Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray said 30,259 consumer complaints were logged last year, up from about 24,000 complaints in 2008. The largest share of complaints came from consumers who bought a vehicle or repair services, followed by complaints against debt collection and credit reporting companies and home-improvement firms.

Kim Kowalski, a spokeswoman for Cordray’s office, said 37 lawsuits filed by the state against companies last year over alleged violations of consumer protection laws brought in $4.1 million in customer restitution, civil penalties and other relief. Resolutions with companies that didn’t go to court totaled an additional $2.8 million.

The nearly $7 million generated in Cordray’s first year as attorney general represented half of the $14 million netted in 2008. That year marked the resignation of Attorney General Marc Dann amid a sexual harassment scandal and his temporary replacement by Nancy Rogers, law school dean at Ohio State University. Kowalski said 2008’s total included a number of big-ticket, multi-state pharmaceutical settlements, netting Ohio about $9 million.

Litigation efforts in 2009, she said, focused more on complaints that didn’t involve large amounts of restitution, such as phony debt collection scams

Department brass have said Gillette was the latter, even after he had accumulated dozens of internal-affairs complaints. But 42 people — including accused criminals, people with no criminal records and law-enforcement officers — say in those complaints that, during more than 13 years as a sheriff’s deputy, Gillette acted as a law unto himself. His detractors say Gillette was a man with a penchant for profanity and roughness who crossed the line into criminal behavior
‘One of the worst cases’

By himself, Gillette racked up more complaints during his 13 years on patrol than the entire department generated in 2005, 2006 and 2007 combined. More than 70 deputies work for the Sangamon County sheriff’s department.

Based on the volume, seriousness and number of sustained complaints, Gillette should have been fired long ago, according to Samuel Walker, a University of Nebraska criminologist who is considered an expert on police misconduct.
Complaints can be a tool

Meyer and Walker said departments should use internal affairs complaints to help identify officers who need help.

Walker said the volume of complaints can be a tool to help figure out which officers need coaching, additional training or re-assignment. Meyer said departments can’t always go by complaint volumes — an officer assigned to DUI patrol, for example, is bound to get a fairly high number of complaints — but he blames himself for not doing more to help Gillette.
Williamson said he believes the department provides adequate help to employees with marital problems, psychological issues, alcohol-abuse problems or other issues that affect their work. The lack of psychological screening for new employees is due in part to the expense, Williamson said.

Williamson, who started the department’s internal-affairs division in 1997, has the final say on who gets hired. He said he requires prospective deputies to have a college diploma, and he interviews extensively before making a decision.

“This is one of the worst cases I’ve heard, just hearing his record,” Walker said. “This sounds, really, pretty shocking. This officer should have been long gone. There’s a really serious failure here.”

That view is shared by Stephen Meyer, former head of internal affairs for the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office, who said he would have fired Gillette if he’d had the authority.

“Given the frequency and severity (of complaints), there comes a time when the agency has to say ‘enough,’” said Meyer, who retired in 2001 but remains a sheriff’s chaplain. “I deemed law enforcement a profession. And you need to remove those who are not professional.”
Gillette, who is now working for a private entity (he declined to be more specific) in Afghanistan, called Meyer a “religious fanatic” who was out to get him and generated complaints by contacting people who had been arrested. While he admitted violating some rules, Gillette denied doing anything seriously wrong.

“The only thing I’ve been found guilty of is minor department infractions,” Gillette said in a telephone interview. “I’m not saying I’m an angel. It’s obvious that I’m not. I did a good job for the sheriff’s department, and we took a lot of bad guys off the street.”

Meyer said he never solicited complaints — when Williamson made him the department’s first head of internal affairs in 1997, the sheriff made it clear that he was to let complaints come to him, not go looking for them, Meyer said.

“My job would have been in jeopardy,” Meyer said. “The sheriff had said, ‘You will not solicit.’”
42 complaints

By October 2001, the number of complaints against Gillette stood at 28, with six of them sustained. He’d been a deputy for six years. Then the pace slowed. He was the target of 14 more complaints for the last eight years of his career with the county, with two of those — the complaint filed by Barr and the allegation of profanity by Anderson — sustained by the department.

A few things changed. Gillette was deployed to Iraq for a year in 2003 and won the Bronze Star, so he was off local streets. Meyer, who Gillette says was out to get him, retired in October 2001. And in September 2001, Lt. Patrick Davlin moved from the bureau of professional standards, which includes the department’s internal affairs division, and became supervisor of the midnight shift that included Gillette.

The paper reports that the oil and gas liaison’s department did add an employee in 2009 (from two to three) and will see a tripling in its budget from 2008 to 2010, if its proposed budget for next year is approved. But a key hydrologic study to check for contaminants from gas drilling in the Mamm Creek area was slashed from $180,000 to $20,000 in 2009.

That study is part of an ongoing effort to investigate findings from a private consultant that show elevated levels of methane in groundwater supplies since the most recent gas boom began in the late 1990s. There also is a push for more federal regulation of certain drilling practices in the wake of complaints from residents that their groundwater wells are being contaminated and they’re being sickened by gas drilling.
Oil and gas liaison officer Judy Jordan told the paper she was perplexed by the rising number of complaints given the drop-off in drilling in the county (from 70 active rigs a year ago to 16 currently operating). That slowdown is widely attributed to the global recession and drop in the commodity price, but some Republicans say it’s directly linked to more stringent state environmental regulations for gas drilling that went into effect in the spring.
“America is facing a painful recession, and this Governor’s policies have made a bad economic situation worse,” Penry writes in his most recent campaign fund-raising newsletter, blasting the “stifling oil and gas regulations [that] have done nothing to help get our economy turned around.”

Whatever the causes the latest natural gas downturn (or some would say bust), Garfield County’s Jordan said the number of drilling permits her department is seeing forwarded from the state for county review continues to go up.

By way of introduction, immigration law violators are not immigrants . They are aliens who are in the United States in violation of law. There is a profound difference between individuals who legally apply for admission and fulfill all the requirements for admission, and those who decide to enter the United States, or intentionally overstay their visa in violation of law.

Two years ago, illegal immigration was such a hot topic that any conservative politician who even mentioned the word “amnesty” for undocumented aliens—also called illegal immigrants—in anything other than a hostile tone risked being tarred and feathered and subject to a recall. But today the issue of aliens unlawfully present in the United States has been moved to the back burners, if not completely off the stove. The only recent controversy involving undocumented aliens is whether they and/or their children should be covered by the new healthcare plan that is currently being crafted by Congress. President Obama, on the other hand, is supportive of a “path to citizenship” for immigrants who are here unlawfully.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the number of illegal aliens in the United States dropped by almost 14 percent, or 1.7 million people, between the summer of 2007 and the spring of 2009. It has been estimated that the number of immigrants entering the U.S. illegally has dropped by one-third, while the number of illegal aliens returning to their homeland has more than doubled.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the number of illegal aliens in the United States dropped by almost 14 percent, or 1.7 million people, between the summer of 2007 and the spring of 2009. It has been estimated that the number of immigrants entering the U.S. illegally has dropped by one-third, while the number of illegal aliens returning to their homeland has more than doubled.

What are the reasons for this dramatic turnaround? One reason is that more of our border with Mexico has been fenced in, deterring potential immigrants from trying to illegally cross into the United States. Although during his candidacy President Obama pledged that he would moderate the Bush administration’s tough policy on immigration enforcement, his administration is pursuing an aggressive strategy for an illegal immigration crackdown that relies substantially on programs started by his predecessor
President Obama favors shifting the burden of immigration enforcement to employers, while making it difficult for illegal immigrants to get hired. It is estimated that tens of thousands of jobs created by the economic stimulus law could end up being filled by illegal immigrants, especially in big states like California where undocumented workers make up a substantial number of construction workers. Studies by two conservative think tanks estimate that illegal immigrants could take 300,000 construction jobs, or 15 percent of the two million jobs that new taxpayer-financed projects are expected to create.
Illegal immigrants come to the United States to improve their lives through the opportunities offered in this country, but often end up becoming employed in low-paying sectors that don’t attract American workers. The illegal workers may be abused and exploited by their employers, but they are afraid to report such abuse and exploitation to the authorities out of fear that they will be deported.
Illegal immigrants are a big burden on hospital emergency rooms. Unable to purchase health insurance, they do not receive preventive medical care. If they have a medical problem, they wait until it is serious enough to warrant treatment. Federal law requires emergency rooms to examine everyone who comes in with a medical complaint and to treat emergency conditions regardless of whether or not the person has health insurance or is here legally or illegally. Undocumented aliens should be free to purchase their own private insurance if they can afford it, and if they can’t, then they should be covered by Medicaid (Medi-Cal in California).

Undocumented aliens are vital to the economy of the United States, doing the jobs most Americans would not do. They are underpaid, overworked, exploited, work in substandard and often dangerous conditions, and live in constant fear of being caught by immigration authorities, jailed, and deported. Call them illegal aliens or undocumented aliens, the fact is that the lure of a better life in the once prosperous United States is hard to resist. We who are fortunate enough to live in the United States take many things for granted, such as pure drinking water, healthful and abundant food, easy transportation, a comfortable house or apartment to keep us cool in the hot summer and warm in the cold winter. Can you really blame a Latino or eastern man for wanting better living conditions for his wife and children, let alone himself? The squalor they often live in in the United States is considered by them to be a paradise as opposed to the cardboard shack, impure water, tainted food, and rampant disease of their native country

The Federal Communications Commission is looking into complaints by AT&T that the Google Voice phone service blocks some calls within the United States to avoid a high connection fee.

The FCC sent an inquiry to Google today seeking information about the software’s functionality, its number of users and which companies with which it has partnered.

Google Voice gives users one number to ring all of their phones and a website to log call history and text messages. The service also provides free calls within the United States
“We take Apple at its word,” Genachowski said. “We’ll continue to monitor the specific issue and to monitor the marketplace.”

Does the FCC even have the authority to regulate whether Apple carries Google’s program or whether Google has to connect every call?

In a response to the former, Genachowski said, “We’ll tackle the authority issues when we get to that point.” The mentality is part of, as the new chairman called it, a “proactive FCC.”

The problem has since been fixed, likely thanks to a counterclaim from the Swedish site.

The Pirate Bay has proven immensely controversial for hosting links and descriptions to a massive amount of copyrighted material.

However, the site does not itself host any copies of films, record albums and software — that’s done by individuals over the BitTorrent protocol with applications like Azureus.

The United States has been accused of pressuring Swedish officials to crack down on the site.

Google is also a part of a number of copyright controversies stemming from its acquisition of YouTube and its library of infringing videos, as well as complaints over its Google Books project which makes digital copies of books from libraries
Those accused of copyright violations can file a response, but in the meantime, their content may be wiped offline.

Lloyds Banking Group racked up the largest number of new complaints, closely followed by Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, Abbey and HSBC.

This is the first time complaints data relating to individual firms has been published.

The Financial Ombudsman Service received a total of 69,841 new complaints from consumers between 1 January and 30 June,, of which 87% related to 142 firms. More than 38,000 cases related to just five banking groups.
“The complaints data we are publishing for the first time will help people to see how the financial businesses that are responsible for nine tenths of the Ombudsman’s workload deal with customer complaints,” says Walter Merricks, the outgoing chief ombudsman. “The data shows that some businesses are much better, and some much worse, at complaints handling.”

An average of 59% of complaints were upheld by the Ombudsman in favour of consumers, with some firms having 95% of complaints made against them upheld. Black Horse, which is part of Lloyds, received 1,009 complaints of which 95% were upheld.

Peter VicaryFirm Number of complaints* % upheld**

Lloyds Banking Group 15,233 51%
Barclays Bank 9,056 62.2%
Royal Bank of Scotland 5,883 56.4%
Abbey 4,279 66.5%
HSBC 2,969 68.3%
-Smith, chief executive of Which?, says the new data is a “victory for consumers”.

The Consumer Council for Water said overall complaints to water companies in England and Wales dropped last year by nearly 15%.

With the exception of metering, all major categories of complaints – billing and charges, water and sewerage services – have triggered fewer complaints from consumers.

A few companies had significant improvements in complaint figures as they recovered from problems in previous years, bringing the industry average down. However, other companies saw rising disatisfaction among consumers. Complaints concerning United Utilities rose by more than 36%, and United Utilities, Southern Water, South East Water and South West Water had the highest number of complaints for the number of customers they serve.

Companies showing a drop in complaints included Severn Trent Water with 40% fewer complaints, and Thames Water with nearly 27% fewer complaints on the previous year’s figures. Southern Water’s complaints dropped by 48% but it still had a high number of complaints compared to other companies.
“We are still particularly concerned with South East Water’s complaint figures. For a smaller company that only provides water, and is not involved in the sewerage side of the business, South East Water’s complaint figures are very poor, and they have been for several years,” she said.

The water industry trade body, Water UK, said it was “pleased” by the overall downward trend, adding: “The number of complaints investigated is also down.

“The industry dealt successfully with 99.4% of complaints through their own processes. It is also pleasing to see that several companies have recovered well from one-off difficulties linked to new billing systems, which had caused temporary complaint surges in the past.”

“It’s a poor reflection on the industry that there are so many unhappy customers out there,” said Which? personal finance campaigner Phil Jones.

“Financial firms simply aren’t treating consumers well enough and things must change if the industry is to rebuild its reputation,” he added.
There were 908,000 complaints about the mis-selling of mortgage endowments during the period, although their number tailed off dramatically during the three years.

Complaints about credit cards came a close third at 745,000.

But a surge in complaints about payment protection insurance (PPI) saw the number of complaints about general insurance and “pure protection” policies double, from 62,000 to 127,000, between the first half of 2006 and the second half of 2008.
“Millions of transactions for millions of customers go through the banking system every day,” she said.

“Put in context, the proportion of reportable complaints is still very small at 3.5 per thousand products held,” she added.

The vast majority of industry complaints were settled within eight weeks with, by the end of last year, just 10% taking longer to deal with.