Updated 7:26 AM PDT, Tue, Sep 15, 200

Tessa Medearis may have only been 18 at the time, but she knew Ian Kinney was the love of her life.  “He was the one for me. I know it. I never wanted to leave him.”

But in July 2008, Ian Kinney was taken from Tessa by a drunk driver.  It happened at about 6 p.m. on State Route 78 as the couple drove in a Lexus from Julian to Vista.

“Out of the corner of my eye I see this white flash,” said Medearis.  The white flash was a white Chevy pick up truck that CHP investigators say El Cajon resident Shannon Shimp was driving.  According to investigators, Shimp was driving erratically, weaving in and out of traffic, when he lost control and broadsided Kinney and Medearis.

“I looked over at Ian and I knew it was pretty much over,”said Medearis.  “The car was pushed inside of him, there was blood everywhere and it wasn’t mine.”

Kinney was pronounced dead at the scene.  A passenger in Shimp’s truck, Joseph Edwards, 52, was also killed.

Medearis was alive but seriously injured.  Both her hands were shattered, her spine fractured and both feet broken.  “And my thumb was really bad it was actually in the middle of my hand,” Medearis said.

None of the injuries compared to the pain in her heart, she said, after losing the love of her life.  She is hoping an East County jury will convict Shimp on two counts of second degree murder.

“If we let someone out there that’s killed two people, what’s to stop them from doing it again,” Medearis said.

Closing arguments begin on Tuesday and the jury could get the case later that morning.

The defense has argued that this is not a murder case.  Shimp’s attorney told jurors that the back tires on the truck had low tire pressure, which may have played a role in the crash.

If convicted on all counts, Shimp could get 30 years to life in prison.

First Published: Sep 14, 2009 10:08 PM PDT

Updated 8:30 AM PDT, Tue, Sep 15, 2009

Meet the Geriatric Bandits: One has a cane, the other needs an oxygen mask. They’re old enough to be your grandfather. This past week, they’ve both robbed banks. And one is still at large.

On Saturday, a man carrying an inhaler or an oxygen tank robbed the San Diego National Bank in La Jolla. The man, wearing a white beret, argyle sweater and sports coat, walked into the bank on Ivanhoe Avenue with a demand note.  In the picture caught by surveillance cameras, he looks to be in his 70s. An oxygen tube appears to hang from his face.

Investigators don’t know if he was armed, but they do know that he got away with some cash. Just look at him – would you stop him?

Then, two days later, another bank robbery. This time, the target was the Bank of America on El Cajon Blvd in City Heights. A 70-year old man — with cane, mind you — walked into the bank with a note and demanded a large amount of cash.

The bank manager attempted to evacuate the bank and lock the suspect inside, but Geriatric Bandit No. 2 was too crafty. Despite dozens of police cars surrounding the bank, he hobbled out of the bank using a side door and tried to hide on the porch of a home a few blocks away.

Police found him lying on the porch and arrested him — maybe his bright red hawaiian shirt gave him away.

First Published: Sep 15, 2009 7:47 AM PDT

February 22, 2009

Earlier this month, a panel of three federal judges issued a tentative ruling that California must reduce its state prison population by more than 55,000 to relieve intense overcrowding and poor medical and mental health care.
If the order holds, the state will have to figure out how to release prisoners on a scale never before seen.Joan Petersilia, professor of criminology, law and society at UC Irvine and the author of "When Prisoners Come Home," spoke about the ruling and its potential effects with Opinion page contributor Sara Catania. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Is there a precedent for an early release of this magnitude?
Never on the scale we’re talking about here. The most dramatic example occurred in Illinois in the 1980s, when the state released 1,200 people early.
Did crime increase as a result?

No, but there are crucial differences in the circumstances of the Illinois release and the proposed California release. In Illinois, the total number of prisoners released was a fraction of what we’re looking at for California. The Illinois numbers were low enough that if all the released prisoners were rearrested, it probably wouldn’t affect the state’s overall reported crime rate. Illinois also had some ability to limit releases to lower-level offenders.
Do you think early release can work in California?
I’m in favor of early release at a lesser level. I think we could safely release 15,000 to 18,000 prisoners. That would include very low-level technical parole violators, the elderly and low-level drug offenders. Nearly everyone who has studied this issue recommends removing less serious parole violators from state prisons.
How does the poor economy affect early release?
In two primary ways. First of all, whether you are conservative or liberal, everyone agrees that we don’t want to be spending $46,000 a year to house a prisoner who represents no public safety risk when it takes about $12,000 a year to fund a really good community-based program for that person.
Unfortunately, the services these former prisoners would need revolve primarily around substance-abuse treatment, and those are exactly the programs that are being cut. Limited early release is a good idea, but it could not be happening at a worse time. Just opening up prison doors and releasing 55,000 prisoners with no preparation is harsh to the offender and dangerous to the public.
Is there an early release approach that might mitigate the fallout?
Yes. In 1994, California’s Legislature created the Community-Based Punishment Act. It was never funded, but now people are talking about reactivating it. Under the act, if you’ve got prison-bound parole violators and you’re willing to keep them locally rather than sending them to state prison, you get a kickback from the state to pay for programs to ease their reentry into society. This approach could include short-term incarceration, intensive supervision, house arrest with electronic monitoring, enrollment in a work-release program, day reporting and mandatory substance-abuse treatment.
In our prisons, the overcrowding crisis is caused by parole violators returning to prison. Every year, we send some 70,000 parolees back to prison, about 30,000 of those from L.A. County alone. Most serve two to three months. Everybody knows this revolving door does not protect the public and in fact puts it at greater risk. These are the lower-level people who may have been in drug treatment, may have found a job and housing. When you send them back to prison, you break those connections and destabilize them. A few months later, they’re back on the street and expected to start all over again.
You recommend a far more limited early release than the one being proposed. Is it possible to do the release right with four times as many prisoners than you recommend?
No, not with the way California currently operates its prison and parole system. If we start releasing prisoners in such high numbers, those who are released are bound to include prisoners with lengthy criminal histories and violence in their backgrounds.
The best way we can reduce the risk these more serious prisoners represent is to transfer them from prison to intensive residential reentry facilities, or perhaps to electronic monitoring and house arrest. Once there, parole agents and community providers would need to closely monitor the prisoners’ behavior and try to interest them in rehabilitation and work training. Simply releasing this larger group of prisoners without the necessary housing and services is asking for more crime.
Is anyone talking about how to pay for the community approach, or are already overworked probation and parole officers just going to have bigger caseloads?
There is a lot of discussion going on in Sacramento about how to fund "intermediate sanctions" to be used instead of sending someone back to prison. If a prisoner who violates parole, for example, no longer returns to prison but remains in the community, who is responsible for his surveillance and services? We can’t ignore their parole failures because often those failures are a signal that the parolee is slipping. Other states have used intermediate sanctions, such as those described in the Community-Based Punishment Act. But in order to employ this model, we have to provide money to counties to expand these types of intermediate sanctions. If we can transfer the state prisoner to a community-based program, we save money — and perhaps more important, provide services that might actually help the prisoner stay out of crime in the long run — which, of course, saves even more money.
Even if early release went according to the best possible plan, there will still be the same number of cells and the same level of administration. Will there really be much in the way of savings inside prisons?
No, we won’t see any cost savings immediately. If prisoners are released, the remaining prisoners will simply spread out so as to not be as crowded, thereby satisfying the court’s requirements.
Of the $46,000 we spend a year to house a prisoner in California, $2,500 goes to food and clothing, $9,000 goes to healthcare and $2,000 goes toward education and employment training to prepare the inmate for release. That’s a total of $13,500 per prisoner. More than two-thirds of the cost of housing an inmate in California goes toward security and operations, making the overall cost of housing a prisoner in California the highest in the nation. There are no plans to close prisons any time soon, so the cost of running the prison system will remain rather unchanged for quite some time.
If the early release order is enacted on the scale proposed, there is a risk of a high level of recidivism, which carries a hefty price tag. In the end, will any money be saved?
The key to all of this — the real money — is in the California prisons, to the tune of $10 billion a year. If we’re to solve the state’s prison crisis, we’ve got to figure out how to shift some of that away from state prisons and into local programs. If we don’t, we’re setting the system up for failure.
Without sufficient financial support, we’re going to release these people and they’re going to fail. You’ll wind up with another victim, plus the cost of the prisoner’s reincarceration. If we don’t do this right, all of these people will be back in prison. We will have saved in the short term, but the long-term consequences will be huge.

- via LA Times

Soon after the robbery in Lincoln, an off-duty Thunder Valley Casino employee saw surveillance footage of the suspect in the news media, and recognized the suspect as a recent visitor to the casino. The casino employee drove to work on his day off, and located surveillance video of the suspect and his vehicle, which helped identify the suspect.  Thunder Valley Casino officials provided the information to law enforcement, and Roseville Police investigators located the suspect  at a Roseville hotel. On June 26, Roseville Police investigators conducted surveillance on the hotel and arrested the suspect, Scott Stewart Singewald, 42, of Roseville, without incident.

According to a U.S. Attorney’s Office press release, on September 5, Singewald pleaded guilty before United States District Court Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. to seven counts of bank robbery.  A U.S. Attorney’s Office representative said that on January 9, Singewald was sentenced to 97 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $34,237 in restitution.

Roseville Police Chief Mike Blair said, "This case was a great example of the partnership among  local and federal law enforcement agencies, Roseville Crime Stoppers, and the community.  We are indebted to Thunder Valley Casino for their outstanding cooperation in this case, to their employee who went beyond the call of duty to help identify a criminal, and to Roseville Crime Stoppers for providing the reward." 

The casino employee’s tip lead to Singewald’s arrest and conviction on the following bank robberies:

September 1, 2007, Bank of America, 2400 N. Texas St., Fairfield
May 3, 2008, Bank of the West, 186 Main St., Woodland
May 16, 2008, Central Valley Community Bank, 1919 Howard Rd., Madera
May 24, 2008, Washington Mutual Bank, 2866 W. March Ln., Stockton
June 11, 2008, River City Bank, 3992 Douglas Blvd., Roseville
June 20, 2008, Bank of the West, 3509 El Camino Ave., Carmichael
June 23, 2008, Wells Fargo Bank, 945 Highway 65, Lincoln

The arrest resulted from the casino employee’s tip and a joint investigation by the Roseville and Lincoln Police Departments, and the Sacramento Violent Crimes Task Force, comprised of investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department.

Per Roseville Crime Stopper’s policy, the tipster remains anonymous. Anyone wanting to provide information about a Roseville-area crime may call Roseville Crime Stoppers at (91…. Roseville Crime Stoppers pays cash rewards for anonymous tips about crimes in Roseville leading to arrest.

– via Rocklin and Roseville Today

Advertisement

US Attorney General Eric Holder on the arrests of drug cartel suspects

A major crackdown on Mexican drug traffuckers operating in the US has led to the arrest of 755 people, Attorney General Eric Holder has announced.

These included 52 people detained on Wednesday in California, Minnesota and Maryland in raids targeting the powerful Sinaloa cartel.

The 21-month operation involved US, Mexican and Canadian authorities.

A 2008 justice department report found Mexican traffuckers were the biggest organised crime threat to the US.

Operation Xcellerator was carried out across the US

Most of the cocaine available in the US is smuggled via the US-Mexican border, while Mexican drug traffuckers control most of the US drug market.

Announcing the arrests, Mr Holder described the cartels as a threat to US national security.

"They are lucrative. They are violent. And they are operated with stunning planning and precision, " he said.

As well as 755 arrests, Operation Xcellerator led to the seizure of :

• money totalling $59.1m (£41.5m)
• 23 tonnes of narcotics, including 12,000 kg cocaine, 7,257 kg of marijuana, 544 kg of methamphetamines and 1.3m Ecstasy pills
• 149 vehicles, three aircraft, 3 maritime vessels
• 169 weapons

"We successfully concluded the largest and hardest hitting operation to ever target the very violent and dangerously powerful Sinaloa drug cartel," said Michele Leonhart, acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

"From Washington to Maine, we have disrupted this cartel’s domestic operations, arresting US cell heads and stripping them of $59m in cash."

She said the investigation had uncovered a "super meth lab that is so sophisticated that we’ve seen none like it anywhere" and drug factory machines able to produce 12,000 ecstasy tablets an hour.

Operation Xcellerator had also disrupted the gang’s operations in Canada, Ms Leonhart said.

US officials say that over the past two years the street price of cocaine has more than doubled and purity fallen.

Turf wars

The Sinaloa cartel is one of four main Mexican drug-traffucking gangs, the others being the Gulf cartel, the Tijuana cartel and the Juarez cartel.

Turf wars led to the deaths of some 6,000 people last year as the traffuckers fought each other and the authorities, and Mexican media say so far this year there have been around 1,000 drug-related murders.

Mexico has deployed some 40,000 troops to tackle the drug gangs

Mr Holder told reporters he was concerned that drug violence from Mexico could spill over to the US.

"The problems that Mexico faces are also problems that we face," he said.

Mr Holder said the Obama administration would push for reinstating a ban on assault weapons.

This has been a long-standing request of the Mexican government which says guns smuggled over the border constitute a major threat to Mexico’s security.

Echoing the growing concern about the drug-related violence in Mexico, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a congressional committee on Wednesday it had become one of her top priorities.

"Mexico right now has issues of violence that are of a different degree and level than we’ve ever seen before," she said.

The US Congress has authorised the spending of $1.6bn (£1.1bn) dollars to confront the threat of drug traffucking and organised crime from Mexico and Central America.

So far, $197m (£138m) has been released for military and law enforcement training and equipment in Mexico.

- via BBC

Gerarld McCullouch is in the news today because he successfully and bravely fended off an attack by a would-be mugger, as he was riding the subway in New York City. The actor was working on his laptop, uploading a video to YouTube when the mugger attempted to snatch it from him. McCullouch, a trained boxer who practices three or four times a week took on the assailant, delivering body shot to the chest. The mugger pulled a 10-inch knife in retaliation leading to a fierce confrontation.

I yelled at the top of my lungs, ‘Get the [bleep] away from me!’ That’s when the knife came down into my back. I don’t know whether he lost his grip or what, but the blade didn’t penetrate my leather jacket.

“We were in each other’s face. I think I punched him again as the doors closed and the train started leaving the station. I’m watching MTA workers on the platform looking in. I thought, ‘Great, now I’m alone in this car with him.’

Thanks to the intervention of the train conductor who pulled the actor into the next car and the several police officers who entered the car and handcuffed and arrested the would be assailant, the actor escaped unharmed. He said in an interview that he fought back because he had been in “the[boxing] ring about eight hours before. Also, I didn’t want to give up my computer after working on my video all that time.”

It was the actor’s second confrontation with a mugger; he was previously held up at gunpoint in 2001.

As a biography, Gerald McCullouch was born in Los Angeles, California, on March 30, 1967 so his age is 41. He attended Florida State University, studying in the BFA Musical Theatre Program. Prior to college, his first job as a performing artist was as a singer in the country western revue at Six Flags Over Georgia when he was 16 years old. The aspiring actor survived a near fatal car crash during his sophomore year of college, in which he suffered a severe head injury that left him in a short-term coma.

After months of rehabilitation, he began his professional career first in Atlanta, Georgia and then in New York City where he found success as an actor in commercials. He also did work in film and theater, in both singing and nonsinging roles, notably as the title character in the musical ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ in a European tour.

For the past nine seasons, Gerald McCullouch has become widely known for his role as Bobby Dawson, a ballistics expert in the hit CBS TV series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, a drama series which chronicles the work of a team of Las Vegas forensic scientists as they investigate the circumstances in mysterious homicides and other crimes. As is the actor, the character is openly gay, as revealed during the show’s season in 2003.

He is also widely seen as a recurring guest host of FYE! on E!TV. He also pursues a career as a stand up comic and has performed in top clubs including Caroline’s and Gotham in New York City and Improv in LA. Additionally, he has numerous professional credits as a model, film and TV director, screenwriter, and photographer.

via – http://celebrity.rightpundits.com/?p=4959

SAN DIEGO — San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis joined other prosecutors in sending letters to the governor and state legislature expressing opposition to the cutting of grant programs in child abuse, gang violence and other areas.

The letters from the California District Attorneys Association, of which Dumanis is president, were drafted in response to plans to completely eliminate funding from the Office of Emergency Services for such prosecution programs as Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement, Gang Violence Suppression Program and the High Technology Theft Apprehension and Prosecution Program.

CDAA noted that the 2008-09 budget already reduces expenditures by 10 percent in many of the programs, and argued their complete elimination will lead to increased crime in California against the most vulnerable citizens.

"We recognize the magnitude of the unprecedented budget shortfall facing our state and the sacrifices necessary to put California’s fiscal house in order,” the letter to state legislators says. "However, we believe that many of the proposals contained in the state budget disproportionately impact prosecutors, irrevocably damage public safety in California, and serve only to exacerbate our economic problems.”

In a second letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, prosecutors were highly critical of the plan to eliminate parole supervision for all non-serious, non-violent, and non-sex offenders.

"Parole is an essential law enforcement tool enabling peace officers to search the persons, vehicles and residences of parolees,” the letter states.

"Parole searches have saved innocent lives and prevented countless violent crimes. To unilaterally eliminate parole for thousands of prison inmates would constitute a public safety disaster.”

via – http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jan/27/dumanis-joins-other-das-fighting-budget-cuts/

Posted: 01/26/2009 01:45:54 PM PST

PICO RIVERA – City officials shared their knowledge on crime prevention and fostered ties Monday with leaders from one of Mexico’s popular tourist destinations.

Pico Rivera hosted a delegation from Mazatlan, Mexico and from the California-Mexico Chamber of Commerce. The group visited Pico Rivera as part of a tour of Southern California to foster business ties and to learn about crime fighting efforts in cities where law enforcement is successfully reducing graffiti and gang violence.

"We came to establish a relationship with the city of Pico Rivera, to understand the operation of the city," Mazatlan Mayor Jorge Abel Lopez Sanchez said. "So that we can help each other."

Pico Rivera City Council members, along with

Station commander, Captain, Michael Rothans, and Gilberto Acuna, the Police Chief of Mazatlan, Mexico, admire a statue in front of the sation as they tour the Pico Rivera Sheriff’s Station, Monday, January 26, 2009. (Correspondent photo by Mike Mullen/SWCity)

Sister City commissioners and city staffers, greeted the delegation and presented them with plaques and a book about Pico Rivera’s history.

According to California-Mexico Chamber of Commerce President Zeferino Farias, the visit should foster new economic ties to improve business in Mazatlan and Pico Rivera.

"We’re about opening business on both sides of the border," Farias said.

Mazatlan has about 500,000 residents and has struggled to maintain safety and quell gang violence and tagging.

"Originally the thought was to find out how we got control of our graffiti," Pico Rivera Mayor Gracie Gallegos said.

Pico Rivera Sheriff’s Capt. Mike Rothans took Mazatlan’s police chief and the rest of the delegation on a tour of the sheriff’s station. A special presentation on Graffiti Tracker, which identifies taggers and all known examples of their work to make prosecutions easier.

The Pico Rivera Sheriff’s Station serves the city’s 60,000 residents plus another 40,000 in the surrounding area. Four years ago, Rothans said, the city was ranked one of the 10 worst in the state for crime.

Law enforcement officials decided to target juvenile crime and focus on tagging as a way to stop gang violence and serious crime before it happens. The Graffiti Tracker program made it possible to find taggers and prosecute the most prolific vandals.

"We know that graffiti is a gateway to other crimes," Rothans said.

According to Sanchez, lower crime rates will help Mazatlan, a coastal city, to continue growing its already-large tourism industry. He invited Pico Rivera officials to come to Mexico for Mazatlan’s Carnival festival, which is the second largest in the world.

"We are a tourism city," Sanchez said. "We have a lot to do in Mazatlan."

airan.scruby@sgvn.com

via – http://www.whittierdailynews.com/news/ci_11557308

Posted: 12/28/2008 09:58:08 PM PST

LONG BEACH – For the first few months afterward, whenever the doorbell rang, 5-year-old Dieon Rin rushed to answer yelling, "It’s Daddy! Daddy’s home!"

But it never was Daddy. Never will be. The truth is something even Dieon’s mother has been unable to grasp, much less explain to her son – Daddy can never come home again.

The father, Phally Rin, was deported to Cambodia in April for a crime committed more than a decade earlier.

Under U.S. law, he is permanently barred from returning to this country.

Veasana Ath was a carefree young man. He wasn’t a bad kid, just easily swayed by friends. His older sister, Sophea, would scold him and say he’d wind up in trouble one day.

Neither realized how right she

Phally Rin, raised in the United States but born in Cambodia, was deported there in April.

was.

After being convicted of residential burglary in early 2004, Ath was put on a plane in December of that year and sent to Cambodia.

Rin and Ath are part of a growing number of Cambodian-American men who have been deported from the United States to the impoverished land of their birth.

Before deportation, the two had little or no connection to their ‘homeland.’ They fled the ravages of the Cambodian genocide with their families as young children.

They were raised and schooled in the U.S. and yet, from now on, they are forever Cambodian, with no hope of returning to their families and the land where they were raised, but not born.

Rin and Ath are just two of 189 Cambodian- Americans deported for a variety of crimes, ranging from murder and rape to lesser offenses like burglary and crimes committed long ago.

According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data on removals in

2008, of more than 111,000 criminal removals, 30 percent were for "dangerous drugs" and

17 percent were for violent crimes. The rest were for a range of lesser crimes, including traffic offenses.

Nationally, an estimated 1,700 Cambodian-Americans are under deportation orders and can be rounded

Solony Kong and her sons were forcibly parted from her husband in April, when he was deported to Cambodia for a crime he committed as a youth. Kong says her younger son has been unable to understand that his father, forever barred from the United States, won t be able to return home. (Jeff Gritchen/Staff Photographer)

up at any time. Another 1,700 may be eligible for deportation but have not been charged. Many live in Long Beach, which has the nation’s largest population of Cambodian refugees.

Overall, nearly 350,000 aliens were deported in 2008, the majority to Latin America.

Innocents suffer

The families of Rin and Ath are the innocents caught in the aftermath of laws passed in 1996 that changed U.S. deportation policy and have resulted in a staggering increase in removals of immigrants, who became eligible for deportation when Congress expanded the list of deportable crimes.

ICE has ramped up its efforts to snare criminal aliens by working more closely with prisons and jails to identify incarcerated noncitizens.

It

The Ath family, which gathered years ago in a Thai refugee camp, has been torn by the deportation of Veasana Ath, who was found guilty of burglary in 2004. Ath has no relatives in Cambodia now.

is a strategy endorsed by many in Congress.

"I would suggest that anything that is a felony, any behavior that causes someone to be convicted, is a good reason to deport them," says Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, whose district includes portions of coastal Long Beach.

Rep. Laura Richardson, D-Long Beach, did not respond to several interview requests.

The Human Rights Watch estimates the deportation of legal immigrants has separated 1.6 million children and adults.

In Long Beach, a large number of Cambodians have been expelled. Their family members, many of them American citizens, are the collateral damage.

Suely Ngouy, the executive director of Khmer Girls In Action, which is involved in immigrant

After the deportation, Dieon Rin kept expecting his daddy to show up at the family’s door.

and refugee rights issues, says deportation has ripped a swath through the local Cambodian community, and crushed an already fragile segment of the population.

"It has devastated families emotionally," says Ngouy, who knows many affected families. "It takes away a son, a daughter, a sibling that has kept together the fabric of what little stability exists."

Since Ath’s deportation, his mother has had a series of health problems, including minor strokes, that the family attributes to stress.

Kim Hok, 61, doesn’t speak much English. But as she listens to the family talk about Veasana, she understands enough. Her eyes fill with tears. She excuses herself from the room and rises unsteadily. The only sound is her cane clicking on the tile floor.

For many families, the shame they feel over deportation leaves them suffering in silence and fear.

Tuy Sobil, a former Crips gang member convicted of armed robbery and deported to Cambodia, has become a success story in Phnom Penh. He has turned around his criminal life and now runs a successful nonprofit called Tiny Toones that helps children from the slums through break dancing, of all things.

Despite his turnaround and newfound celebrity, Tuy’s parents turn down requests for interviews.

"It’s just too hard for them," says Dabson Tuy, Sobil’s brother.

Horrors revisited

Most Cambodian families are refugees from the genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970 s that claimed about 2 million lives. Most saw family members, friends, children and adults removed by a ruthless government. They fled to escape that.

"We came here because of U.S. intervention and involvement (in our country)," Ngouy says.

The damage is extensive, she adds – retraumatization from the removals, deepening of poverty from the loss of wage earners and additional mental health problems, such as depression.

"To have to go through this exhausts what little resources they have to survive and it’s affecting the second generation that is supposed to be the hope," Ngouy says.

To her, the longer-term outcome has been to retard the growth of the overall community, because younger Cambodians see little hope and opportunity after witnessing their parents’ struggles.

Lekha Khin, the brother-in-law of Ath, says he lost 50 to 60 family members in the genocide and is one of the few left. It dismays him that the United States is now tearing his family apart.

"The government, they don’t feel nothing," Khin says
.

Sakhoun Yim, Rin’s mother, says she dragged her family for a week through rice paddies and minefields to escape the holocaust before reaching a refugee camp.

In 1997, Yim watched in horror from her porch in central Long Beach as her youngest son, Simona Rin, was shot in the back by a drive-by shooter as he was going to play basketball. A 16-year-old at Wilson High, Simona was described by as a "model kid," with no gang history.

Yim lost another son, Akhara Rin, to street violence in Lowell, Mass., in 1993, and a grandson, Kerry Ya, was fatally shot at a friend’s house in Long Beach in 2003.

And now she has lost Phally.

"I hurt so bad in my heart," she says in a choking voice. "I have two kids killed here. I don’t want to live any more. I want they kill me."

Admittedly, many Cambodian-American deportees led violent lives, spent long stretches in jail and were members of notorious gangs. Several we met in Cambodia said the U.S. has been right to deport them.

Still the one-size-fits-all justice that can treat a petty one-time criminal like Ath the same as a career gangster has many deportation-reform advocates dumbfounded.

"The laws are not only cruel in their rigidity, they are senseless," said Alison Parker, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch in a report for that organization. "How do you explain to a child that her father has been sent thousands of miles away and can never come home simply because he forged a check?"

Ghosts of crimes past

In 1989 as a teenager, Rin was in a friend’s car in Massachusetts. When the teens were pulled over, a gun was found in the car and Rin did 18 months in state and INS custody on the gun charge.

He was ordered removed, although it meant little because Cambodia did not accept U.S. deportees.

Rin stayed out of trouble after the arrest and moved with his family to California.

Federal law changed in 1996, in the wake of the first bombing of the World Trade Center and widespread demands for immigration reform.

As part of the overhaul, a long list of crimes was added that made legal immigrants eligible for deportation, including crimes predating the law, such as Phally’s gun charge. In 2002, Cambodia signed an agreement with the U.S. to accept deportable aliens.

Without knowing it, Rin had become deportable.

In 2004, neighbors called police during a domestic dispute in which Rin struck his wife, Solonly Kong. After being charged with spousal battery, Rin learned he was eligible for removal for the 15-year-old gun charge.

In 2007, Rin was fitted him with an ankle bracelet to monitor his movements and ordered to report regularly to immigration offices.

"They just put it on his ankle and said, ‘Maybe in two years we’ll let you go,"’ Kong recalls. "They just lied."

Four years later, Rin was put on a plane to Cambodia.

Kong says Rin was the ideal husband, who stayed home and tended to his family.

"He make one mistake," she said in halting English. "If he was a bad guy, I don’t feel this way. But he was always working seven days to support his family, even if he have an ache he did not stop. Any kind of job he would work."

Dieon is not the only child who is struggling without a father. Kong says she has a 15-year-old son from a previous relationship, who is "out of control" without the influence of a stepfather.

Kong feels lost and confused. She wants to join her husband in Cambodia after her oldest son finishes high school, but doesn’t know how they would survive or what that would do to Dieon.

She wonders if Rin might be allowed to return one day.

"If he could come back in 10 years, I would wait," she says wistfully.

She asks if he can immigrate to Canada or Australia. She has no idea.

In the meantime, she calls Rin almost daily in Cambodia. Most of the conversations end in tears.

"Sometimes I go to places we would always go and I cry," Kong says.

She sees young families. She sees fathers with their sons and it all crashes in on her.

"That’s why I don’t want to go anywhere," she says. "I think I cannot live without him."

Kong says Dieon cries all the time for his daddy.

"I don’t know what to tell him," she says through translation. "He’s too young to understand that Daddy can’t come back."

The last time Dieon saw his father, Rin was at a detention facility in Los Angeles. Dieon was weeping and kicking at the door, demanding that immigration officials let his daddy go.

Kong says she told Dieon his father had to go far away for work. She says when Dieon talked to his father, he pleaded with Rin to come back.

"He was saying ‘I don’t need any toys, Daddy, just please come home,"’ Kong remembers.

Now Dieon often refuses to talk to his father on the phone because he thinks Daddy doesn’t want to live with him.

No more tomorrows

Ath thought there was always tomorrow. While his older siblings worked hard, built businesses, went on to higher education and got jobs in government and private industry, Ath drifted through life.

His older siblings became citizens, but Ath never got around to it. Now, he never will.

It was stupidity that landed Ath in jail, then a series of legal missteps and ignorance that got him deported.

As Ath tells the story, he gave a friend a ride to the home of the friend’s ex-girlfriend. She wasn’t home, but while Ath waited in the car the friend stole her car keys. A neighbor recorded Ath’s license plate.

Ashamed and embarrassed, Ath never told his family. A public defender negotiated a plea for a one-year sentence, of which Ath only had to serve a few months in county jail.

Possible immigration consequences never came up. Ath was transferred to ICE custody after serving his sentence and unwittingly signed documents, written in Khmer, accepting his removal.

Ath was released and thought if he changed his ways and proved he was responsible he would be allowed to stay in the U.S.

"I got a job and I worked every day," Ath says.

One day, however, ICE agents appeared at Ath’s home, cuffed him and soon he was on a chartered flight with other deportees to Cambodia.

Life has been harsh and lonely in Cambodia, Ath says. At first he hung out with other American deportees, but tired of being ostracized. Now he says he spends his time alone.

When Ath first arrived in Cambodia, he found work but later gave up the job because co-workers who were Cambodian nationals harassed him, defaced his locker and slashed the tires to his bike.

After being unemployed for three years and existing off what money his family can spare, Ath says he recently found a job at a hotel. He is in his probationary period with the company.

The loneliness is one of the hardest parts for Ath, who has no relatives in Cambodia and misses his family.

"I just want a chance at least to visit my family," Ath says.

Sophea, 34, is able to keep a cool exterior when talking to reporters about her brother. But as she is walking to them to the gate of her home, the facade cracks.

"I’m just so mad at him for doing this to our family," she says, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand.

TUESDAY: Some deportees to Cambodia find redemption, others despair and death.

greg.mellen@presstelegram.com, (562)499-1291