NY attorney general suggests cops halt routine traffic stops
NEW YORK — New York’s attorney general on Friday recommended the New York Police Department get out of the business of routine traffic enforcement, a radical change she said would prevent encounters like one last year in the Bronx that escalated quickly and ended with an officer fatally shooting a motorist.
Attorney General Letitia James, who acts as a special prosecutor appointed to investigate certain police killings, argued that traffic stops for minor infractions often end in violence and that Allan Feliz’s death last October after he was pulled over for a seat belt violation “further underscores the need for this change.”
James’ office concluded that the NYPD’s use of deadly force was justified but that the sequence of events leading to Feliz’s death would never have happened if police hadn’t stopped him in the first place. Police further heightened tensions by attempting to arrest Feliz on outstanding warrants for lowlevel offenses such as spitting, littering and disorderly conduct, James’ office said.
The NYPD declined to comment.
Feliz initially complied when an officer asked him to get out of his car, but then jumped back in and tried to flee, James’ office said in a report on his death that included the recommendation about police yielding traffic stop duties.
Sgt. Jonathan Rivera then fired a stun gun at Feliz and climbed into the car, warning, “Yo, boss, I am going to (expletive) shoot you,” as Feliz shifted the vehicle into gear and began moving. Rivera shot Feliz once in the chest, killing him.
James’ office concluded Rivera was justified in shooting Feliz in part because he feared the vehicle’s movement was endangering another officer standing nearby, the report said.
ICE facility: Several members of Congress called for a detention facility in Georgia to be shut down pending investigation after women detainees told them of being forced into unnecessary gynecological procedures with dirty equipment that left serious infections amid conditions so unsanitary that some begged to be deported.
“This is a horror show, it truly is worse than I expected,” Rep. Juan Vargas, a California Democrat, said Saturday after talking to several detainees on the visit to the Irwin County Detention Center, where both detainees for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and inmates for the U.S. Marshals Service are housed.
While many of the allegations made by the women centered on Dr. Mahendra Amin, a gynecologist accused of performing surgeries without their consent, members of the Congressional delegation recounted stories about conditions and treatment that extended beyond those accusations — starting with the alleged failure to take even the most basic steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
France stabbing attack: The suspect in the stabbing of two people outside the former Paris office of satirical
Belarus protests: newspaper Charlie Hebdo has confessed and said his attack was directed at the publication because it printed cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad, a French judicial official said Saturday.
Charlie Hebdo’s former office was the target of a January 2015 terrorist attack that killed 12 people after the weekly first published the cartoons. It republished them in early September on the opening day of the trial of 14 people suspected of having links to the 2015 attack.
The stabbing took place during the long-awaited trial of alleged accomplices in the 2015 attack, which has forced France to relive the trauma of a series of terrorist strikes in the past few years.
French authorities have said that the suspect, who was arrested shortly after the attack Friday, is an 18-year-old Pakistani man who arrived in France three years ago as an unaccompanied minor. Although he was briefly arrested a month ago for carrying a screwdriver, he had not been previously identified as an Islamist radical, France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, told France 2 television Friday.
Israel and Lebanon: Israel will hold rare talks with Lebanon next month in an effort to resolve a longstanding maritime border dispute, an Israeli official said Saturday.
The official said Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz will lead the Israeli delegation in talks mediated by the United States. Representatives from the three countries are likely to speak by video conference because of the coronavirus pandemic, the official said.
The official requested anonymity in line with regulations. There was no immediate comment from Lebanon.
Israel and Lebanon have no diplomatic relations and are technically in a state of war. They each claim about 330 square miles of the Mediterranean Sea as within their own exclusive economic zones.
Salmonella cases: Federal officials are warning of salmonella cases in at least 10 states linked to dried mushrooms from a Southern California company.
More than 40 people have gotten sick and four have been hospitalized, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.
The product suspected in the outbreak is wood ear mushrooms distributed by Wismettac Asian Foods based near Los Angeles. The company has recalled all of its Shirakiku brand imported mushrooms that were distributed to restaurants in six packs of fivepound bags, the CDC said.
Some of those who got sick ate at restaurants serving ramen in three states, officials said.
The states where cases have been reported are: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and
Wisconsin.
‘You blew it’: A Virginia man accused of spray-painting property with graffiti while he was supposed to be performing community service for a vandalism conviction has been sentenced to three years in jail.
The Free Lance-Star reports that Robert Singhass, 21, of Unionville, bragged on social media about spraypainting the word “Robbo” on properties in Fredericksburg and drinking liquor when he was supposed to be picking up trash earlier this year.
Singhass pleaded guilty to 55 charges related to vandalism in the city earlier this year. Fredericksburg Circuit Court Judge Gordon Willis sentenced him on Friday to a total of 55 years in jail but suspended all but two of those years. He sentenced Singhass to a third year in jail for violating his probation for earlier vandalism convictions.
“You were given a chance and you blew it,” Willis told Singhass.