since tre snow of the andes on al-jazeera. iraq matheson in doha the top stories on the us president has sided with russia instead of his own intelligence agencies over allegations of meddling in the twenty sixteen election donald trump met his russian counterpart vladimir putin in helsinki his comments have been condemned by both the u.s. republicans and the democrats i do feel that we have both made some mistakes i think that the the probe is a disaster for our country i think it's kept us apart it's kept us separated there was no collusion at all everybody knows that president putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today and what he did is that in credible offer he

offered to have the people working on the case come and work with their investigators with respect to the twelve people i think that's an incredible offer i did but i didn't flex could you name a single fact that would definitively prove because lucian to visit autumn nonsense just like the president recently mentioned. u.s. politicians from both parties are condemning trunk's remarks white house correspondent company that has the story. for a president who loves to talk about his ratings and reviews there was nearly universal criticism of members of the u.s. congress over his performance in helsinki and his apparent acceptance of russian president vladimir putin's denial that russia interfered in the twenty sixteen u.s. election president putin he just said it's not russian but more than a dozen u.s. law enforcement and intelligence agencies have concluded just the opposite leading some members of the president's own political party to rebuke his actions

republican senator john mccain called the putin trust press conference disgraceful in a statement he said the damage inflicted by president trumps naive in egotism false equivalence and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate many republicans are concerned that trump blamed both countries for the deteriorating u.s. russia relationship ject into giving what they call moral equivalence to a traditional u.s. adversary what many label a propaganda win for putin this was the primary objective of a lot of the putin was to sow permanent instability in american society and political culture so that we're so busy fighting each other we don't have time to take him on the threat opposition democrats not surprisingly were equally outraged at what the president did. side with our number one enemy who is attacking the united states daily in a variety of ways and be literally kneecapping our allies is just appalling

and demands some kind of explanation the senate intelligence committee has also concluded russia meddled in the us elections and fears it will happen again in twenty eighteen there are times in the senate when people have to stand up and see which side you're right those are one of those times this is one of those times there may now be in the u.s. congress our renewed push for bipartisan legislation known as the deter act that would snap and severe sanctions against russia is oil and banking sectors should it be found to interfere in any future u.s. election can really help al-jazeera washington funerals are being held for some of the eight people killed in antigovernment protests across southern iraq the demonstrations have now entered a second week but over better access to basic services and jobs egypt's president now has the power to grant senior military officers immunity from investigation for

certain crimes a new law applies to offenses committed between mohamed morsi overthrown july twenty third team and president of the. first day in office a year later it includes that. in august twenty third teen when security forces raided two squares full of the protesters more than a thousand people were killed. france's world cup winning football team have returned home to a hero's welcome huge crowds in paris greeted the players who were crowned champions after beating croatia four two and those are the headlines then you can news continues here on al-jazeera after the system joker a free of punishment. and

. so it kind of forced me to become a man of a young age it was kind of like either you recall a body streets all the streets became a body streets so finally i was introduced to the fast money when i say fast money's you know selling drugs that i will know by being you know the old me. you know they say it's too cool. for. the american criminal justice system enforces our laws and keeps watch over a person. who is watching the system. use my camera for twenty years to knock down doors and pursue the truth just now we're going inside the american criminal justice system from law enforcement to elected officials the court system the corrections to find out if justice is being served.

here in new york city heading over to the bronx to meet a guy named michael torres who was arrested over two years ago for criminal possession of a small amount of marijuana and the reason this is important is that he is just one of about fifty thousand people who were arrested that year on similar marijuana charges under a policing strategy know this stop and frisk. in new york police have been stopping and frisking suspects for as long as there has been a police force but during the late one nine hundred ninety s. the giuliani administration made the tactic a central part of its aggressive policing. strategy we were allowing small things to get worse rather than the dealing with the earliest possible stage stop question and frisk is an application of the broken windows theory a crime fighting strategy which argues that if a police force can cut down on petty crimes like vandalism and panhandling then

bigger crimes like robbery and murder will be reduced there is just no question that stop question frisk has saved countless lives as recently as one thousand nine hundred ninety new york city average more than six murders a day today we've driven that down to less than one murder a day but the policy ignited controversy and scandal and put the police department on the defensive protesters agree aggressive policing has reduced violent crime but they complain it has also brought an increase in police brutality. the majority of these stop and frisks occurred in high crime neighborhoods including certain precincts in the bronx. ok. in september two thousand and eleven michael torres was stopped by the police on the way to a job interview. so tell me what happened yeah like i was saying i was coming down for dome. one ninety seven and they kind of turned a corner there this way and as soon as they saw me. right and. they came out

from both ends of the car. didn't show me their bad. and i hope you and who's a police officer i asked them why did they stop and he just said oh we just saw you walking too fast and we saw that suspicious he said come here and he grabbed me dragged me over here me against the war and. made me take. some. paperwork little influence in into view. but then he grabbed my sweater and shook it. back on my sleeve and on the back a week and i asked him am i going to be arrested for it and he said what do you think. it sounds like an open and shut case but the marijuana possession law in new york mandates that the drugs must be in plain view it's my understanding that you didn't actually have the marijuana out by not only was it

a small amount but it was it was an open and those you know it was in my hands it was in my pockets so you just agree with that charge yes i do it. so the marijuana arrests project began in the summer of two thousand and eleven scott levy is an attorney for the bronx defender's office and represents michael torres he says the circumstances surrounding torres's arrest fit a familiar profile we essentially did a survey of every person charged with misdemeanor marijuana possession in a particular courtroom in the bronx for six months and we saw that really a huge number of these cases the police were manufacturing crimes the police were arresting people for misdemeanor marijuana possession which is possessing marijuana in public view when our clients never possessed the marijuana. public view they were just in fact had it in their pocket or in a purse or in a backpack or something like that armed with all of this data the bronx defender's office decided to push back in identified fifty four individuals whose civil rights

were allegedly violated during a stop and frisk procedure they filed suit against the city of new york over time we started calling them the fighters and we had fifty plus clients who were really just dedicated to challenging the police conduct in their cases and wanted to have their day in court but in the bronx the backlog of marijuana misdemeanor cases was so immense that a case that should have been handled within sixty days was stretching out for as long as two years the fighters began to lose their fight fifty three of them gave up and accepted their fate michael torres is the last man standing. at the pushing tie going back and forth to coit so they just anything so they take a plea they hope that you will eventually. just take it just take a plea deal and then. you know but you know. everything in the system is built to create an incentive

for him to plead guilty to accept what's being offered by the people and to just go on his way and forget that this ever happened the open cases disrupted michael tourism's life his last time at work and with it much needed money for his young family despite those pressures taurus has chosen to fight the system after two years of bureaucratic delays his court date is on the docket again. another community that embraced the broken windows theory is new haven connecticut the city might be known as the home of yale university but it's also ranked as the second most dangerous mid-size city in the country in an effort to combine a growing drug trafficking problem city and state officials created so-called drug free zones. mature geographic sanctuaries around schools the premise behind the law was that selling drugs near schools posed a danger to kids anyone caught with drugs inside one of these drug free school

zones would get mandatory additional jail time added to their sentence an additional year for using drug paraphernalia two years for possession and three for drug sales drug free school zones became so popular that their radius increased from a thousand to fifteen hundred feet then daycare centers were added and finally all public housing. because of the geography of new haven it means basically virtually all of new haven with the exception of the golf course at yale university is a drug free zone and this results in mass incarceration of people because with a mandatory minimum sentence added on to the basic sentence it means that most people even if they feel they are innocent will not risk going to to prison for a extended period of time so they plead out and this disproportionately of facts minority populations and impoverished people critics call it the geography of

punishment. if you look at this map here this is a map simply of the schools and. you can quickly notice that most of the city is covered when you add any projects in a daycare centers but you know almost no place in this city where if you do this you don't get the intense penalty state senator gary holder winfield represents the city of new haven louise harvey a former inmate runs the nonprofit better way foundation together they're trying to do something that is counterintuitive to most suburban rural citizens in the state who believe that these laws protect children they actually want to shrink the size of the drug free zones in connecticut from fifteen hundred to two hundred fifty you have a city that's all it has penalty. punished. by keep me away from dealing drugs to children what incentive do i have to stay away

from. a law that was put into place to keep away from children effectively and. in other words if ninety five percent of your city is a drug free zone then anyone arrested for a drug violation whether it's for a misdemeanor or a felony is getting extra time added to their sentence but what really upsets those who advocate for the reduction of drug free school zones is the fact that if a person is arrested for drugs in a city like new haven they will get more time in prison than a person busted for the exact same crime in a suburb where as you can see on the map most of the land is not designated a drug free zone. i just want people to understand is it people out there think that drug free zones are getting reduced why would you want to reduce them to greater area for drug dealing with out that there is no deterrent there was a report. and ninety nine percent of those arrested and drug free

school zones where not near a school at all or on school property there was one case in the last ten years and it was a woman who dropped her kid off at elementary school and she went to the kids back from to shoot up that's not a dealer who needs help so they are trying to change the system holder's latest bill has just been introduced to the connecticut legislature and he and harvey need to get a read on who is on board. doing a bill like this you sometimes feel like you're pushing. just when you're about to get it up there for whatever reason it comes tumbling back down if you look at what happened in two thousand and thirteen it's really a perfect example of that they can choose not to deal drugs that's the choice we should be urging individuals in our communities to me we walked in we had the numbers we thought we were going to push it over to help final. i have not had a. police.

and i know many of the residents. are still determined to get it passed. by drug gang.

thank you very much. intuitively you would think that a drug free zone around schools is a helpful thing but when you hear the other side and you hear how it's applied in a populous area like new haven you understand that it actually can hurt the people that the law is trying to serve. a man to a world in which i think up to some bar i want to learn about how this fifteen hundred foot school zone is affecting the neighborhood i'm i'm trolling absolutely shafique up do so board grew up in new haven and is currently a new haven police department corrections officer he's also president of the national association of black law enforcement officers as a patrol officer for thirteen years he worked on the streets and has used a drug free zone enhancement penalty against dozens of suspects is commonly don't that just sold peaceful when you take a drug arrest you could literally take your life to authorities like so which will

be going to just one bit this one just because they're all with us here all of the different here in the city and it's over kill all the urban attributing individuals who live in those communities world likely to at often times possess trust whatever reason if you go out to a bad sort of marijuana or you for your personal use to more bags of marijuana constitutes sell. constance and they sell they say that selling does sell even though it could be for personal use and even those persons bring back stuff we're selling is no doubt about. that look at what it costs to potentially arrest them body for selling three bags of marijuana for the whole school because police tired to lock them off your car shrink them in a local jail that is still roughly around forty thousand dollars a year for a person to sit in jail for fifty dollars or for drugs is not cost effective because the trail the truck buyers because there was. this is the oldest hit

this is sheldon. this is key. and this is kyra barbara fair has lived worked and raised eleven children inside of a drug free zone and paid the price for it so how many of your children gotten caught in this trap and sean has a couple of times. i have seven sons and six of them have been arrested for drug charges. the only chars they've ever been arrested for drug charges and once you have that fifteen hundred feet within a school which are pretty much know that you're going to be found guilty because there's a mandatory minimum of three years with their barbers the first to admit that when our sons were guilty of a drug offense they deserved to serve time every time he got a receipt he was actually guilty in many instances her sons were charged with possession after they were picked up by a police force that was aggressively clearing street corners but the fact that

nearly every street corner in new haven was a drug free zone meant that her sons were automatically facing additional time in prison it was guilt by geography and you realize that a lot more people are being caught up in net other people in possession of drugs they wouldn't get that enhanced sentence so in the more countrified parts of connecticut where it's more white that would apply and in the more urban concentrated areas able to apply almost everywhere you go and then you lose faith in the justice system i know i have definitely in my experience i have lost any faith in the justice system being fair. about an hour and a half south in the bronx the case against michael moore is another reminder of how proactive policing policies designed to lower crime rates for everyone can result in unconstitutional searches jam up the court system fill up the prisons and

destroy the fabric of neighborhoods this is really quite a simple case as it says here in this motion. to dismiss prosecution claims that mr torres possessed marijuana in public view on september twenty sixth two thousand and eleven mr torres has consistently denied the allegation it adamantly contested the constitutionality of his arrest yet at every turn he has been denied any meaningful due process through the courts this guy has been waiting over two years for his day in court this has affected his work it has affected his psychological well being and his unfortunately one of tens of thousands of people who are arrested in the bronx under the stop and frisk programs. so many. jobs for quite a long time this job has been a lifeline for tourists so every time he gets a call that his case is going to trial he has to choose between copping a guilty plea and serving

a minimum of three months in jail or fighting the system and risking more jail time if he loses torres has chosen to fight and he loses a day's pay each time he shows up to court hoping his case will finally proceed. have some excuses. and. not. you know they start to think the case is bigger than what all i saw these panels. when you lot of acacia and we got deadlines that we got to meet so i can't put my deadlines because i've got to hope in. this case it's not going to change my life it's just going to add on. i want to stop. in new haven the system had one stop for the fair family prison i mean the first time i had to visit my son in prison. i didn't want

him to see me cry so. i feel like i'm back here again. ok here. we go to barbara's son shelton knows full well how the police can use the state's drug zone law to turn a minor drug charge into a longer sentence. and i was home i was coming down the street i was walking in this direction in a car is driving on the side of me and they're trying to call me. a slow down look and ask. what it in assamese so i start to feel like i was about to be the victim of a robbery when the car got about here at least two people jumped out. and i was one that was a guy coming behind me take me back. to the call and i fell down to the ground the next thing i knew i heard him say words that. i knew they were the police. claims that he's innocent that he's the victim of

a random drug sweep and that the two bags of marijuana were actually planted on him . with. him within fifteen. project and i was it. but i'm like michael torres shelton believe that fighting the charge was a dead end when they put that charge on you god. is not you can do it has a mandatory time. and that extra enhancement. means you've got to plead out because you're not going to risk eight ten twelve years in prison. shelton pled guilty and was given two years of probation he and his brothers are all out of jail now their mother barbara is glad they survived what do you say to people who think drug free zones around schools are a good idea if the law was truly about that about keeping drug dealers away from kids would be i would be the first in line to say yes we need to. look behind with

fifteen hundred feet. look at the outcome of what he does and the then try to open your mind and think is something else going on besides trying to protect. the scouts on a tourist case he has been coming to court since september two thousand and eleven so we're keeping our fingers crossed for tomorrow and hopefully he'll finally goes to court. today so i'm going to throw good to see you so i figure what we can do today is just talk through your case a bit you have been to court one two three four. five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve and tomorrow will be your thirteenth court of parents. always come to court prepared to fight the charges but the system is so jammed up with stop and frisk cases that getting the right combination of been available judge courtroom and police officer to cross-examine has been impossible

now my concern is what would have been if they were not ready have to so much time . do we continue to wait a little what's going to happen if they're not ready or if there are no four was available you have to decide whether or not to plead guilty in order to end the case and get back to work or to continue to fight the case and try to vindicate your constitutional rights we filed a motion to dismiss in your case based on constitutional speedy trial grounds and that was denied even though your case has been open for two and a half years but i think tomorrow that we have a reasonable shot at actually having to go to trial we've prepared this case countless times. but i'll see you in court tomorrow definitely going to be. one of the reasons you were stopped is that new york city has this thing called stops for us because you know i think in two thousand and eleven almost seven hundred thousand people six hundred eighty four thousand people in new york city were stopped and frisked and i guess the theory of the police theory is that you

know if you stop low level crime it will stop. bigger crime but what do you think about how do you they were a guy who is. the first. like . changing it keeping the. people that. changing and. not everyone in new york city agrees with torres that the n.y.p.d. stop and frisk policy is too aggressive or racially biased it's a complicated issue. when did we become the bad guy in a situation i think every kid in america yourself include myself included was told as well as they were probably go see a policeman well we've now created the atmosphere that the policeman is the bad guy sergeant ed mullins is a current n.y.p.d. officer and president of the sergeants benevolent association he experienced firsthand the rise in the stop and frisk strategy the little crimes made

a difference to big crimes we stop people we come up with things. contraband whatever it was we could do we began to fish with a net and out with a poll when though you go to jail you know send somebody on their way into it and report any more every incident or field report was recorded in placed into a massive computer system constant searchable by precinct and capable of predicting patterns of criminal behavior. making these arrest. they went by the wayside and here's the challenge for critics of stop and frisk during the past twenty years the crime rate for major offenses like homicide rates robbery and assault have been cut by nearly seventy five percent in new york city for experienced cops like mullins the rationale for keeping stop and frisk is quite simple.

on july fourteenth. two thousand and sixteen. an attack on the city a day in nice would change people's lives. in things that has killed at least sixty people. two years on al jazeera world meets the french muslim families who lost their loved ones. truck attack a nice an al-jazeera i had a briefing today from a man named steele who has been out there working with the security forces a veteran of al salvador as daddy war sent to iraq you seem to be without portfolio doing whatever it is that he wanted to take interest and acts about in counterinsurgency and while this interview was going on with jim steele there were these terrible screams about pain and terror but what was his mission and what legacy did he leave searching for steel around his iraq.

i'm rob matheson in doha the top stories on al-jazeera at the white house says u.s. president donald trump will meet members of congress on tuesday is returned to the u.s. to face swelling criticism of the summit with his russian counterpart vladimir putin during a briefing in helsinki trump defended russia against allegations it interfered in the twenty sixteen u.s. election. i do feel that we have both made some mistakes i think that the the probe is a disaster for our country i think it's kept us apart it's kept us separated there was no collusion at all everybody knows that president putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today and what he did is that in credible offer he

offered to have the people working on the case come and work with their investigators with respect to the twelve people i think that's an incredible of you but i didn't fuck could you name a single fact that would definitively prove because lucian this is are nonsense just like the president recently mentioned funerals have been held for some of the eight people killed in antigovernment protests across southern iraq the demonstrations have now entered a second week of a better access to basic services and jobs. trade tariffs are the focus of talks between the european union and china in beijing and european leaders warn china the u.s. and russia against a dangerous trade war the u.s. is fighting cases against countries that the world trade organization for retaliating against its tariffs. egypt's president now has the power to grant senior military officers immunity from investigation for certain crimes a new law applies to offenses committed between mohamed morsi overthrown july

twenty third teen and the president of the first day in office a year later and includes that a bomb massacre in august twenty thirty one security forces raided two squares full of pro morsy protesters. a tourist boat has been hit by a blast of lava from the big island in hole-y. at least twenty two people have been injured the worst casualty rate since the colonial volcano started erupting three months ago. france's world cup winning football team have returned home to accuse welcome huge crowds in paris greeted the players who were crowned champions after beating croatia four two those are the headlines now it's back to the system joe griffey of punishment. and the. u.s. and british companies have announced the discovery of. what to do with these resources is already a source of heated debate nothing much has changed. five

years on the syrians still feel battered even those who managed to keep their country truly. is a current n.y.p.d. officer and president of the sergeants benevolent association he experienced firsthand the rise in the stop and frisk strategy. made a difference to big. contraband whatever it was we could do i work. out on the street the middle of winter cold nights eight degrees nobody on a street and i see an individual. is that a crime that's not a crime he's allowed to do that. he still hasn't committed a crime so i watch. both different ways takes out

a cigarette smoke a cigarette a couple minutes later he walks into a building to commit a crime he did he lives in a building. same scenario now i say. do you know. my name is x y z a little. way of. getting weapons. and i quote a screwdriver a weapon no. it doesn't but a screwdriver is a weapon it's a weapon if you want to use it as a weapon so i remove the screwdriver. to be committed. what happens is you go to search scenario. window and destroy the interior. with an arrest the public doesn't understand this scenario of how this happens at what point does the officer stop and. police officers in connecticut are also defending a broken window strategy the use of drug free zones to fight the war on drugs. here

an effort is underway to shrink the size of the state's drug free zones from fifteen hundred to two hundred feet. from free zones or controversy oh you know in certain parts of the country in certain rural areas you can understand an exclusion zone around the school about selling drugs and adding a mandatory minimum to the drug charge but in a place like new haven a very urban concentrated center it targets minority and impoverished people because their entire living area is a drug free zone. so we're heading over to see law enforcement here in new haven to hear their side of the story to hear why they feel these drug free zones are effective policy. sorghum for him will be covering tissues to foreign and we use it pretty much as a template. and it willy you know not to make it not personal but that's that's where it is for the officer on the beat you find the drugs you find the person

you're arresting you find the school or the public housing complex you put a pin in the middle of it and you measure fifteen hundred feet from that and if they read it it's just another charge tell me what you think of the you know the drug free zones is that is a useful tool is that yes it's a useful tool but i think it's more of a hansom and it's used for plea bargaining tools om i like it because we can make a statement sometimes with people hey you're in a if you're in a school zone you look you know where children are you're dealing in a place that's for been to us part of the problem in some people's minds with the drug free zones in new haven is that they also include public housing projects i mean do you see that as an issue like that it's and potentially traps minorities if you have a high concentration of shows in the public housing area so what better place to not have tribes am i against reducing it no but even if you want to thousand if you look at the map a thousand feet you're still going to cover most of the area and again as a parent do you want someone you know enjoyed fifteen hundred your school or three

hundred. in your kid's school i pick fifteen hundred at first that and realize what did fifteen and if it was told us that this is all about keeping drug dealers from coming on school property. i would want that but after several of her sons were given increased prison time for possession in the drug free zone farber affair was getting frustrated she went to work on getting her sons out of prison and into jobs then her youngest son was arrested for drug possession inside a drug free zone. i just going to madge and how he could have got to be. quite a ways away so i went. and talked to some of the people and asked them you know if they can give me a measurement between where my son was and where the school. he was able to get away from that mandatory charge the reality is people don't challenge it that's starting to change in connecticut. today probably caring

for senate bill two five nine which is a drug free school zone. harvey this is the beginning of a long process of changing it politically popular last. because i'm sure it's number one thirty three for me. the hearing is for five nine. and we're trying to reform it from fifteen hundred feet to two hundred feet you're good to go thank you. now i'm trying to just get an idea of. what we need to do. and. people you sound bites and they say this is we're being soft on crime by changing the rules or making it easy for people to peddle drugs to children the root of the problem is poverty and addiction and unemployment so why don't we look at those things first before we were so busy

to look at ways of incarceration you seen this bill in the past you came for us last year just my opinion change from last year actually not keeping situation or making life easier for criminals and making it harder for law abiding citizens i don't see anything that has changed that will change so obviously you know my mind is unchanged. taking the bus to hartford to represent the families in new haven whose lives have been negatively affected by this law i think today might be the day did they finally get to miss is that they really need to do something about this has been dragging opportunity. years now i truly truly believe dan may really have a shot at this after all these years pray now we have the public. and after the public airing. to vote it out of the committee and then after passing the senate and the house without any problems then it goes to the governor governor has to sign a long process this is what we call the waking it would be an interesting day to say the least. the first person signed up is state representative prosodic

srinivasan. to represent you may proceed whenever you're ready thank you i'm testifying today in opposition of his bill and for us to say that to get shrink this is zone sans in my opinion of the wrong message i'm actually appalled that the even considering shrinking this drug free zone. back in the bronx it's the end of a long work day for michael torres with a court date tomorrow his limbo status in the legal system could finally be coming to an end. going to feed the girls first the. whole feel. of the day awful that you've. got to be there. to scott's office.

walk over to the courthouse to go. and think is a situation i know people that have been in this situation but they have never dragged on this long like this is that this is a little excessive mike says that money is like that bad luck. good match this time much as far. they might to judge him. for his background you know they don't believe people can change and people do change you can make a lot of people make mistakes. i love you. not a bad person he's a very good guys very responsible works every day. and you know just us take time off and it puts a toll because you know he doesn't get paid for his time off. so then all comes more you know more stress for me and i have to you know pick up whatever you can pick up and it gets a little expensive have to wind up kids are expensive have no maintaining our household you know car insurance everything's expensive. that of the. rest of for the same situation. though most of them got the.

oh they were forced to cop out. everything all wrapped up. and i'd say go shower then. you got to get up early baby. all my love don't forget i have to iron this stuff. i don't think that there is a conscious decision to do this on the part of the police that is to overwhelm the courts but the style of policing that we've had in new york city for the past twenty years has led to just a flood of misdemeanor cases in the system the number of mr mueller arrest in new york city has skyrocketed since the early ninety's the result is criminal courts in new york spend all of their time processing cases and just managing calendars rather than conducting hearings or securing evidence or calling witnesses in the bronx michael torres is about to have his day in court his misdemeanor marijuana

case has been delayed twelve times he's hoping number thirteen will be as lucky number the plan is heading to court will go to the m.s.g. part which is where the very old misdemeanors go and then it's just sort of a lot of hurry up and we will really just have to play by ear and see you know if there's a judge available there's a courtroom available whether or not the police officer actually shows up. there is just something deeply unfair about promising people their day in court and dangling it in front of them for. years on end and never actually get into the damage that that open case has done the mr torres his life is not damaged it can be undone overnight. and the simple thing. is. that. there are real psychological costs of living with that inside that low level his id that follows you everywhere when you have an open case i'm ahead and you're go through

security and then you're just down the escalator. so that's all right so. i'm an optimist i think we have a great shot i certainly don't know the outcome but we are always prepared and we are going to fight like hell for mr torres. in hartford the state's judiciary committee is holding a public hearing about a controversial bill to shrink the state's drug free zones from fifteen hundred to two hundred feet most conservative opponents of the bill are from small towns or wealthy suburbs places where the idea of voting to shrink the size of a drug free zone is hard to fathom. just make sure that i understand your position you're saying that a person who is apprehended selling drugs five football fields and distance away from a school should be arrested and prosecuted and subjected to an enhanced penalty on

the basis that that activity is endangering the children that are attending that particular school is that correct yes i mean i did not realize that fifteen hundred was five five football fields. regardless of that the fifteen hundred should still be the area where and hand ante would be would be handed out to the bus and was it twenty in light of that response do you think it would be sensible to clearly mark the area which. zone. for example instead of just posting a sign at go the boundaries of been zone maybe we should stripe the streets or paint the streets wide. for the length of fifteen hundred feet away from the school or daycare center chairman that that part has crossed my mind as to how to make that demarkation very clear that this is a drop three cell but i'm not sure how the law just takes them as well especially

in our open cities where you take a lot of white. this is part of the process to get. out of my life. would i think i'll be able to make it through. what is going to be to the. shore. this case put up on the fact that if they do it. now i have to. tell them this in. this situation. i'll show that treating for them because the show. at the office just the facts to . come out and. before. this went on i'm seeing lads. the connecticut state sentencing commission is testifying its

studies have shown that the current law unjustly penalizes the state's urban residents especially those who are found in possession of small amounts of marijuana it makes no difference if you possess or sell on the doorstep of the school or in the an office building in downtown so we're left with a feel good law that is ineffective in result a nonviolent low level drug dealers being locked up for longer periods with additional prison costs but without any real advantage to society luckily this would not be an entirely a social experiment others. have taken similar measures to reduce their zone sizes twenty eleven delaware went from a thousand feet to three hundred feet in two thousand and twelve massachusetts went from a thousand feet to three hundred feet in two thousand and thirteen indiana went from a thousand feet to five hundred feet it's very difficult. and i'm going to be honest for me to entertain lowering a drug free zone where potentially it may be working i mean the whole point here is

that urban centers are more densely populated and with this fifteen hundred feet law that urban centers with most of them are drug free zones why is that bad i state what is wrong with. dettori and discrimination is wrong and i wonder if this spirit treatment was happening in other communities where people understand why we need to move on the books quite frankly i'm not prepared in any way shape or form to be like any drug dealer who is victimizing our young children i'm in no position. to make such a drastic change you know they say sanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result i think i'm ready to sign myself into a facility. in the bronx it seems to be the same old story from. go there are no trouble for no judge is available

to try to. just wait around for an hour to receive an. education. in two thousand and twelve new york state's chief judge launched a special program to clear up the backlog of cases in the bronx since then this so-called blockbuster court has been working to cut through decades of bureaucratic red tape but while the number of pending felony cases that are two years or older have been reduced there are still thousands of open misdemeanor cases. so we checked in with the original trial part and originally when the case was called there were no car parts available but we can call the case they called the case again they were able to find us a court room and we're now waiting for the police officer to arrive so we can begin

to hear this is about as close as we've gotten and so we're very hopeful if we could actually have some testimony and a decision on our on our hearing i think this is this is going to be a first for the project for sure. in hartford the public hearing is over for the drug free zone bill now the judiciary committee gets to decide if the bill can go forward senate bill two fifty nine is the final item on the committee's agenda time is running short and the vote is too close to call we're not going to be able to crawl into the mental calculus of a drug dealer someone has already decided to break the law and say you know we're going to change our decision making process because if you stay in that corner you get penalty a but if you stand on this corner you get penalty beat drug dealing occurs more in big cities than it does on a farm. in the country and if that's where the trafficking is then let us allow the higher penalty to prevail voted against this in the past

but looking at some of the research and following the way law enforcement will have a better tool you know i just don't buy the fact that this is being soft on crime i think that's rhetoric i really feel that it's not reality for what. i can do with this bill here today i do have in my hand e-mails and letters of variety of constituents and not only from my phone but throughout the state of connecticut and i have not received any. any best of my knowledge any communication about doing away with this legislation i've received many in opposite there and so i can't support this you have a school zone around the school and you also have a has penalty for this out to kids our kids will be safe if you pass this bill. after twelve failed attempts to have his case heard in court michael torres is

finally catching a break the police officer who arrested him is scheduled to take the stand i mean yes got everyone if you. register this ok. we asked permission to film the trial but were turned down by the court after two and a half years michael tour is as fate is about to be decided. please call the road. home and yes. with just minutes left in the committee session the drug free zone reduction bill passed by a slim margin the vote was twenty one to nineteen and it's a key victory but now holder winfield's bill must survive debates in the house and senate before it can become law are you hopeful this is going to pass i think it has a good chance of passing i think there's tough work ahead i am under the understanding that what i think is right some people think is completely wrong i wanted to

understand some of the stuff that i know about an issue other people don't know but i think if we do that work and we educate people there's no reason we can't get this bill done this year. so the smallest. thank god i feel like this weight off my shoulders. so i think they said i'm glad. the stress take this news back to the job maybe you guys. got a good deal of. do i go to the. use first and then i think i think. it's nice that after all this time we go result we want to. just really think in the back and. i mean all. this detective who arrested mr torres two

and out years ago admitted that he remembered nothing about the incident and couldn't testify at all about what had happened in september of two thousand and eleven and so before we even got to cross-examination before we were allowed to ask him a single question the case was essentially dismissed the in the box and like i said at one of the main reason mr torres fought this case for so long and showed up for as long as he did is he wanted to chance to hear what the police officer had to say and he wanted to chance to have his defense counsel cross-examine that police officer and that never happened he wanted to see the evidence against him and what was revealed today is that there never was really any evidence against him which makes the two and a half years that we waited for this moment and racist victory a little bittersweet and so i think what this case calls for it is a need for a reassessment of our basic institutions of justice. in august two thousand and thirteen a federal judge in new york issued

a landmark ruling judge sheindlin ruled that the new york city police department violated its citizens fourth amendment rights to be free of unreasonable search and seizure she also ruled that the police department stop and frisk practices were racially discriminatory in january of two thousand and fourteen the city of new york dropped its appeal and agreed to work. with a court appointed monitor to reform its procedures wow ah. it's a big big we saw so excited of even though the case is dismissed you know. if you say i just came out of jail and the like three years because this took so long that you know the punishment itself it was like doing time. i am very hopeful for the future i think new york city is going through a period of change and i think very exciting period of change i think there's a lot of opportunity but i think we need to be vigilant if this system is going to have meaning for people it has to pay attention to people and hopefully are headed

in that direction. whenever i see something that has happened in the news my first reaction is to please god don't let this person have been someone that we released on parole gatekeepers of the parole system you're asking us for a second chance or a what's important to me was on the other side offense and how do i get to the other side the fans here's a man who's are going to roll you know how many times you've been in our prison exploring the dark side of american justice the system with job on al-jazeera.

had all the rain in the us although coming in the southwest monsoon here in california is really to be canted to the east where you might expect there's a bit of a cult front running through here which to be ours isn't changing temps as much for the little dots around here hinted where the humidity in the heat come together big showers all the way friends colorado through oklahoma and dances the southern states up the eastern seaboard temp to around about thirty mark still in dallas and that's enough to trigger some pretty big storms otherwise it's just warm sunshine i said the monsoon there was a short monsoon season is showing up in little bits

a cloud in green across southern california and beyond the touch in new mexico that sort of area otherwise hit the sas if you want the big storms there are some in the plains states too and there is a potential for tornadoes was not a huge potential at the moment and science of all this and that includes florida is a draw pictures i know of late there are daily showers forming in the big island of cuba maybe florida and hispaniola otherwise you probably need to look beyond mexico downs or costa rica and panama for the thirty persistent and regular rains and saying rains rather than showers because this is where you tend to get persistent areas of cloud with persistent rain is that tommy. where were you when this idea popped into it whether on line it's undoubtedly chief goal of poverty inequality in our society today or if you join the sunset criminal

justice system is dysfunctional right now this is a dialogue what does it feel like for you to go back for the first time everyone has a voice and allow refugees to be the speakers first say join the conversation on our dizzy or a. bit of a strange day to start the centrifuge we just heard today to city of aleppo has fallen . or should we say liberate the. one. for astonishing stories toads and their own why it's how did you know who to trust and not to trust. a stranger came to town witness on al-jazeera.

this is al jazeera. hello i'm rob matheson and this is the news hour live from doha coming up in the next sixty minutes arriving back to outrage donald trump's backing of putin at their helsinki summit as the russian leader talking of an end to isolation. palestinian children cut to their summer holidays shorts to protect their communities school from demolition in the occupied west bank. be aware what a trade war.