03 September 20
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Prosecutors' Plea Deal Required Drug Suspect to Name Breonna Taylor a 'Co-Defendant'
Vanessa Romo, NPR
Romo writes: "A man charged with running a drug syndicate was offered a plea deal in July if he would name Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old Black woman who had been killed by police in her Louisville, Ky., apartment, as a member of his alleged criminal gang, according to the man's attorney."
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San Leandro Police officer charged with shooting death of Steven Taylor. (photo: San Leandro Police)
Officer Captured on Video Killing Black Man in Walmart Charged With Manslaughter
Tim Stelloh, NBC News
Stelloh writes: "A California police officer who was captured on video fatally shooting a Black man who had a baseball bat inside a Walmart this year was charged Wednesday with voluntary manslaughter, authorities said."
The office of Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley said that Steven Taylor, 33, did not pose an imminent threat to anyone in the store or to the officer, Jason Fletcher, when he shot Taylor to death April 18.
“The decision to file the criminal complaint was made after an intensive investigation and thorough analysis of the evidence and the current law,” O'Malley said in a statement.
A security guard at the San Leandro Walmart, southeast of Oakland, called 911 after Taylor tried to leave the store with a baseball bat and a tent without paying, the statement said.
In disturbing cellphone and body-camera video of the encounter, Taylor can be seen standing in the store’s checkout area when Fletcher approaches him and tries unsuccessfully to take the bat.
Taylor backs up several feet, bat in hand, and Fletcher tells him to drop it, which he doesn’t. From a distance of roughly 17 feet, according to the DA's statement, Fletcher drew a stun gun, then fired as Taylor moved toward him.
The prosecutor’s office said Taylor was “clearly” in shock after he was stunned and struggled to remain standing with the bat pointed toward the floor. In the video, customers can be heard shouting “put it down, put it down,” before Fletcher opened fire, striking Taylor in the chest.
In the video, Taylor then tosses the bat to the floor and walks a few feet before collapsing. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
The San Leandro Police Officers Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Fletcher’s lawyer, Michael Rains.
Rains told the San Francisco Chronicle that he was “very disappointed” in the charges, which he said were “undeserved.”
“I am very confident that the jury hearing all the evidence in this case will acquit this officer in short order,” he told the newspaper.
A lawyer for Taylor’s family, Lee Merritt, has said that Taylor was struggling with a mental health crisis when Fletcher shot him to death. “It was [an] involuntarily break from reality,” Merritt said. “He needed help. He got brutality.”
In a statement Wednesday, San Leandro Police Chief Jeff Tudor said he knew the “sudden loss” of Taylor had “deeply affected” San Leandro, a city of roughly 90,000. “It is important that we allow the judicial process to take its course,” he said.
The charges were filed under a bill signed into law last year by Gov. Gavin Newsom that limited when officers can use deadly force. Under the previous law, a killing could be considered justified if it was "reasonable" and the person had committed a felony and was fleeing or resisting arrest. The new law states that officers can use deadly force only when necessary to defend human life.
A study published earlier this year by researchers at Harvard found that Black people in the San Francisco Bay Area are five times more likely to die in an encounter with police than whites. The California legislature estimated that between one-third and half of fatal police encounters involve people with mental health issues and intellectual or physical disabilities.
Texas's 38 electoral college votes are seemingly in play this November. (photo: Bob Daemmrich/Shutterstock)
Democrats Push to Register One Million Voters in Attempt to Rip Texas From Trump
Alexandra Villarreal, Guardian UK
Villarreal writes: "As the United States barrels toward the presidential election in November, could Democrats possibly come out on top simply through a massive effort on voter registration? They think they can, and Texas is key."
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Amazon facility. (photo: Shutterstock)
Amazon Is Hiring an Intelligence Analyst to Track 'Labor Organizing Threats'
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, VICE
Franceschi-Bicchierai writes: "Amazon is looking to hire two intelligence analysts to track 'labor organizing threats' within the company."
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The 3-mile border fence along the shore of the Rio Grande will fail during extreme flooding, according to an engineering report that is set to be filed in federal court this week. (photo: Brenda Bazán/The Texas Tribune)
New Engineering Report Finds Privately Built Border Wall Will Fail
Jeremy Schwartz and Perla Trevizo, ProPublica
Excerpt: "It's not a matter of if a privately built border fence along the shores of the Rio Grande will fail, it's a matter of when, according to a new engineering report on the troubled project."
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International Criminal Court Chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, seen here in 2018, has been added to the U.S. Treasury's sanctions list. She is leading the court's investigation into alleged U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan. (photo: Bas Czerwinski/AP)
Trump Administration Sanctions ICC Prosecutor Investigating Alleged US War Crimes
UN News
Excerpt: "The UN Secretary-General on Wednesday noted 'with concern' the imposition by the United States of sanctions against the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and another senior official, in the latest of a series of unilateral policy moves against the body."
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Dusk in Hoboken, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from the Empire State Building in Manhattan. (photo: Gary Hershorn/Getty)
'At the Forefront of Climate Change,' Hoboken, New Jersey, Seeks Damages From ExxonMobil
David Hasemyer, Inside Climate News
Hasemyer writes: "The city of Hoboken, New Jersey, filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking damages from ExxonMobil and other major oil and gas companies for misleading the public about the harmful climate-related impacts such as sea level rise they knew would be caused by burning fossil fuels."
The city joined a long line of state and local litigants alleging Big Oil knew burning fossil fuels caused climate-related problems like sea level rise.
he city of Hoboken, New Jersey, filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking damages from ExxonMobil and other major oil and gas companies for misleading the public about the harmful climate-related impacts such as sea level rise they knew would be caused by burning fossil fuels.
The city cast itself as a prime example of an oceanside community "at the forefront of climate change," as Mayor Ravi Bhalla said in announcing the lawsuit.
Less than five miles from midtown Manhattan in New York City, Hoboken is uniquely vulnerable to sea level rise, according to the lawsuit filed in Hudson County Superior Court. It set forth nuisance, trespass and negligence claims, as well as violations of the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act.
"As America's fifth-densest city, its residents and infrastructure are integrally connected to its 1.5 miles of coastline," the lawsuit said. "More than half of Hoboken's residents, half of its schools and all of its hospitals, rail and ferry stations, and hazardous waste sites are within five feet of its high tide line.
"Sea level rise therefore threatens major sections of Hoboken with flooding at high tide."
Global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions from cars, trucks, electric utilities and other industrial processes has caused the sea level to rise by nearly a foot in and around Hoboken, which is considerably more than the average around the world, the lawsuit said, adding: "Multiple additional feet of sea level rise are projected in the coming decades as a result of fossil fuel use."
The number of high tide flood days has already more than doubled since 2000, the lawsuit said, while climate change also threatens the city with more frequent and severe flooding from storm surge during coastal storms.
Other defendants named in the lawsuit include BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell and the American Petroleum Institute, an oil and gas trade association.
"The climate harms masked by defendants' half-century of deception have now slammed into the shores of Hoboken," the lawsuit said.
A representative of Exxon did not respond to a request for comment.
Paul Afonso, a senior vice president & chief legal officer for API, defended the organization, saying "the record of the past two decades demonstrates that the industry has achieved its goal of providing affordable, reliable American energy to U.S. consumers while substantially reducing emissions and our environmental footprint. Any suggestion to the contrary is false."
The lawsuit's fraud claim centers on documents showing that the fossil fuel industry has known for decades that the use of its products would result in catastrophic climate consequences. The lawsuit credits a 2015 InsideClimate News series and a later story in the Los Angeles Times for revealing the extent of Exxon's knowledge, going back to the 1970s, about the central role of fossil fuels in causing climate change.
Hoboken is the 20th municipality, state or private organization to sue the fossil fuel industry over climate change since 2017. Other plaintiffs include Baltimore, Oakland and San Francisco; numerous counties in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maryland, New York and Washington; and the states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Minnesota.
In the wake of hurricane Irene and Superstorm Sandy, Hoboken invested $500 million to build flood protection along its waterfront, including underground cisterns to store excess water and pump stations to expel storm water, the lawsuit said.
"Hoboken is at the forefront of climate change and our residents are literally paying the price," Mayor Bhalla said in announcing the lawsuit on Facebook.
"This shouldn't have to be on the backs of our residents and other government entities to shoulder the burden of these costs," Bhalla said. "We cannot stand idly by and allow big oil to continue profiteering at the expense of Hoboken residents. It's time these companies pay their fair share and be held accountable for their actions and their role in climate change."
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages associated with the destruction of city-owned property from flooding, loss of tax revenue because of depressed property values and the slowdown of economic activity in the face of the on-going threat of climate change-induced severe weather.
"The fossil fuels driving defendants' billion-dollar profits, and defendants' lies about the risks of fossil fuels, are the cause of both the escalating climate harms experienced by Hoboken and the enormous costs the city now must undertake to abate them," the lawsuit said.
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