SocietyWatch
Feds taking over policing in Baltimore?
Baltimore drug dealer Freddie Gray died in April while in police custody, and large numbers of people used accusations of police brutality as a pretext to riot. Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake told reporters at the time that on her instructions, city law enforcement officers “gave those who wished to destroy space to do that.” Since then, criminal destruction in Baltimore spiked to a 40-year high, and the city is now seeking to reclaim that space—with the help of the federal government.
Interim Police Commissioner Kevin Davis announced on August 2 that 10 federal agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies will join the Baltimore police homicide unit. Historically, local law enforcement officials have embedded with federal agents to provide assistance at the local level—not the other way around.
On average, more people have been murdered in Baltimore this year than in any other city in the United States. The Baltimore Sun reported that per 100,000 people, Baltimore had 34 homicides this year through to August 19 (far exceeding New York City’s rate of 2.5 and Chicago’s rate of 10.4).
Editor in chief Gerald Flurry predicted Baltimore’s surge in violence and the involvement of the federal government in his July (“Your Cities Are Burned With Fire”) and August (“Police Under Attack”) Trumpet articles. He warned that the federal government would take advantage of the situation in the city.
America’s Constitution and history has resisted the establishment of centrally controlled policing. But federal intervention in Baltimore and across the country is leading to a more powerful central police force—a tool that throughout history has been used for oppression.
Retreat in war on drugs
On July 16, Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit a federal prison when he toured the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in Oklahoma. The president said that many of the inmates “are young people who made mistakes that aren’t different than the mistakes I made.”
A few days earlier, President Obama shortened the prison sentences of 46 people convicted for nonviolent drug crimes. At a conference for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (naacp), he discussed the $80 billion the U.S. spends annually to house the world’s largest prison population. He said America has “locked up more and more nonviolent drug offenders than ever before, for longer than ever before. … In far too many cases, the punishment simply does not fit the crime.”
These words and actions were intended to reduce the severity of the deterrent against drug use.
Across the Atlantic, Britain is making a similar concession in its battle against drugs. In Durham, in northern England, police have publicly said they will take no action against people who grow marijuana for personal use. The city’s police and crime commissioner said the city needs to focus resources on organized gangs who deal drugs rather than on lone, casual users. “It’s about keeping people out of the criminal justice system and reducing costs,” he said.
Both nations seek to “solve” their drug problems by surrendering to casual drug use and re-drawing the line.
When a teacher from China takes over a British schoolroom
Chinese pupils are three years ahead of British students in math by their mid-teens. So the bbc ran an experiment to learn why. Chinese educators were assigned to teach at Bohunt School in Hampshire, England.
Times columnist Melanie Phillips explained the results: “Chinese education is based on discipline, the authority of the teacher and ruthless competition. All these factors have been significantly undermined or are totally absent in many British schools. The Chinese teach big classes in which pupils are expected to note down what the teachers are saying, learn it and move on. This is light-years away from the British ‘child-centered approach’ in which the pupil dictates the pace” (August 10).
In the experiment, half of the British students did not pay attention to the Chinese instructors. The head teacher at Bohunt, Neil Strowger, said that the problem was not with the students but with the style of teaching of the Chinese. But Phillips attributed the problem to Britain’s educational revolution which she said was part of a broader revolution against authority.
Yang Jun, a Chinese science teacher at Bohunt, observed: “In China, we don’t need classroom management skills because everyone is disciplined by nature, by families, by society. Whereas here [in Britain], that is the most challenging part of teaching.”
