Majority of New Orleans terror attack victims transported to University Medical Center

Charlotte strives to tackle sustainability in underserved communities

As president of the McCrorey Heights Neighborhood Association and a member of the Historic West End Association, Sean Langley is keenly aware of his neighborhood’s past, and of how the legacy of one of its darkest chapters has magnified the effects of climate change to raise temperatures and utility costs during the intensifying summers.

The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 achieved its ambitious goal of building 41,000 miles of roads to connect 90 percent of the nation’s most populous cities by the 1970s. The roadway expansion came at great cost to urban communities of color like Charlotte’s McCrorey Heights.

Just a mile north of Uptown in Charlotte’s Historic West End, residents were displaced, businesses were shuttered and neighborhoods were decimated to make room for an expressway system that includes I-77, the north-south interstate highway that funnels traffic through the city center.

Decades later, McCrorey Heights is boxed in by heavily trafficked thoroughfares that saddle the community with pollution, extreme heat and a growing energy burden.

“Elevated levels of pollutants like particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds, as well as carbon dioxide, that come off highway systems often correlate with with higher rates of asthma, cardiovascular disease and other health disparities,” said Daisha Wall, community science manager for CleanAIRE NC, a health, equity and environmental advocacy organization based in Charlotte. 

The effects of heat-trapping concrete and other surfaces and a dearth of shade trees in some areas means McCrorey Heights can be more than 8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer on average than surrounding rural areas, modeling shows. That’s in addition to the heat being trapped by fossil fuel emissions and other pollution that is raising temperatures across North Carolina and the globe.

Langley and his wife chose to settle and raise their two young children in what’s called the neighborhood of firsts, because it produced so many Civil Rights activists.

“My wife and I both graduated from Johnson C. Smith and learned about the history of this community as students,” Langley says. “We wanted to try to find a home here.”

— North Carolina Health News

Crime in Berkeley, Calif. dropped in 2024

In nearly every major area, crime in Berkeley has dropped in the first 50 weeks of 2024 compared to the same period in 2024, according to police department data. Shootings, robberies, burglaries, felony thefts and arson all saw sharp drops. (See the Berkeley 2024 shooting map, below.) Assaults and batteries were closer to 2023 numbers but still on the decline.

The shift in Berkeley crime rates mirrors a nationwide trend, according to federal law enforcement data and criminal justice experts.

Nationwide, violent crimes, by and large, had dropped to or below pre-pandemic rates, although property crimes were more of a mixed bag, according to a mid-year study by the Council on Criminal Justice, a national research and policy nonprofit. Burglaries, larcenies and drug offenses all dropped in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023. “But rates of reported shoplifting, a crime that has received extensive attention from the media and policymakers, increased by 24% over the same period,” according to the CCJ report.

“Motor vehicle theft, a crime that has been on the rise since the summer of 2020, continued its upward trajectory through 2023. That trend reversed itself in the first half of 2024,” according to the CCJ report.

An FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) summary also indicated that serious crimes were down for the first half of 2024 over the same timeframe in 2023. “Murder decreased by 22.7%, rape decreased by 17.7%, robbery decreased by 13.6% and aggravated assault decreased by 8.1%, according to a summary of the report. “Reported property crime also decreased by 13.1%.”

Berkeley sees so few homicides that it’s difficult to say whether they are trending one way or another. But in Oakland, city police data indicated that the homicide rate had begun to drop precipitously in 2024, showing nearly a ⅓ decline as of October. (Like many cities nationwide,  Oakland saw a spike in homicides during the pandemic years.) Shootings, rapes, robberies and other violent crimes were also on the decline.

— Berkeleyside

Inside the first safe official drug consumption site in the U.S.

This story was originally published by Prism.

At 8 a.m. on a Monday morning, most of the soft recliners in the waiting area of the three-story East Harlem overdose prevention center (OPC) are already occupied by those who have come to consume their first dose of the day. Whether it’s for fentanyl, heroin, or another drug, people of all ages trickle into the consumption room at OnPoint NYC, where mirrored cubicles line opposite sides of the room and a staff station sits in the middle with trays of needles, elastics, and wipes organized in rows.

A man, who looks to be in his late 30s, unwraps today’s first fix of what most likely is the opioid fentanyl, which staff say is the most common drug used here. He simultaneously chats with the staff who welcome each visitor with familiarity. The calm ambiance is occasionally punctuated with noise as the metal doors swing, allowing another person to enter.

OnPoint NYC, which opened in 2021 as the country’s first overdose prevention site, aims to be a judgment- and persecution-free space for drug users to safely consume. The idea of preventing people from dying of an overdose is a controversial one. Last year, former U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York Damian Williams told The New York Times that OnPoint’s methods were illegal and hinted at a shutdown, while New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is also opposed, having repeatedly said the centers violate federal and state laws, putting their future operations in the balance.

But amid the national opioid epidemic, drastic measures are needed. More than 100,000 people die each year from drug overdoses in the U.S., according to the National Center for Health Statistics. In November, President-elect Donald Trump announced plans to impose further tariffs on Chinese imports in an attempt to curb what he believes are fentanyl deliveries into the U.S. It follows calls in 2022 from President Joe Biden to increase funding in the budget to address the overdose epidemic, while in 2023 New York Times editors declared that the U.S. had lost the war on drugs.

“Every 90 minutes…four New Yorkers die [of an overdose],” said Sam Rivera, the executive director of OnPoint NYC.

Advocates for OPCs say having a sanitary and safe place to consume drugs diminishes the element of haste or need for discretion that might exist in a public place. This reduces the risk of an overdose, but should one occur, medically trained staff dressed in jeans and leather are ready to respond.

— Next City

The Mississippi Attorney General’s office declined to prosecute and cleared law enforcement officers for their use of force in a third of all the officer shooting cases it resolved between 2023 and 2024.

There have been 65 officer shootings statewide since 2023, according to records maintained by the Department of Public Safety. That number can change through the end of the year if there are additional shootings or earlier ones are found not to be officer-involved. 

The attorney general’s office resolved about 40% of those cases, most of which have been declined prosecution. 

A spokesperson said the remaining cases are in various stages of review or the office hasn’t received the case file from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, which is responsible for looking into the cases.  

“Each case is different, including the complexity of the fact pattern, number of parties involved, and available evidence, and each case is reviewed thoroughly and independently,” spokesperson Mary Asa Lee said in a statement. “We seek to have a complete picture of the incident, considering all relevant facts and evidence.”

At least 30 people have died and at least 30 were injured, according to the DPS data, press releases by the agency and local news reporting. 

— Mississippi Today

As ‘smart cities’ tools grow nationwide, so do privacy and ethical concerns

After nearly a week of searching for a suspect in the hit-and-run death of an 81-year-old St. Helena, California woman this summer, police found and arrested a man with the help of license plate reading cameras that registered him near the scene.

The police department used information from FLOCK’s automatic license plate reading camera system, which monitors and records license plate data in a cloud-based database. The company makes cameras, drones, audio detection and software tools used by cities, law enforcement and school systems with the goal of crime detection and faster solve times.

Using a license plate number to find a suspect isn’t new to crime solving, but finding that license plate in an autonomously-captured and organized data log, rather than by humans looking through security footage or searching in-person, is more novel.

It’s part of a growing system of “Internet of Things” (IoT) technologies — networks of physical objects that are connected to the internet and can exchange data with other devices or software. These IoT devices are often called “smart cities” devices, because they’re used by states and cities that are aiming to improve services, including making their roads safer and more efficient for drivers and pedestrians.

People on the roads are likely used to red light and security cameras at intersections, but advancements in cloud technology and artificial intelligence allow transit agencies and cities to collect far more data than ever before, and to use that data in more strategic ways.

But with increased monitoring, data collection and analysis comes ethical and privacy concerns.

There’s never been a problem with checking a license plate to see if a car is stolen or otherwise wanted, said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project said. But when that license plate data is retained for an unknown amount of time and for an undetermined purpose, it could infringe on privacy and civil liberties.

“As this technology becomes increasingly denser in our communities, and at a certain point you have like three of them on every block, it becomes the equivalent to tracking everybody by using GPS,” Stanley said. “That raises not only policy issues, but also constitutional issues.”

The residents of St. Helena, in Napa Valley, likely aren’t upset that the technology was used for its intended purpose to help find the perpetrator of a crime, Hari Balakrishnan, a computer science and AI researcher and professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said of the August arrest.

— Virginia Mercury