B.C.'s Site C dam to cost $16 billion, delayed until 2025

VICTORIA — The cost of British Columbia's Site C hydroelectric dam has grown by $6 billion, bringing the price tag of the megaproject to $16 billion and stretching the completion date to 2025.  

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The provincial government says the skyrocketing expenses are due to construction setbacks, geotechnical issues, COVID-19 and other cost and schedule pressures.

Premier John Horgan's announcement comes weeks after a former deputy finance minister completed his report on the status of the northeastern B.C. dam and submitted the study for cabinet consideration.

The review was ordered last July after Crown-owned BC Hydro reported concerns about risks and delays, and the province says it has accepted all 17 of Peter Milburn's recommendations, including a strengthened project assurance board.

The government also released a review by two independent experts that found changes to the foundation to address geotechnical issues on the project's right bank will ensure Site C meets safety standards.

The province says terminating Site C now would mean an immediate writedown of about $10 billion, which would result in an average 26 per cent increase in BC Hydro rates over the next 10 years if covered by ratepayers.

It says continuing with the project means the costs will be recovered through rates over the 70-year lifespan of the dam.

Horgan also announced new leadership at BC Hydro as Doug Allen — who has held top positions at the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia and TransLink — replaces Ken Peterson as chairman of the board.

The premier said in December 2017 that the NDP government would reluctantly support completion of the dam across the Peace River just west of Fort St. John, but he would never have started the project commissioned by the previous B.C. Liberal government.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 26, 2021.

The Canadian Press

CANADA

Pandemic increased direct aid to fossil fuel producers, new study shows


OTTAWA — A new report suggests the economic impact of the pandemic led to a massive increase in federal aid to Canada's oilpatch.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

But the annual inventory of fossil fuel subsidies published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development also highlights that almost all of the direct aid was paid out in two programs to protect jobs and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

It raises further questions about how to define fossil fuel subsidies, an issue Canada has not solved despite promising to eliminate "inefficient" ones for more than a decade now.

"The problematic aspect is how do we make sure they're not supporting for future fossil fuel production," said Vanessa Corkal, a policy analyst at the IISD and author of the report.

The IISD report shows Canada spent at least $1.9 billion in direct aid to the traditional energy sector last year, up from $600 million in 2019.

More than three-quarters of that — $1.5 billion — was to help companies restore abandoned oil wells in Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia.

These are wells that were left with no owner, often when a company went bankrupt, but which continue to leak emissions, mostly methane. It's estimated there are more than 125,000 of them in Canada.

Another $320 million was aid to Newfoundland and Labrador's offshore oil industry, which was hit hard last year by the pandemic and the oil price collapse in the spring.

Corkal said initially the oil recovery fund for the province was pitched in a way that would require it to show an environmental impact, but it's not clear that's happening. Most of that funding has yet to be committed.

Canada first promised to eliminate inefficient fossil fuel subsidies as part of a G20 commitment in 2009, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau more recently set a target date of 2025 to do it.

There is no set definition yet for what inefficient means. Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson says that in his view, programs that are good for the environment don't count.

"Fossil fuel subsidies are those that are largely dedicated to either enhanced fossil fuel production or extraction," he said in an interview with The Canadian Press Thursday.

Wilkinson said he thinks most of the measures listed in the new report aren't subsidies, including the funds to properly decommission abandoned wells.

"That, in my mind, is not a fossil fuel subsidy," he said. "If you want to call it a fossil fuel subsidy then it's not an inefficient fossil fuel subsidy. Those are things that are about environmental remediation. They're about ensuring you're putting people back to work while doing good things for the environment."

Corkal said any kind of financial support to companies that produce fossil fuels could ultimately help those companies invest to produce more oil and gas. She said that just makes no sense when the government is trying to reduce that production by putting a price on the pollution they create when burned.

The report likened having subsidies and a carbon price to "trying to bail water out of a leaky boat."

The G20 fossil fuel subsidy promise has led to multiple countries partnering up to do peer reviews of each other's subsidies. The United States and China, Germany and Mexico, and Italy and Indonesia all completed their reports in 18 to 24 months.

Canada and Argentina agreed to a joint review in June 2018, but it's still not finished.

Wilkinson would not say when it might be done.

Corkal said it's impossible to phase out anything until there's a full picture of what exists.

Environment groups welcomed the orphaned oil well program last spring, believing it to be a better way to help the sector than subsidizing oil production. But Corkal said taxpayers shouldn't be on the hook for cleaning up orphaned wells permanently.

"Even if a subsidy has clear emissions reductions benefits, it's ultimately still reducing the cost of business for fossil fuel producers," she said.

President Joe Biden made eliminating fossil fuel subsidies in the United States an immediate priority. On his first full day in office he directed all federal agencies to identify any direct federal spending on fossil fuels, and to eliminate any such spending from the budget next year.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 25, 2021.

Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press

Alberta judge rejects injunction to maintain last-resort opioid treatment program
Wallis Snowdon  CBC

© Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press The injunction application sought to maintain funding for the injectable opioid agonist treatment (iOAT) program.

An emergency court injunction that would have maintained a last-resort treatment for Albertans suffering from the most severe forms of opioid addiction has been rejected.

The application for an injunction was filed by 11 Albertans struggling with severe substance abuse.

If granted, the injunction would have prevented all injectable opioid agonist treatment (iOAT) patients from being denied the treatment until a lawsuit triggered by the provincial government's decision to discontinue funding for the program concludes.

"The impact on the plaintiffs of the province's planned changes to iOAT will be minor," reads a decision issued by Edmonton Court of Queen's Bench Justice Grant Dunlop on Thursday.

The lawsuit filed last year against the provincial government argues that discontinuing the program would be dangerous for clients who relied on the program.

The statement of claim, filed Sept. 30 in Edmonton Court of Queen's Bench, argues cancelling the treatment infringes on patients' charter rights by putting their lives and personal security in peril, and amounts to discrimination. None of the allegations has been proven in court.

Edmonton lawyer Avnish Nanda, who is representing the plaintiffs pro bono, argued that ending the program would force clients to once again resort to using street drugs, a supply which has become increasingly toxic since the pandemic began.

He said it may have been difficult for the judge to understand the life and death challenges of addiction.

"It's disappointing," Nanda said in interview Friday. "There is no doubt that people will die from this decision.

"My concern is that more patients will die while this takes four to five years to litigate."

He said his clients are worried about what the decision will mean for their treatment.

"These are real people ... and just the indifference of this government to their lives, and the lack of real remedies from the court, it just indicates to them, my clients, that their lives don't matter."

Nanda said the province has promised that treatment for his clients will remain largely unchanged but the details of that new medical service remain unclear. With iOAT clinics set to close next month, he's deeply concerned.

"The court said the alternative model is good enough, but that model is hypothetical. The is no funding in place," he said. "That's what raises real alarm bells for me; ... there are no specific details on what is going to happen."

Following a hearing on the injunction on Feb. 10, Dunlop had reserved his decision on the case. In his decision issued Thursday, Dunlop said Nanda fell short of effectively proving his case.

"I find that the planned changes and their effect on the plaintiffs are minor," Dunlop said in his written decision.

"While there is an argument to be made that those changes will breach one or more of the plaintiffs' charter rights, the plaintiffs have not established that they will suffer irreparable harm as a result of those changes."

Injectable opioid agonist treatment — which allows patients to inject hydromorphone, a medical-grade opioid three times daily under the supervision of a nurse — is offered only when all other treatments prove ineffective.

Clients enrolled in the program are also provided access to a variety of services including psychological, financial and housing supports.

Clinics in Edmonton and Calgary offering the treatment are set to close March 31 when their provincial funding runs out.

The clinics were set up under a two-year pilot program announced by the previous NDP government in late 2017. The Calgary clinic opened in October 2018. The Edmonton clinic opened in May 2019. Together, they once served more than 200 patients.

A $14-million grant for the program was set to expire in March 2020 but the United Conservative Party government, elected in April 2019, renewed it for another year to transition patients to other forms of treatment.

The province has said it expects that all patients will be transitioned out by the end of March and will still be provided access to injections at provincial clinics. Court heard that a funding application had not yet been made for the new treatment program.

The details of that treatment were revealed for the first time during the injunction hearing on Feb. 10.

Court was told that clients will still be supplied with injectable hydromorphone through Alberta Health Services at 10 opioid dependency program (ODP) clinics across the province.

Lawyers representing the province asked that the application for an injunction be dismissed, arguing that access to treatment for users of the program would remain largely unchanged.

"On the evidence before me, none of the plaintiffs will suffer any serious harm from the changes planned by the province," Dunlop wrote.

"The evidence does not establish a high probability that the changes will cause death or serious health consequences for any of the plaintiffs. At worst, some ... may postpone or miss some primary care because of the combination of the time required to receive opioid injections and other challenges they face connected to their opioid use disorder.

"In addition, there is a possibility of minor inconvenience, such as having to go further afield to access some medical services than they presently do at the iOAT clinics. In combination, the likelihood of the harms and the magnitude of the harms do not amount to irreparable harm."

The originating lawsuit details the lives of 11 addicts, each consumed by their own trauma.

Some experienced childhood abuse and homelessness, and have cycled in and out of foster homes, prison cells and treatment facilities. Some have overdosed numerous times.

One plaintiff, Taylor Anthony Maxey, 31, shares a similar cycle of addiction with that of his fellow plaintiffs.

Maxey had a traumatic childhood, enduring years of physical, mental and sexual abuse.

He went on to become a competitive swimmer in his youth but suffered a spinal injury and began using opioids to dull both his physical and mental pain.

At first, the drugs were prescribed, but as his addiction deepened, he turned to street drugs. He attempted suicide, was eventually disowned by his family, and spent 10 years living on the streets committing petty crimes to feed his habit.

Maxey began the program in October 2018, and was found to have an unusually high tolerance for opioids. He requires double the recommended daily dose to keep his withdrawal pains at bay.

"With the closure of iOAT, Maxey will be unable to manage his opioid use disorder," reads the statement of claim. "No other treatment is effective.

"Maxey would lose everything he has gained through iOAT: stable housing and relationships, improving mental health and hope for the future."

Iceberg size of Greater London breaks off Antarctica

Sarah Marsh THE GUARDIAN

An iceberg almost the size of Greater London has split off from Antarctica, near a British Antarctic Survey station.

© Photograph: Robert Taylor/AP The Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica in January 2020. The separation occurred just over 20km from Britain’s Halley research station.


Related: Researchers rethink life in a cold climate after Antarctic find

The separation occurred just over 20km from Britain’s Halley research station but there was no one in the base and so there was no risk to human life. The 1,270 sq km, 150-metre-thick chunk of frozen water separated from the Brunt Ice Shelf on Friday.

The British Antarctic Survey (BAS), which has been operating Halley in a reduced role since 2017 because of the concern an iceberg could imminently split off, captured footage of large cracks at Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf earlier in the month.

Large cracks in the ice of this part of Antarctica were first discovered a decade ago and, since then, the BAS has been monitoring the area in case of just such an event. BAS has a range of GPS devices on the Brunt. These relay information about ice movements back to the agency’s headquarters in Cambridge.

Adrian Luckman, British glaciologist and professor of geology at Swansea University in Wales, has been examining images of the brunt in recent weeks and estimating when a large chunk of ice might break off from the glacier.

Related: 'Strange pale penguin': rare yellow and white bird discovered among king penguins in Atlantic

“Although the breaking off of large parts of Antarctic ice shelves is an entirely normal part of how they work, large calving events such as the one detected at the Brunt Ice Shelf on Friday remain quite rare and exciting,” the remote-sensing expert told the BBC. “With three long rifts actively developing on the Brunt Ice Shelf system over the last five years, we have all been anticipating that something spectacular was going to happen.

“Time will tell whether this calving will trigger more pieces to break off in the coming days and weeks. At Swansea University we study the development of ice shelf rifts because, while some lead to large calving events, others do not, and the reasons for this may explain why large ice shelves exist at all.”

Greek police tear-gas metro station during protest
AFP 
Police in Athens on Friday fired tear gas into a metro station entrance as they scuffled with demonstrators defending a far-left hitman, near death after a long hunger strike in prison

.

© LOUISA GOULIAMAKI Riot police use tear gas against protesters at a subway entrance in Athens on Friday

An AFP photographer said the police fired the irritant gas into a central Athens station as they chased down dozens of protesters.

Several protests have been held in recent weeks in support of Dimitris Koufodinas, the top assassin for the defunct November 17 extremist group, who has refused food for nearly 50 days after being refused a prison transfer.

His partner and son's mother, Angeliki Sotiropoulou, told AFP on Thursday that the 63-year-old was now in a "critical condition" and "borderline comatose".

Koufodinas is seeking a transfer from a high-security prison in Domokos, central Greece, to Korydallos prison in Athens to be near his family.

Prison authorities argue that only suspects in pre-trial detention, not long-term convicts, are held at Korydallos prison.

Greek judges, lawyers and intellectuals have signed petitions calling on judicial authorities to respect Koufodinas' rights.

Supporters of Koufodinas have demonstrated outside the home of Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou, and vandalised the offices of two ministers.

Dubbed 'Poison Hand' by Greek media, Koufodinas was the main hitman of the far-left Greek extremist organisation November 17 that was dismantled in 2002.

He is serving multiple life sentences, having been convicted of 11 killings.

The November 17 group launched dozens of attacks between 1975 and 2000 that killed 23 people.

Their victims included the CIA station chief in Athens, several prominent Greek businessmen, Turkish diplomats and a British military attache.

One of Koufodinas' victims was Pavlos Bakoyannis, a lawmaker who was the father of Athens Mayor Costas Bakoyannis and brother-in-law to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

Upon coming to power in 2019, Mitsotakis' government tightened prison regulations for violent crime offenders.

pho/jph/pvh

The Biden Administration Reversed A Policy That Used The Coronavirus Pandemic To Limit Immigration

One analyst said the policy blocked thousands of people from legally immigrating to the US.

Hamed Aleaziz BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on February 24, 2021


Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images
President Joe Biden signs executive orders on Feb. 24, 2021.

President Joe Biden revoked on Wednesday a Trump-era order that temporarily banned green cards for certain groups of people outside the United States, the latest attempt by the new administration to quickly undo the restrictive immigration policies of the former administration.

Former president Donald Trump signed a proclamation in April that suspended access to green cards for certain people outside the US seeking to immigrate legally. That included family members of permanent residents, parents and siblings of US citizens, and thousands of people who come to the country as part of a lottery system. The former president had said that the order was necessary to stop those who posed a “risk” to the labor market during the pandemic. On Wednesday, Biden moved to rescind it.

Biden wrote, "[Trump’s order] harms the United States, including by preventing certain family members of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents from joining their families here. It also harms industries in the United States that utilize talent from around the world. And it harms individuals who were selected to receive the opportunity to apply for, and those who have likewise received, immigrant visas through the Fiscal Year 2020 Diversity Visa Lottery.”

Trump’s order, which was signed in the weeks after the pandemic was declared, targeted areas of legal immigration that he had long criticized, including people who obtain green cards through familial relationships of US citizens and permanent residents, as well as people who get status through a visa lottery. He later also signed an order in June that restricted work visas. That order has not been revoked.

Immigration attorneys and experts said Biden’s reversal of the policy would have a significant impact.

“This is literally a life changing order by the President. 7,000 Diversity Lottery winners can now enter the United States without fear of being denied entry to start their own American Dreams. Parents, children, and siblings of US Citizens can now be reunited with their families. … 'Big’ does not begin to describe this Order,” said Charles Kuck, an immigration attorney based in Atlanta, said in a statement.

Sarah Pierce, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, said the order signed by Trump led to thousands of potential immigrants being blocked from entering the country.

“The revocation is a strong statement about the asset immigration represents to the United States, even at a time of economic uncertainty,” she said.

Immigrants who want to live in the US permanently obtain visas through their relationships with family members who are already citizens or green card holders. Some groups of people are able to obtain these permanent visas by having “extraordinary” abilities in the arts and sciences or being a highly specialized and skilled worker.

Each year, the government generally provides around 1 million green cards. About half are given to those who are already in the US and who are able to obtain the status after coming to the country on a separate visa, according to the Migration Policy Institute.


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Hamed Aleaziz is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in San Francisco.

India Has Its Own Alternative To Twitter. It's Filled With Hate.

Embraced by India's right-wing government, Koo has given a platform to anti-Muslim hostility.

Pranav DixitBuzzFeed News Reporter

Reporting From New Delhi

Posted on February 23, 2021, 



Dado Ruvic / Reuters



NEW DELHI — In early February, politicians from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party started signing up for a social network that almost nobody had heard of.

“I am now on Koo,” India’s commerce minister posted on Twitter to his nearly 10 million followers. “Connect with me on this Indian micro-blogging platform for real-time, exciting and exclusive updates.” Millions of people, most of them BJP supporters, followed, and the Twitter clone became an instant hit, installed by more than 2 million people over 10 days earlier this month, according to app analytics firm Sensor Tower.

The timing wasn’t coincidental. For days, India’s government had been locked in a fierce tug-of-war with Twitter, which defied a legal order to block accounts critical of India’s Hindu nationalist government, including those belonging to journalists and an investigative news magazine. In response, India’s IT ministry threatened to send Twitter officials to jail. Amid the standoff, government officials promoted Koo as a nationalist alternative, free from American influence.

The site, which bills itself as “the voice of India in Indian languages” is almost exactly like Twitter, except “Koos” are restricted to 400 characters, the trending topics section is filled with government propaganda, and the logo is a yellow, not blue, bird.

More troublingly, on Koo, Hindu supremacism runs wild, and hate speech against Muslims, India’s largest minority, flows freely, driven by some of the government’s most hardcore supporters.

A BJP party worker posted a poll asking followers to choose from four denigrating labels for Muslims, including “anti-nationals” and “jihadi dogs.” A person whose bio says he teaches at the Indian Institute of Technology, a top engineering college whose graduates are coveted by Silicon Valley, shared a hateful comic strip depicting Muslim men as members of a bloodthirsty mob. Some people shared conspiracy theories about Muslims spitting in people’s food to spread disease, while others shared news stories about crimes committed by people with Muslim names in attempts to demonize an entire religion. One person warned Muslims not to follow him and called them slurs. “I hate [them],” one of his posts said.

As the global internet splinters, and mainstream platforms like Facebook and Twitter square off against nation states and fitfully crack down on hate speech, nationalist alternatives are springing up to host it, something that experts say is a growing trend.

“This content wants to find new homes,” evelyn douek, a lecturer at Harvard Law School who studies global regulation of online speech, told BuzzFeed News. Hate speech, disinformation, harassment, and incitement that mainstream platforms have been grappling with for years are particularly problematic on platforms like Koo, she said, because those sites come under less scrutiny. “These problems come to every platform in the end,” douek said, “but with the proliferation of these alternatives, there’s likely to be far less attention and pressure on them. It also creates the possibility that there will be a global internet that has one kind of discourse, and completely alternative conversations happening on national platforms in parallel.”

Aprameya Radhakrishna, Koo’s cofounder and CEO, told BuzzFeed News that his site was not intended as a vehicle for hatred or designed to be an ideological echo chamber.

“You can’t moderate every piece of content at scale,” he said.

Radhakrishna is a Bangalore-based entrepreneur who sold a ride-hailing startup to Ola, India’s Uber rival, in 2015 for $200 million. He launched Koo in March last year. Earlier this month, as downloads surged, the company raised $4.1 million from investors, including former Infosys cofounder Mohandas Pai, a vocal supporter of the Modi government.

Koo doesn’t have a moderation team, Radhakrishna said. Instead, the platform relies on people to flag content they think is problematic. A team only looks at pieces of content that Radhakrishna calls “exceptions.”

“Even Facebook and Twitter are still figuring moderation out,” Radhakrishna said. “We are a 10-month-old company. We are working on our policies.” He added that he believed expressing thoughts wasn’t a problem until it led to violence.

“We won’t take action against something just because we feel like it,” he said. “It will be taken based on the laws of the land.”

A small section titled “Rules and Conduct” buried in the app’s terms and conditions forbids people from posting content that “is invasive of another’s privacy,” “hateful,” “racially” or “ethnically objectionable,” or “disparaging.”

Despite the comparisons to Parler, which positioned itself as a conservative alternative to Twitter and Facebook in the US, Radhakrishna insists that his app is apolitical. “We would love for anybody who wants to adopt the platform to adopt it,” he said. “Politics isn’t the only aspect of India. The platform is made for expression and expressing anything.”

More than a dozen Indian government departments now use Koo. Earlier this month, the country’s IT ministry, the government department that threatened Twitter officials with jail, posted a statement on Koo expressing displeasure about Twitter hours before it posted the same statement on Twitter, the department’s platform of choice for official announcements.

Inside Twitter, which counts India among its fastest-growing global markets, employees are keeping a watchful eye over Koo. “It’s definitely on our radar,” one employee who requested anonymity, told BuzzFeed News. “I don’t know yet if it will be a threat, but we are watching.”

Radhakrishna said the company’s homegrown origins gave it an edge. “We are an Indian company and we will frame our behavior around an Indian context,” he said. “That will be better than what international companies do because they are also guided by their home policies that they have set out.”

When asked what he meant by an “Indian context,” Radhakrishna said he didn’t have any concrete examples. “I haven’t dealt with any real scenario,” he said.


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Pranav Dixit is a tech reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Delhi.

Sen. 'RUSSIAN' Ron Johnson Told Capitol Security Officials That “Fake” Trump Supporters Started The Capitol Riots

Johnson, who refused to condemn Trump’s lies about the election, suggested Trump supporters were not actually responsible for the Jan. 6 attack.

Paul McLeodBuzzFeed News Reporter

Reporting From

Washington, DC

Posted on February 23, 2021, 

Pool / Getty Images

Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin

WASHINGTON — Sen. Ron Johnson claimed Tuesday that left-wing “provocateurs” and “fake” Trump supporters sparked the violence at the Capitol riots.

Johnson made the comments as Capitol Hill security chiefs testified before a Senate committee investigating how rioters were able to breach the Capitol on Jan.

Both Democrat and Republican senators spent their time grilling security heads on the logistics of what went wrong, before Johnson read a lengthy passage from a piece published in the right-wing website the Federalist titled “I Saw Provocateurs at the Capitol Riot on Jan. 6” by J. Michael Waller.

Waller claimed, without evidence, that people “whom I presumed to be Antifa or other leftist agitators” were the ones who attacked police officers and turned “unsuspecting marchers into an invading mob.” He described the Trump-supporting crowd as overwhelmingly peaceful and included a section about how they did not even litter.

BuzzFeed News was on the ground outside the Capitol on Jan. 6 and witnessed hundreds of Trump supporters attacking the Capitol, as well as media and police, carrying Trump signs and waving Trump flags. Many of the rioters who have been charged for the insurrection have explicitly said that they are Trump supporters who came to DC prepared for a fight and went into the Capitol because they believed Trump was directing them to. Joseph Padilla, who is charged among other things with joining a group that attacked police with a giant Trump sign with a metal frame, for example, posted on TheDonald after Jan. 6 that he wanted to be clear it was “Patriots” like himself who attacked the Capitol, not “Antifa,” according to charging documents unsealed on Tuesday.

Johnson spent most of his allotted time for questioning witnesses by reading passages from the Federalist piece that painted Trump supporters as overwhelmingly peaceful and made unsubstantiated suggestions that left-wing provocateurs were actually responsible for the attack.

“I’d really recommend everyone on the committee read this account,” Johnson said.

Johnson was one of 13 Republican senators who announced they would vote against certifying Joe Biden’s Electoral College win leading up to the Jan. 6 count. Several of them, including Johnson, reversed course after the Capitol siege and voted for certifying the results. The crowd had stormed the Capitol in an attempt to stop the count after then-president Donald Trump told them to “fight like hell” to stop the election from being stolen.

For weeks after the election, Johnson refused to condemn Trump’s lies about the election. The Republican senator repeatedly called for investigations into purported irregularities, lending credence to Trump’s false claims.

The Senate Rules and Administration Committee hearing Tuesday was intended to analyze the security breakdowns of Jan. 6. The committee repeatedly heard that the National Guard, under the control of Trump, was slow to get involved. Acting DC Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee III described being “stunned” as the federal government dragged its heels on sending in troops.

But Johnson warned his colleagues against second-guessing decisions made that day. “2020 is hindsight, it’s pretty easy to Monday-morning quarterback and I want to make sure we guard against doing so,” he said.

Zoe Tillman contributed reporting to this story.

A 23-Year-Old Black Man Who Was Put In A Police Chokehold Should Never Have Been Stopped, A New Report Says

Millions of people had called for justice for McClain, who died after he was put in a chokehold by Aurora, Colorado, police.

Last updated on February 23, 2021

David Zalubowski / AP

Police had no legal reason to stop Elijah McClain, a new independent review has found, the first in a series of unjustified and violent actions taken by officers that led to the 23-year-old Black man being placed in a chokehold and injected with ketamine before he died.

The investigative report, released on Monday after millions of people called for justice for McClain, also laid out concerns about the Aurora, Colorado, police department's own investigation of the officers' use of force, alleging police investigators failed to ask "basic, critical questions" and "failed to present a neutral, objective version of the facts and seemingly ignored contrary evidence." Though McClain died in August 2019, an independent investigation didn't begin until Black Lives Matter protests took place around the country in summer 2020.

The new report, commissioned by Aurora's city council, also found officers had no legal reason to frisk or put McClain in the controversial chokehold, pointing out that none of the officers involved had suspected him of a specific crime at any point before he was wrestled to the ground.

Shortly after the report was released Monday, Sheneen McClain, McClain's mother, said in a statement that, according to the review, the city had "engaged in a sham investigation in order to exonerate its employees and hide their wrongdoing" instead of conducting a detailed investigation of her son's death.

"The independent investigation that was commissioned and paid for by Aurora makes clear what was already known: Elijah should never have been stopped by the police, never had been arrested, never have been subjected to extreme force by the police and should never have been forcibly injected with ketamine by Aurora Fire Rescue Paramedics," the statement read. "Notably, this report — with its start and unequivocal indictment of Aurora officials' conduct — is not based on new, revelatory evidence. It is based on evidence that Aurora has had in its possession all along."

McClain was stopped by police as he was walking home at around 10:30 p.m. on Aug. 24, 2019.

According to the report, the first officer who contacted McClain, Officer Nathan Woodyard, put his hands on him within 10 seconds of first approaching him, even though there were no visible weapons and he had made no threatening gestures toward him.

"Woodyard's decision to turn what may have been a consensual encounter with Mr. McClain into an investigatory stop — in fewer than ten seconds — did not appear to be supported by any officer's reasonable suspicion that Mr. McClain was engaged in criminal activity," according to the report. "This decision had ramifications for the rest of the encounter."

After the violent stop, during which McClain struggled to breathe, he was injected with a powerful dose of the sedative and taken to a hospital. He died there three days later.

As the Aurora Police Department investigated his death, authorities failed to ask basic questions, the independent review found.

"Instead, the questions frequently appeared designed to elicit specific exonerating 'magic language' found in court rulings," the review's three-person panel concluded, stating that the department's investigation of McClain's death "failed to present a neutral, objective version of the facts and seemingly ignored contrary evidence."

The officers' actions were also never reviewed by the department's internal affairs unit, which can only open an investigation at the request of the chief of police. A review by the department's Force Review Board was, according to the new investigation, "cursory and summary at best."

A spokesperson for a local Black Lives Matter group said the new report confirmed that McClain should never have been confronted by police in the first place.

"Results from the independent investigation in the murder of Elijah further supports what his family and community already knew," said Apryl Alexander, a community organizer and spokesperson for BLM 5280. "He was a young man trying to walk home and confronted without cause. Instead of simply talking to Elijah, physical force was used within 10 seconds—not enough time for him to even explain that he was going home. Criminalizing Black people for living their lives needs to end."


McClain's death sparked large protests in the streets of Colorado, and more than 5 million people have signed onto a Change.org petition demanding the officers involved in the deadly stop be held accountable.

Since McClain's death, the city of Aurora and police have enacted a number of changes in policies directly linked to the Aug. 24, 2019, incident. Aurora Police have, for example, banned the use of the carotid hold used against McClain and now require police officers to "observe" before conducting a frisk of suspects.

In September, the city council also passed a moratorium calling for police to stop using ketamine as a tool to make a suspect more complaint.

According to authorities, McClain was originally stopped after police received a 911 call from someone who said they saw someone wearing a ski mask and "acting weird" and "waving his arms around."

Family members of McClain have said he wore a ski mask to stay warm because he had anemia.

Audio from body camera footage revealed McClain asked officers to let him go. And according to the report released Monday, although officers needed to have "reasonable, objective" and "articulable" suspicion to make the stop, none of them offered one during subsequent interviews.

"None of the officers articulated a crime that they thought Mr. McClain had committed, was committing, or was about to commit," according to the report.

Instead, the officers said in interviews that McClain was acting "suspicious," pointing to the ski mask and waving of his arms in an area they described as having a "high crime rate."

One officer, the report said, claimed that McClain's refusal to stop was in itself suspicious because it "was consistent with someone who 'either just committed a crime' or someone who is 'concealing something whether it be a weapon or drugs.'"

But that's not a legal reason for police to detain a person, the report noted.

The panel also wrote they were unable to find sufficient evidence that officers had a legal justification for frisking McClain, pointing out that one of the officers reported he "felt safe making an approach," and there was no suggestion he had a weapon.

Instead, officers forced McClain to the ground, and one reported that he had attempted to grab an officer's gun. Officers used a carotid hold to restrain McClain just before he passed out.

The report also noted that, in their description of their encounter with McClain, police described the 23-year-old as "struggling" and said he had "incredible strength" or "crazy strength."

"It is not clear from the record whether Mr. McClain's movements, interpreted by the officers as resisting, were attempts to escape or simply an effort, voluntary or involuntary, to avoid the painful force being applied on him, to improve his breathing, or to accommodate his vomiting," the report stated.

Audio of the encounter instead recorded McClain "crying out in pain, apologizing, vomiting, and at times sounding incoherent."

"His words were apologetic and confused, not angry or threatening," the report said. "He became increasingly plaintive and desperate as he struggled to breathe. He told officers he had his ID, that his name was Elijah McClain, and that 'I was just going home.'"

One of the officers called dispatch saying McClain was "still fighting," but audio at the time of that transmission shows him telling the officers, "forgive me" and "you are all phenomenal, you are beautiful. Forgive me."

On Monday night, the Aurora City Council held a special meeting to go over the findings. Several members told BuzzFeed News after the session that they are pushing for a ban on ketamine in law enforcement actions and a more distinct separation between Aurora's fire and police departments. Alison Coombs, a city council member, said she also wanted to make stop-and-frisk unconstitutional, and use of force a fireable offense.

"Though council cannot call for the firing of city staff except our direct appointees, public comment made it clear that they believe the officers who wrongly stopped Elijah and all those involved in the actions leading up to his death should be fired," she said. "I urge the city manager to take these public concerns seriously and use his powers in a way that would help restore faith in our city government."

In a press conference on Tuesday morning, Aurora Police Chief Vanessa Wilson said she acknowledged the extreme anger and grief that McClain's friends and family have endured. She apologized for their pain and ensured the community that she will continue to make changes in response to this report and other ongoing investigations examining her department's actions. So far, she said, she has instituted a force investigations unit and is changing how suspicious person calls are received and handled. She also agreed that the city should have an independent monitor.

"The bottom line is Elijah McClain should still be here today," she said. "I will hold myself as well as our officers accountable. We will evolve and we will become the police department the community can trust. I know the trust is broken and we have a long way to go."

I GOT RIGHTS

Three People Were Killed In A Shootout At A Gun Store

A man is believed to have opened fire after an employee asked him to unload his gun before entering the store.

Julia ReinsteinBuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on February 21, 2021,

Matthew Hinton / AP
Investigators from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives look at evidence at the scene of the shooting at Jefferson Gun Outlet in Metairie, Louisiana, on Feb. 20.

A man opened fire in a Louisiana gun store on Saturday, killing two people and injuring two others, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office said.

The shooter himself was then killed when several people fired back to stop him, officials said.

The incident broke out just before 3 p.m. at Jefferson Gun Outlet, a gun store and shooting range in Metairie, just outside New Orleans.

Officials have not yet said what the motive for the shooting was, but according to local station WDSU News, the man had gotten in an argument with an employee who told him he could not bring a loaded gun inside the store.

“We’re trying to put it all together and piece it together with what we have in this developing scene,” Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joseph Lopinto said at a press conference.


Matthew Hinton / AP
People react at the scene of the shooting at Jefferson Gun Outlet.

One of the store owners, Michael Mayer, told the New York Times that the man was asked to unload his gun before coming inside and then began shooting.

“He became agitated by the request and pulled his gun out of his pants and started firing,” Mayer said. “Our armed and trained employees, as well as some armed permitted customers, returned fire and eliminated the threat.”

The man was identified as Joshua Jamal Williams, 27, a spokesperson for the Sheriff's Office confirmed to BuzzFeed News.




Facebook, GoFundMe
Veronica Billiot and Herbert "Noah" Fischbach

The Jefferson Parish Coroner's Office identified the two victims who died as Herbert "Noah" Fischbach, 47, and Veronica Billiot, 59, according to NOLA.com and local station Fox 8. The coroner's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BuzzFeed News.

Fischbach was an employee of the store. His wife of 14 years, Nancy Fischbach, told NOLA.com that he was a loving husband and a devoted father to their 13-year-old son. He also reportedly worked on movie sets as an armorer, instructing actors on how to properly use weapons.

"He was amazing," his wife said. "Words can’t describe the person he was. He was so genuine, so real, so true. He was my soulmate."

Fischbach had worked at the gun store for over 20 years, according to a GoFundMe set up by Tina Mayer, Mayer's wife and co-owner of the store, to benefit Fischbach's family. "We are a family at Jefferson Gun Outlet and Noah was a very well loved member of this family who will be greatly missed and never forgotten," she wrote.

Billiot was a mother of three and grandmother of six who worked as a property manager for homes at the naval air station in Belle Chasse, according to NOLA.com. She was the eldest of three sisters, and one of her sisters said that Veronica looked after them as children because their mother was not present.

“She was a very giving person — she looked after her two younger sisters, that’s what she did,” Linda Billiot told the news outlet. “She always made sure we had everything we needed, that she was there to support us for everything.”


Sophia Germer / The Times-Picayune / The New Orleans Advocate via AP
Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office deputies investigate a shooting at Jefferson Gun Outlet.

Family members of Williams have expressed confusion and doubt over whether the 27-year-old instigated the attack. According to NOLA.com, his mother posted on Facebook that her son "was murdered."

An anonymous relative told the outlet that Williams had gone to the store to practice shooting at its gun range, but they couldn't imagine that he would go looking for a gunfight, knowing that police officers and former military members were regular patrons. “That would be a death sentence,” the relative said.

Police declined to comment on the claims of Williams' family but said that more information would be made public about the shooting in the coming days.


Julia Reinstein is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.