Claudio Cappuccino

Testi originali Settembre 2000

ARTICOLI SULLA POLIZIA DI LOS ANGELES

31 Aug 2000
Washington Post (DC)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/

Rene Sanchez
L.A. POLICE MISCONDUCT LIKENED TO RACKETEERING

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 30 - Of all the ugly names the police department here has been called since it became mired in a massive corruption scandal last year, none may be worse than the one a federal judge invoked this week. In a ruling that startled city officials, U.S. District Judge William J. Rea said that the pattern of extreme misconduct shown by the LAPD suggests that it could be considered a "criminal enterprise," subject to lawsuits under federal anti-racketeering laws that could inflict a staggering financial toll on Los Angeles.
The judge's decision is unprecedented, legal analysts say. After all, the laws were enacted nearly 30 years ago to give law enforcement officials more power to crack down on organized crime gangs involved in extortion, bribery or obstruction of justice not a police force. But this force is facing extraordinary charges. In a scandal still unfolding, officers are being investigated for allegedly orchestrating a widespread, violent conspiracy: shooting unarmed suspects, framing others by planting weapons or drugs on them, falsifying police reports and lying under oath in court.
Since the scandal erupted, five officers have been charged with felonies. About 70 more are under investigation. Nearly 100 criminal cases linked to their actions have been thrown out, and a few people who were wrongly convicted have been released from prison.
Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at the University of Southern California, said the potential implications of the federal judge's decision are enormous. In essence, he said, the LAPD could be brought to trial "for acting like an illegal mob." "It's a novel theory, and it could tremendously expand the scope of liability the city could be facing," Chemerinsky said. "The racketeering statute is one of the most powerful tools a plaintiff has because it is so broad."
Most important, the federal law provides a 10-year statute of limitations on racketeering crimes, which could leave the LAPD vulnerable to more lawsuits concerning alleged misdeeds by officers and give attorneys of alleged victims more time to prepare cases. California law provides just a one-year statute of limitations. The federal law also allows juries to triple damage awards to any plaintiff they decide has been wronged. Until now, city officials have been bracing to pay between $100 million and $200 million to settle lawsuits stemming from the scandal. The financial stakes suddenly could be much higher.
Today, city attorneys announced they were preparing an appeal of the judge's ruling. "We believe this order is wrong on the law," said Mike Qualls, a spokesman for city attorney James K. Hahn.
The corruption scandal is rooted in the police department's Rampart Division, which covers a blighted immigrant neighborhood near downtown. Most of the officers being investigated have been part of elite squads that the department created to fight street gangs. The controversy began when a former Rampart officer, Rafael Perez, began telling investigators about police misconduct in exchange for leniency on charges he faced for stealing cocaine from a police evidence locker. Perez is now in prison. The federal judge issued his ruling in a lawsuit filed against the city by Louie Guerrero, an alleged victim of police abuse. Guerrero contends that as he walked along a street in the Rampart neighborhood in November 1997, officers choked, kicked and punched him, then arrested him on phony charges. Guerrero's suit includes other plaintiffs who allege the LAPD violated their civil rights in similar ways. City attorneys had sought dismissal of the suit in part because the one-year statute of limitations for suing under state law had passed. But the judge rejected the city's motion. Stephen Yagman, a lawyer representing Guerrero and other plaintiffs, praised the move. He said it could be just the weapon that victims of police abuse have long needed to force reform upon the LAPD, whose image has been tarnished by the infamous Rodney G. King beating of 1991 and conduct by some officers that became known during O.J. Simpson's 1994 trial. "Now we will be able to expose up to 10 years of misconduct," Yagman said, "and to finally clean up a rotten department that the city just won't clean up on its own."

Wed, 30 Aug 2000
New York Times (NY)
http://www.nytimes.com/

Don Terry
RACKETS LAW CAN BE USED AGAINST POLICE IN LOS ANGELES

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 29 -- A federal judge has ruled that the government's anti-racketeering statute, created to deal with drug bosses and organized crime figures, can be used in lawsuits against the troubled Los Angeles Police Department. Besides allowing one of the largest police departments in the United States to be dealt with as a criminal enterprise, the decision by Judge William J. Rea of Federal District Court drastically increases the city's potential liability in its worst police scandal in decades, since the law permits a longer statute of limitations and could triple the damages the city could otherwise face.
The case involves claims by one of the many people who say they were victims of violent and corrupt officers at the department's Rampart Division, whose actions are at the heart of the scandal. The city had tried to have this case thrown out, and in making his ruling on Monday the judge rejected that motion. Legal experts said today that it appeared the department would be the first police agency in the country to face trial under the statute, which over the years has come to be used in a wide variety of litigation. Edwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at the University of Southern California, said he spent Monday evening researching the matter and could find no other case in which a police department had been brought to trial using the statute, known as RICO -- the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law. Judge Rea did not deal with the credibility of the plaintiff's claim that the department condoned and authorized the actions by the corrupt officers, but said that if those accusation were true, they would constitute racketeering activity and so would come under the RICO law.
Under RICO, the statute of limitations is 10 years, rather than 1 year as in other civil rights litigation, so the ruling could open the courtroom to many more cases. For instance, the lead plaintiff in the case, Louie Guerrero, says that the police beat and falsely arrested him on drug charges in November 1997 and that he was released from prison before details of the Rampart scandal became known last year. Under other civil rights laws, his lawsuit against the department would have to be dismissed. Nearly 100 criminal cases have been overturned as a result of the scandal, in which officers are said to have planted evidence and beaten people in a struggling Latino neighborhood for sport and profit.
City officials have previously estimated the city's liability at between $125 million to $200 million. "If the plaintiffs prevail," Mr. Chemerinsky said today, "there is staggering potential liability for the city, just staggering."
But Mr. Chemerinsky cautioned that the judge had simply ruled that the case could go forward. "Whether the plaintiffs can ultimately prove it," he said, "we'll just have to wait and see." Stephen Yagman, a lawyer for Mr. Guerrero, said, "We have in effect converted a civil rights lawsuit into a racketeering lawsuit, and it's about time." Mr. Yagman said he had no doubt that "a reasonable jury will look at the evidence and agree with what I've been claiming for years: that the L.A.P.D. is essentially a criminal enterprise."
Mr. Yagman said his four-lawyer firm has 19 Rampart-related cases and 50 more on file. He said the lawyers were analyzing 100 more potential cases and had brought in a firm with 26 lawyers to help. "And we're thinking about hiring even more lawyers," he said. Both the Police Department and the mayor's office declined to comment and referred all calls to the Los Angeles city attorney's office. Mike Qualls, a spokesman for the city attorney, said, "Obviously, we're disappointed in the ruling, and we're reviewing our options." The Rampart scandal has embarrassed the Los Angeles Police Department for months as story after story about corrupt and brutal officers has chipped away at a reputation already tarnished by the O.J. Simpson case, the Rodney King beating and the riots of 1992. The image long polished by Hollywood and sent across the world by reruns of "Dragnet" seems long gone now. Now, the city and the United States Justice Department are negotiating ways to prevent the federal government from suing the Police Department for a pattern of civil rights violations.
Judge Rea also refused the city's request to throw out the plaintiff's request for an injunction that would forbid police officers to engage in the planting of evidence or commit perjury, two pillars of the Rampart charges of official abuse.

•••

GLI ARTICOLI E UNA LETTERA AL NEW YORK TIMES SUL PIANO COLOMBIA

Sun, 27 Aug 2000
Washington Post (DC)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/

Jim Hoadland
TAKING COVER IN THE DRUG WAR

President Clinton bought $1.3 billion worth of political cover this past week by giving final authorization to a controversial anti-drug aid package for Colombia. He will visit, ever so briefly, that South American country Wednesday to check on his investment. Clinton hauls in a bargain, since the money is not his. He buys protection for the Democrats against silly charges of being soft on drugs, and throws in a presidential stopover for a few hours in a place that is every security agent's nightmare.U.S. taxpayers may get more than they realize or ultimately want for their money. The investment engages the United States in a civil war on the side of military forces it cannot control or easily monitor. And "Plan Colombia" will not produce a victory over drug trafficking and use, unfortunately.
The aid package fosters the illusion that Washington is coping with an intractable social and criminal problem at home that shows no sign of going away. That is the point of political cover, of course, and its peril. America's politicians are not dealing honestly with the national drug epidemic that is overwhelming our available medical, social and criminal justice resources. They are not likely to do so until the country has a president who will stage a national intervention. That is, a president who will honestly, persistently and clearly explain to the nation the severity of the problem and then acknowledge the inadequacy of the current approach. That president will charge every elected official at municipal, state and federal levels with the responsibility for working to lessen the drug burden on American society every day and then hold them to it.
The national intervention would turn the spotlight on these officials, rather than on Colombia's guerrilla-fighting forces or Mexico's president, and on the key role Americans must play in the struggle against narcotics. Political involvement in drug abuse education, rehabilitation and enlightened law enforcement remains spotty and at odds with inflated rhetoric about waging "war" on drugs. Representative governments routinely purchase political cover when an intractable problem upsets their electorates. They deflect blame onto others or build minimal plausible claims that they are doing the best anyone possibly could. But political cover eventually becomes the governmental equivalent of the drug user's psychological state of denial, blocking honest attempts to come to terms with the problem. Even in his final months Clinton is unwilling to take on demagogues to his far right. He seeks to placate or neutralize them with Plan Colombia. It is not that on drugs, missile defense and other issues Clinton is worse than the Republican congressional leadership; it is that in the end he is no better, though he has the opportunity to be so. Clinton's signature on a national security waiver on Wednesday cleared the way for the military-heavy aid program to Colombia to proceed despite concerns in Washington about human rights abuses by Colombia's forces. Clinton justified the waiver in terms of progress being made by Colombia's army in reducing human rights abuses in the field, immediately touching off criticism from liberal Democrats who do not want to fund potential atrocities. Both the justification and the criticism miss the larger point: Aid of $1.3 billion will not buy Washington control over Colombia's desperate forces as they operate in war zones. Humanitarian restrictions on U.S. aid have to be designed and implemented to protect Americans, not Colombians or other potential targets of abuse who are beyond American protection.
Americans need to be protected against the folly of unsustainable commitments abroad, which drain national treasure and credibility. The American public has demonstrated in ways big and small, in Vietnam, Somalia and El Salvador, that it will not support the use of force when that force creates as much suffering and abuse as it was intended to resolve. When governments credibly show that the use of force contributes to stability and reduces oppression, as in Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor, support is sustained for military and peacekeeping operations. Human rights restrictions on U.S. aid should serve as a guardrail against commitments that will be abandoned later under public pressure. Properly crafted, such legislation raises legitimate questions about the extent and nature of U.S. involvement and flashes warning lights.
That care and foresight is missing in Plan Colombia, which is about politics, not about drugs or human rights or insurgency. Colombia iscertainly no Vietnam. But Washington is still Washington, and that is where the true danger lies in this situation.

Sat, 19 Aug 2000 : New York Times (NY) http://www.nytimes.com/

MISGUIDED AID FOR COLOMBIA The

Clinton administration is poised to begin sending hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Colombia's military. But first it must either certify that that nation's armed forces meet certain human rights criteria or waive those requirements in the interests of national security. Washington will probably grant the waiver to get counter-narcotics aid flowing, arguing that Colombia's armed forces will soon begin to clean themselves up. This is dangerous, wishful thinking. A stream of new helicopters, American training and logistical support given without preconditions will remove any incentive for the military to begin respecting civilians. The United States will be financing, training and backing a military with a record of killing civilians, aiding brutal right-wing paramilitary groups and defying a well-meaning but weak civilian government. Colombia's record on punishing or prosecuting military personnel for human rights abuses is poor, as the State Department acknowledges in its annual human rights report. There is evidence of military collusion in paramilitary massacres of peasants. Carlos Castano, a paramilitary leader and admitted drug trafficker, appears on television, but the military seems unable to find and arrest him. High-ranking officers credibly accused of helping the paramilitaries remain in their jobs. While Colombia's guerrillas have a reprehensible record of killings, kidnappings and drug trafficking, the sudden escalation in American support for the military is not the answer. It will only strengthen the guerrilla hard-liners, intensify a conflict that neither side can win, and wreck the peace process between the government and the guerrillas, which offers the only possible hope of an end to Colombia's endless civil war.

Tue, 29 Aug 2000 Miami Herald (FL)
http://www.herald.com/

Juan O. Tamayo
RIGHTS GROUPS ASSAIL U.S. AID TO COLOMBIA
Violations Alleged In Fighting Rebels

BOGOTA, Colombia -- On the eve of a visit by President Clinton, three top human rights groups Monday issued a scathingly detailed report charging that Colombia does not deserve a $1.3 billion U.S. aid package. Clinton released the money last week, acknowledging that the government of President Andres Pastrana had not met five of the six human rights conditions slapped on the package by Congress, but signing a waiver in the U.S. "national interests." The report prepared by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Washington Office on Latin America represents one of the most comprehensive criticisms of U.S. policy in that Andean country. It contains a scorching litany of allegations that the government has done little to halt gross abuses by security forces fighting an estimated 20,000 rebels.
"We deplore this decision," the report said of Clinton's waiver, citing scores of cases in which military personnel went unpunished despite credible evidence against them. While the U.S. aid package requires the military to promptly suspend personnel "credibly" accused of gross abuses, the report said "dozens . . . not only remain on active duty but are in command of troops or carrying out intelligence work, and are regularly promoted." Some officers have even been allowed to remain on active duty after civilian prosecutors filed serious human rights charges against them, the 30-page report noted. Military commanders, required by the U.S. package to crack down on violators, instead often seek to shield them from civilian courts and send them before military tribunals that "have a virtually unbroken record of covering up crimes, failing to gather or consider evidence and acquitting implicated officers in the face of overwhelming evidence," the report said.
The document was surprisingly tough on Pastrana, a young moderate credited with helping to persuade the U.S. Congress to approve the aid for Colombia's battle against drug traffickers and leftist guerrillas. Congress put strings on the package because of the Colombian armed forces' reputation for massive abuses such as murder, disappearances, torture and assisting paramilitary units accused of the worst massacres. Clinton is scheduled to visit the port of Cartagena for six hours Wednesday to show his support for Pastrana's counter-narcotics and democracy-building Plan Colombia, and figuratively hand over the check, but the human rights report could cast a pall on the visit.
The report claims that while the armed forces are required by the U.S. aid to cooperate with civilian authorities investigating human rights violations, even government prosecutors regularly receive threats when handling cases of military abuses.
It noted that Army Chief of Staff Gen. Nestor Ramirez had complained in December about the "subversives who have infiltrated the prosecutor's, attorney general's and Human Rights Ombudsman's offices."
A Defense Ministry website made similar allegations earlier this year against the American diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota in charge of monitoring human rights abuses, the report noted.

KEY CRITERION Perhaps most damaging to Pastrana, the report complained that he had not even met the one requirement that Clinton certified he had: ordering the armed forces to stop pushing for military trials for suspected human rights violators and leave their cases up to civilian courts. Clinton reported last week that Pastrana met that condition with an Aug. 17 presidential directive that military personnel accused of "genocide, torture and forced disappearances" be tried in civilian courts.
That left out murder and other violations such as cooperating with the paramilitaries, the report noted, adding: "Partial compliance . . . is not adequate. Full means complete -- not partial, not mostly -- but total." Pastrana in fact unsuccessfully objected to a section of a bill approved by the Colombian Congress earlier this year that strengthened civilian justice control over some military cases, the report added.

RECENT BOAST
And while Defense Minister Luis Fernando Ramirez recently boasted that the military had transferred 533 cases of alleged human rights abuses from military to civilian courts, the report said it found only 103 since 1997. Many involved common crimes, it added, and "only 39 related in some way to crimes that could be construed as human rights violations, like murder. Most of these cases involved low-ranking sergeants and lieutenants."

FEW TRANSFERS
"In other words," the report added, "fewer than 10 cases per year are transferred from military to civilian jurisdiction, and these rarely involve senior officials who may have ordered or orchestrated gross violations." U.S. aid to the Colombian military was cut off from 1996 to 1998 because of its dark human rights record. That record has improved in the past year, but critics say that is only because officers are allowing the growing paramilitary units to carry out the "dirty" part of the war on leftist rebels.

Tue, 29 Aug 2000
New York Times (NY)
http://www.nytimes.com

Oscar Arias (former president of Costa Rica, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1987) AID

TO COLOMBIA: UNLEARNED LESSONS

To the Editor: Re "Neighbors Fear Fallout of Aid to Colombians" (front page, Aug. 25): The United States has apparently learned nothing from the horrors of El Salvador and Nicaragua, where vast amounts of military aid only served to intensify conflicts that neither side was going to win. Now, Congress and President Clinton have confirmed that they will make the same error in Colombia by sending $1.3 billion, almost all in military aid.
Haven't the last 20 years shown us that as long as there is a market for drugs in the United States, somebody will find a way to get them there? Cutting down on the demand side in the United States would do much more to curtail drug production than a bloody military campaign. By providing military aid rather than substantial social and economic assistance, the United States is missing an opportunity to address the real roots of insurgency and drug production in Colombia.

OSCAR ARIAS
San Jose, Costa Rica, Aug. 25, 2000

•••

LA SENTENZA CANADESE SULLA CANNABIS

01 Aug 2000 Toronto Star (CN ON)
http://www.thestar.com/

TIME TO AMEND MARIJUANA LAW

Ottawa has two choices after yesterday's landmark court decision calling for the decriminalization of marijuana. It can rewrite its restrictive drug law or it can appeal the ruling. Either way, Canada would be better off. Legal clarity is badly needed on this issue. The current regime, which allows desperately ill individuals to apply for exemptions from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to use marijuana for medicinal purposes, is unfair and impractical. Even when an exemption is granted, it is often impossible to obtain the drug legally. Yesterday's long-awaited ruling by the Ontario Court of Appeal will force the federal government to come up with a better system. The court struck down the 77-year-old law making marijuana possession illegal. It deemed the statute unconstitutional because it fails to take into account the needs of the sick and dying who use the drug as medicine. If Ottawa does not amend the law within 12 months, the court stipulated, it will no longer be a crime to possess marijuana. Yesterday's judgment was the latest chapter in the long struggle of Torontonian Terry Parker, who uses marijuana to ease his epileptic seizures. He has been arrested and charged repeatedly for cultivating and smoking the drug. Finally, in 1997, an enlightened judge ruled that Parker had a constitutional right to grow, possess and smoke marijuana as part of his medical treatment. ``It does not accord with fundamental justice to criminalize a person suffering from a serious chronic medical disability for possessing a vitally helpful substance not legally available in Canada,'' Judge Patrick Sheppard wrote.
That judgment was confirmed yesterday. But the Appeal Court went further. It asked Ottawa to enshrine the legal right of individuals such as Parker to use the drug medicinally without fear of prosecution.
The federal government has the option of appealing the ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada. That would at least bring an end to 30 years of legal wrangling. It would determine, once and for all, whether and under what circumstances, it is a crime to use marijuana. Ottawa's least advisable course of action would be to do nothing. By failing to act, it would forfeit the chance to differentiate between the medicinal and recreational use of marijuana, as well as demonstrating a lack of leadership. While Justice Minister Anne McLellan decides whether to overhaul the controlled Drugs and Substances Act, Health Minister Allan Rock could do his part by ensuring that those who apply for exemptions from the act to cope with debilitating disease receive swift, compassionate approval.

01 Aug 2000 Globe and Mail (Canada) http://www.globeandmail.ca/

Jane Gadd
LAW AGAINST MARIJUANA STRUCK DOWN IN ONTARIO
Amend statute or face legalization, Ottawa told

With reports from Rod Mickleburgh in Vancouver; and Mark MacKinnon in Ottawa

Toronto -- Ontario's highest court has declared the law prohibiting the possession of marijuana unconstitutional, and has given Ottawa a year to amend it or lose it. The Ontario Court of Appeal said the year is to give Parliament a chance to fill the void. Meanwhile, marijuana possession is still illegal. The court ruled yesterday that the law fails to recognize that marijuana can be used for medicinal purposes by the chronically ill. Upholding a lower-court decision in the case of Terrance Parker, a 44-year-old epileptic who won a 23-year court battle for the right to smoke the drug to control his seizures, the appeal court declared the marijuana possession section of Canada's Controlled Drugs and Substances Act invalid. Advocates for decriminalization of marijuana hailed the decision as a "huge" victory, not just for people whose doctors back their claims to need the drug to treat illnesses, but for recreational smokers, too.
"If [Parliament doesn't] amend the law and rectify the problem with [medical] exemptions, then everyone will be entitled to smoke marijuana legally in 12 months," lawyer Alan Young told reporters. Ottawa avoided grappling with the thorny issue of abortion in just this way, Mr. Young pointed out. When the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Regina vs. Morgentaler that prohibiting a woman from terminating a pregnancy violated her fundamental right to security of the person, the government did not rewrite its legislation. "They didn't return to it and therefore we don't have a criminal law relating to abortion," Mr. Young said. There are now three options presenting themselves to the federal government: appealing the decision, accepting it and rewriting the law within the one-year period to provide for medicinal uses, or allowing the law to be struck down, effectively legalizing marijuana. The third route is considered highly unlikely. Health Canada spokeswoman Roslyn Tremblay said the government's lawyers would study the decision before advising on a course. "It would be speculating to say what they'll do. Fortunately, they've got a year to look at it," she said. "They'll take time to review the judgment very carefully and look at what action will be taken." In 1997, Mr. Parker became the first Canadian allowed to smoke and cultivate marijuana with impunity when the Ontario Superior Court ruled that he needed it to control his illness and that the prohibition infringed his rights under Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The court stayed charges laid against him when police raided his 73-plant hydroponic garden. However, the Crown appealed on several grounds: that he had not proven marijuana was the only treatment that could help him; that he could have used a legal, synthetic version of the plant's active ingredient; and that he could have applied for an exemption from the Controlled Drugs Act through the federal Minister of Health. Yesterday, a three-judge panel of the appellate court rejected all three arguments. Justices Marc Rosenberg, Marvin Catzman and Louise Charron said they were satisfied with the factual evidence that Mr. Parker needs to smoke marijuana for his health, and that the drug causes relatively little harm. They also found that the federal Health Minister's exemption program fails to provide a safe, legal supply of the drug for people who need it for medical reasons. "The possibility of an exemption . . . that is dependent upon the unfettered and unstructured discretion of the Minister of Health is not consistent with the principles of fundamental justice," they said. An estimated 150,000 people in Ontario need medicinal marijuana to ease the symptoms of AIDS, cancer treatment, glaucoma and epilepsy, but the Health Minister has granted only about 50 exemptions to date. Lawyers for medicinal marijuana users say applications for exemptions go into a "black hole" at Health Canada. "Hundreds of people get no response from the government to their applications," said Aaron Harnett, who represented Mr. Parker at the appellate court. "They're sitting there, sick and waiting, and the court has said the government must stop their punishment, their imprisonment." Mr. Young added that the government must provide a supply of legal marijuana to patients if its exemption policy is to have any meaning. Exemption from prosecution is useless if you cannot obtain a supply of the drug, he said. As a result of the ruling, Mr. Parker can continue to grow and use marijuana without fear of being raided and prosecuted for one year. Other medicinal users charged during that time will not be prosecuted until Ottawa either amends the law or mounts an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. A wan-looking Mr. Parker told reporters yesterday that he is thankful for the Ontario court's decision in his case, but won't be content until all Canadians have the right to use marijuana without prosecution.

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