Whitecaps

Analyzing Analysis

2008-05-07T19:56:00.000-07:00

In the testosterone-driven world of law enforcement, higher value is often placed on heads busted than on using one's head intelligently. Yet as funding for law enforcement is reduced, progressive law enforcement chief executive officers are realizing that analysis is critical to mission success. Even more importantly, the line investigators are beginning to realize it, too.

For a good example of how a law enforcement analysis program has evolved since its inception in 1973, read The Drug Enforcement Administration's Use of Intelligence Analysts, a 96-page report released by the US Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, Audit Division, in May 2008.

Now Posting on OpenCdA.com

2008-05-04T13:27:00.001-07:00

Whitecaps posts will now appear on OpenCdA.com. Thanks!

Americans Who Spy

2008-04-08T07:10:00.000-07:00

What motivates Americans who spy against the United States? What causes someone to provide information to his country's adversaries?

There is no one answer, because each agent's motivations are uniquely his or hers. There may be generalized categories of motivations such as ideology, money, duress, etc.

From time to time the Defense Personnel Security Research Center (PERSEREC) examines the cases of espionage committed by Americans and tries to better identify what motivates them to espionage. In March 2008 PERSEREC published the latest in its series of reports, this one titled Changes in Espionage By Americans, 1947-2007.

The PERSEREC reports are worth reading because they do reveal changing motivations. While we think of espionage as a crime against the nation, it is also a highly personal and unique crime. The observations about spies against the country may be equally valid about spies against a company.

Toilet Not Included

2008-04-06T17:20:00.000-07:00

In early March 2008 the Coeur d'Alene Police Department announced publicly it wanted to build a public safety substation in Coeur d'Alene City Park. Instead of searching out and examining the underlying facts, our local newspaper, the Coeur d'Alene Press, dutifully reported the proposal and editorially cheered the idea. Among the substation's selling points: No toilets, no running water.

In a series of five posts on OpenCdA.com, Whitecaps digs deeper into the story. Here are links to each of the five posts:

Part 1 - Origin of a bad idea

Part 2 - How the City's public administrators tried and failed to justify an urgent need for the building

Part 3 - Who wins and who loses with this project?

Part 4 - Financial planning? Who needs responsible financial planning when you've got the LCDC Bucket-O-Cash at your disposal?

Part 5 - How the City could have met the project's objectives at far less cost and far more benefit to the taxpayers and participating agencies

The Mayor, the Coeur d'Alene City Council, and the Lake City Development Corporation Board of Commissioners badly let down Kootenai County taxpayers by agreeing to fund this wasteful project which need was never appropriately established.

All of us in Kootenai County whose property tax money helps enrich the LCDC need to pay closer attention to what the Coeur d'Alene Mayor and City Council and the LCDC are doing with our money. We need to be very afraid when any of them use the adverb "only" before a dollar sign. The numbers following the dollar sign come out of our pockets.

We need to demand that our local governments do much better strategic and financial planning so that our tax money is spent prudently on projects, goods, and services that benefit everyone, not just a few.

Public Corruption Update

2008-03-29T09:29:00.000-07:00

Periodically Whitecaps links readers to the Internal Revenue Service’s Examples of Public Corruption Crimes Investigations, a report updated quarterly. The IRS is not the only federal law enforcement agency involved in public corruption crimes investigation. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) also has a prominent role in public corruption investigations.

Some news accounts have suggested that the FBI has reassigned many special agents from public corruption investigations to counterterrorism activities. Recently in San Francisco, Attorney General Michael Mukasey sought to comfort citizens and afflict corrupt officials by renewing his pledge to pursue public corruption. His comments were reported in an Associated Press story in USA Today headlined Mukasey vows corruption crackdown.

The US Department of Justice posted a press release dated Thursday, March 27, 2008. It was titled Fact Sheet: the Department of Justice Public Corruption Efforts. This press release includes both statistical data and anecdotal case studies. It explains the DoJ’s role in public corruption investigations, both foreign and domestic. (Note: The press release refers to the FCPA but doesn't explain the acronym. It is the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.)

It would be a mistake to conclude that the IRS and the FBI do not work cooperatively on public corruption crimes investigations. Both agencies have unique and important jurisdictions and assets that make it much more efficient to team up on these investigations.

The Spitzer Investigation, Part 2

2008-03-12T09:58:00.000-07:00

It is 8:30 AM in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Eliot Spitzer is expected to resign from his position as the Governor of New York within the half hour. Unless Spitzer has cut a deal with prosecutors, his resignation should not have any bearing on his prosecution for violation of federal currency transaction laws. Because Spitzer was formerly New York’s Attorney General responsible for prosecuting complex financial crimes, readers might think he would have been smart enough to evade the law. The banking laws have been written to make that kind of informed evasion more difficult.

Anyone with a bank account, anyone who moves money, is subject to transactional surveillance by US banks. For an entertaining (or alarming, depending on your point of view) take on this, listen to a National Public Radio report titled “Bank [sic] Scrutinize Even Routine Transactions” by Adam Davidson.

To have a better understanding of federal currency transaction laws, go to the Internal Revenue Service’s “Bank Secrecy Act” webpage and click on the various links that explain specific Bank Secrecy Act requirements to assist with education and compliance with the law.

If you’re really into money laundering, read the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s “Bank Secrecy Act / Anti-Money Laundering - Comptroller’s Handbook”. This little gem is 92 pages long, but it is easily read and understood. It is one of the better primers on money laundering. For example, the Suspicious Conduct and Transactions list begins on the report’s page 12 (page 15 of 92 on the .pdf paginator). That list identifies behaviors that should or could trigger a Suspicious Activity Report.

One of the more interesting crimes chargeable under federal law is “structuring” (31 USC 5324). It is a crime of evasion. This has been mentioned as one of the crimes for which Spitzer is being investigated. In simple terms, “structuring” means the person accused knew of the law and intentionally broke up one or more reportable financial transactions into smaller transactions to get their dollar value below the threshold that would have triggered a report required by law. For a detailed discussion of “structuring”, read “Structuring Financial Transactions to Evade Reporting Requirements - A Trap for Unwary Defendants Yet an Opportunity for Defense Counsel“.

Some readers may feel that the banking laws are too intrusive, that they allow too much official attention to be paid to the financial transactions of honest citizens, citizens who have no desire or intent to violate banking laws. The challenge faced by legislators and law enforcement is that not all citizens are honest. There are citizens who seek out ways to intentionally evade the financial transaction laws and violate them. Typically these violators are financially and legally astute. As violators become more skilled in violation and evasion, the tools available to law enforcement must expand to detect and prosecute the violators.

The Spitzer Investigation

2008-03-12T09:55:00.000-07:00

By now most readers know that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has been implicated as a client of a high-end prostitution ring. Some of our local public officials in Kootenai County and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, might want to look at how the allegations against Spitzer came together.

Some of the details were disclosed in today’s New York Times article headlined “Revelations Began in Routine Tax Inquiry”. What may have begun as a routine income tax inquiry by IRS revenue agents, probably in response to a Suspicious Activity Report, was fairly quickly handed off to IRS Criminal Investigations (CI) agents and the FBI.

Most people have a fair, consumer-level understanding of the duties and responsibilities of FBI special agents. Fewer people understand the role of IRS-CI agents and how they and FBI agents work cooperatively to fight money laundering and other financial crimes.

Whitecaps’ post of January 25, 2007, was titled “IRS Criminal Investigations” . It introduced readers to the duties, responsibilities, and investigation methods used by IRS-CI agents. The links in that post are still active today.

Spitzer is in a lot of trouble. He was formerly the New York Attorney General. He had to know that his money was being used to support a criminal enterprise. He apparently took great care to avoid moving the money with wire transfers, and he also apparently took pains to conceal how he used the US mail to move it. Soliciting a prostitute is the least of the charges he may have to face. If he hasn’t already, Spitzer will lawyer up today.

Don't Push That Button!

2008-03-07T08:05:00.000-08:00

I hope there’s more to this March 6, 2008, Spokesman-Review story headlined “Phone evidence accidentally erased”. In case the story link won’t connect (I’m not a subscriber to the S-R), here are the basic facts.

A man on trial for vehicular homicide was allegedly using his cellular telephone when the car he was driving collided with another vehicle. Five occupants in the other vehicle were killed. The cellular telephone, more accurately the information stored electronically in the telephone’s circuits, was likely to be evidence at the man’s trial.

But approximately a month ago prosecutors, accident investigators and attorneys for the defendant met at the Washington State Patrol’s Spokane office to examine evidence for defendant’s upcoming trial. During the course of that examination, defense counsel was allowed to handle the cell phone. The cell phone was then plugged in to a power supply, and defense counsel was further allowed to turn on the phone’s power. While defense counsel was handling the phone, the data created during the phone call in progress when the accident occurred was altered, by some counts erased. This was reportedly because the defense counsel had hit the phone’s ”send” button. The trial judge has determined that defense counsel did not intentionally destroy the evidentiary value of the data stored in the cell phone.

The newspaper story strongly suggests that while the cell phone had been properly booked into evidence, it had not been examined and analyzed by qualified evidence technicians trained and skilled in the recognition, retrieval, storage, and documentation of electronically stored evidence.

Why had the electronically stored evidence in that phone not been properly processed before the phone was handled in a manner that changed and maybe destroyed its evidentiary value? Procedures for properly preserving cell phone evidence were established in the mid-1980’s. I was personally involved in developing the techniques used by the US Secret Service, but other federal agencies including the FBI and Air Force Office of Special Investigations were doing it, too.

I suspect the prosecutor and the judge will have some serious questions about why the Washington State Patrol had apparently failed to process the electronically stored evidence before allowing the cell phone to be handled by anyone other than qualified technicians. Those would be the right questions to ask.

Addendum on 03-07-2008: The headline mentioned in the first paragraph of this post was the one used when the article was first posted on Thursday, 03-06-2008. The headline was changed this morning although the URL remained the same.

Arson On the Street of Dreams

2008-03-04T08:30:00.000-08:00

Our local and regional public safety and government officials should closely follow the progress of the "Street of Dreams" fire investigations. Read carefully the Seattle Post-Intelligencer article headlined "Fire Destroys 'Street of Dreams' Homes." Readers will note there has been some social controversy in the Maltby-Woodinville area where these fires occurred. The controversy involves developments being built over an aquifer, cluster housing, and disagreements over local governments' efforts to manage growth.

Initial news reports focused on a banner found at one of the crime scenes. The banner suggested the fires might have been set by the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), a group whose methods have been characterized by the FBI as special interest extremism. However, the same P-I article reported, "FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Dave Gomez said the arsons fit the profile of an ELF attack, but cautioned that anyone could have set the fires and claimed it as an ELF action."

The P-I's story was accompanied by a series of photos of some of the fire scenes. One photo caption included this statement, "Eco-terrorists are suspected of using explosive devises [sic] to destroy or damage several Street of Dreams show homes, which burned in Woodinville on Monday."

Arson can be a very complex crime to investigate. Though motive is not an element of the crime (motive need not be proven to get convictions), it is of interest to investigators. It is often useful to use motivation as the ribbon on the package of physical evidence at trial. Motivation sometimes answers the "why?" question jurors often want to have answered. The Insurance Information Institute's "Topic - Arson" webpage gives a statistical breakdown of the most common motives for arson.

Readers who want to learn more about this complex crime and what motivates people to commit it may want to look at the interFIRE.org website. That site bills itself as, "...the complete resource for fire services, fire insurers, law enforcement and others whose duties involve arson investigation, fire investigation safety and fire scene training."

Good Questions

2008-02-29T11:39:00.000-08:00

OpenCdA.com readers "steve" and "Stebbijo" asked some good questions about why alleged corruption in Coeur d'Alene has not been investigated. Their questions are good, because people observe things going on and intuitively know those things are wrong. The people who care enough about their community to stick their necks out and subject themselves to Coeur d'Alene's culture of intimidation complain to the proper authorities and then receive either unsatisfactory replies or no replies at all. Almost inevitably, these people begin to wonder if anyone is listening.

My post titled Good Questions on the OpenCdA.com website is an effort to try and explain why the apparent absence of action does not necessarily mean citizens' legitimate complaints have gone unnoticed.

The Kootenai County Prosecuting Attorney

2008-02-28T08:24:00.000-08:00

Kootenai County Prosecutor Bill Douglas announced he will not seek reelection this November. Here are some questions for discussion:

What is your understanding of the job of the Kootenai County Prosecutor? What do you believe the prosecutor’s duties and responsibilities are?
What are your expectations for the person elected to that position?
What do you consider to be the most and least important personal qualifications for the Kootenai County Prosecutor?
Identify a candidate who has the professional qualifications you believe to be essential for the prosecutor’s position? Explain why that candidate is qualified.
Over the next four years, what do you believe the most significant challenges for the Kootenai County Prosecutor will be?
If you could give the new prosecutor one piece of advice, what would it be?

The Kootenai County Sheriff

2008-02-28T08:22:00.000-08:00

Kootenai County Sheriff Rocky Watson announced he will seek reelection this November. Here are some questions for discussion:

What is your understanding of the job of the Kootenai County Sheriff? What do you believe the sheriff’s duties and responsibilities are?
What are your expectations for the person elected to that position?
What do you consider to be the most and least important personal qualifications for the Kootenai County Sheriff?
If you consider Watson to be professionally qualified to be sheriff, what are his strongest and weakest qualifications?
If you consider Watson to be professionally unqualified to be sheriff, identify a candidate who has the professional qualifications you believe to be most important? Explain why that candidate is more qualified than Watson.
Since 2000 what has been Watson’s greatest accomplishment and his greatest failure? Feel free to name more than one in either category.
Over the next four years, what do you believe the most significant challenges for the Kootenai County Sheriff will be?
If you could give the sheriff one piece of advice, what would it be?

The City Responds

2008-02-27T13:02:00.000-08:00

In my February 15, 2008, post titled Better Than a Gold Watch, I expressed curiosity about the employee services consulting contracts given to three recent retirees (and their spouses) who had been employed by the City of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

My post titled The City Responds on the OpenCdA website provides the information I received from the City in response to my Idaho Public Records Law request. Because of the length of that post, I've linked to it rather than repost it here in its entirety.

The Big Loophole - Intentional Ignorance

2008-02-22T12:38:00.000-08:00

In a press conference this morning, Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden announced that the Idaho State Board of Education may have engaged in a non-knowing violation of Idaho’s Open Meeting Law. The AG’s decision is based on a recent Idaho Supreme Court decision which effectively allows intentional ignorance as an affirmative defense to alleged violations of that law.

One of the critical factors in applying the Open Meeting Law’s nullification and penalty portions is that the violation must have been “knowing.” That requirement arises from the Idaho Supreme Court case State of Idaho v. Rick Yzaguirre, Chairman, Ada County Board of Commissioners, Judy Peavey-Derr, Member, Ada County Board of Commissioners, Fred Tilman, Ada County Board of Commissioners.

The Attorney General’s entire report of his office’s investigation is available here.

The Idaho Supreme Court’s decision in Yzaguirre has created what may seem to be a nearly impossible standard for prosecutors to meet. They must prove alleged violators “knowingly” violated the law. In the absence of offenders’ writings and utterances, how do they demonstrate the violators knew they were violating the law?

AG Wasden insightfully recognized this and took steps to administratively close the loophole. The Ada County Board of Commissioners will be required to attend training in the Idaho Open Meeting Law.

Training in the Idaho Open Meeting Law, the Idaho Public Records Law, and the Idaho Ethics in Government Law ought to be mandatory before any Idaho elected or appointed official is allowed to assume a position of public trust. The State already has a statewide mechanism set up to provide training to these officials. It is the Idaho Peace Officers Standards and Training Academy. That academy has regional representatives who could be used to set up and even administer the training. After all, the AG’s office provides the booklet training material free to any requestor either in hard copy or online.

It is worth mentioning that a few years ago, The Spokesman-Review newspaper sponsored an Open Meeting Law - Public Records Law seminar in Coeur d’Alene. Attorney General Wasden and his deputy, Bill Von Tagen, presented the training on behalf of the AG’s office. Coeur d’Alene’s Mayor and City Council just could not find the time to attend. Perhaps they knew that if they attended, they might be held accountable for compliance.

The Idaho legislature needs to adopt AG Wasden’s “fix”: Require all public officials who are subject to these laws to attend certification training and periodic retraining. Remove the “intentional ignorance” defense from their arsenal of weapons of mass evasion.

Better Than a Gold Watch!

2008-02-15T20:03:00.000-08:00

It must be great to retire from employment with the City of Coeur d’Alene and quickly have the City reward you and your spouse with an employee consulting services contract.

I was searching through some calendar year 2007 Coeur d’Alene City Council minutes and stumbled across these three items.

1. October 2, 2007, Coeur d’Alene City Council passed resolution no. 07-063 authorizing an employee consulting services contract with Wendy Carpenter and Tim Trout, wife and husband. Is Wendy Carpenter not the recently retired City police chief and her husband not the recently retired City code enforcement officer?

2. September 4, 2007, Coeur d’Alene City Council passed resolution no. 07-058 authorizing a contract for employee consulting services with Richard F. Suchocki and Georgia A. Suchocki, husband and wife. Is Richard Suchocki not a recently retired city engineer?

3. May 15, 2007, Coeur d’Alene City Council passed resolution no. 07-041 authorizing a contract for employee consulting services with Dan and Doris Cochran, husband and wife. Is Dan Cochran not a recently retired deputy fire chief?

It would be interesting to see what employee consulting services these retirees and their spouses are providing under these contracts. It would also be nice to know the dollar value of each contract.

Such a deal!

Genesis of a Federal Criminal Investigation

2008-02-13T13:12:00.000-08:00

A growing number of people in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, are expressing an opinion that the city government's urban renewal agency, the Lake City Development Corporation or LCDC, ought to be investigated by the federal government. One public perception is that local and state prosecutors and law enforcement officers lack the resources and may be politically compromised so they are unable to conduct such an investigation.

Unless the reader has been directly involved with a major federal white collar crime or public corruption investigation, it may be difficult to understand how such an investigation is launched, how much time it will take, and what resources will be required.

Many people rely on the news media and particularly newspapers to research and report stories based on allegations of public corruption or fraud, waste, and abuse of public money. But these types of investigations are costly for the newspaper just as they are costly for investigative agencies. It can be expensive for a newspaper to commit resources to the kind of coverage that would explain the genesis and execution of a major, long-term federal investigation.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer from Seattle, Washington, has made the commitment in its series about the Port of Seattle. Most of the P-I's stories in the series were written by P-I Reporter Kristen Millares Bolt. The well-written stories and supporting documentation help us understand what it takes to get a federal criminal investigation started when the allegations and evidence are complex.

The P-I's reporting starts in late 2006 with an article titled Audit finds overbilling, bid dispute at port.

Another P-I article in late December 2006, this one by Investigative Reporter Ruth Teichrob, is titled Lax oversight at Port of Seattle. This article may be of particular interest to Coeur d'Alene residents who pay close attention to the LCDC and its personalities as well as to the elected officials who are expected to oversee the LCDC. The Port of Seattle is a municipal corporation in Washington in the same sense that the LCDC is a municipal corporation in Idaho.

Now fast forward one calendar year to December 20, 2007. Washington State Auditor Brian Sonntag released a 334-page performance audit report titled Port of Seattle Construction Management - Report No. 100008. The second paragraph of Sonntag's cover letter presenting the report reads as follows:

We are pleased to present the reports of that audit, which brings to light serious and pervasive issues in the Port's management of these [port construction] projects. According to the audit, the Port Commission provided insufficient oversight over contracting practices and the Port did not have adequate systems in place to protect taxpayer dollars from misuse, abuse, and misappropriation. To the degree the Port had these in place, they were not always followed.

The report's six major findings contain the kind of language that would most likely trigger an investigation. Those findings, in brief, are:

Port construction management lacks cost controls and accountability.
The Port circumvents competition requirements in violation of its own policies and sometimes in violation of state law.
Port policies and Port management's interpretation of its policies result in a lack of transparency and thwart Commission oversight of construction management activities.
Port construction management records are incomplete and disorganized.
The Port fails to enforce basic contract requirements, resulting in delays, extra costs, and an inability to defend against claims.
Port construction management is vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse.

With the blunt language in Auditor Sonntag's report, it is no surprise the P-I continued to follow up with more stories. It is also no surprise that on January 4, 2008, the US Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorney for the Western District of Washington, sent a letter to Washington State Auditor Sonntag stating, in part, "Our office, in conjunction with federal law enforcement agencies, is conducting a criminal investigation of the Port of Seattle. This investigation is a product of your office's December 20, 2007, Performance Audit Report of the Port of Seattle."

The cited letter formed the basis for P-I Reporter Kristen Millares Young's January 8, 2008, story headlined Feds open criminal inquiry into port. The subhed read, "Audit alleging waste, fraud catches U.S. attorney's eye." The articles lead paragraph explains why. It reads:

The U.S. Attorney for Western Washington is conducting a criminal investigation of the Port of Seattle based on a state performance audit of the port's construction management, which found the port wasted $97.2 million during contracts active from 2004 to 2007.

The reader can reasonably ask, "Since the Port of Seattle is a municipal corporation, what gives the federal government investigative jurisdiction?" The overly simple answer is that the Port of Seattle receives federal money, so the federal government has an obligation to ensure that money is spent lawfully and according to the rules under which the money was disbursed. As noted in the cover letter from the contract auditor to state Auditor Sonntag: "POS [Port of Seattle] derives its revenues from airline rates and charges, ad-valorem tax levies, passenger facility charges, and federal grants."

What does this tell us about the genesis of a federal criminal investigation?

First, it tells us that the events ultimately alleged to be criminal often evolved from legal to illegal. The transformation from legal to allegedly illegal may take years.

Second, it tells us that private citizens may have an inkling, an intuition, that something illegal is going on, but they may not have the authority or resources to completely reveal the questionable behavior. It may take a government agency with authority of law, in this case the Washington State Auditor acting under his authority of Washington State Initiative 900, to fully analyze the facts and reveal the behaviors.

Third, it tells us that federal law enforcement agencies take the facts and conclusions in these types of reports seriously, particularly when it seems likely that federally supplied money was involved.

Finally, it tells us that once the investigation has started, it may again take a long time to conclude.

It's a long road from genesis to revelation.

Addendum 01-08-2008: The Seattle Times has also picked up on the story about alleged corruption in the Port of Seattle. It has run a story headlined Possible fraud at Port focus of criminal probe by Times Staff Reporters Jim Brunner and Bob Young. The Times story also reports "...cozy relationships between Port employees and contractors..." and "[current Port CEO] Yoshitani said the problems identified by auditors were not due to corruption, but to a hard-charging, get-things-built culture that sometimes flouted the Port's own policies." Only a thorough investigation will affirm or refute Yoshitani's assertion.

Addendum 01-09-2008: The Seattle Times story today is headlined Port tells panel it's making changes; auditors disagree. The lesson to be learned is that once the purported overseers lose the trust and confidence of the people, it is difficult to get it back. That's particularly true when the overseers say one thing yet fail to carry out their promises.

Addendum 02-13-2008: According to a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article today, "The Port of Seattle Commission will hire former U.S. Attorney Mike McKay to lead its internal investigation of the port in the wake of the state auditor's blistering critique of the port's construction management. "

So...What's the Problem?

2008-02-13T09:10:00.000-08:00

Reporter Annie Linskey's February 13, 2008, Baltimore Sun article headlined Cameras turn lens on police activities says that some Baltimore police officers are upset their actions are being caught on video by citizens with cameras.

Why? What's the problem?

The police could have made a good argument that if someone with a weapon-sized object in his hand shows up at a serious or violent crime in progress, that person could distract the police. A camcorder held in one or both hands at eye height can easily and reasonably be misinterpreted to be a handgun. If the cameraman distracts the officer’s attention from a target with a real weapon, the officer’s safety is jeopardized. The officer’s choices have both been doubled. Instead of one possible target/threat, he has two. Which one is the more viable threat? In less than the time it took to read that last sentence, the officer can become either a shooter or a victim. The police could have made that argument, but they didn’t.

As long as the camera wielding citizens are not creating a threatening distraction, compromising ongoing investigations, or directly interfering with the officers, the officers have little to worry about.

As the article noted, citizen videos ought to result in law enforcement agencies paying closer attention to citizen's complaints. The videos may show officer misconduct, but they may also show its absence.

Videos help hold people accountable for their actions. The police have been using undercover videos for decades now to hold criminals accountable and to impeach criminals when they testilie. Time and again dashboard video cameras on patrol cars have substantiated officers’ proper conduct and refuted unsubstantiated allegations against them.

The police may be uncomfortable by being on camera, but turning the lens 180 degrees to enhance police accountabilty is appropriate. If they don't have anything to hide...

Finally! A Newspaper Columnist That Gets It!

2008-02-04T08:31:00.000-08:00

"And the first thing you need to know about the criminal-justice system is that it is not a system. It is a collection of independent duchies that do what they want, when they want, and how they want to do it."

This was a line from columnist Tom Ferrick, Jr.'s final column in The Philadephia Inquirer. The column was posted on Sunday, February 3, 2008, and was headlined Tom Ferrick Jr.: Policing alone won't solve crime problem.

Please take time to follow the link to his column. Read it carefully. In a few hundred words he has accurately summarized the weaknesses of our criminal justice system.

The Importance of Diligent Oversight

2008-01-27T08:52:00.000-08:00

This week we learned of the Societe Generale fraud, a costly but excellent example of what can happen when oversight either does not exist or is not diligently exercised by those required to perform it.

When legislators set up agencies or allow regulated businesses to exist, they usually impose oversight requirements to prevent abuses and protect the public.

Some of us who live in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, have been concerned about our Mayor and City Council's failure to exert diligent oversight over our urban renewal agency, the Lake City Development Corporation. See Whitecaps post titled LCDC - The Cancer in Coeur d'Alene.

In the SoGen fraud, a low-level employee characterized as Mr. Average was able to circumvent a six-level system of security checks and execute futures trades which resulted in a $7 billion loss to SoGen.

How was the alleged fraudster, Jerome Kerviel, able to beat the elaborate oversight system that should have caught him much earlier? Early reports suggest he began work in a rather menial position that enabled him to learn the vulnerabilities of the protections in place. He then slowly and patiently worked himself into a position as a trader where here was able to do the unthinkable.

In her January 27, 2008, New York Times article headlined Rogue Trader in Custody in France, writer Nicola Clark reports:

Daniel Bouton, the Société Générale chief executive ... described Mr. Kerviel’s elaborate efforts to hide his activities as being like a “mutating virus.” "The nature of his fictitious and fraudulent operations were constantly evolving,” Mr. Bouton said. “And when the control systems detected an anomaly, he managed to convince control officers that it was nothing more than a minor error.”

In short, Kerviel was apparently able to convince those with responsibility for oversight that what he was doing was the right thing to do. The oversight appears to have failed in part because Kerviel's overseers wanted to believe him. They lacked the healthy skepticism diligent overseers have.

Hayden Police Department

2008-01-16T08:50:00.000-08:00

In the Wednesday, January 16, 2008, Coeur d'Alene Press staff writer Marc Stewart is reporting the city of Hayden, Idaho, is considering starting its own police department. It currently contracts with the Kootenai County Sheriff's Department for some law enforcement services. The article is headlined Hayden may create police force.

A city's decision to start its own police force should involve the city's citizens. It is as much a social decision as it is a political one.

On September 7, 2006, Whitecaps posted a brief article titled Starting a New Police Department? The article has links to several very readable guides published by the US Department of Justice's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS). While the guides were intended to be read mainly by public officials considering starting a police department, they are also suitable for informing citizens about both sides of that decision. The guides will help Hayden citizens better understand the negatives as well as the positives about having your own police department.

County Sheriffs: Law Enforcement Administrators or Influence Peddlers?

2008-01-15T10:00:00.000-08:00

The disagreement about whether county sheriffs should be elected or appointed will not likely ever be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. One side will argue that requiring sheriffs to stand for election ensures some accountability to the people in the county. The other side argues, equally effectively, that it often results in political hacks rather than competent public administrators being put in offices that oversee large budgets and make patronage appointments.

This conflict has come to the front in Orange County, California, where Orange County Sheriff Michael Carona has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiracy, mail fraud, depriving the public of the right of honest services of a public official, witness tampering, false statement in bankruptcy, fraudulent concealment of property in bankruptcy, and aiding and abetting.

Reading the grand jury indictment and the series of Los Angeles Times articles, one will quickly see that former Sheriff Carona has been accused of public corruption, selling his office "...for a stream of gifts and money." The articles are all worth reading. In addition to laying out the evidence against the allegedly corrupt sheriff of the second largest county in California, the articles provide snippets of insight into how the federal government investigates allegations of public corruption.

How local politics is insinuated into the Carona case is in today's Los Angeles Times article headlined O.C. sheriff's resignation causes turmoil. Just before resigning, Carona fired one of his assistant sheriffs and appointed Assistant Sheriff Jack Anderson to succeed him. Anderson is an official in the Orange County Republican party.

Every chief law enforcement officer expects to be subjected to political pressure. When they begin to sell their office in return for preferential treatment for donors, they must not only be removed, they must be prosecuted. Some will rationalize their preferential treatment by saying it improves the department's image to have high-profile "special deputies" or "sheriff's posse" or "executive reserve" members in decision-making or -influencing positions in the community. That can be true, but only as long as the sheriff or chief does not sell those pseudo-commissions for political or personal gain. When that happens, the official has betrayed the public's trust and confidence and must be removed.

Heed the Warning

2008-01-04T17:30:00.000-08:00

The Coeur d'Alene Press online posted a story on January 2, 2008, headlined Planner won't face criminal charges. The story by staff writer Marc Stewart reported that a former Kootenai County senior planner would not face criminal charges for allegedly ordering the destruction of an audio tape recording of a County Planning Commission meeting.

This newspaper story was pitifully short on the facts supporting and refuting the allegation and the laws that may have been violated. Consequently, it is difficult for readers to conclude if the decision to not prosecute her was appropriate.

With no more information about the facts than anyone else, we can only speculate on what laws may have been involved and allegedly violated.

It seems most likely that the planner may have been accused of violating Idaho Code 18-3201 - Officer Stealing, Mutilating, or Falsifying Public Records. That law says:

Any public officer, law enforcement officer, or subordinate thereof, who wilfully destroys, alters, falsifies or commits the theft of the whole or any part of any police report or any record kept as part of the official governmental records of the state or any county or municipality in the state, shall be guilty of a felony and is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than fourteen (14) years.

Obviously the planner was a public officer or a subordinate thereof. Obviously there was the destruction of a county government record. The questions of interest are:

What part, if any, did the planner play in the destruction of the recording?
Who was the custodian of the recording? Was it the planner or someone else?
Was the destruction "wilful" [sic]?
Did the planner know that the audio recording was required to be preserved as part of the public record? If not, why not? How could she not know?

The Press story says the planner was accused of ordering the destruction. It does not further explain exactly what form that order took, nor does it identify who actually destroyed the recording. Innocent casual remarks, even humorously uttered, can sometimes be misinterpreted by subordinates or unwitting employees as orders or strong suggestions.

To be chargeable as a crime under IC 18-3201, the destruction had to be "wilful" [sic]. Black's Law Dictionary, 8th ed., defines "willful" as "Voluntary and intentional but not necessarily malicious." If that is the applicable definition here, then it would be difficult for the planner to argue that ordering someone else to destroy the recording was involuntary and unintentional. Notice that the statute does not explicitly require criminal intent, only that the destruction have been "wilful" [sic] .

That raises the next question: Did the planner know, or should she have known, that the recording was in fact part of the record of the meeting and that it had to be preserved intact? Logically, any public officer ought to be expected to know what is and is not part of the record of meetings in which the officer regularly participates. To relieve a public officer from that obligation is to allow intentional ignorance as a blanket defense in prosecutions for alleged violations of IC 18-3201. Here are the critical definitions from Idaho Code 9-337:

(13) "Public record" includes, but is not limited to, any writing containing information relating to the conduct or administration of the public's business prepared, owned, used or retained by any state agency,independent public body corporate and politic or local agency regardless of physical form or characteristics.

(15) "Writing" includes, but is not limited to, handwriting, typewriting, printing, photostating, photographing and every means of recording, including letters, words, pictures, sounds or symbols or combination thereof, and all papers, maps, magnetic or paper tapes, photographic films and prints, magnetic or punched cards, discs, drums or other documents.

(3) "Custodian" means the person having personal custody and control of the public records in question. If no such designation is made by the public agency or independent public body corporate and politic, then custodian means any public official having custody of, control of, or authorized access to public records and includes all delegates of such officials, employees or representatives.

Given the clarity of the statute, the planner could reasonably have been expected to know that the recording was part of the public record and that it must be preserved intact. That is even more true if she was the custodian of the recording. If she was not the custodian of the recording, then the designated custodian should never have allowed the recording's destruction.

Because the Press did not address these issues and report the relevant facts in detail, it is unfair to presume the planner violated IC 18-3201. It is likewise unfair to presume the Coeur d'Alene Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecutor made an improper decision to not prosecute.

But now that the criminal investigation has ended, the Press should obtain the investigative reports to the extent allowed by the Idaho Public Record Law. The Press should analyze and fully report the basis for the decision to not prosecute. It is appropriate for the public to review the facts of the case and decide if the prosecutor's decision to not prosecute was reasonable. The public is entitled to hold prosecutors, even appointed ones, accountable.

Regardless of what the Press does, every public official in Kootenai County should heed this warning: The public record must not be destroyed, altered, or falsified in violation of the law no matter how noble or innocent the purpose might seem. Law enforcement officers and prosecutors should also understand that the public expects its public officials to know their obligations to preserve the public record intact. Ignorance of that obligation, and especially intentional ignorance, must never be allowed to excuse its violation. To allow that is to render the Idaho Public Record Law meaningless.

Tools to Use: Forcing Local Government Transparency

2008-01-02T11:38:00.000-08:00

The first workday in 2008 seems like a good time to remind Coeur d'Alene and Kootenai County residents about the resources we have available to encourage our local governments to be more open and honest with us.

The Idaho Attorney General has published several informative pamphlets and manuals for citizens. They are available in hard copy from the Attorney General's office and online at the Idaho Attorney General's webpage. The pamphlets and manuals are written in easily understood language for us interested citizens. They cover topics such as the Idaho Ethics in Government Law, the Idaho Public Records Law, and the Idaho Open Meeting Law.

Next time you're in contact with an Idaho legislator, ask why our public officials are not uniformly provided with copies of those pamphlets and manuals when they assume their elected or appointed position. Ask why those officials are not required to sign a public record statement affirming they have read, understood, and will comply with the laws described in those manuals. This simple requirement would go a long way toward challenging an official's defense that s/he didn't "knowingly" violate the law. And it seems only fair that our elected and appointed officials be required to be as conversant with applicable laws as the citizenry can be.

The Idaho Attorney General is not the only source of information about government transparency. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has published online its Open Government Guide, a "...compendium of information on every state's open records and open meetings laws."

The Open Government Guide: Idaho was written by Debora K. Kristensen, an attorney with Givens Pursley, LLP. It elaborates on some of the topics raised in the Attorney General's manuals and pamphlets, but it is no less readable.

These publications are tools, nothing more. They are totally useless unless citizens use them. How will you know if you're using them effectively? One way is that officials will begin to criticize you for even using them. You are likely to be accused of abusing them. One city councilman here in Coeur d'Alene commented about citizens who he believed were abusing the public records and open meeting laws. When asked to define abuse, he could not.

This is not to suggest that public records and open meeting law complaints should be used to harrass officials and agencies. They should not. They should be used to legitimately gather information about the conduct of the public's business and to hold public officials accountable to we, the people.

The Handwriting on the Wall

2007-12-29T10:02:00.000-08:00

Today's Coeur d'Alene Press ran an article headlined Graffiti crime on rise. It was written by staff writer Brian Walker. The thrust of the article was an almost breathless effort to associate the graffiti with one or more easily identifiable gangs.

Probably a better and more productive approach would be to research the sociology of gangs and then report that. Some Idahoans' understanding of gangs may be based on television portrayals of southern California's ethnic gangs. While the gangs of East Los Angeles, South Central LA, and Compton still exist, some in roughly the stereotypical form, many of the east coast and California gangs have exported their criminal enterprises to other parts of the United States. They exist in prisons as well as in communities. It is a serious error to presume that all gangsters wear colors, throw signs, and tag dumpsters while engaging in their criminal enterprises.

According to the 2005 National Gang Threat Assessment prepared by the National Alliance of Gang Investigator Associations funded by the federal Bureau of Justice Assistance:

Once found principally in large cities, violent street gangs affect public safety, community image, and quality of life in communities of all sizes in urban, suburban, and rural areas. No region of the United States is untouched by gangs. Gangs affect society at all levels, causing heightened fears for safety, violence, and economic costs.

This study gives an excellent overview of the breadth of gang activity.

Also see the websites of the National Gang Crime Research Center, the California Gang Investigator's Association, and the East Coast Gang Investigator's Association.

Our objective ought to be to learn more about gang behaviors. By better understanding how to recognize behaviors, citizens can more effectively work with law enforcement, educators, and social services to inhibit gang activity in our communities.

More Interesting CJ Bid Solicitations

2007-12-21T09:34:00.000-08:00

As Whitecaps noted in the October 16, 2007, post titled Interesting Bid Solicitations, just about anything is more interesting reading than federal bid solicitations.

However, if you're a criminal justice student, a true or fictional crime writer, or if your occupation is one of the criminal justice fields, the National Institute of Justice's (NIJ) bid solicitations give you some insight into where criminal justice technology and behavioral sciences are going.

As with past solicitations, the interesting material is a few pages into the solicitation, often starting with the heading "Specific Information." However, the "Performance Measures," "Selection Criteria," and "Review Process" headings also reveal not only technical information but also the administrative expectations that CJ professionals would be expected to meet when applying for funding.

With that in mind, here's another list of NIJ bid solicitations.

Social Science Research in Forensic Science

Solving Cold Cases with DNA

Research on Policing

Research on Terrorism

Crime and Justice Research

Guidelines on Cell Phone Forensics

2007-12-13T08:20:00.000-08:00

Did you ever wonder how much information about you and your transactions is stored inside that cell phone you carry on your belt or in your purse? Whether you're a criminal or a cop, a spy or security chief, you should be very concerned about what cell phone transactions reveal about you.

The bad news is the criminals and spies already know. That's why they've begun using prepaid disposable cell telephones or illegally modified phones that conceal true ownership and are nearly impossible (but not quite) to intercept.

The worse news is that the cops and security chiefs often don't know. To help them get a better understanding of cell phone vulnerabilities, the National Institute of Standards and Technology has published the Guideline on Cell Phone Forensics. This 104-page publication:

"...provides basic information on the preservation, acquisition, examination, analysis, and reporting of digital evidence on cell phones, relevant to law enforcement, incident response, and other types of investigations. The guide focuses mainly on the characteristics of cell phones, including smart phones having advanced capabilities. It also covers provisions to be taken into consideration during the course of an incident investigation.

For those true crime writers who read this blog, this publication is a wealth of information about cell phone use in crime.

Real Estate Appraisal Fraud

2007-12-08T09:50:00.000-08:00

With the nationwide housing slump, the number of residential foreclosures is increasing. The subprime lending business is transitioning to the subprime lending scandal. So serious are the consequences for not only homebuyers but for everyone else in the housing industry that the President has taken steps to control the damage.

Inevitably, victims ask "why" and "how" could this occur? How could the home they purchased for $250,000 now suddenly be valued at well under $200,000?

One answer is that the home was overpriced to begin with, and the mortgage lender enticed a dishonest appraiser to inflate the home's value to correspond with the seller's asking price or to the price offered by the buyer.

To better understand the consequences of appraisal fraud, read Home Insecurity: How Widespread Appraisal Fraud Puts Homeowners at Risk. The report was prepared by Demos, a New York think tank.

Though the report deals with residential appraisal fraud, the same deceptive and dishonest techniques are slightly modified and used in commercial property appraisal fraud. Since urban renewal agencies like our own Lake City Development Corporation also rely on property appraisals, the agency's community and therefore its taxpayers may become the ultimate victims of commercial appraisal fraud.

For those interested in learning more about mortgage fraud and appraisal fraud, see the FBI's 2006 Mortgage Fraud Report and Rachel Dollar's Mortgage Fraud Blog.

Investigating Crimes Involving Technology

2007-11-29T12:40:00.000-08:00

It is more and more common for law enforcement officers to find suspects using technology to facilitate crimes. Fortunately many of the suspects do not fully understand just how much information about their criminal behaviors has been stored inside that battery-operated thingamajig they've been using. Unfortunately, law enforcement sometimes doesn't understand it either.

To help educate the good guys (law enforcement), the US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs has published a 169-page technology primer titled Investigative Uses of Technology: Devices, Tools, and Techniques. The introduction to the document notes:

This special report is intended to be a resource to any law enforcement personnel (investigators, first responders, detectives, prosecutors, etc.)who may have limited or no experience with technology-related crimes or with the tools or techniques available to investigate those crimes. It is not all inclusive. Rather, it deals with the most common techniques, devices, and tools encountered.

In addition to its value for investigators, this report is also a wealth of information for authors who write about crime, particulary technology-related crime.

No Gold Star for Brad

2007-11-21T15:59:00.000-08:00

Elementary school teachers used to give gold stars for attendance. Regular attendance showed dedication and commitment. The gold stars were meant to acknowledge, encourage, and reward those traits.

As responsible adults we are expected to regularly and consistently participate in organizations and activities for which we have volunteered. If we can't fulfill our commitment to an organization by regularly attending meetings and performing the duties required, we should resign our position so it can be filled by someone who can. The value of our contribution is directly proportional to the amount of time we spend preparing for and attending meetings. If we're not preparing, if we're not attending, if we're not participating, we're not contributing.

Here in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, we have a local businessman who is a Commissioner on both the Planning Commission and our urban renewal agency, the Lake City Development Corporation or LCDC. His name is Brad Jordan, and he's the co-owner of a local real estate company.

Jordan has a problem. For the past two years he's had the highest percentage of absences from both the Coeur d'Alene City Planning Commission and the LCDC. By anyone's standard among people who actually have standards, his absenteeism is unacceptable.

According to the City's Planning Commission minutes for the period October 2005 through October 2007, Jordan missed 12 of 29 Planning Commission meetings, a 41% rate of absenteeism.

The LCDC's minutes for the period October 2005 through September 2007, reflect that Jordan missed or arrived late at 12 of 30 LCDC meetings, a 40% rate of absenteeism. The minutes show he never attended 8 of the 30 meetings and arrived late at another 4 meetings. Late arrival times varied from a few minutes to over an hour after the meeting had been called to order.

Coeur d'Alene's City Code, 2.48.020B, states, "Any member who does not attend at least a majority of the regularly called meetings of the commission over any consecutive three (3) month period may be replaced by appointment of the mayor and confirmation by the city council." While on the Planning Commission, Jordan missed two of the three meetings from November 2005 through January 2006. He also missed two of the three meetings held in August and September 2006. During the period January through May 2007 there were five Planning Commission meetings. Jordan attended one meeting and was absent from four. Finally, from August through October 2007, Jordan missed the August and October meetings and attended only the September meeting.

Jordan needs to resign or be removed from both the Planning Commission and the LCDC Board of Commissioners. His absenteeism demonstrates a lack of dedication and commitment required for both positions, and the people in the community deserve better than he's able to give.

No gold star for Brad.

Offender Reentry

2007-11-20T10:36:00.000-08:00

The November 10, 2007, issue of the Coeur d'Alene Press had an article headlined "Group homes surge as inmates exit prisions; neighbors furious." It was an Associated Press article authored by John Miller. Its focus was on larger Idaho cities that receive a disproportionate number of offenders after they have been released from prison. Our little town of Coeur d'Alene now has 13 group homes compared four last year.

I wonder if the City knows where these 13 homes are? It is doubtful that all 13 homes in Coeur d'Alene are compliant with applicable zoning ordinances and codes. Then again, the homes' managers have little to fear from the City of Coeur d'Alene. It selectively chooses which codes and ordinances it will enforce and which ones will be overlooked.

The failure of the City to enforce codes and ordinances and the minimally coordinated release of offenders eventually leads to varying levels of conflict between the neighbors and and released offender homes' managers. That conflict is often resolved by a call to the police. This is true elsewhere, not just in Coeur d'Alene.

To help police better prepare to deal with offender reentry, the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) and the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) have partnered to examine the potential for intensified law enforcement involvement in offender reentry efforts. The IACP hopes to reduce recidivism, disorder and victimization through increased law enforcement participation in offender reentry programs.

Together, the BJA and IACP have produced a downloadable DVD titled Offender Reentry: A Police Perspective.

They have also produced some downloadable publications, linked here:

Building An Offender Reentry Program: A Guide for Law Enforcement

Managing Sex Offenders: Citizens Supporting Law Enforcement

Sex Offenders in the Community: Enforcement and Prevention Strategies for Law Enforcement

Framing a Law Enforcement Response: Addressing Community Concerns about Sex Offenders

Wanted: A Newspaper in Coeur d'Alene

2007-11-10T08:02:00.000-08:00

I cancelled my subscription to The Spokesman Review yesterday. My reason was that the quality of its news coverage in north Idaho has deteriorated steadily over the past few months. I had seen the deterioration long before the newspaper announced it would be laying off news staff.

An example: The Spokesman Review no longer routinely sent a reporter to every City Council meeting, let alone commission meetings. It appeared as if a Spokesman Review reporter showed up only after receiving a press release or phone call from the city telling the newspaper that the city would be doing something newsworthy (meaning generating good publicity for the city). Journalism or PR flackery? It was the latter. It will be even moreso now that the number of Idaho reporters has been reduced dramatically.

The Coeur d'Alene Press is no better and no worse than The Spokesman Review at reporting news completely and objectively. The Spokesman Review's editor claims the owners and business side of the newspaper do not influence the news coverage. That is a laugh. At least the Press doesn't even make that specious claim.

The writer(s) of a November 7, 2007, Press editorial titled Whew! Glad that's all over said, "If critics of the Coeur d'Alene City Council, Lake City Development Corp., Kroc Community Center, Mickey Mouse Retirement Village or any other publicly financed entities have proof of unethical or illegal activities by officials, produce it and let the proper authorities do their jobs. The Press will publish the outcomes of any such investigations upon their completion. In the meantime, our reporters will not be writing stories on allegations or speculation."

Read that again carefully. The Coeur d'Alene Press said editorially it will not publish stories demonstrating unethical or illegal activities by officials unless the "proper authorities" conduct an investigation and make the results public. Who would the "proper authorities" be? The Mayor? The City Council? The LCDC Board? The Board of Directors of Mountain West Bank? The prosecuting attorney? Advertisers? Who?

I wonder if it occurred to the editor and publisher of the Coeur d'Alene Press they have just said they will take reportorial direction from the "proper authorities?" How can readers not reasonably conclude that if the "proper authorities" want a story killed, it's killed.

Does the Press not understand that sometimes public officials ("proper authorities") are dishonest and unethical? Does the Press not understand that it has a responsibility to gather and report information independently so we, the people, have trustworthy information, not the propaganda and self-serving crap that flows from City Hall?

The last line about reporters not writing stories on allegations or speculation was gratuitous foot-stomping. No one expects any newspaper to publish stories based on allegations and speculation. But some of us wish the Press would diligently follow up and investigate allegations when a reasonable person reading the allegation and supporting proof would conclude something newsworthy is there. If there's no factual basis, then there's no story.

We don't have a newspaper in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. I wish we did.

LCDC - The Cancer in Coeur d'Alene

2007-10-29T07:16:00.000-07:00

If you are a cancer survivor or if a friend or family member has it, you have learned that cancer develops when cells in the body begin to grow out of control. Normal cells grow, divide, and die. Instead of dying, cancer cells continue to grow and form new abnormal cells. Cancer cells often travel to other body parts where they grow and replace normal tissue. If you understand that, you also understand how Coeur d’Alene’s urban renewal agency, the Lake City Development Corporation or LCDC, operates.

Thoughtful, managed growth and development in any community is useful. When growth and development occur in balance and harmony with the community’s normal social, economic, and political forces, the community is a good place to live. People will be able to afford to live, have careers, and participate in their community. Many businesses will thrive, others will even expand, and some will close. That is normal.

But if growth and development are allowed to occur too quickly or without proper oversight, if they are unduly influenced by unnatural forces, they can stealthily but quickly rage out of control. That is the malignant influence LCDC has on Coeur d’Alene.

LCDC’s proponents proclaim that in the 1980’s and early 1990’s Coeur d’Alene was dying and never would have amounted to anything if it had not been for the LCDC. That is speculation, nothing more.

It is fair to say that without the LCDC’s abuse of urban renewal, the city’s growth and development would have been manageable and more orderly. Being an attractive lakeside city with hard-working imaginative citizens, it would have become a prosperous Coeur d’Alene, not the urbanized “Seattle d’Alene” it is becoming thanks to the LCDC’s and City Council’s love fest with unchecked growth and blind acceptance of unending expensive studies by out-of-state consultants. Coeur d’Alene is morphing into “Seattle d’Alene” as a result of cancerous growth promoted by LCDC and the City Council.

Regardless of where you live, if you receive a Kootenai County property tax bill that includes countywide taxing districts, your tax bill is higher because of the LCDC. For 24 years from each LCDC district’s date of creation the LCDC gets the tax increment, the amount of tax increase above its base value, of every taxable property in the huge LCDC districts. That money goes to the LCDC’s bank account.

Think about it: The LCDC says that taxing districts (e.g., School District 271) still get the money they need. If the taxing districts itemized on your tax bill still get the same amount of money, where does LCDC’s money come from unless the county’s total property tax revenues increase? It comes from us – all Kootenai County property tax payers. Regardless of where we live, if we pay property taxes in Kootenai County, we are paying more property taxes to make up for the increment that goes to Coeur d’Alene’s urban renewal agency, the LCDC, but we have no say about how that money is spent. Think of LCDC as a hidden taxing district in which you have no vote.

Like the cancer it is, LCDC wants to operate and enlarge without being noticed. LCDC’s executive director has been traveling trying to export LCDC’s brand of urban renewal to other communities in and out of Kootenai County. If he succeeds, any additional urban renewal agencies formed in Kootenai County will be additional hidden taxing districts on your property tax bill. To make up for the tax increment being taken by an urban renewal agency, Kootenai County property tax payers will pay more. If those communities allow LCDC’s cancerous form of urban renewal to take root, their businesses, their people, and their governments will be forever changed just as Coeur d’Alene is being changed.

Why hasn’t Coeur d’Alene’s Mayor and City Council stepped in to regulate LCDC’s actions and expansions? Why are they encouraging the LCDC to infect other communities? Why has the LCDC used your tax dollars to hire two lobbyists to protect its interests (not the taxpayers’ interests) in Boise?

The answer to all those questions is greed and power. Money is not inherently evil, but the unchecked greedy pursuit of it is. Money can buy the election results the LCDC and City Council want in order to perpetuate a governmental enterprise that uses taxpayer money to enrich the already rich while keeping any hope of control out of the hands of honest taxpayers. LCDC used your tax money to hire lobbyists to ensure the Idaho legislature does not change the existing urban renewal law so it can no longer be abused by the LCDC.

Voters trusted Coeur d’Alene’s Mayor and City Council to properly learn and understand the complexities of urban renewal and then to regulate and control the LCDC as the law requires. The voter’s trust in them was misplaced. They have failed us. The beneficial cells of legitimate urban renewal have been allowed to grow unchecked and become the LCDC cancer in “Seattle d’Alene”. It is time for a change to restore honesty, integrity, and diligence in Coeur d’Alene City Hall.

For over a year now a growing number of citizens have been trying to help Kootenai County taxpayers better recognize and understand the LCDC cancer that is infecting us. Three honorable and dedicated citizens have decided to become candidates for Coeur d’Alene city council. They are Dan Gookin, Jim Brannon, and Susie Snedaker. These three courageous and honest residents know they will be attacked viciously and personally for their commitment to expose the profiteering being perpetrated by the Mayor, the City Council, and the LCDC in "Seattle d’Alene." They know their campaigns will be competing against incumbents and candidates who will be well-funded by business interests who will pay whatever is necessary to keep control of Coeur d'Alene City Hall. Dan Gookin, Jim Brannon, and Susie Snedaker know their opponents will support candidates who are running not with any hope of winning but for the express purpose of drawing votes away from the honest candidates. Still they are willing to step forward in hopes of slowing the cancerous corruption of city government in Coeur d’Alene.

Cancer survivors know the disease is sometimes incurable. Indeed, attempts to cure the disease can kill the patient or ruin his quality of life. That’s why diligent, attentive management is often the treatment of choice. So it is with urban renewal in Coeur d’Alene. Dan Gookin, Jim Brannon, and Susie Snedaker want to work with us in Kootenai County to manage urban renewal so it is used wisely and lawfully to achieve the beneficial results intended by the Idaho legislature. They want to stop its malignant abuse by the LCDC and their cronies so that taxpayer dollars are used for public good, not private enrichment. Regardless of where you live, if you pay Kootenai County property taxes, encourage your friends in Coeur d’Alene to vote for Dan Gookin for council seat #1, Jim Brannon for council seat #3, and Susan P. “Susie” Snedaker for council seat #5 on November 6, 2007. They want to preserve the character of Coeur d’Alene and Kootenai County.

Two of the candidates have websites. Go to www.dangookin.com and www.vote4susie.com to learn more about their candidacies.

To learn how you’re paying more in tax dollars because of the abusive and unsupervised LCDC, read Dan Gookin’s report The LCDC. It's the report you won't ever see on the Coeur d'Alene City website or the LCDC's website, because the Mayor, the City Council, and the LCDC don't want us to understand the LCDC's abuse of Idaho’s urban renewal law and how LCDC is misusing our tax dollars.

Remember, thanks to a willing and compliant Coeur d’Alene Mayor and City Council, the LCDC obligated county taxpayers for 24 years. In the name of enriching already rich developers, builders, and realtors, Coeur d’Alene Mayor Sandi Bloem and City Council members Dixie “Inside Connection” Reid, Al Hassell, Ron Edinger, Mike Kennedy, Woody McEvers, and Deanna Goodlander have made promises you, your children, and your grandchildren will be legally obligated to keep.

We, all Kootenai County taxpayers, have been attacked by the LCDC cancer, and to effectively manage it we must participate in our own treatment. Become an informed voter. The superficial appearance of health and prosperity in Coeur d’Alene conceals the malignancy that lurks beneath. Study Dan Gookin’s report. Pay attention to what your Mayor and City Council are doing. Don't assume all that looks good is good.

On November 6, vote for the three candidates who want to manage and control the cancer that is LCDC. Vote for Dan Gookin for Council seat #1, Jim Brannon for Council seat #3, and Susie Snedaker for Council seat #5.

Public Corruption Update - October 2007

2007-10-21T14:15:00.000-07:00

Fall is upon us. The leaves are falling and thankfully so are corrupt public officials.

A former city councilman, painting contractor, a former police officer, and a former speaker of the house of the North Carolina House of Representatives are all on their way to federal prison for their criminal betrayal of the public trust. Read about these cases here in the Internal Revenue Service's FY 2007 Examples of Public Corruption Crime Investigations.

Interesting Bid Solicitations

2007-10-16T08:07:00.000-07:00

No, "interesting bid solicitations" is not a self-contradictory phrase. I will, however, admit that just about anything is more interesting than reading federal bid solicitations.

However, the solicitations by the National Institute of Justice, National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technlology Center System, do reveal or at least hint at the types of technology law enforcement is gee-whizzing over. By clicking on the links below, the reader will be taken to the actual solicitation. There is sometimes a surprisingly interesting amount of useful technical information buried in the solicitation's bureaucratese.

Body Armor for Law Enforcement and Corrections

Research and Development in the Area of Controlled Substances Detection and Analysis

Biometric Technologies

Personal Protection Equipment

Electronic Crime and Digital Evidence Recovery

Information-Led Policing Research, Technology Developing, Testing and Evaluation

Research and Development in the Forensic Analysis of Fire and Arson Evidence

Geospatial Technology

Less Lethal Technologies

Sensors and Surveillance Technologies

Research and Development in Forensic Anthropology and Forensic Odontology

Forensic DNA Research and Development

Communications Technology

How Comcast Works With Law Enforcement

2007-10-15T10:10:00.000-07:00

Like many public utility providers, Comcast Cable works with law enforcement agencies to help those agencies gain lawful access to information that is proprietary to Comcast or evidence of crime committed against the public or against Comcast.

Here is a link to Comcast Cable's 35-page Law Enforcement Handbook.

Most public utilities (telephone, gas, electric, water, etc.) have policies regulating how their employees may lawfully respond to law enforcement requests for assistance.

A New Strip Joint in Town?

2007-10-05T07:35:00.000-07:00

In a story headlined Woman wants apology after court scans bra, Coeur d'Alene Press staff writer Marc Stewart recounted how a woman responding to instructions to appear in federal court in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, had been required to remove her underwire bra so it could be fluoroscoped. There were no women court security officers (CSO) available, nor was there a private changing room where she could remove the bra. Her options were to return to her car and remove it or find a public restroom somewhere outside the courthouse. No, there were no restrooms available in the public unscured area inside the courthouse. Needing to get where she was going in the courthouse, she and her husband complied as well as they could. Her husband spread his coat to do his best to shield her from the views of male CSOs and the public, and she removed the bra.

Now, before getting all cranked off about this, it is important to realize that the CSOs are essentially civilian contractors who have limited law enforcement/security authority and are supervised by the US Marshals Service (USMS). The USMS responsibilities for protecting the courts include, "Ensuring the safe conduct of judicial proceedings and protecting federal judges, jurors and other members of the judiciary..."

How well has the USMS fulfilled that responsibility? Not as well as hoped according to the US Department of Justice, Office of Inspector General.

According to a September 2007 report titled The United States Marshals Service Judicial Security Process, the USMS needs improvement in protective intelligence and the execution of protective operations.

So what is happening at "Chez Fed", Coeur d'Alene's newest strip joint? According to today's Coeur d'Alene Press article by Marc Stewart, the US courthouse in Coeur d'Alene still does not have any women CSO's, but it does now have "...a secure and private room to remove articles of clothing that need to be scanned by metal detectors". Presumably after the person has cleared the security checkpoint, s/he goes into a secured restroom and puts on the article of clothing that had been removed for fluoroscopic examination. And it is hoped that a CSO searches the secure and private room for any weapons or other contraband the person may have abandoned there.

Publication: A Military Guide to Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century

2007-10-03T08:21:00.000-07:00

On August 15, 2007, the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, TRADOC Intelligence Support Activity,-Threats, released its handbook titled A Military Guide to Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century.

The handbook is a primer on terrorism and includes

"...an overview of the history of terrorism, descriptions of terrorist behaviors and motivations, a review of terrorist group organizations, and the threat posed to our forces, both in the United States and overseas. Additionally, it provides information on the various terrorist groups, the terrorist planning cycle, operations and tactics, firearms used by terrorists, improvised explosive devices, conventional munitions used by terrorists, and a discussion on weapons of mass destruction." (Federation of American Scientists)

There are four supplements that accompany the handbook:

Supplement 1 — Terror Operations: Case Studies in Terrorism

Supplement 2 — Cyber Operations and Cyber Terrorism

Supplement 3 — Suicide Bombing in the COE

Supplement 4 — Terrorism and WMD in the Contemporary Operational Environment

Radio Remote Triggers for Improvised Explosive Devices

2007-10-01T10:02:00.000-07:00

The US government's Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has issued a press release to explain "...why passengers may notice additional security measures related to remote control (toy) devices."

The press release notes:

While not associated with a specific threat at this time, TSA is aware that remote control toys can be used to initiate devices used in terrorist attacks. Accordingly, Transportation Security Officers have trained on this possibility and travelers may encounter additional screening when bringing remote control devices in carry-on baggage.

This press release is odd on several levels.

First, it only appears to address radio remotely controlled toys. Why? There are several radio frequency devices that are all suitable choices for the bomber.

Second, the press release implies that Officers have only been trained to somehow address the threat believed posed by remotely controlled toys. Why? The training should have included the broader range of suitable wireless devices.

Third, the press release does not tell passengers who may be carrying remotely controlled toys what to expect. Is the TSA going to seize the toys?

The possibility of encountering a radio remote trigger with an improvised explosive device poses a particular threat for security personel, hazardous devices responders, and the general population. The absence of sufficient information about the specific technology used in the device makes any aggressive countermeasure highly risky. Hopefuly the training TSA gave to its officers includes far more information than suggested by the press release.

Reading this press release leaves me waiting for the other shoe to drop.

When to Step Forward

2007-09-27T14:41:00.000-07:00

Whitecaps' post titled FBI Confidential Human Source Guidelines on September 19, 2007, revealed the internal administrative controls it exercises and the protections the FBI offers to confidential human sources.

That's all well and good if you're an FBI special agent. But what if you're the prospective confidential human source?

For example, what if you're a fundamentally honest city, county, or state employee, maybe a department head, with information about public corruption inside your own agency or another one? Maybe you're getting close to retirement age. You're too old to be changing jobs, because yes, age discrimination does exist. Maybe you've looked at what your fellow department managers have done. You've seen the financial and career rewards they've been given even while engaging in illegal misconduct. You know what they've done is illegal, yet they're still on the job, and no one seems to be paying any attention. Why should you step forward, stick your neck out, blow the whistle, jeopardize your retirement, and subject yourself to public ridicule in the media?

There are two reasons.

First, the ethical reason. You are honest, and they are not. You listen to your conscience; they do not. They may rationalize illegal behavior by saying the positive results for the community override the law. Look at how much better off we all are (or at least appear to be) because we "visionary" public officials and business leaders chose to disregard the laws. Look at all the big, shiny new buildings and nice parks. We wouldn't have them if we had obeyed the law. That's what they'll say. They did it for the good of the community.

The flaw in their logic, however, is that what they are doing is still illegal and subject to criminal prosecution. That the elected county prosecuting attorney is unwilling to prosecute does not and cannot make their acts legal. Their apparently benevolent motives for illegal conduct may mitigate their sentence if they are tried and convicted, but benevolent motives do not justify illegal conduct. And you should not believe for one moment that corrupt public officials with "benevolent motives" do not profit personally. Profit comes in many forms. Regardless, if they are found out, they will be disgraced even if they're not prosecuted. Why? Because the vast majority of people in the community want honest public officials whom they can trust. They do not want public officials who will betray their trust and confidence.

Second, the practical reason for your stepping forward. You are fundamentally honest, one of the good guys caught up in a mess not of your own creation. Corrupt public officials conspiring with dishonest business people are the bad guys. The bad guys know that you are honest, that you would prefer to not be involved in criminal behavior. They do not trust you. They never will trust you. Your honesty, integrity, and insider knowledge will always remain a very real threat to their criminal enterprise.

Their concern is that someday you will reveal the details of their criminal misconduct. They will try to co-opt you to become one of them, to turn you into a criminal co-conspirator. They will use a carrot if that will work and a stick if it won't. The carrot may be public acclaim and financial rewards. The stick may be your being demoted or fired from your job. In extreme cases, the stick may also be physical intimidation or violence to you, your family, or others meaningful to you.

So when do you step forward? Do it now. If you've been ensnared involuntarily in public corruption, you gain nothing by waiting. Confidential human sources are validated by the agency to whom they go to seek help. One of the steps in validating a source is to examine the source's motivation to become a confidential human source. The longer you wait between the criminal actions and your reporting of them, the more an investigator wonders, "Why did s/he wait so long?" It's never too late, but sooner rather than later is the guiding rule.

Consider this possibility: Suppose you have put off coming forward and doing the right thing. You decide to wait, but before you can come forward, you're fired. You've just added another credibility barrier you must overcome. Now that you've been fired, your allegations of misconduct by superiors begin to sound more like sour grapes or retaliation against them than genuine concern for the public well-being. Bluntly, as an insider you are far more credible and valuable than you would be as a terminated outsider.

It is never easy for even an honest public employee to come forward and provide insider information about the criminal conduct of fellow workers and superiors. There is risk involved, because the criminal justice system is far from perfect. A prospective confidential human source may believe he can trust city, county, or state law enforcement. He may believe he can trust the county prosecuting attorney. In both cases, he may be wrong. If they betray him, he is alone and out in the cold.

Generally a public employee with insider information about public corruption will be better off going to a federal law enforcement agency such as the FBI or IRS Criminal Investigation. The federal agencies will be less influenced by local political machinations and personalities. Public corruption investigations must be done quietly and carefully. They will proceed methodically. Federal agencies do not want their investigations to be used as a bludgeon for some local political agenda. But it is the federal agencies who have the resources to proceed with public corruption investigations and prosecutions. The federal agencies are in a better position to help and protect a confidential human source who wants to step forward and do the right thing for his community.

Update: Regional Law Enforcement Training

2007-09-25T07:40:00.000-07:00

On October 17, 2005, Whitecaps posted Why Not a Regional Criminal Justice Center?. It suggested the creation of a regional (eastern Washington - northern Idaho) criminal justice center for a regional justice campus incorporating elements of incarceration, corrections, and law enforcement training.

Then in my February 8, 2006, post titled Regionalizing Public Safety Functions, I elaborated on why such a regional partnership would be beneficial.

Whitecaps' March 15, 2006, post titled That Would Never Work...Would It? provided the federal model for a coordinated multi-agency, inter-jurisdictional training program.

Now, September 25, 2007, in today's Coeur d'Alene Press we learn from Maureen Dolan's story headlined Officer training may come to North Idaho that "Support for regional police training academy (is) gaining momentum."

Idaho's law enforcement (especially in the northern counties) has lots of room for improvement, and a training facility in Coeur d'Alene would be a good start.

Crime Statistics: View With Healthy Skepticism

2007-09-24T09:35:00.000-07:00

Law enforcement agencies submit statistical information about crimes. No matter how uniform or standardized the submission procedure, there will always be some departments who choose to deceive their employers (the citizens of their communities) about criminal behavior and their department's response to it.

On January 19, 2005, Whitecaps posted Evaluating Crime Statistics. It included an explanation of the ways departments can "clear" crimes and how those clearances are reported. It alluded to but did not discuss in detail the ways departments report clearances deceptively.

In its Sunday, September 23, 2007, online edition The Miami Herald had an article authored by Dan Christensen. It was about the Broward County Sheriff's Office (BSO) and was headlined Probe: BSO closed out violent cases wrongly -- A long-running crime statistics investigation at BSO includes accusations that deputies also wrongly closed out cases of violence.

And that's an example of why every law enforcement agency's crime statistics should be reviewed with a healthy skepticism. Some will be honest; some will be deceptive.

FBI Confidential Human Source Guidelines

2007-09-19T13:30:00.000-07:00

Suppose you are a public employee and you see evidence of public corruption or other criminal behavior in superiors, maybe even in elected officials. Perhaps you've been told to drop an investigation or shred documents that you know would be evidence.

But you are honest. You have integrity. You don't want your agency corrupted by their dishonesty. At the same time, you are concerned. If you come forward with your information, will your identity be revealed? Will your job, or worse, your own or your family's safety be jeopardized by your doing the right thing?

Your concerns are reasonable, particularly if you're considering taking your information to local, county, or state police agencies. Its hard to know what standards, if any, these agencies have for handling confidential human sources, particularly if potential offenders are superiors of or supervisors in these agencies.

Most federal agencies that routinely use confidential human sources have developed guidelines to protect the source and the information s/he has and wants to share. One example is The Attorney General's Guidelines Regarding the Use of FBI Confidential Human Sources.

Jail Data Collection and Analysis

2007-09-12T09:30:00.000-07:00

Jails throughout the United States are reported to be overcrowded, but many sheriffs and jail administrators know very little about how to effectively collect and analyze jail data and present it meaningfully to the public. Without verifiable data and analysis, claims of jail overcrowding become hyperbole.

To assist sheriffs and jail administrators, the US Department of Justice, National Institute of Corrections, funded the 3rd edition of How to Collect and Analyze Data: A Manual for Sheriffs and Jail Administrators. The 220-page manual was released in July 2007.

If sheriffs and jail administrators expect taxpayers to foot the bill for new jails that meet realistic social and custodial needs of the community, they need to do a much better job of jail data collection, analysis, and presentation. They also need to adopt some form of strategic planning that projects future jail and special custodial needs.

Bribery - How Will I Know? What Should I Do?

2007-09-03T08:37:00.000-07:00

Whitecaps was contacted by a person running for public office in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Presuming that s/he will win, the person asked some very good questions: How will I know if someone is trying to bribe me or is setting me up to be corrupted? What should I do if I think I'm being bribed or being set up?

What impressed me most about the candidate's questions is s/he realized that public corruption has already surfaced in Coeur d'Alene. Many people choose to deny that, either because they don't think it could ever happen here or because they know it has happened and wish they had done more to prevent it.

Whitecaps has put up several posts going back as far as December 7, 2004. They may help answer the candidate's questions.

The processes for spotting, assessing, recruiting, and controlling a public official in Coeur d'Alene are barely different from those used by an intelligence service to recruit a spy in another country. Generally the process identifies a person with placement and access, a person who can deliver whatever results the handler wants. It identifies that person's vulnerabilities. What motivates him or her? How can s/he best be manipulated and controlled? How can I as the handler get that person to trust me enough to want to be willing to violate the law or overcome moral objections to my requests? If I can't ideologically motivate the official to willingly want to work for me, then how can I gradually and subtly obligate that person so that s/he can't refuse?

Public corruption is not pretty. The people who use it may have lived in the community for years, maybe decades, maybe their entire lives. They may appear to be "respected" members of the community. But people deserving of the community's respect do not corruptly and illegally exploit the community's public officials for personal gain or reputational enhancement.

The Unbalanced Criminal Justice Equation

2007-09-01T08:20:00.000-07:00

The criminal justice equation, simplified, is:

Investigation + Prosecution + Defense + Courts = Justice.

The equation becomes unbalanced if one of the elements is removed. Thus:

Investigation - Prosecution ≠ Justice.

Investigation minus prosecution eliminates the need for defense and courts, therefore justice is not served. Reducing or eliminating prosecution does not equal justice for anyone.

As reported in The Wall Street Journal online nonsubscriber edition story dated August 31, 2007, written by Scot J. Paltrow, and headlined Budget Crunch Hits U.S. Attorneys' Offices, budget reductions have forced US attorneys to reduce the number of criminal prosecutions and delay major investigations.

While the US attorneys' offices use other federal agencies to conduct criminal investigations, the investigators rely heavily on their local US attorney's office for legal guidance and counsel. That is especially true in complex white collar crime and public corruption investigations. The investigations could proceed without the investigators consulting an Assistant US Attorney, but that may well make the case more difficult to prosecute at trial. It is less costly and time consuming to avoid making errors than trying to fix them later.

One of the major challenges facing whoever replaces former Attorney General Gonzales will be to improve the funding and enable the US attorneys' offices throughout the country to reinsert "prosecution" in the criminal justice equation. If that doesn't happen, the public will be poorly served in those major cases best handled by federal prosecutors.

The Cost of Public Information

2007-08-27T12:30:00.000-07:00

As a taxpaying resident of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, I wanted to know just what almost $33,000 of the public's money bought when the City contracted with an out-of-state private consultant to conduct a survey about police service here. The City Clerk told me she would be happy to tell me, but it would cost me approximately $537.11 plus the costs of copying the information to find out. Just send a personal check, thank you. If there's any left over, we'll refund it.

My inquiry was precipitated by a July 20, 2007, article in the Coeur d'Alene Press by staff writer Marc Stewart. His article was headlined Survey: Residents feel safe in Coeur d'Alene. Stewart's article briefly reported on the results of a study commissioned and paid for by the City of Coeur d'Alene. The study was reportedly conducted to measure how safe people feel in Coeur d'Alene and how satisfied we are with our police department. The consultant, The Results Group, LTD of Hood River, Oregon, was paid approximately $33,000 to conduct the study and make recommendations based on its findings.

In his article, Stewart reported that, "Three hundred and fifty people were interviewed for the survey and 99 percent said they felt safe while shopping in Coeur d'Alene and 99 percent said they felt safe while at home." The Results Group President Stephen Kane commented that his company had "...never had such a high score."

Later in the article, Stewart reported, "The consultant said the department should stop yielding to 'C.A.V.E. People,' which stands for citizens against virtually everything." In his next paragraph Stewart quoted from the report: "We are aware that there are very small groups of people here and there throughout the community -- who apparently take mean-spirited delight in second-guessing any and everything that city administration and CPD leadership does. However, through their own choices, I believe naysayers and second-guessers will make themselves irrelevant to the future."

I was one of the 350 people selected to be called and interviewed by telephone. None of the questions I was asked during the interview would have elicited anything even remotely close to the "C.A.V.E. People" comment which showed up in the report. The term is not in common usage in Coeur d'Alene. It has been used locally by one particular city council member and a Spokane newspaper gossip columnist who both seem intent on discrediting citizen advocates critically examining local government.

Stewart's article reported that The Results Group, LTD, also interviewed community "stakeholders", people identified by the city administration who would "most likely be key influencers of public opinion". One of those stakeholders was Idaho State Police Captain Clark Rollins. Given the highly inflammatory nature of the "C.A.V.E. People" comments, it is unlikely the consultant would have included them unless several respondents repeated them. I wondered if someone may have encouraged some of the stakeholders (those "key influencers of public opinion") to be certain The Results Group, LTD, interviewers heard the "C.A.V.E. People" message consistently and frequently enough to ensure its inclusion in the final report.

Why would I or anyone else care about the "C.A.V.E. People" allusion? Because the study was paid for with public money, and the newly hired police chief was given a copy of the report. He has indicated he will use it to form the department's action plan and mission statement. Effectively, someone appeared to be using this term to deride and discredit citizens for their efforts to shed light on Coeur d'Alene city government operations. I wanted to see the context surrounding the remarks and know exactly who made them. Couple that with Mr. Kane's comment about the uniquely high score, and it's clearly justified for someone to seek an objective review of the study.

Wanting to know more about the survey's methodology and the extent of the City's financial relationship with The Results Group, LTD, I sent an Idaho Public Records Law request to Coeur d'Alene City Clerk Susan Weathers on August 1. She reponded on August 3 that it would take the City another seven working days to assemble all the information. Her letter of August 14 said the City estimated it would cost $537.11, and it explained how that cost was determined. Her explanation strongly suggested that the City had more extensive dealings with The Results Group, LTD. For example, a Google search using "The Results Group, LTD" revealed this solicitation for The Sergeant's Academy presented by The Results Group, LTD, and sponsored by the Coeur d'Alene Police Department. It was my desire to learn just how much money The Results Group, LTD, is making by having an ongoing financial relationship with Coeur d'Alene. That knowledge would help support or refute any suggestions that The Results Group, LTD, study had been manipulated.

A review and screenshot of The Results Group, LTD, website on August 1, 2007, revealed this statement:

"Did You Know? ... that we don't want ANY one of our clients to ever put anything on a ballot - unless we can count the votes BEFORE the election? Contact us about helping you put together your next funding campaign - or helping you design an election campaign for public office!"

Since Coeur d'Alene will be having an election in November for three councilmember positions, the possible involvement of The Results Group, LTD, in any local political campaigns seemed a logical course of inquiry. Councilmembers who approved the contract with The Results Group, LTD are up for re-election. It will be interesting to see if any of their campaign finance reports reveal any affiliation with The Results Group, LTD, or its principals or agents.

Given all the preceding information, it was my intention to provide the public information sought to at least one and maybe more accredited university behavioral sciences departments (outside Idaho and beyond the reach of Idaho government officials) to ask for an evaluation of the quality and validity of the information for which the citizens of Coeur d'Alene had paid almost $30,000. This would have in effect been an objective peer review of The Results Group, LTD, work.

If anyone used false or misleading information or tactics to manipulate The Results Group, LTD's, report, then arguably the state crime of theft by deception has been committed. The citizens whose $30,000 was spent would be the victims since they would have been deprived of a truthful product. Not only would Coeur d'Alene residents be justifiably upset, so would The Results Group, LTD, if its professional reputation has been harmed by some external manipulation of its honest work product.

I asked the City to waive all the fees and costs associated with my Idaho Public Records Law request. State law provides for that waiver if the public's interest and the public's understanding of the operations or activities of government or its records would suffer by the assessment or collection of any fee. I explained that:

The public will better understand the financial relationship that exists between the City and a private contractor, The Results Group, LTD. The public is entitled to know the extent of that relationship so it can evaluate the validity and reliability of the information for which public money was paid.

The public will better understand why and how The Results Group, LTD, a private out-of-state contractor was selected to conduct the study in lieu ofusing the behavioral science research services available from colleges and universities.

The public, particularly students, will better understand the value of behavioral science research to the criminal justice system.

The public, particularly students, will better understand how to assess behavioral science research methodology and how to criticall evaluate contractors who seek to provide it.

The public will be able to make the work of this private out-0f-state contractor available for peer review by objective behavioral scientists not under any financial pressure from or obligation to the City. The police department is entitled to receive unbiased information, conclusions, and recommendations, and the public whose money funded the study is entitled to review what the police department received to ensure an absence of any bias.

Included with my waiver request was also a request that in order to make the information sought widely available to the public for its own review, the City should also place it in the North Idaho College Library, the Coeur d'Alene City Library, and the Kootenai Shoshone Area Library (Hayden Branch).

The City determined that I had failed to meet the legal standard required to have the fees and costs waived. By extension, it is also refusing to place the information I sought in the libraries unless I agree to pay for its placement.

So, the City's answer to my question about what did our nearly $30,000 in public money buy us is simple: Give us a check for $537.11 and agree to pay additional costs for copying and we'll tell you. (I wonder if the news media who received the report had to pay for it?)

I won't pay. Given what we know about how Coeur d'Alene City Hall operates, sending a check for $537.11 and agreeing to pay even more if the City says it needs more would be like going to a homebuilder who has already given me reason to distrust him, giving him all the money up front, and then hoping he delivers on his promise to build the house I want without ever showing me the plans. No one would be foolish enough to do that.

US Attorney Recusal - Chapter 2

2007-08-21T07:10:00.001-07:00

A Spokane, Washington, newspaper is reporting that Jim McDevitt, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington, will ask the US Department of Justice to appoint an outside US Attorney to investigate charges of public corruption in Spokane's River Park Square scandal.

This is the second highly publicized case in Spokane in which McDevitt has asked to step aside in favor of an outside US Attorney.

While the appointment of an outside US Attorney may seem truly extraordinary, it is not. Neither does is imply wrongdoing on McDevitt's part. The US Department of Justice recognizes that US Attorneys are very likely to have social and political interactions which could make it difficult for them to objectively investigate and prosecute figures in their communities.

For a detailed explanation of what can lead to an outside US Attorney being appointed, see the Whitecaps post titled McDevitt's Recusal dated May 20, 2005. The two hyperlinks in that post have been updated, however newspaper subscription may be required to open the link to the newspaper story.

The US Intelligence Community

2007-08-14T09:40:00.000-07:00

The US Intelligence Community is a collection of agencies responsible for various intelligence functions for our government.

The "official" version of who's who in the US Intelligence Community is available on the Community's own website.

A more readble description of the US Intelligence Community has just been updated by its author, Jeff Richelson. The book is titled The US Intelligence Community, Fifth Edition.

Preferential Treatment?

2007-08-06T08:12:00.000-07:00

Are there citizens who sometimes receive preferential police treatment because of their occupation or perceived prominence in the community?

In the last few days our local newspaper, the Coeur d'Alene Press, has reported how local police handled two different instances of citizens allegedly driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

In the first case a 66-year old retired Air Force fighter pilot failed a field sobriety test, passed the legally required breath test, but was evaluated by a police drug recognition "expert" as being under the influence of drugs. He was arrested and booked into the county jail. Two laboratory urinalyses revealed no drug impairment, and the charges were eventually dropped after waiting several weeks for the laboratory results.

In the second case a 53-year old high school coach failed a field sobriety test and passed the legally required breath test. The officer suspected drug impairment, however there was no police drug recognition "expert" available to evaluate the suspect. The coach was cited and given a ride home by the police officer. Unlike the suspect in the first case, the costs of towing the coach's car were paid by the city, and the coach received a personal apology from the police chief. Charges against the coach were dropped after the police chief contacted the state laboratory and requested them to expedite the testing which normally takes two weeks.

These two local arrests raise the question asked at the beginning of this post: Are there citizens who sometimes receive preferential police treatment because of their occupation or perceived prominence in the community?

Reading the two stories linked for the earlier examples, one could easily answer "maybe."

But are there ever instances when the answer changes from "maybe" to "absolutely?"

Yes, if the driver suspected of driving under the influence is a police officer.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reviewed "...seven years' worth of internal discipline records, arrest reports, accident reports, license-suspension files and court documents statewide," and found conclusive evidence that police officers often receive preferential treatment when facing drunk driving arrests themselves. In their August 6, 2007, online article titled A broken system works in favor of cops busted for DUI, Seattle Post-Intelligencer investigative reporters Eric Nalder and Lewis Kamb noted, "Cops confronted with a drunken-driving arrest fare better than the average citizen."

Carefully reading the Post-Intelligencer article will reveal that many of the officers involved apparently believed their occupational choice (law enforcement) entitled them to the preferential treatment they sought and sometimes received. They wanted sympathy and empathy, not objectivity, from their fellow officers, and they apparently had no reservations about expressing that expectation of entitlement to the arresting officer.

Addendum, August 8, 2007: There is a followup article titled When cops let fellow cops drive drunk in today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer. It talks about the very real, personal consequences to an officer whose fellow officers empowered his career-ending addiction. We, the people, contribute to addictions by police officers when we set unreasonably high and unattainable expectations for their performance. Law enforcement is an occupational choice, not a calling.

Judicial Security

2007-08-03T07:40:00.000-07:00

If federal and state judges are concerned for their own safety, even inside their supposedly "secure" courtrooms, how attentively will they be able to focus on their cases?

The murder of a Georgia Superior Court judge in his courtroom in March 2005 certainly brought the issue of judicial security to the public's attention.

In 2005 the National Center for State Courts and the National Sheriff's Association commissioned the US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, to prepare a plan for judicial security. That plan, A National Strategic Plan for Judicial Branch Security, was authored by Pamela Casey and presented to the sponsors on February 7, 2006.

Then on July 9, 2007, the Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, released an updated report titled, Judicial Security: Responsibilities and Current Issues. That updated report focused attention primarily on the security of the federal judiciary but also recognized that state judges far outnumber federal judges and are equally at risk.

Public Corruption Update

2007-07-30T09:41:00.000-07:00

Though things seem to slow down in the summer, the corruption of public officials goes on.

As a reminder, here's a link to some current examples of public corruption crime investigations.

Readers will notice these are federal investigations. Local law enforcement and prosecutors often do not have the political courage, the professional integrity, the skill, or the resources to effectively conduct public corruption investigations.

Addendum: Well, well, well. If US Senators aren't immune from the law, maybe there is hope that some of our state and local officials in Idaho will find themselves on the receiving end of a federal visit.

Does This Sound Familiar?

2007-07-24T07:06:00.000-07:00

The Tuesday, July 24, 2007, online edition of The New York Times leads with an article headlined Spitzer Aides Cited for Use of Police to Tarnish Bruno. The Times article reports how aides to New York Governor Eliot Spitzer "...improperly used the State Police to gather information about the governor’s chief rival, Joseph L. Bruno, the State Senate majority leader, in an effort to plant a negative story about Mr. Bruno and damage him politically, according to a report on Monday by the attorney general’s office."

Does that sound just a little familiar?

To refresh your memory, re-read Whitecaps February 7, 2007, post titled Trust and Confidence Violated. It recounts how an Idaho State Police Detective Captain reportedly just couldn't wait to report the juicy details of a citizen activist's complaint and the complainant's identity to (get this!) the Coeur d'Alene City Administrator Wendy Gabriel. Now why would he want to do that, you might reasonably ask. Could it be because her father is a recently-retired state legislator, and his current wife is a state appointee with gubernatorial aspirations? A little nest-feathering, perhaps?

The misuse of law enforcement agencies, information, and surveys for political purposes is at least unethical if not illegal. In New York, it may bring down the Governor and get the acting superintendent of the New York State Police and some of the Governor's aides fired. In Idaho, it may get cops and political hacks promoted.

Antitrust Crimes Hurt Taxpayers and Consumers

2007-07-20T08:30:00.000-07:00

Mention antitrust crimes to a group of people in the Inland Northwest and their eyes are likely to glaze over. Once the glaze has cleared, someone will ask what antitrust law has to do with the way business is conducted here. It's a reasonable question. Rarely would too many people living in the Inland Northwest think that the city and county officials or local businesses could violate federal criminal antitrust laws.

They could.

People who do recognize the term "antitrust" usually associate it with huge national or international cases such as the breakup of AT&T (monopoly), Samsung's $300 million criminal fine (price fixing), or F. Hoffman-La Roche's $500 million criminal fine (price fixing and market allocation). But antitrust crimes are committed in communities throughout the United States.

A brief and grossly oversimplified explanation of "trust" is helpful to understand the how its abuse created the need for antitrust law.

A "trust" in law is created when money or property is owned and managed by one person, several persons, or an organization for the benefit of another. One of the principal advantages of a "trust" is that its terms are private and not subject to public disclosure. It is that advantage, privacy, that was exploited early on by American corporations who sought to hide their illegal activities behind the veil of the trust. So abusive did this become that the US Congress found it necessary to pass several antitrust laws, the two best known being the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914.

The term "antitrust" is somewhat misleading as used in the laws' titles, because its use implies that trusts are inherently illegal. A trust, if not abused, is lawful and beneficial. It was the abuse of the trust, hiding illegal restraints on trade and interstate commerce behind the veil of the trust, that spawned the laws.

To get a much clearer understanding of the types of antitrust crimes and, more importantly, how they affect us, the consumers, see Price Fixing and Bid Rigging - They Happen: What They Are and What To Look For. Though subtitled as "An Antitrust Primer for Procurement Professionals," it could just as easily have been called a "Consumer Protection Handbook." What may interest readers most is the section that describes several common forms of criminal collusion, including:

Price fixing (an agreement between "competitors" to raise, fix, or otherwise maintain the price at which their goods or services are sold)
Bid rigging (conspiring "competitors" agree in advance among themselves who will submit the winning bid, then each structures his bid accordingly). Bid rigging can take several forms which include bid suppression, complementary bidding, and bid rotation.

To learn how antitrust crimes directly affect taxpayers and consumer and lhow we can participate in stopping them, read the US Department of Justice's publication Antitrust Enforcement and the Consumer.

A detailed and readable article but directed more at attorneys who are trying to help clients recognize and resist price fixing, market allocation, and bid rigging can be found in the American Bar Association's article titled Collusion Central Helping your clients deal with price fixers written by Daniel R. Karon. The article appeared in the January/February 2002 issue of "ABA Section of Business Law."

Price fixing, market allocation, and bid rigging are per se violations of federal law. That means once the scheme has been established, it cannot be justified by imaginative interpretations of the law. Or as Karon noted in his article cited in the preceding paragraph:

This means that where such collusive schemes have been established, the violators cannot justify their conduct by arguments or evidence that their agreed-on prices were reasonable or that their agreements were necessary to avoid destructive competition or price cutting or were intended to achieve some pro-competitive purpose.

And speaking of the law, the one that is frequently used in federal antitrust investigations and prosecutions is the Sherman Antitrust Act (15 USC §§ 1-7). The most common violations of the Sherman Act -- and the violations most likely to be prosecuted criminally -- are price fixing, bid rigging, and territorial or customer allocation among competitors (commonly described as "horizontal agreements"). As noted earlier, the essence of antitrust crimes is they illegally restrain business competition in interstate commerce. This hurts us consumers by driving up the costs of goods and services.

For a brief introduction to each Section of the Sherman Antitrust Act, see the US Department of Justice's Antitrust Division Manual. For now, pay particular attention to Section A (Statutes Enforced by the Antitrust Division, Chapter 1 (Sherman Antitrust Act). Remember that, "Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal."

Almost every community has major construction projects underway. Some are multimillion dollar projects, and for small- to medium-sized metropolitan areas, that's a lot of money. Where there's that kind of money available with little effective government oversight, there will be predators who will try to bend or even break the laws to get more than their share. They care little that the honest businesspeople and the consumers will be harmed by their greed and predation.

The construction industry is ripe for both bid-rigging and customer allocation antitrust violations. The article Construction: Conspiracy Conviction in International Bid-Rigging Scheme Upheld gives a readable and easily understood example of bid-rigging. As you read the article, don't be misled into thinking that this only happens in "big" international contracts. It can happen locally as easily.

Here's a purely hypothetical example of how an apparently local construction project in Ourtown, Anystate, USA, could violate the Sherman Act.

Suppose the Ourtown mayor and city government desperately wanted an important "improve our city's image" construction project funded in large part by money from out-of-state but also with some local public money in a public-private partnership. When finished, the building and land will be owned by the project manager's employer. That project would be worth several million dollars to the general contractor and subcontractors.

The Ourtown mayor and other public officials would like the out-of-state money to remain in Ourtown as much as possible, so the Mayor approaches the project manager and the general contractor and suggests that a particular local company be selected as one of the subcontractors. In fact, the Mayor and other officials strongly suggest that the work to be done by the local company not be competitively bid, that the contract to the local company be sole-sourced.

Now, it makes little sense for the project manager and the general contractor to accede to the Mayor's request to sole-source rather than competitively bid the subcontract. After all, sole-sourcing it could and probably would increase their costs, thereby reducing their profit. But the Mayor has an imaginative, albeit very illegal, solution. In return for receiving the sole-source contract, that local company will kick back a substantial amount of money to the project administrator's employer. The sole-source contract is worth considerably more to the local company than it will have to kick back to "win" the subcontract.

What would really make the local company happy, though, is if the Ourtown Mayor and city government agreed to quietly reimburse the local company for its kickback. So here's how they might do that.

Ourtown can't legally put any more public money directly to the project, so it uses some ruse or deception to route it to the preferred subcontractor. The preferred subcontractor banks the money, lets it cool off and clean up, then at a politically opportune time, the subcontractor magnanimously and very publicly donates the money to the project. Problem solved. Public money which could not be legally spent on the project has been laundered to look like a private donation.

In our purely hypothetical example, there are elements of bribery, money laundering, and possibly income tax evasion (if the subcontractor who laundered the kickback claims it as a federal or state tax deduction) , but where's the antitrust violation?

When the Mayor of Ourtown exerted pressure on the project manager and the general contractor to award a sole-source contract to the local subcontractor, the Mayor and his co-conspirators effectively made it impossible for other subcontractors to be considered for the work. That restrained the commerce and trade opportunity for other qualified contractors.

But wait. What if the project manager, the general contractor, and the Mayor of Ourtown claimed that the local subcontractor was the only company qualified to do the work? That may very well have been a reasonable and defensible argument. There are rare occasions like that. The questions then must be asked: How did they determine only that subcontractor was uniquely qualified? Was the statement of work tailored so it could be fulfilled only by the selected subcontractor? What was Ourtown's and the general contractor's work histories with the subcontractor? Had the subcontractor done extensive work with both and consistently produced satisfactory results on similar projects? Or conversely, had the subcontractor effectively defaulted on previous contracts with the City and never worked with the general contractor? If it is the latter, it begins to look more like a collusive agreement to restrain trade.

So what can the construction industry do to avoid committing antitrust violations, specifically bid-rigging? As it turns out, the US Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, addressed that very issue in its 1983 publication (updated in May 2007) entitled Suggestions for the Detection and Prevention of Construction Contract Bid Rigging. This is a rather technical article written primarily for the highway construction industry, however the principles apply reasonably well throughout the various construction industries.

What if prevention doesn't work? What if the crimes get committed? What can be done?

Criminal violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act are investigated and prosecuted by the US Department of Justice (DoJ). Its procedures are explained in detail in the DoJ's Antitrust Division Manual, Chapter III, Investigation and Case Development. Usually the criminal investigation will be handled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation after receiving a referal from DoJ.

But what if, as in the hypothetical Ourtown example above, the antitrust violation is not a huge nationwide or international conspiracy? What if it's just a relatively local issue? Is the US Department of Justice really likely to invest its resources in a local economic crime? And what if Ourtown's prosecuting attorney and law enforcement agency have not the political will, legal or investigative skill, or resources to investigate and prosecute? Aren't local consumers who are being victimized by antitrust crime predators left hanging to twist slowly, slowly in the wind?

Not necessarily.

In March 1996 the National Association of Attorneys General and the US Department of Justice announced their joint Protocol for Increased State Prosecution of Criminal Antitrust Offenses. The Protocol allows "... for increased prosecution by State Attorneys General of some criminal antitrust matters that have been previously prosecuted by the United States. This protocol defines the circumstances where the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice ... may transfer prosecutorial responsibility, including the relevant evidence, for certain antitrust offenses to State Attorneys General ... In general, this procedure will be implemented for offenses including, but not limited to, bid rigging and/or price fixing in localized markets." The activation of the Protocol depends primarily on the state Attorney General having the willingness as well as the invesatigative and legal resources to undertake the criminal prosecution. Note that this solution does not involve the local prosecuting attorney.

Antitrust crimes directly affect consumers. Consumers (that's all of us) must be directly involved in the solutions. We do not need to roll over and play dead simply because large companies and public officials are involved in committing them. Shine the light on abusive trust relationships and watch the cockroaches scatter.

Fusion Centers Revisited

2007-07-10T09:18:00.000-07:00

Whitecaps July 5, 2006, post titled Fusion Centers linked the reader to two US Department of Justice guideline documents concerning fusion centers. Fusion centers were defined as a, "...collaborative effort of two or more agencies that provide resources, expertise, and/or information to the center with the goal of maximizing the ability to detect, prevent, apprehend, and respond to criminal and terrorist activity."

Now just a year later, the Congressional Research Service has prepared its own report for Congress. That 100-page report dated July 6, 2007, and titled Fusion Centers: Issues and Options for Congress, elaborates on the economic, social, legal, and political issues surrounding fusion centers.

Ethical Law Enforcement Behavior

2007-07-03T07:00:00.000-07:00

We, the People, have authorized law enforcement officers to exercise certain functions so they can properly enforce ordinances and laws. Because these functions can involve limited and brief suspension of constitutionally guaranteed civil rights, we expect law enforcement officers will perform them lawfully and with reasonable restraint. We also expect that the authority to exercise these special authorities will be used thoughtfully and judiciously. Because we entrust the functions to law enforcement officers, we expect they will not violate our trust by using them unethically.

In its June 2007 issue of The Police Chief magazine, the International Association of Chiefs of Police once again emphasizes the importance of ethical behavior by law enforcement officers. It addresses the potential for abuse in four areas:

Critical Incident Response - US Attorneys

2007-06-29T12:08:00.000-07:00

When one thinks of a national-level critical incident such as the Ruby Ridge or Branch Dividian standoffs, the World Trade Center or Oklahoma City bombings, or the attacks in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC on September 11, 2001, one does not think of United States Attorneys as being first responders.

They are. "Each of 93 United States Attorneys (U.S. Attorneys) is the chief federal law enforcement officer within his or her particular jurisdiction and serves as the principal litigator under the direction of the Attorney General."

Critical incidents include acts of terrorism, hostage situations, and natural disasters. Typically, these events involve one or more of the following factors (although the presence of one factor by itself does not automatically mean that an incident is critical):

Involves threats or acts of violence against government or social institutions.
Involves significant loss of life, significant injuries, or significant damage to property.
Demands use of substantial resources.
Attracts close public scrutiny through the media.
Requires coordination among federal law enforcement agencies (more so than usual), state or local law enforcement agencies, local or state prosecutors, emergency relief services, or emergency response services.
Requires ongoing communication with upper-level personnel at the Department.

In the event of a critical incident the U.S. Attorney is the on-scene legal decision maker and is responsible for managing the Department’s response by, among other things:

Facilitating coordination and communication with federal, state, and local officials and prosecutors;
Preparing and securing search warrants;
Assisting law enforcement personnel in interviewing witnesses;
Making legal decisions, such as granting immunity;
Appearing before grand juries; and
Advising law enforcement personnel when necessary on collecting and preserving evidence.

To meet their responsibilities for critical incident reponses, each of the 93 US Attorneys was required to develop a critical incident response plan. The plans were coordinated by the Crisis Management Coordinator program under the guidance of the Justice Department's Counterterrorism Section and the Executive Office for United States Attorneys.

The program's effectiveness is periodically evaluated by the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General. The most recent evaluation was the January 2007 Follow-up Review of the Critical Incident Response Plans of the United States Attorneys’ Offices - Evaluation and Inspections Report I-2007-001.

Police Executive Accountability

2007-06-19T08:30:00.000-07:00

There's an interesting story building in Seattle. The ultimate question being asked is how much should the Seattle Police Department's chief executive officer, Gil Kerlikowske, have intervened in adjudicating the allegations of unlawful conduct by two patrol officers during a fairly routine drug arrest. The issue is relevant to Seattle's civilian review of police internal investigations of alleged officer misconduct.

The lead in today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer (P-I) story headlined Seattle council president calls for chiefs to be subject to review reads:

In the face of a confidential report critical of the Seattle Police Department, City Council President Nick Licata has renewed his call to subject the police chief and the fire chief to periodic reconfirmation by the council.

The P-I article, written by reporter Neil Modie, provides little detailed information about the report prepared by the independent Office of Professional Accountability (OPA), the civilian review board that oversees the police department's internal affairs unit.

In contrast, the lead in today's Seattle Times (Times) article headlined Scathing report says chief interfered with cop probe reads:

Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske repeatedly interfered in an investigation into the actions of a pair of officers, damaging the credibility of the police force to the point that increased oversight is needed, according to a civilian-review board report.

The Times article contained far more detail. In addition it provided links to several documents including the OPA's report Chief Kerlikowske said he had not yet seen. The Times linked documents are linked below.

Criminal justice students may want to review the links to get a better understanding of how police conduct is examined by civilian review boards and by outside agencies. Journalists and bloggers can also compare and contrast the news coverage by the P-I versus the Times.

Organized Crime - Revisited

2007-06-17T07:20:00.000-07:00

In April of this year Whitecaps posted three pieces about the changing faces and places of organized crime.

The (non)Faces of Organzed Crime in Northern Idaho

Put Up or...

One Face of Northern Idaho Organized Crime

It was not surprising that some commenters were amused or annoyed that Whitecaps would even suggest northern Idaho has organized crime. The amused were those in denial. They refuse to believe regardless of overwhelming evidence. The annoyed were some who are profiting either directly or indirectly from it.

In May 2007 The Police Chief magazine published an article authored by William F. Bratton, Chief of Police, Los Angeles, California. In his article, titled The Mutation of the Illicit Trade Market, Chief Bratton notes that, "...organized-crime entities have morphed from the traditional fixed hierarchies with controlling leaders or families to more decentralized, loosely linked, multiple networks that come together and cooperate only on an opportunistic basis and then separate. "

These evolutionary changes have made it both possible and easier for organized crime networks to become active in arenas beyond their traditional dealings in drugs, prostitution, gambling, and money laundering. They're diversified. Now they're into real estate mortgage fraud and (again quoting Chief Bratton's article) "...the very profitable sale of untaxed cigarettes, human trafficking, and counterfeiting of virtually any product" such as baby formula, prescription pharmaceuticals, wearing apparel, and over-the-counter health products.

As organized crime group definitions have become less distinct, it has become even more difficult for law enforcement to recognize them and mount a counterattack. It requires strong state and federal laws and imaginative, aggressive, and honest prosecutors and investigators. It also requires local and state governments, particularly legislators, work harder to educate themselves about the changing faces and tactics of organized crime. Once educated, legislators must ensure their states' laws are up-to-date and provide the framework necessary for investigators and prosecutors to investigate and prosecute organized crime.

It should shock no one to hear that those involved in organized crime are well aware that the honest public officials and law enforcement officers represent a significant threat to the success of their illicit efforts. Thus, organized crime entities place the corruption of local and state public officials and law enforcement high on their list of priorities. If they "own" the lawmakers and other elected and appointed officials, regulators, and law enforcement officers, their lucrative criminal enterprises will prosper.

Addendum 06-19-2007: Whitecaps offers a big thank-you to Stebbijo at stebbijo.com and the INWBA for passing along the link to the indictment Stebbijo mentioned in her comment appended to this post.

The State of the Nation's Housing - 2007

2007-06-12T07:22:00.000-07:00

The Tuesday, June 12, 2007, Seattle Post-Intelligencer (P-I) carries a story headlined Homes cited as too costly for too many by P-I reporter Aubrey Cohen. The story's lede reads:

The U.S. housing market will struggle with too much supply and falling prices for a while yet, but its biggest problem is that homes are too expensive for too many families, according to a report released Monday.

The study Cohen's article refers to is titled The State of the Nation's Housing 2007. It was published by Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. This annual report looks at the current pressures facing the nation’s housing markets and beyond them to the underpinnings of long run housing supply and demand.

Why include the findings from a nationally respected annual housing study in a blog that focuses on crime and security in the inland Northwest? Because stable, affordable housing and jobs that pay liveable wages are two essentials to reducing predatory criminal behavior among people who have neither.

Presidential Directives

2007-06-11T08:45:00.000-07:00

How much power does the President of the United States really have?

Can he just snap his fingers and create a directive that has the same force and effect as a law created by the legislature and signed by the President?

A report titled Presidential Directives: Background and Overview helps clarify how much authority the President really has. The report was prepared for Congress by the Congressional Research Service and updated for release on April 23, 2007.

It has a discussion of not only executive orders and proclamations but also of Homeland Security Presidential Directives, national security instruments, and others including verbal presidential announcements.

Kootenai County Property Taxes and Mortgage Fraud

2007-06-09T09:00:00.000-07:00

Within the next few days most Kootenai County property owners will have received their notice of 2007 Property Assesments. It is quite likely most assessed valuations will increase significantly. If you appeal your assesment and ask why your assessment is so much higher, you'll be given the usual reasons: many brand new and more expensive houses near yours, many houses sold at very high sales prices. Appeal denied. Just pay your taxes.

But what if the prices of the new home construction and the existing home sales had been artificially inflated? What if your home and others had been initially appraised for far more than they are really worth? What if your development and the homes in it were not built in compliance with required codes? What if lenders had either innocently or complicitly given you and your neighbors mortgage and construction loans for more that your homes were really worth?

The answer is that your property and nearby ones would be assessed by the County above their "actual" value. They would be assessed at an inflated value. And you'd be screwed. Thrice over. You'd first be screwed because your home is worth less than what you've paid for it. You'd be screwed the second time because you're paying higher property taxes than you should to Kootenai County. And if your home's infrastructure does not comply with applicable codes (e.g., inspections were not done at all, they were done from the office, they were done by unqualified inspectors, or they were "drive-by" inspections), you may be living in a home falsely certified safe by fraudulent inspections.

Please look back at a few Whitecaps posts about mortgage fraud. Pay particular attention to the information about appraisal fraud. Do any of the conditions in any of the posts apply to you? If they do, talk with your attorney to see what civil recourse you may have to protect the value of what for most of us is our largest investment, your home. When you're talking with your attorney, discuss mortgage fraud in Kootenai County with him.

If you believe you have been criminally defrauded (mortgage fraud is an umbrella term that includes several federal crimes), talk with your attorney about making an appointment to talk with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I'd strongly discourage you from going to the local, county, or state police or the county prosecutor. If you decide to talk with the FBI, please ask your attorney to help you prepare by drawing up a list of specific allegations with a list of the facts you have to support each allegation. You may want to take your attorney with you to the appointment. You're not a suspect; you're a victim, but your attorney may help save time and keep the conversation focused on items meaningful to investigators.

As homeowners we all have to pay property taxes. That's a fact of life. However, the assessed valuation of our properties should be based on honest data. If the values of our homes and the homes that influence our property's value have been artificially inflated, we are all paying too much in property taxes. Worse, our investment's true value has been reduced. Protect yourself. Educate yourself about mortgage fraud. Hopefully you will find you have not been a victim. If you have been victimized by dishonest developers, builders, appraisers, government inspectors, and lenders, then act!

Terrorist Precursor Crimes

2007-06-07T13:15:00.000-07:00

"Terrorist groups, regardless of ideological ilk, geographical location, or organizational structure, have certain basic needs in common: funding, security, operatives/support, propaganda, and means and/or appearance of force. In order to meet these needs, terrorists engage in a series of activities, some of which are legal, many of which are not." In other words, terrorists in place in the United States are likely to commit crimes to provide or acquire many of their needs.

The crimes they employ are likely to include the various frauds, petty crimes such as theft, identity counterfeiting and theft , counterfeiting of goods (knockoffs), illicit drug trade, and firearms thefts. These crimes are often precursors to the actual terrorist act(s), so they become potential indicators. For that reason, they need more careful analysis beyond their seemingly local nature.

Beyond the federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, various state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies are well-positioned to intervene in precursor crimes. The challenge for them is to look beyond the immediate arrests to see if there is more than meets the eye. It is the responsibility of the federal agencies to educate the state, local, and tribal authorities to better carry out their roles in recognizing and responding to terrorist precursor crimes.

To help Congress better understand the nature and expanse of terrorist precursor crimes, the Congressional Research Service prepared a 30-page report for Congress entitled Terrorist Precursor Crimes: Issues and Options for Congress. The report was released May 24, 2007.

Quarantine

2007-06-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

Biological agents are viable terrorist weapons, however they are frequently lower on the list of risks because they are not as predictable, controllable, and reliable as explosives or chemical agents. We may need to elevate them on the perception of risk scale.

Follow the case and travels of Andrew Speaker. His travels throughout the world have caused international epidemiological red flags to be raised. He has shown no outwardly alarming symptoms, however he is receiving treatment for a difficult to treat strain of tuberculosis. Because of this, the international reaction has been monumental in response to a perception of potential threat.

That one man can cause such an international reaction makes people wonder how much greater the reaction would be if terrorists began using multiple human vectors in much the same way they use suicide bombers.

Inevitably, that consideration raises the prospect of quarantine. The authority of federal and state officials to issue quarantine orders and enforce them, forcibly if necessary, is discussed in the Congressional Research Service's January 23, 2007, report for Congress titled Federal and State Quarantine Isolation Authority. The report update includes a discussion of the Constitutional issues raised by quarantine, it identifies the federal quarantine authority, and it explains how the US military can be used to enforce health measures.

Report: School Districts' Emergency Planning

2007-05-29T06:52:00.000-07:00

There are no federal laws requiring school districts to have emergency management plans. However, 32 states have laws or policies requiring school districts to have them. It will come as no surprise to residents of northern Idaho that our state is not among them.

It isn't as if there is no funding available. The Departments of Education and Homeland Security provide funding for emergency management planning in schools.

To get some idea of the nationwide status of school districts' emergency planning and preparedness, read the Government Accountability Office (GAO) study released May 17, 2007, and titled Emergency Management - Status of School Districts' Planning and Preparedness.

Freedom of Speech and Press - Exceptions

2007-05-23T08:02:00.000-07:00

Recently a Coeur d'Alene community activist was talking with a woman who is also a member of the school board, a member of our community college's board of trustees, and a police sergeant. During the conversation the woman advocated an action which would violate Idaho law. When the activist pointed out how the woman's objective could be achieved without violating state law, the woman reportedly said, "That's ludicrous." Subsequently in a weblog post, the community activist referred to the woman as a "snake" for her willingness to violate state law when lawful but less convenient and less expedient methods were available. Was his characterization of her an exercise of his free speech or defamation?

There are exceptions to free speech and press. To provide Congress with an overview of some of the exceptions, the Library of Congress's Congressional Research Service published a 43-page report for Congress titled Freedom of Speech and Press: Exceptions to the First Amendment.

Issues covered in the report include:

Obscenity
Child pornography
Content-based restrictions
Non-content based restrictions
Prior restraint
Commercial speech
Defamation
Speech harmful to children
Children's First Amendment rights
Time, place, and manner restrictions
Incidental restrictions
Symbolic speech
Compelled speech
Radio and television
Freedom of speech and government funding
Free speech rights of government employees and government contractors

Mortgage Fraud - It Isn't Going Away

2007-05-21T07:35:00.000-07:00

Suppose a politicial jurisdiction, maybe a city or a county, has an obligation to inspect and certify that land has been properly prepared for residential or commercial construction. That jurisdiction's certification becomes an assurance to lenders that foundations and porches won't crumble and that sewer and water lines were installed according to applicable codes so they won't leak. And what if that same jurisdiction has an obligation to make similar certification inspections of structures to assure compliance with other applicable codes?

Lenders, their appraisers, and property buyers alike rely on those certifying inspections by the jurisdiction's inspectors, because once the dirt has been compacted or thrown in the trench, it's may be months or years before the consequences of substandard workmanship certified by deficient inspections ooze to the surface.

The same lenders, appraisers, and buyers rely on the jurisdiction's building inspections to ensure there really is a vapor seal under that siding, that structural, plumbing, and electrical work is safe and code-compliant, and that an array of other hidden work has been done as promised.

What if the jurisdiction didn't have enough inspectors to handle the additional inspections associated with the area's construction boom? Instead of aggravating developers and builders by insisting on conducting diligent compliance inspections, what if the jurisdiction's officials told its inspectors to only do a few occasional field inspections and then just sign off on the rest as if inspections had really been done? Wouldn't that be misleading?

It would not only be misleading, it would quite likely be criminal. Misrepresenting to lenders, appraisers, and buyers that property meets a promised standard of safety and quality when it does not results in the property being valued higher than justified. The property with the artificially inflated valuation receives a mortgage loan higher than it should, and that puts the lender and property owner at risk. That is mortgage fraud.

Whether the housing and commercial market is hot or cold, mortgage fraud still exists.

Today's New York Times has an article about it. The article by Julie Creswell is titled Mortgage fraud is up, but not in their back yards. The story talks about Atlanta's "All-Broad Fraud Squad", ladies who endured the put-downs from law enforcement and mortgage lenders alike to expose and educate about mortgage fraud in Atlanta.

Just after the first of the year, Whitecaps did a series of posts relating to mortgage fraud. Here's links to them:

Mortgage Loan Fraud

Appraisal Fraud in Real Estate

The President's Corporate Fraud Task Force

Bank Examiner! Halt or I'll Put On My Green Eyeshade!

FBI Financial Crime Report for 2006

As the residential and commercial construction market begins to cool, there will be less news coverage about mortgage fraud. The absence of news coverage doesn't mean mortgage fraud is going away. It isn't. Honest lenders, appraisers, and buyers need to be as vigilant as ever. And they need to be as persistent as Atlanta's All-Broad Fraud Squad.

Vishing

2007-05-18T08:35:00.000-07:00

The availability and growing popularity of Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has spawned "vishing", a variation of phishing. Vishing couples the anonymity available on the Internet with the communications technology and social engineering needed to exploit victims.

The vishing scheme and scam is described in these webpages by the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Maybe There Is Hope After All

2007-05-16T07:28:00.000-07:00

If the accounts in today's New York Times and Washington Post are accurate and reasonably complete, our country came very close to seeing a reprise of Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre.

It is reassuring to know that then Attorney General John Ashcroft, his chief of staff David Ayres, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and then Acting AG James Comey were willing to resign in principle over the attempt by President Bush, his former chief of staff Andrew Card, and the current Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to circumvent the Constitutional rule of law in March 2004.

It takes courage and character to jeopardize one's own future by defending principles at any level of government. It takes a strong will for citizens and officials to stand tall knowing they will be viciously and repeatedly attacked by those who lust for power and abuse it willingly once they have it.

It must have stunned President Bush when Ashcroft, Ayres, Mueller, Comey and the others demonstrated their moral and professional courage and reminded him that the law of the land is based on the Constitution, not on the political expedience of a President, his slimeball chief of staff, and a scumbag attorney.

Maybe there is hope after all.

Official Ignorance

2007-05-12T12:10:00.000-07:00

On April 20, 2007, I submitted a request for public information to the Lake City Development Corporation (LCDC), Coeur d'Alene, Idaho's urban renewal agency. Idaho's Open Records Law does not prescribe that records requests must follow a specific format, however the LCDC does conveniently provide its own REQUEST FOR PUBLIC INFORMATION and/or RECORDS form on its website. If the LCDC's website is down, a copy of the form I used is available here. My request was sent via Certified Mail from the same post office in which the LCDC's mailbox is located.

Note that at the bottom of LCDC's own form is the mailing address LCDC specifically instructs requestors to use when submitting requests pursuant to the Idaho Open Records law. That address, PO Box 3450, Coeur d'Alene, ID 83816, is the same official mailing address listed by LCDC elsewhere on its website.

On May 7, 2007, the United States Postal Service (USPS) returned my Certified Mail request. The Certified Mail letter had been unclaimed by LCDC. Here is a scan of the returned envelope. The markings applied by the USPS provide useful information.

First, I mailed the letter on April 20, 2007, from the post office with ZIP code 83814. If an agency has a post office box at that post office, that agency's ZIP code is 83816. My Certified Mail letter never left that post office. Official handling was minimized.

As the USPS-applied imprint on the returned envelope shows, the "1st NOTICE" was placed in the LCDC's mailbox on "4-20-2007." That notice included only the article number (the 20-digit number on the "Certified Mail" sticker applied by USPS) and the date and time delivery was attempted. It included no information about the sender. The intended recipient would have to take the USPS notice to the counter to collect or refuse the mailing.

Second, a "2nd NOTICE" was placed in the LCDC's mailbox on "4/26." That notice contained the same information as the first.

Third, after the addressee failed to take either of the two notices to the counter, the USPS stamped the envelope "UNCLAIMED" and noted the "RETURNED" date as "5/5." Since "5/5" was a Saturday, the unclaimed Certified Mail envelope and contents were returned to me personally (I signed for it from the letter carrier) on Monday, May 7, 2007.

The designation "UNCLAIMED" has a specific meaning for the USPS. When a Certified Mail letter or parcel is "UNCLAIMED", it means the addressee has made no attempt to collect the item or identify the sender. The addressee, the LCDC Executive Director, could have taken either of the two notices from his mail box to the post office's counter and then refused the letter. If that had happened, the Certified Mail envelope would have been stamped "REFUSED", not "UNCLAIMED."

Certified Mail provides the sender with not only proof of delivery but also with proof of attempted delivery. In other words, a Certified Mail letter or parcel prevents the addressee from ignoring it, then saying, "It must have been lost in the mail."

One might suggest that perhaps the LCDC Executive Director was out of town or on vacation or otherwise indisposed and was unable to pick up his mail. That excuse, if offered, would be refuted on two counts.

First, the LCDC Executive Director was seen in Coeur d'Alene by several persons between April 20 and May 5.

Second, on Friday, April 27, 2007, I handcarried a sealed envelope to the Coeur d'Alene City Hall. The envelope contained a scanned copy of the completed LCDC form and a brief cover letter telling the addressee about the Certified Mail in his post office mailbox. The letter's inside address and envelope were the same: Tony Berns, LCDC Executive Director, City Hall, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. There was no return address on the envelope. The City Hall receptionist accepted the envelope without any hesitation or question, arose from her chair, and said, "Sure, I'll put it right in his mailbox." The following Monday, April 30, I received a telephone call from LCDC Executive Director Tony Berns telling me he had received my letter and "...will get to work on it." On May 2, 2007, I received a first-class mailing on LCDC letterhead. The mailing was in response to the item I had left at City Hall. The response was on LCDC letterhead and had been dated April 30, 2007.

What this episode tells me is that in addition to its "public" address, the LCDC uses one or more accommodation addresses. One of LCDC's accommodation addresses is the Coeur d'Alene City Hall. There may be others such as one or more private mail boxes (PMB).

It's certainly not illegal for a public entity such as LCDC to use accommodation addresses. In fact, it sometimes makes sense. It should ensure that important and time sensitive items such as checks, bills, applications, and Idaho Open Records Law requests receive prompt attention. PMBs have the benefit of being willing to distribute not only US mail deliveries but also parcels from outside couriers such as UPS or FedEx.

So why would the LCDC, a public agency, engage in the extremely unusual business practice of specifying only one US mail delivery address and then failing to collect Certified Mail sent to that address? Wouldn't a conscientious administrator of a public agency be concerned that he might miss something important if its mail wasn't diligently collected? Of course he would. The answer is that the LCDC has provided "insiders," its friends and business associates, with an address to which they can send material and be assured it will receive prompt attention. Conversely, LCDC can be reasonably sure that anything sent to the PO Box 3450 has been sent by an "outsider" and can safely be delayed or ignored.

Well, if that's so, why didn't the LCDC Executive Director simply ignore my request left at City Hall? My guess is that if he had decided he didn't want to answer it, my request would have been administratively lost and ignored. But as it happens, someone other than I had already asked the same question and received an answer from the Mayor. That allowed Berns to conveniently use the same answer he and the Mayor had given to the earlier inquiry. Thus, he felt he could safely respond to my request with the identical answer.

That the Executive Director of the LCDC who makes more than $100,000 per year intentionally ignores Certified Mail sent to the LCDC's one public mail address ought to concern not only Coeur d'Alene's honest citizens but also its Mayor and City Council.

The Mayor and City Council are supposed to be overseeing the LCDC's Executive Director and Board of Commissioners, supervising them, to ensure that LCDC is responsive to the public's interests. Clearly, supervision in the public interest by the Mayor and City Council isn't happening.

Idaho's legislators have begun to recognize that Idaho's urban renewal laws need to be revised to preserve their benevolent potential while curbing the kinds of abuses that are occurring in Coeur d'Alene. The urban renewal task force expected to be formed by the Legislature in mid-May is a step in the right direction. Legislation reining in the abuses by the LCDC is badly needed, because Coeur d'Alene's Mayor and City Council are failing to fulfill their supervisory duties and obligations to the public. Those abuses don't just affect Coeur d'Alene's citizens. They affect all Kootenai County taxpayers.

Public Officials Accepting Bribes

2007-05-07T08:00:00.000-07:00

Public officials who accept bribes or gratuities sometimes think because the dollar amounts are low or because the officials are from some remote geographic area, their illegal conduct will escape notice.

It doesn't work that way. Take a look at two news stories.

The first is a newspaper article from the December 8, 2006, Seattle Times. It was an Associated Press wire story headlined Indicted Alaska lawmaker accused of soliciting bribes in exchange for cooperation. The article reveals how an Alaska state legislator and a lobbyist were recruited by a consultant to act on behalf of the consultant's company in the state legislature. The alleged bribe was for "only" $26,000.

The article goes on to describe how the legislator and the lobbyist allegedly created a sham corporation to conceal routing the bribe to the legislator.

The article notes, "The seven-count indictment alleges that from July 2004 to March 2005, Anderson and the lobbyist received $26,000 from the consultant in exchange for Anderson's agreement to act on his behalf in the Legislature." By the way, the seven-count indictment was issued by a federal grand jury.

The second news story comes from CNNMoney.com, dated May 4, 2007, and headlined UPDATE:Alaska Officials Plead Guilty In VECO Oil Bribe Case.

That story recounts how the FBI investigated allegations against three Alaska lawmakers. The allegations ultimately led to federal grand jury indictments for charges including extortion, attempted extortion, bribery, conspiracy, mail fraud, and wire fraud.

What is especially noteworthy, however, is that the dollar amounts of the alleged bribes were comparatively low: $8,993, $2,750, $2,600, and $3,000. The $3,000 was to be paid to one representative's relative for accepting a job with VECO.

The lesson to be learned in this is clear: The corruption of public officials anywhere is on the federal prosecution radar. Even if the cost of investigating and prosecuting far exceeds the dollar value of the bribes or gratuities involved, the public wants prosecution of corrupt public officials.

It's Not Just About Pay

2007-05-04T13:12:00.000-07:00

Today's Coeur d'Alene Press reports the Kootenai County Sheriff's Department (KCSD) is asking the Kootenai County Board of County Commissioners for $2.1 million in next year's budget for pay raises. In his Press article titled KCSD asks for $2.1 million, reporter Marc Stewart notes, "Money would be used for pay raises in hopes of halting departure of employees." The operative word there is "hopes."

Whitecaps "hopes" the Board of County Commissioners will examine the KCSD's strategic plan (if it has one) to determine exactly what other measures Sheriff Rocky Watson and his command staff have in place to increase retention and morale. Absent a comprehensive hiring and retention plan with valid means of measuring success or failure, giving Watson $2.1 million for higher pay is like putting window screen over a sucking chest wound.

A person's career choice is rarely completely dependent on pay. Pay is important, and people will not apply or remain if the pay is too low. However even in departments with adequate pay, retention becomes an issue when other factors are significant. Other significant factors include poor leadership and supervision, lack of respect for subordinates by superiors, inadequate pre-service and in-service training, poor employee selection practices, few opportunities for specialization and advancement, and few opportunities for advanced education.

For some insight into the problems faced by small departments (KCSD is not a small department), see the International Association of Chiefs of Police's Best Practices Guide - Recruitment and Retention of Qualified Police Personnel. The Guide offers some solutions that could be upscaled and applied in KCSD.

For a more academic yet still practical analysis about law enforcement hiring and retention, see the Urban Institute's studey titled Hiring and Retention Issues in Police Agencies: Readings on the Determinants of Police Strength, Hiring, and Retention of Officers, and the Federal COPS Program. This study was published in October 2001.

"Culture of Misconduct"

2007-04-30T08:25:00.000-07:00

No, this post is not about a few Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, elected and appointed officials in and around City Hall.

It's about the Atlanta Police Department and the federal investigation resulting from the "culture of misconduct" that encouraged officers to falsify information for search warrants.

The key word in the US Attorney's phrase is "culture." This was not one or two officers gone bad. This was an agency whose supervisors have tacitly approved their subordinates' use of federal civil rights violations to produce crime suppression. This was a practice approved for use in the narcotics law enforcement subculture inside the Atlanta Police Department.

"So what," some will say. "The cops are the good guys and the drug dealers are the bad guys. So the cops fudge a little information to catch the bad guys. What harm can that do?"

The lede in The Atlanta Journal Constitution story headlined Pleas won't end probe of Atlanta police answers that:

What started with a few bags of marijuana being planted near a suspected street dealer quickly spiraled out of control. Narcotics officers lied to a judge, illegally broke into 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston's house, fired 39 shots at her — and then one handcuffed her as she lay bleeding before he planted drugs in her basement.

The April 27, 2007, article was by AJC reporter Bill Torpy.

Torpy's article headlined Feds: Atlanta police often lie to obtain search warrants on April 26, 2007, had reported:

Atlanta police narcotics officers often falsified search warrants to make busts and pad their arrests records hoping to satisfy goals set for them by upper brass, federal investigators said.

The Atlanta Police Department does not have exclusive ownership of the "culture of misconduct." The strong, moral leadership lacking in Atlanta is found in other departments as well. Where the leadership lacks courage and integrity, misconduct will exist.

"The Bishop"

2007-04-28T07:13:00.000-07:00

Has "The Bishop" been caught?

"The Bishop" is a pseudonym used by the suspect in a series of mail bombs and threats directed at the financial industry according to the Chicago Sun-Times in an online story headlined Suspect nabbed in 'Bishop' mail bomb cases. The article dated April 25, 2007, and written by staff reporters Natasha Korecki and Stefano Esposito, offers some insight into suspect John P. Tomkins' motives and techniques.

As noted in the April 25, 2007, press release by Patrick Fitzgerald, US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Tomkins was arrested by Inspectors from the US Postal Inspection Service.

The US Postal Inspection Service is yet another relatively low-profile federal investigative agency. Its mission "...is to protect the U.S. Postal Service, its employees and its customers from criminal attack, and protect the nation's mail system from criminal misuse." When crimes involve the US mail, Postal Inspectors have jurisdiction and authority to investigate. Just as the IRS CI's special agents are experts in investigating violations of the Internal Revenue Code, so are Postal Inspectors the best qualified to investigate crimes against or using the US mail.

Anyone interested in the application of science and technology to investigations would enjoy checking out the US Postal Inspection Service's Forensic Laboratory Services and Technical Services Division webpage.

Bribery 101

2007-04-24T13:37:00.001-07:00

So you have a multimillion dollar project that needs the approval of one or more government officials. Or maybe you have a business that wants to secure lucrative contracts either issued or steered by government officials.

Who ya gonna call? Bribe-makers. (Apologies to Elmer Bernstein for shamelessly paraphrasing the line from the music he wrote for the 1984 movie Ghostbusters.)

Most people understand obvious bribery as money in an envelope passed in the dark of an alley. But bribery is so much more than that.

To have a better understanding of the techniques used to bribe public officials, read the OECD Bribery Awareness Handbook for Tax Examiners. OECD is an acronym for Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The United States is one of the thirty member countries.

The interesting material starts on page 7 and over the next five pages lists several indicators of bribery. It also shows how investigators detect evidence of bribery.

Yes, this could be a how-to tutorial for government officials on the take, but they already know the bribery game is played. It's posted here as an eye-opener for honest citizens so they can look at some of their elected and appointed officials' dealings with a better-informed eye.

One Face of Northern Idaho Organized Crime

2007-04-23T07:22:00.000-07:00

Whitecaps' April 7, 2007, post titled The (non)Faces of Organized Crime in Northern Idaho observed:

Organized crime is not a caricature of some real or fictional man or woman. Organized crime is patterns of behavior designed to accumulate huge amounts of money and other valuable assets, legally when possible, illegally when necessary or when it would be more profitable, violently when subtlety fails or is inconvenient.

That doesn't mean organized crime in northern Idaho doesn't have a face. It means it can have many faces.

In an online article dated April 23, 2007, and headlined Cigarette smuggling case winds down, The Spokesman-Review staff writer Bill Morlin puts a "face" on one lucrative northern Idaho criminal enterprise.

Morlin's article reveals something else, something that should send a jolt of paralyzing fear through the veins of other north Idaho residents and public officials whose greed has seduced them into criminal enterprise: The feds know northern Idaho is fertile ground for organized crime, and they're paying attention. Very close attention.

There were many details in Morlin's story that make that last point.

The cases didn't go to trial. The defendants pleaded guilty. If you're guilty, your best hope is to become a cooperating witness before being arrested. If you're guilty and are arrested, guilty pleas almost always yield a better outcome than going to trial against overwhelming evidence.
Washington State estimates it lost approximately $56 million in tax revenue in the criminal enterprise. This was not small potatoes crime.
The criminal enterprise was run out of a home near Plummer, Idaho, population fewer than 1,000 people. Organized crime is not a big-city phenomenon. It's in rural areas, too.
The predicate crimes: Trafficking in contraband cigarettes; money laundering; mail fraud; interstate transportation in aid of racketeering; cigarette record-keeping violations.

It was especially significant to see that the guilty pleas were also for conspiracy to violate the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. The predicate crimes noted can be investigated and prosecuted by the appropriate US Attorney's office in their respective judicial districts, however a RICO prosecution requires oversight and approval from an Assistant Attorney General in the US Department of Justice in Washington, DC. Prosecution under RICO clearly demonstrates to all who care to see that organized crime in northern Idaho is on a very large radar screen.

It may also surprise some people to note the Federal Bureau of Investigation was not named as one of the investigating agencies. This organized crime enterprise was very successfully investigated by the Washington State Liquor Control Board, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

Has Idaho Hit the Big Time?

2007-04-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

Has Idaho finally hit the big time when it comes to public corruption? Is it now a "pay-for-play" state?

Could be.

Suppose a developer wants to do a major project that requires state, county, or local approvals. In its simplest form, the developer would simply bribe key decision-makers in the government. Voila! Approvals granted, almost no questions asked, no particularly pesky on-site compliance inspections.

Or suppose a contractor wants a very lucrative contract but doesn't want to risk losing out to a competitor? Again, no problem. Simply bribe those same key decision-makers in the government. Poof! A no-bid contract (known in federal procurement circles as a sole-source contract) is awarded. Sole-source contracts can be in the public interest. Often, they are not. The competitive bidding process helps identify contractors who are capable of doing the job and meeting the statement of work requirements. It should eliminate unqualified bidders, and it allows the government to reject bidders who have defaulted on previous contracts. No honest government decision-maker would even think of awarding a sole-source contract to an applicant who had "stiffed" the agency on a previous agreement. Competitive bidding helps keep cost to taxpayers down and quality up.

Even in Idaho outright bribery is illegal, so some cleverness and subterfuge is necessary. Bribery is such a nasty word. Incidentally, if the influence payment is made before the decision, its a bribe for future service. If the influence payment comes after the decision, it's a gratuity for services rendered. Either way, it's illegal.

The influence payment need not be cash, though that is by far the easiest way to pay off dirty public officials. It can be more subtle. It may mean hiring the decision-maker to use his or her own business to deliver a product or service to the bribe or gratuity grantor. It may mean hiring a close relative of the decision-maker. Regardless, it's a payoff at the front end or the back end for having made a decision with a positive financial outcome for both parties guaranteed.

In the vernacular of contract kickbacks, it's known euphemistically as "pay-for-play" or "play-to-pay." If you or your company want to receive big, government-controlled or government-influenced contracts, cough up those campaign donations to sympathetic incumbents or candidates. Make sure your company's employees donate to your selected candidate as well. Don't worry if the employees can't afford it; you're going to reimbuse them through such vehicles as inflated salaries or wages, year-end bonuses, performance awards, etc. The use of campaign contributions as payoffs are often called "legal bribery" because it is difficult, though by no means impossible, to associate the otherwise legal contributions with specific criminal intent.

There's an even more subtle and lucrative way to pay off a decision-maker. Make a "voluntary donation" to the decision-maker's favorite charity, foundation, or other public cause.

Suppose a key decision-maker or body of decision-makers has publicly endorsed a very high visibility public project, one that will assure the decision-makers' names are prominently displayed on the bronze plaque at the project's front door. The agreement between the offerer and the acceptor is made, and the approvals are granted or contracts awarded to the pre-determined winner(s).

Then after the project is underway and after a suitable amount of time has passed, the pre-determined winner(s) make a ceremonial donation back to the decision-maker's identified cause. This has an additional benefit for the donor. If the decision-maker's "favorite cause" is a charitable organization, some or all of the kickback donation is tax-deductible. Thus part of the bribe or gratuity is returned to the payor by the governments (federal and state) in the form of a tax refund. Illegal? Sure, but only after the scheme is unmasked.

In these contract kickback schemes, the general public loses because its tax dollars or donations it made to what it believed was a legitimately good cause may have been spent on a substandard project. The public officials did not fulfill their obligation to represent all constituents equally or fairly. Neither did those officials ensure that public projects were built safely and in compliance with all public safety laws and regulations.

The general public loses in other ways.

First, those contractors and developers who pay-to-play will have a competitive advantage over honest competitors. This inevitably discourages the honest ones from bidding when competitive bidding is actually used. They know the fix is in. It discourages honest developers, because the dishonest ones get benefits not available to the honest ones, benefits that increase profitability. This ultimately drives up the cost of publicly-funded projects. Taxpayers pay more and get less.

Second, the public eventually realizes it can no longer trust the decision-makers to make decisions in the public interest. This recognition discourages honest citizens from running for public office. It encourages dishonest candidates to run for office. Those candidates are the ones willing to "buy" their office with the tainted money of their benefactors. In return, they do their benefactor's bidding once they are in office.

There is no simple solution to curing the pay-to-play malignancy. As long as public officials are willing to sell out their personal integrity for money or public acclaim, pay-for-play will go on. As long as traditional watchdogs such as the newspapers are unwilling to spend the very considerable time and effort necessary to dig out and report the varieties of pay-to-play, as long as local agencies are unwilling to aggresively investigate and prosecute the criminal side of pay-for-play, and as long as legislators are the recipients of the largesse, the condition will worsen rather than improve.

Welcome to Idaho.

Is the War Over? Did We Win? Are You Sure?

2007-04-15T09:06:00.000-07:00

In January 2006 Whitecaps blogged We're At War ... Or Something. That blog post mentioned several "wars" including the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, the War on Illiteracy, and of course the war du jour, the War on Terrorism.

How will we know if we've won (or lost) the War on Terrorism? For that matter, how will we know when it ends? Who will sign the treaty on behalf of the terrorists?

The Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, gives us a hint of just how difficult answering those questions is. On March 12, 2007, it released an updated report titled Combating Terrorism: The Challenge of Measuring Effectiveness. The report doesn't answer the questions in a way that will satisfy most of us, but it does provide some useful insight into terrorism as process.

Put Up or ...

2007-04-10T08:00:00.000-07:00

A few people who read this blog realize I write it mainly to provide information for some students at Eastern Washington University (EWU). I am an unpaid volunteer guest lecturer, not an employee or a contractor at EWU. Neither the school nor any instructor who invites me should be held accountable for anything I post on this web log. I should.

I've received a comment critical of my Saturday blog post titled The (non)Faces of Organized Crime in Northern Idaho. The commenter asked why I didn't include examples of some of the points I raised. Since the questioner wasn't specific about what s/he sought, I'll give two examples from the news.

One example is nearly twenty years old, but it demonstrates the point that organized crime is willing and able to compromise reputable and distinguished news organizations. The news media compromise was reported by Los Angeles Business Journal reporter Benjamin Mark Cole in his July 13, 1987, story titled Barry Minkow's favorable treatment in press exposes reporters' own vulnerability to fraud - ZZZZ Best Company Inc. Cole reported how various Los Angeles news media, identified in the link, had been so predisposed to report good news about whiz-kid Minkow, they failed to ask the right questions that would have revealed the organized crime financing behind Minkow's business. The reputed organized crime figure was Jack Catain.

The second example comes from a Sunday, April 8, 2007, Washington Post newspaper article by John Solomon and Peter Barker. The article was headlined White House Looked Past Alarms on Kerik. The article reports that former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and now US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urged President Bush to appoint Bernard Kerik to the Cabinet-level post of Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. The Washington Post story reports that during Kerik's vetting process

They (the White House) learned about questionable financial deals, an ethics violation, allegations of mismanagement and a top deputy prosecuted for corruption. Most disturbing, according to people close to the process, was Kerik's friendship with a businessman who was linked to organized crime. The businessman had told federal authorities that Kerik received gifts, including $165,000 in apartment renovations, from a New Jersey family with alleged Mafia ties.

This example is not intended to prove that Bernard Kerik was co-opted by organized crime. It does show, however, that organized crime is willing and able to reach out for and maybe influence public officials, including a (former) top law enforcement officer in the New York City Police Department. To loosely paraphrase a line from the theme song of the 1977 Martin Scorsese film New York, New York: If they can do it there, they can do it anywhere.

"Anywhere" includes northern Idaho. Anywhere.

The (non)Faces of Organized Crime in Northern Idaho

2007-04-07T08:36:00.001-07:00

Even today, April 7, 2007, the mention of organized crime generates thoughts of the Kefauver Committee (1951), the Apalachin meetings (1957), Joe Valachi (1963), and more recently such colorful characters as Sam "the Odd Father" Gigante and John "Teflon Don" Gotti. Our caricature of an organized crime gangster is often an Italian or Sicilian Mafioso or member of the La Cosa Nostra (LCN).

The LCN was and is a good example of a criminal enterprise, a group of individuals with an identified hierarchy or comparable structure who are engaged in significant criminal activity. That definition does not stop with LCN. In today's world of organized crime, it includes Eurasian organized crime, Asian criminal enterprises, African criminal enterprises, and sports bribery.

But we live in northern Idaho. We don't see Mafioso running around on Sherman Avenue in Coeur d'Alene. We don't see Chinese tongs extorting money from merchants in Spirit Lake or Sandpoint. We don't see Nigerians living in Hayden and scamming folks from Athol. We don't see the caricatures with our eyes, so we ignore the possibilities with our minds. We don't want to even think, let alone acknowledge, that organized crime could exist in our area.

We're wrong.

Organized crime is not a caricature of some real or fictional man or woman. Organized crime is patterns of behavior designed to accumulate huge amounts of money and other valuable assets, legally when possible, illegally when necessary or when it would be more profitable, violently when subtlety fails or is inconvenient.

The accumulation of wealth is not inherently illegal. The free and open accumulation of honestly-acquired and properly reported wealth remains a cornerstone of the US economy. But where there's wealth to be acquired, organized crime will try to work its way into the wealth chain.

Wherever possible, organized crime will try to operate with as little public scrutiny and attention as possible. It will try to integrate itself into lawful businesses and corporate vehicles so it can acquire "clean" assets and launder the "dirty" ones (currency is not the only asset that needs to be laundered). And it will try, very hard and very patiently, to insinuate itself into the legal and regulatory processes and institutions to internally sabotage those processes' and institutions' effectiveness against organized crime. It will "groom" future elected and appointed officials, sometimes without the future officials' awareness. By the time the targeted official realizes s/he's been manipulated, s/he's already on the hook.

Organized crime in norhtern Idaho will not be a caricature of Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone in Coppola's 1972 movie The Godfather. It isn't that easily spotted. Indeed, if we wait to act until we can recognize its face, we will have already overlooked the fully developed body.

"Oh, come on! This is nonsense," some of you are saying. "It won't happen here. This is just little ol' northern Idaho, not New York or Chicago or Philly or Miami or Los Angeles. 'They' wouldn't be interested in moving in here."

Yes, "they" would. The social, political, and economic environment is right for organized crime to exist and thrive here.

There's money here. Lot's of it. Greed is growing like milfoil and is just as difficult to eradicate. Greed among community members and public officials is the nutrient that feeds organized crime.
There's little support for official regulation and oversight here. The "live and let live" philosophy that discourages the strict and consistent enforcement of federal regulations as well as city and county ordinances provides a safe harbor for organized crime.
Our state, county, and local law enforcement agencies and prosecutors are simply no match for organized crime. Welcome to northern Idaho. Set your criminal justice system watches back 30 years.
The federal agencies, including the US Attorney's Office, are most able to effectively deal with white collar criminal enterprises, but Idaho's federal agencies are underresourced. Blame that partly on the people Idaho sends to Congress. Their campaign contributors are the same people who fear federal law enforcement and regulatory intervention.
Local and regional news media are barely aware of organized crime, perhaps because their owners, station managers, and publishers don't want to risk loss of social status and advertising dollars. Or maybe they fear learning the truth: Their own journalistic independence may have already been compromised by "them".

Northern Idaho is a fertile field, not a hostile environment, for organized crime. Once it is allowed to take root, it will remain here as long as there are valuable assets to be exploited.

Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Security

2007-04-06T12:18:00.000-07:00

The US Department of Homeland Security has released its long-awaited rule for securing high-risk chemical facilities.

The Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Interim Rule and its Proposed Appendix A: DHS Chemicals of Interest are available online.

Public Safety Communications Interoperability

2007-04-06T08:34:00.000-07:00

"As the first to respond to natural disasters, domestic terrorism, and other emergencies, public safety agencies rely on timely communications across multiple disciplines and jurisdictions. It is vital to the safety and effectiveness of first responders that their electronic communications systems enable them to communicate with whomever they need to, when they need to, and when they are authorized to do so."

The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) was asked to determine the extent to which Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding and technical assistance has helped to improve interoperable communications in selected states. GAO was also asked to determine the progress that has been made in the development and implementation of interoperable communications standards. To address those two objectives, GAO reviewed grant information, documentation of selected states' and localities' interoperability projects, and standards documents.

What the GAO found is available in its April 2007 study titled First Responders - Much Work Remains to Improve Communications Interoperability.

Idaho was not one of the states studied, however some information about what Idaho is doing to work toward interoperability is available on Idaho's Statewide Interoperability Executive Council website.

Why should we care? Well, aside from the improvement in service that interoperabilty should present, communications systems cost a great deal of money to design, install, and maintain. That money comes from taxpayer dollars. And no, it doesn't matter if the money comes from a DHS grant. Federal, state, and local grant dollars are taxpayer dollars. There's no such thing as free money.

It's Elemental

2007-03-31T07:11:00.000-07:00

For those of us who are not lawyers, deciphering laws can be challenging. I've found that reducing a law to its component parts, its elements, contributes to a better and clearer understanding not only of the law but its intent.

For example, first read Idaho Code 50-2017 - Interested Public Officials, Commissioners, or Employees as it appears in the link. I've chosen this law, because it defines when Idaho's public officials, commissioners, and employees have committed misconduct. Misconduct is cause for removal from their official position(s). At first glance, I.C. 50-2017 looks like one huge run-on sentence. It's not. Separate it into its component parts, bite-size chunks, and it's much easier to understand.

I've identified three major divisions in that law. Failure to obey the requirements of any or all those divisions justifies an allegation of misconduct. The three divisions are:

Voluntary acquisition of personal interest or contract
Involuntary acquisition of personal interest or contract
Already owns or controls a property interest

I'll use the first major division, voluntary acquisition of personal interest or contract, to demonstrate how to reduce a law down to its elements. Note that each of the elements below is taken from the law cited, I.C. 50-2017.

1. No public official or

employee of a municipality or

employee of board or

commisson thereof or

commissioner of an urban renewal agency or

employee of an urban renewal agency

2. shall voluntarily acquire

3. any personal interest

direct or

indirect (e.g., corporate vehicles, using family members, etc.)

4. in any urban renewal project or

5. in any property included in any urban renewal project or

6. in any property planned to be included in any urban renewal project

7. in such municipality or

8. in any contract or

9. in any proposed contract

10. in connection with such urban renewal project.

By way of explanation, each numbered element must usually be satisfied if the violation of law is to be alleged. However, the word "or" in the law means just that. Satisfying any one or more of the elements or components connected with or is sufficient proof. If the connective and is used, then each element or component connected with and must be met.

So, let's use a simple hypothetical fact example: Suppose a Commissioner who is already a member of the local urban renewal agency purchases a piece of property inside his municipality's urban renewal district. Has s/he violated the law?

Look at each of the elements identified above. Here's how the facts would be applied to satisfy (or not) the corresponding elements:

Element 1. Satisfied upon showing the Commissioner is a commissioner of an urban renewal agency and was at the time the property was purchased.
Element 2. Satisfied unless shown that Commissioner was coerced into buying the property or otherwise acquired the property involuntarily.
Element 3. Satisfied when Commissioner's ownership of the property is shown.
Element 4. Satisfied by 5 (remember, the connective or is used here).
Element 5. Satisfied when records show property is included in urban renewal project.
Element 6. Satisfied by 5.
Element 7. Satisfied by showing project is included in the municipality.
Element 8. Satisfied by 7.
Element 9. Satisfied by 7
Element 10. Satisfied by 7.

The step-by-step analysis shows that each required element was met. The law concludes, "Any violation of the provisions of this section shall constitute misconduct in office." Thus, with all required elements of the violation having been shown, a citizen would be justified in concluding the Commissioner had committed misconduct in office.

There are some caveats for us laymen, however. One is that online law does not necessarily include relevant annotations and case citations. Another is that the "facts" used to prove violation of or compliance with the law must ultimately be admissible as evidence. Even "obvious" elements must be supported with hard evidence. What "everyone knows" isn't evidence. For example, "everyone knows" that So-and-So is a Commissioner with the URA, but that fact would have to be proven by evidence such as a copy of the URA's minutes identifying that Commissioner S0-and-So was present and voted at URA meetings during the time the alleged misconduct was occurring.

Nevertheless, even for a layman, going through this exercise of understanding the law and applying the facts to them is useful to becoming a better-informed citizen. If we suspect a public official has committed illegal misconduct, using this framework will help identify what we know and what we don't know. Making sure we have solid proof of each element helps us avoid wrongly accusing a public official.

It's not difficult. It's elemental.

US Intelligence Primer

2007-03-28T13:53:00.000-07:00

For those readers interested in better understanding the functions and components of the US intelligence community, read Intelligence Issues For Congress.

This 23-page Report for Congress was updated February 27, 2007, by the Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service.

It briefly and simply (remember, it is written for elected officials) discusses such topics as:

The Intelligence Community
The "INTs": Intelligence Disciplines
Integrating the INTs
Intelligence Budget Process
The 9/11 Investigations and the Congressional Response
Oversight issues
Ongoing Congressional Concerns (including collection capabilities, analytical quality, Iraq, international terrorism, and intelligence support to military forces)
Issues In the 110th Congress (including quality of analysis, implementation of the Intelligence Reform Act [PL 108-458], ISR programs, terrorist surveillance program/NSA electronic surveillance, role of the CIA, role of the FBI, role of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, paramailitary operations and defense HUMINT, and regional concerns, CIA and allegations of prisoner abuse.

Use the Kroc Center

2007-03-27T07:48:00.000-07:00

Monday in a Spokane newspaper blog, Coeur d'Alene's junior councilman Mike Kennedy posted an item about warming centers. He likes them. So now he's going to task the city staff to reinvent the wheel and figure out how to have warming centers for needy people during the winter. In other words, he wants the City to officially waive some of the life-safety codes that protect the very people he's trying to help.

Apparently Councilman Kennedy just realized that (1) there are homeless people in Coeur d'Alene (don't tell Mayor Sandi - acknowledging that doesn't sit well with her); (2) winters here are cold; and (3) the City Council just might be able to use this issue to deflect public attention away from how its urban renewal agency, the Lake City Development Corporation (LCDC), has been enriching the "impoverished" local millionaire developers but hasn't quite figured out how to do anything for the genuinely needy. Like keeping them from suffering in the streets from hypothermia and malnutrition. (There's no profit in human blight and deterioration.)

Rather than having city staff move with its usual glacial speed and stretching this idea out for as long as possible, here's my solution: Once the Mayor has declared the emergency, open the doors to the Kroc Center, put Salvation Army cots and blankets in the community room, fire up the kitchen and serve the people hot meals, and give them towels and access to the showers. The Kroc Center is properly zoned and presumably will meet all applicable city and life-safety codes.

How could the Salvation Army possibly refuse an opportunity to use its facility to help truly desperate people, maybe even save their lives? The Army's mission includes meeting human needs in Christ's name without discrimination. It's certainly a more important and benevolent use for the building than just providing a lap pool, a basketball court, and a climbing wall. Use Citylink buses to transport the people to the Kroc Center.

Now, let the city staff find something else to do.

"...When Greed Masquerades As Need..."*

2007-03-25T14:15:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to find an original, simple way to explain my perception of what Coeur d'Alene's urban renewal agency, the Lake City Development Corporation (LCDC), is doing to Kootenai County residents.

Harvard University psychologist Dr. Daniel Gilbert beat me to the punch.

In his editorial comment in the Sunday New York Times (free online registration may be required), Dr. Gilbert anecdotally describes the psychological sleight-of-hand LCDC is using.
One phrase in the last paragraph of his column points to a growing public perception of LCDC's motives: "... when greed masquerades as need ..."

Thanks to Dan Gookin's The LCDC primer and Mary Souza's The City's Pulse newspaper column, people in Coeur d'Alene are beginning to ask good questions about LCDC's interpretation and administration of "urban renewal". When has a "blighted" condition been successfully abated? For that matter, why is premium waterfront property considered "blighted" simply because it has vegetation rather than buildings on it? Why do some multimillionaire developers "need" tax increment financing when other more conventional methods of financing are available for their profit-generating projects? What independent oversight prevents any LCDC Commissioner from using "inside information" from LCDC project applications to invest in assets certain to appreciate in value if the LCDC project is approved? What independent oversight prevents the LCDC Commissioners from manipulating the somewhat elastic geographic boundaries of the LCDC's urban renewal districts and then "steering" LCDC supported projects to enrich Commissioners, their business associates, and their families?

Urban renewal, properly used and conscientiously administered, can help truly blighted areas recover. Once recovery has occurred, the urban renewal project must end so the increment taxes go to improving the community, not enriching the urban renewal agency. Informed citizens are able to distinguish between greed and need. Urban renewal projects can be a legitimate means to an end, but they must never become the end themselves.
___________________________

*Daniel Gilbert, "Compassionate Commercialism," The New York Times, March 25, 2007 [newspaper on-line], available from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/opinion/25gilbert.html?th&emc=th; Internet; accessed March 25, 2007, at 2:00 P.M. PDT.

If Dirty Harry Got Elected...

2007-03-23T14:08:00.000-07:00

What if an institutionalized Dirty Harry were running the City of Coeur d'Alene?

Remember the movies in which actor Clint Eastwood portrayed Inspector Harry Callahan, a fictional San Franciso police inspector who follows "...his own unconventional philosophy of justice using excessive force, ruthless methods, and 'the end justifies the means' principle without much regard for the rules and legal regulations of his profession."

The "unconventional philosophy" in the preceding paragraph exists. It has a name: noble cause corruption. As it applies to law enforcement officers, it is well-explained in the paper titled Occupational Stressors and Noble Cause Corruption: Understanding Inspector Callahan. The study was authored by Dr. David Sunahara and published by the Canadian Police College in September 2006.

The same noble cause corruption that can take root in law enforcement officers can infect elected and appointed officials, too. Look at the introduction in Dr. Sunahara's paper. It notes, "They act corruptly by stepping outside sanctioned means to achieve ends they deem worthy." But he goes on to say, "The nobility of the cause lies in the eyes of those officers (replace 'officers' with 'elected and appointed officials') who commit noble cause corruption. We cannot and should not assume that the ends they value, and use to justify their actions, are necessarily deemed worthy by the larger society."

How true.

It is only fair to note that when Clint Eastwood was serving as the mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, he left his Dirty Harry persona behind. Sadly, some of our local officials in Coeur d'Alene-by-the-Lake apparently retrieved and adopted it.

Executive Office of President Testimony Before Congress

2007-03-21T13:38:00.000-07:00

The tie-in between the Executive Office of the President (EOP) and the recent firing of eight United States Attorneys has once again raised the possibility that Congress may try to subpoena presidential advisers and compel them to give testimony under oath on the firings.

This would be a contentious issue. To better understand it, read Presidential Advisers' Testimony Before Congressional Committees: An Overview. This 32-page document was prepared for Congress by the Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, and updated April 14, 2004.

Misuse of Corporate Vehicles

2007-03-18T14:39:00.000-07:00

"Corporate vehicles" does not refer to Fords, Chevrolets, Toyotas, Mercedes-Benz, Beemers, or any other motor vehicles.

"Corporate vehicles" refers to legal entities, including corporations, trusts, foundations and partnerships with limited liability. These corporate vehicles can and are used to launder assets in support of drug trafficking, terrorism, and public corruption.

How the assets are laundered is the subject of a report titled The Misuse of Corporate Vehicles Including Trust and Company Service Providers.

The report was produced in October 2006 by the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF). The FATF "...was established by the G-7 Summit that was held in Paris in 1989. Recognising the threat posed to the banking system and to financial institutions, the G-7 Heads of State or Government and President of the European Commission convened the Task Force from the G-7 member States, the European Commission, and eight other countries."

If you read nothing else in the study, read the Introduction and the Glossary. And don't be put off by the fact that the FATF is an international organization. The misuse of corporate vehicles is occurring in many communities in the United States.

Sunshine Week, March 11-17

2007-03-12T08:26:00.001-07:00

March 11-17, 2007, is Sunshine Week.

Please take time to go to the link and read about it. Then participate.

Coeur d'Alene Planning Commissioner Mary Souza participated when she wrote an article headlined Our sweet, little community of Coeur d’Alene has been growing. The article was published on March 8, 2007, by the Coeur d'Alene Press.

I have little doubt Mary Souza will be vilified and have her personal character and motivation assailed by the very people who most fear honest, open government in Coeur d'Alene and Kootenai County.

Informed citizens who fearlessly insist on honesty and accountability from their elected and appointed officials are the best and most effective weapon against public corruption. Individual citizens asking thoughtful questions and being unwilling to accept nonresponsive or clearly deceptive answers from elected and appointed officials are just as important to good, honest government as the officials we select.

We, the People, sometimes forget that we have responsibilities of citizenship that equal or exceed the responsibilities of the hired help we elect to city, county, and state government. Let the hired help never forget that we are co-equal partners in government with them. If we fail to be diligent and attentive, if we allow corporate greed to control and corrupt city hall and its surrogates, we share with those whom we elected the responsibility for governmental failure.

Mary Souza's article asks that we simply look at what's happening and then meet our own personal responsibilities to ensure the government meets its responsibilities to all the citizens and that it does not become the tool of the corrupt.

It's not too much to ask.

FBI Use of National Security Letters - OIG Report

2007-03-10T08:45:00.000-08:00

During the past few days there has been significant news reporting about the contents of a report by the US Department of Justice's Office of Inspector General. The report had been requested by Congress during its consideration of the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005.

Here is a link to the unclassified version of the report entitled A Review of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Use of National Security Letters.

Less Lethal

2007-03-09T08:13:00.000-08:00

For years law enforcement has been looking for less lethal weapons as an alternative to deadly force. The prospect of less lethal weapons raises not only technical issues but also policy, training, and liability concerns.

In my February 16, 2005, blog post Theft, Gunfire, and Death in Hayden, Idaho: Part II, I wondered why Coeur d'Alene police officer Michael Kralicek entered an unsecured house in pursuit of the house's resident and chose to draw his department-issued TASER® rather than his handgun. The resident, Michael Madonna, had been ineffectively restrained by a Kootenai County deputy sheriff. Madonna was able to run into his house, pick up a handgun, and fire two rounds at Kralicek and the pursuing deputy. One of the rounds struck Kralicek with a disabling wound. I wondered if proliferation of less-lethal weapons (Kralicek was carrying three: an extendible baton, OC spray, and a TASER®), each with its own training requirements and policy boundaries, is forcing law enforcement officers to spend too much time making decisions, thereby placing their own lives at greater risk.

My concern expressed after the avoidable shootings of Michael Kralicek and Michael Madonna was somewhat validated by Spokane's Acting Police Chief Jim Nicks' comments following the death of Otto Zehm. During his arrest, Zehm was TASER'd and then restrained while in Spokane Police custody. He died while restrained. In her March 24, 2006, article headlined Officers in fight defended, The Spokesman-Review staff writer Jody Lawrence-Turner reports, "Nicks said his police department's policy regarding a Taser's use is the same as with all non-lethal weapons that officers carry. The protocol is if the tool doesn't work after two or three tries, move on to the next tool."

In November 2006, the US Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Research and its Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program worked with the private Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) to publish Conducted Energy Devices: Development of Standards for Consistency and Guidance -- The Creation of National CED Policy and Training Guidelines. The report's principal authors were James M. Cronin and Joshua A. Ederheimer. This report focused on policies relating to conducted energy devices (CED), more commonly referred to by one specfic product's acronym "TASER®", a registered trademark of TASER International.

Additionally, the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), the Bureau of Justice Assistance, COPS, the National Institute of Justice, and other organizations have joined together to create a website to provide an online clearinghouse for information about less lethal weapons. The clearinghouse's URL is Less-Lethal.org. The site "...was created by the Less Lethal Technology Working Group (LLTWG) to assist local, state and federal law enforcement agencies in developing, implementing and enhancing policies governing the use of less lethal technologies."

FBI Financial Crime Report for 2006

2007-03-08T14:55:00.000-08:00

Interested in

Corporate fraud
Securities and commodities fraud
Health care fraud
Mortgage fraud
Identity theft
Insurance fraud
Mass marketing fraud
Money laundering and asset forfeiture?

Then read the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Financial Crimes Report to the Public - Fiscal Year 2006. Each of the "bullet" sections of the report provides an overview, statistical accomplishments, and case examples of the identified priority crime problems specifically addressed by the FBI's Financial Crimes Section. Where appropriate, suggestions are made in order to protect the public from being victimized by fraudulent activity.

Doin' the Laundry

2007-03-05T08:30:00.000-08:00

I suspect many people have heard the term "money laundering" but haven't really given it much thought. This post will provide links explaining what money laundering is, however it will also ask the reader to consider how the money laundering process is also a very good model for removing or at least hiding the taint from almost any tainted asset such as land or political campaign contributions. Because the process can be applied to other assets, not just currency, the term "asset laundering" will be used interchangeably with "money laundering."

There is a very simple and functional explanation of the basic laundering process at the Howstuffworks webpage in a piece titled How Money Laundering Works by Julia Layton. Again, the process steps of placement, layering, and integration described in the Howstuff works post applies to other assets as well as currency.

In its simplest terms, asset laundering is undertaken because the movement of large amounts of cash or other assets still attract unwanted law enforcement, regulatory, or public attention. "Large" is a relative term here. Any amount of dirty money that exceeds some threshold amount is dirty and needs laundering. The cash proceeds of drug transactions are often laundered to disassociate the currency from the illegal commodity. Illegally large political campaign contributions can be laundered through small mom-and-pop businesses or shell companies (e.g., Limited Liability Corporation - LLC).

Land that would be tainted if retained by one entity can appear to have the taint removed through a series of land exchanges with other groups such as a "private" non-profit organization. While the transaction may be legal, the layering of exchanges follows the asset laundering process very closely.

Though drug money is often used to demonstrate how assets can be laundered, one of the most notorious and largest asset laundering schemes was laid out in The BCCI Affair, a report to the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate by Senator John Kerry and Senator Hank Brown, December 1992, 102d Congress 2d Session Senate Print 102-140. The Bank of Credit and Commerce International - BCCI, was a founded as a criminal enterprise disguised as a lawfully operating bank.

BCCI's criminality included fraud by BCCI and BCCI customers involving billions of dollars; money laundering in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas; BCCI's bribery of officials in most of those locations; support of terrorism, arms trafficking, and the sale of nuclear technologies; management of prostitution; the commission and facilitation of income tax evasion, smuggling, and illegal immigration; illicit purchases of banks and real estate; and a panoply of financial crimes limited only by the imagination of its officers and customers.

Among BCCI's principal mechanisms for committing crimes were its use of shell corporations and bank confidentiality and secrecy havens; layering of its corporate structure; its use of front-men and nominees, guarantees and buy-back arrangements; back-to-back financial documentation among BCCI controlled entities, kick-backs and bribes, the intimidation of witnesses, and the retention of well-placed insiders to discourage governmental action.

For readers who have digested the simple but clear explanation from the Howstuffworks post on Money Laundering, a more comprehensive examination will be found in the US government Money Laundering Threat Assessment Working Group report U.S. Money Laundering Threat Assessment dated December 2005. The report discusses several vehicles often used to facilitate asset laundering. They include:

Banking
Money Services Businesses
Online Payment Systems
Informal Value Transfer Systems
Bulk Cash Smuggling
Trade-Based Money Laundering
Insurance Companies
Shell Companies and Trusts
Casinos

Huge Insider Trading Scandal

2007-03-02T15:14:00.000-08:00

The Seattle Times ran an article today headlined White-collar ring cracked. The Associated Press article was authored by Larry Neumeister. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer also ran an article headlined Brokers at "top-tier" firms charged in trading scheme. The P-I's article was based on material by Bloomberg News writers Patricia Hurtado and David Scheer. Both articles describe how top tier Wall Street brokerage firms' employees stole millions of dollars over a period of five years through insider trading. The defendants included husband-and-wife lawyers, registered representatives, compliance personnel and hedge-fund portfolio managers. And the top tier companies? UBS Securities LLC and Morgan Stanley & Co., Inc.

This scandal is huge.

Here is a link to the US Securities and Exchange Commission's Litigation Release No. 20022 dated March 1, 2007. This release identifies the individuals and companies involved both upstream and downstream, and it describes the nature of the schemes involved.

Here is a link to the complaint filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The complaint names the defendants and their employers. Beginning on page 8, the complaint describes how each of the schemes worked.

"Bank Examiner! Halt or I'll Put On My Green Eyeshade!"

2007-03-01T15:22:00.000-08:00

Okay, the title is a little far-fetched. It's really not likely that the next action figure toy from Hasbro, Inc. will be a bank examiner. Still, there are few finance industry professionals who do more to protect the money we put in banks insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

The early detection of apparent fraud and insider abuse by bank employees is an essential element in limiting the risk to the FDIC's deposit insurance funds and uninsured depositors.

Included under each of the following subject areas is a summary of potential problems, a listing of warning signs of potential fraud and insider abuse and suggested action for investigation.

Corporate Culture/Ethics
Insider Transactions
Loan Participations
Real Estate Lending
Secured Lending
Third Party Obligations
Lending to Buy Tax Shelter Investments
Linked Financing/Brokered Deposits
Credit Cards and ATM Transactions
Advance Fee Schemes
Offshore Transactions
Wire Transfers
Money Laundering
Securities Trading Activities
Miscellaneous

For an elaboration about each of these subject areas that includes a description of the potential problems, the warning signs, and suggested actions, see the FDIC Risk Management Manual of Examination Policies. The Warning Signs in particular are especially relevant to consumers since we may see them when conscientiously examining our monthly banks statements, applying for mortgage and other loans, or being sure we don't become victims of credit and debit card fraud and identity theft.

Trust and Confidence Violated

2007-02-26T12:10:00.000-08:00

If one particular Huckleberries Online (HBO) weblog post by Dave Oliveria is accurate and complete, Idaho State Police (ISP) Captain Clark Rollins has violated the trust and confidence of at least one Idaho citizen. In doing that, Rollins has jeopardized the ability of his fellow law enforcement officers in all agencies to acquire useful information from citizens.

The particular blog post on February 22, 2007, was headlined "Huckleberries Hears That Spen-Sah ...". In that post, Oliveria quotes a communication purportedly passed from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, City Administrator Wendy Gabriel to other City department heads. Gabriel was informing other City department heads that Captain Rollins telephoned her with information from a conversation he had with Larry Spencer. Spencer is a vocal critic of parts of a multimillion dollar project underway in Coeur d'Alene. Rollins reportedly told Gabriel that Spencer's complaint was civil, not criminal, but he (Rollins) was just providing Gabriel with "a heads up" about what the ISP's response to Spencer would be. That wording, if accurate, means Rollins called the City Administrator to discuss the ISP's response with her before he even notified the complainant.

So what's wrong with the ISP Captain in charge of criminal investigations for the five northern counties of Idaho passing along information to a City Administrator?

First, it violated the ISP's own promise to Idaho's citizens. From the ISP's website:

Help Us
If you suspect someone, or have any information involving drug or criminal activity in this area please contact us.
By providing us with as much information as possible you will better equip us in handling and investigating any incidents.
The Idaho State Police actively solicits information on criminal activity within the State of Idaho. Any information received will be disseminated to the appropriate law enforcement agency.
The anonymity of the sender and the privacy of all information contained in any messages received will be respected.

Coeur d'Alene City Administrator Wendy Gabriel does not work for a law enforcement agency nor is she a law enforcement officer. By disclosing Larry Spencer's identity and information to her, Captain Rollins violated the State's promise to respect the anonymity of the sender and the privacy of the information. That's a "trust and confidence" violation.

But was there really any harm in what Rollins, Gabriel, whoever "leaked" Gabriel's communication to Oliveria, and Oliveria did?

Yes. Imagine the chilling effect their combined actions would have on a citizen who may have information about a major crime or public corruption. Is that person as likely to go to the ISP now and risk having his complaint information and personal identity passed to a non-law enforcement person, spread throughout the city or county government, and ultimately posted on the Internet in a regional newspaper’s weblog read by several thousand people every week?

Second, the information Rollins' passed to Gabriel appeared to have no criminal or public safety predicate. There was nothing in the information Oliveria attributed to Gabriel suggesting Spencer posed a threat to anyone's safety or he planned to commit a crime. There was nothing in that information suggesting Gabriel perceived a threat to the personal safety of anyone in the City government. In short, Rollins had no business passing the information along to anyone.

When a citizen contacts the police with a complaint or concern, he should expect his information will be provided to others in public safety and used for legitimate law enforcement or public safety purposes. The citizen also has every right to expect it will not be provided to anyone, including law enforcement, who may use it to discourage legitimate dissent or publicly discredit a citizen activist engaging in lawful conduct.

Professional law enforcement organizations recognize the importance of lawfully-obtained criminal intelligence in protecting the public safety. They don’t want to lose that valuable tool by allowing it to be abused for political purposes in violation of citizens’ civil rights. Neither do they want to chill the willingness of citizens to come forward with information by betraying those citizens’ trust and disseminating the citizen’s information for other than legitimate law enforcement and public safety.

In its July 2003 concepts and issues paper titled Criminal Intelligence, the International Association of Chiefs of Police National Law Enforcement Policy Center notes on page 2:

“While intelligence plays a key role in law enforcement operations, history tells us that it can also be the instrument of abuse if such operations are not properly organized, focused and directed. Particularly during times of national emergency, one must be particularly vigilant to prevent aggressive enforcement and intelligence gathering from becoming incursions upon constitutional rights. Aggressive intelligence gathering operations that resemble fishing expeditions have been employed improperly in the past to garner sensitive or confidential information on individuals for whom there is no reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. Once documented, such information can develop a life of its own if sufficient safeguards are not built into the screening, review, and management of intelligence files. If passed on to other law enforcement agencies as intelligence, it can form the basis for abuse of civil liberties and potential civil liability.

In the same manner, intelligence operations are misguided that directly or indirectly gather information on persons based solely on their dissident political activities or views, because they espouse positions or philosophies that are perceived to threaten conventional social or political doctrine, traditionally accepted social mores or similar societal values or institutions, or because they have cultural connections with terrorists. Use of law enforcement resources to intimidate, inhibit or suppress such activities or harass such individuals under the pretext of legitimate police concern for maintaining social order are at best misguided and, in the worst case scenario, constitute a threat to the principles of law enforcement in a democratic society. Additionally, misguided intelligence gathering is a waste of valuable resources that are desperately needed to ferret out wrongdoers and persons who pose real threats to national and local security.”

This whole incident stinks.

Rollins was wrong if he passed Spencer's information to Gabriel as reported. That was an official betrayal of public trust. If his conduct has not been investigated by his superiors at the ISP, it should be. Most law enforcement agencies have strict policy guidelines on how citizen-provided information (intelligence) can be properly gathered and disseminated. It is hard to imagine that his telephone message to Gabriel was within ISP policy.

Gabriel was wrong when she disseminated Rollins' information to other City department heads. The implication is they would somehow use the information Rollins provided if and when they formulated responses to Spencer's criticisms.

Whoever "leaked" Gabriel's information to Oliveria was wrong, because s/he knew Oliveria was likely to publish it on his blog exactly as he did. It appears the intent of the "leaker" was to discourage Larry Spencer from participating in lawful dissent or to discredit him as a critic of the City's business dealings.

Oliveria was wrong in publishing Gabriel's communication on his weblog. Idaho State Police Captain Clark Rollins' conduct should have been pursued as a news story rather than posted on a weblog. The story here was not that Spencer requested to make a complaint with the ISP, a request denied reportedly for lack of criminal jurisdiction. It was that ISP Captain Clark Rollins thought it was appropriate to supply Spencer's identity and information to a person who had no legitimate public safety reason to have it. That is the type of police conduct that draws the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union and aggressive newspaper reporters.

It is also police conduct that damages the trust and confidence of citizens and other law enforcement agencies alike. If I were still in law enforcement, I would be much more wary about passing sensitive law enforcement information or finished intelligence to the ISP.

ADA & Public Safety Response

2007-02-22T14:20:00.000-08:00

Under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), people who have disabilities are entitled to the same services public safety agencies provide to anyone else. They may not be excluded or segregated from services, be denied services, or otherwise be treated differently than other people.

How does that translate into everyday situations? Remember the March 18, 2006, death of Otto Zehm during a confrontation with the Spokane Police Department? One of the issues the federal government would have examined in this case is whether Officer Karl Thompson individually or the Spokane Police Department institutionally violated Zehm's rights under the ADA. In his statement to investigators, Officer Thompson was recounting his special assignments, and said, "Um, Crisis Intervention Team, which is advanced training in dealing with the mentally ill."

To provide some guidance to law enforcement, the US Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Disability Rights Section has prepared a 12-page Commonly Asked Questions pamphlet. In its Q & A format, it asks and answers the 25 most common questions law enforcement officers have about their duties and responsibilities to conform to the ADA.

However the DoJ does not stop with law enforcement. It notes that one of the most important roles of local government is to protect their citizenry from harm, including helping people prepare for and respond to emergencies. Making local government emergency preparedness and response programs accessible to people with disabilities is a critical part of this responsibility. Making these programs accessible is also required by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). To help local governments meet this requirement, the DoJ has published An ADA Guide for Local Governments - Making Community Emergency Preparedness and Response Programs Accessible to People With Disabilities.

The President's Corporate Fraud Task Force

2007-02-19T13:29:00.000-08:00

Corporate fraud? Here in eastern Washington and northern Idaho? Before you say it couldn't happen here, remember these two words: Metropolitan Mortgage.

But there have been far more widely publicized and financially devastating examples of corporate fraud. Note that this abbreviated list also contains another Washington State company, Holmes Harbor Sewer District.

Adelphia (Remember "The Rigas Gang")
Arthur Andersen LLP
Capital City Bank
Credit Suisse First Boston Corporation (CSFB)
Enron (Andrew Fastow)
Enron (Lea Fastow - Andrew Fastow's wife)
HealthSouth (Richard M. Scrushy)
Holmes Harbor Sewer District (HHSD) on Whidby Island, Washington
Qwest
U.S. Wireless

What does The President's Corporate Fraud Task Force do?

It was established by Executive Order 13271 of July 9, 2002. The CFTC's main functions is to:

Provide direction for the investigation and prosecution of cases of securities fraud, accounting fraud, mail and wire fraud, money laundering, tax fraud based on such predicate offenses, and other related financial crimes committed by commercial entities and directors, officers, professional advisers, and employees thereof (hereinafter "financial crimes''), when such cases are determined by the Deputy Attorney General, for purposes of this order, to be significant.

How the President's Corporate Fraud Task Force goes about prosecuting corporations is outlined in Principles of Federal Prosecution of Business Organizations. One paragraph from the cover memorandum sums it all up:

The main focus of the revisions is increased emphasis on and scrutiny of the authenticity of a corporation's cooperation. Too often business organizations, while purporting to cooperate with a Department investigation, in fact take steps to impede the quick and effective exposure of the complete scope of wrongdoing under investigation. The revisions make clear that such conduct should weigh in favor of a corporate prosecution. The revisions also address the efficacy of the corporate governance mechanisms in place within a corporation, to ensure that these measures are truly effective rather than mere paper programs.

Appraisal Fraud in Real Estate

2007-02-16T08:37:00.000-08:00

"You cannot participate in the real estate business without committing felonies."

That's a direct quote from former Texas real estate appraiser William J. Rose who resigned his state-issued appraisal license and complained successfully to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) about his state real estate board's attempt to stifle his efforts to clean up his industry. Mr. Rose's concern was raised in a Realty Times article titled The Appraisal Crisis and the FBI. In the February 2, 2005, article, Realty Times writer Blanche Evans quoted Mr. Rose as saying, "I complained to the boards, and they tried to stifle me. According to the FBI, this is the new Mafia."

Ms. Evans February 2005 article came just a month after another of her Realty Times articles titled Sickened By Fraud, A Real Estate Appraiser Turns in His Pencil.

The methods used by banks, savings and loans, mortgage brokers, credit unions, loan officers, and real estate agents to apply pressure to appraisers to submit fraudulent appraisals are outlined in another Evans article titled Appraisers Respond: Too Much Fraud In Lending. This article was in the January 19, 2005, Realty Times.

The FBI is not the only federal agency to take notice of appraisal fraud. In its 69-page report titled The Detection, Investigation and Deterrence of Mortgage Loan Fraud Involving Third Parties - A White Paper, the Federal Financial Institutions Examining Council (FFIEC) listed appraisal fraud at the top of a list of third party mortgage fraud schemes that included such intriguing names as builder bailout, chunking, double selling, equity skimming, false down payment, fictitious mortgage loan, land flip, phantom sale, and straw borrower.

One of the more comprehensive articles on appraisal fraud was published by Demos: A Network for Ideas and Action. The article's title, Home Insecurity - How Widespead Appraisal Fraud Puts Homeowners At Risk, succinctly and clearly summarizes appraisal fraud and its consequences to homeowners.

But we're fortunate in Washington and Idaho: Appraisal fraud can't happen here.

IED Defeat Manual

2007-02-12T13:48:00.000-08:00

Nearly every nightly national news broadcast has at least one story about improvised explosive devices (IED) in Iraq. IEDs are not new, but they have received much more news coverage during the Iraq engagement.

In September 2005 the US Army and the US Marine Corps jointly published an interim field manual titled "Improvised Explosive Device Defeat". The link to the manual was obtained from the Federation of American Scientists which redacted approximately 98 pages out of 144 to protect some of the manual's more sensitive information. The 44 remaining pages still do a good job discussing IEDs and the philosophy and practice of defeating them.