Outrage And Sorrow After Teen Shot Dead By Police

 

Following the shooting of 18-year-old man by a police officer in the city of Ferguson, Missouri, an outraged community gathered to demand answers. Michael Brown, a black teen and recent high school graduate, was shot dead in the city north of St. Louis on Saturday. The victim’s grandmother said she found her grandson’s body in the street, shortly after seeing him walking near her home, the Associated Press reports. A spokesman for the St. Louis County Police Department confirmed that a Ferguson police officer shot the man, but provided no further details on why the shooting occurred. Witnesses said that Brown was unarmed, KMOV reports.

 

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Dea Millerberg pleads guilty in death of teen babysitter

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OGDEN — Dea Millerberg pleaded guilty Wednesday to three felonies for her involvement in the 2011 death of Alexis Rasmussen, a 16-year-old who baby-sat for her and her husband in their North Ogden home.

Millerberg, 41, pleaded guilty in 2nd District Court to obstructing justice, acquiring prescription drugs unlawfully, and abuse or desecration of a human body — all third-degree felonies — as part of plea agreement.

 
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Culture Shock: The Problem of Juvenile Justice

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“The prison system as a whole isn’t working, particularly so for juvenile detention centers.

 

WHEN the Center for Investigative Reporting recently visited the Santa Cruz County Juvenile Hall — widely considered one of the best juvenile detention centers in the country — they found remarkably prison-like conditions, ranging from the bare, concrete walls to the use of solitary confinement as a method of disciplining youth. There are currently no federal or state laws that regulate the use of solitary confinement for juvenile offenders, despite overwhelming evidence of its harmful effects. But the abuses don’t stop there. A 2012 report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a division of the Department of Justice, determined that youth held in adult prison facilities suffered less instances of sexual violence than their peers in juvenile facilities. And in some facilities, the rate of juvenile recidivism is over 80 percent, meaning that the bulk of these young people will eventually add to the burgeoning prison population.

There seems to be a consensus that the prison system as a whole isn’t working, and this is particularly true when it comes to juvenile detention. The United States incarcerates more young people under the age of 18 than any other industrialized country in the world. (By comparison, South Africa, our closest competitor, incarcerates its youth at one-fifth the rate of the United States.) Most juveniles who are sent to these facilities are from racial minorities. Many of them suffer abuses in prison that are heinous for adults and potentially ruinous for youth — solitary confinement, rape, repeated physical abuse, deprivation of sunlight, insufficient food and affection. Perhaps worst of all, children leave these facilities with additional traumas under their belts and no promise that their outside lives will improve.

And yet, despite protestations from all political parties that our society values children, despite the proliferation of New York Times bestsellers on how to raise children, despite growing scientific evidence that the confinement of adolescents may profoundly stunt their brain development, despite the fact that juvenile crime is steadily declining, change has not followed. Why?

In her new book, Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison, Nell Bernstein, a journalist whose previous book addresses the problems of children of the incarcerated, attempts to explore this elusive question using a mix of reporting, research, and anecdotal history. Bernstein’s basic premise, which I agree with, is that it’s mostly a matter of culture, an elusive but necessary concept. She argues that young adults and children require positive relationships with adults in order to rehabilitate, but prison, which isolates and punishes violators for transgressions, is based on just the opposite assumption. Prisons assume that those who commit crimes must be isolated from the community, both to force them to think about their immoral acts and to protect the rest of the law-abiding community. This is the direct opposite of what we should be doing for children in prison: educating them, providing them life skills and positive role models, and supporting their mental and physical development in a positive way.

 

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Obama Sent ICE to Their Doorsteps So They Are Coming To His

 

“This week immigrant and LGBT civil rights leaders from the California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance (CIYJA) sat down in the Democratic congressional offices of Rep. Xavier Becerra and Rep. Loretta Sanchez, demanding their leadership to stop the deportations. The action was in solidarity with the hunger-strike at the White House to call on the President to stop deportations, which started Tuesday.”

 
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Alleged teen cop killers likely turned gun on selves, police say

Two Florida teens allegedly shot a police officer to death before apparently killing themselves, authorities say.

 

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This CNN story leaves more questions than answers.

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Student Sues California University For $5 Million, Alleges Horrifying Racial Abuse

 

“…

When there can be this level of bullying at San Jose State University, a bastion of progressive thought, that should be a bellwether for everyone nationwide,” Douglas told Reuters.

 

“I want there to be a conversation started by the filing of this claim… there are issues of racial intolerance, of bullying and of harassment running rampant in universities and colleges across this nation,” he said.

University spokeswoman Patricia Harris declined to comment on the claim, which named as defendants the university, its president Mohammad Qayoumi, a school housing adviser and others.

Authorities said four white roommates taunted and harassed the student, who was 17 at the time, by displaying Nazi imagery and a Confederate flag in their dormitory and attempting to hang a U-shape bicycle lock around his neck.

 

The roommates, also students, referred to him as “three-fifths” or “fraction,” the claim said, in an apparent slur relating to the fact African American slaves counted as only three fifths of a person under an 18th century agreement between U.S. states to determine state population sizes.

 

The roommates barricaded him in his room, and threatened him with a golf club when they tried to locate a missing pet goldfish, the claim said. The harassment lasted from at least September 23 to October 31, 2013, it said.

…”

 
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