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Tag: policing and police forces

  • Baltimore investigators searching for suspects in block party mass shooting that killed 2 and injured 28 others | CNN

    Baltimore investigators searching for suspects in block party mass shooting that killed 2 and injured 28 others | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Investigators in Baltimore are searching for multiple suspects in a mass shooting that turned a beloved annual neighborhood block party into chaos early Sunday, killing two people and injuring 28 others, most of whom were teens, officials said.

    The search for the shooters – investigators believe at least two were involved in the incident – is ongoing, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott told CNN Monday, vowing, “We will not rest until we find those who cowardly decided to shoot up this block party and carry out acts of violence which we know will be illegal guns.”

    Officials are combing through “every single lead, every minute, every second of footage, everything that we have to find out who decided to disrupt this peaceful event in this way,” Scott said on “CNN This Morning.”

    The gunfire erupted early Sunday in the south Baltimore neighborhood of Brooklyn, where community members were enjoying a yearly celebration dubbed Brooklyn Day.

    Aaliyah Gonzalez, 18, whose surname police initially spelled ending with an ‘s,’ and Kylis Fagbemi, 20, were fatally shot, the Baltimore Police Department announced.

    The dozens of surviving victims all sustained gunshot wounds, according to acting Police Commissioner Richard Worley. Five of those injured were adults aged 20 or older and the remaining 23 were teenagers ranging in age from 13 to 19, police said.

    Seven of the wounded remain in hospitals, with four in critical condition and three in stable condition, the mayor noted.

    Investigators are scouring the sprawling crime scene – which spans several blocks – for evidence and are poring over hours of surveillance footage, the police commissioner said. Officials have also urged community members to come forward with any relevant information or video footage that may assist in the investigation.

    A reward for information leading to the capture of the suspects has been raised to $28,000, Worley said at a news conference Monday.

    Police began receiving calls reporting the shooting around 12:30 a.m. Sunday, according to Worley.

    As officers arrived on the scene, they found an 18-year-old woman – later identified as Gonzalez – dead, police said. A 20-year-old identified as Fagbemi was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

    An ice cream truck was parked directly across from where Gonzalez was shot and killed. The truck’s driver, Keith, who declined to give his last name, told CNN he watched her collapse on the stairs as hundreds of people ran for cover.

    Keith said he told his children to lay down on the floor of the truck and wait for the rounds of shooting to stop.

    “I walked over to [Gonzalez], checked her pulse, straightened her out, tried to start doing CPR but she was already dead,” he said.

    Some who suffered gunshot injuries took shelter inside the ice cream truck. On Monday morning, blood was still on the ground near the truck’s parking spot.

    Keith said he could not see where the gunshots were coming from. He said there were no disruptions at the block party before the shooting started.

    He said his two daughters, 13 and 18 years old, are “fine but extremely stressed out.”

    Investigators have yet to determine a motive in the attack and are still figuring out whether the victims were targeted or indiscriminately shot at, the police commissioner said. As officers canvassed the neighborhood during the day Sunday, K-9 units located additional shell casings that had not been found overnight, he said.

    Staff at MedStar Harbor Hospital were expecting a routine overnight shift when they were met with the arrival of several patients with traumatic gunshot wounds, Dr. Hania Habeeb, associate chair of the emergency department, said at a news conference Monday.

    Habeeb said the hospital received 19 patients within an hour, 14 of whom were teenagers. Many of the patients were minors, brought in by family and loved ones who were “appropriately concerned,” she said.

    “We didn’t know if we were safe. We didn’t know if the shooter or shooters were right outside of our hospital doors,” Habeeb said.

    The hospital went on immediate lockdown to ensure safety while staff performed lifesaving procedures to stabilize the victims. Habeeb added 10 patients were transferred to Baltimore trauma centers.

    The attack marks one of the latest acts of gun violence to thrust an American community into grief as they gather in everyday spaces, including parks, schools, shopping malls and grocery stores.

    “This was a reckless, cowardly act of violence that has taken two lives and altered many, many more,” Scott said. “This tragic incident is another glaring, unfortunate example of the deep issues of violence in Baltimore, in Maryland and this country and particularly gun violence and the access to illegal guns.”

    Just three days into the month, it is one of five mass shootings in July and one of 340 mass shootings in the US in 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The archive, like CNN, defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are shot, not including the shooter.

    “These weapons come from Virginia, they come from Texas, they come from Florida, they come from Alabama, they come from everywhere in this country,” Scott said.

    “We have to deal with this issue of guns and the flow of illegal guns into the hands of people who should not have them at the national level,” he added.

    The National Rifle Association sued Maryland Gov. Wes Moore after he signed the Gun Safety Act of 2023 and other gun safety measures into law in May, court documents show.

    Members of the Kingdom Life Church pray at the site of a mass shooting in the Brooklyn Homes neighborhood on July 2, 2023.

    The block party was held as an annual celebration of the Brooklyn neighborhood. Scott called on the public to think of the shooting as if it happened in a rural community. “When it happens in Baltimore, Chicago or DC it doesn’t get that same attention,” he said.

    “These Black American lives, children’s lives, matter just as anyone else,” he added.

    Scott described the Brooklyn neighborhood as a working-class community filled with “immense pride.”

    “It is a neighborhood that has had its troubles, but a neighborhood that has seen some folks in that community really determined to see it be successful and see things turn around,” he added.

    There were “at least a couple hundred people” at the event Saturday, Worley said at Monday’s news conference, describing it as “unpermitted,” emphasizing no organizers had filed paperwork with the city.

    Asked about whether police had been appropriately staffed for the event, Worley said the annual celebration happens on a different Saturday each year. In the past, law enforcement was able to discover the date of the event in advance to prepare resources.

    But this year, police did not learn of the event until the day of, Worley said. “As far as I know, no one notified BPD that Brooklyn Day was happening on July 1st.”

    “Unfortunately, we didn’t get there in time to prevent what happened.”

    Mayor Scott said Sunday his office is mobilizing every available resource to assist with the investigation, including distributing information about community-based services available to residents in the Brooklyn Homes area, which he described as a public housing facility.

    Yvonne Booker, a resident of Brooklyn Homes, told CNN affiliate WBAL she’s lived in the area for three decades and feels the gun violence has reached a breaking point.

    “It’s kind of hard for me. I’m a mother. They need to stop. It’s too much. I’ve been to so many funerals in this community,” Booker said.

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  • Mayor says home ‘rammed’ and set on fire as France detains hundreds more protesters | CNN

    Mayor says home ‘rammed’ and set on fire as France detains hundreds more protesters | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The mayor of a Paris suburb has said his home was attacked early Sunday morning, calling it “an assassination attempt” on his family amid ongoing unrest in the country.

    “At 1:30 a.m., while I was at the city hall like the past three nights, individuals rammed their car upon my residence before setting fire to it to burn my house, inside which my wife and my two young children slept,” said mayor Vincent Jeanbrun of L’Haÿ-les-Roses, a commune in the southern suburbs of Paris, in a statement.

    “While trying to protect the children and escape the attackers, my wife and one of my children were injured.”

    Jeanbrun said that he had “no words strong enough to describe his emotion towards the horror of this night” and thanked police and rescue services for their help.

    France has been rocked by a wave of protests following the death of Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old of Algerian descent who was shot by a police officer in Nanterre earlier in the week and whose funeral took place on Saturday at a mosque in Nanterre amid a heavy security presence.

    The youth’s death has reignited a debate on policing in France’s marginalized communities and raised questions over whether race was a factor in his death.

    His mother, Mounia, told television station France 5 on Friday that she blamed only the officer who shot her son for his death. Nonetheless, the killing has sparked widespread destructive unrest.

    While the French government has deployed security forces and riot police across the country, the unrest continued with another night of protests.

    More than 700 people were detained across France overnight, according to a provisional tally from the Interior Ministry.

    The statement added 45 police officers and gendarmes had been injured overnight, while 74 buildings including 26 police and gendarmes stations were damaged and 577 vehicles set on fire.

    The previous night, more than 1,300 people were detained and 2,560 fires reported on public roads.

    Many of those detained since the unrest began on Tuesday are minors, with an average age of 17, according to Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin.

    Meanwhile, China has warned its citizens in France to remain vigilant after a bus carrying a Chinese tour group in the southern city of Marseille had its windows smashed, resulting in multiple minor injuries, the country’s foreign ministry said in a statement Sunday.

    China’s Consulate General in Marseille has lodged an official complaint and urged French authorities to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens and property amid the unrest.

    The ministry did not say when the incident took place or how many people were injured. It said all the tourists on the group have since left France.

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  • Art-loving Helsinki deputy mayor caught graffitiing the city | CNN

    Art-loving Helsinki deputy mayor caught graffitiing the city | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A deputy mayor in Helsinki is facing possible legal action after being caught spray-painting graffiti with a friend.

    Paavo Arhinmäki, deputy mayor responsible for culture and leisure in the Finnish capital, issued a statement Saturday admitting that he and a friend had been caught by security guards after painting inside a train tunnel leading to the city’s Vuosaari harbor.

    In the post, Arhinmäki apologized for “this stupid foolishness of mine. I’m asking for forgiveness,” adding that he and his friend had long been inspired by the graffiti adorning the walls of Pasila, a district renowned for its urban art.

    It cost the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency €3,500 ($3,800) to clean the graffiti from a concrete slab inside the tunnel, a spokesperson for the agency told CNN over email.

    “Now there is still on-going police investigation for legal action and its consequences,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “The costs of cleaning up are collected from the perpetrators after the police investigation is done,” they added.

    Meanwhile, Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat published a photo of the graffiti and tweeted about the incident.

    CNN has reached out to Arhinmäki and Eastern Uusimaa Police Department for further comment.

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  • 3 San Antonio officers charged with murder in fatal shooting of woman at her apartment | CNN

    3 San Antonio officers charged with murder in fatal shooting of woman at her apartment | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Three San Antonio police officers were charged with murder on Friday, less than 24 hours after they fatally shot a woman during a police call, their chief announced.

    Officer Eleazar Alejandro, 28; Sgt. Alfred Flores, 45; and Officer Nathaniel Villalobos, 27, are suspended from the force without pay as the investigation continues. All were released on $100,000 bond, Bexar County jail records show, and none has commented to CNN.

    “The shooting officers’ actions were not consistent with SAPD policies and training, and they placed themselves in a situation where they used deadly force which was not reasonable given all the circumstances as we now understand them,” Chief William McManus said in a news conference Friday night.

    Police were responding to a call that a woman later identified as Melissa Ann Perez, 46, was cutting wires to a fire alarm system at her apartment complex, McManus said.

    “It appeared that Ms. Perez was having a mental health crisis,” said the chief.

    After initially speaking with officers outside, Perez went back inside her apartment and locked the door, according to McManus.

    Officers continued to talk to Perez through a rear patio window, urging her to come out, edited and blurred body camera video released by the police department shows.

    “You ain’t got no warrant!” she says twice, according to the body camera video.

    One officer tried to open the window, and McManus said Perez threw a glass candleholder at him, McManus said. She later swung a hammer at an officer but hit the window instead, breaking it, police said.

    According to McManus, one officer opened fire, but Perez was not hit and could be heard still speaking on the body camera video.

    But seconds later, Perez “advanced toward the window again while still holding the hammer, and all three officers opened fire,” McManus said.

    More than a dozen shots are heard on the body camera video. Perez was struck at least twice, McManus said. Officers “attempted life-saving measures,” the arrest warrant said, but Perez died at the scene.

    Although she was allegedly approaching the officers with a hammer when they opened fire, the arrest warrant said Perez “did not pose an imminent threat of serious bodily injury or death when she was shot because the defendants had a wall, a window blocked by a television, and a locked door between them.”

    CNN has requested the unedited body camera videos in the case.

    Perez’s children, who range in age from 9 to 24 years old, are have been struck with “incomprehensible grief” following their mothers’ death, the family’s attorney, Dan Packard, told CNN Monday.

    “There’s no words to explain to a 9-year-old how three police officers all thought it was okay to gun this woman down in unison while she was in her own house behind a wall,” Packard said.

    The San Antonio Police Officers’ Association expressed its condolences for Perez’s family in a statement Monday. Citing the active investigation, the association said it “cannot speak to the matter further until the investigation is complete and judicial process is underway.”

    “Following the tragic incident, Chief McManus followed all necessary protocols. All three officers have been suspended indefinitely,” the police association said.

    The swiftness of the charges against the officers reflects a trend as communities reckon with police accountability in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

    Five officers in Memphis, Tennessee, were quickly charged in the death of Tyre Nichols, in contrast to earlier cases, such as the police shooting of Jacob Blake, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in which officials decided not to charge the officer five months later.

    Officer use of force also has been under scrutiny nationwide, especially against people facing mental health crises. The City of Rochester, New York, reached a settlement with the family of Daniel Prude, who died following an encounter with police. In Virginia, Irvo Otieno died after being pinned to the floor by security officers at a state mental health facility. And in California, Miles Hall was shot by police during what his family called a mental health episode.

    Melissa Ann Perez

    Perez’ family is “heartbroken,” it said, and plans to file a lawsuit against the city, according to reports and information from family attorney, Dan Packard.

    “We are not talking about a rogue officer who just lost his mind or got mad,” Packard said in an on-camera interview with CNN affiliate KENS 5. “We’re talking about three officers who thought it was OK to gun this woman down in her own house.”

    “We believe that there are systemic problems in the department that allowed this to happen,” Packard added.

    CNN has reached out to Packard for a copy of the suit, once it’s filed.

    Packard told CNN Perez had schizophrenia and may have had prior interactions with police. The attorney said he’s not sure how easily accessible that information would have been to the officers who responded to her home last week.

    “I think that’s an important component that (Perez’s family) are not angry people who are overly suspicious of the police, but this has shattered their trust in the police force and in the system,” Packard said.

    Perez’s family has requested prayers as they grapple with her sudden death.

    “They do not know how these children are going to cope and deal with this and so they take it one day at a time,” the attorney said. “We’re getting them the professional help that they need. But they’re asking for your prayers.”

    The police department will conduct an internal review and turn it over to prosecutors once it is completed. Court records indicate their preliminary hearing is set for July 25.

    CNN left messages with Alejandro and Villalobos requesting comment Saturday. CNN was unable to find contact information for Flores.

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  • ‘Systemic problems’ at Minneapolis Police Dept. led to George Floyd’s murder, Justice Department says | CNN Politics

    ‘Systemic problems’ at Minneapolis Police Dept. led to George Floyd’s murder, Justice Department says | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Three years after George Floyd was murdered by then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, the Justice Department issued a blistering report Friday of the city’s police department, detailing racial discrimination, excessive and unlawful use of force, First Amendment violations and a lack of accountability for officers.

    “Our investigation found that the systemic problems in MPD made what happened to George Floyd possible,” the report states.

    The Minneapolis Police Department has, for years, used dangerous “techniques and weapons” against people who had committed a petty offense or no offense at all, “including unjustified deadly force,” it adds.

    “MPD used force to punish people who made officers angry or criticized the police,” the report says, and “patrolled neighborhoods differently based on their racial composition and discriminated based on race when searching, handcuffing, or using force against people during stops.”

    In its investigation, the Justice Department reviewed hundreds of police body-worn camera videos, incident and police reports, hundreds of complaints filed against officers and dozens of interviews with city leaders, community leaders and police officials.

    “As I told George Floyd’s family this morning, his death has had an irrevocable impact on the Minneapolis community, on our country and on the world,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a news conference Friday.

    “George Floyd should be alive today,” Garland added.

    Chauvin was convicted in Floyd’s death and pleaded guilty for violating Floyd’s civil rights.

    In a review of the 19 police shootings that took place between 2016 and the summer of 2022, the investigation found that “a significant portion of them were unconstitutional uses of deadly force” including officers shooting at individuals without determining any immediate threat and MPD officers using deadly force against “people who are a threat only to themselves,” the report says.

    In one example cited by the report, a woman had been shot by an officer after she reportedly “spooked” him as she came to his police car.

    On May 25, 2020, Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck and back for over nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed and gasping for air. According to the DOJ’s report, at the time, neck restraints were used by Minneapolis police officers 197 times between 2016 and 2020. Nearly a fourth of those were used in cases where no arrest was made.

    Three years on: reflections on the legacy of George Floyd

    Officers would “frequently used neck restraints without warning” and used the restraints against individuals – including teenagers – accused of low-level offenses, passively resisted arrest, posed no threat or “had merely angered the officer.”

    MPD officers, the investigation found, also used takedowns, strikes, tasers, chemical spray and other methods of force in ways that violated individuals’ rights.

    The department now prohibits neck restraints, “no-knock” raids and requires approval for officers to use certain crowd control weapons without approval from the chief of police.

    The investigation also found that MPD officers disproportionately stop and use force against Black and Native American people.

    “During stops involving Black and Native American people, MPD conducts searches and uses force more often than it does during stops involving white people engaged in similar behavior,” the report, which reviewed data of roughly 187,000 pedestrian and traffic stops says.

    “We estimate that MPD stops Black people at 6.5 times the rate at which it stops White people, given their shares of the population. Similarly, we estimate MPD stops Native American people at 7.9 times the rate at which it stops white people, given population shares.”

    During these stops, the DOJ found that MPD officers unlawfully discriminated against Black and Native American people in both searches and use of force.

    After Floyd’s murder in 2020, many police officers in the department stopped listing the race or gender of individuals in their reports in violation of the department’s policy, according to the investigation.

    The report also found evidence of some officers, including those in leadership positions, have made racist or discriminatory comments to other officers.

    During one of the protests following Floyd’s murder, an MPD lieutenant said a group of protesters were likely mostly White because “there’s not looting and fires.”

    Other MPD employees told the Justice Department about similar discriminatory comments made by their colleagues, including comments about how “you don’t have to worry about Black people during the day ‘cuz they haven’t woken up—crime starts at night.”

    The investigation found that officers were often only held accountable for biased conduct after public calls of outrage.

    minneapolis police surveillance

    How the fatal arrest of George Floyd unfolded

    Garland outlined several incidents where MPD officers were not held accountable for racist conduct until public outrage surfaced.

    “For example,” Garland said Friday, “after MPD officers stopped a car carrying four Somalian-American teens, one officer told the teens, ‘Do you remember what happened in Black Hawk Down. When we killed a bunch of your folk? I’m proud of that. We didn’t finish the job over there. If we had, you guys wouldn’t be over here right now.’”

    According to the Justice Department’s report, MPD officers also violated people’s First Amendment rights, including journalists, and found that officers “regularly retaliate against people for their speech or presence at protests – particularly when they criticize police.”

    “MPD officers frequently use indiscriminate force, failing to distinguish between peaceful protesters and those committing crimes,” the report says. “For example, MPD officers regularly use 40 mm launchers – firearms that shoot impact projectiles, like rubber bullets – against protesters who are committing no crime or who are dispersing.”

    The investigation found that in the protests following Floyd’s murder, officers had pepper sprayed a journalist in the face after pushing the reporter’s head to the pavement.

    Other incidents cited in the report include police officers retaliating against individuals who were recording the officers by illegally grabbing phones, destroying recording equipment or using force – including pepper spray – against them.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Man was accused of killing his family members to get money. Now, he has died in custody, authorities say | CNN

    Man was accused of killing his family members to get money. Now, he has died in custody, authorities say | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Nathan Carman, the man accused of killing his mother at sea in 2016 to get family and insurance money, has died in federal custody, according to a new court filing from federal prosecutors.

    “The United States received information from the U.S. Marshal that Carman died on or about June 15, 2023. Dismissal of the charges against Carman is thus appropriate,” the filing states.

    No cause of death was given. A spokesperson for the Vermont US Attorney’s Office said Thursday they had no further comment beyond the filing.

    Carman was arrested in May 2022 and pleaded not guilty to fraud charges and a murder charge in connection with his mother’s death. Nathan was found adrift in a life raft in 2016, a week after he and his mother, Linda Carman, began a fishing trip off the coast of New England. His mother’s body was never recovered.

    A trial was previously scheduled to begin in October of this year, according to court records. A judge would have handed down a mandatory life sentence for murder on the high seas to Carman, had he been convicted. The fraud charges carried a sentence of up to 30 years in prison each, the Vermont US Attorney’s Office said.

    The indictment says Carman was also accused of fatally shooting his grandfather, John Chakalos, in his Connecticut home in 2013. Chakalos made “tens of millions of dollars” through real estate ventures, the indictment​ says. Carman’s alleged crimes were “part of a scheme to obtain money and property from the estate of John Chakalos and related family trusts,” according to a news release from the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Vermont. Carman was not charged with murder in his grandfather’s death.

    But all eyes were on Carman in the 2016 death of his mother.

    In September of that year, the then-22-year-old and his mother, Linda Carman, 54, were reported missing, a police affidavit said. The night before, they had embarked on their usual weekend fishing trip, departing from Ram Point Marina, Rhode Island.

    Days later, on September 25, a Chinese freighter found Nathan Carman by himself, adrift in a life raft. Carman then contacted the US Coast Guard from the freighter.

    “There was a funny noise in the engine compartment. I looked and saw a lot of water,” Carman told a Coast Guard Search and Rescue Controller, according to a Coast Guard recording. “I was bringing one of the safety bags forward, the boat dropped out from under my feet. When I saw the life raft, I did not see my mom. Have you found her?”

    According to the South Kingstown Police affidavit, “Linda and Nathan had different intentions as to the final destination of the fishing trip.” The mother had told her friend they were going to fish at a spot some 20 miles off Rhode Island, while the son told a local man they were going to another spot about 100 miles offshore.

    The local, who had small talk with Nathan Carman, also noticed he had removed the boat’s trim tabs, devices that help the boat steer with more control and fuel efficiency. He also did not see any fishing poles in the boat, and when he asked Carman about them, he didn’t get an answer.

    The marina manager told CNN there had been “many” repair issues with the vessel, a used 32-foot aluminum-covered fiberglass boat that Nathan Carman had purchased earlier in the year.

    The Carman family had a history of police investigations.

    Linda Carman had been arrested in 2011 for an alleged assault of her then-85-year-old father, John Chakalos.

    There had been an argument over the direction of care for Nathan, who had Asperger’s syndrome. The case was never prosecuted and was eventually dismissed, with Linda Carman claiming self-defense.

    Then, in 2013, Chakalos, a wealthy real estate investor whose estate exceeded $42 million, was killed. His wife had died of cancer only a month earlier.

    There was no forced entry and nothing stolen, according to Gerry Klein, who was Linda Carman’s attorney. Linda Carman was questioned heavily, and Nathan Carman was a suspect, but a search warrant in his then-Middletown home produced firearm rifles that did not match the caliber of the weapon used in the killing.

    Also, according to Klein, the grandfather and grandson had been very close, and Linda Carman insisted that her son was not capable of any violence, especially taking the life of someone he loved. Klein also noted Linda Carman told him Nathan was with her fishing at the time the grandfather was killed, but media reports had said Nathan never showed up.

    After Chakalos’s death, Nathan Carman received the money from the two bank accounts his grandfather had set up. Between the years of 2014 and 2016, he spent most of it and by the fall of 2016, he was “low on funds,” according to the indictment.

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  • Randy Cox, who was paralyzed after being transported in a New Haven police van, reaches $45M settlement with city, attorneys say | CNN

    Randy Cox, who was paralyzed after being transported in a New Haven police van, reaches $45M settlement with city, attorneys say | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Randy Cox, the man who was paralyzed while authorities were transporting him handcuffed and without a seat belt in a police van, reached a $45 million settlement with the City of New Haven, his attorneys announced Saturday.

    The settlement marked the end of a civil lawsuit filed against the southern Connecticut coastal city after the June 2022 incident in which an abrupt stop in the back of a New Haven Police Department van caused Cox to be paralyzed from the chest down.

    The settlement marks the largest involving a police misconduct case in US history, according to Cox’s attorneys, Ben Crump, Louis Rubano and R.J. Weber.

    “The city’s mistakes have been well documented, but today is a moment to look to the future, so New Haven residents can have confidence in their city and their police department,” a joint statement from the attorneys read.

    “This settlement sends a message to the country that we know we must be better than this,” the attorneys said.

    New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker said in a statement that the settlement was “an important and sobering part of this accountability process.”

    “While nothing can ever return Randy’s life to the way it was prior to this incident, we trust that this settlement will allow him to receive the support and medical care he needs to move forward,” Elicker said.

    Of the $45 million settlement funds, the city’s insurance will cover $30 million while the city will pay the remainder, according to a statement from Cox’s attorneys.

    The announcement came just days after four members of the New Haven Board of Police Commissioners voted to dismiss two of the five police officers – Jocelyn Lavandier and Luis Rivera – that were involved in the 2022 incident, which happened on Juneteenth – the annual celebration marking the end of slavery in the US.

    Cox’s attorneys said the decision on Wednesday to terminate Lavandier and Rivera “reflected a commitment to accountability and justice.”

    Lavandier’s attorney, Daniel Ford, called the dismissal “an absolute rush to judgment” in a statement to CNN.

    CNN has reached out to Rivera for comment.

    On June 19, 2022, the two officers, along with Oscar Diaz, Ronald Pressley and Sgt. Betsy Segui, transported Cox following his arrest on suspicion of illegally possessing a handgun, CNN previously reported.

    A handcuffed Cox can be seen in a video of the transport hitting his head on the van’s back wall as it came to a sudden stop.

    The charges against Cox were dropped in October 2022.

    The five officers involved pleaded not guilty in January and have not gone to trial, CNN affiliate WFSB reported.

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  • Dutch police arrest over 1,500 people at Extinction Rebellion protest in The Hague | CNN

    Dutch police arrest over 1,500 people at Extinction Rebellion protest in The Hague | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Dutch police arrested over 1,500 people after Extinction Rebellion protesters blocked a motorway in The Hague on Saturday.

    Hundreds of police were deployed to “maintain public order” during the climate protest, Dutch police said in a press release Saturday.

    According to police, shortly before midday local time, the activists descended upon the Utrechtsebaan (A12) motorway, after riot police prevented them for reaching “the underpass that they wanted to block.”

    The activists then began protesting in front of the police line, prompting police to “directly” and “repeatedly” ask them to leave, according to the press release.

    Extinction Rebellion Netherlands said that police deployed water cannons within 15 minutes of protesters blockading the A12 despite, according to the group, there being “no question of a dangerous or threatening situation.”

    Activists are arrested after blocking the A12 motorway in The Hague.

    Videos of the protest posted in social media showed protesters dressed in swimsuits and raincoats, prepared for the water cannons.

    Extinction Rebellion spokesperson, Raki Ap said in the statement that thousands of people had protested “on and next to the A12 with one demand: stop fossil fuel subsidies.”

    Dutch actress Carice van Outen, best known for her role as Melisandre in hit TV show, “Game of Thrones,” was reportedly hit by a water cannon and arrested by police at the protest, according to Dutch public broadcaster, NOS. Earlier on Saturday, van Outen posted a video on her Instagram page of musicians playing Beethoven, calling it a “peaceful and musical protest.”

    “Most of the activists, 1,539 people, were arrested for violating the Public Demonstrations Act,” the press release said, adding that the Public Prosecution Service will not be pursuing criminal action as it is only a minor criminal offense under Dutch law.

    Forty people were arrested for other criminal offenses including obstructing, blocking, vandalism, and insulting, according to the press release. One person was arrested for resisting arrest resulting in injury. These cases remain under review, according to the police.

    The arrests in the Netherlands come after Germany’s authorities this week conducted a series of raids against the comparable climate activist group Last Generation.

    A total of 15 properties in seven German states were searched as part of the raids conducted on behalf of the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office (LKA) and the Munich General Public Prosecutor’s Office, authorities said.

    The Prosecutor General’s Office in Munich said it had initiated a preliminary investigation “due to numerous criminal complaints from the population” against a total of seven defendants aged 22 to 38 years, “on the charge of forming or supporting a criminal organization.”

    On Germany’s right, political figures were approving of the authorities’ crackdown on the climate group.

    The leader of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Party, Friedrich Merz, wrote on Twitter that causing “mass damage to property, graffiti or memorial plaques, or gluing oneself to the streets or cars are quite simply criminal offenses.”

    He added, “It is correct that police and prosecutors are taking action against the Last Generation and those who finance it.”

    Some, though, questioned the move. Die Linke (The Left) Member of Parliament Lorenz Gosta Beutin told Bavarian broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk prosecutors were “putting themselves above our judiciary and courts.”

    A member of parliament for Germany’s Green Party, Helge Limburg, agreed that the “blanket assumption” of the group as criminal was legally questionable in an interview with Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND).

    The UK in 2020 threatened to class Extinction Rebellion as an organized crime group, which would have seen activists face jail terms of up to five years, although the plans did not come to fruition.

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  • Attorney for 11-year-old Mississippi boy shot by police says there’s ‘no way’ he could have been mistaken for an adult | CNN

    Attorney for 11-year-old Mississippi boy shot by police says there’s ‘no way’ he could have been mistaken for an adult | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    An attorney for an 11-year-old Mississippi boy who was shot by a police officer after he called 911 for help said Thursday there was “no way” the boy could have been mistaken for an adult.

    The attorney, Carlos Moore, is asking for “a full and transparent investigation” of the shooting.

    Aderrien Murry is recovering after being released from the hospital, according to his family, who has called for the officer to be fired and charged with the shooting. The boy is traumatized and will require counseling, according to family attorney Carlos Moore.

    Aderrien was shot in the chest by an Indianola Police Department officer early Saturday morning while the officer was responding to a domestic disturbance call at the child’s home, according to his mother, Nakala Murry, and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.

    Moore told CNN Thursday there is “no way” the boy could have been mistaken by the officer for the adult who was the subject of the 911 call – a man “over 6 feet tall.”

    “This 11-year-old child was about 4 feet 10 it looks like and so he could not have been confused,” Moore said. “So we don’t know what happened, but we do know this officer’s actions were reckless, very reckless, and could have led to the loss of life.”

    Moore said the boy “did everything right” the morning of the shooting and described him as “a good student” who obeyed his mother’s request that he call the police for assistance.

    “No child should ever be subjected to such violence at the hands of those who are sworn to protect and serve,” Moore said in a statement earlier Thursday.

    “We must demand justice for this young boy and his family. We cannot allow another senseless tragedy like this to occur. We must come together as a community to demand change and accountability from our law enforcement officials.”

    The circumstances of the shooting are under investigation.

    Moore, the boy’s mother and others held a sit-in protest Thursday morning at Indianola City Hall. A march and rally to demand the firing of the officer and the release of body-camera footage is planned for Saturday.

    “We are demanding justice,” Moore said outside City Hall on Thursday morning before the sit-in. “An 11-year-old Black boy in the city of Indianola came within an inch of losing his life. He had done nothing wrong and everything right.”

    CNN on Thursday attempted to reach the police chief and other officials at the Indianola Police Department but was told they were not available.

    Aderrien Murry shows where he was shot by police.

    The boy was seriously injured and suffered a collapsed lung, fractured ribs and a lacerated liver from the shooting. He was released from the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson on Wednesday, hospital spokesperson Annie Oeth said.

    “He still has lots of questions,” Moore said of the boy on Thursday. “He is emotionally distraught. He is glad to be alive.”

    Murry said her son is “blessed” to be alive and is asking why the police shot him.

    Murry told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Thursday that arriving officers yelled “Open the door, open the door,” and when she opened it, an officer outside was holding up a gun, telling her to come outside.

    Murry told the show she stepped outside and walked toward the end of a driveway, where her mother was, and then “heard a shot and I saw my son run out towards where we were.” He then fell, bleeding from a gunshot wound, she said.

    The officer who fired the shot told her that he had shot Aderrien after he came around a corner, she told the show.

    Moore told CNN he met Aderrien in person for the first time on Thursday and described him as being “in good spirits” but “still shocked about what happened.”

    He added, “He is afraid of the police. He is still in pain.”

    Moore said the police department has yet to contact the boy’s mother.

    Murry told CNN that the “irate” father of another of her children arrived at her home at 4 a.m. Saturday.

    Concerned about her safety, Murry asked Aderrien to call the police.

    Murry said the officer who arrived at the home “had his gun drawn at the front door and asked those inside the home to come outside.” Murry said her son was shot coming around the corner of a hallway, into the living room.

    “Once he came from around the corner, he got shot,” Murry said. “I cannot grasp why. The same cop that told him to come out of the house. (Aderrien) did, and he got shot. He kept asking, ‘Why did he shoot me? What did I do wrong?’” she said.

    The shooting happened within what felt like “one to two minutes” after the officer asked those in the house to come outside, Murry said.

    The boy was given a chest tube and placed on a ventilator at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. He had a collapsed lung, fractured ribs and a lacerated liver because of the shooting, his mother said. He was released from the hospital Wednesday. CNN has reached out to the hospital.

    Two other children, including Murry’s daughter and 2-year-old nephew, were also in the home at the time of the shooting, she said.

    Moore told CNN the incident was captured on police body camera video.

    The attorney said his request for the body camera footage was denied due to “an ongoing investigation.”

    Moore said he was told there is also video of the incident from a nearby gas station.

    The Indianola Police Department confirmed that the officer involved in the shooting is named Greg Capers but did not provide any additional details on the shooting, telling CNN the police chief was unavailable.

    CNN reached out to Capers for comment but did not immediately hear back.

    On Monday evening, the Indianola Board of Aldermen voted to place Capers on paid administrative leave while the shooting is investigated, according to the family attorney.

    In a statement over the weekend, the MBI said the agency is “currently assessing this critical incident and gathering evidence” and would turn over its findings to the state attorney general’s office after the investigation is complete.

    On Wednesday, MBI spokesperson Bailey Martin declined to answer additional questions, telling CNN in an email, “Due to this being an open and ongoing investigation, no further comment will be made.”

    CNN has contacted the District Attorney’s Office for the Fourth Circuit Court and the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office for comment.

    Murry said that after her son was shot, she placed her hand on his wound to apply pressure as he “sang gospel songs and prayed while bleeding out.” The officer, she said, tried to help render first aid and placed his hand on top of hers to try to stop Aderrien’s bleeding.

    When an ambulance arrived, medics were “very attentive,” she said.

    “Aderrien came within an inch of losing his life,” Moore said. “It’s not OK for a cop to do this and get away with this. The mother asked Aderrien to call the police on her daughter’s father. He walked out of his room as directed by the police and he got shot.”

    Murry said police told her that her daughter’s father was taken into custody later in the day on Saturday but eventually released because she had not filed a police report against him.

    “When was I going to have time to do that? I was in the hospital with my son,” she said, reacting to the news of the man’s release from custody.

    Four days after the shooting, Murry told CNN that “no one came to the hospital from the police station” nor had she spoken to any police investigators about the shooting.

    “I’m just happy my son is alive,” she said through tears.

    Moore told CNN that he is furious that Capers remains employed by the Indianola Police Department.

    “We believe that the city and the officer should be liable to Aderrien Murray, for the damages they have caused,” the attorney said.

    Indianola is a small, mostly African American town with 31% of the population below the poverty line. It lies in the Mississippi Delta, about 100 miles north of Jackson.

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  • Three dead, including two police officers, in a rare mass stabbing and shooting attack in central Japan | CNN

    Three dead, including two police officers, in a rare mass stabbing and shooting attack in central Japan | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Three people were killed, including two police officers, in a shooting and stabbing attack in central Japan on Thursday, NHK reported citing police.

    Police received a call in the late afternoon with reports that a “man stabbed a woman,” a Nakano City police official told CNN.

    When officers rushed to the scene, the man fired something resembling a hunting rifle, striking four people, before fleeing the scene and barricading himself in a building, he added.

    The woman was taken to hospital where she was subsequently pronounced dead.

    Public broadcaster NHK later reported that two police officers also died from their injuries and that one other person was injured.

    NHK reported the suspect was wearing a camouflage hat, top and bottoms with sunglasses and a mask.

    Nakano City urged citizens to stay indoors in a statement posted onto social media Thursday.

    Gun violence is extremely rare in Japan. The country has one of the lowest rates of gun crimes in the world due to its extremely strict gun control laws.

    In 2018, Japan, a country of 125 million people, only reported nine deaths from firearms – compared with 39,740 that year in the United States, according to data compiled by the Sydney School of Public Health at the University of Sydney.

    However, Japan was rocked by a shooting last year that reverberated around the world.

    Shinzo Abe, the country’s longest-serving prime minister, was shot dead during a campaign speech in Nara in July.

    His murder sent shock waves through Japan and the international community, and also sparked questions about whether enough security was in place to protect him despite Japan’s track record for being a safe place.

    Getting hold of a firearm in Japan is extremely difficult and the suspect in Abe’s shooting used a homemade weapon.


    This is a breaking news story, more to follow

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  • Migrants are staying on school grounds, in hotels or at police stations in several states — and some residents are furious | CNN

    Migrants are staying on school grounds, in hotels or at police stations in several states — and some residents are furious | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    In New York City, hundreds of migrants are staying in current or former school gymnasiums.

    In Chicago, dozens of migrants have been sleeping in a police station.

    And in Florida, where the Republican governor has sent migrants to Democratic-led cities across the country, the state has hired three companies to relocate migrants from the state.

    While the surge of new migrants after last week’s expiration of Title 42 was not as large as many expected, the scramble to place asylum seekers who trekked thousands of miles to flee violence or crushing poverty has yielded widespread tensions within and between states.

    And more parts of the US could suddenly find themselves with unexpected migrants.

    About 300 migrants have been placed in current and former school gyms in New York City, a source familiar with the planning process told CNN.

    As of Monday, 220 migrants were in the gym of a former school on Staten Island, the source said. Less than 80 migrants have been housed at a gym at PS 188 on Coney Island, and fewer than 30 have been placed at a gym at PS 17 in Williamsburg, the source said.

    The gyms are not physically connected to the schools, the source added.

    Some New York City parents were dismayed or bewildered to learn of the city’s plan to temporarily house migrants in 20 school gyms.

    “I would like other places to be considered,” Samantha Clark told CNN affiliate WABC. “Our school is tiny. We can barely fit in it as it is.”

    Aramis Rosa said he sympathizes with the migrants but also opposes the plan to house them in school gyms.

    “We’re not against them,” Rosa told WABC. “They’re all welcome – just not to our school, next to our children.”

    Mayor Eric Adams has said the migrants would not interact with students, but that did little to assuage concerns from parents.

    Outside PS 17 in Brooklyn, a group of parents and students protested Wednesday morning over migrants being housed in the school’s gym.

    About 100 people marched around the block chanting, “We want our gym back!” and “Let us play!”

    Parents and children alike carried signs reading, “We need recess,” “No asylum on school grounds,” and “Safety first.”

    One protest organizer stressed the need to support migrants – though she didn’t think housing them on school grounds was appropriate.

    “What we’re gonna do is we’re going to support them. All of you kids are going to help us write notes, and we’ll make care packages, for all the people coming through here,” the organizer announced to the crowd.

    “We wish them well. We care. But they shouldn’t be on school grounds, and not in a place that only has three bathrooms for 100 people, right?”

    Elsewhere in the state, a New York state supreme court judge has granted a temporary restraining order blocking New York City’s mayor from sending asylum seekers to nearby Orange County to try to ease the influx of migrants arriving in the nation’s most populous city.

    The order, requested last week by Orange County Executive Steven Neuhaus, allows for the 186 asylum seekers already staying at the Crossroads Hotel and Ramada by Wyndham in the town of Newburgh to stay in the county, according to the filing.

    But new migrants won’t be allowed to stay at the hotels if any of the current occupants leave, the order states.

    The pushback comes as New York City scrambles to house a crush of migrants – some of them bused to New York by Republican governors and local officials from Southern states.

    Since last spring, New York City has processed more than 65,000 migrants and around 35,000 remain in the city’s care, city officials have said. The city has opened more than 140 emergency shelters and eight large-scale humanitarian relief centers to manage the crisis, the mayor said.

    And a wave of new asylum seekers arrived last week with the expiration of Title 42 – the Trump-era policy enacted early in the Covid-19 pandemic that allowed authorities to quickly expel migrants at US land borders.

    New York Gov. Kathy Hochul last week asked for federal government assistance with constructing and operating temporary shelters “in anticipation of several thousand asylum seekers arriving in New York City every week.”

    Adams’ office said it’s disappointed in the judge’s ruling.

    “New York City has cared for more than 65,000 migrants – sheltering, feeding, and caring for them, and we have done so largely without incident,” Adams’ press secretary Fabien Levy told CNN on Tuesday night.

    “We need the federal government to step up, but until they do, we need other elected officials around the state and country to do their part. New York City is out of space and we’re only asking Orange County to manage approximately ¼ of 1% of the asylum seekers who have come to New York City, with New York paying for shelter, food, and services.”

    But the executive of Orange County said, “New York City should not be establishing a homeless shelter outside of its borders in Orange County.”

    “The city is a self-proclaimed sanctuary city; Orange County is not,” Neuhaus said in a statement. “We should not have to bear the burden of the immigration crisis that the Federal government and Mayor Adams created, and I will continue to fight for Orange County’s residents in regard to this important manner.”

    The New York Immigration Coalition, an immigrant’s rights advocacy group, criticized both Adams and Neuhaus, saying the two need to start working together in coordinating and addressing the needs of asylum seekers in the region.

    “But County Executive Neuhaus shouldn’t be gloating about the judge’s temporary restraining order. His actions in response to asylum seekers to his region have been shameful – he has done nothing more than stoke fear and resentment in his community,” NYIC Executive Director Murad Awawdeh said in a statement.

    “At a moment when he should be choosing to welcome, he has instead chosen cruelty.”

    Hundreds of migrants have been staying in Chicago city buildings after they were “inhumanely” bused to Chicago, former Mayor Lori Lightfoot said earlier this month, according to CNN affiliate WBBM.

    During her final days in office, Lightfoot issued an emergency declaration in hopes of getting federal and state money to help the city respond to the crisis.

    More than 70 migrant families were staying in the Chicago Police Department’s 12th district station.

    “I’ve been here for two weeks,” Johon Torres, a migrant from Venezuela, told WBBM. Torres was joined by his three daughters and niece.

    The families in limbo have received donated supplies from refugee organizations, good Samaritans and even some police officers.

    But the situation is not tenable, said Sgt. James Calvino of the Chicago Police Sergeants’ Association.

    “It’s ballooned exponentially – way out of control,” Calvino told WBBM.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration has chosen three companies to execute the next phase of its migrant relocation program, according to documents obtained by CNN.

    The Florida Division of Emergency Management selected Vertol Systems Company Inc., ARS Global Emergency Management and GardaWorld Federal Services to “manage and implement a program to relocate individuals” who have been processed and released by the US government, according to a FDEM document.

    The contract sets up the framework to once again send migrants to Democratic-led cities, as seen in 2022 when Vertol Systems Company Inc., provided two planes to relocate migrants from San Antonio, Texas, to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, under DeSantis’ direction.

    The state requires vendors to be “solely responsible” from beginning to end of the transporting of participants, including social services that should be provided to them at the destination cities.

    The newly selected vendors are tasked with providing ground and air transportation services to assist with what the DeSantis administration is calling the “voluntary relocation of Inspected Unauthorized Aliens,” who have agreed to be relocated from “Florida, or another state, to a location within the United States.”

    The FDEM did not indicate the number of migrants expected to be transferred and says it will be determined “based on circumstances on the ground.” One vendor noted its capability of moving 40-50 passengers per week, or about 2,200 a year.

    A document showing questions and answers between unnamed vendors and the FDEM, posted on the state’s contract procurement website, sheds light on how the state wants the companies to carry out the program.

    One vendor mentioned California, New York, and Georgia as potential destinations for flights originating from Florida.

    The state wants vendors to start transportation of migrants “within 72 hours of notification by the Division,” and must fulfill their contract until June 30, 2025, unless terminated earlier.

    In response to a question about handling the transportation of minors, FDEM said it does not “anticipate relocating juveniles without a parent or guardian.”

    FDEM said it anticipates this contract to be “turnkey,” saying “vendors will locate and identify, vet and verify individuals for program eligibility and transport.”

    The document states $10 million has been allocated to FDEM for the 2022-23 fiscal year for this program, which expires June 30.

    CNN has reached out to Vertol Systems Company, ARS Global Emergency Management and GardaWorld Federal Services for comment.

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  • 98-year-old woman and her daughter among 3 victims killed by New Mexico student who fired randomly, hitting cars and homes | CNN

    98-year-old woman and her daughter among 3 victims killed by New Mexico student who fired randomly, hitting cars and homes | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A 98-year-old woman and her 73-year-old daughter were among the three people killed by an 18-year-old high school student who roamed through his neighborhood Monday firing indiscriminately at homes and passersby in their vehicles, according to authorities in the northwestern New Mexico town of Farmington.

    In all, Beau Wilson shot nine people Monday morning before four Farmington police officers fatally shot him, police officials said at a Tuesday news conference.

    Gwendolyn Schofield, 98, and daughter Melody Ivie, 73, were killed in their vehicle and Shirley Volta, 79, who also was shot in a car, died at a hospital, according to authorities.

    Farmington Police Sgt. Rachel Discenza was wounded in the exchange of fire with the assailant and New Mexico State Police officer Andreas Stamatiadas was shot as he came to the scene.

    Four other wounded victims were hospitalized, but like the officers, have been released.

    “The amount of violence and brutality that these innocent people faced is something that is unconscionable to me. And I don’t care what age you are. I don’t care what else is going on in your life. To kill three innocent elderly women that were just absolutely in no position to defend themselves is always going to be a tragedy,” Farmington Deputy Chief Kyle Dowdy said Tuesday.

    Investigators are still working on a motive for the shooting, Dowdy said. Interviews with Wilson’s family indicated they had concerns about his mental health, but it was unknown whether Wilson had been diagnosed with any mental health issues, he added.

    The shooter only had “minor infractions” as a juvenile, so he was not on the radar of authorities, the deputy chief said.

    The gunman turned 18 in October 2022 and the next month purchased one of the three weapons used in the shooting, Dowdy said. The deputy chief said police believe the other weapons were legally owned by a family member and they are investigating how the shooter got them.

    One of the guns was an assault-style rifle – a weapon of choice among US mass shooters in recent, high-profile massacres, including the 2012 Sandy Hook school attack and a shooting in Uvalde, Texas, nearly a year ago that left 19 children and two teachers dead.

    The attack left Farmington “shaken to the core by an unthinkable incldent that robbed families of their loved ones,” Mayor Nate Duckett told reporters. It is the latest American city to experience the wider scourge of US gun violence that’s resulted in 225 mass shootings in the first 20 weeks of the year.

    The shooter walked through the neighborhood in this commercial hub near the Southwest’s Four Corners and “randomly fired at whatever entered his head to shoot at,” before police fatally shot him, Police Chief Steve Hebbe said in a video statement Monday night.

    “There were no schools, no churches, no individuals targeted,” he said.

    Dowdy said investigators have not seen a link between the assailant and the victims, but the shooter was staying at a residence in the neighborhood.

    Investigators are piecing together how the attack that left more than 150 shell casings over a “wide and complex scene” that spans more than a quarter of a mile unfolded, authorities said. The assailant fired at three vehicles and six houses, though none of the victims was in a residence.

    Dowdy said investigators were still at the scene and haven’t found all the shell casings it was unclear how many of those the gunman fired.

    Discenza, a patrol sergeant with 10 years at the department, was wearing body armor but was hit by a bullet in the pelvic region, police officials said.

    Stamatiadas was shot while driving to the scene, officials said, and drove himself to a medical facility, according to the chief. The mayor said both have been released from the hospital.

    The four civilians who were shot are no longer in the hospital, Farmington Deputy Chief Baric Crum said Tuesday,

    Five people were treated at the scene for injuries such as cuts from flying glass.

    The shooting was first recorded on a doorbell camera at 10:56 a.m. MT and then emergency dispatch received “hundreds” of calls for an active shooter, police said. Officers were dispatched one minute later, including three who on their way to lunch and responded without body armor.

    They arrived at 11:02 and four minutes later the officers killed the gunman, according to Dowdy. Farmington officers were the only law enforcement personnel who shot at the gunman, firing 16 rounds total, officials said.

    Wilson was a student at Farmington High School, which was set to have its graduation ceremony Tuesday evening.

    Authorities expect to hold another news conference Wednesday.

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  • Man shot 9 times by South Carolina deputies files lawsuit alleging ‘reckless’ use of deadly force during wellness check | CNN

    Man shot 9 times by South Carolina deputies files lawsuit alleging ‘reckless’ use of deadly force during wellness check | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A South Carolina man, who survived being shot nine times by York County sheriff’s deputies responding to a “wellness check” call about him being suicidal two years ago, claims in a recent lawsuit that he was talking with his mother in his pickup truck when officers approached them “like cowboys from a John Wayne movie.”

    Trevor Mullinax and his mother, Tammy Beason, allege that deputies immediately drew their weapons and used deadly force without trying to deescalate the situation and are suing York County and the sheriff’s department for gross negligence, among other claims.

    The lawsuit, filed Friday and obtained by CNN, claims, “Sheriff’s deputies were grossly negligent, willful, wanton, careless, and reckless in their use of deadly force towards Plaintiff Mullinax and Plaintiff Beason, the same causing irreparable and permanent physical, mental, and emotional injury to Plaintiffs.”

    Mullinax was charged with pointing and presenting a weapon – by the State Law Enforcement Division in relation to their investigation of the shooting. That charge is still pending.

    However, attorneys for Mullinax said that while he was “lawfully in possession of a hunting shotgun” inside the truck, “at no point prior to, during, or after Sheriff’s deputies began shooting did Plaintiff Mullinax raise, point, or otherwise move with a weapon in such a fashion as would authorized Sheriff’s deputies to use deadly force.”

    In several dash and body camera videos viewed by CNN, there is no mention of seeing a gun before deputies begin firing their weapons at Mullinax’s truck. However, body camera footage shows deputies after the shooting discussing seeing a “shotgun or rifle.” A deputy can be heard saying he found a weapon in the truck.

    CNN obtained bodycam footage showing deputies with their guns drawn, surrounding the pickup truck, and demanding to see Mullinax’s hands before firing. The video also shows Beason standing beside the truck, speaking with her son through the driver’s side window. Attorneys for the family say officers fired nearly 50 shots at close range as he suffered a mental health crisis, claiming their client was contemplating suicide. Beason can be heard screaming and crying as she’s put into handcuffs by deputies. Attorneys for the family also accuse deputies of failing to render immediate medical aid to Mullinax.

    The lawsuit notes that a shocked Beason “dove backward” to avoid the bullets that hit the vehicle.

    Two years after the May 7, 2021, incident, both mother and son are suing for undetermined damages.

    Justin Bamberg, an attorney for Mullinax, said during a news conference on Tuesday that Mullinax had been hit several times by bullets, including directly in the back of his head.

    “Almost 50 shots fired at somebody who was in need of help. A citizen who was in need of help,” said Bamberg.

    Mullinax, who was present at the news conference, acknowledged that the shooting was triggered by a mental health crisis.

    “I can tell you that it’s hard to believe in the police when they destroyed everything I believe in that day,” Tammy Beason said during the news conference. “It’s taken me a very long time to recover from that. I’m still recovering.”

    According to a recording of the 911 call, a friend of Mullinax had called emergency services with another friend on a three-way call to report Mullinax was having a mental health crisis and was potentially suicidal.

    “We’re just trying to get our buddy some help,” the friend said. They told the dispatcher that they suspected the crisis was, in part, sparked by Mullinax’s belief there was a burglary warrant out for his arrest due to an incident the previous night.

    The 911 caller explained to the dispatcher that Mullinax’s mother was out with him, and that their friend “had locked himself in his truck with a knife – and I say that because I don’t want him to hop out and get shot, I don’t know if that’s his plan.” The friends provided cell phone numbers for Mullinax and his mother so law enforcement could contact them.

    However, the complaint alleges that the 911 dispatcher did not provide the responding deputies with the cellphone numbers she was given for Mullinax or his mother.

    The filing said that when deputies arrived on scene, they found Mullinax’s grandfather at the house. Body camera video obtained by CNN shows the grandfather directing deputies to where he thought Mullinax could have been parked.

    The 911 dispatcher relayed information to deputies about Mullinax being suicidal and the warrant, but deputies who arrived at the home seemed focused on the outstanding warrant based on comments recorded on body camera videos.

    “He’s got to go to jail,” a deputy said to Mullinax’s grandfather.

    As they approach the truck in the distance, a deputy can be heard in one dash camera video observing out loud that there is “somebody standing right beside” the truck and that Mullinax can be seen inside.

    Body camera video shows deputies arriving, shouting “hands up” and “hands, hands” before opening fire on the truck, with Beason still standing there, all in less than 10 seconds time.

    Tammy Beason, Mullinax's mother, on May 9, 2023.

    Mullinax was life flighted to a hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina, for his injuries. Dashcam video shows it appears at least 14 minutes went by before aid for Mullinax was provided by emergency services. He was handcuffed and removed from the pickup truck after the shooting.

    Deputies handcuffed Beason immediately after the shooting. She can be seen on body camera video hysterically crying while begging to see her son.

    “I was trying to get him to go in, and he was talking to me finally. He was talking to me. Why did y’all come? I could have done this peacefully. I could have done this peacefully,” sobbed Beason to a deputy, who captured the interaction on his body camera.

    In a news conference on Wednesday, York County Sheriff Kevin Tolson said his agency had not been served with a lawsuit and that he felt “forced” to address the claims.

    “I feel forced to address this suit out of what I consider to be the proper venue and that’s the court,” Tolson said. “I’ve never held a press conference about litigation, litigation that I haven’t even been served with yet.”

    Tolson said that Mullinax had active arrest warrants through the York Police Department for a violent felony and malicious injury to personal property. Sheriff’s deputies’ claim that Mullinax pulled and pointed a weapon at them when they arrived following a request for a wellness check for Mullinax. He said all four deputies fired their weapons at Mullinax

    “Four deputies approached an individual wanted for a violent felony who was armed with a knife and experiencing mental distress. As those deputies approached, this individual pulled a shotgun. Fearing for their safety, these deputies discharged their weapons at the individual,” said Tolson, who also claimed that Mullinax’s mother corroborated the deputies’ claims that her son grabbed a weapon when law enforcement arrived on scene.

    An image taken from video released by the York County Sheriff's Office shows the scene moments before officers opened fire on Mullinax's truck with him inside and his mother, seen in red, standing beside it on May 7, 2021.

    In response to that claim from the sheriff, attorneys for Mullinax and Beason told CNN “on the day of the shooting, Tammy Beason did tell SLED investigators that Trevor grabbed the shotgun but did so when he saw deputies driving down Highway 324, not as officers pulled right up to the front of his truck.”

    Tolson also said the SLED investigation shows upon arriving at the hospital after being by deputies, Mullinax told medical personnel that he wanted to kill himself but then “decided to have the police do it.”

    Tolson denounced criticism against police officers for their handling of situations “that should not be the responsibility of law enforcement” and said more mental health resources are needed.

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  • ‘Something out of a police state’: Anti-monarchy protesters arrested ahead of King Charles’ coronation | CNN

    ‘Something out of a police state’: Anti-monarchy protesters arrested ahead of King Charles’ coronation | CNN

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    London’s Metropolitan Police said it made 52 arrests during the coronation of King Charles III on Saturday, as the force faces growing scrutiny over its attitude toward anti-monarchy demonstrators.

    Thousands gathered in central London on Saturday to celebrate the once-in-a-generation occasion. But it also drew demonstrators, with protesters wearing yellow T-shirts booing and shouting “Not My King” throughout the morning.

    Republic, Britain’s largest anti-monarchy group, told CNN that police – without providing any reason – arrested organizers of the anti-monarchy protest.

    At around 7 a.m. (2 a.m. ET) police stopped six of Republic’s organizers and told them they were detaining and searching them, Republic director Harry Stratton told CNN at the protest.

    Graham Smith, the chief executive of Republic, was among those detained, according to a video shared by the Alliance of European Republican Movements.

    Stratton said that when the organizers asked police why they were being detained, they were told officers “would figure it out” after they had searched the anti-monarchy protesters. After searching them, police told the six organizers they were arresting them and seizing hundreds of their placards carrying the slogan “Not My King.”

    “They didn’t say why they were arresting them. They didn’t tell them or us where they were taking them. It really is like something out of a police state,” Stratton said.

    “I think people are quite perturbed by the police reaction. But the crowd reaction to us has been overwhelmingly friendly,” he added.

    The group posted on Twitter Saturday, commenting: “So much for the right to peaceful protest.”

    Members of environmental activist group Just Stop Oil also appeared to have been arrested on The Mall outside Buckingham Palace, the UK’s PA Media news agency reported, adding that a large group of the protesters were seen in handcuffs.

    A Just Stop Oil member was arrested and carried away by police.

    The Metropolitan Police confirmed several arrests had been made in central London and defended its actions.

    “A total of 52 arrests have been made today for offenses including affray, public order offenses, breach of the peace and conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. All of these people remain in custody,” the police said in a press release.

    Commander Karen Findlay, who is leading the police operation, said in the release: “We absolutely understand public concern following the arrests we made this morning.

    “Protest is lawful and it can be disruptive. We have policed numerous protests without intervention in the build-up to the coronation, and during it.

    “Our duty is to do so in a proportionate manner in line with relevant legislation. We also have a duty to intervene when protest becomes criminal and may cause serious disruption.

    “This depends on the context. The coronation is a once in a generation event and that is a key consideration in our assessment. A protest involving large numbers has gone ahead today with police knowledge and no intervention.”

    Human Rights Watch, a non-profit campaign group, said earlier Saturday that the coronation arrests were “something you would expect to see in Moscow not London,” according to a statement obtained by PA Media.

    Anti-monarchy groups have expressed concern over the treatment of protesters.

    Republic claimed it was expecting between 1,500 and 2,000 people to join the group at its protest in Trafalgar Square, just south of the royal procession route.

    “Instead of a coronation we want an election. Instead of Charles we want a choice. It’s that simple,” the group tweeted on Saturday.

    The Metropolitan Police, the UK’s largest police force, has been scrutinized for its tough approach toward protests around the coronation.

    “Our tolerance for any disruption, whether through protest or otherwise, will be low,” the force wrote on Twitter this week. “We will deal robustly with anyone intent on undermining this celebration.”

    Ahead of the event, the Met said that more than 11,500 police officers would be deployed in London on Saturday, making the coronation the largest one-day deployment in decades.

    The operation – labeled Golden Orb – saw officers line the processional route, manage crowds and road closures, protect high-profile individuals and carry out searches with specialist teams.

    There are also plans for facial recognition technology to be used in central London, which has sparked criticism from human rights groups.

    Demonstrators gathered in central London on Saturday.

    “We all have the right to go about our lives without being watched and monitored, but everyone at the coronation is at risk of having their faces scanned by oppressive facial recognition technology,” Emmanuelle Andrews of human rights group Liberty, said on Twitter.

    The operation comes amid growing concern over the increase in the police’s power to stifle dissent in Britain, following the recent introduction of controversial pieces of legislation.

    Last year, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 significantly “broaden[ed] the range of circumstances in which police may impose conditions on a protest.” Under the new Act, it is an offense for protesters to “intentionally or recklessly caus[e] public nuisance” – including causing “serious annoyance.”

    In a statement to CNN, Liberty said this Act “has made it much harder for people to stand up for what they believe without facing the risk of criminalization.”

    On Tuesday, a new law called the Public Order Act received royal assent from King Charles, which is a formality and the final hurdle before a bill becomes law.

    It will “give police the powers to prevent disruption at major sporting and cultural events taking place this summer in England and Wales,” the UK Home Office said in a statement.

    Specific measures in the Act were introduced from Wednesday.

    Under this law, long-standing protest tactics such as locking on – where protesters physically attach themselves to things like buildings – could lead to a six-month prison sentence or “unlimited fine,” said the Home Office.

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  • Alleged Thai serial cyanide poisoner now facing at least 13 murder charges | CNN

    Alleged Thai serial cyanide poisoner now facing at least 13 murder charges | CNN

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    Bangkok, Thailand
    CNN
     — 

    A pregnant Thai woman arrested on suspicion of murdering her friend with cyanide has now been charged with at least 13 counts of premeditated murder, police have confirmed.

    Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn was initially arrested last week for the alleged murder of Siriporn Kanwong, Deputy National Police Commissioner Gen. Surachate Hakparn told CNN.

    Police have requested arrest warrants in 14 cases of alleged murder involving Sararat, with 13 approved by the court so far and one still pending, Surachate said in a press conference on Wednesday.

    In the potentially linked cases currently under investigation by police, all the victims ate or drank with Sararat in the run up to their deaths. All 14 of the deceased – as well as one survivor – were poisoned with cyanide, Surachate said.

    Sararat, who was remanded in custody last week, has denied the accusations, National Police Chief Gen. Damrongsak Kittiprapas added at the same press conference.

    Police are also investigating Sararat’s partner Witoon Rangsiwuthaporn, a senior police official who held the rank of Lt. Colonel.

    Earlier this week, Witoon was fired from his job as a local deputy police chief. He is also facing charges of fraud and embezzlement related to the alleged murders, Surachate confirmed.

    The couple are “divorced on paper” but have maintained a relationship, Surachate said, adding that Witoon has denied any knowledge of the murders.

    Police have also confirmed that Sararat is pregnant.

    Speaking to CNN on Thursday, Surachate said Witoon was willing to work with investigators and is set to visit his partner in prison later in the day.

    “Let’s see how much he can do or if he is really sincere,” Surachate said.

    Police believe the killings may have had a financial motive, with victims allegedly lending Sararat money in the run up to their deaths and investigators probing her transactions and debts as a result.

    Consumer debt is a massive problem in Thailand, accounting for nearly 90% of the country’s GDP as of 2022, according to the Bank of Thailand.

    The investigation into so many murders has transfixed Thailand with local media providing daily updates.

    Serial murders are relatively rare and the vast majority of perpetrators of such crimes are men.

    In the United States, the FBI defines serial murder as two or more killings separated by a span of time.

    Fewer than one percent of homicides during a given year are committed by serial killers, the FBI says.

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  • Manhunt underway for gunman who killed 1 and wounded 4 in Atlanta medical facility | CNN

    Manhunt underway for gunman who killed 1 and wounded 4 in Atlanta medical facility | CNN

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    Atlanta
    CNN
     — 

    Atlanta authorities are searching for the person who shot five people Wednesday at Northside Hospital Medical in Midtown Atlanta, killing one person and sending four others to the hospital, and then fleeing in a carjacked vehicle, Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said Wednesday.

    A 39-year-old woman died, Schierbaum said during a Wednesday afternoon news conference. The injured victims were also all women, ranging from 25 to 71 years old.

    The suspect, whom authorities identified as 24-year-old Deion Patterson, left the building and is believed to have carjacked a vehicle nearby, the police chief said.

    He is still at large and there are active leads in Cobb County and in the city of Atlanta, Schierbaum said. Officers in Cobb County were searching in the areas of Vinings, Cumberland and Truist Park, according to a Twitter post from the Cobb County Police Department.

    “We are working diligently to bring this individual into custody,” the police chief added.

    The suspect is a former Coast Guardsman.

    Patterson “entered the Coast Guard in July 2018 and last served as an Electrician’s Mate Second Class,” a statement from the Coast Guard said on Wednesday. “He was discharged from active duty in January 2023.”

    The Coast Guard said they are working “closely” with Atlanta police and other authorities in the investigation of the shooting.

    “Our deepest sympathies are with the victims and their families,” the statement said.

    Multiple victims were undergoing surgery at Downtown’s Grady Memorial Hospital – Atlanta’s only Level 1 trauma center. Their conditions were not immediately available.

    Three of the patients are in critical condition, Dr. Robert Jansen, chief medical officer at Grady Health System, told reporters in an earlier news conference.

    Police issued a “be on the lookout” for the suspect saying he should be considered armed and dangerous and should not be approached.

    The Atlanta Police Department earlier released images showing the suspected shooter wearing a hoodie, asking anyone with information about his whereabouts to call 911.

    Follow live updates: 1 dead, multiple shot in Midtown Atlanta, police say

    A high-level source within the Atlanta Police Department told CNN the suspect and his mother arrived Wednesday for a medical appointment for himself. The man at some point became agitated and started shooting using a handgun. The suspect has a military background, the source said.

    Atlanta Police spokesperson Chata Spikes similarly said the man was attending a medical appointment for himself when the shooting occurred. Police declined to further describe the nature of the appointment, citing HIPAA regulations.

    The man’s mother, who was uninjured, is currently cooperating with police, Atlanta Police told CNN.

    Deion Patterson, 24, suspected of carrying out a shooting in Midtown Atlanta, is seen in this photo released by Atlanta Police.

    Northside Hospital confirmed the shooting at its Midtown location, saying on Twitter it was cooperating with law enforcement.

    “We urge people in the area to shelter in place and follow instructions from law enforcement on the scene,” the hospital system said. “This tragedy is affecting all of us, and we ask for patience and prayers at this time.”

    In what has become routine in America, Wednesday’s shooting interrupted daily life in a place many would consider safe. This time, it was in a doctor’s office, but so often it’s been US schools, grocery stores and houses of worship.

    Including the shooting at the Atlanta medical facility, there have been at least 190 mass shootings in the United States this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which, like CNN, defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are shot, excluding the shooter.

    The Atlanta Police Department tweeted earlier Wednesday it was investigating an active shooter incident inside a building on West Peachtree Street, between 12th and 13th streets, saying multiple people had been injured.

    Videos shared with CNN showed police running on the scene as sirens blared. Multiple fire trucks, at least one armored police vehicle and deputies from the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office were seen outside the building, which sits in a bustling area of the city, with Google’s offices, hotels, restaurants, apartment buildings and at least two day care centers located nearby.

    Atlanta resident Annie Eaveson lives at the Atlantic House apartments a block away and told CNN her building was placed on lockdown as the incident unfolded.

    I saw two people taken out on stretchers. Waves of armored officers went inside in shifts almost. You can see medical professionals huddled up in offices.”

    Law enforcement officers arrive near the scene of an active shooter on Wednesday, May 3, 2023, in Midtown Atlanta.

    This is a developing story and will be updated.

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  • 5 things to know for May 3: Border, Texas shooting, Writers strike, Fed meeting, Sudan | CNN

    5 things to know for May 3: Border, Texas shooting, Writers strike, Fed meeting, Sudan | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Many airline employees have gone for years without pay raises, even after enduring difficult working conditions during the pandemic. Pilots for American Airlines voted to strike this week, and Southwest pilots plan to vote as well, but they won’t be walking off the job anytime soon — if at all — due to a labor law that places considerable hurdles in the way of any union that wants to strike.

    Here’s what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On with Your Day.

    (You can get “CNN’s 5 Things” delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up here.)

    In preparation for an expected surge of crossings at the US-Mexico border next week, the Biden administration plans to send an additional 1,500 active-duty troops to the border to free up Department of Homeland Security agents. The troops will take on strictly administrative roles, officials said, and will join around 2,500 National Guard troops already in place. The surge of migrants is expected because Title 42, the Trump-era policy that allowed authorities to quickly turn away certain migrants at the border during the pandemic, expires on May 11. Encounters between border agents and undocumented immigrants are at around 7,000 per day at the moment and are expected to rise dramatically next week, despite a warning from the State Department and DHS about a new, more punitive policy related to border crossings.

    The man suspected of gunning down five people at a neighbor’s home in Texas last week — including a mother and her 9-year-old son — was captured Tuesday after a dayslong manhunt. The suspect was found under a pile of laundry in the closet of a home just miles from the Cleveland, Texas, residence where the shooting took place, San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said. “We just want to thank the person who had the courage and bravery to call in the suspect’s location,” an FBI spokesperson said, adding that authorities are now investigating whether the suspect had any help in hiding. The gunman will be held on five counts of murder and his bond is set at $5 million.

    Official describes suspect found hiding in laundry

    Popular late night shows are airing repeat episodes “until further notice” due to the film and TV writers’ strike, sources tell CNN. Several shows including “Saturday Night Live,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” began airing repeat episodes as of Tuesday. Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon, who host NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers” and “The Tonight Show,” respectively, previously said they would honor the strike and not air any new episodes as well. Late night shows are being especially impacted because they depend on their writers for bits, monologues and celebrity interview questions. Until an agreement is reached, analysts say the strike could shut down production on shows and cause a domino effect in the wider realm of the entertainment industry, pushing back the return of many programs set for the fall.

    exp TSR.Todd.writers.guild.strike.impacts.tv.movies_00003201.png

    Strike means TV shows and films in jeopardy

    Federal Reserve officials are expected to raise interest rates by a quarter point today. The Fed’s decision comes just two days after the collapse of First Republic Bank, the second-biggest bank failure in US history. When the Fed raises interest rates, banks need to raise the rates on their savings accounts in order to lure depositors from their competitors. That can put a disproportionate amount of pressure on mid-sized and regional banks — like the ones who saw depositors pull their money when the banking crisis began in March. Still, the Fed will move to raise interest rates today to lower inflation. To do that, it has to intentionally slow parts of the economy by making it more expensive for banks, and thereby consumers, to borrow money.

    Leaders of Sudan’s warring factions agreed to a seven-day ceasefire on Tuesday, the foreign ministry of South Sudan said in a statement. However, previous ceasefires have failed to quell the fighting between the rival factions in various parts of the country. Both sides — the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces — have yet to comment on the report on their official channels. Tuesday’s announcement came after the UN’s refugee agency warned more than 800,000 people may flee to neighboring countries, as the ongoing violence blocks evacuation convoys from key ports in Sudan. More than 70,000 people have already fled Sudan to neighboring countries, a spokesperson for the agency said earlier this week.

    exp sudan ceasefire madowo FST 050312ASEG1 cnni world_00002001.png

    Seven-day ceasefire expected to begin Thursday in Sudan

    Teenage boy opens fire at Serbian school, killing eight children and a security guard, officials say

    Eight children and a security guard have have been killed after a 14-year-old boy allegedly opened fire in an elementary school in the Serbian capital of Belgrade, according to Serbia’s Interior Ministry. Several children and a teacher were also injured in the attack, officials said. The boy is in custody following the incident. 

    Cockroach at the Met Gala goes viral

    A bug on the red carpet received more buzz than some A-list celebrities. Watch the video here.

    Top 10 best cuisines in the world, according to CNN Travel

    Check out this list of appetizing cuisines. *Stomach rumbles — loudly* 

    NBA announces Most Valuable Player for 2022-2023

    Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers won the coveted award after the center topped the charts last year.

    Webb telescope detects mysterious water vapor in a nearby star system

    Astronomers detected water vapor around a rocky exoplanet located 26 light-years away from Earth. Here’s what it could mean.

    Kevin Costner and wife Christine Baumgartner are getting a divorce

    After more than 18 years, the two are going their separate ways.

    0

    That’s how many criminal charges, or lack thereof, will be filed against one of the former Memphis police officers involved in the fatal traffic stop that led to Tyre Nichols’ death. On January 7, 29-year-old Nichols, a Black man, was repeatedly punched and kicked by Memphis police officers following a traffic stop and brief foot chase. Former White Memphis police officer Preston Hemphill was part of the initial traffic stop in which bodycam footage revealed he used an “assaultive statement” after firing a stun gun at Nichols. Hemphill was not involved in the second encounter where Nichols was brutally beaten by police.

    “The public shouldn’t have their daily lives ruined by so-called ‘eco-warriors’ causing disruption.”

    — UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman, issuing a statement Tuesday on the government’s plan to take stronger action against peaceful protesters, days ahead of the coronation of King Charles III. The Home Office said parts of a controversial law will go into place today that will “give police the powers to prevent disruption at major sporting and cultural events.” For example, protestors who physically attach themselves to things like buildings could receive a six-month prison sentence or “unlimited fine,” the Home Office said in a statement.

    Check your local forecast here>>>

    Teen’s grand entrance steals the show at prom

    Most teenagers favor limousines and luxury cars for their prom transportation. These high school students, on the other hand, preferred a tank for their grand entrance. (Click here to view) 

    Tank To Prom 1

    Teen’s grand entrance steals the show at prom

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  • Former Minnesota police officer Kim Potter released from prison after serving time for deadly shooting of Daunte Wright | CNN

    Former Minnesota police officer Kim Potter released from prison after serving time for deadly shooting of Daunte Wright | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Former Minnesota officer Kimberly Potter has been released from prison after serving 16 months of a two-year sentence in the fatal shooting of Daunte Wright, whom she shot after mistaking her gun for a Taser during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, according to the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

    Potter was released from the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Shakopee at 4 a.m. on Monday, the department said, noting the early hour was due to safety concerns and the potential for violent protests outside the facility.

    Potter was convicted of two counts of manslaughter in the killing of 20-year-old Wright, an unarmed Black man, during a 2021 traffic stop near Minneapolis. Wright was pulled over for having expired tags and for a hanging air freshener.

    Potter will be on supervised release for the remaining third of her sentence, in accordance with Minnesota law, which doesn’t provide time off for good behavior, the corrections department said. Potter’s supervised release expires in December.

    Potter’s attorney, Earl Gray, told CNN the former officer with 26 years of experience has no plans to return to Minnesota and will live in Wisconsin.

    Wright’s mother, Katie, said she was “dreading” Potter’s release and is struggling to find peace. She said she suffered a stroke that left her temporarily with blurred vision following the stress of Potter’s trial and conviction.

    “Some say I should forgive to be at peace but how can I? I am so angry. She is going to be able to watch her kids have kids and be able to touch them,” Katie Wright told CNN. “I am always scared I am going to forget my son’s voice. It gave us some sense of peace knowing she would not be able to hold her sons. She has two. I can’t hold my son.”

    She said Potter not being able to serve as a police officer again, due in part to her conviction, has given her “a sense of peace.”

    “She will never be able to hurt anybody as a police officer again,” Katie Wright said. “That is the only sense of peace we get as a family.”

    Potter wept when she testified during her 2021 trial, apologizing and insisting she “didn’t want to hurt anybody.”

    “I was very distraught. I just shot somebody. I’m sorry it happened,” Potter cried as a prosecutor asked her about her behavior moments after the fatal shooting. Potter testified she had been trained with a Taser since 2002 and testified she received a new model days before the April 11, 2021 shooting.

    The city of Brooklyn Center agreed to pay a $3.25 million settlement to the family of Daunte Wright in June 2022. The Wright family said the payment still has not been distributed due to other unrelated legal disputes but they are “hopeful” to receive payment in the next 90 days.

    Part of the settlement agreement requires Brooklyn Center Police officers undergo implicit bias training. The city’s newly elected mayor, April Graves, confirmed that training still hasn’t happened, though, she says, it’s in the works.

    Wright was killed just as the high-profile trial of Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who was ultimately convicted of murdering George Floyd, was underway only about 10 miles away. Floyd’s death spurred outrage across the country with protests in many major cities – as well as some international locales – to decry police brutality and racial injustice.

    Soon after Wright’s death, the Brooklyn Center City Council approved “The Daunte Wright and Kobe Dimock-Heisler Community Safety and Violence Prevention Resolution,” which said the city would create an unarmed department to handle “all incidents where a city resident is primarily experiencing a medical, mental health, disability-related, or other behavioral or social need.”

    The resolution, which passed in 2021, was also named after Kobe Dimock-Heisler, a 21-year-old man living with autism, was also killed by Brooklyn Center Police after his family called 911 for help in 2019.

    The measure also said officers would not be able to make arrests or conduct searches for many lower-level offenses, including stops for non-moving traffic infractions.

    It was introduced by the city’s former mayor, Mike Elliott.

    “It was easy to get it passed but we still haven’t implemented anything and here we are two years later,” Katie Wright said. “It is roadblock after roadblock.”

    Mayor Graves told CNN the city is moving forward but “not as fast” as some in the community would like. She said the resolution “was crafted and written by the former mayor without the input of any staff or council members.”

    Daunte Wright

    Graves, who was a city council member when the resolution passed in 2021, said the city council, which now has two new members since the killing of Wright, will vote on new recommendations for the policy changes in May. She added that last year the city held two town halls on policy recommendations. Another town hall was held Saturday.

    “There were some things within that resolution that just weren’t feasible,” Graves said, noting they only have about 35,000 residents and while they have “big city problems,” the council is working with a “small city budget.”

    “Creating three new departments was just not conceivable,” Graves added. “One of those departments that he called for was around a department of violence prevention or something along those lines. Our new office of community prevention, health and safety is aligned with those things.”

    Meanwhile, Graves said if the proposed traffic stop changes and consent searches are approved by the city council, officers would not be allowed to pull people over solely for minor traffic offenses, like invalid or expired registration, excessive window tints, and broken headlights or tail lights. She also said the current recommendations allow officers to pull someone over if a minor traffic offense could lead to serious damage.

    “I think if we’re able to actually vote on and approve these recommendations around consent searches and pre-emptive stops … it would bring down the likelihood of having these issues come up again,” Graves said, adding “community feedback is important.”

    In the last 18 months, Graves said the city has seen turnover in the police department and other city offices. The department, now led by its first Black chief, Kellace McDaniel, has 42 sworn police officers on patrol. Graves said the department is fully staffed at 49 officers. The city also “lost six out of seven department directors” but was able to rehire for those roles, including an equity and human resources director, Graves said.

    “When I first started, it was difficult to even have a resolution around racial equity but now, we have funding and staff trying to do that work internally and externally with the community,” Graves said. “I see definite changes. Government is slow. There’s definitely still a lot of obstacles, people’s fear and misunderstanding and, yes, bias getting in the way, but I think we have the right people in place to keep it moving forward.”

    Katie Wright and her husband, Aubrey, say they will continue to push for change. A red urn holding their son’s ashes sits above a fireplace in their living room.

    “Changing traffic stops is the only thing that is going to keep people safe. We need it in every city,” Katie Wright said. “I am not going to be quiet.”

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  • A Black teen’s murder sparked a crisis over racism in British policing. Thirty years on, little has changed | CNN

    A Black teen’s murder sparked a crisis over racism in British policing. Thirty years on, little has changed | CNN

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    Neville Lawrence sometimes imagines walking through London and looking at buildings his son Stephen might have worked on, had he lived long enough to fulfill his dream of becoming an architect. The closest he ever got to that was building a miniature.

    “He did his work experience with an architect and he built a model of a building down in Deptford. So, every time I pass Deptford and see the building, it reminds me of him,” Lawrence told CNN, referring to a neighborhood in southeast London. It’s been 30 years, but he still gets emotional speaking about Stephen.

    Stephen Lawrence was murdered when he was just 18 years old in a racially motivated attack on April 22, 1993. His killing and the subsequent failure of the London Metropolitan Police Service to properly investigate the crime sparked a national outcry. It culminated in a landmark official inquiry that concluded the force was institutionally racist.

    But despite decades of promises, reviews and reforms, a new government report published last month, just four weeks before the 30th anniversary of Stephen’s murder, reached the same conclusion. The Met is still institutionally racist.

    Raju Bhatt, a civil liberties lawyer who has dedicated his career to representing people making claims of wrongful conduct against the police, said nothing in the new report – the Baroness Casey Review – came as a surprise.

    “What our clients see is a machinery which just doesn’t want to hear what they have to say and as a result, what happens is a failure to address the cultural problems, that culture of impunity, which arises when police officers know that they won’t be brought to account – when [they] know that whatever they do, their managers will be there to back them up, or, at the very least, their managers will look away,” he said.

    The Met Police chief Mark Rowley has acknowledged “systemic” problems in the force but has so far declined to use the word “institutional.”

    Protesters demonstrate outside the Lawrence inquiry in south London in June 1998.

    For Bhatt, the Casey report was just the latest development in a familiar cycle of events that began when he graduated from university in 1981.

    That summer, racial tensions in Britain boiled over and sparked violent clashes between mostly Black protesters and the police, in south London’s Brixton neighborhood and elsewhere. Bhatt worked as a community volunteer, helping people who were arrested during the protests.

    An official government inquiry into the riots and the police response concluded there was an “urgent need for changes in training and law enforcement and the recruitment of more ethnic minorities into the police force.” It also found that there was “evidence of harassment of minorities by some policemen.”

    Stephen Lawrence was murdered 12 years after the Brixton riots. Within days of his killing at a bus stop in southeast London, five White teens were identified as being involved. They were arrested, but none was successfully prosecuted at the time.

    It took years of campaigning by the Lawrence family — and public support from the likes of Nelson Mandela and the national press — to get the investigation moving. A 1997 inquest into Lawrence’s death found that he was unlawfully killed in a “completely unprovoked racist attack by five white youths.”

    A wave of protests forced the then-government to commission an inquiry into the murder and the Met’s handling of it, which concluded in 1999 that “professional incompetence, institutional racism and failure of leadership by senior officers” was to be blamed for the botched investigation.

    The review, known as the Macpherson report, made 70 recommendations on how to improve the police force and increase the public’s trust in the force. They included recruiting more Black and other minority ethnic officers to make sure the force reflects the communities it serves, taking steps to tackle disparities in the use of police powers against people from minority groups and developing specific guidelines on how to investigate and tackle racist crimes.

    The Macpherson report was damning, but like the Brixton riots review, it failed to result in lasting and substantive reform of the Met Police.

    As a Black man who grew up in 70s and 80s Britain, Leslie Thomas says he knows what it’s like to be on the receiving end of police racism. He recounts how he has been racially profiled and stopped and searched by officers several times in the past, including once when he was driving with his wife and baby in the back of his car and once when he was just 14 years old.

    “I was 14, in school uniform, coming home from school and a police van pulls up alongside me. Four officers jump out [and say] ‘you look suspicious’,” he said.

    Like Bhatt, Thomas is a lawyer who has spent decades representing people in claims against the police and other public authorities. And, just like Bhatt, he has little faith that the latest report will lead to much change.

    “Here’s the thing. You can’t hit a target unless you acknowledge the target itself. The Metropolitan Police have said, ‘oh, we want to be a more inclusive organization,’ but steadfastly, they refuse to acknowledge through their leadership that they’ve got a problem with institutional racism,” Thomas said.

    “If it were just a few bad apples, then you wouldn’t expect, as we have seen, repetition after repetition, generation after generation,” he added.

    The Met has not yet responded to CNN’s request for comment. But speaking to the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee last month, Rowley refused to label the Met Police “institutionally” racist, saying the word “institutional” is ambiguous and politicized.

    In a statement released when the Casey report was published, Rowley said it “must be a catalyst for police reform” and “needs to lead to meaningful change.” He added: “I want us to be anti-racist, anti-misogynist and anti-homophobic. In fact, I want us to be anti-discrimination of all kinds.”

    Thomas specializes in representing families of people who have died in police custody – an issue that disproportionately affects people of color.

    Black people in the UK are seven times more likely to die from police restraint than White people, according to statistics compiled by Inquest, a charity that focuses on deaths in police and prison custody, immigration detention, mental health settings and other state settings.

    stephen lawrence file polglase

    The legacy of Stephen Lawrence’s murder, 30 years later

    At a protest in London, Marcia Rigg embraces Carole Duggan, whose nephew Mark Duggan was shot dead by the police in 2011.

    Thomas represented the family of Sean Rigg, who died in 2008 after being pinned down in a police arrest while experiencing a mental health crisis. While an initial investigation by then-police watchdog the Independent Police Complaints Commission cleared the police of any wrongdoing, the Rigg family kept fighting.

    In 2012, an inquest jury found that Rigg died of cardiac arrest after being restrained in a prone position for approximately eight minutes and said the level and length of restraint used by the police was “unsuitable” and “unnecessary” and that this “more than minimally” contributed to his death.

    In light of the findings, the police watchdog re-examined the case. But a police misconduct panel cleared five officers of gross misconduct in connection to Rigg’s death in 2019. One of those officers had earlier been acquitted of perjury relating to his account of events on the night Rigg died.

    Marcia Rigg, Sean’s sister, is still fighting. She and her family have spent years watching CCTV footage of Sean’s last moments, trying to piece together what really happened. The process has been deeply upsetting and it hasn’t, so far, led to the justice she wants for her brother.

    “It was four years before we had an inquest. And basically myself and my family, particularly me and my brother Wade, we had to become investigators ourselves … to see your loved one being treated in that way by officers that should be helping us. It’s traumatizing, it makes you angry,” she told CNN.

    Rigg said she still dreads the police. “I hate the sound of (the sirens), I hate the sight of the uniform, what it represents.”

    The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020 brought back all of the trauma for Rigg. Like Sean, Floyd was held face down by police in a prone position. Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes and was ultimately found guilty of murdering him.

    But it also made her even more determined to fight. “When George Floyd died, and everybody witnessed that murder, (British politicians) were on the side of the people, (saying) that this can’t happen. I said, well, they need to look in their own backyard,” she said.

    A protester holds a picture of Sean Rigg during a 2021 demonstration in London.

    Deborah Coles, Inquest’s executive director, said the struggles of the Lawrences and the Riggs to get justice for their loved ones mirror the experiences of nearly everyone she’s worked with.

    She said the “cultures of denial and defensiveness and delay” within official government agencies, as well as victim blaming and the tendency to demonize the victim’s family and community, add to families’ suffering in such cases, as does “this ongoing institutional denial about the fact that institutional racism is a live and enduring issue.”

    Successive governments and police chiefs have dismissed the severity of the issue, she told CNN. “We’ve always said that one of the problems is that when it comes to looking at deaths (in custody), they see them as isolated incidents, rather than being evidence of a systemic, enduring issue. This is a systemic issue across police forces.”

    The UK’s largest police force commissioned the latest independent inquiry in 2021, after a serving Metropolitan Police officer was convicted of the kidnapping, raping and murdering Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old London woman. The eventual Casey report was damning, finding the Met not just institutionally racist, but also institutionally misogynistic, sexist and homophobic.

    According to a separate parliamentary report published last year, Black people are more than nine-and-a-half times more likely to be stopped and searched than White people, even though the vast majority of “stop and search” actions don’t result in any further action.

    The Met is still overwhelmingly White, with only 17% of officers identifying themselves as non-White in 2022, despite the city they police being far more diverse.

    While that is more than the 3% figure recorded in the early 2000s, it is still well below its own targets and not at all reflective of the communities the police serve.

    “We see time and again critical reviews, inquiries, inquest findings, coroner’s recommendations, a whole wealth of potentially lifesaving recommendations, but also very critical recommendations about structural changes needed. And yet there is no enforcement of those recommendations,” Coles said.

    Inquest and other organizations are calling for a new oversight mechanism that would follow up and report on whether correct actions have been taken in response to the numerous inquiries, she added.

    Neville Lawrence, speaking to CNN, says the family has had to fight for justice itself.

    As the Lawrence family and their supporters mark the 30th anniversary of Stephen’s killing, they are still fighting for his killers to face justice.

    It wasn’t until 2012, 19 years after the murder, that two of the five attackers – Gary Dobson and David Norris – were finally convicted and sent to prison. It took a change in law that allowed for a retrial in cases where new evidence is found.

    To date, the other three people allegedly involved in the killing have not been brought to justice.

    Neville Lawrence remains determined to keep fighting – although he said that the publication of the Casey report has made it clear to him, once again, that the family is on its own in this.

    “If you want justice, you have to try and fight for it yourself, you don’t have anybody who is going to be doing it the way they should be doing it,” he said.

    After years of being consumed by grief and anger, Lawrence decided to move back to Jamaica, where his son is buried. “I accept the situation where I had to leave this place so I can have some peace,” he told CNN.

    “I couldn’t even bury my son here because of the vandalism that would have taken place. The amount of times that they vandalized the (memorial) plaque where he fell, that they had to put a camera on it to stop people going there and desecrating it … so just imagine Stephen, if he was here, what they would have done,” he said.

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  • Alabama investigators say they’ll give update today on Sweet 16 birthday party shooting that killed 4 | CNN

    Alabama investigators say they’ll give update today on Sweet 16 birthday party shooting that killed 4 | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Authorities investigating the weekend shooting that killed four people and left dozens of others injured at a teen’s birthday party in Dadeville, Alabama, are expected to hold a news conference Wednesday about the case that’s left the small community grappling with grief and confusion for days.

    Details about what will be covered in the news conference, scheduled for 10 a.m. CT, weren’t immediately available. It will come four days after Saturday night’s attack, in which authorities have yet to name any suspects or provide a possible motive.

    The party, held at a downtown venue in celebration of Alexis Dowdell’s 16th birthday, was in full swing when gunfire erupted there, witnesses said. Her 18-year-old brother, Philstavious Dowdell, was killed, as were Marsiah Emmanuel Collins, 19; Shaunkivia “Keke” Nicole Smith, 17; and Corbin Dahmontrey Holston, 23, the Tallapoosa County coroner said.

    Thirty-two other people were injured, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency has said, without specifying their ages or whether they all were shot.

    The FBI, US marshals, a prosecutor’s office and local police will be among those joining the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency at Wednesday’s news conference, the state agency said.

    Investigators have been following up on “strong leads” in the shooting, Dadeville Police Chief Jonathan Floyd told CNN earlier this week.

    As of Monday, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency still was processing evidence and interviewing witnesses, it said.

    Several shell casings used in handguns were collected at the scene, the agency said. No high-powered rifle ammunition was recovered, it added.

    After days without significant answers from authorities, Alexis and Phil’s mother, LaTonya Allen – who was shot twice in the attack – has been anxiously awaiting news.

    “I just want justice for my baby and all the other kids that were involved,” Allen told CNN on Monday. She later added, “They took away a piece of my heart, and I know the other mothers and fathers feel the same way.”

    The attack was one of more than 160 mass shootings that have taken place so far this year in the US, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Like CNN, the nonprofit defines mass shootings as those in which four or more people are shot, excluding the shooter.

    Alexis had been planning her party for months, she told CNN, and began feeling “butterflies in my stomach” the day of the party.

    When she went to sit on her brother’s bed to tell him she was nervous, Alexis said, he assured her that he would make sure she had fun.

    Just hours later, Alexis and her friends were enjoying the music of the party’s DJ when gunfire erupted inside the venue, she said. Neither she or her mother recall hearing an altercation before the shooting.

    “All I remember is my brother grabbing me and pushing me down to the ground,” where she fell into a puddle of blood, she said.

    People embrace each other during a vigil in Dadeville on Sunday, the day after the shooting

    After Alexis and her mother ran from the building, they returned to see the bodies of the injured and dying scattered across the dimly lit dance floor, they said. As the room’s lights were flicked on, the family was horrified to see Phil’s body soaked in blood.

    The teen recalls running to Phil and pleading with him to stay alive. “He was trying to say something to her,” Allen said.

    “You’re going to make it. You’re strong,” Alexis told her 18-year-old brother as his consciousness wavered. She begged: “Don’t give up on me.”

    By the time first responders arrived on the scene, Phil was dead, Alexis said.

    “It’s a nightmare that I don’t wish on any parent – to go in and to see my baby laying there in a pile of blood,” Allen said. “That was the worst thing that I could experience in my life.”

    Earlier in the evening, Allen said she heard a rumor that someone in the party may have been armed. She said she made a stern announcement over the speaker: “If anyone in here has a gun, then you need to leave because we’re here to celebrate Alexis’ Sweet 16.”

    She and other chaperones scoured the crowd for anyone carrying a firearm, but didn’t see one, the mother said.

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