“Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result. Likely, they weren’t thinking about many of the Act’s consequences that have become apparent over the years, including its prohibition against discrimination on the basis of motherhood or its ban on the sexual harassment of male employees,” Gorsuch wrote.
“But the limits of the drafters’ imagination supply no reason to ignore the law’s demands,” he continued. “When the express terms of a statute give us one answer and extratextual considerations suggest another, it’s no contest. Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit.”
LGBT activists were thought to face an uphill battle at the high court because Congress has spent more than four decades considering, but failing to pass, measures intended to expand the coverage of the 1964 law by explicitly adding sexual orientation to the list of protected traits.
Such legislation passed the Democrat-controlled House in 2007 and again last year and was approved by the Democrat-controlled Senate in 2013, with the latter two efforts also explicitly aimed outlawing workplace discrimination against transgender people. The bills never cleared both chambers in the same Congress.
That Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion was viewed as a major coup by gay rights advocates. They hoped his professed devotion to “textualism” — an often literal approach to reading Congressional enactments — would persuade him to embrace a reading that LGBT discrimination is sex discrimination because it involves treating someone differently at least in part due to gender.
Gorsuch did just that, sounding unequivocal in his conclusions about the half-century-old legal provision, known as Title VII.
“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids,” wrote Gorsuch, an appointee of President Donald Trump.
Gorsuch also took a jaundiced eye to suggestions that the court should try to divine why Congress never passed language explicitly adding LGBT protections to the workplace discrimination law.
“Speculation about why a later Congress declined to adopt new legislation offers a ‘particularly dangerous’ basis on which to rest an interpretation of an existing law a different and earlier Congress did adopt,” he wrote, quoting a prior case.
Winning Roberts over to back LGBT rights in the new rulingwas also notable, since he joined the rest of the court’s conservatives in 2015 in vocal dissent from the court’s landmark decision finding a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
Because the decision Monday is a matter of statutory interpretation, it is not an all-out guarantee of workplace protections for LGBT people in the future, since Congress is free to tinker with the law. But as a practical political matter, it seems highly unlikely Congress would reach a consensus to repeal those rights anytime soon.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh dissented from the new ruling, arguing that Gorsuch’s claimed humility about simply interpreting the law’s language was belied by the huge gulf between what lawmakers intended and what the court held.
Alito leveled one of the gravest insults one conservative can train on another as he accused his colleague of legislating from the bench.
“There is only one word for what the Court has done today: legislation,” Alito, wrote in a fiery dissent joined by Thomas. “The document that the Court releases is in the form of a judicial opinion interpreting a statute, but that is deceptive…A more brazen abuse of our authority to interpret statutes is hard to recall. The Court tries to convince readers that it is merely enforcing the terms of the statute, but that is preposterous.”
Alito also insisted that textualism doesn’t mean reading a statute so literally that the purpose of the authors is ignored.
“It calls for an examination of the social context in which a statute was enacted because this may have an important bearing on what its words were understood to mean at the time of enactment,” he wrote. “Textualists do not read statutes as if they were messages picked up by a powerful radio telescope from a distant and utterly unknown civilization.”
Kavanaugh’s dissent was more restrained in its tone. He said courts must give force to the “ordinary” meaning of the laws Congress passes, not a “literal” one.
“Both the rule of law and democratic accountability badly suffer when a court adopts a hidden or obscure interpretation of the law, and not its ordinary meaning,” the court’s newest justice wrote.
Kavanaugh said the majority was making “a mistake of history and sociology” because even a rudimentary look at the motivating forces behind the 1964 law shows that it wasn’t seeking to advance gay rights.
“Seneca Falls was not Stonewall. The women’s rights movement was not (and is not) the gay rights movement, although many people obviously support or participate in both,” he wrote.
The decision was a defeat for the Trump administration, which urged the justices to reject arguments that current law covered discrimination against LGBT employees and job applicants.
Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway lamented the ruling and argued that the court departed from Congress’ clear intent.
“We’ve had the Civil Rights Act for 56 years. Everybody has understood what it meant,” she said on Fox News Monday. “It’s very important though to stick to a statute or a law as it is written….If people want to change the law they should go to the congress. Our Congress doesn’t seem to like to work as hard as the other two branches.”
The Trump policy was a reversal of positions taken during the Obama administration, when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission held that both anti-gay and anti-transgender discrimination violated existing law, although courts divided on those issues.
Social conservatives who argued against finding protections for LGBT Americans in the existing statute sounded dejected Monday about the court’s ruling and warned that it will have unexpected effects.
“Redefining ‘sex’ to mean ‘gender identity’ will create chaos and enormous unfairness for women and girls in athletics, women’s shelters, and many other contexts. Civil rights laws that use the word ‘sex’ were put in place to protect equal opportunities for women,” said John Bursch of the Alliance Defending Freedom.
By contrast, LGBT activists were ecstatic about the high court’s decision.
“This is a landmark victory for LGBTQ equality,” said Human Rights Campaign President Alphonso David.
Prior to Monday’s ruling, court decisions or enforcement authorities in nearly half of U.S. states interpreted state law to prohibit workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. In the remaining states, LGBT workers had no legal protection against being fired, demoted or paid less on account of those traits.
LGBT individuals in many states still have no legal protection against other forms of discrimination, such as housing or public accommodations, although the new decision could bolster efforts to win such protection in the courts or in Congress.
“In many aspects of the public square, LGBTQ people still lack non-discrimination protections, which is why it is crucial that Congress pass the Equality Act to address the significant gaps in federal civil rights laws and improve protections for everyone,” David said.
The gay and transgender rights cases decided Mondayhave been lingering on the court’s docket for more than seven months. They were argued last October, on the second day of the court’s current term.
Calls for the court to weigh in on qualified immunity have grown amid the nationwide protests for law enforcement and policing changes that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.
The court, however, said Monday, that it would not hear any of the cases before it related to the issue in its next term, which is slated to begin in October.
Law enforcement officers who behave badly are rarely prosecuted, so lawsuits brought by victims of misconduct are often the only way to hold them accountable. And there’s no other way for victims to get compensation for a violation of their rights. But a string of decisions by the Supreme Court has made it very difficult for victims to win in court.
One of the cases the court refused to take up came from Idaho, where Shaniz West gave police the keys to her house when they were looking for her ex-boyfriend, who was a fugitive. But instead of going in, they bombarded the house for hours with tear gas, destroying everything inside. It turned out he wasn’t there, but when West sued, she lost. Lower courts sided with the police, saying no court had ever explicitly ruled that giving police authority to enter your home did not constitute permission to bomb it with tear gas.
In another case that the court refused, a man in Tennessee named Alexander Baxter was bitten by a police dog after he surrendered to police in Nashville, who were responding to reports of a burglary. Alexander said in his petition that the dog was released on him after he had already surrendered.
Justice Clarence Thomas, a member of the court’s conservative majority, wrote in the Baxter order that he would have preferred to review the case.
“I continue to have strong doubts about our §1983 qualified immunity doctrine,” Thomas wrote.
Taking up these or other cases would have presented the high court with an opportunity to jump into the national debate over whether suing police officers for misconduct should be made less challenging.
A 1982 Supreme Court rule on qualified immunity says police cannot be held legally responsible for violating someone’s civil rights unless courts have “clearly established” that the conduct is illegal. It was intended to protect police from frivolous lawsuits and prevent judges from second-guessing every split-second decision law enforcement officers must make.
Two Supreme Court justices on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum have repeatedly questioned the rule. Sonia Sotomayor, perhaps the court’s most liberal member, said it has created “an absolute shield for law enforcement officers.” Thomas has also said the doctrine has no basis in the Constitution.
Chief Mike Geier of the Albuquerque Police said he supported the reorganization. “Civilian expertise can make all the difference in resolving problems without the threat of arrest,” Chief Geier said.
The police have been criticized this month over the handling of a 911 call from the parents of a mentally unstable man, asking that their son be taken to a hospital for treatment. During the episode, an officer shot the 26-year-old man, Max Mitnik, wounding him in the head. The police claimed that Mr. Mitnik, who is now hospitalized in stable condition, came at them with a knife.
A rumor of a fatal police shooting in Minnesota led to a heated protest.
In a sign of the rage over police killings that is boiling around the country, a nonlethal encounter early Monday morning between the police and a black teenager in St. Cloud, Minn., quickly stirred rumors of a fatal shooting and a heated protest.
The episode began shortly after midnight, according to the St. Cloud police, when two officers saw reports on social media about a person with a firearm outside a local business. The officers confronted the person, an 18-year-old black man.
He tried to flee, the police said, and in a struggle that followed, the young man shot one of the officers in the hand. Both the officer and the young man were taken to the hospital; the young man had what the police chief, William Blair Anderson, described as minor injuries.
Reports quickly spread on social media that the encounter had ended very differently, though — with the police shooting and killing a black teenager. Within hours, a crowd of about 100 people had gathered and was headed for the police station.
Chief Anderson said at a news conference on Monday that the police understood that the crowd, acting on “misinformation, bad information, or just flat-out lies,” intended to take over the station. He said officers used tear gas to disperse the group, but that several buildings, including the station, were damaged. Four people were arrested on minor charges, he said.
Larry KudlowLawrence (Larry) Alan KudlowMORE, director of the National Economic Council, said Sunday that the $600 checks being sent to Americans on unemployment as part of coronavirus relief efforts are expected to end in July and called them a “disincentive” for people to get back to work.
“The $600 plus-up that’s above the state unemployment benefits they will continue to receive is in effect a disincentive. I mean, we’re paying people not to work. It’s better than their salaries would get,” Kudlow said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“That might have worked for the first of couple months. It will end in late July,” he added.
Current unemployment benefits stemming from the coronavirus stimulus package are “a disincentive” says White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow. “We’re paying people not to work. It’s better than their salaries would get.” #CNNSOTUpic.twitter.com/9iZB5Pe6bC
Kudlow suggested the additional checks are no longer needed as businesses reopen and unemployment rates fall.
He said the Trump administration is looking at other incentives, including smaller checks that “still provide some kind of business for returning to work.”
“I think we are on our way. We are reopening, businesses are coming back and therefore jobs are coming back,” Kudlow added. “We don’t want to interfere with that process.”
“I think that’s a fair point. I personally agree with you. I think people want to go back to work. I think they welcome the reopening of the economy. I think they’re anxious to get out and about,” Kudlow said.
He added that he has “heard from business after business” that there is “evidence this effect is taking place.”
Media captionThe Wendy’s drive-through restaurant was set on fire over Mr Brooks’ shooting
A medical examiner in Atlanta, Georgia, has declared the death of an African-American man to be homicide after he was shot in an encounter with police.
Rayshard Brooks died while fleeing from two white police officers in a restaurant car park late on Friday.
Protests erupted after his death, weeks after another black man, George Floyd, was killed in custody in Minneapolis.
Atlanta’s police chief quit and the police officer suspected of shooting Mr Brooks was fired.
Following his death, the Wendy’s drive-through restaurant where he was stopped was set on fire on Saturday.
Thousands of people joined Black Lives Matter protests across the US at the weekend.
In Chicago, a statue of the first US President, George Washington, was spray-painted with the words “slave owner”.
Washington was an active slave holder for 56 years. While spoke of his desire to end the practice, at the time of his death in 1799, 317 enslaved people lived on his Mount Vernon estate. The founding father left instructions in his will for the 123 slaves he owned outright to be freed, only once his wife Martha had died.
— Alexis McAdams ABC-7 (@AlexisMcAdamsTV) June 14, 2020
End of Twitter post by @AlexisMcAdamsTV
Crowds also gathered again in Washington DC near the White House while in Los Angeles, a large number of LGBT protesters marched with rainbow flags to denounce what they said was police brutality, racism and transphobia.
On Sunday evening, more than 100 people turned out in the rain at the site of the shooting for a peaceful protest.
According to the Fulton County medical examiner, the manner of death of Rayshard Brooks was “homicide.” He suffered two gunshots to the back that caused organ injuries and blood loss.
Image copyright AFP
Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard told CNN that three charges could apply against sacked police officer Garrett Rolfe: murder, felony murder and aggravated assault.
“But I believe in this instance, what we have to choose between, if there’s a choice to be made, is between murder and felony murder,” Mr Howard said.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigations (GBI) says officers were called to the fast-food restaurant because Mr Brooks had fallen asleep in his car, which was blocking the drive-through lane.
Media captionThe USA’s history of racial inequality has paved the way for modern day police brutality
Body camera footage released by the police department shows the two officers administering a sobriety test – where a suspect is asked, for instance, to walk in a straight line – and then a breathalyser test, with Mr Brooks’s permission.
The two officers then try to handcuff him, at which point their body cams fall off, but security camera video shows them struggling with Mr Brooks on the ground.
He then grabs an officer’s Taser (electric stun gun) and breaks free from the officers, running away.
Image copyright EPA
Image caption
Rayshard Brooks (undated photo)
As he is chased, Mr Brooks is seen turning around and pointing the Taser before continuing to run and then being shot.
“As I pursued him, he turned and started firing the Taser at me,” Mr Rolfe told a supervisor after the shooting in a videotaped conversation. “He definitely did shoot it at me at least once.”
GBI spokeswoman Nelly Miles said she could not confirm whether Mr Brooks had indeed fired the Taser, the Associated Press reports.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said she did not believe the shooting was a “justified use of deadly force”.
This is the 48th “officer-involved shooting” the GBI has investigated this year, according to ABC News. Of those cases, 15 were fatal.
U.S. citizen Paul Whelan attends a sentencing hearing on Monday at the Moscow City Court on charges of espionage against Russia.
Anton Novoderezhkin/TASS via Getty Images
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Anton Novoderezhkin/TASS via Getty Images
U.S. citizen Paul Whelan attends a sentencing hearing on Monday at the Moscow City Court on charges of espionage against Russia.
Anton Novoderezhkin/TASS via Getty Images
Paul Whelan, a U.S. citizen who was arrested in Moscow in 2018 on charges of espionage, has been found guilty in a closed trial and sentenced to 16 years in prison in a case that has strained relations between the two countries.
The verdict was read in a Moscow court on Monday as Whelan stood in the defendant’s cage holding a sign that read “Sham trial!”
Secrecy has shrouded the case since the December 2018 arrest of Whelan in his Moscow hotel room. The case of the 50-year-old former U.S. Marine who holds passports from the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom and Ireland, has become a thorn in the side of U.S.-Russia relations.
Days after his arrest, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said in a statement that he had been detained while on a “spy mission.” Later, officials said he was caught with a flash drive containing classified information.
Whelan pleaded not guilty and has denied the charges of espionage, maintaining that he was set up and that he was given a flash drive by an acquaintance that he thought contained family photos.
The prosecution said Whelan held the rank of “at least colonel” with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.
After his arrest, BorgWarner, an American automotive parts supplier, confirmed that Whelan works for the company, serving as its director of global security.
“He is responsible for overseeing security at our facilities in Auburn Hills, Michigan and at other company locations around the world,” the company said in a statement to NPR.
U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan condemned Monday’s verdict. An embassy spokeswoman quoted him as saying, “This secret trial in which no evidence was produced is an egregious violation of human rights and international legal norms.” Sullivan has also criticized the lack of access to Whelan by embassy staff.
One of Whelan’s lawyers, Vladimir Zherebenkov, relayed details of his closed trial, which began on March 23.
According to Zherebenkov, his client called Monday’s proceedings “slimy, grubby, greasy Russian politics. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted, “We demand Paul’s release!”
It is unacceptable that Paul Whelan has been denied necessary medical treatment until his condition became dire. We demand Paul’s release.
In June of last year, Whelan appealed to Trump, saying the president could “keep America great” by “aggressively” protecting U.S. citizens such as himself. The White House has been largely silent on the case.
In a statement after the verdict, his brother David Whelan said he believes Monday’s conviction increases the chances that Paul will be released as part of a prisoner swap.
NPR’s Lucian Kim in Moscow contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump gave a speech at the commencement ceremony for army cadets on June 13, 2020 … [+] in West Point, New York. However, it was something that he did on a ramp after the speech that attracted attention on social media. (Photo by David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)
Getty Images
Well, a short walk certainly ramped up the chatter and speculation, so to speak.
Social media was abuzz about a 25 second video of President Donald Trump descending a ramp after he gave a speech at the West Point Commencement at West Point, New York. He didn’t exactly go down the ramp Gangnam style. Instead, he walked down the ramp fairly carefully. That led to lots of speculation about Trump’s health on social media, because that’s what the Twittersphere, the Facebook-o-sphere, and other social media spheres do.
Trump then responded to this speculation on Twitter, because that’s what Trump does:
This spawned the creation of the hashtag #RampGate. So if you noticed that #RampGate was trending on Twitter this weekend, don’t think, “oh no, what did ramps do now?” Ramps are still cool. The hashtag wasn’t the result of some recent ramp-based policy decision either:
Instead, the hashtag accompanied a number of tweets postulating whether Trump’s ramp walk was a sign of some larger health issue or cognitive decline as this tweet indicated:
By the way, that’s not really Scott Pelley or Trump, and “cognitive incline” is not a real medical term. Some of the tweets also compared Trump’s walk with President Barrack Obama’s ramp romp while he was President:
And raised what Trump had tweeted in 2014:
There was certainly no shortage of opinions. Why go to a doctor then when you can just post a 25-second video of yourself and be diagnosed on Twitter by strangers?
Umm, it’s because you can’t tell much from a video like that. In general, a 25 second video doesn’t tend to reveal a whole lot about a person’s health, unless something very obvious happens. It would be one thing if a video were to show someone getting knocked over by a walrus. Then you could reasonably guess that any immediate subsequent injuries could have been walrus-induced. This would especially true if you noticed something new post-walrus that wasn’t around pre-walrus.
Otherwise, there’s only so much that you can garner by watching a person’s gait from afar. That’s not just afar, but afar on a video. That’s afar, on a video, on the Internet. That’s afar, on a video, on the Internet, while you are in a chair or maybe even on the toilet.
Typically, diagnosing most medical conditions requires actually interviewing the person, knowing the person’s real medical history, completing an appropriate physical exam, and possibly running some tests. By contrast, the video clip offered only a brief view of the President walking down one specific ramp, at one specific time, under one set of specific circumstances without offering much more. So it’s not very fair to come up with any specific diagnoses.
Lots of different things could be going on when someone appears to be moving down a ramp a bit more slowly. Sure, more serious conditions such as strokes, brain hemorrhages, breathing problems, heart disease, movement disorders, or other neurological issues can affect your ability to walk. Sure, cognitive decline could make it more difficult for you to navigate. But nothing in the video really offered compelling support for any of these diagnoses.
In fact, there are lots of much less serious possible explanations for what you saw in the video. Here are just 10 of them:
1. The ramp could have been slippery.
Some on Twitter argued that the ramp was not very long. But length can be a very subjective thing. A person may claim that something is long while others may disagree and argue that the person is exaggerating. In the end, length is not the only thing that matters. There are other factors such as its angle and its slipperiness. (We are still talking about ramps aren’t we?) Plus, what’s not slippery for one person may be slippery for another. Even if the ramp were not made out of slippery material, parts of it could have been a bit slick. For example, what if someone had previously rolled a medicine ball covered in Vaseline down the ramp?
2. His shoes could have been slippery.
Most people probably don’t buy special shoes for ramps. Nonetheless, not all shoes are ideal for all surfaces, especially if your shoes are still new. Also, a variety of things can make shoes much more slippery such as rain water, shoe polish, or baby oil dripping from your body.
3. He could have stepped in dog poop or gum.
Have you ever tried to remove something from your shoes by dragging your feet along the ground? No, it’s not the coolest thing to do to leave a trail of dog poop on a ramp. But it happens.
4. He could have been deep in thought.
Hey, some people are just really thoughtful. Who knows what kind of thoughts may be swirling in your head after you’ve made a big speech such as “boy, I gave such as great speech,” or “they love me, they really love me” or “ disinfectants and injection, injection and disinfectants, hey, how about injecting disinfectants,” or something else. In turn, it’s not uncommon to amble more slowly when you’ve got deep thoughts brewing.
5. He could have had an injury to his lower extremities or some other musculoskeletal issue from an accident, Parkour, or something else.
Certainly an injury or some pain in your feet, legs, knees, or hips can make you walk more gingerly, especially when going down a ramp or stairs.
6. He could have been dehydrated or otherwise feeling lightheaded.
Feeling lightheaded isn’t going to make you very light on your feet. Dehydration, nervousness, or seeing One Direction can all lead to such feelings.
7. He could have had some difficulty seeing.
The glaring sunlight could impair your vision for a bit, maybe even longer, depending on the exposure. That’s why you should avoid staring directly at the sun, even during a solar eclipse. Allergies, dust, or spray tan dripping into your eyes can also impair your sight for a bit.
8. He could have had some gastrointestinal problems.
The words “need to go number two” and “skipping down the ramp” rarely go together. A tummy ache, diarrhea, and gas can all make for a slow and more delicate descent.
9. His clothes could have been too tight or otherwise hampering his movements.
In this case, tight means not loose enough to allow freer movement, as opposed to “that’s tight, bro.” As legendary NFL quarterback Tom Brady showed recently in a golf match, sometimes it’s better to move a little more carefully:
That ended up being a split decision. Speaking of golfing and undergarments, another thing that may hamper movement is the whole wedge issue.
10. He could have been experiencing side effects from medications.
Medications such as those for high blood pressure can cause dizziness, lightheadedness, and other side effects.
This is just a sample of the possibilities. You may agree or disagree with Trump’s statements, actions, and policies. But making judgments about his health from afar is a different story. As I covered previously for Forbes, early in 2019, Sean Patrick Conley, DO, the Physician to the President, did declare that Trump was in “very good health” and “will remain so for the duration of his Presidency, and beyond.” That type of guarantee is traditionally reserved for cookware and backpacks. So who knows what his health may be like now. Nevertheless, the only people who can really tell are his doctors.
After all, it’s very difficult to rule in or out most medical conditions simply based on watching someone without doing a real history and physical. Testing may be necessary too. You certainly can’t tell much from a 25-second video on the Internet, unless, of course, something very obvious like a walrus is involved.
Rayshard Brooks’ widow Tomika Miller and other family members will address media on Monday morning, along with family attorneys L. Chris Stewart and Justin Miller.
A March for Justice is also scheduled, starting at the Richard B. Russell Federal Building and ending at the state Capitol.
Brooks was fatally shot by police in Atlanta on Friday night outside of a Wendy’s after police responded to a call about him being asleep in his car in the drive-thru lane. The Fulton County Medical Examiner’s office ruled his death a homicide Sunday night, caused by two shots to the back.
And in Kentucky, no-knock warrants such as the one used when police in Louisville crashed into Breonna Taylor’s apartment may be passing into history. The city has already banned them, a state lawmaker says she will offer a bill this week banning them statewide, and U.S. Sen Rand Paul, R-Ky, is pressing for a nationwide ban.
A closer look at some recent developments:
As protests continued in Minneapolis, some police officers have quit while others are resigning, citing a lack of support from department and city leaders.
Beyonce sent Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron a letter calling for the arrest of the officers involved in Breonna Taylor’s death.
A California woman apologized for ‘disrespectful’ behavior after a viral video shows her threatening to call the police on a man who stenciled ‘Black Lives Matter’ on his property.
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L.A. sheriff to provide update on hanging death of Robert Fuller
The Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva on Monday will discuss the death of Robert Fuller, 24, a Black man whose body was found Wednesday hanging from a tree near Palmdale City Hall. The Sheriff’s Department is leading the investigation and has said it is a possible suicide, which has drawn the ire of Fuller’s family and others in the community who want the state attorney general to take over the probe.
“I take my commitment to transparency very seriously,” Vallanueva tweeted. “As such I want to thank Attorney General Xavier Becerra for agreeing to monitor our investigation.”
Ten days earlier, the body of Malcolm Harsch, 38, was found hanging in Victorville, 50 miles east of Palmdale. San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Jodi Miller said no indication of foul play had been found.
Breonna Taylor’s legacy could be an end to no-knock warrants
Louisville’s ban on no-knock search warrants, the kind used in the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor, may be the start of something bigger. State Rep. Attica Scott, D-Louisville, said she expects to prefile within the next week a bill to ban no-knock warrants in Kentucky. And U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has already said is filing a bill he’s calling the “Justice for Breonna Taylor Act” that effectively would end no-knock warrants in the U.S.
Police investigating a drug case obtained a warrant with a no-knock provision for Taylor’s apartment, though officials have said that officers knocked before crashing through the door. Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker has said he did not hear anyone announce that they were police, and fired at what he thought were intruders. Taylor was killed in the ensuing gunfight. No drugs were found.
– Matt Mencarini, Louisville Courier Journal
Mom of Black teen stopped for jaywalking in Tulsa: ‘It’s nonsense”
The mother of one of two Black teens involved in a confrontation with Tulsa police officers who accused them of jaywalking said the boys were walking down a back road where there was no sidewalk. Police have released footage of the June 4 incident on Facebook, saying the officers were members of a special Gang Unit and that the “stop occurred just outside of a complex in which there is a documented increase in criminal activity.” One teen was released, the other struggled with the officers and was arrested. An investigation of the stop is underway.
“It’s nonsense,” Tawanna Adkins told CNN, who said the boys were visiting a relative. “They weren’t jaywalking.”
Minneapolis police officers quit, resign amid George Floyd protests
At least seven Minneapolis police officers have resigned since widespread unrest began following the death of George Floyd last month, and more than half a dozen are in the process of leaving, department officials told The Star Tribune. Some officers said they were upset with Mayor Jacob Frey’s decision to abandon the Third Precinct station during the protests where demonstrators set the building on fire after officers left.
The department currently has about 850 officers, almost 40 short of the number authorized for this year, the newspaper reported.
LaFace Skincare CEO Lisa Alexander apologizes after viral video backlash
The woman in a video that gained national attention last week has apologized for confronting and threatening to call police on a Filipino man stenciling “Black Lives Matter” on his San Francisco property. Lisa Alexander, founder and CEO of LaFace Skincare, was later identified on social media. She issued an apology Sunday saying, “I should have minded my own business.”
“There are not enough words to describe how truly sorry I am for being disrespectful to him last Tuesday when I made the decision to question him about what he was doing in front of his home,” Alexander said in a statement.
The video shows Alexander and a man, later identified as Robert Larkin, asking James Juanillo whether he lives in the house before asserting that they know he doesn’t live there and is therefore breaking the law. Juanillo doesn’t answer the couple, but invites them to call the police. Juanillo told KGO-TV he believed the couple accused him of defacing private property because they didn’t think he belonged in the wealthy Pacific Heights neighborhood.
Protests continue in Berlin, Milan against police brutality
Protests against police brutality continued abroad Sunday in the wake of George Floyd demonstrations across the U.S. In Berlin, demonstrators formed a human chain across the city in a message against racism, discrimination and social inequality. They were linked by colored ribbons, forming what organizers called a “ribbon of solidarity.”
In Milan, Italy, protesters scrawled ’’rapist” and “racist’’ in Italian on the statue of late Italian journalist Indro Montanelli on Saturday. Montanelli was a correspondent for a fascist newspaper in the 1930s and had a 12-year-old Eritrean while stationed there. Activist group Retestudentimilano said in an Instagram post that “ignoring or underestimating the seriousness of having before our eyes, in the center of Milan, a statue testifying to racist crimes denotes an obvious lack of historical and moral awareness.”
Protesters in California, New York seek justice for the Black LGBTQ community
Demonstrators in California and New York took to the streets on Sunday to honor and demand justice for Black queer and trans people who have died in police custody. In Los Angeles, thousands marched along a stretch of Hollywood Boulevard, where an ‘All Black Lives Matter’ mural was painted in rainbow colors, the Los Angeles Times reported. The march, also called ‘All Black Lives Matter,’ was organized by Black leaders in the LGBTQ+ community.
Meanwhile, in New York, thousands gathered in the courtyard of the Brooklyn Museum and surrounding parkway Sunday for a silent march in support of Black transgender lives, NBC News reported. The protest comes after the killings of two Black trans women – Riah Milton in Ohio and Dominique “Rem’Mie” Fells in Pennsylvania – in the last week, as well as Tony McDade, who was fatally shot by a Tallahassee police officer in May, Layleen Polanco, who died while in solitary confinement on Rikers Island, and Nina Pop, who was stabbed to death in Missouri in May.
“Show them what community sounds like! This is what community sounds like,” the protesters, clad in white, chanted as they walked, according to Twitter posts.
Beyonce urges arrest of police officers involved in Breonna Taylor’s death
More than three months after Breonna Taylor was fatally shot in her Kentucky apartment by Louisville Metro Police officers, Beyonce is calling on the state to “take swift and decisive action in charging the officers.” In a letter addressed to Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron and shared on her website, Beyonce called for criminal charges to be brought against LMPD Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and officers Myles Cosgrove and Brett Hankison, and for the AG to “commit to transparency” during the investigation and prosecution processes.
“Three months have passed – and Breonna Taylor’s family still waits for justice,” Beyonce wrote. “Ms. Taylor’s family has not been able to process and grieve. Instead, they have been working tirelessly to rally the support of friends, their community, and the country to obtain justice for Breonna.”
– Hannah Yasharoff and Sarah Ladd, USA TODAY
A Michigan case similar to Floyd’s death may reopen six years later
Six years after his death, the family of McKenzie Cochran — a Ferndale, Michigan, man who died when security officers pinned him to the floor at a mall — may get the justice they have long been seeking in the wake of the George Floyd protests. Like Floyd, Cochran died at the hands of white security officers who held him face down on a mall floor, including one who said: “If you can talk, you can breathe.”
Cochran died that day. The autopsy said the cause was compression asphyxiation. No charges were filed, his death ruled an accident. On Friday, Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper, facing mounting pressure from protesters amid a thundering Black Lives Matter movement, asked the state Attorney General’s Office to review the case.
– Tresa Baldas, Detroit Free Press
Sen. Tim Scott: Trump didn’t know the significance of Tulsa and Juneteenth
President Donald Trump was unfamiliar with the significance of June 19 when his campaign scheduled a rally for that date in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but rescheduled the event when he learned the day know as Juneteenth marks the end of slavery in the U.S., according to South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.
“I’m thankful that he moved it,” Scott – the only African-American Republican in the Senate and one of only three Black senators in total – said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” Sunday. “The president moving the date by a day once he was informed on what Juneteenth was, that was a good decision on his part.” Coupled with the significance of the date, the choice of Tulsa – where a white mob killed hundreds in 1921 as it burned and looted an affluent Black neighborhood – was decried by many as racially insensitive amid nationwide protests against discrimination.
“The further and further the Democrats tack left, and the further you get to where it’s the defunding the police,” said Scott Frostman, GOP chairman in Wisconsin’s Sauk County, which Obama won easily in 2012 but flipped to Trump four years later. “I think we have the opportunity as Republicans to talk to people a little bit more about some common sense things.”
Biden has rejected a national movement to defund police departments. But elections are often painted in broad strokes, and local party officials expect Trump — with his law and order rhetoric — will be the beneficiary of what they see as Democratic overreach.
“The other side is overplaying its hand, going down roads like defunding the police and nonsense like that,” said Michael Burke, chairman of the Republican Party in Pinal County, Arizona, a Trump stronghold in 2016.” “Most of the American people are looking like that saying, ‘Really?’”
By most objective measures, Trump will need something to drag Biden down. He has fallen behind Biden in most swing state polls, and he lags the former vice president nationally by more than 8 percentage points, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. A Gallup poll last week put Trump’s approval rating at just 39 percent, down 10 percentage points from a month ago. Democrats appear competitive not only in expected swing states, but in places such as Iowa and Ohio, which Trump won easily in 2016.
Little of that data is registering, however. State and local officials point to Trump’s financial and organizational advantages and see Biden as a weak opponent. They’re eager for Trump to eviscerate him in debates. “While the Democrats have been spending their time playing Paper Rock Scissors on who their nominee is going to be, we’ve been building an army,” said Terry Lathan, chair of the Alabama Republican Party.
James Dickey, chairman of the Texas Republican Party, said it took Biden “days to figure out how to even successfully operate, or communicate out of a bunker” and that he “has clearly not been able to deal with any real challenging interview.”
Local officialsbrush off criticism of Trump by Republican fixtures such as former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who said last week that Trump “lies all the time.” They dismiss press accounts of the race. Dennis Coxwell, the chairman of Georgia’s Warren County Republican Party, said: “It’s gotten to a point where I cannot believe anything that the news media says.”
Many admire Trump’s bluntest instincts — the same ones that have cost him among women and independent voters, according to polls. “The left called George Bush all kinds of names and just savaged him all the time … and Bush never said a word,” said Burke, who worked for Trump in the late 1980s and early 1990s overseeing his fleet of helicopters. “It was frustrating for those of us on the right. Now a guy comes along, you attack him, you’re getting it back double barrel. And everybody’s sitting around saying, ‘Yeah, that’s right, give it to ‘em.’”
And most of all, they put their confidence in an expectation that the economy will improve by fall.
Doyle Webb, chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party and general counsel to the Republican National Committee, said the only concern that he would have about Trump’s reelection prospects is “if the economy had another downturn.”
“But I don’t see that happening,” Webb said.
Instead, he predicted an improving job outlook and a return to “the old Clinton mantra: ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’”
“I think that people will be happy,” Webb said, “and [Trump] will be re-elected.”
It’s a widely-held view. In Pennsylvania last week, Veral Salmon, the Republican Party chairman of the state’s bellwether Erie County, measured enthusiasm for Trump by the large number of requests he has received for Trump yard signs. In Maine, Melvin Williams, chairman of the Lincoln County Republican Committee, saw it in a population he said is “getting sick of this bullshit,” blaming coronavirus-related shutdowns on Democrats. And across the country, in heavily Democratic San Francisco, John Dennis, the chairman of the local GOP, was encouraged by the decreasing number of emails from the “Never Trump” crowd.
Not in his city, but nationally, Dennis said, “I’m pretty confident that [Trump] is going to pull it off.”
The death of Rayshard Brooks, a black man killed by a white police officer in Atlanta on Friday, was a homicide caused by gunshot wounds to the back, the Fulton county medical examiner’s office has said, as the US headed into a fourth week of unrest over police violence.
An autopsy conducted on Sunday showed that Brooks, 27, died from blood loss and organ injuries caused by two gunshot wounds, an investigator for the medical examiner said in a statement. The manner of his death was homicide, the statement said.
Brooks’s death reignited protests in Atlanta after days of worldwide demonstrations against racism and police brutality prompted by the death of George Floyd, an African American, in police custody in Minneapolis on 25 May.
On Sunday night riot police gathered at a police precinct a few miles from the scene of his killing after reports of threats to burn down a Wendy’s restaurant. They were followed by hundreds of protesters, a handful arriving with cases of water. A chant of “This is not a riot!” went up and one man told police he expected they were there with the “same peaceful intentions” as protesters.
Brooks’s fatal encounter with police came after an employee of a Wendy’s in Atlanta phoned authorities to say that someone had fallen asleep in his car in the restaurant’s drive-through lane.
Recorded on the officer’s body camera and a surveillance camera, the encounter seemed friendly at first as Brooks cooperated with a sobriety test and talked about his daughter’s birthday.
“I watched the interaction with Mr Brooks and it broke my heart,” Atlanta’s mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, said on CNN. “This was not confrontational. This was a guy that you were rooting for.”
But when an officer moved to arrest him, Brooks struggled with him and another officer at the scene before breaking free and running across the parking lot with what appears to be a police Taser in his hand, a bystander’s video showed.
Rayshard Brooks was shot and killed during an encounter with Atlanta police on Friday. Photograph: Stewart Trial Attorneys Handout/EPA
A video from the restaurant’s cameras shows Brooks turning as he runs and possibly aiming the Taser at the pursuing officers before one of them fires his gun and Brooks falls.
Bottoms said on Saturday: “I do not believe this was a justified use of deadly force.”
Atlanta’s police chief, Erika Shields, resigned over the shooting. Garrett Rolfe, the officer who shot Brooks, was fired, and the other officer involved in the incident, also white, was put on administrative leave.
As demonstrators in Atlanta took to the streets and called for the officers in Brooks’s case to be criminally charged, the Wendy’s restaurant was set on fire.
On Sunday police offered a $10,000 reward and published photos of what appeared to be a masked white woman being sought in connection with the fire.
Police said they were seeking those responsible for the blaze, including a woman who was “attempting to hide her identity”. The department posted photos on social media of what looked to be a young white woman wearing a black baseball cap and face mask, and a video clip filmed by a protester that appeared to show a woman encouraging the flames.
“Look at the white girl trying to burn down the Wendy’s,” the man recording the video can be heard saying. “This wasn’t us.”
Lawyers for Brooks’s family said he was the father of a young daughter who was celebrating her birthday on Saturday. They said the officers had no right to use deadly force even if he had fired the Taser, a non-lethal weapon, in their direction.
Prosecutors would decide by midweek whether to bring charges, said the Fulton county district attorney, Paul Howard. “[The victim] did not seem to present any kind of threat to anyone, and so the fact that it would escalate to his death just seems unreasonable,” Howard told CNN.
However, the president added, “this does not mean that the virus has gone and that we can completely drop our guard. The summer of 2020 will be a summer unlike any other and we will need to watch the evolution of the epidemic to be prepared in case it comes back with renewed strength.”
Which other EU countries are reopening their borders?
The European Commission encouraged all internal border restrictions to be lifted from Monday; however, only a small number of nations have announced they will re-open.
Belgium, Croatia, Switzerland and Germany fully open their borders on Monday, with traffic police and officials enforcing the restrictions no longer present.
The Czech Republic is allowing unrestricted travel to and from 26 states but is still banning people from Belgium, Portugal, Sweden and the UK.
Greece has opened its borders and is allowing travellers from farther afield such as Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea to enter.
Italy already reopened its borders on 3 June as has Poland, which opened to EU travellers on 13 June.
Image copyright Reuters
Image caption
German tourists will be able to visit Spain’s Balearic islands as part of a pilot scheme
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the country would allow free travel with EU countries from 21 June, except for Portugal. However Spain is allowing German tourists to visit its Balearic Islands from Monday as part of a pilot scheme to boost its tourism sector.
Its border with Portugal remains closed until 1 July.
Austria will lift its restrictions on 16 June but a ban on travellers from Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom remains in place.
Sweden and Luxembourg never closed their borders.
France to hold delayed elections
Mr Macron confirmed that the second round of municipal elections, originally scheduled for March, will go ahead on 28 June.
But, he said, mass gatherings will need to remain “tightly controlled” because “they are the main occasions for spreading the virus”.
The announcement means that all of mainland France will now be in the “green zone” virus alert level.
The overseas territories of Mayotte and French Guiana will remain at the “orange” alert level. Both territories still have high numbers of cases, which are threatening to overwhelm their hospital systems.
More than 29,400 people have died of coronavirus in France, and the country has had almost 194,000 confirmed cases – although the number of new cases has slowed markedly in recent days.
President Macron first imposed a strict lockdown on 17 March. These remained in place until 11 May, when the country began to cautiously ease restrictions.
His latest announcement marks the most significant lifting of restrictions since lockdown began.
She said that in most European countries, policing isn’t viewed primarily from a top-down, law-enforcement perspective, but rather as part of a bigger solution to social problems. “It’s not: There’s a problem, send the police. It’s: There’s a problem, let’s work together to find a solution,” she said. “Policing is seen as a small part of a bigger set of actors in terms of addressing social issues.”
Sada Jones anxiously paces inside her apartment every time she catches a glimpse of her building’s maintenance workers through a damaged glass patio door half boarded up with scrap wood that she says her landlord refuses to repair.
Jones, 23, a hotel cook, has been unable to make rent payments on her New Orleans-area apartment since being furloughed on March 19 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, she alleges, her landlord began using aggressive tactics to force her out, including cutting off her utilities and sending maintenance workers to demand she leave.
“I’m scared because I don’t want to move with the situation that’s going on with COVID, but I also don’t want to live in these conditions,” she said. “I’m constantly anxious and paranoid about what they’ll do next. I don’t feel safe.”
Despite efforts by many jurisdictions to halt evictions either through formal moratoriums or court closures, some landlords have taken matters into their own hands with illegal “self-help” evictions and have been harassing and intimidating tenants like Jones who are unable to pay rent — many because of pandemic-related job loss — in an effort to get them out.
These tenants, many who are waiting on unemployment or stimulus checks, are put in the precarious situation of having to endure hostility or leave their homes in the midst of a public health crisis.
Amanda Golob, managing attorney of the housing law unit at Southeast Louisiana Legal Services in New Orleans, said her office has seen several abusive tactics from landlords, including changing locks, cutting utilities, refusing to make essential repairs and constant harassment via phone calls and text messages: “They are creating an environment that forces the tenant to leave on their own.”
Similar incidences of self-help evictions, which are a violation of the law in most jurisdictions, have been reported by housing organizations across the country since the onset of the pandemic.
Mounting frustrations
Nearly 30 percent of respondents to a survey by the National Fair Housing Alliance said they’ve experienced an increase in fair housing complaints, incidences or calls since mid-March, when most states went into COVID-19 lockdowns.
Complaints could become more prevalent as the backlog of evictions builds and landlords’ frustrations mount, housing experts said.
“We have seen both prior to pandemic and during pandemic some landlords will resort to intimidation or other tactics to push their tenants out. It is certainly possible that given the increasing economic pressure that both families and landlords are under that that could increase,” said Alieza Durana, a writer and spokeswoman for the Eviction Lab at Princeton University.
Sada Jones’ damaged door in New Orleans.Sada Jones
Jones said her landlord’s hostile tactics began a few weeks after she missed her April payment. Claiming she broke her lease and surrendered her key, her landlord sent maintenance workers into her apartment to demand she leave immediately, she said. Jones, who still had her key, refuted the claim and refused to go.
A few days later, he cut off various utilities, she said: disconnecting her air conditioning cables as temperatures began to soar and turning off power in parts of her apartment, including the kitchen. She no longer has a working stove.
Jones used her March rent money to stock up on two weeks of food and essentials at the start of the pandemic. Whatever was left from her savings was used for food in April and May, she said, leaving her nothing for housing costs.
“I had to make a decision. Either I pay the rent or I buy food, so I chose what I immediately needed at the time, which was food,” she said.
Meanwhile, a broken sliding glass door vandalized in February has been untouched despite her repeated requests to have it fixed.
Regardless of any lease violations, the landlord still has an obligation to make her unit livable, said Hannah Adams, a legal aid attorney with Southeast Louisiana Legal Services who is representing Jones.
Sada Jones has been unable to make rent payments since being furloughed March 19 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.Sada Jones
When NBC News emailed Jones’ landlord, Joshua Bruno, to ask about her allegations — specifically that he refused to fix the broken door, cut off some utilities to the apartment and had staff intimidate Jones — Bruno responded with more than a dozen points, calling the allegations “false,” claiming Jones was “trespassing” and that there was an “open police investigation into her breaking back into her apartment.”
Jones and attorneys with Southeast Louisiana Legal Services say Bruno’s accusations are baseless and false. Adams said she has repeatedly requested police reports, video or any other documentation regarding a police investigation into an alleged break in and has received nothing from Bruno.
While self-help evictions are outlawed in Louisiana, Bruno is also barred from evicting tenants under the federal Cares Act, Adams said. The law, which was enacted to aid individuals and businesses harmed by the pandemic, prohibits landlords who receive federal loans or assistance — including Bruno, who has a Fannie Mae loan on the property — from initiating eviction proceedings until July 25.
Jones is not alone in her allegations against Bruno. Other renters living in Bruno’s units also claim they’ve been subjected to self-help tactics after losing jobs amid the pandemic (Bruno has maintained that his actions were appropriate and that his company follows state and federal laws).
Every trick in the book
When Arkansas resident Milton Light wasn’t able to pay his rent, his landlord unleashed several aggressive tactics to get him to leave so she could get another tenant in as soon as possible, he said.
Light, 34, lost his full-time job as a coiled tubing operator because of the pandemic on April 3.
His hours had already been cut by the end of March when he let his landlord, Genai Walker-Macklin, know that he wouldn’t be able to make rent the following month. It was then that she told him he had to be out by April 5, he said.
She began showing the home to other potential renters.
When Light pushed back saying she cannot bully him out of his lease which ends in the summer, she began “using every trick in the book” against him, he said.
According to court documents filed by Light, she changed the locks on the property, called his utility companies to have his gas and electric shut off and even tried to have his vehicle towed from his home.
When that didn’t work, she filed a complaint with the Arkansas Department of Human Services alleging that his home was unsafe for his four young children, he said. She also began harassing Light’s ex-wife with whom he shares custody of his children, Light claims.
According to a police report seen by NBC News, the landlord also had movers show up to forcibly remove his things from the home until authorities stopped her.
“She’s taking these actions to try and force him out of his home without a court giving her an order to do so,” said Frank Jenner, an attorney with the Center for Arkansas Legal Services who is representing Light. “You can’t take action until the court authorizes a particular action.”
Walker-Macklin filed a civil eviction lawsuit on April 30, and Light responded with a counterclaim alleging an illegal eviction and asking for a preliminary injunction that would prohibit any further efforts to remove him from the property without a court order. The case is still pending.
Light’s landlord did not return several calls from NBC News requesting comment, and her attorney declined to comment because of pending litigation.
Arkansas is one of the statesthat has not had any kind of mandated moratorium on evictions amid the COVID-19 pandemic and instead left it to individual courts to handle.
‘Everyone has a breaking point’
While data isn’t yet available on renters facing self-help evictions during the pandemic, one can intuit who is more likely to be targeted, said Lisa Rice, president of the National Fair Housing Alliance. “I think it is fair to guesstimate that it is those vulnerable populations who are disproportionately subject to these forms of abusive evictions when there isn’t a pandemic,” Rice said.
Evictions generally affect people with less income stability — disproportionately people of color and single-women households, she said. They may be less empowered to push back.
The tactics can sadly be effective, she added, especially for those who feel intimidated and don’t feel safe in their home.
Cobbling together first and last month’s rent is a huge obstacle for many tenants, and if you’re strapped for cash like so many are right now, the idea of engaging with your landlord or going to court can be overwhelming, said Durana of Eviction Lab.
“In addition, when you do go to court there is an increased risk that it could go on your record,” Durana said. “It could put you in a position in which you then have trouble finding future housing.”
For many families, it’s easier to avoid the court process entirely even though they may have a right to stay and the harassment is illegal and unfounded.
“Everyone has a breaking point,” Durana said.
Pushing back
To help counter self-help evictions, housing advocates are pushing to extend eviction moratoriums, expand relief to renters and raise the bar to filing evictions so there are more legitimate reasons to initiate the process.
Several jurisdictions, including Minnesota and Washington, D.C., have already started to aggressively prosecute cases of predatory landlord behavior.
Being pushed out of your home is problematic at any point, but especially during a pandemic, said Shamus Roller, executive director of the National Housing Law Project.
“The last thing we want right now is people going around looking for an apartment to rent. That involves travel, interacting with strangers, enclosed spaces and all of the other activities associated with moving,” he said. “And those are the challenges for someone that can find and afford a new place. For other people that get evicted, it means doubling up with another family or homelessness, which come with huge health ramifications.”
Jones plans on staying put for now.
While April rent will be covered by a rental assistance program for tenants affected by the pandemic, she said she is trying to work with her landlord to pay back March and May once she starts earning again.
“I want to pay and I’ll pay as soon as I can, but I can’t give you something I don’t have,” she said.
Two state officials have joined a Los Angeles County supervisor in calling on California Atty. Gen. Xavier Beccera to investigate the death of a young Black man found hanging from a tree in a park near Palmdale City Hall.
““The attorney general, as the lead attorney and law enforcement official for the state of California, will lend additional expertise and oversight into this important investigation and provide the community with the answers they deserve,” said L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who called for the independent inquiry along with state Sen. Scott Wilk of Santa Clarita and Assemblyman Tom Lackey of Palmdale, both Republicans.
Robert Fuller, 24, was found on the edge of a 2-acre courtyard known as Poncitlán Square early Wednesday.
The Los Angeles County medical examiner-coroner’s office initially labeled the death a suicide. Fuller’s family and civic leaders quickly pushed back, insisting that it be investigated as a homicide and demanding an independent probe and autopsy, something the city also has requested.
“The City of Palmdale is joining the family and the community’s call for justice and we do support a full investigation into his death,” the city said in a statement, contradicting previous assertions by both City Manager J.J. Murphy and Capt. Ron Shaffer of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department.
Nearly 2,000 people gathered in Palmdale on Saturday to demand answers about Fuller’s death and to mourn the man who was described by family and friends as a peacemaker with a bright smile. He loved music, anime and video games, and mostly stayed to himself, they said.
“This is really crazy to all of us,” said Fuller’s sister, Diamond Alexander. “We want to find out the truth of what really happened. Everything that they’ve been telling us has not been right.
“To be here, staring at this tree, it don’t make no sense,” Alexander added. “My brother was not suicidal. My brother was a survivor.”
On Saturday, Wilk tweeted that “transparency leads to accountability which leads to trust.”
“Robert Fuller’s family and our community can’t have closure [without] a complete independent investigation,” he wrote.
Fuller’s death has generated intense scrutiny amid a backdrop of nationwide protests set in motion by the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the systemic racial injustices those deaths have come to represent.
The case brought to light the suspicious death of another Black man who was found hanging from a tree May 31 in Victorville, 50 miles from Palmdale. The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said Saturday that foul play was not suspected in the death of 38-year-old Malcolm Harsch.
“There were no indications at the scene that suggested foul play; however, the cause and manner of death are still pending,” Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Jodi Miller told the Victor Valley News.
In a statement sent to the news outlet, Harsch’s family in Ohio said they find it hard to accept that his death was a suicide. They said Harsch had recent conversations with his children about seeing them soon and that he did not seem to be depressed to anyone who knew him.
“The explanation of suicide does not seem plausible,” the family wrote. “There are many ways to die but considering the current racial tension, a Black man hanging himself from a tree definitely doesn’t sit well with us right now.”
Times staff writers Kevin Baxter andDeborah Netburn contributed to this report.
Brooks, 27, died after he was shot twice in the back on June 12, the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office said in a statement. Brooks was shot last Friday night after a confrontation with two Atlanta police officers in the parking lot of the fast-food restaurant.
Police had been summoned there on a report of a man sleeping in his car in the drive-through.
Brooks struggled with the officers after they administered a field sobriety test and attempted to take him into custody. Surveillance footage appears to show Brooks running away from the officers with a stun gun that he’d taken from one of them, said Vic Reynolds, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
While running, Brooks appeared to turn around and point the weapon at police, Reynolds said
“At that point, the Atlanta officer reaches down and retrieves his weapon from his holster, discharges it, strikes Mr. Brooks there on the parking lot, and he goes down.”
L. Chris Stewart, an attorney for Brooks’ family, said Brooks should not have faced deadly force because he appeared to have a stun gun.
“Of extreme concern in the murder of Rayshard Brooks is the fact that he was shot in the back multiple times while fleeing,” said Stewart and law partner Justin Miller, in a statement Saturday.
Atlanta Police Chief Erikia Shields resigned over the shooting, saying in a statement that it is time “it is time for the city to move forward and build trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve.” Garrett Rolfe, the officer who shot Brooks, was fired. A second officer, Devin Brosnan, was placed on administrative duty.
The shooting prompted protests Saturday night near the Wendy’s, which was set on fire.
Brooks’ death comes amid widespread protests over the May 25 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Floyd died after a police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
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