Monday, August 17, 2020

Monday, August 10, 2020

Why and how it spreads? Take a look



U.S.

1 dead, at least 20 injured in shooting at apparent D.C. block party

Doha Madani
A teenager was killed and at least 20 others injured in a shooting at an apparent block party in Washington, D.C., overnight Saturday.
Police are searching for multiple gunmen who opened fire at a social gathering that took place at 33rd St. and Dubois Place SE on Saturday night, according to Metropolitan Police Chief Peter Newsham. 17-year-old Christopher Brown was identified by Newsham as the sole fatality as of Sunday morning.
Police respond to a shooting in a Washington, D.C., neighborhood on Aug. 9, 2020. (Tom Yeatman)
Police respond to a shooting in a Washington, D.C., neighborhood on Aug. 9, 2020. (Tom Yeatman)
Brown was taken to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead. A police officer, who was not identified, is in critical condition and fighting for her life, Newsham said.
The rest of those who were injured at the party sustained non-life threatening wounds.
It appeared that a dispute broke out at the event and multiple weapons were “produced” as a result, police said. A motive is not yet known.
“We have at least three shooters because we have at least three separate locations where ... where gunshots were fired,” Newsham said. “And it’s my understanding that the shots went off simultaneously.”
A preliminary investigation indicated handguns were used in the shootings.
Newsham confirmed there were officers at the scene of the gathering, which did not have a permit. The police chief said that such large gatherings were too dangerous to be had during the coronavirus pandemic and amid the spread of COVID-19.
The officer response was not large enough to break up the gathering, which Newsham said had “hundreds” of people in attendance.
This image provided by a resident in Washington, D.C., neighborhood shows a party where a shooting later occurred. (via NBC News)
This image provided by a resident in Washington, D.C., neighborhood shows a party where a shooting later occurred. (via NBC News)
D.C Mayor Muriel Bowser remarked that several people who “had no regard for human life” attacked the gathering.
“It’s very important that as a community we have zero tolerance for this activity, that we support the Metropolitan Police Department when they’re going to have to make very difficult decisions in breaking up these events,” Bowser said.
Bowser warned the community that some people may be jailed while breaking up parties or large events that violate the law in the district, which currently restricts gatherings of more than 50 people.

Sunday, August 9, 2020

Saturday, August 8, 2020

Former Detroit cop accused of preying on women has checkered past



Former Detroit cop accused of preying on women has checkered past


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Chancellor Searcy’s policing career had already been controversial by the time prosecutors charged him this summer with demanding phone numbers from women to avoid traffic tickets.
Searcy, who resigned from the Detroit Police Department in July, is facing misconduct in office charges — and the possibility of never again wearing a badge in another city. If convicted, he would join the small number of officers across Michigan to have their law enforcement licenses revoked.
An investigation by the Free Press, which has been examining police misconduct issues in an ongoing series of stories since 2017, showed Michigan is lax compared with other states when it comes to holding officers accountable for misconduct and questionable behavior. In Michigan, an officer's license is yanked when they are convicted of a felony or, in a recent addition to state law, a handful of misdemeanor charges. Other states are more aggressive.
A review of meeting minutes for the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards found that, as of June, 144 officers have had their licenses revoked since 2007. In Michigan, where there are about 19,000 officers, it is nearly impossible to determine how many have committed other types of serious misconduct because no agency collects that information.
Like other officers the newspaper has reported on around the state, Searcy's most recent problem isn't his first.
Searcy was charged criminally in 2015, accused of wrongfully seizing money and, in one case, fabricating the circumstances of an arrest. Searcy was acquitted, though, and went back to work as a Detroit Police officer.
While that episode garnered headlines, the Free Press has learned that Searcy also faced troubles in 2010 after a woman claimed he threatened to shoot her during a road rage incident. Prosecutors declined to charge Searcy in that case because there was “insufficient evidence,” but Detroit’s top cop recently said that Searcy’s past causes him concern.
“Given his history,” Detroit Police Chief James Craig said, “I am pleased that he is no longer a member of this department."
Searcy faces trial on his current case early next year.
Todd Perkins, his attorney, declined to comment on the pending criminal case, as well as the 2010 incident, saying he doesn’t know the circumstances surrounding that case. Perkins also said Searcy would not make any comments, “on the advice of counsel.”
Craig said Searcy’s resignation is noted as having been “under charges” — meaning if he tried to get another policing job, the circumstances of his departure should be clear to agencies conducting a background check. In its investigation, the Free Press found previous examples of officers job-hopping from one town to another, regardless of past transgressions. Though background checks are routinely conducted, the newspaper found that some departments decided to overlook histories of problems.
In 2017, legislation was passed in an effort to prevent misconduct from being hidden by officers' resignations. It, in part, requires that police departments keep records about the circumstances of an officer's departure from the agency.
Searcy, 33, who started working for Detroit Police in 2008, found himself under investigation by internal affairs following an alleged off-duty road rage incident in 2010.
According to a warrant request submitted to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office and obtained by the Free Press through a Michigan Freedom of Information Act request, a woman was driving in Detroit in June 2010 with her three friends and 2-year-old daughter when she saw Searcy standing in the street and honked her horn to get him out of the way. She said he got into a vehicle, followed her, then pulled up alongside and said: “I’ll shoot you (expletives).”
The woman then drove “at a high rate of speed” to the Highland Park police station, where she banged on the door and told officers that Searcy, who was sitting in his vehicle in the parking lot, had threatened to shoot her and her passengers, according to the request. 
Police saw a handgun between the armrest and driver’s seat in Searcy’s car. As he was being taken into custody, Searcy initially refused to put his hands on his head, asking the officers what probable cause they had and “why are you felonious assaulting me?” according to the warrant request.
Searcy refused to answer any questions or provide a statement to the Detroit Police internal affairs sergeant in charge of the investigation, the request says. The prosecutor’s office declined to charge him.
When asked recently how the prosecutor's office made its determination, a spokeswoman wrote that the office “looked at the facts and evidence in the case and determined that there was insufficient evidence to bring a criminal charge in the matter.” She did not elaborate.
Detroit Police officials recommended Searcy serve a 20-day suspension for the incident — but that recommendation wasn’t made until four years later, in 2014.
Craig, who came to the departmentas chief in 2013, dismissed the case. He said recently that four years is an “excessive” amount of time to have elapsed. Craig said he has issued a rule in the department that misconduct investigations typically need to be adjudicated within one year.
He said the department had lost cases with similarly long delays that ended up in arbitration and that was a concern.
“I think part of the problem in this case was that it wasn’t adjudicated. It took four years,” Craig said. When the 20-day suspension was recommended, “I said, ‘Well the case is four years old, what have we done with it for four years but just put it in a desk?’ That’s a glaring example of some of the things we found that was broken in our system and one of the primary reasons, I think, that the arbitrator was dismissing these cases.”
That same year, in 2014, Searcy and his partner in the tactical response unit were suspended while being investigated for alleged misconduct, according to a 2015 Free Press article. The officers were accused of wrongly confiscating money from a man they arrested and fabricating the circumstances of another arrest.
The officers were charged criminally in 2015 with several counts, including misconduct in office, embezzlement, larceny and false report of a felony. Searcy was also charged in two additional cases, also involving the seizing of money from people who had been stopped. 
The then-president of the Detroit Police Officers Association told the Free Press at the time that Searcy and his partner were “two solid police officers with one goal, and that is to protect our citizens.”
Both officers were acquitted by a jury.
But when Searcy returned to work in 2017, he was given a lower-profile assignment in communications, Craig said. 
Then came the latest criminal allegations.
Prosecutors said that during two separate incidents in summer 2018, Searcy pulled women over and demanded their phone numbers to avoid a ticket from him.
Both women testified during Searcy's preliminary examination that Searcy — wearing a uniform and driving a patrol car — stopped them in downtown Detroit. They said Searcy told them to provide their phone numbers, which he had them recite.
A sergeant with internal affairs testified that Searcy had been doing work at the time through the Detroit Police Department's secondary employment program, which allows businesses or organizations to hire off-duty officers. Perkins, Searcy's attorney, said his client had been working secondary assignments on the dates of the alleged incidents.
According to a transcript of the preliminary exam, Detroit Police Sgt. Kenneth Butler testified that, even while on a secondary assignment, an officer has the authority to "make arrests, issue tickets, conduct traffic stops" in uniform and in a police vehicle.
One woman, pulled over in July 2018, testified that Searcy's instruction to provide her number felt "like a demand." Afterward, she said Searcy called and texted, at one point asking in a message whether she had received a ticket in the mail. The woman testified she then filed a complaint with the police department, "because I felt like he was trying to scare me into responding."
The other woman, who was stopped in August 2018, testified that Searcy told her she made an illegal turn and said her license had been suspended, though she disputed both claims and testified she had just renewed her license.
The woman testified Searcy told her he could take her to jail over the suspended license, give her a ticket and impound the car. She said Searcy told her he could "make all of this go away" if she gave him her number. After she did, the woman testified, Searcy cautioned that he still her information, saying: "This better be the right number," according to the transcript.
Asked about not giving Searcy a fake number instead, the woman testified: "Of course I didn't. He's a police officer and he definitely would verify it and if he wanted to do anything to me, with all my information he already had, he could have."
She said Searcy called and texted her, too, but she eventually told him she was uncomfortable with the contact and reported the issue to a friend, whose brother works for Detroit Police.
Searcy, the woman testified, later apologized.
Searcy is charged with two counts of misconduct in office. His trial is scheduled to start March 2.
Though Searcy resigned on his own, Craig said he would have been let go anyway.
"He resigned," Craig said, "before I could fire him."
Gina Kaufman is a member of the Free Press Investigations Team specializing in criminal justice issues. Contact her at 313-223-4526 or gkaufman@freepress.com. To read more about police misconduct or other Free Press investigations, visit www.freep.com/news/investigations.

Tuesday, August 4, 2020

Gun sales spike among African-Americans: 'Our ancestors died for us to vote, they also died for us to be able to carry guns'



Every single American should have guns, we do.





U.S.

Gun sales spike among African-Americans: 'Our ancestors died for us to vote, they also died for us to be able to carry guns'

Marquise Francis
National Reporter & Producer
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When Americans panic, they buy guns — lots of them. During the first six months of 2020, amid a global coronavirus pandemic, gun retailers have reported a record 10.3 million firearm transactions, according to a new survey by the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Overall, gun sales in the U.S. have increased by 95 percent while ammunition sales have increased 139 percent compared to the same period last year.
And while various demographic groups are buying guns in 2020, African-Americans account for the highest increase in gun purchases of any group.
“The highest overall firearm sales increase comes from Black men and women, who show a 58.2% increase in purchases during the first six months of 2020 versus the same period last year,” Jim Curcuruto, NSSF director of research and market development, wrote in his report. “Bottom line is that there has never been a sustained surge in firearm sales quite like what we are in the midst of.”
Getty Images
Getty Images
In many states, estimated gun sales doubled in March compared with February. In Utah, they nearly tripled. And in Michigan, a coronavirus hot spot, sales more than tripled.
Yet it’s not the first time gun sales have surged following an event with national implications. In 2012, more than 3 million were purchased in the months after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, in which a gunman killed 26 people, including 20 children, in Newtown, Conn. After this tragedy, Americans feared stricter gun laws so they bought more guns. In the eight years under President Obama, the gun industry grew 158 percent, according to the NSSF, over fears of impending gun control.
While much of the spike in sales early on can be attributed to uncertainty surrounding business shutdowns and initial stay-at-home orders because of COVID-19 precautions, more recent sales may be due to an uneasiness around Black Lives Matter rallies and increased calls to defund police departments.
Michael Cargill, a Black man and owner of Central Texas Gun Works in Austin, Texas, says that amid all the anxiety over the pandemic and rallies, people are buying guns to take personal responsibility for their safety. “People were concerned with people breaking into their home or breaking into their vehicle or attacking them while they’re in their vehicles [after COVID-19],” he said in a video interview with Yahoo News. “So people wanted to take their own protection into their own hands.”
Michael Cargill, owner of Central Texas Gun Works in Austin, Texas.
Michael Cargill, owner of Central Texas Gun Works in Austin, Texas.
In the past few months, Cargill says he’s seen triple the amount of people coming into his store wanting to purchase firearms, and he’s noticed a surge in Black customers in particular. Cargill believes Black people are buying more guns because they are getting more educated on the history of gun control. “They’re understanding that gun control first started in the 1800s … so people are realizing that every time there's a gun law that’s targeting a certain group of people, it’s usually the African-American group,” he said. “So they’re saying, with everything going on, we’ve got to make sure that we’re legal with this firearm. We’re going to make sure we know what the law is, we want to make sure we know where we can take it, where we can’t take it.”
History shows that gun control laws have always been unfavorable to Black Americans. Even before America was a country, Black people were banned from owning guns. “The first gun control law in the territory that is now the United States was passed in Virginia in 1640,” journalist Daniel Rivero noted in a 2016 Splinter article. “It explicitly banned black people from owning guns, even if they were not slaves.”
More than 200 years later, in 1857, the prospect of armed Black people became a crucial factor in the Dred Scott case. As Scott attempted to become an American citizen with all its inalienable rights that include owning a gun, the court ruled that "a negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves," were not "intended to be included in the general words used in [the Constitution].”
Following the Civil War, when Black people attempted to arm themselves against white supremacists, Southern state governments passed so-called black codes barring them from owning guns.
Two members of the Black Panther Party meeting with police Lt. Ernest Holloway on the steps of the California state Capitol in 1967. (Getty Images)
Two members of the Black Panther Party meeting with police Lt. Ernest Holloway on the steps of the California state Capitol in 1967. (Getty Images)
Throughout the 1960s, the Black Panthers chose to open carry in California as a sign to police that they would no longer endure racial attacks. In 1967, 30 Black Panthers protested on the steps of the California state house armed with shotguns and pistols. They announced that “the time has come for Black people to arm themselves.” The move frightened politicians, and it wasn’t long before then-Gov. Ronald Reagan signed a state ban on open carry into law, called the Mulford Act.
Whitney Davis of Houston admits that learning more about Black history is the reason why she recently purchased two guns for herself. “I realize in this country a long time ago, Black people weren't even allowed to own guns,” she said.
Davis’s dad grew up on a ranch in rural Texas, where over his lifetime he accrued a lot of guns, but it wasn’t until Davis learned more about her Black ancestors that she felt motivated to buy guns of her own. “So just like people promote that our ancestors died for us to vote, they also died for us to be able to carry guns as well,” she said. “So I wanted to fulfill what my ancestors weren’t able to do in the past.”
Davis endorses a common rationale voiced by proponents of easing restrictions on guns. “If everybody knows that everybody has a gun then maybe you’re a lot of less likely to attack people or hurt people,” she said. “If everyone knows, if you have a gun, I got one too, it’s an equal playing field.”
Despite the increase in Black gun ownership and general knowledge about Black history, many Black people have still lost their lives over owning a gun. “In 2016, legal gun owner Philando Castile was shot after informing a Minnesota police officer that he was armed,” HuffPost’s Julia Craven wrote. “Two years prior, Tamir Rice was killed by Cleveland police while holding a toy gun. John Crawford suffered the same fate in a Beavercreek, Ohio, Walmart.”
On July 25, Garrett Foster, a white man, attended a Black Lives Matter protest in Austin, Texas, carrying a semi-automatic rifle. After a confrontation with a motorist, Foster was shot dead on July 25.
The move for African-Americans to own guns appears to be a break from the progressive movement in American politics, which people of color generally align with.
A view of Washington, D.C., following the 1968 riots. (Getty Images)
A view of Washington, D.C., following the 1968 riots. (Getty Images)
The Congressional Black Caucus has pushed for stricter gun control measures in the past, most recently following two mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. “We have worked vigorously with House Democrats to pass universal background check legislation,” Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said in the aftermath of those two tragedies. The lawmaker said the CBC has also backed a bill to ban a loophole in gun control law introduced by Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C. Rep. Bass did not return Yahoo News’ request for comment.
But Republicans have been consistently resistant to increased gun control measures. In response to the CBC’s push, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Congress was “in a holding pattern” on gun control.
“I still await guidance from the White House as to what [Trump] thinks he’s comfortable signing,” the Kentucky Republican said last September. “If and when that happens, then we’ll have a real possibility of actually changing the law and hopefully making some progress.”
Maj Toure, founder of Black Guns Matter, a nonprofit that educates people in urban communities on their Second Amendment rights through firearms training and education, believes the more Black people who have guns, the better race relations will be in America. “If everyone has the right mindset with a gun, that solves race issues,” Toure told Yahoo News in a phone interview. “An armed society is a polite society.”
Maj Toure of Black Guns Matter at a town hall meeting in Philadelphia. (Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto)
Maj Toure of Black Guns Matter at a town hall meeting in Philadelphia. (Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto)
Toure advocates for Black gun ownership as a tool for self-defense and pushes gun safety. But he acknowledges the fact that fear makes people buy things. Toure welcomes this.
“I love that so many Black people are buying guns,” he said. “If you’re racist ... and you think that one group is inferior to another, then you should be afraid.”

Saturday, August 1, 2020

Blue, pink, purple, green...... YOU should be proud of YOUR color. Don't ever let anyone tell you differently




Tell them to go to ..... Oh you know where.


BE PROUD OF YOU.







Buddy The Dog Died Of Coronavirus — So Can Dogs Get It Now?





Buddy The Dog Died Of Coronavirus — So Can Dogs Get It Now?

Elly Belle
It’s official — the first dog to test positive for COVID-19 in the U.S. has died. Buddy, a 7-year-old German shepherd, was from Staten Island, NY, and passed away on July 11 after dealing with the disease for three months, according to National Geographic. Reportedly, he most likely caught it from his owner, Robert Mahoney, who also tested positive earlier this year.
But wait a minute, wasn’t it just a few months ago that we were told that dogs couldn’t contract coronavirus? Yes, but since then the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released information that a few pets, including cats and dogs, had been infected with the virus that leads to COVID-19 after the animals were in close contact with people who had COVID. While pets can contract the virus, however, it’s less likely that they can pass it on.
While experts say it’s very rare for pets to contract the disease, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Fewer than 25 dogs and cats have been confirmed to be infected with coronavirus in the U.S., according to the USDA, with the most cases in New York and Utah. Currently, it’s not mandatory to get animals tested if they live in homes with people who have tested positive for coronavirus, so there’s no way to know exactly how many household pets are actually infected, or if specific animals are at risk.
Veterinarians who looked at Buddy’s medical records also say it seems like he had cancer, although it’s unclear if that made him more vulnerable to coronavirus, or if it was the virus that made him ill. Either way, dogs and other animals are not immune the way experts once said they were, and Buddy’s health records help to illuminate how little experts actually know about how the virus affects animals, so it’s probably good to take precautions.
If you have a dog, it’s recommended that you avoid dog parks or public places where many people and dogs gather, and that you also keep your dog at least six feet away from other people and animals when walking them. The CDC specifically recommends that if your pet tests positive, you should isolate the pet from everyone else, including other pets.
Unfortunately, it may be difficult to tell if your dog is ill considering that not all pets show signs of sickness. The agency also recommends looking after your dog’s symptoms the same way you would pay attention to your own, and to call a veterinarian as soon as needed.