The Americas Post - Now Big Brother can see right through your clothes. Photo Credit: NYPD

It’s not just in the airport anymore.  The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is working in collaboration with the United States Department of Defense to control illegal firearms by deploying technology to detect concealed weapons carried by people walking down the street.

Using infrared rays, the system scans a “form of radiation emitted from the body” on a person carrying a gun on the city’s streets, New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced Tuesday at a State of the NYPD event.

Known as terahertz imaging detection, the technology functions on the basis that the rays cannot pass through metal, thereby creating a digital outline of any metal weapon gun people may be hiding.   It is reported to be capable of measuring energy radiating off a body from up to 16 feet away.

Kelly told attendees that the scanner would be used only when reasonable suspicious circumstances called for it and could decrease the frequency of stop-and-search incidents on the street.  The news, however, has raised concerns about privacy.

“It’s worrisome. It implicates privacy, the right to walk down the street without being subjected to a virtual pat-down by the Police Department when you’re doing nothing wrong,” the New York Civil Liberties Union’s Donna Lieberman told CBS New York.

According to NY Post reports, the scanners would be mounted on NYPD vans, with the rays aiming at people on the street.

The Americas Post - The new club is open but the US and Canada are not invited.

A newly formed Latin American and Caribbean organization has issued statements in support of Argentina’s claim to sovereignty over the British-ruled Falkland Islands and against U.S. sanctions on Cuba at the end of its first two-day summit.

However, the 33-member Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, or CELAC, declined to engage in stronger anti-Western rhetoric as some had feared at a meeting hosted by Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.  Instead, its 22 final declarations spoke in general terms of the need to combat global ills like price speculation, drugs, terrorism, nuclear arms and cruelty to migrants.

“I don’t think we’re exaggerating if we call it a historic day,” said Chavez, 57.  ”United in our differences, we must demand respect,” he told the assembly. “No more interference; we’ve had enough.”

For Chavez the summit achieved two goals: setting up a regional body without the United States, and allowing him to showcase his recovery from cancer treatment.  He and other left-wing leaders like Raul Castro of Cuba, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Evo Morales of Bolivia and Rafael Correa of Ecuador say the hemisphere-wide Organization of American States (OAS)  is a tool of Washington.

Conservative-led nations like Colombia, Chile and Mexico were able to keep CELAC from appearing overly radical however, with relatively mild final declarations  and next year’s meeting set for Santiago, Chile.  And the communiques over the Falklands – or Malvinas islands as they are known in Argentina – and the U.S. embargo on Cuba were already standard positions within the region.

The final declaration backed Argentina’s “legitimate rights” and urged Britain to resume negotiations.

“The Argentine government has shown a permanently constructive attitude and willingness to reach, via negotiations, a peaceful and definitive solution to this anachronistic, colonial situation on American soil”, it stated.

On Cuba, CELAC, whose countries total almost 600 million in population and  about $6 trillion in GDP, urged Washington to respect U.N. votes and lift trade sanctions in place for decades against the communist government.

Chavez, who survived cancer surgery in June, presided over lengthy sessions and speeches, frequently intervening to add his own anecdotes and opinions.

He plans to run for re-election in 2012, and his opponents used the summit to mount some protests in an attempt to embarrass him in front of his Latin American counterparts.  Activists beat pots and pans around the city on Saturday night in a traditional “cacerolazo” demonstration. Some banners were also briefly unfurled over roads saying “Welcome to Crime City” – before police removed them.

Yuri Fedotov, Executive Director of UNODC, Director Gral of U.N. Office in Vienna and Under Secretary Gral of the United Nations.

Addressing today the Security Council in New York, the Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime UNODC Mr. Yury Fedotov today called for coordinated and concerted efforts to address the threat of transnational organized crime.

Mr. Fedotov said to the Security Council that transnational organized crime TOC and drug trafficking are undermining security in many regions and evolving into major threats to political and social stability, the rule of law, human rights and economic development..

Giving more details about the particular threat to security posed by drugs, Mr. Fedotov noted..READ MORE HERE

Prison cell in the argentinian women prison system.

In Argentina, most people arrested for drug offenses are women or foreigners, according to study made by the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and ngo Intercambios.

“Imprisoned for drug offenses in Argentina” is the title of the research that will be presented tomorrow at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Buenos Aires UBA (Santiago del Estero, Argentina).

The author is the lawyer Alejandro Corda , member of the ngo Intercambios, who says that “one third of detainees in prisons throughout the Federal Prison Service are in this situation because of drug offenses” and that ” drugs trafficking is the second leading cause of incarceration behind crimes against property. ”

The specialist calls for “reform of the Narcotics Law 23,737, to avoid the imprisonment of just women and foreigners, but to catch the real dealers and kingpins of the argentinian illegal drug trafficking mafia

Other relevant data that provides the research says that 7 out of 10 people arrested for drugs are consumers and third of those detained in federal prisons are small players in the drug  traffic “mules” (carriers bordering small amounts) and vendors in poor neighborhoods.

Riots in London: Security Expert William Bratton was hired by the British Government

After the riots in England, a U.S. street crime expert has been hired by the Cameron government.

Prime Minister David Cameron (Conservative Party) has taken a hard line on rioting in statements this week after returning from his summer holiday and recalling parliament. He has also come under attack for austerity measures his government is introducing like cutting the amount of police officers and security budget, among other measures.

Cameron has criticized the police  for their handling of the riots. On the other hand , another conservative, the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has said the riots weakened the case for those police cuts.

Cameron has said social and economic problems had little to do with the looting and violence which followed in which five people were killed, calling it “criminality pure and simple” and saying gang violence lay at its heart.

He enlisted U.S. street crime expert William Bratton on Friday to advise the government on handling it.

But some officers within the british police are not satisfied with Cameron´s decission of hiring an american expert.

“We do not need any lessons from the United States,” answered in today’s Independent newspaper  the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, Hugh Orde.

William “Bill” Bratton, the new adviser, is a very successful police expert. He has been credited with curbing street crime as police chief in New York, Los Angeles and Boston, and Bratton said he would offer advice based on his experience tackling gangs. Bratton is not in favor of massive arrests to solve the gangs problem, and says to ABC news “arrest is certainly appropriate for the most violent, the incorrigible, but so much of it can be addressed in other ways and it’s not just a police issue, it is in fact a societal issue.”

A ComRes poll for The Independent newspaper showed 54 percent of Britons say Cameron failed to provide leadership early enough to control the riots.

Most offenders are unemployed young men, and the riots were the result of a build-up of frustration among young people growing up on grim housing estates with little hope.

There is a debate in the british society, and many are saying the police should have been tougher.

About Bill Bratton.

William Joseph “Bill” Bratton (64) is an American police officer who was the New York City Commissioner, the Chief of Police in Los Angeles and the Boston Police Commissioner.

Bratton started his career at Boston Police Department before becoming New York Police Comissioner in 1994. He designed the successful zero-tolerance policy which reduced petty and violent crime in New York. The city became one of the safest in the world, and the safest in the U.S.

After the 1992 Riots in Los Angeles, he moved to that city. He reformed the Los Angeles Police and crimes lowered.

Bratton’s policing policy is mainly the following:

a) any crime, does not matter how minor or petty crime it is, must be dealt with

b) tolerance to crime equals an increase in the crime rate

c) zero tolerance to crime is one of the solutions to gang crime and riots.

d) the police must be  ethnically diverse, and the force must be representative of the population and its ethnicity

e) the police must promote a strong relationship with the law-abiding population

f) fierce against police corruption

g) must be tough on gangs

h) and a strict no-tolerance of any kind of anti-social behaviour

Bratton was  offered an advisor role to the British government which he accepted in August 2011.

Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón is now working as adviser for the Mission to Support the Peace Process established by the OAS. Photograph Credit to Dominique Faget/AFP/Getty Images

During a lecture under the XXIX Interdisciplinary Course on Human Rights which concluded on August 19th at the American Institute of Human Rights in Costa Rica, the Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón said that governments foster instability among citizens when politicians elaborate security policies without consulting the people. Garzón  called upon the american states to include the opinions and needs of more people, common citizens, in the elaboration of security policies.
For the lawyer and advisor to the International Court in Hague, the authorities act in secret and assume that  regular people do “not understand” their policy decisions.
Garzón thinks that “Citizens must participate in the design of those aspects or rules that affect them.”
For the jurist, one of his major concerns is that some governments postulate the safety of citizens, but continue to violate basic human rights.

Garzon gained worldwide fame for promoting an arrest warrant against former dictator Augusto Pinochet for the death and torture of Spanish citizens during his dictatorship. He also accused Pinochet of commiting crimes against humanity. Garzón has niow been suspended in Spain, due to his initiative to investigate the human rights situation during the Franco regime.
“What is the role of victims in the fight against organized crime,” he asked yesterday at the Institute headquarters in Los Yoses, San Pedro, Montes de Oca.  “Normally, no government takes into account what the victims claims during the design of security policies ,” ​​the judge responded to an audience that included senior officials and security minister, Mario Zamora, and the president of the Supreme Court Justice Luis Paulino Mora.
Garzón said that “we need citizen involvement to define the security agenda so that everything does not become a critique of the government in power because in the end is a matter of coresponsibility.”
During his speech of nearly an hour, Garzon said he was alarmed by the levels of “very serious” violence  that plague countries like Mexico and Colombia in the fight against drug trafficking. He said that violence has led criminal groups to bring their operations in the Isthmus, especially in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
In this regard, he considered that they are wrong who believe that the attacks by organized crime reach only members of rival groups in fight among themselves for power quotas or zones of influence.  “Anyone who thinks this makes a big mistake,” said Garzón.

Strategic Security in Central America, Private Breakfast between the Secretary General of the OAS and his Counterpart at SICA

SAN SALVADOR – The Integration System of Central America (SICA) announced today that Central America has prepared its security plan that will be submitted next June 22nd in Guatemala to all countries and cooperating bodies of the region.
The plan was completed in a meeting in San Salvador on Tuesday and Wednesday, with the participation of U.S. and central american delegates plus representatives of  several agencies and countries, including the two top regional U.S. officials, in charge of diplomacy in Latin America, Mr. Arturo Valenzuela and Julissa Reynoso.

“This meeting served to review documents, including the action plan, programs and projects, profiles, as well as the follow-up. Everything is almost ready to support the Conference of Security Strategy, which will take place in Guatemala, SICA said in a statement.

The meeting, which followed the General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS), was also attended by officials from Canada, European Union,  Spain, Italy, Germany,  Colombia, Mexico,  Chile, Finland and Korea.

The security meeting was also attended by delegates of the UN Development Program (UNDP) , Organization of American States OAS, World Bank, InterAmerican Development Bank IADB and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, said the SICA.

The strategy was completed after a meeting of deputy ministers and deputy ministers of the areas related to security and delegates of the “Grupo de Amigos” that has been working since the plan was adopted in 2007 in Guatemala, said the SICA.

The Summit in Guatemala will be attended by all the Presidents of Central America, and Juan Manuel Santos (Colombia), Felipe Calderón (Mexico) and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton.

Central America is one of the most violent regions of the world, second only to war zones like Afganistan, according to UN data. An OAS report released Monday in the assembly of San Salvador indicated that America is the continent’s most violent, with one murder occuring every four minutes.

If approved this will be a unique criminal identification tool for police work. In the creation of the bill, participated police authorities and scientists from the National Technical Police Institute of the Ministry of Interior of Uruguay. The draft has 14 articles, is a very simple law but essential to fight crime.

Recently, the national director of Technical Police, Chief Inspector Roberto De los Santos, the biologist Natalia Sansgberg and the legal counsel Joseph Messiah, atended the sessionss of the senaturial committee.

Police Chief Inspector De los Santos told the legislators that the approval of the crime databank law in our country would put Uruguay in a “privileged position in the international fight against crime.”   He noted that the legislation would allow the police to “register the entire prison population in the new data system including  ten-print fingerprint, AFIS Automated Fingerprint Identification system digitized, acquired and implemented and, in turn, with the genetic fingerprint in a project similar to Codis (*), complementing the identification” .

“It should be noted that this serves to police work, for the prevention, for relief to justice and accuracy that has to have the police with  the suspects while delivering them to the judges,” said De los Santos in the Senate.

Noninvasive samples

For the development of each criminal identification file,  genetic samples are taken using noninvasive methods, like mouth samples, or from the rubbing of the cuff of a shirt, the armpits, neck, etc. With all that information the system produces  a unique code for each person.

De los Santos said that “the databank does an examination of the obtained sample and there the databank gives a unique alphanumeric code that will go directly to the databank software.”  “Therefore, the databank does not compare samples and fluids/substances but will find the suspect through the alphanumeric code that having numbers and letters in a sequence of 26 will correspond to the individuality of each human being, ” concluded Police Chief Inspector De Los Santos.

(*) CODIS.- CODIS stands for Combined DNA Index System. It is the core of the national DNA database in the U.S., established and funded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and developed specifically to enable public forensic DNA laboratories to create searchable DNA databases of authorized DNA profiles. CODIS is a restricted database and access to, and training on its use, is handled by the FBI. The CODIS software permits laboratories throughout the U.S. to share and compare DNA data. In addition, it provides a central database of the DNA profiles from all user laboratories. A weekly search is conducted of the DNA profiles in this U.S. database, known as the National DNA Index System (NDIS), and resulting matches are automatically returned by the software to the laboratory that originally submitted the DNA profile.

The term “CODIS” is often misused by law-enforcement officers, prosecutors and even practitioners of the forensic sciences when they intend to refer to a “DNA database.”

Brazilian Senator Aloizio Mercadante (PT-SP) promotes bill protecting judges against organized crime.

As a first concrete result of the judicial strike and shutdown of 24 hours of the federal courts, sponsored by the Federal Association of Judges of Brazil (Ajufe), the Senate of Brazil passed – the same day of the event – the supplementary bill that allows the judge decide the formation of an exceptional collegiate (with two other judges) to try cases where he feels threatened by criminal organizations.

Although no one is creating the figure of “faceless courts” as exists in Italy, the president of Ajufe, Gabriel Wedy, believes that “collective decision” to give more security to federal judges, is “a major breakthrough in fighting and transnational organized crime. ”

By doing so, the responsibility of condemning the criminal mafiosi will not reside in one single judge but in three judges.
However, the Federal Association of Judges of Brazil  will try to convince the House of Representatives to approve two measures “also very important,” which appeared in the original design, but were removed by the Senate:

a) an increase in punishment of the crime of conspiracy – that today is imprisonment from one to three years – to a minimum of three and a maximum of 10 years, can be folded in the case of an armed gang, and

b) the creation of a standalone Judicial Police, with the use of existing security officers of the Police Federal.

Alessandra Saturnino, one of the organizers of the event, said that the seminar brings together distinguished professionals from Public Security to discuss “intelligence” in the State of Mato Grosso. “There are delegates and a retired agent very experienced, with high credibility for vocational training and education,” said the delegate.

The seminar is divided into three panels (State Intelligence, Intelligence and Public Security Police Intelligence), whose themes are interlinked and focusing on Public Safety. Seminar will have 500 attendees from police officers and to representatives of institutions associated with the areas of Justice, Public Security, Intelligence Agencies and Federal Revenue , Sefaz, Civil, Deltran, among other institutions. Among the attendees are magistrates, policemen, secretaries, aides to federal judges, and others.

The Intelligence Director of the Civil Police, Milton Teixeira, said the theme is very important, “only with better intelligence techniques is that the police will be able to confront the criminals.” “They are professionals who work directly in the intelligence area, some with international experience here and will discuss cases in which they have been working,” he said. “This will bring knowledge to our police, which could be adapted to our reality,” adds Teixeira.

Wagner Moura reprises his role as Captain Nascimento in Tropa de Elite 2, photo courtesy of Rio Filmes.

On the first day, April 18 at 9 am, the Navy Captain Fortunato Lobo Lameiras, of the National War College (ESG), chaired the panel “State Intelligence” that will have as speaker the delegate of the Civil Police of Rio do Janeiro Claudio Armando Ferraz.

Ferraz is the co-author of “The Elite Squad 2″, which deals with the fight against criminal organizations militia that inspired the movie” Tropa de Elite 2″. The experience in Rio de Janeiro in combating criminal organizations as matters of state is the subject of his lecture at the seminar.

Then the Federal Police agent Monica Maria Ferreira Lacerda addresses the issue “Contemporary Intelligence”, during the second session on Monday morning (18/04).  Ferreira is now assistant federal police attaché at the Embassy of Brazil in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In the afternoon of Monday, the delegate of the Civil Police of Rio Grande do Sul, Marcínio Tavares Neto, speaks of “The Organization as a source of intelligence: managing knowledge”, and Chief of Civil Police of Sao Paulo, Andre Luis Tewfiq on “The danger of distortion of the intelligence of the Judicial Police and the usurpation of the investigative functions.” The lectures will take place in the panel “Police Intelligence”, coordinated by the Delegate of the Civil Police of Mato Grosso, José Lindomar Costa currently security coordinator of Agecopa.

On the second day, Tuesday (19/04), the Deputy Intelligence Sesp / MT, Officer Anderson Aparecido dos Anjos Garcia, opens the panel’s work “Public Security Intelligence” with a lecture on “Public Security Intelligence in State of Mato Grosso. ” During nine years Garcia was the Head of the Intelligence Service of Judicial Police Civil and created the Group to Combat Organized Crime (GCCO), of the Civil Police.

Then at 9:20, the superintendent of the Intelligence Security Secretariat of Rio de Janeiro, Gisélia Cristina Martins Miranda, represents the Secretary of Security of Rio, José Mariano Beltrame, who will not come to the seminar, as he was requested at the last minute to be part of  a United Nations negotiations round table in Geneva, Switzerland. The superintendent of Intelligence, Cristina Gisélia will address in her lecture “Public Security Intelligence in the State of Rio de Janeiro.”

The Seminar “The Activity of State Intelligence and Public Security,” takes place on April 18 and 19th, at the Events Center of the Pantanal, in Matto Grosso (Auditorio das Broboletas).