Editorial Roundup: Excerpts from recent editorials

Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

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Aug. 10

The Baltimore Sun on an investigation into the Baltimore Police Department:

When Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Police Commissioner Kevin Davis stood before the cameras this morning to discuss the Department of Justice's exhaustive documentation of the Baltimore Police Department's blatantly unconstitutional and racially discriminatory practices, their message was, in a nutshell, "Don't worry, Baltimore, we're on it." They emphasized that the mayor had asked for the DOJ review, that the city and department had cooperated fully with the federal investigators, that they have already issued several new procedures and policies to "get ahead" of the findings, and that the problems centered on a relatively small number of "bad apples" in the department.

Baloney. Every single incident, every damning statistic, every embarrassing failure of accountability the DOJ documented occurred under Mayor Rawlings-Blake's administration, up to and including the 14 months when the feds were conducting their investigation. The practices the DOJ describes, including potentially hundreds of thousands of unconstitutional stops and searches, excessive and unnecessary use of force, racially discriminatory orders, violations of First Amendment rights and sexist dismissals of complaints of sexual assault are not the work of a few "bad apples." They are the product of intentional policies and wonton failures of accountability, and they continue to this day.

Ms. Rawlings-Blake has said throughout her tenure that she would clean up the bad practices of the Martin O'Malley-zero-tolerance era of Baltimore policing. Her first pick for the city's top cop, Anthony Batts, proclaimed himself a "reform commissioner," and the current chief, Mr. Davis, touts his experience in helping lead Prince George's County's police through a similar DOJ review. Yet the disregard for constitutional policing - not to speak of effective, community-sensitive policing - remains blatant and brazen.

It's still going on

- In the summer of 2015, after the riots and while the DOJ was engaged in its review, a deployment memo posted in one Baltimore police district "encouraged officers to suppress crime through 'proactive enforcement,' including, 'stop and frisk,' 'street level drug enforcement,' 'warrant checks,' 'foot patrol,' 'car stops,' and 'quality of life' arrests" - effectively, an order to violate the constitution and federal law.

- In January of this year, an African-American teenager reported being stopped by two officers who were looking for his brother. They pushed him against a wall and searched him. When they found nothing, they proceeded to strip search him in full view of the street and in front of his girlfriend. Officers claimed that they found drugs on him but no evidence was ever produced, and the charges were dropped. The teen filed a complaint with the department, and he says one of the officers approached him again, "pulled down his pants and grabbed his genitals."

- In March - nearly two years after Freddie Gray was fatally injured in the back of a police van and amid trials of six officers involved in his arrest that centered on whether they committed misconduct by failing to seat-belt him, DOJ investigators surveyed nearly 300 arrestees at bail review hearings and found that more than 20 percent indicated they had been unrestrained for at least part of their rides to Central Booking.

- A Baltimore police sergeant recently told a patrol officer to stop a group of young African-American men, question them and order them to disperse. The patrol officer said he had no valid reason to do so, and the sergeant replied, "Then make something up." That happened while a DOJ investigator was in the car.

The DOJ's report is hardly the first time anyone at the police department learned that what they were doing was unconstitutional. The ACLU sued over the department's mass arrest policies in 2006, leading to a settlement requiring the department to adopt new policies and subject itself to independent monitoring. Nonetheless, the unconstitutional practices continued even under Messrs. Batts and Davis, the DOJ report says, because of "a persistent perception among officers that their performance continues to be measured by the raw numbers of stops and arrests they make, particularly for gun and drug offenses." DOJ investigators watched as patrol officers "actively sought out corners to clear" - unconstitutional behavior that was "reinforced by BPD's mid-level supervisors."

Investigators witnessed an incident in which a patrol officer approached a group of people talking and eating outside a late-night restaurant after the bars had closed. No evidence of criminal activity was evident, but the officer decided to try to clear the area because he believed his supervisor would be mad if he didn't. He wound up in a fight with a man who refused to leave, pulled his gun and fired, hitting two people, at least one of whom was an uninvolved bystander. Supervisors reviewing the incident found no fault with the officer's actions.

And that's not at all unusual. The DOJ found not one single instance of a front-line supervisor questioning an arrest. Instead, they routinely signed off on officers' reports even when they "describe egregious constitutional violations."

Those practices are all happening in a department under intense scrutiny from the public, the media, advocates and a large team of federal investigators. The only conclusion we can draw is that large swaths of the department see nothing wrong with it.

The racial dimension of the misconduct is overwhelming

Chief Davis said during today's news conference that Baltimore police officers can and do engage in effective, constitutional law enforcement. The DOJ report suggests that's true - in white neighborhoods. Investigators found anecdotal evidence of that from the varying reports of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the police from one neighborhood to another, but there's "overwhelming statistical evidence" of racial disparities in police practices as well.

- Blacks are nearly three times more likely than whites to be stopped by police in Baltimore. Police recorded 300,000 pedestrian stops during the period the DOJ examined (likely only a fraction of the actual number, given the department's horrendous record keeping practices), and 44 percent of them occurred in two, heavily African-American police districts that comprise just 11 percent of the city's population. More than 400 people were stopped by police at least 10 times during the 2010-2015 period; 95 percent of them were African-American. One middle-aged African-American man was stopped 30 times in four years, resulting in not one citation or arrest.

- Discretionary arrests for offenses like loitering, failure to obey and disorderly conduct overwhelmingly fall on African-Americans, far in excess of their share of the population. Blacks are arrested for drug possession at five times the rate of whites, despite similar levels of drug use. As the report notes, the fact that racial disparities were most pronounced for discretionary offenses "is suggestive of intentional discrimination."

- Blacks are 37 percent more likely than others to be searched in pedestrian stops and 27 percent more likely to be searched in vehicle stops. Yet searches of white people are more than twice as likely to turn up contraband in vehicle stops and 50 percent more likely in pedestrian stops. That means Baltimore officers are capable of exercising the level of discernment the law and good policing requires; they are simply far more likely to do so when dealing with white residents.

Why should that be in a department where minorities make up a majority of the force, that was headed by a black commissioner during two of the five years examined and that answered to a black mayor the entire time? It's not just a function of overzealous enforcement of the war on drugs in poor, black neighborhoods. It's rooted in a prejudice that is reinforced by the department itself. The DOJ found a template created by a shift commander for justifying trespassing arrests near public housing complexes. It includes blanks for the officer to fill in various details like name, date and location - but the detail that the arrestee is a black male is already written in, as if there is no other conceivable option. "In some cases, supervisors have issued explicitly discriminatory orders, such as directing a shift to arrest 'all the black hoodies' in a neighborhood," the DOJ report says.

The department has failed to learn its lessons

Federal and city officials are now expected to negotiate a consent decree, to be overseen by a federal judge, to improve training, technology and recruitment, among other things. Ms. Rawlings-Blake promised full cooperation, and Mr. Davis pledged that the Baltimore police department would emerge from the process as a national model. But as the report underscores, the department has shown a remarkable ability to avoid learning its lessons.

- The settlement from the ACLU lawsuit required the department to instigate a series of reforms to move away from zero-tolerance policing, but after four years, the independent monitor found it had failed to fully comply with more than half of the conditions of the agreement. The DOJ found that some of the guidance the department issued pursuant to the suit on how to make constitutional arrests was itself wrong.

- Although the department itself has historically shown little interest in tracking data about complaints or even lawsuits against individual officers, others have. The state's attorney's office has at various times maintained lists of officers who were so untrustworthy that prosecutors would not call them to the witness stand. "Although the State's Attorney's Office regularly shared this list with BPD, the department rarely used the information to identify officers who may need support or discipline," the DOJ report says. "As a result, problematic officers remain on the street, detaining, searching and arresting people even though the state's attorney's office has determined that it cannot prosecute a crime based on the officers' testimony."

- Despite losing or settling a number of lawsuits relating to alleged "rough rides" that led to severe injury, paralysis or even death to detainees, the DOJ found that Baltimore police made only half-hearted efforts to determine whether officers were following policies on the use of seat belts in transport vans. Audits were cursory, and impressive results were flatly contradicted by officers' descriptions of actual practice. The department kept no statistics on such injuries, and what cameras existed in the vans before a recent retrofit did not work.

- In 2010, The Sun published an investigation into the misclassification of rape cases by the Baltimore police, but the DOJ found that the reforms the department promised either never materialized or faded. The department's handling of rape cases is "grossly inadequate," and investigators documented cases of extreme dismissiveness and even outright disdain of victims by officers.

We believe Commissioner Davis is sincere about his desire to make the Baltimore department a model of urban policing. His predecessor, Anthony Batts, was too, and Mayor Rawlings-Blake has been for the entire six years she's been in office. Yet the DOJ report shows that their efforts have not come close to changing pervasive patterns of unconstitutional, discriminatory and self-defeating practices. Correcting that is going to require a lot more than some new training programs and computers in officers' cars. It's going to take a complete overhaul of the department, and it can't come soon enough.

Online:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/

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Aug. 10

The Telegraph, United Kingdom on the relationship between Russia and Turkey:

The European Union and Nato face a significant challenge from the unfolding diplomatic rapprochement between Russia and Turkey. For centuries, these two countries were implacable enemies and efforts a decade ago to forge a strategic partnership were undone by the Syrian civil war. While Moscow propped up Bashar al-Assad, Ankara either stayed out or supported his enemies. Relations hit a low point last November when Turkish jets shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber near the Syrian border for violating Turkey's airspace. Russia imposed sanctions and a freeze descended once more.

But even before the attempted military take-over last month, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had decided he could no longer afford a cold war with Moscow and began making overtures to the Kremlin. The failed coup appears to have expedited matters: yesterday Mr Erdogan met with Vladimir Putin to agree to normalise relations between the two countries.

For President Putin, the opportunity to drive a wedge between Turkey, Nato and the EU is a small price to pay for abating Russian anger over the jet incident. He must recognise in Mr Erdogan a leader cut from the same cloth - a democratically elected nationalist behaving more like a despot.

The Turkish leader's purge of opponents after the thwarted putsch has alarmed EU leaders who had encouraged Ankara to believe it could join the Union at some point in the future and had promised to introduce visa-free access for Turkish travellers to the Schengen area. But no date has been given for either and several EU countries have made clear they would veto Turkey's accession. Europe has been desperate to keep both options open in order to stop Turkey reneging on a deal to keep Syrian refugees from crossing into Europe.

But Mr Erdogan seems to be cooling towards Europe, none of whose leaders have been to Ankara since the failed coup, and is seeking alliances elsewhere. The implications of an improving relationship between Russia and Turkey are significant both for policy on Syria and for Nato itself. The US nuclear base at Incirlik is a key part of western defences; were Turkey to leave the organisation its loss would be a serious blow. Perhaps a weakened Mr Erdogan needs a thaw with Russia more than Mr Putin needs him. But the Russian leader has grabbed at the chance to cause fresh consternation in the capitals of Europe and in Washington.

Online:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

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Aug. 10

The Wall Street Journal on Chinese show trials:

Chinese authorities turned last week's show trials of four legal activists into a multimedia sensation, with forced confessions airing nightly on prime-time news and propaganda videos online. Beyond vilifying the four men, who advocated for dissidents and religious minorities, the trials had a broader purpose: to paint the United States as China's enemy.

The courtroom drama was highly choreographed, with four trials over four days, each lasting a few hours. The accused, who couldn't use their own lawyers or have family in the courtroom, were arrested during last year's sweep of nearly 300 lawyers and legal activists. When they surfaced in a courtroom in the port city of Tianjin after more than 12 months incommunicado, they denounced themselves, praised their jailers and condemned overseas influences for leading them astray.

"We must see clearly the ugly faces of those hostile foreign forces, and those within the country with ulterior motives," declared defendant Zhai Yanmin. Mr. Zhai was affiliated with the Fengrui law firm, which represented artist Ai Weiwei, members of the Falun Gong religious sect and parents of children poisoned by tainted baby formula.

"Don't be hoodwinked by the rhetoric they parade about 'democracy,' 'human rights' and the 'public good,' " Mr. Zhai warned the public, echoing official talking points. He was convicted of subversion and given a suspended three-year sentence.

"I never grasped that Western 'peaceful evolution' of China was so serious," said fellow defendant Zhou Shifeng, founder of the Fengrui law firm. " Xi Jinping's rule of law has made China ever stronger." His sentence is seven years.

Hu Shigen, a longtime democracy and religious-freedom advocate sentenced to 7ˆ½ years, confessed to being "influenced by bourgeois liberalism" and working with "foreign anti-China forces" for sending fellow defendant Gou Hongguo to an interfaith conference in Taiwan.

The conference was hosted by Initiatives for China, a U.S.-based group that promotes "a peaceful transition to democratic governance in China" and is supported by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy. The NED is an increasingly frequent target of Chinese condemnation. When authorities detained a Beijing-based Swedish legal activist for 23 days early this year, his interrogators cited internal NED documents.

For decades Beijing handled dissident trials delicately, with few if any cameras in the courtroom and brief mentions in official media. Today state agencies compete to amplify saturation news coverage.

The Central Committee of the Communist Youth League last week posted a video on social media accusing U.S. and other diplomats of orchestrating protests by defendants' wives outside the Tianjin courthouse. "Truly, these were well-trained performers," the video says as two wives are seen screaming and crying. It also slams former U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman for political meddling, citing his walk past a protest in Beijing in 2011.

The office of China's chief prosecutor also circulated a video accusing the U.S. of trying to turn China into another Syria by fomenting unrest in Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang. "The central government under the leadership of the party is crystal clear about the dangers of 'color revolution,' " it said. "We are extremely confident that China will not become the next Soviet Union."

Anti-Western agitation is on the rise within the Communist Party. In 2013 a secret Party directive known as "Document No. 9" exhorted cadres to battle "false ideological trends" including "Western constitutional democracy"; the belief that "freedom, democracy and human rights are universal and eternal" values; "the West's idea of journalism"; and "rejecting the accepted conclusions" on events such as the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. Targets to combat included "Western embassies, consulates, media operations and nongovernmental organizations."

China's Communists may no longer be Marxists, but under Xi Jinping they take their Leninism seriously. This is a tragedy for the victims of state abuse, growing numbers of whom languish in prison for speaking up_as do lawyers who dare to defend them. It's also dangerous. As in Russia and Iran today, official propaganda that paints America as a villain can incite nationalist passions that erupt in unpredictable ways_and not always peacefully in the rest of the world.

Online:

http://www.wsj.com/

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Aug. 9

The New York Times on Donald Trump's comments about the Second Amendment and Hillary Clinton:

Three months from the presidential election, and one day after his running mate promised "specific policy proposals for how we rebuild this country at home and abroad," Americans find themselves asking whether Donald Trump has called for the assassination of Hillary Clinton.

On Tuesday at a rally in North Carolina, Mr. Trump falsely charged, as he has before, that "Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment." Then he added: "If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know."

Directly behind him, a supporter's jaw dropped. Afterward, Mr. Trump's campaign issued an utterly mystifying statement about the "power of unification," suggesting that Mr. Trump was referring to the political power of Second Amendment supporters, and was not advocating violence. The National Rifle Association, which has endorsed Mr. Trump, concurred with his statement on Supreme Court justices and did not specifically address the rest of his remarks.

Was it a threat? Mr. Trump's campaign has been marked by extraordinarily combative rhetoric. At another rally, he said he would like to punch a protester in the face and see him leave "on a stretcher." His supporters have shouted "kill her" when he mentions Mrs. Clinton. The Republican convention heard cries of "lock her up." A New Hampshire delegate, Al Baldasaro, called for Mrs. Clinton to "be put in the firing line and shot for treason."

That comment wound up on the Secret Service's radar. Mr. Trump's comment should as well.

Seldom, if ever, have Americans been exposed to a candidate so willing to descend to the depths of bigotry and intolerance as Mr. Trump. That he would make Tuesday's comment amid sinking poll numbers and a wave of Republican defections suggests that when bathed in the adulation of a crowd, Mr. Trump is unable to control himself.

Just eight years ago, Senator John McCain of Arizona, then the Republican presidential nominee, told a man at a town hall session who said he was "scared" of an Obama presidency that Mr. Obama "is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared as president of the United States."

Twenty minutes later, a woman told Mr. McCain that she couldn't trust Mr. Obama because "he's an Arab." ''No ma'am," Mr. McCain replied. "He's a decent family man, a citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues. And that's what this campaign is all about."

Republicans would do well to summon the integrity that Mr. McCain showed in 2008, and not just to give some sense of decency to this ugly campaign. The time has come for Republicans - including Mr. McCain - to repudiate Mr. Trump once and for all.

Online:

http://www.nytimes.com/

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Aug. 9

The Los Angeles Times on Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland:

It has been almost six months since Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly, and almost five months since President Obama nominated Merrick Garland, the widely respected and centrist chief judge of the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., to succeed him.

Because of obstructionism by Senate Republicans, however, the Senate is no closer to holding a hearing on Garland's nomination, much less voting on it. Meanwhile, the court has divided 4 to 4 in some cases, preventing a definitive resolution of important issues including the legality of Obama's executive action temporarily granting deportation relief and work permits to 4 million immigrants.

Within hours of Scalia's death, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that he wouldn't act on a new nomination by invoking - or, rather, inventing - the principle that a Supreme Court vacancy that occurs in a presidential election year can't be filled "until we have a new president." At the Republican National Convention, McConnell put it more bluntly: "I made (a) pledge that Obama would not fill this seat." If he follows through on that promise, it would leave the court hamstrung by its 4-4 split, possibly through its entire 2016-17 term.

This is shameless partisanship, and it could also be self-defeating. As Obama has warned, continued obstructionism on the Garland nomination could lead to "an endless cycle of more tit for tat (that would) make it increasingly impossible for any president, Democrat or Republican, to carry out their constitutional function." That's a message the president and Senate Democrats need to revive when the Senate returns to work after Labor Day.

Given the Republicans' recalcitrance so far, such pressure might seem pointless. But where principle might not move Senate Republicans to do the right thing, politics might. With Donald Trump lagging in the polls, McConnell and his colleagues are probably asking themselves whether confirming Garland in this Congress wouldn't be preferable to waiting to see who might be nominated next year by a President Hillary Clinton.

That course would be especially attractive if Clinton won and Garland's nomination was considered during a postelection lame-duck session. Although Clinton hasn't said she would renominate Garland if she was elected, she has said "the president is on the right side of both the Constitution and history" in pressing the Senate to act on the nomination. Over the weekend, Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Tim Kaine replied "absolutely" when he was asked whether the Garland nomination should be taken up in the lame-duck session.

If the Senate takes its responsibility to the Constitution seriously, it will act even sooner than that.

Online:

http://www.latimes.com/

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Aug. 8

The Boston Herald on welfare and terrorists:

The Islamic State has apparently urged its followers to claim as many government benefits as they can as a source of funding, and a new report suggests they are listening. American authorities at every level need to maintain an airtight seal around welfare, unemployment and other government benefits to close off a possible source of terror funding.

Five of the alleged plotters in the recent Paris and Brussels terrorist attacks were relying on welfare payments to support themselves and their terrorist plotting, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. The surviving Brussels attacker, Salah Abdeslam, was collecting unemployment (improperly, it seems) until three weeks before the attack.

A check by Belgian authorities in April found that 14 terror detainees continued to collect benefits in prison.

Now, whether the plotters were specifically using those resources to fund the attacks - or merely to support themselves while they plotted death and destruction - isn't clear, but it's a distinction without much of a difference.

This is a thorny problem for government officials. The benefit programs are designed of course to combat poverty, which many believe is a contributing factor in cases of homegrown terrorism. But the idea that taxpayers would be subsidizing the work of terrorists plotting against them is truly horrifying.

The problem may not be as acute in the U.S. as it is in Europe, where more young, able-bodied men are eligible to collect cash benefits from notoriously generous social welfare programs.

But it's hardly a theoretical problem here. Remember that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was living off the taxpayers, too.

Online:

http://www.bostonherald.com/

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Aug. 8

The Kansas City Star on the death of a 10-year-old boy on a Kansas waterslide:

A thorough investigation must follow the tragic death Sunday of 10-year-old Caleb Thomas Schwab at the Schlitterbahn water park in Kansas City, Kan.

The boy, the second oldest of Kansas state Rep. Scott Schwab's four sons, died on Verrückt, which opened in July 2014. At 17 stories tall, it is billed as the tallest water slide in the world.

Little was known about how the accident occurred Sunday afternoon when admittance to the water park was free for area elected officials and their families. Schlitterbahn said on its Facebook page that it was saddened by Caleb's death.

The ride will remain closed "pending a full investigation," Schlitterbahn said. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the family during this difficult time." Officials at the water park have said nothing about what may have happened to cause Caleb's death.

The water slide had been a major tourist attraction. It's good that the state mandates a qualified inspector's approval before any amusement ride reopens after a major accident.

Certainly no more tragedies need to occur at Schlitterbahn. Riders on Verrückt must be at least 54 inches tall. Each three-person raft holds people with a combined weight of 400 to 550 pounds. Passengers are secured with straps across the waist and one shoulder.

The ride includes 264 steps to the top and call boxes for people to report emergencies. The chute drops 168 feet 7 inches, sending the raft at speeds up to 70 mph. The ride then climbs a second hill, plunges into a 50-foot drop and then continues to a stop. Officials weren't commenting on where things may have gone wrong, resulting in Caleb's death.

A police investigation is underway. The Wyandotte County medical examiner was doing an autopsy, but Monday evening Kansas City, Kan., police said Caleb Schwab died from a fatal neck injury.

Amusement ride injuries and fatalities have occurred in other cities in the U.S. After investigations to determine the cause, the attractions have reopened with improvements geared toward prevention.

For the sake of public safety, people need to know the cause of what happened to Caleb at Verrückt. They also need to be assured that safeguards will be put in place after more details are known to ensure that no more injuries or deaths will occur again.

A Go Fund Me fundraising page has been set up to cover the funeral and other expenses for Caleb. By Monday afternoon, it had raised more than $23,000.

Meanwhile, Rep. Schwab, his wife, Michele, and their family need time with friends and loved ones to grieve over the loss of Caleb.

Online:

http://www.kansascity.com/