21 October 20
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20 October 20
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Cornel West: 'George Floyd's Public Lynching Pulled the Cover off Who We Really Are'
Hugh Muir, Guardian UK
Muir writes: "Cornel West is a thinker. Readers of Prospect magazine recently voted him the world's fourth-best thinker. And right now he is thinking about 3 November, and whether the United States will reject or endorse Donald Trump."
As the US philosopher and civil rights activist looks ahead to the presidential election, he discusses Joe Biden, Black Lives Matter and why Barack Obama was more Kenny G than John Coltrane
No one knows what will happen; not even West, not least because in the US he sees contradictions that even he can’t fully explain.
One such contradiction was Charlottesville, Virginia on the day in August 2017 when far-right activists menaced a community, killed a woman protesting against racism and then basked in the affirmation of Trump calling them “some very fine people”. West – always dapper in black suit, black scarf, white shirt, gleaming cufflinks and with his grey-flecked afro standing proud – was there.
“I remember seeing those folk looking at us and cussing at us and spitting at us and carrying on. And then the charge, and the anti-fascists coming in to save our lives. But what I also remember is walking by the park and seeing these neo-fascist brothers listening to some black music. I said: ‘Wow, this is America, isn’t it? These neo-fascist brothers listening to some Motown just before they going to mow us down.’ Ain’t that something?”
What West says matters because of his CV and because he straddles so many platforms: in academia, in the media, in popular culture. He seems too learned to be embraced by popular culture and too popular to have sway in academia, and yet he manages both. It’s capital he intends to expend between now and November.
“I am not crazy about Biden,” he says. “I don’t endorse him. But I believe we gotta vote for him. I am not in love with neoliberal elites either. I think they have to take some responsibility for this neo-fascist moment. But in the end, this white supremacy is soooo lethal … and it cuts so deep.”
He pauses and his measured delivery becomes staccato. There is pain there. “When you think about it, 65% of white brothers voted for Trump and 50% of white sisters. That’s the kind of country we live in. It’s like ... Wow! If it wasn’t for black folk and brown folk and progressive white folk … you voted for him then and you will vote for him again? Is that what we are talking about? With his impact on the world ...everybody knows he is a gangster, everybody knows he is a pathological liar and a xenophobe.”
And how will it turn out? Will Trump win again? If he loses, will he go? West pauses and reflects. “It’s hard to say. Some of us gonna go in and escort him out. He will probably say the election was rigged, he will probably say it was illegitimate. He could call on his troops to not accept the result of the election. Then we are really in a mess, my brother ... civic strife, man.”
It is, many say, the Covid election. Trump belittled it, under-reacted, ignored his scientists, caught it, recovered – or so he claims – and then made his recovery part of the narrative. Par for the course, says West. “He is creating a character for himself. Like a dumbed down version of a Pirandello play. He is trying to convince us that he is the strongman who is the only one who can save America: that he is a Superman bouncing back from the virus he was in denial about.”
West, 67, sees himself as part of an “anti-fascist coalition” against Trump. He is rooting for the least worst. “What I don’t want to do is present Biden as some great defender of the poor and working people,” he says. “I don’t want to lie. We have had enough lies with Trump.” It’s Hobson’s choice. “When there is a cold-hearted, mean-spirited neo-fascist like Trump, I have got to try and push Biden over the line.”
The same applies to Kamala Harris, Biden’s running mate, and with Biden already 77, a potential president. “She is a brilliant black sister,” says West. But, “she is very much a part of that class and imperial hierarchy”.
West’s yearning to be part of the dominant debate began in childhood in Sacramento, California, where he grew up with his mother Irene, a feted teacher, his father, Clifton, an air force civilian administrator, and three siblings. The Wests raised their progressive voices in the Shiloh Baptist church, as civil rights demonstrators and through the Urban League, a historic civil rights organisation. They took the young Cornel to see Martin Luther King. “He was very powerful. I was too young to understand all his words, but he had an impact on my soul.”
A keen scholar, West took his activism to elementary school. Aged eight, he was kicked out because he refused to salute the flag. A teacher tried to coerce him and a fracas ensued. He had his reason; a family horror, a very American outrage – the death of his great-uncle. “My great-uncle was part of a group from the military who came back from the first world war; a number who were lynched in uniform. They put the flag around them to let them know they were not going to be full citizens, even though they had been willing to give their lives for the country.”
But the young West – assertive and school-less – was lucky to be bright and have supportive parents who knew their way around the system. His mother eventually found him a school across town and then returned each day to teach in her own. West found his metier. “I had a wonderful time,” he says. “I was blessed to bounce back.”
He was set on a stellar trajectory. In 1970, he went to Harvard, graduating in 1973 with a degree in near Eastern languages and civilisation. Then he went off to Princeton to become the first African American to graduate there with a PhD in philosophy. After lecturing at Harvard, he went on to the Union Theological Seminary, New York, the University of Paris and Yale University’s Divinity School. At Yale, during an anti-apartheid campus protest, he was arrested and briefly jailed. In 1988, he returned to Princeton where he spent six years teaching religion and African American studies before re-entry to Harvard – a tenure that ended explosively in 2002 when he fell out with the university’s then president Lawrence Summers. Re-route again to Princeton for more pioneering teaching of African American studies before, in 2017, a triumphant return to Harvard gazetted with fanfare in the New York Times.
Central to his rock star ascent are his books. The first clutch were worthy and well-received. Then in 1993 came West’s collection of essays, Race Matters. It became the lens through which much of the US discussed race: a standard work in colleges and universities, it was the defining text over which the political and intellectual battles were fought. Bill Clinton, the then president, called West to the White House for a private consultation. Some hailed the book, since republished in a 25th anniversary edition, as an arrow through America’s dark heart. Others questioned his analysis. But few argued with the book’s contention that race mattered and, in its wake, West mattered, too.
Today, he presents as a genial man of firm positions and strong faith, drawn from a well of Christianity that means Trump, Michael Bloomberg and even Tucker Carlson – the notorious rightwing Fox News anchor – are referred to as brother. Which can lead to problems – for example, when he refers to the controversial head of the Nation of Islam. “When I call Trump a brother, they say: ‘Oh Brother West, my God, he’s so open-minded.’ But I call Louis Farrakhan a brother, and they say: ‘Oh Brother West must be antisemitic.’ As a Christian you are told to love thy neighbour, and it’s not love thy neighbour with qualifications, its love across the board.”
Any love for Barack Obama, however, is disfigured by the solid line he draws from Obama’s time in office to the rise of Trump. He has called his country’s first black president a “war criminal” because of his use of drones. Now, he says: “People don’t understand the weight of the bailout of Wall Street. Why would you use a trillion dollars for the top 0.01% and leave your people dangling, go to them every four years and act as if you’re their hero?”
For West music and culture are vital to his thinking. No one else juxtaposes the thoughts of great poets and philosophers with those of Curtis Mayfield or Bootsy Collins. “I wouldn’t be who I am without an Aretha Franklin or John Coltrane,” he says. He also prizes hip-hop. As we speak, he is preparing for a hip-hop summit aimed at increasing voter registration. “Geniuses like Rakim and Tupac are wrestling with their conception of what it means to be human in their context,” he says. “They are artists and all the artists, as Shelley says in his Defence of Poetry, are the ‘unacknowledged legislators of the world’.”
So, too, the Wachowskis, the cult film-makers who hired him to play Councillor West in The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. “That was something,” he recalls. “We had intellectual dialogue with Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne, reading Schopenhauer and William James. They are very much intellectuals, they really are.”
But when this politico-cultural lens seeks out Obama, crosshairs appear. “It is just sad that the first black president ended up being Kenny G rather than John Coltrane,” he says. “What can you say? ‘Go on Kenny G, play your notes; you’re alright …’ Obama’s alright. He’s not a fascist or anything. But we’re looking for Coltrane.”
Since the death of George Floyd, people have also been searching for diagnoses and radical prescriptions. An unprecedented stirring, to West’s mind, simply explained. “George Floyd’s public lynching connected with the pandemic, connected with the neo-fascist gangster in the White House, and pulled the cover off who we really are and what our system really is,” he says. “We have been living a lie for so long.”
The killing of Breonna Taylor, and the grand jury decision that no police officer should be charged with her death, “shows the system is decrepit; rotten,” West says, quietly. “That is why it is more concerned with bullets going through the white neighbour’s door than the bullet that killed the black sister.”
From race matters to Black Lives Matter: “A beautiful new moment in the struggle for black freedom.” But even there West sees pitfalls and offers advice. There must be clear objectives, he says. It must be “a profoundly human affair that is always multi-racial, multinational, multigender, multi-sexual orientation”. Crucially, it must prioritise those who need it most. “The focus must be on empowering the least of these, to use the biblical term – the poor and working-class. When you are overthrowing monuments, that is not empowering poor people. It becomes a symbolic gesture.”
That strategy, he says, requires deep thought. “Lincoln was a white supremacist for most of his life but, I mean, my God, he grew. He was a force for good. What happens is you begin to alienate certain members of a larger community that you are trying to speak to.”
When I first interviewed West, he was being feted at Cambridge University and in London, while David Cameron was at No 10, dispensing social division and austerity. “Britain is in deep trouble,” West said then. Neither of us saw what would follow. “Johnson,” he spits contemptuously, “is the kissing cousin of Trump. He is just more educated, more polished and more sophisticated, but I think he is in the same Trumpian zone with Netanyahu and Modi and Bolsonaro. I hate to say that I might have been right about Britain,” he says. Then he chuckles and shrugs in sympathy: “I didn’t see Johnson coming either.”
Over Zoom, he is a lesson in deliberation: rocking back and forth in his own time register, but that’s deceptive because he is also a blur of activity. There are the demands of academia, the summits, his podcast The Tightrope, an engaging double act with Prof Tricia Rose, the sociologist from Brown University in Rhode Island, spanning race, social affairs and culture. He is slightly giddy, preparing for the academic Oscar award of a hugely prestigious Gifford lecture in 2024, one of the series hosted by Edinburgh University since 1888 and described as “the highest honour in a philosopher’s career”. His subject: wrestling death and dogma and domination.
He is also a very vocal supporter of Julian Assange and the fight to stop his extradition to the US. “He’s a truth teller,” says West. “He has been simply laying bare some of the crimes and lies of the American empire.” But will he pay the price? “I am praying for him,” he says, “but I don’t think it looks good, man.”
If the times are bleak, with just a glimmer of hope for 3 November and thereafter, West insists they follow a predicted trajectory. “Militarism, racism, poverty and materialism; all four of these will suck the energy out of American democracy,” he says, reciting reverently. “Martin Luther King said that right before they killed him – and the truth-tellers often get killed, as you know. That’s the way of the world.” Should he be concerned? He cocks his head and laughs: “Oh shoot, they could kill me any day; that’s all right with me. I am going down swinging, brother, like Ella Fitzgerald and Muhammad Ali – with a little bit of Rakim and some Coltrane.”
Jeffrey Rosen testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing to be deputy attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice, April 10, 2019. (photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM)
DOJ Files Long-Awaited Antitrust Suit Against Google
Kate Cox, Ars Technica
Cox writes: "The Department of Justice today filed a landmark antitrust suit against Google, alleging that the company behaved anticompetitively and unfairly pushed out rivals in its search businesses."
Landmark suit is biggest tech antitrust action since US v. Microsoft in the 1990s.
A company does not have to be a literal monopoly, with no available competition of any kind, to be in violation of antitrust law. The law is instead primarily concerned with what a company does to attain dominance and what it does with that dominant position once it's at the top. And according to the DOJ's complaint (PDF), Google did indeed abuse its outsized market power to tilt the playing field in its favor and keep potential rivals out.
"Google is the gateway to the Internet," Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said in a call with reporters. "It has maintained its power through exclusionary practices that are harmful to competition."
Google holds more than 80 percent of the market share in search across the board, with an even higher stake in the mobile search market, according to the DOJ suit. The company's dominance in search and the way it leverages its advertising business, its search business, the Chrome browser, and the Android operating system give the company gatekeeper status that it then uses unfairly to keep competitors out, the suit says. The suit also takes issue with the way Google Search is pre-loaded onto Android phones, from all device manufacturers and distributors, through an allegedly illegal tangle of exclusionary, interlocking contract agreements. The European Union fined Google more than $5 billion in 2018 over similar allegations.
As a result, the DOJ alleges, Google has "substantially" harmed competition by increasing barriers to entry for competitors who wish to offer or scale up their own search services. Its actions also had the effect of making Google's services worse: no competition means no "significant competitive pressure to improve" its own search or advertising products.
The attorneys general of 50 US states and territories also launched a joint investigation into Google's search and advertising practices last year. Eleven of those states—Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, South Carolina, and Texas, all led by Republican administrations—have signed on as plaintiffs in the federal suit.
Although the complaint focuses almost entirely on search, DOJ officials did not rule out the potential to add additional allegations or file a second suit later, saying that the DOJ's broad investigation into the effects of competition in the digital market is still ongoing and that Google remains one of the targets of that probe.
Rosen and other DOJ officials declined to discuss if Google might be broken up as a result of the suit, saying only that "nothing is off the table" and that specific remedies will be left to the court.
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, center, speaks during a rally outside the White House in 2017. (photo: Susan Walsh/AP)
ALSO SEE: Memphis Poll Worker Fired for Turning
Away Voters with "Black Lives Matter" Shirts
Far-Right Trump Supporters Are Infiltrating Polling Stations
David Gilbert, VICE
Gilbert writes: "As threats to disrupt Election Day grow, some members of a far-right Trump superfan group are boasting about securing positions as polling station managers and supervisors while dozens of them are advocating violence on November 3."
Members of TheDonald say they've heard Trump's calls to watch the election and are becoming poll workers.
“Consider this polling station...ON LOCK DOWN”
That’s what a member of the far-right message board TheDonald.win posted this week, alongside a picture of a South Carolina poll manager’s handbook.
The poster, utahbeachballs1944 responded to other users’ comments, saying “my polling place is gonna be like trying to enter North Korea. Fucking LOCKED DOWN” and added: “I will be honoring the BLM movement by working in Blackface.”
Utahbeachballs1944 is among at least four users of TheDonald who have posted pictures showing polling station manuals as evidence that they will be overseeing voting on Election Day next month, according to an investigation by VICE News.
VICE News has been unable to independently verify that these people are actually poll workers, but the photos they posted of official materials did not show up on a reverse image search, suggesting that they are photos taken by the posters themselves. The posts on the message board also match a pattern of activity we've seen before and come in response to specific suggestions from Trump that his supporters "watch" the vote.
The campaign on TheDonald comes after weeks of sustained criticism by the president of the voting process, where he’s repeatedly warned—without evidence—of widespread voter fraud. At the end of September, Trump urged his supporters to “go into the polls and watch very carefully,” and his calls have been heeded, with at least one right-wing militia group confirming they will be turning out at polling stations on November 3.
“I’m urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully because that's what has to happen. I am urging them to do it,” Trump said during last month’s televised debate with his Democratic rival Joe Biden.
The Trump campaign has set up a website with the militaristic title “Army for Trump,” which is recruiting supporters for Election Day operations.
“We all know the Democrats will be up to their old dirty tricks,” Evin Perrine, the director of press communications for Trump’s reelection campaign, says in a video encouraging people to sign up.
Already, we're seeing a lot of potentially violent posturing and some isolated altercations at polling stations during early voting. For example, in Memphis, a poll worker was fired for turning away a voter wearing a "Black Lives Matter" shirt. Michigan, meanwhile, has banned the open carry of guns at the polls, but sheriffs in the state have said they "don't have the authority to enforce" the ban.
Some TheDonald members have been taking cues from Trump about what to do on Election Day.
One member posted a picture of a reference guide for a Voter Service and Polling Center Judge in Arapahoe Country in Colorado with the caption, “All your polling stations belong to us.” A user called linkinu posted a picture of a manual for poll workers in New York State, while another user posted a picture of an electronic poll book training manual.
The election boards in Colorado, New York, and South Carolina did not respond to a request for comment.
Dozens of other members of TheDonald have also indicated that they have volunteered to be polling station monitors at locations across the country. And many more members say they will bring guns to the polls. Others are advocating the use of violence against Democrats if nothing else works.
“Bring your own weapons then. Prepare for a fight. If their [sic] guarding the polling station, get a militia together,” a user called Blazer said in response to a post claiming Black Lives Matter and antifa protesters will be outside polling stations in every major city next month.
Experts in extremism have already raised concerns about Trump’s rhetoric around watching polling stations, and they believe there is cause to worry about the tactics being discussed by members of this group of Trump fanatics.
“It’s concerning for two reasons: one, the potential disruptions to the process that can follow by moving online trolls into the vote-counting process; two, because it creates a universe of people inside the room that can make bogus cries of a rigged process against Trump that will then echo through the right-wing echo chamber and into Trump’s Twitter feed,” said Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, a nonprofit that tracks right-wing websites. “It’s essentially a poison pill for undermining confidence in the results and fueling a right-wing strategy of post-election chaos."
TheDonald group initially emerged on Reddit before they were banned for advocating violence against law enforcement figures and government officials. The group also shared content from white nationalist figures and helped promote the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, before Reddit banned it.
Since migrating to an independent website, members of the group have continued to spread misinformation, conspiracy theories, and far-right campaigns—some of which were about elections and efforts to vote.
VICE News contacted all the members of TheDonald who posted pictures of polling manuals to confirm their claims. Two responded by saying “fuck off” while another member replied in the form of a screenshot of their response in Russian, which said: “Burn in hell.”
However, the site’s moderators, who are also anonymous, did respond when asked if they had any concerns about the coordinated campaign to disrupt polling stations.
“The left has made it blatantly obvious that they plan on cheating in the general. The only thing they care about is power and they will do literally anything to obtain it,” the moderators said, adding: “We are trying to change the things we don't like at the ballot box."
Members of TheDonald are aggressively pushing the Trump campaign's calls for action, sharing the “Election Day Team” URL more than 300 times, while the “Army for Trump” home page has been mentioned more than 800 times on TheDonald.win, according to an investigation by Media Matters.
This campaign is designed to intimidate voters at the polls, but is also designed to scare people from showing up to vote in the first place. It's important to note that a series of gun control groups, voting rights groups, and public officials have insisted that it is safe to vote in person, and violence on Election Day is likely to be isolated. Still, voter intimidation is a serious threat.
“Coordinated activity around the polls by all groups should be taken seriously,” Ciarán O’Connor, an analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told VICE News. “The risk of activity like this, especially anything concerning protests or weapons, is that it may add to increasing tensions around polling day and at polling stations.”
Almost every state allows for official poll watchers of some kind, with the aim for them to promote transparency and openness. Rules vary from state-to state, but poll watchers typically have to be registered to vote in the county where they’re observing a polling center.
In most states, each candidate is also allowed to register a number of poll watchers.
While the duties of poll watchers vary, they are typically there to observe what is happening and to ensure no irregularities. However, in many states, they can also challenge the right of an individual voter to cast their ballot.
Experts have warned that extremist groups, including militias, will seize on Trump’s incendiary rhetoric, raising the possibility that armed groups could show up at polling stations. Many states — including five battleground states — have no laws prohibiting people from carrying guns into or near polling places.
J. Lee, 38, was detained over the summer at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center for overstaying a tourist visa. While there, he said, he was sexually assaulted by his cellmate. (photo: Allen J. Schaben/LA Times)
California Police Got Hundreds of Calls About Abuse in Private ICE Detention Centers. Cases Were Rarely Prosecuted
Andrea Castillo, Los Angeles Times
Castillo writes: "J. Lee stirred awake in early June at an immigration detention facility to find one of his cellmates sliding a hand down his pants."
Lee, 38, had overstayed a tourist visa from South Korea and was now locked in a cell 22 hours each day with two strangers — one of whom had been convicted of soliciting the murder of a family of 10 in Belize. The third cellmate had told Lee that the Belizean man was violating Lee as he slept.
This time Lee felt it.
He tried to report the incident, but 911 is disabled on phones accessible to detainees at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center where he was held, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He said staff told him they would report the incident but gave him no updates. Desperate for help, he asked a lawyer who was investigating coronavirus issues at the facility to report his allegations to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, which sent a deputy to interview the three detainees.
Afterward, Lee said, he began having panic attacks. He wrote to an ICE agent, “How can I do to get out of this nightmare?”
Details of the incident are described in a police report. Lee confirmed those and details of the aftermath in interviews with The Times, health records and federal court documents. The Times generally does not fully name victims of sexual abuse, except when they volunteer to be publicly identified.
Lee’s witness was deported June 22. A week later, the district attorney’s office decided not to prosecute, citing lack of evidence.
A Times investigation found that since 2017, at least 265 calls made to police through 911 and nonemergency lines have reported violence and abuse inside California’s four privately run federal detention centers overseen by ICE. Half the calls alleged sex crimes, including rape, sexual assault and abuse against detainees. The rest were to report assault, battery and other threats of violence against detainees and staff.
In only three cases in which detainees said they were victimized did records show a suspect was charged, The Times found, and in two of those, the suspects were deported before they could be arrested. One case involving two victims — a staff member and a detainee — is pending.
Prosecutors were more likely to pursue cases in which the victims worked at the facility. Among 41 calls alleging attacks on staff members, charges were filed in 12 cases.
Unlike in prisons and jails, people in ICE detention are not serving time for crimes — they are being held while immigration judges decide whether they should be deported. Many are asylum seekers, and most have no criminal history. The federal government is responsible for their safety.
For years, advocates and detainees have complained about unchecked violence within these facilities.
The Times examined hundreds of pages of public records, including federal investigative reports, 911 calls and court documents, and interviewed federal and local officials as well as detention center representatives and detainees.
What emerged is a picture of a system in which violence can be perpetuated against detainees with impunity, both by other detainees and facility staff. Detainees were banned from calling 911, according to ICE, and forced to rely on others to report allegations on their behalf.
Some private detention centers brokered agreements with law enforcement agencies that dictated which crimes officers would respond to. When police did intervene, some were discouraged from investigating, prevented by staff from speaking to detainees who had alleged abuse and instructed not to pursue cases they said had merit, according to police reports.
ICE declined an interview request about The Times’ findings but provided written responses to select questions.
“ICE is committed to a culture that promotes safety and has zero-tolerance for abuse of any kind,” spokeswoman Paige Hughes said in a statement. “ICE is committed to transparency, collaboration, and resolving all concerns, complaints, and allegations with individuals in ICE custody.”
Representatives of the companies that operate ICE facilities in California said they always contact law enforcement to investigate potential criminal allegations and also conduct their own administrative investigations.
In Lee’s case, his alleged abuser was moved to a different cell. The stress caused Lee to lose 35 pounds. He couldn’t sleep. He wrote to a psychiatrist, pleading, “I don’t wanna die in here.”
Over the last four decades, the nation has built a network of facilities to house tens of thousands of people while their immigration cases are decided. The vast majority are owned or managed by for-profit corporations.
In California, four facilities have the capacity to hold more than 4,000 people: the Otay Mesa Detention Center, operated by CoreCivic; the Adelanto and Mesa Verde ICE processing centers, operated by GEO Group; and the Imperial Regional Detention Facility, operated by Management and Training Corp.
These centers are supposed to comply with care and safety standards set by ICE. Their daily operations fall to the companies, whose staff are not sworn law enforcement officers and do not have the authority to conduct criminal investigations. Although ICE agents are on-site to handle immigration matters, they also do not have the authority to criminally investigate allegations of abuse, agency officials told The Times.
ICE requires detention facilities to notify local law enforcement about any potential crimes. The decision to prosecute violations of state law is “the sole responsibility of the local law enforcement agency,” ICE spokeswoman Britney Walker said.
The companies have been sued repeatedly over allegations of violence and are the subject of numerous federal reports over failures to keep detainees safe.
Troubled by conditions in the state’s privately run prisons and detention centers, California leaders banned new contracts after Jan. 1 of this year and ordered existing facilities to close by 2028. In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 3228, which requires private prison companies to adhere to ICE’s detention standards and allows people to sue the companies for violations.
Some agreements between for-profit facilities and local governments, however, have prevented investigations into allegations of detainee abuse, law enforcement officials said.
In late 2018, Abel Lopez Serrano was being held at the Adelanto facility when a deportation agent told him to go back to El Salvador and threatened to “f— him up” after he refused to sign paperwork, he said in an interview.
The agent took Lopez to a room outside the view of cameras, according to an 83-page investigative report by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general. Lopez, 43, said the agent then slammed him into a concrete wall.
The next day, Lopez’s fiancee visited and saw his right eye swollen and bruised, she said in an interview. She called 911.
A San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy responded, but a facility staff member barred him from entering, saying the incident was being investigated at the federal level, a police incident report and federal records show.
The Sheriff’s Department told The Times that current practice is for the Homeland Security Department to investigate federal employees accused of wrongdoing.
ICE, however, told The Times that local law enforcement “has jurisdiction and can open a criminal investigation.”
The Sheriff’s Department also told The Times that it has followed an agreement between the city of Adelanto and GEO Group that details the types of calls to which sheriff’s officials “shall” respond, including “violent felony, such as homicide or assaults on staff” and sexual assaults. Any crime not listed, the Sheriff’s Department told The Times, would be investigated by the FBI or ICE.
Under the Adelanto agreement, GEO Group paid the city $174,866 a year for a sheriff’s deputy to respond to calls from the facility.
Sheriff’s officials initially cited the agreement as a reason why they did not investigate a 2017 allegation that detention staff assaulted a detainee and a 2018 case in which a group of detainees allegedly assaulted another detainee.
Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Cindy Bachman later said the agreement is used as a “guideline.” She said she was not aware that it had expired in 2016.
Deputies “investigate each case thoroughly,” Bachman said.
The Mesa Verde facility, also run by GEO Group, has an agreement that police said limited their role to investigating “major criminal conduct,” such as homicide and sexual assault.
Grace Meng, a lawyer who investigates detention conditions for Human Rights Watch, said she finds the agreements disturbing.
“It seems like ICE, prison officials and local law enforcement agencies are each trying to pass the buck, and the victims of crimes are in the middle,” she said.
GEO Group spokesman Pablo Paez sent a statement in response to more than a dozen questions from The Times: “We take our responsibility to ensure the health and safety of all those in our care and our employees with the utmost seriousness, and we are committed to working with all pertinent law enforcement agencies as appropriate.” He declined to comment on the Lopez case.
Hughes, the ICE spokeswoman, said the agreements are not “made to hinder or prohibit thorough investigations by officials.”
The investigation of Lopez’s case was left to the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general. While it was underway, Lopez was deported. Investigators determined a confrontation had taken place between Lopez and the agent but said they found “no conclusive evidence” to support the assault allegation. The U.S. attorney’s office said it would not prosecute the case and authorized investigators to question the agent while preventing his answers from being used against him in a criminal prosecution.
According to the report, when federal investigators asked the agent whether he caused Lopez’s black eye, the agent said, “I placed him on the wall, that’s all I did.” Investigators asked whether that action caused the black eye.
The agent’s reply: “Anything is possible.”
At Otay Mesa, an agreement sets the rules for how sexual abuse allegations are investigated.
Although federal law requires the facility to report such cases to law enforcement, a 2014 agreement between CoreCivic and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department names the warden, who is not a sworn law enforcement official, as the person who “will determine whether there is credible evidence to support the allegation.”
CoreCivic says every allegation is reported, and according to spokeswoman Amanda Gilchrist, the agreement is “not relevant” because a 2003 federal law, the Prison Rape Elimination Act, would “override” any local agreement. She said CoreCivic would contact the Sheriff’s Department to remove the language.
Sheriff’s Department spokesman Lt. Ricardo Lopez told The Times that before this year, some deputies did not respond to calls that alleged crimes at Otay Mesa. Instead, they would wait for the facility to complete an internal investigation, which was shared with detectives. He said that changed after The Times started asking questions for this story.
“I think in looking at some of that, and some of the things you brought up, I think it’s best that we do go out there and evaluate it for ourselves and get some assistance from them on some of the things we need to help on the investigation,” Lopez said.
The Times also found instances in which police were discouraged by detention center staff from pursuing criminal cases.
In April 2017, a detainee at Mesa Verde was in a bathroom when another detainee grabbed his buttocks and tried to “penetrate him with his penis,” according to a police report. The victim ran to his bed and stayed there until morning, when Bakersfield police were called.
An officer interviewed the victim and suspect but was told by the center’s security chief that “no further police action was needed,” according to the report. The case was closed.
Similarly, in December 2016, a detainee told staff he had been groped by another detainee. Two officers interviewed the victim and suspect and watched surveillance video that showed the detainee’s genitals being grabbed while he talked on the phone, according to a police report.
An employee told officers “no further law enforcement action needed,” according to the report, which also indicated GEO Group employees had disciplined the man who reported the assault.
Bakersfield Police Sgt. Nathan McCauley said, “Statements by a third party regarding documentation or follow-up are not considered when assigning detectives or closing the case.”
A month after the 2016 incident, Bakersfield Police Det. Jeffrey Paglia reviewed the case and noted in the police report that the officers had been improperly instructed by the GEO Group employee “that this case only required documentation and would be investigated internally.”
Paglia reevaluated the evidence, including statements by the detainee who reported the assault. “I believe that [he] is being truthful and that he was unfairly disciplined,” he wrote.
In response to questions about these incidents, Paez, the GEO Group spokesman, said that facility staff members are trained to report sexual assault allegations to law enforcement. “GEO takes appropriate action should a staff member fail to follow these mandatory rules and procedures,” he said.
Paglia did not respond to requests for an interview. According to the police report, he concluded that sexual battery charges were warranted and submitted the case to prosecutors. Three months later, the report shows, he was told the victim had been deported.
The case was closed.
A fraction of the calls to police examined by The Times alleged assaults on facility staff, but they represent nearly all of the cases prosecuted.
Of the 265 calls from Jan. 1, 2017, to June 6, 2020, analyzed by The Times, 63 cases were submitted to prosecutors. Fourteen were accepted. In 12 of those, the victims were staff or ICE agents — including the pending case that involves both a staff member and a detainee.
“I would like to at least allow those victims to have their day in court,” said Imperial County Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin Cayton, who filed the charges in the pending case. Detainees, he said, are “not being held because they’re criminals necessarily — they’re being held based upon immigration issues, and they should not be subject to violence while they’re in detention.”
Michael Bires, a spokesman for the San Bernardino County district attorney’s office, said prosecutors do not give “preferential treatment to those who are in the United States legally, versus those who are not.”
“Just because someone calls the police does not mean a crime did in fact happen,” he added.
Prosecutors say that in some instances, deportation has made it difficult to gather enough evidence to proceed with a case.
Beyond that, “sometimes, individuals who are detained are reticent to cooperate with an investigation or prosecution,” said Steve Walker, a spokesman for the San Diego County district attorney. “In addition, some alleged victims may have criminal histories, and their credibility with a jury is one factor that must also be considered.”
The Times found two cases in which suspects were deported before they could face trial for assaults on other detainees.
One of those cases involved Geovany Murillo, now 27, who was detained at the Adelanto facility in 2017 after fleeing gang violence in Honduras. Murillo asked to be identified by his middle and second last names.
He said he was constantly harassed by his 53-year-old cellmate, who watched him shower, masturbated in front of him and slapped his buttocks. The man also grabbed a third cellmate’s genitals, a police report says.
In February 2018, prosecutors filed two counts of misdemeanor sexual battery against the man, Rodolfo Audelo. But before the case went to trial, Audelo and both victims were deported.
ICE declined to comment on specific cases. But speaking broadly, Britney Walker, the agency spokeswoman, said officials “have significant discretion” in determining whether to hand a suspect over for prosecution.
Gabriel “Jack” Chin, a UC Davis professor and expert in criminal and immigration law, said local authorities legally can take custody of suspects and prevent deportation of witnesses in federal custody.
“Functionally, the system is saying, ‘This isn’t our problem,’” he said.
Murillo, now in Honduras, learned this year about Audelo’s deportation from a reporter.
He wondered aloud: “How could it be that there isn’t punishment for people like this?”
Mark Collie and his son Blake at home in Washington, N.C. When Blake suffered an aneurysm, Mr. Collie turned to a Christian health cost-sharing ministry to help cover the costs. (photo: Madeline Gray/NYT)
New York Accuses Christian Group of Misleading Consumers on Health Coverage
Reed Abelson, The New York Times
Abelson writes: "New York State accused a major Christian group on Tuesday of deceiving customers by illegally offering health insurance to as many as 40,000 residents since 2016."
Regulators say a major group is misrepresenting cost-sharing plans, saddling people with unpaid medical bills.
The state filed civil charges against Trinity Healthshare, the Christian group, and Aliera, a for-profit company that markets the plans.
The state insurance regulators’ complaint included a list of charges, which said Trinity and Aliera “aggressively marketed and sold their products to consumers in the health insurance marketplace, preying on people who were uninsured and deceiving consumers into paying hundreds of dollars per month for what they were led to believe was comprehensive health coverage.”
A man holds a poster during a rally in support of Bolivia's president Evo Morales in front of the Bolivian Embassy in Mexico City, Mexico, November 11, 2019. (photo: Edgard Garrido/Reuters)
Evo Morales's Party's Massive Victory in Bolivia Is a Rebuke to US Elites Who Hailed the Coup
Shawn Gude, Jacobin
Gude writes: "Immediately after last year's right-wing coup in Bolivia, US elites, including many liberals, celebrated or excused the putsch against Evo Morales. Yesterday's resounding electoral win for Morales's party is a rebuke to all of their bloviating nonsense - and a massive triumph for democracy in Bolivia."
ovember 10, 2019 was a day of celebration in the citadels of US punditry and elite policymaking. Evo Morales was gone. The populist dragon had been slain. No longer would the “pink tide” stalk their imaginations.
The US right, veterans of defining democracy as its opposite, hailed the coup against Morales as a popular victory. According to the Wall Street Journal, the putsch represented a “democratic breakout in Bolivia.” The Trump administration praised the military for “abiding by its oath to protect not just a single person, but Bolivia’s constitution” and confidently predicted that “we are now one step closer to a completely democratic, prosperous, and free Western Hemisphere.
One of the most jubilant in the cheering crowd was Yascha Mounk — stenographer of the liberal center, doyen of populist studies. “Evo Morales’ resignation is not a coup,” Mounk said in a Twitter missive on November 11. “[I]t is one of the few big victories democracy has won in recent years.” He expanded on that bold claim in an Atlantic article the same day:
Like many populists on both the left and the right, Morales claimed to wield power in the name of the people. But after weeks of mass protests in La Paz and other Bolivian cities, and the rapid crumbling of his support both within law enforcement and his own political party, it was his loss of legitimacy among the majority of his own countrymen that forced Morales to resign yesterday.
Nowhere did Mounk mention the millions pulled out of extreme poverty, the raft of public services initiated, or, perhaps most impressively, the incorporation of indigenous people — for centuries scorned and hated by the ruling elite — into Bolivian politics as equal members. These, apparently, were incidental to the health of the country’s democracy. Morales, you see, was just like the right-winger Jair Bolsonaro (himself the beneficiary of a coup carried out against a pink-tide party that, in Mounk’s mind, was probably also a populist excrescence).
Nor did a couple weeks’ hindsight cause Mounk to change his tune. In a November 26 article, Mounk argued that Morales was trying to “incite civil war,” denounced right and left “populists” as different varieties of the same anti-democratic beast, and insisted that Morales’s removal was a boon for democracy. “The latest developments in La Paz should, whatever their result, inspire fear in the hearts of the world’s populist dictators.”
Elsewhere in the precincts of elite centrist and center-left opinion, handwringing and both-sides apologetics prevailed. The Washington Post editorial board acknowledged Morales’s successes while blaming him for the “anarchy” that had engulfed the country, and the New York Times editorial board, while declining to celebrate the coup, nevertheless solemnly concluded that Morales had to be deposed.
The forced ouster of an elected leader is by definition a setback to democracy, and so a moment of risk. But when a leader resorts to brazenly abusing the power and institutions put in his care by the electorate, as President Evo Morales did in Bolivia, it is he who sheds his legitimacy, and forcing him out often becomes the only remaining option.
All of this is worth remembering in light of what happened yesterday: Luis Arce, the presidential candidate for Morales’s MAS party, won 52 percent of the vote according to preliminary results, beating his opponents so handily that Jeanine Áñez, the leader of the right-wing coup government, was forced to concede defeat.
MAS’s crushing victory, if I can borrow a phrase from Mounk, is “one of the few big victories democracy has won in recent years.” Over the past year, Áñez’s government has persecuted MAS supporters and repeatedly pushed back elections. The US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS) doggedly circulated the lie that Morales had engaged in election fraud. The Bolivian far right — an amalgamation of anti-indigenous racists and pro-business potentates — was given time to regroup and wrest back power.
They all failed. Bolivian workers and indigenous people braved the repression and restored democracy to the country.
Sunday’s election result is a rebuke to the coup-makers and right-wingers, to the Washington establishment and Western opponents of leftist governments, to the pundits and thinkers who equate democracy with liberal capitalism and excoriate deviations from that orthodoxy as populist hysteria.
And as for Yascha Mounk? We’ll have to wait with bated breath for his opinion. His pen and his Twitter account have gone conspicuously silent.
Legionella grows naturally in the environment, especially warm freshwater lakes and streams that can be a source for drinking water. (photo: istock)
Legionella and Other Dangerous Pathogens Still Lurk in US Drinking Water
Lynne Peeples, Ensia
Peeples writes: "Before her 73-year-old mom contracted Legionnaires' disease at a nursing home earlier this year, Monique Barlow knew little about the deadly pneumonia and the waterborne pathogen that causes it."
Though less common than in the past, microbes that contaminate tap water continue to sicken — and sometimes kill — Americans.
efore her 73-year-old mom contracted Legionnaires’ disease at a nursing home earlier this year, Monique Barlow knew little about the deadly pneumonia and the waterborne pathogen that causes it.
“Until then, I didn’t give it much thought,” says Barlow. “I didn’t even really know what it was.”
Sheryll Barlow, a resident of Room 325 at Arlington Court Skilled Nursing and Rehab Center in suburban Columbus, Ohio, died in late February. Arlington Court was just one of at least five Columbus-area facilities to report an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease, which is caused by Legionella bacteria, since May 2019.
Modern drinking water treatment in developed countries has effectively eliminated cholera, typhoid and other traditional waterborne scourges. The U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), passed in 1974, propelled progress by requiring water suppliers to meet national standards for monitoring contaminants and managing them through filtration, disinfection and other processes. The U.S. now has one of the world’s safest drinking water supplies. And most of the attention on drinking water safety today has shifted from microbiological to chemical, with plastics, pesticides and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, leading lists of contaminants of concern.
Yet many microorganisms also slip through the cracks of U.S. drinking water systems, sickening up to an estimated 4 million to 32 million people every year. Although most only result in mild gastrointestinal upsets, some can be deadly, as witnessed by recent reports of brain-eating amoeba in Texas municipal water supply.
That figure doesn’t include wells, which are particularly prone to pathogen problems. In 2000, some 2,300 people fell ill and seven died in Walkerton, Ontario, for example, after heavy rainwater drew E. coli and Campylobacter jejuni bacteria from cow manure into a shallow aquifer of a nearby well.
Typical concentrations of chlorine used in treatment plants can be insufficient to kill off Cryptosporidum and Giardia, which cause gastrointestinal disease. And other infectious agents, including Legionella and non-tuberculosis mycobacteria, reside beyond the reaches of the treatment plant — finding hospitable environments in the pipes that distribute water to and within hospitals, hotels, homes and other buildings.
“It’s never going to be 100%, but we have things well under control for pathogens in source waters,” says Joe Cotruvo, an environmental and public health consultant based in Washington, D.C., and formerly with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Drinking Water. “The data show that those risks are going down and have been going down ever since the Safe Drinking Water Act was implemented.”
That is, Cotruvo adds, with one exception. “What has been going up has been Legionella.” Figuring out why — and what do to about it — is a major focus of efforts to combat waterborne diseases today.
Attention to Legionella has been heightened by the Covid-19 pandemic. Some health experts express concern that a prior infection with the virus that causes Covid-19 could make a person more susceptible to Legionella. But there’s an even more pressing concern connecting the two: Building shut-downs through the spring and summer have left warm water stagnant in pipes — a perfect environment for Legionella to multiply.
Many hotels, offices, schools and other buildings have been left fully or partially vacant for long periods of time, notes Chris Edens, an epidemiologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which recently released guidance for reopening buildings. “As those kinds of communities reopen, it’s important for owners and operators to be thinking about water management.”
Leading Cause
Legionella grows naturally in the environment, especially warm freshwater lakes and streams that can be a source for drinking water. It generally only becomes a risk to human health when it enters and multiplies within human-made water and plumbing systems, and then that contaminated water becomes aerosolized.
Drinking fountains, hot tubs, sinks, toilets, sprinklers, showers and air-conditioning systems are among the common sources. It tends to flourish when temperatures are warm, water is stagnant, chemical disinfectants are insufficient, and nutrients are plentiful, such as inside corroding pipes. When inhaled at high enough levels, the bacteria can infiltrate the lungs and cause one of two forms of legionellosis, Pontiac fever or Legionnaires’ disease. The former is usually a fairly mild respiratory illness; the latter is far more commonly reported and estimated to be fatal in one in 10 cases.
Now the leading cause of reported waterborne disease in the U.S., Legionella accounts for about 60% of outbreaks over the last decade. Nearly 10,000 cases of Legionnaires’ disease were reported to the CDC in 2018 — the most ever in U.S. history, and still a likely underestimate. Edens suggests the true figure is probably double that. Other scientists estimate the annual case count at between 52,000 and 70,000.
Legionnaires’ disease was discovered in 1976 after some 200 people became ill with a mysterious type of pneumonia-like disease at an American Legion convention in Philadelphia. Dozens died. Health officials eventually identified a bacterium that had thrived in the building’s cooling towers and then spread though the air-conditioning system.
Cooling towers were also likely behind many of the more than 2,000 confirmed cases in New York City between 2006 and 2015. In the summer of 2019, the Sheraton Atlanta hotel was closed for a month after an estimated 79 people were infected from Legionella traced to the hotel’s cooling tower and decorative fountain. A variety of other plumbing issues and insufficient water management has resulted in outbreaks around the country — at nursing homes, hospitals, schools and across whole communities.
At least 87 people were infected with Legionnaires’ disease in Flint, Michigan, in 2014 and 2015 after the city switched water sources. Researchers found evidence for three likely sources of Legionella exposure: a hospital, City of Flint water and local cooling towers. Mayor Sheldon Neeley told Ensia that the city is “making critically important infrastructure improvements to move our community forward in a positive direction.”
Proliferating Pathogen
Yet such large-scale Legionnaires’ disease outbreaks are “just the tip of the iceberg,” according to Joan Rose, a water researcher at Michigan State University. Research suggests that for every case linked to a specific source and outbreak there are nine sporadic cases. For example, outbreaks only accounted for about 10% of the cases in New York City linked to cooling towers.
“We don’t have Legionella under control,” says Rose.
Why does Legionella appear to be on the rise around the U.S.? The answer is complicated, explains Edens. The larger numbers could be partly due to greater awareness and testing. But he suggests that an aging population and aging infrastructure are major drivers.
“In large part, our distribution system is very antiquated,” says Amy Pruden, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech. As water travels through the distribution system and enters a building, it can lose disinfectant as well as interact with the materials, temperatures and design of the building’s plumbing. “Many things are at play that affect whether these microbes grow in the plumbing,” she adds.
Climate change, too, may be playing a role. Longer summers tax the cooling devices used by large buildings. Increased rainfall may increase the presence of Legionella in drinking water.
It’s all added up to growing concerns and heightened calls to address the risks. “The thing about Legionella is it’s a silent killer. You can’t see it or smell it. It’s just in the air floating around,” says Eric Hageman, a Minneapolis lawyer who represents the family of Sheryll Barlow in a claim against Arlington Court. “So, you have to be proactive.”
Controlling Contaminants
Arlington Court had been aware of a Legionella problem at the facility months before Monique Barlow’s mom became sick after another resident contracted Legionnaires’ disease in October 2019. “I just assumed they took care of everything. But then it popped back up, and that’s when we got the call,” says Barlow.
After learning that her mom had the disease, she says she wanted to know more. “I felt like they owed us an explanation. How are you fixing this? How is this not going to happen again?” Barlow adds.
Since February 10, Arlington Court has implemented changes, including the installation of filters in the kitchen, visitor areas, showers, bathrooms and ice machines. Such point-of-use filters are among emerging tools to control Legionella.
In a letter to residents reported on March 1 after local officials announced an investigation of an outbreak, Arlington Court said it took “very seriously the health and safety of everyone at the facility.” In a statement at the time, its parent company, Vrable, said it was working with authorities. Arlington Court and Vrable did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article.
Edens emphasizes the importance of water management strategies such as flushing water pipes, controlling temperatures and using disinfectant within a building. “We know water in the tap is not sterile,” he says. “The purpose of water management is to ensure that if some Legionella bacteria come through the main, the bacteria have nowhere to grow and hide.” He added that, under ideal conditions, Legionella can create a biofilm that helps it survive hot water and chlorine — another thing water management should aim to prevent.
Flushing of the pipes is critical anytime a building, or an area of a building, is not in regular use. And because Legionella bacteria rapidly reproduce at temperatures between about 75 ºF (24 ºC) and nearly 120 ºF (49 ºC), it’s also important to keep hot water hot and cold water cold.
Adding chlorine or other disinfectants to water as it enters a building is yet another tactic to reduce contamination. Chlorine, which is generally applied after filtration at a drinking water treatment plant, can drop to ineffective levels by the time water reaches the point of use. Supplemental chemical treatment such as a chlorine booster can bring disinfectant levels back within a range that limits Legionella growth.
Consumers can also take steps to reduce risks in their own households. For example, the CDC recommends that hot tub or spa owners frequently test water for proper levels of chlorine, bromine and pH. Old piping and “dead legs” — altered, abandoned or capped sections of pipe — can also provide the opportunity for Legionella to grow. And precautions should always be taken for stagnant water.
“You need to consider the far reaches of the building. If you’re not using a second bathroom, for example, then flush the shower before people use it,” says Cotruvo. “And don’t inhale while flushing.” Cotruvo also recommends using hot water regularly so water doesn’t stagnate in the pipes; maintaining hot water heater settings at about 130 ºF (54 ºC), blending hot and cold water at the tap to avoid scalding; and not spending excessive time in the shower or bathroom.
Regulatory Gaps
In a report published in August 2019 by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering. and Medicine, a 13-member committee warned that current laws — even the SDWA — fail to protect the public from the spread of Legionella.
The authors, who include Rose and Pruden, lament that the bacterium is managed in water systems “on an ad hoc basis.” A handful of federal, state and local regulations require certain buildings to have water management plans that include monitoring for and treatment of Legionella. But no federal law targets Legionella contamination of water supplies and building water systems.
The committee offered several recommendations for improving Legionella management in the U.S., such as requiring a minimum disinfectant level throughout public water systems, developing clinical tools to capture more cases of Legionnaires’ disease, providing more guidance to homeowners, no longer allowing low-flow fixtures in hospitals and long-term care facilities, and addressing the longer periods of time that water sits idle and lower hot-water temperatures common in green buildings.
Pruden expresses hope that the document is a “point of reference for those motivated to take action,” but acknowledges today’s challenges: “There is also a great deal of political distraction and other issues getting priority.”
The EPA notes that it regulates Legionella in public water systems under the Surface Water Treatment Rule (SWTR), which is tied to the SDWA. The rule was originally written to control viruses and Giardia, then amended to control Cryptosporidium. The agency suggests that it is currently considering potential changes to requirements on disinfectant residuals and other measures that may provide for better control of Legionella in plumbing systems.
But many scientists argue a need for more urgent attention to and action on the issue.
For Legionella, the SWTR provides only “lip service” to the control of Legionella, says Rose. She suggests that disinfectant residual alone is inadequate to control the bacteria.
“We need some coordination at the [federal] level,” adds Pruden. “It’s a multi-stakeholder problem, but is now awkwardly being handled through the litigation system.”
Pruden highlights a serious roadblock to use of supplemental building-scale disinfectant: If a manager wants to proactively treat the water, according to strict interpretation of the SDWA, then the building effectively becomes a water system and is required to comply with EPA guidance on monitoring and testing.
“It becomes onerous, and creates a disincentive to do something about it,” says Pruden. She suggests that the EPA could amend the SDWA to eliminate this obstacle.
Tim Keane, a Philadelphia-area consulting engineer who focuses on Legionella control, also underscores the need for further regulatory and communication requirements to protect the public. In a paper published in September, Keane and researchers from Virginia Tech including Pruden detailed a 2015 Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in Quincy, Illinois.
While the initial outbreak investigation focused on the Illinois Veteran’s Home, where 58 people got sick and 12 died, some people in the community also acquired the disease without spending time in the veteran’s home. Keane found that a change in the primary disinfectant and an interruption in corrosion control several months before the outbreak resulted in a sustained drop in the level of disinfectant throughout the city’s distribution system. The municipal system deficiencies, the researchers wrote, “occurred in Quincy without any legal violations in the municipal water system or public acknowledgment of community-wide health risks.”
“This outbreak was similar to Flint in that a major change in city water quality issues resulted in an outbreak at a healthcare facility,” says Keane. “The huge difference was it occurred in Quincy without legal violations. So, outcomes as bad as Flint and Quincy can occur because of serious issues in our EPA regulations.”
A range of codes, standards and guidance documents have been sporadically adopted across the U.S. The CDC, for example, has published recommendations for buildings, including steps operators can take to reduce the growth and spread of Legionella. A free tool kit, as well as specific guidance for cooling towers and hot tubs, is available online, in addition to the agency’s guidance on reopening buildings.
Keane points to other documents, including from the Washington State Department of Health, that he says provide safer guidance for post-Covid building restarts.
Disinfection Considerations
Treatment considerations are further complicated by the other pathogens that can infiltrate U.S. drinking water systems. “It’s not just Legionella. Others live happily in the water,” says Caitlin Proctor, an assistant professor of agricultural and biological engineering and environmental and ecological engineering at Purdue University.
The environments in which these microorganisms flourish may differ. Proctor and Pruden are both studying how various organisms respond to different disinfectants. While one might work well against Legionella, Proctor notes, it could fail against non-tuberculosis mycobacterium, a relatively common menace in health-care settings. Overuse of disinfection is also a consideration: Disinfection chemicals can potentially produce unhealthy disinfection byproducts.
“Disinfection definitively saves lives,” Proctor says. “But we need to optimize the use and make the best choices.”
Disinfection could also raise the risk of antibiotic resistance. Genes that allow pathogens to survive disinfection could potentially confer resistance to antibiotics. It’s a hypothesis that warrants further investigation, according to Pruden.
“I view it as a worthy line of investigation to make sure our water treatments and mitigations are not making pathogens more antibiotic resistant,” adds Pruden. “We have a lot to be proud of over the last century in addressing fecal-born disease — cholera, typhoid. But the next frontier is not just treating the water but delivering safe water.”
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