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roccorrios · 5 years ago

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Calling 911: When Should You Dial a Call?

When Should You Dial 911?

Emergencies come suddenly and in different ways. While having a first aid kit in your home can come in handy during emergencies, calling 911 links you to immediate help.

All you need to do is to dial 911 and inform the 911 dispatcher what and where the emergency is.

In this post, we help answer the question: when should you dial 911?

What’s a 911 Call?

911 is the universal emergency number that anybody living in the USA can dial. The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) in 1967 met with AT&T to set up the emergency number.

They aimed at getting a number that was not only short but one that was easy to remember.

What will the Dispatcher do?

The dispatcher will ask you a few questions.

Answer these in the best way you can.

Hold on to the line and follow all the instructions you receive as you wait for help to arrive.

Never call 911 unless the issue is an emergency.

Remember, 911 is designed to assist in situations that involve fires, medical emergencies, or ongoing crime.

If you witness someone get injured, hurt, or get involved in another type of emergency, waste no time.

Some of the emergencies that would prompt you to make a 911 call include:

A fire that’s beyond control

An accident

An assault, burglary, or an ongoing crime

If someone needs a medical emergency – such as stroke, heart attack, and seizure

When you witness a seriously injured person who’s either in shock or bleeding severely

What Happens When You Call 911 – Video

When Should I Call 911?

Here is more information on when you should contact 911.

When Experiencing an Acute Allergic Reaction

If you or someone else starts showing signs of an acute allergic reaction such as swelling of the tongue, difficulty in breathing, and an increased heart rate, you want to call 911 immediately.

Remember, acute allergic reactions can cause death in less than one hour and you could have limited time to save the individual’s life.

When having Breathing Difficulties

If you or someone is showing signs of difficulty when trying to breathe in and out – and more so when they’re experiencing acute symptoms such as severe wheezing, turning blue, or high pitched breathing sounds – you should call 911 for assistance.

Such a person will need immediate treatment or medication which they can receive from 911 responders.

During an Attempted Break-in

If you notice that someone is trying to break into your house, Refrain from taking matters in your own hands.

Call 911 for assistance.

Remember, the burglar could be under the influence of alcohol and drugs, or even armed.

When this is the case, confronting them could only make matters worse as they could severely harm you.

When someone has Fallen and is Unconscious or Injured

Moving an individual after a fall can worsen the situation – especially because determining the full extent of organ damage and spinal injuries can be impossible.

If you absolutely have to move someone, read this article on how to move accident victims or an injured person.

If you notice that someone has fallen and is unresponsive, the best thing to do is to dial 911.

Responders are trained and experienced enough to handle the victim accordingly to avoid further injuries.

Can You Call 911 from a Cell Phone?

What’s the difference between calling 911 from cellphone vs landline?

The difference comes in with the way the calls are routed and tracked.

When you call 911, it’s important to know what to expect as only then will you get the assistance you need immediately.

What happens when you call 911?

Once you call 911 from a landline from any part of the country, emergency responders will find you from any location.

This is because when you call 911 from a conventional landline, a computer situated in the dispatch center displays the phone’s number and address.

This is known as automatic location identification or automatic number identification.

The basic equipment in any Public Service Answering Point of this concept is referred to as the 911 center.

Mobile Phones differ from Landlines

What happens when you call 911 from a mobile phone?

By so doing, you’ll be transmitting signals via the air.

While the tower that captures the phone’s signal may be close, the information delivered may not be sufficient for the dispatcher to locate you.

According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC,) all wireless carriers must display your location to 911 dispatchers.

Regardless of your preferred technology, location information must be displayed in approximately 50% of all wireless calls made to 911.

The percentage is set to rise to 70% by the year 2020.

The FCC rules give an allowance of up to six minutes within which responders must identify your location.

Failure to do this can result in the carrier being declared to violate the rules. Still, this would constitute a large number of calls, either with slow to populate or no location data whatsoever.

Advancement of Technology

As technology advances, a major improvement has been done on iPhone and Android operating systems.

This has come in handy to enhance the ability of smartphones to display the exact location, making it easier for emergency dispatchers to find victims.

The downside of this technology is that it only covers smartphones.

Even with these enhancements, the closest cell tower could be in a different country or region.

This would necessitate the 911 responders to cross borders before accessing the emergency scene.

What happens if you accidentally call 911?

Assuming you call from a cellphone and hang up immediately, 911 emergency dispatchers opine that they’ll request the carrier to provide your number.

They then proceed to call back for follow up purposes.

In case the number retrieval process fails, they may need to estimate the location, making the process challenging seeing that it could or couldn’t be accurate.

What Should you do when Calling 911 from a Cellphone?

If you place 911 calls Rochester NY from a mobile phone, inform the call taker of the emergency you have, and mention your location.

Remember, different emergency types utilize different dispatch centers. By providing the right information you enable the call taker to dispatch the information to the right-center.

Further, you want to remain calm and speak clearly.

Remember, call takers are trained to extract as much information from you as possible and ask relevant questions straight from a computer screen.

The best thing you can do is to listen carefully can provide accurate answers.

By communicating your exact position, you help the responders find you fast and with ease.

Provide your locations as concisely as possible to facilitate this.

Can you Call 911 Online?

Calling 911 online is possible and easy.

All you need is to turn your internet on and switch on any of your digital devices.

There are other VoIP applications you can use as well.

Still, you shouldn’t rely on VoIP applications or even Skype.

This is because they often don’t connect you with the closest 911 center.

Still, these applications could save you in an emergency.

What Should you do when Waiting for Help to Arrive?

Stay on the line and act on the instructions provided to you by the 911 emergency responder.

Depending on your location, the emergency response team could arrive before the dispatcher finishes giving instructions or asking questions.

Before the responders arrive, ensure you have everything you may need.

For instance, have your medical data in order, if you have a chronic disease related to the brain, lungs, the heart, or even blood sugar, you probably are under medication.

Do you experience any allergies after taking some medication?

Make sure all this information is readily available as it will come in handy to help the responders know how to handle your situation.

If you have pets that could pose a danger to the responders, make sure they are locked up where possible.

If you aren’t in a position to secure them, you may want to inform the dispatcher before the responders arrive.

What to Expect When the Responders Arrive

Once the responders arrive, they quickly assess the situation first.

They’ll look around the conditions of your home and evaluate your skin for any signs of paleness, sweating or dryness.

Before they can proceed to set up their equipment or even ask any questions, they’ll know whether you’re at risk.

If you’re experiencing an acute medical condition and have to be rushed to the emergency center, the responders may ask you where you prefer.

They could also be working under protocols with strict instructions on where they should go next.

You’ll need to cooperate with them to get the best assistance.

How can you Call 911 with a Cellphone?

If you’re calling from a cell phone, let the call taker know your exact location immediately. Give them your wireless phone number too. This will help the call taker call you back should your call get disconnected. Ensure your cell phone is locked when you’re not using it. This will prevent unintended calls to 911.

Can You Call 911 in Another State?

It’s possible but it can be complicated. Remember, emergency dispatch centers or public service answering points are tasked with responding to 911 calls, and providing assistance to the needs of people within designated places. When you dial 911, the call is routed to a public service answering point that manages calls within your geographical region.

How can I Dial 911 from iPhone

Tap emergency on the passcode screen, dial 911 then tap

On the Passcode screen, tap Emergency

Dial the emergency number (for example, 911 in the U.S.), then tap

When Not to Call 911 – Video

Finally

Knowing when you should and shouldn’t call 911 is critical if you have to get the best assistance.

If you or someone close to you experience some of the conditions we have mentioned here, you’ll need to dial 911.

You’ll also need to know what to say when you call.

Where possible, use a landline as it makes it easier for the dispatcher to figure out your exact location.

More helpful reading:

10 Worst Natural Disasters (Deadliest in History, Biggest, & Most Recent)

How to Tell if a Snake is Poisonous or Not (Identify Non Venomous vs Most Dangerous)

Wilderness Survival Kits: 10 Essentials You Should Always Bring With You Outdoors

How to Escape a Sinking Car

How to Choose the Best Survival Kit

How to Create a Disaster Plan for Your Home

Signs of a Tornado Coming: 6 Warning Signals

10 Worst Natural Disasters in History

https://www.wikihow.com/Call-911

The post Calling 911: When Should You Dial a Call? appeared first on survivalistgear.co.

source https://survivalistgear.co/calling-911/

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bestmarijuanaboutiques · 5 years ago

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DOJ Report: The Cannabis Effect on Crime: Time-Series Analysis of Crime in Colorado and Washington State

New Post has been published on https://bestmarijuanaboutiques.com/?post_type=wprss_feed_item&p=23746

DOJ Report: The Cannabis Effect on Crime: Time-Series Analysis of Crime in Colorado and Washington State

Abstract

Previous studies based on relatively weak analytical designs lacking contextualization and appropriate comparisons have reported that the legalization of marijuana has either increased or decreased crime. Recognizing the importance for public policy making of more robust research designs in this area during a period of continuing reform of state marijuana laws, this study uses a quasi-experimental, multi-group interrupted time-series design to determine if, and how, UCR crime rates in Colorado and Washington, the first two states to legalize marijuana, were influenced by it. Our results suggest that marijuana legalization and sales have had minimal to no effect on major crimes in Colorado or Washington. We observed no statistically significant long-term effects of recreational cannabis laws or the initiation of retail sales on violent or property crime rates in these states.

Keywords: Legalization of marijuana, Amendment 64, I-502, crime rates, interrupted time-series analysis

Introduction

In many ways the legalization of cannabis by ten states and the District of Columbia, as of March 2019, constitutes a grand ongoing experiment into how a major public policy initiative does or does not accomplish its expected outcomes. One of the principal expectations of the proponents of Initiative 502, the voter-initiated bill authorizing the recreational sale of marijuana in Washington, was that crime would decrease. Crimes generally were expected to decline in number, but particularly those crimes associated with the use of marijuana (e.g., possession, black market production, sales and distribution of cannabis, burglaries or thefts believed to be committed to secure funds to purchase marijuana). Some preliminary studies released shortly after legalization have intimated that crime rates have been going up rather dramatically in some of the states that have legalized recreational marijuana (Smart Approaches to Marijuana, 2018). In Washington State, early reports suggested that the number of marijuana-related offenses such as assault, theft, harassment, and vehicular offenses increased in Washington after the legalization (Northwest High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area [NHIDTA], 2016), but that “violent crime is down since Washington legalized marijuana” (Santos, 2017Santos, M. (2017). What actually happened to violent crime after Washington legalized marijuana. The News Tribune. Retrieved fromhttps://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/marijuana/article163750293.html [Google Scholar]). Or, paradoxically, the article by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker, claiming (based on a book by Berenson, [2019Berenson, A. (2019). Tell your children: The truth about marijuana, mental illness, and violence. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. [Google Scholar]]) that violent crime had increased in Washington state post legalization.

As Garland (2001Garland, D. (2001). The culture of control. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) has noted, there is a strong political demand for immediate answers to often quite complicated questions of public policy. In short, many politicians are inclined to make use of the earliest available data, and unfortunately too often what is available for public consumption at the outset of change in policy represents research employing limited pre/post analyses or misrepresentation of facts. Too often the results reported from such analyses fail to take into consideration the context of practice. For example, consider headlines associated with increasing citations for public marijuana consumption, in and around major cities. In many ways, these headlines are interpreted to suggest that marijuana users are increasingly consuming in public, a practice which was explicitly banned in Washington law. However, to some extent, these increases may in fact relate to property ordinances and rental agreements banning smoking, where violation is an automatic qualification for termination of the lease. Such policy conundrums create an environment where it is illegal to smoke in public and essentially illegal for marijuana users to smoke in their residence. Additionally, pressure from retail establishments and other members of the public can create pressure on police officers to issue citations.

In the absence of more rigorous and robust types of analyses, policy discussions and decisions in those states considering the liberalization of their own cannabis laws are prone to believe the misleading conclusions disseminated about likely outcomes. A variety of claims regarding the deleterious effects of legalization have already been made in a number of instances such as in Berenson’s widely cited book (2019) about the purported dangers of marijuana and Vestal (2019)’s column for the Spokesman Review. Some politicians have also linked the legalization of marijuana with increases in violence, often without the support of empirical data (Adams, 2018Adams, M. (2018, March 28). California officials say marijuana legalization causing more violent crime. Forbes. Retrieved July fromhttps://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeadams/2018/03/28/california-officials-say-marijuana-legalization-causing-more-violent-crime/#467755382c3b [Google Scholar]). Advocacy groups, both for and against marijuana legalization might also contribute to this problem. For example, the group Smart Approaches to Marijuana (2018), frequently presents anecdotal or single-site evidence about potential increases in crime, without a robust analysis to support assertions.

Recognizing the importance for public policy making of more robust research designs in this area, this study uses a quasi-experimental, multi-group interrupted time-series design to determine if, and how, crime rates in Colorado and Washington State were influenced by the legalization of recreational marijuana in 2012 and the start of retail sales in 2014. The objective of the current study is to evaluate whether cannabis legalization would lead to changes in crime rates. This multi-group interrupted time-series study is more rigorous than the limited pre/post analysis frequently used to resolve political discussions because its quasi-experimental design has greater ability to assess causality than correlational studies (Cook & Campbell, 1979Cook, T. D., & Campbell, D. T. (1979). Quasi-experimentation: Design & analysis issues for field settings (Vol. 351). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. [Google Scholar]). As such, this research is timely in that these were the two earliest states to legalize the growing, processing, and commercial sale of cannabis for recreational use. Notably, we observed no statistically significant long-term effects of recreational cannabis laws or the initiation of retail sales on violent or property crime rates in either Colorado or Washington.

As the nationwide debate about legalization, the federal classification of cannabis under the Controlled Substances Act, and the consequences for crime – from legalization – continues, it is essential to center that discussion on studies employing contextualized and robust research designs with as few limitations as possible.

Read full report https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07418825.2019.1666903

#Array

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benrleeusa · 6 years ago

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[David Post] Denying Bail

The Arizona Supreme Court got it right: categorical denials of bail to persons charged with sexual assault violates the Constitution.

In a posting here on the Volokh Conspiracy last week ("Is a Categorical Denial of Bail for Sex Offenders Constitutional?"), Paul Cassell summarized an amicus brief he co-authored urging the US Supreme Court to grant certiorari in Arizona v. Goodman, a case involving a provision of Arizona law under which pre-trial bail must be denied to persons charged with sexual assault where "the proof is evident or the presumption great that the person is guilty." [The Scotusblog page for the case is here.]

Arizona's general bail statute provides (as, I believe, do the statutes of all other States) that courts may deny bail to persons charged with a felony, but only after an individualized determination that the defendant "poses a substantial danger to another person or to the community."*

*The Arizona general bail statute, AZ Rev. Stat. 13-3961, provides that a person charged with a felony offense "may not be admitted to bail" where the court finds, after a pre-trial bail hearing: (a) that there is "clear and convincing evidence that the person charged poses a substantial danger to another person or the community"; (b) that "no condition or combination of conditions of release may be imposed that will reasonably assure the safety of the other person or the community"; and (c) that "the proof is evident or the presumption great that the person committed the offense."

The provision at issue in Goodman replaces this individualized determination with a categorical one: all persons charged with sexual assault are to be denied bail, notwithstanding the constitutionally-mandated presumption of innocence, without the need to produce any evidence showing that they are a danger to the community; they will, in effect, be presumed dangerous (at least, if "the proof is evident or the presumption great that the person committed the offense").

The Arizona Supreme Court struck this provision down as an unconstitutional deprivation of due process. Due process, the court held, requires an individualized determination of dangerousness unless the crime charged "inherently demonstrates that the accused will pose an unmanageable risk of danger if released pending trial." The court, by a 4-3 majority, found that it did not:

"[The law] is facially unconstitutional because it categorically prohibits bail without regard for individual circumstances. [It] does not provide any procedures to determine whether a person charged with sexual assault would pose a danger if granted pre-trial release. A court's finding that the proof is evident or the presumption great only shows a likelihood that an accused committed the charged sexual assault. It does not address the likelihood that an accused would commit a new sexual assault or other dangerous crime if released pending trial....

To be clear, courts can [and must] deny bail to a person charged with sexual assault when the proof is evident or the presumption great as to the charge and that person 'poses a substantial danger to another person or the community.' Before doing so, however, courts must engage in an individualized determination ..."

Paul's brief argues they got it wrong: Arizona can, consistent with the Constitution, "categorically deny bail based on the charged offense if it can show that defendants charged with that offense categorically present a continuing danger to the community," and "a well-supported charge of sexual assault is a sufficient proxy for future dangerousness":

As this Court recognized in Smith v. Doe, releasing sex offenders pending trial presents a substantial danger to the community because the "risk of recidivism posed by sex offenders is 'frightening and high.'" 538 U.S. 84, 103 (2003) ("high rate of recidivism among convicted sex offenders" means they pose risk of future "dangerousness as a class").... A substantial body of academic literature ... confirms that sex offenders reoffend at extremely high rates — regardless of how reoffending is defined and regardless of subsequent offense that counts as reoffending, be it another sex crime, a different violent crime, or any other type of subsequent crime"

He is, in my opinion, wrong about that - wrong on the facts, and wrong on the law.

The Facts. The recidivism statistics** for sex offenders, as Paul's brief illustrates, have been much discussed in connection with this case (and many others involving sex offenders). Although the Supreme Court did indeed declare back in 2003 that the recidivism risk for sex offenders is "frightening and high" - "estimated to be as high as 80%," in Justice Kennedy's words - that turns out (as Ira and Tara Ellman have convincingly demonstrated here) to have been based upon no actual evidence whatsoever, having been derived from a single, unsupported, and entirely uncorroborated sentence in a 1986 article in Psychology Today. [Jacob Sullum, here at Reason.com, discusses the remarkable and damaging persistence of this "frightening and high factoid" in his article here; see also Adam Liptak's NY Times article "Did the Supreme Court Base a Ruling on a Myth?"]. As Sullum puts it, "even if you think Arizona's bail ban is good policy (or at least constitutional), you should be troubled by the continued judicial reliance on repeatedly refuted claims about sex offenders that were erroneously endorsed by the Supreme Court 16 years ago."

**Note: Technically speaking, of course, the recidivism data for persons who have been convicted of sex offences is not strictly relevant to evaluation of this statute, insofar as the persons covered here have only been charged, and not convicted, of any crimes.

The actual data on sex offender recidivism are complicated, often contradictory, nuanced, and do not support the notion that rates are uniformly or significantly higher for sex offenders than for other categories of crimes. [For a summary of the many studies in this area, see the Scholars' Amicus Brief in Vasquez v. Illinois, here]. The Arizona Supreme Court got this right:

The State points to recidivism rates among sex offenders as evidence of the likelihood that sexual assault arrestees would commit a new sexual assault pending trial if released on bail. The cited empirical studies are not illuminating, however, as they concern a wide variety of sex crimes besides sexual assault, arrive at disparate conclusions, and for the most part do not focus on the relatively short time period between arrest and trial. Regardless, none of the studies cited reflects that most convicted rapists re-offend, the highest number being 5.6% reoffending within five years of release from prison. And the only cited study concerning accused rapists released on bail reflects that 3% committed another unspecified felony pending trial. [emphasis added]

The Law But interpretation of the recidivism statistics is not, in my opinion, at the heart of this case. The presumption of innocence - as fundamental a constitutional principle as we have - is at the heart of this case. To deprive an individual of his liberty because he is a member of a class that, statistically speaking, is more likely than others to commit a crime is an odious principle that is not consistent with the due process of law. Many categories of individuals, surely, have higher-than-average recidivism rates: unemployed males between the ages of 18 and 25; persons earning less than $25,000 a year; high-school dropouts; drug addicts; ...

They are - all of them - presumed innocent until the State has persuaded a jury of their peers, beyond a reasonable doubt, that they are guilty as charged.

So, too, for persons charged with sex crimes, no matter how heinous. They can, as the Arizona court was at pains to acknowledge, be detained pre-trial in appropriate circumstances; but those circumstances must be such as to demonstrate that they - not just the members of the class to which they belong, but they themselves - are a continuing danger to others. It is a high bar. It is supposed to be, because it protects us all against the arbitrary imposition of punishment. The recidivism statistics might be relevant as evidence in a particular case; but they cannot be dispositive, lest we punish people, in effect, for the behavior of others whom they resemble in one way or another.

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shaledirectory · 6 years ago

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Facts & Rumors # 312

Expo/Industry events for the next few months

Downstream Petrochemical Value Chain November 15, 2018 Eagle Sticks Golf Club 2655 Maysville Pike Zanesville, OH

https://bit.ly/2CWeXjs

For other events visit

http://www.shaledirectories.com/site/oil-and-gas-expo-information.html

Latest facts and a rumor from the Marcellus, Utica, Permian, Eagle Ford, Bakken and Niobrara Shale Plays

Shell E&P Pulling out of PA. Shell is looking to sell its acreage in Tioga County, PA. Shell has been assigning well site workers to other Shell operations in other parts of the world. (RUMOR) ExxonMobil’s CEO Comments on the Permian. The world's biggest public energy company doesn't worry about size when it comes to potential deal-making. The driver of any acquisition for Irving-based Exxon Mobil Corp. isn't the scope of the target; it's whether the company finds more value in it than the market does, said chief executive officer Darren Woods at the New Economy Forum in Singapore. The explorer is looking for opportunities to purchase assets even as it plans to expand output at existing fields from West Texas to Mozambique. "We have the capacity to do any size opportunity that can come about, so it's really a function of looking at the value that Exxon Mobil can extract, and how we would integrate that into our portfolio," Woods said in a Bloomberg TV interview, while declining to comment on any specific targets. Exxon spent $6 billion buying drilling rights from the Bass family in the Permian Basin last year and has been cited by analysts a potential purchaser of Endeavor Energy Resources LP, the basin's largest privately-held oil producer -- an acquisition that could total more than $10 billion. The oil major certainly has the capability to do big deals, with more than $3 billion of cash on its balance sheet and low debt, according to Bloomberg data. Woods sees a bright future for the oil industry, with 2.5 billion people set to enter the middle class in the next 20 years. That means more liquefied natural gas for electricity, more petrochemicals for plastics, and more oil to fuel the heavy-duty transportation required to move consumer goods. The company is seeking to grow production with a focus on Guyana, Brazil, Papua New Guinea, Mozambique and the Permian Basin in West Texas and New Mexico. Exxon has already surpassed its plan to mobilize about 30 rigs in the U.S. shale region by year's end: the company had 38 machines drilling Permian wells as of last week, a 40 percent increase in just six months. Still, Woods said the company remains committed to not rushing development in the region. West Texas Intermediate crude prices had risen 26 percent this year through early October before giving back nearly all of the gains in the past month. "The price in the oil markets are going to go up and come down again, and our view is the business we build in the Permian, we're building for the long term," he said. "It needs to be efficient, low-cost and effective, so we're making sure the pace we go at allows that to happen." Chevron’s Shale Focus. With each passing quarter, Chevron continues to benefit from, and become more dependent upon, its booming shale-drilling business in the Permian Basin. The company is getting much better results than expected from its drilling program there and is generating lots of excess cash flow to reward investors with share repurchases and dividends. What's even more fascinating about Chevron's strategic plan is that it's also selling assets and keeping capital spending at incredibly low levels. Is the company banking its entire future on shale, or are there other plans in the works? Let's take a look at Chevron's most recent earnings results and see what management was up to this past quarter. 9 Lives of the Constitution Pipeline. (Thank you, MDN) Miracle of miracles, two Democrat FERC commissioners (Cheryl LaFleur and Dick Glick), along with one Republican commissioner (Chairman Neil Chatterjee), voted unanimously to extend the time frame by another two years for Williams to build the Constitution Pipeline. As you may recall, the Constitution was stopped cold by NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC). Constitution is planned to run from Susquehanna County, PA up into, and mostly situated in, New York State. Encino to Stay in Canton, OH Area. Encino Acquisition Partners plans to drill Utica Shale wells for decades to come, with Stark County home to the company’s Ohio operations. The Houston, Texas-based partnership closed Monday on a $2 billion deal to buy Chesapeake Energy’s Utica assets in Ohio. Encino Acquisition Partners acquired 920 operated and non-operated wells and the drilling rights to more than 900,000 acres, along with Chesapeake’s field office in Louisville and the 109 employees who work there.

Who is Encino?

Encino Energy and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board formed Encino Acquisition Partners in 2017. The pension board owns 98 percent of the partnership and Encino Energy, a privately held company in Houston, operates the assets. The Chesapeake deal gives Encino Acquisition Partners more Utica wells than any other company in the state. “The Utica is our most important asset,” said Encino Energy President and Chief Executive Hardy Murchison. “It’s by far our largest and it’s our focus for the foreseeable future. We see decades of drilling ahead of us there and we see it as being profitable across a wide range of oil and gas price outlooks. This is our focus.” The new partnership looked at oil and natural gas basins around the country. Chesapeake held a lot of high-quality acreage in the Utica Shale, and had built a great team of workers in Ohio, all of whom joined Encino, Murchison said. Chesapeake also was looking to sell assets to pay off debts. Chesapeake’s acreage spanned the Utica Shale region, which has areas that produce everything from oil to natural gas to hydrocarbons like ethane that are used in making plastics and other chemicals. Being able to drill for different products gives Encino Acquisition Partners flexibility to deal with swings in the prices of natural gas and oil. The Utica region also has infrastructure — including new pipelines and processing plants — and end users of oil and natural gas, such as the Shell Appalachia “cracker plant” under construction near Pittsburgh. And the Winner Is?? NatGas!! (Thank you, MDN). We spotted an intriguing editorial in the Williamsport Sun-Gazette. It quotes a study by “an independent, market-based think tank” with some phenomenal findings. If you invest $1 million in solar, over a 30-year period you’ll get around 25 million kilowatt hours of electricity. If you invest that same $1 million in wind, you’ll get 50 million kilowatt hours over a 30-year period. But if you invest the same $1 million in natural gas-fired electric generation (cost to extract the gas, etc.), you’ll get 400 million kilowatt hours of electricity over 30 years! NatGas yields 8 times as much electricity per dollar as wind, and 16 times as much as solar. Finally, NatGas Power Plant Coming to WV. A natural gas power plant in Brooke County is one step closer to becoming a reality. Plans have been in motion since 2010. Friday, the site was issued a permit by the state. "The opportunity is here, the shale gas reserves are here, we're just ready to get to work to build this plant and we've been waiting a few years for this announcement,” said Business Development Corporation Executive Director Pat Ford. An announcement was publicly made Friday afternoon by the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. "What we want the public to know is that this is going to be over $880 million in investment to construct this plant and approximately 1,100 jobs, both direct and indirect, associated with this plant,” Ford said. Rover Gets 2 FERC Approvals. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has granted Rover Pipeline permission to begin additional service moving natural gas across northern Ohio, Kallanish Energy reports. The federal agency last week told the company it could begin service on the Sherwood Lateral, Sherwood Compressor Station, Sherwood Delivery Meter Station, CGT Lateral and CGT Delivery Meter Station in the Appalachian Basin. They were the last parts of the Rover pipeline project that needed FERC approval. Approval was granted, FERC said, “on the basis of ongoing inspections, reports by the commission’s third-party compliance monitors, my staff’s determination that rehabilitation and restoration of the affected areas are generally proceeding satisfactorily and Rover’s commitment to promptly finalize restoration of the approved facilities,” said FERC spokesman Rich McGuire, in a two-page letter. Rover Pipeline, a subsidiary of Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners, has pledged restoration and rehabilitation on the remaining slips or land movements on the CGT Lateral will be completed by Dec. 18 and on the Sherwood Lateral by Jan. 2, McGuire said. He said the company had identified 44 slips or ground movement areas that needed work. Last week, the company and another federal agency indicated that Rover Pipeline was likely guilty of what were called three “probable violations.” The problems between the pipeline company and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration have largely been resolved. The violations are for improper testing of pipeline welds, failing to comply with specifications or standards on repairing dents to the steel pipe and failure to build the pipeline to avoid stresses on the pipeline. Those two laterals are mechanically complete and the final grading and seeding have been completed, Rover Pipeline wrote. The company said it has also filed plans for additional ground-movement areas outside the construction right of way along the Sherwood and CGT laterals. The Sherwood Lateral runs about 54 miles from eastern Ohio into West Virginia. The CGT line runs about six miles from the Sherwood line to an interconnection with a Columbia Gas Transmission line. The $4.2 billion twin pipelines had encountered trouble with leaks and spills from horizontal directional drilling in Ohio where drilling had been halted for a time because of concern by state agencies. Construction was also halted for a time in West Virginia because of erosion and sediment control problems along pipeline laterals. The 713-mile pipeline will move up to 3.25 billion cubic feet per day of Utica and Marcellus natural gas to the Gulf Coast, the Midwest and Ontario. Initial service on the pipeline began Aug. 31, 2017. Clouds on the Drilling Horizon. (Thank you, BTU Analytics) Earnings season is here, and with it comes company specific insights as well as occasional perspective on the macro environment. Halliburton and Schlumberger commentary is often a bell weather of industry activity, so today BTU Analytics dives in to see what signals two of the largest oil service companies are sending to the market. While overall the rebound in the North American market has benefited service companies over the last two years, there is significant concern around both the short-term and long-term viability of the prominent US plays in the most recent earning announcements. Additionally, the strong run of improving operating margins over the last couple of years has begun to slow. The chart below shows operating margins for HAL and SLB through 3Q 2018. Operating margins have been trending mostly flat since 4Q 2017. Slowing North American activity during the third quarter caused some service pricing weakness for HAL and SLB, and some of the challenges being faced over the next 12 months could mean that operating margins may not see improvement back to the 16% – 22% range seen in 2014. In the short term, both companies are feeling the effects of infrastructure impacting their clients. SLB stated that the takeaway constraints out of the Permian Basin have led to lower activity in their hydraulic fracturing business which placed pressure on their 3Q performance. Halliburton also saw some customers defer completions due to takeaway issues, however, companies with firm capacity have continued to complete wells and maintain activity in the Permian. Slower activity is expected to persist through 4Q, with operators pulling back through the end of the year due to both takeaway issues and budget exhaustion. Both companies see the current slowdown to be temporary and predict that WTI prices remaining in the $70/Bbl range will allow for larger budgets and encourage strong operator activity in 2019. The pullback in activity across the US is consistent with BTU’s current well forecast, shown below. Increases in total US Wells to Sale activity has begun to slow, with BTU calling for 3Q 2018 to be the peak of completion activity until later in 2019 when many of the pipeline takeaway issues are resolved. Drilling activity is forecasted to remain higher than completions throughout this time frame, and for basins such as the Permian it could result in a significant build-up of DUCs (drilled uncompleted wells) over the next few months. While service companies are hoping that activity will pick up in early 2019, BTU sees challenges which could push higher completions out until later in the year. What are those challenges and what risks does BTU Analytics see to future activity levels? For more insight into BTU’s views, request a sample of the US Upstream Outlook report. Encana – Newfield Merger. Encana has become the second largest unconventional oil producer in North America with its all-stock merger with Newfield Exploration. The Calgary-based exploration and production company will now hold core-of-the-core assets in three major North American shale basins, including the Permian, SCOOP/STACK and the Montney. The value of the merger is roughly $5.5 billion, according to Encana. “When combined with our cube development model, expected synergies and relentless focus on efficiency, we are positioned to deliver highly efficient growth and quality returns,” said Doug Suttles, president and CEO of Encana who will assume the same role of the combined companies. Encana’s cube development program combines above-surface strategies with below ground operations. The strategy involves multiple drilling rigs working on massive multiwell pads. The system utilizes crew and infrastructure to create more efficient above ground operations. Below ground, Encana is able to use more horsepower and complete more wells while on the pad. According to the company, there is a major benefit to drilling and completing an entire cube pattern of wells positioned in multiple zones at once. “Historically, our industry was slow to identify the optimal well spacing for unconventional plays,” said Mike McAllister, Encana’s COO. “This has led to large infill drilling programs years later to try and boost recovery factors.” Following the completion of the deal—expected in early 2019—Encana intends to raise its dividends to shareholders by 25 percent and complete a $1.5 billion share buyback program. The combination of the two E&P’s creates a new version of Encana that will produced more than 577,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day Lee Boothby, president and CEO of Newfield, said Encana will now be able to develop Newfield’s assets at a faster rate. Suttles told investors that the new assets will allow Encana to transfer learnings from one basin to another and that with more assets, the company can now remain fluid with its capital, deploying in the basin’s that offer the best returns. Encana will now own roughly 63 percent of the new company, with Newfield owning the remainder. Mountain Valley Pipeline Seeks FERC Approval. Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC petitioned the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for authorization to build the MVP Southgate project, an interstate natural gas pipeline designed to move natural gas to central North Carolina. The pipeline company will construct and own the proposed MVP Southgate, which is a joint venture between EQM Midstream Partners, affiliates of NextEra Energy, Consolidated Edison; RGC Resources; WGL Midstream; and PSNC Energy, Kallanish Energy reports. EQM Midstream Partners will operate the pipeline and own the largest interest in the joint venture. Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC and PSNC have entered into binding long-term agreements that make PSNC Energy an anchor shipper for the project. MVP Southgate will tie into the Mountain Valley Pipeline near Chatham, Virginia, and transport Marcellus and Utica Shale natural gas to delivery points in North Carolina’s Rockingham and Alamance counties for distribution to PSNC Energy’s residential and commercial customers. As currently proposed, the MVP Southgate project is roughly 73 miles long. Construction is anticipated to begin in the first quarter of 2020, with a full in-service date targeted for the fourth quarter of 2020. Pioneer 3rd Qtr. Update. Pioneer Natural Resources reported third-quarter net income of $411 million, compared to a net loss of 23 million in Q3 2017, the Irving, Texas-based company reported. It reported quarterly revenue of $2.48 billion, Kallanish Energy reports. Pioneer said it is producing 288,000 barrels of oil-equivalent per day (Boe/d) in the Permian Basin of West Texas/southeast New Mexico. That's an increase of 14,000 Boe/d, or 5%, from Q2 2018, it said. Pioneer said Permian oil production grew to 186,000 barrels of oil per day (Bpd), an increase of 11,000 Bpd, or 7%, from Q2. Overall, company production in Q3 was 321,000 Boe/d. Oil sales averaged 195,000 Bpd, while natural gas liquids averaged 63,000 Bpd and natural gas sales averaged 378 million cubic feet per day (Mmcf/d). It is projecting Permian production growth of 19% to 24% in 2018, compared to 2017. “The third quarter was another very strong quarter for Pioneer and resulted in production being above guidance, healthy earnings and solid execution,” said president and CEO Timothy Dove, in a statement. He added, “The Permian Basin continues to be the best place to be in the shale oil business, providing unmatched resource potential and opportunity and delivers highly productive wells, strong cash margins and robust returns.” In the quarter Pioneer placed 69 horizontal wells into service in the Permian Basin. It is operating 22 rigs in the basin and plans to add two additional rigs in December. Pioneer expects to place 250 to 275 Permian wells into service in 2018. Pioneer said it placed its first multi-zone Spraberry appraisal pad with six wells in western Martin County. The initial results are about 35% better than previous Spraberry wells, the company said. Two additional multi-zone Spraberry pads will begin service in Q4. The company spent $835 million in Q3 on drilling and well completions. In the quarter, Pioneer delivered 165,000 Bpd of oil to the Gulf Coast, of which roughly 130,000 Bpd are being exported, it said. The company has leased about 750,000 acres in the Permian Basin. It's divesting Eagle Ford Shale and other assets to become a Permian pure-play company. That should be completed by Dec. 31, Dove said. Bakken Deal. A SPAC has entered the Williston Basin. Vantage Acquisition Operating Company LLC, a special purpose acquisition company formed by former exploration and production executives, has acquired the Williston Basin assets of QEP Resources. The deal, expected to close in early 2019, is valued at $1.725 billion and includes QEP’s South Antelope and Fort Berthold leasehold positions. After raising $552 million in 2017 for the purpose of acquiring a leasehold position in a major shale play, the Vantage team will now be focused on further developing the assets developing by QEP, including wells targeting multiple pay zones of the Middle Bakken and one bench of the multi-layer Three Forks formation. Plains All American Expands Capacity in the Permian. Pipeline operator Plains All American said it had expanded the capacity of its network in Texas, launching its Sunrise pipeline from the Permian to Cushing, Oklahoma, which boosted overall daily volumes to between 300,000 and 350,000 barrels, Reuters reports, citing the company’s third-quarter earnings call. Earlier estimates for the capacity of the expanded network had suggested daily volumes of 200,000-250,000 bpd of crude. The news should be very welcome for Permian producers who have been grappling with pipeline capacity shortages amid fast-growing production. The Sunrise pipeline’s total capacity is as much as half a million barrels daily. Its launch has already affected prices positively, lifting them from four-year lows. As of July, the pipeline capacity in the Permian was 3.1 million bpd, according to S&P Global Platts calculations, with production at 3.5 million bpd. However, there is a total 2.6 million bpd in new capacity coming online soon: the additional barrels should begin to flow in full by the third quarter of 2019, S&P Global Platts reported. There is even more capacity coming online in later years, but this has sparked concern—vague for now—that if prices take a dive again, which is always a possibility, Permian field and pipeline operators could end up with stranded capacity as production growth slows down. However, this possibility is still only hypothetical, so the news about additional pipelines should immediately help producer get a better price for their crude; they’ve had to sell at a substantial discount to WTI because of the pipeline bottlenecks in recent months. Others are upbeat about the Permian’s production growth prospects. “In the past 24 months, production from just this one region—the Permian—has grown far more than any other entire country in the world,” Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of IHS Markit said in August, commenting on the future of the star shale play in the United States. “Add an additional 3 mbd by 2023—more than the total present-day production of Kuwait—and you have a level of production that exceeds the current production of every OPEC nation except for Saudi Arabia.” Permian “frac holiday” Will Be Ending. Take Carrizo Oil & Gas Inc.’s operations, for instance. Just three months after moving drill rigs out of the Permian basin because of pipeline shortages, the Houston-based explorer is already talking about bringing them back in the middle of next year. That’s one of several signs the end may be near for a self-imposed slowdown executives call a “frac holiday.” The result: Carrizo will reach an “inflection point” in 2019 where both production and cash flow begin to rise together, CEO Chip Johnson said on a conference call Tuesday. In other words, things will soon be booming again. Carrizo is among many smaller operators forced to slow activity in the U.S.’s biggest oil field towards the end of this year after the Permian’s rapid production growth overwhelmed pipelines. The lack of conduits left oil almost trapped, lowering in-basin prices to almost $18/bbl, or 26%, below the U.S. benchmark in September. But with at least three major pipeline projects scheduled to come online next year, producers are now seeing the problem as a mere footnote in the basin’s ongoing story of surging production growth. “It will be a series of events throughout 2019 that occur” to ease the bottleneck, Halliburton Co. CEO Jeff Miller told Bloomberg TV this week. “It’d be easy to see, as we finish the year, things being perfectly normal.” This year, the number of wells drilled but waiting to be fracked has increased 50% to 3,722, indicating a new wave of production is set to be unleashed once the pipes are ready, spending budgets are approved and frack crews are available. This matters to world oil markets. West Texas Intermediate has tumbled almost 20% since the beginning of October as fears over U.S. sanctions against Iranian ease. Added production from the Permian would further this trend. Indeed, it bolsters the view that American oil production is in an exponential growth phase. The U.S. surpassed Russia in August to claim the title of the world’s top oil producer after posting the largest year-on-year output increase in its history. The Permian accounts for about a third of the country’s output and is the world’s fastest-growing major oil field. Consultant Rystad AS sees U.S. production climbing another 45% to as much as 16.5 MMbpd by 2030. Permian legend Mark Papa, who was a pioneer of U.S. shale as CEO of EOG Resources Inc. from 1999 to 2013, agrees that pipeline shortages “should go away by year end 2019” and may even turn into a surplus. However it’s not all plain sailing thereafter, Papa, who’s now CEO of Centennial Resource Development Inc, said in an interview last month. “Some of the other issues like personnel and water handling issues are some of the more long term issues,” he said. There are “insufficient people to get the work done.” Range Resources Receives Philanthropy Award. The Washington County Community Foundation held their annual Philanthropy awards and recognition banquet. And in a room full of local people dedicated to community service and charitable giving, Range Resources CEO and President Jeff Ventura humbly accepted the Foundation’s Charles C. Keller for Corporate Philanthropy. As he spoke to the assembled guests, Ventura talked about why southwestern Pennsylvania is special to him and to the employees of Range Resources. “I was born and raised here in western Pennsylvania. I know how close-knit the communities are and how much the people in this region and in this county support one another. Organizations like the Community Foundation are part of what make this area such a great place to live and work. Washington County is a very special place for Range and our employees, and we are so proud to be a part of this community. We pioneered the Marcellus Shale not far from here, and it is where Range has grown as a company for nearly 15 years.” Anadarko Sells Midstream Assets. Independent producer Anadarko Petroleum (APC) on Thursday announced it’s selling most of its midstream assets for $4.025 billion to Western Gas Partners. At the same time, Western Gas Partners (WES) announced it’s merging with Western Gas Equity Partners (WGP), following a number of master limited partnerships looking to simplify their organizational structure – and hopefully, save money. LNG Plant Coming to NEPA. (Thank you, MDN) We have some exciting news to share. A company called New Fortress Energy is planning to build an LNG (liquefied natural gas) liquefaction plant in Wyalusing (Bradford County), PA. The $800 million plant will supercool and liquefy locally extracted Marcellus Shale gas and ship it first by truck, eventually by rail, to “customers in the U.S. as well as abroad.” Meaning exports. How cool is that? It seems that LNG liquefaction plants no longer have to be located along a shoreline to engage in exports. Joe Barone [email protected] 610.764.1232 Vera Anderson [email protected] 570.337.7149

https://www.shaledirectories.com/blog/facts-rumors-312/

#factsrumors312 #newsletter

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duaneodavila · 6 years ago

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What Will Lawyers In Arizona Have To Say About It?

The American Bar Association knew what it wanted to accomplish when it passed model rule 8.4(g), but were the arguments against it exaggerated, hysterical, too extreme? The question is up for debate in Arizona, which is considering amending its rules to include the new model rule.

Eugene Volokh put in his two cents. So did Lambda Legal, which included an example* of the conduct they contend must be subject to discipline.

In 2017, Lambda Legal assisted a transgender woman with addressing discriminatory treatment she experienced when in a Georgia municipal court regarding a traffic ticket. The prosecuting attorney in the case repeatedly referred to her as “he” and “him” when addressing or speaking about her. Prior to the hearing, he took her aside in a small room with four other people who were not identified to her to discuss the case. He then asked her whether she’d “had the full surgery,” an inquiry about genital surgery. This experience was humiliating and dangerous for her.

Violence directed at LGBTQ people has seen an increase in recent years. In 2016, among LGBTQ hate-motivated homicide victims, transgender women of color made up the majority of victims in the U.S. The attorney in this case purposefully disclosed the woman’s transgender status to everyone within earshot and refused to acknowledge a core aspect of her identity. The judge presiding over this case did not take steps to address the misgendering and disrespectful treatment. Lambda Legal brought this matter directly to the attention of the judge, who responded with an acknowledgment of her responsibilities and assurances that any future misgendering or other disrespectful treatment directed to transgender people in her courtroom would be promptly and appropriately addressed.

The degree of awfulness reflected by this conduct will be in inverse proportion to your wokeness, but few people find being prosecuted an unhumiliating and dangerous experience. It’s ironic that a prosecutor couldn’t be punished for playing hide the Brady or put on a lying witness, but could be disbarred for using the wrong pronoun, but two wrongs don’t make a right. The accommodation of calling the defendant “she” is so petty that, even if you believe it silly, the prosecutor wouldn’t sprain anything by doing so.

But the question isn’t about politeness or wokeness, but attorney discipline.

Now if the rule were only aimed at restricting lawyer speech—especially government lawyer speech—in the courtroom, then it would certainly be constitutional as part of the court system’s power to control speech in the courtroom (which is necessarily constrained by all sorts of rules, whether of evidence or of professional responsibility). The same might extend to speech in the pretrial litigation process. (How the legal system should reconcile some people’s desire to be referred to using particular pronouns with some lawyers’ desire not to be compelled to say things that they think are factually false is a complicated question, but I think courts would rightly have considerable discretion in setting the rules there.)

But the rule is deliberately not limited to speech that is part of the legal process; indeed, many states have such rules that ban discrimination and harassment within that process, and the ABA expressly went beyond that. The rule expressly covers speech engaged in while “participating in bar association, business or social activities in connection with the practice of law,” and would thus cover Continuing Legal Education panels, political discussions over dinner at bar functions, and so on.

Don’t Schlossberg me, bro. Judge McConnell told a lawyer in Rhode Island not to use the word “hysterical” because it was sexist. The judge in the Lambda Legal example says she’ll be more woke going forward, presumably to admonish any prosecutor who uses the wrong pronoun. What would happen if he doesn’t is unclear. What could happen if the prosecutor, or any lawyer, responded that he disputes her sensibilities and plans to call any defendant with a penis “he,” and no one, ever, “xi,” is a mystery.

But what will happen when the woke infiltrate the Federalist Society shindig, secret recorder in their lapel, to ferret out the words and phrases that fail to comport with the rule? Can they express disagreement with gender fluidity if they use the plural pronoun for the singular?

Now I think that the ethical question of what pronouns to use for people who don’t fit within the usual clearly-male-“he” / clearly-female-“she” mold is a complicated one. My tentative personal inclination is to go along with people’s preferences as to “he” or “she,” but to balk at “they” and at more innovative pronouns; but I’m not sure about the right answer, and I think it’s worth discussing what it should be. As I said, the preferences of those who are being referred to surely count for something. But so do the preferences of those who are deciding which words to say, especially if they think certain words represent what they view as falsehoods (e.g., using “he” to refer to someone who the speaker thinks is not really male, under the speaker’s understanding of the meaning of “male”).

It’s understandable that Lambda Legal wants to have this tool at its disposal to go after lawyers who utter words that offend their sensibilities. That’s their mission and position, especially after the goal of gay marriage has been achieved. Now they’re into micromanaging word choice, and through it, wrongthink. Of course, it’s entirely possible to be tolerant of LGBTQ+ without adopting the linguistic indulgences as well, but for the “words are violence” crowd, they can’t shake it off.

But I don’t think this is something that the law, or the legally enforceable rules of a profession, should force on people, at least outside the courtroom and related aspects of the legal process. It certainly isn’t something that should be expressly extended to ��social” activities, even those “in connection with the practice of law,” or to bar association panels or debates. Yet the logic of Lambda Legal’s comments suggests that, if 8.4 is adopted, that is exactly what could end up happening.

Eugene is fairly sanguine about what can be uttered in a courtroom. Me, less so, having spent hours trying to redact some pretty nasty language out of wiretaps. Even if your sensibilities tell you that what the prosecutor did in the Lambda Legal example is so very wrong that it justifies discipline, and if it had happened at the National Association of District Attorneys soiree, it should as well (because your sensibilities are right and pure and everyone else is wrong), the example just scratches the surface of where this can go.

Once scratched, there may be no limits of language, and the thoughts beneath the words, that can’t be prohibited. Tell that to your client when you’re trying to argue your way out of the taint of a wiretap where Xe says “faggot” and “nigga” a few thousand times. You know what’s more humiliating than a prosecutor using the wrong pronoun? Being sentenced.

*Paragraph break added for readability.

Copyright © 2007-2018 Simple Justice NY, LLC This feed is for personal, non-commercial and Newstex use only. The use of this feed anywhere else violates copyright. If this content is not in your news reader, it means the page you are viewing infringes copyright. (Digital Fingerprint: 51981395c77d7762065ca2c084b63e47) What Will Lawyers In Arizona Have To Say About It? republished via Simple Justice

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newstfionline · 7 years ago

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Mexico’s Government Is Blocking Its Own Anti-Corruption Drive, Commissioners Say

By Azam Ahmed, NY Times, Dec. 2, 2017

MEXICO CITY--Mexico’s landmark anti-corruption drive, inaugurated by President Enrique Peña Nieto under intense pressure to answer the scandals jolting his administration, is being blocked by the government’s refusal to cooperate on some of the biggest cases facing the nation, according to members of the commission coordinating the effort.

Attempts to look into the use of government surveillance technology against civilians, the embezzlement of tens of millions of dollars through public universities and allegations of widespread bribery to win construction contracts have all been thwarted, commission members say.

Marred by scandals that have embroiled his administration, his allies and even his own family, Mr. Peña Nieto agreed to the creation of a broad anti-corruption system last year that was enshrined in the Constitution, a watershed moment in Mexico.

But after nine months of pushing to examine the kind of corruption that ignited public outrage and brought the new watchdog into existence, some of its most prominent members say they have been stymied every step of the way, unable to make the most basic headway.

After announcing the new system with great fanfare, they say, the government is now refusing to allow any serious investigations into its actions.

“They are panicked that maybe we will go too hard and unravel something, find individuals responsible for corrupt acts,” José Octavio López said. He worked in the administration the last time Mr. Peña Nieto’s party held the presidency, in the 1990s, and is now part of the new National Anti-Corruption System.

“They are used to appointing someone they control,” Mr. López said of the government. But when officials learned that he and others on the new commission wanted to act with impartial independence, he added, “they didn’t like that.”

The effort started more than a year ago, when advocates presented the government with hundreds of thousands of signatures backing a nationwide campaign to combat corruption. The president, facing tough questions about his administration and personal conflicts of interest, including his wife’s purchase of a multimillion-dollar custom home from a major government contractor, conceded.

In principle, regular citizens are at the helm of the new system, giving them the power to ensure that it works in the interest of the Mexican people, not the government.

But in interviews, all five members of the special citizen commission recited a long inventory of obstacles placed before them by the government.

None of the 18 judges who are supposed to oversee anti-corruption cases have been appointed by lawmakers. The prosecutor empowered under the new system to pursue investigations independently has not been named. And members of the citizen commission say they have been routinely shut out of discussions about big corruption cases.

“It is a bad joke,” said Luis Manuel Perez de Acha, a tax lawyer on the commission. “I was naïve when the system launched. I believed and had hope that it would work.”

“I know now that they are trying to sabotage everything we do,” he added.

A big part of the problem, the commission members contend, is that their power is rooted in title only. All significant decisions have to be made by a collection of seven agencies. But six of them come from different branches of government, leaving the citizen’s commission, which technically oversees the entire process, heavily outvoted.

“I’ve been given all the responsibility, with none of the power,” said Jacqueline Peschard, the president of both the citizen commission and the overall anti-corruption system.

The government strongly denies the allegations, saying that it has fully supported the commission members and that they have misinterpreted their mandate.

The citizens involved in the process are not supposed to investigate corruption, the government says. Rather, they are there to help set policy and coordinate the various authorities who have the legal responsibility of prosecuting crime.

But Mrs. Peschard and other members say they have been prevented from doing exactly that because information is regularly withheld from them, like when they tried to discuss the hacking scandal that has engulfed Mr. Peña Nieto’s administration this year.

Sophisticated spying technology sold to the Mexican government for the purpose of tracking terrorists and criminal networks has instead been deployed against dozens of journalists, academics, human rights lawyers and anti-corruption advocates, a potential violation of Mexican law.

But when Mrs. Peschard and others called for a simple briefing on the issue, she said she was voted down by every representative of the government agencies.

One of the representatives voting on whether to discuss the hacking scandal was Arely Gomez, the attorney general in office when the government was using the surveillance technology.

“I would say there is in fact coordination on the committee,” Mrs. Peschard said with a dry laugh. “It’s them against me.”

Mrs. Peschard and other commission members say they have tried, unsuccessfully, to check on other cases that have raised troubling questions for the Mexican public.

Last December, the United States Department of Justice announced that Odebrecht, the Brazilian construction behemoth accused of paying nearly $800 million in bribes to government officials across Latin America, had given about $10.5 million in “corrupt payments” to Mexican officials to win public contracts. The department said $6 million of that money had gone to a single “high-level official of a Mexican state-owned” company.

Court documents in Brazil contend that Emilio Lozoya, the former head of Mexico’s state-owned oil company and a close ally of the president, received bribes directly from Odebrecht. Mr. Lozoya helped to run Mr. Peña Nieto’s 2012 presidential campaign.

Mr. Lozoya has denied any wrongdoing.

Deepening the intrigue, the government fired a Mexican prosecutor who had been looking into the use of illicit money in the president’s campaign--just days after the prosecutor said that Mr. Lozoya had secretly pressured him to be cleared of any wrongdoing.

Mrs. Peschard and other commission members said they repeatedly asked for briefings on the matter. The government denied that any such request had been made. But in separate interviews, several commission members cited letters they had sent to the attorney general’s office requesting an update on the case.

Each time, they said, they were told there could be no briefing because an investigation was underway, prompting them to wonder how they could do their jobs if sharing information about investigations was prohibited.

After consistently being blocked, Mrs. Peschard and the others decided on another approach. When local news reports revealed that nearly $200 million had been embezzled through the nation’s public universities, the commission sent requests to 99 government departments, asking for the information directly.

Only one government agency has responded so far.

In another instance, the commission tried to establish a single account to disburse money for earthquake victims--to ensure that the funds could be rigorously accounted for. Once again, it was told to stand down.

Since the commission is not technically part of the government, the president’s office says, it cannot coordinate government resources.

For many Mexicans, the new anti-corruption system--and particularly the power of citizens to coordinate it--showed that the government, when pushed hard enough, might finally combat the impunity that defines much of life in Mexico.

But many civil society leaders, including some who helped engineer the creation of the anti-corruption system, say they have fallen prey to a familiar trick: The government creates a panel to address a major issue, only to starve it of resources, inhibit its progress or ignore it.

The anti-corruption drive is still missing its independent prosecutor, arguably the most important person in the entire operation. The selection has been frozen in the legislature, which was already up in arms over the president’s contentious choice for attorney general: Raúl Cervantes, a close ally of Mr. Peña Nieto and the main lawyer for his party during the 2012 campaign.

After a long battle in Congress--and news articles about properties and a Ferrari owned by Mr. Cervantes, registered outside of the capital to avoid higher taxes--his name was withdrawn.

Beyond that, many Mexican states have still not enacted the mandatory systems meant to duplicate the federal anti-corruption effort on a local level.

One of the commission members, Mr. Perez de Acha, says he has sued the states that have not set up their anti-corruption systems, which were supposed to be in place by July 19. He has also sued the Senate to force the appointment of the 18 anti-corruption judges.

“We can’t sit with our arms crossed,” he said. “We have constitutional legitimacy.”

Other commission members agreed.

“I’m not going to give up,” said one of them, Mariclaire Acosta. “There is no quick fix here.”

#Mexico #Mexican anti-corruption drive #corruption in Mexico #Mexican government

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jaclynann8-blog · 7 years ago

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Real estate lawyer questions

Is it grounds foqualification if an attorney, reserves the corporate name of a suspended HOA when his client is an owner of the HOA?

The client is being sued by their renters independently athe attorney gores out and reserves the corporate name without meaning to revive the corproration. Then he supports the plaintiffs to go to the IDR procedure based on the governing documents to work out dilemmas instead of court but these CCRs cannot be applied as long as attorney holds corporate name and does not animate.. A: Your question is vague and needs clarification. Additional information are essential to supply a professional analysis of your dilemma. The best first step is an Initial Consultation with an Attorney. It's possible for you to read more about me, my qualifications, awards, honors, testimonials, and media appearances/ publications on my law practice website. I practice law in CA, NY, MA, and DC in these areas of law: Education Law & Contracts, Criminal Defense, Divorce & Child Custody, and Company. This answer does not represent legal advice; make any forecasts, guarantees, or warranties; or create any Attorney-Client relationship.

Damages on commercial property. Severe damage to my building from my neighbor's trees and landscaping.

The commercial property owner neighboring my commercial property raised the ground elevation behind my building to provide landscaping. The root systems egressed into the lower wall of our building undermining the building stucco and a tree and shrubs were put there and pushed the wall stud framing off the floor plate. Extensive structural damage to my building including water damage. Who is liable for repairs?. A: It sounds like your neighbor would be responsible. There are plenty of unanswered questions, and this could really be more of a tort law issue than a real estate one. Have you consulted an engineer and architect concerning the cause of the structural damage? It seems like your neighbor is responsible, if it was the earth work or the plants themselves, but it is going to be important to understand and have signs regarding the causation. Take photos, get statements from engineers and/or architects regarding the reason for the damage and the damage, and get a few estimates for the price of repair. Then go see a lawyer or two. Good luck to you.

Faulty grant deed issued from 2015 default tax auction -assessor will not amend- affecting my rights

He will only issue a corrective deed if the newest owner requests it- property acreage in san bern co. I'm adjacent parcel -the lost majority of property descrp that is legal and my commercial operation is radically affected by the clauses of it's. Ex, ingress & egress. New owner knows he's a title that is incomplete. He wants to impede my accessibility (which ive loved for 24 yrs) I want to correct this historic chain of title deed to represent correct public info- Isn't there a law about public advice that assessor is violating?. A: The correct way of dealing with this might be to file a suit against your neighbor to allow you a right-of-access easement and to clarify the property borders. Additional information are required to give a professional evaluation of your issue. The best first step is an Initial Consultation with an Attorney. You can also read more about me, my credentials, awards, honors, testimonials, and media appearances/ publications on my law practice website. I practice law in the following areas of law in CA, NY, MA, and DC: Company & Contracts, Criminal Defense, Divorce & Child Custody, and Education Law. This response doesn't represent legal advice; make any forecasts, guarantees, or warranties; or create any Attorney-Client relationship.

Property owner has issued a civil notice to move in 60 days, then 3 day pay or quit for rent owed, but have reciepts.

My family and I've inhabited a 5th wheel trailor on a common (w/ owner & 2 others) property for a little over 2 yrs. The owner originally requested us to go with 60 day and has decided to sale the property verbal notice. Subsequently retracked said notice to be the end of the current month (15 days) then again retracted to the 1st of the yr. 5 days after last notice was served a civil 60 day notice to end inclination Nov 30. 1 week after served a 3 day pay or leave for lease owed in addition to breech of contract. I have reciepts with owners signature stating rent was paid. Additionally we don't have a rental agreement due to the fact the owner has stated we're guests money and not renters is for utilisties that is shared. Since the initial notice we have been harrassed nearly daily about when we're going, too as our guests, she's locked us out of common toilet leaving us with no use, and turned off our electricity for money owed (but turned back on) what can we do and are we screwed w/out rental agreement?. A: She may be processing the eviction, and also you might have a foundation to sue. Additional information are essential to give a professional evaluation of your problem. The best first step is a First Consultation with an Attorney. It's possible for you to read more about me, my qualifications, awards, honors, testimonials, and media appearances/ publications on my law practice site. I practice law in CA, NY, MA, and DC in these areas of law: Education Law & Contracts, Criminal Defense, Divorce & Child Custody, and Company. This reply does not constitute legal advice; make any forecasts, guarantees, or warranties; or create any Attorney-Client relationship.

What can I do to save my house?

I was divorced about 8 years ago. We had a 1st and 2nd mortgage, while married. The 1st is with Bank of America as well as the 2nd is with bank of the west. Subsequent to the divorce I chose his name off title and my name is the sole one on title. In order to save the house, I had to file chapter 13 to get rid of 2nd on the home. I made all ch 13 pymts about 1 year ago. My ex husband tried to get a ch 13 but for some reason couldn't. The lending company is sending letters to collect on the 2nd and sounds like they're threatening to foreclose on the house. The interest keeps piling up on the 2nd. What can I do to save my house?. A: When the title changed to your sole name did you refinance the mortgage? If your husband's name is still on the mortgage with the 2nd bank if not, that may be the problem. They could be attempting to pick up the loan from him and using the house as collateral. More information are essential to supply a professional evaluation of your dilemma. The best first step is a First Consultation with an Attorney. It's possible for you to read more about me, my credentials, awards, honours, testimonials, and media appearances/ publications on my law practice web site. I practice law in CA, NY, MA, and DC in these areas of law: Contracts & Company, Criminal Defense, Divorce & Child Custody, and Education Law. This response doesn't constitute legal advice; make any forecasts, guarantees, or warranties; or create any Attorney-Client relationship.

Mortgage Refinance

I was once the owner of the house that I’m living in right now before I transfer ownership( Deed) to a household member but the mortgage statement is still in my name which we’re sharing to pay off, my question to you is, do I must return to ownership to refinance my mortgage. (the title was recorded in public record). A: See my reply to your identical question here. More information are necessary to supply a professional analysis of your problem. The best first step is an Initial Consultation with an Attorney. You can read more about me, my credentials, awards, honors, testimonials, and media appearances/ publications on my law practice web site. I practice law in CA, NY, MA, and DC in the following areas of law: Education Law & Contracts, Criminal Defense, Divorce & Child Custody, and Company. This answer does not constitute legal advice; make any forecasts, guarantees, or warranties; or create any Attorney-Client relationship.

Do I need construction insurance?

I am getting prepared to begin building a home and own a lot in Navarre Fl. The builder has Builder's Risk Insurance and liability ins. Do I as the property owner also want liability insurance during the build? Thx. A: Someone falls and breaks a leg. They are going to sue possibly the contractor but also the land owner (that is you). You had need it anyhow. C'mon!

leak in apartment ceiling. Do they have to check for mold by law?

Have had visible leak in kitchen ceiling twice in exactly the same area. First time maintenance man said there clearly was no leak, only "very poorly" patched the damaged drywall. Recent rain has caused visible damage in the exact same spot. This time they sent roofers to repair leak in roof. Nothing else has been done. The drywall hasn't yet been repaired but, my primary concern is mold. So what can I do? What legal obligations do they have?. A: The landlord is required to keep up the dwelling and is bound by the implied warranty of habitability. The landlord should inspect and fix it in a timely manner, if there is signs of mold. More details are required to give a professional analysis of your problem. The best first step is an Initial Consultation with an Attorney. You can read more about me, my credentials, awards, honours, testimonials, and media appearances/ publications on my law practice website. I practice law in these areas of law in CA, NY, MA, and DC: Business & Contracts, Criminal Defense, Divorce & Child Custody, and Education Law. This reply doesn't represent legal advice; make warranties, guarantees, or any forecasts; or create any Attorney-Client relationship.

What kind of letter needs to be sent in order to notify someone of this?

My grandma was renting to possess to my girlfriend and I at our present address. She explained this to not only my girlfriend and I, but my mother, my girlfriend's father and my girlfriend's mom. We'd not have moved into this address had we known that it wasn't "lease to own". What are our rights?. A: From the little info in your statement, it seems like your written lease agreement (you have one, right?) doesn't include such a purchase option or purchase right. It may be that your only recourse would be to sue your landlord for fraud in the inducement of the lease. But it'll be tough to win such a case. Take your documents and go see a real estate lawyer in your area. Many offer free initial consultations. Good luck to you personally.

Real Estate Lawyers Barrie - Gabriel Krikunez №➊ lawyer in Ontario

CA laws on secondhand smoke from neighbors smoking outside their home entering our bedroom windows

Can I legally ask his tenants and my neighbor to smoke away from our window especially past 10pm? We get secondhand smoke entering all hours to bedroom windows and our house but terrible at 10pm or 2am! We live within a fam home in Laguna niguel orange county ca. A: You can sue for nuisance. More information are essential to provide a professional analysis of your problem. The best first step is a First Consultation with an Attorney. It's possible for you to read more about me, my qualifications, awards, honours, testimonials, and media appearances/ publications on my law practice web site. I practice law in the following areas of law in CA, NY, MA, and DC: Contracts & Company, Criminal Defense, Divorce & Child Custody, and Education Law. This solution doesn't represent legal advice; make warranties, guarantees, or any predictions; or create any Attorney-Client relationship.

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ara-la · 7 years ago

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Civilian Police Oversight: Watchdog or Lapdog?

“Watchdog or Lapdog?” (1991 Revisited)

Thanks to OLAASM for resurrecting this 1991 article of mine that appeared in the Minority Trendsletter (publication that eventually became “ColorLines”) from the Center for Third World Organizing. Also here on his blog: https://olaasm.wordpress.com/2014/02/15/watchdog-or-lapdog-1991-revisited/.

The article as originally published was only a portion of a much longer work, now lost, that reviewed decades of history of so-called “civilian complaint review boards,” including the one enacted by executive order by NY Mayor John Lindsay in the 1960s, which was overturned in a referendum campaign lead by the NY Patrolmen’s Benevolent Associations (PBA) -- the cop union -- with the support of the John Birch Society and the American Nazi Party of George Lincoln Rockwell. It also examined the role of the police within the multi-level, dispersed federal-state-local system of law enforcement in the US.

In reposting this shorter version, I am struck by how many of the key activists cited in the piece have passed away, including Michael Zinzun of CAPA in Los Angeles, Roberto Martinez of the AFSC Border Project in San Diego, and Mary Powers of Citizens Alert and NCOPA in Chicago. I have added links to their obituaries. Rest in peace and power -- carry it on in their names, and in the names of all those needlessly and wantonly killed in racist police murders since this piece was first written more than 25 years ago. #SayTheirNames! --MN

Heads bashed in for traffic violations. Teeth knocked out and bones broken for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Throats crushed in vicious chokeholds, bodies stomped, cattle prods and electric “stun guns” used on prostrate victims – a bullet in the back for failing to stop on command. Torture, murder and mayhem.

Nazi thugs? Salvadoran death squads? Nothing so exotic. Just your local police keeping the peace.

There is probably no more deeply felt issue in communities of color across the country than the question of police brutality. “When I saw those cops beating on Rodney King,” said one African-American activist, “I felt like they were hitting me. Every black man knows what it is to be afraid of the police.”

Hundreds of police accountability organizations have been mobilized to demand decent treatment for their communities; by some estimates, these organizations are more common in communities of color than groupings on any other single issue.

And it is an issue that moves people to levels of anger seldom seen in the United States. Almost invariably, the rebellions that exploded in American cities in the 1960s were sparked by what the community felt was inappropriate police use of deadly force. Last year, the Latino community in Washington, D.C. blew up after a cop shot a teenager, burning stores and police cars for several days.

It is a problem that refuses to die – and one that may be getting worse as some communities of color become ever more segregated and depressed, while the police are given more and more power. “The police act like an army of occupation around here,” a teenager from Richmond, California recently told a newspaper reporter, articulating a commonly-heard complaint in low-income communities.

Demanding Accountability

Complaining is one thing: finding a solution or at least a way of holding the police department accountable to the community is something else entirely. The principal method that has been tried so far is the creation of various committees whose job it is to keep an eye on the police. Nearly every major city has one; they are generally called “citizen review boards” or “police review commissions.” Whatever the name, however, the boards have one thing in common – they are almost always ineffective.

In Berkeley, California, for example, in 1987 a new city manager reviewed the operations of the board under his predecessor and issued a memo reporting that the board’s reports and investigations had never once been used to overturn or modify a decision about misconduct made by the police.

Most of the boards that have been established are severely circumscribed. Almost uniformly, the boards are essentially advisory boards, rarely capable of exercising even limited disciplinary powers. Cities which have supervisory police commissions restrict them to policy-making, not day-to-day oversight. If citizens (called “civilians” by the police) are found somewhere in the process of determining officer culpability for abuse or other violations of policy, they are subordinate to the power of the mayor, or, more often, to the police chief’s authority over his or her own department. Complaint review boards are usually prevented from bringing criminal charges.

Avoiding The Law

The Philadelphia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which originated the first such board, eventually issued a report viewing review boards more as a hindrance and diversion than a solution, because they avoid the central, political question of police abuse:

“Review boards only work where the police department itself is already intent on dealing with a few rogue officers… Review boards allow the executive and legislative branches to evade their responsibility for dealing with (police abuse as) a political problem… A review board can have no real power without a change in fundamental law. Where police abuse is highly institutionalized, the board’s recommendations will be ignored, creating more cynicism”

in the communities affected by the abuse.

According to organizers, there are a number of reasons why police review boards fail to exercise significant control over police behavior:

1. They seldom have the power to bring charges against officers, impose discipline or even subpoena officers for questioning

2. Strong opposition on the part of the police weakens the powers they are given

3. They can be compromised by police involvement, to the point where they are more friendly to cops than to victims of police abuse

4. They are often not independent, and come under the political control of the mayor or police chief

5. Review boards often exclude community activists and exhibit the same racism and disregard for communities of color exhibited by the police department

6. There are many different law enforcement agencies; a board charged with overseeing one agency seldom has any power over others

In part, the weakness of review boards reflects the inability of organized communities to present a clear list of demands and follow-through on them to make sure they are met. In Los Angeles and a few other cities, however, the vulnerability of the police in the wake of highly-publicized incidents and the maturity of the movement for police accountability have led to some expectations that a real review commission can be established. Organizers hope that the new commission will finally be able to institutionalize the long-standing demand in communities of color for an end to police abuse.

Although most boards are more ornamental than substantive, police departments – and particularly patrol officer’s “unions,” have fought tooth-and-nail against their implementation. The demands of community advocates for real power and independence for the commission are often reduced or diluted in response to police demands.

President of LA’s Police Commission having breakfast with the police “union’s” President…

Even as elementary a consideration as having non-police personnel on the board has been breached. “Civilian” may mean only non-sworn or non-uniformed “civilian” employees of the Police Department, or former police officers. Independent investigative staff and subpoena power to compel testimony from officers and witnesses are often lacking. The absence of these powers means that the board is totally dependent on police internal investigations to determine the facts. Some observers feel that witnesses are much less likely to come forward without the protective cover of being forced to testify by a board subpoena because they fear retribution by the police. They also consider the ability to compel sworn testimony by officers vital in order to overcome the “code of silence” that prevents cops from providing evidence against fellow officers.

The recent case of Minneapolis, Minnesota is typical of the way in which recalcitrant police can shape the board more to their liking. A civilian review board was established after a campaign fueled by outrage over several brutal and deadly acts of police racism. But the board as constituted eventually abandoned the effort to obtain the subpoena power it had been potentially authorized to exercise. The necessity to obtain police “cooperation” meant that a significant number of appointments when to police sympathizers. Police officers gained leverage against the board by threatening to resign from their voluntary assignments to the city’s SWAT unit. This pattern of police stonewalling, particularly by police unions, is quite common and debilitating to boards. In Cleveland, police union lawsuits tied up the board, preventing it from beginning operations for almost four years. In San Diego, the threat of a lawsuit by sheriff’s deputies made the board tread very slowly, taking over a year to adopt regulations.

Consulting the Cops

The Minneapolis board began to rely heavily on the attorney for the city patrolmen’s union, with a conservative majority on the board consulting him before adopting resolutions, according to a critical article about the board in City Pages magazine, by Jennifer Vogel, a University of Minnesota student whose piece won the I.F. Stone Award for Student Journalism from the Nation magazine.

The board also adopted a very high standard of proof to sustain complaints, requiring not merely a preponderance of evidence, but clear and convincing proof of the validity of the complaint. Officers admitted privately that they felt they would get better treatment from the Board than they would receive from the Internal Affairs division of their own police department. In fact, less money and staff were allocated to investigating citizen complaints under the Board than had been by Internal Affairs.

In the protracted process of setting up the committee and adopting rules of procedure, the Minneapolis review board lost the support of most of the activists who had campaigned for its adoption. Clyde Bellecourt, a long-time Native American activist, told City Pages that under the circumstances he would “advise people to avoid (the Board) and see a lawyer” to file a civil suit in case of police abuse.

Clyde Bellecourt as an urban American Indian Movement patrol leader in Minnesota

Ron Bear of the American Indian Movement (AIM) believes there has been some improvement in relations between the Native American community and the Minneapolis police compared to several years ago, but he doesn’t attribute this to the review board. “When we got real concerned about police brutality and other attacks on our people, we went out and organized the AIM Patrol on the streets. For awhile, the police were suspicious of us and hostile, but eventually they saw we were operating inside the law to improve things and they have become more cooperative,” he says.

Review boards can also exhibit the same disregard for people of color found in police ranks. When Shirley Cain, a Native American member of the review board, proposed sensitivity training for members of the board and its staff, she was ignored. A Native American woman, Marnie Stately, applied for the position of head of the board’s staff, the only woman and the only person of color to do so. She was asked different questions than were the white male applicants. After she was rejected for the position, the city’s Civil Rights Commission found that she had grounds for a charge of bias in the hiring process.

These problems are hardly unique to Minneapolis. In San Francisco, the former head of the Office of Citizen Complaints staff, Frank Schober, was quoted as urging his investigators to be skeptical of complaints, because “it’s in the nature of Black people to lie.” In San Francisco, the O.C.C. also sustains a smaller percentage of complaints than did the Internal Affairs Division before civilian involvement was established. Wes Pomeroy, former President of the International Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, a professional organization of people involved in police commissions and review boards, claims that “civilian boards are generally easier on the police than their own organizations.”

He feels that members of the boards get too chummy with the police they are supposed to oversee. They become sympathizers even if they didn’t feel that way to start with. “The board has to be careful it doesn’t start advocating the police and forget the other guys.”

Then-President of LA Police Commission encourages holiday shopping at the LAPD online store…

Minneapolis also illustrates another problem with the review board approach, rooted in the federal nature of the U.S. government. Although the city police department now has a board, and Minneapolis police worked cooperatively with Native American demonstrators protesting racist team names at the World Series and the Super Bowl this year, Annie Young, who works with the AIM Patrol, notes that there are 47 other jurisdictions in the county besides the Minneapolis P.D. Just recently, University of Minnesota police allegedly brutalized several people at a conference on the campus, she reports. Few if any of the other police forces have any provision for civilian review, although activists in St.Paul are beginning a campaign for civilian review, attempting to apply lessons from their twin city.

Too Many Police Forces

The multiplicity of jurisdictions contributes to the intractability of the problem of police brutality. Situations will vary from city to city, or even within jurisdictions within the same city. A great deal depends on the configuration of political forces. For example, in San Diego, California, the Review Board for the San Diego Police Department is considered by community activists to be virtually powerless and ineffective. The S.D.P.D. has often been implicated in killings and other brutality, and has a bloody history of operations along the U.S.-Mexico border. The city council and police chief have been hostile to calls for community control.

But, according to Roberto Martinez, Executive Director of the Border Project of the American Friends Service Committee, the recently established Citizens Law Enforcement Review Board for the San Diego Sheriff’s Department is more extensive, enjoys authentic community participation and has received backing from County supervisors and cooperation from the new Sheriff.

In another example, in Long Beach, California, a multi-racial coalition called the Steering Committee for Proposition One was able to rush a citizen review board proposal onto last November’s ballot. Unfortunately, in the interests of haste, the final proposal was the result of a compromise with the City Council and the City Manager. It was passed, but it is advisory in nature and its recommendations are kept secret even from the complainant. Its staff and investigators are appointed by the City Manager and “piggy-back” their investigations onto ones conducted by Internal Affairs.

The City Council is now considering a plan to scrap the entire L.B.P.D. and turn policing of California’s fifth largest city over to the L.A. County Sheriff’s Dept. According to long-time gay activist Rick Rosen, the City Manager had signed a contract turning over 20% of the policing to the Sheriff’s Department before the Board had even gone into effect. He doesn’t feel this was a deliberate attempt to circumvent the board, but that has been the result, as the County Sheriff, Sherman Block, is adamantly opposed to civilian review of his agency, claiming he is an elected civilian leader of the department.

Sherman Block, center, long-time LASD Sheriff.

The sheriff’s department did agree to an informal process whereby a subcommittee of the Long Beach board can consult with the department regarding its internal investigations of complaints against deputies in the city. But if the city attempts to turn policing in its entirety over to sheriffs, Rosen vows that the Steering Committee for Proposition One “will take every legal means to ensure that the language of the City Charter ensuring civilian oversight takes precedence.” He admits, however, that currently California case law supports the Long Beach city attorney’s ruling that the charter provision would not apply to a contract with Sheriff’s Department.

The bottom line is that a majority of civilian complaint review boards have little real power. They uphold a small minority (under 10%) of citizen complaints (compared to a 90% conviction rate in the criminal courts of civilians charged by police.) As the boards are institutionalized, they tend to become co-opted by police departments, in the common fate of many regulatory bodies that become agents of the industries they supervise. At best, they are little more than cosmetic.

Civic authorities in New York, Los Angeles and other large cities are willing to pay out millions of dollars each year to victims of police abuse in civil suits, rather than fundamentally reform the way policing is supervised or carried out. Even where review boards have been adopted, they do not allow community representatives to exercise real power in disciplining abusive police officers or transforming the racially-charged “us against them” mentality of their police departments.

Movement Weakness

Why is this so? Police officials and police officers have a strong vested interest in minimizing the powers and influence of the review boards. On the other hand, the pattern of community struggles over civilian review of police reflects critical weaknesses of popular movements around the issue. Police brutality is most often taken up on a case-by-case basis, in one community or another, often focused on a particular incident or family, around the demand of “justice for the victim.” It has been difficult to generalize the struggle to other communities in the same city, let alone to national political action.

For example in Los Angeles, the African-American community has been dealing with the L.A.P.D., while Latino/Mexicano concern has been focused primarily on the Sheriff’s Department. This is a typical example of how the patchwork quilt of law enforcement bodies in the U.S. has been an effective obstacle to communication, cross-support and solidarity between communities and to maintaining effective momentum against police abuse. Cities where multi-ethnic coalitions have been put together, including Black, Latino, Asian/Pacific, Native American and gay and lesbian groups that deal with police brutality have had more success. But even then such struggles seem to go about reinventing the wheel in case after case, city after city. The closest thing to a national organization or voice on the question of police abuse is the ACLU, which tends towards legalism in dealing with the issue and to procedural rather than a political focus.

Grabbing the Opportunity

On the other hand, in some cities the combination of a political opportunity and an effective police accountability movement with sophisticated strategies has pushed the civilian review model about as far as it has gone in the U.S. These opportunities usually arise as the result of some scandal, where incontrovertible evidence of police abuse is revealed to the public at large and the resulting outrage leads to demands for action.

For example, Rosen points out that in Long Beach, the Steering Committee for Proposition One failed in several previous efforts to get a civilian review board on the ballot. However, they were able to ride the crest of a wave of popular anger after a sting operation by Don Jackson, a Black former police officer who brought an NBC-TV crew to the city and was videotaped while his head was smashed through a plate-glass window by two white Long Beach cops.

Similarly, a series of financial and other scandals left the San Diego Sheriff’s Department politically vulnerable in 1990. The county grand jury was harshly critical of sheriff’s department operations in the jails and abuse of prisoners. Voters approved a charter amendment creating the Board in November 1990, and the concept was embraced by County supervisors who appoint its members, as well as by the incoming Sheriff, who defeated an opponent endorsed by the departing Sheriff.

Yet even with these relatively favorable conditions, the Board was forced into a go-slow strategy by intense opposition from sheriff’s deputies and conservative groups. Roberto Martinez was initially critical of the slow pace with which the Sheriff’s board was put together. Referring to the delay of over a year in getting the board up and running after it was approved by voters, Martinez said he was “a little frustrated. This does nothing to encourage complaints to be filed, to encourage people to come forward.” But he now feels that as a result of constant community organizing and pressure, the effort has successfully placed people on the board who are responsive to community concerns.

Rodney King

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Coui65pO2E

The videotaped beating of Rodney King is another example. It served to focus national attention on the issue of police racism and abuse, and in Los Angeles local organizations are busy building a model for organizing around the issue in a sustained way. An extensive, comprehensive Civilian Review Board proposal is now at the stage of signature-gathering to qualify for ballot status as an initiative. The sponsoring Coalition for Justice and a Civilian Police Review Board has drafted a sweeping proposal after studying measures adopted with frustrating results in other cities.

Compared to existing boards, in fact, calling it a civilian review board proposal is probably a misnomer. The proposal includes elected membership of the board (one representative in each City Council district) selected by popular vote rather than appointment. It calls for an independent staff, hired by the board itself, substantial budget and subpoena powers, the ability to directly discipline officers and to settle minor cases brought against the city by victims of police brutality for financial damages. The most novel aspect of the proposal is the creation of the associated office of a special prosecutor to deal with criminal charges against police in more serious cases. All of this would be established by City Charter amendment if it gets on the ballot and is passed, thereby bypassing all the pitfalls of negotiation with the police and the existing political establishment.

According to Michael Zinzun, co-chair of the sponsoring committee, a former local leader of the Black Panther Party and a longtime police abuse activist, the proposal and the campaign grows out of an effort to overcome the weaknesses they have seen in existing boards in other cities, and previous failures to mobilize effectively in Los Angeles. “We learned important lessons,” he says, “from a failed attempt to enact a similar measure almost a decade ago after police atrocities like the killing of sister Eulia Love by the L.A.P.D. over an unpaid utility bill.”

Developing National Fronts

National efforts are developing around the entire issue of police abuse and lack of accountability. According to Mary Powers of Citizens Alert in Chicago, a group which participates in a local coalition against police torture and brutality, a national consultative meeting was held in that city in May of last year, following the wave of national attention generated by the videotaped beating of Rodney King. The conferees decided to convene a broader national conference, which was held last November, to establish a permanent national network. The conference drew participants from groups around the country and established the National Coalition on Police Accountability.

A six-person steering committee was selected, with representatives from victims of police harassment, civilian oversight agencies, organizations of color, church groups and activist groups dealing with police issues.

NCOPA called for a national week of actions for police accountability on the anniversary of the King beating during the first week of March and programs were scheduled in California, Washington, Texas, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Maryland.

The network has been functioning as a national clearinghouse on the issue, providing background to national news media on police abuse stories. The Minnesota Coalition for Police Accountability has agreed to produce a national newsletter. A second conference is planned for later this year [1991], probably in Minneapolis.

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nadiaswrt205blogposts-blog · 8 years ago

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How The ‘Muslim Ban’ Is Going to Hurt Innovation in the United States of America

The United States prides itself on the American Dream. That is, the dream to come to this country and achieve success through hard work, motivation and determination. It gives people a chance to innovate, inspire, discover, and learn. However, the American dream is slowly evaporating. On March 6, 2017,

President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 13780: Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States. While the ban is intended to protect the country from potential foreign terrorists, it generalizes the populations of multiple countries and halts them from achieving this dream. The document reads “ The visa issuance process plays a crucial role in detecting individuals with terrorist ties and stopping them from entering the United States.”

Immigrants from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen are currently being prevented from entering into the United States for 90 days. The ban also prevents refugees from Syria from entering the country for 120 days (NY Times).

This unjust and unconstitutional ban denies a plethora of people from so many opportunities and will greatly hurt their futures as well as the future of the United States. It does so by preventing the flow of new businesses, denying students and researchers a chance to discover and learn, and is currently upsetting many companies whose workers are being affected.

Immigrants are essential to economic growth in the United States. In fact , according to a 2012 research paper by Washington Post contributor Vivek Wadhwa,”America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs,” immigrants contribute to over 60% of patent filings for innovative companies. If America creates a new atmosphere in which immigrants are uncertain and scared about their future, they will have less incentive to open businesses in the country.

Not only does the ban halt people from those six targeted countries from coming here, but in the long run, it makes those from other countries weary of their future in this country. If Donald Trump is to ban people from six nations from coming here, who’s to say he will not stop immigrants outside those six from migrating?

One particular field that is being effected largely is advanced technologies. Immigrants make up a large majority of technological fields including computer science, mathematics, physics, and other sciences.Therefore, they play a meaningful part in U.S research and innovation. In fact, 24% of engineering and technology startup companies were founded by immigrants and 44% of those started in Silicon Valley were also founded by immigrants.

What Donald Trump does not realize is that immigrants are not taking jobs, they are creating jobs. They are fueling innovation contributing to a large portion of the economic health of the United States of America.

Forbes contributor John Wasik believes that “ promising researchers,engineers,academics,and other professionals will stay away from the U.S if they know they’re not welcome or will be routinely detained and interrogated at U.S airports.”. With this being true, he also goes on to say that “restricting the flow of intellectual capital is another form of a trade war.”

A trade war is defined as a war in which trade between two or more countries is blockaded by restrictions such as quotas or tariffs. Here, the potential war is being fueled by the restriction of human capital. The country depends and needs innovators for the start of businesses. Wasik believes that this potential trade war is curbing talent from entering into the United States and will enter a slippery slope into other areas.

One main reason that America is a superpower is due to innovation , and immigration is crucial to this action. In the current day, innovators such as Nikola Tesla, an immigrant and Steve Jobs, the son of immigrant parents, are changing the future of technology. While these are just two examples, it goes to show the bold and very relevant impact that immigration makes on the technology we see today.

The ban not only prevents the flow of new businesses, it also narrows down the opportunities of students and researchers who are impacted by the ban. Already, the ban has interrupted science opportunities in the United States and around the globe.

One case presented by The Atlantic is that of Ali Abdi, who is an Iranian Ph.D. anthropology student at Yale University.When he left the United States to take part in ethnographic research in Afghanistan, he was stuck in Dubai awaiting a visa from the Afghan consulate. However, he became fearful that if the visa fell through, there was little chance of his return to the United States even though he is a green card holder. Abdi is just one of many who worry that there need to carry out research abroad will be affected by the ban , as they may not be able to return.

Ali Abdi, student at Yale University

Already, students and researchers have found themselves trapped outside the country, have had long awaited visits cancelled, or have seen their fieldwork plans dismantled. What makes the ban disturbing is that one in six U.S scientists is an immigrant. Or in other words, over 5 million scientists are immigrants who have had a large effect on science and research in the United States .

One immigrant Jan Vilcek, from New York University School of Medicine set up a foundation that awards annual prizes to immigrants who have made large contributions to American society in biomedical science and other fields. He believes that “ A very significant segment of the contributions to science comes from people born outside the country including 30 percent of American-based Nobel laureates.” The ban prevents people from coming to the country and their chances to progress in science.

In talking about the possible trade war, it is also safe to assume that if a society is less open to research, the more likely scientists and innovators are to go to a different area. For many years, that area has been the United States. However, with recent restrictions, there is a high chance that abroad research and innovation will be conducted by scientists in other countries. There goes future scientists of this and future generations.

Not only does the order restrict the opportunities of scientists and researchers, it also restricts students who have come to the United States to learn and grow into future researchers, scientists,and innovators.

One case is that of Iranian student Raya Bidshahri, who is currently studying neuroscience at Boston University. Although she has her family in Iran, faculty at the university has warned her not to leave as she might not be able to enter back into the United States. It is truly disheartening to see that Bidshahri may have to sacrifice either visiting her family or giving up her dream to be a neurologist. She is just one of many students who has to worry about their place here in the United States in the future if she leaves the country.

Raya Bidshahri, neurology student at Boston University

Fatemah Keshavarz, director of both the School of Languages,Literatures, and Cultures as well as the Roshan Institute for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland says that under the ban , if she wanted to come study in the United States, she would not be able to do so under the ban. Keshavarz believes that efforts to present the ban as a security issue is not sensible.

Allowing a vast diversity of students from all over the world to study in the United States is how universities accomplish their goal of opening more discussion and teaching students about the globe. She says,”I believe a lot of our safety depends on learning these things”.

As of now, students from schools all over the country are worried that they will not be allowed into the U.S if they leave to visit family for instance. They are worried that this ban will hurt them from achieving their academic and career goals. Without students, who is going to discover? Who is going to invent? Students go to universities to learn so that they can apply their knowledge towards making their mark on the world. This ban narrows down those who can make future impacts.

Companies such as Apple, Facebook, Google, and Amazon are not happy about the implications of the ban. Such companies deeply believe in the importance of immigration, especially to fuel their own innovation. Recently,CEOs such as Apple CEO Tim Cook have been meeting with GOP lawmakers to push for action against the ban. Cook wrote that “In my conversations with officials here in Washington this week, I’ve made it clear that Apple believes deeply in the importance of immigration-both to our company and to our nation’s future. Apple would not exist without immigration,let alone thrive and innovate the way we do.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook

Immigration is pathway for individuals who want to come to this country and innovate. The ban is hurting these companies because many of their employees are being harmed and may not be able to return to work if they leave the country. It also shuts out prospective innovators who may become fearful of working in this country if there is a chance they would be discriminated against by bans such as this one.

The debate about the ban is being intensified by companies who are lobbying against the ban. Companies such as Twitter and Netflix filed a court brief opposing the executive order. Now joining, are multiple companies like Salesforce, Lyft, and Uber. A total of 127 companies have now filed court papers declaring that the ban “ violates the immigration laws and Constitution.) It also represents a “sudden shift in the rules governing entry into the United States, and is inflicting substantial harm on U.S companies,” according to the court document filed by multiple companies.

A a whole, the Silicon Valley has publicly denounced the trump order saying that it is hurting their ability to retain top talent. Companies there are worried about the future of the country, the stability of their labor force, and their survival. An

An overview of the Top Silicon Valley Companies

One example of the ban’s impact on companies is Google. CEO Sundar Pichai said that order affects at least 187 of their staff. In a staff memo, he stated that “ We’re concerned about the impact of this order and any proposals that could impose restrictions on Googlers and their families, or that could create barriers to bringing great talent to the U.S.”

But Google is just one of the countless companies who are mad and rightfully so. Companies, students, researchers, innovators, thinkers, and hard workers are being affected. The ban is not protecting the United States, it is going to harm the United States. The ban instills fear into those who want to prosper here and live the American Dream. While Donald Trump is trying to keep the country safe from immigrants of the six banned country, he is harvesting more insecurity. Without immigrants from all countries including the banned six, the progress of the country will continue to decline.

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