(NEW YORK) — The number of Americans seeing crime as an extremely serious problem in the United States is at a more than 20-year high, President Joe Biden is underwater in trust to handle it and broad majorities in an ABC News/Washington Post poll favor alternative crime-fighting strategies to address it.
A sweeping 75% in the national survey said violent crime would be reduced by increasing funding to build economic opportunities in poor communities. Sixty-five percent said the same about using social workers to help police defuse situations with people having emotional problems.
These measures, aimed at underlying causes of crime, are most apt to have been seen as effective, by substantial margins, of five that were tested. Among the others, 55% think increasing funding for police departments would reduce violent crime, 51% say the same about stricter enforcement of existing gun laws and 46% say so about stricter gun-control laws.
Broad support for alternative anti-crime measures comes against a backdrop of heightened high-level concern. Twenty-eight percent of Americans see crime in the United States as an extremely serious problem, a relatively small group but the most to hold this view compared to nearly annual polls by Gallup from 2000 to 2020. The average across those previous polls is 19%.
Views of crime in the country as a high-level problem expand to 59% when including those who see it as very serious, not just extremely serious. As typically is the case, far fewer, 17%, see crime as an extremely or very serious problem in the area where they live, though this is at a numerical high — by a single percentage point — compared to Gallup polls since 2000.
This poll, produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, finds a troubling difference in the experience of crime along racial and ethnic lines. While 13% of white people and 17% of Hispanic people call crime an extremely or very serious problem in the area where they live, this jumps to 31% among Black people.
Politically, just 38% of adults overall approve of how Biden is handling the issue of crime in this country, with 48% disapproving. That said, Americans divide almost exactly evenly on which political party they trust more to handle crime — 36% pick the Republicans, 35% the Democrats, about the average difference between the parties on this question in polls going back to 1990. Twenty percent volunteered that they don’t trust either party on crime.
(SURFSIDE, Fla.) — At least 18 people, including two children, have been confirmed dead and 145 others remain unaccounted for since a 12-story residential building partially collapsed in South Florida’s Miami-Dade County last week.
The partial collapse occurred around 1:15 a.m. on June 24 at the Champlain Towers South condominium in the small, beachside town of Surfside, about 6 miles north of Miami Beach. Approximately 55 of the oceanfront complex’s 136 units were destroyed, according to Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Assistant Chief Raide Jadallah. Since then, hundreds of first responders have been carefully combing through the pancaked pile of debris in hopes of finding survivors.
Meanwhile, 139 people who were living or staying in the condominium at the time of the disaster have been accounted for and are safe, according to Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, who has stressed that the numbers are “very fluid” and “continue to change.” Officials previously were including the number of deceased among those accounted for but are now separating the figures.
The massive search and rescue operation, now in its ninth day, was temporarily halted for much of Thursday due to safety concerns regarding the structural integrity of the still-standing section of the building. Movement in the pile of rubble as well as in the remaining structure prompted the hours-long pause, according to Scott Nacheman, a structure specialist with the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Urban Search and Rescue support team.
Structural engineers, who have been on site monitoring the situation to ensure the safety of rescue workers, are currently planning for the likely demolition of the rest of the condominium amid the ongoing search and rescue mission, according to Levine Cava. Nacheman, who is helping develop contingency plans for the demolition, told reporters it would be “weeks” before a “definitive timeline” is available.
The structure was cleared by crews last week, and all search and rescue resources have since been shifted to focusing on the pile of rubble. But the two sites are side-by-side and the remaining building has posed challenges for the rescuers trying to locate any survivors or human remains in the wreckage.
“Given our ongoing safety concerns about the integrity of the building, we’re continuing to restrict access to the collapse zone,” Levine Cava said during a press briefing in Surfside on Thursday evening.
Shortly after search and rescue efforts resumed Thursday evening, the Miami-Dade County mayor noted that the crews “looked really, really excited to get back out there.”
Heat, humidity, heavy rain, strong winds and lightning storms have also made the conditions difficult for rescuers, periodically forcing them to pause their round-the-clock efforts in recent days. Officials are monitoring weather systems in the region as the Atlantic hurricane season ramps up.
Although officials have continued to express hope that more people will be found alive, no survivors have been discovered in the rubble of the building since the morning it partially collapsed. Bodies, however, have been uncovered throughout the site.
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden traveled to Surfside on Thursday to tour the scene of the disaster and meet with officials, first responders, search and rescue teams, as well as families of the victims. Recalling the 1972 car accident that killed his first wife and 1-year-old daughter as well as badly injured his two sons, Biden told reporters: “It’s bad enough to lose somebody but the hard part, the really hard part, is to not know whether they’ll survive or not.”
The cause of the partial collapse to a building that has withstood decades of hurricanes remains unknown and is under investigation by local and federal agencies. Built in the 1980s, the Champlain Towers South was up for its 40-year recertification and had been undergoing roof work — with more renovations planned — when it partially collapsed, according to officials.
A structural field survey report from October 2018, which was among hundreds of pages of public documents released by the town of Surfside late Sunday, said the waterproofing below the condominium’s pool deck and entrance drive was failing and causing “major structural damage to the concrete structural slab below these areas.”
A slew of lawsuits against the Champlain Towers South Condo Association have already been filed on behalf of survivors and victims, alleging the partial collapse could have been avoided and that the association knew or should have known about the structural damage. A spokesperson for the Champlain Towers South Condo Association told ABC News they cannot comment on pending litigation but that their “focus remains on caring for our friends and neighbors during this difficult time.”
(NEW YORK) — As Bill Cosby awoke Thursday to his first full day of freedom in nearly three years, women who accused him of sexual assault and victim advocates we’re left reeling from the fallout of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision to vacate his 2018 conviction.
Two women who alleged Cosby drugged and assaulted them told ABC News they felt sick to their stomachs, including one who said the ruling retriggered her post-traumatic stress disorder.
“What we’re seeing is a lot of people are expressing feelings of trauma, retraumatization, feeling helpless and hopeless in the criminal justice system,” Elizabeth Jeglic, a professor of clinical psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice who studies sexual violence prevention, told ABC News on Thursday.
Jeglic said the court’s decision came across as a giant step back from the progress made during the #MeToo movement, in which rich, powerful men like Cosby and movie mogul Harvey Weinstein were convicted and imprisoned in sexual assault cases.
“Following #MeToo, we had some hope,” Jeglic said. “It’s very difficult for survivors to come forward and make accusations, and to go through the criminal justice system process. So when you see that it has failed yet again, you just kind of feel like, ‘What can I do?’ ‘How is this ever going to end?'”
Jeglic said that only 25 out of every 1,000 cases of sexual abuse end with the assailant going to prison.
Cosby was convicted on April 26, 2018, on three counts of felony aggravated indecent assault, stemming from accusations made by Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee, that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in 2004 at his suburban Philadelphia mansion. Cosby was given a sentence of three to 10 years in prison.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned Cosby’s conviction on Wednesday, ruling he should have never been prosecuted because of a deal he and his attorneys cut with former Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor in 2005. As part of the deal, Castor agreed not to criminally prosecute Cosby if he testified in a deposition for a civil suit Constand filed against him, one that resulted in a $3 million settlement.
During a four-day deposition, Cosby, believing he had immunity from criminal charges, made incriminating statements, including that he obtained drugs, specifically the sedative Quaaludes, to give women for sex. Castor’s successor, Kevin Steele, then used Cosby’s statements as grounds to file criminal charges.
The state Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors violated Cosby’s constitutional rights to due process and described Steele’s decision to file felony charges as an unconstitutional “coercive bait-and-switch.”
“The court is saying the entire process was fundamentally unfair,” Dan Abrams, ABC News’ chief legal analyst, said Thursday on Good Morning America.
There were no conditions placed on Cosby’s release and he does not have to register as a sex offender.
The state Supreme Court justices took their ruling a step further by concluding the only way to remedy the miscarriage of justice was to release Cosby from prison and bar prosecutors from trying him for the third time.
“We do not dispute that this remedy is both severe and rare. But it is warranted here, indeed compelled,” the justices wrote in their 79-page decision.
“That was the most surprising part of the ruling to me,” Abrams said, adding that the justices could have ordered a new trial.
Following the ruling, Steele released a statement saying Cosby “was found guilty by a jury and now goes free on a procedural issue that is irrelevant to the facts of the crime.”
Steele could conceivably face sanctions by The Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania if a complaint is filed over how he and his office handled the prosecution, a spokesperson for the Supreme Court told ABC News on Thursday. The Disciplinary Board declined to comment on whether a complaint has been filed against Steele.
Cosby has maintained his innocence throughout the legal ordeal, saying he never engaged in non-consensual sex.
In an interview Wednesday night with ABC News Live Prime anchor Linsey Davis, Cosby slammed prosecutors and the media.
“Nobody had the sense to say, ‘Wait one second, this doesn’t match up with the truth, this is not what I was taught in college, this is not what I was taught at home,'” Cosby said.
But California attorney Gloria Allred, who represents 33 women who have accused Cosby of sexual assault, said at a news conference on Wednesday that “Mr. Cosby is not home free.”
Allred said she is charging forward with a civil case she filed against Cosby on behalf of a woman alleging he sexually abused her as a child at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles. She said the suit had been stayed for trial until the conclusion of Cosby’s criminal case.
Allred said a status conference on the case has been scheduled for August in Santa Monica, California, and that she expects Cosby to testify at a deposition under oath.
“Because his criminal case is now concluded and because he is not in jeopardy of being criminally prosecuted, he will not be able to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination in our case,” Allred said.
Despite the state Supreme Court’s decision, Allred told ABC News that the accusers she represents have found Cosby’s prosecution an “empowering experience” that has allowed them to speak out and demand changes in the laws to make it easier to prosecute perpetrators of sexual violence.
But Constand and her attorneys said in a joint statement that the Supreme Court’s decision “may discourage those who seek justice for sexual assault in the criminal justice system from reporting or participating in the prosecution of the assailant.”
Tarana Burke, a founder of the #MeToo movement, told ABC News that the decision by the state Supreme Court will not derail her group’s mission to support survivors of sexual assault and to “expand the possibilities for ending sexual violence.”
“We don’t owe anybody anything. We don’t owe anybody our survival,” Burke said. “We just owe ourselves to survive.”
Burke added, “As much as I feel sort of appalled by this overturn … the legal system in this country was not built to support survivors, it wasn’t made to give us accountability. So, when we see these failures of accountability, it’s to be expected.”
Lise-Lotte Lublin, who accused Cosby of drugging and sexually assaulting her in 1989, was one of five Cosby accusers to testify at his trial to help prosecutors establish prior bad acts and a pattern of practice by the comedian. She told ABC News that she takes some solace in the notion that Cosby will likely never regain his reputation as “America’s Dad.”
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Thursday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Boston 15, Kansas City 1
Seattle 7, Toronto 2
Chi White Sox 8, Minnesota 5
Texas 8, Oakland 3
Houston 7, Cleveland 2
LA Angels at NY Yankees (Postponed)
NATIONAL LEAGUE
LA Dodgers 6, Washington 2
Atlanta 4, NY Mets 3
Milwaukee 7, Pittsburgh 2
Cincinnati 5, San Diego 4
Colorado 5, St. Louis 2
Arizona 5, San Francisco 3
Miami at Philadelphia (Postponed)
NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION PLAYOFFS
Milwaukee 123, Atlanta 112 (Milwaukee leads series 3-2)
WOMEN’S NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION
Connecticut 86, Indiana 80
Lady A sets the Fourth of July holiday weekend in motion today, playing Good Morning America‘s Summer Concert Series on ABC.
From there, well, they’ve got some serious celebrating to do.
“It’s America’s birthday, and then the next day is Dave [Haywood]’s birthday,” Hillary Scott explains. “And it’s actually the anniversary of my engagement to [my husband,] Chris. The second was the day that we got engaged… And then your anniversary is the…”
“Sixth,” Charles Kelley interjects.
For all those reasons, you’ll usually find Lady A kicking back like lots of Americans around the Fourth.
“We always take that week off,” Dave points out. “I’ll be with my wife’s family in Alabama at the beach…just kind of enjoying outdoor cookouts.”
The three agree: Nothing sets up the Independence Day mood quite like the country standard “God Bless the USA.”
“It’s a great celebration and a reminder of this great country we get to live in,” Charles says of the holiday. “And every time I think the Fourth of July, all I can think of is Lee Greenwood. I don’t know why.”
He continues, “I’m proud to be American. It’s like always, like, right when you say it, I smell barbecue and I’m hearing Lee Greenwood over and over and over.”
Adds Hillary, “Yeah. And fireworks.”
Lady A’s new collection, What a Song Can Do (Chapter One), features their top-25 hit “Like a Lady.”
Pentatonix is one of the acts performing on this year’s edition of A Capitol Fourth, airing on PBS on Sunday, July 4, at 8 p.m. ET. The group will be performing in downtown Los Angeles, along with a choir, and will sing “Seasons of Love” from the Broadway musical Rent. Pentatonix’s Scott Hoying explains why the group chose a distinctly non-patriotic song.
“I think it’s a song that everyone needs to hear right now; it’s a really uplifting song — ‘measure your life in love,'” Scott tells ABC Audio. “And I think we’re all reuniting, and as things start to open up, we’re all feeling the love for each other.”
He adds, “We’re feeling the love for music and a love for our country. And so it felt really appropriate. And the performance is very epic, too. So it has a grandeur about it.”
It’s not the first time the a cappella group has done A Capitol Fourth — they’re pretty much a fixture at these high-profile events, like last month’sKennedy Center Honors. Why do these shows have Pentatonix on speed-dial?
“Y’know, singing a cappella is a really difficult thing. And so I think that the people…who book these gigs have a respect for us,” explains Scott. “Which is amazing, because we get to perform alongside…legends, which is really surreal.”
While celebrating the birth of our country, Pentatonix also is celebrating their 10th anniversary: Last month marked a decade since they first sang together. And Scott says they already have the next decade mapped out.
“We definitely have a 10-year plan…we feel like we’re just getting started,” he gushes. “We’re going to go bolder. We’re going to go bigger. We’re going to tour a lot. We’re going to take everything to the next level.”
The Cadillac Three celebrate their love of skateboarding in the new video for their song “Bridges,” which finds the band converting Nashville venue Exit/In into a pop-up skate park. The video also features a number of skaters, including pro Jake Wooten.
Alan Jackson is joining forces with Cornerstone Building Brands to provide relief for those affected by the spring tornado that hit Alan’s hometown of Newnan, Georgia. Cornerstone is donating $500,000 in supplies to Habitat for Humanity and $100,000 to the Coweta Community Foundation to aid in recovery efforts.
Travis Denning and Jon Langston join newcomer Noah Hicks for his new single, “Drinkin’ in a College Town.”
Imagine Dragons has released a new song called “Wrecked.”
The tune will appear on the band’s upcoming album, Mercury — Act 1, which was announced earlier this week. The record, which is due out September 3, also includes the previously released songs “Follow You” and “Cutthroat.”
Dan Reynolds and company recorded Mercury — Act 1 with famed producer Rick Rubin. They describe the album as being about “love, faith, pain, passion and loss.”
Mercury — Act 1 is Imagine Dragons’ fifth studio effort. It follows the one-two punch of 2017’s Believer and 2018’s Origins.
Propelled by those hits and a fourth top-40 single, “Break It Up,” 4 became Foreigner’s only album to reach #1 on the Billboard 200, spending 10 non-consecutive weeks atop the chart from August 1981 to January 1982. 4 has sold over 6 million copies in the U.S.
Interestingly, “Waiting for a Girl Like You” set a Billboard record by spending 10 weeks at #2 on the Hot 100 tally without ever reaching the top. It was blocked from #1 by Olivia Newton-John‘s “Physical” and Hall & Oates‘ “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do).”
The title 4 also was a reference to the fact that Foreigner had become a quartet after the exit of founding multi-intrumentalist Ian McDonald and keyboardist Al Greenwood in 1980.
Founding guitarist and main songwriter Mick Jones co-produced the album with “Mutt” Lange, then famous for producing AC/DC‘s Back in Black and soon to become more famous for his work with Def Leppard.
4 was the first Foreigner album to make significant use of session musicians. Thomas Dolby, who had a big hit of his own in 1982 with “She Blinded Me with Science,” played synthesizers, while Motown sax legend Junior Walker contributed a memorable solo to “Urgent.”
Singer Lou Gramm told ABC Audio that while “Waiting for a Girl Like You” may be the tune that fans remember most from 4, he considers “Juke Box Hero” to be “the quintessential Foreigner song.”
Here’s 4‘s full track list:
“Night Life”
“Juke Box Hero”
“Break It Up”
“Waiting for a Girl Like You”
“Luanne”
“Urgent”
“I’m Gonna Win”
“Woman in Black”
“Girl on the Moon”
“Don’t Let Go”
Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige says fans should be excited about the latest phase in the Marvel Cinematic Universe… because he certainly is.
Speaking with Entertainment Tonight, Feige opened up about the future of the MCU and what fans can expect.
“I hope what people have taken away from Wandavision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Loki, and seeing Black Widow soon, is how unique and different all the corners of the MCU can be,” he said before noting the MCU now has more storytelling freedom because it expanded onto the Disney+ streaming service.
“That’s what Disney+ has given us, is an ability to tell more deeper, further stories that will have ramifications across features and series,” he explained.
Feige also noted how the current Disney+ series Loki has allowed the MCU to feature lesser-known elements from the comic books, like the Time Variance Authority (TVA) that guards what is known as the “Sacred Timeline” and stops alternate universes from forming.
Feige said he is “so excited” by how receptive MCU fans are to the previously unknown TVA.
“Nobody outside of very, very particular comic nerds like myself had heard of the TVA [before Loki,]” he gushed. “And now that’s something that people are embracing and wondering, when will the TVA come back?”
Unfortunately, that is one question Feige will not be answering — including speculation over which characters will appear next in the MCU.
“Everything we make is hopefully with the intention of exceeding expectations and fulfilling surprises,” he teased. “Not every rumor you read about online is true, not by a long shot, but not every one is false either. So that’s the fun.”
As for when Feige can address those MCU rumors, he grinned, “I hope sometime in the near future.”
Marvel is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News.
