This is an open thread; use it to post what you like, with whomever you like, for as long as you like. Self-linking is beautiful, baby, beautiful.
- Via Racism Review, the very welcome news that Obama has appointed Cecilia Muñoz as the next director of intergovernmental affairs. Muñoz is currently senior vice president for the Office of Research, Advocacy, and Legislation at the National Council of La Raza.
- Jacob Levy argues that civility in the blogosphere declined when comments section became the norm, because “comments sections have encouraged intra-blog rather than inter-blog conversations…. conversations among blog authors across ideological lines started to fall off after comments sections came into being.” Interesting.
- “Atlas Shrugged, updated for the current financial crisis.” Curtsy Kevin Drum.
- This puzzle game is really, really pretty. I still don’t find it as addictive as this game, however.
- “‘Modesty Squads’ Faces Legal Scrutiny in Israel.” Good!
- Bush administration scrambles to destroy more workplace safety before they leave office. Disgusting. By the way, the victims of this will overwhelmingly be male; this is exactly the sort of issue men’s rights activists should be focusing on.
- Bush’s Torture Policy Kills Americans
- Global Warming May Be Even Worse Than Scientists Have Predicted
- Hunter At Random: Gay Rights and Civil Rights
- Dissenting Justice: When Judges Are Elected, Justice Can Be Compromised.
- Deltoid: The Bush Administration’s War On Math (and cover-up of the extent of Iraqi causalities) continues.
- The “No On 8” campaign really seems to have totally failed at outreach to communities of color. In a way, this is good news. The bigger the problems with the execution of the “no on 8” campaign, the more hope we can have that future, better-run campaigns will have better outcomes.
- Good debate on settlement legality.
- Is Silvio Berlusconi a real-world version of Lord Julius?
- “From my cell I scent the reeking soul of US justice.” Curtsy: Ta-Nehisi.
- From Boing Boing: “Minuscule is a co-production of French national TV and the Disney channel. It’s a combination of real world sets and CGI insects, sans dialog. Personally, I think the lack of dialog makes the creatures more humane, and adds incredible opportunities for visual humor. Few opportunities are missed, and few fail.
There are episodes all over YouTube, and when those whet your appetite, please buy the DVD and support these comedic geniuses.”
Several years ago Cartoon Network had a show that aired on Friday nights called “Whatever Happened to Robot Jones?” The story wasn’t something you’d write to your home about but I was hooked to it because of the scribbly, Paul Coker-ish artwork that were present in the character designs.
Another highlight to the show was this music video, “Nudist and Mr. Pendleton”
Thanks for the links.
I haven’t done much but I did write about a police officer trying to get reinstated. He was fired after being arrested by the NCIS and later indicted on manslaughter charges for war crimes in Iraq. He’s trying to get his job back.
I tried to look at it from an management perspective. Tried. And a little bit about how police officers in my state get fired and reinstated back on the force.
I posted a link from a conversation at another site where an officer (who actually harassed me on my blog for a while) was talking about it and this massive protest of officers. I posted that link a while ago and city councilmen read it and were upset that it was going to happen but it didn’t.
I’ll be doing more postings as the 10th anniversary of Tyisha Miller’s shooting death by police officers take place this month.
Iowahawk announces the next logical step to Mr. Obama’s appointment of so many ex-Clinton officials to his Cabinet and the Executive Department in general.
O.K., Charles, that brought back memories. I can remember when bands would actually call themselves something like “The Lavender Fudge Experience” and their stage show would look something like that. It’s amazingly accurate.
Radfem, this is the flip side of the changes that were made to PD hiring and firing practices in order to prevent people from being arbitrarily fired or not hired because they were black or Hispanic or had refused to go along with corrupt practices. Unfortunately they tend to enable these kind of games to be played as well. There shouldn’t be any way to legally force the PD to hire someone that they’ve deemed having failed probation, but I don’t know the details of how one is found to have failed probation. How is such a decision made and reviewed? I’d guess that the answer to that question contains the basis on which the legal challenge will be brought.
Nazario of course wasn’t convicted of anything, which would mean that he couldn’t be fired for it; but this is more of a case of not being hired.
This was confusing for a moment. Maywood and Riverside are both names of close-in western Chicago suburbs, and Maywood (a lower-income majority-minority suburb) at the least has definitely had problems in their police department.
From the “Hunter” link:
Hah. I doubt it. The first example would not affect his standing, but if he had been caught doing either of the 2nd or 3rd actions (presuming that in the latter case the counseling was something done in a publicly accessible counseling service) I would think that the consequences would have been the same.
RonF,
I would think that the consequences would have been the same.
No, I don’t think so. There’s a difference between someone’s telling me, “I personally believe that you should marry within your ethnicity” (something I have been told by whites, black and people in my ethnicity, BTW) and someone’s trying to make it illegal for me to marry outside my ethnicity (something I’ve never encountered personally). I look at the first person as a silly protectionist of his ethnic culture; I look at the second person as a challenger to my civil rights. I have had people in the first group whom I like and respect despite my disagreement with them that one ought to prioritize similarity in ethnicity in the choice of spouse. People in the second group are my enemies.
I can’t challenge what you say your reaction would be, but I suspect that people in the arts community would react differently. Proseltyzing on street corners against gay marriage would definitely be a violation of groupthink and be seen as supporting Prop 8 even if he never mentioned it.
Just posted “What if You still have a nasty case of the gays” about the December 10 “Day without a gay event” — read up and plan to call in gay next week. :)
http://professorwhatif.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/what-if-you-still-have-a-nasty-case-of-the-gays/
RonF,
Really, you don’t think “arts groups” grasp the difference between “This is my preference” and “I will try to make my preference into law”? I know artsy types who think everyone should attend live theater, but none of them have tried to make it a law.
I wrote a post today pondering the significance of the Amazon warrior as a symbol, specifically as a reaction to the gender system:
http://revolutionaryact.org/2008/12/on-the-meaning-of-the-amazon/
I just lost an entire evening to that contraption game.
Probation is a period that all employees go through in the police department. For civilian, it’s 12 months and for sworn officers, it’s 18 months. Supervisors, like sergeants and lieutenants also have probationary periods at that rank. Sergeants used to be six but they were forced by a state consent decree to change it to nine.
Any probational employee is “at will” and can be fired without listing a cause at any time while on probation. They have scant appeal rights except for a “name clearing” hearing at the time they are fired. It’s to give the employers a chance to see if the employee will work out as an officer and to frankly, be able to fire them easier. There’s not been many probational officers who were arrested while on probation so there’s not much to compare but Nazario in particular, was arrested right after his arrest and before his grand jury indictments.
In contrast, an officer was arrested for sexual misconduct crimes and charged with three felonies all from onduty contacts. He was fired about a month after his arrest. The difference with him and Nazario is that this officer if acquitted can go to arbitration and get his firing overturned and if the city doesn’t appeal it or they appeal it and lose, he’ll either come back or be bought off with a retirement. Even if the case is closed without acquittal (i.e. hung juries, charges dropped by prosecutor), the officer can be reinstated as happened recently hear with an officer fired six years ago after being arrested for child molestation.
But Nazario, being probational, the department can’t be forced to take him back because of that like they were forced by the city council to reinstate the officer charged with child molestation and two others last year who weren’t charged with crime but were fired for very serious misconduct. The arbitration system in this state favors the fired officers. One senior management officer told me that this is due to them judging officers under the same standard as private sector employees. A lie told by an officer is the same as a lie told by a corporate employee, for example. Except a lie told by an officer could more likely impact another person’s civil rights or even freedom. And now it’s so that a police officer can’t remain fired unless he or she has a felony conviction in the state of California.
I don’t think the criminal case is what is causing Nazario to have problems. Maybe the anonymous commenter I cited was right and they were going to take him back. I think it was the WSJ comments that are the greater problem. How do you bring back an officer who bragged, joked or said for any reason that he beat the shit out of people and then figured out a reason to take them to jail? You can’t or you lose too much. It ups the risk liability if a lawsuit’s ever filed, it makes a department act like many people think it already does routinely. I think the police chief knows that this is a major problem. And we’ve had a discussion about this issue before.
Then there’s the point you raise early which is a really good one. And that’s why was this officer really fired and how do you know? Was he fired because he didn’t “pass probation” or because he reported harassment? I have an issue with some of the failure to pass probations of the female officers for example. I’ve done my research on my particular agency and I’ve learned enough that these particular probational firings might warrant another look. And I do know when I start blogging on these issues, that’s when the nastiest comments appear somewhere. So somewhere a nerve is getting struck.
The department’s taking a look at its lower retention rates for female officers. But being inhouse, I don’t know what that will do. The experts on gender and policing who I’ve consulted say it needs to be externally done. After all, before this study was set to be done, I had really heard every excuse in the book about how these women failed because they were failures. But I also know that there’s a climate there that’s not welcoming to women on some level but I don’t know the degree. The problem is that exit interviews and interviewing women is necessary but the environment’s not conducive to frank responses to questions. Maybe unless they interview someone who’s been fired and not worried about being blackballed which a former probational female officer alleged happened to her in a lawsuit she filed after her firing.
This is strange but there’s three Maywood police departments including the one you mentioned that have problems within them. I can’t recall where the other one is, maybe the East Coast?
When someone is fired because they failed probation, someone or some group of someones had to make that decision. Who are they? What criteria are used? Are the details of the decision recorded? Do any specific criteria have to be used or can someone be flunked without being in accordance with any particular pre-defined guidelines?
In my city, the police chief has sole discretion on firing people for failing probation or any employee for that matter. For non-probationary employees who are separated if they get their firings overturned in arbitration, then the city council determines whether or not to reinstate them or to appeal at the court level.
I think for probational, if they’re in a training program, then the field training officers and their supervisors up to management have some discretion in terms of passing or failing them on evaluations which could in some circumstances lead to termination directly (depending on the behavior or issue) or lead to termination if any recommended remediation failed to resolve any issue coming out of the FTO program set criteria.
I have the FTO policies and procedures and they explain the different areas of proficiency that have to be mastered during each phase of training and the program as a whole. I imagine certainly in some or many circumstances, the probational officer might have some idea why they were fired if they had a history of deficiencies in training that appeared on evaluations.
Probational officers have to pass standards of performance in different areas from officer-safety to writing reports, to geographical proficiency (how to find their way around the city) and ethical/moral standards among others. Passing probation is at the discretion of the police chief based on recommendations from subordinates who directly supervise probational officers on up. Probational officers can also be fired for other offenses like regular officers and in fact, some behaviors mandate at minimum a suspension but can result in separation. Or like Nazario was, they can be fired “without cause” for being arrested and/or charged with an offense whereas depending on the offense or the stage of the arrest/investigation, a more senior officer could be placed on admin leave or disciplined but not fired.
Nazario was fired because of his criminal case and even acquitted, the chief had discretion on whether or not to take him back and it’s not clear yet what he chose or will choose to do. It won’t be announced if he returns on the force either though state law allows you to request employment status of a city employee and receive information on whether or not he or she is currently employed.
They record the actions or decisions made but those records are confidential under state law.
But with probational officers, there might be cases where they’re fired and don’t know why. One female officer who was on probation sued for being fired the first day of field training and when given her option for “name clearing”, she said I can’t do it b/c I don’t know what I did wrong. Allegedly according to her, the senior supervisor said, we don’t have to tell you why you’re fired (which is true) and we don’t like you.” She filed a sexual harassment complaint in the academy and her lawsuit alleged that she was fired from the department in retaliation or out of fear that she might sue the department in the future for some reason (which she did after her termination and the case settled fairly quickly which is unusual in labor lawsuits in my city).
Ron F, some interesting news. A former police officer from my city who made racist comments after a Black woman was shot to death including caricaturing her grieving grand mother and calling her grief, “Watts death wails” was convicted of felony assault in relation to an incident at a base ball game where he caused another man to have a fractured skull and ribs during an altercation.
He left my city’s department, went up north to an agency. The city paid out a lot of cash on a beating he did it got sued over and he was medically retired right after the assault at the ball park.
He wasn’t fired from my agency. But he got suspended for the racial remarks and was fighting that up to the day he resigned. Don’t know how he did there.
Just an article.
Is this the end of Bratz?
Federal Judge Steven Larson has forbidden the Bratz dolls from ever being made or sold and even the templates have to be destroyed.
Last summer, my city hosted the rather interesting Barbie vs Bratz civil trial. Barbie won.
A civil trial’s unusual in my city since they can only be conducted in school rooms at an abandoned elementary school that were converted to courtrooms. But that’s the county system. All the civil courts are being used to conduct criminal trials to reduce the 1,800 felony trial backlog. The politically ambitious D.A. tried to get family court, small claims court and probate court to turn over their courtrooms for criminal trials but the state supreme court remanded it back to a prior appellate decision against the D.A. You can’t blame the Supremes because they had sent out a special task force of retired and active judges from other counties on loan for almost a year to fix the courts in my county which has frozen the civil courts for civil trials for months at least twice in the past three years.
That’s why it’s not just the Barbie vs Bratz wars making news. It’s also that a civil trial is taking place anywhere that makes news.