Deep Dive: The Racial Equity Task Force’s Smart Criminal Justice Reforms
Everything you need to know for Wednesday, Dec. 16: Kane gets his zoning + the new worst man in the NCGA + the massive Russian hack
Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2020:
9 days until Christmas
10 days until Boxing Day and the start of Kwanzaa
16 days until this cursed year ends
36 days until this cursed presidency is over
Today’s Number: 77
Estimated percentage by which seven nonpharmacological interventions—limiting gatherings to 1,000 people; limiting gatherings to 100 people; limiting gathering to 10 people; closing some high-risk face-to-face businesses; closing most nonessential face-to-face businesses; closing both schools and universities; issuing stay-at-home orders—collectively reduced the reproduction rate of COVID-19, according to new research published in Science. The study analyzed 34 European and seven non-European countries (excluding the US) between January and May.
It also estimated each intervention’s individual effectiveness in reducing COVID reproduction:
Gatherings <1,000: 23%
Gatherings <100: 34%
Gatherings <10: 42%
Close some biz: 18%
Close nonessential biz: 27%
Close schools/universities: 38%
Stay-at-home (on top of all the others): 18%
+ ABOVE THE FOLD
—> The NC Racial Equity Task Force’s Smart, Progressive Criminal Justice Reforms
Here’s the report. If you have a few hours with nothing better to do, read all 166 pages. For those who prefer the Cliff’s Notes version, carry on.
—> THE BACKGROUND: On June 9, following the protests that arose after George Floyd’s death, Governor Cooper created a task force to assess racial equity in the state’s criminal justice system. On Monday, the task force—headed by AG Josh Stein and Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls—released its 125 recommendations, covering everything from policing practices to law enforcement accountability to bail reform to marijuana decriminalization to sentencing disparities.
Of note: The report begins by linking the racial disparities that permeate the legal system to slavery. That’s not something you would have seen from the gov’s office even five years ago.
“As North Carolinians, we all must reexamine our longheld beliefs about how our system is working for all our neighbors—especially those who have been marginalized for far too long. It is only from this place of empathy and honesty that we can effectively support and heal the trauma that comes from victimization and in the process, promote public safety. Public safety is furthered by racial equity. Indeed, public safety demands equity, not just in the criminal justice system, but also in our society as a whole.”
—> THE COPS: The report points out that police are often asked to do non-police duties, so we should “invest in public health and community responses to public safety.” (The word “defund” does not appear.) The state should provide crisis intervention training to all officers but also reorient its policies to reduce police interactions with people suffering from mental illness.
Other recommendations:
Develop community policing programs and “publicly acknowledge mistakes by law enforcement” to build trust with Black communities.
Deemphasize drug possession, avoid overpolicing, and reduce “pretextual” traffic stops.
Prevent local agencies from profiting off of federal asset forfeiture.
Expand diversion programs.
Treat addiction as a public health crisis.
Hire more behavioral health professionals in schools and rely less on SROs.
Require officers to show probable cause to obtain a no-knock warrant.
Facilitate peaceful demonstrations.
Strengthen use-of-force practices and require de-escalation tactics.
Require officers to report other cops’ excessive use of force.
Strengthen local civilian oversight boards: “Recommend revisions to state personnel laws to require the release of personnel records be made to a local government created [civilian oversight board, or COB] or the local government governing body itself.” (Yay!)
Oh: “Create a legal distinction between the documents used in the investigation of the incident and the ultimate disposition or personnel action, which would remain a part of the personnel file and therefore be unavailable to COBs.”
Sigh: “Ensure that any statutory revisions indicate that these documents are not public records with the exception of aggregated use of force data. Allow review of documents related to the internal affairs investigation by COBs or local government council or commission but not allow them to have copies or further release these documents or the information contained therein.”
Fine: “The Task Force recommends support for the Standards Divisions’ ongoing efforts to create a publicly available database on the NCDOJ website where information about officer discipline and decertification can be located.”
Mandate the use of body-worn cameras, expand the use of dashboard cams, and provide oversight bodies and local governments access to all recordings. Allow the public access to footage of “critical incidents” within 45 days, with exceptions.
Recruit a more diverse police force.
Study the effects of cops’ mental and physical health on job performance.
—> THE COURTS: Here, the report looks for ways to address implicit and explicit bias that “disproportionately harms[s] Black people and people of color, particularly those who are accused of or are victims and survivors of crime. These outcomes are driven by discretionary decision-making, laws that criminalize poverty and disadvantaged communities, and severe sentences that are unequally handed down to people of color.”
Recommendations:
Fund restorative justice programs.
Improve access to North Carolina’s victim compensation fund.
Raise the minimum age of juvenile court jurisdiction to 12.
Require a school administrator or social worker to sign off on an SRO’s juvenile court petition.
Eliminating juvenile life without parole.
Decriminalize marijuana possession.
Convene a task force to study marijuana legalization (!).
No, really: “The Task Force further recommends that North Carolina convene a Task Force of stakeholders, free from conflict of interest, to study the pros and cons and options for legalization of possession, cultivation and/or sale, including government or not for profit monopoly options. The study should be guided by a public health, public safety, and racial equity framework.”
Reclassify class III misdemeanors (e.g., begging, open container) as civil infractions.
Sunset all local ordinances that criminalize poverty.
Eliminate citizen-initiated criminal charges, which is not something I knew existed.
Eliminate cash bail in most misdemeanor cases.
Provide unconscious bias training to prosecutors and their staffs.
Broadening protections against jury discrimination—i.e., making its harder for prosecutors to remove jurors for unspoken racial reasons.
Increase funding for the governor’s clemency office and parole commission.
Which reminds me: Why hasn’t Governor Cooper pardoned Ronnie Long?
Create a conviction integrity unit.
Reduce court fines and fees.
Develop a process to eliminate court debt.
Increase due process protections for inmates accused of disciplinary offenses.
Eliminate the future use of violent habitual felony status and habitual status for non-violent drug offenses.
Prohibit capital punishment with people with mental illness or who were under 21 at the time of their crime.
Extend voting rights to those on probation, parole, or post-release supervision.
—> TL;DR: It’s a smart, progressive list of recommendations—which means I can’t help but wonder if the General Assembly is going to send it to the circular filing cabinet.
—> RELATED: While Cooper’s task force was releasing recommendations for making the justice system more equitable and the police more trusted, the Raleigh cops were, um, defending using tear gas on protesters and telling officers to turn off their body cams so they wouldn’t record themselves talking shit about the people they’re supposed to serve and protect.
Per the N&O: Chief Cassandra Deck-Brown “cautioned that not using tear gas could mean using other tools when officers are attacked by people wielding rocks, skateboards, and homemade explosives. Alternatives include officers’ batons, ‘which creates a concern for both optics and the impact of physical injury,’ the chief stated.” (Optics!)
Per Deck-Brown’s memo to city officials: “Moving forward, the RPD has taken steps to assist officers in remembering to deactivate their body-worn cameras when engaging in private, non-public facing conversations.” (That’s a real quote!)
RPD will develop new policies for controlling protest crowds by April 1. Everything seems to be going swell so far.
+ LOCAL & STATE
—> Raleigh Approves Downtown South Rezoning
Not to say I told you so, but I told you so: There was no way Raleigh’s city council would kill John Kane and Stephen Malik’s Downtown South over zoning, no matter what the planning commission (or The News & Observer’s editorial board) said.
From the N&O’s recap: “‘This is about humanity and who we are as a city,’ said Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin. ‘And southeast Raleigh there have been a lot of promises made but not a lot of promises kept. ... This is an opportunity for jobs, an opportunity for investment in the community. I have heard from southeast Raleigh and southwest Raleigh for 10 years that they want to see investment in their community.’”
In its meeting preview story, the N&O covered the developers’ and opponents’ dueling press conferences.
“The Downtown South project will do more harm than good in its current form. We oppose the rezoning application for this project until binding commitments on additional community benefits are made, ” said the Rev. Jemonde Taylor, the rector of St. Ambrose Episcopal Church and a member of ONE Wake’s steering committee.
“During the developers’ press conference, [Kane Realty’s Bonner] Gaylord responded to a question about those who could be displaced by gentrification associated with the project by saying there will be some affordable housing, and the team will also provide education in nearby communities about predatory real estate practices and about property tax relief programs.”
“Both Gaylord and Malik believe gentrification in South Raleigh is inevitable, but that Downtown South project could allow it to happen in a somewhat controlled manner that would benefit both developers and the surrounding community.”
—> QUICK THOUGHT: Were I still editing a local newspaper, I’d want reporters doing more than transcribing tit-for-tat press conferences about a city-defining development.
Perhaps we can’t say with certainty whether Downtown South will hasten gentrification, but that doesn’t mean you should leave the question as an unanswerable he-said-he-said.
John Kane isn’t the first guy to try to plop a stadium in what real-estate folks call up-and-coming neighborhoods. How have these projects played out elsewhere? Did they get subsidies? Does it matter that we won’t have a professional sports team? Did neighborhood residents get jobs or get forced out? Did cities require affordable housing set-asides for residential developments? Has anyone done this right?
I don’t know the answers. But they’re out there. And this development seems important enough to the city’s future that someone should find them.
—> WHAT COMES NEXT: Rezoning, according to Kane, will let Malik close on the property by the end of the year, which he said he had to do lest someone else swoop in and snag it. Then comes the tax incremental grant, which Kane says he needs to add the “community benefits” the city wants—the stadium/entertainment complex, affordable housing, green stormwater infrastructure, etc.
The TIG is basically a rebate on some future property taxes.
The project’s opponents worry that, with zoning in hand, Kane has no incentive to care about the community benefits his team has spent the last several months promising.
I’m not sure that’s correct. To turn vacant industrial land into a southern North Hills, Kane probably a big-ticket attraction. Malik wants his teams to play closer to downtown, and he still dreams of an MLS berth. If Kane needs the TIG to make the project viable—I suspect he does—that should give the city leverage.
—> THE POLITICS: The project’s opponents are loud. But so far as I can tell, more people signed up to speak in favor of Downtown South than against it last night. More important than who shows up at public meetings, though, is who showed up on Election Day: It was hardly a secret that Baldwin and her crew would be more development-friendly than the previous council.
Even so, I found this map interesting:
—> Larry Pittman Gets Challenger for Worst NCGA Member
You remember state Representative Larry “Lincoln was like Hitler” Pittman, right? The guy who wants to hang abortion providers? And maybe secede from the Union again? And shoot “vermin” Black Lives Matter protesters?
Allow me to introduce you to state Senator Bob Steinburg:
“A North Carolina senator suggested Tuesday that the president might suspend basic liberties to overturn an election that he believes, without evidence, was stolen. Sen. Bob Steinburg, R-Chowan, paraphrased on his Facebook page comments that retired Gen. Thomas McInerney made earlier this month on a conservative talk show. Among other things, McInerney suggested President Donald Trump declare a national emergency, invoke the Insurrection Act, and suspend habeas corpus.”
“In an extended harangue, Steinburg also made it clear he believes the recent presidential election was stolen and that Trump is the victim of a conspiracy to which multiple countries, the media, U.S. government agencies, officials, and judges are either a part or turning a blind eye. ‘There’s something going on here bigger than what anybody is willing to talk about,’ he said. ‘I’m not nuts. … I’m not a conspiracy theory person. I don’t like them. I don’t like conspiracy theories at all. But something is going on here that’s bigger than meets the eye.’”
Who suggested he’s a conspiracy theorist? (Nice scoop by WRAL’s Travis Fain.)
—> In Other News: NC
A Black student was expelled from the mostly white Providence Day School in Charlotte after his mother complained about the reading of August Wilson’s Pulitzer-prize winning play Fences. (NYT)
The state might strip some financially distressed towns of their taxing and spending authority. (Policy Watch)
—> In Other News: Triangle
As expected, Wake’s school board pulled back in-person classes until late January. (N&O)
November saw $1.8 billion worth of real estate sold in Wake County, including four transactions worth more than $30 million each. (N&O)
Pharma giant Gilead gave Shaw University $525,000 to launch a Center for Racial and Social Justice. (TBJ, sub. req.)
I didn’t realize this was ongoing, but the state Court of Appeals ruled that the RDU Airport had the authority to lease land to Wake Stone for a quarry. (N&O)
The cops charged a second man with murder in the 2019 shooting of a bouncer on Capital Boulevard. (N&O)
Weather: High of 48, mostly clear, with freezing rain possible overnight and ice potentially blanketing parts of the Triangle this morning. In other words, drive safely. (WRAL, N&O)
+ NATION & WORLD
—> The Russian Cyberattack Was Massive
While President Trump spent the last month whining about a make-believe election fraud scheme, his White House kept quiet about a real-life cyberattack that affected everything from the Pentagon to nuclear labs to Fortune 500 companies.
From The New York Times:
The scope of a hack engineered by one of Russia’s premier intelligence agencies became clearer on Monday, when some Trump administration officials acknowledged that other federal agencies—the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and parts of the Pentagon—had been compromised. Investigators were struggling to determine the extent to which the military, intelligence community and nuclear laboratories were affected by the highly sophisticated attack.
United States officials did not detect the attack until recent weeks, and then only when a private cybersecurity firm, FireEye, alerted American intelligence that the hackers had evaded layers of defenses.
How big was it? “About 18,000 private and government users downloaded a Russian tainted software update—a Trojan horse of sorts—that gave its hackers a foothold into victims’ systems, according to SolarWinds, the company whose software was compromised.”
“‘We think the number who were actually compromised were in the dozens,’ said Charles Carmakal, a senior vice president at FireEye. ‘But they were all the highest-value targets.’”
“Analysts said it was hard to know which was worse: that the federal government was blindsided again by Russian intelligence agencies, or that when it was evident what was happening, White House officials said nothing.”
—> Briefs: 4 Stories to Read Today
“The Supreme Court … firmly rejected an attack on state statutes that protect pharmacies from the prescription-reimbursement intermediaries that health-insurance providers use to administer their prescription-drug programs. The case involves pharmacy benefit managers like Caremark and Express Scripts, which have come to be the exclusive avenue through which most of us purchase prescriptions covered by our health insurance. … It is at least possible that Rutledge will undermine the cost-containment pressures that have driven insurers to rely so heavily on PBMs, and so it might even lead to some cognizable increase in insurance premiums. On the other hand, it should come as no surprise that the Supreme Court has no interest in stepping in to protect a market that almost all of the states regard as functioning so poorly as to warrant legislative intervention.” (SCOTUSblog, SCOTUS ruling)
“The European Union on Tuesday unveiled sweeping new rules for online businesses that could potentially force fundamental changes in the business practices of digital giants such as Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon. The new rules would overhaul the basic legal framework through which companies conduct their digital business in the vast, wealthy E.U. market, requiring platforms to police content far more aggressively and banning them from using their vast stores of data to unfairly overtake their competitors.” (WaPo)
“The Monell Rule is unique to civil rights litigation and exists nowhere else in the legal world. If, for example, an Amazon delivery driver were to negligently cause a traffic accident while on the job, Amazon would ordinarily be liable for the victim’s injuries; there would be no need for the victim to prove that Jeff Bezos or Amazon’s board of directors had caused the accident through their corporate policies or their “deliberate indifference” to the rights of potential accident victims. In the civil rights context, however, that is essentially what the Monell Rule requires. In simplest terms, the Monell Rule … puts legal distance between city governments and their employees, allowing cities to avoid responsibility for the on-the-job conduct of their own police officers. (Politico)
“In all, the FBI identified 22 women who alleged that [Harry] Morel touched them inappropriately, made sexually suggestive comments, or pressured them into performing sex acts while he was the St. Charles Parish DA. … But federal prosecutors never charged Morel with a sex-related crime. … Morel was ultimately sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to a single obstruction of justice charge in federal court in New Orleans. … One of the harshest punishments meted out in the Morel case was against one of the people who investigated him: New Orleans-based FBI Special Agent Mike Zummer, who says he was fired for complaining about a lenient plea deal for Morel and what he says was one federal prosecutor’s cozy relationship with Morel’s attorney. (The Appeal)
—> The Rundown
Six weeks after Joe Biden won the presidency, Mitch McConnell bravely acknowledged that Joe Biden won the presidency. This was breaking news. (WaPo)
Trump, meanwhile, retweeted Kraken lawyer Lin Wood’s suggestion that Georgia’s Republican governor and secretary of state will soon be sent to prison for certifying the state’s election results. (WaPo)
And a Republican candidate for Virginia governor thinks Trump should declare martial law. (WaPo)
Deputy attorney general Jeffrey Rosen will get Bill Barr’s job just in time to oversee Trump’s pardon-fest. (NPR)
Mayor Pete will become Secretary (of Transportation) Pete, which at least means Rahm didn’t get the job. (WSJ)
A KFF survey suggests that more than 25% of Americans won’t get the COVID vaccine. (KFF via NYT)
The FDA is likely to approve the Moderna COVID vaccine on Friday. (NYT)
Getting teachers vaccinated might not be enough to get schools opened quickly. (NYT)
Thanks to Beth Keena for her assistance. Please subscribe or share this newsletter with your friends. It would mean the world to me.