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AP Decision Notes: What to expect in Arkansas’ state house primary runoffs

WASHINGTON (AP) — Voters in three Arkansas state House districts will return to the polls Tuesday to complete some unfinished business from the March 5 primaries, including one race in which Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her father, former Gov. Mike Huckabee, are supporting different candidates.

The top two finishers from races in which no candidate received a majority of the vote in the primary will compete in runoff elections for a spot on the November ballot.

In southwestern Arkansas, Arnetta Bradford and Dolly Henley advanced to the runoff for the Republican nomination in District 88, where Republican state Rep. Danny Watson is not seeking another term.

Despite a huge fundraising disadvantage, Bradford led Henley in the March 5 primary, 47% to 45%, a vote margin of 63 votes. Bradford, a local coffee shop owner, has raised $9,200 for her campaign, the bulk of which came from two donations made in December totaling $6,600 from Sanders’ political action committee. It was the governor’s latest show of support for Bradford. A week after taking office in January 2023, Sanders appointed Bradford to the Black History Commission of Arkansas. She named Bradford’s shop “Arkansas Business of the Month” later that year and held an official government event there in January.

Henley, a longtime local government parks and recreation official and the wife of Washington Mayor Paul Henley, raised $77,650 for her campaign and had more than $34,000 in the bank about a week before the runoff. Bradford’s campaign had $300 in the bank, according to state campaign finance records. Among Henley’s campaign donors is Huckabee, who gave $1,000 in January. Huckabee’s hometown of Hope is in the district.

In Democratic-leaning eastern Arkansas just west of Memphis, runoff candidates are vying for their party’s nod to replace two retiring Democratic members.

In District 35, Jessie McGruder and Raymond Whiteside are the finalists for the Democratic nomination to succeed state Rep. Milton Nicks, who has held the seat since 2015. McGruder, a junior high school football coach, received the most votes in the primary, falling about 3 percentage points shy of the vote majority needed to avoid a runoff. Whiteside, a community development specialist for West Memphis and a former teacher and journalist, was second with about 24% of the primary vote.

In District 63, the race to replace outgoing Democratic state Rep. Deborah Ferguson pits Hughes Mayor Lincoln Barnett against insurance executive and former West Memphis mayoral candidate Fred Leonard for the Democratic nomination. Barnett was the vote leader in the March 5 primary, falling 1.5 percentage points short of clinching the nomination outright. But he was still only 108 votes ahead of Leonard.

Republicans have full control of the state government in Arkansas, with a Republican governor and supermajorities in both chambers of the state legislature. In the state House, Republicans have an 82-18 advantage over Democrats.

Here’s a look at what to expect on Tuesday:

The Arkansas state House primary runoff elections will be held on Tuesday. Polls close at 8:30 p.m. ET.

The Associated Press will provide coverage for Democratic primary runoff elections in state House Districts 35 and 63 and the Republican primary runoff in state House District 88.

Voters who participated in the March 5 primary for a specific state House seat may vote only in the same party’s runoff for that seat. In other words, voters who cast ballots in the Republican primary on March 5 may not vote in a Democratic runoff for the same seat, and Democratic primary voters can’t vote in a Republican runoff in the same district. Voters who did not participate in any party’s primary on March 5 may participate in the runoff. All voters must be registered in the district holding the runoff.

Runoffs tend to be lower-turnout events than the initial elections that prompted them. This could slow the race-calling process for a competitive contest in smaller jurisdictions where the total votes cast in a local race might number in the hundreds or low thousands in a regularly scheduled election. In these cases, determining the outcome could rest on a handful of ballots that have yet to be tabulated. In all three Arkansas state House runoff races, the vote margins between the top two candidates were relatively small: 311, 108 and 63 votes.

The AP does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow the trailing candidates to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

The AP may declare a winner in a race that is eligible for a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

In the March 5 primaries in Arkansas, overall turnout was 21% of about 1.7 million registered voters. More than half of March 5 primary voters in the three state House districts holding runoffs Tuesday cast their ballots before primary day. Pre-Election Day voting made up 51% of the total votes cast in the District 35 Democratic primary, 56% in the District 62 Democratic primary and 50% in the District 88 Republican primary.

As of Thursday, 2,731 votes had already been cast for Tuesday’s elections.

In the March 5 primary, the AP first reported results at 8:36 p.m. ET, or six minutes after polls closed. The election night tabulation ended at 3:28 a.m. ET with more than 99% of total votes counted.

As of Tuesday, there will be 217 days until the November general election.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2024 election at https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.


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AP Decision Notes: What to expect in the April 2 presidential and state primaries

WASHINGTON (AP) — Voters in the pivotal swing state of Wisconsin and three Northeastern states will have a chance to indicate their support or opposition to their parties’ presumptive nominees in presidential primaries Tuesday. Wisconsin voters will also decide the fate of two Republican-backed statewide ballot measures that will shape how elections in the state are run and funded.

Farther south, Arkansas and Mississippi voters will return to the polls to decide a handful of legislative seats that were forced to runoffs in primaries held in March.

Although multiple names remain on the presidential ballots in Wisconsin, Connecticut, New York and Rhode Island, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump face no major challengers and already have secured more delegates than they need to win their parties’ nominations at the conventions this summer. Voters in Connecticut and Rhode Island will have the additional option of voting “uncommitted” if they want to register a protest vote against Biden, a Democrat, or Trump, a Republican. Wisconsin voters have a similar option, although it’s called “Uninstructed Delegation” on their ballot.

Delaware was also scheduled to hold a Republican presidential primary on Tuesday, but the contest was canceled on March 19 after former candidate Nikki Haley had her name removed from the ballot, leaving Trump the only remaining candidate. A Democratic primary there would also have been held Tuesday, but Biden was the only candidate to file for the ballot, so the event was never scheduled. In both cases, the parties awarded all the state’s delegates to Biden and Trump, as they were the only candidates remaining in their contests.

In the presidential race, Biden and Trump are the favorites in their primaries as neither candidate faces a strong challenge. In all four contests, the first indications that they are winning statewide on a level consistent with the overwhelming margins seen in most other contests held this year may be sufficient to determine the statewide winners.

For the Wisconsin constitutional amendments, the fault lines hew closely to traditional partisan lines, with Republican state lawmakers backing the two measures and Democrats in opposition. Thus, the state’s vote history and political demographics will inform the race-calling process.

As for the races in Arkansas and Mississippi, runoffs tend to be lower-turnout events than the initial elections that prompted them. For local races, in which turnout for regularly scheduled elections is already relatively low, this could slow the race-calling process in particularly close contests since determining the outcome could rest on a handful of votes. For example, in Arkansas state House District 63, only 108 votes separated the first- and second-place candidates, out of 1,700 total votes cast.

The Associated Press does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow the trailing candidates to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

Here are the April 2 contests at a glance:

Democrats: 436

Republicans: 179

Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island, Wisconsin

Arkansas (runoff), Mississippi (runoff), Wisconsin

8 p.m. EDT: All polls close in Connecticut, Mississippi, Rhode Island

8:30 p.m. EDT: All polls close in Arkansas

9 p.m. EDT: All polls close in New York, Wisconsin

STATE HOUSE PRIMARY RUNOFF, DISTRICT 35 (D): Jessie McGruder, Raymond Whiteside

STATE HOUSE PRIMARY RUNOFF, DISTRICT 63 (D): Fred Leonard, Lincoln Barnett

STATE HOUSE PRIMARY RUNOFF, DISTRICT 88 (R): Arnetta Bradford, Dolly Henley

WHO CAN VOTE: Voters who participated in the March 5 primary for a specific seat may only vote in the same party’s runoff for that seat. In other words, voters who cast ballots in the Republican primary on March 5 may not vote in a Democratic runoff for the same seat. Voters who did not participate in any party’s primary for a specific seat on March 5 may also participate in the runoff. All voters must be registered in the district holding the runoff.

FIRST VOTES REPORTED (March 5 primary): 8:36 p.m. ET

LAST ELECTION NIGHT UPDATE: 3:28 a.m. ET with about 99.7% of the total votes counted

PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY (D): Biden, Dean Phillips, Marianne Williamson, Cenk Uygur, “Uncommitted.” 60 delegates at stake

PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY (R): Trump, Ryan Binkley, Ron DeSantis, Haley, “Uncommitted.” 28 delegates at stake

WHO CAN VOTE: Only voters registered with a party may participate in that party’s primary. Democrats can’t vote in the Republican primary or vice versa.

FIRST VOTES REPORTED (2022 primaries): 8:08 p.m. ET

LAST ELECTION NIGHT UPDATE: 12:52 a.m. ET with about 99.9% of the total votes counted

U.S. HOUSE PRIMARY RUNOFF, DISTRICT 2 (R): Ron Eller, Andrew Smith

WHO CAN VOTE: Voters who participated in the March 12 primary for District 2 may only vote in the same party’s runoff. In other words, voters who cast ballots in the Democratic primary on March 12 may not vote in Tuesday’s Republican runoff. Voters who did not participate in any party’s primary for this seat on March 12 also may participate in the runoff. All voters must be registered in the 2nd Congressional District.

FIRST VOTES REPORTED (March 12 primary): 8:07 p.m. ET

LAST ELECTION NIGHT UPDATE: 12:35 a.m. ET with about 97% of the total votes counted

PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY (D): Biden, Dean Phillips, Marianne Williamson. 268 delegates at stake

PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY (R): Trump, Chris Christie, Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy. 91 delegates at stake

WHO CAN VOTE: New York has a closed primary system, which means only Democrats may vote in the Democratic primary and only Republicans may vote in the Republican primary.

FIRST VOTES REPORTED (2022 primaries): 9:01 p.m. ET

LAST ELECTION NIGHT UPDATE: 2:49 a.m. ET with about 94% of the total votes counted

PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY (D): Biden, Dean Phillips, “Uncommitted,” Write-in. 26 delegates at stake

PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY (R): Trump, Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, “Uncommitted,” Write-in. 19 delegates at stake

WHO CAN VOTE: Rhode Island voters registered with a specific political party may cast ballots only in their own party’s primaries. Voters who are not affiliated with any party may participate in any party primary, but doing so will automatically affiliate them with that party in state records.

FIRST VOTES REPORTED (2022 primaries): 8:10 p.m. ET

LAST ELECTION NIGHT UPDATE: 11:03 p.m. ET with about 97% of total votes counted

PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY (D): Biden, Dean Phillips, “Uninstructed Delegation,” Write-In. 82 delegates at stake

PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY (R): Trump, Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, “Uninstructed Delegation,” Write-In. 41 delegates at stake

STATEWIDE BALLOT MEASURE, QUESTION 1: “Use of private funds in election administration. Shall section 7 (1) of article III of the constitution be created to provide that private donations and grants may not be applied for, accepted, expended, or used in connection with the conduct of any primary, election, or referendum?”

STATEWIDE BALLOT MEASURE, QUESTION 2: “Election officials. Shall section 7 (2) of article III of the constitution be created to provide that only election officials designated by law may perform tasks in the conduct of primaries, elections, and referendums?”

WHO CAN VOTE: Any registered voter in Wisconsin may participate in either primary.

FIRST VOTES REPORTED (2022 primaries): 9:14 p.m. ET

LAST ELECTION NIGHT UPDATE: 3:01 a.m. ET with about 99.8% of the total votes counted

Connecticut, Rhode Island, Wisconsin (as “Uninstructed Delegation”)

As of Tuesday, there will be 104 days until the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, 139 days until the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and 217 days until the November general election.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2024 election at https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.


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Takeaways: AP investigation reveals Black people bear disproportionate impact of police force

PATERSON, N.J. (AP) — Black people accounted for a disproportionate number of people who died after being restrained, beaten or shocked with stun guns by police officers in the United States, according to an investigation by The Associated Press.

The investigation, led by AP with FRONTLINE (PBS) and the Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism, found that Black people of non-Hispanic descent represented about a third of the 1,036 deaths in such police encounters that AP catalogued over a decade, despite representing just 12% of the population.

Here are some takeaways from AP’s reporting:

The AP found more than 330 Black people died after encounters with police who used force that was not supposed to be deadly. The AP examined such deaths over a 10-year period ending in 2021 and compiled those incidents in a database.

The U.S. Department of Justice has documented racial disparities after probes of multiple police departments in recent years. Several of those have found that Black people accounted for high rates of unjustified stops for minor offenses like jaywalking, illegal searches and frisks that produced no contraband, unnecessary force, or arrests without probable cause.

The 2019 death of Jameek Lowery in Paterson reflects some of the themes uncovered by AP.

Lowery, a lifelong resident of New Jersey’s third-largest city, said he wanted to move to North Carolina with his three children to be closer to his mother and to get away from Paterson police he worried would arrest or hassle him.

Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, he had been increasingly hallucinating and acting paranoid, his relatives said, when he showed up at city police headquarters early on a January Saturday in the midst of a mental breakdown. Barefoot and wearing only pajama pants and a sweatshirt, Lowery pulled out his cellphone and began a social media broadcast of an anti-police rant.

“Why y’all trying to kill me?” Lowery asked several Paterson police officers on his Facebook Live video feed. “If I’m dead in the next hour or two, they did it.”

Police summoned an ambulance, and Lowery was taken to St. Joseph’s University Medical Center. What happened in the ambulance became another flashpoint in the Black community’s deteriorating relationship with the city force.

Lowery arrived unconscious at St. Joseph’s University Medical Center handcuffed to a gurney and died two days later. Officials would later say that officers forcefully restrained and punched Lowery when he kicked and struck them. His sister and activists believe that police acted with excessive force because of his race.

Passaic County Prosecutor Camelia Valdes reported in August 2019 that Lowery died as a result of a “medical event,” citing an autopsy that concluded he had suffered a cardiac arrest while under the influence of bath salts. She said police force wasn’t a factor in the death.

The mother of one of Lowery’s children sued the Paterson Police Department, three of its officers and St. Joseph’s University Medical Center, where he had been seen and released in the hours before he went to police headquarters. Her attorneys hired an expert, a former medical examiner for New York City, to conduct a second autopsy and review police reports, interviews of the officers, and hospital records.

That expert, Dr. Michael Baden, wrote a 10-page report that found Lowery suffered “traumatic blunt force” injuries to his face, jaw, arm and chest and found evidence of “compressive choking.”

Lowery’s death triggered protests, particularly by Black residents who have long complained that the police have mistreated them.

In the mid-1960s, Paterson was the site of street battles between police and Black residents that coincided with the passage of federal civil rights legislation. Paterson was also the inspiration for the 1975 Bob Dylan song “Hurricane,” about the boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, who was convicted by an all-white jury in 1967 of killing three white people at a city bar. A federal judge later threw out the conviction, writing that it had been “predicated upon an appeal to racism rather than reason.”

Tensions between the city’s Black residents and police flared again and again. In the mid-1990s, white police officers fatally shot an unarmed Black teenager and a 28-year-old man in separate incidents, sparking widespread outrage.

A few years ago, the force came under fire for allowing a rogue group of officers to form a “robbery squad” that for three years beat residents and stole their money. Since the start of 2019, city police have fatally shot four people; two others, including Lowery, have died after being restrained.

Lowery’s death led the city to hire an outside group, the Police Executive Research Forum, to conduct an audit of the police department. The nonprofit released its findings in 2022 and found at least 602 use-of-force incidents from 2018 to 2020. Black people accounted for 57% of the incidents, while making up just about a quarter of the city’s population.

In March 2023, police fatally shot Najee Seabrooks, a 31-year-old violence intervention worker who had barricaded himself inside the bathroom of an apartment. HIs death sparked an outcry from residents and advocates. Within weeks, State Attorney General Matt Platkin ordered the takeover of the police department. In an interview with AP, Platkin said he took control, in part, because Black residents have long complained about police discrimination.

“I don’t blame anyone who has lived in Paterson for a long period of time for being distrustful,” Platkin said.

Platkin said reforming the troubled police force will not be easy or quick.

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This story is part of an ongoing investigation led by The Associated Press in collaboration with the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism programs and FRONTLINE (PBS). The investigation includes the Lethal Restraint interactive story, database and the documentary, “Documenting Police Use Of Force,” premiering April 30 on PBS.

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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/


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He didn’t trust police but sought their help anyway. Two days later, he was dead

PATERSON, N.J. (AP) — Jameek Lowery entered the dimly lit lobby of the city’s police headquarters in a panic. He was having a mental breakdown — and needed help.

Barefoot and wearing only pajama pants and a sweatshirt in the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 5, 2019, Lowery pulled out his cellphone and began a social media broadcast of an anti-police rant.

“Why y’all trying to kill me?” Lowery asked several Paterson police officers on his Facebook Live video feed. “If I’m dead in the next hour or two, they did it.”

As Lowery sounded off, police stood back and summoned an ambulance to take the 27-year-old Black man to the hospital. What happened in the ambulance remains a flashpoint in the Black community’s deteriorating relationship with the city’s 400-plus-member police department, an agency so troubled and distrusted that state officials last year took it over.

Lowery arrived unconscious at St. Joseph’s University Medical Center handcuffed to a gurney and died two days later. Officials would later say that officers forcefully restrained and punched Lowery when he kicked and struck them. His sister and activists believe that police acted with excessive force because of his race.

Lowery was among more than 330 Black people who died after police stopped them with tactics that aren’t supposed to be deadly, like physical restraint and use of stun guns, The Associated Press found. Black people of non-Hispanic descent accounted for about a third of the 1,036 deaths that AP catalogued across the nation, despite representing just 12% of the population.

The investigation into a decade of such deaths, led by AP in collaboration with FRONTLINE (PBS) and the Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism, comes as studies by criminologists and public-health researchers have repeatedly demonstrated that Black people endure discrimination in all aspects of the criminal justice system, accounting for high rates of unjustified police stops, arrests, uses of force and incarceration.

Lowery’s case also highlights how hard it can be for families to hold officers accountable and to pry loose information about encounters where officers use body blows and other types of force that are easier to obscure than a shooting.

Due to weak public information laws and other restrictions, it can be difficult to find out what happened in such incidents. Officials in New Jersey, like those in some other states, inconsistently release information about deaths related to police action. In Lowery’s case, AP obtained an autopsy report, a prosecutor’s statement, police reports and a 10-page report prepared by an expert hired by the family that offers considerable new detail not yet made public about police actions in the ambulance.

The high-profile fatalities of George Floyd, Freddie Gray and Eric Garner sparked nationwide protests over the use of force and a reckoning over police interactions with people of color. Advocates in Paterson had hoped Lowery’s death would provide a similar catalyst to reform the city’s police force. But five years later they say they remain disappointed.

“It’s kind of inconceivable to think that a person would go to an agency — in this day and time anyway — for help, and end up being dead shortly after,” said Casey Melvin, a community activist who works with an anti-violence program.

New Jersey’s third-largest city, Paterson has a population of nearly 160,000 and sits about 20 miles northwest of Manhattan. Like many other industrial cities, its demographics have shifted since the middle of last century when the vast majority of its residents were white. Today, Black residents account for nearly 24% and Hispanics just over 60% of the population.

As Paterson’s Black population grew, it found itself repeatedly clashing with the city’s white power structure, particularly its police force.

In the mid-1960s, Paterson was the site of civil unrest between police and Black residents. Paterson was also the inspiration for the 1975 Bob Dylan song “Hurricane,” about the boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, a Black man who was convicted by an all-white jury in 1967 of killing three white people at a city bar. A federal judge later threw out the conviction, writing that it had been “predicated upon an appeal to racism rather than reason.”

In subsequent decades, tensions between the city’s Black residents and police have flared again and again. A few years ago, the force came under withering criticism for allowing a rogue group of officers to form a “robbery squad” that for three years beat residents and stole their money.

Since the start of 2019, city police have fatally shot four people; two others, including Lowery, have died after being restrained.

Many Black residents learned at an early age to look over their shoulders for police, said Ernest Rucker, a community activist.

“At 8 years old, because of the color of my skin, I would be stopped by law enforcement because I crossed the wrong street,” he said. “That type of treatment especially at that young age would always have you mistrust the police, not like the police — hate the police — to a great degree.”

This was Jameek Lowery’s hometown. One of 17 children, he was raised by his mother and stepfather in a series of crowded houses in Paterson’s Fourth Ward. The family moved a lot during his childhood.

Relatives said Lowery enjoyed school, especially music. His stepfather was a DJ, and as a kid, Lowery loved dancing and singing to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” As he grew, he loved ’90s R&B and wanted to be a singer like Usher.

Life was not easy for Lowery. He was diagnosed as a child with bipolar disorder, a mental health condition that resulted in extreme mood swings. As long as he took his medication and regularly saw his doctors, he was fine, said Shavontay McFadden, an older sister.

As an adult, he used and sold illicit drugs, leading in 2013 to a drug distribution conviction and three-year probation sentence. During a jail stay in 2016, Lowery banged his head against a cell’s wall and was sent to a medical center for mental health treatment. By late 2018, Lowery was unemployed — and his mother was managing his Social Security disability income.

At that point, Lowery decided he wanted to move with his three children to North Carolina. He explained to friends and family members he wanted to be closer to his mother in Virginia. But he also said he was tired of the Paterson police, of being worried he was going to be arrested or hassled.

He sent relatives strings of texts and left them messages that complained “certain cops were harassing him,” said his sister, Jamilyha Lowery. “He said they were going to hurt him.”

His family had no reason to doubt him. But it was not always easy to separate his real-life concerns from his growing paranoia.

He was increasingly hallucinating and acting paranoid, they said. Lowery believed that people were out to get him. He imagined he had become an FBI informant providing tips about corrupt and violent police officers, Jamilyha Lowery said, although there is no evidence that he called the FBI.

It was in this state of mind that he called 911 for help on a dreary and chilly January Saturday.

Just after 2:40 a.m. on Jan. 5, 2019, Lowery told a 911 dispatcher that he had taken “ecstasy and was paranoid.” Paramedics took him for observation to St. Joseph’s University Medical Center.

After Lowery was examined and discharged, he jumped on furniture in the hospital lobby, causing a commotion, officials said. Hospital security staff escorted him to a taxi that had brought a friend to take him home. When the cab stopped at a red light in downtown Paterson, Lowery leapt out of an open window and ran toward city police headquarters.

At 3:45 a.m., Lowery opened the front door and walked barefoot into the lobby. He began broadcasting on Facebook Live. When he looked into the camera, he was sweating. Spit had gathered in the corners of his mouth. He sounded desperate, at times breathless.

As he rambled about threats and dangers, he asked police again and again to “help me.”

When the ambulance called by police arrived, Lowery at first said he didn’t want to get into it and return to the hospital, but changed his mind. By the time he got to the hospital, he was fighting for his life. He never regained consciousness.

Lowery’s relatives only learned he was at St. Joseph’s after coming across his archived livestream and calling local hospitals.

“He always said his safe haven is a hospital,” Jamilyha Lowery said.

They raced to his bedside and were aghast at what they found — he was unrecognizable. His face seemed bruised and swollen. Dried blood and fluids crusted his eyes, nose and face. Doctors told them he had gone into cardiac arrest, his sister said, and his brain and organs had gone without oxygen for quite some time.

Lowery died on Jan. 7.

In the days after his death, the video of his encounter with police went viral. Black residents, in particular, pointed to his eerie foreshadowing of his death, and noted he had been talking and his face looked untouched before he got into the ambulance.

Convinced police must have done something to end Lowery’s life, hundreds of protesters descended on City Hall. Their signs read “Justice for Jameek Lowery,” and they chanted, “We want answers!”

As community pressure built, Mayor Andre Sayegh suggested Lowery had died from the infectious disease meningitis, not police force.

Passaic County Prosecutor Camelia Valdes investigated the death. In August 2019, she reported that police and fire personnel escorted Lowery from police headquarters to a waiting ambulance. Once inside, police restrained Lowery when he became “physically combative.” She didn’t elaborate on what exactly he had done but said the force required “compliance holds” in which officers held down Lowery. Officers also struck him with their fists, she said.

Valdes cited a ruling by the state medical examiner — which was also obtained by AP — that said Lowery’s death had been a cardiac arrest while under the influence of bath salts, a psychoactive stimulant.

“The investigation has concluded that Mr. Lowery’s death was a medical event and not the result of police use of force,” Valdes wrote in a press release. That was similar to how a Minneapolis prosecutor had initially characterized George Floyd’s death in 2020, alleging he had succumbed to underlying health conditions and drug use, not police force.

Valdes, the Paterson Police Department and attorneys for two of three officers involved did not respond to a request for comment. The officers’ attorneys either declined to comment or did not respond to interview requests. In court papers, the attorneys argued the officers had acted appropriately and within the scope of their duties.

Activists and family members did not buy the official explanation. Worn down by decades of racist policing in Paterson, they believed police felt they could act with impunity because Lowery was Black.

Shaquana Duncan, the mother of one of Lowery’s children, sued the city and three police officers, alleging police had used excessive force on someone who was “unarmed and posed no danger.”

Her attorneys obtained police reports and other documents not available publicly that they say call into question the county prosecutor’s conclusions. They hired Dr. Michael Baden, a former chief medical examiner for New York City who also conducted the second autopsy on George Floyd, to review the documents and perform a second autopsy on Lowery. Relying on his own autopsy, the state’s autopsy, X-rays, medical records, police reports and interviews of officers by investigators, Baden produced a detailed report that has not before been made public.

Due to New Jersey’s public disclosure laws, AP was not able to obtain documents cited by Baden other than the state autopsy and two police reports filed as exhibits in the federal lawsuit. To reconstruct what happened in the ambulance, AP relied upon those records and the county prosecutor’s statement:

The trouble started when Lowery changed his mind about going back to St. Joseph’s because he told officers, “you guys are gonna kill me there.”

Concerned Lowery might pose a threat to himself or others, two officers restrained him and tried to strap him to the gurney inside the ambulance, according to police reports. As they did, an officer wrote, Lowery kicked an officer in the groin and punched two others in the face.

Officer Mucio Lucero told investigators he punched Lowery two or three times in the rib cage in response to the man’s behavior, according to Baden’s report. Baden added that Officer Kyle Wanamaker said he hit Lowery in the face “more than once.”

Baden wrote that an emergency medical technician told investigators an officer placed Lowery’s sweatshirt over his mouth to stop the man from spitting on them. Officers managed to handcuff Lowery to the gurney by holding down his wrists, arms and legs. Wanamaker and Officer Michael Avila rode in the ambulance with Lowery to St. Joseph’s.

In his report, Baden wrote that his own autopsy revealed Lowery had suffered “traumatic blunt force” injuries to his face, jaw, arm and chest and found evidence of “compressive choking.” Further, while the county prosecutor had said publicly that Lowery had no broken bones, Baden wrote that X-rays taken before the state autopsy revealed “multiple fresh traumatic fractures” of fingers on Lowery’s left hand.

Baden also noted that hospital records showed Lowery was bleeding from his nose and mouth upon arrival, and his face was bruised. Baden added that a hospital chart stated there was “a question of possible assault.”

Baden wrote that lab tests showed only recreational levels of bath salts in Lowery’s blood, enough to cause bizarre behavior but not to stop his heart. Baden concluded that Lowery died from cardiac arrest and kidney failure from being restrained and beaten by police.

The death wasn’t accidental, Baden wrote. It was homicide.

Under pressure from the community, Paterson’s mayor announced in 2019 he was launching an outside audit of the police department.

The audit by the Police Executive Research Forum — a respected law enforcement training nonprofit — found the community distrusted the police and called on the Paterson Police Department to update its use-of-force policies and improve oversight of officers.

Researchers identified at least 602 use-of-force incidents from 2018 to 2020. Black people accounted for 57% of the residents whose race was known in those incidents, even though they only represented only about a quarter of Paterson’s population.

The most common types of force involved tactics that were not supposed to be lethal, like holds, blows and pepper spray, according to the audit published in 2022.

There was no indication that supervisors investigated such incidents beyond affixing signatures on use-of-force reports submitted by officers, the audit found. Of the 73 excessive force complaints filed during the three-year period, only one was sustained by the department.

The audit found that the force was fairly diverse but its supervisors were mostly white men. As recently as 2022, state statistics show, about a third of Paterson officers were white, while just 11% were Black. Hispanic officers made up more than half of the force.

The audit “validated through data the need for change, the need for additional training, the need for compassion, the need for the community voice to be heard,” said Democratic Assemblywoman Shavonda Sumter, who has represented Paterson in the state Legislature since 2012.

But some advocates, and even a few city officials, said the audit was not robust enough and they didn’t trust the police to reform.

“No one really believed that the police would hold themselves accountable,” said the Rev. Kenneth Clayton, pastor at St. Luke Baptist Church in Paterson. “It’s the belief that police don’t really police themselves.”

Advocates convinced state officials to take their complaints seriously following the fatal police shooting last year of Najee Seabrooks, 31.

It began when police responded to a call from family members concerned that he was hallucinating after taking drugs. When police arrived, they found the Black man barricaded in a bathroom. He had used a knife to cut himself and warned that he had a gun. Police said they fatally shot Seabrooks when he came out of the bathroom and lunged at them with a knife.

Three weeks later, relying on state law, New Jersey’s attorney general took extraordinary action: His office took over the Paterson police force. Attorney General Matthew Platkin told the AP that he ordered the takeover, in part, because communities of color in Paterson have long complained about police discrimination.

“I don’t blame anyone who has lived in Paterson for a long period of time for being distrustful,” Platkin said, adding that reforming the force won’t be quick or easy.

Activists said they recognized the need for change but were skeptical the force could be reformed.

“What happened to Jameek is happening to people all across the country,” said Zellie Thomas, a Paterson native who leads a local Black Lives Matter organization. “It’s not just about this one police officer, or the three police officers that assaulted him inside of the ambulance. It’s about a system that we need to be able to take down.”

The city’s public safety director and police chief have sued Platkin, seeking to overturn the attorney general’s control.

Meanwhile, Jameek Lowery’s family and friends say they are still seeking answers.

On a weekday in mid-January, a dozen members of Lowery’s family and local supporters held a vigil on the ice-and-snow covered grounds of St. Peter’s Cemetery in Garfield, New Jersey, where their friend and brother was interred five years ago.

“Say his name,” an aunt exclaimed as they released nearly two dozen blue balloons.

The mourners replied in unison: “Jameek Lowery.”

___

This story is part of an ongoing investigation led by The Associated Press in collaboration with the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism programs and FRONTLINE (PBS). The investigation includes the Lethal Restraint interactive story, database and the documentary, “Documenting Police Use Of Force,” premiering April 30 on PBS.

___

The Associated Press receives support from the Public Welfare Foundation for reporting focused on criminal justice. This story also was supported by Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights in conjunction with Arnold Ventures. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

___

Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/


Brought to you by www.srnnews.com


For years she thought her son had died of an overdose. The police video changed all that

BRISTOL, Tenn. (AP) — It was in the den that Karen Goodwin most strongly felt her son’s presence: On the coffee table were his ashes, inside a clock with its hands forever frozen at 12:35 a.m., the moment that a doctor had pronounced him dead.

As Goodwin swept and dusted the room, she’d often find herself speaking to her son, a soothing one-way conversation that helped her keep his spirit alive. She’d tell him about his nephews and nieces shopping for backpacks for the new school year, or the latest from the Bristol Motor Speedway and her motorcycle ride along Highway 421, one of the most scenic routes in the state.

“I wish you had been there,” she’d say wistfully.

Austin Hunter Turner died in 2017, on a night that Goodwin has rewound and replayed again and again, trying to make sense of what happened. Something just didn’t add up. There was the race to his apartment, the panic of watching her “baby boy” struggle to breathe, the chaos of paramedics in the kitchen. Her feelings of helplessness as she prayed for him to live.

Her emotions have been painfully conflicting. There was the deep shame that Turner died of a drug overdose. The doubts when her own memory diverged with the official police narrative. More recently, anger and outrage. She now believes she has spent all these years living with a lie that has tested what was once a resolute faith in the police, paramedics and the legal system.

Goodwin’s son is among more than 1,000 people across the United States who died over a decade after police restrained them in ways that are not supposed to be fatal, according to an investigation by The Associated Press in collaboration with FRONTLINE (PBS) and the Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism.

Turner’s case highlights a central finding of the AP investigation: In the aftermath of fatal police encounters involving the use of Tasers, brute force and other tactics, a lack of accountability permeates the justice system. From the police officers at the scene and their commanders to prosecutors and medical examiners, the system shields officers from scrutiny.

Goodwin and her family are examples of what can happen when police tactics go too far in such a system: The truth can be lost. Like the Goodwins, hundreds of families have been left to wrestle with incorrect or incomplete narratives that have recast the lives of the dead, and re-ordered the lives of those left behind.

Goodwin was in bed when her phone rang. It was her son’s girlfriend, Michelle Stowers. She was frantic. Turner had just collapsed on the kitchen floor.

“He’s not moving,” Stowers cried. “I don’t think he’s breathing. What should I do?”

The mother’s heart hammered.

“Call 911. I’m on my way,” Goodwin said, her mind racing through terrible possibilities.

Was her son alive? Dead? He’d had a few seizures, but they were nothing serious.

As she sped to Turner’s apartment on that warm humid night in August 2017, Goodwin called and alerted her husband, Brian, and older son, Dustin. She also dialed her sister but could only utter: “Pray for Hunter.”

When she arrived, Goodwin found her son gasping for breath on the linoleum of his kitchen floor. His eyes were vacant. His body shook. Foam spilled from his mouth.

The mother thought her son might die right then. A paramedic arrived, and Goodwin told him that Turner had suffered minor seizures before.

“Hunter, this is momma,” she said, kneeling, pressing an oxygen mask to his face.

The front door burst open, and police officers and firefighters swarmed into the tiny apartment. Medics had requested help restraining Turner to treat him. They thought Turner was resisting.

As the room filled with voices and equipment, Goodwin stepped away, relieved. She and her husband and children had always admired paramedics and police. They were heroes. And she knew they’d do everything in their power to save her son’s life.

Then an officer shouted: “Get up off the floor!” Goodwin heard another say, “You’re going to get tased if you keep it up.”

She felt bewildered. Her motherly instincts kicked in. “Please,” she implored them, “don’t hurt him more than you have to!”

The officers were pinning Turner facedown on a recliner. A few minutes later, he was strapped to a stretcher, again facedown.

Goodwin followed them to the waiting ambulance. She peered inside: Her son seemed like he was unconscious, with a strange sort of mask pulled over his head. His legs were bound.

Goodwin felt powerless. That was her son. She’d give her life for him.

Goodwin followed the ambulance to the Bristol Regional Medical Center.

After a long wait, the emergency room doctor said that “for all intents and purposes” Turner was dead. “Your son is young and strong,” he said. “We’re going to continue working on him for that reason.”

He paused, before continuing: “We’ll take you back — if you think you can handle it.”

Steps away, she saw a team of doctors and nurses trying to get Turner’s heart pumping again. She stared at her son’s blank face when they used a defibrillator to try to shock him back to life.

Nothing worked.

“We can keep going,” the doctor said.

Goodwin waved her hand. She needed a moment. Her son wasn’t moving. He didn’t respond to her voice, or the life-saving measures. When she’d touched his chest, it felt like Jell-O, because the paramedics, nurses and doctors had crushed everything in there while trying to save him. Goodwin knew what she had to do.

“That’s enough,” she said. “My baby needs to rest now.”

As she sat in the sterile hospital waiting room, she wondered: Why her son? He’s such a gentle, kind soul, Goodwin thought. Everyone loved him.

He was boyishly handsome, with light brown hair and a small goatee and chinstrap of hair along his jawline. A few inches short of 6 feet, Hunter had a strong, outdoorsy kind of look. He was outgoing, ready to chat even with strangers.

Turner had a passion for fast motorbikes and owned a maroon Suzuki SV650 that could fly along at 130 mph.

He’d hit the road with his mom and dad and buddies, racing up steep stretches of the Appalachian Mountains with hairpin turns. Sometimes, he’d turn so sharp and deep he’d scrape the knees of his jeans along the ground.

The 23-year-old Turner worked odd jobs to help make ends meet — lately it was refurbishing furniture.

“I have plenty of time to grow up,” he told his parents.

Now, as she sat there, she felt those words reverberating in her head.

At 4 a.m., Goodwin looked up and saw her husband rushing into the waiting room. She needed him now, more than ever.

Karen had met Brian in 1996 when he stopped to fill his tank at the gas station where she worked as a cashier. They were immediately attracted to each other. Karen was drawn to his big smile and sarcastic sense of humor, and Brian to the cashier’s sassy personality and long blonde hair. Karen and Brian were married within a year.

From the beginning, Karen loved how her husband treated her two boys from a previous marriage as his own, teaching them to hunt and fish, ride dirt bikes and motorcycles. An electrician who spent weeks on the road, he had sped the 200 miles south from West Virginia to Bristol in under three hours. Brian Goodwin, a burly tough guy who never cried, was having a hard time holding it together.

“What happened?” he asked.

Goodwin said she didn’t know. She said she’d overheard a Bristol police officer declare that Turner had died of a drug overdose.

The parents knew their son smoked marijuana. They also knew he got high using Suboxone, a drug used to wean people off opioids. But they didn’t think either drug could lead to an overdose.

It didn’t make sense to Goodwin. Why were police saying this, she wondered. They had learned from Turner’s girlfriend that he had seemed fine when she got home from her late shift at Walmart. He hadn’t acted stoned. He had collapsed out of the blue. How could this be an overdose?

After a memorial service, the Goodwins and two dozen of Turner’s friends honored his memory with a procession of motorcycles that climbed the sharp hills of the Appalachians. When they returned to Bristol, the group said their goodbyes. That night, Goodwin felt an emptiness in her soul. It would be a long time before she felt anything else.

Brian went back to work after a month. Keeping busy helped him deal with his grief.

But Goodwin couldn’t find an outlet. The mother tattooed her left arm with an image of her son’s thumbprint, and a clock set at 12:35. The tattoo artist had mixed traces of Turner’s ashes into the ink.

Mother and son had enjoyed a special connection. He was a daredevil, a fun-loving kid. Whenever something went wrong — like the time he hurt himself jumping off a neighbor’s porch, or crashing her car into a utility pole as he tried to teach himself to drive a stick shift — he’d run straight to her. And she was always there to say, “It’s all right, Hunter. It’s all right.”

Her son had always been there for her, too. When she had been diagnosed with cancer in 2015 and surgeons had removed one of her lungs and part of the other, her son had been the one to cheer her up.

Every morning he’d sit next to his mother on the front porch, covering her with a blanket to keep her warm. Sometimes, he’d hold his mother’s trembling hands and whisper, “I love you. You’ll be OK, Mom. You’ll be OK.”

Now, Goodwin wrestled with existential questions. Why did she fight so hard to beat cancer only to have her son die before her?

As the years wore on, she found solace in the den, next to her son’s ashes. Sometimes, she’d think about the weeks and months following Turner’s death. When she obtained his autopsy report, it explained that he died of an overdose and repeated the official police version of events — that officers had gone to Turner’s apartment to help the young man, but he had been too stoned to cooperate. He fought them, and in the end, it had cost him his life.

During that period, she had heard from police that they had tried to save Turner but couldn’t because of the drugs and his heart.

A strong supporter of law enforcement, Goodwin desperately wanted to believe that police and paramedics had acted appropriately. But something was gnawing at her. Sometimes, she’d wake up in the middle of the night and hear the police officer threatening to fire his Taser.

She’d recall that her son seemed to be having a seizure, and police held him down as he struggled to breathe. She had a hard time squaring those actions with what she knew in her heart was a medical emergency.

But she just didn’t trust her recollection. She felt constantly at war — her memory pitted against her deep trust in the police.

And more times than not, she ended up pushing her doubts aside. Why would the police lie? She wanted to believe they had done everything they could to save her son.

On Aug. 14, she heard a knock on her door. When she opened it, she found two Associated Press reporters who asked if she wanted to know more about how her son had died. They had videos that the family had never seen.

It was not easy for Goodwin to take them up on the offer. She knew it would be painful to revisit the worst night of her life.

After a week of agonizing, she sat down at her kitchen table and stared at a laptop before hitting play on the videos captured by police body cameras. The house was quiet except for the ping of a wind chime.

The videos on her computer screen took Goodwin straight back. Body cameras worn by officers Eric Keller and Kevin Frederick had captured most of the interactions between police, paramedics and Turner.

At times, the figures were difficult to make out, but one thing was clear: From the first moment police arrived, Turner was treated as a suspect resisting arrest — not as a patient facing an emergency.

Goodwin watched in horror as police officers seemed to ignore the fact they had been dispatched to a medical call.

Paramedics tried to force Turner onto his feet. He managed to get to his knees and momentarily stand. He took a single step and toppled over.

Officers began screaming that Turner was resisting arrest, being combative and disobeying their commands. But the video seemed to show Turner was having a seizure.

During a seizure, the muscles of the arms, legs and face stiffen, then begin to jerk. The videos showed that Turner was not throwing punches. He wasn’t kicking.

When Keller bounded into the apartment, the video shows he yelled at the flailing Turner, who was pinned down in a recliner chair, “You’re going to get tased if you keep it up.”

Despite paramedics warning him to wait, about 10 seconds later Keller pulled the trigger. Goodwin flinched when she heard the weapon’s loud pop followed by her son’s painful cry, as electricity coursed through his body.

“You’re not going to win this battle,” another paramedic said.

Goodwin was aghast.

“Win what?” she thought. “This isn’t a contest. My son isn’t resisting. He’s dying!”

The force didn’t end there. A paramedic sprayed a sedative up Turner’s nose, but most of it ended up on the medic.

Police kept restraining Turner — even after he was handcuffed facedown on top of the recliner. They shackled his legs.

When police transferred Turner to a gurney, they again put him facedown and strapped him in place. As blood spilled from his mouth, they covered his head with a spit hood.

Once inside the ambulance, an officer sat on Turner’s body — even though he was still on his stomach. There was no rush to get him to the hospital. Instead, the body camera showed police officers and paramedics spent six minutes recounting the “battle.”

It was only then that a paramedic noticed that Turner wasn’t breathing. Attendants removed the restraints, flipped him over, and began CPR. After about 10 minutes a paramedic walked into the frame. For a moment, he studied his colleagues who were working feverishly to revive Turner. He looked puzzled.

“What the hell happened here?” he asked. “Did we cut his damn airway off?”

They said no. As medics continued to work on Turner, the quizzical paramedic asked, “Y’all ain’t recording are you?”

The officer turned off his body camera. Goodwin’s screen suddenly went blank.

The Goodwins were livid. The videos raised disturbing questions. So, they decided to drill down into documents –- the police reports and autopsy –- to try to find answers.

They soon became convinced the Bristol law enforcement community had lied about what had happened.

Police didn’t include any statements in their reports from Karen Goodwin and her other son, Dustin, who had been in the apartment during the encounter. The events police described were a far cry from what Goodwin and her son had seen, or what was captured by the body cameras. They had made Turner out to be a villain.

In a report, Lt. Greg Brown said the paramedics told police the young man was reaching for a knife on the kitchen counter.

“A damn lie,” Goodwin thought. She’d seen a paramedic clear the counters before police arrived.

Keller said he fired his Taser to stop Turner from fighting the medical personnel.

Goodwin knew her son was dazed from the seizures. He wasn’t fighting back. They had no reason to stun him.

Brown wrote in a report that Turner was fighting with medics when he arrived at the apartment. Goodwin was there. She saw no such thing. The body camera showed the opposite.

Using buzzwords that painted the victim as the aggressor, Brown said Turner was “combative,” “agitated,” and had “ignored commands.” Brown noted that Turner had incredible strength like those under the influence of narcotics.

Sullivan County District Attorney Barry Staubus had asked the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to examine Turner’s death.

The investigator talked to witnesses and collected other details, Staubus said in an interview with AP. But after reviewing the TBI report and the body-camera footage, Staubus concluded that Turner died of a drug overdose. Nothing in the autopsy concluded the force and “restraint techniques” had caused or contributed to Turner’s death.

The Goodwins expressed reservations about the state’s investigation and the prosecutor’s decision to shield police from accountability. They noted that state investigators never reached out to two of the most important witnesses: Karen Goodwin and Dustin. The state investigator had sent messages to Turner’s girlfriend and a neighbor at the scene, asking if they’d talk. They said yes.

They never heard from the investigator again.

Tennessee law keeps confidential the state’s investigation files, including those that detail fatal police encounters – unless the death involves a shooting. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation declined to discuss Turner’s death.

Bristol’s chief of police would not answer questions when reached by the AP. Lt. Brown and officers Keller and Frederick did not reply to requests for comment, and neither did paramedics involved. The Bristol Fire Department did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The Goodwins were also perplexed by the autopsy report. Medical Examiner Eugene Scheuerman had declared Turner’s death an accident. He died of “Multiple Drug Toxicity” related to his use of the opioid in Suboxone and the psychoactive chemical in marijuana.

An analysis found a “therapeutic to lethal level” of Suboxone in Turner’s system. Scheuerman added that “dilated cardiomyopathy” — a condition that affects the heart’s ability to pump enough oxygen-rich blood — was a contributing factor to Turner’s death.

The autopsy report also repeated the police version of events.

He didn’t note that police officers had placed Turner facedown and applied their body weight, a tactic that has long been criticized by experts for restricting breathing.

The Goodwins wondered if the medical examiner had bothered to watch the police videos. Scheuerman has since died.

Three experts who reviewed the documents for AP related to the incident disagreed with the autopsy findings: they said Turner did not die of a drug overdose. Instead, they said the Bristol police made critical errors that contributed to Turner’s death, including placing him facedown in a way that could restrict his breathing.

“They didn’t understand the dangers of prolonged restraint and the pressure on his back,” said Jack Ryan, a police training expert and a former police officer and administrator.

Karen and Brian Goodwin said they were still figuring out how to come to terms with the truth. They had blamed their son for his own demise and had felt incredibly guilty about that. They are now convinced he didn’t die from drugs — he was killed by police force.

What hurts so much is that many people in town believe Turner died of an overdose. The parents still can hear the whispers in grocery stores and restaurants: Their boy would still be alive if he hadn’t been a drug user.

“That’s the stigma that we’ve had to live with, ‘Your son was a dumbass.’ We’ve had to live with that as his legacy,” Brian said. “I want everyone to know the truth.”

What’s next? A lawsuit? Becoming advocates for holding police accountable in arrest-related deaths so another family doesn’t go through their pain? They wonder how they will react if police pull them over along the road. They still support the police. But will they be respectful?

Karen worries she may be running out of time. Her health, fragile from the cancer fight, has been flagging. She is glad she learned the truth, but she fears she won’t live long enough to do anything with it.

“My son didn’t do this to himself,” Karen said, fighting back tears. “He didn’t have to die … His death killed a part of us.”

She turned and studied the clock on the coffee table. Even with all the new information, the clock’s hands remain fixed, unmoving, stuck forever at 35 minutes past midnight.

___

AP reporter Reese Dunklin contributed to this report from Dallas.

___

This story is part of an ongoing investigation led by The Associated Press in collaboration with the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism programs and FRONTLINE (PBS). The investigation includes the Lethal Restraint interactive story, database and the documentary, “Documenting Police Use Of Force,” premiering April 30 on PBS.

___

The Associated Press receives support from the Public Welfare Foundation for reporting focused on criminal justice. This story also was supported by Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights in conjunction with Arnold Ventures. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

___

Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/


Brought to you by www.srnnews.com


Stock market today: Asian shares are mostly higher after another set of Wall St records

BANGKOK (AP) — Asian shares ended mostly higher in quiet, Good Friday holiday trading, while European and U.S. markets were closed.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.5% to 40,369.44 and the Kospi in Seoul was little changed, at 2,748.55. The Shanghai Composite index gained 1% to 3,041.17.

Taiwan’s Taiex advanced 0.7%. In Bangkok, the SET added 0.5%.

India’s markets were closed for Holi.

The U.S. dollar slipped to 151.35 Japanese yen from 151.38 yen. The euro edged lower, to $1.0774 from $1.0790.

On Thursday, the S&P 500 added 0.1%, to its all-time high set a day before and closed at 5,254.35. It gained 10.2% in the first quarter.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ticked up 0.1% to 39,807.37 and likewise set a record. The Nasdaq composite dipped 0.1% to 16,379.46.

Chemours fell 9.1% despite reporting better results for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It gave a forecast for earnings before taxes and other items in the current quarter that was below analysts’ expectations.

Also on the losing end was Trump Media & Technology Group. The company behind former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social fell 6.4% after soaring more than 14% in each of the past two days. Its stock has shot well beyond what critics say is reasonable for the money-losing company, driven by fans of Trump and investors hoping to cash in on the mania.

The U.S. stock market has been on a nearly unstoppable run since late October, and the S&P 500 just capped its fifth straight winning month. It has leaped as the U.S. economy has remained remarkably solid despite high interest rates meant to get inflation under control.

And with inflation hopefully still cooling from its peak, the Federal Reserve has indicated it will likely cut interest rates several times later this year.

The U.S. economy’s growth in the final three months of last year was stronger than earlier estimated and another report said fewer U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week, in the latest indications of resilience.

The hope on Wall Street is still that the Federal Reserve will begin cutting its main interest rate in June. Lower interest rates ease the pressure on the economy, while boosting prices for investments. But progress on bringing inflation down has become bumpier recently, with reports this year coming in hotter than expected.

Analysts said investors are ready to pounce on signs of a recovery in the housing market, with interest and mortgage rates expected to come down later this year.

U.S. benchmark crude oil gained $1.82 to $83.17 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Thursday. Brent crude, the international standard, surged $1.59 to $87.00 per barrel. Trading was closed Friday for the Good Friday holiday.


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Kamala Harris pushes the envelope as Biden struggles with some Democrats

By Trevor Hunnicutt

(Reuters) – Hosting rapper Fat Joe at the White House to talk about reforming marijuana laws. Visiting an abortion clinic. Calling for a ceasefire in Gaza at the historic Selma bridge in Alabama. Walking the bloodstained crime scene of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris has stepped out of the shadow of President Joe Biden in recent weeks as part of a high-profile effort to persuade the fractious coalition of voters who sent them to the White House to give them a second term.

Harris’ evolving role comes as progressive Democrats target Biden over his pro-Israel stance and polls show him in a tight race against Republican rival Donald Trump.

As left-leaning voters question Biden’s age and leadership, a problem Trump doesn’t face with his core voters, the 59-year-old Harris is taking on more heated topics, more often and more directly than Biden.

Biden has defended abortion rights but emphasized women whose lives are in danger, and called it a “deeply private and painful” matter.

Harris has gone further – during a visit to Planned Parenthood in Minneapolis, believed to be the first time a sitting vice president has visited an abortion clinic, the former senator described abortion as a basic part of women’s healthcare in vivid terms.

“Everyone get ready for the language: uterus,” she said. “Issues like fibroids — we can handle this — breast cancer screenings, contraceptive care — that is the kind of work that happens here, in addition, of course, to abortion care.”

In Selma, she delivered the strongest comments at that point by any U.S. official on Israel’s offensive against Hamas: “Given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire.”

Her use of the word “ceasefire,” a term left-leaning Democrats were so eager to hear that it had become a rallying cry, was cheered by some, although others demanded it be met with policy changes, too. Harris also pushed Israel to do more to ease what she called a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza.

“There is no doubt the vice-president has tried to move the conversation about Gaza to a more empathetic place but introducing new language falls flat when there is no evidence she’s pushing for a more meaningful policy shift,” said Abbas Alawieh, a top official for a campaign urging voters to protest Biden by voting “uncommitted” in the Democratic primaries.

“She needs to push Biden harder to change U.S. policy,” he said.

Current and former Harris aides disputed the idea of any difference in policy between Biden, characterizing their efforts as a difference in tone and emphasis. They said Harris’ initiatives are a reflection of areas of interest that, in some cases, date back to her time as a prosecutor.

“She’s been on the leading edge of some of the most important issues facing the country, and certainly [those] that are going to be determinative of the election,” said Dave Cavell, a former Harris speechwriter.

Biden cannot emphasize divisive cultural issues without alienating more conservative voters he needs to win, current and former aides said. As the Democrats’ “coalition leader” he needs to focus on the core economic issues that will sway centrists, they said.

To that end, he has used 11 of his 16 trips this year to competitive election states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania to promote “kitchen table” economic policies like bringing back manufacturing jobs shipped overseas and supporting unions.

Harris, the first Black, Asian and woman vice president, instead, is embracing a pugilistic role, with a “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms” tour and a “Fight for Our Freedoms” college tour, in addition to talking about the economy.

ANOTHER CHALLENGE FOR HARRIS

Biden has assigned Harris a number of seemingly intractable issues during her vice presidency, from the decades-old problem of migration to the U.S. southern border to pushing back on a generations-old pattern of limiting voting rights for left-leaning Americans.

Winning back parts of the Democratic coalition that has fractured over Israel policy, immigration and the economy is another big challenge.

Reuters/Ipsos polling that shows Biden and Trump tied nationally also reveals a majority of women, people under 40 and Latinos disapprove of Biden’s performance as president. Each group favored Biden in 2020, helping him beat Trump.

Only 56% of Black people approved of Biden’s job performance, low figures for a group that typically votes 9-to-1 for Democrats in presidential elections.

Harris, whose approval ratings in recent public opinion polls also hover under 40%, is also the U.S.’s most popular Democratic politician after Biden. But some White House aides have privately questioned her effectiveness as an administration spokesperson and her ability to win were she at the top of the ticket.

If Trump wins white voters, the largest U.S. racial group, for the third election in a row, Biden needs a dominant showing among a diverse set of groups that typically favor Democrats.

There are some signs that Harris is in for a tough fight.

On a trip to San Juan last week also aimed at courting the 5.9 million Puerto Rican Latinos who live in the mainland United States, Harris’ arrival at a community center to celebrate the Caribbean island’s culture was shouted down by demonstrators.

Some chanted “Yankee, go home” and held signs calling Harris a “war criminal” for the Biden administration’s support of Israel in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, despite a mounting Gaza death toll. Such protests have occurred at multiple Harris events.

She has an increasingly vocal fan in Biden, though, who once wrestled with the decision of whether to make her his running mate in 2020. Harris has worked carefully to make sure that she doesn’t appear out of sync with her boss, describing Biden and her on March 4 as “aligned and consistent from the very beginning” on Gaza.

“I love her,” Biden said, unprompted, of Harris of Feb. 6. She’s “doing an incredible job,” he added on March 18.

Read Reuters full Election 2024 coverage here:

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington; Additional reporting by Arlene Eiras and Nandita Bose; Editing by Heather Timmons and Deepa Babington)


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Georgia bill aimed at requiring law enforcement to heed immigration requests heads to governor

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia’s Legislature gave final approval Thursday to a bill that would require local jailers to check the immigration status of inmates and work with federal immigration officials instead of sheltering people who are in the country illegally.

The House voted 99-75 to accept changes to House Bill 1105, which was backed by Republicans and now goes to the governor for his signature. It previously passed the state Senate.

Under the measure, local law enforcement agencies would risk losing state funding for failing to work with immigration officials. Local officials could also face misdemeanor charges.

The measure gained traction after police accused a Venezuelan man of beating a nursing student to death on the University of Georgia campus.

Jose Ibarra was arrested last month on murder and assault charges in the death of 22-year-old Laken Riley. Immigration authorities say Ibarra, 26, unlawfully crossed into the United States in 2022. It is unclear whether he has applied for asylum.

Democrats raised concerns it would turn local law enforcement into immigration police, making communities less willing to report crime and work with them. They have also pointed to studies showing immigrants are less likely than native-born Americans to commit crimes.

House Republican Jesse Petrea said on the floor Thursday that the bill was asking law enforcement only to work with immigration officials when someone has committed a crime and is in the country illegally.

“I don’t believe anyone in law enforcement believes that’s too much to ask,” he said.


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What to know about Day of Visibility, designed to show the world ‘trans joy’

Sunday is International Transgender Day of Visibility, observed around the world to bring attention to a population that’s often ignored, disparaged or victimized.

Here are things to know about the day.

The “day” is Sunday, but celebrations and educational events designed to bring attention to transgender people are occurring for several days around March 31.

Events were scheduled around the world and include panels and speakers in Cincinnati and Atlanta, marches in Melbourne, Florida and Philadelphia, and an inclusive roller derby league’s game on New York’s Long Island. A picnic is planned in the English town of Hitchin.

Perhaps the highest profile U.S. event is a rally scheduled for Sunday on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Major buildings and landmarks across the U.S. will be lit up in pink, white and light blue to mark the day. Last year, those lit included New York’s One World Trade Center and Niagara Falls.

Rachel Crandall-Crocker, the executive director and co-founder of Transgender Michigan, organized the first day in 2009.

“I think that once a person understands us, it’s hard to discriminate against us,” she said in an interview. “I created it because I wanted a time that we don’t have to be so lonely. I wanted a day that we’re all together all over the world as one community. And that’s exactly what we are.”

It was designed as a contrast to Transgender Day of Remembrance, which is held annually on Nov. 20 to honor the memory of of transgender people who were killed in anti-transgender violence.

Crandall-Crocker selected the day at the end of March to give it space from the day of remembrance and Pride Month in June, which celebrates all types of LGBTQ+ people.

She plans to take part in a rally in Lansing, Michigan.

Transgender people have become more visible in public life in the U.S. and elsewhere.

There also has been a backlash from conservatives officials. At least 11 states have adopted policies barring people from using the bathrooms aligning with their gender in schools or other public buildings, 25 have bans on transgender women and/or girls competing in sports for women or girls and more than 20 have adopted bans on gender-affirming health care for minors. Some of the policies have been put on hold by courts.

Nico Lang, author of “American Teenager: How Trans Kids are Surviving Hate and Finding Joy in a Turbulent Era,” which is scheduled to be published later this year, said it’s important to find happiness even amid the political tumult.

“I feel like we as people — all of us queer people, trans people — are trying to assert our humanity right now,” said Lang, who uses they/them pronouns.

They said the day of visibility is powerful because it’s not just on social media but also in real life with rallies and potluck meals.

“It’s just us living our lives,” they said.


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Georgia joins states seeking parental permission before children join social media

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia could join other states in requiring children younger than 16 to have their parents’ explicit permission to create social media accounts.

Lawmakers on Friday gave final approval to Senate Bill 351, which also would ban social media use on school devices and internet services, require porn sites to verify users are 18 or over and mandate additional education by schools on social media and internet use. The House passed the measure 120-45 and the Senate approved it 48-7.

The bill, which Republican Sen. Jason Anavitarte of Dallas called “transformative,” now goes to Gov. Brian Kemp for his signature or veto.

A number of other states including Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and Utah passed laws last year requiring parental consent for children to use social media. In Arkansas, a federal judge in August blocked enforcement of a law requiring parental consent for minors to create new social media accounts.

Some in Congress also are proposing parental consent for minors.

State Rep. Scott Hilton, a Peachtree Corners Republican, argued the state should do more to limit social media use by children, saying it’s causing harm.

“Every rose has a thorn, and that’s social media in this generation,” Hilton said. “It’s great for connectivity and activism, but it has reared its ugly head on mental health.”

But opponents warned the bill would cause problems. For example, Rep. David Wilkerson, a Powder Springs Democrat, said that the ban on use of social media in schools could ban teachers from showing educationally valuable YouTube videos.

“If we do pass this, we’ll be back fixing this next year, because there are too many issues with this bill,” Wilkerson said.

The bill says social media services would have to use “commercially reasonable efforts” to verify someone’s age by July 1, 2025.

Services would have to treat anyone who can’t be verified as a minor. Parents of children younger than 16 would have to consent to their children joining a service. Social medial companies would be limited in how they could customize ads for children younger than 16 and how much information they could collect on those children.

To comply with federal regulation, social media companies already ban kids under 13 from signing up to their platforms, but children have been shown to easily evade the bans.

Up to 95% of teens aged 13 to 17 report using a social media platform, with more than a third saying they use them “almost constantly,” the Pew Research Center found.

The Georgia bill also aims to shut down porn sites by requiring submission of a digitized identification card or some other government-issued identification. Companies could be held liable if minors were found to access the sites, and could face fines of up to $10,000.

“It will protect our children,” said Rep. Rick Jasperse, a Jasper Republican who argues age verification will lead porn sites to cut off access to Georgians. In March, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Texas law, leading Pornhub to cut off access to Texans.

The Free Speech Coalition, which represents adult film makers, says the bill would be ineffective because users could mask their location and because people would be forced to transmit sensitive information. They also argue it’s unconstitutional because there are less restrictive ways to keep children out and discriminate against certain types of speech. The coalition has sued multiple states over the laws.

The ban on school social media excludes email, news, gaming, online shopping, photograph editing and academic sites. The measure also requires a model program on the effects of social media and for students in grades 6-12, and requires existing anti-bullying programs to be updated.

The move comes after U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned in May that social media hasn’t been proven to be safe for young people.

Murthy called on tech companies, parents and caregivers to take “immediate action to protect kids now” and asked tech companies to share data and increase transparency and for policymakers to regulate social media for safety the way they do car seats and baby formula.

Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instragram, announced in 2022 it was taking steps to verify ages. Meta says it provides “age-appropriate experiences” for teens 13-17 on Instagram, including preventing unwanted contact from unknown adults.

Dozens of U.S. states, including California and New York, also are suing Meta Platforms Inc., claiming the company harms young people and contributes to a youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children to its platforms.

Florida recently passed a law banning social media accounts for children under 14 regardless of parental consent and require parental permission for 14- and 15-year-olds.


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