Video Review: Андрей Илларионов об убийстве Немцова: Такое могут сделать только российские спецслужбы» - YouTube | Prisoner in van said Freddie Gray was ‘trying to injure himself,’ document says | No Sharp Rise Seen in Police Killings, Though Increased Focus May Suggest Otherwise | Baltimore Police Finish Inquiry Into Death of Freddie Gray | Eric Garner Case Goes Largely Unmentioned as Prosecutor Runs for Congress | America needs to curb immigration flows | House Republicans try to gut a key American principle | Koch brothers cater to Latinos, hoping for votes
- Get link
- X
- Other Apps
No Sharp Rise Seen in Police Killings, Though Increased Focus May Suggest Otherwise |
Prisoner in van said Freddie Gray was ‘trying to injure himself,’ document says |
America needs to curb immigration flows |
House Republicans try to gut a key American principle |
Koch brothers cater to Latinos, hoping for votes
Андрей Илларионов об убийстве Немцова: Такое могут сделать только российские спецслужбы» - YouTube
Published on Mar 3, 2015
Комментарий бывшего советника президента Путина Русской службе "Голоса Америки"
Originally published at - http: //www.golos-ameriki.ru/media/vid ...
Originally published at - http: //www.golos-ameriki.ru/media/vid ...
Published on Mar 25, 2015
Споры в Вашингтоне продолжаются
Originally published at - http: //www.golos-ameriki.ru/media/vid ...
Originally published at - http: //www.golos-ameriki.ru/media/vid ...
Published on April 30, 2015
30 апреля 1975 г. американцы покинули Сайгон
Originally published at - http: //www.golos-ameriki.ru/media/vid ...
Originally published at - http: //www.golos-ameriki.ru/media/vid ...
Published on April 30, 2015
. The Calbuco volcano erupted again on Thursday, sending hot rock and ash billowing into the air and prompting Chilean Officials to order a new evacuation of nearby residents (April 30) Subscribe for more Breaking News: http://smarturl.it/AssociatedPress Get Breaking News updates and more here: http://smarturl.it/APBreakingNews The Associated Press is the essential global news network, delivering fast, unbiased news from every corner of the world to all media platforms and formats. AP's commitment to independent, comprehensive journalism has deep roots. Founded in 1846, AP has covered all the major news events of the past 165 years, providing high-quality, informed reporting of everything from wars and elections to championship games and royal weddings. . AP MOST is the largest and trusted source of independent news and information Today, AP employs the latest technology to collect and distribute content -. We have daily uploads covering the latest and breaking news in the world of politics, sport and entertainment Join us in a conversation About world events, the newsgathering process or whatever aspect of the universe news you find interesting or important.
Read the whole story
· ·
Published on April 29, 2015
Hundreds take to the streets in New York in show of support to Baltimore As They call for justice and police reform. Rough Cut (no reporter narration). Subscribe: http://smarturl.it/reuterssubscribe More updates and breaking news: http://smarturl.it/BreakingNews tells Reuters the world's stories like no one else. As the largest international multimedia news provider, Reuters Provides coverage around the globe and across topics Including business, financial, national, and international news. For over 160 years, Reuters has maintained its reputation for speed, accuracy, and impact while providing exclusives, incisive commentary and forward-looking
Next Page of Stories
Loading...
Page 2
Published on April 30, 2015
CCTV footage shows the moment an archway collapsed over a busy road in Kathmandu as a massive earthquake hit the city killing Nearly 6,000 people. Rough Cut (no reporter narration). Subscribe: http://smarturl.it/reuterssubscribe More updates and breaking news :http://smarturl.it/BreakingNews tells Reuters the world's stories like no one else. As the largest international multimedia news provider, Reuters Provides coverage around the globe and across topics Including business, financial, national, and international news. For over 160 years, Reuters has maintained its reputation for speed, accuracy, and impact while providing exclusives, incisive commentary and forward-looking
Published on April 21, 2015
Gen. John Campbell, commander of Resolute Support, talks how Resolute Support About Afghan leadership is preparing to Maintain and move forward.
Published on April 30, 2015
A fast-paced video interview laced With sound bites, music and interoperability training footage That Gives a brief overview of the 82nd Airborne Division's Interoperability Program and the history Between the 82nd Airborne Division and the 16th Air Assault Brigade (UK).
Published on April 30, 2015
Have preventer German police fear an imminent attack after raiding the home of a Suspected extremist, According to media reports. They Detained a married couple in Oberursel near Frankfurt overnight on Thursday. The pair, named as Halil and Senay D by Die Welt newspaper, Had . Been Placed under police surveillance several weeks ago after buying unusually Large amounts of chemicals While searching the apartment, police found a pipe bomb, explosives, a rifle and ammunition tools as well as th ... READ MORE: http: //www.euronews. com / 2015/04/30 / ge ... What are the top stories today? Click to watch: https: //www.youtube.com/playlist list ...? euronews: the most watched news channel in Europe Subscribe! http: //www.youtube.com/subscription_c ...euronews is available in 13 languages: https: //www.youtube.com/user/euronews ... In
Published on April 25, 2015
April 25, 2015 - President Barack Obama delivered His seventh speech to the White House Correspondents' Association Saturday night. After a short montage parodying His Interviews with BuzzFeed and YouTube stars, the president Launched Into His annual stand-up set. "Welcome to the fourth quarter of my presidency, "Obama Said That I feels adding more" loose and relaxed than ever "with less than two years left in office. The president Said I does not have a "bucket list," but does have something That Rhymes with that. "Take executive action on immigration? Bucket. " "Being president is never easy," Obama Said. "I still have to fix a broken immigration system, Threats veto issue, Negotiate With Iran, all while finding time to pray five times a day ". On Dick Cheney's assertion That Obama is the worst president of His lifetime, the president Said That Is "interesting, because i think Dick Cheney is the worst president of my lifetime". And there was the unavoidable Hillary Clinton joke: " For many Americans, this is still a time of deep uncertainty. For example, I have one friend, just a few weeks ago, she was making millions of dollars a year and she is now living out of a van in Iowa. " Obama welcomed the night's host, Cecily Strong, WHO plays CNN's Brooke Baldwin on Saturday Night Live. "Usually the only people impersonating Journalists Journalists are on CNN on CNN," I Said. The current and potential 2016 Republican presidential field did not emerge unscathed, With jokes About Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum, Donald Trump and more. Obama Said He Could not wait to see WHO pick the Koch brothers. And do not forget about Hillary Clinton's potential competition from the left, Sen. Bernie Sanders. "Some folks want to see a socialist smoking pot in the White House, "He Said. "We Could Obama get a third term after all!" Finally, the president did the unthinkable, bringing out His anger translator Luther, AKA Keegan-Michael Key from Key & Peele, Who Took the "serious" part of Obama's speech and let everyone know what I was really thinking. But by the end, Obama got angry all on His Own, no translation needed. Watch video below, via C-SPAN, as It becomes soon as it available.
Read the whole story
· ·
Published on April 25, 2015
CLIP:. President Obama and his anger translator at 2015 White House Correspondents' Dinner Watch complete video here: http://cs.pn/1JFZuMo
Next Page of Stories
Loading...
Page 3
Published on April 30, 2015
Bhaktapur (Nepal), April 30 (EFE) (Leo Redondo Images) .- The aid comes with a dropper to the camps of the cities That are around the Nepalese capital Repeatedly denounced as Hundreds of people Who Have the opt for self- search systems organization to meet the needs of children and adults. In Bhaktapur, About 10 kilometers from Kathmandu, any open space has Become a camp. In one of them, Vinayak Kamal, About 1,200 people Took refuge under a multicolored roof awnings stores alike Nepalese That mix Red Cross kitchen tablecloths. There Arjun Konda, an Inglés teacher, Serves as the coordinator of a group of young people Who Have taken care of That little help arrives is Dealt rationally and everyone is taken care of. "We have some help but not enough , our number is very large and assistance is available It is not enough for us, "I added. He Said the people HAD Brought food reserves at home but are running. "Hunger can Appear at any time it," He Said.
Published on Apr 29, 2015
Russian efforts to salvage a resupply mission to the international space station have failed and that the spacecraft will re-enter the Earth's atmosphere. Photo: EPA
Published on Apr 30, 2015
NASA’s Messenger spacecraft is expected to end its mission in our solar system with a big bang on Thursday. WSJ's Monika Auger reports. Photo: NASA
A Border Patrol agent keeps watch at the Mexico-U.S. border in Imperial Beach, Calif. (Eric Thayer/Reuters)
By Jeff Sessions April 9
It is time for an honest discussion of immigration.
The first “great wave” of U.S. immigration took place from roughly 1880 to 1930. During this time,according to the Census Bureau, the foreign-born population doubled from about 6.7 million to 14.2 million people. Changes were then made to immigration law to reduce admissions, decreasing the foreign-born population until it fell to about 9.6 million by 1970. Meanwhile, during this low-immigration period, real median compensation for U.S. workers surged, increasing more than 90 percent from 1948 to 1973, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
In the 1960s, Congress lifted immigration caps and ushered in a “second great wave.” The foreign-born population more than quadrupled, to more than 40 million today.
This ongoing wave coincides with a period of middle-class contraction. The Pew Research Center reports: “The share of adults who live in middle-income households has eroded over time, from 61% in 1970 to 51% in 2013.” Harvard economist George Borjas has estimated that high immigration from 1980 to 2000 reduced the wages of lower-skilled U.S. workers by 7.4 percent — a stunning drop — with particularly painful reductions for African American workers. Weekly earnings today are lower than they were in 1973.
Yet each year, the United States adds another million mostly low-wage permanent legal immigrants who can work, draw benefits and become voting citizens. Legal immigration is the primary source of low-wage immigration into the United States. In other words, as a matter of federal policy — which can be adjusted at any time — millions of low-wage foreign workers are legally made available to substitute for higher-paid Americans.
This federal policy continues at a time when robotics and computerization are slashing demand for workers. One Oxford University professor estimates that as many as half of all jobs will be automated in 20 years. We don’t have enough jobs for our lower-skilled workers now. What sense does it make to bring in millions more?
If no immigration curbs are enacted, the Census Bureau estimates that another 14 million immigrants will come to the United States between now and 2025. That means we will introduce a new population almost four times larger than that of Los Angeles in just 10 years time.
The percentage of the country that is foreign-born is on track to rapidly eclipse any previous historical peak and to continue rising. Imagine the pressure this will put on wages, as well as schools, hospitals and many other community resources.
It is not mainstream, but extreme, to continue surging immigration beyond any historical precedentand to do so at a time when almost 1 in 4 Americans age 25 to 54 does not have a job. What we need now is immigration moderation: slowing the pace of new arrivals so that wages can rise, welfare rolls can shrink and the forces of assimilation can knit us all more closely together.
But high immigration rates help the financial elite (and the political elite who receive their contributions) by keeping wages down and profits up. For them, what’s not to like? That is why they have tried to enforce silence in the face of public desire for immigration reductions. They have sought to intimidate good and decent Americans into avoiding honest discussion of how uncontrolled immigration impacts their lives.
But that dam is breaking. The elite consensus is crumbling — and the enforced silence on this critical issue will end.
Continue reading
Get the Today's Headlines Newsletter
Free daily updates delivered just for you.
Success! Check your inbox for details.
Please enter a valid email address
You might also like:
Read the whole story
· · · ·
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), during a House Judiciary Committee meeting in 2013. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
The Civil War era’s 14th Amendment, granting automatic citizenship to any baby born on American soil, is a proud achievement of the Party of Lincoln.
But now House Republicans are talking about abolishing birthright citizenship.
Dana Milbank writes about political theater in the nation’s capital. He joined the Post as a political reporter in 2000.
View Archive
A House Judiciary subcommittee took up the question Wednesday afternoon, prompted by legislation sponsored by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) and 22 other lawmakers that, after nearly 150 years, would end automatic citizenship.
The 14th Amendment, King told the panel, “did not contemplate that anyone who would sneak into the United States and have a baby would have automatic citizenship conferred on them.” Added King, “I’d suggest it’s our job here in this Congress to decide who will be citizens, not someone in a foreign country that can sneak into the United States and have a baby and then go home with the birth certificate.”
It’s no small task to undo a principle, enshrined in the Constitution and upheld by the Supreme Court, that defines the United States as a nation of immigrants. It’s particularly audacious that House Republicans would undo a century and a half of precedent without amending the Constitution but merely by passing a law to reinterpret the 14th Amendment’s wording in a way that will stop the scourge of “anchor babies” and “birth tourism.”
Judiciary Committee Republicans brought in three experts to testify in support of this extraordinary maneuver (a lone Democratic witness was opposed), and they evidently had to search far and wide for people who would take this view, because they ended up with a bizarre witness: an octogenarian professor from the University of Texas named Lino Graglia.
This would be the Lino Graglia who caused a furor in 1997 when he said that Latinos and African Americans are “not academically competitive with whites” and come from a “culture that seems not to encourage achievement.” He also said at the time that “I don’t know that it’s good for whites to be with the lower classes.”
This is also the same Lino Graglia who said in a 2012 interview that black and Hispanic children are less “academically competent” than white children, and he attributed the academic gap to the “deleterious experience” of being reared by single mothers. When the interviewer, a black man, said he had a single mother, Graglia said that “my guess would be that you’re above usual smartness for whites, to say nothing of blacks.”
And this is the very same Lino Graglia whose nomination for a federal judgeship in the 1980s fell apart amid allegations that he had urged Austin residents to defy a court-ordered busing plan and had used the racist word “pickaninny” in the classroom.
Abolishing automatic citizenship for babies born on American soil, and having Graglia make the case, probably won’t help Republicans overcome their problems with minorities, who are gradually becoming the majority. Democrats, by happenstance, presented a sharp contrast to the GOP effort Wednesday: Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and others met at Washington’s Carnegie Library with a coalition including immigration and civil rights advocates to launch a new jobs campaign, “Putting Families First.”
At the birthright hearing, King got things going by informing his colleagues that “birth tourism has grown substantially” and that it costs $48,000 for a Chinese national to fly to the United States, have her baby, get a birth certificate and take the child back to China. Though conservatives generally take a dim view of international law, King said the United States in this case should follow “almost every other industrialized country” in abolishing birthright citizenship.
Graglia dutifully informed the committee that “a law ending birthright citizenship should and likely would survive constitutional challenge.” But consider the source: a man who by his own account takes “a very limited view of the power of the Supreme Court” and breezily dismisses contrary precedents.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif) mentioned Graglia’s “pickaninny” comment and his position on busing. After Lofgren’s time expired, Graglia blurted out: “Your bringing up . . . this alleged statement of ‘pickaninny’ is in the nature of slur. I don’t know why you’re bringing up these insulting things that have nothing to do with” his testimony.
Minutes later, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) read aloud some of Graglia’s other comments about minorities. “It seems some underhanded move is being made here,” the professor protested, saying he “never made a comment that in any way implied the inferiority of any group.”
The congressman asked that Graglia’s past statements be entered into the record. But Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) complained that the line of inquiry was “a non-germane subject for this hearing.”
On the contrary, it gets right at the heart of the matter.
Twitter: @Milbank
Read more from Dana Milbank’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
Continue reading
Get the Today's Headlines Newsletter
Free daily updates delivered just for you.
Success! Check your inbox for details.
Please enter a valid email address
You might also like:
Read the whole story
· · · · · ·
Paula Hernandez, 46, helps a friend use a Spanish copy of the Nevada Drivers Handbook. Hundreds of Latinos in Las Vegas attended a class to learn how to pass the state driver’s license exam. (John Gurzinski/for The Washington Post)
LAS VEGAS — For Republicans, the road to warming the hearts and winning the votes of Latinos may begin at a Las Vegas flea market.
On a recent morning, inside the Eastern Indoor Swapmeet Las Vegas, a group funded by the billionaire Koch brothers helped 250 Latinos — some of them illegal immigrants — pass the Nevada driver’s test.
The LIBRE Initiative, an expanding grass-roots organization now operating in nine states, organized the four-hour test prep session to teach the rules of the road in Spanish — no tome y maneje (no drinking and driving), el límite de velocidad es sesenta y cinco millas por hora (the speed limit is 65 miles per hour).
Paula Hernandez, 46, an undocumented restaurant supervisor from Mexico, was one of those sitting on folded chairs, listening. She has worked in the United States for 25 years and gave birth to three children here. She has never heard of the Koch brothers or LIBRE but said the free classes were a “great help,” particularly because nobody else is lending her a hand. “President Obama promised to do more for us, and it just didn’t happen,” she said.
To Republicans, that sounds like an opportunity — even though the Koch brothers and their conservative allies spend a great deal of their money supporting Republican candidates who oppose citizenship for illegal immigrants.
Sisters Jacqueline Sandoval, 22, left, and Alexandria Sandoval, 18, take notes at the class. Jacqueline said she thinks both political parties “have good ideas.” (John Gurzinski/for The Washington Post)
“Latino celebrities, unions and left-leaning community groups” for decades have done a far better job in courting the Hispanic vote and “engaging directly with the Latino community,” said Daniel Garza, executive director of LIBRE. Now, he said, his group aims to end what he calls the “deafening silence” from “libertarians and conservatives.”
In addition to driver’s license classes, LIBRE has started offering Latinos tax preparation help, wellness checkups, scholarships and food giveaways in Texas, Colorado, Florida and other states. It has bought ads touting the “free market,” smaller government and school choice, and its officials are a growing presence on Spanish-language news stations talking about the virtues of “self-reliance.”
By providing tax prep and driving classes, they are building good will in the Latino community and what they call a ”platform for civic engagement.” LIBRE officials take pains to say they are advocating policies, not specific candidates.
Garza said his group is focused on explaining conservative views. For instance, they talk about how a higher minimum wage might not be in the best interest of Latinos because they believe it will hurt businesses and that there are less expensive ways for young Latinos to get health insurance than Obama’s contentious health plan. Garza also said LIBRE advocates getting millions of undocumented workers “out of the shadows” and into the legal system.
The LIBRE effort, which backers plan to expand into more presidential battleground states over the next several months, has alarmed many Democrats.
“They are making friends and trying to convince you that the Democratic agenda is bad,” said Matt Barreto, co-founder of the research and polling firm Latino Decisions. He said the group hands out ideological material, collects names, e-mails and phone numbers, and is “laying the foundation for Republican candidates to emphasize the same messages.”
Barreto says those behind LIBRE are “playing the long game” and don’t really have to win Republican votes, but rather raise doubts about Democrats to suppress support for them.
Daniel Garza, executive director of LIBRE — a group backed by the Koch brothers — spoke to Latinos attending a drivers’s license class in Las Vegas. (John Gurzinski/for The Washington Post)
The Latino Victory Fund, which is backed by Democratic activists including actress Eva Longoria, is so concerned about LIBRE that it is gathering Latino leaders in Washington next week to discuss how to counter the efforts, which they see as disingenuous.
Cristóbal Alex, president of the Victory Fund, said LIBRE offers handouts and “talks about immigration in a positive way” but “is really doing work on behalf of the Koch brothers who put huge money behind candidates against immigration reform.” He said there is a long litany of conservative stances, including opposition to raising the minimum wage, that are unpopular with Latinos.
According to tax records, LIBRE has received $10 million since it began in 2011 from Freedom Partners, a nonprofit group backed by the Koch brothers and other conservative donors. Garza said the group has hundreds of donors.
At the drivers’ test prep class on Sunday, the crowd applauded a video touting the American Dream and showing the journey of Garza, the son of a hard-working migrant worker from Mexico who went on to work in the White House for former president George W. Bush.
Rosana Romero, a popular anchor at the local Spanish-language station in Las Vegas, MundoFox, which joined in sponsoring the Sunday event, greeted people as they arrived. Spanish language TV stations have been reporting on the free classes and interviewing LIBRE officials. Everyone who came was asked to leave their names and contact information under a big blue sign that read, ”Limited government, Unlimited opportunities.”
In Nevada, where more than 1 in 4 people are Hispanic, undocumented residents can get a “driver’s authorization card” if they pass the regular driver’s test, a measure designed to make the roads safer because drivers know the laws and get insurance.
But many have been flunking the test, and Romero said nobody was helping them until LIBRE stepped up. “What they are doing here is a good thing,” the TV anchor said.
Salvador Garnica, 44, an electrician who is a permanent resident originally from Mexico, has flunked the test four times. He said after listening to an instructor explain in Spanish for four hours everything from the right of way at roundabouts to lane changes, he finally felt ready to pass. He was grateful for the help and the festive atmosphere at the flea market, where a dozen people who took the class won gift certificates in a raffle.
But Garnica also raised the challenge for LIBRE and other Republican efforts to win over Hispanics. While he appreciated the help, he wasn’t about to support Republicans: “They are for the rich,” he said.
Left-leaning groups have been signing up voters outside naturalization services and mobilizing turn out in Hispanic communities for years. David Damore, a University of Nevada associate professor and fellow at the Brookings Institution, said what LIBRE is doing “pales in comparison to what unions do” and just shows that those on the right “think they can get them in their camp.”
But the question remains, Damore said, whether their effort will pay off. The immigration stance of Republican candidates will be key, he said: “Very few people listen to you if you say you want to deport you and your family.”
LIBRE’s strategy, he said, is not necessarily winning the Latino vote, “just not losing it 3 to 1” as they did in 2012.
After the 2012 election, the Republican National Committee commissioned a report that urged the party to strike a more inclusive tone when engaging minorities and called on the party to embrace comprehensive immigration reform. The RNC has deployed about 40 Hispanic state directors, field staff and volunteers to 10 states in 2014, including Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia — and that footprint is expected to grow.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who is expected to announce a bid for president, is actively wooing Latino voters, as is Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).
Bush’s wife, Columba, is from Mexico, a fact he mentions at nearly every stop. On Tuesday, Bush traveled to Puerto Rico to hold two public events, and on Wednesday, he plans to speak to more than 1,000 Hispanic evangelical pastors in Houston.
Even ahead of his official announcement, Bush has already hired a Spanish-speaking spokeswoman assigned to work with Univision, Telemundo and other Spanish-language media outlets, and he has posted his strategy on the Web site of his super PAC in both Spanish and English: “No vamos a ceder una pulgada de territorio – ni cuando se viene a problemas, grupos demográficos, o grupos de votantes ,” “We will not cede an inch of territory — no issues, no demographic groups, no voters.”
Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, also speaks Spanish fluently and is one of the most familiar GOP faces on Spanish-language evening newscasts and Sunday morning public affairs shows.
Donors and aides to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said they see Bush and Rubio and their familial ties to Hispanics as the biggest risks to their near-ironclad grip on the Latino vote.
Clinton’s political director, Amanda Renteria, is fluent in Spanish and is being aggressively wooed by Spanish-language media for interviews. Shortly after Clinton announced her campaign, Renteria headlined a conference call for Hispanic congressional aides and operatives. Clinton’s aides said she plans to place special emphasis on battleground states, including Nevada, with large Hispanic populations. Clinton will visit Nevada on May 5 — Cinco de Mayo — a huge day of Mexican celebrations.
Jacqueline Sandoval, 22, a community college student in Las Vegas, said she will be listening to what all the candidates say and do. She was one of the U.S. citizens who attended the driver’s test prep class Sunday because it helped to hear it in Spanish. She’s not yet sure who she will vote for in 2016 and says so far, she thinks “each party has good ideas.”
O’Keefe reported from Miami Beach. Scott Clement, Matea Gold, Anne Gearan, Sean Sullivan and Katie Zezima in Washington contributed to this report.
Mary Jordan is a national correspondent for the Washington Post covering the 2016 presidential campaign. She served as the co-bureau chief of the Post’s London, Mexico and Tokyo bureaus, and was the head of content of Washington Post Live, which organizes forums and debates.
Ed O’Keefe is covering the 2016 presidential campaign, with a focus on Jeb Bush and other Republican candidates. He's covered presidential and congressional politics since 2008. Off the trail, he's covered Capitol Hill, federal agencies and the federal workforce, and spent a brief time covering the war in Iraq.
Continue reading
Success! Check your inbox for details.
Please enter a valid email address
You might also like:
Our Online Games
Play right from this page
Read the whole story
· · · · · · · · · · · ·
Next Page of Stories
Loading...
Page 4
Full Screen
Autoplay
Close
Aftermath of Baltimore riots
View Photos
Residents clean up from the looting and fires that plagued parts of the city Monday after the funeral for Freddie Gray.
Caption
Residents clean up from the looting and fires that plagued parts of the city Monday after the funeral for Freddie Gray.
April 30, 2015 Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts announces that the department's investigation into the death of Freddie Gray was turned over to the State's Attorney's office at a news conference in Baltimore. Patrick Semansky/AP
Buy Photo
Wait 1 second to continue.
BALTIMORE — A prisoner sharing a police transport van with Freddie Gray told investigators that he could hear Gray “banging against the walls” of the vehicle and believed that he “was intentionally trying to injure himself,” according to a police document obtained by The Washington Post.
The prisoner, who is currently in jail, was separated from Gray by a metal partition and could not see him. His statement is contained in an application for a search warrant, which is sealed by the court. The Post was given the document under the condition that the prisoner not be named because the person who provided it feared for the inmate’s safety.
The document, written by a Baltimore police investigator, offers the first glimpse of what might have happened inside the van. It is not clear whether any additional evidence backs up the prisoner’s version, which is just one piece of a much larger probe.
Gray was found unconscious in the wagon when it arrived at a police station on April 12. The 25-year-old had suffered a spinal injury and died a week later, touching off waves of protests across Baltimore, capped by a riot Monday in which hundreds of angry residents torched buildings, looted stores and pelted police officers with rocks.
Who was Baltimore’s Freddie Gray?(1:27)
The death of 25-year-old Baltimore resident Freddie Gray is sparking demonstrations and riots in the city. Take a look at Gray’s past and the video that shows his arrest just days before his death. (The Washington Post)
Police have said they do not know whether Gray was injured during the arrest or during his 30-minute ride in the van. Local police and the U.S. Justice Department both have launched investigations of Gray’s death.
Jason Downs, one of the attorneys for the Gray family, said the family had not been told of the prisoner’s comments to investigators.
“We disagree with any implication that Freddie Gray severed his own spinal cord,” Downs said. “We question the accuracy of the police reports we’ve seen thus far, including the police report that says Mr. Gray was arrested without force or incident.”
Baltimore police said they will wrap up their investigation Friday and turn the results over to the Baltimore state’s attorney’s office, which will decide whether to seek an indictment. Six police officers, including a lieutenant and a sergeant, have been suspended.
Capt. Eric Kowalczyk, chief spokesman for the Baltimore Police Department, declined to comment on the affidavit, citing the ongoing investigation. The person who provided the document did so on condition of anonymity.
The affidavit is part of a search warrant seeking the seizure of the uniform worn by one of the officers involved in Gray’s arrest or transport. It does not say how many officers were in the van, whether any reported that they heard banging or whether they would have been able to help Gray if he was seeking to injure himself. Police have mentioned only two prisoners in the van.
A tough neighborhood in Baltimore
Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts has admitted flaws in the way officers handled Gray after they chased him through a West Baltimore housing project and arrested him. They said they later found a switchblade clipped to the inside of his pants. Batts has said officers repeatedly ignored Gray’s pleas for medical help and failed to secure him with a safety belt or harness in the back of the transport van.
Video shot by several bystanders has fueled the rage in West Baltimore. It shows two officers on top of Gray, putting their knees in his back, then dragging his seemingly limp body to the van as he cries out.
Batts has said Gray stood on one leg and climbed into the van on his own.
The van driver stopped three times while transporting Gray to a booking center, the first to put him in leg irons. Batts said the officer driving the van described Gray as “irate.” The search warrant application says Gray “continued to be combative in the police wagon.”
The driver made a second stop, five minutes later, and asked an officer to help check on Gray. At that stop, police have said the van driver found Gray on the floor of the van and put him back on the seat, still without restraints. Police said Gray asked for medical help at that point.
The third stop was to put the other prisoner — a 38-year-old man accused of violating a protective order — into the van. The van was then driven six blocks to the Western District station. Gray was taken from there to a hospital, where he died April 19.
The prisoner, who is in jail, could not be reached for comment. No one answered the phone at his house, and an attorney was not listed in court records.
Batts has said officers violated policy by failing to properly restrain Gray. But the president of the Baltimore police union noted that the policy mandating seat belts took effect April 3 and was e-mailed to officers as part of a package of five policy changes on April 9, three days before Gray was arrested.
Gene Ryan, the police union president, said many officers aren’t reading the new policies — updated to meet new national standards — because they think they’re the same rules they already know, with cosmetic changes. The updates are supposed to be read out during pre-shift meetings.
The previous policy was written in 1997, when the department used smaller, boxier wagons that officers called “ice cream trucks.” They originally had a metal bar that prisoners had to hold during the ride. Seat belts were added later, but the policy made their use discretionary.
Ryan said that until all facts become clear, he “urged everyone not to rush to judgment. The facts as presented will speak for themselves. I just wish everyone would take a step back and a deep breath, and let the investigation unfold.”
The search warrant application says that detectives at the time did not know where the officer’s uniform was located and that they wanted his department-issued long-sleeve shirts, pants and black boots or shoes. The document says investigators think that Gray’s DNA might be found on the officer’s clothes.
Keith L. Alexander contributed to this report.
Continue reading
Our Online Games
Play right from this page
Read the whole story
· · · · · · ·
The death of Eric Garner at the hands of the police on Staten Island has given rise to protests, marches and a federal civil rights inquiry, and brought national attention to the borough’s district attorney, Daniel M. Donovan Jr., when a grand jury declined to bring charges.
But in the special election in the 11th Congressional District in New York, where Mr. Donovan is the favorite to win on May 5, the Garner case has been reduced to a faint echo.
The election, to fill a vacant House seat representing Brooklyn and Staten Island, might have been expected to become part of the heightened national debate over race and policing: a clash, at the ballot box, over the issues that have fueled civil unrest in some parts of the country, most recently in Baltimore, where riots have erupted after another young black man died in police custody.
Instead, the campaign in New York has unfolded as a subdued affair. National Democrats, many of whom expressed dismay at the Staten Island grand jury’s decision late last year, have not rallied against Mr. Donovan, a Republican. Their national political committees are not expected to spend any substantial resources in the race.
Mr. Donovan has stuck to a practiced script on occasions when the Garner inquiry has come up, urging voters to respect the grand jury’s decision. He has answered few specific questions about the grand jury, often citing secrecy requirements.
Even the Democratic nominee, City Councilman Vincent J. Gentile, has shied away from discussing Mr. Garner’s death and his treatment by the police. During a recent televised debate, Mr. Gentile used his lone opportunity to question Mr. Donovan to press him not on the Garner case, but on the minimum wage. (Mr. Donovan seemed unable to identify the federal minimum wage as $7.25 per hour.)
Mr. Gentile said in an interview that the Garner investigation had not been a central concern in the election. Voters are primarily interested in economic issues, Mr. Gentile said; in the part of the district based in Brooklyn, the Garner case hardly comes up at all.
“You know, occasionally you get it as a question in Staten Island,” Mr. Gentile said, arguing that the secrecy of the grand jury process had left voters without adequate information: “We’re frustrated, because we can’t comment on it in any intelligible way, because we don’t know what went on.”
Mr. Gentile, a former prosecutor who described himself as a “law-and-order guy,” has been especially cautious in speaking about the Garner case. Asked whether he believed he could have delivered an indictment, had he been presenting evidence to jurors, Mr. Gentile gave a careful answer.
“It’s hard to say, because I don’t know what the police officer said. I don’t know what questions he was asked by the jury or the prosecutor. But it’s hard to get around that video,” Mr. Gentile said, adding, “That video is pretty powerful, to suggest there is enough evidence to move forward.”
There is a political logic to Mr. Gentile’s restraint: Though the Democrat resides in Brooklyn, the bulk of the district is based in conservative-leaning Staten Island, with its large population of civil servants and law enforcement veterans.
There has been little public polling on the issue, but in January, a poll taken by Quinnipiac University found that 66 percent of New Yorkers believed there was “absolutely no excuse” for how the police handled Mr. Garner. Within the smaller sample of Staten Island voters, however, a majority said the conduct of the police was “understandable.”
Mr. Donovan has collected support from police and firefighter unions, and it is unclear whether the Garner case has meaningfully dented his political standing. Robert Blizzard, a pollster for Mr. Donovan’s campaign, insisted that it had not. Voters, Mr. Blizzard said, “strongly approve of how he handled the case as district attorney.”
Republicans, mindful of Staten Island’s ideological tilt and insular political culture, have been eager to draw in Democratic leaders from outside the district, particularly ones unpopular with law enforcement. They have tied Mr. Gentile to Mayor Bill de Blasio, and Mr. Donovan’s campaign has solicited money by raising the prospect that the Rev. Al Sharpton, who helped lead citywide protests around the Garner case, might get involved in the election. (He has not.)
The Brooklyn borough president, Eric L. Adams, a leading critic of police methods in the wake of the Garner case, said Mr. Gentile was wise to avoid any appearance of exploiting the issue. Mr. Adams, a Democrat who plans to campaign for Mr. Gentile, said he had advised the councilman to focus on grand jury secrecy.
“The case has probably helped Donovan more than hurt him,” said Mr. Adams, noting that the issue tended to be particularly divisive. “Those who dislike the decision not to indict are passionate about it, but on the other side of the coin, people are passionate that the officer should not have been indicted.”
Still, some Democrats consider it a mistake to tread so lightly around the matter of the grand jury: Mr. Sharpton, who emphasized that he has not been engaged in the race, said Democrats risked depressing turnout by ducking a matter of deep concern to many in the party’s base.
Mr. Sharpton compared Mr. Donovan unfavorably to the authorities in North Charleston, S.C., where a police officer was swiftly indicted and dismissed from his job this month after shooting a fleeing, unarmed man in the course of a routine traffic stop.
“The contrast between him and a police chief in a state that still flies a Confederate flag on the Capitol is something that independent voters may be concerned about,” Mr. Sharpton said. “In a special election, you can’t go by the normal political demographics. You have to go by turnout — who energizes their base to come out.”
Mr. Gentile’s hope is that, even with the Garner issue having faded, Democrats will show up to vote on the basis of his feisty economic message. He has defended the Affordable Care Act (Republicans, Mr. Gentile said, aim to “take 16.4 million people off Obamacare, and they offer no alternative”) and announced his opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement backed by the White House but opposed by many unions.
But Mr. Gentile acknowledged that turning out voters would be a challenge, and said it would be easier to win the seat in a presidential election year, with a national candidate like Hillary Rodham Clinton driving participation. He faces another disadvantage: Mr. Donovan has raised more money, outpacing Mr. Gentile by a factor of three to one, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Though he did not complain about the lack of national Democratic support for his bid, Mr. Gentile lamented the timing of the vote. After the resignation of Representative Michael G. Grimm, who pleaded guilty to tax fraud, a court ordered Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to schedule the vote without delay, and the election date landed on May 5.
“Thank you, Mr. Governor, for making it Cinco de Mayo, right?” Mr. Gentile said, with a laugh.
In a crowd of Staten Island commuters, less than two weeks before the election, awareness of the coming election was mixed at best. A number of voters were reluctant to express their views of the Garner case; one young black woman, asked about the grand jury’s decision, made a zip-it-up gesture in front of her mouth and walked away.
Allister McLeod, an auditor who said he is a Democrat, said the most important issues to him were income inequality and education, though he disapproved of the outcome in the Garner investigation.
“I don’t think it was handled as well as it should have been,” said Mr. McLeod, who is black. “Based on the video that was taken, it was clear that the officer should have been indicted.”
Richard Vasconi, a retired police officer who is white, said he recognized that there was a level of frustration with the grand jury process. But Mr. Vasconi, a Republican who supports Mr. Donovan, said it was unfortunate that Mr. Garner struggled with the police: “If the man hadn’t fought the way he did, he wouldn’t have had a heart attack.”
Aboard the Staten Island Ferry, Lisa Kogen, who is white and a self-described liberal Democrat, said she believed the Garner case was “appalling,” but understood why Mr. Gentile had tiptoed around the issue.
“I don’t know what’s happening with the police in the United States,” said Ms. Kogen, who works at the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism, adding, of Mr. Gentile: “He knows his constituency.”
Read the whole story
· · · · · ·
Their names have become both a litany and rallying cry: Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. Eric Garner. Walter Scott. And now, Freddie Gray.
Since Mr. Brown was fatally shot in an encounter with a Ferguson, Mo., police officer in August, so many unarmed black males have died in police confrontations that even President Obama noted this week that “it comes up, it seems like, once a week now, or once every couple of weeks.” Calling such encounters “ a slow-rolling crisis, he added, “This is not new and we should not pretend it is.”
But determining how prevalent such killings are is no easy matter. The use of police force — against minorities and whites alike — is so poorly monitored that there is no precise accounting of how many citizens are killed by officers, much less their ethnicity or other crucial details.
What official data exists suggests that the number of killings by police officers has crept upward only slowly, if at all, in recent years. Since 2009, one regular if incomplete measure, the F.B.I.’s account of justifiable homicides by police officers, ranged between 397 and 426 deaths annually before jumping to 461 in 2013, the latest reporting year.
Federal experts have long acknowledged that that estimate is too low, and a handful of more recent, unofficial reports — online databases compiled and fact-checked by volunteers — place the toll much higher, at about 1,100 deaths a year, or three a day. Yet they do not suggest that the pace of police killings or the racial composition of victims as a group has changed significantly in the last two years or so.
A number of criminologists believe police homicides are near their nadir. In New York City, for example, 91 people were fatally shot by police officers in 1971 — and a record-low eight in 2013, the last year for which figures are available. In Los Angeles, officers used “categorical” force — gunfire, chokings and other violence that could lead to death — in 84 of nearly 149,000 arrests in 2012, down 17 percent in seven years.
That data suggests that any perception that higher numbers of unarmed African-Americans are being killed by the police in recent months is driven by the fact that citizens are posting unsettling cellphone videos and pictures, like that of police officers dragging Freddie Gray, his legs apparently not working, into a van.
“People are shocked by all these shootings,” said Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore police officer who is an assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at City University of New York. “But they’ve always been there.”
But it also means that lethal force by the police is a steady problem that is causing police departments across the country to debate whether they need to change procedures and training.
At the riot-scarred intersection of Pennsylvania and North Avenues in Baltimore on Tuesday, Robert Wilson, a Baltimore high-school graduate, said the frustrations that sparked civil disorder there spread well beyond those who took to the streets this week.
“What the media doesn’t understand it is that growing up in this society is poverty, it’s police brutality, it’s rat-infested houses, it’s your friends dying,” Mr. Wilson said.
For most officers, firing a gun is among the rarest events in their careers. But training and the law-enforcement culture conditions officers to regard themselves as perpetually threatened. And while many officers on high-crime patrols learn to sense and respond to danger, experts say, less experienced officers may see their training as a license to use force — not a restriction.
Some criminologists say the very nature of police work and training can inure officers to the violence they see, and make deadly force seem more reasonable in risky situations. Last October, Milwaukee’s police chief fired a 38-year-old officer who had shot and killed a mentally ill man during a fight — not because the shooting was deemed unjustified, but because he had not followed training in handling citizens with mental illness that might have avoided the fight altogether.
“So much police training, from beginning to end, deals with police facing the fact that even the most innocuous circumstance can result in an officer’s death,” said Michael Jenkins, a University of Scranton assistant professor of criminal justice. “I understand that stress in their day-to-day lives. But as a profession, they need to place that potential for harm within its proper context.”
For years, the F.B.I. report on justifiable police homicides and other federal estimates of police homicides have understated the problem. Only recently have online databases compiled by volunteers begun to produce a more accurate picture. Two of the more prominent ones, Fatal Encounters and Killed by Police, each logged about 1,100 police-related homicides in 2014. Their totals are higher when police-related deaths, such as fatalities in high-speed car chases or suicides in standoffs, are included.
Because the records of killings are drawn mostly from news media reports, some crucial details, including the race of officers and suspects, often are missing.
Yet even those spotty numbers shed new light on the nature of police killings.
Fatal Encounters, maintained by D. Brian Burghart, the publisher of The Reno News and Review, may be the most meticulous aggregator of reports of killings by police. The data, covering killings from 2013 to the present, reinforces federal statistics in one broad respect: In police homicides in which the victim’s race is identified, African-Americans account for about three in 10 deaths, and whites roughly half.
“Blacks are three times as likely to be killed by cops as are whites, on a per-capita basis,” said Dr. Moskos of John Jay. But part of that is because of crime in predominantly black neighborhoods.
“Blacks are four or five times as likely to be victims of homicides, and they are five times as likely to feloniously kill a cop,” he said.
Crowdsourced data goes well beyond federal statistics — and offers intriguing results.
Relying on data gathered by Fatal Encounters, The New York Times ranked states by their rates of police-involved homicides per 100,000 residents. The result: among the lowest were populous states like New Jersey, Michigan, Massachusetts and New York whose big cities — rightly or wrongly — are often seen as crime-prone. And some of the states with the highest rates — up to six times greater, in fact — were less populous and generally western states like Oklahoma, Montana and New Mexico.
Why? Medical care could be one reason; shooting victims in rural areas may be far from a trauma center and cannot get care, Dr. Jenkins said. But sociological factors also could be at work. “We know the south and southwest are generally the most violent areas, per capita, compared to the rest of the country,” he said.
Even within individual states, some police departments have a record of killing suspects at rates far higher than others. On both government and crowdsourced databases, some big cities like Phoenix and smaller ones like Albuquerque and Oklahoma City stand out for the unusual number of police killings reported relative to their size.
Nor are homicide victims cut from one cloth. In the 18 months ending last December, at least 18 percent of police killings documented in the Fatal Encounters data involved victims who were mentally ill, and another 7 percent involved drugs or alcohol. Mr. Burghart and some experts said the true share probably was higher.
That fact is important, they said, because it suggests that police homicides could be reduced if officers were better trained to recognize and deal with mental instability — or, for that matter, any of the circumstances that end in needless deaths.
“Too much of police investigations into killings revolves around the immediate circumstances,” Dr. Jenkins said. “We need to step back and ask what got us to that place. What got the person who is now deceased into the position where he acted the way he did? And those questions are not being asked.”
Read the whole story
· · · · ·
BALTIMORE — Completing their initial investigation into the fatal injury sustained by a young man in their custody, the Baltimore police on Thursday gave state prosecutors their findings, including the discovery that a police van carrying the man made a previously undisclosed stop en route to a police station.
The new stop turned up on video taken from “a privately owned camera,” the deputy police commissioner, Kevin Davis, said, and it was “previously unknown to us.” That suggested that the officers involved had not told investigators about it.
The transition Thursday opens a new phase in the case, and shifts the focus to the city’s new, relatively untested state’s attorney, Marilyn J. Mosby. Her office, which acknowledged receiving the findings, will decide whether it has justification and enough evidence to prosecute any of the officers involved; if so, it will present its case to a grand jury and ask for an indictment. If any criminal charges are brought, they could still be months away.
The disclosure of the additional stop by the van was the one new piece of information about what happened on April 12, the day Freddie Gray was injured in police custody, that Mr. Davis and Commissioner Anthony W. Batts revealed at a brief news conference on Thursday. They took no questions and offered no details to help gauge the disclosure’s importance.
“The family and the community and the public deserve transparency and truth,” Mr. Batts said.
Officials had warned the public not to expect that the conclusion of the police inquiry would mean major new revelations about the death of Mr. Gray, who was black — much less a decision on whether to bring criminal charges against any police officers.
“I understand the frustration, I understand the sense of urgency,” the commissioner said. “Getting to the right answer is more important than the speed.”
The case has been a tough test for Baltimore’s political and law enforcement leaders, with demonstrators clamoring for someone to be punished, videos of Mr. Gray’s handling that appear inconclusive, and a history of hostility between the police and residents of this majority-black city. But in contrast to many other cities that have experienced similar tensions, Baltimore’s leaders — including Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Mr. Batts, and Ms. Mosby — are also black, giving a somewhat different tenor to clashes between the power structure and its critics.
Ms. Mosby, just 35, took office less than four months ago, and now finds herself in a national spotlight. She defeated an incumbent last year by vowing to be tougher on violent criminals, while also saying she would be more aggressive in taking on police misconduct. On Thursday she released a statement pleading for patience and asking the public to "trust the process of the justice system.” Ms. Mosby played down the significance of the police handoff.
“The results of their investigation is not new to us,” she said. “We have been briefed regularly throughout their process while simultaneously conducting our own independent investigation into the death of Freddie Gray.”
As for the Police Department, Mr. Batts said: “This does not mean that the investigation is over. If new evidence is found, we will follow it. If new direction is given by the state’s attorney, we will obey it.”
Police commanders said more than 30 detectives, operating on an unusually swift timetable, had been working on the investigation. That included reviewing every available video that might show anything about what happened to Mr. Gray the day he was arrested, from closed-circuit security camera images to cellphone video, Mr. Davis said. He died of his injuries a week later.
Officers riding bicycles arrested Mr. Gray in the 1700 block of Presbury Street, in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of northwest Baltimore. They charged him with illegal possession of a switchblade knife, and called a van to take him to the Western District police station.
At some point, Mr. Gray suffered a severe neck injury, which caused his death. Among the crucial unanswered questions are how he was hurt, whether it was before or during the van ride, and whether the ride exacerbated an earlier injury. The police have acknowledged that he was not wearing a seatbelt, contrary to department policy, and that he should have received medical attention sooner.
Officials had previously said that the van had made three stops before reaching the station, including one to put leg restraints on Mr. Gray, who was described as being unruly, and one to pick up another prisoner.
But Mr. Davis said there was another stop, at Fremont Avenue and Mosher Street, less than a mile southeast of where he was arrested.
The announcement that the preliminary investigation was over came after a second night of relative calm on the streets of Baltimore, even as demonstrations against police practices generated scores of arrests across the United States.
With the police and the National Guard out in large numbers, and community leaders urging residents to go home, the streets emptied as Wednesday evening wore on and a second night passed without the violent protests that gripped Baltimore early in the week.
The 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew was imposed after peaceful demonstrations gave way to arson, looting and rioting following Mr. Gray’s funeral on Monday.
Wednesday brought protests across the country that led to arrests, including at least 11 in Denver and more than 100 in New York. There were also large demonstrations in a handful of other cities, including Boston, Minneapolis and Washington, but the authorities said they remained peaceful.
In New York, the police said that most arrests were for disorderly conduct. Officers began making arrests after a rally, which started in Union Square, spilled into the streets and disrupted traffic.
Before Wednesday night’s curfew took effect in Baltimore, a small group of people gathered at the intersection that was the scene of some of the most prolific violence and looting on Monday. A fistfight broke out in the area, fueling a sense of tension in the minutes before the citywide shutdown was scheduled to begin.
But the crowd at the intersection, of North and Pennsylvania Avenues — much smaller than the one at the same location the previous night — dispersed shortly after 10 p.m. on Wednesday.
Read the whole story
· · · ·
Russia's Media Offensive Seen by the West as Real Threatby By Ivan Nechepurenko
Western governments and institutions are scrambling to devise a commensurate response to Russia's state-run media offensive, analysts told The Moscow Times on Wednesday.
- Get link
- X
- Other Apps
Comments
Post a Comment