HOW DO WE KEEP LAWBREAKING KIDS FROM RETURNING TO LOCK-UP? LA COUNTY SUP MARK RIDLEY-THOMAS AND CHILDREN’S DEFENSE FUND HEAD MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN…HAVE A 10-PT PLAN
The 10-step plan is part of a 65-page report on juvenile reentry commissioned by Ridley-Thomas and prepared by Children Defense Fund staffers, Michelle Newell and Angelica Salazar, who did much of their research when they were at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
While the report is not definitive, it’s smarter than the County’s purported professionals were able to turn out earlier this year, and features many good moments of analysis plus that list of sensible suggestions.
It is also an excellent place to start a conversation.
Here’s a snippet from its executive summary:
With the largest juvenile justice system in the country, LA County has high rates of youth incarceration. For most juvenile offenders, this incarceration will take place in one of the 19 County probation camps, or residential facilities, and these youth will be released after less than a year and face the challenge of reentering their communities.
Reentry is challenging regardless of the population, but for juvenile offenders it is particularly complicated given the range of developmental changes these youth are experiencing. In Los Angeles, these youth are burdened by high rates of mental illness and substance abuse, low rates of educational attainment and alarmingly high levels of gang involvement. Given these barriers, it is perhaps not surprising that juveniles are currently not successful in reentering their communities. Re-offending rates are high, and while the County Probation Department does not collect much outcome data, available evidence indicates youth outcomes are grim…
Ridley-Thomas and Edelman will be holding a press conference at 1:30 pm Thursday to introduce the report and the 10-step plan. The presser will be held in Ridley-Thomas’s office, in the Hall of Administration, 500 W. Temple Street, LA.
A NEW VOLLEY IN THE BATTLE OVER HIRING MORE LAPD OFFICERS
LA Police Protective League president, Paul Weber, has an op ed in Thursday’s LA Times that explains a bit more about why the union is fighting the mayor’s and Chief Charlie Beck’s collective promise to hire more police officers.
Weber says the department should first use its existing officers more wisely. Here’s a clip.
When the City Council voted to raise trash fees in 2006, the action came with a promise to Angelenos that the money would be put toward expanding the Los Angeles police force to more than 10,000 officers. But even as we’ve moved closer to meeting that goal on paper, the number of officers on the street is being eroded.
Because of attrition, early retirement incentives and mandatory furloughs, the number of police officers doing actual police work is gradually declining, and the problem is becoming more acute.
One huge reason is that the city is no longer paying officers for overtime. There is no way to avoid overtime in police work: An officer making an arrest, say, can’t simply let a suspect go because a work shift has ended….
PS: For the record, I think the department should keep hiring, but let’s not use cops for jobs that non-sworn folks could do cheaper (and just as well).
WWBD? WHAT WOULD BILL DO?
By sheer coincidence, former LAPD chief Bill Bratton indirectly addressed the issue when he was in London consulting with the Brits on policing and gave an interview to some local press:
“In terms of creating safer communities, cops count and policing does matter. But successful policing is not only about making the right investments in law enforcement. You cannot spend your way to a safer community and it isn’t about how much money you spend, or how many staff you have on the payroll.
“It’s about what you do with your most valuable asset – the sworn officer….
(My ital.)
LA’S LIGHT RAIL FIASCO
The LA Weekly’s Gene Maddaus has written a terrific article in Thursday’s edition of the paper that shows LA’s light rail project to be both horribly over budget and a projected 2 years over its deadline for completion.
Oh, yeah, the project’s CEO, Rick Thorpe, lives in Utah, not LA, and is collecting a salary of $334,000. As Maddaus points out, Thorpe, who oversees a staff of 16, makes more than the CEO of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, who is responsible for 8,000 employees (!!!)
A PORTRAIT OF A TWICE ARRESTED STUDENT PROTESTER
Neon Tommy’s Callie Schweitzer writes about 21-year-old University of California, Berkeley senior Ricardo Gomez, who has been arrested twice for protesting in what is “part of a growing student movement fighting tuition increases in the 10-campus system.”
Read the rest here.
9TH CIRCUIT JUDGE THINKS CALIFORNIA MAY BE
ABOUT TO EXECUTE AN INNOCENT MAN
The details are in an unsettling LA Times Op Ed by Alan Dershowitz and David Rivkin Jr.
COLUMNIST/WRITER/MOM MEGHAN DAUM COMES BACK FROM THE BRINK AND TELLS US ABOUT THE VIEW
The LA Times’ lovely, smart, talented, soulful columnist, Meghan Daum, was scarily sick last month and writes about it well in two parts – here and here.
(A lot of us are just very glad she’s okay. We didn’t like that tubed up and skating-the-edge thingy one bit.)
Photo by TIMOTHY NORRIS
Dershowitz is a clown and only someone with deeply rooted ignorance to the evidence found and DNA results would think for one second that Cooper was innocent. Even his own investigators were swayed to that decision once DNA results were in.
This is why the death penalty in California is a joke. The left will lie and lie and then lie some more to save an animal like Cooper from execution while giving nothing buta wink and a nod to the bodies he left behind.
http://www.cjlf.org/deathpenalty/CooperReview.htm
You talking about these DNA results, Sure Fire?
“The blood allegedly proving that Cooper’s DNA was found at the crime scene came from a non-secure vial containing more than one person’s DNA. (In a recent case, a state court judge granted relief to another falsely convicted man after determining that Gregonis manufactured evidence against him.)”
More from Dershowitz’s op ed:
“shortly after she learned of the murders, a local woman named Diana Roper suspected that her white boyfriend was involved. She informed the Sheriff’s Department that her boyfriend had left blood-spattered coveralls at her home the night of the murders, and she gave them to the department. Regrettably, the prosecution declined to test the clothing, and a sheriff’s deputy tossed them in a dumpster before the defense knew they even existed.”
“It was also years later that Cooper’s counsel found out that a sheriff’s deputy had discovered a blood-spattered blue shirt near the Ryen home the day after the murders. Like the coveralls, it went missing and was never tested.”
The left leaners in cases like this are constantly grasping at straws and in no way care about actual justice. They will forward any half baked theory, no longer in a true attempt to free those actually innocent but anyone who might face the needle no matter the nature of their act. People like Cooper and the scum Mumia are high profile examples of that. This is what many on the left have become and it speaks to their lack of morals very loud and very clear.
Sure Fire/Nikki Says:
December 2nd, 2010 at 4:47 pm
The left leaners in cases like this are constantly grasping at straws
…………….
A woman said her boyfriend was involved, and gave the sheriffs a blood stained shirt of his. The sheriffs threw it away, and the defense never knew about it.
Sounds to me like it was the sheriff’s department and the prosecution grasping at straws, in this case.
This case certainly deserves some scrutiny. Good work on Dershowitz’s part. And thank you Celeste for shedding light on it.
I still don’t undersatnd what you find unsettling Celeste? Have you researched the case? I have, more than once. Everything Dershowitz brings up has been addressed in past rulings and the court has found them to be without merit.
Dershowitz brings up nothing new here and is just crying for clemency for a multiple murderer.
Wouldn’t it be more honest of the left if people would simply say that they never wanted anyone to be executed and don’t care what they did to who? I could respect someone who said that. Of course I would question their morals and ridicule them but at least they would be showing some guts.
Sure Fire Says:
December 2nd, 2010 at 9:47 pm
Wouldn’t it be more honest of the left if people would simply say that they never wanted anyone to be executed and don’t care what they did to who? I could respect someone who said that. Of course I would question their morals
……………..
Question their morals, for being against killing someone? Whose morals? Satan’s?
You know my stand on the death penalty, SF. And no, I don’t know this case well enough to have have a strong personal opinion on Cooper’s guilt or innocence.
What I find unsettling is that Judge William Fletcher of the 9th circuit wrote a 101 page dissent saying the Cooper might very well be innocent, and Fletcher heard all the evidence.
For the record, Dershowitz, while bright, creeps me out—for a whole host of reasons.
Fletcher is no different than Reinhardt, not even a little bit. Their rulings are far fetched in so many criminal cases it’s laughable. The facts and evidence speak to the truth and there is no doubt Cooper is guilty.
He needs to be dead.
“He needs to be dead.”
Why the blood lust? He’s not going anywhere. There are some serious issues in how the police “lost” the two pieces of clothing that alone should raise red flags to fair minded poeple. Cops can lie like anyone else.
Megan Daum realized she’s so SO SO lucky to have so many people caring about her while she was so sick: chains of email alerts, people at her bedside day and night… LUCKY!!!
At the same time, reminds us of the utter unpredictability of death, and the utter imperfection of “modern medicine” in diagnosing and treating “unusual/don’t fit in the box” illnesses at the same time.
Over 100.000 people/year DIE – that’s die, not get seriously sick – from hospital-induced infections, where they go in for a “minor” thing and never come out. (That’s infections only, not other med errors.) ALSO we have Chief Sergio Diaz’s son’s tragic death, unexplained… Megan realizes how lucky she is by comparison. Saying my deepest sympathies to Diaz’ family sounds so shallow in face of the loss – but what else can any of us say.