Saturday, December 31, 2011

Free holiday rides from Johnnie Walker, DOT

December 23, 2011

Free holiday rides from Johnnie Walker, DOT

youtheman.2011The New York City Department of Transportation is once again sponsoring free rides during the holiday through its You the Manfree voucher program.
In a partnership with Johnnie Walker, the DOT is handing out 4,000 single-ride MetroCards and 1,500 $15 debit cards to use in the city’s 13,000-plus taxicabs, participating livery car services, MTA, PATH, NJ Transit or other ticketing machines from until noon on Jan. 1.
The free cards will be handed out today at 5 p.m. at the St. George Ferry Terminal at Staten Island and at the Fulton Mall in Downtown Brooklyn.
More free cards will be handed out Dec. 31 at 5 p.m. on the Upper East Side at 2nd Avenue at 86th Street and in Harlem at Broadway & 125th Street.

Police Tactic: Keeping Crime Reports Off the Books

Police Tactic: Keeping Crime Reports Off the Books

Guy Calaf for The New York Times

Katherine Davis said that when a man climbed through her living room window, the police did not take an official report.

By AL BAKER and JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN
Published: December 30, 2011

Jill Korber walked into a drab police station in Queens in July to report that a passing bicyclist had groped her two days in a row. She left in tears, frustrated, she said, by the response of the first officer she encountered.

Enlarge This Image

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Jill Korber was frustrated by the Police Department's response after she was groped by a passing cyclist two days in a row.

“He told me it would be a waste of time, because I didn’t know who the guy was or where he worked or anything,” said Ms. Korber, 34, a schoolteacher. “His words to me were, ‘These things happen.’ He said those words.”

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/31/nyregion/nypd-leaves-offenses-unrecorded-to-keep-crime-rates-down.html

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Cooking For Good Luck In The New Year

Cooking For Good Luck In The New Year

Written by News One on December 27, 2011 7:49 amClick for More

Looking for good luck in the New Year? A dish of black eyed peas and rice might be nice.HuffingtonPost Black Voices reports:

SEE ALSO: Take The 2011 News Quiz

As ubiquitous as champagne and confetti on New Year’s Eve, black-eyed peas are a staple in African-American homes come January 1.

Like its soul-food kin, hoppin’ John, as the peas are called when cooked with rice, is rooted in slave culture and has been eaten throughout the South for good luck on New Year’s Day (alongside collard greens, which are said to bring money, and cornbread for good health).

According to Andrew F. Smith’s “Oxford Companion To American Food And Drink,” the dish rose to prominence in South Carolina’s low country, where rice-growing slaves from West Africa prepared it in dishes based on those they made in their homeland. And though it started out as a tradition among slaves, its inclusion in an 1847 cookbook called “The Carolina Housewife” by Sarah Rutledge signaled its acceptance in upper-class kitchens as well.

For recipes to unlock the keys to prosperity and health in the New Year, click here!

Read More At Black Voices

Friday, December 23, 2011

Arizona Sheriff Discriminates Against Latinos, Feds Say

Arizona Sheriff Discriminates Against Latinos, Feds Say

PHOENIX — The federal government issued a scathing report Thursday that outlines how Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office has committed a wide range of civil rights violations against Latinos, including a pattern of racial profiling and discrimination and carrying out heavy-handed immigration patrols based on racially charged citizen complaints.

The report, obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its release, is a result of the U.S. Justice Department’s three-year investigation of Arpaio’s office amid complaints of racial profiling and a culture of bias at the agency’s top level.

The Justice Department’s conclusions in the civil probe mark the federal government’s harshest rebuke of a national political fixture who has risen to prominence for his immigration crackdowns and became coveted endorsement among candidates in the GOP presidential field.

Apart from the civil rights probe, a federal grand jury also has been investigating Arpaio’s office on criminal abuse-of-power allegations since at least December 2009 and is specifically examining the investigative work of the sheriff’s anti-public corruption squad.

The civil rights report said federal authorities will continue to investigate complaints of deputies using excessive force against Latinos, whether the sheriff’s office failed to provide adequately police services in Hispanic communities and a large number of sex-crimes cases that were assigned to the agency but weren’t followed up on or investigated at all.

The report took the sheriff’s office to task for launching immigration patrols, known as “sweeps,” based on complaints that Latinos were merely gathering near a business without committing crimes. Federal authorities single out Arpaio himself and said his office, known as MCSO, has no clear policies to guard against the violations, even after he changed some of his top aides earlier this year.

“Arpaio’s own actions have helped nurture MCSO’s culture of bias,” wrote Thomas Perez, who heads the Justice Department’s civil rights division, adding that the sheriff frequently gave such racially charged letters to some of his top aides and saved them in his own files.

“MCSO is broken in a number of critical respects. The problems are deeply rooted in MCSO’s culture,” he said Thursday.

The Justice Department’s expert on measuring racial profiling said it’s the most egregious case of racial profiling in the nation that he has seen or reviewed in professional literature, Perez said.

Investigators interviewed more than 400 people, including Arpaio, reviewed thousands of documents and toured county jails as part of its probe, he said.

If the sheriff’s office doesn’t turn around its policies and practices, the federal government could pull millions of dollars of federal funding.

Arpaio’s office did not immediately respond to AP requests for comment.

The report will require Arpaio to set up effective policies against discrimination, improve training and make other changes that would be monitored for compliance by a judge. Arpaio faces a Jan. 4 deadline for saying whether he wants to work out an agreement. If not, the federal government will sue him and let a judge decide the complaint.

Arpaio, the self-proclaimed toughest sheriff in America, has long denied the racial profiling allegation, saying people are stopped if deputies have probable cause to believe they have committed crimes and that deputies later find many of them are illegal immigrants.

Arpaio has built his reputation on jailing inmates in tents and dressing them in pink underwear, selling himself to voters as unceasingly tough on crime and pushing the bounds of how far local police can go to confront illegal immigration.

The report also said he and some top staffers tried to silence people who have spoken out against the sheriff’s office by arresting people without cause, filing meritless lawsuits against opponents and starting investigations of critics.

One example cited by the Justice Department is former top Arpaio aide David Hendershott, who filed bar complaints against attorneys critical of the agency along with bringing judicial complaints against judges who were at odds with the sheriff. All complaints were dismissed.

The anti-corruption squad’s cases against two county officials and a judge collapsed in court before going to trial and have been criticized by politicians at odds with the sheriff as trumped up. Arpaio has defended the investigations as a valid attempt at rooting out corruption in county government.

The civil rights report said Latinos are four to nine times more likely to be stopped in traffic stops in Maricopa County than non-Latinos and that the agency’s immigration policies treat Latinos as if they are all in the country illegally. Deputies on the immigrant-smuggling squad stop and arrest Latino drivers without good cause, the investigation found.

A review done as part of the investigation found that 20 percent of traffic reports handled by Arpaio’s immigrant-smuggling squad from March 2006 to March 2009 were stops – almost all involving Latino drivers – that were done without reasonable suspicion. The squad’s stops rarely led to smuggling arrests.

Deputies are encouraged to make high-volume traffic stops in targeted locations. There were Latinos who were in the U.S. legally who were arrested or detained without cause during the sweeps, according to the report.

During the sweeps, deputies flood an area of a city – in some cases, heavily Latino areas – over several days to seek out traffic violators and arrest other offenders. Illegal immigrants accounted for 57 percent of the 1,500 people arrested in the 20 sweeps conducted by his office since January 2008, according to figures provided by Arpaio’s office.

Police supervisors, including at least one smuggling-squad supervisor, often used county accounts to send emails that demeaned Latinos to fellow sheriff’s managers, deputies and volunteers in the sheriff’s posse. One such email had a photo of a mock driver’s license for a fictional state called “Mexifornia.”

The report said that the sheriff’s office launched an immigration operation two weeks after the sheriff received a letter in August 2009 letter about a person’s dismay over employees of a McDonald’s in the Phoenix suburb of Sun City who didn’t speak English. The tip laid out no criminal allegations. The sheriff wrote back to thank the writer “for the info,” said he would look into it and forwarded it to a top aide with a note of “for our operation.”

Federal investigators focused heavily on the language barriers in Arpaio’s jails.

Latino inmates with limited English skills were punished for failing to understand commands in English by being put in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day or keeping prisoners locked down in their jail pods for as long as 72 hours without a trip to the canteen area or making nonlegal phone calls.

The report said some jail officers used racial slurs for Latinos when talking among themselves and speaking to inmates.

Detention officers refused to accept forms requesting basic daily services and reporting mistreatment when the documents were completed in Spanish and pressured Latinos with limited English skills to sign forms that implicate their legal rights without language assistance.

The agency pressures Latinos with limited English skills to sign forms by yelling at them and keeping them in uncomfortably cold cells for long periods of time.

The Justice Department said it hadn’t yet established a pattern of alleged wrongdoing by the sheriff’s office in the three areas where they will continue to investigation: complaints of excessive force against Latinos, botched sex-crimes cases and immigration efforts that have hurt the agency’s trust with the Hispanic community.

Federal authorities will continue to investigate whether the sheriff’s office has limited the willingness of witnesses and victims to report crimes or talk to Arpaio’s office.

“MCSO has done almost nothing to build such a relationship with Mariciopa County’s Latino residents,” Perez wrote.

Arizona Sheriff Discriminates Against Latinos, Feds Say
Associated Press
Thu, 15 Dec 2011 21:58:32 GMT

Thursday, December 22, 2011

NORAD's Santa trackers pull out high-tech stops

NORAD's Santa trackers pull out high-tech stops

NORAD is once again using its super high-tech tracking equipment to keep tabs on Santa Claus this year.


NORAD's Santa trackers pull out high-tech stops
Thu, 22 Dec 2011 23:05:59 GMT

Local Politician Predicts Mayor Bloomberg to Jail in 2012

Local Politician Predicts Mayor Bloomberg to Jail in 2012

Former New York Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV boldly said Mayor Bloomberg will go to prison before finishing his third term in a roundup of political predictions for the Spanish-language El Diario newspaper. Powell didn't explain why, but his fantasy went far enough to include Bill Thompson winning the mayorship in a special election, so it's either a joke without a punch line or Powell knows something we don't. Or it's completely baseless! Stay tuned in the New Year.

Read more posts by Joe Coscarelli

Filed Under: the third terminator ,michael bloomberg ,politics ,2012

Local Politician Predicts Mayor Bloomberg to Jail in 2012
Joe Coscarelli
Thu, 22 Dec 2011 15:03:22 GMT

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Selling Swipes May Be a Swindle, but Don’t Call It Larceny

Selling Swipes May Be a Swindle, but Don’t Call It Larceny

By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
Published: December 13, 2011

It is a classic subterranean swindle, up there with turnstile hopping and token sucking: the selling of contraband swipes from an unlimited MetroCard to unquestioning subway riders.

Seth Wenig/Associated Press

Connect with@NYTMetro on Twitterfor New York breaking news and headlines.

The scam is simple. An enterprising scofflaw invests in an unlimited pass and charges passengers less than the standard fare. After recouping the investment, the rest is pure profit — and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority loses out on legitimate fares.

It is a practice that is commonly classified by the authorities as larceny.

No more. On Tuesday, New York’s most powerful court ruled that the MetroCard scheme did not, in fact, meet the legal definition of petty larceny, and it overturned the 2009 conviction of a New Jersey man who, having served a day in jail for the crime, had fought his case all the way to the State Court of Appeals.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/nyregion/selling-metrocard-swipes-isnt-larceny-new-york-court-of-appeals-rules.html

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Controversial Pharmacy Bill Approved

Controversial Pharmacy Bill Approved

Gov. Cuomo signed into law a controversial bill that prohibits insurance companies from requiring only the use mail-order prescriptions, legislative sources say.   Cuomo also approved a second related bill that mandates that fertility drugs provided by local pharmacists  be covered by insurers ...

Controversial Pharmacy Bill Approved
Tue, 13 Dec 2011 17:42:48 GMT

Note: Cross posted from NARMER'S PLACE.

Permalink

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

What The Hell??? The Government Has Been Testing AIDS Drugs On Foster Kids For The Last Two Decades Without The Proper Protective Measures

What The Hell??? The Government Has Been Testing AIDS Drugs On Foster Kids For The Last Two Decades Without The Proper Protective Measures

Dr. exam kid

SMH… Somebody has to protect these kids.

Government-funded researchers tested AIDS drugs on hundreds of foster children over the past two decades, often without providing them a basic protection afforded in federal law and required by some states, an Associated Press review has found.

The research funded by the National Institutes of Health spanned the country. It was most widespread in the 1990s as foster care agencies sought treatments for their HIV-infected children that weren’t yet available in the marketplace.

The practice ensured that foster children — mostly poor or minority — received care from world-class researchers at government expense, slowing their rate of death and extending their lives. But it also exposed a vulnerable population to the risks of medical research and drugs that were known to have serious side effects in adults and for which the safety for children was unknown.

The research was conducted in at least seven states — Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Colorado and Texas — and involved more than four dozen different studies. The foster children ranged from infants to late teens, according to interviews and government records.

Several studies that enlisted foster children reported patients suffered side effects such as rashes, vomiting and sharp drops in infection-fighting blood cells as they tested antiretroviral drugs to suppress AIDS or other medicines to treat secondary infections.

In one study, researchers reported a “disturbing” higher death rate among children who took higher doses of a drug. That study was unable to determine a safe and effective dosage.

The government provided special protections for child wards in 1983. They required researchers and their oversight boards to appoint independent advocates for any foster child enrolled in a narrow class of studies that involved greater than minimal risk and lacked the promise of direct benefit. Some foster agencies required the protection regardless of risks and benefits.

Advocates must be independent of the foster care and research agencies, have some understanding of medical issues and “act in the best interests of the child” for the entirety of the research, the law states.

However, researchers and foster agencies told AP that foster children in AIDS drug trials often weren’t given such advocates even though research institutions many times promised to do so to gain access to the children.

Illinois officials believe none of their nearly 200 foster children in AIDS studies got independent monitors even though researchers signed a document guaranteeing “the appointment of an advocate for each individual ward participating in the respective medical research.”

New York City could find records showing 142 — less than a third — of the 465 foster children in AIDS drug trials got such monitors even though city policy required them. The city has asked an outside firm to investigate.

Likewise, research facilities including Chicago’s Children’s Memorial Hospital and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore said they concluded they didn’t provide advocates for foster kids.

Some states declined to participate in medical experiments. Tennessee said its foster care rules generally prohibit enlisting children in such trials. California requires a judge’s order. And Wisconsin “has absolutely never allowed, nor would we even consider, any clinical experiments with the children in our foster care system,” spokeswoman Stephanie Marquis said.

Officials estimated that 5 percent to 10 percent of the 13,878 children enrolled in pediatric AIDS studies funded by NIH since the late 1980s were in foster care. More than two dozen Illinois foster children remain in studies today.

Some foster children died during studies, but state or city agencies said they could find no records that any deaths were directly caused by experimental treatments.

We can understand wanting the kids to get the best care but we don’t need what happened in Tuskegee to ever happen again.

Click Here To Read The Full Story

What The Hell??? The Government Has Been Testing AIDS Drugs On Foster Kids For The Last Two Decades Without The Proper Protective Measures
thatsmybiz1
Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:39:22 GMT

Note: Cross posted from NARMER'S PLACE.

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Monday, December 5, 2011

12-Year-Old Leads March Against Gun Violence & Drugs In Harlem

12-Year-Old Leads March Against Gun Violence & Drugs In Harlem

In this is episode of NewOne’s original video series “On The Corner,” we joined twelve-year-old Victoria Pannell, the National Action Network’s Northeast Regional Director of the Youth, in a march and rally in a Harlem neighborhood where gang, drug, and gun activity is rampant.

Dozens of Harlemites congregated at Wright Brothers Playground, a small park that has a reputation of being unsafe for kids, to denounce the illicit activities that go on in the recreation space.

National Action Network recently announced the national Shake-Off the Violence tour and coast-to-coast cease fire coordinated by NAN’s Youth Movement and the Youth in Action group.

 


12-Year-Old Leads March Against Gun Violence & Drugs In Harlem
Samuel Aleshinloye, Assoc Editor
Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:27:52 GMT

Saturday, December 3, 2011

REPORT: More Than Half Of Black Girls Are Sexually Assaulted

REPORT: More Than Half Of Black Girls Are Sexually Assaulted

Sixty percent of black girls have experienced sexual abuse at the hands of black men before reaching the age of 18, according to an ongoing study conducted by Black Women’s Blueprint.

More than 300 black women nationwide participated in the study and 700 more are being sought to take in the survey by March 2012.

RELATED: An ‘Unlikely Victim’ Of Domestic Violence Speaks Out

Farah Tanis, Co-Founder of the New York-based organization and co-author of the study, says the issue of domestic and sexual abuse in the black community is rarely discussed and that a sixty percent rate should be a wake-up call to black women.

“A similar study which was conducted by The Black Women’s Health Imperative seven years ago found that that number was about 40 percent,” Tanis says. “So that means there is an increase and we need to stop neglecting that issue.”

D.C. Has No Love For Women Of Color

The study comes just as U.S. Senators Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) introduced legislation reauthorizing the landmark Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) this week.

While domestic violence advocates praise both senators’ efforts to strengthen the bill, Tanis and other advocates who deal specifically with minority women are advocating for language in the new act that specifically allocates funds to communities of color. More specifically, Tanis and her organization are seeking funding for small community groups which have closer cultural ties to women of color that larger organizations don’t have.

Rita Smith, the Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, a Denver-based national organization that develops policy on domestic violence issues, says smaller domestic violence groups are often better equipped to work with women of color than larger, more traditional organizations.

“Reports from these local communities to their national representatives has made it clear for some time that victims who are Latino, African American, Asian and Native American have not been served adequately by mainstream programs,” Smith says. “For some communities it is important to establish services that address the cultural, spiritual or immigration status needs of victims, and while some mainstream programs attempt to respond to those needs, they are not universally addressing them in sufficient numbers.”

VAWA, as it is currently written, does include language that allots “grants for outreach and services to under-served populations.” But no racial language is written into the act. Federal law prohibits legislation that earmarks government funding based on race.

Back in 2005 when VAWA was being reauthorized, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) fought unsuccessfully for race-specific language to be kept in a final draft of the act. He and several of his congressional colleagues expressed what they felt was Washington’s utter disregard for women of color.

“This language was necessary because the bureaucrats at the Department of Justice were ignoring communities of color when considering grants from domestic violence, rape prevention and other organizations,” Conyers argued in Congress.

Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.), also lobbied for stronger language to be including in VAWA.

“By addressing domestic violence in these communities in a way that understands their culture and honors their values, we greatly increase the chances of making a difference for women of color who are being abused,”  she said.

Washington’s historic rebuff to race-language provisions does not surprise Olivia Dowd at all.

An outreach coordinator for Black Women’s Blueprint, Dowd feels policy makers have something of an elitist outlook concerning which organizations should get funding and who should be in charge of managing the resources.

She says she has been in domestic violence sessions with mostly black women where she, despite her years of on-the-ground experience with women of color, often has to play second fiddle to a 20 or 30-something white woman with a graduate degree but lacks the sophisticated sass and ethnic intuition black women need to be uplifted emotionally from abusive relationships.

“OK, this is the deal. Take this ‘V’ and put it on your head and then another ‘V’ because you are warrior women so get over it,”Dowd said, mocking a traditional letter-game exercise that encourages women in recovery to express themselves.

“As black women, that’s how we talk to one another. That’s how we grew up. As oppose to being the white missionary saying ‘Oh, the poor natives, how bad! Let me kiss your wombs.’ [Black women] don’t work like that. That doesn’t work with us.”

Call To Action

Domestic violence advocates say black women should be particularly active in writing and calling their congressmen to support the reauthorization of the VAWA because it affects them more than any other racial group. In fact, Black women experience domestic violence at a rate 35 percent higher than white women.

Advocates say VAWA needs to include language that:

1.) Puts control of domestic and sexual abuse prevention in the hands of the community, and placing less emphasis on law enforcement. “Police are not the only answer,” Tanis says.

2.) Empowers members of immigrant communities who, for example, would go to their Vodoun or Santeria priest for help before reaching out to a more traditional source of assistance like a domestic violence hotline.

3.) Specifies the different facets of domestic abuse and that verbal violence should be legally prosecutable.

4.) Recognizes that sexual assault in black community is a growing epidemic that requires special attention and resources.

5.) Encourages and educates men, especially black men, on the issue domestic and sexual violence.

This final point, is perhaps the most contentious issue of domestic and sexual violence in the black community.

Kereen Odate, Acting Director at the Center for Women’s Development at Medgar Evers College in New York, says black women are reluctant to discuss sexual and domestic abuse for fear of “vilifying the black man.”

Odate says there has always been something of an unexplored history of sexually dysfunctional behavior in the black community that dates back to slavery. For example, Odate cites mating practices that forced black male slaves to have intercourse with female slaves as the origin of shame that keeps black communities silence about domestic and sexual abuse to this very day.

“You were raped,” Odate says, “but you weren’t raped because it was for the for purpose of making more kids to work on the plantation, so there’s a whole history involved.”

Tanis, citing the 60 percent sexual assault rate, urges black women to be more proactive in advocacy issues like supporting VAWA because no one else will fight for needs on Capital Hill.

“Its critical, whether or not we feel comfortable talking and doing something about it,” Tanis says”

NEWSONE RESOURCES: Are You Being Abused?

If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence, there are organizations nationwide just a phone call away that can assist you.

Safe Horizon Domestic Violence Hotline: 800.621.HOPE (4673)

National Domestic Violence Hotline 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or (206) 787-3224 (Video Phone for Deaf Callers)

For more resources on how domestic and sexual abuse affects the black community, see the Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community’s fact sheet.

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Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan President, Pardons Imprisoned Rape Victim

REPORT: More Than Half Of Black Girls Are Sexually Assaulted
Terrell Jermaine Starr
Fri, 02 Dec 2011 17:08:00 GMT