SUMMARY: While police departments across the country address reform, community groups in cities like Chicago and New York are also teaching people about alternatives to 9-1-1 for crises that can be exacerbated by police presence. NewsHour Weekend’s Ivette Feliciano talked to author Alex Vitale of “End of Policing,” about the country’s reliance on law enforcement to solve complicated social issues.
SUMMARY: Ricky Boyd, 20, was shot outside his grandmother's home three months ago Monday. Law enforcement in Georgia went to arrest Boyd, claiming he was a murder suspect, but shot him. They claimed he had a firearm, which turned out to be a BB gun found 45 feet away. Boyd's mother, Jameillah Smiley, talks with Amna Nawaz in her first national broadcast interview, with her attorney, Will Claiborne.
SUMMARY: Baltimore City Public Schools faced outrage from parents after images emerged of students wearing coats in a freezing classroom. More than a third of schools reported a lack of heat this winter during a cold snap, and that’s just one of the many problems plaguing the school system’s crumbling infrastructure, underscoring a larger debate about long-term funding and investment. John Yang reports.
SUMMARY: Two Baltimore city police officers were convicted in federal court on Monday on charges including racketeering and robbery, as part of a brazen corruption scandal. Baltimore’s Gun Trace Task Force were tasked with getting illegal guns off the street, but used their authority to target people for theft. John Yang talks to Jayne Miller of WBAL-TV about the debate on how the city police force needs to change.
SUMMARY: Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood is both pro-gun and pro-immigrant and he's been endorsed by both the NRA and the NAACP. Special correspondent John Carlos Frey reports in collaboration with the Marshall Project on why Sheriff Chitwood's appeal often cuts across traditional political lines.
SUMMARY: The Washington Post picked up two Pulitzer Prizes on Monday, including one for national reporting on police shootings of civilians. According to an innovative new database compiled by the Post, 990 civilians were fatally shot by police last year. For more on the groundbreaking report, Judy Woodruff talks to Wesley Lowery of The Washington Post.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): And speaking of awards, let's look at some investigative reporting honored by this year's Pulitzer Prizes.
The Washington Post won two Pulitzers yesterday, including one for national reporting for a series on police shootings of civilians. There had been little national data about those kind of shootings.
The Post created its own database that included these findings: 990 people were fatally shot by police last year. One in six officers had been involved in a prior shooting. In three-quarters of the cases, police were under attack or defending someone who was.
Wesley Lowery was one of The Washington Post's lead reporters on this. He's part of a team of more than 60. And he joins me now.
Congratulations, Wesley Lowery.
WESLEY LOWERY, The Washington Post: Thank you so much.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Let's see. How many years have you been reporting?
WESLEY LOWERY: A few, but — a few, a handful. So, I'm 25. I have been at The Post for two years.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And what was your reaction?
WESLEY LOWERY: I was really excited.
This was a project that really was a newsroom-wide effort that involved a lot of different staffs, our investigative staff, our national desk, which I work for, our graphics and data development staffs as well. It was just a really great team win.
JUDY WOODRUFF: How did the idea for this come about?
WESLEY LOWERY: So, this idea, this project was born in a lot of ways out of Ferguson, Missouri.
And I was one of our lead reporters on the ground in Missouri, as well as then in Baltimore, when there was the unrest there. And in Ferguson, they were having this conversation where you had the police unions and the police chiefs saying at the time, this is a one-off anecdote. We almost never shoot anybody. Most officers never fire their guns.
And you had the civil rights groups and many of the activists and protesters saying, young black men are being executed in the streets every day. This is an outrage. We're being killed.
And so smart editors asked an obvious question, which is true. We should know, right? We should be able to provide some clarity to this debate. And it turned out that we couldn't because no one was keeping track at the national level and also even at state levels. No one knew exactly how many people were being killed by the police.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including the grand jury verdict on the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, the resignation of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, plus what our commentators are thankful for this Thanksgiving.
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| Early responders at Sandy Hook Elementary included, from left: Lt. Christopher Vanghele, Officer Jason Flynn, Officer Leonard Penna, Detective Jason Frank and Officer William Chapman. |
The gunfire ended; it was so quiet they could hear the broken glass and bullet casings scraping under their boots. The smell of gunpowder filled the air. The officers turned down their radios; they did not want to give away their positions if there was still a gunman present.
They found the two women first, their bodies lying on the lobby floor. Now they knew it was real. But nothing, no amount of training, could prepare them for what they found next, inside those two classrooms.
“One look, and your life was absolutely changed,” said Michael McGowan, one of the first police officers to arrive at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, as a gunman, in the space of minutes, killed 20 first graders and 6 adults.
Officer McGowan was among seven Newtown officers who recently sat down to share their accounts of that day. Some spoke for the first time, providing the fullest account yet of the scene as officers responded to one of the worst school massacres in United States history, one that has inflamed the national debate over gun control.
It is an account filled with ghastly moments and details, and a few faint instances of hope. One child had a slight pulse, but did not survive. Another was found bloody but unhurt, amid her dead classmates. Teachers were so protective of their students that they had to be coaxed by officers before opening doors. And the officers themselves, many of them fathers, instinctively used their most soothing Daddy voices to guide terrified children to safety.
The stories also reveal the deep stress that lingers for officers who, until Dec. 14, had focused their energies on maintaining order in a low-crime corner of suburbia. Some can barely sleep. Little things can set off tears: a television show, a child’s laughter, even the piles of gifts the Police Department received from across the country.
One detective, who was driving with his wife and two sons, passed a roadside memorial on Route 25 two weeks after the shooting, and began sobbing uncontrollably. “I just lost it right there, I couldn’t even drive,” the detective, Jason Frank, said.
Officer William Chapman was in the Newtown police station along with Officer McGowan and others when the first reports of shots and breaking glass came in early on the day of the massacre. The school was more than two miles away. They traveled up Route 25, then right onto Church Hill Road. “We drove as fast as we’ve ever driven,” Officer McGowan said.
They made it in under three minutes, arriving in the parking lot while gunfire could still be heard.
“I got out of the car and grabbed my rifle and it stopped for second,” Officer Chapman said. “But then we heard more popping. You could tell it was rifle fire. And it was up so close, it sounded like it was coming from outside. So we were all looking around for someone to shoot back at.”
As the officers converged on the building, the gunfire stopped again. Officers Chapman and Scott Smith made their way to the front entrance. It was here, only minutes earlier, that a rail-thin 20-year-old named Adam Lanza, armed with a .223 Bushmaster semiautomatic carbine, two semiautomatic pistols and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, had blasted his way through the glass.
