Soon after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake rocked Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Jan. 12, the United States began mobilizing its relief effort for the small, impoverished Caribbean nation. Two days later, responding to a nationwide call for aid to Haiti, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the deployment of urban search and rescue team New York Task Force 1 to help rescue victims. This New York City team, consisting of members of the police and fire departments, specializes in operations involving the collapse of heavy steel and concrete.
The team saved six lives including two children. Three victims were trapped beneath a collapsed grocery store, a middle-aged man was caught under the wreckage of a four-story building, and a young brother and sister were trapped under rubble for eight days. The children's father had been digging with a crowbar that whole time and passing water through a small opening to his children, miraculously keeping them alive. The eight-year-old boy, Kiki, and his ten-year-old sister, Sabrina, emerged extremely dehydrated but, "other than that, they looked like they were ready to play when they came out of the hole," Battalion Chief Joe Downey reported on the fire department's website.
As he was being pulled from the rubble, Kiki flashed a broad smile and raised his arms above his head in triumph as rescuers cheered. "It was the most incredible feeling," said Downey.
In situations such as this, speed is critical to saving as many lives as possible, and so this team mobilized shortly after the quake struck. But how are teams like New York Task Force 1 organized so rapidly, how do they carry out their operations, and who is responsible for their oversight and costs?
New York Task Force One is managed by the city Office of Emergency Management. This team is one of 28 emergency response teams sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency that are "strategically located throughout the United States" and "can be deployed within six hours of activation," according to the Office of Emergency Management website. In 1989, FEMA established the National Urban Search and Rescue Response System to assemble "local emergency services personnel into integrated disaster response task forces." This was expanded upon in 1991 in the Federal Response Plan, which sponsored the creation of such task forces around the country including New York's.
The federal government, not the city or the state, funds, trains and has the authority to activate these task forces in the event of disasters, natural or otherwise. "The team is funded by, coordinated and overseen by FEMA," said Seth Andrews, deputy press secretary for the Office of Emergency Management. But the city manages "communication between FEMA and the team" and "coordinating within the team itself." This, Andrews said, can include "everything from logistics for food [and] air transportation" to ensure that "team members can show up, pack up their things, load up their equipment and they can get to where they need to be."
The task force includes approximately 220 members from the police and fire departments that can be summoned for rescue operations. The state of New York has another task force, New York Task Force 2 based in the Albany area, but they were not activated for this crisis.
New York 1 can deploy either as a light task force of 34 people or a heavy task force of 80. Workers include emergency physicians, paramedics, structural engineers, hazardous materials technicians, heavy equipment operators, and specialists in canine units, as well as experts on communications, planning, and logistics.
"You do have some people that are there almost, in a sense, behind the scenes, that are helping to coordinate logistics, getting camp set up, things like that," said Andrews.
For their mission in Haiti, the city's task force included 76 members of the police and fire departments and four canine units. They brought 20 tons of the latest technology and equipment including medical supplies and specialized rescue tools. The task force took microphones sensitive enough to detect human breathing, personal protection equipment, tents, power and ready-to-eat meals as well as listening devices, infrared cameras and motion detectors.
Four canines accompanied the team. "The canines that they traveled with are unique," Andrews said. "There are no other in the country of their kind. They are dual-trained meaning that these are regular patrol dogs so when they’re out here in the city they’re trained to apprehend criminals. But they're also cross-trained to be able to sniff out a human body that's still alive, they can detect a heartbeat."
New York Task Force 1 participates in exercises during the year as a unit and "within their respective agencies, they do extensive training on a day to day basis," according to Andrews. In November 2009, its members even participated in an exercise that tested the team’s response to a simulated earthquake.
The last time that the task force deployed was in 2008 for assistance after Hurricanes Ike and Gustav. Similar rescue teams have been utilized after catastrophes like the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 and the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Though most fire departments are capable of "performing rescues in light to medium-sized construction collapses," only the urban search and rescue task forces have all the equipment and techniques necessary to operate within the most dangerous conditions according to the Office of Emergency Management website.
Led by battalion Chief Joe Downey, New York's team flew into Haiti in C-17 cargo planes on Jan. 16, two days after they were activated and scheduled to depart. The delay was due to "bottlenecking in and around the Port-au-Prince airport," said Andrews. The airport there, he said, was "jam packed because they had only one air strip that was open at the time."
Upon landing, the task force divided into two groups with each working 12-hour shifts. They relied on local residents to direct them to where people were trapped. Team members usually have enough equipment to be self-sufficient for up to 72 hours and can be re-supplied beyond that mark so that they are not a drain on important local resources but in Haiti, the team had enough supplies to sustain themselves for a week.
In Haiti, the U.S. rescue teams worked under the U.S. Agency for International Development, the State Department organization leading the relief effort. Similar FEMA-sponsored teams, including the Los Angeles County Urban Search and Rescue Task Force and the Virginia Task Force 2 Urban Search and Rescue team have helped in the ravaged Haitian Capital, Port-au-Prince. The country was divided into a grid so that the 46 teams from around the world were responsible for a designated area. These teams have rescued 132 individuals, with 47 saved by U.S. task forces, according to the mayor’s office.
The New York team returned home Jan, 24 after spending a week helping victims of the earthquake. On Jan. 26, the members of New York Task Force 1 were awarded commendations at City Hall for all their rescue efforts and for saving the lives of six people buried under rubble in Port-au-Prince.
"We are glad to have the members of our Urban Search and Rescue Team, who worked on the front lines of the global rescue effort in Haiti, back home, safe and sound," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at the ceremony. "There's an awful lot of work ahead in Haiti, and an awful lot of mourning, but today, we thought it was important to recognize the members of Task Force One, who've made us proud once again."
Bloomberg honored not only the human members of NY-TF1 but also its canines with four specially made edible keys to the city for its German shepherds. "Six survivors out of thousands lost may not seem significant, but I think it's fair to say, to the six people and their loved ones it really means everything," the mayor said.
Task force member Lieutenant Bill Redding paraphrased a Winston Churchill quote when speaking to DNAinfo about the team's work in Haiti. “To every person comes a time in their life when they're tapped on the shoulder and asked to do something unique and specific to their talents. What a shame if that moment finds them unprepared for what would've been their finest hour," Redding said. "This team was tapped on the shoulder and, in my vision, it was their finest hour to date."
Public school teachers have constitutional rights to wear political buttons while in school, according to the United Federation of Teachers. But not according to the United States District Court in Manhattan.
In Weingarten v. Board of Education, a case first brought in 2008, a presidential election year, the plaintiffs, United Federation of Teachers and several individual teachers, claimed that the school chancellor's regulations banning campaign buttons and distribution of political materials among teachers in Board of Education buildings, i.e., schools, violated the teachers' free speech rights under the federal and state constitutions. (The case refers to the Board of Education throughout -- not the Department of Education.)
The chancellor's regulations provided that "while on duty or in contact with students, all school personnel should maintain a posture of complete neutrality with respect to all candidates." The regulation also banned the distribution, posting, of displaying of "material supporting any candidate, candidates, slate of candidates, or political organizations/committees" in any school building. While there were exceptions for political items of interest that might appear in teachers' newsletters, for example, the regulation generally prevented teachers from placing political material in colleagues' mailboxes or on teachers’ bulletin boards in teachers' meeting places.
When the case was originally brought in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Lewis A. Kaplan issued a temporary order, which stopped the city from banning candidate-related political material on teachers' union bulletin boards in areas closed to students, and also from placing such materials in staff mailboxes. But then -- and now in the latest decision -- the court denied the teachers' attempt to lift the ban on the wearing of political buttons. The court found a "clear relationship" between the ban on political buttons and the Board of Education's "legitimate pedagogical interests in avoiding the inevitable misperceptions among a minority of students that the views reflected by a teacher's political button are endorsed by the school district and also that the entanglement of their public educational mission with partisan politics."
In light of the court's 2008 interim order, the Board of Education revised its regulation to allow dissemination of the relevant materials solely among teachers. At the same time, it strengthened the section on political buttons to say, "While on duty or in contact with students, school personnel may not wear buttons, pins, articles of clothing or any other items advocating a candidate, candidates, slate of candidates or political organization/committee."
Chancellor Joel Klein's position was that "displays of political partisanship by teachers in the schools, particularly in the classroom, to a captive audience of students, are inconsistent with our educational mission. When teachers wear political paraphernalia in an environment free of partisan politician influence . . . . Partisan political activity by staff in the presence of students . . . sends the message that the view expressed carries the support of the school system."
To counter that position, the plaintiffs retained a professor of educational psychology. David Moshman of the University of Nebraska would testify if a trial were held, about "the capacity of adolescents, specifically high school age students, to understand the nature of free speech and official free speech not representing the curriculum viewpoint of the school."
The court gave little weight however to Moshman's statements, partly for technical reasons, but also on the merits. In papers submitted on behalf of the teachers' union, Moshman theorized that young children might be unable to distinguish between a teacher's opinions and the school's, and so the regulation might be reasonable in an elementary school. But for middle school students, he thought a teacher's explanation about personal free speech would be sufficient. And once in high school, he claimed, students "spontaneously understand that a teacher's [political] button is not part of the curriculum." Most of these teenagers, Moshman said, would understand the concept of free speech and a teacher's right to express political preferences even without an explanation. But Moshman did concede that a small percent of high school students might misunderstand.
Kaplan found plaintiffs' contentions lacked merit and dismissed the suit without it ever going to trial. In his written opinion, he said that policy makers overseeing "public schools are constitutionality permitted, within reason, to regulate the speech of teachers in the classroom for legitimate pedagogical reasons." The court then concluded that the appearance of political buttons worn by teachers, "may improperly influence children and impinge on the rights of students to learn in an environment free of partisan political influence."
The judge found that the regulation, when carried out in a professional manner and in good faith, is not a "covert attempt to favor one viewpoint over another." After more than a year of litigation, he declared the regulations to be constitutional.
Emily Jane Goodman is a New York State Supreme Court justice
Forty-nine states in this country recognize "no fault" divorce or allow divorce for "irreconcilable differences." Only New York requires that one party in all contested divorces establish that the other was at "fault." Unless a prior separation agreement has been filed, the state's law requires the plaintiff partner prove the other spouse committed adultery, abandoned them, was cruel or in prison.
Now, in Davis v. Davis, a Brooklyn appellate court has rejected a claim that might have expanded the grounds for divorce in the state. The court would not grant the wife a divorce after a 41-year marriage on the grounds of "social abandonment." Instead, the court ruled that social abandonment is not abandonment; only physical or sexual abandonment qualifies.
In this divorce case, euphemistically known as a "matrimonial" action, the plaintiff’s claim of abandonment or "constructive" abandonment was unsuccessful. Abandonment is defined as leaving without good reason and not returning for at least a year. In cases involving so-called constructive abandonment, the plaintiff alleges and proves that the defendant abandoned him or her unjustifiably by refusing, for at least one year, to have sexual relations despite repeated demands.
In her complaint, the wife, Novel Davis, did not allege that her husband, Shepherd Davis, refused to engage in sexual relations with her, but rather that he refused to participate in a mutual social life, such as dining together and sharing holidays and celebrations. Granting a divorce on this basis would, the court found, have the effect of expanding the grounds for divorce, which the court does not have the power to do.
"The plaintiff's allegation of social abandonment may appropriately be viewed as merely another way of claiming 'irreconcilable differences’ between spouses that do not recognize a cognizable ground for a divorce,” wrote Justice Mark Dillon of the Supreme Court Appellate Division, 2nd Department.
Novel Davis also had complained that her spouse's rejections constituted cruelty and inhuman treatment, but the cruel and inhuman allegation was not before the Appellate Division, so the decision concerned only the constructive abandonment claim.
"The essence of abandonment is the refusal of one spouse to fulfill 'basic obligations springing from the marital contract,'" the court said. Since the case did not involve one spouse leaving the home without good reason or locking the other spouse out of the marital home, the issue in Davis v. Davis, the court said, is whether refusal to share a life is as legally significant as refusal to have sex.
Since 1926, abandonment in New York has been extended to "constructive" abandonment, which has meant the unjustified, willful, continual denial of sexual relations. The original case, though, involved a refusal to consummate a marriage until a religious ceremony was held.
In 1960, the New York State Court of Appeals noted that marriage "involves something far more fundamental than mere physical propensity, and, as a consequence, abandonment is not limited to mere technical physical separation.” The Court of Appeals theory in that case held that the denial of “a marital right strikes at the institution of marriage," and therefore the refusal by one to engage in a sexual relation “undermines the central structure of marriage.”
In explaining the rationale for not extending the definition of abandonment further in the Davis case, Dillon wrote for the court that the legislature has never expanded the definition of abandonment beyond its literal meaning, even though the Court of Appeals did extend its meaning to constructive abandonment or denial of sex. Allowing divorce on the grounds of "social abandonment," he said, would be the same as permitting divorce on the basis of "irreconcilable differences," which is not recognized as a basis for divorce in New York.
The Appellate Division also relied on the longevity of the current definitions. Since the definitions were long-standing, the judges ruled, there is nothing to suggest that the meaning has changed. In addition, broadening the grounds for divorce would usurp legislative function.
Returning to the 1960 language of the Court of Appeals, the Brooklyn court reiterated, "Sexual relations between a man and woman are given a social and legally sanctioned status only when they take place in marriage and in turn, marriage itself distinguished from all other social relations by the role sexual intercourse between parties plays in it."
The court further found that determining social abandonment would be difficult, subjective and not based on fact. That is, abandonment or even constructive abandonment involves a one-year period and specific details, while recognition of social abandonment would be vague. "We predict," said the court, "that . . . no matter what herculean efforts could be undertaken to establish its precise definition," the recognition of social abandonment as grounds for divorce "would open a quagmire of varied factual claims, defenses, and permutations that would be to the everlasting consternation of the matrimonial bar and bench.”
Fifty years later, the current decision adopts that thinking, though it adds, "Social interaction between spouses, while certainly important to a healthy marital relationship, receives less legal recognition and protection."
Emily Jane Goodman is a New York State Supreme Court justice.
Emily Jane Goodman is a New York State Supreme Court Justice