#george-floyd

#george-floyd

The needless, tragic murder of Laquan McDonald, a Black teen, by a white Chicago police officer in 2014 put the city's Police Department, and the need to reform it, in the national spotlight.McDonald's death was a driving force behind the federally mandated consent decree that requires the Chicago Police Department to overhaul its training, supervision and accountability.

Harrowing video of a driver speeding from Iowa police with an officer clinging to his hood and roof emerged this month during the motorist's sentencing.Dennis James Guider Jr., 29, of Chicago Heights, was sentenced last week to up to five years in prison after pleading guilty to a felony count of serious injury by vehicle.

I, like many other Chicago residents, did not support Brandon Johnson in April's mayoral runoff.This was primarily a policy-rooted decision.I consider myself a middle-of-the-road Democrat, and his ideals were generally too left-leaning for me.Yet the sheer amount of vitriol I have seen levied against him is, by all means, disproportionate.

The wounds of Minneapolis are far from healed.T.J. Johnson, a resident of South Minneapolis for 40 years, says he is applying for a gun permit, having long ago given up on the police keeping him safe.Veterans of the city's Police Department, which has lost more than 300 officers, say they are running on fumes, weary from patrolling under a cloud of suspicion.

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.

The Justice Department accused the Minneapolis Police Department of rampant discrimination, unlawful conduct and systemic mismanagement in a scathing 89-page report released on Friday.The federal investigation, launched in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis officer, found that the systemic problems in M.P.D. made what happened to George Floyd possible.

Three years after defund the police became a rallying cry that emerged in the fury over the police killing of George Floyd, efforts to do away with conventional policing have largely fizzled in Minneapolis and beyond.The movement faltered in Minneapolis after activists failed to build broad support for a goal that lacked a clear definition and an alternative that residents could agree on.

Scientists are studying police camera footage to understand why some car stops of Black men escalate and others don't.Hill Street Studios/Getty Images When a police officer stops a Black driver, the first 45 words said by that officer hold important clues about how their encounter is likely to go.Car stops that result in a search, handcuffing, or arrest are nearly three times more likely to begin with the police officer issuing a command, such as "Keep your hands on the wheel" or "Turn the car off."

The Mercury provides news and fun every single day-but your help is essential.If you believe Portland benefits from smart, local journalism and arts coverage, please consider making a small monthly contribution, because without you, there is no us.Thanks for your support!Good Morning, Portland!The weather for the weekend is looking beautiful and temperate, but it is too warm, overall.

A Justice Department report, released on Friday, detailed systemic issues within the Minneapolis Police Department that it said led to the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, in police custody.The report included evidence that it said showed the Police Department had discriminated against people based on race and disability and that officers had frequently used excessive force.

Fort Benning is now officially Fort Moore, the only U.S. base named for a married couple.Photographs and Text by Arin Yoon Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore commanded troops in the first major battle of the Vietnam War, a role depicted in a book and a movie.His wife, Julia, was a champion for military spouses and changed the way next of kin are notified when a service member is killed.

California is set to pay $24 million after reaching a settlement with the family of Edward Bronstein, who died in police custody three years ago after repeatedly yelling, I can't breathe, while an officer knelt on his back, lawyers said on Tuesday.California Highway Patrol officers pulled over Mr. Bronstein, who was 38, on March 31, 2020, believing that he was driving under the influence of a drug, and they then tried to draw his blood.

Shreya ChattopadhyayReporting for the Books desk Don't know what to read next?From an analysis of pandemic-age political organizing to an in-depth cultural history of butts and an array of imaginative queer fiction (happy Pride month!), this week's picks have you covered.Here are six paperbacks we recommend Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care, by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba Two seasoned activists, looking at lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic and the George Floyd protests, offer a blueprint for creating social movements that are grounded in compassion.

Top Justice Department officials on Friday are expected to announce the findings of a two-year long investigation of the policing practices of the Minneapolis Police Department in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, people briefed on the matter said.The pattern or practice review followed the conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in Floyd's murder.

Roger Waters is currently under investigation in Berlin after wearing an outfit resembling that of a Nazi SS officer on stage, according to reports.The Pink Floyd co-founder shocked fans during a concert in the German capital earlier this month.After opening the show with a statement saying he condemns antisemitism unreservedly, Waters performed while wearing a long black jacket, gloves, and a red armband adorned with hammers, rather than the Nazi swastika.

"This is a continuation of a national agenda to whitewash history," said state Sen. Shevrin Jones.Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signs three education bills on the campus of New College of Florida in Sarasota, Florida on Monday, May 15, 2023.Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post / Getty Images Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has signed legislation into law that will defund diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at Florida's public colleges and allow the state to remove programs, majors and minors that teach "identity politics" or critical race theory.

The man who choked Jordan Neely to death on a New York City subway train on Monday is Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old veteran of the Marine Corps, according to two senior law enforcement officials.Mr. Penny has not been charged in Mr. Neely's death and it is unclear if he will be.Many politicians, city leaders and advocates for New Yorkers struggling with homelessness and mental illness have called for his arrest.

There will be significant costs for US diplomacy if Congress doesn't renew a controversial intelligence program gathering communications data that is set to expire this year, a senior State Department official said Tuesday, adding that US diplomats have used the program to monitor Russian atrocities in Ukraine.

The FBI improperly searched an intelligence database for information on suspects in the January 6, 2021, US Capitol riot and people arrested at 2020 protests after the police killing of George Floyd, according to a court opinion that was unsealed and released Friday.The new details about the database misuse are likely to complicate the Biden administration's efforts to renew a key foreign surveillance program.

Of the 66 books approved, nearly 50 were forced to undergo edits to sections on racial justice in order to be allowed.A close-up image of an opened book in front of a blurred bookshelf filled with books in the background.Getty Images Officials in the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) have rejected dozens of social studies and history textbooks that were submitted for consideration for use by school districts, claiming that the books violate recently-implemented state standards.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a news conference to sign several bills related to public education and teacher pay, in Miami, on May 9. Rebecca Blackwell/AP Florida education officials have rejected dozens of social studies textbooks amid an ongoing effort by the administration of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to influence what's taught in the state's public schools.

In a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), federal researchers acknowledge in detail that police-perpetrated killings are a major cause of violent death in the United States, and Black and Indigenous men are disproportionally killed by police compared to all other groups tracked in the data.

President Joe Biden is set to announce on Thursday that he will nominate Air Force chief of staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to a defense official familiar with the plans.The decision follows Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's recommendation to pick Brown as the military's next top officer, the official said.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who directed the prosecution of former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin, is releasing a book about his experience.Scott Olson/Getty Images Minneapolis police officers murdered George Floyd three years ago this week.Video captured how Derek Chauvin, who is white, used his knee to pin Floyd, a Black man, to the ground for more than nine minutes while Floyd pleaded for his life.

The country was riveted for three weeks in 2021 during the trial of the former police officer Derek Chauvin, as a jury in Minneapolis considered whether the death of George Floyd was murder.Through it all, Keith Ellison, the attorney general of Minnesota who was directing the prosecution, was a constant yet silent presence in the courtroom.

When Lori Lightfoot overwhelmingly beat Toni Preckwinkle four years ago in the runoff, Lightfoot was a ray of hope for change in the Chicago political scene.What happened in these four years that thwarted that hope?I can only guess, but a couple of things come to mind.Certainly, Lightfoot was not a politician, and her confrontational attitude created enemies for her.

The Black Economic Council of Massachusetts , better known as BECMA, represents Black-owned businesses across the state.The group has an unusual origin story.Not too many organizations trace their origins to a Federal Reserve study, but, then again, the study in question was no ordinary report.Published in 2015 and titled , the findings of the report commissioned by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston were striking.

(Nico Smedley / Los Angeles Times)

When he sought to make the leap from prosecutor to judge in 2008, Patrick Connolly branded himself to voters as a hard-charging and hard-partying attorney who had won some of the most complicated murder cases in Long Beach between sleepless trips to Las Vegas.Months before he was elected to the bench, Connolly sent Frank Gonzalez and Justin Flint to prison for the rest of their lives.

Put down the electronic devices!June is coming in hot with great books for every taste.A romance between two unlikely lovers, a travel memoir about Blacks abroad and a novel about the friendship between Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune are just a few of the things on our must-read list.These are the books by Black authors we can't wait to read this June.

In the coming weeks, the Supreme Court is very likely to forbid colleges and universities to use race as a factor in admissions decisions.Indeed, when the cases challenging the admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina were argued in October, some justices were already looking at the next question on the horizon: whether admissions officers may promote racial diversity by using race-neutral criteria.

President Biden called for a new era of innovation in the American military on Thursday as he formally unveiled his choice to steer the country's armed forces into an uncertain future hunting down terrorists, managing the growing competition with China and countering Russian aggression in Europe.Introducing Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. as his nominee for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mr. Biden praised him as a proud, butt-kicking American airman and top-notch strategist.

Other images in the advertisement are deeply misleading, leaving out additional context that would also embarrass Trump.Former President Donald Trump speaks to guests via video link at an Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition event on April 22, 2023 in Clive, Iowa.Scott Olson / Getty Images A recent ad created by a super PAC for Donald Trump and shared by the former president's official Facebook page purports that Americans were "better off" under his watch than they are under current President Joe Biden, depicting a series of pictures meant to stir up feelings of fear and xenophobia in viewers.

New documents EFF received through public records requests have revealed that the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) received live access to the hundreds of surveillance cameras that comprise the Union Square Business Improvement District's (USBID) camera network in anticipation of potential protests following the police killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee.

Carmelo Anthony, the former Knicks star and one of the greatest scorers in N.B.A. history, announced his retirement on Monday, calling the farewell after 19 seasons bittersweet.Anthony, 38, last played in April 2022 as a reserve for the Los Angeles Lakers and spent the final few seasons of his career in more limited roles.

In January, Clara Wu Tsai flew to Turkey on a trip that altered the balance of power in the W.N.B.A. Wu Tsai, who owns the Liberty with her husband, Joe Tsai, went there to chase Breanna Stewart, the off-season's most coveted free agent.Accompanied by her team's coach and general manager, Wu Tsai pitched Stewart in the middle of her Euroleague season with a team in Istanbul.

Hello, and welcome to this week's selection of top visual stories by Los Angeles Times photographers.:: The Title 42 public health order policy expired on Thursday.With the arrival of COVID-19, the Trump administration enacted a novel interpretation of a rule created in 1944, allowing U.S. border officials to keep asylum seekers out of the U.S. during the pandemic, citing the potential public health threat.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

California has agreed to pay $24 million to the family of a man who died after yelling "I can't breathe" as officers pinned him to the ground and tried to draw his blood following a traffic stop, attorneys for the family said Wednesday.The deadly encounter in March 2020 came just months before the police killing of George Floyd, who uttered the same phrase to Minneapolis officers more than 20 times.

SAN FRANCISCO Standing at the stoop of her childhood home a slim but stately Victorian shaded by an evergreen pear tree Lynette Mackey pulled up a photo of a family gathering from nearly 50 years ago.The men were all in suits, the women in skirts.Ms. Mackey, a teenager in red bell bottoms, stretched her arms wide and had a beaming smile.

Brandon Johnson has been inaugurated as Chicago's 57th mayor.Johnson took the oath of office Monday morning, administered by Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans, during a ceremony commemorating the former county commissioner and longtime labor organizer's once-improbable rise to become the most progressive leader of the nation's third-largest city in decades.

President Biden declared on Saturday that white supremacy is the most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland and warned a predominantly Black audience that sinister forces embraced by his predecessor and putative challenger are trying to reverse generations of racial progress in America.Mr. Biden never named former President Donald J. Trump in his sometimes stark commencement address to the graduating class of Howard University, the nation's most prestigious historically Black college.

Following the controversy over a Milan design week exhibition that displayed offensive figurines, Stephen Burks considers what the incident says about the design industry and its approach to race.Three weeks ago in Milan, I found myself face-to-face with direct racial aggression.As part of the Campo Base group show curated by Federica Sala, the architect Massimo Adario presented a collection of decorative glass objects made in the 1920s embodying racist stereotypes.

In February, Beyonce made history by becoming the most successful artist in the history of the Grammys
Stockholm (AFP) - Ecstatic Beyonce fans sang and danced in feverish excitement in Stockholm Wednesday as the superstar kicked off her first solo tour in seven years with a futuristic spectacle featuring a lunar rover, an airborne horse and wall-to-wall rhinestones.

Fort Hood, the third-largest U.S. military base, was renamed Fort Cavazos on Tuesday to honor a Hispanic American Army leader rather than a Confederate general.The base is now named after Gen.Richard Edward Cavazos, the nation's first Hispanic American four-star general and brigadier general.He served in the Korean and Vietnam wars, the U.S. Army said in a statement.

By the time I realized what I was doing, I had already been doing it for years.It was the stories that pulled me in.Long, meandering threads about a loving brother who spent his life raising his younger sister, teaching her to obsess over the Knicks, only to lose her to cancer in her 20s.An anonymous postcard from a woman who thanked her former teacher for giving a speech that saved her life when she was in high school.

Two class-conscious novels have been announced as joint winners of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead and Hernan Diaz's Trust were both awarded the prestigious literary prize on Monday.Kingsolver's novel is a modern recasting of Charles Dickens' classic David Copperfield following a similar narrative structure.

Looking back at Mayor Lori Lightfoot's only term in office, it's hard to see past my disappointment.I'm not alone, as evidenced by her defeat in the first round of voting.Four years ago she came from relative obscurity to win all 50 of the city's wards in her first political campaign ever.This time, she couldn't place high enough in the crowded field to make the runoff.

"The rural South is deeply beautiful and complex and contradictory," says Jones. "I really want [people] to know the rural South has something to say."Rahim Fortune/Dead Oceans Durand Jones & the Indications have been making vintage soul cool again since the mid-2010s.But after several years, three albums and international tours, frontman Durand Jones felt the need to step out on his own.