the crime report

After a brutal shootout turned a quiet Tijuana cul-de-sac into a war zone last October, leaving one Mexican soldier and four drug cartel suspects dead, investigators combing through the carnage found the weapons: assault rifles, a massive .50-caliber sniper rifle, even a hand grenade. Fourteen guns were seized. Five of them were bought last summer in Las Vegas, says the San Diego Union-Tribune. Las Vegas was the northern portal of a gun-smuggling pipeline that funneled weapons purchased in Nevada through California and into Tijuana.

The operation appears to be a prime example of what Mexican authorities have long pleaded with the U.S. government to help curb:  the southbound flow of guns that provides Mexico’s drug traffickers with the bulk of their firepower. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives estimates that 90 percent of the guns recovered from crime scenes in Mexico can be traced back to the United States. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence issued a report, “Exporting Gun Violence:  How Our Weak Gun Laws Arm Criminals in Mexico and America.”  It documents how Mexican drug gangs have exploited weak American gun laws and corrupt American gun sellers to amass arsenals of guns that have killed thousands. The report is available at www.bradycampaign.org/xshare/pdf/reports/exporting-gun-violence.pdf.

Over the past decade, government agents and computer experts have gone after hundreds of people who solicit sex from kids or trade child pornography online, the Associated Press reports. Police efforts were all the rage with the media in the early 2000s, including Dateline NBC’s “To Catch A Predator” series. Despite the publicity, trading child porn online and grooming underage targets in chat rooms has exploded nationwide, AP says, reporting from Madison, WI. With arrests more than quadrupling in 10 years, Wisconsin’s agents and analysts feel overwhelmed. “I don’t think we’ve made significant progress at all,” Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said. “Our community leaders don’t even know how bad the problem is. The general population has no idea.”

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s cyber tip line took 85,301 reports of child porn and 8,787 reports of online enticement last year. Investigations of Internet crimes against children resulted in 3,000 arrests nationwide in 2008, says the U.S. Justice Department. The statistics show how an entire generation has moved online, seeking reinforcement from others with the same abhorrent sexual tastes, said Michelle Collins, executive director of the missing children center’s exploited child division. Most disturbing is the correlation between child porn and enticement, said Wisconsin forensic computer analyst Dave Matthews. Viewing leads to doing, he said. “They’re grooming themselves,” he said.

The Supreme Court ruled today that a robber may not withdraw a guilty plea even though the government reneged on a plea agreement and argued for a longer prison sentence, the Associated Press reports. By a 7 to 2 vote, the court upheld a 29-year prison term for James Puckett, who pleaded guilty in Texas to armed bank robbery. A condition of the plea was that prosecutors would tell the judge that Puckett had accepted responsibility for his actions and should be eligible for a shorter sentence.

Between the plea and sentencing, Puckett was implicated in another crime. Instead of advocating for the shorter sentence, prosecutors told the judge that Puckett should not get credit for accepting responsibility for his crime, since he allegedly took part in a new one. Justice Antonin Scalia said that because Puckett “obviously did not cease his life of crime,” giving him credit for accepting responsibility “would have been so ludicrous as itself to compromise the public reputation of judicial proceedings.” Dissenter David Souter said “Puckett is entitled to relief because he and every other defendant who may make an agreement with the government is entitled to take the government at its word.”

Orlando police Chief Val Demings lost her gun in a burglary of her city vehicle. The theft happened weeks ago, but did not become public until late Tuesday, when a tipster alerted the Orlando Sentinel. ”It was devastating enough for me to be the victim of a crime and have my service weapon stolen after 25 years on the job,” Demings said. “I need to do everything possible to get my gun off the street.”

The 9mm Sig Sauer pistol was stolen the night of Feb. 27 and discovered the next morning. The weapon was left in a duffel bag inside her agency sport utility vehicle, which she parked outside the home she and her husband, Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings, share. I never leave my gun in the car, but I did that night because we were expecting guests for the weekend and they had young children,” Demings said. “We are allowed to store our [weapons] in the trunk or passenger compartment as long as they are out of plain view. It was clearly out of plain view.” In 2002, the Sentinel found that 193 of 680 guns stolen in Orange County were taken from parked cars. That year, Florida ranked fifth nationally in that regard, with 7,434 firearms reported stolen.

Dozens of Massachusetts cities and towns are taking steps to impose stiff new fines for smoking marijuana in public and to charge some violators with misdemeanors, says the Boston Globe. Critics say those moves subvert the state ballot question passed overwhelmingly last fall to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana. Police say they want to discourage flagrant marijuana smoking, particularly in public parks, schoolyards, and on beaches where young children gather.

While last year’s ballot initiative reduced possession of an ounce or less from a misdemeanor to a civil infraction carrying a $100 fine, police say that some marijuana smokers mistakenly believe that the voters legalized the drug entirely. “This seems to be much more about people who never liked the law to begin with looking for an end run around the will of the voters,” said Dan Bernath of the Marijuana Policy Project, an advocacy group that rallied support for the ballot initiative. “And it’s particularly disturbing because they were wrong on this policy. The voters were right.”

A Minnesota judge has issued a stern challenge to prosecutors: Give me the names of the victims in four criminal cases, or I’m going to dismiss them, reports the St. Paul Pioneer Press. All parties agree that neither names of juveniles nor those of sex-crime victims should be made public in a criminal complaint, but Judge Margaret Marrinan is asking the county attorney’s office to justify withholding the names of other victims — such as someone whose car has been stolen. “I’m all for protecting victims, but I don’t know what’s driving this,” Marrinan said. “I’m just really outraged.”

The complaint is an important document, because it asks the judge to find “probable cause” the defendant committed the crime. If there is not probable cause in the judge’s view, the case dies. Four cases came before Marrinan with the victims listed only by their initials. She dismissed all four. “If you choose not to indicate publicly who the alleged victims of these cases are, you are denying the defense the opportunity to have the complaint stated with particularity,” Marrinan said. “You are also attempting to avoid giving this information to the public and to the press. I will not be played with here. Initials do not cut it.” Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner said her office generally keeps the names of victims out of complaints to protect their privacy and safety.

The American Civil Liberties Union has issued a critical report on St. Louis’ jails, including stories of inmates beaten by guards, guards sneaking in drugs, a female inmate ordered to sleep nude for 15 days, and supervisors falsifying reports and punishing whistle-blowers, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch says. The volume hangs mostly on the word of six unnamed guards.

Suspicious of the timing — two weeks before a mayoral election — a top aide to Mayor Francis Slay questioned the use of six anonymous voices among 350 guards. “The whole report so lacks in credibility and is so biased and is so based in rumor or innuendo, that it just doesn’t justify a comment,” said Patricia Hageman, city counselor. Hageman said she forwarded the report to the U.S. attorney’s office and said the city welcomes a review of its jails. The report said a jail supervisor documented some of the wrongdoing. One guard said that jail overcrowding was so severe that inmates were sleeping under beds and toilets, sometimes in vomit and feces.

The number of executions worldwide nearly doubled last year compared with 2007, says an Amnesty International report quoted by the New York Times. China put to death far more people than the rest of the world put together. In all, 59 nations still have the death penalty on their books, but only 25 carried out executions last year. Two nations, Uzbekistan and Argentina, banned the death penalty last year.

Amnesty International said at least 2,390 people were executed worldwide in 2008, compared with at least 1,252 in 2007.  The group, which has long opposed the death penalty, said Europe and Central Asia have become “virtually a death-penalty-free zone” with only Belarus, a former Soviet republic, continuing to execute prisoners. “In the Americas, only one state — the United States — consistently executes,” the group said.

Many state governments, out of money and buried under mounting prison costs, are taking steps to reduce prison populations, says the New York Times. Colorado and Kansas are closing prisons. New Jersey replaced jail time with community programs or other sanctions for people who violate parole. Kentucky is enhancing the credits some inmates can earn toward release. Michigan is freeing some offenders who have yet to serve their maximum sentence.

(more…)

The Obama administration is sending hundreds more agents to the Southwest in an effort to target Mexican drug networks and limit violence spilling into the U.S., but the Wall Street Journal says the initiative could be hampered by turf wars among U.S. law-enforcement agencies. Competing units have refused to work together on the task forces that the administration is bolstering to target the drugs, guns, and cash that are fueling fighting among Mexico’s drug lords. The agencies are operating under rules that are up to three decades old. (more…)