We know that you listen to us on air and check our website for news and information about our region. We hope that you look at our website every day, but we know that's not always possible. So, once a week, on Friday, we will highlight some of the website's top stories of the week.
Ferguson: Protests, police and politics
The city of Rosebud, a small town about 70 miles southwest from St. Louis, is trying to reclaim its image after NAACP protesters were met there with a in which counter-protesters in Rosebud shouted obscenities and even hoisted a Confederate flag. Now many in the community are speaking out to say the deeds of a few don't represent their whole city.
One of the most important reforms that could grow out of the Aug. 9 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, experts say, would be the creation of a national database containing detailed information about all police shootings, whether or not suspects are wounded or killed. On this much experts agree. But beneath that agreement, the debate about police use of force is fraught with sharp disagreements about how important a factor race plays.
Two grand juries in two very different cases have refused to indict white police officers for the deaths of two black men. As a result, many people are wondering if it's possible to hold police officers accountable for use of deadly force. State and federal laws could be reformed to make it easier to punish police officers who misuse deadly force, but legal experts say those changes would face political hurdles and an unfriendly U.S. Supreme Court. More effective might be better police training, more attention to police-community relations and federal pressure on local departments to reform their practices.
Rather than rely on the courts to change what constitutes civil rights violations, many experts say change should start in the police academy, the chief鈥檚 office and through the carrot and stick of the Justice Department.
n 2013, St. Louis recorded 120 homicides. The city鈥檚 148th homicide of 2014 occurred this week. That鈥檚 nearly a 25 percent year-over-year increase, and is a problem that needs to be investigated, said Richard 鈥淩ick鈥� Rosenfeld, a criminal justice professor. But Rosenfeld doesn鈥檛 buy into the 鈥淔erguson effect鈥� 鈥� the ideas that crime increased after the August shooting of an 18-year-old man by a police officer in Ferguson.
Members of the clergy have taken on important roles since the August shooting death of an unarmed black man by a police officer in Ferguson. That鈥檚 also true within the St. Louis County Police Department.
Renewed efforts to change Missouri鈥檚 law on school transfers look pretty much the same as the bill vetoed earlier this year by Gov. Jay Nixon, but sponsors of the newly filed legislation say events in Ferguson have changed the atmosphere for the upcoming debate.
What a difference a year makes
On Tuesday afternoon, residents of a newly-minted senior living facility in south St. Louis County were ready for a party. After officially opening in June, local officials helped cut the ribbon on National Church Residences on Telegraph Road. But it wasn鈥檛 too long ago that some of the facility's neighbors were less-than-festive about the independent living center. A little more than year ago, the center generated harsh words and bitter debate inside the chambers of the St. Louis County Council.
Version 2.0
Relatively speaking, not many students take the Advanced Placement course in computer science; last year it was fewer than 40,000 students, out of a little more than 2.3 million students for all subjects. The data also continue to show a jaw-dropping lack of racial and gender diversity. Nationally, only 4 percent of all students who took the test were black and just 20 percent were female. Since 2008, an ffort has been underway to replace the course with one that attracts more minority and female students.
