Vox Sentences: The problem with Baltimore is a problem with America

The US Department of Justice releases its civil rights report on the Baltimore Police Department; things are heating up between Russia and Ukraine in Crimea again.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

The DOJ prints Baltimore's civil rights receipts

Win McNamee/Getty Images

• The Department of Justice has released its civil rights investigation into the Baltimore Police Department, which it launched after Freddie Gray's death in police custody in 2015.

  [US Department of Justice]

• To call a report "damning" has become a cliché, but, well, it's pretty damn damning. One supervisor instructed an officer to "make something up" in order to stop and question a group of black men.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• In another case, a template arrest form automatically filled in the descriptor "BLACK MALE."

  [The Atlantic / David A. Graham]

• Officers didn't show much more respect for crime victims. The DOJ found widespread disrespect for sexual assault victims and their cases — which might contribute to Baltimore's clearance rate for rape cases being half the national average.

  [Baltimore Sun / Justin Fenton and Alison Knezevich]

• This is key: The Baltimore police weren't solving more crimes as a result of their behavior. They were struggling to clear homicide cases during this period, too.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• Meanwhile, crime was going up and arrests were going down — even before Gray's death and subsequent unrest — possibly because police were upset about the conviction of an officer in an earlier use-of-force case.

  [Foundation for Economic Education / Daniel Bier]

• The behavior and policies the DOJ calls out aren't incidental to solving crime. They hurt community safety by making it impossible for black communities to feel the police are a legitimate authority.

  [National Police Misconduct Reporting Project / Jonathan Blanks]

• This is not just a Baltimore problem, or a Ferguson problem. It is a problem with police in America.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• And some activists are beginning to lose faith that even being called out by the DOJ can change policing practices.

  [The Intercept / Alice Speri]

Russia intercepts possibly imaginary terrorists

Alexander Aksakov/Getty Images

• Russian intelligence announced Wednesday that it had foiled attempted terrorist attacks by Ukrainians in the contested Crimean Peninsula.

  [Reuters / Andrew Osborn and Gleb Stolyarov]

• Vladimir Putin condemned Ukraine for these actions; the Ukrainian government accused Russia of making the whole thing up.

  [The Guardian / Shaun Walker]

• Russia and Ukraine continue to be in a low-grade state of war over Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• But tensions (and casualties) have been rising lately — possibly in advance of the 25th anniversary of Ukrainian independence in late August and the Russian parliamentary elections in September (in which Crimea will participate).

  [BBC]

• The new accusations from Russia could be what tips the situation back into full-fledged war.

  [Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty / Christopher Miller]

• That would be awful — and also contribute to the kind of instability in Eastern Europe that raises the likelihood of a nuclear standoff in the future.

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

• Donald Trump says so, so it must be true. (Though in Trump's telling, this is a reason to let Russia do what it wants.)

  [Politico / Nick Gass]

• But maybe the latest provocation from Russia isn't as portentous as all that. Here's the case against alarm.

  [The Daily Beast / Michael Weiss and Pierre Vaux]

Open arms for neocons

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

• The Hillary Clinton campaign has officially launched an organization, called Together for America, to House Republicans and independents supporting Clinton over Donald Trump.

  [Together for America]

• The members include John Negroponte, a Republican diplomat who served under both Bushes and Ronald Reagan, and who was one of the 50 "Republican national security experts" who published a letter Monday calling Trump "dangerous."

  [Reuters / Jonathan Landay]

• Clinton's campaign is reportedly working to get other Republican diplomats — like former Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Henry Kissinger — on board.

  [Politico / Nahal Toosi]

• It's not just the neocons. Clinton published a column in the Deseret News (the local paper of Salt Lake City) emphasizing her affinity for the state's Mormon-inspired political principles.

  [Deseret News / Hillary Clinton]

• In any other year, this would be foolish: Utah is a very Republican state. But it's full of the sort of Republicans who distrust Trump — and it could be in play in 2016.

  [NYT / Alan Rappeport]

• Not everyone needs convincing. A New York Times analysis found that donors who gave money to the "establishment" candidates in the GOP primary are more likely to give to Clinton than to their own party's nominee.

  [NYT / Adam Pearce]

• Clinton can't be the candidate of literally everyone. Plenty of progressives, for example, are extremely worried about her interest in embracing hawks like Negroponte and Kissinger.

  [Esquire / Charles P. Pierce]

• But so far, at least — especially on domestic policy — Clinton's managed to marry broadly appealing patriotic rhetoric with surprisingly progressive proposals.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

MISCELLANEOUS

Please. Stop. Painting. Turtles. [Washington Post / Amy Wang]

• The case against staying calm in high-pressure situations.

  [NY Mag / Jesse Singal]

• In the old days, youngsters would learn trades and work their way into a steady career. Now they just make mad cash by publishing fake stories about Justin Trudeau.

  [BuzzFeed / Craig Silverman]

• "Full refundability for the child tax credit" sounds dull, but there are few more important policies for reducing child poverty.

  [CBPP / Chuck Marr, Chloe Cho, and Arloc Sherman]

• The true story of "Back at it again at Krispy Kreme," the defining Vine of our times.

  [NY Mag / Brian Feldman]

VERBATIM

"For the first of many times that day, Trump was about to be caught saying something that wasn’t true." [Washington Post / David Fahrenthold and Robert O'Harrow]

• "'cani publish mein kampf under my byline' 'no' 'hm interesting'"

  [Gawker / Ashley Feinberg]

• "Friends and family have married, divorced, given birth, and died during this campaign, and I've missed it all."

  [Marie Claire / Katy Tur]

• "The produce section of the grocery store is a botanical disaster."

  [New Yorker / Ben Crair]

• "This revealed an unexpected benefit of cooking for your dogs: There’s almost no way to get a recipe wrong."

  [Eater / Tove Danovich]

WATCH THIS

Fencing, explained [YouTube / Estelle Caswell]

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