Two children, ages 14 and 17, have been arrested and jailed without probable cause in southwest Ohio in the last year, prompting a federal lawsuit to be filed on their and other juveniles’ behalf in the state. The lawsuit alleges that police in Hamilton County have routinely and unconstitutionally arrested children without due process. Kim Tandy, who filed the lawsuit, stopped by HuffPost Live on Wednesday to address the suit, saying the trend is troubling. “It is disconcerting,” Tandy told host Alyona Minkovski. “I really feel like there is some real unfettered discretion that police have because we don’t have a system of checks and balances in place. We don’t know necessarily why that occurs. But…

Two children, ages 14 and 17, have been arrested and jailed without probable cause in southwest Ohio in the last year, prompting a federal lawsuit to be filed on their and other juveniles’ behalf in the state. The lawsuit alleges that police in Hamilton County have routinely and unconstitutionally arrested children without due process.

Kim Tandy, who filed the lawsuit, stopped by HuffPost Live on Wednesday to address the suit, saying the trend is troubling.

“It is disconcerting,” Tandy told host Alyona Minkovski. “I really feel like there is some real unfettered discretion that police have because we don’t have a system of checks and balances in place. We don’t know necessarily why that occurs. But we do know, and we have plead this in the context of a preliminary injunction, we do know that the harm is much greater for children of color.”

The two children remain unnamed because they are minors, going only by L.D. and S.W. in the case.

S.W. was arrested in September for robbery despite only vague evidence attributed to him. He was jailed for a month before being acquitted. L.D., meanwhile, spent 15 days in jail and six months on house arrest after police arrested him for a robbery charge without probable cause.

Read more on the case here.

Watch the rest of the clip above, and catch the full HuffPost Live conversation here.

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Why A Black High Schooler Was Jailed Without Probable Cause

This past August, Missouri voters adopted an amendment to the state constitution affirming a “right to farm.” The amendment would ensure that “the right of Missouri citizens to engage in agricultural production and ranching practices shall not be infringed.” Opponents of the amendment claimed that it was designed to protect large agribusinesses from lawsuits by environmental and animal rights groups, among others. If the notion of a right to farm surprises you, it is because the process by which rights are established is an inexact one. Most of us think of rights as either being God-given or at …

This past August, Missouri voters adopted an amendment to the state constitution affirming a “right to farm.” The amendment would ensure that “the right of Missouri citizens to engage in agricultural production and ranching practices shall not be infringed.” Opponents of the amendment claimed that it was designed to protect large agribusinesses from lawsuits by environmental and animal rights groups, among others.

If the notion of a right to farm surprises you, it is because the process by which rights are established is an inexact one.

Most of us think of rights as either being God-given or at least flowing seamlessly from commonly agreed aspects of human nature like our freedom or capacity to reason (“We hold these truths to be self-evident.”). But the truth is that rights are subject to political machinations just like almost everything else.

This past year has witnessed plenty of examples of traditional human rights at risk, including the crackdowns on political dissent in Egypt, the beheadings of Westerners by the Islamic State and conflicts over excessive use of force by police in the United States. No one would argue that the rights to free expression, life and due process are not well established in the lexicon of human rights.

But perhaps what has been even more interesting this past year has been the evolution of newly recognized or emerging rights. The most obvious example is that of same-sex marriage. Though the Supreme Court has not explicitly affirmed its constitutionality yet, the court is likely to rule on that question in 2015, given the conflicting circuit court rulings on the practice. And the Supreme Court’s decisions to let same-sex marriage proceed in a variety of states signal at the very least that the right to marry for same-sex couples is galloping toward the mainstream.

Similarly, 2014 saw a ruling by the European Court of Justice that Google must implement a “right to be forgotten” on its local European website domains by deleting links to certain materials about individuals that they would rather not have circulating on the Web.

Under the European Union’s data protection legislation, the right to be forgotten has been in place in the EU for years, but this decision gives it teeth it never had before. On November 26, the EU went even further, issuing new nonbinding guidelines that would extend the right to be forgotten to all non-European Web domains.

Social media is forcing lawmakers and courts to rethink a vast array of questions about free speech and privacy, prompted by everything from the Edward Snowden revelations to an impending Supreme Court decision on whether personal threats on Facebook are protected by the First Amendment or can be prosecuted.

Add to these examples the continuing debate about animal rights and the recognition in parts of Latin America of the rights of nature — that is, that trees, oceans, mountains and forests have legally enforceable rights to exist and flourish — and it is easy to see that rights are in considerable flux.

But this is how it has always been. Rights are not static. They evolve, shift and grow. Consider genocide, for example. If anything seems as if it ought to have always been a violation of human rights, it is the mass extinction of a particular group. Yet it was not until 1948 when the United Nations adopted the Convention against Genocide that such a mass atrocity was defined by international law as a crime.

This is not to say that figuring out what constitutes a legitimate “new” right is easy or smooth. It is, after all, a political process, and politics is rarely easy or smooth.

Emerging rights may well be at odds with traditional rights, as with the so-called right to farm that may prompt a battle over the human right to safe, affordable water, or the tension between the public’s right to information on the Internet that appears to clash with an individual’s right to privacy.

And internationally recognized rights are not established by the action of any one nation alone, much less the state of Missouri. They come into being as a result of a growing consensus of world opinion as marked by international treaties and conventions, the opinions of national and international legal bodies, and the gathering policies of international human rights organizations.

By these measures few of the “emerging” rights have yet garnered sufficient consensus to be considered established universal rights.

But what the political nature of human rights does point to is this: each one of us has a role to play in shaping the human rights of the future.

In this sense Eleanor Roosevelt’s famous remark that human rights begin “in small places, close to home … the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works” is exactly right.

Human rights are formed and re-formed by an emerging embrace of what constitutes the good society. An important point to remember between now and Human Rights Day 2015.

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The Rights, They Are A-Changin’

Three words pierced the white noise of Grand Central Station Tuesday night, jolting harried passengers and a fanny-packed tour group from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The words, the last spoken by Eric Garner, have become a rallying cry for activists around the country: “I can’t breathe.” This time, the speaker was Chazz Giovanni, a recent graduate of the acting program at SUNY Purchase. Hard to miss in a red puffer coat and Tiffany blue hat, Giovanni recited all of Garner’s last words — an unintentionally chilling monologue captured on video before the black Staten Island man’s death in July after a …

Three words pierced the white noise of Grand Central Station Tuesday night, jolting harried passengers and a fanny-packed tour group from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The words, the last spoken by Eric Garner, have become a rallying cry for activists around the country: “I can’t breathe.”

This time, the speaker was Chazz Giovanni, a recent graduate of the acting program at SUNY Purchase. Hard to miss in a red puffer coat and Tiffany blue hat, Giovanni recited all of Garner’s last words — an unintentionally chilling monologue captured on video before the black Staten Island man’s death in July after a white police officer, Daniel Pantaleo, put him into a chokehold.

Protesters practice in the chill of Union Square in New York City, ahead of a demonstration in Grand Central Station Tuesday night.

As Giovanni bellowed the now-familiar lines — Every time you see me, you want to mess with me … Please just leave me alone … It stops today — dozens of dancers circled him, some beating on cookie tins as they chanted, “We can’t breathe.” Others broke into pairs to act out a simple, stylized move based on a chokehold. After each round of Garner’s monologue, the group fell to the ground, miming death.

Led by a group of artists who spread the invitation by word of mouth, the grassroots “die-in” slotted into what organizers are calling a Week of Outrage, a series of nonviolent protests across New York City building to a supersized demonstration this Saturday.

The die-in concluded with an open-mic session and lasted for more than two hours.

Garner’s plea has taken on its own life. In the days since a grand jury decided not to indict Pantaleo in his death, the words have been displayed on the chests of NBA players and echoed throughout social media. “There was this quote staring me in the face,” Fred Shapiro, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations, recently told The Washington Post, explaining his decision to revise his list of 2014’s most notable quotes to put one of its newest — “I can’t breathe” — at the top.

For many, the phrase represents tensions that have been building for years in communities where run-ins with police are common. “When I think of someone breathing, it’s like someone is at ease,” said Shamirrah Hardin, a high school dance teacher who led the choreography of Tuesday night’s performance. “All is well. Everything’s ok. But we can’t keep on relaxing and breathing when people are getting choked out left and right, and gunned down.”

Giovanni and Hardin based Tuesday night’s performance on the simple, startling action of a chokehold.

Protests in New York mirror those rippling out across the country from Ferguson, Missouri, where another grand jury recently decided not to indict Darren Wilson in the shooting of Michael Brown.

Jamel Mims, a multimedia artist and co-organizer of the Week of Outrage, said he believes civil disruption is the most effective way to honor Garner’s memory, by forcing Americans to consider the nuances of police procedure rather than going “back to business as usual — Black Friday shopping, holiday shopping.”

“Business as usual is black boys … getting murdered every 28 hours,” he said, referencing a popular statistic pulled from a 2013 study of online police reports by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. “We have to say no more business as usual.”

Statistics on fatalities at the hands of police officers are limited. The country’s police departments self-report records to the FBI, and many don’t file fatal shooting reports in a timely manner. The city of New York — where Garner’s death this year was notably followed by that of Akai Gurley, an unarmed Brooklyn man killed in a stairwell by a cop — hasn’t filed reports since 2007, according to a recent report by ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative journalism unit.

The data that is available shows a dramatic racial imbalance when it comes to young men who are killed during police encounters. In the same assessment, ProPublica analyzed the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Report. Per that report, young black men — ranging from 15 and 19 years old — were killed by police at a far higher rate between 2010 and 2012 than white men of the same age: 31.17 per million black males in that age range, versus 1.47 per million for whites.

It’s hardly a new notion that black men, whether guilty of a crime or not, face greater suspicion from law enforcement officials than their white peers. Mims said that he was assaulted by a policeman while in Boston one summer and then unlawfully arrested. He had just won a grant from the prestigious Fulbright Scholar Program to study hip-hop in Beijing.

Though he eventually was able to clear his name with the Fulbright committee, he said his status was initially “threatened” when the committee found out about the arrest. It was a harsh wake-up call, he said, an “aha moment that it doesn’t really matter what you get” in life — scholarship or not, guilty or not — his future could change with the click of a handcuff.

Giovanni, who is half-black, said he had his own unbelievable moment when he was only 11 years old. He was on his way home from a movie with his friends when two cops responding to a call accused him of snatching a woman’s purse and throwing it into a nearby lot, he said. Though their search turned up nothing, he remembers police letting him go with these words: “At least you can tell your friends you were stopped.”

Giovanni said he wonders whether black men still even feel motivated to share stories of wrongful arrests or random questioning when the practice is so common. People are “so jaded” by the experiences, he said.

Contrast that with his impassioned shouting Tuesday to the rafters of Grand Central. “I still have my life,” he said. “I’d rather tell the stories of people who don’t.”

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Protesters Turn Eric Garner’s Haunting Last Words Into Performance Art

IRVING, Texas (AP) — NFL owners unanimously approved changes to the league personal conduct policy Wednesday, but Commissioner Roger Goodell will retain authority to rule on appeals. A special counsel for investigations and conduct will oversee initial discipline, Goodell said. “This will be a highly qualified individual with a criminal justice background hired as soon as possible for the newly created position,” Goodell said. “The person will oversee our investigations and decide the discipline for violations of the policy.” The commissioner also may appoint a panel of independent experts to participate in appeals. After the Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson cases, a more extensive list of…

IRVING, Texas (AP) — NFL owners unanimously approved changes to the league personal conduct policy Wednesday, but Commissioner Roger Goodell will retain authority to rule on appeals.

A special counsel for investigations and conduct will oversee initial discipline, Goodell said. “This will be a highly qualified individual with a criminal justice background hired as soon as possible for the newly created position,” Goodell said. “The person will oversee our investigations and decide the discipline for violations of the policy.”

The commissioner also may appoint a panel of independent experts to participate in appeals.

After the Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson cases, a more extensive list of prohibited conduct will be included in the policy, as well as specific criteria for paid leave for anyone charged with a violent crime.

A suspension of six games without pay for violations involving assault, sexual assault, battery, domestic violence, child abuse and other forms of family violence will be in effect, but with consideration given to mitigating or aggravating circumstances.

“The policy is comprehensive. It is strong. It is tough. And it better for everyone associated with the NFL,” Goodell said.

The players’ union has sought negotiations with the NFL on any revamping of the policy, and said Tuesday it would “reserve the right to take any and all actions” should the owners act unilaterally. The union could consider Wednesday’s vote by the owners as a violation of the collective bargaining agreement reached in 2011, giving the union cause to file a grievance.

Among the union’s options is pursuing an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board. The players could argue this policy is a change in terms and conditions of employment; the National Labor Relations Act says such changes in unionized situations are subject to collective bargaining.

“We expected today’s vote by the NFL owners from before Thanksgiving,” NFL Players Association spokesman George Atallah said on Twitter. “Our union has not seen their new policy.”

That new policy will include a conduct committee made up of several team owners that will review the policy at least annually and recommend appropriate changes. That committee will seek advice from outside experts, the NFL said.

Members of the committee will be Arizona Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill as the chairman; Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank; Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt; Dee Haslam, the wife of Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam; Dallas Cowboys executive vice president Charlotte Jones Anderson, chairwoman of the NFL Foundation; Chicago Bears owner George McCaskey; Houston Texans owner Robert McNair; and two former NFL players who have a stake in NFL team ownership, Warrick Dunn of the Falcons and John Stallworth of the Steelers.

NFL general counsel Jeff Pash said Wednesday in a conference call that “it was a mistake in the past” to rely solely on the criminal justice system for looking into legal issues. And he said the commissioner’s role in handing out discipline is not subject to collective bargaining.

Last month, an arbitrator threw out Rice’s indefinite suspension by the NFL for hitting his then-fiancee in a hotel elevator, freeing him to play again.

Former U.S. District Judge Barbara S. Jones said Goodell’s decision in September to change Rice’s original suspension from two games to indefinite was “arbitrary” and an “abuse of discretion.”

After noting the two-game suspension given to Rice was insufficient, Goodell had changed the minimum punishment under the personal conduct policy to six games. After a video of the punch became public, Rice was released by the Ravens and Goodell suspended him indefinitely.

Rice and the union contended he was essentially sentenced twice, and Jones agreed, saying Rice “did not lie to or mislead the NFL.”

Peterson’s appeal of a league suspension lasting until next April 15 was heard by Harold Henderson last week. Henderson, a former NFL executive, was appointed by Goodell to rule on the appeal and is expected to do so soon.

Peterson is seeking reinstatement, something Goodell said he would not consider before April 15.

The 2012 NFL MVP hasn’t played for the Minnesota Vikings since Week 1 after he was charged with child abuse in Texas. He was placed on paid leave while the legal process played out, and he pleaded no contest Nov. 4 to misdemeanor reckless assault for injuring his 4-year-old son with a wooden switch.

___

AP Pro Football Writer Barry Wilner and Sports Writers Simmi Buttar and Ronald Blum contributed to this story.

___

AP NFL website: www.pro32.ap.org and www.twitter.com/AP_NFL

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NFL Owners Unanimously Approve League’s New Personal Conduct Policy

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Rapper Earl Warren Hayes and his estranged wife were trying to reconcile and she was optimistic about their chances only days before Hayes killed her and committed suicide, a police detective said Tuesday. The bodies of Hayes, 34, and 30-year-old Stephanie Elyse Moseley were found Monday morning inside their Park La Brea unit in the Fairfax district after neighbors reported hearing gunshots and a woman screaming, police said. Hayes was an acquaintance of professional boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. and police have asked to interview him following media reports that he may have spoken to Hayes before the murder-suicide, homicide Detective Scott Masterson said. “We know that there’s a relationship there,” Masterson said. “If he has anything significant to …

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Rapper Earl Warren Hayes and his estranged wife were trying to reconcile and she was optimistic about their chances only days before Hayes killed her and committed suicide, a police detective said Tuesday.

The bodies of Hayes, 34, and 30-year-old Stephanie Elyse Moseley were found Monday morning inside their Park La Brea unit in the Fairfax district after neighbors reported hearing gunshots and a woman screaming, police said. Hayes was an acquaintance of professional boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. and police have asked to interview him following media reports that he may have spoken to Hayes before the murder-suicide, homicide Detective Scott Masterson said.

“We know that there’s a relationship there,” Masterson said. “If he has anything significant to add to the investigation, we want to know.”

Two attorneys for Mayweather told The Associated Press that they had not heard from the boxer. He was due in San Antonio for a fight on Friday.

Moseley was a dancer and actress who appeared in the VH1 cheerleader drama “Hit the Floor.”

“We are incredibly saddened to hear the news of the passing of Stephanie Moseley,” VH1 said in a statement. “VH1 and the entire ‘Hit the Floor’ family send our thoughts and condolences to her family and friends at this difficult time.”

Hayes and Moseley had been married for five years before separating “but they had recently gotten back together and were trying to work things out,” Masterson said.

Moseley had spoken to family members in Canada last Thursday and told them that “things were going pretty (well) and that she was upbeat and optimistic about things,” the detective said.

Investigators don’t know “what made it turn so violent Monday morning,” he said.

Source article – 

Police Ask To Interview Floyd Mayweather For Murder Suicide Case

Most white Americans think their police departments treat black and white people equally — and some polling suggests recent events have left them more sure than ever. An NBC/Marist poll released Sunday found that 52 percent of whites, compared with just 12 percent of blacks, have a great deal of confidence that police officers in their community treat blacks and whites equally. More broadly, 82 percent of blacks, and just 39 percent of whites, say law enforcement applies different standards to whites and blacks. As The Washington Post’s Scott Clement notes, while black Americans’ ratings haven’t changed all that much from past surveys, white confidence in officers’ fairness appears to have actually grown 11 points from what was found in a September NBC/Wall Street Journal…

Most white Americans think their police departments treat black and white people equally — and some polling suggests recent events have left them more sure than ever.

An NBC/Marist poll released Sunday found that 52 percent of whites, compared with just 12 percent of blacks, have a great deal of confidence that police officers in their community treat blacks and whites equally. More broadly, 82 percent of blacks, and just 39 percent of whites, say law enforcement applies different standards to whites and blacks.

As The Washington Post’s Scott Clement notes, while black Americans’ ratings haven’t changed all that much from past surveys, white confidence in officers’ fairness appears to have actually grown 11 points from what was found in a September NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. It’s now higher than it’s been in six different surveys conducted by other pollsters, dating back to 1995.

The results may speak to something of a disconnect between Americans’ perception of their own local police, and their opinions on incidents taking place elsewhere.

Both white and black Americans have more trust in local police than they do in the police nationally, but the gap is especially glaring among whites. An August Pew Research poll found whites were 26 points more likely to say they had a great deal of faith in their community than they were to say police forces across the country did an excellent job of treating ethnic groups equally, while black Americans were 14 points more likely.

Another poll conducted for HuffPost by YouGov found that 58 percent of black Americans, and just 25 percent of white Americans, think there’s police brutality in their area. Whites were 31 points more likely to report good personal experiences with the police, and 13 points more likely to say that calling the cops during a dispute was likely to help resolve the situation peacefully.

HuffPost/YouGov polling also found that blacks are almost two and a half times more likely than whites to view the shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer as part of a wider pattern in how police officers treat black men.

The NBC/Marist poll surveyed 1,018 adults Dec. 4-5, using live telephone interviews to reach both landlines and cell phones.

Originally posted here – 

Most White People Are Really Confident Their Local Police Treat Races Equally

The state has no power more awesome than its capacity to take the lives of its citizens. In recent decades there has been growing public unease with this capacity, and a powerful moral, legal, and political assault has resulted in the abolition of capital punishment in every wealthy democratic country except the United States and Japan. Even in the United States, still one of the world’s 10 leading users of the death penalty, the practice of capital punishment has been sharply circumscribed, with elaborate trials, guaranteed and publicly subsidized legal defense, and multiple opportunities to appeal. As a result, the actual employment of capital punishment has dropped sharply, falling from …

The state has no power more awesome than its capacity to take the lives of its citizens. In recent decades there has been growing public unease with this capacity, and a powerful moral, legal, and political assault has resulted in the abolition of capital punishment in every wealthy democratic country except the United States and Japan. Even in the United States, still one of the world’s 10 leading users of the death penalty, the practice of capital punishment has been sharply circumscribed, with elaborate trials, guaranteed and publicly subsidized legal defense, and multiple opportunities to appeal. As a result, the actual employment of capital punishment has dropped sharply, falling from an average of 77 per year between 1999 and 2003 to 49 a year between 2009 and 2013 — a far cry from the 180 per year in the mid-1930s, when the United States was well under half as populous as it is today.

Yet if traditional capital punishment — defined as the state’s execution of a human being for the commission of a crime, real or alleged — has declined, another kind of capital punishment continues unabated. This other form of capital punishment, far more common than the traditional kind, involves the killing of Americans by the police without benefit of charges, trial, jury, or the right to appeal. The much-publicized cases of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice are examples.

Because there is no mandatory reporting of police killings and hence no comprehensive statistics, it is impossible to know how many such killings take place each year. But what is certain is that this other, less visible form of capital punishment dwarfs the traditional kind; by an extremely conservative estimate, it is nearly 10 times as frequent as the executions reported each year by the Death Penalty Information Center.

Click to enlarge

The most conservative estimate of the number of police killings comes from the FBI’s “Uniform Crime Report.” Based on data only from those jurisdictions that voluntarily provide it to the FBI, the report finds that an average of 418 people per year were killed by the police in the last five years, with the number reaching a 20-year high of 461 in 2013. But these figures, as The Wall Street Journal has demonstrated in a careful study of 105 of the nation’s largest police agencies (35 of which did not appear in the FBI records), reveal over 550 police killings in the 2007-2012 period that were not reported in the FBI tallies, suggesting that the FBI figure underestimates the number of actual police killings by roughly 45 percent. Other informed estimates are even higher; a recent piece on FiveThirtyEight based on an analysis of the Facebook page “Killed by Police” suggests that the correct figure may be about 1,000 deaths per year at the hands of the police. But whether the number is 450 or 1,000, this constitutes a form of spontaneous and unaccountable capital punishment that is 10 to 20 times greater than the traditional type of capital punishment that has been subjected to years of careful public scrutiny.

This level of police violence in the United States is an extraordinary aberration among wealthy democratic countries. In Germany in 2011, there were six police killings; in England in 2013, there were none. To be sure, the United States is a much more violent society than Germany and England; in 2013 the American murder rate was five to six times higher. But this disparity hardly explains a rate of killings that The Economist estimates is 100 times greater than in Britain.

Many Americans accept and rationalize police killings as the cost of maintaining order in a violent and disorderly society. In this context police violence — like the broader culture of violence of which it is a part — has come to be taken for granted. With very few exceptions police in the United States kill with impunity. A recent study of 179 killings by New York City police between 1999 and 2013 reported just three indictments and only one conviction, with no jail sentence.

But other societies are not so accepting of killings by the police. In 2011 a police shooting of a known gangster provoked riots across London and led to a fiercely debated inquest. And a 2005 killing of an innocent Brazilian in the wake of the July terror bombings seriously tarnished the reputation of the London police.

The bond of trust between the police in America and the communities they serve, never strong in minority neighborhoods, is now seriously frayed. Yet the problem of police violence is an American problem, not just a racial problem. Undeniably, blacks are disproportionately the victims of police violence; in a widely publicized study of seven years of police killings reported in the FBI data base, USA Today found that white officers killed a black person an average of 96 times a year. Not emphasized, however, was an equally striking finding: that three quarters of police killings fell outside the familiar pattern of white officer, black victim.

Can anything be done to control the other capital punishment: the wave of police killings that vastly exceeds traditional capital punishment? Effective action will require a forthright acknowledgment of the sheer magnitude of the problem and a firm public conviction that hundreds of human beings killed by the police each year is neither necessary nor inevitable. Four specific measures would begin to address the problem:

• Thorough investigation of every police killing by an outside and independent body, which would then be required to issue an official report on the findings of its investigation. A landmark piece of legislation doing exactly this was signed into law in the spring of this year by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, suggesting that such legislation would have bipartisan support. The origin of the legislation, which was modeled on the approach that the military takes to investigations of plane crashes, was a relentless campaign by retired Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Bell, whose son, as he put it, was a “blond-haired, blue-eyed boy who was shot in the head while his hands were behind his back in handcuffs, being held down by another officer,” according to five eyewitnesses. Mr. Bell reports that he was unable to find a single case of a police shooting deemed “unjustified” in the 129 years since police departments in Wisconsin were founded in 1885.
• Mandatory reporting by local and state police of every police killing to the Department of Justice and the FBI. Comprehensive and uniform data, including the age, gender, and race of the victims and the officers involved, should be included in the FBI’s “Uniform Crime Report.” Such reporting, which should include an account of the precise circumstances surrounding the death, will bring to an end the remarkable situation in which we do not even know how many Americans are killed by the police each year.
• Systematic and carefully evaluated experiments with police body cameras at both the state and local level. Body cameras are by no means a panacea, but they should add to the evidentiary record available in investigations of police killing and may exert a deterrent effect on excessive police force. Though the results of limited recent experiments with police body cameras in Rialto, California; Mesa, Arizona; and other communities are less than definitive, the use of body cameras would begin to address the public’s sense that police practices are lacking in both transparency and accountability.
• Thorough reform of police training, with special emphasis on the mastery of techniques designed to minimize the use of force. German police training, which takes up to three years, involves repetitive practices on how to remain calm while handling volatile situations. But reformed training of the police must involve more than the teaching of better technique; a police culture that promotes excessive reliance on weaponry must also be changed. A recent report by the Justice Department on the Cleveland police underlines the depth of the problem. The report detailed instances of police “firing their guns at people who do not pose an immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury” and concluded that “Cleveland police officers violate basic constitutional precepts in their use of deadly and less lethal force….”

Reducing police killings will not be an easy matter. Being a police officer in America is a difficult and dangerous job, and the police face a citizenry far more armed than in other countries. More than any other advanced nation, America is a gun culture, and criminals and police alike are embedded in this culture. But even in a country where gun ownership is widespread and levels of homicidal violence are high, the annual spectacle of hundreds of people being shot and killed by the police is intolerable. Another way is possible, and the growing public outcry against police killings visible across the country is a signal that the time to address the other capital punishment is now.

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The Other Capital Punishment

Dear Son, Mommy has something important to tell you about your chocolate skin. Please listen carefully. I’m going to start from the beginning. As a journalism student at The Ohio State University (OSU), I wrote articles about the unjust treatment of African Americans and other races on college campuses and across the country. I remember crying my eyes out as I wrote, “All is equal and freedom rings, right?,” which talked about the unspoken prejudices against OSU students. I graduated from OSU and went on to start a life as a working adult. I stumbled along the way in my career and love, eventually …

Dear Son,

Mommy has something important to tell you about your chocolate skin. Please listen carefully. I’m going to start from the beginning.

As a journalism student at The Ohio State University (OSU), I wrote articles about the unjust treatment of African Americans and other races on college campuses and across the country. I remember crying my eyes out as I wrote, “All is equal and freedom rings, right?,” which talked about the unspoken prejudices against OSU students.

I graduated from OSU and went on to start a life as a working adult. I stumbled along the way in my career and love, eventually marrying your dad in 2007. We worked hard in those first few years, before you blessed us with your presence and we were able to buy a house in the suburbs to give you a better life than either of us had.

In 2008, the United States of America elected Barack Obama as our 44th President. I glared in amazement at the television as President Obama gave his inaugural address. We did it! We did it!

Next morning I ran out to buy a copy of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which showed the president in full color on the front page. Although you were just a mere thought, I saved that newspaper clipping for your scrapbook because I wanted you to see that you have the power to be anything your heart desires.

We thought America was changing.

And we no longer feared bringing an innocent child into the world. Kids from my predominantly white elementary school called me all types of derogatory names. But my son wouldn’t have to feel the hurt I did. Things were better, and your father and I were convinced that while the world was still racist and corrupt, you wouldn’t have to endure name-calling and unjust treatment.

We excitedly planned for your arrival.

In 2011, we welcomed you, our precious baby boy, into the world. You were beautiful. And we were hopeful that America would wrap you up in her arms just as we did.

In 2013, we enrolled you in the area’s most highly regarded preschool. You were surrounded by the sons and daughters of doctors, lawyers and CEOs, and we were proud to provide you with the best possible education. After just a few short months, your dad received a call from the preschool director telling us that you were no longer welcome at the school.

I was in complete shock at what I’d heard and immediately called the school to hear more details. The director claimed you were “terrorizing” the other kids. She went on to say that your teacher threatened to quit if you were not removed from her classroom.

These were pretty strong words about a two-year-old boy. So I asked the director to tell me what you did specifically. And she said you were talking during nap time, hit a kid in the head with a Lego, and would not sit during circle time.

Now, I know you’re very rambunctious, but the funny thing is that I witnessed other kids hitting and pushing you and one even picked up one of those little dust brooms and attempted to brush your hair with it. And no one said anything.

Son, your father and I are truly sorry for sending you to a preschool where you were singled out and treated unjustly because of your brown skin.

Your parents are absolutely not perfect.

We snuggled you oh-so tight in our big house, nice cars, expensive vacations, name-brand clothes and college educations thinking we could shield you from stereotypes and discrimination based on what you look like. We thought we could protect you from racism if only because we earned enough money to give you access to the finer things in life.

Son, we were wrong.

The truth: your suburban lifestyle and the things you possess  – Ralph Lauren clothes, Nike Air Jordan tennis shoes, Apple iPad and even all your Thomas & Friends trains don’t matter. No one even cares that, at the age of three, you know your ABCs, can read, and can count to 10 in Spanish. (Mommy and Daddy care  —  good job, son!)

The fact is, some people in this country will first and foremost only see your chocolate skin.

And they will judge you for it. They won’t want to hear what you have to say. All that will matter to them is your skin tone.

It hurts my heart to tell you this.

But it’s better if I tell you. This way you won’t learn it as you’re staring down the barrel of a police officer’s gun. Or from a judge who sentences you to jail for a simple traffic stop. Or from a hiring manager who tosses your résumé in the trash after he sees “Alston” is the name of an African-American man.

You see Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, John Crawford III, Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, Oscar Grant and too many others to list all lost their lives because of their brown skin. And I can’t have that happen to you.

Your dad and I will give our last dollar for you. And, son, if we thought we could buy you justice, we would spend every waking moment trying to earn enough money to pay for it.

But we can’t.

I know we tell you never to say “can’t” because you can do anything, but this is something we are unable to control. We hope one day soon — before you have to experience the cruelty of this world without our shield — ALL lives will matter.

Until then, we want you to know that your brown skin is a gift from God. And you don’t have to be ashamed because your brilliance will shine so bright that those who come in contact with you will be left color blind. That is our prayer for you.

Signed,

Your loving parents

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An Open Letter to My Son With Brown Skin

Last April, ABC confirmed that Columbus Short would not return to “Scandal” for Season 4. He had been charged with misdemeanor spousal battery against his wife, Tuere Short, who filed for divorce soon after. Now, in a new interview with Access Hollywood, Short revealed that he had been abusing drugs — specifically cocaine — during that time. “I had a lot on my plate, and you know, I was using unhealthy ways to kind of self-medicate and deal with a lot of heavy duty stuff in my life,” he said in the interview. “I was doing cocaine and drinking a lot.” Short confirmed that his “Scandal” co-stars and showrunner Shonda Rhimes were aware …

Last April, ABC confirmed that Columbus Short would not return to “Scandal” for Season 4. He had been charged with misdemeanor spousal battery against his wife, Tuere Short, who filed for divorce soon after. Now, in a new interview with Access Hollywood, Short revealed that he had been abusing drugs — specifically cocaine — during that time.

“I had a lot on my plate, and you know, I was using unhealthy ways to kind of self-medicate and deal with a lot of heavy duty stuff in my life,” he said in the interview. “I was doing cocaine and drinking a lot.”

Short confirmed that his “Scandal” co-stars and showrunner Shonda Rhimes were aware of his activities. “If we’re going to be fully transparent, they protected me and they held me down. And that was one of the real reasons — they just wanted me to get my stuff together. Sometimes the bottom has to be dropped out for you to really get it.”

Since getting fired, Short has moved to Atlanta and has been working on an album, though he’s live tweeted the show — including the episode in which the Gladiators mourn his character’s death — and even held a season premiere party for its return in September. “I would love nothing more to go back to ‘Scandal,'” he said. “It’s my family.”

Watch the full interview:

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Columbus Short Reveals He Was Abusing Drugs While Filming ‘Scandal’