pacino wrote:Mayor Bloomberg sez minorities getting off too easy with stop and frisk:

About 5 million stops have been made during the past decade. Eighty-seven percent of those stopped in the last two years were black or Hispanic. Those groups comprise 54 percent of the city population. Bloomberg says that comparison isn't appropriate. The racial breakdown of those stopped is "not a disproportionate percentage of those who witnesses and victims describe as committing the murder. In that case, incidentally, I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little," he said Friday on "The John Gambling Show." More than 90 percent of suspects in killings in the last two years were described as black or Hispanic, according to city officials. "The cops' job is to stop (people in) the groups fitting the description. It's society's job to make sure that no one group is disproportionately represented as potential perpetrators," Bloomberg said earlier in the show.

Yes, because THAT is what cops are thinking about with stop and frisk, the descriptions of those who are suspected of murdering people. i mean come on.

Luzinski's Gut wrote:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents/?hpid=z1

On one hand, I can't believe SCI-level material like this continues to leak out.

On the other hand, this at least shows the targeting and legal review process.

Werthless wrote:

pacino wrote:Mayor Bloomberg sez minorities getting off too easy with stop and frisk:

About 5 million stops have been made during the past decade. Eighty-seven percent of those stopped in the last two years were black or Hispanic. Those groups comprise 54 percent of the city population. Bloomberg says that comparison isn't appropriate. The racial breakdown of those stopped is "not a disproportionate percentage of those who witnesses and victims describe as committing the murder. In that case, incidentally, I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little," he said Friday on "The John Gambling Show." More than 90 percent of suspects in killings in the last two years were described as black or Hispanic, according to city officials. "The cops' job is to stop (people in) the groups fitting the description. It's society's job to make sure that no one group is disproportionately represented as potential perpetrators," Bloomberg said earlier in the show.

Yes, because THAT is what cops are thinking about with stop and frisk, the descriptions of those who are suspected of murdering people. i mean come on.

What are cops thinking about?

I'm not a mind-reader, but I'll give it a shot at trying to interpret your frustration ("i mean come on")at Bloomberg's comment ("I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little"). It sounds like you're saying that cops are not taking into account the Bayesian probabilities when deciding whom to stop. You would probably say that they are maliciously targeting certain groups unfairly. To narrow it down further, you probably wouldn't say that black cops are racist if they stop and questions/frisk a high proportion of blacks; it's probably only malicious if the white cops are behaving much differently from minority cops, right? To convert your suspicion into something measurable so it can be tested empirically, I suppose you're hypothesizing that white cops stop a higher proportion of minorities than minority cops, all else (eg. neighborhood) equal?

pacino wrote:oops:

Data compiled by the New York Police Department as a result of the city’s controversial focus on stop-and-frisk measures has shown that those suspects who were white were more often to be found in possession of weapons and drugs.

The analysis of 2012 statistics provided by the Public Advocate’s office shows that the likelihood that an African American detained for search would be found in possession of a weapon was half that of a white person.

Specifically, the New York Police Department uncovered a weapon in one out of every 49 stops of white New Yorkers, while for Latinos a weapon was found for every 71 stops, and for African Americans that number was 93 stops.
Meanwhile, the likelihood that a stop of an African American New Yorker would yield contraband was one-third less than that of white New Yorkers stopped.

This most recent analysis of the NYPD’s statistics may well add more fuel to the fire over the stop-and-frisk controversy. The report by the Public Advocate’s Office leaves little room to interpret its findings after surveying the 2012 data.

“Despite the overall reduction in stops, the proportion involving black and Latino New Yorkers has remained unchanged. They continue to constitute 84 percent of all stops, despite comprising only 54 percent of the general population. And the innocence rates remain at the same level as 2011 – at nearly 89 percent.”

Meanwhile, in a separate analysis by the New York Civil Liberties Union of these same statistics, the group revealed that out of 532,911 stop-and-frisk searches in 2012, just 729 guns were found.

On Monday, Judge Scheindlin referred to the “high error rate” correlated with the stop-and-frisk practice, in which 88 per cent of stops yielded no evidence of criminality.

“You reasonably suspect something and you’re wrong 90 percent of the time,” said Scheindlin to a lawyer representing the city.

pacino wrote:yeah, that;'s why i didnt put it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/opini ... .html?_r=0

The Justice Department Civil Rights Division and Los Angeles County today announced that they have reached preliminary agreements to make broad changes to policing in the Antelope Valley and to the enforcement of the Housing Choice Voucher Program (commonly known as Section 8). Together with statements of intent outlining these changes, the division today released a letter detailing its findings that Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s (LASD) Lancaster and Palmdale stations, both of which are located in the Antelope Valley, engaged in a pattern or practice of stops, searches, and seizures and excessive force in violation of the Constitution and federal law. In addition, the Justice Department found a pattern or practice of discrimination against African Americans in its enforcement of the Housing Choice Voucher Program in violation of the Fair Housing Act. The investigation, launched on Aug. 19, 2011, was brought under to the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the federal Fair Housing Act. The findings announced today are based on a comprehensive investigation of LASD’s Antelope Valley stations. This investigation included an in-depth review of documents and data provided by LASD and the Housing Authority of the County of Los Angeles (HACoLA), as well as extensive community engagement. The division reviewed tens of thousands of pages of documents, including written policies and procedures, training materials, arrest reports and civilian complaints. The division also conducted interviews of Antelope Valley deputies and unit commanders, local government officials and hundreds of community members. The investigation also included statistical analyses of the Antelope Valley stations’ search and seizure data of pedestrian and vehicle contacts for the entire calendar year of 2011. Sheriff Leroy Baca and HACoLA Executive Director Sean Rogan were cooperative throughout the investigation and immediately began working with the Justice Department to negotiate a remedy to the problems revealed by the investigation.

The division’s investigation into the Antelope Valley stations findings include:
· African Americans, and to a lesser extent Latinos, are more likely to be stopped and/or searched than whites, even when controlling for factors other than race, such as crime rates;

· The widespread use of unlawful backseat detentions violating the Fourth Amendment and LASD policy;

· A pattern of unreasonable force, including a pattern of the use of force against handcuffed individuals;

· A pattern of intimidation and harassment of African-American housing choice voucher holders by LASD deputies, often in conjunction with HACoLA investigators.

· Inadequate implementation of accountability measures to intervene on unconstitutional conduct has allowed these problems to occur.“We are encouraged by the response of Los Angeles County to our findings. While our investigation showed significant problems in LASD’s Antelope Valley stations, we are confident that we will be able to reach an agreement that will provide meaningful and sustainable reform,” said Roy L. Austin Jr., Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “We look forward to continuing our positive partnership with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and HACoLA and believe this work will help restore the community’s confidence in fair, equitable, and effective law enforcement.”

The proposed changes set out in the statement of intent include:

· Revision of LASD’s policies, directives, training, and practices so that stops, searches, and seizures by Antelope Valley deputies are consistently conducted in accordance with the law.

· A commitment to further strengthening and uniformly implementing protocols regarding HACoLA’s investigation of housing choice voucher holders’ compliance with program rules, including LASD deputy participation in those investigations.

· Provision of training that will focus on how bias may occur in law enforcement activity, and on the effects of bias on subjects of law enforcement activity. Training will also educate LASD and HACoLA personnel on federal and constitutional obligations, including the requirements of the Fair Housing Act.

· Revision of LASD’s use of force policies, training curricula, and any relevant directives, bulletins, or defensive tactics manuals to provide clear guidance about the reasonable use of force.

· Continued and increased positive community engagement by LASD in the Antelope Valley, including participating in local community meetings, making itself available for community feedback, developing the Community Advisory Committees (CAC), and working with the community on the development of diversion programs.


In addition to its investigation of LASD, the Civil Rights Division conducted an investigation under the Fair Housing Act of the HACoLA, and the cities of Palmdale and Lancaster, to determine whether there has been a systematic effort by these entities to discriminate against African Americans. As a result of the Department's findings, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights has authorized the filing of a complaint in federal district court against the County of Los Angeles, HACoLA, LASD, and the Cities of Lancaster and Palmdale for alleged violations of federal law. Through the ongoing negotiations, all of the parties seek to avoid contested litigation and resolve the matter in a comprehensive agreement to be entered as an order of the court.

Our analysis of stop and search activity in the Antelope Valley revealed biased law enforcement activity, as African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Latinos, are more likely to be stopped or searched than whites in the Antelope Valley. Despite the belief that more aggressive law enforcement practices are warranted due to recent fluctuations in crime rates in the area, there is no apparent public safety explanation to justify this pattern of racially disparate stops and searches. The higher rate of searching African-American pedestrians, for example, has not correlated to a higher discovery rate of contraband. In fact, in Lancaster, the contraband seizure rate is about 50% lower for African Americans than for whites. Additionally, even using regression analysis to control for a variety of factors, we found that for offenses where law enforcement discretion is especially high, African-American pedestrians in Lancaster are 25% more likely to be stopped than whites.

"And I am absolutely convinced that this trope that you’re hearing that says that if the Republicans don’t go for immigration reform much as the Senate has done, they’ll never win another presidential election. Oh, baloney," Brit Hume said during an appearance on the conservative cable news channel. "If you look at the statistics, you find there was one significant bloc of voters who turned out in smaller numbers this time in a major way — way below expectations, below even their '08 turnout — and that was white voters. Now, that doesn’t mean that if they turned out thatRomney would have gotten them all but it shows you that this Hispanic vote, which is I think now 8.5 percent of the electorate or something like that, is not nearly as important as, still, as the white vote, which is above 70 percent."

Hume added, "So, if you look at it from an ethnic point of view, that addresses the question of whether you need to get right with the Hispanics."

Raleigh, N.C. — Senators on Tuesday tacked a suite of new restrictions and regulations pertaining to abortion clinics onto a bill dealing with the application of foreign laws in North Carolina family courts.
The measure was unveiled unexpectedly during an unusual late-day committee meeting. It combines several bills in different stages of the legislative process into one omnibus measure.

"It just took a while for there to be a consensus of support for it within our caucus," said Sen. Buck Newton, R-Wilson, chairman of the Senate Judiciary 1 Committee. "Sometimes these things come together at the last minute."

Newton's committee was originally scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. That meeting was canceled.

The Senate met for much of the day, handling a variety of bills in other committees and on the floor. Just before 5:20 p.m., Senate Rules Committee Chairman Tom Apodaca, R-Henderson, announced a recess and said the Judiciary 1 Committee would meet at 5:30 p.m.

Until then, the committee's calendar listed only House Bill 695, which prohibits the recognition of foreign law, such as Islamic Sharia law, in family courts. That measure was controversial when it cleared the House in May, with opponents fearing it could interfere with recognition of U.S. law in foreign courts.However, when the committee convened at 5:30 p.m., it quickly took up an amendment to revise the bill to include the regulations on abortion.

"They're doing it quietly on Fourth of July weekend because they've seen what's going on in Texas and know that women will turn out," said Melissa Reed, vice president of public policy for Planned Parenthood Health Systems, referring to the protests surrounding a similar bill in Texas. She said Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights advocates had no idea the measure would be taken up Tuesday.

TRANSFER AGREEMENTS: Abortion clinics would be required to have "transfer agreements" with local hospitals.

Reed said the measure would essentially limit how many clinics could operate because some hospitals would refuse to engage in such agreements. It's meant to be similar to provisions in other states that require doctors at abortion clinics to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. Hospitals, Reed said, would have little incentive to sign such agreements.
LICENSING: Abortions clinics would be required to go through a licensing process similar to that of outpatient surgical clinics.

Daniel said the provision "ensured we don't have two different state standards" for outpatient clinics.

"These are really safety procedures," he said.

Reed said clinics that offer procedures with higher risk than abortion, such as oral surgery or colonoscopies, don't fall under such provisions.
"They're really putting a barrier in the way to access," Reed said, noting that it would make clinics more expensive to operate.

According to legislative staff, there is one abortion clinic in the state that meets the outpatient surgical standard. Reed said Planned Parenthood's four North Carolina clinics do not meet the standard.

Today, the principle of germaneness is well established. Forty state constitutions contain a provision that requires a bill to address or contain a single subject. In Mississippi, germaneness is implied, but a single subject requirement is not specifically stated in the constitution. No specific single subject provision is set forth by the constitutions in Arkansas, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont.