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Cindy Sheehan and the Women's March on the Pentagon

A movement not just a protest

Different wings of the same warbird

Tell the Feds: End Draft Registration

Courage to Resist Podcast: The Future of Draft Registration in the United States

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Free Leonard Peltier!

On my 43rd year in prison I yearn to hug my grandchildren.

Working people are helping to feed the poor hungry corporations!

Charity for the Wealthy!

GOP Tax Plan Would Give 15 of America's Largest Corporations a $236B Tax Cut: Report

By Jake Johnson, December 18, 2017

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/12/18/gop-tax-plan-would-give-15-americas-largest-corporations-236b-tax-cut-report

Puerto Rico Still Without Power

Addicted to War:

And this does not include "…spending $1.25 trillion dollars to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and $566 billion to build the Navy a 308-ship fleet…"

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/18/funding-for-war-vs-natural-disasters/

Kaepernick sports new T-shirt:

Love this guy!

1) Torture in America: The Prison System

By Carole Seligman, March 2018

http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/marapr_18/marapr_18_01.html

Mumia Abu-Jamal

I had the tremendous honor of meeting Mumia Abu-Jamal on January 18th and Bryant Arroyo on January 19th. After several years of corresponding with these innocent prisoners, respectively serving life sentences in SCI Mahanoy and SCI Frackville, in Pennsylvania, I wanted to meet them in person.

While visiting Mumia, I also met Eddie Africa in the visiting room. Eddie Africa has been imprisoned for four decades after cops attacked their home in the City of Philadelphia in 1978 and arrested the nine occupants—the MOVE 9. Later cops bombed the MOVE home and killed 11 of the organization's members including five children. Eddie Africa was just denied parole again by the corrupt and callous Pennsylvania Parole Board, although they are well aware that Mr. Africa, had nothing to do with the death of the police officer who died, most likely by "friendly fire" during the attack on the MOVE home in 1978. In the face of such prolonged imprisonment Eddie Africa takes an active role in helping young prisoners to survive in this hostile environment.

While visiting Bryant, I met Major Tillery, an innocent man in prison for 33 years. Major is the man who actually saved Mumia's life, when Mumia collapsed and went into a coma at the height of his Hepatitis C illness. For that good deed, he was punished, transferred from Mahanoy to Frackville and sent to solitary confinement for four months.

Knowing about their cases—innocent, framed prisoners—and then getting to meet them in person gives one a new understanding of the depth of cruelty in the American prison system, a system whose atrocities and torture are only beginning to be revealed to the public, as there are more and more exonerations, including from death row! The revelations are due in part to the writings and radio broadcasts of Mumia Abu-Jamal, as well as those of several other prisoners who write about their prison experiences and help us understand what we're up against in the struggle for justice against the capitalist state.

Mumia is a warm, welcoming man. Despite a terribly uncomfortable skin outbreak that keeps him from sleeping, and itching that is constant and unrelenting, Mumia has kept on writing trenchant commentaries on all current pressing issues and recording them in his beautiful voice on Prison Radio. I was introduced by attorney Rachel Wolkenstein who was visiting Eddie Africa, as well as Mumia. Basym Hasan (from the Pennsylvania Prison Society) and Mumia's brother, Keith Cook, were also visiting and we had a roundtable, wide-ranging discussion on many topics—including the court proceedings of the previous day, DNA testing, the death penalty in Pennsylvania, the water quality in the prison (the guards don't drink from the water fountains,) the itchy skin conditions that many prisoners are suffering, prison food, the April 20 Women's March, and the significance of last year's Women's March on the day after the Trump inauguration. We also discussed the case of a juvenile lifer, who, after 64 years in prison had his sentence converted to 35 to life, but wasn't allowed to leave the state to go to family members in the South! Much of our discussion cycled around to the combined conditions of extreme cruelty with irrational idiocy in the prisons.

Now, the system of mass incarceration has spread to the population of undocumented immigrants and refugees who are being rounded up by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement federal agency—ICE. They are held in profit-making private prisons in horrendous conditions including the forced separation of young children from their parents, inadequate protection from cold weather, inadequate quality and quantity of food—in other words, basic necessities of life. ICE is making a concerted effort to violate local and state sanctuary policies, such as the recent round-up of immigrants in the Northern California Bay Area on February 28.

To write in any meaningful way about the prison system in the United States is to document a litany of abuse. One example, as explained in the January visit: Mumia, while he was on death row in Pennsylvania's SCI Greene was in the wing of the prison where they could watch the food preparation from their cells. The food was put on carts and delivered to all the different cellblocks, ending with the death row blocks, where it was always cold. When he was transferred to SCI Mahanoy, he burned his mouth because he had grown used to never tasting hot food. Simple cruelty, carried out for years on end.

Another: Mumia told us about new, colorful, cheerfully painted signs on the Mahanoy prison walls saying: "Help is near," and "If you feel suicidal, contact staff." Such irony. "Help" is non-existent there. Suicide is a regular occurrence. Medical neglect a constant reality. Even killings of prisoners by guards!

Mumia's skin condition seemed to worsen over the time of the visit, with open red areas on his inner arms. As our visit was ending, Mumia gave a message of love for Kevin Cooper, on death row at San Quentin and compliments on Kevin's beautiful art. And at a "Live From Death Row" event on February 10th in San Francisco, where Kevin called in to a public meeting sponsored by the Democratic Socialists of America, Kevin spoke in support and admiration for Mumia. I feel privileged to have listened and participated in conversations with such a big-hearted, knowledgeable person.

Bryant Arroyo

Bryant Arroyo, is serving a life sentence for a terrible crime that he did not do—killing his baby stepson. Another innocent man. Like Mumia Abu-Jamal, Bryant is a person who acts on behalf of others while struggling for his own exoneration. He is known as the "prison environmentalist." He has spoken out for environmental justice in the prison and surrounding community, about corporate destruction of the environment through a proposed coal de-gasification plant, and also, through organizing prisoners, guards, and community to oppose the building of the plant. Bryant has to jump through prison administrative hoops to speak by phone to students and groups of environmentalists to help educate us about how to protect the environment.

Major Tillery

Major Tillery was framed in Philadelphia, with cops providing sexual favors for prisoners to testify against him. While fighting for his own exoneration, he also advocates for others, focusing on elderly and disabled prisoners who suffer especially in the cold prison environment. An example: Tillery is trying to get the prison to issue long johns to the elderly prisoners who suffer more in the cold weather. You would think such a easy-to-grant demand would get results, but, in the cruel environment of the prisons, the authorities scoff at the request and refuse to grant it.

Kevin Cooper

Kevin Cooper, death row prisoner in San Quentin State Prison, (whose article in honor of Black History Month is in this issue of Socialist Viewpoint), spoke by telephone to a public forum at the San Francisco Public Library. His moving presentation and answers to audience questions inspired many in the audience to write postcard appeals to California Governor Jerry Brown supporting Kevin's appeal for clemency. Kevin is a tireless campaigner for abolition of the death penalty, educating and speaking out and explaining slavery as the background of the current abusive system of mass incarceration and torture in the U.S.

California voters recently approved starting up the state's execution machinery, and if that happens, Kevin is one of the first to die. His innocence is beyond dispute, and yet he was almost executed in 2004, coming within three hours and 42 minutes of lethal injection. He has been in prison for 33 years. Governor Brown has had Kevin's petition for clemency for over two years. A delegation went to Sacramento on February 22 to deliver petitions with over 20,000 signatures in support of clemency to the governor as part of a campaign to get the governor to act. A letter signed by the deans of four prominent California law schools supporting Kevin's appeal for clemency was also sent to Governor Brown in February.

Without a doubt, U.S. prisons house an estimated over-100,000 innocent people, and this doesn't include people incarcerated for infractions such as drug possession. It doesn't include the thousands of detained immigrants. Most all prisoners (perhaps with the exception of the millionaires caught for white collar crime and corruption) suffer extreme institutional cruelty. (See the article by Kevin "Rashid" Johnson in this and previous issues about how prisoners in Florida State Prison are tortured and abused.) I find it miraculous, almost in the biblical meaning of the word, that the people I write about in this article not only have retained their humanity, but actually struggle for the rights of other oppressed people.

The conditions of prisoners in this country indicate to the most extreme degree the values of capitalist society and its state power. While we must fight like hell to free the innocent and stop the torture of the prisons, it's also clear that for any humane values to be adopted, the power of capitalism and its state must be definitively broken. A state whose reason to exist is to prop up the capitalist profit system, and to do that with the use of extreme violence, is incompatible with human values of decency. We must bring it down!

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2) School Massacres and the U.S. War Machine

By Bonnie Weinstein, March 2018

http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/marapr_18/marapr_18_02.html

There have been 18 school shootings since January 1, 2018— on average, three shootings per week—the latest, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on February 14, that killed 17 people and injured more than 15. No other country on the planet even comes close to these murderous statistics.

The shooter, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, was trained to shoot in that very school when he was in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. And, according to the U.S. Army JROTC Homepage1 "It is one of the largest youth programs in the world with more than 310,000 high school students participating annually…" and they are routinely taught to handle and shoot weapons. The program is an extension of the U.S. military and it has no place in our schools.

This devastating shooting, along with the 146 people that have been shot and killed by police so far in 2018 according to the a February 21, 2018 update in the Washington Post, has become the norm in this country. But it should be no surprise because the U.S. is the most violent country in the world.

U.S. military might

Make no mistake about it; war is a first priority for the United States. War is how capitalist imperialism settles disputes of power. If things don't go the way the capitalists want it to, they kill those who stand in their way as they have done since the beginning of our country. And we working people are supposed to be in awe of this power.

The JROTC teaches the glories of U.S. wars to these students. They are taught to hail our generals as heroes for having the most mighty killing powers. This, they are told, is what makes our country great. And, indeed, the U.S. has the most powerful and the greatest number of weapons of mass destruction on the planet.

According to an April 24, 2017 Forbes article by Niall McCarthy titled, "The Top 15 Countries for Military Expenditure in 2016:"

"The United States remained at the top of the military spending league last year with $611 billion. That's 36 percent of the global total and over three times the amount spent by second-placed China. Russia upped its outlay 5.9 percent to $69.2 billion, third overall…"

And according to nationalpriorities.org, the proposed military budget for 2019 accounts for 61 percent of Trump's discretionary budget request in the amount of $727 billion. And this does not include national security spending in other departments like nuclear weapons in the Energy Department, Homeland Security or the portion of the federal debt caused by paying for war on the national credit card.

War as a way of life

We are justly horrified by these mass shootings—school shootings, gang shootings, police shootings—but we are immune to the tens-of-thousands of casualties of war perpetrated by the U.S. government on nearly every continent on the planet. We can't ignore that the violence perpetrated by the U.S. military has set the stage for this violence here at home.

The U.S. capitalist class not only wages war, but wages assassinations by Special Forces, by drone strikes, that take out "enemy combatants" which most often turn out to be "collateral damage." War doesn't just kill "the enemy" it kills civilians—men, women and children who have no say in what their governments do any more than we, here in the U.S. do. We do not vote on war, on expenditures for the military, for nuclear weapons, or for "The Mother Of All Bombs." That is not our prerogative. Our only choice is to vote for one warmonger over another—from Hillary to Trump.

Military grade weapons and the struggle against capitalism

From its very inception, the U.S. has outgunned and out-bombed those they labeled "the enemy" from the original inhabitants of this land; the enforcement of slavery; the arming of police; calling in the National Guard against unarmed workers in the early years of the U.S. labor movement; to the May 4, 1970 murder of four students and the wounding of nine more by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University; and the murder of two students and wounding of 12 others by the city and state police May 15, 1970 at Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi during the Vietnam War. Not to speak of the millions of Vietnamese who were killed by the U.S. war machine. It took a massive antiwar movement to finally bring an end to the Vietnam War, which the U.S. lost.

The U.S. lost the war to the Vietnamese fighters who out-fought them. And American soldiers, sick and tired of the carnage and futility of the war, were refusing to continue to fight. At home, the antiwar protesters were clogging the streets in the hundreds-of-thousands in support of bringing the troops home now. We did not take up arms.

The American Civil Rights movement did, on occasion, take up arms in defense against white racist police and the KKK in response to the brutality of lynchings, beatings and bombing of Black school children attempting to integrate all white schools. Malcolm X had armed guards stationed in his defense when he spoke in public. Even Martin Luther King had weapons for self-defense. Self-defense is a human right. That doesn't mean that people should be able to go to Wal-Mart and buy a tank, rocket, nuclear bomb or even a military-grade automatic weapon like the AR-15 that was used most recently in Florida that is meant to kill large numbers of people in a very short time.

The fight against violence has to be much broader

The NRA is the marketing/lobbying front for the military weapons industry, which is the supplier for all the wars the U.S. imperialists and their allies are engaged in directly or indirectly. In order to combat this violence, we must combat capitalism. We must demand that the world be disarmed—that weapons of death are not the answer to the social and humanitarian crisis that plague our planet.

We must demand that the vast sums of money and resources that are spent on weapons of mass destruction be spent, instead, on solving the economic and social inequalities that exist across the globe.

It is impossible to separate the violence that is occurring at an increasing rate on our streets from the massive U.S. military intervention in the world for the sole purpose of protecting the wealthy from the poor who vastly outnumber them. This is the sole purpose for war and weapons of mass destruction. It has nothing to do with "protecting democracy" since we have no democracy in this country that actually counts.

We must organize massive opposition to wars and killing as a way to solve social ills and put the blame where it belongs—on the system that perpetrates inequality as a way of life—capitalism.

How to win the war against war and injustice

Many on the left believe that the working class must arm ourselves in order to win the war against capitalism. And, of course, we must be able to defend ourselves against the brutality of the capitalist dictatorship. But the only way we can accomplish this is to organize workers into such a powerful, anti-capitalist, pro-socialist, unified force, that we are able to win the soldiers over to our side effectively disarming the capitalist class.

Ending capitalism and establishing socialism is the only way to end the violence that plagues the world today.

1 https://www.usarmyjrotc.com/

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3) When Bail Feels Less Like Freedom, More Like Extortion

By Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Shaila Dewan, March 31, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/us/bail-bonds-extortion.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

A sign for Blair's Bail Bonds in New Orleans. Some states give bail bond agents broad latitude

to arrest their clients for any reason. William Widmer for the New York Times

Most bail bond agents make it their business to get their clients to court. But when Ronald Egana showed up at the criminal courthouse in New Orleans, he was surprised to find that his bondsman wanted to stop him.

A bounty hunter was waiting at the courthouse metal detector to intercept Mr. Egana and haul him to the bond company office, he said. The reason: The bondsman wanted to get paid.

Mr. Egana ended up in handcuffs, missing his court appearance while the agency got his mother on the phone and demanded more than $1,500 in overdue payments, according to a lawsuit. It was not the first time Mr. Egana had been held captive by the bond company, he said, nor would it be the last. Each time, his friends or family was forced to pay more to get him released, he said.

As commercial bail has grown into a $2 billion industry, bond agents have become the payday lenders of the criminal justice world, offering quick relief to desperate customers at high prices. When clients like Mr. Egana cannot afford to pay the bond company's fee to get them out, bond agents simply loan them the money, allowing them to go on a payment plan.

But bondsmen have extraordinary powers that most lenders do not. They are supposed to return their clients to jail if they skip court or do something illegal. But some states give them broad latitude to arrest their clients for any reason — or none at all. A credit card company cannot jail someone for missing a payment. A bondsman, in many instances, can.

Using that leverage, bond agents can charge steep fees, some of which are illegal, with impunity, according to interviews and a review of court records and complaint data. They can also go far beyond the demands of other creditors by requiring their clients to check in regularly, keep a curfew, allow searches of their car or home at any time, and open their medical, Social Security and phone records to inspection.

They keep a close eye on their clients, but in many places, no one is keeping a close eye on them.

"It's a consumer protection issue," said Judge Lee V. Coffee, a criminal court judge in Memphis. Before recent changes to the rules there, he said, defendants frequently complained of shakedowns in which bondsmen demanded extra payments. "They're living under a constant daily threat that 'if you don't bring more money, we're going to put you in jail.'" The pressure, the judge said, "would actually encourage people to go out and commit more crimes."

Unlike payday lenders, the bail bond industry deals with potential criminals whose very involvement with the law raises questions about their trustworthiness. But in the United States criminal justice system, the Supreme Court has affirmed, liberty before trial is supposed to be the norm, not the exception — the system is intended to allow defendants to stay out of jail.

Some bail bond practices have drawn the ire of judges who complain that payment plans are too lenient on people accused of serious crimes, allowing them to get out for just a few hundred dollars or even no money down. Those judges say it should be more difficult for the accused to walk free.

Other judges see some bondsmen as trampling the rights of defendants. One judge in Lafayette, La., Jules Edwards III, held in contempt two bondsmen who were brothers for intercepting a defendant on his way to court and sending him, instead, to jail.

The judge said the commercial bail industry had put its financial interests above justice and public safety. "If he's not in compliance with the contract, sue him. How do you get to snatch his body and hold him hostage?" Judge Edwards said in a phone interview.

He added that defendants do not have to go with their bondsmen unless there is a warrant out for their arrest, but many of them do not know that. "What they're doing is intimidating and coercing and lying," he said. The brothers declined to comment.

In both Mr. Egana's case and this one, the bondsmen would not have been on the hook for the defendants' failure to appear, because they diverted the defendants from court dates for unrelated cases, not the ones for which they had bailed them out.

The bond agency, Blair's Bail Bonds, stopped Mr. Egana, who had prior felony convictions, from going to court on charges of fleeing an officer, but had bailed him out in June 2016 after he was arrested on charges of possession of marijuana, a firearm and stolen property.

Had Mr. Egana been wealthier, he might have been able to post his full bail of $26,000, then gotten it back when he returned for court. But like most defendants, Mr. Egana had to turn to a commercial bail bond agent, which charge a nonrefundable fee for the service of guaranteeing the bond.

Not only could Mr. Egana not afford the full bail, he could not afford the fee, $3,275. He arranged to pay it in installments. After his release, he said, Blair's informed him that on top of the premium, he would have to pay $10 a day for an ankle monitor, though the judge had not ordered one. Guilty or innocent, Mr. Egana would never see any of that money again. Blair's has denied any wrongdoing in the matter.

Some customers feel they have no choice but to pay bond agents' fees — no matter how outrageous they seem. When a home health care aide wanted to bail her son out of Rikers Island in New York City, she was charged $1,000 to have a courier walk her money a few blocks to the courthouse.

A defendant in a serious domestic violence case in Santa Clara, Calif., suffering from a dangerous heart condition, had to have his ankle monitor removed each time he went to the hospital, and was forced to pay $300 to have it put back on afterward.

A woman in Des Moines woke one morning to find that her 2001 Pontiac Grand Prix had been repossessed during the night. Had she put up her car as collateral in a typical loan, she would have been notified that she had fallen behind and given 20 days to pay.

But instead, the car was collateral for a bail bond for her child's father. She owed $700 to the bail agents. They not only took the car, but turned the father over to the jail. Ultimately the misdemeanor assault charges against him were dismissed.

The bond agents in the Lafayette, New York, Santa Clara and Des Moines cases declined to comment. But Jeffrey J. Clayton, the executive director of the American Bail Coalition, an industry group, said that credit bonds, as the payment plans are called, should be more tightly regulated and require at least a minimum down payment. However, he said, any rules should preserve the benefit to the customer, namely, "If you have the ability to pay it, just not right now, you can get out right now."

Bond companies fall into a sort of regulatory gulf between criminal courts and state insurance departments, which are supposed to regulate them but seldom impose sanctions. With rare exception, defense lawyers and prosecutors are too busy with their caseloads to keep bond companies in line. Further complicating things, it is often unclear whether consumer protection laws apply, and insurance departments say they lack the resources to investigate complaints.

In the case of Mr. Egana, who worked as a carpenter, it did not take long for him to fall behind on his payments. But he thought that since he was routinely showing up to court, he would be fine.

He was wrong. The bond company detained him several more times, according to court records. At one point, two men with guns and bulletproof vests came to the home where he was working as a contractor and forced him into a car. Each time, they demanded that his mother pay more money.

Jeffrey Orey, a spokesman for Blair's Bail Bonds, while denying any wrongdoing, declined to comment on the specifics of Mr. Egana's lawsuit. He said the company had never charged interest or assessed penalties for late payment. The lawsuit, brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of Mr. Egana and alleging violation of consumer lending laws, says Mr. Egana's mother paid at least $5,450 — or almost two times the original premium — to keep her son out of jail. Some of her money, the lawsuit says, was applied to older debts that Mr. Egana still owed.

"It was kidnapping," Mr. Egana said. "They saw the love that my mom has for me, and they used that to their advantage."

In May, Blair's decided it no longer wanted Mr. Egana as a customer and handed him over to the jail.

Siphoning Millions From Poor

The use of bail bonds has come under attack in recent years because it keeps the poorest, rather than the most dangerous, defendants behind bars.

State after state has taken steps to reduce or eliminate the practice of making that freedom contingent on money. In response, the bond industry has worked to undermine reforms and regulations, arguing that commercial bail is still the most efficient and taxpayer-friendly way to keep the public safe and the courts running smoothly.

The bond agent takes a fee in exchange for guaranteeing the amount of the bail on the defendant's behalf. But the fee — or premium — usually about 10 percent, is too high for many defendants, the vast majority of whom are poor. So they arrange a payment plan. The debt, paid over weeks or months of installments, can outlast the criminal case.

The arrangement can include steep late fees or require signing over collateral worth many times what is owed. And while defendants, or the family members and friends who often shoulder the costs, typically pay no interest as long as their payments are on time, if they go into default they can trigger annual interest rates as high as 30 percent.

The use of financial conditions for bail has not always been as widespread as it is today. In 1990, only 24 percent of those released from jail before trial were required to pay. That number soared to almost 50 percent in 2009, the most recent year for which national figures are available. In some jurisdictions, the number is far higher: In New Orleans in 2015, 63 percent of misdemeanor defendants and 87 percent of felony defendants had to pay to be released before trial, according to a study by the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit that seeks to improve the criminal justice system.

Commercial bail fees, often scraped together by multiple family members, siphon millions from poor, predominantly African-American and Hispanic communities. Over a five-year span, Maryland families paid more than $256 million in nonrefundable bail premiums, according to a report by the state's Office of the Public Defender. More than $75 million of that was paid in cases resolved with no finding of guilt, and the vast majority of it was paid by black families.

In 2015, New Orleans families paid $6.4 million in premiums and fees, the Vera Institute of Justice found. In New York City last year, bond companies collected between $16 million and $27 million, "a sizable transfer of wealth," noted Scott Stringer, the city comptroller, "to the pockets of opportunistic bail bond agents."

The poor pay more than the rich: Some bond agencies offer lower rates to those who are union members, hire their own lawyer rather than use a court-appointed one, or put up more valuable collateral.

The entire premise on which the commercial bail system is built — that when defendants skip bail, someone must either find them or pay, is somewhat illusory.

The image of the industry, encapsulated by Dog the Bounty Hunter chasing down outlaws on television, is one of danger and high stakes.

But in most cases where defendants miss court, a bond agent may not have to do anything. Many states allow months for a defendant to be found. In Texas, bond agents have nine months before a felony bail is forfeited. In Colorado, according to the American Bail Coalition, even after a bond is paid, the agent has two years to find the missing defendant and get the money back.

With so much time, many defendants will resurface on their own, or be caught during a traffic stop or other law enforcement interaction, without any effort on the bond agent's part.

In a report last year, government auditors in Utah criticized the long grace periods, saying that more than 70 percent of defendants who skip court show up within a month. Over the course of a year, the auditors found, less than 2 percent of bonds were forfeited.

"If you're not holding bond companies accountable at every turn, they can wriggle out of a forfeiture," said Alison Filo, a prosecutor in Santa Clara, Calif., where the district attorney's office has begun in recent years to pursue payments from bond agents. Ms. Filo said there were some counties in her state where forfeitures were never collected.

The system, though, has worked well for the industry, even attracting private equity investors. Mom-and-pop bail companies are backed by large surety companies, which guarantee the full amount of the bond in exchange for a portion of the premium.

Together, the surety companies and the bail bond agents collect about $2 billion a year in revenue, according to an analysis by Color of Change, a nonprofit focused on racial justice, and the American Civil Liberties Union. "Bail insurers have shaped the entire industry, as well as the laws they operate under, to safeguard their profits at the expense of people's lives," said Rashad Robinson, the executive director of Color of Change.

While most insurance companies expect losses of up to 50 percent, one surety company, Continental Heritage of Florida, had no losses in its bail division for almost two decades. And an industry giant, AIA Bail Bond Insurance Company, said it underwrote more than $800 billion in bonds in 2016. Its losses: zero.

Extortion, Theft and Kidnapping

In Santa Clara County, Gregory Chiotti's daughter had already been convicted and gone to jail when he got a bill from Jake's Bail Bonds for $39,755, along with a notice of foreclosure on his house, which he had put up as collateral on her bond.

On paper, California's bail laws have strong consumer protections, but regulators have grown so frustrated with complaints that they have repeatedly asked lawmakers for more money to police the industry.

Under California law, Mr. Chiotti could be charged only the premium for his daughter's bond — $5,000 — plus any "actual, reasonable and necessary" expenses incurred by Jake's.

But Jake's claimed that Mr. Chiotti owed something called a "recovery cost percentage" of $19,500 and $4,425 for unspecified "equipment," among other fees, according to an investigative report. To prevent the sale of his house, Mr. Chiotti, then 69, cashed out savings and forked over nearly $40,000.

He thought that was the end of the matter, but Jake's never released the lien on his property. Six years later, in 2015, he got a second notice of foreclosure. This time the bondsman, Jacob Garcia Peters, said he owed $117,500.

At the time, Santa Clara County had begun a rare effort to prosecute unscrupulous bondsmen, and Mr. Peters was charged with attempted extortion. During the investigation, court records show, Mr. Peters acknowledged that the bonds had been cleared by the court and he had never been required to pay. But according to the file, Mr. Peters said the daughter, who had missed at least one court appearance, had "breached the contract," so Mr. Chiotti was liable for the money anyway.

Though California law appears to be quite clear about what bond agents can charge, a review of more than 100 bail contracts and legal documents by the criminal justice reform clinic at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law found that such protections were routinely ignored. The contracts included all manner of additional costs, including late fees, interest on delinquent balances and "renewal premiums" that required the defendant to pay again to stay out of jail if the case was not resolved within a year.

Unlike in most states, bondsmen in California must return the premium to customers if they surrender them to jail, unless they can demonstrate that their risk level substantially increased. A new arrest for a lesser crime does not constitute increased risk, the law says. But one contract said that if the defendant moved without prior written notice or was arrested for any new offense, his premium would not be repaid. In another, defendants could be returned to jail without a refund if they did "anything to suggest that they might forfeit the bond."

California contracts are hardly outliers. Until recently, Maryland bond contracts allowed an automatic financial judgment against a client if the bondsman claimed they had missed a payment. Such provisions, known as "confession of judgment" clauses, are typically forbidden in consumer contracts because they are considered unfair and deprive borrowers of the chance to contest the debt. Under a Beaumont, Tex., contract, one late payment could mean jail.

In New Orleans, the Southern Poverty Law Center has complained to state regulators that bondsmen routinely charge more than is allowed by law. In phone calls placed by The New York Times, several bail bond companies quoted prices that exceeded what is allowable under state law by a few hundred dollars. When asked, they said the extra money was a "lock-up fee" paid to the jail. But there is no such fee.

In one San Francisco case, according to a court filing, a defendant named Juan Contreras claimed he made more than 20 court appearances on a felony domestic violence charge and paid some $20,000 to his bond agency, but was returned to custody when he did not answer the bond agent's calls.

Between 2010 and 2015 in California, the number of bail complaints to the Department of Insurance nearly quadrupled and became more serious, the department said, with common grievances including kidnapping and false imprisonment for purposes of extortion, forged property liens and death certificates, and theft or embezzlement of collateral.

Complaints about bail bond agents have flooded into insurance regulators across the country, but rarely result in meaningful punishment.

Part of the problem, regulators say, is that they are outmatched and do not have the resources to investigate abuses. The California insurance commissioner, Dave Jones, said he had twice tried to get a law passed to pay for bail investigations, but both times it was defeated after lobbying by the bond industry.

Mr. Clayton of the American Bail Coalition said bond agents objected because the department had over-criminalized the insurance code, pursuing violations as felony cases rather than focusing on revoking licenses.

In Mr. Chiotti's case, a criminal court judge dismissed the charges against Mr. Peters, the bondsman, saying the evidence did not show attempted extortion. A lawyer for Mr. Peters declined to comment. Mr. Peters reached a confidential settlement with Mr. Chiotti and surrendered his bail license.

An Upside-Down System

Under California law, Mr. Chiotti could be charged only the premium for his daughter's bond — $5,000 — plus any "actual, reasonable and necessary" expenses incurred by Jake's.

Complaints about bail bond agents have flooded into insurance regulators across the country, but rarely result in meaningful punishment.

An Upside-Down System

Under California law, Mr. Chiotti could be charged only the premium for his daughter's bond — $5,000 — plus any "actual, reasonable and necessary" expenses incurred by Jake's.

Complaints about bail bond agents have flooded into insurance regulators across the country, but rarely result in meaningful punishment.

An Upside-Down System

It is not hard to find people whose entire lives have been upended by the bail bond industry. Some defendants wind up in jail for no offense other than falling behind on their bail payments. Others decide to plead guilty to crimes that they did not commit just to escape from the financial demands of their bondsman.

Frankie Bell's troubles began last January in New Orleans, when she was charged with misdemeanor domestic abuse after getting into a squabble with her boyfriend. Ms. Bell, 26, had no criminal record. With help from her uncle, she was able to pay the $1,500 premium. But the bond company, citing the fact that she had a Texas driver's license, required her to wear an ankle monitor — at a cost of $300 a month.

It took less than two weeks for Ms. Bell, who is mentally impaired and lives on $700 a month in disability payments, to fall behind. Almost immediately, the calls from her bail bond company began, she said. "They would threaten to put me back in jail," she said. "They said they would send the police to my house, arrest me and throw me into a cell."

Ms. Bell said she tried panhandling on the street, begging her friends for money, and letting other bills slide. Still, by the time she appeared in court in April, she was $800 behind. Ms. Bell had maintained her innocence from the start, but faced a stark decision: plead guilty in a deal that spared her any jail time, or risk being locked up before trial for failing to pay the bond agent. "I don't want people to think of me as a criminal," she said, "but I just wanted it all to end."

Often, even pleading guilty is not enough to get free of the bond agent's power, since defendants may still owe money. Christopher Franklin pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge in February 2017. He had paid his bondsman, Rodney Sawyers, more than $4,000, and owed only $300 more.

But about a week later, Mr. Franklin said, Mr. Sawyers showed up at his house in Charlotte, N.C., in the middle of the night, pounding on the front door.

Mr. Franklin stumbled to answer, disoriented and groggy. Mr. Sawyers muscled his way in, Mr. Franklin said, handcuffed him and drove him to jail.

Mr. Sawyers did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Franklin's public defender in the case, Eli Timberg, said he has routinely had clients returned to jail for not paying their bondsmen, but Mr. Franklin's case stood out. "There were no active charges," Mr. Timberg said. "No bond out for him. It was unbelievable."

Even the jail staff seemed perplexed when Mr. Franklin arrived, he said, since his case was no longer pending. After five hours, he was released.

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4) Baton Rouge Officer Is Fired in Alton Sterling Case as Police Release New Videos

By RICHARD FAUSSET MARCH 30, 2018

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Police Chief Murphy Paul of Baton Rouge, La., announcing disciplinary decision for the two officers who shot Alton Sterling in 2016. His action came after the Justice Department and Louisiana's attorney general, Jeff Landry, declined to seek charges. CreditJosh Brasted/Getty Images

A police officer who fatally shot a black man in Baton Rouge, La., nearly two years ago was fired on Friday, and a fellow officer involved in the episode was suspended for three days. The disciplinary actions were the first serious consequences for the officers after both state and federalofficials declined to bring criminal charges against them.

Blane Salamoni, the officer who was dismissed, fired six shots at the man, Alton B. Sterling, after responding to a call at a convenience store parking lot on July 5, 2016.

After announcing the disciplinary actions, the department released new raw footage of Mr. Sterling's arrest and his killing moments later. Video taken from a police body camera shows Officer Salamoni repeatedly shouting profanities at Mr. Sterling; slamming him into a car; twice ordering the second officer, Howie Lake II, to use his Taser; and threatening to shoot Mr. Sterling with a gun pointed at his head.

"These actions were not minor deviations from policy," Chief Murphy Paul of the Baton Rouge Police Department said. "And they contributed to the outcome that resulted in the death of another human being."

The decision came after the Louisiana attorney general, Jeff Landry, said on Tuesday that the officers would not be charged with state-level crimes, and after the Justice Department declined last May to seek federal civil rights charges. The shooting is one of numerous high-profile fatal encounters between black men and the police in recent years, and prompted large protests in Baton Rouge and beyond.

Chief Paul said that Officer Salamoni had violated the department's use-of-force rules and that Officer Lake had violated its policies on sustaining "command of temper."

The chief spoke mostly in generalities about why the men were found to have violated the policies. "One officer attempted to use de-escalation and disengagement techniques consistent with policy and procedure and training," he said. "And one officer did not follow the tactics, training, professionalism and organizational standards."

He also said: "Fear cannot be a driver for an officer's response to every incident. Unreasonable fear within an officer is dangerous."

The closed-door administrative hearings took place on Thursday. Chief Paul noted that while Officer Lake answered all of the questions put to him at his hearing, Officer Salamoni, on the advice of his lawyer, chose not to answer questions.

The chief's announcement was expected to bring a modicum of relief to activists and Mr. Sterling's family members, who have grown increasingly frustrated after the state and federal decisions.

The decision also came amid tension and protests over another police shooting in Sacramento. Stephon Clark, a 22-year-old unarmed black man, was shot at more than 20 times by the police in his grandmother's backyard on March 18. A private autopsy commissioned by Mr. Clark's family and released Friday found that eight bullets had struck him, and that his death took three to 10 minutes, raising questions about why he did not receive medical care more quickly.

Part of Mr. Sterling's fatal encounter with the Baton Rouge officers was captured in a widely seen cellphone video, in which the officers can be seen holding down Mr. Sterling. At one point, someone can be heard saying, "He's got a gun! Gun!"

The two officers were responding to a call that a man who fit Mr. Sterling's description had been brandishing a gun.

One newly released video from the vantage of the convenience store shows Mr. Sterling standing by a folding table, where he appears to be doing business with two customers. Officer Lake approaches, and takes Mr. Sterling by the arm.

Footage from Mr. Salamoni's video camera shows him approaching moments later.

The three men tussle as the officers try to bend Mr. Sterling over the hood of a car and as Officer Salamoni, using expletives, repeatedly threatens to shoot Mr. Sterling in the head. Officer Lake fires his Taser at Mr. Sterling, twice, and Officer Salamoni tackles him to the ground.

Gunshots ring out. As Mr. Sterling lies facedown and motionless on the parking lot, Officer Salamoni swears at him and searches Mr. Sterling's pockets, apparently for a firearm.

A state report noted that Officer Lake had found a .38-caliber handgun in Mr. Sterling's pocket after the shooting. The report also included the results of a toxicology test, which said Mr. Sterling's blood had contained alcohol, cocaine, amphetamine, methamphetamine and THC. The amount of methamphetamine, the report said, was associated with "abusers who exhibited violent and irrational behavior."

Michael Adams, a lawyer for the Sterling family, said that the videos showed that Mr. Sterling was lucid, and not "deranged" or "out of control."

"He stayed relatively calm throughout this process," he said. "And that's a different story or depiction when you read the attorney general's findings."

Another lawyer for the family, L. Chris Stewart, said that he was pleased to see Mr. Salamoni leave the force.

The two officers may now appeal their punishments to a civil service board, which will hold public proceedings and uphold, vacate or modify the punishments. The officers may then appeal that decision to a state district court.

Before the chief's announcement on Friday, Sharon Weston Broome, the mayor of Baton Rouge, had said publicly that she would like to see Officer Salamoni fired and Officer Lake disciplined. Ms. Broome, who was elected in 2016, pledged during her campaign that she would replace the previous police chief, fulfilling that promise late last year with the announcement of Mr. Paul's appointment.

Lawyers for the two officers are almost certain in the appeals process to seize on the mayor's statements calling for the discipline of the officers, and argue that the punishments were a foregone conclusion, said Henry D.H. Olinde, a Baton Rouge lawyer with significant experience with civil service cases.

"The question's going to be, did the mayor's declaration in any way influence the decision of the police chief?" he said.

In an interview with a local TV station, John S. McLindon, Officer Salamoni's lawyer, said he would vigorously pursue the appeal as "a matter of principle," noting that his client did not expect to get his job on the force back.

"I think it's unfair," Mr. McLindon said. "He had to make some split-second decisions — several split-second decisions."

A lawyer for Mr. Lake could not be reached for comment Friday night.

The new police chief, who is black, has a difficult political path to navigate in a racially and economically divided Southern city. He will have to both rally his police force to his side to support a reform agenda and gain the trust of residents who took to the streets in protest after Mr. Sterling's death.

Chief Paul spoke at his news conference of a retaliatory act after the shooting, in which a man shot and killed two Baton Rouge police officers and a deputy sheriff. He spoke of all of the work that officers do that rarely garners international attention, and encouraged residents to file complaints if they felt they were mistreated by police.

He also urged them not to resist officers' orders, and to treat the police with respect.

"Please stop resisting. Stop running," he said. "When the police officer gives you direction, listen."

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5) At Stephen Hawking Funeral, Eddie Redmayne and Astronomer Royal Give Readings

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS MARCH 31, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/world/europe/stephen-hawking-funeral-eddie-redmayne.html?rref=

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The coffin of Stephen Hawking arriving at St Mary the Great Church in Cambridge, England.CreditJoe Giddens/Press Association, via Associated Press

LONDON — Hundreds of people lined the streets of the British city of Cambridge on Saturday, breaking into applause as the hearse carrying the remains of the famed scientist Stephen Hawking arrived at a local church for a private funeral for 500 invited guests.

Dr. Hawking died on March 14 at age 76 after capturing popular imagination with his writings about space and time.

His book "A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes," published in 1988, has sold more than 10 million copies and inspired a documentary film by Errol Morris. His own story was the basis of an award-winning 2014 feature film, "The Theory of Everything."

The actor Eddie Redmayne, who portrayed Hawking in the 2014 biographical drama, gave a reading from Ecclesiastes during the service at St. Mary the Great Church. There was also a reading by Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal, and eulogies by one of Hawking's children and a former student.

The service was officiated by the Rev. Cally Hammond, the dean of Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge University, where Dr. Hawking was a fellow for 52 years.

Flags were lowered to half-mast in many parts of Cambridge to pay tribute to him.

Dr. Hawking, who suffered from motor neuron disease, was known for his groundbreaking research into black holes and other phenomena.

Even as he gradually lost control of his muscles, he traveled the globe to scientific meetings, visiting every continent, including Antarctica; wrote best-selling books about his work; married twice; fathered three children; and was not above appearing on "The Simpsons," "Star Trek: The Next Generation" or "The Big Bang Theory."

Dr. Hawking will be cremated at a later date, and his ashes are to be interred at Westminster Abbey in London near the remains of his fellow scientist, Isaac Newton.

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6) At the Justice Dept.'s Death Penalty Unit, Accusations of Favoritism, Gender Bias and Unwanted Groping

By KATIE BENNER MARCH 31, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/us/politics/justice-department-harassment-bias.html?rref=

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The Justice Department's death penalty unit faced accusations of gender bias under its previous chief, Kevin Carwile, who was removed from the post after The New York Times began asking about the allegations. CreditAl Drago for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — When Kevin Carwile arrived to run the Justice Department's death penalty unit in 2010, he had never prosecuted or sat through an entire capital punishment case. He was moved into the job after overseeing the gangs unit, and some prosecutors worried he lacked the expertise to steer the division.

Now Mr. Carwile has been removed from his post after The New York Times inquired about a series of grievances against him, including complaints that he promoted gender bias and a "sexualized environment." He fostered a culture of favoritism and sexism, according to court records, internal documents and interviews with more than a half-dozen current and former employees. In one episode, his deputy groped an administrative assistant at a bar in view of their colleagues, according to some who were present. Mr. Carwile asked the witnesses to keep it secret, one said.

Employees of the unit, the capital case section, complained about the issues to Justice Department officials, the inspector general and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission at least 12 times. Some allegations went unaddressed for years. In cases that were investigated, the accusers were never told what investigators found. Both Mr. Carwile and his deputy, Gwynn Kinsey, remained Justice Department employees despite the inquiries.

Six employees, including the administrative assistant, said they eventually left the section or quit government altogether in part because of the toxic climate. A defendant in Indiana has asked in court for the government to drop the death penalty recommendation in his case because of the unit's emerging conduct issues.

Mr. Carwile declined to comment. After The Times contacted the Justice Department for this article, he was demoted and detailed to a different division. Through his lawyers, Mr. Kinsey declined to comment.

"The Department of Justice takes these allegations extremely seriously but cannot discuss specific employee disciplinary actions, or comment on internally handled personnel actions or matters that may impact personal privacy," said Ian Prior, a Justice Department spokesman. The department confirmed that it referred some allegations made by employees to the inspector general, whose spokesman would not confirm or deny any investigation.

The unit is poised to gain power. President Trump has suggested the United States start executing drug dealers, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions has urged prosecutors to seek the death penalty whenever possible in drug-related crimes.

A Mercurial Boss

The Justice Department created the capital case section in 1998 to help the attorney general decide when to apply capital punishment. The section's prosecutors advise or work with trial teams on cases and a few trials a year. They were involved in some high-profile prosecutions like those of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers, and Dylann S. Roof, who was convicted in 2016 of murdering nine people at an African-American church in South Carolina.

As the death penalty fell out of favor in the United States, the influence of the unit, already one of the smallest in the Justice Department, waned. About half a dozen trial lawyers worked there in the beginning of 2012, along with a lawyer conducting protocol reviews and three others on loan from different parts of the department.

Mr. Carwile had arrived just before the public learned of the Fast and Furious scandal, a botched operation in which agents at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives let criminals move guns across the border into Mexico to try to build a bigger case. Many of the firearms were later found at crime scenes. Mr. Carwile incorrectly told superiors that the A.T.F. learned about guns moving illegally only after the fact, according to a subsequent inspector general investigation. He was moved from his post as head of the gangs unit to the much smaller capital punishment division.

He quickly gained a reputation as a mercurial manager with a hands-off style that bordered on neglect, according to current and former employees. He rarely responded to emails, four former employees said, and in meetings his questions revealed that he had not read their messages.

But after his first year, Mr. Carwile received the Excellence in Management award for the criminal division as the section's lawyers prosecuted more cases.

In 2013, Jacabed Rodriguez-Coss, a prosecutor who had herself won one of the department's highest awards, complained to human resources that Mr. Carwile expected her to involuntarily travel far more than her male counterparts.

Though she lived in Connecticut and had cases in Rhode Island and Vermont, he assigned her to one in California. She protested that her family needed her nearby. Her husband, an F.B.I. agent, was one of the first on the scene of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School and was confronting the aftermath of having worked on the case.

Ms. Rodriguez-Coss filed a complaint to the E.E.O.C., which notified the Justice Department. Mr. Carwile subsequently suspended permission for her to work from Connecticut. She sued the department in 2016, accusing him of gender discrimination and claiming that her permission to work in Connecticut was taken away in retaliation for her complaints.

Seven men and women from the unit filed declarations in her support. Two male colleagues said that they had not been assigned so much travel. Bruce R. Hegyi, a former prosecutor, wrote that he left because of "plainly unethical and improper conduct."

He said in his filing that Mr. Carwile promoted "a sexualized environment," took him to a restaurant with scantily clad waitresses and let a fellow prosecutor show naked photographs of a woman during a work gathering of both men and women.

Other employees said in their declarations that Mr. Carwile held men-only meetings, sent emails only to men and assigned more desirable and high-profile cases to men. "Women only go to law school to find rich husbands," he said, according to a declaration filed by one lawyer, Amanda Haines.

Under Mr. Carwile, there was incentive "not to not stir things up," said Kevin Little, the lawyer representing Ms. Rodriguez-Coss.

"My client and other of her colleagues feared retaliation," he said.

The Justice Department said in its response that Ms. Rodriguez-Coss's claims "boil down to her admitted refusal to perform the essential requirements of her position," which included taking on cases that required travel.

Life-or-Death Cases in the Balance

Around the same time, Ms. Haines, who worked as a federal prosecutor for 18 years before joining the division, alerted Mr. Carwile to persistent work-quality issues, warnings that she later described in a court filing.

In one case in Pennsylvania, she said, she received no files describing the government's work by the previous prosecutor, despite numerous requests, and dozens of boxes with discovery materials had sat unreviewed.

She told Mr. Carwile and Mr. Kinsey, but the problem went unaddressed. Her colleague instead received a plum assignment: the Boston Marathon bombing trial.

In the Indiana case, Ms. Haines said her predecessor interviewed over a dozen witnesses without a law enforcement officer or other witness present, an error that could jeopardize the government's work. She said in a legal filing that the prosecutor, who later won a departmental award, destroyed his interview notes, which he initially denied but later acknowledged.

After Ms. Haines took her concerns to Mr. Carwile, a colleague shared them in an email with Sung-Hee Suh, then the deputy assistant attorney general.

Ms. Haines also described the errors in a declaration filed in Ms. Rodriguez-Coss's lawsuit. After her accusations became public, defense lawyers in the Indiana case pushed back on the government's recommendation to seek the death penalty for their client, Andrew Rogers, a felon accused of tying up his cellmate and stabbing him to death.

The notes the prosecutor is accused of destroying could have been the difference "between a verdict for life and a verdict for death," the defense wrote in a brief in January.

"If you pull on the thread, who knows how many cases could be impacted?" said Mr. Little, Ms. Rodriguez-Coss's lawyer.

'Unwelcome Liberties'

Two years ago, another prosecutor in the section, Ann Carroll, was asked to travel for work after she had surgery. Around that time, she learned that a male colleague was allowed to forgo travel to accommodate his gluten intolerance.

"Over the 20 years I had worked at the Department of Justice, I had never experienced a complete lack of sensitivity in the immediate aftermath of a serious medical illness," Ms. Carroll wrote in a declaration. "I felt Mr. Carwile's response was arbitrary, and gender-based." She quit that June.

Before departing, Ms. Carroll said she described ethical violations to Ms. Suh, prompting a management review. Four former and current employees said in court declarations and to The Times that they told Ms. Suh and James Mann, the chief of staff to the No. 3 official at the Justice Department, about the mishandled cases, sexualized culture and gender bias.

Ms. Suh ultimately said that Mr. Carwile and Mr. Kinsey, as a result of the review, were "now doing their best," according to Mr. Hegyi's declaration, and she concluded that employees were unhappy because they wanted to work from home, to choose between trials and case reviews, and to be given more ways to bring concerns to management.

Her conclusions dumbfounded employees who said they had shared more serious grievances. A person briefed on the matter said they were not told of steps being taken to address complaints because those were confidential.

Ms. Suh, who now works at the asset manager Pimco, said she could not comment on the details of pending litigation or personnel matters. "Any allegations of misconduct, discrimination, harassment or bias actually brought to my attention were fully and fairly investigated and addressed appropriately," she said.

The years of warnings that their bosses had ignored or condoned misconduct came to a head last May. During a work-sanctioned happy hour at a restaurant near the Justice Department, colleagues watched Mr. Kinsey grope the administrative assistant, Alyssa tenBroek.

"Mr. Kinsey, who is a married man, began to take what seemed very clearly to be unwelcome liberties of a physical, sexual nature," Luke Woolman, an intern at the time, wrote in his declaration. He said Mr. Kinsey repeatedly touched Ms. tenBroek, whom he identified as A.T., "inappropriately, openly and obviously" in front of patrons, Mr. Carwile and at least one other Justice Department prosecutor.

Mr. Woolman and the prosecutor, Sonia Jimenez, suggested everyone go home, he later told Ms. Haines. Ms. Jimenez tried to discourage Mr. Kinsey from trying to persuade Ms. tenBroek to go to a hotel with him, according to an internal memo by Ms. Haines.

As the night wound down, Mr. Carwile pulled aside Mr. Woolman and asked him not to tell anyone what he had seen.

"He sternly reiterated his request, specifically stating that he was being serious," Mr. Woolman wrote.

Fallout From a Night Out

After that night, tensions in the unit exploded into view. Ms. tenBroek showed colleagues text messages from Mr. Kinsey in which he offered to give her money, pay her bills or take her on a trip. He also sent her photos of herself that he had downloaded from the internet.

He signed off "XOXOXOX," according to Ms. Haines's memo. In other messages, he appeared to apologize.

Ms. tenBroek later told Ms. Haines and Julie Mosley, another prosecutor, that Mr. Kinsey groped her again in the cab and tried to coerce her into checking into a hotel.

Ms. Mosley told the E.E.O.C., and Ms. Haines sent her memo to superiors at the Justice Department. "I trust you will give this matter the serious attention it deserves," she wrote. Mr. Woolman said in a court filing that he shared his story with Mr. Mann and an investigator from the inspector general's office.

Ms. tenBroek did not dispute her co-workers' accounts and said in a statement that she had participated in the department's "lengthy and taxing" complaint process. She has since left the agency.

"I have always wanted to pursue a career with the Department of Justice, but it failed me when I reported misconduct," she said. "No woman should feel compelled to deal with the pervasive harassment that I experienced, much less have her complaint be effectively disregarded."

The department's inspector general began investigating, and Mr. Kinsey was demoted and moved to another division. He is appealing. A person close to Mr. Kinsey said that evidence in another investigation is favorable to him, but would not say who was conducting that inquiry.

Current and former employees said the public understandably expects death penalty cases to be handled with integrity. As Mr. Sessions and Mr. Trump push for more capital punishments, the section's history, they say, could work against the Justice Department.

The same month as the happy hour, the inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, sent a memo to Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general. Sexual harassment, he wrote, "profoundly affects the victim and affects the agency's reputation, undermines the agency's credibility, and lowers employee productivity and morale."

Doris Burke and Kitty Bennett contributed research.

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7) Student Protesters Take Over Howard University Administration Building

By MAYA SALAM and EMILY BAUMGAERTNER MARCH 30, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/us/howard-university-scandal.html?rref=

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HU Resist, a student group, has called for the resignation of Howard University's president and the executive committee of the board of trustees. CreditEmily Baumgaertner/The New York Times

Hundreds of Howard University students occupied the main administration building for a second day on Friday, crippling operations amid a protest fueled by revelations about the misappropriation of financial aid money.

"We'll be here as long as it takes to get our demands met," Juan Demëtrixx, a Howard University student, said on Friday at a morning news conference held by HU Resist, the student group that organized the protest at the historically black university in Washington. "We've taken over every floor."

Members of HU Resist, disgruntled by what they called "administrative negligence," had already been planning an event to bolster a list of nine demands that they issued on Sunday.

The group called for Howard to provide adequate housing to younger students, to disarm campus police officers and to actively fight rape culture on campus. It made several other demands, including the immediate resignations of the university's president, Wayne A.I. Frederick, and the executive committee of the board of trustees.

HU Resist's plan quickly swelled into a multiday protest after Dr. Frederick confirmed on Wednesday the mishandling of funds and, in turn, the firings of six employees.

The protest and sit-in in the university's administration building began Thursday morning and quickly grew. At one point a large group of protesters belted out the Rihanna song "Bitch Better Have My Money."

Maya McCollum, a 19-year-old freshman who helped organize the sit-in, said on Friday that the news of the misappropriated financial aid money was "the straw that broke the camel's back."

On Friday, Dr. Frederick issued a statement addressing HU Resist's demands. "Howard University has birthed generations of student activists and we will always continue in that spirit," Dr. Frederick said.

The statement included a list of HU Resist's demands and information on efforts he said the university had made or has planned for each item — though he did not address the call for his resignation.

He ended by saying: "Your concerns are valid. We are listening. We are committed to jointly making changes to move Howard forward."

Protesters did not appear moved by his response. At the administration building on Friday afternoon, where a list of the demands were scrawled on large pieces of paper and hung above a main entrance, dozens of students were gathered in the foyer, chanting, "Whose school? Our school!" They had been there since Thursday afternoon, Ms. McCollum said.

Inside, empty Dunkin' Donuts boxes and Red Bull cans were scattered across the floor.

Rows of chairs blocked the entrance, and the glass doors were marked with handwritten signs: "STUDENTS ONLY. (ID REQUIRED.)"

"The staff work for us, not the other way around," said Zephaniah Galloway, 19, a freshman from Cleveland and a member of HU Resist.

Outside the building, members of the board of trustees lingered, waiting for an afternoon meeting scheduled with protesters. Eugene Newman, a board member known as Rock, declined to comment on the financial aid scandal but gave a full-bodied high-five to a student protester who came out to welcome him.

The meeting did not appease HU Resist. The group said on Friday evening that the board had not taken its demands seriously — or even fully read them — and that it would continue to occupy the building, where it was controlling all entrances and exits.

The statement released on Wednesday by the university's president did not disclose how much money was potentially embezzled by members of the financial aid office. But it said six employees had been fired "for gross misconduct and neglect of duties." Dr. Frederick added, "We will refer this matter for criminal prosecution, as appropriate."

In a statement on Friday afternoon, the board of trustees said it stood with Dr. Frederick on the handling of the financial aid matter and on his response to HU Resist's demands.

In December 2016, Dr. Frederick and the board of trustees became aware that financial aid funds may have been mishandled, quickly prompting an internal investigation, Dr. Frederick said. The university hired an outside auditor to investigate. Those results, which were reported to the president in May 2017, confirmed that misappropriation of funds had occurred from 2007 to 2016.

Dr. Frederick said he reported the matter to the United States Department of Education in July 2017. Howard's investigation concluded in September, and the employees were fired.

In a letter to students on Wednesday, Dr. Frederick said: "I feel strongly that any dollar that is taken away from a deserving student due to malfeasance or fraud is unacceptable. We will continue to take swift action against any individuals involved in this wrongdoing."

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8) America has sold its soul to special interests, and the Parkland students know it

LeVar Burton, March 23, 2018

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/america-has-sold-it-soul-special-interests-parkland-students-know-ncna859266

Actor LeVar Burton speaks at Javits Center on September 3, 2016 in New York.Jason Kempin / Getty Images file

I believe that it is possible that, in the annals of time — should our republic survive this period in history — America will be revealed to be the hollow, shallow shell of what the experiment was meant to be. The kids from Parkland, Florida are proving that it was and should always be the government of the people, by the people, for the people, and not the people with the most money.

But I think that America stopped being that place when we refused to acknowledge that this country was built on the backs of slave labor, and we decided that there would be no accountability for that. We stopped living up to that ideal when we began to delude ourselves that this nation had a manifest destiny to lead the world, but there would be no repercussions for slavery. That lie we told ourselves — that no accountability was and no repercussions were necessary — was the beginning of the downward slide to where we are now.

Just take the original gun control movement: It was white people trying to keep firearms out of the hands of people of color who has once been enslaved. The issues of guns, and the militia, the incarceration of black people and even whose deaths have prompted a response in the current opioid crisis, all of these issues have the same root cause: America's insistence that whiteness was law.

But the sooner we acknowledge our imperfections as a nation, the more chance we have of surviving this turbulent period in our history.

Look at David Hogg, one of the Parkland kids: He's acknowledgedthat there are racial disparities in how these shootings are covered, and said that he and his fellow students need to use their white privilege to bring attention to the people of color who have been subjected to similar violence who have been ignored. This kid gets it; he understands America.

People of color in this country, in this culture, tend to not matter as much as those who are white; that is the truth of America. In the Black Lives Matter movement, young black people have been shouting from the rooftops until their voices are raw and hoarse, and America hasn't listened. But now that it's white kids who are shouting at the tops of their lungs, people pay attention.

We're in deep trouble in this country, and the Parkland kids know it. When we're willing to sacrifice our children on the altar of guns and a special interest lobby, we've sold our souls, and that's the truth. We have sold our souls, and these kids aren't having it.

The denial runs deep in this country. We are willing to say the sky is purple, and believe the sky is purple, when in fact we know it's blue — for profit, for power, for personal gain, for the feeling of being right or superior. None of those are good reasons to stand by and allow children to be killed and slaughtered.

Look at what's going on in Washington: We have a man in the Oval Office who seems to have no character and no moral compass, and a Congress that has turned a blind eye to all of that. If we can't be real about the nature of the character of the president of the United States, and Congress's complicity in looking the other way, it's hard not to ask what hope there is for all of us.

I'm an eternal optimist, though: I think that anything is possible, including that America might acknowledge its imperfections. The probability that we do is up for grabs.

But, there's a lot that I find inspirational in the Parkland kids. The idea that they have taken ownership of this issue and their lives, and the lives of their peers. The idea that they haven't just taken ownership, but taken action in an era where my generation has absolutely failed.

I'm proud that spirit upon which this country was initially founded still exists somewhere in our psyche, because most of the rest of us have lost our way. We are in uncharted territory. I don't know what happens next, but I'm sure glad that these kids are standing up and speaking out.

As told to THINK editor Megan Carpentier, edited and condensed for clarity.

LeVarBurton is an actor, director and educator. He hosts the podcast LeVar Burton Reads and the founder of LeVar Burton Kids, which is "aimed at promoting critical thinking and inspiring kids' curiosity" and offers the children's app Skybrary.

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9) #BlackLivesMatter and the NBA Collide In Sacramento

by Dave Zirin, March 27, 2018

https://www.thenation.com/article/blacklivesmatter-and-the-nba-collide-in-sacramento/

Protesters block the door of the Sacramento Kings' Golden 1 Center in the wake of Stephon Clark's killing, March 22, 2018. (AP Photo / Rich Pedroncelli)

On Sunday, March 18, a 22-year-old black man named Stephon Clark was killed by Sacramento police in his grandmother's backyard. They took his life with 20 bullets. Near Clark's body, there was only a cell phone. After killing Clark, the officers muted their body cameras. On Thursday, following a week of protests, civil disobedience and other actions, Black Lives Matter demonstrators marched and their actions made national news across the sports pages. Yes, the sports pages.

These protesters made the decision to surround the Sacramento Kings' publicly funded basketball arena, the Golden 1 Center, preventing fans from attending the game. As police closed in, the team locked the doors, keeping all the fans out, with the exception of a smattering of people who arrived early or entered through a VIP entrance. The game was subsequently played in front of empty seats, the silence of the arena standing in for the silencing of Stephon Clark's voice. On Sunday, before the Kings tipped off against the Boston Celtics, players on both teams wore T-shirts during warm-ups with Clark's name on the back and the phrase, "Accountability. We Are One" across the front. They kept the shirts on during the playing 0f the national anthem. Then, on the Jumbotron, the Kings and Celtics players played a public-service announcement calling for police accountability. In the video Celtic all-star Al Horford said, "We will not shut up and dribble." Word also got out that former Sacramento Kings players DeMarcus Cousins and Matt Barnes even offered to pay for Stephon Clark's funeral.

Yet all of this athlete activism only happened because Black Lives Matter activists in Sacramento dared to act. I spoke to the founder of the Sacramento chapter of Black Lives Matter, Tanya Faison, about the decision to surround the arena and shut it down. Faison said that none of it was planned beforehand.

She explained: "Normally, how I organize, I go with the vibe of the crowd. Since Stephon was someone who had a lot of friends and family, many of them attended our first event [earlier in the week] and they were coming to this one. I knew I wanted to kind of follow their lead. So it was not planned to go to the Golden One Arena. It also wasn't planned to block the freeway. None of it was planned. It was just how the crowd moved. We went to go block an intersection and people started to get on the freeway. The police blocked the traffic for us to be there but we didn't want that so we headed to the Kings' game. And it was just like, automatically somebody said, 'Hey, let's not let anybody into the game.' And so that's what we did."

One of the stunning parts of this story is the way that the Kings had a game without fans, costing the team an untold amount of money, and yet they immediately displayed sympathy with the protesters and the family of Stephon Clark, from ownership to the front office to the players themselves.

"Yes, that was really surprising," said Faison, "But it just showed that, even though there's a lot of people saying they're not happy with what we did, it needed to happen. I'm very happy with the outcome, especially the video by the Kings and the players who spoke out in support. So yeah, I'm very happy with that.

Hopefully, it's followed up by some action."

This action includes an open invitation to Sacramento Kings players to do Black Lives Matter organizing in the city. "Players should come through to one of our events so they can reach out to our chapter and help out because Stephon Clark is definitely not the first person in Sacramento that's been killed or abused by law enforcement," she said. "Last year, alone, we were fighting for a number of people and we've been fighting for different people since 2015. If they really want to help, there's a lot of work to be done."

Back in October, Sacramento Bee associate editor Erika D. Smith wrote that Faison "might not be the leader Sacramento wants, but she's the leader Sacramento needs." She has certainly proved that where it matters most: among the people and in the streets.

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10) Remington's Bankruptcy Stalls Ruling in Sandy Hook Families' Suit

By KRISTIN HUSSEY and RICK ROJAS APRIL 1, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/nyregion/remington-sandy-hook-shooting.html?hp&action=

click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=

top-news&WT.nav=top-news

From left, Fred Guttenberg, father of Jaime Guttenberg, 14, who was killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida; Francine Wheeler, mother of Ben Wheeler, 6, a victim of the Sandy Hook shooting, and Lori Haas, mother of a survivor of the Virginia Tech shooting, during a meeting with Senate Democrats about gun violence this month. CreditJim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via Shutterstock

The lawsuit brought by family members of those killed in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School has been watched closely over years of winding its way through the court system. But a new hurdle stands in the way of a much-awaited ruling.

Remington, one of the nation's oldest gunmakers and a defendant in the lawsuit, recently filed for bankruptcy as its sales have declined and debts have mounted. The company manufactured the AR-15-style weapon used by the gunman in the 2012 attack in Newtown, Conn., in which 26 people, including 20 first graders, were killed.

The case is now before the Connecticut Supreme Court, where families brought an appeal with the aim of bringing the case to a jury trial. Remington's bankruptcy does not guard the company from potential liability, but it has stalled the court from issuing ruling on the lawsuit until the company emerges from the process. The court has been weighing the case after hearing oral arguments last year.

The families' lawyers contend that the bankruptcy will ultimately have little influence on the case's viability. "The bankruptcy proceeding doesn't affect our claim," said Katie Mesner-Hage, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, nine families who had a relative killed and a teacher who was shot and survived. "The only thing the process does is delay it to some degree."

The lawsuit has high stakes for both gun companies and gun-control advocates since it is testing a novel strategy to find a route around the broad protections granted by federal law that shield the companies from litigation if their product is used to commit a crime. Supporters contend that the case, if it makes it to trial, could offer a glimpse into how the gun industry operates and possibly provide a road map for the survivors and relatives of victims in other mass shootings who have otherwise been hamstrung in pursuing legal action.

The case, amid recurring episodes of deadly mass violence, has drawn an intense response. When the lawsuit reached the Connecticut Supreme Court, gun control advocates, school officials and emergency doctors who treated victims of assault rifle fire submitted amicus briefs in favor of the lawsuit. Gun-rights organizations also weighed in, including the National Rifle Association, which argued that the case stood to "eviscerate" the gun companies' legal protections.

Remington will remain in business as it reorganizes and unloads hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, according to court records. The process could be expedited because the company is using a so-called prepackaged bankruptcy, which could be completed as early as May. Remington's lawyers did not respond to messages seeking comment.

The military-style rifle used in the attack was made by Bushmaster, which was bought by a New York private-equity fund in 2006. The $48 billion fund, Cerberus Capital Management, eventually folded Bushmaster into Remington along with other gun companies. Remington is also the target of another high-profile case, a federal class-action lawsuit that claims that trigger defects have caused some of its shotguns to accidentally discharge.

Remington, which has about $950 million in debt, began hinting this year that it was likely to file for bankruptcy. Before the 2016 presidential election, the gun industry had maintained a robust manufacturing operation. But gun sales have plummeted since President Trump won the election; many attribute the decrease to gun buyers believing that the Trump administration and a Republican-controlled Congress would be less inclined to pursue tougher gun-control measures.

Remington recently hired Lazard, a financial advisory firm, as the company devised its restructuring plans and searched for financing for its reorganization. Lazard approached more than 30 potential lenders on Remington's behalf before finding financial companies willing to give them a loan, according to court filings. A Lazard representative wrote that many lenders "indicated that they were reluctant to provide financing to firearms manufacturers." And even some of the ones who ended up lending Remington money had their names redacted from court documents.

Susheel Kirpalani, a bankruptcy lawyer who has been consulting the Sandy Hook families' legal team, said that he and others have been scouring Remington's voluminous filings and disclosure documents, looking for anything in the complex financial transactions that might affect the Sandy Hook lawsuit. The company's filings indicate that creditors, including the Sandy Hook plaintiffs, would be "unimpaired" by the Chapter 11 process, which means that the lawsuit can resume after the reorganized Remington emerges from bankruptcy.

Even so, beyond the bankruptcy, the Sandy Hook lawsuit has faced long odds of success.

Congress granted gun companies industrywide immunity from blame when one of their products is used in a crime. But the law, enacted in 2005, includes exceptions for sale and marketing practices that violate state or federal laws and instances of so-called negligent entrustment, in which a gun is carelessly given or sold to a person posing a high risk of misusing it.

The lawsuit argues that Remington — along with a wholesaler and dealer, which were also named in the suit — erred by entrusting an untrained civilian public with a weapon designed for maximizing fatalities on the battlefield. It also asserts that the companies relied on advertising, with messages of combat dominance and slogans like "Consider your man card reissued," that appealed specifically to disturbed young men like Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old gunman.

The gun companies contend that federal law shields them from the families' claims, and a lower court judge agreed, dismissing the lawsuit in 2016.

Still, the families believe that the companies bear a measure of responsibility. "The families' ultimate goal in filing the lawsuit is accountability," Ms. Mesner-Hage said.

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11) Woman Injured by Sacramento Sheriff's Vehicle at Stephon Clark Protest

By KAYNE ROGERS and MATT STEVENS APRIL 1, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/us/sacramento-stephon-clark-protest.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=

Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

A woman identified as Wanda Cleveland was knocked to the ground Saturday night by a Sacramento County Sheriff's Department vehicle. CreditMax Whittaker for The New York Times

An activist at a Sacramento demonstration protesting the police killing of an unarmed black man in his grandmother's backyard was struck and injured by a Sheriff's Department vehicle late Saturday as law enforcement officials tried to pass through the crowd.

The Sacramento Bee and The State Hornet newspapers identified the activist as Wanda Cleveland, 61. The Bee described Ms. Cleveland as a regular attendee at City Council meetings. It said she was taken to a hospital with minor injuries and released early Sunday.

"He never even stopped," the newspaper quoted Ms. Cleveland as saying. "It was a hit-and-run. If I did that I'd be charged."

Sgt. Kevin Jordan of the Sheriff's Department said he could not confirm that someone had been hit.

But videos posted on Twitter show sheriff's vehicles, surrounded by crowds protesting the shooting death last month of Stephon Clark, moving slowly through the crowd as someone urges repeatedly on a megaphone, "Back away from my vehicle."

As the first car creeps forward, a second appears to follow quickly in its wake, striking someone who falls to the ground. A video from ABC10 News in Sacramento showed the impact.

The California Highway Patrol said a pedestrian "who may have been a protester" was taken to a hospital with minor injuries.

A spokesman for the patrol's South Sacramento office, Officer Michael Bradley, said it was investigating a collision that occurred around 9:30 p.m. outside the city limits near the corner of Florin Road and 65th Street. No further details were released.

Some Twitter users suggested that the second vehicle had sped up in order to hit a protester and then failed to stop.

Crowds in Sacramento, California's capital, have rallied almost daily since Mr. Clark was shot and killed on March 18. They have urged the firing of the two officers involved, who have been put on administrative leave.

Mr. Clark, 22, died after he was shot eight times by police officers sent to investigate reports that someone was breaking car windows. The Sacramento Police Department initially said Mr. Clark had "advanced toward the officers" while holding what they believed to be a firearm.

An independent autopsy commissioned by Mr. Clark's family and released on Friday found that most of the shots that struck him were in his back, raising questions about the police account.

The police that night were relying in part on personnel who were in a Sheriff's Department helicopter that hovered above, and who at one point reported that the suspect had picked up a crowbar.

The officers eventually spotted Mr. Clark, who appears to have run into his grandmother's backyard.

After he was killed, the police found no weapon, only a cellphone, in his possession.

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12) Court Permits New York Police to Use 'Neither Confirm nor Deny' Tactic

By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN MARCH 30, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/nyregion/nypd-neither-confirm-nor-deny.html?rref=

collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fnyregion&action=click&contentCollection=nyregion&region=

stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=6&pgtype=sectionfront

The case that gave the Police Department permission to use the phrasing concerns two Muslim men who were trying to learn whether they had been under police surveillance. CreditUli Seit for The New York Times

For decades, it has been the federal government's famous non-answer.

"We can neither confirm nor deny …"

It emerged in 1975 with the C.I.A.'s response to questions about the agency's efforts to recover a sunken Soviet submarine in the Pacific. And in the decades since then, it has been used countless times by the C.I.A., F.B.I. and other federal agencies.

On Thursday, New York State's highest court told the New York Police Department that it was free to use the phrase in response to inquiries from citizens who want access to their police files to learn if they have been the subject of surveillance.

The ruling, by the state Court of Appeals, carves out a new exemption in the state's Freedom of Information Law, which has been understood to require local agencies to at least acknowledge the existence of records, even if they were not required to release them.

But the ruling for the first time allows the New York Police Department to avoid even answering whether such files exist, said Christopher T. Dunn, a New York Civil Liberties Union lawyer who filed a brief in the case. "That's the ultimate act of secrecy," Mr. Dunn said.

The New York Police Department has a reputation for secrecy, often declining to promptly release the kind of documents — complaint reports, use-of-force investigations, officer narratives of arrests — that many other departments disseminate to the news media. In 2016, the New York Police Department stopped releasing basic information about officer discipline, though it recently indicated it would resume releasing some information, though without officers' names.

The case before the court involved public-record requests filed in 2012 by two men to get records relating to any surveillance of them by the police. The men, who are both Muslim, filed the requests after a series of articles by The Associated Press described a secretive Police Department counterterrorism program that conducted extensive surveillance of Muslim organizations and mosques. One of the men, Talib Abdur-Rashid, is the imam of a Harlem mosque. The other man, Samir Hashmi, was a student at Rutgers University and active in its Muslim Student Association. After the Police Department refused to confirm or deny the existence of the records they were requesting, the men sued.

The police maintained that even disclosing the existence or nonexistence of any such records — let alone publicly releasing any that existed — would provide too much information. "The knowledge that a person or group is the subject of a N.Y.P.D. counterterrorism investigation would allow that person or group to alter their behavior so as to avoid detection," the department's intelligence chief, Thomas Galati, wrote in an affidavit. "Conversely, the knowledge that a person or group is not a subject of investigation would allow such persons to more freely engage in illegal activity."

In the court's majority opinion, Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, accepted that the police needed room to give a non-answer. "The need for government confidentiality may be at its zenith when a law enforcement agency is undertaking a covert investigation of individuals or organizations, where the lives of the public, cooperators and undercover officers may hang precariously in the balance and the reputation, livelihood or liberty of the subject may be at stake," she wrote.

A partially concurring decision by one judge, Rowan Wilson, and a separate dissenting opinion, by Leslie Stein, expressed concern that the majority decision seems to make little distinction between long-ago surveillance related to past investigations and surveillance related to ongoing investigations.

Omar T. Mohammedi, a lawyer for the two men, criticized the decision, saying that the court had been swayed by the "fear-mongering" of the New York Police Department. "Our clients are good, law-abiding citizens," Mr. Mohammedi said. The case did not have to do with counterterrorism investigations — as the police claimed, he said. "It's not — this case is about abusing Muslims by surveilling them without having any leads on terrorism."

In a statement, the Police Department said it has "rarely" responded to public record requests with a "neither confirm nor deny" answer. "The department will continue to do so only on a very limited basis and where appropriate," the statement said.

But Mr. Dunn, the civil liberties lawyer, expressed concern that the Police Department would keep to that.

"The big question is how far they are going to push this," he said, noting that the Police Department recently issued a "neither confirm nor deny" answer to a public records request the New York Civil Liberties Union had filed that sought information regarding a 2014 Black Lives Matter protest. In that case, the civil liberties union wanted to know if the police had listened to — or jammed — phone calls among demonstrators.

"They've already used it in a protester case," Mr. Dunn said.

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BAUAW NEWSLETTER

4/01/2018

bauaw2003 BAUAW NEWSLETTER, SUNDAY, APRIL 1, 2018

Cindy Sheehan and the Women's March on the Pentagon

A movement not just a protest

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Free Leonard Peltier!

On my 43rd year in prison I yearn to hug my grandchildren.

GOP Tax Plan Would Give 15 of America's Largest Corporations a $236B Tax Cut: Report

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Siphoning Millions From Poor

Extortion, Theft and Kidnapping

An Upside-Down System

An Upside-Down System

An Upside-Down System

A Mercurial Boss

Life-or-Death Cases in the Balance

'Unwelcome Liberties'

Fallout From a Night Out

4/01/2018

bauaw2003 BAUAW NEWSLETTER, SUNDAY, APRIL 1, 2018

Cindy Sheehan and the Women's March on the Pentagon

A movement not just a protest

Different wings of the same warbird

Tell the Feds: End Draft Registration

Courage to Resist Podcast: The Future of Draft Registration in the United States

Free Leonard Peltier!

On my 43rd year in prison I yearn to hug my grandchildren.

GOP Tax Plan Would Give 15 of America's Largest Corporations a $236B Tax Cut: Report

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Siphoning Millions From Poor

Extortion, Theft and Kidnapping

An Upside-Down System

An Upside-Down System

An Upside-Down System

A Mercurial Boss

Life-or-Death Cases in the Balance

'Unwelcome Liberties'

Fallout From a Night Out

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