Emma Hall | The Sacramento Bee (TNS)

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Pit River Tribe elder Theodore Martinez knows more of death than anyone should.

“I want to acknowledge some of the people that have been murdered from my tribe,” Martinez said. “These are all my people.”

Martinez’s family, close friends and members of his tribe are among the more than 150 documented cases of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People crisis in California. The state has the fifth most unsolved cases involving Native people in the country, and tribal leaders have urged for the crisis to be declared a state emergency.

Earlier this year as he stood on the west Capitol steps, Martinez, with anguish in his eyes, recalled each person he’s lost in his lifetime.

There was Little George Montgomery, who was like a brother to Martinez. He was killed decades ago, with the tribe finding his body dismembered, Martinez said. All they had left to bury was his skull.

There was his own brother, Victor, who Martinez said was killed in 1992.

There was his cousin who lived on the Fort Bidwell Reservation in Modoc County. Martinez said she was found dead, face down in the water of the tribe’s hot springs.

There was Dewey McGarva. At 36, he went missing for more than a year. When his tribe found him, there wasn’t much left, Martinez said.

And then, there was Milton “Yogi” McGarva, who identified as Two-Spirit, a third gender identity for Indigenous people. McGarva was stabbed and fatally wounded in 2020.

“These are things that have gone on historically, throughout my territory,” Martinez said. “None of these things have been investigated. Nothing has been done.”

As Martinez looked upon a crowd of Native Californians, he knew he wasn’t the only one who had lost relatives.

The deaths and disappearances of his relatives have gone unsolved by law enforcement for decades, Martinez said. It’s a pain many families relate to: the feeling of being let down and left without closure.

“We as Native people, we need to help each other. We need to support this movement,” Martinez said. “Because without that support, it’s not going to go very far.”

After feeling neglected by law enforcement, these families have taken matters into their own hands. They offer monetary rewards for anyone with knowledge of their relatives’ whereabouts, carrying posters with their loved one’s faces and names.

They haven’t given up. They all want justice.

Families of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People seek justice

Toni Espinoza, a member of Wilton Rancheria, is the sister of Angel Baby Espinoza, who died on Nov. 18, 2001. Her family believes she was killed.

Toni Espinoza said her sister died following a hit and run on Norwood Avenue in North Sacramento. Her family believes Angel Baby was pushed in front of the car by an ex-partner.

“We want justice. I want to be able to tell her kids who did this to their mom,” Toni Espinoza said, her voice beginning to break. “We have a right to know, everybody has the right to justice.”

Toni Espinoza said she worked with a police detective and allegedly found an eye witness. But the case was deemed manslaughter after three years and not pursued as a murder investigation.

To this day, her family, including Angel Baby’s own five children,still mourn her death. They are left with no answers.

“This is why we do what we can,” Toni Espinoza said. “To spread the word, to say her name, to do marches and hold protests in front of the Capitol so somebody will care.”

Over in Mendocino County, 81-year-old Ronnie Hostler and his family have been searching for his beloved granddaughter, Khadijah Britton, 23, who has been missing for the past seven years. Britton belongs to the Wailaki Round Valley Indian tribes.

Britton was last seen in Covelo, California, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigations, with an ex-boyfriend forcing her into a car at gunpoint.

While the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office was involved in the case, Hostler is unsatisfied. He said Britton’s disappearance wasn’t investigated until two weeks after her family reported her missing. Today, Britton has been deemed a cold case.

Britton’s family is still trying to find herbut at this point, they are looking for her body to bury in the family cemetery.

“We want to find her, wherever she may be, and we want to take care of her,” Hostler said. “That’s what we want right now, and we’re not getting it.”

Tribes face issues with law enforcement

The Sacramento Bee has spoken to, or heard from, 46 families, tribal leaders and experts in Indian Country affected by the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People crisis. They identified obstacles preventing cases from getting solved.

Missing and Murdered Indigenous People cases reflect disproportionate rates of violence against Native communities nationwide. Native people are 2.5 times more likely to experience a violent crime, according to the Association on American Indian Affairs.

When cases are reported, there is sometimes no response, little follow through or poor coordination with criminal investigations, said Keely Linton, the operations director for the Strong Hearted Native Women’s Coalition, a nonprofit that supports families with Missing and Murdered Indigenous People cases.

Local law enforcement can be slow to respond to calls of crime and are “less attentive to the interests of tribes,” according to the UCLA American Indian Studies Center. Tribal communities also struggle to trust law enforcement.

Erik Apperson, the former Del Norte County sheriff, saw this dynamic firsthand when working on Yurok and Tolowa Dee-ni’ tribal lands. Now retired, he recalled meeting a shocked and grieving mother whose young son was killed by another boy on tribal lands.

Despite the tragedy of a young boy dying that night, the need to bring an offender to justice did not outweigh the absence of ability and desire to pursue the case, Apperson said.

“I believe in my heart that it was a homicide, even if negligence played a part in it,” he said.

Why do Missing and Murdered Indigenous People cases go cold?

Missing and Murdered Indigenous People crisis cases are seven times less likely to be solved than any other ethnic group statewide, according to Sovereign Bodies Institute. As a result, most cases go cold, said Linton, who is Íipay and Cupeno.

Families will often feel stigmatized by law enforcement and are often faced with skepticism due to racist stereotypes. They feel law enforcement is uncaring or that their loved one’s disappearance is minimized.

Racism against Native people can prevent cases from being pursued or taken seriously, said Linton. Officers are not always understanding or trauma-informed about the tribal communities they serve.

As a result, some harbor stereotypical beliefs and prejudices. It’s an issue Greg O’Rourke, the Yurok tribal police chief, faced when he handled a sexual abuse case with his non-Native partner in the his local sheriff’s department.

“I remember very specifically my partner saying ‘do the people on the reservation have kids just so they can molest them?’” said O’Rourke during a hearing on Public Law 280 in March. “This person was a good man, a good cop. But that was the response. How can you provide accurate and humane services when that is the first thing that comes to mind?”

Barriers are also deeply rooted in California’s colonial origins and laws today.

What is Public Law 280?

Enacted in 1953, Public Law 280 requires tribal law enforcement to share criminal jurisdiction with state police agencies, causing overlap and confusion. It’s a law that impeded on Britton’s case being pursued, Hostler said.

“The piece of colonization is still here, embedded with all these laws, all these laws that have moved forward in the state of California,” said Assemblyman James Ramos, D-San Bernardino. “It’s now, recently, that we’re layering back those laws and trying to insert the California Indian voice into it.”

Because of Public Law 280, tribal law enforcement are unable to prosecute non-Native people on tribal land. Tribal police can only arrest and detain non-Natives for “delivery to state and federal authorities,” according to the Department of Justice.

In regards to Missing and Murdered Indigenous People cases, it’s often non-Native people perpetrating sexual violence against Native women. Between 86% to 96% of abuse against Native women comes from non-Native offenders, who are rarely punished, the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University found.

How California legislation could help

Tribal police know their communities best, yet they lack the authority of a state officer to investigate murders, said O’Rourke.

This is where Assembly Bill 2138 could provide a solution. This bill, authored by Ramos, would launch a pilot program to grant state peace officer status to tribal police in selected tribal communities from 2025 until 2028.

If passed, this program would go into effect under the Department of Justice. By no later than 2027, the DOJ would submit a report about case clearance rates, including those for Missing and Murdered Indigenous People cases.

As another way to combat Missing and Murdered Indigenous People cases, California passed the Feather Alert in 2022, an emergency notification system similar to the Amber Alert.

But the alert has run into obstacles.

In December, The Bee found that the California Highway Patrol only sent out one Feather Alert. CHP has a history of not issuing alerts tribes requested, either because it did not meet their criteria or for undisclosed reasons. Since then, about 60% of Feather Alert requests have been rejected, according to the Press Democrat.

New amendments have been implemented for the Feather Alert. Law enforcement agencies are now required to respond to requests within 48 hours. If an alert is denied, law enforcement must provide written notice to a government agency or tribe that explains why.

“We’re starting to address and make the alert system stronger,” said Ramos, who is Cahuilla and Serrano.

Tribal leaders have urged more funding toward investigations. In July, Gov. Gavin Newsom awarded almost $20 million in grants to 18 tribes to fund prevention efforts for Missing and Murdered Indigenous People cases.

Families, meanwhile, called for the convictions of the perpetrators who enact violence against their loved ones. Justice has not been swift for most families, but McGarva’s family did have their call answered. Jarrett Bleu Rucker, the man who killed McGarva, one of Martinez’s relatives, was sentenced to 26 years to life in prison earlier this year.

“The victory and justice for Yogi was not easily won,” said Morning Star Gali, the founder of Indigenous Justice, who assisted McGarva’s family in the criminal justice process. “It was a difficult four years in the making, with his family not knowing when they would be able to breathe a sigh of relief.”

The road to support starts with visibility, priority and mutual respect for California’s first people, Ramos said.

“It’s time that our voices be heard,” Ramos said. “It’s time that our voices and what’s affecting our people doesn’t go in silence.”

The Strong Hearts Native Helpline provides culturally-specific resources for Native Americans experiencing domestic and sexual violence through a helpline 1-844-7NATIVE (762-8483).

©2024 The Sacramento Bee. Visit at sacbee.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Fred Clasen-Kelly, Renuka Rayasam | KFF Health News (TNS)

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Blocks from where tourists stroll along the cobblestoned riverfront in this racially divided city, Detraya Gilliard made her way down the dark, ruptured sidewalks of Yamacraw Village, looking for her missing 15-year-old daughter.

Like most other people living in one of the nation’s oldest public housing projects, Gilliard endured the boarded-up buildings and mold-filled apartments because it was the only place she could afford.

Without working streetlights in parts of Yamacraw, Gilliard relied on the crescent moon’s glow to search for her daughter Desaray in May 2022. She passed yards dotted with clotheslines and power lines, and a broken-down playground littered with juice boxes and red Solo cups.

“I happened to look down, and I knew it was her by her feet, by the shoes she had on,” Gilliard said. She was “barely hanging on and she was covered in blood.”

The year before Desaray died, President Joe Biden called for the federal government to spend tens of billions of dollars to fix dilapidated public housing that he said posed “critical life-safety concerns.” The repairs, Biden said, would mostly help people of color, single mothers like Gilliard who work in low-income jobs, and people with disabilities.

The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates that $115 billion is needed to fund a backlog of public housing repairs. But, two years ago, money to fund those repairs became a casualty of negotiations between the Biden administration and congressional lawmakers over the Inflation Reduction Act. Republicans also have blocked efforts to lift 25-year-old legislation that effectively prohibits the construction of additional public housing, despite the catastrophic public health consequences.

Tenants living in derelict housing face conditions that contribute to higher rates of heart disease, diabetes, asthma, violence, and other life-threatening risks.

The federal government has a long history of discriminatory practices in public housing. In cities across the country after World War II, Black families were barred from many public housing complexes even as the government induced white people to leave them by offering single-family homes in the suburbs subsidized by the Federal Housing Administration. Starting with the Nixon administration, lawmakers slowed investing in new public housing as more Black families and other people of color became tenants.

Today “residents are facing really terrible choices, or terrible options about their future,” said Sarah Saadian, senior vice president of policy for the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “We got here from Congress really failing to live up to its responsibilities of ensuring that people have access to an affordable, stable home.”

In 2022, an art deco luxury apartment building opened down the street. But little has changed in Yamacraw, which is filled with Black families.

Current and former tenants say the Housing Authority of Savannah, the agency that oversees Yamacraw, has ignored the mold, rats, and roaches that infest the units and sicken residents, and the bullet holes in windows and gunshots that ring through the night. Now they fear the city is using the poor state of Yamacraw as justification to push residents out.

In April, an inspection of Yamacraw apartments conducted by HUD, which oversees taxpayer-supported public housing nationwide, found 29 “life-threatening” deficiencies that pose a high risk of death to residents, according to a preliminary report.

The inspection cited 28 deficiencies it called “severe,” meaning they present a high risk of permanent disability, serious injury, or illness. An additional 195 deficiencies were cited as “moderate” because they could cause temporary harm or prompt a visit to a doctor.

Research links structural racism and disinvestment to chronic gun violence, which has taken a heavy toll on Black neighborhoods and kids such as Desaray. A study of gun injuries in four large cities at the height of the covid-19 pandemic found that Black children were 100 times as likely as white youths to suffer a firearm assault.

Study co-author Jonathan Jay, an assistant professor of community health sciences at Boston University, said most of the country’s gun violence stems from disputes in neighborhoods that lack investment in housing and other public services

“This is about white privilege,” Jay said. “The result is driven by racist policymaking.”

Desaray Gilliard was a high school freshman when she was killed. She loved clothes, music, dancing, and the color pink, her mother said. She planned to go to Italy with her art class. She was excited about learning to drive and getting a job. Desaray had her sights set on attending Ohio State University.

They’d lived in Yamacraw for seven years. The teen’s shooting death remains unsolved.

Gilliard has struggled with thoughts of self-harm, she said. She maintains a memorial with pictures, stuffed animals, and flowers near the spot where she found Desaray’s body.

“I have to remember this is for her,” she said of her middle child’s death, “because nobody else is doing these things for her to keep her memory alive.”

A Broken Promise?

Federally funded public housing must be kept in “decent, safe and sanitary” condition, according to HUD. In 2013, the agency’s then secretary, Shaun Donovan, visited Savannah to announce a program that could give the local housing authority millions of dollars to rehab four public housing complexes, including Yamacraw, which has been among the lowest-rated public housing complexes in Georgia.

The Rental Assistance Demonstration program touted by Donovan did not provide new public money. Instead, it loosened rules to allow local officials to work with private lenders and developers to pay for repairs, transforming public housing complexes into mixed-income developments with Section 8 project-based rental assistance.

Last year, a consultants’ report found a host of problems in Yamacraw, including water leaks and faulty wiring. “The Remaining Useful Life of the Property is estimated to be 0 years,” the consultants wrote. The housing authority wants to demolish Yamacraw and replace it with homes that are “healthier, more energy efficient and accessible,” the report said.

Yamacraw never saw the windfall Donovan promised, current and former tenants said. Even with a housing assistance waitlist of more than 3,000 families in Savannah, records show most of the 315 apartments in Yamacraw sit empty, many with boarded-up doors and windows. Some other public housing developments in the area have been repaired or rebuilt, but except for new roofing added in 2019, Yamacraw has not had a significant renovation in years, according to the consultants’ report.

Rather than repair the units, local officials started a process to tear down the complex, threatening to displace residents who have nowhere else to go in a city where the average two-bedroom apartment rents for more than $1,600 monthly.

Congress has provided less money than was needed over the past 20 years to fix Yamacraw and other public housing complexes nationwide, leaving local agencies in a tough spot, said Earline Davis, executive director of the Housing Authority of Savannah.

The housing authority still plans to demolish Yamacraw and redevelop the property with new affordable housing, she said. Residents fear that they will be pushed out, and that because of its prime location, the redevelopment plans would prioritize apartments that attract people who can afford higher rents.

“Anytime you want to do something to make money — go destroy the historic Black community,” said Georgia Benton, who grew up in Yamacraw. “But ain’t nobody hollerin’ ‘Stop.’”

She and her son LaRay Benton have been fighting the housing authority’s redevelopment plans, which they say could also disrupt the two-century-old First Bryan Baptist Church. Rev. Andrew Bryan, a former enslaved person and ordained minister, founded the church in 1788. He later bought his freedom.

The Bentons and three City Council members went door to door observing the condition of residents’ units. They said plumbing issues caused sewage overflows and leaky faucets, mold tracked across the ceilings, and there were insect and rodent infestations.

Many families said they developed respiratory problems, such as bronchitis and asthma, after they moved in. “It is an unhealthy situation,” LaRay Benton said.

About seven years ago, after his previous Savannah landlord raised the rent, Paris Snead, his wife, and two children found themselves homeless. A nonprofit helped them get into Yamacraw, where rent was $750 a month.

It’s been years since they left. Snead said he still takes a daily allergy pill because he believes he was exposed to mold in his unit, which caused allergy-like symptoms.

“The walls sweat like working men,” Snead said of his former apartment. “The walls will, literally, from the top to the bottom, leak water.”

“When you’re homeless, and you want to be able to have a place for your kids, I mean, you’ll make a home wherever you can,” he said.

Snead said he showed Yamacraw’s management the leaking walls, but they didn’t act.

“The management team there did more to evict people and cause problems than they did to help families and ensure they had a place to stay,” Snead said.

HUD, which conducts periodic inspections at public housing complexes, declined an interview request. The agency referred questions to the Housing Authority of Savannah.

The housing authority’s redevelopment plans have been delayed by HUD’s lengthy approval process, said Savannah Mayor Van R. Johnson II, who appoints people to a five-member board of commissioners that helps oversee the city’s public housing.

He said he met with HUD acting Secretary Adrianne Todman and other HUD officials about housing issues in Savannah.

“People don’t deserve to live like that,” Johnson said.

If Yamacraw is demolished and rebuilt, he said, current tenants will have a chance to return because the homes will be affordable to people with low incomes.

Nobody else is doing these things for her to keep her memory alive.

‘The Worst Experience of My Life’

Yamacraw’s struggles are rooted in century-old policies that have made it difficult for many Black neighborhoods to thrive.

In the 1930s, the federal government’s Home Owners’ Loan Corp. made color-coded maps for Savannah and 238 other cities and labeled redlined areas — usually places where Black people, Jews, immigrants, and Catholics lived — as undesirable for investment.

“The houses are occupied by the lowest class negro tenants,” a government surveyor wrote.

Yamacraw was opened in 1941 as segregated public housing for Black people. Today a health clinic occupies the original administrative building, designed to look like a plantation house.

Despite its problems, Johnson said, some of the city’s most prominent doctors, lawyers, and ministers grew up in Yamacraw.

Former and current tenants said the apartments slowly descended into disrepair.

Each year more than 10,000 public housing apartments across the U.S. become uninhabitable.

Some lawmakers have used the poor state of public housing as justification to refuse lifting a moratorium passed during the Clinton administration that prohibits the construction of additional units, even as the nation’s rental prices — and evictions — soar.

The argument that public housing “doesn’t work” is disingenuous, said Saadian, with the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

“The federal government really failed to invest in public housing, to keep it in good condition, and to keep those communities thriving,” Saadian said, “and in many cases, actively contributed to those communities declining.”

Instead of repairing public housing and building more high-quality units, federal lawmakers promised to provide housing vouchers, commonly known as Section 8, which helps people with low incomes rent privately owned homes. But most people who qualify for vouchers never receive them. Those who do often struggle to find landlords who will accept them, rendering them sometimes worthless.

Three years ago, LaTonya Atterbury was living in hotels north of Atlanta when she was offered a unit in Yamacraw for $511 a month. In August 2021, she moved in with her niece, now 29, and her niece’s son, now 8, relieved to have more stable housing.

But within the first week, she said, a neighbor’s son broke her window and the housing authority charged her $60 to fix it. She said her bathroom is covered in mold and mildew. One day, months after she moved in, Atterbury noticed a hole in her second-story window and saw a bullet on the floor, and realized there had been a shooting overnight. No one was injured, she said, but the bullet hole was only recently fixed — about 2½ years after the incident.

“It’s been the worst experience of my life,” Atterbury said. “Sitting here will make you very depressed.”

Atterbury said she and other residents remain in Yamacraw at least in part because the housing authority has promised vouchers to move elsewhere. Three years later, she is still waiting.

Demolishing and rebuilding Yamacraw could take years.

Davis, the housing authority’s executive director, said her agency has repeatedly told tenants they would be relocated to other public housing complexes or given a Section 8 voucher during construction if they have no lease violations. But residents say they routinely receive lease violations for harmless acts such as broken blinds. LaRay Benton said one resident was cited and fined $75 for leaving a stroller on her front porch while she took her baby inside.

A Mother’s Search

Researchers said that the presence of abandoned buildings can contribute to violent crime by making people feel unsafe and creating a sense of disorder. Studies suggest that razing abandoned buildings and improving green space can reduce it.

“No gun policy is going to work if we don’t fix social infrastructure,” said Jonathan Metzl, director of the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University. “We need investments to make sure communities feel safe. This is not just a public health problem. This is a race problem. This is a democracy problem.”

In recent years, shooting victims or their relatives, including Desaray’s mother, have filed at least three lawsuits against the Housing Authority of Savannah. Those ongoing lawsuits allege the agency failed to take added security measures in its public housing complexes — some of which had fallen into disrepair — despite gun violence and other crimes.

“I don’t know how we can prevent shootings,” Davis said.

Davis declined to comment on the lawsuits. She would say only that her agency has installed cameras in Yamacraw, worked with police, and asked residents to report crime. The actions came after Desaray’s death.

Johnson, Savannah’s mayor, said police have investigated the Desaray Gilliard case, but there are people “who know what happened” and will not talk to officers.

Around 9 p.m. on a Friday night two years ago, Gilliard went looking for her daughter for the second time that night. Desaray missed an 8 p.m. curfew and wasn’t answering her phone.

Gilliard waited for about 30 minutes at a bench near a park in the middle of the complex, hoping Desaray would find her. Then she started to retrace her steps.

Gilliard called 911 after she saw her daughter’s body.

When the police arrived, they made their way through the darkened complex with flashlights, Gilliard said. An officer pulled up Desaray’s shirt and saw a bullet hole in her chest. Gilliard said she later learned from a funeral director that her daughter had been shot three times. She has yet to receive an autopsy report from the police.

Gilliard said “nothing has changed before, since, or after” her daughter’s death.

“It’s been very difficult,” she said. “Sometimes I wanted to give up. I even thought about committing suicide.”

About a month after Desaray died, Gilliard said someone tried to break into her apartment. A couple of weeks later, her request to move to a new complex was finally granted and Gilliard left Yamacraw.

(KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2024 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The CTA has begun testing technology that uses artificial intelligence to identify guns in its “L” stations.

The technology, from company ZeroEyes, automatically detects guns that have been brandished. Images are sent to a ZeroEyes operations center where they are reviewed by staffers who determine what the object is, then alert relevant authorities like police, CTA officials and Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications.

The goal, CTA officials said, is to alert police quickly to any situation arising at the transit agency’s stations. Often the alert can be made in under a minute, they said.

The test program comes as the CTA has grappled with concerns about personal safety, both real and perceived, in recent years, and as the use of different types of technology to address public safety concerns has grown. ZeroEyes technology has at times been used on other public transit systems, and the company touts the use of its program in schools, businesses and other places.

But a separate gunshot detection technology used in Chicago, ShotSpotter, became a political flashpoint earlier this year. Supporters have said the technology — which uses audio sensors to determine the location of potential outdoor gunfire, while ZeroEyes relies on images — helps police arrive quicker at crime scenes and helps critical aid reach gunshot victims more quickly. Opponents, including Mayor Brandon Johnson, labeled it a costly impetus for overpolicing, and the mayor has nodded to studies questioning its effectiveness as a tool to curb crime and catch criminals.

ACLU Illinois spokesman Ed Yohnka said technology like ZeroEyes demands transparency from the CTA, and could lay the groundwork for further intrusive technologies to be used. CTA cameras were marketed as a way to make the system safer, but now another technology needs to be added, he said.

“There are solutions to security issues. I’m not sure that an opaque system being marketed by a company to make money, and not done with sort of citizen input as to how it should work and where people want it to work, I’m not sure any of that is the answer,” he said.

On the CTA, information about the prevalence of specifically gun-related crimes, such as the type that could be detected by ZeroEyes, was not immediately available. The CTA referred questions about crime statistics to Chicago police, and the Police Department said Wednesday it could not immediately provide gun-specific statistics.

The department did say 626 instances of violent crime had been reported on the CTA this year through Aug. 27, up from 547 through the same time period last year.

“One gun on the system is too many, which is why we’re interested in exploring ways to increase our safety on top of the measures that are already in place,” CTA spokeswoman Maddie Kilgannon said.

The technology will join the CTA’s use of unarmed security, K-9 teams and Chicago police to patrol the system. The agency has boosted its security spending in recent years as it has added guards and dog teams, budgeting nearly $65.2 million to purchase security services in 2024. Security service spending was running overbudget through June.

The $200,000 ZeroEyes test run, which has been in place for about a month, will run through summer 2025 to start, CTA Vice President of Security Kevin Ryan said. The program uses the CTA’s existing cameras to detect guns once they have been exposed, and is now installed on more than 250 of the agency’s roughly 30,000 cameras, he said.

ZeroEyes is now being used in CTA train stations across the system, though Ryan declined to specify which stations or train lines have the technology, citing security concerns. He anticipates the program will expand if the test run goes well, which will be determined based on whether the technology works as expected, if law enforcement can respond to any gun reports quickly enough to intervene, or if it works as a deterrent to would-be gun carriers.

So far, the program has detected guns carried openly by law enforcement officers and toy guns, including large electronic water guns, he said. ZeroEyes alerted Chicago and CTA officials to the toy guns, noting they were not believed to be lethal weapons, and then it was up to local officials to determine how to respond, Ryan said.

“One of the reasons I really like ZeroEyes is it has a human component to it,” he said. “It’s not relying on AI or computers to completely do the work.”

Ryan, who once worked for the Chicago Police Department, said officers responding to a call of a person with a gun almost always want more information about what they’re heading to. A picture of the person helps them know what to expect, and helps managers know how best to direct their resources, he said.

“Stuff like that, weapons, it doesn’t happen everyday,” Ryan said. “But when it happens, it has big repercussions to public transit for obvious reasons, so I want a way to mitigate that to the quickest extent possible.”

The technology has been used by other transit agencies, including Philadelphia’s Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, which operates a metro, along with buses and regional rail.

But the agency ended a yearlong pilot program with ZeroEyes. The technology wasn’t compatible with SEPTA’s analog cameras, and the agency decided to reallocate funding toward other needs, according to reporting from the Philadelphia Inquirer and the local ABC TV station.

Kilgannon said CTA did not anticipate the same issues. The Chicago agency uses a different camera system that so far has been high-enough quality to be effective, she said.

Jon Healey | Los Angeles Times (TNS)

When news broke that AI-generated nude pictures of students were popping up at a Beverly Hills Middle School in February, many district officials and parents were horrified.

But others said no one should have been blindsided by the spread of AI-powered “undressing” programs. “The only thing shocking about this story,” one Carlsbad parent said his 14-year-old told him, “is that people are shocked.”

Now, a newly released report by Thorn, a tech company that works to stop the spread of child sexual abuse material, shows how common deepfake abuse has become. The proliferation coincides with the wide availability of cheap “undressing” apps and other easy-to-use, AI-powered programs to create deepfake nudes.

But the report also shows that other forms of abuse involving digital imagery remain bigger problems for school-age kids.

To measure the experiences and attitudes of middle- and high-school students with sexual material online, Thorn surveyed 1,040 9- to 17-year-olds across the country from Nov. 3 to Dec. 1, 2023. Well more than half of the group were Black, Latino, Asian or Native American students; Thorn said the resulting data were weighted to make the sample representative of U.S. school-age children.

According to Thorn, 11% of the students surveyed said they knew of friends or classmates who had used artificial intelligence to generate nudes of other students; an additional 10% declined to say. Some 80% said they did not know anyone who’d done that.

In other words, at least 1 in 9 students, and as many as 1 in 5, knew of classmates who used AI to create deepfake nudes of people without their consent.

Stefan Turkheimer, vice president of public policy for the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, the country’s largest anti-sexual-violence organization, said that Thorn’s results are consistent with the anecdotal evidence from RAINN’s online hotline. A lot more children have been reaching out to the hotline about being victims of deepfake nudes, as well as the nonconsensual sharing of real images, he said.

Compared with a year ago or even six months ago, he said, “the numbers are certainly up, and up significantly.”

Technology is amplifying both kinds of abuse, Turkheimer said. Not only is picture quality improving, he said, but “video distribution has really expanded.”

The Thorn survey found that almost 1 in 4 youths ages 13 to 17 said they’d been sent or shown an actual nude photo or video of a classmate or peer without that person’s knowledge. But that number, at least, is lower than it was in 2022 and 2019, when 29% of the surveyed students in that age group said they’d seen nonconsensually shared nudes.

Not surprisingly, only 7% of the students surveyed admitted that they had personally shared a nude photo or video without that person’s knowledge.

The study found that sharing of real nudes is widespread among students, with 31% of the 13- to 17-year-olds agreeing with the statement that “It’s normal for people my age to share nudes with each other.” That’s about the same level overall as in 2022, the report says, although it’s notably lower than in 2019, when nearly 40% agreed with that statement.

Only 17% of that age group admitted to sharing nude selfies themselves. An additional 15% of 9- to 17-year-olds said they had considered sharing a nude photo but decided not to.

Turkheimer wondered whether some of the perceived decline in sexual interactions online stemmed from the shutdown last year of Omegle, a site where people could have video chats with random strangers. Although Omegle’s rules banned nudity and the sharing of explicit content, more than a third of the students who reported using Omegle said they’d experienced some form of sexual interaction there.

He also noted that the study didn’t explore how frequently students experienced the interactions that the survey tracked, such as sharing nudes with an adult.

According to Thorn, 6% of the students surveyed said they’d been victims of sextortion — someone had threatened to reveal a sexual image of them unless they agreed to pay money, send more sexual pictures or take some other action. And when asked whom to blame when a nude selfie goes public, 28% said it was solely the victim’s fault, compared with 51% blaming the person who leaked it.

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Michael Hirtzer, Gerson Freitas Jr. | Bloomberg News (TNS)

Between hail, strong winds, floods and plant disease, U.S. corn crops were put through some tough times this summer. But somehow, the fields of green blanketing America’s heartland have proved to be ever resilient.

Those are the findings heading into the final day of a Midwest tour that sends scouts traversing through the Crop Belt to measure yield potential. The scouts saw evidence of corn stalks with the tell-tale vibrant dark green leaves that typically signal plants will produce plump, starchy kernels of grain in the final stretches of the growing season. Soybean fields were also lush and healthy.

“There’s big yields out there, both corn and beans,” said Brian Grete, leader of the eastern leg of the Pro Farmer Crop Tour, which completes its four-day survey on Thursday.

Three days of data so far show that corn yields are looking better than the historical three-year averages in South Dakota, Ohio, Illinois and parts of Iowa. Soybean yields also look strong in many key growing areas. Final figures will be released late Thursday.

The findings buttress an outlook from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is projecting record-large U.S. corn and soybean yields this year. The croup tour provides the first “boots on the ground” look at fields, according to Chris Hawthorn, head of field crops section at USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, and a scout on the tour. The agency did away with its own objective yield analysis — the physical counting of crops in the field — for the month of August back in 2019.

“Wearing my crop-tour hat, it looks amazing out there,” Hawthorn said. “Beans look really good and are reflective of what our numbers say.”

Ironically, many American farmers aren’t celebrating the bumper crops. Mega-harvests are creating a host of challenges, as the ample inventories pushed soybean and corn futures to the lowest since 2020 last week. Wheat futures also hit a four-year low late last month, with production set to be 9% higher than the prior year.

Farmers’ incomes are heading for a 26% slide this year, the biggest drop since 2006, forcing them to cut back on everything from fertilizer to equipment.

Weather is playing a significant role in the state-by-state outlook. Corn crops in parts of Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota were damaged by hail, strong winds and floods. Storms also swept in pathogens that cause a corn disease called tar spot – evident by small, black spots on leaves. But ample rains throughout the growing season and mild summer temperatures benefited many fields in places like Indiana.

“One field looks like it’s ready to burn up and the next one is as green as a gourd,” said crop scout Mike Berdo, a farmer from Iowa.

Still, the issues are isolated, and plant health overall is strong.

David Benes, who helps manage 8,000 acres of farmland in Nebraska, said he expects his corn harvest to average as much as 240 bushels per acre, which is below his own record but above the average for past years. With the exception of a two-week dry spell in July, it was “almost an ideal year” with “adequate to good precipitation levels,” Benes said.

And “you can still add weight to those kernels,” he said, leaving further room for yields to improve before the harvest.

The crop tour is putting a spotlight on the problems farmers must face as grain prices stay depressed.

“You have to stop spending your money foolishly,” said Steve Zavadil, a Nebraska farmer who planted 300 acres with corn and 250 acres with soybeans this season. “You can’t be going out and buying any new equipment all the time. We’ve just got to adjust.”

While farm-machinery makers can lay off workers or sell businesses in lean times, grain growers’ best option usually is to maximize yields so they have more to sell even if prices are low. U.S. farmers cut back on corn plantings this spring by 3% and boosted soybean sowings by the same amount. Timely rains and sunshine, with a relative lack of damaging heat during the peak growing season, were nearly ideal for crops.

“I suppose that’s just the way it is,” Zavadil said while observing scouts taking samples of his soybean and corn crops. “You know, big crop coming down the road, and everybody knows it — probably the best we’ve seen here.”

(With assistance from Ilena Peng.)

©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

CHICAGO — For University of Illinois Chicago visiting senior research specialist T. Chedgzsey Smith-McKeever, creating a path to higher education became a road to debt.

Her San Diego beginnings led to stints at the University of California at Irvine and the University of Southern California, and ended with a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. But Smith-McKeever, who had been diagnosed with diabetes at age 13, had to juggle school debt with paying out of pocket for her preexisting condition.

In between her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, she defaulted on her student loans.

“I got out of undergrad owing around $15,000,” she said. Then Smith-McKeever became pregnant. “That was my great motivator. What killed me was getting my master’s degree because I’m paying for me to survive, for my daughter to survive. The tuition was outrageous. I went from owing $15,000 to $120,000.”

She remembers being in and out of homelessness even with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. “I knew I had to get more education,” she said, “otherwise there is no way I’m going to be able to take care of this child.”

Smith-McKeever got lucky when a friend offered her late mother’s home as a place for her to stay. Without having to pay rent, she saved enough money to get out of default to continue her education. Once she got her master’s degree, a job at the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services adoption division allowed Smith-McKeever to be able to afford rent for a studio apartment and child care.

Although she was able to manage things, her student loan payments were $1,200 a month. It was a number that she didn’t even share with her spouse.

“It was killing me,” said the social work educator and researcher, who moved to Chicago in 2002.

She managed to get that number down to $560 per month by negotiating with her lender and demonstrating with her income tax returns that much of her income was consumed by medical expenses.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m paying $560 if I owe over $200,000,” the Evergreen Park resident said. “You’re not paying as much, but you’re seeing that interest accumulate. It’s terrifying because it’s just getting bigger and bigger.”

So she Googled “help with managing my student loan debt” and was pointed to the Chicago law firm of Rae Kaplan. Smith-McKeever had spent nearly 20 years working at public universities and struggling to get her loans forgiven. But after working with Kaplan for a few years, Smith-McKeever finally received a letter in the mail saying, “your debt of $274,000 is forgiven.”

“I have an autoimmune disease; I don’t have a strong immune system,” Smith-McKeever said. “Between the end of COVID and now, like a year ago, I lost my right leg. I’ve had setback after setback. However, I believe the weight that retiring that student loan debt took off me, the psychological emotional stress that it removed from me really helped me be able to get through this challenge of losing my leg.”

Kaplan Law Firm was solely working on bankruptcies until 2014, when Kaplan decided to focus on helping people with student loan debt.

“We still practice bankruptcy law, but our student loan practice has eclipsed what the bankruptcy practice ever was. There are so many more people who need answers on their student loans and don’t need a bankruptcy,” Kaplan said. “If you forgive $40,000 or $50,000, for a middle-class family, that’s life-changing.”

The Kaplan Law Firm helps individuals and families understand the educational loan process before and after they sign the loan papers. Kaplan and her team help determine the best course of action for limiting and eliminating student loan debt. In most cases, Kaplan said, the federal loan monies taken out will be eligible for a type of income-driven repayment plan provided by the United States Department of Education.

Kaplan analyzes each client’s loans, federal and private, and if they are private, Kaplan goes over best strategies to reduce payments and get maximum loan forgiveness.

“For private loans, we’re looking at whether or not the best options are refinancing because in many cases, the borrower will have taken out a high interest loan that really just needs to be refinanced and that will do a lot to lower their payments and reduce the amount that they pay back overall on that loan,” Kaplan said. “If those private loans are already in default, then we can negotiate a reduced balance settlement. Very often you can get the creditor to agree to a 50% settlement. That’s a big money saver.”

Whether it’s a parent curious about taking out Parent Plus Loans for their child, a high school student who has plans for their major and career, or a person who has been paying their student loan for 10 to 25 years, Kaplan said she can be of assistance.

She said the student loan process is confusing. Kaplan spoke of an attorney who owed six figures in student loans but got confused by the information and misinformation about student loan debt. So she came to Kaplan, who got her enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan, an initiative of President Joe Biden’s administration that went into effect this year. It is an income-driven repayment plan that calculates a monthly payment based on income and family size. The attorney is now paying $180 per month under the repayment plan and Kaplan said the woman is going to wind up paying back about $25,000 of her loans and then the remaining balance will be forgiven.

“If you know what you’re doing when it comes to your student loans, you can save so much money, but the key is you have to know the system and understand how it was set up and how it works and how that applies to you and to your loans because it’s a very fact-specific situation,” Kaplan said. “There is a lot of information out there, but it’s still confusing because there are different types of loans and the law applies to them differently depending on your circumstances. Some people are going to have to pay back their loans in full. Those are usually high-income earners … but you might still be able to get some forgiveness of the interest that accrues. The interest is a killer, because it starts accruing as soon as the loans are disbursed to your school. Most people don’t know that and they’re shocked when they come out of school … and then they see the balance has doubled and tripled.”

Kaplan said having a servicer provide incorrect information can add to the frustration. She has been on the phone with servicers for hours on behalf of her clients and then the call drops; she’s also had servicers incorrectly calculate monthly payments.

“The servicers are not there to help you,” she said. “They’re just there to keep track of your payments and keep your loans out of default. So they very often will tell people, OK, you’re having trouble making payments, let’s put the loans into forbearance when that’s very often the wrong thing to do because interest is then accruing and capitalizing, so it’s increasing the balance. And during that time, maybe that person was eligible for a $10 monthly payment plan that would get them further on track for forgiveness.”

Despite a recent federal stay on the SAVE plan, Kaplan is a big proponent of the plan because most people will have their payments reduced by 50% just by enrolling, she said. The plan also has a 100% interest subsidy, which means any interest that accrues gets waived by the Department of Education. Before July, over 5,500 Illinoisans were identified for loan forgiveness with the SAVE plan, amounting to $43.8 million.

Even though there is litigation challenging whether the Biden administration had authority to create the plan under the Higher Education Act, Kaplan said she thinks SAVE will survive. But in the interim, there are other income-driven plans that are “very reasonable and based on a percentage of the borrower’s income … usually 10% to 20%,” Kaplan said.

Kaplan counsels borrowers before they take out loans so they don’t upend their financial futures. “For student loans, it requires careful planning and knowledge so that you pay what you’re supposed to pay, but again, not more than you’re supposed to pay. And there is tremendous relief available; you just have to know how to access it,” Kaplan said.

After a 45-year career in the shoe industry, Homewood resident Marc Atkins endured a deep vein thrombosis in his left leg in 2020. When the world was reopening after lockdown and the possibility of going back to his job at Nordstrom in women’s shoes was an option, he opted to take early retirement. But student loans in the amount of $232,195 loomed for the DeVry graduate. He, too, Googled student loan attorneys and found Rae Kaplan.

“That was the only thing on my credit report … two loans that came to about $165,000 or something like that collectively, but the interest is what shot it up,” said Atkins, 66. “Interest alone was soaking up any payments I was able to make. I knew there was no way I was gonna be able to take on (student loan payments) dealing with my monthly living expense. … I’m retired and on a fixed income; it was not feasible that I could deal with that included.”

Within months of touching base with Kaplan, Atkins had all of his student loans forgiven. “My stress level is pretty much zero. … I’m at peace … living life, being comfortable,” the 66-year-old said.

Since then, Atkins has referred former co-workers and residents in his building to Kaplan, whose fees start at $350 for a consultation. After that, the range depends on how much work is involved in the case, which can start at $1,500 and go up to $3,500. But Kaplan says she does many pro bono cases when a client isn’t in a position to pay.

Education used to be the great equalizer, said Smith-McKeever, whose daughter signed up for the SAVE Plan. “But the cost of education has gone so far out that it seems a trap,” Smith-McKeever said. “It’s crazy how expensive it’s gotten, but there’s an out, there’s a secret: It’s Public Service Loan Forgiveness and income-driven repayment plans.”

The educator has since told many students about Kaplan’s expertise. Her rationale: A cost of hundreds now is better than thousands of dollars down the road. Kaplan is trying to line up free seminars at area schools and institutions so more people are privy to the details of debt relief.

“Every Black, brown and Indigenous person needs to know not to let the cost of college be a barrier, because there’s a way out of the debt,” Smith-McKeever said. “Our lives are overwhelming. Having somebody to send you the paperwork, so you don’t get caught up, and you get out of (debt) and live your life in the process … that’s the drum that I’ve been beating.”

It’s also a drum that a number of other services have been beating for years. The Illinois Student Assistance Commission, the state’s college access and financial aid agency, offers free help with college planning and financial aid.

The Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Northern Illinois, a nonprofit credit counseling agency, has been helping with debt management for over 40 years. And the nonprofit Institute of Student Loan Advisors was started in 2018 by Betsy Mayotte, a former compliance officer at a nonprofit student loan organization, because she wanted an avenue for people who needed help with their student loans.

“I’ve researched the Higher Education Act and the history of student loans back to the ‘70s, and I can say unequivocally that I’ve never seen a period of time in student loans like this, sort of chaotic,” said Mayotte, who is based in Massachusetts. “It’s become really difficult to try to advise someone what to do because this is uncharted territory.”

Donna Rasmussen, executive director at Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Northern Illinois, said that when people think they’re getting in trouble with their student loans, they should contact their loan servicer to work out feasible options for repayment. She also recommends families seek out a counselor’s help at a nonprofit credit counseling agency when their child is in high school to start planning their higher education goals and how much in loans one needs.

“What we try and put in their head is that whatever you think you might be making your first year at your career out of college — that entire year of your income — that’s about the amount of student loan debt that we recommend people take,” Rasmussen said. “Don’t take more.”

She added that although occasionally there’s assistance for loan repayment or forgiveness, it’s not always an option. So if you’re taking on debt, you want to make sure that you have the capacity to pay it back. That’s why her firm helps people with budgeting plans to make sure they can do that.

Ana Moya, an ISAC professional development specialist, recommends not taking out the maximum amount of loans, even if they’re offered to you. Take only what you need, she said. And figure out how much you need by filling out the FAFSA, the application for federal, state and institutional aid, or if you are an eligible undocumented student, the Alternative Application for Illinois Financial Aid. The FAFSA is not just for loans, but also scholarships and grants. And check student loan forgiveness programs for certain professions prior to enrolling in higher education as it could affect your college planning.

“On our website, we have a ton of information,” Moya said. “If you go to any of our webinars, and you’re like ‘Would I qualify for this program?’ we can ask you a set of questions to see if you’re on the right track and what questions you should be asking the servicer, since we don’t have direct access to your loans.”

Smith-McKeever said she had planned to go into the Navy and have that pay for her education, but the diabetes diagnosis derailed that plan. While paying her student loans, her living expenses and health care expenses, she hasn’t been able to accumulate wealth, but she’s looking forward to breathing a bit easier without the suffocating debt.

Kaplan said that although the Biden administration has done a lot to make the student loan process easier, there’s still a long way to go in terms of educating borrowers. “I have a lot of clients who are doctors, lawyers, financial planners, and none of them have any idea how to approach student loans,” Kaplan said. “I like being able to help people and take that stressor off their shoulders.”

With a fickle stock market and broader economic uncertainty around the globe, Howard and Heather Short were looking for a safe harbor for their savings and financial stability.

The San Diego couple settled on gold.

After months of hearing advertisements promoting the Oxford Gold Group on a local talk radio station, the Shorts began transferring chunks of their retirement portfolio to the Beverly Hills company.

“I thought, it’s silver and gold. It’s tangible. It’s not going to lose value,” Heather Short said in a telephone interview. “We did one lump sum from each of our retirement accounts.”

Oxford Gold told clients their assets would be deposited with Equity Trust Co., an Ohio firm specializing in so-called self-directed investment accounts focused on precious metals, cryptocurrency and other alternative assets.

But earlier this year, the Shorts and hundreds of other investors received a letter from Equity Trust indicating that the money they directed to Oxford Gold had not been properly recorded.

“What this means is that our records reflect that i) the metals you purchased from Oxford Gold were not yet fulfilled and delivered to your designated depository, and/or ii) that your Equity Trust account(s) has not received the cash proceeds from the precious metals that you sold to Oxford Gold,” the unsolicited correspondence said.

The letter from Equity Trust advised the Shorts to review their statements and to contact Oxford Gold for further information. Equity Trust was no longer doing business with the gold purveyor, it said.

“Thank you for being a valued client,” the letter concluded.

Now the Shorts are among hundreds of people who have lost millions of dollars of retirement savings to Oxford Gold, which according to news reports out of Los Angeles has shut its doors and closed without a trace.

They also are the lead plaintiffs in a proposed class-action lawsuit filed late last week in San Diego federal court alleging fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, violation of federal securities laws and unfair competition.

The plaintiffs, who live in at least 27 different states, say Equity Trust failed to make sure that investments were being properly credited to their retirement accounts, the lawsuit says.

“Business records generated at defendant Equity Trust Co. in connection with the transfer of the millions of dollars from investor accounts showed substantial and material amount of precious metals transactions with OGG were not being settled,” the complaint alleges.

That means “the investor funds were going unaccounted for by Equity Trust Co. in violation of defendant Equity Trust Co.’s fiduciary duty to investors,” it added.

Equity Trust, a Westlake, Ohio-based investment house that claims more than $45 billion in total assets under management, said in a statement that the company does not comment on pending litigation.

The lawsuit also names a host of principals at Oxford Gold Group, including chief executive Pedram Granfar, chief financial officer Johnathan Adler and Patrick Granfar, another executive and co-founder.

None of the Oxford Gold Group executives could be reached for comment.

According to state records, the California Franchise Tax Board suspended the company April 2 — about seven weeks after Equity Trust alerted account holders that their deposits had not been recorded.

In early May, the company filed documents with the secretary of state indicating that it moved from a Wilshire Boulevard office in Beverly Hills to a midtown Sacramento address.

Over the past several weeks, news reports in Los Angeles said Oxford Gold was no longer responding to questions from clients. The company website is not operational, and its telephone number does not work.

Short said she reported her experience to state financial regulators and to federal investigators.

She said both the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation and the U.S. Commodity Future Trading Commission have opened investigations, and she spoke to a federal investigator as recently as last month.

Neither agency responded to requests for comment on the Oxford Gold complaints.

The lawsuit, filed last Friday in the Southern District by the San Diego law firm Aguirre & Severson, alleges that plaintiffs were duped by Oxford Gold Group advertisements largely broadcast on radio, television and social media platforms.

“In defendants’ nationwide advertising campaign delivered through television, radio, YouTube, social media and written brochures represented that plaintiffs’ funds would be obtained and held in safety in trust,” the complaint says.

The allegation is backed up by a slew of negative reviews that have turned up online in recent months.

“Even Jesse Kelly the radio guy told us all how great Oxford Gold is!” a client identified as Scott D. from San Francisco posted on Yelp last month. “I emailed Jesse Kelly and let him know the OGG is a scam but no reply from him.

“As far as I know, he still sings their praises on the radio paid for by our stolen money,” he said.

The San Diego case was submitted three days after a similar suit was filed in Sacramento federal court. A judge will likely have to determine which court will eventually preside over the dispute, and which lawyers will represent a class of plaintiffs.

The defendants have not yet responded to the allegations, according to federal court records.

Amanda Hernández | Stateline.org (TNS)

Lawmakers across the country have considered legislation this year that would allow courts or parole boards to reevaluate a person’s long prison sentence and decide whether they can be safely released into society.

The bills, known as “second look” legislation, often focus on older populations, people sentenced as minors, or those whose crimes might have had a mitigating factor such as self-defense against domestic violence.

As America’s prison population both ages and increases, the “second look” movement has gained interest as a way to reduce overcrowding and potentially save money. Both Republicans and Democrats have sponsored the bills, but some advocates and prosecutors say the laws could retraumatize crime victims and further burden a strained court system.

Still, at least one second look bill, in Oklahoma, was signed into law this year. The new law, which is set to go into effect soon, requires judges to consider whether domestic violence was a mitigating factor in a crime. If so, a defendant would be eligible for a lighter sentence compared with the usual mandatory ranges.

“We showed that you can pass significant criminal justice reform inside a conservative state,” Republican state Rep. Jon Echols, one of the bill’s sponsors, said in an interview with Stateline. “I think we did a lot of good with the legislation we did, and I’m hoping more states follow.”

The Oklahoma law has a retroactive clause for current inmates. People who are now serving time can file a resentencing request once the law goes into effect.

Some sentencing experts and criminal justice advocates think second look legislation could draw bipartisan support because the measures aim to address prison overcrowding and overspending by releasing people who are least likely to reoffend.

“It can be a way to address excess spending,” said Liz Komar, sentencing reform counsel with The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit criminal justice research and advocacy group. “We can reinvest scarce public safety dollars from being uselessly employed to keep people who are zero risk in prison to instead prevent crime in the community.”

At least 12 states already have second look measures in place, according to the group’s legislative tracker. The existing second look laws vary, with some allowing courts to reconsider sentences based on conditions such as an offender’s age at the time of the offense and amount of time served, and others allowing prosecutors to request the court reconsider a sentence.

Some prison sentences currently include parole, which allows early release after serving part of a sentence. Those eligible for parole typically must be interviewed by a parole board and, if approved, meet certain conditions while serving the remainder of their time in the community.

But at least 17 states have abolished discretionary parole for all or most offenses, according to Campaign Zero, a nonprofit social justice organization. This means people convicted of an offense in those states will not receive a parole-eligible sentence. Some of those states, however, have enacted second look measures that could allow people to be released.

Momentum and pushback

Avenues for early release, such as clemency or compassionate release, have been around for hundreds of years. But interest in second look legislation has grown over the past five years, according to Maria Goellner, the director of state policy at Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a nonpartisan criminal justice advocacy organization known as FAMM.

Debate over second look policies has been intense. Some prosecutors, victim rights groups and family members of crime victims have voiced concerns that victims and their families could be retraumatized by the resentencing process.

Some fear that these policies could be abused. Others worry about overburdened prosecutors having to handle an influx of resentencing cases.

In Virginia, a Senate bill proposed a new resentencing mechanism that would allow inmates convicted of crimes such as arson, rape and some types of murder, to petition for reduced sentences. Those convicted of aggravated murder would not be eligible.

Crime victims and prosecutors would have to support an inmate’s petition before a hearing could be granted, and a judge would make the final decision.

In emotional hearings earlier this year, some crime victims pleaded for Virginia lawmakers to reject the bill.

“To allow criminals to have an ability to petition to come back out, and to put victims back in the same courtroom that we were in 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago — I’m not a proponent. You just don’t understand,” Michael Grey, whose son, Joshua, was murdered, said during a hearing in early February.

Joshua Grey was killed in 2018 while trying to sell an iPhone.

“The impact — it’s with us every day. That was over five years ago,” Michael Grey said. “Why have a justice system if we’re going to circumvent these decisions, and try to come back and let these people get out of jail?”

The bill passed the Virginia Senate on a 21-19 party-line vote and was approved to carry over to next year in the House.

Supporting crime victims and families

Another family member, Nancy Leichter, supports second look laws, though she didn’t always feel that way. Her father, Leonard, was the victim of a carjacking in 1980 in Pennsylvania. The perpetrators dropped Leonard off at a phone booth upon discovering he had a heart condition, allowing him to call for help, but he died of a heart attack about three hours later.

“My mother lost the love of her life,” Leichter recalled. “She was never the same, so it was like we lost two parents, and we were just sort of trying to put the pieces of our lives together. We were just happy that they were away — that they were in prison.”

More than 35 years later, one of the perpetrators was set to be released; the two other men involved, Pennsylvania brothers Reid and Wyatt Evans, remained in prison to serve the rest of their sentences of life in prison without parole. When Leichter reflected on the compassion they’d shown her father by dropping him off and thought about them dying in prison for a crime they’d committed in their teens, she stepped in to help. The brothers were released in 2021.

“I can be both heartbroken at this profound and enormous loss, but I can also be heartbroken by the unfairness of the harsh sentences that [the Evans brothers] received,” said Leichter, who testified in support of a bill last year that would have changed how Pennsylvania handled pardons.

Some state legislators have incorporated language into their bills to address concerns about supporting crime victims.

A House bill in Washington state, for example, would have created a victim fund to support survivors, in addition to allowing judges to review and shorten long prison sentences, including life sentences. The bill passed the House but did not receive a Senate committee hearing.

“It’s really just an opportunity to be heard — for a judge to look at all of the facts of the case and consider whether that person should be resentenced in the interest of justice,” Democratic state Rep. Tarra Simmons, the bill’s sponsor and the first formerly incarcerated lawmaker in the state, said in an interview. “My goal in life is to bring healing and justice to all communities.”

(Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a national nonprofit news organization focused on state policy.)

©2024 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Jess Mador, WABE | KFF Health News (TNS)

When Bristeria Clark went into labor with her son in 2015, her contractions were steady at first. Then, they stalled. Her cervix stopped dilating. After a few hours, doctors at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, Georgia, prepped Clark for an emergency cesarean section.

It wasn’t the vaginal birth Clark had hoped for during her pregnancy.

“I was freaking out. That was my first child. Like, of course you don’t plan that,” she said. “I just remember the gas pulling up to my face and I ended up going to sleep.”

She remembered feeling a rush of relief when she woke to see that her baby boy was healthy.

Clark, a 33-year-old nursing student who also works full-time in county government, had another C-section when her second child was born in 2020. This time, the cesarean was planned.

Clark said she’s grateful the physicians and nurses who delivered both her babies were kind and caring during her labor and delivery. But looking back, she said, she wishes she had had a doula for one-on-one support through pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period. Now she wants to give other women the option she didn’t have.

Clark is a member of Morehouse School of Medicine’s first class of rural doulas, called Perinatal Patient Navigators.

The program recently graduated a dozen participants, all Black women from southwestern Georgia. They have completed more than five months of training and are scheduled to begin working with pregnant and postpartum patients this year.

“We’re developing a workforce that’s going to be providing the support that Black women and birthing people need,” Natalie Hernandez-Green, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Morehouse School of Medicine, said at the doula commencement ceremony in Albany, Georgia.

Albany is Morehouse School of Medicine’s second Perinatal Patient Navigator program site. The first has been up and running in Atlanta since training began in the fall of 2022.

Georgia has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the country, according to an analysis by KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News. And Black Georgians are more than twice as likely as white Georgians to die of causes related to pregnancy.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re rich or poor. Black women are dying at [an] alarming rate from pregnancy-related complications,” said Hernandez-Green, who is also executive director of the Center for Maternal Health Equity at Morehouse School of Medicine. “And we’re about to change that one person at a time.”

The presence of a doula, along with regular nursing care, is associated with improved labor and delivery outcomes, reduced stress, and higher rates of patient satisfaction, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Multiple studies also link doulas to fewer expensive childbirth interventions, including cesarean births.

Doulas are not medical professionals. They are trained to offer education about the pregnancy and postpartum periods, to guide patients through the health care system, and to provide emotional and physical support before, during, and after childbirth.

Morehouse School of Medicine’s program is among a growing number of similar efforts being introduced across the country as more communities look to doulas to help address maternal mortality and poor maternal health outcomes, particularly for Black women and other women of color.

Now that she has graduated, Clark said she’s looking forward to helping other women in her community as a doula. “To be that person that would be there for my clients, treat them like a sister or like a mother, in a sense of just treating them with utmost respect,” she said. “The ultimate goal is to make them feel comfortable and let them know ‘I’m here to support you.’” Her training has inspired her to become an advocate for maternal health issues in southwestern Georgia.

Grants fund Morehouse School of Medicine’s doula program, which costs $350,000 a year to operate. Graduates are given a $2,000 training stipend and the program places five graduates with health care providers in southwestern Georgia. Grant money also pays the doulas’ salaries for one year.

“It’s not sustainable if you’re chasing the next grant to fund it,” said Rachel Hardeman, a professor of health and racial equity at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.

Thirteen states cover doulas through Medicaid, according to the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families.

Hardeman and others have found that when Medicaid programs cover doula care, states save millions of dollars in health care costs. “We were able to calculate the return on investment if Medicaid decided to reimburse doulas for pregnant people who are Medicaid beneficiaries,” she said.

That’s because doulas can help reduce the number of expensive medical interventions during and after birth, and improving delivery outcomes, including reduced cesarean sections.

Doulas can even reduce the likelihood of preterm birth.

“An infant that is born at a very, very early gestational age is going to require a great deal of resources and interventions to ensure that they survive and then continue to thrive,” Hardeman said.

There is growing demand for doula services in Georgia, said Fowzio Jama, director of research for Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition of Georgia. Her group recently completed a pilot study that offered doula services to about 170 Georgians covered under Medicaid. “We had a waitlist of over 200 clients and we wanted to give them the support that they needed, but we just couldn’t with the given resources that we had,” Jama said.

Doula services can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars out-of-pocket, making it too expensive for many low-income people, rural communities, and communities of color, many of which suffer from shortages in maternity care, according to the March of Dimes.

The Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies study found that matching high-risk patients with doulas — particularly doulas from similar racial and ethnic backgrounds — had a positive effect on patients.

“There was a reduced use of pitocin to induce labor. We saw fewer requests for pain medication. And with our infants, only 6% were low birth weight,” Jama said.

Still, she and others acknowledge that doulas alone can’t fix the problem of high maternal mortality and morbidity rates.

States, including Georgia, need to do more to bring comprehensive maternity care to communities that need more options, Hardeman said.

“I think it’s important to understand that doulas are not going to save us, and we should not put that expectation on them. Doulas are a tool,” she said. “They are a piece of the puzzle that is helping to impact a really, really complex issue.”

In the meantime, Joan Anderson, 55, said she’s excited to get to work supporting patients, especially from rural areas around Albany.

“I feel like I’m equipped to go out and be that voice, be that person that our community needs so bad,” said Anderson, a graduate of the Morehouse School of Medicine doula program. “I am encouraged to know that I will be joining in that mission, that fight for us, as far as maternal health is concerned.”

Anderson said that someday she wants to open a birthing center to provide maternity care. “We do not have one here in southwest Georgia at all,” Anderson said.

In addition to providing support during and after childbirth, Anderson and her fellow graduates are trained to assess their patients’ needs and connect them to services such as food assistance, mental health care, transportation to prenatal appointments, and breastfeeding assistance.

Their work is likely to have ripple effects across a largely rural corner of Georgia, said Sherrell Byrd, who co-founded and directs SOWEGA Rising, a nonprofit organization in southwestern Georgia.

“So many of the graduates are part of church networks, they are part of community organizations, some of them are our government workers. They’re very connected,” Byrd said. “And I think that connectedness is what’s going to help them be successful moving forward.”

This reporting is part of a fellowship with the Association of Health Care Journalists supported by The Commonwealth Fund. It comes from a partnership that includes WABE , NPR , and KFF Health News.

(KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2024 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.