A7FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2013 LuBBOck AVALANchE-JOuRNAL

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OtherViewsDancing with iran on sanctions

If economic sanctions were key to forcing Iran to accept limits on its nuclear program, wouldn’t more sanctions have an even greater effect? Critics of last week’s interim nuclear deal with Tehran certainly think so. It didn’t take long for them to denounce the agreement. “This is a bad deal — a very, very bad deal,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “A surrender,” agreed former presidential candidate Newt Gingrich — “the Munich of the Middle East.” In the view of the Obama administration as well as the naysayers, the effectiveness of sanctions brought Iran to the table. So why not double down on the punitive approach instead of settling for an interim six-month deal that allows Iran to continue enriching uranium as long as it stays within negotiated limits?

The deal between Iran and six world powers also reduces Tehran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, puts a ceiling on its store of low-enriched uranium and makes it harder for Iran to build a nuclear weapon without being detected.

— los Angeles times

Today’sQuip

Tomorrow

“The Fcc is consid-ering lifting the ban on cellphone calls on planes. The good news is you’ll be able to make calls during your flight. The bad news? The person sitting next to you will be able to make cellphone calls dur-ing your flight.”

Jay Leno

Quoted on http:// newsmax.com/jokes/

Enrique Rangel writes about power of Duncan and Seliger.

Be considerate when shoppingWhen consumers have a bad expe-

rience at a retail store, it is best to remember the grace God has shown to us, and therefore to show it in return.

Often, people react to unforeseen circumstances in a negative way with-out knowing all the facts. Threatening to speak negatively about a person/business, especially a small business that is doing its best to make a living and maintain a good reputation, is the opposite of how God wants us to treat each other. People that run small businesses are our neighbors and are just trying to maintain a livelihood for their families just like you. Making threats and treating people as if they were intentionally being malicious is just a horrible way to act towards each other. Imagine if every mistake you ever made was paraded around town. Please be more considerate to your fellow community members, hear each other out, and remember, we are all brothers and sisters in Christ.

MIchELLE REYNOLDS/Lubbock

Tornado sirens became a hot topic this year in Lub-bock after deadly torna-does at Moore, Okla., and in Dallas/Fort Worth.

Earlier this month, the Lubbock City Council heard recommendations from a task force of emer-gency management ex-perts the council appoint-ed in June to study options for emergency notifica-tions, including sirens.

The group, which in-cludes city emergency management coordinator Jay Parchman, presented possible options ranging from widgets and social media to tornado sirens to the council at a Nov. 12 work session.

“It looks like the recommendation is to go to a mass notification system combined with a siren system,” Mayor Glen Robertson said then. “Now, we’ve still got questions, and we need city staff now to go back out and get us a good, hard cost.”

We agree.Tornado sirens could be one of many options.

But we’re still not sold and we’re glad city leaders are continuing to take a serious look at options.

It’s nice to have a group of logical thinkers look-ing at the best way to warn city residents about dangerous weather.

With the variety of sophisticated electronic technology that exists today, we would not be surprised to see a task force ultimately generate better ideas than resurrecting a siren system that was a high-tech approach half a century ago.

After months of research and information gath-ering, the task force recommended a comprehen-sive approach that includes an emergency alert system delivered to all radio and television sta-tions, NOAA weather radio, wireless emergency

alerts delivered to cell-phones in affected areas, online resources, outdoor warning sirens and more.

Traditionally, tornado sirens have been the most common tool, but Parch-man believes a message system could be better.

People who hadn’t been born or moved to Lubbock when the May 11, 1970, tor-nado hit Lubbock may not be aware Lubbock had a tornado siren system in place at the time. For a va-riety of reasons, it wasn’t very useful in warning Lubbock residents that night.

Tom Martin, a former Lubbock mayor and police officer, had been hired as the city public informa-tion officer only a few hours before the tornado struck Lubbock.

Much of the siren system was damaged in the high winds, and was never operated again, Martin said. The replacement costs were too high for what had been a vulnerable system that could provide only a siren warning with other information.

Meanwhile, 43 years later, the task force was not able to present solid prices for installing the sys-tems, but Robertson estimates it will be at least a $6 million project, in the best-case scenario.

Tornado sirens average about $25,000 for just the head, not including installation or mainte-nance. An emergency messaging system similar to CMAS charges Texas Tech nearly $2 a person, but is likely to charge the city based on population.

Where the money to fund the project will come from has yet to be determined, but Robertson said a bond election is a possibility.

Vetting options by looking at reliability, effective-ness and yes, cost, sounds like a logical next step in investigating an emergency warning system.

Lubbock taking logical approachto finding weather warning system

OurView

Editorials represent the opinion of The Avalanche-Journal Editorial Board, which consists of Publisher Stephen A. Beasley, Vice President of Audience Terry Greenberg, Editorial Page Editor Joe Gulick, in addition to input provided by community advisory board members Adrienne cozart and Juan Muñoz.

At-a-glancen our position: The prospect of a tornado hitting Lubbock

like the one in 1970 is a scary thought, and tornadoes this year elsewhere have caused people to talk about the pos-sibility of tornado sirens. The city council has heard from a task force this month to consider sirens and other forms of notification during emergency weather situations. city leaders now must prioritize options based on reliability, ef-fectiveness and cost.

n Why you should care: If a tornado should touch down in Lubbock, one place isn’t going to be safer than another. All residents would be equally at risk and therefore should have an interest about whether Lubbock needs a warning system and what would work best if we had one.

n For more information: Log on to our website, www.lub-bockonline.com, and enter the words “tornado sirens” in the search box.

QuickOpinionRecent wet, frosty weather made roads a mess and delayed harvesting some crops. But the moisture is helpful for our farmers. The drought is an ongoing concern and why we so strongly supported Prop. 6 in the recent election. No water is not an option. Every drop is precious and we’re thankful for this recent precipitation.

violence surges in california jails in wake of 2011 law

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — County jails that ac-count for the vast major-ity of local inmates in California have seen a marked increase in vio-lence since they began housing thousands of of-fenders who previously would have gone to state prisons.

Many of the 10 counties that account for 70 per-cent of California’s total jail population have ex-perienced a surge in the number of inmate fights and attacks on jail em-ployees, according to as-sault records requested by The Associated Press.

The spike corresponds to a law championed by Gov. Jerry Brown in which lower-level offenders are sentenced to county jails instead of state prisons. Some jails have seen vio-lence dip, but the trend is toward more assaults

since the law took effect on Oct. 1, 2011.

Brown sought realign-ment of the state’s penal system in response to federal court orders re-quiring the reduction of prison overcrowding as the main way of improv-ing medical and mental health treatment for state inmates. But the change has shifted many of the same problems the state had experienced to local jails.

Nearly 2,000 more jail inmates were assaulted by other inmates in the first year after the re-alignment law took effect, up about one-third over the previous year, the fig-ures compiled by the AP show. Attacks on jail em-ployees increased by 165 during the same period.

A rise in the level of vi-olence in jails was likely to be inevitable under the law because of the higher number of additional fel-ons being sentenced to

counties.Yet the increase signifi-

cantly outpaces the over-all growth in the jail pop-ulation for the 10 counties surveyed during the same time period. On average, the combined population grew 14 percent through

2012 while inmate-on-in-mate assaults rose 32 per-cent and inmate-on-staff assaults rose 27 percent.

By June, the 10 coun-ties’ jails held nearly 58,000 inmates, about 7,600 more than their rat-ed capacity.

Beyond the realignment law adding to jail crowd-ing, county sheriffs say it also changed the nature of the inmates they are overseeing.

Fresno County is one of several counties being sued by the same law firms that forced the state to reduce prison crowding, and for the same reasons. The county’s jail popula-tion increased 78 percent between Jan. 1, 2011, and Jan. 1, 2013, including a 40 percent increase since the realignment law took effect. Reports of inmate-on-inmate fights have in-creased 48 percent.

Linda Penner, a Brown appointee who is chair-woman of the Califor-nia Board of State and Community Corrections, which is helping counties with the transition, said the realignment law has been “a game-changer” but said officials plan to design new training for county jail deputies next

year.In Sacramento County,

assaults on jail employ-ees soared 164 percent, the greatest percentage increase of any large county. Yet its jail popu-lation has not grown and remains near its rated ca-pacity of 4,125 inmates.

In one such assault, Deputy Kenny Gouveia was trying to settle a dis-pute between cellmates in the Sacramento jail’s psychiatric unit in July when he was attacked by a 26-year-old inmate.

“It was literally out of nowhere,” he said. “Sud-denly I look at him and his eyes were dilated, and it’s like, ‘Uh-oh.’ The fight was on.”

The inmate slammed Gouveia’s head against a food cart and was chok-ing him despite the in-tervention of two other deputies. Gouveia was off work for five days while he recovered from cuts, bruises and swelling.

by Don thompson

ASSOcIATED PRESS

ASSOcIATED PRESS

sacramento County Deputy sheriff Kenny Gouveia pos-es in the housing unit on Aug. 14 where he was attacked while trying to settle a dispute between two inmates.