The illegal immigration issue is heating up again as rival protests, including a handcuffed Lady Liberty, squared off in front of the Alamance County jail. An immigration rights march is scheduled for this morning in Greensboro.
The N&R’s Lorraine Ahearn, no fan of Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson, presents a balanced piece, to her credit. Emotions are running high again after an Elon University professor discovered that the Sheriff’s department had “grossly underreported” the number of Hispanics pulled over between 2004 and 2008. Johnson acknowledged the discrepancy through Maj. Tim Britt, who appeared before Alamance County commissioners on Monday.
Bonus observation: On the subject of Ahearn once again donning her reporter’s hat, we saw evidence of her “watchdog journalism” in Sunday’s N&R with a story dealing with one of her advocacy issues, mental health reform. In my opinion, the lede is a bit heavy-handed:
Mentally ill, addicted to pain pills, homeless at 53, Betty Ann Scott went through jail, hospitals, rehab, every place but where she wound up the afternoon of Feb. 15.
For once, her hospital stay would be long — 15 days. But there is no treatment here, and the room temperature is 42 degrees in this part of Moses Cone Hospital: the county morgue, where Scott was dead on arrival after a suspected drug overdose.
