A hallmark of a civilised society is that minorities therein can live with dignity and honour. The recent attacks on Christians (and other minorities ) in India and Pakistan show that neither country is really civilised.
Christians in India and Pakistan are tiny minorities in both countries, about 28 million or 2.3% of the total population of about 1400 million in India, and about 1.27 million or 1.65% of the total population of about 230 million in Pakistan. They are peace loving people who have never done any harm to other communities. Rather, they have made a great contribution, particularly in the field of education, where many non Chistians prefer to send their children to Christian schools ( myself being a product of one of them, the Boys High School, Allahabad ).
Yet savage attacks have been made on them in both countries, many of whom were killed, their women raped ( two of them paraded naked and beaten in Manipur ), and their churches and homes often torched and vandalised.
For instance, recently in the state of Manipur the minority Christian Kuki community were barbarically attacked by the majority Meitei community ( most of whom are Hindus ), supported by the state government which is ruled by the pro-Hindu BJP party, which also rules the Central Govt.
It is the majoritarian policy of the ruling party in India, which thrives on religious hatred, as it gets them votes.
And in Pakistan it is the free hand given to the mullahs and religious extremists given by the Establishment.
It is sad to say, but this situation will continue until there is a radical change in the political and social system in both countries, but that is still a far way off.
The move marks an early attempt to gain the high ground after Republicans last year seized on the state’s bail laws as evidence Democrats are weak on crime, fueling embarrassing losses for House Democrats in New York. The governor’s new strategy could shape next year’s House races, and maybe even control of Congress. But it could also prove a tough and complicated sell to voters.
The new law will give judges greater authority to decide whether an individual can be held on bail. The tweaks mark, to the dismay of liberals, a third round of rollbacks of progressive bail laws Democrats passed in 2019.
Hochul’s team realized too late in the midterm cycle that public safety and the economy — not abortion rights — were animating New York voters. The result was the closest governor’s race since 1994, and Democrats were swept out of all four House seats on Long Island, as well as battleground races in the Hudson Valley.
The blame landed squarely on New York Democrats and especially Hochul, a messaging mishap that even former Speaker Nancy Pelosi said state leaders should have recognized earlier.
Former GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin’s gubernatorial campaign focused on rising crime rates in big New York cities, and he consistently blamed the bail laws for permitting dangerous individuals to walk free.
Democrats attempted to argue that there is little evidence linking crime spikes to New York’s bail laws and pointed to larger, national crime trends that were influenced by the pandemic. But Zeldin and GOP House candidates successfully used the issue to gain ground in the critical New York City suburbs.
Hochul held up the state budget for nine days last year to get a handful of bail changes. But then she didn’t effectively promote the tougher laws during the campaign.
She is trying not to make the same mistake twice.
So Hochul’s budget, the first of her first full term, revolved around addressing those critiques; she delayed budget negotiations for weeks and sacrificed a deal on her other major initiatives, like a broad housing plan she wanted, in order to push reluctant Democrats to once again open talks on bail. She was backed up by Adams.
“I say over and over again that there are many rivers that feed the sea of violence, and we have to dam each river, and we damned one during this process,” Adams said Wednesday on WABC Radio.
The ultimate deal still left many unhappy. It did not go as far as Republicans, some moderates and even Adams wanted. Hochul has resisted backing a “dangerousness” standard for even greater judicial discretion that has been used by other states that have successfully overhauled bail laws.
“The governor is going to claim a win for public safety even though the law expressly prohibits judges from taking a defendant’s dangerousness into account during the pretrial process,” Albany-area Republican Sen. Jake Ashby said in a statement during budget votes last week. “If she tries to spin that as judicial discretion, she will be embracing a level of shamelessness previously reserved only for her predecessor.”
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, too, brushed off the changes as inconsequential in the state’s fight against crime during his podcast Thursday. Cuomo, a Democrat who cruised to three terms before resigning in 2021 over sexual harassment allegations, said he personally would have sought a broader criminal justice deal.
“I don’t think anyone won anything. The governor loses,” Cuomo said. “The answer was not bail reform.”
The changes, for example, did not include adjustments to discovery laws — measures also passed in 2019 outlining how and when prosecutors hand over case material — despite pushes from progressive prosecutors who say those laws also need to be fixed to prevent cases from being tossed on technical grounds.
Republicans won’t be letting up on attacking Democrats on crime, state GOP chair Ed Cox said. Democrats “are not going to be able to hide on this issue” in 2024 when all 26 House seats will be on the ballot, he said.
“Kathy Hochul continues to have her head in the sand on crime,” he said in a statement. “The changes made in her budget are just window dressing.”
The amendments go too far for the Legislature’s progressive caucuses, which say such adjustment could lead to more poor, mostly minority suspects being held on bail — the reason the laws were changed in the first place.
Hochul struggled to build progressive enthusiasm for her candidacy last year, and the new changes may not help her do so in the future.
“The governor’s effort to decimate bail wasn’t driven by facts. It was driven by fear mongering, headlines, political expediency and it was reacting to a far-right strategy to weaponize racism,” Assemblymember Latrice Walker (D-Brooklyn) said during the budget debate.
They is also a policy gamble. Researchers have said Hochul’s measures are not the strongest way to address specific issues of recidivism and the broader issue of public safety.
The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law was “disappointed by the Legislature’s continued focus on revising bail reform to the exclusion of other policies that can make our communities safer,” senior counsel Ames Grawert said in a statement.
In response, Hochul said the budget also includes more money for gun violence prevention, mental health support and pay bumps for public defenders.
Now she’ll have to better sell her plan to skeptical voters.
Democrats will be “able to say they took significant steps toward improving the safety of New Yorkers, while not going back on reforms that were necessary,” Hochul told reporters.
“And we have to show that we struck the right balance.”
[ad_2]
#York #Democrats #lost #crime #debate #redo
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Drug abuse is already an epidemic. Earlier the drug abusers used to die silent death by overdose. Now, the resource-deficit addicts have started turning against their own relations, reports Raashid Andrabi
With the hospitals getting an unprecedented number of addicts, some with overdose, a new pandemic is in progress in Kashmir. KL Illustraition: Malik Kaisar
That the instant and unexplained deaths of young men could be the outcome of a drug overdose is the old story. The new story is more tragic. Desperate to have drugs and the means to manage the costs can push the addicts to kill their own family members, even the closest relations.
Kashmir has actually landed into a state of fear and disbelief, as a series of heinous crimes rocked the Vale. In a spate of horrific incidents, family members turned on each other. The tragedy is that a son was held responsible for killing his mother.
Data that the government has put in the public domain suggest nearly 10 lakh people in Jammu and Kashmir are victims of drug abuse. Cannabis addiction affects at least 1.44 lakh drug abusers, while opioid addiction is prevalent among 5.34 lakh men and 8,000 women, and sedative addiction among 1.6 lakh men and 8,000 women. Experts believe that these figures could be much lower than the actual numbers, as many drug users are hesitant to seek medical care or open up about their addiction due to fear of social ostracism.
Despite efforts to combat the epidemic, the problem seems to be getting worse. In 2022, a report by the National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre of AIIMS estimated the total number of drug abusers in Jammu and Kashmir at over 6 lakh, placing the erstwhile State fifth in the country among all States and Union Territories. Another study, conducted in December 2022, ranked Kashmir second among the States and Union Territories in the country for drug abuse, ahead of Punjab.
The impact of drug addiction is evident across the region, with reports of violence, crime, and broken families. The recent spate of homicides has only served to highlight the devastating consequences of this epidemic. Families are torn apart, and communities are left in fear and disbelief, as the people of Kashmir struggle to come to terms with the reality of the situation.
Ashmuqam Murders
The air was thick with tension as the news of the heinous crime spread like wildfire through the narrow alleys of Anantnag. Javaid Ahmad Rather, a successful baker, had committed an unforgivable act of violence against his own family and neighbours.
Ashmuqam: The shrine area.
On a chilly Friday morning in December 2022, the small town of Ashmuqam was abuzz with rumours of an incident involving one of its residents. Rather, a man known for his excessive drinking and drug use had apparently lost his sanity under the influence of a faith healer. The news quickly spread like wildfire, and people started to speculate about what could have possibly driven him to such madness.
Some claimed that the faith healer had given him powerful drugs, while others believed that he had cast a spell on him.
Rather’s father vehemently denied these accusations, insisting that his son was not a drug addict or a drunkard. He spoke of Rather’s success as a businessman, with three traditional bakery shops in Pahalgam that were managed by ten people. However, there was no denying the horror of what had occurred.
Rather’s father had just returned from Pahalgam, where he had gone to bring his son back home. Rather’s father claimed that the faith healer had asked them to sacrifice a sheep, but he did not know what had made his son lose control.
It started with Rather hitting his father on the head, sending him reeling to the ground. Rather then took his mother, Hafiza Begum, on the pretext of visiting a shrine. But instead of seeking blessings, he attacked her with a cane, causing her to die on the spot. The blood-curdling screams of Rather’s mother echoed through the quiet streets, alerting the neighbours who rushed to help.
But the horror had only just begun. Rather, now completely out of control, began targeting everyone in the area. Mohammad Amin Shah and Ghulam Nabi Khadim, two of Rather’s neighbours, were caught in his path of destruction and were brutally killed.
As the town’s gossip mill went into overdrive, the local police were called in to investigate the incident. They managed to apprehend Rather, but not before he had injured six other people. Shockingly, it was later revealed that Rather had been detained by the police just a day before the incident when he was seen roaming naked in the market carrying a bottle of liquor.
A Mother’s Murder
Anantnag’s Kehribal village was plunged into darkness when a shocking incident came to light. In what can only be described as a heinous crime, a 45-year-old woman named Razia Akther was brutally murdered by her own son and his accomplice, all for the sake of money. The victim Razia was hit on the head with a stone by her own son, Aaqib, and his accomplice Adil. The duo had allegedly hatched a conspiracy to steal money from Razia, but it ended up in a brutal murder.
The initial incident was thought to be an accidental fall from a concrete slab, but police investigations revealed that it was indeed a murder.
On October 21, details revealed police recovered the body of Razia and rushed her to GMC Anantnag for treatment, but the doctors declared her brought dead. The prolonged matrimonial dispute and various allegations and counter-allegations in societal circles made the police suspect foul play. They initiated proceedings under section 174 CRPC and took the body into possession for medico-legal formalities.
In a quick follow-up to the murder, it was Aqib, the son, holding the microphone and telling on camera the details of how his grandparents actually killed his mother. With emotional outbursts, he had successfully managed to hoodwink society.
As the cops started investigating the case, the cat was out of the bag. Police found Aqib and Adil responsible for the murder. They had hatched a criminal conspiracy to snatch money from the deceased. As she refused to yield, Aqib smashed his mother and punched her. Later, they tried to portray the murder as an accidental death and even created a fake crime scene.
Both accused fled away from the spot along with the snatched money. They even got the victim admitted to the hospital with the assistance of other family members. However, during further investigation, a disclosure memo was prepared, and the weapon of offence was recovered. An FIR has been registered under relevant sections of IPC.
The Sopore Shocker
The Sopore town was jolted by a horrific incident on a chilly March morning.
On March 30, Showkat Ahmad Ganai, a 32-year-old resident of Dangerpora village in Sopore, reportedly strangled his 70-year-old mother, Aisha Begum. A son, consumed by the dark grip of drug addiction, committed the ultimate betrayal by snuffing out the life of his own mother. The community is reeling from the shock of yet another senseless murder, which has left many questioning the corrosive impact of drugs on society and the lengths to which addiction can drive a person to commit the most heinous of crimes.
Sopore: An aerial view. It is the bridge that connects the two parts of Sopore. Image: Junaid Bhat
Speaking to the media, Showkat’s devastated sister said the family had always tried to steer Showkat away from his wrongdoings and get him on the right track. They had even scolded him when he was heading in the wrong direction, but in recent times, he had turned his life around, working hard and earning a good livelihood.
Showkat’s sister is still in disbelief about what could have happened to him and that he would resort to killing his own mother. She said that her brother had been very humble towards everyone around him, and everything seemed to be going fine until this incident occurred.
The killer’s sister is also grappling with the shock and cannot come to terms with what has happened. She expressed her wish that the police should catch Showkat and bring him to face justice. She went on to say that she wants to see him hanged in front of her, as that is the only justice that she can think of.
Larger Impact
With drug abuse as rampant as an epidemic, according to the police, a lot of crimes could be attributed to the addicts, who are always cash-starved. With some of them turning towards their family members, there is a possibility that they can kill others too.
While the authorities have been taking action against the suppliers – mostly the retailers, and making arrests on a daily basis, there is a requirement for snapping the supply chain. Officials have been consistently saying that the supplies are sourced from across the Line of Control (LoC) and various gangs including members of the security grid, have been arrested. However, the drug bazaar is still making a lot of money and on a daily basis; hundreds of families are getting devastated. Can Kashmir’s efficient security grid trace and squeeze the tracks that keep the drug supplies on?
(Photographs used in this report are representational and not linked, directly or indirectly, to the incidents mentioned in the report.)
Abu Dhabi: Lieutenant General Abdullah Khalifa Al Marri, Commander-in-Chief of Dubai police, has chaired a performance evaluation meeting of the General Department of Criminal Investigation for the first quarter of the current year.
The meeting was attended by Major General Expert Khalil Ibrahim Al Mansouri, Assistant Commander-in-Chief for Criminal Investigation Affairs, Major General Jamal Salem Al Jallaf, Director of the General Department of Criminal Investigation, and other senior officials.
Al Marri praised the efforts of the General Department of Criminal Investigation in maintaining security and safety, which led to a 25 percent reduction in alarming reports in Q1 2023 compared to the same period last year.
The number of known reports in Q1 2023 increased by 97 per cent compared to Q1 2022, and the number of reports rescored against unknown decreased by 14 per cent in Q1 2023 compared to the same period in 2022. Non-alarming criminal reports also declined by 7.1 per cent in Q1 2023 compared to the same period in 2022.
During the meeting, Colonel Rashed Bin Dhaboui, Director of the Criminal Control Department, presented a report on police efficiency and crime prediction in Q1 2023 compared to Q1 2022. The report highlighted the results achieved by the General Department of Criminal Investigations in implementing developmental and strategic plans to achieve desired objectives and indicators in reducing alarming crime rates, rapidly handling reports, reducing crimes in specific areas, and forming effective task forces.
Bin Dhaboui also explained the most critical cases handled and the reasons that led to the decrease in crime rates in cooperation with Dubai police stations, as well as predicting crime and emerging criminal methods using artificial intelligence techniques.
Major General Al Jallaf emphasised that the periodic meetings chaired by the Commander-in-Chief of Dubai Police contribute to enhancing performance efficiency, discussing future projects, and addressing potential obstacles. He added that these meetings follow an integrated methodology to evaluate the department’s quarterly results within a specific timeline, allowing an insight into the directions that determine the department’s goals and methods for evaluating results compared to previous years.
(Except for the headline, the story has not been edited by Siasat staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
“Tonight our message is this: journalism is not a crime,” Biden told the applauding crowd.
The president also acknowledged dinner attendee and WNBA star Brittney Griner, who was detained in Russia for nearly 10 months, and Debra Tice, the mother of Austin Tice, a journalist who has been held captive in Syria for more than 10 years.
“Evan and Austin should be released immediately, along with every American held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad,” Biden urged. He also acknowledged Paul Whelan, the former U.S. marine currently detained in Russia, and promised Whelan’s family that neither he nor his administration would quit until Whelan was freed.
Biden eventually cut the somber atmosphere with a joke about his own age. “I believe in the First Amendment. Not just because my good friend Jimmy Madison wrote it,” the 80-year-old said to laughter from the crowd.
Biden’s speech included some of his favorite lines — “don’t compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative,” — peppered with digs at Republicans and the media, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Fox host Tucker Carlson, former CNN host Don Lemon and Twitter CEO Elon Musk.
Biden also had some barbs for Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
“You all keep recording my approval rating is 42%. I think you don’t know this. Kevin McCarthy called me and asked, ‘Joe, what the hell is your secret?’” Biden said.
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner was back to its glitzy, elbow-rubbing glory this year for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic began. The annual roast was canceled in 2020 and 2021, and the virus continued to cast a shadow over last year’s event, after the Gridiron Club dinner weeks earlier turned out to be a superspreader event.
But on Saturday, not even the threat of rainy weather could deter the crowd – some 2,600 journalists, politicians and celebrities filed into the ballroom at the Washington Hilton for the celebration, keynoted by comedian and “Daily Show” correspondent Roy Wood, Jr. The dinner got off to a rowdy start, as White House Correspondents’ Association President Tamara Keith tried to rein in attendees’ attention. “Don’t make me shout out, ‘Decorum!” Keith said in an effort to quiet the room for her opening remarks.
The awards and speech portion of the night opened with a video of actor and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who spoke of the importance of the relationship between politicians and the press.
“Tonight’s event of course sends a powerful message that you don’t see politicians schmoozing and drinking with the press in Beijing or in Moscow or places like that — no, not at all,” Schwarzenegger said in the pre-taped recording, which included a cameo from actor Danny DeVito. “So even though you have asked questions that have annoyed the hell out of me, I remind myself always that you actually do the people’s work. You are the ally of the people, so never ever stop shining a light on the truth and informing the public.”
Keith emphasized that message in her remarks, noting that this was the first time in many years that both the president and the vice president attended the event, after former President Donald Trump declined to join during his time in office.
“Their presence is a statement and endorsement of the importance of a free and independent press — even if they don’t always like the questions we ask, or the way we ask them,” Keith said.
Keith also acknowledged the slew of recent media layoffs, including at her own company. “This is a challenging time for the news industry. My employer, NPR, just went through a painful round of layoffs and we are not alone. ABC, BuzzFeed, CBS, CNN, Gannett, Insider, Vice News Tonight, the Washington Post — I had to alphabetize the list because it’s so long,” Keith said. “These are difficult times in our industry. There is uncertainty and fear for what the future holds. But we are still here, so let’s stand proud,” she added later.
Wood later wrapped up the evening’s theme in his inimitable style: “Tonight is all about you all, journalists, the defenders of free speech. People who show truth to the world, from different mediums, from television, print, radio, whatever China let us see on TikTok.”
[ad_2]
#Journalism #crime #Biden #salutes #press #stresses #freedoms #WHCD
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Patna: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Friday reacted with exasperation over the opposition faced by the head count of caste’ underway in the state, saying that holding such a survey is not a crime.
He asserted that the state is not conducting a caste census but only collecting information related to people’s economic status and their caste so that specific steps could be taken by the government to serve them better.
“The ongoing caste survey is a good initiative taken by us. People will be hugely benefited after the recognition of their economic status, whether they belong to the upper caste, backward caste or extremely weaker sections of the society.
“I don’t understand why a section of people are against this exercise They are challenging it. Is it a crime? No, it is not,” Kumar said while addressing a conference of Civil Servants here.
An organisation had claimed that it was not a survey for a sample population but a census involving house-to-house enumeration of all people, which only the Centre can undertake. The organisation had moved the Supreme Court against the state government’s decision but it refused to entertain the plea.
The top court, however, on Friday allowed the petitioner to approach the Patna High Court and directed it to decide the petition expeditiously.
“Data related to people’s economic status and their caste will be collected during the headcount so that the state government could know how many people are poor and what sort of steps needs to be taken to bring them into the mainstream,” said the chief minister.
All parties in Bihar had the same view when the state government decided to hold the caste-based survey, he said.
The first round of caste survey in Bihar was conducted between January 7 and 21. The second round started on April 15 and will continue till May 15.
The BJP government in Karnataka issued seven separate orders to drop the prosecution in 385 criminal cases, including 182 cases of hate speech, cow vigilantism, and communal violence, over a four-year period from July 2019 to April 2023, the state home department stated as a response to an RTI filed by the Indian Express.
Over 1,000 people benefited from the dismissal of communal crime charges, including a BJP MP and MLA. In the overall withdrawal procedure, 2000 accused were granted relief.
The majority of the 182 cases with communal links withdrawn pertained to the Congress government’s tenure between 2013 and 2018.
Between 2013 and 2018, the Congress government in Karnataka, led by then chief minister Siddaramaiah, ordered the dismissal of 176 cases involving nearly 1,600 activists from the Socialist Democratic Party of India (SDPI) and the now-banned Popular Front of India (PFI), the majority of which were related to violations of prohibitory orders.
45 of the 182 charges dismissed by the BJP government had to do with suspected rightwing activist violence in the Uttara Kannada area in December 2017, following the murder of a Hindu youngster, Paresh Mesta.
The CBI eventually determined that it was an accident. Courts largely followed the government’s direction to withdraw cases.
A civil judge and magistrate in Sirsi, Uttara Kannada, disregarded a government decision on February 28, 2023, to dismiss prosecution against 66 persons in the communal violence after Mesta’s case, and committed the matter for trial, according to the Indian Express report.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a petition seeking uniformity in grant of compensation to the victims of hate crime and mob lynching, and sought the response of the Centre, states and union territories.
A bench of Justices KM Joseph and BV Nagarathna also asked the Centre, states and UTs to inform it within four weeks by way of affidavits about the steps taken for formulating a scheme for providing relief to the families of victims of mob lynching, as directed by it in the 2018 verdict in the Tehseen Poonawala case.
It posted the matter for further hearing after eight weeks.
Advocate Javed Sheikh, appearing for petitioner ‘Indian Muslim for Progress and Reforms’ (IMPAR), said some states have framed schemes pursuant to the 2018 verdict of the apex court but there was no uniformity, while many states still do not have any such scheme.
He gave the example of Rajasthan where, in the event of an earning member getting lynched by a mob, the family gets Rs 5 lakh compensation which is reduced to Rs 2.5 lakh in case of a non-earning member.
Sheikh sought a direction to the states for formulating a uniform compensation scheme.
The plea, filed through advocate Rizwan Ahmad, said the petitioner is praying for an order or direction to bring in uniformity in the grant of compensation to the victims of hate crimes/lynching/mob lynching as the present practice of granting ex-gratia amounts by various state governments is discriminatory and contrary to the provisions of Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution of India.
It said that IMPAR also prays for an order directing the State Governments and Union Territories to provide just, fair and reasonable compensation to the victims of hate crime and mob lynching pursuant to the scheme framed by them in compliance with the direction of this court in 2018.
The petition flagged “whimsical, discriminatory and arbitrary approach” adopted by states in grant of ex-gratia to the victims of hate crime and mob lynching and the “meagre” compensation provided to them.
The plea said the compensation awarded by states in most cases depended on extraneous factors like “media coverage, political imperatives and the victim’s religious identity”.
“It is seen that the trend of awarding compensation to the victims of hate crime/mob lynching is decided based on the religious affiliation of the victims. In some cases, where the victims belong to other religious denominations, huge compensation is awarded for their losses, while in other cases where the victim belongs to a minority community, the compensation is woefully inadequate,” it claimed.
The petition said such acts were not only in violation of Article 14 (equality before law) but also a breach of Article 15 which mandates non-discrimination against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them.
On June 29, 2022, it said, a man named Kanhaiya lal of Udaipur, Rajasthan was murdered in an alleged hate crime and the next day the chief minister, while visiting the victim’s family, handed over a cheque for Rs 51 Lakh. The two sons of the victim were also given government jobs, he said.
The plea said on February 17, 2023, the bodies of two people from the minority community were found in a burnt car. They were killed in a most brutal and cruel manner which shook the community to the core. On March 3, 2023, the Rajasthan chief minister, while visiting the victim’s family announced Rs 5 Lakh as compensation.
The plea referred to similar instances in Karnataka.
Telangana Director General of Police, Anjani Kumar (left), Additional DG CID, Mahesh Muralidhar Bhagwat (right)
Hyderabad: The Telangana Crime Investigation Department (CID) will soon train officers of clues teams in fingerprint collection and preservation techniques as they play a crucial role in crime detection.
Owning to the importance of ‘fingerprints’ in the detection of property offences, identification of unidentified bodies and verification of the suspects, crime detection teams are being formed in five newly created zones in Rachakonda, Hyderabad, Cyberabad and Mulugu districts.
Director General of Police, Anjani Kumar held a video conference with fingerprint bureau officers of 41 units in Telangana on Wednesday and lauded the services rendered by the fingerprint bureaus.
“Five of the best units in the state will also be presented awards for good performance,” declared the DGP.
Additional DG CID, Mahesh Muralidhar Bhagwat said, “In all the five zones in the city and Mulugu district we will have clues teams which would include a fingerprint bureau officer.”
“The officials will be trained by experts to assist in the collection of scientific evidence for two weeks,” Mahesh Bhagwat added.
Peoria, Ill., saw a spike in violent crime through the pandemic that startled local leaders.
Gun violence among young people in particular was going up at a disturbing pace in a city that already had one of the highest murder rates in the country. Democratic Mayor Rita Ali needed a plan to yank the numbers back down.
She hired a new top cop two months after being sworn in in 2021 who sought to make the police more visible and opened a tip line at the beginning of 2022. The city launched a violence “interrupter” program. A community center started offering school tutoring, physical fitness classes and mentoring on how to handle conflicts without picking up a gun.
We asked these 50 mayors what they considered to be the leading causes of crime in their cities. Here’s what they told us:
15 mayors mentioned drugs or addiction
12 mayors mentioned economic inequality, poverty or lack of opportunities
Eight mayors mentioned guns or illegal firearms
Seven mayors mentioned mental health
Four mayors mentioned car theft or other types of theft
Peoria still had a high rate of gun violence last year. But shootings and homicides fell roughly 26 percent, compared to 2021, a drop Ali and other local leaders attribute to the new suite of programs.
“We’re looking block by block how we can address gun violence and really transform the situation within these hot spots,” Ali, the first Black woman elected to lead Peoria, a city 160 miles southwest of Chicago, said in an interview. “We think if we can interrupt the violence within these hot spots, that it’s going to have a collective impact within our community.”
There’s a similar scene playing out across the country. Leaders for communities of all sizes are desperate to restore the broad, steady declines in violence that preceded Covid-19. What’s happening is an experimentation with anti-crime methods that respect the protests that erupted across the nation after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. How mayors address the issue of public safety will decide their political fate, whether their cities prosper or stagnate, and to what degree their residents can live without fear for their lives or their family.
For 2023, POLITICO assembled 50 mayors — one from every state — to shine a light on the challenges their communities face and offer up the lessons they’ve learned on the job. Throughout the year, members of the inaugural Mayors Club will share their perspective on key issues that weigh on them and their peers, in both surveys and interviews. We’ll hear directly from leaders who are far from Washington’s corridors of power, representing cities and towns big and small, urban and suburban.
The first topic we asked the members of the Mayors Club about: Crime and policing.
Nearly half of the 50 mayors in The Mayors Club said public safety was the single most pressing issue in their communities. We had them rank it on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the most important.
Ali and mayors all over the country are grappling with a similar surge in violence, anchored with the huge responsibility of reducing crime rates with limited money and limited power. It’s a confluence of forces that leave mayors exasperated — often feeling boxed in by a frightened public and an intractable problem.
Here these mayors will discuss their search for solutions to many of the same problems: Understaffed police departments facing low morale — and a public uneasiness with the people hired to protect them. A steady flow of illegal guns. Inflamed and inaccurate rhetoric. State lawmakers who get in their way. And, of course, insufficient funds.
“It’s a very volatile situation,” Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, a Democrat, said of crime in his city. “We can have a very safe month, then you can have a mass shooting and the next month is challenging.”
Just three mayors we surveyed said their constituents were not concerned about crime.
33 were a little or somewhat worried
The majority of the Mayors Club said their concerns about crime aligned with their residents’ — and a quarter reported being more worried.
2
Less worried about crime
36 were as worried about crime as their constituents
Mayors Club members believe their constituents have a mostly accurate view of crime rates in the communities. We had them rank it on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being not at all accurate and 10 being completely accurate.
Louisville, Ky., Mayor Craig Greenberg, a Democrat, campaigned on combating gun violence, and a few months into his tenure he’s trying to fulfill that promise. It’s an issue that became deeply personal for him — and predates this week’s shooting less than a mile from City Hall: He survived a shooting at his campaign headquarters last year when a candidate for city council fired several rounds before a door was closed and barricaded. No one was injured but a bullet grazed the sweater Greenberg was wearing.
A few weeks into office, Greenberg announced a new plan unique to Kentucky: Guns seized by the police department would be disabled before being turned over to the state. Their firing pins would be removed and a label added saying that the gun may have been used in the killing of a child or to commit other homicides in Louisville. Kentucky law mandates that all forfeited guns must be auctioned, a requirement Greenberg said is “dangerous and absurd” because it allows for the weapons to be recirculated.
“There are thousands and thousands of guns in our possession we are going to be rendering inoperative,” Greenberg said in an interview before the downtown bank shooting that left at least four people dead on Monday. “We believe it’s important to do everything we can to continue to reduce gun violence.”
Greenberg, as mayor of Kentucky’s largest city, is likely setting himself up for a legal challenge to this workaround as well as a confrontation with the conservative state legislature behind the decades-old law. And proceeds from the auctions go toward buying equipment like body armor and tasers for police departments.
The Kentucky State Fraternal Order of Police opposes the mayor’s plan and said it “will have far reaching ramifications for police and sheriffs departments.”
Greenberg has promised that his initiative won’t hurt funding for law enforcement.
More than 75 percent of The Mayors Club reported that they believe their constituents trust their police force. About 14 percent were neutral.
39
Strongly agree or agree
Strongly disagree or disagree
4
7 mayors said they were neutral
More than 90 percent of the Mayors Club said they would feel comfortable approaching their police chief to talk about their constituents’ complaints.
47
Strongly agree or agree
No mayors said they were neutral
Mayors told POLITICO they are consumed with figuring out how to keep guns off the streets — and they’re facing new challenges all the time.
In Lancaster, Penn., Mayor Danene Sorace said the police department has discovered an uptick in ghost guns — untraceable firearms that can be bought online or assembled at home using a 3D printer. A recent federal report found that the use of ghost guns has risen by more than 1,000 percent since 2017.
“As a mayor, you feel that you have no sense of control over these things, especially given the climate around guns in our country and the lack of support for law enforcement to help stem the tide of illegal guns,” Sorace, a Democrat, said in an interview. “It’s really frustrating.”
In Columbia, S.C., Mayor Daniel Rickenmann is in the process of setting up a new anti-gun violence office, an effort he imagines will consolidate resources and deploy a coordinated response across city agencies. Rickenmann, a Republican, has sparred with the city council over funding, arguing that Columbia — which experienced more shootings in 2021 than any year on record — needs a central hub dedicated to the issue.
Some council members have balked at the price tag, which is estimated at more than $800,000 in federal funds over three years.
Rickenmann also wants to see the state legislature, ruled by a Republican supermajority, pass some gun restrictions while also preserving the right to own a firearm.
“We’ve got to show people you’ve got to be responsible,” he said in an interview. “I don’t think we should take away the opportunity for people to own a firearm … but it doesn’t mean you can take it to the mall.”
He added: “I don’t think the intent was that everything is a free-for-all, and I do think we’ve got to have some boundaries and restrictions.”
An increasing number of cities across the country are rolling out violence interruption initiatives — programs that send individuals out onto the streets to deescalate the potential for crimes before they occur. These interrupters often have a criminal record and relationships with gang members after following that life themselves. Their salaries are paid for by a combination of federal and local funding, depending on the city.
In Birmingham, Ala., Mayor Randall Woodfin is bringing the city’s interrupters into the hospital by sending workers to the bedside of gunshot victims admitted to the trauma department.
“What we want is not only for that victim to survive, what we want is for them not to retaliate,” Woodfin, a Democrat, said.
But these interrupter programs have run into problems getting off the ground, mainly with building the trust of law enforcement and community members and convincing those leaders to spend significant sums. It’s difficult for advocates of these efforts to prove they prevented crimes that never occurred and the interrupters can sometimes face tremendous risk.
In Baltimore, which has had a violence interrupter program since 2007, three workers employed on behalf of the city’s Safe Streets initiative were recently shot and killed on the job over an 18-month period. One of those men was Dante Barksdale, the director of Safe Streets and a close friend of Democratic Mayor Brandon Scott, a Black man who grew up in the Park Heights neighborhood, a predominantly low-income area with high crime rates.
Following the murders, Baltimore’s leaders faced questions about the program’s risks and whether there are better approaches.
“The day that [Barksdale] died is one of the hardest days of my life as an elected official,” said Scott, who got choked up when talking about his death. But he said Barksdale was committed to the effort.
Barksdale would tell Scott: “We’ve got to go deeper. We’ve got to do more of it, not less, because it’s necessary and it works.”
Scott is pushing a comprehensive public safety strategy that not only relies on law enforcement but also programs like Safe Streets and the recently reimagined Group Violence Reduction Strategy that directs job training, drug counseling, housing and behavioral health support to at-risk individuals.
“When you think about gun violence as a disease or a cancer, you have to cure the whole cancer, not just one symptom,” Scott said.
What do you wish state lawmakers better understood about crime in your community?
“Police officers need more mental health support and services. No one really prepares us for if there’s a homicide in the city or what happens when you lose an officer.”
— Maria Rivera, Central Falls, Rhode Island
“We still struggle in Iowa with some of the small drug offenses. Marjuana is not legalized here for recreational use and [we have] limited medical use. There’s not any real agreement. They’re just not open to that conversation right now.”
— Brad Cavanagh, Dubuque, Iowa
“[Fentanyl] is new, very powerful, extremely addictive and very deadly. We need state laws addressing the people directly dealing that poison.”
— Todd Gloria, San Diego, California
Members of The Mayors Club said it is crucial to encourage law enforcement to embrace community policing tactics: being more visible within their cities and towns and directing nonviolent 911 calls to mental health professionals. That approach, they believe, will help build trust between law enforcement and residents.
In few places has that mandate been more difficult than in Tacoma, Wash., where Manuel Ellis, a 33-year-old Black man, died during an arrest in 2020. The incident sparked a crisis for the city and state, pulling in the governor and leading Mayor Victoria Woodards to immediately call for the removal and prosecution of the four police officers on the scene after video footage of the altercation was released showing the officers choking Ellis and repeatedly tasing him. Three of the officers are awaiting trial on murder and manslaughter charges. The Tacoma Police union has called the prosecution’s case a “witch hunt” and that the officers acted “in accordance with the law.”
Woodards, a Democrat and the city’s first Black mayor, said she found the Ellis killing and its fallout “devastating” as she dealt with her own emotions about “representing the system that has now hurt my community.”
“Mayors have to be really careful. … I’ve got to call out what’s wrong but I also have to balance that with still saying that those who are still left, those who are waking up every day fighting crime, still have to be honored in the work that they’re doing,” she said. “It’s a tightrope. It’s not easy.”
A majority of the Mayors Club said they intended to spend more money on their police department this year than last year.
29
More money than was spent last year
16 said the same amount as last year
When given three choices for how to spend a hypothetical $500,000 public safety budget surplus, nearly 70 percent said they’d hire social workers.
11 mayors said create/hire more police officers
34 mayors said hire social workers to handle nonviolent policing duties such as mental health issues
Five mayors said invest in drug rehabilitation programs
When offered several choices for how to spend a broader hypothetical $500,000 budget surplus, more than one-third said they would spend the money on housing.
Mayors shared deep concerns about the quality of life for police officers, who they say are experiencing low morale amid the national discourse over policing and mental health issues associated with their dangerous jobs.
And law enforcement resources are stretched thin, an issue exacerbated by recruitment challenges.
“People just don’t want to be police officers and that’s a big challenge,” Dubuque, Iowa, Mayor Brad Cavanagh, a Democrat, said in an interview. “Recruiting and hiring is our biggest concern right now.”
The Dubuque police department currently has 14 vacancies and no longer receives a comparable amount of applicants for open positions that it used to.
“It’s a challenge when you have a national narrative where people are not as supportive of the police, and for some really legitimate reasons,” he said of the police department’s personnel setbacks. “There’s been some terrible things that have happened at the hands of police officers in the United States. And it leads to a larger discussion that doesn’t attract somebody to the profession.”
LONG TERM POLICY AMBITIONS
One-third of the mayors in the club reported drugs and addiction as the leading cause of crime in their communities. Nearly a quarter cited economic inequality, poverty and a lack of opportunities.
Some mayors are hoping to address a few of these root causes with a greater focus on lifting people out of poverty or helping those struggling with substance abuse.
In Louisville, Ky., the city is exploring how to create a universal pre-kindergarten program.
The city of San Diego is lobbying the California Legislature to crack down on dealers of illicit fentanyl, who prey on the homeless population.
In Birmingham, Ala., the city has provided more than $3 million in college tuition assistance to more than 800 high school students.
Here is what some mayors said they would change about their police department — if there were no political blowback:
new patrol cars
more officers living inside city limits
ending qualified immunity
proactive in citing violators
cameras in public areas
hire a full time psychologist
terminate bigoted officers
more social workers
All these efforts are intended to get at systemic issues mayors believe may meet long term policy goals — and could be better realized with the support of state and federal government and more money.
“We’re dealing with the symptom and not the underlying cause,” Democratic Santa Fe, N.M., Mayor Alan Webber said.
What do you wish state lawmakers better understood about crime in your community?
“We need more tools at the local level to enforce the illegal trafficking of guns in our city. The legislature here in Ohio has undermined home rule for us as mayors to cut down on guns. That plays a large driver in the homicides we see across the state.”
— Justin Bibb, Cleveland, Ohio
“What’s happening right now in 2023 with the proliferation, the ease and access to guns in urban cores across America is extremely reminiscent of the crack cocaine epidemic in the 80’s.”
— Randall Woodfin, Birmingham, Alabama
“One of the things the state needs to recognize is that at the same time we want more officers and more response to things that are crimes, we want more prevention and intermediation and diversion for things that are social problems not criminal problems. It’s underfunded, it’s harder to explain to the public, it is less politically popular than being ‘tough on crime.’”
— Alan Webber, Santa Fe, New Mexico
[ad_2]
#truth #crime #American #cities #asked #mayors
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
On October 21, details revealed police recovered the body of Razia and rushed her to GMC Anantnag for treatment, but the doctors declared her brought dead. The prolonged matrimonial dispute and various allegations and counter-allegations in societal circles made the police suspect foul play. They initiated proceedings under section 174 CRPC and took the body into possession for medico-legal formalities.
