Justin's Political Corner
Brianna Pena, a 5-year-old, was told she could not return to her kindergarten classroom at her Bronx, NY, charter school until she was “psychiatrically cleared” to return by a medical professional. It was her first day at a new school. She didn’t know anyone and repeatedly cried, “Nobody cares about me!” School officials insist that Brianna kept “yelling and throwing chairs” during the incident. Administrators placed her on a list of so-called “psychiatric suspensions.”
In Bartow, FL, Kiera Wilmot, a 16-year-old student was expelled from Bartow High School and arrested for conducting an unapproved chemistry experiment. She combined some household chemicals in an 8-ounce water bottle and the top popped off, giving off a small explosion. According to the school principal, Ron Pritchard, “she made a bad choice. … She wanted to see what would happen [when the chemicals mixed] and was shocked by what it did.” She was charged with possession of and discharging a weapon on school property.
Brianna’s and Kiera are but two examples of the growing “discipline” crisis besetting schools throughout the country. School administrators are resorting to an increasing number of questionable tactics to address problems associated with the breakdown of the classroom as a learning environment. These include the use of local EMS workers to remove pre-teen children as well as such high-tech methods as RFID tracking and CCTV video surveillance. An increasing number of officials are resorting to aggressive in-school policing, with on-campus uniformed and armed officers ticketing and arresting more and more kids. All to contain “disruptive” students often engaged in what was once considered bad behavior but is now criminalized conduct.
Reports that American education is in crisis appear in the media almost every day. From Pres. Obama to mayors across the country, everyone complains about the country’s supposedly failing education system. Each promises to fix the problem – and it only seems to be getting worse. Yet, efforts to police schools reflect the further shifting of education spending from the classroom to the administrative apparatus of control.
A major contributing factor to this crisis is the failed “zero tolerance” discipline program promoted by the Bush administration and still in force in school systems throughout the country. Like its abstinence-only sex ed program, Bush policies made a serious issue worse. The effort to enforce classroom discipline through the expulsion and punishment of students is an example of the moral absolutism propagated during much of the last few decades. It further extends the “school-to-prison pipeline” by aggressively incarcerating ever-younger children, particularly African-American and Hispanic youth.
Some cities, like New York, are increasingly turning to costly emergency medical services to restrain students. Cashmiere Turner, a 7th grader at New York’s Intermediate School 151 in the Bronx, struggled both academically and socially in the classroom. Her mother, Sonya, repeatedly sought school administrators’ help with her daughter’s learning problems and the bullying she faced, but was ignored. In October 2011, school officials claimed that the troubled teen acted out, attempting to harm herself. They contacted Cashmiere’s mother, who rushed to the school only to find that the officials had also contacted the local EMS. Refusing to let Ms. Turner take her daughter home, EMS workers and police officers brought her to a local hospital that found her neither a threat to herself nor others. She was released, but not before the hospital billed her mother an estimated $1,300 for services rendered.
The city’s Board of Education (BOE) reports that during 2010-2011 school year, EMS was called 947 times to handle disruptive or dangerous kids; this is up 12 percent from the previous year. Nelson Mar, an attorney with Legal Services NYC-Bronx, represented both Brianna Pena and Cashmiere Turner, warns, “minor children are removed by EMS for childhood behavior or misbehavior which does not rise to the level of a medical emergency.” He points out that at one Bronx hospital, there were 58 EMS calls from schools during a 10-day period in February 2011. Most troubling, doctors and psychologists found that only 3 percent of the kids brought to an Emergency Room were admitted to the hospital.
A high school student from Hoover, AL, was recently beaten by a school official and then arrested for falling asleep in school, according to a recent lawsuit. Ashlynn Avery is not your typical teenager. She suffers from diabetes, asthma and sleep apnea. Sadly, while sitting in the in-school suspension room and reading “Huckleberry Finn,” she dozed off. She asserts that the classroom supervisor seized the book and hit her with it; he claims it was an accident. The police were called and the girl was “forcefully” arrested, causing her to have a seizure, vomit, pass out and endup in the hospital.
To enforce discipline, school systems across the country are employing harsher techniques and turning to the local police. In Maine, educators report an increase in school disruptions with students pulling fire alarms and scratching and bruising teachers. The state is considering allowing teachers to use restraints or seclusion on misbehaving students; the current bill limits such actions to those authorized in writing by a student’s parent, whether this will remain in the final bill is an open question. In Connecticut over the last few years, nearly 1,700 students were arrested, almost two-thirds of them for breach of peace, minor fights and disorderly conduct. In-school busts account for 20 percent of all youth arrests in the state.
In Georgia, school misbehavior incidents bring in the local police. In Milledgeville, GA, a small town about 90 miles from Atlanta, Salecia Johnson, a 6-year-old student at Creekside Elementary School, was handcuffed and taken away in a patrol car to the police station. According to the Baldwin County schools Superintendent, Geneva Braziel, the police were called due to Johnson’s “violent and disruptive” behavior that threatened other classmates and school staff. In Clayton County, police recently arrested seven students at the North Clayton High School for disorderly conduct; Precious Woods was busted for spiting on a fellow student who had thrown a trashcan at her and Trinell Kennedy was arrested for using profanity during the same incident.
In Albuquerque, NM, during the 2009-2010 school year, 900 of the district’s 90,000 students were referred to the criminal justice system. More than 500 of were handcuffed, arrested and brought to juvenile detention. More than 200 were arrested for minor offences, including disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, refusing to obey and interference with staff. (In response to a 2010 class-action lawsuit, student arrests fell by 53 percent.)
Things are far worse in Texas. In a 2010 report, Texas Appleseed, a public-interest group, found that each year more than 275,000 non-traffic tickets are issued to juveniles. It reports that the vast majority of offences are due to classroom disruptions and disorderly conduct. It noted that in 1989, only 9 school districts in Texas had separate police agencies while in 2010 more than 160 had police units. Ticketed students received fines of between $250 and $500 or do community service in lieu of fines.
Steven Teske, MA, JD, and a Judge, Juvenile Court of Clayton County, Jonesboro, GA, writing in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, defines zero tolerance as “policies operate under the assumption that removing disruptive students deters other students from similar conduct while simultaneously enhancing the classroom environment.” His detailed analysis makes clear not only that the policy doesn’t work, but contributes to the deepening crisis of American education and harms children.
The concept of zero tolerance originated during the Reagan-era’s so-called “war on drugs.” It entered the educational sector in 1994 when Pres. Bill Clinton signed the Gun-Free Schools Act that required a student’s 1-year suspension if s/he was found possessing a firearm. In the wake of the Columbine shootings of 1999, the law has been expanded to include any so-called weapon, including Kiera Wilmot’s chemistry experiment. Under Pres. George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind program, zero tolerance was linked to teaching-to-the-test policies as a solution to the education crisis.
The increased policing of the classroom is part of the effort to transform schools from “educational” institutions that cultivate citizenship to “training” campuses inculcating workplace discipline. It is a battle that has shaped American education since mass public schooling was introduced more then a century ago.
h/t: Alternet
BREAKING: Dr. Kermit Gosnell Found Guilty of Three Counts of First-Degree Murder
UPDATE: Gosnell is guilty of three of four counts of 1st-degree murder. More to come…
Original Post: Just a few hours after the jury announced a deadlock on two of the charges in a murder trial that’s gained as much notoriety for its sickening crimes as its controversial (lack of) coverage (and news), the court has announced that the jury has reached a verdict on all 260+ counts against Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell. The court will reconvene shortly to read the verdict and we’ll have updates as soon as it’s announced.
Gosnell is accused of numerous crimes arising from his abortion practice, including five counts of murder—four for babies that he allegedly killed after they were born alive, and one for the death of one of his adult patients. (Three other murder charges were dropped during the trial, though there were accusations of many, many more illegal abortions.) He was also accused of performing numerous late-term abortions, carried out long after they are legally allowed and sometimes on underage patients. There were also many charges for offenses related to abuse and mismanagement of prescription drugs and violations of state health codes, including using unlicensed office assistants and allowing untrained workers to administer anesthesia and other medicines.
BREAKING: #JodiArias guilty of 1st-degree murder. Faces the death penalty or life sentence with parole after 25 years.#AriasTrial #Arias
— Justin Gibson (@JGibsonDem) May 8, 2013
HOUSTON — Shots fired near a ticket counter left one man dead and created a scare this afternoon at Houston’s busy George Bush Intercontinental Airport.
The episode has delayed some flights to and from the airport, mostly on United — which has waived change fees for customers flying through Houston today.
The incident began when an as-yet unidentified man entered the airport’s Terminal B and fired a gun toward the ceiling at around 1:35 p.m. CT, Houston Police Department spokesman Kese Smith told reporters at the airport.
Smith says a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official stationed at the airport heard the commotion and moved to the scene, where he gave the man a verbal warning to drop his weapon. When the man did not comply, the DHS official fired at the suspect.
At about the same time, according to Smith, the suspect appeared to turn his own gun on himself. Kese says shots were fired from both weapons, but it was not clear whose shots killed the suspect, who was pronounced dead at the airport. That will be determined in an autopsy, according to Kese.
The airport adds via Twitter that Terminal B operations are “being redirected to other terminals. (Passengers) are being allowed to move to other terminals. It’s a slow process due to heavy (passenger) traffic and limited train access.”
“It’s still an active scene. We’re asking people to be patient.,” Ward says.
The airport advised passengers were advised to check with their airlines on the status of their flights.
By 2:10 p.m. CT, the Federal Aviation Administration had issued a “ground stop” for flights bound for Houston Bush Intercontinental, citing “security” as the reason. The ground stop was still in place as of 4:30 p.m. CT.
h/t: USAToday.com
The bipartisan House immigration bill taking shape may soon make all undocumented immigrants plead before a judge for breaking U.S. criminal law. In a move certain to appease Republican lawmakers but anger immigration advocates, House group members have proposed that legal status and an eventual pathway to citizenship can be conferred once a federal judge places undocumented immigrants on “probation.” In a joint proposal meant to assuage conservative critics of “amnesty,” undocumented immigrants would have to serve out a minimum five year probation sentence before they can get on a path to citizenship.
Being undocumented is a civil infraction, not a criminal one. But as one GOP congressional aide described the process to Roll Call, it would be “similar to how judges handle small drug crimes, in which offenders are sentenced to probation, rather than jail, because it forces them to acknowledge that they broke the law but saves taxpayers the expense of incarceration.”
Comparing a large spectrum of undocumented immigrants (including so-called Dreamers who were brought to this country as children) to drug dealers serves as a reminder of how steadfastly disconnected the House Republicans remain in their widely condemned approach to immigration reform.
The probation sentence furthermore exemplifies the House Republican belief that punishment is the only sensible immigration reform solution.
There have been conflicting crime scene accounts from police about basic facts.One week after Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev captured, there are more questions than answers surrounding the Boston Marathon bombing and its violent climax involving a carjacking and two shootouts and the murder of an MIT policeman.
Some of the confusion comes from the police, whose statements have been contradictory or wrong, and were later retracted. Some of the confusion comes from new details that have emerged prompting more questions, such as the FBI’s tracking of the older brother and his mother. And others are media speculation, such as whether Tamerlan killed his teenage brother’s best friend and two others on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, because they were pot dealers and exerting a bad influence on Dzhokhar.
Let’s try to sift through what’s known and unknown, correct and incorrect.
1. The bombing. We know the Tsarnaev brothers were singled out as the top suspects. Yet some bloggers reported that there were nearly identically dressed people who also left black backpacks at the race’s finish line. We don’t know their motives, or if anyone else was involved or knew about their plans. The brothers were apparently poor, so there are lingering questions about how they bought the explosives they used and their getaway car.
2. The MIT killing. It’s not clear why the brothers killed the MIT police officer, though speculation is that they wanted his gun. Reports that they robbed a 7-11 were untrue. The evidence they killed the MIT officer comes from the young Chinese man whose Mercedes SUV they carjacked; he told police and the media that the brothers told him they did.
3. The carjacking. The carjacking victim emerged from seclusion and gave a detailed account to the Boston Globe, saying that he ran for his life at a gas station, not that he was let go because he was a foreigner, as earlier media reports suggested. He said the brothers told him that they were the bombers and that they had killed the MIT officer and might go to New York—prompting city officials to demand more federal anti-terror funding.
4. Bombs yes, guns not so much? The initial police reports said that the pair was heavily armed with guns, including an assault rifle. But that apparently was untrue as photos of the Thursday night confrontation were posted online, showing only one brother was armed with a gun, it’s not clear what kind of firearm.
5. Tamerlan’s death. How the older brother died is another open question. Watertown police said that he ran toward a line of officers (leaving his brother behind in the SUV), while firing a handgun, but he ran out of bullets just yards in front of them. They say he was tackled to be taken alive, but that his brother ran over the body while driving the SUV through the police lines. A gruesome photo of Tamerlan’s dead body shows bullet wounds and gashes. Later reports say that most of the 200 rounds fired in this confrontation were from the police.
6. False information on attempted suicide? Dzhokhar ended up hiding in a boat in a backyard not far from the shoot out. He did not shoot himself in the neck to try to kill himself or fire on police from the boat, as was initially reported by police; he had no firearms in the boat, according to more recent accounts by federal officials. What prompted authorities to open fire on Dzokhar is still unclear.
7. The family and the FBI.Tamerlan was known to the FBI. He had been interviewed by agents after Russia singled him out as dangerous. He was listed on an FBI terrorist watch database. His mother, who is a citizen but moved back to Dagestan, was also in that FBI database. Since his death and her other son’s arrest, she has given press conferences denying their involvement. Press reports said that both she and Tamerlan became devout Muslims. Other reports said Dzhokhar told police from his hospital bed that the family was angered by America’s wars in Islamic countries.
The FBI links raise all kinds of questions. Did this surveillance radicalize them further? Did agents even try to recruit Tamerlan? The question of who else knew about the bombing plot—and who might have supported or encouraged it—is still murky.
8. The triple pot murder. Media coverage of the bombers has swung between speculation that they had ties to overseas terrorists to the theory that they were lone wolf actors. The revelation that the younger brother was a pothead, and that the Sept. 11, 2011 triple murder of his friend—a pot dealer—and two others might be related to the bombings is another Pandora’s box. Some writers suggest that Tamerlan could have done it, as the crime occurred during a particularly devout period of his return to religiosity and it anticipates the callousness of the marathon bombing.
9. The evidence trail. There’s still much to be learned about the bombers, including what their lives online will yield. The brothers had computers, e-mails, YouTube pages and other accounts that are being scrutinized. All of this suggests that the larger truths behind the bombing and its violent aftermath have yet to emerge.
MANCHESTER, Ill. (AP) — The nephew of a small-town Illinois mayor shot and killed five people, including two boys, before leading police on a chase that ended in an exchange of gunfire that left him dead, authorities said Wednesday.
Illinois State Police said they believe Rick O. Smith, 43, entered a Manchester home through the back door and shot the victims at close range with a shotgun, leaving two women, one man and the boys dead. Two people were found in a bedroom, two in a second bedroom and the man in the hallway. A sixth victim, a 6-year-old girl, was injured and taken to a Springfield hospital.
“The offender took the 6-year-old out of the residence and put her in the hands of a neighbor,” State Police Lt. Col. Todd Kilby said.
Officials have not revealed a motive for the killings. Police said the victims are related. Authorities believe Smith and the victims were acquainted, but they didn’t provide details of the relationships.
A bystander called police and told them that Smith fled the home in a white sedan. A car chase ensued, leading authorities to the nearby town of Winchester, where Smith and officers exchanged gunfire. Officers shot Smith, and he later died at a hospital.
Police said they found a rifle, shotgun and large hunting knife in Smith’s car.
Coroner officials said they plan autopsies on the victims Thursday morning in Bloomington and identities would be released at that time.
Scott County State’s Attorney Michael Hill said Smith, of rural Morgan County, had previous convictions for reckless homicide, drugs and bad checks.
Manchester Mayor Ronald Drake confirmed that Smith was his nephew, saying he hadn’t spoken to Smith in two years, but he believed his nephew was unemployed. Drake said the last time Smith contacted him was to borrow tools.
In Manchester, yellow police tape surrounded the small one-story brick home where the victims were found. Manchester is a village of about 300 residents located about 50 miles west of Springfield.
The Rev. Robin Lyons of Manchester United Methodist Church, one of two churches in the community said, “this shows tragedy can happen anywhere.”
Two area school superintendents said they received calls from county sheriffs before 6 a.m. informing them that five people had been shot to death at a house in Manchester and that a suspect was at large.
Superintendent David Roberts of the Winchester School District and Les Stevens of the North Greene Unit District No. 3 both said they immediately canceled classes when they were told of the shootings and that other school districts did the same.
Roberts said the wounded girl is a student at Winchester Grade School and her teacher was with her at the Springfield hospital.
H/T: TPM
A senior congressional aide privy to the Boston Marathon terror investigation confirmed Saturday that the FBI had been warned about alleged bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev as far back as 2011, when his apparently suspicious activities prompted Russian authorities keeping close surveillance on militant Islamic groups in the Caucuses region of the former Soviet Union to contact US counter-terrorism officials about him. The 26-year-old suspected terrorist, who was killed in a firefight with police in Watertown early Friday morning, traveled to Russia from Boston several times in recent years, according to multiple US officials who have reviewed his passport file - including an extended stay in 2012. The alleged bomber’s uncle, Alvi Tsarnaev, said in an interview with the Globe that the nephew visited his father in the restive Russian province of Dagestan, which neighbors war-torn Chechnya.
Despite initial reports to the contrary, FBI agents did not read Boston Bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda rights immediately after he was taken into custody. Instead, they invoked what is known as the “public safety exception” to delay reading those rights to the alleged bomber. Here’s what you need to know about this narrow exception to the Miranda rule:
The Public Safety Exemption Is Real
The Supreme Court first held that there is a public safety exemption to Miranda in a 1984 case known as New York v. Quarles. In Quarles a woman told police that a man with a gun raped her, and that he’d run into a nearby grocery store. Police quickly found the suspect within the store, arrested him after a brief chase, handcuffed him, and discovered that he was wearing an empty shoulder holster. Before reading him his rights, an officer asked him where the gun was, and the suspect told the cop where to find it. After retrieving the gun, police then read the suspect his Miranda rights.
Although the Constitution generally forbids law enforcement from interrogating suspects in custody without first reading them their rights, the Court held that a narrow “public safety exemption” permitted the limited questioning that occurred in Quarles. As the Court explained, “procedural safeguards which deter a suspect from responding were deemed acceptable in Miranda in order to protect the Fifth Amendment privilege; when the primary social cost of those added protections is the possibility of fewer convictions, the Miranda majority was willing to bear that cost. Here, had Miranda warnings deterred Quarles from responding to Officer Kraft’s question about the whereabouts of the gun, the cost would have been something more than merely the failure to obtain evidence useful in convicting Quarles. Officer Kraft needed an answer to his question not simply to make his case against Quarles but to insure that further danger to the public did not result from the concealment of the gun in a public area.”
As the Court emphasized, this exemption is “narrow.” It permits police to ask a limited range of questions for the purpose of removing any imminent threats. It does not permit wide-ranging questions intended to build a case against the suspect.
FBI Guidelines Apply The Public Safety Exemption Aggressively In Terrorism Cases
A 2011 FBI memorandum says agents may delay reading Miranda rights to a suspect in “exceptional cases” when the FBI “conclude[s] that continued unwarned interrogation is necessary to collect valuable and timely intelligence not related to any immediate threat.” According to a DOJ spokesperson, this guidance exists because “the threat posed by terrorist organizations and the nature of their attacks—which can include multiple accomplices and interconnected plots—creates fundamentally different public safety concerns than traditional criminal cases.” Needless to say, this guidance is controversial, as it extends the public safety exemption beyond truly imminent threats to encompass more distant — but also potentially more deadly — future threats.
The FBI Cannot Indefinitely Delay Reading Tsarnaev His Miranda Rights
Because the public safety exemption is rooted in the “need for answers to questions in a situation posing a threat to the public safety,” it is only temporary. Eventually, it may become clear that no such threats exist (or at least any that Tsarnaev is capable of providing information about). At that point, he must be read his Miranda rights even under the most lax plausible understanding of the exemption. Additionally, if law enforcement wishes to ask Tsarnaev questions geared towards gathering evidence to use against him at trial, they must read him his Miranda rights.
Let’s show the world that our criminal justice system works by Mirandizing Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, charging him as a murderer, and trying him in our federal court system, with all of the usual rights and protections, rather than holding him as an “enemy combatant.”
This is pretty breathtaking. Graham (no relation) is suggesting that an American citizen, captured on American soil, should be deprived of basic constitutional rights.
Keep in mind that Graham isn’t just an angry citizen; he’s not even just a U.S. senator. He is also a trained lawyer, a colonel in Air Force Reserve, and a member of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, the legal arm of the Air Force.
h/t: The Atlantic
Fox News figures are dismissing the voices of the families who suffered in a mass shooting in Newtown, CT by claiming they’re being used and exploited by Democrats, discounting the efforts they have made to encourage Congress to pass stronger gun laws.
On April 11, the Senate overcame a Republican-led filibuster that tried to block the beginning of debate on stronger gun laws with a 68-31 vote. The impetus for the new gun proposals was driven by the December mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut that left 26 victims dead, most of them young children. President Obama had been urging Congress to act to strengthen guns laws in response to the shooting for some time.
According to several Fox News figures, Obama has been using the families of the Newtown shooting victims as props for a political agenda.
On April 11, Fox News host Sean Hannity called the effort to strengthen gun laws “naked exploitation of dead children and grieving families,” while his guest Ann Coulter said that Democrats are “play[ing] with these victims.” The previous night, Hannity stated that the president “is once again using families of tragedy as props for his agenda.” Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade said on his April 11 radio show that Obama is “using the Newtown families to push for background checks.” Fox News White House reporter Ed Henry similarly said on April 9 that “for the second straight day, the White House used the victims of the Newtown tragedy to make their case.” On his April 9 radio show, Fox News host Mike Huckabee suggested that taking some of the relatives of the Newtown shooting victims to Washington, DC on Air Force One to make their case for stronger gun laws was “an exploitation of those parents.”
Such an attitude does a disservice to the many Newtown families that want tougher gun laws in the wake of their tragedies. Several of the families appeared on CBS’ 60 Minutes on April 7 to discuss what kind of gun violence prevention measures they would like to see signed into law, saying that universal background checks and a ban on high-capacity magazines were important. After the vote that broke the GOP’s threatened filibuster, more than 30 families of Newtown victims released a statement criticizing those who tried block an up-or-down vote on new gun legislation, saying that “[t]he senators who have vowed to filibuster this bill should be ashamed of their attempt to silence efforts to prevent the next American tragedy.”
h/t: MMFA
A US couple who had fled to Cuba after snatching their two young sons from the care of their grandmother are behind bars in Tampa, Florida, local law enforcement said Wednesday.
A US airplane carrying Joshua Hakken, his wife Sharyn Patricia and their sons, aged two and four, landed in Tampa from Cuba early Wednesday, local media reported.
Hakken was attempting to flee US authorities when he took his wife and boys to Cuba aboard his sailboat on Monday.
Joshua Hakken was booked in the Hillsborough County, Florida jail and faces charges that include child neglect, kidnapping, burglary, and grand theft auto, while Sharyn Hakken will face charges of kidnapping, interference with child custody and child neglect, according the website of the sheriff’s office.
TV footage showed the couple arriving in the United States in handcuffs.
Officials in Florida had been searching for Joshua Hakken since April 3 when he allegedly broke into his mother-in-law’s house near Tampa, tied her up and fled with his young boys.
The Hillsborough County sheriff’s office said that Hakken lost custody of the children after being arrested in Louisiana on drug charges in June 2012, following what police described as “an anti-government rally.”
h/t: The Raw Story
