Some educators of color resist push for police-free schools

DENVER (AP) — School districts nationwide are working to remove police officers from campuses, but some Black and Indigenous educational leaders are resisting the push prompted by the national reckoning over racial injustice and police brutality.

Some say the system is hamstrung by a complicated mix of police response policies and a lack of support for alternative programs, which plays a role in students of color being disproportionately punished and arrested — the so-called school-to-prison pipeline. Some support individual officers skilled at working with students. Others say they need to learn more as activists urge change.

Cities from Portland, Oregon, to Denver to Madison, Wisconsin, have taken steps to remove police from schools following George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police. But some school leaders like Stacy Parrish, principal of Northeast Early College in Denver, said school resource officers are being unfairly blamed for students of color ending up in the criminal justice system.

Parrish, a member of the Klamath Tribes, said she supports the movement to combat overpolicing but believes it’s irresponsible to eliminate school resource officers and replace them with counselors and social workers without changing the overall approach to discipline.

“Generalizations and romanticizations aren’t getting us anywhere when our democracy needs our public schools more than ever,” Parrish said.

The problem lies in the tangle of state laws and school policies that mandate when police respond — such as a student suspected of selling drugs — and a lack of money for alternative ways of helping troubled students, she said. School policy in Denver requires overworked counselors to take students to court if they repeatedly miss class, while drug treatment programs are underfunded but a better solution for students who bring drugs to school, Parrish said.

Some school officials have rejected activists’ demands to cancel police contracts. Chicago’s school board left the decision to local councils mostly comprised of parents.

Kenwood Academy, a predominantly Black public school near the University of Chicago, has two officers who focus on protecting students from problems like shootings or domestic disputes between parents on campus, principal Karen Calloway said.

She said one officer stopped dismissal after learning of a nearby shooting last year, and many parents thanked her for the swift action.

“That, to me, was worth the money that we spend on school resource officers alone,” Calloway said.

The officers, whom the local council voted this month to keep, can’t discipline students, she said.

In San Francisco, the school board voted in June not to renew its agreement with police before getting a recommendation from its African American Parent Advisory Council. In a letter to the board, the group said it was divided: Some saw school resource officers as the only positive relationship between police and schools.

“Members of our Leadership Team have been extremely vocal at previous Board of Education meetings, asking that an opportunity be created to ​widely ​hear the voices of the Black community,” the letter said. “To our knowledge, that has not been done.”

The council is planning a town hall to discuss police in schools but said a more pressing concern could be how teachers and staffers can get police involved in disciplinary issues that are supposed to be off limits to police and disproportionately push Black students out of school. It noted that 35% of students suspended in the 2017-2018 school year were Black, though they only make up 6% of the population in the San Francisco Unified School District.

The district didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Latoya Pitcher, who’s on the Black parents council, said she’s hopeful those supporting equity won’t implement knee-jerk solutions to address the embarrassment that comes with exposing systemic racism.

“I am grateful that SFUSD today has a progressive board that fights against all ‘-isms,’” she said.

In Denver, Kevin Wilson, who oversees student discipline at the Collegiate Prep Academy, a mostly Black and Latino school, said he supports the police reform movement. Wilson, who is Black, had difficulties with police growing up in the neighborhood where he now works, but he thinks school officers have unfairly become “collateral damage” in the movement.

Because his school has no officer, he said he’ll sometimes ask a Black and bilingual officer from a nearby school to meet with particularly recalcitrant students. The officer often will work with the student instead of writing a ticket, Wilson said.

“That is what our community needs,” he said.

Denver Public Schools board member Tay Anderson, who pushed to end the contract with police, said he would like school resource officers to remain a specialized unit within the Police Department but only go to schools when called.

Creating a new security plan will involve looking at changes to the discipline policy, Anderson said. And the district’s roughly 1,500 employees are getting implicit bias training to try to prevent students of color from being disciplined more harshly.

Another district in the Denver area has kept its officers but also has more funding for mental health support, which can help prevent students from getting in trouble with the law.

Aurora Public Schools gets about $10 million a year for mental health staffers and programs from a voter-approved tax. The district has worked out an agreement with Aurora police, who are under scrutiny for last year’s death of Black 23-year-old Elijah McClain, to delineate which issues fall to police and which to educators. The number of students referred to police since 2011 has declined by 62%, including the proportion of Black students.

School board president Kyla Armstrong-Romero, who also oversees Colorado’s juvenile detention facilities, believes trained school resource officers can help keep children out of the criminal justice system. However, districts also need to hire diverse teachers and train staffers to try to understand students from different backgrounds, she said.

Armstrong-Romero said she was involved in the juvenile system as a Black student who bounced between 14 schools, and she credits educators with helping her.

“I think it’s important that we capitalize on the roles that all those people play,” she said.

Former Denver student Tiera Brown, 28, who supported the schools’ decision to phase out officers, wonders if there would be more fellow Black students in her University of Denver law class if they had been treated with more understanding as teens.

She was ticketed by police at school at 13 when she stood by a friend who fought with a bully. Despite having good grades and winning academic awards, she said she received in-school suspensions for things like talking back to her teachers and was sent to a room that was like the school jail.

“For a lot of people who don’t have hope to begin with, what is it going to do them? I think it just adds to the hopelessness,” she said.

Biden questions whether coronavirus vaccine will be 'real,' despite experts' assurances

Joe Biden is preemptively doubting whether a coronavirus vaccine will be "real," and has cast doubt on whether the vaccine would be distributed with "any degree of equity and realization" -- seemingly contradicting public health experts even as the White House touts vaccine progress.
The Trump campaign has called out Biden's remarks as "irresponsible," pointing to statements by top National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials promising an effective vaccine.
“How are you going to distribute the vaccine when it arrives, when it arrives, when it’s there?" Biden asked Tuesday. "And the question of whether it’s real, when it’s there, that requires enormous transparency. You got to make all of it available to other experts across the nation, so they can look and see. So there’s consensus, this is a safe vaccine.
"Because already you have, what percent is American people saying if the vaccine were there tomorrow, they wouldn’t take it? And it’s not the usual anti-vaccine crowd. It’s beyond that because people are losing faith in what the president says. Think about it."
Meanwhile, the chief adviser of Operation Warp Speed, the government's vaccine program, said this week in an interview with CNN that he expects efficacy rates "in the 90 percent" range.
"I think it will be a very effective vaccine. That's my prediction," the scientist, Moncef Slaoui, told reporters. "My personal opinion based on my experience and the biology of this virus, I think this vaccine is going to be highly efficacious."
Slaoui predicted that "ideally" all Americans would have access to the vaccine by mid-2021.
Biden's rhetoric comes as his campaign has been stepping up his attacks on the Trump administration's coronavirus testing management. The former vice president has said that the coronavirus crisis in Arizona, for example, is the "direct result of Donald Trump's failure to lead and his desire to 'slow the testing down,' and Americans are suffering the consequences."
Biden specifically called for the White House to "immediately resume operating federally managed community-based testing around the country and establish multiple sites in Arizona." And, in recent weeks, Biden has demanded that Trump "speed up the testing" nationwide, saying Trump has been "putting politics ahead of the safety and economic well-being of the American people."
However, during the 2009 swine flu pandemic, the Obama administration suddenly told states to shut down their testing, without providing much in the way of explanation. And, Biden's top adviser at the time has acknowledged that the Obama administration didn't do "anything right" to combat that pandemic, before walking back those comments.

AOC’s ‘Twitch’ amendment, to limit US military ads, fails: reports

Idiot

In a 292-126 vote Thursday night, the U.S. House rejected an amendment by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., that would have placed limits on U.S. military recruitment ads, according to a report.
The more than 2-to-1 defeat of the Democrat’s plan means the military may continue posting recruitment ads on Twitch, a streaming platform popular with online gamers.
Earlier Thursday on Twitter, Ocasio-Cortez made an appeal to convince lawmakers to back her proposal.
“War is not a game,” she wrote. “Twitch is a popular platform for children FAR under the age of military recruitment rules. We should not conflate military service with ‘shoot-em-up’ style games and contests.
“The Marines pulled out of Twitch for a reason,” she added. It’s time to follow their lead.”
The Army, Navy, Air Force and National Guard all participate in sponsorships and partnerships in the world of so-called “e-sports,” The ESports Observer reported.
But the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard do not. In May, Military.com cited a 2019 Marine Corps recruiting document that was submitted to the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services.
“The national marketing brand strategy does not include future plans to establish eSports teams or create branded games,” the Marine Corps wrote. “This is due in part to the belief that the brand and issues associated with combat are too serious to be ‘gamified’ in a responsible manner.”
The same report noted, however, that in January the Marines launched an Academic Excellence Program in association with Esports Stadium in Arlington, Texas, that offers free game time to high-achieving high school and college students.
Marine Corps recruiters have also attended esports tournaments – signaling at least some contact with an activity that attracts 72 percent of men and 49 percent of women between ages 18 and 29, Military.com reported.
After Thursday’s vote, Ocasio-Cortez returned to Twitter to put a positive spin on the outcome.
“The good news: a majority of the Dem party supported this amendment,” she wrote. “That’s really a solid start for this being the first time this issue has been brought before Congress.”
Thirteen House members did not vote on the amendment, The ESports Observer reported.

Trump defends tweet on possible Election Day delay at contentious press conference

Claiming at Thursday's White House briefing that the 2020 elections could be "fixed" and "rigged," President Trump again highlighted the risks of nationwide, universal mail-in balloting in stark terms -- including by citing news articles and experts who have raised similar concerns.
Before taking questions, Trump honored former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, noting that "unfortunately, he passed away from a thing called the China virus." Trump also hit Democrats' plans to keep schools and businesses closed, saying they would cause "probably more death" and economic destruction than coronavirus itself.
Within seconds, Trump was pressed on his tweet earlier in the day that suggested the election could be delayed due to mail-in ballot fraud. He responded that delays in mail-in ballot results, including lost ballots, could mean the election winner isn't clear for weeks or even months after Election Day.
"You're sending out hundreds of millions of universal mail-in ballots. Hundreds of millions. Where are they going? Who are they being sent to? It's common sense," Trump said. "I want an election, and a result, much more than you. I think we're doing very well. ... I don't want to see a rigged election."
The president held up a Wall Street Journal article entitled "New York's Mail-Vote Disaster," as well as a CBS News article entitled "Vote-by-mail experiment reveals potential problems within postal voting system ahead of November election." He cited a similar piece in The Washington Post.
The press conference followed a backlash against Trump's comments from both sides of the aisle on Thursday, with Democrats railing against the suggestion and some Republicans saying they opposed it. The Senate's top Republican, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, flatly told a Kentucky news station the election would not be moving.
Earlier this month, a Fox News review found a slew of issues with mail-in ballots in recent elections. A dramatic local news report this week, tweeted out by the president on Thursday, highlighted missing ballots in a test of the United States Postal Service's ability to handle mail-in ballots.
"We all agree that absentee voting is good," Trump said, referring to votes by mail where citizens provide a justification for sending in a ballot remotely. He then hit Democrats for voicing concerns about Russian election interference, only to ignore the risks posed by mail-in voting.
"Mail-in voting will lead to the greatest fraud," he added. "Stupid people may not know it."
The brouhaha began when Trump tweeted at 8:46 a.m. ET: “With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”
Hours later, Trump appeared to suggest he was trying to raise awareness, not seriously suggest he would try to delay the election. “Glad I was able to get the very dishonest LameStream Media to finally start talking about the RISKS to our Democracy from dangerous Universal Mail-In-Voting (not Absentee Voting, which I totally support!)," he wrote.
Several experts have long called mail-in balloting an invitation to widespread fraud.
"Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud," read the conclusion of a bipartisan 2005 report authored by the Commission on Federal Election Reform, which was chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker.
And a 2012 article in The New York Times was headlined, "Error and Fraud at Issue as Absentee Voting Rises." The article states that "votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show."
Twitter has previously slapped a warning label on Trump's tweets about mail-in ballots. Fox News has reported that Twitter's "Head of Site Integrity" Yoel Roth is in charge of fact-checking efforts – and that he has previously referred to Trump and his team as "ACTUAL NAZIS," mocked Trump supporters by saying that "we fly over those states that voted for a racist tangerine for a reason," and called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., a "personality-free bag of farts."

Seattle Cartoons 2020

Seattle residents slam ‘Defund the police’ as ‘radical experiment’ during city budget meeting

Hundreds of Seattle residents spoke up about proposals to “Defund the police” during a city council budget meeting on Wednesday, according to reports.
The council is considering a plan that could slash the budget of the city’s police department by 50 percent – resulting in layoffs for hundreds of officers – all as Seattle deals with the coronavirus outbreak and frequent riots and other unrest since the May 25 death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis.
While the “Defund the police” effort was initially popular in the city, opponents of the plan have been growing more vocal, Q13 FOX of Seattle reported.
“Defunding the police is a radical experiment that will hurt the vulnerable,” one member of the public, calling in to the phone-in meeting, told the council, according to Q13 FOX.

“Defunding the police is a radical experiment that will hurt the vulnerable.”
— Caller to Seattle City Council budget meeting

In addition, the Seattle Police Officers Guild, the union representing police, said it has collected more than 20,000 signatures on a “Stop Defunding” petition, the station reported.
But proponents of the “Defund the police” plan say it would be part of an effort to repair race relations in the city following years of excessive force against minorities and other claims of mistreatment.
“Nothing less than defunding will begin to heal the violence committed by police against Seattle’s Black, Brown and Indigenous communities,” said another of the estimated 300 people who signed up to address the council in a process that took about three hours, Q13 FOX reported.
Seattle has been an epicenter of the rioting that has been seen in many cities across the U.S. The unrest there has included the infamous “CHOP” (Capitol Hill Organized Protest) zone, in which protesters took over about six blocks of the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, looking to establish a “police-free” area – until the city ultimately regained control, but not before at least two fatal shootings took place.
The city – along with Portland, Ore., Chicago, and other locations – has taken criticism from President Trump and other Republicans, who have portrayed Democratic leaders in the cities as enablers of the rioting and destruction rather than law enforcers who are dedicated to maintaining public safety.
Earlier Wednesday, Seattle police union leader Michael Solan told Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” lashed out against Mayor Jenny Durkan, who had claimed on CNN on Monday that President Trump was using federal agents in Seattle and other cities “as a political tool” in what she described as a “dry run for martial law.”
Solan countered: Solan said: “Clearly what the dry run for Seattle was, the [CHOP] experience where multiple people were shot and killed."
Currently, a veto-proof majority on the city council supports the cuts to the police department – despite polls showing that public support is split, Q13 FOX reported.
Council members have been revising the current year’s budget to account for the coronavirus outbreak. On Friday they are scheduled to begin debating the plans for police-related cuts, with a vote on a revised city budget for the remainder of the year set to take place Aug. 10, the station reported.
Fox News' Talia Kaplan contributed to this story.

Trump, family of slain Fort Hood soldier Vanessa Guillen to meet over sex-misconduct bill

The family of slain Fort Hood soldier Vanessa Guillen were scheduled to meet with President Trump at the White House on Thursday to discuss the new “#IAmVanessaGuillen” bill, a proposal aimed to help victims of sexual harassment.
“I don’t know a person in the world that doesn’t think that this is the greatest thing on Earth,” the family’s attorney and author of the bill, Natalie Khawam, said, according to FOX 26 Houston. “Everybody thinks it’s time.”
The bill would allow service members claiming sexual harassment to avoid going through their chain of command and instead report mistreatment claims to a toll-free 800 number.
Guillen, 20, went missing in April after she was allegedly bludgeoned to death by fellow enlisted soldier Aaron Robinson, 20 with the help of his girlfriend, Cecily Aguilar, 22, investigators have said.
After a months-long search, Guillen's remains were found near Fort Hood on June 30. Robinson later killed himself as investigators closed in on him, authorities said. Aguilar has been charged with allegedly helping Robinson dispose of Guillen’s body.
Guillen’s family said she told them she was being sexually harassed on the base but never filed a report. The Army has not confirmed the claims.
“(Vanessa) felt so unsafe that going to them [her chain of command] to make any kind of report that she shared with her family and her friends, any kind of report, she knew that she may receive harassment or retaliation,” Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, said last week, according to Houston's KPRC-TV. “We know that Vanessa’s story is not new, and it is time to put a stop to this. This can never happen again.”
Guillen’s family will march from Capitol Hill to the White House on Thursday morning to present the bill, which the president is expected to support, FOX 26 reported.
The Army is investigating Fort Hood’s sexual harassment program, according to Stars & Stripes.

Volunteer arrested in fire at Arizona Democratic headquarters

Authorities on Wednesday announced an arrest in an arson fire that destroyed much of the Arizona and Maricopa County Democratic Party headquarters.

Phoenix police said 29-year-old Matthew Egler was booked on one count of arson of an occupied structure.
In charging documents obtained by KPNX-TV in Phoenix, police said Egler has been a volunteer for the Maricopa County Democratic Party but was banned for behavioral reasons. Investigators say the fire was retaliation after being recently rejected as a volunteer again.
“We are deeply saddened and shocked by today’s news, but appreciate the swift action by law enforcement to ensure that the suspect is in custody," state and county Democratic leaders said in a statement.
A message left at a cellphone number listed for Egler's family was not immediately returned. It was not immediately known if he had an attorney to speak on his behalf.
Police in the charging documents also mention that Egler discussed starting the fire and his “discontentment” with county Democratic officials in a Twitter account.

FILE - A booking photo provided by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Phoenix shows Matthew Egler.  (Maricopa County Sheriff's Office via AP)

A Twitter account with the handle “Valley Leader” shows several videos of a man who matches a mugshot of Egler released by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office talking about carrying out the fire. The man also claims to be married to Ivanka Trump.

The blaze occurred early Friday in a business district a few miles north of downtown Phoenix. Investigators said evidence indicated it was an act of arson.
The building is the longtime home of both the state and county Democrats. The northern portion of the building, which houses the operations for Maricopa County Democrats, was a total loss, said Steven Slugocki, the county chair. Damage was less extensive in the state party’s portion of the building, he said.
The fire destroyed computers, tablets, phone-banking equipment, campaign literature and years of candidate and organizing information, Slugocki said. It also burned political memorabilia accumulated over decades, including campaign materials for John F. Kennedy, he said.
Arizona Republican Party leaders also condemned the fire.

Wolf vows federal agents won't leave Portland until courthouse at center of rioting is 'safe and secure'

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf told "Bill Hemmer Reports" Wednesday that federal agents will not leave the city of Portland, Ore. until a federal courthouse that has been repeatedly attacked by rioters is "safe and secure."
"We will continue to keep law enforcement officers in the area to make sure that that courthouse is secure at the end of the day," Wolf told host Bill Hemmer.
Earlier Wednesday, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown announced that federal agents would begin a "phased withdrawal" from Portland Thursday. Wolf said that he and the governor had agreed on a plan to end "the violent activity in Portland directed at federal properties and law enforcement officers" that called for "the robust presence of Oregon State Police in downtown Portland."
"Over time," Wolf told Hemmer, "if the Oregon State Police and the plan that has been put in place is successful, and we can responsibly draw down law enforcement assets there, then we will."
Portland has seen 62 consecutive nights of protests and demonstrations stemming from the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. Brown and Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler have repeatedly described the federal presence in terms of an "occupying force" and accused the Department of Homeland Security of an "illegal occupation" that has incited more violence in the city.
"What we know is that the violence in Portland, specifically, was there well before DHS or law enforcement officials arrived in Portland," Wolf responded. "The mayor, by his own words, declared that the city was under violence for more than a month before we got there, so this idea that we have somehow incited violence, the idea that enforcing federal law incites violence, is absolutely backward and I don't understand that."
The acting secretary added that he has only ever asked for "state or local law enforcement to step up and help us police around there [the courthouse] and to hold individuals accountable.
"So, Governor Brown has decided to step up. We see a sizable force of Oregon State Police that will be deployed to the area, and we will see if the plan that they have put in place will help quell the violence that we have seen around that federal courthouse in Portland, and we are going to take a cautious view of that."
The Oregon State Police told Fox News Thursday that special operation teams and uniformed troopers would assist city police and federal agents in the hope of instilling "an atmosphere that affords the removal of the protective fence and restore a semblance of normalcy, while meeting community expectations and our obligations to protect the federal property."
"I understand what his plan is," Wolf said of Oregon State Police Superintendent Travis Hampton. "They would have to successfully implement that plan [for the federal agents to leave]. I think they have to understand the criminal nature that they are up against every day. We will partner with them to do that. Again, we will protect federal property. That is our responsibility. I will continue to be our responsibility."

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