(WASHINGTON) — The first federal prison to experience a COVID-19 outbreak in March of 2020 is now severely short-staffed, the Louisiana congressional delegation and members of the Bureau of Prison union say.
FCI Oakdale in Louisiana experienced a severe COVID-19 outbreak in March of 2020, so bad the Justice Department inspector general was critical of the BOP for how it failed to separate inmates at the facility during the first weeks of the pandemic.
The Louisiana congressional delegation, led by Republican Sen. John Kennedy, wrote to the Bureau of Prisons to make sure it takes care of the staffing issues at the facility.
“FCC Oakdale faces unsustainably low staffing levels that is nearing crisis,” the congressional delegation writes. “These vacancies force FCC Oakdale to rely on mandatory overtime in order to meet the basic safety needs of the mission.”
They say they are concerned about the staffing levels and want to know what the Bureau is doing to address it.
“Staffing conditions at FCC Oakdale have understandably forced many veteran staff members to actively seek opportunities for promotion or transfer to other federal prison facilities and agencies or even retire.”
The Bureau of Prisons told ABC News it received and is reviewing the congressional letter. “We have no additional information to provide at this time,” the BOP said.
Federal prisons that are short-staffed are not a new problem, which is something the national BOP union has pointed out.
The local union president at FCC Oakdale tells ABC News FCC Oakdale was the first to experience a major outbreak of COVID-19 and staff worked overtime to provide coverage for the prison.
“During that time, as your aware, the staff worked an extreme amount of overtime to provide security coverage to the inmates at outside hospitals while receiving treatment for COVID,” Ronald Morris, AFGE Local 1007 President told ABC News. “This was a very hard mission staffing wise due to having inmates in the outside hospital, attempting to cover the post at the institution through augmentation and dealing with staff out due to COVID. Fast forward two years and it seems that the staff have not been able to recover. We are still short-staffed,” he said.
(PHILADELPHIA) — In an effort to curb shootings and make going to and from school less dangerous for students, Philadelphia officials announced they will spend $1.8 million on installing security cameras near city high schools and middle schools in high crime neighborhoods.
Standing outside the John Bartram High School in Southwest Philadelphia, where a 17-year-old student was fatally shot in January after leaving campus, Mayor Jim Kenney and other city leaders said at a news conference Monday they hope the cameras will make criminals think twice about committing shootings around a school.
“We need to create a culture of if you’re going do something, somebody might be watching you,” city councilmember Maria Quiñones-Sánchez said.
Cameras that can be remotely monitored will be placed along routes students frequently take to and from Bartram and 18 other schools, officials said.
Craig Johnson, the deputy chief of school safety for the School District of Philadelphia, said the schools were chosen for the program based on information regarding shootings around those campuses. The cameras will be linked to the Delaware Valley Intelligence Center, where Philadelphia police monitor crime from real-time feeds.
“We hate to think that we have to have this environment where we have to have this coverage, but it’s a simple reality that people in the neighborhoods in the city of Philadelphia, they want us to do something,” Philadelphia City Council President Darrell Clarke said at the press conference.
The move comes as shootings and murders in the City of Brotherly Love have climbed to record levels. Last year, Philadelphia set an all-time annual homicide record with 562 killings. As of Monday, the city has recorded 227 homicides this year, 18 fewer than this time in 2021, according to police department crime statistics.
More than 800 non-fatal shootings have occurred in the city this year as of Sunday, according to gun violence crisis data tracked by the city’s Office of the Controller. At least 95 young people 18 or younger have been shot in the city this year, according to the data.
Johnson said the need for the new security cameras is being prompted by the shootings of teenagers, many near their schools.
On May 17, a 16-year-old boy was shot seven times while sitting outside KIPP Philadelphia Charter School in the city’s Parkside neighborhood. Just seven days later, three students, ages 15 to 17, were shot and wounded after leaving the Simon Gratz High School Mastery Charter in the city’s Tioga-Nicetown section.
In April, a 15-year-old boy was shot to death about a block from Tanner Duckrey School in North Central Philadelphia when a gunman fired at least 20 shots.
“Youth being shot or being murdered almost on a daily basis doesn’t even garner that much attention,” Johnson said. “It’s almost like it’s expected or normalized and that’s a really sad place to be.”
The announcement of the program comes less than a month after a teenager armed with an AR-15 rifle allegedly killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
Clarke said he hopes the new cameras will also “create an environment where people feel a little more safe.”
“We need every child to be safe as they go to school, and come home later in the day,” Clarke said. “These cameras are a good start, and they’ll lend eyes to law enforcement officials working very hard to keep our kids safe from harm.”
(NEW YORK) — A third of the U.S. population will experience heat advisories on Tuesday and Wednesday as a week of record-breaking temperatures continues, according to the National Weather Service.
A “heat dome” is expected to bring triple-digit temperatures to portions of the Midwest, adding to the early onset temperatures already baking the Southwest.
From California to Virginia, approximately 100 million Americans are under heat advisories, heat warnings or heat watches.
St. Louis reported a record-high temperature of 100 degrees on Monday, and the heat index in parts of the Midwest neared 115 degrees.
From Raleigh, North Carolina, to Chicago, actual temperatures are expected to reach near 100 degrees on Tuesday.
As extreme heat has persisted in the Southwest and Midwest, the heat is moving East, with Detroit predicted to reach 97 degrees on Wednesday.
Wildfires are continuing in the Southwest amid the heat, igniting due to gusty winds and very dry conditions.
There are red flag warnings across Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma for increased fire danger.
A new heat wave is poised to hit the Southwest on Wednesday, with temperatures again surpassing 110 degrees from Southern California to Arizona.
Gusty winds are expected to continue, prolonging wildfire risks in the Southwest.
More than 27 major cities tied or broke day-of heat records on Saturday, with California’s Death Valley being the hottest place in America at 123 degrees.
Palm Springs, California, and Phoenix followed, tying at 114 degrees, marking the hottest day for Phoenix in a century.
Las Vegas reported temperatures of 109 degrees on Saturday for the first time since 1956.
Extreme heat causes more deaths in American than any other weather-related disaster, with the Environmental Protection Agency estimating that more than 1,300 deaths per year in the U.S. are due to extreme heat.
Warning signs of a heat episode include nausea, excessive sweating and rapid pulse.
Those who are at the greatest risk for a heat-related incident include young children, older adults, pregnant women and immunocompromised individuals.
If possible, the NWS encourages residents to take cool showers or baths, find pools to escape the heat, avoid physical activity during the daytime and high-heat hours and find a safe place with air conditioning.
(WASHINGTON) — All Yellowstone National Park entrances have been closed in the wake of “unprecedented” rainfall causing “substantial flooding, rockslides and mudslides on roadways,” the National Park Service announced Monday.
Some roads have been washed out and others are covered in mud or rocks, according to the park service. Power has also been knocked out in multiple parts of the park, officials said.
Park Superintendent Cam Sholly described it as “record flooding.”
The flooding was sparked by near record-high temperatures melting high-elevation snow over the weekend. Rivers are at peak levels now and are forecast to recede in the next few days.
The park service didn’t say when Yellowstone would reopen but noted that officials need time to assess the damage and wait for conditions to stabilize.
The closure will last through Wednesday at a minimum. The park service warned that many roads could be shuttered “for an extended period of time.”
The massive national park spans 2,219,789 acres, mostly in Wyoming but also in neighboring Montana and Idaho. Summer is the park’s busiest tourist season.
ABC News’ Max Golembo and Dan Peck contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — A yearslong legal attempt to get Happy, an elephant residing at the Bronx Zoo, transferred to an elephant sanctuary failed Tuesday when New York’s highest court rejected a petition from the Nonhuman Rights Project.
The group filed a writ of habeas corpus on Happy’s behalf, suggesting a legal instrument that has safeguarded the liberty of humans, by providing a means to secure release from illegal custody, should also apply to an elephant.
The New York Court of Appeals disagreed, though it said Happy was entitled to proper care.
“Because the writ of habeas corpus is intended to protect the liberty right of human beings to be free of unlawful confinement, it has no applicability to Happy, a nonhuman animal who is not a ‘person’ subjected to illegal detention,” the decision said. “Thus, while no one disputes that elephants are intelligent beings deserving of proper care and compassion, the courts below properly granted the motion to dismiss the petition for a writ of habeas corpus, and we therefore affirm.”
Happy has lived at the zoo for 50 years.
The elephant was part of a 2006 study published in the journal Science that described her ability to recognize herself in a mirror as evidence of human-like self-awareness. As such, Nonhuman Rights Project asserted, the elephant was not a thing lacking rights but akin to a person with a fundamental right to liberty based on the principle of habeas corpus, which guards against unlawful detention.
The Nonhuman Rights Project first filed a writ of habeas corpus arguing for Happy’s legal personhood and seeking her release from the zoo in 2018. A New York City judge denied the habeas corpus relief in 2020. The state Court of Appeals granted an appeal last year.
In a statement Tuesday, the Nonhuman Rights Project said that the court’s decision to reject its petition “is not just a loss for Happy, whose freedom was at stake in this case and who remains imprisoned in a Bronx Zoo exhibit. It’s also a loss for everyone who cares about upholding and strengthening our most cherished values and principles of justice — autonomy, liberty, equality, and fairness — and ensuring our legal system is free of arbitrary reasoning and that no one is denied basic rights simply because of who they are.”
The group said it plans to continue its campaign for her release and “consider our legal options and next steps in New York.”
ABC News has reached out to the Wildlife Conservation Society, which runs the Bronx Zoo, for comment.
(HOUSTON) — A 7-year-old boy was inside his home when authorities said he was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting in Harris County, Texas, which encompasses the Houston area.
Around 10:45 p.m. Sunday, the unknown gunman drove in front of a trailer home and opened fire at it, Harris County Sheriff’s Sgt. Jason Brown said.
Paul Vasquez, who was inside the trailer, was shot in the chest, the sheriff’s office said. He was pronounced dead at a hospital, authorities said.
Paul’s mother and two brothers were home at the time but none of them were hurt, Brown said.
No motive is known and no suspects have been identified, authorities said.
The gunman’s car is believed to be a white or gray four-door sedan, authorities said.
Just 24 hours later, at about 10:45 p.m. Monday, a 9-year-old girl was shot and killed in an apartment only 15 miles away, according to Houston police.
The girl’s mom was shot in the upper body, police said. She is in stable condition and is expected to survive, police said.
This shooting was believed to be the result of family violence, police said.
The suspect is not in custody, police said.
These deadly shootings come one week after an 11-year-old girl was shot dead in a Detroit home by outside gunfire.
After the slaying of 7-year-old Paul Vasquez, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez tweeted that he’s “outraged.”
“This is the daily toll of gun violence … Let’s not accept daily gun violence as our norm,” he tweeted. “We can and we must do more.”
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo on Tuesday called for a special state legislative session to address youth gun violence.
“Yes, we need more mental health resources … yes, we need to look at broader issues. But we cannot address gun violence and the gun violence epidemic without addressing the need for gun safety policies,” Hidalgo said at a news conference. “My hope is that as we do our work in Harris County we can work together as a state, we can work together as a nation, to finally tackle this.”
Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis added, “We owe it to these kids to keep them safe from gun violence.”
(UVALDE, Texas) — Three weeks after one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history, some relatives of students gunned down at Robb Elementary School say they’re hopeful about the federal anti-gun violence proposal announced by a bipartisan group of senators Sunday.
But others say they’re dissatisfied with the extent of the proposed legislation and the lack of answers in their community.
The agreement, if passed into law, would provide funding for mental health, including behavioral health centers, and create incentives for the creation of so-called “red flag” laws to remove firearms from people who are a danger to themselves or others; increase money for school safety; and strengthen the federal background check system as it relates to convicted domestic violence abusers or those with restraining orders.
Amelia Sandoval, whose grandson Xavier Lopez was killed in the attack, told ABC News that she has not been watching news coverage while she processes her grandson’s death. But when briefed on the proposed legislation, she choked up, saying, “Praise God. This is just the beginning, but praise God.”
Briana Ruiz, whose child survived the shooting, told ABC News that the proposed measures just aren’t enough.
“I feel like it’s a pathway to hopefully, eventually get to what many are asking for … but the age limit should have been raised as well,” she said, referring to the requirements to purchase an AR-style weapon like the one used in the attack.
Ruiz, who at one point was a teacher’s aide in accused shooter Salvador Ramos’ class, said she laments how an 18-year-old in Texas cannot buy beer or cigarettes, but can purchase an AR-15.
Twenty-two people, including 19 young children, were killed in the attack in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24.
Some in Uvalde said the proposed legislation is important, but it’s not their primary focus right now.
Monica Garza-Herrera, a relative of fourth-grade victim Amerie Jo Garza, said she was glad to hear about the federal framework — but she said she’s looking for local answers as well.
“What I want to know is what they’re going to do as far as here in our hometown to change things for our students that are still in school,” Garza-Herrera told ABC News.
She said there’s pain in the community, and she worries about whether her grandchildren and her sister, who is a teacher in the school district, are safe. She also wants to know if faster action on the part of law enforcement could have saved more children’s lives.
“Could they have been saved, even though they were shot?” she said. “Would they have gotten in there sooner? What do they plan to do about that? That’s what I’m waiting for them to tell us.”
While those answers may take time, President Joe Biden said he hopes to move quickly to get the legislative framework adopted into law. The framework has the backing of 10 Republicans, which suggests that, if adopted, the proposal would have enough votes to overcome its biggest hurdle in the Senate.
“Each day that passes, more children are killed in this country,” Biden said. “The sooner it comes to my desk, the sooner I can sign it, and the sooner we can use these measures to save lives.”
(NEW YORK) — Philadelphia resident Latanya Byrd’s 27-year-old niece Samara Banks and three of Banks’ sons were struck and killed by a speeding driver in 2013. They were crossing Roosevelt Boulevard, a 12-lane road that passes through some of the city’s most diverse and lowest-income neighborhoods.
“It was just so devastating,” Byrd told ABC News. “We lost two generations in one swoop. I mean, just an instant snap of the finger.”
As the local population has swelled, Byrd said outdated transportation infrastructure — grass paths instead of pavements, dangerously short pedestrian signal cycles, overcrowded bus stops, to name a few — can partially explain why this road is one of America’s deadliest.
Byrd’s story exemplifies a larger trend of racial disparities and inequity in traffic fatalities, as reported by the Governors Highway Safety Association and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last year.
And a new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine last week reveals that these disparities may be even wider than initially estimated, especially for “vulnerable” modes of travel such as walking and cycling.
Previous estimates were derived by calculating national traffic fatality counts by race and ethnicity across travel modes, sometimes adjusting for the population of each racial and ethnic group.
“But that assumes that everyone of all races and ethnicities cycle, walk or drive the same number of miles, and that we find is not true,” Matthew Raifman, a Boston University School of Public Health doctoral candidate who co-authored the new study, told ABC News.
Using 2017 national traffic fatality and household travel data, Raifman and co-author Ernani Choma, a research fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, analyzed the travel activity of different racial and ethnic groups by the additional variables of travel mode, distance traveled, time of day and urbanicity.
They found that when examining only car drivers or passengers, the traffic fatality rate per mile traveled was 1.8 times higher for Black Americans than white Americans.
That rate increases to 2.2 times and 4.5 times when considering only pedestrians and cyclists, respectively.
The rates for Hispanic Americans follow similar, though less severe, patterns. Asian Americans had the lowest fatality rates across all modes of travel.
During the nighttime, racial and ethnic disparities in traffic deaths were exacerbated.
Byrd partially attributed these disparities to systemic underinvestment in protected walking and cycling infrastructure in working class neighborhoods, which are disproportionately communities of color — while most road repairs occur elsewhere.
“It can be the same road that’s getting fixed every year, and it’s nowhere near as bad as the roads in the lower-income section of the city,” she said.
The fact that Black and Hispanic Americans die at higher rates due to traffic accidents yet bike and walk fewer miles in aggregate is a problem in itself, Choma told ABC News.
“It might indicate that, for example, Black Americans or Hispanic Americans are less able to cycle, they don’t have access to transportation in that way,” he said. “Maybe it’s less bike lanes. Maybe they don’t even bike because they feel unsafe.”
Raifman said their analysis could also indicate racial inequity in the medical service chain — emergency response times, quality of care, access to health insurance and pre-existing conditions.
“Traffic fatalities don’t necessarily occur at the point of the collision,” he said. “Some people die in a hospital or an emergency room or en route to an emergency room.”
Choma added that without safe access to bike lanes and pedestrian crossings, Black and Hispanic Americans also lose out on the health benefits that come from physical activity, as well as the environmental benefits like reducing air pollution.
Byrd co-founded the advocacy group Families for Safe Streets Greater Philadelphia to confront the “epidemic” of traffic violence. She successfully lobbied for automated speed cameras, which were placed at eight intersections on Roosevelt Boulevard in June 2020.
The U.S. Department of Transportation created the Safe Streets and Roads for All program in May to allocate federal transportation funding to cities and local governments. President Joe Biden also recently signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, providing $550 billion in spending on roads, bridges, transit and more.
With more complete data on specific streets, walking and cycling activity levels, as well as other social costs of traffic crashes, like injuries and property damage, Raifman and Choma said they hope future research will spur local policymakers to address the root of racial disparities in traffic deaths.
“We have these two big challenges. We have structural racism, and we have traffic fatalities, and they’re related. They’re interlinked,” Raifman said. “Instead of just investing in reducing traffic fatalities, why not do it in a way that’s also addressing the systemic, structural racism challenges in our society?”
(NEW YORK) — Kathleen Buhle was married to Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, for over two decades and raised three daughters with him before their divorce five years ago.
Now, Buhle has penned a memoir, If We Break: A Memoir of Marriage, Addiction and Healing, sharing the first glimpse into her experience in their 24-year marriage.
In an exclusive interview with ABC News’ Amy Robach, Buhle opens up what it was like to watch her husband disappear into drug and alcohol addiction.
“I think with addiction especially, there’s so much shame surrounding it that it becomes something that we don’t talk about,” Buhle told Robach in an interview airing Tuesday on Good Morning America.
Tune into Good Morning America on Tuesday, June 14, between 7 and 9 a.m. EST, to watch Amy Robach’s full interview with Kathleen Buhle.
(DUNCANVILLE, Texas) — Police shot and killed a suspect Monday morning after he entered an athletic complex where summer camp was taking place in Duncanville, Texas, allegedly armed with a handgun, authorities said.
No children were harmed after camp staffers ushered them to safety when the man entered the building.
Police shot and killed the suspect at the Duncanville Fieldhouse within minutes of arriving at the scene, Duncanville Mayor Barry Gordon said, according to ABC Dallas affiliate WFAA.
“Our officers did not hesitate,” Gordon said. “They did what they were trained to do and saved lives.”
Families of kids wounded in Uvalde school shooting sue suspected gunman’s estate
A camp counselor confronted the suspected gunman in the lobby of the indoor sports and fitness center.
Upon hearing the gunshots in the lobby, staff members moved the kids to a safe area and locked the doors, preventing the suspected gunman from getting inside, Duncanville Assistant Police Chief Matthew Stogner, said.
“[He] did fire one round inside the classroom where there were children inside,” Stogner said. “Fortunately, no one was injured.”
Stogner praised the police officers for quickly dealing with the situation and utilizing their active shooter training.
The incident comes weeks after 19 kids and two teachers were killed in a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
Uvalde law enforcement has been heavily criticized for their handling of the May 24 shooting, which included waiting for more than an hour to confront the suspected gunman while students were inside.
