Just who are these moppets?

You’ll find some fascinating data in yesterday’s Inside Higher Ed. In “Profiling the American Freshman,” we learn that, each year, UCLA researchers survey 270,000 (Wow!) entering undergraduates at 400 colleges. Results of the latest survey are in:

This year’s data show that the first-year students are increasingly politically minded and moving away from the center of the political spectrum. They are far apart on many social issues…. They are concerned about financing their educations and are fully confident in their academic abilities.

One in three students reported discussing politics frequently during their last year of high school…. That’s up from 26 percent in 2004, the last time that question was asked, and represents the highest total in the 40 years of the survey.

Evidently, that figure is high even for an election year. What’s it all mean?

… The proportion of students who identified themselves as being liberal (28 percent) and conservative (24 percent) were the highest in decades….

—Evidence of increased polarization? Yeah, probably. On the other hand, maybe these kids don’t know what the words “liberal” and “conservative” mean! So they pick the shorter of the two. Just a theory.

…Two of three students surveyed said they have “some” or “major” concerns about paying for college….

That third one must be brain-dead. Or just a Bush “conservative.”

…Making more money and getting a better job were two of the top reasons that students cited for choosing to go to college.

And Lake Wobegon lives: Seventy-two percent of men and 66 percent of women surveyed said they are either “above average” or in the “highest 10 percent” of academic ability.

I bet that's true about bloggers, too.

"Drop the knife, honey," they said

MAKES YOU PROUD, doesn’t it? I’m talkin’ about the “professionalism” of our police and police departments.

Today’s Times (Man arrested in Costa Mesa was stroke victim...) reports that a man arrested for drunkenness two years ago in Costa Mesa may have been having a stroke instead.

According to the man’s lawyer, when he was arrested, officers ordered him to stand up, but he couldn’t. When he was hauled off to jail, he was again ordered to stand, but he kept falling down.

The man—a gardener with a Latino name—then spent 10 hours in jail. At that point (for reasons left unexplained), he was taken to Hoag Hospital “where doctors determined that he had suffered a stroke,” according to the lawyer.

And the drunkenness charge? Dismissed, says the lawyer, when the DA’s office determined that the man had not been exhibiting drunkenness. Instead, it seems, the DA determined that the man was exhibiting an inability to use his right arm.

Yesterday, the Times reported on that horrible incident last summer in which cops shot an 18-year-old girl, killing her (Police who shot O.C. 18-year-old...). She had weighed 120 pounds. She had wielded a 4-inch blade.

Had these officers acted properly? The matter went to our DA, the sleazy and corrupt Mr. Tony Rackaukas, who is near the middle of that very small circle of rat bastards sometimes called the the OC “Republican Mafia.” It is a world that embraces cops and their shoot-‘em-up & move-'em-along mentality bigtime.

Naturally, Rackaukas has now determined that officers Park and Randell acted properly. It was “clear-cut,” evidently:

"It turned into a situation where they were really left with no other choice," Rackaukas said.

The officers, according to the investigation by the Sheriff's Department and district attorney's office, were forced into a split-second decision to kill a woman who was far more dangerous than was depicted in news reports.

Well, when the cops arrived at the scene, they already knew that young Ms. MacDonald was wacked out and probably dangerous, wielding a knife.

Here’s my question. Why didn’t they show up with a net and throw it over her? I've seen it done. It's effective!

Nets too expensive? OK, knock her over with bean bags. Too expensive still? I’ve got some big sticks out here where I live. I’ll provide them for free.

But no. She was shot fifteen times:

[O]fficers Park and Randell … ordered MacDonald to give up her weapon. "Drop the knife, honey," they said, according to [Assistant DA] Brent. MacDonald told them, "I'm on drugs, just … kill me." She then ran toward the officers and was shot 15 times when she came within 8 to 10 feet of one of them, Brent said.

At the time of the shooting, an officer nearby was loading a gun with nonlethal pepper-spray pellets and a fourth officer was rushing to the scene with beanbag ammunition.

Now tell me this. If these other guys are around the corner with nonlethal force, why didn’t these two cops on the scene leave and monitor this gal from some safe distance? As I recall, it was in the middle of the night, and nobody was around. So why wasn’t that an option?

My problem here, of course, isn’t necessarily with the officers. It could be with the policies with which they are saddled. Maybe these policies just assume that you’ve got to confront perps ASAP. Maybe they assume that cops don’t scatter or retreat.

If so, why?

Or maybe my issue is with a world in which people just don’t care that people are killed when nets can be thrown over ‘em instead. A world in which a guy is treated like crap while he’s having a stroke.

C’mon everybody. Get pissed off!