New top story from Time: After Its Deployment in Upstate New York, Residents Raise Concerns Over Gun Violence Task Force

https://ift.tt/375f9sG

In the midst of nationwide calls to move away from age-old police tactics towards incorporating more community-led responses to gun violence, one U.S. Attorney’s decision to form a task force—with the goal of taking “proactive” measures to address gun violence in two cities in New York—has drawn criticism from local residents.

James P. Kennedy Jr., U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York, announced the formation of the Violence Prevention and Elimination Response (VIPER) task force on July 7, intended to combat a recent surge of gun violence in Rochester and Buffalo, NY. Combining the work of city, state and federal agencies, VIPER’s focus is to get high-level and well-known gun offenders off the cities’ streets, Kennedy said.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Similar federal-led initiatives are rolling out across other cities in the country. Last week, the Department of Justice launched a series of firearms trafficking strike forces in “five key market regions,” including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, to tackle potential sources of gun crimes.

So far this year, 40 people have been killed in Rochester, and the city is on pace to have its highest murder rate in history. (In 2020 52 people were killed). As of Tuesday, July 28, however, the city has gone 13 straight days without a homicide.

Buffalo has also recorded over 40 homicides as well this year, and is on track to eclipse the 65 murders that occurred last year.

On July 23, the task force released statistics from its first two weeks’ work: 138 arrests. 45 of those arrests were narcotics-related, 45 were firearm-related and 38 were violent felony arrests. The task force has also seized 22 weapons. (15 of the arrested people now face federal prosecutions, while another 21 individuals’ arrests are under review.)

“All residents in both Rochester and Buffalo deserve, and are entitled, to feel safe in their own homes,” Kennedy said in a July 23 press statement. “The tremendous coordination between federal, state, and local law enforcement combined with the outstanding cooperation we have received from the community have combined thus far to produce some pretty remarkable results.”

However, some community members speaking with TIME paint a different picture, with concerns that the task force appears designed to implement strategies similar to those seen during the height of the mass incarceration era in the 1990s.

“In this day and age with so many studies, so many evidenced-based resources surrounding violence interruption and strategies to reduce violence, it’s crazy to see folks that do not live in our community take it upon themselves to call in the [federal government] to criminalize us,” Stanley Martin, an activist who co-founded Free the People ROC and works with VOCAL-NY, tells TIME.

On Tuesday, VIPER officials, along with Kennedy and District Attorney Sandra Doorley, held a public meeting to discuss the violence in Rochester. Many who attended the meeting expressed concerns, particularly around the fact that the task force was formed without any input from community groups or leaders.

“There is no one [from] the Black community that is part of this task force,” says Shalonda Jones, an activist with the Community Justice Initiative who attended the meeting, says. Jones tells TIME she and others felt the meeting was insincere. “They don’t give us the vibe that they are here to help. They want us to snitch,” Jones says. They’re not offering us any resources.”

The Western District U.S. Attorney’s office did not immediately respond to TIME’s request for comment.

To many Rochester and Buffalo residents, the punitive mentality overlooks the need for investment—whether in educational programs, youth programs, job training, or countless other kinds of programs which are viewed as preventing or curtailing pipelines to criminal behavior—and greater cooperation between the community and the police, federal or otherwise.

Perhaps ironically, Rochester has also responded to calls to lessen police responsibilities with action. Earlier this year, the city launched a 24/7 Person in Crisis (PIC) team to respond to mental health calls in the city and, within months of its launch, doubled the pilot team’s size due to demand. As of May 31, 2021, the PIC team responded to a total of 1,774 calls.

Activists and community members say this is a step in the right direction, but that the city’s leadership hasn’t shown enough commitment to such initiatives.

“All we want to do is really have a seat at the table and be a part of the discussion,” Antonia Wynter, another activist with the Community Justice Initiative says. “If law enforcement’s goal is to bring people to justice that’s fine, but our goal [as community leaders] is to find the root causes as to why crime is happening. We can come in and work together.”

Comments

New top story from Time: Environmental Crises Are Forcing Millions Into Cities. Can Countries Turn Climate Migrants Into an Asset?

https://ift.tt/3sEUWCv When he was a child, James Owuor loved hearing the elders talk about the way life used to be. So it comes as something of a surprise that at 38, he is now the one tasked with the job of describing the Before Times in Kenya’s Rift Valley. Before Lake Baringo started to rise, before it flooded and stole everything he knew. “At the beginning, we just thought it was a bad rainy season, that the water would recede when the dry season came. It didn’t,” he says ruefully, peering over the edge of his motorized canoe at what used to be houses below the milky brown waters. Over the past decade, an unprecedented increase in annual rainfall—widely attributed to climate change —has raised the lake by 40 ft. (12 m), inundating nearly 22,000 acres and destroying homes, businesses and Roberts Camp, the lakeside resort where Owuor has worked for most of his adult life. In 2014, he watched the waters overtake the two-story-tall shorefront lodge. The restaurant went next...

New top story from Time: What Women Owe One Another on Black Women’s Equal Pay Day

https://ift.tt/2Vlj9D9 Given the durability of the so-called “ glass ceiling ,” it is apt that, when the U.S. government brought its first gender pay discrimination lawsuit, in the late 1960s, the company at the center of the case was a large New Jersy glassmaking facility . The company had been founded in the late 1880s , but by 1956 ran headlong into what it described in court documents as a shortage of male workers . The situation prompted the company, in an agreement with a union representing its workers, to hire women as “selector-packers,” forbidden from lifting items over 35 lbs. Beyond that one limitation, many men and women inside the company did the same work and were responsible for almost all the same tasks. And yet, they did not take home the same salaries—until the government’s lawyers ultimately prevailed at the U.S. Supreme Court in January 1970 , winning wage equality (and back pay) for the women. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The case established a cor...

New top story from Time: China Calls U.S. Policy ‘Misguided’ in High-Level Talks

https://ift.tt/3iPgwS0 TIANJIN, China — China came out swinging at high-level face-to-face talks with the United States on Monday, blaming the U.S. for a “stalemate” in bilateral relations and calling on America to change “its highly misguided mindset and dangerous policy.” Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng accused the administration of President Joe Biden of trying to contain and suppress China’s development, according to an official summary of his remarks in talks with visiting U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. The fundamental reason why relations between the two face serious difficulties is because some Americans portray China as an “imagined enemy,” the Foreign Ministry quoted Xie as saying. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Sherman, America’s No. 2 diplomat, is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit China since Biden took office six months ago. She was having separate meetings with Xie, who is in charge of U.S.-China relations, and Foreign Minister Wang Y...

New top story from Time: DOJ Reportedly Investigating Whether New York Gov. Cuomo Manipulated Data on COVID-19 Nursing Home Deaths

https://ift.tt/3u8AJab (ALBANY, N.Y.) — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo faced mounting challenges to his leadership on the coronavirus pandemic Wednesday as state lawmakers threatened to strip him of the power to issue emergency orders and federal investigators scrutinized his administration’s handling of nursing home data. The U.S. Justice Department has been examining the governor’s coronavirus task force and trying to determine whether the state intentionally manipulated data regarding deaths in nursing homes, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. The people, who weren’t authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Cuomo administration had not been cooperative with prosecutors, especially in the early stages of the probe, and for months had not produced documents and other data the Justice Department had requested. The inquiry began months ago in the Justice Department’s civil division, and parts of it have ...

New top story from Time: Many U.S. At-Home COVID-19 Test Results Could Be Going Unreported

https://ift.tt/3jdyI9f Popular at-home COVID-19 tests from Abbott Laboratories and Quidel Corp., available without a prescription, were launched without a mechanism for reporting results to health officials, potentially leaving many cases uncounted by authorities as the delta variant spreads around the U.S. How many of the products have been sold in pharmacies and online and used isn’t clear. When Abbott’s BinaxNOW Self Test became available through retail stores in late April, the company said it planned to make at least tens of millions each month. The company last month said a group of COVID tests including BinaxNOW brought in $1 billion in global sales. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] While COVID testing sites and labs are required to report their findings, the Food and Drug Administration relaxed requirements for some at-home tests to speed their path to market. Abbott said customers are encouraged to report results of its tests, while Quidel didn’t respond to a req...

New top story from Time: Why Lorde’s Solar Power Is a Pop Oddity

https://ift.tt/3DdBK5t As a pop star, Lorde stands out for many reasons: her reclusiveness on social media , her emotional acuity , her idiosyncratic dancing . But one of the key elements that makes her so distinctive from her peers is more theoretical: her use of the mixolydian mode. Without getting too technical, the mixolydian is a type of major scale in which the leading tone—used relentlessly in pop music to build tension and yearning—is replaced by a flat seven. The mixolydian is a primary part of blues music as well as much of early rock: think the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” or the Doors’ “L.A. Woman.” But it’s much less common in modern pop music, to the point that it was nearly nonexistent in charting songs when Lorde brought it back to the top with the foreboding “Royals” in 2013. (You can read a more granular, precise definition of mixolydian on Stereogum .) [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Four years after “Royals,” Lorde achieved similarly huge success with the ...

New top story from Time: Sunisa Lee Is Representing America in the Tokyo Olympics—and a Community America Left Behind

https://ift.tt/3zIdc1R In March 2019, a day before her 16th birthday and just over a year before the Olympic Trials were supposed to begin, Sunisa “Suni” Lee appeared on 3 Hmong TV , one of the most popular Hmong-language news shows in the Twin Cities. Cushioned between her parents, John Lee and Yee Thoj, wearing her Team USA jacket, the newscaster asked, “Do you feel you have high potential to go to the Olympics?” “Um, I think. I’m not really sure,” Lee says. Her father interrupts, “The important thing is that she has as much potential as anyone on the team.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Now, two years later, Suni Lee is a singular talent in the world of gymnastics—poised to carry both the hopes of the United States and a community that has not always felt a part of it. Lee is the youngest of six gymnasts representing the U.S. in Tokyo and the first Hmong-American to compete for Team USA. She has advanced to the finals in the all-around, beam and uneven bars events...

Big Study Casts More Doubt on Malaria Drugs for Covid-19, Reveals Greater Risk of Death Friday’s report in the journal Lancet is not a rigorous test of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine, but it is by far the largest look at their use in real world settings, spanning 671 hospitals on six continents. Friday’s report in the journal Lancet is not a rigorous test of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine, but it is by far the largest look at their use in real world settings, spanning 671 hospitals on six continents.

Friday’s report in the journal Lancet is not a rigorous test of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine, but it is by far the largest look at their use in real world settings, spanning 671 hospitals on six continents. from Top World News- News18.com https://ift.tt/3cWZ3CZ https://ift.tt/2LUfGDg Friday’s report in the journal Lancet is not a rigorous test of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine, but it is by far the largest look at their use in real world settings, spanning 671 hospitals on six continents.

New top story from Time: Indonesia Is Searching for a Missing Submarine With 53 People Aboard

https://ift.tt/32PnPlb JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesia’s navy ships are intensely searching the waters where one of its submarines was last detected before it disappeared with 53 people on board, as neighboring countries are set to join the complex operation. The KRI Nanggala 402 was participating in a training exercise Wednesday when it missed a scheduled reporting call. Officials reported an oil slick and the smell of diesel fuel near the starting position of its last dive, about 96 kilometers (60 miles) north of the resort island of Bali. Indonesia’s military said that five navy ships and a helicopter were taking part in the search while a hydro-oceanographic survey ship equipped with underwater detection capabilities is on its way to the site around the oil spills. Officials said they had not yet been linked to the missing submarine. Rescue ships from Singapore and Malaysia are expected to arrive Saturday. The military said Australia, the United States, Germany, Fran...

New top story from Time: Israel Says It Struck Targets in Syria in Retaliation for a Missile Attack

https://ift.tt/3dGION4 JERUSALEM — A missile launched from Syria was fired into southern Israel early Thursday, setting off air raid sirens near the country’s top-secret nuclear reactor, the Israeli military said. In response, it said it attacked the missile launcher and air-defense systems in neighboring Syria. The incident, marking the most serious violence between Israel and Syria in years, pointed to likely Iranian involvement. Iran, which maintains troops and proxies in Syria, has accused Israel of a series of attacks on its nuclear facilities, including sabatoge at its Natanz nuclear facility on April 11, and vowed revenge. It also threatened to complicate U.S.-led attempts to revive the international nuclear deal with Iran. The Israeli army said it had deployed a missile-defense system but could not confirm if the incoming missile was intercepted, though it said there had been no damage. The air raid sirens were sounded in Abu Krinat, a village just a few kilomete...

My precise view

Search This Blog