The federal prison system paid $1.6 million in bonuses to its top executives and wardens during the past two years despite chronic staffing shortages and sharp critiques of prison management leveled by Congress, reports USA Today. The payments ranged from $5,400 to $23,800 per official. The largest sums went to the agency’s leadership team, including $20,399 to the federal Bureau of Prisons’ acting director, Hugh Hurwitz, and the wardens of prisons who confronted what union officials described as dangerous shortages of guards. Joseph Coakley, who managed the maximum security complex in Hazelton, W.Va., where gangster Whitey Bulger and two other inmates were murdered last year, received $20,399. Coakley, who retired this year, collected an additional $34,500 in 2015 and 2016. Bulger’s murder drew a harsh spotlight to conditions at the Hazelton prison complex, where authorities had long grappled with officer vacancies that persisted at federal prisons generally. A shortage of prison officers forced wardens to tap secretaries, teachers, nurses, kitchen workers and other non-security staffers to patrol cellblocks, solitary confinement units and prison yards, often with little preparation for those. Known as “augmentation,” the practice was condemned by lawmakers. BOP officials would not say how they decide on the size of wardens’ bonuses, citing security concerns. “Bonuses are given based upon work performance,” the bureau said. “Information contained in the performance award justifications may relate to safety and security and therefore, would not be releasable.” The Bureau of Prisons is the nation’s largest correctional system, responsible for managing 121 facilities that house 180,000 inmates. Last year, Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) cataloged troubling allegations by whistleblowers in a letter to Hurwitz, including sexual harassment complaints against bureau officials, prison security breaches, assaults on guards and persistent staffing shortages. Oklahoma state attorneys asked a judge to hold Johnson & Johnson responsible for the state’s opioid epidemic and make the company pay more than $17 billion, the Wall Street Journal reports. “We are in a state of crisis,” Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter said in closing arguments in the nation’s first trial seeking to hold the pharmaceutical industry accountable for opioid addiction and overdoses. Hunter said the company “blamed everyone, everyone except themselves for causing this crisis.” Over a seven-week trial, Oklahoma presented evidence they say proves Johnson & Johnson was the kingpin of the state’s prescription opioid supply. Oklahoma has proposed a $17.5 billion, 30-year plan to abate the costs of opioid addiction that it says Johnson & Johnson should fund. The plan includes money for addiction treatment, education of the public and medical community, and overdose prevention programs. The state says 6,100 Oklahomans died from prescription-drug overdoses between 2000 and 2017. Johnson & Johnson rejected allegations that it marketed its opioid drugs too broadly and played down addiction risks. The firm says it is being scapegoated as the only company willing to take the claims to trial, and argues its marketing of drugs was legally protected speech regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. “These drugs help patients function,” said Larry Ottaway, an attorney representing Johnson & Johnson. The decision is in the hands of state Judge Thad Balkman. The outcome will be closely watched in light of 2,000 similar lawsuits brought against drugmakers and distributors by states and municipalities. The trial became a showcase for the societal cost of all opioid abuse and addiction. Johnson & Johnson’s primary opioid painkillers are Duragesic, a fentanyl patch, and a pill called Nucynta that it sold in 2015. Johnson & Johnson was the lone defendant after two companies settled. Purdue Pharma LP agreed to pay $270 million and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. contributed $85 million. It’s not a matter of if, but when, a federal court will strike down the Trump administration’s latest attempt to rewrite laws governing who can receive asylum in the U.S., immigration and legal experts tell the Texas Tribune. The federal Departments of Homeland Security and Justice announced an interim rule on Monday that effectively denies asylum to migrants who don’t first apply for protections in a third country before requesting asylum at the southern border. The American Civil Liberties Union quickly announced it would challenge the rule in court. Experts said the new rule is on shaky ground for a number of reasons, including recent court decisions. The White House last November tried to prevent undocumented immigrants who cross the border illegally between ports of entry from seeking asylum, but a federal court blocked that attempt, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld that ruling. “We see the [new] rule … as being similarly illegal but broader in scope, and thus more problematic,” said Keren Zwick of the National Immigrant Justice Center. Federal officials said the new rule more efficiently identifies applicants who are “misusing the asylum system.” The rule says that, “Aliens who transited through another country where protection was available, and yet did not seek protection, may fall within that category.” Although the administration has been in discussions with Mexico and Guatemala to designate them as safe third countries, those discussions have stalled, and the only current agreement is with Canada. Tom Jawetz of the Center for American Progress, said that’s only part of the reason the rule “violates the statutory scheme laid out by Congress and is illegal, plain and simple.” U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say that 62 current and eight former Border Patrol employees are under internal investigation after revelations of a secret Facebook group that mocked lawmakers and immigrants, reports the Associated Press. Most are under investigation for posts in a secret group called “I’m 10-15,” where messages questioned the authenticity of images of an immigrant father and child dead on the banks of the Rio Grande, and depicted crude, doctored images of U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) purporting to perform a sex act on President Donald Trump. Posts from at least one other closed group also under investigation. “Messages posted on a private page that are discriminatory or harassing are not protected and violate standards of conduct,” said Matthew Klein of the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility. The potential punishment is based upon the severity of the misconduct, whether the employee has previously engaged in misconduct and whether there’s a direct tie to their employment. An agent could get counseling or get anything from a written reprimand to suspension, demotion or firing. ProPublica first posted details of the Facebook group, which boasts 9,500 members. The posts tarnished the Border Patrol’s image at one of the most challenging times in its 95-year history. Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost said the posts were unacceptable. Provost may also have been a member at once point, though there is no indication she knew about the inflammatory posts. Klein said, “To be clear, the expectations of professional conduct don’t end at the end of a shift.” Not reporting misconduct is also considered misconduct. Investigator are working to determine who was active on the page and who knew about the posts. Since 2016, 80 others have been investigated for misconduct for social media posts. Bianca Devins, 17, traveled from upstate New York on Saturday night to attend a concert in New York City with a young man she’d been seeing. In the morning, she was found dead, lying on the ground next to an SUV in her hometown, Utica. Her throat had been slit by the young man, Brandon Clark, who then posted grisly photos of her body on social media before stabbing himself in front of officers who arrested him, the New York Times reports. As news of the killing spread online with the hashtag #ripbianca, the disturbing photos proliferated on Instagram, where they were shared and reshared as the posts were being reported by users and removed by the platforms. The shocking images prompted an outcry about the spread of violent content on social media and the inability by tech companies to police it. There was rampant speculation as people scoured Devins’s online history, trying to determine whether her death was a case of internet harassment that had spilled into real-life violence. Clark, 21, of Cicero, N.Y., was charged with second-degree murder. Devins’s family described her as “a talented artist” who, after graduating high school last month, was preparing for college. Clark posted photos of himself to Snapchat. Gruesome pictures posted to Clark’s Instagram account showed Devins’s corpse and the caption, “I’m sorry Bianca.” Clark posted photos of Devins’s bloodied body on a server on the chat platform Discord that she was known to frequent. Police were looking at the posts, as well as similar ones on the anonymous message board 4chan. Clark’s posts expired from his Instagram and Snapchat stories, where content disappears after 24 hours. A spokeswoman for Instagram said, “Our thoughts go out to those affected by this tragic event. We are taking every measure to remove this content from our platforms.” About a dozen states prohibit the release of 911 recordings or transcripts without the written consent of the caller or by court order. The goal is to protect the privacy of callers in what may be one of the most stressful moments of their lives. The restrictive laws also keep families in the dark about how the state’s 911 system has responded to calls involving their loved ones, and it leaves the public unaware of troubling gaps in how the system is performing, finds an investigation by The Public’s Radio and ProPublica. In March, the news organizations reported on the death of a 6-month-old baby after a Rhode Island 911 call taker failed to give CPR instructions to the family. The lapse came to light after a family member taking part in the 911 call sought a copy of the recording. In June, the news organizations, with the Boston Globe, reported on the death of Rena Fleury, 45, who collapsed while watching her son’s high school football game last year. Four bystanders called 911. None of the 911 call takers recognized that Fleury was in cardiac arrest and none instructed the callers to perform CPR. The 911 recordings for Fleury were never made public. Across the U.S., recordings of 911 calls for accidents, medical emergencies, mass shootings and natural disasters have provided insight into the workings of public safety systems and sometimes revealed critical failings. States are looking to curb access, a trend that troubles media representatives and others. “Oftentimes, 911 calls are one of the primary sources of information for the public to learn what happened,” said Adam Marshall of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. They “can show what government officials did in response. And that allows the public to evaluate, are the 911 calls working properly?” See also: Why I’ll Never Dial 911 Citing government immunity, the Connecticut Appellate Court ruled against two families who alleged negligence and inadequate school-safety protocols contributed to the deaths of their loved ones during the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, reports Law.com. The court upheld a lower court’s ruling in favor of the town of Newtown and its education board. It said the families who sued made no specific allegations against any faculty or staff at the time of the shooting, and that school security guidelines imposed only discretionary responsibilities, not required actions, on the defendants. The case was filed by the families of Jesse Lewis and Noah Pozner, two elementary school students killed in the shooting. They argued that top school officials knew there was a protocol to lock down the school and shut the doors to every classroom, but no lockdown was ordered during the incident in which Adam Lanza killed 20 schoolchildren and six educators. Appellate Judge Thomas Bishop said that, “no reasonable juror could have found that the school security guidelines imposed a ministerial duty upon the faculty and staff.” Fifty years ago this week, U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy’s sedan plunged into a pond on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts, killing passenger Mary Jo Kopechne. Leslie Leland, foreman of the grand jury that investigated the case, tells the Associated Press that, “If we’d been allowed to do our job, there would have been an indictment and a request to have a jury trial. Justice wasn’t served. There were so many discrepancies, but we weren’t allowed to do our jobs to get to the truth — whatever the truth may have been.” Now 79, Leland was a young pharmacist on the island when he was swept up in the aftermath. He recalls getting death threats and 24-hour police protection, and says he is still frustrated by a judge’s refusal to subpoena anyone who was at the party or share key investigative documents, stymieing the grand jury’s efforts to determine whether Kennedy had been drinking. Kennedy, 37, survived the crash, but his presidential ambitions did not. The Massachusetts Democrat waited 10 hours to report the accident to police, and the “whys?” dogged him for the rest of his days. Half a century later, what did and didn’t happen on Chappaquiddick Island on July 18, 1969, continues to fascinate and frustrate, AP says. Kennedy was driving after a party when his car flipped into the chilly waters, trapping Kopechne. She had been a campaign worker for Kennedy’s brother, Robert, who was assassinated the previous year in Los Angeles while campaigning in California’s Democratic presidential primary. |
