Police & Community – Page 20 – CAHRO – California Association of Human Relations Organizations

CAHRO is a strong advocate for community policing as a vehicle for preventing conflicts between law enforcement agencies and the communities they are charged with serving. If police agencies have a strong positive relationship helping neighborhoods address causes of crimes by providing resources and support we believe they will establish avenues of communication that will prevent major conflicts from escalating.

Immigration agents allowed back in L.A. County jails, with limits

By Carmen Chandler| 2016-12-02T17:41:23+00:00 September 23rd, 2015|Immigration, Police & Community|

Federal immigration agents have returned to Los Angeles County jails to seek out deportable inmates under a new policy by Sheriff Jim McDonnell that has prompted criticism from immigrant advocates who say it could lead to racial profiling.

The new Sheriff’s Department policy, made public Tuesday, comes after county lawmakers voted this year to end a

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California agrees to move thousands of inmates out of solitary confinement

By Carmen Chandler| 2016-12-02T17:41:24+00:00 September 1st, 2015|Intergroup Relations, Police & Community|

Ending years of litigation, hunger strikes and contentious debate, California has agreed to move thousands of prison inmates out of solitary confinement.

Instead, the state agreed to create small, high-security units that keep its most dangerous inmates in a group setting where they are entitled to many of the same privileges as other prisoners: contact visits,

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Activists come up with a plan to end police killings. Here it is

By Carmen Chandler| 2016-12-02T17:41:25+00:00 August 21st, 2015|Police & Community|

Have a plan, she said. On Aug. 11, Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke privately with a group of Black Lives Matter protesters who had tried to disrupt one of her campaign events in New Hampshire.

Clinton said raising awareness about inequality would not be enough — there should be a specific vision to improve the lives of

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LAPD urges officers to be community guardians, not warriors on crime

By Carmen Chandler| 2016-12-02T17:41:25+00:00 August 21st, 2015|Police & Community|

For years, Los Angeles police officers have worked under the shadow of the department’s dark past.

The LAPD of the 1970s and ’80s acted as a hard-charging, occupying force that raided poor neighborhoods and rounded up anyone in sight. Police stormed suspected crack houses, tearing down walls with a tank-like battering ram. Officers of that era

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Can Universities Fix the Police?

By Carmen Chandler| 2016-12-02T17:41:25+00:00 August 18th, 2015|Education, Police & Community|

On a Sunday evening in July, Robin S. Engel was watching her daughter’s basketball game when her phone rang. It was the police.

A man had just been shot, an assistant chief of the Cincinnati Police Department told her. It happened near the University of Cincinnati, where Ms. Engel worked as a professor of criminal

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HOW THE L.A. COUNTY JAIL’S VERSION OF DEMOCRACY HAS CHANGED LIFE FOR INMATES

By Carmen Chandler| 2016-12-02T17:41:25+00:00 August 17th, 2015|Police & Community|

The tall man with the bushy black beard gestured at his dark blue jail uniform. His shirt barely reached his navel, leaving a swath of bare skin above his waistband.

“I’m 6 feet 4. My shirt is like a crop top,” he said to laughter from inmates as jail laundry supervisors listened.

Too small. Dirty. Full of

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The Bail Trap

By Carmen Chandler| 2016-12-02T17:41:25+00:00 August 13th, 2015|Police & Community|

Every year, thousands of innocent people are sent to jail only because they can’t afford to post bail, putting them at risk of losing their jobs, custody of their children — even their lives.

Homeless woman’s case sharpens focus on justice system and mentally ill

By Carmen Chandler| 2016-12-02T17:41:25+00:00 July 24th, 2015|Health, Police & Community|

The list of Trishawn Cardessa Carey’s prescriptions fills a page in her case file: clonazepam for seizures and panic, methocarbamol for muscle spasms and quetiapine for spells of psychosis. She suffers delusions, paranoia and “dramatic mood swings.”

For years, the homeless woman has lived off Social Security tied to her mental disability — a doctor diagnosed

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L.A. County task force suggests ways to divert mentally ill from jails

By Carmen Chandler| 2016-12-02T17:41:25+00:00 July 23rd, 2015|Police & Community|

Cutting the number of mentally ill inmates in Los Angeles County’s jail system would require spending tens of millions of dollars on new treatment facilities and housing for offenders who would otherwise be released into homelessness, a long-awaited report concludes.

A task force of public officials and mental health advocates convened by Los Angeles County Dist.

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No room at the inn for innocence

By Carmen Chandler| 2016-12-02T17:41:26+00:00 July 22nd, 2015|Employment & Housing, Police & Community|

The children gather at dusk on the pitted motel parking lot, hard against the sound wall of the freeway. They kick a scuffed soccer ball and play with the stray dogs they have rescued. One holds a cockroach he pretends is a pet turtle.

Eddie Martinez, 14, rides his bike among them, happy they are

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