LA police boss faces contempt charge
Lawmakers investigating the deadly arrest of Black motorist Ronald Greene voted unanimously Wednesday to hold the former head of the Louisiana State Police in contempt for defying a subpoena and refusing to turn over the handwritten journals he kept while leading the state’s premier law enforcement agency.
The decision to charge former Col. Kevin Reeves with contempt — and fine him $5,000 — marks a dramatic escalation in the bipartisan committee’s probe of the alleged cover-up in Greene’s 2019 death. If affirmed by the full state House, it will allow lawmakers to ask a court to compel Reeves to turn over three handwritten journals.
The vote comes a day after the three-year anniversary of the fatal arrest on a rural roadside outside Monroe, where troopers beat, stunned and dragged Greene following a highspeed chase.
Reeves’ attorney, Lewis Unglesby, has contended Reeves cooperated with the committee, but claims that all but 11 pages of the former police superintendent’s journals don’t pertain to Greene’s death and therefore don’t have to be turned over. Members of the committee investigating Greene’s death said Wednesday the documents are public records.
The resolution to hold Reeves in contempt next moves to another committee where Reeves will be able to mount a defense and then, if affirmed there, to a House vote.
A firstof-its-kind federal study of Native American boarding schools that for over a century sought to assimilate Indigenous children into white society has identified more than 500 student deaths at the institutions, but officials expect that figure to grow exponentially as research continues.
The Interior Department report released Wednesday expands to more than 400 the number of schools that were established or supported by the U.S. government, starting in the early 19th century and continuing in some cases until the late 1960s. The agency identified the deaths in records for about 20 of the schools.
The dark history of Native American boarding schools — where children were forced from their families, prohibited from speaking their languages and often abused — has been felt deeply across Indian Country and through generations.
Many children never returned home, and the Interior Department said that with further investigation the number of known student deaths could climb to the thousands or even tens of thousands. Causes included disease, accidental injuries and abuse.
“Each of those children is a missing family member, a person who was not able to live out their purpose on this Earth because they lost their lives as part of this terrible system,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, whose paternal grandparents were sent to boarding school for several years.
The agency is in the process of poring through thousands of boxes containing more than 98 million pages of records, with help from many Indigenous people who have had to work through their own trauma and pain. Accounting for the number of deaths will be difficult because records weren’t always kept.
A second volume of the report will cover burial sites as well as the federal government’s financial investment in the schools and the impacts of the boarding schools on Indigenous communities, the Interior Department said. It has so far identified at least 53 burial sites at or near boarding schools, not all of which have marked graves.
Tribal leaders have pressed the agency to ensure that any children’s remains are properly cared for and returned to their tribes, if desired. To prevent them from being disturbed, the burial sites’ locations will not be publicly disclosed, said Bryan Newland, the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for Indian Affairs.
At a news conference Wednesday, Haaland choked back tears as she described how the boarding school era perpetuated poverty, mental health disorders, substance abuse and premature deaths in Indigenous communities.
“Recognizing the impacts of the federal Indian boarding school system cannot just be a historical reckoning,” she said. “We must also chart a path forward to deal with these legacy issues.”
The Interior Department acknowledged the number of schools identified could change as more data is gathered. The coronavirus pandemic and budget restrictions hindered some of the research over the past year, said Newland, a citizen of the Bay Mills Indian Community.
A nearly $1 billion tentative settlement has been reached in a class-action lawsuit brought by families of victims and survivors of June’s condominium collapse in Surfside, Florida, an attorney said Wednesday.
Harley S. Tropin announced the $997 million settlement during a hearing before MiamiDade Circuit Court Judge Michael Hanzman. Still pending final approval, the settlement involves developers of an adjacent building, insurance companies and other defendants.
“I’m shocked by this result — I think it’s fantastic,” Hanzman said. “This is a recovery that is far in excess of what I had anticipated.”
Earlier this year, Hanzman had approved an $83 million settlement to compensate people who suffered economic losses such as condominium units and personal property. A key question from the beginning has been how to allocate money from the property’s sale, insurance proceeds and damages from lawsuits among wrongful death cases and property claims.
The 12-story Champlain Towers South condominium partially collapsed in the early-morning hours of June 24, almost instantly destroying dozens of individual condo units and burying victims under tons of rubble. Rescuers spent weeks carefully digging through mountains of concrete, first to find survivors and later to recover the remains of those who died. Ten days after the initial collapse,
— Interior Secretary Deb Haaland