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Another theme: Officers suspected that minority drivers accusing them of racial profiling were trying to intimidate the officers.
They suspected it was a way to evade a ticket or to try to distract the officer because the motorist had a suspended license or something to hide.
“Only a very few officers indicated that racial minority citizens allege racial profiling because they genuinely believe they were stopped because of their race,” the report said.
Officers said minorities had a bias against them that has been taught.
One black officer said: “African Americans learn not to trust the police from a young age.
… Older generations of African Americans had bad experiences with the police and so that leaves a bad impression of the police which is passed down generationally in families.” A white officer said that when he said “Hi” to children in a car during a traffic stop, the adults “will tell the kids don’t talk to the police.” Media blamed Officers blame the news media for part of the negative image, saying that media skew their reporting against police when it comes to the issue of racial profiling, and that media “over-report” on cases like the shooting in Ferguson, Mo.
“So I really think the media are like weather chasers,” one officer said.
“They are going to report anything, and objectivity doesn’t really matter.” What people don’t understand, officers said, is that they are targeting crime, not minorities.
Police call it “proactive policing.” The problem is, the same neighborhoods where they go after gangs and drug trafficking often are home to many low-income minorities.
The officers said they learn from experience to look for certain clothing, gestures and behavior for crime indicators – not race.
“So when you’re driving along and these indicators start popping up you’re like wow,” one officer said.
Police also defend their use of “pretext” stops, where they are stopping someone for a minor traffic violation because they suspect the person of something more serious.
For example, an officer might stop a driver for not signaling soon enough after the car leaves a drug house.
The report notes that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld pretext stops.
“My biggest case came from using a pretext stop for a defective headlight,” an officer said.
A black officer from eastern Kansas said he once wondered about a fellow officer who always seemed to be pulling over black men.
“But getting to know him over the years,” the officer said, “I realized that he is not like that at all, he just has this photographic memory for criminals regardless if they are white, purple, black or red and when he passes you he’s on it.” Training criticized Police say their racial-profiling training is “boring,” “bland” and “mind numbing” and should be more interactive.
Some officers proposed bringing in minorities during the training so the citizens would understand the officers’ view.
It goes both ways.
Birzer noted in an interview about his latest study that when he talked with minorities for his Wichita racial profiling study, they said they wanted to see officer training “so police could have a better understanding of them and their culture.” Part of the problem is that minorities don’t have enough positive contact with police, a white officer said in the latest study.
Another sentiment is that officers have to be smart and realistic about their public relations effort.
“I mean, holding a feed or a barbeque in the middle of the hood with a bunch of cops is not going to do it,” one officer said.
The media also need to be invited to officer training so they can be better educated about police work, officers said.
A white female officer said about the media: “Maybe if they gave as much attention to the positive things that we do that would be a start.
It takes one bad incident to wipe out all good things that go on.”
President Trump made his debut at the United Nations on Tuesday, addressing the U.N. General Assembly at its annual opening.
Afterward, media headlines and news coverage of the speech focused on Trump’s absurd (but admittedly amusing) new nickname for Kim Jong Un, “Rocket Man,” and his threat that the United States is willing to “totally destroy” North Korea to protect itself and its allies.
The mainstream media, liberal elites, and the international community have been doing a lot of handwringing about Trump’s rhetoric and his talk of going it alone.
They also had a lot to say about his comments concerning the Iran nuclear deal, whose dissolution the president has long desired.
Although the focus was on Trump’s supposedly dangerous isolationism and nationalism, what’s really upsetting them is that he dared to say what no one is supposed to say: that the U.N. is broken and that it is unrealistic and dangerous to have a world without borders and without national sovereignty.
In other words, Trump violated the Emperor Has No Clothes rule.
The Importance of Governments Serving Their People One of the major themes of Trump’s U.N. speech was national sovereignty, both of the United States and of foreign countries: “Our government’s first duty is to its people, to our citizens, to serve their needs, to ensure their safety, to preserve their rights, and to defend their values.
As president of the United States, I will always put America first.
Just like you, as the leaders of your countries, will always and should always put your countries first.” Although the international community gives lip service to the idea of national sovereignty and the U.N.’s role in defending it, this concept fundamentally conflicts with the liberal belief that the world should be progressing toward a kind of borderless global nationalism, in which no one country can claim superiority over another.
That’s the real reason Trump was so roundly criticized for saying that he’s willing to go it alone on North Korea.
Trump also dared to praise America for its enduring legacy as a free democracy.
His speech was devoid of the kind of America-bashing that President Obama was fond of, especially in front of international audiences.
Instead, Trump asserted that the United States should “shine as an example for everyone to watch,” which indeed it should.
He also praised the 230th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution as the “foundation of peace, prosperity, and freedom” for Americans and millions around the world who have embraced it as a model of good government.
No doubt, this kind of talk disturbs the American Left and international bureaucracies, both of which have grown comfortable with the idea that American exceptionalism is a myth based on an ugly and misguided sense of supremacy and pseudo-colonialism.
This goes hand-in-hand with “nationalism” becoming a dirty word that can only be interpreted as a form of fascism.
Thus it has become bigoted to desire defensible borders, whether here in the United States or in Europe, and the idea of loving one’s country is now a touchy and uncomfortable subject, something Trump specifically brought up at the end of his speech.
The international community has believed in a sort of fictional world since the end of World War II, in which national sovereignty was to be ceded in exchange for peace on earth.
Except no one really defined whose peace.
Neither did they consider that different countries have different ambitions, not to mention different values that are sometimes irreconcilable.
There can never be a utopic one-world order because countries are made up of people, and people have ambition, vice, and self-interest.
The best that any world order can do is contain these impulses; it can never eradicate them.
Since the U.N.’s founding in 1945, we’ve seen that China and Russia, as permanent members on the U.N. Security Council, have repeatedly and consistently vetoed efforts by the council to take action against rogue members or intervene effectively in genocidal conflicts (like the Syrian civil war).
Everyone knows this, yet no one dares to say it for fear it will expose the U.N. for the failure that it is.
In light of these problems, Trump stated that he would work outside the U.N. if it became necessary, if the United States and its allies continue to be threatened by North Korea and the body doesn’t do more to prevent that.
That makes sense.
It’s absurd to defer to an international body that, with the exception of the first Gulf War, has never resolved a foreign conflict and is not now taking the necessary steps to stop Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Trump called out the rogue regimes represented at the U.N. and “have hijacked the very systems that are supposed to advance them.” He pointed specifically to the countries that sit on the U.N. Human Rights Council that have terrible human rights records themselves, like Cuba and Saudi Arabia.
He also criticized the U.N. for delays and stagnation in resolving conflicts as a result of “bureaucracy and process.” Trump Also Condoned International Cooperation Although his speech promoted American values and interests, and contained a healthy dose of criticism for the U.N., Trump’s speech wasn’t a total rejection of the U.N. or the international community.
Trump called for member states to work together to help protect the sovereignty of other nations, like Ukraine, and protect the international shipping lanes in the South China Sea.
He praised the mission of the U.N., urging that we “must work together and confront together those who threatens us with chaos, turmoil, and terror,” and calling for “all nations to work together to isolate the Kim regime.” He said that although the United States is ready to act unilaterally, he hoped that wouldn’t become necessary because he held out hope that the U.N. would step up and function as it was intended.
Rather than slamming the very existence of the U.N. or threatening to leave (as he has done with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), Trump praised the founding of the international body, calling it a pillar of “peace, security, and prosperity.” He urged the U.N. to make a collective effort to improve, in the hope that one day it would more accountable and be able to effectively advocate for “human dignity and freedom around the world.” That doesn’t sound like the words of an isolationist to me.
Trump’s message was not a black and white case of promoting isolationism and denigrating internationalism.
After all, he said plainly, “As long as I hold this office, I will defend America’s interests above all else, but in fulfilling our obligations to our nations, we also realize that it’s in everyone’s interests to seek the future where all nations can be sovereign, prosperous, and secure.” He sees the need for both, or so it seems.
Despite Trump’s efforts to make a generous nod to the U.N., notwithstanding all the failings he pointed out, half the country (and much of the world) only heard what it wanted to hear—the speech of a dangerous isolationist who threatened to attack North Korea.
That way, they don’t have to talk about the real meat of the speech, which shined a spotlight on the manifest and longstanding failures of the U.N.
“Retired” actress Amanda Bynes is quickly gaining on Lindsay Lohan for the coveted title of most troubled former child star.
While Lohan has your run-of-the-mill substance abuse issues, the former Nickelodeon star has been reportedly been wreaking havoc in New York City during a spree of bizarre behavior.
Over the weekend, Bynes reportedly went to an adult gymnastics class in New York City and “showed up in fishnets and a leotard that looked like lingerie,” Page Six reports.
Bynes was allegedly “muttering to herself” and then “burst into tears when she attempted a cartwheel and her dark-colored wig fell off.” “She immediately started acting strangely,” a “source” told Page Six.
“She lined up with the other gymnasts, and each took their turn to perform a roll.
But Amanda just walked out on the mat, was spinning around in circles and mumbling to herself.” Bynes was then asked to leave the class and was reportedly escorted out.
The incident is similar to the time she was allegedly asked to leave a spinning class after she took off her shirt — revealing nothing but a black bra — and began applying make-up in the gym mirror.
Bynes tweeted last week that she was planning on suing some gossip sites and magazines for claiming she had mental health issues.
She cleared that up by posting that she doesn’t have mental health issues, but that she just “has an eating disorder.” Follow Taylor on Twitter
If sports columns were posted on bulletin boards in town squares instead of the internet, folks would be gathered around Ailene Voisin's Bee column with jaws slung low and "what the Frahms" ringing out regularly.
It's a gem.
Holy cow, it's a gem.
First, Voisin's sources -- which on first glance look like either the Maloofs or close confidants of the Maloofs -- say that the family will accept a matched bid from Sacramento.
In fact, On Thursday, sources close to the Maloofs said that if the Sacramento group submits a matching offer that satisfies the league's other owners, they will embrace an outcome that keeps the Kings in Sacramento.
And "We're giving Sacramento every opportunity to keep the team," one source said Thursday, "but they keep blowing every deadline.
We haven't seen anything in writing."
That's good news, I guess?
But here's the really fun news.
The Maloofs have met with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and have for months looked into buying a hockey franchise, with Las Vegas among the possible destinations.
Their interests also have expanded and included opportunities in Major League Baseball.
I can envision David Stern running over to Gary Bettman during the annual Sports Commissioners Summit (totally a real thing don't try to convince me otherwise) and saying, "Tag, you're it."
(And lord, can you imagine if the Maloofs sold the Kings to the Sacramento group and then successfully bought the Coyotes and moved them to Vegas, blocking Seattle's bid for an NHL team!)
MALOOFED, indeed.
This whole saga has entered the Twilight Zone.
Thanks for sending us there, Ailene.
BY: Follow @LizWFB Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have developed a system that can predict the "psychological status" of users with smartphones and hope to private companies to bring the invention to the market.
The technology appeared on a list of NIH inventions published in the Federal Register that are now available to be licensed by private companies.
The government allows companies to license inventions resulting from federal research in order to expedite their arrival on the marketplace.
The system uses smartphones to ask people how they are doing mentally during the day and based on the results can "deliver an automated intervention" if necessary.
"The NIH inventors have developed a mobile health technology to monitor and predict a user's psychological status and to deliver an automated intervention when needed," according to the notice published Wednesday.
"The technology uses smartphones to monitor the user's location and ask questions about psychological status throughout the day."
"Continuously collected ambulatory psychological data are fused with data on location and responses to questions," the NIH said.
"The mobile data are combined with geospatial risk maps to quantify exposure to risk and predict a future psychological state.
The future predictions are used to warn the user when he or she is at especially high risk of experiencing a negative event that might lead to an unwanted outcome (e.g., lapse to drug use in a recovering addict)."
The NIH said the technology has potential commercial applications for "real-time behavior monitoring" and "therapeutic delivery of an intervention via a mobile device."
Researchers developed the system from a project that tracked the mood and cravings of drug users in Baltimore.
The $8.9 million federal study sought to develop algorithms that could "automatically detect behavioral events (such as episodes of drug use or stress) without requiring self-report."
The NIH said the app is currently being used for drug addiction interventions, but that the "inventors are also seeking to test the technology for other health applications."
Request for comment from the NIH was not returned by press time.