Sources: Marvel Comics, Disney Studios, Entertainment Weekly, Youtube
**** Black Panther claws past $1 billion at worldwide box office
Black Panther has reached a milestone only four other Marvel Studios titles have achieved so far. The film, starring Chadwick Boseman as newly crowned King T’Challa, has joined the $1 billion club at the global box office — all in just 26 days in theaters.
The Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Iron Man 3, and Captain America: Civil War are the other films within the Marvel Cinematic Universe to unlock this achievement. Black Panther is now the 33rd film, the 16th Walt Disney film, and the fifth Marvel Studios film to gross $1 billion.
By Saturday morning, the film grossed $521 million domestically and is expected to surpass Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight ($535 million) as the second highest-grossing superhero film of all time in the U.S. by the end of the weekend.
Internationally, Black Panther will cross $500 million this weekend, after it hit Chinese theaters on March 9 with an estimated opening of $22 million.
With all this success, the story of T’Challa, the Dora Milaje, and the highly advanced nation of Wakanda seems destined for a sequel. Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige told EW there’s “nothing specific to reveal” at this time, “other than to say we absolutely will do that.”
“One of the favorite pastimes at Marvel Studios is sitting around on a Part One and talking and dreaming about what we would do in a Part Two,” he continued. “There have been plenty of those conversations as we were putting together the first Black Panther. We have ideas and a pretty solid direction on where we want to head with the second one.”
Directed by Ryan Coogler, Black Panther saw T’Challa assuming the Wakandan throne as Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) emerged from the shadows to challenge him. The film has become a cultural phenomenon, boosted by a cast that includes Danai Gurira, Lupita Nyong’o, Andy Serkis, Martin Freeman, Angela Bassett, Letitia Wright, Daniel Kaluuya, Forest Whitaker, and Winston Duke.
“As Panther has so loudly declared, [representation] can only help you, can only help you tell unique stories, can only help you do things in a new, and unique, and fresh, and exciting way,” Feige said. “If you do that, audiences will notice it, and appreciate it, and support it.”
MARYLAND BLACK WOMAN THROWN INTO FREEZING STREET BY BALTIMORE HOSPITAL:
AN AFRICAN HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONAL SAVED HER.
WASHINGTON DC & MARYLAND BLACK LEADERS TREAT MOST BLACK PEOPLE LIKE DRUG DEALERS AND CRIMINALS.
INCLUDING LOCAL BLACK VOTERS.
IT’S WORSE THAN JIM CROW.
DOES THE GOV OF MARYLAND REALLY CARE ABOUT BLACK VOTERS?
DO DC POLITICIANS REALLY CARE ABOUT BLACK VOTERS?
AFTER WITNESSING HOW BLACK PEOPLE ARE MISTREATED BY BLACK LEADERS IN DC & MD, I NO LONGER THINK THE DMV IS BETTER THAN NYC.
Sources: AP, CBS News, TIME, Yahoo News, The Independent, Washington Post, Youtube
******* Man who aided hospital patient discharged in gown shocked
The man who said he came to the aid of a woman discharged from a Baltimore hospital wearing only a gown and socks on a cold winter's night, says he was left outraged and stunned at how she was treated.
Imamu Baraka, identified in local reports as the person who sought to help the woman, told The Associated Press he was so angry he decided to record Tuesday night's events on cellphone video, fearing no one would believe him if he reported a woman being left at a bus stop like that.
"I saw the unthinkable: another human in a wheelchair being wheeled out in the dead of cold," he said in the phone interview Thursday evening.
He described frigid temperatures in the 30s and a cold wind blowing at the woman's hospital gown, exposing her to the elements.
Baraka, who said he has a psychotherapy practice in a building across the street from the Maryland Medical Center Midtown Campus, said he rushed back to his office, retrieved his cellphone, returned and hit "record" while growing increasingly angry.
As a medical professional, the psychotherapist said he sought to keep his emotions in check even as he repeatedly challenged those who had wheeled the woman out to the street in the dark.
"At first I was shocked. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. And I move beyond that to the next level from being shocked. I became ... irritated and fearful for the young lady. And then I became angry," he recalled.
He added he failed to get satisfactory answers as he tried to help the woman.
Of those who brought her outdoors, he said: "I asked them three times, I asked them specifically, 'Are you going to leave this lady out here like this?' They kept walking. They then went inside of the building." He said he went and asked a security guard outside the hospital for a supervisor and was told "I am the supervisor."
Rebuffed, he said, he then went and tried to help the woman shelter in the bus stop while calling 911 for an ambulance. He said he asked the arriving ambulance crew where they would take her, and they replied "back to the hospital."
Recalled Baraka, "I said, 'Are you kidding me, they just dumped her on the curb.'"
It wasn't immediately clear what happened to the woman after she was driven back toward the hospital. But the hospital confirmed in a statement that the woman was discharged that Tuesday night.
Dr. Mohan Suntha, president and CEO of University of Maryland Medical Center Midtown Campus, told a news conference on Thursday afternoon that the hospital had "failed" after the video posted on Facebook showed the unidentified woman mumbling and appearing disoriented in frigid weather outside. Suntha also said there were no excuses for what happened to the woman.
"We believe firmly that we provided appropriate medical care to a patient who came to us in need, but where we absolutely failed, and where we own that failure, is in the demonstration of basic humanity and compassion as a patient was being discharged from our organization after having received that care," he said.
He added that the woman wasn't mistreated while in the hospital's care and that the incident was isolated and that hospital officials were conducting an extensive internal review.
Said Suntha, "We do not believe that what occurred Tuesday night in any way defines who we are as an organization. There has been a lot of conversation since this incident came to light."
Dominique Hill and Irving Smith Jr. had good jobs.
Last year, Hill worked as a bartender at P.F. Chang’s in Tysons Corner and Smith had recently been promoted to bartender at Wildfire grill, also in Tysons. Each had more than a decade of experience working in restaurants and was making $700 to $900 a week.
But last summer both of them walked away from their jobs for a chance at something better: the opportunity to work at BLT Prime, the steakhouse in the luxury Trump International Hotel, Washington D.C.
The couple said they soon discovered their hopes were misplaced. In a civil complaint filed Wednesday morning in D.C. Superior Court, Hill, a former BLT employee, and Smith, a current one, allege that the Trump Organization and hotel managing director Mickael Damelincourt saw to it that the restaurant routinely steered black employees to less lucrative shifts and subjected them to discriminatory behavior by other staff and by guests. The two men are joined in the case by another former BLT employee, JaNette Sturdivant.
Hill said he was the first bartender the restaurant hired last summer, before the hotel opened, but was almost exclusively given only lunch shifts.
“Some days I would just stand there all day long and have no customers,” he said. He routinely made $300 to $400 for a 30- to 35-hour workweek at BLT. He claims only four black employees still work at BLT after the hotel opened with 15 or more.
Smith, who works as a BLT server, said he was demoted to assistant server early on and rarely given prime shifts, where weekly earnings averaged $600 to $1,500 and which allegedly went instead to newly hired white and Latino employees.
“They started hiring all these people and instead of putting them on day shifts they was giving them night shifts and keeping us on day shift. Next thing I know, within the month all the black people were on the day shift,” he said.
In a statement, the Trump Organization, which runs the hotel, called the allegations “utterly baseless,” particularly because “the Hotel never employed these individuals.”
“Rather, the plaintiffs worked for a third-party restaurant company that is solely responsible for the direction, supervision, and management of its own employees. In short, this lawsuit appears to be nothing more than a desperate, politically-motivated publicity stunt. We look forward to litigating this matter,” said Amanda Miller, a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization, in a statement.
ESquared Hospitality, which operates the restaurant, said it “wholeheartedly” disputed the allegations and that the employees “did not previously voice or file complaints through any of the proper channels.”
“Had they done so, BLT Prime would have immediately taken the alleged complaints seriously and investigated them to the fullest extent and would have taken appropriate action where warranted,” the company said.
Trump opened the hotel last fall, weeks before he was elected president. He no longer runs his company and has placed his ownership into a trust, but the family name still adorns everything from the sign out front to the cocktail napkins. After the election, Smith claimed one of his co-workers began making racist statements to him and that Smith’s complaints to management fell on deaf ears.
The lawsuit’s allegations about the restaurant stand in contrast to the operation of the larger hotel, whose is widely diverse by race, gender and nationality. On a busy Friday night in September, when the hotel unveiled a new dessert menu, staff who appeared to be black worked in prominent positions as bartender, hostess, server, valet and other posts.
A reporter observing six shifts of morning, afternoon and evening work at BLT, viewed staffs that appeared to be diverse as well, although evening bartenders appeared to usually be white. “We work diligently to create a culture of equal opportunity employment with a zero-tolerance policy for any kind of discrimination regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion or otherwise,” ESquared said in its statement.
Gregg C. Greenberg, a Maryland employment attorney, said racial discrimination cases are often difficult to prove.
“If you have a client that says, ‘I have been discriminated against,’ how and why are you able to prove it? Do you have emails or policies in place that are objectively discriminatory? Or do you just have the feeling that someone there is out for you?” he said.
Smith and Hill, unlike most workers in the hotel, were not employed directly by the Trump Organization but by ESquared. Hill produced paperwork showing that in March he filed a discrimination charge with the D.C. Office of Human Rights and underwent mediation in July with attorneys for ESquared.
When that failed, he filed suit with representation from A.J. Dhali, a D.C. attorney who said he has brought nearly 100 employment cases in his career and averages 15 to 18 annually.
Dhali argued the Trump Organization had control over the BLT employees’ employment because of the nature of the management contract between the hotel and ESquared. Whether other black employees were treated well or not was not the issue for the court to consider, he said.
“I don’t have to show that discrimination occurred against everybody. I just have to show that discrimination occurred against my clients,” Dhali said. The plaintiffs are seeking $14.5 million in damages.
Hill and Smith said they have both experienced discrimination in other restaurant jobs. Smith said guests at Wildfire once informed management they did not want a black or gay server. “Management asked them to leave,” he said. He said management at Clyde’s issued the same directive when necessary, but that at BLT, he said he had twice observed guests requesting service from nonblack staff who were allowed to stay. The suit cites other allegedly racist behavior by some guests, and it describes a working environment where, for instance, a staff memo posted in the kitchen details how the staff ought to handle $39 ostrich eggs for a dish that includes a photo of an ostrich chasing a black man.
The third plaintiff, Sturdivant, 34, a black woman who worked at BLT from May to June as a server, claimed she was complimented on her light skin after arriving.
“When I first came on board … the server manager said it’s good to see someone with Milano complexion here,” she said. Still, she said she was not given “moneymaking” night shifts.
Hill said he was fired after dropping a bloody mary on a baby in a stroller at a weekend brunch. But he said a white server who spilled a bottle of champagne down a bride’s dress and was not suspended or fired.
“I kept saying, why am I being terminated? Why can’t I be suspended or transferred? … My feeling was Mickael, who was right there, was letting me go from the company.” After being fired he said he was without work for six weeks and had his cable and electricity cut off in his apartment. Smith lost his car because he could not make the payments.
Smith said he took a second restaurant job to pay his bills and works about 60 hours a week.
“I would go to work crying and ask god why are you doing this? We were so comfortable and gave up everything to go to this place. And then to be treated like this.”
A Mississippi teacher has been fired after a racist comment appeared on her Facebook page.
The South Panola School District told WREG Tuesday that Cammie Rone, a second grade teacher at Batesville Intermediate School in Batesville, was dismissed from employment following an investigation.
Rone can appeal the decision.
Monday, Fox13 in Memphis obtained a screenshot of a post made on Rone's Facebook page.
The post read, "If Blacks in this country are so offended no one is forcing them to stay here. Why don't they pack up and move back to Africa where they will have to work for a living. I am sure our government will will pay for it! We pay for everything else."
Rone made a post on her Facebook page Monday, saying she was hacked.
"I think I have been hacked,” the post read. “I keep getting messages about racist posts but when I go to my page I can’t see it. Someone screenshoted (sic) and sent me.
If anyone knows me I post about cows recipes and home improvements stuff not racism. Please know I have not posted or made any kind of ractist (sic) comments.”
Rone did not return requests for comment. Neither post is available to the public.
• Kenneth Gleason, 23, charged with murder after shootings in Baton Rouge
• Gleason could face the death penalty, district attorney says
A 23-year-old white man arrested Tuesday was accused of killing two black men and firing on a black family in a string of attacks that police say may have been racially motivated.
A law enforcement official said they had found a copy of an Adolf Hitler speech at the home of Kenneth James Gleason, and investigators said DNA on shell casings and other evidence link him to the crimes.
Gleason was led away from the police department in handcuffs just before authorities there held a news conference to announce that he would be charged with first-degree murder in the shooting deaths last week of a homeless man and a dishwasher who was walking to work.
"I feel confident that this killer would have killed again," interim Police Chief Jonny Dunnam said.
Gleason's attorney, J. Christopher Alexander, said his client "vehemently denies guilt, and we look forward to complete vindication." Alexander declined to say anything else.
Authorities found a copy of the Hitler speech during a search of Gleason's home over the weekend, according to the law enforcement official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.
Asked whether police suspect race was a motive for the shootings, Sgt. L'Jean McKneely said: "We're not completely closed off to that. We're looking at all possibilities at this time, so we're not going to just pinpoint that."
District Attorney Hillar Moore said his office could seek the death penalty.
"It appears to be cold, calculated, planned (against) people who were unarmed and defenseless," he said. "We don't need to prove motive. There are a lot of things that are unanswered."
No one was injured when Gleason fired multiple times into the home of a black family in his neighborhood on Sept. 11, authorities said. It's not clear if Gleason knew the family.
In the other shootings, Gleason fired from his car then walked up to the victims as they were lying on the ground and fired again multiple times, police said.
Neither victim had any prior relationship with Gleason.
The first fatal shooting occurred Sept. 12 when 59-year-old Bruce Cofield, who was homeless, was shot to death.
The second happened last Thursday night when 49-year-old Donald Smart was gunned down while walking to his job as a dishwasher at a cafe popular with Louisiana State University students.
The attacks came at a time when Louisiana's capital already was in the grips of a surge in violence. The number of homicides in East Baton Rouge Parish has already surpassed last year's total of 62, The Advocate newspaper reported earlier this month.
"Baton Rouge has been through a lot of turmoil in the last year. Has there not been a swift conclusion to this case, I feel confident that this killer probably would have killed again," the police chief said. "He could have potentially created a tear in the fabric that holds this community together."
Racial tensions roiled the city in the summer of 2016 when a black man was shot to death by white police officers outside of a convenience store.
About two weeks later, a black gunman targeted police in an ambush, killing three officers and wounding three others before he was shot to death.
The city of about 229,000 is about 55 percent black and 40 percent white.
Gleason didn't appear to have any active social media profiles. A spokesman at Louisiana State University said a student by that name attended the university from the fall of 2013 to the fall of 2014 before withdrawing.
He had transferred to LSU from Baton Rouge Community College.
During the search of Gleason's home, authorities also found 9 grams of marijuana and vials of human growth hormone, according to a police document.
A former St. Louis police officer was acquitted Friday in the fatal shooting of a drug suspect following a chase.
Jason Stockley was charged with first-degree murder in the 2011 death of 24-year-old Anthony Lamar Smith. Testimony in the trial ended Aug. 9, but Circuit Judge Timothy Wilson weighed evidence for more than a month before ruling.
Stockley and his partner sought to question Smith after observing what appeared to be a drug deal on a fast-food restaurant parking lot. Smith drove away, prompting a chase.
Stockley shot into Smith's car five times after the chase. He testified Smith was moving his hand toward an area of the seat where a gun was found. But prosecutors said Stockley planted the gun.
Stockley is white and Smith was black. The case is among several across the United States in recent years that have increased debate about race and policing. Here are some other high-profile deaths of blacks during police encounters:
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FREDDIE GRAY
The U.S. Department of Justice said Tuesday it won't bring federal civil rights charges against six Baltimore officers involved in the arrest and in-custody death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man whose death touched off weeks of protests. Gray was shackled but alive when he was put in a Baltimore police van in April 2015. He came out with severe neck injuries. Six officers were charged initially, but prosecutors in July 2016 dropped all remaining charges after acquittals and a hung jury. Gray's family agreed to a $6.4 million settlement with the city in September 2015.
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LAQUAN MCDONALD
Chicago officer Jason Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder in November 2015, on the same day that the city, under a judge's orders, released dashcam video showing 17-year-old McDonald being shot 16 times on Oct. 20, 2014. Van Dyke, who is white, has pleaded not guilty. The Justice Department determined in January that Chicago police have a long history of civil rights violations and excessive force. A Cook County grand jury looking into allegations of a cover-up is weighing further indictments in the case, the Chicago Sun Times reported in August.
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KEITH LAMONT SCOTT
A split review board announced in August that it won't challenge a police department's finding that its officer was justified in the fatal shooting of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2016. The board split 4-4 after reviewing the internal police probe. The board will issue confidential recommendations for policy changes. The shooting provoked several days of unrest, resulting in a death, dozens of arrests and millions of dollars in damage.
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SAM DUBOSE
A judge in July dismissed charges against Ray Tensing, a white former University of Cincinnati officer who fatally shot Sam DuBose, an unarmed black motorist, during a 2015 traffic stop. The judge's decision came after a prosecutor declined to pursue a third murder trial; the first two ended in hung juries. Tensing has said he feared he could be dragged or run over as DuBose tried to drive away. The university fired Tensing, restructured its public safety department and reached a $5.3 million settlement that includes free undergraduate tuition for DuBose's 13 children.
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SYLVILLE SMITH
A jury in June acquitted former Milwaukee officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown, who is black, of first-degree reckless homicide in the death of Sylville Smith in 2016. The shooting ignited rioting in the city. Smith was shot following a traffic stop. Police say Smith ran away holding a gun. Prosecutors say Smith fell and Heaggan-Brown shot him once in the arm as he was getting up, still holding the weapon while facing the officer. They say Heaggan-Brown's second shot came after Smith had thrown his gun over a fence. Heaggan-Brown, 25, said he thought Smith was reaching for another gun in his waistband when he fired again.
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PHILANDO CASTILE
St. Anthony, Minnesota, officer Jeronimo Yanez was acquitted of manslaughter in June in the fatal shooting of Philando Castile, a black motorist who had just informed the officer that he was carrying a gun. The case in suburban St. Paul garnered immediate attention because Castile's girlfriend streamed the aftermath live on Facebook. Yanez testified that Castile was pulling his gun out of his pocket despite his commands not to do so.
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JORDAN EDWARDS
Roy Oliver, a white police officer in suburban Dallas, was fired and is charged with murder in the fatal shooting in April of 15-year-old Jordan Edwards. The U.S. Department of Justice also is investigating. Oliver fired a rifle at a car full of teenagers leaving a party, striking Edwards, who was a passenger in the vehicle. Balch Springs, Texas, police had originally said the vehicle was reversing "in an aggressive manner" toward officers, but police Chief Jonathan Haber later said video taken at the scene proved the vehicle was actually driving away. Oliver is free on bond.
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TERENCE CRUTCHER
An Oklahoma jury in May found white Tulsa police officer Betty Jo Shelby not guilty of first-degree manslaughter in the 2016 death of Terence Crutcher, 40, who was shot shortly after Shelby arrived to find Crutcher's SUV stopped in the middle of the road. Shelby testified that she was afraid because Crutcher didn't obey her commands and appeared to reach inside his vehicle. Prosecutors told jurors that Shelby overreacted, noting that videos from a patrol car dashboard and a police helicopter showed Crutcher had his hands in the air and did not have a weapon.
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ALTON STERLING
Federal prosecutors announced in May they would not seek charges against two white police officers who were involved in a deadly encounter with Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, last summer. Sterling, 37, was shot to death on July 5, 2016, as the officers pinned him to the pavement outside a convenience store where he had been selling CDs. The killing was captured on cellphone video and circulated widely online, sparking demonstrations across Baton Rouge. U.S. Attorney Corey Amundson said Sterling was armed during the confrontation and the investigation didn't find enough evidence to pursue charges. State authorities are investigating whether to bring charges.
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JAMAR CLARK
Jamar Clark's November 2015 shooting death sparked weeks of protests in Minneapolis. Two white officers, Mark Ringgenberg and Dustin Schwarze, were trying to arrest the 24-year-old when he was shot once in the head. He died a day later. Some witnesses said Clark was handcuffed when he was shot, but federal and state probes concluded that he was not. Investigators said Ringgenberg felt Clark's hand trying to grab his weapon and shouted to Schwarze, who then shot Clark. Prosecutors decided not to charge either officer, and an internal police investigation cleared them.
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JEREMY MCDOLE
Jeremy McDole, 28, was sitting in his wheelchair when he was shot and killed in September 2015 in Wilmington, Delaware, after police received a 911 call about a man with a gun. A bystander's cellphone footage showed officers repeatedly telling McDole to drop his weapon and raise his hands, with McDole reaching for his waist area before shots erupted. The Delaware attorney general's office decided not to criminally charge four Wilmington police officers involved. A federal judge approved the city's $1.5 million settlement with McDole's family.
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WILLIAM CHAPMAN II
Former Portsmouth, Virginia, police officer Stephen Rankin was sentenced last October to 2½ years in prison for fatally shooting William Chapman II while responding to a shoplifting call outside a Walmart on April 22, 2015. Prosecutors allege Rankin killed the unarmed 18-year-old "willfully, deliberately and with premeditation." Some witnesses said Chapman was combative, and one said he knocked away Rankin's stun gun. Rankin, who is white, was fired.
___
WALTER SCOTT
Prosecutors are recommending decades in prison for white South Carolina police officer Michael Slager, who shot Walter Scott in the back as the motorist fled following a traffic stop. Slager pleaded guilty in May to a federal charge of violating Scott's civil rights. A judge will determine his sentence, which could range from probation to life in prison without parole. Scott's shooting in April 2015 was captured on cellphone video and seen worldwide.
___
ERIC HARRIS
Former Tulsa County volunteer sheriff's deputy Robert Bates, 74, was sentenced in 2016 to four years in prison for second-degree manslaughter in the April 2015 death of Eric Harris, 44, who was unarmed and restrained. Bates, who is white, has said he confused his stun gun with his handgun. That shooting led to the temporary suspension of the reserve deputy program after a report found poor training of the volunteer officers, a lack of oversight, and cronyism. Bates is appealing his conviction.
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TAMIR RICE
Tamir Rice, 12, was fatally shot by a white Cleveland police officer in a recreational area in November 2014. Officers were responding to a report of a man waving a gun. The boy had a pellet gun tucked in his waistband and was shot after the officers' cruiser skidded to a stop, just feet away. A grand jury in December 2015 declined to indict patrolman Timothy Loehmann, who fired the fatal shot, and training officer Frank Garmback. The city settled Rice's family's lawsuit for $6 million. Cleveland in May fired Loehmann and suspended Garmback for 10 days. The officers' union called the discipline politically motivated.
___
AKAI GURLEY
Rookie New York City police officer Peter Liang was convicted of manslaughter last year in the November 2014 death of 28-year-old Akai Gurley. Liang, an American of Chinese descent, said he was patrolling a public housing high-rise with his gun drawn when a sound startled him and he fired accidentally. A bullet ricocheted off a wall, hitting Gurley. A judge reduced the conviction to negligent homicide and sentenced Liang to five years' probation and 800 hours of community service. The city settled with Gurley's family for $4.1 million.
___
MICHAEL BROWN
Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, was fatally shot by a white officer, Darren Wilson, in August 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. A grand jury declined to indict Wilson, and the U.S. Justice Department opted against civil rights charges. Wilson later resigned. The death of Brown led to months of sometimes-violent protests and became a catalyst for the Black Lives Matter movement.
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JOHN CRAWFORD III
Police in the Dayton, Ohio, suburb of Beavercreek responded to a Walmart store in August 2014 on a call of a man waving an apparent rifle. A white officer fatally shot John Crawford III, 22, who was carrying what turned out to be an air rifle from a store shelf. Police said they believed it was a real gun and that he didn't respond to their commands to put it down. A grand jury declined to indict the officers. The U.S. Justice Department said it was reviewing the case, and an attorney for Crawford's family has filed a federal lawsuit.
___
ERIC GARNER
Eric Garner, 43, died in July 2014 in New York City after a white officer placed him in a chokehold during an arrest for selling loose cigarettes. A grand jury declined to indict that officer, or any others involved in the arrest. The city agreed to pay a $6 million civil settlement.
___
REKIA BOYD
Chicago police officer Dante Servin resigned in May 2016 after the police superintendent said he should be fired for killing Rekia Boyd four years earlier. Servin was off duty when he shot the 22-year-old unarmed woman. She had been walking down a street with her friends when he told them to be quiet, and he fired when he thought he saw a gun. Prosecutors charged Servin with involuntary manslaughter; a judge acquitted him in April 2016, saying he'd been improperly charged. The city settled a wrongful-death lawsuit in 2013 with Boyd's family for $4.5 million.
Nearly three days after Kenneka Jenkins was found dead inside a walk-in freezer in a Rosemont hotel, police have said very little about what happened to the 19-year-old.
No cause of death has been released and police won't say if there were signs of trauma on her body when it was discovered early Sunday morning at the Crowne Plaza Hotel.
Yet that has not kept thousands and thousands of online commenters from accusing and making threats against people they think set Jenkins up and then attacked her. "The day of punishment will come," one person posted, though police have not even said whether a crime has been committed.
Much of the speculation is based on a livestream video that was apparently broadcast from a hotel room shortly before Jenkins disappeared.
The video — which has gotten more than 4 million views — features a woman in mirrored sunglasses talking to the camera. Reflected in her glasses is the other side of the room, where Jenkins appears to be sitting.
The video has been shared more than 53,000 times and has drawn nearly 35,000 comments. Some viewers claim to hear her cry for help, others hear someone say she is being attacked.
But words are often garbled or obscured by music or other people talking. The images reflected in the woman's sunglasses appear clear at times, but it's still hard to tell what exactly Jenkins is doing.
Investigators say they have been reviewing the Facebook video as well as surveillance video, and have been talking with people who were in the room. But they have said very little so far about what they have found.
Here is a timeline of events that unfolded over the weekend at the hotel, as disclosed by family and police, followed by what we do not know about the case.
Yet that has not kept thousands and thousands of online commenters from accusing and making threats against people they think set Jenkins up and then attacked her. "The day of punishment will come," one person posted, though police have not even said whether a crime has been committed.
Much of the speculation is based on a livestream video that was apparently broadcast from a hotel room shortly before Jenkins disappeared. The video — which has gotten more than 4 million views — features a woman in mirrored sunglasses talking to the camera. Reflected in her glasses is the other side of the room, where Jenkins appears to be sitting.
The video has been shared more than 53,000 times and has drawn nearly 35,000 comments. Some viewers claim to hear her cry for help, others hear someone say she is being attacked.
But words are often garbled or obscured by music or other people talking.
The images reflected in the woman's sunglasses appear clear at times, but it's still hard to tell what exactly Jenkins is doing.
Investigators say they have been reviewing the Facebook video as well as surveillance video, and have been talking with people who were in the room. But they have said very little so far about what they have found.
Here is a timeline of events that unfolded over the weekend at the hotel, as disclosed by family and police, followed by what we do not know about the case.
• 12:48 a.m. Sunday. Jenkins is pronounced dead, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. The cause of death remains undetermined after an autopsy the next day, pending further studies and investigation.
• Around 5 a.m. Sunday. Martin is allowed to see her daughter's body. She says the body had been removed from the freezer, which appeared to have been defrosted. “Her hair had soaking water up on there," she told reporters.
What We Don't Know
• What Jenkins was doing between the time she left home at 11:30 p.m. Friday and the time the video began around 1:35 a.m. Saturday.
• Who was in the hotel room. Police have not said how many were in the room and whether Jenkins knew all or most of them.
• What witnesses have told police about what went on in the room. Do they contradict each other?
Jenkins' mother has said her friends’ stories about what happened have changed. Is anyone considered a suspect?
• Whether Jenkins left alone or with someone, and whether anyone else was with her at the front desk.
• Who finally found Jenkins? How? Police have not said whether video shows her entering the freezer or whether there was anyone with her.
• We don't know how Jenkins died or whether there were signs of trauma. Jenkins' family said they were initially told by police that Jenkins apparently let herself into the freezer while drunk and died inside.
But a police spokesman said on Monday that nothing has been ruled out.
The medical examiner's office says the cause of death remains undetermined pending further studies and investigation.
• Police initially said the freezer was running at the time, but a spokesman later appeared to back off that comment.
It's also unknown whether there was a lever inside that would have allowed Jenkins to get out.
Hurricane Irma battered the Florida Keys and South Florida, swiped the Tampa area and unexpectedly targeted Orlando at the last moment late Sunday, bringing hours of rain and strong winds that left about 6.5 million homes and businesses without power and 200,000 people in shelters.
At least two people were killed during the storm in Orange County. About 900,000 homes and businesses were still without power Monday night in five Central Florida counties, and residents came outside after hours indoors to find downed trees blocking streets and damaging homes and cars.
And about 4 a.m. Monday, a lake in west Orange County’s Orlo Vista neighborhood overflowed leading to flooding. Orange County firefighters and members of the National Guard pulled more than 200 people from 500 homes and took them to local shelters.
“How are we going to survive from here?” asked Gwen Bush, a resident who walked through thigh-deep floodwaters. “What's going to happen now? I just don't know.”
No injuries were reported in the neighborhood.
In South Florida, Gov. Rick Scott said he saw boats washed ashore and flood damage when he flew over the Florida Keys Monday. He did not know whether there were casualties, but said he hoped everyone who did not evacuate survived the storm.
“The Keys right now,” Scott said, “not having water, not having sewer, not having electricity, I mean, how can you live there?”
“Marathon was completely underwater,” said state Rep. Holly Raschein, R-Key Largo. “Cudjoe Key took a direct hit; we’re still having problems communicating there. Flooding on Big Pine.
It’s pretty widespread. The good thing is a lot of people did evacuate, so we’re seeing a bad situation that could have been worse.”
Tampa and St. Petersburg were spared the damage some meteorologists feared when the storm did not hug the state’s gulf coast, and instead headed closer inland.
The National Weather Service recorded maximum wind gusts of 79 mph at Orlando International Airport, and gusts of 83 mph in Cocoa Beach.
The higher winds brought damage to Central Florida.
Edgardo Plaza, 53, looked out from the seawall where his sailboat was docked at SunDance Marine in Palm Shores, Brevard County. He could see only the mast and ropes dangling. The ocean had buried the rest of the vessel.
"I checked on it last night, and it seemed fine," he said perched atop wood and metal debris along the harbor. "I can't believe it."
The damage was only an ounce of what Brevard County saw during Hurricane Irma, which left many without electricity and nearly half of the county’s 579,000 residents without running water.
About 80 percent of Polk County was without power, including shelters. Polk County officials warned drivers of potentially dangerous downed power lines.
In nearby Lake County, firefighters in Clermont rescued a 23-year-old man who was crushed in bed when a tree fell through his roof, police Sgt. Malcolm Draper said. During a lull in the storm at 1:45 a.m., when sustained winds were higher than 50 mph and gusting to 90 mph, firefighters hurried to the home and lifted the tree from the man.
Fire Chief Carle Bishop drove the man to South Lake Hospital, where authorities quickly realized he needed surgery but no doctor was available. Police officers went to a doctor’s home and drove him to the hospital, where the man successfully underwent surgery for internal injuries. He is in stable condition, Draper said.
More than 30 people were rescued in Volusia County during Hurricane Irma on Sunday night and Monday morning.
Volusia County Manager Jim Dinneen said the west side of the county and Beach Street in Daytona Beach sustained the most damage, particularly downed trees.
“In the end, if we all work together we can all guarantee a safe return to normalcy,” he said.
The biggest hurdle will be restoring power, he said. More than 220,000 customers in Volusia County were without power as of Monday afternoon, according to Florida Emergency Management.
As the day went on and winds quieted, people across Central Florida tried to return to normal. Against advice, some left their homes — 24 people were arrested on charges of curfew violations in Orange County , including three on burglary charges. Others just got out of the house — a person in an inflatable T-Rex costume and black flip-flops found a tree blocking an Orlando road and climbed onto it as people nearby filmed with their cell phones.
Schools are still closed Tuesday. Most curfews were lifted by Monday afternoon, though Mount Dora instituted another one from Monday night to 6 a.m. Tuesday because of a power line down.
Robert and Maria Gonzalez said they looked outside their Kissimmee home overnight in the night and saw flood waters almost up to the front door. The water looked like a lake — and they joked they didn't know they'd gotten a lake house.
"We were thinking, 'Please don't come in,'" Maria Gonzalez said.
The couple and their 10-year-old son had seen images of residents stranded because of flooding in Houston after Hurricane Harvey weeks before. They feared they could end up in the same situation.
Water seeped into their garage on Town & Country Drive, but they found no damage. Water had begun to recede midday Monday, but still not enough they would risk driving their van through it, they said.
Despite curfews and hazardous debris blocking off streets, local highways across counties in Central Florida were used all day Monday. Florida Highway Patrol troopers were pulling over drivers who refused to follow road laws at intersections where traffic lights were still out.
FHP spokeswoman Sgt. Kim Montes said drivers should exercise additional caution until road conditions return to normal, which could take some time.
One fatality in the storm was a car crash: Heidi Zehner, 50, died after losing control of an SUV on State Road 417 Sunday evening as the storm approached. The other, Brian Buwalda, 51, was apparently electrocuted at Leith and Westchester avenues in Winter Park by a downed power line Monday morning.
The University of Central Florida offered to house up to 1,000 National Guard members and 250 of their vehicles on campus as recovery continues, a university spokeswoman said.
Saturday’s UCF football game against Georgia Tech was canceled Monday.
In Seminole County, the driver of a van accidentally drove head first into a sinkhole that opened in the parking lot of the Astor Park apartments off Tuskawilla Road near Red Bug Road.
The driver, who was not injured, was pulled out of the vehicle from the back window of the van by a resident Good Samaritan.
Jeff Lane was out walking his dog on Monday morning in his neighborhood near Aloma Avenue and SR 417.
Overnight, a wind gust tore his kitchen skylight open.
"I threw some blankets down and grabbed a storage crate to catch the water," he said. "It's not too bad."
He said the sound of the storm reminded him of Charley in 2004.
"We were without power for three weeks after Charley," he said. "Hopefully it won't be that long."
Tropical Storm Harvey sent devastating floods pouring into the nation’s fourth-largest city Sunday as rising water chased thousands of people to rooftops or higher ground and overwhelmed rescuers who could not keep up with the constant calls for help.
The incessant rain covered much of Houston in turbid, gray-green water and turned streets into rivers navigable only by boat. In a rescue effort that recalled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, helicopters landed near flooded freeways, airboats buzzed across submerged neighborhoods and high-wheeled vehicles plowed through water-logged intersections. Some people managed with kayaks or canoes or swam.
Volunteers joined emergency teams to pull people from their homes or from the water, which was high enough in places to gush into second floors.
The flooding was so widespread that authorities had trouble pinpointing the worst areas. They urged people to get on top of their homes to avoid becoming trapped in attics and to wave sheets or towels to draw attention to their location.
Judging from federal disaster declarations, the storm has so far affected about a quarter of the Texas population, or 6.8 million people in 18 counties. It was blamed for at least two deaths.
As the water rose, the National Weather Service offered another ominous forecast: Before the storm that arrived Friday as a Category 4 hurricane is gone, some parts of Houston and its suburbs could get as much as 50 inches (1.3 meters) of rain.
That would be the highest amount ever recorded in Texas.
Some areas have already received about half that amount. Since Thursday, South Houston recorded nearly 25 inches (63 centimeters), and the suburbs of Santa Fe and Dayton got 27 inches (69 centimeters).
“The breadth and intensity of this rainfall is beyond anything experienced before,” the National Weather Service said in a statement.
Average rainfall totals will end up around 40 inches (1 meter) for Houston, weather service meteorologist Patrick Burke said.
The director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Brock Long, predicted that the aftermath of the storm would require FEMA’s involvement for years.
“This disaster’s going to be a landmark event,” Long said.
Rescuers had to give top priority to life-and-death situations, leaving many affected families to fend for themselves.
Tom Bartlett and Steven Craig pulled a rowboat on a rope through chest-deep water for a mile to rescue Bartlett’s mother from her home in west Houston. It took them 45 minutes to reach the house. Inside, the water was halfway up the walls.
Marie Bartlett, 88, waited in her bedroom upstairs.
“When I was younger, I used to wish I had a daughter, but I have the best son in the world,” she said. “In my 40 years here, I’ve never seen the water this high.”
The city’s main convention center was quickly opened as a shelter.
Gillis Leho arrived there soaking wet. She said she awoke Sunday to find her downstairs flooded. She tried to move some belongings upstairs, then grabbed her grandchildren.
“When they told us the current was getting high, we had to bust a window to get out,” Leho said.
William Cain sought shelter after water started coming inside his family’s apartment and they lost power. “I live in a lake where there was once dry land,” he said.
Some people used inflatable beach toys, rubber rafts and even air mattresses to get through the water to safety. Others waded while carrying trash bags stuffed with their belongings and small animals in picnic coolers.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said authorities had received more than 2,000 calls for help, with more coming in. He urged drivers to stay off roads to avoid adding to the number of those stranded.
“I don’t need to tell anyone this is a very, very serious and unprecedented storm,” Turner told a news conference. “We have several hundred structural flooding reports. We expect that number to rise pretty dramatically.”
The deteriorating situation was bound to provoke questions about the conflicting advice given by the governor and Houston leaders before the hurricane. Gov. Greg Abbott urged people to flee from Harvey’s path, but the Houston mayor issued no evacuation orders and told everyone to stay home.
The governor refused to point fingers on Sunday.
“Now is not the time to second-guess the decisions that were made,” Abbott, a Republican, said at a news conference in Austin. “What’s important is that everybody work together to ensure that we are going to, first, save lives and, second, help people across the state rebuild.”
The mayor, a Democrat, defended his decision, saying there was no way to know which parts of the city were most vulnerable.
“If you think the situation right now is bad, and you give an order to evacuate, you are creating a nightmare,” Turner said, citing the risks of sending the city’s 2.3 million inhabitants onto the highways at the same time.
Jesse Gonzalez, and his son, also named Jesse, used their boat to rescue people from a southeast Houston neighborhood.
Asked what he had seen, the younger Gonzalez replied: “A lot of people walking and a lot of dogs swimming.”
“It’s chest- to shoulder-deep out there in certain areas,” he told television station KTRK as the pair grabbed a gasoline can to refill their boat.
The Coast Guard deployed five helicopters and asked for additional aircraft from New Orleans.
The White House announced that President Donald Trump would visit Texas on Tuesday.
He met Sunday by teleconference with top administration officials to discuss federal support for response and recovery efforts.
The rescues unfolded a day after Harvey settled over the Texas coastline. The system weakened Saturday to a tropical storm.
On Sunday, it was virtually stationary about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northwest of Victoria, Texas, with maximum sustained winds of about 40 mph (72.42 kph), the hurricane center said.
Harvey was the fiercest hurricane to hit the U.S. in 13 years and the strongest to strike Texas since 1961’s Hurricane Carla, the most powerful Texas hurricane on record.
Now that the sun is finally shining and the murky, brown floodwaters are slowly receding in much of the Houston area, grim reality is setting in.
Harvey is about to release its dead.
In Texas, the official death toll surpassed 30 on Wednesday and was expected to climb as authorities investigated several other deaths to determine whether they were storm-related.
Officials fear that the number of fatalities will climb sharply in coming days as neighbors, emergency workers and family members search for the missing — and discover the bodies of people trapped in waterlogged homes or encased in underwater graves inside cars.
And the death toll might rise even further in the recovery phase, from car crashes, carbon monoxide poisoning or other accidents during cleanup.
"Historically all estimates of deaths are wrong in the beginning," said Craig Fugate, who was the Federal Emergency Management Agency director from 2009 until earlier this year.
Already, the nation is shocked by the horrors revealed as the storm moves out of the area and east toward Louisiana and points north.
The first confirmed fatality came early: A man in the Gulf coastal city of Rockport was killed in a fire late Friday as the storm raged ashore.
On Wednesday, officials located a submerged van that seven members of a Houston family had been traveling in when it was swept off a bridge and into a storm-ravaged bayou.
Samuel Saldivar told police he was trying to bring his elderly parents and his brother's four grandchildren to safety from their flooded home on Sunday when the van he was driving was tossed by a strong current into the bayou as it crossed the bridge.
He escaped through a window but the six others were trapped when the van's partially submerged sliding door wouldn't open.
Also Wednesday, authorities said 65-year-old Donald Rogers and his 58-year-old wife, Rochelle, drowned when they were swept away by a current after driving their pickup truck into floodwaters in a rural area southwest of Houston.
Fort Bend County Sheriff's Maj. Chad Norvell said the couple was on the phone with 911 asking for help when the line went silent. When officers found the truck, it was completely submerged.
Sunlight Returns to Houston, Revealing the Grim Reality of Harvey's Aftermath
On Tuesday afternoon, a 3-year-old girl was found alive in a rain-swollen canal, clinging to the body of her drowned mother in Beaumont, Texas.
A second woman was confirmed dead in Beaumont on Wednesday.
Earlier Tuesday, the body of 61-year-old Houston Police Sgt. Steve Perez was found in his car. He'd been swept down a flooded road as he drove to his precinct, determined to serve his community.
Eleven other confirmed deaths, some of which were listed on a Harris County database, showed people were found floating in waters — some in homes or businesses, others near cars.
Among those victims was Ruben Jordan, a high school football and track coach, who was last seen late Saturday helping people through floodwaters.
His family was informed on Monday that he had died in the floods.
"The sad thing is, of the deaths we've seen, we're going to see more, unfortunately," said Jeff Schlegelmilch, the deputy director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. "That number doesn't stop moving up until we're well into the recovery phase."
No official number of the missing has been released, and a spokesman for the Harris County Sheriff's Office, where Houston is located, said there isn't a specific strategy in place to look for additional bodies.
"We are going to go out and try to find any potential victims that may be there," said the spokesman, Jake Smith. "We are also encouraging the public if they come across anything, we strongly urge them to call 911 if they find a body or a potential victim."
Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said the department had received 47 missing persons reports since Harvey inundated the city and 27 of those individuals have been located.
Photos with pleas for help have been posted on social media, cut-and-pasted and retweeted by thousands of people as desperate family members seek loved ones they fear may be dead — but who may only have a cellphone without power.
The uncertainty is terrifying.
One of the worries, said Schlegelmilch, is that many of the severely flooded neighborhoods weren't in evacuation areas.
Additionally, the people most likely to be found dead are the elderly, the infirm and the people who were isolated from others — along with folks who didn't have the means or wherewithal to flee.
Sometimes it's a matter of having the strength to wade through floodwaters a few blocks to safety, or to pull one's self up onto a roof.
"Those who are the most vulnerable when the sky is blue, they are also the most vulnerable when the sky is gray," Schleglemilch said.
Fugate, the former FEMA head, said it's also common for people to die during the recovery phase, when stress levels are high and people aren't making clear-headed decisions.
"Stay safe, stay home, stay off the roads if you can. Don't go sightseeing," he warned.
Still, experts say there is some good news:
They don't expect the death toll from Harvey to come anywhere close to that of Katrina, when 1,800 people died.
Many of those flood-related fatalities came when a levee broke and water inundated New Orleans.
People were stranded in extreme heat and the federal response was slow.
Emergency managers learned painful lessons during Katrina, and have put those lessons to use in this storm.
Residents of New Orleans during Katrina saw top-to-bottom failures at every level, experts said.
During Harvey, "state and local officials and FEMA were mobilizing, water rescue teams were prepared, in anticipation of this," said Fugate, adding that safe shelters were almost immediately in place for Texas residents, unlike New Orleans. "That provided faster rescues."
One other thing seems to have helped Houston in its time of need: the residents themselves.
"Neighbors helping neighbors," Fugate said. "That will keep the death toll down."
Ten years after the third-deadliest hurricane in U.S. history, we still don't know how many people died because of it. We'll never know for certain how many people died in Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.
The problems are inherent in the confusion of disasters, especially those involving multiple states and various local, state and federal agencies.
Inquires to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, and The Department of Health in Louisiana led U.S. News to a 2008 report as the most accurate and updated source of information. The report was years in the making as deaths were investigated and missing persons were located. In an effort to cut down on the confusion among agencies, the report reviewed all available death databases to attempt the impossible: an accurate count of Katrina's victims in Louisiana.
Although 1,833 is an often-cited mortality figure, it is older than figures in the report and none of the agencies we spoke to claimed it as an accurate estimate of the final death toll, as FiveThirtyEight also reported.
The most likely cause of death was drowning. The victims of the storm were often black and skewed older. In Orleans Parish, where 70 percent of the victims counted in the study died, the mortality rate for black adults was 1.7 times to 4 times higher than the mortality rate for white adults.
Forty percent of victims were aged 75 or older, which further complicated the process of counting victims. Many of the deceased had serious preexisting medical conditions. It's impossible to know if the person would have died from those conditions if the storm hadn't occurred or if the storm exacerbated medical conditions enough to cause death.
"If an evacuee died after a heart attack two months following the storm, was that death attributable to Katrina?" says John Ford of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals.
The researchers confirmed 986 victims (including 15 deaths from Louisiana evacuees in other states), but called the estimate "conservative." The higher estimate for deaths in Louisiana was 1,440.
This graphic shows the conservative estimate, including the staggering impact on the elderly population. While the number of people who died in Hurricane Katrina is likely much higher, even the lower bound shows the devastating impact of a huge storm that New Orleans was ill-equipped to handle.
While the death toll in the study is 986, the total in the graphic is slightly lower because it doesn't include the 15 deaths from other states or the 22 deaths for which age information was not available.
People in poor communities lack the resources to escape the worst of the flooding.
As the remnants of Hurricane Harvey continues its march, the lives that are most devastated are those confined to poor communities of color—as we’ve seen with previous mega storms like Hurricane Katrina.
The New York Times reports that the hurricane, now a tropic storm, drenched parts of Texas throughout Sunday. At least five people died and more than a dozen have been reported injured, since Harvey struck Texas’s Gulf Coast, dropping up to 25 inches of rain since Friday. Several areas have seen a downpour of as much as 50 inches.
In Houston, as with many other cities, poor communities of color are the most vulnerable during these destructive storms. They tend to live in segregated, flood risk neighborhoods that are near petrochemical plants, according to The Atlantic.
People in these communities lack the resources to evacuate, and the authorities—despite South Texas’ vulnerability to major storms—have failed to create an evacuation plan.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner defended his decision not to order an evacuation for some neighborhoods, KPRC-TV reported.
He told residents that their homes are “the best place” to stay during the storm, the NBC News affiliate reported.
Those who were unable to escape Harvey are “overwhelming” emergency centers with phone calls and tweets for help, The Atlantic stated. Homeless people sought shelter under highways and other low-lying areas to prepare for Harvey. Many of those makeshift shelters are now under water.
KPRC-TV reported that Houston’s 911 center has received more than 56,000 calls since Saturday evening. Police and firefighters have fielded more than 6,000 rescue calls, and more than 1,000 people have been pulled out of flooded homes and streets.
According to the current affairs publication, Texas has failed to fund a plan to control flooding, even though most climate scientists predict an increase in superstorms because of climate change. The most vulnerable are feeling the consequences.
Meanwhile, Harvey is not finished. The storm is expected to create tornadoes and floods in its path, which remains inhabited by poor people of color.
WASHINGTON DC POVERTY - A TALE OF TWO CITIES (NO REPRESENTATION):
GREAT WEALTH vs GREAT LACK.
WIDE ECONOMIC GAP CREATED BY 21st CENTURY GENTRIFICATION.
LOWER INCOME BLACKS ARE BEING PUSHED OUT OF NATION'S CAPITOL.
DC CITY GOVT LEADERS DON'T CARE & USE CITY ATTORNEYS TO SILENCE POOR BLACKS.
Sources: Washington Post, RT America, BBC News, YouTube
******As D.C. families get richer, staggering disparities persist, report finds
As the D.C. budget grows more flush and housing prices continue to soar, concentrated poverty among households with children persists in some areas, according to a report released Tuesday.
The report by a local advocacy agency found that the overall median income of D.C. families has climbed since 2010. But families living in Wards 7 and 8, the only wards east of the Anacostia River, have experienced sharp declines.
D.C. Action for Children’s annual “Ward Snapshots” report breaks down child poverty rates and family economics by ward, saying that as the city fills its coffers, it needs to ensure that families across the city benefit from it.
“As the District gets more wealthy, how is it affecting all kids?” Shana Bartley, the group’s acting executive director, said of the report. “Ward Snapshots” culled data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the D.C. Department of Health, the D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education and more.
Since 2010, the number of young children living in the city has increased by 23 percent, and children younger than 5 account for nearly 40 percent of the child population. But the wards with the highest share of these young children — Wards 5, 7 and 8 — have the lowest median family incomes.
In Ward 8, for example, the median family income dropped nearly 17 percent between 2006-2010 and 2010-2015, from $28,979 to $24,096.
Likewise, in Ward 7, the median family income during those years went from $34,562 to $31,273, a nearly 10 percent drop.
By comparison, the median family income in Ward 2 jumped nearly 65 percent, from $114,752 to $189,324.
Bartley said that one factor driving these disparate incomes is that as families are priced out of neighborhoods in Wards 1 and 2, for example, they are moving to Ward 8, the city’s poorest ward.
While the overall child poverty rate has declined to 26.7 percent — a drop of three percentage points since 2010 — there has been a slight uptick in Wards 3, 4 and 8. Ward 3 had a child poverty rate of 2.9 percent in 2015, compared with Ward 8’s 49 percent. Some of the increases could be attributed to rising housing costs. Ward 3’s rate was previously 2.4 percent; Ward 8’s was 48.3 percent.
The report found that more than 40 percent of D.C. residents spend more than a third of their monthly income on rent and related costs. The number of children enrolled in Medicaid increased by 21 percent, with the largest jumps in Wards 3, 4 and 8.
Some positive trends also emerged: In Wards 7 and 8, teen pregnancy rates steadily declined between 2010 and 2015, and students’ standardized test scores there saw slight increases between 2015 and 2016.
The report does not create a new narrative in the nation’s capital: The city has long been divided by race and socioeconomics. The report suggests that the wave of wealth the city has seen in recent years — the D.C. budget has reserves totaling $2.4 billion — has not trickled to all residents equitably.
“The biggest thing for the District to be is forward thinking,” Bartley said. “We’re continuing to see a baby boom, we are seeing families laying down roots in the city, public school enrollment is increasing, but we have to make sure that there’s infrastructure in the city to support healthy growth for all families and kids in the District.”
D.C. Action for Children recommends that the city boost access to quality early-childhood care and education, use census and local demographic data to determine how to allocate the city’s budget, and put more resources toward home-visiting programs that would support maternal and child health.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser released her 2018 $13.8 billion budget earlier this month that proposes modest spending increases for affordable housing, homeless services and education.
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