John Leptich, Tribune

Terrorism liaison officers have been getting a lot of attention in the national press lately. But the bottom line of what they do is basically old-fashioned police work, according to the state police coordinating the effort in Arizona.

The TLOs, as they are called, keep their eyes and ears open for any suspicious activity.

The three-year-old program is part of the Arizona Department of Public Safety and its Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center, the state’s intelligence fusion center. The 75 to 80 TLOs are specially trained police officers, firefighters and police crime analysts. They report suspicious behavior they see in the course of their jobs. The reports are put in the state database for further investigation, and could be sent to federal terrorist databases.

DPS Lt. Larry Perry, the man in charge of Arizona’s TLOs, thinks they are necessary. Although he admits their jobs include a concept that all police officers and firefighters should follow, he says TLOs have learned a lot more than that during 40 hours of special training.

“This is situational awareness where people who work in critical infrastructures throughout the state are reporting suspicious activities,” Perry said. “TLOs are not getting information on private citizens in their homes. This is a speciality unit that links TLOs together for the purpose of reporting suspicious activity.”

Perry said TLOs in Arizona have reported theft of military clothing, police or fire uniforms and equipment. He added that TLOs are deployed to large public gatherings of 500 or more people where the potential for terrorism exists so they can assist law enforcement officials.

“If we were to see one person taking a lot of pictures of the power plant at Palo Verde (nuclear plant), that could be a terrorist opportunity,” Perry said.

The program has received four federal and state grants ranging from $200,000 to $500,000, according to Perry. They range from 24 months to 36 months.

Sgt. Brent Olson, a member of the Mesa Police Department emergency services and counter terrorism teams, is a TLO. He believes the program provides an important link between law enforcement and fire protection agencies.

“A lot of it is straight-up crime prevention, but with a twist,” Olson said.

“We’re focused with speciality other units. Something may happen here in Mesa and TLOs can work their counterparts in other cities to check if there’s anything going on there. We can contact each other directly and share information. We don’t have to go through others as we might have had to do. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a good program.”

Perry scoffs at the notion that the program may be likened to snooping.

“It’s not ‘Big Brother’ at all, but I can see that the ACLU might have a problem with it,” he said.

Alessandra Soler Meetze , executive director of the Arizona chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said her concern is the program might give inexperienced or undertrained volunteers the opportunity to target people because of ethnicity or religion.

“What we don’t want is a policy that encourages non-law enforcement personnel to keep tabs on their neighbors,” Meetze said. “This sounds like good police work and smart profiling based on behavior rather than racial or ethnic factors. The policy clearly targets behavior. We just need to keep tabs on DPS to make sure their officers and volunteers in practice don’t cross the line and begin replacing suspicious activity with skin color when targeting individuals.”

Perry said the reporting of suspicious information by TLOs is based upon suspicious activities and incidents, not on race or religious preference.

Suspicious activity is defined in TLO training as behavior that could lead to terrorism, such as taking photos of no apparent aesthetic value, making measurements or notes, espousing extremist beliefs or conversing in code, according to a draft Department of Justice/Major Cities Chiefs Association document.

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WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial and ethnic groups.
urrently, FBI agents need reasons — such as evidence or allegations that a law probably has been violated — to investigate citizens and legal residents. The new policy, law enforcement officials say, would let agents open terrorism investigations after mining public records and intelligence to build a profile of traits that, taken together, are deemed suspicious.

Although President George W. Bush has disavowed targeting suspects based on their race or ethnicity, the new rules would let the FBI consider those factors among traits that could trigger a national security investigation.

Among factors that could make someone subject of an investigation is travel to regions of the world known for terrorist activity, access to weapons or military training, along with the person’s race or ethnicity. Law enforcement officials say the policy would help them find terrorists before they strike.

“We don’t know what we don’t know. And the object is to cut down on that,” said one FBI official.

FBI agents wouldn’t be allowed to eavesdrop on phone calls or dig deeply into personal data — such as the content of phone or e-mail records or bank statements — until a full investigation was opened.

More than a half-dozen senior FBI, Justice Department and other U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the new policy agreed to discuss it on condition of anonymity.

The change, expected later this summer, is part of an update of Justice Department policies amid the FBI’s transition from traditional crime fighting to protecting the nation from attacks. Attorney General Michael Mukasey acknowledged the overhaul was under way in early June.

If adopted, the guidelines would be put in place in the final months of a presidential administration that has been dogged by criticism that its counterterrorism programs trample privacy rights and civil liberties.

Critics say the presumption of innocence is lost in the proposal. The FBI could begin investigations simply “by assuming that everyone’s a suspect, and then you weed out the innocent,” said Caroline Fredrickson of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Courts across the country have overturned criminal convictions when defendants showed they were targeted based on race. Racial profiling generally is considered a civil rights violation, and former Attorney General John Ashcroft condemned it in March 2001 as an “unconstitutional deprivation of equal protection under our Constitution.”

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the guidelines wouldn’t give the FBI more authority than it now has.

“Any review and change to the guidelines will reflect our traditional concerns for civil liberties and First Amendment liberties and our traditional investigative emphasis on using the least intrusive means feasible,” he said Wednesday.

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MINNEAPOLIS — A Minnesota college student looking to profit off his political indifference has been charged with a felony for trying to sell his vote on the auction Web site eBay.

The student, Max P. Sanders, 19, of Edina, was charged Thursday with one count of bribery, treating and soliciting, a felony under an 1893 Minnesota law that criminalizes the sale and purchase of votes.

In May Mr. Sanders set a minimum bid of $10 for his vote this November and offered to provide photographic documentation inside the booth.

Mr. Sanders, whose auction was halted before anyone bid, declined to comment. He is studying liberal arts at the University of Minnesota.

The state law was actively enforced during Prohibition, when “people would go into bars and dig out drunks and give them a $20 and try to buy their vote,” said Mike Freeman, the Hennepin County attorney, who said he did not know of any other modern abuses.

“We’re not humorless in the county attorney’s office and we’re not in the horse-and-buggy age,” Mr. Freeman said, “but we decided it’s something we just couldn’t blow off. Sometimes in this business we need to make statements.”

Attending a Fourth of July parade, where he observed a veteran limping along the streets, reinforced his decision, said Mr. Freeman, who is a Vietnam veteran. “A lot of us served in the military trying to protect the right to vote,” he said. “This is serious stuff.”

The charge carries up to five years’ imprisonment and a $10,000 fine. Mr. Freeman said an “appropriate” penalty was more likely to entail community service, not jail time.

Still, he stands by the old law. “We have an opportunity to clean up laws and we often do, but selling your vote — I don’t care whether it’s an 1893 law or a 2005 law,” Mr. Freeman said. “If it came up tomorrow, I’d vote for it.”

Mr. Sanders has defenders online, who invoke patriotic arguments of their own.

“Students have a right of speech, and any person has a right to joke and comment,” read a posting on a Craigslist forum Friday.

It added, “Defend what the fathers and mothers of this country died for: write letters, protest and unite against a criminal charge he is facing.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/05/us/05vote.html

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By DAVE DAVIES
Philadelphia Daily News

daviesd@phillynews.com 215-854-2595

Four young residents of a North Philadelphia house who circulated petitions questioning police-surveillance cameras were rousted from their home Friday and detained 12 hours without charges while police searched their house.

Daniel Moffat, 28, a co-owner of the house, said police had no warrant when they entered. The house was examined by officials from several government agencies and then shuttered by the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections.

“This leaves me homeless, without access to things I need. My whole life is disrupted,” Moffat said yesterday.

The raid on the property on Ridge Avenue near Parrish Street was led by 9th District Police Capt. Dennis Wilson, who was quoted in an online story by the City Paper as saying of the residents: “They’re a hate group. We’re trying to drum up charges against them, but unfortunately we’ll probably have to let them go.”

Reached yesterday by the Daily News, Wilson said he was unable to comment.

Police spokesman Lt. Frank Vanore said police had gone to the property because a nearby surveillance camera had been spray-painted and rendered inoperable, and interviews with neighbors led police to suspect that “people in this house were possibly involved.”

Vanore said that when Moffat and others declined to identify themselves and cooperate, police entered the property because “they had probable cause to believe there was trespassing or even burglarizing.”

Once inside, Vanore said, police saw things that prompted them to obtain a search warrant, such as protest literature, anti-police graffiti on walls, and the construction of what police thought might be a bunker on the roof.

Before the day ended, the property also was visited by members of the state police, the Fire Marshal’s Office, and the Philadelphia Housing Authority. Details of the story are in dispute.

Viewed from the sidewalk, the property doesn’t look inhabited. The first floor is a decrepit storefront covered by a metal gate. The second-floor windows are covered with plywood.

But Moffat said that since he and Robert Gilbert bought the place four years ago, they’ve repaired the roof and worked to restore the interior. Moffat said he and three friends who live there are active in the Francisville community, distributing free food at times and helping with a community garden. Co-owner Gilbert does not live there.

Moffat grew up in Southern California and attended San Francisco State University before moving to Philadelphia in 2003.

He said he isn’t a member of any political group, but he said he and others in the house recently circulated petitions that raised questions about the appearance of surveillance cameras in the neighborhood and about the beating of three suspects by police that was seen on a TV video.

Moffat said police did not mention damage to any surveillance camera when they arrived Friday morning. He said Wilson had told him police had received a complaint that the residents of the house were living there illegally.

Moffat said he had been intimidated by the presence of the officers and told Wilson, falsely, that he didn’t own the property, but could call the owner. He said he asked Wilson if he had a warrant, and none was produced.

Moffat said he was handcuffed and placed in a patrol car while police entered the building, began a search and arrested the other three residents. Moffat said once the search began and L&I officials were called, he told Wilson that he owned the property and could show him a deed inside, but that Wilson wasn’t interested. He asked what they were accused of.

“You’re not being charged,

you’re being investigated,” he said Wilson told him. At another point Wilson said, “call it a kidnapping.”

Then after about two hours, Moffat said, he was taken to jail.

“We’re going to do you a favor,” Moffat said Wilson told him. “It’s a very hot day, and we’re going to bring you down the district and put you in a cell so you don’t overheat.”

Moffat and his housemates weren’t released until after midnight. but Moffat said he was told the house was sealed, and they could only come in the next day with a police escort to retrieve personal belongings.

“When I got to my room, it had been thoroughly searched,” Moffat said. “All my photographs on the floor, all my filing cabinets emptied. It was a wreck. Some of the stuff from my room was in other rooms.”

Moffat said he was given a property receipt indicating his laptop computer is now in the possession of the State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Intelligence Division.

State Police spokeswoman Cpl. Linette Quinn said she didn’t know anything about the raid or whether state police had the computer.

“You have to talk to Philadelphia police,” she said.

Philadelphia police spokesman Vanore said he didn’t know why the state police were brought in, but said there may have been protest literature involving the issue of police-surveillance cameras in other states.

Vanore said when police entered the property, they saw anti-police graffiti on walls, including the phrase, “kill the pigs.” He said there was spray paint, including some that matched the color spayed on the police surveillance video.

And he said the structure on the roof “was similar to what we saw on Osage Avenue,” referring to the rooftop fortification built by the radical group MOVE before the 1985 confrontation that killed 11 people.

The bunker charge provoked a chuckle from Moffat.

“It’s a greenhouse,” he said.

Moffat said the anti-police graffiti was on the wall of an adjacent building accessible from his roof, he said, and it was there when they moved in.

Moffat said they had a box with some spray paint, since they’d been doing renovations. But he adamantly denied having anything to do with spraying the surveillance camera.

Kirk Dorn of the Philadelphia Housing Authority said the city called his agency to seal up the property because they’d determined it was unfit for human habitation. It didn’t have proper running water and had holes in walls and floors.

Moffat acknowledged that he didn’t have proper permits for renovations he was doing, but insisted that the place had running water and flushing toilets, and that any holes in floors were “tiny, where vents had been.”

Vanore said police will conduct a forensic examination of the items taken from the property to see if any charges are warranted.

Moffat and co-owner Gilbert said they’re exploring their legal options. Moffat is now staying with friends. *

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It could be a long time before Omar Khan goes to college: as long as 38 years, according to Orange County prosecutors, who have arrested and charged the 18-year-old student with breaking into his prestigious high school and hacking into computers to change his test grades from Fs to As.

If convicted on all 69 counts, including altering and stealing public records, computer fraud, burglary, identity theft, receiving stolen property and conspiracy, Mr Khan could spend almost four decades in prison.

He is currently being held on $50,000 (£25,500) bail and is scheduled to appear in court today.

Mr Khan’s defence lawyer, Carol Lavacol, described her client as “a really nice kid” and said: “There’s a lot more going on than meets the eye.”

Prosecutors claim that between January and May, Mr Khan, who lives in Coto de Caza, one of Orange County’s oldest and most expensive gated communities, repeatedly broke into Tesoro High School, which was made famous by the reality TV series Real Housewives of Orange County.

In an alleged plot that resembles the script to the 1986 high school comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, prosecutors claim that he then used teachers’ passwords to hack into computers and change his test scores. In at least one test, an English exam, Mr Khan had been given an F grade because he was caught cheating.

Prosecutors claim that the teenager, who is alleged to have broken into the school late at night with a stolen master key, also changed the grades of 12 other students, and that he installed spyware on school hard drives that allowed him to access the computers from remote locations.

Tesoro High has 2,800 pupils and often appears in Newsweek magazine’s annual list of best high schools.

Mr Khan’s plan, the prosecution argues, was to get a place at one of the colleges within the University of California system. After his application was rejected, he requested copies of his student records, known as “transcripts” in the US educational system, so he could appeal. But when teachers looked at his files and noticed all the A grades that had magically appeared next to all the courses he had taken they realised something was wrong.

“School administrators alerted law enforcement after noticing a discrepancy in Mr Khan’s grades,” the Orange County District Attorney’s office said. “Subsequent investigation revealed that Mr Khan was in possession of original tests, test questions and answers, and copies of his altered grades. Khan is accused of stealing master copies of tests, some of which were e-mailed to dozens of students.”

The case has once again raised the question of whether technology, in particular mobile phones that can access the internet, has resulted in an epidemic of cheating in the high-school system. The Orange County Register, a local newspaper, asked its readers yesterday to respond to a poll asking if “technology is giving [students] an advantage”, or whether it is just “the same stuff using new tools”.

Another student, Tanvir Singh, also 18, is accused of conspiring with Mr Khan and faces up to three years in prison. The pair allegedly exchanged text messages last month while organising a break-in.

Jim Amormino, of the local sheriff’s department, said that he was astonished by the sophistication of the scheme, especially given the age of the defendants. “I think they [now] wish they would have put their talents into studying,” he said.

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MIAMI — From “Scarface” to “Miami Vice,” Florida’s drug problem has been portrayed as the story of a single narcotic: cocaine. But for Floridians, prescription drugs are increasingly a far more lethal habit.

An analysis of autopsies in 2007 released this week by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission found that the rate of deaths caused by prescription drugs was three times the rate of deaths caused by all illicit drugs combined.

Law enforcement officials said that the shift toward prescription-drug abuse, which began here about eight years ago, showed no sign of letting up and that the state must do more to control it.

“You have health care providers involved, you have doctor shoppers, and then there are crimes like robbing drug shipments,” said Jeff Beasley, a drug intelligence inspector for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which co-sponsored the study. “There is a multitude of ways to get these drugs, and that’s what makes things complicated.”

The report’s findings track with similar studies by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which has found that roughly seven million Americans are abusing prescription drugs. If accurate, that would be an increase of 80 percent in six years and more than the total abusing cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, Ecstasy and inhalants.

The Florida report analyzed 168,900 deaths statewide. Cocaine, heroin and all methamphetamines caused 989 deaths, it found, while legal opioids — strong painkillers in brand-name drugs like Vicodin and OxyContin — caused 2,328.

Drugs with benzodiazepine, mainly depressants like Valium and Xanax, led to 743 deaths. Alcohol was the most commonly occurring drug, appearing in the bodies of 4,179 of the dead and judged the cause of death of 466 — fewer than cocaine (843) but more than methamphetamine (25) and marijuana (0).

The study also found that while the number of people who died with heroin in their bodies increased 14 percent in 2007, to 110, deaths related to the opioid oxycodone increased 36 percent, to 1,253.

Florida scrutinizes drug-related deaths more closely than do other states, and so there is little basis for comparison with them.

It has also witnessed several highly publicized cases in recent years that have highlighted the problem. Only last year, an accidental prescription drug overdose killed Anna Nicole Smith in Broward County.

Still, the state has lagged in enforcement. Thirty-eight other states have approved prescription drug monitoring programs that track sales. Florida lawmakers have repeatedly considered similar legislation, but privacy concerns have kept it from passing.

As a result, federal, state and local law enforcement officials say, Florida has become a source of prescription drugs that are illegally sold across the country.

“The monitoring plan is our priority effort, but that is not enough,” William H. Janes, the Florida director of drug control, said in a statement accompanying the study. He said Florida was also looking at ways to curb illegal Internet sales and to encourage doctors and pharmacists to identify potential abusers.

Some local police departments have taken a more novel approach.

In Broward County on May 31, deputies completed a “drug takeback” in which $5 Wal-Mart, CVS or Walgreens gift cards were distributed to 150 people who cleaned out their medicine cabinets and turned in unused drugs in an effort to keep them out of young people’s hands.

“The abuse has reached epidemic proportions,” said Lisa McElhaney, a sergeant in the pharmaceutical drug diversion unit of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. “It’s just explosive.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/us/14florida.html

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D.C. police will seal off entire neighborhoods, set up checkpoints and kick out strangers under a new program that D.C. officials hope will help them rescue the city from its out-of-control violence.

Under an executive order expected to be announced today, police Chief Cathy L. Lanier will have the authority to designate “Neighborhood Safety Zones.” At least six officers will man cordons around those zones and demand identification from people coming in and out of them. Anyone who doesn’t live there, work there or have “legitimate reason” to be there will be sent away or face arrest, documents obtained by The Examiner show.

Lanier has been struggling to reverse D.C.’s spiraling crime rate but has been forced by public outcry to scale back several initiatives including her “All Hands on Deck” weekends and plans for warrantless, door-to-door searches for drugs and guns.

Under today’s proposal, the no-go zones will last up to 10 days, according to internal police documents. Front-line officers are already being signed up for training on running the blue curtains.

Peter Nickles, the city’s interim attorney general, said the quarantine would have “a narrow focus.”

“This is a very targeted program that has been used in other cities,” Nickles told The Examiner. “I’m not worried about the constitutionality of it.”

Others are. Kristopher Baumann, chairman of the D.C. police union and a former lawyer, called the checkpoint proposal “breathtaking.”

Shelley Broderick, president of the D.C.-area American Civil Liberties Union and the dean of the University of the District of Columbia’s law school, said the plan was “cockamamie.”

“I think they tried this in Russia and it failed,” she said. “It’s just our experience in this city that we always end up targeting poor people and people of color, and we treat the kids coming home from choir practice the same as we treat those kids who are selling drugs.”

The proposal has the provisional support of D.C. Councilman Harry “Tommy” Thomas, D-Ward 5, whose ward has become a war zone.

“They’re really going to crack down on what we believe to be a systemic problem with open-air drug markets,” Thomas told The Examiner.

Thomas said, though, that he worried about D.C. “moving towards a police state.”

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PROVO, UTAH — For years, Kevin Jensen carried a pistol everywhere he went, tucked in a shoulder holster beneath his clothes.

In hot weather the holster was almost unbearable. Pressed against Jensen’s skin, the firearm was heavy and uncomfortable. Hiding the weapon made him feel like a criminal.

Then one evening he stumbled across a site that urged gun owners to do something revolutionary: Carry your gun openly for the world to see as you go about your business.

In most states there’s no law against that.

Jensen thought about it and decided to give it a try. A couple of days later, his gun was visible, hanging from a black holster strapped around his hip as he walked into a Costco. His heart raced as he ordered a Polish dog at the counter. No one called the police. No one stopped him.

Now Jensen carries his Glock 23 openly into his bank, restaurants and shopping centers. He wore the gun to a Ron Paul rally. He and his wife, Clachelle, drop off their 5-year-old daughter at elementary school with pistols hanging from their hip holsters, and have never received a complaint or a wary look.

Jensen said he tries not to flaunt his gun. “We don’t want to show up and say, ‘Hey, we’re here, we’re armed, get used to it,’ ” he said.

But he and others who publicly display their guns have a common purpose.

The Jensens are part of a fledgling movement to make a firearm as common an accessory as an iPod. Called “open carry” by its supporters, the movement has attracted grandparents, graduate students and lifelong gun enthusiasts like the Jensens.

“What we’re trying to say is, ‘Hey, we’re normal people who carry guns,’ ” said Travis Deveraux, 36, of West Valley, a Salt Lake City suburb. Deveraux works for a credit card company and sometimes walks around town wearing a cowboy hat and packing a pistol in plain sight. “We want the public to understand it’s not just cops who can carry guns.”

Police acknowledge the practice is legal, but some say it makes their lives tougher.

Police Chief John Greiner recalled that last year in Ogden, Utah, a man was openly carrying a shotgun on the street. When officers pulled up to ask him about the gun, he started firing. Police killed the man.

Greiner tells the story as a lesson for gun owners. “We’ve changed over the last 200 years from the days of the wild, wild West,” Greiner said. “Most people don’t openly carry. . . . If [people] truly want to open carry, they ought to expect they’ll be challenged more until people become comfortable with it.”

Jensen and others argue that police shouldn’t judge the gun, but rather the actions of the person carrying it. Jensen, 28, isn’t opposed to attention, however. It’s part of the reason he brought his gun out in the open.

“At first, [open carry] was a little novelty,” he said. “Then I realized the chances of me educating someone are bigger than ever using it [the gun] in self-defense. If it’s in my pants or under my shirt I’m probably not going to do anything with it.”

As Clachelle pushed the shopping cart holding their two young children during a recent trip to Costco, her husband admired the new holster wrapped around her waist. “I like the look of that low-rise gun belt,” he said.

The Jensens’ pistols were snapped into holsters attached to black belts that hug their waists. Guns are a fact of life in their household. Their 5-year-old daughter, Sierra, has a child-sized .22 rifle she handles only in her parents’ presence.

Clachelle is the daughter of a Central California police chief and began shooting when she was about Sierra’s age. She would take her parents’ gun when she went out and hide it in her purse because the firearm made her feel safer.

“I love ‘em,” Clachelle said. “I wouldn’t ever be without them.”

Kevin Jensen’s first encounter with guns came when he was 11: His grandfather died and left him a 16-gauge shotgun. The gun stayed locked away but fascinated Jensen through his teen years. He convinced his older brother to take him shooting in the countryside near their home in a small town south of Salt Lake City.

“I immediately fell in love with it,” said Jensen, a lean man with close-cropped hair and a precise gait that is a reminder of his five years in the Army Reserve. “I like things that go boom.”

Jensen kept as many as 10 guns in the couple’s 1930s-style bungalow in Santaquin, 21 miles southwest of Provo. In January 2005, he decided to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon, mainly for self-defense.

“I’m not going to hide in the corner of a school and mall and wait for the shooting to stop,” he said.

When Jensen bought a Glock and the dealer threw in an external hip holster, he began researching the idea of carrying the gun in public and came upon OpenCarry.org.

Its website, run by two Virginia gun enthusiasts, claims 4,000 members nationwide. It summarizes the varying laws in each state that permit or forbid the practice. People everywhere have the right to prohibit weapons from their property, and firearms are often banned in government buildings such as courthouses.

According to an analysis by Legal Community Against Violence, a gun control group in San Francisco that tracks gun laws, at least eight states largely ban the practice, including Iowa and New Jersey. Those that allow it have different restrictions: In California, people can openly carry only unloaded guns.

Utah has no law prohibiting anyone from carrying a gun in public, as long as it is two steps from firing — for example, the weapon may have a loaded clip but must be uncocked, with no bullets in the chamber. Those who obtain a concealed-weapons permit in Utah don’t have that restriction. Also, youths under 18 can carry a gun openly with parental approval and a supervising adult in close proximity.

Most of the time people don’t notice Jensen’s gun. That’s not uncommon, said John Pierce, a law student and computer consultant in Virginia who is a co-founder of OpenCarry.org.

“People are carrying pagers, BlackBerrys, cellphones,” Pierce said. “They see a black lump on your belt and their eyes slide off.”

Sometimes the reactions are comical. Bill White, a 24-year-old graduate student in ancient languages at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wears his Colt pistol out in the open when he goes to his local Starbucks. Earlier this month a tourist from California spotted him and snapped a photo on his cellphone.

“He said it would prove he was in the Wild West,” White recalled.

But there are times when the response is more severe. Deveraux has been stopped several times by police, most memorably in December when he was walking around his neighborhood.

An officer pulled up and pointed his gun at Deveraux, warning he would shoot to kill. In the end, eight officers arrived, cuffed Deveraux and took his gun before Deveraux convinced them they had no legal reason to detain him.

Deveraux saw the incident as not giving ground on his rights. “I’m proud that happened,” he said.

Cases like this are talked about during regular gatherings of those who favor open carry. At a Sweet Tomatoes restaurant in the Salt Lake City suburb of Sandy, more than 40 civilians with guns strapped to their hips took over a corner of the restaurant, eating pasta and boisterously sharing stories.

Hassles with law enforcement were a badge of honor for some.

Travis White, 19, who has ear and chin piercings, congratulated Brandon Trask, 21, on carrying openly for the first time that night. “Just wait until you get confronted by a cop,” White said. “It’ll make you feel brave.”

Having pistols strapped around their waists made Shel Anderson, 67, and his wife, Kaye, 63, feel more secure. Longtime recreational shooters, they began to carry their pistols openly after a spate of home-invasion robberies in their neighborhood. The firearms can serve as a warning to predators, they said.

“I decided I want to have as much of an advantage as I can have in this day and age,” said Kaye Anderson, a retired schoolteacher.

Nearby, Scott Thompson picked over the remains of a salad, his Springfield Armory XD-35 sitting snugly in his hip holster.

The gangly graphics designer grew up in a home without guns and didn’t think of owning one until he started dating a woman — now his wife — who lived in a rough neighborhood. One night last year, a youth had his head beaten in with a pipe outside her bedroom window. The next day, Thompson got a concealed-weapons permit.

Thompson found out about open carry last month while reading gun sites. He’s become a convert. He likes the statement it makes.

Glancing around the restaurant, as armed families like the Jensens dined with men in cowboy hats and professionals like himself, Thompson smiled.

“I love this,” he said. “I want people to be aware that crazy people are not the only ones with guns. Normal people carry them.”

The Jensens’ daughter, Sierra, and newborn son, Tyler, began to get restless, so the couple bundled up the children and pulled the manager of the restaurant aside to thank her for hosting them.

A patron appeared at Jensen’s side and began to berate him. “What you guys are doing here is completely unacceptable,” he said. “There are children here.”

Jensen said that everyone in the restaurant had a legal right to carry. The man didn’t back down and the Jensens left.

Days later, Jensen was still thinking about the reaction and the man’s belief that guns are unsafe.

“People can feel that way and it doesn’t bother me,” he said. “If they have irrational fears, that’s fine.”

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CHICAGO (Reuters) - A former Chicago police officer charged with being part of a ring that falsely arrested and stole from drug dealers has detailed how the operation led to a plot to kill two colleagues, according to interview excerpts released on Friday.

The scandal in the elite Special Operations Section helped lead to a change in the Chicago police department with the appointment of a new superintendent, former FBI agent Jody Weis.

In what was described as his first interview on the matter, FBI informant Keith Herrera told CBS’ “60 Minutes” that pressure to get drug dealers and their guns off the streets led first to cutting corners and then to crime.

“Creative writing was a certain term that bosses used to make sure that the job got done,” Herrera, referring to fabrications on police reports, said in a program to be aired on Sunday.

“I didn’t just pick up a pen and just learn how to (lie). Bosses, guys that I work with who were older than I was … It’s taught to you.”

CBS released portions of the program in advance.

As an example, Herrera said, a drug suspect might be listed in a report as refusing to surrender his gun even if he had dropped the weapon.

“Do you want that guy … that just shot somebody to not go to jail because he threw the gun? Or do you want him to go to jail because he never let the gun out of his hand?” Herrera said. “I know what I’ve got to do.”

He said some officers obey the rules but “this isn’t Podunk, Iowa. This is the city of Chicago … You’ve got to do a job.”

Herrera and six other former members of the Special Operations Section were charged in 2006 with robbery, kidnapping and other crimes. All have pleaded not guilty.

Herrera said he began stealing from people he arrested but decided to go to the FBI after the group’s leader proposed killing two colleagues who were threatening to testify against him.

He said the ring leader, who has been charged with plotting a murder for hire, told him in a conversation he recorded for the FBI that there would be a “paint job” and if it was done right “we’d never have to paint again.”

Weis, also interviewed on the program, said there was probably an atmosphere of breaking the law so the elite unit could cite progress and accomplishment.

“They lost their way and it saddens me,” he said. “This is horrific in my eyes.”

CBS said Chicago Mayor Richard Daley acknowledged in an interview to be aired on Sunday’s program that the scandal tainted the department but most officers were not involved.

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