. Lanzillo is a fired Riverside police officer who
according to a published report got a medical retirement and became a
private investigator. Lanzillo worked sometimes for the Upland law firm of
Lackie, Dammeier & McGill, which until late last week represented the Costa
Mesa police union.

The union and city are tied up in contract negotiations.

At a news conference Friday, Righeimer blamed employee unions for the "911"
call that sent an officer to his home to conduct a sobriety test. Righeimer
had just arrived from a local bar, where he had two Diet Cokes. He passed
the test, and now wants the District Attorney's Office to look into the
incident, noting a similar event in Buena Park in 2010.

In that case, Councilman Fred Smith said his city's Police Department tried
to set him up for a DUI arrest because of decisions he made on the dais that
were unpopular with many officers. Smith was found to be sober; police
officials at the time brushed aside Smith's accusations, saying the officer
in question did not know who he was pulling over.

Righeimer said he doesn't know Lanzillo personally, but wasn't surprised to
learn about his connection to the law firm. The councilman said he believes
he had been followed for some time, and that the bar's security cameras show
Lanzillo's car following Righeimer's vehicle.

"What these organizations are doing is trying to get personal dirt on
elected officials so that they'll vote against the interest of cities or
counties to protect themselves," Righeimer said. "That's what makes this so
horrendously wrong. ...It's against the whole American system."

Minutes before the news conference, the police union notified the Register
that it had fired Lackie Dammeier for being too aggressive. One of the
tactics previously touted by the firm was to target a city or county
official until he fell into line - and then go after another "victim."

Lanzillo could not be reached, but attorney Dieter Dammeier confirmed he did
some work for the law firm. Dammeier denied any connection with the
Righeimer incident.

"I assure you, he was not employed or authorized to surveil (or do anything
else to) Mr. Righeimer by this firm," Dammeier wrote in an email.

Dammeier also said he understood Costa Mesa's desire to "go in another
direction."

"While our firm does have a reputation of being aggressive, we have learned
to acclimate to the various clients we represent. Given the hyper
anti-public employee nature of the council in Costa Mesa, it is
understandable that any employee group there will have to go to great
lengths to accommodate them," he wrote.

Dammeier added: "The reason we represent most of the POAs in L.A., Orange,
Riverside and San Bernardino counties is because police officers like and on
occasion require aggressive representation."

For more on Lackie, Dammeier & McGill, see today's watchdog column in the
Local section.

The "911" tape paints a picture of an out-of-control driver, staggering to
the car, swerving, rolling through a stop sign.

The caller told police: "I think he's DUI. ... He's just swerving all over
the road. ... I don't know what's wrong with him."

The caller went on to say that he could be wrong, "but why take a chance?"

Then the caller says he doesn't want to get involved.

"When I pulled into a location, I saw him coming out. I was meeting a friend
over at some location, I can't remember the name of it now and I saw him
like stumbling out of this location," the caller said. "I don't know, maybe
he's disabled."

Then the caller accuses Righeimer of rolling through a stop sign.

He then followed Righeimer home and pointed out the house to the arriving
officer.

"The officer made contact with the driver, identified as City Council member
Jim Righeimer, and determined that Mr. Righeimer had not been drinking and
was not under the influence," according to a police statement.

Righeimer said he was asked to follow a pen with his eyes and did not have
to take further field tests. He dismissed the idea he could have been
driving recklessly.

"From day one, when I was given the test," the councilman said, "right then
I realized this was a set-up, I knew immediately it was the labor unions."

KIDS FIRST of Orange County

Kids First is an interactive educational program designed to meet the specific needs of children whose parents are separated or divorced.




Kids First Youtube introduction video:

Linke:  Kids First video




Kids First website: 

Link:  Kids First website



              

Private Investigator Arrested For Impersonating Police Officer
August 15, 2012 11:35 PM

YOLO COUNTY (CBS13) – Police arrested a private eye for impersonating an officer. They say he was trying to get unauthorized police records for his clients.

He’s a private eye now in the public spotlight.

Anthony Vegas allegedly lost a big bet.

“This is highly unusual,” said Woodland Police Department Lt. Anthony Cucchi.

The retired parole agent was trying to retrieve redacted police reports for a client by impersonating an officer, say police.

“There are some police reports where the victim’s protected. We protect their identity so that the suspect can’t find them later,” said Cucchi.

Vegas allegedly doctored his old corrections ID and used a phony badge to trick several local police records departments into giving him what he wanted.

And police say it was working. He reportedly gathered unauthorized records from Woodland and Sacramento police and the Solano County Sheriff’s Department before getting arrested in the act at the Yolo County’s Sheriff’s Department.

Vegas closed the door on CBS13 when we asked him for his comment, but he’s at the center of an open and ongoing investigation, charged with impersonating an officer.

Vegas may also see an additional charge of forgery when he goes before a judge.


LINK >  http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2012/08/15/private-investigator-arrested-for-impersonating-police-officer/

Court Ruling Puts Stamp of Approval on Warrantless Cell Tracking

Court Ruling Puts Stamp of Approval on Warrantless Cell Tracking

By Richard Adhikari
TechNewsWorld
08/16/12 7:00 AM PT

Police may track suspects whereabouts using their cellphones without first obtaining a probably cause warrant, according to a recent federal court ruling. The decision "could be extended to apply to any sort of technology," said Yasha Heidari, managing partner of the Heidari Power Law Group. However, "whether the U.S. Supreme Court would agree is a different question."


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Law enforcement agencies may be able to freely track cellphone users without first getting a probable-cause warrant thanks to a ruling handed down by the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Jose on Tuesday.

The 2-1 ruling in the case of convicted drug trafficker and money launderer Melvin Skinner stated that the police did not breach Skinner's Fourth Amendment rights by tracking his location in real time through the signals his cellphone sent to cell towers.

The ruling focused on prepaid phones, or "burners," but the court "hinged its analysis on the fact that Skinner was driving on public streets and transmitting his data by using a cellphone," Hanni Fakhoury, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), told TechNewsWorld.

"Any phone that does this, prepaid or not, loses constitutional protection under the ... decision," Fakhoury continued.

The ruling "could be extended to apply to any sort of technology," agreed Yasha Heidari, managing partner of the Heidari Power Law Group. However, "whether the U.S. Supreme Court would agree is a different question."

When You Walk Through the Garden ...

Skinner was arrested after law enforcement agents tracked his location by calling him, then hanging up. This caused his "burner" to send a signal to the nearest cellphone tower, allowing the agents to establish Skinner's real-time location. This technique was used to track Skinner as he transported drugs along public roads between Arizona and Tennessee, U.S. Circuit Judge John M. Rogers said in his opinion.

The tracking let U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agents locate Skinner and his son at a rest stop near Abilene, Texas, with a motor home containing more than 1,100 pounds of marijuana, Judge Rogers wrote.

Skinner was given a 20-year sentence, but he appealed on the grounds that under the Fourth Amendment, which protects people against unreasonable searches or seizures, the DEA agents couldn't monitor his whereabouts without a probable-cause warrant.

"We believe people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their movements, particularly when aggregated over an extended period of time, as was done here -- three days," the EFF's Fakhoury said. "That's because this data can reveal details of a person's personal life ... and this technology has the potential to intrude into the home."

The Skinner case is "almost like having a safety deposit box in the bank," Heidari Power Law Group's Heidari told TechNewsWorld. "A reasonable person would expect that the contents of that box would remain secure and private, and that the government would need a warrant to inspect the contents, irrespective of the fact that the box is being held by a third party." Those contents are the data logged by Skinner's cellphone carrier.
... You Better Watch Your Back

Link to article: >>  http://www.technewsworld.com/story/75917.html

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/75917.html

Sick Families of N.C. Military Base Water Contamination May Finally Get Help, 30 Years Later

Sick Families of N.C. Military Base Water Contamination May Finally Get Help, 30 Years Later

By ALYSSA LITOFF (@AlyssaBL) and KATIE HINMAN
June 28, 2012

Camp Lejeune, a military base in North Carolina, is home to hundreds of thousands of Marines and their families. It's also the site of what may be the largest water contamination in American history.

Now, nearly three decades after poisons were discovered in their drinking water, Congress is set to vote on legislation that will provide health care to those who suffered.

From the 1950s to the mid-1980s, the Marines who lived on the base with their families drank water laced with cancer-causing chemicals. Hundreds of thousands of Lejeune residents were exposed over the 30-year stretch. Many died and others are still getting sick today.

Watch "Nightline" anchor Cynthia McFadden's full investigative report TONIGHT on "Nightline" at 11:35 p.m. ET/PT

The Marine Corps doesn't often talk about the base's water contamination history. But two men with ties to Camp Lejeune, Jerry Ensminger and Mike Partain, have worked tirelessly to get the word out to Lejeune alumni -- maybe as many as a million people -- who may have been exposed. For both men, the mission is personal.

Ensminger is a career Marine who raised his family at Lejeune. His daughter Janey died of leukemia when she was just 9 years old. She died in 1985, just shy of her 10th birthday. "She said, 'I love you.' I said, 'I know.' I whispered in her ear, and I said, 'It's time to stop fighting,'" he said.
PHOTO: Camp Lejeune, a military base in North Carolina, is home to hundreds of thousands of Marines and their families. It's also the site of what may be the largest water contamination in American history.

"After I had time to sit and think about it, I did what any normal human being would do, I started wondering why," Ensminger said. "That nagging question of 'why' stayed with me through [Janey's] illness, through her death."

Ensminger said his first clue came from a local TV station's report in 1997, saying that contaminants discovered in the base's drinking water had been possibly linked to childhood cancer and birth defects, primarily leukemia.

"I dropped my plate of spaghetti right there on the living room floor," Ensminger said. "That started this journey for the truth."

He was soon joined by Partain, who also had cancer -- breast cancer, which is extremely rare among men. Partain's father was stationed at the base when his mother became pregnant and gave birth to him there, but he's lived most of his life in Florida, where he's an insurance adjuster.

His life's work, though, has become a search for answers about what happened in the water and how it has affected his own health and those of thousands of others. Through his own research, Partain has documented 80 cases of male breast cancer among men who were born or served at Camp Lejeune.

The Marine Corps dragged its feet in contacting and alerting those who had lived at Lejeune about the water contamination and the possible health consequences. So Ensminger and Partain decided to team up and help get the word out. Their efforts are the focus of a 2011 documentary, "Semper Fi: Always Faithful," which was short-listed for an Oscar.

"The Marine Corps needs to get people notified," Partain says in the film. "They need to get on the TV, they need to get on the news, and they need to tell people what is wrong."

But it is already too late for some of the tiniest victims. During the years when the water was contaminated, stillborn babies were commonplace on the base, so many that the local cemetery has a section locals call Baby Heaven, lined with the graves of children who never made it to their first birthdays.

Mary Freshwater was a young mother who lived on the base back in the 1970s. She said she and the other women at Camp Lejeune suspected something was terribly wrong.

"I was very active with the Officers' Wives Club. We were at a party at one of my friend's house one night. There were five of us in different stages of pregnancy. Every one of us lost their baby to a birth defect," she said.

For Freshwater, it was an unbearable pain she suffered not once, but twice.

On Nov. 30, 1977, she gave birth to a son, Russell Alexander Thorpe, but the baby was born with an open spine. All she has left of him now is a small suit he was wearing the day he died – just 10 minutes past midnight on New Year's Eve, 1977.

"It was really a shocker when he was born that way and then when he died, he died in my arms. He took his last breath," she said.

Freshwater said doctors encouraged her to get pregnant again and she eventually gave birth to a second son -- Charlie, who was born without a cranium, and died the same day.

Today, Freshwater is 68 years old and has been diagnosed with two different kinds of cancers, acute myeloid and acute lymphoma. She says doctors told her the diagnosis was consistent with exposure to chemicals such as benzene, which she was exposed to during her time at Camp Lejeune.

"I am angry, but you can't let that destroy you," she said. "That won't bring my babies back and it won't cure me."

Representatives from the Marine Corps, the Secretary of the Navy and the Department of Veterans Affairs all declined to talk to "Nightline" about Camp Lejeune on camera.

In an email statement, one Marine Corps representative wrote that General James F. Amos, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, "considers this issue to be very important" and that "we continue our commitment to find and notify those who used the water during the time period in question."

For years, there has been a bureaucratic battle over which agency should be responsible for funding the health care of those affected by the contamination: the Defense Department, which owned the base, or the Department of Veterans Affairs, which covers service-connected illness, injury and disability. But a deal for the VA to cover those costs is now in the works, negotiated by the House and Senate Committees for Veterans Affairs.

The health care provision, which is part of a larger bill addressing veterans issues, covers those who lived or worked on Camp Lejeune for at least 30 days from Jan. 1, 1957, through Dec. 31, 1987. The Senate is expected to pass the bill as early as this week, and it will head to the president's desk after the 4th of July, according to Congressional staffers.

Happy Flag Day!!!

Do you remember the greatest play in baseball history? 

On April 25, 1976 at Dodger Stadium, Rick Monday of the Chicago Cubs, grabbed and secured the American flag from two individuals as they were attempting to burn our flag in the middle of the playing field. It was an outstanding display of American Patriotism.

"...take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes"

Have a safe and reflective Memorial Day. 

If you are able,
save them a place
inside of you
and save one backward glance
when you are leaving
for the places they can
no longer go.
Be not ashamed to say
you loved them,
though you may
or may not have always.
Take what they have left
and what they have taught you
with their dying
and keep it with your own.
And in that time
when men decide and feel safe
to call the war insane,
take one moment to embrace
those gentle heroes
you left behind.

Major Michael Davis O'Donnell
1 January 1970
Dak To, Vietnam

'Bait Car' TV show busts sheriff's detective with video

May 7, 2012 |  2:04 pm

The reality TV show “Bait Car” is supposed to catch car thieves in the act.
Undercover cops park a rigged car on the side of the road, conspicuously leaving the keys inside, while a television crew waits nearby for an unsuspecting passerby to take the bait and steal the car.
But in one recent sting filmed in cooperation with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the lead detective on the case ended up getting busted instead.
Footage shot for the TruTV program showed 28-year-old Keenan Alex come across a parked, shiny, red Cadillac Escalade with the keys in the ignition and the engine running. After he gets inside and drives off, deputies pull him over and cuff him. In court, Det. Anthony Shapiro said under oath that he read Alex his Miranda rights from a card in his notebook before the suspect made incriminating statements, a transcript shows.
But unedited video for the program shows the detective never read the suspect his constitutional rights, including the right to remain silent and have an attorney present during questioning.
“You watch TV. You know your rights and all that?” Shapiro asked instead, according to the video reviewed by The Times.
Combining law enforcement and reality TV has a long and sometimes controversial history, dating to the long-running show “Cops.” While such programs often record the questionable behavior of suspects, the "Bait Car" case shows the unblinking eye of the camera can also catch potential police wrongdoing.
After Shapiro’s conduct was discovered, authorities dropped the case against Alex and launched a criminal perjury investigation of the detective, citing the conflict between his testimony and the video.
Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher Frisco told a judge in February that the contradiction “poses a very severe problem” for the detective, according to court documents. Explaining why the D.A.’s office agreed to dismiss the case, Frisco said the footage showed that Shapiro violated Alex’s Miranda rights, which prevented the prosecution from using the defendant’s incriminating statements. Frisco said prosecutors needed the statements to counter defense arguments that Alex’s mental illness played a role in the decision to take the vehicle.
“I believe the statement would be crucial to putting on the case to win a conviction,” Frisco told the judge, according to a court transcript.
Alex, whose criminal history includes brandishing a firearm and drug possession, admitted taking the car as part of a probation violation hearing in another case. A judge allowed him to remain free as long as he continued taking his psychiatric medication and sought mental-health treatment, records show.
Shapiro did not return messages for comment. His captain said the detective could not discuss the matter because it was the subject of an ongoing investigation. Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said Shapiro has been relieved of duty with pay.
Court documents show Shapiro was almost fired in 2008 over allegations that he had received stolen property from a known felon. Internal sheriff’s criminal investigators served Shapiro with a search warrant on his home and seized alloy car rims, a bicycle, a Honda generator and a Gibson electric guitar, court records show.
Shapiro denied the items were stolen, saying several came from his brother. Prosecutors declined to file charges, finding insufficient evidence the items were stolen. But after a separate investigation, the Sheriff’s Department, which requires a lower standard of proof to impose discipline, moved to fire Shapiro.
The detective appealed the decision, arguing there was no proof the items were stolen, court records show. The department agreed to classify the allegations as “unfounded,” while he agreed to a five-day suspension for using law enforcement records to check the criminal histories of two felons, including the man he was alleged to have received stolen property from and one of the detective’s neighbors, according to court records.
The department’s watchdog found serious flaws in the sheriff’s internal investigation. Investigators, including a deputy who had previously worked in the same unit with Shapiro, inadvertently tipped off the detective before executing their search warrant and allowed him to be present for an interview with a key witness, according to a 2010 report by the Office of Independent Review. The report found that “investigative deficiencies hampered a potential criminal prosecution and forced the department to continue to employ a deputy it believed had committed serious crimes.”
Shapiro’s attorney, Richard A. Shinee, disagreed. “There was no credible evidence that he stole anything and that’s why the case fell apart,” he said. Shinee declined comment on the "Bait Car" case, citing the ongoing investigation.
During the case, the defense attorney raised questions about whether the problems she encountered  were common in prosecutions resulting from "Bait Car" filming.
Deputy Public Defender Priya Bala said she doubted the county was regularly turning over relevant video to defense attorneys, who may be able to use that footage to exonerate their clients. In her case, it took weeks before she was told the arrest had been filmed and an additional six months before the unedited footage was turned over, prompting the judge to rule that the county had failed to disclose evidence in a timely fashion.
The district attorney’s office initially said it could not compel the production company to turn over the footage but admitted it could when Bala obtained a copy of the county’s contract, which showed Earth Angel Productions had agreed to comply with D.A. requests for unedited footage. Part of the delay, Frisco said in court, was because Shapiro did not return repeated messages left by the prosecutor.
Deputy Dist. Atty. Alex Karkanen, who works with the auto-theft task force, said the county has prosecuted scores of similar bait-car cases and never encountered such problems. Defense attorneys and judges, he said, are generally notified that the arrests were filmed for TV and the suspects are aware of the cameras and are asked to sign a waiver by the production crew at the time of their arrest.
Bala also criticized the county’s decision to conduct the televised stings at all, saying they wasted taxpayer resources that could better be used on more serious crimes. She said her client, who hallucinates and hears voices, jumped into the bait car while walking to an aunt’s house from a residential facility that houses the mentally ill.
“It’s disgusting,” she said. “Don’t they have any real crime to go after?”
Under its contract with the county Board of Supervisors, the production company pays the county at least $22,500 per episode, an additional 10% of the company’s profit from the series and other fees, as well as the overtime costs for law enforcement officers working on the stings. In July 2011, when Alex was arrested, the company paid $156,000 in overtime to deputies and police officers assigned to the task force during that month, records show.
Whitmore, the sheriff’s spokesman, denied the payments are why the department does the stings, saying the televised operations act as a deterrent to car thieves.
“If the general public sees this [TV show], it’s gonna prevent people from doing it because they won’t know if [a] car is a bait car or not,” he said.



LINK  >>>   http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/05/bait-car-tv-show-busts-sheriffs-detective-with-video.html