Tina Susman

WHITEY BULGER: 'Whitey' left his mark on South Boston

Everybody has a tale about the brutal mob boss brought home in cuffs after 16 years.

June 26, 2011

Tina Susman

DATELINE: BOSTON

There used to be a bar on the corner where an upscale furniture shop now sits, which isn't surprising. This is, after all, South Boston, where James "Whitey" Bulger held sway and where the streets are as unrecognizable today as the aged mobster who ruled them.

But gentrification has its limits, and no amount of shops, sleek taverns and family-friendly eateries can change the mind-set of a population attached to its past, even if that past was defined by a man now in federal custody and linked to 19 murders.

"He was just that tough guy, that guy that everyone here wanted to be," said Teresa Needle, summing up the conflicted feelings of longtime locals as she strolled up West Broadway on Saturday, three days after Bulger's arrest in Santa Monica after 16 years on the run.

"I think some people are very happy he's finally been apprehended, but I think others who are loyal to his past are kind of sad," said Needle, who declined to say which side she came down on.

But she added with a tinge of wistfulness: "He got caught. That wasn't his style."

Bulger, 81, was brought to Boston on Friday along with his longtime girlfriend, Catherine Elizabeth Greig, 60, who FBI agents said proved the key to his capture.

In Bulger's former neighborhood, horror at the crimes prosecutors accuse him of committing is mixed with a certain respect for his ability to evade justice for so long, and for the way he provided for loyalists. It's a feeling far more prevalent among longtime residents than the newcomers who are slowly turning the area around. Like law enforcement officials who hunted Bulger and his Winter Hill Gang, they wonder how it's possible to speak fondly of someone with such a brutal past.

"Most of those people never knew him or what he did," said Richard Baker, a retired FBI agent. Baker said there was a cult that grew up around Bulger but that wasn't around when he was running the Winter Hill Gang and ordering hits: "They didn't understand the evilness of the man."

Everyone in South Boston, it seems, has a Bulger tale. Taken together, they reflect the changes in the neighborhood, where new, glassy buildings occupied by young professionals and families soar above squat pubs and delis. On the streets, joggers stroll past weary-looking old-timers puffing on cigarettes and missing the old days, even as they acknowledge the bad parts.

Joyce Jones says Bulger had an eye for her younger sister when they were teenagers, and she swears she spotted him walking through a nearby housing project a few weeks ago.

Joseph Collins says he was a kid when Bulger was a grown-up gangster.

"He was quite a guy. I liked him," said Collins, who owns a bar on a corner that once housed a Bulger hangout.

Linda Castagna, who owns the upscale Urban Exchange furniture shop where a bar once stood, says her husband's brother's friend's father was killed by Bulger.

A woman from New Jersey named Jamie gave birth to a baby the day Bulger was arrested, watching the news in her hospital room with her husband.

They didn't move to Boston until well after 1995, when Bulger -- tipped off by a corrupt FBI agent -- vanished before he could be arrested. "But you couldn't not hear about him," she said while nursing her newborn daughter in the courtyard of an old stone church that is now a condominium complex.

For one thing, his brother, William Bulger, was a leading state politician and president of the University of Massachusetts. In addition, Whitey was considered the king of Boston's mobsters.

"He was kind of the only one, or the biggest one," said Jamie, whose husband signaled the ghost of Bulger's presence, even among relative newcomers, when he warned his wife against giving her surname.

The couple quickly went inside as a friend, Michael Whited, explained. "There's still a lot of fear around here," said Whited, though he wasn't afraid to express his disdain for the likes of the Winter Hill Gang.

"The murders, the drugs and absolute corruption," he said, attributing Bulger's ability to evade justice for so long to officials who were afraid that he would spill the beans on their corrupt dealings. "Everyone knew someone who got something."

Maybe so, but that's why Bulger had fans, explained Jones.

"Let's say I needed something. He'd get it," said Jones, a self-described project girl who spent her youth hanging around outside the rough-and-tumble public houses on D Street. Whitey was a generation older and held court at a deli nearby.

To hear Jones tell it, Bulger liked young women and lavished gifts on them: a Coach bag, Prada shoes. Jones says he provided a washing machine and dryer for her first apartment, even though she never dated him.

"We just knew them as regular people," Jones said of the gang. "We didn't know they were killers and thugs."

Collins, sweeping the sidewalk outside his bar, doesn't pretend to have been ignorant of the past. He just preferred to stay out of the fray and remain on Bulger's good side.

Like other old-timers, Collins credits Bulger with preventing South Boston from being flooded with heroin in the 1960s.

"If he found out you were dealing, you were going to pay," Collins said, referring to the myriad ways the Winter Hill Gang was known to thrash its enemies, including strangulation and stomping them to death.

Others say Bulger merely controlled the heroin trade and steered it toward other areas.

"He had such control over this community," said Castagna, who said no matter how many horrible things you heard about Bulger, there was always someone with a "nice" story to tell about him.

Such as the time Bulger overheard a young thug bragging about having stolen computers from a school. Shortly afterward, he took the kid for a ride in his car.

"And next thing you know, all those computers were back in school," she said, repeating Bulger lore that may or may not be true.

Whatever the truth, Collins said some things are clear. "A lot of guys wanted to be just like him but didn't have the guts," he said. "It made life really interesting in South Boston."

 

NIAGARA FALLS: A stunt to make Niagara Falls rise

The long-struggling New York city wants to revisit its daredevil past to boost its economy, and it's aiming high.

July 27, 2011

Tina Susman

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y.

There is no shortage of legends surrounding the cat that went over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

Some say it survived, proving the barrel was sturdy enough to carry humans down the falls. Some say it died. Some say it rode shotgun with Annie Edson Taylor when she became the first person to survive a barrel roll over the falls in 1901.

Mark DiFrancesco of Niagara Falls' Daredevil Museum offers another twist on the tale.

"Legend has it the cat was black going over the falls but came out of the barrel white" from fright, he said, straight-faced, as Independence Day visitors eyed the museum's yellowed newspaper clippings, old photographs, bashed-up barrels, tattered life vests and a dented jet ski.

That the legend of the cat lives on 110 years later says something about Niagara Falls' passion for its daredevil past, which seemed as dead as its economy until state lawmakers latched onto the idea of using that death-defying spirit to try to boost the city's finances.

High-wire artist Nik Wallenda approached officials recently with a plan to cross the cataract on a wire the width of a nickel. The performance would be featured in "Life on a Wire," a Discovery Channel show expected to begin airing this year. To clear the way for the spectacle, legislators last month approved a one-time exemption from a 50-year-old ban on daredevil acts at the falls.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has not indicated whether he will sign the bill, which has won support from local tourism officials and most city leaders. Backers say that even though the city wouldn't profit directly, visitors who come to watch Wallenda would spend money in its restaurants and other businesses, and the television show could trigger a long-term surge in tourism.

But not everyone is sold on a made-for-reality-TV event as the solution to the city's economic problems, especially one that could end in tragedy.

"Are we that desperate?" local historian Paul Gromosiak asked the Niagara Falls City Council this month.

Some think so. Council members voted 4 to 1 to endorse the wire walk.

--

Once synonymous with romantic honeymoons, burgeoning industry (Nabisco made Shredded Wheat here) and Hollywood glamour (Marilyn Monroe played a murderous wife in the 1953 hit "Niagara"), the Rust Belt city has struggled for decades.

A few blocks from the shady parkland surrounding the falls, dilapidated neighborhoods speak to the city's decline. Crumbling brick and boarded-up windows mar streets lined with once-gracious homes. Derelict storefronts haunt Main Street. Low-slung motels and vacant lots stand in sharp contrast to the high-rises, colorful cafes and manicured gardens across the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls' likewise-named Canadian sister city.

There, officials spent decades building a bustling tourist industry while their New York counterparts banked on factories and plants -- now gone -- to pay the bills.

Since 1960, the city's population has fallen by more than half, to 50,000. Though tourism officials say more than 8 million people visit each year, they don't necessarily stay the night. The city's hotel occupancy rate this year is 51.7%, its best in years but still lagging behind the national average of 59%, according to Smith Travel Research. Hotel revenue last year was about $76 million, compared with $420 million for hotels on the Canadian side.

Last month, the city's school district announced a halt to night games for varsity sports teams, to save money on stadium lighting.

"We're very depressed here," said tour guide Michele Brundidge as she led visitors through the Daredevil Museum -- actually a convenience store whose heat-and-serve burritos, ice cream bars and cold drinks share space with artifacts left by those who tried to conquer the falls.

When tourists glimpse the Canadian skyline with its giant Ferris wheel and hotels overlooking the falls, they ask, "Can't we go over there?" Brundidge said.

If the prohibition against daredevil acts is eased, Wallenda would have one year to perform his feat, which would take him across the Niagara River in front of Horseshoe Falls. At more than 170 feet high and 2,200 feet wide, it is the biggest and most spectacular of the three cataracts that make up Niagara Falls. The wire would be attached to cranes on either side of the gorge; Wallenda's representatives say there would be no bolts or other damage to the environment.

Some key players -- including parks commissions in New York and Ontario, Canada -- have yet to embrace the idea. Skeptics such as Mayor Paul Dyster of Niagara Falls, N.Y., worry about copycats.

"We're concerned about that, but we're also concerned about our first responders who would have to go and rescue people," Dyster said.

Even on a hot summer day, gusty winds and sheets of cold spray wash over visitors on viewing platforms, hinting at the harsh conditions Wallenda would face. His path would begin on the U.S. side, take him across to Canada and then perhaps back again, depending on conditions, said Winston Simone, a friend of Wallenda's and one of the producers of "Life on a Wire."

--

If sanctioning potentially deadly behavior to boost a moribund economy sounds ghoulish, Simone and state Sen. George D. Maziarz, whose district abuts Niagara Falls, emphasize that it isn't an invitation to others to try their luck on the falls.

Maziarz drafted a bill after Wallenda and his representatives asked about bringing the high-wire act here.

"It has been many years since anyone has been able to follow in the footsteps of the Great Blondin," the legislation says, referring to Jean-Francois Gravelet, the first high-wire walker to cross the falls, in 1859. He made the trip several times, once stopping midway across to cook and eat an omelet. "In the meantime, tourism in Niagara Falls has declined. ... [Wallenda's feat would] give the city a much-needed shot in the arm."

The Niagara Tourism and Convention Corp. agrees. "People today still come here and ask questions about the daredevils," said spokesman Nick Mattera. "They want to know about their history."

And if Wallenda falls?

"It would certainly be a tragic end to an exciting attempt," Mattera said, before adding: "He's a pro. He's a seventh-generation wire walker, and we have all the confidence he'll be able to achieve this."'

So does Simone, who refuses to use the word "daredevil" to describe Wallenda and says the 32-year-old is "in perfect physical condition."

"He takes the art form incredibly seriously," Simone said.

Wallenda's great-grandfather, Karl Wallenda -- founder of the famous Flying Wallendas -- fell to his death in 1978 while walking between two towers in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The family blamed the accident on poor rigging of ropes that were supposed to hold the wire taut.

But drama is part of the draw, said Bill Bradberry, a Niagara Falls civic leader. He has no desire to watch Wallenda's walk. "Are they crazy?" he said of the men and women who have gone over the falls and through the rapids in everything from huge bouncy balls to pickle barrels.

But if it takes Wallenda to bring visitors back, so be it, he said as he showed a visitor Civil War graves at the city's Oakwood Cemetery.

"This area has a very, very, very rich history," said Bradberry, who is the local NAACP leader. Slaves fleeing to Canada via the Underground Railroad passed through the area, and the Niagara Movement, a precursor of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, was founded here.

The cemetery also holds remains of some of the falls' stunters, including Annie Edson Taylor.

Like today's lawmakers, Taylor saw the falls as a way out of financial trouble, and on Oct. 24, 1901, she became the first person to successfully ride them in a barrel. But fame and fortune never came, and when Taylor died penniless 20 years later, the Oakwood Cemetery Assn. gave her a grave.

On a scorching Sunday, a beer stein engraved with "Annie" and adorned with an artificial flower sat atop her grave. Beside Taylor lies Carlisle D. Graham, the first person to ride a barrel through the raging rapids below the falls, in 1886.

Down the row is Capt. Matthew Webb. He was the first person to swim the English Channel in 1875. He died eight years later trying to swim the Niagara rapids.

"This is where our history is. Right here," said local historian Michelle Kratts, adding that the city owes much to its daredevils. "These are the people who are going to bring us back."

 

GAY MARRIAGE: Gay couples line up to wed in New York

Same-sex marriage advocates hope the occasion resonates on a national level

July 25, 2011

 By Tina Susman

There were the usual wedding-day jitters, tears and hiccups. One groom's leg twitched nervously. Rings had to be squeezed onto fingers swollen to sausage-like proportions from the heat and humidity. A name or two got jumbled, and witnesses were corralled at the last minute to validate some of the ceremonies.

There were even a few objectors, but none loud enough to be heard by hundreds of gay and lesbian couples Sunday as they married in chapels and courtrooms, beneath chuppahs and shade trees, even alongside Niagara Falls as New York became the sixth state to recognize same-sex weddings.

From the satin gowns and tailored tuxedos to the jangled nerves and champagne toasts, those marrying and those officiating said the ceremonies showed that gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual love is no different from anyone else's. But nobody could deny that these vows signified more than just weddings. They were the beginning of what gay rights advocates hope is a renewed push for marriage equality now that New York has become the most populous state to legalize same-sex marriage.

"It was a privilege to be part of this achievement in civil rights," said New York City Clerk Michael McSweeney, who presided over the city's first same-sex wedding, between 76-year-old Phyllis Siegel and 85-year-old Connie Kopelov.

The white-haired couple arrived in blue button-down shirts and trousers, Kopelov in her wheelchair. To take her vows, she stood and leaned on a walker. Siegel stood beside her, her right hand covering Kopelov's left, which clutched the walker. After McSweeney declared them married, he and their witnesses erupted in loud applause. Siegel wiped away tears.

Minutes later, the couple exited the clerk's office onto the street, where Kopelov triumphantly displayed their certificate of marriage. Asked how long they had been together, Siegel replied, "Twenty-three years, and we're looking for 23 more."

Hundreds of other couples stood three deep in a line that stretched down a city block, waiting their turn inside the marble-floored lobby of the clerk's office in Manhattan. Altogether, the city issued 659 marriage licenses Sunday in all five boroughs, officials said.

Those waiting their turn in Manhattan included Dave Lewis, who grew up in Long Beach, and Adam McKew, originally from West Covina. They dressed in traditional kilts and Prince Charlie jackets, with ermine-fur bags on their hips, to pay tribute to their shared Scottish heritage.

Sunday was their seventh anniversary as a couple. "So we're very excited," Lewis said.

The men had hoped to be legally wed in New York two years ago, when the state Senate debated a same-sex marriage bill. It failed then but passed this June 24 by a slim margin, prompting opponents of same-sex marriage to vow to target lawmakers who approved it. Scattered protests Sunday drew hundreds or handfuls.

The Rev. Anthony Evans of the Washington, D.C.-based National Black Church Initiative, a coalition of black and Latino churches that opposes same-sex marriage, warned that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo would face problems when he and his fellow Democratic legislators seek reelection. "You're going to need the black church," Evans said at a Manhattan protest. When Cuomo "went against God ... we have a moral right to go against him."

The protests did not disrupt any weddings, nor did they faze couples like Daniel Hernandez and Nevin Cohen, who exchanged rings in 2001 on a beach in California, Hernandez's home state. He had moved to New York to live with Cohen, and on Sunday, the pair wore yellow orchids in their matching navy sport coats as they tied the knot.

"Love just transcends hate," said Hernandez, his voice breaking, as a small group of protesters yelled from a distant corner.

Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage, which called protests in Manhattan, Buffalo, Syracuse and the state capital, Albany, said the group wanted a referendum. "We want to let the people of New York decide the future of marriage," she said.

But there was no indication that New York would follow the path of California, where voters in November 2008 ended gay marriage after the state Supreme Court had legalized it. The passage of Proposition 8 halted six months of same-sex weddings but did not invalidate the 18,000 marriages that took place in California during that time. A federal judge has declared Proposition 8 unconstitutional; that decision is under appeal.

New York voters are overwhelmingly Democratic, and they elected Cuomo last year after he made same-sex marriage a centerpiece of his campaign. The state is home to about 65,000 same-sex couples, according to the Williams Institute of UCLA, which studies gender-based law and social policy. Its estimate is based on 2010 U.S. census figures.

For the couples in New York City, the celebration carried special significance in light of President Obama's decisions last week on two key gay rights issues.

On Tuesday, he endorsed a bill sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that would repeal the 15-year-old Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman and denies federal benefits and protections to gay couples who wed in states that recognize their unions. And on Friday, Obama certified Congress' repeal of the ban on gays serving openly in the military.

Despite all the celebrations Sunday, advocates of gay marriage said overturning the Defense of Marriage Act was crucial. As long as it remains in effect, even couples married in states that recognize same-sex marriage are denied things such as Social Security benefits when their spouses die. Other places recognizing same-sex weddings include Massachusetts, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Washington, D.C.

"Right now, I'm just thinking about this moment. That will be the next step," Elizabeth Rosario said of the battle for federal recognition, after she married Tina Marie Torregrossa in Brooklyn. The couple's 16-year-old son, Roberto, carried the rings, which proved more difficult than anticipated to slip on.

"I just want you to know that this has happened to every couple so far -- swollen fingers," the pastor said good-naturedly, blaming the heat wave as the couple, clad in white shirts and white pants, forced their rings on.

Later, Rosario said the couple initially had planned to have a ceremony with family and friends, but that would have taken time to arrange.

"My gut just told me it was time," said Rosario, after she and Torregrossa posed for pictures beneath a rainbow-colored arch at the Brooklyn borough hall. "We decided we wanted to be part of history."

Libya's not a welcome neighbor in New Jersey

Kadafi's government owns a mansion that for 30 years has enjoyed tax-exempt status.

By Tina Susman

March 23, 2011

Reporting from Englewood, N.J.
This New York City suburb has seen its share of famous residents — Tony Bennett, Dizzy Gillespie and Sarah Jessica Parker among them. But it is the one who has never been seen who commands the most attention: Moammar Kadafi, Libyan leader and lord of a multimillion-dollar mansion that flies Libya's flag and sits next door to one very peeved Orthodox Jewish rabbi.
Rarely has the stone-walled structure, with expansive grounds, pond and swimming pool, been the placid retreat the Libyan government envisioned when it paid $1 million for it in 1982, six years before Libyan agents blew up Pan Am Flight 103.
The estate, called Thunder Rock, has been a flash point for years for local protests, most recently in 2009 when Kadafi lost a battle to erect his traveling Bedouin tent on the lawn during a U.S. visit. But never has Thunder Rock's fate been as uncertain as now, with fresh State Department sanctions targeting Libyan property and a renewed uproar over the home's tax-exempt status in the state with the country's highest property taxes.
"This is a man who blows up airliners!" said the rabbi next door, Shmuley Boteach, who complains that the green Libyan flag flapping in the breeze is the first thing he sees each morning through his bedroom window. "I have a deep-seated loathing of tyranny, tyrants, dictators, people who brutalize their citizenry. And Kadafi hits the top of the list."
To be fair, a U.S. flag also flies from a pole outside Thunder Rock, and for all his complaining about the neighbors, the Los Angeles-born Boteach has been known to stir up controversy himself. The self-described relationship expert raised eyebrows in the Orthodox community for his close friendship with Michael Jackson when the pop star was facing allegations of child sex abuse, and for advice books such as "The Kosher Sutra" and "Kosher Sex: A Recipe for Passion and Intimacy."
Even Boteach admits that his relentless drive to oust his neighbors has gained him a reputation as a nuisance among some local leaders, including some of his friends.
"It's become a solitary battle," lamented Boteach, who lost a round recently when a court dismissed a lawsuit he had filed against the Libyans. He alleged that they had damaged his property during renovations to Thunder Rock in advance of Kadafi's expected 2009 stay. A court dismissed the lawsuit this year, upholding the Libyans' claim to diplomatic immunity, according to Boteach and his attorney in the case, Eric Herschmann.
But this month, Englewood Mayor Frank Huttle III, galvanized by the latest State Department sanctions, said he had directed the city attorney to attempt to revoke the tax exemption Libya's government has enjoyed for nearly 30 years, a step that some hope will drive the Libyans out of town.
"The compound represents a disgraced regime that is no longer recognized by the international community," said Huttle, complaining that Englewood has spent money on extra police and other security measures for Thunder Rock.
The order signed last month by President Obama "blocks all property" of the Libyan government. But a Treasury Department spokesman would not say how this might affect Thunder Rock. Past efforts by Englewood and New Jersey lawmakers to force Libya to at least pay taxes have failed, with courts ruling that the country enjoys a diplomatic standing that relieves it of tax burdens.
According to the latest Census Bureau information, the median annual tax bill of $6,579 paid by New Jersey residents is the country's highest, and Bergen County, where Englewood is located, is one of the five highest-paying counties in the nation. The tax bill for Thunder Rock in 1982 was about $14,000. Last year, the property was assessed at $5.5 million, and Herschmann estimated the annual taxes would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"This is another universe when it comes to property taxes," said one Englewood resident, who like most in town did not want to give a name when discussing the Libyan homeowners. In fact, in the years after they bought the place, the owners spent so little time at Thunder Rock that it fell into disrepair. That changed early in 2009 with the renovation project.
Surrounded by a low fence, the nearly 5-acre estate is clearly visible from the busy street, where the other homes range from Boteach's similarly imposing structure to simple, suburban houses. The expansive lawns are neatly trimmed, and a white footbridge crosses the pond at the back of the home. The gray stone exterior and flagpoles give Thunder Rock a castle-like appearance. On a recent afternoon, all the curtains were drawn, and nobody responded to a ring at the front gate.
According to reports at the time of the sale, the mansion boasts 25 rooms and a swimming pool, and was intended mainly as a weekend getaway for the Libyan U.N. ambassador and his family.
Former Englewood Mayor Michael Wildes, who pushed for years to oust the Libyans, acknowledged that problems at the compound mainly came from locals engaging in "criminal mischief," such as spraying graffiti or protesting outside the mansion.
"They really keep to themselves. They're not a nuisance," the owner of a nearby business said of the owners, listed on property records as merely the government of Libya. "It's the proximity to the neighbors, and the history. Nobody wants someone like that in their town."
If the Libyans are concerned about Thunder Rock, they're not saying. Libya's deputy U.N. ambassador did not return a call, and the embassy in Washington did not respond to an e-mail.
When a Libyan U.N. representative came to see Boteach in the summer of 2009, during the battle over Kadafi's plan to set up his tent, the rabbi refused to see him, dismissing him as the representative of a "terror government."
Boteach hopes eventually to buy Thunder Rock himself and use it "for some very positive purpose," such as a convalescent home for soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. "I don't lose enthusiasm," he said of his so-far futile fight, "because it's right next door to me."

tina.susman@latimes.com

Shoe hurler speaks to a nation's soul

Iraqi who assaulted Bush begins trial with a crush of adoring fans.

Friday, February 20, 2009

By Tina Susman and Raheem Salman    ,

BAGHDAD -- It was the hottest ticket in town. It drew spectators from as far away as Sweden and sparked a scramble for choice seats. Police formed human chains to block the crowds that surged forward to glimpse the star attraction: a defiant-looking man in black loafers.

This time, Muntather Zaidi's shoes stayed put as he went on trial Thursday for flinging his footwear at President Bush during a December news conference in Baghdad. If convicted of assaulting a visiting head of state, the Iraqi journalist could face 15 years in prison.

Nobody questions whether Zaidi, 30, hurled his shoes at the president's face during Bush's farewell visit to Iraq on Dec. 14. The act was captured live on TV and has been replayed endlessly, like a spectacular touchdown pass.

Nor does Zaidi deny trying to clock Bush as he stood at a lectern beside Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki that night, shortly before the two leaders sat down to dinner.

On Thursday, standing in the wooden defendant's pen, Zaidi said he acted in a burst of rage as Bush, "smiling that icy smile," spoke of achievements in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion of the country in March 2003 and mentioned his upcoming meal with Maliki.

Zaidi, voice calm but forceful and an Iraqi flag draped like a cravat around his neck, said it was more than he could bear.

"I thought about what the achievements were -- killing about a million Iraqis," Zaidi said.

Everything but his target faded to black, he said, as he yanked off his shoes and threw them, one after the other. "I didn't see anything but Bush."

Zaidi's legal team, more than 20 lawyers who jostled for space around the pen, cited two principal reasons why their client should not have been charged.

Bush was a drop-in guest, they said, not an official visitor to Iraq, hence Zaidi should not face charges of assaulting a visiting dignitary. Second, because the incident occurred in the U.S.-controlled Green Zone, they said, technically Bush was not visiting Iraq at the time.

Beneath those legal quibbles lies what Zaidi's supporters consider the main issue: freedom to publicly oppose the U.S. presence in Iraq. They argue that throwing one's shoes and calling someone a dog, as Zaidi did -- both supreme insults in the Middle East -- were his way of protesting the war and the presence of about 140,000 U.S. troops.

"My professors tell me this trial is unfair," said one of Zaidi's brothers, Maitham, a law student in Baghdad. He was holding court at a cafe beneath a giant shade tree outside the courthouse before the session began early Thursday.

Maitham was there with three of Zaidi's five sisters, as well as aunts, uncles, young nieces and nephews and two other brothers. He said he would not feel different if the fast-flying shoes had hit their target and drawn blood. Neither touched Bush.

"It's the principle," he said. "It was just to insult George Bush. It's freedom of expression."

Asked whether it would be all right for someone to hurl shoes at Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki if he visited the United States, Maitham replied, "Yes, if Maliki occupied you!"

As he spoke, the Zaidi clan sat around tables drinking tea and eating a breakfast of meat tucked into soft, white bread. The men wore loafers, most in the style favored by Iraqi males -- leather, with square toes bending upward like banana boats.

Attorney Yayha Attabi, a loafer wearer himself, scoffed at the idea that leather shoes such as the ones his client threw could hurt anyone. "It was a light shoe," Attabi said of the offending footwear, which lawyers say was destroyed by security forces for fear they might be rigged to blow up.

"There were no nails protruding. It was soft leather. Even if it were thrown strongly, it would not have hurt him," Attabi said, speaking outside court at the close of the session.

The hearing began promptly at 10 a.m. in a vast courtroom with white stone floors, wooden benches and heavy green drapes. All 200 seats were filled, and extra chairs were brought in to accommodate spectators, who for the most part were seated on a first-come, first-served basis. The two front rows were reserved for relatives and close friends, including Jumana Kurawi, an Iraqi woman living in Sweden who said she knew Zaidi from many years ago.

She recalled Zaidi phoning her in Sweden on Dec. 14 to say he would be covering the Bush-Maliki news conference for his employer, the Cairo-based satellite network Baghdadiya TV. Kurawi tuned in to see "what kind of question he would ask."

Two days later, after learning that Zaidi would face criminal charges, Kurawi flew to Iraq to support him and his family.

As the defendant entered the courtroom, applause erupted and most spectators stood up, either to get a better look or to express support. Zaidi glanced at the crowd but remained poker-faced.

The judge ordered quiet as Zaidi entered the pen. One of Zaidi's young nephews waved at him. A little girl, one of Zaidi's nieces, squirmed and began to fuss. No loafers for her -- she wore miniature faux gold lame cowboy boots with rhinestones. The prosecutor's cellphone rang.

After things settled down, two witnesses briefly gave accounts of the incident and suggested that Zaidi's claims of having been beaten savagely by those who grabbed him after he threw his shoes were exaggerated.

When his turn came, Zaidi testified that he had been subjected to electric shocks and brutal beatings while in jail.

He also acknowledged that he had practiced throwing his shoes in hopes of one day having the chance to hurl some at Bush.

But he denied that he went into the Dec. 14 news conference planning to do it.

Instead, Zaidi said his emotions took over. "I was feeling that the blood of Iraqis was flowing beneath my feet, and he [Bush] was smiling," Zaidi said as a man in the front row wept.

With a legal dream team objecting to the case on technicalities, court was adjourned after 90 minutes until March 12, when a three-judge panel will decide whether the charge is warranted.

Pandemonium erupted. Friends and relatives rushed to the pen, hoping to touch or kiss Zaidi. Guards yelled at the crowd to behave and leave the room.

In the corridor, police linked arms to prevent hundreds of onlookers from closing in on Zaidi. He waved at the mostly cheering crowd and raised his fist in the air before disappearing down the staircase, surrounded by guards.

--tina.susman@latimes.com

Bronx bursting with pride over Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor

Local officials say the judge gives the New York City borough a new ambassador to improve its image problems.

May 28, 2009|

Tina Susman

Calvin Klein slept here. So did Colin L. Powell, Regis Philbin, Jennifer Lopez and the new Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor.

"Here" is the Bronx. And at a gathering to celebrate the area's latest famous name, local leaders Wednesday wanted to make something clear: The Bronx is not burning.

There's even a Starbucks in the neighborhood where Sotomayor grew up, City Councilwoman Annabel Palma said cheerfully. Granted, it's a mile from the judge's childhood apartment, but residents see it as evidence that the drug-addled den of despair portrayed in films and books -- think "Fort Apache, the Bronx" and "The Bonfire of the Vanities" -- is part of the borough's distant past.

Palma joined the Rev. Al Sharpton, borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. and a host of others to celebrate Sotomayor and the Bronx at a community center adjoining the brick housing project where the judge spent her formative years. "Welcome to God's country," the dapper Diaz said as he strode into the glassy community center, past a fish-filled aquarium and into the gymnasium.

Sharpton vowed to lead a bipartisan delegation to Washington to lobby for Sotomayor's quick confirmation, which he said should be a shoo-in given her credentials. "The most unfortunate thing that could happen is if this becomes a political football in the Senate," Sharpton said, "not an affirmation of the American dream."

Outside, the lawns and small playgrounds sprinkled throughout the complex were a far cry from the squalor that enveloped this area in the 1970s -- when landlords were torching their buildings to collect on the insurance. Housing projects like Bronxdale, where both Sotomayor and Diaz grew up, now sit along avenues lined with neatly kept homes, not abandoned drug dens.

"We're not addicted to cement," joked Sharon Sako as she tended a large, colorful flower and herb garden outside her house a few blocks from Sotomayor's old home.

It wasn't always like this.

Francisco Gonzalez, a prominent Puerto Rican community leader, grew up in the 41st Police Precinct, a violent South Bronx outpost once dubbed Fort Apache. "It was a rough neighborhood. A lot of crime," said Gonzalez, standing in a drizzle near a highway overpass. "I believe we fight every single day to educate the rest of the United States that we've turned Bronx around."

Having someone with Sotomayor's reputation emerge from what used to be one of New York's most notorious neighborhoods should help, said residents, some of whom clearly harbor resentment of the Bronx's persisting image.

Ian Johnson, for example, rattled off the books and films that have cast the borough in a poor light. Among them are Tom Wolfe's "The Bonfire of the Vanities," in which a white Manhattanite takes a wrong turn and ends up on a Bronx street after dark, terrified of the black youths he encounters, and "Fort Apache, the Bronx," which follows cops facing crime and corruption.

"Most people strive for stereotypes," said Johnson, who is black. "It's easier to look at the Bronx through a movie." However, he noted, the borough is ethnically and racially diverse -- with mainly white, up-market Riverdale to the west, the largely Latino area where Sotomayor grew up, and black-dominated neighborhoods.

Dennis Wales, who is white, nodded in agreement. He said he still seethes at the memory of hearing sportscaster Howard Cosell quip that "the Bronx is burning" during the 1977 World Series, when cameras showed a building on fire near Yankee Stadium. "People said, 'Oh, my God, the Bronx is burning,' " said Wales, who moved here 25 years ago from Harlem, another once-blighted area.

Other parts of New York -- such as Harlem, Hell's Kitchen, Alphabet City and large swaths of Brooklyn -- have shed their grim reputations in the last 20 years as citywide crime has dropped and families moved in where drug dealers once reigned. But in a city where neighborhood loyalty runs deep and many people don't feel the need to leave their familiar enclaves to eat, drink, or shop, changing the image of the Bronx, New York's northern-most borough, might be harder.

Just getting to Sotomayor's old home from her current one, on a quaint street in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, requires more than an hour on the subway, three transfers and at least 20 minutes of walking.

Whereas her old neighborhood's strip malls are filled with check-cashing shops, delis and fast-food outlets, her current one features artsy cinemas and candlelit bistros. On Wednesday, as a camera crew lurked outside Sotomayor's Manhattan residence, a French restaurant a few doors down was advertising Les Sandwiches, Les Crepes and L'escargot on its lunch menu. Another business promised $58 foot and back rubs.

Palma said Sotomayor gives the Bronx a new ambassador to help spiff up its image, and the councilwoman predicted that its reputation as New York's most beleaguered borough soon will be forgotten.

But the question is how to transform the borough's image and usher in popular businesses without caving into the gentrification woes plaguing much of New York, where longtime residents are being priced out of their homes.

Wales acknowledged it would be a challenge.

"We need to realize these are the people who made this community," he said, looking at the porridge of humanity on the busy corner around him. "Don't chase them away."

--tina.susman@latimes.com

 

Demand grows for niche translators

Do you understand both German and waste management? How about Farsi and nuclear power? Russian and physics? Specialty interpretation jobs are growing.

By Tina Susman

Abigail Dahlberg realized she was a success a few years ago while explaining her unusual specialty -- translating documents about waste- management issues from German into English -- to a wide-eyed listener.

"I've heard of you!" the man exclaimed. "You're Trash Girl!"

He may not have known her real name, but that didn't bother Dahlberg, whose cheery British accent belies her reputation as an expert in all things ekelhaft. That's German for "yucky."

In the burgeoning world of translators and interpreters (translators deal with written documents, interpreters with the spoken word) it's all about the niche.

"It's not just having the language skill. It's also having the expertise in the subject matter," said Dahlberg, whose story was striking enough that Nicholas Hartmann, president of the American Translators Assn., retold it during the group's 50th convention in New York last month.

For four days, some 2,300 attendees networked, traded stories and listened in on workshops and seminars at a Times Square hotel.

That's 1,000 more than attended last year's conference -- evidence that even in this economy, the industry is healthy.

Hartmann said demand for translators and interpreters is expected to grow by 15% in the coming year as globalization, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the worldwide green movement spur demand for information in myriad languages.

E-mail, Skype and other technologies have opened the door to cross-cultural communications, but they alone cannot bridge the language gap.

"It's so easy to communicate, but once you find someone you want to communicate with, you find they don't speak your language," Hartmann said. And as Dahlberg's situation shows, it's not enough to simply speak another language.

"There is a wealth of knowledge and background you need in your area of specialty," said Dahlberg, who speaks French as well as German and English and found her niche while working for a publishing house in Germany that dealt in environmental and waste-management documents.

"Translation is far more than words," said Hartmann, who specializes in translating German patents. It requires him to understand not only the context of words and phrases, but also the technical and legal issues involved. And his spelling has to be impeccable.

The slightest error can cause extraordinary embarrassment.

During a March meeting in Geneva, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton presented a gag gift to her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov. It was a red button with a word written in Russian that State Department translators thought meant "reset." The idea was to remind Russia of America's hopes for resetting the nations' tense relations. But when Lavrov opened the box and peered inside, he told Clinton the word on the button, peregruzka, translated to "overcharge" -- not the message the U.S. wanted to send.

Whether it was poor translation or a misspelling exacerbated by changing Russia's Cyrillic into Western lettering, the incident made headlines worldwide and was cited by conference attendees as one of the worst examples of a translation mistake.

It was also a reminder that if you're going to make a joke, make sure it translates well, said Kevin Hendzel, an ATA spokesman whose specialty is translating nuclear documents from Russian into English.

In the early 1980s, Hendzel was chief of the White House translation staff responsible for the top-secret hot line used for direct contact with the Kremlin.

He has little patience for high-level linguistic gaffes. If a leader makes a joke that doesn't elicit laughs, Hendzel said, a good interpreter will say in the listening audience's language, "It's a joke that does not translate -- please laugh."

During the George W. Bush administration, Hendzel was involved in interpreting a presidential video message to China's Communist -- and officially atheist -- leaders. The message included the phrase "God bless you all."

"We took it right out, because it would have embarrassed him and made us look like idiots," Hendzel said.

His is a highly specialized niche -- Hendzel has degrees in electrical engineering, physics and Russian -- and one that will be even more in demand as countries such as Iran pursue nuclear programs.

"Trying to find someone who speaks Farsi and knows nuclear issues . . . it's nearly impossible," he said.

Despite the fact that niche translators and interpreters are, as Hendzel put it, "everybody's lifeline," they remain in short supply, particularly in U.S. government agencies.

The FBI said its translation workload had doubled since the Sept. 11 attacks. Hospitals, courts, schools and other institutions are struggling to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse population.

But few people have the training it takes to do what can be an excruciatingly difficult job. Hendzel, for instance, once had to translate about 275 pages of Belarusian environmental laws into English in two days. He worked all 48 hours straight.

Some businesses try to save on translation fees by using free computer programs, but those don't offer the quality needed to avoid stilted and often nonsensical results.

"It might be amusing for some people, but I find it very embarrassing," said Katrin Rippel, whose Menu International firm provides translation for the food and hospitality industry.

The challenges are particularly acute for interpreters who must match the often long-winded speeches of politicians and diplomats.

When Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi spoke for 96 minutes to the United Nations' General Assembly in September, his personal interpreter had to be replaced by a U.N.-provided one after about 75 minutes. Hartmann said the usual limit for simultaneous interpretation is 20 minutes, followed by a break and then a return to duty.

Kadafi's interpreter, Fouad Zlitini, denied news reports that he exclaimed: "I just can't take it anymore!" and collapsed. But he has acknowledged he ran out of steam during his boss' speech. "I don't deny, I may have asked for someone to take over," he told the New York Post.

Dahlberg -- who has a master's degree in translation and interpretation from the University of Edinburgh -- worked in Germany before moving with her American husband to Missouri in 2005. Now she does freelance work for, among others, companies that deal with battery recycling and sewage sludge.

"Because the environmental field is so hot right now, I've found new customers are coming to me," said Dahlberg, who nonetheless has a hard time explaining her specialty to laypeople.

"They kind of pause for a minute and then say: 'Hmm,' " she said.

A recent job involved translating a report on the state of Germany's waste plastics market.

Some words and phrases she frequently encounters include die deponie (the landfill), die abfalltonne (the trash can) and, more recently, something familiar to Americans -- die abwrackpramie, which means "cash for clunkers."

tina.susman@latimes.com

 

State bills against workplace bullying gain traction

Proponents say workplace bullying is widespread and procedures for dealing with it are ineffective. They back a model called the 'Healthy Workplace Bill.'

By Tina Susman, Los Angeles Times

7:51 PM PDT, March 18, 2011

Reporting from Annapolis, Md.

 
Kathie Gant knew the relationship with her new boss was bad, but she didn't know how bad until the woman, a Maryland attorney, hurled a bundle of pencils at Gant, her administrative assistant. "You just don't sharpen my pencils for me!" the boss raged, punctuating each word with exaggerated enunciation and the zing of a pencil across the office toward Gant.

Months later, Gant was in a storage closet in the courthouse where she worked when the lights were shut off. "I turned toward the door and she was standing there," Gant said of the supervisor. "I tried to say 'Hey, I'm in here!' " Her boss stared back, shut the door, and locked it from the outside, trapping Gant in the pitch-black space.

After months of taunts and needling by her boss, Gant said she ended up on a psychiatrist's couch and nearly in a psych ward.

With a quavering voice and tearful demeanor, Gant testified about her job situation during a legislative hearing this month at the state Capitol as Maryland became one of the latest states to consider legislation against workplace bullying. She recounted some details later in an interview.

Progress has been slow since California in 2003 became the first state to introduce a "Healthy Workplace Bill," which would give employees legal protection against those they say torment them at work (The measure died in committee). Since then, 19 other states have proposed similar legislation, though none has passed it into law.

David C. Yamada, a law professor at Suffolk University Law School in Boston and the author of the Healthy Workplace Bill, said laws protect workers from abuse only on the basis of such things as race or religion. Employees who do not fall into a protected category have no legal means of fighting bullying.

Opponents of legislation say employees already are protected by anti-discrimination laws and workplace rules against abusive behavior. They also say that human resources departments exist to help employees deal with workplace problems.

If all else fails, bullied workers can bypass their bosses and seek help from higher-ranking supervisors, said Champe McCulloch, president of the Maryland Assn. of General Contractors and a former human resources director at Verizon.

"There's always an internal appeals process," said McCulloch, one of three lobbyists to speak against the bill on March 3 when it was introduced to the state Senate's finance committee. "At some point, the employee has to screw his or her courage to the sticking post and keep escalating the complaint up the management chain. I assure you ... at the senior management ranks, somebody is going to take action."

But proponents say that alleged bullying that may have led to highly publicized suicides last year — including that of a 52-year-old magazine editor who accused his boss of abusive behavior, and a 15-year-old schoolgirl who was taunted by classmates — have focused attention on the problem and galvanized efforts to pass legislation. So, too, has workers' frustration over several states' efforts to follow Wisconsin in curtailing the power of unions representing public employees.

While the suicide of Phoebe Prince, the Massachusetts girl, shed light on school bullying, Gary Namie of the Workplace Bullying Institute in Bellingham, Wash., said it underscored the need for legislation at all levels.

"If it is not stopped at childhood, it clearly progresses into adulthood," Namie said, citing a 2010 study by the bullying institute and the Zogby International polling company that indicated 35% of adults in the United States had been bullied at work. An additional 15% said they had witnessed workplace bullying. According to the survey, most bullies are men and most victims are women, but both sexes report being bullied by male and female bosses, and women are more likely to seek help from human resources.

"This year it's an especially uphill struggle," Namie said of workplace bullying legislation, citing "attacks on workers in general" in Wisconsin and other states proposing new limits on labor unions.

But Namie said he believes New York, where the state Senate passed a bill last year, is likely to get it signed into law in 2011.

"If New York becomes the first to pass it, that's a bellwether state, so others would follow," said Namie, a social psychologist who founded the institute 14 years ago with his wife, Ruth, after she experienced on-the-job bullying.

The Healthy Workplace Bill, used to guide individual states' proposed legislation, forbids a health-harming "abusive work environment" and requires medical documentation to prove worker claims of bullying.

Proponents of anti-bullying bills say this is among the measures that would prevent a flood of lawsuits by disgruntled employees.

Yamada, the Healthy Workplace Bill author, said workers face the challenge of trying to prove bullying, which generally falls short of physical assault and is Machiavellian and difficult to identify. "I liken our understanding of workplace bullying to where we were with sexual harassment three decades ago," Yamada said. "A lot of people have had to deal with this for years but didn't know what to call it."

Bill backers say internal appeals processes often fall short, citing the case of Kevin Morrissey, who was managing editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review magazine. Morrissey shot himself to death last June after relatives and friends said his — and others' — repeated complaints about a bullying boss were ignored. The University of Virginia, which publishes the magazine, said it had handled the complaints properly and that the manager could not be blamed for Morrissey's death.

The recession has made it easier for bullies to carry on because jobs are scarce and employees are reluctant to quit or to speak up and be seen as troublemakers, bill proponents say.

Gant, who worked in a county courthouse, said that after a few months a new boss openly called her "stupid," humiliated her at meetings, and sent out office e-mails that belittled her work.

Gant is still at a loss to explain the behavior. Because much of the abuse was unseen by others — the pencil-throwing, the locking of the closet, the snide comments — it was difficult to make others realize how bad it was, she said.

"She was an attorney. I never felt she'd go that far," said Gant, who was haunted by the experience long after the woman's departure. One day, the woman returned to the office for a brief visit. Gant hid in an office until she was gone.

Gant remained on the job a few more months but has since taken another job that she enjoys. She said she also went back to school to study for a doctorate and bolster her self-confidence, "so if I ever see her again, I'll be ready."

tina.susman@latimes.com

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

Border Vigilantes

Newsday (New York)

February 17, 2003 Monday

Pride & Prejudice On Desert Border

By Tina Susman. STAFF CORRESPONDENT

Tombstone, Ariz. - As he raises his children in the rugged desert straddling the U.S.-Mexico border, Ray Bouton drills two rules of survival into them: "Watch out for rattlesnakes and Mexicans."

It says something about his fellow ranchers' attitudes that Bouton, his wind-burned face and pale blue eyes shaded by a black Stetson, proclaimed this proudly and with no pretense at political correctness as he stood on his ranch about a week ago at the foot of the snow-speckled Huachuca Mountains.

It says something about fellow ranchers' attitudes as well that, as he spoke, about a dozen like-minded people were gathered at the ranch for a gun course that will allow them to carry concealed weapons and, if they choose, join civilian militias scanning the border for illegal crossers.

"It's an invasion," said Chris Simcox, leader of the newest such group, the Tombstone-based Civil Homeland Defense, which says it is doing what the government has exhorted the nation to do since 9/11: be extra-vigilant about security. "There's too much crime coming over that border, and Americans are being victimized."

To critics, the rise of such groups - Simcox's is the third in southeastern Arizona - is an ugly and dangerous offshoot of 9/11, one that has racists arming themselves in the name of homeland security and drumming up support by preying on fears of terrorism.

"It has intensified incredibly since 9/11. They'll blame immigrants for anything," said Devin Burghart of the Chicago-based Center for New Community, which tracks anti-immigration groups' activities.

Based on their beliefs, there are few differences between the militias and large, well-organized hate groups such as David Duke's National Organization for European American Rights, Burghart said. One militia, Glenn Spencer's American Border Patrol, is listed as a hate group by the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, which cites among other things the patrol's claim that Mexico is plotting to take over the southwestern United States.

Arizona has become "ground zero" in the anti-immigrant movement because of its traditionally conservative politics, its proximity to Mexico and the porous state of the international frontier as it cuts through the vast, sparsely populated desert, Burghart said. According to the U.S. Border Patrol, about 50,000 people were caught crossing illegally in the Tucson Sector, a 15,000-square-mile area that stretches from the Texas border to western Arizona, between October and December of last year. No one knows how many crossed without being caught.

Militia leaders say such numbers prove the 9,300 federal agents covering the U.S.-Mexico frontier can't do the job. The biggest of these militias is Ranch Rescue, which claims 250 volunteers in several states and is most active in Arizona, Texas, California and New Mexico. Spencer's patrol claims 80 members and has a Web site that offers real-time video of its patrols.

But the group garnering the most attention is Simcox's, by virtue of its origins in this famous Wild West town and of Simcox's openness to media coverage. In fact, Simcox announced his group's formation in October on the front page of the Tombstone Tumbleweed, the newspaper he bought last year after moving here from Los Angeles.

"We're the politically correct, kinder, gentler way of defending the borders," said Simcox, a former teacher. Simcox likens Civil Homeland Defense to a "neighborhood watch" program.

"Our goal is to be an obvious presence on the border and to deter anyone from coming across it - terrorists, drug dealers and illegal immigrants," he said, denying, as do other militia leaders, any racial motivation.

At the very least, though, his conspiracy-laced rhetoric suggests a fierce disdain for outsiders, who he says have filled classrooms with their tuberculosis-infected children, taken jobs from Americans and led to a state of lawlessness near the border. Mexican drug cartels, he says, have paid off politicians to ignore the issue.

Dressed in civilian clothes, members of Simcox's group, who appear to number no more than a few judging from recent patrols, cruise the border region most weekend mornings and evenings, concentrating on dirt roads that cut through expanses of mesquite and ranchland. When they encounter "illegals," Simcox said, group members do not forcibly detain them but instead alert the U.S. Border Patrol to their location.

A walk through Tombstone, a tourist stopover of 1,500 people dominated by souvenir shops, bed-and-breakfast inns and cafes, provides a good idea of the townspeople's views of Simcox, 42. Not since Wyatt Earp rode into town in 1879, setting the stage for the infamous shoot-out at the OK Corral two years later, has a newcomer made such a splash. "Weirdo," "racist," "egomaniac," "idiot" and "over the top" are a few of the adjectives residents toss out, often with an amused shake of the head.

It's just such terms that worry people like Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who says they are indicators of dangerous fanaticism. "I think he's a lunatic. At the same time, I think he's pouring more gasoline into a dangerous fire," said Potok, echoing human rights groups' worries that militia members will get carried away and start gunning down migrants in the desert, if they haven't already.

While no militia groups have been accused of crimes against migrants, over the past few years several migrants have been found dead for unexplained reasons and others are known to have been murdered. No arrests have been made. The U.S. Border Patrol says Mexican drug dealers and human smugglers are to blame. Human rights groups say the militias should be investigated for possible crimes against migrants.

"They're like little boys playing cowboys and Indians," said Burt Devere, a sixth-generation Tombstone native whose ranch is in the footpath of illegals heading for the highway out of town. Devere rejects Simcox's claims that illegal migrants are burgling homes, damaging property and freeing livestock by cutting barbed-wire fences as they cross private land. "We know it's not the Mexicans, but the Mexicans get blamed for it because they're not here to defend themselves."

Devere and his wife, Dorothy, say the real problem is Border Patrol agents and "local yokels" who rampage through private property in all-terrain vehicles, bust down fences, let livestock loose onto highways and use water towers for target practice. "Migrants have always come through here. If we didn't have them, who'd do the menial labor the Americans won't do?" said Devere, who cordially waves at the migrants he sees crossing his land.

Simcox, though, says most people support his idea of using tanks and soldiers to close the U.S.-Mexico border. They're simply scared to admit it, said Simcox, who claims to have had eight death threats as a result of his activities and who frequently wears a bulletproof vest under his shirt.

And despite his many critics - who include the mayor, the head of the chamber of commerce, and a host of human rights groups - Simcox has admirers, even among those who don't relish the thought of civilians taking up arms. They include Roger Remsik, the owner of the Sagebrush Inn in Tombstone, who figures this isolated region would be attractive to terrorists looking for a good place to sneak into the country.

"These are loose borders. This is where they should be stopping them, and this is where I agree with Chris doing it his way," Remsik said. "But Chris shouldn't have to do it. The federal government should be doing it."

The Border Patrol has little to say about the militias but denies allegations it is not doing its job. Total apprehensions dropped from 1.676 million in 2000 to 1.266 million in 2001 and 955,310 last year, said spokesman Mario Villarreal, attributing the decrease to everything from better vigilance after Sept. 11 to economic conditions on both sides of the border. "We discourage private parties from taking matters into their own hands," he said.

Perhaps one reason the Border Patrol has little to say about the militias is because some former Border Patrol agents support them. American Border Patrol's members, for example, include two retired Border Patrol agents. In addition, Arizona legislators this month introduced House Bill 2440, which would amount to the state's seal of approval to militias. It calls for creation of an armed, civilian volunteer organization called the Border Area Reserves, composed of U.S. citizens who would do exactly what Simcox and his followers are doing.

Bouton, 48, whose ranch is about a mile from the border, says opponents of such ideas don't know what it's like living here. He says he has survived one shoot-out with Mexican bandits and now picks up his pistol just to walk across his yard. He sleeps with a gun beside him, and while he supports Simcox's desire to close the border, he won't patrol with Civil Homeland Defense because he feels its rules on carrying weapons - they must be concealed and drawn only in self-defense - put members at too much of a disadvantage.

"Down here I live by the gun, and that's the only way you can live down here," Bouton said. "I won't go to that border unless I've got 150 rounds of ammunition on me."

Hate Crimes

Newsday (New York)

December 8, 2002 Sunday

Attacking Hate Crimes;
Activists call for better defining, reporting of bias attacks

By Tina Susman. STAFF WRITER

In the collective mind of Brooklyn's Bangladeshi community, there's little doubt that the murders of Mizanur Rahman and Mohammed Hossain were motivated by religious and ethnic hatred. Both men, killed three months apart earlier this year, were attacked by several Hispanics who pounded them ferociously with wooden clubs but stole nothing. Rahman's attackers also used chair legs and bamboo sticks to beat him. Hossain's killers, after hitting him repeatedly with a baseball bat, stabbed him several times.

If those incidents weren't proof of rising animosity toward Asian-American Muslims, community leaders say, another beating two weeks after Hossain's murder was. On Nov. 24, Abdul Muhit, who immigrated to Brooklyn from Bangladesh eight years ago, was jumped by two Hispanic men a few blocks from where Rahman was slain.

"They weren't saying anything. They were laughing," said Muhit, who was carrying about $70 when he was knocked to the ground from behind. In an attack lasting about three minutes, Muhit said his glasses were smashed into his face, leaving shards of glass in his eyes, and his nose was split open, but nothing was stolen. "They wanted to try more torturing, but they couldn't because I was shouting," Muhit said.

Police, though, say there are too many unknowns to call any of the three attacks hate crimes, highlighting what special-interest groups say is the weakness of the 1990 federal Hate Crimes Statistics Act.

The idea behind the act was local law enforcement could better stem such crime if they knew where it was occurring and who most of the perpetrators and victims were. But although the act requires the Department of Justice to compile an annual record of hate crimes nationwide, critics say the resulting numbers are far from accurate because local law enforcement agencies are not required to submit reports and because police use wide discretion in determining what is a hate crime.

Religious, ethnic and gay organizations say factors from victims' fears of reporting such crimes to police indifference in pursuing them add to the problem.

The hate crimes report for 2001, released by the FBI on Nov. 25, cited a 17 percent increase over 2000 in such crimes. That included an alarming 1,600 percent increase over 2000 in attacks on individuals, businesses or organizations identified with Islam, a jump attributed to post-Sept. 11 bias.

But if the FBI reports are to be accepted without question, for example, Alabama would be the most tolerant state in the nation. It has never reported a hate crime, not even in 1999 when two men, angry over unwanted advances from a gay man, Billy Jack Gaither, beat him to death with an ax handle and threw his body onto a pile of burning tires.

Critics say because local agencies are not required to report hate crimes to federal officials, many authorities neglect to do so, which results in federal data full of "false zero" reports, such as Alabama's. Of nearly 12,000 local agencies - from police forces to hospitals and universities - that volunteered statistics for last year's FBI survey, only 2,106 reported any hate crimes. In 2000, a survey sponsored by the Justice Department of local agencies' hate-crime reports estimated several thousand bias incidents were never reported to the FBI.

The apparent reluctance of local police to label incidents as hate crimes discourages victims from going to police because they believe nothing will be done, said Krittika Ghosh of the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York, which pressed police to pursue the Bangladeshi attacks as possible hate crimes. "It's grossly underreported," Ghosh said.

In addition to victims' beliefs that police will not help them, she said there is a fear among immigrants they will be reported to federal officials for immigration violations if they come forward. Even her organization, which said it had received about 600 hate crime reports since Sept. 11, 2001, does not always encourage victims to go to police, because many immigrants believe they are in cahoots with the FBI and INS.

Such reluctance further stymies police and other law enforcement agencies, who say that defining hate crimes is a hazy enough task even with community cooperation.

"These are very, very gray areas," said Det. Kevin Czartoryski, a spokesman for the New York Police Department, who spent six years in the department's Hate Crimes Unit. In New York State, a crime must be motivated by hate "in whole" or in a "substantial part" to be deemed a hate crime, which can carry enhanced punishments.

"That's where it becomes gray," Czartoryski said. "You have to look at every factor." He said there are a number of reasons the Brooklyn incidents don't fall into the hate-crime category. In the Hossain case, for example, the victim and attackers were not strangers and had apparently argued earlier. Rahman was the victim of attackers out for revenge after earlier altercations with groups of Bangladeshi men, even though Rahman was not involved in those fights. No one was arrested in Muhit's assault, which, police say, makes it impossible to determine the motive.

Police agencies across the country have comparable standards for classifying hate crimes, resulting in similar disputes between law enforcement and victims' families. On Sept. 15, 2001, for example, Adel Karas, an Egyptian immigrant, was shot to death at his San Gabriel, Calif., market by unknown assailants who stole nothing. Relatives were convinced the shooting was a hate crime, but police said they couldn't classify it as such because of a lack of evidence. On Sept. 17, 2001, a Yemeni Arab, Ali Almansoop, was shot to death as he slept in his home in Detroit. The man arrested for the murder told police he was angry at Almansoop over the terrorist attacks. However, he was also jealous because Almansoop was seeing his ex-girlfriend. For that reason, police did not classify the slaying as a hate crime, and Michigan shows up in the latest FBI hate crimes report with no bias-motivated murders last year.

Ghosh said such circumstances should not be enough to dismiss many hate-crime allegations. In the Bangladeshi attacks, she said the level of brutality and the numbers of assailants were strong indicators of hate-motivated violence. "Just because the two parties knew each other, that doesn't mean it isn't a bias crime," she said.

"I think a lot of it also has to do with the fact that labeling it as a hate crime means admitting there are tensions between people in a neighborhood, and police would have to take action," she said.

Indeed, Bangladeshis living in the gritty East New York section of Brooklyn, where Rahman and Muhit were attacked, say they have complained several times about gangs of youths harassing them and have requested extra police protection after dark, to no avail.

Nazrul Lasker, a Bangladeshi who runs a travel agency across the busy avenue from where Rahman was killed, said he had been called a "bloody Indian guy" by non-Muslims in the neighborhood who assumed because of his appearance that he comes from India.

"There is a hate," said Lasker, blaming it on resentment toward the number of thriving, Asian-run shops in the area coupled with anger at Muslims since Sept. 11. But asked whether local Muslims report most incidents, he said, "They don't go to the police because the police do nothing."

Muhit said when the police responded to his call for help on Nov. 24, they insinuated he was drunk because he was staggering. Muhit said he was staggering because he was observing Ramadan and had not eaten all day, and because he had just been beaten.

Muslims aren't the only group wary of hate crime record-keeping. Groups representing gays and lesbians are suspicious of figures showing 1,393 crimes in 2001 linked to the victim's sexual orientation. They include the FBI's only reported gay-bashing murder for the year, a teenage cross-dresser beaten to death in Cortez, Colorado.

Denise de Percin of the Colorado Anti-Violence Program, which tracks crimes based on sexual orientation in that state, said crimes against gays never were accurately reported in the FBI data because many states' laws did not recognize gays as a special category of people prone to being targeted. That fuels attitudes that gays are legitimate targets, de Percin said.

"When it's not called what it is - a hate crime - I think the sense is that you can do something and get away with it," she said.

For Muslims, the issue has a new sense of urgency since Sept. 11, and in the run-up to a possible war with Iraq, which they fear will bring a new rash of violence against them. Before Sept. 11, Muslims were one of the least-targeted groups, according to FBI records, but last year's report showed they had become one of the most frequently targeted. Crimes against them, and against people believed to be of Middle Eastern descent, rose from 354 in 2000 to 1,501 in 2001.

"I love this country so much, but I don't know what happened and what is going on now," Muhit said. "I can't believe what has happened."