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The Minneapolis City Council on Friday approved an agreement with the state to revamp policing, nearly three years after a police officer killed George Floyd. The state Department of Human Rights issued a report last year that said the police department had engaged in a pattern of race discrimination for at least a decade. City leaders subsequently agreed to negotiate a settlement with the agency. The City Council approved the court-enforceable agreement Friday on an 11-0 vote, but not before several members expressed harsh criticism of the Minneapolis Police Department and other city leaders over the years, reports the Associated Press. “The lack of political will to take responsibility for MPD is why we are in this position today,” council member Robin Wonsley said. “This legal settlement formally and legally prevents city leadership from deferring that responsibility anymore. And I hope this settlement is a wake-up call for city leaders, who the public has watched rubber-stamp poor labor contracts, have signed off on endless misconduct settlements, and then shrugged their shoulders when residents asked then why we have a dysfunctional police department.” The state agency launched its investigation after Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, knelt on Floyd’s neck for 9 1/2 minutes, disregarding the Black man’s fading pleas that he couldn’t breathe. Floyd’s death led to mass protests that spread around the world. It forced a national reckoning on racial injustice and compelled the Minneapolis Police Department to begin an overhaul. The U.S. Department of Justice is still investigating whether Minneapolis police engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination, and that investigation could lead to a separate consent decree with the city.

A New York judge will soon unseal criminal charges against Donald Trump over a payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. The alleged coverup that followed the payment is likely to be as important for the future of the case, the Wall Street Journal reports. A Manhattan grand jury indicted Trump after an investigation of the hush-money payment to Daniels in the final stretch of his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump’s then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels $130,000 in October 2016 to keep her from going public with a story of a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump a decade earlier. Trump is expected to appear in court on Tuesday, but any potential trial is still at least more than a year away, legal experts said, meaning it could occur during or after the presidential campaign, Reuters reports. A Trump attorney said the former president will "vigorously fight" the charges. Trump received support from a number of potential challengers for the Republican nomination including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg defended his office’s decision to indict Trump in a letter to Republican lawmakers Friday, rejecting GOP accusations of political persecution as “baseless and inflammatory.” “That conclusion is misleading and meritless,” wrote Leslie Dubeck, Bragg’s general counsel, in a six-page letter to three House Republican committee chairs who have sought internal details of the criminal probe, Politico reports. Trump has acknowledged that he reimbursed Cohen for the Daniels payment in the first year of his presidency. Trump Organization records mislabeled the money as legal expenses for work he never performed, federal prosecutors alleged in the 2018 prosecution of Cohen. The indictment could make any number of charges, including those related to the payment to Daniels or a separate $150,000 payment to a former Playboy model who alleged that she had an affair with the former president. Among the most likely charges is falsifying business records. The charge by itself is a misdemeanor but can be converted into a felony if prosecutors prove records were falsified to commit or conceal another crime, such as a violation of campaign-finance rules. Experts said any successful prosecution would likely require evidence establishing that Trump tried to hide the repayment to Cohen with false book entries. Prosecutors would have to prove that Trump made or caused the false entries with an “intent to defraud.”

The former president denies any sexual encounter with Daniels, has accused her of extortion and said he relied on Cohen’s advice as his lawyer at the time. He has called the investigation by Bragg, a Democrat, politically motivated. Key parts of the story rely on the word of Cohen, who pleaded guilty in U.S. district court in 2018 to campaign-finance and other charges brought by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, as well as to lying to Congress on a separate matter. He was sentenced to three years in prison.

Despite Cohen’s vulnerabilities as a potential witness, former New York prosecutors said the Manhattan district attorney’s office would have circumstantial evidence and common sense on its side if it attempted to tie Trump to the reimbursement plan. “You can think this witness is a liar, but you can also believe that his version of the story is the only one that makes much sense,” said Rebecca Roiphe, a professor at New York Law School and former Manhattan prosecutor.

When Baltimore prosecutors asked to vacate Adnan Syed’s murder conviction and have him freed after 23 years behind bars, their request exemplified a movement in the criminal justice system to acknowledge and correct past mistakes, including police misconduct and prosecutorial missteps. A Maryland appellate court ruling this week in the case raises new questions about the rights of crime victims, whose role in such proceedings often comes in opposition to ongoing justice reform efforts. Legal experts said the ruling could have serious implications, reports the Associated Press. The Appellate Court of Maryland’s 2-1 decision reinstated Syed’s conviction, creating yet another unexpected wrinkle in the protracted legal odyssey chronicled in the hit podcast “Serial.” The court ordered a redo of the September hearing that won Syed his release, finding that the victim’s family didn’t receive adequate notice to attend in person, which violated their right to be “treated with dignity and respect.” Syed will appeal the decision to the state’s highest court. While crime victim advocates celebrated their victory, others warned the ruling could have a chilling effect on efforts to fight wrongful convictions and excessive sentences. “The victims’ rights movement is a very powerful lobby that wants a reserved seat at the head of the criminal justice table,” said Doug Colbert, a University of Maryland law professor who represented Syed decades ago. “This ruling certainly seems to satisfy their agenda.” David Jaros of the Center for Criminal Justice Reform at the University of Baltimore School of Law said defendants rarely succeed in getting prosecutors to reconsider a standing conviction. Syed was 17 when his high school ex-girlfriend and classmate, Hae Min Lee, was found strangled to death and buried in a makeshift grave in 1999. He was arrested weeks later and ultimately convicted of murder. He received life in prison, plus 30 years. Paul Cassell, a victims’ rights lawyer and University of Utah law professor, called this week's court decision "an important milestone, signaling that crime victims’ rights are becoming an enforceable part of our nation’s criminal justice architecture,. It would add insult to criminal injury to extend victims only paper promises.”

When New York City police in January announced arrests in the killing of a 17-year-old in Coney Island, none of the three people charged was old enough to drive: A 13-year-old had stabbed Nyheem Wright. The killer's friends, ages 14 and 15, were charged with aiding him. The fight started over a girl after school, prosecutors said. Now, the boys, who turned themselves in, face possible sentences ranging from nine years in prison to life behind bars. From 2018 through 2022, teenagers were arrested and charged with murder in the city at a rate that grew twice as fast as that of adults. Forty-five children ranging from 13 to 17 were arrested and charged with murder last year, nearly double the number in 2018, the New York Times reports. Violence breaks out more quickly and more often now than it did before the pandemic, law enforcement and education officials say. Young people “came out of quarantine with scores to settle,” said Patrice O’Shaughnessy of the Bronx district attorney's office, which charged 26 adolescents with murder last year. The proliferation of guns and the fallout of the pandemic’s disruption to schools, including higher numbers of students missing school and falling behind academically, added factors that have troubled children. Students were absent from schools, and with that their stabilizing influence, more often in poor communities, where gun violence was already higher and where social services, housing, and access to amenities are often lacking. During the 18 months that New York City schools were closed because of the pandemic, more people in Black and Latino communities died, and Black children were more likely to lose a caregiver. All the teenagers charged with murder in New York City last year were Black or Hispanic. Clinical psychologist Joseph Allen of the University of Virginia said the pandemic and its attendant catastrophes were a “short circuit” for adolescents, at a time when they are learning how to manage conflicts. A recent study of four major U.S. cities found that the rate at which children were victims of gun violence had nearly doubled throughout the pandemic. Black children were the main victims, said Jonathan Jay, a professor at Boston University School of Public Health and the report’s lead author. “Black children’s rates of gun victimization in these cities was 100 times the rate of white children during the pandemic, which was much more than we have ever seen before or would have expected to see,” Jay sai

Princess Blanding and her family have endured the pain of losing two relatives experiencing a mental health crisis to police violence within five years. The death of Irvo Otieno in Virginia is reigniting her call to fix mental health and police systems that harm too many Black people. Blanding grew up in the same home as Marcus-David Peters; their families were so close that they were like siblings. Peters, 24, was a high school biology teacher in Tappahannock, Va., who was shot three times in Richmond in 2018. Tragedy struck again for Blanding when her biological brother, Joshua Mathis, was killed by police in January 2022. “If you’re Black and having a mental health crisis, you know, it’s gonna result in the same as Marcus-David Peters, as Joshua Mathis, and as Irvo Otieno,” Blanding said. “You’re just at a higher likelihood of ‘the problem being taken out,’ meaning being killed, instead of getting help.” Blanding is determined to turn her grief into a purpose. She’ll never stop challenging whether police officers should interact with individuals having a mental health crisis, she tells Capital B. Families, activists, and mental health advocates demand more police accountability and tangible solutions to dealing with people in the throes of mental health episodes without them ending in death. Some efforts have been made to address this issue, including eight-hour de-escalation training courses and multi-county mental health emergency phone numbers for the public to call instead of 911, such as the Marcus Alert, named in memory of Peters. The original Marcus Alert legislation included provisions for training and resources for police and the community that may have prevented Otieno’s death. After Peters’ death, Blanding said, “performative politicians” entertained her family’s request to create a behavioral health emergency phone number that would connect callers to a regional crisis call center that will determine what type of intervention is needed. “And although we have the Marcus Alert in place, with my brother’s name on it, it is not the life-saving system that we crafted it to be so that having a mental health crisis would never result in a death sentence,” Blanding said. The bill that eventually passed is a significantly watered-down effort restricted to only five jurisdictions in Virginia. Henrico County, where Otieno was killed, doesn’t have the Marcus Alert three-digit phone service; it provides an online database form. The rest of the state is expected to have the service by 2028, even though lawmakers allow smaller localities to opt out of the service.

After Monday’s shooting a Christian school in Nashville, social media users shared a post that claims nearly all mass shootings happen in designated “gun-free zones” where firearms are expressly prohibited, such as schools. “The facts: 92-98% of mass shootings happen in gun-free zones. Today was yet another example of that,” reads an Instagram post. “Great job on the Gun Free School Zones Act, Clinton and Biden.” The oft-cited figure comes from a study by a gun rights advocacy group that experts say is flawed. They say the study draws from federal data on “active shooter” incidents, which is not the same as a mass shooting. It also excludes gang-related incidents, yet includes military bases and other locations that aren’t arguably “gun free.” There are no definitive data on how many “mass shootings” occur in “gun-free” zones, because there is no consensus on how to define either term, the Associated Press reports. The Instagram post refers to a 1990 law that made it illegal for anyone to possess a firearm in a school zone unless part of a school program or by a law enforcement officer. It was signed when President Bill Clinton was in office and Joe Biden served as a senator from Delaware. The figure comes from a study by gun rights advocacy group the Crime Prevention Research Center. The group says 94% of mass public shootings since 1950 happened in gun-free zones. The group’s president argues that gun-free zones “invite” mass shootings. Looking at gun violence data from 1950 to 1990 is “irrelevant” because many states banned or heavily restricted concealed firearms during that period, says Daniel Webster of Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Gun Violence Solutions. Webster and other experts say the center’s study wrongly classifies places where armed officers are stationed -- such as military bases -- as gun-free zones. It also excluded gang-related shootings and other mass shootings related to other major crimes. The center’s study relies on the FBI’s data on “active shooter” incidents, which isn’t the same as a mass shooting, said Jaclyn Schildkraut of the Rockefeller Institute of Government’s Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium. "You could have 0 fatalities and injuries and be included in that data,” she said. John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center argued that the exclusion of shootings stemming from gang violence or other crimes is appropriate. He said the “causes and solutions” of those incidents are “dramatically different” from those of typical mass shootings, where the aim is generally to kill or injure as many people as possible.

Baltimore’s flagship community violence intervention program, Safe Streets, has led to reductions in nonfatal shootings and homicides, finds a Johns Hopkins University analysis of nearly 15 years of data. In the neighborhoods served by the five Safe Streets sites that have been open for four years or more, the analysis indicated there was an average of 22% fewer homicides than predicted. Across all sites, Safe Streets was associated with a 23% reduction in nonfatal shootings, researchers found, reports the Baltimore Sun. Daniel Webster of Johns Hopkins’ Center for Gun Violence Solutions said that while there is further research to be done, such as gathering insights from people close to the program and in surrounding communities, this study shows there has “clearly been less gun violence as a result” of Safe Streets’ work in Baltimore. “We’re seeing in the neighborhood of about a 20% drop in gun violence when you implement a Safe Streets program in a neighborhood,” Webster said. Safe Streets is a community violence intervention strategy built around “violence interrupters,” people with knowledge of the streets and community credibility, tasked with de-escalating conflicts and connecting people at-risk of gun violence with services or opportunities. The program is what Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott calls a community violence “ecosystem” designed to tamp down the city’s consistently high level of violence. Shantay Jackson, director of the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, called the program an “integral component” of that ecosystem and said the Hopkins evaluation “underscores the profound impact that Safe Streets has had. ..Safe Streets staff members work tirelessly and selflessly to mediate conflicts in our communities and encourage peace. These results would not be possible without their commitment to our city and fellow neighborhoods.” Safe Streets has been in the spotlight in recent years after the killings of several frontline workers and an internal review that found problems with its oversight, training, and staffing. The city announced last year that the nonprofits running Safe Streets sites would be consolidated and that the city would add new hospital-based violence intervention programs.

In 2004, the U.S. Sentencing Commission again called attention to the racial disparities produced by the 100-to-1 rule. This meant that the same sentence would be applied to a dealer holding 50 grams of crack as the one selling 100 times that amount in cocaine, enough to fill a briefcase. In 1986, before federal mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, the average federal prison sentence for African Americans charged with these crimes was 11 percent longer than it was for whites; by 1990, it was 49 percent longer, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. In 2006, four years before the 100-to-1 rule was revised, 80 percent of defendants sentenced for crack offenses were African American, even though two-thirds of users were white or Hispanic, reports the New York Times. The entwined crack and crime epidemics that unfolded during the 1980s and 1990s left a catalog of destabilizing legacies. The most recent chapter is playing out in a national crisis around aging in the penal system, and out of it. Data from the Osborne Association suggest that by 2030, the population of prisoners 50 and older will account for one-third of all incarcerated people — an increase of 4,400 percent over a span of a half-century. Decades of mass incarceration have resulted in a prison population growing older and more enfeebled, and has introduced the challenge of reintegrating people coming out after long sentences, often with few skills, into a society that technology has made alienatingly unfamiliar. Last June, Osborne opened a residence in part of a new building within the Marcus Garvey housing complex in Brooklyn for people over 50 exiting long prison terms. Men and women in this situation are among the most vulnerable to homelessness, but housing built around their specific needs is exceedingly rare. The Osborne model is the first of its kind in New York. Beyond the rooms themselves, the facility provides psychological counseling, drug counseling, connections to doctors, job placement and so on. The objective is to scale the program up in other places in the city and state and serve as a blueprint for what might be done elsewhere. Older people are among the most socially isolated after release from prison,” said Bruce Western, chair of the sociology department at Columbia University and an expert on re-entry. In his research he found that they have the least support coming home — both in terms of financial and emotional help. “Some people were in prison repeatedly or for long periods of time, and families often cannot sustain the relationships.”

A new federal study found a surge in gunfire injuries during the COVID-19 pandemic when the number of people fatally shooting each other and themselves increased. The number of people injured by gunfire was nearly 40% higher in 2020 and 2021, compared with 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a study published Thursday. In 2022, gun injuries tapered off, but were still 20% higher than before the pandemic. Gun injuries rose similarly for men and women over the past three years, while the largest proportional increase occurred among children under 15, a subset that remains a small fraction of the overall problem, reports the Associated Press. Experts say the CDC gun injury study, which uses data from hospital emergency departments, helps provide a more comprehensive picture of gun violence than simply measuring homicides and suicides. “Hospitals are a great place to keep the pulse on who is being shot, and when and where,” said Catherine Barber, a senior injury researcher at Harvard University’s school of public health. The CDC study results came from more than 2,200 hospital emergency departments, the bulk of the nation’s ERs, said Thomas Simon an author of the new study. The study suggests that the number of gunshot-related ER visits at hospitals rose from around 50,000 in 2019 to more than 72,000 in 2020. Because more than a quarter of U.S. hospital emergency departments were not included in the study, the actual number is likely significantly higher. Experts believe a variety of factors contributed to the pandemic surge in gun violence, including a rise in guns purchased, more time spent inside homes where guns are present, and mental health struggles stemming from social isolation and economic hardships. The gun violence problem was thrust into the national conversation again this week after a shooter killed 3 children and 3 adults at a Christian school in Tennessee. “We are in a week when people are paying attention to this issue again, sadly, after a mass shooting in Nashville,” said Nina Vinik of Project Unloaded, an advocacy group focused on the impact of gun violence on children.

President Biden would to veto a GOP-led measure to block Washington, D.C.’s major police accountability legislation if the resolution passes Congress. “Congress should respect D.C.’s right to pass … measures that improve public safety and public trust,” a White House official told the Washington Post. “The President will veto this resolution if it reaches his desk.” Biden’s threat to veto the measure — known as a disapproval resolution — is likely to end the GOP’s hopes of rejecting another piece of D.C. legislation, the Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Act. Congress this month passed a resolution blocking D.C.’s criminal code overhaul, which Biden signed — angering advocates for D.C. statehood and causing local Democrats to fear more legislation could be in jeopardy. Biden “will not support congressional Republicans’ efforts to overturn commonsense police reforms such as: banning chokeholds; limiting use of force and deadly force; requiring the timely release of body-worn camera footage; and requiring officer training on de-escalation and use of force,” the statement said. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s nonvoting delegate in the House, thanked Biden for coming out early with a veto threat. She had been caught off guard and disappointed when Biden announced support for rejecting D.C.’s criminal code overhaul. “The president has finally reached the appropriate conclusion that the nearly 700,000 residents of the nation’s capital deserve, and are fully capable, of governing themselves,” she said Thursday. Biden’s veto threat came a day after the House Oversight Committee advanced the resolution disapproving of the policing bill on a party-line vote. Biden surprised local Democrats when he announced that he would sign the GOP disapproval resolution blocking the criminal code overhaul, which was the subject of political attacks that it was “soft on crime” — a characterization that council members strongly disputed.

Tension increased on Capitol Hill this week as it became clearer that Congress would not take any action after another fatal school shooting. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Ca.) on Thursday showed no signs that Republicans would move on any firearm measures in response to the shooter at a Nashville private school who killed three 9-year-old students and three adults on Monday. "I don't think one piece of legislation solves this. I think a nation together, working together, solves a problem that's much bigger than us,” McCarthy said. Asked about Nashville, McCarthy played down the impact of legislative fixes in addressing mass shootings and said the nation must deal with mental illness, according to Roll Call. Democrats, who called on Republicans to hold floor votes on bills that would ban assault weapons, indicated they did not have immediate plans to pursue a discharge petition that would force such a vote. “We haven't made any decisions one way or the other with respect to a particular legislative approach,” said Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York. “But we are going to continue to make it clear that Congress must act.” In the Senate, an extended floor debate Thursday between Connecticut Democrat Christopher Murphy and Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz laid bare the partisan fault lines. Murphy, a longtime voice for tougher gun laws, blocked unanimous consent requests from Cruz on bills related to school security. Cruz said one measure would commit $15 billion to add law enforcement officers at schools and another would allow schools to spend COVID-related money on school security. The proposals, Murphy said, were not serious attempts to make children safer. He called one “ham-handed” and said there were brackets and question marks in the text. “They're going to get a lot of clicks online,” Murphy said. “The confrontation that he's looking for will probably lead to a bunch of cable news appearances being booked, but it's not going to save any kids' lives.” Cruz said Democrats simply react to mass shootings by wanting another gun control bill to disarm law-abiding citizens.