WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2007
Wednesday Edition: An Explosion of Explosive Devices
Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs as they are called in Iraq, pose a larger risk in the United States than you might think. The people who respond to bomb calls say the nation needs a coordinated effort to detect these dangers.
The Washington Post points out:
Local officials say preparedness efforts around the country remain a patchwork. For instance, the Los Angeles Police Department's
bomb squad, which responds to about 1,000 calls a year, has 28
full-time explosives technicians and is about to move into a new, $8
million downtown headquarters. The squad has an explosives library, a
research facility for testing and access to an explosives range for
training.
In contrast, the D.C. police bomb squad's 10 technicians handle
about 700 calls a year, but they are housed in portable trailers and
must also perform crime patrols. Among the six U.S. metropolitan
regions considered top terrorist targets, only the Washington area has
not earned the top rating of the DHS three-level scoring system for
bomb squads. Regional officials recently decided to spend $7 million in
federal grants to buy equipment to lift that rating.
Experts and officials have struggled in reaching a consensus that
the government should invest more in efforts to detect and disrupt bomb
plots in advance, and not just pay for equipment and training that
could keep specific devices from exploding in metropolitan regions or
reaching other targets.
Al's Morning Multimedia: Legacy of One Community's Pesticide Use
The (San Jose, Calif.) Mercury News has
an impressive story about decades of pesticide use that has created a hidden risk in Silicon Valley. The multimedia storytelling includes interactive maps, videos, information about how to test for poisons in your own yard and more. This kind of story could play out anywhere where orchards once stood. Farmland that has been urbanized also is a good candidate for pesticide buildup.
Think about gated communities, parks and condos that dot the landscape where farms once stood. A little testing, or local Environmental Protection Agency records, may set you on the right path.
The Spread of Prescription Drug Abuse
The
Ledger-Enquirer in Columbus, Ga., this week launched
a week-long project highlighting stories of people who have become "shackled" by prescription painkilling drugs.
The story says pharmacists and physicians often become addicts:
The American Medical Association estimates that 10-15 percent of
doctors and pharmacists suffer from prescription drug addiction. By
comparison, less than 5 percent of U.S. residents use a painkiller
nonmedically in a year, according to the federal Substance Abuse and
Mental Health Services Administration.
Sexual Violence Toward Students: An AP Investigation
The Associated Press finds:
- A total of 2,570
educators nationwide were punished for sexual misconduct from 2001-05,
representing about a quarter of all educator misconduct cases in that
time period.
- The total number of times an action was taken against a
teacher s license for sexual misconduct was 2,625 (more than 50
teachers lost licenses in more than one state). Licenses were revoked
in 1,636 of the cases; surrendered in 440 cases; suspended in 376
cases; and denied in 108 cases. Other punishments were handed out in
the remainder of the cases.
- Students were clearly identified as victims in at least
1,467 of the sexual misconduct cases. The victim was a young person, a
category including students, unidentified youths, family members and
neighbors, in at least 1,801 of the cases.
- Educators made physical contact in at least 1,297, or 72
percent, of the cases in which the victims were youths. The remainder
were cases that did not involve physical contact, including verbal
sexual harassment and other offenses.
-- There were criminal convictions in at least 1,390, or 53 percent, of the cases.
-- Nearly nine out of 10 of the educators punished for sexual misconduct were male.
-- At least 446 of the cases that the AP found involved educators who had multiple victims.
The seven-month
investigation found 2,570 educators whose teaching credentials were
revoked, denied, voluntarily surrendered or limited from 2001 through
2005 following allegations of sexual misconduct.
Young people were the victims in at least 1,801 of the cases,
and more than 80 percent of those were students. More than half the
educators who were punished by their states also were convicted of
crimes related to the misconduct.
The findings draw obvious comparisons to sex abuse scandals in
other institutions, among them the Roman Catholic Church. A review by
America's Catholic bishops found that about 4,400 of 110,000 priests
were accused of molesting minors from 1950 through 2002.
Clergy abuse is part of the national consciousness after a
string of highly publicized cases. But until now, there's been little
sense of the extent of educator abuse.
Beyond the horror of individual crimes, the larger shame is the institutions that govern education have only
sporadically addressed a problem that's been apparent for years.
"From my own experience - this could get me in trouble - I
think every single school district in the nation has at least one
perpetrator. At least one," says Mary Jo McGrath, a California lawyer
who has spent 30 years investigating misconduct in schools. "It doesn't
matter if it's urban or rural or suburban."
One victim wonders why there isn't more outrage.
"You're supposed to be able to send your kids to school knowing
that they're going to be safe," says Jennah Bramow, a 20-year-old
single mom and waitress in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Sidebars:
Airbags That Don't Deploy
The Kansas City (Mo.) Star discovers that in hundreds of cases, auto airbags failed to deploy in head-on crashes. Read the findings carefully:
Analyzing a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration database
of all traffic fatalities over a six-year period, the newspaper
discovered that far more people had died from wrecks where airbags
didn’t deploy than all of those who died from injuries caused by
airbags that fired too easily or too forcefully.
A decade ago,
deaths blamed on overly aggressive airbags triggered congressional
action, which brought about the “smart bags” of today. About 300 people
have died from improper airbag deployments since 1990.
But The Star found
those deaths are dwarfed by another body count just as disturbing. At
least 1,400 drivers and front-seat passengers died from 2001 through
2006 in front-impact crashes involving vehicles whose airbags — smart
or otherwise — never deployed.
“I have to say I’m shocked,” said
Joan Claybrook, former chief of NHTSA and current president of the
consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. “These airbags should deploy.”
To be sure, even when airbags work, people still die in serious accidents. In the six-year span analyzed by The Star, head-on crashes killed roughly 14,000 drivers and front-seat passengers, even though their airbags deployed.
But in that same period, the federal government has estimated, airbags saved 15,000 lives.
Nobody knows how many more lives could have been saved if the airbags had deployed in the cases reviewed by The Star.
And because of insufficient data gathered by NHTSA, speeds for many of
those wrecks also are unknown, raising questions as to whether those
vehicles were going fast enough to activate the airbags.
For those reasons and others, current NHTSA officials disputed The Star’s findings and don’t consider uninflated airbags to be a significant problem.
“There
is never an acceptable failure rate,” said agency spokesman Rae Tyson.
However, he insisted that it is impossible to draw any conclusions
about the lack of deployments based on the agency’s data.
In a written statement, NHTSA warned that “The Kansas City Star is
doing a grave disservice to its readers, by implying — through an
improper analysis of our own data — that air bags are not performing as
intended. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
A spokesman
for the auto industry, Charles Territo of the Alliance of Automobile
Manufacturers, said that “no two accidents are alike” and that
conclusions can’t be drawn from the analysis without knowing more about
each accident.
Sidebars:
Coast Guard Questioned About Withholding Names
The Coast Guard is now being asked to tell a congressional subcommittee why the Coast Guard withholds the names of people it rescues at sea.
You may remember me telling you about this dispute, which arose after a newspaper wanted to know if some of the people the Coast Guard rescues are "frequent fliers" who are constantly taking risks and having to get plucked from the water.
It costs $4,400 per hour to run a Coast Guard rescue chopper. That is your tax money. The Coast Guard's current policy is to disclose the names of people during an active search and rescue.
Second Signal for Volunteer Firefighters
I have included
stories on "Al's Morning Meeting" over the years about the fact that it's becoming more difficult for volunteer fire departments to attract younger volunteers. It is so difficult for people to get away from their jobs to fight the daily emergencies around them.
Now, there is a system that says it can help volunteers make better decisions about knowing when a call is severe enough to leave work and help out.
Click here to find out more.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's Note: Al's Morning
Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other
materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and
analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it
will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The
column is fact-checked, but depends on the accuracy and integrity of
the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be
corrected.
Posted at 5:03:36 PM
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