SUMMARY:How should efforts to implement criminal justice reform handle minor offenses committed by juveniles? Officials in Newark, New Jersey, are trying a new approach; municipal courts, public schools and police have aligned to develop an alternative sentencing program for teenagers: Newark Youth Court. This NewsHour Shares is provided by 12-year-old Yasmeena Sharif for our Student Reporting Labs.
SUMMARY:At New Jersey’s Rutgers University, a new honors program for undergraduates is redefining academic excellence. Students accepted into the highly competitive Honors Living Learning Community (HLLC) study critical social issues and prove their commitment to becoming “change-makers." While the program is small, its early outcomes have been promising. Hari Sreenivasan has the story from Newark.
SUMMARY:Military veterans are running for Congress this year in record numbers, many for the first time. In New Jersey's 11th district, no fewer than four veterans, two in each party, are running for the open congressional seat. Lisa Desjardins reports from the competitive district and explains what's behind this new national trend.
SUMMARY:The Supreme Court has ruled that states have the power to legalize sports betting. The case came from New Jersey, a state that fought for years to legalize sports bets at casinos and race tracks. Special correspondent Brenda Flanagan of NJTV-News reports.
SUMMARY: Syndicated Columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week's news, including accusations that Judge Roy Moore pursued relationships with teens and had sexual contact with a minor decades ago, a wave of Democratic victories in statewide elections, including the Virginia governor's race, and the larger trends facing both parties.
SUMMARY: Historically one of the country's most impoverished and violent cities, Camden, New Jersey, has been working to rebuild its police force from the ground up, recruiting officers from its mostly Latino and African-American community. The new procedures aim to bring police into closer face-to-face interactions with the people they serve in order to foster good relationships. Hari Sreenivasan reports.
SUMMARY: A rush hour commuter rail train smashed into a station in Hoboken on Thursday, killing one and injuring more than one hundred. Hari Sreenivasan speaks with Brenda Flanagan of NJTV News about the factors that may have led to the accident and upcoming investigations into transit security and safety.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Investigators in Northern New Jersey have a big question to ponder tonight: Why did a commuter train smash into a station in the midst of rush hour?
For now, the answer is anything but clear.
It was 8:45 this morning, when a New Jersey transit train came barreling into Hoboken without slowing down. A passenger in the first car said there'd been no hint of anything wrong.
JAMIE WEATHERHEAD-SAUL, Rain Passenger: There wasn't even a screeching, like it was halting. It just kept going. Maybe there was some kind of, like, braking involved, because the lights went off and people started screaming.
HARI SREENIVASAN: The speeding railcars crashed through a barrier and into the outer wall of the terminal waiting room, crushing the front of the train and collapsing part of the ceiling.
POLICE SCANNER AUDIO: We have a train that's into the train station at Hoboken terminal. We are going to need multiple EMS for multiple injuries.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Police and emergency workers rushed to the station, a commuter hub just outside New York that handles 50,000 passengers every day. Bystanders jumped in to help people pinned under mangled steel and concrete.
MIKE LARSON, New Jersey Transit Employee: The second half of the first car was completely destroyed, to where they were crawling on their hands and knees. And we were trying to get as many people out. I assisted in maybe three or four people getting out.
HARI SREENIVASAN:The lone fatality was a woman on the platform killed by the falling debris.
SUMMARY: Following a shootout, New York police apprehended their suspect for Saturday's actual and attempted bombings in New York and New Jersey. Twenty-eight-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Afghanistan, was seized after being recognized sleeping in the doorway of a New Jersey bar. Earlier in the day, a text message alert urged New Yorkers to call 911 if they saw him.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): They say they've got their man. Now they're trying to figure out his motive. An arrest this morning in New Jersey has ended a manhunt in a series of bombings and attempted bombings around New York City and New Jersey.
MAN: That's definitely him.
GWEN IFILL: Ahmad Khan Rahami was loaded into an ambulance, bloody and dazed after a gun battle with police. The 28-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen from Afghanistan was captured in Linden, New Jersey, after he was recognized sleeping in the doorway of a bar.
That was just hours after police sent text alerts to millions in the New York metro area to be on the lookout for him. After the shoot-out, in which two police officers and the suspect were injured, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio firmly labeled the bombings terrorism.
MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO, New York City: We have so more much information obviously than we even had a few hours ago. Based on the information we have now, we have every reason to believe this was an act of terror.
GWEN IFILL: It all began on Saturday morning in a bomb attack in the beach town of Seaside Park, New Jersey, before a charity race to benefit Marines. No one was injured there.
Later that night, in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, another bomb went off, injuring 29 people. Surveillance video allegedly caught Rahami planting the device. A second device, made from a pressure cooker filled with shrapnel, was found undetonated a few blocks away.
And last night, five more pipe bombs were found at a train station in Elizabeth, New Jersey. As robots worked to dismantle them, one exploded suddenly. Officials linked all of the attacks to Rahami, but offered limited details about how they made that connection.
But, with Rahami as a named suspect, police descended on his family home in Elizabeth.
MAN: He's a very friendly guy. That's what's so scary. It's hard when it's home. They never seemed out of the ordinary. They were just Americanized. You would have never known anything.
SUMMARY: The suspect behind this weekend’s bombings has been apprehended; now authorities are trying to figure out what motivated him and whether he acted alone. Judy Woodruff talks to George Washington University’s Lorenzo Vidino and former Department of Homeland Security official Juliette Kayyem about what the investigation has uncovered so far and how we can try to prevent future attacks.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Juliette, what do you make of the fact that we learned late this afternoon his family moved to the United States in 1995? We figured he would have been 7 years old then.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): In the aftermath of the police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, and the chokehold death of a man in New York City, civil rights groups and even the president have called for an increase in the use of body cameras by police departments.
Hari Sreenivasan takes us to one town where they recently began using them.
DANIELLE TORRES, Evesham Township Police Department: It’s green. I’m ready to go out on a shift. I pick it up. I put it on. I flick it so that it’s like that. Once it turns green, then it’s ready for me to start recording.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): For the last five months, police officer Danielle Torres has been wearing a small body camera when she’s out policing the streets of Evesham, New Jersey, a commuter town just 20 miles southeast of Philadelphia.
DANIELLE TORRES:The body camera sees everything from me out, almost as if it’s my eyes, whereas in-car cameras only see a stationary view of what’s in front of my patrol car.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Her department is one of dozens across the country that have adopted this surveillance equipment.
And Chief Christopher Chew, who himself wears one, says his officers have all embraced the new policing tool.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Casinos in the U.S. rack up billions of dollars in profits each year. But as they pop up in more states and expand in places like New England, classic gambling spots suffer, case in point, Atlantic City.
Our economics correspondent Paul Solman has the story, part of his ongoing reporting Making Sense of financial news.
MAN: I got laid off at Showboat August 31 — 28 years.
MAN: We’re actually fighting for our lives out here.
PAUL SOLMAN (NewsHour): Workers in Atlantic City, New Jersey, protesting a threatened slash in pay and benefits at the latest casino under siege here, the Trump Taj Mahal.
What will you do if the Taj closes down?
WOMAN: I don’t know. I don’t have an idea, because no jobs. So, what do I do?
PAUL SOLMAN:Four casinos closed already this year, thousands unemployed, and now the Taj, unless its 3,000 or so workers and the city make concessions.
Hotel union president Bob McDevitt.
C. ROBERT MCDEVITT, President, UNITE-HERE Local54: The average wage is about $12 an hour. What makes these middle-class jobs is the health care and the — and the retirement plan. And that’s part of the original legislation that brought gambling to Atlantic City.
PAUL SOLMAN: It was an economic strategy forged to restore the city to its heydays, says Mayor Don Guardian.
MAYOR DON GUARDIAN, Atlantic City: Atlantic city’s been around for 160 years, it’s been a destination.
PAUL SOLMAN: First as a health spa, with rolling chairs to ferry the feeble.
DON GUARDIAN: Then we built beautiful Victorian hotels to attract the rich people from Philadelphia and New York, and that worked for about 40 years.
PAUL SOLMAN: Into the 20th century, that is.
DON GUARDIAN: Then we decided to ignore prohibition. That was very successful.
PAUL SOLMAN: So successful that when the game of “Monopoly” was popularized in the 1930s, its board was laid out as Atlantic City.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Today marks two years since Superstorm Sandy slammed into the East Coast, leaving enormous damage in its path.
As is the often the case, the Red Cross was at the center of major relief activity, but its efforts and its coordination at the time are now the subject of new scrutiny.
Howling winds and sheets of rain pounded New Jersey and New York when the storm made landfall late on October 29, 2012. Millions of people lost power, as water poured into streets, flooding subways and tunnels. When it was over, ocean-front communities lay devastated, with thousands of homes damaged or destroyed, and 182 people dead. The Red Cross helped lead the relief effort with endorsements coming from the highest levels.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The Red Cross knows what they’re doing. They’re in close contact with federal, state, and local officials. They will make sure that we get the resources to those families as swiftly as possible.
GWEN IFILL: But, today, a report released by NPR and ProPublica painted a starkly critical picture of the agency’s actions.
JUSTIN ELLIOTT, ProPublica:In many cases after Sandy, the Red Cross just didn’t show up to the most devastated areas until weeks after the storm.
GWEN IFILL:ProPublica reporter Justin Elliott says internal documents and interviews with current and former Red Cross staffers found some decisions were dictated by appearances.
JUSTIN ELLIOTT: Several Red Cross officials who worked on the Sandy effort complained at the time that emergency response vehicles which are used to deliver relief items like blankets and also food were diverted by headquarters to be backdrops at press conferences, as well as at photo-ops with celebrities.
GWEN IFILL:The report says logistical problems and communication snafus led to wasteful spending and unmet needs.
A large family that lives at the shore and suffered losses during Superstorm Sandy will share a $20 million lottery jackpot that one of the 17 siblings said will be “a great pick-me-up.”
Members of the Endreson family packed the Beachwood Community Center on Thursday for a news conference. A lottery spokeswoman said the siblings range in age from 53 to 76. The New Jersey Pick-6 prize will also be shared with three children of a brother who died a few years ago.
John Endreson, 69, became emotional when he described rebuilding his home after Sandy ripped through the area in October 2012.
“The hardest part was seeing other people that were devastated,” he said. “I was able to redo my house and help my family and my brothers. I was quite fortunate. I just feel so lucky. And this is just the icing on the cake.”
Another sibling described how their late mother started playing the lottery regularly years ago and would always say that all her children would get a piece of the winnings.
Faith Schiabor told how she got the news from one of her sisters who had bought the winning ticket.
“I got this frantic phone call,” she said. “She said, ‘Are you sitting down?’ I thought someone was hurt.”
Her sister Sigrid told reporters that she bought the tickets and then forgot about them for about two weeks before going down to a supermarket to check them. When one came back with the message, “see cashier,” she ran it through again before taking it up to the window and getting the good news.
“I started to cry,” she said. “I called my sister to come get me. I didn't think I was going to make it. I said, ‘I think I won the lottery.’”
The family decided to take a lump sum payment of $14 million, which is worth about $10 million after taxes.
“It's going to help the family, it's going to help Ocean County,” Schiabor said. “It's just a great pick-me-up for all of us.”
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week's top news, including the possible fallout of the "cheap political trick" that shut down traffic in New Jersey, a new memoir by former Defense Secretary Gates and lessons from the nation's 50 year war on poverty.
In many ways, it was a relief to hear New Jersey Governor Chris Christie declare he was apologetic, humiliated, embarrassed and sad after an odd tale of bridge and tunnel retribution exploded on his watch this week.
"I had no knowledge or involvement in this issue, in its planning or its execution," Christie said of the George Washington Bridge lane closures allegedly carried out by his staff last fall. "And I am stunned by the abject stupidity that was shown here, regardless of what the facts ultimately uncover. This was handled in a callous and indifferent way."
So often, apologies come couched in arm's-length formulation. Public figures apologize if they offended someone, implying that the offense itself is not the problem. They often suggest that they were not really responsible for their actions and disappear briefly into rehab.
And sometimes, they never apologize at all.
Not Christie. With his national reputation as a straight-talking potential president on the line, he conducted a tour de force press conference in Trenton, holding forth for nearly two hours until reporters began repeating the same questions over and over again. Tom Kean, a former New Jersey Republican governor, was among those who suggested that Christie lay everything on the table. "If he doesn't," he told the Washington Post, "it's going to be like water torture."
But while Christie declared himself mortified by what he considered a betrayal by his staff, he had to be prodded to express similar concern for the actual actions they took -- basically ordering up a traffic jam to punish New Jerseyans who did not support the governor.
"It was an awful, callous indifferent thing to do," he said -- only when he was asked -- of the political vendetta carried out by his close aides. He spent far more time holding forth on what their lies had done to him.
Authentic apology is a tricky thing to pull off in politics, which is why it so seldom occurs. Plausible deniability must be preserved. True contrition has to be displayed. Traitors to the cause must be immediately be jettisoned. Most of all, the goal is to stop the bleeding.
I watched Hillary Clinton do this in the White House East Room years ago as she sought to tamp down a brewing scandal involving her old Little Rock law firm. It was later tagged the "pretty in pink" press conference because of the color she chose to wear. It went on, I recall, for a long time.
Anthony Weiner apologized too, more than once. David Vitter and Eliot Spitzer did too. President Obama admitted his administration "screwed up" the rollout of his signature health care plan. Trey Radel, the Florida congressman who got caught purchasing cocaine, expressed tearful regret to members of his party caucus when he returned to Washington from rehab this week.
The ritual is always fascinating to watch, and three cable networks hung with Christie's mea culpa for the entire time.
I was reminded of what authentic apologies can look like when Melissa Harris-Perry, an MSNBC host, took to her own airwaves to apologize for a discussion on a year-end panel on her program with comedians that briefly mocked a photograph of Mitt Romney holding one of his grandchildren, who is African American. It was tasteless.
She did not blame her staff, although she could have. She did not blame the comedians who made the unfunny joke. She just said, flat out, that it was an insensitive thing to say, that she was in charge, and that the Romneys had the right to be offended.
Romney accepted the apology right away.
This sort of honest exchange seldom occurs with anyone searching for an elevated life in elective office. Christie, who enjoys enthusiastically batting down speculation about his presidential ambitions, made sure he was most offended by being lied to by staff he trusted.
"I was being led to believe by folks around me that there was no basis to this," he said. "I was wrong."
This is where plausibility deniability comes in. Christie fired his deputy chief of staff and directed another top political adviser to step aside. But he apparently never spoke to them directly.
"The political nature of this would lead to charges of interference," he said. "I'm just trying to be a safe and careful steward of the public trust."
Trust is, of course, at the heart of every authentic apology. In politics and in life, the trust only holds if the water torture ends.
As the snow continued to fall early Thursday, forecasters said some northern Illinois communities could get another eight inches of lake-effect snow that could extend as far west as Joliet.
Another four to six inches of snow was expected in Chicago on Thursday.
Drivers returning to work after the New Year’s holiday were greeted with a slick and snowy morning commute Thursday, as a pair of weather systems continued dumping snow across the Chicago area.
The storm that arrived on New Year’s Eve dropped 5.1 inches of snow at O’Hare International Airport by midnight Thursday, according to the National Weather Service.
The wintry wallop came courtesy of a second weather system that moved in overnight, weather service meteorologist Matt Friedlein said, making roads icy and visibility poor during the drive to work.
A lake-effect snow warning is in effect until Thursday afternoon for Cook and Lake counties in Illinois and Lake County in Indiana.
Chicago’s full fleet of 287 snow plows and salt spreaders was deployed Tuesday afternoon and, since the snowfall has been almost constant, has been continuously working to clear main and arterial roadways, said Molly Poppe, spokeswoman for the Department of Streets and Sanitation.
Many residential streets have yet to be plowed though, as the city’s trucks work to keep pace with the falling snow.
“We’re focusing on main streets right now,” Poppe said. “We’ll move to side and residential routes once our main roads are cleared... It’s obviously all contingent on when the snow stops.”
The city’s 26 smaller four-wheel drive plows will be dispatched once the city starts clearing side streets, she said, warning that residents should drive with caution as the roads are likely slippery in areas.
More than 635 flights were canceled Wednesday at O’Hare and another 275 were canceled by early Thursday morning, according to the city’s Department of Aviation. At Midway International Airport, observers reported 4.6 inches of snow and flights were delayed at least 25 minutes Thursday.
As of 6 a.m. Thursday, 10.1 inches of snow had fallen in north suburban Niles, and at least 9 inches had accumulated in some northwest suburbs including Richmond and Cary, meteorologists said. Nearly 8 inches had piled up in Norridge.
Elk Grove Village, Elgin and Niles all saw more than 7 inches of snow as of 4 p.m. Wednesday.
But once the snow finally stops falling by Friday morning, NWS meteorologist Charles Mott said there will be more bad news.
“Then we’re going to get cold,” Mott said.
The most optimistic forecast predicts Monday’s high temperature will be 0 degrees.
A snowstorm could bring near-blizzard conditions and frigid temperatures tonight and on Friday, testing our newly inaugurated mayor.
Here’s what you need to know:
• Snow is falling and may mix with freezing drizzle during the day. But significant accumulations are likely only after 7 p.m.
• Accidents snarled some roadways this morning. New Jersey Transit is cross-honoring bus and train tickets systemwide.
• The evening commute could be treacherous. Consider leaving work early.
• Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo warned that some suburban highways might close this afternoon. He advised commuters to use mass transit to get home. “We are looking at a serious storm situation,” Mr. Cuomo said.
• The city has issued a hazardous travel advisory for late tonight and Friday.
• Public schools in the city are open. Some suburban schools are closing early or closed altogether.
• Alternate side of the street parking is suspended in the city.
• The forecast — a winter storm warning is in effect — calls for six to eight inches of snow by Friday, with the bulk of it falling overnight.
• Heavier snow is expected on Long Island, where a blizzard warning is in effect from 6 o’clock tonight to 1 p.m. Friday.
• Temperatures will hover around freezing today, with a high of 32, dropping to the teens overnight and staying there through Friday. Friday night could get down to single digits.
• That, combined with winds gusting to 30 miles an hour, will make it feel as if it’s below zero. Wear long johns.
• A coastal flood watch is in effect tonight.
• Track the progress of city plows here.
• Advice from the Red Cross on preparing for winter storms.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss their takes on the week's political news including the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, the future of "partisan posture" among changing demographics and Obama's apology over cancelled insurance policies.
SUMMARY: Superstorm Sandy showed U.S. coastal cities the damage water can do -- a threat the Dutch have lived with for centuries. Their system of dams and dikes, locks and levees is keeping the Netherlands safe in a world with rising seas. Miles O'Brien reports on what Americans can learn from the Dutch model of flood management.
GWEN IFILL (Newshour):Now to the second installment of our look at what has and has not changed one year after superstorm Sandy blew ashore, taking 181 lives and damaging 650,000 homes.
Many of those affected are still trying to rebuild and to answer the question, are we doing enough to protect ourselves from floods?
In conjunction with NOVA, NewsHour science correspondent Miles O'Brien traveled to the Netherlands for one answer.
MILES O’BRIEN (Newshour):The Netherlands, the name says it all, the lowlands, built on a swampy delta. Much of the country lies below sea level. American Tracy Metz is an author and water management expert living in Amsterdam.
TRACY METZ, water management expert: You really wonder why people settled here at all. This must have been such an uninhabitable, inhospitable place. It's a very soggy delta.
MILES O’BRIEN: That's what these are for. Windmills are essentially pumps.
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): Same-sex couples married by Newark Mayor and senator-elect Cory Booker in the Garden State were met with some welcome news as they exchanged nuptials. Gov. Chris Christie's move, dropping the appeal, makes New Jersey the 14th state to allow gay marriage, along with the District of Columbia; 35 states have laws or constitutional amendments in place to restrict same-sex marriage.
Joining me now to outline what's happening is David Crary. He reports on social issues and policies as a national writer at the Associated Press.
SUMMARY: Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D-N.J) will be New Jersey's first African-American senator, having been elected to fill the U.S. Senate seat of the late Frank Lautenberg. Gwen Ifill talks to Booker about his win, his legislative priorities and how he plans to pursue "uncommon coalitions for uncommon results" with his fellow lawmakers.
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): When he is sworn in, probably later this month, Cory Booker will be only the fourth African-American elected to the U.S. Senate. But he brings his own celebrity with him, including as the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary in 2005, "Street Fight."
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
*Anti-First Amendment policies that attempt to turn America into a theocracy by enshrining ANY religious belief as law.
* Any attempt to suppress human or Constitutional rights.
* Any law or policy that supports discrimination based on religion, ethnicity, race/color, gender, sexual orientation, or any law that does NOT support Equal Treatment under the law.
*Any law or policy that attempts to suppress Freedom of the Press or Free Speech.
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