Tag Archives: baltimore

Civil Rights Groups Move to Expose Government Spying on Black Lives Matter

by AudreaDEIhfkzevp Posted on July 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Against a backdrop of surveillance of the Black Lives Matters movement ahead of the Republican National Convention, two civil rights organizations are aiming to further expose government tracking of the movement’s members. On Tuesday, New York City-based groups Color of Change and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a joint Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security seeking documents, video and audio recordings, and other information on policies and protocols related to the surveillance of Black Lives Matter activists.

The request covers surveillance conducted in 11 cities that have seen large-scale protests over the police shooting or in-custody deaths of black people, including Baltimore, Chicago, New York City, Oakland, Cleveland, and St. Louis, where protests erupted in Ferguson after the killing of black teenager Michael Brown in August 2014. (The request cites Mother Jones‘ reports on the Department of Homeland Security tracking protesters at a Freddie Gray-related rally, and the monitoring of social media activity by prominent Black Lives Matter activists Deray McKesson and Johnetta Elzie by a private cyber security firm.)

The groups filed the request because they believe surveillance of Black Lives Matter is more systematic than is currently understood and jeopardizes the activists’ First Amendment rights, says Rashad Robinson, the director of Color of Change. “The government has done a real coordinated effort about what’s happening among activists, but nobody is monitoring what the government is doing,” Robinson says. “The more information we have, the better we can go about the kind of pushback and systemic change necessary to stop it.”

You can read the full FOIA request here.

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Civil Rights Groups Move to Expose Government Spying on Black Lives Matter

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Why Is the Murder Rate Increasing?

by AllanTrapp Posted on May 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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Over at Vox, Dara Lind has a longish piece about the “Ferguson Effect,” the notion that homicides are up because police are afraid to do their jobs in an era of viral videos and public backlash against police violence:

Just like there’s been a certain reluctance to admit homicide is rising at all among people who don’t want to blame Black Lives Matter protesters for it, there’s been reluctance to attribute any rise in homicides to changes in policing….But the reality is that changes in policing do affect crime rates. Indeed, “proactive” policing — in forms that have officers walking around neighborhoods and building relationships with their residents — is one of the most effective things a city can do to prevent crime. You just have to look at the correct scale: Police departments are local institutions, and they affect things on a local scale.

“Gun violence is very local,” says crime analyst Jeff Asher. “And changes in gun violence patterns probably have local explanations.” So he doesn’t give much credence to Comey’s version of the Ferguson effect theory — that the hypothetical fear of being the subject of a viral video somewhere is changing how cops around the country do their jobs. “There’s little evidence in the places we can measure it,” he says, “that proactivity in, say, Louisville, went down because of events in St. Louis or Baltimore.”

The problem, of course, is that this kind of thing is difficult to measure, which means the Ferguson Effect is all but impossible to verify. Personally I’m skeptical: homicide rates appear to be up a lot more than overall violent crime rates, and that’s hard to square with any kind of policing theory. And it’s important to get this right: If we choose the wrong theory about why murder rates are up, we have almost no chance of getting them back down. Liberals and conservatives alike need to be willing to go wherever the data leads them.

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Why Is the Murder Rate Increasing?

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James Inhofe blames Flint water crisis on Obama’s climate agenda

by IsidraSteen Posted on February 25, 2016

James Inhofe blames Flint water crisis on Obama’s climate agenda

By on 24 Feb 2016commentsShare

James “Snowball” Inhofe, the Oklahoma senator who once compared the EPA to the Gestapo, has announced an amendment to the Energy Modernization Act that will provide low-interest loans for Flint, Mich., and other communities facing water crises.

The bipartisan amendment will increase much-needed funding to communities with inadequate water infrastructure, but lest you think Inhofe grew a heart (or a brain) for a moment: Nope! The senator seems to be less concerned with the toxic water coming out of America’s pipes that with throwing shade at Barack Obama. In a statement, Inhofe said:

As a result of misplaced priorities of President Obama, who has consistently failed to partner with the states to address our nation’s real needs, stories are emerging in East Los Angeles, Baltimore, communities across Ohio, and elsewhere about lead pipes and other infrastructure problems that put the health of our citizens at risk.  In my leadership role on the EPW Committee, I have watched the Obama administration prioritize more than $120 billion for the president’s global warming agenda at the expense of real investment in critical infrastructure.

Ya hear that, liberals?? Contrary to common sense and all expert opinions, Flint’s water crisis isn’t because the conservative local government changed the city’s water source in order to save money, it’s because of Obama’s “global warming agenda.”

While it’s true that the EPA’s reaction to the crisis was troublingly slow, and that Obama’s proposed 2017 budget does cut the EPA’s water infrastructure funding by a quarter billion dollars, we have a really hard time believing that this had anything to do with global warming. Is it a problem? Yes. But is it because of excessive attention to climate change? No.

Let’s recall that this is the president who has tried to invest the EPA with more regulatory oversight, in the service of fighting climate change and improving environmental health around the country. Both have been priorities of Obama’s administration, and both have been staunchly opposed by a Republican Congress. And not only does climate change action not distract from clean drinking water, but the two are directly related, as drought can concentrate contaminants in dwindling water reservoirs.

If the senator’s logic seems flawed, maybe we should give him a break: All those fracking-induced earthquakes in Senator Snowball’s home state might have rattled his brain.

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James Inhofe blames Flint water crisis on Obama’s climate agenda

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Five Places Where Police Shooting Scandals Have Altered the Political Landscape

by Dann4778eehk Posted on February 17, 2016

Mother Jones

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With national attention focused on the mistreatment of people of color by police, and incumbents in many cities reeling from police-abuse scandals, some Black Lives Matter organizers have launched bids for elected office. Here are five places where officer-involved shootings have altered the political landscape.

Cook County, Illinois: State’s attorney Anita Alvarez has been under fire since November for her handling of the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald by a Chicago police officer. Her top challenger is Kim Foxx (profiled here), who was raised in a notorious housing project but made it to law school and became an assistant state’s attorney. Foxx, who has been pounding Alvarez over the McDonald case, promises to overhaul prosecutorial practices in Cook County and supports assigning officer-involved shootings to a special prosecutor. She’s still polling a close second, but she has racked up key endorsements, including those of the Cook County Democratic Party—and Alvarez’s former campaign co-chair.

Baltimore: Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, stung by criticism over her handling of last April’s Freddie Gray-related unrest, is not seeking reelection. Stepping into the void is Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson, a lead organizer of protests in Ferguson and Baltimore—his hometown—and a national voice for the movement. McKesson, 30, left his job as a public school administrator to become a full-time organizer, and has built his mayoral platform around police and education reform and tackling unemployment.

Ferguson, Missouri: In the first local election since a white police officer killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, voters have elevated two black candidates to the Ferguson City Council, tripling black representation on the six-member panel. (Voter turnout was 20 percent higher than it was in the previous municipal election.) State Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, who helped organize local protests after Brown’s death, aims to ride the activist wave all the way to the halls of Congress. She says she wants to see more federal resources directed to educational programs at the state level.

St. Paul, Minnesota: Black Lives Matter leader Rashad Turner, 30, is running for the Minnesota House with a platform focusing on criminal justice and education reform, employment, and housing. Turner, who first trained to be a cop but then switched to education, led the Black Lives Matter protest at the Minnesota State Fair last August. To win, he’ll need to unseat incumbent Democrat Rena Moran, the state’s first black female state representative, currently in her third term.

Cuyahoga County, Ohio: Tim McGinty, the prosecutor who argued to members of a grand jury that they shouldn’t indict the Cleveland police officer who gunned down 12-year-old Tamir Rice in a local park, now faces a very tough reelection bid. Exhibit A: He failed to secure the county’s Democratic Party endorsement.

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Five Places Where Police Shooting Scandals Have Altered the Political Landscape

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Justice Is Postponed in the Death of Freddie Gray

by VetaMcgough294 Posted on December 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, Judge Barry G. Williams declared a mistrial in the trial of William Porter, the first of six officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray. Gray died in April from injuries suffered after Baltimore police left him unbuckled but shackled in the back of a police van during a ride to a booking station, sparking turbulent protests throughout the city.

Jurors said on Wednesday that they were deadlocked on all counts. Porter had pleaded not guilty to second-degree assault, involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment, and misconduct in office. After deliberating for about a day, jurors had told the court that they were deadlocked; the judge instructed them to continue to try to reach a unanimous verdict. It didn’t happen.

Prosecutors argued that Porter criminally neglected his duties by failing to buckle Gray into a seat, or to get him medical attention when it was clear that he needed it. But Porter’s lawyers said it was the driver’s responsibility to make sure Gray was buckled in, and that Porter fulfilled his responsibility to Gray’s safety when he told his supervisor that Gray needed to go to the hospital.

City officials were again on edge as Baltimore awaited a verdict. Last April, Mayor Stephanie Rawlins-Blake declared a weeklong curfew and called in the National Guard after riots broke out around the city. Rawlins-Blake issued a statement following the judge’s decision on Wednesday calling on protesters to show “respect for our neighborhoods” and saying that the city was “prepared to respond” to any unrest.

The Harford and Howard county school districts canceled all field trips to Baltimore this week in anticipation of possible protests. The CEO of Baltimore schools also sent a letter to parents Monday saying he was “very concerned” about how students might respond. The letter drew criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, which said it was wrong to equate students’ desire to demonstrate with potential violence.

Judge Williams is expected to set a date for Porter’s new trial on Thursday. Trials for the other five officers charged in Gray’s death are also expected to begin soon.

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Justice Is Postponed in the Death of Freddie Gray

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Brennan Center: No "Crime Wave" in 2015

by ShadSolander Posted on November 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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Has there been an explosion of crime in 2015? It will take some time before official figures are available, so the Brennan Center decided to compile some unofficial figures through October. They surveyed the 30 largest cities and asked for both the murder rate and the overall “index” crime rate (murder and non-negligent manslaughter, aggravated assault, robbery, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft). Their conclusion: the murder rate is up 11 percent while the overall crime rate is down 1.5 percent.

It’s true that some cities have seen very large increases in their murder rates. But that’s not uncommon. The base of murders is pretty small, so it doesn’t make much to create a big spike in a single year. The overall crime rate, which has a much larger base, is usually more stable.

Any time the murder rate goes up, it’s a good idea to be concerned. But murder rates have ticked up by 10 percent or so on several occasions in the past. There’s just a lot of noise the data. Overall, though, there’s little evidence of any kind of explosion in either the murder rate or the crime rate. A few cities (Baltimore, DC, Denver, most of Texas) seem to have a serious problem, but that’s about it.

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Brennan Center: No "Crime Wave" in 2015

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Baltimore Just Proposed a Settlement With Freddie Gray’s Family

by ShanelParas8 Posted on September 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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Six months after Freddie Gray died from a spinal injury suffered after an alleged “rough ride” in the back of a police van, the city of Baltimore has tentatively agreed to settle with Gray’s family for $6.4 million. From the Times:

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said in a statement that the settlement with the family of Freddie Gray would be sent to the Baltimore Board of Estimates for a vote on Wednesday…

“The proposed settlement agreement going before the Board of Estimates should not be interpreted as a judgment on the guilt or innocence of the officers facing trial,” Ms. Rawlings-Blake said. The proposed settlement will be paid as $2.8 million in the current fiscal year and $3.6 million in the year beginning in July of 2016.

Six Baltimore police officers are currently being tried on criminal charges relating to Gray’s death, which sparked massive national protests in April.

The proposed settlement is close in amount to the $5.9 million agreement reached in July between New York City and the family of Eric Garner, who also died at the hands of the police, and eclipses the total $5.7 million that Baltimore has paid in all 102 alleged police misconduct cases since 2011, according to the Baltimore Sun.

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Baltimore Just Proposed a Settlement With Freddie Gray’s Family

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The Pentagon Gave How Much Taxpayer Cash to the NFL?

by JonelleLaffer Posted on May 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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For the last three years, the Department of Defense has forked over $5.4 million to 14 NFL teams to pay respect to service members during games. And while that’s a small line in the behemoth Pentagon budget, at least one GOP senator isn’t thrilled about it.

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) criticized the “egregious and unnecessary waste of taxpayer dollars” on Monday after a weekend report by NJ.com found the Defense Department and the New Jersey National Guard paid the New York Jets $377,000 for in-game salutes and promotional activities at professional football games. The Atlanta Falcons received more than $1 million during that time, while the Baltimore Ravens raked in $885,000.

“While it may be appropriate for the National Guard or other service branches to spend taxpayer funds on activities directly related to recruiting,” Flake said, “giving taxpayer funds to professional sports teams for activities that are portrayed to the public as paying homage to US military personnel would seem inappropriate.”

What did the National Guard get in return? From NJ.com‘s Christopher Baxter and Jonathan Salant:

The agreement includes the Hometown Hero segment, in which the Jets feature a soldier or two on the big screen, announce their names and ask the crowd to thank them for their service. The soldiers and three friends also get seats in the Coaches Club for the game.

…

Aside from the Hometown Heroes segment, the agreements also included advertising and marketing services, including a kickoff video message from the Guard, digital advertising on stadium screens, online advertising and meeting space for a meeting or events.

Also, soldiers attended the annual kickoff lunch in New York City to meet and take pictures with the players for promotional use, and the Jets allowed soldiers to participate in a charity event in which coaches and players build or rebuild a playground or park.

The Jets also provided game access passes.

Flake, who first highlighted the National Guard’s spending as part of his #PorkChops campaign on wasteful spending, said his office had found “a number of advertising and promotion contracts between the Pentagon and professional sports teams in the MLB, NBA, NASCAR, Major League Soccer and the NCAA,” according to the Hill.

Here’s the full list of NFL teams that received DOD money, via NJ.com:

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The Pentagon Gave How Much Taxpayer Cash to the NFL?

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Property Bubble, Tech Bubble, What’s Next For China?

by anunturiimobiliaretimisoara Posted on May 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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I’ve long been conflicted about China’s prospects for the future. On the one hand, their growth rate has been impressive over the past few decades, and their long-term growth seems to be reasonably well assured too. But there are clouds on the horizon. Demographics are one: China is getting older, and by 2030 nearly a quarter of the country will be elderly. There’s also a problem that’s inherent to growth: As China gets richer and more middle class, their labor costs will rise, eliminating one of their key attractions to Western manufacturers.

But what about the short term? That’s starting to look problematic too. China’s stock markets have been on a massive, bubblicious tear recently, none more so than the exchanges that specialize in tech companies. Matt O’Brien speculates about the underlying cause of this mania:

Why are China’s stock markets partying like it’s 1999? Well, part of it is that China’s housing bubble might be bursting—new home prices fell 5.1 percent in January—and the only other place people can put their money is in stocks. Another part is that China’s state-owned media companies have been saying for months that stocks look cheap, and people are listening. Especially people who haven’t graduated from high school. Indeed, 67 percent of China’s new stock investors don’t have a high school diploma. And now that China has cut interest rates so much—and looks like it will keep doing so—they can borrow money to buy as many stocks as they want. And that’s a lot. So-called margin accounts, which let people do this, more than doubled in 2014, and, even though brokerages have tightened their terms a bit, they’re still growing.

So whether you want to call this a boom, a bull market, or a mania doesn’t really matter. A bubble by any other name will pop just as much.

The best-case scenario is probably that China’s central bank manages to engineer a fairly normal cyclical recession, which will be mild and short-lived. The worst-case scenario is that borrowing is fueling more of this boom than we think, and China will shortly experience a bursting property and stock bubble that will look an awful lot like the one we went through in 2008.

Still, I will say one thing in China’s favor: a lot of analysts have been predicting a crash for a long time, and somehow China’s economy just keeps rolling along. On the other hand, to paraphrase Keynes, bubbles can last a helluva lot longer than you’d think. But eventually they all burst anyway.

So color me nervous about China. At the same time, keep in mind that all I know is what I read in the papers. I might be totally off base with my concerns.

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Property Bubble, Tech Bubble, What’s Next For China?

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Why Do We Give Medical Treatment That Increases Patients’ Chances of Dying?

by BlytheMadsen Posted on May 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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While Kevin Drum is focused on getting better, we’ve invited some of the remarkable writers and thinkers who have traded links and ideas with him from Blogosphere 1.0 to this day to contribute posts and keep the conversation going. Today we’re honored to present a post from Aaron E. Carroll.

I saw this study a few weeks ago on blood pressure treatment for nursing home residents, and I almost ignored it. There are so many like it. But it’s just ridiculous that this kind of stuff continues, and that we can’t seem to do anything about it.

We know that in many people, high blood pressure is bad. We therefore try and do things to lower it. But then we go ahead and decide that if lowering blood pressure in some people is good, it must be good for everyone. In frail, elderly people, however, there’s no evidence for this—and there may be evidence that lowering blood pressure is a bad idea. But that runs counter to what we’ve always been told, so many ignore it.

This was a longitudinal study of elderly people living in nursing homes, meaning that the authors recruited people there and then followed them for about two years. They were interested in seeing how different aspects of care were related to the subjects’ chance of dying. Almost 80 percent of them were being treated for high blood pressure (in spite of the above). A previous analysis of this study had shown that blood pressure was inversely related to all-cause mortality “even after adjusting for several confounders, such as age, sex, history of previous cardiovascular (CV) disease, Charlson Comorbidity Index score, cognitive function (Mini-Mental State Examination), and autonomy status (activities of daily living).” This study went further, to look at whether being on lots of drugs for high blood pressure was bad—even after controlling for the blood pressure relationship.

Patients in this study were on an average of seven drugs and were on at least two drugs for high blood pressure.

What the study found, to no one’s real surprise, is that the people on two or more blood pressure medications who had a systolic blood pressure of less than 130 mm Hg had a significantly higher all-cause mortality. This held true even after additionally adjusting for propensity score–matched subsets, other cardiovascular issues, and the exclusion of patients without a history of hypertension who were receiving BP-lowering agents.

We know that there’s evidence that keeping blood pressure lower in this population might be bad. Yet, many of these patients were not only being treated for “high” blood pressure—many were on multiple medications for it. Those on more medications (i.e. more treatment) were more likely to die.

Here’s the kicker: This wasn’t a study done in the United States. It was done in France and Italy—so this isn’t me bashing on the US health care system. It’s a problem that’s writ large. We find something that is bad. We find that lessening it is better. We then start to lessen it even more. Soon we’re trying to lessen it for everyone. We’re saying it’s too high in all populations, even when we don’t have evidence that’s true. We say it even as evidence builds that less is bad for lots of people.

Better clinical decision support might help, but we can’t seem to get that in electronic health records, and doctors hate those anyway. Many are still unaware that guidelines even exist.

And then when things get really bad, we act as if we weren’t to blame. From an editorial in JAMA:

It is surprising that among frail elderly patients with a systolic blood pressure less than 130 mm Hg (20 percent of the studied group), the use of multiple antihypertensive drugs was continued, because few evidence-based data support this approach.

Really? It’s surprising?

Getting doctors to change their behavior is hard, and getting them to stop doing something may be even harder. But all of this is important, and it’s part of why health services research is so critical.

A final note: Even when I’m upset about some aspects of medicine, I’m grateful for so many others—like the ones helping Kevin right now. I’m crazy about health care. I’ll keep poking it with a stick. That’s how I show my love.

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Why Do We Give Medical Treatment That Increases Patients’ Chances of Dying?

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