EDITOR’S NOTE: Starting today, the very smart and talented Taylor Walker is helping me gather stories. Eventually Taylor will be doing a story-gathering and commentary section of her own. But right now, she’s helping me curate and write these multi-story posts. More about—and from—Taylor Walker soon.

NEARLY 50 PERCENT OF AMERICANS SAY THAT TOO MANY PEOPLE ARE IN PRISON & WE COULD LET 20 PERCENT OF ‘EM OUT….SAYS NEW PEW STUDY

The Pew Center on the States has the results of a new survey out that measures attitudes by Americans about who we should incarcerate and for how long.

Turns out that the majority of Americans think that there are “more effective, less expensive alternatives to prison for non-violent offenders and expanding those alternatives is the best way to reduce the crime rate.”

There’s lots more and it’s quite interesting. So check out the summary of the rest of the report here.

ANTONIO GOES LOOKING FOR GANG PREVENTION AND INTERVENTION $$ IN D.C.

The LA Times reports that mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was in Washington DC this week for a gang-violence reduction summit meeting with leaders from Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, San Jose and Salinas.

Sunday, he also met with Attorney General Eric Holder, to hit up Holder for some federal money to help to fund LA’s GRYD programs (Gang Reduction and Youth Development), These were the programs that were gathered under the mayor’s umbrella in 2007, and got up and running in 2009.

Last year, the combined prevention and intervention GRYD programs were budgeted at $26 million, made up of federal, state and local monies. Villaraigosa wants the feds to come across with a good chunk of those millions.

Hopefully he’ll get the money he/we need. I just wish that when the mayor made his pitch he didn’t have to try to attribute LA’s drop in gang crime to GRYD, since even his own evaluators from the Urban Institute say otherwise (namely since the parts of Los Angeles that aren’t served by GRYD have had exactly the same drop).

Yeah, yeah. Picky, I know.

ACLU ISSUES REPORT SHOWING HOW MANY POLICE DEPARTMENTS ARE TRACKING US THROUGH OUR CELL PHONES WITHOUT ANYTHING PESKY LIKE, SAY, A WARRANT

A huge pile of information gathered by the ACLU on law enforcement cell phone tracking protocols was released to the New York Times on Saturday. The report returned results that differed considerably between about 200 agencies that agreed to provide information about how they were using our cell phones to track us. Departments across the U.S. are grappling with the lack of concrete boundaries set in place for officers in regard to cell phone tracking. While some agencies state that they are only using tracking without a warrant in life-threatening situations (and sometimes it does save lives), others are using it when they damn please, including in California where state prosecutors advised local police departments on ways to get carriers to “clone” a phone and download text messages while it is turned off.

(About that text downloading function, unreasonable search and seizure anyone? Seriously, how in the world is that not a 4th Amendment violation?)

In order to get the information, 35 ACLU affiliates filed over 380 public records requests with state and local law enforcement agencies to ask about their policies, procedures and practices for tracking cell phones.

This is from the ACLU’s statement:

What we have learned is disturbing. While virtually all of the over 200 police departments that responded to our request said they track cell phones, only a tiny minority reported consistently obtaining a warrant and demonstrating probable cause to do so. While that result is of great concern, it also shows that a warrant requirement is a completely reasonable and workable policy.

They’ve got a point. And, given this recent SCOTUS decision, I think the SUPREMES may think so too.

LGBTQ BOX TO CHECK MAY SHOW UP IN CAL STATE COLLEGE APS…SO IS THIS A GOOD IDEA? BAD IDEA? MANY ARE NOT SURE

Within the next year, students may see optional sexual orientation check-boxes on their application forms for California state colleges. While the purpose may be to gauge the size of the LGBTQ community on campus, and thus offer better services, some fear it may be an invasion of privacy or that the information may be improperly used or wrongly divulged. The LA Times reports.

it slipped my mind that today was Cesar Chavez Day. So since many are taking the day off (and, yes, many of us aren’t), the promised Part 2 of Aero Bureau will appear Monday, not today.

In the meantime, watch the hour-long PBS video on the Farm Worker’s Movement at the end of the post ( It reminded me about, among other things, all those years that no one I knew would have dreamed of eating table grapes. Even after the strike was over, it took a long time to learn to like them again. I imagine I was far from alone in that somewhat irrational post-strike reaction.)

POLICE UNION VERY UNHAPPY THAT SOME DEPARTMENT INSIDER LEAKED TO THE LA TIMES THE NAME OF THE OFFICER INVESTIGATED FOR RACIAL PROFILING

New LAPPL prez Tyler Izen wrote LAPD Inspector General Alexander Bustamante a strongly worded letter asking for an investigation into the matter.

“…the unlawful disclosure of the confidential information regarding any officer by unscrupulous self-serving individuals has reached a level of indecency so great that we will not stand by and remain silent,” he wrote.

(The full text is here.)

And, to remind you what we’re talking about, here’s an opening clip from Joel Rubin’s LA Times article.

A white police officer has been targeting Latino drivers for traffic stops because of their ethnicity, a Los Angeles Police Department investigation concluded — marking the first time the department has found that one of its officers had engaged in racial or ethnic profiling.

For decades, the question of profiling — “biased policing,” in LAPD vernacular — has bedeviled the department. Accusations that the practice was commonplace throughout the 1970s and ’80s alienated the LAPD from the city’s minority neighborhoods. And, despite dramatic reforms that have boosted the department’s image in recent years, complaints of profiling have persisted, with hundreds of officers being accused of bias each year. Until now, none of those complaints has been substantiated.

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Of course, at least the LAPD’s probable Peace Officer Bill of Rights violator wasn’t a department captain who, in a fit of pique, blurted the existence of an IAB investigation against an LASD sergeant formerly under the captain’s command, all this in front of a very full and public board of supervisors meeting. Making matters worse, the captain failed to include in his blurt (that had a wild-eyed county attorney looking to be on the verge physically tackling him) the information that the charge had already been resolved in the sergeant’s favor—but instead inaccurately implied the exact opposite.

FBI SAYS IT DIDN’T REALLY MEAN THAT “SUSPEND THE LAW” THINGY IT HAD IN ITS COUNTER-TERRORISM BOOKLET

Wired Magazine’s Danger Room section has the not-terribly-cheering story. Here’s a clip:

The FBI once taught its agents that they can “bend or suspend the law” as they wiretap suspects. But the bureau says it didn’t really mean it, and has now removed the document from its counterterrorism training curriculum, calling it an “imprecise” instruction. Which is a good thing, national security attorneys say, because the FBI’s contention that it can twist the law in pursuit of suspected terrorists is just wrong.

“Dismissing this statement as ‘imprecise’ is a rather unsatisfying response given the very precise lines Congress and the courts have repeatedly drawn between what is and is not permissible, even in counterterrorism cases, over the past decade,” Steve Vladeck, a national-security law professor at American University, says. “It might technically be true that the FBI has certain authorities when conducting counterterrorism investigations that the Constitution otherwise forbids, but that’s good only so far as it goes.”

The reference to law-bending was noted in a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller from Sen. Richard Durbin that Danger Room obtained. When Danger Room asked for the original document, the FBI initially declined. On Wednesday, a Bureau spokesperson relented, but refused to say who prepared the document; how long it was in circulation; and how many FBI agents, analysts and officials received its instruction….

IN NEW YORK CITY A CIVILIAN OVERSIGHT BOARD GETS THE POWER TO PROSECUTE NYPD OFFICERS FOR MISCONDUCT

“Lawyers for the independent agency that investigates allegations of police abuse in New York have been given wide new powers to prosecute officers in misconduct cases under an agreement city officials reached on Tuesday,” writes Al Baker for the NY Times.

This is something that could be very useful to consider in LA. It involves both civilians and police officers.

REMEMBERING THE FIERCE AND GIFTED ADRIENNE RICH, AND THE FABULOUS EARL SCRUGGS

The New York Daily News has an unusually good send off for the enormously influential feminist poet, Adrienne Rich, who died this week.

And in this video from the PBS Newshour Judy Woodruff and Jeffrey Brown help us say goodbye to both Rich and Earl Scruggs, who also died this week.

“He made you stop in your tracks,” said Bela Fleck of the brilliant and beloved banjo innovator Scruggs.

Yep. That he did.

And here he is doing it again— with those he inspired.

And now back to Cesar Chavez.

On January 6, of this year Ira Glass’s This American Life aired a show about the FoxConn factory in China, where so many of our nice, shiny, perfect Apple products are made (including, I assume, my brand new iPad), and which has become infamous for its brutal working conditions.

The TAL broadcast, which was to become the most downloaded in the show’s history, centered around monologuist Mike Deasey’s popular one man show about Apple and Foxconn called “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.”

The TAL segment was such a powerful and disturbing portrayal of factory conditions that it triggered a slew of other media reports on the Chinese factories used by Apple and other American tech companies.

Then last Friday, TAL’s creator and host, Ira Glass, announced that although the show had vetted a lot of Deasey’s material, it hadn’t been able to vet it all, and Glass and crew had now discovered that some of Deasey’s “facts” were far more theatrical than truthful.

But Glass didn’t stop with the written statement. He and his producers turned all of this past weekend’s show into one giant retraction that included a deconstruction of the various errors, an interview with Deasey’s Chinese translator, and a painfully uncomfortable conversation between Glass and Deasey— all of which turned out to be wildly compelling radio.

The retraction, and Deasey’s subsequent blogging remarks after the TAL broadcast has triggered a flood of commentary from other journalists and media types.

The collective discussion about truth, facts and journalism has been largely a very good one, and worth your while to wander through if you have a mind.

But first listen to the two TAL episodes. They are utterly fascinating, especially given what we know now.

Here are some links to and clips from some of the better commentary.

This is from the NY Times’ David Carr:

Is it O.K. to lie on the way to telling a greater truth? The short answer is also the right one.

No.

It’s worth examining that question now that we have learned about the lies perforating the excerpt of Mike Daisey’s one-man show on Apple’s manufacturing processes in China, broadcast in January on the weekly public radio show “This American Life.”

No one is suggesting that everything about Apple’s supply chain is suddenly hunky-dory, but the heroic narrative of a fearless theater artist taking on the biggest company in the world is now a pile of smoking rubble.

Mr. Daisey’s one-man show, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” closed its very successful run at the Public Theater in New York on Sunday. The show played a significant role in raising public consciousness, not just about the ethics of offshore manufacturing, but about whether those of us who fondle those shiny new iPads every day are implicated as well….

And this is also from the NYT, this time from Charles Isherwood:

in his own statement on Friday Mr. Daisey said: “What I do is not journalism. The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism.” He also said he regretted allowing parts of his work to be heard in the context of a factual program.

Mr. Daisey may not claim to be a journalist, but there is little question that in his show, which he has been performing since 2010, he gives no indication that some of the events he describes as having witnessed himself were embellished or based on incidents that took place elsewhere. The program at the Public Theater described it as “nonfiction.”

Nonfiction should mean just that: facts and nothing but the facts. For its part the Public released a statement saying: “Mike is an artist, not a journalist. Nevertheless, we wish he had been more precise with us and our audiences about what was and wasn’t his personal experience in the piece.”

Certainly Mr. Daisey uses language more evocative than a reporter would in describing his encounters with workers at the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen. But in an hourlong segment of “This American Life” released for broadcast on Friday that delved into the reasons behind the retraction, it became clear that this was not a matter of reordering events or using colorful description for maximum theatrical effect, but of presenting as firsthand experience incidents that never happened.

Rebecca Greenfield has some good stuff to say at the Atlantic.

Here’s a link to the story by Rob Schmidt, the NPR Marketplace reporter who flagged some of Deasey’s truthiness in the first place.

MORE COMMENTARY ON THE JUVENILE LWOP CASES THAT THE SUPREMES WILL HEAR TUESDAY (TODAY)

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday in the matters of Jackson v. Hobbs and Miller v. Alabama, the twinned cases that aim to test the constitutionality of sentencing a 14-year-old killer to life without parole.

Professor Douglas Berman of Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, along with a group of second and third-year students at Moritz filed an amicus brief in the two cases. In the video above, Doug Berman explains in layman’s terms what’s in the brief and what are some of the things you should know is you’re watching these cases. (Doug Berman also runs the wonderful Sentencing, Law and Policy.)

With an eye toward the SCOTUS hearing of the cases, Sandra McElwaine at the Daily Beast interviewed former inmates who were convicted of murder as teenagers but who did not get life. Their insights regarding the paths of their own individual redemption is very much worth reading.

Andrew Cohn over at Atlantic Wire has a well-reasoned look at which justices might go what direction in the juvenile LWOP cases, and that the fact that Chief Justice Roberts has two kids who are about to become teenagers may have bearing on the matter. (But in the end, it’ll likely come down to Justice Kennedy—again.)

The Guardian’s story on the twinned cases features a video with an incarcerated man in his 20’s named Quantel Lotts who killed his stepbrother when he was fourteen.

Here’s a clip from the Guardian’s article on the cases:

There is a singularly brutal quality to this aspect of US justice. America is the only country in the world, bar none, that is known to sentence children to die in prison without any hope of release. Even in a country that practices the death penalty it has the ability to shock, because this is a living death.

“All I want is another chance,” says Lotts. “A shot at living an actual life. I’ve been in prison since I was 14, so I don’t know too much about anything – I’ve never been anywhere, done anything. I’ve never lived a life.”

Okay, if you’ll remember, last week there was the whole legal showdown about whether or not someone could be force to decrypt their laptop’s hard drive if the stuff on said hard drive was incrimination. Could decrypting be shielded by the 5th Amendment?

Different appeals courts, it seems, had differing views of that pesky little question.

On Friday of last week, 11th Circuit ruled that the forced decrypting was, indeed, unconstitutional.

However, a mere day before, the 10th circuit refused to hear the appeal, meaning that the order to decrypt remained in place.

Sooooo….What to do?

Constitutional showdown! Pistols at dawn? (Awfully analog.)

As it turned out, the showdown became moot when the feds managed to decrypt the thing without the defendant’s help.

Wired’ Magazine’s Threat Level section, which has been following this issue wonderfully well, has more. Here’s a clip:

Colorado federal authorities have decrypted a laptop seized from a bank-fraud defendant, mooting a judge’s order that the defendant unlock the hard drive so the government could use its contents as evidence against her.

The development ends a contentious legal showdown over whether forcing a defendant to decrypt a laptop is a breach of the Fifth Amendment right against compelled self incrimination.

The authorities seized the encrypted Toshiba laptop from defendant Ramona Fricosu in 2010 with valid court warrants while investigating alleged mortgage fraud, and demanded she decrypt it. Colorado U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn ordered the woman in January to decrypt the laptop by the end of February. The judge refused to stay his decision to allow Fricosu time to appeal.

“They must have used or found successful one of the passwords the co-defendant provided them,” Fricosu’s attorney, Philip Dubois, said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

He said the authorities delivered to him Wednesday a copy of the information they discovered on the drive. Dubois said he has not examined it.

The development comes a week after a federal appeals court ruled in a separate case that forcing a criminal suspect to decrypt hard drives so their contents can be used by prosecutors is a breach of the Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination.

It was the nation’s first appellate court to issue such a finding. The Supreme Court has never dealt directly with the issue.

AND IN OTHER NEWS: WHICH WAY LA? DISCUSSES THE POLICE COMMISSION’S RECENT APPROVAL OF CHIEF BECK’S NEW RULES FOR IMPOUNDING CARS OF UNDOCUMENTED RESIDENTS

Click here and listen.

On Tuesday morning, there was mostly ebullience. However, by afternoon the significance of Tuesday’s Proposition 8 decision by the 9th Circuit was being examined from every angle.

The majority opinion for the 2 to 1 ruling was, after all, written by the most liberal justice on the most liberal appellate court in the nation. Yet it was a narrow opinion, a fact that has been criticized by some as not being the history-making ruling it could have been. Still others claim that the very narrowness of the opinion will make it easier for SCOTUS to back, should they agree to take the case next fall.

THE OVERVIEW

NPR’s Talk of the Nation has a great multi-part segment on the decision that gives a good overview.

SOME SAY THE 9TH COULD HAVE MADE HISTORY, BUT DIDN’T: WAS THE 9TH WISE OR GUTLESS?

Dahlia Lithwick at Slate is somewhat critical of the 9th Circuit for not making a more historic decision, but argues that it may be a smart one.

Here’s a clip:

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the (“liberal”) 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, led by the (“very liberal”) Stephen Reinhardt, struck down the state’s ban on gay marriage as unconstitutional. Prop 8, passed by referendum in November 2008, had already been thrashed to a pulp by a (“gay”) judge in August 2010, and when the federal appeals court heard the case in December 2010, it was manifestly clear that they were struggling to find some plausible rationale for a ban on gay marriage that made sense. And given that a lot of folks always thought the fix was in at the 9th Circuit, the real shocker today isn’t that a liberal panel delivered a liberal decision. Rather, what’s so surprising is that they delivered a far more moderate decision than anyone would have predicted.

Consider what a dismal job the proponents of Prop 8 did at trial in this case, proffering mediocre witnesses who proffered mediocre evidence that gay marriage would harm children and imperil heterosexual marriage. (Who can forget Prop 8’s star witness David Blankenhorn’s admission that he knew of no study that proved children reared by gay couples fared worse than those raised by heterosexual parents.) Then, recall the almost painfully meticulous findings of fact (80! 80 findings of fact!) produced by Judge Vaughn Walker to support his conclusion that Proposition 8 violated not just the constitutional promise of equal protection, but also a fundamental right to marry the partner of one’s choosing. Against this dramatic backdrop, today’s 2-1 decision is downright modest, corralling the ruling to apply only in California, and only because of the indignity of Prop 8, which “eliminated” a right that had already been granted same-sex couples. Confronted with massive constitutional questions, the majority wrote, “We need not and do not answer the broader question in this case, however, because California had already extended to committed same-sex couples both the incidents of marriage and the official designation of ‘marriage,’ and Proposition 8’s only effect was to take away that important and legally significant designation, while leaving in place all of its incidents.”

Today, the most liberal judges in the most liberal state on the most liberal appeals court had an opportunity to make history. Instead, they opted to do far less.

Read the rest though, because her analysis goes much farther.

AND FOR THOSE WANTING HANDICAPPING ABOUT HOW THIS RULING WILL FARE IN THE FUTURE WHEN IT COMES TO SCOTUS…..

60 Minutes legal analyst, Andrew Cohen, who also writes for the Atlantic, points to all the ways that Tuesday’s ruling was carefully tailored to address the legal sensibilities of Anthony Kennedy, who will almost certainly be the Supreme Court’s swing vote on the matter, should they decide to take the case.

Here’s a clip:

The only serious question, in the 552 days between the trial court’s ruling and today, was how far the 9th Circuit would travel, doctrinally, in declaring Prop 8 to be an unconstitutional violation of the due process and equal protection rights of same-sex couples. Would it follow the logic and reasoning of U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, the Republican appointee who presided over the trial in this case and then had to defend himself against allegations that he was biased because he is gay? Or, would the 9th Circuit strike out on its own?

In the colossal wake of Perry v. Brown, 133 pages of fur and teeth, the best answer I can offer today is that the federal appeals court’s majority sought to thread a needle between recognizing the constitutional rights of certain same-sex couples to stay married and respecting the current equal protection jurisprudence of Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Republican appointee and native Californian, whose vote everyone agrees ultimately will decide the fate of Prop 8 and therefore the fate of same-sex marriage in America.

The 9th Circuit’s ruling is much narrower than was Judge Walker’s ruling and clearly aimed at Justice Kennedy’s jurisprudence in cases involving discrimination based upon sexual orientation

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images via the Hollywood Reporter

UPDATE: Today is a very good day for human beings.

No reporting can speak quite as eloquently to the point as the opening of the ruling itself, the majority opinion, written by Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt.

You can find it here.

But here’s one line that sums up all:

Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to opposite sex couples. The Constitution simply does not allow for “laws of this sort.”

The opinion (with minority commentary) goes on for another 128 pages.

But that’s the heart of the matter. Straight up.

The court’s decision, had it’s light moments, which in a back door way also spoke deeply to the issue.

As The wrap reports via Reuters:

The appellate court judges who ruled Tuesday that California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage, mentioned Jumbotrons, Frank Sinatra, movies and Marilyn Monroe along with Supreme Court precedents in their decision.

“Had Marilyn Monroe’s film been called ‘How to Register a Domestic Partnership with a Millionaire,’ it would not have conveyed the same meaning as did her famous movie, even though the underlying drama for same-sex couples is no different,” the judges wrote.

The judges wrote that in society, “We are excited to see someone ask, ‘Will you marry me?’, whether on bended knee in a restaurant or in text splashed across a stadium Jumbotron. Certainly it would not have the same effect to see, ‘Will you enter into a registered domestic partnership with me?’.”

They even invoked Groucho Marx, William Shakespeare and Abraham Lincoln — all in one paragraph:

“Groucho Marx’s one-liner, ‘Marriage is a wonderful institution … but who wants to live in an institution?’ would lack its punch if the word ‘marriage’ were replaced with the alternative phrase. So too with Shakespeare’s ‘A young man married is a man that’s marr’d.’ Lincoln’s ‘Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory,’ and Sinatra’s ‘A man doesn’t know what happiness is until he’s married. By then it’s too late.’”

The Court mentioned Shakespeare a few times:

“We emphasize the extraordinary significance of the official designation of ‘marriage,” the decision says. “That designation is important because ‘marriage’ is the name that society gives to the relationship that matters most between two adults. A rose by ay other name may smell as sweet, but to the couple desiring to enter into a committed lifelong relationship, a marriage by the name of ‘registered domestic partnership’ does not.”

The ruling by the 3-judge panel from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is due to be announced at 10 am, Tuesday.

Fingers crossed.

One day we’ll look back on this crazy period in which some among us were not allowed to marry the people they love because of the whacked notion that those unions, no matter how devoted, would do harm to the concept of marriage as a whole—and we’ll wonder what in the world we could possibly have been thinking.

Howard Mintz at the San Jose Mercury News has a good break down of the possible outcomes. Bob Egelko of the SF Chron also has a clarifying take.

SHERIFF’S DEPUTIES CAN’T BE GUARANTEED CONFIDENTIALITY IN JAILS COMMISSION TESTIMONY

The controversy over whether or not those testifying before the Citizens Commission on Jail Violence can be offered anonymity may have just been settled.

LA Times reporters Robert Faturechi and Jack Leonard spoke to the Commission’s lead attorney, Richard E. Drooyan, who explained that legally, a promise of anonymity wouldn’t hold up if deputies were asked to testify in future criminal or civil cases in court.

(By the way, Drooyan is also the president of the Los Angeles police commission.)

Here’s how the LAT story opens:

A commission investigating allegations of deputy brutality inside Los Angeles County jails cannot guarantee confidentiality for deputies who want to testify, dealing a blow to efforts to combat what has been described as a code of silence among some jail guards.

Members of the special commission created by the county Board of Supervisors had raised the possibility of allowing deputies and others to provide anonymous testimony as they attempt to determine the scope of any brutality against inmates.

But Richard E. Drooyan, the panel’s general counsel, has told commissioners that a court could compel them to provide the identities during a criminal investigation or civil litigation. Allegations of excessive force against inmates is the subject of an FBI probe as well as civil lawsuits, including one filed last week by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

In an interview with The Times on Saturday, Drooyan said he hoped former deputies and current guards would be willing to come forward despite the limits on confidentiality.

“There is at least some chance that we’ll be able to preserve confidentiality, but it’s not something we can guarantee,” he said.

Drooyan notes that the Commission will be looking at systemic issues, not criminality by individual deputies. In other words, the issue is reform, not nabbing people. So hopefully everyone with something important to say will say it anyway, even without anonymity.

A CALIFORNIA CASE OF WARRANT-FREE TRACKING HEADS FOR THE SUPREMES

Howard Mintz of the San Jose Mercury News has this well-reported story. Here’s how it opens:

A year and a half ago, a Silicon Valley community college student wound up in the cross hairs of a shadowy but common law enforcement practice now at the center of an unfolding legal drama in the U.S. Supreme Court.

On his way to school, Yasir Afifi, an Arab-American, stopped for an oil change and later discovered that the GPS tracking device he found on the underbelly of his car had been put there by the FBI without a warrant.

Now the Supreme Court is expected to decide any day whether the government has a right to use that tactic without a search warrant in a case that highlights the tensions between law enforcement needs and the privacy implications of new technologies that can track our every move.

In a Washington, D.C., case, the Supreme Court is considering whether warrantless GPS tracking violates the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable search and seizure, one of the core rules in any criminal case. The scope of the court’s ruling could have far-reaching implications when everything from smartphones to dashboard gadgets offer authorities a generous menu for tracking suspects.

The Obama administration and law enforcement groups say GPS tracking is no different from ordinary police surveillance on public streets. There is no constitutional barrier to GPS tracking in public places, they argue.

Really? Really?? Yeah, okay, we all know that privacy’s a thing of the past, but this sounds a little police state-ish.

The problem is that if the Supreme Court rules against the tracking, some righteous convictions will be tossed out. On the other hand, if one has a warrant, no problem with slapping on that tracker.

No one seems to have a clear bet as to which way SCOTUS will go.Yet, whatever their ruling, it will be significant, as this case will set the course for other technologies that have yet to appear.

UPDATE: THE SUPREMES REJECTED WARRANT-CHALLENGED TRACKING: GO, SCOTUS!

Ars Technica has a very interesting write up on the split in thinking on the court that went into the unanimous decision.

JUVENILE LIFE FOR NON-HOMICIDE CASES—LOUISIANA STRUGGLES WITH WHAT TO DO

In a 2010 decision (Graham vs. Florida), The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that kids convicted of crimes that don’t involve murder cannot be locked up for the rest of their lives.

The states with cases affected by the ruling are now struggling with how things should play out with their non-homicide LWOP cases. Louisiana is one of those states. Here’s the opening to a story from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, that deals with one such case that has pushed the issue into the open.

Giovanni Brown was 16 when he and another teen forced their way into a home in an upscale Harvey subdivision in 1999, armed with pistols and intent on mayhem. After holding four people against their will for hours, ransacking the home and trying in vain to force the homeowner to withdraw cash from an ATM, the teenagers stole two cars loaded with the family’s property.

Brown was prosecuted as an adult and convicted of aggravated kidnapping and four counts of armed robbery. He was sentenced in 2000 to life in prison with no chance of probation, parole or suspended sentence for the kidnapping, and another 40 years for robbery. Under Louisiana law, Brown would never leave prison, a reality his public defender Marquita Naquin argued during the trial.

“What can a 16-year-old do in the first 16 years of his life that demands that we throw him away?” Naquin asked the jury just before it unanimously rejected her plea.

Her argument proved prophetic.

Louisiana’s DA’s Association is arguing that inmates like Giovanni Brown should not be eligible for parole until they are 60 years old.

And while we’re having this discussion, at the risk of doing my broken record thing again (which I’ll be doing once more in the next week or so because California’s legislative attempt to modify juvenile LWOP may be coming up for a vote soon), please do remember that the U.S. is the only country in the world—IN THE WORLD— that imprisons kids for life. So either we have a much worse class of kid in this nation, or we’ve got a policy that……let’s just say it needs some improvement.

It wasn’t your usual book party.

For one thing, Monday night’s book launching event for civil rights lawyer Connie Rice’s new memoir, Power Concedes Nothing, was held at the LAPD’s headquarters, in the over-lit Compstat room, no less—i.e. the room where the cops go to hear a rundown on the latest crime statistics and ‘crime mapping.”

Moreover, the party was hosted by LAPD Chief Charlie Beck—who seemed mildly surprised to find himself in the book party hosting business. (Can you think of another instance where LA’s Chief of Police threw a book party? I can’t either. Go, Chief Charlie! Perhaps this could be the start of a new LA event trend: Law enforcement and literature.)

And then, of course, there’s the fact that the book details, among other things, the years that Rice spent suing the Los Angeles Police Department on a regular basis—and usually winning.

Still, Connie’s suing-the-LAPD days are now mostly in the past, and the mood in the Compstat room on Monday night was so upbeat it sometimes bordered on love fest-y. (As you’ll see from the rough snippets of iPhone videos above.)

Those in attendance were a mix of law enforcement and city government types, plus a smattering of criminal justice-leaning authors and journalists—nearly all of whom passed up the red and white wine for glasses of fizzy water. (Helpful party tip: Always drink less than the cops in the room.) U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte, showed up, as did City Controller Wendy Greuel, and LAPD command staff types like Deputy Chief Pat Gannon of South Bureau, and department spokesperson, Commander Andrew Smith (who was the LAPD guy you saw most often on TV throughout the whole LAPD/Occupy thingy.)

Journalist/authors Joe Domanick, Jesse Katz, and Jon Weiner, made appearances, as did Christine Pelisek from the Daily Beast, KPCC’s Frank Stoltz, KCET’s Judy Muller, the LA Times’ Pat Morrison, Sue Horton, Susan Brenneman and Deborah Vankin.

Among the others who stood around book-buying, appetizer-munching and gossiping were Police Commission head, John Mack, LA Gang Czar Guillermo Cespedes, Gerry Chaleff, who used to administer the federal consent decree for the LAPD but now has been appointed by Chief Beck as the Special Assistant for Constitutional Policing—meaning he’s supposed to be the guy tasked with making sure that LAPD officers don’t go around violating anybody’s Constitutional rights, and community activists, like Alfred Lomas, of LA Gang Tours.

City Councilman Tom LaBonge offered the night’s weirdest compliment to Rice, when in a moment of unchecked effusiveness after presenting her with an honorific city proclamation, he leaned into a microphone and told her, “You remind me of William Mulholland!”

(In case you’ve forgotten, Mulholland was the ultra powerful 1920’s era head of the Department of Water and Power on whom the John Huston-played villain of the movie Chinatown, Noah Cross Hollis Mulwray, was supposed to have been, in part, based.*) After Police Commission head John Mack began looking meaningfully at the City Councilman, and making subtle “cut it” motions, LaBonge tried to clarify things by shouting, “Forget Chinatown! Everybody drinks water.” Or something to that effect. Then he wisely divested himself of the microphone.

Still, everyone seemed to take LaBonge’s outburst as a quirky representation of the pleasant ebullience that characterized the night.

The cheery mood may have, in some ways, had to do with the fact that, unlike many book parties, where the point is to support (or meet) the writer, on Monday night, in addition to coming to support Connie, most everyone seemed to be really anxious to read Rice’s book—if they hadn’t already.

It is, as the subtitle says, “one woman’s quest for social justice in America….”—meaning it is a personal account, told through the lens of Rice’s specific experience and perceptions. Yet, much of it is also a book about certain events in Los Angeles in the last few years that many of those in the room felt they had, in some way had a part, or at the very least lived through and cared very much about—things like the battle to transform the LAPD and the struggle to get a handle on the gang violence that was corroding the emotional health of many LA neighborhoods.

In other words, they—we—think and hope that Connie’s book will add a new valuable puzzle piece to the communal puzzle that is the unfolding history of Los Angeles—a history that all of us get to claim.

PS: I’ve not yet read Connie’s book (as I just got it Monday night) but, like the rest, I’m looking forward to doing so. I’ll report back to you here when I do.

NOTE: I’LL HAVE MUCH NEWSIER NEWS TOMORROW, AND THEN A NEW JAILS/LASD STORY LATE IN THE WEEK.

NOTE 2: I hopelessly bollixed up the Chinatown characters when I first posted this. According to the zillion essays analyzing Robert Towne’s amazing script, Huston’s character Noah Cross plus Cross’s business partner in the film, Hollis Mulwray, collectively represented William Mulholland. (And many of us have eyed the DWP with suspicion ever since.)

THE LATEST DOJ REPORT FUELS RENEWED SPECULATION THAT A FEDERAL CONSENT DECREE MIGHT BE IN THE FUTURE FOR LA COUNTY’S TROUBLED PROBATION CAMPS

This past Friday the Federal monitors representing US Department of Justice delivered their 145 page response to LA County Probation’s claims that its juvenile camps were mostly “In compliance” with the Feds’ 41 demands for reform spelled out four years ago in a 2008 Memorandum of Agreement.

Not so fast, said the monitors in the report— which WitnessLA has acquired.

When, on November 6, 2006, the US Department of Justice began investigating LA’s juvenile probation camps, investigators found the facilities rife with horrors. Probation officers batted kids around, instigated fights (some of which were caught on video and wound up on YouTube) or looked the other way when one group of kids pounded another. Staff also made kids stand or sit in body-stressing positions for long periods, kept them in solitary confinement for even longer periods as punishment, randomly denied them bathroom breaks, recreational time and/or medical treatment, failed to check on kids who were on suicide watch, pepper sprayed teenagers over trivialities, and drank alcohol on the job—among other transgressions and illegalities.

Now, said the monitors in the new report, the worst of the rampant abuse and neglect in the camps had pretty much been halted, although there was still lots of room for improvement.

And thankfully the staff, for the most part, wasn’t drinking on the job.

But, after 4 years under the watchful eye of the Department of Justice, although most kids weren’t being actively abused, they weren’t being helped either, said the monitors, particularly when it came to mental and emotional health, substance abuse—and overall rehabilitation. Probation has little or nothing in the way of positive outcomes to show for its supposed progress in these areas. And in many of the camps they have they don’t have the required rehabilitative programs in place at all.

“These camps are not meant to be punishment for the kids we send there,” said a source close to the federal monitors. “They’re supposed to rehabilitate. And that’s still not happening.”

So now the big question is: Will the Feds take over the the juvenile facilities with a Federal Consent Decree?

Observers are split on whether the Feds will step in— or will they give probation one more chance now that Probation has a brand new head guy, Chief Jerry Powers, who started last Monday.

LA County Board of Supervisors has a committee of staffers meeting today, Wednesday, to discuss the Fed monitors’ comments and instructions—and what, if anything, to do in response.

(MORE ON THE REPORT AND ITS MEANING SHORTLY)

MEANWHILE LA’S CITY COUNCIL CALLS FOR MORE CONTROL OVER THE $2000 LUNCH -EATING HOUSING AUTHORITY

After the $1.2-million golden parachute handed to HACLA’s ousted head, and jaw-dropping spending for trips, meals and “employee incentives,” the LA City Council thinks maybe there should be a bit more city oversight of the agency. (Ya think?)

The LA Times David Zahniser and Jessica Garrison have the story.

Controller Wendy Greuel also has a new report on the drunken-sailor-spending HACLA folks.

3:25: THE MAYOR AND THE CHIEF OF POLICE COME OUT AND SAY A FEW WORDS

Villaraigosa said of Chief Charlie Beck: “He’s someone who understands that Constitutional policing is the only way to go for Los Angeles.”

Charlie Beck said that 1400 officers took part, and there were around 200 arrests. (There were 292 arrests, as it turns out, a great many of whom, cops and Occupiers both say, intended to be arrested. Last night Occupiers were repeatedly asking each other, “Are you arrestable?”—meaning, are you willing to be arrested or do you need to go home to put the kids to bed or feed the dog?)

“I’ve never been prouder of Los Angeles police officers than I am tonight,” Villaraigosa said.

2:40 am: The tree dwellers have been (sadly) plucked and the night is winding down. Well done, Occupy LA! Well done, LAPD!

(For those desirous of a more detailed account, my Twitter stream gives a fuller view of the night.)

And check out Kevin Roderick’s coverage.

By the way, one of the big stars among citizen journalists to have emerged from the Occupy movement is Spencer Mills who tweets and broadcasts under the name OakFoSho. He was great tonight!

12:59: Arrests definitely taking place. But slowly, as the tents are slowly and carefully dismantled. The cops have been very disciplined, actually, at least thus far.

12:26: UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY DECLARED, OCCUPIERS HAVE 10 MINUTES TO COMPLY… Only problem: the 10 minute warning was given around 15 times at various intervals.

Fox 11 reporter chick to an LAPD spokesperson regarding the plethora of 10 min. warnings: “At what point does this become the boy who cried wolf?”

12:14 am – POLICE POURING OUT SOUTH DOOR OF CITY HALL

Now at 12:20 am – the police are moving into the crowd. The mood of the crowd has changed. Everyone seems to sense that the the eviction is about to commence.

12:02 am – LAPD COMMANDER ANDREW SMITH SAID THAT PRESS WILL NOT BE ALLOWED INTO PARK ONCE AN UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY HAS BEEN DECLARED

Okay, that’s the tip off. That’s what will be the signal to move in. The LAPD will declare an unlawful assembly. And they WILL declare an unlawful assembly tonight. When? We don’t know. But tonight is the night.

11:56: LAPD HAS REPORTEDLY ISSUED A FINAL WARNING. (Or something of that nature. Trying to confirm. The TV folks certainly aren’t reporting any such thing. But they’re five steps behind through all of this. No, nothing seems to be happening. False alarm.)

11:28 pm: The OccupyLA crowd, plus onlookers and press, is estimated to be between 1500 to 2000.

10:58 pm – COMMANDER SMITH AFFIRMS THAT A PERIMETER HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED AROUND OCCUPY LA ALLOWING NO CARS IN

Commander Smith, the LAPD spokesperson, is saying that he’s “really optimistic that this will be peaceful.”

LA Times Live Feed from building to street. And here’s the CBS aerial stream.

10:41 FOLKS IN PINK SHIRTS ARE “PEACEKEEPERS” FROM OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE

10:31 pm: LAPD officers have arrived on a fleet of big buses.

10:23 pm: FINDING LAWYERS: Lawyers from National Lawyers’ Guild and legal observers are reportedly wearing lime green baseball caps.

9:30 pm – LAPD is on a tactical alert. A raid could come anytime after 10:30 pm. At least that’s the word going around. It isn’t officially confirmed that tonight is the night. But everyone seems to know. This is it. Game on.

Watch UStream for a view of the encampment.

Lady cop photo by Wendy Carrillo

Tree people photo by Gigi Graciette