Sexting

Teens caught 'sexting' face porn charges By Wendy Koch, USA TODAY A growing number of teens are ending up in serious trouble for sending racy photos with their cellphones. Police have investigated more than two dozen teens in at least six states this year for sending nude images of themselves in cellphone text messages, which can bring a charge of distributing child pornography. Authorities typically are notified by parents or schools about so-called "sexting." This week in Spotsylvania, Va., two boys, ages 15 and 18, were charged with solicitation and possession of child porn with intent to distribute after an investigation found they sought nude pictures from three juveniles — one in elementary school. "It's absolutely becoming a bigger problem," says Michelle Collins of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Of the 2,100 children the center has identified as victims of online porn, she says, one-fourth initially sent the images themselves. She says some did it for fun and others were tricked into it by adults they met online. "They may not realize the danger they are exposing themselves to," says William Shaw, district attorney for Clearfield County, Pa. "When they put it online, they lose control." Last month, Shaw filed a juvenile petition against a 15-year-old girl for sending nude photos of herself over the Internet. He says his objective isn't to jail her but to get her counseling or other help. The 27-year-old man who enticed her to do it has been sentenced to 10 years for having sex with her. Lawmakers are debating penalties. On Wednesday, the Utah Legislature passed lighter penalties, from a felony to a misdemeanor, for sexting. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Juvenile Court Judge Thomas O'Malley struggled to figure out what to do with eight teens, 14 to 17, caught trading nude cellphone pictures of themselves. He says the father of one of the girls found the images. If the 17-year-old who sent the nude photos to an ex-boyfriend were convicted of a child-porn charge, he says, she would be a registered sex offender for 20 years. "These kids have no record, not even a parking ticket," says O'Malley, a father of four teens. He required each to do community service and to ask peers if they knew sexting was a crime. They told O'Malley they surveyed 225 teens; 31 knew.

Find this article at:  http://www.usatoday.com/tech/wireless/2009-03-11-sexting_N.htm

Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Differences in Parole and Probation Practices in US

• :45 P.M. ET

States Urged to Improve Probation, Parole Programs

Associated Press

NEW YORK -- The number of offenders on parole and probation across the U.S. has surged past 5 million, complicating the challenges for fiscally ailing states as they try to curb corrections costs without jeopardizing public safety, according to a new report.

The Pew Center on the States report, released Monday, says the number of people on probation or parole nearly doubled to more than 5 million between 1982 and 2007. Including jail and prison inmates, the total population of the U.S. corrections system now exceeds 7.3 million -- one of every 31 U.S. adults, it said.

The report also noted huge discrepancies among the states in regard to the total corrections population -- one of every 13 adults in Georgia and one of every 18 in Idaho at one end of the scale, one of every 88 in New Hampshire at the other extreme. The racial gap also was stark -- one of every 11 black adults is under correctional supervision, one of every 27 Hispanic adults, one of every 45 white adults.

The report notes that construction of new prisons will be increasingly rare as most states grapple with budget crises. It said improved community-supervision strategies represent one of the most feasible ways for states to limit corrections spending and reduce recidivism.

"Every single one of them should be making smart investments in community corrections that will help them cut costs and improve outcomes," said Susan Urahn, managing director of the Center on the States.

At present, according to the report, prisons consume nearly 90% of state corrections spending, even though two-thirds of offenders under supervision are on parole or probation. Costs per year for a prison inmate average nearly $29,000, while average costs for managing parolees and probationers range from $1,250 to $2,750 a year.

Adam Gelb, director of Pew's Public Safety Performance Project, stressed that violent and incorrigible criminals need to be locked up, but contended that many prison inmates could be safely overseen in their communities at far lower cost.

"New community supervision strategies and technologies need to be strengthened and expanded, not scaled back," he said. "Cutting them may appear to save a few dollars, but it doesn't. It will fuel the cycle of more crime, more victims, more arrests, more prosecutions, and still more imprisonment."

Among the report's recommendations for strengthening community corrections:

-Base intervention programs on sound research about what works to reduce recidivism.

-Use advances in supervision technology such as electronic monitoring and rapid-result alcohol and drug tests.

-Create incentives for offenders and supervision agencies to succeed, and monitor their performance.

-Impose swift, certain sanctions for offenders who break the rules of their release.

The report cited a probation program in Hawaii as a positive example. Under that program, which offers extensive counseling and treatment, failure to comply with random drug tests, office visits and treatment requirements is met with immediate sanctions -- typically a few days in jail. Participants have proven far less likely than others on probation to be arrested for new crimes and sent back to prison.

Arizona was praised for a law enacted last year that creates performance incentives for offenders and the county-based probation supervision system. For every month that an offender complies with the terms of supervision, the length of probation can be shortened by up to 20 days. Slip-ups result in a loss of the earned time.

Kansas has made headway in curbing its prison population by offering grants to community corrections programs that cut down on the high number of probation and parole rule-breakers being sent back to prison solely for such rule violations.

The Pew report says strong community supervision programs for low-risk offenders not only cost much less than incarceration but, when properly funded and managed, can cut recidivism by as much as 30%. That could be a huge boon to the states, which, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers, spent a record $51.7 billion on corrections last fiscal year -- up 300% over two decades.

The five states with the highest rate of adults under correctional supervision were Georgia, Idaho, Texas, Massachusetts and Ohio. Those with lowest rates were New Hampshire, Maine, West Virginia, Utah and North Dakota.

Georgia, although only the ninth most populous state, had more people on probation in 2007 -- 435,631 -- than any other state, according to the report. The state Department of Corrections said the number might be inflated by double-counting of some offenders, but it has previously acknowledged that its probation population is the highest per capita in the country.

One consequence, according to the department, is that Georgia probation officers have had a caseload far higher than the national average.

Copyright © 2009 Associated Press

They need to find another way

Multnomah County's drug court faces budget ax
Posted by Aimee Green, The Oregonian March 10, 2009 21:26PM

Jamie Francis/The Oregonian

A county department that funds a world-recognized drug rehabilitation program is offering to sacrifice it to help balance Multnomah County's budget.

Officials come from across the nation and around the globe to learn from the county's Sanctions Treatment Opportunity Progress court program -- the second-oldest of nearly 2,000 drug courts in the United States -- yet county officials say their funding outlook next fiscal year is so dire they must cut somewhere.

County budget feels the pinch

Multnomah County residents are getting the first glimpse of massive cuts coming to county services because of a projected $45 million gap in the coming budget. Department heads have submitted suggestions on how to slash 12 percent from their budgets. Here are some of cuts on the table for the spending plan county Chairman Ted Wheeler will put forth in April.

• The county's last gang prevention program would end, and the sheriff's office would no longer participate in the multiagency gang task force.

• More jail beds would close, though it's unclear how many.

-- Nikole Hannah-Jones
Those close to the county's drug-court program, which offers people caught possessing drugs a chance to avoid a felony conviction if they become drug-free, say that eliminating funding for the $1.4 million program would be a costly mistake.

It would not only hurt addicts, but their children and society in general because some addicts will resort to crime to fuel their habits, they say.

"There will be an increase in drug overdoses, babies born drug addicted and child-welfare cases," said Rick Berman, program director at InAct, the Volunteers of America drug treatment program where most drug court offenders enroll.

"The bottom line is people who desperately need treatment won't be able to get treatment," Laurie Hoyt Huffman, division director at InAct. "And that's bad news for everyone."

Officials from the Multnomah County Department of Community Justice, however, say there are no easy choices and they must follow a county mandate to slash their budget by 12 percent come July 1. And so they've recommended eliminating funding for the program.

That would mean hundreds of defendants addicted to meth, heroin, cocaine or other illegal drugs would flood Multnomah County's traditional criminal justice system. If convicted, many would be given probation and ordered into drug treatment. But because of an already overtaxed system, many would get no more than an occasional letter asking them if they'd followed court orders.

"They can go through their entire probation without doing anything at all," said Spencer Hahn, a public defender with Multnomah Defenders Inc..

Since its inception in 1991, Multnomah County's STOP court has won the praise of prosecutors, defense attorneys and treatment providers and served as a model for some of the 1,900 drug-court programs that have sprung up across the country since, including courts in Clackamas, Clark and Washington counties. Visitors from as far off as Azerbaijan have sat in to learn by example.

The court keeps a watchful eye on hundreds of addicts who enter it each year. To enter the program, defendants must be charged with a nonviolent drug crime, chiefly possessing drugs or forging prescriptions. They also must plead guilty or no contest, with the understanding that their cases will be thrown out if they graduate. That means consistently going to treatment, taking random urine tests and enrolling in school or getting a job.

Those who flunk out are convicted.

At periodic graduation ceremonies, those who succeed get a lease on a new life, applause and a judge-ordered look at the often scary, angry or haggard-looking mug shots that were taken when police brought them in.

During a STOP court session earlier this week, Circuit Court Judge Christopher Marshall encouraged a 22-year-old woman who'd lost her job at Clackamas Town Center, then turned to meth. To show her how far she's come since last getting high in July 2007, he offered her a sneak peak of the mug shot she will see at graduation.

"Oh my God, that's so bad!" she exclaimed, a big smile breaking across her face.

Marshall offered kudos as he saw defendants with clean urine screenings and perfect attendance at drug treatment. He gave an unemployed and extraordinarily thin 28-year-old man a stern warning because he skipped out on more than four months of court dates and went on a drug binge.

This is your last chance, the judge told the man.

"You cannot miss another court date," Marshall said. "Cars get flat tires. Children get ill. Catch the bus that gets you here an hour early."

Although some drug court participants are homeless, unemployed or work minimum-wage jobs, others are white collar. The court has seen elementary school teachers, lawyers, dentists, doctors and plenty of college students.

The Department of Community Justice included STOP court along with a handful of other programs recommended for cuts, including a proposal to reduce drug treatment spots and the number of juveniles who are brought before a judge after being picked up by police.

Under the last proposal, fewer youth offenders would be found responsible for their crimes, ordered to do community service and apologize to victims. Instead, more juvenile offenders would simply receive letters after their arrests.

Jason Ziedenberg, a spokesman for the department, said department leaders think STOP court is successful, but they've placed a priority on the most dangerous offenders. In large part, that means devoting resources to sex offenders and other violent felons who've been released from prison.

The proposed cuts have been sent to Multnomah County Chairman Ted Wheeler, who will compile a proposed budget in April. Commissioners must agree on a new budget, effective in July.

Drug courts in Clackamas, Clark and Washington counties aren't planning cuts to their programs at this time.

-- Aimee Green; aimeegreen@news.oregonian.com

©2009 Oregon Live LLC. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance

Headlines and Reality

Headlines and Reality  The headlines make the residents believe that crime is high, but according tothe police commissioner this is not the case. See what you think results from crime headlines March 1, 2009 As Hard Times Loom, Will New York’s Streets Get Meaner? By AL BAKER With each crack of gunfire, with each new homicide, the trajectory of public safety in New York City is being measured. Headline: A 15-year-old boy in the Bronx is shot on Monday in a dispute over graffiti.  Headline: A 21-year-old woman is shot dead on Wednesday on a street in East New York, Brooklyn, a neighborhood once known as the “dead zone.”  Headline: A 53-year-old man and a 16-year-old girl are fatally shot on Thursday night inside an apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. If a shrinking economy, soaring jobless claims and a troubled financial sector are not angst-producing enough, the threat of increased crime is leading many conversations toward a nagging and persistent question: Will the bad old days of record numbers of murders and ubiquitous street muggings be far behind? “If you’re nervous, some noise can make you jump,” said Dennis C. Smith, a professor at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, who has studied the New York City Police Department’s strategies to reduce crime. “And I think we are understandably very, very nervous.” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, for his part, said he has heard this all before.He said similar worries were being voiced as he took over in 2002 for a second stint as the city’s top police official: Things were headed in the wrong direction, the economy was devastated after Sept. 11, 2001, and there were predictions that crime would increase. Instead, overall crime has dropped nearly 30 percent in the last seven years, he said, and in 2007 the lowest number of killings was recorded since the city started keeping what it considers reliable records, about four decades ago. “There’s a lot of predictions that crime is going to go up as a result of the economic crisis,” Mr. Kelly said on Friday during a news conference to announce an arrest in the fatal beating of an Ecuadorean immigrant in December.“The fact of the matter is that hasn’t happened,” Mr. Kelly said. “The fact is we’re down 14 percent, and we’re down in every category across the city.” “We’ve met these challenges before,” he added. Criminologists warn that it can be misleading to analyze crime data for short periods of time and say that clusters of murders can occur during periods of overall crime decreases. Still, after the first two months of 2009, Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, said that murders in the city are down slightly. As of Feb. 25, there were 55 homicides in the city, Mr. Browne said, compared with 66 in the same period a year go, a 17 percent decrease. Despite a recent surge in violence, crime in East New York, which is part of the 75th Precinct, is mirroring the citywide trend: It is down 14 percent.“It is flat in every category,” Mr. Kelly said. “It is actually flat, as far as homicides are concerned. It is down as far as shootings are concerned.” But crime statistics and people’s feelings about public safety “are not perfectly correlated,” Professor Smith said.“People have had this longtime misconception that crime came down in New York City because the economy improved, and I have been telling people that it is just the reverse — the economy improved after crime went down,” Professor Smith said.  “Hotel occupancy went up after crime went down. Airport arrivals went up after crime went down. Employment went up after crime went down.”Thomas A. Reppetto, a police historian and a retired commander in the Chicago Police Department, said a city becoming less safe because of a sputtering economy was not something that would occur quickly. Even if stores were going out of business and being boarded up, reversing the revitalization of certain neighborhoods, it would not happen “overnight.” A key issue is whether the city, facing a multibillion-dollar budget deficit, would be able to sustain the Police Department’s size or be able to provide money for hiring or overtime costs. Mr. Kelly said he would like to have more officers, and expressed hope that the federal stimulus package would contain grant money for new hires. Mr. Reppetto said he believed crime would continue declining this year. “For 2009, if the police receive some additional things because of federal money, and if they continue to carry out the strategies they have carried out, you will not see a significant rise in crime; indeed, it will probably go down,” he said. “But if there is going to be a prolonged depression, recession, then we have to think about other scenarios.”Mr. Reppetto said predictions about “the fall of the Big Apple” were made in 1990, when homicides hit their peak at 2,245, and, “murder gangs with machine guns” roamed the streets. “I got calls galore,” Mr. Reppetto said. “Is this the end of New York? Is New York finished? The BBC wanted to know what was going on.” In Bedford-Stuyvesant, outside 117 Van Buren Street, where two people were killed late Thursday, residents said it was hard to tell if they were at the threshold of a new era of lawlessness. But they spoke of their anger over crime and those responsible. “The kids around here don’t feel like they have any other choice,” said Renee Taylor, 21, who works as a security guard. “There’s definitely more robberies lately. That’s getting popular now. People will knock right on the door with a gun. You can tell them some sob story about being broke, but they’re just going to get mad at you.”A friend, Jessica Paige, 21, offered a simple theory about why people turn to crime: “It’s a money thing.” Colin Moynihan contributed reporting. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

The Justice System and a 10-year old killer

Prosecutors frustrated by limited options for trying juvenile murders

Thursday, February 26, 2009

By Daniel Malloy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Jordan Anthony Brown

The law isn't built for a case like Jordan Brown's.
The 11-year-old boy, charged with killing his father's pregnant girlfriend with a shotgun, has kept prosecutors up at night and caused a national stir.
"It scares us," said Allegheny County Judge Kim Berkeley Clark, who handles juvenile cases. "Because we don't like to think that our children, small children, are capable of these types of things."

Neither do lawmakers.

That's why the legal mechanism for dealing with Jordan's case has Lawrence County District Attorney John Bongivengo flummoxed. As a murder suspect, Jordan is required to be charged as an adult because Pennsylvania law says murder cannot be a delinquent act.

Yesterday morning, Jordan was moved to the Allencrest Juvenile Detention Center in Beaver, an 18-bed facility that handles kids as young as 10. Mr. Bongivengo determined it was a better place for Jordan than the Lawrence County Jail, where there were no uniforms that fit him and he was sequestered from other inmates.

But, in an illustration of how ill-equipped the law is to handle such a circumstance, Jordan is technically not allowed to be at the juvenile facility, Judge Clark said, because he's been deemed an adult defendant.
Pennsylvania is one of five states -- the others are Delaware, Florida, Nevada and Wisconsin -- where Jordan would automatically be charged as an adult, according to data compiled by the Pittsburgh-based National Center for Juvenile Justice.

His attorney, Dennis Elisco, said he will argue to have the case moved to juvenile court, but the burden is on him to prove it should be sent down.
The allegations are almost as jarring as Jordan's boyish mugshot.

Prosecutors say that Friday's killing of 26-year-old Kenzie Marie Houk, who lived with Jordan in a New Beaver farmhouse, was premeditated. After shooting the sleeping woman in the back of the head, police said, the fifth-grader got on the bus and went to school.

There is precedent in Pennsylvania for trying a child this young for murder.

On March 6, 1989, Cameron Kocher, 9, of Kresgeville, Monroe County, took a rifle from his father's gun cabinet, loaded it and fired it out of a window, killing a 7-year-old girl on a snowmobile. He later pleaded guilty in adult court to involuntary manslaughter and was placed on probation until he was 21.

But Patrick Griffin, senior research associate at the NCJJ, said child killers are so rare that the system doesn't account for them well.

"It's kind of a safety valve of the juvenile system, [not] handling offenses that are too serious," Mr. Griffin said. "Murder was way beyond the pale. But they weren't thinking about an 11-year-old."

State Rep. Don Walko, D-North Side, chair of the judicial subcommittee on courts, said he intends to use the subcommittee to address the issue of juveniles charged as adults.

"I believe we should look at this situation and balance out the need to punish adult crime with adult punishment, and balance that with the reality of, my God, an 11-year-old," Mr. Walko said. "To me that was flabbergasting."
Mr. Walko said he had been thinking of bringing this up before Ms. Houk's killing, and one of the issues to address will be the all-or-nothing nature of juvenile or adult prosecutions.

The juvenile system in Pennsylvania can't maintain control after the juvenile turns 21, whereas an adult murder conviction can mean decades -- or life -- in a state prison.

NCJJ statistics say 25 states allow for a third option, the hybrid juvenile-adult sentence. For a particularly serious crime, a juvenile can be sentenced to serve until a certain age in a juvenile facility, then move to state prison for a period of time, if warranted.

Though Pennsylvania does not have such an option, Mr. Griffin noted that it is one of the most flexible states in the country in giving judges leeway to decide whether the case proceeds in juvenile or adult court. In many states, there's a firm cutoff age for certain crimes.

"This may seem like the wrong way to start out the case, but there will be an opportunity to consider the individual circumstances of the kid," Mr. Griffin said of Jordan.

"Probably they will be able to work it out without having a big contentious hearing."

Jordan's preliminary hearing was rescheduled yesterday for March 24, and Mr. Elisco said a bond hearing and a hearing to determine whether the case is sent to juvenile court will come sometime after that.

Another potential option for Jordan, Judge Clark said, would be a mental health placement. If a doctor determines that the child needs serious treatment, Jordan could be housed in a mental hospital.

But the idea of treating an 11-year-old in the same manner as a 31-year-old has struck many observers as absurd.

"He probably hasn't had the sex talk yet," said Melissa Sickmund, chief of systems research at the NCJJ. "He remembers learning how to tie his shoes -- and being proud of it. His big worries in a day are so unlike that of an adult."

Police Discretion or Discrimination?

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This articles was found at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/nyregion/22tickets.html and it raises issues of discrimination. How is this different from the interactions of many motorists and drivers where the police decide to simply let the person go with a warning?

Is this a natural result of discretion? 

February 22, 2009

Can You Plea-Bargain in a Traffic Case? That Depends

By JOHN ELIGON

For years it was a normal routine in traffic courts in towns and villages across New York State: Drivers would negotiate at the courthouse with the state trooper or the local police officer who cited them for moving violations to reduce the charge. The judge would then make it official.

But the State Police, citing ethical concerns, issued an order in 2006 banning the practice, generating outrage among judges, town leaders, district attorneys and even some troopers. Local police officers still offer plea bargains.

Now, some lawyers have taken an unusual approach to challenge the ban: fighting tickets using a law established after the Civil War to protect the rights of former slaves.

The lawyers have cited the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which mandates that laws be applied equally to everyone, to argue that the State Police policy prevents drivers from receiving equal justice. Whether a driver can negotiate a lower fine, the lawyers say, depends on where they get a ticket and from whom.

“It stinks because it prevents people from doing what other people are permitted to do, based on the color of the uniform of the cop that’s pulling them over,” said Jonna M. Spilbor, a Poughkeepsie-based lawyer who has fought about half a dozen traffic tickets using the equal protection argument. Although some of those tickets were reduced or dismissed, she and other lawyers and judges said they did not know of any state judge who had explicitly ruled that the State Police policy violated equal protection rights.

The issue may soon be decided by a state appellate court.

Critics of the policy accuse the State Police, who wrote more than one million traffic tickets last year, of trying to save on overtime by decreasing troopers’ court appearances, of interfering with the judiciary and of placing an unnecessary financial burden on small towns. The State Police rule has no effect on drivers ticketed in New York City, Buffalo, Rochester and some towns in Suffolk County, where traffic violations have long been handled in administrative hearings set up by the Department of Motor Vehicles. Those cases are heard before an administrative judge, and there is no plea bargaining before the hearing with the ticketing officer.

The State Police have defended the ban, saying they did not want to open the door to ethical problems by having troopers cut deals with people they ticket. That argument was echoed by Gov. David A. Paterson when he vetoed a bill last year that would have overturned the State Police rule. (The two previous governors, Eliot Spitzer and George E. Pataki, had also vetoed such bills.)

Mr. Paterson said the bill “would undermine the authority of the superintendent of State Police to institute policies that will prevent troopers from engaging in conduct that could lead to allegations of impropriety, favoritism and corruption.”

The State Police also said the policy does reduce overtime costs and keeps troopers focused on more important patrol tasks. The policy saves the State Police about $5 million in overtime and other personnel costs annually, according to a spokesman for the governor.

Towns have a strong financial incentive to allow plea bargains because cases that reach trial cost more. And for some infractions, like speeding, the state keeps all the money from the fines, but for a lesser charge, like failing to obey a traffic sign, the money goes to the town.

Despite the complaints, plea bargains or dismissals in town and village traffic courts around the state have not greatly dropped since 2006, according to statistics from the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Many towns have avoided the State Police directive by assigning special prosecutors who can offer deals to drivers who are given tickets by troopers. This adds fuel to the equal protection argument, lawyers say, because drivers ticketed by troopers in towns with those special prosecutors are treated differently from those in towns without them.

But in the roughly two dozen counties where troopers also serve as prosecutors in court, some judges dismiss or reduce tickets, even when troopers object.

And in some courts, troopers engage in surreptitious plea bargaining, said Thomas B. Mafrici, a traffic lawyer based in Cicero, N.Y. “I’m still talking to the trooper before I go to the judge,” he said. “It’s almost no different.”

Lt. Glenn Miner, a spokesman for the State Police, said any trooper caught violating the agency’s policy would be disciplined.

Some district attorneys said assigning their prosecutors to traffic cases was a waste of resources.

“I would certainly rather have my people working on real criminal cases as opposed to performing a largely ministerial act of dealing with hundreds, probably thousands, of traffic tickets,” said Terry Wilhelm, the Greene County district attorney. “We were completely satisfied with the procedure that was in effect before the state policy did this.”

The State Police have aggressively sought to protect their policy. Two years ago, Francis G. Christensen, a town justice in Milan, reduced a speeding charge and ruled that it was “improper and unreasonable” for the State Police to ignore a defendant’s explanation.

“A prosecutor is required to look out for justice, not necessarily a conviction,” Justice Christensen, a former state trooper, said in a recent interview.

The State Police sued Justice Christensen, arguing that he overstepped his authority. Last September, a State Supreme Court justice ruled in the agency’s favor.

Justice Christensen is appealing the decision to the Appellate Division, the second-highest court in the state. His lawyer, Marshall L. Brenner, said he planned to raise the equal protection argument.

Mr. Paterson’s office has also rebuffed the equal protection argument, saying that despite the State Police ban on plea bargains, the county prosecutors in the area still have the discretion to offer them.

But Ms. Spilbor said it was unfair that state troopers would not even listen to a driver’s arguments.

“The discretion to negotiate with you as the motorist is gone because this policy does not allow for it under any circumstances,” she said. “By any other police agency, the discretion exists.”

 

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

 

Family Annihilators

An article from Newsweek Magazine that is available here talks about the

potential surge in family annihilations.

The term is not one most of us are even familiar with although our newspapers

cover the stories when they occur. In simply terms it involves the killing of

an entire family by a member of the family, usually the mother or father.

Here is a bit of scary knowledge: the largest number of mass killings in the 

United States occur in the family with workplace killings and schools slayings

the next two categories. 30% of mass killings are within the family.

The author of the article spoke with Professor Jack Levin of Northeastern

University who wrote a book on serial killers.

Professor Levin believes that as the economy spirals downward more

family annihilations may be on the way as well.  According to Levin these

individuals are not insane but rather externalize blame and feel total loss

of control. He mentions both the revenge situation as well as the altruistic

one.

It is well worth reading.