Tag: hit&run

The hatred and havoc that erupted last weekend in Charlottesville were a reminder that every push toward enlightenment elicits spasms of reaction. The white nationalists who gathered to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from a public park were aggrieved that they no longer enjoy being members of the ruling race, suggests Steve Chapman. That status carried great privileges, and it’s no surprise that these modern misfits bitterly resent the changes that undid it—or that they are willing to resort to intimidation and brutality to restore it.

But they are fantasizing to think they can succeed, argues Chapman. The turmoil in Charlottesville may look like the beginning of something big for the cause of white nationalism. But those were not birth pangs. They were death throes.

View this article.

The hatred and havoc that erupted last weekend in Charlottesville were a reminder that every push toward enlightenment elicits spasms of reaction. The white nationalists who gathered to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from a public park were aggrieved that they no longer enjoy being members of the ruling race, suggests Steve Chapman. That status carried great privileges, and it’s no surprise that these modern misfits bitterly resent the changes that undid it—or that they are willing to resort to intimidation and brutality to restore it.

But they are fantasizing to think they can succeed, argues Chapman. The turmoil in Charlottesville may look like the beginning of something big for the cause of white nationalism. But those were not birth pangs. They were death throes.

View this article.

The owners of a Layton, Utah, Subway store have sued the police department after officials falsely accused one its its workers of spiking an officer’s drink with meth and THC. State crime lab tests showed no drugs in the drink. The owners say their reputation was damaged and the store lost tens of thousands of dollars in business. After they announced their plans to sue, a city attorney offered to let them cater the city Christmas party.

When James Alex Fields, Jr. drove his car into a crowd full of protesters, killing one and injuring 19 others, Fields’ former classmates, teachers, and neighbors rushed forward with stories of a boy infatuated with Adolph Hitler and the Nazi movement.

The one oddly discordant voice was that of Barbara Brady, a spokeswoman for Boone County (Kentucky) Schools, where Fields was a student. In what smacks of a school district striving to cover its own butt, Brady said there were never any negative complaints about Fields’ behavior during his time in Boone County and suggested the young adults interviewed about him were merely hungry for media attention.

“Now they are crawling out of the woodwork to get their 15 seconds of fame,” Brady said in an email exchange with the Cincinnati Enquirer, “and say they knew something back then.”

And they certainly did come out. In publication after publication, those who knew Fields’ as a student at Cooper High School portrayed him as a quiet but anti-social boy who had long taken a liking to Nazi ideology, spewing bigotry against non-whites and glorifying Germany’s actions in World War II.

Former classmates at the small, predominantly white high-school he attended told Vice News that Fields was fond of wearing a belt with swastikas on it, drawing swastikas all over his things, and picking (verbal) fights about race-related topics. Keegan McGrath, who roomed with Fields on a school trip to France and Germany, told the Associated Press that Fields spent the trip praising Hitler, explaining why the French were inferior to Germans, and refusing to associate with French students. Another ex-classmate said Fields would often call a Muslim female student a terrorist.

Caitlin Wilson, who went to school with Fields for years, told the Enquirer that he was drawing swastikas and talking about his love for Hitler as early as middle school.

Derek Weimer, a former teacher at Cooper High School, told WKRC Cincinnati that Fields was not a behavioral problem but “it was clear. He loved Hitler and he loved the Nazi movement. They were all geniuses and, you know, the whole white supremacy thing.” (At home, however, his behavior was a different story: 911-call transcripts show Fields’ mother, widowed and wheelchair-bound, feared for her own safety around her son sometimes.)

Weimer and several Cooper High School alums said they talked to school leaders about Fields.

Brady alleged the district had received no such reports, from either Weimer or former students. She then used this alleged lack of official complaints as a way to discredit their accounts.

“How can you trust that information now if they didn’t do anything about it then?” Brady asked in the email to the Enquirer.

Of course, multiple folks say they did raise flags about Fields. But beyond that, not every doodled swastika or bigoted remark from a fellow student is the kind of thing kids would report to authorities. A lack of tattling to the principal that Fields said something nice about Hitler doesn’t mean he didn’t say nice things about Hitler.

And regardless of whether reports were made, the district may have lacked grounds to act, at least in a diciplinary manner. High-school students still have First amendment rights, and we don’t know if Fields’ former antics ever crossed the line into prohibited speech or actual misconduct.

Still, this incident could serve as a good jumping-off point for exploring what roles and responsibilities that school officials, teachers, classmates, and community members do (and don’t) have when it comes to young people and radically racist rhetoric or extremist views. It’s sad that school bureaucrats in Boone County seem more concerned with deflecting potential criticism in any way possible—even if that means casting aspersion on alumni simply for speaking out—than fostering a fruitful discussion about how to prevent domestic terrorism.

In Hartford, Connecticut, three state troopers stopped Michael Picard at a sobriety checkpoint in 2015, confiscating his pistol, pistol permit, and camera, according to a lawsuit Picard has now filed. The troopers also told him (falsely) that recording them was illegal, but they weren’t aware the camera was continuing to record after they took it.

On the video, they can reportedly be heard calling a local cop to ask if they had any “grudges” against Picard, who they knew to have organized a previous protest at the state capitol. After learning that the permit was valid, one of the troopers told the other two they had to “cover” themselves, and another responded, “Let’s give him something.”

Picard received a ticket for illegal use of a highway by a pedestrian and creating a public disturbance. Both charged were thrown out in court.

Nearly two years after the incident, the state Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection refuses to say whether the three troopers—John Barone, John Jacobi, and Patrick Torneo—were disciplined for their actions. The department, which oversees the state police, cited state privacy laws and the state police’s union contract to reject media requests for a copy of the investigative report and findings. The Associated Press has appealed to the state’s Freedom of Information Commission.

This kind of obfuscatory use of privacy laws and union contract provisions is, sadly, nothing new. In some states, even prosecutors can’t learn about dirty cops. Police reform activists associated with Black Lives Matter launched a project, Check the Police, that tracks union contracts at many of the country’s largest law enforcement agencies. Most have provisions that make accountability more difficult—by preventing past misconduct investigations from being retained in personnel files, for example, or disqualifying complaints that are submitted too long after an incident.

New York City has treated personnel records the same way since the de Blasio administration decided to reinterpret a decades-old state privacy law. That didn’t stop the deputy commissioner of intelligence there from claiming the NYPD is the “most transparent municipal police department in the world.”

As recently as 2015, the police chief of Fairfield, Connecticut, claimed that any citizen could request police personnel and disciplinary files, telling WNYC that open records have improved accountability in his department. The state police should follow suit. Laws preventing such transparency should be replaced by laws that prevent such transparency from being negotiated away.

• More CEOs resigned in the wake of President Trump’s post-Charlottesville comments, and the president said he was disbanding his White House business advisory groups.
• George H.W. and George W. Bush released a joint statement in the wake of Charlottesville, calling on Americans to reject “racial bigotry, anti-Semitism, and hatred in all forms.”
• A tweet by Barack Obama in response to Charlottesville has become the most liked tweet ever.
• Human rights experts at the United Nations urged the U.S. to investigate and prosecute hate crimes and hate speech.
• A memorial service was held for Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, where she was killed in a vehicular attack.
• “It’s time for Taylor Swift to denounce her neo-Nazi admirers.”
• Another Game of Thrones episode was leaked, this time after HBO in Spain mistakenly aired it.

Chicago is cracking down on what one alderman outrageously referred to as “potential rolling cemeteries“—otherwise known as party buses—with a new ordinance requiring expensive security cameras and a licensed guard on trips where alcohol is involved.

Over the past two years 11 shootings connected to party bus passengers resulted in three killings (in a city with 762 homicides in 2016).

The new ordinance kicked in this June and applies to vehicles that can hold 10 or more people and only provide pre-arranged transportation (called charter and sightseeing vehicles). It is city officials’ latest attempt to reign-in what they claim are dangerous party buses because, as stated by License Committee Chairwoman and Ward 37 Alderman Emma Mitts, “sometimes fatal violence can break out at a moment’s notice thanks to the potent mix of guns and alcohol.”

Most of the new rules are meant to target the bigger charter and sightseeing vehicles that can carry 15 or more passengers. For bigger buses where alcohol will be consumed on the vehicle or during trip stops, it must be outfitted with a security camera, have a licensed security guard present, all passengers must be informed of the prohibited acts, and the driver must take “affirmative steps” to ensure that no prohibited acts are taking place.

Those prohibited acts include underage drinking, disorderly conduct, possessing drug paraphernalia or drugs, unlawful possession or discharging a firearm, throwing items from the vehicle, indecent exposure, and littering.

Igor Vulicevic, owner of ChiTown LimoBus told Reason that bus shootings are isolated incidents.

“Watch the ten o’clock news. How many were killed on a daily basis in Chicago?” Vulicevic said. “I don’t think that the buses are the problem.”

According to Vulicevic, the ordinance is “very poorly defined,” and bus companies have been fined for not having security guards or cameras on trips with fewer than 15 passengers. A press release from the mayor’s office states that that these rules apply to “[b]uses that have 15 or more passengers” which makes it sound like the city is targeting large, rowdy parties. However, the ordinance is actually based on the bus carrying capacity. If there are only five people on the bus, the regulations still apply.

“Things like this are absolutely mindboggling… ,” Vulicevic said. “This is just a simple example so you can see how semantics can actually cost somebody a thousand dollars.”

Additionally, the city now requires all vehicles that are rated for 15 or more passengers (regardless of alcohol consumption) keep a full itinerary of the trip, and all charter and sightseeing vehicles registered by the city (even those which carry fewer than 15 passengers) must have their city vehicle number printed on the side of the bus.

Vulicevic said that it cost his business $4,000 upfront to get each bus up to code—$16,000 for his four buses. He expressed concern that increasing costs of business could actually make roadways more dangerous for consumers.

“I think it [the ordinance] will put lots of people at risk. … We provide safe and reliable transportation to the citizens and the residents of this city… ,” Vulicevic said. “The rates have already gone up. We simply cannot afford paying for all of this. … So who has to pay? The consumer has to pay. And if the consumer cannot afford it then they will have to drive on their own and it will bring the risk of drinking and driving.”

The mayor’s office also advertised the ordinance as a way to “help police officers more easily identify unlicensed party buses so they can be stopped.” Fines for noncompliance with city regulations can range from $100 to $10,000.

The Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection and Chicago Police conducted an investigation for illegal vehicles at the end of July and sent cease-and-desist letters to 17 companies who they claim were not following the new rules. But some of those companies say they actually are in compliance with the rules and are threatening to sue the city. Dan Cosma, owner of Cloud 9 Limo told CBS Local Chicago that his company was up to code:

“They really need to do their homework. They are saying for three days they have been investigating all those companies and they wrote I don’t know how many citations. We never got a citation. We never got a ticket. We did not get notified about any of this. We know about the ordinance, we are up to date. … This is very damaging and I don’t know how it can be fixed now.”

Cosma added that he wanted the city should look for companies that “do, in fact, operate illegally.” This is a sentiment echoed by Vulicevic, who feels that the city is penalizing legitimate businesses.

Vulicevic and other party bus businesses in Chicago are currently working with a legal team to get the ordinance better defined.

“My last intention is to bash the city and the city officials; we all have to work together,” Vulicevic said.

Want to learn more? Check out this informational video from the city:

Black Americans are eight times more likely than white Americans to be the victims of a homicide. That’s just one of the less-than-cheery bit of news the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has reveals in “Age-Adjusted Rates for Homicides by Race/Ethnicity—United States, 1999-2015,” where it notes:

During 1999–2014, a general decline in homicide trends for non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic black, and Hispanic populations occurred, followed by a significant increase in the rates for all three groups between 2014 and 2015. In 2015, homicide rates were 5.7 deaths per 100,000 for the total population, 20.9 for non-Hispanic blacks, 4.9 for Hispanics, and 2.6 for non-Hispanic whites.

The good news is that U.S. homicide rates declined steeply over the past three decades. As the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports, the homicide rate increased from 4.6 per 100,000 U.S. residents in 1962 to 10.2 per 100,000 in 1980. The rate then fell to 7.9 per 100,000 in 1984, rose again to another peak in 1991 at 9.8 per 100,000, and then started plunging back down. It reached a nadir of 4.5 per 100,000 in 2014 before rising back to 5.7.

How does the U.S. fare in comparison with other countries? Our Southern neighbors are for the most part doing much worse than we are. The homicide rate in Venezuela is now estimated at 90 per 100,000 citizens; the rate in El Salvador fell from 103.1 in 2015 to 80.9 per 100,000 last year; the rate in Honduras has dropped from 86.5 in 2011 to 60 per 100,000 in 2015. Mexico’s 2016 murder rate, at 16 per 100,000, is comparatively low, but murders there surged to over 2,000 in May, the highest for any month in the last two decades.

On the other hand, Canada’s 2015 homicide rate was just 1.7 per 100,000 residents. The average in the European Union hovers around 1 per 100,000 residents. The World Bank calculates that the global murder rate is about 5.3 per 100,000 Earthlings.

While homicide victimization rates fell among blacks and Hispanics fell during the past three decades, they have remained persistently higher than the rate for whites. At the 1991 peak, black Americans were murdered at a rate of 39.3 per 100,000; the Hispanic toll stood at 6 per 100,000; the white rate was 5.5 per 100,000. As the CDC data show, the murder rates for both black and white residents have essentially been cut in half, whereas the Hispanic rate is only about 20 percent lower. As a result of the differential in dropping murder rates, the gap between black and white homicide victimization rates fell more than 50 percent.

Why are homicide victimization rates so much higher in the African-American community? The University of Missouri-St. Louis criminologist Richard Rosenfeld addressed the question in a 2016 study of murder rates in several big cities. He considered three possible explanations, which are not mutually exclusive: an expansion of urban drug markets fueled by the heroin trade; a greater number of prisoners being released into the nation’s cities; and a “Ferguson effect” in which the police respond to protests by de-policing. Rosenfeld concluded that the data that might underpin any of these hypotheses were inconclusive.

How can we get back on the track toward falling murder rates? One good first step would be to end the drug war, as my colleague Eric Boehm has suggested. That would eliminate at least some of the violence associated with the black market for drugs, which may account for as much as 25 percent of all homicides.

Lifeline—a federal program that is supposed to subsidize telephone and broadband internet service for low-income Americans—has been handing out subsidies to millions of ineligable recipients, including thousands of dead people.

Now a bipartisan group of senators wants answers.

On Monday, the leadership of the Senate’s Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee sent a letter asking the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to hand over any specific findings of fraud they’ve found in the Lifeline program for “further investigation and possible enforcement action.”

This request was prompted by a June GAO investigation of Lifeline, which is funded by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The report found that 1.2 million participants’ eligibility could not be verified, that 5,510 were receiving multiple subsidies, and that another 6,378 were dead. In all, taxpayers could be paying $138 million annually in potentially fraudulent payments.

Even by the feds’ standards, the lack of accountability here is shocking. It highlights the inherent dangers that accompanies any government foray into the internet business.

Under Lifeline, individuals earning below 135 percent of the federal poverty line, or who are receiving benefits from Medicaid, SNAP, or a similar program, are eligible for a $9.25 monthly subsidy on their internet or phone bill. That subsidy comes in the form of lower bills from participating phone and/or internet providers, who the government reimburses based on the number of Lifeline participants they have signed up.

The Universal Service Administration Company (USAC)—a private nonprofit—administers the program, handing out $1.5 billion in subsidies to 12.3 million people in 2016.

In its 2017 report, the GAO found several “weaknesses” in the program design. Notably, the government relies on service providers to conduct eligibility checks for Lifeline, and “companies may have financial incentives to enroll as many customers as possible.”

Indeed, providers have absolutely no incentive to check eligibility adequately. Enrolling more Lifeline participants means a provider receives more subsidies. Servicing more Lifeline participants also allows a provider to raise prices, as the federal government, not their customers, will eat the increased costs.

Sure enough: When GAO staff submitted fraudulent Lifeline applications to 19 Lifeline service providers, 12 accepted them into the program.

On a macro level, GAO examined the eligibility of some 3.5 million Lifeline beneficiaries in six states. The eligibility of over a third could not be verified. And as mentioned above, more than 11,000 were ineligible either because they were receiving multiple subsidies or because they were dead.

GAO notes that “these numbers likely understate the number of people reported dead who were reenrolled in Lifeline,” due to inadequate record keeping.

The FCC has failed time and again to implement procedural safeguards or even evaluate the effectiveness of the program. The commission promised to review USAC’s performance a year after contracting with them to administer the program; then it didn’t. In 2005 the FCC awarded a contract to the National Academy of Public Administration to study the administration of the program, then inexplicably cancelled that contract.

Not only is Lifeline poorly administered, the GAO concluded, but it is probably unnecessary, since it “may be an inefficient and costly mechanism to increase telephone subscribership.” Most low-income households receive phone service without any need of a Lifeline subsidy, and many current participants would likely maintain phone service in the absence of the assistance.

The same can be said of Lifeline’s relatively new mission of increasing broadband access. Pew Research Center found that internet usage went from 52 percent to 84 percent from 2000 to 2015. The gains for low-income Americans was even more pronounced, with those earning less than $30,000 a year increasing from 34 percent in 2000 to 74 percent in 2015—all without the aid of Lifeline.

This isn’t the only government foray into the internet business to have ended in disaster. As part of Obama’s stimulus program, the feds spent $4.7 billion on grants to local broadband projects to increase access and speed. Some $594 million in program funds were eventually suspended after revelations of undocumented expenditures, wasteful projects, and simple graft.

Local governments’ internet interventions have often been disastrous too, with one recent study finding that most municipal broadband networks are operating at a loss.

Lifeline still has its defenders. FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn has claimed that cutting the program would deny people “access to critical services like 911.” Access to 911 is a great thing, but it is a little too late for those Lifeline clients who are dead.

Black Americans are eight times more likely than white Americans to be the victims of a homicide. That’s just one of the less-than-cheery bit of news the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has reveals in “Age-Adjusted Rates for Homicides by Race/Ethnicity—United States, 1999-2015,” where it notes:

During 1999–2014, a general decline in homicide trends for non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic black, and Hispanic populations occurred, followed by a significant increase in the rates for all three groups between 2014 and 2015. In 2015, homicide rates were 5.7 deaths per 100,000 for the total population, 20.9 for non-Hispanic blacks, 4.9 for Hispanics, and 2.6 for non-Hispanic whites.

The good news is that U.S. homicide rates declined steeply over the past three decades. As the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports, the homicide rate increased from 4.6 per 100,000 U.S. residents in 1962 to 10.2 per 100,000 in 1980. The rate then fell to 7.9 per 100,000 in 1984, rose again to another peak in 1991 at 9.8 per 100,000, and then started plunging back down. It reached a nadir of 4.5 per 100,000 in 2014 before rising back to 5.7.

How does the U.S. fare in comparison with other countries? Our Southern neighbors are for the most part doing much worse than we are. The homicide rate in Venezuela is now estimated at 90 per 100,000 citizens; the rate in El Salvador fell from 103.1 in 2015 to 80.9 per 100,000 last year; the rate in Honduras has dropped from 86.5 in 2011 to 60 per 100,000 in 2015. Mexico’s 2016 murder rate, at 16 per 100,000, is comparatively low, but murders there surged to over 2,000 in May, the highest for any month in the last two decades.

On the other hand, Canada’s 2015 homicide rate was just 1.7 per 100,000 residents. The average in the European Union hovers around 1 per 100,000 residents. The World Bank calculates that the global murder rate is about 5.3 per 100,000 Earthlings.

While homicide victimization rates fell among blacks and Hispanics fell during the past three decades, they have remained persistently higher than the rate for whites. At the 1991 peak, black Americans were murdered at a rate of 39.3 per 100,000; the Hispanic toll stood at 6 per 100,000; the white rate was 5.5 per 100,000. As the CDC data show, the murder rates for both black and white residents have essentially been cut in half, whereas the Hispanic rate is only about 20 percent lower. As a result of the differential in dropping murder rates, the gap between black and white homicide victimization rates fell more than 50 percent.

Why are homicide victimization rates so much higher in the African-American community? The University of Missouri-St. Louis criminologist Richard Rosenfeld addressed the question in a 2016 study of murder rates in several big cities. He considered three possible explanations, which are not mutually exclusive: an expansion of urban drug markets fueled by the heroin trade; a greater number of prisoners being released into the nation’s cities; and a “Ferguson effect” in which the police respond to protests by de-policing. Rosenfeld concluded that the data that might underpin any of these hypotheses were inconclusive.

How can we get back on the track toward falling murder rates? One good first step would be to end the drug war, as my colleague Eric Boehm has suggested. That would eliminate at least some of the violence associated with the black market for drugs, which may account for as much as 25 percent of all homicides.