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martinelligi

Few Police Officers Who Cause Deaths Are Charged or Convicted - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Few police officers are ever charged with murder or manslaughter when they cause a death in the line of duty, and only about a third of those officers are convicted.
  • Union protections that shield police officers from timely investigation, legal standards that give them the benefit of the doubt, and a tendency to take officers at their word have added up to few convictions and little prison time for officers who kill. On top of that, misconduct and poor judgment do not always amount to criminality.
  • Though state statutes vary, officers are generally permitted to use deadly force if they reasonably perceive imminent danger — a standard that has been criticized as overly subjective and prone to racial bias.
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  • Many officers who avoided criminal convictions have been fired
  • With increasing calls for change, a few states have attempted to make it easier to hold officers accountable
woodlu

Remote-first work is taking over the rich world | The Economist - 2 views

  • N FEBRUARY 2020 Americans on average spent 5% of their working hours at home. By May, as lockdowns spread, the share had soared to 60%—a trend that was mirrored in other countries.
  • Most office workers remain steadfastly “remote-first”, spending most of their paid time out of the office. Even though a large share of people have little choice but to physically go to work, 40% of all American working hours are still now spent at home
  • Last year British government ministers exhorted workers to get back to the office; now they are quieter
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  • bosses expect that in a post-pandemic world an average of 1.3 days a week will be worked from home—a quarter more than they expected when asked the same question in January.
  • Many people remain scared of contracting covid-19, and thus wish to avoid public spaces.
  • workers have more bargaining power.
  • it takes a brave boss to make people take a sweaty commute five days a week (workers view being forced to be in the office full-time as equivalent to a 5% pay cut).
  • Work that is largely done remotely may be more efficient compared with an office-first model.
  • Not all the papers find a positive impact on productivity. A recent paper by Michael Gibbs of the University of Chicago and colleagues studies an Asian IT-services company. When the firm shifted to remote work last year average hours rose but output fell slightly.
  • “higher communication and co-ordination costs”. For instance, managers who had once popped their head round someone’s door may have found it harder to convey precisely what they needed when everyone was working remotely.
  • more positive results
  • Only 15% of home-workers believe they are less efficient working in this way than they were on business premises before the pandemic, according to a paper published by the team in Apri
  • One possibility is that they can more easily focus on tasks than in an office, where the temptation to gossip with a co-worker looms large.
  • Commuting, moreover, is tiring. Another factor relates to technology.
  • Remote workers, by necessity, rely more on tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams. This may allow bosses to co-ordinate teams more effectively, if the alternative in the office was word-of-mouth instructions that could easily be forgotten or misinterpreted.
  • If it is so wonderful, then why is there little evidence of a shift towards “fully remote” work, where firms shut down their offices altogether? Companies that have chosen to do this are in a tiny minority.
  • A new study in Nature Human Behaviour, however,suggests that firms have good reason to hold on to their office buildings, even if they are used less frequently.
  • Remote work makes people’s collaboration practices more “static and siloed”, it finds. People interact more with their closest contacts, but less with the more marginal members of their networks who can offer them new perspectives and ideas
  • That probably hurts innovation. The upshot is that fully remote teams might do quite well in the short term, but will ultimately suffer as innovation dries up.
lucieperloff

Covid Has Killed Hundreds of Police Officers. Many Still Resist Vaccines. - The New Yor... - 0 views

  • he had assumed that the lieutenant, a distant relative, was vaccinated, but thought it would be inappropriate to ask.
  • More than 460 American law enforcement officers have died from Covid-19 infections tied to their work since the start of the pandemic, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, making the coronavirus by far the most common cause of duty-related deaths in 2020 and 2021. More than four times as many officers have died from Covid-19 as from gunfire in that period.
  • While the virus has ravaged policing, persuading officers to take a vaccine has often been a struggle,
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  • Yet as more departments in recent weeks have considered requiring members to be vaccinated, officers and their unions have loudly pushed back,
  • “It’s a huge challenge, and I think mayors throughout the country are balancing the safety imperatives of responding to 911 calls against the safety imperatives of having a vaccinated work force,
  • Still, proponents of the mandate have noted that there were risks to the public in not requiring the shots.
  • Health departments generally do not publish vaccination data by occupation, but some cities have released figures showing that police department employees have been vaccinated at lower rates than most other government workers,
  • But some officials theorized that the daily dangers of police work may also make an invisible virus seem less of a hazard,
  • a vast majority of Americans hospitalized with or dying from Covid-19 are unvaccinated.
  • For more than a year, the chief has made daily phone calls to sick officers and delivered meals to officers in quarantine. When outbreaks have spread through his department, he has reshuffled schedules and asked officers to work overtime.
sgardner35

Video released of deadly Chicago police shooting - CNN.com - 0 views

  • On Thursday, a judge released video of the deadly shooting. In its wake, a group of activists who have organized previous protests over shootings called for more on Friday.
  • The police department fired Davis, he said, after he ruled Officer Kevin Fry's shooting of 17-year-old Chatman, who was unarmed, unjustified. But he had been at odds with the department over the internal assessment of police use of force for a while.
  • "I pay most attention to Officer Fry. Mr. Chatman is simply trying to get away. He's running as fast as he can away from the officers. Officer (Lou) Toth is right behind him; he's doing the right thing. He's pursuing him. He's trying to capture him, while Officer Fry, on the other hand, has both of his hands on his weapon. He is in a shooter's position. He is looking for a clear shot."
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  • After Davis' firing, a new investigator was assigned, who ruled the shooting justifiable, and police accounts given after Chatman died told a story that differed in important points from Davis' assessment
  • He runs across the street and squeezes between two parked cars as Fry's partner, Officer Lou Toth, gives chase. Chatman then hits an all-out sprint along the sidewalk toward an intersection. Toth sprints behind him.Fry draws his handgun in the middle of the street, plants his feet near the intersection in a firing stance as Chatman appears to still be running away. Chatman is out of camera shot at the time, and it does not reveal his moves.
  • In ordering the videos' release, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Gettleman indicated Fry might have put his partner's life in danger, saying Toth was running so close to the teen when shots rang out "you might say he was in the line of fire."
  • He has had 30 complaints lodged against him over the years, including 10 allegations of excessive use of force. The police department found every complaint against him to be unwarranted.In one case in 2007, Fry and a partner shot a 16-year-old black male in a school alcove after seeing a shiny object around his waist and fearing for their lives. The object wasn't a weapon but a "shiny belt buckle," according to an independent investigation of the shooting.
  • Both were about 10 blocks away at the time of the shooting. The law in Illinois allows for anyone who sets in motion a chain of events that results in the death of another individual to be charged with murder.
  • Outrage over police shootings have rumbled through Chicago since the November release of the fatal police shooting video of Laquan McDonald, who was shot 16 times. Attorney's for his family accused police of threatening witnesses and falsifying their accounts.Chicago Alderman Anthony Beale has criticized investigations into police violence as being flawed."For years we've had a systemic problem with the police officers protecting one another. And that's why you have such distrust in the community," he told CNN's Don Lemo
  • n.But he also sees police as an essential part of the community and wa
  • s worried that they might feel intimidated by the scrutiny.
  • Judge Gettleman scolded the city and mayor's office, saying it was "irresponsible" to waste taxpayers' money and the court's time with its previous opposition. "I'm very disturbed at the way this happened," he said. "This should not have happened the way it did."He blasted city attorneys for the December motion in which they stated it was not clear from the videos who fired at Chatman. Gettlemen said that wasn't true: "It's clear to me who fired the shots."
Megan Flanagan

Police: Danville officer killed after suspect's threat - CNN.com - 0 views

  • said her ex-boyfriend took off with his weapons Sunday night and was looking to kill an officer
  • Cottrell's body was found behind the Danville Municipal Building
  • His weapon had been stolen, and his police car was missing.
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  • immediately clear whether Cottrell was targeted specifically, or if the assailant was trying to kill any police officer.
  • at least 30 U.S. law enforcement officers were shot to death
  • 24 law enforcement officers died in the line of duty in 2015, a 4% increase from 2014
  • 42 officers were killed by firearms, which was a decline from 2014, when 49 officers were shot and killed,
  • encountered a man who shot him
  • had faced multiple state and federal charges going back more than 10 years
  • pleaded guilty to possessing an unregistered sawed-off rifle in 2005, and in 2010 pleaded guilty to felony possession of a firearm
  • a federal magistrate judge sent Henderson to a treatment center run by the Utah Department of Corrections
Javier E

George Conway: Trump Is Unfit for Office - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • Behavior like this is unusual, a point that journalists across the political spectrum have made. “This is not normal,” Megan McArdle wrote in late August. “And I don’t mean that as in, ‘Trump is violating the shibboleths of the Washington establishment.’ I mean that as in, ‘This is not normal for a functioning adult.’” James Fallows observed, also in August, that Trump is having “episodes of what would be called outright lunacy, if they occurred in any other setting,” and that if he “were in virtually any other position of responsibility, action would already be under way to remove him from that role.”
  • Simply put, Trump’s ingrained and extreme behavioral characteristics make it impossible for him to carry out the duties of the presidency in the way the Constitution requires. To see why first requires a look at what the Constitution demands of a president, and then an examination of how Trump’s behavioral characteristics preclude his ability to fulfill those demands.
  • Though the Constitution’s drafters could hardly have foreseen how the system would evolve, they certainly knew the kind of person they wanted it to produce. “The process of election affords a moral certainty,” Hamilton wrote, “that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.
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  • “Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity,” might suffice for someone to be elected to the governorship of a state, but not the presidency. Election would “require other talents, and a different kind of merit,” to gain “the esteem and confidence of the whole Union,” or enough of it to win the presidency. As a result, there would be “a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue.” This was the Framers’ goal in designing the system that would make “the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided.”
  • In a nutshell, while carrying out his official duties, a president has to put the country, not himself, first; he must faithfully follow and enforce the law; and he must act with the utmost care in doing all that.
  • can Trump do all that? Does his personality allow him to? Answering those questions doesn’t require mental-health expertise, nor does it really require a diagnosis. You can make the argument for Trump’s unfitness without assessing his mental health: Like James Fallows, for example, you could just ask whether Trump would have been allowed to retain any other job in light of his bizarre conduct
  • More than a diagnosis, what truly matters, as Lincoln’s case shows, is the president’s behavioral characteristics and personality traits. And understanding how people behave and think is not the sole province of professionals; we all do it every day, with family members, co-workers, and others.
  • its criteria for personality disorders—they don’t require a person to lie on a couch and confess his or her innermost thoughts. They turn on how a person behaves in the wild, so to speak.
  • Donald Trump, as president of the United States, is probably the most observable and observed person in the world. I’ve personally met and spoken with him only a few times, but anyone who knows him will tell you that Trump, in a way, has no facade: What you see of him publicly is what you get all the time, although you may get more of it in private
  • accounts of a person’s behavior from laypeople who observe him might be more accurate than information from a clinical interview, and that this is especially true when considering two personality disorders in particular—what the DSM calls narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorde
  • These two disorders just happen to be the ones that have most commonly been ascribed to Trump by mental-health professionals over the past four years. Of these two disorders, the more commonly discussed when it comes to Trump is narcissistic personality disorder, or NPD—pathological narcissism
  • it touches directly upon whether Trump has the capacity to put anyone’s interests—including the country’s and the Constitution’s—above his own.
  • A certain amount of narcissism is healthy, and helpful—it brings with it confidence, optimism, and boldness. Someone with more than an average amount of narcissism may be called a narcissist. Many politicians, and many celebrities, could be considered narcissists
  • “Pathological narcissism begins when people become so addicted to feeling special that, just like with any drug, they’ll do anything to get their ‘high,’ including lie, steal, cheat, betray, and even hurt those closest to them,”
  • The “fundamental life goal” of an extreme narcissist “is to promote the greatness of the self, for all to see,
  • To many mental-health professionals, Donald Trump provides a perfect example of such extreme, pathological narcissism: One clinical psychologist told Vanity Fair that he considers Trump such a “classic” pathological narcissist that he is actually “archiving video clips of him to use in workshops because there’s no better example”
  • The goal of a diagnosis is to help a clinician guide treatment. The question facing the public is very different: Does the president of the United States exhibit a consistent pattern of behavior that suggests he is incapable of properly discharging the duties of his office?
  • Even Trump’s own allies recognize the degree of his narcissism. When he launched racist attacks on four congresswomen of color, Senator Lindsey Graham explained, “That’s just the way he is. It’s more narcissism than anything else.” So, too, do skeptics of assigning a clinical diagnosis. “No one is denying,” Frances told Rolling Stone, “that he is as narcissistic an individual as one is ever likely to encounter.” The president’s exceptional narcissism is his defining characteristic—and understanding that is crucial to evaluating his fitness for office
  • The DSM-5 describes its conception of pathological narcissism this way: “The essential feature of narcissistic personality disorder is a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy that begins by early adulthood and is present in a variety of contexts.”
  • The diagnostic criteria offer a useful framework for understanding the most remarkable features of Donald Trump’s personality, and of his presidency. (1) Exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements?
  • (2) Preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance
  • (3) Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and should only associate with other special or high-status people?
  • Trump claims to be an expert—the world’s greatest—in anything and everything. As one video mash-up shows, Trump has at various times claimed—in all seriousness—that no one knows more than he does about: taxes, income, construction, campaign finance, drones, technology, infrastructure, work visas, the Islamic State, “things” generally, environmental-impact statements, Facebook, renewable energy, polls, courts, steelworkers, golf, banks, trade, nuclear weapons, tax law, lawsuits, currency devaluation, money, “the system,” debt, and politicians.
  • (4) Requires excessive admiration? Last Thanksgiving, Trump was asked what he was most thankful for. His answer: himself, of course. A number of years ago, he made a video for Forbes in which he interviewed two of his children. The interview topic: how great they thought Donald Trump wa
  • (5) A sense of entitlement? (9) Arrogant, haughty behaviors? Trump is the man who, on the infamous Access Hollywood tape, said, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything you want”—including grabbing women by their genitals. He’s the man who also once said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”
  • (8) Envious of others? Here’s a man so unable to stand the praise received by a respected war hero and statesman, Senator John McCain, that he has continued to attack McCain months after McCain’s death;
  • (6) Interpersonally exploitative? Just watch the Access Hollywood tape, or ask any of the hundreds of contractors and employees Trump the businessman allegedly stiffed, or speak with any of the two dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct, sexual assault, or rape.
  • Finally, (7) Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings or needs of others? One of the most striking aspects of Trump’s personality is his utter and complete lack of empathy
  • The notorious lawyer and fixer Roy Cohn, who once counseled Trump, said that “Donald pisses ice water,” and indeed, examples of Trump’s utter lack of normal human empathy abound.
  • “It made no sense, Priebus realized, unless you understood … ‘The president has zero psychological ability to recognize empathy or pity in any way.’
  • What kind of human being, let alone politician, would engage in such unempathetic, self-centered behavior while memorializing such horrible tragedies? Only the most narcissistic person imaginable—or a person whose narcissism would be difficult to imagine if we hadn’t seen it ourselves. The evidence of Trump’s narcissism is overwhelming—indeed, it would be a gargantuan task to try to marshal all of it, especially as it mounts each and every day.
  • A second disorder also frequently ascribed to Trump by professionals is sociopathy—what the DSM-5 calls antisocial personality disorder
  • Central to sociopathy is a complete lack of empathy—along with “an absence of guilt.” Sociopaths engage in “intentional manipulation, and controlling or even sadistically harming others for personal power or gratification. People with sociopathic traits have a flaw in the basic nature of human beings … They are lacking an essential part of being human.” For its part, the DSM-5 states that the “essential feature of antisocial personality disorder is a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood.”
  • Trump’s sociopathic characteristics sufficiently intertwine with his narcissistic ones that they deserve mention here. These include, to quote the DSM-5, “deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others.” Trump’s deceitfulness—his lying—has become the stuff of legend; journalists track his “false and misleading claims” as president by the thousands upon thousands.
  • Other criteria for antisocial personality disorder include “failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors, as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest”; “impulsivity or failure to plan ahead”; and “lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.
  • As for impulsivity, that essentially describes what gets him into trouble most: It was his “impulsiveness—actually, total recklessness”—that came close to destroying him in the 1980s
  • And lack of remorse? That’s a hallmark of sociopathy, and goes hand in hand with a lack of human conscience. In a narcissistic sociopath, it’s intertwined with a lack of empathy. Trump hardly ever shows remorse, or apologizes, for anything. The one exception: With his presidential candidacy on the line in early October
  • In a way, Trump’s sociopathic tendencies are simply an extension of his extreme narcissism
  • articular, “They change reality to suit themselves in their own mind.” Although Trump “lies because of his sociopathic tendencies,” telling falsehoods to fool others, Dodes argues, he also lies to himself, to protect himself from narcissistic injury. And so Donald Trump has lied about his net worth, the size of the crowd at his inauguration, and supposed voter fraud in the 2016 election.
  • The latter kind of lying, Dodes says, “is in a way more serious,” because it can indicate “a loose grip on reality”—and it may well tell us where Trump is headed in the face of impeachment hearings. Lying to prevent narcissistic injury can metastasize to a more significant loss of touch with reality
  • Experts haven’t suggested that Trump is psychotic, but many have contended that his narcissism and sociopathy are so inordinate that he fits the bill for “malignant narcissism.” Malignant narcissism isn’t recognized as an official diagnosis; it’s a descriptive term coined by the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, and expanded upon by another psychoanalyst, Otto Kernberg, to refer to an extreme mix of narcissism and sociopathy, with a degree of paranoia and sadism mixed in
  • In the view of some in the mental-health community, such as John Gartner, Trump “exhibits all four” components of malignant narcissism: “narcissism, paranoia, antisocial personality and sadism.”
  • Mental-health professionals have raised a variety of other concerns about Trump’s mental state; the last worth specifically mentioning here is the possibility that, apart from any personality disorder, he may be suffering cognitive decline.
  • His “mental state,” according to Justin A. Frank, a former clinical professor of psychiatry and physician who wrote a book about Trump’s psychology, “include[s] so many psychic afflictions” that a “working knowledge of psychiatric disorders is essential to understanding Trump.” Indeed, as Gartner puts it: “There are a lot of things wrong with him—and, together, they are a scary witch’s brew.”
  • when you line up what the Framers expected of a president with all that we know about Donald Trump, his unfitness becomes obvious. The question is whether he can possibly act as a public fiduciary for the nation’s highest public trust. To borrow from the Harvard Law Review article, can he follow the “proscriptions against profit, bad faith, and self-dealing,” manifest “a strong concern about avoiding ultra vires action” (that is, action exceeding the president’s legal authority), and maintain “a duty of diligence and carefulness”? Given that Trump displays the extreme behavioral characteristics of a pathological narcissist, a sociopath, or a malignant narcissist—take your pick—it’s clear that he can’t.
  • To act as a fiduciary requires you to put someone else’s interests above your own, and Trump’s personality makes it impossible for him to do that. No president before him, at least in recent memory, has ever displayed such obsessive self-regard
  • Indeed, Trump’s view of his presidential powers can only be described as profoundly narcissistic, and his narcissism has compelled him to disregard the Framers’ vision of his constitutional duties in every respect
  • Trump’s incapacity affects all manner of subjects addressed by the presidency, but can be seen most acutely in foreign affairs and national security.
  • All in all, Trump sought to impede and end a significant counterintelligence and criminal investigation—one of crucial importance to the nation—and did so for his own personal reasons. He did precisely the opposite of what his duties require. Indeed, he has shown utter contempt for his duties to the nation
  • hat constitutional mechanisms exist for dealing with a president who cannot or does not comply with his duties, and how should they take the president’s mental and behavioral characteristics into account?
  • it turns out that impeachment is a more practical mechanism
  • In short, now that the House of Representatives has embarked on an impeachment inquiry, one of the most important judgments it must make is whether any identified breaches of duty are likely to be repeated. And if a Senate trial comes to pass, that issue would become central as well to the decision to remove the president from office. That’s when Trump’s behavioral and psychological characteristics should—must—come into pla
  • One of the most compelling arguments about the meaning of those words is that the Framers, in Article II’s command that a president faithfully execute his office, imposed upon him fiduciary obligations. As the constitutional historian Robert Natelson explained in the Federalist Society Review, the “founding generation [understood] ‘high … Misdemeanors’ to mean ‘breach of fiduciary duty.’
  • Eighteenth-century lawyers instead used terms such as breach of trust—which describes the same thing. “Parliamentary articles of impeachment explicitly and repetitively described the accused conduct as a breach of trust,” Natelson argues, and 18th-century British legal commentators explained how impeachment for “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” was warranted for all sorts of noncriminal violations that were, in essence, fiduciary breaches.
  • why the discussion of Morris’s suggestion was so brief—the drafters knew what the words historically meant, because, as a House Judiciary Committee report noted in 1974, “at the time of the Constitutional Convention the phrase ‘high Crimes and Misdemeanors’ had been in use for over 400 years in impeachment proceedings in Parliament
  • Certainly Alexander Hamilton knew by the time he penned “Federalist No. 65,” in which he explained that impeachment was for “those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.
  • What constitutes such an abuse or violation of trust is up to Congress to decide: First the House decides to bring impeachment charges, and then the Senate decides whether to convict on those charges. The process of impeachment by the House and removal by trial in the Senate is thus, in some ways, akin to indictment by a grand jury and trial by a petit jury
  • As Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz explain in their recent book on impeachment, “the Constitution explicitly states that Congress may not end a presidency unless the president has committed an impeachable offense. But nowhere does the Constitution state or otherwise imply that Congress must remove a president whenever that standard is met … In other words, it allows Congress to exercise judgment.”
  • As Tribe and Matz argue, that judgment presents a “heavy burden,” and demands that Congress be “context-sensitive,” and achieve “an understanding of all relevant facts.” A president might breach his trust to the nation once in some small, inconsequential way and never repeat the misbehavior, and Congress could reasonably decide that the game is not worth the candle.
  • It’s also an appropriate mechanism, because the constitutional magic words (other than Treason and Bribery) that form the basis of an impeachment charge—high Crimes and Misdemeanors, found in Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution—mean something other than, and more than, offenses in the criminal-statute books. High Crimes and Misdemeanors is a legal term of art, one that historically referred to breaches of duties—fiduciary duties—by public officeholders. In other words, the question of what constitutes an impeachable offense for a president coincides precisely with whether the president can execute his office in the faithful manner that the Constitution requires.
  • there’s another reason as well. The people have a right to know, and a need to see. Many people have watched all of Trump’s behavior, and they’ve drawn the obvious conclusion. They know something’s wrong, just as football fans knew that the downed quarterback had shattered his leg. Others have changed the channel, or looked away, or chosen to deny what they’ve seen. But if Congress does its job and presents the evidence, those who are in denial won’t be able to ignore the problem any longer.
ethanshilling

Meet Wyoming's New Black Sheriff, the First in State History - The New York Times - 0 views

  • “I don’t necessarily represent or identify with everybody in law enforcement,” said Sheriff Appelhans, who was appointed as sheriff of Albany County, Wyo., in December. “I come in with some different ideas of how to go about doing things.”
  • Sheriff Appelhans, a Black man, is now at the helm of one of the most historically white law enforcement institutions in Wyoming, one of the country’s whitest states.
  • He is the first Black sheriff in the 131 years that Wyoming has been a state.
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  • Sheriff Appelhans, 39, is inheriting a troubled department plagued by the kinds of problems that have been documented in sheriff’s offices across the region.
  • A Colorado native, Sheriff Appelhans carries little of the stiff formality often associated with sheriffs’ offices.
  • Sheriff Appelhans’s approach is a stark departure for a Wyoming sheriff, a storied, sometimes archaic institution central to the lore of a disappearing American West.
  • In Wyoming, sheriffs are elected to four-year terms with no limits; many hold office for decades.
  • “I think what he brings to the sheriff’s office is a calmness: He’s soft-spoken, but it doesn’t mean he’s a pushover,” said Linda Devine, a defense lawyer in Laramie who is a proponent of overhauling criminal justice.
  • In the meantime, he plans to embark on an aggressive approach to bringing cultural change in the sheriff’s office. He is leading an effort to coordinate police response with resources like shelters, mental health professionals and support groups.
  • Sheriff Appelhans said he has unilateral authority over hiring decisions at the department and is actively seeking applicants, adding that he intends to recruit more Black, Latino and female officers.
  • Sheriffs’ offices in Wyoming have a long history of racial bias, advocates say. The issue confronted Sheriff Appelhans early in his tenure: On his second day in office, a Wyoming state representative, Cyrus Western, tweeted a racist gif from the movie “Blazing Saddles” in reference to Sheriff Appelhans’s appointmen
kaylynfreeman

Why Remove Trump Now? A Guide to Trump's Impeachment - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The House on Wednesday impeached President Trump for a second time, a first in American history, charging him with “incitement of insurrection” one week after he egged on a mob of supporters that stormed the Capitol while Congress met to formalize President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.
  • At least five people, including a Capitol Police officer, died during the siege and in the immediate aftermath.
  • The process is taking place with extraordinary speed and will test the bounds of the impeachment process, raising questions never contemplated before.
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  • The House vote requires only a simple majority of lawmakers to agree that the president has, in fact, committed high crimes and misdemeanors; the Senate vote requires a two-thirds majority.
  • The test, as set by the Constitution, is whether the president has committed “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
  • Impeachment is one of the weightiest tools the Constitution gives Congress to hold government officials, including the president, accountable for misconduct and abuse of power.
  • The article, drafted by Representatives David Cicilline of Rhode Island, Ted Lieu of California, Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Jerrold Nadler of New York, charges Mr. Trump with “incitement of insurrection,” saying he is guilty of “inciting violence against the government of the United States.”
  • The article cites Mr. Trump’s weekslong campaign to falsely discredit the results of the November election, and it quotes directly from the speech he gave on the day of the siege in which he told his supporters to go to the Capitol. “If you don’t fight like hell,” he said, “you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
  • While the House moved with remarkable speed to impeach Mr. Trump, the Senate trial to determine whether to remove him cannot begin until Jan. 19, his final full day in office.
  • Democrats have argued that Mr. Trump’s offense — using his power as the nation’s leader and commander in chief to incite an insurrection against the legislative branch — is so grave that it must be addressed, even with just a few days remaining in his term.
  • Conviction in an impeachment trial would not automatically disqualify Mr. Trump from future public office. But if the Senate were to convict him, the Constitution allows a subsequent vote to bar an official from holding “any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States.”
  • There is no precedent, however, for disqualifying a president from future office, and the issue could end up before the Supreme Court.
  • Democrats who control the House can choose when to send their article of impeachment to the Senate, at which point that chamber would have to immediately move to begin the trial. But because the Senate is not scheduled to hold a regular session until Jan. 19, even if the House immediately transmitted the charge to the other side of the Capitol, an agreement between Senate Republican and Democratic leaders would be needed to take it up before then.
  • Once the Senate receives the impeachment charge, it must immediately take up the issue, as articles of impeachment carry the highest privilege.
  • The Senate could hold a trial for Mr. Trump even after he has left office, though there is no precedent for it. Only two presidents other than Mr. Trump have been impeached — Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998 — and both were ultimately acquitted and completed their terms in office.
  • With only a week left in his term, the House impeached President Trump, but he will leave office before he stands trial in the Senate. Here’s how the process works.
  • The charge against Trump is ‘incitement of insurrection.’
  • That vote would require only a simple majority of senators. Such a step could be an appealing prospect not just to Democrats, but also to many Republicans who either have set their sights on the presidency themselves or are convinced that it is the only thing that will purge Mr. Trump from their party. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, is said to hold the latter view.
clairemann

Trump Acknowledges Capitol Police Deaths After Staying Quiet For Days | HuffPost - 0 views

  • After staying quiet since last week’s violent insurrection, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation on Sunday to honor two United States Capitol police officers ― one of whom died at the hands of the mob he incited.
  • The president ordered that “the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels ...  until sunset, January 13, 2021.” The lowered flags are meant to be “a sign of respect for the service and sacrifice of United States Capitol Police Officers Brian D. Sicknick and Howard Liebengood.”
  • Sicknick died on Thursday after Trump-supporting rioters hit him in the head with a fire extinguisher during Wednesday’s siege of the Capitol, where lawmakers were tallying up electoral votes to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. The officer later collapsed in his division office after “physically engaging” with the insurrectionist mob, according to law enforcement.
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  • Trump and the White House did not acknowledge Sicknick’s death until the proclamation on Sunday, which made no mention of the fact that Sicknick died as a result of the violence Trump incited.
  • Capitol Police said Thursday that its officers were attacked during the insurrection with metal pipes, chemical irritants and other weapons when rioters violently stormed the Capitol. Videos of the siege show some officers being overwhelmed by the number of violent rioters, while others appeared to show little resistance.
andrespardo

George Floyd killing: sister says police officers should be charged with murder | US ne... - 0 views

  • George Floyd killing: sister says police officers should be charged with murder
  • The sister of George Floyd, the black man killed by police in Minneapolis after an incident captured on video in which an officer knelt on his neck as he lay on the ground, has called for those involved in his death to be charged with murder.
  • The FBI and authorities in Minnesota have launched investigations into his death. The officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck is white.
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  • Bridget Floyd struggled to hold back tears as she spoke to NBC Today about the family’s shock and grief.
  • In the footage that emerged of Floyd’s violent detention, he can be heard to shout “I cannot breathe” and “Don’t kill me!” He then becomes motionless, eyes closed, face-first on the road.
  • I offer my deepest condolences to the Floyd family, and I stand with them in their fight to get justice for George.”
  • She said: “It’s painful but true that black lives continue to be destroyed by police officers in many communities across our country. They keep killing us. and it’s the same story again and again.”
  • Crump said that in some ways, the use of “violent, lethal and excessive force” on Floyd was more disturbing than the treatment of Garner, even, because the officer is seen kneeling on Floyd’s neck for up to nine minutes.
  • He said he hoped the killing would be a turning point for the justice system. “There cannot be two justice systems, one for black America and one for white America.”
  • She said: “I would like for these officers to be charged with murder, because that’s exactly what they did. They murdered my brother. He was crying for help.”
katherineharron

Feds chased suspected foreign link to Trump's 2016 campaign cash for three years - CNNP... - 0 views

  • federal prosecutors investigated whether money flowing through an Egyptian state-owned bank could have backed millions of dollars Donald Trump donated to his own campaign days before he won the 2016 election
  • It represents one of the most prolonged efforts by federal investigators to understand the President's foreign financial ties, and became a significant but hidden part of the special counsel's pursuits.
  • The investigation was kept so secret that at one point investigators locked down an entire floor of a federal courthouse in Washington, DC, so Mueller's team could fight for the Egyptian bank's records in closed-door court proceedings following a grand jury subpoena.
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  • It's not clear that investigators ever had concrete evidence of a relevant bank transfer from the Egyptian bank. But multiple sources said there was sufficient information to justify the subpoena and keep the criminal campaign finance investigation open after the Mueller probe ended.
  • Justice Department confirmed that when the special counsel's office shut down in 2019, Mueller transferred an ongoing foreign campaign contribution investigation to prosecutors in Washington. Some of CNN's sources have confirmed that the case, which Mueller cryptically called a "foreign campaign contribution" probe, was in fact the Egypt investigation.
  • The probe was confirmed this week by a Justice Department senior official who responded to CNN's queries: "The case was first looked at by the Special Counsel investigators who failed to bring a case, and then it was looked at by the US attorney's office, and career prosecutors in the national security section, who also were unable to bring a case. Based upon the recommendations of both the FBI and those career prosecutors, Michael Sherwin, the acting US attorney, formally closed the case in July."
  • there could have been money from an Egyptian bank that ended up backing Trump's last-minute injection of $10 million into his 2016 campaign, according to two of the sources.
  • Yet neither the special counsel's office, nor prosecutors who carried on the case after Mueller, got a complete picture of the President's financial entanglements. Prosecutors in Washington even proposed subpoenaing financial records tied to Trump, before top officials finally concluded this summer they had reached a dead end, the sources said.
  • Mueller's primary task was to investigate Russian government attempts to interfere in the 2016 election, which had consumed the political and investigative conversations in the early days of Trump's presidency. But Mueller's mandate also allowed him to take on related criminal investigations, which in this case included another probe of potential foreign influence connected to the campaign.
  • Zainab Ahmad, a former international terrorism prosecutor, and Brandon Van Grack, a national security and counterintelligence specialist, co-led it, according to sources. Public records also show they focused on cases separate from other trial attorneys in the special counsel's office and had senior titles equivalent to other Mueller team leaders.
  • Mueller's team tried to understand both the $10 million contribution Trump gave to his campaign 11 days before the 2016 election and the Trump campaign's ties to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, according to sources and redacted interview records released from the Mueller investigation.
  • One official familiar with the work said some investigators believed the Egypt inquiry presented a more direct avenue for Mueller's team to examine Trump's finances, in part because it did not have an obvious tie to Russia.
  • Soon enough, the bank was arguing it shouldn't have to give Mueller records because it was interchangeable with the foreign government that owned it. The US courts disagreed repeatedly, saying the company couldn't be immune from the Mueller team subpoena.  
  • Mueller's office pressed witnesses to explain how the Trump-Sisi meeting in late 2016 came about. Ahmad, whose aims on the investigation were cloaked in secrecy, was repeatedly present in interviews touching on both Trump's $10 million contribution to his campaign and the campaign's ties to Egypt.
  • In a session months later, Bannon was asked about Trump's $10 million contribution to his campaign, according to another recent release of Mueller's interview memos.
  • Mueller asked the President, "Did any person or entity inform you during the campaign that any foreign government or foreign leader, other than Russia or Vladimir Putin, had provided, wished to provide, or offered to provide tangible support to your campaign?" Trump wrote back in his written answers that he had "no recollection of being told during the campaign" of support from a foreign government.
  • Needing a final push before Election Day as the polls tightened in 2016, the Trump campaign was running low on cash. Trump's top campaign officials scrambled to convince Trump to inject money, according to memos of witness interviews from the investigation and contemporaneous news reports. Trump lagged well behind a pledge he made to spend $100 million of his own money on his campaign. Less than two weeks before Election Day, Trump wrote his campaign a $10 million check, publicly calling it a loan. Campaign finance records showed it as his single largest political contribution, by far, and not one the campaign would reimburse him for.
  • When the federal appeals court in Washington, DC, heard arguments in the case in December 2018, security cleared journalists from an entire floor of the federal courthouse, allowing attorneys involved in the case to enter and exit the building and the courtroom without being seen.
  • The case even landed before the Supreme Court in early 2019. The high court ultimately declined the company's bid to block Mueller's subpoena in March 2019.  Even then, however, the standoff between US prosecutors and the Egyptian bank ended in a stalemate. 
  • In the end, it was the bank's word against the investigators. The court proceedings ended with prosecutors getting nothing more than what the bank was willing to turn over, and the bank was excused from hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines that had accrued for defying the subpoena. It appeared to be a dead end -- and not justification enough for Mueller to keep his office open to finish this case alone.
  • In late March 2019, shortly after Mueller's investigation concluded, Howell, overseeing final court proceedings in the Egyptian bank's subpoena case,  asked a prosecutor point-blank if the investigation was over. "No, it's continuing. I can say it's continuing robustly," David Goodhand of the DC US attorney's office told the court.
  • Liu told prosecutors she didn't believe they had met the standard needed to seek the records. The investigation stagnated, but Liu didn't close the case. She declined to comment for this story.
  • It's unclear how much activity occurred after Liu rejected the subpoena request. Prosecutors who disagreed with her decision believed it was now impossible to resolve questions about Trump's 2016 campaign contribution. Liu told people in her office that if the investigation had produced enough evidence, Mueller would have made the decision to take additional steps, according to sources.
  • On paper, Mueller described the investigation with only three vague words: "Foreign campaign contribution."
carolinehayter

How Police, National Guard And Military Are Preparing For Election Day Tensions : NPR - 0 views

  • Milley told NPR's Morning Edition. "And if there is, it'll be handled appropriately by the courts and by the U.S. Congress. There's no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of a U.S. election. Zero. There is no role there."
    • carolinehayter
       
      And that's one of the (many) reasons Barrett's confirmation was so strongly opposed
  • Nov. 3 promises to be an Election Day unlike any other, and public safety entities say they're preparing for tensions and the possibility of violence.
  • Poll workers are usually the first line of defense in case of disputes between voters, though they may be backed up by private security guards. Some local election authorities say they'll be adding guards
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  • Most jurisdictions are not planning to post uniformed police at polling stations, because tradition and local laws keep officers at a distance to avoid an impression of voter intimidation.
  • Given this year's tensions, and the fact that the police themselves are a major issue in the election, the question of their presence at polling places has become a partisan flashpoint in some places.
  • Democrats in Miami complained about a uniformed police officer wearing a Trump face mask at an early-voting location, and he faces potential discipline by his department.
  • New Jersey is considering last-minute legislation to restrict the presence of officers at polling places, a debate that quickly acquired partisan overtones. A similar dispute broke out in North Carolina, where the Board of Elections issued a memo reminding uniformed police officers to stay away from polling places, and state Republicans objected.
  • "We want to respect the concern [about voter intimidation]," Newton says. But he says because voters have other ways to cast ballots, "it's not a valid issue, that someone has to face down a uniformed law enforcement officer to vote in North Carolina."
  • One unresolved question in Michigan is whether private citizens will be allowed to carry firearms openly around polling places. The state's open carry law is generally quite permissive, but Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson issued a directive saying visible guns would not be allowed at the polls or other election-related offices this year. But police chiefs have cast doubt on whether they have the legal grounds to enforce such an order, and it's also attracted a lawsuit.
  • Away from the polls, police departments are planning to have more officers on hand on Election Day, especially in cities that saw unrest over the summer.
  • Chicago endured extensive looting and property damage over the summer, something police superintendent David Brown believes was coordinated by what he calls "agitators" embedded in legitimate protests.
  • "From those lessons learned over the summer, we are planning for that to be a feature of peaceful protests," on Election Day, Brown said at a press conference last week.
  • National Guard soldiers around the nation will take part in security operations for the election — but only for cybersecurity, assisting state officials by trying to prevent foreign governments and others from interfering with the vote. The National Guard, like the active military, does not want to get involved in physical security at the polls, leaving that up to poll workers and if need be local police.
  • Military officials tell NPR they want to maintain their apolitical stance, and not get involved in partisan politics, saying uniformed soldiers at the polls would lead to charges the military favors one candidate over another.
  • Military officials don't anticipate any particular problems of violence at the polls themselves, but they do say that with the bitter campaign, street protests and the rise of armed groups, violence could occur after the election, regardless of who wins.
  • If violence erupts and local police are unable to handle it, a governor could activate Guard units
  • Governors are in charge of their state Guard forces, but a president can "federalize" the Guard and take control from a governor. That has happened in rare occasions in the 1950s and '60s during school integration.
  • And a president can invoke the Insurrection Act and send in active troops. That, too, is rare. In 1992, California Gov. Pete Wilson asked President George H.W. Bush to send in active troops to deal with protests after the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles.
  • Defense Secretary Mark Esper in June publicly opposed using the Insurrection Act, saying Guard troops would make more sense since they come from the local communities they would protect. That angered the president, who sources say threatened to fire Esper but was talked out of such a move so close to the election.
  • President Trump has added to the election tensions by suggesting on numerous occasions that he might not accept the results of the vote, unless it is "fair." And that has led to speculation the president might try to hold onto power, and the military might be called on to remove him. Such talk is strongly dismissed by the nation's top military officer, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
carolinehayter

In A Small Pennsylvania City, A Mental Crisis Call To 911 Turns Tragic : Shots - Health... - 0 views

  • Rulennis Muñoz remembers the phone ringing on Sept. 13. Her mother was calling from the car, frustrated. Rulennis could also hear her brother Ricardo shouting in the background. Her mom told her that Ricardo, who was 27, wouldn't take his medication. He had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia five years earlier.
  • Rulennis knew that her brother was in crisis and that he needed psychiatric care. But she also knew from experience that there were few emergency resources available for Ricardo unless a judge deemed him a threat to himself or others.
  • Ricardo was becoming aggressive; he had punched the inside of the car. Back on their block, he was still yelling and upset, and couldn't be calmed. Deborah called 911 to get help for Ricardo. She didn't know that her sister was trying the non-emergency line.
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  • Rulennis called a county crisis intervention line to see if Ricardo could be committed for inpatient care. It was Sunday afternoon. The crisis worker told her to call the police to see if the officers could petition a judge to force Ricardo to go to the hospital for psychiatric treatment, in what's called an involuntary commitment. Reluctant to call 911, and wanting more information, Rulennis dialed the non-emergency police number.
  • It was a tragedy for the Muñoz family — but it's not that unusual. According to a Washington Post tracker, police killed about a thousand people in the U.S. in the past 12 months. Like Ricardo, a quarter of those people had a diagnosis of a serious mental illness.
  • When the dispatcher questioned Deborah further, she also mentioned that Ricardo was trying "to break into" his mom's house. She didn't mention that Ricardo also lived in that house. She did mention that her mother "was afraid" to go back home with him.
  • The Muñoz family has since emphasized that Ricardo was never a threat to them. However, by the time police got the message, they believed they were responding to a "domestic disturbance."
  • "Within minutes of ... that phone call, he was dead," Rulennis says.
  • A Lancaster police officer walked toward the house. Ricardo saw the officer approach through the living room window, and he ran upstairs to his bedroom. When he came back down, he had a hunting knife in his hand.
  • In video from a police body camera, an unidentified officer walks toward the Muñoz residence. Ricardo steps outside, and shouts "Get the f—k back." Ricardo comes down the stairs of the stoop and runs toward the officer. The officer starts running down the sidewalk, but after a few steps, he turns back toward Ricardo, gun in hand, and shoots him several times. Within minutes, Ricardo is dead.
  • After Ricardo crumples to the sidewalk, his mother's screams can be heard, off camera. Police made the body camera video public a few hours after Ricardo's death, in an effort to dispel rumors about Ricardo's death and quell rioting in the city. The county district attorney has since deemed the shooting justified, and the officer's name was never made public.
  • A recording and transcript of the 911 call show that the dispatcher gave Deborah three options: police, fire or ambulance. Deborah wasn't sure, so she said "police." Then she went on to explain that Ricardo was being aggressive, had a mental illness and needed to go to the hospital.
  • Across the U.S., people with mental illnesses are 16 times more likely than the overall population to be killed by police, according to one study from the mental health nonprofit Treatment Advocacy Center.
  • Miguelina Peña, says she tried for years to get help for her son.
  • Among the problems, the family couldn't find a psychiatrist who was taking new patients, Peña says. Additionally, Peña speaks little English, and that made it difficult to help Ricardo enroll in health insurance, or for her to understand what treatments he was receiving. Ricardo got his prescriptions through a local nonprofit clinic for Latino men, Nuestra Clinica.
  • Instead of consistent medical care and a trusted therapeutic relationship, Ricardo got treatment that was sporadic and fueled by crisis: He often ended up in the hospital for a few days, then would be discharged back home with little or no follow-up. This happened more times than his mother and sisters can recall.
  • Laws in Pennsylvania and many other states make it difficult for a family to get psychiatric care for someone who doesn't want it; it can only be imposed on the person if he or she poses an immediate threat, says Angela Kimball, advocacy and public policy director at National Alliance on Mental illness. By that point, it's often law enforcement, rather than mental health professionals, who are called in to help.
  • "Law enforcement comes in and exerts a threatening posture," Kimball says. "For most people, that causes them to be subdued. But if you're experiencing a mental illness, that only escalates the situation."
  • "Dialing 911 will accelerate a response by emergency personnel, most often police," she says. "This option should be used for extreme crisis situations that require immediate intervention. These first responders may or may not be appropriately trained and experienced in de-escalating psychiatric emergencies."
  • The National Alliance on Mental Illness continues to advocate for more resources for families dealing with a mental health crisis. The group says more cities should create crisis response teams that can respond at all hours, without involving armed police officers in most situations.
  • There has been progress on the federal level, as well. Kimball was happy when President Trump signed a bipartisan Congressional bill, on Oct. 17, to implement a three-digit national suicide prevention hotline. The number — 988 — will eventually summon help when dialed anywhere in the country. But it could take a few years before the system is up and running.
  • "And instead of a cop just being there, there should have been other responders," Rulennis says. "There should have been someone that knew how to deal with this type of situation."
anonymous

Midtown Is Reeling. Should Its Offices Become Apartments? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The damage caused by the emptying of office towers and the permanent closure of many stores is far more significant than many experts had predicted early in the crisis.
  • it is promoting a striking proposal: to turn more than one million square feet of Manhattan office space into housing.
  • Nearly 14 percent of office space in Midtown Manhattan is vacant, the highest rate since 2009.
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  • The fallout from the crisis can be seen in a rising tide of litigation between landlords and tenants, even at some of New York’s most gilded addresses.
  • “It’s not easy, but we need to make sacrifices, and landlords need to make sacrifices,”
  • Commercial property sales have plummeted by nearly 50 percent through October, according to Rahul Jain, a deputy state comptroller.
  • The lack of workers is having a ripple effect on rents. Across Manhattan’s retail corridors, asking commercial rents have dropped nearly 13 percent from last year, according to CBRE, a commercial real estate firm.
  • New York City’s finances — money to pick up trash, repair parks and police streets — rely heavily on the health of the industry.
  • “The amazing thing to us is that in New York, they’re going after rent for times when we weren’t allowed to be open,” Mr. Berger said. “We have worked out deals with our landlords across the country except in New York City.”
  • “Anyone that thinks the way that people used the workplace in the past isn’t going to change postpandemic is fooling themselves,”
  • Roughly 140 million of Manhattan’s 400 million square feet of office space is considered to be of average quality or is in older and less luxurious buildings
  • The real estate group estimates that converting even just 10 percent of that office space to residential would create 14,000 apartments citywide, including as many as 10,000 in Manhattan — a significant amount in a city routinely short of enough housing, especially affordable homes.
  • Converting office buildings to homes would not only provide a potential financial lifeline to landlords, but would also benefit retailers, the real estate board argues, because the presence of office users during the day and apartment dwellers at night would increase foot traffic.
  • The proposal would require changes to zoning and density rules that would have to be approved by the City Council and the State Legislature and embraced by the mayor and governor.
lilyrashkind

Elon Musk tells Tesla workers to be in office full time or resign, report says - 0 views

  • Elon Musk has told Tesla employees to come back into their respective offices at least 40 hours a week or leave the company.Musk said in two separate emails that people must show up for at least 40 hours per week in a main Tesla office. “If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned,” he said in one of the emails, first reported by Electrek and also obtained by CNBC.
  • “Tesla has and will create and actually manufacture the most exciting and meaningful products of any company on Earth. This will not happen by phoning it in,” he added.
  • For example, when Covid numbers were rising in California in April 2020, Musk called health restrictions “fascist” in a rant during a company earnings call. He also kept his company’s Fremont, California, plant operating despite health orders but faced no repercussions from the state or Alameda County.
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  • By contrast, some big tech employers including Atlassian and Airbnb now allow remote work year-round.
  • Everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of forty hours in the office per week. Moreover, the office must be where your actual colleagues are located, not some remote pseudo-office.If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned.The more senior you are, the more visible must be your presence. That is why I lived in the factory so much- so that those on the line could see me working alongside them. If I had not done that, Tesla would long ago have gone bankrupt.
lenaurick

First women elected to office in Saudi Arabia - CNN.com - 0 views

  • At least 17 women have been elected to public office in Saudi Arabia
  • he first time women in the country were allowed to vote and to run for office.
  • Despite the new rights extended to women, critics have said restrictions made it hard on women who wanted to run for office and vote.
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  • Female candidates also were barred from speaking to male voters and required to segregate campaign offices, the organization said.
  • n the end, 979 women candidates and 130,637 women voters registered to participate in the election, according to Saudi election officials. A total of 5,938 men ran for the local offices
  • The move to allow women to vote has been described as a step forward for equality in the male-dominated kingdom.
  • informal system of male guardianship over women that requires women be accompanied by a male guardian to travel or go to school.
  • Two years later, he ordered that at least 20% of seats in the Consultative Council be set aside for women.
  • The number of women in the Saudi workforce also has been increasing, from 23,000 in 2004 to more than 400,000 in 2015, according to the government.
Javier E

Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace. - The Washingto... - 2 views

  • A 2013 study found that many workers in open offices are frustrated by distractions that lead to poorer work performance. Nearly half of the surveyed workers in open offices said the lack of sound privacy was a significant problem for them and more than 30 percent complained about the lack of visual privacy.
  • “the loss of productivity due to noise distraction … was doubled in open-plan offices compared to private offices.
  • benefits in building camaraderie simply mask the negative effects on work performance. While employees feel like they’re part of a laid-back, innovative enterprise, the environment ultimately damages workers’ attention spans, productivity, creative thinking, and satisfaction.
martinelligi

Chauvin Trial: Expert Says Use Of Force In George Floyd Arrest Was Not Reasonable : Liv... - 0 views

  • Seth Stoughton, a former police officer and use of force expert, told jurors in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin that the actions by the officers involved in George Floyd's killing violated those of a "reasonable officer" throughout the fatal arrest.
  • "It's clear from the number of officers and Mr. Floyd's position and the fact that he's handcuffed and has been searched, he doesn't present a threat of harm," Stoughton told jurors after reviewing a brief body cam clip in which Floyd stood in handcuffs flanked by officers beside a squad car
  • In order to assess that, he said, experts consider the threat an officer faces at any given moment, as well as the "foreseeable effects of the use of force."
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  • "Both the knee across Mr. Floyd's neck and the prone restraint were unreasonable, excessive, and contrary to generally accepted police practices," Stoughton said.
  • "No reasonable officer would have believed that that was an appropriate, acceptable or reasonable use of force," said Stoughton, who testified that he reviewed all of the available video footage of the incident and prepared for more than 130 hours for the case.
edencottone

Georgia prosecutor investigating Trump hires new evidence expert - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • The Atlanta-area district attorney investigating former President Donald Trump, Fani Willis, is beefing up her office with a new evidence expert, according to a source familiar with the situation.
  • The Atlanta-area district attorney investigating former President Donald Trump, Fani Willis, is beefing up her office with a new evidence expert, according to a source familiar with the situation.
  • While Carlson was not hired explicitly to work on the probe into Trump, his expertise on the rules of evidence and criminal procedure is sure to be seen as a valuable addition for an office investigating a former President.
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  • Carlson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
  • Unlike Floyd, who is contracted to work only part time for Willis' office, Carlson is being brought into the district attorney's office full time as a staff employee.
  • In a letter to numerous Georgia state election officials, including Raffensperger, Willis requested that they preserve documents related to Trump's January phone call in which he pushed Raffensperger to "find" votes to reverse his election loss.
  • The Atlanta-area district attorney investigating former President Donald Trump, Fani Willis, is beefing up her office with a new evidence expert, according to a source familiar with the situation.
  • Michael Carlson, known as an expert in the rules of evidence, is slated to join the Fulton County District Attorney's Office in the coming weeks. He's expected to work on a variety of issues, from cold cases to capital murder to public integrity investigations.
katherineharron

What is impeachment? Here's what you need to know - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • The overall impeachment process laid out in the Constitution is relatively simple: President commits "high Crime or Misdemeanor," House votes to impeach, Senate conducts a trial.
  • The one President Donald Trump faces now, after inciting a riotous mob to attack the Capitol, is unprecedented in all sorts of ways, which means the process will feel entirely new and different from the one we saw in late 2019 around the Ukraine investigation.
  • Specifically, this House impeachment vote is likely to be done Wednesday,
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  • this second impeachment of Trump, in which a US President is accused for the first time of inciting violence against another branch of government.
  • In that first effort, the details of Trump's pressure on Ukraine leaked out over the course of weeks and built into Democratic support to launch and conduct an investigation and, ultimately, to impeach him.With Trump's time in office set to expire at noon on January 20, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also gave Trump and Vice President Mike Pence the option of avoiding impeachment if either Trump resigned or Pence mobilized the Cabinet to use the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.When those two offramps were ignored, Democrats in the House moved quickly toward impeachment and the first post-presidential impeachment trial in US history.
  • The Article argues that Trump incited his supporters by repeatedly denying the election results in the lead-up to the counting of the electoral votes, that he pressured Georgia's secretary of state to "find" additional votes for him, and in doing so he "gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government," "threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government."
  • Getting from Trump's misdeed to impeachment proceedings in the House took 86 days in 2019. It's going to take just a week in 2021.
  • This time, while there's an argument he committed treason, Democrats in the House have alleged Trump "engaged in high Crimes and Misdemeanors by inciting violence against the Government of the United States."
  • It took 48 days to get from Trump's December 19, 2019 impeachment to his February 5, 2020 acquittal. That process was slowed by a break over the holidays. The trial actually began January 16.
  • This time it could be slowed by the fact that Trump won't be in office any more by the time the trial starts and new President Joe Biden will be asking the Senate to vote on his Cabinet nominees and act on legislation to address the Covid pandemic as well as relief for Americans hurt by the troubled economy.
  • This time, incoming Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is hoping to pursue a half-day schedule to conduct the trial part of the day and business the rest of the day.
  • When both of the new Democratic senators from Georgia are seated, it will take 17 Republicans voting with Democrats to reach a two-thirds majority and convict Trump.
  • The most unconventional aspect of this second impeachment effort is that Trump will be a former President by the time it concludes. There is precedent for former officials facing impeachment both in US history and in England, from whence the Founders imported the idea of impeachment. Read here about what's technically called a "late impeachment" from the scholars Frank Bowman and Brian Kalt.
  • Beyond the stain of being a President who a majority of Congress feels it's worth impeaching for a second time, conviction could mean he can't run for office again in 2024. Barring him from further office would require a second vote by senators, although it probably would not require two-thirds agreement. It could also cost him his more-than $200,000 per year pension if the Senate wants to take that way.
  • Trump is widely thought to be considering the never-before-attempted self-pardon, to inoculate himself from future legal jeopardy related to his time in office and running for office. What's not clear is whether a late impeachment would have any bearing on his power to pardon himself. As the impeachment scholars Kalt and Bowman point out, the text of the Constitution doesn't mention pardons in terms of impeachment. It certainly seems like a successful impeachment would come up if and when a potential self pardon is challenged in court.
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