Drawbacks to police body cam technology, new music from Earl Sweatshirt and the Alabama Shakes, a roundtable on race in Southern California and is there an advantage to free-range parenting?
Body cameras offer promise, challenge for police departments
Police departments around the country have been under mounting pressure to equip their officers with video cameras, after several high-profile officer-involved shootings.
But as the technology becomes widely adopted, it presents its own set of problems: lots and lots of video to go through, and unclear rules on how and when to make it public.
"I think police chiefs and citizens alike want to do everything they can to demonstrate that they are being accountable and they are being transparent," said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum. The group worked on a Justice department report on body cameras that found that, as of 2013, less than one-fourth of departments surveyed were using body cameras. But that number is sure to be on the rise, said Wexler.
San Diego is one of many cities around the country that uses body cameras. The city's program began in January 2014.
"Our department had had several cases of misconduct on our police department, so we made the decision that we were going to implement a body-worn camera program," said Shelley Zimmerman, chief of San Diego Police Department. The department uses about 600 cameras throughout the force, according the Zimmerman.
In a six-month period last year, complaints reduced more than 40 percent and the use of force allegations in those complaints were cut by nearly 60 percent, said Zimmerman.
The department expects another analysis in about two to three months.
Foreign adoptions by Americans reach lowest level in 30 years
Last year the number of foreign children adopted by U.S. parents dropped to the lowest level since 1982, according to figures recently released by the State Department.
For comparison's sake, in 2004, foreign adoptions reached an all time high of 22,884. Last year, the grand total was just 6,441.
Chuck Johnson, CEO of the National Council for Adoption, joined Take Two to discuss the drop in international adoptions.
The Brood: Should kids be able to play outside on their own?
Last year, a couple living in suburban Maryland landed in hot water when they let their kids go unaccompanied to a playground a mile away from their home, and this past weekend it happened again.
Ten-year-old Rafi and 6-year-old Dvora Meitiv were two and a half blocks away from their house when a police car picked them up and reportedly kept them in the back of the car for hours.
The incident has thrown fuel on the fire in a debate over what is called free-range parenting.
Mother Danielle Meitiv says the concept is about giving her kids the same childhood she had:
"For us, free-range kids means nothing very radical. It means we're giving our children the childhood that we had. The idea that kids can be trusted to go down the block, to play at the park, to walk home from school. So, we let them, within carefully defined boundaries, walk around outside, play outside, interact with people. Basically encounter with the world on their own."
This week in The Brood, our segment on parenting, Alex Cohen speaks with Ashley Merryman, one of the authors of the book "NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children."
The questions:
- Should kids be able to go play outside on their own?
- What boundaries should be set for them?
- What should parents trust them to be able to do and at what age?
Check out the full audio of the interview if you're curious about these questions.
Roundtable discussion: Are LA's race relations as rosy as they seem?
A recent survey conducted by the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences asked Californians how they felt about race relations in the state. The outlook was generally positive: about 65 percent of those surveyed said that California has the best relations in country.
Speaking to Take Two, survey director Dan Schnur said that outlooks varied, depending on which group was being polled.
"While the general feeling among all Californians was that race relations within their own communities were better, generally speaking, white Californians, and to a slightly-lesser extent Asian Americans were more positive," he said.
Latino respondents, on the other hand, had a less rosy outlook. Schnur also noted that African American were "significantly less positive."
You can hear yesterday’s interview with Dan Schnur in its entirety here.
Take Two host Alex Cohen moderated a dialogue on diversity in Southern California with a multiethnic panel of local scholars. The panel explored the challenges that Latino, Asian and African American communities in California continue to face. Additionally, they discussed the steps needed to fix the economic and social divisions that are still rampant in our local communities.
Press the play button above to hear the panel’s discussion.
Roundtable Guests:
Grace Kao, associate professor of ethics at the Claremont School of Theology
Jodi Armour, professor with the USC Gould School of Law
Matt Barreto, professor of Chicano studies and political science at UCLA
New music from Earl Sweatshirt, Alabama Shakes, Raekwon and more
This week on Tuesday Reviewsday, Oliver Wang and music supervisor
join Alex Cohen to talk about the latest in music.
Morgan Rhodes
Artist:
Album: "Damn Sue"
Song: "Air," "Victor"
Artist: Jose James
Album: "Yesterday I Had The Blue: The Music of Billie Holiday"
Song: "Good Morning Heartache"
Artist: Lapalux
Album: "Lustmore"
Song: "Puzzle feat. Andreya Triyana"
Oliver Wang
Artist: Earl Sweatshirt
Album: "I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside"
Song: "Huey"
Artist: Alabama Shakes
Album: "Sound and Color"
Song: "Gimme All Your Love"
Artist:
feat. Snoop Dogg
Album: "F.I.L.A. (Fly International Luxury Art)"
Song: "1,2 1,2"
Why it's difficult to track LA's P22 mountain lion
L.A.'s P22 mountain lion was made famous by a National Geographic photo that captured him standing in the hills with the Hollywood sign and the illuminated city behind him.
P22 made headlines again Monday when he holed up in a crawl space under a Los Feliz home. As of Tuesday morning, he had apparently moved on, but it's not yet known where he's ended up.
Seth Riley, a mountain lion expert with the National Park Service who teaches at UCLA, explained why keeping track of P22 and L.A.'s other mountain lions is no easy task.
"Well, the truth is, these animals -- all kinds of wildlife -- are very elusive. We know a lot about them, a lot more than if we weren't tracking them, but we still know relatively little in terms of their actual second-to-second movement," he said.
While the GPS collars provide great information, only nine locations are tracked each day, Riley said.
You can listen to the rest of the interview by clicking the blue audio player above.
Curiosity Rover finds water could exist near Mars' surface
With drought-stricken California doing all it can to protect any sources of water, there's one place in the universe where even the hint of water is cause for celebration: Mars, which is where NASA's Curiosity Rover has found that our very same H2O could exist as a liquid near the Martian surface.
Ashwin Vasavada, lead scientist on the Curiosity project, joins Take Two with more.
Dwight Yoakam and his Second Hand Heart
Today is a special treat for music fans in general and country fans specifically.
Music legend Dwight Yoakam drops his latest studio album - which he called, Second Hand Heart.
Yoakam has sold more than 25 million records and landed more than 30 singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts.
We recently stopped by his office in West Hollywood to talk about it, his contributions to the genre known as "cowpunk" and the sometimes overlooked influence California has had on country music.