28 April 21
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28 April 21
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The Secret Footage of the NRA Chief's Botched Elephant Hunt
Mike Spies, The New Yorker
Spies writes: "Wayne LaPierre has cultivated his image as an exemplar of American gun culture, but video of his clumsy marksmanship - and details regarding his Rodeo Drive shopping trips-tells another story."
fter the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in 2012, Wayne LaPierre, the head of the National Rifle Association, told Americans agitating for new gun regulations, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Less than a year later, LaPierre and his wife, Susan, travelled to Botswana’s Okavango Delta, where they hoped to show N.R.A. members that they had the grit to take on a different adversary: African bush elephants, the largest land mammals on Earth. The trip was filmed by a crew from “Under Wild Skies,” an N.R.A.-sponsored television series that was meant to boost the organization’s profile among hunters—a key element of its donor base. But the program never aired, according to sources and records, because of concerns that it could turn into a public-relations fiasco.
The Trace and The New Yorker obtained a copy of the footage, which has been hidden from public view for eight years. It shows that when guides tracked down an elephant for LaPierre, the N.R.A. chief proved to be a poor marksman. After LaPierre’s first shot wounded the elephant, guides brought him a short distance from the animal, which was lying on its side, immobilized. Firing from point-blank range, LaPierre shot the animal three times in the wrong place. Finally, a guide had the host of “Under Wild Skies” fire the shot that killed the elephant. Later that day, Susan LaPierre showed herself to be a better shot than her husband. After guides tracked down an elephant for her, Susan killed it, cut off its tail, and held it in the air. “Victory!” she shouted, laughing. “That’s my elephant tail. Way cool.”
For three decades, LaPierre has led the N.R.A.’s fund-raising efforts by railing against out-of-touch “élites” and selling himself as an authentic champion of American self-reliance and the unfettered right to protect oneself with a gun. But the footage, as well as newly uncovered legal records, suggest that behind his carefully constructed Everyman image, LaPierre is a coddled executive who is clumsy with a firearm, and fearful of the violent political climate he has helped to create. The N.R.A. did not respond to requests for comment.
The N.R.A. is weathering an existential crisis, which began with revelations of rampant self-dealing first reported in 2019 and extends to an ongoing legal fight with the New York Attorney General and a humiliating bankruptcy trial. Now, the video and other materials offer a glimpse of the stage-managed, insular, and privileged life of the N.R.A.’s top official.
The footage of LaPierre in Botswana first shows him walking through the bush dressed in loose-fitting safari attire and an NRA Sports baseball cap. He is accompanied by several professional guides and his longtime adviser, Tony Makris, a top executive at the N.R.A.’s former public-relations firm, Ackerman McQueen, and the host of “Under Wild Skies.” The heat, at times, causes LaPierre to sweat. As he walks, his wire-framed glasses slide down his nose. After a guide spots an elephant standing behind a tree, LaPierre takes aim with a rifle. As LaPierre peers through the weapon’s scope, the guide repeatedly tells him to wait before firing. LaPierre is wearing earplugs, doesn’t hear the instructions, and pulls the trigger. The elephant drops. “Did we get him?” LaPierre asks.
The guide at first says yes, but then, as he approaches the elephant, it appears that the animal is still breathing. The guide brings LaPierre within a few strides of the elephant, which lays motionless on the ground. He tells LaPierre that another bullet is needed. “I’m going to show you where to shoot,” the guide says. “Listen, hold your rifle—I’m going to tell you when. Just hold it up.” The guide pushes the rifle’s barrel skyward as other men involved in the expedition move around in the distance. “I’m going to point for you where to shoot. Just waiting for these guys.”
The guide walks over to the elephant, crouches down, and points near the animal’s ear, telling LaPierre to shoot the elephant there. Makris directs LaPierre to shoot low, accounting for the rifle scope.
LaPierre fires and a confused expression comes over his face. Once again, he shoots the elephant in the wrong place. It’s still alive. The guide tells LaPierre to sit down and reminds him to reload, as he physically moves LaPierre into place. Now on one knee, the N.R.A. leader asks, “Same spot?” and then shoots again. The bullet misses the mark.
“I don’t think it’s quite done yet,” the guide says to Makris. “Do you want to do it for him?” The guide then says to LaPierre, “I’m not sure where you’re shooting.”
“Where are you telling me to shoot?” LaPierre responds, sounding frustrated. The guide again walks over to the elephant and points toward the ear. “Oh, O.K.,” LaPierre says. “Alright, I can shoot there.” He takes a third shot at point-blank range.
“Uh-uh,” the guide says, indicating that LaPierre has missed his mark again.
“No?” LaPierre asks.
As the guide chuckles, Makris asks, “Do you want me to do it?”
“Go ahead, finish him,” the guide says.
Makris cocks his rifle and shoots. “That’s it,” the guide declares, before turning to the N.R.A. chief to congratulate him.
Makris, ignoring his own role, praises LaPierre’s marksmanship, “You dropped him like no tomorrow.”
Later, LaPierre and the guide chat beside the dead elephant, a species that was declared endangered earlier this year. LaPierre acknowledges that his initial shot wasn’t “perfect.” The guide encourages him. “He went down, so that’s what counts.” Looking sheepish, LaPierre lets out a laugh and says, “Maybe I had a little luck.”
Over the course of LaPierre’s tenure at the N.R.A., Makris was one of his two most important advisers. The other was the late Angus McQueen, who, until he died, in 2019, ran the firm that bore his name. For forty years, Ackerman McQueen devised combative messaging campaigns that successfully placed the N.R.A. at the forefront of the culture wars. The once-close relationships unravelled in a series of bitter legal battles over contracts, unpaid bills, and allegations of deceptive business practices.
In September, 2019, LaPierre sat for a private deposition in one of the cases involving Ackerman McQueen. Although the document remains sealed, The Trace and The New Yorker reviewed a copy. In his sworn testimony, LaPierre’s manner is inconsistent with the swaggering, confrontational public persona he has cultivated for decades. When asked about lavish spending, he pleaded ignorance or blamed his advisers.
LaPierre’s life style, as described in the deposition, is a stark contrast from the Americans the N.R.A. claims to represent. Lawyers pressed LaPierre about nearly three hundred thousand dollars in payments that Ackerman McQueen made to Ermenegildo Zegna, a luxury men’s fashion retailer on Rodeo Drive, in Beverly Hills, to dress LaPierre between 2004 and 2017. According to an N.R.A. ad, the group’s coalition includes “steelworkers,” “cowboys,” “hard-rock miners,” “swamp folks in Cajun country who can wrestle a full-grown gator out of the water,” “the mountain men who live off the land,” and “the brave cops who fight the good fight in the urban war zones.”
When a lawyer for Ackerman McQueen asked LaPierre about the upscale suits, he said, “Angus told me, ‘Wayne, get wardrobe. Go get wardrobe.’ Angus actually set up the billing.”
The lawyer replied, “But, let me just say, you’re a big boy, right?”
“Yes.”
“You can make your own decisions about what clothes you need and what clothes you don’t need,” the lawyer said. “You’ve been dressing yourself for a number of years.”
LaPierre then defended the purchases, arguing that he was the N.R.A.’s “primary brand spokesperson” and that he “didn’t see anything wrong with it” since his job required “looking good on TV in terms of your image.” He said that McQueen recommended certain types of suits. “There was a period where Angus wanted me in light suits because he thought that women responded better in light suits. There was another period of time where he thought my suits were outdated because style—style had changed.”
LaPierre said that he called McQueen “Yoda,” after the “Star Wars” character that serves as a symbol of unparalleled wisdom. “I thought that from a branding and imaging and crisis management skill,” LaPierre elaborated, “I thought that he had a certain amount of exceptional, unique, genius quality.”
At another point in the deposition, an attorney asked LaPierre if he ever wore the suits to non-N.R.A. events. “I hardly ever—I don’t really put on a suit except when I have to for N.R.A. work,” he said. “I get so harassed. The minute I put on a suit, I get I.D.’ed and somebody starts yelling at me.” LaPierre then became emotional. “So to tell you the honest truth,” he said, “I’m walking around most of the time—almost all the time in jeans and sunglasses and a ball cap because I am sick and my family is sick and tired of being yelled at, shouted at, screamed at, harassed, swatted, hacked, and generally abused.”
Lawyers also asked about spending related to Susan LaPierre. An unpaid volunteer at the N.R.A., she is one of the organization’s most visible fund-raisers. Susan co-chairs the Women’s Leadership Forum, a program designed to reward and cultivate high-dollar female donors. Though she doesn’t draw a salary, full-time N.R.A. employees work on her projects, and the organization also provides her with ample resources. At a 2015 fund-raising luncheon, for example, records show that the organization paid the country band Rascal Flatts three hundred and fifteen thousand dollars to play a half-hour acoustic set.
The deposition reveals, for the first time, the name of a makeup artist, Brady Wardlaw, who was hired in May and September of 2016, for an N.R.A. convention in Louisville, Kentucky, and a retreat in McLean, Virginia. Wardlaw is based in Nashville, and his clients have included Taylor Swift, LeAnn Rimes, and other country music stars. Bills for the makeup services for the events amounted to seventeen thousand dollars.
In response to questions from lawyers, LaPierre stated that he wasn’t sure whether Susan specifically requested Wardlaw for the events. He claimed that Ackerman McQueen “recommended the makeup” and that his wife, “who is a complete volunteer,” was not the only woman at the events who received Wardlaw’s services. When Susan later learned the cost of the makeup, LaPierre asserted, she put a stop to it.
It is important to the N.R.A. that supporters view Susan as a genuine member of the hunting and outdoor community. During the bankruptcy trial, LaPierre testified that his wife’s attendance on the Botswana trip was “part of projecting her image for the N.R.A.” Internally, some N.R.A. employees derided the Women’s Leadership Forum as the “Susan LaPierre Life Legacy Project.”
In the video footage from Botswana, Susan’s hair is pulled back in a ponytail, her nails are manicured, and her large stud earrings sparkle in the sun. She walks through the dry vegetation, until two elephants come into view and a guide sets up a stand that Susan uses to steady her rifle. The elephant in front stares directly at Susan and the guide. “O.K., you want to do a front or you want to do a side?” the guide whispers. “Which one do you feel more comfortable with?”
“Well, right now I’ve got him right in the front,” she says.
The guide tells her to aim for a crease between the elephant’s eyes. When she fires, the bullet enters the creature’s head, its trunk immediately flops toward the sky, and it collapses onto its belly before rolling onto its side. The elephant appears to be dead, but Susan, from closer range and at the guide’s direction, fires one more bullet in its chest “for insurance.”
“That was amazing,” Susan says, patting her chest. “Wow. My heart is racing. I feel great.” She walks over to the elephant. “That was awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome.” She inspects the elephant, bends at the waist, and seems to think the elephant is still alive. “Aww, he’s still there. Look at his eyes.” She places her hand on her chest, laughs, walks around the elephant, and pats one of its tusks. “Beautiful animal,” she says, and then, speaking to the elephant, “You’re a good old guy. A real good old guy.”
She grows emotional and appears to choke up, then asks a guide about the elephant’s age.“Must be close to fifty years old, I would say,” the guide says. “You think so?” she asks. “That’s exactly what I wanted. An old bull. Near the end of his age.”
The guide tells her she’s allowed to cry. “What an experience this is,” she says. “Once in a lifetime.” She rests a hand on the elephant’s forehead. “I was practicing this shot all day long.” She laughs again. “He wasn’t sure what we were doing. Amazing. That’s just incredible. Quite a day. Two beautiful African elephant in one day.” Susan touches the animal’s feet. “He’s so wrinkly. . . . Wow. A podiatrist would love working on him.”
Soon, Wayne enters the frame. He hugs his wife, congratulates her, and says, “I’m proud of you. That is really neat.” A person off-camera asks Susan if the elephant looked like it was going to charge her, and she says no, but that the animal “was checking us out.” Wayne responds, “But if he was looking at you like that, he could’ve charged.”
Later, a guide invites Susan to cut off the elephant’s tail, a ritual he says hunters performed in the “olden days” to claim their animal. Susan hesitates, but begins cutting the tail with a knife. “Oh, it’s like a fish almost, with the center cartilage,” she says.
Once the tail is off, she raises it in the air, and stretches out her arms, the bloody knife in one hand and the tail in the other. “Here in Botswana, in the Okavango Delta, with ‘Under Wild Skies,’ ” she says, and then laughs again.
Hunts in Botswana can cost tens of thousands of dollars per person, and, according to testimony in the bankruptcy case, a company that belongs to Makris covered the LaPierres’ costs. After the trip, in late September of 2013, footage of Makris shooting an elephant on a different expedition aired on NBC Sports, which then hosted “Under Wild Skies.” The episode caused an immediate public backlash.
The footage of the LaPierre hunt never aired, but records show that the couple still wanted their trophies. To avoid bad publicity—and at Susan’s written request—body parts from both elephants were shipped to the U.S. in a hidden manner. A man travelled two hours to Johannesburg to remove the couple’s names from shipping crates. The Master Airway Bill was in the name of a taxidermist, whom Makris’s company paid to turn the animals’ front feet into stools for Wayne and Susan’s home.
Demonstrators gathered in support of Mr. Brown in Elizabeth City on Monday. (photo: Carlos Bernate/NYT)
FBI Launches Civil Rights Investigation Into Death of Andrew Brown Jr.
Associated Press
Excerpt: "The FBI launched a civil rights probe Tuesday into the death of Andrew Brown Jr., a Black man killed by deputies in North Carolina, as his family released an independent autopsy showing he was shot five times, including in the back of the head."
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper called for a special prosecutor as pressure built on authorities to release body camera footage of last week's shooting. A judge scheduled a hearing Wednesday to consider formal requests to make the video public.
The FBI's Charlotte field office, which opened the civil rights investigation into Brown's death, said in a statement that its agents planned to work closely with the Department of Justice "to determine whether federal laws were violated."
The independent autopsy was performed Sunday by a pathologist hired by Brown's family. The exam noted four wounds to the right arm and one to the head. The state's autopsy has not been released yet.
The family's lawyers also released a copy of the death certificate, which lists the cause of death as a "penetrating gunshot wound of the head." The certificate, signed by a paramedic services instructor who serves as a local medical examiner, describes the death as a homicide.
"It was a kill shot to the back of the head," family attorney Ben Crump said at a press conference.
Brown was shot last Wednesday by deputies serving drug-related search and arrest warrants at his house in the North Carolina town of Elizabeth City, about 160 miles northeast of Raleigh.
The autopsy results come a day after Brown's relatives were shown a 20-second clip of footage from one deputy's body camera. Another family lawyer, Chantel Cherry-Lassiter, who viewed the video, said Monday that officers opened fire on Brown while he had his hands on the steering wheel of a car. She said the video showed Brown trying to drive away but posing no threat to officers.
Brown's son Khalil Ferebee questioned why deputies opened fire.
"Yesterday I said he was executed. This autopsy report shows me that was correct," he said Tuesday at a news conference. "It's obvious he was trying to get away. It's obvious. And they're going to shoot him in the back of the head?"
The pathologist, North Carolina-based Dr. Brent Hall, noted a wound to the back of Brown's head from an undetermined distance that penetrated his skull and brain. He said there was no exit wound.
Two shots to Brown's right arm penetrated the skin. Two others shots to the arm grazed him. The pathologist could not determine the distance from which they were fired.
The shooting prompted days of protests and calls for justice and transparency. Pasquotank County Sheriff Tommy Wooten II has said multiple deputies fired shots but released few details about what happened. Seven Pasquotank County deputies have been placed on leave while the State Bureau of Investigation probes the shooting.
The governor, a Democrat, said appointing a special state prosecutor to handle the shooting case would serve the interests of justice and preserve confidence in the judicial system.
"This would help assure the community and Mr. Brown's family that a decision on pursuing criminal charges is conducted without bias," Cooper said in a statement.
State Attorney General Josh Stein said state law puts control of criminal prosecutions in the hands of the local district attorney, so his office cannot intervene unless asked. He said he has offered assistance to prosecutors but has only received an acknowledgment.
"For my office to play a role in the prosecution, the District Attorney must request our assistance," Stein said.
District Attorney Andrew Womble, who oversees Pasquotank County, did not immediately respond to an email seeking reaction comment.
Wednesday's court hearing on the video will consider petitions to release the footage, including filings by a media coalition and by the county attorney on behalf of the sheriff. A North Carolina law that took effect in 2016 allows law enforcement agencies to show body camera video privately to a victim's family, but it generally requires a court to approve any public release.
It's not clear how soon a judge could rule or how quickly the video would be released if the release is approved. In similar cases, it has sometimes taken weeks for the full legal process to play out.
The slow movement has prompted an outcry from protesters, the family's lawyers and racial justice advocates, who noted that law enforcement agencies in other states have moved faster. In Columbus, Ohio, the day before Brown was shot, body camera footage was released within hours of an officer fatally shooting a 16-year-old Black girl who was swinging a knife at another girl.
Democrats in the North Carolina General Assembly filed a measure this month proposing that body camera video be released within 48 hours unless a law enforcement agency asks a court to delay its distribution. But the legislation faces long odds with the GOP controlling both chambers of the Legislature.
A key Republican lawmaker, state Sen. Danny Britt, issued a statement saying GOP lawmakers are open to considering improvements to the current law. But with a hearing set for Wednesday, he said, the process has had little time to unfold.
Joe Biden at a campaign event. (photo: Phil Roeder/Flickr)
Biden Sets Out Plan for Free Preschool and Community College Funded by Taxes on Rich
Lauren Egan, NBC News
Egan writes: "President Joe Biden will announce a roughly .8 trillion plan to invest in universal preschool, free community college and expanded access to child care in his joint address to Congress on Wednesday night, the White House said."
He is also expected to announce an extension to the expanded child care tax benefit as part of his American Families Plan.
resident Joe Biden will announce a roughly $1.8 trillion plan to invest in universal preschool, free community college and expanded access to child care in his joint address to Congress on Wednesday night, the White House said.
The proposal, which the White House calls the American Families Plan, would also increase taxes on the wealthy to offset the cost over 15 years. It is the second phase of Biden's two-part push to reshape the economy, following the $2 trillion American Jobs Plan, which he announced last month.
"We view the American Families Plan as a core element of President Biden's strategy to build back better and generate a strong and inclusive economy for the future," a senior administration official said in a call with reporters.
The official argued that by investing in social programs to help families, the plan would reduce deficits in the long term.
The American Families Plan would provide universal preschool to all 3- and 4-year-olds, as well as two years of free community college. Both programs would be available regardless of income. The plan would also extend the expansion of the federal child tax credit in the American Rescue Plan through 2025 and permanently make the tax credit fully refundable.
It would also ensure that low- and middle-income families did not pay more than 7 percent of their incomes on child care, which could entirely wipe out the cost for some of the poorest Americans. The plan would also establish a national paid leave program that would provide up to $4,000 a month for 12 weeks for parental, family or personal leave.
The plan does not include measures to lower the cost of prescription drugs or lower the Medicare eligibility age, as some Democrats had been pushing for. The plan would instead make permanent the Affordable Care Act premium reductions established as part of the American Rescue Plan.
Biden will propose a number of tax increases on the rich to pay for the plan, including raising the top tax rate on the wealthiest Americans to 39.6 percent, raising taxes on capital gains to 39.6 percent for households making more than $1 million and ending the estate tax loophole for gains in excess of $1 million.
The White House views Biden's address as an opportunity to pivot from the Covid-19 crisis to other agenda priorities, and it will mark a new stage of legislative challenges.
Republicans on Capitol Hill have already voiced opposition to raising taxes, and it is unclear how the White House plans to pass the American Families Plan with its narrow majorities in the House and the Senate. Biden also has not made it clear how he plans to simultaneously juggle the American Jobs Plan with the American Families Plan.
"There is broad support from the American people for this approach. There's broad support from the American people for the investments that these resources will go to," the administration official said when asked how the White House planned to persuade Republicans to get on board with tax increases. "And what you'll hear the president explain tomorrow night, if people have other ideas how to finance these critical investments, he's open to hearing them."
In addition to the American Families Plan, Biden is expected to focus on racial justice and police reform.
Biden's speech is expected to begin at 9 p.m. ET.
Navajo people line up in their vehicles to collect water and supplies from a distribution point, as the Covid-19 virus spreads through the Navajo Nation, in Monument Valley at the Utah and Arizona border last year. (photo: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)
Tribes Without Clean Water Demand an End to Decades of US Government Neglect
Nina Lakhani, Guardian UK
Lakhani writes: "The US government's haphazard approach to providing Indigenous American tribes with clean drinking water and sanitation must be radically transformed to tackle decades of underfunding and neglect, according to a new report."
US has broken promises as Indigenous Americans lack access to safe water, a crisis worsened by Covid-19
An estimated one in 10 Indigenous Americans lack access to safe tap water or basic sanitation – without which a host of health conditions including Covid-19, diabetes, and gastrointestinal disease are more likely.
Among the most affected by water issues are 30 tribes within the Colorado River Basin (CRB), located across California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado, according to researchers from the University of Utah and Colorado in the Water and Tribes Initiative.
Reduced rainfall and droughts linked to the climate crisis are further straining supply issues such as inadequate and ageing infrastructure, legacy contaminants, insufficient technical capacity within tribes, and limited revenue streams.
Unlike towns and cities, tribes cannot raise money through property taxes as reservation lands are held in trust by the federal government. But while the root causes vary from tribe to tribe, the overriding issue is the absence of an adequately funded comprehensive government policy to make good on treaty obligations. In exchange for the cession of millions of acres of lands to white settlers, tribes were promised a permanent homeland, a livable reservation, and a home conducive to health and prosperity.
“These promises are broken when we do not have clean water to drink, to cook with, and to wash as required to avoid the spread of this deadly disease,” said leaders of the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and Ten Tribes Partnership and the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian tribe.
They added: “Helping to provide clean water to us, throughout Indian Country, benefits everyone, and its absence correspondingly jeopardizes the health of the entire United States of America.”
In the US, race – not where you live or income level – is the most significant predictor of plumbing poverty, with Indigenous households 19 times more likely than white households to lack indoor pipes for running water and sanitation.
Several CRB tribes suffer from plumbing poverty, including 30% to 40% of all Navajo Nation residents, who are 67 times more likely than other Americans to live without running water. The cost of hauling water is at least 70 times more expensive than piped water. The Navajo Nation has a diabetes crisis because sugary drinks are more readily available and cheaper than potable water.
Indigenous Americans have died from Covid-19, a highly contagious virus which requires good hygiene to curtail the spread, at twice the rate of white Americans, with CRB tribes like the Navajo Nation and White Mountain Apache suffering disproportionately.
Last year’s Cares Act included $5m to support installation of temporary water stations and storage tanks, but tribal leaders were unable to invest the money in urgently needed infrastructure because of an arbitrary time limit on spending. An estimated $4.5bn is needed to address the widespread lack of water access on the Navajo reservation, which is bigger than West Virginia.
Contaminated water is also pervasive in Indian Country, and out west in particular, where mining companies have left groundwater sources with elevated levels of toxic chemicals like arsenic and uranium. An estimated 75% of residents on the Hopi reservation are forced to use drinking water laced with arsenic, which poses serious health risks including cancers and birth defects.
The Trump administration approved $5m towards building a new water system on the Hopi reservation, but that is only 25% of the estimated construction cost and provides nothing towards operation and maintenance of the new pipeline.
Researchers say that the Hopi case exemplifies the limits of the government’s current piecemeal approach: federal grants are too small, require complicated applications to a myriad of agencies and almost never take into account running costs. Tribal consultation – which is key to crafting tailored solutions – is mostly absent.
But this is a pivotal moment, many activists say. They believe Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill, known as the American Jobs Plan, is an opportunity to remove bureaucratic barriers and right decades of wrongs denying Indigenous Americans access to safe tap water and sanitation.
Police fire pepper spray at protesters during a demonstration in downtown Washington after the inauguration of President Donald Trump on Jan. 20, 2017. (photo: John Minchillo/AP)
DC to Pay $1.6 Million to Settle Mass Arrest Lawsuits From 2017 Trump Inauguration
Spencer S. Hsu and Peter Hermann, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "The D.C. government will pay $1.6 million to settle two lawsuits alleging police unlawfully detained more than 200 protesters in mass arrests the day of Donald Trump's presidential inauguration in January 2017, the parties told a federal judge Monday."
Demonstrators represented by the ACLU of the District of Columbia and Jeffrey L. Light alleged D.C. police violated the constitutional rights of journalists, legal observers and protesters by indiscriminately rounding them up in downtown Washington after rampaging vandals damaged property over several blocks on Jan. 20, 2017.
The city agreed to pay $605,000 to six defendants represented by the ACLU and nearly $1 million to about 200 others falsely arrested and held up to 16 hours without food, water or restrooms in a class-action case brought by Light, according to court filings.
In all, 234 people were arrested in the 2017 Inauguration Day protests near Franklin Square at 12th and L streets NW. Of them, 21 defendants pleaded guilty before trial — the only convictions arising from the arrests. Charges against all others were eventually dropped after prosecutors struggled in initial trials to tie defendants to specific damage.
In the ACLU case, in which photojournalist Shay Horse is the lead plaintiff, police agreed to memorialize changes to mass-arrest policies, including assigning each detainee an identification number that will go on a wrist band, a bag with their personal property and a photo of both the arrestee and officer.
Police also agreed to record searches from three angles with body-worn cameras when practicable and notify officers of standing police policies in First Amendment-protected mass events such as presidential inaugurations. D.C. police will also restrict the use of stingballs — explosive devices that release smoke, rubber pellets and chemical irritant within a radius of about 50 feet — to rolling them on the ground instead of throwing them in the air except under extreme circumstances, according to settlement papers awaiting approval by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of Washington.
“MPD’s unconstitutional guilt-by-association policing and excessive force, including the use of chemical weapons, not only injured our clients physically but also chilled their speech and the speech of countless others who wished to exercise their First Amendment rights but feared an unwarranted assault by D.C. police,” ACLU-DC Legal Director Scott Michelman said in a statement announcing the settlement.
“It speaks volumes that the District has chosen to settle rather than defend MPD’s obviously unconstitutional actions in court,” Light said in the statement.
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), the office of Attorney General Karl A. Racine (D) and D.C. police declined to comment on the settlement or its potential impact on policing future demonstrations, with Bowser saying at a news conference only, “We settled the matter.”
The D.C. attorney general’s office agreed in the proposal not to oppose motions to expunge arrest records of plaintiffs in both suits, and asserted its expectation to be included in any future mass demonstration law enforcement joint command.
Then-D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham, who left the department in January to run the force in Prince William County, Va., defended officers’ conduct and said he had urged District officials not to settle.
“For those folks to get a financial windfall after legitimately getting arrested says something about our civil litigation in the courts,” Newsham said in an interview.
Newsham said he remains confident officers “had probable cause” and arrested people involved in destruction.
“The folks that were arrested were operating as a unit,” Newsham said, recounting allegations that some individuals exchanged clothes to try to evade detection and caused more than $100,000 in damage over a 16-square-block area. “By all accounts, it was a coordinated effort to come to Washington, D.C., and to destroy property.”
The 2017 arrests followed a decades-long history of litigation over how police handle mass protests in Washington. The settlement comes as the ACLU, Black Lives Matter and other civil rights groups accuse the Trump administration and federal and military police of violently clearing Lafayette Square in June to enable a photo op of Trump holding a Bible outside the historic St. John’s Church.
Two D.C. police officers are also named as defendants in both ACLU cases from 2017 and 2020, the civil liberties group said.
The District has paid out more than $40 million since 2016 to settle police misconduct claims. Most went to six claims for wrongful conviction and death, but $5 million went to resolve at least 65 other suits alleging false arrest, excessive force, negligence and violations of constitutional rights, with amounts that often ranged from $25,000 to $200,000.
The sum also included the last $2.8 million of $11 million the District paid to settle lawsuits spawned by the mass arrest of almost 400 protesters and bystanders at Pershing Park in a September 2002 demonstration against the World Bank.
D.C. police in those cases apologized and abandoned “trap and detain” tactics in which officers surrounded and arrested large groups of people close to demonstrations, including some individuals who had their wrists and ankles bound together and were detained as long as 24 hours.
Police adopted new training methods and procedures to deliver warnings, establish individualized probable cause and provide for escape avenues after the Pershing Park settlement.
Payments in Monday’s proposed class-action settlement are mainly capped at $5,680 and will vary depending on how long individuals were held.
ACLU plaintiffs Gwen Frisbie-Fulton and her then 10-year-old son traveled from North Carolina to peacefully protest.
“We ended up fleeing through a cloud of pepper spray for doing nothing but chanting and holding signs,” she said in a statement. “The real lesson in how our Constitution works had to be this lawsuit, showing that there can be consequences when law enforcement abuses its power.”
Michelman and Light acknowledged the challenge police face differentiating between rioters and demonstrators in a mass protest but said the lawlessness of a few cannot justify unconstitutional mass arrests or a crackdown on free speech on many.
Michelman also cited the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, in which U.S. Capitol Police and supporting agencies made almost no arrests after being overwhelmed by thousands of Trump supporters who mobbed the building and disrupted Congress’s formal acceptance of the results of the presidential election that day.
“The contrast between the over-policing of constitutionally protected speech on Inauguration Day 2017 and the under-policing of a violent invasion of the U.S. Capitol earlier this year starkly demonstrates law enforcement’s institutional biases,” Michelman asserted. “A diverse group of protesters with a left-wing message was subjected to a mass arrest without cause, whereas armed White insurrectionists with a right-wing message stormed Congress, and the police let them walk away.”
D.C. police, who assumed command of the response to the Capitol riot, have said they were not prepared to make mass arrests inside the Capitol, that it would have taken too long and that their priority was to search, clear and secure the building so Congress could complete its election work.
Barricades of flaming tires in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, April 27, 2021. (photo: Twitter/@vantbefinfo)
Haiti: Protesters Block Streets in Response to Kidnappings
teleSUR
Excerpt: "The Center for Human Rights Research and Analysis has counted 157 kidnappings in this Caribbean country during the first quarter of the year."
ew protests against violence and insecurity in Haiti took place Tuesday in Port-au-Prince and surrounding regions.
Students at the State University's Faculty of Medicine set up barricades and burned tires to demand the release of professor Marie Josette Malvoisin, who was kidnapped as she was leaving the institution on Saturday.
Another group of citizens blocked the access roads to the international airport and threatened to block the streets leading to President Jovenel Moise's headquarters.
In the Petit Goave community, people blocked National Route 2 to denounce the kidnapping of local official Wilkens Dicette on Sunday.
During the past week, local outlets reported at least 13 kidnappings. Among the most recent criminal acts was the disappearance of nursing student Marline Flora Nerestant whose body was found by police in Tabarre on Monday.
On April 11, seven religious and three lay people were kidnapped in Croix des Bouquets, a suburb near Port-au-Prince. Two weeks later, three of the victims are still in captivity. In rejection of this incident, the Episcopal Conference promoted the closure of churches during the April 21 work stoppage.
The Center for Human Rights Research and Analysis has counted 157 kidnappings in this Caribbean country during the first quarter of the year.
Construction on the Dakota Access pipeline, Oct. 2016. A hearing was scheduled for Friday, April 9, 2021, to determine whether the Dakota Access oil pipeline should be allowed to continue operating without a key permit while the Army Corps of Engineers conducts an environmental review on the project. (photo: Tom Stromme/The Bismarck Tribune/AP)
Judge Gives Biden Administration 2nd Chance to Offer Dakota Access Pipeline Opinion
Dave Kolpack, Associated Press
Kolpack writes: "A federal judge faced with a motion on whether the Dakota Access oil pipeline north of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation should be shut down during an environmental review is giving the Biden administration another chance to weigh in on the issue."
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg held a hearing earlier this month to give the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers an opportunity to explain whether oil should continue to flow during its study, after an appeals panel upheld Boasberg's ruling that the pipeline was operating without a key federal permit. The Corps instead told the judge it wasn't sure if it should be shut down.
The decision not to intervene came as a bitter disappointment to Standing Rock, other tribes involved in the lawsuit and environmental groups. Even the judge appeared to be taken aback when the Corps opted to shrug its shoulders.
“I too am a little surprised that this is where things stand 60 days later,” Boasberg said at the hearing, referring to the three months he gave the Biden administration to catch up on proceedings. “I would have thought there would be a decision one way or another at this point.”
Boasberg said in a one sentence order filed late Monday that the Corps has until May 3 to tell him when it expects the environmental review to be completed and give “its position, if it has one," on whether the pipeline should be shut down. The Corps said earlier it expected the review to be done by March 2022.
Attorneys for the pipeline’s Texas-based owner, Energy Transfer, have argued that shuttering the pipeline now that economic conditions are improving would cause a major financial hit to several entities, including North Dakota, and the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation located in the state's oil patch.
Attorneys for Standing Rock, which straddles the North and South Dakota border, and other tribes said in court documents that Dakota Access is exaggerating the economic losses. And no matter what the true figure is, Standing Rock said, it should not come at the expense of other tribes "especially when the law has not been followed.”
The $3.8 billion, 1,172-mile (1,886-kilometer) pipeline was the subject of months of protests in 2016 and 2017, sometimes violent, during its construction. Standing Rock continued to press legal challenges against the pipeline even after it began carrying oil from North Dakota across South Dakota and Iowa to a shipping point in Illinois in June 2017.
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