Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Police, Regardless Of Race, Have Implicit Bias Against Black People, Studies Have Found
NPR: Police Researcher: Officers Have Similar Biases Regardless Of Race
One common recommendation for reducing police brutality against people of color is to have police departments mirror a given area's racial makeup.President Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing recommended that law enforcement "reflect the demographics of the community"; the Justice Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said diversity on police forces can help build trust with communities. Rashawn Ray, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and a sociology professor at the University of Maryland, studies race and policing. He says that diversity helps but that "officers, regardless of their race or gender, have similar implicit biases, particularly about Black people." Ray says it's not enough to have Black cops in a Black neighborhood if they don't know the area. (Doubek, 6/22)
Stateline: 'If The Police Aren't Needed, Let's Leave Them Out Completely'
Beginning this month, Denver’s emergency dispatch is sending social workers and health professionals, rather than police officers, to handle nonviolent situations. “If the police aren’t needed, let’s leave them out completely,” said Sailon, program manager for criminal justice services at the Mental Health Center for Denver. Denver’s Support Team Assisted Response, known as STAR, launched at the beginning of June as a six-month pilot program, funded by a grant from the Caring for Denver Foundation. The fact that STAR began at the height of demonstrations against police brutality was coincidental, Sailon said, but fitting. (Vasilogambros, 6/23)
The Washington Post: Activists Halt Street Protests In South Carolina As Some Demonstrators Become Infected
South Carolina racial justice activists said they would postpone future demonstrations or move them online after at least 13 people who took part in previous protests tested positive for the coronavirus. As the number of cases across the country continued to climb ominously Monday, organizers of “I Can’t Breathe” protests in South Carolina urged participants to get tested for the virus. (Shammas, Janes, Beachum and Bernstein, 6/22)
NPR: How Recommendations Of An Obama Task Force Have, And Haven't, Changed U.S. Policing
The police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others — and the wave of protests that followed — have sparked a national conversation about how to prevent police killings and improve relationships between law enforcement and the communities they police. Six years ago, police shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., sparking a similar conversation. As a result, President Obama convened a panel of experts, activists, authors and academics to rethink policing in America. (Sullivan, 6/22)
NPR: NYPD Officer Suspended For Using A Chokehold
A New York City police officer has been suspended after apparently using a chokehold during an arrest in Rockaway, Queens. NYPD commissioner Dermot Shea said the department is investigating the incident, which happened Sunday. Cellphone video shot by a bystander shows several police struggling to subdue a Black man, including one officer who had his arm around the man's neck. One bystander shouts, "Stop choking him!" (Lawrence, 6/22)
The Washington Post: Rayshard Brooks Body On Display At Atlanta's Ebenzer Baptist Church
Anger ebbed into grief on Monday as hundreds of mourners visited a historic church here to pay their respects to Rayshard Brooks, the latest black man to become a household name after dying at the hands of police. Brooks’s death became the latest flash point in a national movement against police brutality and racism. Hundreds trickled through Ebenezer Baptist Church on Monday to see the man who galvanized them into action lying in repose. (Nirappil, 6/22)
WBUR: Protesters Call For Action From Baker On Police Brutality
Hundreds of people marched from Roxbury to the State House to honor Rayshard Brooks, a Black man who was fatally shot by an Atlanta police officer in a fast food parking lot last week. They also marched against police brutality and in favor of changes to policing beyond what's already been proposed by state and local officials. The protests have drawn promises from politicians to reform the police. (Ma, Rios and Kelly, 6/22)
NPR: Protest Arrests Led To Surge Of Bail Fund Donations: Impact Could Be Long Lasting
The Minnesota Freedom Fund, which bails low-income people out of jail or immigration detention, used to run on a shoestring budget. "We were always in need of more money," says board member Mirella Ceja-Orozco, " constantly writing grant proposals ... to kind of figure out how we could obtain money to last us for the next few months." In 2018, the last year it filed its taxes, the group had about $150,000. It had to turn down a lot of requests for assistance because of a lack of funds. But in the past few weeks, the group received $31 million from more than 900,000 individual donations. "It's just completely changed our world," says Ceja-Orozco. (Domonoske, 6/23)
NBC News: To Amplify Black Voices In Medicine, Non-Black Doctors Hand Over Their Twitter Accounts
Voices of Black women in the field of medicine are reaching a broader audience Monday, as non-Black doctors handed over their Twitter accounts to Black female colleagues. The online event called #ShareTheMicNowMed is meant to highlight the work of Black female physicians and encourage more diversified conversations on social media. (Edwards, 6/22)
Kaiser Health News: Listen: Navigating The Pandemic And Protests As The U.S. Reopens
KHN Midwest correspondent Cara Anthony appeared on Illinois Public Media’s “The 21st” with host Brian Mackey in a reporter’s roundtable about the latest on the coronavirus pandemic and the civil rights protests. After the protests highlighted police brutality and systemic racism, she reported on the unwritten rules that Black teens learn to try to cope with the mental health burden of other people’s racist assumptions. (6/22)
NBC News: Latino Leaders Demand Florida Governor Apologize For Linking 'Hispanic Farmworkers' To COVID-19 Rise
Florida Latino Democratic and civil rights leaders demanded Monday that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis apologize for and clarify his recent comments attributing the state's steep rise in positive COVID-19 tests to "overwhelmingly Hispanic farmworkers" and day laborers. "It's absolutely embarrassing, appalling," state Rep. Javier Fernández said during a news call Monday. "We're living in very dark and sad times" when the governor places blame not on "his failed leadership but on some of the most vulnerable members of our community here in Florida." (Sesin, 6/22)
The New York Times: White Americans Say They Are Waking Up To Racism. What Will It Add Up To?
One recent afternoon, while washing his car, Greg Reese, a white stay-at-home dad in Campton, Ky., peeled off the Confederate flag magnet he had placed on its trunk six years earlier. He did not put it back on. It was a small act for which he expected no accolades. It should not have taken the police killing of George Floyd, Mr. Reese knew, to face what he had long known to be true, that the flag he had grown up thinking of as “a beautiful trophy” was “a symbol of hate, and it’s obviously wrong to glorify it.” (Harmon and Burch, 6/22)
ProPublica/New Mexico In Depth: A Hospital Was Accused Of Racially Profiling Native American Women. Staff Said Administrators Impeded An Investigation.
Federal regulators are ramping up scrutiny of a prominent women’s hospital here after clinicians’ allegations that Native Americans had been racially profiled for extra COVID-19 screening, leading to the temporary separation of some mothers from their newborns. The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will refer findings from state investigators about a violation of patient rights at Lovelace Women’s Hospital to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights, state officials said. The state Department of Health declined to specify details of the violations it had found. (Furlow, 6/22)
The Associated Press: Once Reluctant, GOP's Only Black Senator Now Leads On Race
When he first ran for office in 1994, they scrawled the N-word on his lawn signs. By the time he came to Congress, he had to unplug the phone lines because callers brought the staff to tears. Even after he became a U.S. senator, the Capitol quickly became just another place where he would be stopped by the police. Initially reluctant to focus on race, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina is now a leading Republican voice, teaching his party what it’s like to be a Black man in America when the police lights are flashing in the rearview mirror. (Mascaro and Powell, 6/23)
