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Ferguson: Burned Buildings, 61 Arrests In Wake Of Grand Jury Decision

Ferguson: Burned Buildings, 61 Arrests In Wake Of Grand Jury Decision

By James Queally, Cathleen Decker, Lauren Raab and Matt Pearce, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

FERGUSON, Mo. — At least a dozen buildings were burned and 61 people arrested during a night of violence and chaos in Ferguson, Mo., that followed a grand jury’s decision not to indict a white police officer in the killing of an unarmed black man, police said early Tuesday.

St. Louis County Police Department officials said those arrested could face charges of arson, burglary, possession of stolen property, unlawful possession of a firearm, and unlawful assembly. Only nine of those taken into custody were from Ferguson, authorities said.

During an early morning news conference held while flames still rose from some cars and buildings in Ferguson, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said Monday night’s unrest exceeded what happened in the days after Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown on Aug. 9.

Belmar told a news briefing that he heard about 150 gunshots during the night.
“I’m disappointed in this evening. … I didn’t see a lot of peaceful protests out there tonight,” he said.

Police were pelted with rocks and batteries as soon as the St. Louis County grand jury’s decision was announced, he said. Two police cars were set afire and “melted” on West Florissant Avenue, the scene of many protests, and at least a dozen buildings were torched, he said.

As day began to break, police still had no accurate count of the damage or the losses.

“What I’ve seen tonight is probably much worse than the worst night we had in August,” Belmar said. “There’s not a lot left” on a section of West Florissant ravaged by arson and looting.

But there was no loss of life, he said, and no serious injuries among police or protesters have been reported. “The good news is that we have not fired a shot,” Belmar said of law enforcement.

Missouri Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson lauded law enforcement’s restraint. “The officers did a great job tonight,” he told reporters. “They showed great character.”

Like Belmar, Johnson said the night’s violence dismayed him: “Our community has got to take some responsibility for what happened tonight. … We talk about peaceful protests, and that did not happen tonight.”

Belmar confirmed that an officer in University City, another St. Louis suburb, had been wounded by gunfire Monday night, but he said that “as far as I know, that is totally unrelated to events here in Ferguson.”

St. Louis County police said the officer was hit in the arm and would be OK.

Belmar said he looked forward to getting more National Guard troops in the community, as Gov. Jay Nixon ordered earlier in the evening, but he defended police preparedness.

“I don’t think we were underprepared,” he said, adding, “I don’t think we can prevent folks who are really intent on destroying a community.”

“I didn’t foresee an evening like this,” he said. “I’ll be honest with you.”

(Queally reported from Ferguson, Pearce from St. Louis and Decker and Raab from Los Angeles. Staff writer Connie Stewart contributed to this report.)

TNS Photo/Armando Sanchez/Chicago Tribune

China Accuses U.S. Of ‘Hypocrisy’ As Hacking Row Escalates

China Accuses U.S. Of ‘Hypocrisy’ As Hacking Row Escalates

Beijing (AFP) – Beijing summoned the U.S. ambassador and accused Washington of double standards Tuesday as a diplomatic row escalated over the unprecedented indictment of five Chinese military officers for cyber-espionage.

The world’s top two economies have long been at loggerheads over hacking and China’s defense ministry denounced Washington’s allegations as “a pure fabrication by the U.S., a move to mislead the public based on ulterior motives.”

“From ‘WikiLeaks’ to the ‘Snowden’ case, U.S. hypocrisy and double standards regarding the issue of cyber-security have long been abundantly clear,” the ministry said in a statement on its website.

China also summoned U.S. ambassador Max Baucus to lodge a “solemn representation” over the indictment, suspended cooperation with the U.S. on cyber-security issues and banned the use of Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system on all new government computers.

Beijing’s furious response came one day after the U.S. charged five members of a shadowy Chinese military unit with allegedly hacking U.S. companies for trade secrets.

In the first-ever prosecution of state actors over cyber-espionage, a federal grand jury indicted the five on charges they broke into U.S. computers to benefit Chinese state-owned companies, leading to job losses in the U.S. in the steel, solar and other industries.

Cyber-spying has long been a major sticking point in relations but Washington’s move marked a major escalation in the dispute.

Analysts said the U.S. was unlikely to be able to put the men on trial but the indictments were an attempt to apply public pressure on China over the issue.

U.S. prosecutors said the five officers belonged to Unit 61398 of the People’s Liberation Army.

A report last year by U.S. security firm Mandiant said the unit had thousands of workers operating from a nondescript, 12-story building on the outskirts of Shanghai to pilfer intellectual property and government secrets.

The grand jury indicted each of the five on 31 counts, which each carry up to 15 years in prison.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called on China to hand over the men for trial in Pittsburgh and said the United States would use “all the means that are available to us” should it refuse.

President Barack Obama’s administration “will not tolerate actions by any nation that seek to illegally sabotage American companies and undermine the integrity of fair competition”, Holder told reporters.

China’s foreign ministry rejected the U.S. indictment as “absurd” and suspended the activities of a bilateral cyber working group.

Its formation was announced last year by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, but analysts said there had been little progress on the issue and Washington had probably decided to change tack.

“I think the U.S., they probably realized they’re not going to get any cooperation from the Chinese, so they wanted to take things into their own hands,” Hoo Tiang Boon, a China expert at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told AFP.

The fact that the case was the first of its kind made Beijing’s reaction difficult to anticipate, he said.

But he noted: “The U.S. has been frustrated with the Chinese for quite some time, especially over cyber-security.”

“It really sends a message to the Chinese to say, ‘Look, we can actually identify the actual individuals.’

“It’s a pretty calibrated move, because it basically means that these five individuals, they can’t travel anywhere around the world to places where there are extradition treaties with the United States,” he added.

China itself regularly seeks to use legalistic routes to pursue its interests, as in its proclamation of a so-called “nine-dash line” to justify its territorial claims over much of the South China Sea.

James Brown, a military fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, said that by trying to move the cyber-espionage debate into the legal realm, the U.S. was taking a “taking a page out of China’s playbook.”

Beijing has in the past accused the U.S. of hypocrisy on cyber-spying and foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Tuesday: “It is the U.S. who has launched cyber-surveillance and wire-tapping against individuals, companies and institutions of many countries around the world. China is a victim of this.”

Leaks by former government contractor Edward Snowden have alleged widespread U.S. snooping in China including into telecom giant Huawei — which has itself been the object of security allegations.

Xinhua cited data from an official Chinese network centre as showing that from mid-March to mid-May, “a total of 2,077 Trojan horse networks or botnet servers in the US directly controlled 1.18 million host computers in China.”

Hoo said Beijing and Washington see cyber-espionage differently.

“I think all along the Obama administration has been trying to demonstrate that spying for national security purposes is fair game,” he told AFP. “But if you do it for commercial interests, that’s a different story altogether: that’s intellectual property theft.”

©afp.com / Saul Loeb

Rep. Michael Grimm Is Indicted On Fraud Charges, Says He’s ‘Moral Man’

Rep. Michael Grimm Is Indicted On Fraud Charges, Says He’s ‘Moral Man’

By Michael A. Memoli and Richard A. Serrano, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Even as Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) faced charges of defrauding the federal government and pleaded not guilty Monday, he vowed to seek re-election.

Grimm was charged with fraudulently underreporting more than $1 million in sales and wages at a Manhattan fast-food restaurant he once co-owned and operated.

The 20-count indictment unsealed at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn included five counts of mail fraud, five counts of wire fraud, three of aiding and assigning in the preparation of false tax returns, two of perjury, and one each of employing undocumented workers, engaging in health care fraud, conspiring to defraud the U.S., impeding the Internal Revenue Service and obstructing an official proceeding.

The Staten Island Republican, who has called himself the victim of a political witch hunt, surrendered Monday. After entering a plea, he was released on $400,000 bond.

In a statement, Grimm referred to his previous roles as a Marine and an FBI agent before his 2010 election to Congress and promised not to “abandon my post.”

“I know who I am and I know what I’ve done for this country,” he said. “I know I’m a moral man, a man of integrity. I also know that I have a lot more service and leadership to provide this country. And that’s exactly what I intend to do.”

But in a letter to House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-OH), on Monday evening, Grimm, who is also an attorney and accountant, said he would give up his seat on the House Financial Services Committee.

Loretta Lynch, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, said Grimm, 44, “made the choice to go from upholding the law to breaking it. In so doing, he turned his back on every oath he had ever taken.”

FBI Assistant Director George Venizelos said that although Grimm “billed himself as a patriot and an American hero,” he was in fact “anything but an upstanding citizen.”

“As a former FBI agent, Rep. Grimm should understand the motto fidelity, bravery and integrity. Yet he broke our credo at nearly every turn,” Venizelos said. “In this 20-count indictment, Rep. Grimm honored a new motto: fraud, perjury and obstruction.”

The lawmaker has been the subject of a federal investigation for nearly two years, one that began as a probe of an alleged “donor swapping” scheme, in which one candidate’s supporters donate money to other candidates, who then give money back to the original candidate in order to skirt limits on individual contributions.

He garnered national attention in January for threatening to throw a New York TV reporter off a Capitol balcony for asking about the probe.

At the heart of the indictment are allegations that from 2007 to 2010 Grimm personally oversaw the day-to-day operations of the Upper East Side restaurant Healthalicious and “paid a significant portion of employees’ wages in cash.”

Many employees received all or half of their pay in cash, often in envelopes at the end of each week, prosecutors said. Then, according to the indictment, Grimm underreported their wages to the IRS. By creating an “off-the-books” pay scheme, he “caused a number of false filings to occur” with the IRS, the indictment alleged.

Grimm’s activities came to light after two former Healthalicious employees filed a federal lawsuit in New York contending that he owed them back wages and overtime pay.

In a deposition in that suit, Grimm allegedly lied under oath when he contended that the restaurant’s “back office” handled payroll and that he was simply the one “handing out the envelopes.”

He maintained that employees who did not have bank accounts were given cash envelopes as a favor so they could avoid high check-cashing fees at financial institutions.

Grimm also denied that he discussed business matters in emails. “Not really,” he said under oath. “Almost everything was done on the phone or in person. I wasn’t big on email then.”

But according to the indictment, Grimm sent numerous emails regarding his payroll records, including one in April 2010 that discussed putting “envelopes and paychecks in a bag.”

Prosecutors say Grimm sold his interest in the restaurant before taking office.

If convicted, Grimm could face a prison sentence ranging from six months for hiring the undocumented workers to 20 years for each of the mail and wire fraud charges.

Lynch said the investigation was continuing.

Grimm will probably face pressure to surrender his seat. The House Republican leadership discussed his situation at a closed-door meeting Monday evening, but no formal statement was expected until Tuesday. Most lawmakers were still returning to the capital after a two-week spring recess.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report, which handicaps congressional races, changed its rating of Grimm’s district from “Lean Republican” to “Lean Democrat” shortly after he surrendered to authorities.

Portrait via Wikimedia Commons