statista | Out of America's eight biggest coronavirus outreaks, seven are in jails or correctional facilities. That's according to a list from the New York Times
which shows that the biggest national cluster is in the Marion
Correctional Institution in Ohio which has 2,439 cases as of June 16,
2020. Another facility in Ohio, the Pickaway Correctional Institution,
has 1,791. The third largest cluster was identified in the Trousdale
Turner Correctional Center in Hartsville, Tennessee.
Even though
prisons account for the largest outbreaks in the U.S. with deaths within
their walls increasing 73 percent in the past month alone, the vast
majority of outbreaks have occurred in U.S. nursing homes
and long-term care facilities. The toll on inmates has still been
heavy, however, with 600 estimated to have died during the pandemic so
far.
plsonline | By the mid-1960s police officers had responded with an aggressive and
widespread police unionization campaign. Aided by court rulings more
favorable to the organizing of public employees; fueled by resentment of
the authoritarian organization of departments; and united in a common
resistance to increasing charges of police brutality, corruption and
other forms of misconduct, nearly every large-city police department had
been unionized by the early 1970s. Police officers struck in New York
City in 1971; in Baltimore in 1974 and in San Francisco in 1975. "Job
actions" such as "blue flue" and work slowdowns (i.e. not writing
tickets, making few arrests) were common in other cities.
Initially, the response to this union activity was to reduce
centralization in the police bureaucracy and to include officers in
discussions of rules, procedures and departmental practices. What had
been the exclusive fiefdom of the police executive was now subject to
negotiation with a union. But reduced municipal tax bases, caused
primarily by the exodus of white, affluent executives and professionals
to the suburbs in the 1970s; a prolonged economic recession in the 1970s
and early 1980s; and fiscal mismanagement in many cities, led to
layoffs of police and other municipal workers, and rollbacks in
benefits. In fact, unions became an attractive scapegoat for municipal
problems. Politicians, administrators and the media all blamed demands
by public workers for the financial straits in which the cities had been
floundering. Despite the fact that the fiscal crisis had been caused by
much larger social and economic trends, blaming police and other
workers allowed police administrators and politicians to once again
reorganize the police. This reorganization has been dubbed the
"Taylorization of the police" by historian Sydney Harring (1981).
Under the "Taylorization" reforms, police departments reduced the
size of their forces; went from two-person to one-person patrol cars;
and increased the division of labor within police departments. Police
work was broken down into ever more specific, highly specialized tasks;
patrol became more reactive; technology was used to restore the control
of police administrators (i.e., 911 emergency lines; computerization);
and some traditional police tasks were turned over to civilian
employees. All of this served to further isolate the police from the
citizenry; to further reduce the effectiveness of police practices; and
to continually justify ever more "Taylorization" as a response to
increasing inefficiency.
Concurrent with reform efforts aimed at professionalization, was an
increased reliance on technology and scientific aspects of police
investigation. The idea of police as scientific crime fighters had
originated with August Vollmer as early as 1916, with the introduction
of the crime laboratory. By 1921 Vollmer was advocating the widespread
use of lie detectors and the establishment of a database for collecting
national crime data (Crank and Langworthy 1992). Over the years science
became synonymous with professionalism for many police executives. The
use of fingerprints, serology, toxicology chemistry and scientific means
for collecting evidence were emphasized as part of a professional
police force. In terms of technological advancements, new ways of
maintaining police record systems and enhancing police communications,
such as the police radio, became priorities.
The emphasis was on
efficiency and crime-fighting, with the social work aspects of policing
deemphasized and discouraged. The hope was also that the professional,
scientific crime-fighters would be less susceptible to corruption. It is
therefore a further irony of policing that in Philadelphia new
communications technologies were put to use in establishing what is
arguably the first "call girl" system in the United States, calling out
for prostitutes using police communications systems.
On Friday of last week, the
Juneteenth holiday, a leak-focused activist group known as Distributed
Denial of Secrets published a 269-gigabyte collection of police data
that includes emails, audio, video, and intelligence documents, with
more than a million files in total. DDOSecrets founder Emma Best tells
WIRED that the hacked files came from Anonymous—or at least a source
self-representing as part of that group, given that under Anonymous'
loose, leaderless structure anyone can declare themselves a member. Over
the weekend, supporters of DDOSecrets, Anonymous, and protesters
worldwide began digging through the files to pull out frank internal
memos about police efforts to track the activities of protesters. The
documents also reveal how law enforcement has described groups like the
antifascist movement Antifa.
"It's the largest published hack of
American law enforcement agencies," Emma Best, cofounder of DDOSecrets,
wrote in a series of text messages. "It provides the closest inside look
at the state, local, and federal agencies tasked with protecting the
public, including [the] government response to COVID and the BLM
protests."
The Hack
The
massive internal data trove that DDOSecrets published was originally
taken from a web development firm called Netsential, according to a law
enforcement memo obtained by Kreb On Security.
That memo, issued by the National Fusion Center Association, says that
much of the data belonged to law enforcement "fusion centers" across the
US that act as information-sharing hubs for federal, state, and local
agencies. Netsential did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.
Best declined to comment on whether the information was
taken from Netsential, but noted that "some Twitter users accurately
pointed out that a lot of the data corresponded to Netsential systems."
As for their source, Best would say only that the person
self-represented as "capital A Anonymous," but added cryptically that
"people may wind up seeing a familiar name down the line."
DDOSecrets
has published the files in a searchable format on its website, and
supporters quickly created the #blueleaks hashtag to collect their
findings from the hacked files on social media. Some of the initial
discoveries among the documents showed, for instance, that the FBI
monitored the social accounts of protesters and sent alerts to local law
enforcement about anti-police messages. Other documents detail the FBI
tracking bitcoin donations to protest groups, and internal memos warning
that white supremacist groups have posed as Antifa to incite violence.
NYPost | They may be New York’s Bravest, but they sure aren’t New York’s brightest.
In a Brooklyn neighborhood overrun with nightly illegal fireworks, one resident found out that some of the amateur pyrotechnic aficionados are none other than local FDNY firefighters.
The 33-year-old Crown Heights resident said he and his wife were
passing by Ladder 123 on St. John’s Place near Schenectady Avenue at
about 11:30 p.m. Tuesday when he saw a group of firefighters ignite what
appears to be a fountain firework display.
“I thought it was young kids lighting it. And there are. But then I
see the firefighters doing it — they should know better,” the man, a
father of five children who asked that his name not be used, told The
Post.
Video he recorded at the scene shows the firework spray sparks into the night air from a device on the street.
The man said one of the firefighters confronted him about filming the
display — causing him to question whether they actually knew what they
were doing was “absurd,” he said.
“As public servants, I feel like they should know better than to
light fireworks at 11:30 at night. It’s completely brazen wantonness,”
the man said.
“It’s like they didn’t understand why what they were doing is so
absurd. It’s late at night, there are kids. You have to be responsible
and set an example,” he added.
Slate | Everyone in my neighborhood in Boston—not just the narcs and NIMBYs on
my local NextDoor—is convinced they’re hearing way more fireworks this
year. It turns out we’re not imagining it: Boston police recorded 1,445
fireworks complaints in the first week of June, compared with just 22 in
the same week last year, the Boston Herald reported last week.
This seems to have started when the weather began warming up—complaints
in May were also up by more than 2,300 percent compared with May
2019—and it’ll only continue as we near a July 4 in which organized
fireworks displays are yet another casualty of this semi-reopened
pandemic summer.
To go by the complaints cities are registering, it appears way more
people are spending their free time dabbling with pyrotechnics this
year. The mayor of Syracuse, New York, vowed action after a rash of 911
calls about fireworks last Tuesday night, and Syracuse police claim a 335 percent increase in fireworks complaints since the beginning of the year. Looking at New York City’s 311 data,
I calculated a 920 percent year-over-year increase in fireworks
complaints for the month of May. (The city made it easier to submit
these complaints last June, when it began accepting reports online—but
that by itself doesn’t appear to explain the May increase. The NYPD did
not respond to a request for further comment.) More anecdotally, in
Baltimore, “longtime residents” say individual fireworks use is noticeably more prevalent this year. In other parts of the country, Facebook and Twitter are full of complaints that it’s the worst year ever. As my colleague Ben Mathis-Lilley put it:
Everyone in my neighborhood in Boston—not just the narcs and NIMBYs on
my local NextDoor—is convinced they’re hearing way more fireworks this
year. It turns out we’re not imagining it: Boston police recorded 1,445
fireworks complaints in the first week of June, compared with just 22 in
the same week last year, the Boston Herald reported last week.
This seems to have started when the weather began warming up—complaints
in May were also up by more than 2,300 percent compared with May
2019—and it’ll only continue as we near a July 4 in which organized
fireworks displays are yet another casualty of this semi-reopened
pandemic summer.
To go by the complaints cities are registering, it appears way more
people are spending their free time dabbling with pyrotechnics this
year. The mayor of Syracuse, New York, vowed action after a rash of 911
calls about fireworks last Tuesday night, and Syracuse police claim a 335 percent increase in fireworks complaints since the beginning of the year. Looking at New York City’s 311 data,
I calculated a 920 percent year-over-year increase in fireworks
complaints for the month of May. (The city made it easier to submit
these complaints last June, when it began accepting reports online—but
that by itself doesn’t appear to explain the May increase. The NYPD did
not respond to a request for further comment.) More anecdotally, in
Baltimore, “longtime residents” say individual fireworks use is noticeably more prevalent this year. In other parts of the country, Facebook and Twitter are full of complaints that it’s the worst year ever. As my colleague Ben Mathis-Lilley put it:
It’s true that Americans always complain more about fireworks in the run-up to July 4. And a pandemic alone can’t explain why Americans are generally setting off more explosives than they used to; we can also thank a liberalization of laws
in a slew of states over the past two decades. These factors make it
challenging to establish just how extraordinary 2020 is in terms of DIY
fireworks displays and whether the apparent boom (sorry) is a local or
national phenomenon.
BaltimoreSun | Baltimore-area residents may not always agree, but when it comes to the
spate of fireworks popping off all night across town, many have
suddenly found themselves on the same page.
From Poppleton and Carrollton Ridge to Patterson Park, Hampden and
Locust Point, the barrage of crackles, booms and pows has united much of
Baltimore around a common set of concerns, ranging from fears about
accidental fires to frustrations about interrupted sleep.
“It’s mayhem. It’s a lack of understanding about what it means to live
in civil society,” said Janet Miller, who lives near Hollins Market and
has seen fireworks go off until the wee hours of the morning since
Memorial Day weekend. “It’s hard to continue to live here and feel
safe.”
While the run-up to Independence Day usually sparks some amateur
fireworks displays in Baltimore, longtime city residents say this year’s
showings feel different in presentation, tone and timing.
Residents all over the city — and in other major U.S. cities such as
New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco — have taken to
Facebook, Reddit and other online neighborhood bulletins to vent and
share opinions, with some posts receiving more than 150 replies and
dozens of likes and shares. Parents of young children, military veterans
and local politicians have weighed in.
There
have been more fireworks going off over the last 10 nights than I've
heard in the last three July 4th holidays combined. Some special
fireworks sale going on that I don't know about?
Pigtown resident Cat Wall has counted 17 nights in a row of audible
fireworks, starting as early as 7 p.m. and continuing as late as 4 a.m.
Her dog, Halas, a 12-year-old chocolate Lab, has taken to hiding in the
basement and refusing outdoor walks when it gets dark, she said.
NYTimes | Federal
officials charged today that a group mostly made up of police officers,
firefighters and private security guards set the string of fires three
years ago that brought Boston the nationally reported title of ''arson
capital of the world.''
The fires
were set, according to United States Attorney William Weld, to scare the
public into supporting more positions for the Police and Fire
Departments after property tax reductions had reduced their ranks.
Federal
agents arrested six people in three states this morning, and a seventh
surrendered in Boston this afternoon. Two of the defendants were armed
when arrested. The five arrested in the Boston area pleaded not guilty
at a hearing here today. More charges and arrests were expected, Federal
and state officials said.
Largest Arson Case
Mr.
Weld said the 83-count Federal indictment announced today was believed
to be ''the largest single arson case in history, state or Federal, in
terms of the number of fires involved.''
The indictment alleges that beginning
sometime after July 1981, as the effect of a statewide tax-cutting
measure forced layoffs of many police officers and firefighters in
Massachusetts, the members of the group set 163 fires in Boston and nine
surrounding cities and towns. The outlying fires were set to divert
investigators away from Boston, the indictment said.
It also said that defendants who worked for a security company burned a client's building to distract attention from themselves.
The buildings burned included houses,
churches, factories, restaurants, a Marine Corps barracks and the
Massachusetts Fire Academy. A total of 281 firefighters were injured in
the fires.
The fires listed in the
indictment grew in frequency and number over the months. They stirred
deep public apprehension here, generated local and national news
accounts, and two years ago resulted in the Federal investigation that
produced the indictments.
The
indictments and arrests were announced by an assembly of Federal and
state officials that included the District Attorneys of five counties,
officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Stephen E. Higgins,
director of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
thediplomat | The protests in the United States have sparked a debate about the
militarization of American police forces. Much attention has been paid
to the literal usage of military hardware because it is the most obvious
manifestation of this phenomenon. But there is a much deeper history
that goes beyond just American police choosing to take on military garb
and ride Armored Personnel Carriers: American military adventures abroad
have long fueled a broader militarization that shapes norms, processes,
mentalities, and the relationship between the local police and the
citizenry.
There was a significant amount of concern in early
America and up to the late 1800s about the prospect of the U.S. military
being used as a means of controlling the public. The founding fathers
were suspicious of the idea of
a standing army, in part, for this reason. A number of laws including
the Militia Acts passed in the decades following American independence
and the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 tried to limit the ability of the president to use the military in domestic circumstances.
That
being said, scholars have been mapping the relationship between wars
and the evolution of domestic policing for some time. Christopher J.
Coyne and Abigail R. Hall’s work on the matter is
particularly informative. They posit that a “boomerang effect”
contributes to the incorporation of intrusive and aggressive means used
to subdue foreign populations in domestic civilian settings. Other
scholars have looked at the impact of specific conflicts or the mindsets
that govern police conduct.
The Domestic Legacy of the Philippines War
Despite
the formal end of the Philippine War in 1902, American colonial rule
faced an aggressive insurgency seeking independence. The insurgency in
the Philippines against the U.S. occupation authority provided the
opportunity to experiment with new concepts involving the use of
military entities to pacify a civilian population. The U.S. military
formed a constabulary manned primarily by sympathetic locals that
blurred the line between police and military. Rather than having two
distinct forces, one protecting the country from foreign threats and the
other providing security services to the populace, the Philippine
Constabulary (PC) was a hybrid of both, with a comfortable revolving
door between it and various other military and policing structures.
Many
U.S. veterans who had been at the forefront of establishing these
social control systems in the Philippines returned the United States
after the war, where they sought work in local law enforcement and
changed the structure of police departments, unleashing a torrent of
militarization. These veterans, many of whom were involved with the PC,
initially used the techniques they had mastered abroad to target
out-groups like foreign workers or prostitutes. Over time, the success
of these measures would open the door to a more widespread
militarization of the police and a shift in organizational and cultural
norms within police departments and public opinion shifted to
accommodate it. As historian Alfred McCoy notes:
[T]he
U.S. military, thrust into these crucibles of counterinsurgency,
developed innovative methods of social control that had a decidedly
negative impact on civil liberties back home. As the military plunged
into a fifteen-year pacification campaign in the Philippines, its colonial
security agencies fused domestic data management with foreign police
techniques to forge a new weapon—a powerful intelligence apparatus that
first contained and then crushed Filipino resistance. In the aftermath of
this successful pacification, some of these clandestine innovations
migrated homeward, silently and invisibly, to change the face of
American internal security. … Empire thus proved mutually transformative
in ways that have arguably damaged democracy in both the Philippines
and the United States.
The notion that returning
servicemen would seek employment in the civilian policing sector is not
inherently harmful, but as Coyne and Hall explain, rather than these
servicemen being mentored to adapt their skills for civilian service,
they became agents of importation for military tactics — especially as
they climbed the ranks of their respective departments:
wikipedia | According to the official website, "the church was designed in a
monumental Russian style, organically incorporating modern architectural
approaches and innovations unique to the Orthodox church creation". The
facades of the building are finished with metal, the arches are glazed. The walls of the church, decorated with murals, include battle scenes from military history and scripture texts. The decoration of the lower (small) church is made of ceramics and is decorated with Gzhel painting, with pieces of glass smalt used in the manufacture of mosaic panels. The central apse dedicated to the Resurrection of Christ is made in the form of a metal relief. The decoration of the church, the icon and the iconostasis (icon wall) are made of copper with enamels, as was done on the marching military icons. The image of the Saviour-Not-Made-by-Hands in the central dome of the church is the largest image of the Christ's face executed in mosaic.
Some of the sizes are symbolic. The height of the church along with the cross is 95 meters. The diameter of the drum of the main dome
is 19.45 meters, symbolizing the year when the Great Patriotic War
ended – 1945. The height of the belfry is 75 meters, a reference to the
75 years that passed in 2020 since the end of World War II. The height
of the small dome is 14.18 meters – 1418 days and nights hostilities
lasted in Great Patriotic War. The area of the church complex is 11,000 m². The capacity of the interior of the church is up to 6,000 people.
Bells
The bells
are made at the Voronezh Foundry. The decoration of the bells repeats
ornaments decorating the cathedral. The bells reflect the theme of
Victory in the Great Patriotic War, icons of patrons of the Russian
Army. The main bell-evangelist was decorated with bas-reliefs depicting
key events of the Great Patriotic War. Work on the manufacture of bells
was carried out for six months. The ensemble weighs more than 20 tons,
it includes 18 bells, the largest of which weighs 10 tons.[7]
17 of the 18 bells are dedicated to the types and arms of the troops.
On the one hand the emblem is applied to the bell, on the other, the
image of the patron saint.[7] On 23 August 2019, bells are set on the belfry of the cathedral.
Dome
On 15 November 2019, a 80-ton central dome was erected on the cathedral, the height and diameter of which are 12 meters.[8]
In total, the cathedral has six domes, four of which are identical,
each of which weighs 34 tons, the central one is the largest and one is
on the belfry. The design has a high alloy steel frame with a strength
factor from 300 to 1500 years.
gatestoneinstitute | Moscow sent a spectacular message last month to the world's other
Arctic powers: Russia is determined to dominate the region. Russian
transport aircraft, breaking the record for the highest altitude jump
ever, parachuted a group of their Spetsnaz
(Special Forces) over the Arctic from a height of almost 33,000 feet
(Mt. Everest is 29,000 feet). Russian paratroops then executed a
military exercise operation before reassembling at the Nagurskoye base, the northernmost military facility in Russia.
Any rival's attempt to catch up and surpass Moscow's head start in
the Arctic is unlikely to succeed. Russia has a geopolitical advantage
in that its sovereign land abuts over half of the Arctic's territorial
waters. Historically, Russia's czars and commissars were frustrated in
their attempts to secure warm-water ports, which would have benefited
commerce and military force projection. Now, with environmental warming
and subsequent accelerating ice-melt in the Arctic Ocean, Moscow appears
poised to control the newest maritime corridor, "the Northeast
Passage." This waterway will unite Russian Europe with Russia's Far East
provinces adjacent to Pacific waters. The "Northeast Passage" could shorten the transshipment of goods from Asian countries to Europe by two weeks, rather than shipping goods through the Suez Canal route.
For centuries, ships could navigate only sections of the Arctic a few
months of the year. If present climatic warming trends continue,
however, and probably even if they do not, Russia seems to be expecting
exclusively to exploit the region's vast energy, mineral and fishing
resources, at least within the legal limits of its 200 nautical mile
exclusive economic zone beyond its land borders.
Russia's northwestern Arctic territory of the Kola Peninsula accounts for large portions of the country's nickel and copper output, as does Norilsk in East Siberia. The Arctic region also accounts for most of Russia's tin extraction. Russian mining centers within the Arctic Circle produce valuable minerals, such as diamonds in the Yakutia Republic in Russia's Far East, as well as palladium, platinum, selenium and cobalt. Probably the most famous minerals are the area's legendary gold deposits in the Kolyma area.
Russia's claim of exclusivity, or at least its special ties, to the Arctic are of long-standing. Moscow first claimed sovereignty over all the islands in the Arctic Sea north of its Eurasian land mass as early as 1926, and repeated this claim in 1928 and again in 1950. Russia's claim of sovereign control of these islands, along with its nearly 25,000 kilometers of Arctic coastline, is considered part of the country's historical patrimony and, therefore, its ownership supposedly non-negotiable.
WaPo | Sam Greenlee was underappreciated, disgruntled, professionally disemboweled and perpetually agitated.
NewYorker | Ivan Dixon’s 1973 film, “The Spook Who Sat by the Door,”
which is playing at Metrograph from Friday through Sunday (it’s also on
DVD and streaming), is a political fiction, based on a novel by Sam
Greenlee, about the first black man in the C.I.A. After leaving the
agency, the agent, Dan Freeman (Lawrence Cook) moves to Chicago, and
puts his training in guerrilla warfare to use: he organizes a group of
black gang members and Vietnam War veterans into a fighting force and
leads a violent uprising against the police, the National Guard, and the
city government. The film’s radical premise was noticed outside of
Hollywood: produced independently, the film was completed and released
by United Artists, but it was pulled from theatres soon after its
release. Its prints were destroyed; the negative was stored under
another title; and Greenlee (who died in 2014) claimed that the F.B.I. was involved in its disappearance, citing visits from agents to theatre owners who were told to pull the movie from screens. (No official documentation of these demands has emerged.)
On
these grounds alone, a viewing of “The Spook Who Sat By the Door” would
be a matter of urgent curiosity. But the movie is also a distinctive
and accomplished work of art, no mere artifact of the times but an
enduring experience. A supreme aspect of the art of movies is tone—the
sensory climate of a movie, which depends on the style and mood of
performance as much as the plot and the dialogue, the visual
compositions as well as the locations, costumes, and décor, the editing
and the music (often a sticking point), all of which are aligned
with—and sharpen and focus—the ideas that the movie embodies. Dixon—who
starred in one of the greatest of all independent films, Michael
Roemer’s “Nothing But a Man,”
from 1964 (and then spent five years on “Hogan’s Heroes”)—begins with a
tone bordering on sketch-like satire that soon crystallizes into a
sharp edge of restrained precision. A senator (a white man, played by
Joseph Mascolo) campaigning for reëlection finds that he needs the black
vote and decides to criticize the C.I.A. for having no black agents.
Even in his office, the senator speaks in a pompous, stentorian voice
seemingly inflated to a constant podium bluster.
nih | The gap between Whites and Blacks in levels of violence
has animated a prolonged and controversial debate in public health and
the social sciences. Our study reveals that over 60% of this gap is
explained by immigration status, marriage, length of residence,
verbal/reading ability, impulsivity, and neighborhood context. If we
focus on odds ratios rather than raw coefficients, 70% of the gap is
explained. Of all factors, neighborhood context was the most important
source of the gap reduction and constitutional differences the least
important.
We acknowledge the harsh and often justified
criticism that tests of intelligence have endured, but we would
emphasize 2 facts from our findings. First, measured verbal/reading
ability, along with impulsivity/hyperactivity, predicted violence, in
keeping with a long line of prior research. Second, however, neither factor accounted for much in the way of racial or ethnic disparities
in violence. Whatever the ultimate validity of the constitutional
difference argument, the main conclusion is that its efficacy as an
explainer of race and violence is weak.
Our findings
are consistent with the hypothesis that Blacks are segregated by
neighborhood and thus differentially exposed to key risk and protective
factors, an essential ingredient to understanding the Black–White
disparity in violence. The race-related neighborhood features predicting violence are
percentage professional/managerial workers, moral/legal cynicism, and
the concentration of immigration. We found no systematic evidence that
neighborhood- or individual-level predictors of violence interacted with
race/ ethnicity. The relationships we observed thus appeared to be
generally robust across racial/ ethnic groups. We also found no
significant racial or ethnic disparities in trajectories of change in
violence.
Similar to the arguments made by William Julius Wilson in The Truly Disadvantaged,these results imply that generic interventions to improve neighborhood
conditions may reduce the racial gap in violence. Policies such as
housing vouchers to aid the poor in securing residence in middle-class
neighborhoods may achieve the most effective results in bringing down the
long-standing racial disparities in violence. Policies to increase home
ownership and hence stability of residence may also reduce disparities
(see model 3, Table 2).
Family
social conditions matter as well. Our data show that parents being
married, but not family configuration per se, is a salient factor
predicting both the lower probability of violence and a significant
reduction in the Black–White gap in violence. The tendency in past
debates on Black families has been either to pathologize female-headed
households as a singular risk factor or to emphasize the presence of
extended kin as a protective factor. Yet neither factor predicts
violence in our data. Rather, being reared in married-parent households
is the distinguishing factor for children, supporting recent work on the
social influence of marriage and calls for renewed attention to the labor-market contexts that support stable marriages among the poor.
Although
the original gap in violence between Whites and Latinos was smaller
than that between Whites and Blacks, our analysis nonetheless explained
the entire gap in violence between Whites and Latino ethnic groups. The
lower rate of violence among Mexican Americans compared with Whites was
explained by a combination of married parents, living in a neighborhood
with a high concentration of immigrants, and individual immigrant
status. The contextual effect of concentrated immigration was robust,
holding up even after a host of factors, including the immigrant status
of the person, were taken into account.
The limitations
of our study raise issues for future research. Perhaps most important
is the need to replicate the results in cities other than Chicago. The
mechanisms explaining the apparent benefits to those living in areas of
concentrated immigration need to be further addressed, and we look to
future research to examine Black–White differences in rates of violence
that remain unexplained. As with any nonexperimental research, it is
also possible we left out key risk factors correlated with race or
ethnicity. Still, to overturn our results any such factors would have to
be correlated with neighborhood characteristics and uncorrelated with
the dozen-plus individual and family background measures, an unlikely
scenario. Even controlling for the criminality of parents did not
diminish the effects of neighborhood characteristics. Finally, it is
possible that family characteristics associated with violence, such as
marital status, were themselves affected by neighborhood residence. If
so, our analysis would mostly likely have underestimated the association
between neighborhood conditions and violence.
We
conclude that the large racial/ethnic disparities in violence found in
American cities are not immutable. Indeed, they are largely social in
nature and therefore amenable to change.
medium | There are six crucial pieces of information — six facts
— that have been largely omitted from discussion on the Chauvin’s
conduct. Taken together, they likely exonerate the officer of a murder
charge. Rather than indicating illegal and excessive force, they instead
show an officer who rigidly followed the procedures deemed appropriate
by the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD).
The evidence points to the MPD and the local political establishment,
rather than the individual officer, as ultimately responsible for George
Floyd’s death.
These six facts are as follows:
George Floyd was experiencing cardiopulmonary and psychological distress minutes before he was placed on the ground, let alone had a knee to his neck.
The Minneapolis Police Department (MPD)
allows the use of neck restraint on suspects who actively resist
arrest, and George Floyd actively resisted arrest on two occasions,
including immediately prior to neck restraint being used.
The officers were recorded on their body cams assessing George Floyd as suffering from “excited delirium syndrome” (ExDS), a condition which the MPD considers an extreme threatto both the officers and the suspect. A white paper used by the MPD acknowledges that ExDS suspects may die irrespective of force involved. The officers’ response to this situation was in line with MPD guidelines for ExDS.
Restraining
the suspect on his or her abdomen (prone restraint) is a common tactic
in ExDS situations, and the white paper used by the MPD instructs the
officers to control the suspect until paramedics arrive.
Floyd’s
autopsy revealed a potentially lethal concoction of drugs — not just a
potentially lethal dose of fentanyl, but also methamphetamine. Together
with his history of drug abuse and two serious heart conditions, Floyd’s
condition was exceptionally and unusually fragile.
Chauvin’s
neck restraint is unlikely to have exerted a dangerous amount of force
to Floyd’s neck. Floyd is shown on video able to lift his head and neck,
and a robust study on double-knee restraints showed a median force
exertion of approximately approximately 105lbs.
Let’s be clear: the actions of Chauvin and the other officers were absolutely wrong. But they were also in
line with MPD rules and procedures for the condition which they
determined was George Floyd was suffering from. An act that would
normally be considered a clear and heinous abuse of force, such as a
knee-to-neck restraint on a suspect suffering from pulmonary distress,
can be legitimatized if there are overriding concerns not known to
bystanders but known to the officers. In the case of George Floyd, the
overriding concern was that he was suffering from ExDS, given a number
of relevant facts known to the officers. This was not known to the bystanders, who only saw a man with pulmonary distress pinned down with a knee on his neck. While
the officers may still be found guilty of manslaughter, the probability
of a guilty verdict for the murder charge is low, and the public should
be aware of this well in advance of the verdict.
While
we should pursue justice for George Floyd, we should be absolutely sure
that we are pursuing justice against his real killers. A careful
examination of the evidence points to the procedures and rules of the
MPD, rather than the police officers following these procedures and
rules, as the real killers of George Floyd. If anyone murdered George
Floyd, it was the MPD and the local political establishment. This is why
Attorney General Keith Ellison has expressed how difficult a conviction
will be.
NYPost | Fired Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin could still receive more than
$1.5 million in pension benefits during his retirement years — even if
he is convicted in the killing of George Floyd, according to a new report.
Chauvin, 44, was booted from the force and charged with second-degree
murder, but could still cash in because Minnesota, unlike some other
states, does not allow for the forfeiture of pensions for employees
convicted of felony crimes related to their work, CNN reported.
The Minnesota Public Employees Retirement Association confirmed to
the network that Chauvin, who had worked for the department since 2001,
would remain eligible to file for his partially taxpayer-funded pension
as early as age 50, though it would not specify the specific amount he
would receive, the network reported.
Employees terminated voluntarily or for cause are eligible for future
benefits unless they choose to forfeit them and receive a refund of all
contributions made during their employment, according to the
association.
“Neither our board nor our staff have the discretion to increase,
decrease, deny or revoke benefits,” a spokeswoman told CNN. “Any changes
to current law would need to be done through the legislative process.”
Chauvin’s attorney declined to comment to the network.
quillette | Tony Timpa was 32 years old when he died at the hands of the Dallas
police in August 2016. He suffered from mental health difficulties and
was unarmed. He wasn’t resisting arrest. He had called the cops from a
parking lot while intoxicated because he thought he might be a danger to
himself. By the time law enforcement arrived, he had already been
handcuffed by the security guards of a store nearby. Even so, the police
officers made him lie face down on the grass, and one of them pressed a
knee into his back. He remained in this position for 13 minutes until
he suffocated. During the harrowing recording of his final moments, he can be heard pleading for his life. A grand jury indictment of the officers involved was overturned.
Not many people have seen this video, however, and that may have
something to do with the fact that Timpa was white. During the protests
and agonizing discussions about police brutality that have followed the
death of George Floyd under remarkably similar circumstances, it is too
seldom acknowledged that white men are regularly killed by the cops as
well, and that occasionally the cops responsible are black (as it
happens, one of the Dallas police officers at the scene of Timpa’s death
was an African American). There seems to be a widespread assumption
that, under similar circumstances, white cops kill black people but not
white people, and that this disparity is either the product of naked
racism or underlying racist bias that emerges under pressure. Plenty of
evidence indicates, however, that racism is less important to
understanding police behavior than is commonly supposed.
Timpa was, of course, just one case and might be dismissed as an
anomaly. On the other hand, we are told that what happened to George
Floyd is what happens to black people “all the time.” But because the
killing of black suspects by white police officers receives more media
attention and elicits more outrage, such instances leave us vulnerable
to the availability heuristic—a cognitive bias that leads us to form
judgements about the prevalence of phenomena based on the readiness with
which we can recall examples. Had Tony Timpa been black, we would all
likely know his name by now. Had George Floyd been white, his name would
likely be a footnote, briefly reported in Minneapolis local news and
quickly forgotten. In fact, white people are victims of police
mistreatment “all the time” too. And just as the Timpa case tragically
parallels the Floyd one, there are countless episodes paralleling those
we hear about involving black people.
ipsnews | Since the 1960s, many institutions, the world over, have embraced the
notion of meritocracy. With post-Cold War neoliberal ideologies enabling
growing wealth concentration, the rich, the privileged and their
apologists invoke variants of ‘meritocracy’ to legitimize economic
inequality.
Instead, corporations and other social institutions, which used to be
run by hereditary elites, increasingly recruit and promote on the bases
of qualifications, ability, competence and performance. Meritocracy is
thus supposed to democratize and level society.
Ironically, British sociologist Michael Young pejoratively coined the term meritocracy in his 1958 dystopian satire, The Rise of the Meritocracy. With his intended criticism rejected as no longer relevant, the term is now used in the English language without the negative connotations Young intended.
It has been uncritically embraced by supporters of a social
philosophy of meritocracy in which influence is supposedly distributed
according to the intellectual ability and achievement of individuals.
Many appreciate meritocracy’s two core virtues. First, the
meritocratic elite is presumed to be more capable and effective as their
status, income and wealth are due to their ability, rather than their
family connections.
Second, ‘opening up’ the elite supposedly on the bases of individual
capacities and capabilities is believed to be consistent with and
complementary to ‘fair competition’. They may claim the moral high
ground by invoking ‘equality of opportunity’, but are usually careful to
stress that ‘equality of outcome’ is to be eschewed at all cost.
As Yale Law School Professor Daniel Markovits argues in The Meritocracy Trap,
unlike the hereditary elites preceding them, meritocratic elites must
often work long and hard, e.g., in medicine, finance or consulting, to
enhance their own privileges, and to pass them on to their children,
siblings and other close relatives, friends and allies.
Gaming meritocracy
Meritocracy is supposed to function best when an insecure ‘middle class’
constantly strives to secure, preserve and augment their income, status
and other privileges by maximizing returns to their exclusive
education. But access to elite education – that enables a few of modest
circumstances to climb the social ladder – waxes and wanes.
Most middle class families cannot afford the privileged education
that wealth can buy, while most ordinary, government financed and run
schools have fallen further behind exclusive elite schools, including
some funded with public money. In recent decades, the resources gap
between better and poorer public schools has also been growing.
Elite universities and private schools still provide training and
socialization, mainly to children of the wealthy, privileged and
connected. Huge endowments, obscure admissions policies and tax
exemption allow elite US private universities to spend much more than
publicly funded institutions.
Meanwhile, technological and social changes have transformed the
labour force and economies greatly increasing economic returns to the
cognitive, ascriptive and other attributes as well as credentials of
‘the best’ institutions, especially universities and professional
guilds, which effectively remain exclusive and elitist.
As ‘meritocrats’ captured growing shares of the education pies, the
purported value of ‘schooling’ increased, legitimized by the bogus
notion of ‘human capital’. While meritocracy transformed elites over time, it has also increasingly inhibited, not promoted social mobility.
campusreform | Amid nationwide calls for more diversity initiatives at universities,
one professor argues that these types of programs fail to address the
real issues and ultimately harm minority students.
In a recent interview, Henry Louis Taylor Jr., professor
of urban and regional planning at the University of Buffalo, said the
focus on “inclusion and diversity” on college campuses has been an
excuse to avoid any actual confrontation of race issues. Taylor says
that the primary issue of the century is race, and argues that society
needs to bring more attention to how different organizations handle
issues of race and racism.
He says this should be done by bringing these topics to the forefront.
According
to Taylor, universities have “replaced conversations around race with
conversations around inclusion and diversity, which shifts the
conversation and issue away so that we don’t have to deal with all of
those complex issues that are related to grappling and dealing with
race."
Taylor claims that the move toward “inclusion and
diversity” at universities “has been nothing more than a smokescreen to
marginalize the discussions of race and, in particular, the issues
facing African Americans."
“There are these predominantly white
science departments and medical centers that years later still have no
or very few black folks or Puerto Ricans,” said Taylor. “And this is one
of the reasons the anger is so deep." Taylor states that as a result of
the current situations, people are having their voices be heard by
bodies of government. The spread of the coronavirus and the recent
protests have us “caught in this kind of purgatory” by showing all
“people across the racial divide...the commonalities of pain and
misery."
According to the professor, the coronavirus crisis created the perfect storm for the types of change he believes is necessary.
“COVID-19
has snatched the mask off of America the beautiful, and revealed
disfigurement as a characteristic of this country,” said Taylor. “It’s
created a common experience of people across the racial divide that
allowed them to see the commonalities of pain and misery.
“So we
won’t go back to the old world. We have a vision, that’s what they’re
talking about — saying that enough is enough,” he explained
Taylor told Campus Reform
that certain university diversity efforts have increased enrollment of
international students on college campuses, there has been an unnoticed
decrease of black students.
“The inclusion and diversity
framework, in practice, pushed issues concerning black and brown people
to the margin as they became increasingly abstract. In some places,
people were even calling for ideological diversity,” Taylor told Campus Reform.
Taylor
added that college campuses’ diversity efforts actually harm the very
people they are meant to aid, saying that “the rise of international
students made it easier to hide the disappearance of Blacks on college
campuses, along with Latinxs.”
jonathanturley | We have yet another teacher suspended or
put on leave for merely expressing her opinion of Black Lives Matter on
her personal Facebook page. After Tiffany Riley wrote that she does
not agree with the BLM, the Mount Ascutney School Board held an
emergency meeting to declare that it is “uniformly appalled” by the
exercise of free speech and Superintendent David Baker
assured the public that they would be working on “mutually agreed upon
severance package.” The case magnifies concerns over the free speech
rights of teachers on social media or in their private lives.
WSWS | It is now just over three weeks since the Memorial Day murder of
George Floyd set off mass protests throughout the United States and
around the world. The political representatives of the ruling class have
responded with, on the one hand, brute force and threats of military
repression, and, on the other hand, pledges of “reform” and
“accountability.”
Yesterday, Trump signed an executive order that would embed more
social workers and mental health professionals with the police, create a
national database to track officers fired or convicted for using
excessive force, and ban chokeholds, with the exception, as the
president explained, of “when an officer’s life is at risk.”
Trump announced his executive order in an address before police
officers filled with calls for “law and order” and denunciations of
protesters. Trump’s caveat on chokeholds leaves the window wide open for
the continued use of the deadly practice, since police officers
routinely claim that they fear for their lives when they grievously
wound or kill someone.
The Democrats have offered up their own slate of cosmetic changes
largely mirroring Trump’s, including banning chokeholds and creating a
national database of abusive officers, while also explicitly rejecting
the demand, popular among protestors, to “defund” the police. Former
Vice President Joe Biden, the Democrats' presumptive presidential
nominee, has called for $300 million in additional federal funding to
shore up police departments across the country, while Senator Bernie
Sanders has said that cops need to be paid higher salaries.
Such measures will amount to less than nothing. They might as well
propose to change the color of police uniforms. Inevitably, “reforms”
from these representatives of the ruling class will end up strengthening
the police as an oppressive apparatus of the state.
The promise of police reform has repeatedly been offered up by the
ruling class as a supposed solution to excessive violence. In the
aftermath of the urban rebellions of the 1960s, the Democrats claimed
that more black police officers on the beat, more black police chiefs
overseeing forces and more black mayors would solve the problem.
Half a century later, African Americans account for more than 13
percent of police officers, an overrepresentation compared to the
population as a whole. Black police chiefs head departments across the
country, and cities large and small have elected black mayors. In the
last decade, the introduction of police vehicle dash cams and body
cameras has been offered up as yet another panacea.
And yet the killing and abuse continue, and indeed have escalated.
What is absent from all of the media commentary on police violence,
let alone the statements from bourgeois politicians, is any examination
of what the police are and their relationship to capitalist society.
Celebrating 113 years of Mama Rosa McCauley Parks
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*February 4, 1913 -- February 4, 2026*
*Some notes: The life of the courageous activist Mama Rosa McCauley Parks*
Mama Rosa's grandfather Sylvester Ed...
Monsters are people too
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Comet 3I/Atlas is on its way out on a hyberbolic course to, I don't know
where. I do know that 1I/Oumuamua is heading for the constellation Pegasus,
and ...
Remembering the Spanish Civil War
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This year marks the 90th anniversary of the launch of the Spanish Civil
War, an epoch-defining event for the international working class, whose
close study...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
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(Damn, has it been THAT long? I don't even know which prompts to use to
post this)
SeeNew
Can't get on your site because you've gone 'invite only'?
Man, ...
First Member of Chumph Cartel Goes to Jail
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With the profligate racism of the Chumph Cartel, I don’t imagine any of
them convicted and jailed is going to do too much better than your run of
the mill ...
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