Editorials from around Ohio

Recent editorials of statewide and national interest from Ohio newspapers:

This time, El Paso and then Dayton

Akron Beacon Journal

Aug. 4

Many Ohioans went to bed on Saturday with thoughts of El Paso, Texas. Earlier, a gunman opened fire at a Walmart there, killing 20 people and injuring dozens. Then, morning arrived with word of a mass shooting at a popular Dayton bar, the toll nine dead with many wounded. These horrific episodes, at least 33 across the country this year, account for a fraction of the casualties of gun violence. Yet they leave a deep impression, in the unimaginable slaughter and the vulnerability of the victims.

Those at Walmart on weekend errands or enjoying a summer evening with friends had no idea of the devastation coming.

The same goes for those attending the garlic festival in Gilroy, Calif., a week earlier, in which a gunman killed three and wounded 13 others. All told, that adds up to 32 dead in a matter of days.

The investigation in Dayton continues, the killer, a 24-year-old student, heavily armed, in body armor, dying as city police officers responded quickly, saving many lives. Authorities in El Paso captured the suspect, and by Sunday, they were calling the shooting a domestic terrorism case and weighing whether to bring hate crime charges.

That thinking is driven by a hate-filled, anti-immigrant manifesto that appeared online just minutes before the shooting. The document warns about a “Hispanic invasion of Texas” as part of foreigners replacing white people. It calls for separating the country into territories by race. It refers to the mass murder of Muslims in New Zealand in March, leaving 51 dead, in which the killer published a similar manifesto promoting white supremacy.

There is a chilling thread through the recent mass shootings in Pittsburgh and Poway, Calif., even Charlottesville, where guns weren’t involved, one woman fatally hit by a car, but the chant at a white supremacist rally went, “Jews will not replace us.”

What about the toxic rhetoric of President Trump? He clearly has played to racial divisions and stoked fear. His administration’s treatment of migrants has departed from decency. Yet the immigration debate isn’t just a failure of presidential leadership. Congress has neglected the obvious compromise, or a comprehensive answer to spur consensus and narrow openings to inflame.

Something similar applies to the gun debate. There is no perfect solution. There may be no set of laws that would have stopped the majority of mass shootings. The point is the country, and the state, could do much better in seeking to curb gun violence, and do so without harming individual gun rights.

The Democratic majority in the U.S. House has advanced bipartisan legislation extending background checks to all gun sales. Today, roughly one-fifth of purchases proceed without such a check. Polls show a huge majority of Americans agree. Yet the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate resists this sensible step.

A year ago, John Kasich, in his final months as governor, urged his fellow Republicans in charge of the legislature to enact a handful of modest gun regulations, including a “red flag” provision allowing for the court-approved temporary removal of guns from those deemed a threat to themselves or others. The legislative majorities balked. They express more interest in easing the requirements to carry a concealed weapon and expanding the concept of “stand your ground.”

Gov. Mike DeWine has called for a “red flag” law, too. The idea goes to enacting a collection of small and responsible measures to slow the killing, from safe storage requirements to public health research and banning “bump stocks,” which deliver the traits of a machine gun. Then again, the country has been here before - with the hope this grim weekend will result in action.

Online: https://bit.ly/2ZBhw1k

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As data shed light on opioid crisis, prevention must be our focus

The Columbus Dispatch

Aug. 5

It may take years to sort out the proportionate blame for the deadly opioid epidemic that infected the nation early in this century and marked Ohio as an epicenter.

But we cannot take too long to learn from past mistakes and put measures in place to keep from repeating this shameful history.

The newest data to shine a light on the crisis of addiction and overdose deaths is stark testimony to lapses at multiple points where questions could have been raised and the flow of drugs potentially stemmed.

Nationally, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration database tapped by the Washington Post has revealed that 76 billion opioid pills were distributed across the United States from 2006 to 2012.

In Ohio alone, the total number of opioid pills flowing through this state during that period was 3.4 billion, according to the DEA database.

This scourge of painkillers too often turned traitor on those they were intended to help, leading them from law-abiding lives to all-consuming drug dependency that supply sources were willing to feed.

Such easy access to these addictive prescription painkillers adds up to more than one million years of life lost in Ohio due to drug overdoses from 2009 through 2018, according to an analysis from a partnership of Ohio University and the University of Toledo.

The universities, working together as the Ohio Alliance for Innovation in Population Health, dug deeper into the 26,375 people who died in Ohio of overdoses in the decade ending last year to determine that the victims each lost an average of 39 years of life - accounting for half of their expected life spans.

Just as the number of pills flooding Ohio was excessive, there is no shortage of targets for our collective wrath and outrage.

Unscrupulous physicians who operated pill mills were rightly among the first targets of regulators seeking to halt abuses. Fittingly, some have been convicted for putting heartless greed above their patients’ well-being.

The nation’s drug manufacturers and major drug distributors, including Dublin-based Cardinal Health, are facing civil litigation in Cleveland, sued by almost 2,000 cities for ruinous outcomes of opiate use.

In attempting to deflect and defend its actions, Cardinal issued a statement noting the DEA itself responded to increasing opioid production by lifting quotas on manufacturers by 140% from 2006 to 2014.

Finger-pointing aside, the more critical need now is to make sure that all elements touching the drug supply chain, legal and illegal, are in sync as to their responsibilities for reducing and preventing drug overdoses.

Guidelines and restrictions for prescribing opioids have been implemented and overdose deaths have started to drop but they still cut short 4,002 lives last year in Ohio, decreasing by 1,153 from 2017.

Partnerships like the Ohio Opioid Education Alliance and its campaign, “Don’t live in Denial, Ohio,” are raising awareness with parents and others on preventing opioid addiction.

As the courts sort out who should pay what for their role in creating the opioid addiction epidemic, all of us must protect our families and loved ones.

Ask health care providers about alternatives to drugs for pain relief, safeguard prescription medications and be prepared to administer naloxone if someone you love shows signs of experiencing an overdose.

Even one preventable drug death is too many.

Online: https://bit.ly/2T7ugtX

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To make an immediate difference for those at risk of domestic abuse, scale back Aisha’s Law

The Cleveland Plain Dealer

Aug. 2

Aisha’s Law, proposed Ohio House Bill 3, seeks to make it harder for repeat domestic abusers to hurt, maim and kill their former intimate partners. It packs a deep emotional punch in Greater Cleveland. Understandably.

Family and friends of the late Aisha Fraser, a beloved Shaker Heights teacher allegedly stabbed to death last year by her ex-husband, disgraced former Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Lance Mason, have provided powerful testimony in favor of the bill. It was introduced in May with primary sponsorship by state Rep. Janine Boyd of Cleveland Heights.

But there’s a problem. HB 3 goes way too far. A series of ill-considered provisions has drawn the ire of a range of groups that normally would champion reform. And Boyd told cleveland.com reporter Laura Hancock last month that the bill remains a work in progress with more changes coming.

That’s counterproductive. Even critics of other parts of the bill applaud the core reform that our editorial board previously had said should be at the heart of Aisha’s Law — “11 questions” as part of an evidence-based “lethality assessment screening tool” that courts can use to better assess the risks posed by an abuser. The Ohio Judicial Conference “strongly supports” this provision, according to Clermont County Domestic Relations Judge Kathleen M. Rodenberg, who chairs the Ohio Supreme Court’s Advisory Committee on Domestic Violence.

Boyd should make changes — by narrowing the bill’s focus.

It’s way too broad now. For instance, HB 3 as introduced would widen Ohio’s death penalty crimes to include repeat domestic abusers, even if the first offense was a misdemeanor. It would, according to critics, improperly rewrite rules of evidence, a task that the Ohio Constitution reserves for the state Supreme Court. It would allow, as a matter of law, certain types of hearsay evidence to be offered without the ability to cross-examine the witness. That’s drawn the opposition of Chief Cuyahoga County Public Defender Mark A. Stanton, who cited the U.S. Constitution’s Sixth Amendment right of confrontation in his testimony.

HB 3 also would add potentially crushing costs to all court systems in the state by requiring that a judge or magistrate be available 24/7 to issue protection orders.

No one wants another beautiful, caring woman, another devoted, long-suffering mother like Aisha Fraser to be killed or to suffer grievous bodily harm and have her children permanently scarred by witnessing that abuse. No rational judge, prosecutor or police officer wants that scenario to repeat. Yet it does, over and over again.

Last month, four people were horrifically murdered in Cleveland’s Slavic Village neighborhood, including two children ages 2 and 6, and their 25-year-old mother Takeyra Collins. Arrested was Collins’ estranged intimate partner — a man who’d been accused five and a half years previously of attacking her in a case that was never resolved, although it prompted a protection order to be issued against him.

But protection orders are just pieces of paper. Cleveland.com’s Kaylee Remington found 12 other fatal cases dating to 2010 in Greater Cleveland where women (all women) were strangled, shot, beaten or knifed to death by their estranged spouses and intimate partners, sometimes in front of their children.

Reform is sorely needed. But start with the 11 questions. Perfect that part of HB 3 — Rodenberg, for instance, testified the bill lacked a mechanism “for the sharing of any assessment results with a bond officer or the court.”

Narrow Aisha’s Law to make it work sooner rather than later, to make a real difference for others in Ohio facing the threat of serious physical harm from a domestic abuser.

Online: https://bit.ly/2OGKlrZ

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No robot umpires

The Toledo Blade

Aug. 5

In an age defined by rampant cultural volatility and the eerie encroachment of technology, baseball has remained one of the few constants, offering fans a relaxing and endearing game that has changed very little since the 19th century.

But, because our society seems unable to leave anything alone, baseball is now bracing itself for its most radical change in decades: robot umpires.

Yes, that’s right, the national pastime’s balls and strikes could soon be determined by a computer.

The Atlantic League of Professional Baseball, an independent league, has been experimenting with the use of an automated strike zone. A human umpire stands behind the plate wearing an earpiece connected to a phone. The umpire then relays the call from a tracking system that uses Doppler radar.

Proponents of the robo umpire claim that the technology will lead to more accurate calls and fairer games. Blown calls can undermine entire games as well as hurt individual players and their statistics. Arguing with umpires over bad calls slows the entire game down, something professional baseball executives fret about often these days. And there is little question that this technology can technically perform more accurately than a human.

But is that accuracy and saved time worth sacrificing the human element of baseball?

One of the great joys of baseball, and certainly one of its most entertaining components, is the interplay between the players, coaches, and umpires. The fallibility of everyone involved makes the sport relatable, as well as exciting. Arguing with the umpire, justified or not, makes for exciting viewing. It also injects a psychological element into the game that can inflate or deflate a team.

Human umpires are not unacceptably inaccurate. A 2019 Boston University study found that home plate umpires made the right ball-strike call nearly 91 percent of the time in 2018. That figure has been trending upward in recent years, a fact some attribute to more selective hiring practices.

And for those unconcerned about baseball, imagine how this technology could be extrapolated to impact your sport of choice. Robots could soon be making the calls on the football field and basketball court, not to mention phasing out human workers at retail stores or warehouses.

So while it may seem trivial, robot umpires do not bode well for the future of the beloved game of baseball nor for society at large. Handing more and more responsibilities over to automatons is a recipe for disaster. Let us retain some sliver of humanity and forget the robot umpires.

Online: https://bit.ly/31iqLnf