Thin Blue Line: America's Police Under Assualt

A 38-year old police officer was viciously gunned down last year during a bank robbery in Mississippi.  A nine year veteran of the Tupelo Police Department, Kevin Stauffer left behind a young wife and two children. There were no national headlines about his death.

As the shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, demonstrates, the news media are more interested in covering racially charged events.  The death of a police officer hardly rates national mention.  In the last ten years, more than 1,500 police and detectives have died in the line of duty, including 568 by gunfire.

Crime fighting has taken its toll on America's police.  Since the first recorded police death in 1791, there have been more than 20,000 officers killed in the line of duty.  Violent crime, although down in recent years, still exceeds 1 million incidents nationwide every year.

Police not only are gunshot victims.  Others die in motor vehicle accidents while chasing suspects, drownings, vehicle assaults, accidental shootings, stabbings and illnesses related to their duties. It is a hazardous profession with very little room for error.  

The deadliest year since the dawn of the new century was 2001, when 71 officers were killed during the September 11 terrorist attacks alone.  For that year, 140 officers were slain, including three who were ambushed by criminals.

Despite those numbers, the 1920's were far worse for law enforcement officers.  That decade ended with with 2,390 police officers losing their lives in deadly shootings. The deadliest year, however, was 1930, when 297 officers were killed.      

Thousands more police officers are assaulted every year in the line of duty.  During the last decade, there were more than 519,000 assaults, resulting in injuries to 154,836 police officers, according to FBI statistics.  The average over that period was 57,892 assaults each year.

Although shooting deaths of police are on the decline, even one fatality is too many for the thin blue line that maintains the peace in communities throughout America.  The most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics estimate there are 780,000 police and detectives keeping the country safe each day.

As a result of police deaths, many departments have purchased body armor to help protect the men and women in blue.  However, body armor is not a panacea.  In 2012, a total of 51 police officers died while wearing body armor.  But the gear has been credited with the reduction in gun deaths.

The number one killer of police officers is not gunfire.  More than twice as many law enforcement officers every year die from suicide than are killed in traffic accidents or assaults, according to a 2012 national study underwritten by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP).

Astonishingly, for every one suicide, the study's authors estimate there are 25 attempts.  Those sobering numbers are testimony to a high risk occupation where law enforcement officers are exposed to the worst human atrocities while dealing with often potentially life threatening confrontations.

Unfortunately, the media seldom paint a fair and unbiased picture of police.  Good police work goes unreported, but there is nothing like the scent of scandal or wrongdoing to get the media digging for details to expose the dirty blue laundry.

This does not mean police should not be scrutinized and held to high standards.  Those officers who break the law they are sworn to uphold deserve swift and vigorous justice.  What is lacking is balance in the reporting of incidents involving police.

That equilibrium has been missing in most news media coverage, particularly in reports that involve use of police force.  That fact has not gone unnoticed by the chiefs of police.

"In large part, the public perception of police use of force is framed and influenced by media depictions which present unrealistic and often outlandish representations of law enforcement and the policing profession," the IACP group said in a 2012 report.

What was true then is still true today.  Just look at the one-sided, incendiary media coverage coming out of Ferguson, Missouri.

Memo to Jesse: Focus on the Critical Issues

MEMORANDUM: To Jesse Jackson regarding your campaign to shine attention on Silicon Valley's dismal record of hiring blacks and Latinos for high tech jobs.

Even for a man who has made a career of shaking down businesses, you have stumbled to a new low with this attempt to shame the icons of America's technology industry into adopting hiring quotas, nonsensical diversity measurements and racial sensitivity training.

Your civil rights playbook needs some serious updating.  For starters, there would be more African-Americans and Hispanics in Silicon Valley if they pursued degrees in engineering, computer science and other technology fields.

The Washington-based Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies issued a recent report detailing how blacks and Latinos in particular "fall short in preparedness for jobs in the technology sector."  In its report, the center called for increasing the number of minorities majoring in science and engineering in college to address the issue.

Apparently, Reverend Jackson, you must have been too busy jetting around the country to hustle a few million more dollars for your Rainbow PUSH organization to be bothered with the facts.

Frankly, African-Americans and Latinos have more pressing problems than scoring a corner office at some technology firm.  It might be a more productive use of your time if you spent considerable energy tackling these urgent issues:

1.  Blacks lead all ethnic groups in unemployment.  According to the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment among African-Americans is 11.4 percent.  Just for the record, Hispanic occupy second place in the unemployment line.  July statistics pegged the unemployment rate for Americans at 6.2 percent.

2. Blacks have the lowest high school graduation rates of all ethnic groups.  Department of Education figures estimate that 66.1 percent of African-American students graduated from high school.  Hispanic graduation rates were 71.4 percent.  By comparison, 83 percent of whites achieved high school diplomas.

3.  More than 60 percent of the people in state and federal prisons are racial and ethnic minorities.  For black males in their 30's, one in ten is incarcerated in a prison on any given day.  These figures are from the Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group for imprisoned minorities. Firearm violence rates for blacks aged 12 and older were 40 percent higher than Hispanics and 200 percent more than whites, reports the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

4.  More black children are raised in a single parent household than other ethnic groups.  In the African-American community, 72 percent of children are raised by a single parent.  For the country as a whole, 25.8 percent of children are brought up by one parent, based on studies by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

5. Blacks are more likely to receive welfare assistance than other groups.  Department of Health and Human Services data confirms that 39.8 of all Americans who receive food stamps, unemployment insurance or other forms of welfare are African-Americans.  White recipients comprise 38.8 percent of those collecting federal aid and Hispanics constitute 15.7 percent.  In the most recent U.S. Census, 72.4 percent of Americans were white, 12.6 percent were African-American and 16.4 percent were Hispanic or Latino.

Start with these five issues if you want to improve the plight of minorities, especially African-Americans.  Stop trying to make them victims and do something that actually provides blacks and other minorities opportunities to share in America's prosperity.

Sorry, but you have no right to grumble about hiring practices in Silicon Valley until you have done more than just blame others for the serious problems that are ravaging the minority community.  Just being a racial profiteer isn't enough to claim the mantle of Martin Luther King.

Society's Most Discriminated Against Group

They are the butt of cruel jokes.  They attract unwelcome stares. They are routinely portrayed in movies and on television as boobs. They are shunned by photographers.  They are often mistaken for someone else because they all look alike.  They are a hair salon's worst nightmare.

They are bald men, discriminated against by a society that believes a thick head of hair is next to godliness. Lesbians, gays, native Americans, African-Americans and even dwarfs are represented by anti-discriminatory groups.  Laws have been written to protect them from hate crimes.  

But bald men wallow in the shadows, unloved, vulnerable, indefensible and powerless.   They are victims who suffer silently the barbs of the insensitive and malicious.  "That glare bouncing off your head is blinding me," is the insult repeated ad nausea by amigos and antagonists alike.     

Bald is not beautiful unless you are a movie star with your own yacht, a 20,000-square foot mansion and fire-engine red Maserati.    Even then, you better don a hat.  For every Bruce Willis, there are a 100 Tom Cruise clones on screen flaunting their flocculent follicles.

Gays, lesbians and transsexuals represent about 2.5 percent of the population according to a new study by the Center for Disease Control.  Yet they have far more clout that bald males, who outnumber them by millions.  By age 50, six out of every 10 men will have suffered some degree of baldness.

Just based on those figures, bald men deserve at least as much protection as gays.  But they need to be better organized, more vocal and downright pushy.  For starters, they need a lobby with a catchy abbreviation.  How about Follicle Organization Lividly In Crisis or FOLIC?

Every special interest group needs a headquarters location.  The small town (pop. 2,897) of Bald Knob, Arkansas, would nicely serve that purpose.  The perfect front man for the organization would be Vin Diesel, an actor with an intimidating presence and a seriously gravelly voice.

Despite voters objections to gay marriage, the courts have struck down bans approved in most states.  Surely, that precedent can be used to rule that a bald man can marry a bald woman without suffering stares, insults and society's scorn.  It only seems fair.

No group needs hate crime protection more than bald men.  The endless jokes are reason enough.  "Bill is so bald you can see what's on his mind."  "What's the difference between a prince and a bald man? A prince is an heir apparent and a bald man has no hair apparent." The gags are demeaning and hateful.

Have you ever noticed there are more gays on television shows than bald men?  And, if the script calls for a bald actor, chances are he will be the show's buffoon.  Meanwhile, the gay guy is smart, suave and oozes charm.   The bald guy never gets the woman or the man.

Researchers in Germany and Japan found that people view bald men as being older, although socially mature.  Men with a flowing locks were perceived as being more aggressive and less mature.  The study, conducted in 2001, would have been produced far different results if it was done in the U.S.

In America, bald men are held in such low esteem every president since Dwight Eisenhower in 1953 has sported telegenic heads overflowing with hair.  The optics of a bald man addressing the nation are just too frightening for many Americans.

But all that is about to change.  Once organized, bald men will reclaim their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of Hair Club memberships.  

Exposing IRS Lies About Lost Emails

Congressional investigators have been stonewalled, stiff-armed and stalled at every turn in their efforts to get to the bottom of the IRS scandal.  As a result, the probe has dragged on as precious little details have dribbled out of the agency at the heart of the controversy.

Just when investigators thought things couldn't get worse, Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen dropped a bombshell. Thousands of potentially incriminating emails from former IRS official Lois Lerner disappeared into thin air after a computer crash, he informed Congress.   

Lerner, who directed the IRS targeting of conservative groups, was not the only agency employee whose emails dropped from sight.  Five more IRS employees also claimed their email correspondence had gone missing.  Koskinen contended none of the emails could be recovered.

This is worse than sheer nonsense.  It is a damnable lie.  Koskinen and the Obama Administration are depending on Americans' unfamiliarity with technology to perpetuate the deceit.  Republican committee members could have easily exposed the fabrication if they had been better prepared.

Ed Glotzbach, former vice chairman of Information Services Group, Inc., reviewed Koskinen's testimony and charitably called the commissioner's explanation "not credible." Glotzbach's view carries weight because of his information technology experience.

He is the former chief executive officer of TPI, Inc., a Houston based firm that is a leading sourcing advisory firm in the U.S.  Prior to that, Glotzbach served five years as the chief information officer for SBC Communications.  His duties included overseeing data center operations for the telecom firm.

"The fact that Lois Lerner's hard drive crashed is irrelevant," Glotzbach explains.  "Today virtually every large organization backs up every email on file servers.  Almost always, those servers have back-ups that shadow them.  Those emails never leave the servers."

In layman's terms, servers are like super-sized computers.  Every user's computer in the organization is linked to file servers, which store and retrieve files.  Every document and email created is stored on the server.  Most large businesses are required by federal regulations to archive correspondence for at least five years.

Federal government agencies, including the IRS, have similar document retention policies.  An examination of the IRS guidelines confirms that the agency is supposed to provide for "backup and recovery of records to protect information against loss and corruption."  

The IRS even employs a chief technology officer (CTO) who is responsible for the 400 systems operated by the agency. Inconceivably, Republicans have never called the CTO on the carpet to testify before the Congressional committee.  

That has left the pedestrian Koskinen to justify why Lois Lerner's emails cannot be retrieved.  His explanations, frankly, are dubious. "Her hard drive could be wrecked or her computer disc scratched.  It doesn't matter.  Those emails exist on the file server," Glotzbach asserts.

The emails could be easily reclaimed, Glotzbach maintains. Businesses and federal agencies are required often to produce emails and documents created by their employees as part of regulatory proceedings, lawsuits and law enforcement inquiries.  

Could IRS officials have erased the emails from the servers?  Not likely, Glotzbach explains.  "It would require more than a handful of people and there would be a trail of mechanized process control steps," Glotzbach says.  "The trail would consist of authorizations to make changes."

If Lerner's emails were not backed up on a server, then the IRS has an ever larger problem, according to Glotzbach.  "It is unfathomable that an agency with such voluminous and essential data did not regularly conduct disaster recovery exercises and evaluate the outcome," he says.

In other words, the IRS has to employ a back-up system or it could lose all taxpayer data if its computers crashed.  No business, let alone an agency dependent on records like the IRS, could risk losing all its data in the event a fire, earthquake or other disaster destroyed its computers or servers.

Despite the obvious lies, Democrats call the Congressional inquiry a political stunt.  The lemmings in the news media have refused to lift a finger to investigate the IRS commissioner's claims.  However, their efforts to squelch the Congressional investigation may have backfired. 

Now the courts are involved.  Cases have been filed with two federal district courts over the lost email issue.  In at least one instance, the judge has already demanded an explanation from the IRS.  Koskinen's coverup may about to be exposed.