May 29, 2013

Police in Brooklyn Are Told Not to Seize Condoms of Prostitutes

By J. DAVID GOODMAN

It has been a paradox of New York City government long assailed by aid groups for sex workers: the Health Department hands out millions of condoms to stem the spread of deadly diseases, while the Police Department collects condoms as evidence in arrests for prostitution.

Now in Brooklyn, prosecutors have a message for the police: stop taking the condoms.

In a letter sent last week to Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, said his office would not use possession of condoms as evidence of prostitution or loitering for the purpose of prostitution.

“Accordingly,” Mr. Hynes wrote in the letter, dated Friday, “the collection and vouchering of condoms as evidence by members of your department” in such cases in Brooklyn “should immediately cease.”

Advocates for sex workers have argued that officers’ use of condoms to support their arrests discouraged prostitutes from using condoms, presenting a public health risk. A 2012 report by the group Human Rights Watch found that such arrests sowed a fear of carrying condoms among sex workers.

Asked about Mr. Hynes’s call for policing changes, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said the department agreed that “it is not necessary to seize condoms as evidence of the intent of an individual to engage in prostitution.”

But Mr. Browne added: “We do not rule out their evidentiary value when going after pimps and sex traffickers. If there is a bowlful of condoms in a massage parlor, we want our officers to be able to seize them as evidence against the trafficker.”

While prosecutors are generally wary of excluding whole categories of evidence, there is a growing consensus that condoms should not be part of prostitution cases that do not involve sex trafficking. Prosecutors in Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx said that while their offices had no formal policies in place, in practice condoms were rarely if ever introduced in prostitution cases.

“Because of public health policy considerations, it is now the practice of the Manhattan D.A.’s office not to introduce condoms as evidence in individual loitering for prostitution or prostitution cases,”said Erin M. Duggan, the chief spokeswoman for the office.

But the city’s district attorneys — including Mr. Hynes in Brooklyn — said they would continue to view condoms as potential evidence in trafficking cases. (Sex trafficking, a felony charge, is often brought against pimps.)

A vast majority of the nearly 2,500 arrests for misdemeanor prostitution in the city last year — including more than 600 in Brooklyn — never make it to trial and many are resolved at arraignment, said Steven Banks, the chief lawyer for the Legal Aid Society, with cases dismissed or suspects released after accepting pleas for time served after a night in jail.

“Our front-line staff see these sorts of charges every day,” he said.

The new policy in Brooklyn mirrors, in part, one adopted in February in Nassau County and comes amid continued efforts in Albany to pass a bill, first introduced in 1999, that would prohibit condoms from being used as evidence in criminal court, including in sex trafficking cases.

Nassau prosecutors already reject condoms as evidence, even in more serious cases. “It was very important to me to also extend the ban to traffickers,” said Kathleen M. Rice, the Nassau County district attorney. Without it, she said, “traffickers will refuse to hand out condoms to their workers and in fact prohibit their use,” putting the victims of trafficking at risk.

Indeed, for many advocates in New York City, Mr. Hynes’s policy shift, while welcome, does not go far enough.

“People ask me how many condoms is it legal to carry,” said Andrea Ritchie, a lawyer with Streetwise and Safe. “I tell them that there’s no law against carrying condoms, but it’s true that police and prosecutors will use them as evidence. That’s why we’re pushing for state legislation.”

May 29, 2013

Brooklyn Prosecutor’s Office Is Accused of Detaining Trial Witnesses

By MOSI SECRET

The office of the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, routinely detained trial witnesses against their will in hotel rooms as a part of forced interrogations, according to depositions taken in a civil rights lawsuit against the city, calling into question whether strong-handed tactics by prosecutors played a role in dozens of troubled convictions already under review.

The detentions, which a top paralegal described in detail in a sworn deposition, took place during the 1990s under the office’s now defunct “hotel custody program.” Investigators held witnesses who prosecutors believed could help build cases in undisclosed hotels, under armed guards, cutting them off from visitors and telephone calls.

Witnesses were also brought to the office of the district attorney, where they were compelled to testify, according to the testimony from the paralegal, Liz N. Fitzpatrick. Many elements of her testimony were echoed by two other former employees with the district attorney’s office who were deposed.

The claims came in court documents filed on Wednesday in the case of Jabbar Collins, who is suing the city after winning his release after serving 16 years in prison for a murder he said he did not commit. His conviction was tossed out after he provided evidence that the police and prosecutors coerced false testimony.

Joel Rudin, a lawyer for Mr. Collins, filed the documents as part of a motion asking a federal judge to force Mr. Hynes to testify about several issues that Mr. Rudin said he found troubling, including the hotel custody program. Mr. Rudin also filed testimony from Ms. Fitzpatrick, saying that many of the arrest warrants used to compel witness testimony were signed and notarized by paralegals in the name of prosecutors rather than by the prosecutors themselves, which is illegal.

City lawyers have fought the subpoena for Mr. Hynes to testify, arguing in a motion filed last week that he should not be deposed because other prosecutors in the office can answer questions without his involvement.

In a statement on Wednesday, Jerry Schmetterer, a spokesman for Mr. Hynes’s office, said: “We are not commenting on the ongoing civil suit. But it is not, nor has it ever been, the practice of this office to hold people in hotel rooms against their will without judicial intervention.”

The city’s law department also released a statement: “Mr. Rudin’s hyperbolic characterizations of various alleged practices in the Brooklyn D.A.’s office are irresponsible and absurd. Our court papers fully address the legal issues.”

Mr. Collins’s civil rights lawsuit claims that his wrongful conviction was not an isolated episode, but rather the result of office policies that encouraged unconstitutional behavior. In his efforts to prove that claim, Mr. Rudin will also seek a deposition from Michael F. Vecchione, a top prosecutor in the office and close associate of Mr. Hynes who has repeatedly been accused of misconduct.

Mr. Hynes’s office is now investigating more than 50 of its own murder convictions that have been called into question because of their connection to a rogue police detective, Louis Scarcella. The investigations come after federal judges who reviewed prosecutions from the office pointed to instances of prosecutorial misconduct.

The district attorney’s office ran the custody program from the early 1990s through at least 1997, according to the sworn testimony. Many of Mr. Scarcella’s convictions occurred during that period.

Mr. Collins was convicted of killing Abraham Pollack in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 1995, based on the testimony of three witnesses. His conviction was tossed out following a successful postconviction claim in which he argued that prosecutors did not turn over evidence that one of the witnesses who testified against him had recanted his statement.

The judge presiding over Mr. Collins’s lawsuit, Frederic Block, said the facts showed that officers working on the case, Vincent Gerecitano and Jose. R. Hernandez, had pressured a heroin addict to implicate Mr. Collins, and that Mr. Vecchione had threatened the addict with prosecution and bodily harm unless he agreed to testify against Mr. Collins. Two other witnesses made similar accusations.

Judge Block is scheduled to hear oral arguments on whether Mr. Rudin can depose Mr. Hynes on June 12.

Supreme Court rejects ban on funding Planned Parenthood

Indiana had tried to block Medicaid funding of clinics that perform abortions, but the Supreme Court lets lower courts prevent the measure from going into effect.

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A 2011 Indiana law would have banned Medicaid funds from going to organizations that perform abortions, but the Supreme Court has let lower courts prevent the law from going into effect. (Karen Bleier / AFP-Getty Images / January 9, 2013)

By David G. Savage, Washington Bureau

May 28, 2013, 6:27 p.m.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court refused Tuesday to allow Indiana to block Medicaid funding of Planned Parenthood clinics because they perform abortions.

Without comment, the high court let stand decisions by a federal judge in Indiana and the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago that prevented the measure from taking effect. The 2011 law would have banned Medicaid funds from going to an organization such as Planned Parenthood whose work includes performing abortions.

Judge Diane S. Sykes, writing for the 7th Circuit last year, said the state's "defunding law excludes Planned Parenthood from Medicaid for a reason unrelated to its fitness to provide medical services, violating its patients' statutory right to obtain medical care from the qualified provider of their choice."

The Obama administration had joined the case on the side of Planned Parenthood and argued that the Medicaid law gives eligible low-income patients a right to obtain healthcare from any qualified provider. This is known as the free-choice-of-provider rule.

More than 9,300 Medicaid patients in Indiana go to Planned Parenthood clinics for routine medical exams, cancer screening and birth control, the lower court said. Medicaid does not pay for abortions because by law, Congress has forbid the spending of federal funds to pay for elective abortions. Indiana has a similar provision in state law.

Two years ago, Indiana lawmakers voted to go further and forbid the spending of any Medicaid money — federal or state — through "any entity" whose facilities perform abortions. Hospitals and state-licensed surgical clinics were exempted. Though the federal government pays most of the cost for providing healthcare under Medicaid, the money is funneled through a state agency. Had the state law stood, it would have stopped the federal money from flowing to clinics, and many of them would have been forced to close, Planned Parenthood officials said.

Before the Indiana law could go into effect, the group's lawyers went to federal court and sued on behalf of a doctor, a nurse and two patients. That led to the court orders that blocked the law.

Notre Dame Law School professor O. Carter Snead called the outcome "deplorable" and said it offered "a grim reminder of the Obama administration's unswerving commitment to Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider." He said the only legal remedy was to have Congress revise the Medicaid Act.

Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, welcomed the court's decision.

"Today's announcement from the Supreme Court is not only a victory for Planned Parenthood's patients in Indiana, it is a victory for the nearly 3 million people who turn to Planned Parenthood health centers each year across the country," she said.

New Perry Mason, Case of the Jailed Justice 1973

JERRY SAYS "NO" TO GRAND JURY "FISHING EXPEDITION"

Camille Raneem

Jason Rodman

In 2009, New York City anarchist and legal activist, Jerry Koch, was subpoenaedfor a federal grand jury. During federal grand jury proceedings, according to the National Lawyer's Guild, "You are not allowed to have a lawyer present and can be required to answer questions about your activities and associations." Investigators have subpoenaed Jerry, who was having a drink in the area, in relation to a bomb plot against a military recruitment center located in one of the most visible locations in New York City, at the heart of Times Square. Jerry refused to testify in 2009, and for a second time in 2013, because he believes the connection to be fabricated in order to conduct a "fishing expedition" to collect information on anarchist networks. And he has good reason to believe so. (For more background on grand juries, check the bottom of this post.)

I am the only one in OWS Mutant Legal Services, I believe, who has crossed paths with Jerry Koch. I honestly don't know much about the case, but in terms of background... I must say this type of circumstance is unique. I have seen cases before where activists have been framed in activist related activities, and we have seen countless Muslim men across the US become radicalized and entrapped by the State, but we have never seen the State use "an act of terrorism" to fish anarchist circles. The false-flag model, up until now, has been enacted against Black and Brown populations for over half a century.

It reminds me of the old adage "First they came for...and when they came for me..." The anarchist movement (and the modern "Left" on the whole) is predominately white, educated, from a range of backgrounds, but generally middle class. COINTELPRO and private agent provocateurs traumatized and destabilized the anti-war and black power movements, while everyone else tuned in, turned on and dropped out.

 

So by the time the environmental, animal rights and anti globalization movements stirred up, the Law Enforcement Agencies were well poised to discredit, disrupt and neutralize people's movements. I know BLAmembers who spent upwards of 15-20 years in prison for things they had nothing to do with. And because the Left moved forward into the '80s and '90s letting their generation's heroes rot in prison, it's new to some of the younger generation on the Left that: this is how the State rolls.

 

Jerry has become much more professional since his first subpoena and I find the timing fascinating. The subpoena went out only a few weeks before the Boston Bombing, and Assata Shakur, the mother of all framed activists, was put on the FBI's most wanted list. They are finishing the last stages of criminalizing dissent, and Jerry's persecution is only the beginning of the end. Activist communities need to become more secure and think more tactically.

 

The State has all the tools it needs at its disposal to manipulate reality, make the innocent guilty, and destabilize our last stand.  We may not all be Trayvon Martin or Kimani Gray, but we are surely all Jerry Koch.

***

According to the National Lawyer's Guild, "the government has frequently used grand jury subpoenas to gather information about activists and political organizations. It is common for the FBI to threaten activists with a subpoena in order to elicit information about their political views and activities and those of their associates." According to the United States Department of Justice itself, "Probable cause is not a prerequisite to the issuance of a subpoena...The Government may not use a subpoena to conduct a 'fishing expedition'; however, a subpoena is rarely invalidated because of a finding that it sought information irrelevant to the grand jury's investigation. In the face of general allegations that a subpoena seeks irrelevant information, the standard of 'relevance' is easy to meet." For his principled stand against the excesses of the grand jury system, Jerry risks being held in contempt of court and faces incarceration in a federal prison for the duration of the grand jury, which could be up to 18 months. He was found in contempt of court on May 21, 2013, and is currently being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, NY.

WRITE TO JERRY:

• Gerald Koch
• # 68631-054
• MDC BROOKLYN METROPOLITAN DETENTION CENTER
• P.O. BOX 329002
• BROOKLYN, NY 11232

In Sweden, Riots Put an Identity in Question

Fredrik Sandberg/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Burned-out cars in the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby last week after groups made up mostly of young immigrants rioted.

By ANDREW HIGGINS

Published: May 26, 2013

STOCKHOLM — Eva Bromster, an elementary school principal, was jolted awake by a telephone call late Thursday night. “Your school is burning,” her boss, the director of the local education department, told her.

• Sweden: Riots Continue in Immigrant Neighborhoods (May 23, 2013)

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Ms. Bromster rushed to the school, in the mostly immigrant district of Tensta, north of Stockholm, and found one room gutted by fire and another filled with ankle-deep water after firefighters had doused the flames. It was the second fire at the school in three days.

In Stockholm and other towns and cities last week, bands made up mostly of young immigrants set buildings and cars ablaze in a spasm of destructive rage rarely seen in a country proud of its normally tranquil, law-abiding ways.

The disturbances, with echoes of urban eruptions in France in 2005 and Britain in 2011, have pushed Sweden to the center of a heated debate across Europe about immigration and the tensions it causes in a time of deep economic malaise.

The riots, now subsiding, have produced less damage than the earlier ones in Paris and London, which also involved mostly immigrants. But the unrest has shaken Sweden, which has a reputation for welcoming immigrants and asylum seekers, including those fleeing violence in countries like Iraq, Somalia and Syria, and regularly ranks in surveys as one of the world’s happiest places.

“I don’t know why anybody would want to burn our school,” Ms. Bromster said. “I can’t understand it. Maybe they are not so happy with life.”

The riots are not unprecedented here. In 2008 and 2010, immigrants clashed with the police in the southern port city of Malmo. But the past week’s arson attacks in Stockholm, the capital, and the spectacle of teenagers hurling stones at firefighters have left many Swedes wondering what went wrong in a society that has invested so heavily in helping the underprivileged.

While the violence was concentrated in relatively poor districts, most of their residents have been shielded from dire poverty by a welfare system that is one of the world’s most expansive, despite recent cutbacks.

Sweden’s center-right prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, scornfully described the riots as “hooliganism,” while the Swedish Democrats, a far-right party, have seized on the violence to push their anti-immigrant stance and called for the deportation of nonnative Swedes who break the law. “This is not just a police issue,” said Jimmie Akesson, the party’s leader, but “a direct result of an irresponsible immigration policy that has created deep cracks in Swedish society.”

The left, which dominated Swedish politics for decades and devised the cradle-to-grave welfare system, has blamed reduced state benefits and a modest shift toward the privatization of public services for the unrest, pointing to an erosion of the country’s tolerant, egalitarian ethos. A recent report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said that income inequality had grown faster in Sweden than in any other industrialized nation between 1985 and the end of the past decade, although it remains far more equal than most countries.

“The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer,” said Barbro Sorman, an activist of the opposition Left Party. “Sweden is starting to look like the U.S.A.”

But Stockholm’s immigrant enclaves, including Tensta and the nearby suburb of Husby, where the riots began May 19 after the police fatally shot a 69-year-old immigrant wielding a knife, show few outward signs of deprivation.

Created in the 1960s as part of a state building blitz to create a million new homes in a decade, Stockholm’s northern suburbs now offer well-tended parks, graceless but well-maintained public housing, well-equipped schools, youth centers, libraries and legions of social workers financed by the state.

Dejan Stankovic, the Serbian-born manager of a team of government youth workers that has joined parents and other volunteers on nightly street patrols, recalled a visit to the area by a group of mystified American social workers. “They said, ‘It is green and safe, so what is the problem?’ ”

One big problem is the lack of jobs. The national unemployment rate is about 8 percent, but the rate is at least twice as high in immigrant areas and four times as high for those under 25. But, said Nima Sanandaji, a Kurdish-Swedish author of several books on immigration who was born in Iran, remote areas in the north of Sweden have more people out of work, “but they are not throwing rocks and burning cars.”

Mr. Stankovic said he was sympathetic to immigrants’ complaints of discrimination in the job market. But, he added, many job seekers, particularly young men, had unrealistic demands and expected the state to find them work in their own neighborhoods. “There are a lot of people aged from 20 to 22 who say, ‘I want a job, I want it now, and I want to stay here,’ ” he said. “This is their problem, but it becomes a government problem.”

Gabriel Bersham, a 17-year-old high school student born in Iraq, said: “Young people want to be heard but used to be ignored. Now what they say is being listened to.” But burning cars “is stupid and sad,” he said.

The anger of young immigrants has bewildered and alarmed elders in their communities. After the riot police were pulled off the streets late last week, older immigrants mounted their own effort to defuse tensions. “There is no excuse for this violence,” said Abdullah Ahmed, a teacher who emigrated from Somalia 23 years ago and now spends his nights walking the streets on the lookout for possible troublemakers.

The effort seems to be working, at least in Stockholm, where a few cars were incinerated over the weekend, down from about 50 last Tuesday. On Saturday night, the streets of Husby were quiet as young people gathered to watch a European championship soccer game on a big screen set up at the subway station.

Among immigrants, a wide generation gap exists regarding perceptions of life in Sweden. “Our parents say we should feel thankful,” said Rami al-Khamisi, a Husby youth activist whose family moved here from Iraq. “They feel thankful themselves because they lived through wars. But those of us who were born here have nothing to compare our lives with.”

Husby, Mr. Khamisi said, “looks nice on the outside, but inside it is not nice.” A first-year law student at Stockholm University who did not join in the rioting, Mr. Khamisi acknowledged that “Sweden has given me opportunities I didn’t have in Iraq,” but “I’m not treated the same as a white guy.”

“I feel discrimination all the time,” he said.

The recent violence has been a boon to the Swedish Democrats, the anti-immigration party. Opinion polls suggest the party is gaining in popularity, partly because of the indignation many Swedes feel about being called racists after accepting so many refugees. Immigrants and the Swedish-born children of immigrants make up about 15 percent of the population, and last year Sweden nearly doubled the number of asylum seekers it took in and became Europe’s primary destination for refugees from Syria.

Ms. Bromster, the school principal, whose 325 students are all from immigrant backgrounds, said families who had “escaped from terrible wars in Iraq and Syria” could not be expected to adapt easily to an entirely foreign environment. “They don’t get work, and they feel excluded from society,” she said.

But Michael Lundh, a former police officer, said, “Ordinary Swedes are sitting in front of their TVs and are getting very angry at pictures of immigrants throwing stones.” Mr. Lundh, who worked for years in an antiracism organization set up by Stieg Larsson, the author of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” said, “I’m angry, too, but this is the only way they can get the attention of politicians and the media.”

Mr. Lundh, who visited areas affected by rioting last week, said that although he had extensive experience in relatively deprived districts, he “didn’t realize so many young people hate the police” and considered them racist.

“The police are frightened, and young people are frightened,” he said. “When frightened people meet, you only get trouble.”

Doc Rocket ‏@DocR0cket2m

The New York Times doesn't seem to understand how #surveillance threatens the free press

May 19, 2013

Eavesdropping on Internet Communications

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has a new plan to intercept Internet messages, calls and video chats. Instead of requiring companies like Skype and Google to build surveillance capabilities into their services as it suggested in 2010, the F.B.I. now proposes fining companies that fail to comply with court-ordered wiretaps.

The new approach has met less opposition from other agencies, like the Commerce Department, than the earlier plan, which went nowhere because some officials worried that it would hurt innovation by imposing expensive and technically difficult requirements on start-up Internet-based communication services.

Fines, some officials believe, would be less of a burden on new businesses because they might not have to worry about developing the ability to conduct wiretaps right away. The White House is evaluating the plan for submission to Congress.

The F.B.I. has long complained that it is becoming ever harder to carry out court-approved, real-time eavesdropping on criminal suspects since people are communicating without picking up a phone. The agency argues that the monitoring of Internet-based services does not expand government surveillance, but merely updates the current wiretap law. Judges would still have to authorize wiretaps, and would impose the fines if the services did not comply.

But tech companies and advocates for greater privacy and security say the threat of fines would still force companies to build complex wiretapping capabilities into their services from the start (allowing wiretapping on peer-to-peer services like Skype will be particularly difficult). And they argue that opening systems to surveillance could make them vulnerable to hackers, a serious problem.

Some experts say there are other ways to monitor suspects. A recent paper by four academics in the journal IEEE Security & Privacy argues that the government could get court orders to install software directly on the computers of suspects instead of going through Internet companies.

The administration and Congress need to analyze carefully the F.B.I.’s proposal, details of which have not been made public. New rules will have to strike the right balance between privacy and cybersecurity and the government’s need to monitor criminal activi

No Powerball Winner; Jackpot Soars to $550M

No Powerball Winner; Jackpot Soars to $550M

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LOS ANGELES (KTLA) — No one took home the $360 million jackpot in Wednesday night’s Powerball drawing, officials with the multi-state lottery said.

File photo of a Powerball ticket

The winning numbers drawn were: 2, 11, 26, 34, 41 and a Powerball of 32.

A message on Powerball’s website Thursday said the jackpot was at $550 million for the next drawing, scheduled for Saturday.

Powerball is played in 43 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. California joined Powerball for the first time in April.

Read more: http://ktla.com/2013/05/16/no-powerball-winner-jackpot-soars-to-475m/#ixzz2TU39of5L

Cuomo, Oneidas strike new casino deal

2:26 PM, May 16, 2013   |  

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The Oneida Indian Nation's Turning Stone Casino in Verona, N.Y., is shown on Sunday, June 10, 2007.

Written by

Jon Campbell

Albany Bureau

@JonCampbellGAN

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ALBANY — The Oneida Indian Nation was granted exclusive casino rights in central New York under a deal struck Thursday that will send 25 percent of slot revenue to the state.

The Native American tribe, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the heads of Madison and Oneida counties signed the agreement at the Capitol on Thursday, settling a decades-old land dispute while for the first time sending gambling revenue from Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona to the state.

The state estimates the agreement will bring in about $50 million annually, with a portion of that money heading to both Oneida and Madison counties. The Oneida Indian Nation, meanwhile, will have exclusive casino rights to an area stretching from Syracuse to west of Albany as the Cuomo administration pushes a plan to allow three non-Indian casinos upstate.

“This was one of the truly lingering festering negative situations in this state,” Cuomo said before signing the deal. “It was about litigation. It was about disharmony. It was about discord. To finally come to terms and work through all of those years of emotion and disappointment was extraordinary.”

The new agreement makes major changes to a deal first struck 20 years ago by Cuomo's father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo. The 1993 agreement allowed the Oneidas to open the Turning Stone facility, but did not include an exclusivity agreement or any revenue sharing with the state.

The new deal will not be dependent on Andrew Cuomo's push to change the state’s constitution to allow for non-Indian casinos, Cuomo said. Negotiations between Cuomo and the Legislature continue on a plan to site the casinos, but it would also need to be approved by a vote of the public.