A federal appeals court upheld the Seattle Police Department’s policy on the use of force by officers, the Associated Press reports. The department adopted the policy under a 2012 reform agreement with the U.S. Justice Department. It says that when necessary, officers shall only use “objectively reasonable force, proportional to the threat or urgency of the situation.” It also requires them to use de-escalation techniques when it’s safe to do so. A group of 125 officers challenged the policy, saying it would unreasonably restrict their Second Amendment rights to use their service weapons for self-defense. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. “The City of Seattle has a significant interest in regulating the use of department-issued firearms by its police officers, and the … policy does not impose a substantial burden on the Second Amendment right to use a firearm for the core lawful purpose of self-defense,” wrote Judge William Hayes, a California federal trial judge who was assigned to the case. The attorneys general of 41 U.S. states are banding together to investigate the makers and distributors of powerful opioid painkillers that have led to a spike in opiate addictions and overdose deaths. The coalition issued subpoenas seeking information from opioid manufacturers Endo International, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Teva Pharmaceuticals and Allergan, and additional subpoenas to Purdue Pharma, NPR reports. The group is demanding documents from distribution companies AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson. “Our subpoenas and letters seek to uncover whether or not there was deception involved, if manufacturers misled doctors and patients about the efficacy and addictive power of these drugs,” said New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. The industry already faces dozens of lawsuits by cities, counties and states, including Ohio, Missouri and Oklahoma. Some are trying to recoup the costs incurred from the surge in emergency responses to opioid-related overdoses. The strategy is reminiscent of the litigation by states and municipalities three decades ago against tobacco companies. The opioid drug industry expanded in the 1990s in response to the medical community’s push to better treat pain and chronic pain. Millions of opioid users became addicted to opioids or heroin after being prescribed the medication by doctors. Many doctors said they were assured by the drugmakers that the opioids were less addictive or even not addictive. New York prosecutors said this week that an August drug raid yielded 140 pounds of fentanyl, the most in the city’s history and enough to kill 32 million people. Those numbers underscore the dizzying size of the current opioid crisis. On Tuesday, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers published an analysis showing the crisis has actually negatively impacted life expectancy in the U. S., the Washington Post reports. The analysis, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, crunched the numbers recorded by the National Vital Statistics System Mortality file, a storehouse of death data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, from between 2000 to 2015. It found that the average American’s life expectancy grew overall from 2000 to 2015, but that the astounding rise in opioid-related deaths shaved 2.5 months off this improvement. That’s .21 years, compared to the .02 years taken off the average life expectancy by alcohol overdoses. “It really underlines how serious the problem of opioid overdose has become in the U.S.,” the CDC’s Deborah Dowell told Time. “In general we don’t see decreases in life expectancy attributable to a single cause that are of this magnitude.” While overdose deaths in general in the U.S. more than doubled in that 15-year span, opioid overdoses more than tripled, the study reported. The average life expectancy for an American born in 2010 was 76.8 years, which grew to 78.8 years in 2015. The study suggested that but for opioid-related deaths, it would have been higher still. The Georgia Tech police officer who shot and killed a student was on duty for one year and had not received crisis intervention training, the New York Daily News reports. Tyler Beck, identified in a Georgia Bureau of Investigation statement as the officer who shot Scout Schultz, joined the Georgia Tech Police Department in May 2016 after serving on the department’s Community Outreach and Engagement unit. He participated in 492 hours of training in 2016 and 64 hours of training in 2017, for such topics as “firearms …& use of deadly force,” “campus law enforcement training,” and “crisis management.” He was not given crisis intervention training, which provides officers insight on dealing with those suffering from behavioral health issues. Beck shot Schultz once in the chest, and the 21-year-old student died at a nearby hospital. Authorities released audio of Schultz’s 911 call in which he described a person who “looks like he’s got a knife in his hand … I think he might have a gun on his hip.” “Looks like he might be drunk or something,” Schultz said. “He has long, blond hair, white T-shirt, jeans.” As fellow students watched from their dorm rooms, police surrounded Schultz near a campus parking deck. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra plans to announce a lawsuit Wednesday that will challenge President Trump’s proposal to build a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, a project Becerra has called “medieval.” Becerra is scheduled to travel to Border Field State Park near San Diego to announce plans to sue over construction of border wall projects in San Diego and Imperial counties, the Los Angeles Times reports. The lawsuit alleges that the Trump administration has failed to comply with federal and state environmental laws, relied on federal statutes that don’t authorize the proposed projects and violated the U.S. Constitution’s separation-of-powers doctrine. The lawsuit also says the Department of Homeland Security decided to build the walls without complying with the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. As a result, the lawsuit alleges that the federal government lacks proper environmental analysis of the impact of 400-foot prototypes of the wall currently planned, as well as the 2,000-mile-long final wall. It is the latest of more than two dozen lawsuits and legal briefs filed against the Trump administration by Becerra, who was appointed attorney general in January and is running for election to the post next year. He previously sued to challenge Trump’s plans to end a program that protects young immigrants from deportation, ban immigration from some countries and roll back environmental laws. Last week, three advocacy groups sued the federal government to block construction of a border wall, alleging that the Trump administration overstepped its authority by waiving environmental reviews and other laws. Prompted by high-profile cases of endangered children and chronically overworked caseworkers, many states have taken steps this year to shield children from abuse and neglect, including adding caseworkers, tightening reporting requirements and expanding the definition of “abuse,” Stateline reports. Some states and cities are pouring more money into child protection agencies. In Texas, where the foster care system was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge in 2015, legislators allocated $4 billion this year, up 17 percent, to shore up the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services, including hiring more caseworkers. Tampa, Fl., child welfare agencies got $4 million more in state funding to hire more social workers. And in New Mexico, after the rape and murder of a 10-year-old girl last year, officials in Albuquerque and Bernalillo counties tripled the funding they’d earmarked for a new child-abuse intervention program for at-risk families, to $3 million a year. In other states, there is more pressure to act. After the high-profile deaths of several children in state custody, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback signed a law in June that will form a task force to study the state’s foster care system and make recommendations to overhaul it. In Montana, where the number of child abuse victims jumped from 1,100 in 2011 to 1,900 in 2015, Gov. Steve Bullock signed a law in April to create a commission to study child abuse. In May, he signed a law that requires the state’s Department of Health and Human Services to create a plan to reduce the incidence of child abuse and neglect. Surveillance video shows Kenneka Jenkins, 19, staggering alone through a kitchen of the Crowne Plaza Chicago O’Hare Hotel and around a corner where a walk-in freezer is located. A hotel worker found her body in the freezer 21 hours later, on Sept. 10, reports the Chicago Tribune. The still-developing case, which police said is a death investigation, not a homicide probe, is spawning alternate explanations at a furious rate, many of which exhibit deep skepticism that authorities are telling the truth. Protesters have converged on the hotel on a near-nightly basis, stirred by the strange circumstances of the black woman’s death and complaints from Jenkins’ mother about the initial response from hotel staff and police. After well-publicized shootings of unarmed black men two years ago, only 52 percent of Americans expressed great confidence in the police in a Gallup poll, a record-tying low. While overall confidence has rebounded to the historical average of 57 percent, black trust has slid even more, with only 30 percent saying they have great confidence in police. A new study by the Urban Institute found the problem particularly acute in Chicago, where tension between police and the black community has existed for decades. The study shows that over half the people in largely black areas say their neighborhood police are dishonest, and only 9 percent say police treat people with respect. Jim Bueermann of the Police Foundation said departments can address distrust through community meetings and social gatherings. Convincing out-of-towners that they are conducting an investigation fairly and competently — especially when the case is the subject of endless social media speculation — can be difficult. “They’re probably experiencing a sense that (the Kenneka Jenkins demonstrators) distrust police, period,” he said. “That is very difficult to address. And I think in some cases, local officials just have to ignore it.” A 2009 Louisiana law making it easier to subject serial killers to the death penalty could have a profound impact on Kenneth James Gleason, the Baton Rouge man who was booked Tuesday on first-degree murder counts in a pair of fatal shootings last week, reports The Advocate. East Baton Rouge Parish prosecutors sought the change to the first-degree murder statute after reputed serial killer Sean Vincent Gillis was convicted in 2008 of first-degree murder. The jury deadlocked on the death penalty, and Gillis was sentenced to life in prison. First-degree murder, which is punishable by death in capital cases, requires an aggravating circumstance, such as murdering someone while committing another crime like armed robbery or killing someone under the age of 12. Prosecutors complained to state lawmakers after the Gillis trial that serial killers often murder without committing another aggravating crime. Authorities say Gillis confessed to killing eight south Louisiana women between 1994 and 2004. He was booked in seven of those deaths. Prem Burns, who prosecuted Gillis and helped push the change in state law, said it was sorely needed so serial killers would not be rewarded for not committing an aggravating crime in addition to each individual murder. Gleason, who is white, is booked with first-degree murder in the killings of Donald Smart, 49, and Bruce Cofield, 59, both black men. Authorities have said the shootings may have been racially motivated. Smart was shot Thursday night while walking to work his overnight shift at a cafe. Cofield was apparently homeless and frequently panhandled at the intersection where he was shot on Sept. 12. The Colorado Department of Corrections is asking for $11 million to lease a private prison while it attempts to reopen a closed prison in Cañon City, the Denver Post reports. . The department’s supplementary budget request shows it wants $10.9 million to open a 250-bed private prison because of unexpected increase in the number of people being sent to prison. Critics say the state needs to look for options rather than pour money into more prison beds. They are especially concerned about the department’s plan to put general-population prisoners in Centennial Correctional Facility-South, a prison designed for solitary confinement. The department would use the private prison while a $636,000 recreation yard is under construction at Centennial South. Federal law requires general-population prisons to provide recreational options for inmates, and the project would meet that criteria. State law forbids the corrections department from housing prisoners at Centennial South, so it would need the legislature to change that. Christie Donner of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition said Colorado needs to study what is driving a rising inmate population and devise alternatives to sending more and more people to prison. “The historical approach of going back to get more money from the taxpayers to open another facility should not be the only option on the table,” she said. Centennial South is widely considered a boondoggle. The prison, constructed after the state borrowed $208 million, opened in 2010 and was closed two years later. Taxpayers are still paying the construction bill. A federal court rejected a request by Dylann Roof, the unabashed white supremacist who killed nine black parishioners at a South Carolina church two years ago, to fire his attorneys because they’re Jewish and Indian, the Washington Post reports. Roof, who was sent to death row for the June 2015 massacre at a historically black church in Charleston, requested on Monday that the two public defenders appointed to handle his appeal be removed from his case, saying their ethnicities are “a barrier to effective communication.” He said that, “Because of my political views, which are arguably religious, it will be impossible for me to trust two attorneys that are my political and biological enemies,” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. The court denied the request Tuesday. Rishi Bagga of the South Asian Bar Association of North America, said that requesting an attorney’s removal should be based on legal abilities. He said Roof’s comments highlight a challenge among public defenders, who often have to represent clients who don’t reflect their own views. “It’s really part of a lawyer’s oath to represent someone to the best of their ability regardless of their own beliefs, religion or background or origin,” Bagga said. Roof has been on death row since a jury convicted him of dozens of charges, including federal hate crimes, for the deaths of nine parishioners who had invited him into their Bible study at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Federal prosecutors said Roof committed the massacre to try to start a race war. |
