Attorney General Eric Holder warned Monday that contracting government budgets at federal, state and local levels, are expected to lead to significant layoffs in police departments across the country.
Holder urged those attending the International Association of Chiefs of Police Annual Conference in Chicago to help restore federal funds that would assist local police departments in keeping officers on duty.
“According to a new economic outlook report that our COPS office released this week — we expect that, by the end of this year, nearly 12,000 police officers and sheriff’s deputies will have been laid off,” the Attorney General said.
COPS is the controversial program that provides assistance to local police forces seeking seek to hire additional officers.
“The findings included in this new report show that law enforcement agencies nationwide have nearly 30,000 unfilled vacancies,” Holder added.
Holder also criticized congressional plans to cut assistance to law enforcement agencies that the White House proposed in administration jobs proposals.
“That is a dangerous, drastic and unacceptable gap — one that can’t be closed without your immediate attention and assistance,” Holder said.
Holder did say, however, that last month, COPS Director Bernard Melekian announced more than $240 million in grants to over a thousand officers in 238 local police departments across the United States.
Some Democratic senators are shoring up efforts to see that terrorist suspects can be tried in federal courts in the latest feud with Republicans over the role of military courts and prison facilities in Guantanamo Bay.
In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) sent Friday, several Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee and the Select Committee on Intelligence asked Reid to work toward ensuring that the annual defense authorization bill does not contain provisions that would outlaw trials for terrorist suspects in federal courts, and make permanent strict requirements for transferring prisoners out of Guantanamo Bay.
The senators also expressed a concern that the provisions in Section D — known as “Detainee Matters” — could lead to the detention of American citizens without due process.
“We support the majority of the provisions in this bill, which further national security and are of great importance to the needs of the men and women in our armed forces, but we cannot support the controversial detention policy provisions,” said the letter, which was signed by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, and most members of the two committees.
“The executive branch must have the flexibility to consider various options for handling terrorism cases, including the ability to prosecute terrorists for violations of U.S. law in federal criminal courts,” the letter stated, adding that the White House “has made clear its opposition to requiring military custody for terrorism suspects.”
Attorney General Eric Holder recently hailed civilian trials for terror suspects on October 12, after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — the “Underwear Bomber” who attempted to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane that had flown from Amsterdam to Detroit — pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Michigan.
The Democratic senators described the Section D provisions in question — 1032 and 1033 — as “unprecedented” and potentially unconstitutional and inconsistent with the Authorization for Use of Military Force that was signed a week after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
In addition to arguing that the provisions could interfere with counterterrorist operations by federal law enforcement officials, the senators also claimed that they could allow for the indefinite detention of American citizens without charge or trial.
The senators also criticized provision 1033, claiming that it limited the ability of the United States to transfer prisoners out of Guantanamo Bay.
“Professionals in the intelligence community and law enforcement need the flexibility to use all tools to effectively interrogate, incarcerate, and bring terrorists to justice,” the letter said.
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, however, defended the bill’s detainee provisions.
“As we learned from the Attorney General’s failed attempt to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City, American citizens are demanding that our federal court and prison systems be off-limits to terrorists,” the Senator told Main Justice. “Housing people and holding a trial for people who want to kill Americans has no place in any state, be it New York, California, or Vermont, and would introduce needless risk and burdens on communities.”
Andre Birotte Jr., the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, defended the Department of Justice’s decision to crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries in the state Sunday, saying that marijuana is being sold for non-medical reasons.
The Los Angeles-based U.S Attorney said that although California voters approved of legalizing medical marijuana in 1996, the initiative is justified due to abuses of the system.
“What we’ve seen, unfortunately, is the Compassionate Use Act has really turned into the Commercial Use Act,” Birotte said on News Conference, a Sunday morning talk show on NBC’s Los Angeles affiliate.
He added that authorities aren’t certain what percentage of the state’s 1 million registered users need marijuana for legitimate medical reasons, dismissing criticism from legislatures that ill people are being adversely affected by the initiative.
Birotte also said that marijuana is a controlled substance and that authorities will go after dispensaries that violate state and federal law.
On October 7, California’s four chief federal prosecutors — Birotte, San Francisco U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag, San Diego U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy and Sacramento U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner — announced that they would crackdown on the state’s medical marijuana system.
Federal authorities have demanded back taxes from dispensaries, disqualified them from business expense tax deductions, and ordered landlords to evict dispensaries or else face criminal charges.
Eight medical marijuana dispensaries alone in Lake Forest — a town in the Greater Los Angeles Area — shut their doors last week, according to Prop Zero, a blog about California politics produced by NBC. Landlords who owned the properties had been threatened with asset forfeitures.
Funds from a Justice Department earmark to a Pennsylvania defense contractor actually were controlled by the office of the late Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), which decided which law enforcement agencies should get grants, the Justice Department’s Inspector General concludes in a new report.
In the report, the IG states that between September 2004 and September 2006, MountainTop Technologies Inc. received $3,454,668 to help improve the ability of law enforcement agencies in southwest Pennsylvania. The report states that MountainTop turned all decision-making power about distribution of that money over to Murtha’s congressional office.
Murtha, a long time key member of the House Appropriations Committee and chairman of its Defense Appropriations subcomittee, was known as a master of the earmark game. A former Murtha aide, Paul Magliocchetti, founded a powerhouse lobbying group that focused on delivering earmarks. He pleaded guilty to illegally funnelling some $386,000 to members of Congress. Newly released FBI documents indicate that Murtha was under investigation at the time of his death in February 2010.
The IG report is the latest nail in the coffin of the earmarking process The practice of members of Congress writing earmarks into appropriations bills has come under fire in recent years, with members promising a moratorium on congressionally directed projects. While many reports have surfaced about members earmarking funds to favored companies, the MountainTop case is particularly shocking because, not only did a lawmaker steer money to a favored company, the lawmaker’s office then controlled distribution of the earmarked funds.
The IG found that as part of the grant, “the 12th District Office directed MountainTop in how to distribute grant funds, including which law enforcement organizations would receive funds and the amount and timing of funds to be disbursed.”
The IG reported that MountainTop failed to review the local law enforcement agencies that received the grants and that money was not always deposited in the proper accounts.
The IG is recommending that the DOJ recoup $3,335,583 in grant expenditures, or about 97 percent of the total grant award.
In a respnse to the IG report, MountainTop officials said that they consulted with Murtha’s office because those employees had “unique knowledge” of local police departments. MountainTop officials dispute the IG’s conclusion that the company provided no oversight and disagrees with the recommendation that the company return 97 percent of the grant funds.
The Washington Post reported in 2009 that MountainTop had received at least $36 million in the past eight years in earmarks and military contracts, without competition with Murtha’s assistance and that the company was under investigation. . The firm, the newspaper said, hired the lobbying firm tha employed Murtha’s brother and employees made significant campaign contributions to Murtha.
Judge Jay Bybee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit got a big gift — legal and consulting aid worth some $3.4 million — as he fended off charges that he violated ethics rules by authorizing torture techniques while he was a legal adviser in the administration of President George W. Bush, The National Law Journal reported on Monday.
Jay Bybee
Nearly all of that $3.4 million came from Los Angeles-based Latham & Watkins, whose Maureen Mahoney led Bybee’s pro bono defense from 2007 to 2010, the newspaper said. Its report was based on financial-disclosure forms.
“Experts on judicial ethics said they could not recall another federal judge receiving so large a benefit,” the NLJ said. “Although the fact that Latham represented Bybee has been widely reported since 2009, the dollar value of the work had not been reported.”
The defense team had to respond to congressional and Justice Department investigations into Bybee’s tenure as head of DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel. That office produced memos signed by Bybee and another OLC lawyer, John Yoo, allowing the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods. Critics said the memos showed a reckless disregard for ethical duties.
“Bybee and Yoo won a decisive victory in January 2010, when Justice Department lawyer David Margolis, at the urging of Latham lawyers and others, rejected the idea of referring the two men to state bars for possible discipline,” The Journal recalled. “House Democrats also declined to pursue impeachment proceedings against Bybee, as some of his critics wanted.”
Bybee (who will turn 58 on Thursday) has had to recuse himself from several cases involving Latham, The Journal noted. He was confirmed as a judge by the Senate in March 2003, before the “torture memo” became public.
Attorney General Eric Holder paid a warm, and personal, tribute to the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth on Sunday in Alabama, calling the late civil rights pioneer “both a warrior for justice and an advocate for peace.”
“Throughout his life – as a minister of the faith, and a leader of the civil rights movement – he transcended labels like ‘pioneer’ and ‘role model,’” Holder said at a memorial ceremony at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, where four young black girls were killed by a bomb in 1963. “He became, as President Obama recently noted, nothing less than ‘“a testament to the strength of the human spirit.’”
“Reverend Shuttlesworth helped to lead the movement that remade our society,” Holder said. “And more than half a century ago, he renewed the great, yet unfulfilled promise that first inspired America’s founding: that all its citizens are created equal. For so many decades, he called – and, at times, he pushed – our nation forward. From both the pulpit and the streets, with both his words and his deeds – he demanded and inspired the very best in our people.”
“Reverend Shuttlesworth was often a prime target of hate – and even violence,” Holder recalled. “Over the years, he was spit on. He was savagely beaten. Not once, but on two separate occasions, he was bombed. And, more than 30 times, he was arrested.”
Shuttlesworth, who died in Birmingham on Oct. 5 at the age of 89, often marched alongside the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other giants of the civil rights movement in the turbulent, danger-filled 1960s. In 1963, Holder recalled, Shuttlesworth was arrested on a trumped-up charge of parading without a permit. His case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which held in 1969 that he had been denied a parade permit “not to control traffic, as the state contended, but to censor ideas- powerful ideas rooted both in our Constitution and in our faith.”
Today, Holder said, “although we can be justifiably proud of the steps this country has taken over the years to expand the promise of justice and equality for all Americans, none of us can afford to become complacent.”
Although he did not mention it in his speech, an Alabama immigration law is being challenged by civil rights groups and the Department of Justice (see Main Justice’s recent report.)
Holder, the first black attorney general, was 12 years old in 1963, when Shuttlesworth was being beaten, spat upon and arrested. Holder said Shuttlesworth was not just a “national treasure” but a personal benefactor: “Without him, there would be no me.”
Grupo Bimbo will be permitted to acquire Sara Lee’s North American Fresh Bakery baking division, the Justice Department announced Friday..
The settlement requires that the Mexican company and its U.S. baking unit, BBU Inc. sell the rights to sell Sara Lee’s brands of sliced fresh bread in various metropolitan areas throughout the country.
“BBU and Sara Lee’s North American Fresh Bakery business aggressively compete head-to-head for sliced fresh bread sold in retail stores,” Sharis A. Pozen, Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, said in a news release. “Without the divestitures required by the department in eight geographic markets, the combination of BBU and Sara Lee’s North American Fresh Bakery business would likely lead to millions of Americans paying higher prices for sliced fresh bread.”
As part of the settlement, BBU agreed to sell the rights to manufacture, distribute and market Sara Lee’s EarthGrains label in California, Kansas, Oklahoma and Nebraska, along with the Holsum and Milano brands in central Pennsylvania.
BBU is the largest baker and seller of sliced fresh bread in the U.S., and sells a variety of products including Arnold, Oroweat, Brownberry, Thomas’, Entenmann’s, Boboli, Freihofer’s and Stroehmann’s. In 2009, its sales in the U.S. totaled approximately $3.9 billion.
Sara Lee is the third largest baker and seller of sliced fresh bread in the U.S. and sells brand names that include the Sara Lee brand family and EarthGrains. Its North American Fresh Bakery Division took in approximately $2.1 billion in revenue.
The federal government has reached a $380 million settlement with an Oklahoma Indian tribe over allegations that it mismanaged the tribe’s trust funds and other assets.
Senior officials from the Justice, Treasury and Interior departments and the Osage Tribe’s Principal Chief John Red Eagle appeared at a news conference at the Interior Department headquarters to announce the settlement.
A trial over outstanding claims was set to begin in February 2012.
“This historic settlement resolves with finality long-standing trust accounting and trust management claims by the Osage Tribe,” said Assistant Attorney General Ignacia A. Moreno, head of the DOJ’s Environment and Natural Resource Division. “This settlement demonstrates the United States’ strong commitment to resolving pending tribal trust accounting and trust management cases in an expedited, fair and just manner.”
As part of the agreement, the Department of the Interior agreed to regularly provide the Osage Tribe with statements of account, audits, and information relating to the management of the mineral estate to the tribe.
The two sides also agreed on dispute resolution provisions in an effort to minimize the probability of future litigation.
The Osage Tribe first filed its trust accounting and management lawsuits in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in 1999 and 2000. The tribe also sued the United States in a trust accounting case filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 2004, but dropped the case in 2010. Between 2006 and 2010, the tribe won two judgments worth $331 million from the U.S. Court of Federal claims on various grievances date from 1972 t0 2000.
The American Civil Liberties Union appealed to Attorney General Eric Holder Thursday to put a stop to FBI surveillance and investigations tactics that they described as “unconstitutional.”
The ACLU asked Holder to reform the Attorney General’s Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations after information it received through Freedom of Information Act requests revealed that the Bureau has conducted a number of investigations based on racial, ethnic, religious and political profiling over the past decade.
The civil liberties advocacy group called on Holder to amend the guidelines by stopping “Preliminary Investigations’” that aren’t based in factual evidence and “limited in time and scope”, and asked him to strip the FBI of its authority to conduct “Assessment” investigations without probable cause.
The ACLU also said that Holder should disallow profiling based on religion and nationalities that is currently allowed by the Guidance on Race, and withdraw a provision in the Guidance that allows profiling in “national security and border integrity investigations”.
As a result of its Freedom of Information Act Request, the ACLU said that:
- Guidelines for conducting Preliminary Investigations were relaxed in 2002 and 2008.
- A 2010 DOJ Inspector General report confirmed that the FBI has been spying on environmentalist and anti-war groups, among other domestic advocacy groups, based on “factually weak…speculative after-the-fact rationalizations.”
- A 2009 FBI Counterterrorism “Baseline Collection Plan” revealed that even after such investigations revealed no criminal wrongdoing, the personal information of those investigated was retained indefinitely.
- The Baseline Collection Plan shows that innocence did not necessarily result in the cessation of investigations.
- In 2008, the FBI issued an internal manual called the Domestic Investigation and Operations Guide, which revealed a strategy to glean demographic information to “Geo-map” concentrated ethnic communities for “intelligence analysis”. The Guide also permitted federal agents to document and monitor “specific and relevant ethnic behavior” and “behavioral characteristics reasonably associated with a particular criminal or terrorist element of an ethnic community.”
- The FBI wrongly stated that the Guidance allows it to use race as one of many factors in criminal law enforcement activities, even though the Guidance states that race cannot be used “to any degree.”
- Investigations based on race have been carried out in recent years in Georgia, Michigan, California, Alabama, and New Jersey.
The FBI denied the ACLU’s allegations that it conducts investigation based on profiling. In a statement issued on Thursday, the bureau said that the Attorney General’s Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations and the Domestic Investigation and Operations Guide “clearly prohibit the predication of investigative activity solely on the exercise of First Amendment rights” and that “[t]he FBI does not investigate individuals, groups, or communities based on ethnicity or race.”
“Certain terrorist and criminal groups target particular ethnic and geographic communities for victimization and/or recruitment purposes. This reality must be taken into account when determining if there are threats to the United States,” the FBI said.
“These efforts are intended to address specific threats, not particular communities.”
