US Grocery stores are a hotbed for racism and hate crimes, data shows

Elliott Ramos - NBC News

In December 2018, a 31-year-old man allegedly kicked a 1-year-old boy in a Wichita, Kansas, grocery store while yelling racist slurs at the toddler’s Black family.

In June 2021, a former Marine allegedly punched a Black 19-year-old who is autistic in a Chicago grocery store and shouted that “white people built this country.”

And three months ago in March, Rose Wysocki had an uncomfortable encounter with an 18-year-old white man at Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo, New York.

Wysocki, a produce manager at the store, had just helped the man locate an item in the produce section when he told Wysocki that she “didn’t belong” in the majority Black store.

“I was just like, ‘Why do you say that,’” Wysocki told NBC News. The man replied that Wysocki, who is also white, looked like she belonged “in the suburbs.”

“When he turned around and went to walk away, he called me a n—-- lover.”

Two months later, police said that same man returned to the same grocery store, where he shot and killed 10 Black people as they shopped for food. The Department of Justice has charged the suspected shooter, 18-year-old Payton Gendron, with 26 counts of hate crimes and firearms offenses. The charges carry the potential of the death penalty.

The mass shooting in Buffalo is the latest in a wave of racism and hate that has swept over grocery stores across the country in the past decade, a trend that data shows has greatly accelerated since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

According to an NBC News analysis of FBI hate crime data from the last 10 years, more than 160 hate crimes were recorded at grocery stores in 2020, 65% more than in 2019 and four times as many as in 2010.

“With regard to 2020, we saw grocery stores were a more common target than they were a decade ago,” said Brian Levin, executive director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

Experts who follow hate crime trends gave several reasons for their rise in 2020, from the pandemic to the presidential election. But they also noted the special role that grocery stores played, serving as one of the few places that year where people could gather in public, as restaurants, schools and businesses were closed.


“That's one of the few places where people congregated, because they had to,” Levin said. “It was a necessity, even houses of worship were able to adapt via Zoom.”

Stop AAPI Hate, a nonprofit organization that works to combat racism against Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, cataloged more than 10,000 hate incidents from 2020 to 2021 and found that 1 in 10 hate incidents occurred in grocery stores.

“Incidents that occur in businesses are like incidents that occur on the streets,” said Dr. Russell Jeung, Stop AAPI Hate co-founder. “In both cases, people use anti-China rhetoric. So they say things like: ‘You're the reason why we have Covid-19. Go back to China, you c—-.’”

Experts said that grocery store employees, like other essential workers, were often stuck enforcing city or state mask mandates on irate customers. And for some, a request to mask up was often the spark needed to launch into racist verbal assaults.

“It's disturbing, but there has been violence in the workplace as it related to the mask mandate,” said Marc Perrone, president of United Food and Commercial Workers, a union representing more than 1.3 million food and retail workers.

“People wore masks that were decorated with hate symbols. We had violence inflicted on some of our members because they were trying to have conversations with people about mask mandates and trying to stay safe during the pandemic,” Perrone said.

In Santee, California, a man wore a Ku Klux Klan hood at a Vons grocery store in May 2020. The man was not charged with a crime. Five days later, a different man wore a mask with a Nazi swastika while shopping at a Food-4-Less.

The Buffalo shooting came three years after 23 dead people were killed and more than a dozen others injured at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart. The shooter, a 21-year-old man, targeted the mostly Latino customers of the store and posted a racist screed on 8chan, a fringe internet message board tied to numerous mass shootings, where he decried a Hispanic “invasion” of the state.

Perrone’s organization has called on Congress to pass the STOP Violence Act, which would make grocery stores eligible for federal funding for active shooter preparedness.

“I don't think that you can legislate away hate,” Perrone said. “I think that you can legislate some things that might limit the impact of that.”

Twenty-two hate crimes involved murder in 2020, three times as many as 2010.

“2020 was a watershed moment for racial hate. It was a watershed time for racial hate crimes, and our data is unmistakable on this,” Levin, of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, said, noting that June 2020 was the second-worst month for hate crimes since record-keeping started in 1991. It was also the worst-ever month for anti-Black hate crimes.

But as bad as 2020 was, Levin said that hate crimes have only continued to increase in the two years since. The Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism issued a report in May that showed hate crimes rose by more than a third in 37 major U.S. cities from 2020 to 2021.

Levin said that hate crimes tend to increase during years with elections. And with the midterm elections six months away, he said more hate crimes and assaults could be on the way.

“What we're concerned about is the second half of the year,” Levin said.

“We can see this consistently because the stereotypes that label people [as] legitimate targets for aggression tend to increase as the elections come closer.”

Canada's Kinross Gold sells Russia assets at half price

(Reuters) - Canada's Kinross Gold Corp said on Wednesday it had sold all of its Russian assets to the Highland Gold Mining Group for $340 million in cash, half of the previously announced price.

The Toronto-based miner said in April it would sell its Kupol mine and Udinsk project to Highland Gold, one of the largest gold miners in Russia, for $680 million.

"The transaction consideration was adjusted by the parties following review by the recently formed Russian Sub-commission on the Control of Foreign Investments," Kinross said, adding the sale was approved for a price not exceeding $340 million.


Russian authorities in March had stipulated that any transaction between Russians and foreign counterparties requires permission from the commission, saying it wanted to ensure decisions to exit were considered and not driven by political pressure.

Highland Gold operates several mines in the country, including in Chukotka and Khabarovsk regions where the Kupol mine and Udinsk project are located.

U.S.-listed shares of Kinross were up 3% in premarket trading, mirroring gains in other gold miners on a stronger bullion.

(Reporting by Ruhi Soni in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

Halifax approves four areas where about 30 people experiencing homelessness can camp

Halifax city council has unanimously approved a plan to allow people without housing to camp in four parks and green spaces in the municipality.



A staff report submitted to council had recommended allowing more than 30 people to sleep in tents at two sites in Halifax and two in Dartmouth.

The report states that Halifax is in a "homelessness crisis."

Those camping in the approved areas will be expected to follow noise bylaws and a ban on fires, which will be enforced by municipal compliance officers and not Halifax Regional Police.

There are also limits on the number of tents allowed at each site.

Even with planned housing units on the books, the report says demand for shelter will "still exceed supply."

Halifax had 200 shelter beds and 622 unhoused people in the city as of June 14, as reported by Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia.

City councillor Tim Outhit says the plan is a “temporary Band-Aid” fix that doesn’t address the expected increase in homelessness.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 15, 2022.

Ottawa police promise outreach to Sikh community after false Parliament bomb tip


Ottawa police have reached out to the leadership of the city’s Sikh community and will be meeting with them later this week to get their feedback on the police response to the false bomb tip that led to the arrest of two Sikh rally organizers near Parliament Hill on Saturday.

Interim police chief Steve Bell shared that information in a letter to the city's police services board Tuesday night.

The RCMP is conducting an ongoing investigation into the event, Bell said, noting that in light of that investigation, Ottawa police is limited in what it can share about Saturday's incident, but added it will work to give as much information as possible to "ensure transparency."

Bell said police are aware of the effect law enforcement's response had on the individuals who were arrested.

"We have reached out to the leadership of Ottawa’s Sikh community and we will be meeting with them later this week to take their feedback and discuss the Ottawa police response and operational processes under these circumstances," he said. "Our relationship with the Sikh community is important to us."

However, the two men who were arrested live in Quebec and say they have not heard anything from Ottawa police since their release from custody and they also have not been informed that officers are meeting with the Ottawa Sikh community.

Manveer Singh and Parminder Singh have spoken out about their arrests to defend their reputations and seek answers about who targeted them with the false tip and why. Parminder Singh said he’s appealing to Ottawa police, RCMP and CBSA to explain what happened.

"I really need to know who is behind this," said Parminder Singh, who lives in Pierrefonds, Que.

Harpreet Hansra, a fellow organizer of the rally, has called for police to deliver a public apology to the two men and supported the World Sikh Organization of Canada’s call for an investigation into the false tip.

The RCMP would not confirm Wednesday that such an investigation is underway. It said for privacy and operational reasons, it can only confirm details related to criminal investigations where charges have been laid.

When the RCMP probe finishes, Ottawa police will review the incident and community feedback to look at how it can improve its response to similar incidents, Bell said in the letter to the police services board.

Bell said the "detailed and specific threat" about the potential use of explosives in the Parliament Hill area "was complicated by time factors related to a planned event."

Police acted on the information received to ensure public safety, and acted "in good faith" and worked "as quickly and effectively as possible" to investigate the potential threat, said Bell.

The organizers of the rally, held in remembrance of the victims of the 1984 massacre of Sikhs in India, had a permit to hold the event on Parliament Hill. When they arrived, they were told the area was shut down due to an ongoing threat and they moved to the lawn of the Supreme Court of Canada.

Soon after the rally started, the men say police arrested them and told them their names were connected to a serious bomb threat on the Hill. Manveer Singh, who lives in Vaudreuil-Dorion, Que., said police claimed they had “credible information” linking him to the threat.

"What was that credible information that led police to arrest me?” he asked.

Police searched their cars for explosives before handcuffing them and taking them to the police station, where they were made to remove their turbans and questioned by officers, the men said. Manveer Singh also had to remove other religious symbols including a bracelet called a kara and a ceremonial dagger known as a kirpan.

The men said they were eventually released, with police apologizing and explaining that the pair were the victims of a "terrorism hoax."

Parliament was also evacuated while police investigated the tip on Saturday. After several hours, police said no threat to public safety was found and the area reopened.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 15, 2022.

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This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Meta and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

Erika Ibrahim, The Canadian Press

Floods leave Yellowstone landscape 'dramatically changed'



RED LODGE, Mont. (AP) — The forces of fire and ice shaped Yellowstone National Park over thousands of years. It took decades longer for humans to tame it enough for tourists to visit, often from the comfort of their cars.

In just days, heavy rain and rapid snowmelt caused a dramatic flood that may forever alter the human footprint on the park's terrain and the communities that have grown around it.

The historic floodwaters that raged through Yellowstone this week, tearing out bridges and pouring into nearby homes, pushed a popular fishing river off course — possibly permanently — and may force roadways nearly torn away by torrents of water to be rebuilt in new places.

“The landscape literally and figuratively has changed dramatically in the last 36 hours,” said Bill Berg, a commissioner in nearby Park County. “A little bit ironic that this spectacular landscape was created by violent geologic and hydrologic events, and it’s just not very handy when it happens while we’re all here settled on it.”

The unprecedented flooding drove more than 10,000 visitors out of the nation’s oldest national park and damaged hundreds of homes in nearby communities, though remarkably no was reported hurt or killed. The only visitors left in the massive park straddling three states were a dozen campers still making their way out of the backcountry.

The park could remain closed as long as a week, and northern entrances may not reopen this summer, Superintendent Cam Sholly said.

“I’ve heard this is a 1,000-year event, whatever that means these days. They seem to be happening more and more frequently,” he said.

Sholly noted some weather forecasts include the possibility of additional flooding this weekend.

A house falls into the Yellowstone River in Gardiner, Montana after record flooding and rockslides in the area (June 14)

Days of rain and rapid snowmelt wrought havoc across parts of southern Montana and northern Wyoming, where it washed away cabins, swamped small towns and knocked out power. It hit the park as a summer tourist season that draws millions of visitors was ramping up during its 150th anniversary year.

Businesses in hard-hit Gardiner had just started really recovering from the tourism contraction brought by the coronavirus pandemic, and were hoping for a good year, Berg said.

“It’s a Yellowstone town, and it lives and dies by tourism, and this is going to be a pretty big hit,” he said. “They’re looking to try to figure out how to hold things together.”

Some of the worst damage happened in the northern part of the park and Yellowstone’s gateway communities in southern Montana. National Park Service photos of northern Yellowstone showed a mudslide, washed out bridges and roads undercut by churning floodwaters of the Gardner and Lamar rivers.

In Red Lodge, a town of 2,100 that’s a popular jumping-off point for a scenic route into the Yellowstone high country, a creek running through town jumped its banks and swamped the main thoroughfare, leaving trout swimming in the street a day later under sunny skies.

Residents described a harrowing scene where the water went from a trickle to a torrent over just a few hours.

The water toppled telephone poles, knocked over fences and carved deep fissures in the ground through a neighborhood of hundreds of houses. Electricity was restored by Tuesday, but there was still no running water in the affected neighborhood.


Heidi Hoffman left early Monday to buy a sump pump in Billings, but by the time she returned her basement was full of water.

“We lost all our belongings in the basement,” Hoffman said as the pump removed a steady stream of water into her muddy backyard. “Yearbooks, pictures, clothes, furniture. Were going to be cleaning up for a long time.”

At least 200 homes were flooded in Red Lodge and the town of Fromberg.

The flooding came as the Midwest and East Coast sizzle from a heat wave and other parts of the West burn from an early wildfire season amid a persistent drought that has increased the frequency and intensity of fires. Smoke from a fire in the mountains of Flagstaff, Arizona, could be seen in Colorado.

While the flooding hasn't been directly attributed to climate change, Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said a warming environment makes extreme weather events more likely than they would have been "without the warming that human activity has caused.”

“Will Yellowstone have a repeat of this in five or even 50 years? Maybe not, but somewhere will have something equivalent or even more extreme,” he said.

Heavy rain on top of melting mountain snow pushed the Yellowstone, Stillwater and Clarks Fork rivers to record levels Monday and triggered rock and mudslides, according to the National Weather Service. The Yellowstone River at Corwin Springs topped a record set in 1918.

Yellowstone's northern roads may remain impassable for a substantial length of time. The flooding affected the rest of the park, too, with park officials warning of yet higher flooding and potential problems with water supplies and wastewater systems at developed areas.

Major flooding swept away at least one bridge, washed away roads and set off mudslides in Yellowstone National Park on Monday, prompting officials to close the entrances to the popular tourist attraction and evacuate visitors. (June 13)

The rains hit just as area hotels filled up in recent weeks with summer tourists. More than 4 million visitors were tallied by the park last year. The wave of tourists doesn’t abate until fall, and June is typically one of Yellowstone’s busiest months.

Mark Taylor, owner and chief pilot of Rocky Mountain Rotors, said his company had airlifted about 40 paying customers over the past two days from Gardiner, including two women who were “very pregnant.”

Taylor spoke as he ferried a family of four adults from Texas, who wanted to do some more sightseeing before heading home.

“I imagine they’re going to rent a car and they’re going to go check out some other parts of Montana — somewhere drier,” he said.

At a cabin in Gardiner, Parker Manning of Terre Haute, Indiana, got an up-close view of the roiling Yellowstone River floodwaters just outside his door. Entire trees and even a lone kayaker streamed by.

In early evening, he shot video as the waters ate away at the opposite bank where a large brown house that had been home to park employees before they were evacuated was precariously perched.

In a large cracking sound heard over the river's roar, the house tipped into the waters and was pulled into the current. Sholly said it floated 5 miles (8 kilometers) before sinking.

The towns of Cooke City and Silvergate, just east of the park, were also isolated by floodwaters, which also made drinking water unsafe. People left a hospital and low-lying areas in Livingston.

In south-central Montana, 68 people at a campground were rescued by raft after flooding on the Stillwater River. Some roads in the area were closed and residents were evacuated.

In the hamlet of Nye, at least four cabins washed into the Stillwater River, said Shelley Blazina, including one she owned.

“It was my sanctuary,” she said Tuesday. “Yesterday I was in shock. Today I’m just in intense sadness.”

___

Whitehurst reported from Salt Lake City. Associated Press writers Amy Beth Hanson in Helena, Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, R.J. Rico in Atlanta, and Brian Melley in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Matthew Brown And Lindsay Whitehurst, The Associated Press

Italy creates new museum for trafficked ancient artifacts


ROME (AP) — Italy has been so successful in recovering ancient artworks and artifacts that were illegally exported from the country it has created a museum for them.



The Museum of Rescued Art was inaugurated Wednesday in a cavernous structure that is part of Rome's ancient Baths of Diocletian. The Octagonal Hall exhibition space was designed to showcase Italy’s efforts, through patient diplomacy and court challenges, to get valuable antiquities repatriated, often after decades in foreign museums or private collections.

Exhibits in the new museum will change every few months as the objects on display return to what experts consider their territory of origin, many of them places that were part of ancient Etruscan or Magna Grecia civilizations in central or southern Italy.

The inaugural exhibit revolves around some 100 of 260 artifacts recovered by the nation's paramilitary Carabinieri art squad from the United States and brought back to Italy in December 2021.

The pieces on display, which were found during clandestine digs and illegally exported, include exquisitely carved Etruscan figurines and imposing painted jars from several centuries B.C. The items previously were held by museums, auction houses and private collections.

The new Rome museum is exhibiting objects "never before seen in Italy,'' said Massimo Osanna, director general of Italy's state museums. In his previous role, Osanna had long been in charge of reviving the fortunes of Pompeii, the ancient Roman city near Naples, one of the world's most famed archaeological cites that itself was heavily looted by antiquities thieves of past generations.

The recently recovered antiquities are from before the Roman era, dating back to the 8th to 4th centuries B.C. Many of them came from the area near modern-day Cerveteri, which is awash with remnants of the flourishing Etruscan civilization in west-central Italy.

One particularly striking piece, from the 7th century B.C., is a ceramic jar, painted red on white and towering more than a meter (40 inches) high. Decorated with images of horses and cats, it depicts the mythological scene of the blinding of Polyphemus, a man-eating one-eyed creature.

The choice of the jar's decoration probably indicates that the Etruscan elite were bilingual and “fascinated with Greek myth,'' Osanna told The Associated Press in an interview. They were ”Etruscan heroes that identified with Greek heroes," he said.

Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini explained the decision to opt for a series of rotating exhibits in the new museum instead of establishing a permanent collection of rescued art.

"We thought it's right to have the pieces return to the places where they were stolen from,'' Franceschini said.

In some cases, experts don't know the exact original location of the antiquities, underlining the irreparable damage done when archaeological treasures are clandestinely snatched away. Pieces with unknown origins will be returned to the general geographic area.

The exhibition space is part of the National Roman Museum. Its current exhibit runs until October 15, then the museum will display a different batch of recovered antiquities.

Among the show-stoppers at the current exhibit of “rescued art” are two terra cotta heads, sliced vertically in half, part of a group of Etruscan votive pieces from the 4th-to-3rd centuries B.C.

Another striking piece is a well-preserved, intricately decorated Etruscan funeral box, decorated with images of a warrior, horse and a cat.

While Italy proudly boasts of regaining some 3 million artifacts and artworks since a special Safeguarding of Cultural Heritage unit of the Carabinieri was established in 1969, it is also trying to inspire countries to give back ancient pieces that are identified with other cultures.

Earlier this month, Italy returned to Athens a frieze fragment of the Parthenon that had been in an archaeological museum in Sicily. Franceschini, Italy's culture minister, contended that the so-called “Fagan fragment” was in Italy legitimately but said his country wanted to “affirm the principle of the restitution of cultural wealth to reconnect artistic historical patrimony with the places and peoples of origin.”

Some treasures have so far eluded Italy's efforts to obtain them.

Carabinieri Commanding Gen. Teo Luzi spoke wistfully at the new museum's debut of hopes that Italy's would one day reclaim “Victorious Youth,” a footless bronze statue that was found by an Italian fishing boat in the Adriatic Sea in 1964. It was eventually purchased by the J. Paul Getty Museum in California.

In 2018, Italy's highest court ruled that the museum had to surrender the statue to Italy. But the museum, insisting that the statue was fished out of international waters, has challenged the order.

__

Francesco Sportelli contributed from Rome.

Frances D'emilio, The Associated Press

Canada, California sign memorandum of understanding on climate action, nature protection | FULL
 

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau signed a memorandum of understanding on Thursday with California Gov. Gavin Newsom on day two of the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles.

The partnership on climate action and nature protection goes further than a 2019 agreement between the two jurisdictions on reducing vehicle emissions, and will work to “deliver clean air and water, good jobs, and healthy communities,” said a joint statement.

The two leaders cite similarities in current policies, including efforts to ban harmful single-use plastics, commitments to clean electricity and oceans, and nature preservation plans.

The deal will encourage sharing of information and best practices as the world deals with a narrowing window to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

 Trudeau meets with Biden, California governor at Summit of the Americas - National | Globalnews.ca

California, Canada partner in fight against climate change


Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (L) and California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday at the California Science Center in Los Angeles signed a memorandum of cooperation centered on tackling climate change-related issues. 

Photo courtesy of Office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom/Release

June 10 (UPI) -- California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have entered into a partnership to fight climate change at the Summit of the Americas.

Newsom and Trudeau signed a memorandum of cooperation Thursday during a press conference at the California Science Center in Los Angeles that outlines shared objectives of the partnership on emissions reduction, nature protection, zero-emission vehicles, climate adaption and circular economy.

"We can't fight the climate crisis on our own -- we need to work together with partners all across the globe to achieve humanity's most important task: saving our planet," Newsom said. "This partnership with Canada is a vital step on California's path to a cleaner, greener future and is the latest expression of our shared values."

The objectives of the partnership include collaborating on their zero-emission transport goals, such as having all new light-duty vehicle sales by 2035 be electric, reducing overall emissions and eliminating emissions from medium- and heavy-duty vehicles and off-road engines.

Promoting the use of clean technologies as well as sharing information, lessons learned and best practices on a slew of areas from climate adaptation to plastic reductions are also outlined as objectives of the agreement, and they will also cooperate in the sectors of clean transportation and technology, biodiversity conservation, climate change adaptation and others.

The two sides also agreed to co-host an expert roundtable during U.N. Climate Week in September on forest resilience and wildfires, issues both Canada and California face.

Trudeau told the crowd Canadians have watched as Californias struggle with wildfires and drought but said that many north of the border suffer from the same issues caused by climate change.

"We've seen extreme weather events across the country and we know that, yes, there's a lot we can in Canada, but Canada alone cannot solve this problem for Canadians -- we need to work with everyone to solve the problems of the world," he said.

The MOC follows similar partnerships that California has recently inked with New Zealand, Japan and China.

New poll suggests Liberal, NDP voters prefer Charest and Brown over Poilievre



OTTAWA — New polling suggests Liberal and New Democrat voters think Jean Charest or Patrick Brown would make the best leader of the federal Conservative party.


Jean Charest 

The data released by the research firm Leger is based on an online survey it did of 1,528 Canadian adults last weekend using computer-assisted web interviewing technology.

It cannot be assigned a margin of error because internet-based polls are not considered random samples.

The survey asked respondents which of the six candidates in the running they believe would make the best leader of the party, which will unveil its new leader Sept. 10.

Leger executive vice-president Christian Bourque says one of the issues they come across when they poll Canadians about a party leadership race is that roughly one-third appear indifferent.

The data suggests 58 per cent of respondents answered they didn't know or picked none of the above when questioned on which candidate would make the best Conservative leader.

When it came to Conservative voters, the polling suggests 23 per cent of respondents said they didn't know and only eight per cent selected none of the above.

Of Tory voters who responded to the survey, data suggests 44 per cent of them believe Pierre Poilievre, the longtime Ottawa-area MP known for his attacks on the government and Bank of Canada over inflation, would make the best party leader.

Charest, Quebec's former premier, came in a distant second at 14 per cent among Conservative voters, according to the survey's findings, while the four other remaining candidates ranked much lower.

Looking at respondents who back other political parties, Leger's data suggests 25 per cent of both federal Liberal and NDP voters feel Charest would make the best Conservative leader.

It also suggests 11 per cent of both Liberal and NDP would select Brown, who is mayor of Brampton, Ont., and formerly led Ontario's Progressive Conservatives.

By contrast, the data suggests only six per cent of Liberal and NDP supporters feel Poilievre would be the best pick.

The findings come as one of the main tasks facing Conservative leadership contenders, if they win, will be to grow support for the party ahead of the next federal election, particularly in seat-rich Ontario.

"The only way they can win back Ontario and do better in Quebec is to actually move voters away from the Liberal party and away from the NDP," Bourque said.

Leger's data also suggests 57 per cent of respondents who support the more right-wing People's Party of Canada feel Poilievre should be the next Conservative leader.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 15, 2022

WHITE SUPREMACIST COPS

Toronto police use more force against Black people with little explanation, data shows

CBC/Radio-Canada - TODAY

An expansive Toronto police report released Wednesday confirms what many racialized people in the city have long said: Black, Indigenous and other diverse groups are disproportionately affected by use of force and strip searches by officers.


© Evan Mitsui/CBCNewly released internal data from Toronto police shows that officers used force more often against Black people than white people, even when factors like types of arrest, the presence of a weapon and local demographics are accounted for.

At a morning news conference, interim Toronto Police Chief James Ramer said the force needs to do better.

"As an organization, we have not done enough to ensure that every person in our city receives fair and unbiased policing," he said.

"For this, as chief of police and on behalf of the police, I am sorry and I apologize unreservedly," Ramer continued.

"The release of this data will cause pain for many. We must improve and we will do better."

The apology was not welcomed by Beverly Bain from the group No Pride in Policing, which describes itself as a coalition of queer and trans people formed in support of Black Lives Matter Toronto and focused on defunding police.

In a tense moment during the news conference, Bain slammed Ramer's response to the data.

"Chief Ramer, we do not accept your apology," she said, putting a point on an impassioned speech about how Black, Indigenous and other racialized groups have had to deal with police in the city.

Bain called Ramer's apology a "public relations stunt" that is "insulting" to Black and Indigenous people.

"This is not about saving our lives. What we have asked for you to do is stop. To stop brutalizing us. To stop killing us," she said.
Police used more force against Black people more often: data

The never-before-seen statistics released today were drawn from records of 949 use of force incidents and 7,114 strip searches over the course of 2020. The granular analysis, compiled by the force's Equity, Inclusion and Human Rights Unit alongside outside data experts in concert with a 12-member community panel, examines a wide range of questions.

Among its findings was that Black, Indigenous and Middle Eastern people were all overrepresented in the number of "enforcement actions'' taken against them relative to their total population in Toronto. For Black residents, it was by a factor of 2.2 times.

Similarly, Black, Latino, East/Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern people were overrepresented by factors of 1.6 times, 1.5 times, 1.2 times and 1.2 times, respectively, when it came to use of force.

Police also tended to use a higher degree of force against racialized groups compared to white people, especially when it came to officers drawing their firearms.

Black, South Asian and East/South Asian people were considerably more likely than white people -- 1.5 times, 1.6 times and two times, respectively -- to have an officer point a firearm at them during an interaction.

Ontario requires the public sector to collect race-based data as part of the Anti-Racism Act, and in 2019 the Toronto Police Services Board approved a data policy that would start with use of force and later extend to other police processes such as stops, searches, questioning and the laying of charges.

The use of force data was taken in part from reports that officers submit to the Ministry of the Solicitor General after interactions that necessitate medical attention for community members, as well as any time an officer draws or uses a firearm or Taser, or uses another weapon such as their baton or pepper spray.

The 949 use of force instances reported in 2020 account for 0.2 per cent of the 692,937 recorded police interactions with the public. Firearms were pointed in 371 of those encounters and used in four, two of which were fatal, according to police.
TPS concedes it has 'misused' race-based data before

The release of the data comes in the wake of several recent reports from human rights and police complaint watchdogs that called for major reforms within Toronto police.

In 2018, the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) concluded that Black people were "grossly overrepresented" in several types of violent police interactions, including use-of-force cases, shootings, deadly encounters and fatal shootings.

The OHRC reported that between 2013 and 2017 in Toronto, a Black person was nearly 20 times more likely than a white person to be shot and killed by police.

A follow-up analysis by the OHRC released in 2020 found that Black people are also more likely than others to be arrested and charged during interactions with Toronto police.

In its new report, the force acknowledged that it has "misused" race-based data in the past. That's an apparent reference to carding -- the practice of collecting identifying information during random street checks -- which the province moved to significantly restrict in 2017.

Any identifying information for both members of the public and officers was stripped from the data used in the use of force and strip search analysis, police said.
Reforms led to dramatic fall in strip searches

The research released Wednesday also looked at whether any racial groups were disproportionately represented in strip searches.

The results show Indigenous people were 1.3 times overrepresented relative to their presence in arrests. Meanwhile, Black and white people were 1.1 times overrepresented.

Toronto police overhauled their procedures for strip searches in October 2020, leading to a dramatic decline in how many were conducted from that point onward.

Before the changes, about 27 per cent of all arrests in that year included a strip search. That fell to four roughly five per cent afterward.

The policy modifications included that all strip searches be authorized by a supervisor and audited by upper-level management.

The reforms helped to end overrepresentation of Indigenous people in strip searches in 2021, the analysis concluded. But racial discrepancies remained for Black and white residents who were arrested.

The changes were introduced after a 2019 report from the Office of the Independent Police Review Director found that unnecessary and illegal strip searches had become commonplace practice among police forces in Ontario.

The report released this morning also includes 38 actions the force says will help to address racial discrepancies in use of force incidents and strip searches. During a briefing for the media on Tuesday, a police official said a public-facing online dashboard will keep track of the force's progress in implementing the actions in coming months and years.

Black people greatly over-represented in Toronto enforcement population, use of force and strip search data

 

Toronto police apologize for disproportionate use of force against racialized communities | FULL

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Toronto Police Interim Chief James Ramer apologized on Wednesday to the city’s racialized residents after the release of Toronto police statistics that showed racialized groups were disproportionately affected by enforcement actions and use of force by police officers.

New statistics released by Toronto police show Black people faced a disproportionate amount of police enforcement and use of force in 2020 in comparison to their representation in the overall population, and were more likely to have an officer point a gun at them than white people in the same situation, according to police data.

Middle Eastern people were also overrepresented when it came to enforcement action and use of force, while other groups — such as Latino and East and Southeast Asian residents — experienced less enforcement in comparison to their representation in the overall population but saw more use of force when they did interact with police.

Indigenous people faced more enforcement, but proportionately slightly less use of force in those interactions, according to the same data.

Police statistics show white people faced proportionately less enforcement and less use of force in comparison to their representation in the overall population. 

Congressional subcommittee: EPA must cancel popular Seresto collar over link to pet deaths

Johnathan Hettinger - USA TODAY



One of the most popular flea and tick collars in America poses “too great a risk to animals and humans” and should be removed from the market, a congressional subcommittee recommended in a report released Wednesday ahead of its hearing titled “Seresto Flea and Tick Collars: Examining Why a Product Linked to More than 2,500 Pet Deaths Remains on the Market.”


© Colin Smith Getty Images

Since it entered the U.S. market in 2012, Seresto has been linked to at least 98,000 adverse incidents and 2,500 pet deaths – the most of any such product regulated by the EPA.

The House Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, which is a part of the House Oversight Committee, the main investigative body in the U.S. House of Representatives, said the hearing will probe the Environmental Protection Agency’s “failure to regulate the Seresto collar as well as Elanco’s refusal to take action to protect pets and their owners from the collar’s harm.”

Owners of deceased pets are scheduled to testify at the hearing, which is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Eastern today, as well as a former EPA staffer and other experts. Jeffrey Simmons, the president and CEO of Elanco, which manufactures Seresto, is also expected to testify, the committee announced.

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Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-ILL., launched an investigation into the collar in March 2021, after reporting by Investigate Midwest and USA TODAY revealed the high number of incidents related to the collar, as well as the EPA’s inaction despite knowing about the issue for nearly a decade.

“It is unacceptable that the EPA has been aware of the Seresto collar’s safety concerns for years and has continued to allow Americans to unknowingly put their pets in danger by using a product they have been led to believe is safe,” Krishnamoorthi told Investigate Midwest and USA TODAY in a statement.


Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-ILL., launched an investigation into the collar in March 2021.

Since it entered the U.S. market in 2012, Seresto has been linked to at least 98,000 adverse incidents and 2,500 pet deaths – the most of any such product regulated by the EPA and the source of internal alarm among some agency employees, records previously obtained by USA TODAY and Investigate Midwest show.

Elanco said it “unequivocally” stood behind the safety of the collar.

“Numerous studies and the incident report data for Seresto demonstrate the product does not pose an unreasonable risk and has a strong safety profile, which is why the American Veterinary Medical Association opposed canceling Seresto’s EPA registration,” said company spokeswoman Keri McGrath Happe in a statement Wednesday.

In its own emailed statement, EPA spokeswoman Melissa Sullivan said that the EPA is conducting a review of the product, with assistance from the Food and Drug Administration, which it expects to wrap up in fall 2022.

“Upon completing its analysis and assessment, EPA will determine whether these pet collar registrations can still be used safely according to the instructions on the label or if additional safety measures or cancellations are needed for these products,” she said.

The EPA did not answer a question about why it does not have anyone scheduled to speak at today’s hearing.

Elanco has repeatedly defended the collar, which is its top product, accounting for 8% of revenue annually. The company said the rate of complaints is a fraction of the overall sales – which have surpassed 33 million in the past decade – and that the rate has declined over the years. It also said that most incidents are classified as “minor” or “moderate” and that the pet did not suffer “any significant or permanent harm.”

Elanco – which bought the entire Bayer Animal Health unit, including Seresto, from the German pharmaceutical giant in 2020 for $7.6 billion – has said its own extensive studies into the product show that the incidents of harm reported by pet owners are likely related to other factors and not the collar itself.

But the subcommittee’s investigation casts doubts on those claims. In a 22-page report that heavily cites reporting and documents published by Investigate Midwest and USA TODAY, as well as never-before-released information, the subcommittee reveals new details about how Seresto “may be the most dangerous flea and tick product on the market” and that the EPA has known it for years.

For example, as early as 2015, EPA discovered that Seresto had the highest rate of total incidents as well as death or major incidents of any such product the agency regulates. “Compared to the second most dangerous product, Seresto had nearly three times the rate of total incidents, and nearly five times the rate of ‘Death’ or ‘Major’ incidents," the report said. "Compared to the third most dangerous product, the Seresto collar had nearly 21 times the rate of total incidents, and over 35 times the rate of ‘Death’ or ‘Major’ incidents."

The report also details how, in determining whether to approve the sale of Seresto in its own country, Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) reviewed data on roughly 1,000 of the most serious death and major pet incidents linked to the collar and found that it “probably or possibly caused 77% of these incidents.” This led the agency in 2016 to deem the collar too dangerous to sell, and PMRA rejected the product’s application even as sales of Seresto continued in the United States.

Among the cases that PMRA linked to Seresto, the congressional report noted, pets experienced symptoms including skin problems, “lethargy, abnormal behavior, excessive grooming and vocalization, vomiting, diarrhea, and anorexia.” More than a third involved problems in “multiple organ systems,” with some experiencing “convulsions, muscle tremors, and loss of control of bodily movements.” Ten percent of those pets died or were euthanized after wearing the collar.


© Tanya BreenRhonda Bomwell of Somerset holds a photograph as she talks about her 9-year-old Papillon, Pierre, who died June 1 due to side effects from wearing a popular flea and tick collar for pets, at Colonial Park in Somerset, N.J., on Monday, March 1, 2021.

Pet owners, too, experienced adverse effects after coming into contact with the collar, according to the congressional report. Symptoms included hives and dermatitis, but also more serious problems like “respiratory, neurological, and digestive effects, with throat irritation, breathing difficulty, dizziness, and nausea.”

“Notably, these observed effects on humans were consistent with clinical studies into Imidacloprid –one of the collar’s main active ingredients,” the congressional report said.

The Canadian agency also factored in Seresto’s sales data and found that its collars had an incident rate of 36 to 65 incidents per 10,000 collars sold. PMRA considers one incident per 10,000 collars sold as indicative of a potential problem, the report stated. By comparison, 15 pet collars sold in Canada at the time averaged 0.07 incidents per 10,000 collars sold.

“Seresto’s incident numbers were also trending in the wrong direction: PMRA expressed ‘additional concern’ over the fact that Seresto’s total incident numbers had nearly doubled every year since 2013,” according to the congressional report.

The EPA’s own peer review of Canada’s analysis “found an even stronger connection between Seresto collar use and deaths,” the report said. The Canadian agency had examined 251 pet deaths linked to Seresto and determined that 33% of them were “probably or possibly” caused by the collar. When the EPA independently reviewed the same 251 pet deaths, it “concluded that 45% – or 113 – of the deaths were probably or possibly caused by the collar.”

Yet the EPA did nothing to warn the public and did not require Bayer — and later Elanco — to do anything differently to make its product safer or place a warning label on the packaging as countries like Colombia and Australia had required, the congressional report noted.

For example, the EPA proposed in 2019 that Bayer separate its registrations for the collar so that there was one for cats and one for dogs. The rationale being that the EPA could better analyze incident data for the different products. Bayer rejected this proposal, citing the administrative burden it would cause. The EPA thanked the company for its consideration and backed down, according to the congressional report.

The EPA also asked Bayer to update Seresto’s warning label as it had done in other countries. Germany’s label, for example, notes the collar poses neurological risks; Colombia’s label calls it highly toxic; Australia’s label simply says “POISON.” Bayer, and later Elanco, refused this proposal, and the label remained unchanged, the report said.

The congressional report also states that documents obtained by the subcommittee “show that Bayer and Elanco relied on dubious justifications to explain adverse incidents caused by the Seresto collar” and called into question its claim about the “Weber effect.”

The Weber Effect is a theory that “the number of incidents linked to a product will peak at the end of the second year after regulatory approval, followed by a steady decline as the market becomes familiar with the product,” the report states. But when Bayer continued to use this justification during a July 2019 meeting between the company and the EPA, reported animal deaths had continued to climb each of the seven years the collar had been on the market.

But Elanco said in a statement to USA TODAY and Investigate Midwest that the rate of incident reports has been decreasing. According to the company's own numbers, McGrath Happe said, the rate was was 17.26 per 10,000 collars sold in 2021.

"That’s less than a fifth of 1% reporting rate across-the-board," she said. "More than 93% of incident reports received for Seresto pet collars in the U.S. from January 2013 to December 2021 are classified after careful analysis as 'minor' (70.65%) or 'moderate' (22.59%), with the vast majority being redness or irritation at the site of the collar. In analyzing all reports, the data show no established link between the active ingredients in Seresto and pet death."

In addition to its demands that Elanco voluntarily recall its collar and the EPA cancel the product’s registration, the subcommittee also recommends that the EPA change the way it collects incident data and allocates necessary resources to investigate these incidents.

“Following the Subcommittee’s disturbing findings,” Krishnamoorthi said, “I believe the EPA must expand its data collection standards and more strictly follow its scientific review process to ensure that dangerous products are not permitted to stay on the market and threaten the welfare of pets that so many Americans view as family.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Congressional subcommittee: EPA must cancel popular Seresto collar over link to pet deaths