Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
More Than 30% Of Black Americans Know Someone With COVID In Latest Sign Of Racial Disparities
The Washington Post: Almost One-Third Of Black Americans Know Someone Who Died Of Covid-19, Survey Shows
Nearly 1 in 3 black Americans know someone personally who has died of covid-19, far exceeding their white counterparts, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll that underscores the coronavirus pandemic’s profoundly disparate impact. The nationwide survey finds that 31 percent of black adults say they know someone firsthand who has been killed by the virus, compared with 17 percent of adults who are Hispanic and 9 percent who are white. (Goldstein and Guskin, 6/26)
NPR: Black Americans Face Higher Barriers To Getting Good Mental Health Support
Two decades of life experience made a mental-health activist of Kai Koerber. When he was 16 and a student at a Parkland, Fla., high school, a gunman killed 17 people, including one his friends. "I really did suffer a domestic terrorist attack, and that's not something that happens to you every day," Koerber says. But as a young Black man growing up in the South, Koerber had already faced threats of racial and police violence routinely, and those experiences, too, shaped his relationship with the world. He's coped with that stress, he says, through a lifelong practice of meditation. And after the school massacre, Koerber also sought emotional support from a therapist with a deep empathy for his personal traumas. (Noguchi, 6/25)
Reuters: Colorado Governor Orders Probe Of Death Of Black Man After Police Encounter
Colorado Governor Jared Polis on Thursday appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the 2019 death of an unarmed Black man who died days after he was subdued by three policemen and injected with a powerful sedative. Polis said the state’s attorney general, Phil Weiser, will probe the death of Elijah McClain, who died following an encounter with police who applied a carotid neckhold on him. During the incident, paramedics injected him with ketamine and he lapsed into a coma from which he never recovered. (Coffman, 6/25)
AP: Colorado Reexamines Elijah McClain's Death In Police Custody
The Colorado governor on Thursday ordered prosecutors to reopen the investigation into the death of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man put into a chokehold by police who stopped him on the street in suburban Denver last year because he was “being suspicious.”Gov. Jared Polis signed an executive order directing state Attorney General Phil Weiser to investigate and possibly prosecute the three white officers previously cleared in McClain’s death. McClain’s name has become a rallying cry during the national reckoning over racism and police brutality following the deaths of George Floyd and others. (Nieberg and Peipert, 6/25)
Reuters: New York City Police Officer Arrested After Apparent Chokehold Arrest
A New York City police officer was arrested on Thursday and charged with strangulation and attempted strangulation after videos emerged over the weekend that appeared to show him using an illegal chokehold to arrest a man on a boardwalk, police said. The officer, David Afanador, had already been suspended from the New York Police Department without pay. Afanador, 39, turned himself in to be arrested at a police station house, the NYPD said. He pleaded not guilty at an initial court appearance, his lawyer said. (Allen, 6/25)
Reuters: Fired Miami Police Officer Charged For Putting Knee On Black Woman's Neck
A former Miami police officer was charged on Thursday with battery and misconduct after a video surfaced showing him pressing his knee on a Black woman’s neck and tasing her stomach, while she kept screaming, U.S. media reports said .Jordi Martel, 30, was charged with official misconduct for filing two reports with false details about the incident that took place outside a striptease club on Jan. 14, State Attorney Katherine Rundle told a press conference. (6/26)
The New York Times: ‘I Humbly Apologize’: Philadelphia Officials Announce Changes After Protest Response
Officials in Philadelphia on Thursday announced a moratorium on the use of tear gas in the city and apologized for their response to a June 1 protest against police brutality. The announcement, by the mayor and the police commissioner, came hours after The New York Times published a visual investigation into the use of force by the police. During a confrontation with several hundred demonstrators who had entered Interstate 676 in the city center this month, SWAT officers used tear gas and pepper spray on a group of nonviolent protesters, some of whom were trapped as they tried to leave. (Tabrizy, Koettl, Xiao, Reneau and Jordan, 6/25)
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Atlanta Mayor Issues 3 Administrative Orders Addressing Use Of Force
Two weeks after the creation of an advisory council to review Atlanta’s use-of-force policies by police, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has received the initial recommendations and issued three administrative orders as a result. The newly established Use of Force Advisory Council provided Bottoms with 10 recommendations, three of which were adopted, according to a news release. The other seven are undergoing further “legal and operational review.” (Hansen, 6/25)
The Washington Post: Atlanta’s Mayor Becomes A Leading Voice In The National Debate Over Race And Policing
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms won praise from politicians and commentators with her poised and powerful rebuke of protesters who smashed windows and spray-painted buildings during protests after the death of George Floyd, a black man killed by a white police officer. “I am a mother to four black children in America. . . . So you’re not going to out-concern me or out-care about where we are in America,” Bottoms said during a news conference. “This is not a protest. . . . This is chaos. A protest has purpose.” (Williams and Willis, 6/25)
The New York Times: Carlos Ingram Lopez Death In Tucson: Another Video And Police On The Defensive
It was another gruesome video of policing in America — a naked Latino man, his face covered by a mesh spit guard, his hands cuffed behind him as he lay dying face down on the ground at his grandmother’s house. He pleaded for water more than a dozen times, saying he could not breathe as police officers restrained his legs and torso. This time, the scene was a southern Arizona city with a politically moderate image, a large Latino population and a Police Department said to be relatively progressive. (Romero, McDonnell Nieto del Rio and Bogel-Burroughs, 6/25)
KQED: 3 Ways Asian Americans Can Fight Anti-Black Racism
Over four weeks since a police officer killed George Floyd on video in Minneapolis, a nationwide reckoning with anti-Black racism is showing no signs of slowing. In the streets, protestors have participated in demonstrations of all sizes, including a student-led march of over 10,000 in San Francisco and 15,000 people marching for Black trans lives in New York. Online, people have created and shared innumerable resources on anti-racist action and how to break down anti-Blackness in non-Black communities. (Yu, 6/25)
AP: Impatience Grows For Cops' Arrests In Breonna Taylor's Death
The outcry has reverberated for weeks online and at demonstrations nationwide: Arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor. But three months after plainclothes detectives serving a warrant busted into her Louisville, Kentucky, apartment and shot the 26-year-old Black woman to death, only one of the three officers who opened fire has lost his job. No one is facing criminal charges. (Lovan, 6/26)
AP: Rayshard Brooks Struggled In System But Didn't Hide His Past
Rayshard Brooks didn’t hide his history. About five months before he was killed by Atlanta police in a Wendy’s parking lot — before his name and case would become the latest rallying point in a massive call for racial justice and equality nationwide — Brooks gave an interview to an advocacy group about his years of struggle in the criminal justice system. He described an agonizing cycle of job rejection and public shame over his record and association with a system that takes millions of Americans, many of them Black like him, away from their families and treats them more like animals than individuals. (Thanawala and Seewer, 6/26)
Reuters: U.S. Public More Aware Of Racial Inequality But Still Rejects Reparations: Reuters/Ipsos Polling
Americans are growing increasingly aware of racial inequality in the United States, but a large majority still oppose the use of one-time payments, known as reparations, to tackle the persistent wealth gap between Black and white citizens. According to Reuters/Ipsos polls this month, only one in five respondents agreed the United States should use “taxpayer money to pay damages to descendants of enslaved people in the United States.” (Johnson, 6/25)
Los Angeles Times: Black Lives Matter Seeks Restraining Order To Prevent LAPD Use Of Batons, 'Rubber' Bullets On Marchers
Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles and other protest groups are asking a federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order and injunction to forbid the Los Angeles Police Department from using baton strikes and “rubber” bullets to control crowds during future protests, arguing that such use violates demonstrators’ constitutional rights and has caused a plethora of injuries. With protests over the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police bringing calls to end police brutality, lawyers for the protesters on Wednesday asked a federal judge to end LAPD practices that they say have fallen short of their constitutional duties. (Winton, 6/25)
AP: Race Relations In Wisconsin Capital Are A Tale Of 2 Cities
In this college town that considers itself a bastion of progressive politics and inclusion, race relations are really a tale of two cities. Demonstrators who toppled statues of figures with no racist history this week say they went after the sculptures because they wanted to shatter a false narrative that the state and the city support Black people and racial equity. (Richmond, 6/25)
The Washington Post: Police Chiefs Are Cracking Down On Misconduct Including Brutality And Overt Racism And Are Losing Their Own Jobs, Too
The police officers were discussing work when their conversations moved, as so many have recently, to the protests against racial injustice rippling across the country. Their words quickly turned hateful. One officer used racist slurs to assail a black judge and a black woman he had arrested, while another described feeling like a civil war was coming and described his plans to go out and buy an assault rifle. (Laverty, Berman and Elfrink, 6/25)
Los Angeles Times: Sheriff's Deputy Who Fatally Shot Andres Guardado Faced Earlier Allegations
A week after a deputy shot and killed an 18-year-old man in Gardena, setting off heated demonstrations, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has yet to fully explain how the shooting occurred and has not interviewed the two patrol deputies involved. But details are emerging about the deputies, including earlier allegations faced by the officer who fatally shot Andres Guardado. Sources with knowledge of the case identified them to The Times as Deputies Miguel Vega, who opened fire, and Chris Hernandez, who did not shoot. (Tchekmedyian and Lau, 6/25)
The Wall Street Journal: Many Minnesota Police Officers Remain On The Force Despite Misconduct
Minnesota police officers who are fired for misconduct or charged with criminal behavior often end up back on the force. Law-enforcement officers in the state who appealed terminations since 2014 were reinstated half the time, according to a Wall Street Journal review of records from the Minnesota Bureau of Mediation Services, which maintains a database of arbitration awards. (Jones and Radnofsky, 6/25)
