(ALAMO, Ga.) — Investigators announced Sunday afternoon they had arrested the suspect wanted in connection with the killing of a central Georgia police officer who was shot outside his police department early Saturday, authorities said.
Dylan Harrison, 26, of Dudley, Georgia, was working his first shift as a part-time officer with the Alamo Police Department in Wheeler County when he was fatally shot around 1 a.m. Saturday, police said. Harrison was allegedly killed over an earlier confrontation that took place near the precinct a few hours prior, investigators said.
Damien Anthony Ferguson, 43, of Alamo, Georgia, was taken into custody Sunday afternoon following a nearly 38-hour manhunt, authorities said. He was arrested without incident while officers executed a search warrant of his residence, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said during a news conference Sunday evening.
Lindsay Wilkes, the special agent in charge for the GBI, told reporters that Harrison was involved in an altercation at a parking lot on Circle K across the street from the precinct Friday night. Harrison allegedly saw a man who was an associate of Ferguson commit a traffic violation and made contact with him, according to Wilkes.
The officer allegedly used his Taser on the suspect when he did not comply with Harrison’s orders, Wilkes said.
“It is believed that the ambush-style attack on Officer Harrison was retaliation for the incident and the arrest of the man Friday night,” Wilkes said.
Ferguson was charged with murder and with aggravated stalking related to a previous domestic incident, according to the GBI. Attorney information wasn’t immediately available.
Ferguson served eight years in prison after being convicted in Wheeler County of charges including aggravated assault of a peace officer, Georgia Department of Corrections records show. He was released in 2006.
Before his arrest, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation issued a “blue alert,” which indicates the search for a suspect who’s allegedly killed or injured an officer and hasn’t been apprehended, for Ferguson. An $18,500 reward was offered for information related to Ferguson’s arrest.
Harrison appears to be at least the fifth Georgia officer killed in the line of duty this year, according to Officer Down Memorial Page, which tracks law enforcement deaths.
He was also a full-time agent with the Oconee Drug Task Force in Eastman, Georgia, and has been in law enforcement since 2018. He leaves behind his wife and 6-month-old baby.
(ST. PAUL, Minn.) — A woman was killed and 14 other people were wounded early Sunday when at least three patrons pulled guns and opened fire at a popular bar in St. Paul, Minnesota, police said.
The mass shooting erupted inside the Seventh Street Truck Park bar in downtown St. Paul around 12:15 a.m., prompting a flood of 911 calls, according to authorities.
Steve Linders, a St. Paul Police Department spokesperson, said that when police officers arrived they found a “chaotic scene” with wounded people inside and outside the tavern.
“There were gunshot wound victims lying in the street outside the bar,” Linders said at a news conference early Sunday. “There were gunshot wound victims lying on the sidewalk outside the bar. There were gunshot wound victims lying on the floor inside the bar.”
St. Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell said one of the victims, a woman in her 20s, was pronounced dead at the scene. Police were withholding her name pending an autopsy and notification of her relatives.
“My heart breaks for the woman who was killed, her loved ones and everyone else who was in that bar this morning,” Axtell said. “In an instant, they found themselves caught in a hellish situation. I want them to know that we have the best investigators in the country, and we won’t stop until we find the people responsible for this madness. We will do our part to hold them accountable.”
Three men wounded in the incident were taken into custody at local hospitals. Police identified the suspects as Terry Lorenzo Brown, Jr., 33, Devondre Trevon Phillips, 29, and Jeffrey Orlando Hoffman, 32. Charges have yet to be determined, but Axtell said the suspects will be booked into the Ramsey County jail as soon as they are discharged from the hospital.
“I hope these arrests bring a modicum of peace to all who’ve been affected by this morning’s tragedy,” Axtell said.
He said the investigation remained active and did not rule out the possibility of more arrests. A possible motive was not disclosed.
Investigators were still conducting interviews with witnesses and collecting evidence Sunday afternoon inside and outside the bar, which is about a block from the city’s Xcel Energy Center, home of the Minnesota Wild National Hockey League team.
St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter said in a post on Twitter that the shooting has left his community “devastated.”
The fatal shooting marked the 32nd homicide in St. Paul this year, according to the police department’s crime statistics. In 2020, there were a total of 34 homicides in St. Paul, a 13.3% increase over 2019.
“As our St. Paul officers work to bring those responsible for these senseless acts into custody, our work to build more proactive safety strategies is more urgent than ever,” Carter said. “We will never accept violence in our community.”
(WASHINGTON) — It’s been more than a month since the U.S. withdrew all U.S. troops from Afghanistan on President Joe Biden’s order to leave by Aug. 31, ending a chaotic evacuation operation after the Afghan government collapsed and the Taliban seized control of the country.
In testimony to Congress last month, their first since the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Afghanistan — Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley and Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, candidly admitted that they had recommended to Biden that the U.S. should keep a troop presence there, appearing to contradict his assertions to ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos.
Here are the latest developments. All times Eastern:
Oct 11, 10:26 am
US, Taliban hold first talks since withdrawal
While it appears the U.S. government has agreed to provide humanitarian aid to Afghanistan as it nears economic disaster, it did not signal formal recognition of the Taliban as the country’s new rulers following weekend talks in Doha, Qatar.
These were the first direct talks between the U.S. and the Taliban since the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops at the end of August.
State Department spokesperson Ned Price called the talks “candid and professional” and said the U.S. delegation reiterated to the Taliban they will be judged on their actions, not only their words.
“The U.S. delegation focused on security and terrorism concerns and safe passage for U.S. citizens, other foreign nationals and our Afghan partners, as well as on human rights, including the meaningful participation of women and girls in all aspects of Afghan society. The two sides also discussed the United States’ provision of robust humanitarian assistance, directly to the Afghan people,” Price said in a statement.
No date has been set for the resumption of talks that took place in Doha on Saturday and Sunday.
(NEW YORK) — Facebook will implement new tools to increase transparency and safety for users following Tuesday’s explosive whistleblower hearing, Facebook Vice President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg said Sunday.
“We will, of course, seek to make ourselves ever more transparent so people can hold us to account,” Clegg told ABC This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos.
“We understand that with success comes responsibility, comes criticism, comes scrutiny, comes responsibility, and that’s why we’re the first Silicon Valley company to set up an independent oversight board that independently adjudicates on these difficult content decisions,” Clegg added.
Facebook whistleblower and former employee Frances Haugen testified before a Senate subcommittee last week, accusing the social media giant of ignoring evidence that its content is harmful to young users and dangerous to democracy.
“I saw Facebook repeatedly encounter conflicts between its own profits and our safety. Facebook consistently resolved these conflicts in favor of its own profits,” Haugen told senators. “The result has been more division, more harm, more lies, more threats and more combat.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg denied Haugen’s claims in a statement following her scathing testimony. “At the most basic level, I think most of us just don’t recognize the false picture of the company that is being painted,” Zuckerberg said.
Clegg said Facebook is working on giving users more control, acknowledging that they want to see “more friends, less politics.”
During Tuesday’s hearing, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said Facebook is “facing a Big Tobacco moment, a moment of reckoning.”
Clegg called the comparison “extremely misleading.”
“We can move on beyond the slogans, the soundbites, the simplistic charcuteries and actually look at solutions and, of course, regulations,” Clegg said.
Stephanopoulos also pressed Clegg on Facebook’s efforts to create a safer environment for kids and teens.
“You also say Facebook’s job is to mitigate the harm and amplify the good on social media. But even researchers and — critics — say you can be devoting more resources to positive interventions for teens. Is Facebook prepared to do more on that?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“Yes, we are,” Clegg responded. “We’re now going to not only provide those new parental tools but we’re going to introduce new measures … [if our] systems see that a teen is dwelling on content that may be correlated with something that’s not good for their well-being, we would nudge them to look at other content.”
He went on, “We’re also going to introduce new tools, what we call ‘take a break,’ to really kind of urge teens to take a break from using Instagram if they appear to be doing so, you know, for long periods of time.”
Clegg defended Facebook’s algorithm, which prioritizes the content users see first and was a target of Haugen’s testimony. Haugen claimed Facebook’s algorithm incites misinformation and violence.
Stephanopoulos asked why the company does not just remove the algorithm altogether and display content chronologically. Clegg said that would make things worse.
“If you were just to sort of across the board remove the algorithm, the first thing that would happen is that people would see more, not less, hate speech, more, not less, information, more, not less, harmful content,” Clegg said. “Why? Because those algorithmic systems precisely are designed like a great sort of giant spam filter to identify and deprecate and downgrade bad content.”
(WASHINGTON) — While the Capitol was under attack on Jan. 6, former President Donald Trump remained out of sight from the public and watched TV in the White House private dining room, ABC News’ chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl revealed on ABC’s This Week.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., called Trump to ask him to tell the rioters to leave the Capitol, Karl reports in his new book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show.
McCarthy allegedly told Trump, “I just got evacuated from the Capitol! There were shots fired right off the House floor. You need to make this stop.”
A source familiar with the call between McCarthy and Trump said the former president pushed back, saying, “They are just more upset than you because they believe it more than you, Kevin,” referring to the lie that the election had been stolen.
The former president liked what he saw, boasted about the size of the crowd and argued with aides who wanted him to tell his supporters to stop rioting, according to Karl’s sources.
Two hours after the riot started, Trump finally acquiesced to recording a video statement. In the message posted to Twitter, he asked his supporters to go home but also praised them. “We love you. You are special,” Trump said in the video.
An aide present for the recording said, “Trump had to tape the message several times before they thought he got it right.”
In earlier versions he neglected to tell his supporters to leave the Capitol, according to Karl.
Last week, a Senate report documented alarming new details about the way Trump attempted to use the Justice Department to overturn the presidential election. Attorney General Bill Barr refused to go along, infuriating Trump when he said in early December there was no widespread fraud.
After Barr left office in mid-December, the report said Trump pressured Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to help steal the election but he too refused.
Rosen told senators he informed Trump that the Justice Department “can’t and won’t just flip a switch and change the election.”
In response, Trump asked that the DOJ “just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the [Republican] congressmen.”
In late December, Trump turned to Jeffrey Clark, a lawyer with no experience in election law, but who promised to declare without evidence that there was widespread voter fraud and to pressure contested states to reverse President Biden’s victory.
Clark also brought a new conspiracy theory to the cocktail of falsehoods. Two sources familiar with Clark’s actions said Trump “believed that wireless thermostats made in China for Google by a company called Nest Labs might have been used to manipulate voting machines in Georgia. The idea was nuts, but it intrigued Trump, who asked Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to look into it.”
At a dramatic, three-hour Oval Office meeting on Jan. 3, Trump said he wanted to make Clark acting attorney general, according to Karl.
“One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren’t going to do anything to overturn the election, Trump said, according to Rosen’s congressional testimony.
Trump was then told every senior DOJ official would resign if he went through with his plan, as well as White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who said Trump’s plan amounted to “murder-suicide pact,” according to Karl.
Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show will become available Nov. 16.
(NEW YORK) — When someone goes missing in Hawaii, local activist Ihilani Lasconia says that many in the island’s Native communities first suspect one thing: sex trafficking.
“Everybody knows that it’s happening, everybody knows that it’s a problem,” said Lasconia, an advocate for the feminist group AF3IRM. “It’s been so normalized — with over 100 years of colonization — so people feel defeated and don’t have the vocabulary to articulate these experiences.”
A new task force created by the state House aims to gather data on the number of missing Native Hawaiian women, and the impact of sex trafficking on Native populations on the islands.
Women and children in Hawaii are facing a widespread epidemic of violence and sex trafficking, according to House documents.
The task force is being led by the Hawaii State Commission on the State of Women and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs — and is backed by state agencies, local authorities and other activist groups.
Khara Jabola-Carolus, executive director of the Hawaii State Commission on the State of Women, said that “if there’s no data, there’s no problem.”
That’s why she and her team are researching the concrete numbers of how many women and girls may be missing or being sex trafficked in the state.
Why the data matters
The few figures that exist, like research from the commission and Arizona State University, suggest that Native Hawaiian women are disproportionately represented among sex trafficking victims in the state.
Sixty-four percent of the sex trafficking victims identified in the commission’s 2020 study identified as having Native Hawaiian ancestry.
The report reads: “The overutilization of Native Hawaiians to meet sex buyer demand may be directly linked to structural economic coercion and vulnerabilities connected to land dispossession, exposure to sexual violence, hypersexualization, incarceration, cultural dislocation, intergenerational trauma, mental and emotional distress, racism, poverty, and going inequities.”
Nearly a quarter of the sex trafficking victims were sex trafficked by a family member, the research shows.
But there’s still a lot that researchers don’t know, Jabola-Carolus said.
Native Hawaiians have been left out of federal and state research into the issue of missing and murdered Native and Indigenous women — according to Jabola-Carolus, because recent federal efforts have been focused on researching crimes on tribal lands in the U.S., and Native Hawaiians don’t have the same land designation as other Indigenous communities.
Indigenous women and girls are victims of violence at far greater rates than any other population in the United States, according to the Urban Indian Health Institute.
Much of the research on these missing and murdered women have not included or researched Native Hawaiians, or the data does not offer the racial and ethnic nuances of these victims.
How did this happen?
The local activists who spoke with ABC News put the blame on tourism and lack of law enforcement resources for the widespread issue plaguing Native women across the islands.
“We can’t talk about the sexual violence that Native Hawaiians experience without talking about the tourism industry, because a lot of buyers come from either the United States, or internationally and they feed this market,” said Lasconia
Jabola-Carolus and Lasconia say there’s a mistrust in law enforcement, which they allege have never put the resources into finding missing Native women and girls — several of whom have gone missing in recent months with no leads.
ABC News contacted the Honolulu Police Department which wouldn’t comment on the matter.
They also say they believe the tourism industry often easily escapes accountability due to authority or temporary time in the islands.
“There’s nothing bad about Hawaii, right? It’s meant to be marketed to you as a blissful, problem-free place where you can leave your worries behind,” said Jabola-Carolus. “But for us, there is such a high cost.”
Now, the efforts to find these women — and prevent more women from going missing — are on.
Finding the missing
The disappearance of Gabby Petito, a white social media personality, and the media attention that followed her case has prompted calls to search for missing women from different communities across the United States. Activists, like Lasconia, say that missing women of color have been left behind, receiving little attention.
“There was so much conversation around this one white woman going missing … there were so many young Native Hawaiian girls [who] went missing within that same week, and not a single Amber Alert went out,” Lasconia said.
But local activists and organizers in Hawaii have long been working to fix this issue themselves.
Since the state passed its first anti-sex trafficking law in 2016, local agencies have been working to examine how widespread the issue of sex trafficking is.
Jabola-Carolus said that the Hawaii State Commission on the State of Women has been working to build trust with communities that have been heavily impacted by sexual “exploitation, neglect and criminalization.”
In 2019, SB1039 was signed into law.The Hawaiian law lets people vacate a prostitution conviction and expunge their criminal record as long as they haven’t been convicted of another offense within three years of the original offense. Before, the person would have to prove that they were a victim of sex trafficking to have the conviction erased.
In May 2020, the Department of the Attorney General established a human trafficking coordinator position for the state in an attempt to improve Hawaii’s anti-trafficking response.
The department plans on collaborating with law enforcement to increase the number of prosecutions, developing training programs for law enforcement and expanding outreach against these kinds of crimes.
Hawaii also passed a law in June to enhance the state’s ability to investigate and prosecute traffickers, “while improving outcomes for victims and survivors as they move through the justice system, which punishes sex buyers who exploit sex trafficking victims,” a press release from the office of Gov. David Y. Ige reads.
“These laws are the result of support and input from our partners in law enforcement, policy makers, community service providers, non-governmental organizations, and most importantly, those with lived experience,” said Deputy Attorney General and State Human Trafficking Coordinator Farshad M. Talebi in the statement.
Matthew Mire, 31, is suspected of killing at least one person and shooting several others in a crime spree across Louisiana on Saturday, Oct. 9, 2021. – Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office
(NEW ORLEANS) — A Louisiana State Police officer was found dead after being shot in Ascension Parish Saturday night as law enforcement authorities have swept across the region looking for a suspect in the murder of one person and the shooting of several others.
The New Orleans branch of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said it was assisting on scene where the officer was found dead and confirmed the death was tied to “a manhunt for a gunman tied to multiple shootings in several parishes this weekend.”
“Today, Louisiana mourns the death of Master Trooper Adam Gaubert, a 19-year veteran of Louisiana State Police, who was ambushed while in his patrol unit and killed in the line of duty on Saturday.” Louisiana Gov John Bel Edwards said in a statement Sunday.
“Preliminary information indicates that Trooper Gaubert was shot and killed in the area in which an early morning homicide occurred,” Edwards said. “I am thankful for Louisiana State Police and all law enforcement agencies that worked together to capture the suspect in these homicides.”
Authorities announced overnight that they had caught the suspect, Matthew Mire, 31. He is suspected of breaking into a home and shooting two people in Prairieville around 3 a.m. on Saturday, according to the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office.
Joseph Schexnayder, 43, and Pamela Adair, 37, were both taken to the hospital, where Adair later died. Schexnayder is in critical but stable condition, the sheriff’s office said.
Just hours earlier, in nearby Livingston Parish, Mire is suspected of breaking into another home and shooting two other people. In that incident a woman was shot twice in the arm and leg and a man was shot once in the arm. Both are expected to recover, Livingston Parish Sheriff Jason Ard said.
“The pair tells detectives that they heard a noise outside of their home. They then witnessed someone barging in through their front door and firing shots,” Ard said. “We do not believe this to be a random shooting. It’s believed Mire was familiar with the victims.”
Mire is believed to have stolen a blue 2013 Chevrolet Silverado from that scene, authorities said.
At 5 a.m., a Louisiana state trooper attempted to stop a pickup truck in East Baton Rouge Parish when they came under fire from the driver, authorities said. The officer was not struck, but law enforcement believes the driver was Mire.
Police are still trying to find a motive, authorities said.
(HOUSTON) — A 3-year-old boy in Texas who has been missing since Wednesday has been found alive, officials said Saturday.
Christopher Ramirez was last seen playing with a neighbor’s dog while his mother unloaded groceries from her car outside their home in Grimes County Wednesday afternoon, authorities said. He followed the dog into the woods, and while the dog returned, he didn’t.
Search crews, including FBI personnel and community volunteers, had scoured the region with no signs of the boy for days.
Around noon local time Saturday, Texas EquuSearch, an organization that assists in search and recovery, announced that Christopher had been found. It shared a photo of him shirtless in a car, being cradled by a woman, though did not provide further details.
Christopher was found around 11 a.m. Saturday “alive and safe,” Grimes County Sheriff Don Sowell said in a Facebook post.
He was taken to Texas Children’s Hospital in the Woodlands, where he will be “observed and monitored for a period of time,” the sheriff said.
“A bit tired and dehydrated as well as hungry and in overall good spirits and healthy,” Sowell said.
Crews and community volunteers had been canvassing the wooded area, using drones and dogs to track Christopher’s scent, authorities said. On Friday, Sowell said they had expanded the search perimeter and would continue to search through the night and weekend.
Sowell had said there was no evidence of foul play, and family members were not persons of interest.
The boy’s mother, Araceli Nunez, had publicly pleaded for help in finding Christopher.
“I am asking you all to please help and find my son. I don’t know anything about him, and a lot of time has passed. I don’t know what to do. Please everyone help me,” she told reporters in Spanish at a press conference Thursday.
“I’m desperate and my heart has a hole in it. Please bring back my son, please help me,” she said.
The “humble and kind man” who found Christopher has requested anonymity, Sowell said on Facebook.
“I had several good visits with him and thanked him for being there,” the sheriff said. “He replied that God told him at Bible study yesterday evening to go look for him and he would find him. This morning the man did just that and the rest is a happy ending to this story.”
DEA Speciat Agent Mike Garbo in an undated photo. – (U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration)
(NEW YORK) — It has been a particularly perilous week for federal law enforcement.
On Monday, DEA Special Agent Michael Garbo, a 16-year veteran of the agency, was shot and killed during an operation in Tucson, Arizona.
What started as a routine investigation with DEA agents following up on tips that illegal drugs were being transported on an Amtrak train from California turned deadly as agents closed in on a suspected drug dealer.
The Tucson incident was one of three shootings in the past week that left at least 4 agents killed or wounded. As of Oct. 5, 55 law enforcement officers had been killed or wounded so far this year, approaching the five-year high set in 2018.
Another agent was also shot but not killed in the operation.
On Tuesday an ATF agent was shot and critically wounded in Nashville after a suspect opened fire team of agents looking to arrest him as he sat in his parked in his car outside a diner.
The dramatic scene was captured on security camera video. According to court records, the suspect, who died in the incident, was the target of a drug investigation.
Earlier this week, an FBI agent was shot and critically wounded while serving an arrest warrant with the U.S. Marshals in Racine, Wisconsin, according to police. They did not specify what the agent was doing other than categorizing it as “law enforcement activity.”
FBI Agents Association President Brian O’Hare said the association stands with those law enforcement agents who were shot at.
“The FBI Agents Association stands with these courageous agents, and our thoughts and prayers are with them and with their families,” O’Hare said in a statement to ABC News. “The FBIAA hopes that all Americans will join us in condemning these abhorrent acts of violence.”
And last Friday in Louisiana, a deputy U.S. marshal died after he was in a car accident while on duty.
Law enforcement leaders say these incidents show just how dangerous the profession can be.
“These tragedies are yet another painful reminder of what everyone in this audience knows firsthand: violent crime — particularly gun violence — has reached epidemic levels,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco told the Major City Chiefs Association during its annual conference on Wednesday.
Acting Deputy Director of the ATF Tom Chittum told ABC News in an interview it has been a hard week for federal law enforcement.
“This has been an incredibly difficult week for federal law enforcement,” he said. “Our hearts and thoughts and prayers go out to the families, the friends and to those officers that have been subjected to this gun violence.”
He said law enforcement is a dangerous profession, investigating the most serious violent offenders, but as of late it’s been more dangerous.
“I think they represent in a lot of cases, a callous disregard for life, no respect for them law,” Chittum said. “We have seen an increase in assaults on law enforcement officers that goes hand-in-hand with just the increase in violent crime we’ve seen across the country. It’s a dangerous time out there and increasingly we see more rounds being fired, often in the ambush style attacks.”
(NEW YORK) — In 2005, when music producer and engineer Elliot Scheiner was working with the Foo Fighters on “In Your Honor,” he had the rock group sit in an Acura TL parked outside the studio.
“We’d finish a mix and go out to the car to listen,” Scheiner, an eight-time Grammy winner, told ABC News. “We listened to the album for two weeks in the car. We’d come back, make changes and go back to the car. We mixed these records based on the Acura.”
The Foo Fighters were immediately captivated by the TL’s immersive, crisp and precise sound system Schenier helped design with a team of Panasonic engineers.
“Dave [Grohl] went out and bought a car, he thought it was so amazing. [Eagles guitarist] Joe Walsh bought one too,” Schneier recalled. “All the artists felt [the system] was the most unbelievable representation of what they do.”
Automakers — even mainstream ones — have increasingly turned their attention to high-end, premium audio systems to attract buyers.
Scheiner, 74, continues to work closely with Panasonic on Acura’s exclusive ELS Studio system. The most advanced ELS system, Studio 3D, now boasts 16 channels, 16 speakers and 710 watts, a powerful upgrade from the TL’s seven speaker, 5.1 system. For Acura’s second-generation TLX sedan, Twin Telford subwoofers were added to dramatically reduce and eliminate extraneous rattles and vibrations and guarantee accurate playback in the sedan’s 17 speakers.
“When you put a speaker in the car, it sounds completely different,” Panasonic engineer Mark Ziembe told ABC News. “The car changes it, makes it colored. We’re trying to get rid of that car sound.”
Techniques like dynamic enhancement, motion control and equalization are applied in the tuning process to make sure an Acura “sounds more like a studio,” Ziembe said.
“We want people who buy these cars to be intimate with the artists,” Ziembe said. “We want people to get into their car and have it be a sanctuary.”
Cadillac decided to team up with AKG, an acoustics engineering and manufacturing company, on the revamped Escalade SUV.
“We really wanted to take Cadillac and the audio system to the next level and be different, be unique,” Chris Lata, the engineering group manager for the Cadillac Escalade, told ABC News. “It was a global search and we had a lot of different proposals. AKG is a Grammy winning studio.”
The AKG Studio Reference System in the Escalade comes with 36 speakers and 28 channels that provide a rich, acoustic environment for passengers. Lata said finding where to strategically place and integrate the speakers — the A pillar, headliner, doors — was a challenge in the massive Escalade.
“We worked very closely with AKG on the tuning … there were lots of tweaking, listening evaluations, tests with the windows down, at highway speeds,” he said. “Speakers had to get in the places and locations that give the best studio experience and immersive feel.”
He went on, “When you get into an Escalade and listen to the AKG system, it’s almost like you’re hearing the music differently for the first time. We’ve recreated the live experience as if you’re sitting there at the studio or stadium.”
Brian Moody, executive publisher of Autotrader, said automakers are concentrating on premium audio systems to stand out among audiophiles and consumers who are spending more hours of the day inside their vehicles.
“When you hear the music the way the artist intended — the subtlety, breathiness, crunchiness — it’s a huge enhancement in your everyday life,” he told ABC News. “In the modern world of cars it’s no longer enough to say I have cooled seats and leather and a sunroof. Automakers are taking audio more seriously. Premium systems become more about branding and exclusivity.”
These systems may even matter more than a vehicle’s performance stats or latest tech gadgetry, Moody argued.
“Millennials don’t care that a car has a V8 engine,” he said. “My 18-year-old son is way more interested in a car’s sound quality than ride quality.”
Tim Gunkel, a sound and acoustics development engineer at Mercedes-Benz, said he’s seeing more young people seek out premium audio systems over engine size in their luxury vehicles. Mercedes is currently the only automaker to offer a 4D high performance stereo system where “you can actually feel the music, can feel the impact of the bass, when sitting in the seat,” he told ABC News.
The 4D surround system, developed in partnership with renowned German audio company Burmester, took five years to engineer and is only offered in Mercedes’ flagship S-Class sedan. The state-of-the-art system features 31 high-performance loudspeakers, eight additional exciters and a system output of 1,750 watts — allowing the driver and passengers to perceive the rhythms of the music through the entire body and not just the ears.
“Burmester is connected to a lot of famous Berlin musicians and music producers,” Gunkel noted. “Our customers tell us they like the audio system so much they go to the car to listen to their music.”
British automaker McLaren first partnered with venerable Bowers & Wilkins, also based in the U.K., in 2015 for the 570S supercar. McLaren’s audio engineers had to create a perfect audio system for its discerning customers while also factoring in the supercars’ sonorous turbocharged V8 engines.
“At higher speeds, you’re hearing a lot of noise from external sources,” Matthew Dryden, McLaren’s senior engineer for audio systems, told ABC News. “The system adjusts the bass frequencies to counteract the wind and tire noise … the audio sounds the same but the user doesn’t notice.”
The tweeters in McLarens showcase Nautilus diffusers — spiraling channels that dissipate reflected sound waves — and every speaker seamlessly assimilates into the supercars’ sleek, modern cabin. McLaren also chose Aramid Fibre, a high-end loudspeaker technology known for its robust nature, responsiveness and tonal qualities, in its Speedtail hypercar and GT.
“More and more consumers expect a vehicle’s audio to match up to what they have at their house,” said Dryden. “We want our customers to go on long journeys and enjoy the audio experience.”
Karl Brauer, executive analyst at iSeeCars.com and a self-described audiophile, said a small but growing subset of consumers is willing to pay thousands of dollars more for higher quality, dynamic systems. The best way to test a vehicle’s audio system? Put away the cellphone and plug in a USB to get that raw, unadulterated experience, according to Brauer.
“The number of speakers in cars has become a bullet point in marketing material,” he told ABC News. “Don’t be fooled by the specs — you have to listen to the quality of the system. And execution of the hardware is even more important than the hardware.”
For lawyer Greg Kovacevich, the ELS Studio system in his Acura TSX helps him tune out and survive his long commute home in Southern California traffic.
“I am sitting like cattle most of the time and I want good sound and a comfortable seat to enjoy myself,” he told ABC News. “Premium sound is far more important to me than super tight handling or even fuel efficiency.”
Kovacevich said he has sampled various audio systems made by other automakers but keeps coming back to Acura, with plans to soon buy the new TLX.
“The system is designed so well … Elliot is amazing. The only place I listen to music is in the car,” he said.
