A teacher at Myrtle Beach High School was suspended with pay after accidentally bringing a loaded gun to the school Tuesday morning, according to Horry County Schools spokeswoman Teal Britton.

``She was placed on administrative leave with pay, which is standard for any investigation that involves serious allegations,'' Britton said.

The school district does not release the names of employees involved in disciplinary actions, Britton said.

The teacher drove her husband's pickup truck to work Tuesday because the vehicle was being appraised, according to a police report. Her husband reminded her to remove the weapon from the car before going to work, Britton said.

``She did remove it, place it on the hood of the car and somewhere in the hurry scurry of loading the car, she forgot that it was there and drove to school,'' Britton said.

A visitor to the school saw the gun in its holster on the passenger's side of the hood just after 11 a.m. Tuesday and reported it to school authorities, Britton said. School security then searched the parking lot, found the car and the gun in its holster and on the hood of the car. Police then searched the teacher's car and personal affects, Britton said.

The woman told police that ``her husband carries a gun in his vehicle for hunting purposes, shooting snakes while hunting,'' the report states.

Police are investigating, according to Capt. David Knipes of the Myrtle Beach Police Department. He added that no charges have been filed.

Myrtle Beach High principal Nona Kerr held a staff meeting to tell faculty what had happened Tuesday afternoon, and Britton said she sent an automated phone message to parents to tell them about the incident Tuesday evening.

City Solicitor Shelley Smith today challenged in court the standing of the National Rifle Association to sue Philadelphia for a package of five gun-control laws passed by City Council on April 10 and signed immediately into law by Mayor Nutter.  Smith told PhillyClout her preliminary objections, filed with Common Pleas Court Judge Jane Cutler Greenspan, note that the NRA challenges the legality of the gun control laws but doesn't "allege an actual injury." The NRA sued on behalf of its members in the city, two firearm organizations, two gun shops and four firearm owners.

"They don't deal specifically with the legal injury as it relates to each of the separate ordinances," Smith said. "You have to look at what every ordinance prohibits and then figure out if any of the plaintiffs can allege any specific injury."  The local laws limit handgun purchases to one a month, make it a crime to not report a lost or stolen gun within 48 hours, allow police to confiscate guns with a judge's approval from people considered a danger to themselves or others, prohibit gun possession by people subject to protection from abuse orders, and ban semiautomatic weapons with clips that hold 10 or more rounds.

Greenspan on April 17 approved the NRA's request for a temporary restraining order to keep the city from enforcing the new laws.  She will hold a hearing on May 19 to consider the group's request for a permanent injunction.  The NRA says the laws conflict with a 1996 state Supreme Court ruling that only the state can regulate guns. Smith says the city laws do not conflict with that ruling.  Further complicating matters, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey had vowed to enforce the local laws before the restraining order but District Attorney Lynne Abraham said she would not prosecute anyone arrested for violating them.

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Keys Talks About Her Conspiracy Theories

1 day ago

NEW YORK (AP) â There's another side to Alicia Keys: conspiracy theorist. The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter tells Blender magazine: "`Gangsta rap' was a ploy to convince black people to kill each other. `Gangsta rap' didn't exist."

Keys, 27, said she's read several Black Panther autobiographies and wears a gold AK-47 pendant around her neck "to symbolize strength, power and killing 'em dead," according to an interview in the magazine's May issue, on newsstands Tuesday.

Another of her theories: That the bicoastal feud between slain rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. was fueled "by the government and the media, to stop another great black leader from existing."

Keys' AK-47 jewelry came as a surprise to her mother, who is quoted as telling Blender: "She wears what? That doesn't sound like Alicia." Keys' publicist, Theola Borden, said Keys was on vacation and unavailable for comment.

Though she's known for her romantic tunes, she told Blender that she wants to write more political songs. If black leaders such as the late Black Panther Huey Newton "had the outlets our musicians have today, it'd be global. I have to figure out a way to do it myself," she said.

The multiplatinum songstress behind the hits "Fallin'" and "No One" most recently had success with her latest CD, "As I Am," which sold millions.

By Allison Klein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 13, 2008; B01

D.C. police are so eager to get guns out of the city that they're offering amnesty to people who allow officers to come into their homes and get the weapons.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier announced yesterday the Safe Homes Initiative, aimed at parents and guardians who know or suspect that their children or other relatives have guns. Under the deal, police target areas hit by violence and seek adults who let them search their homes for guns, with no risk of arrest. The offer also applies to drugs that turn up during the searches, police said.

The program is scheduled to start March 24 in the Washington Highlands area of Southeast Washington. Officers will go door-to-door seeking permission to search homes for weapons. Police later plan to visit other areas, including sections of Columbia Heights in Northwest and Eckington in Northeast.

"If we come across illegal contraband, we will confiscate it," Lanier said. "But amnesty means amnesty. We're trying to get guns and drugs off the street."

Fenty (D) and Lanier announced the plan as part of a new strategy to deal with the prevalence of firearms in a city that has one of the strictest gun control laws in the nation. The Supreme Court will hear arguments next week in a case challenging the constitutionality of the D.C. law.

Residents who agree to the searches will be asked to sign consent forms. If guns are found, they will be tested to determine whether they were used in crimes. If the results are positive, police will launch investigations, which could lead to charges.

Boston police are embarking on a similar program this month. Police in that city have been meeting with residents before the door-to-door effort begins. Philadelphia police are considering such an initiative.

Ronald Hampton, executive director of the National Black Police Association, questioned the Washington effort. As a lifelong D.C. resident and a former police officer, he said, he would not consent to his house being searched.

"They haven't earned that level of access or respect from the community," Hampton said. "I just can't believe they're trying to do that. I've never heard of anything like that in my life."

Arthur B. Spitzer, legal director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the program is "a very bad idea." He said officers might act so aggressively that residents feel coerced into letting them in.

"It sends the message to the public that the police ought to be able to search your house anytime for any reason," Spitzer said. "People will be intimidated. That cheapens civil liberties and privacy for everyone."

At a news conference, Fenty and Lanier also said police will host monthly meetings with other law enforcement agencies to identify trends in gun-related crimes and to facilitate information sharing. The goal is to identify repeat offenders and find new ways to stop them, Lanier said.

"It should give us a much clearer picture of how to coordinate our efforts," she said.

Police also announced the creation of an anonymous hotline for people to call with information about crimes. The line, 888-919-CRIME, is staffed by detectives. In the coming weeks, the department is planning to set up a system through which the public can send tips as text messages.

"We want to make sure the community has every means necessary to get in touch with us," Lanier said.

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Note: Guns have been banned in DC since 1976. Good people follow these rules and thug life uses it against them.

Despite mountains of scholarly research, enough books to fill a library shelf and decades of political battles about gun control, the Supreme Court will have an opportunity this week that is almost unique for a modern court when it examines whether the District's handgun ban violates the Second Amendment.

The nine justices, none of whom has ever ruled directly on the amendment's meaning, will consider a part of the Bill of Rights that has existed without a definitive interpretation for more than 200 years.

"This may be one of the only cases in our lifetime when the Supreme Court is going to be interpreting the meaning of an important provision of the Constitution unencumbered by precedent,'' said Randy E. Barnett, a constitutional scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center. "And that's why there's so much discussion on the original meaning of the Second Amendment.''

The outcome could roil the 2008 political campaigns, send a national message about what kinds of gun control are constitutional and finally settle the question of whether the 27-word amendment, with its odd structure and antiquated punctuation, provides an individual right to gun ownership or simply pertains to militia service.

Martha Smith, 80, shot a mountain lion her dog, Bo, had cornered in some trees in her yard with her .22 caliber rifle. 

Since August 2006, the city has installed 73 cameras across the city, mostly on utility poles, at a cost of about $4 million. But until recently, officers were using them mainly as an investigative tool -- checking the recordings after crimes were committed in hopes of turning up leads and evidence.

Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said she thought the department wasn't making the most of the technology and was missing opportunities to more quickly solve crimes -- or even stop them in progress. "I thought, 'Why the heck aren't we watching them?' " Lanier said.

And so, for about 40 hours a week, a small team of officers in the department's Joint Operations Command Center watches the live feeds from 10 to 15 of the cameras. They choose locations based on the latest crime trends -- focusing, for example, on areas in Southeast Washington beset by gun violence.

The District is following cities such as Baltimore, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, where police have actively monitored live camera scenes for years. London is often credited with having the most extensive network -- 500,000 cameras that make up the "Ring of Steel," dating to the early 1990s. "I'd love to have the whole city wired like London," said Lanier, adding that she didn't anticipate that becoming a reality.

The District's cameras have quite a range, officials said. Officers can rotate angles for different views. They can zoom in on faces of potential suspects and pick up license plate numbers from cars several blocks away. Officers monitor 911 calls while watching the cameras, and they can switch feeds if they learn of a crime being reported at one of the sites under surveillance.

Police have directed one arrest from the command center, a drug deal they spotted at a Northwest Washington gas station a few weeks ago. Officers called in vice units that surprised the suspect.

Lanier said the initiative is a pilot project that began without any fanfare in mid-November. The D.C. Council is expected to learn details of the new use of the cameras in a report due Friday. Members will probably assess the effectiveness of the live monitoring and weigh concerns about balancing public safety and privacy.

The city first turned to cameras nearly a decade ago, creating a downtown network to aid police in monitoring large demonstrations, inaugurations and other big events. At the time, civil liberties groups and some council members raised concerns about privacy rights.

Over the years, residents in many parts of the city pushed to get cameras for crime-fighting purposes, and that led to the program's expansion into neighborhoods in 2006. Police hope to add about 50 cameras in the next two years and make other upgrades, at an estimated cost of $4.5 million. Of the 73 cameras in neighborhoods, police can get live feeds from 54, officials said. Eventually, they plan to have the capability to get live images from all of the cameras.

The cameras are in public places, clearly marked with the D.C. police logo. But Arthur B. Spitzer, legal director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said he remains concerned about privacy. Spitzer said police will be observing more average, law-abiding people who are unaware they are being watched.

Spitzer said there is also a danger of officers "zooming in on attractive women or engaging in idle curiosity."

Mel Blizzard, the police official in charge of the camera program, said standards guard against misuse. "This is not intended to be Big Brother watching but to be more responsive to our residents' needs. As long as you put protocols in place, which we have, we can be answerable to the community and the government," he said.

The live monitoring has also raised questions about the best use of limited police resources. Typically, two or three officers are assigned to monitoring.

"To just park someone in front of a bank of monitors is not a good use of resources," said council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), head of the Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary. "The issue of the cameras is whether we get the best bang for our buck. The more officers you have on the street, the more visibility you have."

Former D.C. police chief Charles H. Ramsey, who left office in December 2006, echoed that view. He said that under his tenure, he did not want to dedicate personnel to live monitoring, preferring to have officers on the street.

"You can always go back after the fact and look at the tape," said Ramsey, who is commissioner of the police department in Philadelphia, which implemented live monitoring before he arrived.

Lanier said that she took action last fall after officials mapped locations of shootings in the city and realized that the gunfire often was taking place within range of the cameras. The department is also using a technology called ShotSpotter, which detects the sound of gunfire in some parts of the District.

In one case, police looked at recordings of a homicide in August in Southeast. Lanier said she was appalled by the tape, which showed several people passing the victim without stopping to help, including a man smoking a cigarette while staring at the body. Ten minutes went by before anyone called 911. That incident cemented Lanier's decision to be more proactive.

"It literally makes you sick to your stomach to watch somebody executed that way," Lanier said of the images, which captured the slaying of Antwan McKinney, 38, in the middle of the 900 block of Valley Avenue SE. "The guy laid there for so long. No human being should lie there for so long."

There have been no arrests in the case.

Since the cameras were installed, investigators have pulled 130 recordings for possible use as evidence in criminal cases, officials said, although none has been used in trials. Lanier said she hopes that by watching live images, officers will pick up clues for police and prosecutors.

Neighborhood activists said they want police to be watching.

"All of [the cameras] should be monitored," said community activist Sandra Seegars, who lives in Ward 8, which has the city's highest rate of incidents of gun violence. "In my neighborhood, we're not concerned about privacy -- just keeping crime down and catching people who are committing the crimes."

On a recent afternoon in Columbia Heights, several residents said they supported live monitoring. At 14th and Girard streets, where there were multiple shootings and several homicides last year, Kafi Gregory, 27, said she hopes police start watching around the clock.

"As much crime as is going on here, they need it," Gregory said.

But despite the hopes, cameras have limitations.

Nashville television stations, citing unnamed sources, said the teen unsuccessfully tried to hijack the plane to Lafayette, La., and crash it into a building where a "Hannah Montana" concert was to be performed.

Southwest Airlines spokeswoman Brandy King said the passenger was removed from Flight 284 Tuesday night by authorities at Nashville International Airport. She declined to provide additional details.

Hannah Montana is an American Emmy Award-nominated children's television series, which debuted on March 24, 2006 on Disney Channel. The series focuses on Miley Stewart (played by Miley Cyrus), who lives a double life as an average teenage girl at school during the day, and a famous pop singer (Hannah Montana) at night, concealing her real identity from the public, other than her close friends and family.

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Horn's supporters parked motorcycles along the block Sunday and jeered protesters who called for Horn to be prosecuted. The supporters waved American flags and hoisted signs reading, "We love our neighbor for protecting our neighbors" and "Burglary is a risky business."

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