POLICE BODY CAM VIDEOS USELESS IF BRASS WON’T PUNISH OFFICERS WHO USE EXCESSIVE FORCE
“People act differently when they know they’re being recorded. I believe overwhelmingly police officers act in a professional way. Are there cases when they don’t? Yes. I think cameras will mostly vindicate officers.” – Springettsbury Township Police Chief Thomas Hyers.
Yes, the chief is probably right that requiring cops to wear body cams will “vindicate” officers accused of unprofessional behavior.
Probably even in situations where they shouldn’t be absolved. That, in our opinion, has been the case here in York County – and in Chief Hyers’ own department.
Springettsbury Township officers made headlines last year when two people sued, alleging police brutality – claims that appeared to be justified in light of the cruiser cam videos the plaintiffs’ attorneys released to the media.
In one video, an officer is seen punching a woman who is shackled by the ankles and handcuffed behind her back in the rear seat of a Springettsbury patrol car. Granted, the woman was uncooperative and verbally abusive to officers. But there was no need for officers to hit the suspect. They should have simply let her rant in the squad car and ignored her.
In another video, officers use a stun gun on a male suspect and knee him in the ribs, breaking five, and they threaten to allow a dog to attack him. A judge later found the suspect not guilty of resisting arrest, saying officers did not give the man time to comply with orders to put his hands behind his back before they hit him with a leg sweep and “compliance strikes” (knees to the ribs).
Both of these incidents were caught on cruiser cam video. The behavior of the suspects was certainly not what you would expect of model citizens, but the behavior of some of the arresting officers is at the very least unprofessional, in our opinion.
What were the results of inquiries into these incidents?
Officers were vindicated by District Attorney Tom Kearney, who said no criminal charges would be filed.
The township later settled the lawsuits for $250,000 each, and the individual suits against the officers were dismissed.
The point is that making video recordings of the activities of police officers could be a good measure to assure accountability of officers – who carry weapons and have extraordinary power over citizens.
But those videos are only as effective as the authorities whose job it is to view them and assure accountability: police chiefs, district attorneys, U.S. attorneys, judges.
Any upper-level law enforcement official who could look at the videos of those two Springettsbury incidents and not say they are examples of unwarranted force is delusional or hopelessly biased in favor of the officers.
At a recent community forum sponsored by the York NAACP in the wake of the Ferguson, Mo., killing of an unarmed black man by police, Chief Hyers, DA Kearney and other law enforcement officials were quick to say they supported the use of body cams by officers to assure accountability.
Good. But they also must commit to actually meting out accountability when presented with videos that show officers using excessive force.
We realize police have difficult, hazardous jobs, and they sometimes must use force to subdue dangerous, intoxicated, obnoxious people – without putting themselves at unnecessary risk.
But accountability is a two-way street. Officers hold citizens accountable to the law, and they themselves must be held accountable to professional and lawful conduct on the job.
Law enforcement brass must assure accountability on both sides of that thin blue line.
– York Daily Record
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KEEP ON STRUTTING
As expected, some longtime South Philadelphia residents are upset that plans are being made to move the annual Mummers Parade route on New Year’s Day away from their neighborhoods. But they need to understand that the route change is necessary to ensure the survival of one of this city’s proudest traditions.
The truth is that the crowds standing outside to watch the televised parade travel down Broad Street are extremely thin below Washington Avenue. That’s a reflection of the area’s changed demographics. Many of the families who in the past both participated and watched the parade have moved elsewhere.
Past parades traveled north along Broad Street from Oregon Avenue, but the new route would start at City Hall and run south to Washington Avenue, where it would end. The proposal has been endorsed by leaders of all five Mummers divisions, who understand that the parade’s survival is at stake.
Shortening the parade route will also cut the city’s expenses for policing and closing streets. Philadelphia has officially sponsored the parade since 1901, but its roots can be traced to the 17th century, when Swedes among the city’s first settlers would wear costumes and parade to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s Day.
In more recent years, the parade came to be closely associated with the largely Italian American neighborhoods in South Philadelphia that embraced the tradition. They formed string bands and other Mummers groups. But those neighborhoods have become much more diverse, and new residents haven’t been as enthusiastic.
Healthy crowds still watch the festivities north of Washington Avenue, especially around City Hall, so plans are to use the Benjamin Franklin Parkway as a staging area prior to kicking off the parade at City Hall. Judging would occur at Broad and Market instead of at the parade’s end. Some say getting the judging out of the way will allow the Mummers to loosen up afterward. But it’s hard to see how the two-steppers could be any more carefree.
Any change to a long-held tradition is going to be controversial. “Leaving out the neighborhood where it started from? Why don’t we just move the Liberty Bell to South Jersey?” asked one Mummer. Ironically, many longtime Mummers and their doting fans have done just that – moved to South Jersey and other suburbs. But many of those suburbanites cross the bridges with their costumes to participate in the parade, with their families in tow.
The parade has had temporary route changes. Now the route must change to ensure its survival. That’s what the city must stress when it sits down in the coming weeks with the five Mummers divisions – the comics, the wenches, the string bands, the fancies, and the fancy brigades – to make a final decision.
– The Philadelphia Inquirer
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LAWMAKER’S PROPOSED LIQUOR LAW CHANGES MAKE SENSE
So you’re in line at the grocery store. The kick-off to the big game is just minutes away. You plunk your three six-packs down for payment. And the cashier’s face creases.
Sorry, he or she tells you, under state law, you can only buy two six-packs at a time. If you want that third one, you’re going to have to buy two, bring them out to your car, and then come back inside to buy the third one.
Or, say for instance, there’s a spirit or wine that you happen to love, and, by happenstance, it’s not available in Pennsylvania. Under state law, you can’t have it shipped to you.
And because of another legal quirk, if you hop across the border to buy it, you’re a bootlegger because you’re dodging the 24 percent tax the state Liquor Control Board levies on the sale of wine and spirits.
As PennLive’s Charles Thompson pointed out last week, there are plenty of head-scratchers in the thicket of legal language dictating how Pennsylvania regulates the sale of wine and spirits.
So we welcome an effort by state Rep. John Taylor, R-Philadelphia, who wants the state to stop making criminals out of otherwise law-abiding Pennsylvanians who might skip across the border into New Jersey or Maryland to pick up a bottle or two of their favorite vino or hootch for their own consumption.
“I don’t want my constituents to be subject to being criminals … for having a bottle of wine,” Taylor, the chairman of the House Liquor Control Committee, said last week.
Under current law, violators caught bringing in alcohol from out-of-state stores are subject to a fine of $10 a bottle or can of beer and $25 per bottle of liquor. That’s in addition to whatever you paid for it in the first place.
And, adding insult to injury, police will confiscate the offending booze too.
Wendell Young, the head of Local 1776 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which represents state store employees, told Thompson that it’s unfair to state employees for lawmakers to encourage more out-of-state liquor shopping without giving the state stores a better chance to compete. Despite the fact that Young’s union has been one of the single, biggest impediments to reform efforts, he has something of a point.
If there is one signal failure of the past legislative session, it has been the Legislature’s complete inability to modernize the way Pennsylvania sells wine, spirits and beers to legal adults.
From outright efforts at divestiture of the state-run monopoly to mere attempts to make consumers’ lives easier by allowing wine sales in grocery stores, liquor reformers have seen their attempts stymied by well-organized opponents in industry, organized labor and the temperance movement.
As we have noted so many times before, other states have managed to expand alcohol sales and … perish forbid … even make it easier for adults to purchase legal beverage without their becoming a Sodom and Gomorrah of the Lower 48. Only one other state – Utah – exerts such strict control over the sale of alcoholic beverages.
Rep. Taylor’s proposal, along with other modernization proposals, deserves a fair airing. Given their past incompetence on this issue, it may be too much to hope that lawmakers will accomplish something during the handful of days they’re in session this fall.
That would be indeed something to toast at year’s end.
– PennLive.com
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PENNSYLVANIA’S ‘PRIVATE’ MEDICAID PLAN MUCH BETTER THAN NO PLAN
After months of negotiating, the Corbett administration and the federal government have agreed on a kind of privatized Medicaid expansion for low-income Pennsylvanians. That’s good news, but it’s hard to view this as a win-win situation when so many poor, mostly working people were needlessly shut out of health care coverage for the past year.
While Corbett maintains it was essential to include a private-sector approach in his “Healthy Pa.” insurance proposal – an alternative to the federally paid Medicaid expansion for low-income people under the Affordable Care Act – this standoff was about burnishing his anti-Obamacare credentials, too.
But at least the state now has a federal waiver that will allow as many as 600,000 people – most of them full-time workers who can’t afford health insurance – to begin enrolling as of Dec. 1, with the hope that coverage can begin in January.
Pennsylvania is the 27th state to accept the federal help. Instead of directly expanding the state’s Medicaid program, however, it will make federal subsidies available to low-income Pennsylvanians to purchase private insurance – through Aetna, Highmark or other companies.
“From the beginning, I said we needed a plan that was created in Pennsylvania, for Pennsylvania – a plan that would allow us to reform a financially unsustainable Medicaid program and increase access to health care for eligible individuals through the private market,” Corbett said in a statement.
Reaction to the federal approval, which was tendered as a five-year demonstration project, was mixed but generally positive. The Hospital Association of Pennsylvania and health-care advocates said it was important to extend coverage to the working poor.
Corbett administration officials said they pushed for a private insurer-based plan because many primary care physicians were refusing to take on new Medicaid patients, citing the low federal payment rates to doctors.
Yet the administration sought several conditions that not only would have made the plan more punitive, but added several layers of bureaucracy – a requirement for the unemployed to seek work to qualify, allowing providers to cancel a policy if one monthly premium were missed, and reductions in services compared to straight Medicaid coverage. Most of the demands were rejected by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Some low-income people will be charged premiums – those earning more than the federal poverty level, which begins at $11,670. Also, Pennsylvania will be allowed to reduce the 14 policies available under Medicaid to just one high-risk and one low-risk plan. Corbett agreed not to cut the Medical Assistance for Workers with Disabilities program, which covers 33,000 poor and middle-income people with disabilities.
Was it worth it to go to the wall for a private-insurer plan? This could become a moot point if Corbett fails to win a second term in November. Democratic candidate Tom Wolf supports a federal Medicaid expansion for the state, although he hasn’t said whether he’d petition the feds to switch back from the “Healthy Pa.” plan.
Health insurance is already complicated enough without changing schemes with every election.
Republicans and Democrats can spar over whether Corbett’s modified plan is a savvy upgrade over Obamacare or is simply borrowing a page from it, considering the business that’s being directed to private insurers.
Either way, half a million Pennsylvanians, many of them working at or near minimum-wage, will be able to get coverage for themselves and their families. That’s a step up.
– The (Easton) Express-Times.
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ALZHEIMER’S EXACTS TOLL IN PENNSYLVANIA
Alzheimer’s disease is going to be an increasingly acute problem both around the world and in this country as life spans stretch even further and the large cohort of baby boomers march into senescence.
But all the practical and emotional problems that accompany Alzheimer’s, both for victims of the disease and their families and friends, will perhaps be felt even more pointedly in Pennsylvania. The commonwealth has the fourth-highest concentration of residents older than age 65, according to the 2010 U.S. Census, and metropolitan areas like Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Harrisburg and Allentown aside, it is one of the most rural states in the nation.
Right now, it’s estimated 280,000 residents of Pennsylvania are struggling through some stage of the disease, 70 percent of them still living at home, and that number is virtually certain to inch higher barring a left-field medical breakthrough. The difficulties of those living outside population centers will be magnified, with a projected shortage of nursing homes, community-based services and primary care providers in those areas. Individuals who migrate to Pennsylvania from other parts of the world could also endure difficulties in getting treatment.
These are some of the findings of a statewide report on Alzheimer’s disease released in February and approved by Gov. Tom Corbett earlier this summer. It was the fruit of six regional public meetings and over 300 comments made at the meetings and online. The study makes for sobering reading on the toll of Alzheimer’s in the Keystone State.
In today’s edition of the Observer-Reporter, as part of our yearlong exploration of Alzheimer’s disease, we are looking at nursing homes and care facilities that patients with Alzheimer’s or dementia can turn to when living at home is no longer practical and loved ones can’t provide the specialized, taxing care the condition demands. Facilities like these can help ease the suffering of those in the throes of Alzheimer’s, and ease the burden on friends or families who are entrusted with their care.
And Pennsylvania has so many unpaid caregivers, they could fill Heinz Field 10 times over with enough left over to fill Consol Energy Center. All told, according to the report, about 667,000 residents provide care that, if paid, would cost over $9 billion. “The toll on family caregivers is enormous – emotionally, financially and on their overall health,” the report states.
Among the report’s recommendations is continued support for research, such as that being carried out at the University of Pittsburgh’s Alzheimer Disease Research Center, promoting “brain health” and increased support for caregivers – all worthy and fairly obvious goals.
Another is centered around increasing awareness, knowledge and a “sense of urgency” around Alzheimer’s disease and all of its ramifications, from the social to the financial. We hope, through our series on Alzheimer’s, we have been able to make a contribution toward this goal.
Many reports are pumped out at state capitals and in Washington, D.C., only to be given a cursory look-through, tossed aside and completely forgotten. But even with so many competing demands and resources so limited, this is a document whose recommendations need to be understood and implemented.
-Washington Observer-Reporter
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A HOME OF ONE’S OWN: COUNTY TRIES PROGRAM FOR GREATER INDEPENDENCE
A promising trial program by the Allegheny County Department of Human Services will allot $200 a month to 20 residents in group housing who would like to live on their own.
The two-year program will use a relatively small amount of public funds to make a large impact on the lives of those with mental illness or intellectual disability who are ready and able to leave group homes. It will give people the opportunity to find jobs and independent housing and save the county the cost of housing them in community resident facilities, which can be up to $600 a month.
For some group residents, $200 a month can mean the difference between their low-income wages or Supplemental Security Income and the cost of rent they would pay in the open market to live on their own. If successful, the county support would enable them to achieve greater independence and function more fully in the community.
Since the program is temporary, the county will be able to analyze its effectiveness, fine-tune its workings and let it expire if necessary. At this early stage, however, the plan looks appealing.
Beyond helping these residents to live more independently, the program could open slots in group homes for others who truly need that level of support and care. Right now, the county’s waiting list for supported housing ranges from 300 to 400 people.
By giving the plan a try, the county may be better able to focus the right amount of resources on the right homes for the right people.
– Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
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