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Officer Scott Masino began CPR even though he knew his friend was dead. Masino tried in vain to push breath into the chest of fellow cop Marc Atkinson, to get his heart to beat after it had been stopped by the gunshots.
Atkinson was killed in an ambush on March 26. While pursuing three drug suspects in his squad car, he rounded a corner only to find he was looking down the barrel of a .357. Two bullets struck Atkinson in the head.
Atkinson's murder ripped through the city. The first shooting of a Phoenix police officer since 1991 blared from the evening news and headlines for weeks. Complete strangers left flowers and thank-you notes at the grimy street corner where Atkinson was killed. For days, people kept a vigil over the spot as if awaiting a visitation.
Masino had worked with Atkinson to take down one of Phoenix's most violent street gangs, the West Side City Crips, without injury. Now brazen drug peddlers had murdered Atkinson.
Masino and another officer were the first on the shooting scene at 30th Avenue and Thomas Road. Masino talks about the details of Atkinson's death for the first time to New Times.
Masino is usually calm on calls, he says. He kept his voice steady even as he described the bullet hole in the windshield of Atkinson's cruiser. But when he looked inside the squad car and saw Atkinson, he screamed for the fire department's paramedics to hurry to the scene.
The dispatcher's voice came to Masino then, asking him how Atkinson was. Masino recalls how he wrestled with a proper response.
"You can't say he's dead," Masino says. "You can't say he doesn't look good. You can't say he was shot twice in the head. There are officers on the way, you don't want them to hear it, they're already pumped up with adrenaline from an officer-needs-assistance call. The media are on the way, they've got their scanners on. Overhead, there was a media chopper, you know they're broadcasting live, and you just think, he's got a family, and you don't want them to hear it this way. So I just said, 'We need fire here now.'
"It's one of those moments you never want to go through again," he says after a beat.
But gang and drug-related violence are not uncommon events in Phoenix anymore. Masino has confronted this reality firsthand.
A month before Atkinson's death, the Maryvale cop had faced the newest evolution in gang tactics: Instead of occupying street corners in their neighborhood, the West Side City Crips took over an entire condominium complex and nearby apartment units; more alarming than the gang's unusual turf claim was West Side City's willingness to openly challenge and physically threaten law enforcement.
Gang violence, once reserved for rivals or those unlucky enough to get caught in a drive-by, now targeted the police themselves.
Although Atkinson's death was not gang-related, his shooting forced Masino to acknowledge the danger both officers confronted when they went after the West Side City Crips.
"This [gang violence] has been going on a long time," Masino says. "People don't realize it, but this isn't new. It's just reached the point where the bad guys are hurting the good guys now."
Twenty days after Atkinson's death, Masino's viewpoint on gang violence was underscored when Officer James Snedigar, a member of Chandler's SWAT team, was killed. Snedigar had charged a room where the suspects in a heist of a jewelry store had holed up; two were documented members of the New Mexican Mafia, a powerful and violent gang. Police say it was one of the gangsters who fired the SKS rifle that ended Snedigar's life. People from all over the Valley mourned again.
There are civilian casualties as well. In February, the media spotlight blazed on south Phoenix, near 24th Street and Broadway, where five neighbors left their homes in body bags in less than 72 hours. Three others, including a 2-year-old girl, were wounded in the two shootings, which New Times ("Life and Death in a Crackhouse," March 18, and "Larry Jack's Second Shot," March 25) linked to gangs.
Although the most grisly episodes like the killing of the police officers and the carnage in south Phoenix are trumpeted in the press, gang-related violence has proliferated in the Valley in the dark. Gang activity goes largely unreported. Following police recommendations, the press fails to accurately identify gangs.
A community has to identify its problems before it can fix them, and in the absence of civic attention, gangs have become an epidemic.
State and municipal authorities say they have documented about 600 street gangs in the Valley, more than 300 of them in Phoenix alone. They say the majority of these gangs do not pose immediate threats, but that anywhere from two to four dozen of them are "hard core" and dangerous.
While gang violence is down from its peak in 1992 and 1993, the police say gang membership is on the rise. The most dangerous of these gangs deal drugs, run protection rackets and enforce their will with intimidation, assault and murder.
In interviews with New Times, police officers and residents of the city's most battered neighborhoods have stepped forward to name the struggle they face on a daily basis. Today in metropolitan Phoenix, gangs control entire neighborhoods and apartment complexes. Alleys and courtyards have been turned into open-air drug markets, operating around the clock. Market share is protected with 9 mms and shotguns. Mothers instruct their children to sleep on the floor for fear of flying bullets.
"The violence knows no boundaries. It's not any section of town. It's everywhere now," Masino says.
Gangs even occupy the sedate suburbs of Scottsdale and Mesa. Gang-related violence has erupted in such unlikely places as the upscale Paradise Valley Mall.
Not all gangs are dangerous crack dealers. Not all gangs are homicidal. Some, it could be said, are part of the neighborhood social fabric.
And obviously, gangs are less prevalent in the places where the median income rises and private security guards patrol.
The worst of the gangs are largely the problem of the poor.
The neighborhoods least equipped to confront the power of these thugs endure the worst of it. And in the silence from the city's leaders and the press, the poor, and the street cops who protect them, are left on their own.
Certain gangs have grown so arrogant that they have ordered the police off their turf--and some police officers have ceded the territory as behind enemy lines.
That was the case in the Woodmar condominium complex, the Maryvale neighborhood in the grip of the West Side City Crips, listed by the police as one of the three most dangerous criminal street gangs in the city.
Then Scott Masino joined with the residents and owners in Woodmar and decided it was time to draw a line of their own. After an intense community effort, the police made nearly 30 arrests in February, smashing the Crips' control of the place and ending years of violence.
Masino served as the police point man in the Woodmar reclamation. He spent many hours alone with the gang-bangers at a time when there was a standing order for cops to enter the complex only in groups. He documented the behavior and made the IDs that would allow the February arrests to stand up in court.
But Marc Atkinson's murder was devastating for Masino. It made him reflect on his own actions at Woodmar. Would he do it again?
"After what happened to Marc, I'd have to seriously consider whether I'd do it again," he says. "My wife wouldn't want to hear this, but I don't know if I'd take the chances I did. After Marc, I don't think I'd do it that way again."
Still, there weren't many other options.
"We didn't have any other ideas, because we'd tried everything else," Masino says. "We tried sweeps, we tried arrests, we tried coming in groups--none of it worked."
This time was different. This time, the raid worked.
Admittedly, Woodmar still isn't perfect, but for the first time in years, kids can play outside without fear of getting shot. Families congregate on the lawns. In Woodmar, the residents have taken back their homes. They won a battle in a war most people don't even realize is being waged.
Lieutenant Chris Gentis watched for several years as the Woodmar IV townhomes at 43rd Avenue and Thomas sank further and further into the gutter. An affable, 26-year veteran of the force, he'd worked his way up the departmental food chain from the street. He can remember when Maryvale was a nice place to live.
Woodmar, a cluster of 150 condos, is adjacent to the Pine Ridge Apartments, which number about 300.
About 500 families make their homes here--including roughly 1,000 school-age children.
But the kids didn't play outside at Woodmar. People stayed indoors and kept their heads down and their mouths shut.
Woodmar belonged to the West Side City Crips. Their names weren't on any titles, but for years, there was no question who really owned the place. They bullied residents, utility workers, handymen, the sheriff's posse and the cops.
The West Side City Crips is a loose affiliation of street gangs in west Phoenix that sells drugs--mainly crack. Named one of the three most powerful gangs in Phoenix by the police, the Crips have been around for years, in one incarnation or another.
Police estimate their numbers at 300 to 400 members. There is no single leader of West Side and little in the way of organization. The gang-banger with the most status commands respect from other gang-bangers, but the hierarchy shifts constantly, as West Siders go to jail, drop out and get killed.
"Even if we took the 'leaders' down, somebody there would step up to take his place," says Detective David Mendoza, an officer with Phoenix's gang unit. Mendoza, along with his partner, Terry Boe, was one of the officers recruited by Gentis and Masino to help out with the Woodmar investigation. "It's just a part of life. You take one out, another one takes his place."
The West Siders are what the police call a "profit-based" gang as opposed to a "boundary-based" gang--they will go wherever the drug sales take them, and they will use violence and murder to protect their business. They moved north to Woodmar about four years ago when police began cracking down on their traditional haunts around Buckeye Road. Like pushing on a balloon, the pressure caused them to emerge elsewhere.
"Over the years, we've targeted West Side City mainly down on Buckeye. As a result, they decided to leave. They took the path of least resistance and came up here," Mendoza says.
Woodmar was the perfect new home for them.
"The gangs have learned that the best way to sell drugs is to take over one of these condominium complexes," Gentis says.
The police have been seeing this tactic more and more, Gentis says. Condo complexes are especially vulnerable to gang control, he explains, because they have a lot of what the gangs want: cover from the street, lots of places to stash drugs and money, and lots of nooks and crannies to elude the cops.
Many complexes on the west side of Phoenix also lack organization, Gentis adds. There are about 100 owners of the 150 condos at Woodmar. Only 5 percent of them live on the property. The remaining residences were rented out to whoever would take them. Most owners were unaware of what was happening at Woodmar, or they just didn't care.
Unlike an apartment complex, there was no central control. And the gangs capitalized on that. West Side City moved into the vacuum and became the authority.
Crack Alley was the center of their enterprise: a blocklong, full-time recreational pharmacy, helping addicts from all over the Valley drain the life from their bodies one hit at a time. The Crips took over the alley, which runs between Woodmar and the Pine Ridge Apartments, as a kind of drive-through for drugs. The alley was a clear shot from 43rd Avenue; traffic easily slid in and out. The alley was also their gambling parlor; there was always at least one craps game going.
The dealers did their walk-up business on the main sidewalk in the complex. The kids at Woodmar named it Crack Walk.
There was serious money to be made at Woodmar. A dealer at the townhomes could take in $200 to $700 a night.
"Dookie [the gang name of Andrew Blake] couldn't read or write, but he could count real well," Mendoza says. "He was saving up to buy a HUD home, he told us."
(Blake was in custody at the time of this writing and could not be reached for comment.)
At any hour of the day or night, there was someone waiting to feed the need: 30 to 50 dealers worked the area at a time. Residents remember not being able to pass by sidewalks clogged by pushers and their clients during the day; at night, they were kept awake by the constant sound of blaring stereos and traffic from the alley.
"There was a lot of competition; whoever got there first would get the sale. You'd have guys running up to buyers," Mendoza says. One dealer even pulled a gun on an undercover agent when he bought from another dealer, he remembers.
West Side City didn't like anyone else working their territory, and they staked their claims with violence.
Residents learned to live with the sound of nightly gunfire. The police answered repeated calls for help every day--2,670 total for the year, all in a half-mile square.
Last year's police stats in the Woodmar area qualify as a crime wave: three homicides, one sexual assault, 35 aggravated assaults, 22 robberies, 269 property crimes and 63 drug crimes.
The West Side City Crips didn't like the police any more than competition. They threatened any cops who came on the property. The message was clear: Keep out.
"They loved pushing the blues," Mendoza explains. "They don't respect the guy in the blue uniform. They would surround a patrol car to see if they could get the guys to leave. It was like a game to them, to see how far they could push the blues."
The harassment was constant. When police officers would go into the complex on a call, 15 to 20 Crips would surround them, sometimes heckling and jeering, other times just staring them down. And every cop who went to Woodmar knew the Crips were armed.
As a result of the threats and intimidation, there was a standing order at the Maryvale precinct that no cop was to go into Woodmar without at least two other officers.
The three-officer policy in Woodmar and Pine Ridge was standard practice off and on for the past decade, Gentis says. For the past three years, he says, it was in effect all the time.
About a year ago, Gentis faced the troubles at Woodmar firsthand. While driving through the complex in an unmarked car, he ran the plate of a drug buyer in Crack Alley. The car was stolen. Gentis took off down the alley after him. The dealers, who resented a cop scaring off a customer, began throwing rocks at Gentis as he drove past.
After that, Gentis went to his commander, and made his case for a full-time officer to fix Woodmar. "Our doors were being stormed, and I told my boss, if we just had enough time, we can get this done," he says.
So Gentis pulled Masino off the Maryvale bike squad, juggled his budget a bit, and made Masino the Special Assignment Officer for Woodmar.
In the phrasing of the police reports, Masino was "tasked with attempting to solve the problem at hand."
"The patrol guys didn't have the time to do this," Masino says. "Gentis gave me the time. They said, 'You stay out there all night if you have to. Don't worry about the patrol, don't worry about the calls.'"
In October of last year, Masino went into Woodmar alone.
Linda Tye had already seen too much brutality when she moved to Woodmar three years ago.
Tye, a mother and grandmother, moved from Avondale to care for her sister's children after her sister died in a gang drive-by in south Phoenix. "She had a last chance to straighten up, and God took her because she wasn't going to use that chance," Tye recalls. "She was so deep into the drugs, she was selling food stamps to buy drugs."
Tye's first indication that something was different at her new home came when her sister's kids told her not to turn on the porch light, Tye recalls. "They said, 'The men don't want [any] lights because that's the Crack Walk,'" she recalls.
"I was so scared. You couldn't walk down the sidewalks because of all the people standing around selling drugs," Tye remembers, sitting on a chair outside her unit. A small child watches her through the wrought iron of the screen door. "Every time you'd go by, it'd be, 'Whatcha need? You need? Whatcha got?'"
Tye soon learned the rules of survival at Woodmar.
Kids weren't allowed outside. Families stayed indoors, with the blinds drawn and the doors locked. People kept their heads down and their mouths shut.
The gang members weren't shy about keeping the residents informed when they needed to shoot down a rival dealer. "They'd tell you when they was about to start shooting," Tye says. "They'd come by and say, 'Get your kids in the house.'"
Woodmar was the Crips' place of business more than their home. Most of the dealers did not live there--they commuted to work like a lawyer to a downtown firm.
"They came in cabs, the dealers, just like they were coming to work. They'd drive up in nice suits," Tye says.
Tye knew them all by their street names: Melly Mel, Big D, Dookie, 10th Avenue, Red Dog.
She could handle the guys who just smoked weed, she remarks. What she couldn't stomach were the guys who smoked crack and sherm--cigarettes dipped in embalming fluid. "The kids would always pick the vials up off the ground," Tye says.
Linda Tye saw the butchery from her front door. She witnessed two shootings in 1998--one fatal.
"Last summer was the worst," she says, shaking her head sadly. "They really ran the place then."
The first shooting victim was a dealer, the leading occupation in Woodmar.
As night began to fall one evening last summer, Tye's daughter came in the house. "Mama, [someone] got shot," she said.
Tye looked out her front door and saw the familiar scattering of police and paramedics, milling around the door of a nearby unit. Then she saw the body, not 30 feet from her condo.
The dealer was lying on his back, his feet propped against the wall. "It was like he just had his feet up, so he could take a nap," Tye says. "I stayed out there until 2 or 3 in the morning, watching the paramedics take him away."
The second time, Tye remembers the blood. That was when "Lil' Larry"--Larry McBeth, a competitor of the Crips--pushed his luck a little too far.
At the center of Crack Walk was what the cops called the Million-Dollar Spot. That's where McBeth got shot.
McBeth was allowed to operate inside Woodmar even though he wasn't in the gang. In fact, he was a member of the Bloods, the Crips' longtime rivals. But he had family on the West Side, and that was close enough.
For a while, anyway. In a dispute with West Side City last August, McBeth was shot seven times with a semiautomatic handgun.
McBeth told the police who investigated that his name was Larry Jones, and that he'd been shot during a craps game for no apparent reason. The police arrested a West Side City member identified by witnesses at the scene.
Tye heard the shots, but wouldn't look outside until after it was over.
"[H]e got shot right under my stairwell," Tye recalls. "I heard shots, and I wasn't going to come out. I heard shots all the time. But then I looked around outside, and I saw his shoes and his pager on the ground, and a trail of blood."
She followed the trail to the door of Larry's apartment, which is where the paramedics found him. They took him to the hospital.
"So much blood," Tye says.
McBeth left the hospital before the police could pick him up, Lieutenant Gentis recalls. Gentis adds that they found him just a few days later, wearing a bulletproof vest over his bandages, carrying a pistol and 50 rocks of crack cocaine.
(McBeth is now in prison, serving a five-year sentence for drug sales.)
Linda Lloyd is one of the few Woodmar residents who's been around longer than Linda Tye. A disabled full-time mom, she's been at Woodmar for seven years. When she came back to Phoenix from Oakland, she thought she was leaving the gang wars behind.
She didn't. Lloyd's unit is directly across the common area from Crack Walk. Her rental turned out to be on the front row for the Crips' activity.
"I've seen them come and go, either walking out or being carried out. . . . I would tell them, 'Why are you doing this? Why are you shooting and killing each other?' I saw enough of that in Oakland."
For years, Lloyd made her son Jeremiah sleep on the living-room floor.
"They would be shooting out by his window," she says. "I tell you, the Lord's been watching over us, because a bullet doesn't have any name on it."
Two years ago, Lloyd saw a girl shot and killed right outside her condo.
"I was just back from the store, and I walked right by her," she says in a matter-of-fact tone. The girl was leaning up against her house, and Lloyd could see her shadow from a window inside.
"Then I saw the shadow of a man and saw him pull out a gun and shoot her. Just bang-bang, shot her twice," she says.
She never went to the police. She's not sure if the shooter was ever caught.
Patti Hussey was trying to do the right thing. She worked hard to make Woodmar a decent place to live. But her job put her at odds with West Side City, which liked Woodmar just the way it was.
Hussey was brought in as complex manager in 1995. Her company specializes in turning around what she politely refers to as "distressed property." But she'd never seen anything as bad as Woodmar.
On a recent tour of the place, Hussey talks about the gang problems in the manner of an aggrieved schoolmarm. She still sounds shocked at some of what she saw.
There were beer bottles strewn around the common areas every morning. In the winter, the gangs would tear the plywood off boarded-up units and build bonfires. The smell of urine was so strong you couldn't bear to walk through some stairwells, Hussey says. Here and there, piles of human feces littered the sidewalks. The gang members set palm trees on fire, shot guns into the air, "stupid stuff like that," Hussey says.
"I'd ask what was going on, and they said they were having a party for one of their homies," Hussey says in disbelief. "Excuse me, that is just not acceptable."
Hussey couldn't keep the pool open. "They would have urinating contests," she says. "They would just circle around the pool and pee into it and throw beer bottles into it. We couldn't buy enough chemicals to keep it clean."
Near the main courtyard, the gangs claimed a vacant unit for their own. They filled its patio with trash, broke the door in and slept there when the weather turned cold. When Hussey did find a tenant, nothing changed. They would still come in as if they owned the place. "They just intimidated her to the point where she moved out."
Most tenants couldn't live with the problems.
"As it got worse, it just got more and more abandoned," Hussey says--which was the way the gang preferred it.
"All of these places were vacant," she says, indicating condos at key points around the common areas. "No one was here. Who was going to bug them?"
Hussey even tried scolding the gang members and druggies, with predictable results. "I'd tell them to go away, and they'd say, 'Oh sure, Ms. Patti.'"
Last Christmas, Hussey came as close as she wanted to a confrontation with the gangs. She was dropping off a paycheck to one of the complex's maintenance workers, who rented a second-floor apartment in Woodmar. "I usually looked before I went into one of the stairwells, but I just started down the stairs before I realized I was walking right in the middle of a drug deal."
Six men surrounded her and would not let her pass. Hussey kept her eyes fixed straight forward and said, "Excuse me." Still, nobody moved. She reached up and tentatively tapped the man in front of her on the shoulder. "Then he nodded--someone must have nodded to him--and he let me by," she says.
Hussey got in her car and drove away. She stopped down the street and took a moment. "I just kept thinking, I'm a single mom, I have two kids, I need to go home tonight. I just said, 'Thank you, God, I owe you one.' I've looked at people, and if they have even the slight spark of life in their eyes, I'm not afraid to talk to them. But there are people whose eyes are just dead, you know? And these guys were like that. It just shakes you, because there are people like that out there."
To most people at Woodmar, the West Side City Crips were like a rabid beast parked right outside the door; residents shied away, tried to walk around it.
But to David Roland--a.k.a. Wink Dawg, as it reads in his court file and police reports--the Crips were his family.
Roland was a dealer at Woodmar. According to police reports, Roland's been a suspect in assaults, car theft and burglary. Snared for his first felony as an adult in February, he went to jail for the first time for selling crack at Woodmar.
Now 20, he was "born into" the Crips. Roland wasn't initiated with a physical beating, like the members who are "jumped in." The Crips already knew him. He grew up in the West Side neighborhood of 60th Avenue and Encanto Boulevard, and was around members of the Crips every day of his life. The first time anyone asked where he was from, what colors did he "represent," he proudly said he was West Side City.
Roland is short and slight, with soft, almost baby-faced features. His sister and friend joke about his modeling career. But his attitude compensates. He doesn't brag or try to come off harder than he is; he is matter-of-fact about his life in the gang.
Roland started gang-banging hard when he was about 12 years old. His grandmother died, and without her, the family fell apart. He says his parents got into drugs.
"My parents started smoking rock, weed, everything. They couldn't take care of themselves or us. We started to take care of them," he says.
"That's where the gangs come in," Roland adds. "They showed us how to make a little money, showed love for us."
The 12-year-old Roland believed it was the best possible path. He moved into a circle that wanted him, respected him, kept him entertained and put money in his pocket--and most of all, loved him.
He showed his love back. Nobody could insult his colors. He wouldn't allow anyone to talk "crazy shit" about his neighborhood.
"By doing crimes, fighting, you prove you're down for your neighborhood," he says. "If people were talking crazy, saying you weren't down, you don't represent, you got to show them."
He didn't have much else. His family's orbit was disintegrating. His church tried to help, he says, "but the church can't do it forever. The church can't keep a whole family together." School was nothing to him; he mainly went there to mingle, he says.
He got into his first gang fight in seventh grade "with this Mexican dude, Wetback Power [a Hispanic gang]," he says. Roland doesn't even remember what started it. "He said something, I said something, he kicked me, we got into it."
Watching from the sidelines were his homies, as always. "They back me. We got love for each other. If you go somewhere, someone gets on you, they'd be there for you," Roland says.
Roland was first shot at before he turned 15--it became so much a part of his life, he isn't certain when it was. It was sparked by the same thing as the fistfights, only this time, the other gang-bangers came back with guns. A group of Bloods drove by while he was hanging out, looking for vengeance for a fight a few days before. They missed. Roland never took any bullets, although he admits he did some shooting of his own.
Roland was kicked out every semester he was in high school, for offenses ranging from fighting to skipping class. "They'd throw me out for a week or two," he remembers. "Then I'd go back and they'd throw me out again."
He finally dropped out in the 11th grade. He played a little football and basketball on school teams, but that ended when his education did. The gang filled the rest of his life; partying and fighting were his only extracurricular activities.
He began selling in Woodmar two or three years ago. Another West Side City Crip brought him in, and soon he was making up to $400 a night. He bought the cocaine--usually in rock form, but sometimes in powder he'd cook himself--from a small group of suppliers. He'd double the price he paid and sell it; 100 bucks worth of rock was $200 to him.
His customers came from all over the Valley. "I didn't look down on them," he insists. "They was like my boss; they were paying my money. I looked for them."
Roland's buyers weren't limited to the usual stereotypes, either. "Sure, there was people on government checks and stuff," he says. "But I sold to everybody. Sold to doctors, lawyers, white, black, you name it, people from all over town."
It was almost like a regular job. Roland would get up in the morning, get dressed, go to Woodmar, sell some crack, and then party on the proceeds.
Roland was at the center of his own universe: He had money; did what he wanted, when he wanted; he carried cool weapons and was respected and feared; there were always girls hanging around him; and he wore the colors of a group that would kill on his behalf.
"It's addictive," he says. "You got easy, fast money, you get to kick it with your friends all day and all night, you never have to go to work, you can just sit around getting high and getting drunk. Everyone I knew was over there."
Woodmar was their kingdom, Roland says. The cops were a joke. He never tossed rocks at the Phoenix police himself, but he watched as his friends did. Roland joined them in their catcalls and insults when the police would venture out of their cruisers.
"We'd talk crazy shit to them all the time, harass them, call them pigs, po-po [police], motherfucker, all that shit," he says, laughing. "Some of them, they just wouldn't say anything. Some of them would look scared. . . . They'd be going around asking, 'What's your name?' Trying to book us when we hadn't done anything. 'What's your name?' Fuck you, what's your name?"
The Crips had no fear of the police, Roland boasts, because they had the guns and the numbers.
"They was just another gang to us, basically. . . . They had guns, well, we had guns, too," Roland says. "Especially when there was 50 of us and two of them. What were they going to do? Two of them, two guns, and between us we'd have 15 or 20. They can't shoot all of us."
The gang members would even pull their guns and point them at the police after the officers turned their backs, Roland says.
"They was scared, basically. They didn't do anything," he says.
And if there was a raid, the Crips would usually be able to take off. "The way the place was set up, we could always see the cops coming. I ain't going to say we were organized, but we knew what we were doing."
The worst areas of Woodmar were around Crack Walk, toward the back of the property. At the lowest point, about 45 units were vacant. About 20 of those had been abandoned by the owners.
When Hussey came in as manager, the townhomes' board of directors was fractured and bickering over what to do. Some owners of the property were sick and tired of watching their investment turn into a slum.
Paul and Joyce Hamby were two of those owners. They nicknamed Woodmar the War Zone.
The Hambys moved to Phoenix from Irving, Texas, in 1982. Paul switched from contracting to real estate, and they began selling and renting property in the city. They got tangled up in Woodmar in 1993, when Paul began managing a condo for an owner in Montana. "People just wanted out," Paul says, and he picked up their property cheap. Pretty soon, he and his wife owned five units in Woodmar.
They bought into more trouble than they realized. The Crips didn't like outsiders on their turf.
Word got back to Hamby from his tenants: Stay off the property. When Hamby began doing maintenance work on his investments, he started to get threats. Hamby, a minister on the weekends at Black Canyon City First Assembly of God, was told that the "preacher man" should stay clear of Woodmar.
The nickname stuck. One day, a group of kids told him, "Preacher man, preacher man, someone's messing with your van."
Hamby--who is 64--took off running after the guy. He didn't catch him, but he didn't get shot, either.
The Hambys also put themselves in the crosshairs by swearing out trespassing warrants against gang members at Maryvale Justice Court. This gave the police the power to arrest any of the bangers found on the property.
Hamby even tried to stop the traffic through Crack Alley. He put up four different gates to block the exit. The gang-bangers tore them down by ramming stolen cars into them. Once while he was installing the second or third gate, a crackhead walked up to him, he says. "I don't know why you keep coming over here," the addict told Hamby. "We're just going to tear it down tonight."
Joyce believes respect for the clergy kept her husband from getting hurt. Hamby thinks it was the three-iron he carried with him while on the grounds. "Early on, I let them know I wasn't afraid of them," Hamby says.
Joyce's theory is probably closer to the truth. At any rate, someone must have been looking out for Hamby, because a golf club is no match for an automatic weapon.
The Crips didn't threaten just Hamby. They told the Hambys' maintenance workers to stay out. The Salt River Project's utilities workers were afraid to go into Woodmar, Hussey says. City of Phoenix housing inspectors were afraid to go into Woodmar, officials at the housing department say. Even armed guards were afraid to go into the complex.
About two years ago, Hussey recalls, the manager of the private security firm Hussey had hired to patrol called her to his office. He said, "We have a problem," she recalls, and he slid the clip of an automatic handgun, loaded with hollowpoint bullets, across the desk to her. He'd gotten it at Woodmar. While patrolling the grounds, he'd seen a gang-banger firing a pistol in the air. When the kid took off running, he jammed the gun into his pocket, and he must have hit the clip release, the manager said. We quit, he told Hussey.
"We can't handle this," he said.
When Officer Scott Masino started patrolling Woodmar, he had to face the fact that many residents found the real cops to be as little help as the rent-a-cops.
In January 1998, Hussey hired Sheriff Joe Arpaio's citizen posse and some of his deputies to work security at Woodmar.
The gang members threw rocks at posse members and their horses and chased other deputies off the grounds.
After a month of this, the posse members and the deputies quit. On February 5, Hussey says she got a fax from the sheriff's office that said the posse wouldn't be riding in to save Woodmar.
Sheriff's spokesman Dave Trombi maintains that the sheriff's patrols ended because the condo association cut their hours--a claim Hussey laughs at.
"We begged them to stay," she says.
Woodmar residents and owners weren't happy with the Phoenix police, either.
To Linda Tye and Linda Lloyd, it seemed the police didn't want to do anything.
Until last year, police rarely came into the complex, and then they wouldn't spend much time.
Tye was calling Crime Stoppers constantly about the dealers. "They should know my name by now," she jokes. "I got tired of the gunshots, I got tired of them dealing dope."
But nothing happened.
"[The dealers] would just look at me, after they'd talk to the police," Tye says. "They'd look at me like nothing could touch them. They just couldn't be touched.
"[The police] would come in and walk around, and then the drug dealers would just come back."
The Crips would chase off the police, just like they did the posse members. If a cruiser came into the complex, gang members would surround it. More often than not, the patrolmen would hit reverse and leave the area.
The owners of Woodmar were also frustrated in their attempts to get the police's attention.
The Hambys burned up the phone lines to the mayor, the chief of police and even the governor. At one community meeting last year, Joyce Hamby recalls, a cop from the Maryvale precinct offered to give out his number for anyone to call--then added, "Well, maybe I better wait until Joyce leaves the room."
Last year, Paul Hamby saw three patrol cars sitting in the parking lot of a nearby day-care center while he was at Woodmar. He then heard a barrage of gunfire. Not one of the police officers even got out of their cars, he says.
Part of the problem was the fractured ownership of Woodmar itself. The police seemed to find little reason to care about the place if the owners didn't.
"Everyone was pointing fingers," Ken Broyles, the president of the homeowners association at Woodmar, says. "Everyone was blaming everyone else, instead of taking responsibility for themselves. We'd blame the police, they'd come back at us, well, why don't you take better care of the place? We'd go round and round."
Broyles started writing letters. In a 1997 letter, Broyles says that an officer who responded to a tenant's complaint of a break-in asked her why she lived at Woodmar.
Broyles wrote, "[The police] said [they] clean up Woodmar IV, but it doesn't last. We feel the reason it doesn't last, the police want to keep the gangs at Woodmar IV so they know where they are. . . . We are paying our taxes and your wages, but you don't want to help."
He got a letter back from then-chief Dennis Garrett, which, in the time-honored tradition of bureaucracy, said nothing: "The purpose of this letter is to serve as notice and to provide you with knowledge of the criminal activity that is taking place on and around your property. . . . [I]t is to your advantage to come to the board meetings and become actively involved in the future of Woodmar IV townhomes."
Patti Hussey recalls one angry conversation with the former Maryvale precinct commander. He'd told her that some of his officers didn't want to go into Woodmar.
"I told him, 'You have officers that are scared to go in there? Shouldn't that be a red flag?'" she says. "I said, 'I know you have redneck officers on the force; this would be like bonus time for them. Maybe we should call out the National Guard.'
"He said, 'You have a bad attitude.'"
Maryvale Precinct Commander Manny Davila says the police were never scared to enter Woodmar, but he can understand why some people there might say that.
"People get frustrated when their problems aren't being solved, and part of their frustration involves lashing out at the police," he says. "I've been on the force 26 years now, and it's just part of the flak you have to deal with as an officer."
Davila agrees that Woodmar "had been a sore spot for years," but says the owners and residents have to take some responsibility for the conditions there.
"There were numerous reasons why we couldn't work there effectively. Part of the reason was the owners themselves were not unified in their efforts," Davila says.
Still, before Gentis sent Masino into Woodmar, there were a lot of people ready to give up hope.
Scott Masino is a second-generation Phoenix cop. His father was a detective for 20 years; he's wanted to be a cop since he was 5 years old. Masino says his father, in all that time on the force, was never shot at, was never involved in a shooting. In Masino's first nine months on the force, he'd already pulled his gun three times.
"That was when I had to decide, 'Do I really want to do this for 20 more years?'" he says.
In the seven years since, he's been shot at twice, worked 12 homicides, arrested three homicide suspects and seen one friend die. He's also been honored at the White House as a Top Cop by the National Association of Police Organizations for his actions in the Tent City riots in November 1996. With six other Phoenix police officers, Masino stormed the barricades of the inmates rampaging in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's tent jail and rescued trapped jail guards.
Lieutenant Chris Gentis tapped Masino to enter hostile territory again--this time in their own backyard.
At Woodmar, Masino had to win the trust of not only the residents at Woodmar, but the gang-bangers as well.
Masino disagrees with the residents who think the cops gave up on Woodmar.
"There was never really a full investigation before," Masino says. "You've got 150 units with 100 owners here. Dealing with so many different people makes it almost impossible to get things done."
All of the different owners presented legal obstacles for the police as well. "You can't tie the problems to one specific apartment and get an abatement order," Mendoza says.
But even other cops confronted Masino and Gentis and told them they were wasting their time, that Woodmar was a lost cause.
"Nothing was working," Masino says. "The attitude was, 'What are you going to do that's different?' The other officers would say, 'Look, we've already done everything we can there, there's nothing else we can do.' We just said, 'That's wrong. We can do this.'"
Masino felt a responsibility to make a change. He believed the people at Woodmar shouldn't have to live as if under siege.
"If it were my neighborhood, I wouldn't want to live like this. I live in a part of town where if shots were fired, everybody would be shouting for the police to do something. It should be the same here," he explains. "There are a lot of kids here. There are a lot of good people in this place. You can't leave them stranded."
Masino's job was to "find out who the good guys and bad guys were," as he puts it. Undercover officers could make drug buys in Woodmar every day, but it was useless unless they knew who they were buying from. In order to make a case, the police had to learn the names of the dealers and gang members. That meant getting close.
It seems unlikely that Masino--who is white--would be able to win over a group of predominantly black drug dealers while patrolling alone, on foot, in an area other cops didn't want to drive through.
The gang-bangers seemed stunned by the thought themselves.
He would walk through the complex and watch drug deals go down without doing anything but nodding and saying, "Hi."
But more than anything else, Gentis chose Masino for the job because Masino gets along with anybody, it seems, without losing his authority as a cop. If he were a politician, you'd call it charisma. Since he's a police officer, you just think of him as a regular guy--who happens to carry a Glock and a badge.
"It took a very special officer who can speak the lingo and convince them to open up and talk to him," Gentis says.
Masino wasn't supposed to make arrests. He was supposed to watch and pay attention.
"The way it usually works, two cops come in and they ask for back-up, they pull their guns and they hook 'em up [stop and search the suspects], then they leave," Masino explains. "I came in, and I played dumb. They'd do deals right in front of me and I didn't do anything. They thought I was fat, stupid and happy."
It must have worked, because the Crips didn't shoot him. They were curious about "Officer Scott," as everyone called him, though. They began developing theories about him: Competing schools of thought held that he was covered by SWAT, or he was RoboCop, or just congenitally stupid.
"They couldn't believe it when I came in alone," Masino recalls. "First, they told me that I must have snipers watching me--nobody would have come in alone. Then there was this rumor that I was a quick-draw artist. Then they decided I must be on the take. Then a lot of them just figured I was dumb old Officer Scott. They couldn't understand it. They came up with all kinds of stories."
The Crips got so comfortable with Masino they let him videotape them--he turned the tapes over to the drug enforcement bureau.
One suspect he had a hard time photographing was Shane Watson, who would turn away whenever Masino brought out the video camera.
But the lure of new technology drew Watson in. Masino was showing off the digital camera he'd just been issued by the department, which takes instant electronic photos and stores them in its memory.
"He's like, 'That's really cool,'" Masino says. "So I say, 'Stand over there, I'll take your picture.' I even got him to pose twice. The first time he was hamming it up, so the second time, I said, 'Come on, Shane, be serious.'"
(Watson's attorney did not return repeated calls for comment.)
David Roland was the one Crip who didn't trust Officer Scott.
"He's a rat," Roland says. "The other guys, they thought he was cool. He wasn't cool."
With a laugh and a smile, he recounts trying to get the other dealers to be more careful. "I knew the whole time, he doesn't want to get you for weed," Roland says. "He wants to get you for crack so he can send you to prison. I told them. I told them all. They called him Officer Friendly. I just said, he ain't friendly. He's a snake."
Masino slowly won the trust of the Woodmar residents as well.
Residents were scared to talk. They knew there would be repercussions from the Crips. One man was beaten and dragged out in front of his neighbors for calling the police to complain about the noise from a gang member's stereo. Other witnesses to crimes just disappeared or refused to talk.
Then the Crips cut Linda Tye's phone lines because of her repeated calls to the police.
Masino told the gangsters, in front of Tye: "If anything happens to Miss Linda over there, I'm going to have this place under so many cops you'll think it was martial law."
He also got her a cell phone that dialed 911. The Crips didn't bother her again. It wasn't out of the goodness of their hearts, Masino believes. They just didn't want anything interrupting their business.
Even though he was well-liked by the gang-bangers, Masino still faced the threats. West Side City tolerated his presence, but the dealers wouldn't miss a chance to let him know who was boss.
"There would be times when I was surrounded by 15 or 20 guys, and they'd start saying, 'Hey, let's jump Officer Scott.' Fifteen or 20 guys and just me," Masino says.
At other times, Masino would find the laser sight from a gun pointed at his chest. "Just their way of trying to intimidate us," he says.
Occasionally, the intimidation went all the way up to gunfire.
Masino also worked at Woodmar on his nights off. He'd hand-picked a group of cops to work off-duty at the townhomes--"guys who wouldn't just put in their time and leave," he says. One of those was Tad Bowers, Masino's partner, a young guy with the vault-door build of a longtime gym rat.
While working off-duty last December, they had to arrest a suspect on a warrant. "Fifteen members were standing there while we were wrestling with this guy," Masino says, "and then we heard two gunshots. We couldn't even tell who fired them. I think they were just trying to get us to let him go."
Bowers adds, "They were all shouting, 'Take it easy on my cuz, man, take it easy on my cuz.' Then there was this POP-POP sound. We called 907 [Officer Needs Assistance]. Then all of these [squad] cars pull up, we hear sirens, we hear shotguns racking . . . we had officers everywhere."
The closest Masino came to a gunfight was when he approached a suspect in a dark alley, behind the Pine Ridge Apartments.
"He had a gun, and I had to draw down on him," Masino says. "I was alone, no back-up, and if he'd seen me just a second earlier, he would've been able to get the drop on me. I was lucky."
Based on Masino's information, the police prepared search warrants and fell on Woodmar like a bomb on February 5.
The weather was bad, Linda Tye remembers. "That rainy day," she says. "I've never seen it so bad, and I watch Cops every day. I had one foot out the door with my gandson, and I saw all these cops, and I said, 'Oh, Lord, it's a raid.' All of them were in that gear, the guns, the hoods, so you can't even see them except for their eyes."
The police locked down the entire area. Drug and gang officers worked with tactical officers to overwhelm the Crips.
Patti Hussey was on hand to watch the end of a long nightmare.
"There were just a phenomenal amount of people. There were copters, police cars, police officers everywhere. Oh, it was great," she says gleefully.
David Roland's memories of the bust aren't so fond.
Roland was cautious about his dealing. He only worked with a select group of customers who had his pager number. He wouldn't often sell to strangers.
Roland admits he screwed up. He can remember the exact sale to the undercover officer. The cop wasn't one of his regulars, "but this other guy vouched for him, so I thought that guy was cool. Made me mad."
Altogether, the police arrested 29 people and served half a dozen search warrants. Because of the weather, several members of West Side City weren't around, and had to be arrested at other locations.
Eight people have been charged so far. Roland, who was charged with possession of a narcotic, pleaded to a lesser charge and was sentenced to 89 days in jail (time served) and four years' probation. Two others have also copped pleas, but because of a computer switchover, the County Attorney's Office could not provide data on the resolution of those cases.
The five who have been arraigned face charges ranging from sale of narcotic drugs to conspiracy/assisting in a criminal syndicate to weapons charges.
Scott Masino was on hand for the bust, but no one saw him. His superiors wouldn't let him out of the van, fearing that someone would try to take revenge on dumb old Officer Scott.
Masino is quick to downplay his role.
"I ID'd these guys, yeah, but the drug enforcement and gang guys did this," he maintains. "It wasn't just Lieutenant Gentis and me. We'd know who they were, sure, but they'd still be here if somebody hadn't come in and arrested them."
And it wasn't just the arrests, Masino says. City of Phoenix Neighborhood Services stepped up its presence in the Woodmar area and gave grant money for improvements. Gentis worked with Paul Hamby and the fire department and the city to build a gate that would close down Crack Alley and meet zoning and fire regulations. The residents cooperated with the police despite the risk that the West Side City Crips would retaliate against them.
Gentis gives Masino much of the credit, however.
"Scott just refused to give up. He had it in his heart," Gentis says, tapping his Kevlar vest above the sternum.
The Woodmar IV complex at 43rd Avenue and Thomas really only comes alive at night: Kids run around the playground and battered lawns, families gather outside the doors of their apartments and the sound of guitars competes with the heavy thump of bass from stereos.
The shotgun blasts in the walls are filled in with putty. White paint covers the graffiti. In one condo, kids hide their stuffed animals in a floor safe where dealers used to stash drugs and money. A police office has been established in what used to be a vacant apartment. Residents can even use the pool.
"There are people swimming here now," Linda Tye says. "I didn't even know people swam around here before."
Patti Hussey and the owners of Woodmar have all written letters thanking and commending the Phoenix police.
"One of the police officers called me a while ago," Hussey says. "He said, 'Patti, you're not going to believe it: There are kids playing ball in Crack Alley!'"
The place is not yet perfect, not by a long shot. The police are still wary when they patrol the grounds. Hussey still takes her valuables out of her car and locks up the steering wheel with The Club. Cockroaches roam the alleys. There are still 911 calls.
There are some unexpected problems, too. People have embraced community policing "so much that they think we can do anything, and we can't," Gentis says. "We'll get calls from people who want us to go in and kick their neighbor's door down because he's playing his stereo too loud." Gentis has also heard complaints about "Block Watch Nazis" always carping about the rules.
Gentis is still wary. "It's tough, and I'm just as nervous today as I was six months ago because I don't want it to go back that way," he says.
But nobody deals drugs in Crack Alley anymore. The craps games are gone. The number of calls has dropped dramatically.
Most people are elated at how Woodmar has changed.
"Credit the Phoenix Police Department. Whatever they [the police] did, it worked," says Glen Woods, Linda Lloyd's boyfriend. "You couldn't walk through here without all these people coming up to you buying or selling. They are on the job this time. It is just amazing."
Lloyd adds, "There was one time we were really considering leaving. We were getting tired of laying on the floor. . . . We thought the police were just going to make an appearance and they wouldn't do anything, but they did. They really did."
Joyce Hamby: "I was ready to believe there were no good policemen left anymore. We called and called and called for someone to do something, and nothing got done. And then we met Scott and Lieutenant Gentis."
"Scott took it like a personal crusade," her husband adds. "This was something he was going to get done."
Other people at Woodmar sound a similar note: They call "Officer Scott" and "Officer Chris" their heroes.
Woodmar "has been successful because the people feel more secure," says Jim Rizer, the chief of the County Attorney's Repeat Offender and Gang Bureau. "We've made an impact on the population that lives there. That's why the police do these things--to show the law-abiding citizens we're out there and doing something for them."
Not everyone is overjoyed, though. Some younger residents feel like they've given up some of their freedom because of the police presence.
Andrea Portee, a 24-year-old resident of Pine Ridge for the past nine months, says she gets tired, sometimes, of being treated like a suspect.
"You get harassed a lot more," she says. "I'm over 21. I live here. I should be able to walk to Circle K past midnight without anyone asking me where I'm going."
Her boyfriend, Eric Davis, also worries that the new rules might have gone too far. He keeps a gun in his apartment for protection, he says, and he's not a gang-banger. But if management finds a gun in his apartment, he'll be evicted. "When I moved here, it was crazy. People would bust into your house, they wouldn't even care," he says.
Another young resident, who did not want his name used because he fears retaliation by the police, says it's just a lot duller than it used to be.
"I'm not going to lie to you, I've been in trouble before," he concedes. "And they're always looking at me funny now, like they're trying to get something on me when I haven't done anything."
But all three say that--"for the kids," especially--life is better now.
"The kids can play now," Portee says, hoisting a toddler into her arms. "I like that."
The prosecutions of people arrested in the Woodmar raid are ongoing. Some members of West Side City are still at large; the police believe they've left the state.
As for David Roland, he learned to hate jail quickly.
"I don't like doing time," he says vehemently. "I like being free. That was a hard three months. Pink drawers, pink socks, nasty food, nasty jail, no women."
He had no problems with other gangs while inside. "West Side is deep in jail," he says. Conflicts are more about race than gang colors. "In jail, you got to be with your race. Blacks click up, whites click up, Mexicans click up. It's just the way it is."
Jail turned Roland around, he says. He has a 1-year-old daughter, Tatianna, to provide for, and he can't do that behind bars. He pleaded to a lesser charge of possession, and since it was his first offense, the judge gave him probation and time served. He swears he wants to stay out of the life. He's trying to find a trade, he says. He thinks he'd be good at construction or carpentry.
"I never want to go back," he says. "There ain't no future there."
He adds that his homies' love for him seemed to evaporate at the jailhouse door. "Seems all cool and fun, but when you go to jail, they don't come to visit you," he says. "Only my family came and visited me."
But Roland isn't out of the gang completely--because you cannot amputate those connections easily.
"It's for life. You can leave away from it, but it never leaves you. You leave the neighborhood, but the neighborhood never leaves you," he says.
Scott Masino still patrols off-duty at Woodmar, recently with Tad Bowers, David Mendoza and another cop from the gang unit, Donny Corey.
Masino is more like an armed dorm counselor than a cop on this night: First, he and the other officers stop a kid who appeared to hide something in a carport. They detain a carload of trespassers who are drinking beer. None of them speaks English, so Mendoza is stuck doing double duty, translating.
"I don't think you even speak Spanish, Dave," Masino says after a while. "I think you just nod and then you make it up."
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Then, on the other side of the complex, Masino has to chew out two teenage girls who are playing on a neighbor's roof. After that, he gets lip from a group of teens out after curfew.
Masino sighs heavily and runs his hands over his face. He's "about ready to pull his hair out tonight," he says as he walks back to the police office.
Then he grins. "Not that I'm complaining," he says. "I'd much rather deal with this than what used to go on here. If this is as bad as it gets, that's fine by me."
Contact Chris Farnsworth at 602-229-8430 or online at email@example.com


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Drug company Pfizer has recalled close to one million birth control packets because the tablets may not contain enough active ingredients to prevent pregnancy, or the pills were packaged out of sequence.
The recall involves 14 lots of Lo/Ovral®-28 (norgestrel and ethinyl estradiol) tablets and 14 lots of Norgestrel and Ethinyl Estradiol tablets (generic). Check the FDA website for a full list of recalled lot numbers and expiration dates, and view photos of the labels of recalled packets.
The faulty pills do not pose a health risk but could leave women at risk for unintended pregnancies. Women using the recalled pills should notify their doctor, return the pills to their pharmacy and use a back-up method of birth control.
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subset: commoncrawl


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|START Conference Manager
ASIST 2012 Annual Meeting
Baltimore, MD, October 26-30, 2012
The Art of Creating an Informative Data Collection for Automated Deception Detection: A Corpus of Truths and Lies
Victoria Rubin and Niall Conroy
Monday, 3:30pm
One of the novel research directions in Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning involves creating and developing methods for automatic discernment of deceptive messages from truthful ones. Mistaking intentionally deceptive pieces of information for authentic ones (true to the writer's beliefs) can create negative consequences, since our everyday decision-making, actions, and mood are often impacted by information we encounter. Such research is vital today as it aims to develop tools for the automated recognition of deceptive, disingenuous or fake information (the kind intended to create false beliefs or conclusions in the reader's mind). The ultimate goal is to support truthfulness ratings that signal the trustworthiness of the retrieved information, or alert information seekers to potential deception. To proceed with this agenda, we require elicitation techniques for obtaining samples of both deceptive and truthful messages from study participants in various subject areas. A data collection, or a corpus of truths and lies, should meet certain basic criteria to allow for meaningful analysis and comparison of socio-linguistic behaviors. In this paper we propose solutions and weigh pros and cons of various experimental set-ups in the art of corpus building. The outcomes of three experiments are used to formulate the limitations of an open ended task, the importance of incorporating motivation in the task descriptions, and the role of visual context in creating deceptive narratives.


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For many, keeping squirrels out of bird-only feeders has been an ongoing battle. Oftentimes, the squirrels find a way to spring from a nearby tree or branch and land clumsily on your feeder, helping themselves to the seed or spilling just enough seed to give them a little feast once they bounce off and land on the ground.
Many people go to extremes keeping squirrels off their feeders, and their backyard ends up looking like a collection spot for tin cans and line. Using squirrel baffles is a tactic that will help reduce clutter as well as the possibility of squirrels hoarding all of your seed.
Baffle from above and
below: Adding a baffle on the top of your feeder prevents squirrels from accessing your feeder from above. Make sure that you place your feeder far enough away from "launching pads," such as trees. Adding a baffle below your feeder prevents a "ground attack" from squirrels climbing up the pole and getting to the seed.
If greedy squirrels are bullying birds and gobbling seed at your feeders, here are a few feeding methods that baffle them every time:
Some feeders are enclosed inside an attractive metal cage that allows birds to come in and access the feeding ports but is spaced too small to allow squirrels through. In frustration, they usually give up. An example is the Belle Fleur Sweet Treat Café Caged Feeder.
The weight-sensitive, spring-operated perches used on some feeder varieties close off seed access to squirrels or heavier birds. You adjust the spring's tension to the weight that fits your needs.
Thanks to clever designs, you can save seed and feeder space for invited guests only.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em
Squirrels are very intelligent, and it seems they always find a way to access our bird feeders. However, these pesky critters can actually be entertaining if you provide them a feeder of their own as an outlet for their smarts and acrobatic abilities. One of the quickest and most entertaining ways to keep squirrels out of your bird feeders is to give them a feeder of their own. So, why not set up a
squirrel feeder? This makes a pesky situation entertaining!
Using their clever wits to climb and enter squirrel feeders, squirrels are challenged and rewarded at the same time. Offer them foods that they must chew and gnaw, such as
corn and
peanuts, to provide the additional
health benefit of grinding down their constantly growing teeth. Then use feeders that will entertain their clever minds as well as satisfy their hunger, such as our
Squirrel-In-A-Jar Feeder. Keep squirrel feeders stocked at all times, so they are not tempted to stray. A feeder of their own may just do wonders for their disposition and keep them away from your bird feeders for good, allowing you to sit back and enjoy the serenity of your backyard.


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Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Paris Cafe: Le Select Crowd
23 comments:
À bientôt Carol!ReplyDelete
ahhh, hello, Carol, hello Rick! Any chance either of you are up for another cup of coffee in Paris on the weekend after next?ReplyDelete
It's say to say au revoir, isn't it? Better to say à la prochaine... I hope you've had a wonderful visit. I love Monoprix, too. I am always on the look out for a new one to visit. Great post.ReplyDelete
I meant it's sad... bien sûr. Really should proof before hitting that button!ReplyDelete
Musée Monoprix - *rofl* you are simply the greatest!ReplyDelete
I remember Rick from previous visits - great drawings, indeed!
Monoprix..One day:)ReplyDelete
I'd love to be talented enough to sit and sketch in a public place..Paris no less!
So someday you & Rick will be featured in books about the olden days in Paris cafés & expatriot artists who frequented them...Sartre, Hemingway, Tulka, Gillott...Good trip home to you!ReplyDelete
Paris' cafe shops are a must to visit during a trip there. As the other says their coffee is divine. The atmosphere is also quite appealing especially at night.ReplyDelete
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"Bye-bye Paris"--such a sad statement. I agree with the Chef. KatieReplyDelete
Your mention of Hemingway reminded me of the book I'm reading, The Paris Wife. Have you read it? Bon voyage back to the U.S.ReplyDelete
Ah! le fin de la vacance. Well as we say 'all good things must come to an end' if it was everyday it wouldn't be the same.ReplyDelete
Bon voyage
Barbara Lilian
Safe travels! You timed this trip very well indeed! No floods or power outages for you! (Maybe you wouldn't have experienced them anyway!) I swear I can read that dog's mind: "WHEN is she coming back? Is she bringing me a treat?"ReplyDelete
Is it time to go home already? Seems like you just got there. Fun post. I cant believe that dog just sits there and doesn't go into the store looking for its master. I Need to check out Ricks book. Safe trip home and hope you find home safe and sound.ReplyDelete
Such a lovely post Carol. How wonderful to meet with you talented friend again- his drawings are amazing. I love the term Musee Monoprix! I may have to borrow that. Supermarkets are one of the fascinating windows into the alternate life you could lead if you were lucky enough to live in Paris.ReplyDelete
I did a post last year for Paris in July about my love affair with Parisian supermarkets, although sadly sans dogs.
As for yoghurt, I'm astonished that they often come in glass or ceramic jars, and I love the different French flavours- chestnut of course, raspberry goat milk yoghurt. I'm a bit of a thrill seeker with the flavours. Our strawberry or peach and mango are nice, but I'm always cheered on by the thrill of the new.


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Criminal Justice Degrees - Columbia Southern University
Let Columbia Southern University help you change your community with an MBA in...
June 13, 2012
by Paul Clinton
Editor's note: This is the second installment of PoliceMag's "Returning To Duty" Web-only series about the challenges officers face getting back to police work after sustaining injuries on the job. Read the first installment here.
The trauma team that loaded Fremont (Calif.) Police Officer Todd Young onto a gurney at Oakland's Highland Hospital didn't initially realize just how close the lawman—who had suffered a critical gunshot wound—was to death on that warm, August Friday.
The 39-year-old Young was in SWAT shape, and had trained his body to fight through adversity and mask the trauma he suffered.
Young had been working undercover earlier that day in one of Oakland's most violent neighborhoods. He wore a T-shirt and jeans with his badge hanging around his neck and carried a .45-caliber SIG Sauer 220 pistol in a drop-leg holster. Shortly after 2:30 p.m., a gang member shot Young during a foot pursuit.
When Young arrived at the hospital, his vitals didn't raise undue concern, 160-over-100 for blood pressure and a heart rate of 85 beats per minute. Because his heart rate was so slow for the conditions, doctors believed he hadn't lost a lot of blood. For most trauma patients, a higher heart rate signals blood loss because the heart works harder when the body has less blood.
Young was admitted into the ER where Highland trauma surgeon Dr. Javid Sadjadi decided to send him for a CT scan. His face had grown pale, and the CT image showed a pelvic entry wound and exit wound above his left buttock. The large dark spot on the image showed blood pooling inside his body.
That dark spot was caused by a bullet fragment that pierced Young's iliac artery located deep in his pelvic region. Dr. Sadjadi now knew why the wounded officer was so pale; he was bleeding out. Young was rushed into the operating room. On the way, he called his wife, Nicole, to reassure her.
During the next 51 days, Young would undergo eight surgeries, spend 19 days in a coma, and inspire hundreds of officers to donate blood on his behalf.
Now as he recovers, Young is keeping his eye on the prize. However long it takes, he wants to get back to chasing high-risk bad guys on the gang task force and rejoin his department's SWAT team.
"I'm not going to be a victim, and I'll help other people who can't help themselves," says Young. "I just believe in keeping the public safe. I just believe in actively seeking criminals. That's what I do."
Officer Down
On the afternoon of Aug. 27, 2010, Officer Young and his partner Eric Tang rolled into East Oakland in their surveillance car. As members of the Southern Alameda County Major Crimes Task Force, the officers were looking for Andrew Barrientos, a member of DeCoto 14, a Union City Norteño gang known for its violent threats against law enforcement.
Barrientos, 21 at the time, had threatened to kill his ex-girlfriend and infant son, and Young knew where to find him. A tip led Young to "the nicest house on the block" on Auseon Avenue between Olive and Birch streets. He was told to look for a granite walkway, a rarity in that low-income neighborhood. Young spotted the house, and then spotted Barrientos standing near a black Chevy Avalanche parked at the curb.
Young yelled, "Police! Police!"
Barrientos bolted toward Olive, turned the corner, and began to head up the street. He turned and fired at the pursuing officers with a Glock 9mm he jerked from his waistband.
Barrientos fired 10 rounds, one of which struck Young in the pelvis. The officer replied with seven shots but missed his moving target. Young moved to the sidewalk and kneeled, so he could apply direct pressure to the wound.
Almost immediately, Officers Michael Igualdo and Nancy Cercedes rolled up in their black-and-whites, answering Officer Tang's call for help. Igualdo pulled a first-aid kit from the trunk of his cruiser and began applying QuikClot gauze to Young's wound to accelerate clotting.
Igualdo knew Young couldn't wait for an ambulance and called for a "load and go" when a sergeant pulled up in a cageless supervisor vehicle. During the bumpy ride to Highland, Officer Cercedes asked Young about his children and his 40th birthday, as he rode in the back seat. Anything to keep Young's mind off the gunshot wound.
"We were trying to save a dying man's life," Igualdo says later about his decision to not wait for the ambulance. "If you believe you can get [the downed officer] to the hospital faster than an ambulance, then it's best to transport."
On the ride, Young grew pale. His mind raced with thoughts about catching Barrientos. Police radio traffic in the car chirped questions about the shooter's identity, and Young called out the shooter's name, date of birth, and warrants.
In the OR
Once he reached the operating room, Young's condition deteriorated.
"In the OR, we were trying to stabilize the patient," Dr. Sadjadi says. "With gunshots to the torso, the thing that kills people first is blood loss. That's the issue you have to address during the Golden Hour."
The "golden hour" is how trauma doctors refer to the time they have to save a patient with severe bleeding from a devastating injury. Young reached the operating room about 30 minutes after he was shot, which didn't give Sajadi much of a margin.
The OR staff opened up Young and saw the severe bleeding firsthand. Sadjadi began to tie-off the damaged artery, and once it stopped, Sadjadi began stuffing absorbent laparotomy pads into Young's abdomen to stop the bleeding.
Anesthesiologists continued feeding blood into Young intravenously. "My goal was to plug the sink, and their job was to keep the sink filled," Sadjadi says. Doctors fed 64 units (or pints) of red cells and another 40 units of platelets and plasma into Young—or more than five times the amount of blood in the human body—to keep him alive.
Young needed so much blood that the American Red Cross packed additional units into a cooler and sent the blood to Highland's OR via taxi.
Newspaper accounts of the incident brought a flood of calls to the Red Cross from law enforcement officers wanting to donate blood to help save Young. The response was so overwhelming that the Northern California Blood Service Region's Oakland donor center often resembled a police substation.
"People really came out to support Todd," says Sara O'Brien, the center's spokesperson. "We had weeks of blood drives. Everyone would like to know it was their unit that saved the police officer. But we need all types of blood."
Taking Down the Shooter
As doctors worked to save Young, his assailant, Barrientos, fled in a green Mazda 626 sedan he had carjacked from a convenience store a block away from the shooting. His mother told police that her son called her to tell her he had shot an officer. He then headed to meet a friend.
VIDEO: Shots Fired: Oakland, Calif., Carjacking
Once he reached his compatriot, Barrientos reloaded his Glock, packed a bag of shirts, socks, and toothpaste, and headed toward the U.S.-Mexico border. Police located Barrientos' cell phone in San Diego near the San Ysidro port of entry by 3 p.m. the day after the shooting. His exact location was still unknown.
San Diego police sergeant Jason Wheedon received a description of Barrientos and the vehicle. He then printed out about 20 fliers of Barrientos' driver's license and headed into the area to search for him.
Wheedon exited the freeway at Camino De La Plaza, the last off-ramp before the Mexican border, where nearly 20,000 people cross a day. It was at a red light that Sgt. Wheedon looked up into his rearview mirror and spotted a familiar face riding shotgun in a gray Camaro.
"The passenger was Barrientos," Wheedon says. "He was sitting there with a white hoodie. I looked down at my stack of papers and said, 'That's going to be him.'"
Wheedon maneuvered behind the Camaro and ran the plate. A dispatcher informed him the vehicle was registered to an Oakland address. Wheedon tailed the Camaro into the parking lot and positioned his patrol car behind the suspect vehicle.
Barrientos exited the vehicle.
Wheedon called out to the suspect. "I said, 'Barrientos,' and he looked at me," Wheedon says. "I drew my weapon and told him, 'Don't move and turn away.' He complied and raised his hands."
Months of Pain
Young spent seven weeks at Highland, and endured eight surgeries. The initial surgery stopped the bleeding. Once he was stabilized, doctors used the sedative drug Versed to induce a coma to allow his body to heal. A second surgery repaired his bladder. A third addressed damage to his rectum.
The trauma to Young's body from the shooting and the surgery was severe. For seven weeks, he was hooked up to a colostomy bag to catch his waste. He took his nutrition through a feeding tube. And once he came out of a coma, Young had to learn to walk again.
Nearly two months after the shooting, Young was discharged from the hospital and went home to the care of his wife, son (now 10), and daughter (now 6). But his visits to the doctor weren't over, as he went through a colostomy reversal surgery in February 2011.
Young rehabbed; Barrientos went to trial. And with the help of Young's testimony, the prosecutors won their case. On November 2011, a jury found Barrientos guilty of attempted murder of a police officer. In late December, an Alameda County judge gave the gang member two life terms.
Getting Stronger
Young's rehabilitation has been grueling. At first he had to relearn how to walk. He can now run a 12-minute mile and has added strength training. Running longer distances is harder on his hips and he still gets a numb foot, but in January, he ran the obstacle course used for the Fremont PD's SWAT qualification under the supervision of a physical therapist.
"I started lifting weights and getting strong because I didn't want to be that officer who pulled up on a car stop to help you, and then you say, 'Oh, he's hurt. He's going to be more of a liability than anything.'"
Young's tenth and final surgery was conducted earlier this year. The stitches of his abdominal incision had ripped out when he struggled to wake up from the coma. In January, a surgeon at Stanford University Medical Center used pig mesh and a skin graft to hold his stomach in place.
When told of the procedure, Young joked, "So you're going to put pig into a pig?"
Young cracks jokes to deal with his medical issues, but he is as determined as they come. Doctors informed him he has recovered to about 60-70% of what he was physically before the shooting.
He takes physical therapy under the direction of Dr. Chris Chung at the South Bay Sports and Preventative Medicine clinic.
Young plans to return to light duty in August in an administrative role. He keeps working toward his goal of returning to the regional task force and Fremont PD SWAT team, a feat that will require him to pass the agency's grueling SWAT training. Young has circled early 2013 on his calendar. That's when he hopes to test his mettle.
"Even though my doctor said I'll be 60% of what I was, my body will continue to heal and get stronger," Young says. "My body will compensate. I will be able to do all the stuff I need to do."
Shots Fired: Oakland, California 08/27/2010
Returning To Duty: Todd Young (photos)
Returning To Duty: Officer Recovers After Being Struck by Drunk Driver
Nick @ 6/14/2012 6:21 PM
Simply fantastic, amazing, and inspiring story. Glad he's going to be ok, and with an attitude like that he'll have no issues getting back on SWAT.
Kristine @ 6/18/2012 2:54 PM
Excellent story, and very inspiring. Interesting to hear from all the parties to include the trauma team and doctors that helped. What an inspiring story! Congratulations to him and kudos to Police Mag for telling such an important story.
John @ 6/23/2012 8:47 AM
Our prayers are with him! God willing Todd will be back putting badguys away in the near future.
David @ 6/23/2012 9:26 AM
An inspiring story of dedication to duty and survival. It should serve as a lesson to us all! There are no substitutes for mental and physical toughness and preparedness for the unthinkable! Great job and good Lu k! My thoughts and prayers are with you.
Jack Swenson @ 6/23/2012 10:05 AM
God's blessing Officer Young.Hope to see you back on the street soon!
Jim Mccaughey @ 6/23/2012 10:14 AM
Todd, welcome back! You give every LEO Inspiration and the Fighting edge that we all strive for.
DonG @ 6/23/2012 10:48 AM
Not only is this inspiring, but it is great that his department stands with him during this period of time. This isn't always the case and I felt personal solace knowing that there are still some great LE organizations out there. My prayers and best wishes are with you and your family, Todd.
Candelyn Carpenter @ 6/23/2012 1:58 PM
Do let them win you have fought to hard to get where you are today to to let them win now. Just in case no one has told you I will. We need more cops like you, I am so thankful that you are going to be okay. Jesus loves you, and I am sure a heck of alot of other people do to. Jesus has a very special place for you when the time comes. However the time is not here. Give 'em hell Todd. Remember God can do a lot more damage than they can. I am so proud of you for taking a stand in something that no body else has the guts to do. Hang in there. We need you. Candelyn Carpenter
John @ 6/23/2012 2:05 PM
God bless you brother!Welcome back!You did good bro!I wasn't there but from what I have read, there was not a single thing I would have done differently!You can't know when a goblin is going to get froggy and try to get in the wind!I carry a Colt's 1911 (same capacity as your Sig P220) I carry ten round magazines for reloads....just a thought bro!God bless!Most respectfullyjohn
Dexter @ 6/23/2012 8:11 PM
Winston Churchill said it best....never, never, never, never, never give up! God bless you Todd you are in our prayers.
Sean @ 6/24/2012 12:42 PM
Outstanding drive and determination. You will do it! I'm awe-inspired by your story...
Bob Harrison @ 6/25/2012 12:17 PM
Get well soon...I will remember you in my prayers for complete recovery and back with SWAT....God Bless you Brother........
Bob Harrison @ 6/25/2012 12:19 PM
God Bless you Brother...In my prayers for a complete recovery and back on SWAT soon.....
J. Emerson @ 6/25/2012 1:35 PM
Continue with committment and perserverance, it is the spirit of a Warrior, for a Warrior knows no pain and no job is to tough. Get well soon my brother, you have set the example for all to follow. Peace be with you and your family.Sincerely,J. Emerson Garrison
Abel Arriazola @ 6/27/2012 5:51 PM
Young you are a brave and courageous officer who gave full commitment in apprehending a dangerous suspect. In your recovery don't give this punk on second of your time, energy, or mind, instead, focus all you have towards recovery. Be just as aggressive towards your healing process as your were chasing the suspect and God will take care of the rest. Thank you for all you do. You are commendable in every respect. Never give up! Capt. Abel Arriazola
Dusan @ 7/3/2012 10:47 AM
This is great article
Rodney @ 7/4/2012 9:28 PM
May God quicken your recovery and further strengthen your resolve. Hope this quote helps,"Iron is full of impurities that weaken it; through forging, it becomes steel and is transformed into a razor-sharp sword. Human beings develop in the same fashion." -- Morihei Ueshiba (Founder of Aikido)
Thomas Buchenauer @ 7/15/2012 9:18 PM
Close call......God Bless....and a speedy recovery....
sal @ 7/17/2012 7:34 AM
Keep going big dog, till the wheels fall off.
Shawna @ 7/23/2012 4:58 AM
Hero...never quit. I wish you a full recovery. I know you'll reach your goals!!!!
brian @ 7/31/2012 3:34 PM
Great story


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Los Angeles: Socialite-actress Brook Mueller has reportedly been discharged from a rehabilitation centre in California, will meet her sons under supervision here.
Mueller, who was being treated for substance abuse at the rehabilitation centre, is preparing to meet her four-year-old twin sons, Bob and Max from her marriage with ex-husband Charlie Sheen.
She will have monitored visits three days per week with the children beginning as soon as next week, reports radaronline.com.
"Social workers from the Los Angeles County of Department of Children and Family Services recommended that Brooke be allowed to have increased visitation," said a source.
The children are currently staying with Sheen's former partner Denise Richards.


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The NFL All-Pro Team is showing off the new wave of pro football stars.
Three rookies are among 17 first-time selections highlight the team, including Dallas running back Ezekiel Elliott and Kansas City's Tyreek Hill, who is a unanimous choice as a punt returner.
Atlanta quarterback Matt Ryan, edging New England's Tom Brady, who was suspended for four games, is another first-time All Pro.
Tennessee right tackle Jack Conklin is the other rookie making the revamped roster announced Friday.
"It's special," Elliott said. "Just to be able to come into this league my first year and dominate and just play at the level I'm playing, and just kind of get...


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Stock up on a variety of breakfast items, beverages, snacks, frozen entrées and more, any time—all on the honor system.
Candlewood Suites Syracuse-Airport
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What a lot of stunning creations we had for our last challenge of 2011 - Thank you all ever so much. We had a very hard job choosing our TOP 3 - wish it could have been you all..:)
Our winner is....
#101 - Wendy with her fabulous card for her daughter. :)
using the 'Contact Me' button at the top of the blog and she will sort your prize out for you.
Now for our Top 3 and like I said we sure had a very hard time choosing,
but here are our final choices....
#30 - Jen Leeflang
We really loved your tealight - Such a lovely gift to make and give - beautifully made. :)
#74 Amelia
Really beautiful card, and fabulous attention to detail - we loved all distressing and bunting. :)
Last but most definately not least is
#137 - Our lovely Lorriane, who used to be our DT co ordinator so a special mention is deserved.
We all thought that her House shaped Shadow box is stunning - the amount of work, techniques, time, elements and detail that she has put into this creation is amazing - and what a beautiful gift it makes too - sure is to be treasured. :)
Thanks Lorraine for entering this fabulous project into our challenge. :)
Now we do not usually show our TOP 3 choices but I would like to highlight and show off Lorraine's as it would make a fabulous project to undertake in the New Year and certainly give you loads of inspiration..:) There are close up pics on Lorraine's blog if you would like a closer look. :)
Congratulations Ladies - please take you TOP 3 badge for your blogs.
Now as 2011 draws to a close we are having a break and shall return with our New challenges 15th January 2012, there will be some new releases too. :)
Please do check back inbetween now and the 15th January as we may have a wee tutorial for you.
Thank you all for your wonderful support over the past year and we have thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and hope you have too?
We all from the Crafty Pad would like to wish you a
Very Happy, Healthy New Year. :)
xxThe Crafty Pad Teamxx


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When you're headed out for a rigorous bike ride, denim might not be your first choice for clothing. However, Levi's® is manipulating that mentality with the new Commuter line of cycling apparel.
The popular 511™ Skinny Jean and Trucker Jacket have both been optimized for the needs of the urban commuter cyclist.
"As an avid cyclist myself, I am confident this line has all of the key cycling-specific performance features cyclists value, but haven't been able to find in other lifestyle clothing options," said Erik Joule, senior vice president of Levi's Men's Merchandising & Design.
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My husband's boss is handsome!April 27th, 2010
The husband is sent off to a business trip and his boss goes to visit his lonely wife, he definitely wants to make her feel good and offers her something she just can't refuse…
Hi, guys! My name is Rebecca, I am 24 and my husband's name is Brandon. He is 28, not quite much older than me. We live in Prague and stay in a big luxurious apartment provided by the Gas Company in which Brandon works. He works as a top manager and therefore, due to his work, he has to often leave his home for a long time.
I am 5"8, quite tall, and I am very extravagant when it comes to my look: deep blue eyes, well curved humps, and luscious red lips, good sexy complexion, falling brown hair. I have got a large beast to kill for! I prefer black, white or red colors, so no wonder if you find my wardrobe filled by cloths and outfits of these colors. I have to maintain my wardrobe carefully because Brandon and I have to attend parties thrown by the company, which are held quite often. During these parties Brandon often gets complemented by his boss, a big guy by the name of Ronald. He says to my hubby that he is the luckiest person in the company to have such a cute sexy wife!
Ronald is quite a big guy, 6"7 height with a muscular build and a brown tan over his massive complexion, and he is very energetic in all things. He is 32 and is still single. I have many times masturbated at home, when Brandon is not with me, thinking of Ronald fucking me. Oh my God, just the thought of him makes me wet! (Read More…)
Popularity: 15% [?]


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At Least The Data ID Thieves Have About You Is Wrong
from the small-comfort dept
It's not likely to be very comforting to the 145,000 or so people who had their personal data gift-wrapped and handed to identity thieves by ChoicePoint, but it turns out that many people who have seen their personal files from the company note that they're riddled with errors, including wrong addresses, relatives who don't exist, suggestions of criminal activity in places where they'd never been and (in at least one case) a claim that the person reading the report had actually died thirty years ago. Of course, the best part is that if you ask ChoicePoint how to fix these errors, the answer is "sorry, you can't do that." Apparently, they want to make sure that future identity thieves have access to the same false info too.


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Posted on September 9, 2017
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Aiming to start a win streak, 'Canes visit Canadiens
The Carolina Hurricanes will try to build off their first win in weeks when they visit the first-place Montreal Canadiens for Monday's clash at Bell Centre.
The Hurricanes had lost seven straight games (0-6-1) from March 14-28 before ending the season-worst slide with Saturday's 3-1 road victory over the rival Winnipeg Jets. It was Carolina's first win since March 12 in Washington and allowed the Hurricanes to move within four points of the Jets for first place in the Southeast Division.
Eric Staal and Alexander Semin each came up with a goal and an assist to help the Hurricanes end their losing streak Saturday in Winnipeg. Semin scored just 66 seconds into the game to stake Carolina to a 1-0 lead and the 'Canes would push the lead to 2-0 by the end of 20 minutes.
Jussi Jokinen, placed on waivers by Carolina earlier in the week, also had a goal in his return to the lineup, while Tuomo Ruutu contributed two assists before exiting with a lower-body injury in the first period. Ruutu and fellow forward Chad LaRose (illness) are questionable for Monday's game.
Justin Peters, making a third straight start in place of an injured Dan Ellis, turned away 34-of-35 shots to help Carolina pick up an important two points.
"We put 60 good minutes together tonight," said Hurricanes head coach Kirk Muller. "We didn't get away from our game, our leaders kept leading and all the guys contributed. That's what I think was really rewarding for the guys tonight."
The Hurricanes had lost three straight on the road before Saturday's win. Carolina, which is 9-6-2 as the guest this season, will wrap a three-game road trip tonight before beginning a three-game homestand Tuesday against Washington. The Caps and Hurricanes are tied in the Southeast and conference standings with 34 points apiece.
Montreal enters Monday with a three-point lead over Boston for the top spot in the Northeast Division. The Canadiens have won their last two games, beating the Bruins in a wild 6-5 shootout win on Wednesday before handling the New York Rangers in a 3-0 decision on Saturday.
After posting the key road win in Boston, the Habs returned home to record the decisive win over the Rangers. Montreal recorded the only goal it would need to defeat New York just 47 seconds into the game, as Michael Ryder notched his 13th goal of the season.
Carey Price, meanwhile, stopped all 34 shots he faced for his third shutout of the season and 19th of his career.
"It was a team effort. They had a few scoring chances, but we played hard and blocked a lot of shots," Price said. "I thought we'd played very consistent hockey and that's the key to our success against them."
Tomas Plekanec and Brendan Gallagher also tallied for the Canadiens and PK Subban assisted on all three goals. Subban is leading Montreal this season with 27 points (10 goals, 17 assists) and is third among all NHL defensemen in scoring.
Montreal ended a two-game slide at the Bell Centre on Saturday and is 10-4-3 on home ice this season.
The Habs are 2-0 against Carolina in 2013 and can complete a season-series sweep on Monday. The 'Canes have lost seven of 10 overall against Montreal and four of their last five at the Bell Centre.


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Long hair is the beauty of the women. Most of the Indian girls own the pride to have black silky long hair. We feature the beautiful long hair pictures and videos of Indian girls and women including long hair combing, braiding, washing,shampooing, oiling, plays,drying, brushing and actress.
Sunday, 24 June 2012
Three stranded braid pictures
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Here's your holiday feel-good tech story. Programmer Patrick McConlogue walked by homeless man Leo Grand for weeks before deciding to make Grand an offer: He could take $100 right now, or he could have McConlogue come back the next day with a laptop and start giving him coding lessons.
"I went with door No. 2," says Grand, and the two formed a real working partnership.
There's no treacle here -- just a guy teaching another guy a valuable skill. "I dig the mental challenges. I love it. I see this as something new to learn," says Grand, whose carpooling app, Trees for Cars, launched earlier this week. "This will change my life. I can work for Google, I can work for SpaceX, I can build a server ... this is going to change my life in a magnificent way."
This story, "Video: Meet the homeless man who learned how to code," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Keep up with the latest tech videos with the InfoTube blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.


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42 U.S. Code § 5164 - Rules and regulations
§ 5164.
Rules and regulations
The President may prescribe such rules and regulations as may be necessary and proper to carry out the provisions of this chapter, and may exercise, either directly or through such Federal agency as the President may designate, any power or authority conferred to the President by this chapter.
(Pub. L. 93–288, title III, § 321, as added Pub. L. 100–707, title I, § 105(m)(1), Nov. 23, 1988, 102 Stat. 4696.)
References in Text
This chapter, referred to in text, was in the original "this Act", meaning Pub. L. 93–288, May 22, 1974, 88 Stat. 143. For complete classification of this Act to the Code, see Short Title note set out under section 5121 of this title and Tables.
LII has no control over and does not endorse any external Internet site that contains links to or references LII.


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MELBOURNE, Jan. 22 (UPI) -- Roger Federer out-battled Andy Murray for a four-set win Wednesday and will face world No. 1 Rafael Nadal in the Australian Open semifinals.
Federer, a four-time Australian Open champion, reached the semifinals in Melbourne for an 11th consecutive year with a 6-3, 6-4, 6-7 (6-8), 6-3 win over Murray a year after Murray took a five-set match from Federer in the semis. Nadal took the day's first quarterfinal, defeating 22nd-seeded Grigor Dimitrov 3-6, 7-6 (7-3), 7-6 (9-7), 6-2.
Nadal will be the third consecutive Top 10 player across from Federer, who beat 10th-ranked Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the fourth round before taking on Murray, ranked fourth, in the quarterfinals.
Federer didn't face a break point while converting both of his opportunities in building a two-set lead Wednesday. Murray got his first -- and only as it turned out -- break when Federer was serving for the match at 5-4 of the third set. Federer also had a pair of match points in the tiebreaker.
Federer missed out on six break points in a 19-minute second game of the fourth set and lost two more before a backhand winner gave him a break and a 5-3 lead. He then held serve for the win.
Dimitrov cashed in the only break chance of the first set for a surprising lead against Nadal and each had one break in both the second and third sets. Nadal didn't allow Dimitrov a break chance in the fourth set, however, dropping only five points on serve in finishing off the match. He moved ahead with a break in the second game of the set and picked up his fourth break of the day in the game's final game.
Nadal is looking to become the first double men's player in the Open Era to win each Grand Slam event twice. He has the 2009 Australian Open title to go with his record eight wins at the French Open and two championships each at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. He's in the semis in Melbourne for the fourth time in his career as the 22nd time overall he's advanced this far in a major tournament.
Federer won at the Australian Open in 2004, '06, 07 and '10 but had lost in the semifinals each of the last three years.
Nadal owns a commanding 22-10 series edge over Federer, with Nadal taking all four of their meetings in 2013. Nadal won both times he played Federer in Melbourne, winning in five sets in the 2009 finals and in four sets in the 2012 semifinals.
The other 2014 semifinal Friday has No. 7-ranked Tomas Berdych going against eighth-seeded Stanislas Wawrinka.
Berdych is playing in his fourth major tournament semifinal but first in Australia. He lost to Nadal in the 2010 final at Wimbledon the only time Berdych was in a major semifinal.
Wawrinka's semifinal at last year's U.S. Open marked the only other time he's played in a Grand Slam semi.
Wawrinka has won the last three times he's played Berdych, pushing his series record to 8-5.