Category: San Diego

San Diego Is A Union Town

Woe to the San Diego public official who dares cross the police unions.

Police unions are in the midst of contract negotiations with San Diego and surrounding communities.

The police union in La Mesa, a suburb east of San Diego, flexed its muscles when Mayor Art Madrid dared to point out that there isn’t a heck of a lot of crime (0 murders in 2009)  in the city of 57,000.

“Our employees aren’t getting shot at,” Madrid said during a City Council meeting.

Jeff Raybould, the city’s police union president, called that comment “slap in the face to every police officer in this fine city,” in a letter to Madrid that was obtained by The San Diego Union-Tribune

Came then the hammer:

“Contrary to what you might believe, we don’t spend all of our time scooping up inebriated public officials,” Raybould wrote.

That’s a nasty shot at Madrid, whom police found lying on the sidewalk in 2008.

And for the San Diego Police Officers Association a drop in crime is apparently bad news. The SD police union urged “restraint” this week over FBI crime statistics that show overall crime plunged by 18 percent. 

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, a former police chief, has proposed $12 million in cuts — but no layoffs of sworn officers — for the SDPD, which is in the midst of contract negotiations with the city.

Issa Wants Those Fed Memos

Congressman Darryl Issa has been on the warpath lately over the Fed’s September 2008 bailout of AIG.

In a letter to Congressman Edolphus Towns, chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Issa requests a subpoena based on information from an anonymous whistleblower:

According to the whistleblower, the documents reveal troubling details of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s personal involvement in the decision to bail out AIG. These documents date to September 15, 2008 and are identified by the following electronic labels: sb-aig-01000092 to sb-aig-010000125 and “Draft Memo on AIG.pdf.”

Issa’s staff tried to get the documents, but the Fed never returned their calls.

The documents have not been released, although Bernanke responded in writing to some questions from Issa.

As Ken Silverstein of Harper’s notes, how bad must things be when Issa holds the moral high ground?

The Embarrassing Case of Jesus Navarro (Updated)

(Note: I updated this post after a reader pointed out that the Border Patrol didn’t let Navarro go in 2007. What actually happened is even worse)

Now that a Mexican smuggler suspected in the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent is on his way to San Diego, maybe we can finally get some answers as to how and why the case went so horribly wrong.

The U.S. government’s bungling allowed the suspect, Jesus Albino Navarro-Montes, to get out of a Mexican jail. That part is well known, but what hasn’t gotten much attention is that U.S. officials let Navarro slip away not once, but twice.

Not long before the death of Border Patrol Agent Luis Aguilar, Navarro was caught by the Border Patrol with a half-ton of pot.

But he got away.

How?

According to a federal complaint, Navarro and his female passenger stole a Border Patrol vehicle and drove it back to Mexico.

This would laughable if the results weren’t so tragic.

A few months later, Navarro was allegedly behind the wheel of a Hummer H2 on Jan. 19, 2008 that illegally crossed the border near Yuma, Arizon.

Agent Aguilar, 32, was run over while trying to throw down a spike strip. The Hummer got away, but Navarro was arrested on January 28, 2008.

On June 18, 2008, he was released from jail by a Mexican judge.

Why?

The U.S. government never sought Navarro’s extradition. It never presented an arrest warrant. Without any evidence of a crime, Navarro had to be released.

“Although we had asked the U.S. government a couple of times before his release to help us deal with the matter so we could hold Mr. Navarro, we got nothing whatsoever,” embassy spokesman Ricardo Alday told a reporter for The Washington Times. “The U.S. response never came.”

Congress Brian Bilbray, a San Diego-area Republican, asked Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey and the White House for an explanation.

He got the brush off.

Disclosure would “inevitably compromise highly sensitive law enforcement investigative information,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Keith B. Nelson wrote in a letter to Bilbray.

Navarro was re-captured near Zihuatanejo on Feb. 11, 2009 by Mexico’s Agencia Federal de Investigacion in an operation coordinated with the FBI and U.S. Marshal’s Service.

After Navarro’s re-arrest, authorities in San Diego unsealed a criminal complaint that showed that Border Patrol agents had captured Navarro on Sept. 23, 2007 following a chase east of San Diego.

(Click here to read the complaint and accompanying statement of facts.)

Border Patrol agents used a spike strip to successfully slow him down. Navarro ditched his pickup in the desert and fled on foot with an unidentified female passenger.

Border Patrol agents caught the pair and put them in their vehicle.

According to the statement of facts, “The female passenger was able to take control of the Border Patrol vehicle, and both the female passenger and NAVARRO-Montes absconded to Mexico in the Border Patrol.”

The agents were stuck in the desert with a Toyota pickup with three blown out tires and 979.7 pounds of marijuana inside.

Report: US Mulls Killing Former SD Imam

Can the president target an American citizen in a lethal attack?

White House lawyers are struggling with that question in the case of Anwar Awlaki, a former San Diego imam and SDSU graduate student, according to an ABC News report. 

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee noted last week that U.S. intelligence and military officials consider Anwar Awlaki, a former San Diego imam and U.S. citizen, to be “a direct threat to U.S. interests” although he has not yet been accused of a crime.

Awlaki corresponded with alleged Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan before the attack that killed 12 soldiers, and investigators believe he also met with accused “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

  • For more see my Awlaki timeline.

ABC’s Matthew Cole, Richard Esposito and Brian Ross are reporting:

According to the people who were briefed on the issue, American officials fear the possibility of criminal prosecution without approval in advance from the White House for a targeted strike against Awlaki.

The former imam at the Masjid al-Rabat al-Islami in San Diego was said to be in the Predator’s sights after the Fort Hood attack, but the strike wasn’t authorized because of questions over the citizenship of the New Mexico-born Awlaki.

President Reagan signed an an executive order in 1981 that forbid anyone employed by or acting on behalf of the U.S. government from engaging in or conspiring to engaging in assassination. That order remains in effect today.

However, we can kill those who are trying to kill us. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress gave the president the authority to use “all necessary and appropriate force” to prevent future acts of terrorism against the United States. The specifics are said to be set out in a secret presidential “finding” signed by President Bush after the attacks.

In 2002, a CIA drone attack in Yemen killed a carload of suspected terrorists, including the target of the operation, the top al-Qaida leader in the country. U.S. officials weren’t troubled that the strike killed Yemeni-American Kamal Derwish, a U.S. citizen. “No constitutional questions are raised here,” said National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Putting the bullseye on Awlaki and pulling the trigger would break new legal ground and raise fresh questions about the limits of presidential power.

At the very least, the U.S. government should make plainly clear what Awlaki has done to earn the wrath of a Hellfire missile. Meeting, corresponding and, odious as it may be, enouraging jihadists, doesn’t cut it.

Long slog for US Marines in Afghanistan

Afghan General Mahaiuddin Ghori visited Camp Pendleton and held a press conference today thanking Marines and their families.

Ghori commands the British-trained Afghan National Army’s 3rd Kandak, 205 Hero Corps (3/205) brigade in Afghanistan’s Helmand province — the world’s largest poppy growing region.

By April, Camp Pendleton units are expected to lead about 20,000 Marines serving in Helmand, and Ghori and his men are here to help the U.S. troops train them. Here they are at the Marine’s “combat town”

Ghori has been fighting for years. He was a former officer in the 1980s pro-Soviet Afghan army fighting the mujehadin. His 3/205 brigade fires Soviet D-30s, 122mm howitzers. Ghori himself trained at Moscow’s Frunze Academy.

Asked about President Barack Obama’s timeline for withdrawing American forces from Afghanistan starting around July 2011, Ghori said his army needs a longer partnership: “I’m hoping for more time in order to properly train our forces.”

How much time?

Last month, Ghori said he expected it would take 5-6 years for Afghan troops to take over the country’s security, and they would need to depend on foreigners for many years after. He said “a long time, 10-15 years are needed for mentoring in new equipment, new airplanes, education, pilots engineers and commanders..”