Donavon Brinson, who captured footage of the fatal shooting of an Ohio teen by a police officer, says the officer was not faced with many choices and only had seconds to respond.
Ma’Khia Bryant’s neighbor Donovan Brinson said Tuesday that a video captured by his garage security camera led him to believe the Columbus police officer who shot Bryant had no other choice. Brinson watched the incident begin to unfold as he pulled into his driveway. “They were calling each other the B-word, so I figured it was just a girl fight,” he told The Columbus Dispatch. Brinson said the intensity of the fight increased when he was taking his dog out. He claimed he heard four gunshots when the police arrived at the scene. Brinson then reviewed the 26-second video from his surveillance camera and concluded that Bryant may have fatally stabbed multiple bystanders had the officer not acted immediately to stop the threat. “It was violent and all just happened so fast,” Brinson said. He mentioned seeing a girl wearing pink who was the second female involved in the skirmish with Bryant. The video showed an officer performing CPR on Bryant after the shots were fired. Ira Graham III, another neighbor, said he heard the gunshots Tuesday afternoon and saw cop cars driving down the street. After viewing the police video, Graham commented, “I believe in truth and facts. Video doesn’t lie,” he said. “She was in full attack mode.” Graham said of the female dressed in pink that the woman “was literally aiming a knife at this young lady.” “She needed to be stopped at that point. That young lady’s life was at stake,” Graham said. Interim Columbus Police Chief Michael Woods told reporters Wednesday that state law permits police to use deadly force to protect themselves or others. Bryant was a 16-year-old foster care child with Franklin County Children’s Services. Her death has sparked outcry in the community and nationwide in the wake of the trial verdict that found police officer Derek Chauvin guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter in the death of George Floyd. Nicholas Reardon, the officer identified in Bryant’s killing, has been removed from duty while the situation is investigated.
Columbus, Ohio, police release body camera footage from the shooting of 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant.
The discovery, shared to Reddit by a user named Yamaha234, is just the latest bizarre home feature to turn heads online.
A health professional holds a vial of Janssen/J&J's COVID-19 vaccine in Pamplona, Spain on April 22, 2021. Abigail, a 29-year-old from New York City who asked to use a pseudonym to preserve her privacy, knew to expect some side effects after she got her second Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in February. While scientists have not confirmed that COVID-19 vaccines can cause menstrual changes like Abigail’s, she feels confident the shot was her trigger, since she experienced something similar after a probable case of COVID-19 last spring.
She's a Pilates, Peloton, and The Mirror devotee—and it shows.
Thought nothing could be weirder than Kevin Spacey's bizarre Christmas Eve videos? Think again. A new report in The Hollywood Reporter runs through the legal issues the disgraced actor is facing more than three years after allegations of sexual harassment and assault were leveled against him. Among these is a battle between Spacey and House of Cards production company Media Rights Capital. MRC is reportedly seeking tens of millions of dollars in damages it says it suffered because of the scandal, which "diminished" the Netflix's show value. Spacey, meanwhile, has reportedly brought a counterclaim against MRC. Part of this fight, the Reporter describes, is an allegation that Spacey groped a House of Cards production assistant in 2012, as Spacey is arguing that MRC wasn't "blindsided" by the scandal after previously signing off on a settlement with the PA. This case was reportedly submitted to an arbitrator last year — and it sounds like a subsequent proceeding got a bit strange. "Like everything in the new bizarre world of Spacey, this legal proceeding turned surreal quickly," the Reporter writes. "At one point during his deposition, Spacey sprung up from his seat and performed a song-and-dance number in the conference room." Spacey might want to take this case a bit more seriously than that, especially considering the Reporter points out it "may have the biggest monetary stakes" for him. He's also facing the possibility of criminal charges in London, according to the report, not to mention an ongoing civil lawsuit from a sexual assault accuser. Spacey has mostly dropped off the map since his scandal, though he's been releasing bizarre videos every Christmas Eve, two of which feature him in character as House of Cards' sinister Frank Underwood. As far as whether Spacey could ever make a return to acting, the Reporter arrives at essentially the answer you'd expect to that question, noting that there is "little appetite in Hollywood to bring Spacey back." More stories from theweek.comJoe Manchin lives on a boat in Washington — and protesters are reportedly headed there7 cartoons about Derek Chauvin being found guiltyHow to vaccinate the anti-vaxxers
An organization representing the family said the girl loved her hair and didn’t ask for it to be cut at school.
Tom Brady doesn't like the idea of linebackers wearing single-digit numbers in 2021.
‘It seems this person is entitled to nothing, but as he was a co-signer of the loan, my friend is in a tough spot.’
A Brooklyn woman accused of harassing and slapping an Asian woman two weeks ago in Manhattan's Lower East Side near Chinatown has been arrested on Tuesday. The incident: Cheyanne Taylor, 29, approached the 25-year-old victim at around 7:30 p.m. on April 7 as she was sitting outside an ice cream shop with a friend on Grand Street near Forsyth Street, New York Daily News reported. Surveillance footage caught Taylor slapping the victim across the face then fleeing the scene.
The 33-year old Hayes played seven years in the NFL, last suiting up in 2014.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — It was Valentine’s Day when Ma’Khia Bryant, 16, moved into the foster home where her younger sister had lived for more than a year. The girls were close, and would dance and make TikTok videos together, while Bryant nurtured a constant hope: to one day live again with her biological mother. “That’s all she said, was, ‘I want to be with my mom,’” said Angela Moore, who said she provided foster care for Bryant and her sister on a quiet block on the southeastern edge of Columbus, Ohio. Those dreams were cut short after a Columbus police officer fatally shot Bryant on Tuesday afternoon, just moments after arriving at a chaotic disturbance outside her foster home. Body-camera footage released by the Columbus police appears to show Bryant holding a knife as she lunges toward another person a moment before she is shot. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times Her death fanned new waves of sorrow, anger and protest Wednesday over yet another police killing. And its timing — just minutes before a jury in Minneapolis convicted Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd — was a grim reminder of an unceasing tally of killings by the police. As the White House on Wednesday described Bryant’s death as “tragic,” law enforcement authorities in Columbus pleaded for patience from the community as they released 911 calls and new body-camera videos showing the frenzied moments surrounding her shooting. Michael Woods, the interim chief of the Columbus Division of Police, identified the officer who shot Bryant as Nicholas Reardon, and said he had been on the force since December 2019. “Under any circumstance, that is a horrendous tragedy,” Ned Pettus Jr., the city’s public safety director, said during a news conference Wednesday. “But the video shows there is more to this. It requires us to pause, take a close look at the sequence of events, and though it’s not easy, wait for the facts as is determined by an independent investigation.” Pettus said a third-party investigation being conducted by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation would need to answer key questions, including what information Reardon had, what he saw at the scene, and what would have happened if he “had taken no action at all.” The first 911 call that brought the police to the house came at 4:32 p.m. Tuesday. It is a cacophony of screaming. The caller, who sounds like a younger woman, says that someone was “trying to stab us” and had “put hands” on the caller’s grandmother. The dispatcher asks again and again whether the caller has seen any weapons. “We need a police officer here now,” the caller responds. That person’s identity was unclear Wednesday. A second 911 call came in minutes later, but the caller hung up because the police had already arrived. Unlike the agonizingly slow video showing Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, in which he calls out that he cannot breathe as Chauvin kneels on his neck, footage released by the Columbus police shows that Bryant’s killing unfolded in seconds. Officers were dispatched to the home on Legion Lane at 4:35 p.m. Tuesday and arrived at 4:44, according to the Columbus police. As Reardon got out of his vehicle, he encountered seven people outside a two-story brick home and asked, “What’s going on?” Yelling could be heard in the background. An unidentified girl appeared to fall to the grass after being attacked by Bryant and then kicked by an unidentified man. The video footage then showed Bryant, who was holding a knife, appearing to lunge toward a person dressed in pink who was pinned against a car parked in the driveway. “Hey! Hey!” Reardon said as he pulled his gun. “Get down! Get down!” He fired four quick shots, and Bryant dropped to the ground at the edge of the driveway. A witness yelled, “Why did you shoot her?” The officer responded, “She came at her with a knife,” apparently referring to Bryant and the person dressed in pink. Woods said Columbus officers were allowed to use deadly force to protect somebody who was in danger of being killed by another person. A Taser, he said, is generally reserved for situations where there is no immediate threat of death. Officers are not required to call out that they are about to fire their weapon, he added, though they try to if there is time. “It’s a tragedy,” Woods said. “There’s no other way to say it. It’s a 16-year-old girl.” Two experts who reviewed the body camera footage said that in this case, the officer’s use of force appeared at first glance to be justified. Geoffrey P. Alpert, a professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina, said investigators would look at whether the officer believed that there was an imminent threat to the life of the other woman. If there was an immediate threat, investigators will look at whether the officer could have resorted to other methods of control, he said. Alpert said that based on his own review, Bryant did appear to pose a threat to the life of the other woman. “Were there other options? Not if she was about to stab that woman,” Alpert said, adding that a Taser could take too long to deploy, and that the less-than-lethal weapons are not 100% reliable. “He’s protecting her life, not his own,” he said. “What if it didn’t work and she ended up killing this woman?” Still, Bryant’s family and activists across Columbus questioned why the officer shot Bryant. “I don’t know why he shot her,” Moore, Bryant’s foster parent, said. “I don’t know why he didn’t Tase her, why they didn’t try to break it up.” She added, “At the end of the day, it wasn’t worth all this.” Tensions over police shootings of Black people were already raw around Columbus. In early December, Casey Goodson Jr., 23, was shot to death at the entrance of his home by a Franklin County sheriff’s deputy who had been searching for someone else. Two weeks later, Andre Hill was shot by a Columbus police officer who was later charged with felony murder. Moore said that she was at work during the shooting, but that she believed the fight began over an argument about housekeeping. She said one of her former foster children had visited the home Tuesday and criticized Bryant and her sister for having messy bedrooms. “That’s where the problem came,” Moore said. “I didn’t know they had called the police.” Moore said that Bryant had moved into her home Feb. 14, and that she was one of three foster children living there, including her sister. Bryant’s family expressed dismay and outrage at her death, and described Bryant as sweet and caring. They said she should still be alive. “This could have been de-escalated by the Columbus Police Department,” Don Bryant, a cousin of Bryant’s mother, said. “There are things you can do to avoid pulling out your gun and shooting someone. I question the use of force.” Don Bryant said he did not know how Ma’Khia Bryant had ended up in foster care. But he said that her mother, Paula Bryant, who works as a nursing assistant in Columbus, had been working toward a reunion. “Paula was working extremely hard to get Ma’Khia back into her home, working to do everything right,” Don Bryant said. Ma’Khia Bryant had been enrolled at Independence High School in Columbus in February. Jacqueline Bryant, a spokesperson for Columbus City Schools who is not related, said her teachers reported that in the short time Ma’Khia Bryant was there, she was “very respectful, attended school each day, and was eager to learn.” On Legion Lane, where a memorial of flowers and stuffed animals was growing Wednesday, neighbors were still stunned. Chris Mitchell, 31, who was visiting from another city, was playing with his two children in a nearby backyard when he heard “very loud arguing” followed by gunshots about two minutes later. “I came out and saw a young lady on the ground,” Mitchell said. Israel Reales, 19, said his mother, Nahomi, was unloading groceries from her car when she heard gunshots. She went outside and saw people with their hands up. She relayed the story through her son, who interpreted. “The police need a lot more training,” Reales said. “The way it was handled wasn’t proper.” Activists who spent Tuesday demonstrating at the scene of the shooting marched late Wednesday afternoon to Police Headquarters, and said they planned to demand answers and accountability. “They didn’t de-escalate the situation,” said DeJuan Sharp, an organizer with a local Black Lives Matter group called the Downtownerz. “I don’t know why the gun was the first thing for him to use.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company
I feel like I’m re-awakening to my true self, and I am so much happier to be flat-chested and free of my breast implants.
The Chiefs wanted to revolutionize the universe of jersey numbers available to players. The quarterback who beat the Chiefs in Super Bowl LV doesn’t like that very much. “Good luck trying to block the right people now!” Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady posted on Instagram. “[G]oing to make for a lot of bad football.” It possibly [more]
The teenager was upset her twin brother got special treatment on their birthday.
A North Carolina deputy shot and killed a Black man while serving a search warrant Wednesday, authorities said, spurring an outcry from community members who demanded law enforcement accountability and the immediate release of body camera footage. Authorities wouldn't provide details of the shooting but an eyewitness said that Andrew Brown Jr. was shot while trying to drive away, and that deputies fired at him multiple times. The car skidded out of Brown's yard and eventually hit a tree, said Demetria Williams, who lives on the same street.
Prosecutors charged Rakayo Vinson, 24, of Kenosha, with three counts of first-degree intentional homicide and three counts of attempted first-degree intentional homicide in the shooting early Sunday at Somers House Tavern in the village of Somers in Kenosha County. Vinson got into a fight at the tavern during which his face was injured, according to the complaint. Killed were 24-year-old Cedric Gaston; 26-year-old Atkeem Stevenson; and 22-year-old Kevin Donaldson, all of Kenosha.
"I can assure you this was not a decision made lightly, but I believe it was the right decision," an Air Force commander said.
MINNEAPOLIS — It was shortly after 4 p.m. Tuesday, and all chatter ceased in the roll-call room for the Fourth Police Precinct in North Minneapolis. Everyone’s attention was glued to the television on the wall. Then came the verdict: Derek Chauvin was guilty on all counts, including murder, for killing George Floyd last May. The station house stayed silent, the officers processing what the verdict meant after a year of tension and conflict, said Inspector Charles Adams, the precinct’s commanding officer. “It was just like, wow,” Adams said. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times For him, it was a relief — he felt that Chauvin had been wrong and that his actions, kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes, cast a negative light on policing. But the verdict did little to end months of upheaval and anxiety in his profession. “So much is being thrown at us as law enforcement officials,” Adams said. “We’re unsure how we’re going to police in the future.” Police chiefs and unions across the country condemned Chauvin’s actions and applauded the jury's verdict, but not always with the same zeal or for the same reasons. Some said they hoped it would restore faith in the criminal justice system. Others said it would help keep the peace. And still others indicated that it would clear the way for “honest discussion” about policing. The feelings of rank-and-file officers were more complicated: a mix of relief, resentment at being vilified alongside Chauvin and unsettling thoughts of themselves in his shoes. “They’re thinking, ‘Man, I’ve got to think long and hard before I get out of my car and get into something I don’t have to get into,’ ” said Jim Pasco, the executive director of the national Fraternal Order of Police. In the Minneapolis station house, Adams heard of remarks from a few rank-and-file officers who believed the defense’s argument that drugs killed Floyd and that Chauvin had followed his training. “Some just think he got a raw deal,” Adams said. “But there’s a lot of them who think he was guilty, too.” The full extent of the fallout for Chauvin will be known June 16, when he is scheduled to be sentenced. He is being held alone in a cell in a maximum-security prison in Oak Park Heights, Minnesota, a Twin Cities suburb. He is allowed out for exercise for only an hour each day. Even then, he is kept away from other inmates. Prison officials said Chauvin was being kept in solitary for his own safety. Outside the Twin Cities, in rural communities where “Back the Blue” banners hang in storefronts, Chauvin’s trial at times seemed a world away. There, largely white police departments patrol largely white communities, and residents are often friends or relatives of law enforcement officers. In Gilbert, Minnesota, a community of about 2,000 three hours north of Minneapolis, Ty Techar, the police chief, said he watched only about an hour of the trial and 30 seconds of the body-camera footage. While he said that what Chauvin did would be unacceptable in his department, he stopped short of saying he agreed with the verdict. “For me to sit here and make a judgment on whether he got a fair trial, I don’t know all the evidence,” he said. “I haven’t looked at it closely enough.” He added: “Is it second-degree murder or manslaughter? I don’t know much about the case.” Police unions historically have been the staunchest defenders of officers, even those accused of wrongdoing. They did not defend Chauvin, but some used the verdict as an occasion to criticize public figures who have scrutinized the police. The Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis said in a statement that it wanted “to reach out to the community and still express our deep remorse for their pain” and that “there are no winners in this case.” “We need the political pandering to stop and the race-baiting of elected officials to stop,” the statement said. “In addition, we need to stop the divisive comments and we all need to do better to create a Minneapolis we all love.” Police and union officials have argued that the consistent pressure some community members and elected leaders place on law enforcement can be a detriment. In Minneapolis, there are several efforts to significantly downsize the Police Department and create a new public safety division. The governor of Minnesota has come out in support of a bill to limit police traffic stops for minor infractions. The Justice Department on Wednesday announced a broad civil rights investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department. Adams said that several officers were now hesitant to perform even some of the most basic duties like traffic stops, worrying that such situations might escalate and get them in trouble. In New York, a union leader seemed to play on such anxieties. “It is hard to imagine a tougher time to be a member of the law enforcement profession,” Ed Mullins, the president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, wrote in a letter after the verdict was announced. He warned members that their every action was being recorded and that “scores of attorneys” were eager to sue them. “Our elected officials are complicit in perpetuating the myth that we are the enemy,” he added. Attitudes like that, activists said, speak to the resistance of law enforcement to be held accountable and allow police abuses to continue. Some police officials said the backlash to Chauvin’s actions actually provided an opportunity to improve. “I think it takes us a step closer toward reform,” said Michael S. Harrison, Baltimore’s police commissioner. “It doesn’t make it harder to do our jobs. It makes it where we have to train better, and use best practices and we have to do our job the right way.” The guilty verdict was a significant reminder for officers to stay within their training, said Rick Smith, the police chief in Kansas City, Missouri. “I think officers understand that going outside the norms leads to potential issues,” he said. “And this one highlighted that in the hundredth degree across the nation.” Adams said he believed that the judicial process ultimately helped the profession regain some of its credibility. Nine current and retired members of the Minneapolis Police Department testified against Chauvin at trial, including the police chief. That testimony, Adams said, showed the public that Chauvin was not representative of the Minneapolis police. The prosecution’s assertion during closing arguments that its case was against Chauvin, not the police, also helped, he said. After Chief Medaria Arradondo testified that Chauvin acted outside of department policy, Adams said he texted him to say he was proud to belong to his staff. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company
Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is being held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day following his conviction for the murder of George Floyd. He's held in a small cell with "a bench with a mattress pad, a combination toilet and sink, and a tiny shower." A guard checks on him every 30 minutes. Chauvin's solitary confinement is protective, and he's hardly languishing in a dank hole. He has writing materials, and potentially reading materials, too. The Count of Monte Cristo this is not. He's also perhaps the most notorious man in the country at this moment — hardly a sympathetic test case for arguing against solitary confinement. But America should rethink solitary, even for Chauvin. It's not a stretch to call it torture. A brief separation is one thing, but extended isolation from human contact is "cruel and unusual punishment," in constitutional parlance. About 60,000 people are held in solitary in U.S. prisons at any given time (under normal conditions — use of solitary has spiked during the pandemic in an attempt to curb viral spread). Isolation is used not only for protection, as in Chauvin's case, but also for punishment, including for very minor offenses, like "derogatory comments" and "reckless eye-balling." The worst cases are the long ones. In Texas, The Texas Observer reported last year, 1,300 people have been in solitary for six years or more. Among those, 129 have been in solitary for two to three decades, and 18 for 30 years or more. Texas isn't the only state with ultra-long solitary stays. Before it passed a law limiting solitary confinement to 15 consecutive days, New York kept a teenager, Kalief Browder, in solitary for two out of three years of pre-trial detention. Browder committed suicide after his ordeal. As for Chauvin, he'll likely be sentenced to around 12 years in prison, or potentially as many as 40. If he is held in solitary longer than 30 days, his situation will be subject to review. But it's difficult to know what alternative prison officials would choose: Chauvin's notoriety (and therefore their quandary) will be no different in 30 days. That solitary may seem like the only option points to our prison system's larger need for reform. More stories from theweek.comJoe Manchin lives on a boat in Washington — and protesters are reportedly headed there7 cartoons about Derek Chauvin being found guiltyHow to vaccinate the anti-vaxxers
