A18
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FGHIJ Eyes on the Big Easy
an independent newspaper EDITORIALS
A The feds and the Danziger Bridge shootings
VAN FULL OF POLICE screeches to a halt on a New Orleans bridge, just days after Hurricane Katrina has devastated the city. The officers open fire on civil- ians, killing two and seriously wound-
ing four. They and fellow officers try to cover up the crimes by planting guns at the scene, fab- ricating witness statements and falsifying police reports to claim that the civilians shot first. This series of events is almost beyond belief, yet a recently unsealed federal indictment claims that this is exactly what a crew of New Orleans po- lice officers did. If true, these are crimes for which the defendants should be sentenced to the maxi- mum penalty. The officers had been charged by the state sev-
eral years ago with murder and attempted mur- der, but the charges were dismissed in August
Free
the hikers Shahram Amiri was allowed to
go home. How about the Americans Iran is holding?
T
HE MORE INFORMATION becomes available about Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri, the more the Obama ad- ministration’s version of events seems
borne out: He freely chose to leave Iran for the United States, and he freely chose to return. That he was allowed to do so is in keeping with U.S. law and common decency. But it also ought to provide an example for the government of Iran, whose re- spect for its own laws, not to mention decency, is sporadic at best. For nearly a year, Iran has been holding three young Americans who, unlike Mr. Amiri, have no involvement in espionage but would like to freely return to their homes. Those prisoners — Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal — have been in custody since July 31, 2009, when they were ar- rested while hiking near the border between Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan. The three may have crossed the border unintentionally; they have not had a chance to tell their stories. What’s certain is that Iran has been holding them ever since in the noto- rious Evin prison outside Tehran — neither re- leasing them nor charging them with a crime, in violation of Iranian law. Senior Iranian officials, including President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Intelligence Min- ister Heydar Moslehi, have hinted that the three hikers could be swapped for Iranians in the Unit- ed States — including Mr. Amiri. The Obama administration rightly rejected the possibility. But after Mr. Amiri returned to Iran, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley made the proper connection: “We have shown with an Ira- nian citizen who chose to come here and has cho- sen to go home that he’s free to do so. We should expect the same consideration when it comes to
2008 after a judge concluded that prosecutors il- legally shared secret grand jury testimony with a witness. New Orleans U.S. Attorney Jim Letten, a Bush appointee, deserves credit for pressing for- ward with a federal investigation after the dis- missal. The Bush Justice Department, normally not a fan of oversight of local police departments, allowed the investigation to proceed; the Obama Justice Department seamlessly continued the probe; this is how government is supposed to work. The officers must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, but it would have been a trav- esty had the events of Sept. 4, 2005, been allowed to fall by the wayside. The violence on New Orleans’s Danziger Bridge garnered insufficient attention in 2005, when most of the country was focused on broken levees and bloated corpses. It’s a fair bet that claims of a
massacre would have been taken more seriously had the victims not been people of color and the shooters not worn badges. Others tried to shrug off the episode as a sad and inevitable consequence of a flood-ravaged and chaos-laden city. But the police department in New Orleans has been a locus of corruption since long before Katrina. It is long overdue for a shakeup. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu wisely reached out to the Justice Department this year and all but implored it to conduct a top-to-bottom review of all functions and policies. The depart- ment is conducting such an investigation. The probe should be thorough and uncompromising. The residents of one of this country’s greatest cit- ies should not have to live in fear of the men and women paid to protect them.
TOM TOLES
SUNDAY, JULY 18, 2010
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
dletters@washpost.com
A better deal for the young In his July 12 op-ed column, “The Great Strangle-
hold,” Robert J. Samuelson said a new survey by the Pew Research Center shows that the Great Recession “has been most disruptive and disillusioning to those who were previously the most protected.” However, earlier in the column, he mentioned the survey’s finding that the “elderly have been relatively shel- tered” and, in contrast to younger workers, were less likely to be cutting back on expenditures. What the survey confirms is that those of us over
65 (I’m 81) who are reasonably well off are being pro- tected from economic hardship at the expense of the younger generation. I would not be particularly hap- py to have to pay more in taxes or get less in Social Se- curity and Medicare. But I could accept this if it meant repackaging government assistance so that my two children, three grandchildren and one great- grandchild have a better shot at achieving the finan- cial security that I have.
JOHN SCHAPPI,Washington Montgomery dog park users, unite
Yet again, money is being extorted from hard- working, taxpaying residents to remedy Montgom- ery County’s bloated spending. Now, dog owners will have to pay a $40 annual fee to use the dog parks. A dog park is essentially a fenced-in piece of ground that requires little to no maintenance. This blatant revenue-raising that penalizes pet owners is unfair; we now have to pay for our dogs to wear a colored tag allowing them to run on county property that my tax dollars already pay to keep up? What about playgrounds in county parks? I don’t
see Montgomery County forcing parents to pay a $40 fee per child and stick a colored tag around their offspring’s necks! I urge dog park users in Montgomery County to
boycott this ridiculous fee. NICOLE PORCARO, Silver Spring
Sarah Palin’s uninclusive outreach
Kathleen Parker watched Sarah Palin’s new com- mercial and saw a celebration of womanhood [“Ma- ma grizzly hones the message machine,” op-ed, July 14.] Ms. Parker relishes the “aggressively feminine,” looking pretty in pink, and bonding between moth- ers, other women and children. In watching Ms. Palin hugging her supporters and handing out flowers, I saw something else. I noticed only one slightly off-white face among the many people she was reaching out to. And Ms. Palin point- edly says that conservative women are “mama griz- zlies,” more formidable than “pit bulls.” Of the deeply feminine women I know, none of
them exclude people of color from her personal em- brace. And a claim to be nastier than a pit bull de- grades, rather than elevates, the relational power women bring to politics. KATHRYNRUUD, Middletown, Md.
The view from the shelter Regarding Dennis Culhane’s July 11 Outlook com-
our citizens.” Iran allowed the three Americans to meet with their mothers in May, a gesture it fully exploited for propaganda purposes. But since then the pris- oners have been denied access to their Iranian lawyer, “in violation of all due process,” as a letter the mothers released on Thursday put it. As Mr.
Crowley said, “they’re not guilty of any crime oth- er than crossing an unmarked border.” U.S.- Iranian relations have been deteriorating in re- cent months, but this is a humanitarian matter. It’s time for the regime to stop treating innocent Americans as hostages or pawns and allow them to leave the country.
Election-year politics The D.C. Council gets entangled in a contract settlement.
L
EGITIMATE QUESTIONS remain about the District’s disputed contracts for park and recreation center projects. But pros- pects for getting those questions answered are fading fast in the face of election-year politics. Case in point is the recent uproar over Attorney General Peter J. Nickles’s decision to settle a claim by owners of a firm whose contract was canceled. It’s hard to imagine a worse way to elicit informa- tion than that employed by D.C. Council mem- bers, whose principal interest seems to be embar- rassing the administration. At issue is Mr. Nickles’s agreement, reached this month, to pay $550,000 to settle a $2.3 mil- lion claim by Banneker Ventures, a firm whose contract to oversee work at new parks and recrea- tion centers was voided because proper council scrutiny and approval was bypassed. Banneker is owned by a friend of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, and the council has commissioned an outside review into the circumstances that led to the company getting the city’s business. Months of hearings by the council were, at best, inconclusive, and now it appears that Robert P.
Trout, the attorney conducting the council’s probe, won’t complete his work until after the Sept. 14 primary, in which the contracts have emerged as an issue. Enter now the settlement; no sooner was the
ink dry than Vincent C. Gray, the council chair- man and mayoral hopeful, was calling for Mr. Nickles’s resignation amid charges of “cronyism” and council members were demanding the attorney general’s presence at a hearing they knew he couldn’t attend. The fate of the settle- ment is uncertain, with the council last week di- recting Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi not to cut the checks. Caught in the middle, Mr. Gandhi is examining the city’s options, even as A. Scott Bolden, attorney for Banneker, threatens to go to court. It was no secret that Mr. Nickles was in talks with Banneker, and, once a settlement was reached, he advised Mr. Trout that he would make normally confidential documents about it avail- able. Mr. Nickles has since followed up on that promise, providing to Mr. Trout and to council members “in the spirit of transparency and comi-
ty” relevant documents and a chronology of the events. It remains to be seen if Mr. Nickles got the best deal for the city, but he makes a plausible argu- ment that it was in the city’s interests to settle to avoid the risk of much greater liability as well as the possibility of ongoing construction projects getting stalled in the legal dispute. A review of the documents that Mr. Nickles provided to us shows the city acceding to demands only for costs in- curred by the firm, such as purchased equipment and leased office space. In negotiations, the city demanded a detailing of costs, challenged certain expenses, refused many demands, and insisted that payment be made and documented to sub- contractors, some of whom are continuing their work for the city. Mr. Nickles says that he consulted a number of
officials but never Mr. Fenty. Indeed, if one sub- scribes to the theory that the attorney general is interested only in the mayor’s political welfare, it’s difficult to see how the decision to settle — giving grist to the mayor’s opponents — fits the scenario.
LOCAL OPINIONS 3Join the debate at
washingtonpost.com/localopinions
Baileys Crossroads doesn’t need another homogenized ‘revitalization’ Frank Sellers would like “people to know
Regarding the July 8 Metro article “Blueprint for Baileys Crossroads Is Revived”: The last thing Fairfax County needs is another
“revitalization.” Fairfax officials say they want to make this area “walk- able”? It appears plenty walkable right now, judging by the number of people I see walking there, many more pe-
they’ve arrived somewhere”? The Baileys area is already “somewhere,” with a
Baileys has an ambiance distinct from all these interchangeable town centers around the area.
destrians than I see in other areas. Carol Turner, who “occasionally visits . . . a Best Buy and Panera Bread,” would like to see more restaurants? You would be hard-pressed to find an area with more restaurants, as the article men- tions (“ethnic restaurants and mom-and-pop stores”).
distinct ambiance that differentiates it from all these “revitalized,” inter- changeable town centers that continue to crop up around the D.C. area. Ms. Turner and Mr. Sellers should get out of
their chain-store/restaurant comfort zones and patronize some of the ethnic restaurants and mom-and-pop stores in the Baileys area before they get excited about revitalization. Perhaps it is some of the citizens, and not the area, that need a little revitalization. DANIELW. KEIPER, Falls Church
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Stoking bigotry in the military
Regarding the July 10 front-page article “U.S. de- fends asking military about gays”: I am embarrassed by the grotesque anti-gay bias of the Pentagon survey about “don’t ask, don’t tell.” This will only stoke bigotry. The clumsy handling of this civil rights issue by President Obama’s Penta- gon is truly shameful. Did Harry Truman survey the military when he ended apartheid in our military? Can you imagine the racist responses he would have gotten? Where is the survey of enlisted men and women about the ab- sence of a strategy for the wars we are waging? I am ashamed that my tax dollars have been used to un- dermine lesbian and gay service members. TIMMILLER, Los Angeles
mentary, “5 Myths about America’s homeless”: I volunteer at Shepherd’s Table, a home away from home for such people. My contact with our clients shows that homelessness is almost always a long- term condition, not commonly one or two days, as stated in the article. “Humane” is a matter of degree and perspective. Sleeping in a shelter is more humane than sleeping on the street, particularly when the temperature is subfreezing. We are very careful about our use of shelters, so that they do not become overcrowded, there are no long lines and they are as sanitary as it is possible to make them. The only time a homeless person sleeps on the street is when he or she makes that choice; and even then we try to get him or her off the street and into a shelter. The clients we serve are, without exception, long- term poor. Shepherd’s Table works with Mont- gomery County to help provide housing for the homeless poor, but too many of these people actu- ally prefer being homeless. I would invite Mr. Cul- hane to visit us at Shepherd’s Table to witness first- hand the true homeless picture, rather than to rely on nebulous findings from ivory-tower researchers and policymakers.
ROBERTHAUPTMAN, Silver Spring How the Fed can aid lending The Federal Reserve began paying banks interest
on extra money they keep on reserve at the Fed as one of many steps it took to help banks shore up their balance sheets. Rather than ending this program as a way to spur
lending, as reported in the July 8 news story “Fed weighs steps to keep economic recovery afloat,” the Fed should offer this interest only to banks that meet a minimum standard of direct lending activity to small and midsized businesses over the next six months. Banks that meet this standard with loans that demonstrate high performance should then be rewarded with a higher interest rate for the sub- sequent six months. These rates should apply only to the minimum re-
serve amount, to prevent stashing cash, and only to banks that use high standards to prevent indis- criminate lending and creeping moral hazard. Banks need to relearn a key aspect of their role in so- ciety: smart lending. Retooling the interest rate pol- icy on reserves would provide positive reinforce- ment to do so. NICOLE BHALLA FERNANDEZ, Arlington
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