4- The Michigan Daily - Friday, November 5, 1993 CA U~ttbeal 420 Maynard Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan JosH DUBOw Editor in Chief ANDREW LEvY Editorial Page Editor , Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the majority opinion of the Daily editorial board. All other cartoons, articles and letters do not necessarily represent the opinion of the Daily. T my in Detroit i hope for the future me Court justice the flesh" to get badly needed dollars for Detroit. In county Prosecutor fact, the city saw a 15 percent cut in government aid. troit mayoral race Archer must work with the U.S. Conference of city. Twenty years Mayors topusha national agenda that focuses on the administration are cities. It is less than two years since the L.A. Riots, yes that the people and little has been done to relieve the pressure and look to the future. the problems of the cities. Action must be taken by ry kind - crime, the government to make these pressing changes, and pregnancies, high Archer must lead the call for this change. ;tructure and a de- Another principal responsibility of Archer's is to Lke their toll on the bring jobs to Detroit. He must paint the city in. a n a policy of coali- favorable light. And with his established relation- n the healing," and ship with the suburbs, he must convince the rest of the state that Detroit has needs that are relevant to John Engler has Michigan as a whole. ayor, promising to As the auto industry slowly moves out of Detroit, ation to aid Archer jobs must be found to replace them. And in the highly :ity. But talk is not competitive state-to-state tug-of-war for jobs, Ar- cher will be a welcome addition. I be a scrapping of Beyond funding and jobs, Archer must bring a ce reform bill, in sense of change to Detroit. The social problems of provides the same the city are immense, but they must be tackled. The tudents, suburban city government had grown stagnant. And in the process, a generation of young people is being lost. Archer's. He will More than half of Detroit students do not graduate ie federal govern- from high school. One-third of all babies are born to y into Detroit. For teenage mothers. It is not enough to lament the oung, in his later problems. Increased funding and a change in policy nwilling to "press is desperately needed. Sng habeas corpus Shr at Tastby im Lase- - L4 ( ti { y -.fr " 1T r- r-~ 'i.'. :i ,T + if 1 ' i / "i'7 .L _ " -- D a mi /.r Insigh 2> /S i fu~e Clinton anti-crime package :k Brooks (D-Texas), chair of the House Judi- ary Committee and long-time opponent of gun rol, recently allowed the Brady Bill, which would ire the purchaser of a handgun to wait five ping days to allow for a background check, to be rated from Clinton's anti-crime package. By ng the Brady Bill from the clutches of the anti- e package that has been stalled in Congress due logjam of bipartisan opposition, Brooks has :ased the likelihood that both will pass Con- ;. Passage of the Brady Bill is a small step toward h needed and long overdue gun-control legisla- But sans the Brady Bill, Clinton's crime bill s to be shot down. he anti-crime package proposed by the admin- :ion would deploy an additional 50,000 police, 'ell as authorizing funds for drug treatment rams and boot camps for juvenile offenders - noble goals. However, this bill would also :ase to almost fifty the number of federal crimes shable by death and limit to one the number of as corpus appeals a death row inmate could file Ieral court. Habeas corpus, the right of prisoners .se constitutional objections to their convictions ides a precious outlet for innocent victims of an rfect judicial system. Restricting this right, as on 's anti-crime bill proposes, will only restrict ustice and equality America espouses and per- now just death-penalty bill. whelmingly black and poor. Since 1932, only one white has been executed for killing a black, whereas the numbers are staggering on the opposite side. The poor suffer from inadequate legal representation and insufficient funds requisite for a fair trial and often pay the price. Minorities and the poor have virtually no hope in a system based more on skin color than justice; more on financial status than equality. Furthermore, as habeas corpus appeals are re- stricted to one, individuals unjustly sentenced to death-row become lambs to the slaughter of the State. In the last 20 years, 48 death-row inmates have been found innocent following their convictions. That's at least 48 fatal flaws in the system of capital punishment. Proponents of this provision in the anti-crime bill claim that limiting habeas corpus appeals will be an effective deterrent to the most serious crimes, and will also reduce excessive time and effort put into unnecessary appeals. However, no credible study has ever proven that the death penalty is a deterrent to crime . More importantly, because only about 125 ha- beas corpus petitions are filed annually, restricting appeals will sacrifice the rights of inmates for the minor relief of reducing a relatively small amount of paperwork. This is hardly the justice on which America prides itself. On Wednesday, the House endorsed increasing the number of police on America's streets. Clearly, Congress can pass anti-crime legislation without committing a crime of its own. The racist and classist death penalty fix must be considered separately from proposals about drug awareness and the state of the police bureaucracy. Such a sacrifice of justice is neither an effective nor a democratic solution to fighting crime. By KRIS SWARTY I write in response to your editorial "DPS Report Card," (10/14/ 93). As soon as I saw the headline, I said to myself, "Ahh, the Daily must not have had anything better to do, you know how they cop-bash when the get bored ..." I have several problems with your editorial. First off, you refer to the statistics provided by DPS as "internally generated," like this is a cover-up. Please tell me what else you would expect. Maybe you think it is proper and even widely practiced to hire an outside agency to tally the crimes reported each day. I hate to burst your bubble, but crime statistics are internally generated in just about every law enforcement agency around. This reflects on how well educated you are when it comes to reporting standards. Second, you try to propose another cover-up by DPS because their statistics reflect only those crimes reported. How is one able to produce statistics on unreported crimes unless you are an outside firm calling people at random to find out if they failed to report a crime to the Swarty is a School of Natural Resources junior. Parking woes To the Daily: Our congratulations for addressing the problem of parking on North Campus ("Students call North Campus parking unsafe," 10/22). However, those of us who have dealt with North Campus parking for some time sense that some punches were definitely pulled in the article. We were particularly intrigued by the comments of the Parking Services manager, Susan Kirkpatrick, "Parking is being expanded out from the core area." Excuse us? Don't you mean "affordable parking is being made completely inconvenient?" Are we supposed to be excited about parking away from the "core area?" For the moment, the North Campus crowd seems resistant to the idea of paying for what we've come to view as free parking. In a couple of years, everyone will be sucked into buying Reduced Rate permits. And the logical next step would be to raise their cost. We certainly aren't the only ones on campus who are dismayed by the profit-maximizing tendencies of Parking Services. ERIC BISH CHESTER CHANG Rackham students Embrace Jesus Christ To the Daily: I have a burden for those who proclaim to be Christians and Believers in Jesus Christ and actively support homosexuality. The Bible clearly states that males and females were created so that they might "be fruitful and multiply." The assumptions of the Gay Rights movement are that sexual preference is predetermined at birth, confirmed police? Maybe they should guess. Take this scenario: the computer is spitting out yearly statistics ... incidents of burglary actually reported = 100 - incidents of rape actually reported = 20. Later, in a small room around the corner, several uniformed officers sit around a table and try to figure out how many went unreported. "Hey, I bet old lady Smith was burglarized last month and never told us, count that as one. And I bet SOMEONE had to have gotten attacked after that wild party at the Michigan Union, count that as one rape." Wake up, how do you expect law enforcement agencies to incorporate unreported crimes into their statistics? There is no magic equation to use in order to figure out how many crimes went unreported - do you think they should just tack on another ten percent? If you read something besides your own paper and the political science journals, maybe you would know that crime statistics are reported in the University Record once a month AND include both reported and UNREPORTED incidents of sexual assault as reported by SAPAC. Third, you state the department would rather focus on punishments for crimes after they occur (and not Believers to give opportunity for all to come to know Christ as Savior. What an awesome responsibility! MICHAEL MARTZ Engineering junior Taking the moral high ground To the Daly: Let's get the facts straight regarding last week's poster war! Nothing cures AIDS - nothing! Yes, it's true that abstinence from sex and intravenous drug use will (in all likelihood) protect you from HIV, but a properly used latex condom and a syringe sterilized with bleach are also reasonably effective preventatives. If the College Republicans were really interested in preventing the spread of HIV or "curing" AIDS they would include more facts in their message. The thing that is most disturbing about the CollegebRepublicans actions is not the blatant misinformation being spewed. Rather, I object to the underlying attempt to squelch our understanding of ourselves and the world around us by redefining American politics as a play for the moral high-ground. JOHN R. SMITH Music Alumnus prevention). Please provide me with some background here - you give no support to this accusation in your editorial. I guess you need to be reminded that the courts are left to deal with punishments not the police and I'm sure DPS is aware of this. Most people learn that in high school government or middle school sociology class. Maybe that is why you had no support for your accusation. Regarding the prevention of crimes, maybe you should visit the Crime Prevention and Community Relations Division of DPS. It really does exist and they have made great strides in both areas. I bet you are one of those people that leave their dorm room unlocked or their book bag unattended and then accuse DPS of not preventing theft. Lastly, on the issue of professionalism, I ask you to find a comparable department with higher ethics and better trained personnel. And I challenge you to two things: take a look at the operating procedures and the training require for the officers and tell me they are not impressive, then visit the department and talk with some of the officers - you will find that they really are people, too. Review was terrible To the Daily: Let me take this opportunity to review Karen Lee's review of last weekend's Comedy Company performance (11/1/93). First, director Rob Green didat state that most sketches resulted from improvisation, but rather that" improv was a frequently used method of starting rehearsals. Furthermore, to call a performance' "...pointless, tasteless, irrelevant, unoriginal and almost completely humorless..." would be completely fallacious. I agree with Lee that "Appalachia" was utterly disgusting and in very poor taste, but it was one sketch. Sometimes a slap in the face is good for a society whose main concern at times is whether to allow the word "penis" to be broadcast on television. Overall, I feel Lee's review was unwarranted and unnecessarily harsh. Aside from one sketch, which was very successful at "waking up the audience," the show was very funny, tasteful and original. Why the Daily assigned a reporter with no sense of comedy to a comedy show is beyond me. CHRIS CURTIS President, UAC LETTERS POLICY The Daily encourages responses from its readers. Letters should include the author's name, year in school and/or University affiliation (if applicable), and phone number.0 has taken the initiative to ap- by taking out the Brady Bill, ocates of capital punishment to leting the restrictions on habeas States are over- Croll's Camera Corner Anthony V M. Croll Chester the Molester To the Daily: What was going through the minds of your layout staff when it was decided that "Chester the Molester" would be an appropriate front page photo on Nov. 1? The fact that the ROTC has apparently failed in teaching this one particular student (the photo's ..,'