Becca Balint, the president pro tempore of the Vermont Senate, is running for the state’s lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, she announced Monday morning.
Balint joins Lt. Gov. Molly Gray in the Democratic primary to succeed U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., who is vacating his House seat to run for the U.S. Senate. No Republicans have entered the race.
Balint, 53, is the first openly gay woman elected to the Vermont Senate and the first woman to serve as its president.
Santa Rosa has put up a beautiful, temporary, synthetic ice skating rink in Courthouse Square, in the heart of Downtown Santa Rosa! Sonoma County Pride will be hosting the ice skating rink on 4 days in December, and will receive the proceeds of our sessions! We need volunteers for 4.5 hours shifts to perform tasks such as checking in ticket holders, monitoring the rink for safety, providing skate rentals to skaters, sharpening and sanitizing the skates, and HELPING SPREAD GOOD CHEER.
What a great opportunity to help Sonoma County Pride and have a Beyond the Rainbow experience in Downtown Santa Rosa! We will be hosting the following dates / times:Dec 17: 3-7pmDec 18: 11am-7pmDec 24: 11am-3pmDec 26: 11am-7pm
VOLUNTEER CRITERIA: *Volunteers must be 14 or older. *All volunteers must be fully vaccinated. *Volunteers will be required to complete a waiver.*Have a friendly positive attitude while working with the public.*Enjoy a fun, festive, fast-paced-at-times day outside! Please click on the link below to see what dates and times are available, and to sign up for a shift. https://sonomacountypride1.volunteerlocal.com/volunteer/?id=59395
At least 20 million adults in the U.S. identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, according to a new analysis of government data, representing nearly 8 percent of the nation’s total adult population.
Millions more may identify as something “more expansive” like pansexual or asexual, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation said in a recent report.
Using data from the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, an experimental household probability survey released in bi-weekly phases during the pandemic, the HRC report estimates the U.S. adult LGBTQ+ population is nearly two times larger than it had been believed to be.
Census data suggests that more than two million adults in America may identify as transgender, up from an estimated 1.4 million in 2016, according to the Williams Institute, a UCLA think tank focused on sexual orientation and gender identity issues.
An additional 2 percent of survey respondents said they did not use the terms “cisgender male,” “cisgender female” or “transgender” to describe their gender, suggesting they may identify as nonbinary, genderqueer, or gender fluid, according to the HRC report.
Similar to prior research, the report indicates that bisexual adults comprise the largest contingent of LGBTQ+ people in the U.S., representing about 4 percent of the LGBTQ+ population. Gay and lesbian adults accounted for 3 percent.
While LGBTQ+ people are found in “every community across every state,” the report found California and Texas had the largest LGBTQ+ populations based on the census data.
The HRC noted that previous attempts to document the size and demographics of America’s LGBTQ+ population have faced significant roadblocks related to sampling and bias.
In one of the most comprehensive studies of the LGBTQ+ community, the Public Religious Research Institute’s American Values Atlas estimated 4.4 percent of Americans identified as LGBT. That was followed by a Gallup poll published earlier this year, which saw the percentage of LGBT Americans grow to 5.6 percent of the total adult population.
The HRC’s estimate nearly doubles those figures, though it may still underestimate the LGBTQ+ community’s size.
“This data shows what we’ve suspected: our community is larger and more widespread than we could have known up to this point,” Human Rights Campaign Interim President Joni Madison said in a statement.
“We’re proud to bring this data to light and set the stage for a future where all the millions of LGBTQ+ people in America enjoy full legal and lived equality. I commend the Biden administration and the U.S. Census Bureau for finally allowing researchers to count us, and look forward to seeing the LGBTQ+ community counted in further studies,” she said.
l Approximately 8% of respondents to the Household Pulse Survey self-selected that they were lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. This suggests that 20 million adults identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
✚ An additional 2% of participants identify with a sexual orientation that is something else other than lesbian, gay, bisexual or straight. These individuals may identify as pansexual, asexual, or a host of many other identities, but it remains unclear.
l The data on transgender participants also suggest that more than 2 million adults (more than 1%) in America could identify as transgender, a number higher than previous estimates of 1.4 million.
✚ An additional 2% of participants said that none of the terms “cisgender male,” “cisgender female” or “transgender” described their gender. We could suspect that some individuals identify as non-binary, genderqueer or genderfluid, though we don’t know exactly.
l Similar to previous research, bisexual people comprised the largest contingent of LGBTQ+ people, representing about 4% of participants, next to gay and lesbian adults who comprise 3% of Household Pulse Survey participants.
l LGBTQ+ people live in every community across every state. Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas have the largest number of LGBTQ+ people who responded to the survey residing in their states.
l California (approximately 2.6 million LGBTQ+ adults) and Texas (approximately 1.7 million LGBTQ+ adults) are the two states with the largest number of LGBTQ+ people who responded to the survey.
A gay man was brutally beaten with a metal pipe and robbed of his walker while bystanders ignored him in Brooklyn, New York.
More than a month since the attack in his hometown of Coney Island, Jawhar Edwards still has a swollen eye after his eye socket was broken when a man and a woman battered him and threatened to kill him.
As he ducked out of a birthday honouring his late godmother, Edwards went to pass out food to the homeless on the boardwalk by 19th and 21st Streets on 4 November at around 12:30am.
That’s when two people targeted him because he is gay, he told FOX 5 New York, taking off with his mobile phone, coat, money and walker.
The attacked called him a “f****t” and swung at his eye with a metal pole, shattering his eye socket and damaging his vision. He was left writhing in pain on the boardwalk as bystanders simply strolled past, doing nothing.
First responders arrived and brought him to Kings County Hospital to undergo multiple surgeries on his eye.
The New York Police Department arrested Infenent Millington, a 21-year-old homeless man, on Friday (10 December). Millington has been charged with second-degree robbery.
For the last three years, Edwards has gone out to the boardwalk to feed homeless folk at around 10pm.
“I went down to feed the homeless,” Edwards told the outlet.
“In return, I got assaulted, I got gay-bashed, I got robbed of my belongings. I got called a [slur], I got told: ‘If I see you again, I am going to kill you’.”
At a Friday rally organised by assembly member Mathylde Frontus outside her Mermaid Avenue office, Edwards urged law enforcement to treat the incident as a hate crime.
Edwards knows homophobia all too well. It was the third time he has been attacked because of his sexuality, he said. In 2018, a subway rider hurled homophobic insults at him because he bumped into him.
His story, however, echoes a frightening pattern in New York City. According to data from the NYPD, anti-LGBT+ hate crimes have surged a staggering 139 per cent this year alone.
“[Edwards] is not hurting anyone,” Ann Valdez, a community leader, said, Gay City News reported.
“He’s not bothering anyone. He went out there to feed the homeless. He’s not being paid for that.
“He’s doing that out of the kindness of his heart. My question for Coney Island is: ‘Where is your heart?’”
n Thursday, December 16, 2021, at 6pm, at the Shea Federal Building, 777 Sonoma Ave., in Santa Rosa, Immigrants and allies will hold a public “Speak-Out” to let California’s U.S. Senators know that they expect passage of a Path To Citizenship for Christmas, as President Biden and the Democrats promised. At 7pm, they will walk with lights to the Old Courthouse Square, in downtown Santa Rosa, to show holiday shoppers, elected officials and the community at large that undocumented residents of Sonoma County demand legalization as soon as possible.
“It is difficult for the undocumented community to celebrate the holidays when so many of us still can’t travel to see our families and loved ones in our home countries,” states Socorro Diaz, Leader of ALMAS, an Immigrant & Indigenous women’s organization which empowers workers through education and political campaigns. “We need to end the criminalization of essential workers in this country, and it needs to happen before Christmas,” she adds.
“The “Build Back Better” Bill is the closest we’ve gotten to achieving a Path To Citizenship,” says Patricia Garibay, also a Leader of ALMAS. “The Democrats must act boldly and swiftly and deliver legalization to us for Christmas this year.”
The “Build Back Better” Bill recently passed the U.S. House of Representatives and is currently being considered by the U.S. Senate as a budget reconciliation bill. Although the Senate Parliamentarian announced that a Path To Citizenship should not be included in a budget bill, Immigrant communities and Democrats wish to override the Parliamentarian or include some type of “temporary status” for the country’s 12 million undocumented.
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EN ESPANOL:
Inmigrantes del Condado de Sonoma Organizan un “Micrófono Abierto” y Caminata Alrededor de Los Compradores de Regalos Navideños Para Exigir Que el Senado Pase Para Navidad la Propuesta de Ley “Build Back Better” Que Contiene Estatus Legal Para Los Indocumentados del País.
El Jueves, Diciembre 16, 2021, a las 6pm, en el Edificio Federal Shea, 777 Sonoma Ave., en Santa Rosa, Inmigrantes y aliados tendrán un “Micrófono Abierto” para informarles a los Senadores de California que esperan que pasen un Camino a la Ciudadanía para Navidad, como el Presidente Biden y los Demócratas prometieron. A las 7pm, caminarán con luces al Old Courthouse Square, en el centro de Santa Rosa, para mostrarles a los compradores, políticos y la comunidad entera que residentes indocumentados del Condado de Sonoma exigen la legalización lo más pronto posible.
“Es difícil para la comunidad indocumentada celebrar las Navidades cuando tantos de nosotros aún no podemos viajar para ver a nuestras familias y seres queridos en nuestros países de origen,” dice Socorro Diaz, Lider de ALMAS, una organización de mujeres Inmigrantes e Indígenas que empodera a las trabajadoras a través de información y campañas políticas. “Debemos poner fin a la criminalización de trabajadores esenciales en este país, y necesita tomar lugar antes de la Navidad,” ella agrega.
“La propuesta de ley “Build Back Better” es lo más cercano que hemos llegado para lograr un Camino a la Ciudadanía,” dice Patricia Garibay, también Lider de ALMAS. “Los demócratas deben actuar con valor y rápidamente para darnos una legalización esta Navidad.”
La propuesta de ley “Build Back Better” recientemente pasó por la Cámara de Representantes de los EEUU y ahora está siendo considerada por el Senado EEUU como una propuesta presupuestal. Aunque la Parlamentaria del Senado anunció que un Camino a la Ciudadanía no debe ser incluido en una propuesta presupuestal, comunidades Inmigrantes y Demócratas quieren rechazar esta conclusión o incluir un tipo de “estatus temporal” para los 12 millones de indocumentados en este país.
A 12-year-old boy took his own life after being tortured by bullies and told he would go to Hell because he is gay.
Eli Fritchley was a seventh-grader from Shelbyville, Tennessee, who adored Spongebob Squarepantsand played the trombone.
He died by suicide on 28 November, no longer able to bear the “pain and torture” from kids at his school, his parents said.
Eli was never afraid to be himself, Debbey and Steve Fritchley told WKRN-TV, and they were in awe at his bravery in the face of bullies at his school, Cascades Muddle School in Bedford County.
“He was told because he didn’t necessarily have a religion and he said he was gay that was going to Hell,” Debbey told the local station. “They told him that quite often.”
She added that Eli wore the same Spongebob sweater every day – even doing the laundry himself – and painted his nails. “I think probably because he was in the same clothes every single day that they used that as a weapon,” she added.
Eli’s father, Steve, said: “It was really abusive. I don’t think it was ever physical. I think it was just words, but words hurt.
“They really hurt. This has just blindsided us. This is something we would have never, ever expected.”
Though his parents knew he was being bullied, neither Debbey nor Steve knew the extent of how Eli was feeling.
“We all failed him,” Debbey said. “We all failed him. It’s as simple as that.”
Family of Eli Fritchley raise thousands so ‘this terrible tragedy doesn’t happen again’
The story of Eli Fritchley echoes a frightening pattern for queer youth who are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide than their straight, cisgender peers, according to LGBT+ suicide-prevention charity The Trevor Project.
More than one in two queer youth have been bullied in person or electronically, it adds.
Bedford County School district officials were left “shocked” and “devastated” by the news of Eli’s passing. Working together with his grieving parents, superintendent Tammy Garrett said more social and emotional education programs will be rolled out across local schools.
“Anytime someone takes his or her life, especially a child, it is nearly unbearable,” Garrett said in a statement.
“Our hearts go out to his parents and family as they deal with this terrible loss.”
Now Fritchley’s parents are working to ensure that no child or parent goes through what their family did. “I honestly think education, education, education for everyone where bullying is concerned,” Debbey said, “because it is a problem.
“Not just in Bedford County. It’s a problem everywhere.”
The Fritchley family, with the help of Penalties Sports Bar & Grill, have created a GoFundMe paid to do just that.
Tens of thousands of dollars have poured into the fundraiser to “go towards other kids and families […] so that this terrible tragedy doesn’t have to happen again”, ” fund organiser and family friend Shondelle Lewis wrote.
“As parents and grandparents, it is our responsibility to teach our children to love, not hate; to be kind, not mean; to understand that we are all different in our own ways and that is OK.”
“Hug your children and your grandchildren, tell them this world doesn’t have to be so full of evil because, in the end, evil never wins.”
Suicide is preventable. Readers who are affected by the issues raised in this story are encouraged to contact Samaritans on 116 123 (www.samaritans.org), or Mind on 0300 123 3393 (www.mind.org.uk). Readers in the US are encouraged to contact theNational Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255.
“The Obama Portraits Tour” and “Black American Portraits” exhibits at LACMA not only celebrate portraiture, but also queer Black artists and subjects.
In the West Coast presentation of “The Obama Portraits Tour,” Kehinde Wiley’s Barack Obama and Amy Sherald’s Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama are on loan from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, and on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through Jan. 2.
“Barack Obama” by Kehinde Wiley, oil on canvas, 2018; “Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama” by Amy Sherald, oil on linen, 2018. (Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald)
Wiley, who identifies as gay, was the first Black artist to paint an official presidential portrait for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery when Obama selected him in 2018.
Wiley’s “Portrait of a Young Man,” his eagerly anticipated reimagining of Gainsborough’s iconic 1770 painting “The Blue Boy,” is on display at The Huntington. Wiley’s work, which takes the name that Thomas Gainsborough initially used, incorporates the Grand Manner portraiture technique and style, but in a contemporary setting.
“The Portrait Gallery’s official portraits of President Barack Obama by Kehinde Wiley and First Lady Michelle Obama by Amy Sherald are powerful works of art,” Michael Govan, LACMA CEO, said in a statement. “The colors and styles of the paintings are a fresh departure from the history of presidential portraiture, and these have become two of the most recognized artworks in the world.”
To complement “The Obama Portraits Tour,” “Black American Portraits” is an exhibit that reframes portraiture to center Black American subjects, sitters, and spaces. It features 140 works mainly drawn from the museum’s permanent collection.
The picture above it showed several Black men who had been lynched.
Another photo asked what someone should do if their girlfriend was having an affair with a Black man. The answer, according to the caption, was to break “a tail light on his car so the police will stop him and shoot him.”
Someone else sent a picture of a candy cane, a Christmas tree ornament, a star for the top of the tree and an “enslaved person.”
“Which one doesn’t belong?” the caption asked.
“You don’t hang the star,” someone wrote back.
The comments represent a sliver of a trove of racist text messages exchanged by more than a dozen current and former Torrance police officers and recruits.
Through interviews with sources with direct knowledge of the investigation, public records requests and a review of district attorney’s office records, The Times examined some of the contents of the until-now secret texts and identified a dozen Torrance police officers under investigation for exchanging them.
The broad scope of the racist text conversations, which prosecutors said went on for years, has created a crisis for the Torrance Police Department and could jeopardize hundreds of criminal cases in which the officers either testified or made arrests. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said Wednesday his office will investigate the department in the wake of the scandal.
The officers’ comments spared no color or creed: They joked about “gassing” Jewish people, assaulting members of the LGBTQ community, using violence against suspects and lying during an investigation into a police shooting, according to district attorney’s office records reviewed by The Times.
Frequently, hateful comments were targeted at Black people. Officers called Black men “savages,”and several variations of the N-word, according to documents reviewed by The Times. The officers also shared instructions on how to tie a noose and a picture of a stuffed animal being lynched inside Torrance’s police headquarters, according to the documents.
While no officers currently face criminal charges in direct relation to the text messages, the racist exchanges have led to the dismissal of at least 85 criminal cases involving the officers implicated in the scandal. County prosecutors had tossed 35 felony cases as of mid-November, and the Torrance city attorney’s office has dismissed an additional 50, officials said.
In total, the officers were listed as potential witnesses in nearly 1,400 cases in the last decade, according to district attorney’s records The Times obtained through a public records request. The officers did not necessarily testify in each case, so it’s unclear how many of those cases could be affected.
Still, in the span of one week in November, the Los Angeles County public defender’s office received about 300 letters from prosecutors disclosing potential misconduct by officers implicated in the scandal, said Judith Green, an office spokeswoman.
Prosecutors are reviewing dozens of additional cases linked to the officers, said Diana Teran, a special advisor to Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón. The review will prioritize active cases in which a defendant is still in custody and one of the officers implicated in the scandal was a “material witness.”
“So that could be, for example, a single police officer is in a patrol car and sees an individual on the sidewalk and then says he had a bulge in his pocket and then pats him down and then recovers a gun,” Teran said. “Without that officer, you couldn’t prove that case.”
Since 2013, the group of officers identified by The Times has been involved in at least seven serious use-of-force incidents in Torrance and Long Beach, including three that ended in the deaths of Black and Latino men, according to police use-of-force records and court filings. Although the officers’ actions were found to be justified in each case, experts say those cases should be reexamined in the context of the hateful messages.
“What those text messages revealed was an extraordinarily hostile attitude toward people of color, people who are nonbinary, people who have different sexual orientations,” said Walter Katz, a former independent police auditor in California who now serves as a vice president of criminal justice for research firm Arnold Ventures. “I don’t know that we can take anything they’ve said at face value.”
Two of the officers under investigation as part of the scandal — Anthony Chavez and Matthew Concannon — are also under investigation for the controversial 2018 slaying of Christopher DeAndre Mitchell, a Black car theft suspect they fatally shot while he was holding an air rifle. Chavez and Concannon were cleared of wrongdoing by former Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey, but the case is one of several that Gascón has hired a special prosecutor to review for possible criminal charges.
Several of the officers have also been named as defendants in lawsuits alleging excessive force, false arrest and wrongful death, court filings show. In some of those cases, the plaintiffs are members of the same ethnic groups the officers espoused hatred for in the texts.
In addition to Weldin, Tomsic and Chandler, The Times has reviewed district attorney’s records detailing racist texts or images shared by six other police officers: Blake Williams, Brian Kawamoto, Joshua Satterfield, Omar Alonso, Christopher Allen-Young and Long Beach Police Officer Maxwell Schroeder, who is a former Torrance police recruit.
Concannon, Chavez and fellow Torrance Police Officers Andrew Kissinger and Enrique Villegas are also under investigation as part of the scandal, according to three people with direct knowledge of the case and a review of district attorney’s records. The Times did not independently view documentation of racist text messages sent by any of those four officers, though the newspaper did review a document that showed Concannon sent messages that are part of the investigation.
The identities of all 13 officers named in this article were confirmed by three people with direct knowledge of the case and by reviewing district attorney’s records that detailed some of the officers’ comments. Those people spoke on the condition of anonymity so they could candidly discuss an ongoing investigation.
The text messages were not on one continuous thread, according to two of the sources.Additional officers received the texts but did not interact with them in any way, so they are not considered under investigation,those sources said.
The exact number of officers involved in the scandal is unclear. Sgt. Mark Ponegalek, a Torrance police spokesman, could not confirm or deny the identities of the officers involved, but said 15 have been placed on administrative leave in relation to the scandal.
That number did not include Tomsic, Weldin, or Schroeder, he said. The Times identified 13 officers in its investigation, including Tomsic, Weldin and Schroeder, meaning there are an additional five Torrance officers under investigation whose identities remain unknown to the public.
A Long Beach police spokesman said Schroeder was assigned to desk duty pending the outcome of an internal investigation, but would not say why.
The officers either declined to comment through their attorneys or did not respond to messages left by The Times at their homes or through their union, the Torrance Police Officers Assn., which represents rank-and-file officers. An attorney for the union said the officers were barred from commenting on the investigation.
“The current administrative investigations are confidential. As such, we do not have access to facts of the underlying investigation, or the alleged inappropriate materials. We expect that as police officers, our members should be treated like any other citizen — considered innocent until proven guilty,” the union said in a statement. “Our members have a right to due process and should be protected from illegal and unnecessary intrusion into their private lives.”
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The text messages might have remained hidden if not for the alleged bizarre actions of Tomsic and Weldin in January 2020.
The two officers responded to a report of mail theft in the South Bay city and directed a car linked to the crime to be towed from the scene, authorities said. The pair allegedly spray-painted a swastika and a “happy face” inside the vehicle, according to a criminal complaint.
District attorney’s records reviewed by The Times showed Tomsic sent a slew of racist images and messages, including a picture of former President Reagan feeding a monkey with a caption stating Reagan “used to babysit [former President] Obama.”
Another picture he sent referred to an “African American baby” as a “Pet Niguana,” according to the records, and he also sent a message mocking the fact that he was the subject of a racial profiling complaint.
“So we totally racially profiled his ass, haha … Shopping at 7/11 while Black, he didn’t know the rules lol,” Tomsic wrote, according to the records.
Torrance police officials acquired evidence of the text message threads during their investigation of Weldin and Tomsic, according to Ponegalek, though he declined to give a specific timeline of when they obtained the data.
Gascón said he first became aware of the situation in July, when he was given a briefing about the pending vandalism charges.
“I questioned whether there was any other things that would lead us to believe that this is not sort of a single crime event,” he said. “I actually made some comments about how, generally, when someone does this kind of stuff, there are bigger patterns of behavior. So, I started asking if we had checked for text messages.”
Within weeks, Torrance police provided the district attorney’s office with more than 200 gigabytes of data, which showed the officers had been exchanging racist messages since at least 2018, according to Teran, the advisor to the district attorney. Gascón praised Torrance Police Chief Jeremiah Hart for moving quickly to provide information to prosecutors, noting he met resistance from police leaders when investigating similar scandals involving racist text messages among San Francisco officers.
Gascón said the texts are proof that some Torrance officers hate the communities they were hired to serve.
“It creates a tremendous amount of concern for me. We have a group of officers who, apparently in addition to harboring very biased and racist beliefs, also may be engaging in inappropriate force that could be illegal in some cases,” he said.
In the texts, the officers showed little concern about getting caught and even less about the citizens they were assigned to protect, routinely joking about using force and mocking internal affairs.
“We had to [expletive] her up because we knew he wouldn’t,” one officer wrote in one exchange about an altercation with a female suspect. “Don’t ask me where that lump on her forehead came from though.”
“Sometimes you’ve got to do things your own damn self,” Kawamoto replied, later adding a comment that he wanted to “always make Torrance great again,” a reference to former President Trump’s ubiquitous political slogan.
Kawamoto also referred to Black men as “savages” in the texts, according to district attorney’s records reviewed by The Times.
In another message reviewed by The Times, Alonso complained about the idea of having to work with a gay officer, and said he’d “straight punch” a member of the LGBTQ community, using a common slur for gay men.
Usually, conversations always seemed to circle back to vile insults or depictions of violence against Black people. After one officer shared a news article about someone being arrested for urinating on a Black child and calling them the N-word, Satterfield replied, “what’s the crime?” according to district attorney’s records reviewed by The Times.
From 2016 to 2019, Torrance police upheld just three citizen allegations of police misconduct and zero allegations of racial profiling made against officers, according to data submitted to the California attorney general’s office. Katz, the former independent police auditor, described those statistics as “concerningly low.”
“If citizen complaints are not taken seriously, it does increase the sense of impunity that officers who are inclined toward misconduct have,” he said.
Ponegalek argued that The Times’ analysis was incomplete, as it did not include statistics involving complaints filed by other officers. Torrance police sustained 35 out of 43 internally generated complaints of officer misconduct from 2016 to 2020, Ponegalek said. The department has also hired an outside law firm to conduct a review of the scandal, he said.
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Many of the officers under investigation as part of the scandal also have use-of-force histories involving the communities for which they expressed hatred.
Schroeder used a carotid restraint hold — sometimes referred to as a blood choke — to subdue a homeless Black man in a park in November 2018, according to Long Beach police records The Times obtained through a public records request. Schroeder initiated contact with the man because he was sleeping in a park after it closed, the records show, and used the choke to take him down after an altercation.
Long Beach police officials determined the use of force was justified, the records show. The homeless man was booked on suspicion of resisting arrest, being in the park after dark and possession of drug paraphernalia, according to a Long Beach police spokesman. Long Beach City Prosecutor Doug Haubert did not respond to repeated calls and e-mails seeking information about the criminal case against the homeless man.
According to the district attorney’s records reviewed by The Times, Schroeder sent one message in the texts reading “No Jews, No Blacks,” and made racist remarks about a child eating a watermelon.
Several of the Torrance officers under investigation as part of the scandal have also used serious or deadly force against Black and Latino men while on duty in recent years, according to district attorney’s records.
Chavez, Williams, Satterfield and Tomsic all opened fire on Michael Lopez in 2017 after a vehicle pursuit that started in Palos Verdes Estates. Lopez had been fleeing police in a truck, and the officers said he attempted to ram them when they opened fire, according to a district attorney’s office memo that determined the fatal shooting was justified.
One year later, Tomsic was one of several officers involved in a deadly altercation with Deautry Ross in the Del Amo Fashion Center, according to district attorney’s records. The officers were responding to calls from a mall employee who said Ross was walking through the building with a knife, muttering to himself. Ross fled from Torrance police when they responded, and became violent when they tried to arrest him, district attorney’s records show.
During the struggle, Tomsic said, Ross tried to gain control of his gun, according to a district attorney’s office memo clearing the officers of criminal liability. The officers hit Ross with a Taser and handcuffed him, but he continued to struggle, according to the report, which then described two officers kneeling on Ross’ shoulders.
Another officer then sat on Ross’ legs before others were able to “bind Ross’ arms and legs with a hobble restraint.”
Minutes later, firefighters on scene noted Ross’ pulse was beginning to weaken. He eventually went into cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead at a hospital a short time later. A knife was recovered at the scene.
Medical examiners ruled Ross died of cardiac arrest resulting from methamphetamine use and his struggle with the officers, according to autopsy records.
The most controversial incident involving officers linked to the racist text scandal is the 2018 shooting death of Christopher DeAndre Mitchell. The incident sparked significant protests — including one inside Torrance’s City Council chambers that led demonstrators to file excessive-force lawsuits against several of the officers The Times identified in this article — and remains under review by Gascón.
Mitchell, who was Black, was suspected of driving a stolen vehicle when he pulled into a Ralphs parking lot in Torrance in December 2018, according to a district attorney’s office memo clearing the officers of wrongdoing. Concannon and Chavez pulled in behind him, exited their vehicle and yelled “police!” Mitchell initially placed his hands on the steering wheel, according to the memo, but when the officers approached him, they noticed his hands move toward his lap where Concannon saw what he believed to be a firearm.
The officers repeatedly ordered Mitchell to get out of the car, but he did not comply, according to the report. The officers described the weapon, later determined to be a “break barrel air rifle,” as “pinched” between Mitchell’s legs, though neither alleged he grabbed it or pointed it at them before they opened fire.
Lacey cleared the officers of wrongdoing in all three deaths, but Gascón has reopened the investigation into Mitchell’s killing . He declined to offer a timetable on that review and would not say whether the officers involvement in the text scandal would affect that probe.
Katz said the text messages call into question the credibility of the officers’ accounts of any past use-of-force incidents involving Black or Latino suspects.
In the Mitchell case, that could be especially concerning. According to district attorney’s records reviewed by The Times, Concannon once sent a troubling text message referring to a deposition he gave in an “officer-involved shooting.”
“They believed our lies. Good job sticking to the script,” he wrote. “LMAO, that’s what they call a W.”
According to a Times review of public records, Concannon has shot only one person during his career: Christopher DeAndre Mitchell.
Federal prosecutors arrested a man Monday who they said threatened to attack this year’s New York City Pride March with “firepower” that would “make the 2016 Orlando Pulse Nightclub shooting look like a cakewalk.”
Officials from the FBI and the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force announced that Robert Fehring, 74, was charged with mailing dozens of letters threatening to assault, shoot and bomb LGBTQ-affiliated individuals, organizations and businesses, including New York City’s annual Pride festival.
After executing a search warrant at his home in Bayport, New York, last month, law enforcement agents recovered photographs from a Pride event on Long Island this year, two loaded shotguns, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, two stun guns and a stamped envelope addressed to an LGBTQ-affiliated attorney containing the remains of a dead bird, federal prosecutors said.
“Fehring’s alleged threats to members of the LGBTQ+ community were not only appalling, but dangerous, despite the fact he hadn’t yet acted on his purported intentions,” Michael J. Driscoll, the assistant director-in-charge of the FBI’s New York Field Office, said in a statement.
A criminal complaint released Monday said Fehring had sent more than 60 threatening letters to members of and organizations affiliated with the LGBTQ community since 2013 and as recently as September.
In many of the letters, he describes LGBTQ individuals as worse than the “bottom of the pig-pen” or states that “even animals know better” than to engage in same-sex activity, according to the complaint.
Notably, the complaint stated that Fehring threatened that there would “be radio-cont[r]olled devices placed at numerous strategic places” at the 2021 New York City Pride March with “firepower” that would “make the 2016 Orlando Pulse Nightclub shooting look like a cakewalk,” referring to the massacre at the gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, which left 49 people dead and dozens injured.
NYC Pride, which runs New York City’s Pride march, “received threatening letters earlier this year and reported them,” the organization’s executive director, Sandra Pérez, told NBC News in an email.
“We are cooperating in any way we can, and we remain committed to the safety and well-being of the LGBTQIA+ community,” she added.
Prosecutors also detailed an incident in which Fehring allegedly sent a letter threatening the organizer of the Long Island Pride event in East Meadow, New York. The letter called the organizer a “freak” and stated, in part, “You are being watched. No matter how long it takes, you will be taken out…. high-powered bullet…. bomb….knife…. whatever it takes.”
Last month, Fehring waived his Miranda rights and allowed federal prosecutors to interview him, according to the complaint. During the interview, he acknowledged that he authored certain letters under investigation and that he had a general animosity toward the LGBTQ community, according to the complaint.
There is “a sick overdose of that stuff being shoved down everybody’s face on the paper, on the TV and all over the place and I’m not a fan of any of the homosexuality, homosexual thing,” he said.
Fehring is expected to make his initial appearance in court Monday afternoon.
