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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, APRIL 10, 2014
PAGE 7B
NATIONAL
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Boston Police Department Commissioner and Fellow at Harvard University Edward Davis, left, and Watertown Mass., Police Chief Edward Deveau, center, applaud as Watertown Police Sgt. Jeffrey Pugliese and fellow police officers from Watertown as they stand to be acknowledged on Capitol Hill in Washington. Wednesday during the House Homeland Security Committee hearing about the Boston Marathon Bombings leading up to the year anniversary of the attack. At right is Harvard University Professor Herman "Dutch" Leonard.
Chief describes Boston Marathon lessons learned
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — It's been almost a year since police in the Boston suburb of Watertown were at the center of the hunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects.
Police found themselves in a late-night shootout with the suspects — one was killed, the other was found wounded almost a day later.
On Wednesday, Watertown's police chief was on Capitol Hill testifying at a House hearing on the aftermath of last April's bombings.
Edward Deveau was asked about what lessons his department learned in the wake of the attack and if anything should be different.
He said while his department is too small for a permanent seat on the Boston area's Joint Terrorism Taskforce — one of many task forces around the country organized by the FBI — smaller agencies like his
"need to have access to that table" immediately after events such as the Boston Marathon bombings.
A few days after the attacks that killed three and wounded hundred others, Watertown officers got into an early morning shootout with bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Deveau said his officers thought they were pursing carjacking suspects when the officers were attacked with homemade explosives and gunfire. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in the shootout and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found nearly a day later, wounded and hiding in a boat.
Deveau testified before the House Homeland Security Committee along with a sergeant from his department and former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis.
updated," Deveau said of working with the FBI-led terrorism task force. "We need to have a seat right away."
"When something like this happens, we need to have access to that table ... to be
The committee chairman, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said he still worried that law enforcement officials missed signs that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had become increasingly radicalized in the months and weeks leading up to the bombings.
McCaul said a report from the committee on the bombings "found that several red flags and warnings were missed."
The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday that Tamerlan Tsarnaev submitted an application with immigration authorities to legally change his name to honor a slain militant who fought Russian forces in Dagestan, a Russian republic where the Tsarnaev family is from.
CIVIL RIGHTS
Hall of Famer: Gay athletes face decades-old questions
ASSOCIATED PRESS
AUSTIN, Texas — NBA Hall of Famer Bill Russell said Wednesday that gay athletes' current fight for equality and acceptance reminds him of some of the same struggles black athletes faced in the 1960s.
Russell, who won 11 NBA championships with the Boston Celtics, said talk about whether gay athletes can be good teammates or if they might disrupt locker rooms are the same questions black athletes heard years ago, when colleges and professional leagues were struggling with the concept of integration.
"It seems to me, a lot of questions about gay athletes, were the same questions they used to ask about us," Russell said during a panel discussion at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, which is hosting a summit celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.
Russell said he would have
only one question about a gay teammate: Can he play?
Russell, 80, joined NFL Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown. 78, on a panel about sports and race during the three-day Civil Rights Summit. Former President Bill Clinton is scheduled to address the summit Wednesday night, and President Barack Obama is scheduled to speak Thursday.
Brown and Russell were key figures, as athletes and black leaders, during the civil rights movement. Both men said they approached civil rights as a struggle for respect for human beings based on their character and merit, not the color of their skin.
Their comments came just hours after UMass basketball player Derrick Gordon became the first openly gay player in Division 1 men's basketball.
The former athletes also addressed the question of whether college athletes should be able to form unions and collectively bargain with
their universities. Brown said he opposed unionizing college athletes, but also said he disliked the model of the NCAA.
"It's not going to be a struggle between the NCAA and the union, that will just be (about) money ... put the value back on education," Brown said.
Russell, however remembered fighting to form the NBA players union to get better contracts. That only worked when players threatened to sit out an all-star game and the playoffs, Russell said.
"All great fortunes are amassed with either cheap or slave labor," Russell said. "The NCAA is the one group everybody is focusing on. They have this money machine. To keep it this way, the labor force has to be free or very low wages ... All the agreements with the NBA now are based on collective bargaining."