Friday, July 29, 2016
POLICE: Four of the six
complaints came from
within the department
Continued from 1A
chain of command. After
an incident where force
is used, the supervisor on
duty ills out a report, which
is forwarded to a captain
for review. The captain
reviews the incident, which
may include watching
body camera footage and
asking questions or raising
concerns. Then the review
is forwarded to Edmiston,
who reads through the
review and will proceed
with a recommendation.
Of the 14 suspects
arrested by force in the last
year, 10 were white, three
were Hispanic, and one
was black.
“If there was ever a
time where the use of
force appeared to be based
on some kind of bias or
other inappropriate factors
or
criminal
elements
were involved, it is my
policy and duty to notify
the Ofice of the District
Attorney and ask for an
outside investigation to
be conducted,” Edmiston
said in a report to the city
council regarding use of
force in the department.
Though use of force
doubled over the year,
complaints
regarding
members of the department
stayed consistent with
previous years at six. Of
those six complaints, two
were made by citizens and
four were internal admin-
istrative reviews, meaning
the complaint came from
someone within the depart-
ment.
“I believe this is a good
indication we are able
and willing to ‘police’
ourselves,” Edmiston said.
The complaints resulted
in two verbal counseling
or training sessions, three
formal letters of reprimand
and one formal admonish-
ment, but no suspensions.
The department saw an
increase in pursuits, from
four the previous year to
12 in the last iscal year, the
highest number of pursuits
the department has been
involved with in at least
six years. The department
made 6,699 trafic stops
last year, making the
percentage of stops that
resulted in pursuits less
than a quarter of one
percent.
“Scrutinizing
each
pursuit we are involved in
to highlight positive actions
on the part of the oficers
or areas where we could
improve is, in my opinion,
where the rubber meets the
road,” Edmiston said.
CLINTON: Convention
began with efforts to shore
up Bernie supporters
Continued from 1A
but question her character.
She acknowledged those
concerns briely, saying “I
get it that some people just
don’t know what to make of
me.” But her primary focus
was persuading Americans
to not be seduced by
Trump’s vague promises to
restore economic security
and fend off threats from
abroad.
Clinton’s
four-day
convention began with
efforts to shore up liberals
who
backed
Bernie
Sanders in the Democratic
primary and it ended with
an outstretched hand to
Republicans and indepen-
dents unnerved by Trump.
A parade of military leaders,
law enforcement oficials
and Republicans took the
stage ahead of Clinton to
endorse her in the general
election contest with Trump.
“This is the moment, this
is the opportunity for our
future,” said retired Marine
Gen. John R. Allen, a former
commander in Afghanistan.
“We must seize this moment
to elect Hillary Clinton
as president of the United
States of America.”
American lags waved
in the stands of the packed
convention hall. There were
persistent but scattered calls
of “No more war,” but the
crowd drowned them out
with chants of “Hill-a-ry”
and “U-S-A!”
The
Democratic
nomination now oficially
hers, Clinton has just over
three months to persuade
Americans that Trump is
unit for the Oval Ofice
and overcome the visceral
connection he has with
some voters in a way the
Democratic nominee does
not.
She embraced her repu-
tation as a studious wonk, a
politician more comfortable
with policy proposals than
rhetorical lourishes. “I
sweat the details of policy,”
she said.
Clinton’s proposals are
an extension of President
Barack Obama’s two terms
in ofice: tackling climate
change, overhauling the
nation’s fractured immigra-
tion laws, and restricting
access to guns. She disputed
Trump’s assertion that she
wants to repeal the Second
Amendment, saying “I’m
not here to take away your
guns. I just don’t want you
to be shot by someone who
shouldn’t have a gun in the
irst place.”
Campaigning in Iowa
Thursday, Trump said there
were “a lot of lies being
told” at Clinton’s conven-
tion. In an earlier statement,
he accused Democrats of
living in a “fantasy world,”
ignoring economic and
security troubles as well
as Clinton’s controversial
email use at the State
Department.
The FBI’s investigation
into Clinton’s use of a
private internet server
didn’t result in criminal
charges, but it did appear
to deepen voters’ concerns
with her honesty and
trustworthiness. A separate
pre-convention controversy
over hacked Democratic
Party emails showing
favoritism for Clinton in the
primary threatens to deepen
the perception that Clinton
prefers to play by her own
rules.
Through four nights
of polished convention
pageantry,
Democratic
heavyweights
told
a
different
story
about
Clinton. The most powerful
validation came Wednesday
night from President Barack
Obama, her victorious
primary rival in 2008.
Obama declared Clinton
not only can defeat Trump’s
“deeply pessimistic vision”
but also realize the “promise
of this great nation.”
Seeking
to
offset
possible weariness with a
politician who has been in
the spotlight for decades,
he said of Clinton: “She’s
been there for us, even if we
haven’t always noticed.”
Clinton was introduced
by her daughter, Chelsea,
who spoke warmly of her
mother as a woman “driven
by compassion, by faith, by
kindness, a ierce sense of
justice, and a heart full of
love.”
A parade of speakers
— gay and straight, young
and old, white, black and
Hispanic — cast Trump as
out-of-touch with a diverse
and fast-changing nation.
Khizr Khan, an Amer-
ican Muslim whose son was
killed in military service,
emotionally implored voters
to stop Trump, who has
called for a temporary ban
on Muslim immigration.
“Donald Trump, you are
asking Americans to trust
you with their future,” Khan
said. “Let me ask you, have
you even read the United
States Constitution? I will
gladly lend you my copy.”
The program paid tribute
to law enforcement oficers
killed on duty, including
ive who died in Dallas
earlier this month in retal-
iation for oficer-involved
shootings in Minnesota and
Louisiana.
“Violence is not the
answer,” Dallas Sheriff
Lupe Valdez said. “Yelling,
screaming and calling each
other names is not going to
do it.”
East Oregonian
Page 7A
NATION/WORLD
Experts confront explanations for surge of mass killings
By DAVID CRARY
AP National Writer
NEW YORK — The
relentless series of mass kill-
ings across the globe poses a
challenge for experts trying to
analyze them without lapsing
into faulty generalizations.
Terms like contagion and
copycat killing apply in some
cases, not in others, they say,
and in certain instances perpe-
trators’ terrorist ideology
intersects with psychological
instability.
Some of the attacks, such
as the coordinated assault on
multiple targets in Paris last
November, were elaborately
planned operations by Islamic
State adherents. However,
they may have contributed to
some of the other attacks by
troubled individuals with no
established ties to the militant
group.
J. Reid Meloy, a San
Diego-based
forensic
psychologist who has served
as a consultant to the FBI’s
Behavioral Analysis Program,
said some of the attackers
appear to have identiied with
Islamic State as an outlet for
their own seething emotions.
“In virtually every one
of these cases, there was
a deeply held personal
grievance — loss, anger,
humiliation,” Meloy said.
“When they come across
Islamic State material, they’re
stimulated by that. They can
take their personal grievance
worldwide.”
Meloy said two different
syndromes could be surfacing
in the series of attacks —
contagion, in which one
attack rapidly inspires imita-
tion attacks, and copycat inci-
dents, in which an individual
seeks to emulate a previous
perpetrator.
In Germany, for example,
the deadliest of four recent
attacks was carried out by an
18-year-old German-Iranian
who killed nine people in
Munich. Police said the
young man had researched
previous
mass
attacks,
including the rampage in
Norway by Anders Behring
Breivik that killed 77 people
exactly ive years before the
Munich attack.
A 2015 study by
researchers at Arizona State
University found signiicant
evidence of a contagion
effect in the United States.
According to the study, the
likelihood of new attacks rose
signiicantly over a two-week
period after any widely publi-
cized mass killing or school
shooting.
The study’s lead author,
professor Sherry Towers, said
AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani, File
In this July 17 ile photo, a French lag stands stall amongst a loral tribute for the
victims killed during a deadly attack, on the famed Boulevard des Anglais in Nice,
southern France.
“In virtually every one of these cases,
there was a deeply held personal
grievance — loss, anger, humiliation.”
— J. Reid Meloy, Forensic psychologist, consultant to
FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Program
contagion likely played a role
in the recent spate of killings
in Europe, particularly those
carried out by individuals.
“Planned,
coordinated
terrorist attacks are in a
different class compared
to lone wolf killings, since
logistical matters likely play
more of a role in the timing,”
Towers said in an email.
“Lone wolf attacks by people
who might have extremist
leanings, but no solid connec-
tions to terrorist cells, and
also might have other mental
issues, are the types of events
that would likely show more
of a contagion effect.”
The attacker who killed
84 people in Nice, France, on
July 14th by driving through a
holiday crowd was described
as a psychologically troubled
and violent man, not linked
directly to Islamic State. But
what had been a history of
domestic violence and petty
crime took on darker implica-
tions with his decision to use a
truck as a killing machine, as
called for in Islamic State and
al-Qaida propaganda.
“We’ve got this situation
where it seems like almost
any public act of violence can
be attributed to the Islamic
State regardless of how
nebulous a connection there
is to the group,” said Daniel
Schoenfeld, an analyst with
the Soufan Group, a security
consulting irm.
Max Abrahms, a terrorism
analyst who teaches political
science at Northeastern
University, has been using
the term “loon wolf” to depict
individuals whose attacks are
as much the product of mental
instability as of any form of
radical ideology.
“They’re seeing others
do this and replicating their
behaviors,” said Abrahms,
who suggested the phenom-
enon will be troublesome for
counterterrorism investiga-
tors.
“Historically, governments
were looking for people who
seemed to be undergoing radi-
calization,” he said. “Now,
we’re looking at people
committing similar acts, but in
some cases with no evidence
they were being radicalized
and maybe were being driven
by mental instability.”
Brian Jenkins, a senior
adviser with the RAND
Corporation and author of
numerous books and articles
on terrorism and security, said
the emerging trends are the
subject of ongoing research
by experts, and may prove
frustrating for members of the
public.
“There’s a certain degree
of comfort with categoriza-
tion — if we can put this guy
in the terrorism bin or the
mentally disturbed bin,” he
said. “The problem is, people
are really complicated.”
He said researchers are
trying to determine why
certain unstable people might
be attracted by Islamic State
ideology.
Islamic State “advertises
atrocities,” he said. “Normal
people would look and say,
‘Oh my God.’ We’re talking
about those who are attracted
to those images. Those
images become, in a sense, an
invitation to action.”
Jenkins says there’s a
strong possibility that Islamic
State-inspired violence in
Europe could worsen before
it eases, given the likelihood
that military setbacks in Syria
and Iraq will prompt many
foreign ighters to return to
their home countries.
“They will have dificulty
becoming assimilated,” he
said. “Some are going to be
frustrated and angry and will
carry out acts of violence.”
Suggested countermea-
sures vary — ranging from
tougher policing and deten-
tion policies to more robust
social-support programs. This
week, some leading French
media outlets pledged to stop
publishing the names and
images of attackers linked
to the Islamic State group
to prevent individuals from
being inadvertently gloriied.
However, Scott Atran, an
anthropologist and terrorism
researcher who has taught
in France, Britain and the
United States, worries that
a contagion of mass killings
in democratic nations is
spreading beyond any orga-
nized political or ideological
agenda, including that of the
Islamic State.
“The big concern has to
be that savage violence is
adopted by other groups,
leading to a quasi-anarchy
like we haven’t seen before,
at least not in our lifetimes,”
he said in an email.
BRIEFLY
Police and
protesters credited
with restraint at
convention
PHILADELPHIA
(AP) — Bernie Sanders’
devoted followers were
careful to pick up after
themselves and wore hats
embroidered with a dove
to remind everyone to
remain peaceful. And the
police, instead of hauling
demonstrators off to jail,
issued them $50 tickets
for disorderly conduct
and released them with a
complimentary bottle of
water.
As the Democratic
National Convention drew
toward a close Thursday
afternoon, Philadelphia
police reported making
a four-day total of only
11 arrests, and oficers
and protesters alike were
credited with showing
restraint and courtesy.
The rallies and marches
that some feared would
result in violence and mass
disruptions instead brought
a festival-like atmosphere
at times to City Hall and
Broad Street.
Mary Catherine Roper,
deputy legal director of
Pennsylvania’s American
Civil Liberties Union, said
the department’s hands-off
approach helped keep
things calm.
“This is what it looks
like when you just let
people get their message
out: lots of expression and
very little conlict,” she
said.
As of Thursday
afternoon, in addition to
the 11 people arrested,
about 100 protesters had
been ticketed and ined.
The ticketed demonstrators
were briely detained, their
hands zip-tied behind their
backs, but not technically
arrested.
Less than two months
before the convention,
the city passed legislation
allowing police to write the
equivalent of trafic tickets
instead of making criminal
arrests for many nuisance
crimes, such as disorderly
conduct, blocking a street
and failure to disperse.
Testing conirms
new, rarely seen
whale in Paciic
ANCHORAGE, Alaska
(AP) — Genetic tests
conirm that a mysterious,
unnamed species of beaked
whale only rarely seen
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alive by Japanese ishermen
roams the northern Paciic
Ocean, according to
research published this
week.
The testing shows the
black whales, with bulbous
heads and beaks like
porpoises, are not dwarf
varieties of more common
Baird’s beaked whales, a
slate-gray animal.
Japanese researchers
sampled three black
beaked whales that washed
up on the north coast of
Hokkaido, the country’s
most northern island, and
wrote about them in a 2013
paper. The challenge to
conirm the existence of
the new animal was inding
enough specimens from a
wider area for testing and
matching genetic samples,
said Phillip Morin, a
National Oceanographic
and Atmospheric
Administration research
molecular biologist.
He and his team
uncovered ive other
whales, all found in Alaska,
that matched the species
found in Japan.
“Clearly this species
is very rare and reminds
us how much we have to
learn about the ocean and
even some of its largest
inhabitants,” he said in an
announcement.
The largest beaked
whale varieties can reach
40 feet and spend up to
90 minutes underwater
hunting for squid in deep
water. They are hard to
research because they may
spend only a few minutes
at the surface, Morin said
by phone Thursday. They
rarely breach, travel in
small numbers and blend
into their surroundings.
Japanese ishermen
reported occasionally seeing
a smaller, black beaked
whale that they called
“karasu,” the Japanese word
for raven, or “kuru tsuchi,”
black Baird’s beaked whale.