The story came about after a tip from a parent.

I conducted background checks on more than 40

coaches, interviewed the coaches with criminal records as well as league officials, parents and
outside sources for this story. After it was published, I was both vilified and praised on talk
radio; the story and its three follow-ups gathered hundreds of comments on tampabay.com and
my phone rang off the hook with responses from readers. This story placed fifth in the Hearst
Journalism Awards for in-depth reporting in 2008. —LN

St. Petersburg Times | Oct. 30, 2007

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/10/30/news_pf/Southpinellas/Who_s_your_kids__coac.shtml

Who’s your kids’ coach?

Some youth programs check sex offender registries but let other offenses
slide.

By LIBBY NELSON, Times Staff Writer

Published October 30, 2007

ST. PETERSBURG - Three evenings a week, four coaches for the Azalea Bulldogs
football program teach youths ages 7 to 14 to block and pass. Whistles around their
necks, they demonstrate technique, make out plays, encourage young minds.

Among them, they have 45 arrests.

Their records include cocaine sales, weapons offenses and prison time.

“We’re supposed to be setting examples and being good mentors,” said Sally Johnson,
executive director of the National Council of Youth Sports. “You want to be certain that
we’re being responsible and that your children are in the care of upstanding citizens.”

The coaches have slipped through a loophole that legislators, advocacy groups and other
counties are trying to close.

The only criminal background check required of the Bulldogs and the 10 other programs
in the Suncoast Youth Football Conference is a search of the sex offender registry.

“What we’re looking for is criminal sexual offenders and child pedophiles,” said
conference president Lenny Anderson.

The conference declined to provide information about coaches. But background checks
on more than half the coaches in the conference revealed no records comparable to
Azalea’s.

The coaches are not without their supporters.

“I’m very careful,” said Kim Walter, president of the Azalea Bulldogs division, who
knows the coaches’ stories but believes they are a positive influence. “I’m not a cop. I try
to be trusting.”

‘Very good people’

The coaches are volunteers. From August to November, they give their teams three
evenings a week and most of Saturday.

Finding people willing to make that commitment can be challenging, and the Bulldogs
are not the first to see coaches’ records catch up with them.

Last year, Hillsborough County removed a youth football coach who had been convicted
on corruption charges, only to have him reinstated by a committee of volunteers. The
county since has clarified its policy to exclude anyone convicted of felonies within the
past eight years.

Under those guidelines, three of the four Azalea coaches would have been ineligible to
coach.
The Azalea division includes 11 head coaches instructing 400 young players who make
up 10 teams, categorized by age, weight and ability. The Bulldogs’ parent organization,
the Suncoast Youth Football Conference, has 11 such divisions in Pinellas County.

The conference requires coaches to list their records, but it also searches a state sex
offender registry for their names. The registry would have given no hint of the four
Azalea coaches’ criminal histories.

Adrian Monroe was sentenced to three years in prison in 1997 for cocaine trafficking,
possession of marijuana and carrying a concealed weapon.

He was released in 2000. In 2002, Monroe became an assistant coach.

Monroe, now a head coach, has not discussed his record with players or parents.

Monroe said he filled out his background form honestly when he volunteered but didn’t
expect his record to be a problem.

He was arrested 12 times in 11 years, between 1992 and 2003, but most charges are
almost a decade old. Domestic violence charges in 2003 were dropped.

“They’re looking for sexual predators, stuff like that,” Monroe said.

Other coaches moved even more quickly from prison or probation to the playing field.

Charles Price was arrested for selling cocaine in 2002 and sentenced in May 2003 to
three years’ probation.
Three years and three months later, he was an assistant coach.

Price is an assistant to Brian Dozier, who has 14 arrests, most for driving with a
suspended license. As a habitual offender, Dozier was sentenced to a year in jail in 2003.
Now he’s back on the practice field.

Head coach Aundre Stevens also had a speedy turnabout.

He pled guilty in 2003 to possession of cocaine and was put on probation. He began
coaching in 2006, the same year he was convicted of grand theft and larceny for writing a
bad check.

Not every criminal offense should eliminate someone from coaching, Azalea Bulldogs
president Walter said.

“Driving with a suspended license -- that’s not going to keep a coach off my field,”
Walter said. “Being arrested eight, nine, 10 years ago, that’s not either. Two years ago?
Maybe.”

She said she believes people can turn their lives around -- and that these coaches have.

“I just think they really are positive role models for these kids,” Walter said. “They really
are very good people.”

Legislation planned
Cases such as Azalea’s have made thorough background checks more common among
youth sports organizations.

But many organizations only consult the state’s sex offender registry, which is free and
addresses parents’ fears about sexual predators near children.

In the spring 2008 legislative session, legislators will vote on whether that’s good
enough.
“It’s a loophole left out there for unsavory people to get near our children,” said Sen.
Jeremy Ring, D-Margate, who is proposing a bill requiring comprehensive background
checks. “What if your coach was busted for selling crack cocaine a month ago? There’s a
lot of criminal activity that parents need to be concerned about.”

Ring’s bill does not specify what offenses would disqualify a coach. If it passes in the
Legislature’s spring session, background check requirements would go into effect in June
2008.
Some organizations support an even tougher line.

The National Council of Youth Sports’ guidelines advise leagues to disqualify coaches
who have been convicted of any felony punishable by a year or more in prison, and any
coaches convicted of a drug crime. Under those rules, none of the four Azalea coaches
would be on the field.

In Hillsborough, the county imposes guidelines that often go beyond those required by
youth organizations, just to ensure no one slips through the cracks.

Pinellas County does not have a similar backstop. Neither do Pinellas public schools and
the city of St. Petersburg.

For example, Azalea players practice on Pinellas school property, but the schools defer to
the city, which requires only a sex offender registry check, said spokesman Paul
Whitehouse.

More comprehensive background checks are too expensive, he said.

That notion is commonly held, but some groups are working to bring down the price.

A criminal history from the state costs $23. USA Football, a nonprofit supporting
amateur football, subsidizes background checks for $15 per coach.

Though the checks are aimed at catching sex offenders, they also screen for all other
offenses.
John Brill, spokesman for Hillsborough Parks, Recreation and Conservation, supports
thorough background checks.

“We don’t run the league, but they are on our property,” he said. “We’re held accountable
in everybody’s eyes.” ■
This is, by far, the craziest assignment I’ve ever had. I worked an 18-hour day, including several
hours at the museum before the event and a few hours writing the story when I got home. I got hit
in the shoulder with a microwaved tomato. I was afraid that fireworks might misfire and hit me.
And all for a story that led off the front of the New York Times’ Culture section.—LN

The New York Times | August 15, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/15/arts/design/15duke.html

In Queens, a Battle on the Low Seas, and May the Best Artist
Win
By LIBBY NELSON

Sated with free beer and wine, and plenty of it, the toga-wearing crowd flung
microwaved tomatoes and morsels of baguette into the reflecting pool at Flushing
Meadows-Corona Park in Queens.

“Boats!” they yelled. “Boats! Boats! Boats!”

This was an art exhibition — a term that perhaps conjures a more subdued event. But the
art in this show, called “Those About to Die Salute You,” involved humans in motion,
boats on water and those tomatoes. It was the creation of Duke Riley, whose work skews
aquatic and unpredictable: He once built a wood and fiberglass submarine, floated it too
close to the Queen Mary 2 and was arrested.

His vision for Queens on Thursday night was a Roman-style staged naval battle among
representatives of museums in four New York boroughs, who would face off in teams in
the reflecting pool, paddling in boats built from recycled materials like reeds and
salvaged Styrofoam.

At least, that was the general idea. There were no dress rehearsals; there was no script.

“It’s one of these things where you’re taking a certain degree of risk,” said Tom
Finkelpearl, executive director of the Queens Museum of Art. Mr. Riley, speaking before
the performance, said he had “no idea exactly what’s going to go on.”

“There’s a lot of variables and wild cards,” he added. “I just hope everything goes
smoothly and safely, and nobody gets too badly hurt.” In the end it was a sopping melee,
very messy, and any notions of careful naval strategies were quickly abandoned as the
audience and the team members — dressed in cardboard armor with painted faces and
cardboard swords and shields — got caught up in their enthusiasm. But it was art. And
nobody got too badly hurt.

The idea evolved over the course of a year, Mr. Riley said. He had been thinking for
some time about naumachia, as ancient Rome’s elaborate re-enactments of naval battles
were called. When he was asked to do an exhibition for the Queens Museum of Art,
which hosted the event, “everything just kind of clicked,” he said.
By Thursday afternoon, the reflecting pool was filled with 70,000 gallons of water for
what organizers said was the first time since the 1964 World’s Fair. The teams, from the
Queens Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Bronx Museum of the Arts and El
Museo del Barrio in Manhattan, were putting on their war paint and cardboard armor. A
Queens Museum intern had spent the day microwaving tomatoes, seeking to achieve the
perfect consistency for throwing.

And by early evening toga-wearing guests were packed into the museum, shouting at one
another to be heard over a rock band playing behind them. Eventually spectators moved
out to the reflecting pool, sitting quietly at first, on the grass and on bleachers.

As the wait stretched to an hour, they grew restless. The microwaved tomatoes, piled in
boxes by the pool, were meant to be thrown during the mock battle, but they proved too
much of a temptation. Soon people were flinging them across the pool at one another. A
few unfurled umbrellas to protect themselves.

Then the audience began jumping into the thigh-deep pool as the first boat, the one from
the Queens Museum of Art, emerged. An announcer grabbed the microphone: “Let’s get
it started!” he said.

But that ship, as they say, had sailed.

“Get out of the pool!” the announcer yelled, trying to restore order and using several
expletives. “Get out of the water! We’re not starting till you’re out of the pool!”

The audience complied, and the ensuing battle resulted in the disintegration of most of
the boats within 20 minutes. Audience members refused to stay corralled and jumped
back into the water and climbed onto the boats. The Queens boat collapsed, as did the
Brooklyn one, meant to be a battleship. Only a giant pig-shaped boat made of wood,
representing Manhattan, emerged mostly unscathed.

A model of the Queen Mary 2, Mr. Riley’s old target, was the last to arrive, pushed by a
volunteer, and was promptly set aflame, driving spectators from the water. Then Roman
candles began issuing from the boat, followed by other fireworks. Some burst overhead;
others landed a little too close, and the crowd ducked. The flames reached almost three
feet high before the boat was tipped into the water and the fire extinguished.

“You never really know what’s going to happen,” Mr. Riley said after the performance.
“Nobody got hurt, and I’m not in jail.”

Afterward the spectators appeared exhilarated but slightly shell shocked. Some praised
the participatory nature of the art; others were still recovering.

“It was radical, super radical,” said Catherine Harine Connell of Brooklyn. “The fact that
it was in a public park in Queens.
“It was free form, but still organized,” she added.

Ms. Connell was euphoric; others were alarmed.

“That was wilder than I ever would have expected,” said Dorothy Trojanowski, who
described the event as “out of control.”

“The danger factor was —— “ she paused. “Stimulating.”

As everyone piled out of the pool, leaving debris from the boats behind, an announcer
promised a Roman orgy at the museum afterward.

Some wondered, given the night’s events so far, whether he might have been serious. ■
I spent days at the Taxi and Limousine Commission office for this story, listening to telephone
testimony and chatting with judges. The resulting “Only in New York” story was a fun slice of
life, as well as an adventure in big-city bureaucracy.—LN

The New York Times | September 5, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/05/nyregion/05taxi.html

With Advent of Telephone Testimony, More Taxi Complaints

Are Heard by a Judge
By LIBBY NELSON

Len Gelstein’s taxi nightmare started, he said, after he slipped into a yellow cab
at Kennedy International Airport. It ended after a harrowing $71 ride, he said, and a call
to the police.

Mr. Gelstein said his driver got lost and ended up in a line of garbage trucks on a bridge
unfamiliar to Mr. Gelstein. The cabby drove more than 70 miles per hour, Mr. Gelstein
said, and even backed up on the highway. The price wound up being almost double what
the trip ordinarily costs.

Outraged, Mr. Gelstein called the police to ask if he had to pay the fare. Told he would
spend the night in jail if he did not, he complied. Then he turned to another agency for
recourse.

“It was a remarkable ride,” Mr. Gelstein testified on a recent Monday before a judge at
a Taxi and Limousine Commission hearing.

Complaints about the work of cabdrivers seem to follow the adage about the weather:
Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything. This has long been a problem for the
commission, which relies on customer complaints to monitor drivers. Complaints are
filed in only about 1 in every 11,000 rides, and the customers who do lodge complaints
often do not follow through. In 2008, less than a quarter of those who agreed to testify at
a hearing showed up.

In December, in an effort to make the process easier, the commission began allowing
those who file complaints to testify by phone. This year, about a quarter of the
complainants who have opted for a hearing chose to testify by phone. (Mr. Gelstein was
among them.)

The commission’s chairman, Matthew W. Daus, considers the program a success thus far.
Now, half of the customers who say they will testify in person and half of those who
agree to testify by phone do so.

One such customer was Jane Bills, who filed a complaint in January, saying she had been
forced to pay her fare in cash.
“Is the guy, the driver, there?” Ms. Bills asked over the phone during a hearing on Aug.
17. Told that he was, Ms. Bills began to tell her story.

She said she had hailed a cab after a dinner with friends. The driver, Khris Singh, insisted
that she would have to pay in cash, she said, telling her the credit-card reader was broken,
although she said it appeared to be fine. She said that she rolled down her window
slightly and that Mr. Singh rolled it up from the front.

Fed up, she had the cab stop short of her destination, paid the fare — in cash, with exact
change — and got out.

Hearings like Ms. Bills’s often feature competing narratives and limited verifiable truth.
(Mr. Singh’s lawyer, M. Daniel Bach, said that his client did not remember driving Ms.
Bills and that she could not prove he was lying about the credit-card machine.)

If found guilty, drivers, who must appear in person to testify, can be fined or have their
licenses suspended or revoked. Those found not guilty still pay a price, because they are
unable to earn fares while in court. “For a taxi driver, the minute a complaint is filed, the
penalty begins,” said Bhairavi Desai, the founder and executive director of the New York
Taxi Workers Alliance.

Some drivers, like Mr. Singh, hire lawyers. Others cannot afford to, including Yah
Nuamah, who was accused of hitting a car with his cab and leaving the scene. When Mr.
Nuamah was called by the judge, he was asked if he wanted to return with a lawyer. He
could not afford one, he said. He would represent himself.

At the intersection of driver and passenger is an administrative law judge. The judge
hears testimony from passengers, who are sometimes angry because drivers refused to
transport them or did not take the route they requested, and from drivers, some angry as
well, who sometimes must represent themselves despite speaking little English.

One of the judges, Patrick McAuliffe, said he saw the conflict as a deeper one, between
the public’s right to good service and safe streets and the drivers’ right to make a living in
a difficult job.

“It can get very dramatic,” Judge McAuliffe said. “How could it not?”

When witnesses testify by phone, one bit of courtroom drama vanishes: the moment
when driver and customer meet face to face. A personal connection is lost, said Ms. Desai
of the taxi workers alliance, as is, in many cases, the chance for an apology or
explanation from the driver. “Once they see them in that environment,” she said, “it
softens a lot of people, and they realize that, wait a minute, this driver could lose their
livelihood over our matter.”
Ms. Bills still seemed to realize the stakes. “I know I filed a complaint,” she said,
somewhat apologetically, after concluding her testimony. “I’m not trying to ruin this
guy’s life.”

Most of the hearings that day resulted in fines: $900 for the cabby who drove Mr.
Gelstein (he did not show up for his hearing and was found guilty in absentia), and $200
for Mr. Singh. But even with the new system, almost half of the complainants do not
testify, and the complaints are dismissed.

That happened to Mr. Nuamah, who could not afford a lawyer but whose passenger, who
had opted for a phone hearing, failed to answer his phone. Mr. Nuamah’s scheduled
hearing time passed, and he received good news: the complaint against him was
dismissed. ■
This crime story generated a lot of attention in the Minneapolis metro area and landed on the
front page. It was written on deadline, with about four hours from the preliminary assignment to
the final product, including transit time to collect the police documents.—LN

Star Tribune | July 17, 2008

http://www.startribune.com/local/west/25601044.html

Minnetonka Realtor arrested in theft of pain meds

By LIBBY A. NELSON, Star Tribune
July 17, 2008

Freddy Akradi came home at lunch Tuesday to clean before what he thought would be
the first showing of his Minnetonka home.

Instead, he found his Siberian husky locked in the garage and pain medication missing
from his kitchen cabinet.

“I knew right away somebody had been in my house,” said Akradi, 26.

Police say the culprit was Minnetonka real estate broker Charles Lindley, 64, arrested
that day at another home showing. He’s accused of stealing pain medication from
Akradi’s home and other houses he had claimed to be showing to clients.

Lindley was in the Hennepin County jail Thursday night pending charges. Police said
they can link him to a similar theft in June and possibly to dozens of other cases.

“My guess is it’s going to be lots of houses,” said Minnetonka detective Sgt. Dave
Riegert, who’s supervising the investigation.

When Lindley was arrested, he had “literally hundreds of listings” for other homes with
him, Riegert said.

“People that are selling their houses are going back and looking in their medicine
cabinets,” he said. “They’re finding that their hydrocodone [a narcotic pain reliever] is
gone and they didn’t know about it.”

Lindley, who operates a brokerage agency with his wife, used a real estate database to
search new listings, Riegert said. He would set up a time to show a house, but then would
arrive without clients.

His wife is not under investigation, police said.

After Akradi’s real estate agent called police, four officers were waiting at a showing
Lindley had scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, Riegert said.
According to police documents, Lindley was in the house police staked out for less than
five minutes, going straight to the kitchen and pulling bottles of pills from the cupboard.

Police found a sock containing 85 pills in his car, according to the report.

When arrested, Lindley told police that he had become addicted to prescription drugs
during treatment for restless-leg syndrome 10 years ago, according to the report. He said
he has been prescribed pain medication but was supplementing it with the thefts.

Such cases rare

Real estate agents who steal from clients are rare, but such cases do occur, said Bill
Walsh, a spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Commerce, which licenses real
estate agents and brokers.

Lindley was licensed as a broker in 1985, according to Department of Commerce records.

On Wednesday, he agreed to a revocation of his license, Walsh said.

Akradi’s real estate agent, Wendy Villella, said the case creates even more problems for
real estate agents in a tough market and taints an honest profession.

“The Realtors out there are sick and tired of having a bad name, and it’s very hard to sell
homes when somebody’s out there stealing from your sellers,” Villella said. “It’s a very
difficult market out there, and the Realtors that are surviving are going above and
beyond.”

It’s difficult to safeguard against dishonest brokers, who, unlike real estate agents, might
not have any contact with homeowners, Walsh said.

Riegert advised people selling their homes to lock up their valuables, including
prescription drugs, just in case. “You don’t know if the Realtor’s going to get distracted,
or if there’s going to be a bunch of people there,” he said.

Akradi said he’s just glad his dog -- locked in a hot garage on a 90-degree day -- is safe.

“I could care less about the prescription,” he said. “I really was worried that my poor dog
was in the garage. God knows how long he was in there for.”

And though he blames the economy, not the break-in, he has also decided to wait a little
longer to try to sell his house. ■
For this story, written in a day on deadline during my summer internship at the Star Tribune in
Minneapolis, I chased beer vendors around the Metrodome stadium for a “talker” piece.—LN

Star Tribune | Aug. 20, 2008

http://www.startribune.com/local/27208229.html

At the old beer game

A University of Minnesota study of alcohol sales at pro sports events finds
it’s not hard to get a drink when you shouldn’t

By LIBBY NELSON

Metrodome beer vendor Jeff Scroggins knows a drunk fan when he sees one: slurring
words, avoiding eye contact, trying to mask how much he or she has had. He said he
won’t sell them any of the $6.75 bottles he carries through the stands.

“I’m here to make money, but you gotta be responsible,” Scroggins said.

Not all vendors are so scrupulous, a University of Minnesota study of alcohol sales at the
“big four” pro sports events has found. The study, released Wednesday by the
university’s Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, looked at 16 sports
stadiums in five states from September 2005 to November 2006. It found that nearly
three out of four people posing as intoxicated fans and one out of five trying to pass as
underage drinkers without ID succeeded in buying alcohol.

Underage or intoxicated drinkers have about equal chances of being served regardless of
whether they’re attending pro football, basketball, baseball or hockey games, said lead
researcher Traci Toomey, an associate professor at the university’s School of Public
Health.

Because the study involved human subjects, Toomey said, she couldn’t give any specifics
on the stadiums, not even saying in what parts of the country the stadiums are located.
She wants to focus on the problem nationwide, saying stadiums are a “high-risk setting”
for alcohol use.

Drinking at the stadium

“Alcohol is related to a lot of problems we deal with in our society,” she said. “At a
stadium, you have a large group of people trying to watch a game. They don’t want a
drink spilled on them, they don’t want to be next to a fight breaking out, they don’t want
to have someone next to them so loud they can’t hear the game, they don’t want to get in
their car and have someone next to them who’s had too much to drink.”

The study hired people older than 21 who were judged to look underage and actors
selected on their ability to feign drunkenness. The actors would slur their words, fumble
with money and repeat themselves while trying to buy a drink, sometimes spraying
themselves with alcohol beforehand to add to the effect.

Those pretending to be underage would try to buy a beer without ID, Toomey said.

The subjects found that buying alcohol in the stands was nearly three times easier than at
a concession stand.
At the Metrodome, vendors are “very proactive” about illegal alcohol sales, said Dennis
Alfton, director of operations.

32 seats of difficulty

Vendors in the seating area are required to check ID of anyone who looks too young to
drink legally, though that can be difficult because there may be as many as 32 seats
between aisles, Alfton said.

“That is a challenge, and one we’re looking at,” he said. “If employees are found to sell
to underage drinkers, they are immediately terminated.”

The Metrodome has passed recent compliance checks by the city, he said. “Those issues
are high priorities for us and have been so for a number of years,” Alfton said.

Scroggins said he’s been trained to recognize drunken patrons but doesn’t see them “as
often as you might think.” “The bigger the game, the more it happens,” he said. He added
that other fans often tip vendors off when a would-be buyer has already had too much.

Twins fans tend to be responsible drinkers, said vendor Ryan Wegner, who was selling
beer in the cheap seats of the Metrodome during the Twins victory over Oakland on
Wednesday.

“People, if they’re drinking at all, usually only have two or three beers,” he said.

Underage drinking is a well-publicized problem, Toomey said. The consequences of

more drinking by those who are already drunk has gotten less attention.

She said she hopes stadiums are concerned about both situations. “My goal as a
researcher in public health is to identify issues that may contribute to problems we’re
facing in our society,” she said. “Hopefully, it opens up a dialogue.” ■
I traveled to Indiana to report this story on Sallie Mae’s last-gasp lobbying efforts: using the
threat of job losses to persuade moderate Democrats into voting against the student-loan reform
bill. I spent a day at the headquarters, talking with ordinary workers as well as officials; I also
talked to expert sources for an analysis of how true the company’s projections of doom really
were. The result was this narrative, showing some of the less-visible people in the student loan
debate. —LN

The Chronicle of Higher Education | Nov. 22, 2009

http://chronicle.com/article/Sallie-Mae-Fights-for-Stude/49224/

Sallie Mae Fights for Student-Loan Role in a Campaign That’s

All About Jobs
By Libby Nelson

Fishers, Ind.
On a crisp November morning, hundreds of Sallie Mae employees gathered here in a
scene reminiscent of a high-school pep rally. They filed into rows of folding chairs,
wearing matching blue-and-white “Protect Indiana Jobs” T-shirts, as John Mellencamp’s
rock ‘n’ roll played over the speakers. They cheered as an official of the student-loan
company praised their dedication and told them how important they were to the local
economy.

For two weeks, at grocery stores, nursing homes, and soccer games, employees of Sallie
Mae’s loan-service and data center in Fishers had tried to persuade their neighbors to join
them in signing a petition urging Congress to consider alternatives to the Obama
administration’s plan to end bank-based student lending. The company official, Jon
Kroehler, a senior vice president, told the crowd that one employee had handed around
the petition in a hospital delivery room as his wife was giving birth.

As he finished reciting a few last facts about the company’s Fishers location (its $148-
million payroll has the economic impact of 7,000 local jobs, he said), about 20 employees
ran out from behind him, clapping and grinning and carrying stacks of petitions. Above, a
banner dropped to reveal the total number of signatures: 81,437, greater than the
population of Fishers.

“As my daughter would say, OMG,” Mr. Kroehler said, as the crowd before him cheered.

The U.S. House of Representatives has already voted to end bank-based student lending,
approving a bill in September that would move all federal loans to the Education
Department’s direct-loan program. The legislation, which largely mirrors President
Obama’s plan, would use the estimated $87-billion in savings to increase student aid,
provide grants to community colleges, and finance other college programs. But the
Senate has yet to introduce its version of the legislation, and lenders are seizing on the
delay.
Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest student lender, has lobbied Congress and put forward its
own proposal for overhauling the federal student-loan system. That plan, too, would
move all federal loans to direct lending, but it would continue to allow student-loan
companies to originate loans before they were sold to the government. After the House
vote didn’t go their way, company executives accelerated their use of another tactic, one
based on the adage that all politics is local.

The student-loan giant began drumming up grass-roots opposition to the legislation in the
towns where its largest facilities are located: Fishers and Muncie, Ind.; Lynn Haven, Fla.;
and Wilkes-Barre, Pa., among others. Thousands of employees at those locations donned
T-shirts with slogans protesting Congress’s move to end bank-based lending and solicited
signatures on petitions.

If bank-based lending ends, Sallie Mae employees told their neighbors and friends, the
company would face a major downsizing. Many of its 26 U.S. locations would probably
close, putting hundreds of people in those towns out of work, employees were told. Sallie
Mae’s argument against the legislation is a simple one and, with the national
unemployment rate at its highest level in 26 years, perhaps a powerful one, too.

The question is whether the argument, and the 186,092 signatures gathered nationwide in
the just-ended petition campaign, will be enough to change the outcome when the Senate
takes up the measure, later this year or early next year. Sallie Mae officials say they hope
that, in the meantime, some moderate Democrats, such as Sen. Evan Bayh, of Indiana,
can be swayed to vote against the bill.

Job Fears in Fishers

“There’s Washington, and then there’s the rest of the country,” Albert L. Lord, Sallie
Mae’s chief executive officer, told the crowd in Fishers. “This is the rest of the country.”

In Washington, Sallie Mae has spent $5.8-million in the past year and a half on lobbying.
In Fishers, company executives criticized Congress and the administration as being out of
touch with ordinary workers.

Fishers, just northeast of Indianapolis, is a fast-growing suburb of about 69,000 people

that is dotted with SuperTargets and megachurches amid the large parking lots, strip
malls, and young trees that mark new development. Overwhelmingly white and solidly
middle-class, it was ranked 10th in Money magazine’s 2008 “Best Places to Live” survey,
which lauded its high education level and low home prices. The county unemployment
rate, which was 6.1 percent in September, is far below the national average of 10.2
percent but has almost doubled in the past year.

Sallie Mae’s facility here stretches for nearly a quarter-mile in an office park. Only about
100 loan originators, the jobs that are the most at risk if bank-based lending ends, work
here. Far more of its 1,600 employees work in default prevention, calling customers who
are behind on their payments, or in the data center, a windowless expanse of servers with
data for Sallie Mae offices all over the country.
Still, that does not mean those jobs are safe. “If we have to do a downsizing, every job is
going to be rated,” said Mary Eure, a senior vice president. “Every job is at stake.”

Brenda Marino, 42, found work as a systems analyst at Sallie Mae five months ago, after
being laid off from a job she had kept for 19 years. Afraid she would be jobless again, she
posted the Sallie Mae petition on Facebook every few days and kept a copy in her purse
to pull out at every opportunity, eventually gathering 47 signatures.

“My daughter will need a student loan, and if she can’t get one, I’ll have to support her at
home,” Ms. Marino says, echoing company executives who had cast doubt on whether a
direct-loan program would be able to efficiently lend money to students who need it.

Barbara Foust, 57, a loan-reconciliation processor—she helps work out problems with
loans—has worked at Sallie Mae for 18 years. Talking about the possibility of losing her
job, she has tears in her eyes. Her husband has health problems that left him hospitalized
for two months this year, and her 26-year-old son is unemployed. “I am the sole
supporter of our income,” she says.

During the Fishers rally, Mr. Lord accused Congress of creating “enormous anxiety”
regarding student loans among people like Ms. Foust and Ms. Marino as well as in
colleges worried about switching loan systems.

He also dismissed Education Department officials’ arguments that little net job loss
would result from the proposed changes. The department points to an analysis by the
Council of Economic Advisers that said direct-loan servicing contracts, which Sallie Mae
will still get if bank-based lending ends, would create new jobs to help offset job loss.

“Many of these jobs are likely to be at the very same banks and loan-servicing companies
that will be affected by the elimination” of bank-based lending, Christina Romer, the
council’s chair, wrote to Sen. Tom Harkin, a Democrat of Iowa and chairman of the
Senate education committee.
Mr. Lord, however, was not buying it. “We don’t want just any old jobs,” he told the
crowd. “We want our jobs.”

Forecasting Job Losses

Should bank-based lending end, Sallie Mae has been chosen as one of four companies to
service federal loans under a contract with the Education Department. And Sallie Mae’s
borrowers will still be repaying their existing loans, which will have to continue to be
serviced for years, until they are all paid off.

A switch to direct lending would require a vast restructuring of the company, says Martha
E.H. Holler, vice president for corporate communications. Sallie Mae would need to lay
off about 30 percent of its 8,500 employees, she warns, and most of the company’s 26
U.S. facilities would close, consolidating operations at five or six remaining locations.
Some industry analysts, though, have cast doubt on how many jobs would actually be lost
if the bank-based federal loan program is eliminated.

Tim Ranzetta, president of Student Lending Analytics, an independent research company,

predicted in August that there would be a net loss of 4,750 jobs related to federal student
loans over the next several years if direct lending prevails. In his analysis, he assumed
that Sallie Mae would bring back to the United States 3,400 jobs that it has outsourced to
other countries. He also projected that some jobs would be created by the pending
legislation’s College Access and Completion Innovation Fund, which would give grants
to states and programs that work to help more students attend and complete college.

Regardless of the exact figure, the threat of job losses has been potent. At the Sallie Mae
facility in Lynn Haven, Fla., the 700 employees work almost exclusively in loan
origination. “Obviously it’s a critical issue,” says Renee Mang, a senior vice president
there.

A petition circulated around Lynn Haven got 23,000 signatures. In Wilkes-Barre, Pa.,
where Sallie Mae employs about 1,000 people, employees gathered more than 31,000
signatures.

Aiming at Moderate Democrats

The petition drive in Indiana is the biggest by far, in part because more than a quarter of
Sallie Mae employees work in Fishers and Muncie. The petition’s appeals to fight the bill
also found fertile political ground there.

Arguments against the policies of President Obama and the Democrats, and against a big
federal government, play well in the solidly Republican county where Fishers is located.
In 2008, Hamilton County residents gave John McCain, the Republican nominee for
president, 60.8 percent of the vote.

Scott Faultless, president of the Fishers Town Council, is one of the petition’s most active
supporters. In a speech at the rally, he cast the House bill as part of a series of
“government takeovers,” linking it to the bailouts of the banking and auto industries and
the proposed health-care overhaul.

“You can’t do everything from Washington,” he said. “Private industry has a place.”

Influencing the votes of moderate Democratic senators from Florida, Indiana,

Pennsylvania, and Virginia could help to change the outcome of the bill, although the
Democrats’ sizable majority in the Senate means a larger shift would be necessary to
defeat the administration’s proposal altogether.

Time is the biggest weapon on the side of the student-loan companies, higher-education
lobbyists have said: The longer the Senate waits to debate, the longer the lenders’
arguments have to gain traction. And the closer the 2010 elections loom, one higher-
education lobbyist says, the more wary lawmakers will be of voting for any proposal that,
like the loan overhaul, would make broad changes to the federal government’s role.

Sen. Ben Nelson, a Democrat of Nebraska, has publicly raised concerns about job losses
that would be created by the version of the bill that passed the House. He has spoken out
against the measure, saying it would restrict options for students seeking loans.

Armed with the petitions from Muncie and Fishers, representatives of Sallie Mae have
met with Senator Bayh. Mr. Lord says the senator was responsive to Sallie Mae’s
concerns.

A spokesman for Mr. Bayh says his vote will depend on the specifics of the Senate bill.
He “will evaluate the Senate’s version of student-lending legislation when it comes out of
committee, looking at the legislation’s overall impact on students and families, as well as
the impact on jobs in Indiana,” the spokesman says.

Direct Lending Still Growing

The direct-loan program has grown in popularity among colleges in the past year. It now
carries 42 percent of federal student-loan volume, up from 29 percent a year ago. Some
of the colleges that have already moved to direct lending are in Sallie Mae’s backyard:
Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, a 30-minute drive from Fishers,
switched in the summer of 2008, along with the rest of the Indiana’s public colleges.

Officials of Indiana-Purdue say they chose direct lending when they were told that fees
charged to students in the federal bank-based system would increase to a level higher
than for students in the direct-loan program.

“There was a sense that things were going to become a bit more unstable” in the bank-
based program, says Rebecca E. Porter, associate vice chancellor and executive director
for enrollment services. And the switch to direct lending went smoothly, she says.

The university “never had any problems” with Sallie Mae, Ms. Porter says, but in the end
the decision came down to saving students money. The campus administration takes no
position on the student-loan legislation.

But for the Sallie Mae employees just up the road, the stakes appear high as they await
Congress’s next move.

“I love my job, and I’ve had it for 18 years,” says Ms. Foust, the loan-reconciliation
processor whose income supports her disabled husband. “If Sallie Mae would close their
doors today, it would devastate my family.” ■
I covered courts for three weeks at the Star Tribune—as (bad) luck would have it, some of the
slowest weeks of the summer. But I did get to write several features on county and state policy,
including this one.

Star Tribune | Aug. 18, 2008

http://www.startribune.com/local/west/27088619.html

Hennepin County is saving lives via DWI court

By LIBBY NELSON, Star Tribune

When Mark Flakne wants his car to start, he breathes on it.

If there's no alcohol on his breath, the car starts. If he's trying to drink and drive -- and
that hasn't happened, Flakne said -- a machine turns off the engine. He can try again in
six hours.

Flakne, 42, a carpenter with multiple DWI convictions, normally wouldn't be behind the
wheel at all. But now he can drive with the sensor, called an ignition interlock, as part of
the Hennepin County DWI court program, an 18-month regimen for repeat offenders
designed to stop them from drinking and driving again.

Of about 110 participants in the court so far, only one has been convicted again for
drunken driving. In Ramsey County, which began a similar program in 2005, three of 73
participants have been convicted again, and none since 2006.

Repeat DWI offenders usually have a 60 percent to 80 percent chance of reoffending.

"We're saving lives," said Fourth District Judge John Holohan, who oversees the DWI
court. "Not only the lives of the offenders, because a lot of those people are out-of-
control alcoholic and their fate if they don't get help is an untimely death. We're also
protecting society from the worst of the worst of the drunken drivers."

DWI court hasn't only saved lives, Holohan said. It's also saved Hennepin County about
$500,000.

The court costs about $2,000 per participant, or more than $5,000 less than the traditional
90 days in jail for repeat offenders.

"Locking somebody up to punish them, and doing nothing to address the underlying
behavior, is costing the taxpayers $7,000 to $8,000," he said. "What we're doing is
changing the behavior."

Niki Leicht, who directs the DWI court program in Ramsey County, said the county
hasn't yet evaluated the costs and savings, but is planning to compare court participants to
a group DWI offenders who chose the traditional probation route.
In Hennepin County, repeat offenders, usually with at least three DWI convictions, can
apply to participate in the court. Instead of the usual 90-day jail sentence, they serve six
days, then undergo a screening procedure. If they pass, they're accepted to the program,
agreeing to meet weekly with a probation officer, attend Alcoholics Anonymous
meetings and let probation or police officers conduct random searches at their home.

In return, participants who normally would have their licenses suspended or revoked, can
drive with the ignition interlock for a set amount of hours per week to work, court and
Alcoholics Anonymous.

Ramsey County's program requires participants to be sober in stages: 90 consecutive days

at first, then 120, then 180, Leicht said, and doesn't offer the driving option.

The program's success rate is partly based on the participants it chooses. The screening
process selects offenders who think they need help, not those looking to avoid jail time
and go back to old habits, Holohan said.

"We're not taking in people that are noncompliant or who are trying to get in here just to
get out of doing the 90 days in jail," he said. "We're taking in people that we believe have
a sincere commitment to turning their lives around and getting sober."

Forced to make changes

Flakne is one of them. After his most recent DWI conviction, in February 2007, he
decided it was time for a change. His attorney suggested DWI court. A little less than 18
months later, he became the program's third graduate a few weeks ago.

"Instead of just sitting in jail and stewing about the mistakes I had made ... it forced me to
make some lifestyle changes," Flakne said.

Educating drunken drivers about the effects of their actions can have a positive impact,
said Jean Mulvey, executive director of Minnesota's chapter of Mothers Against Drunk
Driving, which works with the Hennepin County court system to show things from the
victim's perspective.

"We want them to change their behavior so that they realize some of the different
consequences," Mulvey said.

The process made Flakne realize he was going to be back in jail if he didn't change.

"Fortunately for me, the only person I hurt was myself," he said. "There are people
who've done a lot worse. But you know what, it was probably just a matter of time." ■
While covering the New York Police Department for the New York Times, I also covered the
resolution of a court case brought by a former officer. I reported and wrote this story on deadline
from the State Supreme Court. —LN

The New York Times | July 21, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/nyregion/21brown.html

Police Officer Shot During Drug Raid 11 Years Ago Settles

Suit Against City
By LIBBY NELSON

Eleven years after he claimed he was shot by a fellow police officer, a former New York
Police Department sergeant accepted a $3.25 million settlement from the city on Monday,
ending a legal battle after more than a decade of wrangling.

Dexter Brown, 46, who was shot in the back, agreed to drop his wrongful-injury lawsuit,
which accused the Police Department of failing to properly train its officers in the use of
deadly force, as jury selection was scheduled to begin in State Supreme Court in
Brooklyn.

Mr. Brown said he felt vindicated. But in a fiery statement, he made it clear he was still
angry with the city and the police force he once belonged to, accusing the police of
shooting minorities — both officers and civilians — without cause.

“Not only are we being beaten, crippled and killed, other actions are being taken against
us needlessly,” said Mr. Brown, who is black, accusing the Police Department of a
“prevailing mentality of shoot first and lie about it later.”

Mr. Brown was leading an undercover narcotics team when he was shot in the back in
February 1998. Struggling with two suspects in a Bedford-Stuyvesant crack house, he
shot one of them in the leg. Then, Mr. Brown said Monday, he felt two shots in his back.
He turned around and saw a member of his own squad, Detective Luis Lopez, firing from
a few feet away.

From that point, competing narratives unfold.

Mr. Brown said that Detective Lopez shot him intentionally, and continued to fire even
after being ordered to stop, fatally injuring one of the suspects before fleeing the scene.

The Police Department initially said that the mortally wounded suspect had shot Mr.
Brown. Later, a firearms-discharge review board review concluded that Detective Lopez
had fired the shots, but said the shooting was justified.

Detective Lopez himself swore under oath that he was not the shooter.
Pretrial proceedings in the case stretched on for years. Mr. Brown retired in 1999 on full
disability and moved to Mississippi with his family in 2005. He said that he is still in
pain, often needing steroid injections to get out of bed in the morning. He walks with a
cane, and he said he will require further back surgery.

Insurance pays for his medical bills, but his legal fees will come to about one-third of the
settlement, his lawyer, Bonita E. Zelman, said. Mr. Brown had initially sued for $31
million.

“After 10 years of fighting the courts to get justice, the city finally stepped up to the
plate,” Ms. Zelman said in a statement after the settlement was announced, adding that
she hoped the case would lead to changes in department policy.

Ms. Zelman and Mr. Brown called for another investigation into the shooting and for
Detective Lopez, who is still a member of the police force, to be disciplined.

The Police Department and the city’s Law Department said Monday that the settlement
was not an admission of official wrongdoing.

“The city supports the actions of the defendant police officers in this rapidly developing,
split-second police encounter involving a narcotics buy-and-bust in which the defendant
officers heard shots, saw the sergeant struggling with a perpetrator and thought that the
sergeant’s life was in danger,” said Fay Leoussis, the tort division chief of the law
department, in a statement, adding that city settled because of the uncertainties inherent
in a trial.

The $3.25 million settlement is about what the city paid in 2003 to settle a case brought
by Desmond Robinson, an undercover officer who was shot in 1994 by Peter Del-
Debbio, an officer who was off duty at the time. Mr. Robinson received $3 million.

On the steps of the courthouse after the settlement was reached, Mr. Brown described the
night he was shot, recalling the betrayal he felt when the Police Department disputed his
version of events.

But asked the question at the center of the case — why he was shot — he was at a loss
for words.

“That’s a question I’ve been asking for 11 years now, and no one gave me a good
answer,” he said. ■