two or three we should putting themselves in situations where quarreling speak more likely. armed and dangerous it seems some us police officers are taking their promise to protect and serve a little too far these days but the shoot first ask questions later mentality so is our police force getting a little too trigger happy. plus calling in the loan sharks wealthy u.s. lawmakers are debating the fate of hordes of indebted college students house of representatives approved a measure to keep interest rates low so now it's up to the senate but will they follow suit. plus you know the saying you are what you eat the american better hope people don't take that thing too literally because the majority of the u.s. would be a match of genetically modified d.n.a. from a range of exotic gene pool people on the streets of the big apple to weigh in on the issue of g.m.

. it's friday april twenty seventh eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm christine you're watching our t.v. . well it's been twenty years since one of the deadliest and costliest urban uprisings in american history many parts of los angeles have been rebuilt since the one thousand nine hundred two riots but believe it or not there are still some parts of the city that have been unable to fully recover over the last two decades the six days of violence ended with more than fifty deaths and more than a billion dollars in damage to the city but it was much more than an angry reaction to the rodney king verdict as our g. correspondent ramona lindo shows us many of the underlying conditions which led to the rioting in the first place are still just as bad or even worse today. the riots the fires the looting continuing tonight and some say it is actually getting worse

you don't belong here tonight images of arson in writing in golf in los angeles in one thousand nine hundred two remain vivid in the minds of many americans sparked by the acquittal of four l.a.p.d. officers who brutally beat a black motorist the violence underscores simmering racial tensions and widespread distrust of the city's police this is where it all got started run the street where rodney king was beaten more than twenty years ago by several police officers the video which showed the extreme violence was shown worldwide and is one of the sparks which touched off an inferno throughout the city today the area near the beating looks different but many of the same concerns about police violence remain brutality is one thing and you know in the use of force is another it is not just the violence but the sense of justice being denied which help the rage boil over

the only p.d. historically in black communities has been the poster agency for everything wrong with policing in america while the country's third largest police department claims it has reformed in the past two decades they are still under fire for their lack of accountability but i'm still seeing a tendency on the part within the l.a.p.d. not to punish officers were at the intersection of normandy and florence known as ground zero for the l.a. uprising news footage showed a rule display of chaos and anger which had been brewing for some time now some of the residents here with that we spoke to say that some things have improved in the neighborhood right now we have here better than ever safe in their home but another look at this intersection also shows that many of the conditions which led up to the riots are still very present i. absolutely in that the city could are wrapped again there is continued police brutality continued repression tiffany wallace saw

the unrest as a child and as an adult is troubled by a slumping economy not just in los angeles but across the u.s. . it's only a matter of time she thinks before impoverished communities again rise up i'm hoping that if there's going to be some type of unrest that happens that it's productive that we have people allying together not burning down stores in our community back in one thousand nine hundred two this empty life here used to be filled with large stores after the fires it has become a trash field for twenty years later this neighborhood in south los angeles which is mostly comprised of blacks and latinos is still suffering from the ill effects of too few grocery stores and not enough jobs you have corporations it's that ran into every kind of government official under the sun that came the only they made a lot of promises promises forgot say residents once that settled nationwide

black unemployment is still in the double digits and african-americans are much more likely to end up homeless or jailed i would say might be a little bit because you know times are hard you know people struggling with the economy grow jobs are hard to get you know people are just struggling these days brutal conditions for unrest not just in los angeles but all over the u.s. today in los angeles ramon lindo r t so los angeles is one thing other cities police forces have also quite a few people concerned when it comes to their use of excessive force we've seen just in the last year incident after incident of police using violent force on nonviolent offenders we've also seen the music stream force pepper spray for example directly in people's eyes on protesters in california who are sitting down on all in a line we've seen more deaths come from people who are taste and it begs the question why what's going on here for more on this i was joined by. associate

professor at texas wesleyan university school of law and a legal fellow at the institute to processional policy and understanding she also wrote a. was an article called from the oppressed to the terrorists that can be found on saher as he's long dot com i started out by asking her how far this country has come in the last twenty years on the matter of police targeting people based on their race more than their crime here's her take well i think there's certainly been progress. with regard to the taliban i think it was much more prevalent maybe three four six or five decades ago however unfortunately as yours is that show it has not decreased sufficiently and what happened is it shifted from murder or shots being fired the gun to link to tasers that can kill people or put them in a coma or temporarily. unconscious and often times excessive use of

force and i think many police officers think well i'm not using a gun so therefore i'm free means a taser or other forms such as pepper spray but they use it excessively and that can cause while it may not cause that it certainly can cause injury well it doesn't it doesn't usually cause death but i know that amnesty international came out with a report just earlier this year that showed that more than five hundred people in the u.s. have actually died after police officers used tasers on them and ninety percent of those people were unarmed suspects i think most people would argue that stun guns are better than real guns but at what point did tasers and stun guns start being used as the first line of offense. well i think it was a response to the litigation and so i think this was a way for the police department to try to decrease the violence and certainly decrease it to fix the bills or die arrest related activity however as i

stated it in a have some one problem created another one that could potentially be worse because the volume may be higher so even though the injury mean obviously we're in again people have died from tasers but the volume may be higher so i think that part of it is cultural is that they feel more free to be able to do that would be to use the well at least we were shooting which i think is an unacceptable response i think also part of it is that this is a version and this aggression towards protests and this is part of a post nine eleven trend where in the name of national security in the name of keeping society they are the police are given free reign to do things that i think are going overboard such as this excessive pain during any sprang to protesters these are people that are supposed to be protected by the first amendment these are not people that should be subjected to the course i think is a really important point i mean it wasn't that long ago that we were showing police taking extreme measures to deal with the occupy wall street protesters right here

in the u.s. we're talking about police using issued weapon issued weapons and many cases when i was people were talking about them using pepper spray you know less than twelve inches from their faces why is this i mean i think you have your own is on the here is suppose nine eleven mentality new law is being formulated to basically stop people from protesting except in designated you know free speech zones and a lot of cases but do you think i mean especially after the occupy wall street stuff i mean do you think this is something that will continue to see. well i think it's really up to the citizenry i think that those who are injured should file suit and i think they should hold the police department's accountable nation all their public officials accountable and make sure that they are not excessively using the warranty i think they also need to hold those government officials accountable or the chilling effect that's being cause is if you feel that you're going to go protest street and get a's or to get pepper sprayed and possibly die from it you

may think twice about going on good testing so there is certainly a political dimension to it and i think we have to talk about the racial dimension for example in the new york police department united frisk program six hundred eighty four thousand people just in two thousand and eleven question in france eighty percent of them were african-american and then d.c. eight percent of those near tasered in new york are blacks and latinos so part of it and this is actually been going on for a while so a lot of latinos are getting tasered as part of equal teachin. but the occupy movement many of those who are tasered were anglo and so that brought it to the forefront in the media and so i think now it's time for all of these different communities come together and hold the police departments and the public saying you know i sense a violence is unacceptable it should be an exception not the norm it's really interesting too when you look at so many of these cases officers are either cleared or put on paid administrative leave and i think it's fair to say that incidents

like this at least in the long run will make police officers jobs more difficult not less i know you know when i work in local news so often police would be investigating a crime but no one in these neighborhoods where a lot of these crimes are committed would talk to them because you know some of them oil taste to people involved but other times they just simply didn't trust the police why don't they trust the police well so often police you know commit these kind of crimes and perform this kind of brutality and never are held accountable i guess i'm wondering i mean do you think that there's a larger discussion that needs to be had here about the message that these departments are sending. well i asked what we do i think again part of it is part of the post nine eleven mentality on dying loyalty to the lease on dying loyalty for law enforcement and trying what's been happening is many agencies local state and federal are trying to use the national security paradigm in order to expand their discretion and restore these and tell the public just trust us trust us and

then when someone does get her if it were minority oftentimes racial minority then that falls under the stereotype well it was that he was not an american a bank your. document arab or muslim probably a terrorist and so all of these stereotypes are huge do essentially excuse the government and excuse the police from. being held accountable so i think we have to make a connection between them but i think all americans have to realize that when you have excessive or particularly in political context political protests the first amendment is under attack and we have to hold them accountable it is not always the race of the person isn't it doesn't matter what the gender is no one deserves to be . violated in that way so what's your response to some of these police officers and these police chiefs who say you know what we've got to watch out for the safety of

our communities we have to know that our officers feel safe doing their jobs you hear this same excuse being used in war zones that you know soldiers and marines they need to know that they're not going to get in trouble for shooting somebody if they feel like their lives or their safety is in jeopardy and so often that's the excuse that's given even though you know studies with police forces here show otherwise you know what's the answer to dealing with that to police officers saying we need to know that we're going to we can do our job well without being punished well i think one and i and i agree that we we all benefit. thank you we all benefit from the police doing their job right operative term right and doing a job for most of the constitution but one thing that has come up or one technology interesting which is the recording of iraq so whenever we saw this or uses sirens or sirens recording start and often times many of these cases of violence on staff

as a result are the less they claim that the person was armed or that the person was fighting back in a combative way and so they had little choice but to shoot your pepper spray and then it turns out when they look at the servings in the recording that in fact none of that was true so in some ways the technology is i think a positive development and so then if the police feel that they need to you horse the recording will defend them but at the same time if they abuse their authority and they lie order to their own skin then they'll get caught in it so i think of it that it's a really good point with everyone having cameras and even video cameras on their phones now it's much more difficult for police to be able to give those arguments without the evidence being put forth there so far as he's an associate professor at texas wesleyan university school of law also a legal fellow at the institute for social policy and understanding well when it

comes to getting an education a college education in this country it's becoming more expensive something millions of americans choose to do and they pay for that choice in the form of loans and debt for decades after they graduate and inside the job market now more unwelcoming for college grads than it's been a long time colleges and universities are still raising their prices over the last thirty years tuitions cost of risen by six hundred percent now average in-state tuition has risen by eight percent just in the last year and those who graduated in two thousand and ten had an average of twenty five thousand two hundred fifty dollars in student that's now in july the threat of another blow to stu. once the interest rates on student loans is scheduled to double from three point four percent to six point eight percent president obama has brought this is you front and center and now both republicans and democrats say they agree and they valid to prevent the interest rate from doubling from the interest rate doubling from happening but it's not that simple the two sides disagree on how to pay for it

republicans want to offset cost by taking money from a program within the new health care law democrats a oil companies and wealthy americans should be taxed at a higher rate to help offset those costs and today in the house this afternoon the republican majority passed their version of the bill which will most likely be vetoed by president obama i spoke a short time ago with steph gray a student at activist and co-founder of student debt dot com i asked her what she makes of this current action being taken on capitol hill to try to deal with the student debt problems. well it's bankers arguing about the rights of bankers it's not really about students it's not even about obama care which boehner is willing to go in order to fix this temporary issue you know this this isn't going to solve the student debt crisis at large this doesn't address the lack of refinancing rates for students and really what it comes down to is once again like the every single issue we've heard in the past year is about are futile tax viper rich i don't understand why women tell test be pitted against reform i mean these are issues

that affect some of america's most vulnerable and there's no need for us to have to duke it out for assistance and as a woman and student better i'm very upset and my health is not a bargaining chip they affect some of the some of america's most vulnerable also you know the future of this country people who stand to make a difference you know if given the opportunity but one people are strapped with so much debt so many loans that they never pay back it's very hard to sort of take the next step doing things like buying houses and starting businesses you know it's interesting stuff when you look at some of the most major riots and protests over the last year or so many of them have been about this very issue student debt we have some video of massive protests in chill a in london and we saw this week to we're showing it on the screen here this week in canada these people are angry at the rising cost of getting an education so these protests even turn into riots i'm

wondering i mean do you think in this country we've just gotten so used to this continual upswing and cost for what why aren't people doing what you're doing you know making more of a stink about this. well i mean this is only the tip of the iceberg things are bound to get worse fifty three percent of new graduate class of twenty fold are bound to be unemployed or underemployed and if you're unemployed from the several months you can default on your student loan and all mess up your entire financial future you may never be able to buy a house rent an apartment or even get a job but the sixty percent of employers that check credit when hiring but what it comes down to what i want to know is that sallie mae it all comes back to selling me america's largest student lender think of them as how bank of america was for the for closure crisis now it's house speaker john boehner his daughter works for sallie mae and he's very close friends with their c.e.o. albert lord so really it's about nepotism as well john boehner is just helping out his friends and his child he's not thinking about america's youth we certainly see a lot of that here in washington the revolving door between lobbyists and politics

and a lot of them are friends and relatives. we put some of the numbers up before but if you look at this timeline of what's going on here it's not just about this threat of the interest rate doubling we've got about a quarter of you know we've got about twenty five years of state funding decreasing that means of course that we've seen over the last few decades and schools raise or to wish and and then in many cases the federal government steps in to fill those holes with more loan money and as you said when students graduate they come out to a much rougher job market plus they've got loans piled on them talk a little bit about this cycle this vicious cycle that seems to be going nowhere fast well i mean like i said if you're unemployed in default and can't get a job because you've defaulted on a student loan then you chaps and catch twenty two which will affect your entire future and essentially hold whatever your version of the american dream is hostage whether you'd like to get married and your partner does not want to take on all of your student debt or other situations where you want to advance your career or have

a child. when you hold entire generations ha future hostage and we've got a lot of free time from being unemployed underemployed then you know i think that painters making a very bad mistake i think he's also trying to exploit opinion between us and baby boomers on the issue of student debt reform because frankly baby boomers just don't get it in one thousand nine hundred eighty two it was six hundred percent lower than it was today and real wages have not risen very much in the past thirty years so short maybe thirty years ago you would have family finances full education while working full time at subway but that's not the case they need to hear the statistics. a lot of the media coverage of student debt focuses on emotional sob stories from the most extreme cases of student debt affecting americans lives but it's a systemic issue that affects millions are a lot of people who ring out the fact a lot of people who do have jobs and who have good jobs in you know the career of

their choice but still struggle i guess i'm wondering what your group your website suggest the government do about these problems of course it's easy to point our fingers and to to list the things that are wrong but do you think there are viable solutions out there well unlike boehner who serves only to help sell in may representative hansen clarke from detroit michigan who i had the pleasure of meeting in washington a couple of months ago is very much dedicated to this issue he represents one of america's poorest congressional districts so he has a unique understanding of the issue of student debt and he also had loans through selling me directly and understands how they work as a company with regards predatory lending and collection practices right now represent hansen clarke wrote up a bill h.r. four one seven zero which you can read more about h.r. four one seven zero dot com and this is the stand up forgiveness bill it would help with a lot of necessary changes in public policy and refinancing rates that would give student debtors a leg up on reclaiming their futures. that was stuffed grey organizer for occupy

student debt and still ahead on our teeth do you know what's in your food the truth of the matter is most americans have no clue a pink slime is just the beginning last people on the streets of the big apple g.m.o. is are the way to go back in a minute. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through it's already been made can you trust no one. is imbue it with a global missionary ridge see where we had a state controlled capitalism it's called fashion so when nobody dares to ask we do our tea question more. we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old when she told the truth. to

confess and i am going to get a friend that i was driving. and for. that he was kind of yesterday. i'm very proud of. its place. is the state run english speaking russian channel it's kind of like al-jazeera. russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us.

let's talk now about genetically modified food food made or grown with the addition of engineer organisms often these are used to enhance the size or shape or nutritional value of certain crops chances are you ingest it in many of these and your body just today there's no way for you to know this and so least for now you won't see g.m.o. on the labels of foods in the united states that's because producers are not required by the government to tell you because the government has declared that it's their job choice the producers choice to determine what is good for you which foods are safe for your consumption but you have lots of choices of course at least that's what the way it feels when you're in the grocery store with the big aisles in the stacked shelves infinite choices well it turns out these choices actually fall under the umbrella of just ten companies just ten check this chart chart out all of those seemingly distinct brands of candy and food and laundry detergent there are often brands that compete with one another but they're actually owned by

the same corporation a lot of people are unaware of this and also want to wear of what is in their food the question is do they care more harshness with the resident on that ask that question to several different people she met in new york city. are you concerned about genetically modified or enhanced foods or is it just an overblown issue this week let's talk about that do you care he eat them obviously not. well i think it's less processed foods in europe that's for sure yeah i do think a lot of it is corporate driven here and it is related to money unfortunately modifying genetically food is totally we couldn't controlling they want to take over the super food sources over mankind so they can basically push up on us so why are americans ok with that i think is the knowledge they want to get information from regular t.v. . that are just being intertainment did you know that coca-cola was is made with

high fructose corn syrup in the united states but everywhere else it's made with pure cane sugar i didn't know that but it doesn't surprise me. so what is up with that why don't americans demand better things in their food. they don't want to pay more money for their food in a day they used to what they're eating my i don't care as long as they're comfortable it doesn't matter that would be my guess i think our country is run by greed and money and there's a lot of issues here so. when that say when the greed is so strong that it messes with what people eat. i think i think you just answer the question with your question do you think that because the population is growing and growing and growing that we're bound to eat things like bait in petri dishes and those kinds of extremes probably yes there's this website i don't remember the name of it but supposedly you put what you we in a week. and told you how many earths we would need for everyone in the world the

same amount that you know. and it turns out. there really need to be six earths for me i know you know these in size to say the least but you know the years for is that if americans stopped by gently modified food rather you think that they'd stop making at all that's one hundred percent yes the plains of man when the demand dries up the supply dries up to they need to start putting that on labels that everything that's in there right absolutely and more people are getting wise to labels now i think when they're in the supermarkets in the shopping they'll see the signs in the start to read more than to get off the shelf and put in a basket i think the slowly get the idea through media but i think in these to go further whether or not you're concerned about genetically modified foods the bottom line is if you live in the united states you're probably eating a lot more of them than you realize.

well that's going to do it for us for this week but be sure to tune in to our team next week we've got a brand new line up first up anonymous this mysterious cyber group has been gaining a bunch of attention these days albeit unwanted the f.b.i. has escalated its crackdown of the group raiding the houses of alleged members confiscating computers and sifting through their internet history but anonymous certainly is not going down without a fight they never do the group even made a video promising more cyber unrest now next week we're going to actually speak to one of the men who had his house raided. plus going back to the stone age literally the new york city department of education wants to edit history books to be more sensitive to people who don't believe in evolution all right we're talking about questions about prehistoric creatures like dinosaurs they're even being banned from some tests and this is just the tip of the iceberg we'll tell you all about this

p.c. overkill and while new york schools try to tone down the controversy video game makers are stirring up some trouble by creating games that don't feature the american g.i. as a hero these days you can be a german soldier in world war two an iranian revolutionary or a person who steals cars for a living so is all fair in love and gaming or does somebody need to draw the line we will question more now those are just a few of the stories we have in store for you next week along with more news and in-depth interviews so keep it tuned right here to our t.v. and for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r.t. america or check out our website r t dot com slash usa and you should of course follow me on twitter i'm at christine for is now for now have a great night and a great weekend.