| Blog and Media Roundup - Wednesday, July 24, 2013; News Roundup | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jul 24 2013, 04:31 AM (335 Views) | |
| abb | Jul 24 2013, 04:31 AM Post #1 |
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http://www.heraldsun.com/news/x533459232/Police-investigate-Umstead-St-homicide Police investigate two new possible homicides Jul. 23, 2013 @ 07:37 PM Keith Upchurch DURHAM — A 41-year-old man was shot repeatedly outside a house Monday night and later died at the hospital, and a woman’s body was found Tuesday in an apartment. The deaths bring to number of city homicides in the past five weeks to eight. Officers were called at 9:09 p.m. to the 300 block of East Umstead Street to investigate reports of a shooting, and found that Travis Knight of Armitage Court had been shot “several times.” He was rushed to Duke University Hospital and later died. Police did not identify the exact address where the shooting happened, but the low-income neighborhood is near the former J.A. Whitted School and Operation Breakthrough, off Roxboro Street. A man who lives nearby said Tuesday that he “knew of” the victim. “I heard he had been shot and was dead,” the man, who asked not to be identified, said. “He was a quiet dude. But that’s sad, man, really sad.” Investigators continued Tuesday trying to develop leads in the slaying. Durham Police Chief Jose Lopez said in an interview from Wilmington, where he is attending a conference, that no motive has been determined for the death. “I think it’s just too early [to pin down] motive,” Lopez said. “We’re still investigating it, and we urge anybody who knows anything to come forward. We’ll continue to look at ways to address this violence.” Lopez said no link to earlier homicides has been established. “At this time, there’s nothing that says to me that there’s a connection to any other [homicides],” Lopez said. “The investigators are still out there, and that could change.” Police are also investigating what they termed “a suspicious death” at an apartment at Greens of Pine Glen in southern Durham. Officers were called to the apartment at 10 a.m. Tuesday to check on the welfare of a resident in the 6400 block of Greens Hollow Lane, and found a woman dead inside. Police did not release her name Tuesday. The cause of death had not been determined Tuesday evening, but police spokeswoman Kammie Michael said it “appears to be suspicious” and is being investigated as a homicide. Anyone with information is asked to call Investigator Cristaldi at 919-560-4440, ext. 29322 or CrimeStoppers at 919-683-1200. CrimeStoppers pays cash rewards for information leading to arrests in felony cases. Callers never have to identify themselves. |
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| abb | Jul 24 2013, 04:33 AM Post #2 |
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http://www.heraldsun.com/news/x533459611/Police-chief-asks-new-officers-to-show-compassion Police chief asks new officers to show compassion Jul. 23, 2013 @ 08:11 PM Keith Upchurch DURHAM — Durham Police Chief Jose Lopez asked 10 newly minted officers Tuesday to keep their badges shiny by behaving professionally and to show compassion toward others. “You have a lot of tools,” Lopez said at the Durham Police Academy graduation ceremony at Duke Memorial United Methodist Church. “But one tool that you cannot put a price on is compassion. Make sure you keep that compassion, and let it grow for those that you deal with.” The Basic Law Enforcement Training Class that graduated Tuesday night includes 10 new officers – eight men and two women, who range in age from 21 to 31. Eight have four-year college degrees and two have some college education. One new officer is from Durham and four have relatives who are former or current law enforcement officers. The academy included 26 weeks of classes, which will be followed by more training while on patrol. Lopez asked the graduating class to “remember this day.” “Remember who you are,” he said. “Make sure you represent this department in a very positive way, because everything you do good will make the rest of this organization look good. Everything you do wrong will impact this police department, so make sure that you don’t tarnish this badge that we’re giving you today.” Also speaking was class leader Kayla Blevins, who thanked her police academy instructors for “pushing us to be the best.” “Every day was a test to see if we were meant to be an officer,” she said. Through “blood, sweat and hard work,” the class developed a bond that endures, Blevins said. “We learned really quick that if one fails, we all fail,” she said. Blevins ended by reminding her fellow officers that their job requires excellence. “Every day, we have the ability to protect the weak and vulnerable, and we will,” she said. “Every day, we will have the chance to fight crime and foster hope, and we should. “And every day, we will be called upon to be courageous, and we must.” In addition to Blevins, the new officers are Michael Antonides, Brentley Brown, Christopher Foley, Joshua Mashburn, Laurel Nuyen, Morgan Riddle, Justin Rose, Jeremy Rushton and Edwin Valerio. |
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| Quasimodo | Jul 24 2013, 10:51 AM Post #3 |
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| abb | Jul 24 2013, 02:23 PM Post #4 |
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http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-perils-of-political-correctness.html Wednesday, July 24, 2013 The Perils of Political Correctness Two items showing the continuing failure in the academic world to learn the lessons of the lacrosse case. The first comes from the Chesterfield (VA) Observer, which ran an article on the status of African-Americans in the sport of lacrosse. The Observer interviewed Jay Coakley, professor emeritus of sociology and sport at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs. According to the Observer: In the aftermath of the 2006 Duke lacrosse rape scandal, Coakley was invited to speak to a national lacrosse convention in Philadelphia. His message – that the sport desperately needed diversity – wasn’t well received. “When I gave my presentation, probably about 100 white men walked out,” Coakley recalled. He offered up slides of photos culled from college websites, which showed a preponderance of white men playing the game. “I was accused on local talk radio of pushing political correctness and not understanding what lacrosse is all about,” he said. The address to which Coakley referred occurred at the 2007 US Lacrosse convention, which was held January 12-14 in Philadelphia. It’s worth noting the context: by this point, disciplinary charges had been announced against Mike Nifong; Crystal Mangum’s story had been changed to claim that no actual rape had occurred; and even Richard Brodhead (though not the Group of 88) had been moved to denounce Nifong. In short, the version of events to which so many politically correct figures on campus had attached themselves had been revealed as an utter fraud. Yet Coakley’s remarks appear to have ignored the jarring transformation of the case between March 2006 and January 2007; he spoke, instead, as if all events were as commonly understood in early April 2006. Since there was no record of Coakley’s remarks online, I e-mailed him. He graciously summarized his main points, which—to put it mildly—were stronger than the Observer article entailed. That wasn’t too surprising, since it was all but impossible to imagine that a banal call for more racial diversity in lacrosse could have triggered the mass walkout that he alleged. A few items: (1) Ignoring any of the new developments between early April 2006 and January 2007, Coakley linked the case to a call that (paraphrased) the “sport desperately needed diversity” because it had (paraphrased) “a preponderance of white men playing the game.” (Whites were, of course, a preponderance of all college-aged men in January 2007.) Even if some sort of racial balancing in college men’s lacrosse was or is desirable, how, precisely, could this goal be linked to the Duke lacrosse case in a way that would reflect well on Coakley? It’s true that, if the accused students were African-American rather than white, the lacrosse case would have differed. Neither Nifong nor the Group of 88 would have had any reason to have exploited the case, and therefore it likely would have never moved forward or received much campus or media attention. But suggesting that a sport having more black athletes minimizes the possibility of a local prosecutor or a school’s faculty engaging in race-baiting behavior doesn’t strike me as a . . . progressive . . . argument. Coakley seems to be insinuating, instead, that if more African-Americans were on the 2006 lacrosse team, the team would have treated the strippers more sensitively. That strikes me as a highly implausible conclusion. In general, his view of events seemed then, and still seems, frozen in time, as if no additional facts about what occurred at the party came out after early April 2006. He suggested to me that racial epithets were directed at false accuser Crystal Mangum (there’s no evidence of this, since Mangum was passed out during the racially charged argument between Kim Roberts and a lacrosse player that concluded the evening) and that other lacrosse players somehow should have intervened to stop the exchange between Roberts and their teammate. But it’s not clear how they could have done so, since all accounts of the evening suggested that Roberts then immediately called the police claiming a “hate crime,” and then drove off, while the captains told the remaining handful of players to go home. Coakley’s comment about intervention only makes sense if he believes that racial epithets occurred during the party itself—yet the only figures connected to the case to ever have made such a claim were Mangum and Mike Nifong. That he still seems to view the duo as credible speaks volumes as to the biases he brings to the case. (2) In his e-mail to me, Coakley linked his criticism of the lacrosse team in part to the hiring of strippers—an act that I, too, find distasteful. Yet it’s hard to see any connection between his critical comments about the team’s (or, more generally, lacrosse’s) racial makeup and the hiring of strippers. After all, a few weeks before the party, the majority African-American basketball team had hired strippers for a team party. More broadly, his basic approach in the 2007 talk—on which he doubled down in his Observer interview—suggests that the hiring of the strippers, and Coakley's seemingly inaccurate view of the development of the party, was such a grave character flaw that it overcomes all that we subsequently learned about members of the lacrosse team, whether in the Coleman Committee report, or in their post-case behavior in the 2006-7 academic year. Much like the Group of 88, it’s as if, for Coakley, the team’s character is frozen in time, as of early April 2006, and nothing that came after was allowed to disturb the preconceived ideological notions that he brought to the case. (3) In his interview with the Observer, Coakley said that he “was accused on local talk radio of pushing political correctness.” (Coakley didn’t cite which local talk radio leveled the accusation against him; it’s intriguing that he’s evidently a talk-radio listener.) In the event, at least based on what he shared with the Observer and later with me, the accusation seems to be a valid one. It’s unclear how many people share Coakley’s perspective; in society as a whole, it’s almost certainly a minority, and perhaps a small minority indeed. On campus, however, his politically correct approach is very much mainstream—as we saw, yet again, in a recent event at Duke. Of all the campuses in the country, it would seem as if Duke—whose students were the victims of the highest-profile rape hoax in modern American history—would bend over backwards to protect due process in sexual assault cases. The reverse was true: in 2009, the university implemented a new sexual assault definition, in which students could be found guilty of rape on the following criteria: “Real or perceived power differentials between individuals may create an unintentional atmosphere of coercion.” Why a student could be deemed a rapist based on unintentional actions that any accuser happened to perceive Duke never said, and amidst an outcry from alumni and from national groups, especially FIRE, Duke quietly dropped the new criteria in 2010. But otherwise, a due process-unfriendly sexual assault policy remained in place—until earlier this month, when Duke announced an adjustment. Students found guilty by the university now will face a presumed penalty of expulsion. Remarked Larry Moneta to the Herald-Sun, “This is not like the measles; there’s no vaccine . . . This is a very complicated issue that is not unique to us that just requires persistence and a multi-varied approach.” Moneta did not mention the importance of due process for sexual assault allegations. Students properly deemed rapists certainly should be expelled. Actually, of course, they should be sent to jail—but university activists tend to strongly oppose the idea of allowing the criminal justice system, rather than university bureaucracies, to address allegations of sexual assault. In the event, the heightening of the punishment has to shine the spotlight on the procedures the university employs, since the error resulting from a procedurally flawed decision is now so much greater. Duke’s policy is for a university administrator or a hired outside investigator to examine the allegations. The investigation is almost guaranteed to be slipshod: “Allegations of sexual misconduct will be investigated in a thorough and timely manner, typically within 15 business days of receipt of a complaint.” (Imagine if the police had such a requirement, amidst a bureaucracy that’s strongly predisposed, for ideological reasons, to believe all allegations of sexual assault, as is the case at Duke and many other universities.) The accused student doesn’t have the right to be represented by outside counsel, only a “member of the university community,” and even the role of this advocate is severely restricted: “He/she may only confer quietly or through notes with the complainant and may not address the panel.” And a finding of guilt occurs at the lowest possible threshold—a preponderance of evidence, or 50.01 percent. In explaining the new penalties, Moneta didn’t reference the lacrosse case, or explain why a campus that witnessed such an extraordinary violation of due process wouldn’t be vigilant about due process on such matters in the future. But Bob Ashley’s Herald-Sun filled the void. In an unsigned editorial celebrating Duke’s action (there’s a surprise!!), the H-S reflected in the following manner: “One legitimate debate fueled by the infamously false rape allegations against Duke lacrosse players in 2006 concerned the overall culture of gender relations on Duke and other campuses.” It’s easy to see how “legitimately false rape allegations” might have triggered a debate about why so many on Duke faculty members were willing to rush to judgment against three of the university’s male students. But somehow I doubt that’s the sort of “legitimate debate” about “gender relations” on the Duke campus that Ashley had in mind. Beyond the rare admission from Ashley that the charges his paper so consistently framed as true were actually false, it’s as if for the H-S editor, much like Professor Coakley, events in time are frozen as of April 2006. Posted by KC Johnson at 2:55 PM |
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| Quasimodo | Jul 24 2013, 02:44 PM Post #5 |
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Yep, their reputations are still damaged ... |
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