BOMB SQUAD - The Newest Member

"How robots are joining the police force" PBS NewsHour 9/21/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In light of the recent bombings in New York and New Jersey, science correspondent Miles O'Brien takes a look at a new technology that is increasingly being used by law enforcement, bomb-disarming robots.  Operated from a safe distance, these robots can blast through car windows and even kill, raising ethical issues about how they should be used.

MAN:  Everybody, get off the street!

MILES O'BRIEN (NewsHour):  As the pipe and pressure cooker bomb plot unfolded and unraveled in New York and New Jersey, police deployed some remotely operated tools aimed at saving the lives of civilians and bomb squad technicians alike.

In New Jersey, a reminder of the hair-trigger risk they face in harm's way.

At NYPD bomb squad headquarters on City Island a few years ago, Lieutenant Mark Torre gave me a demo using the same robot, the Remotec ANDROS F6A, built by Northrop Grumman.

LT.  MARK TORRE, NYPD Bomb Squad:  Its primary mission is to put distance between our technicians and something of a hazardous nature, because distance in this business is always your friend.

MILES O'BRIEN:  In this scenario, it is believed there may be an explosive in this car.  And it is much more than a hypothetical.  It's what happened in Times Square on May 1 of 2010.

A street vendor discovered a smoldering, abandoned car filled with propane tanks, fertilizer, gasoline and firecrackers.  It was a Saturday evening, the busiest time of the week, in one of the busiest, and most iconic, intersections in the world.

MITCH SILBER, Terrorism Analyst:  Between the scenery, the symbolism, the congestion and it being be just media central for New York City, you can't get much better of a background for terrorists.

MILES O'BRIEN:  Mitch Silber was NYPD's director of intelligence analysis at the time.  He shudders to think what would have happened if the car bomb, built by Pakistani American Faisal Shahzad, had not been a dud.

MITCH SILBER:  It would ripped the car in half, and this is a very busy intersection.  Depending on the congestion of people right around the car, it would certainly kill people, injured and maimed many others.  And it would have been the first big terrorist attack in New York City since 9/11, since 2001, nine years earlier.

RACE MATTERS - To Police, Students Still Children

"Alabama lawyer seeks to remind school-based police that students are still children" PBS NewsHour 8/8/2016

I just cannot believe this, a pregnant teen gets maced and arrested FOR CRYING!  This is sick!

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Last September, a federal court in Alabama ruled that the disciplinary practices used by the Birmingham Police Department toward high school students were unconstitutional.  The police department's appeal will be heard next month.  Ebony Howard, the lawyer who filed the class-action suit, speaks with special correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault about the specific police conduct and the settlement.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Last September, a federal court in Alabama ruled that the Birmingham Police Department's disciplinary practices, including the use of pepper spray for minor discipline problems, is in violation of student rights and unconstitutional.

Attorney Ebony Howard of the Southern Poverty Law Center filed the class-action suit, and returns to court next month when the police department's appeal is heard.

As part of our year-long Race Matters conversations focusing on solutions, special correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault reports from Birmingham about reducing tensions between African-American high school students and the police.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (NewsHour):  This video of a white South Carolina policeman roughly ejecting a black student from her classroom went viral and ignited a conversation about the proper role for police in schools.

Ebony Howard, a lawyer with the Southern Poverty Law Center, has been involved in that conversation as a result of her successful suit against police macing students in Montgomery, Alabama.

Ebony Howard, thank you for joining us.

EBONY HOWARD, Southern Poverty Law Center:  Thank you for having me.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT:  Can you tell us briefly about the case you won in Birmingham last year?

EBONY HOWARD:  Sure.

The case was about police officers who are stationed in Birmingham City high schools who are there to protect students, and they were using mace, or pepper spray is what it's sometimes called, against students for engaging in what amounts to normal adolescent behavior.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT:  Like what?

EBONY HOWARD:  Like, for example, one of our plaintiffs, plaintiff K.B., she was leaving class and going to another class with a fellow classmate.  And as she walked, a boy came up to her and started to call her really foul names that I won't repeat.

But as he called her those names, his friends who had come with him, they started to laugh.  And the more they laughed, the more names he called her.  And so she tried to walk away from him.  And as she walked away, he followed her and his friends followed her, and he continued to call her lots and lots of names.

And so eventually, as she walked the entire length of the school building, she started to cry.  And she became hysterical.  And when she reached the end of the school building, a police officer walked up.  And you would think that he would have taken care of her, but what he did was, he told her to calm down or he was going to arrest her.

And when she didn't stop crying, he put her in handcuffs.  And she continued to cry after he handcuffed her, and he told her, calm down.  And when she didn't calm down fast enough, he sprayed her with mace.

The other point that I forgot to mention, though, was that she was four months' pregnant at the time when he sprayed her with mace.  She was arrested and taken to the local juvenile facility, where she had to take off her pants and her underwear and squat and cough as a part of a strip search.

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 7/29/2016

"Shields and Brooks on which convention was more successful, Clinton's failure to emotionally connect" PBS NewsHour 7/29/2016

Excerpts

SUMMARY:  New York Times columnist David Brooks and syndicated columnist Mark Shields sit down with Judy Woodruff for a look at the conventions and agree the Democrats were more successful — even if Hillary Clinton failed to connect emotionally.  “If we are in some Hobbesian state of nature, in which we want a strongman who has no compassion,” then Trump comes out ahead, says Brooks.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  And with that, we turn to the analysis of Shields and Brooks.  That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

So, gentlemen, looking back on those highlights from both Cleveland and Philadelphia, what does it make you think, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist:  It makes me think that the Democrats — this was my 24th convention — and I think this was as good a Democratic Convention as I have seen since the 1976 convention, which nominated Jimmy Carter, which was — he left with a 30-point lead over President Ford.

I just thought it was a spectacularly successful convention.  I don't think Hillary Clinton's speech was spectacular, but I don't think she's a spectacular speaker.  But I thought their messages worked.  And certainly the national security and preempting both faith and country and patriotism from the Republicans, which had been the Republican symbols for so long, was effective.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  David?

DAVID BROOKS, New York Times:  Yes.  Well, the Democrats had the better convention by a long way.  It's rare we see the gap so big, frankly.

They controlled the debate.  Donald Trump tried to set up this debate where it was going to be globalists vs. nationalists, and the Republicans were going to be the nationalists.  But, if anything, the Democrats looked more patriotic and more nationalist at the end of these two.

And so that was a big win.  And I agree with Mark.  The whole presentation was just powerful.  It's funny.  Maybe it just because I'm tired, but the further away you get, the less you know about the convention, and it boils down to a core theme, to one thing.

And so for the Republican Convention, I think of Trump's speech and sort of the darkness, the fear of crime, the need for a strong arm really, and so that one core theme.

And then, for the Democratic one, I really think of Trump erratic.  I think that was the big message that came out.  The positive agenda for Hillary was a little less vibrant.

And of those two, I do think that the — right now, at least in my mind, the Democratic theme is eclipsing the Republican one.  So, the Democrats won this volley, I think.
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MARK SHIELDS:  In a strange way — there are a couple thoughts of David that reminded me of this — an awful lot of people don’t ordinarily have day-to-day contact with police officers.

In both Cleveland and Philadelphia, the police were enormously, enormously impressive, I mean, their temperament, to use a word that’s going to be central…

(CROSSTALK)

JUDY WOODRUFF:  You don’t mean the police on the stage.  You mean the police in the street.

MARK SHIELDS:  No, I mean the police in the streets.

I mean, I really — the interaction with the police.  They had to be tired.  You know, they had a lot of jerks, including several in the press.  And it was hot.  It was hot.  And they had long hours, and they were just so professional and so cool.
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DAVID BROOKS:  And so — but that doesn't mean we're not — it's settled.  Events are in the saddle here.  If ISIS really begins a sort of continual series of weird, random attacks around the world, then that does underline the theme.

And that goes back to something I have been saying for the last couple of weeks, is, we're not quite sure what ball game we're playing here.  If we're playing the normal political rules, where you want to have people loving each other, compassionate, working together, being generous toward each other, being well-informed about the issues, well, if those are the rules, then the Democrats are doing really well.

But if we're in some sort of Hobbesian state of nature, where you just want a strong man who has no compassion, who you just want a toughness, well, then that — by those rules, Donald Trump is going to do a little better.  So, we will figure out what game we're playing.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Which is what the Democrats were trying to say for three or four days — for four days, Mark, which, is, we don’t need this.  We’re a strong people.  We’re a good people and we don’t need some bully telling us what to do.

MARK SHIELDS:  No, exactly.  And the President did that, I thought.  President Obama did.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Which is what the Democrats were trying to say for three or four days — for four days, Mark, which, is, we don’t need this.  We’re a strong people.  We’re a good people and we don’t need some bully telling us what to do.

MARK SHIELDS:  No, exactly.  And the President did that, I thought.  President Obama did.
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MARK SHIELDS:  Michelle Obama was probably better than Barack Obama, if you think about it.

Her speech is a masterful, masterful speech.  And she delivered it in a persuasively conversational tone.  You can’t say this is a political attack or a political document.  It was just — so, in a strange way, she’s getting compared to — instead of to Donald Trump, she’s being compared to Joe Biden, who gave this emotional valedictory about America and his life, and both Obamas, who were dominant.

POLICING - Rebuilding Accountability and Trust

"How do communities increase accountability and rebuild trust after police shootings?" PBS NewsHour 2/10/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Around the nation, from Ferguson to Staten Island to Albuquerque, communities are grappling with the aftermath of deaths caused by police officers who used lethal force.  Gwen Ifill talks to Cornell William Brooks of the NAACP and Richard Berry of the International Association of Chiefs of Police about how to repair strained relations and curb the use of excessive force by law enforcement.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  A rookie New York City police officer was indicted today in the shooting death of an unarmed man in a Brooklyn housing project stairwell.  The victim, Akai Gurley, was described as a total innocent in the case.

New York is obviously not the only community grappling with the fallout from cases such as this.  Last night, we brought you a story about efforts to curb the use of similar lethal force in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

So what are communities doing about it?

For more on that, we turn to Cornell William Brooks, president and CEO of the NAACP, and Richard Beary, president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

Thank you both for joining me tonight.

Months later, after all the discussions of Ferguson and Staten Island, what progress are we making, Mr. — Reverend Brooks, in this and trying to get to policing reform?

CORNELL WILLIAM BROOKS, President, NAACP:  I’m hopeful that there is an emerging consensus as to both our ability to bring about policing reform and a concrete set of policy proposals.

So whether it be at the federal level in terms of passing the End Racial Profiling Act, which would tie federal funding to the training of police officers, so that they don’t engage in racial profiling, to the NAACP-supported and passage of the Death in Custody Act — up until a little while ago, you would ask the commonsense kind of question, how many police-involved homicides are there in the country, there’s no way to answer that question.

I believe we’re on our way to answering that question.  To more flexibility in terms of promoting — or appointing special prosecutors.  So there are a number of concrete proposals, reforms that we can pursue.  And all across the country, you’re seeing a young — a generation of practitioners of democracy, of protesting, are engaging in sit-ins and die-ins and who believe something could be done.

INDIA - Police Inaction on Human Trafficking

"Police inaction hampers human trafficking crackdown in India" PBS NewsHour 1/12/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In India, outrage over a fatal gang rape of a college student two years ago has helped bring about some protections for women who are the victims of sex trafficking, but getting police to enforce the law is still a challenge.  In the first report in a two-part series, special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro follows a human rights group that’s working to crack down on human trafficking and find victims.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO (NewsHour):  There was an unusual demonstration recently in this small town near India’s border of India, Nepal, unusual because these women, most with backgrounds in prostitution, are rarely seen in public.  They protested social evils, from gender bias to the caste system, India’s age-old social ladder in which they’re at the very bottom.

RUCHIRA GUPTA, Apne Aap Women Worldwide:  In Bombay, in Delhi, in Calcutta, whichever red light area you go to, the girls and women are all low caste.  Prostitution is passed on from mother to daughter and pimping from father to son.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO:  Ruchira Gupta is a former journalist who started a group called Apne Aap, or On Our Own, which organized the rally.  The group has rescued many of these women, found them new work in crafts and micro-enterprises, and put their daughters in school.

Apne Aap was also part of a protest movement that followed the fatal gang rape of a Delhi college student two years ago, a campaign that got lawmakers to act against what many called a culture of rape and misogyny.

WOMAN:  I am not going to allow this incident to become another statistic.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO:  The law was changed to penalize traffickers, instead of the women they traffic, recognizing the women as victims.