July 18, 2015 - July 18, 2015, The Afro-American A1 PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY EDITION
Volume 123 No. 50
JULY 18, 2015 - JULY 24, 2015
Baltimore
Washington
• Fake Pot Dangers D1 • Zoning Out Liquor Stores B1
• Living for the
• Is Metro Safe? D1
Weekend C2
• Editorial: Batts Was
• Editorial: Beware,
• Baltimore Crime
• Black Realtor, Certified
Synthetic Marijuana A5
Not the Problem A5
Tweets B1
International Property D1
AP Photo
President Barack Obama laid out an expansive vision on July 14 for fixing the criminal justice system by focusing on communities, courtrooms and cellblocks. A4
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Commissioner Batts Faced Pushback in Effort to Reform Police Department By Roberto Alejandro Special to the AFRO ralejandro@afro.com “ Changing the police department to the future Baltimore Police Department, that we have the opportunity to obtain, is going to take time. We’re on the road, we’re making those changes, we’re going in the right direction, and it doesn’t matter whether Tony Batts is here or not, change is happening in the Baltimore Police Department,” said Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts during a sit-down interview with the AFRO on July 2. Change was indeed happening in the department, at least at the top. On July 8, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie RawlingsBlake fired Batts and replaced him with
AP Photo
Former Police Commissioner Anthony Batts
new interim commissioner Kevin Davis. The firing came the same day Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 3 (FOP), Baltimore’s police union, issued an After Action Review Report critical of the commissioner’s leadership during the weeks of unrest in April and May that followed the death of Freddie Gray. The mayor denied the FOP’s report had anything to do with the firing, but called the ongoing focus on Batts’s leadership, as the city struggles to fend off a surge in gun violence and rank and file police officers effectively withdraw from Baltimore’s high crime neighborhoods, a “distraction”, according to the Associated Press. At a press conference on June 3, a reporter asked Batts whether he agreed Continued on A3
Free Community College NAN Lobbies for New Bill Starts to Take Shape
Voting Rights Bill
By James Wright Special to the AFRO jwright@afro.com Two members of the Congressional Black Caucus recently sponsored a bill that would allow, for the first time in the nation’s history, qualified students to attend a community college for free. U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), the ranking Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee, co-introduced the “America’s College Promise Act of 2015” with U.S. Sen. Cory Booker Continued on A3
By James Wright Special to the AFRO jwright@afro.com One of the nation’s most active civil rights organizations recently held a two-day conference on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., where restoring the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a chief topic. – Greg Moore The National Action Network (NAN), led by the Rev. Al Sharpton, convened a legislative and policy conference, “From Demonstration to Legislation,” on July 8-9. Sharpton said that 2015 has been a year of intense struggle for civil rights but those Continued on A4
“We need a hearing this year in the House and the Senate on this bill.”
Wikipedia
Bobby Scott is a U.S. representative from Virginia.
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Minority Banks Shut Out of New Tax Credit Awards By Shantella Y. Sherman Special to the AFRO ssherman@afro.com Members of the National Bankers Association, including heads of several Black-owned banking institutions, recently alleged charges of racial discrimination against the Department of Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund). The banks were overlooked for up to $3.5 billion in allocations in New Markets Tax Credits (NMTC) provided by the fund. The NMTC program,
“By our estimates, less than two percent of the $450 billion NMTCs issued over the past 12 years has gone to minority banks.” – B. Doyle Mitchell designed to spur economic development in distressed communities across the U.S., recently awarded 76 community development institutions, but did not do the same for any of the nation’s minority banks, despite their reputations of deploying capital in the most underserved communities in the U.S. “The absence of a single minority bank raises much concern,” said Michael Grant, president of the National Bankers Association stated in a press release on July 10. “In 2009, the General Accounting
Continued on A4