Archive for May, 2012

3 illegal aliens nabbed in NY Mills

Thursday, May 31st, 2012

Three illegal aliens from Guatemala were busted Wednesday morning living in a New York Mills apartment and working illegally for a restaurant in New Hartford, authorities said.

Shortly after 7 a.m., New York Mills police joined federal U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and the U.S. Border Patrol in apprehending the aliens living at 25 New Hartford St., police Sgt. Lee Soja said.

The trio – two men aged 21 and 31, and a 24-year-old woman – were transported to a substation of the U.S. Border Patrol in Syracuse, and will soon head to Buffalo for further deportation hearings, Soja said.

This isn’t the first time illegal aliens have been nabbed in this small village over the years, Soja said: A Russian woman was previously taken into custody, as well as a person from Mexico.

“I would say it is a concern to us,” Soja said. “Everybody likes to come to America and work because it’s the land of opportunity. I’m not saying they are bad individuals, but you have people here who are paying taxes and working hard, and then you might have others coming here to flee their country and we may never know who they are.”

New York Mills police and federal immigration authorities were first alerted to the targeted village address last week after New Hartford police charged another man with possessing illegal bath salt drugs, New Hartford police Sgt. Michael Kowalski said.

That man – identified as Henry Robello Mazugrie, 23 – said he had once lived at that location, and he was later found to be an illegal alien, police said.

As police recently attempted to interview the residents despite a language barrier, Soja said one of the aliens offered a fraudulent form of identification while the others had no immigration paperwork or visas.

“By interviewing them, they did admit they weren’t supposed to be here,” Soja said. Police believe the aliens had been living here for about three months, but it remains unclear how they initially entered the country.

Further investigation also revealed that the three illegal aliens apprehended Wednesday had been working at an Asian restaurant in New Hartford, while the fourth had also worked at the establishment at one point but was believed to be currently unemployed, Soja said.

Neighboring residences at 25 ½ and 27 New Hartford St. were also investigated, but no other illegal aliens were discovered, Soja said. Two legal immigrants were located, one of which was also working at the same restaurant.

The owner of the restaurant was also the landlord of the apartments where the illegal aliens were living, but that person told police that he believed the workers had legally entered the country, Soja said.

As far as whether the business owner made any efforts to determine if he was hiring legal workers, local police officials said that aspect is something that would be more appropriately investigated by federal immigration authorities.

“At this point in time, our main focus was the individuals,” Soja said. “Although there may be some follow-up, it seemed to be the impression that he thought they were here legally.”

Enhanced by Zemanta
Share on Facebook
Share

Police gaining ground on violent crime in South Seattle

Thursday, May 31st, 2012

SEATTLE – While Seattle City Councilmembers turn the screws on the Seattle Police following a recent surge in violence, the department says it is gaining ground in the fight against crime in the south side.

The South Precinct, typically associated with the area around Rainier Avenue South, has been a big focus of SPD’s new “Violence Prevention Emphasis Patrols.” But Lt. John Hayes said police are making progress in the fight against crime, not just by patrolling, but by establishing more personal relationships with the people who live in the area.

“We try to educate them and their friends around them,” he said. “We want to make it easier for them to call us and prevent an incident from taking place.”

Hayes said it’s that kind of strategy that helped them gather enough information from the youth in the area to arrest Troy D. Sanders. Sanders, 26, is suspected in the May 16 shooting death of Courtney Taylor, 31, in a Jack in the Box Parking lot along Rainier Avenue South.

Officers report the area was so hostile that it was difficult to gather information at the scene.

“Behind the scenes, the community dialogue is getting better,” said Hayes.

Pat Murakami, President of the South Seattle Crime Prevention Council, has been proactive by organizing community walks and street clean ups, and believes property crime is less, but she wants to see more.

“This is encouraging, but now we need to work on the extremely violent crime,” she said. “All of these shootings are people that know each other.”

The most recent statistics provided by the Seattle Police Department show crime is up compared to last year. Through March of this year, 852 violent crimes have been reported compared to 798 last year.

Enhanced by Zemanta
Share on Facebook
Share

Euro 2012: don’t boycott Ukraine

Thursday, May 31st, 2012

Euro 2012 is almost upon us. For those just joining us from outer space, it will take place in Poland and Ukraine – both first-time hosts. As an English-language writer who was born in Ukraine, I have been receiving messages from football fans who are having second thoughts about travelling to the country of my birth for the tournament. “I’ve got everything booked,” one message reads. “But do you think Ukraine is safe for foreigners?”

 

In recent weeks, we have heard much talk about a boycott of Ukraine during the tournament – from such people as the foreign secretary,William Hague, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel – inspired mainly by the jailing of the former prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, and furthered by general concerns over rule of law in the country. And since racist attacks in Ukraine are also not unheard of, the UK Foreign Office advises British travellers to Ukraine to “take extra care” if they are of Asian or African-Caribbean descent, or belonging to a religious minority group.

 

I’ve written extensively about other social problems and crime in Ukraine, including recent coverage of a horrific rape and murder that prompted mass protests in the country. You’d think I’d be the first to say, “Ukraine is not worth it.” But I would be lying.

 

What intrigued me most about calls to boycott Euro 2012 in Ukraine was the fact that there was no high-profile drive to boycott the recent Eurovision song contest held in Azerbaijan – and it’s not as if human rights abuses in Azerbaijan are something to speak of lightly. Azerbaijan is an authoritarian country, something that Ukraine is simply not (for one thing, Ukraine is too divided and diverse to be truly authoritarian). Did it come down to the fact that Azerbaijan has oil and Ukraine does not? Or is a major football tournament seen as a bigger deal than a few days of bad pop music? Either way, I have found myself feeling defensive over the implicit suggestion that Azerbaijan was perfectly fine to visit, while Ukraine is not.

 

As someone who comes to Ukraine often, and used to do so while accompanied by my Arab ex-boyfriend, I can personally attest to the fact that safety for foreigners in the country has improved. For one thing, racism in particular is no longer swept under the rug – there have been mass campaigns drawing attention to the problem, and a major drive to make skinheads feel unwelcome. Law-enforcement officials are keenly aware of the possibility of scandal. My source in the Ukrainian police told me this week: “People being picked up by the police for crimes are being told that should they cause any trouble during the tournament, there will be hell to pay. And officers themselves are being cautioned to think twice about harassing foreigners.”

 

It may be that during Euro 2012, Ukraine will be a safer place for foreigners than for citizens. As a friend of mine who is a former prosecutor told me this week: “Some parents are worried that their children will fall prey to foreign sex-tourists during the tournament! As you can see, these kinds of safety concerns can go both ways. But Kiev is ready for the fans, the city is spruced up, and I think all will turn out well.”

 

Ukraine is much more than the sum of the headlines. The football tradition there is long and proud, but even if you take sport out of the question, the country is well worth a visit. There is a well-developed eco-tourism industry in the west of the country, for example. And Kiev is a treasure trove of church architecture and shady courtyards, and does not yet have the sleek look and feel of the well-trod tourist destination.

 

As for me, I like to go down to the beach in Crimea’s remote Lisya Bukhta, or Fox Bay, when given half the chance. A gathering place of hippies, nudists and other representatives of Ukraine’s oft-neglected, yet thriving counter-culture movement, the scenic Lisya Bukhta represents, perhaps, what’s best about the country today: a kind of fleeting informality, a point in space and time where day-to-day life remains unpredictable and very beautiful. And yes, I’m sure the bars down there will broadcast football matches live.

Enhanced by Zemanta
Share on Facebook
Share

The Rise of Black-on-White Violence

Wednesday, May 30th, 2012

The media and the usual race-mongers made sure that all of America knew about George Zimmerman’s killing of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, on February 26. The local police initially did not arrest Zimmerman because it was an obvious case of self-defense.

There was no such outcry, however, when a month later on March 26 a 50-year-old white man was attacked and beaten with a hammer by two black teens, in Midway, Florida, just six miles from Sanford. The Orlando Sentinel published a description of the attackers, but neglected to mention their race. One of them had just finished a seventeen month prison sentence.

On May 9, the Star-Ledger of Newark, NJ published an article, “Group of 10 or 15 ‘thugs’ rob and beat 5 people following Prudential Center concert, cops say.” There was no reference to their race in the article and when I emailed the reporter for clarification, I received no response.

This kind of double standard is rampant in the reporting of black-on-white attacks and Colin Flaherty, a radio host on WDEL, Wilmington, Delaware, and a writer who has won more than forty awards for his work, has recently published “White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Race Riots to America” that chronicles a trend that is receiving little media attention and one which local police authorities tend to avoid discussing.

The book is not a racist screed. It is the reporting of events.

It is also an appalling record of violence against whites that must be addressed or political correctness will doom any chance of dealing with it. In the introduction to his book, Flaherty writes, “Almost as astonishing as the widespread racial violence is the willingness of people in authority to deny it. Ignore it. Explain it away. Even condone and lie about it.”

The book is a chronicle of black-on-white violence in recent years. “In Chicago,” Flaherty notes, “after weeks of racial violence where the newspapers refused to mention the crime was almost exclusively black gangs on individual whites, the Superintendent of Police said he knew what was causing the violence: Sarah Palin.”

“A member of Congress from Chicago, Bobby Rush, said black violence in Chicago was routine and the only reason anyone was paying any attention to the race riots in downtown Chicago was because it was black on white violence.”

“The riots on the streets of South Philly had ‘no racial component’ and were ‘nothing much’ said the Mayor, until events forced him to acknowledge the obvious: black people were taking racial violence to a new level.”

Flaherty says “The deniers fall somewhere in between two points; (on) one hand, they say the racial violence is not happening. On the other, they say it is, but everyone already knows it—and it is happening for a good reason. Sometimes they say both.”

“As I started to unravel the threads of these attacks,” writes Flaherty, “it became clear right away that this was happening all over the country for at least a year or two. And that newspapers were underreporting it—when they reported it at all.”

As the Memorial Day weekend approaches at the end of the month, Flaherty warns about Black Beach Week in Miami Beach and Black Bike Week in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, along with Speed Week in Charlotte, North Carolina.

For the past decade the events in Florida “have become the center of the universe of the world’s biggest black beach party. The city doesn’t really host the party. People just show up.” The events are distinguished by “Shootings, assaults on police, mountains of trash, (and) violence against people and property on a scale that can only be called anarchistic.”

These are not isolated events. The pattern was repeated in Indianapolis, Indiana, during its annual Black Expo and in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the several day party that precedes the annual Coca Cola 600, a NASCAR event. In 2011, an estimated 30,000 to 60,000 blacks rioted, resulting in one of the city’s largest mass arrests. Charlotte will be the site of the 2012 Democratic National Convention.

In July 2010, in Milwaukee, some ten to twenty white youths were enjoying a Fourth of July fireworks show when they were set upon by a gang of blacks. In Minneapolis in 2011, more than 800 black people “marauded through downtown followed a few days later by an incident when twenty black women beat a white woman after she confronted them about harassing her child.

In city after city throughout America—Akron, Rochester, Atlantic City, Atlanta, St. Louis, Boston, Seattle, Las Vegas, Detroit, Denver, and even the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., Flaherty documents riots and attacks that can no longer be ignored or seen as isolated events.

It is just too easy to pass this off as “black anger.” It is racism, and the Zimmerman-Martin killing is just the tip of the iceberg. Despite decades since the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 that was passed to redress the wrongs of the past against black Americans, some blacks retain a malignant hatred directed against whites.

“The Return of Race Riots to America” portends that the summer of 2012 could reflect this trend. It is a warning to the leaders in both the black and white communities to condemn it and to the nation’s media to do something other than ignore or exploit it.

The reality is that we are going to be hearing a lot more from Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Louis Farrakhan who thrive on such violence, and the real tragedy is that millions of law-abiding black citizens will be branded by such behavior.

Enhanced by Zemanta
Share on Facebook
Share

Report details mass shooting in Ariz.

Wednesday, May 30th, 2012

ll four people killed by a former neo-Nazi before he turned the gun on himself this month in a quiet Phoenix suburb were shot in the head, according to a police report released Tuesday that paints the clearest picture yet of the gruesome crime scene.

Various Gilbert police officers and detectives wrote about what they saw at the home where they believe Jason ToddJT” Ready, 39, shot and killed his girlfriend and three others, including a toddler, before killing himself May 2 in a domestic dispute.

Ready was the leader of the U.S. Border Guard, a group of armed civilians that patrols Arizona‘s desert for illegal immigrants and drug smugglers.

When authorities first arrived at the home, they saw the bodies of Ready, wearing only tan shorts and boots, and another man. Both were dead with pools of blood beneath their heads. A camouflaged gun was near Ready.

When police walked to the home’s open front door, they saw the bodies of Ready’s girlfriend, Lisa Mederos, her daughter and her granddaughter, a 15-month-old named Lilly.

Mederos had been shot twice, once in the face and once in the back of the head, the report said. Police believe she was first shot while on the phone with a 911 dispatcher, and that the bullet also severed one of her fingers.

Mederos and her daughter Amber Mederos were clearly dead. But when officers checked the toddler, they found signs of life, the report said.

The girl, who was wearing gold earrings and a denim jumper, had been shot once in the area near her left temple and cheek.

“I could see brain tissue and a pooling of blood next to her head,” wrote Officer Veronica Roden. “Her arms and neck were still warm to the touch, and we both detected a pulse on the inner part of her upper left arm.”

Gilbert firefighters strapped the girl to a backboard and rushed her to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

When officers went farther into the home, they heard a woman crying in a locked bedroom and kicked in the door. They found Lisa Mederos’ 19-year-old daughter, Brittany Mederos. Because police had to clear the home, they forced Brittany Mederos to walk by the bodies of her mother and sister, and her dying niece.

“Upon entering the hallway, the female observed the bodies on the floor at which time she began crying hysterically,” wrote Officer Chris Zamora. “I advised the female to ‘Just keep walking’ as I continued to escort her, stepping over the body of at least one of the female victims and around the other two victims.”

Another officer described having to tell Lilly’s father, Jess Boggs, that the toddler was dead. He arrived after the police tape had been put up around the home and surrounding houses.

“Jess showed me a picture of Lilly on his cellphone,” wrote Officer Michael Cluff. “I immediately recognized the child as the same child I had observed within the house. Jess seemed to recognize my reaction to seeing the picture, and he began to wail and cry.”

The other victim was Amber Mederos’ boyfriend, Jim Hiott. Ready lived at the home with Lisa Mederos and Brittany Mederos.

One of Amber Mederos’ friends, Cassandra Olivier, told police she thought Ready was angry because Amber Mederos, Hiott and their daughter wanted to move back into Lisa Mederos’ home. Olivier said Ready was the one to make them move out in the first place when he moved into the house six months before the shooting.

The FBI already was conducting a domestic terrorism investigation of Ready at the time of the shootings. The probe dated to when Ready was a member of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement and continued into his participation with the border group, The Arizona Republic reported.

Search warrant affidavits obtained by the Republic show federal agents seized numerous computers and munitions from Ready’s home. The warrants imply weapons seized at the murder scene were stolen from the U.S. military. Focus on those weapons could trigger a larger federal investigation.

Documents connected to the search warrant show FBI agents seized two computer towers and two laptops, correspondence, cellphones, police and Nazi uniforms, white-supremacist propaganda and bank statements.

Agents also seized two assault-style rifles and multiple rounds of ammunition. The reporting FBI agent focused on “approximately two dozen military ordnance/40 millimeter grenades” loaded with explosives, tear gas, buckshot and smoke.

Recordings of two 911 calls released about a week after the killings revealed the horror just before and after the crime.

The first came from Lisa Mederos, who told the operator in a raised voice: “Oh my God. He’s got a gun. No!” before the sounds of two shots.

In another call, a sobbing Brittany Mederos told a dispatcher: “My mom and my niece and my sister are all on the floor. They’re hurt pretty bad.”

She said that just before the shooting, she heard Ready and her mother “fighting and screaming” so she hid under her bed. “I come out and they’re all on the floor and there’s blood,” Brittany Mederos said.

Enhanced by Zemanta
Share on Facebook
Share

Arizona

Wednesday, May 30th, 2012

 

Share on Facebook
Share

Hundreds turn out to protest Ala. immigration law

Tuesday, May 29th, 2012

Hundreds of people gathered at the Alabama state Capitol to protest the recent passage and signing of a bill that makes some changes to Alabama‘s tough law targeting illegal immigration.

The Montgomery Advertiser reports (http://on.mgmadv.com/JIwn1r ) that the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice led the march from the Capitol to the governor’s mansion Sunday. Groups from all over the state made the drive to Montgomery for the march.

State Sen. Hank Sanders, a Democrat from Selma, spoke to the crowd about the need for unity in what he said is a fight for freedom.

Organizers said they didn’t expect the march to change the law. They said they wanted to raise awareness of the law and the reasons they oppose it.

Enhanced by Zemanta
Share on Facebook
Share

Much Crime, Little Punishment

Tuesday, May 29th, 2012

The war against Boko Haram is very visible in the Moslem north. There are roadblocks everywhere and a lot more soldiers and police. This is hurting Boko Haram, which has suffered some serious losses (of leaders and bomb making supplies and technicians) in the last few months. But the Islamic terrorists retain a growing popularity among many Moslems, because of the promise to eliminate the corruption that strangles the economy and oppresses every Nigerian every day. President Johnson has been in power for a year, and was elected on the promise of making a major effort to curb corruption. There has been a lot of noise about suppressing corruption, but little result. Those corrupt officials who are indicted tend to bribe their way past judge, jury and jailers. There is still lots of crime, and not much punishment.

The police are very corrupt, and often violent. This means that sending additional police to the Moslem north is likely to cause more violence, rather than reduce it. Curbing police corruption has long been a popular cause, but no politician has ever managed to make a dent in the problem.

Decades of effort to eradicate polio are still being compromised by Islamic radicals. There are only small populations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria where polio is still found. In Nigeria Islamic conservatives up north have been preaching against polio vaccinations for years (on the assumption that the medicine is actually a Christian plot to poison Moslems). Polio can be wiped out, like smallpox was back in the 1970s, if you can vaccinate everyone in areas where the disease still exists (as polio and smallpox are diseases that can only live in human hosts). But the Islamic conservatives have been a major barrier to eliminating polio. The current wave of Islamic conservatism was only getting started back in the 1970s, and it continues to grow. The government is making yet another effort to wipe out polio in the Moslem north. It’s unclear if Boko Haram will actively oppose this. Apparently some in Boko Haram do see the polio vaccinations as part of a war against Islam.

May 28, 2012: In the northeast, Boko Haram shot dead four Christian merchants. Boko Haram wants to drive all Christians out of the Moslem north and eventually turn the north into an Islamic religious dictatorship.

May 26, 2012: In the north, Boko Haram shot dead three card players. Boko Haram considers card playing, and most forms of entertainment as sinful and punishable by death.

May 21, 2012: In the capital, police arrested a Boko Haram man trying to enter a government building carrying concealed weapons.

In the northeastern city of Maiduguri, two Boko Haram attacks left five dead.

May 19, 2012: In the central Nigerian city of Jos, a police raid uncovered a bomb making workshop. Jos has, for the last few years, been the scene of deadly violence between Moslems and Christians.

May 18, 2012: A government study concluded that theft of oil from pipelines  (from tapping into oil pipelines) is costing the government $9 billion a year. Since government income from oil is about $4-5 billion a month that is a major problem. Over the last decade, the government made a major effort to curb oil theft by tribal gangs in the Niger Delta. These gangs were preaching rebellion and more oil money for the locals. The government put down this movement by cracking down on the oil theft efforts of these gangs. This led to the discovery that a lot of these oil thefts are carried out under the protection of military and political leaders (who get a cut of the proceeds). All forms of oil theft are believed to account for 5-10 percent of oil production each year. Oil theft is still a major activity for the criminal gangs in Niger Delta. The theft not only reduces government income, it leaves a lot spilled oil on the ground and in the waterways of the Niger River Delta. The problem has been so bad recently that oil production was down 14 percent in April.


Enhanced by Zemanta
Share on Facebook
Share

Arizona militia support intensifies with bill’s defeat

Tuesday, May 29th, 2012

The recent defeat of legislation that would have created a citizens’ border group is driving up support for Arizona militias.

The Arizona Daily Star (http://bit.ly/MRB9JB ) reports the state’s border-militia groups are seeing members becoming more motivated after plans for a state-sanctioned organization were struck down in the Legislature.

Leaders of volunteer patrols along the Arizona-Mexico border said there is an invasion of smugglers and illegal immigrants that needs to be stopped. Supporters say they are giving up on getting assistance from lawmakers.

Jack Foote, a longtime Arizona border-militia leader from Cottonwood, worked with the group that penned the bill.

“We have now washed our hands of our state’s Legislature,” Foote said. “Now we are going to do things our own way.”

The proposed bill would have established a 300-member, armed Arizona Special Missions Unit to guard the border at the governor’s request. A provision in the bill included screening volunteers to weed out violent extremists.

Critics of the bill say a border militia is extremist in nature.

Mark Pitcavage, of the Anti-Defamation League, said extreme behavior is no longer found on the fringes of militia movements.

“Some are explicitly white supremacists,” Pitcavage said. “The others may not be white supremacists but may well be racists.”

Arizona militia groups were recently in the spotlight after Jason Todd “J.T.” Ready, a known neo Nazi and border-militia leader, shot and killed four people before turning the gun on himself. FBI officials were investigating Ready at the time. He had most recently led a group known as the U.S. Border Guard. James Turgal, the FBI special agent in charge who oversees Arizona, said Ready’s shooting of his girlfriend and her family members was “a domestic violence tragedy” unrelated to his political activities.

A regeneration of border-militia movements would contradict an earlier trend reported by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks groups it considers right-wing extremist. The center said earlier this year that the Minuteman border-watch movement that exploded in southern Arizona in the last decade has virtually disappeared. The study concluded the decline was due to its members’ concerns about illegal immigration have been adopted by state lawmakers.

Pat King, a rancher who lives near the border, said she has accepted help in the past from Minuteman groups. King said the group now uses cameras to report illegal activity rather than conduct patrols.

“You have to be very careful of who joins your ranks, that you don’t trash the whole organization,” King said. “Some people can join and have their own agendas. That gets kind of frightening.”

Enhanced by Zemanta
Share on Facebook
Share

Aurora man among 12 charged in drug investigation

Monday, May 28th, 2012

 An Aurora man is one of 12 people arrested by Chicago police, accused of involvement in a South Side drug market run by a Mexican drug cartel and the Gangster Disciples street gang.

Narcotics and South Chicago District police officers executed arrest warrants for the suspects in an investigation focusing on the 7900 blocks of South Bennett and South Yates avenues, according to police. Juan Castro, 28, of the 2500 block of Dorothy Drive in Aurora, was among those arrested.

Police said officers used surveillance and infiltrated the drug market to make narcotics purchases. In the process, they seized about 132 pounds of marijuana with a street value of $722,000, and $10,000 worth of crack cocaine, heroin and drug money, a release from police said.

Two semi-automatic handguns and five vehicles also were seized.

“The Chicago Police Department continues its efforts to alleviate violence and chronic narcotic markets in all neighborhoods,” Narcotics Cmdr. James O’Grady said in a statement.

Charged with various drug-related offenses were:

— Melvin Birgans, 55, of the 7700 block of South Bennett Avenue.

— Steven Willis, 23, of the 6700 block of South Jeffery Boulevard.

Donald Strickland, 55, of the 8100 block of South Bennett Avenue.

Darrell Williams, 22, of the 8000 block of South Euclid Avenue.

— Richard Pierce, 56, of the 2100 block of East 79th Street.

— Robert Brandy, 41, of the 7500 block of South Hoyne Avenue.

— Adrian Fields, 55, of the 7700 block of South Bennett Avenue.

— Gary Johnson, 56, of the 1700 block of East 78th Street.

— Alejandro Medina, 34, of the 500 block of Lincoln Avenue in Calumet City.

— Darryl Hardy, 32, of the 1000 block of East 41st Place.

— April Felton, 22, of the 7800 block of South Langley Avenue.

Enhanced by Zemanta
Share on Facebook
Share