On Q Professional Investigations

If you want to feel safe in Chicago, live on the outskirts of the city — or live near the mayor.

Ward Room surveyed all 77 Chicago community areas to see how many were murder-free in 2012. The result: 15. Most were on the Northwest, Southwest or Southeast Sides. But not all.

The home neighborhoods of two of Chicago’s most prominent politicians didn’t have a single murder last year: Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s North Center and Rahm Emanuel’s Lincoln Square each had a murder rate of zero in 2012. There has not been a murder in Lincoln Square since Emanuel was sworn into office on May 15, 2011.

Here are Chicago’s murder-free neighborhoods, with the date of the last killing:

Avalon Park: September 17, 2011
Beverly: September 2, 2011
Clearing: June 18, 2009
Douglas: April 2, 2010
East Side: July 10, 2011
Edison Park: None since 2007
Forest Glen: October 27, 2011
Jefferson Park: October 10, 2011
Lincoln Park: September 3, 2011
Lincoln Square: March 13, 2011
Loop: May 6, 2011
Montclare: August 28, 2010
Mount Greenwood: None since 2007
North Center: August 24, 2008
North Park: December 31, 2009

View Source

The Obama administration is sitting down with gun owners groups — including the National Rifle Association — as officials look at ways to curb gun violence.

Vice President Biden, who is leading an administration-wide review of gun safety laws, has vowed urgent action in the wake of last month’s massacre at a Connecticut elementary school.

The meeting with the NRA is one of three Biden has scheduled for Thursday, as he prepares to make recommendations on gun policy by the end of the month. Besides the NRA, Biden and other officials are meeting with sportsmen and wildlife interest groups, as well as people from the entertainment industry.

The NRA, the nation’s largest gun-rights group, has blocked gun control efforts in the past and is opposing any new ones.

Shortly after last month’s shooting in Newtown, Conn., President Obama tasked Biden with heading a commission to come up with recommendations on gun policy by the end of January.

Mr. Obama supports steps including reinstating a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines and closing loopholes that enable many gun buyers to avoid background checks.

But the White House will likely recommend that Congress go further by requiring universal background checks for gun buyers and establishing a national gun database, reports CBS News White House correspondent Bill Plante.

Senior administration officials tell CBS News the president is likely to unveil his ideas to reduce gun violence next week. He will also push his gun control agenda in his State of the Union address next month.

Biden, who met with representatives of victims groups and gun-safety organizations Wednesday, said officials are considering steps that could “take thousands of people out of harm’s way” and improve the safety of millions more.

“I want to make it clear that we are not going to get caught up in the notion that unless we can do everything, we’re going to do nothing,” Biden told groups including the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “It’s critically important we act.”

Administration officials face tougher audiences today in meeting with the NRA, as well as gun retailers. Attorney General Eric Holder is hosting the meeting with retailers this afternoon, which in addition to Wal-Mart will include, Academy Sports + Outdoors, Bass Pro Shops, Big 5 Sporting Goods, Cabela’s, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Dunham’s Sports, Gander Mountain, and Sportsman’s Warehouse.

The NRA’s executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, has dismissed the assault weapons ban as “a phony piece of legislation” and has recommended putting armed guards in all schools as a way to stop another school shooting.

In a radio interview late Tuesday night with Brooklyn GOP Radio, NRA President David Keene lashed out at both Mr. Obama and Biden, saying, “I think they’re being disingenuous. I think that they’ve seen this as an opportunity to go after the Second Amendment, which they’ve wanted to do for years, if not decades, and I think they’re going to do everything they can to strip Americans of their right to keep and bear arms.”

Biden said he wanted to hear from “all parties, on whatever side of this debate you fall.”

In a nod to political realities that could imperil sweeping gun-control legislation, Biden said the administration is weighing executive action in addition to recommending legislation by Congress.

Recommendations to the Biden group include making gun-trafficking a felony, getting the Justice Department to prosecute people caught lying on gun background-check forms and ordering federal agencies to send data to the National Gun Background Check Database.

The Brady Campaign says some 40 percent of gun sales are made without background checks, such as at gun shows and over the Internet.

The shootings in Newtown, in which 20 children and six adults were killed by a man with a military-style semiautomatic rifle, have prodded the administration to act. Mr. Obama had remained largely silent on gun control after the 2011 shootings in Tucson, Ariz., that killed six people and wounded 12 others, including then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, and the Colorado movie theater killing of a dozen people and wounding of many more last July.

Biden, referring to the Newtown shootings, said at the White House, “Every once in a while, there’s something that awakens the conscience of the country, and that tragic event did it in a way like nothing I’ve seen in my career.”

Biden said he and Mr. Obama are determined to take action.

“We can affect the well-being of millions of Americans and take thousands of people out of harm’s way if we act responsibly,” he said.

The president hopes to announce his administration’s next steps to tackle gun violence shortly after he is sworn in for a second term.

View Source

Apple is working on a lower-end iPhone, according to people briefed on the matter, a big shift in corporate strategy as its supremacy in smartphones has slipped.

While Apple has explored such a device for years, the plan is progressing and a less expensive version of its flagship device could launch later this year, one of the people said. The cheaper phone could resemble the standard iPhone, with a different, less-expensive body, one of the people said.

One possibility under consideration is lowering the cost of the device by using a different shell made of polycarbonate plastic; in contrast, the iPhone 5 currently has an aluminum housing.

Many other parts could remain the same or be recycled from older iPhone models.

Apple could still decide to scrap the plan. A spokeswoman for the Cupertino, Calif., company declined to comment.

Apple now faces greater pressure to make the iPhone more affordable. An onslaught of lower cost rivals powered by Google’s Android operating system are gaining market share. In the 2012 third quarter, Apple held only 14.6 percent of worldwide smartphone shipments, down from a peak of 23 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011 and the first quarter of 2012, according to IDC.

View Source

In response to a horrific series of shootings that has sown terror in our communities, victimized tens of thousands of Americans, and left one of its own bleeding and near death in a Tucson parking lot, Congress has done something quite extraordinary — nothing at all.

I was shot in the head while meeting with constituents two years ago today. Since then, my extensive rehabilitation has brought excitement and gratitude to our family. But time and time again, our joy has been diminished by new, all too familiar images of death on television: the breaking news alert, stunned witnesses blinking away tears over unspeakable carnage, another community in mourning. America has seen an astounding 11 mass shootings since a madman used a semiautomatic pistol with an extended ammunition clip to shoot me and kill six others. Gun violence kills more than 30,000 Americans annually.

This country is known for using its determination and ingenuity to solve problems, big and small. Wise policy has conquered disease, protected us from dangerous products and substances, and made transportation safer. But when it comes to protecting our communities from gun violence, we’re not even trying — and for the worst of reasons.

An ideological fringe

Special interests purporting to represent gun owners but really advancing the interests of an ideological fringe have used big money and influence to cow Congress into submission. Rather than working to find the balance between our rights and the regulation of a dangerous product, these groups have cast simple protections for our communities as existential threats to individual liberties. Rather than conducting a dialogue, they threaten those who divert from their orthodoxy with political extinction.

As a result, we are more vulnerable to gun violence. Weapons designed for the battlefield have a home in our streets. Criminals and the mentally ill can easily purchase guns by avoiding background checks. Firearm accessories designed for killing at a high rate are legal and widely available. And gun owners are less responsible for the misuse of their weapons than they are for their automobiles.

Forget the boogeyman of big, bad government coming to dispossess you of your firearms. As a Western woman and a Persian Gulf War combat veteran who have exercised our Second Amendment rights, we don’t want to take away your guns any more than we want to give up the two guns we have locked in a safe at home. What we do want is what the majority of NRA members and other Americans want: responsible changes in our laws to require responsible gun ownership and reduce gun violence.

We saw from the NRA leadership’s defiant and unsympathetic response to the Newtown, Conn., massacre that winning even the most common-sense reforms will require a fight. But whether it has been in campaigns or in Congress, in combat or in space, fighting for what we believe in has always been what we do.

Let’s not be naive

We can’t be naive about what it will take to achieve the most common-sense solutions. We can’t just hope that the last shooting tragedy will prevent the next. Achieving reforms to reduce gun violence and prevent mass shootings will mean matching gun lobbyists in their reach and resources.

Americans for Responsible Solutions, which we are launching today, will invite people from around the country to join a national conversation about gun violence prevention, will raise the funds necessary to balance the influence of the gun lobby, and will line up squarely behind leaders who will stand up for what’s right.

Until now, the gun lobby’s political contributions, advertising and lobbying have dwarfed spending from anti-gun violence groups. No longer. With Americans for Responsible Solutions engaging millions of people about ways to reduce gun violence and funding political activity nationwide, legislators will no longer have reason to fear the gun lobby. Other efforts such as improving mental health care and opposing illegal guns are essential, but as gun owners and survivors of gun violence, we have a unique message for Americans.

We have experienced too much death and hurt to remain idle. Our response to the Newtown massacre must consist of more than regret, sorrow and condolence. The children of Sandy Hook Elementary School and all victims of gun violence deserve fellow citizens and leaders who have the will to prevent gun violence in the future.

Gabrielle Giffords is the former Democratic U.S. representative from Arizona. Mark Kelly is a former astronaut.

View Source

Gun owners and advocates are fond of saying, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”

This might be a more useful aphorism: Smart-guns don’t kill the wrong people.

Technology exists, or could exist, that would make guns safer. The idea of a safe gun might seem to be the ultimate oxymoron: guns are designed to kill. But something missing from the gun-control debate that has followed the killing of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., is the role of technology in preventing or at least limiting gun deaths.

Biometrics and grip pattern detection can sense the registered owner of a gun and allow only that person to fire it. For example, the iGun, made by Mossberg Group, cannot be fired unless its owner is wearing a ring with a chip that activates the gun.

But you would be hard pressed to find this technology on many weapons sold in stores. “The gun industry has no interest in making smart-guns. There is no incentive for them,” said Robert J. Spitzer, a professor of political science at SUNY Cortland and the author of four books on gun policy. “There is also no appetite by the government to press ahead with any kind of regulation requiring smart-guns.”

Why can we open our front doors with our iPhones and have cars that drive themselves, but we can’t make a gun that doesn’t fire unless its registered owner is using it?

“We can,” Dr. Spitzer said. “These safety options exist today. This is not Buck Rogers type of stuff.” But gun advocates are staunchly against these technologies, partly because so many guns are bought not in gun shops, but in private sales. “Many guns are bought and sold on the secondary market without background checks, and that kind of sale would be inhibited with fingerprinting-safety technologies in guns,” he said.

I called several major gun makers and the National Rifle Association. No one thinks a smart-gun will stop a determined killer. But I thought Smith & Wesson and Remington, for instance, would want to discuss how technology might help reduce accidental shootings, which killed 600 people and injured more than 14,000 in the United States in 2010. The gunmakers did not respond, and neither did the N.R.A.

A Wired magazine article from 2002 gives a glimpse of the N.R.A.’s thinking. “Mere mention of ‘smart-gun’ technology elicited sneers and snickers faster than a speeding bullet,” the magazine wrote. It quoted the N.R.A.’s executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, as saying, “Tragic victims couldn’t have been saved by trigger locks or magazine bans or ‘smart-gun’ technology, or some new government commission running our firearms companies.”

After the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown in December, Mr. LaPierre created a new aphorism: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” He said violent video games and movies were part of the problem, but he didn’t mention smart-guns as a solution.

TriggerSmart, an Irish company, has patented a childproof smart-gun. One feature is a “safe zone” that can be installed in schools and acts as a force field, disabling any TriggerSmart gun that enters a designated area. Robert McNamara, the company’s founder, has been trying to persuade gun makers to adopt the technology. He isn’t having much luck. “One gun manufacturer told us if we put this technology in one particular gun and some kid gets shot with another gun, then they will have to put them in all guns,” he said.

“We believe we could have helped prevent the Newtown massacre.”

View Source

Authorities say four people are dead after a six-hour standoff with police at a townhome in Aurora, Colo.

Aurora Police Sgt. Cassidee Carlson says a suspected gunman was shot and killed when he exchanged fire with officers after hours of negotiations. Three victims — all adults — appeared to have been killed before police were called.

A woman inside the home was able to escape by jumping out a second-story window and alert authorities that the armed man had fired shots inside the home. Before escaping, she said she saw three “lifeless” bodies. She was not injured, police said.

The names and ages of the victims and of the suspect were not released. The Denver Post reported that the victims may all be related.

“We have an idea of who they are, but we obviously want to confirm their identities with the coroner,” said Carlson, who declined to release the relationship between the victims and the shooter.

Next-door neighbor Melissa Wright, a nurse who treated victims of the July movie theater shootings in Aurora, told the Associated Press that she knew the gunman as Sonny Archuleta — a name used by police officers using a bullhorn to try to negotiate with the man. Wright said the townhome may have been inhabited by the gunman, the gunman’s wife, her father and another man.

At 3 a.m., police sent out emergency notifications to residents living near the townhome. Officers closed streets and evacuated neighbors’ homes during the standoff and used a bullhorn to communicate with the gunman, urging him to surrender. Hostage negotiators were also able to speak to the suspect on the phone intermittently for several hours. Police say he was behaving “very irrationally” and often hung up on negotiators.

“After we arrived on scene, there were no more shots fired up until he fired at us,” Carlson said. “During this time he was all over the house. He moved furniture. He was throwing things. He was agitated. He was irrational.”

Police said the timeline of events surrounding the gunfire played out as follows:

– At 8 a.m., SWAT members moved in front of the townhome to break out a window.

– The shooter responded by firing multiple times at police. The bullets struck the SWAT vehicle but did not injure any officers.

– After that, police responded by using tear gas inside the home.

– About 45 minutes later, the shooter appeared in a second-story window and began firing at police again. That time, officers returned fire and hit the suspect, police said.

When officers entered the home, they found the bodies of two men and one woman. Police said they found a fourth body — the shooter’s — upstairs.

“I’ll be honest with you, I’ve never been so scared in my life,” Michael Ignace, a neighbor, said.

“The cops that were standing there [said] he was on methamphetamine,” said neighbor Jennifer Williams. She says the woman who escaped the home provided that information to the responding officers.

Read More

A pilot in Minnesota who was preparing to fly a commercial jet halfway across the country was arrested after a security agent smelled alcohol on him and he failed a preliminary breath test, airport police said Friday.

The arrest of Kolbjorn Jarle Kristiansen, 48, happened Friday morning as American Eagle Flight 4590 was preparing to take off from Minneapolis-St. Paul International for LaGuardia Airport in New York.

Officers and a Transportation Security Administration agent “detected the odor of a consumed alcohol beverage as they passed by Kristiansen waiting to enter the elevator,” according to a Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport Police Department report.

The pilot was taken to a hospital for blood tests, airport spokesman Patrick Hogan told CNN. He was released to airline personnel and charges are pending, according to the airport police report.

Fifty-three passengers were scheduled to be on board the Bombardier CRJ700 regional jet for the flight. However, Hogan said none were aboard at the time of the arrest.

“American Eagle has a well-established substance abuse policy that is designed to put the safety of our customers and employees first,” American Airlines spokesman Matt Miller told CNN in a written statement. “We are cooperating with authorities and conducting a full internal investigation.”

The pilot is being withheld from service until the investigation is completed, he said.

Flight 4590 eventually arrived in New York, with a different crew at the controls, nearly 2½ hours late, according to American Airlines’ website.

FAA regulations say, “No person may act or attempt to act as a crewmember of a civil aircraft … within eight hours after the consumption of any alcoholic beverage,” and a pilot’s blood alcohol concentration is limited to .04%.

For comparison, drivers are often limited to the higher .08%.

View Source

A woman hiding in her attic with children shot an intruder multiple times before fleeing to safety Friday.

The incident happened at a home on Henderson Ridge Lane in Loganville around 1 p.m. The woman was working in an upstairs office when she spotted a strange man outside a window, according to Walton County Sheriff Joe Chapman. He said she took her 9-year-old twins to a crawlspace before the man broke in using a crowbar.

But the man eventually found the family.

“The perpetrator opens that door. Of course, at that time he’s staring at her, her two children and a .38 revolver,” Chapman told Channel 2’s Kerry Kavanaugh.

The woman then shot him five times, but he survived, Chapman said. He said the woman ran out of bullets but threatened to shoot the intruder if he moved.

“She’s standing over him, and she realizes she’s fired all six rounds. And the guy’s telling her to quit shooting,” Chapman said.

The woman ran to a neighbor’s home with her children. The intruder attempted to flee in his car but crashed into a wooded area and collapsed in a nearby driveway, Chapman said.

Deputies arrested 32-year-old Atlanta resident Paul Slater in connection with the crime. Chapman said they found him on the ground saying, “Help me. I’m close to dying.” Slater was taken to Gwinnett Medical Center for treatment. Chapman said Slater was shot in the face and neck.

In February, Slater was arrested on simple battery charges, according to the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Office. He has been arrested six other times in the county since 2008.

Kavanaugh was the first reporter at the scene as deputies investigated. The victim’s husband told Kavanaugh he’s proud of his wife. He was on the phone with her as the intruder broke in.

“My wife is a hero. She protected her kids. She did what she was supposed to do as responsible, prepared gun owner,” Donnie Herman said.

He said he’s thankful for his family’s safety.

“Her life is saved, and her kids’ life is saved, and that’s all I’d like to say,” Herman said.

Read More

According to the FBI, burglaries accounted for approximately $4.8 billion in lost property in the U.S. in 2011, the most recent year for which data exists. With almost 2.2 million committed, this means that the average loss per burglary was $2,185.

Some cities see more burglaries than others, and CNBC.com lists the top 10 here, based on the data in the 2011 the agency’s Uniform Crime Report.

Read ahead to see the 10 cities with the most burglaries.

10. Indianapolis, Ind.

Number of burglaries: 15,122

The capital of the state of Indiana is the site of the National Hot Rod Association U.S. Nationals, the NCAA Basketball tournaments and, of course, the Indianapolis 500. Among the 46,967 property offenses reported in 2011, 15,122 were burglaries. There were also 26,588 offenses categorized as “larceny-theft” and 5,257 motor vehicle thefts.

9. Columbus, Ohio

Number of burglaries: 15,169

In 2011, Columbus experienced 49,043 property offenses, 15,169 of which were burglaries. On the plus side, the city is perhaps better known for the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, which was made famous by former director Jack Hanna, whose regular appearances on the “Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” made for reliably memorable television viewing.

8. San Antonio

Number of burglaries: 15,334

In 2011, The Washington Post reported that the population of San Antonio had grown to 1.3 million, an increase of 16 percent since 2000. This increase is part of the overall population explosion that has been going on in Texas in the new millennium. This growing city experienced 80,868 property offenses in 2011, of which 15,334 were burglaries.

7. Detroit

Number of burglaries: 15,994

Detroit is the largest city in Michigan and the center of the U.S. automobile industry. Despite its reputation as a city in decline, crime has actually been steadily decreasing there since the 1970s. Although the 15,994 burglaries committed there in 2011 are nothing to brag about, they put the city at a somewhat modest number seven on this list.

6. Los Angeles

Number of burglaries: 17,264

Los Angeles is the second most populous city in the U.S. and one of the most influential in the world. The fields of business, entertainment, media and education are all well-represented within the city’s limits, and the crime rate has undergone consistent decline for the past two decades. Despite this improving picture, the city still fell victim to 17,264 burglaries during 2011.

5. New York

Number of burglaries: 18,159

New York is the most populous city in the U.S. and one of the main cultural centers of the world. During the 1970s and 1980s the city was considered more afflicted by crime than many others, but it has been dropping steadily since the 1990s for reasons The New York Times said had baffled the experts as recently as 2011. Still, no city is immune, and New York was the site of 18,159 burglaries in 2011.

4. Phoenix

Number of burglaries: 18,666

According to the Census Bureau, the 2011 estimated population of Phoenix was approximately 1.5 million. Mirroring the trend across the nation, the city has seen a decline in its crime rate, particularly with respect to its once-epidemic rate of car theft. It experienced 18,666 burglaries in 2011.

3. Dallas

Number of burglaries: 18,727

Dallas is the center of the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metropolitan area, an area which had a gross metropolitan product of $374 billion, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Of the 61,859 property offenses committed there in 2011, 18,727 were burglaries.

2. Chicago

Number of burglaries: 26,420

Chicago is the third most populous city in the U.S. Known as “Chi-Town” and “The Windy City,” it has had a world-famous criminal element since the days of Al Capone, but like the rest of the country, the crime rate has been on the decline since the 1990s. Still, the city saw a whopping 118,239 property offenses in 2011, of which 26,420 were burglaries.

1. Houston

Number of burglaries: 27,459

Houston is best known as the location of NASA’s Johnson Space Center and Mission Control Center. It also saw 108,336 property offenses in 2011, of which 68,596 were categorized as “larceny-theft” and 12,281 were motor vehicle thefts. The remaining 27,459 were burglaries, which puts the city at the top of the list. So if you live there, lock your doors when you go out at night.

View Source

The hacking group issues a statement boasting of its cyberattacks against the U.S., Syrian, and Israeli governments in 2012, while warning people to continue to expect this type of activity.

The hacking collective Anonymous has clarified that it has no plans to fade away in the New Year. It issued a statement over the weekend that warned the world to “Expect us 2013.”

Along with the statement, the group created a video that boasts of its campaigns and exploits carried out in 2012. The video details the group’s temporary shutdown of the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, Universal Music, and the Motion Picture Association of America’s Web sites in protest of the U.S. government’s indictment of the operators of popular file-hosting site MegaUpload.

The video also shows newsreels of Anonymous’ campaign against Syrian government Web sites because of that government’s alleged shutdown of the Internet, along with Anonymous’ “cyberwar” against the Israeli government in protest of government attacks on Gaza. The group also recounts its hack into the Web site of the Westboro Baptist Church in response to plans by the controversial church to picket the funerals of those massacred at the elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

“The operations which are listed in the video are only examples, there are far more operations,” Anonymous wrote in the statement. “Some of them still running, like Operation Syria. We are still here.”

Despite the hacking group’s threats, some believe that the collective may not actually make a big impact in the online world in the coming year. Security firm McAfee Labs released its “2013 Threat Predictions” last week and claimed the decline of Anonymous.

The firm argued that a lack of structure and organization, false claims, and hacking for the simple joy of it has affected the group’s reputation. McAfee also said, however, that higher-level professional hacking groups may take up the slack, and promote a rise in military, religious, political, and “extreme” campaign attacks.

View Source