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NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MONDAY, APRIL 30, 2007
Ducks out of water
Kari Gillespie, Houston junior, walks her newly-purchased pet ducklings, Bonnie and Clyde, on Wescoe Beach Friday afternoon. Gillespie said she planned to keep the ducklings until after they'd grown up. "I'd been wanting a pet for awhile and they were just too cute to pass up," she said. "They're my little babies."
KANSAS CITY SHOOTING
BY HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH ASSOCIATED PRESS
Gunman kills two
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A shooting at a Kansas City shopping center has left at least three dead, including the gunman, police said.
Two of the victims were shot about 3:30 p.m. in the parking lot of the Ward Parkway Center in south Kansas City. The gunman went inside the mall and is believed to have fired more shots, wounding at least two people, police spokesman Tony Sanders said.
The man was shot to death inside the mall, but police were still trying to determine exactly who shot him, Sanders said. His body remained there early Sunday evening.
Sanders said the entire incident began about 2 p.m. at another location, when police went to a home to investigate a report of a person who had not been seen by relatives for days. The person was
found dead and his car was missing, Sanders said.
Around 3:15 p.m., an officer was shot in the arm after pulling over a man who was driving the victim's car. The officer, whose wound was not life-threatening, returned fire. The car took off and was later seen at the mall.
Police received several calls from people who saw a man with a "long gun" at the mall, Sanders said. The gunman shot two people in the parking lot, killing them, then went inside the mall and fired more shots, Sanders said.
TRAFFIC STOPS
The mall, one of the city's busiest shopping centers, was shut down and officers were going through each store. Sanders said.
Preliminary witness accounts gave conflicting accounts of exactly where the shootings occurred. Television video showed a window shot out at a Starbucks coffee shot but some witnesses said the shooting occurred near a Target store.
Study reveals color disparity
Justice Dept. reports African Americans, Hispanics more likely to be arrested
BY MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — AfricanAmerican, Hispanic and white drivers are equally likely to be pulled over by police, but African Americans and Hispanics are much more likely to be searched and arrested, a federal study found.
Police were much more likely to threaten or use force against African Americans and Hispanics than against whites in any encounter, whether at a traffic stop or elsewhere, according to the Justice Department.
The study, released Sunday by the department's Bureau of Justice Statistics, covered police contacts with the public during 2005 and was based on interviews by the Census Bureau with nearly 64,000 people age 16 or older.
"The numbers are very consistent" with those found in a similar study of police-public contacts in 2002, bureau statistician Matthew R. Durose, the report's co-author, said in an interview. "There's some stability in the findings over these three years."
Traffic stops have become a politically volatile issue. Minority groups have complained that many stops and searches are based on race rather than on legitimate suspicions. African Americans in particular have complained of being pulled over for simply "driving black."
"The available data is sketchy but deeply concerning," said Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP's
Washington bureau. The civil rights organization has done its own surveys of traffic stops, and he said the racial disparities grow larger, the deeper the studies delve.
"It's very important to look at the hit rates for searches — the number that actually result in finding a crime," Shelton said. "There's a great deal of racial disparity there." He called for federal legislation that would collect uniform data by race on stops, arrests, use of force, searches and hit rates.
"This report shows there are still disturbing disparities in terms of what happens to people of color after the stop," said Dennis Parker, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's racial justice project. He also said better reporting is needed.
Like the 2002 report, this one contained a warning that the racial disparities uncovered "do not constitute proof that police treat people differently along demographic lines" because the differences could be explained by circumstances not analyzed by the survey. The 2002 report said such circumstances might include driver conduct or whether drugs were in plain view.
Traffic stops are the most frequent way police interact with the public, accounting for 41 percent of all contacts. An estimated 17.8 million drivers were stopped in 2005.
African-American, Hispanic and white motorists were equally likely to be pulled over by police — between 8 percent and 9 percent of each
group. The slight decline in African Americans pulled over — from 9.2 percent in 2002 to 8.1 percent in 2005 — was not statistically significant, Durose said, and could be the result of random differences.
The racial disparities showed up after that point:
African Americans (9.5 percent) and Hispanics (8.8 percent) were much more likely to be searched than whites (3.6 percent). There were slight but statistically insignificant declines compared with the 2002 report in the percentages of African Americans and Hispanics searched.
African Americans (4.5 percent) were more than twice as likely as whites (2.1 percent) to be arrested. Hispanic drivers were arrested 3.1 percent of the time.
Among all police-public contacts, force was used 1.6 percent of the time. But African Americans (4.4 percent) and Hispanics (2.3 percent) were more likely than whites (1.2 percent) to be subjected to force or the threat of force by police officers.
People interviewed described police hitting, kicking, pushing, grabbing, pointing a gun or spraying pepper spray at them or threatening to do so. More than four of five felt the force used was excessive, but there were no statistically significant racial disparities among the people who felt that way.
Two years ago, the Bush administration's handling of the 2002 report and its finding of racial disparities generated considerable controversy.
MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY
Doctors explore new ways to operate Procedures include surgeries through natural openings in bodies
BY MALCOLM RITTER ASSOCIATED PRESS
PITTSBURGH — A 4-year-old boy lay on an operating table a few weeks ago with a tumor that had eaten into his brain and the base of his skull. Standard surgery would involve cutting open his face, leaving an ugly scar and hindering his facial growth as he matured.
But doctors at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center knew a way to avoid those devastating consequences. They removed much of the tumor through the boy's nose.
Since then, doctors in New York and in France have announced they removed gall bladders through the vaginas of two women. And doctors in India say they have performed appendectomies through the mouth.
It's a startling concept and a little unpleasant to contemplate. But researchers are exploring new ways to do surgery using slender instruments through the body's natural openings, avoiding cutting through the skin and muscle.
Many questions remain about that approach. But doctors say it holds the promise of providing a faster recovery with less pain and no visible scars. And in the brain, it can avoid a need for manipulating tissue that could disturb brain and eye function.
For abdominal surgeries, going through the mouth, vagina or
rectum would avoid the need to cut through sensitive tissues. And deep inside the body, where tissue doesn't feel lasting pain, the procedures themselves might be less traumatic.
Some abdominal surgeries like bowel operations can require patients to spend a week or more recovering at home. With the natural-opening surgery, the theoretical hope is that "they really can go back to work the next day" said David
Rattner of Massachusetts
Gener al
Hospital.
"It would be like going to the dentist and getting a root canal," Rattner said. "It's not trivial, but it also isn't disabling."
The key to operating through body openings is specialized slen-
"Getting rid of them completely is going to be not an evolutionary step but a revolutionary step."
the nose, nibbling at them and withdrawing pieces the size of popcorn kernels.
DR. MARC BESSLER On punctures during surgery
Sometimes doctors even pass up one natural body opening for another. On the same day they treated the 4-year-old, doctors in Pittsburgh operated on neck vertebrae of an elderly man through his nose. Usually, this operation would have been done through the mouth.
However, entry through the nose isn't feasible for brain tumors in some locations. That's why doctors had to remove the rest of the 4-year-old's tumor another way, by going through the side of his skull. They used an incision designed to hide behind his hairline.
der instruments that can be inserted into the natural channels, along with devices that provide light and a video camera lens at the site of the surgery. Doctors watch their progress on video screens
But going through the nose meant the patient could start eating right away rather than waiting a few days. And he avoided the risks of a feeding tube and a surgical hole in his throat to help him breathe, said neurosurgeon Dr. Amin Kassam.
Sound familiar? It's much like laparoscopic surgery, which revolutionized the operating room more than 15 years ago. For many operations, long incisions have been replaced with three or four holes, each maybe a quarter-inch to a half-inch wide. That has vastly reduced pain and recovery time.
as they manipulate the surgical instruments.
Doctors at the medical center first reached the spine through the nose just two years ago, he said.
The natural-opening approach holds the promise of going a step beyond that by eliminating the need for those punctures.
They have even removed brain tumors the size of baseballs through
"Getting rid of them completely is going to be not an evolutionary step, but a revolutionary step," said Dr. Marc Bessler of New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center.
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