Organized Crime

Napa State’s former executive director pleaded not guilty in Long Beach Friday morning to 35 counts of child molestation.

Claude Edward Foulk, 62, is suspected of sexually abusing an adopted son over a decade in Long Beach and later in Rancho Murieta.

All 35 counts relate to the son, who began living with Foulk in 1992 at the age of 10.

A total of 13 others have come forward accusing Foulk of sex crimes, though many of the alleged offenses occurred prior to the statute of limitations in 1988, according to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office.

A Long Beach Superior Court judge also granted the state attorney general’s request to suspend Foulk’s nursing license and set his bail at $3.5 million.

Jon Artz, Foulk’s attorney, says the public should not jump to conclusions.

Midnight Feb. 26 — The former Napa State Hospital executive director accused of molesting several children, including a former foster child, will appear in Long Beach Superior Court Friday to offer his plea in the case.

In the meantime, California officials have moved to revoke Claude Edward Foulk’s registered nursing license, which he has held since 1974.

“We are working closely and quickly with the state Attorney General to ensure this threat is removed from the public,” said Luis Farias, spokesman for the Department of Consumer Affairs, which regulates nurses.

The California Department of Mental Health has fired Foulk from his position at Napa State, where he earned $98,000 annually.

Source/Full Story: Weekly Calistogan

Tens of thousands of Greeks took to the streets Wednesday as much of the country went on a 24-hour strike against government austerity measures.

Protesters clash with riot police during a demonstration in Athens on Wednesday. Greece ground to a halt as unions staged a one-day general strike and thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to protest austerity measures designed to tame a public debt crisis.

A small group of youths threw Molotov cocktails at police, who responded with tear gas. However, the 20,000 people who filed through downtown Athens—a relatively large crowd for a Greek strike—mostly limited themselves to chanting anti-government slogans.

Public- and private-sector unions called the strike to protest a range of measures aimed at reducing Greece’s budget deficit. The government has announced a freeze on civil-service wages, cuts in public-sector entitlements and the closing of tax loopholes for certain professions, including some civil servants. It has also announced a fuel-tax increase.

“There is an all-out war against public servants, those who earn the least,” said Spyros Papaspyros president of ADEDY, an umbrella union for public-sector workers. “We will fight to keep the little we have. The government and the EU must understand the crisis must be paid by the rich.”

Source/Full Story: WSJ.com

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is bracing for a new wave of bank failures that could cost the agency many billions of dollars and further strain its finances.

With bank failures running at their highest level in nearly two decades, the F.D.I.C. is racing to keep up with rising losses to its insurance fund, which safeguards savers’ deposits. On Tuesday, the agency announced that it had placed 702 lenders on its list of “problem” banks, the highest number since 1993.

Not all of those banks are destined to founder, and F.D.I.C. officials said Tuesday that they expected failures to peak this year. But they also warned that the fund might have to cover $20 billion in additional losses by 2013 — a bill that could be even greater if the economy worsens.

F.D.I.C. officials say the fund has ample resources to cope with its projected losses.

“We think that we have the cash we need,”

Sheila C. Bair, the F.D.I.C. chairwoman, said in an interview on Tuesday. She said it was unlikely the F.D.I.C. would need to tap its emergency credit line with the Treasury Department, although she did not rule out such an action.

Source/Full Story NYTimes.com

Whenever an airplane crashes, investigators focus on the black-box data, which may explain why the plane went down. Though most drivers don’t realize it, two thirds of new U.S. automobiles have black boxes, too. They’re called “event data recorders.” These devices tell the airbags when to deploy, but they also record the car’s speed, whether the brake or gas pedal was engaged, and if seat belts were fastened. They’ve become such a vital tool to car-crash investigators that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has issued new requirements, which take effect in 2012, standardizing exactly what data the devices measure.

In theory these black boxes could help explain what’s causing the sudden acceleration problems that led Toyota to recall millions of vehicles. There’s just one catch: Toyota keeps its data secret. Ford, GM, and Chrysler’s black boxes use an open platform that allows law-enforcement officials to download data. But only Toyota is able to download the proprietary data off its devices. In fact, there’s just one laptop in the entire country capable of reading a Toyota data recorder, and Toyota will download one only under court order, or at the request of law enforcement or the NHTSA.

Source/Full Story: Newsweek.com

The federal agency charged with ensuring the safety of IRS employees said it has seen an uptick in the past several years in threats against agency personnel.

In the past four years, there appears to have been a “steady, upward trend” in the number of threats against IRS employees, said an official with the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration. That assessment, offered in response to an inquiry from Dow Jones Newswires, is based on preliminary data, the official cautioned.

On Thursday, 53-year old Andrew Joseph Stack crashed his private plane into an Austin, Texas, office building that housed IRS workers, killing himself and one IRS employee and injuring 13 others.

Following the attack, Inspector General J. Russell George said his agency will consider whether changes to security policies are necessary to improve safety.

“There’s no question that in the wake of this tragedy, we will be directing attention to that very issue,” Mr. George said in an interview. “There are limitations, however, on what you can anticipate about what a disturbed, troubled person can do.”

Source/Full Story: WSJ.com

He looked like some sort of fur trapper, this bearded man walking through the snowy woods here in upstate New York. But then, Frank Serpico has always been known for his disguises.

Anyone who has seen the celebrated 1973 film “Serpico” knows that he often dressed up — bum, butcher, rabbi — to catch criminals. His off-duty look was never vintage cop either, with the bushy beard and the beads.

This is the man whose long and loud complaining about widespread corruption in the New York Police Department made him a pariah on the force. The patrolman shot in the face during a 1971 drug bust while screaming for backup from his fellow officers, who then failed to immediately call for an ambulance. The undaunted whistle-blower whose testimony was the centerpiece of the Knapp Commission hearings, which sparked the biggest shakeup in the history of the department.

Source/Full Story: NYTimes.com

The Supreme Court today overturned a century-old restriction on corporations using their money to sway federal elections and ruled that companies have a free-speech right to spend as much as they wish to persuade voters to elect or defeat candidates for Congress and the White House.

In a 5-4 decision, the court’s conservative bloc said corporations have the same 1st Amendment rights as individuals and, for that reason, the government may not stop corporations from spending freely to influence the outcome of federal elections.

The decision is probably the most sweeping and consequential handed down under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. And the outcome may well have an immediate impact on this year’s mid-term elections to Congress.

Source/Full Story: latimes.com

We absolutely need to do something constructive to get the animal trash off the streets, asap.

Salvation Army Major Philip Wise

Authorities on Monday reported scant new information about the Christmas Eve shooting death of a Salvation Army supervisor.

Private
donations pushed a reward fund to $10,000 in the slaying of Maj. Philip
Wise, 40, who was gunned down in the parking lot of Salvation Army
headquarters here Thursday afternoon as he dropped off the day’s
donations.

Wise’s three children, age 4, 6 and 8, were with him when the shooting
occurred and told police two black men approached them before the
shooting.

At a news conference Monday, Police Chief Danny
Bradley said detectives had worked through the weekend but had not
identified any suspects in the homicide that police said occurred
during an apparent robbery.

Police have not given a description
of the suspects other than both were in their late teens or early 20s.
Police also have declined to say how much, if any, money was stolen.

Bradley
announced that a crimestoppers reward for information leading to the
arrest and conviction of those responsible for the killing had grown
from the original $1,000 to $10,000 through private donations.

Source/Full Story: News : Police: No New Information In Killing

A Salvation Army major was shot dead in front of his three children on Christmas Eve in North Little Rock, Arkansas, authorities said.

Maj. Philip Wise, 40, was gunned down Thursday. He was found lying by the back entrance of a Salvation Army facility, said police spokesman Sgt. Terry Kuykendall.

Wise apparently dropped two bell ringers off at home and returned to the Salvation Army building with his three children, ages 4, 6 and 8. Two men carrying handguns approached them and demanded money before shooting Wise, Kuykendall said.

The suspects fled on foot.

Source/Full Story: CNN.com

Update:

As police in North Little Rock, Ark., continue to search for two suspects who shot and killed a Salvation Army major in front of his three young children on Christmas Eve, the reward money has been increased to $10,000 for information leading to an arrest in the case.
…
As North Little Rock police follow up on leads, they are asking the public to help by calling (501) 758-1234 with any information connected to the crime.

Source/Full Story: $10K reward offered in Salvation Army major Philip Wise’s murder; Shot in front of kids on Christmas

Watch your top knot…

Mr Troy estimated that criminals took about $40m from bank accounts this year, primarily targeting the small and mid-sized businesses that are themselves customers of small and mid-sized banks.

Such banks and their clients were less likely than their biggest competitors to have the highest-grade security procedures.

Source/Full Story: FT.com

MSNBC ran a piece the other day about how Gun-friendly laws sweep South, West

The number of officers killed in the line of duty by gunfire increased 24 percent from 2008, according to preliminary statistics compiled by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, a national nonprofit organization that tracks officer-related deaths.
…
The availability of guns compounds the problem, criminologists say. But Pennsylvania, the state with the most gun-related officer deaths so far this year, has among the strictest gun laws in the country, according to a ranking by the pro-gun-control Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Other states, like Louisiana, Oklahoma and Kentucky, have very little oversight and had few, if any, officer gun deaths this year.

Kevin Morison, a spokesman for the Officers Memorial Fund, which keeps the statistics, said he sees people on both sides of the gun debate using the numbers to prove points.

“But folks who are willing to intentionally target police officers seem to be able to find a way to accrue guns regardless of what the laws in those state would be,” Morison said.

Source/Full Story: msnbc.com

Confidential documents related to the World Health Organization Expert Working Group on innovative financing for research and development surfaced today, revealing the group’s thinking as well as pharmaceutical industry thinking about the WHO process. The documents immediately raised concern about possible undue access to the process by industry; the WHO told Intellectual Property Watch the industry group was not supposed to have the documents.

Source/Full Story: Big Pharma caught spying on the WHO – Wikileaks

The House passed legislation Friday aimed at preventing the next big financial crisis, ushering in the most sweeping set of changes to the banking regulatory system since the New Deal.

The bill, which passed 223-202, imposes more oversight and stronger capital cushions for the largest banks and Wall Street firms. It forces them to pay a total of as much as $150 billion into an emergency fund that could be tapped when a troubled company needs to be taken over and broken up.

The legislation also calls for the regulation of some derivatives and creates a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency to regulate products such as credit cards and mortgages.

“We are sending a clear message to Wall Street, the party is over. Never again will reckless behavior on the part of the few threaten the fiscal stability of our people,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during a press conference after the bill passed. “The legislation will finally protect Main Street from the worst of Wall Street.”

On the Senate side of Capitol Hill, the bill is moving much more slowly and final passage is likely months away.

Source/Full Story: money.cnn.com

Mark Pittman, the award-winning reporter whose fight to make the Federal Reserve more accountable to taxpayers led Bloomberg News to sue the central bank and win, died Nov. 25 in Yonkers, New York. He was 52.

Pittman suffered from heart-related illnesses. The precise cause of death wasn’t known, said his friend William Karesh, vice president of the Global Health Program at the Bronx, New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society.

“He was one of the great financial journalists of our time,” said Joseph Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University in New York and the winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize for economics. “His death is shocking.”

A former police-beat reporter who joined Bloomberg News in 1997, Pittman wrote stories in 2007 predicting the collapse of the banking system. That year, he won the Gerald Loeb Award from the UCLA Anderson School of Management, the highest accolade in financial journalism, for “Wall Street’s Faustian Bargain,” a series of articles on the breakdown of the U.S. mortgage industry.

Pittman’s push to open the Fed to more scrutiny resulted in an Aug. 24 victory in Manhattan Federal Court affirming the public’s right to know about the central bank’s more than $2 trillion in assistance to financial firms. He drew the attention of filmmakers Leslie and Andrew Cockburn, who featured him prominently in their documentary about subprime mortgages, “American Casino,” which was shown at New York City’s Tribeca Film Festival in May.

Source/Full Story: Bloomberg.com

Shots have been fired at a Seattle house where a man sought in the coffee shop killings of four police officers may be holed up.
…
Clemmons, 37, who had a lengthy prison sentence commuted by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee nearly a decade ago, became the prime target Sunday in the search for the killer of Lakewood Police Sgt. Mark Renninger, 39; and Officers Ronald Owens, 37; Tina Griswold, 40; and Greg Richards 42.

Source/Full Story: FOXNews.com

The cop had no choice? How did law enforcement get children under control prior to the use of tasers???  The father is right.  If the cop can’t handle a child then he shouldn’t be a cop.  The mother should be flogged.

Ozark police said they were called to a home where a mother asked for help with her unruly child, but the 10-year-old’s father said he’s outraged at the force police used against his daughter.

“I would like to say Ozark police Tased this little girl right here. Ten years old and [they] shot electricity through her body, and I want to know how the heck in God’s green earth can they get away with this,” said the girl’s father, Anthony Medlock.

Medlock said his daughter was at her mother’s house when Ozark police Officer Dustin Bradshaw shocked her in the back with a Taser and arrested her.

“If you can’t pick the kid up and take her to your car, handcuff her, then I don’t think you need to be an officer,” Medlock said.

Medlock said his daughter does show signs of having emotional issues, but she “doesn’t deserve to be treated like a dog. She’s not a tiger.”

According to a police report, the officer was called to the home by the mother and witnessed the child kicking and screaming.

The officer’s statement said the girl’s mother, Kelly Hamlert, told him to use a Taser on her if he needed to.

The officer did shock the girl after he said she kicked him in the groin.

“He had no other choice. He had to get the child under control,” said Ozark police Chief Jim Noggle.

Source/Full Story: KHBS