SUMMARY: Following a fatal explosion in a Denver suburb in April, Colorado is taking a closer look at all oil and gas operations across the state. Colorado's governor has set a Friday deadline for companies to complete inspections of oil and gas lines near homes and businesses. Dan Boyce with public media's Inside Energy reports on the tension between drilling and growing suburban development.
SUMMARY: One year ago, two students in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, began sharing plans to gun down their classmates. They may have gotten away with it had it not been for a group of students who alerted school authorities. Young journalists from NewsHour’s Student Reporting Labs look at the actions of the whistleblowers that led to the arrest of the potential shooters.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): This month we have been bring you stories from high school students around the country reporting on how the concept of school safety is evolving.
Tonight, we travel to the town of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, where a potential attack by students was foiled one year ago.
As part of our ongoing Student Reporting Labs series called The New Safe, student television network correspondent Nick Weiss investigates what inspired a handful of brave students to take action.
NICOLE MALINOSKI, Principal, Cedar Crest High School: You know, the first thing I do when I wake up every morning is think about the safety and security of all students here. It’s actually even before education, just because of school safety, how it’s been in the media and, unfortunately, you know, things that have happened over the last number of years.
I was actually out of the building the day that this occurred and I received a text message from Ms. May, who’s an assistant principal here. She asked me if I could call ASAP. She had something very important to discuss with me.
Railroad workers scored a victory last week in a years-long battle over the introduction of single-person crews on freight trains, a move that railroad workers say is a recipe for disaster. On September 10, a unit of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air and Rail Transportation Workers (SMART) union announced that members had voted down a proposed contract which would have allowed the railroad company BNSF to run more than half its trains with just one worker on board.
BNSF and other railroad companies assert that automation and modern controls on tracks mean freight trains can be safely and efficiently operated by only one engineer, a change that would essentially eliminate the position of the conductor.
Railroad workers, however, say that having only one person on trains that are often more than a mile long is a safety risk for workers and communities alike, especially as more and more trains are involved in carrying explosive crude oil cross-country. The introduction of single-person crews would further a longstanding push by industry to reduce the number of workers needed to operate trains; currently most freight trains have a conductor and an engineer, but in decades past crews of three to five people were common. An industry shift to single-person crews would likely mean significant job losses, and significant savings for railroads on labor costs.
Currently the major railroads like BNSF are not using single-person crews, but smaller railroads are. The July 2013 Lac-Megantic disaster in Quebec, in which a train derailed and caused a deadly explosion, brought increased scrutiny of single-person crews.
The contract between the union and BNSF had been negotiated by a union leadership body known as the district committee, SMART GO-001, representing about 3,000 conductors, brakemen and switchmen in multiple states. Leaders of Railroad Workers United (RWU), a national organization that includes members from the country’s 13 different railroad labor unions, said that SMART GO-001 leadership had pushed for approval of the single-person crew provision, apparently as a way to gain other concessions from BNSF.
SMART’s national leadership opposes single-person crews, and supports proposed federal legislation on the issue. The Rail Safety Improvement Act (S. 2784) just introduced in the Senate on September 10, and the Safe Freight Act (HR 3040), introduced in August 2013 in the House, would require two workers on any freight train.
In a statement on SMART’s website, SMART Transportation Division President John Previsich says: “No one would permit an airliner to fly with just one pilot, even though they can fly themselves. Trains, which cannot operate themselves, should be no different.”
How the Excessive Militarization of the Police Is Turning Cops Into Counterinsurgents
Jason Westcott was afraid.
One night last fall, he discovered via Facebook that a friend of a friend was planning with some co-conspirators to break in to his home. They were intent on stealing Wescott's handgun and a couple of TV sets. According to the Facebook message, the suspect was planning on “burning” Westcott, who promptly called the Tampa Bay police and reported the plot.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, the investigating officers responding to Westcott’s call had a simple message for him: “If anyone breaks into this house, grab your gun and shoot to kill.”
Around 7:30 p.m. on May 27, the intruders arrived. Westcott followed the officers’ advice, grabbed his gun to defend his home, and died pointing it at the intruders. They used a semiautomatic shotgun and handgun to shoot down the 29-year-old motorcycle mechanic. He was hit three times, once in the arm and twice in his side, and pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital.
The intruders, however, weren’t small-time crooks looking to make a small score. Rather they were members of the Tampa Bay Police Department’s SWAT team, which was executing a search warrant on suspicion that Westcott and his partner were marijuana dealers. They had been tipped off by a confidential informant, whom they drove to Westcott’s home four times between February and May to purchase small amounts of marijuana, at $20-$60 a pop. The informer notified police that he saw two handguns in the home, which was why the Tampa Bay police deployed a SWAT team to execute the search warrant.
In the end, the same police department that told Westcott to protect his home with defensive force killed him when he did. After searching his small rental, the cops indeed found weed, two dollars' worth, and one legal handgun -- the one he was clutching when the bullets ripped into him.
Welcome to a new era of American policing, where cops increasingly see themselves as soldiers occupying enemy territory, often with the help of Uncle Sam’s armory, and where even nonviolent crimes are met with overwhelming force and brutality.
The War on Your Doorstep
The cancer of militarized policing has long been metastasizing in the body politic. It has been growing ever stronger since the first Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams were born in the 1960s in response to that decade’s turbulent mix of riots, disturbances, and senseless violence like Charles Whitman’s infamous clock-tower rampage in Austin, Texas.
While SWAT isn’t the only indicator that the militarization of American policing is increasing, it is the most recognizable. The proliferation of SWAT teams across the country and their paramilitary tactics have spread a violent form of policing designed for the extraordinary but in these years made ordinary. When the concept of SWAT arose out of the Philadelphia and Los Angeles Police Departments, it was quickly picked up by big city police officials nationwide. Initially, however, it was an elite force reserved for uniquely dangerous incidents, such as active shooters, hostage situations, or large-scale disturbances.
Nearly a half-century later, that’s no longer true.
In 1984, according to Radley Balko's Rise of the Warrior Cop, about 26% of towns with populations between 25,000 and 50,000 had SWAT teams. By 2005, that number had soared to 80% and it’s still rising, though SWAT statistics are notoriously hard to come by.
As the number of SWAT teams has grown nationwide, so have the raids. Every year now, there are approximately 50,000 SWAT raids in the United States, according to Professor Pete Kraska of Eastern Kentucky University’s School of Justice Studies. In other words, roughly 137 times a day a SWAT team assaults a home and plunges its inhabitants and the surrounding community into terror.
Upping the Racial Profiling Ante
In a recently released report, “War Comes Home,” the American Civil Liberties Union (my employer) discovered that nearly 80% of all SWAT raids it reviewed between 2011 and 2012 were deployed to execute a search warrant.
Pause here a moment and consider that these violent home invasions are routinely used against people who are only suspected of a crime. Up-armored paramilitary teams now regularly bash down doors in search of evidence of a possible crime. In other words, police departments increasingly choose a tactic that often results in injury and property damage as its first option, not the one of last resort. In more than 60% of the raids the ACLU investigated, SWAT members rammed down doors in search of possible drugs, not to save a hostage, respond to a barricade situation, or neutralize an active shooter.
On the other side of that broken-down door, more often than not, are blacks and Latinos. When the ACLU could identify the race of the person or people whose home was being broken into, 68% of the SWAT raids against minorities were for the purpose of executing a warrant in search of drugs. When it came to whites, that figure dropped to 38%, despite the well-known fact that blacks, whites, and Latinos all use drugs at roughly the same rates. SWAT teams, it seems, have a disturbing record of disproportionately applying their specialized skill set within communities of color.
Think of this as racial profiling on steroids in which the humiliation of stop and frisk is raised to a terrifying new level.
Everyday Militarization
Don’t think, however, that the military mentality and equipment associated with SWAT operations are confined to those elite units. Increasingly, they’re permeating all forms of policing.
As Karl Bickel, a senior policy analyst with the Justice Department’s Community Policing Services office, observes, police across America are being trained in a way that emphasizes force and aggression. He notes that recruit training favors a stress-based regimen that’s modeled on military boot camp rather than on the more relaxed academic setting a minority of police departments still employ. The result, he suggests, is young officers who believe policing is about kicking ass rather than working with the community to make neighborhoods safer. Or as comedian Bill Maher reminded officers recently: “The words on your car, ‘protect and serve,’ refer to us, not you.”
This authoritarian streak runs counter to the core philosophy that supposedly dominates twenty-first-century American thinking: community policing. Its emphasis is on a mission of “keeping the peace” by creating and maintaining partnerships of trust with and in the communities served. Under the community model, which happens to be the official policing philosophy of the U.S. government, officers are protectors but also problem solvers who are supposed to care, first and foremost, about how their communities see them. They don’t command respect, the theory goes, they earn it. Fear isn’t supposed to be their currency. Trust is.
Nevertheless, police recruiting videos, as in those from California’s Newport Beach Police Department and New Mexico’s Hobbs Police Department, actively play up not the community angle but militarization as a way of attracting young men with the promise of Army-style adventure and high-tech toys. Policing, according to recruiting videos like these, isn’t about calmly solving problems; it’s about you and your boys breaking down doors in the middle of the night.
SWAT’s influence reaches well beyond that. Take the increasing adoption of battle-dress uniforms (BDUs) for patrol officers. These militaristic, often black, jumpsuits, Bickel fears, make them less approachable and possibly also more aggressive in their interactions with the citizens they’re supposed to protect.
A small project at Johns Hopkins University seemed to bear this out. People were shown pictures of police officers in their traditional uniforms and in BDUs. Respondents, the survey indicated, would much rather have a police officer show up in traditional dress blues. Summarizing its findings, Bickel writes, “The more militaristic look of the BDUs, much like what is seen in news stories of our military in war zones, gives rise to the notion of our police being an occupying force in some inner city neighborhoods, instead of trusted community protectors.”
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): For years, carmakers have been adding advanced automated safety features to their increasingly high-tech vehicles. Now the federal government is considering turning some of those options into industry standards.
ACTOR: This is unreal.
LAURENCE FISHBURNE, actor: No, it’s very real.
GWEN IFILL: In a Super Bowl broadcast packed with car commercials, this Hyundai ad focused not on speed or style, but on how to avoid an accident. In it, an ever-attentive dad does his best to protect his son from a collision, including the perils of mixing teenaged hormones with learner’s permits.
NARRATOR: Remember when only dad could save the day? Auto emergency braking on the all new Genesis.
GWEN IFILL: In fact, automatic braking is becoming an option on models around the world. The vehicles use radar, video and sensors to monitor their surroundings, give early warnings to drivers and even engage the brakes.
NARRATOR: The technology may be hard to imagine, but why you would want it is not.
GWEN IFILL: Now Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx wants similar enhancements on all new vehicles.
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): Next, our continuing look at the impact of 9/11 a decade later.
Tonight, we focus on how it's affected air travel.
NewsHour correspondent Tom Bearden reports.
TOM BEARDEN: This is where the greatest number of Americans have been affected in the post-9/11 world, the nation's commercial airports.
Passengers have been walking through metal detectors and had their carry-on bags X-rayed since the late '60s, but aviation security changed dramatically after September 2001.
Prior to the attacks, passenger screening was done by private companies who were supervised by the Federal Aviation Administration. After 9/11, the government created the Transportation Security Administration, which was the largest single federal startup since World War II.
Terry Crosby went to work for the TSA almost from the beginning. He signed up eight years ago because the attacks made him want to serve his country. He rotates through several different jobs during his shift, from running the X-ray machine for carry-on baggage...
TERRY CROSBY, Transportation Security Administration: He decided to leave his liquids in there.
TOM BEARDEN: ... to hand-searching for suspect items, to physically searching passengers.
TERRY CROSBY: Yes, all right, I'm going to go inside your collar here. All righty.
TOM BEARDEN: It's not his favorite job, but a job he says needs to be done.
TERRY CROSBY: A lot of Americans don't feel that they should be patted down, that it's not necessary to be patted down. But when you have things come in that don't belong or try to take things on the plane that don't belong, then it is necessary.
TOM BEARDEN: Some Americans believe those enhanced pat-downs, which started within the last year, violate their constitutional rights. They're just one part of a raging debate over how far the TSA should be allowed to go.
Since 9/11, security procedures have steadily escalated after a series of failed terrorist attacks. After 2001, passengers had to walk through security in their stocking feet after Richard Reid tried to detonate explosives hidden in his shoes.
In 2006, people started having to carry liquids in small containers inside a plastic bag after a plot to detonate liquid explosives was uncovered. And when Umar Abdulmutallab tried to set off plastic explosives hidden in his underwear in 2009, the government spent hundreds of millions of dollars to speed up deployment of advanced imaging technology machines that can peer beneath clothing.
JOHN PISTOLE, Transportation Security Administration: And the first thing we want to do is get all the facts that we can, and that may include the closed-circuit TV coverage of the checkpoint, if there is -- if that's available
Watching intently as a huge white steel container surfaced from a 42-foot-deep canal, workers set upon it with long-handled tools, like sailors wrestling a flailing whale to the deck of a ship.
Yet this catch was far more menacing: 57,000 pounds of spent nuclear fuel at the LaSalle nuclear plant here, stored for decades in a pool and, if unshielded, powerful enough to deliver a lethal dose of radiation within seconds.
The fuel had just been moved into a capsule the size of a small silo, called a dry cask. Welded shut after it came out of the water, the cask was pumped full of inert gas, placed in an outer cask and moved outdoors to a concrete pad where it will sit until a disposal site is found. Spent fuel must be isolated from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years before it loses its potency.
The nuclear calamity at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant has refocused attention on the vulnerability of spent fuel pools at the 104 operating American nuclear plants.
The pools are generally far more packed than the damaged ones at Fukushima. Some scientists argue that the crowding raises the risk of a fire and makes the pools a tempting target for terrorists.
Several members of Congress are calling for the fuel to be moved from the pools into dry casks at a faster clip, noting that the casks are thought to be capable of withstanding an earthquake or a plane crash, they have no moving parts and they require no electricity.
“We should not wait for an American meltdown to beef up American nuclear safety measures,” Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, who advocates greater reliance on casks, said after the accident in March in Japan. “We must heed the lessons to be learned from the nuclear meltdown in Japan and ensure nuclear safety here.”
But transferring the fuel to dry casks involves risks of its own, some industry experts say. “It’s a very complex discussion,” said Neil Wilmshurst, a nuclear power expert and a vice president of the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit utility consortium. “Every time you move spent fuel, there’s always a risk of human error. How much of this do you want to do if you don’t need to do it?”
The discussion is unfolding amid a far broader and more divisive debate over nuclear waste disposal. A half-century after the American nuclear industry was born, the nation still lacks a dedicated repository for such waste because of maneuvering driven by not-in-my-backyard politics.
DR. DONALD BERWICK, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services: They are getting levels of performance that most of the rest of us in health care can only envy. The vast majority of their patients are either uninsured or Medicaid patients. They deal with a very, very stressed population. And they are proving that that kind of care isn't just kind of good enough. It can be the best care -- actually, the best care in the country. They are showing the rest of us what's possible.
Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.
JOHN GOGLIA, former member, National Transportation Safety Board: Well, it's quite significant in dealing with this particular issue.
What remains unanswered is what is going to happen to the areas adjacent to the damage of the rest of the airplane. Most of our actions today and in the past have been reactive to events that have occurred. And as these airplanes age, at some point, we need to do a complete body scan, if you will, on the fuselage to determine the condition, not just look in the areas where we have had problems before, but to be proactive and look at the entire airplane for a change.
With so many pipeline accidents in the last few months that federal investigators cannot get to them all, the secretary of transportation plans to introduce a safety campaign on Monday aimed at coordinating federal, state and local oversight and making more information available to the public about potential hazards under foot.
“I want to be able to say to people, when you throw a light switch, you shouldn’t cause an explosion in your front yard,” the secretary, Ray LaHood, said in an interview. “We ought to have the decency to tell people there’s a pipeline in the front yard, if they want to know that.”
And pipeline owners will come under pressure to assure that their pipelines, mostly out of sight and out of mind, are safe, he said.
Mr. LaHood will announce the campaign in Allentown, Pa., where an explosion from a natural gas pipeline killed five people on Feb. 9.
