First the cartel cut its teeth with drug trafficking. Then avocados, real estate and construction companies. Now, a Mexican criminal group known for its brutality is moving in on seniors and their timeshares.

The operation is relatively simple. Cartel employees posing as sales representatives call up timeshare owners, offering to buy their investments back for generous sums. They then demand upfront fees for anything from listing advertisements to paying government fines. The representatives persuade their victims to wire large amounts of money to Mexico — sometimes as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars — and then they disappear.

The scheme has netted the cartel, Jalisco New Generation, hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade, according to U.S. officials who were not authorized to speak publicly, via dozens of call centers in Mexico that relentlessly target American and Canadian timeshare owners. They even bribe employees at Mexican resorts to leak guest information, the U.S. officials say.

Read it all.

“Over 5 years, American timeshare owners were bilked out of $288 million. The real number is most likely $350 million, as about 20% never register a complaint.”

A Mexican Drug Cartel’s New Target? Seniors and Their Timeshares https://t.co/DAKwfJwE37

— Dan Beucke (@DanBeucke) March 21, 2024

“The challenge we are having is a lack of interest by federal prosecutors to charge illicit marijuana cases,” said Ray Donovan, the former chief of operations of the Drug Enforcement Administration. “They don’t realize all the implications. Marijuana causes so much crime at the local level, gun violence in particular. The same groups selling thousands of pounds of marijuana are also laundering millions of dollars of fentanyl money. It’s not just one-dimensional.”

The expansion into the cannabis market is propelling the rise of Chinese organized crime as a global powerhouse, current and former national security officials say. During the past decade, Chinese mafias became the dominant money launderers for Latin American cartels dealing narcotics including fentanyl, which has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. The huge revenue stream from marijuana fuels that laundering apparatus, which is “the most extensive network of underground banking in the world,” said a former senior DEA official, Donald Im.

“The profits from the marijuana trade allow the Chinese organized criminal networks to expand their underground global banking system for cartels and other criminal organizations,” said Im, who was an architect of the DEA’s fight against Chinese organized crime.

U.S. law enforcement struggles to respond to this multifaceted threat. State and federal agencies suffer from a lack of personnel who know Chinese language and culture well enough to investigate complex cases, infiltrate networks or translate intercepts, current and former officials say. A federal shift of priorities to counterterrorism after 2001 meant resources dedicated to Chinese organized crime dwindled — while the power of the underworld grew.

And the shadow of the Chinese state hovers over it all….

Read it all.

Officials estimate the value of the illegal marijuana market grown in Oklahoma at somewhere between $18 billion and $44 billion a year.

Investigators have found links to foreign mafias and say that more than 80% of the groups are of Chinese origin. https://t.co/A4WKYfaCet

— ProPublica (@propublica) March 16, 2024

“In the past 10 years we have seen more than 17 mass kidnappings. It’s a bad record for any country and government, a total breakdown of the social contract,” regional security expert David Otto told CBS News over the weekend about the situation in Nigeria. “Most of the victims are women in these attacks, and when you attack women you have attacked society. The attacks of the last week — when 200-plus people are just taken — show after two decades of fighting insurgency, the government is still unable to protect society from terrorist groups.”

Otto spoke as the parents of more than 280 children voiced their anger over a mass abduction in Nigeria’s northern Kaduna state. The students, boys and girls between the ages of 8 and 15, were seized by armed men from the elementary and secondary schools in the town of Kuriga on Thursday.

The parents told local media outlets that bandits, as kidnap gangs in the region are commonly called, had taken their children and they implored Nigeria’s government to pay any ransom being demanded to secure their safe return.

Read it all.

Six days before Christmas, the US Department of Justice loudly announced a win in the ongoing fight against the scourge of ransomware: An FBI-led, international operation had targeted the notorious hacking group known as BlackCat or AlphV, releasing decryption keys to foil its ransom attempts against hundreds of victims and seizing the dark web sites it had used to threaten and extort them. “In disrupting the BlackCat ransomware group, the Justice Department has once again hacked the hackers,” deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco declared in a statement.

Two months and one week later, however, those hackers don’t appear particularly “disrupted.” For the last seven days and counting, BlackCat has held hostage the medical firm Change Healthcare, crippling its software in hospitals and pharmacies across the United States, leading to delays in drug prescriptions for an untold number of patients.

The ongoing outage at Change Healthcare, first reported to be a BlackCat attack by Reuters, represents a particularly grim incident in the ransomware epidemic not just due to its severity, its length, and the potential toll on victims’ health. Ransomware-tracking analysts say it also illustrates how even law enforcement’s wins against ransomware groups appear to be increasingly short-lived, as the hackers that law enforcement target in carefully coordinated busts simply rebuild and restart their attacks with impunity.

“Because we can’t arrest the core operators that are in Russia or in areas that are uncooperative with law enforcement, we can’t stop them,” says Allan Liska, a ransomware-focused researcher for cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.

Read it all.

Two months ago, the FBI “disrupted” the BlackCat ransomware group. They're already back—and their latest attack is causing delays at pharmacies across the US. https://t.co/iowdfRdtXY

— WIRED (@WIRED) February 28, 2024

A recent study by women rights organisation Terre des Femmes shows that at least 26 people in Germany were victims of attempted or completed so-called ‘honour killings’ between 2022 and 2023.

According to the research, there were twelve victims of violence in the name of honour in the past two years, ten of whom were women. There were also 14 victims of attempted murders, including nine women, reported German newspaper Welt am Sonntag.

Terre des Femmes also documented 19 cases of attempted and completed ‘honour killings’ in 2021, so that in the past three years, there were a total of 45 victims, 22 of whom lost their lives.

In most cases, the killings took place at environments dominated by Islam, and the perpetrators often belong to the family of the victims.

Read it all.

Most took place at Islamic environments by members of the own family. “It is the most despicable expression of gender-based violence”, says the minister of Justice.https://t.co/hzyjz039Or

— Evangelical Focus (@Evan_Focus) February 6, 2024

What the families want is atonement. When something goes wrong, there is a need, buried deep within the human psyche, or even deep within the structure of the universe, for atonement — for someone to pay a price for what has happened.

And this is what the families need: some kind of atonement for what has been done wrong. They long for some sign of remorse, repentance even, on behalf of those who bear responsibility. Yet it does not come. The serried ranks of smart suits remain silent — maybe understandably so in this setting, but, without that sign, the pain continues.

There is deep anger about the fire brigade’s advice — families were told to stay in their flats until the firefighters put out the fire — without which, it seems, many of those who died would still be alive today. There is equally deep anger about the cladding draped around the building a few years before, which was dangerously flammable. It was the combination of these two factors which led to the deaths of their loved ones.

Read it all.

Who will atone for the wrongs of Grenfell?

More than six years since the tragedy, no one has yet admitted responsibility, writes @gtomlinhttps://t.co/1V4lJDUI46

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) February 2, 2024

Later on Sunday, Turkey’s interior minister, Ali Yerlikaya, wrote on social media that the two murder suspects had been captured.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on Telegram, “saying it was in response to a call by the group’s leaders to target Jews and Christians”, Reuters reports.

On Monday, the Anglican Chaplain in Istanbul, Canon Ian Sherwood, praised the response of the authorities.

“Christians in Istanbul enjoy a perfectly peaceable life with their Turkish friends and neighbours of other spiritual persuasions,” he said. “There is great sorrow on hearing the news of the murder at a celebration of the mass at the very moment that we, too, were celebrating the eucharist in our own church.

“The English Chaplaincy was impressed and grateful to see how quickly the Turkish authorities acted. As far as I know, within less than one hour, every open church in the city had a police presence assigned to it for protection and security.”

Read it all.

“We ask for greater security and for the safety of the faithful, of the Christian community, which perseveres in the faith and courageously face very long journeys at times to attend the eucharistic celebration.”https://t.co/SwOv4RI130

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) January 29, 2024

More than 10,000 people received modern-slavery victim support from the Salvation Army under its government contract last year — the highest in the 12 years since it began. This included more than 3000 new referrals, up by five per cent on the previous year.

The figures are set out in the charity’s annual report Behind the Shield: Protecting and supporting survivors of modern slavery, published on Anti-Slavery Day on Wednesday of last week. It is the 12th year that the Government has contracted the Salvation Army to provide specialist support for adult victims of modern slavery referred from England and Wales.

In that year — between July 2022 and June 2023 — 3533 potential victims contacted the Salvation Army for support: a five-per-cent increase (465 more people) over the previous year. Of the potential victims, one third were women, two-thirds were men, and 1.5 per cent identified as transgender.

The use of the term “potential” means that there is reasonable evidence that the person is a victim, but that this has yet to be confirmed by decision-making bodies in the Home Office, the report explains.

Read it all.

Modern slavery on the increase, Salvation Army reports https://t.co/xtSnB0LFTl

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) October 26, 2023

Hours passed. Authorities believe the trio dropped the girls off, then made their way down Highway 61, not far behind Troy Morris. Morris, meanwhile, had pulled over and tried to report his flat tire to the mail service. When that didn’t work, he called Troop M, his highway patrol substation. While he was talking with the dispatcher, a vehicle turned around and stopped beside Morris’ truck. It was the three young men. Norman and Washington remained inside while the driver, Damion Whittley, stepped out and walked up to Morris’ window. Investigators believe he asked for a cigarette or a light. It’s likely Morris had both. He was fond of smoking.

When Whittley walked back to his vehicle, he got a gun. Whatever happened next left Morris dead. Life as they’d known it vanished for the other three men, too, right along with their tail lights as they sped off into the night.

No one can say for sure whether Morris knew Whittley or if Whittley knew him. Most folks around town assumed the motive was robbery. But according to Mark Cochran, owner of Blackwell Hauling, the company that contracted for the postal service, the trucks carried only packages and letters. “No money,” Cochran ­maintains. “Everybody knows that.”

Whatever the motive, Morris’ death was a deeply felt loss, especially at his workplace. Just as calls for defunding police began wreaking havoc on officer recruitment and retention, Troop M lost a career patrolman, a supervisor with 28 years of experience. It also lost a dispatcher. In her last exchange with him that night, the ­dispatcher heard Morris talking with his killer. It was too much. She quit.

Read it all.

"Indifference to life is growing like malignant cancer," writes @kimhenderson319 in our cover story.

Read how one murder in rural Mississippi underscores the nation’s struggle to contain violent crime:https://t.co/pnSfMA3DyR

— WORLD (@WNGdotorg) September 27, 2023

On [a] Monday [in September 2003], the last of the 343 firefighters who died on September 11th was buried. Because no remains of Michael Ragusa, age 29, of Engine Company 279, were found and identified, his family placed in his coffin a very small vial of his blood, donated years ago to a bone-marrow clinic. At the funeral service Michael’s mother Dee read an excerpt from her son’s diary on the occasion of the death of a colleague. “It is always sad and tragic when a fellow firefighter dies,” Michael Ragusa wrote, “especially when he is young and had everything to live for.” Indeed. And what a sobering reminder of how many died and the awful circumstances in which they perished that it took until this week to bury the last one.

So here is to the clergy, the ministers, rabbis, imams and others, who have done all these burials and sought to help all these grieving families. And here is to the families who lost loved ones and had to cope with burials in which sometimes they didn’t even have remains of the one who died. And here, too, is to the remarkable ministry of the Emerald Society Pipes and Drums, who played every single service for all 343 firefighters who lost their lives. The Society chose not to end any service at which they played with an up-tempo march until the last firefighter was buried.

On Monday, in Bergen Beach, Brooklyn, the Society therefore played “Garry Owen” and “Atholl Highlander,” for the first time since 9/11 as the last firefighter killed on that day was laid in the earth. On the two year anniversary here is to New York, wounded and more sober, but ever hopeful and still marching.

–First published on this blog September 11, 2003

A total of 343 New York fire service personnel died trying to save lives on 9/11. pic.twitter.com/7ziMiFBLnq

— Prof. Frank McDonough (@FXMC1957) September 11, 2023

Simon Mackenzie, a security officer at the discount retailer QD Stores outside London, was short of breath. He had just chased after three shoplifters who had taken off with several packages of laundry soap. Before the police arrived, he sat at a back-room desk to do something important: Capture the culprits’ faces.

On an aging desktop computer, he pulled up security camera footage, pausing to zoom in and save a photo of each thief. He then logged in to a facial recognition program, Facewatch, which his store uses to identify shoplifters. The next time those people enter any shop within a few miles that uses Facewatch, store staff will receive an alert.

“It’s like having somebody with you saying, ‘That person you bagged last week just came back in,’” Mr. Mackenzie said.

Use of facial recognition technology by the police has been heavily scrutinized in recent years, but its application by private businesses has received less attention. Now, as the technology improves and its cost falls, the systems are reaching further into people’s lives. No longer just the purview of government agencies, facial recognition is increasingly being deployed to identify shoplifters, problematic customers and legal adversaries.

Read it all.

British retailers are increasingly using AI facial recognition technology to combat shoplifting, raising questions about its spread as AI rapidly improves and falls in cost.https://t.co/8EH6oebJyp

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 28, 2023

We all receive scam messages — and I cannot be alone in noticing that they are becoming more frequent. Last month, several UK banks gave warnings about a sharp increase in online fraud.

It disturbs me that anyone will go to such lengths to steal my money; but what has chilled me to the core is learning that the person on the other end of a scam call or message could be a victim of human trafficking — forced into involvement in fraud by the threats of beatings and electrocution.

My colleagues at International Justice Mission (IJM) in Cambodia were some of the first people to respond to this sinister new form of modern slavery, forced scamming. Human traffickers are luring people with false job offers online, paying their transport costs, and then trapping them in heavily guarded compounds in places such as Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos.

Under the threat of extreme violence, the victims must scam people all around the world. Survivors whom we have helped have shown us bruises the size of watermelons caused by being beaten, and burns from electrocution — the result of not hitting their scamming targets.

Disturbingly, forced scamming is one of the most complex and fast-growing forms of modern slavery in the world.

Read it all.

"It disturbs me that people go to such lengths to steal my money, " @IJMUK CEO @DavidWestlake, writes in the @ChurchTimes, "but what has chilled me to the core is learning that the person on the other end of a #scam could be a victim of #humantrafficking."https://t.co/bq0hY5SsDj

— International Justice Mission (IJM UK) (@IJMUK) June 30, 2023

The San Francisco Police Department is down more than 600 officers, almost 30 percent of its allotment. Phoenix needs about 500 more officers to be fully staffed. The D.C. police force is smaller than it has been in 50 years, despite troubling gun violence and carjackings, as officers leave faster than they can be replaced.

Police departments across the country are struggling to fill their ranks, creating what many current and former officials say is a staffing emergency that threatens public safety.

They cite an exodus of veteran officers amid new police accountability measures that followed the 2020 murder of George Floyd, increased hostility from the communities they police, and criminal justice laws that seek to reduce the number of people in jail.

Advocates for police reform see the moment as an opportunity to hire a new generation of officers and reimagine policing. But as agencies seek fresh recruits, they are getting fewer qualified applicants than in past years — leading some to make the risky move of lowering the bar for hiring to fill their ranks.

Read it all.

Police departments across the country are struggling to fill their ranks, creating what many current and former officials say is a staffing emergency that threatens public safety. https://t.co/vBL1FNOODf

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 28, 2023

“Departments of all sizes are fighting rising crime while facing severe staffing shortages, many due to large numbers of officers resigning amidst retention and recruitment challenges. NBC News’ Ron Allen speaks with former officers to understand why they left and what they think would help keep more officers on the force.”

Watch and listen to it all.

Law enforcement across the country rescued more than 200 sex trafficking victims, including 84 children, in a nationwide sweep dubbed “Operation Cross Country,” the FBI announced Monday. The youngest victim was 11 years old.

Authorities located 84 victims of child sex trafficking, as well as 37 children that were actively missing during the campaign, the FBI said. Law enforcement officers also located 141 adult victims of human trafficking.

In 2021, more than half of all trafficking victims in the U.S. were minors, according to the Human Trafficking Institute. In a news release Monday, FBI Director Christopher Wray called sex trafficking “among the most heinous crimes” the agency encounters.

Read it all.

More than 200 state, local, and federal partners and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children conducted 391 operations over a two-week period in August. https://t.co/8AjYmMbbtO

— CBS News (@CBSNews) August 16, 2022

Attendees included former prime minister Theresa May, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, Housing Secretary Michael Gove, building safety and fire minister Stephen Greenhalgh, and shadow housing secretary Lisa Nandy.

Opening the service, the very Reverend Dr David Hoyle, Dean of Westminster, said the loss and anguish “are still vivid and sharp” as the congregation gathered “in sorrow and in pain”.

He said: “Here we renew our commitment to remember those we have lost.

“We gather as those who look for justice and a renewed commitment to securing safety in our homes, safety in times of fire.

“Grateful for the support of the communities and individuals that have sustained the bereaved and the survivors over the last five years, we meet in faith and hope looking to a better, safer, surer future.”

Read it all.

Grenfell Tower: Victims remembered at Westminster Abbey service

A memorial service has taken place at Westminster Abbey to mark the fifth anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire.

Seventy-two people were killed by the blaze in west London on 14 June 2017.https://t.co/HwBmDOwsjD

— Public Sector Focus (@SectorFocus) June 14, 2022

St. John’s Chapel on the east side of Charleston starting giving out ring cameras in 2018. They wanted to help solve crime on the east side.

So far, they have given out around 70 cameras and hope to give out about 80 more.

St John’s Chapel works to stop crime on the east side through doorbell cameras. (WCIV)

“As a community we must stand together. I think it’s a rally and cry right now for the community to do that,” said Reverend Matthew Rivers of St. John’s Chapel.

Read it all.

In the News: St. John's Chapel has been providing security cameras to their neighbors—free of charge—to stop crime in their neighborhood. Details: https://t.co/EBlNEGToTi Contact The Rev. Matthew Rivers, Rector of St. John's Chapel, to assist! #StJohnsChapel #ABCNews4 #ADOSC pic.twitter.com/t4T6YdH6Cz

— Anglican Diocese of SC (@anglican_sc) June 2, 2022

‘A Long Island woman received a scam call that her grandson was in a drunken car crash. She notified the police, who helped tackle the fraudster when he showed up demanding money.’ Watch it all.

In the days after George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020, protesters took to the streets across America. They urged cities to “defund the police”, and politicians listened. Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles, called for his department’s budget to be cut by up to $150m. London Breed, San Francisco’s mayor, announced that she would “redirect funding from the sfpd to support the African-American community”. City councils in Oakland and Portland, Oregon, among other cities across America, approved budgets that cut police funding.

That trend has reversed. Portland and Oakland increased police funding to hire more officers. The Los Angeles Police Department’s budget will get a 12% boost. Last month Ms Breed vowed to “take steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement” and “less tolerant of all the bullshit that has destroyed our city”. Why such a stark reversal, and what does it mean for the future of criminal-justice reform?

The first question is easy to answer. Though crime overall did not rise during the pandemic, the type people fear most—murders and shootings—did, and the surge has not abated. Over three decades from 1990, America’s homicide rate fell steeply (see chart). From 2019 to 2020, however, the rate had its highest-ever year-on-year rise, of nearly 30%, followed by a further rise in 2021. More than three-quarters of the murders were committed with guns. In Oakland, 133 people were murdered in 2021, more than in any year since 2006, and almost 600 more were shot but not killed. Portland was one of at least 16 American cities that set all-time homicide records last year.

Read it all (registration).

"No evidence suggests a relationship between the size of a police force and the number of people its officers kill; ample evidence suggests that bigger and better-funded forces tend to reduce violent crime."https://t.co/EtOB9qb5rC

— Dave Morris (@MirabilisDave) January 13, 2022

Frustration was nothing new, not for any of them. Ms. Burns, who specializes in domestic violence, describes the criminal justice response to these crimes as ineffectual, like “putting Band-Aids on bullet wounds.” She spends much of her time scraping for evidence that can be admitted in court, but so many of the assaults she prosecutes take place behind closed doors, she said, that not guilty verdicts are common.

Ms. Neal’s suicide — the way she had slipped away from them — made this failure different, more agonizing.

“From the criminal justice side of it, we had a piece of paper telling Nelson not to contact her, that’s what we had,” Ms. Burns said. In domestic violence cases, she added, “the dynamics and the history are too deep” to be altered by “a piece of paper from a judge.”

Domestic violence cases are so challenging that some experts, like Rachel Teicher of John Jay College’s National Network for Safe Communities, argue that arrests and prosecutions are simply inadequate as a response, and should be supplemented with other kinds of interventions.

Perpetrators and victims become accustomed to a cycle — charges dismissed or reduced, restraining orders violated — and conclude, she said, that “these are systems I don’t have to take all that seriously.”

“The folks at the front lines are often using every tool they can,” she said. “Sometimes our tool kit isn’t big enough.”

Read it all.

For victims of domestic violence, cooperating with prosecutors can be dangerous and disruptive. Assault charges can take a year or two to wend their way through the system, a period during which abuse can continue or worsen. https://t.co/LFPBLORdee

— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 28, 2021

On [a] Monday [in September 2003], the last of the 343 firefighters who died on September 11th was buried. Because no remains of Michael Ragusa, age 29, of Engine Company 279, were found and identified, his family placed in his coffin a very small vial of his blood, donated years ago to a bone-marrow clinic. At the funeral service Michael’s mother Dee read an excerpt from her son’s diary on the occasion of the death of a colleague. “It is always sad and tragic when a fellow firefighter dies,” Michael Ragusa wrote, “especially when he is young and had everything to live for.” Indeed. And what a sobering reminder of how many died and the awful circumstances in which they perished that it took until this week to bury the last one.

So here is to the clergy, the ministers, rabbis, imams and others, who have done all these burials and sought to help all these grieving families. And here is to the families who lost loved ones and had to cope with burials in which sometimes they didn’t even have remains of the one who died. And here, too, is to the remarkable ministry of the Emerald Society Pipes and Drums, who played every single service for all 343 firefighters who lost their lives. The Society chose not to end any service at which they played with an up-tempo march until the last firefighter was buried.

On Monday, in Bergen Beach, Brooklyn, the Society therefore played “Garry Owen” and “Atholl Highlander,” for the first time since 9/11 as the last firefighter killed on that day was laid in the earth. On the two year anniversary here is to New York, wounded and more sober, but ever hopeful and still marching.

–First published on this blog September 11, 2003

We will never forget. 🕊 #neverforget #911 pic.twitter.com/E1xu8T4JFr

— NAPF (@the_napf) September 10, 2021

“Neighbors immediately called 911 after a 6-year-old girl was kidnapped while outside with her bike in Louisville, Kentucky. Police officers quickly located the car to rescue the little girl.”

Watch it all.

During law school, I took a class on capital punishment and learned that many wrongful convictions had something in common: a mistaken eyewitness ID. I read the work of Elizabeth Loftus, the psychologist whose research helped establish the limitations of human memory. The basic problem is that people often aren’t good at remembering the specific features of faces they’ve seen only once; they’re more likely to recall a general trait, like eye color or a mustache, that many people share. But if eyewitness testimony is fallible, Loftus explained, it is also potent. “There is almost nothing more convincing than a live human being who takes the stand, points a finger at the defendant and says, ‘That’s the one!’” she wrote in her 1979 book, “Eyewitness Testimony.”

Since 1989, mistaken IDs have factored into nearly 30 percent of about 2,800 convictions of innocent people tracked by the National Registry of Exonerations. And yet the legal system depends on them because the testimony of an eyewitness may be the only piece of direct evidence. Though no comprehensive data exists, one old but often-cited survey from 1989 suggests that eyewitness testimony is most likely used to solve at least 80,000 crimes each year.

The upshot is that eyewitness identification “presents the legal system with a challenge unlike any other,” Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the federal District Court in Manhattan writes in his recent book, “Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free.” “Modern science suggests that much of such testimony is inherently suspect — but not in ways that jurors can readily evaluate from their own experience.”

As I became absorbed by Briley’s case, I wanted to understand more about the science of memory. What did the research suggest about the reliability of the identification Joseph made? Eyewitnesses like him often have the best intentions. Nonetheless, I learned, their error rate increases when more time lapses between the initial viewing of a person and the retrieving of that memory to make an identification. Cross-racial IDs become even weaker with the passage of time. The circumstances of a street crime itself can also affect accuracy. Victims and witnesses may have only a brief chance to view the perpetrator, and making an identification becomes harder with dim lighting, stress, fear and the distracting presence of a weapon. One study showed a “catastrophic decline” in accuracy — dropping as low as 18 percent — depending on a witness’s level of anxiety.

Read it all.

“Can you please help me get out of prison or refer me to somebody who can?”

For years as a journalist, @emilybazelon covered attempts to exonerate incarcerated people. But this letter led her to a very different story. She found him a lawyer: her sister. https://t.co/suhCzJkh09

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 30, 2021

So when reports came in on Tuesday of a vulnerable woman on a motorway bridge in Devon, a firefighter had the bright idea to take him along.

A team of trained police officers was on site trying to provide support to the woman and help her return to safety, but it was Digby who ultimately got her out of harm’s way.

“Today [Digby] did something amazing and helped save a young woman who was thinking of taking her own life on a bridge over the M5 near Exeter,” said a spokesman for Devon and Somerset fire service.

“We were at the incident as part of a multi-agency response. Police negotiators were speaking with the woman but the situation was becoming increasingly worrying. One of the fire crew had the idea to bring along Digby, our ‘defusing’ dog. Digby helps crews who have been exposed to trauma during talking therapy ‘defusing’ sessions.”

The spokesman added: “When Digby arrived, the young woman immediately swung her head round to look, and smiled.

Read it all (requires subscription).

A three-year-old labradoodle named Digby has been praised after he saved a woman who was on the verge of taking her own life. https://t.co/nuU9roHDl6

— The Times (@thetimes) June 17, 2021

The bishop recalled his memories of the day of the fire, when there was “confusion, anxiety and fear, trying to bring a sense of comfort and hope, all the time trying to process how something like this fire could happen in a sophisticated, supposedly safe city like London in the 21st century”.

During his sermon, Dr Tomlin described the story as “not a happy one”.

He said: “It’s a story of careless decisions, of regulations ignored, of an industry that seemed at times more interested in making profits or selling products than keeping people safe. And of course, the whole process is taking longer than many of us would have hoped.

“And still across the country, thousands of people are living in flats with unsafe cladding or other safety defects, unable to sell their properties and yet facing the costs of waking watches, huge insurance bills, rising service charges, and so far no obvious answer as to who’s going to pay for the mistakes that were made in the construction of their homes.”

The bishop said there was “an urgency about justice and healing” and that justice too long delayed is justice denied.

Read it all.

Grenfell tragedy a ‘story of careless decisions,’ says bishop | Evening Standard https://t.co/UzU609Cm2H

— Mars Pioneer (@MarsPioneer) June 13, 2021

A group of faith leaders in Kansas City held a news conference Tuesday announcing they have video of the fatal police shooting of Malcolm Johnson earlier this year.

Johnson, 31, was killed March 25 during a confrontation with Kansas City police officers at a gas station near East 63rd Street and Prospect Avenue, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

On Tuesday, the group of ministers gathered outside the gas station and said they had obtained video of the shooting and were releasing it to news media. The video they released did not show the shooting itself, but the faith leaders said it, and other facts surrounding the shooting, showed the initial account given by the highway patrol was not accurate.

“What I saw was an execution,” said the Rev. Darron Edwards, a leader with Getting to the Heart of the Matter, a group of local faith leaders who have been cooperating with the Kansas City Police Department.

“Regardless of the sound quality and the video not showing the actual shots, it is clear that the report does not match the video,” said the Rev. Emanuel Cleaver III. “We are demanding justice.”

Read it all.

Faith Group Speaks Out About Kansas City Police Shooting

▫‘An execution’: Kansas City faith group says video shows March 25 police shooting
▫@GRicekcstar@annaspoerre▫https://t.co/mtrRnVtfRt #frontpagestoday #TheKansasCityStar #USA pic.twitter.com/2ezoOStEpX

— (@ukpapers) June 2, 2021

Watch it all and note the role of faith all the way though; I especially love the policewoman’s reference to daily prayer; KSH.

An Anglican Archbishop, Isaac Nwobia, has urged the federal government to convene a national dialogue to address issues of insecurity in the country

Mr Nwobia, who is the Archbishop/Bishop of Diocese of Isiala Ngwa South (Aba Province), made the call during the 4th Synod of the diocese at St. Peter’s Cathedral Owerrinta, Abia State on Thursday.

The archbishop, while speaking with reporters during the opening session of the Synod, said that national dialogue was important, as the communication gap could be responsible for some of the present security challenges in Nigeria.

“The president should summon us, either as a meeting or a confab, so that people can say why they are annoyed.

“The solution should be that we need to sit down, dialogue and sort things out,” he said.

The cleric condemned the destruction of some of the nation’s security facilities.

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#UKWLIVESON
EPISCOPAL CONDOLENCE VISIT..
His Grace, Rt Rev Isaac Nwobia commiserates with the family

I thank you all. pic.twitter.com/cBNEp5N1jQ

— Chukwuemeka Maduagwu (@CEMaduagwu) March 1, 2020

Nigeria’s parliament called on the presidency, armed forces and police to address the country’s mounting security crisis on Tuesday, with the lower house urging President Muhammadu Buhari to declare a state of emergency.

The resolutions come as a wave of violence and lawlessness sweeps across Africa’s largest economy. Security forces, including the military deployed across most of Nigeria’s states, have shown little ability to stem the tide.

“The president should immediately declare a state of emergency on security so as to fast track all measures to ensure the restoration of peace in the country,” said a resolution passed by the lower house.

In the northwest, gunmen have kidnapped more than 700 schoolchildren since December, as militants pillage communities in the region.

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Reuters: ""Nation is on fire": Nigerian lawmakers demand action on security crisis" https://t.co/mdc2AskaUx

— Evan Kohlmann (@IntelTweet) April 27, 2021

When nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls were kidnapped from their boarding school by the Islamist group Boko Haram in 2014, the world exploded in outrage. Hundreds marched in the country’s capital, the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls was picked up by then First Lady Michelle Obama and Nigeria’s president scrambled to respond to the mass abduction in the village of Chibok.

It seemed an aberration. But since last December, mass kidnappings of girls and boys at boarding schools in northwest Nigeria have been happening more and more frequently — at least one every three weeks. Just last Friday, more than 300 girls were taken from their school in Zamfara state. They were released this week, the governor of the state announced early Tuesday. The week before, more than 40 children and adults were abducted from a boarding school in Niger state. They were freed on Saturday.

With Nigeria’s economy in crisis, kidnapping has become a growth industry, according to interviews with security analysts and a recent report on the economics of abductions. The victims are now not just the rich, powerful or famous, but also the poor — and increasingly, school children who are rounded up en masse.

The perpetrators are often gangs of bandits, who are taking advantage of a dearth of effective policing and the easy availability of guns.

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The victims of kidnappings for ransom in Nigeria are not just the rich, powerful or famous, but also the poor. Mass abductions of girls and boys at boarding schools in the northwest have been happening at least once every three weeks since last December. https://t.co/w8YkEKtHgz

— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 1, 2021