Mississippi House Votes to Ban Ticket Cameras; Missouri and Maryland Protest
Mississippi state House votes 117-3 to ban red light and speed cameras. Public protest against photo ticketing grows in Maryland and Missouri.

A near-unanimous Mississippi state House of Representatives voted Wednesday to ban red light cameras and speed cameras while anti-camera citizen protest movements gathered steam in other parts of the country. Mississippi state Representative Edward Blackmon, Jr. (D-Canton) inadvertently kicked off the effort when he introduced a measure designed to give legislative approval to the use of photo enforcement so long as ticket records were not shared with insurance companies. Blackmon’s proposal was a clever way to encourage the city councils of Jackson, McComb, Natchez, Southaven and Tupelo, all of which have approved red light camera ordinances, in the guise of placing limitations on automated ticketing machines.

The state House Judiciary Committee would have none of it. The panel rewrote Blackmon’s measure to ban not just the reporting of photo tickets to insurance companies, but also the issuance a photo ticket for any offense other than a toll violation.

“A civil or criminal traffic citation may not be issued as the result of the use of automated recording equipment on state, county or municipal highways, roads and streets, and any evidence obtained from such use shall not be reported to the Department of Public Safety for any purpose, to any person or entity for the use on any credit report or to any insurance company for insurance purposes,” House Bill 1568 now states.

Blackmon was one of only three House members who voted against the revised legislation which now heads to the state Senate for its consideration.

In the neighboring state of Missouri, a group of concerned Kansas City residents gathered this weekend to protest red light cameras. The event took place at the location of the city’s first red light camera which is to be activated later this week. The citizens’ group Liberty Restoration Project insisted that red light cameras increase accidents (view studies) and urged passersby to support Senate Bill 211, a measure that would ban all photo ticketing (view details). The legislation will be considered in a state Senate hearing this week.

At the same time in Maryland, a group of citizens gathered on Connecticut Avenue in Chevy Chase, just over the border from Washington, DC, to protest at the site of a notorious speed camera trap. Members of the newly formed DC.CameraFraud.com pointed out that the speed cameras were located on a six-lane boulevard — not a school zone or residential neighborhood as required by state law — and that the cameras themselves were hidden behind trees and signs. The group hopes to raise awareness in the Washington, DC metropolitan area as Virginia municipalities begin to re-install red light cameras, the District adds new speed cameras and the Maryland legislature contemplates using photo radar on freeways for the first time.

Article Excerpt:

Mississippi Legislature, Regular Session 2009
HOUSE BILL NO. 1568
Version as amended and passed by the House

AN ACT TO PROHIBIT TRAFFIC CITATIONS ISSUED AS THE RESULT OF THE USE OF ELECTRONIC SPEED SENSORS OR CAMERAS FROM BEING REPORTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY OR INSURANCE COMPANIES; AND FOR RELATED PURPOSES.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI:

SECTION 1.
(1) A civil or criminal traffic citation may not be issued as the result of the use of automated recording equipment on state, county or municipal highways, roads and streets, and any evidence obtained from such use shall not be reported to the Department of Public Safety for any purpose, to any person or entity for the use on any credit report or to any insurance company for insurance purposes. For the purpose of this section, the term “automated recording equipment” means a camera or optical device designed to record images that depict the vehicle, the vehicle operator, the license plate of the vehicle and/or other images to establish evidence that the vehicle or its operator is not in compliance with a law, ordinance, order or other provision imposed by the state or a political subdivision thereof, or the payment of tolls at toll facilities.

(2) Nothing in subsection (1) of this section shall be construed to prohibit the use of automated recording equipment to enforce the payment of tolls at toll facilities, as provided under Section 65-43-73.

SECTION 2. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after July 1, 2009.

Religious divide drives bikie war

• Dylan Welch Police Reporter
• February 16, 2009

AN ANCIENT religious enmity is at the centre of a new conflict in the Sydney bikie scene, with a new gang comprised mainly of Sunni Muslims warring with a group of bikies with a Shiite Muslim background.

While detectives continue to investigate the February 4 bombing of a Hells Angels clubhouse in Crystal Street, Petersham, police and other sources are indicating that the city chapter of the Comanchero is involved in an escalating feud with a new club, Notorious.

The president of Notorious is a Lebanese-Australian with a long-standing association with a bikie from a colourful Sydney Sunni Lebanese family. The two are among Sydney’s original “Nike” bikies - sporting white sneakers, fashionable T-shirts and clean-shaven instead of the traditional boots, dirty vests and bushy beards - and both are from Sunni families from Sydney’s west.

Notorious is considered by gang squad detectives to be the prime suspect in the Crystal Street bombing. One of its mottos is “Only the dead see the end of war” and its “colours”, or coat of arms, is a turbaned skeleton holding twin pistols with “Original Gangster” beneath it. Today is the first time the club’s colours have been revealed publicly.

On the other side of the conflict is the president of the Comanchero City Crew, a Beirut-born Shiite who grew up in the St George area. Comanchero has been one of the motorcycle gangs that have embraced the new breed of “Nike” bikie, and have been recruiting from the Lebanese and Islander communities for several years.

Traditionally, Lebanese Muslim migrants to Sydney have been geographically and religiously divided. The Sunni majority live in Sydney’s west and south-west, mainly around Auburn and Bankstown, while the Shiite minority live in the St George area. “The two groups have no love lost between them,” a senior police source told the Herald.

They have been fighting since the Sunni bikie, one of Sydney’s most well-known gangsters, became president of the Nomads Parramatta chapter in the late 1990s.

In 2006, he was jailed over a Newcastle shooting. The following year, the Parramatta chapter’s Granville headquarters was bombed, allegedly by the Comanchero, and the chapter subsequently disbanded.

A few of its members formed Notorious, probably at the request of the Sunni bikie.

“[The Sunni bikie] left the Nomads while he was on remand,” said an investigator who has watched the two groups for years. “He was telling people he was planning to start up his own club. Around about the same time, Notorious appeared.”

Unlike the Sunni bikie and the Notorious president, the Comanchero City Crew president was born in Beirut and grew up in Sydney’s southern suburbs. He appeared on television in 2005 following the Cronulla riot and Maroubra reprisal violence, when he met members of the Bra Boys to calm tensions.

When the Herald asked the president of the Hells Angels city chapter about the bombing, he was succinct: “I’ve got nothing to say, thank you.”

But bikie sources said the Angels believe Notorious may be responsible for the attack, which closed down Crystal Street for a day and damaged seven neighbouring businesses.

Neither police nor the Hells Angels have established why Notorious may have attacked the club, though the senior police source offered a simple answer: “They’re just bloody crazy.”

In the latest violence, a Comanchero member was shot in the leg when he was confronted by five Hells Angels at a park in Silverwater on February 7.

Connecticut Governor Plans to Charge Drivers $171 Million
Connecticut motorists will pay $171 million more in non-tax increases to help balance the state budget.

Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell (R) is proposing a budget that increases the financial burden on drivers by $171 million in order to close the state’s growing $850 million deficit. Rell’s plan increases license and registration fees, imposes freeway speed cameras and assesses new charges on speeding tickets. If implemented, the programs would represent a permanent and steadily increasing source of revenue for the state.

“Governor Rell has produced a two-year spending plan that does not rely on any increased taxes,” the official budget summary explained. “The governor is keenly aware that the last thing our economy needs now is more money flowing from taxpayers’ wallets into the government’s hands.”

Under the proposal, $70 million a year would flow from the wallets of drivers into the hands of a private company operating four speed cameras on Interstate 95. That company would then place $35 million into the government’s hands after accounting for the expenses of operating the fixed and mobile devices. Rell has already put pressure on the state police to meet budget targets by increasing the number of speeding citations issued. The force responded with a sixteen percent boost that brought the total number of tickets issued last year to 75,000.

As more drivers get those speeding tickets, more would qualify for the proposed “driver responsibility program” that would impose a point and citation tax of up to $2000 on ticket recipients. The same idea has succeeded in bringing over a billion dollars in revenue to Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Texas (details). Rell’s budget conservatively estimated the new revenue at $27 million plus another $32.5 million from increasing the base cost of speeding tickets. In Virginia the abuser fee concept was so unpopular that Governor Tim Kaine (D) was forced last year not only to repeal the law but also to refund the fees already collected, admitting that the program failed to improve public safety.

Rell rounded out her proposal by “updating” driver’s license and registration fees so that motorists would hand over another $72.4 million to the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

The full plan requires approval of the state legislature which last year turned down the speed camera idea when the budget deficit stood at just $165 million.

Source: Cryptogon

Blackwater has probably been used for U.S. Government narcotics trafficking operations before, but it looks like that is going to be a major component of their business going forward.

Note the phrase “aviation support” in the story below. Aviation support is synonymous with narcotics trafficking. If you read, Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA, this will all make much more sense.

Also note the mention of West Africa as a venue for increased Blackwater/Xe activity. In this context, see: Global Cocaine Trade Moves to Africa:

West Africa is an unlikely center for the international cocaine trade. It is not a producer of the drug nor is it a consumer, as the vast majority of its people are very poor.

Yet a startling 50 tons of cocaine is transported through West Africa each year, according to the latest United Nations estimates. The value of this illicit trade dwarfs entire economies and has the potential to corrupt the region’s fragile states, which are just pulling out of decades of bitter civil wars.

In the past Africa has been a treasure trove looted by covetous colonialists, voracious rebels and kleptocratic rulers — over the last 300 years think slaves, ivory, gold, diamonds, tin and coltan. Now it is a transit point and storeroom for the cocaine trade.

“Drug money is perverting the weak economies in the region,” says Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. The wholesale value in European streets of cocaine passing through West Africa is $2 billion, he says.

South American cartels used to transport cocaine to the big U.S. market via the Caribbean. But dwindling American consumption, stricter control of the West Indies drugs route, growing cocaine use in Europe and weak law enforcement in West Africa have conspired to bring the drug to the region. It is the path of least resistance.

Grown and processed in South America, the refined cocaine is transported by boat or plane across the Atlantic: The shortest line of latitude brings the cargo straight to West Africa. From there the cartels move the drugs onwards to Europe, along the way paying off West African officials in order to be able to operate freely.

So, we have Blackwater/Xe increasing “aviation support” activities in two of the hottest narcotics trafficking hubs in the world. Coincidences.

Blackwater/Xe/ or whatever those crooks are calling themselves this week, are probably going to be performing the same role as Barry and the Boys did at Mena, Arkansas in the 1980s. Running contractors and cutouts, training drug pilots, retrofitting aircraft, and actually carrying out narcotics trafficking operations. Soup to nuts.

In other words, same shit, different decade.

Via: AP:

Blackwater Worldwide is still protecting U.S. diplomats in Iraq, but executives at the beleaguered security firm are taking their biggest step yet to put that work and the ugly reputation it earned the company behind them.

Blackwater said Friday it will no longer operate under the name that came to be known worldwide as a caustic moniker for private security, dropping the tarnished brand for a disarming and simple identity: Xe, which is pronounced like the letter “z.”

It’s a rare surrender for a company that cherished a brand name inspired by the dark-water swamps of northeastern North Carolina, one that survived another rebranding effort about a year ago, following a deadly shooting in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square. The decision to give it up underscores how badly the Moyock-based company’s brand was damaged by that incident and other security work in Iraq.

“They have established themselves as the bad guys,” said Katy Helvenston, who sued the company following her son’s death during a mission in Fallujah while working for Blackwater in 2004. “They’ve established such a horrible reputation. Why else would they change their name?”

Blackwater acknowledged last year in an interview with the The Associated Press the damage to its reputation had persuaded the company to focus on lines of business other than private security contracting.

The issue came to a head last month, when the State Department said it would not rehire Blackwater to protect its diplomats in Iraq after its current contract with the company expires in May. The company has one other major security contract, details of which are classified.

“It’s not a direct result of a loss of (that) contract, but certainly that is an aspect of our work that we feel we were defined by,” said spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell.

The company is also replacing its bear paw logo with a sleeker black-and-white graphic based on letters that make up the company’s new name. In a note to employees, president Gary Jackson said the name change reflects the company’s new focus, and he indicated Xe would not actively pursue new security business.

“This company will continue to provide personnel protective services for high-threat environments when needed by the U.S. government, but its primary mission will be operating our training facilities around the world,” Jackson said.

It has expanded other businesses such as aviation support, recently building a fleet of 76 aircraft that it has deployed to such hotspots as West Africa and Afghanistan. The company got its start in training and continues to build up that business. Last year, some 25,000 civilians, law enforcement and military personnel attended a Blackwater class.

The company’s changes aren’t entirely voluntary. The 2007 shooting in Nisoor Square involving Blackwater guards left at least a dozen Iraqi civilians dead, infuriated politicians in Baghdad and Washington, triggered congressional hearings and increased calls that the company be banned from Iraq.

Late last year, prosecutors charged five of the company’s contractors — but not Blackwater itself — with manslaughter and weapons violations. In January, Iraqi officials said they would not give the company a license to operate. The State Department responded by informing Blackwater it would not renew a contract that comprises a third of the company’s nearly $1 billion in annual revenue.

“It would hurt us,” company CEO Erik Prince said in an interview before losing the State Department deal. “It would not be a mortal blow, but it would hurt us.”

Blackwater has rebranded before, introducing a new name — Blackwater Worldwide — and slight changes to its logo about a year ago. But Friday’s announcement cuts ties entirely with a name created in 1997 when Prince and some of his former Navy SEAL colleagues launched the company.

Xe will cover the parent brand for the two-dozen subsidiaries, and none of those subsidiaries will retain the word “Blackwater” in their names.

Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky, chair of the Intelligence Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and a longtime Blackwater critic, said the new name won’t change the fact that its actions have resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians.

“Blackwater’s notorious reputation will outlast its name,” she said.

Source: Now Public

Police opened fire on an unarmed couple during a routine traffic stop late Tuesday night because one officer “thought he was shot,” a high-ranking Salinas Police Department official said Thursday.

“He saw what he perceived as a threat and thought he was shot, and based on that both officers discharged their firearms,” said Dino Bardoni, commander of investigations.

No one was hurt in the 11:24 p.m. incident at North Sanborn Road and Freedom Parkway, but the couple’s SUV was riddled with bullet holes and its rear window was shattered.

Police are releasing few details about the incident or case and have characterized it as a “priority investigation,” Bardoni said.

It’s the fourth officer-involved shooting in the city in the past seven months, two of which were fatal.

Interim Police Chief Daniel Ortega refused to discuss the most recent case, referring all questions to Bardoni.

Bardoni said the incident began when one officer stopped the vehicle because one of its license plate lights was not working. He was joined shortly thereafter by a second officer.

Bardoni said the primary officer was in the midst of contacting the vehicle’s occupants, a driver and passenger, when the problem began.

“He was walking up to them, nothing out of the ordinary,” Bardoni said, when there was the perception of a threat and the officer thought he’d been shot.

Police later determined that the couple was unarmed.

Neither of the vehicle’s occupants was arrested or cited.

The couple, Adrianna Velasquez and Julio Fernandez, could not be reached for comment.

Bardoni declined to identify the officers or to confirm or deny that one of them is the same officer who was involved in the tragic shooting death last year of Maria Irma Del La Torre, 45, of Salinas.

She was shot and killed when officers mistook a knitting needle for an ice pick and said she lunged at them. De La Torre was taking medication for epileptic seizures at the time of her death.

Contact Jack Foley at jfoley@thecalifornian.com