Thread: U.S. Civil Rights Commissioners: Obama-Era School Leniency Policy Brings ‘Fear’ and ‘

U.S. Civil Rights Commissioners: Obama-Era School Leniency Policy Brings ‘Fear’ and ‘Danger’
MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

by DR. SUSAN BERRY8 Mar 2018

Two members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights say the Obama-era school leniency policy that discourages reports of threatening behavior by minority students to law enforcement is dangerous.

“Many schools that have adopted lenient disciplinary policies – i.e., defining offenses down so that blacks and Hispanics aren’t suspended or expelled at significantly higher rates than whites and Asians—have seen marked increases in the number and severity of offenses,” attorney Peter Kirsanow, a Republican member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, tells Breitbart News. “St. Paul is just one example, but numerous districts across the country have reported spikes in violence against teachers and students, as well as other forms of disruptive behavior.”

“Students (and teachers) have reported being fearful of going to school,” adds Kirsanow, who also chairs the board of directors of the Center for New Black Leadership. “One school principal stated unequivocally that the people that are most harmed are the good students who want to learn but are harmed by the chaotic environment.”

Similarly, in a paper released in January, U.S. Civil Rights commissioner Gail Heriot, an Independent and a professor of law at the University of San Diego, writes with her colleague, Alison Somin, of the dangers of the Obama-era policy:

The danger should have been obvious. What if an important reason more African-American students were being disciplined than white or Asian students is that more African-American students were misbehaving? And what if the cost of failing to discipline those students primarily falls on their fellow African-American students who are trying to learn amid classroom disorder? Would unleashing OCR and its army of lawyers cause those schools to act carefully and precisely to eliminate only that portion of the discipline gap that was the result of race discrimination? Or—more likely—would schools react heavy-handedly by tolerating more classroom disorder, thus making it more difficult for students who share the classroom with unruly students to learn?

“The Department of Education’s disparate impact policy is encouraging discrimination rather than preventing it,” the authors further assert:

When it comes to school discipline policy, the federal government has an unimpressive track record. In the past, it has pressed local schools to adopt tough “zero-tolerance” rules for guns (including things that appear to be guns), resulting in children being suspended for “guns” made out of a nibbled Pop Tart or a stick. Similarly, on too many occasions, its get- tough, policies on sexual harassment have led to disciplinary actions against kindergarteners and first-graders—children generally too young to spell “sexual harassment,” much less engage in it.

More recently, we’ve been seeing an overcorrection. The federal government’s policy developed during the Obama Administration has been to press schools to lighten up on school discipline, specifically to benefit African Americans and other racial minorities. But both efforts to dictate broad discipline policy, while well-meaning, are wrongheaded. It’s time for the federal government to get out of the business of dictating broad discipline policy.

The debate over the Obama administration’s policy comes as Nikolas Cruz is charged Wednesday with 17 counts of premeditated murder following his shooting rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County, Florida.

Despite many warnings of Cruz’s propensity for violence and aggression while he was a student at the school, he was never arrested — and was ultimately able to purchase a firearm.

Broward County Public Schools adopted its PROMISE disparate impact policy after current superintendent Robert Runcie left Chicago – where he once worked for Obama education secretary Arne Duncan – and assumed his post as head of the school district.

Runcie and Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel signed onto the PROMISE program. In Israel’s campaign video in 2012, the Democrat praised the ideology behind the lax school policy:

I am the sheriff who will measure the success of the agency by the young people we’re able to keep out of jail and not put in jail, while keeping our neighborhoods secure and making sure that we’re doing things the right way. We’ll end racial profiling, not curtail it, but end racial profiling. We’ll diversify the county, we’ll look differently than each other, we’ll think differently than each other, we’ll have hybrid ideas, and most importantly we’ll bring a cultural change to an agency that’s in dire need of one.

Within a year of Runcie’s arrival in the school district, school arrests dropped dramatically by 66 percent. Seeking to implement a similar nationwide policy, the Obama administration brought the Broward County officials to Washington to propose their plan as a possible model for school districts across the country.

In 2014, the Obama administration issued a Dear Colleague letter that mapped out recommendations for national public school disciplinary policies that would purportedly put an end to the “school-to-prison-pipeline” for minority students. The policy threatened schools with risk of federal investigation if they showed higher numbers of referrals to law enforcement for minority students than for other students – even if the behaviors in question were unacceptable.

With the Obama-era policies in place now in more than 50 school districts throughout the country, students whose behavior would have previously drawn an arrest or a suspension have been instead referred to “teen courts” or “restorative talking circles.”

Kirsanow reports that the literature on racial disparities in disciplinary rates often omits key data.

“Much of the literature that focuses on racial disparities in disciplinary rates recites statistics showing that black and Hispanic students are 3—4 times more likely to be suspended than white and Asian students,” he explains. “But the same literature often leaves out data showing that black and Hispanic students are far more likely than white and Asian students to commit the types of offenses resulting in suspension.”

“There is some evidence that black students are more likely to be suspended than white students for some of the same infractions,” he adds. “But a closer look at the data shows that’s not necessarily due to discrimination, but rather, the disciplinary policies of specific schools or school administrators. Some black school administrators at majority-black schools punish black students more harshly than white school administrators punish white (or black) students at majority white schools.”

In March 2016, Katherine Kersten wrote at the Star Tribune about the increasing number of student assaults against St. Paul, Minnesota teachers, as well as student riots requiring police intervention since the adoption of the lax disciplinary practices.

Kersten noted a comment from one teacher: “We have a segment of kids who consider themselves untouchable.”

“Most parents will tell you that if you eliminate consequences for kids’ bad behavior, you can expect a lot more of it,” Kersten observed. “It’s common sense.”

“But we’re not talking about common sense here,” she added. “We’re talking about a powerful ideology that has gripped the imagination of Twin Cities school officials — and far beyond. That’s the notion of ‘equity’ — a buzzword that is rapidly becoming the all-purpose justification for dubious policies not only in education but in many public arenas.”

“The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held a hearing just a few months ago on the “School-to-Prison Pipeline,” Kirsanow tells Breitbart News. “Many progressives start with the assumption that the profound disparities in disciplinary rates between the races must be caused, at least in substantial part, by racial discrimination. Maybe that is a cause of the disparities, but we’ve adduced no evidence of such alleged discrimination, other than the numerical disparities themselves.”

Kirsanow states some school officials may have adopted the Obama-era policies for the purpose of boosting graduation rates and reducing incarceration rates for black and Hispanic students.
“But others have done so because they don’t want to be subjected to the heavy hand of the federal government,” he says. “They just ‘get their numbers right’ by keeping dangerous and disruptive students in class rather than suspending or expelling them, or reporting them to law enforcement.”

“The goal should be issue nondiscriminatory discipline appropriate to the offense, not to lower disciplinary standards so racial disparities aren’t as great,” Kirsanow asserts. “We’re sacrificing good students (and teachers) on the altars of political correctness, racial bean counting, and misguided theories of social justice. This is both boneheaded and tragic. The guidance needs to be rescinded.”
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is composed of eight commissioners. Four are appointed by the president and four by Congress. The commissioners serve six-year terms and are not confirmed by the Senate.

Currently, four members of the commission are Democrats, three are independents, and one is a Republican. The four presidential appointees were all selected by former President Barack Obama.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...ar-and-danger/

Time Bomb: Obama Spread Broward County “No Arrest” Policy Across Entire Country

By Rebekah Baker March 6, 2018 at 5:30pm

It is becoming clearer with every passing day that the safety and security of schools in the Broward County School District were sacrificed on the altar of a leftist social experiment.
On Feb. 14, Nikolas Cruz charged into Majory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County and gunned down seventeen innocent people.
Ultimately, Cruz is the one responsible for all the lives lost that terrible day. He pulled the trigger. But his killing spree might never had happened if not for a progressive social justice experiment — dubbed the PROMISE program — that cultivated a fertile ground for violence in Broward County schools in the years leading up to the shooting.

Worse still is that this program, spearheaded in Broward County, was used by Obama officials as a national model for the disciplinary policies now in use in over 50 school districts across the nation.
The origins of the PROMISE program can be traced to a man with personal ties to the Obama administration: Robert Runcie. Formerly the Chief Information Officer of Chicago Public Schools, Runcie left Chicago in 2011 to become the Broward County Public Schools superintendent.

“Working together, the sky’s the limit in terms of what we can do,” Runcie told the Broward school board during his final round of interviews for the position, Miami Herald reported.

"Some of the dialogue that I have heard recently is about arming teachers. We don't need to put guns in the hands of teachers."

-Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie pic.twitter.com/qLC5YqwWBb

— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) February 22, 2018

According to an Associated Press report from 2013, Runcie immediately sought to address disciplinary practices which he believed unfairly targeted minorities in Broward County public schools.

“One of the first things I saw was a huge differential in minority students, black male students in particular, in terms of suspensions and arrests,” he said, according to The American Prospect.

Taking his cue from Obama administration officials, including then U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Runcie sought to do away with what he viewed as the “racist outcomes” of the disciplinary practices in Broward County in favor of “restorative justice.” And so, the PROMISE program — Preventing Recidivism through Opportunities, Mentoring, Interventions, Supports & Education — was born.
As reported by Conservative Tribune, the Broward County School District and the Broward County Sherrif’s Office signed an NAACP-advised agreement to essentially stop arresting students in Broward public schools. The Broward State Attorney, the Broward Public Defender’s Office and the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice also partnered in the agreement.

The strategy outlined in the new program called for using the “least punitive means of discipline” against students and handling infractions within the school system rather than involving law enforcement. In other words, rather than arrest students for alleged crimes, PROMISE instead encouraged warnings, counseling and conflict resolution.
And although the PROMISE guidelines claimed to deal with felonies and other student behaviors that posed “a serious threat to school safety” with more severity, the program doesn’t mandate a student be arrested, even in those cases.

After the Valentine’s Day massacre at Stoneman Douglas, Broward County Sheriff Union President Jeff Bell described the paralyzing effect this policy had on law enforcement officers and their ability to arrest troublesome or even dangerous individuals in Broward County schools.

“They don’t want the police officers making arrests on campus, and they don’t want the drugs found on campus and they don’t want the warrants to be served on campus because it looks like there’s bad stats at the school,” he told Fox News Channel’s Laura Ingraham. “The problem is when that (PROMISE) program started, we took all discretion away from the law enforcement officers to effect an arrest if we choose to.”

Broward County succeeded in reducing juvenile arrests by huge margins each year. Between 2012 and 2016, juvenile arrests dropped by almost 50 percent according to Juvenile Arrests by Gender and Offense statistics compiled by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

But at what cost? Two years after the PROMISE program was adopted, Maria Schneider, the head of the juvenile unit in the Broward State Attorney’s Office, remarked, “We’ve accomplished reducing the arrests. Now it’s ‘how do we keep that up without making the schools a more dangerous place?'”

Clearly they failed at that crucial task.

Unfortunately, this dangerous, social justice disciplinary policy wasn’t confined to Broward County. Championed by the Obama administration, the “no arrest” guidelines were pushed onto schools across the nation in the form of a 2014 “Dear Colleague” letter from the U.S. Department of Education:

“The U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Justice (Departments) are issuing this guidance to assist public elementary and secondary schools in meeting their obligations under Federal law to administer student discipline without discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin …

The Departments initiate investigations of student discipline policies and practices at particular schools based on complaints the Departments receive from students, parents, community members, and others about possible racial discrimination in student discipline. The Departments also may initiate investigations based on public reports of racial disparities in student discipline combined with other information, or as part of their regular compliance monitoring activities.”

“School leaders got the memo: Don’t punish kids, especially not minority kids. Because if you do, you may face a never-ending civil-rights investigation and the threat of losing federal funding,” Manhattan Institute senior fellow Max Eden explained. “Even if your rules are fair and administered equally, we may accuse you of ‘unlawful discrimination’ if some groups get punished more than others.”

Schools that cooperated with the guidelines, however, were in for a huge financial reward. In 2016, the year Broward County’s school board renewed the PROMISE program, it was awarded with a Teacher Incentive Fund grant of almost 54 million dollars. According to a Broward County Public Schools news release, the top priority for the Teacher Incentive Fund was “improved life outcomes for students in poverty/students of color.” Broward was the only large urban district in the nation to receive the grant.

Even the Broward County Sheriff, Scott Israel, used these artificially low crime statistics to his advantage. He boasted about these “initiatives” during his 2016 run for reelection.

“The results speak for themselves. As our sheriff, I successfully implemented new policies and approaches to public safety that sharply reduced violent crime and burglary rates – the sharpest declines in the entire State of Florida,” he stated on a candidate questionnaire. “My innovative initiatives also helped keep children in school and out of jail, greatly expanding the juvenile civil citation program and making issuance of civil citations mandatory for BSO deputies….I will build upon these impressive successes in my next term as Sheriff.”

The formerly inexplicable events surrounding the inaction on the part of both the school and the sheriff’s department regarding Nikolas Cruz now appear to be in complete concordance with the drive to lower student arrests that was so prevalent during the five years that preceded the Broward County school shooting. Cruz was in high school when the PROMISE program was adopted.

This is horrific. “In November, a tipster called BSO to say Cruz ‘could be a school shooter in the making’ but deputies did not write up a report on that warning. It came just weeks after a relative called urging BSO to seize his weapons.” https://t.co/3gtwGPl6bo

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) February 23, 2018

“At times, Nikolas Cruz’s behavior could be a school administrator’s nightmare: Teachers and other students said he kicked doors, cursed at teachers, fought with and threatened classmates and brought a backpack with bullets to school. He collected a string of discipline for profanity, disobedience, insubordination, and disruption,” Miami Herald reported.

According to the Herald, Cruz was never actually expelled — or arrested, apparently.

Like so many progressive initiatives, the PROMISE disciplinary program in Broward County had lofty aims, a grand-sounding name, and deceitful actions to achieve glowing statistics. Tragically, the results were deadly. This ticking time bomb went off with disastrous consequences at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. And as long as the legacy of this Obama administration social justice experiment exists in schools across the nation, countless children are at risk.

https://conservativetribune.com/time...f_source=Email

Broward Sheriff Rails About Gun Control Yet Provided Weapons Training to Radical Mosque Linked to Terrorist Factions

Posted on February 26, 2018 by admin

Let’s travel back to late 2015, early 2016.

Nezar Hamze is a leader in the Hamas-related Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). He is also a Deputy Sheriff in the Broward Sheriff’s Office (BSO), in Broward County, Florida. This background has given him the opportunity to exploit his position in law enforcement to assist his Islamist friends in their desire for weapons training. This month, he did so at a Tampa Bay, Florida mosque that partners with designated terrorist organizations.

Nezar Hamze is the CEO and Regional Operations Director for the Florida chapter of CAIR or CAIR-Florida. In July 2014, CAIR-Florida co-sponsored a pro-Hamas rally in Downtown Miami, where rally goers shouted, “We are Hamas” and “Let’s go Hamas.” Following the rally, the event organizer, Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout, wrote, “Thank God, every day we conquer the American Jews like our conquests over the Jews of Israel!” In August 2014, CAIR-Florida Executive Director Hassan Shibly wrote, “Israel and its supporters are enemies of G-d…”

CAIR’s Hamze, using his position as a law enforcement officer, traveled to the Tampa, Florida area to perform weapons training at the Daarus Salaam Mosque, also known as the Islamic Society of New Tampa (ISONET), a mosque associated with all three US groups named to UAE’s terror list.

Daarus Salaam has sponsored events with three designated terrorist organizations, the only three groups to be named terrorist organizations by UAE. And the last of these events was one where mosque goers were taught how to use weapons, while Hamze brandished a gun in each hand, wore a Muslim outfit that resembled a trench coat, and simulated firing at his audience. The mosque referred to the event as ‘Active Shooter Training.’

According to the mosque, the weapons training event took place as a result of the shooting attacks, which transpired in San Bernardino this month, and the potential for a backlash against Muslims due to the attacks. Whether or not there was merit in such an event – and according to federal ‘hate crime’ statistics regarding anti-Muslim acts, the merit may be highly exaggerated – one cannot look past the venue for the event or the individual doing the training.

To reiterate: Because of a shooting perpetrated by radical Muslims, a radical mosque which partners with designated terrorist organizations is learning how to shoot guns from an individual who is the leader of a designated terrorist organization, himself.

https://truepundit.com/broward-sheri...rist-factions/


And from Canada...
Broward County Sheriffs Trained Area Mosque Attendees How To Protect Themselves

By Judi McLeod —— Bio and Archives--March 1, 2018

Not let out in the mainstream media’s “official narrative” on the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting is that the Broward County Sheriff’s Department had been spending resources on firearms training at radical area mosques with attendees being taught how to protect themselves.

The progressive left’s Second Amendment slogan should be: ‘Guns: Safe in the hands of jihadists, but not in the hands of American citizens’.

Broward County Deputy Sheriff Nezar Hamz

Thanks to Beila Rabinowitz, Director of Militant Islam Monitor, and writers like Front Page columnist Joe Kaufmann, the Broward Sheriff’s Office (BSO) Training Mosques story is starting to seep out.
Broward County Deputy Sheriff Nezar Hamze, who takes his marching orders from Sheriff Scott Israel, has spent on-the-job time training attendees of Florida radical mosques how to protect themselves.
Picture Sheriff Hamze in full regalia at one of the mosques, brandishing a gun in each hand, turned out in a Muslim outfit that resembled a television detective’s trench coat and simulating firing at his enraptured audience.

The mosque called it ‘Active Shooter Training’.

MSM-downplayed in the aftermath of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that Officer Hamze also happens to head up the Florida chapter of CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations), named by the US government a co-conspirator for two federal trials dealing with the financing of millions of dollars to Hamas, a terrorist group.
Hamze was referred for the Broward sheriff job by Scott Israel, the current Sheriff, who calls Hamze his “friend.”

“Israel hired Hamze against the advice of all three BSO Majors who had evaluated Hamze during the hiring process. In May 2013, they unanimously signed a form stating,
“At this time, I do not recommend Officer Hamze for employment…” (FrontPageMag, Dec. 20., 2016)
Hamze was allegedly found to be lying on his polygraph exam about “use of illegal drugs” and about “buying illegal drugs.”

In any case, It was Israel who allowed Hamze the ability to use his position in the Sheriff’s Office to provide gun training to various radical mosques within striking distance of the Florida school.

The Darul Uloom mosque, located in Pembroke Pines, Florida is roughly 30 miles away from the high school.
Pictures that surfaced on social media prove that the MSM didn’t have to go too far to find evidence of the Broward training at Darul Uloom Mosque:

“In July 2015, the Hamze/Israel Show made an appearance at the Darul Uloom mosque, located in Pembroke Pines, Florida. Each gave impassioned speeches, as they donned their full BSO uniforms, with guns and badges on display.” (FrontPagemag)

Attendees at the Darul Uloom Mosque, who once included Osama bin Laden’s top flight lieutenant Adnan el-Shukrijumah, whose family home was in nearby Miramar, where as far as is known, his mother still lives to this day, were no small potatoes in the Jihadi world.

Volumes have been written in news sites like this one about el Shukrijumah, who had a $5-million FBI bounty on his head as far back as 2006.

el Shukrijumah, who was a prayer leader at Darul Uloom, has been (thankfully) deceased since 2014, having been killed in Afghanistan in a military manhunt operation by Pakistani Special Forces in South Waziristan

“Many al-Qaeda terrorists have passed through Darul Uloom. “Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla was a student of the mosque’s founder and present imam, Maulana Shafayat Mohamed. Now-dead al-Qaeda Global Operations Chief, Adnan el-Shukrijumah, was a prayer leader at Darul Uloom. And Darul Uloom Arabic teacher Imran Mandhai, along with mosque goers Hakki Aksoy and Shueyb Mossa Jokhan, hatched a plot at the mosque to blow up different South Florida structures, including area power stations, Jewish businesses, and a National Guard armory. (FrontPageMag)

That Hamze and Israel gave gun training to potential jihadists at the Darul Uloom Mosque is a public disgrace.

“The mosque’s imam, Shafayat Mohamed, who Sheriff Israel embraced and literally bowed to, has his own illicit history. Mohamed was thrown off a number of boards in Broward County for his outspokenness against gays. In February 2005, an article written by him was published on the Darul Uloom website (and is still there), entitled ‘Tsunami: Wrath of God,’ claiming that homosexual sex caused the 2004 Indonesian tsunami. In the piece, he also states that most Jews and Christians, whom he refers to as “People of the Book,” are “perverted transgressors.” (FrontPageMag)

In the immediate aftermath of the Florida school tragedy, Sheriff Israel has managed to shift public attention to school resource deputy Scot Peterson for failing to confront gunman Nikolas Cruz during the attack.

Israel said video showed the deputy arriving at the west side of the building where the shooting took place. Peterson then took up a position but “never went in.” The sheriff said the revelation made him “devastated”, and “sick to my stomach”.

News that a higher ranking officer at the Broward Sheriff’s Office was training nearby mosque attendees should come as a kick in the stomach for the loved ones of all those who lost their lives at the school.
According to information revealed by Laura Ingraham, Broward deputies were reportedly ordered not to enter the school during the shooting.

“According to “sources near the Broward County Sheriff’s Office,” the deputies who arrived at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were told not to enter the building “unless their body cameras were turned on.” (Mediate, Feb. 26. 201
Ingraham went on to report that the deputies didn’t have body cameras, making it impossible for them to enter the building.

It also turns out that Members of the Emergency Medical Service were also ordered not to enter the school in the critical moments after the shooting began.

Two separate sources told Fox News some of the EMS teams who requested to enter the school were told they could not. One source said it was the Broward County Sheriff’s Office - which was the commanding office - that ordered some of the EMS crews not to go into the school when they requested to enter.

The role played at the Parkland school by the Broward Sheriff’s Office is coming out in the wash.
The big question now is: When are Sheriff Scott Israel and his deputy Nezar Hamze going to be asked to turn their badges in?

https://canadafreepress.com/article/...protect-themse

Time Bomb: Obama Spread Broward County “No Arrest” Policy Across Entire Country

Thank you Obama!

"Broward County Deputy Sheriff Nezar Hamze, who takes his marching orders from Sheriff Scott Israel, has spent on-the-job time training attendees of Florida radical mosques how to protect themselves.

Picture Sheriff Hamze in full regalia at one of the mosques, brandishing a gun in each hand, turned out in a Muslim outfit that resembled a television detective’s trench coat and simulating firing at his enraptured audience. "

---------------------------------

What is being done to shut down these RADICAL MOSQUES! These people do not belong in our Country or their radical place of "hate and worship"!