President Obama, First Lady study protocols as they prepare for meeting with Queen Elizabeth

British etiquette dictates that “you may not shake the queen’s hand, only touch it briefly,” so that would rule out the fist bump. And if there’s food around, and the queen stops eating it, everybody else has to stop, too.

DAILY NEWS | Apr 1, 2009

BY Kenneth R. Bazinet and Richard Sisk

WASHINGTON – “Just be yourself” was the advice from the palace for the big meet with Queen Elizabeth, but First Lady Michelle Obama was taking no chances Tuesday.

The usual spies said that White House and State Department protocol types had briefed the First Lady on the do’s and don’ts of royal chitchat and such, and she had passed it on to President Obama aboard Air Force One.

For the Buckingham Palace grip-and-greet Wednesday, British etiquette dictates that “you may not shake the queen’s hand, only touch it briefly,” so that would rule out the fist bump. And if there’s food around, and the queen stops eating it, everybody else has to stop, too. Among the big don’ts – don’t act like former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Her Royal Highness was not amused when Bush winked at her in 2007 after muffing his lines to suggest that Elizabeth may have been around in 1776.

Then there was the time in the ’90s when Clinton tried to bring a group of hangers-on with him into the palace.

When they were barred, Clinton aides complained that the queen’s attendants had been allowed into the White House earlier. One of the queen’s staff shot back: “Yes, well, this is the palace, isn’t it?”

Not that any of this will ruffle the queen, who has taken the measure of 11 Presidents going back to the administration of Harry S Truman, when she was a mere princess. The only President she hasn’t met since then is Lyndon B. Johnson.

The White House has kept a tight lid on the gifts for the queen the Obamas will bring Wednesday night, saying only that they will be an upgrade from the classic-movie DVDs Obama recently gave Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The British have leaked that the queen will have something in the way of Harris Tweeds for the Obamas.

The White House was also mum on whether Michelle Obama will go with sleeves or be sleeveless in the manner that has wowed the style mavens of late.

Carl Anthony, a historian at the National First Ladies Museum, can’t understand the fuss about the sleeves. “Michelle Obama seems to favor a once-popular style,” said Anthony, noting that Nancy Reagan, Mamie Eisenhower, Bess Truman and other First Ladies going back to Dolly Madison sometimes ditched the sleeves. The new First Lady “is not some kind of history heretic here,” Anthony said. Obama and the other world leaders attending the G-20 summit will also attend a reception at the palace and then move on to the prime minister’s residence for a dinner hosted by Brown.

London Police Turn ‘Big Brother’ For G20 Summit

Sky News | Mar 31, 2009

With security fears rising in the build-up to the G20 summit on Thursday, the Metropolitan Police have been given access to more than 3,000 CCTV cameras around London.

The police will be watching over 3,000 CCTV cameras from the hub in Lambeth.

Scotland Yard’s Central Communications Command in Lambeth, South London, will become the eyes of the city tomorrow when more than 100 officers monitor live links across the capital.

As the world’s most powerful leaders arrive in London, the priority will be to ensure their safety while also keeping an eye on the thousands of protesters expected to turn out.

The surveillance team will be managed by a team of 20 senior officers including tactical advisers and counter-terrorism staff.

The team will be backed up representatives from the fire brigade and ambulance service.

The control room will be the hub for co-ordinating the several-thousand strong police force who will work to ensure security throughout the G20 summit.

The huge operation, known as Operation Glencoe, is one of the biggest to have taken place in recent times.

The Liberal Democrats say they will be keeping a close on on the policing of the G20 protests.

The party’s justice spokesman, David Howarth, said: “We do not want to see a repeat of the policing of last year’s (climate change) camp at Kingsnorth, which was disproportionate, heavy-handed and provocative.

“I was encouraged to hear the Metropolitan Police talking seriously about proportionality when I met them today.

“I very much hope the that the rights of the protesters to make their important point peacefully will be fully respected.”

3,000 cameras to monitor G20 summit

UK Press | Apr 1, 2009

Police will have access to more than 3,000 CCTV cameras as the world’s most powerful political leaders arrive in London for Thursday’s G20 summit.

Senior officers were continuing their preparations at Scotland Yard’s Central Communications Command. The building, in Lambeth, south London, houses the force’s specialist operations room, with live links to cameras across the capital.

The open plan office-style room will become a hive of activity on Wednesday as more than 100 officers and civilian staff monitor the city. They will oversee the movements of diplomats, including United States President Barack Obama, and the expected massing of protesters in the City of London.

NYPD moves to cloak midtown with camera license plate readers, and radiation and bio scanners

DAILY NEWS | Apr 1, 2009

BY Alison Gendar

The NYPD wants to cloak midtown with the same security blanket it rolled out for lower Manhattan: camera license plate readers, and radiation and bio scanners.

Those measures covering Manhattan south of Canal St. will slowly be applied to midtown, from 34th to 59th Sts., river to river, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told the City Council Public Safety Committee.

“We want to take that model, protecting the 1.7 square miles south of Canal and replicate it in midtown Manhattan,” Kelly said after the hearing Tuesday.

The NYPD wants $21 million in federal homeland security dollars to put toward the midtown project, estimated to cost $58 million.

Aside from iconic buildings that could be terror targets, many financial companies relocated into midtown after the 2001 World Trade Center attack, police said.

Kelly did not outline how many cameras, license plate readers or radiation scanners would be deployed in midtown.

The announcement is the latest in the NYPD’s attempts to use technology to scan huge swaths of the city.

Modeled after London’s “Ring of Steel,” the NYPD opened its coordination center last November, with cops monitoring feeds from 300 cameras and 30 mobile license plate readers in lower Manhattan.

The 24-hour center, based in a nondescript Broadway building, keeps tabs on high-profile terror targets such as the World Trade Center site and Wall Street.

Plans are underway to have some 3,000 cameras, public and privately owned, and as many as 96 fixed license-plate readers feeding into the center south of Canal St.

The NYPD is also looking to install permanent license plate scanners at each of the 20 crossings into Manhattan as part of an elaborate new safety scheme.

Police also want to install sensors to detect biological and radiological weapons.

The lower Manhattan plan costs an estimated $92 million. The department has already invested about $84 million to secure Manhattan south of Canal St., river to river.

Civil rights groups said wholesale scanning and filming of everyone entering a specific area goes too far and doesn’t insure safety, as London found out when its camera-coated transit system was bombed by terrorists.

Mother of murdered model campaigns to get everyone’s DNA on database

Murdered: Sally Anne Bowman

Mother of Sally Anne Bowman: Store everyone’s DNA on a national database

This is London | Apr 1, 2009

By Danny Brierley and Martin Bentham

THE mother of murdered London model Sally Anne Bowman today called for a DNA database of everyone in Britain to help police catch rapists and other serious criminals.

Linda Bowman, whose 18-year-old daughter’s killer Mark Dixie was caught through the use of a DNA sample, said the reform could prevent dangerous offenders remaining free and stop miscarriages of justice.

Dixie, now 38, was convicted last year of Miss Bowman’s murder during a sex attack in Croydon in September 2005. He was arrested after his DNA, taken following his arrest over a pub fight in 2006, was linked to the murder scene.

Mrs Bowman’s call now comes after concerns over the bungled Met investigation into serial rapist Kirk Reid.

Reid, 44, was convicted last week after remaining free for years as detectives repeatedly failed to act on evidence linking him to sex crimes. His DNA was first left on one of his victims in 2001, seven years before his arrest.

Mrs Bowman, 46, said the case and that of her daughter highlighted the value of a universal database.

“It is the only deterrent that will stop serious crimes being committed. I am a mother of four and I have five grandchildren, I would not worry about any of their details being held on a computer and everyone in our family feels the same way,” she said.

“I am sick to death of the people who complain about this idea. They have no idea what families like mine have been through.” Mrs Bowman said that Dixie and other offenders such as John Worboys would have been caught earlier if a universal database existed. Taxi driver Worboys, 51, of Rotherhithe, is believed to have attacked up to 200 women. He was first arrested after a sex attack in July 2007, but police released him on bail and failed to proceed with the case. Worboys went on to attack about 30 more women before he was caught on 15 February last year. He was found guilty of 19 charges, including a rape.

Other supporters of a universal database include Conservative peer and former head of the Barbican, Baroness O’Cathain. She said: “A lot of women particularly would feel more secure and safe if everybody was on the DNA database, particularly in rape cases.”

The existing database of more than 4.5million people – of whom about 80,000 have no convictions – records the DNA of convicts and also of those who have been arrested but not convicted.

Lord Justice Sedley has criticised the data, saying: “Where we are at the moment is indefensible. If you happen to have been in the hands of the police, then your DNA is on permanent record. If you haven’t, it isn’t.

“It also means that a great many people who are walking the streets, and whose DNA would show them guilty of crimes, go free.”

Brown: London can lead the New Order

This is London | Mar 31, 2009

By Joe Murphy, Political Editor

London’s beleaguered bankers can lead the world to future prosperity by embracing reforms being unveiled at the G20 summit, Gordon Brown declared today.

Writing exclusively in the Evening Standard, the Prime Minister called on the City to adopt his agenda of better regulation and closer supervision, setting new standards for the world to follow.

“It is fitting that we are seeking to agree new rules for global financial markets here in London,” he wrote.

“Getting this right can provide a platform for a reformed City to secure its place as the world’s leading financial centre in a more responsible, better supervised global system that our economies so urgently need.”

Mr Brown is urging a stronger role for the Financial Services Authority, an end to the short-term bonus culture, a crackdown on tax havens and greater clarity of the risks taken by banks. His comments gave a strong hint that a reformed City would enjoy greater Government support.

Expressing sympathy for City workers, in contrast with his condemnations of greedy bank bosses, Mr Brown said: “I know that ordinary City workers are feeling the pain of the worldwide financial collapse that has triggered this global recession.”

However, Mr Brown’s article notably made no call for a big global deal to inject more money into the world economy to beat the recession, making clear that the ambition has been effectively dropped from the G20 agenda because of a lack of European support.

With the summit’s formal opening just three days away, world leaders have already begun gathering in London. Australia’s Kevin Rudd was at No 10 for breakfast talks this morning, with Mexican president Felipe Calderó* arriving this afternoon.

Many Londoners are keenly awaiting the arrival tomorrow of Barack Obama, who used an interview to urge the G20 countries to show “unity in the face of crisis”.

The US President, who has been one of the biggest voices calling for a world cash injection to match his own plans to boost the American economy, also softened his position by agreeing the importance of other measures. “There are some G20 participants that are arguing fiercely for stimulus, others for regulation,” he told the FT.

“We need stimulus and we need regulation. We need to deal with the problems right in front of us and we also need to make sure we’re taking steps to prevent these types of breakdowns from happening again.”

Mr Obama said that each country needed to make sure it was “taking serious steps to deal with the problems in the banking sector and the financial markets”.

He retreated from demanding an immediate stimulus by agreeing with European leaders who have insisted they need to wait and see how previous spending boosts have worked. “We need to see how they work,” he said.

“To start making a whole host of plans about next year, without having better information on how the current stimulus efforts are working, is something that I think is of concern.”

He spoke confidently of a deal, saying he had spoken to a range of world leaders and found “a rough consensus” on what had to be done.

But shadow chancellor George Osborne, also writing in the Evening Standard, scoffed that the Government had performed a “rather panicky downplaying of expectations” from past Downing Street rhetoric about a “grand global bargain”.

He said the reluctance of other countries to spend their way out of recession showed the Prime Minister was “isolated”.

The Criminalization of Everyday Life

Are anyone’s days entirely free of “offenses” that can get you arrested?

City Limits | Mar 23, 2009

By Robert Neuwirth

I spent 24 hours in the slammer the other day. My crime? Well, the police couldn’t tell me when they locked me up. The prosecutor and judge couldn’t either, when I was arraigned the following day. I found out for myself when I researched the matter a few days after being released: I had been cited for walking my dog off the leash – once, six years ago.

Welcome to the ugly underside of the zero-tolerance era, where insignificant rule violations get inflated into criminal infractions. Here’s how it worked with me: a gaggle of transit cops stopped me after they saw me walk between two subway cars on my way to work. This, they told me, was against the rules. They asked for ID and typed my name into a hand-held computer. Up came that old citation that I didn’t know about and they couldn’t tell me about. I was immediately handcuffed and brought to the precinct. There, I waited in a holding cell, then was fingerprinted (post-CSI memo: they now take the fingers, the thumbs, the palms, and the sides of both hands) and had the contents of my shoulder bag inventoried. I could hardly believe it: I was being arrested without ever having committed a crime.

I was held overnight in the Midtown North Precinct lock-up (shoelaces and belt confiscated, meals courtesy of the McDonald’s dollar menu). In the morning, my fellow convicts and I were led, chain-gang style, to the Manhattan Community Court next door. The judge there dismissed the charge against me – because no one ever does time for that kind of crime. A few days later, at Brooklyn’s central court, my warrant was lifted for “time served” – again because no one is ever locked up for breaking the leash law.

If the cops had simply written me a ticket, I would have paid it, and I would have also had to pay to vacate my outstanding warrant. But by cuffing me and holding me overnight, the city spent quite a bit of money (it took two police officers approximately six hours each just to arrest and process me), while the fines assessed against me were rescinded.

While I was inside, I was astounded by the kinds of things that take up police and court time. A couple of people nabbed for being in various parks after dark. One of them was walking his dog. Two young men accused of riding their bicycles on the sidewalk. Three people arrested for sleeping in a subway station. My roommate in the lock-up was an articulate and self-aware 60-year-old whose sin was that he bought a bottle of booze and had taken a swig on the street. In the cell next to us: two costumed Mariachis busted for busking on the subway. They were repeat offenders. Their weapons: a guitar and an accordion.

With zero tolerance, we have finally done it: We have criminalized everyday life. After all, in the course of their life people sometimes ride their bikes on the sidewalks. And once upon a time not too long ago, it was normal to go into the parks after dark. My friends and I did all the time, particularly if we had time to kill before or after the opera, the symphony, or a jazz or rock concert. We walked brazenly between subway cars. Some of us even – horror of horrors! – played music on the street or in the subway without a license. And, though my parents would not be happy to know it even now, we sometimes drank beer in public – making sure, in an important but legally meaningless gesture, that the bottle was in a paper bag. If I did any of this on a regular basis today, I’d probably be considered a behavioral recidivist and sent to Riker’s Island.

I can laugh away my time in a cell—my life suddenly turned into an update of “Alice’s Restaurant.” But I get angry when I think of kids in their teens or 20s being treated the way I was. I’m not against hard time for criminal, violent or anti-social behavior. But slapping young people behind bars and giving them an arrest record simply because the normal things they do are trivial rule violations is not only wasteful, it’s downright criminal.

– Robert Neuwirth

Robert Neuwirth, a longtime contributor to City Limits, is the author of “Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World,” and is at work on a new book about the global reach of the informal economy.

Editor’s note: The Giuliani administration highlighted its increase of “quality of life” summonses, but statistics from the annual Mayor’s Management Report indicate that the Bloomberg administration has been just as zealous. The number of such summonses under Giuliani reached its height in fiscal 2001, hitting 523,000. After a dip in 2002, the number of “quality of life” summonses rose under Mayor Bloomberg to more than 700,000 in fiscal 2004. They’ve declined since then to 527,000 in fiscal 2008—still higher than under the previous mayor. The city’s courts, meanwhile, have registered an uptick in the number of people getting arraigned on minor charges: In 2007, the last year for which the court system published statistics, the number of arraignments for infractions and violations was the highest in 10 years – 20 percent greater than the previous year.