Tag Archives: civil

Finally, Conservatives Begin To Back Away From the Confederate Flag

Mother Jones

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The death of nine innocent worshippers may achieve what decades of civil rights activism failed to do: Force South Carolina to remove the Confederate battle flag from grounds of its capitol building.

The Confederate battle flag flew over the capitol dome in Columbia, S.C., from 1962, when the legislature hoisted it as a symbol of defiance against integration, to 2000, when huge protests convinced state lawmakers to move it elsewhere. But it didn’t go far: The flag has flown over a Confederate soldiers’ memorial on the capitol grounds ever since.

The shooting in Charleston is leading to new calls to take down the Confederate flag for good, including one from the mayor of Columbia:

Now we’ve also seen some tentative hints that figures on the right may actually be willing to let that happen:

Nikki Haley

The South Carolina governor infamously called a non-issue during her re-election campaign last year because she “had not had one conversation with a single CEO about the Confederate flag” during calls with business leaders. She also rejected at least one previous call by the NAACP to remove the flag.

But during an interview on Friday with Reuters, Haley seemed open to re-examining the deal that moved the Confederate flag to its current spot

“If they want to have this conversation again, they will,” Haley said of the state legislature. “They had it 15 years ago. They came to a consensus, that’s where it was. I think they’ll have another conversation, and we’ll bring people together.”

Lindsey Graham

Many people, including us, blasted the South Carolina senator and Republican presidential candidate when he told CNN on Friday morning that the flag is “part of who we are” in his state. But he also said he was open to changing the capitol’s awkward compromise on the flag.

“It’s time for people in South Carolina to revisit that decision,” he said. “It would be fine with me.”

During the 2012 GOP primaries, Graham called the use of the flag at the Confederate War Memorial a “bipartisan” solution and advised candidates to avoid the topic altogether. “Any candidate who brought that up wouldn’t be doing themselves any favors,” he said to The Hill.

The National Review

Writers at the conservative magazine—which firmly backed the South’s mantra of states’ rights during the civil rights era—debated the use of the flag on Thursday. Executive Editor Reihan Salam came out firmly against it:

It could be that the Confederate battle flag has come to mean something entirely different in 2015 than it did in the mid-1950s, when it was closely tied to resistance to federal desegregation efforts. But is its value such that we ought to continue giving it quasi-official status, even when doing so alienates the descendants of enslaved southerners, who have just as much claim to deciding which symbols ought to represent southern heritage as the descendants of Confederate veterans? I don’t believe so.

Others were more skeptical: Ian Tuttle argued that “objections to the flag are not raised in good faith” but rather for political gain. But even he then acknowledged that the flag can cause serious harm and offense.

One can recognize, understand, and sympathize with the revulsion symbols of the Confederacy occasion in some quarters, particularly among black Americans — and a compromise should be possible. If reducing the visibility of these symbols would offer relief to those genuinely hurt, and would remove an object of contention keeping persons of different races from cooperating to advance true racial justice, that is something supporters of Confederate symbols should be able to do.

Charlie Baker

The pro-choice, pro-marriage equality Massachusetts governor is hardly an arch-conservative, but his experience on Thursday shows how the shock of the shooting may be acting on politicians. Baker told Boston’s WGBH early on Thursday afternoon that while he was against the flag personally, it was a “tradition” of South Carolina. “My view on stuff like this is that South Carolinians can make their own call,” he said.

Within hours, Baker was backtracking hard. “What were you thinking?” was the message he received from friends, he told the Boston Globe that evening. “I just want to be clear: I abhor the symbolism and the history of that flag as much as anybody, and I am more than cognizant of the fact that literally millions of Americans died over what it represents in the Civil War,” he said. “I think they should take the flag down.”

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Finally, Conservatives Begin To Back Away From the Confederate Flag

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Obama on the Baltimore Riots: It’s About Decades of Inequality

Mother Jones

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Standing side by side with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan at the White House on Tuesday, President Barack Obama made some of his most detailed and forceful comments yet about economic inequality and police behavior during recent protests around the country. He told reporters that while there was no excuse for the violence that erupted in Baltimore last night, the unrest could be tied to decades of civil rights issues, income inequality, and a lack of opportunity. Here’s an excerpt:

This is not new. This has been going on for decades. And without making any excuses for criminal activities that take place in these communities, we also know if you have impoverished communities that have been stripped away of opportunity, where children are born into abject poverty, they’ve got parents, often because of substance abuse problems or incarceration or lack of education, and themselves can’t do right by their kids, if it’s more likely that those kids end up in jail or dead than that they go to college, and communities where there are no fathers who can provide guidance to young men, communities where there’s no investment, and manufacturing’s been stripped away, and drugs have flooded the community and the drug industry ends up being the primary employer for a lot of folks, in those environments, if we think that we’re just going to send the police to do the dirty work of containing the problems that arise there without, as a nation, and as a society saying what can we do to change those communities to help lift up those communities and give those kids opportunity, then we’re not going to solve this problem, and we’ll go through this same cycles of periodic conflicts between the police and communities, and the occasional riots in the streets and everybody will feign concern until it goes away and we just go about our business as usual.

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Obama on the Baltimore Riots: It’s About Decades of Inequality

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The Science of How Gay Marriage Will Destroy America

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case that could legalize same-sex marriage in every state by the end of the court’s term in June. To stop that from happening, supporters of the state-level bans that could be in jeopardy have filed 66 friend-of-the-court briefs, offering a host of social, political, and scientific reasons the court should uphold existing state bans.

These briefs fall into a few categories. The more temperate ones argue that marriage should be decided at the state level—an attempt to sway Justice Anthony Kennedy without disparaging same-sex unions. Others are more dramatic in tone, such as a brief from the Texas Eagle Forum, a conservative group in Texas, that predicts legalizing same-sex marriage would be “analogous overreaching” to “this Court’s misguided attempt to impose its views on the entire country in Dred Scott,” the 1857 decision often cited as one of the causes of the Civil War.

Opponents have also tried to demonstrate more specific social harms from gay marriage in their briefs. As SCOTUSblog‘s Lyle Denniston noted recently, they don’t want to be caught flat-footed this time around, as they were during the Proposition 8 case over California’s same-sex marriage ban. Asked how same-sex marriages would harm opposite-sex marriages during 2009 pretrial hearing in that case, conservative lawyer Chuck Cooper admitted, “Your Honor, my answer is: I don’t know.”

Referring to the California case, attorney Gene Schaerr, who helped coordinate some of the briefs in support of the gay-marriage bans, told the National Law Journal recently that he “looked back at the amicus briefsfiled in that case. “Our side had not made as powerful a social science case for the traditional definition of marriage as could be made,” said Schaerr, formerly of Winston & Strawn, who defended Utah’s gay marriage ban last year.*

This time around, Schaerr and his allies want to avoid that mistake. Here are a few of the scientific reasons submitted to the Supreme Court from the opponents of same-sex marriage:

Same-sex marriage will cause an additional 900,000 abortions: As Schaerr, the chief author of this amicus brief, admits, “abortion and same-sex marriage may seem unrelated.” But, he has found a connection. Schaerr, writing on behalf of “100 scholars of marriage,” argues that states with same-sex marriage have seen a decline in opposite-sex marriage by “at least five percent.” Schaerr extrapolates this 5 percent figure, concluding that over the next 30-year “fertility cycle,” nearly 1.3 million women will forego marriage. Arguing that unmarried women are more likely to get abortions, Schaerr calculates an additional 900,000 abortions. But, he acknowledged to the Washington Post last week, “it is still too new to do a rigorous causation analysis using statistical methods.”

The “homosexual experience” leads to “early death”: This is the argument put forward by Mike Huckabee Policy Solutions, an advocacy group that supports the “national policy aims” of the former Arkansas governor and likely 2016 presidential candidate, and the Family Research Institute, the “anti-gay movement’s main source for…completely discredited junk science” on LGBT people, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Their brief argues that “consistent evidence indicates that individuals who engage in homosexuality experience significantly higher mortality rates than those who do not.”

Children of same-sex marriages are disadvantaged: The Ruth Institute, a San Diego-based group that appears to be run by one woman, Jennifer Roback Morse, and seeks to address “the lies of the Sexual Revolution,” argues that the “‘consensus’ that ‘the kids are ok’ has been manufactured by systematically excluding evidence” that they are not okay. The group is particularly worried about children not having a biological connection to both parents and predicts “social chaos, by creating a world in which families are determined by policy, rather than biology.”

Same-sex marriage will hurt underprivileged women and children: A group that describes itself as “scholars of the effects that marriage law has on the welfare of women, children, and underprivileged populations,” and including gay marriage foe Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage, claim that marriage is particularly helpful to the stability and economic status of poor Americans. But redefining marriage, they argue, would create a new era “where men and women are viewed as interchangeable, nonessential facets of family life; and where the law has cemented marriage as a mere governmental capstone of a loving relationship.” Without marriage’s “historical” focus on procreation and stability, single mothers will end up raising children on their own, hurting their economic outlook.

Correction: An earlier version of this article suggested that Winston & Strawn defended Utah’s ban. It did not.

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The Science of How Gay Marriage Will Destroy America

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Just How Racist Are Schoolteachers?

Mother Jones

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It’s no secret that black kids are more likely to be suspended from school than white kids—three times more likely, according to a 2012 report from the Office of Civil Rights. And now a study published this week in Psychological Science may shed some light on just how much of a role racial bias on the part of educators may play.

Stanford psychology grad student Jason Okonofua and professor Jennifer Eberhardt designed a study where active K-12 teachers from across the country were presented with mocked-up disciplinary records showing a student who had misbehaved twice. Both infractions were relatively minor: one was for insubordination, the other for class disturbance. The records’ substance never changed, but some bore stereotypically black names (Darnell or Deshawn) while others had stereotypically white names (Jake or Greg). Teachers answered a series of questions about how troubled they were by the infractions reflected in the documents, how severe the appropriate discipline should be, and the likelihood that the student was “a troublemaker.”

The teachers’ responses after learning about the first infraction were about equal, regardless of the student’s perceived race. But after hearing about the second infraction, a gap in discipline emerged: On a scale of one to seven, teachers rated the appropriate severity of discipline at just over five for students perceived to be black, compared to just over four for students perceived to be white. That may not seem like a big difference, but on one-to-seven scale, a single point is a 14 percent increase—well beyond what is typically accepted as statistically significant.

A follow-up experiment of over 200 teachers took the questioning further, and found that teachers were more likely (though by smaller margins) to judge students perceived as black as engaging in a pattern of misbehavior, and were more likely to say they could “imagine themselves suspending the student at some point in the future.”

Okonofua and Eberhart, Association for Psychological Science

“Most school teachers likely work hard at treating their students equally and justly,” says Okonofua. “And yet even amongst these well-intentioned and hard-working people, we find cultural stereotypes about black people are bending their perceptions towards less favorable interpretations of behavior.”

Many studies have looked at the subconscious racial prejudice of snap judgments—my former colleague, Chris Mooney, wrote an excellent feature on the subject last December. But according to the authors, this is the first study to look at the psychology behind the racial gap in school discipline. And, as Okonofua said, “The research shows that even if there’s no race effect for an initial interaction, the stereotyping can play out over time. That’s really important because in the real world, there are sustained relationships.”

And the research may have implications for other kinds of sustained relationships between two levels of authority: say a boss and an employee, a prison guard and a prisoner, or a judge and a repeat offender.

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Just How Racist Are Schoolteachers?

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This Earth Day, Pledge to Ditch These 7 Toxic Chemicals

Why not make Earth Day matter this year? Pledge to ditch these 7 toxic chemicals in favor of more natural and healthy products.

1) Triclosan – Triclosan is an antibacterial agent found in soaps, shampoos, hand sanitizers, sanitary wipes and many cleaning products. Doctors worry that its overuse – and our overexposure to it – are reducing the effectiveness of antibiotics to fight germs. In fact, triclosan and other antibacterials may be giving rise to a group of “super bugs” that can’t be controlled with normal courses of treatment. Fortunately, the way to reduce the impact of most household germs is simply by washing our hands, bodies and surfaces with warm soapy water. Skip the antibacterial wipes and dispensers of antibacterial lotion that seem to be everywhere.

2) BPA – Bisphenol-A is a chemical compound that makes plastic soft and malleable, which is why for years it was used in baby products like baby bottles and nipples, water bottles, and water hoses. In animal studies, it’s been show to mimic hormones like estrogen. It’s also been linked to problems with the development of the reproductive and nervous systems. Many companies have phased it out of bottles, but it still shows up in the lining of cans used for canned food. To be safe, use a stainless steel or glass water bottle, glass baby bottles, and food that’s either frozen or in its natural state.

3) The Nail Polish ‘Toxic Trio’ – Many conventional nail polishes contain three chemicals that have been linked to birth defects, cancer and general malaise. The chemicals are toluene, dibutyl phthalate (DBP) and formaldehyde. Fortunately, it is now possible to find non-toxic nail polish that’s water and mineral-based, and some of those are “5-free,” meaning they also are free of formaldehyde resin and camphor. You can see a list of safer nail polishes here.

4) Glyphosate – Glyphosate is what’s called a “broad spectrum herbicide.” It’s used to kill weeds, especially broadleaf weeds and grasses that compete with agricultural crops, or lawns or ornamental plants around our homes. It’s marketed as Roundup, Rodeo or Pondmaster; you have probably heard of “Roundup Ready Seeds,” which are used to produce many of the foods we eat. Use of Roundup, or glyphosate, has become so widespread that it is now contaminating drinking water. The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified it as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” It is also leading to antibiotic resistance, reports Civil Eats. If your week-killer is either Roundup or contains glyphosate, stop using it and take it to your community’s nearest toxic waste drop-off facility. You can find safer, more natural weed control options here, or forego grass altogether in favor of native ground covers that require little maintenance to look beautiful.

5) Neonics – Neonics is a nick name for neonicotinoids, a class of insecticides that are chemically related to nicotine. They are toxic to insects and popular with farmers and gardeners because they can be applied to the soil and when the soil is watered, they will be taken up by plants. When an insect sucks on a treated plant, it will die. Neonics show up on an insecticide label as something like acetamiprid, clothianidin, dinotefuran, or imidacloprid. They kill wood boring pests, flies, and many other insects – including bees. In fact, the “colony collapse” being experienced by bees all over the U.S. could be directly attributable to beesfeeding on nectar and pollen on plants that have been treated with neonics.The evidence has led Lowe’s to promise to phase out the sale of plants raised from seeds treated with neonics. Before you buy garden plants this year, make sure to inquire whether they have been treated with neonics in any way.

6) Lead – Even though lead is a toxic chemical, it is frequently found in the pigments used to color lipstick and make it shimmer. Lead has long been linked to harming the intellectual development of infants and children; women who unknowingly apply leaded lipstick and lick their lips all day could be susceptible, as well. Fortunately, there are some safe alternatives, including plant-based lip balms and products made by companies that are committed to safer cosmetics. No matter what you use, keep your lipstick out of the reach of kids, who might not just play with it. They might eat it!

7)Parabens –Parabens are a chemical compound used as a preservative in cosmetics, moisturizers, hair care products, some deodorants, and shaving products, among others. On a product label, you might see the ingredient listed as methylparaben, propylparaben, butylparaben or benzylparaben. Typically, only tiny amounts of parabens are added to a product. However, because consumers apply so many different products to their bodies, and those products are used every day, questions have been raised about the cumulative impact that parabens could have on human health. Parabens have been associated with certain forms of breast cancer, notes WebMD, which has prompted many people to switch to products that are parabens-free.

This Earth Day, take a moment to read the labels of the products you have around your home. Put aside those containing the chemicals listed above, and switch them out for safer, healthier options, many of which you can find in your local grocery store. You can definitely find them online!

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This Earth Day, Pledge to Ditch These 7 Toxic Chemicals

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The Feds Are Investigating 106 Colleges for Mishandling Sexual Assault. Is Yours One of Them?

Mother Jones

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Last May, the Department of Education released a list of 55 colleges and universities under investigation for possible Title IX violations for mishandling sexual-assault cases. As of April 1, the number has grown to 106 institutions, according to new data requested by Mother Jones.

The DOE provided the updated list Monday, a day after the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism published its report on the widely discredited Rolling Stone article about sexual assault at the University of Virginia. The controversy around the piece has served as a reminder of the ongoing national debate about how colleges and universities should handle sexual-assault allegations. Recent research shows that 1 in 5 women in undergraduate programs experience sexual assault, even though just 1 percent of assailants are punished.

UVA has been on the federal radar since June 2011, joining five other Virginia area schools under investigation. Meanwhile, several schools have agreed to make changes in how they handle sexual-misconduct complaints following the federal probes:

In 2011, before the DOE made its list of institutions public, the Office for Civil Rights looked into complaints of a sexually hostile environment at Yale, in part due to an October 2010 incident in which fraternity pledges chanted “sexually aggressive comments” outside the campus’ Women’s Center. Yale agreed to alter its policies in June 2012.
Both the Department of Justice and the DOE investigated procedures at the University of Montana-Missoula, once described as the nation’s “rape capital.” (Between January 2008 and May 2012, Missoula police received more than 350 sexual-assault reports.) The university agreed to make changes in May 2013.
Last May, the DOE’s Office for Civil Rights found that at the Virginia Military Institute, “female cadets were exposed to a sexually hostile environment” and that the institute violated Title IX for requiring pregnant and parenting cadets to leave the school.
The DOE’s Office for Civil Rights found that Harvard Law School failed to “appropriately respond” to two sexual-assault complaints, including one complaint that was dismissed more than a year after the university took up the case. The law school agreed to make changes in December 2014 as part of a university-wide overhaul of its policy for handling sexual-assault and harassment cases. A group of Harvard law professors objected to the tougher policy in a Boston Globe op-ed, noting that the procedures for deciding cases were “overwhelmingly stacked against the accused.”

Here’s the most recent list of schools under federal investigation:

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106 Universities, Colleges Title IX Investigation Department of Education (PDF)

106 Universities, Colleges Title IX Investigation Department of Education (Text)

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The Feds Are Investigating 106 Colleges for Mishandling Sexual Assault. Is Yours One of Them?

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Obama Just Officially Decided White House Emails Aren’t Subject to the Freedom of Information Act

Mother Jones

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Civil liberties advocates are adding another strike to the Obama administration’s record on transparency: on Monday, the White House announced that it is officially ending the Freedom of Information Act obligations of its Office of Administration. That office provides broad administrative support to the White House—including the archiving of emails—and had been subject to FOIA for much of its nearly four-decade history.

In 2007, the George W. Bush administration decided that its OA would reject any FOIA requests, freeing it from the burden to release emails regarding any number of Bush-era scandals. When President Obama took office in 2009, transparency advocates were hopeful that he’d strike down the Bush policy—especially after he claimed transparency would be a “touchstone” of his presidency. In a letter that year, advocates from dozens of organizations urged Obama to restore transparency to the OA.

He never did, and Monday’s move from the White House makes the long-standing policy official. Coincidentally, March 16th was Freedom of Information Day, and this week marks the annual Sunshine Week, which focuses on open government.

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Obama Just Officially Decided White House Emails Aren’t Subject to the Freedom of Information Act

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DOJ Finds Pervasive Racial Bias at Ferguson Police Department

Mother Jones

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The Department of Justice has concluded that the Ferguson Police Department engaged in racially biased practices, including disproportionately arresting African-Americans during routine traffic stops. The findings are the result of an investigation launched back in September, which found that systematic biased behavior, including “racist jokes about blacks” on police email accounts, have resulted in fractured race relations in the Missouri community and a deep mistrust of police officials. From the Times:

In compiling the report, federal investigators conducted hundreds of interviews, reviewed 35,000 pages of police records and analyzed race data compiled for every police stop. They concluded that, over the past two years, African-Americans made up about two-thirds of the city’s population but accounted for 85 percent of traffic stops, 90 percent of citations, 93 percent of arrests and 88 percent of cases in which the police used force.

The full report is expected to be released on Wednesday.

The findings are separate from an FBI investigation focused on Darren Wilson, the police officer who fatally shot unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown last August. According to previous reports, the Justice Department is planning to clear Wilson of civil rights charges.

Brown’s shooting death and a Ferguson grand jury’s decision not to indict Wilson sparked a national debate on police brutality and racist police practices.

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DOJ Finds Pervasive Racial Bias at Ferguson Police Department

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LA Is Adopting Bodycams For Its Police Force. But Who Gets to See the Footage?

Mother Jones

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Los Angeles is gearing up to equip its entire police force with body cameras, but Chief Charlie Beck says he doesn’t plan to routinely release bodycam footage to the public. “I don’t think that transparency means we post every interaction on YouTube,” he said yesterday. Plus this:

The chief said he felt there was a “moral prohibition” as well.

“People invite us into their homes on their worst possible day, and I don’t think they invite us with the intention of having that interaction made public,” he said. “Families call us when they’re in crisis. Victims call us when they’ve had horrific things done to them by evil people. And to make those things public revictimizes them, doesn’t serve justice. And I don’t think it’s the right thing to do.”

This may be self-serving on Beck’s part, but the truth is that he has a point. And the ACLU agrees:

The Southern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has indicated support for the cameras but is demanding strong policies to protect civilian privacy. The organization wrote to the Police Commission, recommending it make public video of high-profile incidents, such as police shootings, “if not while an investigation is pending, then as soon as it is concluded.”

I’m still struggling with the right answer to this, and I think it’s going to be a while before we figure out the right balance. In the meantime, as I continue to noodle over what rules should govern release of bodycam footage, I’ll toss out a few thoughts:

The police department itself should not be allowed to decide what footage to make public.
In fact, the police department probably shouldn’t even be involved in these decisions.
However, civilians caught in police videos should have some say. If they don’t want footage of their encounter made public, that should be given some weight.
But how much weight? In the case of, say, a routine domestic dispute, I’d give it a lot of weight. But in a matter of serious public interest—especially those involving allegations of police misconduct—civilian desires for privacy will have to take a back seat.
There should be different guidelines for footage taken in public places vs. footage from people’s homes.
We also need rules that govern generic research requests. It’s in the public interest, for example, to know whether traffic stops of white drivers seem more motivated by probable cause than stops of black drivers. A review of bodycam footage could provide valuable evidence on that score. But what are the regulations governing this?

The fundamental question underlying all of this, of course, is: Who decides? Not the police themselves. Maybe judges? An independent agency? But if it’s an agency, how do you prevent it from becoming captured by the police department? These are really knotty issues, and I wouldn’t be surprised if several of them end up in front of the Supreme Court over the next few years.

At yesterday’s meeting, Police Commission President Steve Soboroff said “This is not for YouTube. This is not for TMZ. This is for maintaining the city’s safety.” Maybe so. But what it’s for doesn’t matter. Once this stuff is public, it will end up on TMZ and YouTube whether anyone likes it or not.

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LA Is Adopting Bodycams For Its Police Force. But Who Gets to See the Footage?

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FAA to Football Fans: Super Bowl Is a No-Drone Zone

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) released a 15-second warning to football fans eager to sneak a bird’s-eye look at this Sunday’s Super Bowl: Leave your drones at home.

The No Drone Zone campaign is part of the FAA’s ongoing efforts to regulate small drones flying over crowded stadiums. The Washington Post reported last November that the aviation agency was investigating a rash of incidents involving drones hovering over major sporting events. A month earlier, the agency extended its ban on airplane flights over large open-air stadiums to include unmanned and remote controlled aircraft.

Drones over sporting events have occasionally raised alarms. In August, a man was detained after he flew a drone that flew over a preseason NFL game between the Carolina Panthers and Kansas City Chiefs. A month later, police questioned a University of Texas student who was flying a drone around Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. Last October, a drone carrying an Albanian flag during a soccer match between Serbia and Albania sparked a riot in Belgrade.

Earlier this month, the FAA issued an advisory reiterating the civil and criminal penalties for pilots who drone the Super Bowl. (Also banned in the airspace above the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona: gliders, parachutes, hang gliders, balloons, crop dusters, model aircraft, and model rockets.) The Goodyear blimp will be allowed.

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FAA to Football Fans: Super Bowl Is a No-Drone Zone

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