"All the news that fits we print" and then the copyright
infringement story and the faux
NYTIMES...NOTE: we
subscribe to the NYTIMES online
N E W S O
F T H E W O R L D . . .
"BULLY PULPIT" DEPARTMENT: Bullying in schools and related matters...
"Old school tie" does carry greater weight across the pond
Stain From Tabloids Rubs Off on a Cozy
Scotland Yard
NYTIMES
By DON VAN NATTA Jr.
July 16, 2011
LONDON — For nearly four years they lay piled in a Scotland Yard
evidence room, six overstuffed plastic bags gathering dust and little
else.
Inside was a treasure-trove of evidence: 11,000 pages of handwritten
notes listing nearly 4,000 celebrities, politicians, sports stars,
police officials and crime victims whose phones may have been hacked by
The News of the World, a now defunct British tabloid newspaper.
Yet from August 2006, when the items were seized, until the autumn of
2010, no one at the Metropolitan Police Service, commonly referred to
as Scotland Yard, bothered to sort through all the material and catalog
every page, said former and current senior police officials.
During that same time, senior Scotland Yard officials assured
Parliament, judges, lawyers, potential hacking victims, the news media
and the public that there was no evidence of widespread hacking by the
tabloid. They steadfastly maintained that their original inquiry, which
led to the conviction of one reporter and one private investigator, had
put an end to what they called an isolated incident.
After the past week, that assertion has been reduced to tatters, torn
apart by a spectacular avalanche of contradictory evidence, admissions
by News International executives that hacking was more widespread, and
a reversal by police officials who now admit to mishandling the case.
Assistant Commissioner John Yates of the Metropolitan Police Service
publicly acknowledged that he had not actually gone through the
evidence. “I’m not going to go down and look at bin bags,” Mr. Yates
said, using the British term for trash bags.
At best, former Scotland Yard senior officers acknowledged in
interviews, the police have been lazy, incompetent and too cozy with
the people they should have regarded as suspects. At worst, they said,
some officers might be guilty of crimes themselves.
“It’s embarrassing, and it’s tragic,” said a retired Scotland Yard
veteran. “This has badly damaged the reputation of a really good
investigative organization. And there is a major crisis now in the
leadership of the Yard.”
The testimony and evidence that emerged last week, as well as
interviews with current and former officials, indicate that the police
agency and News International, the British subsidiary of Rupert
Murdoch’s News Corporation and the publisher of The News of the World,
became so intertwined that they wound up sharing the goal of containing
the investigation.
Members of Parliament said in interviews that they were troubled by a
“revolving door” between the police and News International, which
included a former top editor at The News of the World at the time of
the hacking who went on to work as a media strategist for Scotland Yard.
On Friday, The New York Times learned that the former editor, Neil
Wallis, was reporting back to News International while he was working
for the police on the hacking case.
Executives and others at the company also enjoyed close social ties to
Scotland Yard’s top officials. Since the hacking scandal began in 2006,
Mr. Yates and others regularly dined with editors from News
International papers, records show. Sir Paul Stephenson, the police
commissioner, met for meals 18 times with company executives and
editors during the investigation, including on eight occasions with Mr.
Wallis while he was still working at The News of the World.
Senior police officials declined several requests to be interviewed for
this article.
The police have continually asserted that the original investigation
was limited because the counterterrorism unit, which was in charge of
the case, was preoccupied with more pressing demands. At the
parliamentary committee hearing last week, the three officials said
they were working on 70 terrorist investigations.
Yet the Metropolitan Police unit that deals with special crimes, and
which had more resources and time available, could have taken over the
case, said four former senior investigators. One said it was “utter
nonsense” to argue that the department did not have enough resources.
Another senior investigator said officials saw the inquiry as being in
“safe hands” at the counterterrorism unit.
Interviews with current and former officials show that instead of
examining all the evidence, investigators primarily limited their
inquiry to 36 names that the private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire,
mentioned in one list.
As a result, Scotland Yard notified only a small number of the people
whose phones were hacked by The News of the World. Other people who
suspected foul play had to approach the police to see if their names
were in Mr. Mulcaire’s files.
“It’s one thing to decide not to investigate,” said Jeremy Reed, one of
the lawyers who represents numerous phone-hacking victims. “But it’s
quite another thing not to tell the victims. That’s just mind-blowing.”
Among the possible victims was former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who
asked the police last year to look into suspicions that his phones were
hacked. In response, Scotland Yard sent him a form letter saying it was
unclear whether the tabloid had eavesdropped on his conversations,
people with knowledge of the request said.
The police assigned a new team to the hacking allegations in September
after The New York Times published a magazine article that showed that
the practice was far more widespread and which raised questions about
Scotland Yard’s handling of the case.
Shortly after, the police finally reopened those “bin bags.” Now, the
police are enduring the painstaking and humiliating exercise of
notifying nearly 4,000 angry people listed in the documents that they
may have been targets of what now appears to be industrial-strength
hacking by The News of the World. The chore is likely to take years.
A Series of Inquiries
Scotland Yard’s new inquiry, dubbed Operation Weeting, has led to the
arrests of a total of nine reporters and editors, with more expected.
And the police have opened another inquiry into allegations that some
officers were paid for confidential information by reporters at The
News of the World and elsewhere.
The Metropolitan Police itself is now the subject of a judicial inquiry
into what went wrong with their initial case, as well as into the ties
between the department’s top officers and executives and reporters for
News International.
At a parliamentary committee hearing last week, three current and
former officials who ran the case were openly mocked. One member of
Parliament dubbed an investigator “more Clouseau than Colombo.”
At the hearing, the senior investigator in charge of the day-to-day
inquiry, Peter Clarke, blamed The News of the World’s “complete lack of
cooperation” for the shortcomings in the department’s initial
investigation.
While editors were not sharing any information, they were frequently
breaking bread with police officers. Andy Hayman, who as chief of the
counterterrorism unit was running the investigation, also attended four
dinners, lunches and receptions with News of the World editors,
including a dinner on April 25, 2006, while his officers were gathering
evidence in the case, records show. He told Parliament he never
discussed the investigation with editors.
Mr. Hayman left the Metropolitan Police in December 2007 and was soon
hired to write a column for The Times of London, a News International
paper. He defended the inquiry that he led, writing in his column in
July 2009 that his detectives had “left no stone unturned.”
Three months later, Mr. Wallis, the former deputy editor of The News of
the World, was hired by Scotland Yard to provide strategic media advice
on phone-hacking matters to the police commissioner, among others.
Scotland Yard confirmed last week that the commissioner, Sir Paul, had
personally approved nearly $40,000 in payments to Mr. Wallis for his
work.
But when Mr. Wallis was interviewed in April by a New York Times
reporter working on a story about the hacking, he did not disclose his
new media role at Scotland Yard. In the interview, Mr. Wallis defended
both the newspaper and the vigor of Scotland Yard’s initial
investigation.
A person familiar with the hacking investigation said on Friday that
Mr. Wallis had also informed Rebekah Brooks about The New York Times’s
reporting. Ms. Brooks, who resigned on Friday as chief executive
officer of News International, has maintained that she was unaware of
the hacking.
A News International spokeswoman said the company was reviewing whether
it had paid Mr. Wallis at the same time.
It is unclear whether Scotland Yard knew about Mr. Wallis’s activities.
While The New York Times was working on its article last year, Scotland
Yard was refusing to answer most of the detailed questions that The
Times submitted to it in a freedom of information request.
It was not until Thursday night that Scotland Yard revealed that Mr.
Wallis had worked for it for a year. That revelation came about 10
hours after he was arrested at his west London home in connection with
the phone hacking.
“This is stunning,” a senior Scotland Yard official who retired within
the past few years said when informed about Mr. Wallis’s secret dual
role. “It appears to be collusion. It has left a terrible odor around
the Yard.”
Sky News raised further questions about a possible link between Sir
Paul and Mr. Wallis on Saturday night. Just after Christmas last year
Sir Paul recovered from surgery at a Champneys Spa in Hertfordshire,
and his $19,000 bill was paid by a friend, the spa’s managing partner,
Sky News reported. Sir Paul learned Saturday that Mr. Wallis had worked
as a public-relations consultant for the spa, a police spokesperson
said, adding that “Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson is not considering
his position.” Mr. Stephenson had declared the stay on a gifts list,
Sky reported.
A lawyer for Mr. Wallis said there was no connection between Sir Paul’s
stay at the spa and Mr. Wallis. Mr. Wallis did not return calls seeking
comment.
He had worked as second in command at the tabloid under Andy Coulson,
who left the paper in 2007 after the private investigator and the
reporter were found guilty of hacking into the phones of members of the
royal family and their staff.
Shortly after, Mr. Coulson was hired by the Conservative Party to lead
its communications team. Last year, when David Cameron became prime
minister, he brought Mr. Coulson to 10 Downing Street. But Mr. Coulson
could never escape the hacking controversy. Once Scotland Yard decided
to reopen the case, he resigned and was arrested on July 8.
It was not until last autumn that the police were forced to confront
their own mistakes. By then, they were facing an escalating stream of
requests by people who suspected that their phones might have been
hacked. Two dozen people had also brought civil cases against News
International, and that compelled the police to release information
from Mr. Mulcaire’s files.
The documents were seized on Aug. 8, 2006, from Mr. Mulcaire’s home in
Cheam, south of London. Mr. Mulcaire, a 40-year-old former soccer
player whose nickname was “the Trigger,” was nothing if not a
meticulous note-keeper. On each page of the 11,000 documents, in the
upper-left-hand corner, he wrote the name of the reporter or editor
whom he was helping to hack phones.
Also seized from his home was “a target list” of the names of a total
of eight members of the royal family and their staff, and 28 others,
which Scotland Yard’s investigators used as their first road map of Mr.
Mulcaire’s activities.
‘A Mutual Trust’
From the beginning, Scotland Yard investigators treated The News of the
World with deference, searching a single desk in its newsroom and
counting on the staff’s future cooperation. “A mutual trust” is how one
police investigator described the relationship.
Leaders of the Metropolitan Police decided not to pursue a wide-ranging
“cleanup of the British media,” as one senior investigator put it. Mr.
Hayman, the investigator in charge, said in testimony before Parliament
last Tuesday that the inquiry was viewed as “not a big deal” at the
time.
The police charged only Mr. Mulcaire and the royal affairs reporter,
Clive Goodman. When the case was done, the evidence went into plastic
bags in a storage locker, several officials said. It was occasionally
reviewed, but a complete accounting would not be done until late 2010.
On July 9, 2009, Mr. Yates, the assistant commissioner, said, “It is
important to recognize that our inquires showed that in the vast
majority of cases there was insufficient evidence to show that tapping
had actually been achieved.”
And then last year, he told two parliamentary committees that a full
accounting of all the evidence had been done.
Mr. Yates said investigators presumed that the material in the files
was for legitimate purposes since it was the job of both Mr. Mulcaire
and Mr. Goodman “to gather personal data about high-profile figures.”
Yet on numerous occasions Mr. Yates assured the public that all those
affected had been notified.
He said the police had “taken all proper steps to ensure that where we
have evidence that people have been the subject of any form of phone
tapping, or that there is any suspicion that they might have been, that
they have been informed.”
The parliamentary committees declined to pursue the matter.
In the fall of 2006, Sir Ian Blair, then the police commissioner, had
the option of assigning the case to the Specialist Crime Directorate,
the division that handles homicides, robberies and the like. It had
3,500 detectives at its disposal and could have reviewed every
document, several former officials said.
The man leading the unit, Tarique Ghaffur, was known among his
colleagues for refusing to toe the line. Mr. Ghaffur had led an
internal inquiry into the police harassment of a prominent black
activist and concluded that the man had been the victim of
“unreasonable targeting by police officers.”
It was not until July 2009, three years after the evidence was seized,
that Mr. Yates ordered some of the names in Mr. Mulcaire’s files to be
put into a database, former officials said. But it fell far short of a
complete accounting, they said.
In one instance, the police thwarted a deeper look at their handling of
the evidence.
Last autumn, four people, including John Prescott, the former deputy
prime minister, and Brian Paddick, a former senior police official,
sought a judicial review to determine why Scotland Yard had not
notified all the hacking victims.
In response, lawyers for the police claimed that none of the four
plaintiffs’ phones had been accessed.
Last February, a judge ruled against going forward with an inquiry.
Within days, several plaintiffs received word from the police that
their phones might have been hacked.
“The court was misled,” said Tamsin Allen, who represents four people
who claim their phones were hacked. “It was pretty outrageous.”
A judge recently decided to open a new review of why Scotland Yard did
not notify everyone in Mr. Mulcaire’s files.
“I still don’t think we know the extent of what the police did and did
not do because we are only about halfway down into the murky pond,”
said Chris Bryant, a Labour member of Parliament who is one of the four
plaintiffs who applied for the judicial review.
A Toxic Atmosphere
Current and former officials said that shortly after Scotland Yard
began looking into the hacking, five senior police investigators
discovered that their own phones might have been broken into by The
News of the World.
At last week’s hearing in Parliament, Mr. Hayman, one of the five,
denied knowing if his phone had been hacked.
So far, only 170 phone-hacking victims have been notified.
A second police operation is now trying to determine how many officers
were paid for information from journalists working at The News of the
World and elsewhere. One of the challenges, a senior officer said, was
that the journalists’ records contained pseudonyms instead of the
officers’ names. There is suspicion that some pseudonyms were made up
by reporters to pocket cash from their editors, the officer said.
The atmosphere at Scotland Yard has become toxic. “Everyone is rowing
for the shore,” said a former senior Scotland Yard official. “Everyone
is distancing themselves from this mess.”
Sue Akers, a deputy assistant commissioner who is leading both police
inquiries, said the department faced a deep challenge to repair its
reputation.
“I think it is everybody’s analysis that confidence has been damaged,”
Ms. Akers told Parliament last week. “But I am confident that we have
got an excellent team who are working tirelessly to get this right.”
She added: “I hope that I do not have to come back here in five years’
time to explain why we failed.”
BULLYING AND RELATED MATTERS...
Nigerian woman sentenced to death
by stoning, and potential orphan son.
In
South Windsor, report on effectiveness of anti-bullying legislation so
far...BULLYING LAWS passed in CT and now even Weston has new buses with
videocam.
Districts rarely review school bus videos
Vinti Singh, Staff Writer
Updated 08:12 a.m., Tuesday, April 12, 2011
BRIDGEPORT -- Area school districts review school bus video camera
footage all the time. Sometimes, it's because one student won't let
another one sit in a particular seat. Other times, it's more serious.
Last week, Bridgeport school district officials had to review a tape
after a woman boarded a school bus and allegedly berated some of the
students on board.
School districts say they have been reviewing bus video footage even
before a Trumbull bus driver was sentenced to probation last week for
texting while driving at least 1,000 times. But officials said their
reviews are almost always prompted by a complaint and that they do not
believe systematically reviewing videos would be worth the time or cost.
Onboard surveillance cameras captured Trumbull bus driver Evelyn Guzman
texting, but police detectives would likely not have seen the footage
if a parent had not raised an unrelated concern about a student who
rode on Guzman's bus.
Kim Stagliano wondered why her 8-year-old autistic daughter would come
home from school every day crying and with bruises on her hands.
Stagliano asked the school district to look at the footage from the
security camera on the bus, which revealed that the bus monitor was
abusing her child. It also revealed Guzman was habitually texting.
"Schools should sample the videos regularly," Stagliano said. "The
cameras on the bus are fantastic, but if nobody is ever looking at them
until there is a problem, it's like a tree falling in the woods and
nobody hearing it."
Most school buses in the state are equipped with security cameras that
capture both students and the bus driver. Of the approximately 20
school districts in Fairfield County that contract with the bus company
First Student, about one-third have video cameras installed, a
representative for the company said. The videos are usually
reviewed only if a student or parent reports a problem on a bus ride.
"We're usually watching videos once a week," Milford Deputy
Superintendent Philip Russell said. "It's usually incident driven."
If the district randomly watched 30 hours of footage a week, it would
be able to monitor six of the district's 70 buses, Russell said.
Stratford public schools are operating on a lean budget, Superintendent
Irene Cornish said, making it difficult to pay someone to spend hours
watching the footage. Perhaps the school bus company could
dedicate one or two hours to watching a random bus route, Bridgeport
Transportation Director Raul Laffitte said.
"We don't have the time or resources, but they do have a safety person
who is in charge of reviewing videos," Laffitte said.
Bridgeport contracts for bus service with We Transport, a New
York-based company. We Transport watches about four video
sessions a week as a result of complaints from parents or drivers, said
Andrew Ifill, We Transport's director of Connecticut operations.
Cornish said she would be uncomfortable with having a third-party
contractor reviewing student and bus driver behavior and would rather
district employees sample footage.
The principal at Frenchtown Elementary School in Trumbull said she
watches one random video a week because the students were getting a bit
rowdy on the ride home. The biggest problem she's seen is kids not
staying in their seats.
"It does consume a lot of time," Principal Jacqueline Norcel said.
"It's 45 minutes each way, so it can take 90 minutes. I usually
fast-forward through a lot of it." Since the drivers do not work for
her, she does not watch them as closely, although she will tell the
district's transportation director if she witnesses a problem.
There are no state guidelines for onboard cameras. Video surveillance
policies vary by district. Some schools ask bus companies to turn over
all surveillance tapes. Others, like Bridgeport, ask the company to
review tapes for them. In Trumbull, recordings are archived for
one month. Trumbull parent Renee Oricchio, whose child also rode
Guzman's bus, said she has asked the administration to archive the
videos for a longer period.
As for the added cost of watching the video, Stagliano called it a
penny-wise and pound-foolish point of view.
"I am sure every school administrator would agree the threat of
lawsuits from families of children in a bus accident caused by an
errant driver has the potential to affect budgets far more than costs
of having single person spend X amount of hours a week looking at
tapes."
Miss Porter's School Sued Over Expulsion
The Hartford Courant
By VANESSA DE LA TORRE
December 10, 2008
Tatum Bass appeared to be thriving at the elite Miss Porter's School in
Farmington.
The senior from South Carolina ran track and belonged to a Christian
fellowship group. She traveled to Peru with other students to help
renovate an orphanage and regularly made the honor roll. In a sign of
the boarding student's social standing, her peers this year elected
Bass to serve on the Nova Nine — a panel of nine seniors that leads the
student body — as the student activities coordinator responsible for
the prom and other events.
Then, over the past three months, Bass became a campus pariah and was
expelled from the all-girls private school in November.
A federal lawsuit filed recently in U.S. District Court in New Haven
contends that students in a "secret society" orchestrated a bullying
campaign against Bass for her role early this school year in planning a
multi-school prom. The "Oprichniki," as the group called itself
according to the suit, apparently was named after the 16th-century
Russian secret police that brutally eliminated the czar's enemies.
In the civil suit against Miss Porter's and its head of school,
Katherine Windsor, Bass family attorneys say some girls, unhappy over
the Nova Nine's plans to hold a joint prom with students from other
schools, made Tatum Bass a target. The harassment weighed so heavily on
Bass, according to the suit, that she missed about a week of school.
The suit says the school's decision last month to expel her was based
largely on the unexcused absences and "violations of school rules." The
suit also acknowledges that Bass was suspended from school this fall
for cheating on a test.
But the lawsuit contends that Bass only cheated because she was
frazzled by the harassment and that Windsor and other Miss Porter's
officials neglected their duty to stop the abuse, despite repeated
pleas for intervention from Bass and her parents.
School officials declined to comment on any aspect of the suit,
including the existence of a Miss Porter's Oprichniki or school
policies on bullying.
"It's very important for me to respect the privacy of the Bass family,"
Windsor said.
Classmates, the suit says, belittled Bass for having attention deficit
disorder. They called her "retarded," yelled expletives at her at a
school dance and taunted her — through "text messages, on Facebook and
in person about being stupid and threatened to boycott the prom because
of her," the suit says.
The family is seeking a judgment voiding the expulsion as improper,
along with Bass' reinstatement at Miss Porter's as a student in good
standing and a temporary injunction preventing the school from
reporting the expulsion to colleges where Bass has applications
pending. The lawsuit also seeks more than $75,000 in damages and legal
fees.
Attorney Heather Spaide of the Bridgeport firm Cohen and Wolf P.C.,
which is representing Tatum Bass, did not return requests for comment.
The Oprichniki
The lawsuit singles out the girls in the Oprichniki as responsible for
much of the harassment.
"Oprichniki members were at the forefront of taunting Tatum in class
and advising others" about her ADD, the suit says.
Some students also circulated a petition within the senior class that
sought to cancel out Bass' vote as a member of the Nova Nine in an
attempt to derail plans for the multi-school prom, according to the
lawsuit.
The original Oprichniki were ruthless loyalists to Ivan the Terrible.
Dressed in black, they rode through the Russian countryside on black
horses and carriages and were said to impale, drown, hang, mutilate and
sometimes boil alive any suspected traitors. Their emblem — a dog's
head and a broom — was a reminder of how efficient they were in
sniffing and sweeping out the czar's enemies.
Bill Bass, president of an insurance agency, and Nina Bass, a pediatric
psychiatrist, flew to Connecticut in late September to speak with Miss
Porter's officials about the alleged bullying and its effect on their
daughter, according to the suit. Nina Bass met with Windsor twice, the
suit says, and after the trip repeatedly contacted Windsor and the
school throughout October when the harassment didn't stop.
The family's attorneys contend that when Bass used her notes to finish
an art history test on Oct. 27, it was a first-time cheating offense
that the teen attributed to the emotional stress of weeks of bullying.
The suit asserts that Bass was so disturbed by her own actions that she
sought out Windsor in tears to confess. School officials, the suit
says, then violated a Miss Porter's policy by alerting Vanderbilt
University that Bass, an early decision applicant, had received a
three-day suspension after that incident.
After serving the suspension off-campus, the suit says, Bass returned
to her classes, but slept at a local hotel with her parents. More
on-campus harassment made the environment "emotionally traumatic" for
Bass, who sought medical treatment for anxiety and missed about a week
of classes.
On Nov. 11, the suit says, a week before learning that school officials
planned to expel her from Miss Porter's, Bill and Nina Bass went with
their daughter to get a few things from her dorm room.
Inside, they found Tatum's belongings tossed in a corner, according to
the suit. On her bed someone had placed a "For Rent" sign.
Uncounted
Problems With School Bullying
Data?
By JIM FARRELL, Courant Staff Writer
October 22, 2006
SOUTH
WINDSOR -- Andrew Recato and his girlfriend had an ugly breakup
last spring that splintered the clique both belonged to.
Since then, Andrew, now 16, has been beaten up in a hallway and
threatened via an anonymous message left on his home answering machine.
He stayed home for the last five weeks of the school year because he
said he was afraid of being beaten again. Since returning this fall, he
has been given a "permanent pass" so he can seek sanctuary in the main
office whenever he chooses.
But he hasn't been bullied at school, South Windsor High School
officials concluded. They report that they have had no verified acts of
bullying since the state's anti-bullying act was passed in 2002.
"I find that unbelievable," said state Sen. Thomas Gaffey, D-Meriden,
who helped draft the law and said he considers bullying to be a problem
with profound implications in education. "Any school reporting no
verified acts of bullying - I call into question whether they are doing
their jobs."
South Windsor is one of 14 schools from about 30 surveyed by The
Courant that reported no verified acts of bullying last year.
Only two schools - Middletown High School and Carmen Arace Middle
School in Bloomfield - reported more than six. The incongruities
don't surprise Scott Newgass, who works for the state Department of
Education on matters related to bullying and school safety.
"These are very complex issues," he said, citing reasons that include
longstanding ambiguities about the very definition of bullying.
Connecticut passed its anti-bullying law after a Meriden boy,
12-year-old Daniel Scruggs, committed suicide. His mother, Judith, was
among those who said the boy's death was the result of bullying.
The law is multifaceted. It requires, for example, that school
districts create systems so that acts of bullying can be reported
anonymously and that parents of students involved - as either the
aggressor or the victim - be notified. The law also mandates that
every school maintain a list of the number of verified acts of bullying
and make lists available for public inspection. But state officials say
there has been no effort to learn what those lists reveal.
Gaffey said that needs to change, and that schools should be required
to publicize their bullying data rather than just provide information
if asked.
"Incidents of bullying go on every day and can have a horrible,
profoundly negative impact on the psyche of a child," he said, adding
that he believes that "schools have a tendency to circle the wagons
when it comes to information they don't see as very positive."
Confusing Mandates
When it comes to tracking school safety, local officials face a number
of reporting demands that some say are confusing and redundant.
Apart from keeping a bullying log, schools are required to submit
records to the state on incidents that lead to suspensions or
expulsions. Bullying is one category on these disciplinary reports, but
so are verbal altercation, physical altercation and threat/intimidation.
Some principals, in response to a request for their school's bullying
log, said they had no suspensions or expulsions due to bullying.
Newgass said such an approach leads to distortions. For example, he
noted that prolonged, repeated harassment that led to a fight might be
logged as an assault - but never recognized as an act of bullying.
Also, he said any bullying that did not lead to at least a suspension
would never be recognized by schools that use their disciplinary record
as a de facto bullying log.
Carmen Arace Middle School had 18 verified acts of bullying last year -
more than any other school surveyed by The Courant. In some cases,
Principal Sam Galloway said, the problems were solved using
interventions that did not include suspensions or expulsions, and thus
did not become part of the school's disciplinary report.
Newgass said such candid reporting was commendable and consistent with
the intent of the law.
Brenda High, director of an Internet-based watchdog group call Bully
Police USA, said schools are notorious for interpreting standards in
self-serving ways.
"It's one thing to know the rules of the game, it's another to obey
them," she said, adding, "I would be more worried about a school that
says it has no bullying than one that said, `We've had 10 incidents.'
They know they've got a problem and they're dealing with it."
Robert Kozaczka, the school superintendent in South Windsor, said he
objects to such insinuations.
"We're certainly not turning a blind eye," he said, adding that the
school devotes a great deal of time and resources to creating a climate
that ensures student safety. "I would offer to those people who are
somewhat suspicious to spend a day in the high school with an assistant
principal, seeing what they do."
Donald Sierakowski, the principal of Manchester High School, which has
2,200 students and reported no bullying last year, said preoccupation
with data is of little value.
"If the point of the law is making statistics, well, we can do that,"
he said. "But our focus is on helping kids."
Sierakowski said "one or two interventions" usually end conflicts at
the high school. He added that his interpretation of the "over time"
portion of the bullying law is "a period of months when something
doesn't stop."
At 1,300-student Middletown High School, which had 12 verified acts
last year and 17 in 2004-05, Principal Robert Fontaine said repeated
acts over "a couple of weeks" could constitute bullying. Citing hallway
behavior, Fontaine said "a bump and a comment, a bump and a comment -
we would interpret that as bullying if it goes on over time."
Fontaine said he was skeptical of schools that reported no acts of
bullying and said, "We're willing to acknowledge a reality that
everyone knows exists" even though he said that he knows such candor
can stigmatize a school.
Andrew's Case
John DiIorio, the principal at South Windsor High School, said he could
not comment on the case involving Andrew Recato beyond saying the
school responds promptly and firmly when students are harassed or
otherwise intimidated.
"If something happens once and gets resolved, it doesn't rise to
bullying," he said, alluding to part of the state's definition of
bullying that refers to acts that "are repeated against the same
student over time."
The law does not specify what "over time" means, nor is it clear on
issues related to possible bullying outside of the school
setting. In the Recato case, for example, most of the documented
problems have taken place away from school. Andrew Recato, who is
now 16 and a junior, said his life was relatively "drama free" until he
broke up with his girlfriend last March. Soon thereafter, Andrew said,
the girl began telling people that he had slapped her after he found
out she had cheated on him.
Andrew said he has never hit a girl but added that he could not stop
the swirl of rumors that followed, not only in school but online and
over the phone.
"I started hearing, `That's him,' from people I didn't know around
school," he said, adding that ex-friends warned him to "watch your
back."
Shortly after midnight on March 19, a message was left on the family's
phone that said, "Bitch, I'm going to kill you."
Jay Recato, Andrew's father, summoned police, but they were unable to
intervene because the source of the call could not be determined and
Andrew didn't recognize the voice. Tensions escalated again in
May, when Andrew said he confronted his ex-girlfriend after lunch,
began yelling at her and ended up with a one-day suspension.
Two weeks later, Andrew said, he was in a hallway when 20 to 25
students surrounded him.
"A tall guy comes up and said, `You've got some explaining to do,'"
Andrew said. "I was pinned against the wall. Everyone was cheering him
on."
Andrew was punched in the face just before an associate principal
arrived. Although the assailant was arrested, Jay Recato said he
decided to keep Andrew out of school for the rest of the year.
"I feared for his safety," the father said, adding that he contacted
school officials, a lawyer, even a doctor who examined Andrew and
reported that he was suffering from "acute stress disorder,
hypervigilance and general heightened anxiety."
During the summer, Andrew said, three teenagers came to his house,
threatened him and forced him to call his ex-girlfriend and apologize
as they listened in. Jay Recato said he implored the district to
arrange for Andrew to be sent to West Hartford or Avon - districts that
have high schools on par with South Windsor - or to East Catholic, a
parochial high school in Manchester.
When the request was not granted, Jay Recato pressed for assurances
that Andrew would get extra protection when South Windsor schools
opened in late August. Among other steps, the school security
guard was notified of Andrew's schedule and is expected "to routinely
check to see that there are no problems."
Things have gone smoothly so far this year, Andrew said, but his father
remains concerned.
"I have no hope that Andrew will be transferred but at the same time,
I'm hopeful there will be no more incidents," he said, adding that he
believes the district is more interested in preserving its reputation
than in his son's well-being.
"It's about the system," Jay Recato said. "The system did not work for
us."
Saturday, 18 January, 2003, 10:19
GMT (I-BBC)
Writer's anger
over Miss World deaths; Churches and mosques were destroyed in
the
riots
The Nigerian journalist whose article
about the Prophet Mohammed and Miss World contestants sparked deadly
riots
in Nigeria says she will probably spend the rest of her life in hiding.
In
an exclusive interview with the
BBC, Isioma Daniel said her initial guilt soon turned to anger that
fanatics
would use a newspaper article as an excuse to kill. People used
her
article to "unleash their anger, their frustration with other aspects
of
their life".
More
than 200 people died in violence
between Christians and Muslims last November, while the beauty pageant
was moved to London. Trouble was centred on Kaduna - a city in
the
mainly Muslim north of Nigeria which has a large Christian minority.
Wife
suggestion
Daniel,
21, told BBC Radio 4's Today
programme she was still coming to terms with the consequences of her
article.
A fatwa - a religious edict calling for her death - was issued against
her by the government of Zamfara state. It followed an article
she
wrote in the newspaper ThisDay claiming that the Prophet Mohammed would
not have complained about the Miss World competition, and may have even
chosen to marry one of the contestants.
She
wrote: "The Muslims thought it
was immoral to bring 92 women to Nigeria to ask them to revel in
vanity.
"What would Mohammed think? In
all honesty, he would probably have
chosen a wife from one of them." She told the BBC's Zubeida Malik
she acknowledged her article had sparked the unrest.
"At
first I did feel very guilty,
but eventually I thought to myself, this is ridiculous, they're taking
this thing overboard," she said. "There's no reason why someone
should
write something and you immediately think it gives you the right to go
out and kill innocent people. "They used it as an excuse to
unleash
their anger, their frustration with other aspects of their life. And
unfortunately,
I gave them that excuse. It was not a normal reaction."
No
bodyguard
Now
living in hiding, Daniel is coming
to grips with not having any personal security, while being one of the
most sought after people in the world.
"It's
quite difficult, because I'm
not with my family, I'm not with any friends, in a place I've never
been
to before," she said. "I haven't got a bodyguard, or anything
like
that. I'm not being given the same kind of priority that Salman Rushdie
probably got, because the fatwa was issued by... a secular country."
Rushdie
was the subject of a fatwa
in 1989, when the Iranian Government called for his death, saying his
"Satanic
Verses" was blasphemous. Daniel is now trying to sort out her
life
away from Nigeria. "I have to have plans for the future. I'm only
21," she said. "I hope I'll be able to write a book... I've got a
long, long road ahead of me."
Wednesday, 27 November, 2002, 11:24
GMT
Fatwa journalist
'flees Nigeria' - Thousands were left homeless by the violence
Fashion writer Isioma Daniel is
reported to have left Nigeria after calls for her to be killed for
insulting
the Prophet Mohammed. Colleagues at ThisDay newspaper say she is
now in the United States, according to Reuters news agency.
On
Tuesday, authorities in the northern
state of Zamfara issued what they said was a "fatwa", urging Muslims to
kill her for writing the article, which sparked religious riots in the
northern city of Kaduna.
At
least 220 people were killed in
several days of clashes between the city's Muslims and Christians.
Kaduna
is now reported to be calm. A fatwa is a religious decree which
is
normally made by an Islamic scholar but a spokesman for Zamfara state
said
that any leader could issue one. Opinion is divided among Muslim
leaders about whether the Zamfara fatwa is indeed valid.
Some
say that because Ms Daniel has
apologised and also resigned from her job, she does not deserve to be
killed.
Political
divide
The
new journalism graduate wrote
an article in response to Muslim objections to Nigeria's hosting of the
Miss World beauty contest, saying that the Prophet Mohammed would not
have
complained about the pageant and indeed, may have chosen to marry one
of
the beauty queens. This infuriated many Muslims, who destroyed
ThisDay's
Kaduna office and went on to burn down churches and hotels last week.
Correspondents
say this is the latest
example of a split between politicians in the Muslim north and the
federal
government, which is largely made up of southern Christians.
President
Olusegun Obasanjo, a born-again Christian, is seeking re-election next
year.
The
federal government has said that
it will not allow the death sentence to be carried but no action is
being
taken against the deputy governor of Zamfara state.
'Null
and void'
Mamuda
Aliyu Shinkafi told religious
leaders in Zamfara state capital, Gusau: "Like Salman Rushdie, the
blood
of Isioma Daniel can be shed."
The
speech was rebroadcast on local
radio in Zamfara state, which was the first state in Nigeria to
introduce
Islamic law in January 2000. "It is binding on all Muslims
wherever
they are, to consider the killing of the writer as a religious duty".
The
Miss World contest was moved
to London after the riots. A Muslim cleric in the capital, Abuja,
said that Ms Daniel could only escape the death penalty by converting
to
Islam. Hussein Muhammed told the BBC Focus on Africa programme
that
if he saw her, he would kill her, even if that meant going to prison
because
Islamic law is more important to him than Nigerian law. "I would
be willing to kill my parents for Mohammed," he said.
But
other Muslim leaders have a different
view.
"ThisDay
newspaper has apologised
on her (Ms Daniel's) behalf, so the fatwa has to be withdrawn,"
Kaduna-based
Islamic scholar Ali Alkali told Reuters.
Ann
Cooper, executive director of
the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said: "We are
extremely
concerned about her safety. In this whole controversy, I think
something
that has been completely lost is the universal right to free
expression."
Just The Latest Fad
November 17, 2002 - Laurence D. Cohen
Miss America, who was carefully manufactured over
decades to promote the money-grubbing commercial
interests of Atlantic City, has been transformed over the
years into an Oprah-like fountain of emotion and social
concern. To be a bathing-suit babe certainly doesn't hurt,
but in the end, the best little girl in America needs a
cause, be it world peace, combating hunger or flossing
between meals.
The current Miss America, Erika Harold, came to town last
week with her prescription for pathology: the battle against
bullying.
She's got nice hair and interesting collar bones, but with
this anti-bullying business, she's really struck the mother
lode. Within a few months, she'll start getting buildings
named after her.
The timing of her emergence as an anti-bullying advocate
couldn't be better. The nation is awash in a sea of
government initiatives and academic programs and state
laws that encourage both the detection of and the battle
against school bullies. What better way to grease the
skids for that next anti-bullying grant than to ponder
images of Miss America in her evening gown, doing the
anti-bully cha-cha-cha?
Having exhausted the compassion and government
money available for the usual collection of victims and
misfits and addicts and disaffected youths and surly
adults, the caring professions have unveiled the bullying
epidemic as the latest fad on which to fixate.
The joy of the bullying epidemic is that the supply of
perpetrators and victims is almost endless. It's somewhat
akin to getting funded to count the number of fish that
swim. A clever cadre of social workers and psychologists
could soak up every available education and mental
health dollar for the next decade by simply identifying the
bullies and their victims.
A government study this year in Great Britain reported that
more than 40 percent of kids said they were victims of
bullying, or at least were made to "feel like an outsider" at
school. Ten percent of American kids are regularly bullied
at school, according to the Project on Teasing and
Bullying (and quite a project it must be) at Wellesley
College in Massachusetts.
The bullying numbers are all over the place, since most of
them are based on self-reporting by kids who will tell
adults almost anything they want to hear and on
definitions of bullying that are mysterious, vague and
flexible, depending on who is doing the counting. A survey
by the cops this year in Oak Harbor, Wash., found that 89
percent of the local high school students had engaged in
bullying behavior - a veritable Garden of Eden for
anti-bullying research and development, if one assumes
the numbers aren't ridiculous.
Connecticut is one of the states that, fueled by
federal-grant fever, jumped on the anti-bullying
bandwagon this year and rammed through legislation
ordering the state's public schools to count and track and
report and, presumably, pay some attention to incidents of
bullying. It was a wonderful piece of legislation to watch
being created, this solution in search of a problem. The
anti-bullying legislation prompted significant
head-scratching among the lawmakers, since no one
could quite decide what bullying was - making it more
difficult for school systems to report it.
The lawmakers finally settled on something about
"ridicule" and "humiliation" and "intimidation," which, as
any adult who has spent more than 6 seconds on a
school playground knows, effectively stigmatizes the
entire school population.
School administrators were horrified by this piece of fluff,
which in effect drowns them in a sea of meaningless
report writing, counting, investigating, informing,
evaluating, verifying and reviewing every single supposed
act of bullying, including anonymous complaints that the
students can make up on April Fool's Day.
It might well be that Miss America, when she takes time
off from her ribbon-cutting at the openings of new
shopping centers, can convince us that this anti-bullying
business is about something more than the funding of
workshops, consultants, trainers and academic programs
on nothing much at all.
Or perhaps we'll just wait for next year, with a new Miss
America and a new issue.
So many problems. So many funding sources. Where will
it end?
Laurence D. Cohen is a senior fellow at the Yankee
Institute for Public Policy in Hartford and a public-relations
consultant. His column appears every Sunday and every
other Thursday.
YALE DAILY NEWS
Published Thursday, February
12, 2004
Senator's record means
questionable
electability
I'm not holding my breath, but an
apt slogan for Democratic Senator John Kerry might be, "Kerry:
Candidate
of the Living Dead." Barely a month ago, Kerry's presidential campaign
seemed to have all the life of three-legged arthritic dog stricken with
cancer. Pundits everywhere were polishing their Kerry eulogies, and the
candidate had practically been stuffed into a political casket.
On
the night of the Iowa Caucuses,
however, something rather awkward happened; the supposedly dead
presidential
contender coolly stepped out of his casket and walked off to become the
new prohibitive front runner of the race. Democrats in Iowa, New
Hampshire
and now 10 other states flocked at the 11th hour to Kerry's banner, but
not, generally speaking, because they particularly liked his economic
policy,
or his foreign policy, or even his character. Democrats in those
states,
and across the country, supported and are supporting John Kerry because
they consider him to be more "electable."
Conventional
political wisdom holds
that voters are generally incapable of voting strategically -- they
vote
for the guy they like, the guy they want to actually have as president.
But this year's Democratic presidential free-for-all has been anything
but conventional, and Democratic desperation to evict the current
occupant
of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue proved decisive. Over and over again, the
refrain
was heard: "I like Howard Dean, but I just don't think he can win." And
so, in a last minute, last-ditch effort to find someone who could,
voters
settled on the apparently more experienced, apparently more moderate,
and
certainly more decorated John Kerry.
The
problem, as David Brooks pointed
out in his New York Times column on Jan. 31, is that "electability is
all
about Iowa and New Hampshire liberals trying to imagine what Palm Beach
County, Florida independents will want in a presidential candidate nine
months from now," and of course Iowa and New Hampshire liberals are not
very good at doing this.
I
like John Kerry. Most Democrats
do. The man fought in the United States Senate for decades to defend
democratic
values (both the big d and little d kind) and fought in Vietnam for
years
to defend his country, and neither service should be taken lightly. But
for Kerry to be somehow "more
electable" than Howard Dean, he
has to be in a better position to make a strong case against Bush. And
the simple fact is that he isn't.
Consider
what I take to be four of
the biggest initiatives of the Bush presidency so far: the war in Iraq,
the Patriot Act, the "No Child Left Behind" Act, and the tax cut bills.
These four Bush initiatives are essentially the Bush record, and if we
want to persuade the general public to fire its
sitting president, we have to persuade
that public that the Bush record is bad. The candidate that the
Democratic
Party needs is thus a candidate who provides a clear contrast with Bush
on at least some of these issues, a candidate who has opposed Bush's
bad
ideas from the very beginning.
John
Kerry is simply not that candidate;
his positions on all four issues have been seriously compromised. He
voted
to authorize the war in Iraq, but opposed the first Gulf War and voted
against funding our present occupation. He voted for the Patriot Act,
even
though today he calls it deeply flawed. He voted for No Child Left
Behind,
but now angrily denounces it on the campaign trail as well. On tax cuts
he has the opposite problem: he voted against the tax cuts, but now
wants
to preserve pieces of them.
Are
all these positions explainable?
Of course. Senators are inevitably put into difficult positions when,
at
the end of the day, they are asked to vote either "yes" or "no" on
issues
that are never black and white. The war in Iraq, the tax cuts, the
education
bill and the Patriot Act are all
enormously complex issues -- like
most thinking Americans, Kerry supported elements of each, and didn't
have
the luxury of voting only for those elements that he supported. That's
the hard life of a senator.
But
maybe that's also why it's been
40 years since a senator ascended to the presidency -- the nuances of a
Senate vote simply don't translate well into a 30-second sound bite. To
people who take the time to examine the record, Kerry's votes are
explainable,
but Americans usually don't
examine the record in an election
year, and in a 30-second ad with scary music, Kerry's votes and
statements
look like egregious flip-flops. Armed with a $200 million war chest,
Republicans
will gleefully paint him as the quintessential Massachusetts liberal, a
waffling and indecisive wimp
pathetically incapable of taking
on the Saddams and Osamas of the world. One of my good friends on
campus
keeps referring to John Kerry as "princely." It doesn't matter how
princely
he is; the cold hard fact is that he is simply not positioned to run
against
this president.
Which
is too bad, because he seems
almost certain to do so anyway. If Democratic primary voters really
care
about electability, they must take one last hard look at John Kerry
before
they nominate him. The party would be much better off if Kerry would
politely
climb back into his political grave.
Roger
Low is a freshman in Branford
College. He is the head of publicity for Yalies for Howard Dean.
Superior Court Dockets
Now Accessible Online
Courant Staff Report
January 18, 2007
For the first time, Superior Court adult criminal dockets are available
online. Lawyers, adult criminal defendants, employers and others
can
search the daily dockets for all the state's courts to find out whether
people have been arrested, are in court or should be in court.
The state judicial branch started offering the dockets electronically
on its website Tuesday.
Interested parties can find a list of all criminal defendants scheduled
to appear in a particular courthouse on a given day, their birth year,
the charges against them, their lawyers' names, their pleas to the
charges and the amounts of their bond if applicable.
State judicial officials said they created the website in response to
the recommendations of a task force, which recently studied ways to
improve public access to court records. Officials hope to expand the
database within the next six months to include lists of criminal
convictions.
For now, the information is limited to parties scheduled to appear in
court. This week, the dockets for a particular day will be available
after 8:30 p.m. the preceding business day. The time will be moved up
to 7:30 p.m. next week, officials said.
To protect some individuals' privacy should their cases become sealed
or otherwise dismissed, the judicial branch is not offering an online
archive of daily dockets. Each day, new dockets will replace the old
dockets for each court and visitors to the website will not be able to
search dockets for any preceding days.
Users of the site, however, can search for an individual by name across
the state as well as by courthouse. A similar search engine has been in
place for pending civil cases for some time.
The information on the adult criminal dockets can be found at www.jud2.ct.gov/crdockets.