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Obama will pitch immigration overhaul in Mexico
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama has his domestic ambition at the top of his travel agenda as he travels to Mexico on Thursday. To sell his immigration overhaul back home, he needs a growing economy in Mexico and a Mexican president willing to help him secure the border.Obama was to fly to Mexico City on Thursday to meet with President Enrique Pena Nieto, eager to promote Mexico’s economic success and the neighboring country’s place as the second largest export market for U.S. goods and services. Mexicans will be hanging on the president’s words, but Obama also has in mind an important audience back in the United States.Though the role played by Latino voters in last year’s U.S. presidential election gets much credit for the current momentum for changing immigration laws and providing a path to citizenship for 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally, another reason for the change in attitudes is that stronger border protections and the recession have been disincentives to cross into the U.S. As a result, illegal immigration has declined.Continue Reading… … Read More
NY Police Commissioner: Blacks “understopped” by police
Echoing what Joan Walsh called Mayor Bloomberg’s “ugly” defense of the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practice, police commissioner Ray Kelley this week said that African Americans are “understopped” by police. During an interview with ABC Wednesday night, the commissioner and the stop-and-frisk tactic’s greatest defender, said that “African Americans are being understopped in relation to people being described as perpetrators of violent crime.”While Mayor Bloomberg has been mayor, the NYPD has carried out over 5 million stop-and-frisks. Analysis by the ACLU of official police data found that over 86 percent of which on black or Latino individuals. The analysis of police data also revealed that 88 percent of the stops did not result in an arrest or summons (and of course an even smaller proportion ever lead to a conviction). The number of innocent people stopped alone serves as ample riposte to Kelly’s suggestion that any demographic is “understopped.”Continue Reading… … Read More
NYPD’s Ray Kelly wanted to “instill fear” in minority youth
In the latest striking revelation about the internal mechanisms of the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices, a New York state senator testified that police commissioner Ray Kelly once said he intended to “instill fear” in black and Latino young men with the controversial tactic.State Sen. Eric Adams, a retired NYPD captain, took the stand Monday in the landmark Floyd vs. City of New York federal trial, which challenges the constitutionality of the racially skewed stop-and-frisk tactic. Adams told the court about a 2010 meeting between Kelly and New York’s then-governor David Patterson. Adams, also present at the meeting, testified that the commissioner had expressly stated that black and Latino men should be targeted in police stops. Kelly, according to the city’s attorney, has flatly denied making such claims.Ryan Devereaux reported for the Guardian:Continue Reading… … Read More
NYPD boss said stop-and-frisk designed to ‘instill fear’ in minorities – Senator’s testimony
Twenty-two year NYPD veteran and State Senator Eric Adams told the court that in 2010 he traveled to Albany to voice his support to a bill that would forbid the NYPD from keeping a database of information pulled from stop-and-frisks that did not lead to an arrest. That bill would ultimately pass, but Adams testified on Monday that, upon telling Kelly the program disproportionately targeted young black and Latino men, the commissioner was far from concerned.The new testimony follows evidence from more than one New York cop indicating that the department has set, officially or unofficially, quotas for stop-and-frisks. There has also been recent testimony from those officers that the program specifically targets people of color.Kelly “stated that he targeted and focused on that group because he wanted to instill fear in them that every time they left their homes they could be targeted by police,” Adams said.He said Kelly justified his reasoning by asking, “How else would we get rid of guns?”“I was amazed,” Adams said in court. “I told him that was illegal.”Under Kelly and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg the NYPD has stopped an estimated 4.4 million people, most of whom have been in the demographic Kelly allegedly described to Adams. The policy allows officers to stop pedestrians on the street if they perceive that person is on the way to committing a crime, is in the process of committing a crime, or leaving the scene of a crime. Roughly 94 per cent of the stops result in no charges.The program has come under attack in recent months as civil rights lawyers try to prove stop-and-frisk is a violation of the 4th and 14th amendments. Adams’ testimony comes after previous witnesses told the court that NYPD officers have acted with impunity since the program began in 2002.Adams said stop-and-frisk is a “great tool” to stopping crime but mentioned that “nowhere” does it empower the NYPD to “use the tool to instill fear. Nowhere.”City attorney Heidi Grossman questioned Adams’ recollection of the conversation while claiming Kelly meant officers should “instill belief” in young men of minority backgrounds, not “instill fear,” though she did not specify what such a belief would be in.“I don’t think anyone in their right mind would believe the police commissioner would say the police department is targeting, just for targeting, blacks and Hispanics,” Grossman said.She also tried to read from a written statement from Kelly denying the claim before being stopped by Manhattan Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin.“If he’d like to come here, he’s welcome in this courtroom,” Scheindlin said, regarding Grossman’s attempted “backdoor” testimony from Kelly.Outside the courthouse Adams told reporters that because his Brooklyn district has one of the highest crime rates in the city, it is also heavily policed. He said his constituents find themselves trying to stay away from crime as well as overbearing law enforcement.“They feel trapped,” he said, adding that “Cops don’t want to do this. Cops are so frustrated they are wearing wires to roll call.” … Read More
Maddow: Republican Latino outreach so far is going hilariously badly
Friday night on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” host Rachel Maddow looked at recent efforts by the Republican Party to broaden its appeal among Latino voters and found the efforts by the GOP to be somewhat lacking. “We begin tonight with the Republican Party,” said Maddow,…
Don Young issues second, slightly better apology for “wetbacks” comment
House Republican Don Young apologized for a second time on Friday for using a racial slur to describe migrant farmworkers. Earlier this week, Young told an Alaskan radio host that when he was a child, his father “used 50-60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes” on their California farm.When news of Young’s comment broke, Republican leaders (newly-committed to having Latino voters and immigrants like them) issued strongly-worded statements disavowing the remark. House Speaker John Boehner called Young’s use of the word “offensive and beneath the dignity of the office he holds.” Other House GOP leaders joined Boehner in his criticism, saying there was “no excuse” for Young’s language and that it warranted “an immediate apology.”On Thursday, the 21-term congressman issued a statement explaining that he “used a term that was commonly used during my days growing up on a farm in central California.” Young said that he that he “meant no disrespect,” but did not apologize for the slur.Continue Reading… … Read More
