Mangino a guest on Law and Crime Daily

Watch my guest appearance on Law and Crime Daily on the Law and Crime Network. 

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Instances of gunfire on school grounds up dramatically

There were at least 136 instances of gunfire on school grounds between Aug. 1 and Dec. 31, according to a report Friday from the gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, reported the USA Today. The figure is nearly four times the average for that period since Everytown began tracking gunfire on school grounds in 2013.

The shootings killed 26 people and wounded 96, marking the most recorded instances of gunfire and people shot in the five-month period since 2013, according to the report.

"This has been by far the most violent first half of the school year in recent history," said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, which is part of Everytown.

The new report comes nearly four years to the day after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida. On Valentine's Day 2018, a former student walked into the school's freshman building, fired more than 100 rounds over the course of six minutes and killed 17 students and staff and wounded 17 others.

The gunman pleaded guilty last year to first-degree murder charges. His sentencing trial, which could result in the death penalty, has been repeatedly delayed.

Gun violence has risen across the U.S. during the coronavirus pandemic. More Americans died of gun-related injuries in 2020 than in any other year on record, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. More than half were deaths by suicide.

Children and teens have been particularly affected by the gun violence surge. In 2020, the numbers of kids fatally shot both increased by more than a third from the previous year, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research group that uses a combination of police statistics and media reports.

The surge continued into 2021, when more than 1,500 kids were killed and more than 4,000 injured, according to the archive. So far this year, more children and teens have been shot compared with the same time last year, according to the archive.

The new Everytown report focuses on gunfire at K-12 schools, colleges and universities, where gunfire includes unintentional discharges, arguments that escalate to gun violence, gun violence that comes onto school grounds, shootings at sporting events, random shootings and more.

Data from another research group reveals similar trends. The K-12 School Shooting Database found there have been at least 190 shooting incidents at K-12 schools since August.

The database, based at the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security, documents every instance a gun is brandished or fired or a bullet hits school property for any reason.

"The number of incidents in this time period alone is four-to-eight times more than the full years in the database between 1970-2017," said lead researcher David Riedman.

During that time frame, 171 people were killed or injured on school property, the youngest being 6 years old, Riedman said. Most of the victims were teachers or students, and some were nonstudents attending high school football or basketball games. Most of the shooters were students, a few were parents and one was a teacher.

Shootings in schools typically capture national attention only when they are mass shootings, often defined as four or more people killed, not including the shooter. The issue drew concern again in November, when a student at Oxford High School outside Detroit fatally shot four students and injured seven others.

But many more school campuses have seen smaller-scale or targeted shootings inside or outside school buildings or after dismissal. Other incidents have happened on school grounds but have not involved members of the school community.

The incidents this year have happened across the country – in urban, suburban and rural areas – and no specific region has a higher concentration of incidents, Riedman said.

"This is truly a nationwide problem," Riedman said. "These shootings are representative of the increase in gun violence that is occurring across the country. Most of these incidents are simple disputes between students that escalate into a serious shooting because someone involved is carrying a gun."

"On the four-year anniversary, it's nice to look back at the work that we've done that's continuing to help improve the safety of schools," Kaufman said. "There's been a lot of work that I've done with Students Demand Action and Everytown in the past four years with secure storage policies and red flag laws being passed at the state level."

Education on how to securely store firearms and clear guidelines for schools that choose to conduct active shooter drills are key to reducing shootings on school grounds, according to Everytown. The group released initial school safety recommendations for the Biden administration earlier this year.

Among other points, the recommendations direct the Department of Education to "develop a strategy to encourage school districts to send parents secure firearm storage information and raise awareness about the importance of secure storage in keeping schools safe."

The recommendations also "direct the Department of Justice to enforce the laws that prevent underage students from purchasing firearms and continue to call for Congressional action to close the loopholes in the background check law."

Everytown estimates that about half of gun owners don't store their guns securely, and at least 5.4 million children live in a home with at least one unlocked and loaded firearm. About 80% of people who engaged in mass shootings at K-12 schools stole guns from family members, according to a recent report from the Justice Department's National Institute of Justice.

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Reform advocates push Biden for creation of gun violence office

 Many groups advocating for gun reform and violence prevention have pushed President Biden for the creation of an office in the executive branch focused solely on gun violence, reported The Trace.

Advocates say that Biden’s silence on the matter suggests he isn’t prioritizing the crisis. At the same time, the president promised to keep doing everything in his power to “make sure communities are safer.”

The office and its director would be responsible for coordinating a government-wide response to a worsening crisis. It would employ public health strategies, support and evaluate prevention programs, collect much-needed data, and hold other agencies accountable — with the ultimate goal of reducing shootings.

Creating such an office would be relatively easy. It could be accomplished by executive order, without congressional approval, and the idea is not a new one. Presidents — including Biden — have for decades created offices or other specialized units to tackle complex challenges. It’s become a common way for presidents to enact their will, with some clear advantages — as well as mixed results.

Establishing an office to tackle gun violence would mean that the federal government’s disparate groups and staffers devoted to the issue would be forced to collaborate, instead of tackling facets of it in isolation. So far, the Biden administration has suggested it is taking a different approach. It has directed several departments — sometimes separately and sometimes in collaboration — to take steps to address gun violence through enforcement, regulation, and funding. It has pointed to Susan Rice, the head of the Domestic Policy Council, as the administration’s point person on gun policy, though her portfolio goes far beyond the issue.

“The President is not standing still while too many innocent lives are being lost each day due to gun violence,” Biden spokesperson Michael Gwin told The Trace in an emailed statement, “so he’s going to continue to push Congress to act on common-sense measures that are currently being blocked by Senate Republicans, and he’ll continue to use the tools at his disposal to take further action, such as what we saw with last week’s announcement.”

Still, advocates are clamoring for an office of gun violence prevention, saying the Biden administration’s efforts are not enough. “There’s nobody overseeing how those different pieces fit into a single puzzle,” said Igor Volsky, the director of Guns Down America, a gun reform advocacy group, who added that he believes Rice’s portfolio is too large to give gun violence the attention it deserves. 

March For Our Lives, a gun reform group largely founded by the survivors of the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school shooting, has been perhaps the most outspoken proponent of appointing a national director of gun violence prevention.

“We’re very clear on the fact that if no one has gun violence as their chief priority, it’s going to fall to the wayside,” said Zeenat Yahya, policy director for March For Our Lives.

Proponents like Yahya and the 36 members of Congress who wrote a letter to Biden in favor of creating the office say doing so would signal that the federal government is taking the crisis seriously and break down silos among a growing list of federal agencies working on the issue.

The extensive list of players includes the Department of Justice — and its law enforcement agencies like the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives — and the Department of Health and Human Services, which houses the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. Others, like the departments of Education, State, Veterans Affairs, Labor, Homeland Security, and Commerce, also fund violence prevention, research gun violence, and regulate firearms.

The advocates for a centralized federal response say it’s not a big ask. With a few exceptions, Congress has not challenged the president’s authority to organize and appoint officials in the executive branch. The office could begin, advocates say, by auditing existing grant programs across the federal government to find out what’s working and what isn’t — and then make it easier for nonprofits, cities, and states to access grant money. It could generate sorely lacking data about gun violence and the effectiveness of prevention programs, and research and create public awareness campaigns. With millions in new grants for community violence intervention programs made available over the last year, a centralized place evaluating the data from those programs is increasingly important.

“The major thing is that there is something created that can sustain a comprehensive strategy, and, year-to-year, continue to build on that strategy,” said Greg Jackson, the executive director of the Community Justice Action Fund, a nonprofit organization that promotes community-based strategies for violence prevention.

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Congress looks to expand statute of limitation for child sex abuse

In an effort to empower victims of child sex abuse, the Senate Judiciary Committee recommended that the Senate pass a bill to give survivors unlimited time to file civil claims in federal court, reported Courthouse News Service.

The Eliminating Limits to Justice for Child Sex Abuse Victims Act would apply to more than a dozen federal child abuse offenses and has garnered bipartisan support within and outside of the committee.

While there's no federal criminal statute of limitations for prosecuting child sex abuse if the child is still alive or for 10 years after the abuse, there are limits as to when a survivor can file a civil claim in federal court.

In 2018, Congress extended the statute of limitations, allowing federal civil claims to be filed until the survivor turns 28 or 10 years after the discovery of the abuse.

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who supports the legislation, said these timelines don't line up with how long it takes many survivors to process and understand their abuse, much less be willing to come forward about it in a public forum.

“Delayed disclosure has historically impacted survivors' path to the justice that they deserve. We can't deter children in any way from speaking out against their abusers," Grassley said. “ We know from the Larry Nasser case, and many other tragic examples that it can take years for survivors to muster up the courage to come forward. This bill sends a clear message to victims of these horrendous crimes that we see, we hear, and we support you.”

Democrat Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, who co-sponsored the bill with Republican Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, cited research from Child USA, a nonprofit focused on combatting child abuse and neglect, which estimates the average survivor is 52 years old when they finally report their abuse.

"Statutes of limitations remain an obstacle for many survivors," Durbin said.

The committee also favorably recommended a bill to the Senate that would target child sexual abuse and exploitation online by reforming section 230, a policy governing the internet that typically shields websites from being liable for posts by third parties.

The Earn It Act was first introduced in 2020 by Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, and Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina.

Blumenthal and Graham's legislation would alter section 230 to make online platforms liable for content portraying child sexual abuse on their sites and establish a national commission of abuse survivors, researchers and law enforcement that will develop strategies for combatting online child abuse.

"Our goal is to tell the social media companies, 'Get involved and stop this crap. And if you don't take responsibility for what's on your platform, then section 230 will not be there for you.' It's never going to end until we change the game and this bill changes the game," Graham said.

While the proposal does not give websites the explicit duty to prevent such content from being posted, they would be held responsible if they are found to have knowledge of explicit and abusive content of children on their platform.

The bill has garnered broad support from both sides of the aisle and from members of the law enforcement community, but it's faced backlash from members of tech companies and civil rights organizations that warn the bill could endanger user privacy and free speech.

A group of more than 60 civil rights organizations, including the ACLU and GLAAD, sent a letter to the committee opposing the legislation, arguing it will end up functioning similarly to a 2017 revision of section 230 that intended to target online sex trafficking but has rarely prevented trafficking, according to research by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

"Providers will engage in over-broad censorship of online speech, especially content created by diverse communities, including LGBTQ individuals, whose posts are disproportionately labeled erroneously as sexually explicit," the letter warns.

Tech companies have argued the legislation would keep companies from using encryption to secure privacy on messages and user information out of fear of prosecution.

"A key distinction here is it doesn't prohibit use of encryption, doesn't create liability for using encryption, but the misuse of encryption to further illegal activity is what gives liability here," Blumenthal said in defense of the bill.

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New Mexico looks at limiting qualified immunity

Laurie Roberts writes in the USA Today: 

As America nears the grim milestone of its 3,000th exoneration, the causes of wrongful convictions are well understood. Sometimes a survivor misidentifies their attacker, or an incarcerated person provides false testimony in exchange for leniency. But too often, egregious police misconduct sends innocent people to prison for crimes they didn’t commit. 

From witness tampering and malfeasance in interrogations to fabricating evidence and committing perjury at trial, police misconduct contributed to 35% of known exonerations nationwide. This misconduct stole thousands of years of freedom and a lifetime of priceless memories from its victims. Yet the perpetrators of these injustices rarely face accountability because of the court-created defense of "qualified immunity."

This doctrine lets public officials escape civil liability after engaging in misconduct, unless a previous court decision has ruled that nearly identical conduct violates the Constitution – even when their actions put innocent people behind bars. In practice, this means officers can violate people’s rights with impunity, as long as they do so in sufficiently unique ways. 

That’s why the Innocence Project has redoubled its efforts in state legislatures. Last year, we worked with dozens of organizations and grassroots activists from across the political spectrum to pass the New Mexico Civil Rights Act (NMCRA), which eliminates qualified immunity as a legal defense and allows New Mexicans whose constitutional rights have been violated to sue in state court.

The NMCRA’s impact is bigger than the individual lawsuits it will facilitate. To avoid large civil settlements, the law incentivizes cities and counties to enact training and policies that will prevent misconduct before it happens. And ending qualified immunity won’t impact municipalities where officers are conducting themselves professionally. Litigation will instead reveal civil rights violations going unaddressed. The fiscal impact of the legislation is a feature, not a bug, and it finally puts a price tag on injustice. 

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Mangino a guest on Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

 Listen to my guest spot on Crime Stories with Nancy Grace: Breast Milk Proves Murder, Hubby Poisons Wife with Heroin

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"Gun violence is a symptom, not the overarching problem"

The Russian author Leo Tolstoy famously noted that “happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” wrote John L. Micek of the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

It’s not a bad way to think about the gun violence epidemic that’s wracked some of America’s largest cities, including Philadelphia, even as the COVID-19 pandemic has exacted its own deadly toll.

Every city has its own problems, and challenges, but the causes behind gun violence — actual poverty and a poverty of opportunity — are remarkably the same.

That analogy rushed to mind as I read the comments of Erica Atwood, the senior director of Philadelphia’s Office of Policy and Strategic Initiatives for Criminal Justice and Public Safety.

“Gun violence is a symptom; it is not the overarching problem,” Atwood told Stateline.org, as part of a broader examination of how cities are reacting to the deadly explosions of violence within their borders.

“If we do not look at the issues of poverty, poor access to mental and behavioral health, poor access to quality education and training and economic mobility, we are going to continue to have these conversations every 15 to 20 years,” Atwood continued.

Philadelphia marked its deadliest year in recent memory in 2021, with 562 homicides and 2,332 total shootings, our partners at the Philadelphia Tribune reported last month.

The City of Brotherly Love was one of 16 major U.S. cities that logged a rise in homicides in 2021, Stateline reported, citing data compiled by the Council on Criminal Justice.

All told, homicides rose by 5% last year, compared to 2020 tallies in the nearly two dozen cities the council analyzed, Stateline reported. The majority were shootings.

 Last year, Philadelphia released a roadmap aimed at addressing its gun violence challenges, Stateline reported. It provided specific neighborhoods and high-risk individuals with access to social services and conflict mediation intended to prevent future violence.

The city’s plan also calls for trimming the ranks of blighted properties. City officials also are working with the state to investigate and stop illegal gun trafficking. The plan further directs city police to target “hotspots” where gun violence is more frequent.

Atwood told Stateline that she expects the city’s homicide rate to drop as more of those policies are brought online — potentially reaching pre-pandemic levels by 2023. If there’s a bright spot, it’s that homicides are down slightly from this time last year at 53—a 15% reduction, Stateline reported.

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