Judge Davenport ousted: Middle-aged white woman with blonde bobbed hair wearing white blouse with black judges' robe sits at podium with microphone in front of dark wood bookcases

New bill seeks to remove Tennessee judge who illegally jailed children

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Since 2000, Judge Donna Scott Davenport has overseen the juvenile justice system in Rutherford County, where the county jailed kids in 48% of the cases referred to juvenile court — compared with the statewide average of 5%. Now, state Sen. Heidi Campbell and state Rep. Gloria Johnson have said they are proposing legislation that could result in Davenport’s ouster. A bill starting the process was filed in the state Senate Friday.

Demonizing the Free Press Puts President on Wrong Side of History

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Criticism is nothing new to people in the news business.
If you have spent more than a day gathering it, writing it, reporting it, printing it or posting it, you have experienced it. Readers need the news, but they don’t always like what they read. When they don’t like it, they let you know.

Redeemed Juveniles Like Me Are Not the Exception

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Today is special for me for several reasons.

For starters, I will have the honor of spending much of the day in a symposium at San Quentin State Prison in California.

Violence By, Against Police Risks Tearing Country Further Apart

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Gavin Long’s violence stood in sharp contrast to the hundreds of protesters, many of them young people, who expressed their anger and rage at the police department with words — loud words, painful words, harsh words — but just words.
(See rest of story plus slideshow in Bokeh.)

Cops Smash Boy Through Window in the Bronx

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he 14-year-old boy sat on the stoop of Hookah Stop in the Bronx, blood pouring from his chest and filling his lungs, and thought: This is what it’s like to die. Moments before 11 o’clock Saturday night, the boy, Javier Payne, had been smashed through the store’s plate glass window by a police officer who had stopped him after an altercation with a man on the street, witnesses said. The boy was bleeding critically and under arrest.