Wednesday, March 18, 2015

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18, 2015





SF Antiwar Protest on 12th Anniversary of U.S. Invasion of Iraq

Saturday, March 21, 12 noon, Powell and Market Streets

In solidarity with the “Spring Rising” protest at the White House on Mar. 21

Stop Pres. Obama’s proposed new 3-year AUMF – Authorization for Use of Military Force!

End U.S. War and Occupation in the Middle East and Central Asia – U.S. Out!

No to U.S. sanctions and intervention vs. Iran, Venezuela, Korea, Cuba, Mexico, Russia, Haiti and everywhere

Free Palestine – End U.S. Aid to Israel!

Fund People’s Needs, Not Endless War!

To Endorse or Volunteer reply to: answer@answersf.org
More info: 415-821-6545 or visit www.ANSWERsf.org.
ANSWER SF

To join the Facebook event for Spring Rising: https://www.facebook.com/events/430232700485435
For more information, click here:
http://nepajac.org/springrising.html

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Cancel the #DetroitWater Debt and Start Afresh

Sign the petition:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/cancel-the-detroitwater-debt-and-start-afresh


We call on the City of Detroit and the newly-formed Great Lakes Water Authority to cancel the existing debts of Detroit Water and Sewerage customers and start afresh with simple, affordable rates: all customer past-due balances are wiped clean.

Last year, Detroit made international headlines when tens of thousands of residents lost their access to water through an aggressive shut-off program by the water department.

The city of Detroit has endured decades of economic turmoil, drastic depopulation and repeated mismanagement. The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) is over $5 billion in debt (over $4,500 per family in the metro Detroit area).To compensate, they have increased rates over 119% in the last decade.¹Residents who fall behind on their bills risk water shutoff, and in 2014 that’s exactly what happened to tens of thousands of Detroiters.

The shutoff program didn't work, and the DWSD collected less than 3% of the over $100 million currently owed.² A large number of the families who entered into payment plans last year are now defaulting on them yet again because they lack sufficient income.

In contrast, a voluntary bond tender offer initiated during the shutoffs allowed the city to renegotiate high interest rates on municipal water bonds and save over $250 million in interest fees for the city.³

The bond markets know that Detroit's water debt is junk and the city will unlikely ever be able to pay the current interest rates, which is why Default Trends proclaimed Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) its "Biggest Default of 2014".⁴

Corruption in the DWSD has been rampant, with former Department head Victor Mercado currently serving an 8-month federal corruption sentence for "conspiracy to commit extortion" by padding department contracts and rigging bids that netted his business associates millions. Although many of those contracts are now being scrutinized by the city's legal team, Detroiters are still paying dearly for the fraud of past leaders.

The overbearing Detroit water debt has a human side, too: it has pushed Detroit into an outright humanitarian crisis. Rates of infectious disease and sickness are up dramatically, leading the National Nurses union recently to declare a 'Public Health Emergency' in Detroit.⁵The water department is significantly under-staffed and water infrastructure is crumbling, leading to leaks that cost taxpayers tens of millions annually. The department is unable to address these time-sensitive issues due to lack of funding, as it currently spends 46% of its operating revenue on debt service to banks - the largest line-item by far in its budget.

We call on the City of Detroit and the newly-formed Great Lakes Water Authority to cancel the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department's existing debts and start afresh with simple, affordable rates: all customer past-due balances are wiped clean.

Detroit's existing water/sewerage rate structure is highly-regressive and unaffordable for too many families. We call on the city to implement the 2005 Water Affordability Plan to ensure that no family pays more than the EPA-recommended threshold for water, including "lifeline rates" for essential quantities of drinking/bathing water.⁶

The water department acknowledges that 90% of its operating costs are fixed⁷, meaning they don't depend upon how much water is consumed by users. Still, they charge usage-based rates that fluctuate dramatically with weather (up to 18% decrease in usage) and with broader demographic shifts in the region (2/3 of Detroit's population has left the city since 1950). Creating a progressive rate structure based at least partially upon a family's income - as is done with many public services like streetlights, schools, libraries, etc - would more equitably distribute the burden of operating a system relied upon by over 4 million people for essential drinking water.

The Detroit Water Brigade has provided emergency relief and advocacy to hundreds of families since June of 2014, including providing immediate financial assistance to families currently without water.⁸We've seen first-hand the disastrous effects of these harsh, debt-driven austerity policies.

We pledge to escalate this campaign in the coming months until we bring relief to the tens of thousands of metro Detroit families living without water today and the millions living precariously with unaffordable water rates.


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Free Albert Woodfox!
End the Injustice. Don’t Oppose Bail for Albert Woodfox

In 1972 a young white prison guard named Brent Miller was fatally stabbed inside Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as “Angola.” Although no physical evidence tied Albert Woodfox to the crime, he was immediately assumed to be guilty and placed in solitary confinement; 23 hours a day isolated in a small cell, four steps long, three steps across. He was eventually convicted of the crime after trials tainted with constitutional violations and other legal issues, and has been held in solitary confinement, fighting to prove his innocence ever since.

Albert believes that he and fellow prisoners, Herman Wallace and Robert King, were placed in solitary confinement in retaliation for their activism and outspoken critique of injustice. All three men were members of the Black Panther Party and campaigned for better treatment, racial solidarity, and an end to the brutal sexual slavery in prison. Woodfox, Wallace and King came to be known as the Angola 3.

Albert Woodfox’s conviction has been overturned three times - most recently in 2013 on the basis of racial discrimination in the selection of a grand jury foreperson. In late 2014, an appeals court upheld the decision in Alberts favor, and on February 6, his lawyers filed for bail. After years of the State of Louisiana appealing decisions in Albert’s favor, It is critical that Governor Bobby Jindal show leadership, and ensure that Albert’s cruel and unjust isolation is not his legacy. April 2015 will mark 43 years since Woodfox was first placed solitary - for a crime he maintains that he didn't' commit, a claim that much of the available evidence supports. It is time for the State to let the wisdom of the courts stand and ensure his release.


Amnesty International
http://act.amnestyusa.org/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1839&ea.campaign.id=35593&ea.tracking.id=Country_USA~MessagingCategory_PrisonersandPeopleatRisk&ac=W1502EAIAR2&ea.url.id=359128&forwarded=true

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Rasmea Odeh sentenced to 18 months, but is coming home!

On Thursday, March 12, 2015 10:18 AM, Prisoner News wrote:

Over the objections of a prosecution team that called for 5-7 years in federal prison, a harsh sentence with terrorism enhancements, Judge Gershwin Drain sentenced Rasmea Odeh, Chicago’s 67-year-old Palestinian community leader, to 18 months for Unlawful Procurement of Naturalization, of which she was convicted last November.

Almost 200 of Rasmea’s supporters filled two courtrooms in the Detroit federal courthouse, and left disappointed but not defeated. “This is a blow, of course, but we have to remember that the government wanted the judge to lock Rasmea up for half a decade or more,” said Muhammad Sankari of the national Rasmea Defense Committee. “Judge Drain had to weigh the outpouring of support that Rasmea has inspired from across the country. We made it impossible for the judge to justify an extended prison term, and now, we will stand with her in the fight to appeal the conviction itself, to make sure she doesn’t serve one day of that prison sentence.”

The decision came after her attorneys argued that she not be imprisoned at all. Seventy important leaders of unions and community-based, faith-based, civil rights, and student organizations, as well as prominent academics and activists, wrote letters to the judge in the past few weeks, urging him to issue a sentence with no prison time beyond the month Rasmea served in a county jail following the November verdict. They cited her invaluable service as a community leader in Chicago, as well as concerns for her age, poor health, and chronic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

One of the many letters of support came from Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton of Detroit. He wrote, “I am asking for compassion in her sentencing. Rasmea has much to offer her community…keeping her out of prison would allow her to continue as a contributing and productive person, doing the work that is so critical to hundreds of refugee women.”

For their part, prosecutors called for Judge Drain to issue a sentence far beyond standard sentencing guidelines. While prosecutors had been barred from branding her a terrorist in front of the jury last year, today they were bound by no such court orders, asking that a terrorism enhancement be added to prolong her sentence.

Frank Chapman of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression said, “The government showed their true colors today, making it clear this case was never about immigration, but rather, the political persecution of a Palestinian hero. What they didn’t bargain for is that Rasmea would defend herself, and that thousands would rally around her.”

During the trial last year, Rasmea was prevented from presenting evidence about the events that led to her conviction by an Israeli military tribunal 45 years ago. Judge Drain had ruled that the circumstances of conviction by Israel didn’t matter. “Not the illegal 1967 massacres and occupation - let alone the military ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians from the land and their homes when Palestine was partitioned in 1948 - not the midnight sweeps and kidnapping by the invading Army after the 1967 war, not the torture, not the kangaroo court and false confessions, not the prison time,” said her attorneys in filings to the court.

"Be strong whatever happens," Rasmea said before speaking to the judge, "I am strong."

After the sentencing, Rasmea was released on bond, as she sets out to appeal her conviction. Surprising many, the prosecution did not object, despite having pressed for her bond to be revoked after the guilty verdict. She credits the work of her supporters across the country for forcing the government’s hand.

Zena Ozeir of the Z Collective in Detroit said, “I have no doubt Rasmea’s freedom today is owed to the public outcry against her persecution. The government is still out to lock her up for years, but that is something they couldn’t win today. We have been with her at every hearing and trial date, we’ve held protests across the country, and flooded their phone lines and mail boxes, with people of conscience demanding an end to this prosecution, and an end to her unjust treatment in jail this fall. We will not stop until we win justice for Rasmea!”

After today’s hearing, Rasmea returns to Chicago, where she will continue her important community activism and work with her attorneys on an appeal of the verdict. If Odeh loses her case on appeal, she will have to serve the full sentence, and then lose her citizenship and be subject to immediate removal from the United States.

Rasmea Defense Committee
justice4rasmea.org
 
follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend
Copyright © 2015 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414

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Open Letter to the People and Leaders of Iran from the People of the United States

Sign onto the letter at:
http://www.answercoalition.org/open_letter_to_the_people_of_iran?utm_campaign=open_letteriran&utm_medium=email&utm_source=answercoalition#sign

To the people and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran:

It has come to our attention while observing the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the United States government that a group of 47 U.S. Senators are attempting, against the will of the majority of the American people, to sabotage any agreement due to their hope of creating additional conflict between our country and the people of Iran.

We would also like to bring to your attention that many people in the United States are aware that the United States government is in violation of a treaty approved by the Senate and signed into law. The treaty imposes an affirmative obligation on the United States and all other countries possessing nuclear weapons to act to diminish and eventually eliminate all of their existing nuclear weapons as a condition for relieving non-nuclear countries of the need to acquire such terrifying weapons. The official name of this treaty is the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons or NPT.
We also wanted to bring to your attention that under the U.S. Constitution, (Article 6, Clause 2), any treaty approved by the Senate and signed into law “shall be the supreme law of the land” in the United States.

Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty requires the United States as a nuclear power to: “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control". (our emphasis)

We wanted to make sure that you were aware that the U.S. Constitution, recognizing the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as the supreme law of the land in the United States, requires government officials to carry out two specific tasks:

First, to eliminate the U.S. nuclear arsenal under its Treaty pledge of “general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control;”

And second, to “pursue negotiations in good faith” with other nations for the achievement of nuclear disarmament.

As things stand, the United States is in violation of this “supreme law of the land.”

The United States is not ridding itself of nuclear weapons. It possesses thousands of operational nuclear weapons that it is not destroying. In fact, it is in the process of improving their capability, deploying them on updated fighter aircraft, and other land-attack missiles, aircraft carriers and submarine platforms at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars in new government funding.
The United States also provides more than $4 billion in military and economic aid to the state of Israel although Israel refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or allow outside inspectors, and does not deny that it possesses a considerable arsenal of nuclear weapons. We are not aware of any call by U.S. officials insisting that Israel sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or begin liquidating its own nuclear arsenal. 

We, the people of the United States, are also aware that Iran as a signatory to the same Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has the absolute legal right, as do all signatory countries, to develop a nuclear capability for civilian energy purposes.

Article IV of the Treaty states: “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.”

As a side note, we are also aware that when your country was ruled by a monarch installed in power in 1953 as a consequence of a CIA led-coup against the then constitutional government in Iran, the policy of the U.S. government was to encourage the development of an Iranian nuclear program.
We hope that this letter enriches your understanding that the spirit and content of the Open Letter by 47 Republican Senators does not conform with the views and desires of a broad section of public opinion inside the United States.

Their real aim in scuttling and sabotaging the current negotiations between the United States and Iran, perhaps unprecedented in the form they have chosen, is to create more conflict including the danger of military action against Iran.

Be assured that the last thing the American people want is war with or against Iran.
-- Add your name to these initial signers:

Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General • Cynthia McKinney, former Congresswoman • Brian Becker, ANSWER Coalition • Cindy Sheehan, peace activist • Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director, Partnership for Civil Justice Fund • Heidi Boghosian, Esq., Constitutional Rights attorney • James Lafferty, Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild Los Angeles • Debra Sweet, Director, World Can't Wait • Chuck Kauffman, National Co-Coordinator of Alliance for Global Justice • Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst • Eugene Puryear, Party for Socialism and Liberation • Juan Jose Gutierrez, Vamos Unidos, USA • Phil Wilayto, author and editor, Virginia Defenders Newspaper • Don DeBar, Host, CPR News • Arturo Garcia, Alliance Philippines • Radhika Miller, Attorney, Washington, D.C. • Rev. Claudia de la Cruz, Rebel Diaz Arts Collective (RDACBX) • Kim Ives, Haiti Liberte • Benjamin N. Dictor, Attorney, New York, NY • John Beacham, ANSWER Chicago • Phil Portluck, Voices4Justice72.com • Preston Wood, ANSWER - LA • Mike Prysner, March Forward! • Jeff Bigelow, labor organizer • Gloria La Riva, National Committee to Free the Cuban Five   

Add your name to these initial signers:
http://www.answercoalition.org/open_letter_to_the_people_of_iran?utm_campaign=open_letteriran&utm_medium=email&utm_source=answercoalition#sign

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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter

Table of Contents:

A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

B. ARTICLES IN FULL



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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS



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Oakland Action to End Solitary Confinement

Part of Statewide Coordinated Actions to End Solitary Confinement (SCATESC)

Monday March 23rd 2015 11:30am-1:30pm

Oakland’s SCATESC will start Monday, March 23rd, 2015 and happen on the 23rd of each month

*Same Location Monthly: Downtown Oakland 14th and Broadway*

Let's make a public show of our commitment to stop the torture!
Leafleting and speakers (you)
This fight is not over!

Cosponsors: California Families Against Solitary Confinement (CFASC); Peoples' Action for Rights and Community (PARC); Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition (PHSS); Project: Pollinate; Sin Barras.
              
PHSS and many other co-sponsors and endorsers are conducting actions statewide in CA, nationwide, and internationally. These actions coincides with 2013 proposals for action from Pelican Bay State Prison Hunger Strikers, which calls for “…designating a certain date each month as Prisoner Rights Day. … [when] supporters would gather … throughout California to expose CDCR’s actions and rally to support efforts to secure our rights.”

We choose the 23rd of each month for the 23 or more hours every day that people are kept alone in 7 by 11 foot concrete cells.

Endorsers: Ramona Africa and The MOVE Organization; Cabrillo College Justice League; Cafe Intifada; California Peace and Freedom Party; Communities Organized for Relational Power in Action (COPA) Restorative Justice Institutions; Darrell and Karen Darling; Family of Frank Alvarado Jr., killed by Salinas Police, July 10, 2014; Free Our Minds, Free Radio Santa Cruz; Rabbi Borukh Goldberg; Justice for Palestinians, San Jose; LA Laborfest; Dylcia Pagán, former Puerto Rican Political Prisoner held in US prison; Leonard Peltier Support Group Silicon Valley; Prison Activist Resource Center (PARC); South Bay Committee Against Political Repression (SBCAPR); Donna Wallach; Anti-Racist Action-LA

Questions or want to be added as co-sponsor or endorser? phssreachingout@gmail.com
http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com
@CAHungerStrike
Find us on Facebook
Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity


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Save the Date - UNAC National Conference, May 8 - 10, 2015


UNAC is the major national antiwar coalition in the U.S. today.  The existence of a United National Antiwar Coalition is vital and we need your financial support to continue our work and to expand.

With U.S. wars today accelerating and expanding globally in various forms – from drone attacks on Yemen and Pakistan, never-ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, support to neo-fascists in Ukraine, and proliferating Africom forces to threats of war for regime change in Syria – we have an obligation to do whatever is possible to educate the public and to take action to stop the carnage.

The wars abroad are connected to global warming with most wars fought over energy resources with the U.S. war machine as the largest polluter.

At home, we see hugely growing income inequality, a militarized and racist police force, mass incarceration of Blacks and Latinos, and a massive police state apparatus that includes global surveillance and laws to quell dissent.

In spite of the trillions spent by the U.S. corporate war government and its controlled media propaganda machine to keep us in check, the people are fighting back.  We’ve been inspired and strengthened by the hundreds of thousands of new activists taking to the streets of this country to stop police brutality, to build Occupy encampments, to fight for decent wages, to demand full rights for immigrants, to win marriage equality, to end global warming, to demonstrate solidarity with the besieged people of Gaza, and to protest unending U.S. wars.

UNAC has played an active, often leadership role, in all of the antiwar and social justice movements of our time.  While most activists are focused on their particular issues, the most vital role we can play is to connect the issues to their source.  All of the injustices and crimes we protest, stem from the imperialist insatiable drive for expanding profit and control – and the U.S. is the largest imperialist power militarily and economically.  When there should be plenty for all, only the obscenely wealthy benefit while the rest of the 99% struggle just to survive.

Some of our recent major accomplishments:
·       Initiated protest against NATO and 15,000 marched in Chicago in 2012.
·        Called for immediate actions against threats of war and coups directed at Libya, Iran, No. Korea, Africa, Latin America,    Ukraine, and maintaining the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.
·        Organized a national tour for Afghan leader Malalai Joya.
·        Sent representatives to international NATO protests and conferences.
·        Serve on the Board of the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms to act against Islamophobia , racist attacks on Muslims, and attacks on our civil liberties.
·        Participated in national efforts to organize anti-drone actions.
·        Campaigned to defend victims of government repression who speak out and expose Washington’s crimes, including Rasmea Odeh, Mumia abu Jamal, Lynne Stewart, Chelsea Manning, and the Midwest activists targeted by the FBI.
·        Produced national educational conference calls featuring experts on topics such as U.S. intervention in Africa, the destruction of Libya, the developing wars in Syria, and others.
·        Built an antiwar contingent in the massive New York City Climate Change march and built Climate Change action in other cities around the country.
·        Helped organize protests against Israel’s attack on Gaza
·        Helped organize protests against the murder of Blacks by white police and the militarization of the police forces in the U.S.

UNAC has a history of bringing hundreds of activists together at large national conferences to learn about the issues of the day, to discuss the way forward and to vote on an Action Program for the coming period.

The UNAC conference next May will bring activists from all the movements in motion to cross-fertilize these struggles.  We are particularly dedicated to bringing young activists together to support and learn from each other.  For this, we need your help to offer subsidies to leaders from Ferguson, from the border wars in the southwest, from the Native Americans who are fighting against the pipelines ruining their lands, from the Students for Justice in Palestine, and many others.

Please give generously so that we can continue our work to bring harmony and justice to the peoples of this earth.

You can send a check to UNAC at PO Box 123, Delmar, NY 12054 or click the button below to contribute on-line with your credit or debit card.

 https://www.unacpeace.org/

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On Behalf of Wadiya Jamal and
Mumia Abu-Jamal,
A Contribution Request

The message following is a forward from:
Rachel Wolkenstein
Sister, Advocate and Friend of the Extended Family

Samiya “Goldii” Abdullah, a daughter of Wadiya Jamal and Mumia Abu-Jamal died on December 17, 2014 after years of battle with breast cancer. Samiya would have been 37 this January 9 and is survived by two young daughters, Aiyanah and Aaiyah, affectionately known as Dolly and Puddy, ages eleven and four.

Samiya was a remarkable woman. She was accomplished as a musician, an activist and rapper on social justice, particularly in the struggle for Mumia’s freedom. She devoured books and education. During her long, often debilitating illness, Samiya finished her Masters Degree in School and Mental Health Counseling from the University of Pennsylvania with honors. She was dedicated to her young daughters and wanted them to grow up loving each other as much as she did her brothers and sisters. And she wanted her daughters to see Mumia (called “Pop Pop” by them) walk out of prison and home with their grandmother, Wadiya.

Samiya's active fight for Mumia's freedom, began at the young age of four. Mumia wrote about this in “The Visit” printed in Live from Death Row in 1994. This was recreated in the movie "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary."

"My father is still considered to be a dangerous individual … his mind is what they fear, there is over- whelming evidence that would exonerate him of his conviction.
"He is an innocent man and the commonwealth has always known this, but being too Black, too smart, and too strong … The government will silence anyone that possesses the power to open the minds of the people."   
                     —Goldii

Samiya’s strength, character and spirit were nurtured by Wadiya and Mumia and are being passed on to her daughters.

On behalf of Wadiya Jamal and Mumia Abu-Jamal, this is a request for funds to assist Wadiya for care of her granddaughters, Dolly and Puddy.

A financial contribution of any amount will be greatly appreciated.

Please send checks or money orders, made payable to Wadiya Jamal:

Wadiya Jamal
P.O. Box 19404
Kingsessing Postal Station
Philadelphia, PA 19143-9998

In loving memory of Samiya and in tribute to her fierce fight for life,

Rachel Wolkenstein
Sister, Advocate and Friend of the Extended Family


Hear Mumia’s Words (and Song) played before the Janazah for Samiya on December 20, 2014: “Samiya Abdullah Makes Transition”:

http://prisonradio.org/sites/default/files/audio/uploads/SamiyaAbdullahMakesTransition12-19-2.mp3?download=1

This message has been sent to you by:
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222  •  Oakland CA  •  510.763.2347
www.laboractionmumia.org

Donate Now
to fight the “gag” law!
go to:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protect-freedom-of-speech-keep-mumia-on-the-air

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Support Prison Radio

$35 is the yearly membership.

$50 will get you a beautiful tote bag (you can special order a yoga mat bag, just call us).

$100 will get the DVD "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary"

$300 will bring one essay to the airwaves.

$1000 (or $88.83 per month) will make you a member of our Prison Radio Freedom Circle. Take a moment and Support Prison Radio

Luchando por la justicia y la libertad,

Noelle Hanrahan, Director, Prison Radio

PRISON RADIO

P.O. Box 411074 San Francisco, CA 94141

www.prisonradio.org
info@prisonradio.org 415-706-5222


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Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson

Lorenzo Speaks Concerning Prosecution's Brief:
JANUARY 1, 2015—The prosecutor has run away from (almost) every issue raised in my PCRA by begging the Court to dismiss everything as “untimely”. When they don’t do this, they suggest that me and my lawyers were “defamatory” towards either my former prosecutor Christopher Abruzzo or Detective Kevin Duffin, in our claims they withheld, misused or hid evidence of my Innocence, in order to secure an unjust conviction in this case. If I charged, a year ago, that about a dozen AGs (attorneys general) were involved in circulating porno via their office computers, people would’ve laughed at me, and seen me as crazy.

But, guess what? During 2014, we learned that this was the truth. How can it be defamatory to speak the truth? Notice the OAG (Office of Attorney General), never said the obvious: That AG Abruzzo didn’t inform the Defense about the relationship between his Motive Witness and his head detective (Victoria Doubs and Det. Duffin); that Det. Duffin doesn’t deny Doubs was his god-sister, and that she lived in his family home, or that he assisted her whenever she got into trouble.

Why not? Because it is true. How can you defame someone who defames himself? Mr. Christopher Abruzzo, Esq., when a member of the higher ranks of the OAG, sent and/or received copious amounts of porno to other attorneys general and beyond. What does this say about his sense of judgment? He thought enough about his behavior to resign from his post in the Governor’s Cabinet. If he thought that his behavior was okay, he’d still be sitting in the Governor’s cabinet, right? The OAG cannot honestly oppose anything we’ve argued, but they try by seeking to get the Court to do their dirty work, how? By denying an Evidentiary Hearing to prove every point we’ve claimed.

The prosecution is trying desperately to avoid dealing with the substance of my claims in Com. v. Lorenzo Johnson. So, they slander my Legal Team and blame them for defaming the good AG’s and Cops involved with this case. They try to do what is undeniable, to deny that they hid evidence from the Defense for years. They blamed me for daring to protest the hidden evidence of their malfeasance and other acts to sabotage the defense. They claim that they had an “Open File” policy with my trial counsel. But “Open File” is more than letting an attorney read something in their office. If it’s a search for the truth it must include what is turned over to the attorney, for how do we really know what was shown to her?

They say it is inconceivable that an attorney would read a file, beginning on page nine (9), and not ask for the preceding eight (8) pages. Yet, it is conceivable if trial counsel was ineffective for not demanding the record of the first eight pages. Pages that identify the State’s only witness as a “SUSPECT” in the murder for which her client was charged! How could such an attorney fail to recognize the relevance of such an issue, barring their sheer Ineffectiveness and frankly, Incompetence.

By seeking to avoid an evidentiary hearing, the prosecution seeks to avoid evidence of their wrongdoing being made plain, for all to see. If they believe I’m wrong, why not prove it? They can’t. So they shout I filed my appeal untimely, as if there can ever justly be a rule that precludes an innocent from proving his innocence! Not to mention the fact that the prosecution has failed to even mention the positive finger prints that ay my trial they said none existed. Don’t try to hide it with a lame argument about time. When isn’t there a time for truth? The prosecution should be ashamed of itself for taking this road. It is unworthy of an office that claims to seek justice.

After the trial verdict The Patriot-News (March 18, 1997) reported, “Deputy Attorney General Christopher Abruzzo admitted there were some serious concerns about the strength of the evidence against Johnson and praised the jury for doing a thorough job.” I guess he forgot to mention all of the evidence he left out to show Innocence.

Now, more than ever, Lorenzo Johnson needs your support.
Publicize his case; bring it to your friends, clubs, religious
and social organizations. 


SIGN LORENZO JOHNSON'S FREEDOM PETITION

http://www.freelorenzojohnson.org/sign-the-petition.html

CONTRIBUTE TO LORENZO'S CAMPAIGN FOR FREEDOM!
http://www.freelorenzojohnson.org/how-can-i-help.html


Write: Lorenzo Johnson
            DF 1036
            SCI Mahanoy
            301 Morea Rd.
            Frackville, PA 17932

 Email: Lorenzo Johnson through JPAY.com code:
              Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC



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Click HERE to view in browser
http://www.iacenter.org/prisoners/freepinkney-1-28-15/
       
Join the Fight to Free Rev. Pinkney!

On December 15, 2014 the Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan was thrown into prison for 2.5 to 10 years. This 66-year-old leading African American activist was tried and convicted in front of an all-white jury and racist white judge and prosecutor for supposedly altering 5 dates on a recall petition against the mayor of Benton Harbor.

The prosecutor, with the judge’s approval, repeatedly told the jury “you don’t need evidence to convict Mr. Pinkney.” And ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE WAS EVER PRESENTED THAT TIED REV. PINKNEY TO THE ‘ALTERED’ PETITIONS. Rev. Pinkney was immediately led away in handcuffs and thrown into Jackson Prison.

This is an outrageous charge. It is an outrageous conviction. It is an even more outrageous sentence! It must be appealed.

With your help supporters need to raise $20,000 for Rev. Pinkney’s appeal.

Checks can be made out to BANCO (Black Autonomy Network Community Organization). This is the organization founded by Rev. Pinkney.  Mail them to: Mrs. Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union Street, Benton Harbor, MI 49022.

Donations can be accepted on-line at bhbanco.org – press the donate button.

For information on the decade long campaign to destroy Rev. Pinkney go to bhbanco.org and workers.org(search “Pinkney”).

We urge your support to the efforts to Free Rev. Pinkney!Ramsey Clark – Former U.S. attorney general,
Cynthia McKinney – Former member of U.S. Congress,
Lynne Stewart – Former political prisoner and human rights attorney
Ralph Poynter – New Abolitionist Movement,
Abayomi Azikiwe – Editor, Pan-African News Wire<
Larry Holmes – Peoples Power Assembly,
David Sole – Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice
Sara Flounders – International Action Center

MESSAGE FROM REV. PINKNEY

I am now in Marquette prison over 15 hours from wife and family, sitting in prison for a crime that was never committed. Judge Schrock and Mike Sepic both admitted there was no evidence against me but now I sit in prison facing 30 months. Schrock actually stated that he wanted to make an example out of me. (to scare Benton Harbor residents even more...) ONLY IN AMERICA. I now have an army to help fight Berrien County. When I arrived at Jackson state prison on Dec. 15, I met several hundred people from Detroit, Flint, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids. Some people recognized me. There was an outstanding amount of support given by the prison inmates. When I was transported to Marquette Prison it took 2 days. The prisoners knew who I was. One of the guards looked me up on the internet and said, "who would believe Berrien County is this racist."  

New Court Date on 4 Motions for Rev. Pinkney 

TUES, FEB. 24 1pm Berrien County Court 

Background to Campaign to free Rev. Pinkney

Michigan political prisoner the Rev. Edward Pinkney is a victim of racist injustice. He was sentenced to 30 months to 10 years for supposedly changing the dates on 5 signatures on a petition to recall Benton Harbor Mayor James Hightower.

No material or circumstantial evidence was presented at the trial that would implicate Pinkney in the purported5 felonies. Many believe that Pinkney, a Berrien County activist and leader of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization (BANCO), is being punished by local authorities for opposing the corporate plans of Whirlpool Corp, headquartered in Benton Harbor, Michigan.

In 2012, Pinkney and BANCO led an “Occupy the PGA [Professional Golfers’ Association of America]” demonstration against a world-renowned golf tournament held at the newly created Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course on the shoreline of Lake Michigan. The course was carved out of Jean Klock Park, which had been donated to the city of Benton Harbor decades ago.

Berrien County officials were determined to defeat the recall campaign against Mayor Hightower, who opposed a program that would have taxed local corporations in order to create jobs and improve conditions in Benton Harbor, a majority African-American municipality. Like other Michigan cities, it has been devastated by widespread poverty and unemployment. 

The Benton Harbor corporate power structure has used similar fraudulent charges to stop past efforts to recall or vote out of office the racist white officials, from mayor, judges, prosecutors in a majority Black city. Rev Pinkney who always quotes scripture, as many Christian ministers do, was even convicted for quoting scripture in a newspaper column. This outrageous conviction was overturned on appeal. We must do this again!

To sign the petition in support of the Rev. Edward Pinkney, log on to: tinyurl.com/ps4lwyn.

Contributions for Rev. Pinkney’s defense can be sent to BANCO at Mrs Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union St., Benton Harbor, MI 49022

Or you can donate on-line at bhbanco.org.

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COURAGE TO RESIST
http://couragetoresist.org/

New Action- write letters to DoD officials requesting clemency for Chelsea!

November 24, 2014 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network

Secretary of the Army John McHugh
President Obama has delegated review of Chelsea Manning’s clemency appeal to individuals within the Department of Defense.
Please write them to express your support for heroic WikiLeaks’ whistle-blower former US Army intelligence analyst PFC Chelsea Manning’s release from military prison.
It is important that each of these authorities realize the wide support that Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning enjoys worldwide. They need to be reminded that millions understand that Manning is a political prisoner, imprisoned for following her conscience. While it is highly unlikely that any of these individuals would independently move to release Manning, a reduction in Manning’s outrageous 35-year prison sentence is a possibility at this stage.
Take action TODAY – Write letters supporting Chelsea’s clemency petition to the following DoD authorities:
Secretary of the Army John McHugh
101 Army Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310-0101
The Judge Advocate General
2200 Army Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310-2200
Army Clemency and Parole Board
251 18th St, Suite 385
Arlington, VA 22202-3532
Directorate of Inmate Administration
Attn: Boards Branch
U.S. Disciplinary Barracks
1301 N. Warehouse Road
Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027-2304
Suggestions for letters send to DoD officials:
  • The letter should focus on your support for Chelsea Manning, and especially why you believe justice will be served if Chelsea Manning’s sentence is reduced.  The letter should NOT be anti-military as this will be unlikely to help
  • A suggested message: “Chelsea Manning has been punished enough for violating military regulations in the course of being true to her conscience.  I urge you to use your authorityto reduce Pvt. Manning’s sentence to time served.”  Beyond that general message, feel free to personalize the details as to why you believe Chelsea deserves clemency.
  • Consider composing your letter on personalized letterhead -you can create this yourself (here are templates and some tips for doing that).
  • A comment on this post will NOT be seen by DoD authorities–please send your letters to the addresses above
This clemency petition is separate from Chelsea Manning’s upcoming appeal before the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals next year, where Manning’s new attorney Nancy Hollander will have an opportunity to highlight the prosecution’s—and the trial judge’s—misconduct during last year’s trial at Ft. Meade, Maryland.
Help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea’s legal fees at this critical stage!



Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
 Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org

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 B. ARTICLES IN FULL




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1) Official: Average Wall Street Bonus Rises to Nearly $173,000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS




2) Homeowners Try to Assess Risks From Chemical in Floors
"But while federal rules exist for workers, no federal rules protect consumers from formaldehyde or most other airborne chemicals in their homes. And while research exists on formaldehyde’s health effects, experts have difficulty correlating levels of exposure with cancer risk since so many factors can affect the development of the disease."
By AARON M. KESSLER and





3) Two Officers Are Shot Amid Protests Outside Ferguson Police Station
By




4) Focus in Brooklyn Subway Shooting Is on Whether Deadly Force Was Justified
By




5) Roof Collapse Kills Workers in Bangladeshi Cement Factory
By




6) Rats and Rot: NYC Report Rips Family Homeless Shelters
"Ultimately, the city spent $637,000 for the guards who were ordered after the DOI inspection, plus over $750,000 to fix the stairs."
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS





7) Ferguson Protests Resume Quietly After Shootings
By and




8) Swedes Offer to Question Julian Assange in London
By
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/14/world/europe/julian-assange-sweden-london-sexual-assault-allegations.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news




9) Starving Sea Lions Washing Ashore by the Hundreds in California
By





10) Coroner: 19-Year-Old Man Killed by Cop Shot in Head, Torso
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS





11)  Alcohol or Marijuana? A Pediatrician Faces the Question




12) Pardons Elude North Carolina Men Exonerated After Decades in Prison
By




13) Man, 20, Is Arrested in the Shooting of 2 Officers in Ferguson
By and




14) A Police Gadget Tracks Phones? Shhh! It’s Secret
By





15) Veteran San Francisco Cops Caught Exchanging Vile, Racist Texts
4 officers spewed racist and homophobic texts freely.
By Terrell Jermaine Starr
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/veteran-san-francisco-cops-caught-exchanging-vile-racist-texts?akid=12896.229473.OpIyOa&rd=1&src=newsletter1033363&t=9




16) A More Public Option for Investigating Shootings by Police Officers
By





17) Louisiana Parish Fights Plan to Burn Tons of Propellant No One Wants
By




18) Protesters and Police Clash Near E.C.B.’s New Headquarters
By RHEA WESSEL and

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/19/business/european-central-bank-protests-frankfurt.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news




19) Missouri Executes Killer Who Had Brain Injury
By
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/18/us/missouri-executes-killer-who-had-brain-injury.html?ref=us 




20) Taxes Take Away, but Also Give Back, Mostly to the Very Rich
By

















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1) Official: Average Wall Street Bonus Rises to Nearly $173,000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ALBANY, N.Y. — New York's state comptroller says the average bonus paid to securities industry employees in New York City grew 2 percent last year to nearly $173,000.

Thomas DiNapoli says according to his office's analysis, that's the largest average Wall Street bonus since the 2008 financial crisis, though the industry was slightly less profitable last year.

According to the report Wednesday, the securities industry has been profitable for six consecutive years. It has added 2,300 jobs in the past year, amounting to 167,800 workers in New York City. That's still 11 percent less than before the crisis.

Pretax profits for broker/dealer operations of some 200 New York Stock Exchange members — the traditional measure of profitability for the securities industry — totaled $16 billion last year, down $700 million from 2013.


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2) Homeowners Try to Assess Risks From Chemical in Floors
"But while federal rules exist for workers, no federal rules protect consumers from formaldehyde or most other airborne chemicals in their homes. And while research exists on formaldehyde’s health effects, experts have difficulty correlating levels of exposure with cancer risk since so many factors can affect the development of the disease."
By AARON M. KESSLER and

Installing a new wood floor is usually about aesthetics: brown or black? Glossy or matte?

Now, some Americans and businesses are grappling with another feature: formaldehyde.

Uneasy consumers have flooded state and federal safety agencies with inquiries about Lumber Liquidators, the discount flooring retailer accused in a “60 Minutes” episode of selling laminate wood with high levels of formaldehyde, a known carcinogen. Should they rip it out? Leave it in? And what are the dangers to adults, children or even pets?

Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman of New York has now opened an inquiry into whether the company violated safety standards. Safety officials in California are also likely to investigate.

But federal regulators, armed with murky rules or none at all, have scrambled to respond, leaving consumers largely responsible for assessing the risk. Formaldehyde exposure can cause immediate health problems like respiratory and sinus effects, but the effects of long-term exposure remain unclear.

That has left many Lumber Liquidators customers concerned about what they should do.

Sol Hesney, 66, and his wife, Lynne, said they were mystified when their two dogs became sick shortly after they moved into their apartment in Fort Lee, N.J., five years ago.

“The vet was stumped. We were stumped,” said Mr. Hesney, who ultimately had both dogs euthanized.

After the news of Lumber Liquidators’ high-formaldehyde flooring broke on March 1, Mr. Hesney said he and his wife decided that they would replace their floors — they had installed the company’s Chinese-made laminate floors before moving in.

“We looked at each other and said, ‘Maybe that’s what explains this. It’s just too coincidental,’ ” he said. Since they moved in, he said, he had three serious sinus colds requiring antibiotics within a year’s time, something that had never happened to him before, and his wife had bronchitis.

But regulators, at least for now, are advocating a more tempered approach.

“We are not encouraging people to rip out their flooring right now,” said Lynn Baker, an air pollution specialist with the California Air Resources Board, which enforces the state formaldehyde rules that Lumber Liquidators is accused of breaking.

Commercial customers could also be affected, although Lumber Liquidators estimates that commercial sales make up less than 10 percent of the market for laminate flooring, a cheaper alternative to hardwood. Homeowners account for the bulk of its sales.

Laminate flooring itself is commonly used in some types of commercial spaces, experts say.

Lumber Liquidators disputes the “60 Minutes” report and says its flooring is safe. The company also said it was considering offering air testing services to reassure concerned consumers.

Installers, too, find themselves on the front lines after the report.

“The installers literally don’t want to install it,” said David Hill, president of Texas Best Flooring in Dallas. Mr. Hill, who does not work with Lumber Liquidators products, said he had received hundreds of emails and at least 15 calls a day from worried consumers.

“It’s confusion. Everybody’s confused, and everybody wants it out of their house,” Mr. Hill said. A spokesman for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration said the agency was paying close attention to the Lumber Liquidators issue, though as of Tuesday it had received no formal complaints.

But while federal rules exist for workers, no federal rules protect consumers from formaldehyde or most other airborne chemicals in their homes. And while research exists on formaldehyde’s health effects, experts have difficulty correlating levels of exposure with cancer risk since so many factors can affect the development of the disease.

“Any exposure to a carcinogen can increase your risk of cancer,” said Marilyn Howarth, a toxicologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.

Mr. Baker, with the California agency, said consumers should ask two questions: How long has the flooring been installed, and have they been feeling sick?

“If the flooring has been installed more than a couple of years ago, most of it has probably already off-gassed,” he said, meaning that the chemical would probably have been released. “If it was just installed last week, that’s a different story — you definitely want to ventilate the home.”

The floorboard controversy bears a resemblance to the cases of Chinese-made drywall that released sulfur gases into thousands of homes built after the 2005 hurricane season, which resulted in metal corrosion and health complaints. But while the drywall gases were expected to be released for decades, formaldehyde emissions in flooring may not last as long.

“You’ll get a fairly large amount that off-gasses early on, and then it starts to become less over a period ranging from months to a couple of years depending on the amounts contained in the product,” Mr. Baker said.

Most new floors emit small levels of formaldehyde. But it also seeps out of adhesives used to bind furniture and other household items, affecting the quality of the air residents breathe.

To combat its harmful effects, governments around the world have limited the use of formaldehyde in household products, particularly those made of wood. In Europe, chemical emissions from composite wood products are tightly regulated, and Japanese regulators put the onus on home builders to limit formaldehyde levels over all within houses they construct.

The United States, however, trails when it comes to such regulations. California enacted rules to cap emissions from composite wood products sold in the state. As far back as 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency said it was considering adopting California’s limits nationwide, and it issued a proposed rule in 2013.

But after many delays at the request of the wood products industry, the E.P.A. has yet to complete its rule. On Tuesday, the E.P.A. said it had no plan to investigate Lumber Liquidators, citing the lack of a finished rule. The agency says it is trying to give consumers “actionable guidance” when it comes to formaldehyde from composite woods, according to Bob Axelrad, a policy adviser in the office of air and radiation.

That includes proper ventilation, when possible, and using reliable air testing methods.

David Krause, an environmental consultant at the consulting firm Geosyntec and the former state toxicologist of Florida, said ventilation helped but was not always a solution: Humidity, for example, can intensify the problem.

Testing indoor air quality is also not a simple proposition — mainly because federal standards are geared toward workplaces, not homes. There are no definitive testing levels, and people react in different ways to the chemical.

“We really don’t have anything that is enforceable,” Dr. Krause said.

Still, based on current knowledge of the Lumber Liquidators’ product, he added: “This is not a ‘Your hair’s on fire’ emergency.”

The Consumer Product Safety Commission may take a lead role in investigating Lumber Liquidators. The commission can push for a recall if it can prove direct harm to human health.

But that would involve a long regulatory inquiry. Several consumers have begun pursuing a different path: suing the company.




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3) Two Officers Are Shot Amid Protests Outside Ferguson Police Station
By

FERGUSON, Mo. — Two police officers were shot here early Thursday morning as gunfire rang out in front of the police station, throwing into panic what had been a spirited — and at times tense — but largely peaceful night of protests.

Demonstrators and police officers alike hit the ground when the gunshots echoed through the crisp air. Many people ran for cover. The police, clad in riot gear, dragged their wounded fellow officers to safety. Others crouched behind cars and walls, drawing their handguns or rifles as they rapidly swiveled their heads every which way to survey their surroundings.

One officer, from the St. Louis County Police Department, was shot in the shoulder, and the other, from the suburban Webster Groves department, was shot in the face. Both were in serious condition, but their injuries were not life threatening, said Sgt. Brian Schellman, a spokesman for the St. Louis County police.The shots, which witnesses said they believed originated from the top of a hill about 220 yards directly across from the station, came just hours after the Ferguson police chief, Thomas Jackson, announced that he would resign, a move greeted with praise from protesters. Chief Jackson had been at the center of criticism that he ran a racially biased department ever since one of his white officers fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager seven months ago.

But Thursday’s shooting threatened to ratchet up tensions, as well as unravel efforts to change the way the police here do business and to heal the anger and frustration that Mr. Brown’s killing had unleashed.

In addition to Chief Jackson’s resignation, two other high-ranking Ferguson officials, the city manager and the municipal judge, left their jobs after a scathing Justice Department report last week that accused the city of racially biased and unconstitutional practices in its law enforcement. City officials had hoped that the changes would help residents see that they were prepared to start anew.

Instead, Chief Jon Belmar of the St. Louis County Police Department said that Thursday’s shooting only realized the worst fears he has had since the unrest over Mr. Brown’s killing — that it would lead to serious violence.

He said he believed the gunman targeted the officers who were lined up shoulder to shoulder in front of the Ferguson police station to keep protesters back.

“I’ve said all along that we cannot sustain this forever without problems,” Chief Belmar told reporters during a news conference in front of Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, where the wounded officers were being treated.

“I don’t know who did the shooting, to be honest with you,” he added. Chief Belmar said that based on the bullets’ trajectory and where the officers had been standing, he assumed that “these shots were directed exactly at my police officers.” He said he did not know what kind of gun had been used.

The Webster Groves officer is 32 years old and a seven-year veteran of the force, while the St. Louis County officer is 41 and has 14 years experience, the county police said.

Emotions quickly ran high after the shooting. One Ferguson officer, standing among the protesters as things calmed down, said, “This is what they wanted to happen.”

When a protester told him that no one wanted this to happen, the officer was adamant, saying that that was his opinion and that the protester could differ if he wanted.

Protesters on the scene were quick to point out that the gunfire did not come from among them, rather from a distance behind them.

Earlier in the night, the protests took on a familiar pattern that had not really been seen here since after a grand jury announced in November that it would not indict the white officer, Darren Wilson, for the fatal shooting of Mr. Brown.

It was as much a celebration of Chief Jackson’s resignation as it was a call for more action.

“Not just Jackson, we want Knowles, Ferguson has got to go!” they yelled in reference to James Knowles III, the mayor of Ferguson.

Protesters engaged in a cat-and-mouse game of sorts with the police. Dozens of them flooded into the street in front of the Police Department, blocking cars as they tried to pass. Things occasionally became tense between the protesters and motorists, some of whom refused to back away when demonstrators lined up in front of their vehicles. On several occasions, drivers inched forward, tapping the knees of protesters who dared them to hit them.

Each time, one side would eventually give in: Either the driver would back away, or the protesters would let them through. But on other occasions, police officers wearing helmets and clutching transparent shields and batons would race into the street to clear away the demonstrators. The police made a handful of arrests.

Some of the tensest moments came when the protesters fought among themselves. Some people urged others to block cars, while others urged their fellow demonstrators to get out of the street and direct their anger at the officers in front of the police station.

There were tussles between protesters who did not recognize one another, with the fault line appearing to be those who had been demonstrating for many months versus those who were new to the movement. Some took offense to the supposedly new protesters trying to tell them what to do. At one point, it devolved into fisticuffs in the street, as the police stood by watching.

But by midnight, the situation calmed down, and the number of protesters dwindled to around 100, if not fewer. They stood on the east side of South Florissant Road, while the police held their line on the west side, in front of the station.

Then, without any warning or seeming escalation, the shots rang out.

“I heard the bullets go past my head,” said Bradley J. Rayford, a freelance photographer, who said he was standing near the officers when the shots were fired. After the first one, Mr. Rayford said, he looked up at a hill across from the police station and saw muzzle fire from that direction. He said he heard about four shots, after which he moved to the ground.

After the shots were fired on Thursday, the remaining protesters scattered, and the St. Louis County Police Department’s homicide unit was sent to investigate.

Dozens of officers from around the region also arrived to secure the area. A group of officers in tactical gear carefully walked up the hill across from the police station where Mr. Rayford and other witnesses said the shots had come from.

By 2 a.m., a handful of people remained in the lot across the department, which was encircled in yellow police tape. Investigators tried to interview people in the group. But in a sign of the chasm that remained between law enforcement and this protest movement, many of them were reluctant to talk.





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4) Focus in Brooklyn Subway Shooting Is on Whether Deadly Force Was Justified
By

For nearly everyone on the packed Brooklyn-bound No. 4 train, the Tuesday evening commute began like any other. Bodies crammed together. Tempers contained beneath the fatigue of a long day.

In one car, an argument flared as the train left Manhattan: Two men, co-workers returning from a job site, bristled when an older man, William J. Groomes, stepped between them to get on, officials said.

It was the sort of scene that occasionally erupts underground and usually fizzles. In this case, angry words turned to blows. And Mr. Groomes, a 69-year-old retired New York City correction officer, was carrying a loaded 9-millimeter handgun.

The confrontation spilled into the subway station under Brooklyn’s Borough Hall. As Mr. Groomes struggled with one of the men on a station mezzanine, near a revolving exit door, a shot rang out, striking the man, Gilbert Drogheo, 32, in the chest. He died at Brooklyn Hospital Center.On Wednesday, the police charged Mr. Drogheo’s co-worker, Joscelyn Evering of Brooklyn, 28, with assault and menacing. But the police and prosecutors were still grappling with whether the killing — the first in the transit system this year — constituted a crime, or if Mr. Groomes had been justified in his use of deadly force to counter what he told detectives was an assault.

The Brooklyn district attorney’s office said on Wednesday that it was still “investigating the incident to see if a grand jury presentation is warranted.”

Neither Mr. Drogheo nor Mr. Evering was armed, the authorities said. Mr. Groomes told detectives that he had warned the men he intended to arrest them before following them through the station, his gun at his side, a law enforcement official said.

“There is an issue to be determined, which is whether Groomes was justified,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because no decision had been made on whether to charge him. “The shooting occurred after Groomes told them they had assaulted him and he was going to arrest them.”

The killing called to mind events of another era, when subway crime was rampant and New York could make a hero out of someone like Bernard Goetz, a white man who opened fire in 1984 on four black teenagers who he believed were going to rob him on a No. 2 train.

But while Mr. Goetz’s weapon was illegal, Mr. Groomes had a permit for the gun he took onto the subway at a time when, Police Commissioner William J. Bratton has said, riders are safer than ever. Unlike the episode involving Mr. Goetz, the moment the gunfire erupted on Tuesday was captured on video.

Detectives spent much of Wednesday interviewing witnesses and reviewing video, trying to piece together the events that preceded the altercation and its deadly conclusion. Mr. Groomes, who was hospitalized after the shooting, had been released by Wednesday. His lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Norman Seabrook, the president of the union that represents correction officers, said he had spoken with Mr. Groomes on Wednesday. “He’s thankful for all the support he’s gotten,” he said. “He’s done nothing wrong.”

Under New York State law, people have the right to defend themselves against an aggressor and to use deadly physical force when confronted with the imminent use of deadly physical force.

But unlike states with “stand your ground” laws, such as Florida, New York imposes a duty to retreat before deadly force is used, said James A. Cohen, a criminal defense lawyer and Fordham University Law School professor. “That’s the difference with a cop, who doesn’t have a duty to retreat,” Mr. Cohen said.

Any decision to bring charges, he said, would turn on who had been the aggressor, at first as well as just before the gunfire.

As for the idea that Mr. Groomes planned to arrest the two men, Mr. Cohen said: “People, even though armed, don’t go about trying to arrest people they have altercations with. And for good reason.”

Mr. Groomes fired after what the police and witnesses described as a prolonged confrontation that spilled from subway car to platform to mezzanine.

“They’re standing in the door; it’s crowded, and everyone is headed home,” said a witness, Eliza Byard, who was in the car with the men.

“They were in the way,” Ms. Byard said, adding that the younger men seemed “a little out of it,” as if they might have been drinking.

While still on the train, the law enforcement official said, the younger men had insulted Mr. Groomes, who mostly ignored them. “At one point, they called him a boy,” the law enforcement official said. “He says: ‘Don’t call me boy. I’m not your boy.’ ” Investigators said that at another point, one of the men punched Mr. Groomes in the head.

It was not clear when Mr. Groomes pulled the gun from his pocket, but as he did he told the men he was going to arrest them and suggested he was a law enforcement officer. Witnesses described the panic that spread when the weapon emerged.

A cellphone video, recorded by a person in the station and first broadcast by WCBS-TV, showed Mr. Groomes moving through the station. At one point in the video, Mr. Groomes appeared to be descending back toward the train as a man who appeared to be Mr. Drogheo moved away from him.

“Don’t shoot!” a man can be heard saying in the video.

Outside the Borough Hall station on Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Drogheo’s youngest brother, Eric Maldonado, 16, said that there was no justification for the killing. “If you watch the video, my brother is running,” he said. “He didn’t have to die.”

Mr. Drogheo, the father of a 3-year-old daughter, worked as an electrician at the same company as Mr. Evering, and the two often rode home from jobs together. This week, they had been installing paneling in the East 20s in Manhattan, Mr. Evering’s mother, Patricia Livingston, said.

“They had no guns, no weapons in his bag,” Ms. Livingston said. “They had tools.”

Mr. Groomes, who lives in Brooklyn, retired from the Correction Department in 1993 after 18 years. Like many retired law enforcement officers, he has a permit to carry a concealed handgun.

A friend called Mr. Groomes “a wonderful guy” and a regular neighbor. “If anybody would try to mess with his character, I would defend him on that,” the friend, Sikkim Assing, said.

Ms. Assing, who is also a retired correction officer, said she understood why Mr. Groomes would want to have a gun permit.

“A lot of people choose to carry a gun because we work with the garbage of New York,” she said. “We got to protect ourselves.”

Reporting was contributed by Emma G. Fitzsimmons, Nate Schweber and John Surico, and research by Susan C. Beachy.



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5) Roof Collapse Kills Workers in Bangladeshi Cement Factory
By

NEW DELHI — The roof of a cement factory collapsed Thursday afternoon in the southwestern Bangladeshi city of Mongla, killing at least six people and leaving scores more in the wreckage, a government safety official said.

Around 40 people were rescued in the first hours after the roof collapsed, but as night fell, as many as 70 remained trapped in the collapsed structure, said Mahboob ul-Allam, senior assistant secretary in Bangladesh’s disaster management department. Part of the factory, which is run by the army and located about 200 miles from Dhaka, the capital, was under construction, he said.

The cause of the collapse is being investigated.

Two years ago, a similar collapse focused global attention on unsafe conditions in Bangladesh’s garment industry, which handles orders for many of the world’s top brands and retailers. More than 1,000 people were killed in that collapse, which a government report attributed to substandard construction materials and blatant disregard for building codes.

 


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6) Rats and Rot: NYC Report Rips Family Homeless Shelters
"Ultimately, the city spent $637,000 for the guards who were ordered after the DOI inspection, plus over $750,000 to fix the stairs."
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK — One family of six was living in a homeless-shelter apartment where a dead rat festered on the floor for two days. Another family had no living-room furniture and had been without electricity for days.

At a different homeless family shelter, a puddle of urine soiled the floor of the only working elevator. And at yet another, one stairway was so treacherously rusted that inspectors ordered guards to block access to it until it was repaired.

All those buildings were part of a system that costs the city Department of Homeless Services about $360 million a year, with the agency sometimes paying well above neighborhood market rates for apartments, according to a city Department of Investigation report released Thursday. It found decrepit and dangerous conditions and lacking enforcement were rife in the city-paid, largely privately-run shelters that house nearly 12,000 homeless families with children.

"At its worst, DHS is turning a blind eye to violations that threaten the lives of shelter residents," the report said, calling for repairs, stiffer inspections and new mechanisms to compel fixes.

The homeless services agency said it had already axed some unacceptable apartments from the system, stepped up inspections and asked for money to hire 19 new inspection staffers, among other steps.

While that's progress, "much work still needs to be done," Department of Investigation Commissioner Mark G. Peters said in a statement.

New York City is legally obligated to provide shelter to all homeless people and has long grappled with how to house them. The problem has grown more acute as the numbers of people seeking shelter rose from an average of about 39,000 a night in the start of 2010 to over 60,000 this past November, according to the most recent data the nonprofit Coalition for the Homeless has gathered from city agencies.

Conditions in some family homeless shelters were bleakly spotlighted in December 2013, when The New York Times profiled an 11-year-old girl who lived amid mice, rotting walls and communal bathrooms in a Brooklyn shelter that no longer houses children. Mayor Bill de Blasio took office the next month and asked for an investigation.

Investigators inspected 25 of the over 140 family shelters last spring and summer. They range from converted hospitals and schools with on-site social services to single-room occupancy hotels and "cluster sites:" apartments within buildings that also house private tenants.

The "cluster sites" proved particularly deplorable, the report said. Inspectors reported roaches crawling on the walls, holes in the corners and unlocked front doors with inadequate security in lobbies of buildings with histories of shootings and other crimes. Garbage was piled in halls, beds were broken and there were rats, including the reeking, dead one that had lingered for two days, the report said.

The city pays an average of $2,450 a month for cluster site apartments, while the average rent in some of their neighborhoods is $1,200 a month and lower, the report said.

But even some better-equipped shelters had fire code violations and other problems, including the rusted-out stairwell, the report said. It was one of two in a 140-family building.

The homeless services agency had known the stairway was deteriorating since 2012 and tried to get money to fix it. Ultimately, the city spent $637,000 for the guards who were ordered after the DOI inspection, plus over $750,000 to fix the stairs. They reopened in September.

Reach Jennifer Peltz on Twitter @ jennpeltz.


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7) Ferguson Protests Resume Quietly After Shootings
By and

FERGUSON, Mo. — This region awoke Friday to an uneasy calm on Friday as the police continued searching for the person responsible for shooting two officers a day earlier during a protest outside the police station here.

Demonstrators returned to the police station on Thursday night for a peaceful but boisterous rally, as they sought to deny any link to the violence and shift attention from the shooting to their calls for change in Ferguson’s police and court system.

Sgt. Brian Schellman, a spokesman for the St. Louis County Police, said Friday morning that detectives were continuing to look into leads, but that no one was in custody. He described it as an “active investigation.”

Investigators on Thursday scoured nearby streets for evidence, and some people were brought in for questioning. They were later released.Protesters were small in number, about 100, and at times subdued in tone. They marched and chanted for a few short hours, heading home as rain began to fall. And they had a simple, symbolic goal: to keep the demonstrations alive the day after the two officers were shot.

Many questioned whether protesters would return to the street outside Police Headquarters — doing so would once again expose officers securing the building to danger — but the demonstration on Thursday night seemed to form as a kind of defiant answer.

“What the coward who shot at the police officers last night did was to try to take us off message,” said Cat Daniels, an activist known as Mama Cat who handed crackers and cookies to protesters. “We refuse to be taken off message.”

In many ways, the demonstrations on Thursday night seemed to unfold as if the shooting never happened. Protesters used the same confrontational speech they had in the past. Some wore Guy Fawkes masks or bandannas covering their faces. Others denounced the “racist police” and blared rap songs with antipolice lyrics.

Though several Ferguson officials have resigned since the release of a scathing Justice Department report, activists demanded that other officials, including the mayor, also step down. Anger over the killing of Michael Brown, the unarmed black teenager who was shot by a white Ferguson officer in August and whose death ignited unrest, remained as fierce as ever.

“How many kids did you guys kill today?” one protester shouted at police officers who walked by him.

As Ms. Daniels put it: “I personally feel bad for the officers and what they had to go through. But they went home. Mike Brown laid on that ground for four and a half hours and no one cared.”

There were no arrests during the demonstration. But activists asserted on social media that two protesters had been pulled over in traffic stops nearby and arrested.

The shooting occurred shortly after midnight on Thursday as officers guarded the police station while a demonstration was winding down. Officials called the shooting an “ambush” and said that the officers had been targeted. One officer was shot in the face and the other in the shoulder. Both were treated at a nearby hospital and released.

Down the street from the police station, a group of clergy members and protesters gathered for a nighttime prayer vigil, with several pastors condemning the shooting of the officers while maintaining that peaceful protesters were not to blame.

“We come to curse all of those who would stand in the midst of peaceful protest and cast off shots of violence,” said the Rev. Starsky Wilson, a chairman of the Ferguson Commission, which was appointed by Gov. Jay Nixon to study the public’s relationship with law enforcement and other socio-economic problems.

Law enforcement officials made several small but significant changes in their handling of the protests and guarding of the police station, taking a more cautious and less visible approach.

Last year, after the announcement that a grand jury declined to indict Darren Wilson, the white officer who killed Mr. Brown, police officers formed a shoulder-to-shoulder line across the police station’s parking lot facing protesters. Known as a skirmish line in police parlance, the line created a human shield between the protesters and the police station. The two officers who were shot were standing in such a protective line.

But during the protest on Thursday night, officers mostly stood behind four parked police sport utility vehicles. The human shield was replaced for the most part by a kind of vehicular shield. At one point, when the demonstrators crowded the street blocking traffic, seven officers stood in front of the vehicles. Compared with last year’s demonstrations, when a line would stretch across the length of the parking lot and remain there so long that officers would rotate in and out, the skirmish line this time was short and brief.

One of the police commanders in charge of overseeing security outside the building said he wanted to “reduce some of that visibility” of his officers, calling the concrete barriers that blocked the entrance of the parking lot “a position of cover.”

“There is probably more of a sense of unease, a little bit more nervousness, based on what happened last night,” the commander, Lt. Jerry Lohr with the St. Louis County Police Department, said as he stood outside the police station. “Officers are worried. I think the spouses, the families’ of these officers, are extremely worried. Personally, I ran home today to change and get ready to be up here, and my wife wanted to take a picture with my son. So she asked my 14-year-old son and I to get a picture taken together. My wife never asks for a picture. It’s her way of expressing that emotion, that concern.”

Lieutenant Lohr had won praise from many protesters last year for de-escalating tensions between law enforcement and the demonstrators. He said a few protesters he knew had come up to him on Thursday to denounce the shooting. Throughout the night, he walked among the crowd with about 10 officers, asking protesters who were standing in the street to move onto the sidewalk to allow traffic to flow. He was yelled at, greeted politely, hugged, questioned, ignored.

“I don’t think it’s fair to stereotype and say this was an act of the protesters,” he said of the shooting. “The majority of the people that are out here are here to have their voices heard. The majority of people out here aren’t here to physically engage the police.”




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8) Swedes Offer to Question Julian Assange in London
By

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/14/world/europe/julian-assange-sweden-london-sexual-assault-allegations.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

LONDON — In a move that could unlock years of stalemate, Swedish prosecutors on Friday offered to travel to Britain to question the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange over allegations of sexual assaults in 2010.

The Swedish officials had previously refused to conduct interviews in London, where Mr. Assange has taken refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy since June 2012.

But with some of the crimes under investigation set to reach their statute of limitations in August, the officials said that they had changed their minds, and that they had also asked for permission to take a swab of DNA from Mr. Assange.

“My view has always been that to perform an interview with him at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London would lower the quality of the interview, and that he would need to be present in Sweden in any case should there be a trial in the future,” Marianne Ny, the director of public prosecutions in Sweden, said on Friday in a statement.

“Now that time is of the essence, I have viewed it therefore necessary to accept such deficiencies in the investigation and likewise take the risk that the interview does not move the case forward,” she added.

One of Mr. Assange’s defense lawyers, Per Samuelson, welcomed the initiative and suggested that it would most likely be accepted. He said he had spoken to Mr. Assange early on Friday.

“This is what we have been asking for, for years, so finally the prosecutor is speaking the same language,” Mr. Samuelson said. “We are a little irritated that it has taken her so long to do.”

“We received the formal request from the Swedish prosecutor by email,” he added. “In that email, there are some preconditions, one of which is that both the Ecuadorean and the United Kingdom authorities approve the request. For us, she could come tomorrow, but since she demands that the two countries approve, that could take some time.”

Mr. Samuelson added, however, that he thought that both Britain and Ecuador wanted to resolve the situation and would not obstruct an interview taking place in London.

He also said that the Swedish prosecutor already had access to a sample of Mr. Assange’s DNA. “We don’t know why she is asking for it once more,” he said, adding that he had not discussed that aspect of the request with Mr. Assange.

Mr. Samuelson said that Mr. Assange welcomed the change of position from the Swedish prosecutor.

“I am convinced that once the prosecutor hears him, she will understand that he is innocent and will drop the investigation,” he said.

In the statement, Ms. Ny said that if Mr. Assange agreed to the interview in London, it would be carried out by the supporting prosecutor to the case, Chief Prosecutor Ingrid Isgren, along with a police officer.

Karin Rosander, the director of communications for the Swedish prosecutor, said that it was unclear how soon any interview could take place. After getting the agreement of Mr. Assange, the Swedish authorities would still need to make a formal request to Britain before going ahead, she said.

Mr. Assange is wanted for questioning over allegations of sexual misconduct and rape involving two women he met during a visit to Sweden in 2010.

No charges have been brought formally, but that step is usually taken later in a criminal investigation in Sweden than in many other countries. In 2012, Mr. Assange lost an appeal in Britain against extradition to Sweden, prompting his request for refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where, under diplomatic protocol, Britain does not have jurisdiction.

Mr. Assange denies the allegations, but he has refused to go to Sweden to face them because he says he could then, ultimately, be extradited to the United States. There, he might face trial over the publication on WikiLeaks of huge quantities of delicate information that caused acute embarrassment for the United States and for other governments and revealed confidential details about diplomatic relations.

A solution to the impasse would probably be welcomed by Britain, where a police chief said this year that the cost of guarding the embassy to ensure that Mr. Assange did not leave was draining resources.

The Metropolitan Police in London have provided a 24-hour guard at a cost of about $15 million since the operation began, and Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe told LBC Radio this week that officials were considering “how we can do that differently in the future, because it’s sucking our resources in.”
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9) Starving Sea Lions Washing Ashore by the Hundreds in California
By


CAPISTRANO BEACH, Calif. — By the time Wendy Leeds reached him, the sea lion pup had little hope of surviving.

Like more than 1,450 other sea lions that have washed up on California beaches this year, in what animal experts call a growing crisis for the animal, this 8-month-old pup was starving, stranded and hundreds of miles from a mother who still needed to nurse him and teach him to hunt and feed. Ribs jutted from his velveteen coat.

The pup had lain on the beach for hours, becoming the target of an aggressive dog before managing to wriggle onto the deck of a million-dollar oceanfront home, where the owner shielded him with an umbrella and called animal control. In came Ms. Leeds, an animal-care expert at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center, which like other California rescue centers is being inundated with calls about lost, emaciated sea lions.

“It’s getting crazy,” she said.Experts suspect that unusually warm waters are driving fish and other food away from the coastal islands where sea lions breed and wean their young. As the mothers spend time away from the islands hunting for food, hundreds of starving pups are swimming away from home and flopping ashore from San Diego to San Francisco.

Many of the pups are leaving the Channel Islands, an eight-island chain off the Southern California coast, in a desperate search for food. But they are too young to travel far, dive deep or truly hunt on their own, scientists said.

This year, animal rescuers are reporting five times more sea lion rescues than normal — 1,100 last month alone. The pups are turning up under fishing piers and in backyards, along inlets and on rocky cliffs. One was found curled up in a flower pot.

Last week, SeaWorld San Diego said it would shut its live sea lion and otter show for two weeks so it could spare six of its animal specialists for the rescue-and-recovery effort.

“There are so many calls, we just can’t respond to them all,” Justin Viezbicke, who oversees stranding issues in California for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said on a conference call with reporters. “The reality is, we just can’t get to these animals.”

As the injured animals proliferate, their encounters with humans are growing. Some people offer misguided help such as dousing the pups with water or trying to drag them back into the ocean. Others take selfies with the stranded animals, pet them or let their children pretend to ride them, rescuers said.

As Ms. Leeds approached the quaking sea lion on Capistrano Beach, she frowned at a pile of tuna near his muzzle. “Has someone been trying to feed him?” she asked.

Many are sick with pneumonia, their throaty barks muted to rasping coughs. Parasites have swarmed their digestive systems. Some are so tired that they cannot scamper away when rescuers approach them with nets and towels and heft them into large pet carriers.

“They come ashore because if they didn’t, they would drown,” said Shawn Johnson, the director of veterinary science at Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito. “They’re just bones and skin. They’re really on the brink of death.”

This year is the third in five years that scientists have seen such large numbers of strandings. Researchers say they worry about the long-term consequences of climate change and rising ocean temperatures on a sea lion population that has evolved over thousands of years to breed almost exclusively on the Channel Islands, relying on circulating flows of Pacific upwellings to bring anchovies, sardines and other prey.

“The environment is changing too rapidly,” said Sharon Melin, a wildlife biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service who found that pups on the Channel Islands were 44 percent underweight. “Their life history is so much slower that it’s not keeping up.”

Scientists said it was too soon to predict how these strandings and deaths could affect California’s sea lion populations, which stand at what scientists say is a healthy 300,000. As their mothers leave them to take longer, less productive foraging trips, the pups are simply not growing normally.

“We do expect the population to take a drop,” Dr. Melin said. “Probably not something catastrophic, but probably a really good hit. It is going to impact the overall population eventually if we continue to have these events back to back.”

For now, rescue and rehabilitation groups like Pacific Marine Mammal Center, in Laguna Beach, have the feel of big-city emergency rooms. Volunteers and staff members pull up with crates of freshly beached sea lions to be weighed and examined. They shave numbers into the animals’ brown coats, warm the coldest ones in saltwater baths, and try to coax them back to health with smoothies of herring, Karo syrup, Trader Joe’s brand salmon oil and other nutrients.

Many have rebounded, gaining weight and graduating from indoor holding pens and tube feedings to eating small fish and romping in outdoor pools. The gaunt new arrivals lie forlornly inside, lethargic and scrawny. The recovering ones loll outside like sunbathers on a crowded roof deck, rolling around in hose spray and occasionally flapping around the small pools in their pens. After four or five weeks, many should be ready to be released back into the ocean.

But the death rates are sobering, and staff members say they have to make quick and sometimes painful decisions to euthanize animals unlikely to survive. Of the 1,450 sea lions scooped up from the shores, about 720 are now being treated, Dr. Viezbicke of NOAA said.

Michele Hunter, the center’s director of animal care, said, “It’s very difficult to see so much death.”

On Capistrano Beach, Ms. Leeds hauled the quaking sea lion into a kennel, accepted a $20 donation from the homeowner who had called in the report and headed down the highway to a fishing pier where a lifeguard had spotted another pup in the sand.

This one was small and cool to her touch with ragged, unsteady breathing, so she piled both animals into the same kennel so they could keep each other warm. They seemed to bond quickly: When Ms. Leeds reached toward one, the other snapped at her hand. Within the hour, veterinary workers would decide that both pups were too starved and sick and had to be put down. For the moment, the two curled up together like a pair of brown socks for the ride back to the rescue center.


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10) Coroner: 19-Year-Old Man Killed by Cop Shot in Head, Torso
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MADISON, Wis. — A 19-year-old biracial man who was unarmed when killed by a white Madison police officer was shot in his head, right arm and torso, according to preliminary autopsy reports released Friday.

The report from the Dane County Medical Examiner did not say how many times Tony Robinson was shot on March 6, but said he died from "firearm related trauma." The results of toxicology tests aren't expected for several more weeks.

Robinson was fatally shot by police officer Matt Kenny after Kenny was summoned to a call that the young man was jumping in and out of traffic and had assaulted someone. Authorities said the officer heard a disturbance and forced his way into an apartment where Robinson had gone, and fired after Robinson assaulted him.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice is investigating the shooting; state law requires an outside agency to look into any fatal police shootings. Attorney General Brad Schimel has said he hopes to have the bulk of that investigation done and submitted to the local district attorney in two weeks.

There have been numerous peaceful protests of 1,000 people or more since the shooting. Robinson's funeral was scheduled for Saturday.

A memorial for Robinson at the scene of the shooting still drew a few people Friday morning. Visitors have left flowers and mementos outside the apartment and scribbled notes on its walls.

Associated Press writer Kia Farhang contributed to this report.


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11)  Alcohol or Marijuana? A Pediatrician Faces the Question

As my children, and my friends’ children, are getting older, a question that comes up again and again from friends is this: Which would I rather my children use — alcohol or marijuana?

The immediate answer, of course, is “neither.” But no parent accepts that. It’s assumed, and not incorrectly, that the vast majority of adolescents will try one or the other, especially when they go to college. So they press me further.

The easy answer is to demonize marijuana. It’s illegal, after all. Moreover, its potential downsides are well known. Scans show that marijuana use is associated with potential changes in the brain. It’s associated with increases in the risk of psychosis. It may be associated with changes in lung function or long-term cancer risk, even though a growing body of evidence says that seems unlikely. It can harm memory, it’s associated with lower academic achievement, and its use is linked to less success later in life.

But these are all associations, not known causal pathways. It may be, for instance, that people predisposed to psychosis are more likely to use pot. We don’t know. Moreover, all of these potential dangers seem scary only when viewed in isolation. Put them next to alcohol, and everything looks different.

Because marijuana is illegal, the first thing I think about before answering is crime. In many states, being caught with marijuana is much worse than being caught with alcohol while underage. But ignoring the relationship between alcohol and crime is a big mistake. The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence reports that alcohol use is a factor in 40 percent of all violent crimes in the United States, including 37 percent of rapes and 27 percent of aggravated assaults.

No such association has been found among marijuana users. Although there are studies that can link marijuana to crime, it’s almost all centered on its illegal distribution. People who are high are not committing violence.

People will argue that casual use isn’t the issue; it’s abuse that’s worrisome for crime. They’re right — but for alcohol. A recent study in Pediatrics investigated the factors associated with death in delinquent youth. Researchers found that about 19 percent of delinquent males and 11 percent of delinquent females had an alcohol use disorder. Further, they found that even five years after detention, those with an alcohol use disorder had a 4.7 times greater risk of death from external causes, like homicide, than those without an alcohol disorder.

When I’m debating my answer, I think about health as well. Once again, there’s no comparison. Binge drinking accounted for about half of the more than 80,000 alcohol-related deaths in the United States in 2010, according to a 2012 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The economic costs associated with excessive alcohol consumption in the United States were estimated to be about $225 billion dollars. Binge drinking, defined as four or more drinks for women and five or more drinks for men on a single occasion, isn’t rare either. More than 17 percent of all people in the United States are binge drinkers, and more than 28 percent of people age 18 to 24.

Binge drinking is more common among people with a household income of at least $75,000. This is a solid middle-class problem.

Marijuana, on the other hand, kills almost no one. The number of deaths attributed to marijuana use is pretty much zero. A study that tracked more than 45,000 Swedes for 15 years found no increase in mortality in those who used marijuana, after controlling for other factors. Another study published in the American Journal of Public Health followed more than 65,000 people in the United States and found that marijuana use had no effect at all on mortality in healthy men and women.

I think about which is more dangerous when driving. A 2013 case-control study found that marijuana use increased the odds of being in a fatal crash by 83 percent. But adding alcohol to drug use increased the odds of a fatal crash by more than 2,200 percent. A more recent study found that, after controlling for various factors, a detectable amount of THC, the active ingredient in pot, in the blood did not increase the risk of accidents at all. Having a blood alcohol level of at least 0.05 percent, though, increased the odds of being in a crash by 575 percent.

I think about which substance might put young people at risk for being hurt by others. That’s where things become even more stark. In 1995 alone, college students reported more than 460,000 alcohol-related incidents of violence in the United States. A 2011 prospective study found that mental and physical dating abuse were more common on drinking days among college students. On the other hand, a 2014 study looking at marijuana use and intimate partner violence in the first nine years of marriage found that those who used marijuana had lower rates of such violence. Indeed, the men who used marijuana the most were the least likely to commit violence against a partner.Most people come out of college not dependent on the substances they experimented with there. But some do. So I also consider which of the two might lead to abuse. Even there, alcohol fares poorly compared with marijuana. While 9 percent of pot users eventually become dependent, more than 20 percent of alcohol users do.

An often-quoted, although hotly debated, study in the Lancet ranked many drugs according to their harm score, both to users and to others. Alcohol was clearly in the lead. One could make a case, though, that heroin, crack cocaine and methamphetamine would be worse if they were legal and more commonly used. But it’s hard to see how pot could overtake alcohol even if it were universally legal. Use of marijuana is not rare, even now when it’s widely illegal to buy and use. It’s estimated that almost half of Americans age 18 to 20 have tried it at some point in their lives; more than a third of them have used it in the last year.

I also can’t ignore what I’ve seen as a pediatrician. I’ve seen young people brought to the emergency room because they’ve consumed too much alcohol and become poisoned. That happens thousands of times a year. Some even die.

And when my oldest child heads off to college in the not-too-distant future, this is what I will think of: Every year more than 1,800 college students die from alcohol-related accidents. About 600,000 are injured while under alcohol’s influence, almost 700,000 are assaulted, and almost 100,000 are sexually assaulted. About 400,000 have unprotected sex, and 100,000 are too drunk to know if they consented. The numbers for pot aren’t even in the same league.

I’m a pediatrician, as well as a parent. I can, I suppose, demand that my children, and those I care for in a clinic, never engage in risky behavior. But that doesn’t work. Many will still engage in sexual activity, for instance, no matter how much I preach about the risk of a sexually transmitted infection or pregnancy. Because of that, I have conversations about how to minimize risk by making informed choices. While no sex is preferable to unprotected sex, so is sex with a condom. Talking about the harm reduction from condom use doesn’t mean I’m telling them to have sex.

Similarly, none of these arguments I’ve presented are “pro pot” in the sense that I’m saying that adolescents should go use marijuana without worrying about consequences. There’s little question that marijuana carries with it risks to people who use it, as well as to the nation. The number of people who will be hurt from it, will hurt others because of it, begin to abuse it, and suffer negative consequences from it are certainly greater than zero. But looking only at those dangers, and refusing to grapple with them in the context of our society’s implicit consent for alcohol use in young adults, is irrational.

When someone asks me whether I’d rather my children use pot or alcohol, after sifting through all the studies and all the data, I still say “neither.” Usually, I say it more than once. But if I’m forced to make a choice, the answer is “marijuana.”

Aaron E. Carroll is a professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine. He blogs on health research and policy at The Incidental Economist, and you can follow him on Twitter at @aaronecarroll.

The Upshot provides news, analysis and graphics about politics, policy and everyday life. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.


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12) Pardons Elude North Carolina Men Exonerated After Decades in Prison
By

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — In the days leading up to the one last summer when Henry L. McCollum left North Carolina’s death row, it seemed that inmates and staff members could not stop talking about what awaited him beyond Central Prison.

The man who had spent almost his entire adult life awaiting execution would be able to go out for fried chicken, his favorite. Maybe he could strike a movie deal. At the very least, Mr. McCollum remembers, people told him that he would be a man of considerable wealth once the state paid him the $750,000 he could seek under North Carolina law because he had been wrongly convicted and imprisoned for decades.Mr. McCollum, 50, was released from prison last September after DNA evidence showed that he did not rape and murder a young girl in 1983. But since then, he and his half brother, Leon Brown, who was also exonerated and freed from prison in the same case, have led anything but a glamorous post-prison life. Instead, because of legal decisions made to help accelerate their release, as well as Gov. Pat McCrory’s deliberate approach to granting what is known here as a pardon of innocence, both men have clung to a minimal existence, absent substantive remuneration, counseling or public aid in transitioning back to society.

“If the governor called me, I would tell him the reason why I need his pardon: I would tell him I deserve this pardon,” Mr. McCollum said. “I did 31 years in prison for a crime I did not commit. I could have given up a long time ago and told the state to kill me.

So far, though, Mr. McCrory has not acted on the pardon applications of Mr. McCollum or Mr. Brown, whose I.Q. scores were previously recorded in the 50s.

Because of the approach lawyers used to secure swifter releases for the two men, neither is entitled to wrongful conviction compensation until they get pardons.

The men were teenagers — Mr. McCollum was 19 and Mr. Brown was 15 — at the time of their September 1983 arrests in Red Springs in the sexual assault and murder of an 11-year-old girl, Sabrina Buie. They were convicted about a year later.

But Judge Douglas B. Sasser of the Robeson County Superior Court concluded last year that “no physical evidence, either at the time of their arrest or at any time since, linked Mr. McCollum or Mr. Brown to the scene or the commission of this crime.” Judge Sasser also found that the case against the men, who are black, was built “almost entirely” on the inconsistent confessions that they quickly recanted.

DNA recovered from the crime scene was linked decades later to Roscoe Artis, who is serving a life sentence for another 1983 rape and murder in Red Springs. (Mr. Artis has not been charged in the death of Sabrina Buie.)

Mr. McCollum and Mr. Brown each received $45 when they left prison and have lived on charity since. They resided for a time at a home here, where Mr. Brown slept on a couch in one room and Mr. McCollum’s mattress and box spring rested on the floor in another.

Without money for a car or any knowledge about how to drive one, the men walked to a grocery store to buy subsistence fare like canned potatoes and pork and beans. Mr. McCollum, who was a janitor while he was incarcerated, said he wanted to apply for a job, but he was reluctant until he had a pardon.

Mr. Brown, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment, is far more reticent than Mr. McCollum, but he talked of starting a church or a radio ministry.

Both say that until Mr. McCrory issues them pardons, they cannot fully set aside what happened over about 31 years.

Theresa A. Newman, a co-director of the Wrongful Convictions Clinic at the Duke Law School, said such sentiments were common among men who had been cleared by judges but not by governors. She said the mostly closed nature of the lengthy process could prove demoralizing.

“Just having some information would be very, very powerful, and I think it would hold these men up slightly,” said Ms. Newman, who is not involved in the McCollum or Brown cases. “Why would they trust the state to do the right thing?”

In a statement last week, a spokesman for Mr. McCrory, Ryan Tronovitch, said, “Our extensive review is ongoing, and we need to ensure that we have gathered and considered all relevant information as part of our process. While we can’t put an exact time frame on when a decision will come, this is a top priority for Governor McCrory, and he has made that abundantly clear to those involved.”

Lawyers here say the pardon process in North Carolina has been an enigmatic one for far longer than Mr. McCrory’s term. But Ms. Newman said that when a client of hers sought a pardon from Mr. McCrory, the governor had been an active participant while he weighed his options. He even “grilled” the man during an interview as part of a process that took about six months, she said.

But what remains unclear is how, exactly, Mr. McCrory’s process unfolds, and how much he considers any opposition to pardon applications. In the cases of Mr. McCollum and Mr. Brown, there is some, namely from the retired district attorney who prosecuted them.

The prosecutor, Joe Freeman Britt, who came to be known as the nation’s “deadliest D.A.” because he won death sentences so often, said: “There is no doubt in my mind that they’re not entitled to a pardon, and there is no doubt in my mind that they’re not entitled to compensation by the taxpayers.”

But the current district attorney, Johnson Britt (who is of distant relation to his predecessor), supported the men’s bids for freedom last year and told Judge Sasser that “the state does not have a case” and would not prosecute them again.

That support is partly why a lawyer for the men, Scott Brettschneider, said he hoped that “there isn’t something more here than just bureaucracy” as they waited for the governor’s decision.

Recently, a bank bet that the delay was only administrative, and it wrote a large enough loan that the men this week began renting a home where they each have bedrooms. Mr. McCollum, who, since leaving prison, has sometimes referred to a bedroom as a cell, picked one at the top of a stairwell.

“This is my room right here,” he said softly as he looked around one afternoon. “This is my room.”

He said his favorite feature of the room, more than twice the size of his former cell on death row, is the lock on the wooden door. He can lock it — and unlock it — himself.



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13) Man, 20, Is Arrested in the Shooting of 2 Officers in Ferguson
By and

FERGUSON, Mo. — A 20-year-old suspect was charged Sunday with shooting two police officers during a protest outside Police Headquarters here Thursday. Law enforcement officials said the man, Jeffrey L. Williams, claimed to have been targeting someone other than the officers and shot them by accident from inside a car.

Mr. Williams was arrested late Saturday and charged with first-degree assault in connection with the shooting, which had ratcheted up tensions between the police and protesters here. With the gunman at large, the officers guarding the police station as demonstrations continued had concerns for their safety, while protesters had criticized police officials for suggesting that the shooting was linked to them.

Discord has been simmering since Aug. 9, when a white police officer, Darren Wilson, fatally shot an unarmed, 18-year-old black man, Michael Brown, in a confrontation in the middle of a street. A grand jury declined to indict Mr. Wilson in November.The arrest seemed to resolve almost none of the tension, and Mr. Williams’s motive was unclear. Prosecutors expressed skepticism at his version of events, but said he had attended the demonstration the evening of the shooting as well as previous rallies. Several protest leaders, however, quickly took to Twitter to deny that Mr. Williams was one of them, or that they had even seen him among the crowd the night of the shooting.


The authorities said Mr. Williams, who was on probation at the time of the shooting for receiving stolen property, admitted his involvement to investigators and acknowledged firing the shots. He told investigators that he had a dispute with some people outside the police station that had nothing to do with the demonstration, officials said.

“It’s possible at this point that he was firing shots at someone other than the police, but struck the police officers,” Robert P. McCulloch, the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County, said at a news conference Sunday afternoon at the Buzz Westfall Justice Center in Clayton, Mo., the seat of St. Louis County. “He has stated that he may have had a dispute with some other individuals. I’m not sure we completely buy that part of it. But in any event, it’s possible he was firing at some other people.”

Mr. McCulloch added: “We’re not 100 percent sure that there was a dispute. That’s part of the claim right now. It’s possible that there was a dispute. It’s possible that he was targeting police officers. We just have to wait for the investigation to develop.”

By Friday, the investigation had appeared stalled. The break in the case that pointed to Mr. Williams as the primary suspect appeared to come from tips and information provided by members of the public. Investigators recovered a .40-caliber handgun they believed had been used in the shooting. Mr. McCulloch said more arrests were possible.

Ferguson’s mayor, James Knowles III, and City Council members said in a statement that they were grateful to citizens who had provided assistance, and that while they supported peaceful protesting, they would “not allow, nor tolerate, the destructive and violent actions of a few to disrupt our unifying efforts.”

In a statement from Washington, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., whose Justice Department released a scathing report that found widespread misconduct, racial bias and unconstitutional practices by Ferguson’s police department and its municipal courts, praised “the swiftness of this action.”

“This arrest sends a clear message that acts of violence against our law enforcement personnel will never be tolerated,” Mr. Holder said.

At the St. Louis address listed in court documents as Mr. Williams’s residence, no one answered the door of the blue-clapboard house, on a tree-lined street about five miles from the police station. A woman who later entered the house declined to comment. Mr. Williams, who will turn 21 in two weeks, remained in custody; bond was set at $300,000.

DeRay McKesson, who has been participating in and documenting the demonstrations on social media, said that to his knowledge, Mr. Williams was not “a regular member of the protest community in St. Louis.”

Mr. McKesson criticized the way the police handled the investigation, pointing to previous statements made by Chief Jon M. Belmar of the St. Louis County Police Department in which he called the shooting an ambush and said the shooter may have been embedded with the demonstrators. Both of those assertions have been called into question now, Mr. McKesson said.

What Chief Belmar said “was intentionally said to incite and invoke fear,” Mr. McKesson said. “This does not change the momentum of the protesters. This person was not aligned with the protest community and the values within.”

The two officers — one from the county police and the other from the nearby Webster Groves department — were standing shoulder to shoulder outside the police station Thursday shortly after midnight as part of a protective line facing demonstrators across the street. At least three gunshots came from a distance behind the demonstrators, as much as 125 yards away, the authorities said.

Demonstrators had denounced the shooting, but vowed to continue marching and protesting, saying they would not be distracted from seeking justice for Mr. Brown’s killing and for systemic change in Ferguson’s police and court system. Police officials had taken steps after the shooting to reduce the visibility of the officers securing the police station, having them stand behind parked vehicles rather than out in the open. And they had taken a more hands-off approach to the demonstrators, allowing many to occasionally block traffic in front of the police station and declining to arrest those who ignored their orders to move onto the sidewalk.

The two officers, whom the authorities have declined to name, were treated at a hospital and are recuperating at home, according to Chief Belmar. The Webster Groves officer, 32, a seven-year veteran, was shot in the face, the bullet entering under his right eye and becoming lodged behind his ear, officials said. The county officer, 41, a 14-year veteran, was shot in the shoulder, with the bullet coming out of his back.

Manny Fernandez reported from Ferguson, and John Eligon from Kansas City, Mo.




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14) A Police Gadget Tracks Phones? Shhh! It’s Secret
By

A powerful new surveillance tool being adopted by police departments across the country comes with an unusual requirement: To buy it, law enforcement officials must sign a nondisclosure agreement preventing them from saying almost anything about the technology.

Any disclosure about the technology, which tracks cellphones and is often called StingRay, could allow criminals and terrorists to circumvent it, the F.B.I. has said in an affidavit. But the tool is adopted in such secrecy that communities are not always sure what they are buying or whether the technology could raise serious privacy concerns.

The confidentiality has elevated the stakes in a longstanding debate about the public disclosure of government practices versus law enforcement’s desire to keep its methods confidential. While companies routinely require nondisclosure agreements for technical products, legal experts say these agreements raise questions and are unusual given the privacy and even constitutional issues at stake.

“It might be a totally legitimate business interest, or maybe they’re trying to keep people from realizing there are bigger privacy problems,” said Orin S. Kerr, a privacy law expert at George Washington University. “What’s the secret that they’re trying to hide?”

The issue led to a public dispute three weeks ago in Silicon Valley, where a sheriff asked county officials to spend $502,000 on the technology. The Santa Clara County sheriff, Laurie Smith, said the technology allowed for locating cellphones — belonging to, say, terrorists or a missing person. But when asked for details, she offered no technical specifications and acknowledged she had not seen a product demonstration.

Buying the technology, she said, required the signing of a nondisclosure agreement.

“So, just to be clear,” Joe Simitian, a county supervisor, said, “we are being asked to spend $500,000 of taxpayers’ money and $42,000 a year thereafter for a product for the name brand which we are not sure of, a product we have not seen, a demonstration we don’t have, and we have a nondisclosure requirement as a precondition. You want us to vote and spend money,” he continued, but “you can’t tell us more about it.”

The technology goes by various names, including StingRay, KingFish or, generically, cell site simulator. It is a rectangular device, small enough to fit into a suitcase, that intercepts a cellphone signal by acting like a cellphone tower.

The technology can also capture texts, calls, emails and other data, and prosecutors have received court approval to use it for such purposes.

Cell site simulators are catching on while law enforcement officials are adding other digital tools, like video cameras, license-plate readers, drones, programs that scan billions of phone records and gunshot detection sensors. Some of those tools have invited resistance from municipalities and legislators on privacy grounds.

The nondisclosure agreements for the cell site simulators are overseen by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and typically involve the Harris Corporation, a multibillion-dollar defense contractor and a maker of the technology. What has opponents particularly concerned about StingRay is that the technology, unlike other phone surveillance methods, can also scan all the cellphones in the area where it is being used, not just the target phone.

“It’s scanning the area. What is the government doing with that information?” said Linda Lye, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, which in 2013 sued the Justice Department to force it to disclose more about the technology. In November, in a response to the lawsuit, the government said it had asked the courts to allow the technology to capture content, not just identify subscriber location.

The nondisclosure agreements make it hard to know how widely the technology has been adopted. But news reports from around the country indicate use by local and state police agencies stretching from Los Angeles to Wisconsin to New York, where the state police use it. Some departments have used it for several years. Money for the devices comes from individual agencies and sometimes, as in the case of Santa Clara County, from the federal government through Homeland Security grants.

Christopher Allen, an F.B.I. spokesman, said “location information is a vital component” of law enforcement. The agency, he said, “does not keep repositories of cell tower data for any purpose other than in connection with a specific investigation.”

A fuller explanation of the F.B.I.’s position is provided in two publicly sworn affidavits about StingRay, including one filed in 2014 in Virginia. In the affidavit, a supervisory special agent, Bradley S. Morrison, said disclosure of the technology’s specifications would let criminals, including terrorists, “thwart the use of this technology.”

“Disclosure of even minor details” could harm law enforcement, he said, by letting “adversaries” put together the pieces of the technology like assembling a “jigsaw puzzle.” He said the F.B.I. had entered into the nondisclosure agreements with local authorities for those reasons. In addition, he said, the technology is related to homeland security and is therefore subject to federal control.

In a second affidavit, given in 2011, the same special agent acknowledged that the device could gather identifying information from phones of bystanders. Such data “from all wireless devices in the immediate area of the F.B.I. device that subscribe to a particular provider may be incidentally recorded, including those of innocent, nontarget devices.”

But, he added, that information is purged to ensure privacy rights.

In December, two senators, Patrick J. Leahy and Charles E. Grassley, sent a letter expressing concerns about the scope of the F.B.I.’s StingRay use to Eric H. Holder Jr., the attorney general, and Jeh Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security.The Harris Corporation declined to comment, according to Jim Burke, a company spokesman. Harris, based in Melbourne, Fla., has $5 billion in annual sales and specializes in communications technology, including battlefield radios.

Jon Michaels, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies government procurement, said Harris’s role with the nondisclosure agreements gave the company tremendous power over privacy policies in the public arena.

“This is like the privatization of a legal regime,” he said. Referring to Harris, he said: “They get to call the shots.”

For instance, in Tucson, a journalist asking the Police Department about its StingRay use was given a copy of a nondisclosure agreement. “The City of Tucson shall not discuss, publish, release or disclose any information pertaining to the product,” it read, and then noted: “Without the prior written consent of Harris.”

The secrecy appears to have unintended consequences. A recent article in The Washington Post detailed how a man in Florida who was accused of armed robbery was located using StingRay.

As the case proceeded, a defense lawyer asked the police to explain how the technology worked. The police and prosecutors declined to produce the machine and, rather than meet a judge’s order that they do so, the state gave the defendant a plea bargain for petty theft.

At the meeting in Santa Clara County last month, the county supervisors voted 4 to 1 to authorize the purchase, but they also voted to require the adoption of a privacy policy.

(Sheriff Smith argued to the supervisors that she had adequately explained the technology and said she resented that Mr. Simitian’s questioning seemed to “suggest we are not mindful of people’s rights and the Constitution.”)

A few days later, the county asked Harris for a demonstration open to county supervisors. The company refused, Mr. Simitian said, noting that “only people with badges” would be permitted. Further, he said, the company declined to provide a copy of the nondisclosure agreement — at least until after the demonstration.

“Not only is there a nondisclosure agreement, for the time being, at least, we can’t even see the nondisclosure agreement,” Mr. Simitian said. “We may be able to see it later, I don’t know.”


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15) Veteran San Francisco Cops Caught Exchanging Vile, Racist Texts
4 officers spewed racist and homophobic texts freely.
By Terrell Jermaine Starr
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/veteran-san-francisco-cops-caught-exchanging-vile-racist-texts?akid=12896.229473.OpIyOa&rd=1&src=newsletter1033363&t=9

Four San Francisco police officers are being investigated for exchanging racist and homophobic texts, The San Francisco Chronicle reports.

The text messages, reportedly exchanged between former Sgt. Ian Furminger and current officers Michael Robison, Noel Schwab, Rain Daugherty and Michael Celis, came to light after the feds recently prosecuted and convicted Furminger on corruption charges.

All four officers have been reassigned to positions that require no contact with the public.

The messages were sent between October of 2011 and June of 2012. Here are some of the most vile texts, mainly initiated through Furminger, per a federal document made public Friday:

• “We got two blacks at my boys [sic] school and they are brother and sister! There cause dad works for the school district and I am watching them like hawks.”

• In response to a text asking “Do you celebrate quanza [sic] at your school?” Furminger wrote: “Yeah we burn the cross on the field! Then we celebrate Whitemas.”

• “Its [sic] worth every penny to live here [Walnut Creek] away from the savages.”

• “Those guys are pretty stupid! Ask some dumb ass questions you would expect from a black rookie! Sorry if they are your buddies!”

• “The buffalo soldier was why the Indians Wouldnt [sic] shoot the niggers that found for the confederate They [sic] thought they were sacred buffalo and not human.”

• “Gunther Furminger was a famous slave auctioneer.”

• “My wife has 2 friends over that don’t know each other the cool one says to me get me a drink nigger not knowing the other is married to one just happened right now LMFAO.”

• “White power.”

• In response to a text saying “Niggers should be spayed,” Furminger wrote “I saw one an hour ago with 4 kids.”

• “I am leaving it like it is, painting KKK on the sides and calling it a day!”

• “Cross burning lowers blood pressure! I did the test myself!”

• In response to a text saying “All niggers must fucking hang,” Furminger wrote “Ask my 6 year old what he thinks about Obama.”

• In response to a text saying “Just boarded train at Mission/16th,” Furminger wrote “Ok, just watch out for BM’s” [black males].

• “I hate to tell you this but my wife friend [sic] is over with their kids and her husband is black! If [sic] is an Attorney but should I be worried?” Furminger’s friend, an SFPD officer, responded: “Get ur pocket gun. Keep it available in case the monkey returns to his roots. Its [sic] not against the law to put an animal down.” Furminger responded, “Well said!”

• In response to a text from another SFPD officer regarding the promotion of a black officer to sergeant, Furminger wrote: “Fuckin nigger.”

What is especially disturbing about the text messages is that all four officers have at least 10 years on the force; some work in very specialized units in the SFPD. Robison, who has 23 years of service, was assigned to the Special Victims Unit before being transferred to the Mounted Unit.

Celis, a 16-year vet, was charged with four counts of misconduct, in 2004, for flashing his badge and trying to bribe his way into his estranged wife’s hotel room. In 2009, Schwab was seen on video threatening to break a skateboarder's arm “like a twig” if he resisted arrest. It is not clear if he faced disciplinary charges in connection to the threats he made. As for, Daugherty, a 15 year veteran, his attorney says her client is sorry for his “impulsive and insensitive” texts.

The revelation of the racist texts may very well explain why black people in San Francisco are arrested at disproportionately high rates compared with white residents. According to statistics from the California Department of Corrections, black Americans are seven times more likely to be arrested, despite making up just 6 percent of the city’s population.

San Francisco police Chief Greg Suhr said that he could not confirm the identities of the officers connected to the texts but is ready to fire them.

“You cannot unring the bell on these text messages — anybody who has sent these text messages should not be a police officer,” Suhr said. “Ian Furminger should never have been a police officer; he’s a disgrace. These other officers have disgraced the department as well.”

Public Defender Jeff Adachi says the officers’ identities must be made public because their testimony in prior cases must be scrutinized.

“We have a right to this information. It may affect both current and past cases,” he said. “This is hugely problematic — if these officers were involved in active investigations in the last 2½ years, it is relevant and must be disclosed.”


Terrell Jermaine Starr is a senior editor at AlterNet. Follow him on Twitter @Russian_Starr.

 


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16) A More Public Option for Investigating Shootings by Police Officers
By

MISSOULA, Mont. — In most places, the actions of the police officer who fatally shot Kaileb Williams, 20, would have been judged in secret, by an anonymous grand jury weighing criminal charges behind closed doors.

Here, it all played out in the open, during a little-known proceeding called a coroner’s inquest. It unfolded like a miniature trial, with a county coroner presiding in place of a judge, and seven Montana residents questioning witnesses and examining the violent, chaotic path that led Mr. Williams to a deadly standoff with the police on an icy night this past December.

These inquests are relics in America’s justice system, harking back to an era when elected coroners sat in judgment of Western gunslingers like Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. But they are finding new support from some elected officials and civil rights advocates critical of the cloistered grand jury process that cleared police officers in the killings of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Mo., and Staten Island.Inquests do not indict officers or judge guilt or innocence, but lawyers here said they could be useful tools in cities inflamed by police killings. They take place before trials — often before any criminal charges are even filed — and offer a forum to air painful details and talk about disputed facts.

In Pasco, Wash., where the shooting death of a Hispanic orchard worker last month resulted in accusations of bias and cover-ups by the police, the coroner recently announced that he would hold an open inquest to head off “another Ferguson.”

“It helps to come to terms with a traumatic event to go through it in a public way,” said Paul MacMahon, an assistant law professor at the London School of Economics who recently wrote about inquests.

The inquests have the simple aims of officially declaring who was killed and when, but they also have the power to decide whether a killing is justified or a crime — a crucial question when a police officer has pulled the trigger. Whatever their outcome, the decision to file charges still rests with local prosecutors.

Inquests occur sporadically across the country, sometimes after a jail suicide, other times when the circumstances of a death are murky or in dispute. Legal experts said Montana appeared to be the only state to require the county coroner to undertake a full, public investigation of deaths in custody or at the hands of law enforcement officers.

Echoing criticisms of grand juries, detractors say inquests are also biased toward the police. In Montana, for example, at least 12 men have been killed in confrontations with law enforcement officers the past two years — some of them shootouts, others cases in which the slain men were unarmed. Coroners’ juries have not sided against law enforcement in any of them.

Critics say the scales are tipped because local prosecutors, who often have working relationships with the police and sheriff’s officers, choose the witnesses and ask the questions. Victims or their lawyers can submit questions from a public gallery, but they have no power to question witnesses themselves. And the coroners are often closely aligned with law enforcement.

“You need somebody independent presiding,” Mr. MacMahon said.

In Las Vegas, county officials passed new rules for inquests into officer-involved deaths requiring that an ombudsman represent the family of the slain person, and that a justice of the peace, not the coroner, oversee the proceeding. Police groups opposed the changes, and successfully sued to overturn them.

The day before the March 9 inquest into Mr. Williams’s death here, his mother, Rhenon, said she was still grieving the loss of a son she remembered as a tender and protective boy who had loved toy trains, comic books and cross-country running. She wanted a criminal trial, but she expected the coroner’s jury to clear the officer, Cpl. Paul Kelly, of committing any crime in the early-morning shooting on Dec. 31.

“My son was unjustly killed,” she said. “There were other ways of taking care of this situation and simmering it down.”

Nobody disputes that Mr. Williams’s last hours alive were a violent spiral into chaos.

He had been drinking at his apartment in Missoula, and a fight erupted when his girlfriend of three years, Rita Daniel, returned to his apartment and saw him having sex with another woman, according to testimony from the inquest. When his mother came over at the girlfriend’s request, Mr. Williams punched her in the face several times and drove away with Ms. Daniel.

Increasingly hysterical and despondent, he led the police on a chase through Missoula’s icy streets that ended when his car died along an on-ramp. He slapped Ms. Daniel with the back of his hand a few times during the ride, she testified, and alternately yelled, cried, punched the steering wheel and apologized to her. He had previously been convicted on drug charges and told Ms. Daniel, “I’m not going to do this again.”

”I knew he was talking about dying,” she testified.

Corporal Kelly, a 12-year veteran of the Missoula police, was the first to approach the car. In videotapes and transcripts from that night, he was empathetic and understanding until the moment he shot Mr. Williams. He urged Mr. Williams to calm down, insisted that he had other options and told him that he did not want to shoot him.

When Mr. Williams yelled that he had reached a dead end, Corporal Kelly said, “Just talk to me, man,” according to the transcript.

Several times, Mr. Williams urged the police to shoot him, once pointing to his head.

“Kill me right now, and it’s over,” he told them.

“O.K. well, I can’t do that,” Corporal Kelly responded. “That would be murder.”

“Right here, right now, it’s over,” Mr. Williams said.

“And if I don’t?”

“It’s gonna get ugly.”

Had Mr. Williams been alone, Corporal Kelly said, the police would probably have backed off and negotiated from a distance. But they could hear Ms. Daniel whimpering in the car, and said Mr. Williams had yelled that he was holding her hostage. Although he turned out to be unarmed, his mother had told the police that he might have a knife, scissors or pepper spray.

When Mr. Williams noticed two other officers approaching his car, a tense situation grew dire, several officers testified. He wrapped his arm around Ms. Daniel’s neck and pulled her low toward him. She has described the motion both as a chokehold and something akin to a protective embrace, but Corporal Kelly testified that at that moment, he thought Mr. Williams was slitting her throat.

“That’s what I believed was happening,” he testified. “I knew I had to stop him.”

It was 3:18 a.m. He fired once, straight through the driver’s window into Mr. Williams’s head.

The structure of the inquest allowed the jury to pepper the witnesses with questions. Why did you go with Mr. Williams in his car that night? one asked Ms. Daniel. Did you ever get out of the car? Had you been drinking? Another asked Corporal Kelly: How well could you see into the car? Did you think about backing away?

After a day of testimony, Jason Marks, a deputy county attorney, faced the jurors and asked them: “Do you think that Officer Paul Kelly should be charged with deliberate homicide? That’s the question.”

Less than an hour later, they came back with an answer: No. They were unanimous: The killing was justified. In an interview afterward, Corporal Kelly, 39, said he had been confident the legal system would vindicate him. He said that even as he pulled the trigger that night, knowing the heartache that would follow for Mr. Williams’s loved ones, he believed he was acting to stop Mr. Williams from killing his girlfriend.

That night was the first time he had killed anyone, he said, and he replayed the shooting in his mind, and kept concluding that he had been right to pull the trigger.

“When you go through something like this, you’re going to have people who love you and people who hate you,” he said. “I knew in my heart and my mind that it had to be done.”




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17) Louisiana Parish Fights Plan to Burn Tons of Propellant No One Wants
By

MINDEN, La. — Just before midnight on Oct. 15, 2012, Sheriff Gary Sexton of Webster Parish was driving home from the airport when the sky lit up like midday. He flipped on his walkie-talkie to hear everyone asking: What on earth were those big booms?

As the sheriff would soon learn, two massive explosions had taken place at Camp Minden, a 15,000-acre site owned by the state in the pine woods just south of here, where private companies engage in military-related work. When the authorities began examining the blast site, they found something startling: thousands of tons of M6 propellant, used in the firing of artillery rounds, stuffed into plastic bags and piled into sagging cardboard boxes, many of them out in open fields.

“Turned upside down, spilled, out in the open, in the weather, out in the woods — it was unbelievable,” Sheriff Sexton said. “To be honest with you, I was ready to leave.”Though the initial explosions were so big that smoke from them showed up on National Weather Service radar, no one was injured and damage was minimal. But more than two years later, figuring out how to dispose of 18 million pounds of unstable and dangerous material — who would do it and whether it could be done in a way that did not compound the danger — remains the talk of the parish.

The material belonged to Explo Systems, a private contractor. The 18 million pounds includes some explosives like TNT, but nearly all of it is M6 propellant, which can spontaneously ignite, a risk that increases significantly over time. Officials with the Environmental Protection Agency say it is the largest such stockpile in the country.

Last week, a couple of dozen people, forming what is called the Minden Dialogue Committee, gathered at a community center here to discuss how to proceed. The group included scientists, environmental activists, government officials and local residents like Sam Mims, a retired Army colonel, who appeared as an “irritated, concerned citizen representing my 17 cows.” They had been meeting almost constantly, at least by telephone, since early February.

The committee was formed in direct opposition to a plan announced in October by the Army, the E.P.A. and the Louisiana National Guard to burn all of the M6 propellant outdoors in large trays, a disposal method routinely used by the Army, though not at this scale. The idea of burning 80,000 pounds a day in open fires for more than 220 days — which some experts said would send untold amounts of carcinogens and other hazardous pollutants into the air — was a nonstarter with nearby residents.

“If there is an open burn,” Colonel Mims said, “somebody’s equipment is going to have to run over me.”

People who live around Camp Minden, for years the site of a munitions plant run by the United States government, are not unacquainted with explosions or pollution, but this time is different.

Explo, which had run into problems with safety violations at other sites, had been working at Camp Minden under contract with the Army to dismantle bombs and artillery shells into components that it would later sell. The M6 propellant was usually purchased by coal mining companies, but in recent years the demand from the coal industry began to dry up. The supply, however, kept coming — even as Explo ran out of room to store it.

After the explosions, the 18 million pounds of material was gathered and put into 97 separate bunkers to reduce the risk of an ignition setting off a huge fire. Now, said Johnny Heflin, a rancher in the nearby town of Doyline, there are “97 big bombs all waiting to go off.”

Given years of natural degradation, accelerated by long stretches out in the elements, the propellant has for some time been at “imminent and substantial risk” of self-igniting, according to the E.P.A. But disposal has been problematic.

The Army’s position was that once charges are demilitarized they no longer belong to the Army, which is statutorily barred from cleaning up private property. E.P.A. officials responded that Defense Department officials, which had oversight of Explo’s demilitarization activities, consistently gave Explo clean marks in quarterly safety audits — though, as one Defense official acknowledged to the E.P.A., inspectors were always escorted by Explo representatives and did not look at storage areas.

While this debate continued, seven of Explo’s employees were indicted and, in August 2013, the company declared bankruptcy. The State of Louisiana thus found itself the owner of roughly 9,000 tons of dangerous material that no one wanted.

A funding arrangement was eventually worked out, with $24 million coming from a federal liability pool, and the E.P.A., the Army and the National Guard came to a formal agreement last October to set up an open-tray burn.

Dolores Blalock, a retired journalism professor living on a farm not far from Camp Minden, heard about it on the news. She looked up M6 propellant online. Her first thought, she recalled: “These people are crazy.”

At a December public meeting, Ms. Blalock, along with a chemistry professor at a nearby university, lit into the officials for making the decision without reaching out to private citizens and challenged testing that showed an open burn would be safe. Thus began a feisty campaign, joining liberal environmental activists with conservative politicians in common opposition to the open burn.

The E.P.A. had insisted that an open burn could be controlled so that it stayed well within state and federal emissions standards. But Ron Curry, the regional E.P.A. administrator, acknowledged last week that officials had made a mistake in going forward without community comment.

“The remedy was based upon past practices more than anything else,” Mr. Curry said last week. With the public outcry, he said, “we thought it was important to kind of back up.”

In late January, the E.P.A. announced a delay and agreed to the creation of the Minden Dialogue Committee to recommend alternative disposal methods. Since then, the group has been studying the relevant science, interviewing contractors and demanding, with limited success, responses from the Army and the E.P.A.

Last week, the committee made a final recommendation of six technologies that members believed would be both safe and effective, including the use of microwaves or high-pressure and high-temperature water. The recommendation is not binding, and the Army, which has expressed reservations about the other methods, maintains that an open burn “generally constitutes the safest and most efficient way to dispose of these materials,” according to a spokesman.

For now, the process is largely in the hands of the E.P.A. and the Louisiana National Guard, which will finish accepting estimates from potential contractors this week.

But members of the dialogue committee stressed that they do not see their work as finished: If the authorities proceed with an open burn, Ms. Blalock, Colonel Mims, Sheriff Sexton and others said they would not shy from a confrontation.

Still, amid the pine trees at Camp Minden, the M6 sits. When asked how grave the danger is, with no way to know how old the material is or how long it was left outside or how many of the bunkers may have let in moisture, Sheriff Sexton said what just about all of the experts are saying: “I really don’t know.”





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18) Protesters and Police Clash Near E.C.B.’s New Headquarters
By RHEA WESSEL and

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/19/business/european-central-bank-protests-frankfurt.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

FRANKFURT — Protesters set cars on fire and clashed with police officers on Wednesday morning as they marched toward the European Central Bank’s new headquarters in a demonstration against European austerity programs and capitalism.

The rally, organized by a group called Blockupy and German workers’ unions, drew thousands of people as the central bank inaugurated its new tower. Blockupy is a left-wing alliance of dozens of activist groups from across Europe. Its members include the second-largest German labor union, Ver.di, and Syriza, the Greek political party that is now leading the government in Athens.

The European Central Bank is one of debt-burdened Greece’s main creditors, and it is part of the so-called troika of international organizations that are supervising the Greek bailout program that the government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is trying to renegotiate. The two other creditor groups are the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund, which along with the central bank are widely blamed for imposing austerity budgets on countries that have required bailouts.

A recent posting on Blockupy’s website predicted that thousands would attend, “to blockade and demonstrate, and to say: ‘There’s nothing to celebrate in your handling of the crisis.’ ”

The exact number of demonstrators was difficult to determine because the protesters moved around the city in groups and were prevented by the police from banding together outside the central bank tower. The demonstration was set to last through the evening, with busloads of marchers joining throughout the day.

Since 2012, activists have occasionally handed out leaflets in front of the central bank’s headquarters, but there had been little organized protest in Frankfurt until Wednesday.

As a group of roughly 400 demonstrators tried to cross a bridge over the Main River and head toward the tower, they were blocked by the police. Smaller groups burned cars, furniture, trash and bikes nearby. Dozens of police officers in riot gear guarded an area around the European Central Bank.

Employees of the central bank began moving into the new headquarters, which cost 1.2 billion euros, or about $1.27 billion, near the end of last year. Located away from downtown Frankfurt on a parklike site overlooking the Main River, the roughly 600-foot-high tinted-glass tower is a more potent symbol of central bank power than the generic gray high-rise in central Frankfurt that it previously occupied.

The inauguration ceremony on Wednesday was scaled back in response to the protests. In addition, some European Central Bank employees were encouraged to work from home on Wednesday, though a central bank spokesman said that the institution was “fully operational.”

Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, acknowledged in a speech inaugurating the headquarters that European unity was being strained and that “people are going through very difficult times.”

As a European Union institution “that has played a central role throughout the crisis, the E.C.B. has become a focal point for those frustrated with this situation,” Mr. Draghi said in prepared remarks. “This may not be a fair charge – our action has been aimed precisely at cushioning the shocks suffered by the economy. But as the central bank of the whole euro area, we must listen very carefully to what all our citizens are saying.”

Many businesses near the headquarters shut their doors, and residents watched the action on the street from their windows, coffee and cameras in hand.

A woman from Denmark who would give her name only as Sara said she arrived on an overnight bus with about 80 others to show her disdain for the way the capitalist system enriches some but impoverishes others.

“I believe in fighting against the system,” she said, taking a break in a bakery after having inhaled tear gas that was apparently released by officers after a group of demonstrators set fire to a police car. “It won’t change if you don’t do something. I am here for solidarity.”

At the police barricades, isolated demonstrators were along a line with signs bearing slogans like “ECB = Monetary Fascism.” On the ground, someone wrote in blue chalk on the street, “Your house is built on corpses.”

A representative from the Committee for Civil Rights and Democracy, Martin Singe, who was attending the demonstrations as an observer, said that protesters were supposed to be allowed closer to the central bank tower but were stopped prematurely, limiting the impact of pictures and television segments from the march.

Mr. Singe also said that Frankfurt did not allow demonstrators access to public space for organizing before the march. “It appears the police were expecting violence and therefore may have induced it,” he said.

The European Central Bank drew smaller, orderly protests when it met in Nicosia, Cyprus, on March 5. The demonstrators were mostly Cypriots who objected to what they said was the central bank’s focus on helping banks rather than eurozone citizens.

The previous European Central Bank building was the focal point of protests beginning in October 2011 as part of the global Occupy movement. Protesters objected to what they said was the central bank’s distance from democratic processes and its role in the center of the global financial system.

An encampment with an estimated 60 to 100 protesters persisted in a grassy area below the previous headquarters building until the police cleared it in August 2012, after complaints that it had become infested with rats and housed more homeless people than protesters.

The eviction took place without any major incidents. The German police have experience in dealing with protesters of every political stripe, and they are skilled at containing violence and avoiding physical confrontation.

Sven Giegold, a member of the Greens in the European Parliament who speaks for the party on monetary policy issues, said he supported the protests and would attend. But, in a statement, he questioned whether the European Central Bank was the right site for the protests.

“The main responsibility for the unsocial and economically counterproductive euro policy of the troika is located in the capitals of the eurozone,” Mr. Giegold said.

“Berlin, Paris, Rome and Athens would be the correct addresses for the demonstrations,” Mr. Giegold said. He gave the central bank credit for rescuing the eurozone from bad decision making by European political leaders.



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19) Missouri Executes Killer Who Had Brain Injury
By

A Missouri man who was missing 20 percent of the frontal lobe of his brain was executed on Tuesday, after the United States Supreme Court declined to delay his death and order a test of his mental competency.

The man, Cecil Clayton, 74, was executed by lethal injection at 9:13 p.m. Central Daylight Time at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, Mo.

Mr. Clayton was working at his family’s sawmill in 1972 when a piece of wood penetrated his skull and pushed bone fragments into his brain. During surgery, doctors removed a portion of his frontal lobe, the part of the brain involved in impulse control and problem solving, among other functions.

Family members and medical experts who examined him said that Mr. Clayton subsequently began to have hallucinations, and that he became increasingly violent and unpredictable. He had an I.Q. of 71 — 29 points below the average I.Q. — and had schizophrenia and intense paranoia.In November 1996, 24 years after the sawmill accident, Mr. Clayton was sentenced to death for fatally shooting Christopher L. Castetter, a deputy sheriff in Barry County, a rural area in southwestern Missouri.

Missouri law and federal law dictate that people in line for execution be aware that they are to be killed and understand the reasons for the punishment in order for their treatment not to violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Mr. Clayton’s lawyers had requested that the Supreme Court delay his execution so that he could be tested to determine his mental competency.

In January, a psychological examination found that Mr. Clayton believed that God would intervene on his behalf so that he could be free to preach the Gospel.
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20) Taxes Take Away, but Also Give Back, Mostly to the Very Rich
By

“Get your billions back, America,” the tax preparer H&R Block urges in television advertisements.

What many taxpayers may not realize is that they already do. When it comes to the government, taxing is often just another name for spending.

There are tax credits and tax deductions; tax exclusions and tax exemptions; tax deferrals and tax reductions; tax discharges and tax preferences, all of which put money in people’s wallets rather than take it out.

There is one critical difference between tax-related payouts, however, and those that come directly from the federal budget: Spending channeled through the tax code tends to overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans.

According to an analysis of $340 billion in tax subsidies for housing, education, retirement and savings in 2013, the top 1 percent received about $95 billion, more than the $90 billion received by the bottom 80 percent combined, said the Corporation for Enterprise Development, a nonprofit organization that seeks to build assets for low- and moderate-income families.

“Every year, the federal government spends billions of dollars on these tax programs primarily to support the highest-income households that need support the least,” said Ezra Levin, associate director of government affairs for the group, which is based in Washington.

Relentless pressure in recent years, particularly by conservatives, to reduce program spending has meant that the tax code has increasingly become the primary driver of social policy when it comes to education, retirement and housing.

The amount of spending in those areas channeled through taxes is on the rise, topping $620 billion in 2014, up from $540 billion in 2013, according to Mr. Levin’s analysis. By comparison, federal discretionary spending by 14 of the 15 cabinet agencies, including housing, transportation, labor, commerce, education, Treasury and health and human services totaled $464 billion.

“This is not a liberal position or a conservative position,” he said.

Those at the tippy-top of the income scale — the top 0.1 percent, with an average annual income of $7.6 million — received an average of $33,391 in federal tax payouts analyzed by the group. Those in the bottom 60 percent, who earn less than $65,000, got less than $1,000 on average, altogether about 12 percent of the billions handed out.

A 2013 report from the Congressional Budget Office that looked at the 10 largest tax subsidies, worth a total of $900 billion, found that more than half went to households in the top fifth on the income scale.

Neither analysis includes the new federal tax credits available to low- and moderate-income households that bought private health insurance on public marketplaces set up under the Affordable Care Act. Roughly 85 percent of the 16.4 million Americans who are insured through these exchanges receive a government subsidy to help pay premiums, according to figures released by the Obama administration this week. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the average subsidy in 2015 at $3,960. The bulk of this financial assistance, which is available through federal exchanges in 34 states, has been challenged by conservative opponents, and a Supreme Court ruling is expected in June.

Once you exit the partisan muck surrounding the Obama administration’s health care program, however, Democrats and Republicans are largely united on many tax breaks, which were aimed at encouraging what are considered socially beneficial goals, like homeownership and college and retirement savings. Eliminating or reducing them can unleash a firestorm, as President Obama discovered when he proposed, and then abandoned, a plan to do away with the tax benefits for 529 college savings plans, where families can contribute up to $14,000 a year. Households with incomes above $150,000 received 80 percent of that program’s tax benefit, according to the White House.

Other benefits similarly help largely upper-income families. The deduction for mortgage interest payments, one of the oldest and largest, and the one for property taxes together cost the federal government $98.5 billion in 2014. About 70 percent of the benefits went to the top quintile of earners. The average gain for a household in the bottom 20 percent — those earning less than $21,000 a year — amounted to $3, according to the enterprise development group.

Other critics complain that these benefits are not that effective and point to research showing that rather than spurring would-be renters to buy a house, the deduction simply encourages existing buyers to purchase bigger homes.

Retirement tax spending, totaling $146 billion in 2014, up from $128 billion from the previous year, also primarily benefits high-income households. The average annual benefit for the 1 percenters in 2013 equaled $13,088, compared with $200 or less for the bottom 60 percent, the development group found.

Tax programs that do help those with less include the earned-income tax credit, a wage subsidy that increases the incomes of 27 million low-wage workers. Many economists and advocates consider it the most effective antipoverty measure around. The savers credit, which helps low- and moderate-income families build retirement savings, is also geared toward those with fewer resources.

In his 2016 budget, President Obama proposed bulking up these programs, including a $500 tax credit for working parents with children. The White House estimated that the maximum credit would help those earning below $120,000, with some money funneled to households with incomes up to $210,000.

Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has agreed that earned-income tax credits should be expanded to adults without children instead of just to parents, but he has balked at endorsing Mr. Obama’s proposed “second earner” tax credit.

Tax policy tends to benefit those in the upper tier of the income ladder for several reasons. Wealthier households fall into higher income brackets, and so they get proportionately greater savings. They also have more assets to put into housing, retirement accounts and educational programs that are eligible for tax subsidies.

Many economists have noted that from an accountant’s point of view, there is no difference between spending through the tax code and the budget. The minimum-wage worker who uses a federal voucher to help pay the rent and the Wall Street banker who deducts the mortgage interest on a multimillion-dollar vacation getaway in the Hamptons are both the recipients of government housing assistance.

Donald Marron, a former member of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, called it “spending in disguise,” arguing that “the confusion surrounding such spending allows politicians to claim they are saving taxpayers’ money when, in fact, they are really spending it.”

Congress started including what are known as tax expenditures in federal spending totals in 1976 as part of a budget reform package.

Anti-tax advocates ardently dispute the notion that tax reductions are equivalent to public assistance. “That’s just stupid and dishonest,” said Ryan Ellis, tax policy director at the conservative Americans for Tax Reform. “Letting people keep their own money does not increase the size of government in any way.”

Suzanne Mettler, a professor of government at Cornell University, counters that the government doesn’t bestow tax-related largess equally. “Just like direct social benefits, benefits in the tax code are directed at certain groups of people,” she said. Home buyers get a break; renters don’t, even if they both earn the same.

To Ms. Mettler, the hidden nature of tax code spending undermines support for the government, because people don’t recognize just how much they benefit. Ms. Mettler, who is the author of “The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy,” pointed to a 2008 poll from Cornell’s Survey Research Institute that found that a majority of Americans insisted they did not use any government programs, even when they took advantage of deductions on mortgage interest or student loans.

She advocates providing receipts that detail just how much money someone receives through the tax code, a counterpart to the W-2s and other notices that list what someone pays.

That way everyone would know just who is getting their billions back.



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