What To Know Today
Is neighborhood police violence worsening health outcomes for Black women? A new study from researchers at Northwestern University and NorthShore University HealthSystem suggests it could be. The research, published in the journal Science Advances, found that neighborhoods with frequent formal complaints about excessive use of force by police correlated with certain health inequities. Specifically, Black women living in neighborhoods with reports of police violence were 1.2 times more likely to deliver babies preterm and 1.4 times more likely to develop cardiovascular disease. The researchers established those links after accounting for other possible stressors, like neighborhood disadvantage and high rates of homicide. The study also observed a link between elevated use of force complaints and excess risk for preterm delivery in assessing groups of women and comparing multiple births for the same woman. “These findings suggest police violence may be an unrecognized contributor to health inequity for Black women,” the author wrote.
Cook County judge denies Chicago mayor’s request to put more people in pretrial detention. Mayor Lori Lightfoot asked Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans last month for a temporary moratorium on releasing defendants to home confinement with electronic monitoring if they are charged with several kinds of crimes, including illegal gun possession. The mayor’s request named a surge in violence as reason to consider keeping pretrial defendants in jails, invoking the victims and witnesses who often aid police in locating suspects. In denying that request this week, Evans disputed some of that reasoning, explaining that most people charged with murder remain in jail and highlighting the risks of detaining someone at length before they’ve been judged guilty at trial. “There is no evidence that individuals released from pretrial detention are driving this wave of violence,” Evans’s office said in a statement. “Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, [the violence] has struck both cities like Chicago that have undergone bail reform and cities that have not.”
At least 20 Oath Keepers are still serving in the U.S. military. The tally comes from a USA TODAY investigation following up on a hacked list of the far-right group’s membership rolls that was released publicly last year. The new report confirmed that 81 people on the list had joined while serving in a military branch, and at least 20 remain on active service. Of the remaining ones, 14 used their military email addresses to sign up. It’s unclear if current members who signed up for the group would have violated the Pentagon’s new rules forbidding service members from active participation in extremist groups. Eleven Oath Keepers members were charged last week with seditious conspiracy for a plot that allegedly included a plan to ferry firearms into Washington, D.C., around the time of the Capitol insurrection. Related: A handful of the more than 550 people charged over the incident have violated the terms of their pretrial release, and a few have been ordered back into custody. Among the most common reasons — in at least seven cases — were gun-related violations.
The final numbers are in: 2021 was a record-breaking year for TSA gun recoveries. The agency said it recovered 5,972 guns at airport security checkpoints last year, 86 percent of them loaded. The previous record, from 2019, was 4,400 recoveries. Americans can fly with unloaded guns in their checked baggage, but bringing a gun through security can lead to large fines and legal trouble.
Data Point
Three — the number of street outreach workers with Baltimore’s Safe Streets organization who have lost their lives to gun violence since January 2021. The third person, DaShawn McGrier, died along with two others on Wednesday night in a quadruple shooting in East Baltimore. Shantay Jackson, director of the Baltimore Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, said in a statement: “We lost a brother, a villager, who was doing his job and nothing more. We must do better.” [The Baltimore Sun]
