Dog mistreated in Illinois boarding facility

Savage monkey mother charged in 3 year old death

A stay-at-home mother who brutally beat her 3-year-old daughter to death lied to police, telling them that the child stopped breathing following a home invasion at her Northwest Side apartment, Cook County prosecutors said.

Paramedics found Ashley Mendoza on the kitchen floor Sunday night with visible injuries to her forehead, bruising on her hands and legs, scrapes and abrasions on her neck, Assistant State’s Attorney Robert Mack said.

But there was no blood on the girl or near her body.

Police later found blood splatter in Maria Espinoza-Perez bathroom’s vanity and shower, Mack said.

Officer’s also discovered blood splatter in Ashley’s bedroom on a teddy bear, blanket, mattress and her crib’s wooden frame, Mack said.

Espinoza-Perez allegedly had told both the baby’s father and authorities that Ashley stopped breathing after the apartment, in the 3300 block of North Natchez, was broken into.

However, police couldn’t find any evidence of forced entry, Mack said.

Espinoza-Perez, 24, later admitted to police she made about the story about her apartment being broken into and admitted causing some of the injuries on Ashley’s body, Mack said.

An autopsy performed Monday found Ashley died of multiple injuries from child abuse and her death was ruled a homicide, according to the medical examiner’s office.

Noting that the circumstances surrounding Ashley’s death were “horrific,” Judge James Brown Wednesday said “there was no doubt” in his mind Espinoza-Perez that should be held without bail.

The state Department of Children and Family Services also is investigating the mother for allegations of abuse, according to spokeswoman Karen Hawkins.

The agency has not had previous reports regarding the family, and there are no other children in the home.

The family had lived in their apartment for about three years, their upstairs neighbor said.

Anita Padilla said her neighbors could be worryingly loud at times. Sometimes, their arguments were noisy enough to shake the walls, she said.

“There was a lot of yelling, but it was mostly between the husband and wife,” Padilla said.

The arguments were in Spanish, a language Padilla says she doesn’t speak. She said the arguments never resulted in a police visit.

On Sunday, the neighbors were unusually quiet, Padilla said. “I didn’t even know they were at home.”

Padilla said the girl’s father appeared to be a devoted dad.

“When he would leave every day [for work], she would stand by the window, and he would stand by the car blowing kisses and giving air hugs,” Padilla said.

Illinois red light camera update

7th circuit of appeals ruling

Since 2010, a group of Chicago drivers has been quietly challenging the legality of Chicago's red light camera program in a class action lawsuit.

But this past week, the plaintiffs' case was dealt a major blow when the First District of the Illinois Appellate Court unanimously upheld a previous ruling by the Cook County Circuit Court, which dismissed the lawsuit in 2011.

"We are pleased that the appellate court has upheld the validity of our ordinance and dismissed this case in its entirety," said Chicago Law Department spokesman Roderick Drew.

The lawsuit claims the city did not have the legal right to establish its red light camera program when it was first created. That's because the original RLC ordinance was passed in 2003, before the State of Illinois had a law on the books permitting this type of automated traffic enforcement.

The lawsuit also argues the city lacked home rule authority to do so, claiming the Illinois Vehicle Code did not permit this type of enforcement at the time. Home rule is the ability for municipalities with populations over 25,000 to pass laws that might normally be issued at the state level.

The State of Illinois eventually passed a law allowing red light cameras for municipalities within just eight counties: Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, Madison, Will, McHenry and St. Clair

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Supreme Court agrees to hear arguments over Chicago’s red light program, FOIA and legal malpractice matters
September 26, 2013 12:47 PM
By BETHANY KRAJELIS
illinois supreme court groupThe Illinois Supreme Court this week agreed to hear arguments in more than a dozen cases.
Likely to be of most interest to Chicago area residents is a case that challenges the city’s red light program, a municipal ordinance enacted a decade ago that penalizes owners of vehicles caught violating red traffic light signals.
This case — Elizabeth Keating et al. v. City of Chicago –is one of 14 civil and nine criminal cases in which the justices granted petitions for leave to appeal in. They denied more than 400 petitions.
At issue in this case is whether the lower court erred in dismissing a suit that seven motorists brought over the city’s red light camera ordinance.
Among other allegations, the plaintiffs argued that the city lacked home rule authority to enact the 2003 ordinance and that a 2006 state law authorizing the red light camera programs in eight counties – Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, Madison, McHenry, St. Clair and Will—is unconstitutional.
Determining that the ordinance was valid and the enabling statute was constitutional, the Cook County Circuit Court dismissed the plaintiffs’ suit for failure to state a claim.
It also dismissed the claims of two of the plaintiffs for lack of standing because they were not issued red light camera citations from the city and held that the remaining plaintiffs’ claims were barred because they voluntarily paid the fines for the citations.
The First District Appellate Court affirmed. It, however, found that the lower court erred in dismissing the suit on the basis of the voluntary payment doctrine, determining that dismissal was appropriate based on the plaintiffs’ failure to state a cause of action.
In addition to this case, the state high court agreed to hear arguments in two separate matters dealing with alleged legal malpractice.
Those cases are Morton Goldfine, et al. v. Barack, Ferrazzano, Kirschbaum and Perlman, et al. and The Estate of Perry C. Powell v. John C. Wunsch P.C., et al.
The Goldfine legal malpractice case stems from an underlying cause of action for a violation of the state’s Securities Law and the Powell matter focuses on the defendants’ representation of the decedent’s family in the a wrongful death suit against the decedent’s medical providers.
The justices also agreed to hear a pair of cases challenging dismissals of actions brought under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Those cases are Warren Garlick v. Lisa Madigan and Larry Nelson, et al. v The County of Kendall.
The Garlick case deals with the circuit court’s dismissal of the plaintiff’s suit over a FOIA request he made to the Attorney General’s office and Nelson presents the court with the question of whether a state’s attorney’s office is a “public body” under FOIA.
To view the court’s entire list of allowed and denied petitions, go to state.il.us/court and click on the “Leave to Appeal Dispositions” tab on the left side of the page.
This entry was posted in Ill. Supreme Court, News and tagged City of Chicago, Freedom of Information Act, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Illinois Supreme Court. Bookmark the permalink.
Illinois will be waiting on ruling while the ruling in other states is this.

Judges say red-light cameras are now unconstitutional or invalid in five Missouri cities.
The Missouri Supreme Court will not take on two court cases involving red-light cameras in Ellisville and Arnold, effectively invalidating the cities' ordinances.
The Supreme Court has turned down five recent chances to have its say on the controversial cameras, leaving Missouri with a confusing patchwork of red-light laws.
"There's nothing on the horizon here to show the Supreme Court is going to weigh in," says St. Louis-based attorney Ryan Keane, who tried the five cases out of Ellisville, Arnold, Creve Coeur, Florissant and Kansas City, all of which were turned down by the Supreme Court. "This was the opportunity, and they decided not to. We don't know why they didn't."

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The appellate court ruling that Cleveland's traffic camera system is unconstitutional has several suburbs still sorting through options about how to respond given the camera networks in their cities.

East Cleveland Mayor Gary Norton Jr. said Monday the city hasn't yet decided on any changes to its camera program because of the court ruling. In Parma, spokeswoman Jeannie Roberts said the city is still reviewing its alternatives. Michael Pokorny, law director in Parma Heights, said his city also hasn't finalized its response.

EBAY HACKED

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Hackers quietly broke into eBay two months ago and stole a database full of user information, the online auction site revealed Wednesday.

Criminals now have possession of eBay customer names, account passwords, email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers and birth dates.

The company said the passwords were encrypted, but there’s no telling when or if the hackers can decrypt them. As a precaution, eBay is resetting everyone’s passwords.

The company isn’t saying how many of its 148 million active accounts were affected — or even how many customers had information stored in that database. But an eBay spokeswoman said the hack impacted “a large number of accounts.”

EBay’s subsidiary, PayPal, said it was untouched by the data breach. PayPal data, which is sensitive because it includes payment information, is kept on a separate network.

To hack into the eBay database, the cyber attackers managed to get their hands on “a small number” of eBay employee log-in credentials, the company said. They then used that to worm their way into eBay’s corporate network. The hackers grabbed the customer database between late February and early March.

It wasn’t until two weeks ago that eBay discovered employee credentials had been stolen, the company said. The company then conducted a forensic investigation of its computers and found the extent of the theft.

The company said it hasn’t spotted any increase in fraudulent activity on eBay yet.

This is only the latest major data breach compromising people’s digital lives. In April, AOL announced hackers stole “a significant number” of its 120 million users’ email addresses, passwords, contact lists and more.

Police investigate the death of a 3 year old

Police are questioning a person of interest in the death of a 3-year-old girl on the Northwest Side of Chicago.

Officers found the girl dead inside her home in the 3300 block of North Natchez Avenue about 8:30 p.m. Sunday, police said. She was pronounced dead on the scene, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office, which has not yet released the girl's name.

The child appeared to have died from blunt force trauma to the head, police said, citing preliminary information.

The circumstances of the death have not been released, but police remained on the scene past 1 a.m. today. As detectives holding clipboards stood outside a white multifamily home on the block, a forensic investigator shot video and photographs both inside and outside the home.

Several police vehicles remained parked in the middle of Natchez for hours, blocking traffic on a street so narrow that overlapping branches from trees on both sides form a canopy in places.

The scene drew the attention of several groups of neighbors who gathered on the sidewalk and a nearby porch to watch.

Police said Area North detectives are interviewing a person of interest as they conduct a homicide investigation.

A police supervisor on the scene declined to comment.

U.S. accusing China of Cyber Spying

WASHINGTON — The United States is preparing to announce criminal charges Monday against Chinese military officials in an international cyber-espionage case, a government official said.

Attorney General Eric Holder and other federal law enforcement officials were expected to reveal the new indictments later Monday, the official told The Associated Press.

The indictments will accuse individuals of participating in cyber-espionage on behalf of a foreign government, said the official, who revealed this information only on grounds of anonymity because this person wasn't authorized to publicly discuss the case in advance of the official announcement.

The official described the prosecution as the first of its kind for the U.S. government.

The official said Chinese government officials are being charged in the United States with hacking into private-sector companies to gain trade secrets, adding that Holder and other top-level law enforcement officials were poised to announce charges that include economic espionage and trade-secret theft.

The Chinese to be named, the official said, are current members of Beijing's military establishment. The U.S. official did not identify the companies or industries with which they were engaged.

John Carlin, recently installed as head of the Justice's National Security Division, earlier this year cited prosecution of state-sponsored cyber-threats as a key goal for the Obama administration.

U.S. officials have accused China's army and China-based hackers of launching attacks on American industrial and military targets, often to steal secrets or intellectual property. China has said that it faces a major threat from hackers, and the country's military is believed to be among the biggest targets of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command.

Last September, President Barack Obama discussed cybersecurity issues on the sidelines of a summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

White House spokesman Ben Rhodes said at the time that Obama had addressed concerns about cyber threats emanating from China. He said Obama told Xi the U.S. sees it not through the prism of security but out of concern over theft of trade secrets.

In late March, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel revealed that the Pentagon planned to more than triple its cybersecurity staff in the next few years to defend against Internet attacks that threaten national security.

Hagel's comments at the National Security Agency headquarters in suburban Washington came as he prepared to visit China.

"Our nation's reliance on cyberspace outpaces our cybersecurity," Hagel said at the time. "Our nation confronts the proliferation of destructive malware and a new reality of steady, ongoing and aggressive efforts to probe, access or disrupt public and private networks, and the industrial control systems that manage our water, and our energy and our food supplies."

Oval Office chimp asked NSA to widen surveillance

The NSA's wide-ranging surveillance programme should be curtailed, says hardware-maker Cisco in a letter to President Obama.

Cisco boss John Chambers said faith in US technology companies was being eroded by the NSA's activities.

The letter comes after whistleblowers revealed the NSA regularly intercepted Cisco hardware to help it gather information on potential targets.

Mr Chambers said the NSA should be held to higher "standards of conduct".

The first allegations about NSA staff intercepting deliveries of Cisco hardware came from papers given by whistleblower Edward Snowden to journalist Glenn Greenwald.

"If these allegations are true," wrote Mr Chambers in a letter published in the Financial Times, "these actions will undermine confidence in our industry and in the ability of technology companies to deliver products globally."

In addition, pictures have circulated online of NSA staff opening packing crates containing Cisco gear. The NSA is believed to have intercepted and altered the networking hardware so the agency can more easily gather information about the people and companies it targets.

"We simply cannot operate this way," Mr Chambers wrote. "Our customers trust us to be able to deliver to their doorsteps products that meet the highest standards of integrity and security."

To restore confidence in Cisco and other tech firms, President Obama should draw up new rules to govern the way the NSA operates to ensure its conduct was held to a high standard, he said.

The allegations about Cisco were not the last to be published about NSA surveillance, said Glenn Greenwald in a wide-ranging interview with GQ. Mr Greenwald said he was saving some of the biggest leaks until last.

This final tranche of information would detail who in the US the NSA has been targeting and why it chose those targets, said Mr Greenwald.

"Are they political critics and dissidents and activists? Are they genuinely people we'd regard as terrorists?" he said to the magazine. "What are the metrics and calculations that go into choosing those targets and what is done with the surveillance that is conducted?"

Freedom banner

The continuing revelations about the NSA have also prompted action by China which has said it plans to beef up its internet security defences in response to "overseas hostile forces".

Such forces were using the net to "penetrate and destroy" China, said Wang Xiujun, the state official in China's Internet Information Office who directs the nation's net regulation system.

"A few countries have used their superiority in internet resources and information technology to conduct large-scale internet surveillance and to steal a large volume of political, economic, military and corporate secrets", Mr Wang is reported to have said.

Information from documents released by Edward Snowden suggest the NSA had managed to get at servers run by Chinese communications giant Huawei to look at documents and monitor messages passing between executives.

In addition, he said, many people were using the banner of "internet freedom" to attack and slander China and undermine its stability.

The improved defences against external threats and improved monitoring and censorship of internal activity would help China win "the struggle for ideological penetration", Mr Wang said.