July 31, 2016


News and Views


http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/muslims-go-catholic-mass-across-france-italy-show-solidarity-n620521

Muslims Go to Catholic Mass Across France, Italy to Show Solidarity
by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEWS JUL 31 2016, 1:27 PM ET

Image: Muslim call to go to Sunday Mass, Members of the congregation in Santa Maria Trastevere church in Rome, Italy, 31 July 2016, during a multi faith service organized by Italy's Islamic Religious Community. MASSIMO PERCOSSI / EPA
Image: TOPSHOT-FRANCE-ATTACK-CHURCH-RELIGION, A catholic monk discusses with a muslim worshipper in front of the Saint-Pierre-de-lAriane church, prior a mass on July 31, 2016, in Nice, southeastern France. JEAN CHRISTOPHE MAGNENET / AFP - Getty Images
Related: Priest Killed in ISIS-Linked Hostage Drama at French Church
Image: FRANCE-ATTACK-CHURCH-RELIGION, A catholic monk welcomes muslim worshippers in the Saint-Pierre-de-lAriane church, prior to a mass on July 31, 2016, in Nice, southeastern France. JEAN CHRISTOPHE MAGNENET / AFP - Getty Images
Related: French Church Attack: How Should Known Jihadis Be Tracked?
Play -- Pope Francis: Pope Francis: 'World Is at War' 1:06


ROUEN, France — In a gesture of solidarity following the gruesome killing of a French priest, Muslims on Sunday attended Catholic Mass in churches and cathedrals across France and Italy.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene said that a few dozen Muslims gathered at the towering Gothic cathedral in Rouen, near Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray where the 85-year-old Rev. Jacques Hamel had his throat slit by two teenage Muslim fanatics on Tuesday.

"We are very moved by the presence of our Muslim friends and I believe it is a courageous act that they did by coming to us," said Dominique Lebrun, the archbishop of Rouen, after the service.

Some of the Muslims sat in the front row, across from the altar. Among the parishioners was one of the nuns who was briefly taken hostage at Hamel's church after the priest was killed. She joined her fellow Catholics in turning to shake hands or embrace the Muslim churchgoers after the service.

Outside the church, a group of Muslims were applauded when they unfurled a banner: "Love for all. Hate for none."

Churchgoer Jacqueline Prevot said that the attendance of Muslims was "a magnificent gesture."

"Look at this whole Muslim community that attended Mass," she said. "I find this very heartwarming; I am confident. I say to myself that this assassination won't be lost, that it will maybe relaunch us better than politics can do; maybe we will react in a better way."

Many of the Muslims who attended the service in Rouen — including those with the banner — were Ahmadiyya Muslims, a minority sect which differs from mainstream Islam in that it doesn't regard Muhammad as the final prophet.

Similar interfaith gatherings were repeated elsewhere in France, as well as in neighboring Italy.

At Paris' iconic Notre Dame cathedral, Dalil Boubakeur, the rector of the Mosque of Paris, said repeatedly that Muslims want to live in peace.

"The situation is serious," Boubakeur told BFMTV. "Time has come to come together so as not to be divided."

In Italy, the secretary general of the country's Islamic Confederation, Abdullah Cozzolino, spoke from the altar in the Treasure of St. Gennaro chapel next to Naples' Duomo cathedral. Three imams also attended Mass at the St. Maria Church in Rome's Trastevere neighborhood, donning their traditional dress as they entered the sanctuary and sat down in the front row.

Mohammed ben Mohammed, a member of the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy, said that he called on faithful in his sermon Friday "to report anyone who may be intent to damage society. I am sure that there are those among the faithful who are ready to speak up."

Ahmed El Balzai, the imam of the Vobarno mosque in the Lombard province of Brescia, said he did not fear repercussions for speaking out.

"I am not afraid. ... These people are tainting our religion and it is terrible to know that many people consider all Muslim terrorists. That is not the case," El Balazi said. "Religion is one thing. Another is the behavior of Muslims who don't represent us."

Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni thanked Italian Muslims for their participation, saying they "are showing their communities the way of courage against fundamentalism."

Like in France, Italy is increasing its supervision of mosques. Interior Minister Angelino Alfano told the Senate this week that authorities were scrutinizing mosque financing and working with the Islamic community to ensure that imams study in Italy, preach in Italian and are aware of Italy's legal structure.

Meanwhile the Paris prosecutor's office said it has requested that a cousin of one of the two 19-year-olds who slit the priest's throat should be charged with participating in "a terrorist association with the aim of harming others."

In a statement it said it appeared 30-year-old Frenchman Farid K. "knew very well, if not of the exact place or time, of his cousin's impending plans for violence."

The office added that a Syrian refugee detained in the wake of the attack was released Saturday.



http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/french-church-attack-how-should-known-jihadis-be-tracked-n617866

French Church Attack: How Should Known Jihadis Be Tracked?
by ALASTAIR JAMIESON and MICHELE NEUBERT
JUL 30 2016, 5:07 AM ET

Video -- FROM JULY 27: Pope Francis: 'World Is at War' 1:06
Video -- Spit and Garbage Left at Site of Truck Attacker's Death 0:33
Video - FROM JULY 27: FROM JULY 27: Pope Francis: 'World Is at War' 1:06
Image: A police officer in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, France, A police officer secures a position in front of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray City Hall on Tuesday. Pascal Rossignol / Reuters
Video -- FROM JULY 26: Watch Masked Police Arrest Suspect in France Terror Attack 0:36
Play -- FROM JULY 26: Priest Killed by ISIS-Linked Militants During Mass at French Church 2:07
Image: Adel Kermiche and Abdel-Malik Nabil Petitjean, still from a video released by the ISIS-affiliated Amaq News Agency shows Adel Kermiche (left) and Abdel-Malik Nabil Petitjean (right). HANDOUT / Reuters
Play -- FROM JULY 26: Watch Masked Police Arrest Suspect in France Terror Attack 0:36



LONDON — France is facing questions over its monitoring of extremists after both of the attackers who slit the throat of an elderly priest were known to authorities - including a teen who twice tried to wage jihad in Syria.

Adel Kermiche, 19, was intercepted and arrested as he traveled to fight alongside ISIS using family members' identity documents two times last year.

He was put under house arrest in his hometown of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray near Rouen, Normandy, with an electronic surveillance ankle bracelet after a judge freed him, terror prosecutor Francois Molins said.

However, the bracelet was deactivated for a few hours every morning as part of the surveillance agreement, giving Kermiche the chance to murder 85-year-old Rev. Jacques Hamel during Tuesday's morning Mass.

Kermiche and his accomplice, later identified as 19-year-old Abdel-Malik Nabil Petitjean, held five people hostage — Hamel, two nuns and an elderly couple — in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray before slashing the priest's throat and seriously wounding the other man. Police fatally shot both attackers as they left the church.

Kermiche was one of 1,100 French citizens or residents who want to travel to the Middle East to fight alongside ISIS or who have already been and come back, according to government estimates. Security services had opened a special file on Petitjean on June 29 amid suspicions he had been radicalized, a police source told Reuters.

The ISIS-linked attack piles pressure on intelligence services and legal procedures in a country still under a state of emergency that began after November's coordinated attacks in Paris that left 130 dead.

"We may have had the possibility to check on this guy. If he was released without any treatment or any evaluation of his dangerousness to society, there was a failure — period," center-right French senator Nathalie Goulet told the BBC.

She added: "You cannot predict everything but … if the guy was effectively in jail for radicalization and released … without any treatment, this thing becomes predictable."

Kermiche first tried to travel to Syria in March 2015 but was arrested in Germany. Upon his return to France he was placed under surveillance and barred from leaving the Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray area. Less than two months later, he slipped away and was intercepted in Turkey making his way towards Syria again.

Although he was wearing an ankle bracelet on his release from prison in March, a neighbor and school acquaintance remembered him as a normal teenager who became obsessed with hardline interpretations of the Quran after the deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in January 2015.

"He tried to indoctrinate us," said the 18-year-old, who gave his name to reporters only as Redwan. "He was saying that we should go [to Syria] and fight for our brothers.

Kermiche told his people around him that France was "the land of unbelievers … that we should not live here," Redwan said.

France's security services, already stretched after eight months under a state of emergency, have strained ever further since an attack in the southern city of Nice on July 14 that killed 84 people.

Kermiche was one of 112 people in France released into the community under some kind of court-imposed supervision relating to terrorism offences, according to Le Figaro newspaper.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said in March that 609 French nationals or residents were currently fighting in Syria or Iraq, including 283 women and 18 minors. Almost 170 others have been killed, and some 300 more have returned and are living in their communities, he said.

"Almost 800 would today like to go to these wars zones, according to intelligence services," Valls said, adding that about 1,000 people in France were being monitored by authorities. "Each day [we] ... trace networks, locate cells, arrest individuals," he said.

France is not alone in having to confront a extremist threat at home. Governments across Europe have been tightening anti-terrorism laws as the Syrian conflict enters its sixth year, agreeing to share more intelligence and taking down radical websites to try to stop their citizens from going to fight in the Middle East and bringing militancy home.

Britain's most senior police officer told NBC News that the sheer number of individuals being monitored means cases have to be prioritized.

Bernard Hogan-Howe, commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police, said: "No doubt, it's hard. It's a really difficult decision."

He added: "We have got many people who we are worried about ... either involved in or supporting terrorism so all the time we are trying to assess: 'Are they thinking about it? Are they getting together equipment to do something about it? Are they working with other people to conspire to organize it?'"

"It's a real challenge to get enough intelligence because we cannot follow everybody all the time so we have to make rational choices," Hogan-Howe add.

Jimmy Deliste, general secretary of France's biggest prison workers' union, said that it was impossible to track the movements of all individuals wearing court-ordered ankle bracelets.

"It's not like the U.S. where, in case of non-compliance, an armed [officer] arrives at the person's home," he told Le Figaro. "Beyond the [jail] walls, individuals are not controlled. We are in a trust agreement. Can we trust a man who tried to reach [ISIS] in Syria? I think the answer is in the question."

"WE'VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT THE DANGER OF THE GLOBAL JIHADIST INSURGENCY. THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE."

Even when an electronic bracelet triggers a warning, probation officers are overwhelmed by the number of alerts, he said.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is expected to enter a conservative primary for next year's presidential election, accused the country's socialist government of being soft.

"We must be merciless," Sarkozy said in a statement to reporters. "The legal quibbling, precautions and pretexts for insufficient action are not acceptable."

France's center-right opposition wants all Islamist suspects to be either held in detention or electronically tagged to avert potential attacks.

However, President Francois Hollande in March dropped plans to strip foreign-born suspected jihadis of their French passports and deport them.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front, said both Sarkozy's and Hollande's parties had failed on security.

"All those who have governed us for 30 years bear an immense responsibility. It's revolting to watch them bickering!" she tweeted.

Britain also plans to enforce new laws to seize the passports of suspected terrorists, but a former intelligence chief said European countries should keep their doors open to repentant fighters.

"Many of the people who have been most successful in undermining the terrorist narrative are themselves ex-extremists," Richard Barrett, a former terror chief at British intelligence services MI5 and MI6, told The Guardian newspaper.

It is a view echoed by CAGE, a British non-profit that campaigns on behalf of terror detainees including former inmates at Guantanamo Bay. It has even called for returning jihadis to be given pastoral help "to help them reintegrate into society."

"The suspension of conventional justice in France with the state of emergency hasn't really been effective at all in preventing attacks," said CAGE spokesman Ibrahim Mohamoud. He added that the attacker in Nice "didn't fit the profile at all" of a jihadi and suggested that terror attacks were a predictable "blowback" from Western intervention in the Middle East.

The cluster of towns outside Rouen where Kermiche and Petitjean launched their attack has been inked to ISIS before.

A micro-cell of recruits from the area included a Frenchman seen cutting the throat of a Syrian soldier in a November 2014 video. Maxime Hauchard, the jihadi in the video, was among at least four people who met at a local mosque and later left to join the extremists.

But Haras Rafiq, managing director of British anti-radicalization Quilliam Foundation think tank, described Tuesday's attack as a turning point.

"What these two people have done is ... shifted the tactical attack to the attack on Rome ... an attack on Christianity," he said.

As Europe becomes painfully inured to a summer of repeated bloodshed, the extremists are looking for greater ways to shock, Rafiq said. "This is going into a house of God. This is attacking and killing a priest."

He added: "We've been talking about the danger of the global jihadist insurgency. This is what it looks like." he said.



https://www.yahoo.com/news/convention-over-clinton-faces-hacking-trump-criticism-070837144--election.html

Bill Clinton and Tim Kaine: Trump lacks empathy for Khans
LISA LERER and JONATHAN LEMIRE, Associated Press
July 30, 2016

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Hillary Clinton's top surrogates are taking aim at rival Donald Trump for criticizing the bereaved mother of a Muslim Army captain, a comment that sparked outrage across the political spectrum on Saturday.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine expressed shock that the GOP nominee would attack Ghazala Khan for not speaking during her husband's address to the Democratic convention.

"He was kind of trying to turn that into some kind of ridicule," Kaine said after a campaign event in Pittsburgh. "It just demonstrates again kind of a temperamental unfitness. If you don't have any sense of empathy than that, then I'm not sure you can learn it."

Former President Bill Clinton, who joined Kaine and his wife at the event, agreed: "I cannot conceive how you can say that about a Gold Star mother."

Lawyer Khizr Khan gave a moving tribute to their son, Humayun, who received a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart after he was killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2004. During the speech, Khan's wife, Ghazala, stood silently by his side, wearing a headscarf.

"If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say. You tell me," Trump said, in an interview with ABC's "This Week."

Ghazala Khan has said she didn't speak because she's still overwhelmed by her grief and can't even look at photos of her son without crying.

Trump also disputed Khan's criticism that the billionaire businessman has "sacrificed nothing and no one" for his country.

"I've made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard. I've created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures," Trump said. He added: "Sure those are sacrifices."

Trump's comments sparked immediate outrage on social media, including from Republicans, who criticized Trump both for attacking a mourning mother and because many considered them racist and anti-Muslim.

In a statement that made no mention of Trump, Hillary Clinton said she was "very moved" by Ghazala Khan's appearance.

"This is a time for all Americans to stand with the Khans and with all the families whose children have died in service to our country," she said. "Capt. Khan and his family represent the best of America and we salute them."

Trump's comments about Khan came a day after he criticized retired four-star Gen. John Allen and slammed a Colorado Springs, Colorado, fire marshal for capping attendance at the event. The fire marshal, Brett Lacey, was recently honored by the city as "Civilian of the Year" for his role in helping the wounded at a 2015 mass shooting at a local Planned Parenthood.

"Our commander in chief shouldn't insult and deride our generals, retired or otherwise," Clinton told a crowd gathered Saturday on a factory floor in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. "That should really go without saying."

Trump also accused Clinton via Twitter of "trying to rig" the fall presidential debates by scheduling two of the three debates on the same night as NFL games. The schedule was set last September by a nonpartisan commission, which said the campaigns were not consulted about dates. Trump also said the NFL complained to him about the debate schedule in a letter, but the league said it sent no such letter.

Post-convention it has become clear the presidential race will be fought in the struggling manufacturing towns, cities and rural farming communities of the Rust Belt, as Clinton used the days following her convention to try and win back some of the white working class voters that once made up a key piece of the Democratic Party's electoral coalition. Trump's anti-trade message has appealed to those voters, who feel frustrated with an economic recovery that's largely left them behind.

On Saturday, Clinton made stops in rural western Pennsylvania, a largely white part of the swing state that traditionally votes Republican.

Clinton is playing up economic opportunity, diversity and national security. Democrats hammered home those themes this week with an array of politicians, celebrities, gun-violence victims, law enforcement officers and activists of all races and sexual orientation. Their goal is to turn out the coalition of minority, female and young voters that twice elected Obama while blunting some of the expected losses among the white men drawn to Trump's message.

At a rally in Pittsburgh, she was introduced by Mark Cuban, the Dallas Mavericks owner, technology investor and television personality who recently endorsed her. "Leadership is not yelling and screaming and intimidating," he said.

Trump has made plans to visit some of the same areas Clinton is campaigning in during her three-day bus tour through Ohio and Pennsylvania, scheduling Monday stops in Columbus and Cleveland.

The Trump campaign swaggered out of the convention weeks, feeling bullish about the bump the nominee received from his own nominating convention.

While Clinton and Kaine attempted to sell their positive economic message, much of their strategy centers on undermining Trump, particularly the business record that makes up the core of his argument to voters.

Clinton highlighted Trump's use of outsourcing to manufacture some of his branded products, arguing he's profited from the same foreign labor he now blames for killing U.S. jobs.

"What part of America first leads Trump to make Trump dress shirts in Bangladesh not Ashland, Pennsylvania," said Clinton. "I just find it so maddening that Trump goes around saying this and all the stuff he makes in other countries."



Although I tend to close off immediately nearly anything that Trump says, nowadays, this was not only very unwise social policy, but the root of the hateful back and forth that goes on between Fundamentalists of all stamps – yes, I do mean Fundamentalist Christians also. We need to have someone in the presidency who gives a happy d**n about what he says and does and won’t stir up more discord rather than solving what we already have.

This kind of behavior fuels the flames, and we may have some real violence between Christian and Islamic groups. There have been such attacks at Jewish Synagogues and some Mosques as well, though usually random and with no one being harmed. There are members of the armed militias and White Supremacists all over this country, not just in the rural areas of the South and West, who have already shown up at Ferguson, MO when the problems started there and a couple of other such BLM actions. People like that admire Trump’s “free speech.” I have become alarmed at how numerous they are becoming, and how bold. See the Yahoo article below on that general subject.



KRLD IS NOT OWNED BY FOX, BUT BY CBS


https://www.yahoo.com/news/dallas-weatherman-resigns-post-bashing-201900440.html

Dallas Weatherman Resigns After Post Bashing DNC For 'Parading Mothers of Slain Thugs'
Inside Edition
July 30, 2016


A Dallas meteorogist has resigned after writing a racially insensitive Facebook post bashing the Democratic National Convention.

Bob Goosmann was a weatherman at KRLD when he posted about the DNC speeches by the so-called "Mothers of the Movement," such as Eric Garner's mother, on Wednesday.

"As many of you have probably noticed, I've stayed away from politics on FB. The DNC parading the mothers of slain thugs around on their stage has me furious," read the post, which has since disappeared.

The post has disappeared and Goosmann's Twitter account also appears to have been disabled.

Among the mothers who appeared Tuesday in the lead-up to Hillary Clinton's nomination were Gwen Carr, mother of Eric Garner; Geneva Reed-Veal, mother of Sandra Bland; Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin; and Lezley McSpadden, mother of Mike Brown.

Paul Mann, KRLD's news director, confirmed that Goosmann had resigned as the station's chief meteorologist, "effective immediately" according to the Dallas News.

According to his Facebook profile, Goosmann is now employed as a real estate agent.

Goosmann has held several television meteorologist positions previously, including at stations in Denver, Richmond and Dallas.



UPSKIRTING “LEGALIZED”

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/georgia-appeals-court-upskirting-is-legal/

Georgia appeals court says "upskirting" is legal
CBS/AP
July 25, 2016, 12:58 PM

Photograph -- Surveillance footage of Brandon Lee Gary attempting to take photos and videos up a woman's skirt at a Publix grocery store in Houston County, about 100 miles south of Atlanta. WGCL-TV
Play VIDEO -- "Upskirting" photos ruled legal by Massachusetts high court


ATLANTA - A man admitted he surreptitiously took cellphone video up a woman's skirt while she shopped at a grocery store, but a Georgia court said he didn't break the law.

A divided Georgia Court of Appeals this month tossed out the conviction of former grocery store employee Brandon Lee Gary, who recorded videos up a woman's skirt - known as "upskirting" - while she shopped. The 6-3 majority opinion said Gary's behavior, while reprehensible, doesn't violate the state's invasion of privacy law, under which he was prosecuted.

In a ruling issued July 15, Judge Elizabeth Branch said it is "regrettable that no law currently exists which criminalizes Gary's reprehensible conduct."

"Unfortunately, there is a gap in Georgia's criminal statutory scheme, in that our law does not reach all of the disturbing conduct that has been made possible by ever-advancing technology."

In 2014, a Massachusetts man's conviction for taking upskirt photos was also overturned by the state Supreme Judicial Court, largely also because of technicalities in the law.

In a strongly worded dissent, Judge Amanda Mercier argued there is no gap in the law and that Gary's actions were clearly illegal.

Numerous residents of Atlanta told CBS affiliate WGCL-TV they were deeply troubled by the ruling.

No one disputes the facts of the case: Gary aimed his cellphone's camera up the woman's skirt at least four times as she walked through the aisles of a Publix grocery store in Houston County, about 100 miles south of Atlanta.

An indictment charged him with violating the state's invasion of privacy law, which prohibits "the use of any device, without the consent of all persons observed, to observe, photograph, or record the activities of another which occur in any private place and out of public view."

Whether Gary's behavior violates that law hinges on how the word "place" is interpreted.

The law defines a place as a physical location, not an area of the body, the majority opinion says. The appeals court also agreed with Gary's lawyers, who argued that because the recording happened in a grocery store that is open to the public, it cannot be considered private and out of public view.

In the dissenting opinion, Mercier argues that "with the stroke of a pen" the court is negating privacy protections by narrowly interpreting place in a way that excludes a person's body.

"As the victim's genital area was not exposed to the public, it was out of public view and the victim had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the area under her skirt," Mercier wrote.

The majority opinion calls Gary's behavior offensive but says it is not prohibited by law. It is up to the state's lawmakers to fix the problem, Branch wrote. Lawmakers in other states have recognized that existing laws didn't criminalize actions like Gary's and created voyeurism statutes to prohibit such behavior, according to a footnote in Branch's opinion.

Chuck Spahos, who heads the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that his group plans to draft legislation to solve the problem. State Rep. Rich Golick, a Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee, told the newspaper he would welcome such a bill. And State Sen. Vincent Fort, a Democrat, told CBS affiliate WGCL-TV he plans to make sure the law is fixed during the next legislative session, which begins in January.

Tanya Washington, a GSU law professor, told WGCL the ruling is a setback for privacy rights.

"You've just given people a license to continue this kind of conduct," said Washington, adding that waiting until next year to fix the problem in the legislature is bad.



http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/29/487944304/u-s-navy-to-honor-gay-rights-icon-harvey-milk

U.S. Navy To Honor Gay Rights Icon Harvey Milk
RICHARD GONZALES
July 29, 20164:44 PM ET


The U.S. Navy plans to honor slain gay rights activist and former San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk by naming a ship after him. The USNS Harvey Milk, which hasn't been built yet, is the latest in a series of Navy vessels named for civil rights icons.

The news came in a report published by the U.S. Naval Institute, citing a notification sent to Congress earlier this month by Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, signaling his intention to name a Military Sealift Command fleet oiler after Milk. The Navy has not officially confirmed the plan.

According to the USNI News, the ship will be built by General Dynamics NASSCO in San Diego.

Milk was the first openly gay elected official in California. As a young man, he served in the Navy as a diving officer during the Korean War. He was honorably discharged from the service with the rank of lieutenant in 1955.

Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. A year later, he was assassinated, along with Mayor George Moscone, by another former Supervisor Dan White, over a dispute about White's resignation from the Board. When White changed his mind and tried to get his job back, Milk and Moscone opposed his reinstatement. In a rage, White killed them both.

The news of the Navy's plans to honor Milk was met with cheers and some mixed reactions by local leaders and activists who knew him.

Milk's nephew Stuart Milk, who long had organized public pressure for the Navy to honor his uncle told the San Francisco Chronicle:

"We have just reached the point recently where LGBT people can serve openly in the military, and what better message can there be of that than this ship? It's a very fitting tribute to a man whose primary goal was for people to be authentic and not have to wear a mask."

The Chronicle also quoted Cleve Jones, a former Milk intern who went on to spearhead the Names Project's AIDS Memorial Quilt.

"I have no idea what Harvey would think of this. He has been dead a long time. I can tell you I have mixed feelings. It is obviously an indication that gay people are more accepted than they were when he lived. And I think he would be glad of that. But he did not like war."

The USNS Harvey Milk is one is a series of vessels known as the John Lewis-class, named for civil rights activist Rep. John Lewis, (D-Ga.).

Others in the class include ships named for former Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, women's rights activist Lucy Stone and abolitionist and women's rights activist Sojourner Truth.



I am proud of our military groups for standing up for our civil rights, even as so many of our good Christians can’t bring themselves to do it.


POLITICS -- NOT CRUCIAL, BUT INTERESTING NONETHELESS


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/women-who-helped-shatter-glass-ceilings-before-hillary-clinton/

Woman were cracking glass ceilings long before Clinton
CBS NEWS
July 30, 2016, 10:56 AM

Play VIDEO -- Would a Hillary Clinton presidency have impact on women in America?


Hillary Clinton made history this week, becoming the first woman nominated to the presidency by a major American party.

This comes 32 years after Geraldine Ferraro was chosen as Walter Mondale's running mate - the first woman to appear on a presidential ticket, reports "CBS This Morning: Saturday" co-host Vinita Nair.

Three years earlier, President Ronald Reagan made good on a campaign promise by nominating Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court. Two months later, she was sworn in, becoming the first female justice to sit on the nation's highest court.

But the first cracks in the glass ceiling of politics were made exactly 100 years ago, when Jeannette Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress, four years before women won the right to vote.

And even earlier than that, Marie Curie was making history as the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in 1903 and winning again eight years later.

Speaking of prizes, Edith Wharton was the first woman to take home the Pulitzer for fiction for her 1923 novel "The Age of Innocence."

But it took 87 more years for a female director to be recognized at the Oscars - Kathryn Bigelow winning the Academy Award for her work on "The Hurt Locker."

And after an all-male inaugural class in 1986, Aretha Franklin busted down the doors as the first female inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/07/28/sanders-delegates-ready-one-last-protest-against-the-dnc/

Post Politics
Sanders delegates ready one last protest against the DNC
By David Weigel
July 28, 2016

Photograph -- Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday. (Photo by Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)


PHILADELPHIA -- Steven Abreu paid for his convention week with a GoFundMe campaign. He showed up bright and early the first three nights. On the third, he proudly flashed a sign reading "TPP," with the acronym for the Trans-Pacific Partnership crossed out. He hoisted it whenever the crowd rose to cheer a speaker. He yelled "racist" when former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg took the stage. He got some cross looks from Clinton delegates, and figured that was the end of it.

On Thursday morning, Abreu went to pick up his daily floor credentials, and was denied. Too much of a disturbance, he was told.

"I'd understand if I was holding up signs that said 'Obama's from Kenya' or 'Crooked Hillary belongs in jail,' " Abreu said. "But I did the least disruptive thing I could. I only held up my sign when others stood up and cheered. I don't know why they stripped my credentials, because all I did was express civil disobedience against the TPP."

Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont spent Thursday trading rumors, hurrying to Wells Fargo Center, and prepping for one last show of strength as Hillary Clinton accepts the Democratic nomination. Clinton's team, hoping for a bounce out of Philadelphia, was watching nervously for anything that could come off as a sign of disunity or chaos -- a walkout being the worst option.

"Looking at the audience the last couple nights, she might want to concentrate on her base a little," Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer snarked at a news conference today.

Some of Sanders's supporters were hoping for a resolution, one last show of good faith from Clinton's team. If someone from the DNC apologized for the expulsions, that could smooth over tension. If Clinton herself praised Sanders, as President Obama did on Wednesday night, some -- not all -- of the bad feelings could fade.

But on Twitter and Facebook there were reports of up to 700 Sanders delegates being kept outside, of Clinton delegates filling seats so that Sanders delegates would be locked out, and of the DNC being so desperate to cover up for walkouts that it was hiring actors to fill seats.

Almost all of the rumors were false. There was no mass stripping of credentials; delegates, like Abreu, had to pick up new passes each day, as a security measure, and it was at that point when volunteers for Sanders fell off the roles. A Craigslist ad asking for "700 actors" to fill seats did not come from anyone related to the convention and bore little relationship to the reality of the convention, where the sporting arena was packed cheek-to-jowl, with fire marshals cutting off access to some areas as they filled in.

In fact, that rumor contradicted the much truer story of seats being filled in before Sanders delegates got chances to pack them. The final day of the convention lacked some of the drama of the first days but filled the gap with paranoia about crucial space in the arena being filled by the wrong team.

Shortly after 4 p.m., a few dozen Sanders delegates rallied inside the arena-adjacent media tent that had become an ad hoc protest hub. They splayed neon yellow sheets of copy paper on the ground, writing #NoVoice #NoUnity on one side and slogans of their choice on the other. They wore shirts in the same gaudy neon with the slogan "Enough Is Enough," credited to Sanders himself, written across them.

"I've had Hillary supporters call me names," said Edward Alexander, a Sanders delegate from Alaska, one of the Vermont senator's strongest states. The back of his sign read "Our Vote Is Sacred," something he'd grown worried about in the wake of DNC email revelations.

"I've had people shout at me because I wasn't smiling or waving signs," he said. "Somebody explain the taking-away of 'No TPP' signs -- why do that when both candidates are against the TPP?"

Sanders has said nothing about the protests, except that it is not up to him to corral every one of the people he brought into the party. But "enough is enough," one of his catchphrases, actually refers to what he sees as an oligarchy's tightening grip around the country, not any fight among Democrats.

At the small protest in the media tent, Jeffrey Eide, a Sanders delegate from North Dakota, told protesters to stand their ground and to be polite. They did not have to relinquish their signs if anyone asked them to, but it was not in their interest to create a scene.

What worried Abreu was that the DNC would find ways to minimize even minor scenes. "I'm under the impression that the California delegation has had its lights turned off," he said, and that there are "white noise machines in front of their sections."

Clinton delegates from California disputed some of that, but they were led to believe that microphones near their delegation had been quieted to avoid picking up boos and chants. (All such noise has been hard to hear on audio feeds since Wednesday afternoon, when the role of state delegations in picking the nominees ended.) They also winced at the memory of Monday morning's delegation breakfast, where Sanders delegates chanted "Count the votes!" at California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, blaming him for a (typically) slow count after the primary.

As Thursday night's program got underway, the "Enough Is Enough" shirts were visible in all sections of Wells Fargo Center.



THE PARTY’S OVER. IT’S TIME TO CALL IT A DAY. BERNIE DIDN’T WIN THE ELECTION, BUT HE PUT UP A MIGHTY FIGHT AND WON SOME SIGNIFICANT POINTS, WHICH WAS HIS DEEPER GOAL ALL ALONG. IT WAS STARTLING HOW LARGE A FOLLOWING HE DID GET.

THE REASON IS BECAUSE OUR COUNTRY NEEDS SOCIAL AND INCOME REFORM, AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY SHOULD PAY ATTENTION TO THAT SITUATION. THEIR CONTINUED CONTROL OVER THOSE OF US WHO LEAN LEFT, IS BY NO MEANS GUARANTEED, AND I EXPECT MANY OF US TO LEAVE THE PARTY AFTER NOVEMBER.

MAYBE WE SHOULD ALL GO OVER TO THE GREENS, OR SIMPLY BECOME INDEPENDENTS, LEAVING IT LESS CLEAR TO THE DEMS OF THE FUTURE WHETHER OR NOT THEY HAVE OUR VOTES. MAYBE THEY WON'T BE SO ARROGANT AFTER THAT. THAT COULD BE GOOD. THEY HAVEN’T HAD TO REALLY THINK ABOUT ANY OF THIS UNTIL SANDERS CAME ALONG.



TRUMP LEAVE MINIMUM WAGE UP TO STATES/”YOU NEED TO HELP PEOPLE”

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-cant-clearly-explain-his-position-on-the-minimum-wage/

Donald Trump can't clearly explain his position on the minimum wage
By REBECCA SHABAD CBS NEWS
July 27, 2016, 10:14 AM

Donald Trump claimed Tuesday that Bernie Sanders lied about the GOP nominee's position on the minimum wage, but then he failed to clearly articulate his stance.

"Wow, that was really a lie. He said that I want to do go less than minimum wage. This is a new one because I'm the one Republican that said in some cases we have to go more than minimum wage but what I like is states," Trump said in an interview on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor."

Trump said that the states should be allowed to make their own determinations about the minimum wage. Host Bill O'Reilly said to Trump that there has to be a federal minimum wage and asked him what number he would set it at.

"There doesn't have to be. Well, I would leave it and raise it somewhat. You need to help people. I know it's not very Republican to say but you need to help people," Trump said.

Asked to give a specific number like $10, Trump said, " I would say 10. I would say 10. But, with the understanding that somebody like me is going to bring back jobs, I don't want people to be in that $10 category for very long. But, the thing is, Bill, let the states make the deal."

O'Reilly said that he now had Trump on the record saying that he supports a $10 federal minimum wage and that states can do what they want.

"No, you have me on record saying the states are going to raise it higher than that," he said.

In an interview with MSNBC's "Morning Joe" last August, Trump said that "having a low minimum wage is not a bad thing for this country." Then at a debate in November, Trump said that "wages are too high."

In an interview on "CBS This Morning" Wednesday, Trump's campaign chairman Paul Manafort was asked to clarify Trump's position on the federal minimum wage because he keeps changing his comments on it, but he failed to give a clear answer.

"We'll be dealing with that, his national economic policy and some of his tax policies in the course of the next several weeks as he makes several speeches dealing with these type of topics," said Manafort, who then accused Democrats of not explaining how they'll pay for their proposed programs and policies.

Asked again if Trump believes in raising the federal minimum wage, which is currently $7.25 an hour, Manafort said, "Donald said what he did and that will be explained in the context of an overall economic package that we're doing over the course of the next two weeks."



Is Trump trying to “play nice” part of the time now?? He says, "There doesn't have to be. Well, I would leave it and raise it somewhat. You need to help people. I know it's not very Republican to say but you need to help people," Trump said. Asked to give a specific number like $10, Trump said, " I would say 10. I would say 10. But, with the understanding that somebody like me is going to bring back jobs, I don't want people to be in that $10 category for very long. But, the thing is, Bill, let the states make the deal." O'Reilly said that he now had Trump on the record saying that he supports a $10 federal minimum wage and that states can do what they want. "No, you have me on record saying the states are going to raise it higher than that," he said.”



http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/07/27/sanders-loyalists-warn-democratic-party-could-rupture-over-clinton-nomination.html

DEMOCRATS
Sanders loyalists warn Democratic Party could rupture over Clinton nomination
Published July 27, 2016 Associated Press

2016 Election Headquarters -- The latest headlines on the 2016 elections from the biggest name in politics.
Video -- Sanders supporters pushing to include him in roll call vote


PHILADELPHIA – Bernie Sanders loyalists warned that the Democratic Party could rupture over the nomination of Hillary Clinton after a volatile night that saw a large group of Sanders delegates and supporters exit the party's national convention to stage a sit-in at a nearby media tent.

They rejected Sanders' call for unity even after the Vermont senator took the symbolic step of declaring Clinton the winner of the state-by-state delegate count inside the convention in Philadelphia.

"I suspect we are witnessing an event that will fundamentally change American politics," said Cory James, 22, a college student from Flint, Michigan, who expects the Democratic Party to break apart over Clinton's victory.

Thousands of activists have taken to the streets during the convention this week to voice support for Sanders, a liberal U.S. senator, and his progressive agenda. The "Bernie or bust" brigades that have marched across the sun-warped city threatened to disrupt Clinton's moment as the first woman to be nominated for president by a major U.S. political party.

"We all have this unrealistic dream that democracy is alive in America," said Debra Dilks, of Boonville, Missouri, who spoke as a protest broke up near Philadelphia's City Hall.

She said she wasn't sure she would even vote in November.

"Hillary didn't get the nomination. The nomination was stolen," Dilks said.

At the media tent protest, some had their mouths taped shut, while a few others spontaneously sang, "This land is our land." They said they were holding a peaceful protest to complain about being shut out by the Democratic Party.

In the streets outside, Sanders supporters who had spent the day protesting began facing off with police. They started scaling 8-foot walls that blocked off the secure zone around the arena parking lot. Police and the Secret Service immediately arrested four protesters, who will be charged with entering a restricted area. They're scheduled to appear in court Wednesday.

Protests continued into the night as Sanders supporters and an anti-police brutality group joined together. Later, another protester set an Israeli flag on fire as people chanted, "long live the intifada."

Others then came together for a candlelight vigil.

Earlier in the day, activists held a midday rally at City Hall, and then made their way down Broad Street to the convention site. By early evening, a large crowd had formed outside the subway station closest to the arena. The crowd consisted of an assortment of protesters espousing a variety of causes, but mostly Sanders supporters and other Clinton foes on the left.

"I think people were hoping we could sway the delegates and show that there really is a movement here," said Alexis Holmes, a school janitor from Carbondale, Illinois, who has been protesting in the city since Sunday.

The longstanding bitterness between Sanders' supporters and Clinton's seemed to grow worse over the past few days after a trove of hacked emails showed that officials at the Democratic National Committee played favorites during the primaries and worked to undermine Sanders' campaign.

Sanders had urged supporters Monday to fall in line behind Clinton for the good of the country. But many were not swayed.

Engineer Chris Scully, of Troy, New York, said he opposes Clinton because of her war record as U.S. secretary of state. He carried a "Jill Before Hill" sign Tuesday at a demonstration at City Hall, in a nod to Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

As Scully spoke, a passer-by called out: "That's a vote for Trump!"

In a separate protest against police brutality and racial injustice, about 500 people marched down Broad Street to City Hall. Protest leader Erica Mines told the crowd that it was an "anti-police rally" and a "black and brown resistance march" and instructed all white people to move to the back.

March participant Tiara Willis, of Philadelphia, said she subscribes to the slogan "I'm with her ... I guess." She said she would not back Trump and called Clinton, "the lesser of two evils."



ALAN GRAYSON’S DEMISE??


July 26, 2016


I’M SAD TO SEE THAT ALAN GRAYSON’S WIFE IS COMING UP AGAIN. A MAN WHO HITS HIS WIFE MUSTN’T BE IN PUBLIC OFFICE. TOO BAD, BECAUSE HE IS A LEFT-LEANING LIBERAL. WE COULD HAVE USED HIM. THERE ALSO IS A STORY ABOUT HEDGE FUNDS AND THE CAYMAN ISLANDS, IN WHICH LITERALLY “SLAVERY” HAS BEEN ALLEGED. WHAT THEY MEAN IS FORCED LABOR, BUT IT AMOUNTS TO THE SAME THING. HE SAID HE DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT IT.


OFF THE PRESIDENTIAL TRAIL (WASHINGTON POST):
It was not a good day for Rep. Alan Grayson (D), the Florida Senate hopeful.

This morning, Politico reported that Grayson's ex-wife "repeatedly went to police with accusations of domestic abuse over a two-decade period." Later in the day, Grayson reacted to the story by "barreling out of the magazine’s convention space, threatening to get a reporter arrested, and losing two endorsements from loyal progressive groups," The Post reports.

Weigel has more detail. "Grayson visited Politico’s public event space outside the convention, and pushed past reporter Isaac-Edward Dovere as multiple cameras hit record. 'You’re getting in my way,' said Grayson. 'You’re assaulting a member of Congress. You’re pushing me.'"

Later, progressive groups Democracy for America and Progressive Change Campaign Committee withdrew their support for Grayson's campaign.

Read more about the whole saga -- which benefits Grayson rival Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Fla.) -- here.


OTHER NEWS


http://finance.yahoo.com/news/fbi-woman-robbed-wyoming-bank-return-prison-224157972.html?post_id=1605282889713411_1772448659663499#_=_

FBI: Woman robbed Wyoming bank to return to prison
Ben Neary, Associated Press
July 30, 2016

Photograph -- In this undated inmate mug released by the Oregon Department of Corrections shows inmate Linda Patricia Thompson in Salem, Ore.


CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) -- A woman who was recently released from prison in Oregon robbed a bank in Wyoming only to throw the cash up in the air outside the building and sit down to wait for police, authorities said Friday.

Investigators say 59-year-old Linda Patricia Thompson told them she wanted to go back to prison.

Thompson said she had suffered facial fractures after strangers beat her at a Cheyenne park last weekend.

She said she couldn't get a room at a homeless shelter and decided to rob the bank Wednesday because she could no longer stay on the streets, court records say.

She faces a detention hearing Tuesday on a bank robbery charge and doesn't have an attorney yet.

FBI Special Agent Tory Smith said in court documents that Thompson entered a US Bank branch in Cheyenne and handed a teller a cardboard note that said, "I have a gun. Give me all your money."

The teller turned over thousands of dollars.

Outside, Thompson threw money into the air and even offered some to people passing by, Smith stated. He added that Cheyenne police Lt. Nathan Busek said he found Thompson with a large sum of money when he arrived at the bank.

"Lt. Busek asked Thompson what was going on, and Thompson replied, 'I just robbed the bank, I want to go back to prison,'" Smith wrote.

Thompson had been serving time at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, Oregon, for a second-degree robbery conviction in Union County until her release in June, Betty Bernt, communications manager with the Oregon Department of Corrections, said Friday.

Thompson told investigators then that she didn't want to be released and advised the Oregon state parole office that she would not do well on parole.

An attempt to reach Thompson's parole officer for comment wasn't successful on Friday.



My feeling about this woman is one of sympathy and sadness. She solved her problem in her own way, though. For an old American Classic on that poignant subject, go to O’Henry’s excellent story, from another age when Americans were living on the streets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cop_and_the_Anthem

THE QUOTA SYSTEM OF MUNICIPAL FINANCE


Ever since the Ferguson, MO case came under the microscope of public attention, the BUSINESS of police and court fines has been cited as a major cause for those anti-Brown and anti-poor police interactions. These news articles show situations like this one, in which a Black young man to death at the hands of an officer when he reached for his wallet upon the officer’s command. The driver had made what perhaps was a major psychological mistake in telling the officer at all that he did have a firearm and a license for it.

This man, unfortunately, had a long string of traffic and parking violations, and his 50 or so traffic tickets came from those causes. He had no violence in his background and was a valued worker at the cafeteria of a local Catholic school. Of course, he was also a Black man who had dreads, according to his girlfriend, and when he drove through certain primarily white neighborhoods, would be pulled over for a minor reason and fined yet again. See the two Philando Castille case stories below.

Particularly clear on the issue of unfair policing are the Tax Foundation blog and video interview, which blames pressure on officers to write tickets for minor issues while possibly ignoring real crime as a cause of unethical policing. The officer in that case was fired for bucking the quota system. Much of this day-to-day harassment and bullying of the poor and ethnic minorities, potentially ending a shooting, that keeps hitting the news is due to pressure from the top ranks to crack down on these small issues with fines and arrests to the exclusion of more serious things.

That is the so-called “Broken Windows” philosophy of policing. It was under that sort of training that Darren Wilson engaged physically with a young black man who was “walking in the street” rather than on the sidewalk. That's just not a serious problem unless there's a great deal of traffic. Wilson claimed that Brown struggled with him over possession of his firearm, causing the first shot to be fired, with the whole situation escalating from there. Wilson said that he had received a complaint from headquarters about a black man “answering Brown’s description” stealing several packs of cigarillos in a corner store earlier. The problem I see, besides the needless loss of life, is the fact that very few crimes are ever used in a courtroom to justify the death penalty; and a scrape over someone walking in the street, or even stealing a handful of cigars, is certainly not one of those crimes.

Following those are several related articles. Which concern one of the main roots, besides pure racism, of course, of this terribly common pattern of policing, and that is the use of Quotas. http://kut.org/post/why-your-speeding-ticket-doesn-t-pay-what-you-think-it-does, puts the beginning at the state level.



http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/29/487922464/special-prosecutor-named-in-philando-castile-shooting-death

Outside Attorney Joining Prosecutors On Philando Castile Shooting Case
CAMILA DOMONOSKE
July 29, 2016 12:21 PM ET

Photograph -- A sign reading "Your Life Mattered" hangs on a lectern outside J.J. Hill Montessori School in St. Paul, Minn., on July 14, following a funeral service for Philando Castile at the Cathedral of St. Paul. Castile, who was a cafeteria manager at the school, was shot and killed by police on July 6., Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
THE TWO-WAY -- The Driving Life And Death Of Philando Castile

An outside attorney will be joining the team of prosecutors considering the possibility of charges in the killing of Philando Castile earlier this month in Minnesota, Ramsey County Attorney John Choi says.

Castile, a 32-year-old black man, was shot by a police officer during a traffic stop on July 6. As NPR reported at the time, video of the aftermath of the shooting sparked outrage and protests in Falcon Heights, Minn., and across the country:

"Castile's girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, began streaming video live on Facebook immediately after the officer fired. In the stream she said Castile was stopped for a broken taillight, had notified the officer that he was licensed to carry a handgun and was reaching for his wallet at the officer's request when he was shot. ...

"Minnesota's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is investigating, and Gov. Mark Dayton has asked the U.S. Justice Department to examine the case."

Valerie Castile, mother of Philando Castile, looks at a photo button of her son during a press conference on the state Capitol grounds in St. Paul, Minn., on Tuesday. Philando Castile was fatally shot by police July 6.

At a press conference Friday, Choi said he would be bringing in a "special prosecutor," Don Lewis, to work on the case — not to replace Choi, but to work with him.

Choi said that stepping aside from the case himself would be an abdication of his responsibility, and announced Lewis would be "an integral member of our team," Minnesota Public Radio reported:

"Choi, whose office will get the Castile case once the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension completes its investigation, emphasized that no decision had been made yet on any charges in the shooting, or whether the case will be taken to a grand jury.

"Lewis, who is African-American, vowed that his work on the Castile case would be "substantial, meaningful and visible."

"Lewis is a longtime fixture in Twin Cities legal circles. Besides his years as Hamline law school dean, he also served as an assistant United States Attorney for Minnesota. He led St. Paul's outside investigation into the 2013 landslide at Lilydale Regional Park, in which two children died.

"He also led an independent investigation into the 2014 arrest of community activist Al Flowers in Minneapolis. Ultimately, that investigation found no officer misconduct."

Some activists, including Flowers, questioned Lewis' independence, MPR reports.



http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/15/485835272/the-driving-life-and-death-of-philando-castile

The Driving Life And Death Of Philando Castile
Heard on Morning Edition
EYDER PERALTA
CHERYL CORLEY
July 15, 20164:51 AM ET

Photograph -- Valerie Castile, mother of Philando Castile, looks at a photo button of her son during a press conference on the state Capitol grounds in St. Paul, Minn., on Tuesday. Philando Castile was fatally shot by police July 6. Eric Miller/Reuters
Chart of traffic and parking violations -- Source: NPR analysis of court documents
Credit: Alyson Hurt and Eyder Peralta/NPR
NPR NEWS INVESTIGATIONS -- As Court Fees Rise, The Poor Are Paying The Price


Philando Castile's trouble with traffic stops began when he still had his learner's permit. He was stopped a day before his 19th birthday.

From there, he descended into a seemingly endless cycle of traffic stops, fines, court appearances, late fees, revocations and reinstatements in various jurisdictions.

Cycles Of Traffic Stops, Fines And Suspensions

Between July 2002 and his death in July 2016, Philando Castile was stopped by police at least 46 times. Some traffic stops kicked off months- and years-long spirals of fines, driver’s license suspensions and more traffic stops that Castile would eventually pay off or settle in court. He was most often cited for driving on a suspended license or lacking proof of insurance.

Court records raise big questions: Was Castile targeted by police? Or was he just a careless or unlucky driver?

An NPR analysis of those records shows that the 32-year-old cafeteria worker who was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop in a St. Paul, Minn., suburb, was stopped by police 46 times and racked up more than $6,000 in fines. Another curious statistic: Of all of the stops, only six of them were things a police officer would notice from outside a car — things like speeding or having a broken muffler.

The records show that Castile spent most of his driving life fighting tickets. Three months after that first stop, for example, his license was suspended and he went into his first spiral: Police stopped him on Jan. 8, 2003. They stopped him on Feb. 3 and on Feb. 12 and Feb. 26 and on March 4.

"What Mr. Castile symbolizes for a lot of us working in public defense is that driving offenses are typically just crimes of poverty," says Erik Sandvick, a public defender in Ramsey County, which includes St. Paul and its suburbs.

When he heard about Castile in the news, his name sounded so familiar that Sandvick looked up the records and saw his own name listed as Castile's public defender in a 2006 case. He vaguely remembers Castile, but his story is like that of many other clients he's had. They get tickets they can't pay, and then they are ticketed over and over for driving with a suspended license or not having insurance.

The proliferation of court fees has prompted some states, like New Jersey, to use amnesty programs to encourage the thousands of people who owe fines to surrender in exchange for fee reductions. At the Fugitive Safe Surrender program, makeshift courtrooms allow judges to individually handle each case.

Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University and the author of Crook County, which documents the problems in the criminal justice system of Chicago, said Castile was the "classic case" of what criminologists have called "net widening," or the move by local authorities to criminalize more and more aspects of regular life.

"It is in particular a way that people of color and the poor are victimized on a daily basis," Gonzalez Van Cleve said.

Many times, both Gonzalez Van Cleve and Sandvick agree, the system leaves citizens with no good choices — having to pick, for instance, whether to pay a fine or pay for car insurance.

Timeline: June 3, 2005, to Feb. 27, 2006

DATE
DESCRIPTION
RESULT
June 3, 2005 Traffic stop He is charged with “impeding traffic,” which means going too slowly or perhaps blocking the box at an intersection. That charge is dismissed, but he is again convicted of having no proof of insurance. That means a year's probation and a $778 fine, which he has problems paying.
Moving violation
Fined $778
Put on probation
Dec. 20, 2005: His license is suspended because of nonpayment.

Larpenteur Avenue is a dividing line separating St. Paul from surrounding suburbs. Falcon Heights, where Castile was pulled over by St. Anthony police, is one of them. Maplewood, about 10 miles away, is another.

Maplewood Police Chief Paul Schnell said he couldn't comment about the Castile police stop, but he has seen the list of nearly 50 citations Castile received when driving through nearby communities.

"It seems like a lot," he said. "So it does prompt the question, what was the basis and why so many stops?"

Schnell says all of the communities along Larpenteur have policing priorities. He said many consider traffic enforcement good policing.

"Communities where they might not have demand for services, officers will be looking to take action, to do things, to produce, because that's one of the things that's being more and more expected," Schnell said.

In some ways, Schnell added, this is a cycle for everyone involved: Unable to dig themselves out, drivers may lose their licenses and police may run their plates.

"The registered owner pops up as driving after suspension or revocation, and that can often trigger the stop," Schnell said.

Castile's driving problems often appeared to be triggered by something small — a problem with his license plate or blocking an intersection. When he couldn't keep up with the fines, his license would get suspended, and he'd keep driving.

One six-year period in particular — from 2006 to 2012 — stands out. Castile was stopped 29 times. Sometimes he was fined $270, sometimes $150, but it kept adding up. He soon amassed more than $5,000 in fines.

"I am just baffled, and I've been pulled over in the same vehicle my brother died in," Castile's sister said. Allyza Castile thinks it was her brother's dreadlocks and the big sedans he loved to drive — like the Oldsmobile he was in — that made him stand out.

"I've been pulled over in that car for three or four times for the same exact reason — supposedly a broken taillight," she said. "When you run the plates, his name comes up, so I've been harassed driving his vehicle myself. So I know that they harass my brother."

Of course we don't know intent. Or if police knew something about Castile that's not in the public record.

University of Minnesota Law School professor Myron Orfield says this doesn't really surprise him. Back in 2003, he studied racial bias in policing.

The state-commissioned study found that African-Americans and Latinos were more likely to be stopped than whites. That was especially true as they crossed into mostly white suburbs — or through the borderlands, as the Twin Cities locals call it — where they were up to seven times more likely to be stopped by police.

"When you see those stark residential differences between neighboring communities, it's often a sign that there's some underlying discrimination going on," Orfield said.

This week, the St. Anthony Police Department released statistics on its traffic stops. They show that officers issue citations at the same rate as neighboring suburbs, but police disproportionately arrest African-Americans.

About 7 percent of the residents in the area patrolled are African-American, but this year they make up about 47 percent of arrests. The data show that since 2011, African-Americans have been making up a larger percentage of arrests.

The head of the Minneapolis NAACP, Nekima Levy-Pounds, compared the situation in the Twin Cities to Ferguson, Mo.

In the aftermath of the police killing of a black man there, the U.S. Department of Justice found Ferguson was more concerned about raising revenue than public safety.

"Shame on Falcon Heights," Levy-Pounds said during a speech at a rally. "They should have known that something was wrong. Shame on the St. Anthony Police Department for that money-making scheme."

In a statement, St. Anthony City Manager Mark Casey said the data unfortunately show that St. Anthony and Falcon Heights face many of the same challenges that Minneapolis, St. Paul and other cities do.

"We do share concerns about the information and what it represents," Casey said. "Racial inequality, in terms of arrests, citations and incarceration, is a complex yet urgent challenge for all of us."

He said St. Anthony and other suburbs are continuing to review how officers are trained and engaged in activities addressing racism and bias issues. But he didn't say how and did not specifically address the issue of traffic fines.

During some periods of his life, Castile was sometimes able to emerge from a mountain of fines.

From 2012 to late 2014 — like clockwork — he paid off fine after fine, some of them more than $500 a month.

"He was trying to make it right," said Beverly Castile, Philando's aunt. "And it was right. He paid off all his tickets, got his license back and everything else. It was done right."

But about three months after he was done with probation, he was stopped again — for "improper display of original plate." By January of this year, his license was suspended, but he quickly paid $275 to get it back.

Last week, police stopped Castile once again.

Castile's girlfriend, who was in the car, said it was because of a broken taillight. But in scanner traffic audio obtained this week by Minnesota Public Radio, a nonchalant officer, yet to be confirmed as Jeronimo Yanez, told dispatchers a different story.

"Two occupants just look like people who were involved in a robbery," he said. "The driver looks more like one of our suspects, just because of the wide-set nose."

Gloria Hatchett, an attorney for the Castile family, said that's racial profiling.

"How do you say, 'There's a robbery suspect with a broad nose, African-American?' " she said. "That's equivalent to saying there's a white woman with blond hair."

What happened next is unclear. Was Castile just reaching for his ID, or was he reaching for his gun?

What we know is that Yanez fired his weapon.

What we know is that throughout his life, Castile was stopped by police at least 46 times before that moment.

If there was anyone familiar with the routine and perils of a traffic stop, it was Philando Castile.

The July 6 stop was his last.

Alyson Hurt, Sarah Knight and Avery Lill contributed to this report.



http://taxfoundation.org/blog/police-ticket-quotas-revenue-source

Police Ticket Quotas as a Revenue Source
By Scott Drenkard
August 05, 2013

MUST WATCH – Video interview with “Good Cop” who wants to do a fair and honest job; Huffington Post journalist Radley Balko

Reason TV recently released a rather persuasive video on the effect of police quotas on civil liberties. It tells the story of Auburn police officer Justin Hanners, who saw the new quota imposed in Auburn, Alabama as antithetical to why he joined the police in the first place. It’s worth a watch: “Cop Fired For Speaking Out Against Quota …” Reason.TV.

One of the more common arguments you’ll hear from quota supporters is that quotas are designed to bring in revenue to keep local taxes (usually property taxes) down. But while keeping moderate tax burdens is important, quotas change the very essence of the relationship between citizens and the government.

Government levies come in three major types: taxes, fees, and penalties. Taxes are different from fees in that their revenue is used for general government functions. Fees, by contrast, are extracted in exchange for a service that directly benefits the person that pays them (think of tolls that pay for roads). Penalties like speeding tickets and other police punishments are different from taxes and fees in that their primary purpose is to discourage behavior. I would go so far as to say that the fact that they happen to collect revenue is tangential. Taxes and fees are for funding government, penalties are for keeping order.

Instead of a broad-based tax system where people pay taxes in rough proportion to the benefits they get from government services, setting a requirement of revenue gathered from penalties creates a system where police authorities are incentivized to seek out ever more infractions and discouraged from practicing good judgment. Officer Hanners points out that the Auburn quota made for a police force that made “72,000 [police] contacts [per] year in like a 50,000 person town.” As Huffington Post journalist Radley Balko puts it in the video, "You have a policy that encourages police to create petty crimes and ignore serious crimes, and that's clearly the opposite of what we want our police to be doing.”



http://azchiefsofpolice.org/speeding-parking-tickets-on-rise-as-government-revenue-source/

Speeding, Parking Tickets on Rise as Government Revenue Source
November 24, 2015 By azchiefs

Drivers across the country, beware - a heftier fine could be coming to a dashboard near you. Faced with rising deficits and dwindling revenues, many states and local municipalities are turning to increased traffic and parking fines to fill their coffers.

In California, the cost of a "fix-it ticket" nearly tripled on Jan. 1, meaning that drivers in the Golden State can pay up to $100 for having a broken headlight - an infraction that didn't even garner a citation years ago. A bill approved by the state Legislature raised fix-it fines to $25 from $10 and hiked surcharges on regular traffic tickets by $35. Parking tickets and court costs to attend traffic school also increased, by $3 and $25 respectively.

Motorists in Pensacola, Fla., saw fines for parking in front of a fire hydrant or in a fire lane skyrocket from $10 to $100 - a 900 percent increase - after the city's Downtown Improvement Board reportedly unanimously approved the hike earlier this month. Statewide, speeding fines also increased by $10 this month, along with an increase of an additional $25 for exceeding the speed limit by 15 to 29 miles per hour.

And in the Boston suburb of Malden, Mass., Police Chief Kenneth Coye urged officers to bring in revenue for the cash-strapped suburb by writing at least one parking or traffic ticket per shift.

"We need to increase enforcement in areas that create revenue . write 'ONE TAG A DAY,'" Coye told officers in a memo obtained by the Boston Herald.

Coye said tickets are crucial to maintaining quality of life, the Herald reported. He did not return several requests for comment from FOXNews.com.

According to a study in this month's Journal of Law and Economics, local governments like Malden use traffic citations to bridge budget shortfalls. Researchers Thomas Garrett and Gary Wagner examined revenue and traffic citation data from 1990 to 2003 in 96 counties in North Carolina, and they discovered that the number of citations issued increases in years that follow a drop in revenue.

They got the idea for the study when Garrett, assistant vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, got an exorbitant ticket for speeding in Pennsylvania.

Garrett likened traffic violations to a "hidden tax," like hotel occupancy taxes, that can easily be passed on to to out-of-state tourists.

"When times are tough, it's often harder to increase revenue through traditional means like increasing sales and property taxes," Garrett said. "And traffic tickets certainly fit that bill."

Critics complain that whereas property taxes are proportionally tied to property values, motorist fines are flat taxes that have a harder impact on lower-income drivers; the laborer going 80 mph in a 12-year-old Kia pays the same fine as the trust-fund heir going 80 in his brand-new Ferrari.

But the tickets generate needed municipal income, and that's why they're on the rise. Wagner, a professor at the University of Arkansas Little Rock, said there is a "significant correlation" between revenue and the number of citations.

"We don't know that someone's actually been told to go out and issue tickets for revenue, but if police are incentivized to step up enforcement, that naturally results in more tickets," Wagner told FOXNews.com. "More tickets were issued when revenues declined."

The study, "Red Ink in the Rearview Mirror: Local Fiscal Conditions and the Issuance of Traffic Tickets," also found no significant drop in tickets when revenues rebounded.

Wagner and Garrett said there's no reason to believe the findings don't apply elsewhere.

"The incentives aren't just in North Carolina, it could apply anywhere," Garrett said. "The results pretty much speak for themselves."

Bonnie Sesolak, development director of the National Motorists Association, said the study backs years of anecdotal evidence.

"It's been no secret that municipalities have always tried to fill their coffers from traffic citations," she said. "Once that money starts flowing in, it's really hard to cut it off."

While recognizing the need for traffic enforcement, Sesolak said the increased focus on issuing citations could spread officers thin in some areas.

"They're making lawbreakers out of people who normally aren't," she said. "Their manpower could be better spent in other areas."

And the trend could further disenfranchise low-income drivers who receive the same fine as drivers in higher salary brackets, she said.

"If they can't afford to pay their fine, they're still going to get to work to feed their families," Sesolak said. "They're going to drive regardless."

Barbara Anderson, executive director of Massachusetts' Citizens for Limited Taxation, said she found Police Chief Coye's memo "disturbing" and questioned why local police officers hadn't been issuing tickets with proper discretion all along.

"It's disturbing when you come to realize that laws many of us try to obey are not being upheld in any predictable way," Anderson said. "So then you ask, who does get picked on? What makes the decision when you're going to enforce the law?"

The American Trucking Associations, which represents more than 37,000 members, said its drivers back efforts to enforce traffic laws. "But legitimate law enforcement reasons, not revenue needs, should determine the nature and extent of those efforts," a statement from ATA read.

Meanwhile, Dennis Slocumb, vice president of the International Union of Police Associations, said he was unaware of any "concerted effort" by law enforcement officers to write more tickets during tough financial times.

"The IUPA remains opposed to any type of ticket quotas that might be considered by state or municipal employees as an effort to increase public revenue," a statement by Slocumb read.

Moving violations aside, more than a dozen states are considering giving police officers the authority to pull over motorists solely for not wearing their seatbelts. The states - including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia - must pass a bill with the governor's approval by June 30 to be eligible for millions in federal money, the Associated Press reported.

Ohio, which is facing a projected $7.3 billion budget deficit over the next two years, would receive $26.8 million if it enacts primary seat-belt enforcement laws to match those of 26 states and the District of Columbia, according to the AP.

"If there's a time to be more cautious, our results suggest that time is now," Wagner said. "But the smart thing is, if you want to keep your money, you should always obey traffic laws."
Information contributed by: FOX News



http://kut.org/post/why-your-speeding-ticket-doesn-t-pay-what-you-think-it-does

Why Your Speeding Ticket Doesn’t Pay For What You Think it Does
By TYLER WHITSON & JOY DIAZ • APR 22, 2015

Photograph -- When Austinites pay traffic tickets and fines, where does that money end up? SARAH JASMINE MONTGOMERY/KUT
KUT News -- kut.org/, KUT A public radio station operated by the University of Texas at Austin. Includes RealAudio feed.

Travis County and the City of Austin take part in a regular fiscal dance with the State of Texas over who pays the costs of government. Over the next three days, KUT News and the Austin Monitor will look at key examples of that interaction in our series, “The Buck Starts Here.” Today, we take on Austin’s Municipal Courts.

When Austin residents are handed traffic tickets or other Municipal Court fees and fines, they likely assume that the city is profiting handsomely from those often colorful sheets of paper. If they could see where those revenues go, however, they might come to a different conclusion.

In fact, the city’s current budget projects that the court will face a roughly $3.7 million shortfall in the fiscal year that started in October by incurring about $19.7 million in general expenses and pulling in about $16 million in general revenue. On top of that, it projects that the court will fall short in three of its special revenue funds and break even on the fourth.

Though there are many reasons this might be happening, one view among those involved is that the Texas Legislature has made it difficult for municipal and county courts to balance their budgets by tasking them with administering certain fees and sending the bulk of the revenue back to the state. In many cases, the court keeps only between 5 to 10 percent of the fees it collects.

Mayor Steve Adler told the Austin Monitor and KUT News that he believes the situation is “a pretty good example” of an unfunded mandate, or a requirement that one government imposes on a smaller one without budgeting adequate money for implementation.

“We have a system that's been set by the state, and the state takes its share and leaves us to do a program with less funds than what the program costs,” Adler said. “We have to cover that shortfall with other revenue.”

Noting that the city's main sources of revenue are sales and property taxes, Adler said that the fee system is, in part, “one of the reasons why people's property taxes are at the level that they are at.”

A 2014 study of court costs and fees in Texas that was directed by the 83rd Legislature and carried out by the Office of Court Administration, or OCA, indicates that the state government is in a more enviable situation than local governments.

One view among those involved is that the Texas Legislature has made it difficult for municipal and county courts to balance their budgets by tasking them with administering certain fees and sending the bulk of the revenue back to the state. In many cases, the court keeps only between 5 to 10 percent of the fees it collects.
“Most court fees and costs end up being transmitted in whole or in part to the state,” the report reads. “On the other hand, court fees and costs are generally insufficient to cover the cost of funding the judiciary at the local government level, with expenditures for the judiciary oftentimes far surpassing collected revenues from court fees and costs.”

The Municipal Court is in charge of administering Class C misdemeanors, which include both city and state offenses. Most of the revenue the court collects goes to the city’s general fund, which is also its primary funding source. Revenues from certain fees go into special revenue funds that the city can access for specific purposes, such as juvenile case management.

According to its most recent annual report, the court made more money on traffic tickets than any other source of revenue in the last fiscal year, hauling in about $6.9 million, or 42 percent of the revenue it contributed to the city’s general fund. The court’s next top source was parking tickets, which comprised $3.4 million, or 20 percent of its general revenue.

Base fines and court costs for various levels of speeding tickets.
When individuals receive those tickets, however, they’re generally not told what they’re being required to pay for.

When the Monitor requested the breakdown of a “typical” speeding ticket, the court provided the fees and fines it assesses for speeding in a 30 mph zone. The ticket consists of a laundry list of set fees, some of which the state has mandated and some of which the city has adopted, along with a municipal “base fine” that goes to the general fund and is determined by the driver’s speed.

According to OCA Assistant General Counsel Ted Wood, a fine differs from a fee in that it is a punishment that a judge sets within a certain range prescribed by the Legislature. Fees, also known as court costs, are not punitive and are meant to recuperate court costs. Typically, judges cannot waive or change court costs.

The set fees total $103.10, of which $76.39 goes to the state and $26.71 goes to the city for various purposes. The base fine ranges from $41.90 to $171.90 for driving between less than 5 mph to more than 25 mph over the speed limit. A driver caught going 39 miles per hour, for example, would receive a $165 ticket.

The two most substantial state-mandated fees in the ticket are a $40 “consolidated fee” and a $30 “state traffic fee.” The state gets 90 and 95 percent of these, respectively, and the city gets what is left over.

It is likely that the consolidated fee, listed in the OCA report as the “consolidated court cost,” generates substantial revenue for the state. It applies to all felonies at $133, all Class A and B misdemeanors at $83 and all “non-jailable misdemeanor offenses … other than a conviction relating to a pedestrian or the parking of a motor vehicle” — such as speeding tickets — at $40.

According to the report, the consolidated court cost is allocated to 14 places in the state budget. The top three destinations, based on the percentage of revenue they receive, are the compensation to victims of crime fund, the criminal justice planning account in the general revenue fund, and the law enforcement and custodial office supplemental retirement fund.

About two-thirds of the state traffic fee, listed as the “state traffic fine” in the report, goes to the state’s general fund, while the remainder is earmarked for trauma and emergency medical services funding. In certain cases, surplus revenue will go to the Texas Mobility Fund.

The OCA notes in its report that it and the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts treat the state traffic fine as a fee, despite the ambiguity of its name.

Harris County Public Defender Jani Maselli Wood, who happens to be married to Ted Wood, has challenged most of the fees that make up the consolidated court cost in a case called Orlando Salinas v. the State of Texas. It is pending at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest court for criminal matters.

According to data from the Municipal Court, it collected about $30.3 million in gross revenue and bonds during the last fiscal year and submitted about $9.3 million of that to the state. It also allocated about $2.1 million to other agencies 'as required by law and contractual obligations.'
Maselli Wood the Monitor and KUT that she believes the fees she has challenged are not going to the courts — or even the judiciary — and are therefore unconstitutional. She went on to argue that many state-mandated court costs and fees may be regarded as “hidden taxes for people who are convicted of offenses, including Class C misdemeanors.

Others might argue in favor of the consolidated court costs and say that criminals should be obligated to carry their weight as far as funding the criminal justice system. From that perspective, requiring a resident charged with a crime to chip in to the compensation to victims of crime fund may be considered reasonable. Whether it is constitutional, though, will be up to the courts to decide.

Regardless, the system has a clear financial impact on the Municipal Court. According to data it provided to the Monitor, the court collected about $30.3 million in gross revenue and bonds during the last fiscal year and submitted about $9.3 million of that to the state. It also allocated about $2.1 million to other agencies “as required by law and contractual obligations.”

These other agencies, according to the court, include the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the Austin Independent School District, the city’s school crossing guard program, a collections company called the Municipal Services Bureau and a database company, Omnibase.

In state fiscal year 2013, which started in September 2012, the OCA report says that “court cost and filing fees generated over $408 million in revenue deposited to the state, while the total Article IV general revenue and general revenue-dedicated appropriations in that same fiscal year were just under $219 million.”

Article IV of the Texas Constitution refers to the state’s executive branch.

Though this is not necessarily an apples-to-apples comparison, Adler commented generally on the revelation. “The state is able to get a surplus that it can then put into its general fund to put into other things,” he said. “I wish the city were in that position.”

Though city budget data for fiscal year 2013 does not match up perfectly with current figures because of a switch to a new accounting method, the budget shows that the Municipal Court made $2.6 million that year, incurring about $13.9 million in general costs and taking in about $16.4 million in general revenue.

Staff wrote in the budget that the accounting change was intended “to provide a more complete picture of the true costs for each department and to bring the City of Austin in line with budgeting practices of other municipalities.” If that is the case, costs in fiscal year 2013 were likely higher than what was reported.

Of course, the Austin Municipal Court is not the only one in the state that is on the hook for revenue. According to the Texas Municipal League, an association that lobbies on behalf of cities in Texas, municipal courts collected over $229 million in what it refers to as “state fee/fine revenue” in 2013. County courts also must submit revenue to the state.

Reform efforts are underway in the Legislature. The same law that directed the OCA report — Senate Bill 1908, filed by Sen. Royce West (D-Dallas) — led West to file SB 287 in order to eliminate certain court fees and costs that have been deemed unnecessary. It has been engrossed in the Senate and sent to the House.

House Bill 1516, filed by Rep. Armando Walle (D-Houston), would require that an individual charged with a court cost receive an itemized bill before having to pay. It is currently pending in the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee.

Maselli Wood said she was planning to testify in favor of the bill at its hearing on April 8. “There's no transparency in government to get an itemized cost bill,” she said.

“If people were aware of it, they could talk to their own legislators and say, ‘Look, why am I being charged this consolidated court cost when I got a traffic ticket and paid through the mail?’” she continued. “There would be more rumbling if people knew exactly what they were paying.”



BELOW, SEE COMMENTS FROM THE INTERESTING WEBSITE QUORA. THESE ARE OFFICER ANSWERS ON THE QUESTION OF QUOTAS, TAKEN FROM THEIR OWN EXPERIENCES.

AS A MATTER OF DEPARTMENTAL MANDATE, IT SEEMS TO VARY WIDELY FROM LOCATION TO LOCATION, AND IS USUALLY UNPOPULAR WITH THE OFFICERS. THERE ARE ALSO STATES WHICH MAKE SUCH QUOTAS ILLEGAL.

THERE IS NO INDICATION OF A FEDERAL LAW PROHIBITING IT, THOUGH. THIS IS ONE OF SEVERAL POLICING ISSUES WHICH, I BELIEVE, SHOULD BE CONTROLLED ON A NATIONAL BASIS AND NOT BY STATE, AS THEY DIRECTLY AFFECT RACIAL AND ETHNIC UNFAIRNESS IN POLICING.

LET’S FACE IT, QUOTAS INFLUENCE AN OFFICER’S INCOME. THAT’S A PERSONAL TEMPTATION. AS A RESULT, THEY NEED SOMONE TO PULL OVER, AND IT’S JUST EASIER FOR A POLICEMAN TO GET AWAY WITH HARASSING A BLACK OR BROWN SKINNED MAN/WOMAN THAN A WHITE. WHITES ARE MORE LETIGIOUS THAN THOSE OF OTHER RACES.

I WISH TO QUICKLY EXPLAIN THAT NOT ALL OFFICER CONTACT, EVEN OVER A TAILLIGHT, IS A SILLY WASTE OF EVERYONE’S TIME, BUT A BLACK/BROWN SKINNED PERSON IS STATISTICALLY MORE LIKELY TO BE STOPPED IN THOSE CASES THAN IS A WHITE. AS WITH OTHER RACIAL ISSUES, WE NEED TO INTERVENE TO PROTECT EVERYONE’S CIVIL RIGHTS. THE FACT THAT CASTILE WAS KILLED IS A TERRIBLE RESULT TO A COMMONPLACE SITUATION THAT I SIMPLY CAN’T TAKE AS “PAR FOR THE COURSE.” IT NEEDS TO BE CURTAILED, IF IT CAN’T BE TOTALLY STOPPED.



https://www.quora.com/Do-police-officers-have-monthly-ticket-quotas

Do police officers have monthly ticket quotas? The victims of speeding tickets often bemoan this as the reason they were pulled over. Are quotas commonplace?

Tim Dees, Retired cop and criminal justice professor, Reno Police Department, Reno Muni...

30.1k Views · Upvoted by Bill Stein, Former Air Force Security Forces Augmentee, third-generation Law Enforcement and Al Saibini, Retired federal agent and deputy sheriff
Most Viewed Writer in Police and Law Enforcement with 2340+ answers
Originally Answered: Do cops / police have quotas to fill?

Reports of quotas or "target goals" appear now and then at various agencies, most recently within the NYPD on "stop and frisk" reports and certain traffic violations like talking on a cell phone while driving. Traffic ticket quotas are illegal under most state laws and they tend to get reported by the cops on whom they are imposed, who don't like them.

Some law enforcement officers, especially those whose primary duty is traffic enforcement based on self-generated "on sight" activity, do have performance standard metrics. Rather than requiring a certain number of citations per hour or per shift, they are more commonly measured in "citizen contacts." A contact can be a traffic stop (that might or might not result in one or more citations), an assist of a stranded motorist, or a field interview of a hitchhiker or some other suspicious person. Unless you're working a very lonely area, it's not difficult to generate a citizen contact per hour, but not all of them will be enforcement stops.

Officers in other roles may have no pressure to write tickets at all. At my former agency, there was a traffic division that mainly did traffic enforcement and accident investigation. The patrol division handled most calls for service and other basic policing duties. Patrol supervisors didn't care if we wrote tickets or not. One of my academy classmates wrote four tickets during his first ten years on the department, all of which were in patrol. At our ten-year celebration (we were vested in the retirement system at ten years), he still had the first book of citations we had been issued in the academy.

There are various federally-funded programs intended to target certain traffic offenses, like DUI, speeding, or seat belt use. If an officer is assigned to one of these programs, he is usually on overtime and is expected to produce citations charging the targeted violation(s) (any others are icing on the cake). If he doesn't produce the expected number consistently, he will probably be denied further overtime opportunities. This might cause the officer to make stops he would otherwise let go by, although it's still not kosher to fabricate reasonable suspicion for the stop, and certainly not to make false accusations. That invites perjury, which will cost the cop his career and possibly land him in jail.

Written Oct 20, 2012 · View Upvotes
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Roger Curtiss
Roger Curtiss, Retired Detective
25.8k Views · Featured in Lifehacker
Roger has 330+ answers in Police and Law Enforcement
Quota is a dirty word in law enforcement. It is called instead, a minimum performance standard which can vary amongst departments.

I worked in a department where it was 10 & 10. Ten movers/ten parkers a month.

Another department made it 10 movers (crash citations did not count) but the chief preferred if you wrote no parking tickets as he received more complaints from those than from anything else.

I also worked briefly in a very small department which had no business tax base but did have a small section of a freeway running through it. So the police department was basically funded from traffic citation revenue. You weren't paid directly by the number of tickets you wrote, but it was tacitly understood that if that revenue stream was to dry up the department would face personnel cutbacks.

Written Aug 28, 2014 · View Upvotes
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India L. J. Mitchell
India L. J. Mitchell, Retired Police officer
58.3k Views · India has 360+ answers and 17 endorsements in Police and Law Enforcement
There is an old joke among police officers.

Citizen: "Do you have a quota of tickets you have to write?"

Officer: "No, I can write as many as I want."

And this is true to some extent. But it is also true that there is an unwritten policy that if you do not write any citations, you must not be doing your job. Some officers just do not like writing citations. They don't like making traffic stops and will only do so if the driver has done something so obvious, and in front of other civilians, that the officer feels obligated to stop the driver for safety reasons. That still does not mean that he or she will write a citation.

In my agency, those of us in patrol had to keep a "Daily." This would be a formal document that showed the times, addresses where we went, written in code, of what we had done.

On the back were boxes for how many traffic citations, criminal citations, parking citations and felony and misdemeanor arrests we had made on that day.

I frequently commented that the form didn't represent how many people we stopped from committing suicide. Or how many domestic disputes we settled or how many missing children we found. So that "daily" never really adequately represented what my day really involved and often, by the numbers, could look as though I did nothing at all.

However, if you are working the "Traffic Unit" then writing citations is an intregal part of your job and if you write no citations, you are going to be asked why.
So as is frequently the case, each police agency has different policies. I am sure there are some that do require a certain number of citations.

Anonymous
5.6k Views
New York City has always denied that such quotas exist. However, in the summer and fall of 2010, evidence came out that NYPD brass had been effectively encouraging such quotas anyway. This lead to the investigation of several high ranking police officials, the dismissal of at least one, the transfer of several others and significant persecution of the whistleblowing cop, Adrian Schoolcraft (he was involuntarily committed on dubious grounds). It's been quite the scandal.

The article that first broke the case:
http://www.villagevoice.com/2010...

Subsequent developments:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/1...
Written Jan 15, 2011 · View Upvotes
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Andrew Brown
Andrew Brown, One day I'll write you a ticket
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In Rolla, MO, the answer is no. Police officers do not have a set number of tickets they need to write over any period of time.

I can't speak for other stations, but I imagine they'd have similar policies.
Updated Dec 1, 2010 · View Upvotes
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Vicky A Cravey
Vicky A Cravey, I love to learn. What I haven't learned and can't look up, I'll ask. What I h...
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Some cities do have quotas. But they can't pull you over for that reason. They reach them by paying more attention to their surroundings, working harder at pulling over violators and refusing to give the drivers "a break".

But they can't "make up" offenses, such as accusing a driver for running a red light when he didn't, and of course, they can't rip off your tags and write you up for failure to display updated tags.

You always have the right to fight the summons, and it's in your best interest to plead "no contest" or "not guilty" in court. Pleading "guilty" will almost always assure you consequences. Also, take in as much information as you can. Videotape the lights changing from the position of the officer's perspective, for instance. Take pictures, gather your DMV records (there may be a fee), anything you can use to plead your case. By the way, judges tend to take the case more seriously if you hire a lawyer. If an insurance hike is compromised, for instance, it would behoove you to hire one.

You can also "negotiate" your sentence. For example, if you are sentenced to six weeks in jail, but you're job is threatened, you can ask the judge for a lighter sentence, ask to drop points and take driver improvement classes (which can now be taken online), to reduce the fine in exchange of community service, even ask if you could draw out the jail term and spend the time on weekends, only. It couldn't hurt to ask. If you are a first time offender, he may lighten up on you or accept a reasonable request.
Written Feb 19, 2011 · View Upvotes
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Joe Stanganelli
Joe Stanganelli, Founder and principal of Beacon Hill Law
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It depends upon the community, although there is a lot of pressure universally to increase traffic ticket revenue.

Some do not (or so we are told).

In some communities/jurisdictions, there are quotas for pullovers -- warnings and tickets combined. In such a case, it does not matter whether the officer gives you a warning or a ticket, so long as he gives you something.

In others, there is a true quota for speeding tickets. (Indeed, through local government connections, I am explicitly aware of at least one town in the Greater Boston area that has such a ticket quota.)