US Labor Department inspector general retires after warning of fraud

Dahl said the decision "has been long in the works and is for entirely personal reasons," adding that he was not "told or asked to resign."


J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

By REBECCA RAINEY

06/02/2020

Labor Department Inspector General Scott Dahl announced Tuesday he was retiring from his post just a day after warning lawmakers of massive fraud in the unemployment insurance system, becoming the latest watchdog to exit the Trump administration.

Dahl, who will leave the office effective June 21, said the decision "has been long in the works and is for entirely personal reasons," adding that he was not "told or asked to resign."

"The Department and the people it serves have benefited greatly from his contributions," Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia said in a statement. "We wish Scott and his family the very best in the future.”

On Monday, Dahl and other officials from his office told a House oversight subcommittee that they've seen a "significant amount of fraud" in unemployment programs during the coronavirus pandemic. He told lawmakers that DOL punted on his recommendation that states should collect more earnings information from applicants to combat the fraud.

Dahl also said he was "very surprised" that DOL's Occupational Safety and Health Administration had only issued one citation during the entire Covid-19 pandemic.

"This is something that we're planning on turning our attention to to look at [OSHA's] enforcement activities and seeing if they are following their standards, and what can be done to make them more efficient, effective," he told lawmakers.

During the briefing Dahl also suggested, in response to a lawmaker, that he could investigate Scalia for pressing a federal retirement board to reverse plans to begin investing in a new index that includes Chinese companies. The board's decision came after Scalia and White House officials applied pressure.

His exit comes as the Trump administration has seen an exodus of watchdogs across the federal government, including Glenn Fine, who resigned from the Defense Department inspector general's office last month.

President Donald Trump has ousted Michael Atkinson as inspector general of the intelligence community, Steve Linick as the top State Department watchdog and acting Transportation Department inspector general Mitch Behm.

I'm An Angry Black Woman. This Is What I Want White People To Know.
Candace Howze 

MAY 30/2020

© Courtesy of Candace Howze The author's great-grandfather, Booker Howze, as a young man.

Editor’s note: The opinions in this article are the author’s, as published by our content partner, and do not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft News or Microsoft. MSN Lifestyle Voices features first-person essays and stories from diverse points of view. Click here to see more Voices content from MSN Lifestyle, Health, Travel and Food.

This a photo of my great-grandfather, Booker Howze.

I never met him. In fact, my dad never met him either. He passed away when my grandad was barely a teenager. Over the past few years, I’ve spent some free time trying to discover as much about my family history as possible, connecting dots of information across yellowed, torn sheets of paper that contain snippets of the people who came together and thus produced me.© Courtesy of Candace Howze A copy of the author's great-grandfather's prison record, via Ancestry.com.

On one of the sheets of paper shown above is my great-grandfather’s name. A Mississippi native who went North during the Great Migration, he was arrested in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania (greater Pittsburgh), at the age of 24. His crime? “Suspicious person.”


Let’s pause for a moment and take that in.

My great-grandfather, at an age where most of us have barely graduated a college or snagged a decent job, was taken to prison because somebody felt he looked like a dangerous, dishonest young man.

When it comes to matters of race, I used to focus on how to fix it. My thoughts always consisted of things like, How do we solve it? Is there something new we could try? If everyone did one little thing, it could create a ripple effect. I grew exasperated at older relatives and neighbors and even peers who had grown “jaded” by the system, believing that they simply were choosing not to look on the bright side, insisting that their “complaining” and apathy was not how civil rights were “won.”

Then Trayvon Martin’s killer was left to walk free. And then cop after cop was not arrested, or arrested but not indicted, or indicted but not convicted. And then I understood.
© Courtesy of Candace Howze A photo the author took at the

I discovered how modern policing has its roots in slave patrols and not gun-slinging sheriffs in old Westerns as I’d once believed. Through research like the 1619 Project and the ”Mere Distinction of Color” exhibit at Montpelier, I finally realized that Africans were enslaved long before ― hundreds of years before ― the Constitution was even written, which means, of course, that when it was “signed, sealed and delivered,” it was a lie. White supremacy is just America’s big brother. Although they’re always trying to be better than him, they learned everything they know from his example.

When I realized these things, my feelings changed.

I no longer want the system fixed. I just don’t want the system at all.

Black Americans have consequences for our actions that are almost always potentially equal to our life. Try to pay for groceries with a counterfeit bill in the middle of a pandemic that’s left half the nation economically deprived and you end up dying in the street for the world to see. Play for your music too loud with your friends and a random guy can shoot you in broad daylight.

Yet on the other hand, calling the police on someone who’s done nothing illegal and who hasn’t harmed you could lead a white person to lose their job, take a hit in their reputation, and have people say that’s gone too far. To think that threatening or harassing someone based on race or prejudice should not have consequences is ludicrous. And it’s privilege.

Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old EMT who was shot and killed by police in her apartment this March, did nothing to merit consequence. The police were looking for a man who had already been arrested earlier that day. They allegedly entered Breonna’s apartment without announcing themselves (known as a no-knock warrant) in the middle of the night and shot her eight times. Her boyfriend ― thinking the officers were intruders ― fired back in an attempt to protect them and was charged with attempted murder. It took weeks for those charges to be dropped.

I keep thinking about this young woman, my age, with dreams and aspirations, who probably had a long day at work and was finally in the comfort of her own home, with the person she loved. Who went to sleep thinking about all the things she had to do the next day, probably hoping she didn’t catch COVID-19 at work, but instead ended up shot dead in her own bed. By men who are sworn to protect and serve the community. And for what reason? That could’ve been me, a friend, a relative. Why would that ever be OK?

We, Black people, do the work of fighting for justice because we care about one another. We defend our humanity the way your gun-toting neighbors defend their rights at every moment’s notice. But ultimately, I now see that this is not our battle alone.

We can seek justice after the fact. We can march for integration into communities that would rather move out of their homes than live across the street from us. And yes, we might change a few words in a few laws.

But marching doesn’t end racism. Smiling, speaking the King’s English, getting fancy degrees, pulling our pants up ― none of it ends racism.

Racism exists because white colonists decided hundreds of years ago to dominate a land full of native people who were minding their own business and then to kidnap people from another continent to labor mercilessly without compensation for their economic gain. And every turn of events since, every snippet of progress thereafter, has been twisted to maintain the economic and social hierarchy that existed the day America became America.

I admit it, the idea of America is super cool. It really sounds amazing and yes, it’s a geographically and culturally influential and beautiful place. But America isn’t really America. Anyone who’s paid two seconds of attention to history knows America does not live up to its own standards, and its ideals of things like unalienable rights certainly don’t apply if you’re not white. Where were the rights of all the men, women and children throughout history whose lives were taken for nothing?

If America was indeed America for everyone, we wouldn’t have to beg for our life in the street only to have it taken anyway. We wouldn’t have to argue on Twitter about whether or not someone deserved to live based on what they did during a 2-minute or 10-minute video.

Today I am not tired, disappointed or hurt. I am angry. And I’ve been thinking a lot about what to do with that anger. I’ve been thinking a lot about what to say to white friends who are reaching out and to people on social media who want to be an ally. In the past I would’ve thought it’s time to educate, but I am not in a period of my life where I feel compelled to do so. I’m sharing as much love as I can, appreciating the support, but I know everyone has to do this work for themselves.

So if you are a white person looking at a Black person like, How do I join the fight? I want you to know that joining the fight is just the beginning. There will be conflict, but it’s worth it. This is a long haul. You will need to take the mantle in spaces in which we have little influence. You need to make this your priority. It’s your turn to be angry. It’s your turn to be dissatisfied. You need to hate racism and inequality. You have to take the time to understand exactly what those things are and how you play a part. You need to pull up, read the books and check your people when opportunity arises.

If you’re thinking, “I’m not racist, I’m not prejudiced, I’m not biased.” You are. On some spectrum. And here is how I know.

I grew up surrounded by Black history. I was homeschooled and stayed largely untouched by the more direct effects of racism and prejudice in the educational system. I was raised by two educated, involved Black parents who taught me to be proud of my race. And I still left home with stereotypes and prejudices about Black people. With ideas passed down to me by mainstream media and relatives and images that taught me to think a certain way about “kinds” of Black people, based on their hair or their name or what they listened to on their iPod, as if that somehow told me their story or correlated with their intelligence. Thankfully, my interactions with people shattered all those assumptions.

But if I thought that way about my own people, how much more does a white person in a white American family feel about my people?
© Courtesy of Candace Howze The author standing next to a log that slaves cut down at a South Carolina rice plantation.

It’s time to dig down and open up so you can heal and help others to heal. I’m proud of everyone who’s already doing that.

If you’re Black and you’re reading this and needed to hear that too, it’s OK. You may not find yourself receiving a gold star for doing this at first, because it’s a bare minimum to advocate for human respect. But it’s appreciated.

Otherwise, we’ll just be over here telling our kids and grandkids what to do around police, how to be prepared for their white friends to say something insensitive, urging them not give up on life or God or their future because of what they see on the news. Black people will keep doing that 100 years from now and white people will keep saying, “Oh, wow, this is still happening.”

Or you can change that.

We do not live in separate worlds, although it often feels like we do. We live in the same country with the same news, it’s all a matter of whether you choose to take action.

If you want this to stop happening and you’re white, this is your fight too.

This requires your courage and conviction.

This is your demon to kill.

What you do in times of crisis reflects your truth.

Candace Howze is a North Carolina-based writer, podcaster and multimedia artist. In her spare time, you can find her listening to music, baking or online shopping. Find her on Instagram and Twitter.

Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh marches in anti-police brutality protest in Ann Arbor


Sam Cooper

Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh was present for a Tuesday morning anti-police brutality protest in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

© Provided by Yahoo! Sports Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh waits to lead the team on the field before an NCAA college football game against Army in Ann Arbor, Mich., Saturday, Sept. 7, 2019. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Jim Harbaugh, sporting a maize and blue mask, took part in an anti-police brutality march in Ann Arbor this morning.

(Story by @samgododge/ photo by @jenna_kieser) https://t.co/EA8GylePqv pic.twitter.com/PED0zerfn9— Aaron McMann (@AaronMcMann) June 2, 2020

“So early in my life, I had learned that if you want something, You had better make some noice” -Malcom “Detroit Red” X@coachjim4um Thank you for supporting as always. Thank you for listening to our black players, standing behind them, and supporting them during this time. pic.twitter.com/zX39RhZxYN— Chris Bryant (@cbryant58) June 2, 2020

According to the Detroit Free Press, Harbaugh marched in the protest with several members of the Wolverines football program, including staff members and former players. The protest came in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25.

The protest, which was organized by former UM football player Mahmoud Issa, took place both on Michigan’s campus and in downtown Ann Arbor.

Stand for nothing, fall for everything. #Equality #unity #love pic.twitter.com/QfF1PJUkwI— Grant Perry (@TheGrantPerry) June 2, 2020

In a statement, the University of Michigan expressing its support for coaches, staff and players “as they respectfully and peacefully express their views on the social issues affecting our country."

[Thamel: How colleges can create change in wake of George Floyd’s death]
Harbaugh ‘really, really upset’ about George Floyd’s killing

Harbaugh, in an interview with the Rich Eisen Show last week, characterized Floyd’s death as “completely outrageous.”

“I’m really, really upset about the George Floyd death and that’s kind of got me preoccupied today,” Harbaugh said May 28. “Just very horrendous. … I’m looking forward to there being an investigation and waiting for charges. That’s completely outrageous.”

On May 31, Harbaugh tweeted support of his children for speaking out about the issue.

"I believe in equal justice for all,” Harbaugh wrote. “All injustice should be confronted and punished. It has to be equal and fair for all, and no one can be above the law. I pray we can get there!"

I am really proud of @JayHarbaugh @JamesHarbaughJr @grace_harbaugh for expressing themselves.

I believe in equal justice for all.

All injustice should be confronted and punished. It has to be equal and fair for all, and no one can be above the law. I pray we can get there! https://t.co/d7JQkZqdzW— Coach Harbaugh (@CoachJim4UM) May 31, 2020

It was Harbaugh’s first tweet since December 2019.
Harbaugh, who coached Kaepernick, praised by his OC

Harbaugh’s offensive coordinator, Josh Gattis, expressed his admiration for the Harbaugh family.

“Beyond the Rooney family, I consider the impact that the Harbaugh family has had on many of us African American coaches and players to create opportunities to make an impact in the game we love,” Gattis wrote.

In challenging times of racial inequality and injustice I am even more thankful for the Harbaugh Family! TY ✊🏽✊🏻✊🏾✊🏿 pic.twitter.com/RV4bBOEmPl— Josh Gattis (@Coach_Gattis) June 2, 2020

Gattis cited Harbaugh’s time coaching Colin Kaepernick with the San Francisco 49ers. Harbaugh said last week during his interview with Eisen that he sometimes exchanges test messages with Kaepernick, who kneeled during the national anthem in protest of police brutality.

In reference to Kaepernick’s peaceful protest, Harbaugh had this to say:

“If you didn’t know then, you know now.”

More from Yahoo Sports:

AFTER A WEEK LARGEST AMOUNT OF FATALITIES LOUISVILLE
A Louisville restaurant owner known for feeding police for free was killed by authorities — and his body was reportedly left on the street for 12 hours
Bryan Pietsch Jun 1, 2020

People reenact the pinning down of George Floyd during a protest in Louisville, Kentucky, on May 29. REUTERS/Bryan Woolston


David McAtee, the owner of a barbecue restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, was killed during a protest on Monday.

McAtee was known in the community for giving food away, including to police officers, according to the Louisville Courier Journal.

McAtee was killed after police and Kentucky National Guard members were fired upon and they returned fire, according to Gov. Andy Beshear.

Locals expressed anger over reports that his body was left on the street for 12 hours after the shooting. 

Beshear called for an investigation and said body-camera footage should be released by Monday evening. 

Later on Monday, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said the police involved in the shooting did not have their body cameras on and that the police chief had been fired.

David McAtee, the owner of a barbecue restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, was killed after police and National Guard members opened fire at a protest over the death of George Floyd.

McAtee was the owner of YaYa's BBQ, according to the Louisville Courier Journal. He was known as a "community pillar," his mother, Odessa Riley, told the paper.

McAtee, who was 53, often gave food to the community for free, including police officers. "He fed them free," Riley told the paper. "He fed the police and didn't charge them nothing."

McAtee died early Monday morning after police and the Kentucky National Guard were sent to disperse a crowd in the city, where protests have continued over the death of Floyd in Minneapolis. Police said they were shot at and that they and National Guard members returned fire, which resulted in McAtee's death, according to a statement from Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.


Members of the community were especially angered by reports that his body was left on the street for 12 hours after the killing. The shooting occurred shortly after midnight, and his body appeared to be removed from the scene after noon later that day, according to WFPL, a local radio news station.

Beshear on Monday called for an investigation into the shooting and said body-camera footage should be released by Monday evening, acknowledging that people may not trust claims made by police over what happened. "I'm not asking people to trust our account," Beshear said.

But later on Monday, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said that the police did not have their body cameras turned on.

The police chief, Steve Conrad, has been fired, Fischer said, according to the Courier Journal. Disciplinary action for the officers involved is forthcoming, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.


McAtee's death comes as police have escalated protests across the country, sometimes turning violent toward unarmed and peaceful protesters. Police in New York rammed cars into a group of protesters and law-enforcement officers around the country have shot nonlethal bullets, pepper spray, and tear gas at protesters, bystanders, and journalists. A police officer was seen in Salt Lake City shoving an elderly person with a cane to the ground.

Protests have erupted across the country and in some nations around the world over the killing of Floyd, who died after a police officer in Minneapolis pressed his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes.

Remote work could accelerate the tech industry's migration to Canada, where affordable costs of living and more open immigration policies are helping create tech hubs to rival Silicon Valley
Bani Sapra
May 31, 2020

Tobias Lütke founded Shopify, the $85 billion e-commerce company based in Ottawa, Canada Photo By David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile via Getty Images


Facebook and Twitter's new remote-work policies have prompted SF Bay Area workers to begin considering leaving their homes. 

Some may choose to cross the border to Canada, home to some fast-growing tech-hubs thanks to easy immigration policies, and affordable costs of living. 

A survey by Envoy Global, a firm that helps companies sponsor and manage work visas, showed that 66% of the employers it surveyed had either established an office in Canada or were in the process of doing so. 

And Toronto's tech scene is so hot that a report issued by commercial real estate company CBRE, ranked Toronto's tech talent as the third in North America, just after the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle. 

Silicon Valley techies, newly liberated to work remotely and searching for greener pastures, may end up heading towards the great white north.

Canada has spent the past few years striving to produce tech hubs that can challenge Silicon Valley and Seattle. Now, as companies like Facebook, Twitter, Coinbase and Square have announced plans to let employees permanently work anywhere they want, employers and officials in Canada are hoping the country's moment has come.

Canada boosters point to a mix of attractive incentives and other benefits, including the fact that the cost of living — depending on where you choose to live — is largely more affordable than pricey San Francisco.

And as US immigration policies have grown increasingly stringent, Canada is touting its comparatively welcoming foreign work policies. A program called the Global Talent Stream, lets Canadian employers speed up the visa process for skilled tech workers relatively easily.

"What is frequently lost is if US employers cannot hire a person to work in San Francisco, they do have other alternatives," said Richard Burke, the CEO Envoy Global, a firm that helps companies sponsor and manage work visas.
A recent survey by Envoy showed that 66% of the employers it surveyed had either established an office in Canada or were considering of doing so. 

Big tech firms like Facebook and Google, as well as smaller startups like Lever, have established satellite offices in Toronto to take advantage of more affordable tech talent. (Other startups like Postmates and Tile have offices in Vancouver). 

Job growth

Canada is no stranger to tech giants — BlackBerry's global headquarters are in Waterloo. But a new generation of tech brands are now in the spotlight, helmed by popular e-commerce giant Shopify, which is headquartered in Ottawa.

A growing collection of tech hubs across Canada have gained prominence in recent years. In 2017, Toronto created more tech jobs than the SF Bay Area, Seattle, and Washington DC — combined, according to a survey held by the CBRE Group. The same company ranked Toronto as #3 in a tech talent survey of North American cities, just behind San Francisco and Seattle.

Companies like Terminal, a startup that helps tech firms establish remote offices are predicting that the coronavirus outbreak and shift to remote work will only accelerate job growth and startup creation.

"The US is not making it very easy or attractive for high quality talent to come to the United States. I think that increasingly, companies are realizing that they have to be leaning into remote work," Terminal CEO Clay Kellogg told Business Insider. "The COVID-19 outbreak actually is ... kind of an unfortunate catalyst for this whole shift."

That's good news for Canada, as it aims to leap ahead of San Francisco and Seattle in terms of tech talent — and hopefully be the home of the next wave of billion-dollar startups.

Toronto suffered a setback recently when, owing to the coronavirus outbreak, Alphabet subsidiary Sidewalk Labs cancelled plans to build a futuristic "smart city "along the water font, depriving the city of what would have amounted to a tech crown jewel. (BUT THEY GOT ALL THE FREE BIG DATA THEY NEEDED THROUGH THE BIDDING PROCESS)

But Toronto already has a strong foundation in the area of tech-focused urban planning, with North America's largest urban innovation center, MaRS, lodged between the University of Toronto and the University Health Center. The center says its home to 1,500 entrepreneurs and ventures, helping "an innovation economy," that will help drive the country's economic growth.

MaRS hosted an event in March, where hundreds of people dressed as Albert Einstein lookalikes to set a Guinness World Record Carlos Osorio/Toronto Star via Getty Images

Already, MaRS CEO Yung Wu says the campus has helped foster startups that help Canada "punch way above its weight," in terms of creating innovative startups. (Wu cited the Global Cleantech forum's 'top 100 cleantech innovators' as an example, noting proudly that the list counted 12 Canadian companies as cleantech leaders.)

And immigration is one big reason for that, as Wu readily admits. He's experienced immigration policies in both the US and Canada, as he got his start as an entrepreneur in the US before migrating north.

Canada, unlike the US, knows it needs to import tech talent in order to grow, Wu said, adding, "the innovation economy is entirely fueled by talent."

"We understand that talent is a supply thing, and we have to generate demand from outside," Wu said. "So we punch way above in terms of innovation. And from my perspective, if we can connect a powerhouse of innovation to global market commercialization, that's where we hit our sweet spot."

TRUMP ORDERED 101st AIRBORNE TO BE ARMED WITH LOADED RIFLES WITH BAYONETS! BAYONETS! SOUNDS FAMILIAR


700 paratroopers ‘issued bayonets’ as 82nd Airborne prepares to carry out ‘Operation Themis’ at #DCprotests: report

 June 2, 2020 By Bob Brigham


President Donald Trump’s controversial decision to use the United States military against civil rights protesters in Washington, DC could escalate after airborne troops from Fort Bragg were staged outside the capital.

“Aircraft flying over DCA last night in a show of force against #GeorgeFloyd protesters were ordered by President [Trump] – US forces in DC are operating under an official mission: Operation Themis—Greek mythology, Themis = divine law & order,” 

(NOT BLIND JUSTICE THINK ATHENA)

 Associated Press correspondent James LaPorta reported Tuesday.

“Also: 700 members of the 82nd are at Joint Base Andrews and Fort Belvoir. 1,400 more soldiers are ready to be mobilized within an hour. Soldiers are armed and have riot gear. They also were issued bayonets—standard issue but some feel could be inflammatory,” he explained. “Some context: they were issued to the members of the 82nd deploying to Washington, D.C. – they were told to pack them in their backpacks. Members I spoke said bayonets are always on their packing list but given the context of the protests, it could be perceived in a bad light.”

Some context: they were issued to the members of the 82nd deploying to Washington, D.C. – they were told to pack them in their backpacks. Members I spoke said bayonets are always on their packing list but given the context of the protests, it could be perceived in a bad light. https://t.co/h343ojJAjh
— James LaPorta (@JimLaPorta) June 2, 2020

Seattle mayor, police chief vow to review protest tactics


People peacefully protest at University Village, Monday, June 1, 2020, in Seattle as demonstrations continued, sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. (Ken Lambert/The Seattle Times via AP)

SEATTLE (AP) — Seattle’s mayor and police chief promised a large crowd of protesters Tuesday to review the department’s use of pepper spray and flash-bang grenades to break up a crowd of peaceful protesters the night before, encouraging them to keep marching as long as they do not do damage.

“Your voices holding me accountable are important and you should continue to raise them,” Mayor Jenny Durkan told those assembled outside the city’s Emergency Operations Center downtown. “We want you to march. ... We want you to continue on the path of justice. But we need you please to do it peacefully.”

Earlier in the day Seattle’s police watchdog agency said it would investigate the use of pepper spray Monday night to break up a fourth consecutive day of large protests over the George Floyd killing.

The department insisted that demonstrators threw fireworks and tried to storm a barricade near a police station. Police Chief Carmen Best said one officer was struck in the face with a chunk of concrete.

 Protesters chant "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" as they march Monday, June 1, 2020, in Seattle. Monday's protests in the city against police violence were peaceful. (Dean Rutz/The Seattle Times via AP)

But video posted on Reddit and Facebook showed that in the moments before the chaos began, an officer grabbed a pink umbrella that a demonstrator was holding just across a barricade as a shield against a potential application of pepper spray. Other officers nearby then began spraying chemicals and firing flash-bangs at the crowd.

“It was a beautiful, beautiful march for hours,” the mayor said. “We know the end was not how it was meant to be, and the chief and I have talked about it. We’re going to look at it.”

Durkan also promised to address underlying issues of injustice and discontent with the crowd. When one protester asked her when, she asked what the group was doing Wednesday.

Best expressed support for the protesters, saying, “As a black woman, I feel the same things you feel. Just because I wear the uniform doesn’t change that.”

Demonstrators listen to people speak Monday, June 1, 2020, outside City Hall in Seattle during peaceful protests over the the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, among others. (Dean Rutz/The Seattle Times via AP)


During a subsequent news conference, Durkan emphasized that change is needed to remedy a deep history of discrimination that has marred the U.S. since its founding. She also spoke to Seattle’s efforts to reform its police departments; in her prior position as U.S. attorney, she led the Justice Department in forcing the city into a consent decree to change training and accountability practices after questionable uses of force.

She stressed that police uses of force must be rare, necessary and proportional, and she said she had concerns about police tactics used Monday night.

Seattle’s Office of Police Accountability said Monday it has received about 12,000 complaints over the Seattle Police Department’s handling of the demonstrations, break-ins and theft. There were reports that a young girl was tear-gassed, officers placed their knees on the necks of two people who were being arrested, and protesters twice grabbed unattended rifles out of police cars before being disarmed by a television news crew’s security guard. Many of the incidents were captured on video.

On Tuesday, the agency said it was adding Monday night’s use of pepper spray to disperse the crowd to the long list of events it’s investigating. The agency, which is led by a civilian director and supervisors, uses civilian investigators as well as Seattle police sergeants to conduct its work, then presents its findings and recommendations to the chief.

The city’s Office of the Inspector General will also conduct a review, Durkan said.

“I am extremely concerned that the crowd management tactics that I have seen being used by the Seattle Police Department are just out of proportion,” Seattle City Council President Lorena González said in an interview.

Demonstrators in Washington and around the country have been protesting the killing of Floyd, a black man who died May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for several minutes even after he stopped moving and pleading for air.

The police department declared the protests a riot about 9 p.m., saying the decision was made “after a crowd threw rocks, bottles and fireworks at officers and attempted to breach barricades one block from the East Precinct.”

That explanation drew criticism from protesters and some city leaders. City Council Member Teresa Mosqueda tweeted a link to overhead video taken by a witness and posted on Reddit, which did not show projectiles from the crowd or attempts to breach the barricade in the moments before the chaos began.

“THIS IS NOT A RIOT,” Mosqueda tweeted.

González said the police and fire chiefs were due to discuss the demonstration response at a council meeting on Wednesday.

“We want to be able to get a better understanding of what the response was and has been,” she said. “My hope is that we’ll be able to correct course in a way that doesn’t eviscerate the trust we have spent so many years trying to rebuild with communities of color in our city.”

Best said a 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew will remain in effect through Saturday. She said police do not intend to enforce it in a heavy-handed manner but want to be able to use it to keep the peace if necessary, given the looting and violence that occurred during last weekend’s protests.

___

This story has been corrected to show that the police watchdog agency has received about 12,000 complaints, not 1,200.

Washington man has some surprise guests: about 60 protesters


Demonstrators react as a helicopter circles low as people gather to protest the death of George Floyd, Monday, June 1, 2020, near the White House in Washington. Floyd died after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Rahul Dubey had some unexpected guests Monday night — about 60 in all — as a tense nation’s capital continued to grapple with the fallout from the death of George Floyd while in police custody.

They were protesters out after Washington’s 7 p.m. curfew and about to be arrested when Dubey frantically waved them into his rowhouse. Police chased them as far as the entrance. Inside, pandemonium ensued as some of the screaming protesters hit by pepper spray sought relief for their eyes with milk and water. On the back patio, neighbors pitched in by handing milk over the fence.

“The whole time he didn’t think of himself,” said one of the protesters, a 22-year-old Virginia man named Meka who declined to give his last name. “He was just trying to keep everybody safe, make sure we knew our rights and to make sure our spirits were lifted throughout the night.”

Dubey said a police line was about two houses away when he flung his door open and he encouraged people to come inside.

“And now the pepper spray is coming, and they’re coughing and they can’t see and they’re tripping up on the stairs and their friends or whoever’s around them is helping them, pulling them inside the house. And this went on for 10 minutes,” Dubey said, adding that “it was pure terror. It was 10 minutes of terror.”

Meka insists that the protesters acted peacefully throughout the evening. He said he didn’t see anybody who tried to fight police or cause damage. At the same time, he acknowledged openly defying the curfew as he participated in his third consecutive night of protesting.

“I believe, as an American citizen, they don’t have the right to place a curfew on us if we were just peacefully protesting. I believe that’s unconstitutional in the first place,” Meka said, adding that he was just trying to make a difference in the world.

Dubey said he also viewed the protesters as acting respectfully: “The last thing that they were chanting with their arms out peacefully was ’let us through, let us through.’”

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered a curfew from 7 p.m. Monday until 6 a.m. the following day. She emphasized that “if you are out, then you are subject to be stopped and/or arrested, so it’s very important that you stay at home.”

The move came after violence erupted the night before near the White House, where looters and vandals set fire to parked cars and buildings, including historic St. John’s Church. Firefighters were able to quickly extinguish that fire.

D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said at a news conference Tuesday that police started seeing behavior among the protesters in northwest Washington around 9 p.m. Monday that was consistent with what preceded violent activity the night before.

He said police moved to get that stopped with arrests and a homeowner “allowed a number of people who were going to be arrested into his home.”

Newsham said police were in constant communication with Dubey and that the people in the home ultimately were not arrested. At one point, Meka said, police officers sought to enter after stating they had received a 911 call, but the protesters all denied making such a call and the officers left.

All told, however, there were 194 arrests in that neighborhood.

While the visitors praised Dubey, he was impressed with them as well.

“They were all strangers to each other before this started and when we were in that first hour we were all taking care of each other,” he said. As night continued into early morning, he said the group began “sharing stories of where they were on Sunday and what had happened and, you know, why Black Lives Matter and what they were feeling inside.”

DEAR POLITICAL CHICKEN LITTLES 

THERE IS NO ANARCHIST INTERNATIONAL ORDER

THE BLACK BLOC ARE ALL LOCAL

ANTIFASCIST ACTION IS ANYONE OPPOSED TO FASCISM AND WHITE SUPREMACY

ANARCHIST ARE ANTI STATE, ANTI GOVERNMENT AND ANTI ORGANIZATION

EVERYONE KNOWS ANARCHIST ORGANIZATION IS AN OXYMORON

AND I SHOULD KNOW I AM AN ANARCHIST

SO ARE YOU 

False claims of antifa protesters plague small U.S. cities

ALL CLAIMS ABOUT ANTIFA ARE FALSE

Demonstrators gather to protest the death of George Floyd, Tuesday, June 2, 2020, in Washington. Floyd died after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

CHICAGO (AP) — In the days since President Donald Trump blamed antifa activists for an eruption of violence at protests over police killings of black people, social media has lit up with rumors that the far-left-leaning group is transporting people to wreak havoc on small cities across America.

                              HOW TO IDENTIFY ANTIFA AKA ANTI FASCISTS

The speculation was being raised by conservative news outlets and pro-Trump social media accounts, as well as impostor Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Twitter and Facebook busted some of the instigators behind the unsubstantiated social media chatter. Twitter determined Monday that a tweet promising antifa would “move into residential areas” and “white” neighborhoods was sent by the white supremacy group Identity Evropa. The tweet was shared hundreds of times and cited in online news articles before Twitter removed it Monday, a company spokesperson said

Yet the tweet continued to circulate Tuesday on Facebook and Instagram.

Facebook, using information shared by Twitter, announced Tuesday night it also took down a handful of accounts on its platform that were created by whites supremacy groups like Identity Evropa and American Guard, some of them posing as part of the antifa movement.

For years, some social media users have tried to delegitimize controversial or political protests with baseless theories that they were organized by wealthy financiers or extremists organizations. Over the weekend, Trump singled out antifa as being responsible for the violent protests triggered by the killing of George Floyd, saying in a tweet: “It’s ANTIFA and the Radical Left.”

“Usually you see this when there’s an interest to deflect conversations from protests to just accusing the protests of being violent, organized or having backers that are evil,”said Filippo Menczer, a professor of informatics and computer science at Indiana University. “The president mentioning it, of course, has generated a huge spike.”

The theories about antifa — short for “anti-fascists” and an umbrella term for lefitst militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations — have trickled through cities across the country in recent days.

Police departments say people are phoning in “tips” they see on social media claiming antifa is sending buses or even planes full of antifa activists to their area.

In Payette County, Idaho — a rural county of 24,000 — the calls started early Monday morning after one Facebook user said the sheriff had spotted antifa rioters in the area. The calls didn’t taper off until the sheriff’s office debunked the rumor on Facebook.

“It’s really a small community, where our citizens know us pretty well,” said Payette County Sheriff Lt. Andy Creech. “When the post got out there, we started getting phone calls directly.”

Meanwhile, Facebook users were also warning their friends to stay clear of a shopping center in a New Jersey suburb, saying it would be the center of antifa destruction on Tuesday.

But police had “no credible information” that antifa would be present in the area, Toms River Police Department media specialist Jillian Messina said in an email. The police aren’t aware of anyone showing up at all, she added.

Identical Facebook and Twitter posts about busloads of antifa protesters also stumped the Sioux Falls Police Department, where officers in the South Dakota city said they didn’t see any unusual bus activity in town. But the claims still spread for days ahead of a planned protest this Saturday, said Sam Clemens, a public information officer for the department.

“Everyone heard there were going to be buses of people,” Clemens said. “It was very specific: there were three busloads.”

Even the owner of a Michigan limousine business was forced to refute online rumors when two of his buses became the center of a conspiracy theory that liberal financier George Soros was funneling protesters to Milan, Michigan. Social media users widely shared a manipulated photo of his white buses, edited to show the words “Soros Riot Dance squad” emblazoned on the sides.

The buses belong to Sean Duval, the owner of local transportation company Golden Limousine International, and don’t have any words printed on them.

Said Duval: “It’s frustrating when people from the outside start instigating and try to turn American against American.”

___

Associated Press writers Barbara Ortutay in Oakland, Calif., Beatrice Dupuy in New York and Ali Swenson in Seattle contributed to this report.