Today on Airtalk we'll discuss the LAPD roundup, senior sexuality in nursing facilities, Senator Mark Leno's bill to allow people to have more than two legal parents, the results of the Mexican presidential election, and David Maraniss' new biography "Barack Obama: The Story."
LAPD roundup: police shooting data called misleading, latest police driving payout costs city $6.6 million
Traffic related lawsuits are becoming a big issue for the Los Angeles Police Department, representing a quarter of all suits filed against the police department. Just recently, the family of a woman killed by a police car received $6.6 million, the largest such sum to date. Over the last decade, the overall cost to the city has been about $30 million.
Responding to the large payout, Councilman Bill Rosendahl said, “We have no choice,” clearly representing the dearth of alternatives or solutions to this problem.
LA Times reporter Joel Rubin, who began investigating traffic related incidents with the LAPD years ago, says that maybe it is time to for the department to start looking at this problem.
“There has been so much attention on so many areas of reform, if you wanted to have a generous read on it, I think you could say maybe this is just one they didn’t recognize as a problem area and now are just getting around to recognizing it,” Rubin said. “But I do think there’s probably some institutional blindside to it.”
Robert Glassman, the attorney representing the Lugo family in the $6.6 million lawsuit, says the investigation into the woman’s death was sloppy and he is already seeing changes in the way the LAPD is handling such cases.
“This case has spurred the LAPD to reconsider the way they investigate serious traffic accidents involving LAPD officers,” Glassman said. “The way they are going to do it now...is they are going to investigate them the way they investigate officer involved shootings which involves more scrutiny, it [also] prevents collusion among the officers.”
Glassman says in this particular incident two officers were driving over twice the speed limit, at night, with no lights, and no sirens. They initially blamed Ms. Lugo for the incident but after an independent investigation it was found she was in no way at fault.
The question of officer related traffic incidents comes just as the LAPD saw a dramatic increase in the number of police shootings. Officers shot at and hit 47 suspects in 2011, compared to 26 in 2010.
In a public explanation, Police Chief Charlie Beck reasoned that the jump in shootings was directly related to an increase in the number of assaults on police officers which jumped 22 percent in 2011 to 193.
However, Alex Bustamante, the inspector general for the Los Angeles Police Commission, is scrutinizing Beck’s claim. Bustamante pored over the data, and found several fault points that show there is not a correlation between the two.
Joe Domanick, Associate Director, Center for Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, says the problem might be a vast focus on many areas of reform is taking away from certain problems.
“Sometimes problems have to become glaring problems before administrators or executives address them simply because they’re either unaware or they’re doing other things,” Domanick said.
Weigh In:
What is being done by the LAPD to reduce such instances? Why are these figures so astronomically high? Is there a way to cut down on police traffic accidents while still effectively patrolling the streets?
Guests:
Robert Glassman, Attorney representing the Lugo family; Attorney with Panish Shea & Boyle LLP law firm based in Santa Monica
Joel Rubin, LA Times Reporter
Joe Domanick, Associate Director, Center for Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice
The complexities of sex and aging
Sexuality — it’s a part of life, something we as consenting adults take for granted. But what about our elderly relatives, those who are sequestered in nursing facilities?
The need for physical intimacy doesn’t just go away as we age. Evidence shows that many seniors enjoy healthy sexual relationships well into their eighties. For those living in nursing homes, however, there can be barriers to intimacy.
A new study shows that, in addition to the lack of privacy, the need for sexual expression between elderly patients is often ignored by their caregivers, and sexual relationships are discouraged. The onset of dementia or Alzheimers’ presents its own set of problems: how do administrators know if sexual relations are consensual or not? What happens if family members object, believing their relative is being taken advantage of? How to facilitators protect their patients from coercion and abuse?
Is depriving senior residents of sexual contact the safest policy? Is it healthy — or even possible?
Guests:
Stacy Tessler Lindau, M.D., Associate Professor of Obstetrics/Gynecology and Medicine-Geriatrics, University of Chicago Medicine
Debra Cherry, Ph.D, executive vice president, Alzheimer’s Association, California Southland Chapter
David Farrell, licensed nursing home administrator and director of organizational development for Windsor Health Care; on the board of directors for the Pioneer Network, a national organization advocating best practices in nursing care facilities
Senator Mark Leno introduces bill to allow individuals to have more than two legal parents
The family - consisting of two parents, whether same or different sex - could be a thing of the past in California. State senator Mark Leno has proposed legislation that would make it legal for a child to have multiple parents.
SB1476 is designed to make it easier for adults involved in three-parent relationships to play a role in a child's life. If an agreement could not be reached on issues such as custody and visitation rights, a judge could divide responsibilities. Opponents say this could have a negative impact on the family structure, in addition to creating a legal minefield over who has rights over a child, or who could claim the child for tax purposes.
If you’re in a three parent relationship, how would this change in legal status help you? How could this confuse matters – as in who has custody and visitation rights? Does this need to be legally defined? Or are you concerned this could confuse a child as to how many ‘parents’ they have?
GUESTS
Ed Howard, senior counsel for the Children’s Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego School of Law.
Assemblyman Donald Wagner, 70th Assembly District (Irvine)
Mexican election results are in
Mexican voters went to the polls Sunday, and early results show that Enrique Pena Nieto claimed victory. His party, the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century, but was replaced by the conservative PAN (National Action Party) in 2000. The PAN government saw an advance in democracy, but that was eclipsed by increasing violence from the many drug cartels omnipresent in Mexican cities.
The PRI, which has long been associated with corruption (the party has been known to pay citizens to vote), typically was able to work out a deal with the cartels that didn’t infringe on their drug trafficking, but resulted in significantly less violence and safer streets for regular Mexicans. Now, Pena Nieto is promising that the PRI has reformed its old ways, and that the drug cartels will be dealt with without any backroom deals.
With the attitude and fresh face of a newcomer, how will Pena Nieto fare during his first term? What does the White House think of the outcome, and the PRI’s return to power? How will the two governments collaborate on key issues of drug cartels, immigrations and border violence?
Guests:
Sam Quinones, staff writer for the Los Angeles Times and author of “True Tales from Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino and the Bronx” (University of New Mexico Press)
Andrew Selee, VP and director of the Mexico Institute at Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars. IN
David Maraniss tells Barack Obama’s story
After nearly a term in office, do you think you know Barack Obama? Well, think again.
In his new biography, David Maraniss goes into exhaustive detail about Obama’s life. But he doesn’t stop there. He also delves deep into the President’s familial roots, paying close attention to the life of his great-grandmother and members of his Kenyan family. By employing this multigenerational approach, the author highlights the way Obama’s identity has been forged by his past.
Drawing upon four years of research, numerous documents and over 300 interviews, including with the President himself, Maraniss provides a realistic and authentic account of the key events and people in Obama’s life who made him who he is today. In the process, Maraniss dispels myths and illuminates aspects of Obama’s history that have never been known before.
What moments in Obama’s life helped lead him to become the nation’s president? Who are and were the major players in his life? What did Maraniss find particularly scintillating or informative during his research?
Guest:
David Maraniss, author of Barack Obama: The Story (Simon & Schuster); journalist and author, currently serving as an associate-editor for The Washington Post. He received a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1993 for his coverage of then-candidate Bill Clinton during the 1992 United States presidential election.