Law Enforcement

Social Security cards run about $20, green cards about $70 and a California driver's license between $60 and $250. The price jumps up for higher-quality documents, such as IDs with magnetic strips containing real information -- often from victims of identity theft. As the demand for counterfeit IDs skyrockets, the criminal organizations that produce them are increasingly relying on sophisticated technology to expand their operations and thwart authorities.

Carlos DeLuna was, in all likelihood, murdered by the state of Texas on Dec. 7, 1989. It's hard to come to any other conclusion after reading an exhaustive analysis of his case published online by a Columbia law school professor and his students. And he may not be the only innocent death row inmate executed by that notably bloodthirsty state. Cameron Todd Willingham, a man whose conviction for setting a fire that killed his three young daughters was based on spectacularly shoddy forensics work, was injected with a death cocktail on Feb. 17, 2004.

If you buy something from online auctioneer Property Room, you don't have to wonder if it was stolen. That's because it probably was. Property Room, started by a former police detective, gets its items from law enforcement property rooms nationwide. Most of its inventory of jewelry, bicycles, computers, furniture, tools, car stereos, cameras, sports equipment, portable music players and things that could best be categorized under miscellaneous -- or bizarre -- was seized from crooks.

Re "Federal officials sue Arizona lawman," May 11 I can only hope that this lawsuit is the beginning of the end of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The man has no business in law enforcement. He has demonstrated time and again his bias against nonwhites. Under his questionable leadership the sheriff's department has engaged in numerous instances of racial profiling, according to theU.S. Department of Justice. He has gone on record to align himself with the "birther" movement, whose members cannot accept the fact that a black man is in the White House.

Technology executives and law enforcement officials are clashing over a nearly 25-year-old law that protects Internet users' private information. Some of the world's largest technology companies, including Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., are pushing for changes to the law — written before the World Wide Web existed — saying it makes it too easy for government investigators to gain access to their customers' Web-based e-mail and documents. That, the companies say, is bad for the bottom line.

Citing a disturbing increase in gang activity, top Ventura County law-enforcement officials on Friday pledged to crack down on gangs like they never have before. At the county government center, the district attorney and police chiefs unveiled a master plan to unite police agencies throughout the county in a coordinated war against the growing gang problem. The Ventura County Gang Strategy, as the new effort is called, advocates a two-pronged approach to fighting gangs, Dist. Atty. Michael D.

A system of federal "boot camps" to rehabilitate first-time drug offenders is being studied, drug czar William J. Bennett said Sunday. Bennett, whose formal title is national drug policy director, raised the subject of the need for more and different penal facilities for incarceration of users during an appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation." He had previously called for an intensified effort to lock up sellers of narcotics, possibly on ships and abandoned military stations, as part of his "war plan" against drugs.

Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said. Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties.

An initiative to legalize marijuana and allow it to be sold and taxed will appear on the November ballot, state election officials announced Wednesday, triggering what will probably be a much-watched campaign that once again puts California on the forefront of the nation's debate over whether to soften drug laws. The number of valid signatures reported by Los Angeles County, submitted minutes before Wednesday's 5 p.m. deadline, put the measure well beyond the 433,971 it needed to be certified.

Federal authorities have repeatedly said their priority is to find and remove illegal immigrants with violent criminal histories, but the U.S. government's stepped-up enforcement in recent years has led to the deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants convicted of nonviolent crimes, according to a new study.

Re "Beating video may be a mental health watershed," May 9 The fatal beating of Kelly Thomas at the hands of Fullerton police officers is another glaring example of failed police administration as it relates to the training of officers to properly handle resistive, combative or aggressive mentally disabled people. All medical staff and personnel employed in treatment centers for mental patients receive certified professional training on how to physically handle these types of incidents.

Concerned that mobile phone networks are becoming surveillance tools, the American Civil Liberties Union recently asked hundreds of local law enforcement agencies whether they've tracked people's movements through their cellphones. Most of those that responded said they had, usually obtaining the information from mobile phone companies without a warrant. The practice has become so routine, the ACLU found, that phone companies are sending out catalogs of monitoring services with detailed price lists to police agencies.

WASHINGTON - Concerned about possible cyber spying, U.S. national security officials are debating whether to take the unprecedented step of recommending that a Chinese government-owned mobile phone giant be denied a license to offer international service to American customers. China Mobile, the world's largest mobile provider, applied in October for a license from the Federal Communications Commission to provide service between China and the United States and to build facilities on American soil.

With the advent of Google Drive, we talk about cloud computing as if the bits and bytes of our lives are stored somewhere up in the air, but, really, the "clouds" are very terrestrial. What's more up in the air are the laws that govern who can access your stuff and how. Originally a way for geeks to explain to the rest of us the notion of remote servers storing and serving up content, cloud computing can be defined several ways, depending on whom you ask. In some ways, even email is a form of cloud computing.

The U.N.'s World Trade Organization says 1 billion people will cross international borders as tourists this year for the first time . That's about 4% higher than last year. The top three destinations? The U.S., France and China . . . . United has moved its John Wayne Airport ticket counter operations to Terminal C. The temporary move (eight weeks) is necessary to allow the TSA to make security upgrades to the baggage-handling system in Terminal B . . . . Grand Canyon National Park celebrates endangered species and wildlife May 18-19, a Friday and Saturday.

The future of books Re "Reading, no batteries required," Opinion, April 22 Patt Morrison's otherwise intelligent contributions to this newspaper trip up on the romantic notion that some technologies have spiritual value and others do not. Would Johannes Gutenberg's colleagues have pined away for the calligraphic works done by generations of monks? Electronic devices make reading, for some people at least, easier, in addition to offering it in a sleek package that can also claim to be accessible, tactile and beautiful.

Death threats and a $10,000 bounty offered for a citizen's arrest of George Zimmerman have raised concerns about the threat of "vigilante justice" in the racially charged case. A group identifying itself as the New Black Panther Party is offering $10,000 to anyone who makes a citizen's arrest of George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin slaying. The reward, and an earlier spate of death threats, also raise questions about whether law enforcement is taking steps to protect Zimmerman and his family.

Looking for some hot goods? PropertyRoom.com, a Web site launched this week in San Clemente, auctions goods that were seized or recovered by law enforcement agencies in Southern California. The parent company, Property Bureau, has agreements with a dozen Southern California police departments, including Fullerton and Garden Grove. By law, departments are required to sell the goods that accumulate in their warehouses. The money usually goes to the city or county. Enter Property Bureau.

With the advent of Google Drive, we talk about cloud computing as if the bits and bytes of our lives are stored somewhere up in the air, but, really, the "clouds" are very terrestrial. What's more up in the air are the laws that govern who can access your stuff and how. Originally a way for geeks to explain to the rest of us the notion of remote servers storing and serving up content, cloud computing can be defined several different ways, depending on whom you ask. In some ways, even email is a form of cloud computing.

NEW YORK - Michael Maloney was just eight days from retiring as police chief of the tiny town of Greenland, N.H. - just eight days from leaving 26 years in law enforcement for the freedom to golf, fish, enjoy his family and maybe find another job. But there was one thing he needed to do. It was a thankless task: helping to serve a warrant on a man with a rap sheet that included assault and drug charges. And it was the kind of job Maloney insisted on doing himself rather than leaving to others, say those who knew the chief, who was killed by a bullet to the head as he carried out his final mission Thursday.