Tag Archives: county

Investigators About to Break Silence on Police Killing of 12-Year-Old Tamir Rice

by COEMonikaof Posted on May 11, 2015

Mother Jones

On Tuesday, nearly half a year since 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed at a community center park by a Cleveland police officer, the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department will make its first public statement about the progress of its criminal investigation. Sheriff Clifford Pinkney will review the timeline of the investigation from the day Rice was shot until present, and what remains to be done, according to a county official familiar with the case. Citing the ongoing investigation, Pinkney’s office says he plans to take no questions from the media following the statement.

The Sheriff’s department has remained quiet about the investigation ever since taking it over from the Cleveland Police Department in January, despite mounting questions about how long the process has taken in light of explicit video footage of the killing and the troubling police record of Timothy Loehmann, the officer who fired the fatal shots. The few details about the investigation that have come to light so far have been via court filings issued as part of the Rice family’s wrongful death suit against the city of Cleveland. Last week, Loehmann and fellow officer Frank Garmback filed a motion in that case seeking to invoke their fifth amendment rights against self-incrimination.

The Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department declined to comment on the record about the two officers’ role in the ongoing criminal investigation.

More MoJo coverage on police shootings:


Exactly How Often Do Police Shoot Unarmed Black Men?


The Cop Who Choked Eric Garner to Death Won’t Have to Pay a Dime in Damages


Philadelphia Cops Shoot and Kill People at 6 Times the Rate of the NYPD


Here’s What Happens to Police Officers Who Shoot Unarmed Black Men


Congress Is Finally Going to Make Local Law Enforcement Report How Many People They Kill


Here’s the Data That Shows Cops Kill Black People at a Higher Rate Than White People

Political infighting may have been a factor in the prolonged process: After Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson asked the county to take over the investigation in early January, the sheriff’s department requested help from Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, against Jackson’s wishes. DeWine had previously said that a 2012 police shooting involving another officer, Michael Brelo, revealed a “systemic failure” at the Cleveland PD. Brelo currently faces voluntary manslaughter charges for shooting and killing two unarmed black suspects during a car chase, and a verdict is expected this month. (Thirteen officers were involved that case, but Brelo was the only one charged.) The handover of the Rice case also coincided with the start of a new Cuyahoga County executive’s term.

Still, particularly against the backdrop of ongoing national news about officer-involved killings, the pace of the Rice investigation has been troubling, says Ayesha Bell Hardaway, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University and a former Cuyahoga County assistant prosecutor. “The lapse of time from Tamir’s death until now has been too great,” she says, adding that “the public’s confidence in the police department and the city of Cleveland is hanging in the balance.”

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Investigators About to Break Silence on Police Killing of 12-Year-Old Tamir Rice

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Where You Grow Up Has a Big Effect on How Much You Earn As An Adult

by ShelaChoaiv Posted on May 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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It’s pretty obvious that where you live as an adult has a major impact on your financial situation. It’s way more expensive to live in San Francisco, for example, than in Iowa. But a recent study suggests that where you grow up has a significant impact on your chances of financial success later in life.

The Equality of Opportunity Project, run by Harvard economists Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren, looked at tax records on 5 million families who moved between counties from 1996 to 2012. Analyzing those records, the researchers were able to measure the relative annual income differentials before and after moving. The researchers found several local factors seem to impact a child’s future earning capabilities: race and income segregation, exacerbated income inequality, quality of schools, crime, and the prevalence of two-parent households.

The full list of counties shows that DuPage County, Illinois, just west of Chicago, could be the best of the country’s top 100 counties in terms of children’s upward mobility. Simply by living there, a child could add about $200 to his or her annual income at age 26, a 15 percent premium over the county average nationwide. The worst county for future mobility, Baltimore City, puts children in a position to make more than 17 percent less than the county average.

To see how your county fares, check out the New York Times‘ interactive presentation of the study’s findings.

Chetty and Hendren write that their study “suggests that policy makers seeking to improve mobility should focus on improving childhood environments (e.g., by improving local schools) and not just on the strength of the local labor market availability of jobs.” In other words, trying to provide more economic opportunity for adults starts with leveling the playing field for kids, regardless of where they grow up.

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Where You Grow Up Has a Big Effect on How Much You Earn As An Adult

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How Californians Screwed Drought-Plagued California

by OliverSheets Posted on April 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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Solving California’s water crisis got a lot harder on Monday when a state appeals court struck down steeply tiered water rates in the city of San Juan Capistrano. Like many other California cities, this affluent Orange County town encourages conservation by charging customers who use small amounts of water a lower rate per gallon than customers who use larger amounts. The court ruled that the practice conflicts with Proposition 218, a ballot measure that, among other things, bars governments from charging more for a service than it costs to provide it.

The drought isn’t the only way Prop. 218 is hamstringing California cities. Early last year, San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency announced a controversial pilot program that would allow Google buses and other tech shuttles to use public bus stops for $1 a stop. Activists, who saw the shuttles as symbols of inequality and out-of-control gentrification, wanted the agency to charge Google much more than that and use the profits to subsidize the city’s chronically underfunded public transit system. But MTA officials argued that their hands were tied: Prop. 218 prevented them from charging more than the estimated $1.5 million cost of administering the program.

Prop. 218, the “Right to Vote on Taxes Act,” was a constitutional amendment drafted in 1996 by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, the group that led the tax revolt that swept California in the 1970s and eventually helped elect President Ronald Reagan. After 1978, when the group’s signature initiative, Prop. 13, began severely limiting property tax increases, cities and counties moved to plug their budgetary holes with other types of taxes and fees. Prop 218 was designed to constrain those workarounds by requiring that any new tax be approved by voters or affected property owners. For the purposes of the act, taxes included any fees from which a government derived a profit.

Prop. 218 has been widely criticized for making it harder for cities to raise revenues, but the recent cases with water rates and tech shuttles point to another issue: the way the initiative prevents state and local governments from addressing urgent social and environmental problems. It’s worth remembering that withdrawing water from California’s dwindling reservoirs to feed verdant lawns is in itself a tax of sorts, and Mother Nature may not wait until the next election to revoke our ability to levy it.

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How Californians Screwed Drought-Plagued California

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Marco Rubio’s 2016 Campaign Could Depend on This Billionaire Car Dealer

by TJJWileyuimnxfyo Posted on March 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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As Jeb Bush sucks up cash from Florida’s wealthy Republican donors for his all-but-announced presidential bid—his allies have set a goal of raising $100 million by the end of the month—many of the state’s wealthiest conservatives have passed over Sen. Marco Rubio, another possible 2016 contender, who like Bush hails from South Florida. But Rubio’s ability to compete for the Republican nomination, should he enter the race, may be preserved by one very rich man.

Norman Braman, an 82-year-old billionaire car dealer in Miami and former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, has taken a shine to the freshman senator and could spend up to $10 million on a Rubio run, according to the Miami Herald. “I will be providing substantial support and that will be public when that occurs,” Braman tells Mother Jones, while declining to confirm the $10 million number. Rubio is expected to make his 2016 bid official in the next few weeks.

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Marco Rubio’s 2016 Campaign Could Depend on This Billionaire Car Dealer

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Nude Parades, "Retard Olympics," And Other Twisted Prison Guard Games

by JulianE23bfftk Posted on March 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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The San Francisco sheriff’s office is asking the Department of Justice to investigate allegations that officials at the county jail forced inmates to fight for hamburgers and other rewards during gladiator-style matches. Speaking at a press conference Thursday, city public defender Jeff Adachi accused four sheriff’s deputies of twice pairing off a 150-pound inmate against a 350-pound inmate and betting on the outcomes. “I can only describe this as an outrageously sadistic scenario that sounds like it’s out of Game of Thrones,” he said.

The smaller inmate claimed one of the deputies threatened him with violence if he didn’t fight. “He told me he was gonna mace me and cuff me if I didn’t…comply with what he wanted,” Ricardo Palikiko Garcia said in a statement, adding that three weeks later, he still has bruises on his back and suspects he fractured a rib.

However twisted this case may be, it’s not an isolated incident. Some other examples of prison guards being accused of organizing gladiator-style fights and other humiliating games for prisoners:

Human cockfights: In 1996, an investigation by the Los Angeles Times exposed how guards at California’s Corcoran State Prison, paired rival inmates “like roosters in a cockfight, complete with spectators and wagering.” Officers also allegedly organized a ritual known as “gladiator day” in which inmates in the most violent unit were sent to brawl in an empty yard, cheered on by an official who served as an announcer. Guards would break up some fights by firing gas guns that discharged wood blocks or, if that didn’t work, by firing a rifle. The FBI investigated after a 25-year-old was killed during one such shooting. In 2000, eight prison guards accused of orchestrating the matches were acquitted of federal civil rights abuses by a grand jury.

Out of Solitary: In August 2012, a federal civil lawsuit was filed on behalf of seven inmates at a St. Louis, Missouri, jail who said they were forced by guards to fight and to punish each other, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Thirty more inmates joined the lawsuit in 2013, saying they were also required to fight. At least one attack was captured on video. Daniel Brown, the attorney representing the inmates, said prisoners were even taken out of solitary confinement to brawl. “The guards were actually taking inmates out of the cells, placing them in cells with other inmates, and forcing them to fight each other,” he told a St. Louis radio station.

“Retard Olympics”: In 2013, three corrections officers at a prison in York County, Pennsylvania, were accused of organizing competitions dubbed the “Retard Olympics,” in which a prisoner with bipolar disorder and another inmate were forced to do stunts like drinking a gallon of milk in an hour, as well as water mixed with pepper spray foam. Other challenges included eating a spoonful of cinnamon and snorting a line of spicy vegetable powder, as well as licking a guard’s boots. The guards denied any wrongdoing and described the allegations as “fabrications.” York County paid a $40,000 settlement to avoid going to court.

Nude Lines: A class-action lawsuit filed March 19 on behalf of hundreds of Illinois inmates alleges that more than 230 officials from a state corrections unit called Orange Crush sexually abused and beat inmates during “shakedowns” last year. During a shakedown in April 2014, officials allegedly forced inmates to take off their clothes and stand in line with their backs at 90-degree angles so each person’s genitals rubbed against the behind of whomever was in front of him. (Orange Crush referred to this position as “Nuts to Butts”). They were told to walk like this to the gym and were allegedly beaten with batons if they failed to follow orders.

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Nude Parades, "Retard Olympics," And Other Twisted Prison Guard Games

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Illegal Pot Farms Are Literally Sucking California Salmon Streams Dry

by PhilDrechsler Posted on March 27, 2015

Mother Jones

Outlet Creek watershed in Northern California’s Mendocino County. Scott Bauer

Northern California pot farmers are using up all of the water that normally supports key populations of the region’s federally protected salmon and steelhead trout.

That, at least, is the conclusion of a new study, published last week in the journal PLOS One, that examined four California watersheds where salmon and trout are known to spawn. In the three watersheds with intensive pot cultivation, illegal marijuana farms literally sucked up all of the water during the streams’ summer low-flow period, leaving nothing to support the fish.

Author Scott Bauer, a biologist with the state department of fish and wildlife, estimated the size and location of outdoor and greenhouse pot farms by looking at Google Earth images and accompanying drug enforcement officers on raids. He did not include “indoor” grows—marijuana grown under lamps in buildings.

After visiting 32 marijuana greenhouses in eight locations and averaging the results, Bauer extrapolated his findings to all greenhouses in the study area—virtually nothing else is grown in greenhouses in this part of the country. The sites contained marijuana plants at a density of about one per square meter, with each plant (taking waste and other factors into account) using about six gallons of water a day. Overall, he calculated, pot operations within the study yielded 112,000 plants, and consumed 673,000 gallons of water every day.

And that is water the area’s fish badly need. The Coho salmon population is listed as threatened under both state and federal Endangered Species Acts, and is designated as a key population to maintain or improve as part of the state’s recovery plan.

Bauer collected his data last year, at a time when California’s drought had already become its worst in more than 1,200 years. When I spoke to him at the time, he told me that pot farming had surpassed logging and development to become the single biggest threat to the area’s salmon. Now that that the drought is expected to extend into a fourth year, the same streams could run dry again this summer, and remain so for an even longer period of time.

Overall, the outdoor and greenhouse grows consume more than 60 million gallons of water a day during the growing season—50 percent more than is used by all the residents of San Francisco.

“Clearly, water demands for the existing level of marijuana cultivation in many Northern California watersheds are unsustainable and are likely contributing to the decline of sensitive aquatic species in the region,” Bauer’s study concludes. “Given the specter of climate change”—and the attendant rise of megadroughts—”the current scale of marijuana cultivation in Northern California could be catastrophic for aquatic species.”

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Illegal Pot Farms Are Literally Sucking California Salmon Streams Dry

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After Mother Jones Report, University of Arkansas Pulls Diary Critical of the Clintons

by k8qxuani Posted on March 20, 2015

Mother Jones

On Tuesday, I reported on the newly public diary of retired Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.), the longtime Clinton ally, which is included in the 89-year-old’s personal papers at the University of Arkansas. In entries penned during the 1980s, Bumpers was highly critical of the Clintons, dishing on the future First Couple’s “obsessive” qualities and alleged “dirty tricks” by Bill Clinton’s gubernatorial campaign. Bumpers, who gave the closing argument for the defense in President Clinton’s impeachment trial, became a close friend and confidante of the president later in his career. But the previously unreported entries revealed a more tense relationship in the early going, as Clinton vied for political elbow room with the Democratic icon.

In response to the Mother Jones piece, the University of Arkansas library has pulled the diary from its collection at the request of Bumpers’ son, Brent. Per the Arkansas Democrat–Gazette:

Brent Bumpers of Little Rock, son of the former senator, said he was “shocked” by the diary. He has questioned its origin and authenticity, saying nobody in the family had ever heard anything about Dale Bumpers keeping a dairy.

Brent Bumpers said his father, who is 89 years old, doesn’t remember keeping a diary. He said Dale Bumpers always admired the Clintons and wouldn’t have written the things the diary contains.

Brent Bumpers said he wants to review the diary, but he won’t have the opportunity for several days.

Although Dale Bumpers hasn’t personally requested that the diary be pulled, Laura Jacobs, UA associate vice chancellor for university relations, said Brent Bumpers is speaking and acting on behalf of his father regarding the Dale Bumpers Papers.

But the Bumpers diary could not have been written by anyone but Dale Bumpers. When not commenting on the various politicians he interacted with, it is filled with personal musings on his wife, Betty, and three kids; the strains of the job; can’t-miss events such as the annual Bradley County Pink Tomato Festival; and the trials of a first-time candidate at an Iowa presidential cattle call—all interspersed with the thoughtful reflections of a lawmaker who was generally regarded as such.

This is the second time in the last year that the University of Arkansas has made news by restricting access to a political archive in its special collections. Last year, the university’s library blocked the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news outlet, from accessing its collections because of a dispute over publishing rights. (The library ultimately backed down.)

With Hillary Clinton and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush both running for president, reporters (and opposition researchers) will have more access to archival records than perhaps ever before. The two candidates have nearly a century of public life between them; that’s a heck of a paper trail. This may not be the last time a little-noticed archive makes news.

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After Mother Jones Report, University of Arkansas Pulls Diary Critical of the Clintons

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Government Cancels Contract With Prison That Inmates Set on Fire

by CoySparkes Posted on March 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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Willacy County Correctional Center, the privately run Texas prison that inmates set on fire last month to protest inadequate health care, will no longer hold federal prisoners. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has canceled its contract with the facility, it announced Monday.

According to a spokesman for Management & Training Corp., the company that owns the prison, the government just doesn’t need the space at Willacy anymore, thanks to a falling federal inmate population. But the contract cancelation follows years of complaints from prisoners about overflowing sewage in the tents where they slept, excessive use of solitary confinement, and medical staff who prescribed Tylenol for every ailment. The February protest was at least the second inmate uprising in two years.

“This prison has been a horror ever since it opened in 2006,” said Carl Takei, an ACLU lawyer who visited Willacy and wrote a report last year about the grim conditions there. “This is a measure of much-needed accountability.”

All 2,800 of Willacy’s inmates were moved out of the prison immediately after last month’s uprising, which left parts of the facility uninhabitable. Officials had expected to reopen the prison within six months.

The Bureau of Prisons isn’t the first federal agency to pull out of Willacy. Until 2011, the prison held people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But after reports of guard-on-inmate sexual violence and maggots in the food, ICE relocated its detainees, and Management & Training Corp. signed a contract with BOP instead.

Takei said the ACLU is concerned that instead of shutting down, Willacy will be able to secure yet another federal contract. MTC told a local newspaper that it’s working on exactly that.

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Government Cancels Contract With Prison That Inmates Set on Fire

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Missouri Is About to Execute a Man Who’s Missing Part of His Brain

by CandelaAbendrot Posted on March 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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Cecil Clayton, 74, who had parts of his brain removed after an accident 40 years ago, is scheduled to be put to death on Tuesday. He was convicted of first-degree murder after killing a cop in 1996. Unless Missouri’s Supreme Court, a federal court, or Republican Gov. Jay Nixon accepts the evidence that Clayton is mentally unfit for capital punishment, his execution will proceed.

Missouri law states that a person cannot be executed if, as a result of mental disease or defect, he or she is unable to “understand the nature and purpose of the punishment about to be imposed upon him.” However, state law offers no mechanism for the defendant to set up a competency hearing after trial. The fact that Clayton was tried and sentenced before receiving an evaluation is complicating efforts to save him from the executioner, and creating what his lawyers call a “procedural mess.”

In 1972, Clayton was a sober, religious husband and father working at a sawmill in Purdy, Missouri. One day, a piece of wood flew from his blade, piercing his skull and entering his brain. Doctors eventually had to remove nearly one-fifth of his frontal lobe—the part of the brain that is crucial to decision making, mood, and impulse control. Clayton was completely transformed: His IQ dropped to 76, and he developed serious depression, hallucinations, confusion, paranoia, and thoughts of suicide. He relapsed into alcoholism, and his wife divorced him.

Clayton was officially diagnosed with chronic brain syndrome in 1983, which includes psychosis, paranoia, depression, schizophrenia, and decreased mental function. The severity of his condition rendered him unable to work. In 1979, a doctor said he was “just barely making it outside of an institution.” In 1984, another doctor found him to be “totally disabled” and the government placed him on disability benefits.

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Missouri Is About to Execute a Man Who’s Missing Part of His Brain

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Two Police Officers Shot During Ferguson Protest After Police Chief Resigns

by BillyEUHsodb Posted on March 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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Two police officers were shot near a protest outside the Ferguson Police Department on Wednesday night, according to St Louis police officials. In a press briefing just before 2 a.m. local time Thursday morning, St. Louis County police chief Jon Belmar confirmed that one officer was wounded in the shoulder, and another officer was shot in the face. Who fired the shots remains unclear. A spokesperson for the St. Louis County Police said the two officers sustained “very serious,” but non-life threatening injuries.

The protests came after Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III announced earlier on Wednesday that Police Chief Thomas Jackson would resign with one year’s salary and health insurance.

Jackson resigned a week after the US Department of Justice issued a scathing report about systemic race-based problems within the Ferguson, Missouri police department and court system. This comes the day after City Manager John Shaw resigned. Both will receive a year’s salary as severance ($96,000 for Jackson, $120,000 for Shaw), and a year’s worth of health insurance—a fact that was met with outrage both in Ferguson and on social media.

Municipal Judge Ronald J. Brockmeyer also resigned in the wake of the DOJ’s report, which accused the city administration of using police ticketing and court fines, imposed on the city’s largely African American population, as a means to raise money for the city budget. That context set the stage for violent police crackdowns in the city last August as people protested in the wake of Officer Darren Wilson shooting and killing Michael Brown. Wilson wasn’t indicted by a local grand jury, and the DOJ announced last week that it wouldn’t bring federal civil rights charges against him either. Many in the city want others to resign as well, including Knowles III and the city council.

The DOJ’s report highlighted the glaring disproportionate police ticketing of the city’s black population, and highlighted several racist emails sent by city and police administration officials. Two officers involved with the emails resigned last week, and the city’s top court clerk was fired.

The Department of Justice issued a statement shortly after Jackson’s press conference saying that it will continue working for a court-enforceable agreement to reform the city and police department’s “unconstitutional practices in a comprehensive manner.”

Protesters gathered at the city’s police department headquarters Wednesday night after the announcement, with police arresting at least one man and some accusing the police of provoking confrontations.

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Two Police Officers Shot During Ferguson Protest After Police Chief Resigns

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