Obama: Mistrust of police corrodes nation ADVERTISING Obama: Mistrust of police corrodes nation WASHINGTON (AP) — The widespread mistrust of law enforcement that was exposed by the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man in Missouri exists in too
Obama: Mistrust of police corrodes nation
WASHINGTON (AP) — The widespread mistrust of law enforcement that was exposed by the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man in Missouri exists in too many other communities and is having a corrosive effect on the nation, particularly on its children, President Barack Obama says. He blames the feeling of wariness on persistent racial disparities in the administration of justice.
Obama said these misgivings only serve to harm communities that are most in need of effective law enforcement.
“It makes folks who are victimized by crime and need strong policing reluctant to go to the police because they may not trust them,” he said Saturday night in an address at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual awards dinner.
“And the worst part of it is it scars the hearts of our children,” Obama said, adding that it leads some youngsters to unnecessarily fear people who do not look like them and others to constantly feel under suspicion no matter what they do.
“That is not the society we want,” he said. “It’s not the society that our children deserve.”
Obama addressed the Aug. 9 shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown carefully but firmly, saying his death and the raw emotion it produced had reawakened the country to the fact that “a gulf of mistrust” exists between residents and police in too many communities.
The shooting sparked days of violent protests and racial unrest in the predominantly black St. Louis suburb of Ferguson. The police officer who shot Brown was white.
“Too many young men of color feel targeted by law enforcement — guilty of walking while black or driving while black, judged by stereotypes that fuel fear and resentment and hopelessness,” said Obama.
He said significant racial disparities remain in the enforcement of law, from drug sentencing to application of the death penalty, and that a majority of Americans think the justice system treats people of different races unequally.
Nearly 60K immigrant
children need lawyers
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Most of the nearly 60,000 Central American children who have arrived on the U.S.-Mexico border in the last year still don’t have lawyers to represent them in immigration court, and advocates are scrambling to train volunteer attorneys to help cope with the massive caseload.
With the number of unaccompanied immigrant children more than doubling this past fiscal year, the need for attorneys has surged, and it has been exacerbated by the immigration courts’ decision to fast-track children’s cases, holding initial hearings within a few weeks instead of months.
Immigrants can have counsel in immigration courts, but lawyers are not guaranteed or provided at government expense. Having an attorney can make a big difference: While almost half of children with attorneys were allowed to remain in the country, only 10 percent of those without representation were allowed to stay, according to an analysis of cases through June by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
Efforts are underway from White Plains, New York, to New Orleans to train attorneys at private law firms on the country’s byzantine immigration laws and how to work with traumatized, Spanish-speaking children, many of whom are fleeing violence — a far cry from the corporate clients most deal with on a daily basis.
“We’re doing pretty well on finding willing lawyers. We’ve got to get them trained, we’ve got to get them matched to that child,” said Reid Trautz, director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s practice and professionalism center. “It just takes time.”
Police: No protest link in shooting of officer
FERGUSON, Missouri (AP) — Authorities searched Sunday for a suspect in the shooting of a police officer in Ferguson, the St. Louis suburb where there have been angry protests since a white officer fatally shot an unarmed 18-year-old black man last month.
Although there were two protests about the Aug. 9 shooting of Michael Brown happening when the officer was shot Saturday night, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said at a news conference early Sunday that he didn’t think they were related to the wounding of the officer.
St. Louis County Police Sgt. Brian Schellman, a police spokesman, said in an email that only one suspect was involved in the shooting, not two as earlier reported.
The suspect was standing outside a closed community center when the officer approached Saturday night. The suspect fled and the officer gave chase. That’s when the man turned and shot him in the arm, police said.
Belmar said the officer returned fire, but that police have no indication that anyone else was shot. The officer was treated and released from a hospital, Schellman said.
Schellman said he didn’t know why the body camera the wounded officer was wearing was turned off during the shooting.
The shooting comes amid simmering tension between community members and police in Ferguson, where two-thirds of the residents are black, but only three of the city’s 53 police officers are African-American.
