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From the Los Angeles Times

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Online outrage in China after toddler run over twice, ignored

More than a dozen pedestrians and motorists passed by as Wang Yue lay writhing in pain after she was hit last week by a van in a wholesale market in the southern city of Foshan, in Guangdong province.

Video footage from a closed circuit camera was posed on YouTube and Youku, a Chinese video sharing site.

As Wang lay in the street after the first collision, another van ran over her although it appears the driver didn't notice. More bystanders walked by, including one woman with a small girl, who walked briskly away after she realized there was a bloody child on the ground.

A 57-year-old trash collector eventually moved Wang to safety. The trash collector pleaded with passers-by to no avail until the girl's mother arrived and called an ambulance

Wang is currently in the ICU despite earlier reports that she had died.

The Chinese media has erupted in outrage over Wang's plight and the fact that it took so long for someone to help her.

The official People's Daily on Tuesday attacked the passers-by and lauded the trash collector in an editorial entitled, “We could all be the pedestrians that walk passed the injured girl.”

The Chinese public has also had to do some soul-searching over the event.

“The indifference from one or two people may be acceptable. But 18 people? Doesn't this say something about the local culture?” said Li Hongbo on Weibo, China's Twitter-like microblogging service. “I am extremely disappointed by the moral standards in China."

“Stop the Indifference” was the top trending topic on Weibo the day after the incident was reported.

Many see the country's constant obsession with economic prosperity as the main reason for eroding moral standards.

“China as nation has lost its passion and is beyond hope. It's a nation that can sell its soul for money,” said user Haowu Yiyi on Weibo.

Various government agencies in Foshan gave about $4,000 to the trash collector that helped Wang. She has said she will be giving the money to the family of the injured girl, according to local media reports.

The driver of both vans that struck Wang have been apprehended by police, according to the Guangzhou Daily.

China has no Good Samaritan-style law and many in China avoid helping strangers in need for fear they will be blamed for the accident.

Last week, a bus driver who helped an elderly woman who fell ill on the bus collected the contact details of four eyewitnesses in the event he was accused of harming the woman.

In the past week it was reported that a tourist from the U.S. jumped into West Lake in Hangzhou to save a suicidal woman. Many are questioning why none of the Chinese bystanders did anything to help. The case has elicited a similar torrent of outrage online.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2011/10/toddler-hit-and-run-china-soul-searching-outrage.html

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Poll: 50% of Americans -- a record high -- favor legal marijuana

Slowly but surely, Americans seem to be making peace with the pot pipe.

According to a poll released by Gallup on Monday, 50% of Americans surveyed say marijuana use should be legal — up from 46% last year. This year, 46% percent said it should be illegal.

Those numbers mean that, for the first time in the poll's 42-year-history, Americans who say that marijuana should be legal outnumber those who say it should be illegal.

Societal acceptance of marijuana has come a long way since 1969, when Gallup first posed the question "Should marijuana use be legal?" Back then, only 12% of Americans favored legalization of the drug. From the '70s through the mid-'90s, support remained in the 20s, but it has been climbing steadily since 2002.

Some interesting results from the most recent poll:

• Men are more likely to support legalizing marijuana than women (55% vs. 46%).
  
  
• People in the West are more likely to support it than people in the East (55% vs. 51%).
  
  
• People ages 18-29 are twice as likely to support marijuana use as people 65 or older (62% vs. 31%).

The findings come less than six months after the federal government ruled that marijuana should remain classified as a Schedule 1 drug, which means the government considers it as dangerous as heroin.

In June, Michele M. Leonhart, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said that marijuana would remain classified as Schedule 1 because it "has a high potential for abuse" and "has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States."

That now appears slightly out of step with what most Americans think. A Gallup survey last year found that 70% of people favored making it legal for doctors to prescribe marijuana to reduce pain and suffering.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/

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9th Circuit finds police stun gun use excessive in 2 cases

The ruling could prompt police to reexamine rules and practices for the temporarily debilitating weapons.

by Carol J. Williams, Times Staff Writer

October 17, 2011

Police used excessive force when they fired Tasers at a pregnant woman in Seattle and a victim of domestic abuse in Maui, a federal appeals court ruled Monday in a case that could influence how police handle those resisting arrest across the West.

The ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting in a full 11-judge forum used to decide important questions of law, could prompt police forces to reexamine their rules and practices for the temporarily debilitating stun guns.

In the Seattle case, a seven-months pregnant Malaika Brooks was driving her son to school when she was stopped by police, ticketed for driving 12 miles over the 20-mph speed limit and blasted with a stun gun three times after refusing to sign the citation.

Two years later and thousands of miles away in Maui, Jayzel Mattos was trying to defuse a brewing clash between her drunk husband and four police officers called to a domestic disturbance when one of the officers suddenly dropped her to the floor with two jolts from his Taser, which was set in dart mode.

The federal appeals court ruled that in both instances, police used excessive force and that their actions violated the Constitution's protection from unreasonable force.

While deeming the use of the stun guns in Seattle and Maui excessive, the court said the officers weren't liable in the civil suits filed against them because the law governing Taser use wasn't clearly established at the time of Brooks' 2004 arrest or when Mattos was jolted without warning for what police said was obstructing police at her home in 2006.

But the court's ruling Monday may now serve to establish that using stun guns without an imminent threat of harm is unreasonable, at least in some cases, exposing police officers to liability in future lawsuits, legal analysts said.

Barry McDonald, a constitutional law professor at Pepperdine University, said the 9th Circuit ruling wouldn't be unduly restrictive for law enforcement because the circumstances in the two cases it reviewed were unusual and unlikely to be relevant in most instances when police decide to use stun guns.

"They took some pretty sympathetic factual scenarios to establish this law," said Laurie Levenson, a criminal law professor at Loyola Law School, noting Brooks' advanced pregnancy and the allegedly unprovoked stunning of Mattos.

The ruling should encourage police to better assess the threat level they confront and the severity of the offense for which a citizen is resisting arrest, said Levenson, describing the decision as "certainly not a case where the court says police can't use Tasers."

The Los Angeles Police Department has detailed guidelines for officers on the appropriate use of stun guns and their procedures already comply with the court ruling, said Assistant Chief Sandy Jo MacArthur.

Other regional law enforcement agencies have been refining their stun gun rules after a similar decision last year involving Coronado police in San Diego County.

Monday's ruling could influence the outcome of a lawsuit filed by the parents of a San Bernardino man who died in May. Three officers were accused of shocking him repeatedly with stun guns for 10 minutes. Allen Kephart, 43, was stopped by three sheriff's deputies after he honked his horn at them for turning in front of his car, the lawsuit contends.

Four of the 11 judges dissented in part from the 9th Circuit ruling, including Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who expressed concern that restricting the use of non-lethal force with Tasers could result in police resorting to more dangerous means to subdue those resisting arrest.

In the last decade, Kozinski said, half a million police officers were assaulted in the line of duty and 536 were killed, "the vast majority while performing routine law enforcement tasks like conducting traffic stops and responding to domestic disturbance calls."

Two of the dissenters disagreed that Brooks' constitutional rights were violated, saying she brought the action on herself by repeatedly refusing to sign the traffic citation or to get out of her car when police tried to arrest her.

"There are only so many ways that a person can be extracted from a vehicle against her will, and none of them is pretty. Fists, batons, choke holds, dogs, tear gas, and chemical spray all carry their own risks to suspects and officers alike," wrote Judges Barry G. Silverman and Richard R. Clifton.

Borrowed cellphone slams prison cell shut

An inmate says used a contraband phone to tell relatives he was about to be paroled. Caught, he gets five more years in prison.

by Jack Dolan, Los Angeles Times

October 17, 2011

Dwayne Kennedy threw a man from a moving car in 1988, but that's not what's keeping him in prison today. It's not the inmate he stabbed 17 years ago either; the state parole board forgave him that.

Instead, California prison officials are keeping Kennedy locked up for an extra five years — costing taxpayers roughly $250,000 — because guards caught him with a contraband cellphone he says he borrowed to tell his family he had just been granted parole and was coming home.

It was "just stupid on my part for even using it," Kennedy told a pair of parole commissioners convened in June 2010 to decide his punishment for breaking prison rules. But "cellphones are just everywhere in prison nowadays.... It's easy to borrow one from a guy," Kennedy said.

Indeed, Kennedy's access to the phone underscores a rapidly growing problem for California corrections officials. Just five years ago, only 261 of the devices turned up behind state prison walls. This year, guards are on pace to seize about 15,000 phones — nearly one for every 11 inmates. Almost as troubling as prisoners gaining access to cellphones is their frequent source: prison employees.

Last month, a federal grand jury charged Bobby Joe Kirby, a Northern California prison guard, with wire fraud. Inmates paid him for phones via Western Union and other services, according to the indictment. When Kirby showed up to collect the cash at one location, he had to answer a security question he arranged with the inmates. "What's your favorite color," the clerk asked. "Green," Kirby replied.

State investigators found that another guard made $150,000 in a single year delivering cellphones to inmates. He was fired.

Phones are so prevalent in California prisons that even highly scrutinized inmates can get their hands on them. Charles Manson has been caught with two. Inmates have used cellphones to run drug rings, intimidate witnesses and order violent attacks on the outside. Despite state leaders' rising anxiety over inmates obtaining phones, smuggling them into prisons wasn't against the law until this month.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill on Oct. 6 making it a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in a county jail. Brown also issued an executive order that requires prison officials to increase the number of random searches of employees and to determine how much it would cost to send them through airport-style screening on their way into work.

Under the new law, most inmates caught with phones face losing 90 days of credit earned for good behavior.

In Kennedy's case, using the cellphone derailed his parole bid and effectively lengthened his prison stay by at least five years. That's because a 2008 ballot measure extended the time inmates serving life sentences must wait for a new hearing when they are denied parole or their parole offer is revoked.

When the two parole commissioners met to decide his punishment for violating the cellphone rule, Kennedy said that he had made the calls because he was "overwhelmed and just happy" that he had been granted parole.

"He was so happy.... We were crying and praying," recalled his sister, Yolanda Kennedy, one of the people he called.

But months later, parole commissioners John Peck and Dennis Smith found that Kennedy's willingness to violate the prison rule proved he is an "unreasonable risk of danger to society." They revoked his parole offer and imposed the five-year wait until his next hearing.

The commissioners' decision seemed a bit severe to Debbie Mukamal, executive director of Stanford University's Criminal Justice Center, who noted that the state is under a U.S. Supreme Court order to remove tens of thousands of inmates from its overcrowded prisons.

"I wonder if they're punishing [cellphone use] more severely because it's something they feel like they can't control," Mukamal said.

Heidi Rummel, a former federal prosecutor who now advocates for inmates' rights as co-director of USC Law School's Post-Conviction Justice Project, said there should be some evidence of harm before imposing such a harsh penalty.

"It would seem that why he had the cellphone would be a critical factor in deciding whether it made him a danger to society," Rummel said.

The Los Angeles County Superior Court and the 2nd District Court of Appeal have rebuffed Kennedy's efforts to get the decision overturned. His attorney, Keith Wattley, has filed a petition with the state Supreme Court. "There's never been any allegation he's done anything illegal with this phone," Wattley said.

Kennedy, 44, has been in prison since 1990, serving 15 years to life for kidnapping and conspiracy to commit murder. He's now at Chuckawalla Valley State Prison in Blyth. He became eligible for parole in 1999 but a decade passed before parole commissioners found he was no longer a threat to society and recommended his release. They noted that Kennedy had stayed out of trouble for seven years and had a stable home and good job waiting for him on the outside.

The cellphone bust changed everything.

"Frankly, this panel didn't buy that you were going to call your supporters to thank them," said Peck, a parole board commissioner and recently retired prison guard who presided over the June 2010 hearing. "There is no way you would put your parole date at risk to make a thank-you call."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prison-cellphone-20111018,0,5932909,print.story

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From Google News

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India

Over 100 community policing centres opened in Punjab

The Punjab government on Monday opened 115 community policing centres across the state to encourage people to freely approach the police for redressal of their grievances.

To make state police "citizen-friendly", Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal launched the community policing initiative by inaugurating 'Saanjh Kendras' at Majitha and Civil Lines.

"There is an inherent fear among common citizens to enter Thana for even civil work. Therefore, the Saanjh Kendras have been constructed separately from police stations, and persons manning these Kendras are dressed in civil and corporate-style dresses," Badal said.

These Saanjh Kendrayas would provide civil services of the Punjab Police like verification of tenants, registration and verification of servants, passport verifications, police clearance certificate, character verification for service and payment of traffic challans among others.

The crime information counter at the Saanjh Kendras would provide information regarding unclaimed bodies, lost vehicles, missing articles and documents, missing mobile sets and missing persons, Badal said.

"Punjab will become the first state that will provide copy of an FIR online besides copy of cancellation or untraced reports," he said.

Badal said after the initiation of community police reforms and new Commissionerate system, the crime rate in Punjab has come down to 22 per cent.

http://www.governancenow.com/gov-next/egov/over-100-community-policing-centres-opened-punjab

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Canada

Community awareness important for police to protect citizens Special

October 18, 2011

by KJ Mullins

Constable Tony Vella was the special guest at Centro de Língua Portuguesa –Instituto Camões in Toronto to discuss personal safety and community policing. Vella spoke to a room of local residents representing all age groups.

Director Ana Fernandes-Iria invited Constables Vella and Scott Mills at the centre's first town meeting. Toronto City Councillor Ana Bailao also took the time to take part in the event.

Mills and Vella both work for the Toronto Police Service and go out on their own time to community events like tonight's to help build a bridge between the police and Toronto residents. That bridge building helps not only give residents more knowledge on how to protect themselves but can actually reduce crime through more awareness.

Vella started the discussion with talking about knowing what division that is for the area in times of crisis. Many in Toronto don't know which police division is the one for where they live, as was seen with several of the members of the audience. Having a relationship with local police can help residents know what to do if a crisis does arise. Many also were unsure of when to call the main number for their division or to call 9-1-1.

"Call 911 when there is an emergency and do not walk away if possible," Vella advised, adding that if a person is in danger by being in the area that they should put their safety first.

Texting and driving is another danger that was discussed.

"It's not a right to drive, it's a privilege," Vella said, "If you see someone doing something that could be endangering traffic calling the police could save lives."

Drinking and driving can cost you over $50,000 Vella warned saying that the cost of the arrest is just the beginning. A conviction can result in being fired from a job, increased insurance rates and in worse cases another person's life.

One important issue that was discussed is what happens when a person witnesses a crime. Far too many people do not report incidents that they observe, fearing that the criminals could harm them.

"Witnesses have fears and the police understand that. The police will protect you, be strong and don't walk away. Your information can be the key to solve a crime," Vella said.

It's true that people can be released before their trial date, it is the way the courts rule not the decision of the police said Vella. The police do their best to make sure that suspects are not endangering others while they await their court dates.

Domestic violence is a problem in Toronto and elsewhere. This type of violence happens everywhere and ethnic communities are not immune. Report crimes that you hear. Letting someone know that you are dealing with violence can be an important first step.

"Be aware of what is going on in your neighbourhood, if you notice that something is wrong alert the police. It's your neighbourhood, you want to feel safe living there," Vella said when discussing how criminals look for ways to enter your home to take your personal belongings. Maintaining your yard and making sure that lights work and simple steps such as having a radio playing when you're not home can help keep thieves away.

Ethnic neighbourhoods often fear that they won't be able to communicate with the police. Vella and Mills let the audience know that language is not a barrier when it comes to being safe as the service has several officers who speak various languages. There may be a slight delay to get the right person but there will be someone sent you can communicate with. In an emergency you will have fast service, just like a person who speaks English or French.

There were several younger members in the crowd tonight learning about how to be safe. Vella and Mills both stressed that bullying should never be tolerated. Standing up for yourself and telling someone is the first step to stopping someone else from making you a victim. Don't let the bullies win with your silence.

Another important issue was the fact that cars are being broken into all the time in Toronto. The perfect target for these break ins are when items are left out on car seats in parked areas. By leaving your stuff on the seat, which several in the crowd admitted that they had done in the past, you are giving the criminals all the stuff they need to break into your house later.

"When a criminal steals that purse you left on the seat of your car while you run into the store has your personal information. Your purse holds your keys. When a criminal steals these items they have all they need to go to your home and take your hard earned personal items," Vella said adding that simple steps can protect you and your property from becoming a criminal's stuff.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/print/article/312966

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From the White House

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Joining Forces to Rebuild 1,000 Homes for Veterans

First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden joined forces with Sears Holding's Heroes at Home program and the Rebuilding Together nonprofit organization today to put the final touches on the 1,000th home that they have rebuilt for veterans since 2007.

The home belongs to Army Sergent Johnny Agbi who served in the Army's 10th Mountain Division and deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. While serving as an Army medic in Afghanistan, his helicopter transport was shot down and he suffered injuries that have required him to use a wheelchair and join a comprehensive rehabilitation program. Along with fifty volunteers, the First Lady, Dr. Biden, Sears and Rebuilding Together completed a retrofit of Army Sergent Johnny Agbi's home to make it wheelchair accessible.

The Joining Forces initiative is all about honoring and supporting America's service members and their families, and the work of the Heroes at Home program and Rebuilding Together is an amazing example of how companies, organizations and individuals can help. They work to improve the lives of American military families by making necessary repairs, improvements or modifications to the homes of veterans and wounded warriors.

Following the build, Dr. Jill Biden thanked Sergeant Johnny Agbi for welcoming the team to his home:

Sergeant Agbi, I know I speak for everyone here today when I say, you are a true hero. You and all of your fellow veterans and service members from across the country show us every day what words like "strength" and "courage" mean. And, of course, we're also grateful to your family members for their service to our country.

Projects like today's build represent some of the incredible ways that communities are coming together to support our veterans and military families all across the United States. And these projects, and all the partners and volunteers who make them possible, embody the spirit of the Joining Forces Initiative that the First Lady and I launched earlier this year.

First Lady Michelle Obama also had a message for everyone who joined forces to make the day possible:

One of our goals with Joining Forces is really to use what we have to shine a light not only on the incredible service of America's military families who give our nation so much, but also on those Americans -- like all of you -- who are stepping up in so many important ways to give something back to these men and women and their families.

And that's exactly what's happening here today with these two wonderful announcements. First, we're marking the 1,000th home that Sears and Rebuilding Together have refitted for our wounded warriors through the Heroes at Home Project. And that is a very impressive accomplishment and you all should be just so proud -- 1,000 homes.

And on top of that, Sears Holdings is pledging to increase the number of military family members in its workforce by 10 percent. I mean, that's incredible. That's exactly what we're hoping to see happen. It means that more than 30,000 troops, veterans, and military spouses will be working at Sears. And it's only the latest commitment that the Sears team has made. They have been working with us at Joining Forces since the very beginning. And we look forward to working with them even more, but more importantly, for them to serve as an example of how America's businesses can look out for our heroes, particularly during these tough economic times.

And all of this is just amazing. It represents the best that our country has to offer. And just think about what those kind of numbers actually mean. Just think about the lives that are changed. Think about the renewed sense of security that each family feels because mom or dad just got hired; how the wounded warrior whose life is transformed by a refurbished home. Just think about what that new front door, that broader, wider front door means -- it's no longer an obstacle; the stairway that is no longer an adversary; the building that's no longer just a house, but it's now become a home.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/10/17/joining-forces-rebuild-1000-homes-veterans

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