Good morning, Bulletin readers. A white Texas police officer who shot a black woman in her own home over the weekend resigned his position on Monday. Hours later, he was arrested.
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WHAT TO KNOW TODAY
The Fort Worth police officer who fatally shot a 28-year-old woman in her own home was charged with murder. Hours after Aaron Dean tendered his resignation, he was arrested and charged in Saturday’s fatal shooting of Atatiana Jefferson during a welfare call, the Police Department said. Bond was set at $200,000. “To the citizens and residents of our city, we feel and understand your anger and your disappointment,” said a police spokesperson.
NEW from THE TRACE: A Silicon Valley start-up aims to help solve more shootings. Created by a group of entrepreneurs and former law enforcement officials, the Law Enforcement Analysis Portal, or LEAP, analyzes troves of gun-related data to spot patterns and help investigators make more informed decisions in the field. Forensic Logic, the company behind LEAP, calls the technology the “Google for crime.” The Oakland Police Department was its first major customer, and the department and local prosecutors credit the program for saving lives and bolstering crime investigations. But the software is not without critics, who say that the information added to police data portals, and the algorithms that process it, are prone to factual holes and racial bias. Alain Stephens has the story.
Democratic presidential candidates spar over gun buybacks. In an interview with Snapchat’s “Good Luck America,” South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg said Democrats should pursue reforms like universal background checks while avoiding a politically fraught debate on gun buybacks, which he termed “confiscation.” He called former Texas Representative Beto O’Rourke’s aggressive support of mandatory buybacks a way to “stay relevant” in the campaign. O’Rourke responded that Buttigieg’s position amounted to belittling grassroots voters, while Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey separately tweeted that Buttigieg “calling buyback programs ‘confiscation’ is doing the NRA’s work for them.” Booker, Buttigieg, O’Rourke, and nine other Democratic hopefuls will debate in Ohio tonight. Get caught up on the candidates’ positions on guns with our handy guide.
Chicago activists rally for more gun violence prevention funding. The Fund Peace for Chicago coalition, comprised of nearly 20 different groups, is urging Mayor Lori Lightfoot and city officials to allocate $50 million to the city’s Office of Violence Prevention. Asked Ciera Walker, executive director of the violence prevention group LIVE FREE Chicago: “If we know that we can save black and brown lives, why don’t we make that investment now?”
Journalists call on Trump to personally denounce video depicting him shooting the media. The clip was played at a meeting of a pro-Trump group held at a Trump property in Miami this past weekend, prompting stinging rebukes from media organizations and at least one former Trump ally. The White House said on Monday that the president strongly condemns the video, but a journalism group wants Trump to personally denounce it. Instead, he repeated his attacks on “fake news” yesterday on Twitter.
A Parkland victim’s father doesn’t want March For Our Lives using his daughter’s likeness. Andrew Pollack, who lost his 18-year-old daughter, Meadow, in the February 2018 shooting, took issue with a teen gun reformer using her photo to protest a speech by Donald Trump Jr. at the University of Florida last week. Unlike many Parkland parents who embraced gun reform after the shooting, Pollack has focused on school security, while defending gun rights.
DATA POINT
709 people have been shot and killed by police in the United States in 2019. As of last week, there had been 90 fewer fatal police shootings this year compared to the same point last year. [Washington Post]