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Life & Times Transcript
9/26/07 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- Cities are competing for police officers. What will they do to attract the best? Chief Bill Lansdowne>> This winter, we'll be on the east coast when there's six feet of snow out there showing the coast of San Diego and people who will be surfing. This is a great environment to work in and a great police department to be on. Val Zavala>> And then, what do you give a president who has it all? We look at the gifts that went to the Reagan White House from kings and the common man alike. It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times. Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Val Zavala>> Los Angeles Police Chief Bill Bratton has complained for years that Los Angeles doesn't have enough police officers and yet, when the city increases the hiring budget, they still don't. Why is that? Because good applicants are hard to come by and the competition among cities for those few applicants is intense. But why the shortage and how far are cities willing to go to get the best officers? NewsHour correspondent Jeffrey Kaye has our story. Jeffrey Kaye>> To attract and hire a thousand new police officers, the city of Los Angeles is spending a million dollars this year on a recruitment blitz. Narrator>> "In the city of Los Angeles, when duty calls, the LAPD responds." Jeffrey Kaye>> With baby boomers retiring from police departments in large numbers and with starting salaries often not keeping up with the cost of living, law enforcement agencies across the country are having trouble filling their ranks. And the war hasn't helped. The military, usually a good source of law enforcement candidates, is retaining personnel. In addition, since 9/11, federal agencies from the Border Patrol to the FBI also have ramped up their own hiring, increasing the competition for available and qualified personnel. Kenneth Garner>> It's a challenge nationwide. Everybody is talking about recruitment and the recruitment of qualified police officers. Jeffrey Kaye>> Kenneth Garner is a Deputy Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. Kenneth Garner>> Every police department is hiring right now. I've never seen that before in my thirty years in law enforcement where every police department, usually it's one or the other is hiring, but now everybody is hiring. Jeffrey Kaye>> Although no hard numbers exist, organizations representing law enforcement agencies say that most large police departments in the United States complain that they have shortages of sworn officers. So many are making the hard sell at job fairs and hiring expos. >> "Both of you interested in law enforcement?" >> "Oh, yeah." >> "Excellent." Jeffrey Kaye>> At this one held recently by the San Diego Police Department, potential recruits were shown law enforcement hardware. [Film Clip] Jeffrey Kaye>> They got an opportunity to test their reflexes on training simulators. [Film Clip] Jeffrey Kaye>> And to chat with officers from all branches of the department. >> "And they taught us how to ride. If you didn't know how to ride, they teach you how to ride and, if you knew how to ride, we retrain you (laughter)." Jeffrey Kaye>> Recruiters hope the excitement and esprit de corps of a job in law enforcement would appeal to both those seeking their first job and those thinking about a career change, people such as Benjamin Pearson. Benjamin Pearson>> I'm bored, to tell you the truth. I'm super bored and I've never had careers, but I've had a number of jobs that have never amounted to anything. I want a challenge. I want to make a positive contribution to society. Jeffrey Kaye>> In San Diego, the country's sixth largest city, the police department has more than two hundred vacancies. That shortage, says Police Chief Bill Lansdowne, is leaving divisions severely understaffed. Chief Bill Lansdowne>> We're not providing all the services we used to. We belong to a lot of taskforces, the Drug Enforcement Administration, ICAC, Internet Crimes Against Children. We've had to pull some of our officers out of those taskforces and put them back on patrol duty so we can continue to answer the calls. We're not clearing as many cases as we used to because of the shortages. And our response times are starting to move up a little bit because we're not getting to the calls as quickly as we used to. Jeffrey Kaye>> When job fairs, videos and billboards aren't enough, Chief Lansdowne acknowledges that he's not above poaching qualified officers from far-away departments, even using San Diego's mild climate as a valuable recruiting ally. Chief Bill Lansdowne>> This winter, we'll be on the east coast when there's six feet of snow out there showing the coast of San Diego and people who will be surfing. This summer when it's a hundred fifteen degrees in Arizona, we'll be recruiting there as our temperature will stay around eighty-two degrees. This is a great environment to work in and a great police department to be on. [Film Clip] Jeffrey Kaye>> More controversially, some departments are also changing their hiring requirements. In some cases, they're relaxing fitness standards and forgiving recruits' past debt problems and minor criminal convictions. The LAPD has revised its zero tolerance policy towards past drug use among recruits. Admitting to having used cocaine or marijuana no longer eliminates candidates. Kenneth Garner>> You can't use 1950 standards and apply them today. We're not opening up the floodgates, but we are being realistic in the twenty-first century and saying that some kids will experiment with drugs. But experiment is one thing. Being a drug user is another thing. Jeffrey Kaye>> To help borderline candidates pass the department's fitness requirements, the LAPD has also expanded a program that helps harden the bodies of potential officers before they enter the police academy. All these efforts are geared to getting more cops, but will more police officers equal less crime? Joseph Brann>> I have long maintained that it isn't about adding more numbers. It's about how we use those resources effectively and efficiently in the first place. Jeffrey Kaye>> Joseph Brann is a former chief of police who, in the 1990s, directed the Clinton administration's Community Oriented Policing Services, or C.O.P.S. program. C.O.P.S. provided billions of dollars in federal funds to help local law enforcement agencies hire a hundred thousand new officers. Now a private consultant, Brann believes that local politicians and law enforcement agencies often promise to increase police personnel as a way to score public relations points. Joseph Brann>> If elected officials would ask the question when a police organization is saying we need more in the way of resources, they ought to be asking a very specific question. What are we going to get if we provide you with those additional resources? What's the outcome that's going to be achieved here? I think if we did that, we would actually recognize what type of resources we need to be seeking. We would also be a lot more careful about just adding bodies for the sake of adding bodies. Jeffrey Kaye>> Instead of putting more bodies in uniform, Brann advocates turning over some policing jobs to civilian employees, making greater use of technology such as surveillance cameras in public places and creating better partnerships between the public and police. But in high crime neighborhoods such as Los Angeles's Panorama City district, some residents simply want more cops on the streets. Lisa Quintana>> I'd feel much safer with more police. I'd like to be able to walk down the street feeling secure and not afraid so I can do the things I need to do. Jeffrey Kaye>> Long considered an under-policed city, Los Angeles now has about ninety-five hundred sworn police officers. Kenneth Garner>> The chief has gone on record as saying, you know, to really police this city the right way, you need between fourteen and fifteen thousand officers. So that's the goal, but first we have walk before we run, and that first goal is to get up to ten thousand and, you know, have enough officers to really fully deploy. Jeffrey Kaye>> LAPD officials are confident that they'll meet their hiring goals. Looking the epitome of spit and polish perfection, a graduating class of police cadets recently stepped smartly onto the LAPD Academy's parade ground. When the ceremony ended, Los Angeles had sixty-three newly sworn officers on its police force. Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times". Val Zavala>> As we speak, it's flying through space, traveling twelve thousand miles per hour toward Mars. I'm talking about the Phoenix Lander scheduled to arrive in May of 2008 and, if all goes well, it will discover what scientists consider gold. Sam Louie talked with Barry Goldstein, the manager of the Phoenix Project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. Sam Louie>> Well, after four and a half years of planning, the Phoenix mission launched August 4 and it's expected to land May 25 of next year. Barry, can you describe a little bit more about the mission? Barry Goldstein>> Sure. Phoenix is the first of the Mars scout missions which were missions designed to react to discoveries from the Mars community, basically scientific discoveries from the previous missions to Mars. Sam Louie>> Recent missions have revealed strong evidence of water on Mars, but NASA needed a sophisticated spacecraft which could collect, analyze and scan the terrain. This is the result, the Phoenix Lander. Barry Goldstein>> So what we are doing with Phoenix, which is a little bit different from the previous Landers from Mars, is instead of going to study the history of water on the planet, we're actually going to where we believe through reconnaissance that the water actually is. We're going to send the Lander down to the northern polar regions. We're going to dig into what we believe is the water ice and we're going to sample it and put it into our little in situ, our little instrument laboratories that we have on the Lander deck. Sam Louie>> In terms of significance, what are you hoping to find? Barry Goldstein>> Well, the main purpose for going to the polar region, as I said, this was really reacting to a discovery from Odyssey. Everywhere on earth that we see water in any form, we see signs of life. It doesn't have to be creatures crawling around or anything with intelligence of that sort, but we see microbes and things that basically are the building blocks of life. So the NASA theme for the Mars exploration program is really to follow the water. Sam Louie>> To follow the water, NASA is sending the Phoenix Lander to Mars' north pole. This is NASA's first attempt to successfully land on Mars' polar regions. Barry Goldstein>> What we're doing with Phoenix is we are actually reacting to a discovery that was made by the Odyssey spacecraft which is an orbiter that's been in orbit about toward the end of 2001 around Mars. What they found was, within a half a meter of the surface at the northern polar regions, is accessible water ice. Sam Louie>> How confident are you that the Phoenix Lander will find water? Barry Goldstein>> How confident? We're pretty confident based on the data. Can we say positive? No. We haven't had anything down there to touch it and see it, but remote sensing is fairly sophisticated and fairly good, so we're pretty confident that it's there. We think we've designed a good instrument, so we'd actually dig into it and get to it and taste and sniff and smell it. The Odyssey mission had an instrument that discovered that all the way down to about sixty-five degrees north latitude was accessible water ice. By accessible, I mean less than a half a meter from the surface. Sam Louie>> The Phoenix Lander has a seven foot long robotic arm. It's the largest ever built by NASA. The arm is capable of digging close to two feet into the soil, deep enough to penetrate the hard surface and potentially tap into a layer of ice underneath. Barry Goldstein>> We like to call it vertical mobility by digging. We want to maximize what we call the workspace. If this were the edge of the deck and that's the surface, we want to maximize the reach of the arm so that it has the maximum capability of grabbing a sample. The longer the arm is, the longer the workspace. That's a fine balance because, if the arm gets too long, it's a little bit hard to control. So we tried to build the longest arm we could within reason. So what we're doing with Phoenix is we're putting a stationary Lander down. If everything goes well, that'll be on May 25 of next year. A stationary Lander down on the upper latitudes of Mars and we're actually going to obviously take pictures, but we're also going to dig into the surface and actually get the ice into a sample and deliver those samples to little laboratories that we actually have on this Lander to investigate what's inside of the ice. Sam Louie>> And if they find water, could life be close by? Barry Goldstein>> If I were to dream as to what would be the miraculous discovery we could have is if we found organics in the water. That would be absolutely earth-shattering, so to speak. That would be sign of the potential for life on another planet. That would be somewhat significant. Sam Louie>> But before that can happen, the Phoenix still has a long ways to go, a hundred seventy million miles, to be exact. Right now, on the journey, any concerns? Barry Goldstein>> We're right on course where we want to be and we have been finding no problems, so things have been going very smooth. Sam Louie>> Where is the area of concern? Landing it or keeping it on course? Barry Goldstein>> Getting to the planet is something that we've done fairly well. I think, without question, the hardest part of our mission is the entry descent and the landing, without question. Think of it this way. We're landing a vehicle a hundred seventy million miles away from earth in seven minutes. It's coming in, as I said before, at twelve thousand six hundred miles an hour. Inside that seven minutes, it has to descend down to five miles an hour accurately. Sam Louie>> With so much happening in such a short period of time, precision and accuracy are crucial to a successful landing. Barry Goldstein>> We have models that we use for the environment that we're going through, the density of the atmosphere, the wind speeds, things of that sort, atmosphere pressure, as I said. All these things have to happen as we expect. Sam Louie>> So the quest to find water and to answer the question of whether there's life on Mars gets closer with each passing day. Barry Goldstein>> The proof of our mission is going to be how well we do our job in getting to the surface successfully and that's still some ten months away, May 25. Sam Louie>> And if it gets to Mars successfully, the Phoenix Lander will have ninety days to do its work and possibly answer the question of whether there's past or present life on Mars. I'm Sam Louie for Life and Times. Val Zavala>> Ronald Reagan received more gifts than any other president up to that time in presidential history, more than a hundred thousand of them. So what do you do with a hundred thousand gifts, everything from sculptures to spurs? Well, most of them ended up at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley and now you can see dozens of them in an exhibit called "Gifts to the President". Vicki Curry got a tour from curator Thomas Thomas. Vicki Curry>> Crystal and coins, guns and knives. These are just a few of the thousands of gifts given to Ronald Reagan during his presidency. Thomas Thomas>> He received all kinds of things from the absurd to the gorgeous. I mean, it's a full array. Vicki Curry>> And they're not just from other heads of state. Half of them came from ordinary people around the world. Thomas Thomas>> The everyday people just wanted to say thank you to a president that they thought was doing a really fine job. They are sent to him so often that there's a Gift Unit in Washington, D.C. for each president and the gifts are sent directly to the Gift Unit. Many are presented to him directly on some sort of event or occasion and those he sees. The ones that go directly to the Gift Unit he actually doesn't see until after his presidential library is built and he comes out here. There are many. I'm told stories that were before my time here that he wandered through the gifts downstairs in our collections area and just was amazed. He said, "All these were from the people to me?" Vicki Curry>> So you start the exhibit with this portrait. How did you decide to do that? Thomas Thomas>> I went through the collection and decided on a portrait that I felt really showed the president. The president as a western man is the way I see him. Vicki Curry>> Now there's quite a number of portraits in this exhibit, but yet many of them are made out of unusual materials. Thomas Thomas>> That's quite so. Vicki Curry>> Tell me about them. Thomas Thomas>> Oh, we have pieces out of redwood. We have pieces out of bronze. We have a portrait out of lapis lazuli stone, which is really quite incredible. Someone decided that they needed to do a portrait out of butterfly wings and, of course, I tease the director that they're all right wings (laughter). We have a piece that was chainsaw-carved of the president. Yeah, it's an interesting piece. Then we have pieces right next to it that are done in gold and silver. I brought these out just so you'd get an idea of how so many people see the president so differently. I enjoy asking people, "Which one do you think looks the most like the president to you?" Vicki Curry>> Well, you were telling me earlier that you feel a lot of people had difficulty capturing the likeness of the president. Thomas Thomas>> The president has a very unusual likeness to be captured. He has certain things about him that are unique and, if you don't really spend a lot of time looking carefully at who he is and the way he looks, you'll miss him entirely. If you do see him, then you'll get it. Some are done by professional artists. Many are done just by individuals who enjoy doing pieces like that or decide that that's what they really need to do to say thank you to the president. Vicki Curry>> That craftsmanship is on display throughout the exhibit. Thomas Thomas>> I think one of my favorites is the Komodo Dragon carved out of wood. But when you look at it, people when they just sort of pass by think it's a taxidermy piece, you know, that that really is a dragon there with its children. But it's out of wood and it's extraordinary. Vicki Curry>> This looks really interesting. What is this piece that's hanging on the wall here? Thomas Thomas>> That's a cowhide. It was presented to the president by a group of Japanese people. Vicki Curry>> A cowhide. That's interesting. Thomas Thomas>> And it's done in Old West, of all things. We have the cavalry up there coming over the hill, the stagecoach being attacked by Indians. It's a strangely gorgeous piece. Vicki Curry>> It really is. And then what does it say there in the middle? Thomas Thomas>> It says, "In Commemoration of Reappointment". They really mean "Re-election", but they didn't quite get the translation. Vicki Curry>> (Laughter) This looks like a replica of the White House which he probably received quite a few of. But apparently this has something else going on that you don't see on first glance? Thomas Thomas>> This is a desk and quite an unusual one in that it does open up. Vicki Curry>> Oh, my goodness. Thomas Thomas>> Storage compartments. Vicki Curry>> Wow. Thomas Thomas>> Secret compartments, writing area. Vicki Curry>> That's amazing. So this was hand-made by a woman? Thomas Thomas>> Yes, Margaret Martin. She's one of these people that felt that she wanted to say something to the president and she used her craft to do so. Vicki Curry>> There are a lot of things you might expect a president to receive, like different versions of the American flag, the Bald Eagle, the Statue of Liberty. But do all presidents get spurs as gifts? Thomas Thomas>> Each president seems to get things that are just for him and saddles were a big thing. Although Mr. Reagan only rode English, other people gave him all kinds of saddles. Belt buckles were a huge thing to give to the president. Oftentimes, people gave things to him for an occasion. Here's a saddle here talking about tax reform. We have a pencil back there from a group of students because they wanted to get his attention on an object. We have a ball of yarn over here from a group of ladies in San Diego who were concerned about the Conference on Aging and they wanted the president to be sure that he was aware of their needs and concerns, so they sent it to him. The ball of yarn, unfortunately, went unnoticed until after he was here. That's one of the unfortunate things when people send things. Sometimes the Gift Unit receives over a hundred items a day. A hundred items a day is just a lot of material to take in. Vicki Curry>> Although the president doesn't see most of the gifts sent to him by the public, he usually sees the ones from world leaders. Thomas Thomas>> Heads of state would give him more of the high-end kind of things, just something really nice from their country that represented their country and their people. Japan gave a couple of dolls that are really exquisite. The DeMarcos family gave him a tree that's out of Mother of Pearl. It's really flashy (laughter). Vicki Curry>> Flashy or simple, ordinary or bizarre, the Reagan Library says all the gifts are popular with visitors. Thomas Thomas>> It's a connection between the people and the president. We've had one other gift exhibit. It was done about eight years ago and I would say that probably eighty percent of what we have on exhibit now is new. If you saw the original gift exhibit, you will see a whole lot of new things. Val Zavala>> Many of those presidential gifts are now on permanent display at the Reagan Library. For information, you can go to their website at reaganlibrary.com. Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address: Life and Times 4401 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, California 90027 You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org. Val Zavala>> Yes, I know I'm showing my age when I say I've had personal experience with the hula hoop. And, like they say, if you wait long enough, everything comes back around again. Only this time, at a whole new level. Hena Cuevas takes a look at the return of the hula hoop. Hena Cuevas>> They say what comes around, goes around, and that might be the case of hula hooping. Rayna McInturf>> "Ladies, let's start by taking some deep inhales, lifting the hoop up above your head, stretching at the top." Hena Cuevas>> This is Hoopnotica, a combination workout dance class created and taught by Rayna McInturf. Rayna McInturf>> There are a lot of the same benefits that you would find in, say, Yoga or Pilates, which are both core workouts. You get a lot of core strengthening. Strengthening in all of your abdominal muscles and your lower back. That's your core that supports you. But hoop dance goes even beyond that into toning and strengthening your entire body. As you start to work on different parts of the body and involve your limbs, you start to work your entire body from arms, legs, hips, glutes, back, abdominal, feet, hands, wrists, everything. Everything gets a workout. [Film Clip] Hena Cuevas>> She says she first saw this new style of dancing being performed on the street by a woman in Silver Lake. McInturf was hooked. Rayna McInturf>> I started performing hoop dance and I would just get approached by people who wanted to know where they could learn how to do that. So I started teaching very shortly into actually hoop dancing myself, so there was always a demand for classes. "So reach your arm up and hand comes down close to the body." It is quite a workout and the whole point of learning to dance with the hoop is to make it look effortless. So what I've created for students is that I've taken every move and just completely broken it down and that's what we do in class. We take each move and break it down step by step by step. Hena Cuevas>> But many adults last used a hula hoop when they were just kids and are skeptical about using a childhood toy as a workout tool. Rayna McInturf>> A lot of people, when we first talked to them about hooping or they see it and we ask them if they want to try, they say, "Oh, I tried that a month ago and I can't do it." We asked them, "Well, have you tried a big adult-sized hoop like this?" "No, I just used my daughter's hoop from school." That's the biggest reason, I think, for adults, that it kind of has gone out of style because hoops that you can buy in the store are made for children. They're smaller in diameter and they're much lighter in weight. They're really almost impossible for adults to use with any kind of grace. So using an adult-sized hoop, we give this to someone and they give it a try, even though they think they can't, and instantly they're hula hooping and they're amazed. Hena Cuevas>> Even though Hoopnotica is less than a year old, the classes are sold out and she says there's even a waiting list. Rayna McInturf>> I know that a lot of women, just like me, hate exercise and really are probably lacking fun in their lives. So this kind of handles both of those things and also has a lot of other benefits like creative self-expression, building of confidence, shifting your mood. Instantly you cannot be upset inside a hoop. [Film Clip] Hena Cuevas>> I'm Hena Cuevas for Life and Times. Val Zavala>> And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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