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Blog and Media Roundup - Monday, December 21, 2015; News Roundup
Topic Started: Dec 21 2015, 04:33 AM (80 Views)
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Saunders: Durham needs a police chief like Fayetteville’s

Harold Medlock is open and willing to invite scrutiny

That’s just what the Bull City needs with Jose Lopez leaving

So come to Durham, Chief, and we can promise you all of the charm and crime you can handle

By Barry Saunders


Outta the mouths of babes, right?

As kids in the 1970s, whenever one of our buddies could get hold of a car, we liked going to Fayetteville for its distinctive adult nightlife at places where the only ID required was green with a picture of Abraham Lincoln on it.

Even at that tender age, my buddy Rodney summed up the city in a way that still holds true. Despite its beloved charms, Fayetteville, he said, is a Charlotte that didn’t quite make it.

So Chief, you interested in making a move?

That’s what I wanted to ask Fayetteville’s police chief, Harold Medlock, after he met with reporters last week in Durham to discuss a new Open Data Policing plan that was unveiled by the Southern Center for Social Justice.

Durham is fixing to start looking for a new chief to replace the soon-to-be-departed Jose Lopez, and a chief who is not only willing, but eager, to invite scrutiny sounds like just what the Bull City needs.

The SCSJ showed reporters an app that allows anyone access to data that show who’s being stopped by police, where and why, as well as who’s doing the stopping. Say you think it was an unrighteous stop that had you pulled over to the side of the highway for 45 minutes while police dogs sniff your car, clothes and slobber all over your Nabs on the front seat – as happened to me two years ago by South Carolina deputies.

With the new app, all you have to do is go to the SCSJ website, tap in the whens and wherefores, and you can find out whether you were really singled out for suspicion of doing something wrong or just because that particular officer didn’t like the way you look.

Not only was Chief Medlock in Durham to extol the program’s virtues, but he had earlier asked the Department of Justice to investigate his department and suggest ways to improve how it serves Fayetteville.

As I’m sure many Fayetteville cops did, I asked “WHAT?”

I wanted to know why a police chief would sign up for something like that, as well as embrace an app that will shine a light into heretofore hard-to-access corners of police work.

The data are what the data are. The days of policing in secret are over.

Fayetteville Police Chief Harold Medlock, about new app

“It’s a way of opening our police department up to our customers, to the people we serve,” Medlock said. He said that after learning about the DoJ’s Community Oriented Policing Services Office, “we invited ourselves to the party.” As for the app that’ll show who’s being stopped, why and where, he said, “The data are what the data are. The days of policing in secret are over.”

I was doubly impressed that he knew “data” are plural.

The Department of Justice issued a report last week with 76 recommendations on how the Fayetteville Police Department can, among other things, reduce its use-of-force incidents and improve its relationship with the community.

Man, voluntarily inviting the Department of Justice to investigate your cop shop seems about like going to the dentist for a root canal before you get a toothache.

Ian Mance, a staff attorney for the SCSJ, called Medlock “one of the more progressive and forward-thinking police chiefs in North Carolina. I’ve been so impressed by the numbers (of arrests) in Fayetteville. Four years ago, Fayetteville was going through what Durham went through last year.”

He was referring to the widespread disaffection of residents toward the department and an us-against-them mentality that seemed to permeate all interactions.

The Fayetteville Police Department has reduced by half the number of traffic stops while also seeing a decrease in the number of traffic fatalities.

His mentality seems to be, ‘Let’s air this out and talk about it.’

Ian Mance of the SCSJ, on Harold Medlock

Medlock inviting the DoJ to investigate his department, Mance said, “says a lot about him. They had some critical things to say, but his mentality seems to be, ‘Let’s air this out and talk about it.’”

I’d already been a fan of Medlock, going back a couple of years when some heinous crime was committed in the ’Ville and he went on television to implore citizens to get involved. He seemed as hurt by what had happened to the victims and his city as the relatives of the victims.

So come to Durham, Chief, and we can promise you all of the charm and crime you can handle. Sure, previous chiefs have shut down most of the sin dens like the 14 Karat Dinner Theater and Brothers III that made the city so delightfully decadent but weren’t included in Chamber of Commerce brochures. But you won’t get bored.

We’ve got great barbecue and fish, and institutions of higher learning such as Duke and NCCU. There is the beautiful and acoustically superb Durham Performing Arts Center and the ballpark a long home run’s distance away. You have to be careful when going to take in a show at DPAC, though, because some geniuses decide to build an equally but incongruously impressive jailhouse right across the street.

Because of their proximity and grandeur, it’s likely that more than a few visitors have gone to the jail seeking tickets for “The Lion King.”

Barry Saunders: 919-836-2811, bsaunders@newsobserver.com, @BarrySaunders9

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/barry-saunders/article50782805.html#storylink=cpy
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http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/mother-of-falsely-accused-student-describes-ongoing-trauma/article/2578857

Mother of falsely accused student describes ongoing trauma
By Ashe Schow (@AsheSchow) • 12/21/15 12:58 PM

Late last week a mother received a frightening phone call from her son, who had been falsely accused of rape two years earlier. The phone call came at 3:30 in the morning, her son was crying.

"I'm sorry mom, I just can't do this anymore…" he said.

The mother, who must remain anonymous to protect her son and to stay within the terms of the settlement they reached with the school now nearly two years ago, submitted her description to the "Save Our Sons" website, which is dedicated to helping families cope with false accusations of campus sexual assault.

"I'm learning with our son that life doesn't just go on after an allegation of rape on campus," the mother wrote. "Even after clearing his name, even years later, the pain returns, staggeringly fresh."

Her son was expelled after he was accused of rape, even though no sex had even occurred. His evidence and witnesses were kept out of his school's investigation, the school ignored its own written policies, and the accuser and her witnesses were able to provide demonstrably false testimony without being questioned. In the end, the school settled with the accused and his family, but even clearing his name wasn't enough to end the pain.

"I'm learning that the healing process isn't a straight path for survivors of trauma. I'm learning that it offends some to even equate our experience with trauma. I'm learning that the message is clear to the American people, that on campus the innocent do not matter, that their lives aren't as important, that we should be happy and celebrate clearing his name. I'm learning it doesn't work that way," she wrote. "The damage to him, our family, his reputation, has been done. Moving on is not as easy as it seems."

She described being viewed as "the rapist's mom" when she would go to the school to help her son.

He was accused during his first week of freshman year, and expelled before the end of the semester. Despite the school's subsequent clearing of his name, the accused was so distraught from the experience that he could not return to school until another year had passed. He became chronically ill, lost 25 pounds, and could only handle a few classes a semester. Now, two years after the accusation and what should be his junior year, he is just finishing up enough credits to qualify as a sophomore.

False accusations don't just roll off the backs of their targets because they're supposed to be emotionless men. False accusations hurt, and schools, senators, activists — even the president and vice president of the U.S. — are promoting policies that make it easier to ruin the life of an innocent student.

"I want to beg Senators [Claire] McCaskill and [Kirsten] Gillibrand to see the destruction of an innocent life, to feel his pain, to see his trauma, to know what it's like to pick up your child who is in a crumble on the campus lawn, to ask them why his life doesn't matter," she wrote, "but the silencing continues, and the war wages on."

Though her son is back in school, he avoids the campus as much as possible. He goes to class but nothing else. He became severely depressed after the ordeal, and suffered another bout during this past semester. He sees a psychologist but is told the best healer is time. While waiting for time to heal his wounds, he's too afraid to date.

His mother hopes that one day "the tide will turn toward a reasonable fusion of compassion and common sense," and that laws and policies will be changed to incorporate necessary due process and fairness.

"And one day when my son's invisible wounds are healed, he will have been stronger for the journey," she wrote.
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