According to a new ACLU study, many CA school districts outsource disciplinary action to police, to negative effect – is there value to police presence on campus?; we check in with LAPD Chief Beck on reforms and transparency demands; the latest on the FCC’s task force to fight robocalls; and a new report points to potential flooding in Downtown L.A., which might be a problem for the L.A. River restoration project.
New report finds schools' reliance on police harms black, poor students most
A study released Wednesday has renewed the ongoing debate over whether police should be called to school campuses for disciplinary issues.
Published by the the American Civil Liberties Union of California, the study claims districts are increasingly turning to police to deal with student discipline problems, a practice that disproportionately impacts minority students, poor students and students with disabilities.
"Studies have consistently found that black students are far more likely to be referred to the police or referred for suspension and exclusion from school based on discretionary offenses, such as disorderly conduct or willful defiance," ACLU of Northern California attorney and study author Linnea Nelson told Airtalk’s Larry Mantle Wednesday.
They were joined by Teri Sorey, President of the Irvine Teachers Association and Mo Canady, Executive Director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, to discuss the report, as well as whether police officer presence on campus can ever have positive impact.
Click on the blue playhead above to hear the full discussion, or read highlights below.
Interview highlights
On school districts giving staff too much discretion to call police
Nelson: School districts do not have adequate policies to protect youth against police misconduct and the aggressive criminalization of student behavior... most school districts give staff complete discretion to call police to address student misbehavior that should be handled by school staff...Over two thirds of school districts statewide allow police officers to interview students immediately upon demand, stating that staff shall not hinder or delay interrogations.
On the negative impacts of these practices
Nelson: Studies have consistently found that black students are far more likely to be referred to the police or referred for suspension and exclusion from school based on discretionary offenses, such as disorderly conduct or willful defiance. And those offenses are classically in the eye of the beholder... we're very concerned about the impact of implicit bias on school discipline.
On whether there are benefits to having police on campus
Canady: There are three things that we [police] do in that environment [on a school campus]. One is about school safety. The second piece is about the issue of informal counseling...to have the opportunity to mentor kids. And the third is to be involved in the education process... to teach students about different law-related issues.
On when it's appropriate for school administrators to turn to police
Canady: We're talking about assault or serious bodily injury.
On how school districts should address behavioral issues
Nelson: We need to be sending our students the message that they are scholars, not suspects. Every student deserves an educational environment where they can thrive. Districts in California are spending millions of dollars a year from classroom budgets to put armed police in schools and we need to ensure that schools invest in resources for a quality education, like school counselors and mental health services that keep students in school...Counselors are the best way to go. Counselors are trained to work with students in conflict resolution and to keep youth in school and out of trouble.
Interviews have been edited for clarity. Hear the full discussion by clicking the playhead above.
Read the ACLU California report:
The Right to Remain a Student ACLU CA Report by Southern California Public Radio on Scribd
Guests:
Linnea Nelson, Education Equity Staff Attorney, ACLU of Northern California and author of the report
Teri Sorey, President of the Irvine Teachers Association, which has School Resource Officers on its campuses
Mo Canady, Executive Director of the National Association of School Resource Officers
New use-of-force reforms are shift in focus, not disciplinary change
LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said a sweeping set of reforms approved by the Police Commission earlier this month won't have a huge impact on police training or policy, but will mean a new focus for both.
“I don't think there's gonna be a huge change,” Beck told Airtalk host Larry Mantle, “because we already do role-playing. We already do scenario-based training. We already have our fire arms trainings simulators. Much of this is in place, and it's a further refinement of things that we already do.”
The reforms call for accountability in releasing video footage. They also require that officers favor non-lethal force and undergo de-escalation trainings. Beck said that would only serve to focus what the LAPD has already been doing in terms of training and protocol.
“We require an imminent threat of great bodily injury or death before we shoot," Beck said. "The chief of police can always discipline relative to not acting to your training or not acting to department policy — doesn’t change that one bit."
Beck also spoke about the department's evolving policy on when to release officers' body camera footage, and a recent protest at an event featuring L.A. District Attorney Jackie Lacey, among other issues.
You can hear the full interview above by clicking the blue playhead, or read more highlights below.
Interview Highlights
ON THE USE OF DEADLY FORCE AS A “LAST RESORT”
Beck: Shooting is always a last resort, always has been. As a matter of fact, it's not the last resort, it's the only resort. We require an imminent threat of great bodily injury or death before we shoot…
The Police Commission is calling for de-escalation training, which we do, which we want to expand. They also want to move the wording of “last resort” into the policy piece on deadly force instead of in the training piece, and both of them control what officers’ behavior is [...]
The chief of police can always discipline relative to not acting to your training or not acting to department policy, doesn’t change that one bit […]
It is a focus, it is a highlighting, but is it a change? Did we ever have a shooting policy that wasn’t last resort? Absolutely not. It's always the last resort […]
But I think what it does, and the importance of it and why the commission wants to do it is that it refocuses, or focuses, the police department on its core values regarding use of force. That deadly force is a last resort, that we should exhaust options before we use deadly force, and that we recognize the severity of that option.
ON WHEN TO RELEASE VIDEO FOOTAGE AND WHY
Beck: This is something that we're working on. This is something that’s new to policing. It’s being done about 100 different ways across the country right now, all of whom are looking for the right answer.
I think there is video that should not be released just because it's so graphic, it is so personal, it is so intrusive to the people involved. I think that there are many times that police officers are present when very, very bad things happen to people and I don’t know that that should be part of the public conversation other than the fact that it happened. So we have to guard with that, guard for that.
One of the things that everybody agrees on, including me, is in those rare instances when police officers do violate the law in a use of force. It is extremely difficult to prosecute them, so the release of video does not make it easier. As a matter of fact all the prosecutors advise against it, [but] there are all of these competing desires.
ON THE TOWN HALL MEETING WITH LA COUNTY DA JACKIE LACEY
Beck: The problem is that whenever we shout somebody down, whenever we deny somebody else's right to express their point of view — first of all, we tear at the very fabric of democracy. We take away what is great about this country — that we can have a dialogue — and then we also stymie any attempt to move forward.
If all you're gonna do is yell at me then we are probably not gonna be able to build a bridge between us, and I think that is the tragedy of what's going on, and all of us see it...people not listening and just putting forth their opinion, where what we really need to get through these tough issues — like when to release video, like what kind of policing is legitimate, what kind of policing do we want — what we really need is dialogue.
We really need to hear each other, not talk at each other.
Interviews have been edited for clarity. Hear the full discussion by clicking the playhead above.
Guest:
Charlie Beck, Chief, Los Angeles Police Department; he tweets
How the FCC, the telecom industry and computer programmers are working to fight robocalls
After announcing the creation of a Robocall Strike Force in August, the FCC gave the newly-formed task force 60 days to come up with concrete, modern solutions to robocalls.
These kinds of calls are the number one complaint the FCC receives, according to FCC Chairman tom Wheeler and since the federal ‘do not call’ list has been basically defunct for years, the FCC has convened a team of minds from companies like Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Google to help come up with better standards of caller ID verification in the hopes of weeding out unwanted or automated calls from scammers, debt collectors, and more.
Now, those 60 days have passed and today marks the deadline for the task force to report back to FCC Commissioners with those plans. At the group’s first meeting, Chairman Wheeler encouraged the group to ‘get creative’ and suggested the possibility of a “Do Not Originate” list, which would put outgoing numbers that are often spoofed, like those of banks and IRS, into a database that’d be shared among the wireless companies.
Another commissioner suggested legislation to crack down on foreign scammers who prey on Americans by spoofing caller ID. But skeptics say that this would be difficult administratively and logistically for phone companies since numbers are easy to obtain and spoof. They also worry that too much regulation could mean calls that customers do want to receive wouldn’t go through.
The FCC will hold another meeting next week, and it’s expected that the Commissioners will comment on the solutions the Strike Force has proposed.
We contacted the FCC and CTIA - The Wireless Association, which is the main trade group for the wireless and telecom industry. Both declined to participate in our discussion. CTIA did send us a statement from their senior vice president and general counsel, Tom Power:
“Unwanted calls and texts are a consumer issue the wireless industry works hard to address and we look forward to working with the FCC to help address this challenge together."
Guests:
David Shepardson, reporter for Reuters covering the FCC; he tweets
Jeff Kagan, wireless analyst and columnist based in Atlanta, GA; he tweets
Raymond Tu, Ph.D. candidate in computer science at Arizona State University
Filming at 120 frames-per-second could upend movie storytelling
It's back to the projector room for Oscar-winning director Ang Lee after his pricey, gutsy movie-making experiment, “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” drew a mixed response at the New York Film Festival last week.
The ground-breaking war drama was shot at an ultra-fast 120 frames-per-second rate in 3-D with 4K resolution. The first wave of critics at the film fest panned the movie and blamed the technology.
Today on KPCC, Douglas Trumbull, a filmmaker and technical innovator who inspired Lee's experiment, blamed the NY screening for projecting the film “much too bright” and without necessary projector adjustments.
Now, Trumbull is helping tweak the movie. He tells KPCC he’s working with Lee and Sony Pictures “to try to make sure that that next wave of screenings of 'Billy Lynn' are going to be much better than what I think we saw in New York.”
Also in the audience at the fest screening was L.A. Times film writer Steve Zeitchik. He takes issue with what he describes as knee-jerk criticisms and argues the movie's “immersive experience” requires a different set of criteria to judge it.
“What I would question,” Zeitchik tells AirTalk's Larry Mantle, “is this idea that we need to fix it. For one thing the heightened, hyper-real aspect from a purely experiential standpoint ... really does work.” He adds, “I've watched a lot of war movies — good, bad, and indifferent — over the years and I don't think I've ever felt as jolted ... felt war in quite as visceral a manner as I did watching this film. And so I think a lot of that has to do with the resolution and the frame rate. So when you bring down the brightness and you bring down the frame rate, you're losing a lot of that.”
Zeitchik also poses a question for studio executives and audiences: “Who's to say the kind of traditional cinema that we're used to, and traditional storytelling, should necessarily be the dominant mode for this new era of immersive cinema? ...Why can't we have something new or a mix of types and genres? ... Let's not fix the movie.”
Zeitchik observes that another major effect of the “immersive” film technology is that traditional movie moments of heightened drama or artifice lose their credence. In his L.A. Times piece he notes, “Because everything around the actors feels so real, when they’re asked to break from that reality -- to act in even the most slightly heightened way, or show an emotion that’s bigger than emotions people show in their everyday lives -- it can seem artificial or staged.”
Trumbull, whose credits include “Blade Runner” and “2001: A Space Odyssey,” says “Billy Lynn,” with its faster frame, rate truly sings when shooting scenes from a first-person point of view.
“You want to switch gears from conventional third-person storytelling, in which the director is directing the camera to see an action that is off to the side. When you create more of a virtual reality, a first-person point of view is much stronger,” explains Trumbull.
If the faster frame-rate becomes more widely adopted, how will writers, performers, directors, and cinemas have to adapt?
LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW BY CLICKING THE PLAY BUTTON ABOVE.
Guests:
Douglas Trumbull, Filmmaker and film technology innovator; Credits include "Brainstorm," "2001: A Space Odyssey," "The Tree of Life," "Blade Runner;" Trumbull convinced Ang Lee to use 120-fps
Steve Zeitchik, Los Angeles Times staff writer who has been covering film and the larger world of Hollywood for the paper since 2009