Nose for crime: $1.2M in French perfume nabbed

PARIS (AP) — French police say 1 million euro ($1.2 million) worth of Givenchy perfume has been recovered after it was stolen by masked thieves from a warehouse in the middle of the night.

The scented bounty was taken a week ago from Beauvais, near Paris, and was discovered on Tuesday, according to local police official Jean-Marie Salsat.

Salsat, who revealed details of the perfume heist Friday, said the bottles were found unused, with the stoppers still in.

The Sipa news agency, quoting unnamed police sources, reports that several robbers had overpowered a perfume warehouse night watchman. They later loaded trucks with the fragrances produced by the French house Givenchy, part of fashion giant LVMH.

The thieves are still at large.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

A nose for crime: Masked thieves nab $1.2 million in French Givenchy perfume

PARIS - French police say 1 million euro (US$1.2 million) worth of Givenchy perfume has been recovered after it was stolen by masked thieves from a warehouse in the middle of the night.

The scented bounty was taken a week ago from Beauvais, near Paris, and was discovered on Tuesday, according to local police official Jean-Marie Salsat.

Salsat, who revealed details of the perfume heist Friday, said the bottles were found unused, with the stoppers still in.

The Sipa news agency, quoting unnamed police sources, reports that several robbers had overpowered a perfume warehouse night watchman. They later loaded trucks with the fragrances produced by the French house Givenchy, part of fashion giant LVMH.

The thieves are still at large.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Nearly 1.2 Million Forensic Requests To Publicly Funded Crime Labs Were Backlogged At Yearend 2009, Unchanged From 2008

WASHINGTON, Aug. 2, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- At the end of 2009, the nation's publicly funded crime labs had an estimated backlog of 1.2 million requests for forensic services, relatively unchanged from the backlog at yearend 2008, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today. A request was defined as backlogged if it had not been completed within 30 days.

In 2009, the 411 federal, state, county and municipal labs began the year with more than 1.0 million backlogged requests and received an additional estimated 4.1 million new requests for forensic services from law enforcement and other criminal justice agencies during the year.

Forensic biology accounted for about a third (34 percent) of all requests received in 2009, and about three-quarters of the total backlog at yearend 2008 and 2009. Forensic biology involved the screening or DNA analysis of biological samples (such as blood and saliva) from criminal casework or for DNA database profiles.

In 2009, all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the federal government required offenders convicted of certain crimes to provide DNA samples. Some jurisdictions also collected DNA from certain arrestees. DNA samples collected from convicted offenders and arrestees for a DNA database accounted for more than 1.0 million of the nearly 1.4 million forensic biology requests in 2009.

The analysis of controlled substances (33 percent) and toxicology (15 percent)—which involved examining blood, other body fluids and tissue for alcohol, drugs and poisons—were the  most requested services, following forensic biology.

During 2009, publicly funded crime labs provided an average of five different types of forensic services. About three in 10 publicly funded crime labs outsourced some work to private labs or other public facilities to address the demands for forensic services.

The composition of the requests handled by crime labs varied across federal, state, county and municipal jurisdictions. For example, forensic biology comprised 61 percent of requests made to federal labs, 46 percent of requests to state labs, and less than 10 percent of requests to county and municipal labs.

In 2009, 83 percent of publicly funded crime labs were accredited by a professional forensic science organization. Most received accreditation through the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board. State labs (92 percent) were the most likely to be accredited, while municipal labs (62 percent) were least likely.

The number of full-time employees in publicly funded crime labs increased from an estimated 11,000 in 2002 to 13,100 in 2009. More than half of crime lab employees were analysts or examiners who prepared and analyzed evidence and reported on their conclusions.

The vast majority (97 percent) of publicly funded crime labs performed proficiency testing, ensuring the accuracy and reliability of forensic examinations. More than a third (36 percent) used random case reanalysis by another examiner and a tenth performed blind tests.

The annual operating budget for all publicly funded crime labs increased from about $1.0 billion in 2002 to $1.6 billion in 2009. Personnel costs accounted for about three-quarters of the expenditures of publicly funded crime labs in 2009.

These findings come from the third Census of Publicly Funded Forensic Crime Laboratories, a BJS data collection that provides a comprehensive look at forensic services across the nation and the resources devoted to completing the work. This report provides detailed information on the 411 publicly funded crime labs operating in 2009 and compares those findings to data from the 2002 and 2005 censuses.

The report, Census of Publicly Funded Forensic Crime Laboratories, 2009 (NCJ 238252), was written by BJS statisticians Matthew Durose and Andrea Burch, and Kelly Walsh of the Urban Institute. The report, related documents and additional information about the Bureau of Justice Statistics' statistical publications and programs can be found on the BJS website at http://www.bjs.gov/.

The Office of Justice Programs (OJP), headed by Acting Assistant Attorney General Mary Lou Leary, provides federal leadership in developing the nation's capacity to prevent and control crime, administer justice, and assist victims. OJP has six components: the Bureau of Justice Assistance; the Bureau of Justice Statistics; the National Institute of Justice; the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention; the Office for Victims of Crime; and the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking. More information about OJP can be found at http://www.ojp.gov.

SOURCE Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Italy rules 'no balls' insult for men is a crime

Italy's highest court ruled that telling a man he has "no balls" as an insult is a crime punishable with a fine because it hurts male pride in a ruling on a curious row between two cousins.

The case was brought to the supreme court by a lawyer named only as Vittorio against his cousin Alberto, a justice of the peace, for the phrase uttered during a heated courtroom exchange in the southern Italian city of Potenza.

"Apart from the vulgarity of the term used, the expression definitely also has an injurious quality," the male judge, Maurizio Fumo, said in his ruling as quoted by Italian news agency ANSA.

"It refers not only to the target's lack of virility but also to his weakness of character, lack of determination, competence and coherence -- virtues that, rightly or wrongly, are still identified as pertaining to the male gender."

The court also found that because the insult was uttered at the workplace with third parties present it could be seen as damaging Vittorio's reputation.

Vittorio's lawyer had argued that the expression implied that his client was "worth less than other men because he did not have the attributes."

A judge will now rule on the fine that Alberto should pay to Vittorio.

The ruling, which comes after years of legal dispute, did not specify whether any insults against women should now also be considered crimes.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Puerto Rico tries tougher sentences in crime fight

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — An updated penal code signed into law Monday by the Puerto Rican governor increases prison sentences for homicide, assault and other offenses as the U.S. island territory struggles to contain crime and the widespread perception that violence is out of control.

The new penal code establishes fixed sentences on a range of offenses that are substantially higher than those that have been in place since the last time the laws were updated in 2004 and, in some cases, more in line with the 1974 version, Gov. Luis Fortuno said.

"These penalties are both fixed and more severe and that's what we are looking for," the governor, surrounded by half a dozen people who lost family members to violent crime or were themselves victims. "We want to bring peace of mind back to the good and decent people of Puerto Rico."

Puerto Rico had a record number of homicides last year and the island has been struggling with rising crime for several years, largely as a result of the island's role as a transshipment point for South American drugs bound for the U.S. mainland. Though random violence is relatively rare, polls in the territory consistently show crime as the leading concern and an anti-crime march planned for Aug. 12 is expected to draw tens of thousands of people.

The governor, who is running for re-election this year, has twice replaced the island's police chief and is supporting a ballot referendum that would end a provision of Puerto Rican law that grants the right to post bail to anyone charged with a crime, including rape and murder.

The updated penal code raises the sentence for second-degree homicide to 50 years from a range of 15-25 years and the sentence for negligent homicide to 15 years from a range of 8-15 years. The sentence for first-degree homicide would remain 99 years, unchanged since the 1974 revision. Puerto Rico does not have the death penalty but people charged under U.S. federal law on the island can face capital punishment and be denied bail.

Other amendments to the new penal code increase the sentences for assault, kidnapping, robbery, sexual assault and the production of child pornography as well as other offenses.

The American Civil Liberties Union and others have criticized a provision that restricts protests that block public buildings and interfere with local government, measures that appear to be aimed at demonstrations in recent years at the University of Puerto Rico and outside the Capitol building.

William Ramirez, the executive director of the ACLU in Puerto Rico, said the restrictions are unconstitutional and the group is considering a legal challenge.

The governor denied the revised penal code will infringe on the right to protest and said the changes will give local authorities more tools to fight crime. "We won't allow the criminals to take over Puerto Rico."

Luis Romero Font, the leader of an anti-crime group whose son was killed during a robbery last year, said he welcomed the higher sentences as part of a broader approach to crime in the island.

"Will this lead to an end to the violence? Not by itself," said Romero, who attended the signing ceremony for new penal code. "But you have to cut the impunity. If the impunity continues, it will just lead to more crime."

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

'Predictive policing' takes bite out of crime

Crime fighters have long used brains and brawn, but now a new kind of technology known as "predictive policing" promises to make them more efficient.

A growing number of law enforcement agencies, in the US and elsewhere, have been adopting software tools with predictive analytics, based on algorithms that aim to predict crimes before they happen.

The concept sounds like something out of science fiction and the thriller "Minority Report" based on a Philip K. Dick story.

Without some of the sci-fi gimmickry, police departments from Santa Cruz, California, to Memphis, Tennessee, and law enforcement agencies from Poland to Britain have adopted these new techniques.

The premise is simple: criminals follow patterns, and with software -- the same kind that retailers like Wal-Mart and Amazon use to determine consumer purchasing trends -- police can determine where the next crime will occur and sometimes prevent it.

Colleen McCue, a behavioral scientist at GeoEye, a firm that works with US Homeland Security and local law enforcement on predictive analytics, said studying criminal behavior was not that different from examining other types of behavior like shopping.

"People are creatures of habit," she said.

"When you go shopping you go to a place where they have the things you're looking for... the criminal wants to go where he will be successful also."

She said the technology could help in cities where tight budgets were forcing patrol reductions.

"When police departments are laying more sworn personnel, they can do more with less," she said.

The key to success in predictive policing is getting as much data as possible to determine patterns. This can be especially useful in property crimes like auto theft and burglary, where patterns can be detected.

"You can build a model that factors in attributes like the time of year, whether it is hot and humid or cold and snowy, if it is a payday when people are carrying a lot of cash," says Mark Cleverly, who heads the IBM unit for predictive crime analytics.

"It's not saying a crime will occur at a particular time and place, no one can do that. But it can say you can expect a wave of vehicle thefts based one everything we know."

IBM has worked with dozens of agencies such as London's Metropolitan Police, the Polish National Police and a number of US and Canadian cities.

In Memphis, officials said serious crimes fell 30 percent and violent crimes declined 15 percent since implementing predictive analytics in a program with IBM and the University of Memphis in 2006.

The program known as CRUSH -- Criminal Reduction Utilizing Statistical History -- targeted certain "hot spots" to allow police to deploy more efficiently.

John Williams, crime analysis manager for the city's police, said the system has had a dramatic impact, allowing Memphis to get off the list of worst US cities for crime.

"If the data is indicating a hot spot, we are able to immediately deploy resources there. And in a lot of instances we are able to make quality arrests because we're in the right area at the right time," he told AFP.

Although beat officers can use their instincts for similar results, Williams said the software could be far more precise, such as predicting burglaries in a small geographic area between 10 pm and 2 am.

In one case, the software was able to help police break up a group that was committing armed robberies on the city's Hispanic population.

"There were 84 robberies, but we had no idea it was so organized," Williams said.

By crunching the numbers, police were able to pinpoint the zone and time of likely holdups: "We caught a group of robbers in progress, we had leads on additional robberies," he said.

Williams said police officials from as far away as Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro and Estonia have come to review the experience in Memphis.

In Los Angeles, another program developed by scientists at the University of California-Los Angeles and Santa Clara University was tested in a single precinct, and resulted in a 12 percent drop in crime while the rest of the city saw a 0.2 percent increase.

That test and others led to the creation of a company called PredPol.

And Los Angeles will expand its use of the program under contract with PredPol, said CEO Caleb Baskin.

Baskin said the system is based on a model from mathematician George Mohler which "is very effective in predicting the time and location for crimes that have not yet taken place."

PredPol had begun working with other cities in California and "we've had inquiries from a lot of places in the US and international locations," Baskin said.

"The science that underlies the tool will work anywhere. The question is does the agency maintain a database that we can plug into."

While use of such analytics generally wins plaudits for helping "smarter" policing, it does raise concerns about Big Brother-like snooping.

Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a law professor at the University of the District of Columbia, said the use of technology could be positive but that it could lower the threshold for constitutional protections on "unreasonable" searches.

"To stop you and frisk you and search you, a police officer needs reasonable suspicion, so my question is how will this affect reasonable suspicion?" he said.

If the search is based on a computer algorithm, Ferguson said, and the case comes to court, "How do you cross-examine a computer?"

IBM's Cleverly said the technology can in many cases improve privacy.

"You can pinpoint the record of who has access to information, you have a solid history of what's going on, so if someone is using the system for ill you have an audit trail," he said.

As for "The Minority Report" and its predictive software, Cleverly said, "It was a great film and great short story, but it's science fiction and will remain science fiction. That's not what this is about."

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Crime wave hits Sao Paulo, with political effects

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Murders and robberies are soaring in Sao Paulo, Brazil's biggest city and financial capital, in a crime wave that could further hurt the local economy and have national political implications.

Sao Paulo had 622 homicides in the first six months of the year, a 21 percent increase over the same period of 2011, according to government data released this week. Armed robberies grew 8 percent, and are now occurring at the rate of 319 a day in the city of more than 11 million people.

Economists say that crime is a leading factor in the so-called "Brazil cost" - the mix of logistical bottlenecks, high taxes and other costs that make Brazil one of the world's most expensive places to do business, and have contributed to a sharp economic slowdown over the past year.

For example, Brazilians spend about $8 billion a year on private security. Insurance premiums are also high by global standards as banks and other business seek to protect themselves.

Marcos Carneiro Lima, a senior police official, said the wave of murders resulted from a "snowball effect" as gangs stepped up revenge attacks on each other. He said robberies and other property crimes could be a product of recent economic growth.

"(Property crime) is not new, but it's been intensifying because it's very profitable," Carneiro was quoted as saying in Folha de S.Paulo newspaper. He said the spike in violence had already had an impact on insurance premiums.

The city's banking community has also been deeply shaken by last week's murder of a young Italian banker who had just moved to Sao Paulo in search of work.

Police say that Tomasso Lotto, 26, was riding in a car that was approached by armed thieves on a motorcycle on a busy avenue in one of the city's richest neighborhoods. Lotto got out of the car in an apparent attempt to flee, and was shot dead.

No suspects have been arrested for the killing.

Sao Paulo's murder rate has fallen by more than 70 percent in the last decade, in large part because of more effective policing, but is still more than twice the U.S. average. Property crime has largely defied that falling trend.

The city has seen a surge in activity this year by armed gangs who raid apartment buildings and restaurants in upscale neighborhoods, prompting a public outcry for a police crackdown. On Valentine's Day, police were forced to nearly double the amount of officers on the streets in areas with lots of restaurants to ensure that couples could dine out in peace.

The crime wave is becoming an issue in municipal elections in October, a key race that has become a tug-of-war between leading national figures from the main political parties.

The front-runner is Jose Serra, a former presidential candidate for the opposition PSDB party. The center-right PSDB is eager to regain control over Sao Paulo after a series of crushing electoral defeats elsewhere - including Serra's loss to President Dilma Rousseff in 2010.

However, Serra has built his candidacy around his support for incumbent Mayor Gilberto Kassab, and other candidates have been rising in the polls as they attack Kassab for being soft on crime. Serra preceded Kassab as mayor, and after that served as governor of Sao Paulo state.

Rousseff's Workers' Party has also fielded a candidate for the mayorship, former education minister Fernando Haddad. Haddad has remained a distant third in polls, despite energetic campaigning on his behalf by national figures including popular former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

(Editing by Todd Benson and Vicki Allen)

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Senators Using Crime Stories to Push Cybersecurity Bill

It’s not a matter of whether a catastrophic cyberattack will happen, but when. That’s the message Senate backers of broad cybersecurity legislation repeated over and over on Tuesday as they sought to highlight what they see as the danger of inaction.

Experts differ on the likelihood of a truly disastrous cyberattack or cyberwar, but lawmakers have latched onto the worst-case scenarios to try to sell legislation designed to head off such attacks, as well as the kind of cybercrime that happens every day.

“We’re not offering this proposal in a vacuum,” Senate Homeland Security Chairman Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., told reporters on Tuesday. “We are responding to a very serious situation. The danger to the United States is clear, present, and growing.”

Lieberman and his fellow sponsors of the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 are trying to round up enough votes to send the bill to the House. But first, the bill has to overcome opposition from some Republicans who say the bill isn’t ready for prime time.

That fight will play out as soon as Wednesday as the Senate debates a procedural motion to proceed with debate on the bill.

Senate Armed Services ranking member John McCain, R-Ariz., a longtime critic of the Cybersecurity Act, says the Senate is rushing to debate a bill that still contains too many government regulations.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., rejected that argument on Tuesday, but he admitted that it's still not clear if the bill has the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Democrats seem to have coalesced behind the bill, but Reid said he will be “dumbfounded” if Republicans don’t vote to proceed with the bill.

Lieberman and other sponsors introduced compromise language last week designed to win support from businesses and Republicans. Instead of allowing the Homeland Security Department to develop and enforce mandatory cybersecurity standards for certain critical networks, as proposed by the White House and included in the original bill, the revised proposal relies on incentives such as liability protection and prioritized technical assistance to help goad businesses into adopting voluntary standards.

But those changes did little to sway vocal critics like McCain, and supporters of mandatory standards accused the sponsors of giving up too quickly. Even Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., whose ideas were among those included in the compromise language, told National Journal Daily that he doesn’t think the bill is ready. “There’s nothing resolved yet,” he said.

But Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs ranking member Susan Collins of Maine, the bill’s lone Republican sponsor, said she’s convinced the changes will at least allow the Senate to move ahead with the debate.

“This represents the best chance to pass a cybersecurity bill this year,” she said. “The headlines and the data make clear we have already waited too long to address this threat.”

The bill has been stalled for months as the Senate has wrangled over other issues and supporters sought to overcome concerns about standards as well as fears that proposals to share more information between businesses and government could undermine privacy.

The bill has the support of President Obama, who has called for its passage, but its chances are less clear in the House, which has passed its own cybersecurity proposals. Still, Lieberman says that if the Senate can pass his bill, he thinks it will have a good chance of success in conference.

In addition to creating a system for voluntary security standards, the Cybersecurity Act would encourage businesses and government agencies to share cyberthreat information with each other, update federal network security by requiring agencies to continuously monitor their systems, and boost measures to train and recruit cybersecurity professionals.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.