Judicial Watch » Gangs

U.S. Funds “Scholarly Study Of Gang Violence”

admin- — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 09:40:56 +0000

The U.S. economy is in a crisis and the national debt continues growing but the federal government keeps funding questionable programs like a “scholarly study of gang violence” to help police analyze crime patterns.

Of all the taxpayer-funded academic projects out there, this one ranks quite high in the area of creativity and innovation. A group of researchers at California’s largest public university have designed a “mathematical algorithm” to identify street gangs involved in unsolved violent crimes. The work is based on patterns of known criminal activity between gangs and represents the “first scholarly study of gang violence of its kind.”

Mathematicians at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) analyzed more than 1,000 gang-related crimes that occurred over a decade in a part of Los Angeles known to have 30 active gangs. To test the algorithm, researchers created a set of simulated data that closely mimicked the crime patterns of the city’s police gang network. Then they excluded key information and tested how well the algorithm could calculate the missing information.

“If police believe a crime might have been committed by one of seven or eight rival gangs, our method would look at recent historical events in the area and compute probabilities as to which of these gangs are most likely to have committed crime,” said the study’s senior author, a UCLA professor of mathematics.

While the esteemed academics could not pinpoint which specific gang committed a crime, in around 80% of the cases they were able to narrow it down to three gang rivalries. Though this doesn’t exactly help police solve crimes, placing the correct gang rivalry within the top three most likely rivalries most of the time is “significantly better than chance.” according to the study’s co-author, who is also a UCLA math professor.

Paving the way for a taxpayer-funded sequel, the professors assure that they “can do even better,” reminding that “this is the first paper that takes this new approach.” In fact, this new “mathematical algorithm” technique can also be applied to a much “broader class of problems that involve activity on social networks,” asserts the UCLA math professor in charge.

Like so many questionable projects over the years, this one was largely funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), which was created by Congress six decades ago to promote the progress of science and advance national health. With an annual budget of about $7 billion, it’s the only federal agency whose mission includes support for all fields of fundamental science and engineering.

In the last few years the NSF has come under fire for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on frivolous things like a play about climate change and the study of dinosaur eggs in China. In 2009 the NSF was rocked by a huge computer porn scandal. In a scathing report to Congress the agency’s inspector general revealed that NSF employees spend a significant portion of their workday watching, downloading and e-mailing pornography without ever being caught or disciplined. The porn surfing has cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars, according to investigators.

Mexican Drug Cartels Make Texas Border A “War Zone”

akajas — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 12:07:17 +0000

While the Obama Administration downplays violence along the U.S.-Mexico border, authorities in Texas reveal that Mexican drug cartels have transformed parts of the state into a war zone where shootings, beheadings, kidnappings and murders are common.In fact, drug-cartel violence is so severe that Texas counties along the Mexican border are under attack around the clock, according to an alarming report published by the state’s Department of Agriculture. The agency was ordered by the state legislature to conduct an assessment of the impact of illegal activity along the Texas-Mexico border on rural landowners and the agriculture industry.Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples hired two reputable military veterans to conduct the probe. One of them is a retired four-star Army General (Barry McCaffrey) who served as Bill Clinton’s Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The other, retired Army Major-General Robert Scales, is the former commander of the U.S. Army War College.The results of their in-depth investigation have ignited outrage among border state officials who are sick of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s reassurances that the border is “as secure as it has ever been.” Just a few months ago, during a heavily promoted visit to El Paso, Napolitano said violence along the Mexican border is merely a mistaken “perception” because the area is better now than it ever has been.The reality is that in the past two years Texas has become increasingly threatened by the spread of Mexican cartel organized crime as the enterprises move their operations into the U.S., according to the new assessment. They recruit street gangs and exploit porous borders by using all the traditional elements of military force, including logistics, intelligence and deadly firepower.This has created a sort of “narco-terrorism” which takes on the classic trappings of a real war, the report concludes. “Crime, gangs and terrorism have converged in such a way that they form a collective threat to the national security of the United States.” However, the report points out that “federal authorities are reluctant to admit the increasing cross-border campaign by narco-terrorists.”In the meantime, Texas has become an “operational ground zero” in the cartels’ effort to expand into the U.S. This has put residents of border communities in the crossfire of escalating violence resulting from conflicts between cartels, paramilitary enforcement groups and transitional gangs struggling for control of drug and illegal alien smuggling routes into the U.S. from El Paso to Brownsville.Incredibly, Napolitano proclaimed that “some of America’s safest communities are in the Southwest border region…” during her spring visit to El Paso. She actually said that “misinformation about safety” was negatively impacting border communities by driving visitors away and hurting local businesses.

U.S. Admits Mexican Cartels Control Parts Of Border

akajas — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 15:14:15 +0000

Janet Napolitano spent much of the spring sounding like a broken record ensuring that the U.S.-Mexico border is safe when the reality is that stretches are controlled by drug-trafficking organizations.A new federal report exposing the ugly truth about the southern border has left President Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary with egg on her face. Published by the Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center, the document contradicts much of what Napolitano has preached in the last few months during highly publicized jaunts to the crime-infested region.Remember this? The Mexican border “is as secure as it has ever been.” Or what about this; violence along the Mexican border is merely a mistaken “perception” because the Obama Administration has successfully fostered a “secure and prosperous” region. Napolitano also said that “misinformation about safety” is negatively impacting border communities and that the U.S.-Mexico border is not “overrun or out of control.”The truth is that Mexican drug cartels do in fact “control access to the U.S.-Mexico border” and the “smuggling routes across it,” according to the Justice Department’s drug assessment, which has been kept quiet by the administration. No press conferences or photo ops to promote this report, which concludes that the “unprecedented levels of violence in Mexico” will continue for years to come.The crisis has also flowed north because cartels—including Sinaloa, Los Zetas and Juarez—have joined forces with U.S. street gangs that operate in more than 1,000 cities throughout the country, according to the report. Together they run profitable enterprises that sell cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines brought into the U.S. through the southern border. This sort of “collaboration between U.S. gangs and Mexican-based” criminal organizations will continue to increase, facilitating wholesale drug trafficking into and within the United States, the report says.This is hardly shocking news. The National Drug Intelligence Center has for years determined that Mexican drug trafficking organizations represent the greatest crime threat to the United States. In fact, the agency’s2009 report says that the violence, intimidation, theft and financial crimes carried out by the illicit operations “pose a significant threat” to the nation as a whole.