FEMA Worker Sentenced To Five Years For Identity Theft

Jon — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 01:40:54 +0000

Or – How Many Fraud Convictions Does It Take To Prevent Being hired at FEMA?

By Washington Post Staff Writer Del Quentin Wilber, dated 12/6/08:

Judge Imposes 5-Year Term for ‘Lowdown’ Scam,

A former employee of the Federal Emergency Management Agency was sentenced yesterday to more than five years in federal prison for stealing the identities of 200 people, some of them disaster victims.

In April, Robert W. Davis, 44, of Southeast Washington pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Washington to charges of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in a four-year scheme that ended in November 2007. Prosecutors said Davis used the identities to purchase items ranging from diamond watches and other jewelry to steaks and lobsters.

Davis stole identities while working at mortgage companies and as a human resource specialist at FEMA, authorities said. About 30 stolen identities belonged to people trying to get disaster assistance, federal prosecutors said.

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[Judge] Walton said that while he understood Davis had a difficult childhood, he noted that he had been convicted four previous times of theft and fraud. He also pointed out that Davis wasn’t using the lines of credit just to finance a drug habit. “That wasn’t about drugs,” Walton said. “That was about living good.”

Thanks to Sonya Geiger at the Disaster Accountability Project for spotting this one.

Popular Logistics' Recommendations for Surgeon General, Secretary of Homeland Security, and FEMA Chief

Jon — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 03:11:24 +0000

Popular Logistics recommends that President Obama appoint Dr. Irwin Redlener as Surgeon General, William Bratton as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and Paul Maniscalco as the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. We know all three to be men of intelligence and integrity. All three have strong records of leadership and delivering excellent service. Dr. Redlener and Chiefs Maniscalco and Bratton set a standard against which any nominee could be measured.

We urge that in regard to positions with national responsibility for disaster preparedness, comparison with the outgoing administration’s appointees – some with no experience at all – is useless. We’ve identified three experts with decades of experience taking responsibility for creating services where none existed, making dysfunctional systems work, and leading adequate organizations to excellence. We have no reservation entrusting our safety and welfare to any of them; indeed, we’re confident that, if appointed, America’s disaster and health prospects will be substantially improved.

Irwin Redlener, M.D. | Surgeon General

Dr. Redlener, with the musician Paul Simon, created the Children’s Health Fund, which brings pediatric care to children in mobile clinics. The CHF National Network includes 22 innovative pediatric programs that provide medical care to children in poor rural and urban communities Health care is delivered via mobile medical units, school-based clinics, and shelter-based clinics. By mid-2008, the network had provided care to over 375,000 medically-underserved children in nearly 1.8 million health care encounters.
Dr. Redlener is the author of Americans at Risk: Why We Are Not Prepared for Megadisasters and What We Can Do Now (Knopf, 2006), which we believe is the single best introduction to disaster risk reduction, preparedness, and understanding disaster issues as public health issues. He is the founder and director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness and Professor of Clinical Population and Family Health at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Redlener was recently appointed to the congressionally-established National Commission on Children and Disasters (establishing legislation; House Vote On Passage: H.R. 3495: Kids in Disasters Well-being, Safety, and Health Act of 2007).

Paul M. Maniscalco | Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency

The expression “he wrote the book on …” isn’t mere idiom when it comes to Chief Maniscalco. He’s not only managed mass casualty incidents, he’s studied them, written leading textbook, and been consulted by the FBI, all of the terrorism advisory commissions in recent memory, the United Nations, World Health Organization, DARPA, and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies – and others. He’s written the books and the manuals, and he knows what’s gone wrong in recent years and what needs to be done to repair our response capabilities – and how to get it done.

We’ve taken the liberty of republishing Paul Maniscalco’s bio from the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute:

Paul M. Maniscalco is a Senior Research Scientist with The George Washington University, a Past President of the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians (NAEMT), Chairman of the NAEMT National EMS Administrators Division and a former Deputy Chief/Paramedic for the City of New York. Chief Maniscalco has over 30 years of Public Safety response, supervisory and management experience. During his tenure he has had the responsibility of responding to and managing a wide array of events ranging from aviation & rapid transit emergencies, natural & manmade disasters to civil disturbances and acts of terrorism. Chief Maniscalco has also been engaged in command roles for managing special events such as dignitary visits, national political conventions and a wide variety of mass gatherings. He has also participated in public safety, emergency and disaster response capacity building projects in the nations of India, St. Maarten, Turkey, Kenya and Tanzania collaborating with organizations such as the UN, PAHO, WHO and IFRC/ICRC.

Paul has lectured extensively and is widely published in academic & professional journals on Emergency Medical Service, fire service, public safety and national security issues. He is the co-author of the Brady textbook “The EMS Incident Management System: EMS Operations for Mass Casualty and High Impact Incidents”; a contributing author to the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institutes “Hype or Reality? The ‘New Terrorism’ and Mass Casualty Attacks”; the USFA “Guide to Developing & Managing an Emergency Service Infection Control Program”; National Fire Service Incident Management System Consortiums “Model Procedures Guide for Emergency Medical Incidents, First Edition”; the co-author “Understanding Terrorism and Managing the Consequences”; Mass Casualty and High Impact Incidents: An Operations Management Guide; Terrorism Response: A Field Guide for Law Enforcement and Terrorism Response: Field Guide for Fire and EMS Organizations (Prentice Hall/Brady) and a contributing author to the International Federation of Red Cross / Red Crescent Societies and Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health Center for Disaster and Refugee Studies “Public Health Guide for Emergencies”.

Chief Maniscalco is an appointee to the President’s Homeland Security Advisory Council – Senior Advisory Committee for Emergency Services, Law Enforcement, and Public Health and Hospitals; a member of the Department of Defense, Defense Science Board (DSB), Transnational Threat Study and the DSB – Homeland Defense – Chemical Weapons Task Force; a member of the DoD/DoJ, Interagency Board (IAB); an advisor to the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency ENCOMPASS project; a member of the Board of Advisors for the OKC Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism and an appointee to the Centers for Strategic and International Studies – Homeland Security Task Force. Paul M. Maniscalco also holds an appointment to the United States Congressionally mandated National Panel to Assess Domestic Preparedness (Gilmore Commission) and to the Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government and U.S. Department of Justice – Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness.

Paul M. Maniscalco earned his Baccalaureate degree in Public Administration — Public Health & Safety from the City University of New York, and a Master of Public Administration – Foreign Policy & National Security from the New York University Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. He is presently a Doctoral degree candidate in Business Administration – Organizational Behavior, with a research focus on organizational response to disasters and terrorism.

Chief Willliam J. Bratton | Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security

William J. Bratton, currently Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, can fairly take credit for turnarounds in four police departments: The New York Police Department, New York City Transit Police Department (now merged into the NYPD), the Boston Police Department, and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Police. Creating the Department of Homeland Security from its many disparate components may or may not have been a good idea, but making it work will require the experience and temperament to domesticate unruly bureaucracies. Chief Bratton has a good record in doing precisely that while also increasing officer morale.

Chief Bratton, a veteran of the United States Army, joined the Boston Police Department in 1970. He quickly rose to the rank of lieutenant, and in 1980, at the age of 32 and ten years after his appointment to the BPD, Bratton was named as the youngest-ever Executive Superintendent of the Boston Police, the department’s second highest post.

Between 1983 and 1986 Bratton was Chief of Police for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, following which he became Superintendent of Boston’s Metropolitan District Commission Police. In 1990, he was appointed Chief of Police of the New York City Transit Police. Bratton was Superintendent in Chief of the Boston Police Department from 1991 until 1993, when he became that city’s 34th Police Commissioner. He holds the Department’s highest award for valor.From Wikipedia’s entry New York City Transit Police:

In 1991 the Transit Police gained national accreditation under Chief William Bratton. The Department became one of only 175 law-enforcement agencies in the country and only the second in the New York State to achieve that distinction. The following year it was also accredited by the State of New York, and by 1994, there were almost 4,500 uniformed and civilian members of the Department, making it the sixth largest police force in the United States.

Bratton is well-known for introducing crime mapping into police planning, first in the New York City Transit Police Department. The New York Times said, when Bratton resigned,

William Bratton’s brief but effective career as chief of the New York City Transit Police vividly demonstrates how one person’s energetic leadership makes a difference, even in a city struggling with fiscal and spiritual depression.

The transit force Mr. Bratton took over in 1990 had been demoralized for years. Officers resented the grimy, monotonous working environment underground and the limited opportunities for career advancement. Few people either in or out of the department challenged the assumption that they were second-class cops.Chief Bratton inspired them with talk of turning the force into an elite unit. He began replacing the department’s fleet of clunky trucks with spiffy new patrol cars. His decision to let officers carry 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistols also boosted morale even if it raised safety issues. He mounted an aggressive advertising campaign that elevated the department’s public profile.

More important, he showed officers that he cared. After office hours, he took to the trains himself, quizzing cops about the job and ways to do it better. Feeling the heat on torrid summer days, for example, he ordered ventilated caps. Transit police began to feel better about themselves and worked harder; crime underground declined.

In short, he proved again a management lesson as old as human organizations — and more germane than ever to a demoralized city.

See also Mr. Bratton’s Wise Policing (New York Times editorial)

Artist creates solar/wind powered "emergency respond

Jon — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:00:30 +0000

(Via Inhabitat) Which may, in fact, exceed FEMA’s exertions – despite the fact that, as Paul Villinski

, a

New York-based artist has demonstrated, it’s entirely possible to construct livable/usable emergency structures which rely on solar and wind power. From Bridget Steffen at Inhabitat, Solar Powered Mobile Emergency Response Studio:

Better yet, make sure you read the whole piece and see the images – the one above the jump, taken alone, doesn’t do it justice.NB: as of this writing – October 30th – Villinski’s bandwidth limit had been exceeded. Waiting and checking back later will, we think, be worth it.

Villinski – main site.

Emergency Response Studio

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Other coverage.