Starvin Larry

WASHINGTON (AP) — For the second consecutive year, the Obama administration more often than ever censored government files or outright denied access to them under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.

The government took longer to turn over files when it provided any, said more regularly that it couldn’t find documents, and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy.

It also acknowledged in nearly 1 in 3 cases that its initial decisions to withhold or censor records were improper under the law — but only when it was challenged.

Its backlog of unanswered requests at year’s end grew remarkably by 55 percent to more than 200,000.

The government’s new figures, published Tuesday, covered all requests to 100 federal agencies during fiscal 2014 under the Freedom of Information law, which is heralded globally as a model for transparent government. They showed that despite disappointments and failed promises by the White House to make meaningful improvements in the way it releases records, the law was more popular than ever. Citizens, journalists, businesses and others made a record 714,231 requests for information. The U.S. spent a record $434 million trying to keep up.

The government responded to 647,142 requests, a 4 percent decrease over the previous year. The government more than ever censored materials it turned over or fully denied access to them, in 250,581 cases or 39 percent of all requests. Sometimes, the government censored only a few words or an employee’s phone number, but other times it completely marked out nearly every paragraph on pages.

On 215,584 other occasions, the government said it couldn’t find records, a person refused to pay for copies or the government determined the request to be unreasonable or improper.

The White House touted its success under its own analysis. It routinely excludes from its assessment instances when it couldn’t find records, a person refused to pay for copies or the request was determined to be improper under the law, and said under this calculation it released all or parts of records in 91 percent of requests — still a record low since President Barack Obama took office using the White House’s own math.

“We actually do have a lot to brag about,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

The government’s responsiveness under the open records law is an important measure of its transparency. Under the law, citizens and foreigners can compel the government to turn over copies of federal records for zero or little cost. Anyone who seeks information through the law is generally supposed to get it unless disclosure would hurt national security, violate personal privacy or expose business secrets or confidential decision-making in certain areas. It cited such exceptions a record 554,969 times last year.

Under the president’s instructions, the U.S. should not withhold or censor government files merely because they might be embarrassing, but federal employees last year regularly misapplied the law. In emails that AP obtained from the National Archives and Records Administration about who pays for Michelle Obama’s expensive dresses, the agency blacked-out a sentence under part of the law intended to shield personal, private information, such as Social Security numbers, phone numbers or home addresses. But it failed to censor the same passage on a subsequent page.

The sentence: “We live in constant fear of upsetting the WH (White House).”

In nearly 1 in 3 cases, when someone challenged under appeal the administration’s initial decision to censor or withhold files, the government reconsidered and acknowledged it was at least partly wrong. That was the highest reversal rate in at least five years.

The AP’s chief executive, Gary Pruitt, said the news organization filed hundreds of requests for government files. Records the AP obtained revealed police efforts to restrict airspace to keep away news helicopters during violent street protests in Ferguson, Missouri. In another case, the records showed Veterans Affairs doctors concluding that a gunman who later killed 12 people had no mental health issues despite serious problems and encounters with police during the same period. They also showed the FBI pressuring local police agencies to keep details secret about a telephone surveillance device called Stingray.

“What we discovered reaffirmed what we have seen all too frequently in recent years,” Pruitt wrote in a column published this week. “The systems created to give citizens information about their government are badly broken and getting worse all the time.”

The U.S. released its new figures during Sunshine Week, when news organizations promote open government and freedom of information.

The AP earlier this month sued the State Department under the law to force the release of email correspondence and government documents from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. The government had failed to turn over the files under repeated requests, including one made five years ago and others pending since the summer of 2013.

The government said the average time it took to answer each records request ranged from one day to more than 2.5 years. More than half of federal agencies took longer to answer requests last year than the previous year.

Journalists and others who need information quickly to report breaking news fared worse than ever.

Under the law, the U.S. is required to move urgent requests from journalists to the front of the line for a speedy answer if records will inform the public concerning an actual or alleged government activity. But the government now routinely denies such requests: Over six years, the number of requests granted speedy processing status fell from nearly half to fewer than 1 in 8.

The CIA, at the center of so many headlines, has denied every such request the last two years.

___

Online:

U.S. data: http://www.foia.gov/data.html

At least 15 Americans were exposed to Ebola from a single, infected U.S. healthcare worker and have been brought back to the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday.

They all work for Partners in Health, a nonprofit group that’s been helping fight the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

Over the weekend, Partners in Health said 10 of its staffers might have been exposed to the often deadly virus when they were trying to help the patient — who hasn’t been identified and who’s in critical condition at the National Institutes of Health outside Washington, D.C.

Now, another four have been identified and are being brought back for observation. So far, only one person, the first patient, has tested positive for Ebola symptoms.

It’s not clear how so many people got exposed to the virus.

“We’re still investigating and hopefully we’ll have an answer to that question,” said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner. “The circumstances around all these exposures is what we are looking at right now. “

Ebola’s infected more than 24,000 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia and killed more than 10,000 of them. The patient at NIH is the 11th to be treated in the United States.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/its-now-18-americans-coming-back-ebola-zone-n325321

A rise in shootings? Say it ain’t so-handguns are banned for most people in NYC,how can there be an increase in shootings?

By Sebastien Malo

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York City police are employing a high-tech system to pinpoint gunfire amid an uptick in shootings in the nation’s largest city, officials said on Monday.

With the installation of the tracking system, ShotSpotter, New York continues its foray into technology-assisted policing, which recently equipped New York Police Department officers with body cameras, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner William Bratton told a news conference.

ShotSpotter consists of acoustic sensors, which are mounted on rooftops, telephone polls and other locations. Audio from at least three sensors that detect gunfire – a process called triangulation – is sent to the company’s California lab, which analyzes the information to confirm it’s a gunshot, pinpoints its location, and then alerts police in New York.

“This new gunshot deterrent system is going to do a whole lot of good in terms of going after the bad guys,” said de Blasio. “This technology will help us stay even safer.”

New York is among a growing number of cities that have adopted the system, including Washington, Oakland, Detroit and Rio de Janeiro.

At a cost of $1.5 million so far, a web of 300 sensors have been added to New York high-crime areas spanning 15 square miles in the boroughs of the Bronx and Brooklyn.

Questions have been raised about the system’s efficiency. In a 2013 assessment in Suffolk County, New York, the police department found that less than 7 percent of alerts over a 32-week period surveyed were confirmed as gunshots.

Critics say those kinds of false positives could remain a hurdle in making the technology useful to policing.

“Like burglar alarms, we all get used to alarms and don’t always respond,” said professor Dennis Kenney of John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

But Bratton pointed to the high percentage of people who fail to call 911 after hearing a gunshot, estimating that figure to be in excess of 75 percent in cities where ShotSpotter has already been implemented. Experts say they fail to act either out of confusion about the sound heard or fear of retaliation.

Since the system went live in the Bronx early on Monday, at least one unreported instance of three gunshots has been recorded.

Already this year, New York has seen 184 shooting victims citywide as of March 8, an increase of nearly 22 percent compared to the same period last year, NYPD data show.

ShotSpotter consists of acoustic sensors, which are mounted on rooftops, telephone polls and other locations. Audio from at least three sensors that detect gunfire – a process called triangulation – is sent to the company’s California lab, which analyzes the information to confirm it’s a gunshot, pinpoints its location, and then alerts police in New York.

Telephone polls????????

CLAYTON, Mo. (AP) — A 20-year-old man charged Sunday with shooting two police officers watching over a demonstration outside the Ferguson Police Department had attended a protest there earlier that night but told investigators he wasn’t targeting the officers, authorities said.

St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch said suspect Jeffrey Williams told authorities he was firing at someone with whom he was in a dispute.

“We’re not sure we completely buy that part of it,” McCulloch said, adding that there might have been other people in a vehicle Williams is accused of firing from.

Williams is charged with two counts of first-degree assault, one count of firing a weapon from a vehicle and three counts of armed criminal action. McCulloch said the investigation is ongoing.

The police officers were shot early Thursday as a late-night demonstration began to break up following the resignation of Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson in the wake of a Justice Department report that found widespread racial bias in the police department.

“He was out there earlier that evening as part of the demonstration,” McCulloch said of Williams.

But several activists who’ve been involved in the protests since the Aug. 9 fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer told The Associated Press they were not familiar with Williams.

Williams used a handgun that matches the shell casings at the scene, McCulloch said. He also said tips from the public led to the arrest.

Williams, who St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said is black, is being held on $300,000 bond. County police spokesman Brian Schellman said he didn’t know whether Williams had an attorney or when he’d appear in court. A message left at the St. Louis County Justice Center was not immediately returned.

Brittany Ferrell, 26, a protest leader with the group Millennial Activists United, had just left a meeting with other leaders Sunday when word of the arrest circulated. She said no one in the group knew Williams, and they checked with other frequent protesters — who also hadn’t heard of him.

Ferrell suspected McCulloch tried to cast him as a protester to reflect negatively on the movement.

“This is a fear tactic,” she said. “We are very tight-knit. We know each other by face if not by name, and we’ve never seen this person before.”

John Gaskin, a St. Louis NAACP leader, said of Williams, “I don’t know him. I’ve never seen him.”

Williams, a north St. Louis County resident, was on probation for receiving stolen property, McCulloch said. “I think there was a warrant out for him on that because he had neglected to report for the last seven months to his probation officer,” he said.

Online state court records show a man by the name of Jeffrey Williams at the address police provided Sunday was charged in 2013 with receiving stolen property and fraudulent use of a credit/debit device.

There was no answer at the door at the small, ranch-style home. Several neighbors, including the people just across the street, said they didn’t know Williams. But one, 26-year-old Jason White, said “He was cool. I never heard of him doing nothing to nobody.”

Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement Sunday that the arrest “sends a clear message that acts of violence against our law enforcement personnel will never be tolerated” and praised “significant cooperation between federal authorities and the St. Louis County Police Department.”

Belmar previously called the shooting “an ambush,” and had said the two officers easily could have died, like two New York City officers who were shot and killed in their police cruiser in December.

A 41-year-old St. Louis County officer was shot in the right shoulder, the bullet exiting through his back. A 32-year-old officer from Webster Groves was wearing a riot helmet with the face shield up. He was shot in the right cheek, just below the eye, and the bullet lodged behind his ear.

The officers were released from the hospital later Thursday, and Belmar said Sunday that they “were getting better, not getting worse.”

The Ferguson police department has been a national focal point since Brown, who was black and unarmed, was killed by now-former police officer Darren Wilson. Wilson was cleared by the Justice Department’s report and a grand jury led by McCulloch declined to indict Wilson in November.

The federal report found widespread racial bias in the city’s policing and in a municipal court system driven by profit extracted from mostly black and low-income residents.

Six Ferguson officials, including Jackson, have resigned or been fired since the federal report was released March 4.

Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III and the City Council issued a joint statement saying they support “peaceful protesting” but “will not allow, nor tolerate, the destructive and violent actions of a few to disrupt our unifying actions.”