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Maryland just repealed its police bill of rights. Here’s what it means for reform.

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Maryland lawmakers passed a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/04/10/986159466/maryland-lawmakers-override-vetoes-on-sweeping-police-reform">package of sweeping police reform bills</a> which narrow the capacity of police to use force and expand accountability for their misconduct, in part by doing away with the state’s powerful and first-in-the-nation Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights passed in 1974.
Maryland’s Democratic-controlled legislature passed the bills <a href="https://www.baltimoresun.com/politics/bs-md-pol-hogan-police-reform-veto-20210409-uawqxhjyhjbqfbvogifimywqxi-story.html">over the objections and vetoes</a> of Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, and the legislative package is being hailed by Democratic lawmakers and police reform advocates as a significant step toward a more progressive criminal justice system in the state.
“Last year, I attended and participated in multiple demonstrations of people demanding change — the young and the old, people of all races and walks of life,” Maryland Sen. Charles Sydnor, a Democrat who sponsored one of the measures, said, <a href="https://www.baltimoresun.com/politics/bs-md-pol-saturday-session-20210410-eyfrbxrlevhrvohrm43lbntvyq-story.html">according to the Baltimore Sun</a>. “With so many situations being thrust before our eyes, we could no longer deny what we see, and I thank my colleagues for believing their eyes and listening to the majority of Marylanders.”
The new laws cover a wide range of policies and include restricting no-knock warrants, mandating body cameras, prohibiting police officers from preventing civilians from recording them, and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/04/10/986159466/maryland-lawmakers-override-vetoes-on-sweeping-police-reform">banning</a> sentences of life in prison without possibility of parole for juveniles.
As the New York Times reports, there are also new guidelines designed to raise the bar for police <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/10/us/maryland-police-reform.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage">use of force</a>:
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One section creates a new statewide use-of-force policy and says that officers who violate those standards, causing serious injury or death, can be convicted and sent to prison for up to 10 years. The standard says that force can be used only to prevent “an imminent threat of physical injury” to a person or to “effectuate a legitimate law enforcement objective.”
The policy also says that force must be “necessary and proportional.” Police reform groups said that was a tougher standard than the traditional “reasonableness” standard, which they said was not sufficient for holding officers accountable for blatant acts of violence.
</blockquote>
One of the bills repeals the state’s police bill of rights passed in 1974 — the first of its kind in the country, which helped <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/04/10/986159466/maryland-lawmakers-override-vetoes-on-sweeping-police-reform">inspire similar laws in some 20 other states</a>. It gave police officers workplace protections well beyond those offered to other government employees by allowing them to, among other things, appeal to a local board without civilian input. The new law which replaces it provides civilians with a role in the police disciplinary process.
Hogan initially vetoed the laws, saying that they went too far and would “further erode police morale, community relationships and public confidence.”
Police unions also criticized the reforms as too drastic. “They’re going to make it tougher for the police to police. There’s reform, and this went beyond reform,” Angelo Consoli, second vice president and legislative committee chair of the Maryland Fraternal Order of Police said, according to the New York Times.
But Democratic lawmakers and advocates for police reform saw it as a long overdue step in the fight against excessive police violence.
“These new laws are a victory steeped in the coordinated efforts of community members and advocates who have worked for police accountability, transparency, and justice,” a statement from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund <a href="https://www.naacpldf.org/press-release/ldf-issues-statement-on-marylands-new-police-accountability-laws/">said</a>. “This landmark package of bills required hard-fought advocacy and its removal of a number of impediments to police accountability has come after over a decade of rallying for a just public safety system.”
<h2>Why repealing the police bill of rights is substantial</h2>
Criminal justice activists have criticized police bill of rights laws as serious obstacles to police accountability for decades. As the Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/08/29/police-bill-of-rights-officers-discipline-maryland/">explains</a>, when Maryland passed the very first one in the 1970s, it seemed uncontroversial at the time, but it put in place powerful new precedents for shielding police from accountability for misconduct:
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[The law’s provisions] included giving officers a formal waiting period before they had to cooperate with internal inquiries into police conduct, scrubbing records of complaints brought against officers after a certain period, and ensuring that only fellow officers — not civilians — could investigate them.
</blockquote>
Experts say that Maryland’s police bill of rights went <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/08/29/police-bill-of-rights-officers-discipline-maryland/">further than other states</a> in the amount of time it allows officers before being investigated — five days in Maryland versus 48 hours in other states, according to the Post.
This waiting period until the investigation <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/5/26/8662463/baltimore-police-accountability">conflicts with US Justice Department guidance</a>, in part because it may give officers more time to conspire and fabricate a story as they prepare to be asked about alleged misconduct.
Maryland’s new law allows for civilian input into the process and removes some of those protections. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/10/us/maryland-police-reform.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage">Per the New York Times</a>: “Civilians will have a role on administrative charging committees that will review the findings of law enforcement agencies and recommend discipline for officers. Police chiefs will not be able to issue disciplinary actions more lenient than the level recommended by those panels.” And the waiting period and record-scrubbing policies <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/hogan-vetoes-police-accountibility/2021/04/09/c0ac4096-9967-11eb-962b-78c1d8228819_story.html">are gone</a>.
Still, some activists don’t think the new oversight policy replacing the police bill of rights has gone far enough. Dayvon Love, the director of public policy for Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, a Baltimore-based think tank, told the Post the new laws were a “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/hogan-vetoes-police-accountibility/2021/04/09/c0ac4096-9967-11eb-962b-78c1d8228819_story.html">net positive</a>,” but ultimately lack a substantive enough community oversight mechanism.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/4/11/22378584/maryland-police-reform-repealed-police-bill-of-rights">https://www.vox.com/2021/4/11/22378584/maryland-police-reform-repealed-police-bill-of-rights</a>

vox Maryland just repealed its police bill of rights. Here’s what it means for reform.

Maryland lawmakers passed a package of sweeping police reform bills which narrow the capacity of police to use force and expand accountabi...

Trump’s irate, lie-filled RNC speech shows tensions in GOP

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In an address to top Republican National Committee donors on Saturday, former President Donald Trump revived false claims that he won the election and called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell a “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-mcconnell-election/2021/04/11/297a82da-9879-11eb-962b-78c1d8228819_story.html">dumb son of a bitch</a>” for not backing his efforts to overturn the results.
His remarks, which took place at a gathering that would typically be used by GOP leaders to reflect on their party’s recent loss of the White House and the Senate, underscored his continued devotion to sowing discord and spreading disinformation within a party still largely in thrall to him.
The location of the RNC donor retreat points to Trump’s strong grip on the party. Most of the events took place <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/10/politics/rnc-donors-palm-beach-donald-trump/index.html">just a 10-minute drive south</a> of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, at a Four Seasons resort. On Saturday night, participants — which included not just fundraisers but also Republican party officials and lawmakers — <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/10/politics/rnc-donors-palm-beach-donald-trump/index.html">were shuttled</a> to Mar-a-Lago to attend Trump’s private speech.
During his address, Trump remained true to his typical rhetorical style — boasting about himself and his record, attacking perceived adversaries or insufficiently loyal Republicans, and making inflammatory comments which signaled a disinterest in reevaluating the costs of his divisive approach to politics.
Trump appeared hung up on Republicans who did not side with him in his campaign to overturn the results of the election based on false claims of election fraud, slamming politicians like <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/12/7/22159017/trump-attacks-georgia-republicans-kemp-raffensperger">Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp</a>, who rebuffed Trump’s requests to alter the state’s Electoral College votes or otherwise overturn Georgia’s election results.
The former president reserved much of his venom for McConnell, who he called a “stone cold loser” and criticized for not blocking the Senate’s certification of the 2020 election results.
“If that were Schumer instead of this dumb son of a bitch Mitch McConnell they would never allow it to happen. They would have fought it,” Trump said, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-mcconnell-election/2021/04/11/297a82da-9879-11eb-962b-78c1d8228819_story.html">according to the Washington Post</a>.
Trump also tried groundlessly to take credit for Covid-19 vaccine breakthroughs and floated the idea of referring to them as the “Trumpcine,” the Post reports.
In a gesture illustrating total commitment to his inflammatory political style and inclination to use racist tropes to express anti-immigrant sentiment, Trump said of immigrants: “They’re coming in from the Middle East. They’re not sending their best people. You have murderers, you have rapists, you have drug dealers.”
In 2015 he said something <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/16/donald-trump-mexico-presidential-speech-latino-hispanic">extremely similar</a> about Mexican immigrants: “[Mexico] are sending people that have lots of problems, and they are bringing those problems to us. They are bringing drugs, and bringing crime, and their rapists.”
Trump’s speech probably did not surprise anyone in the room, but it drove home the <a href="https://www.vox.com/22321215/trump-rnc-cease-and-desist-fundraising-feud-purge">predicament</a> that the GOP finds itself in. On one hand, Republican Party elites know that his fondness for picking fights — with the media, with GOP politicians who don’t submit to him, with anyone who criticizes him — can act as a liability for the party by creating division and alienating moderates. On the other hand, Trump still has a great deal of popularity with the base, and the party doesn’t think it can afford to turn its back on him.
Trump’s fixation on McConnell, the most influential Republican lawmaker in Congress, is a reminder of how Trump can cause chaos in the midterms. He’s already vowed to do so — during the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, he said that the party should “<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/03/nrcc-chair-trump-primary-challenges-impeachment-473260">get rid of</a>” every Republican in Congress who voted to impeach or convict him in his <a href="https://www.vox.com/22281591/trump-impeachment-trial-winners-losers-acquitted">second impeachment trial</a>, shortly before he left office. He’s already endorsed Republican primary challengers to incumbent Republicans in the House, such as Rep. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, who joined the impeachment vote against him.
Trump’s behavior suggests that the Republican Party could be fighting on two fronts as the midterms approach — against both Democrats, and Trump-endorsed candidates meant to take out sitting Republican incumbents.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll taken at the end of March shows <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-politics-disinformation/half-of-republicans-believe-false-accounts-of-deadly-u-s-capitol-riot-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN2BS0RZ">60 percent of Republicans believe</a> Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen from him — and similarly, about 65 percent say he should run for president again in 2024.
That level of popularity and trust is why the RNC situated its retreat near Mar-a-Lago and had him as a headliner. It’s also why the organization uses Trump’s image to raise funds — something which has prompted Trump to issue <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/09/us/trump-rnc.html">a cease-and-desist letter</a>.
Trump’s interest in a 2024 presidential run looms large as well. While he didn’t offer any new information on whether he’s seriously considering running again in 2024, he didn’t rule it out, either. That ambiguity, in turn, puts some pressure on 2024 hopefuls to define their candidacies in relation to him, whether that means opposing or adhering to his right-wing populist style and values.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/4/11/22378366/trump-rnc-speech-gop-mar-a-lago-mcconnell">https://www.vox.com/2021/4/11/22378366/trump-rnc-speech-gop-mar-a-lago-mcconnell</a>

vox Trump’s irate, lie-filled RNC speech shows tensions in GOP

In an address to top Republican National Committee donors on Saturday, former President Donald Trump revived false claims that he won the e...

SNL’s cold open pokes fun at white Americans’ optimism about Chauvin trial outcome

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SNL’s cold open this week featured a fictitious morning news show in Minnesota in which uncomfortable disagreements between anchors highlighted differences in how white and Black Americans perceive <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/4/8/22368881/derek-chauvin-trial-verdict-george-floyd">the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin</a> in the death of George Floyd, and the state of racial progress.
After an initial series of agreements between the white anchors, played by Kate McKinnon and Alex Moffat, and the Black anchors, played by Ego Nwodim and Kenan Thompson, about how damning the evidence against Chauvin is, they run into trouble.
“Sounds like we all agree there’s no way Derek Chauvin walks away from this,” McKinnon optimistically says.
“Weeellllll,” responds Thompson with a scrunched-up face.
When Thompson explains that <a href="https://www.vox.com/first-person/22373806/george-floyd-trial-derek-chauvin-minneapolis-black-lives-matter">the defense is emphasizing Floyd’s drug use</a> as a tactic to “create doubt where there is none,” McKinnon replies, “Exactly, and there’s no way the jury is going to fall for that.”
“I’m not saying that,” Thompson says as he tries to lower expectations.
“Let’s just say we’ve seen this movie before,” Nwodim chimes in.
As Vox’s German Lopez <a href="https://www.vox.com/21497089/derek-chauvin-george-floyd-trial-police-prosecutions-black-lives-matter">explained recently</a>, police officers are prosecuted in less than 2 percent of fatal shootings, and a significantly smaller amount are convicted of a crime.
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Moffat later pleads, “You guys can at least admit this country has made a lot of progress recently, yeah?”
“For who?” Thompson asks skeptically.
“When?” says Nwodim.
Desperate to find common ground, the news anchors ask the weatherman, played by Chris Redd, to weigh in. He agrees, “Obviously it’s an open and shut case.”
“Thank you, yup!” Moffat says.
“That being said, he’s a white cop in Minnesota so I’m going to guess probation with pay, tops,” Redd says.
As the panel moves to discussion of possible solutions, they agree abstractly on the need for concrete solutions, but when it gets specific, there’s friction again.
“And we start with reparations,” Nwodim says.
“Now wait just a minute!” Moffat replies.
“That was a good trap,” Thompson quips.
“I thought I had him,” Nwodim declares.
As the panel tries to move on to other news, McKinnon announces, “We lost royalty yesterday,” referring to <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2021/4/9/22375557/prince-philips-death-meghan-markle-british-media-racism">the death of Prince Philip,</a> husband to Queen Elizabeth II.
“Yes, the rapper DMX died,” Nwodim says, nodding in agreement.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/4/11/22378292/snl-cold-open-chauvin-kenan-thompson-kate-mckinnon">https://www.vox.com/2021/4/11/22378292/snl-cold-open-chauvin-kenan-thompson-kate-mckinnon</a>

vox SNL’s cold open pokes fun at white Americans’ optimism about Chauvin trial outcome

SNL’s cold open this week featured a fictitious morning news show in Minnesota in which uncomfortable disagreements between anchors highlig...

Personal Data Of 1.3 Million Clubhouse Users Leaked Online: Report

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Personal Data Of 1.3 Million Clubhouse Users Leaked Online: Report" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-02/ctendo8g_clubhouse-bbg_625x300_12_February_21.jpg" title="Personal Data Of 1.3 Million Clubhouse Users Leaked Online: Report" /></div>
Personal data for some 1.3 million users of Clubhouse has been leaked online: Report (File)
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Washington:
Personal data for some 1.3 million users of the social audio app Clubhouse has been leaked online, Cyber News reported.
The Verge quoted a report by Cyber News as saying that a SQL database with users'' IDs, names, usernames, Twitter and Instagram handles and follower counts were posted to an online hacker forum. It did not appear that sensitive user information such as credit card numbers were among the leaked info. But the information could be used in phishing attempts to get users to hand over that more sensitive info.
Last week, Cyber News reported on another data breach from a social platform: it found that personal data for 500 million LinkedIn users had been scraped and posted online. The Microsoft-owned company said that no private member account data from LinkedIn was included in the leak.
As reported by The Verge, that news came just a couple of days after it was discovered that personal data for some 533 million Facebook users also was leaked online for free. The Facebook leak reportedly included users'' phone numbers, birthdates, locations, email addresses, and full names.
The social audio app Clubhouse had a monster first year- despite being invite-only and available only on iOS devices- seeing more than 10 million downloads.
Twitter, LinkedIn, Discord, Spotify, and Slack have all launched or are working on competing for social audio platforms, and Facebook reportedly has one in the works as well.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/personal-data-for-1-3-million-clubhouse-users-leaked-online-report-2411373">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/personal-data-for-1-3-million-clubhouse-users-leaked-online-report-2411373</a>

news world Personal Data Of 1.3 Million Clubhouse Users Leaked Online: Report

Personal data for some 1.3 million users of Clubhouse has been leaked online: Report (File) Washington: Personal data for some 1.3 mill...

Brazil Now Has More Young Than Old Covid Patients In ICUs

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Brazil registered more than 66,500 Covid-19 deaths in March. (File)
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Rio de Janeiro:
The number of Covid-19 patients under 40 in intensive care in Brazil surpassed older groups last month, a researcher said Sunday, amid a deadly surge driven partly by a new coronavirus variant.
The number of people aged 39 or younger in intensive care units with Covid-19 in March rose sharply to more than 11,000, or 52.2 percent of the total, said the Brazilian ICU Project.
That was up from 14.6 percent of total ICU patients early in the pandemic and around 45 percent from September through February.
"Previously, this was a population that would typically only develop a less-severe form of the disease and would not need intensive care. So the increase for this age group is very significant," said Dr. Ederlon Rezende, co-coordinator of the project, an initiative of the Brazilian Association of Intensive Medicine (AMIB).
He said various factors could be driving the increase.
Patients over 80, who fell from 13.6 percent to 7.8 percent of the total in Brazil's ICUs in March, are now largely vaccinated.
Young people are also more likely to expose themselves to the virus, whether because they have to leave home to work or believe they are less vulnerable, he said.
Another factor may be the new Brazilian variant, known as P1, which experts say is partly responsible for the country's Covid-19 death count exploding in March.
The numbers suggest that P1, which can re-infect people who have had the original strain of the virus, may also be more virulent, Rezende said.
"The patients arriving in ICUs now are younger, have no pre-existing conditions and are developing more severe cases of the virus, too," he told AFP.
The number of ICU patients without pre-existing conditions increased by nearly a third in March, to 30.3 percent of the total.
And the proportion of patients put on ventilators reached a pandemic record of 58.1 percent in March, according to the project's data.
Brazil registered more than 66,500 Covid-19 deaths in March, more than double the hard-hit country's previous monthly record in July 2020.
The disease has claimed a total of 351,000 lives in the country of 212 million people, a death count second only to that of the United States.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/brazil-now-has-more-young-than-old-covid-19-patients-in-icus-2411355">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/brazil-now-has-more-young-than-old-covid-19-patients-in-icus-2411355</a>

news world Brazil Now Has More Young Than Old Covid Patients In ICUs

Brazil registered more than 66,500 Covid-19 deaths in March. (File) Rio de Janeiro: The number of Covid-19 patients under 40 in intensi...

Earthquake Death Count Rises To 7 In Indonesia

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The quake struck at a relatively deep 82 kilometres (50 miles). (File)
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Jakarta:
At least seven people were killed after a 6.0 magnitude quake struck off the coast of Indonesia's main Java island Saturday, as the country reels from a cyclone disaster in another part of the archipelago.
The afternoon quake hit offshore about 45 kilometres southwest of Malang city in East Java, damaging hundreds of homes as well as schools, government offices and mosques across the region.
"Our latest data shows that seven people died, two are seriously injured and 10 others sustained minor injuries," said National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Raditya Jati.
Several communities had been evacuated, he added.
The quake struck at a relatively deep 82 kilometres (50 miles) -- shallower quakes tend to do more damage than deep ones.
Images from the scene showed a ceiling caved in at a hospital ward and debris strewn across the floor of the local parliament in Blitar, a city southwest of Malang.
"I had just finished praying and was changing my clothes when suddenly the quake struck," Malang resident Ida Magfiroh told AFP.
"It was pretty strong and went for a long time. Everything was swaying... My heart was racing."
The deadly quake comes as the Southeast Asian nation reels from a cyclone that killed more than 200 people in the eastern part of the archipelago and neighbouring East Timor this week.
Indonesia experiences frequent quakes and volcanic eruptions due to its position on the Pacific "Ring of Fire", an arc of intense seismic activity where tectonic plates collide that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.
Among Indonesia's string of deadly quakes was a devastating 2004 tremor measuring 9.1 magnitude that struck off the coast of Sumatra and triggered a tsunami that killed 220,000 throughout the region, including about 170,000 in Indonesia.
The Boxing Day disaster was one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history.
In 2018, a powerful quake shook the island of Lombok and several more tremors followed over the next couple of weeks, killing more than 550 people on the holiday island and neighbouring Sumbawa.
Later that year, a 7.5-magnitude quake and a subsequent tsunami in Palu on Sulawesi island left more than 4,300 people dead or missing.
In 2006, a 6.3-magnitude quake rocked a densely populated region of Java near the city of Yogyakarta, killing around 6,000 people and injuring tens of thousands more.
A year earlier, a quake measuring 8.7 magnitude struck off the coast of Sumatra, which is particularly prone to quakes, killing 900 people and injuring about 6,000.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/earthquake-death-count-rises-to-7-in-indonesia-2411337">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/earthquake-death-count-rises-to-7-in-indonesia-2411337</a>

news world Earthquake Death Count Rises To 7 In Indonesia

The quake struck at a relatively deep 82 kilometres (50 miles). (File) Jakarta: At least seven people were killed after a 6.0 magnitude...