LAPD WATCHDOG FLAGS UNDER-DOCUMATION OF NON-LETHAL USES OF FORCE AS PROBLEMATIC
The inspector general for the L.A. Police Commission, Alex Bustamante, presented a report Tuesday on how less-than-lethal uses of force (punches, use of tasers, and the like) are dealt with by LAPD officials. Bustamante, in the report, said that department policy only requires one account of the incident from the officers’ perspective, no matter how many officers were involved, and that virtually no interviews with witnesses or participants of the incident are recorded.
LA Times Joel Rubin has the story. Here’s a clip:
These less serious cases, called non-categoricals, or non-cats in LAPD jargon, can include body holds, punches, baton strikes and the firing of non-lethal weapons such as a Taser or bean-bag projectiles. Such cases account for about 95% of the roughly 1,750 force incidents LAPD officers are involved in each year, the report found. The remaining cases — about 90 each year — are the more serious cases in which officers attempt to shoot someone or use some other type of deadly force.
Although cases involving deadly force undergo months-long investigations by a special detective unit, the less serious cases receive considerably less intensive reviews by regular field supervisors. Bustamante pointed out in the report, for example, that in nearly all of the lesser cases, interviews with officers who either participated in the incident or witnessed it are not recorded. Also, the report said, department policy requires only that a single account of the incident be written from the officers’ perspective, regardless of how many officers were involved.
Such policies, Bustamante told commissioners at a meeting Tuesday, made it difficult, if not impossible, for his office to adequately assess the quality of the department’s investigations.
“It does not mean they are bad,” he said. “I just don’t have the ability to look.”
A veteran law enforcement source told us that, often, when officers want to get away with excessive use of force, they will minimize the force they used. “They might report that they punched someone instead of kicking them, or report a lower number of blows than were actually delivered.” The fact that these lesser force incidents only require one recorded account, said the source, leads one to wonder if the LAPD’s use of force record isn’t as shiny as it seems.
SENATE BILL TACKLES CRIMINALIZATION OF TRAFFICKED CHILDREN
A new Senate Bill would amend the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) to require that children ensnared in sex trafficking are considered victims of abuse and neglect who often instead get caught up in the juvenile justice system.
The AP’s Valerie Bonk has the story. Here’s a clip:
“In much of the country today if a girl is found in the custody of a so-called pimp she is not considered to be a victim of abuse, and that’s just wrong and defies common sense,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said during a Senate Finance Committee hearing Tuesday, where lawmakers heard a 25-year-old woman recount how the child welfare system failed her nearly a decade earlier.
Asia Graves, now a Maryland-based advocate for sexually exploited girls, told of being kicked out of her home by her father at the age of 16 and soon found herself with a man who took her in during a Boston snowstorm. After a week of living comfortably, things changed.
“He told me that he was a pimp, and I was his property,” Graves said.
“I did not wake up one morning and say that I wanted to be a prostitute,” she said. “There is no such thing as a ‘child prostitute’ because legally, children cannot consent to be sold for sex. No girl chooses to be a slave. Yet, girls like me are the face of modern day slavery in America.”
And here’s a clip from the summary of the bill:
Domestic child sex trafficking remains a serious problem in the United States. There are an estimated 293,000 American youth at risk of commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that between 2008-2010, 83 percent of sex trafficking victims found within the United States were U.S. citizens and 40 percent of sex trafficking cases involved the sexual exploitation of children.
Research suggests that the majority of trafficked youth in the United States have been in and out of the child welfare system, specifically foster care. For example, of the trafficking victims in Alameda County, California, 55 percent were from foster youth group homes. In New York, 85 percent of trafficking victims had prior child welfare involvement. And in Florida, the head of the state’s trafficking task force estimates that 70 percent of victims are foster youth.
Children and youth in foster care lack stability which often sets them up to fall prey to pimps and traffickers. And too often, state child welfare systems fail to properly identify and assist trafficked and exploited children. The protections, services and protocols established for abused and neglected children within the child welfare system are rarely extended to trafficked children and youth, and in most states, such children aren’t even categorized as victims. Instead, they are often sent to the juvenile justice system and criminalized for being raped and trafficked.
Certainly the passage of this bill would help here in CA.
Chronicle of Social Change’s Lynsey Clark has this notable post on the child trafficking situation in Oakland, where it is especially rampant. Here’s a clip:
The city of Oakland has one of the highest rates of child trafficking in the state. Alameda County’s District Attorney’s office prosecutes 46 percent of all of California’s cases with an 80 percent rate of conviction. A large part of the county’s success in combating the problem can be attributed to its approach and collaboration with other agencies.
In the face of budget cuts, a loose confederation of governmental agencies and non-profits have fought increasing rates of child trafficking while developing strategies to work through the trauma experienced by victims of exploitation. Laws that place exploited minors in the juvenile justice system as opposed to foster care typify the systemic barriers that these advocates face. But in Oakland, where obstacles abound, dedicated professionals are finding a way to regain ground.
The Oakland Police Department (OPD), the DA’s office unit on Human Exploitation and Trafficking (H.E.A.T.), and local non-profits, work together against child trafficking. They share information as it develops, then present it to the public at conferences like this one: Points of Entry for Sexually Exploited Minors. It was the ninth Bay Area Coalition Training, hosted by H.E.A.T., in a large nondescript conference room downtown: almost every chair filled.
NON-PROFIT JOURNALISM AND THE IRS
Over the last month or so, there has been a burst of news coverage on the IRS targeting Tea Party organizations applying for non-profit status. There has been almost no coverage, however, about the fact that non-profit journalism has come under fire from the IRS for the last few years, having to jump through hoop after hoop for tax-exempt status.
Columbia Journalism Review’s Ryan Chittum has this essay on the issue. Here are some clips:
Tell me if this sounds familiar: The IRS targets a particular kind of nonprofit applicant for special scrutiny. Scrutiny comes from the Cincinnati office, works upward to Washington, D.C., and leaves applicants in limbo for years. After years of rubber-stamping approvals, the review comes amid a surge in applications in a murky part of the tax code. Some suggest politics plays a role in favoring some applications. The IRS itself specifically questions applicants about their political activities.
That’s what happened to the nonprofit-news movement for the better part of three years, something I reported on last fall. But there’s been little-to-no uproar over the First Amendment implications of selecting journalism startups for special scrutiny.
[SNIP]The INN’s Kevin Davis told me last November that “The IRS has preemptively suggested that we modify our procedures, change our policies, and modify our articles of incorporation to remove the word ‘journalism’ because that is not a charitable cause.” Agents asked the SF Public Press, repeatedly, to sign forms promising not to make political endorsements, according to Steven Waldman’s Council on Foundations report two months ago.
Why did the IRS suddenly start putting nonprofit journalism startups through the wringer, and why did it take so long to finally approve them? The Cincinnati IRS office noticed a surge in activity in the sector a few years ago as for-profit journalism took a beating, and while the IRS had typically put up little resistance to nonprofit news applicants (at least since it threatened Mother Jones’s tax-exempt status in 1981 and was defeated), Congress has never specifically protected journalism in the 501(c)(3) section of the law.