In Prison Hospitals
Not Really
by Bob Walsh
(Left) Rocky flattened Johnny Greco in the 3rd round on 5-21-51 in Montreal,
(Right) Rocky and me in the champ's basement man cave in 1950.
I was privileged to visit Rocky and his family at their home many times and to stay with Rocky at his training camps in Ellenville, NY and Chatham, NJ.
The three fights he had with Tony Zale were among the most brutal fights in boxing history. He was KO's in the first one, won the world middleweight championship in the second one, and got KO'd in the third one.
Rocky defeats Tony Zale on 7-16-47 to win the world middle weight championship.
Zale regains title on 6-10-48 with a 3rd round KO
Rocky's rise to fame and fortune began on March 9, 1945 when he stopped a heavily favored Billy Arnold. All the boxing experts predicted Arnold would become world champion, but after the beating he took from Rocky, he was never the same again.
Rocky' last two fights were with the legendary Sugar Ray Robinson and Chuck Davey. Robinson came off the floor to knock Rocky out and Davey avoided his punches to win the 10-round bout.
I
attended the Davey fight at the Chicago Stadium with a seat on the front
row. Seated to the right of me were about a dozen well-dressed,
cigar-smoking men. Suddenly, during one of the preliminary bouts,
Chicago cops swooped down on the men and carted them off to jail. The
next day I learned from the papers that the men were part of Al Capone's
mob.
Rocky wisely retired after the Davey fight. Rocky went on to appear in several movies and TV shows. He played Martha Raye's husband on her TV show. He also raked in a good amount of money by doing commercials for a number of businesses.
Thanks to his wife Norma, Rocky did not blow his accumulated wealth away. Norma managed his finances by making sure he did not leave their home with a large amount of cash in his pocket.
Norma's father Ray Unger was the host of a restaurant in the Times Square area that served cheese cake to die for. Just before I went on one of my trips to see my mother in Galveston, I went to the restaurant and asked Ray to get me the cheese cake recipe. He said "no problem" and proceeded down the stairs to the kitchen. Suddenly he came rushing up the stairs white as a ghost. He told me the baker came after him with a meat cleaver when he asked for the recipe.
Rocky died of a heart attack on May 22, 1990 at age 71. Norma passed away on April 16, 2009 at age 83.
by Bob Walsh
Barr undercuts Trump on election and Hunter Biden inquiries
Associated Press
December 21, 2020
Attorney General William Barr used his final public appearance to undercut President Donald Trump on multiple fronts Monday, saying he saw no reason to appoint a special counsel to look into the president’s claims about the 2020 election or to name one for the tax investigation of President-elect Joe Biden's son.
In the course of breaking with Trump on matters that have been consuming the president, Barr also reinforced the belief of federal officials that Russia was behind a massive hack of U.S. government agencies, not China as Trump had suggested.
Barr made the comments at a press conference to announce criminal charges in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 190 Americans, an issue he had worked on in his previous stint as attorney general in the early 1990s. He chose the announcement for his last public appearance, then took questions.
Barr said the Justice Department’s existing investigation into Hunter Biden’s financial dealings was “being handled responsibly and professionally.”
“I have not seen a reason to appoint a special counsel and I have no plan to do so before I leave,” he said. Nor for election fraud, he said.
Barr had been in lockstep with the president during much of his tenure as Trump's attorney general. But Trump, as he has done with many others in his inner circle, started criticizing Barr publicly. He was particularly angry that Barr didn't announce the existence of a two-year-old investigation of Hunter Biden.
And shortly before he announced his resignation, Barr told The Associated Press that he had seen no evidence of widespread voting fraud, despite Trump’s claims to the contrary. Trump has continued to push baseless claims even after the Electoral College made Biden's victory formal Dec. 14.
A special counsel would make it more difficult for the incoming attorney general and president to close investigations begun under Trump. Doing so could lend a false legitimacy to baseless claims, particularly to the throngs of Trump supporters who believe the election was stolen because he keeps wrongly claiming it was.
Barr’s statements Monday may make it easier for the acting attorney general who takes over, Jeffrey Rosen, to resist pressure from the White House to make such appointments.
In his 2019 confirmation hearings for deputy attorney general, Rosen said he was willing to rebuff political pressure from the White House if necessary. He told legislators that criminal investigations should “proceed on the facts and the law” and prosecutions should be “free of improper political influences.”
“If the appropriate answer is to say no to somebody, then I will say no,” he said at the time.
Trump and his allies have filed roughly 50 lawsuits challenging election results and nearly all have been dismissed or dropped. He’s also lost twice at the U.S. Supreme Court.
With no further tenable legal recourse, Trump has been fuming and peppering allies for options as he refuses to accept his loss.
Among those allies is Rudy Giuliani, who during a meeting Friday pushed Trump to seize voting machines in his hunt for evidence of fraud. The Homeland Security Department made clear, however, that it had no authority to do so. It is also unclear what that would accomplish.
For his part, Barr said he saw no reason to seize them. Earlier this month, Barr also told the AP that the Justice Department and Homeland Security had looked into the claims “that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results” and ultimately concluded that “so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that.”
Trump has consulted on special counsels with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and outside allies, according to several Trump administration officials and Republicans close to the White House who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized discuss the matter publicly.
Trump was interested both in a counsel to investigate the younger Biden’s tax dealings and a second to look into election fraud. He even floated the idea of naming attorney Sidney Powell as the counsel — though Powell was booted from Trump’s legal team after she made a series of increasingly wild conspiratorial claims about the election.
Federal law requires that an attorney general appoint any special counsels.
Barr also said Monday the hack of U.S. government agencies “certainly appears to be the Russians.”
In implicating the Russians, Barr was siding with the widely held belief within the U.S. government and the cybersecurity community that Russian hackers were responsible for breaches at multiple government agencies, including the Treasury and Commerce departments.
Hours after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a radio interview that Russia was “pretty clearly” behind the hacks, Trump sought to undercut that message and play down the severity of the attack.
He tweeted that the “Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality.” He also said China could be responsible even though no credible evidence has emerged to suggest anyone other than Russia might be to blame.
Kim Foxx’s vision: Automatically erase more serious convictions for weed dealing, expunge cocaine or heroin arrests
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx detailed a bold vision for drug enforcement as she laid out a plan to automatically wipe clean the records of convicted weed dealers and opened the door to expunging offenses for heroin and cocaine possession.
In an exclusive interview with the Sun-Times, Foxx framed cannabis legalization as a “test balloon” for reexamining the country’s drug laws — and their toll on the communities that have suffered the most.
“I think this is the gateway conversation to deeper conversations around treating addiction as a public health issue and looking at the drug economy that has flourished in these neighborhoods while every other bit of economy has abandoned [them],” Foxx said.
High on her list is helping those caught up in the drug war move on with their lives by automatically expunging criminal records so those convicted don’t have to take any actions to get their records wiped clean after they serve their sentences. Her office has already automatically expunged about 2,200 low-level pot convictions for possession of 30 grams or less, the amount of weed that’s now legal to have.
But Foxx ultimately wants to use her office’s existing infrastructure for identifying cases to similarly wipe out more serious offenses for selling cannabis, which she acknowledged typically involves more than 30 grams. Currently, those convicted of a crime dealing with 30 to 500 grams of pot must petition the court to have their record expunged.
“We should also make it easier for those who had those sales convictions for higher amounts to also be able to have their convictions vacated automatically,” Foxx said.
“No, they didn’t have a license. And no, it wasn’t legal. But it was the only economy that they had,” she said, noting that legal pot firms are now “doing the exact same thing and making a ton of of money.”
The comments appear to be the first time Foxx has spoken about automatically expunging records of those found guilty of more serious drug offenses than low-level possession. Previously she said she thought those convictions should be reviewed on a “case-by-case basis.”
Sarah Sinovic, a spokeswoman for the state’s attorney, clarified that Foxx doesn’t yet have any immediate plans to begin automatically expunging those records.
“It’s a vision that she has,” Sinovic said.
For now, Foxx’s office is most focused on meeting the deadlines for automatically expunging convictions that were put forth in the state’s legalization law took effect earlier this year.
The first batch of records, which include convictions from 2013 through this year, must be completed by Jan. 1. The next set of 11,000 expected cases stretches from 2000 to 2012 and has to be completed by the start of 2023, while earlier convictions must be expunged over the following two years.
Foxx said she had hoped to move through the low-level cases “more expeditiously” so her office could begin tackling the more serious offenses. However, the COVID-19 outbreak ultimately “shut things down” along with other complications.
Amid those hiccups, Foxx made it clear that her vision for reform doesn’t end with weed.
“What has been a long concern of mine … is other drugs that are still illegal, that are still being prosecuted, in some of these very neighborhoods that are being devastated by the war on drugs,” Foxx said. “And marijuana was but one of the drugs. It wasn’t the totality of the devastation.”
Using the West Side as an example, Foxx noted the crack cocaine epidemic that started in the 1980s has now given way to the deadly opioid crisis. Through those decades of destruction, Foxx complained the area’s “economic infrastructure” still hasn’t been rebuilt.
Now, Foxx is looking to address the systemic issues that underlie those scourges. Currently, possession of 15 grams or less of heroin or cocaine can result in a felony conviction that typically can’t be expunged from criminal records.
Asked whether she would advocate for expunging convictions for possession of those harder drugs, Foxx answered “yes” — as long as it’s part of a larger, progressive approach to handling addiction.
“If we recognize substance abuse disorder as a health condition, then we must modify our justice system to treat it as such,” Foxx said. “Criminalizing health is not in the interest of public safety.”
Foxx’s push is in line with national trends, experts said, but even they are surprised at how far society has come in pushing back on the drug war.
“It is clear that public support for harsh drug sentences is fading, and this is particularly true for minor possession and use cases,” said Ralph Weisheit, a professor of criminal justice at Illinois State University. “Decriminalizing minor possession of hard drugs, as has happened in Oregon, is something I would not have predicted even five years ago.”
Even more surprising is that someone in Foxx’s position is leading the charge, he said.
“That prosecutors would express any support for these changes is not something I would have expected. Historically, prosecutors have not led the charge for decriminalization,” he said.
Even some who have been opposed to legalization in the past are OK with the push for expungement — even for low-level dealers.
Riverside Police Chief Thomas Wietzel, an executive board member of the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police, former president of the West Suburban Chiefs of Police Association and a member of the state’s Impaired Driving Task Force, spoke in opposition to legalizing both medical and recreational marijuana.
Now he sees expungement for possession of less than 30 grams as something he supports. And he would accept that for drug dealers — with caveats.
“If it’s a small amount they are convicted of selling, that’s more difficult. But if they’re not selling to juveniles, at public parks ... I would be OK with that,” he said.
But automatically expunging for convictions involving the larger amounts Foxx advocates, he says, is too much: “I think that large manufacturing and delivery cases, that’s a different story.
Los Angeles County’s New Progressive D.A. Changes Policy After Public Outcry
LAPPL News Watch
December 21, 2020
Following a heavy
public backlash, Los Angeles County’s newly-elected, controversial
district attorney reversed course on Friday, reinstating the use of some
sentencing enhancements for cases involving “the most vulnerable”
victims.
In a memo to his staff, D.A. George Gascón reportedly said he had re-evaluated a special directive issued just 11 days earlier after taking the oath of office.
The Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL), a union that represents rank-and-file LAPD officers, issued a statement after Gascón’s reversal. “It took a national outcry for him to understand that child rapists, human traffickers, and perpetrators of violent hate crimes should spend some more time behind bars,” it read. “Yet he’s still willing to go easy on gang members who terrorize our neighborhoods or criminals that shoot cops in the back of the head.”
__________
Mom Of 20-Year-Old Man Brutally Murdered, Thrown Off Cliff Lashes Out At LA County DA George Gascón
The mother of a young man who was brutally murdered and thrown off a cliff in Azusa is outraged after learning her son's suspected killers had special charges dismissed in court Friday morning. The dismissals came under new Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón.
The mother, Desiree Andrade, tells FOX 11 she saw her son's alleged killers smirk in court earlier in the day as all their special circumstance charges were dismissed, meaning none of them will face life without parole.
"It's sick," Andrade said. "This is all sick." "I felt let down by this justice system," she added. Her son, 20-year-old Julian Andrade, was viciously murdered in May 2018 by five suspects who thought he stole some of their weed. "They brutally murdered my son," said the grieving mother.
The suspects are accused of repeatedly beating and stabbing Julian Andrade for several minutes until he lost consciousness. The suspects then drove up to the mountains to toss Andrade's body.
However, during that drive, prosecutors say the suspects stomped on his head when they realized Andrade was still alive. The suspects threw Andrade off the cliff and heard him still struggling. One of the suspects went down to attack Andrade some more.
Julian Andrade's body was found two days after the deadly incident.
Training a castrated infantry
By Akiva Bigman
Israel Hayom
December 21, 2020
Footage of an Israeli soldier not shooting a terrorist who set alight and threw a Molotov cocktail at him caused a justifiable uproar. Following the incident, a number of voices blamed in on a number of factors: the effect of the trial of Elor Azaria; the lengthy and complicated open-fire protocol; too cautious a commander, and more. There is truth in these claims, but it's important to note another angle, which in my opinion is deeper and more important than any other, and has to do with the training of infantry soldiers.
Despite prevailing beliefs, soldiers in a democratic army, in which they are citizen-soldiers, are pacifists by nature. This is nothing unique to the Israeli soldier or the result of our long years of dealing with Palestinian terrorism, it is a universal phenomenon. Brig. Gen. Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall, who researched the battles of World War II for the US Army, reached the same conclusion after looking at statistics from 20 battles and interviewing hundreds of soldiers. Marshall learned that only about 15% of soldiers fired their weapons during the battles in which they participated, and even when wounded and casualties were factored in, that percentage did not exceed 25%. This was true for all fronts in all conditions, including instances in which at least 80% of the soldiers said they were in a situation to open fire. This statistic is supported by testimony collected in research on other wars of the modern era, and demands an explanation.
According to Marshall, these soldiers come from a cultured environment in which the aggression entailed in taking a human life is forbidden and unacceptable. He concluded that the fear of aggression has been so thoroughly inculcated and absorbed that it comprises the biggest obstacle when civilian soldiers go into battle.
The soldier in the controversial footage is no exception – he is the norm. Evading conflict and fear of killing are natural to every cultured person. However, they are also the main challenge to military training. Taking civilians and turning them into fighters means taking pacifists and instilling in them killer instincts. This is exactly what the training and drills are intended to do.
Infantry training is full of sudden transitions from a calm situation to one of shooting from various points, with the soldiers having to shoot as rapidly as possible toward the target's center mass. Shoot to kill, with the understanding that the moment a threat is identified, this is the immediate response required, without consideration. That is the soldier and that is what he is supposed to do.
In recent years, these basic principles have eroded in operations in Judea and Samaria. Years ago, I wrote an expose about how soldiers were being trained to aim for targets' knees, which was designed to change their mindset from "shoot to kill" to "shoot to disarm."
There are also long hours of lectures about open-fire protocol, which get longer and more complicated all the time. In the field, a soldier has to make an instinctive decision, but according to protocol, he should consider a number of parameters such as whether or not the enemy has "a weapon" with which to attack, "an intent" of doing so, and "the possibility" of carrying out an attack. Aside from the difficulty of identifying the weapon, "intent" and "possibility" are subjective and cannot be measured.
Then we have the rules that prohibit shooting unless there is clear and present danger, in other words – even when someone is preparing a weapon (like lighting Molotov cocktail), they still cannot be shot until he raises his arm to throw it. And we haven't even discussed cases in which a commander must give a soldier permission to fire, which makes what still remained instinctive into a techno-bureaucratic jumble and firing shots into battle into a drawn-out struggle.
Marshall observed that even in his time, training soldiers was hampered by too heavy an emphasis on shooting protocol, to an extent that nearly obscured that the basic problem was to train soldiers to shoot freely – and that was in the face of enemies like the Nazis or the Japanese Imperial Army. The castrated training the IDF offers its infantry soldiers just makes the situation worse, and there will be a heavy price to pay.
History has been made in Dubai: the first professional sports game between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and it’s hockey!
By
History has been made in Dubai: for the first time since the peace agreement was signed between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, the first professional sports event took place between teams from Israel and the United Arab Emirates. The first was an ice hockey game between the “Chiefs” from Bat Yam and the “Camels” from Dubai, that was held at a professional ice hockey arena in Dubai.
The Bat Yam team, who is the reigning Israeli champion from the 2018/2019 season, defeated the Camels from Dubai 9 – 6 in the game held over the weekend. Israel’s Foreign Ministry noted that this is the first time that such a sports match has been held between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, although a number of agreements have been signed between the various sports associations.
The commissioner of the National Hockey League (NHL), the most prestigious hockey league in the world, Gary Bettman, sent a recorded greeting for the game and said: “We send our congratulations for this historic event. The first professional game between a team from Israel and a team from the Emirates. We are proud that hockey can bring people together. We want to wish all the participants a congratulations and hope that this is the first event out of many.”
by Bob Walsh
by Bob Walsh
by Bob Walsh
NYPD tracks former boxer to Middle East after he allegedly murdered his daughter on SI
By Tina Moore and Laura Italiano
New York Post
December 19, 2020
The father of a woman whose body was found in a Staten Island park last year has been extradited from the Middle East and charged with her murder.
Suspect Kabary Salem had been indicted in the murder of his daughter, Ola Salem, 25, by a Staten Island grand jury Nov. 5, law enforcement sources told The Post.
The NYPD’s Regional Fugitive Task Force tracked him down Dec. 3, and brought him back to New York on Friday, sources said.
Salem had fled the U.S. immediately after his daughter’s body was discovered in October 2019 by a jogger in Bloomingdale Park, in the borough’s Prince Bay neighborhood.
The fully-clothed body had been dragged through the woods some 30 feet, then covered in leaves.
Salem, 52, is a former professional middleweight boxer from Egypt who went by the nickname “The Egyptian Magician” and who competed in the 1990s through early 2000s, including in the 1992 and 1996 Summer Olympics, according to his Wikipedia page.
Notoriously, Salem killed one opponent, Randie Carver, in the ring in Kansas City in Sept. 1999 after repeatedly headbutting the doomed man.
Carver never regained consciousness after being knocked out in the 10th round, and died two days later from blunt head trauma, according to Wikipedia.
The victim, who lived in Rosebank, had been an advocate for Muslim women suffering from domestic violence through her volunteer work at the New York City-based Asiyah Women’s Center, a 20-bed shelter and resource organization.
Lou Dobbs debunks his own claims of election fraud — after a legal demand from Smartmatic
Something surprising happened Friday night on Lou Dobbs’ top-rated show on the Fox Business Network.
Dobbs, an opinion host and conservative ally of President Donald Trump who has consistently raged over the past month that the president was robbed of a second term by a rigged election, instead introduced a segment that calmly debunked several accusations of fraud that Rudolph Giuliani and other of the president’s supporters have lobbed against one election technology company, Smartmatic.
“There are lot of opinions about the integrity of the election, the irregularities of mail-in voting, of election voting machines, and voting software,” Dobbs told his viewers, before introducing Edward Perez, an expert with the nonprofit Open Source Election Technology Institute, to give “his assessment of Smartmatic and recent claims about the company.”
Perez then appeared in an apparently pretaped segment, where he shot down various conspiratorial theories in response to questions from an off-camera, unidentified voice — not Dobbs’s.
The segment, it turns out, was in response to a 20-page legal demand letter that was sent this month by Smartmatic to Fox News Media. Similar letters went to Fox’s smaller competitors on the right, Newsmax and One America News Network. The letters demanded “a full and complete retraction of all false and defamatory statements and reports” aired by the network in its coverage of the Nov. 3 presidential election.
Specifically, the company charged that: “Fox News has engaged in a concerted disinformation campaign against Smartmatic. Fox News told its millions of viewers and readers that Smartmatic was founded by [the late former president of Venezuela] Hugo Chávez, that its software was designed to fix elections, and that Smartmatic conspired with others to defraud the American people and fix the 2020 U.S. election by changing, inflating, and deleting votes.”
Not only are these claims false, the company says, it only played a relatively minor role in this year’s presidential election, as a contractor for the election process in Los Angeles County, Calif.
In the legal letter, Smartmatic included multiple segments from Dobbs’s prime time show as examples of “false and defamatory statements/implications,” with some comments coming from Dobbs himself — Dobbs said on Nov. 18 that the company is comprised of “left-wing radicals” — and others from guests like Giuliani and one-time Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell.
Fox News confirmed to The Washington Post on Saturday that the fact-checking segment seen on Dobbs’s show Friday night will also air on “Justice with Judge Jeanine,” hosted on Saturday night by Jeanine Pirro, and “Sunday Morning Futures,” hosted on Sunday morning by Maria Bartiromo, on which Powell made many of the comments included in the complaint. (Smartmatic had demanded that the corrections “must be published on multiple occasions” and must be made during prime time shows, so as to “match the attention and audience targeted with the original defamatory publications.”)
OSET Institute did not respond to a request for comment but put out a statement praising Dobbs on Twitter and said it was “good on him” to “set the record straight.” Perez, the organization said, “was happy to help do so.”
In the segment, Perez also clarified that Smartmatic is “for all intents and purposes,” a completely separate company from Dominion Voting Systems, another voting technology company that has faced unsubstantiated charges of wrongdoing. In a Nov. 12 appearance on Dobbs’s show, Giuliani claimed that Dominion is owned by Smartmatic; on Nov. 16, Dobbs said that “Dominion has connections” to Smartmatic, while also claiming the since-denied theory that Smartmatic “had ties to” Venezuela’s Chavez.
During Friday night’s fact-checking segment, the questioner asked Perez: “Have you seen any evidence of Smartmatic sending U.S. votes to be tabulated in foreign countries?”
This appeared to be a reference to Giuliani’s Nov. 12 claim on the show that with Smartmatic software, “the votes actually go to Barcelona, Spain.” Perez responded, “No, I’m not aware of any evidence that Smartmatic is sending U.S. votes to be tabulated in foreign countries.”
It is unclear if the fact-checking segment fulfilled Smartmatic’s demand for a retraction. The company did not respond to questions from The Post Friday night. In the legal demand letter, Smartmatic said that the comments made on Fox will cost the company “hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars” in value.
Thus far, Fox appears to be the only network that has publicly made amends in response to Smartmatic’s complaint. Newsmax, which only began referring to Biden as “president-elect” on Monday, released a statement responding to Smartmatic’s demand letter by placing the burden of blame onto the guests who expressed those views on-air.
“Individuals, including plaintiff’s attorneys, congressmen and others, have appeared on Newsmax raising questions about the company and its voting software, citing legal documents or previously published reports about Smartmatic,” the company said. “As any major media outlet, we provide a forum for public concerns and discussion. In the past we have welcomed Smartmatic and its representatives to counter such claims they believe to be inaccurate and will continue to do so.”
Uproar at NYC’s posh Dalton School after faculty issues 8-page anti-racism manifesto
By Susan Edelman and Dana Kennedy
New York Post
December 19, 2020
One of NYC’s poshest private schools is in an uproar over an anti-racist manifesto signed by dozens of faculty members with a sweeping list of demands.
The Dalton School — which boasts stars Anderson Cooper, Christian Slater and Claire Danes as alumni — is wrestling with eight pages of “proposals” to overhaul the staffing, curriculum and treatment of black students.
Yearly tuition for grades K-12 at the Upper East Side institution is $54,180 a year.
The proposals — first reported this week by The Naked Dollar blog — grew out of the George Floyd police-brutality protests and long-simmering student complaints of racism at the prestigious school.
But some parents say the backlash has become oppressive.
“My ancestors experienced white supremacy by being slaughtered,” a Jewish parent told The Post. “The idea that being white automatically means you are privileged or a white supremacist is ridiculous. My child comes from people who had to fight for everything they got.
“It’s just about skin color now.”
Those who disagree remain silent, the insider said. “Parents are terrified to speak up for fear of retribution. Parents are acting like spineless wimps.”
One Dalton father, who said he’s removed his children from the school as a result of the manifesto, said Dalton “has totally failed in its mission to uplift the very people it professes to help.
“It’s completely absurd and a total step backwards,” the father, who did not want to be identified, told the Post.
“This supposed anti-racist agenda is asking everyone to look at black kids and treat them differently because of the color of their skin,” he said. “The school is more focused on virtue-signaling this nonsense than it is in actually helping students of color. More parents are going to be pulling their kids out.”
The wide-ranging faculty demands include:
Dalton officials said the document is just “a set of thought-starters created last summer by a group of faculty and staff responding to Dalton’s commitment to becoming an anti-racist institution.
“The school does not support all the language or actions it contains.” it added.
“Dalton’s commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racism is grounded in our deep appreciation for the dignity of all community members, an understanding of differing life backgrounds, empathy for one another, and the ability to engage and listen with respect across differences,” the school said in a statement to The Post.
But Naked Dollar blogger Scott Johnston, who first revealed the manifesto Thursday, said of the demands: “Dalton’s teachers are refusing to come back until they are met.”
The Dalton spokesman rebutted, “We’re expecting all teachers to return after winter break.”
Johnston — the author of “Campusland,” a humorous novel about the “woke” college climate — said the “meltdown” at Dalton reflects the angst and self-imposed guilt of elite private schools across the country.
“This isn’t just Dalton, but one of the most extreme examples,” he told The Post. “There’s a rituatualistic self-abasement these private schools feel they have to subject themselves to.”
Sources told Johnston that Dalton kids were made to watch a PBS video called Being 12, in which “white kids are shamed for the sin of their skin color and told they are complicit in perpetuating racism.”
A Dalton fourth-grade play featured a role for a “Racist Cop,” Johnston reported, adding that the faculty petition includes a demand that every school play have anti-racist narratives. “I’m told even ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is out these days. It’s a white man trying to save a black man. Can’t have that sort of racial paternalizing.”
In revealing the turmoil, Johnston wrote, “The rich parents play the game. They go along with every progressive fad conjured up by the administration and faculty. Many embrace them.”
But the Dalton parent who spoke to The Post predicted that 30 to 40 percent of parents of kids in the Class of 2025 will pull them out of the school and transfer them as a result of the manifesto.
Making the situation more tense, some Dalton parents are fuming over the school’s resistance to reopening classrooms since the COVID-19 outbreak, remaining fully remote while other private and public schools have resumed some or all in-person instruction.
“We are, in short, frustrated and confused and better hope to understand the school’s thought processes behind the virtual model it has adopted,” a group of parents describing themselves as physicians wrote in a letter to head of school Jim Best, Bloomberg reported in early October.
A petition signed by more than 70 lower-school parents asked for the return of on-campus classes, Bloomberg reported. “Zoom-school is not Dalton,” it said.
But that petition was seen by some as racist because faculty of color were more likely to live in the outer boroughs or neighborhoods with high rates of COVID-19.
Dalton announced last month that it will offer campus instruction as well as remote instruction in January.
Mayor de Blasio cowardly uses NYPD as a scapegoat to blame for riots, boys in blue push back
By
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is under fire again for disrespecting law enforcement and seeming to blame officers for violent protests over the summer.
The Democrat was accused of using police officers as a “scapegoat” for the riots and violent demonstrations that unfolded in New York City following the death of George Floyd in May. The head of the union representing New York City detectives called de Blasio out in a scathing statement following his public apology for police actions.
Reacting to a Department of Investigations Protest Report released on Friday, de Blasio issued an apology in a nearly seven-minute video message expressing his “remorse” and vowing that the NYPD will “do better.”
“It’s a season of reflection right now, that’s what the holidays are,” he said. “I read this report, and I agree with it. I agree with its analysis and I agree with its recommendations, because it makes very clear we’ve got to do something different, and we’ve got to do something better.”
“I look back with remorse. I wish I had done better,” he said of his handling of the protests in May and June. “I want everyone to understand that. And I’m sorry I didn’t do better. And I’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons. And I want our police department to do better. And I’m going to insist upon that.”
Of course, many would concur that the liberal mayor has plenty to be sorry for in his mis-handling of the violence, but de Blasio was not specific about his own actions. During his regular press briefing on Friday, he was asked directly by one reporter “exactly what it is you’re apologizing for?”
“I don’t feel I did good enough, that’s why I apologized,” he replied.
Paul DiGiacomo, president of the Detectives’ Endowment Association, slammed the mayor as well as Department of Investigation Commissioner Margaret Garnett.
“The irony that the DOI Commissioner is appointed directly by the Mayor of New York City should not be lost on anyone,” DiGiacomo said in a blistering statement on Friday. “Our brave men and women in blue were sent to do an impossible job by elected officials who send mix messages about what they want and have no experience in these dangerous situations.”
“As hundreds of cops were injured and businesses destroyed, there was only one thing we could count on — no support from City Hall and Albany,” he said, referring to New York’s state capital. “Perhaps our elected officials are the ones who need ‘new training.'”
The Department of Investigation report found that “heightened tensions” during the summer protests were exacerbated by excessive force used by police officers against protesters.
“NYPD use of force and crowd control tactics often failed to discriminate between lawful, peaceful protesters and unlawful actors, and contributed to the perception that officers were exercising force in some cases beyond what was necessary under the circumstances,” the 100-page report concluded.
De Blasio used the report’s findings and his vow to do things “differently” moving forward as a segue in his press briefing to announce a need to “redistribute wealth” in the city.
The Democrat addressed “systemic racism” in education and elsewhere as
he targeted income inequalities, and openly declared that the
redistribution of wealth is the government’s “mission” in education.
LA DA George Gascon slams victim’s family as they protest sentencing plan
New York Post
December 19, 2020
Los Angeles’ controversial new district attorney told the family of a murder victim they should “keep their mouth shut” — unwittingly, he later said — as they protested his office’s kid-gloves handling of the accused killers.
“It’s unfortunate that some people do not have enough education to keep their mouth shut for a moment so we can talk,” George Gascon said in a video obtained by FOX 11 Los Angeles.
“My son can never speak again because he was murdered,” shouts a woman identified as the mother of Joshua Rodriguez, who was kidnapped and killed in 2015.
“My son matters!” she screamed as Gascon walked away. “And you’re going to do nothing about it!”
Gascon — who was elected last month promising a sweeping left-wing overhaul of the criminal justice system — was speaking to the press in front of a Pomona courthouse Friday when he was confronted by the family about his intention to drop the punishment sought against Rodriguez’s killers, eliminating the chance they could receive no-parole life sentences.
His slate of planned changes, including an end to bail and to arrests for crimes like trespass, disturbing the peace, and public intoxication, have drawn outrage from victims’ rights groups — but are in line with similar reforms being made by lefty DAs across the country.
Gascon later apologized for his outburst.
“I did not understand what they were yelling about until later, let alone that they were victims,” he said in a statement. “Regardless, it’s not how I should have reacted. Clearly, this family is in pain.”
‘Thief to Chief’: How a teen gang member became a respected police officer
New York Post
December 19, 2020
It was 1974. Roaches crawled around the basement of a government-subsidized apartment building in Flushing, Queens, where six young men — members of a local gang called the Family — were “probably” high on weed. Six guns were laid out. Each person was expected to choose one and join the hunt to shoot rivals thought to have messed with a member’s cousin.
One of the teenage hoods, Kevin Lowry, was already on parole and on a path of drug dealing and petty crime — but he was about to get lucky. “Weather had driven the unsuspecting young men underground,” he writes of the gang’s prey, in his memoir “From Thief to Chief: A Self-Portrait of Juvenile Delinquency and Rehabilitation” (BookBaby), out Thursday. “We called it off [as the sun came up} . . . That’s when I knew I had to get out.”
Dangerous acts dominated the life of then-17-year-old Lowry. But he recognized that murder was one step beyond the pale. “I was struggling with self-esteem and trying to be something I was not,” Lowry, now 63, told The Post. Still, the twice-arrested kid didn’t think his life would take the turn that it did, with him becoming a top uniformed cop in Nassau County, LI.
“My mother was a Valium junkie and my father drank every day. They both were subject to domestic violence. That drove me out to look for solace. I found it in the street,” Lowry told The Post.
He cast his lot with a gang of kids in his neighborhood, a half-mile or so from the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Park, and they formed the Family. One of the gang’s schemes was busting into the coin boxes of apartment-building washing machines, which led to them stealing bags of quarters from the car of the guy who collected the money. They wound up with $3,000 or so, which took them into the world of grand larceny.
Life became increasingly perilous as the crew took to robbing rival drug dealers and selling the purloined drugs themselves. Once, they tried to take down a pot pusher with a Family member wielding both a loaded gun and the toddler-nephew he was baby-sitting. The heist went awry and, miraculously, no shots were fired.
Lowry once avoided arrest by swallowing a chunk of hashish he had in his pocket. “It’s tough to say how high I got from it. I was probably already high before I swallowed it,” he said.
When he finally decided to straighten up, Lowry realized it would necessitate distancing himself from the Family. He convinced his parents to move from Flushing — otherwise, he said, “I was doomed” — to Bayside, Queens. It was just 10 minutes away, but far enough. “I never saw my old gang friends again,” said Lowry, who was nearing 18 at the time.
He took straight-and-narrow jobs that included elevator operator and security guard while attending college, earning two degrees (a bachelor’s in sociology from St. John’s University and a master’s in criminal justice from C.W. Post). Against all odds, he decided to become a cop. “There is romance and excitement to the street,” he said. “The police department promised me those things and the opportunity to do good. You have to be on the right side.”
Because of the positive changes he had made in his life, the Nassau County Police Department chose to overlook his criminal record and, in 1982, Lowry became a patrol officer. Over the next 26 years, he worked his way up to three-star chief of police and managed to get a law degree attending night school at St. John’s.
Now retired from the force for 10 years, Lowry owns an Oceanside, LI,
company that collects auto-insurance claims for corporate clients.
He’s married and a father of two.
Lowry, who is donating proceeds
from his book to the Island Harvest Food Bank, told The Post he “owes a
great debt of gratitude to the Nassau County Police Department for
giving me an opportunity.”
He added, though, that his earlier life helped him to succeed as a law enforcer: “I had the playbook. I knew what bad guys would do because I had done many of those things myself. I knew how to squeeze a perp and when to give people breaks. My story is all about second chances. We need to celebrate people who take the initiative to turn their lives around.”
