Teachers As Cops?

by Tracey Middlekauff

29 October 01

In a Manhattan public school, a boy kissed a girl while they were alone. She complained to a teacher. He protested that she wanted him to kiss her; she said that she did not. The teacher called the cops. The boy was taken away in handcuffs.

“I’m not going to defend what he did, I have three daughters,” says Jill Herman, who was principal of the school at the time. “But I don’t know if it was criminal. I don’t know if it was harassment. I felt it could have been worked out.”

But Herman had no discretion to do so, she says, because Board of Education regulations dictate that such an incident must be reported to the police.

On November 6, voters have an opportunity to weigh in on an issue that is more complicated than recent headlines might suggest. One of the proposals that will be on the ballot,
called the school reporting proposal, would, if passed, “require Board of Education officials and employees to report immediately to the New York Police Department information relating to suspected crimes in public schools, including sex-offenses and violent crimes.” It would turn policy into law, and levy a legal punishment on those teachers and others who did not contact the police.

It would be difficult to find anyone who would argue that teachers should not report cases of adult misconduct towards children. But what about peer shenanigans such as that incident in Jill Herman’s old school? What exactly are “suspected crimes,” critics ask, and should teachers under threat of punishment take on in effect the role of cops?

A RISE IN INCIDENTS?

Several recent cases of sexual assault perpetrated by students have contributed to the perception that the situation is spiraling out of control. In October of last year, a 12-year-old girl at MS 2 in Brooklyn was allegedly pulled to the ground and sexually assaulted by a 13-year old boy; the Daily News reported that the school did not allow the girl to call home
after the incident. Three students at IS 158 in the Bronx were charged with attempted rape against a 14-year old girl last May, and a teacher there told the Daily News that sexual activity in the school was rampant. In another case last spring, two 6th grade boys at Community School 66 in the Bronx were charged with trapping two girls, 11 and 12, in the stairwell and then fondling them; school officials reportedly failed to notify police of the incident.

In May, second-grade Bronx teacher Milton McFarlane was charged with sexual abuse, sodomy, sexual misconduct and endangering the welfare of a child after allegations that he victimized a 9-year-old boy in his classroom. What shocked many, beyond the act itself, was that McFarlane had been charged with the same criminal counts involving an 8-year-old boy in an earlier instance and was still teaching.

Taken at face value, the statistics paint a bleak picture of the situation as well. The New York Times reported in June that sexual incidents for the year 2001 jumped 13 percent to 354, four times the national average, while other crimes in schools appeared to be down.

The problem, many say, is that these statistics do not paint an accurate picture. Three-quarters of the incidents are classified as third degree, the least serious, which can include a wide array of offenses, and does not differentiate between acts perpetrated by students or teachers. It is also unclear whether the number of incidents have risen, or whether reporting has risen. Additionally, it is unclear from the statistics what sorts of incidents, if any, have increased. Donna Lieberman, an attorney for the New York Civil Liberties Union, says, “Nobody has an accurate assessment. It is all being lumped together.”

A REPORTING PROBLEM

Faced with highly publicized incidents in which school authorities failed to do anything, Schools Chancellor Harold Levy distributed a policy directive in June, 2000 to all school principals which mandated, upon threat of disciplinary action, that all incidents of a criminal nature be reported to the police.

In June 2001, the City Council Education Committee drafted legislation that would legally require all Board of Ed employees to report any crime or suspected crime to the police; failure to do so would risk being found guilty of a misdemeanor, with a possible one-year jail sentence or a fine of up to $1,000. A vote has been indefinitely postponed.

But now the charter proposal on school reporting will be on the ballot.

Levy was careful in his testimony before the City Council to emphasize that “we do not [want to] act in a way that criminalizes behavior that in some cases could be developmentally appropriate.” But many experts say that over reporting has already led to criminalization of such behavior.

PRO AND CON

Jill Chaifetz of Advocates for Children, a group which, among other things, works in educational advocacy, says that no one is against making schools safe. However, she adds, “Ever since Levy announced you’ll get fined if you don’t report everything, reporting has skyrocketed. … We’re getting the craziest cases. A 6-year-old girl had a pointy comb and was suspended for bringing a dangerous weapon. … We’ve had 6-year olds accused of sexual harassment.” Chaifetz says that there has been a “general complete overreaction.” The passage of the legislation or the charter revision proposal would only make things worse, she feels.

Detective Terrance Wansley, a co-founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement, says that he can see merits on both sides of the issue. At the same time, he feels that a blanket mandate to report all suspected offenses could lead to problems. “I can say, as it stands, unless they get very specific, it’s going to be a mess,” Wansley says. Of course, he points out, as everyone agrees, all cases involving an adult must be taken very seriously and be reported. But in cases of alleged peer-on-peer misconduct, he points out some difficulties he has faced.

“I’ve found it difficult, as an investigator, to go into certain schools and interview students–victims or perpetrators,” he says. In addition, he says, “I’ve seen school officials relay just the bare, incomplete facts. School officials aren’t trained in criminal activity.”

Indeed, better training for teachers is an issue some point to as not only a good preventive measure, but also a good way to deal with the current reporting situation. Advocates like Chaifetz and Lieberman argue that the Board of Ed needs to draw a clear line between criminal and inappropriate behavior, and then give the teachers the skills necessary to accurately perceive the difference. “If the school system holds principals accountable and gives them the means to train their staff, we’ll go a long way towards dealing with disciplinary problems,” Lieberman maintains. “Kneejerk penalties with criminal sentences is counterproductive.”

Chancellor Levy, in his testimony on the school crime reporting bill, pointed to prevention programs such as conflict resolution, mentoring efforts, and gang preventions programs as steps the board has taken to help keep students safe from violence of all kinds. But Jill Chaifetz does not see enough emphasis on the right kinds of prevention. She cites measures such as peer-to-peer training, teaching students about inappropriate behavior, and more clear training for teachers as steps in the right direction. Jill Herman, the principal with the smooching boy, concurs. “We need to have real discussions about gray areas, and about what is expected adolescent behavior.”

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Journalism Fights
Corporate, Legal Battles

8.29 a.m. ET (1329 GMT) November 19, 1999

By Tracey Middlekauff

NEW YORK — There’s a fair chance the evening
news you watched last night, the movie you’re going to see this weekend
and the book you just ordered online are all brought to you by the same
umbrella company.

Over the past two decades, giant media corporations have been on a mergers
and acquisitions binges involving both journalistic and entertainment
enterprises.

The recent Michael Mann film The Insider depicts this relationship
between journalism and big business. The film dramatizes how CBS News
allegedly bowed to corporate pressure when it decided to pull an interview
Mike Wallace conducted with Jeffrey Wigand, a whistle-blower from the
tobacco behemoth of Brown & Williamson.

In the actual incident upon which The Insider is based, CBS News,
its lawyers claimed, could be subject to a lawsuit by Brown & Williamson
for what they called “tortious interference,” or inducing a source (Wigand)
to break a binding contract, in this case his non-disclosure agreement
with Brown & Williamson.

But some believe CBS’ more pressing concern was their impending purchase
by Westinghouse. If they were in the midst of a lawsuit, big money could
be lost.

Was this just an isolated incident? Or is journalism in the age of big
business and the multimedia corporation doomed?

Paul Janensch, a 30-year journalism veteran and professor of mass communications
and journalism at Quinnipiac College in Connecticut, believes there is
cause for concern.

“I teach students that in this country, the mission of the news media
is to make money and serve the public,” he says. “You can’t do good journalism
unless you’re part of a thriving business. But the primary mission is
to serve the public, and that’s being overwhelmed by money, big money.”

As for the CBS case, Janensch says, “I’ve dealt with lawyers a lot when
preparing sensitive stories, and I’ve never heard of tortious interference.
That’s totally obscure. It was clear their concern was over their negotiations
with Westinghouse.”

AP/Wide World Al Pacino plays ‘60 Minutes’ producer Lowell Bergman in ‘The Insider’

Another problem, according to Janensch, is that those in charge of corporations
with news branches don’t have any newsroom experience themselves. Bob
Giles, senior vice president of the Freedom Forum, agrees.

“I think the people who are running newsrooms are as committed to the
core values of journalism as ever,” Giles says. But, he adds, “Some of
the people who run these big corporations don’t share the values of the
people who run the newsrooms.”

Case in point: The L.A. Times-Staples Center Arena story. The
October 10, 1999 edition of the L.A. Times Sunday magazine was
devoted solely to the Staples Center Arena. Unbeknownst to the editorial
staff of the Times, publisher Kathryn Downing had agreed to a deal
to share advertising revenue with the owners of the arena. The editorial
staff was outraged the sacred wall between the advertising and editorial
departments had been breached in this way.

Another trend in journalism is what Dirk Smillie calls “cross-promotion.”
Smillie, the director of the New-York based News Research Group, a non-partisan
media research organization, believes investigative journalism is being
replaced by cross-promotional journalism. He cites as an example Time magazine’s nine-page cover story on the Pokémon movie. Warner Bros.
distributes the film and the WB network owns the TV series, both of which
are sister corporations under the same umbrella corporation (Time Warner)
as Time magazine.

Smillie, like Janensch and Giles, believes money is one of the culprits.
“You have a lot of MBAs running corporations,” he says. “Those values
get telegraphed down.”

While the above example indicates how a product may get promoted when
it’s in the interests of a corporation, the case of Thomas Maier illustrates
what can happen when a huge publishing concern is threatened by unfavorable
information.

In 1997, Maier, now a reporter for New York’s Newsday, published
a book about publishing giant Si Newhouse, then-owner of Random House,
the New Yorker, Vanity Fair and one of the nation’s largest
newspaper chains. Maier had a tough time getting his book out. He says,
“Nobody wanted to publish a book about the biggest guy in book publishing
at the time.”

Even though the book was voted Best Media Book of the Year by the National
Honor Society in Journalism, it went unreviewed in any Newhouse publication.
Later, after Maier wrote another book, this time about baby-care guru
Dr. Spock, he says, “I shopped that around, but the world where I could
shop it was much narrower. … I’m proud of (Newhouse) but I was unaware
of the consequences.”

For Janensch, the inevitable result of so many conflicting interests
will be the erosion of the media’s credibility. “Fundamentally, I’m an
optimistic person,” he says, “but I see this as part of a continuing trend.”

What can be done about it? Some might call for more regulation, but
Gregg Leslie, the acting executive director for the Reporters Committee
for Freedom of the Press, a group primarily concerned with media law,
does not see legislation as a viable answer.

“We see the temptation (in journalism) towards more business-related
dealings,” Leslie says. “We hope they’ll learn their lessons early on.
… Once you get a news organization doing promotion for a commercial
venture, the biggest risk is to their credibility. But we would object
if the government tried to regulate that. … The government shouldn’t
decide news content.”

Perhaps the role of watchdog should be placed in the hands of the consumer.
Dirk Smillie points out in the current climate, “It’s left up to the news
customer to figure out what’s the news angle on a particular story. …
It gets so complicated.”

Complicated, indeed. But Smillie adds, “Traditional news organizations
have been compromised, so people are going to look elsewhere. The Web
has a good chance of being the fourth rail of American journalism.”

However, he warns that people should be cautious about what they accept
as fact. For example, Matt Drudge, Smillie believes, may be called a columnist,
or an information provider, but “he doesn’t have an editor; so he’s not
a journalist. Journalism is a collaborative effort.”

NEW YORK — Baltimore, Maryland, as the can of National Bohemian beer plainly states, is “The Land of Pleasant Living.”

Gail Burton/AP
Mayoral candidate Carl Stokes talks with Harlynn and Gerod Wilson before a rally in his honor

Also known as Charm City, Baltimore boasts John Waters, Barry Levinson, Edgar Allen Poe’s grave and the Orioles. People in Baltimore call you “hon,” and they eat things like crab cakes slathered with Old Bay seasoning and huge plates of fried lake trout, which isn’t actually a trout and doesn’t come from a lake.

The agreeably inexplicable — even the downright bizarre — is just part of the rhythm of life in Baltimore, and the race for mayor is no exception.

There’s a downside to the city’s perverse charm, of course: The murder rate is more than three times as high as New York City’s, one in 10 citizens (or one in eight, depending on who you ask) is a drug addict and middle-income residents are fleeing the city at a rate of 1,000 a month.

And then, of course, there’s the problem of the 27 original candidates for mayor. Of those, six have criminal arrest records, three have filed for bankruptcy, and one is, well, a convict. One candidate was spotted by police during a local news broadcast and was promptly taken into custody for burglary.

Time magazine recently published an article making Baltimore sound like the very epitome of urban blight, but Baltimoreans aren’t ones to panic about a little bad press.

Gail Burton/AP Alana Bell greets Democratic mayoral candidate Martin O’Malley during a church service

“The Time article was wildly inaccurate,” says David Dudley, associate editor at Baltimore magazine. “Most of the (criminal) candidates are fringe candidates. None of the main ones are felons or weirdos, they’re just kind of boring. Whenever an incumbent isn’t going to run, the goofballs come out.”

But all the madness should be over soon: Tuesday is the Democratic mayoral primary, and in Baltimore, a Democratic stronghold, whoever wins that primary is considered to be a shoe-in for mayor. And the three frontrunners who have emerged do seem — relatively — normal.

Take Carl Stokes, a 49-year-old former city councilman. Besides forgetting to pay taxes for the past four years, Stokes got into a little trouble when he misrepresented himself on his campaign resume. Stokes claimed to be a graduate of Loyola College. He did attend Loyola College, only it seems “graduated” is a bit of an exaggeration.

Kelley Ray, a spokesperson for the Stokes campaign, says that “a while ago it said ‘attended,’ and at some point it was changed to ‘graduated.’ (Stokes) saw it, he should have changed it immediately. It broke as we were getting ready to come forward. But he’s sent the message to the voters that it was his responsibility.”

Martin O’Malley, another frontrunner, is a 36-year-old former city councilman and federal prosecutor. He has emerged from the campaign relatively unscathed, but his status as the only white frontrunner in a predominantly African-American city has not gone unnoticed. The Rev. Frank M. Reid III of Bethel AME endorsed O’Malley, which raised eyebrows in the black community.

And then there’s City Council President Lawrence Bell.

Bell was ahead in the race until some “incidents” knocked him back into third place.

“Bell shot himself several times,” Dudley says. In August, copies of a supposed white supremacist flier emerged, endorsing candidate O’Malley. “The pamphlets were clumsy and inauthentic, and there was no record of that supremacist group even existing,” Dudley says. Two Office Depot employees later came forward with the information that members of Bell’s staff had recently been spotted making copies of the fliers. Bell denies any knowledge of the incident, but according to Dudley, “Bell denies ever knowing what anybody is doing.”

Then, during an O’Malley rally in front of city hall, held because O’Malley had picked up endorsements from state senators, members of the Bell camp came, heckling and disrupting the whole affair. “That was a ridiculous campaign tactic,” says Rick Binetti, spokesperson for the O’Malley campaign. No one from the Bell campaign could be reached for comment.

The funny thing is, O’Malley and Bell used to work closely together in the city council, earning themselves the nickname “Batman and Robin.”

According to Jim Brochin, formerly of the Stokes campaign, “Carl (Stokes) and Martin (O’Malley) are two outstanding people.” But Brochin believes that Stokes’ misinformation may have cost him the race.

But has all the brouhaha surrounding the race damaged Baltimore’s reputation? “The mayoral campaign has not been an embarrassment to the city,” Brochin believes, “it has been an embarrassment to Lawrence Bell.”

“His car was repossessed, he didn’t pay his condo fees, he spent $4,000 on clothes for the campaign,” Brochin says. “He’s going to have to find a job after this campaign and it’s not going to be easy.”

But Brochin feels outsiders looking at this race probably can’t understand what makes Baltimore so appealing, despite its flaws.

“Baltimore is a very quirky town, it has a lot of character,” he says. “Four years ago a water taxi driver threw his hat into the (mayoral) race. It’s what makes Baltimore Baltimore.”