Los Angeles Security News

Two robbers attack Chicago store where owner fiercely fights back

It was about 90 seconds of terror as some 10 shots rang out in a Chicago store and those being robbed fought back with whatever they could grab, including a baseball bat.

“It was like the Fourth of July. Pow, pow, pow,” Luis Quizhpe told reporters, including the Chicago Tribune, from his hospital bed Wednesday. “Then he was yelling, ‘Kill the [expletive].”

One man, Cornell Mack, was in police custody on charges of attempted first-degree murder, armed robbery and discharge of a firearm in the Tuesday robbery attempt on the novelty store in the Logan Square neighborhood. A second suspect is being sought.

Mack was being treated at a hospital, apparently shot by his accomplice during the melee caught on a surveillance video.

The attempted robbery took place at Quizhpe’s Gifts and Sports. Luis Quizhpe and his brother-in-law, Luis Ernesto Aucaquizhpe, were working in the afternoon when two men wearing hoodies enter. A man flashes a weapon, the video shows.

“I thought it was a toy, but what made me frightened and really made me angry was when they grabbed my brother-in-law by the neck and they were pointing the gun at him,” Quizhpe, 62, said.

One of them envelopes Aucaquizhpe and drags him to the counter. The suspect points a gun at Quizhpe while the other robber walks around to the cash register where Quizhpe holds out his hands in apparent supplication. The robber grabs a handful of cash, and a fight with Quizhpe erupts.

The gunman opens fire apparently hitting his comrade, who limps back around the counter and toward the front door.

All four figures then leap into action as though a video game had somehow been set to fast-forward. The gunman repeatedly fires as he jumps over the counter to reach a button or switch that could unlock the door.

Meanwhile, Quizhpe is swinging wildly with a bat. Brother-in-law Aucaquizhpe joins in, fencing with a metal rod, then hurling a stool and, finally, a fire extinguisher at the assailants.

Quizhpe said he is considering retiring and selling the store that his family has run for decades.

“With what happened, I’ve been thinking about selling everything off and changing my business,” he said. “The reality is, with everything going on, it’s difficult to put myself and my family in danger.”

George Zimmerman’s mother lashes out at justice system and media

A year ago and after weeks of demonstrations and protests, George Zimmerman was arrested and charged with murder for shooting an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin. On Thursday, Zimmerman’s mother celebrated the anniversary by angrily denouncing the justice system and the media for the pushing for the arrest of her son  “solely to placate the masses.”

Zimmerman, 29, has acknowledged that he shot 17-year-old Martin to death on the rainy night of Feb. 26, 2012, while the teenager was returning from a convenience store in Sanford, Fla. After weeks of protests that roiled the national debate on civil rights, racial profiling and self-defense law, Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder;  his trial is scheduled for June 10.

“April 11 2012 will be forever remembered by the Zimmerman family as the day the justice system failed us as Americans, and as a consequence an innocent man was arrested for a crime he did not commit, solely to placate the masses,” Zimmerman’s mom, Gladys, wrote in a letter distributed via Twitter by her son, Robert.

She went on to accuse the lawyer representing the Martin family of “confusing the public and manipulating perception in order to sway the ‘court of public opinion.’”  Later in her letter,  she also lashed out against the media for spreading what she called misinformation about her son’s case.

“From the beginning, this case has been heavily publicized and a false narrative was developed surrounding a very real tragedy when there was little evidence available to the public,” the letter stated. “It is astounding that despite the vast amount of information and evidence now available that supports George’s self-defense claim, the majority of the media avoids its publication. It is indeed alarming that even more media outlets do not regret misinforming the public and have not taken steps to retract the fabrications they are responsible for perpetuating.”

The family gave no specifics.

Zimmerman has been free on bail while awaiting trial on a charge of second-degree murder for shooting Martin. His lawyers have indicated that they will pursue a self-defense strategy, arguing that Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer who was off-duty, was protecting himself in a confrontation with the teenager.

Zimmerman acted to protect himself as allowed by Florida’s stand-your-ground law, which is broader than the self-defense standards in other states.

Prosecutors allege that Zimmerman profiled a young man because he was African American.

Zimmerman was originally interviewed by local police after the incident and was released without being charged. It was only after weeks of complaints by the family and civil rights leaders that a special prosecutor charged Zimmerman in the case.

“There was absolutely no justifiable reason my son should have been charged for a crime he didn’t commit and there was no just reason he should find himself incarcerated either,” Gladys Zimmerman wrote.

Blame all around in Stockton

After a federal judge ruled last week that the city of Stockton can reduce its debt through bankruptcy, observers began to frame the battle as one of municipal bondholders against public employees. But it’s hard to shed tears for either of them.

During the boom years, Stockton promised its future public-sector retirees free lifetime medical coverage. It also adopted rules allowing workers to spike their pensions by letting them include overtime and other payments from their final work year to calculate retirement pay.

The city also issued far too many bonds. From 2003 to 2009, on an annual budget of just $156 million, Stockton borrowed $191 million for a spending spree that included public housing, an events center and arena, parking garages and a new City Hall and police communications center.

The city also borrowed $125 million to make its required payments to the California pension fund. Yes, even during the boom years, Stockton could not afford to make its pension payments.

Since 2008, the average home price in Stockton has fallen from $407,000 to $118,500, which means that property and sales tax collections have fallen sharply too. The city has cut back severely, reducing its workforce by 25%, including deep cuts in the fire and police departments, and cutting worker pay and benefits. When it became clear that wasn’t enough to balance the budget, Stockton last year suspended $2 million of its $13 million in annual bond payments.

In its bankruptcy filing, Stockton noted that “debt taken on … in the 2000s is simply not supportable given current economic realities without devastating current city services.”

The city’s position has those who invested in the bonds crying foul. A coalition of creditors, including municipal bond funds and a company that insures government bonds against default, tried to prevent Stockton from even filing for bankruptcy. They asserted that the city wasn’t insolvent because it still had the ability to raise revenue through taxation or to cut even more deeply. They also said that Stockton hadn’t negotiated in good faith.

Last week’s ruling by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein found that Stockton was indeed insolvent and that it hadn’t negotiated in bad faith. As Klein put it: “It was the choice of the … creditors to take a position as a stone wall.”

Investors are right to be nervous. The debt from which Stockton wants to free itself is not general obligation debt. That is, it doesn’t carry the full faith and credit of Stockton citizens and taxpayers.

The creditors should have understood this fact six years ago, when they freely chose to insure or purchase the bonds. The offering document warns right on its first page in big, bold, capital letters that the bonds “DO NOT CONSTITUTE AN OBLIGATION OF THE CITY FOR WHICH THE CITY IS OBLIGATED TO LEVY OR PLEDGE ANY FORM OF TAXATION.”

You couldn’t have missed it — unless you just didn’t care.

Creditors also should have known they might lose out to the state’s pension system, CalPERS, in case of a bankruptcy. California law considers its state pension fund to be a super-senior creditor, and state politicians and appointees have made it clear that they intend to keep it that way.

Investors should have contemplated the risks before lending money to Stockton on generous terms without knowing how the city planned to make good on all its promises. If investors had thought before lending, they could have turned off the money spigot then — forcing Stockton to admit, for example, that its pensions were unaffordable a good half-decade ago. Instead, bondholders prolonged the pain for taxpayers — and, now, have caused pain for themselves.

Fiscal conservatives expressed disappointment in Klein’s ruling. But if they are unhappy with public employee compensation, they should continue to persuade their fellow citizens — and elected officials — to reduce that compensation. If fiscal hawks don’t like the fact that California has anointed CalPERS as a senior creditor under state law, they should change the state law and maybe even the state Constitution, which governs that law.

And if bondholders without a full faith and credit guarantee from taxpayers don’t like the fact that the state of California considers them to rank low on the repayment scale, they shouldn’t buy the bonds.

Just looking at your phone while driving is now a crime

Direction-impaired drivers, prepare to meet your doom.

A California appellate court has ruled that it’s illegal to hold your phone while driving to use it for anything — like checking Google maps, or even looking at an email or text.

The case was brought by Steven R. Spriggs, a 58-year-old professional development officer at Fresno State University. On Jan. 5, 2012, Spriggs found himself in stop-and-go traffic caused by road construction on California 41 near the California 180 interchange. For the uninitiated, that’s basically the middle of Fresno.

It was 6 p.m., and dark, and Spriggs wondered if he got off at the next exit if he could avoid the jam. So he picked up his iPhone 4 and hit the map app. Something out his left window startled him. It was California Highway Patrol motorcycle officer Jack Graham, motioning to him to pull over.

“He said, ‘Pull over, I’m going to write you a ticket for using your cellphone,’” Spriggs told me Tuesday. Graham cited Spriggs for driving a motor vehicle while using a wireless telephone. Not talking on a wireless phone. Not texting on wireless phone. But using the phone.

On April 26, 2012, Spriggs fought his ticket at trial in Fresno County Superior Court. He brought in a paper map and opened it to demonstrate that trying to use a traditional map is much more cumbersome than using an iPhone map. He lost.

Having attended law school, Spriggs decided to file his own appellate brief. There was a hearing — “It took all of 31 seconds,” Spriggs said — then the court took the case under advisement. Months passed.

Last week, he got a call from a Fresno newspaper reporter. “He informed me that I’d lost.”

A three-judge panel of the Appellate Division of Fresno County Superior Court found on March 21 that Spriggs had violated the California law that prohibits distracted driving.

“Our review of the statute’s plain language leads us to conclude that the primary evil sought to be avoided is the distraction the driver faces when using his or her hands to operate the phone,” wrote Judge W. Kent Hamlin. “That distraction would be present whether the wireless telephone was being used as a telephone, a GPS navigator, a clock or a device for sending and receiving text messages and emails.”

(A clock? As I mentioned, we are doomed.)

“The judge said you can’t touch the unit while you are in the car,” Spriggs told me Tuesday by phone from Santa Ana, where he was working. “I think that’s judicial overreaching.”

Spriggs had not expected the case to be made public and has been surprised at the response. The ruling has been featured on many tech blogs, and seems to have touched a nerve. “It’s been pretty stupid the last 48 hours,” he said. “I’ve been on radio stations I never thought I would have my name associated with.”

Spriggs, who was fined $160 for his ticket, would like to appeal but said he can’t do it on his own. He is  very much in favor of laws that prevent distracted driving. “I believe this in my heart,” he told me. “My son was hit on his bike by a distracted driver on a cellphone,” he said. “He still suffers daily because of that injury.”

But he thinks there’s a distinction to be made between actions caused by distraction and distraction itself. “I recognize the dangers of using a cellphone while driving but everyone is distracted all the time.”

He noted that most new cars have video displays in their dashboards. “You have to manipulate them to do anything.” Why is it legal to futz around with your dashboard video screen, but not look at your cellphone to check the traffic or the time?

“I don’t know how it’s any different,” said Spriggs. “They have to look at the actions caused by our distraction, not by what’s distracting us.”

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