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December, 2014 - Week 2

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Washington

Families of Slain African-Americans Join 'Justice for All' March in Washington DC

by Matthew Larotonda and Gillian Mohney

Thousands of protesters walked down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. today to march alongside the families of African-Americans killed in recent months by law enforcement officers.

The demonstration in Washington was echoed by marchers in cities across the country, including New York, where protesters took to Fifth Avenue and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, blocking traffic, and in Boston, where dozens were arrested. Across the country, demonstrators also turned out in San Francisco.

In Washington, the families of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice were among those at the "Justice for All" march, where protesters carried signs reading "Black Lives Matter."

"Let's keep it strong, long and meaningful," Eric Garner's widow, Esaw Garner, told the crowd. Eric Garner died in July after a New York City police officer put him in a chokehold while stopping to arrest him for allegedly selling "loosie" cigarettes.

"My husband was a quiet man but he's making a lot of noise right now," Esaw Garner said. "His voice will be heard."

Also in attendance was the family of Trayvon Martin, who was fatally shot by a neighborhood watchman in Sanford, Florida, in 2012. The watchman, George Zimmerman, was acquitted in Martin's death.

Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin challenged the protesters to reach out and talk to people outside their social circle and get involved with a nonprofit.

"It hurts me to my heart to know that so many men are getting away with shooting and killing our young people and not being held accountable for it," Fulton said.

Samara Rice, the mother of Tamir Rice, called for the officer who shot her son to face a criminal proceeding. Tamir, 12, was killed by a Cleveland police officer while he was playing with a pellet gun in a park.

"We will get justice for our children, believe that," Rice said. Cleveland officials have started grand jury proceedings in the case to decide whether the officer will face charges.

While the march progressed peacefully, there was a moment of confusion at the pre-march rally. A group came on stage with a megaphone, demanding the people of Ferguson, Missouri -- where Brown, 18, was fatally shot over the summer -- be allowed on stage to speak.

The rally's MC called for calm, saying he had a message from Michael Brown's father, who was expected to speak later while some in the crowd chanted, "Let them speak."

"[Brown's family is] asking that we not do this like this," he said. "We are not going to disrespect the families that have lost real lives here."

After a few minutes of arguing, a woman, identified by The Associated Press as Johnetta Elzie, addressed the crowd, saying, "This movement was started by the young people." The group, made up mostly of people appearing to be in their 20s, then left the stage, reports the AP.

The Rev. Al Sharpton addressed the crowd after the interruption.

"Don't let no provocateurs get you out of line," Sharpton said. "We are not here to play big shot. We are here to win."

Protests -- some violent -- have continued since grand juries declined to file charges against officers in the deaths of Brown and Garner.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/families-slain-men-join-justice-march-washington-dc/story?id=27578130

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California

Effigies of black men and women found hanging on UC Berkeley campus

The cardboard photos of a black man and woman lynched by angry mobs more than a century ago were discovered hanging by a noose on the Berkeley campus at the University of California as demonstrations against police brutality took place across the U.S.

by Nicole Hensley

Amid national protests decrying police brutality, three effigies of black people were discovered hanging by a noose on the Berkeley campus at the University of California.

Police and students took the cardboard cutouts depicting lynching victims down Saturday afternoon from two locations on campus as demonstrations broke out to the theme of "#blacklivesmatter."

“We're uncertain of the intention of this. It could be related to the protests, but it could be racially motivated,” Claire Holmes told the Daily News. “We'd like to get to the bottom of it.”

The disturbing figures hanging from iconic landmarks on the Berkeley campus were reported to police just after 9 a.m., but a third effigy found through social media disappeared before police got to it.

Two of the photo effigies were labeled “I can't breathe,” Eric Garner's last words as NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo put him in a fatal chokehold.

One photograph was of Laura Nelson, a black woman lynched alongside her 18-year-old son, Lawrence, near Muskogee, Okla., in 1911 after allegedly shooting a deputy to death at their home.

Her effigy was found hanging from a tree.

Century-old wire reports show their bodies were discovered hanging from a bridge six miles away from their jail cell after a mob broke in, gagged its jailer and kidnapped the Nelsons.

The figure found tied to Sather Gate shows George Meadows, a 22-year-old black man who proclaimed his innocence while being accused of murder and rape in Alabama, according to an 1889 report by Birmingham's Weekly Herald.

A crowd of about 500 men then took Meadows from the jail to Pratt Mines near Birmingham where they “suspended him from a limb” and “riddled” his body with bullets, the report states.

Neither students nor police were sure who's responsible for hanging the life-size images, but hope “it's someone who wanted to bring attention to the issue,” UC Berkeley student, Spencer Pritchard, 21, said.

Campus police are investigating the display as a hate crime, Holmes added, but as of Saturday night no one has come forward with any tips.

Photos of a stuffed dummy hanging by a noose along the school's greek row were also shared on social media, but Holmes said that was from a prior incident during an unspecified Halloween.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/black-effigies-found-hanging-uc-berkeley-campus-article-1.2044448

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From the Department of Justice

Attorney General Holder Delivers Remarks at Regional Roundtable Meeting in Chicago on Building Community Trust

Good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be back in Chicago on such an unseasonably warm day.

I want to thank Mayor [Rahm] Emanuel and Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy for welcoming me to this great city, as well as our outstanding U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Zach Fardon, for his help in pulling together this important meeting.

I also want to thank all of the assembled law enforcement, faith, community, and student leaders for joining me to talk about the work that is underway here in Chicago.

This session is the fourth in a series of meetings I will be convening with law enforcement and community leaders around the country in the coming weeks.

We're here in Chicago today because this city is led by elected officials, law enforcement, and community leaders who understand that we will only be able to move forward by working closely together, across issues that divide us, to make sure the entire community can thrive.

A short time ago, I had the chance to speak with leading members of the bench and bar – from across the state – at the Illinois Judges Association Annual Convention. It was a productive opportunity to talk about our ongoing effort to improve the criminal justice system and to restore trust between police officers and those they serve. Chicago has demonstrated tremendous leadership, especially under Mayor Emanuel.

Over the last three years, the Mayor and Superintendent McCarthy have made it a priority to improve trust between Chicago residents and the Chicago Police Department – by implementing reforms to training and supervision; improving the City's independent response to allegations of police misconduct; improving transparency by opening internal investigation files to public scrutiny; and investing in community policing – particularly through the Mayor's Commission for a Safer Chicago.

This work holds significant promise for residents throughout this city. But these concerns touch a wide range of communities from coast to coast.

The national conversations we're currently convening are more necessary than ever because, as you all know, millions of people throughout the nation have come together in recent days – bound by grief and anguish – in response to the tragic deaths of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner, in New York City.

As I announced last week, the Department of Justice is currently conducting an independent, thorough, fair, and expeditious federal civil rights investigation into each of these incidents. And, as President Obama and I have indicated, the time has come to do even more.

The tragic losses of these and far too many other Americans have raised urgent, national questions. And they have sparked an important conversation – testing the sense of trust that must exist between law enforcement and the communities they serve and protect.

As the brother of a retired police officer, I know in a personal way how brave these public servants are. So it is for their sake as well that we must seek to heal the breakdowns we have seen.

Now, before we get started, I wanted to provide you all with a brief update on some of the policy announcements that President Obama recently made – about the constructive steps we're taking to address these problems, and ensure that this national dialogue results in meaningful action.

Last week, the Administration released its review of programs that support the acquisition of equipment from the federal government to local law enforcement authorities. The report identifies several ways in which these programs could be improved to better ensure the safety and security of police officers and the communities they protect. And based on that report, the President has instructed that an Executive Order be drafted directing federal agencies to work with law enforcement and civil rights organizations to improve the ways in which these programs are structured, implemented, and audited.

The President also instructed his team to draft an executive order creating a Task Force on 21st Century Policing, co-chaired by Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and former Assistant Attorney General for DOJ's Office of Justice Programs, Laurie Robinson. This task force will examine how to promote effective crime reduction while building public trust. And it will be directed to prepare a report and recommendations within 90 days of its creation.

Finally, President Obama proposed a three-year, $263 million investment in body-worn cameras, the expansion of training for law enforcement agencies, and additional resources for police department reform, including additional opportunities for DOJ to facilitate community and local law enforcement engagement.

This proposal would help purchase some 50,000 body-worn cameras. And together with new Justice Department guidance on profiling by federal law enforcement agencies, these important steps hold significant promise in moving us in the right direction.

This new guidance will expand prohibited profiling criteria by explicitly banning profiling based not only on race – but also, for the very first time, on gender, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

It will close the so-called national security loophole and apply the same uniform standard to all investigations, national security operations, and intelligence activities conducted by federal law enforcement. It will govern the actions of FBI agents and all other federal agents conducting law enforcement activities, even when those agents are assigned to state and local task forces.

It will apply to state and local officers when they are participating in federal task forces. And it includes training, oversight, and accountability measures to ensure that all federal law enforcement activities and operations reflect our commitment to keeping the nation safe while upholding our most sacred values.

Throughout my tenure as Attorney General, I have repeatedly made clear that racial profiling by law enforcement is not only wrong, it is misguided and ineffective – because it can mistakenly focus investigative efforts, waste precious resources, and, ultimately, undermine the public trust. Particularly in light of recent incidents we've seen at the local level – and the concerns about trust in the criminal justice process which so many have raised throughout the nation – it's imperative that we take every possible action to institute sound, fair and strong policing practices.

The tragic deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and far too many other Americans have revealed a deep distrust between some communities and their police forces. These incidents also illustrated the need to develop and widely disseminate to law enforcement best practices for responding to public demonstrations and developing and maintaining public trust.

The Department of Justice has begun this work. We will continue it here in Chicago – and in communities around the country – over the coming weeks.

And we will continue to rely on your leadership, your expertise, and your unique perspectives to help ensure that historic divides between law enforcement and the communities that they serve can be bridged by bringing together elected officials, law enforcement, faith and community leaders to ensure both dialogue – and action – to address underlying barriers to trust.

Once again, I would like to thank our partners in Chicago, and particularly Mayor Emanuel, for hosting me today. I look forward to a substantive and hopeful discussion.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-holder-delivers-remarks-regional-roundtable-meeting-chicago-building

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From the FBI

Commitment to Indian Country -- Director Comey Pledges Continued Support for Crime Victims

At the 14th National Indian Nations Conference, which convened today on the reservation of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians in California, FBI Director James Comey pledged the Bureau's “unshakeable” commitment to tribal nations.

The Bureau has unique and important responsibilities in Indian Country, Comey told more than 1,000 conference attendees. Investigating crimes and assisting victims there, he said, “will be a priority of the FBI under my stewardship.”

The Indian Nations conference, sponsored by the Department of Justice's Office for Victims of Crime and coordinated by the Tribal Law and Policy Institute, brings together Native Americans and a range of community and government agencies and service providers to share knowledge and develop programs to help those impacted by violence on tribal lands.

Comey noted that his interest in the FBI's Indian Country work is driven by his responsibilities as Director, but also by something more—his family. Last summer, his two youngest daughters went on a mission trip to a reservation and came home, he said, “with their eyes wide open about the challenges on the reservation. They said, ‘Dad, you've got to do something, you've got to do more.'”

The FBI has investigative responsibility for 212 Indian reservations nationwide, and about 115 special agents work in our Indian Country program. Additionally, 41 victim specialists from our Office for Victim Assistance serve Native American crime victims. The Director acknowledged that those numbers should be higher.

To begin to address staffing and resource needs, Comey said, he has asked the Indian Country Crimes Unit and Office for Victim Assistance at FBI Headquarters to submit proposals detailing the need for increased staff, specialized training, and additional equipment. “I can't do everything,” he explained, “but I know that I can do better.”

Comey highlighted several areas in which the Bureau provides valuable resources to tribal nations:

•  Training. Beyond the many training opportunities the FBI provides to tribal law enforcement, the Bureau is developing a new, three-week school—in partnership with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)—to equip new FBI and BIA agents, along with tribal law enforcement officers, with cutting-edge training on investigating Indian Country crimes.

•  Partnerships. “One of our most important joint efforts is the Safe Trails Task Forces,” Comey said, “the first of which originated 20 years ago.” Currently, there are 14 Bureau-led Safe Trails Task Forces nationwide, bringing together federal, state, local, and tribal resources to combat violent crime, drugs, and corruption in Indian Country.

•  Victim assistance. “Much of our work in Native American communities involves the most heartbreaking kinds of crimes—the homicides and the violent assaults and the rapes, and especially the abuse directed at kids,” said Comey.

FBI victim specialists provide on-scene crisis intervention and help victims and their families navigate the criminal justice process. “The work of our victim specialists is so important to the FBI that we made sure many of them were here today to meet with their counterparts in the BIA,” explained Comey, “so they can talk with you about how to get better at their work.”

“The essence of our job in the FBI,” Comey added, “is to ensure that justice is done for everyone in America—every man, woman, and child living in any part of this great land—including American Indian and Native Alaskan communities.”

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2014/december/director-pledges-continued-support-for-indian-country-crime-victims/director-pledges-continued-support-for-indian-country-crime-victims

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Latest Hate Crime Statistics Report Released

Publication Includes New Data Collected Under Shepard/Byrd Act

Today, the FBI released its annual Hate Crime Statistics report, which revealed that 5,928 hate crime incidents involving 6,933 offenses were reported by our law enforcement partners to the Bureau's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program in 2013. These hate crime incidents impacted a total of 7,242 victims—which are defined as individuals, businesses, institutions, or society as a whole.

The number of reported hate crimes last year is down slightly when compared to 2012 UCR figures—5,928 in 2013 versus the 2012 figure of 6,573 (a combination of the 5,796 incidents in Hate Crime Statistics, 2012 and the 777 additional incidents published in Hate Crime Addendum, 2012 ).

Hate Crime Statistics, 2013 —the first UCR publication to contain data collected under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act of 2009—has a few changes from previous reports. First, biases against gender (male or female) and gender identity (transgender and gender nonconformity) have been added to the list of bias categories. And in response to the Shepard/Byrd Act, we modified our data collection so that reporting agencies can indicate whether crimes were committed by, or directed against, juveniles.

Changes to this latest report include a revision of sexual orientation bias types, a revision of race and ethnicity categories, and the collection of rape data under the new UCR rape definition. For additional information on these changes, read About Hate Crime Statistics.

Among the report's findings for 2013:

•  Of the 5,928 incidents reported, six were multiple-bias hate crime incidents involving 12 victims.

•  Of the 5,922 single bias incidents reported, the top three bias categories were race (48.5 percent), sexual orientation (20.8 percent), and religion (17.4 percent).

•  Of the reported 3,407 single-bias hate crime offenses that were racially motivated, 66.4 were motivated by anti-black or African-American bias, and 21.4 percent stemmed from anti-white bias.

•  60.6 percent of the reported 1,402 hate crime offenses based on sexual orientation were classified as anti-gay (male) bias.

•  Law enforcement agencies identified 5,814 known offenders in the 5,928 bias-motivated incidents. Of these offenders, 52.4 percent were white and 24.3 percent were black or African-American.

•  Of the 6,933 hate crime offenses reported in 2013, 63.9 percent were crimes against persons (i.e., intimidation, assaults, rapes, murders), while 35 percent were property crimes (mostly acts of destruction/damage/vandalism). The rest were considered crimes against society (like drug offenses or prostitution).

Upcoming changes to Hate Crime Statistics : The FBI approved a recommendation by the Criminal Justice Information Services Division's Advisory Policy Board to expand the bias types in the religious category to include all the religions identified by the Pew Research Center and the U.S. Census Bureau. Also, the hate crime data collection procedures will be modified to include an anti-Arab bias motivation. The collecting of both types of data will begin on January 1, 2015.

The UCR Program continues its efforts to assist our law enforcement partners in collecting and submitting hate crime data and with establishing or updating hate crime training programs for their personnel. Most recently, we held a training session for UCR contributors that focused on upcoming changes to the hate crime report, and we're in the process of revising our Hate Crime Data Collection Guidelines and Training Manual with new definitions and scenarios that reflect those changes.

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2014/december/latest-hate-crime-statistics-report-released/latest-hate-crime-statistics-report-released

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From the Department of Homeland Security

Engaging the Private Sector in Nuclear Detection

by Huban Gowadia

Director, Domestic Nuclear Detection Office

Yesterday, I joined my colleagues from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) to host our third Industry Day to engage the private sector on the challenges and opportunities associated with radiological and nuclear detection capabilities. This event is part of our continuous efforts to pursue improvements in the deployed, multi-layered capabilities to detect and report attempts to smuggle nuclear and other radioactive materials into the United States. The forum also provided an opportunity for industry to engage in dialogue and network with colleagues and counterparts in the business with whom they can explore mutually beneficial cooperative efforts.

Attendees from the private sector, academia, national laboratories, and government partner organizations were briefed on DNDO's role in implementing domestic nuclear detection capabilities, and how the private sector can improve operational and technical performance of capabilities. The event featured plenary sessions facilitated by experts on topics such as long-term research and development goals, radiation sensor standards, test efforts, and market characteristics.

Participants also had the unique opportunity to hear from a panel of law enforcement operators who use nuclear detection technology. The panelists, consisting of members of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Transportation Security Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, provided their insight on their diverse operational needs and use of radiation sensors.

Above all, the day served as an opportunity to enhance collaboration through dialogue and the exchange of ideas and information. Through a series of breakout sessions, we had the opportunity to discuss in-depth with participants about technical challenges and emerging developments in detection. We also heard from stakeholders on DNDO's industry engagement process, which was established as a result of feedback from a previous Industry Day. DNDO has conducted over fifty industry engagement sessions since implementing this process in June 2013.

This week's event demonstrates DHS's commitment to connect with the private sector to advance national nuclear security capabilities. I encourage industry to learn more about business opportunities and DNDO's industry engagement process at http://www.dhs.gov/doing-business-dndo.

http://www.dhs.gov/blog/2014/12/10/engaging-private-sector-nuclear-detection

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Oregon

Police Arrest Suspect in Shooting Near Portland High School

NBC News

Portland police arrested a 22-year-old suspect in the shooting that left a 16-year-old girl in critical condition and three others were hurt outside an alternative high school. Officials stopped a car at around 1:30 a.m. Saturday, detained the suspect and found a gun in the vehicle, according to Portland police Department. They began to search a nearby apartment about half an hour later as part of the investigation.

A 16-year-old girl is in critical condition and three others were hurt after gunfire erupted outside a Portland, Oregon, high school Friday in a shooting police believe was gang-related. Taylor Michelle Zimmers, 16, was the most seriously wounded in the 12:13 p.m. shooting outside Rosemary Anderson High School, in which a 17-year-old boy and a 20-year-old man were also shot and another 17-year-old girl was grazed by a bullet, police said. Portland Police Sgt. Pete Simpson said a gunman shot them after "some kind of dispute," and the victims ran inside the school after they were shot. All the victims are either students or attend programs at the school, police said.

Earlier, police said the gunman and two other men fled on foot immediately after the shooting. Zimmers was in critical condition Friday at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center. The other shooting victims, Labraye Quavon Franklin, 17, and David Joshua Jackson-Liday, 20, were at the hospital in fair condition. Police said in a statement Friday night that "based on the investigation thus far, the shooting appears to be gang-related." Simpson earlier told reporters the gunman is believed to have gang ties, but did not say that any of the victims are affiliated with gangs, or whether they were targeted or were bystanders.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/police-arrest-suspect-shooting-near-portland-high-school-n267381

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New York

NYC Police Union Wants Mayor Banned From Funerals

by The Associated Press

New York City's rank-and-file police union is urging its members to ban Mayor Bill de Blasio from their funerals.

The Patrolmen's Benevolent Association posted a link on its website telling members not to let de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito "insult their sacrifice" should they be killed in the line of duty. The union posted a waiver officers can sign requesting the two politicians not attend their funerals due to their "consistent refusal to show police officers the support and respect they deserve."

The New York Post reports the mayor and council speaker are calling the effort "deeply disappointing."

The mayor customarily attends such funerals.

The union's president has said officers haven't felt supported in the wake of a chokehold death of an unarmed black man.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/nyc-police-union-mayor-banned-funerals-27575849

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North Carolina

FBI to probe death of black N.C. teen found hanged

by Melanie Eversley

The FBI has agreed to step in and investigate the August death of a black North Carolina teen found hanging from a swingset in a predominantly white trailer park.

The agency agreed to take on the case after questions raised by the mother of 17-year-old Lennon Lacy and by the North Carolina branch of the NAACP.

Claudia Lacy of Bladenboro , N.C., did not immediately respond to a private message sent to her through social media, but she did say in an essay dictated to The Guardian that she was concerned for her son because he was dating an older white woman. Lacy does not believe the police were involved in her son's death, but she does believe his case was treated as if it did not matter, she said. She told The Guardian that her son was not depressed and that he was respectful and compassionate.

Bladenboro Police Chief Chris Hunt did not immediately respond to a voicemail message left for him Friday night. Hunt has referred all questions to the North Carolina Bureau of Investigation, which has said that all leads in the case were addressed.

William Barber II, the North Carolina NAACP branch president, said he was gratified that more would be brought to light about the death of the high school student and football player who, according to his family, was found hanging by a dog leash and a belt that did not belong to him.

"There must be a thorough investigation," Barber said in a statement. "There are too many questions and contradictions raised by our independent pathology report and stories in the community about facts, quick conclusions, and how the death scene was not protected to leave this case unprobed and unevaluated."

In the Dec. 12 Guardian essay, Claudia Lacy detailed the day that Hunt came to her door and asked her to come identify a body. When she arrived at the trailer park, she saw a police officer wrapping up the crime scene tape. She found that odd because she thought such tape is normally left around a scene for some time to maintain the integrity of evidence. Police then brought her to an ambulance, where she saw a black body bag that held her son, she said.

"I unzipped the bag down to his waist," she told the Guardian. "I was in shock, despair, but I wanted to see what had happened to him. I wanted to know why my son was here, in this desolate place, lying dead in a body bag. As I stepped back out of the vehicle, I spoke out loud and clear. 'Whoever did this,' I said, 'they took him down, because he didn't do this to himself.' "

Lacy said Hunt came to see her four days later and said police found no evidence of wrongdoing and he mentioned suicide.

Lacy said she found a number of problems with the case, including:

•  Police never inspected her son's room and never asked to see his cell phone

•  Lennon was found wearing a pair of sneakers that he did not own and that were two sizes too small

•  Lennon was not depressed and was looking forward to a football game that night

•  Lennon was shy and would not have killed himself in such a public area

Both the Bladen County, N.C., coroner and medical examiner have said they initially looked at suicide as a cause of death because of the other's conclusion.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/12/12/bladenboro-teen-handing-death/20333271/

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Massachusetts

Anonymous Layaway Angel Pays Off $20,000 Worth of Toys in Massachusetts

by Nicole Arce

For the more than 150 people with layaway accounts at the Toys "R" Us store in Bellingham, Mass., the spirit of the holidays just arrived in the form of an anonymous donor who paid for all their merchandise.

On Wednesday afternoon, an unnamed woman walked into the Hartford Avenue Toys "R" Us and told the employees that she would be settling the balances of the store's 154 layaway accounts with balances ranging from a few dollars to a few hundred. The total figure amounted to more than $20,000, but, as employees said, the woman didn't even bat an eye.

"If you have it, give it," she reportedly told the employees, according to the Milford Daily News.

Described as a local and a bubbly older woman, the layaway angel reportedly told employees that she would "sleep better at night" knowing that all those toys will be making their way to their young owners in time for the holidays instead of sitting on a shelf at the back of the store waiting for their buyers to pay the full amount.

"I thought, 'You have to be kidding me.' I almost wanted to cry," Linda, a woman from Franklin who spent $9 for a layaway purchase of cars and racetracks for her 10 and 11-year-old sons, says. "It was only $50, but to me that's a lot of money, and that someone would go and do that gave me chills. What she did was so caring and thoughtful. I feel like I was part of something special - touched by an angel."

Grafton-based Jason Wood, a man whose layaway items were paid for by the anonymous angel, says he was inspired by the gesture and decided to pay it forward himself. Wood says he plans to spend the money he was supposed to pay for the layaway purchases for his six-month-old and five-year-old daughters to buy holiday gifts for Toys for Tots.

"I wish there were more people like that," Wood says. "You've got to pay it forward. It's good karma."

Some 180 kilometers away in Auburn, another woman became Secret Santa at a Toys "R" Us store after paying $19,600 for the store's 125 layaway accounts. Just like the Bellingham woman, the Auburn angel barely flinched when she saw the five-figure amount. Last week, in Woburn, a man paid more than $1,200 for the layaway purchases of the eight people behind him in line.

"We have had many accounts of layaway Santas, layaway angels, just good Samaritans," says Adrienne O'Hara, spokesperson at Toys "R" Us. "Over the years, we've seen a lot of excitement and a lot of acts of good will."

One of those layaway angels is Greg Parady. While growing up, Parady's says he was a layaway kid himself, so he understands the struggles of families on layaway accounts.

"I know it affected people immediately. I mean they were getting text messages that payments were being made on their accounts while we were there and people were calling saying, 'I think there's a mistake,'" he says. "It was so special. It was really special."

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/22127/20141213/anonymous-layaway-angel-pays-off-20-000-worth-of-toys-in-massachusetts.htm

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Ohio

Sen. Turner, Born to head community-police relations task force

by Michelle Everhart

One week after announcing a task force that would examine police and community relations, Gov. John Kasich signed an executive order officially creating it and naming the chairs yesterday.

The group, called the Ohio Task Force on Community and Police Relations, will have until April 30 to report. It will hold at least four public forums and explore issues such as best community policing practices.

Kasich announced the group just days after a U.S. Department of Justice report stated Cleveland police are reckless and poorly trained.

“Too many people in communities of color feel like the protective shield that law and order is intended to provide is not working for them,” Kasich said in a release. “The underlying friction can only be resolved by giving community members a chance for their voices to be heard and then moving forward to strengthen the essential relationship between communities and the police.”

Ohio Department of Public Safety Director John Born and outgoing state Sen. Nina Turner, D-Cleveland, will co-chair the task force.

According to the governor's release, the group will have about 20 members, including Sen. Sandra Williams, D-Cleveland, and Rep. Alicia Reece, D-Cincinnati, as well as “representatives of the governor, attorney general, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio, local law enforcement, organized labor, local community leaders, the faith-based community, business, municipalities and prosecuting attorneys.” Those members have yet to be named.

On Thursday, Attorney General Mike DeWine named a working group of community and law-enforcement leaders in the state to examine police training in Ohio.

Officials are trying to deal with concerns after incidents in Ohio and across the nation in which white officers killed young black people have caused unrest.

Last month, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was killed by Cleveland police while he held an airsoft gun. That investigation continues.

Earlier this year, John Crawford was killed in a Beavercreek WalMart while holding a BB gun. The officer in that case was not indicted, but the Department of Justice is investigating.

Protests continue across the country over the death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man who died after New York City police placed him in a chokehold, and the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black man who was shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo. Grand juries in both cases did not indict officers involved.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/12/12/kasich-police-community-task-force.html

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Rhode Island

Policing on camera: R.I. communities weigh benefits and costs

by AMANDA MILKOVITS

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Twenty years ago, cameras were installed in police cruisers to fight drunken driving.

The Rhode Island chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, in its effort to win more convictions, awarded the devices to the state police and some local departments. The cameras came, and the cameras went.

In January 2000, two white Providence officers mistakenly shot and killed a black off-duty officer who had drawn his gun to help them control a dispute with an armed man. The death of Sgt. Cornel Young Jr. ignited deep-seated feelings of anger and mistrust among minority residents against the police.

The cameras returned. Then-mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. hoped they would improve police and community relations. Within two weeks, an off-duty Providence patrolwoman was filmed assaulting another motorist in a road-rage incident.

Providence police added more cameras, and as federal money became available, other police departments also bought the technology.

But the cameras came, and the cameras disappeared again, as funding for them ran out.

Fast-forward to Dec. 1, a week after a Missouri grand jury decided not to indict Darren Wilson, a white Ferguson police officer, for fatally shooting Michael Brown, an unarmed young black man.

In the face of sweeping protests against racism and cries of police brutality, President Obama recently proposed a three-year $263-million package to fund community policing initiatives, including $75 million for body-worn cameras.

The miniature cameras and microphones are small enough to be attached to a uniform or sunglasses. Body-worn cameras, which are intended to foster more accountability for the police and the people they encounter, are another tool to help solve and prosecute crimes.

But police officers must turn them on, and they can turn them off.

And the cameras raise privacy issues and carry a substantial financial cost for storing vast amounts of data.

Different views

A spokeswoman for Providence Mayor-elect Jorge O. Elorza said he supports body-worn cameras, because the devices protect police officers and the public. “There is a realistic cost associated with the policy, so implementing it will be a challenge,” Marisa O'Gara said in an email Thursday. “However, he looks forward to working with federal, state, and private partners to find the necessary resources.”

James Vincent, the president of the Rhode Island branch of the NAACP, is unequivocally in favor of body-worn cameras. He said the cameras will “restore faith in the community and absolve the police.”

Providence Police Chief Hugh T. Clements Jr. said he also sees the benefit to having the cameras. “Our officers are involved in dangerous, violent situations. [The video] would help in the proceedings of criminal cases in court,” he said. “And, also for the public, who knows that everything is on camera.”

But Clements said there's the cost of storing the data — considerable for a city police department like Providence, which handles about 130,000 calls for service a year.

The proposal raises more issues: How long is the data kept? How much is considered a public record and must be released? What about privacy rights, for police and the public? What happens with witnesses who want to be anonymous?

“There's an accelerated interest in body cameras across the country, and there are several different policies,” Clements said. “You want to make it right for your own agency. It needs to be well-thought-out and clear to the work force and the general public.”

No uniform policy

Although law enforcement agencies across the country have been adding body-worn cameras over the last several years, there's no uniform policy.

The Police Executive Research Forum, with the assistance of the Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, began studying the issue more than a year ago and released a detailed report and recommendations this fall.

The number-one reason that departments chose to use the cameras was to capture a more accurate view of police encounters with the public.

Officers perform better when they know they are being recorded. Other people's conduct also improves, when they know the camera is on. Police administrators “overwhelmingly” said there is a noticeable drop in complaints against officers.

Benefits, limitations

The response to body-worn cameras in Rhode Island is cautious.

“From a prosecution standpoint, video evidence captured from a body cam is stronger than eyewitness testimony,” Attorney General Peter Kilmartin said in a statement. “Video evidence can prove a person's guilt or innocence. It can exonerate a police officer who has been wrongly accused of misconduct, and it can identify a police officer who has abused his power. Certainly, video evidence can build confidence with the community in the result of an investigation.”

Kilmartin said law enforcement should come up with policies before they rush to buy. Understand “the impact on the criminal justice system, strain on law enforcement agencies in terms of personnel and budgets, and most important, unintended consequences on the public's privacy,” Kilmartin said.

Central Falls Police Chief James Mendonca said his department has been looking at the issue for several months. He wants to buy body cameras for the 36 officers on the street.

“The public is recording law enforcement all the time, and this is an opportunity for us to tell our side of the story,” Mendonca said.

However, he sees limitations. The city would have to invest in the cameras and data storage for years to come. The department would have to hire staff to screen the videos for privacy issues before releasing them to comply with open records laws. That may require legislation, so interviews with crime victims don't end up posted on the Internet for anyone to see, the chief said.

The video also creates a “false reality,” Mendonca said. People believe if it didn't happen on video, it didn't happen, he said.

Race issues

Vincent, of the NAACP, said the cameras are “part of the solution” for accountability and transparency. He also wants to see better training for the police in dealing with minorities, as well as more diverse police forces.

Steve Brown, the head of the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the organization is more interested in adopting racial profiling legislation than body-worn cameras for the police.

According to a data collection study released in October, the racial profiling statistics haven't changed much either, Brown said. “It's disheartening. Blacks and Hispanics are stopped more often than whites and are not as likely to be caught with contraband.”

Body-worn cameras are used by some departments in analyzing complaints of racial profiling, according to the PERF study.

Other options

But some police chiefs at departments say they aren't rushing to buy body-worn cameras. They say there are other ways to heighten accountability and better relationships with the communities police serve.

In East Providence, Chief Christopher Parella said his department assigned Tasers to its officers. The move reduced injuries to officers and civilians, he said.

Providence police adopted community policing methods department-wide, assigning officers to neighborhoods, building relationships with local organizations, and setting up an advisory board that includes faith leaders, community leaders and others.

The state police also dropped cruiser cameras when the funding ran out. Col. Steven O'Donnell said that collaborating with Providence Chief Clements and local community groups has helped build trust between police and minority residents.

One community leader is Kobi Dennis, the founder of Project: Night Vision, which has after-hours programs for teenagers that include working with the police.

For years, Dennis has organized regular forums, called “New Beginnings,” with the state police, Providence police and local community and minority groups to talk about police and community concerns. No media, no hype, just talk among police officers and neighbors, in an effort to gain understanding and trust.

“This is how real community is supposed to work,” Dennis said Friday.

The next forum will be Monday at 8 p.m. at the South Providence Recreation Center to talk about the grand jury decisions in Ferguson and New York City in the deaths of young black men being arrested by white police officers.

The forums are a sign of the change in police and community relations since the death of Sergeant Young in 2000.

And, unlike the cameras, the relationships are still in place.

http://www.providencejournal.com/news/police-fire/20141212-policing-on-camera-r.i.-communities-weigh-benefits-and-costs.ece

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Ohio

Law and pubic safety: Tough talk about homicides

CINCINNATI (Deb Dixon) -- Numbers never tell the whole story, especially when it comes to calculating crime.

There is some good news, according to the numbers. So far in 2014 homicides are down from 2013 in Cincinnati. 70 percent of them were solved and that's high compared to cities of similar size. But look closer and one councilman sees a crisis, an urban war.

Chris Smitherman said, "It's OK for Americans to say, 'I'm concerned about what's happening,' in Ferguson but guess what? It's more difficult to talk about what's happening in my own backyard."

What council man Smitherman wants to talk about is black on black murder. That's 83 percent of the 2013 homicides in the city of Cincinnati. Nationwide the percentage is higher.

"I can't say it's because of drug trade, a bad life; I can't say it's about jobs. It's about a decision someone made to take someone's life. I'm not going to sit here and make excuses for anyone who does that," said Smitherman.

No excuse for murder Smitherman says. Not cooperating with police? Also unacceptable.

"This culture of no snitching; we have to as adults challenge people and say that's unacceptable," he continued.

Twenty-one of 2013's 61 murders remain unsolved. Detectives believe people in Evanston know who killed McKinley Douglas on St. Leger in May. Police said he was rehabbing a home that had been burglarized. When he got home masked men were waiting. He was shot and died later. Police called it a robbery gone bad.

The woman who was McKinley Douglas told police the masked men were black. Smitherman said fathers, ministers, and community leaders need to commit to helping young men. Something Pastor Peterson Mingo's been doing for years.

"Sense of self-esteem for one thing; ownership, pride in the community and themselves," said Mingo.

Mingo said too many young black men don't believe they have a future, "It's self-loathing. They don't like themselves, don't love themselves, it doesn't matter if they get killed today, next week, or next month."

There is a reward for information in McKinley Douglas' murder or any other murder. Call the 24 hour Crime Stoppers hotline at 352-3040. Callers are identified by code numbers, not names.

http://www.local12.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/law-public-safety-tough-talk-homicides-22022.shtml

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Connecticut

How depression, insomnia, marital strife and drug abuse is growing in Newtown, two years after Sandy Hook massacre

by The Associated Press

Anxiety, depression, guilt, sleeplessness, marital strife, drug and alcohol abuse — these are some of the mental health issues facing residents in Newtown, Connecticut, two years after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.

Only now is the scope of the psychological damage to children, parents and others becoming clear, and the need for treatment is likely to persist a long time.

'Here it is two years later, and it's still hard to deal with. But, God, you didn't want to know me two years ago,' said Beth Hegarty, a Sandy Hook mother who happened to be inside the school that day with her three daughters, all of whom survived.

Hegarty and her girls are among the thousands of people in this close-knit town of 27,000 who have taken advantage of counselling and other programs made available through millions in grants and donations.

With the second anniversary of the shooting rampage approaching Sunday, agencies have been working to set up a support system for the next 12 to 15 years, as the youngest survivors approach adulthood.

Mental health officials say the demand for treatment is high, with many people reporting substance abuse, relationship troubles, disorganization, depression, overthinking or inability to sleep, all related to the December 14, 2012, attack in which a young man killed 20 children and six educators before committing suicide.

And some of the problems are just now coming to the surface.

'We've found the issues are more complex in the second year,' said Joseph Erardi, Newtown's school superintendent. 'A lot of people were running on adrenaline the first year.'

The Hegarty children have had trouble sleeping and difficulty with loud noises and crowds. Whenever they leave the house, they look for places they can hide in case something bad happens. In February, a school counselor suggested the family seek help because one of the daughters wasn't paying attention in class; she was staring at the doorway.

Hegarty and her children have been receiving support from Newtown's Resiliency Center, an organization formed after the shooting that has seen rising demand for its offerings, which include art, music and play therapy. Hegarty said the programs have helped her become more 'even-keeled.'

'I was super reactive to everything. I would fly off the handle on a whim. I was emotional. I couldn't handle crowds or loud noises,' said Hegarty, who took cover under a conference table during the shooting while the principal and psychologist she had been meeting with died.

'For my girls, there is less running down the hallway in the middle of the night and climbing into my bed. They want to go more places instead of staying at home all the time.'

Newtown has received about $15 million in grants from the U.S. Education Department and the U.S. Justice Department to support its recovery.

The Newtown-Sandy Hook Community Foundation, which oversees the biggest pot of private donations made to Newtown, has about $4 million left after paying out more than $7 million to the families of the 26 victims and other children who were in the same classrooms but survived.

Newtown Youth and Family Services, the main mental health agency, has quadrupled its counseling staff, adding 29 positions in the months following the shootings, Executive Director Candice Bohr said. She said the federal grant money that recently came through will help cover its costs.

Jennifer Barahona, director of the foundation overseeing the private dollars, said the group has been spending about $60,000 a month on one-on-one counseling for people who have no insurance or whose insurers won't cover such treatment. She said more people are reaching out for help every day.

The Newtown school system is starting a long-term program to teach young people from kindergarten through high school how to handle their feelings. It is also setting up a mental health center at the middle school in January to help those who were affected by the tragedy while in elementary school. Teachers have been trained to identify students who might have mental health problems.

Melissa Brymer, director of terrorism and disaster programs at the UCLA-Duke National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, has been consulting with Newtown to develop a plan to make sure the mental health needs are met for another 12 to 15 years.

Hegarty said she struggles with survivor guilt, but the Resiliency Center has helped her and her children.

'Are we 100 percent? No,' she said. 'But will we ever be 100 percent? We might not be.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2870512/In-Newtown-mental-health-problems-emerging.html

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U.S. chokehold protesters stage 'die-ins', issue demands in NY

by Emmett Berg and Sebastien Malo

Students at medical schools around the United States staged "die-ins" to protest the chokehold death by police of an unarmed black man, and New York activists demanded the city take action after a grand jury declined to indict the officer involved.

Protests intensified last week after the grand jury decision not to charge a white New York City police officer in the July death of Eric Garner. The decision came roughly a week after a Missouri grand jury did not indict a white officer in the shooting death of unarmed black teen Michael Brown.

In New York, a group calling itself the NY Justice League asked local officials to fire Officer Daniel Pantaleo over Garner's death. They also urged the state to name a special prosecutor to investigate and called for clearer laws regarding police use of lethal force.

Hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons, who is behind the music label Def Jam Records, said he had spoken with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio about the group's demands.

"Their demands are so legitimate and so easy to understand," Simmons said.

The killings of Garner and Brown have aggravated already strained relations between police and black Americans and rekindled a national debate over race relations.

Students at about 70 medical schools around the country including in Chicago, Atlanta and Boston staged die-ins on Wednesday to protest the killings.

Police said more than 100 demonstrators marched in Berkeley, California, which has a history of social activism. Under cloudy skies, turnout was smaller than earlier in the week, when demonstrators in the area threw rocks at police and shut down a major freeway.

Dozens of people were arrested in those actions, but Berkeley police spokeswoman Jennifer Coats said there had been no incidents or arrests on Wednesday night.

In an unusual show of solidarity, the police chief for the nearby city of Richmond on Tuesday joined protesters in his city, and held a sign that read "#blacklivesmatter," according to the Contra Costa Times.

Separately, at recent National Basketball Association games, some players including Los Angeles Laker Kobe Bryant and Cleveland Cavalier LeBron James have worn T-shirts during warm-ups that read, "I can't breathe," Garner's last words.

Even though a grand jury has decided against charging Pantaleo, the New York officer, he still faces the possibility of discipline from an internal police investigation.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/11/us-usa-new-york-chokehold-idUSKCN0JH2BI20141211

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Ohio

Cleveland, Justice Dept. Policing Talks to Start

by Mark Gillispie

Negotiations between Cleveland and the U.S. Justice Department over allegations that the police department has a pattern of excessive force are expected to begin next week.

The city law director told a City Council committee on Wednesday that Mayor Frank Jackson's administration is analyzing the Justice Department report made public last week that leveled harsh criticism at officers, supervisors and the administration for how the department is run and how poorly allegations of excessive force are investigated.

Barbara Langhenry said Wednesday that the city will work the Justice Department to address legitimate issues raised in the report.

"Cleveland has an opportunity at this time to honestly confront disharmony with the goal of creating a well-functioning city," Langhenry said.

The Justice Department is seeking an agreement that will lead to a court-ordered consent decree and the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee reforms of the police department.

U.S. Attorney Steven Dettelbach told the council committee on Wednesday that the consent decree will help ensure that reforms are comprehensive and will be sustained over time. The Justice Department opened an investigation into the use of deadly force practices by Cleveland police in 2002, resulting in a voluntary, one-year agreement in 2004 that was supposed to address police training and the civilian complaint process. It's unusual for the Justice Department to return to a city for a second police investigation, Dettelbach said.

Dettelbach insisted that the investigation that began in March 2013 was not linked to any one incident, but the 58-page report referred to a November 2012 car chase that ended with officers firing 137 rounds into a car and killing two unarmed suspects. The police officer who fired the last 15 rounds faces charges of involuntary manslaughter, and five supervisors face charges of dereliction of duty.

The Justice Department investigation also found instances when officers punched or used Tasers on people who were handcuffed in apparent retaliation for what they had said or did. The report said officers are poorly trained in subduing suspects and that some do not appear to know how to use their firearms.

Dettelbach emphasized that the city needs to create a culture of community policing, a policy that calls for officers to engage rather than provoke people, something he said will make residents and police officers safer.

"Community policing is not sufficiently embedded in the Cleveland police department," Dettelbach said.

He did laud the city for its work creating a new community policing plan.

Councilman Mike Polensek later responded that he'd not heard about such a plan.

"I don't believe there is any community policing taking place here," Polensek said.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/cleveland-justice-dept-policing-talks-start-27508985

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Pennsylvania

Police-community partnerships offer way to improve neighborhood safety

by Brandon Alcorn

If you walk past North Philadelphia's Rainbow de Colores Park on a summer day, you'll see children playing on a playground and running through sprinklers, a bustling handball court and a well-tended community garden. Newly installed solar lights mean the activity continues well into the evening.

Five years ago, Rainbow de Colores looked very different.

“It was a playground that was basically controlled by drug dealers,” says Andrew Frishkoff, Executive Director of the Philadelphia office of the Local Initiatives Support Coalition (LISC).

Less than a block from a prolific drug-dealing corner, the park served as a base of operations for a local drug-trafficking organization that controlled the street. Community members were reluctant to leave their homes, let alone play in the park.

Beginning in 2010, however, community members, local nonprofit organizations including LISC, a Philadelphia police captain and the local councilwoman joined forces to take back the park.

While LISC worked with community members to clean up the park, 26 th District police captain Michael Cram and his police force dedicated their efforts to keeping away criminal activity. Councilwoman Maria Quiñones Sanchez and the Department of Public Property delivered approximately $200,000 to support the cleaning and rehabilitation efforts and the community drove the decisions to include the handball courts and the community garden.

“It's a little bit of judo,” says Frishkoff. “Taking something that is blighted and a hub of criminal activity and not just trying to move the crime but actually turning that space back into an amenity for the community.”

The state of community-police relations

The shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and the nationwide protests that have followed are a stark reminder of the tension between law enforcement and the communities they police throughout our country.

In June 2014 Gallup reported that just 53 percent of the U.S. population have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the police, the lowest reported level of trust in the police in the last 20 years. At 37 percent, levels of trust are even lower among African-Americans. One-quarter of African-Americans have very little or no confidence in the police.

The racial composition of police forces, racial disparities in stop rates and arrest rates and inappropriate use of force have been driving new discussions about police behavior. On December 1 st , President Obama requested $263 million in funding for police body cameras and training to help address a “simmering distrust” in the wake of the events in Ferguson.

Farther from the spotlight of media attention, however, neighborhoods around the country are joining with community development organizations, local law enforcement and municipal authorities in efforts to overcome the distrust of police, decrease crime and revitalize neighborhoods. These collaborative efforts are making community-based policing work.

Since 2012, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has tried to support police forces that are doing it well and the communities they work in. The DOJ has awarded nearly $31 million in Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation grants to support community safety in 46 cities and towns around the country. $4.5 million more has been provided to LISC to support these grant recipients. LISC has been running its own Community Safety Initiative (CSI) in cities across the country since 1994 and for Julia Ryan, Program Director for the CSI project, that experience makes LISC a valuable partner.

“The goal is to tap research from all over about what works to help reduce crime in these communities,” says Ryan, “and also bring the experience and knowledge of the people on the front lines in struggling neighborhoods into the national conversation.”

Jim Bueermann, President of the Police Foundation, says the values at the foundation of community-based policing -- leadership, collaboration and ethical behavior among them -- need to be reflected in every aspect of a police department's work.

“Community policing is not a program,” he says. “It is a philosophy about how police departments go about their business in a way that engages the community in the co-production of public safety.”

Here are programs in six cities, all of which have received support from the DOJ and LISC. The scope of these programs is relatively small, affecting only a handful of neighborhoods and cities, but they serve as important examples of successes that could be replicated.

Building partnerships

In Philadelphia, Captain Michael Cram has moved on from the 26th District , home to Rainbow de Colores Park , to the neighboring 25th district . But he's brought his lessons on community-based policing with him. “I'm a firm believer that neighbors take back neighborhoods, not the police,” he says.

Since February, Cram and his police force have started three community groups. In some cases, they've identified key members of the community -- block captains, ward leaders, or other leading figures -- and worked with them to form a group. In other cases, they simply announced a community meeting, knocked on doors, handed out flyers and worked with the community members who showed up. Now, nearly a year later, all three groups are holding regular monthly meetings that Cram and his officers attend.

“They're the eyes and ears of the community,” says Cram. “They educate us on what's going on in the community and we educate them on how the police work and how they can help us better.”

Six hundred miles away in the white, working class West Side neighborhood of Covington, Kentucky, just across the river from Cincinnati, there was a problem with basement break-ins. Intruders were breaking through basement windows to steal copper wiring, appliances and other items. In theory, the solution was simple: in Covington there was a historical regulation requiring basement windows be plate glass, so a variance was needed to allow residents to install windows that were better reinforced against break-ins. Residents petitioned the city for a change, but city officials either didn't hear the complaints or didn't listen.

The LISC office in Cincinnati heard them. LISC brought the attention to the local police, a group that had been involved with responding to the break-ins but not in the community's prevention efforts. When the police and community went to city government to present the multitude of problems caused by the historical regulation, the city agreed to change it.

“Since they changed that, they haven't had any basement break-ins at all,” says Kate McInerney, Assistant Program Officer at LISC Cincinnati.

Three years ago, Pittsburgh's Lawrenceville neighborhood had a problem with a nuisance bar. Through a combination of relationship building with police, neighborhood mobilization, and substantial grant funding for community safety, Lawrenceville had seen a 60 percent reduction in crime since 2002 and an almost complete elimination of Part 1 crimes like homicides, aggravated assaults and prostitution. "So community members were distraught when a local social club, traditionally a community space, became a hub of criminal activity.

“There were shootings, underage drinking and drugs,” says Lauren Byrne, Executive Director of Lawrenceville United, a community development corporation. “And it's really hard in Pennsylvania to shut down a liquor-licensed establishment once it's already operating.”

But Lawrenceville United drew upon the partnerships it had built over ten years to shine a light on the issue. After a three year fight and with the help of the Bureau of Building Inspections, the local police and Liquor Control Enforcement, the bar was shut down. Not only that, the bar owners were also denied a transfer of their liquor license to a nearby property following community-led protests.

In another particularly surprising case, the Grandmont Rosedale neighborhood of Northwest Detroit is volunteering to pay more taxes to support a wider range of safety measures in the community. After community members circulated petitions and received support from at least 51% of homeowners in the neighborhood of 5,000 homes, the plan was presented to the City Council and the new Neighborhood Benefit District was approved. Through a partnership with the local police district, the new funds are supporting secondary police officers, the installation of security cameras and better lighting throughout the neighborhood.

If getting a neighborhood to volunteer to pay more taxes sounds like a herculean task, getting the rest of the city stakeholders on board was no easy feat either. “Many meetings,” says Amber Elliott, a Detroit native and Assistant Program Officer for LISC, when asked what it took to launch the initiative. “A meeting every week for a year, getting many people to the table who didn't think it would work.”

But now that the citywide ordinance exists and the tax structure is in place, it can be replicated. Already the West Village and East Village of the Jefferson East neighborhood is moving forward, with support from LISC, with a Neighborhood Benefit District of their own.

These tangible victories are important, but the community empowerment and promise of change is the story Cram and others want to tell. “The relationship between the police and the community, it's phenomenal. That's the most important thing,” says Cram. “That's a home run.”

Planning for safety

Strong community-based policing not only requires effective relationships between the community, police, and government, but also a physical environment that promotes safety.

For a number of years, parts of Walnut Hills, a densely populated, predominantly African-American neighborhood just northeast of downtown Cincinnati, functioned as an open air drug market. With heavy traffic volume passing through the neighborhood's two main corridors, drug traffickers and prostitution rings saw a steady stream of business.

They were also able to easily hide their activity. Both of the main streets running through Walnut Hills are one way, making it a simple task to spot approaching police vehicles. Drug dealers and prostitution rings could operate in the open and melt away at the first sign of trouble.

The community knew what was happening and, with the help of the local LISC office and the Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation, convinced the city planning office to make both corridors two-way streets. “It was a huge change,” says Kristen Baker, a Program Officer at LISC Cincinnati “[There was] a dramatic reduction in drug-dealing and prostitution and other criminal activity in the neighborhood.”

In Minneapolis-St. Paul, Andriana Abariotes of the Twin Cities LISC office praises the long-term commitment that city leadership and police leadership have shown to community-based policing. LISC has been a partner in this process, taking a proactive approach to planning and designing neighborhood development with community safety in mind.

In June 2014, a new light rail line opened, connecting the downtown portions of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Along with the opening of the light rail line and the convenient access to both Minneapolis and St. Paul came a number of community development projects. LISC, along with its community partners, recognized an opportunity to apply community safety lessons.

“We facilitated design sessions between the community, the developers and the police department,” says Abariotes. "[We wanted] to ensure improvements that would reduce crime hotspots or improve safety in and around these new developments.”

Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) strategies include natural surveillance and improving lines of sight to deter criminal activity and create a perception that people can be seen at all times. Movement prediction designs public spaces with appealing and well-lit pedestrian walkways so that the movement of people is predictable.

Whether the environmental design changes happen in response to a crime problem, like in Cincinnati, or to preempt the emergence of crime in developments like in Minneapolis, the essential idea is that crime does not occur independently of the neighborhood environment. By designing neighborhoods better, it is possible to make them safer.

Looking forward

With protests against the Michael Brown decision and other incidents continuing across the U.S., community policing is now a front line issue. “We're now past the point that these are individual incidents,” says Bueermann. “This is now a movement to reform police practices as it relates to the use of force.”

The proof of whether community policing efforts will be effective, he says, lies in whether police forces are engaged in the best practices related to hiring, training, policing, and engaging with the community.

For community policing to work, the police force needs to reflect the community they are policing and “recruiting in the spirit of service” must be prioritized over “recruiting in the spirit of adventure.” Training must focus not just on technical skills like firing a gun and conducting a traffic stop, but on cultural sensitivity, the science of addiction, and how best to interact with special needs populations. The police need a multitude of strategies for communicating with citizens. They need to get to know the community, and success needs to be measured in terms of outcomes – whether the goals defined by the police and community are being met – not outputs, like the number of arrests or citations.

“Most police chiefs are going to tell you they engage in community-based policing,” says Bueermann. “The issue, though, is do they really understand it? Are they really committed to it?”

However, the opportunity exists not just to reform the use of force, but to reform the way we police our society, Bueerman stresses. The results of community policing in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and other cities are a testament to the positive impact of these partnerships.

This story is part of a series on community transformation underwritten by Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), a national organization dedicated to helping community residents transform distressed neighborhoods into healthy and sustainable communities of choice and opportunity .

http://www.popcitymedia.com/features/communitypolicing120814.aspx

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Michigan

Benton Harbor Public Safety Officers suiting up with body cameras

by Jasmine Norwood

BENTON HARBOR, Mich. -- Cops and body cameras, a hot topic nationwide. In January, Benton Harbor Public Safety officers will be required to wear body cameras daily.

Dan McGinnis, Benton Harbor Public Safety Director, made clear at meeting Wednesday night, the body cameras are not being ordered in response to anything that happened in Ferguson or anywhere else. He said, this is something the department started researching a year ago.

“To us this is a no brainier. We want to have each resident incident recorded properly,” McGinnis explained in an interview with Abc 57 News, that transparency is the goal. “We want to make sure that officers are protected, and that residents are protected.”

Director McGinnis says dashboard cameras are no longer enough.

“Once you leave the view of the camera, we are losing a lot of data. Those cameras still pick up audio, but after so many feet you lose that also,” he explained.

That is where the Taser Axon body cameras come in – paid for by a grant.

“We will require the camera to be activated every time there is a citizen contact,” said McGinnis, who presented this information at a public safety meeting Wednesday night.

Residents and city commissioners had a few questions.

“I just think that we need some policies in place to make sure that there is accountability as well as responsibility that goes along with the wearing of these cameras,” Benton Harbor City Commissioner Mary Alice Adams expressed at the podium.

McGinnis agreed, regulations are a must, especially when it comes to officer privacy.

“Obviously we will not have the camera activated while officers are going into restrooms or during conversations among officers, they have a certain amount of rights that have to be protected.”

City leaders hope the extra set of eyes will hold officers and citizens more accountable.

The body cameras will not stream live – they will record throughout the day and at the end of each day the officers will be required to plug the camera up to a central computer and upload all of the video.

http://www.abc57.com/story/27600202/benton-harbor-public-safety-officers-suiting-up-with-body-cameras

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United Nations

More People Die From Homicide Than in Wars, U.N. Says

by NICK CUMMING-BRUCE and RICK GLADSTONE

GENEVA — Homicide and acts of personal violence kill more people than wars and are the third-leading cause of death among men aged 15 to 44, the United Nations said Wednesday in a new report.

Around the world, there were about 475,000 homicide deaths in 2012 and about six million since 2000, “making homicide a more frequent cause of death than all wars combined in this period,” the report states.

The figures are based on detailed data collection from 133 countries that together account for 88 percent of the global population. Figures are not yet available for 2013 or 2014.

The report, a collaboration of the World Health Organization, the United Nations Development Program and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, is intended to provide a base line for assessing efforts to address domestic violence, including child maltreatment; youth, intimate partner and sexual violence; and elder abuse, as well as homicides.

According to the report, one in four children has been physically abused, one in five girls has been sexually abused, and one in three women has been the victim of physical or sexual violence committed by an intimate partner at some point in life. The findings are based on analysis of a wide range of surveys; in the abuse of children, the report draws on information provided by adults.

Alexander Butchart, the health organization's coordinator for prevention of violence, said in an interview that he was astonished not just by the high rates of violence against women found in the survey, but also that the rates were similar in all regions.

More than one billion people, about one-seventh of the world's population, are affected by violence in their lifetime, according to Dr. Etienne Krug, a senior W.H.O. official. Dr. Krug told reporters in Geneva that the consequences of the deaths and injuries from acts of personal violence were themselves “a huge public health problem.”

Only one-third of the countries surveyed offer services to reduce or prevent the problem, such as anti-bullying programs in schools, home-nurse visits to families at risk, or support for caregivers to older people. Half the countries surveyed have no intervention services to protect or support victims of violence.

While most countries have enacted laws meant to prevent violence, the report said, only slightly more than half are enforcing them. Mental health services for victims are provided by fewer than half the countries surveyed, and by only 15 percent in Africa, where the need can be especially acute, the report said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/11/world/europe/united-nations-domestic-violence-report.html

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From the Department of Justice

Attorney General Eric Holder Delivers Remarks at the "My Brother's Keeper Summit" Closing Session

Memphis, TN

Thank you, Mayor [A.C.] Wharton – and thank you all for being here today. It's a privilege to join you in convening this important summit – to discuss and advance the groundbreaking My Brother's Keeper initiative. And it's a particular pleasure to do so here in the great city of Memphis – a city whose history is bound up in the work we gather to continue, and whose future will be written by the leaders, and especially the young people, in this crowd.

Over the centuries, Memphis has undergone a remarkable series of transformations – from a hub in the immoral slave trade, helping to fuel a 19th-century economy founded on oppression and built on the backs of those our nation held in chains; to a diverse, inclusive, and thriving urban center – known for its legendary music; vibrant, wonderful culture – and even better barbecue.

The Memphis of today is in some ways barely recognizable as the city it was just a few short decades ago – near the height of the Civil Rights Movement – when the struggle for equality played out in the streets and in national headlines. Yet the scars of this struggle, and the lingering impacts of legal and institutional discrimination, remain all around us. Over the years, the changes we've seen in Memphis have mirrored the ones that have swept across the nation – tearing down barriers and affirming the equality of all men and women. And all of this progress has come thanks to the power of engaged citizens like you, the promise of America's founding documents, and the passion of leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Like so many cities across the American South – from Selma, to Greensboro, to Birmingham; from Tuscaloosa, to Atlanta, to Meridian – Memphis is home to a number of historic sites of great importance to the Civil Rights Era. It was here, in 1968, that sanitation workers went on strike to call for higher wages – and to protest discrimination and dangerous working conditions. It was here, at the Mason Temple not far from where we now stand, that Dr. King famously declared that “[s]omething is happening in Memphis; something is happening with our world.” It was in that very same speech that he told us he had been to the mountaintop and had seen the Promised Land. And it was here, of course – the very next day, at the Lorraine Motel that's now a museum to the cause he championed, and the work we all must continue – that Dr. King was taken from us, far before his time.

In the decades since then, this city – and our nation – have taken extraordinary steps forward along the road to civil rights and equal justice. Let me be very clear: to discount this progress would be a grave disservice to those who peacefully marched, and organized, and sacrificed so much to make it possible. Yet it's equally true, as we gather today, that the work that these generations have left to us – of forging a more inclusive future and building a more perfect Union – is far from over. A great deal remains to be done. And as we speak – once again – something is happening in Memphis. Something is happening with our world.

In recent months, with the tragic deaths of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner, in New York City, we've seen the beginning of important national reflection and conversation. These incidents have brought long-simmering divides to the surface. They have sparked widespread public demonstrations. And they have focused a spotlight on the rifts that can develop between police officials and the citizens they are entrusted to serve and protect.

None of these concerns are limited to any one city, state, or geographic region. They are American issues that are truly national in scope. They demand a constructive response from our entire country. And, at their core, they are far larger than just the police and the community – implicating concerns about the fairness of our justice system as a whole, and the persistent opportunity gaps faced by far too many people throughout the nation – and by boys and young men of color in particular.

I know you heard from President Obama, via video message, earlier today. And I want to join him in expressing my gratitude – and admiration – for all that Memphis has done to assume a mantle of leadership befitting your unique history. Since the President launched his My Brother's Keeper initiative, in February – to address opportunity gaps and ensure that all young people can reach their full potential – the Obama Administration has been relying on leaders like you to help make a difference. We have been joining with cities and towns, businesses, and foundations that are taking steps to connect young people to mentoring, support networks, and the skills they need to find a good job – or go to college – and work their way into the middle class. And we've been encouraged by the great work that you're doing – under Mayor Wharton's leadership – to improve education, employment, healthcare, and justice. To help advance the work of our groundbreaking Defending Childhood Initiative and National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention. To expand mentoring and leverage new partnerships to increase access to post-secondary education. And to take up the My Brother's Keeper Community Challenge – an important call for communities to implement coherent cradle-to-college-and-career strategies for improving the life outcomes of all young people – regardless of who they are, where they come from, or the circumstances into which they are born.

All of this is vital, commendable, and extremely promising work. It has the potential to make a real difference in the lives, and the futures, of countless Americans. And as we gather this afternoon to advance it, to address concerns raised by peaceful protesters, and to rebuild trust where it has been eroded – I believe we also need to broaden both our focus and our impact. Make no mistake: out of the tragedies of the past few months and weeks comes an opportunity for this great nation that we must not – as we have too often in the past – squander. Our needed conversation must result in concrete action.

Last August, with these goals in mind, I launched a new “Smart on Crime” initiative to help strengthen communities, to improve public safety, and to make America's criminal justice system more effective – and more equitable. Our actions under this initiative are born of the crucial recognition that growing both tougher and smarter on crime means investing in innovations; striving for more just and more equal outcomes; and rejecting any policy or practice that has the potential to undermine sound law enforcement – or erode the sense of trust that must always exist between police officials and the citizens they serve.

As the My Brother's Keeper Task Force reported to the President last May – months before events in Ferguson captured headlines – we need to do more to strengthen the relationships between law enforcement and their communities. America's law enforcement leaders must ensure that every community can see that we are firmly committed to the impartial and aggressive enforcement of our laws – and the unbiased protection of everyone in this country. Bonds that have been broken must be restored. And bonds that never existed must now be created – because this is the fundamental promise that lies at the core of who we are, what we do, and what so many brave law enforcement officers sacrifice so much, every day, to achieve.

This is why I've been traveling around the country, in recent days and over the coming weeks and months, to meet with law enforcement, faith, and community leaders to strengthen our dialogue about cooperation and mutual trust. I'm pleased to note that we're holding the latest in this series of meetings later today, here in Memphis. And I want to emphasize that our shared dedication to integrity, equal justice, and the highest standards of fair and effective policing has always been at the heart of the Justice Department's efforts in every sector – and in every city and town – that our work touches.

This is the dedication that drove me, shortly after taking office as Attorney General, to order an extensive review of the Justice Department's Guidance Regarding the Use of Race by Federal Law Enforcement Agencies – a directive that was issued by the previous Administration in 2003. This guidance expressly prohibited federal agents from using race as a factor in their investigations unless they encountered specific, credible information that made race relevant to a particular case. But it did not prohibit the consideration of factors such as national origin, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. And it broadly exempted investigations and operations that implicated America's national security – an unduly expansive exemption that was the subject of legitimate criticism.

As Attorney General, I have repeatedly made clear that racial profiling by law enforcement is not only wrong, it is misguided and ineffective – because it can mistakenly focus investigative efforts, waste precious resources, and, ultimately, undermine the public trust. Like some of you, this is something I experienced, as a younger man, in a deeply personal way. I will never forget the frustration I felt at being pulled over twice, and my car searched, on the New Jersey Turnpike, even though I'm sure I wasn't speeding. Or the humiliation of being stopped by a police officer while simply running to a catch a movie – at night, in Georgetown, in Washington, D.C. – even though I was a federal prosecutor at the time.

These experiences bear out what research has consistently found: that, when those who come into contact with law enforcement feel that they are treated fairly, and that official actions are both appropriate and warranted, they are more likely to accept decisions by the authorities. They are more likely to obey the law. And they're more likely to cooperate with law enforcement in the future – even if they disagree with specific outcomes. This is especially true in communities where crime challenges are at their most acute – and where interactions with police officials are too often characterized by discord and distress. And that's why it is incumbent upon Justice Department leaders and others in law enforcement at every level to help bridge this divide – because trust in the system and compliance with the law must begin not with the fear of arrest, or even the threat of incarceration, but with respect for the institutions that guide our democracy – and for the laws, policies, and courageous men and women who keep us safe.

Over the past five years, we scrupulously reviewed the 2003 Guidance with an eye toward ensuring that all federal agents can fulfill their core law enforcement, public safety, and national security responsibilities with maximum legitimacy, accountability, and transparency. I am here to report that this review has reached its conclusion. And we have determined that – although the department's 2003 Use of Race Guidance prohibited racial profiling in a broad sense – it is time for us to do even more.

It's time to expand upon the safeguards that are currently in place. It's time to institute new protections for those who come into contact with federal authorities. And it's time to bring enhanced training, oversight, and accountability to this process – so that anyone responsible for isolated incidents of profiling can be held responsible, and singular acts of discrimination do not tarnish the exemplary work that's performed by the overwhelming majority of America's federal law enforcement officials each and every day.

Particularly in light of the recent incidents we've seen at the local level – and the widespread concerns, about trust in the criminal justice process, that so many have raised throughout the nation – it's imperative that we take every possible action to ensure strong and sound policing practices. We must instill the absolute highest standards of professionalism and integrity. And that's why – yesterday – I announced new Guidance that will supersede the directive issued in 2003, and will apply to all federal law enforcement agents conducting law enforcement activities, including when those activities relate to national security and intelligence.

This new Guidance will expand prohibited profiling criteria by explicitly banning profiling based not only on race – but also, for the very first time, on gender, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity. It will apply the same uniform standard to all investigations, national security operations, and intelligence activities conducted by federal law enforcement. It will govern the actions of every single FBI, DEA, and ATF agent; every U.S. Marshal, and every other federal law enforcement agent conducting law enforcement activities, including state and local law enforcement officers assigned to federal task forces. And it will include training, oversight, and accountability measures to ensure that all federal law enforcement activities and operations reflect our commitment to keeping the nation safe while upholding our most sacred values and the rights of all communities and individuals.

This constitutes a major and important step forward to ensure effective policing by federal authorities throughout the nation. It will institutionalize clear and critical strategies that are already in place in the field – and are currently enabling us to protect the safety of our nation and maintain the trust of our citizens. And it codifies positive policies and practices that are now being observed by the FBI, ATF, DEA, and U.S. Marshals Service.

Today, I urge state and local law enforcement agencies to look to this new federal guidance as a model – and to develop their own rigorous policies along similar lines. This will promote sound law enforcement techniques. It will help to move us toward the ultimate goal of ending racial profiling, once and for all. And it will enable every American to have greater confidence in the mechanisms in place to hold their government accountable; to work in concert with law enforcement to secure their communities; and to make public safety not only an obligation for those who have sworn to serve – but a promise that's fulfilled by citizens and public servants side by side.

Throughout the country, my colleagues and I are taking meaningful steps to make good on this promise – and to expand our ability to protect and empower all of our citizens. In meetings with law enforcement and community leaders – like the ones I've convened in Atlanta, Cleveland, and soon Memphis – we're opening new lines of communication and cooperation. Through the efforts of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division – which has opened more than 20 investigations into police departments across the country in the last five fiscal years – we're striving to correct unconstitutional policing practices.

In conjunction with the President's recent policy announcements – reforming the way the federal government equips state and local law enforcement, particularly with military-style equipment; investing in the use of body cameras and promoting proven community policing initiatives; and engaging law enforcement and community leaders to reduce crime while building public trust – I'm confident that all of these efforts will help to move us forward. And I can think of no better place to renew our shared commitment to this work than right here in Memphis.

Following today's summit, I will visit the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. King's room is preserved just as it was on the night he lost his life. He knew, when he arrived here – on April 3, 1968 – that threats had been made against him. He spoke frankly about these threats, and about his own mortality, in the Mason Temple speech that was to be his last. He acknowledged, at the age of just 39, that his life might soon come to a violent end. Yet his optimism did not waver. His dedication to nonviolence, and adherence to nonaggression, did not wane. And his unshakeable faith – in the Divine, in the promise of what this nation could become, and especially in his fellow citizens – remained stronger than ever.

Dr. King believed – as we believe – in the need for mutual respect, and the power of nonviolent, collective action. He recognized that nonviolence is the single best path to bring about enduring change. He once wrote that promoting nonviolence – and love – is the only way to “cut off the chain of hate.” And he called us all to remember that “the aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness.”

Today, in this moment of challenge – and far too much bitterness – let us reclaim these timeless principles. In this age of division, let us once more reach for peace. In this hour of darkness, let us live by Dr. King's shining example. And in this time of trial, and great consequence, let us remember the assurance of his last public speech: that the power to achieve transformational progress lies within us – because, in his immortal words, “. . . somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. And so just as I say we aren't going to let dogs or water hoses turn us around, we aren't going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on. We need all of you.”

As we take up this work anew; as we address the challenges now before us; and as we meet the great struggles of our time, I want you to know that we will continue to “need all of you” – in cities like Memphis – to keep pushing us forward. We will keep relying on you to honor the history of progress that lives in hallowed places across this city, as in so many others. And we will never stop working – with optimism, with commitment, and without delay – to build renewed trust and forge that more perfect Union – that beloved community – that remains our common pursuit. To keep walking, together, toward the Promised Land. And to do everything in our power to ensure that – in every case, in every circumstance, and in every community – justice is done.

Thank you.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-eric-holder-delivers-remarks-my-brothers-keeper-summit-closing-session

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Attorney General Holder, Secretary Duncan, Announce Guidance Package on Providing Quality Education Services to America's Confined Youth

Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today announced a Correctional Education Guidance Package aimed at helping states and local agencies strengthen the quality of education services provided to America's estimated 60,000 young people in confinement every day.

This guidance package builds on recommendations in the My Brother's Keeper Task Force report released in May to “reform the juvenile and criminal justice systems to reduce unnecessary interactions for youth and to enforce the rights of incarcerated youth to a quality education.” Today's guidance package is a roadmap that states and local agencies can use to improve the quality of educational services for confined youth.

“In this great country, all children deserve equal access to a high-quality public education - and this is no less true for children in the juvenile justice system,” said Attorney General Holder. “At the Department of Justice, we are working tirelessly to ensure that every young person who's involved in the system retains access to the quality education they need to rebuild their lives and reclaim their futures. We hope and expect this guidance will offer a roadmap for enhancing these young people's academic and social skills, and reducing the likelihood of recidivism.”

“Students in juvenile justice facilities need a world-class education and rigorous coursework to help them successfully transition out of facilities and back into the classroom or the workforce becoming productive members of society,” said Secretary Duncan. “Young people should not fall off track for life just because they come into contact with the justice system.”

“Today's announcement directly responds to the call to action made by President Obama's My Brother's Keeper Initiative,” said Broderick Johnson, White House Cabinet Secretary and Chair of the My Brother's Keeper Task Force. “It is imperative that we ensure that incarcerated youth are receiving a quality education and provide them with the necessary tools for a second chance. I applaud Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary Arne Duncan for highlighting this critical issue.”

The guidance package includes four components:

•  A set of Guiding Principles for Providing High-Quality Education in Juvenile Justice Secure Care Settings, outlines five principles and supporting core activities to improve education practices, or implement new ones. Authored jointly by the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice, the guide is meant to help agencies and facilities serving youth in correctional education provide education services comparable to those available to students in community schools.

•  A Dear Colleague Letter on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act for Students with Disabilities in Correctional Facilities from Education's Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to clarify state and public agency obligations to ensure the provision of a free appropriate public education to eligible students with disabilities in correctional facilities.

•  A Dear Colleague Letter on the Civil Rights of Students in Juvenile Justice Residential Facilities clarifying how the Federal civil rights laws that prohibit race, color, national origin, sex, religion and disability discrimination against students in traditional public schools also apply to educational services and supports provided to youth in juvenile justice residential facilities.

•  A Dear Colleague Letter on Access to Federal Pell Grants for Students in Juvenile Justice Facilities explains the extent to which confined youth may be eligible for the Federal Pell Grant Program, and is accompanied by a fact sheet for students and a detailed set of questions and answers for institutions of higher education

“High-quality correctional education is thus one of the most effective crime-prevention tools we have,” Attorney General Holder and Secretary Duncan wrote in a dear colleague letter to chief state school officers and state attorneys general. “High-quality Correctional education – including postsecondary correctional education, which can be supported by Federal Pell Grants – has been shown to measurably reduce re-incarceration rates. Less crime means not only lower prison costs – it also means safer communities.”

The President has set a goal that, by 2020, our nation will have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world and that all Americans complete at least one year or more of college or career training. The Administration believes that even youth in correctional facilities can play their part in helping us achieve that vision.

Providing young people in confinement with access to the education they need is one of the most powerful and cost-effectives strategies for ensuring they become productive members of their communities. The average cost to confine a juvenile is $88,000 per year – and a recent study showed that about 55 percent of youth were rearrested within 12 months of release. Inmates of all ages are half as likely to go back to jail if they participate in higher education – even compared to inmates with similar histories.

This joint effort by the Departments of Education and Justice is one of a number of notable actions that they have taken to ensure that education programming in juvenile justice residential facilities is comparable to services provided in any school. The departments have been working together to help communities reduce the number of youth entering the justice system and to ensure that those in the system return to their communities with dignity, skills and viable education and employment opportunities including the following efforts this year:

•  Justice and Education jointly released a School Climate and Discipline Guidance Package to provide schools with a roadmap to reduce the usage of exclusionary discipline practice and clarify schools' civil rights obligation to not discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin in the administration of school discipline.

•  Education released the results of the 2011-2012 Civil Rights Data Collection, which includes school discipline data from most every school in the country and certain juvenile justice facilities.

•  Justice and Education filed a joint Statement of Interest in the G.F. v. Contra Costa County lawsuit in support of confined youth with disabilities who alleged that they were placed in solitary confinement for 22 hours or more per day, discriminated against on the basis of their disability, and denied their right to a free, appropriate public education.

•  Attorney General Holder and Secretary Duncan met with leaders from 22 agencies for a Federal Interagency Reentry Council meeting to discuss actions to reduce reentry barriers to employment, health, housing and education for individuals who are transitioning from incarceration to community.

•  Justice and Education engaged with various philanthropies to commission a School Discipline Consensus Project, led by the Council of State Governments, to bring together practitioners from the fields of education, juvenile justice, behavioral health and law enforcement to develop recommendations to address the school-to-prison pipeline, including recommendations for strengthening services to youth in confinement.

•  Justice and Education coordinated and supported the National Leadership Summit on School Climate and Discipline in Washington, D.C. The summit focused on deepening partnerships between local and state education and justice officials, and community stakeholders.

All youth are deserving of an appropriate, high-quality education. This guidance package clarifies that obligation for confined youth, as well as advocating that they have a real chance at a second chance in their lives. A solid education that unleashes and expands their potential to contribute to their communities is a step in the right direction.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-holder-secretary-duncan-announce-guidance-package-providing-quality

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Attorney General Holder Announces Federal Law Enforcement Agencies To Adopt Stricter Policies To Curb Profiling

WASHINGTON – U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced Monday that the Justice Department will take new steps to bar profiling by federal law enforcement agencies, building upon a 2003 policy that had previously only addressed the consideration of race and ethnicity in conducting federal investigations. The new policy will address the use of other characteristics as well—including national origin, gender, gender identity, religion, and sexual orientation—and applies a uniform standard to all law enforcement, national security, and intelligence activities conducted by the Department's law enforcement components. The new guidance also applies to state and local law enforcement law officers who participate in federal law enforcement task forces.

The issuance of the new policy completes a thorough review first launched by the Attorney General shortly after taking office, and reaffirms the federal government's deep commitment to ensuring that its law enforcement agencies conduct their activities in an unbiased manner.

In announcing the new policy, the Attorney General said that biased law enforcement practices not only perpetuate negative stereotypes and promote mistrust of law enforcement, but also are counterproductive to the goal of good policing.

“As Attorney General, I have repeatedly made clear that racial profiling by law enforcement is not only wrong, it is misguided and ineffective – because it can mistakenly focus investigative efforts, waste precious resources and, ultimately, undermine the public trust. Particularly in light of recent incidents we've seen at the local level – and the concerns about trust in the criminal justice process which so many have raised throughout the nation – it's imperative that we take every possible action to institute sound, fair and strong policing practices.”

The Attorney General added: “With this new Guidance, we take a major and important step forward to ensure effective policing by federal law enforcement officials – as well as state and local law enforcement participating in federal task forces throughout the nation. This Guidance is the product of five years of scrupulous review. It codifies important new protections for those who come into contact with federal law enforcement agents and their partners. And it brings enhanced training, oversight, and accountability to federal law enforcement across the country, so that isolated acts do not tarnish the exemplary work that's performed by the overwhelming majority of America's hard-working law enforcement officials each and every day."

The new policy, which is spelled out in a memorandum circulated Monday, instructs that, in making routine or spontaneous law enforcement decisions, officers may not use race, ethnicity, gender, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity to any degree, unless listed characteristics apply to a suspect description. Under the policy, federal law enforcement officers will be prohibited from acting on the belief that possession of a listed characteristic by itself signals a higher risk of criminality.

In all activities other than routine or spontaneous law enforcement, officers may consider the listed personal characteristics only to the extent there is trustworthy information, relevant to the locality or timeframe, that links individuals with a listed characteristic to a particular criminal incident, criminal scheme, organization, a threat to national or homeland security, a violation of federal immigration law or an authorized intelligence activity. In relying on any of the listed characteristics, an officer must also reasonably believe that the activity to be undertaken is merited under the totality of the circumstances.

A copy of the memorandum outlining the new policy is available here.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-holder-announces-federal-law-enforcement-agencies-adopt-stricter-policies

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Washington

President Obama: CIA's Post-9/11 Torture Was 'Contrary to Who We Are'

by F. Brinley Bruton

LONDON— CIA intelligence-gathering techniques used in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and detailed in the Senate's torture report are "contrary to who we are," President Barack Obama said in an exclusive interview.

Asked whether he agreed with George W. Bush's view that CIA interrogators should be considered "patriots," Obama said they "do a really tough job and they do it really well."

But the president insisted that "we've got better ways of doing things" than resorting to the "brutal" tactics chronicled in the report.

"We took some steps that were contrary to who we are, contrary to our values," Obama told José Díaz-Balart of Telemundo/MSNBC on Tuesday.

Even though "a lot of folks" worked very hard to keep the country safe during the uncertain times after terrorists hit the Pentagon and World Trade Center, Obama said some of the actions described in the report "constituted torture" and were "counterproductive."

"Often times, when somebody is being subjected to these kinds of techniques ... they're willing to say anything in order to alleviate, you know, the pain and the stress that they're feeling," he added.

Obama also said he was not worried that similar interrogation methods were being used today.

"I've been very explicit about how our intelligence gathering needs to conduct itself, and explicitly prohibited these kinds of techniques," he said. "And so anybody who was doing the kinds of things that are described in the report would not simply be keeping something from me, they would be directly violating the orders that I've issued as president and commander in chief."

When asked by Diaz-Balart how he might have reacted if he'd been president on 9/11, Obama said he didn't want to discuss hypothetical situations.

However, he added that "nobody can fully understand what it was like to be responsible for the safety and security of the American people in the aftermath of the worst attack on our national soil."

Obama said it was important that the Senate's torture report be released despite the intelligence community's fears that details within it could trigger anti-American violence overseas.

"One of the things that sets us apart from other countries is when we make mistakes, we admit them," he said.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/cia-torture-report/president-obama-cias-post-9-11-torture-was-contrary-who-n265276

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Connecticut

Parents of Sandy Hook kids file notices of wrongful death claims

by Michele Richinick

As the small New England community of Newtown , Connecticut approaches the two-year mark on Sunday of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, some of the families of the 20 children killed in the tragedy are taking action. The parents of nearly half of the first-graders who died on Dec. 14, 2012 have filed, or are expected to put into place, notices of wrongful death claims on behalf of their children.

As of Monday, at least eight families took the first step in pursuing possible legal action for the deaths of their children, including Charlotte Bacon, Daniel Barden, Dylan Hockley, Ana Marquez-Greene, Grace McDonnell, Jack Pinto, Jessica Rekos and Benjamin Wheeler, according to Connecticut probate court records. Their action – opening an “estate” in the child's name – allows family members to become representatives on behalf of the individuals who died. The move, however, doesn't indicate the relatives ultimately will file a lawsuit in superior court.

The Hartford Courant reported the news on Monday night. The newspaper also reported that two other families were considering filing wrongful death claims on behalf of their kids.

Paul Knierim, probate court administrator in Connecticut, told msnbc that employees cannot discuss specific cases.

Once family members are designated as “administrators” in probate court, actual legal action then occurs in superior court, Knierim said. Individuals, companies and governmental agencies legally can be at fault in a wrongful death claim if they were found to have acted negligently and intentionally.

The 2012 shooting took the lives of 26 people — 20 first-graders and six educators — as well as the gunman and his mother. The tragedy was the second-deadliest school shooting in American history, after the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech that killed 32 people. Officials who investigated the Sandy Hook shooting found “no conclusive motive” nor indication of why the gunman chose the nearly 400-student school as his target.

The Courant also reported that some of the families have considered broader legal action in response to the shooting, including a suit against a gun manufacturer, the insurance company that holds the policy for the Newtown home where the gunman, Adam Lanza, lived and the town itself.

Earlier this year, two Newtown parents expressed to the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission how the local town agencies failed their families when it provided initial assistance after the shooting. The parents cited delays in the notification of direct contact to the superintendent's office and information about a trauma team that had been established to assist surviving relatives during the recovery process. The local town government didn't excel at the same level as the state agencies during its initial and long-term assistance for Newtown residents, David Wheeler, whose son Benjamin died in the tragedy, told the state commission in June. Recently re-elected Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy created the 16-member panel to review policies on school safety, mental health and gun-violence prevention after the shooting.

The 2012 tragedy renewed a nationwide debate about gun control. Many of the victims' family members have become gun-control advocates and have visited Capitol Hill to push lawmakers to strengthen gun laws.

Ahead of the two-year mark of the Sandy Hook shooting, the groups Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America released a report Tuesday on the nearly 100 U.S. school shootings that have occurred since Newtown. The list now includes 95 separate incidents at elementary, middle and high schools, as well as on college campuses. Seventy percent of the kindergarten-through-12th grade incidents in which the shooter's age was known were perpetrated by minors, according to the report. In more than a third of all the incidents, at least one person was shot following an argument that escalated and a firearm was present.

“Here's the reality: this country has experienced 95 school shootings since the tragedy at Sandy Hook. The other reality is that Congress is complicit in these murders if we continue to sit back and do nothing to reverse this trend,” Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said Tuesday during a press conference on Capitol Hill.

“Students and teachers shouldn't have to fear entering their classrooms each morning,” added Rep. Elizabeth Esty, Democrat of Connecticut.

Everytown and Moms Demand Action also published a new ad Tuesday that shows American students preparing for lockdown. In the 60-second spot, titled, “We can't hide from gun violence,” a teacher and her classroom full of students prepare for a lockdown after a voice on the intercom relays the situation. The video ends with a voice on the intercom signaling that the lockdown has ended, and a narrator asking when adults will take action to reduce gun violence in the country.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/parents-kids-killed-sandy-hook-file-wrongful-death-claims

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Washington

Can Congress keep putting off a vote on the war on ISIS?

by Stephanie Condon

Members of Congress -- ranging from liberals like Sen. Barbara Boxer and libertarians like Sen. Rand Paul to hawks like Sen. Marco Rubio -- largely agree that they should hold a vote to formally authorize the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Yet five months after ISIS emerged as a threat, and about three months after the United States assembled a large international coalition against the group, the process is only just now starting in earnest. A handful of lawmakers have introduced their own versions of an authorization for the use of military force (AUMF), and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday finally received a formal request for an AUMF from the administration.

With just days left before the 113th Congress is scheduled to adjourn, it seems unlikely Congress will vote on the matter before next year, when the new Republican majority takes over the Senate. Some lawmakers have suggested this is preferable. Others say it's unacceptable. The impact of holding off on the vote is also up for debate.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, one of the more forceful voices for a war vote in Congress, argued in the Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday that Congress shouldn't adjourn this year without holding the vote.

"We weaken our nation when we don't take seriously the most solemn responsibility Congress has, which is to engage around the authorization at the beginning - not five months in - about whether we should initiate war," he said. "I think it would be foolish to leave here this week or next, to adjourn."

For those skeptical of President Obama's current authority to engage in combat against ISIS, "every day we have been on offense without Congress we believe is an unauthorized war," Kaine continued. "We believe it's a congressional abdication of our oath of office and of our fundamental constitutional responsibilities."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky -- who will most likely serve as the Senate's majority leader when Republicans take control next year -- believes Congress should vote on the matter next year, when the newly-elected members have been sworn in, his office tells CBS News.

McConnell told CNN this week, "We'll address it at the beginning of next year."

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, applauded the members of his committee on Tuesday for finally getting the ball rolling, and he thanked Secretary of State John Kerry for testifying at Tuesday's hearing. Still, "I think it's better to start this at a time when we can finish it," he said. "With a Congress, by the way, that will deal with this start to finish."

Debating the AUMF right before the Congress adjourns could have damaging consequences, he suggested. "We weaken our nation when we begin a process like that and don't actually enact it in law."

If Congress does wait until next year, it may mean that lawmakers give Mr. Obama a more sweeping war authorization, as the administration is asking for, national security expert Ryan Goodman pointed out to CBS News. Goodman is a law professor at New York University and co-editor-chief of the blog Just Security.

"A Republican-controlled Senate increases the likelihood of a more expansive authorization with no time limitation on the authorization and little or no restriction on the deployment of ground combat forces, because many Republicans believe such restrictions would unduly tie the president's hands or constitute so-called micromanagement," Goodman said.

Indeed, during Tuesday's hearing, Committee Chairman Robert Menendez, D-New Jersey, questioned why his draft AUMF -- which "gives the president the ability to do everything he is doing now and then some" -- wasn't expansive enough for Kerry's liking. Kerry said the draft was "very close to what the president could support."

The secretary of state also assured Congress that, from the administration's point of view, prolonging the debate over the war authorization wouldn't damage the ongoing combat operations.

"Are you concerned about the message that sends?" asked Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho.

Kerry responded, "I don't think that's going to be read as anything other than what it is, a legitimate process and discussion."

Furthermore, he added, the president and administration are "absolutely convinced" they already have the authority to engage in combat against ISIS under the 2001 AUMF. That AUMF granted the executive branch authority to fight whomever was responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Kerry made the case that ISIS is simply an outgrowth of al Qaeda.

"In my judgment, everybody knows this group merely changed its name, but it's been al Qaeda in Iraq," he said.

Both Democrats and Republicans, however, have questioned that premise. "I think Congress would've crafted that authorization different in 2001" had they known it would be used like this, 13 years later, Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Maryland, said.

Meanwhile, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Delaware, pointed out that while the debate is prolonged, the bill for the fight against ISIS continues to rack up.

"We cannot write another blank check for war," he said.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/can-congress-keep-putting-off-a-vote-on-the-war-on-isis/

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Senate to release report on Bush-era interrogation techniques and policies

by Ed Payne and Evan Perez

U.S. Marines are on high alert. So are the CIA and the White House, for that matter.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle also are ready to enter the fray.

They're all geared up over the Senate Intelligence Committee's $50 million investigation of Bush-era CIA interrogation tactics on detainees in the years after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The long-delayed report on the use of torture -- "enhanced interrogation techniques" -- by the U.S. government is expected to be released Tuesday morning.

This won't be the full report, but its 480-page executive summary that will be released. There will also be a shorter Republican counter-assessment and the CIA's own assessment. The complete report totals more than 6,000 pages.

The release comes six years into Barack Obama's presidency and in the waning days of Democratic Party control in the Senate.

Ugly new details

Officials briefed on the report say it will provide ugly new details of the CIA program, including specifics on detainee deaths and a portrayal of a haphazardly assembled and poorly managed program. The report will detail 20 findings, plus 20 case studies that the Senate Democrats say illustrate the CIA's misrepresentations about the program. The hunt for Osama bin Laden is one of the 20 case studies.

Countries that cooperated with the CIA, hosting black site prisons and assisting in transferring detainees, will be identified only obliquely and not by name. CIA employees, referred to by pseudonyms in the report, won't be identified. However, the CIA pushed for the pseudonyms to be redacted because other information in the report could be used to determine who the employees are.

The Senate report was conceived initially as a bipartisan review of the CIA program, though Republican senators pulled support from the investigation soon after it began. Its findings probably will end up being seen through the prism of the deeply partisan divide over the Bush-era counter-terrorism tactics and whether they actually produced intelligence to keep the nation safe.

'These are good people'

CNN's Candy Crowley asked former President George W. Bush about the report in a recent interview.

"I'll tell you this," Bush said after clarifying that he hadn't read the Senate report yet. "We're fortunate to have men and women who work hard at the CIA serving on our behalf. These are patriots. And whatever the report says, if it diminishes their contributions to our country, it is way off base. I knew the directors, the deputy directors, I knew a lot of the operators. These are good people. Really good people. And we're lucky as a nation to have them."

The central conclusion by the Democratic-led Senate report, according to people briefed on the investigation, is that CIA employees exceeded the guidelines set by Justice Department memos that authorized the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" and that the agency misrepresented to Congress and the White House what it was doing.

More than 100 detainees went through the CIA's detention program, and about a third were subjected to those techniques, which included waterboarding, exposure to low temperatures, slapping and sleep deprivation. Three were waterboarded, which is considered the harshest of the techniques.

The agency now disavows the program as a mistake that it won't repeat.

But it is also trying to walk a fine line, by sticking to claims that valuable intelligence on al Qaeda and in the hunt for bin Laden emerged from the harsh interrogations of detainees.

For some Republicans and CIA supporters, there's still a dispute about whether techniques such as waterboarding constitute torture.

The Justice Department twice has investigated the conduct of CIA employees involved in the program and decided not to bring charges.

On alert

Anticipating a backlash across the Middle East with the release of the report, thousands of Marines have been put on a higher state of alert. Should a U.S. Embassy or base come under threat, the units can be deployed within hours.

The Marines are all part of forces positioned in key areas to respond to a crisis.

"I've directed all of our combatant commanders to have all their commands on alert because we want to be prepared, just in case," Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Tuesday. "We've not detected anything specific anywhere, but we want to be prepared, and we are."

A house divided

President Obama, who was an early critic of the CIA program as a senator, has tried to be more even-handed since becoming President. "We tortured some folks," he said in August, adding that there was a need to recall the context of the era, including the fear of follow-up terrorist attacks against the United States.

"In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we did some things that were wrong -- we did a whole lot of things that were right, but we did some things that were contrary to our values. ... I understand why it happened. It's important when we look back to recall how afraid people were."

The report has also opened a rare public rift between the current White House and some Democrats on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee and is usually a defender of the CIA, has unleashed stinging criticism of the agency after what she said was a series of cover-ups, including the destruction of interrogation tapes.

"The interrogations and the conditions of confinement at the CIA detention sites were far different and far more harsh than the way the CIA had described them to us," Feinstein said on the Senate floor in March.

In a phone call Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry asked Feinstein to consider the broader implications of the timing of the report's release, said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.

"A lot is going on in the world, and he wanted to make sure that foreign policy implications were being appropriately factored into timing," Psaki said. "These include our ongoing efforts against ISIL and the safety of Americans being held hostage around the world."

During the call, Kerry made it clear "that the timing is, of course, her choice," Psaki added.

Feinstein also said some of the report's findings challenge the "societal and constitutional" values of America.

"We have to get this report out," she told the Los Angeles Times in an interview Sunday. "Anybody who reads this is going to never let this happen again."

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/09/politics/cia-torture-report/

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Sexual threats, other CIA methods detailed in Senate report

by Mark Hosenball and Jeff Mason

The Senate Intelligence Committee prepared to release a report on the CIA's anti-terrorism tactics on Tuesday and U.S. officials moved to shore up security at American facilities around the world as a precaution.

The report will include graphic details about sexual threats and other harsh interrogation techniques the CIA meted out to captured militants in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, sources familiar with the document said on Monday.

The report, which Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein said would be released on Tuesday, describes how al Qaeda operative Abdel Rahman al Nashiri, suspected mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, was threatened with a buzzing power drill, the sources said. The drill was never actually used on him.

It documents how at least one detainee was sexually threatened with a broomstick, the sources said.

Preparing for a worldwide outcry from the publication of such graphic details, the White House and U.S. intelligence officials said on Monday they had shored up security of U.S. facilities worldwide.

The report, which took years to produce, charts the history of the CIA's "Rendition, Detention and Interrogation" program, which President George W. Bush authorized after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Bush ended many aspects of the program before leaving office, and President Barack Obama swiftly banned "enhanced interrogation techniques," which critics say are torture, after his 2009 inauguration.

A pair of Republican lawmakers called the release of the report "reckless and irresponsible."

"We are concerned that this release could endanger the lives of Americans overseas, jeopardize U.S. relations with foreign partners, potentially incite violence, create political problems for our allies, and be used as a recruitment tool for our enemies," Senators Marco Rubio and Jim Risch said in a statement on Monday.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/09/us-usa-cia-torture-idUSKBN0JM24I20141209

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CIA Offers New Security Checks for ‘Torture Report' Spies

U.S. spies are worried the long-awaited Senate review will paint targets on their backs. So the CIA is offering to help erase those targets.

by Shane Harris

The CIA has offered to perform security assessments for former intelligence officers that may be identified in the so-called Senate torture report, expected to be released Tuesday.

Most of these officers are not identified by their real names in the report, which was drawn up by the Democrats of the Senate Intelligence Committee. But the CIA remains concerned that close readers will be able to figure out, based on cross-referencing and context clues, who the anonymous officers are. (Some very senior and well-known officials will be mentioned by name in the report.)

Current and former CIA personnel say they are fearful for their personal safety, and that of their families, should they be identified after the report is released and become targets for harassment or retribution. So the agency has agreed to determine their degree of exposure to any risk of identification, according to one senior intelligence official who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “They will help people assess their individual situations, assessing their homes, and helping them keep a low profile,” the official told The Daily Beast.

Roughly 15 agency employees were directly involved in running the program, but the official was not aware of how many had accepted the CIA's offer of assistance. The CIA would not be providing security, this person said. The agency didn't respond to a request for comment.

Separately, a lawmaker said the CIA had briefed him on the possible need for “personnel moves” related to the security fallout from the interrogation report. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the security preparations publicly.

The CIA has long been concerned that if any of its personnel were identified following the release of the report, which details interrogation techniques President Obama has called torture, it could jeopardize employees' physical safety and make it impossible for them to work overseas. This issue was a central focus of debate between the committee and the Obama administration, which argued in favor of heavily redacting a 600-page summary so that it's difficult to know who each anonymous officer mentioned or referred to in the report actually is.

Identifying current officers could also jeopardize any individuals with whom they're in contact in foreign countries, including spies that the agency is running. “As soon as you start naming names, that person and everyone he's connected to come up for grabs,” said a former intelligence official who hasn't read the report but has spoken with current employees at the agency about their concerns.

In addition, intelligence officials are concerned that foreign governments that are described in the report as having helped the United States to detain and interrogate prisoners might resist cooperating in the future on controversial operations.

“Countries who are outed for having supported our interrogation program are going to be less likely to support us in the future,” said Gary Berntsen, who spent more than 20 years in the CIA, including three assignments as chief of station in the Middle East and Latin America. “Would you engage in another clandestine program with a country who outs you in the press? They won't trust us. That's a big problem.”

Bernsten said that releasing the report could endanger U.S. personnel chiefly in Iraq, Jordan, and Turkey, as well as other Persian Gulf countries—and especially those nations now struggling with Islamic extremist movements.

“There are now dozens of countries across the Middle East and Africa where those organizations that are members of ISIS or al Qaeda would be spurred to conduct additional operations against the United States. I don't want to test that theory, however—and I see [the release] as unnecessary,” he said, adding that U.S. personnel working in Middle Eastern countries in particular will be at risk for attack. “Why fan the flames on this?”

It's an argument that Mieke Eoyang—a former staffer on the House Intelligence Committee who now directs the National Security Program at Third Way, a Washington think tank—has trouble swallowing.

“Is ISIS really able to rally people in the streets over waterboarding and sleep deprivation after they've beheaded people? It seems hard to imagine that they have the moral high ground here,” she told The Daily Beast. “However, aside from the techniques themselves, if there were slights against religious texts or icons, that might inflame the Muslim world more generally. If that's in the report, you have to ask why we did it and if it was actually effective.”

Last week, Bloomberg View reported that Secretary of State John Kerry raised concerns with the Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman, Dianne Feinstein, about how the release of the report might affect the United States' fight against ISIS, as well as the safety of Americans held overseas by terrorist groups. Kerry called the senator on Friday “because a lot is going on in the world, and he wanted to make sure that foreign-policy implications were being appropriately factored into timing,” said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.

Rep. Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on CNN that releasing the report at this time would put America at risk of attack, calling the Senate committee's decision “a terrible idea.” Rogers added, “Foreign partners are telling us this will cause violence and deaths. Our own intelligence community has assessed that this will cause violence and deaths.” Former CIA Director Michael Hayden told the right-leaning Newsmax TV that the reaction to the report would make the CIA less willing to undertake risky but necessary operations and would result in “an American espionage service that is timid and friendless and that really is a danger to the U.S.”

Those concerns weren't enough, however, to stall the report's release. The White House was informed by the committee on Monday that the report would be released the following day.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/08/cia-offers-new-security-checks-for-torture-report-spies.html

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Missouri

Michael Brown's federal autopsy report released

by The Associated Press

A federal autopsy in the Ferguson police shooting reached similar conclusions to those performed by local officials and a private examiner hired by 18-year-old Michael Brown's family, documents show.

The Armed Forces Medical Examiner System's autopsy on Brown, conducted at the request of the Department of Justice, was among grand jury documents that St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch released Monday with little explanation. Other documents include transcripts of eight federal interviews of possible witnesses to Brown's shooting in early August; police radio traffic; and an alleged audio recording of the shots fired by Wilson.

Many of documents contained information that was similar or identical to the materials that McCulloch released on Nov. 24 after a grand jury decided not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in Brown's shooting death. A transcript of testimony from an Air Force pathologist who performed the Justice Department autopsy was included in the November documents, but the autopsy report itself was not released until Monday.

The transcripts of the witness interviews that were released Monday were already included in previously released testimony heard by the grand jury.

The Justice Department autopsy found that Brown died from multiple gunshot wounds and had severe head and chest injuries, though it noted the chest injury might have been an exit wound from a shot that entered Brown's arm. The autopsy also found a minor gunshot wound to Brown's right hand was evidence of close range discharge of a firearm.

Wilson told the local grand jury that investigated the shooting that his gun went off during a tussle with Brown through the open window of his police car moments before Brown was fatally shot. The Justice Department is conducting a separate civil rights investigation into Brown's death.

The Associated Press has reviewed all of the grand jury documents that have been released and none appear to include a transcript or a recording of a two-hour FBI and county police interview with Brown's friend, Dorian Johnson, who was with Brown when he was shot.

However, the first batch of documents did include seven video clips of Johnson's media interviews, as well as a transcript of his testimony to the grand jury.

Johnson was walking with Brown when they encountered Wilson in a Ferguson street. Wilson fatally shot Brown, who was unarmed, after a struggle.

Johnson painted Wilson as provoking the violence, while Wilson said Brown was the aggressor. He also said Wilson fired at least one shot at his friend while Brown was running away.

The transcript released in November notes that jurors listened to a recording of an Aug. 13 interview of Johnson by the federal and county investigators.

Ed Magee, a spokesman for McCulloch, acknowledged earlier Monday that his office didn't release copies of FBI interviews with some witnesses at the request of the Justice Department. An FBI spokeswoman in St. Louis declined comment.

"Those reports are not ours to release," Magee said.

Hours later, Magee advised reporters that "as promised, additional information concerning the grand jury testimony on the Michael Brown/Darren Wilson investigation is now ready to be released."

Grand jury investigations are closed to the public. When McCulloch released documents last month, he said that he wanted transparency and believed "everyone will be able to examine that same evidence and come to their own conclusion."

Wilson resigned from the Ferguson Police Department in late November.

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2014/12/michael_brown_federal_autopsy.html

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California

A NAZI surprise: 'Swastika wrapping paper' stuns shopper and sparks fury at chain store

by Gareth Roberts

Walgreens - the US's largest chain of pharmacies - has pulled the paper from its shelves after a complaint from a customer in California

Gift wrapping that featured the adopted symbol of Adolf Hitler's political party has sparked a furious response from a shocked customer.

Hot on the heels of Nazi Christmas baubles being sold online, Cheryl Shapiro spotted rolls of present paper strewn with a swastika design as she shopped in Walgreens in Northridge, California.

The former interior design told ABC News: "It blew me away. What the hell was that doing on there?

"I said, 'I want it out of the store, but I wanted this to go national. I want this out of the stores nationally'. How could the paper go through quality control and not be seen?"

The swastika is considered to be a sacred and positive image in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism but is commonly associated with Adolf Hitler and the murderous regime of the Nazi Party.

The shop immediately removed the wrapping from its shelves and contacted the Walgreens HQ.

And now bosses at the company, the largest chain of pharmacies in the US with 8,217 stores, say the rest of their shops will follow suit.

"We're in the process of removing the product from our stores," Walgreens spokesman Phil Caruso told ABC News.

Last week, a giant swastika was spotted in the swimming pool of a luxury mansion by a police helicopter flying overhead in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina.

Police said the unnamed homeowner would not be charged as the swastika is on private land and was not on display to promote Nazism.

The symbol has reportedly been in the pool for more than a decade.

In August, McDonald's sacked a worker and issued an apology after a customer found a swastika sign drawn into her snack.

Charleigh Matice ordered a chicken sandwich at a McDonald's drive-thru in Morehead City, North Carolina, and was gobsmacked to see the symbol etched into the bun with melted butter.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/nazi-surprise-swastika-wrapping-paper-4774188

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Texas

Police Chief David Brown compliments police associations, touts community policing after Ferguson, Eric Garner protests

by Tristan Hallman

Dallas Police Chief David Brown complimented some of his biggest critics — officer association leaders — and touted the department's community initiatives in light of a wave of protests against police locally and nationally.

During a briefing of the City Council's Public Safety Committee, council member Sandy Greyson asked about how Brown and the department were reacting to strong reactions to grand juries declining to indict officers who killed unarmed men in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City. Dallas has seen a number of demonstrations recently after those decisions, leading to a handful of arrests after some of the protesters walked onto Interstate 35.

Brown responded that the policing “profession is under quite a bit of scrutiny across the country for something that did not happen in Dallas.”

He noted that officers in Dallas deal with hundreds of thousands of interactions and arrests each year without major incidents.

“But one incident in another state and the whole department gets painted with a broad brush,” he said.

Brown said in light of the national events, he is grateful for the four major police association leaders' “strong advocacy” of the department's officers — even though he often disagrees with them on policy, management and firing decisions.

He noted, as he has in the past, that he has tried to invest for officers on the front end through youth programs, community events, crime watch and community policing strategies.

Brown said those programs are an investment that “pay dividends and multiples” to build trust.

Brown noted that there has been some criticism of those programs. After all, an officer playing sports with kids means they're not spending their workday catching crooks.

But council members expressed support. Greyson said she was originally a skeptic of those programs.

“You've made me a believer,” she said.

http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/2014/12/police-chief-david-brown-compliments-police-associations-touts-community-policing-after.html/

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Catholic theologians call for community policing

by Paul Moses

About 200 Catholic theologians have signed a statement that calls for a "radical reconsideration of policing policy in our nation." Some would no doubt question what theologians know about police work, but their effort to bring Catholic teaching to the controversies surrounding the police slayings of Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y., and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.,deserves to be read and discussed.

One of the key points is support for "the proven, effective results of community policing. Rather than perpetuating an `us versus them' mentality, a community policing approach is more consonant with our Catholic convictions that we are all each other's keepers and should work together for the common good of our communities."

It's a good point. New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton at one time scoffed at community policing, saying cops weren't meant to be social workers. He shouldn't have. If community policing were practiced in New York, police wouldn't simply patrol unlit stairways in housing projects; they'd take steps to get the lights turned on. That might've helped Akai Gurley, the unarmed 28-year-old man a tense police officer accidentally shot to death in the lightless stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project last month.

The theologians cited Catholic teaching on “legitimate defense” as well, saying use of force is justified only when an aggressor poses a grave and imminent threat to the officer's or other persons' lives. As the video of his death shows, Eric Garner did not pose such a threat to the officers who subdued him.

The theologians also call for the creation of independent boards and special prosecutors to investigate allegations of police misconduct, a step police unions have always fought.

The American law enforcement community has long had an outsized Catholic presence, and the church's teaching on the common good is absorbed into the ethic of service one finds among police officers. Given the Catholic influence still found in many big-city police departments, the theologians have a particular contribution to make in this national debate about policing and race.

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/catholic-theologians-call-community-policing

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Ohio

Ohio Gov. John Kasich announces task force to deal with community-police relations

Columbus — A new statewide task force will study community and police relations and offer recommendations for improvements, in light of police shooting incidents in Cleveland, the Dayton area and elsewhere in the country.

Gov. John Kasich announced the formation of the panel Dec. 5 during a press conference at the Statehouse, where he was joined by three Democratic lawmakers and Attorney General Mike DeWine.

“We're going to make an honest effort to try to bring Ohio together — an honest effort to listen to the frustrations and the challenges of people in the community who need to be listened to,” Kasich said. “Because Ohio cannot afford to be fractured. America cannot afford to be fractured.”

He added later, “This is what must be done now to give folks in the community a sense that somebody is paying attention who's in authority.”

The task force was announced a day after federal officials issued a report concluding that “Cleveland Police engage in a pattern or practice of unreasonable force in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”

And it came less than two weeks after the shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice by a Cleveland police officer called to a city park following a report that the youngster was waving a gun as passersby. The firearm turned out to be a toy.

The incident and others involving black men in Missouri and New York have sparked protests and, at times, clashes with and vocal criticism of law enforcement.

“We are seeing great frustration, some great division, polarization in parts of our communities throughout the country, and that includes communities in the state of Ohio,” Kasich said. “… This has been excruciatingly difficult time for members of the minority community, particularly the African-American community.”

State Rep. and Sen.-elect Sandra Williams (D-Cleveland), added, “For many people in the African-American community, this has just become too much. We faced these issues in the 1940s, in the 1950s, the ‘60s, the ‘70s, the ‘80s, the ‘90s, and now we're in 2014 and we're still addressing the same issue. And it has to stop.”

The new state task force will study the justice system in general and community policing in particular, “providing a forum for people to air their grievances and to sit together as a family in the state of Ohio, to give people an opportunity and provide an opportunity for needed reform inside our state,” Kasich said.

A goal of the task force's coming meetings and community discussions is to relieve growing tension between residents and law enforcement in minority communities.

“The purpose of this task force isn't to place blame on either the police or communities of color or anybody else for that matter,” said Sen. Nina Turner (D-Cleveland). “…Police and communities are partners, and we need one another and we have to continue to put forward that message.”

DeWine also announced Dec. 5 that he will ask a state panel the sets standards for law enforcement training to consider whether existing requirements are adequate.

DeWine said the Ohio Peace Officer Training Commission will meet to discuss the issue Dec. 11.

Kovac is the Dix Capital Bureau chief. Email him at mkovac@dixcom.com or on Twitter at OhioCapitalBlog.

http://www.auroraadvocate.com/latest%20headlines/2014/12/08/ohio-gov-john-kasich-announces-task-force-to-deal-with-community-police-relations

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Massachusetts

Community Policing Goes Digital

Departments are starting to sign up for ‘Nextdoor,' so they can connect with targeted parts of the community.

by Steve Annear

Instead of walking the streets of a specific neighborhood, knocking on people's doors to give them a heads up about reports of a rash of robberies, some police departments are merely sending out a mass message targeted at residents who live in the affected area.

Using “Nextdoor,” a social media network that lets residents create private groups with abutting neighbors, police are reaching out to people to update them on events happening on their streets, without actually holding a community meeting.

Braintree Police announced last week that they're the latest department to start exploring the use of the platform, and others, like police in Brookline, have expressed interest in doing the same.

“In the digital age we are in now, social media is in everybody's life in one aspect or another, and we are trying to keep up with that. It's a form of digital community policing, if you think about it,” said Officer Peter Gillis, who runs the Braintree department's social media and community outreach programs.

Gillis said the department's trying to get more residents to sign up for Nextdoor, to make it more convenient for people to share information with the department, and vice-versa. He said police can't monitor activity going on between users within a specific group, so there's no “Big Brother aspect” involved. But officers like him do have the ability to reach out to those who sign up for Nextdoor, and can even address neighborhood-specific concerns.

“It's for the residents, mainly. They use it as a social media platform however they like,” said Gillis, adding that it's like an online Neighborhood Watch program. “Our involvement will only come into play when we want to reach out to a specific neighborhood, and tell them their was a rash of car break-ins, or something along those lines. We can even reach out to one neighborhood, or the entire town, to send out some sort of alert.”

Nextdoor, a San Francisco-based company, is in more than 40,000 neighborhoods across the country. On their website, they promote the benefits of agencies like police departments getting involved with the social site, claiming it can be used to engage in two-way communications and to solicit public opinion in targeted areas of a community, without having to tap into an entire network of followers on Facebook and Twitter.

“Residents are already organizing virtual crime watch through Nextdoor. Public agencies can join the conversation and support residents with information and resources,” according to the company's website.

Gillis said Braintree decided to get involved back in October, after he attended a seminar on the fundamentals of social media and policing, and then spoke with the department's chief about the website.

While Braintree hasn't launched the police account yet, something they plan to do later this month, they have been getting advice from officers over in Billerica who have been using Nextdoor since August of 2013.

“We can more easily know the audience we are talking to,” said Billerica Police Lt. Greg Katz, who runs the department's account. “It has helped the residents because it keeps the town stuff separate from other forms of social media. It works pretty well; it's a good concept and fits right in with the community policing mentality.”

Over in Braintree, Gillis said since they announced they were looking to get involved with Nextdoor, other departments have become curious, too.

“Brookline police reached out to us recently,” said Gillis. “I talked to a Lieutenant over there, and he basically said he's in the beginning stages like Braintree is. It's just one more way for people to better connect to their neighborhood, and with the police.”

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2014/12/08/nextdoor-braintree-police-connect/

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California

Berkeley, Calif., protest gets violent for second night

by Jessica Guynn and Laura Mandaro

BERKELEY, CALIF. — A peaceful protest in the university town of Berkeley, Calif., Sunday night over police killings of black men was overtaken by a group vandalizing police cars and stores and briefly shutting a local highway.

It was the second straight night that protests over the chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York and shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., turned violent.

A roaming crowd of 300-400 protesters moved between the Oakland border on Telegraph Ave. and downtown Berkeley, leaving California patrol cars and a string of stores damaged, according to California police and local reports. Media reports said eight people were arrested.

The downtown Berkeley BART station was also temporarily shut.

While an air of calm returned as the marchers headed back to the University of California, Berkeley campus, they left a trail of damage and confrontations — both with police and between the groups of protesters, one trying to prevent vandalism.

Police fired teargas at protesters after a group would not leave Highway 24, shutting off the artery between Berkeley and the eastern suburbs of Walnut Creek for 45 minutes.

Groups of protesters set trash cans on fire and lobbed objects at storefronts, looting some. The Cal Student Store's window was cracked, two bank fronts were vandalized and two cell-phone carrier stores were damaged.

Other groups of protesters shouted at the violent groups to keep peaceful and keep walking. As the six-hour demonstration headed past the rows of college shops directly south of the campus, groups of protesters linked arms to keep out looters.

It was the second night in a row that a protest in Berkeley, no stranger to political demonstrations by its student population and liberal permanent residents, was in upheaval as vandalism flared.

On Saturday evening, what started as a peaceful demonstration over the chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York and shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., ended with looting and damage at several Berkeley businesses after a small group split off from a swell of about 400 peaceful protesters.

The San Francisco Bay Area was home to months of sometimes violent protests linked to the Occupy movement in 2011. Individuals calling themselves anarchists were a frequent component of the Occupy protests.

Sunday's protest was peaceful until two men smashed the window of a Radio Shack on Shattuck Avenue and tried to steal boxes of electronics. Protesters surrounded the men, grabbing the boxes and throwing them back into the store. One protester was injured when he tried to stop the looters. The two men then ran off.

Protesters gathered around 5 p.m. PT at the corner of Telegraph and Bancroft.

They drew outlines of bodies on the pavement and then marched down Channing Way, chanting "From Ferguson to Berkeley, we won't back down!" and "They say Jim Crow? We say hell no!"

Drivers in cars honked and waved their arms in solidarity with the protesters.

The protesters marched through downtown Berkeley to the heavily barricaded police station, holding their hands in the air.

They then walked a few blocks to Berkeley Civic Center, where they crowded the steps and chanted, "the whole damn system is as guilty as hell."

Meagan Day, 26, was walking her bicycle with protesters along Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley.

The Oakland resident said she joined the protest in Berkeley as an "act of solidarity" to "amplify the voices" of people oppressed by police violence.

"I want to be another voice and another body," she said.

Marchers then headed for Highway 24, where they were tear-gassed after refusing to leave the freeway, according to the California Highway Patrol, which also reported that some pedestrians had tried to light a patrol car on fire and were throwing rocks and bottles at police. The CHP then told peaceful protesters to clear the area. One of its most recent tweets was "Although some protestors may be peaceful, this is not a peaceful protest."

The protests were part of the fifth day of national demonstrations over Garner's death and the decision not to indict the police officer who apparently performed a chokehold while arresting the asthmatic black man in Staten Island, NY.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/12/08/berkeley-protest-michael-brown/20077905/

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Missouri

Police Face a Long and Complex Task to Mend Distrust Deepened by Killings

by Manny Fernandez

FERGUSON, Mo. — During a recent demonstration here against a grand jury's decision not to indict a white police officer in the killing of an unarmed black teenager, a 28-year-old black protester approached a white police sergeant in a line of heavily armed, mostly white officers. The protester did not taunt, and the sergeant did not issue orders. They simply talked past each other.

“I ain't never seen a police officer do anything good,” the man said. “If I had to worry about someone chasing me with a knife and I saw you, I would be more worried about you killing me than that person with a knife.”

“How do I change your perception?” the officer, Sgt. Kevin Stevener, asked.

“I keep telling you the whole time — stop killing us,” the man replied.

As the St. Louis region tries to recover from the death of the teenager, Michael Brown, which laid bare racial tensions and set off months of sometimes violent protests, one of the biggest unresolved problems in Ferguson is the deep suspicion, anger and mistrust that separate its mostly black population from its almost entirely white police force.

It is a problem that police departments across the country are now confronting in the midst of an anguished national debate over whether the police too often use deadly force against minorities. New York, where a grand jury on Wednesday declined to indict a white officer in the July death of an unarmed black man, and Cleveland, where the Justice Department will require an independent monitor of the Police Department in the wake of fatal police shootings, are just the most recent examples.

Closing this gap, experts say, will require a broad shift in police training and culture, and in officers' behavior and attitudes — the sorts of almost philosophical changes that are complex, time-consuming and, at times, costly. Creating civilian review boards and putting body cameras on officers, as New York started doing on Friday, are the first steps in a process to improve community relations that could take years. l

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., in announcing the findings of the Justice Department's scathing review of the Cleveland Police Department on Thursday, said the department's actions stemmed from “systemic deficiencies” that included inadequate training and engagement with the community. This is not unlike what critics have said about the Ferguson Police Department.

“You've got to bring officers out there and make them stand up in somebody's living room, make them stand up in front of a church,” said Russ Leach, a former police chief in Riverside, Calif., who oversaw court-ordered changes there after the fatal shooting in 1998 of a 19-year-old black woman by four white officers.

“Giving the cops bulletproof vests and cameras, that's fine,” Mr. Leach said. “But what needs to be managed is the mentality. You can't have a siege mentality and be an effective police officer.”

Last Monday at the White House, in response to the events in Ferguson, President Obama announced the formation of a task force to examine ways to strengthen community policing, a law enforcement strategy that focuses on preventing crime and addressing neighborhood concerns rather than merely reacting to crime.

After a steady increase during the late 1990s, community policing programs declined as the federal government shifted more grant money to fighting terrorism. From 2000 to 2007, the number of full-time community policing officers nationwide fell by more than half, to 47,000 from 103,000, according to Justice Department data.

“I think that community policing has been there all along, but it has gotten less attention,” said Laurie O. Robinson, a former Justice Department official who is leading Mr. Obama's task force with the Philadelphia police commissioner, Charles H. Ramsey.

“It didn't have the emphasis from Washington, from the White House,” Ms. Robinson said. “It's about local police departments having the capacity, ability and willingness to build relationships, to establish a positive dialogue, to hire a diverse work force. And building that legitimacy and that trust is not something that happens overnight, obviously.”

Several police departments that have made changes after fatal shootings or excessive-force scandals, including those in Cincinnati, Los Angeles and New Orleans, provide models for Ferguson. Such changes have often been a result of public and political pressure, court orders, state intervention, and agreements, known as consent decrees, between the Justice Department and the police agencies.

In Cincinnati, the Rev. Damon Lynch III helped lead a push to overhaul the Police Department after the fatal shooting in 2001 of an unarmed 19-year-old black man, Timothy Thomas, by a white officer. The filing of a class-action lawsuit against the city led to a 2002 agreement among community leaders, the police and others.

“The cops had to sit through a process that initially they hated, but at the end of the day, most people in Cincinnati, cops included, will tell you we're better for it,” said Mr. Lynch, who has twice visited Ferguson to hand out copies of the agreement.

Even before the Ferguson police officer, Darren Wilson, shot and killed Mr. Brown on Aug. 9 in a brief encounter near the predominantly black Canfield Green apartments, tensions were high. One black Canfield Green resident, Kevin Seltzer, 30, said some residents would carpool to the convenience store just a few blocks away because they did not want to risk being harassed by officers if they walked.

The mistrust was apparently mutual, as Mr. Wilson made clear in his testimony to the grand jury investigating the killing.

Mr. Wilson, who did not get out of his vehicle when, just before the shooting, he asked Mr. Brown and his friend to walk on the sidewalk, described Canfield Green to prosecutors as “an anti-police area for sure,” adding: “There's a lot of gun activity, drug activity. It is just not a very well-liked community. That community doesn't like the police.”

Mr. Seltzer, standing at Mr. Brown's flower-strewn memorial at Canfield Green recently, rejected Mr. Wilson's description. “We weren't anti-police,” Mr. Seltzer said. “We were afraid of the police. We tried to avoid the police.”

Some community-policing experts said Ferguson needed a change in police leadership, including the departure of Chief Thomas Jackson, who has declined to resign. Others suggested there would be little progress until the Justice Department completed its broad civil rights investigation of the Ferguson police's practices, similar to the review it just finished in Cleveland.

In the meantime, relations between the two sides seem to have only gotten worse. At Canfield Green, some residents have tried to police themselves, conducting their own security patrols, handing out body cameras to monitor the police and complaining that police officials have made few, if any, efforts to improve their communication with residents.

Some experts say the onus for change should be on the police.

“They cannot continue to engage in a mind-set that they've done no wrong, that everything they've done has been by the book and it's O.K. to continue down that path,” said Joseph Brann, the former director of the Justice Department's community-oriented policing office and a former police chief in Hayward, Calif. “If they do that, there's no hope for reform.”

In Ferguson, late in the night of rioting that followed the grand jury's decision, an African-American man walked alone holding a sign that read, “Darren Wilson Is a Murderer.”

The man, Andre' C. Coffer, 49, is a certified public accountant whose office is across the street from Ferguson City Hall. He said he was fed up with being pulled over by the police in Ferguson and other municipalities — traffic stops that he said were a result of racial profiling and that, because he missed a court date, led to the suspension of his driver's license.

“It's been a simmering anger,” Mr. Coffer said. “This is bigger than Mike Brown. There's not too many C.P.A.s picketing tonight. But I've got a vested interest in this. I've got four sons.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/08/us/police-face-a-long-and-complex-task-to-mend-distrust-deepened-by-killings.html?_r=0

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“Community-oriented policing”: A cover for the militarization of police in the US

by Nick Barrickman

Over the past several days, thousands who have protested the whitewash of the police killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York City have faced threats, abuse and arrest by riot police clad in military gear. In the case of Ferguson, more than 2,000 National Guard soldiers were deployed in a virtual siege of the St. Louis suburb a week after Missouri's Democratic governor declared a “preemptive state of emergency.”

Seeking to mollify public anger last August over scenes of armored vehicles rolling down the streets of an American city and police threatening peaceful protesters in Ferguson with weapons from the Iraq and Afghan wars, the Obama administration ordered an executive review of the US federal government's program, known as 1033, which has helped transfer billions of dollars of combat weaponry, including mine-resistant vehicles and military aircraft, to local law enforcement agencies.

Predictably, the review did not oppose the continued militarization of police forces. Offering generalized palliatives such as the need for increased “training” and “transparency” and adding some money to help police forces buy body cameras for cops, the White House report sanctioned the programs, saying “they have been valuable and have provided state and local law enforcement with needed assistance as they carry out their critical missions in helping to keep the American people safe.”

A key component of the Obama's proposal was the setting up of a “Task Force on 21st Century Policing”—co-chaired by Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey—that would focus on the expansion of the “community-oriented policing model.” Ramsey, who during his tenure in Philadelphia and before that as the head of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC compiled an extensive number of violations of basic democratic rights, might seem like an odd choice for Obama given the president's claim that the program is designed at “healing” tensions between communities ravaged by police violence and law enforcement agencies.

However, when one looks into the history of “community-oriented” policing in the US, the reason for the selection of Ramsey becomes clear. In fact, he is perfectly suited for the job.

Billed as a policy alternative to the widely-perceived view of the police as an outside occupying force, the Justice Department web site says its Community-Oriented Policing Services or COPS initiative “develops innovative programs that respond directly to the emerging needs of state, local, and tribal law enforcement, to shift law enforcement's focus to preventing, rather than reacting to, crime and disorder.”

In fact, the COPS program has served as a key facilitator of the growth of militarized policing, as well as the spread of community based police informers, since its creation in the early 1990s. Originally formed as a component of then-President Bill Clinton's Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, the program was touted by Clinton as helping to “build bonds of understanding and trust between police and citizens.” The stated goal of the program was to hire over 100,000 police officers nationally and integrate them more fully into communities.

Since its initial implementation, the program has not only failed to stem the spiraling number of police brutality cases across the US; it has served as a cover for them. A 2013 Justice Department report found that COPS “may be a layer added on top of, rather than replacing, traditional patrol concepts.” It added that, “many of the interventions used in the name of COP are traditional methods of intervention (e.g., street sweeps, crackdowns).”

A 2007 study conducted by Peter B. Kraska, a researcher at Eastern Kentucky University, notes the relationship between the proliferation of “police paramilitary units” (PPUs) and the implementation of so-called community policing. The study, entitled Militarization and Policing – Its Relevance to 21st Century Police, notes that by the late 1990s over 89 percent of all municipalities with populations above 50,000 possessed SWAT team units in their police departments, in contrast to only 20 percent in 1980. Likewise, SWAT teams saw their deployment rates shoot up by nearly 1,400 percent in this same period.

The report states that given falling rates of violent crime during this period, “more than 80% of these deployments were for proactive drug raids, specifically no-knock and quick-knock dynamic entries into private residences.” It also adds that this “zero tolerance” method of policing, in which officers mete out overwhelming displays of force for relatively minor infractions, is modeled from the US military interventions in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Obama administration is particularly tied to the process of police militarization. Serving then as a senator from Delaware, current-Vice President Joe Biden wrote the bill that would later become the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. In the 2008 presidential election run, both Biden and Obama touted the COPS program as being an effective crime-stopping tool. One of the first acts of the newly elected Obama administration was to expand funds to COPS and other programs facilitating police militarization as a part of its 2009 Stimulus bill.

Under these conditions, the appointment of Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey to the position of co-chair in the “Task Force on 21st Century Policing” is all the more ominous. In his position as the head of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC from 1998 to 2007, Ramsey was responsible for the mass arrests of hundreds of peaceful anti-globalization protesters and setting up traffic checkpoints where police carried out unconstitutional search and seizures although they did not have the slightest evidence that their random victims had committed any illegal activity.

Aside from a record of utter disregard for civil liberties, Ramsey is well versed in the deployment of identity politics in his policing strategy. His profile at the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, DC notes that the former police chief was responsible for developing “new strategies” to put “more officers on the street and partner with the community,” including “the establishment of special liaison units for DC's Asian, Latino, gay and lesbian, and deaf and hard of hearing communities.”

The inclusion of various racial and other identity groups into a network of neighborhood informants is closely related to the policies advocated by a number of advocates of racial and identity politics and the Obama administration itself. These methods have been deployed to spy on and infiltrate protest movements, frame-up participants and suppress any expressions of public dissent.

An article released on the website Philly Declaration states that the “community-policing” model advocated by Ramsey has been “often partnered, especially since the 2001 World Trade Center attacks and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, with a pervasive surveillance function increasingly expected of beat officers under the notion of ‘intelligence-led policing.'”

Obama, like his Democratic predecessor in the White House Bill Clinton before him, fully embraces the right-wing law-and-order demagogy long associated with the Republican Party. Far from proposing any government spending programs to combat poverty, poor housing and education and lack of any decent future for youth—the real source of crime, drugs and other social ills—Obama has followed up Clinton's destruction of federal welfare programs with the systematic dismantling of public education in major cities and the gutting of other essential programs. These right-wing policies have been given a cover by various “civil rights” millionaires like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson who too are increasingly hated by workers and youth.

The Obama administration's continued implementation of the “community-oriented policing model” will portend further attacks against the working class. Well aware of the deep hostility of the population to social inequality, attacks on democratic rights and the prospects of new and even more devastating wars, the ruling class in increasingly adopting the methods of a police state to protect its wealth and power.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/12/08/cops-d08.html

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Connecticut

Sandy Hook survivors: "We're at a tipping point" on gun laws

by CBS News

"Something like this rips you to your core, and we came back to school ripped to shreds," said Abbey Clements, a 2nd grade teacher. "But we came back to do the best we could with these kids who we loved and we got lucky enough to survive with."

She was one of four women working at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012.

All four and all of the children in their care got out of the building safely.

All four only now are speaking out about the impact of that terrible day.

"Nobody cowered under a chair," said Clements. "Everybody took care of those kids the best that we knew how to in the insanity that was unfolding before us."

Reading specialist Becky Virgalla was in a meeting in a conference room near the school's front door. "We heard this loud noise and I thought the roof was collapsing," she said. "I just looked at someone and said, 'What was that?'"

A 20-year-old gunman had blasted through the glass entryway with a semi-automatic rifle.

"Three people got up and ran out into the hall. We were ready to follow them out to go investigate the sound. I was three steps away from going out into the hall when my principal, Dawn Hochsprung, shouted back, 'Shooter! Stay put!'"

Someone had called 911 on a phone linked to the school intercom, which in the chaos was accidentally turned on. The ensuing gunfire could be heard in classrooms all over the school.

"The speaker, I just wanted to climb up on the table underneath it and rip it down," said Clements, "but I was scared 'cause we were always told to stay low, and I had no idea where the shots were coming from. So I tried to sing songs, and we tried to read, and many of us did similar things."

The shooter went into two first-grade classrooms. Carol Wexler's second-grade classroom was directly across the hall. For her, there was no turning off the sounds only feet away.

"I haven't told this story," Wexler said. "I think this is a very difficult conversation to have just because of what it brings up for me."

Five minutes: That's how long it took the gunman to fire 154 shots -- the last, to take his own life.

"When I gave my report to the police I said, 'Oh, half-hour, 45 minutes," said Virgalla. "It seemed to go on forever. I heard every one of those 154 shots. It just went on forever."Newtown, Conn., mourned 20 children and six adults.

One month later, in a borrowed building in a neighboring town, Sandy Hook teachers faced the collateral damage: children emotionally wounded, jumping every time a book fell or a door slammed.

"The old rules didn't apply anymore," said Pauley. "How did your teaching change in January?"

"It was incredibly challenging," said Clements.

Wexler said they cared for the children "not just the academic, but emotionally."

"The rest of the winter and that spring was less about education than nurturing?"

"Well, no, I think it was a combination of both," Wexler said.

Monsignor Robert Weiss of Newtown's Saint Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church was called to the school right after the shooting: "I was asked by one of the first responders if I wanted to go in and give a blessing. I looked in and I could see kind of the streams of blood that were coming from the corridor."

He says the community is still healing.

"Professionals tell us try to get through this first ten years," Monsignor Weiss said, "and that you're going to see an increase of marriage disruption, and there has been. There have been a number of separations and divorces. You're going to see an issue with abuse of alcohol and drugs, and there have been. You're going to see an increase with domestic violence, and there has been.

"We're all grieving in a very different ways, and that grief takes a lot of different places, especially when it comes to anger, and where does that anger get directed?"

For 37 Sandy Hook teachers, that anger has now turned to activism.

Abbey Clements said that when she goes home, "I do lesson plans and I research gun violence prevention. That gives me a purpose."

In May, they came together as Sandy Hook School Educators for Gun Sense.

At a meeting last month, a guest speaker was Erica Lafferty, whose mother, Dawn Hochsprung, was one of the shooter's first victims.

"The last day I saw my mom was the Sunday before the shooting," Lafferty said. "My mom would be so proud of you for being here and for standing up for what you guys know in your heart of hearts is the right thing to do."

Carol Wexler told Pauley, "For myself, at this point I feel that I have a responsibility to make sure that I at least try and do something. I look at the young children in school every day, and I think, 'I can't let them grow up in a society where this is acceptable.'"

Pauley asked if being a Sandy Hook survivor makes her responsible?

"I don't know if it makes me responsible, I just know that I don't want other people to go through what we went through," Wexler said.

They say they want to close loopholes that allow online and private gun sales without background checks.

In a survey 74 percent of NRA members supported universal background checks for all gun sales.

But, as an organization, the National Rifle Association emphatically does not.

"We're at a tipping point," said Mary Ann Jacob, who works in the Sandy Hook school library. "We're up against a really big lobby, but we know we can make a difference. This is like when cigarettes got so much pressure, and all the laws were made against all the tobacco companies. And the same thing with seat belts and car safety."

"And you know what? Not everyone wears their seat belt. That doesn't mean we have to say, 'Oh well, forget it then. Let's not make a law about buckling up.' Some of the gun proponents -- they're afraid of these laws somehow infringing on their rights, when in reality there's laws around everything we do."

They insist this is not a political issue.

"In this situation, it has nothing to do with whether you're a Democrat or a Republican or an Independent," said Wexler. "It's, 'Do you want to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people?'"

"My husband is a member of the NRA," said Jacob, "and there's guns in my home in a safe. My husband and my kids like to hunt, and they like to do skeet shooting.

"This discussion really comes down to how can we prevent gun violence, not how can we take people's guns away."

They are pushing for a ban on high-capacity magazines for assault weapons.

"The [fewer] bullets in a magazine, in our case certainly, there could've been more survivors," said Jacob.

Pauley asked, "I'm going to ask the devil's advocate question: Is there no one here that that day didn't wish they had a gun?"

Becky Virgalla replied, "I did not even think of that."

"Never thought of that," said Wexler.

"No," said Jacob. "And you know what? If there had been someone at the entrance to our school with a gun, they would've been dead, too. There's a reason they call them assault weapons. It's an impossible barrage to survive from. We survived because we were lucky and because he was stopped for whatever reason before he could do more damage."

The Sandy Hook educators say they don't want a legacy counted in children they helped keep safe December 14, 2012, but in the kids they'll help keep safe from here on.

"There have been nearly 100 shootings at American schools since our tragedy," said Abbey Clements. "That's an unacceptable number. Over 31,000 Americans die each year by guns. What's it going to take? We have to have that confrontation. We have to be ready to have that argument."

http://www.ktvq.com/news/sandy-hook-survivors-we-re-at-a-tipping-point-on-gun-laws/

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Canada

Reaching out to the hearing world

Award-winning volunteer doing her part to educate the public

by Bonnie Belec

If you ask Jennifer Rimmer about the challenges people with disabilities face daily she'll say point blank, it is society that has created the obstacles.

“We function in everyday life. We have no limitations,” said the 33-year-old, who has been deaf since birth.

“The problem is that society as a whole places barriers in front of us. We should not be given the runaround by service agencies and organizations avoiding accountability to providing an accessible service,” said Rimmer via email.

The wife and mother of a three-year-old boy is this year's recipient of the Cecilia Carroll Award for Independent Living for a person with a disability.

The award is given to a person who has demonstrated a long-term and extraordinary personal commitment to full inclusion of persons with disabilities in the province.

Rimmer was one of three people and one business recognized Wednesday — the United Nations International Day for Persons with Disabilities — during the Independent Living Resource Centre's (ILRC) awards ceremony at Government House.

The Memorial University graduate was heralded as the first deaf person to use American Sign Language (ASL) exclusively to communicate and graduate with an undergraduate degree in 2010.

“Newfoundland is a particularly challenging place in which to be deaf due to isolation and lack of services, but I always figured out a way,” said Rimmer, who graduated with a bachelor of arts in sociology/anthropology and a minor in women's studies.

She says no matter how busy she is, working at Compass Eurest Dining at the airport in St. Johns, providing respite work for a young deaf adult, providing translation services or raising her son with her husband, she makes time for volunteering.

She said it is important to continue to do community outreach to ensure maximum accessibility and an inclusive environment for the deaf community.

“It takes a lot of patience and education to open hearing minds that deaf people can do anything except hear,” Rimmer said.

But she's trying to change that through awareness.

“I have done presentations called Understanding the Deaf Community that has helped the hearing understand a little better,” she said.

People don't realize, Rimmer said, that the deaf community has limited resources and many barriers to gain equal access to the services they need.

She said inequity exists everywhere, including mental-health services, sexual assault support and domestic violence.

“There are crisis lines, but the deaf can't call them, as they only provide lines that are suitable for hearing people,” Rimmer said.

“We can't pick up the phone right away and talk to them. Therefore there is a need to provide more options such as text message, IP relay or video relay,” she said.

“American Sign Language is our first language. Access to it and communication in our first language is our basic human right,” she said.

The sexual abuse survivor said she is trying to help people in the deaf community overcome the challenges of a system that isn't conducive to their needs.

Unfortunately, it takes a lot of work, she said.

“My goal and career is to work within the community and the government,” she said.

“The goal is to receive funding for a deaf community outreach worker for the deaf and hard of hearing to be employed on a permanent basis,” said Rimmer.

However, until she lands her dream job, she continues volunteering and educating people and groups about the deaf community.

Rimmer is on a committee she co-founded called Reducing Barriers for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing which does work with Marguerite's Place, Daybreak Child and Parent Centre and the Sexual Assault Crisis and Violence Prevention Centre.

“Looking for a job can be really frustrating and challenging,” she said.

“Many employers are ignorant about disabilities, especially deaf people, and can easily accommodate if they just ask the person,” Rimmer said.

“I have been deaf my whole life. If you want to know what works, ask me,” she said.

http://www.thetelegram.com/News/Local/2014-12-08/article-3966772/Reaching-out-to-the-hearing-world/1