Adeel Hassan

They had turned off the road into the United States, across an international border.

Border Patrol officials detained the two couples and their three young children, who were held in American custody for nearly two weeks. They were deported Wednesday after spending the past 11 nights in a Pennsylvania detention center, said a lawyer for the families.

“This is how the scariest experience of our entire lives started,” Eileen Connors, one of the detained Britons, wrote in a sworn statement filed to the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security. “We will never forget; we will be traumatized for the rest of our lives by what the United States government has done to us.”

According to Connors, her husband, David, and his cousin were arrested despite their protests that they did not intend to cross the border. They asked if they could turn around, she wrote, but the officer said they would all be held.

A spokesman with U.S. Customs and Border Protection said on Tuesday that the vehicle was seen on surveillance video on Avenue 0 in British Columbia at about 9 p.m. on Oct. 2. The official said the vehicle then crossed the border “by slowly and deliberately driving through a ditch onto Boundary Road in Lynden, Washington.”

Fifteen minutes later, the driver and six passengers — including 2-year-old twins and a 3-month-old — were arrested. The spokesman said record checks showed that two of the four adults had been denied travel authorization to the United States.

Canada refused to allow their return, the spokesman said, and the British Consulate could not be reached. Connors said they had a visa waiver, which entitled them to travel to the United States for business or tourism for stays of up to 90 days without a visa, although they were not aiming to visit the United States that night.

“They didn’t want to be here,” said their lawyer, Bridget Cambria. “This is the only family that has come from across the border who wants to leave. Normally, people who want to come to the United States are in this facility.”

On their first night in detention, Connors wrote, she and her baby were kept in “a very cold” female-only cell at a Customs and Border Protection facility in Washington. She put her son on top of her and tried to rest. “It was futile because he kept sliding off of me, and I just could not let him lie on the disgusting floor,” she wrote.

Immigration officers told them the next day that they would be released if they provided contact information for a family member in the United States who could become their sponsor, she said. But after they gave the name of a relative, she wrote, immigration officials said there was a change in plans.

They were turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, wrote Connors, 24. David Connors, 30, was dropped off at the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center, while she and her son were taken to a Red Roof Inn in Seattle. They were in customs custody for a much shorter period then most border crossers, Cambria said. “They had an understanding of the language and their rights and were outspoken,” she said, adding that many others do not have the same luxury.

The next morning they were put on a flight to Pennsylvania, where they arrived at the Berks Family Residential Center in rural Leesport, she wrote. The other adults and their infant twins were taken to the same place, Cambria said.

The baby had not completed his immunizations, making him especially vulnerable to germs and contagious diseases, Cambria wrote in a letter to Homeland Security, adding that he had not yet seen a pediatrician.

“We all had to shower when we arrived, but because he is too small to take into a shower, I had to wash him off in the office on a sofa, using a washcloth and soap that I had with me,” Connors wrote in her sworn statement. “They offered me a baby bathtub to use, but it was filthy dirty and had broken bits, so I refused to use it.”

She wrote that the temperature dropped to 50 degrees at night and that the staff refused to turn the heater on. On Friday, the baby woke up with a swollen, teary eye, and his skin was rough and blotchy, she wrote. Officials did offer to remove the baby, she wrote: “If we wanted, we could sign papers to allow him to be separated from us and taken to some other facility.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials did not return a request for comment. About 4,300 people were arrested at the Canadian border in 2018, and about 3,000 in 2017.

There are eight families with children under the age of 5 being held at the Berks center, said Jasmine Rivera, a community organizer who is the coordinator for the Shut Down Berks Coalition. The center is run by the county under a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and houses about 90 parents and children.

“It is undoubtedly the worst experience we have ever lived through,” Connors wrote. “No one should have to suffer this kind of treatment. This would never happen in the United Kingdom to U.S. citizens, or anyone else, because people there are treated with dignity.”

This article originally appeared in

British Family Says One Wrong Turn Led to ICE Detention Nightmare

Seven British citizens said they were vacationing in Canada when they had to swerve to avoid an animal, not an uncommon occurrence in rural British Columbia. But doing that proved dangerous in its own way.

Hollas is believed to be the first person in the country to be given a national ecclesiastical role of this kind. And the choice of the hymn was a deliberate underlining of what she sees as a desperate need: to do more than react to the latest mass shooting with an offer of benedictions. That, she said, is not sufficient in a country where 40,000 people are killed by guns each year.

“The saying ‘thoughts and prayers’ has been co-opted by the gun lobby to keep the church from taking action so they can increase their profits,” Hollas, who was installed in her new role by the Presbyterian Church (USA) earlier this month, said in a recent interview. “While all that we do as Christians should be rooted in worship and prayer, it should not stay there. It is like breathing — worship and prayer is the in-breath, and action is the out-breath.”

A Texas native who describes herself as “no stranger” to gun culture, Hollas, 52, said she was committed to ensuring that Americans from all sides of the gun debate stop talking past one another. “No matter where you fall on this issue,” she said, “the important thing is that we remain in conversation with one another.”

From her place of ministry, Retreat House Spirituality Center in Richardson, Texas, Hollas will oversee about 800 supporters of gun violence prevention in all 50 states.

We asked her about her role and what she hoped to accomplish. The conversation has been edited and condensed.

What is your background? And what makes you ready for this role?

I grew up in Plainview, Texas, where guns and hunting are part of the culture. My father owns multiple guns and property specifically for family hunting trips. My in-laws live on a farm in South Texas where shooting guns would often happen on a weekend trip. This background is what enables me to connect to gun owners.

I first went to seminary because I felt called to the ministry of spiritual direction, which is a ministry of listening. I feel this is what is needed most right now. We have lost our ability to listen to one another, to our bodies and, therefore, to God. Violence is the result of this separation. Spiritual practices can heal, repair and restore us to right relationship and thus lead us away from violence and toward peace and love.

What exactly will you do in your new role?

My role is to encourage the church at every level to become informed and active in preventing gun violence, to provide pastoral care for victims and survivors, and to seek a spiritual response to resist violence and seek Christ.

I serve as a resource and an encourager and connector for pastors, elders and others in the church so they are empowered to prevent gun violence. I have the best role, as I spend my days talking to so many different people all across the country who are committed to ending gun violence

Do you expect to face resistance?

I expect resistance because when you talk about guns, you are tapping into the part of the brain that protects one’s identity. Guns and identity are linked for many people; that is why I have developed a spiritual practice that helps us shift our bodies from fight-or-flight mode and teaches us to welcome and hold with compassion all the sensations that arise in our bodies. When we connect with one another on the level of personal experience, it leads to empathy. Establishing empathy is key in peacemaking.

Do you feel daunted at all?

The church has always been political — Jesus was executed by the government for speaking against its violence and against the religious authorities that aligned themselves with this unjust system. That is still the role of the church today: to speak a word of peace into a world of violence.

I live in Texas, and I became involved in this movement because of the passing of a law that allowed guns on college campuses. My daughter was a student at Texas Tech at the time, and I saw how her friends and roommates viewed the law as an invitation to become armed.

Being familiar with guns, I knew from what they were saying that they did not have a realistic understanding of how a gun worked. They basically assumed that having a gun would turn them into Jason Bourne, ready to defeat any bad guy that came their way, but the reality is having a gun increases one’s chance of being shot.

And while legislation is an important part of the work, it is not what gets me up in the morning. I am more interested in creating the cultural change that is needed along with legislation.

What can other church congregations do?

There are so many churches that are doing great things that it is hard to pick just one. The one that is most on my heart today is one I am working with in Texas, St. Barnabas Presbyterian Church in Richardson. It is a congregation that has both far-left liberals and gun-loving Trump supporters worshipping together Sunday mornings.

Starting in September, this congregation will engage in a five-week study. Each week’s lesson will be led by a different member of the congregation so that a variety of folks will feel comfortable participating and to ensure that no one person’s individual agenda dominates the discussion.

When we can move beyond the rhetoric, we find that no Christian is a proponent of gun violence. Churches have been afraid to talk about gun violence because they are worried it will cause people to leave, but we are called to shine light into darkness.

Mainline denominations are in a unique position to be leaders in bringing conversations about gun violence out of the shadows, as our congregations are one of the few places where people of different political persuasions still gather together voluntarily.

And I know of no congregation that is not touched by gun violence. Often, these folks feel they must grieve in silence. When people think gun violence prevention, they think about legislation, criminal activity and mass shootings, but most gun deaths are suicides.

I also think there is lots to learn about white Americans’ obsession with guns and how that is impacting the violence in communities of color. It is our responsibility, as a mostly white church, to be actively engaged in dismantling white supremacy and creating racial equity.

Why do you remain hopeful?

I entered seminary thinking I would just take two classes and get my diploma in the art of spiritual direction and that would be it. But God kept leading me toward ordained ministry, which didn’t make much sense at the time as I didn’t feel called to lead a congregation.

In fact, I was thinking about withdrawing my candidacy for ordination when the NRA came to Dallas last year for their annual convention. I was blessed to be part of a prayer vigil hosted by a group of interfaith leaders, which ran from the beginning of the convention to the end. It was during this vigil, on the steps of Dallas City Hall, that I gained clarity on my call to speak the word of God into the violence of the world.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/us/minister-gun-violence-church.html" id="3a1d8393-7604-3f94-a3e0-4dab9cf2b7cc">The New York Times</a>.

A Ministry Pushing Beyond 'Thoughts and Prayers'

To the strains of the hymn “If We Just Talk of Thoughts and Prayers,” the largest Presbyterian denomination in the United States ordained The Rev. Deanna Hollas as its first minister of gun violence prevention this month.

'Thoughts and Prayers' Aren't Enough, America's First Gun Violence Minister Says.

Though residents said they were fed up by years of corruption, the tipping point proved to be the publication of hundreds of pages of crass, insensitive and often profane chat messages among Rosselló and 11 men in his inner circle. The texts confirmed what many Puerto Ricans thought — that they held disdain for the public.

The vast majority of governors in the United States fulfill their terms, though many have resigned to take a Cabinet position, or to join the Senate. Since World War II, two have left governor’s mansions to move to the White House. But a few have met ignominious ends in office.

Here is a look at the men who have been forced out of the governor’s office over the past 15 years.

Eric Greitens of Missouri (2018)

Greitens, a Rhodes scholar, a decorated member of the Navy SEALs who served tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a Bronze Star recipient, was seen as a rising star in the Republican Party.

But he lasted barely 17 months in office, before two felony charges involving allegations of sexual and political misconduct and a 24-page legislative committee report filled with graphic details of an extramarital affair brought the looming threat of impeachment in a state capital dominated by his fellow Republicans.

“It’s clear that for the forces that oppose us, there is no end in sight,” he said in his resignation speech. “I cannot allow those forces to continue to cause pain and difficulty to the people that I love. I know and people of good faith know that I am not perfect, but I have not broken any laws or committed any offense worthy of this treatment.”

Shortly after the speech, the other felony charge, for illegally obtaining a donor list from a charity he founded and using it to raise money for his 2016 campaign, was also dropped.

Where is he now? Greitens recently said that he planned to deploy with the Navy to the Middle East in the fall, The Kansas City Star reported.

Robert Bentley of Alabama (2017)

Bentley left office on the day that impeachment hearings began — an exit that was secured by prosecutors. He pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges: failing to file a major contribution report and knowingly converting campaign contributions to personal use.

Days earlier, a report was made public that said Bentley, a Republican, had fostered “an atmosphere of intimidation” and compelled state employees to help him cover up his affair with his senior political adviser, Rebekah Caldwell Mason. He was also the subject of multiple investigations, including inquiries by the FBI and the state attorney general’s office. The deal, which bars him from public office, allowed him to avoid felony charges and potential jail time.

In 2016, Bentley acknowledged that he had made sexually charged remarks to Mason, whom one official referred to as the “de facto governor.” Mason resigned in 2016.

“I’ve not always made the right choices,” he said. “I’ve not always said the right things. Though I have sometimes failed, I’ve always tried to live up to the high expectations the people place on the person who holds this esteemed office.”

Where is he now? A dermatologist by training, Bentley has since returned to private practice, where Mason again works for him. His biography does not mention that he did not finish his second term.

John Kitzhaber of Oregon (2015)

A personal relationship was also at the center of a crisis that engulfed Kitzhaber, a Democrat, only one month after starting his fourth term (he also served from 1995-2003).

His fiancee, Cylvia Hayes, was accused of using her access to the governor to gain consulting contracts. Federal prosecutors subpoenaed years of emails, employment records, visitor logs, credit card statements, tax returns and anything related to contracts awarded to Hayes or her consulting company.

Though no criminal charges were filed against either Kitzhaber or Hayes, who had been an unpaid policy adviser to the governor, the state’s ethics commission concluded that they had violated conflict-of-interest laws.

Kitzhaber agreed to pay a $20,000 fine last year and admitted to violating state ethics laws.

“It is deeply troubling to me to realize that we have come to a place in the history of this great state of ours where a person can be charged, tried, convicted and sentenced by the media with no due process and no independent verification of the allegations involved,” he said upon leaving office.

Where is he now? Kitzhaber, a former emergency room doctor, is a paid speaker and consultant, with a focus on health care policy and issues.

Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois (2009)

A vacant Senate seat left by President-elect Barack Obama became the undoing of Blagojevich. He was impeached and removed in 2009 and later convicted on federal charges for corruption, for trying to personally benefit from making an appointment to Obama’s seat and from people who had state business. Federal prosecutors said that his actions “would make Lincoln roll over in his grave.”

“The law as it stands right now is that I have to go do what I have to go do, and this is the hardest thing that I have ever had to do,” he said outside his Chicago home on the day before going to prison in 2012. “I’ll see you around.”

Where is he now? He remains in a low-security prison in Jefferson County, Colorado, although President Donald Trump last year suggested that he might commute Blagojevich’s 14-year sentence.

Eliot Spitzer of New York (2008)

Spitzer, the son of a wealthy New York real estate baron, graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School before serving two terms as New York’s attorney general (1999-2007). His time in that office was best known for his using aggressive tactics to pursue tycoons and executives with a moralistic fervor.

Those years earned him a landslide victory in the governor’s race in 2006. Spitzer, a Democrat, lasted little more than a year before he was caught on a federal wiretap confirming plans to meet an escort from a high-priced prostitution service in Washington.

“Over the course of my public life, I have insisted — I believe correctly — that people regardless of their position or power take responsibility for their conduct,” he said, announcing his resignation. “I can and will ask no less of myself.”

Spitzer did not face criminal charges and, in 2013, he lost the Democratic primary for New York City comptroller.

Where is he now? He took over his family’s real estate business after his father’s death in 2014.

James E. McGreevey of New Jersey (2004)

McGreevey, a Democrat, resigned in 2004 after admitting he had an affair with a man he had put on the state payroll as a special adviser. He was the first openly gay governor.

“I realize the fact of this affair and my own sexuality if kept secret leaves me, and most importantly the governor’s office, vulnerable to rumors, false allegations, and threats of disclosure,” he said in his resignation address.

“So I am removing these threats by telling you directly about my sexuality. Let me be clear, I accept total and full responsibility for my actions. However, I am required to — to do now, to do what is right to correct the consequences of my actions and to be truthful to my loved ones, to my friends and my family, and also to myself.”

Where is he now? He has been helping to reintegrate former inmates into society, but he was recently ousted from his leadership role for the local New Jersey nonprofit program.

John Rowland of Connecticut (2004)

Rowland, a Republican, was facing impeachment when he resigned in 2004, midway through his third term, amid a federal investigation for accepting gifts from friends and business executives.

“I acknowledge that my poor judgment has brought us here,” he said in a televised address outside the governor’s mansion. It was the only reference he made to the scandal about to force him from office.

One year later, he was convicted and sentenced to a year in federal prison for accepting $107,000 in gifts from people doing business with the state and not paying taxes on them.

He went to prison a second time, after a conviction in 2014 on more corruption charges. The 2-1/2-year sentence was for conspiring to conceal payments for his work on a congressional campaign from the Federal Election Commission.

Where is he now? Rowland is a development director for Prison Fellowship Ministry, helping to counsel prisoners and former prisoners, while advocating for criminal justice reforms.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/us/politics/puerto-rico-governor-history.html" id="06aa5881-65f9-3705-a534-1b3068c2b6f1">The New York Times</a>.

Gov. Ricardo A. Rosselló of Puerto Rico announced his resignation on Wednesday, after an uprising and looming impeachment proceedings had derailed his administration.

Texts, Sex, Lies and Corruption: Here's What Has Forced Governors Out of Office

It took the jury less than an hour to convict Albert Flick, 77, for the 2018 murder of Kimberly Dobbie, 48, who was slain in front of her 11-year-old twins outside a laundromat in Lewiston, Maine, a city of 36,000.

The killing itself was shocking but so was Flick’s violent past, leaving Dobbie’s family and others in the town to question why he was ever allowed to be freed.

“There is no age that is ‘too old’ to commit murder,” Elsie Kimball Clement, daughter of Sandra Flick, said last year. “He never should have been on the streets.”

Forty years ago, Albert Flick was living in Westbrook, Maine, working at a doughnut shop and facing the end of his marriage. His wife, Sandra Flick, served him with divorce papers and had police officers remove him from their apartment. But, when he came to get his belongings, he was armed with a jackknife.

Sandra Flick’s daughter from an earlier marriage, Elsie, hid in a bedroom and watched as Albert Flick bent her mother’s arm behind her back and covered her mouth with his hand. The daughter fled the apartment. When a neighbor went up to check on Sandra Flick, he saw Albert Flick on the stairs, covered in blood, and found Sandra Flick stabbed four times in the neck and chest, and once through her heart.

Flick was convicted in his wife’s murder and spent 25 years in prison. But the violence continued after his release: He was convicted of punching and stabbing a woman — who a prosecutor said was a girlfriend — with a fork in 2007, and of assaulting and threatening another woman with whom, a prosecutor said, he had a sexual relationship, in 2010.

A prosecutor then urged a judge to sentence Flick to about eight years in prison, calling him a danger to society and women. Despite his age — then in his late 60s — she told the judge that he was not about to stop.

Judge Robert E. Crowley cut that recommendation in half, sending Flick back to prison for less than four years.

“At some point Mr. Flick is going to age out of his capacity to engage in this conduct,” Crowley said, “and incarceration beyond the time he ages out doesn’t seem to me to make good sense from a criminological or fiscal perspective.”

Crowley retired as a judge shortly afterward, and he now works in alternative dispute resolution at a law firm in Portland.

Had Flick been imprisoned longer or remained on probation, authorities might have been able to keep a closer eye on him. But Flick had served his sentence and had the right to live freely.

Last July, he killed Dobbie in a nearly identical stabbing attack to the one on his wife. Prosecutors said that Flick was obsessed with Dobbie, 48, who was homeless and living in a shelter.

She would go to the library during the day, when the shelter required residents to be out of the building. That is where Flick met her and began following her, even eating meals at the shelter.

Flick offered to buy her sons the healthy lunches she could not always afford. “She was just plain out of money,” Katharyn Cormier, a resident at the shelter told The Times last year, “and any mother’s going to accept that.”

Dobbie’s friends said that he followed her everywhere, despite being asked to leave her alone. She also spurned his romantic overtures.

She and her sons had just been awarded an apartment of their own, outside Lewiston before her death. The day before caseworkers were going to take them to their new home, Dobbie was stabbed to death.

In court, Flick wore black headphones, to help him hear the proceedings. Bud Ellis, an assistant attorney general, told jurors that Flick knew Dobbie was going to be moving away from Lewiston and said that Flick thought to himself, “If I can’t have her, I will kill her.”

“We and the family and friends of Kim Dobbie are very gratified with the jury verdict,” Ellis said Friday. “Mr. Flick stabbed her to death in a similar fashion to how he murdered his wife Sandra in 1979. At least there is some level of justice in his conviction.”

Flick faces 25 years to life in prison during his sentencing hearing, set for Aug. 9. Maine has no death penalty. This time the prosecutor will seek a life term.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/us/albert-flick-convicted-kimberly-dobbie-murder-maine.html" id="781ca932-e886-37a7-a4f0-9a89cdf4089c">The New York Times</a>.

A murderer with a long history of violence against women — but who had been freed from prison and deemed unlikely to hurt anyone again because of his advancing age — was convicted by a jury in Maine this week in the stabbing death of a mother of twin boys.

A Murderer Deemed Too Old for Violence Was Just Convicted of Another Killing

Those questions intensified Monday night when a 39-second video that she recorded on her cellphone surfaced publicly for the first time, in an investigative report broadcast on the Dallas television station WFAA. The video shows part of her encounter with the state trooper who pulled her over.

The WFAA report included interviews with Bland’s family and supporters, who accused officials of concealing information that they say should have been made public early in the investigation of her death.

Who was Sandra Bland?

Bland had been visiting family in the Chicago suburb of Naperville, Illinois, over the Fourth of July holiday in 2015. Bland was one of five sisters.

She was planning to begin a job at her alma mater, Prairie View A&amp;M;, a historically black state university located in a largely rural part of southeast Texas, when she was pulled over near the campus on July 10, 2015, after a state trooper said she failed to signal a lane change.

What happened at the traffic stop?

The trooper, Brian T. Encinia, approached Bland’s car, took her information and returned to his vehicle to write out a citation. The newly surfaced video begins when the trooper walks back to her car with the ticket.

Encinia asked if Bland was OK and told her she seemed “very irritated.” She said she was, because she was being written up simply for moving out of the trooper’s way.

The trooper then asked her to put out the cigarette she was holding, and she refused. The encounter quickly escalated from there.

The trooper ordered Bland out of the car, but she refused. He shouted that he would “yank you out” and tried to do so, but she resisted. He pulled out a stun gun and yelled, “I will light you up.”

At that point, Bland got out of the car. The newly released video ends there, but the encounter remained heated; before long, Bland was shouting insults and profanities and the trooper had her in handcuffs.

What happened in jail?

Bland was booked and placed in a housing area for women in the one-story Waller County Jail. Three days later, on July 13, a guard making rounds found her hanging in her 15-by-20-foot cell.

Waller County officials said she was found in a “semi-standing position,” with a plastic trash-can liner roped around her neck and affixed to a U-shaped metal hook overhead. Bland was pronounced dead at 9:16 a.m. The authorities ruled her death a suicide.

What happened to the state trooper?

Encinia was indicted on a charge of perjury, the only criminal charge arising from the case. Grand jurors accused him of making a false statement when he claimed that his purpose in ordering Bland out of her car was to more safely conduct a traffic investigation.

That charge was dismissed at the request of prosecutors, in exchange for the trooper’s promise that he would never again work in law enforcement.

Why has this case resonated for years?

Bland was a vocal civil rights advocate. Two months before her death, she posted a video on Facebook in which she discussed police brutality. “Black lives matter,” Bland said to the camera. “They matter.”

“In the news that we’ve seen as of late, you could stand there, surrender to the cops, and still be killed,” she continued.

Social media attracted worldwide attention to her death, as it had after the deaths of several unarmed black men at the hands of the police. Three months earlier, Freddie Gray, an unarmed 25-year-old African American in Baltimore, had died from injuries suffered while being transported in a police van.

Social media users adopted the hashtags #SandraBland and #SayHerName in the days after her death and created an online petition calling for the Justice Department to investigate. The case was considered a turning point in the Black Lives Matter movement, intensifying outrage over incidents of mistreatment of black people by white officers.

The case also led Texas to enact a law in 2017 called the Sandra Bland Act, which requires all police officers to undergo training in de-escalation techniques; establishes protections for people in custody who have mental health or substance abuse issues; and requires that all jail deaths be investigated by independent law enforcement agencies.

An HBO documentary about the case, “Say Her Name,” was released two weeks ago, using nearly three dozen of Bland’s video blog posts to tell a richly personal story.

What will happen now?

The newly released video returns the public spotlight to the roadside confrontation between Bland and Encinia. Millions of online viewers had already seen the encounter from the officer’s dashcam video and in video shot by a bystander; now it can be seen from Bland’s perspective, directly facing Encinia at her car window.

Bland’s family members, who agreed to a reported $1.9 million settlement in a wrongful-death civil suit, are calling for a renewed investigation into her arrest and death nearly four years ago.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/us/sandra-bland-arrest-video.html" id="3fd5671f-eaa2-30b1-abad-60594d0b1b55">The New York Times</a>.

Questions have surrounded the death of Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old black activist, since she was found hanged in a Texas police cell in July 2015 after she was arrested during a traffic stop.

What You Need to Know About the Sandra Bland Video

The man, Russell Courtier, 40, was convicted of killing Larnell Bruce Jr., 19, in August 2016. Prosecutors said Courtier had joined a white supremacist gang while serving a prior prison sentence, and had scuffled with Bruce before Courtier’s girlfriend urged him to run down the teenager.

Courtier was charged with murder and hit-and-run driving. But when prosecutors tried to add a hate crime charge, the court would only allow him to be charged with a misdemeanor hate crime, rather than a felony. A judge ruled that there was not enough evidence that the girlfriend shared the same beliefs, so she would not be considered an accomplice to the hate crime.

It was similar to the case of Jeremy Joseph Christian, who was accused of stabbing three people, two fatally, aboard a Portland, Oregon, commuter train in May 2017 while screaming anti-Muslim insults. Along with murder, assault and weapons charges, prosecutors added hate crimes charges, but they were misdemeanors, not felonies, because he acted alone. He has pleaded not guilty.

The two high-profile cases have brought attention to efforts to change Oregon’s hate crimes law, which was enacted in 1981 in response to a rise in organized skinhead attacks that often involved more than one assailant.

“This creates a peculiar scenario where two defendants spraying racist graffiti on a wall might reasonably expect to be punished more harshly than one individual who physically attacks someone because of the color of their skin,” said Ellen Rosenblum, Oregon’s attorney general, in testimony last month before the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee.

In 2005, a white supremacist accused of desecrating a Jewish cemetery in Portland with swastikas faced 10 years in prison because he was joined by a co-conspirator, allowing prosecutors to charge him with a felony hate crime, although he was only sentenced to a year.

Rosenblumformed a task force last year to update the hate crimes law, and a bill that would accomplish that is working its way through the state Senate. The current legislative term ends June 30.

Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, said he was not aware of any other state with a similarly worded hate crimes law. But he said states across the country are re-examining their statutes as an increase in hate crimes is reported nationwide.

“What we’re seeing now, in particular because this is a time that there is an issue with federal enforcement of states’ civil rights laws, is a renewed effort across the United States to bring some of the antiquated hate crimes laws up to modern times,” Levin said.

The number of hate crimes reported in Oregon increased 40 percent from 2016 to 2017, FBI data showed, although half of the 2017 cases were in Eugene, a city of 170,000 that has focused on improving the reporting of hate crimes.

Levin said the Oregon law mirrored the wording of the earliest criminal civil rights laws, which were passed right after the Civil War, when racial terrorism was being committed by Klansmen and local authorities.

“It reflects a bit of a bygone era,” Levin said, “when hate violence was thought to be orchestrated by organized groups.”

Courtier was convicted of killing Bruce after a fistfight in August 2016 outside a convenience store in a Portland suburb. Prosecutors said he was a member of a white supremacist prison gang called the European Kindred. It’s unclear what started the altercation, although prosecutors noted that Courtier was wearing a hat with the European Kindred’s symbol, which was also tattooed on one of his legs.

Authorities said that Courtier’s girlfriend, Colleen Hunt, urged him to drive into Bruce after the two men scuffled. Witnesses testified that they heard her cry out: “Run him over!” and “Get him, baby!”

Hunt pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Courtier was given a life sentence for his murder and hit-and-run conviction but will be eligible for parole in 28 years. (He must also serve four years for a conviction for an attack in a bar in 2015.)

It is believed to be Oregon’s first hate crime murder conviction since skinheads killed an immigrant from Ethiopia with a baseball bat in 1988.

A felony conviction on first-degree intimidation, which is the state’s hate crimes charge, might have given Courtier an additional 20 years in prison, according to Oregon’s sentencing guidelines.

Prosecutors indicted him on charges of intimidation in the first degree and the second degree in Bruce’s killing. But a judge found that they had sufficient evidence only for the second-degree charge, a misdemeanor. Misdemeanor convictions in Oregon carry a maximum sentence of one year in prison.

“If murder isn’t a first-degree hate crime, then that’s part of the law needing reform,” said Randy Blazak, who leads the Oregon Coalition Against Hate Crime and has spent the last 30 years studying hate groups in a state that is 87 percent white.

After Courtier was sentenced last week, Larnell Bruce Sr. approached the father of his son’s killer to express remorse for how the crime had affected both of their families, and the two men shook hands.

“Both of our families have suffered,” Bruce said. “We both lost our sons to hate.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/26/us/oregon-hate-crimes.html" id="8e8849df-f7f6-3102-a050-44d2b9cd95ae">The New York Times</a>.

A white supremacist who deliberately plowed his Jeep into a black teenager was sentenced last week to at least 28 years in prison for what is believed to be Oregon’s first hate crime murder conviction in more than three decades. He could have faced as much as 20 additional years in prison if not for an unusual quirk in Oregon law, which imposes softer penalties on anyone who commits a hate crime alone rather than with an accomplice.

In Oregon, a Murder Conviction Adds to Calls for Tougher Hate Crime Punishments

That’s what students and administrators at the University of South Carolina are urging people to ask before they get into a car, to be sure it’s the one they called via a ride-sharing app.

The public safety campaign follows the death of Samantha Josephson, a 21-year-old student who was killed last weekend after getting into a car she mistook for her Uber, police said. Across the country, at least two dozen women have been attacked in recent years after making a similar mistake.

Asking that simple question — “What’s my name?” — would help keep riders safe, advocates said. Here are more tips for what you can do, according to law enforcement officials and ride-share companies:

Check the license plate, make and model of the car.

After booking a ride, a confirmation text should include the license plate number and a description of the car. It is critical to know what you are getting.

Depending on the tier of service you choose, Uber could send anything from a basic four-door sedan to a black SUV that is commercially registered and insured. A vehicle that is not what you expect is one of the more obvious giveaways that there might be a problem.

Any discrepancy is a red flag, and riders should not get into the car.

Ask the driver’s name.

That confirmation message from the ride-share app should also include a photo of your driver, so check to be sure they match. Always ask the driver their name, and make sure that it also lines up.

Share your status.

Share your trip details with a friend, relative or a group through the sharing option available on the app. By adding your destination and sharing through a text, others can watch your ride, in real time, on a map. The “Trusted Contacts” feature allows you to select up to five friends or family members with whom you can share your whereabouts for every ride.

Uber and Via monitor drivers’ routes, sending alerts to their staff if the cars go off course. Riders with Lyft can also share the route and estimated time of arrival by tapping Send ETA.

Follow the light.

Uber and Lyft also offer glowing dashboard lights called the Beacon and Amp that change color to match a hue on a passenger’s app. But the lights are in limited distribution and not available to all drivers. Lawmakers in South Carolina have proposed a law, named for Josephson, that would require all ride-share drivers to display a lighted sign.

Call for help.

If you suspect danger, or if you have an emergency, call 911 immediately. Uber also provides an in-app emergency button to connect riders directly to 911. It can be reached through a section of the app called the Safety Center.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/us/uber-safety-tips.html" id="2e3219c0-12c2-36c7-aa8b-05d9b477e75f">The New York Times</a>.

“What’s my name?”

Taking Uber? Here Are Tips for Staying Safe

These causes killed more than twice as many as they did in 1999.

More than 150,000 Americans died from alcohol and drug-induced fatalities and suicide in 2017. Nearly a third — 47,173 — were suicides.

“There are two crises unfolding in America right now,” said Dr. Benjamin Miller, chief policy officer for Well Being Trust and founding director of the Eugene S. Farley Jr. Health Policy Center in Aurora, Colorado. “One is in health care, and one is in society.”

Miller attributed the increasing disparities in health care and inequalities in income as crucial factors in the feelings of despair, loneliness and a lack of belonging that contributed to suicides among many Americans.

The grim statistics are fueled by synthetic opioid deaths.

Twenty years ago, less than 1,000 deaths a year were attributed to fentanyl and synthetic opioids. In 2017, more than 1,000 Americans died from synthetic opioid overdoses every two weeks, topping 28,000 for the year.

The number of deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide in 2017 hit the highest level since the collection of federal mortality data started in 1999, according to an analysis by two public health nonprofits, the Trust for America’s Health and the Well Being Trust. To reach their conclusion, the two groups parsed the latest available data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Adeel Hassan

Articles written by the author

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