The Wall Street Journal - 07.10.2019

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. ** Monday, October 7, 2019 |A

needing to clear water to be

ready for next spring, the dam

is releasing 80,000 cubic feet a

second—and high releases are

expected to continue into De-

cember.

“It’s imperative in my mind

that we have all of our flood-

storage capacity to manage any

flood that may come” next

spring, said John Remus, chief

of the Missouri River Basin

Water Management Division

for the Corps. “There’s going to

be a very fragile levee system

still being repaired.”

The high water from the

dams and continued rains be-

low them mean many of the

breached levees can’t be re-

paired because that would

strand large amounts of water

on the wrong side of the le-

vees, said Bret Budd, head of

the Corps’s levee restoration

team. And water levels aren’t

expected to end before cold

weather sets in.

“The weather hasn’t been

cooperating,” said Mr. Budd,

who came out of semiretire-

ment to lead the project. “If we

get an early winter with early

snow and it freezes, we’re

done.”

When a levee breaches, the

water runs parallel to the river

until it finds a place to flow

back, creating a second breach,

Mr. Budd said. The first

breach, known as an inlet

breach, needs to be stopped as

soon as possible, but the other

breaches, known as outlet

breaches, must wait until the

river level falls to a point

where all the water has

drained away. About 14 outlet

breaches remain unrepaired,

with large amounts of water

still covering farms and homes.

The Corps has temporarily

patched 13 inlet breaches to

stop water coming into the

riously inconsistent and spotty.

Researchers saw misdemean-

ors as another unchecked, ra-

cially unbalanced police power

creating barriers to housing,

employment and education.

With millions of dollars in

grants, a network of scholars

led by John Jay collected data

from several cities and released

reports over the past year.

Other studies revealed simi-

lar patterns. A December report

by the Public Policy Institute of

California found that misde-

meanor rates in California de-

clined by close to 60% between

1989 and 2016.

Los Angeles police made

112,570 misdemeanor arrests in

2008 and 60,063 by 2017,

largely driven by declines in

driving and alcohol-related of-

fenses, according to John Jay’s

Data Collaborative for Justice.

A coming paper by law pro-

fessors at George Mason Univer-

sity and the University of Geor-

gia also found sizable arrest

declines in rural Virginia, San

Antonio and other jurisdictions.

Other indications include

shrinking caseloads reported by

the National Center for State

Courts and arrest tallies by the

Federal Bureau of Investigation

showing steady declines in dis-

orderly conduct, drunkenness,

prostitution and loitering viola-

tions.

In Durham, the arrest rate

for 18- to 20-year-old black men

dropped by more than 70%

from 2008 to 2016, according to

John Jay’s research collabora-

tive. Durham’s arrest rate

started sinking after Jose L. Lo-

pez took over as police chief in

2007, the study noted. In an in-

terview, Mr. Lopez said he en-

couraged his department to

avoid making a misdemeanor

arrest if they can issue a sum-

mons or warning.

“We weren’t looking to make

arrests,” said Mr. Lopez, who

retired as chief at the end of

2015. “The job of a police officer
      is to guard and make the com-

munity safe. The job isn’t to put

people in jail.”

In some cities, like Seattle,

progressive prosecutors have

helped steepen the decline. City

Attorney Peter Holmes has

sought to curb law-enforcement

actions against lower-level

street crimes, declining to pros-

ecute homeless and mentally ill

people for loitering, public uri-

nation or open drug use, and

trying to steer them into social-

counseling services.

“We were locking people up

for minors things,” said Christo-

pher Fisher, chief strategy offi-

cer at the Seattle Police Depart-

ment. “There started to be a

realization that you were often

exacerbating the problem.”

side the bar, while the five

wounded had fled outside mo-

ments after the gunfire, the

spokesperson said, adding that

a police investigation is con-

tinuing.

The dead ranged in age

from 20s to late 50s. All were

Latino men, but police don’t

believe the crime was racially

motivated.

The five wounded are in

stable condition.

Agents from the Bureau of

Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms

and Explosives, an arm of the

Justice Department, were also

responding to the shooting,

according to a statement

posted on Twitter.

Sunday’s shooting was the

city’s deadliest in recent years.

In 2014, white supremacist

Frazier Glenn Miller Jr. killed

three people in shootings at

Jewish centers in the Kansas

City suburb of Overland Park.

floodplain, with one more ex-

pected to be patched next

month.

It is an epic task as some of

the breaches are nearly 1,

feet long and 60 feet deep.

Large dredges pump sand

from the river bottom into the

gaping hole, even as the river

continues to flow through the

breach. Eventually, the sand

forces water out of the opening

and the dredges, helped by

land-based equipment, con-

tinue to pour on sand until

they create a berm 500 feet

wide at the water level and 100

feet wide above.

The Corps has spent about

$113 million so far on these

temporary repairs—with a to-

tal cost to restore the system

estimated at $1.1 billion over

several years, Mr. Budd said.

Corps officials emphasize

that the dams have helped to

even out the peaks of flooding

this year. They point to a chart

showing how much worse

flooding would be in a place

like Omaha, Neb., if the water

had been allowed to flow un-

regulated.

Many farmers argue the

Corps could do more—like

dredging the river or draining

more water from the reservoirs

in the winter, so there is more

room to capture water from

spring flooding. The Corps

says it has to keep a certain

amount of water in the reser-

voirs for potential drought

years, including water for

drinking, power production,

recreation and wildlife man-

agement.

“They need to go back to

putting people first,” said Kim

Ashlock, a teacher from Ham-

burg, Iowa. A levee that

breached on March 16 flooded

her home and left a farm that

had been in her family for four

generations covered for acres

in 5 feet of sand. “It looks like

a desert,” she said.

Federal authorities are rac-

ing to drain water from swol-

len reservoirs on the Upper

Missouri River to prepare for

next year’s flood season, inad-

vertently complicating efforts

to shore up badly damaged le-

vees downstream.

Heavy rains over frozen

ground last March created re-

cord floods that breached doz-

ens of levees in Iowa, Ne-

braska, Missouri and Kansas.

But rains—and even a huge

snowstorm in Montana late

last month that could melt be-

fore winter sets in—haven’t let

up. That is forcing the U.S.

Army Corps of Engineers to

keep pushing water through its

dams and hampering repairs.

“The dams are still full, the

rivers are above flood stage

and it’s already snowing in

Montana,” said Mike Crecelius,

emergency management direc-

tor of Fremont County, Iowa,

where several of the breaches

occurred and the river has re-

mained above flood stage since

March. “There’s never a dull

moment.”

This year’s extended deluge

is now expected to tie 2011 for

the most precipitation flowing

into the Upper Missouri River

watershed, federal officials say,

raising questions about the

overall system’s ability to han-

dle increasingly frequent and

large storms.

The Corps controls six mas-

sive dams that opened between

1940 and 1962 and were de-

signed to trap runoff and re-

lease it in a controlled manner,

preventing sudden and cata-

strophic floods. Normally, by

this time of year, Gavins Point

Dam in South Dakota, the

southernmost flood-control

point, releases water at a rela-

tively leisurely 30,000 to

40,000 cubic feet a second.

Right now, with reservoirs still

BYJOEBARRETT

Work Hastens Before Flood Season

A 1,000-foot breach on a Missouri River levee near Percival, Iowa. Rains in March sparked floods that damaged levees in four states.

U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS

Two gunmen killed four

people and wounded five oth-

ers in a Kansas City, Kan., bar

early Sunday and remain at

large, police said.

The shooting occurred at

Tequila KC Bar near 10th

Street and Central Avenue, a

spokesperson for the city’s po-

lice department said. Police

said the preliminary investiga-

tion suggests an earlier bar

fight led to the shooting, with

two suspects later returning to

the bar.

The police are looking for

the suspects, who they say

used handguns. Police released

pictures of the two men and

asked for the public’s help in

identifying them.

Jose Valdez, a bartender,

told the Kansas City Star that

he recognized one of the gun-

men as someone he refused to

serve earlier that evening be-

cause he was known as a trou-

blemaker. Mr. Valdez told the

paper the man threw a cup at

him and left and then returned

later with another man.

Police received a call re-

porting the incident at 1:

a.m., police said. The four

dead victims were found in-

BYSHAYNDIRAICE

ANDBENCHAPMAN

Gunmen Kill Four

In Kansas Bar

GavinsPointReservoir

averagedailyoutflow

150,

0

50,

100,

2010 ’15 ’

cubic feet per second

Projected

Omaha

GavinsPoint MissouriRiverMissouriRiver

NEB.

IOWA

MO.

KAN.

S.D.

100 miles

Jan.

Omaha,Neb.,flows

350,

0

50,

100,

150,

200,

250,

300,

cubic feet per second

Sept.

Actualflow

MissouriRiverdamsreducedtheworstofflooding

inplaceslikeOmaha,Neb.,thisyear.

Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Actual

Estimated

flows

ifdam

system

didn'texist

U.S. NEWS

in urban areas.

Some say the falling arrest

rates signal a fundamental

shift in crime prevention. The

shrinking misdemeanor sys-

tem, they say, is evidence that

police departments are pulling

back on sweeping quality-of-

life enforcement and focusing

instead on “hot spots,” neigh-

borhood strips and streets

with clusters of gun violence

and gang activity.

The decline, some experts

say, could also be driven by

technologies like the internet

and mobile phones that help to

keep social interaction off the

streets and inside homes. The

growing decriminalization and

legalization of marijuana has

also contributed, they say.

“The enforcement powers of

the police are being used far

less often,” said Jeremy Travis,

a former president of John Jay

College of Criminal Justice in

Manhattan. It is a “very deep re-

set of the fundamental relation-

ship between police and public.”

Millions of Americans are

swept into the misdemeanor

system every year, but only re-

cently have scholars sought to

dig into the numbers of low-

level crime. Criminal data and

research have focused on vio-

lent felonies like rape and mur-

der and more serious drug-deal-

ing offenses, while statistics on

misdemeanors have been noto-

Major police departments

around the country are arrest-

ing fewer people for minor

crimes, according to a growing

body of criminal justice data.

New statistical studies show

a deep, yearslong decline in

misdemeanor cases across New

York and California and in cities

throughout other regions, with

arrests of young black men fall-

ing dramatically.

New York City’s misde-

meanor arrest totals have fallen

by half since peaking in 2010,

with rates of African-American

arrests sinking to their lowest

point since 1990. The arrest rate

for black men in St. Louis fell by

80% from 2005 to 2017, a period

that saw steep declines in sim-

ple assault and drug-related of-

fenses. In Durham, N.C., arrest

rates for African-Americans fell

by nearly 50% between 2006

and 2016.

While racial disparities in en-

forcement persist, researchers

say they are surprised by the

downward misdemeanor trend,

which pushes against ingrained

assumptions about overpolicing

BYJACOBGERSHMAN

Arrests Drop Sharply for Minor Crimes

Fall is especially steep

for young black men

as police strategies

and drug laws shift

White

Hispanic

Black

MisdemeanorarrestsinNew

YorkCity

Source: John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Note: 2018 figures don't include arrests for

misdemeanors committed by 16-year-olds

between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31.

10,

0

2,

4,

6,

8,

per 100,000 people

1990 ’95 2000 ’05 ’10 ’

Ex-Chief Defends

‘Broken Windows’

Former New York City po-

lice commissioner William Brat-

ton likened the “broken win-

dows” policing of

misdemeanors to cancer che-

motherapy. It was tough medi-

cine the city needed when

crime, fear and disorder were

rampant.

Mr. Bratton, who led the

NYPD during parts of the admin-

istrations of Mayor Rudy Giuliani

and Mayor Bill de Blasio, said

the “aggressive treatment...really

helped the patient to get better”

and allowed New York to “exper-

iment with lower doses.”

The city’s misdemeanor ar-

rests jumped in the 1990s dur-

ing Mr. Giuliani’s mayoralty—

when an embrace of

criminologists George Kelling

and James Q. Wilson’s broken-

windows theory ushered in

crackdowns on graffiti vandals,

subway panhandlers, public uri-

nation and loitering.

Arrests soared even higher

under the next mayor, Michael

Bloomberg—but started declin-

ing during his last term and ha-

ven’t stopped.

Charges for trespassing, re-

sisting arrest and marijuana of-

fenses started falling in 2011,

as the Bloomberg administra-

tion’s stop-and-frisk tactics and

housing project gang sweeps

came under fire from civil-liber-

ties advocates.

Under current Mayor de

Blasio and Manhattan District

Attorney Cy Vance, the decline

extended to other crimes like

simple assault, petty larceny

and turnstile jumping.

Police are looking

for two suspects.

Five people were

also wounded.

© Belén Imaz. Archive of the Region of Madrid

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